[Feedback] The Cursed Ascent (now with poll!)

[RemiHiyama]

If you have "harder" and "easier" options as checkboxes instead of fixed levels, you might be able to combine them in interesting ways to produce rulesets that aren't necessarily easier or harder, but different in interesting ways. After battle regen would combo interestingly with harder tasks, encouraging more risktaking behavior... Shorter tasks but higher health for both sides might give roughly the same difficulty but more varied fights... There's a lot of possibilities.

- Player-created Vixens: You could input the variables for an enemy Vixen and then fight it. However, the input would be tediously long and the enemy Vixen could not be saved in your save file, due to size restrictions.
- User-created Vixens: If there were enough interested players, I would make a new forum thread, detailing the programming behind Vixens. It's basically a couple of variables and an attack pattern in form of a list. People could come up with their own Vixens, post the code and I would implement them as optional enemies.

You could always use something like this to allow loading custom data wholesale, and have both and more besides. Being able to make custom courses with different behavior for absolutely everyone seems entirely possible, and sharing or playing them would just be a matter of easily pasted around blocks of text.

[itslate]

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Had a pretty odd bug today. I had just bought the curse of death and was on my first run to fight the witch. Got to the top, beat the witch handily and then it just went to back to the ascent screen and battle and I had to fight the witch again.

First off: You beat her handily? Than I really need to make her harder. Did she start the fight by dooming you? Just to rule out that the wrong Vixen got loaded.

That bug seems strange, never encountered it myself. I will look into it, thanks for reporting!

You could always use something like this to allow loading custom data wholesale

Thanks for the tip. I will look into it later, but I don't want to rewrite the whole savegame stuff if I don't have to.

[RemiHiyama]

I will look into it later, but I don't want to rewrite the whole savegame stuff if I don't have to.

You wouldn't have to. (Though it may require some rewriting of that code to not have to, I haven't looked closely.) It's presented as being for savegames, but there's no reason you couldn't leave saves the way they are and just use that for loading custom Vixen data at runtime.

[iiilllililiill]

Possible bug for Curse of Death

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So I got curse of death and beat the witch. After beating her it took me back to the screen before her except instead of being Realm 5: The End, it was Realm 6: The End. I beat her again, and i was again brought back to the screen before her reading realm 7 this time. I let her kill me this time because I was tired of fighting her, and I was brought to the failure screen. She said something about the price of my insolence or something and brought me back down to Realm 1 with my inventory from the past run and negative 2 hp. As soon as the fight against the vampire started, I died and I went to the normal loss screen and did not get any keys I earned that run. Is the game supposed to work that way, or is this a bug?

Edit: I see now someone else already reported it, mb
Absolutely love the game by the way and respect all the effort you're putting into it post-launch.

[itslate]

I fixed the bug for Curse of Death. It seemed to have happened when I added the new battle menu.
This process of getting community feedback and debugging is really important in my opinion. One person can only do so much.

Speaking of: So far, you guys voted the most for a Boss Mode. That is gonna take me some time, but I do like to create Vixens. I am pretty shocked though that some people found the late-game Vixens too easy. So I would love some feedback, especially on Vixens from Realm 4: Were there some mechanics that did make it challenging or fun? Do you have ideas how to make a really neat Boss Battle?

Also, I am contemplating two ideas for this mode:
1. Rogues will only get to shop once in all three shops (with about 100 gold) and do only one training before doing the Boss Battle.)
2. The Rogue is pre-set, having a fixed inventory and stats for this battle. Only the Rogue's class ("The tormented Rogue", "The Edgelord", etc.) would be chosen.
Any preferences?

[lor205y]

I am pretty shocked though that some people found the late-game Vixens too easy. So I would love some feedback

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I did feel like I started to move through them more easily after R2, speeding up by the end of R3. I think it came down to a few things. I had Attack II and Block II (and I think I had trained those a little as well?) so I could pretty easily just beat the later vixens by attrition if I didn't feel like dealing with their specific games. It was usually just a pattern of block and attack, spaced out correctly to avoid their damage as much as possible. I also got heal somewhere in there so I would throw that into the mix and heal myself every few turns rather than try to fully block or cleanse everything.

