Nowhere Prophet News

It's now exactly two weeks after the release of Nowhere Prophet and from where I stand it looks like I managed to deal with all the really big issues. A lot of bugs and problems are fixed (I'm sure there are more so please keep reporting what you find) and now it's time to look beyond simply repairing things and to making the gameplay experience better.




So, what's foremost on my mind there?

Equipment Powers
A number of the equipment powers are clearly better than the others, skewing equipment and limiting the choices because some are clearly better. I'm looking at the unit spawn and refresh items for example.

During prototyping I tried out a number of variants of the equipment system. One where items had a number of uses in each fight, or a general number of uses per item. A version where power use cost energy (different based on the power) but I removed all these things that to keep the system simple.

Right now though it feels like the Tool Power design space would benefit from having Energy cost added back into it. Costs could be used to balance some of the powers of course, but this would also make a wider variety of powers possible in the future: Stronger powers for higher costs.

In general I think this is something that will improve the play experience, so keep your eyes peeled for that. We're currently discussing the ramifications of this in the discord #workshop-chat channel. Come join us!

Better Follower Filters
This is the quality of life update the game needs the most right now. I'll ultimately have to see what makes the most sense but my current thoughts are:

Remove all filter buttons on the screen directly. Only keep a button that opens up a filter menu and a simple text-box that allows you to search card names and text. The button opens a small overlay menu where you can select your filters:

• Show Wounded/Unwounded
  
• Show Common/Rare/Legendary/Mythic
  
• Show Factions
  

Maybe this overlay could provide detailed statistics on your current deck and thus free up the space of the stats area in the screen to be used for a "remove all wounded followers" button that turns into a "remove all" button when you have no wounded followers.

I'm also thinking about the ability to make some of your followers as Favorites. You could then filter by Favorites, and they would always be sorted at the start of the list. Also when healing favorites in your deck and not in your deck would be prioritized before all others giving you some more control.

Here's a (arguably VERY quick) mockup of what it could be like:



What do you think? Any good ideas on how to improve this? Am I missing anything vital or important?

If so, join the discord and let me know!

Comeback Content
Another thing the game could do better is to allow players to come back from having lost board control. To that end I'm looking at maybe modifying some existing cards or adding new ones that make the game a bit more forgiving if you fall back.

An example would be a card that stuns all followers. This isn't something you would ever want to use when you're leading, but when you're behind it can give you enough room to put some of your units down in a safe environment. This would allow me to put the price of the card down a bit, which means it doesn't eat up all your Energy budget for the turn.

I have a few ideas for pieces of content like this but as always I'm curious to hear your thoughts!


So with these changes coming up next, how will these roll out?

Well the current plan is to keep the Preview branch active for this. Ideally I'd like to update Preview at the end of each week and then give you all time over the weekend to play and test. If nothing unforeseen catches fire or explodes then the update could go live to everyone after the weekend.


And in line with that today marks a new update to the preview branch. This one is mostly bugfixes, some balancing and interface improvements. As usual: If it breaks nothing major it will go live early next week, so give it a whirl!

Originally posted by changelog

Balancing
• Improved states for opening the gate with follower count was reduced to 25/50
• Armored enemies have a tad less armor
• AI now properly evaluates and targets obstacles with Taunt
• You gain Focus as normal on Doomed difficulty now
• Juggernaut cost increased to 5 (was 3)
• Decoy changed to 2/4 (was 1/4)

Interface
• Followers in Combat now only show the "multiple effects" icon if they actually have multiple icons to display
• Critical enemy buffs are marked blue in pre-combat screens
• Event buildings leading to potential boss fights are marked red in locations
• Focus value display changed in edit deck screen
• Crypt Gate events split and put on the map and into the location
• Chance labels in event options adjusted to be more accurate
• Added visual effect to unsummoning of units

Bugfixes
• Brain Drain can now target obstacles as expected
• Coordinated Swarm now also potentially targets the enemy leader
• Battlefield Sense no longer triggers if Energy is full
• Quickly unsummoning a unit with a fury effect no longer creates a stuck card
• Can no longer spam ESC to quit out of Mulligan while game is still setting up starting state
• Can no longer sneak illegal attacks in during animation (queueing an attack while kennel master is off the board and before his dog has appeared now leads to no action happening)
• Route Generator now no longer creates multiples of unique locations (gladiator camp, boss locations)

Alright, and that's it for today! As always, thanks for reading, thanks for playing and thanks for speaking up!

- Martin

A lot of bugfixes and tweaks to the AI and balance here we are with the first sizable update to the game outside the preview branch.


After the initial hotfixes that just helped make the game more stable, this one will make it feel different. The AI has regained its smarts and the enemy decks have been tweaked to be more even across the different factions, and also to ramp up more smoothly without punishing you too much (it's still a dangerous world) in map 1.

