Interesting...

[Nystul]

After working about 68 hours in 7 days a couple weeks ago (25 regular, 40 overtime, 3 double time) getting Christmas gifts hopefully to the right states, I bought a few for myself including HGL. I've tried out a few classes and just finished Act I with an engineer.

I have mixed thoughts on this game so far, with it being way too early to know whether it is going to "stick". My general impression is that they made a revolutionary game but botched the details. Hmmm, kind of like Neverwinter Nights in that regard.

It seems like the MMO genre is having a very negative impact on smaller scale games. A soldier with a huge ! over his head wants you to kill 15 munchkins so that he can then have you kill 10 kobolds, what kind of crap is this? At least you can't run through monsters or shoot bullets through walls as if they were all ethereal. (Can you walk through the ones that are ethereal?)

I need to play more before I comment on the 3D implementation. The random 3D levels are a marvel. What a disturbing feeling going through the tubes and having it be the same and yet different. So far it seems like they are underutilized. I'd like to be able to climb a fire escape ladder and pelt demons with grenades (or even better, have them do it to me). I'd like to shut the door of a small building and wait for demons to come charging in at my melee character (or even better, have them do it to me). Tactical use of the environment is a hallmark of both the turn-based roguelikes and FPS games, after all.

[KingOfPain]

So far it seems like they are underutilized. I'd like to be able to climb a fire escape ladder and pelt demons with grenades (or even better, have them do it to me). I'd like to shut the door of a small building and wait for demons to come charging in at my melee character (or even better, have them do it to me). Tactical use of the environment is a hallmark of both the turn-based roguelikes and FPS games, after all.

2 good ideas that would make the game much more interesting. Maybe you should post that in the official forum and see we can generate some support and what the devs do with it. They already know how to do the door thing a la Classic Diablo.

In a way hgl already does the climb a ladder to take up tatical advantage thing, in an annoying way. Flyers against melee fighters; and even against range attackers when they are directly over head making them very hard to target. Likewise, those jumpers and hgl's version of Stygian Dolls are very hard to target when they are under your feet.

Who (when playing underpowered) haven't sweated their share in anticipation before opening the door to the Butcher? Room full of dumb skel archers, then slam the door shut, but failed in panic or because the door is blocked by a corpse? Yea, give me those.

KoP

[Thecla]

[QUOTE=Nystul]
I have mixed thoughts on this game so far, with it being way too early to know whether it is going to "stick". My general impression is that they made a revolutionary game but botched the details.
[quote]

I have very mixed feelings on it also --- it does capture the kind of game play I enjoy in a way that Diablo did but Guild Wars, or WoW, say didn't. But it was released in an incredibly unpolished state. It's not a good sign when I feel like keeping a pad of paper next to me while playing the game so I can write down every single little thing (and some big things) that annoy me.

[quote]
It seems like the MMO genre is having a very negative impact on smaller scale games. A soldier with a huge ! over his head wants you to kill 15 munchkins so that he can then have you kill 10 kobolds, what kind of crap is this?
[/quote]

The quests in general in HG:L seem extraordinarily crursory and poorly explained, never mind full of bugs, even for a genre where the story is not really the main focal point.

[quote]
I need to play more before I comment on the 3D implementation. The random 3D levels are a marvel. What a disturbing feeling going through the tubes and having it be the same and yet different.
[/quote]

Though maybe you won't feel that way after your hundredth set of underground tunnels. It's hard not to wonder if they spent so much time working on the 3D-randomized engine that they didn't have time and resources to do a lot of other necessary stuff. And is has some negative effects too: it seems like they were not able to produce really random maps in 3D like the ones in Diablo. The tunnels, for example, basically just go in a straight line from entrance to exit, and there's much less point to randomizing linear maps

[quote]
So far it seems like they are underutilized. I'd like to be able to climb a fire escape ladder and pelt demons with grenades (or even better, have them do it to me). I'd like to shut the door of a small building and wait for demons to come charging in at my melee character[/quote]

There are some places you can do this e.g. from the metal walkways above tube stations (overall the vertical differentiation in the game is sometimes a little funky -- shadows from monsters above appearing on ceilings below etc.) but you're right: a lot more could be done. As for doors, it seems to me they made a deliberate decision at the beginning not to put them in (surely it wouldn't have been hard if they wanted to do it). Why they did that I don't know. It would've really added to the game.

[KingOfPain]

Even simple things such as making those short small broken tunnel sections, and say buses, big enough for one to walk in can make the game play different.

I had a game with Bede the other night where we were totally raped soon as I ported to his zone. There were monsters in every direction in aggro range, the only thing we could have done as soon as we got our corpses was to run and try to string out the mobs. But that wasn't going to happen since they were everywhere. I finally found a little nook where the bridge support column met the embankment just wide enough to squeeze in. I can deal with mobs when they were lined up in single file, that saved the game. A small thing but so satisfying

OTOH, "stair traps" that is so common in this game is (variant)game-breaking annoying.

KoP

[Thecla]

OTOH, "stair traps" that is so common in this game is (variant)game-breaking annoying.

True, but seems to be something they did deliberately, since there were many complaints about this since the alpha/beta. OTOH you can often use the temporary invulnerability to your advantage and pop back and forth between two instances when getting started in a nasty area. This also tends to be worse in elite mode, but for standard non-variant characters elite mode is much more interesting to play than normal.

[Nystul]

Though maybe you won't feel that way after your hundredth set of underground tunnels. It's hard not to wonder if they spent so much time working on the 3D-randomized engine that they didn't have time and resources to do a lot of other necessary stuff. And is has some negative effects too: it seems like they were not able to produce really random maps in 3D like the ones in Diablo. The tunnels, for example, basically just go in a straight line from entrance to exit, and there's much less point to randomizing linear maps

Yeah... I should play more and think about this less. Every time I start to reply, I delete it all. Randomization always brings a lot of compromise and limitations, and making the switch to 3D adds additional development challenges at this point. I'm thinking in terms of "gameplay" vs. "content". Randomization = lost control over content = great pains for little content development. The gameplay has got to be there, or it's a bust. Whether it comes from terrain/monster interaction, monster/monster interaction, random equipment changes affecting playstyle; whatever it is, it has to be there.

That's what I'm looking for. I haven't played enough to say it's there or not. It's been fun, but so far I am playing it more like Deus Ex than Diablo II. That would be just fine by me for the whole game, but I know the skill system probably lends to something very different.

I can only take so much wisdom from the official forums, because different people are looking for so very different things out of this game. Some things are helpful, some things are too helpful, and some things are just ARG.

[cb-13]

I'd like to be able to climb a fire escape ladder and pelt demons with grenades (or even better, have them do it to me). I'd like to shut the door of a small building and wait for demons to come charging in at my melee character (or even better, have them do it to me). Tactical use of the environment is a hallmark of both the turn-based roguelikes and FPS games, after all.

Not quite a fire escape ladder But.... you can climb and pelt the baddies

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/attachmen...=332&stc=1









http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/attachmen...=331&stc=1