When I picked up the game back in November the one thing I knew to expect from the reviews was that I was going to die a lot. So I booted up the game and then… didn’t. I guess those warnings made me overly cautious. Apparently, I’ve logged 25 deathless hours into the game since then in which time I achieved a lot story wise.
But of course as the title says, I died. I was in my merchant ship on a large loop of the map that was meant to end in me turning in the last color at Venderbright (a quest I had been dragging my feet on). Things were going great when I accidentally attracted the attention of that mountain that hangs out by the chapel of light. This wasn’t a problem as I had done this many times before but this time I was at full hull and in high spirits so I decided to keep it just at the edge of my gun range and take pot shots at it with my aft gun to see what happened, figuring I would just speed away if anything went wrong. This continued for a little while with the mountain roaring or something but taking no obvious hostile action towards me since it couldn’t get close. I was considering driving away anyway because this was taking a long time when suddenly I was dead. I hadn’t even noticed that it was hurting me (presumably by roaring). Kind of an anticlimactic end really. And given how long it took me to get there I’m having trouble getting motivated to start up the whole process again.
I’m sure that it’s already on you guys’ list (or already done) but having some damage sounds that play whenever you get hurt would be a great thing. I’d also like to recommend a visual component as well (entire screen briefly flaring red for example) that occurs when ever you lose hull regardless of context. Given the catastrophic consequences of death the more cues you can give us that we’re dying the better.
Sorry to hear about the death, It usually indicates that you’ve been damaged on the ships log, together with any other effects, worth taking a glance next time.
Mt. Nomad was upgraded with a special ranged attack that does a poor job of indicating it hit you unless you were paying attention to your hull or observing the logs for red lettered displays of damage. Sorry to hear about the death of your Captain, the Zee is a cruel taskmaster and cares little for our pains and sorrows.
On the point at hand, I concur that perhaps some more cues as to hull strength or even just the sounds of rents and tears to signify a damaging attack would go a long way towards immersion and practicality.
edited by Owen Wulf on 1/12/2015
For my reference, does Mt. Nomad’s ranged attack look/sound like the Lorn-Fluke’s ranged attack?
Okay, then, yeah, it’s really very inobtrusive and doesn’t seem like it’s doing damage to you, unlike being shot at by pirates or smashed into by normal zee-beasts. When I was fighting the Lorn-Fluke, my eyes were on the center of the screen, not reading the log book, and I thought maybe the weird screaming was like… sonar or something? Or something to increase my Terror, since I’d heard about monsters doing that in some version of the game? Only after the battle ended did I have the attention to spare for the log book and its record of the damage received.
I agree that modifying the audio cue would probably be just the thing.
It’s this whirlwind-looking thing. Funny how sometimes it doesn’t even do damage though.
Perhaps they could add some sort of "cracking" visual effect to first indicate hull damage and a red flash/blood effect on the screen borders to indicate damage to the crew during combat?
edited by Bardigan on 1/12/2015
Well, if it’s a ranged attack, then I presume it can miss if fired before the completion of the firing solution, just like cannon shots, right?
Yes but sometimes it does impact your ship (instead of harmlessly splashing into the water) and makes the damage noise but does no damage on the combat log. I was wondering if high Iron/Hearts lets you resist the hit somewhat due to the Mt Nomad/Lorn-Fluke shots being “magical” projectiles.
My attention was pretty thoroughly focused on the mountain at the time. I never check my hull or log during combat unless something has indicated that there is relevant information there (like being hit by a cannon). It’s possible I may have encountered a graphical glitch. I’ve seen the mountain (and the lorn flukes) send painful attacks that looked like sound waves at me in the past. After Diamond I’ve only seen what look like sound rings around them. These are very short range and there isn’t any visible projectile that actually goes towards my ship. Apparently it silently demolishes your hull though.
Out of curiosity, how many of you keep the game in perma-death mode and of those who do about how many hours do you normally get through a run before dying? I had a scion and about 8 heirlooms but still, losing 25 hours worth of progress has been so brutal I’m not sure I’m going to start another run. I would have put the game into manual save mode a while ago but I’d become pretty durable and wealthy and everything seemed to telegraph it’s deadliness pretty clearly so it wasn’t a priority and slipped my mind.
I play on perma-death mode. I usually get at least a dozen hours in before dying.
You’ve stumbled upon the chief design challenge it seems to me that this game is facing; it’s hard to vary early game storylets enough to make starting over less than absolutely staggeringly brutal, not for the loss of money per se so much as the complete story reset.
Currently none of the stories can be continued from one generation to the next, and London exactly repeats as well.
This is a big problem for a game that’s dipping its toes in roguelike territory. That doesn’t work unless the experience is heavily varied each time through.[li]
More random port events near London would go a long way to helping this issue out, as well as heavily changing the early game stories in London based on your background/past choice.
Meanwhile, hopefully in the future they can make it so that some larger stories can be inherited after completing some OPTIONAL re-establishment storylets at a relevant location (some plotlines are built with multiple endings so that they will be intriguing to revisit).
edited by MrChapeau on 1/12/2015[/li][li]
edited by MrChapeau on 1/12/2015
Never doubt the danger of the sea :) I’m staying in manual save until the game is finished and I can play it without thinking that something might change (I’ve been caught a few times on invictus when things changed and the amended battlefield killed me), so when it’s ready, I’m Invictus :)