Suggested Tweaks

[Zoltar567]

Not sure if this is the area to post this, but I have a few ideas in mind that I think would severely improve the experience.

Firstly, Id like to say that I LOVE this game. My brother and I used to play Gauntlet as a kid and no game since has captured the excitement, stress, and absolute joy that Gauntlet caused me. Until Hammerwatch. This game is a nostalgia over-load and I thank the devs endlessly!

I have beaten the game once on easy with health regen (with my girlfriend), with 2 players on local multiplayer. I am also in act 2 with a 4 player normal local multiplayer.

We use a wireless Xbox360 adapter and it works great, but I have a few suggestions/complaints:

1. When playing locally, anyone can control a menu that another player opens. If I go to the combat store while my buddy is in a battle, he could subsequent accidental buy upgrades for me (since he and everyone else playing have complete control over the menu I just opened). This has got to go! There should be some indication of who opened the store, and only they should be able to control it.

2. Along the same lines; anyone can control the menu if you press start. It happened once where my buddy wasnt paying attention and was dying, so I out of panic hit start to save his live. Well, he realized he was getting mauled just as i hit start and happened to scroll down and quit the game. We didnt lose much progress, but he SHOULDNT be able to control the start menu that I opened. There should also be a confirmation window that pops up after you hit QUIT that prompts "Are you sure? YES NO". By default the cursor should select no, to avoid this kind of thing happening.

3. Respawning. It's crazy! We lost many a lives to trying to spot where we would spawn during the fray of a large battle. It's very hard to stay focused when the screen keeps moving and jumping and you spawn unannounced on a random player. We think after you die you should respawn in the spot where you died, but as a "ghost". You are a flashing/transparent ghost for 3-5 seconds. While this is happening you are invulnerable, but all you can do is move. After your time as a ghost is up (maybe there should be a countdown or visual queue) you spawn in the area you are now standing. This would resolve the camera re-adjusting and the mass confusion.

Other than that, the game is killer! I also thought about some way to be able to join or drop players from a game in local play. So we could continue with 3 players if one of us couldn't show up, but I dont know how that should could or would work.

What do you guys think?

[Matrix]

Great points!

We also had issue with random quitting/purchasing. And local respawning must be reworked! I'd say no respawn as long as there's imminent danger could work too (maybe disable it for bosses though) as respawning in the midst of mobs or worse : in spike/other traps is really a pain. But the ghost idea would work pretty well too and be as easy to implement.

I would add a little something, it shouldn't happens often, but when you play at 3 or 4 players and you have no more life, and there's 2 dead : upon picking up a life, the first player in the list is resurrected. We had a sucky mage that kept dying as player 1, the only time our paladin died it took like 4 lifes to get him up as the mage kept dying and dying. Something along the line as when you pick the life, it goes to the one whose last resurrection was farthest in time, or dead timer is the longest.

As far as the drop or join in-game go, it would be pretty hard to balance. The easiest solution I see would be not saving the characters leaving and when a new character join let him have 80% of total gold amassed (so it would effectively cost you 20% of the gold for the option to respec your character/change class.

[Zoltar567]

Ah! Those are good points. I agree with you. The only problem is getting the devs in on it ;P

[Zoltar567]

BUMP because I think the devs really need to see this!

[00cpxxx]

I was going to open a similar thread so instead I'll add my thoughts on this one. I agree with everything Zoltar567 says, specially the respawning.

A very easy thing that need to be added is a quit confirmation, because I accidentally quit the game once using the game controller (wrong key combinations). If there were a confirmation dialog I could have the chance to cancel it.

We lost our game save because we died together and were sent to the last save spot but as soon as we moved from it the game automatically saved again, this had overwritten the previous save where we had more lifes.

Also related to the respawning there should be a safe time of like 3 seconds where the player could be invincible, this would help to get away from the monsters.