Thank you to everyone who played in the PREVIEW branch and helped me finetune this. Double thanks for those who filled out the form.

Speaking of: I'd still love to hear your feedback on the difficulty changes. So if you play, wether in PREVIEW or not, please do take some time to fill out the difficulty form. Your collective experience will help me make the game play even better in the future.




So now, with what feels like the first solid update out of the door, what's next?

I'm obviously not naive enough to think the game is now perfectly balanced so I'm planning to spend more time on this, which is why the form will be really helpful.

I've also already noted down a bunch of cards and effects that may be too strong (I'm looking at you Stim Set!) or too weak (Hello Sabotage), so if you have some thoughts, please let me know!


And in the meantime I will finally have to the time to look at some of the pesky bugs that have been popping up. A number of people have experienced the game soft-locking: It stops responding and no longer works as it should. Usually quitting and loading the game solves that issue so these bugs weren't super high priority right away, but they are too annoying to not take a closer look.

Then beyond those I'm looking at some quality of life improvements. Improved filter and sorting options in your follower screen for one. And I've also scoured the forums and my brain for more useful suggestions.

And beyond that, I'm already thinking about new content for the game, possibly some new cards and convoys? I'm not making any promises yet, the stability and quality of the game comes first since anything new will disrupt the status quo so I want to be careful.



But there's more to come! So thank you everyone for playing!

- Martin

Originally posted by changelog

AI
• AI evaluation bug fixed: Later moves in a sequence had inflated scores, making even bad moves look useful
• AI decision system improved and more responsive to prioritization and unit positioning
• AI is less allergic to having obstacles in the front column position
• Enemy AI cleverness is affected by level (Ai is worse on lower levels)

Balancing
• Enemies
...• Enemy levels on map 1 changed to 1-2 (was 1-3)
...• Enemy levels on last map changed to 7-10 (was 7-9)
...• Enemy levels on crypt map changed to 10-12 (was 9-10)
...• Enemy decks adjusted to be easier on lower levels
...• Scion Bloodhand deck adjusted: Fewer charge followers in early maps
...• Scion High Priest deck adjusted: Only one Bodhisattva, no more danger of cycling them constantly
• Cards
...• Unconquered Ascetic: Lost Shielded keyword
...• The Tireless changed to 4/3 (was 3/6)
...• Mounting Pressure cost increased to 6 (was 5)
...• Frazzle cost increased to 4 (was 3)
...• Bold Strike cost increased to 4 (was 2)
...• Shade cost increased to 3 (was 1)
• Miscellaneous
...• Reduced number of nodes in later maps slightly
...• Reduced rest at initial crash site to 3 uses (was 5)
...• Finally added rest options to the Crypt Gate (3 uses). You can now take a breather before diving in.
...• Battery rewards reduced slightly across the board

Interface
• Improved visual quality of intro logos
• French translation updated

Bugfixes
• Soothing Shadows no longer triggers on moved obstacles or constructs
• Coordinated swarm no longer triggers on dead drones moving and no longer hits dead targets
• Defy Death is depleted on trigger, not on turn start
• Hedgehog Drone is depleted on trigger, not on turn start
• Battery mutator no longer has second player start with 10 Energy
• Wounded followers on the enemy side now start with 1 damage
• Rest button no longer vanishes on 4K displays
• Restarting game after loading a game no longer throws save game error
• Crypt Knowledge follow up events can no show up in the Crypt (no stars crashed into the Crypt)
• Surrender events in combat are now properly loaded
• Various minor text and event issues fixed

A new week has dawned, and there's still plenty of work to do!


Today starts with an update to the PREVIEW branch (Here's how to change to the preview branch) that includes a bunch of balancing and AI improvements.

My changes last week made the AI smarter and the game harder, so now the game is moving down a bit. Since the AI is a frequent point of criticism I really want to update the main game, but since the AI and the balancing go hand in hand I want to make sure that it plays the way I want it to.

A lot of the changes I did were to the enemy leader and convoy decks. My goal was to make the first map a tad easier while making the later maps a bit harder. But these changes are a lot more complex than simple HP adjustments so I need some help!

So to that end: If you play in preview, please let me know how your experience went!

I've set up another Google Form since the last one was very useful! If you have any time to fill it out I'd be very grateful

Oh, by the way, here's a look at the before/after stats of the boss form!



As you can see, the green "just right" sections grow larger compared to the length of the columns. While this is just a small sample of players it still is a good sign that these changes were a good start!


