Yolan

[Yolan]

“1) you complain about that poor recruits does not pull their weight? That is a given. Find beter ones…”

I don’t complain that poor recruits do not pull their weight. Rather, it is a problem of how the level scaling works. As far as I know, a poorly equipped, poorly stated member of your team is going to contribute to the mathematics of the level scaling simply because of their level. I am more than happy to have to retire weaker guys in the face of bigger threats. The problem is that level scaling causes all kinds of complications and wierdness. Let say I am too poor to hire new people, having had a few big losses. Yet my remaining weak players are high level, and the result is a series of punishing fights that are scaled too high for waht you can reasonably deal with.

“You want to play veteran and want it to be easier? Just play normal than.”
I don’t want it to be “easier”. And I explicitly said that and explained what I actually wanted.

2) “why do you want to make parts of the world even less attractive…”
I don’t. I want parts of the world to be safer. Which makes them -more- attractive if you are trying to recover from some bad losses, and want a steady drip of money to help you get on your feet.

[Yolan]

Please, guys. Just slow down. Let’s chill. I think the perfect way to describe the feeling I get from the game right now is that I feel under time pressure, very stressful.

Yes. This very much so.

I just -love- the aesthetic of this game. I really enjoy combat. I love the variety of equipment and potential tactics. The enemies are varied and cool. Overall, just great. But honestly, I don’t feel like playing any more as it is. I’d like a world that is more independent of me, with time to explore it as long as I like. A sandbox. Now it feels like a constant ramping ever upwards of pain. No thanks!

[Yolan]

Some more feedback, now that I’ve survived with a party up to day 90+.

I’ve noticed something which concerns me about how the world responds to party growth.

Others have pointed out that having the end of game crisis occur regardless of if the player is ready or not can lead to big problems. Actually, I’ve got this problem right now! Although I’ve survived this long, my party sucks. Basically I’ve struggled a lot, and only just managed to recover a few times from pretty catastrophic losses. As a result, I can handle fighting a few brigand raiders, but I can’t really handle legionnaires etc.

Thing is, this is not actually what has caused me a lot of grief. For the last 30-40 days of the campaign, I’ve struggled more because the world appears to be acting as something like a treadmill. As my team has gotten stronger, it’s not just that more difficult and better paying jobs have become available, but that all the quests have been “upgraded”. The world has gone and become more difficult alongside my party (and in my case, getting stronger has, paradoxically, made me much weaker in the face of what I have to try and do). This is entirely aside from the end of game crisis, which is just what happens to be wiping me out now.

So a one-skull quest, I’ve found later on, is much harder than a one-skull quest initially. In other words, it’s only -relatively- a one-skull quest, based on the game guessing my strength and what would be easy/hard. It’s not absolutely a one-skull quest. That in itself I find annoying, but the real issue is that although quests get harder, the payment doesn’t keep up. I might get 700 crowns for killing a bunch of thugs early on, and then later have to take on a bunch of raiders for the same amount of money. What gives??

To be honest, I really, really dislike the world scaling itself to my level. Obviously, the problem it seeks to address is real. Players need challenges which are suitable. Too hard, and they can’t survive. Too easy, and things get boring. In my opinion having the world adjust itself to you is not a good way to deal with this issue however. It’s not just that the game can get things wrong (for example, as I have gotten stronger, I’ve actually become weaker, relative to the quests I have to do at the moment). This is a technical issue, and some tweaking can help a lot with it. It’s that scaling works to help destroy the illusion that I’m living in this real, fantasy world. This is a shame, because the Battle Brothers world is really cool. All kinds of nice things are simulated that work to make it believable. Having things scale like this though goes in the opposite direction.

In my opinion, the integrity of the world requires that it doesn’t care a jot how strong or weak I am, -unless it makes sense for it to do so-. It makes sense that getting stronger would unlock higher level quests, in that it simply makes them more accessible. Currently I have yet to be able to unlock the noble house quests. Obviously my party are just to weak. And it makes sense. But it doesn’t make sense that getting stronger would turn what are effectively the same quests into “harder versions” of the same quest. When a guy gets his stupid idol stolen I’d like it to be something that is legitimately happening in the world, regardless of how strong I happen to be. The strength of the parties involved should have nothing to do with me. It is up to me to get involved or not.

I assume that the way the Battle Brothers world worked in earlier versions was more like this. As I recall, you were more likely to run into all kinds of nasty creatures that were spawning around and marching about. Is this something that has now been actively moved away from for some reason? I understand that the devs want to have the player enjoy a somewhat more balanced experience, but I hope more of a objective simulation approach to the game can be taken, with player strength only having a minimum influence on overall world difficulty. There are other ways of keeping the player from getting hammered by far superior forces than is reasonable. For example, using geography (few goblins/orcs or undead in human lands).