I was kind of expecting some vixens to notice my stronger attacks and blocks and level up themselves to deal more damage or block harder mid-battle. OR like, get mad when I use a stronger attack, and unleash a bunch of horrible stuff on me. Not sure if this would be easy to implement. You could also start much more frequent and intense force stroke, and force edge to wear the player down.

The vixens ARE very good about destroying my limit, which is how I think they're supposed to be more challenging, but I just stopped using limit boost and fell back to a steady repeated Attack II.

I think if you can make them react to stronger attacks the same way they are prepared for limit boosts, it would make a big difference.

I guess it felt like I leveled up more than the vixens did.

[RemiHiyama]

You wouldn't have to. (Though it may require some rewriting of that code to not have to, I haven't looked closely.) It's presented as being for savegames, but there's no reason you couldn't leave saves the way they are and just use that for loading custom Vixen data at runtime.

Actually, would you be bothered if I just -wrote- the thing and then handed the code off to you? I'm pretty sure I know how to do this in a fairly straightforward way.

[itslate]

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I did feel like I started to move through them more easily after R2, speeding up by the end of R3. I think it came down to a few things. I had Attack II and Block II (and I think I had trained those a little as well?) so I could pretty easily just beat the later vixens by attrition if I didn't feel like dealing with their specific games. It was usually just a pattern of block and attack, spaced out correctly to avoid their damage as much as possible. I also got heal somewhere in there so I would throw that into the mix and heal myself every few turns rather than try to fully block or cleanse everything.

I was kind of expecting some vixens to notice my stronger attacks and blocks and level up themselves to deal more damage or block harder mid-battle. OR like, get mad when I use a stronger attack, and unleash a bunch of horrible stuff on me. Not sure if this would be easy to implement. You could also start much more frequent and intense force stroke, and force edge to wear the player down.

The vixens ARE very good about destroying my limit, which is how I think they're supposed to be more challenging, but I just stopped using limit boost and fell back to a steady repeated Attack II.

I think if you can make them react to stronger attacks the same way they are prepared for limit boosts, it would make a big difference.

I guess it felt like I leveled up more than the vixens did.

That's awesome feedback. Especially if you know the game well, you can buy the right skills to choose and can kill the Vixens quite effectively. It's interesting you beat a lot of them without using limit. That's not what I had in mind. Some Vixens should pretty much force you to use limit. This can be done with more blocking and healing, though. Maybe I add another status that gives blocking automatically each round.
The idea of reacting to big attacks is cool, but nearly impossible to implement. Any kind of "if" calls for a second list or part of the list of actions. There is exactly one condition like that in the game, Full Health: Evolve. I think it would be better for me to just rebalance some vixens in Realm 3 or 4 and assume that the player leveled up his stats effectively. That's how rogue-likes operate either way.
It would be great if a few people could post their opinions on balance as well. Do you agree with lor205y?

Actually, would you be bothered if I just -wrote- the thing and then handed the code off to you? I'm pretty sure I know how to do this in a fairly straightforward way.

Thanks for the offer, but I'll look at the coding when I have the time. Player-created vixens are far down the list.

[LittleElfBoy]

Re: Balance, one of the issues I think is that Attack (and secondarily, Limit) is the only thing that does damage. Since damage can end the encounter (and the other actions don't), its inherently more useful to just keep attacking. There should be more variety in the other actions to also deal damage in some way to make them more appealing to use.

Attack also has IMHO the easiest instruction to follow, so its more easily spammable (stroking 30 times is way easier than 3 edges)

[intermolecularpyro]

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I bought the Curse of Space but it is not in the curse menu and is no longer available to purchase in the keys screen.

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Also is it supposed to be possible to buy more than one key from the Smith in a run? I paid 300 gold worth to her but still only received 3 keys total upon successful completion of the run. I did turn down the orgasm though, just to see what would happen. Maybe that's something to do with it?

