Miscellaneous feedback

#1

I’ve been enjoying the heck out of Defender’s Quest. But I’m also a detail-oriented perfectionist, so here are some complaints and suggestions.

Feature from other games I miss most: the Checkpoint system from Defense Grid. It’s frustrating to be 10 minutes into a perfect run and have a critter on the verge of death slip through. In those circumstances, I would really rather only lose a minute or two of play than have to restart the whole map, especially as I am not likely to change my opening strategy much.

The Golden Sheep is Too Tough. I haven’t beaten every other map on Expert Perfect yet, but I have done most of them. But I still can’t get that sheep down below 40% health. maybe I’m missing a power strategy somewhere, but I feel taunted by this level, in a not-fun way.

When you click on a Monster to see its description, there should be some icons describing specific abilities. Mousing over these icons should provide a tooltip with more detail.

  • Immune to Knockback (some monsters mention this in their flavor text, but many don’t)
  • Immune to Slow/Stop (I think the Golden Sheep is, but I’m not actually sure)
  • Currently Frenzied
  • Currently Blind
  • Currently Bleeding
  • Currently Poisoned

When a Healer is at Boost 5, set to Fight (or Both) Priority, has at least one level of Inspiration, and has at least one friendly unit in range who is in combat (e.g. an Archer), that Healer should be firing Zeal.

Armor-related skills don’t seem very valuable to me. When Armor first appears, the anti-armor skills seem meaningful, but as general damage output of your army goes up, Armored creatures become functionally indistinguishable from Tough creatures, so it seems to make sense to just boost raw damage, rather than invest in skills that are only occasionally relevant. Suggestion 1: change mechanics/balance such that there is an occasional need for Armor-piercing/breaking. Once there is an actual need, you might also consider adding some weapons (either as Perfect Rewards, or for sale) which confer anti-Armor abilities, but which have much less raw damage output.

#2

Thanks for all of the suggestions!

  • A checkpoint system would probably be too complicated at this point for us. I could see building it into a sequel if we do one, but I think from a tech perspective it’s very unlikely, especially for the gold version. If the game continues to be hugely popular then maybe, but this is definitely non-trivial, and we have to pick our features. We have basically 1.01 programmers (I help a little, but it’s 99% Lars).

  • I would disagree here. The golden sheep is supposed to be tough. Very tough. I modeled it after the Weapons in Final Fantasy VII. Not everyone beats them, but those who do have legitimate bragging rights. I worried that much of the game erred on the easy side, and wanted something to keep people challenged who really like a big challenge.

  • I agree that more information would be good here, especially in terms of immunities. The “currently” statuses are already represented in the game with icons.

#3

the super sheep was great, actually one of the better challenges in the game. took about 10 tries or so to figure out the best strat/combo of guys to beat it.

#4

OK, I’ll grant your point on the sheep.

The status icons are partially useful, but not completely.

  • If there are lots of damage numbers coming in, the status icons can get completely obscured. (This is actually a more general problem, as it also makes it hard to see health bars. Hm, maybe I should turn off damage numbers!)
  • The icon doesn’t give me any hard data about the effect. Say I have two rangers, one of whom has rank 9 Poison, and has just started to put points into Bleed; the other is exactly the opposite. I can see that a unit is Poisoned and Bleeding, but are those effects level 2 or level 9? I know that my Frenzy increases attack speed – does an enemy Frenzy do anything for units that don’t attack my towers? I don’t know.
#5

I highly liked the sheep challenge, and it would probably be a good idea if you put more and harder ones in as updates come out. :twisted:

#6

I killed the sheep with roughly 33% of the path left, and I was not maxed out. It’s not impossible, just fairly difficult. :slight_smile:

#7

I think for me it was the not knowing if the bastard was gonna die, I was running it at half speed to make sure I didn’t miss a tick on upgrades and placement, and really started getting worried towards the end (again, again, ect ect) I really was rdy to start hacking the save file just for this damned sheep LOL. I think it was all the time I invested just to have him kick my ass yet again LOL. I would say make him faster, and a little weaker.