BEACON

Mutate yourself to victory as you scavenge an uncharted alien planet in this stylish sci-fi action rogue-like. · By monothetic

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Initial Thoughts/Feedback/Bugs

A topic by Arcalane created Jun 21, 2018 Views: 512 Replies: 8

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Arcalane5 years ago

So I'm about five-six passes in now. Semi-consistently getting to the hive (though it has awful performance). Some feedback, though;

DNA TYPES as a whole are unclear. What's the difference between base/volatile/fortified/etc.? Is there a risk of even "OK" installed DNA randomly mutating and eventually expiring?

Prism Transmitter Arm is really counterintuitive. The tooltip states 'Chance to Hack Robots', but that "chance" seems to be 100%. It also doesn't mention that it disables your standard melee functionality i.e. damaging enemies, meaning it's dead weight if you face a lot of Solus and few Prism.

Prickled Shell seems to reflect certain shots from all angles, particularly Prism turrets. Have not tested extensively though.

Sack Feet deleted Freya's thighs. Now how is she supposed to sit down?!

In other miscellaneous issues, I found a gun that I couldn't pick up (outside a tent, it triggered the Weapon Variants log entry but was completely impossible to interact with) and am generally seeing a lack of alternative weapons in general, even when searching for them; I'm finding maybe one per level at best, and it's kind of a pain when you get something like Rejected Arm so you can only use one-handed weapons (and with awful accuracy at that).

Aside from that, everything seems promising so far.

monotheticDeveloper5 years ago

Thanks for trying out the game and giving feedback!

DNA Types - We'll have more information provided in-game on the types eventually. Here's a quick rundown for now. Base DNA is 1 positive 1 negative with a medium chance to mutate. Volatile is ~3 Positive and ~3 negative with a high chance to mutate. Fortified is all positive with a low chance to mutate. Paramount is "Boss DNA", which for now just provides a large amount of stats but hopefully eventually will provide a boss mutation.

Transmitter Arm - Some rare mutations will have a balance between being more useful against Solus or Prism, but I agree this one still needs a bit of balancing and we'll make the tooltip more descriptive.

If you're having trouble finding weapons, look for the Stockpile Waypoints on the map (Yellow Ammo icon). The weapon variant not being able to be picked up is a glitch in the current build along with mementos being un-inspectable. We'll have it fixed in the next update! I fixed the issue you mentioned with the sack feet thighs as well just now.

Arcalane5 years ago

I've been checking the Stockpiles when I can, but it's kind of hard to figure out how to reach some of them, especially when I have mutations that are slowing me down and disabling dodgeroll. Or if I do get to them, only to find it's a two-handed weapon whilst I'm stuck with a mutation that enforces onehanded weapons.

Thinking about it, there's another flaw with the Transmitter Arm; as it had no melee damage as part of its hitbox, it couldn't dislodge any Geyser Plugs. I had to wait for a lightning strike to knock one out so that I could gain access to a higher tier. If I was on a map that didn't have those, I might have to expend a grenade (if I had any spare) in order to use the geyser.

I think the only other real complaint I have that jumps out at me is the fact that the crystal 'meteors' or whatever they are, seem to have very little reason to actually inflict damage when they explode shortly after impact. There's no visible projectiles or area effect, it's just this thing that seems like it ought to be safe to walk past now bursts and inflicts damage?

One last thought for now; the Prism Mining Laser cutoff/shutdown panels don't seem to work at all, but I assume that's more of a "we haven't finished rigging up that system" thing rather than a "oops, a bug" thing.

monotheticDeveloper5 years ago

It sounds like you got pretty unlucky with your first sets of mutations with the rejected arm and sack feet. Sack feet is the only mutation that REMOVES dodge roll so don't worry about that happening often. Some of the other dodge rolls are immensely useful compared to how that one is so un-useful, but we'll keep balancing the RNG of it as we keep getting feedback. No matter what dodge roll you have though the level exits should be reachable but some secrets/stockpiles do become un-reachable with certain dodges.

We'll definitely tweak the transmitter arm soon as well, it should definitely be able to pop geysers and perform basic melee functions just with reduced damage. It seems like the range is too low now or something though.

The Hailshard meteors are a randomized weather trap that we want to be punishing if you don't respect them and also occasionally able to be manipulated by your positioning when they drop but they're maybe a bit too punishing now.

You're right about the laser too, it's just not hooked up yet. Someday it will be but there's not much of an advantage to turning it off for now so we haven't prioritized getting it working.

Arcalane5 years ago

Honestly the worst part about losing dodge roll was the fact I got a dodge roll buff mutation on one of the other DNA bits I'd slotted at the start of the same run.

The actual hack melee function range was fine, but even standing basically on top of a plug I couldn't knock it out.

Mostly the thing that bugged me about the Hailshard is that there was no obvious reason to why it damaged me upon exploding. No big fireball, no shockwave, no shower of shrapnel, just apparently arbitrary damage.

Speaking of lasers, the Prism excavator boss can bug out if it gets hit by a shock grenade. I managed to make it as far as that fight in my previous run but by the time I figured out that damaging it seems to have something to do with the plugs and towers, it ate a shock grenade and just stood in one place for the rest of the fight, spamming its lasers at me until I died.

Arcalane5 years ago

Something else I just ran across- some kind of glitched/easter egg DNA?

Can't pick it up, even though I can pick up other kinds of DNA.

monotheticDeveloper5 years ago

I thought we fixed that in the last patch but it looks like you found an exception. Was that from an enemy you hacked? When I first ran into that I thought it'd make a cool easter egg as well, but if we do that it'll actually be something useful instead of just broken.

Arcalane5 years ago

I was fighting a giant pile of Prism, and I definitely hacked a couple of them during the fray (since it was 15v1 or something; at least two reinforcement pods dropped into the area at once). It could well have been from one of the hacked ones but things were rather hectic.

Arcalane5 years ago

Another instance of an uncollectable item;

Supply crate was open when I got there and I couldn't pick up the... whatever it is.

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BEACON

Initial Thoughts/Feedback/Bugs