Here is a quote from the game webpage.

On the procedurally generated worldmap different factions exist with their own agenda and resources, struggling for survival and dominance. A strategic AI leads each faction towards its goal by making use of its resources while staying true to the lore of that faction. Factions own locations on the worldmap – villages, camps, crypts or similar – and send out parties from there with objectives such as patrolling the area, hunting for food or raiding an unsuspecting village.

The player jumps into this living world and affects its balance by his actions – but the simulation works even without the player intervening. This way, the game does not have to rely on pre-scripted or linear events but provides new opportunities of adventure every time based on the dynamic interplay of its inhabitants. Furthermore, the player’s actions make a real difference. Preventing that orc raid on a village has that village able to offer you more in trade, and even just killing a single orc leaves the orc tribe with one less warrior for future encounters.

This all sounds great to me. But I’m not sure I’m seeing that much of it right now. The late game crisis are kind of nice, but it’s the idea of having a real impact on a living, dynamic world that excites me. It seems thought that things have moved more towards using scripts to provide a narrative and challenge to the game at the expense of the simulation.

[Yolan]

Some feedback for veteran difficulty level, iron man mode. Played two party wipes. (Both times to darn necromancers! Damn I hate necromancers.)

Basically, I love it. Keeping in mind that I’ve always played iron man style, even when it wasn’t available as an option, I think the difficulty is much more balanced. A few things I love:

1. Balanced quest progression. Previously, I had trouble running out of lower level quests to do. Now there is just enough. You still have to be careful with your budgeting and overall management, but so long as you are, you aren’t too likely to fall apart from lack of quests, or from being forced into taking a quest that is too high for you. A small criticism might be that there are a few too many fetch quests (stolen item quests). I’d lower their number relative to other quests a little bit.

2. Balanced enemy spawning. Previously, I would often get wiped out by goblins, orcs, etc. that wandered around the landscape. Now the human world actually feels -human-. If you go out into the wilds, you might get yourself into trouble, but stay near towns and you are more likely to run into other human beings than monsters (although of course I imagine the greenskin invasion scenario would change this). This feels much better.

3. Better party development via new goal system. I -really- like the mini goals. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about them when I first heard of the idea, but I think they have been executed excellently. My parties feel a bit more like they have something they are striving to achieve, and as they gather nice objects like the banner, or the sash, I feel that much more attached to them (and bummed out when they die). Also, the new little occurrences and stories that difference classes can cause to pop up really add more color.

4. Nice quest variety. I love now how quests to raid a place actually occur when there is a place nearby, as opposed to just spawning the place when required by the quest. A few times, I’ve found a location, walked on past it, and returned later when a quest was offered for me to go there. Cool.

5. Art. Love the new art. Really pleasant to look at.

6. Reputation. Another cool thing to strive towards improving. Love it.

7. Retirement/party wipe. Really nice. Such a kick in the gut when your guys have a good run, then die like dogs and have their names forgotten. Or when you retire, and end up in complete penury. Trying to actually give your heroes the fate their deserve becomes a motivation for you as the player.

Some issues:
1. I once had a quest location spawn across a bay, on a peninsula. So, to get there from the issuing village, I would have to walk 2.5 days one way, 5 days round trip. Making it unprofitable. However once I accepted it, refusing also would lower my reputation. Felt a bit like a bug. Maybe add some code to check not just raw distance from the town, but how far it would take the player to walk.
2. Necromancers attacking towns. Twice now I have accepted one skull level quests to defend towns from bandits, and both times it turned out that a necromancer was attacking. Each time I was absolutely routed, even with a group of 8 level 4 men, well armed and with some decent tactics/tricks. I like how difficult this guy is, but it seems a bit raw that he has no maximum level on how many zeds he can resurrect each round. I even had him raise 4 or maybe 5 in a single round. Yikes.
3. Raider groups for low level quests are often a pack of 6-8 thugs. Happy to have the easy fight, but it would be nice if each group had at least one leader character. He doesn’t need to be very tough, but make him identifiable in some manner.

[Yolan]

Long time player. Just want to say that I love your art Paul. The style you guys have achieved is something of an ideal for me, and an inspiration for my own indie devving work (www.innkeepgame.com).

Wishing you guys success with the release of Battle Brothers. I’m in completely agreement with Agathocles. The game is looking great.

[Author]

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