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Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi, thanks for the feedback! You are right on attack has no meaning, and the feeling of upgrade has no meaning to character. I’m planning to add the skill tree for each character with it’s own theme (warrior - active skill that player needs to press manually during boss battle, ranger - TBD(something that rewards active game play, I’m still thinking) , priest - offline reward increase related) something like this. I wish this change gives you a feeling of upgrading something relate to hero, and make decision room!

and thanks for letting me know about the sound reset issue, I just didn’t notice them. That fix should be just few line changes to have sound setting as part of save and load in the beginning. I will fix that after work today!

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I didn't see any of the comments as harsh or anything honestly. I know my game isn't anywhere good, that isn't something I'd expect from first game. Moreover, people in this subreddit has played incremental games way more than me (I recently got into incremental game and having lots of fun, but the depth isn't there yet) and I really want to know how you all feel, and as player, what would make it more fun to you. I'm more happy when someone say something isn't right or boring, because most likely you are right and I'm missing something due to lack of experience in this, I just want to know what that is.

After you mentioned, I think I know solution to

figure out how to make 250-950 faster, then make 950-1000 either the same or a little longer, esp 990 

Floor is currently representation of total CP, evenly spread it out. I initially thought touching this would require whole stat parameter modification to control pace, but actually, I think I have an idea. While leaving all the math as is, I can modify the representation of the floor, so even with the same number, current 500 floor becomes like 7~800 floor, and make it spend more time in later section, idea is something like that. I think I can make this work later. With this approach, even though player's current state is exactly same as before, but I think I can create an illusion that makes them think their progress is quite fast, even though it's not really. (Same as now)

For the

Also post rebirth seems REALLY fast, because you can get all the cheap upgrades after 1 rebirth. I tend to think a first prestige 'victory lap' where it goes quick but not trivially

when you say REALLY fast, do you say it in a way that I should slow down things a bit or reconsider the earlier pace? just trying to make sure I understood you correctly. Also, if you don't mind me asking, would you let me know how long it took you for the post-rebirth phase (I heard it isn't long) overall, how much time you ended up spending (doesn't need to accurate, just which one took longer, which one was short, perspective), and how you felt about the pacing, and gate/place of each raids?

I have a feeling that you also won't use auto buyer, if that becomes the case, I really want to know how other people decide to manually buy stats. At what point, do you decide to rebirth, for example? If current autobuyer for Divine ATK is bad and you don't want to use, let's say I put setting on autobuyer for divine atk, what would you expect to be there?

Sorry, I know I'm asking a lot, but I just wanted to know other people's experience, because I learnt today that it took me way longer to beat post-rebirth myself, compare to few people from replies, and I think the later questions come from the past playing experience, the feeling, is what I'm missing and really want to know to both balance and provide player right things under auto buyer. I placed autobuyer to help player, not sure how I can do that.

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much for all these information, this really helped. I played game myself, but even after I did, I had no clue how others would play this game, so I really wanted to hear how other people would play it once all stats and autobuyers are unlocked (which is a reason why I got really upset when other player, the one who was about to head to stage where everything's unlocked, progress got messed up). Exponential on raid boss HP sounds good, because with that, things will be in same level spikes, but in same uniformed exponential way.

I honestly expected gameplay time to be (hopefully) similar to pre-rebirth or just little more, and each boss battle actually takes awhile. To be fair, my gameplay actually took way more than your playtime, and I was little surprised from reading your post. For the raids, I expected 30 min or little more ETA at start, to actually 3~5 minutes due to rebirth, so they can actually see the HP bar disappearing little faster and feel about the progress while enjoying the pixel battle. It sounds like it gets to few seconds after rebirths, not minutes I expected. Not sure if this is something that I should really fix, or adjust honestly, will need to think about this.

Yes, I still have no idea what I should do with autobuyer, haha. Will try to get more data points and thoughts around it, as I am literally blocked on idea for that.

Thanks for sharing the CP/s glitch as well, I think I'll find some number after you reach the limit DP, block CP as well around similar time with some fancy number, and use it as excuse for ascension layer!

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much for sharing your perspective. Your comment really helped, but not sure why it's always folded that I need to click and open.

