I have huge respect for the developers, but i have to agree with this review

Discussion in 'W:R General Discussion' started by Filipfonky, Feb 26, 2013.

  1. Leth

    Leth Risk of Rain & Wanderlust

    The things Nerva said are things we're aware of and being addressed in the sequel of the game. We want the game to 'hook' players more quickly, and the award screen is readily available in your esc menu (and also explains awards whether you've unlocked them or not).

    Wanderlust's gameplay mechanics are subtle, and require time to discover. Playing with an experienced player will help new players understand a lot easier; it's not ideal, but it's true. Unfortunately, hosting a game requires port-forwarding - a skill that seems to be beyond many of our players. =P

    I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of players who dislike the tutorial also end up disliking the game. It's a challenging game and we thought it was appropriate to prepare players for this in the tutorial. If you end up playing online and still dislike the game, then it's probably not a game you will enjoy. That's fine. Rest assured we are tailoring the second game more around the feedback we've heard from Rebirth players.
     
      Rawrquaza likes this.
    • Nerva

      Nerva Parsec Taste Tester

      I find it ironic that you accuse me of 'not having the right information' when you jump to the assumption that I'm 'writing a bash.' I praised the aspects of Wanderlust that I found appealing. I raked the parts I didn't over the coals. I don't think I can be more evenhanded than that.

      And here, you put words into my mouth. I did not state that the demo should showcase everything in the game. Just some of the good stuff so I can make an accurate judgement as to whether I want more or not. What it gave me was not something I want more of.

      You think I'm averse to difficulty? I play Roguelikes. ADOM. Dungeon Crawl. Nethack. Rogue. I'm used to being thrown into the deep end from the word 'go' and dying horribly. But when that happens, it's my mistake or my inexperience that costs me a character. And y'know what? I'm not bothered by that. If you go back and re-read my post, I don't complain about the difficulty at all - in fact, I complain about the lack of any real difficulty in the demo.

      But a scripted, unwinnable fight, and in a tutorial no less? That's insulting. I lost not because I played poorly, but because I was one-shotted by a creature that I wasn't even allowed to attack - the Elementalist's spells automatically evaporate one tile away from the demon, and I have no other means of offense. You're not even allowed to inflict damage. It doesn't even serve a purpose of demoing the death mechanics, as an actual death would prompt you to revive and try the room again, or to retry the entire adventure, or quit to camp.

      There's plenty of ways the demo could start at later chapters. Let me illustrate for you just one:
      1. Give the demo player a character that has CP appropriate for chapter five
      2. Disable any scorekeeping for demo characters until they purchase the full game
      3. Do not allow characters from the demo to be carried over to the full game
      4. Allow only chapter 5 to be played.
      5. Inform the player that, as this is a demo of a late chapter of the game, the difficulty is going to be hard.
      There you go, a demo that can showcase chapter 5. While it's good for the casual players to offer a couple of the beginning chapters so they can familiarize themselves with the game, you can't say, "oh it gets better later" and expect people to buy the game on your word alone. Maybe if I'd played and enjoyed other games by Yeti Trunk and they'd earned more of my trust, I might consider it. But to me, they're an unknown quantity.

      I don't risk real money on unknown quantities unles they can show me something I'm genuinely interested in.

      I gave this game the most fair critique I could given what I could see of it and what it offered me. I realize it's not the complete game, but I don't have the complete game, and as I stated before, I'm not going to spend money on a game I'm not absolutely sure I want. I have two elderly parents to take care of and keeping a job in this neighborhood is not easy - my disposable income is few and far between. I am not going to waste it on something that might wind up gathering dust in my hard drive.

      I do not have the kind of money to waste on someone else's word. If Wanderlust's demo can't convince me to buy it, then I just ain't going to buy it. That's my opinion, I'm sticking to it.
       
        Oarius likes this.
      • Leth

        Leth Risk of Rain & Wanderlust

        Oh you two...