In any case, let's get back to this new version. Here's an excerpt of the changelog:

[Quote]
Enemies
• Enemy levels on map 1 changed to 1-2 (was 1-3)
• Enemy levels on last map changed to 7-10 (was 7-9)
• Enemy levels on crypt map changed to 10-12 (was 9-10)
• Enemy decks adjusted to be easier on lower levels
• Scion Bloodhand deck adjusted: Fewer charge followers in early maps
• Scion High Priest deck adjusted: Only one Bodhisattva, no more danger of cycling them constantly

Cards
• Unconquered Ascetic: Lost Shielded keyword
• The Tireless changed to 4/3 (was 3/6)
• Mounting Pressure cost increased to 6 (was 5)
• Frazzle cost increased to 4 (was 3)
• Bold Strike cost increased to 4 (was 2)
• Shade cost increased to 3 (was 1)

Miscellaneous
• Reduced number of nodes in later maps slightly
• Battery rewards reduced slightly across the board


And that's it for today. I hope you'll enjoy this new iteration of the game! And if everything works out it might go live for everyone in the next few days!

Thanks for playing,
- Martin

So I hope that by now a few of you found some time to play the PREVIEW build with the improved AI. As you may have noticed, this makes the game a bunch tougher.


So I'm currently looking at the overall balancing to bring it back in line. CHOSEN still seems to be mostly fine, though could be a tad easier, while the change to the AI is felt more strongly in BURDENED and DOOMED, which makes me think that both of these need to be brought down a bit as well.

I'd love to hear some feedback about your experience on whether you agree or disagree with me. That would help me a lot to zone in on an ideal curve.


In the meantime, I am thinking about which levers to use to change things:

• Player Health (At start, increase per level)
  
• Enemy Health
  
• Enemy Decks
  
• Enemy Status effects (which, at what level, how strong)
  
• AI cleverness
  
• Fight Rewards (Resources, Followers & Items)
  
• Event Rewards (Resources, Followers & Items)
  
• Length of maps
  

All of these dials affect the game in different ways. The changed AI basically dialled up the difficulty of fights with the enemies playing more effectively. Tweaking health would be the easiest change but it would also make the game even more sensitive to alpha strikes as it already is in the non-elite non-boss fights.



Enemy decks are probably a better are to address but they are a bit finicky and hard to balance because there's so many things coming together, sometimes in unexpected ways.

Enemy status effects are simpler (fewer moving parts) but the changes are less gradual. One fewer trigger can sometimes make a challenging fight trivial.


So that said, my current thoughts are to make the enemy decks a bit less mean in Chosen and Burdened so that the decks start to synergize at higher levels. This would also help with making map 1 a bit less of a make or break moment. Also some tweaks to the status effects and then pulling down HP for the elites and bosses just a tad (on Burdened and Doomed). And lastly to make the AI in the early maps a little stupider again - not as much as it was but just a tad less optimized.

I am also considering changing the length of the maps and how the enemy levels are spread out across them a bit. Currently the game ramps up quickly in Map 1, so maybe that should be a bit more gradual.

In any case, expect an updated PREVIEW build Monday or Tuesday next week.

With all that said, please keep the feedback coming! Specifically:

• How does the current PREVIEW difficulty feel to you?
  
• What do you think about my plan for rebalancing?
  

- Martin

Another day, another update.


I've spent today tweaking the AI some more to make sure it makes better decision and plays more effectively again. The bug I fixed yesterday did a lot to un-stupid the AI and this one should help it find good plays more reliably and a tad quicker even.

I might push up the number of iterations up a bit to make it slower again but give it more time to think in turn.

So far I'm pretty happy with the improvements as the AI seems to make a lot, lot, LOT fewer ridiculous mistakes. However unfortunately that also makes the game a bunch harder which in turn invalidates a bunch of the balancing tweaks I did before the launch.

So my next steps, before this update can roll out to all players, are to push the difficulty down a bit again. I'll have to think about how to best do that.


In the meantime, here's the changes compared to yesterday's PREVIEW version:

Originally posted by changelog

Balancing

• AI decision system improved and more responsive to prioritization and unit positioning
• Scion Bloodhand deck adjusted: Fewer charge followers in early maps
• Scion High Priest deck adjusted: Only one Bodhisattva, no more danger of cycling them constantly

Bugfixes

• Restarting game after loading a game no longer throws save game error
• Crypt Knowledge follow up events can no show up in the Crypt (no stars crashed into the Crypt)

If you do play on PREVIEW, please provide feedback on the AI and difficulty in general. I'd love to hear about your experience!


< How to change to the Steam PREVIEW branch to play the new v1.00.008.


Also, in regards to the AI bug from yesterday, here's the lines of code I had to change to fix it. Such a tiny change leading to a cascading issue in the evaluation and a clearly stupider AI.



I hope you're still enjoying the game. I'm looking forward to rolling out these changes to the wider player base! Thank you for reading and playing!

See you all tomorrow,
- Martin