Posted March 15, 2022
Progression
By tightly restricting player progression difficulty is maintained but at the cost of fun. Furthermore it robs players of tools that would allow them to adjust to the difficulty. If players had full access to ship upgrades they could grind easier combat missions until the ship is upgraded to a comfortable level.
Ground combat suffers less from this because levels aren't capped but EXP being finite is worrisome. What if players stick to the same units for a hefty chunk of the game but start getting bored and want to spice things up by experimenting with different units? To give an example of my own experience I unlocked the horse while two of my staple units were 5-8 levels over it, in combat the horse does negligible damage and gets killed in 1-2 hits while my high lvl napolean 1-shots almost everything and sometimes clears 3-5 units solo when everything else is dead. One of my early units is still at level 4, using it is just out of the question now. The ability to train new and weak units is needed.
Which brings me to a side note, the game could seriously use 'at a glance' power level indicators. Being able to see the intended level to do a mission would help with a lot of things. Also, the ability to see how complete a system is from the map would be a nice QoL improvement. Seeing units gained EXP after a mission along with the girls would also be nice.
Ground combat:
The biggest problem I see with ground combat is how waves spawn in. Because players have no way of knowing where enemies will pop in, there is no way for players to plan for it. This kills almost all effort at strategy beyond turtling up. Some indication of where the next wave is spawning is desperately needed if player skill is to matter at all, especially with these tiny maps. I have had waves spawn behind my initial starting point, there's no predictability.
The grids for combat being tiny is a major turn off. This is made worse by terrain being re-used. At this stage of development I'm assuming addressing this issue is not feasible, but it still needs to be said.
I'd really like to see some support units. I'm not sure how good something like a healer will be when most of my units that die go from full health to dead in a single round, but moves other than 'do damage' would be nice.
Overall, my general opinion of ground combat is that there is no room for player skill in the equation. I'd say it's the weakest part of Subverse.
Space combat:
Space combat seems to be the most well thought out portion of the game. Aside from capped progression and repetitive scenarios I really don't have any complaints. Being able to change the special weapon is good enough for a game split in so many directions. The feel of the combat is good and that's the most important thing.
New mission types:
The game doesn't have any 'space trucker' aspect to it, or crafting systems, or anything to build off of resource gathering. I'm not saying the game should have those things, as much as I personally like them, but without them this kind of mission feels really out of place. Of course the basic format can have a wide variety of context, so not really an issue. Having a handcrafted level is a nice change of pace, I'd definitely like to see more missions make use it.
As for the stealth, for me it was really difficult but having checkpoints for when I die instead of going back to the beginning makes the difference. Overall it was fun and a nice change of pace.
By tightly restricting player progression difficulty is maintained but at the cost of fun. Furthermore it robs players of tools that would allow them to adjust to the difficulty. If players had full access to ship upgrades they could grind easier combat missions until the ship is upgraded to a comfortable level.
Ground combat suffers less from this because levels aren't capped but EXP being finite is worrisome. What if players stick to the same units for a hefty chunk of the game but start getting bored and want to spice things up by experimenting with different units? To give an example of my own experience I unlocked the horse while two of my staple units were 5-8 levels over it, in combat the horse does negligible damage and gets killed in 1-2 hits while my high lvl napolean 1-shots almost everything and sometimes clears 3-5 units solo when everything else is dead. One of my early units is still at level 4, using it is just out of the question now. The ability to train new and weak units is needed.
Which brings me to a side note, the game could seriously use 'at a glance' power level indicators. Being able to see the intended level to do a mission would help with a lot of things. Also, the ability to see how complete a system is from the map would be a nice QoL improvement. Seeing units gained EXP after a mission along with the girls would also be nice.
Ground combat:
The biggest problem I see with ground combat is how waves spawn in. Because players have no way of knowing where enemies will pop in, there is no way for players to plan for it. This kills almost all effort at strategy beyond turtling up. Some indication of where the next wave is spawning is desperately needed if player skill is to matter at all, especially with these tiny maps. I have had waves spawn behind my initial starting point, there's no predictability.
The grids for combat being tiny is a major turn off. This is made worse by terrain being re-used. At this stage of development I'm assuming addressing this issue is not feasible, but it still needs to be said.
I'd really like to see some support units. I'm not sure how good something like a healer will be when most of my units that die go from full health to dead in a single round, but moves other than 'do damage' would be nice.
Overall, my general opinion of ground combat is that there is no room for player skill in the equation. I'd say it's the weakest part of Subverse.
Space combat:
Space combat seems to be the most well thought out portion of the game. Aside from capped progression and repetitive scenarios I really don't have any complaints. Being able to change the special weapon is good enough for a game split in so many directions. The feel of the combat is good and that's the most important thing.
New mission types:
The game doesn't have any 'space trucker' aspect to it, or crafting systems, or anything to build off of resource gathering. I'm not saying the game should have those things, as much as I personally like them, but without them this kind of mission feels really out of place. Of course the basic format can have a wide variety of context, so not really an issue. Having a handcrafted level is a nice change of pace, I'd definitely like to see more missions make use it.
As for the stealth, for me it was really difficult but having checkpoints for when I die instead of going back to the beginning makes the difference. Overall it was fun and a nice change of pace.