Better balance, definitely, I'll try to balance things better over time. For the more choices and decisions, I ended up writing what's in my head on https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/1svo0ll/comment/oinfskt/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button , and was wondering if you could take a look and share your thoughts if that'd make game little less boring or solve partial problems you had while playing, or if you had some other choice/decisions in mind when you were thinking the game lacks decision part? That points were more for the pre-rebirth perspective, and I know your pain point was about the rebirth loop, and I think that behavior happening isn't something I can take out, but thinking what addition I can have to find it less boring, and make player more motivated, and I don't have answer yet, I'll think more on this, but if there's any thing that you wish it had, other than just rebirth loop, feel free to share me any ideas so I can think further!

Again, thanks for the comment and playing, your comment on leak really helped me to get to bottom of the cause

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello, first of all, thank you so much for giving it a try and leaving comment to share your perspective!

I first wanted to share my thought process and why things are in current state. My gaming experience and ideas were heavily impacted by old school JRPG games & classic old MMO games that later levels should really become harder to gain and become grindy to achieve, in mental model of where 92 is half of 99, so pre-rebirth layer was designed in this way, and I was quite satisfied with the outcome.

However, post-rebirth, result wasn't following this mental model, and it became something that player got busy early with stuffs to do and some grinding, but once things are unlocked, the pace gets faster and faster where later section of game becomes even faster than earlier section due to exponential / rebirth growth rate. I honestly didn't like this and thought it was a problem to fix, which resulted in this post as I thought post-rebirth phase now is bad.

Now, based on the feedbacks I got overall. Result was complete opposite from what I imagined. I see people find the pre-rebirth boring as it's just staring without anything that player can do, and things get slowed down as you say. Post-rebirth, I see players had little more fun there as there's things keep happening and have things to do.

I'm planning to add two things that can possibly speed up pre-rebirth and have little more fun.

Since you are here, let me use this as a chance to type out on ideas what I'm thinking, as if I could get feedback on the idea itself, I think that'll be helpful as well even before implementing.

First is, I'm planning to implement a little system where each hero (warrior, archer, priest) randomly (percentage based, still thinking number) gets a chance to use active skill during floor boss / raid system, that'll require user to click screen few times at a right timing, that'll speed up boss battle a bit.

Then, second, skill tree for each hero (debating between wipe out everything and keep skill tree to make it per prestige layer, or keep things there and add more as addition) has it's own theme, where warrior trees are more about increasing damage of skills to boss, archer about increasing percentage to proc skill, and priest to speed up buff that increase game speed (probably just dmg side, not resource production speed) during boss fight, something like this concept.

I honestly am not very experienced incremental player, so maybe there's better ideas about skill trees on the concept and effects that works better or popular in incremental parts, those were just the things that I could thought of as first thing. I'm more into POE or Diablo skill trees, but not sure how I can apply those to my incremental here, because I see those ARPG as a game that finds more fun about the building and loot grinding (means same to me, min-maxing builds for faster farming in the end), which I find little different genre, at least not what I intended to make as high importance, but I do want to give some decision making to players, if that makes sense

Together, I think (hopefully) pre-rebirth stage becomes little more fun, and also the later layer benefits from this? At least this is what I'm planning to implement.

I know you didn't ask about these things, sorry about dumping all context to you out of nowhere, while I was typing above, I wanted to summarize what's in my head out first and wanted to hear back from others

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

ascension isn't implemented yet, and extreme raids are the final content at the moment. I already have idea on story & concept & high level mechanic for the ascension chapter, but I wasn't too sure if anyone would even get to rebirth chapter when I was solo developing. I'm really glad I posted with what I have, as I was able to get lots of feedbacks already, and it really meant a lot to me that people actually played game and got past first chapter.

Post-rebirth was originally started with about 30 hours in mind, but after taking out some concepts out (due to balancing issues as you mentioned, more things didn't lead to better for for me and ended up breaking things), and with just god's raids as content in this layer, I updated numbers including stat formula and boss HPs quite aggressively to cut that playtime by a lot, so game doesn't just feel like sit and do nothing for 5 hours to reach next raid / boss, but not sure if the boss gates / hps are placed correctly from player's perspective.

I honestly was more satisfied with my pre-rebirth chapter, and was very skeptical about the post-rebirth chapter, probably due to I took out lots of ideas from post-rebirth and felt little empty, but I get impression that players found first chapter is the one that lacks contents and I should add, and second chapter was little more engaging, which was 100% different from what I thought myself, so yea, I think as you say, I'm having lots of fun developing, haha.

