Post by BobbyTwoHands in Shadows 2 (Internal Dev build) comments

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Thanks for playing and giving feedback.

You're right that even at this early stage the descriptions need to be a better. I've gotten so used to testing it myself that I don't even read the descriptions, so don't notice that they're wrong or missing. I'll have to look back over them before we do any more testing. For instance it possibly hasn't ever actually been mentioned that a cult allows you to infiltrate around the cult AND the entire nation the cult is in, so you don't have to place cults right next to locations you want to infiltrate (like universities). I also think maybe the game needs to explain better that stopping understanding is useful, but not always critical, if you can win before it becomes a problem then you can just do that.

The map graphical issues are something that I planned on fixing, but wasn't yet a priority. I think the hexes look cool, but they were a Unity asset store thing, and I'd like to have a unique style to it. Having the terrain as this giant shader lets me do some new stuff with it. For instance Deep Ones will gain the ability to raise sea level, to drown entire cities and nations. It'll also allow weird shader effects so we can have stuff like "The Color From Outer Space" or giant fungus growing all over the map. Definitely needs some work, but hopefully the advantages will be useful.

Anyway, thanks again for playing, I'll try to get it at least slightly more playable in the immediate future. Maybe it needs some placeholder messages just to say what's different from Shadows 1, before a real tutorial can be made to explain cults, evidence and understanding.

megaboto24 days ago

I see, thanks for explaining

I am not sure if I need a tutorial exactly - SOFG was played by me without a tutorial as well (for the most part), most if not all the information was able to be inferred from the challenges or the quest descriptions - as such, I would request that those be the foci - something like having infiltration describe what is necessary for it to happen, or maybe having specific quests by the heroes describe what the quest is supposed to achieve (which would also be useful for quests like guarding - like, if a human is being guarded, it would be nice to know for how long they will be guarded. in fact it actually would be kinda nice if obsessively liking a species would not result in someone just becoming a dedicated guard forever)

what I can say are some nice changes mechanically or UI wise are how shadow does not spread as easily, how infiltration is not a thing that "just happens" anymore (since you need to have a somewhat significant cost to basically start doing it), and the way that the challenges are filtered (based on stat used or things like infiltration) means that it was easier to actually see specific things; especially when you have things like death, souls or geomantic loci in a given location since those added a looot of challenges you might not wanna see right away. I also like how numerous challenges have "other" effects that basically make them easier (or harder) like how cults improve certain challenges based on their growth

megaboto24 days ago

one of THE most important things right now, I believe, is to mark which challenges create a piece of evidence in the first place. as an example, I infiltrated two universities next to one another and put cultists into their faculty - however, the game never mentioned that at any point it would create a piece of evidence, which is especially counter intuitive since the evidence is right on the location where it would also be studied

BobbyTwoHands19 days ago(+1)

Alright, I've added a warning to the challenge screen, when you hover over it should have a nice big "creates evidence" warning, so people can tell. It's also got a tiny footstep icon next to the challenge icon on the right.

I've also added the text and traits for the three unique agents. It feels like things are in a good enough shape to progress. I think there's some good new changes, it's sufficiently different from the old game to be worth trying, while keeping a bunch of the good things. I'll work on the remaining bits, including trying to stop them bodyguarding 24/7 (although during the final battle they still gotta hold the line defending the Chosen One against your agents). I'll also mention it on the discord, so a few more people can try it out and check it's a good foundation.

After that I'll actually start work on the rest of the game. Paying for the artist is going to be expensive, so I really wanted to ensure it was a good idea before I committed. If you'd hated it I'd rather know before spending the money.

Thank you again for all the testing and feedback

megaboto17 days ago

you are welcome. I personally think that, given that there already exists a lot of a game, things can be reused - even if temporarily, to focus on mechanics and interactions mainly - at least for any kind of alpha build, while it is in pre-early access so to speak, unless you are very certain that things will work out (I worry since with the last game there more and more issues towards the end due to legal stuff and taxes and the like which slowed and eventually halted development, which I do not wish for the new project to be affected by. it also means in case there IS some kind of issue with mechanics that cannot be solved, there was no financial commitment to it to mess with it)

side note - I am thinking that, maybe universities should be some kind of city point of interest, be it rolled into the library (though, maybe there is too much power concentrated in a library then? unless every point of interests gets new cool stuff) or into some other unique one, since it is currently too easy to infiltrate them

as a side note, though it is perhaps not as much a priority - maybe the way gold works could be changed/reworked? I ask because locations like 10 pop villages cannot really do much of anything, since the unrest created via taxation is usually more than the unrest reduction would need in terms of gold, since it is always a flat amount. and because taxation takes time and needs to be prioritized, sometimes there are things like "I have 200 motivation to do this thing, but it requires gold that I do not have, but the motivation to gather gold is too low compared to (lets say brutal crackdown) so I will do [the other challenge] instead". I am not sure if that falls within the scope, but if things like shadow spread are reworked and evidence becomes a thing, I would love to see the economy to have a change that prevents it from being very one sided/having so many edge cases that they basically become the norm. those are my thoughts right now at least (I so far have yet to play version 03, I only now saw the message I received)

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