        It's fine if you don't like it. I'm glad you were sensible enough to try the demo first and base your decision on actually experiencing the game before spending money. More than I can say for most of our detractors.

        That said, $2 is probably worth a gamble if you were enjoying the game up to the point you were dashed by the Tutorial Demon. Perhaps try another character?
         
        • LastDay

          LastDay Heliosphere

          I'm actually outright shocked that someone didn't like how the tutorial ended!
          I absolutely love it when games do things like that!

          If you follow Elona's tutorial it makes you eat the corpse of a beggar (driving you insane), dig up worthless fake gold bars and then throws a bunch of little mobs at you who depending on your starting class and equipment are either a joke or nearly impossible to kill.

          Desktop dungeons makes you get 1-shotted by a goat if I remember right.
          And I died probably 5+ times during Dungeons of Dredmor tutorials! Haha!
          And if I remember right the last one always kills you.
          Heck, the death message for that game is a golden shiny text saying "Congratulations! You are dead."

          It's bit of a roguelike thing; to do well in hard games you need to enjoy losing.
          Or as Dwarf Fortress puts it: "Losing is fun."

          That's what the tutorials that kill you are telling you.
          "You will die. A lot. Here's your first death! Enjoy it!"
          I'm very surprised that somebody actually got mad about it, but I'm even more surprised that you do actually play roguelikes and still didn't like it.

          One would think you are used to unfair deaths.
          ...like Gnomes using overpowered wands in Nethack to 1-shot you with no warning.
           
          • Nerva

            Nerva Parsec Taste Tester

            The difference here, is that I have a chance to fight back, if I'm properly prepared. Plus, if I can get the right items, I could quite easily do the same thing to the gnome. Wands of Death work both ways, after all, and a Scroll of Genocide can keep the gnome from ever even spawning in the first place. There's a difference between having "a slim chance" and having "no chance." Between losing because you're simply outclassed, and being scripted to lose.

            I don't mind games where losing is an inevitability, so long as I can fight it for as long as possible and progress despite it. You cited Dwarf Fortress as an example. I'm fine with the fact that "losing is fun," because the object of the game is to see just how long you can stave off losing. Risk of Rain is the same way, and I intend to buy it the next time I come into some free cash. Sure, the game loops endlessly, getting harder with every stage you progress until it finds a way to kill you. I'm fine with that, because it also lets you do awesome things like this between start and death.

            But being scripted to lose? Being killed because of arbitrary developer fiat? That ticks me off. Even in Elona, where the tutorial NPC, Lomias, is a jerk for the reasons you stated, you're not put in a totally unwinnable fight. Even a snail, the slowest and weakest race in the game, can potentially run from the Putits, leave your home, go to Vernis, get your first pet, and come back to murder the putits and reclaim your home. Heck, if you start a class that allows for the Throwing and Evasion skills, you can use the rock you start off with to potentially kill the putits as a snail without even taking a hit in return. Elona even gives you an opportunity (or even several opportunities, depending on how lucky you are with spawns) to kill Lomias later, getting sweet, sweet revenge for his jerk behavior in the tutorial.

            I've never played Dredmor or Desktop Dungeons, so I honestly don't know how those go. I'll have to take your word for it.

            Point being, when you promise "skill based gameplay" but the second fight in the tutorial is literally unwinnable through no fault of your own, you're not exactly leaving the best of impressions.
             
            • LastDay

              LastDay Heliosphere

              By the time the tutorial told you you'd find one of the most powerful weapons in the game in the chest it should have been pretty obvious that the game doesn't take itself too seriously.
              And you shouldn't either.

              To me whether the tutorial says "lol gg" or brutally murders me before the first mission doesn't really matter.
              The latter is just much, much funnier. :)

              In fact if I ever got in the game business I'd probably decapitate or drop the player in a vat of acid at the end of the tutorial, depending on the mood of the game of course.
              It wouldn't really fit a more serious game with heavy narrative etc.

