Minor issue; molecular assembler is boring

AnnonymousNerd87 commented 1 month ago

not much to say, it just doesn't have the extra juice of a good field. It's just passive damage, and molecular assembler + inductive charging makes the game even more boring. You just sit around corners, not firing your gun, just letting drones/spores/ice9/missiles kill everything while you fall asleep. I feel like it should reward m for being active, maybe it only produces stuff after you kill a mob or deal a certain amount of damage. maybe it could consume nearby blocks when you hold your field, releasing field explodes out in drones/spores/ice9/missiles based on the mass of blocks consumed, forcing you to be aggressive and kill mobs to harvest their mass to add to your assembler. I just don't want it to stay as the energy regen go brrrrrrrr field.

kgurchiek commented 1 month ago

That's a really good point, I never really thought about it that way but molecular assembler really does just reward you for being active. I get incentivizing the player to be careful and take it slow, which some of the bosses do, but making it beneficial to just sit and do nothing isn't very good for gameplay (in my opinion, at least). Maybe instead of just producing things for each kill it could have a short timer, so for each kill you get 3 seconds where you're able to produce things, and then it stops. I imagine it being displayed visually on the player like the damage boost powerups.

landgreen commented 1 month ago

... molecular assembler is my favorite field

kgurchiek commented 1 month ago

Molecular assembler is definitely one of my favorites too, it's a cool concept and it's fun to mess around with, but it falls into the problem a lot of games fall into where the best strategies aren't the fun ones, so you end up having to sacrifice some fun to do better at the game or vice versa. Pilot wave is the opposite, it's my favorite field because of how fun it is, but it just isn't that good in practice so it isn't a viable option if you're trying to do as good as possible.

landgreen commented 1 month ago

Fields are designed to be more of a personal choice, so it's cool to like some and not like some.

I play molecular assembler in an active way on the why mode I've been working on. I'm mostly trying to figure out a way to not die with the reduced mobility and defense of the field. It's fun!

(also I'm old and I like that molecular assembler doesn't hurt my wrists as much to use)

kgurchiek commented 1 month ago

I think it should at least have some cap though, high energy or coupling builds are made op with molecular assembler because you can basically just afk and kill everything. Most "god runs" I see people do either use an insane amount of bots or molecular assembler to basically become unstoppable, at which point the game becomes boring because there's no linger any challenge, it's an easy win even on why mode. Don't get me wrong, molecular assembler is great and fun if you play it for the fun, but I just think in its current state it rewards playstyles that aren't fun more than ones that are. While it is your choice to play that way, most gamers are prioritizing doing as good as possible, regardless of fun. It's why you can look up so many grindy xp farms in pretty much any game that has an xp system. Most games try to make the fun playstyles rewarding, so that those people still end up having a lot of fun and enjoying the game. I personally think The Finals does this really well, wacky strategies with crazy movement and whatnot are both really effective and really fun.

landgreen commented 1 month ago

If you can win every time or even 1/5 of the time with a low skill build on why mode I'd be surprised. I think people stuck doing a boring, but effective build need to try a harder difficulty.

That's kinda the point of the next patch. I want to make setting a higher difficulty a more obvious choice so people will find the right level of fun. Lots of folks don't even know there are difficulty modes.

kgurchiek commented 1 month ago

Yeah, a lot of people I talk to don't even know there are settings because they ignore the start menu entirely, that's another reason having the difficulty menu be an in-game powerup is a great idea.

AnnonymousNerd87 commented 1 month ago

This was some great commentary, I'm closing now.

Masbirb commented 4 weeks ago

In the word of every game design book players will optimize the fun out of your game. I believe that the problem with molecular assembler is that it works just as well if not better when playing passively compared to playing actively. We can make molecular assembler more active by adding techs that increase energy or energy efficiency when surrounded by mobs so for max dps you need to be surrounded while you still can sit back and let your drones or spores do the work for you slowly.