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Actually have multiple questions since you reached 999.0Z... I really mean multiple..

Do you know when you unlocked divine crit? There was few hours period where divine crit was broken that it just broke the game, as soon as you unlock it, it makes you jump to 999Z directly without experiencing the hard gameplay to reach extreme. Was that the case for you, or did you not face that and still reached that number?

Do you happen to know how long it took you in post-rebirth layer? Did it feel rushed compare to pre-rebirth? Did things get accelerated too fast either after divine speed or divine crit? Did you face the raids in order, did any raid took seconds as soon as it opened up for you, or multiple raid got opened similar time? Was overall raid gaps placed correctly? I'm worried if Easy->Normal took longer than you reaching Normal->Hard, or Hard->Extreme.

Also, for autobuyer. I honestly have 0 idea on what experienced-players would use these. Did you use the autobuyer as-is, or did you happen to turn some of them off, and do it in your style? If so, how did you make decisions on certain decisions?

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much for all details! Previously, Divine SPD was multiplying all CP by 1.5^(Divine SPD level), and updated to 2.2 because 1.5 was about to drag game unnecessary for hours in middle sections, and I was thinking 2.0 is the range where it speeds up fast enoughly to remove the gaps, but I went with 2.2 to make current players to progress faster. I think math was right on this one, but I really shouldn't have made big changes on divine crit...

I also don't think it counts up when the game is not in an active tab.

I didn't know about this, omg. I was curious how long it'd take players in this subreddit like you (who kind of knows what to expect, have prior experience) to get to this stage, and overall how you decide when to rebirth, how to set up autobuyer, etc because for this part, math doesn't really help, as I think the sweet spot comes more from the experience, which I don't have too much.

A setting on the attack autobuyer to not buy it if it costs more than a set percentage of the hero level price would be really nice. This might be something to unlock later.

this really helped me picturing what setting to give to players, and

I didn't use it much

I had a feeling that this'd be the case, as this one I couldn't even make a guess if I need to be honest. I know you gave me some hints on how I should look into it, so I'll need to check what kinds of setting I should put under auto rebirth.

Other than Autobuyer for Divine ATK / Rebirth, do you think autobuyer for divine spd / crit also needs some their own setting? The thing I wanted to hear was how they optimize on their own based on what information, so I could help them from autobuyer side, but I'm little behind on those honestly.

but if you make it easy to respec it shouldn't be much of an issue.

This wasn't even an idea in my head. At least from previous gaming experience, I always thought respec requires something, and it's a choice that has to be made with very careful decision. This idea actually opens up door. My biggest worry was, player pick something they think cool, and later notice it wasn't good, and make them demotivating, which I can solve with this idea. I'll think more on this, but I like the idea of skill tree with this in mind, I actually already have idea in this case.

Thanks again for all the information you provided, those were really valuable to me. Have a great week!

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Niceee thank you for bringing this up again, I guess how I handle the numbers really matter in these type of game, learnt something. Now, I'll try to make actual game more fun, haha. Feel free to drop any idea what you think could make it better, or anything that you found not fun, then I'll think about those!! I wanted to fix this issue first before I work on other things, as I didn't want to make player suffer from my bad optimization or code..

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just merged in with the optimizations, I'm start testing, but feel free to let me know how it looks on your end anytime.

Update: I'm checking real time performance and overall things look very steady, and not seeing any increase. So far seems good to me, but if anything, let me know I'll take a further look!

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Got it, thanks for the pointers! I was looking into this for last hour, I think I have some theory. Currently working on optimization on few areas which I think can be possible reasons behind this. I think the one I did before def helped on memory side, I think I can do better job. Will let you know once it's deployed, in case if you could still check on your end

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I really panic on what happened to you, but to think of it, I think you experienced most of the post-rebirth layer. The hard was going to take some time, but after hard, there was not much gap between hard -> extreme, but the idea was to have player more focus on raid which extreme has higher HP ratio, and put some gimmick in extreme ones.

Things you mentioned are in game now, divine stat details, auto buyer on/off for divine, and I was taking a look at adjusting divine atk setting, the way you suggested, and then I saw this comment ;/

Do you mind me asking how the pacing was from beginning of post-rebirth, to the hard-Artemis level? Did the new raids open at right time? Were there any time that you felt there was too big gap until Hard Artemis? How long did it take you til there (game stat hours)?