              Each to their own I suppose.
               
              • emtwo

                emtwo Orbital Explorer

                My own response to W:R was "meh."

                Not a bad game really, it just doesn't add any new elements to the genre, nor does it perfect the elements that it's borrowed from other games.

                I'm not here to bash the game though, I'd just like to express some disappointment that the developers are so quick to jump in and attempt to belittle, minimize, or negate the experiences of people who disliked the game. I don't think that making back-handed comments that attempt to guess at why people disliked it and then discredit their point of view is a good approach for developers to take. It isn't conducive to a positive sense of trust and community between the developers and the consumers. Though thankfully nobody has used these exact words, the impression I've gotten from developers after reading this thread is, "If you didn't like W:R then it's your own fault because you were too lazy/incompetent/ignorant to see how awesome it really is."
                 
                • d2king10

                  d2king10 Guest

                  I am sorry that you got that from our posts. We are not against feedback (good or bad), but you have to look at it from a our standpoint. When a user (who generally puts in half an hour or the first two chapters) comes onto the forums to rage about how "broken" or "buggy" the game is, does not help anyone better the game. The reason we respond with, what you call an attempt to belittle (I would rather just call it questioning their criticism), we are really just trying to push the user into telling us EXACTLY what they did not enjoy/did enjoy about the game. That is the ONLY way we can take the criticism and turn it into patches/fixes for the game.

                  We also find that a lot of users who dislike the game will openly criticize WR for features early in the game that get expanded on later in the game (or, in some cases blatantly lie about features in the game/not in the game). There are very few posts (good and bad) that point out things in the game they liked/dislike.

                  Sorry again if you take our counter-criticism posts negatively, we are simply trying to get the user to give us useful feedback that we can actually use. If they aren't/can't do that, then in my opinion their views on the game are moot.
                   
                  • emtwo

                    emtwo Orbital Explorer

                    If this is the case, I think simply not responding at all would be a more positive and professional approach.

                    You claim that reviewers are making invalid assertions without truly understanding what they're talking about, yet you in return make assertions on how much time you think they've played the game or why they found it to be dissatisfying. Tomato, tomato. (Yes, I'm aware that that phrase doesn't translate well in text). The developers in this thread have also stated that they think that people who didn't like the game were "unskilled" (whatever that means) which is clearly a vindictive pot-shot.

                    On a more philosophical note, if you're going to make the case that W:R really gets good later in the game but some people just don't have the patience (or skill) to reach that point, I think that is more of a reflection on poor game design than on poor ability to review a game.

                    Either way, I personally found the game to be worth what I paid for it ($2) and I am happy to see some of that money go to Chucklefish for Starbound development.
                     
                    • d2king10

                      d2king10 Guest

                      Yes, the game most certainly does get better the longer you play, and I would agree that that wasn't the best approach from a game design standpoint. Making that claim in a review would be a statement I wouldn't have a problem with because they are at least pointing out the fact that they did not play it long enough to get to that point, but the reason being is because of X.

                      The reason we get a bit defensive over the "unskilled" players comments are because we frequently get "This game sucks because it is too hard!". The game was made to be challenging, so saying the game sucks because of that is not a valid complaint. Saying you didn't enjoy the game because it was harder than you were looking for is a valid statement. You are right, it may be tomato, tomato in terms of what criticism the user is trying to portray, but I feel we have a right to defend our game when such a blunt statement such as "This game is broken, it is too hard!" is said on a public forum to sway potential players.

                      I am glad you enjoyed the game, again sorry if you feel we do not care about our users. We CONSTANTLY read and discuss user feedback, and are always trying to find ways we can better the game based on that feedback.
                       