Small spelling error: the Witch says something like "All roads leed to me" in one of her scenes.

Thanks again for all this support!

[itslate]

Re: Balance, one of the issues I think is that Attack (and secondarily, Limit) is the only thing that does damage. Since damage can end the encounter (and the other actions don't), its inherently more useful to just keep attacking. There should be more variety in the other actions to also deal damage in some way to make them more appealing to use.

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That's true, and there are lots of other ways to deal damage. But maybe they are not as potent as upgraded attack actions. Maybe I will add a status that only affects the attack actions, specifically. Weaken or Blind also hinder quadslash.

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I bought the Curse of Space but it is not in the curse menu and is no longer available to purchase in the keys screen.

I fixed it, thank you!

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Also is it supposed to be possible to buy more than one key from the Smith in a run? I paid 300 gold worth to her but still only received 3 keys total upon successful completion of the run. I did turn down the orgasm though, just to see what would happen. Maybe that's something to do with it?

You can but you can only get the key in the next realm, when you visit the Smith again. That's when you get the message that you obtained a key. The keys you forge are not affected by the keys you get for completing an ascent.

[Vicissitudo]

I noticed you've constantly implementing/fixing it and that's great.
But I now see you've somehow increased the difficulty by a lot (or perhaps I'm just extremely unlucky).
Apparently I can't find Heal in the Dojo anymore and I end up relying on the Witch's potions/tinders which are very limited.
Perhaps add an easy/normal/hard selection at the beginning of the game? Just saying...
Could also be cool to have a list of the encountered Vixens and those unknown who still have to be discovered and/or new ones.

Thank you anyway for all the effort, the game is great!

[itslate]

I noticed you've constantly implementing/fixing it and that's great.
But I now see you've somehow increased the difficulty by a lot (or perhaps I'm just extremely unlucky).
Apparently I can't find Heal in the Dojo anymore and I end up relying on the Witch's potions/tinders which are very limited.
Perhaps add an easy/normal/hard selection at the beginning of the game? Just saying...
Could also be cool to have a list of the encountered Vixens and those unknown who still have to be discovered and/or new ones.

Thank you anyway for all the effort, the game is great!

Thanks for the feedback!
One downside of me fixing stuff is that the tease appears to be changing all the time. But all changes are documented in the about menu, I promise you. I haven't done any balancing work as of yet. Whether you find an action in the Dojo is determined by...

Spoiler: show

your already bought actions and by luck.

I am also cautious of balancing too soon. I have gotten good feedback on balance, but not by a ton of people. If I do have a feeling that attack actions and training are too dominant, I am right now leaning towards ...

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implementing 3 new statuses which would be introduced in Realms 3 and 4:

Exhausted/Debuff/Taking an attack action applies Weakened X/permanent/Player Only
Shielded/Buff/Apply X Blocking at the end of your turn/permanent/Enemy Only
Guarding/Buff/Can't take more than (10-X) damage from a single attack/reduced by 1/Enemy Only

So Guarding7 means the Vixen can only take 3 damage max per attack from the rogue.

All these would be aimed at making attack actions weaker forcing players to use Limit and other means of damage more. The overall difficulty would increase as well.

These mechanics would also be cool to implement in boss battles first, which are the most demanded by the community right now. Implementing it would take a few weeks though, because I don't have the time. I am acting quite fast on some feedback right now, but most of it is easy to fix and I want to make sure the game itself works as intended and is fun to play.

[intermolecularpyro]

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I bought the Curse of Space but it is not in the curse menu and is no longer available to purchase in the keys screen.

I fixed it, thank you!

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Hmm, it's still not there, but now the Turn Keys menu is missing too. Other things I've bought (disembodiment, knowledge of the smith) are still usable.

[itslate]

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Hmm, it's still not there, but now the Turn Keys menu is missing too. Other things I've bought (disembodiment, knowledge of the smith) are still usable.

There was indeed a second bug. Please try again, it should be fixed now.