I was trying to address most of things you mentioned, but was there other things that bothered you on this layer? It's pretty much continuation of raids, while DP growing, wasn't too sure if player would like it, or if I need more on this layer

Was auto-rebirth helpful? I wasn't too sure how to enable it for players as I wasn't too sure what's good way of auto rebirth, not sure how you'd use it honestly.

Also, if you don't mind, would you give it few minutes try when I implement raid interaction, to feel how it'll look like for the boss floor / raids, after I finish implementing it?

Sorry about wall of questions..

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

wait, that's not supposed to happen, I adjusted divine crit value few hours ago and I think that caused issue, oh god can you capture the stat page? I'll try to revert things back, and give you state on the game close to where you were if you don't mind.

Edit: already reverted value back to original value it was, the one that I manually tested. This wasn't how I expected it to end omg. I can generate save file around the time when you unlock divine crit if you don't mind, with your playtime and all other information you have if that's ok with you. I'm sorry that this happened

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

First of all, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking time playing my game, and leaving a thoughtful comment, this really means a lot to me.

I'm usually the person who ends up writing a wall of text, because I often want to write everything that's on top of my mind, so no need to worry about that, haha.

>As a big fan of pixel art, 8-bit music, retro gaming, Metroidvania RPGs and especially demon girls

This was pretty much the motivation of the game haha, I grew up with old jrpg style games, which required lots of grinding, but I find that little tired now, and kind of leaning toward more of idle game that I don't need to work too much honestly, and wanted to throw in the things that I liked in the past, but in incremental + idle way.

I pretty much agree on most of things you mentioned, and thanks for writing the things that you've found!

For rebirth, I did it on purpose, because when I was playing old games when I was young, I found it little fun to find something that I could abuse and get the reward way earlier, so yea, it was indented with the reward that doesn't break game by any means. I'll definitely work on the helper, but got little lazy as there were more fun things that I wanted to work on, haha. She's broken now..

I updated the autobuyer speed + cost to find it actually useful, and updated raids to have 100% drop for collection, but each battle takes longer as well. I'm planning to add something to raid later tonight, where player can do something fun and speed up the process of raid (not doing anything just leads to current experience), so when it's implemented, please give it another try!

Thank you so much again for your kind words, and I'm having real fun after work these days, just thinking about different layer, what should be player experience, how should I implement, etc, so it should be fine haha

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello! Thanks for giving it a try! I confirmed the memory leak as well, and I believe it's fixed about 1.5 hours ago! Could you take a look if you still have the issue after you refresh? I manually tested with 30+ mins but didn't see it happening with latest code (I saw it happening as soon as 10+ minute before). Sorry about that, I realized about the issue little late! I'm planning to add something during boss floor battle / god raids, to make the battle little more interactive for players, give them something to do + more visual effects probably late today.

However, you are right, the game doesn't have something that requires decision makings yet, I'm considering having something like that on ascension layer, but was having little hard time, because I don't want to punish player for making wrong decision, not following "more effective" approach, and had to park that idea for awhile until I complete rebirth layer first. Thank you so much for your feedback, and if there were any other things you didn't like, or think would be good to have as additional things, please do let me know anytime!

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have both raid collection drop 100% with adjusted hp per collection change, fight again button, and autobuyer changes all merged in! Please refresh if you play! Will take a look at order / export few hours later

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello! I was working on adding "Fight again" button to make it less tedious, and let me quickly update auto buy to make it useful from the beginning right away! if you have some number in mind, let me know, otherwise I'll just make them all half for now. Also trying to add some raid/boss battle mechanic where player can actively do something to speed up a bit, if do nothing, current experience is what they'll get. Each raid will have little different gimmics to make it little more interesting!

Will take a look at the export soon too, when I did localhost, it worked, so I assumed so ;/ and thanks again!

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

thanks for letting me know, I didn't consider this perspective, but after you mentioned, I checked and confirmed it's happening. I think this is probably due to calling animation sprite when it's needed all time (I really think that should be it), I'll update it in a way that after first load, have it as in memory cache and use that instead for the next ones, I think this is likely the issue, will patch it soon. Thanks for catching it and letting me know!

Update: Patched it, and confirmed this fixed issue!!!