                      • FreshSheet

                        FreshSheet Pangalactic Porcupine

                        Well you see the point of the developers and I to be replying to people is to see if they TRULY have actually played the game. Because it's an entire game to be judged, not just a part of it. Honestly, the things that people are judging are like people playing Call of Duty and after, say the airport mission from MW2, saying that the whole game is bad and/or too hard because of a literal scripted death and pointlessly killing people to aid the bad guy. That's the best analogy I can think up, but it's pretty fitting. And our part is saying no, it gets better later on in the game, you find out the rest of what happens and do some cool stuff, you just haven't experienced it yet because of a poor/depressing experience early on. If you've played WL in its entirety, you will know that the analogy above is quite accurate and fitting. You become powerful and get revenge on all those things that used to kill you, you start doing crazy damage and blowing things up in explosions of blood and battling the bosses alone in an epic battle of stamina and skill, testing yourself to do better and better. Though we may come across as overly defensive, there's good reason, and we just want those who had anger towards the game understand where it's all coming from and the reasons behind why things are the way they are.
                         
                        • Leth

                          Leth Risk of Rain & Wanderlust

                          Jason and I are very sensitive to the 'negative' posts and discuss every single one of them. Hell, I'm only responding here because he messaged me and told me to take a look at the forums. ;)

                          When a customer says "a reflection on poor game design", we simply ask "in what respect is the design poor?" What's wrong with that? :confused:

                          Even this post, I've had to edit multiple times and erase entire paragraphs, simply because I'm trying to justify our design decisions while simultaneously catering to a potential customer, hopefully fostering constructive discussion (about elements of the game that can be easily changed). It's very challenging simply replying to our dissatisfied customers, but we've found that the ones who have legitimate reasons for their discontent are generally quite helpful and open to discussing their experience with specifics.


                          Generally, d2king10 and I are sensitive about our work, but genuine in our desire to meet the requests and desires of fans; the sequel of the game is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT because of their feedback.

                          For the record, I had no issues with anything Nerva wrote in this topic - we're focusing on making the tutorial much better in the sequel of the game (we are aware of our current tutorial's shortcomings).
                           
                            Catoosie likes this.
                          • Nerva

                            Nerva Parsec Taste Tester

                            Honestly? I respect the heck out of this.

                            Far too many developers do not talk to their fanbase and do not talk to their critics. Some critics are totally unreasonable people. Some people are going to have issues that you can't resolve. No one game can be for everyone and I can understand that - Wanderlust just did some things that violently offended my sensibilities. Still, giving people that have criticisms the silent treatment does not help. It makes you look pompous or uncaring, or standoffish, or worst of all, afraid of speaking your mind. Devs are people too dammit, and I feel they should have a right to talk to their playerbase.

                            So, in the end, I vehemently disagree that you should stay quiet. I really appreciate that you're willing to come in and talk to people like me and other players about it.
                             
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                            • NewcDukem

                              NewcDukem Aquatic Astronaut

                              The fact that I bought this game as a 4-pack for less than $5 and I got probably ~10 hours of gameplay out of it with my three buddies makes it worth it for me. It's not the greatest game by far, but it's not terrible either.
                               
                              • Dustin

                                Dustin Scruffy Nerf-Herder

                                Man, it's been over a year and they STILL haven't added Widescreen support. There's a difference between making shit old school looking and not supporting new tech, unacceptable at this point. What is the hold up? This game has been out forever now and it's still the same crap that I got when I purchased it. Pretty sad about the whole deal.
                                 
                                  Filipfonky likes this.
                                • Leth

                                  Leth Risk of Rain & Wanderlust

                                  Widescreen Support will likely not be added into Wanderlust: Rebirth - it's a 2.5 year old game.

                                  Wanderlust: Adventures, however, already runs at a 16:9 Aspect Ratio.
                                   
                                  • Dzelda

                                    Dzelda Parsec Taste Tester

                                    Sounds like someone is used to new content all the time. Some games work on the old school saying, "Get it right the first time and you wont have to fix anything later" :p
                                     
                                    • Filipfonky

                                      Filipfonky Cosmic Narwhal

                                      This one doesn't.
                                       

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