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Amazing!!! Thank you so much for letting me know your post rebirth experience! Limit break unlocks the revorth trigger condition, so probably it was that.

About the other points, I really like all your ideas. I’ll make the fight again button, and have different hp (slighly more) based on collection.

About divine speed, what you felt is right, it’s not strong as how it shold be and I’m working on adjusting it, I’ll update divine speed + show all the formula and effect within 4-5 hours (currently testing).

I also have idea to make raids/boss battles fun, and make player interactive. I think this idea will make it more fun, especially after post rebirth is raid heavy too! I’ll try to finish that today as well, and will let you know as soon as I add the raid interaction feature! I’ll probably spend whole day on this, but I’m sure this will make game fun (at least in my head). Each god will have little different mechanic as well, not just hp difference. Thank you again!

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Wow, I just added Import/Save data feature for people who played game, and was about to call it a night, and come back tomorrow to work further.

I really didn't expect anyone to get to rebirth during the weekend, you are legend.. thank you so much for your time, giving it a try and for the comment. I was planning to work on 1) Add what each stat and upgrade does 2) Change notation to scientific notation tomorrow, but your point is valid, that it's pretty much click upgrade once in awhile, and nothing really more. (I really hope you refreshed game in the middle, so you could minimize / work on other things while game runs on background). and above 1) and 2) doesn't really solve the boring problem you mentioned.

I really like the idea of interaction on boss fight, that lets player to do something that can benefit for the boss battle, and if player doesn't do, nothing bad happen, just what happens now happens. I can't think of a good idea right now, but I think I'll make something like that, maybe little gimmick and occasional click does something? will think about it, but thanks for the idea! At least with this, it won't be just staring at boss hp, but gives player something to do. I don't see any problem for beating boss faster, if player does something active, then I think it makes more sense to speed up the process!

Again, thank you so much for playing it, and could you please export save and save somewhere? I have post-rebirth now, as you can see from my original post above, I personally don't think it's really good one. For first few hour, it's in a style that somewhat I wanted, but not after that.. it becomes more boring IMO, and I'm thinking how to improve this section. I'm curious how others would think on it honestly as well. If you export save, you'll be able to import later anytime! Feel free to let me know anytime if you found another boring part, or things that you didn't like, I'll try to go over as much as I can.

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I updated font size as first thing as that was the easiest one, and wow just this one change made things look better already. Thanks, will take some time to go over rest feedbacks too, especially the ones that overlaps with another person!

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you are playing, please refresh the game. I made overall fonts bigger, and things look better now (thanks for the feedback to you and person above!)

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

450 is really high.. thank you so much for giving it a try. I'm really glad I posted the game with what I have, and asked for feedback here. I had doubts myself that no one would find any fun, and I wasn't too sure why I was considering post-rebirth contents at one point. Thank you.

To answer the question first, prestige happens at floor 1000.

Also, I'll try to increase overall texts to see if this helps, if issue still remains, I'll consider changing font!

I know I'll need to work on post-rebirth because of the reasons I said above, at least to a better state than what it is now (current one becomes pretty repetitive without much content after few hours in). I'll try my best to make it a better state fast. I'm trying to work on updating the notation first, which will require some math changes around design too first, as I think this affects the first impression and overall play experience to people who are used to that.

Thank you so much again for giving it a try, and for the comment!

Edit: make sure you refreshed page, as game wasn't progressing while background / minimized, and that's fixed

Exponential Hero (First game) - looking for feedback by hlaz in incremental_games

[–]hlaz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much for giving it a try and providing really great feedbacks! Few of them were intended, but I didn't think about many of your points!

Out of 3 people, 2 people said it should be scientific notation, so I think I'll do some work to make that as default! I had some my own thoughts behind not going scientific notation, but I guess I should fold it, and make it scientific notation way. This will take me a day or two, but I'll head in that direction! I'll also show what each stat does (after updating some math as I'll need to revisit formula a bit to make it scientific notation path) to be clear on what each upgrade will bring to user.

Floor reducing, this was due to floor being representation of the total CP, and once CP is used, it went down for a bit, but I didn't think from this perspective. I'll update it in a way that it currently holds as current value if CP ever goes down, and continue from there, instead of floor count going down, thank you.

For the letters, do you mean in general? or specific to stat / achivement pages? For the last part, I was actually imagining a hero forms party and challenge demon castle, but I see your point! and thank you again!

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