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Topics - Nemo

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Bug report & Technical Support / Will I lose my Extended Clip card when the Heavy Metal update comes out?

on: September 29, 2019, 09:00:44 PM

I probably should have made this post a while ago, but anyway.

I still have the normal version of Alicia's 'Extended Clip' card. This was changed to being a rare only card when Wardog Fury came out, but I've still kept the normal version since Alien Myths.

From what I understand from this new update, players will keep the cards they already have, which will be put in their new Talent grid, but I'm not sure what will happen to my 'Extended Clip' card since it doesn't really exist anymore. I don't want to have to spend more points and time having to go down the grid to go get it again. Not sure what to do, but I guess I'll just see what happens tomorrow.

Suggestions / An option for simpler reticles

on: January 21, 2019, 03:39:34 PM

I'm not quite sure if this can be done, since a lot of weapons have gimmicks that are visually represented by their reticle, but I would still like the option to be able to switch to a simpler one, like a dot, circle or crosshair.

Certain weapon reticles, like Doldren's KLT-13 or Bloody Mary, tend to obscure your target somewhat.

Bug report & Technical Support / Mentor Match difficulty seems higher than normal

on: January 21, 2019, 03:23:36 PM

I've played quite a few Mentor matches, on different maps, and my general experience is that enemies in these Mentor matches are a lot tougher than the difficulty on the results screen would indicate.

For example, I played a 77% difficulty non-Mentor match on Weapon from the Past. Regular Wardog enemies needed two 80 damage Strikes to take down, and their melee damage was about 25. The Wardog Captains' incendiary pistols would hit me for about 25 damage, as Konstantin.

I then played a 45% difficulty Mentor match on Hanging by a Thread, and enemy health and damage was pretty much the same as I experienced at around 75% difficulty. Bear in mind, that these are matches with low level players that don't have the same passives or weapon upgrades, so they're going to have a very hard time, and a poor first experience.

I remember watching some of the low level players try to take down a Hades Brute in the last section, and it seemed like it would take them 10+ Strikes to take one down. Regular enemies would also be a big threat to newer players, due to their high health and damage.

These matches usually just end up with the newer players dying a whole lot to regular enemies and Elites alike, and oftentimes just disconnecting and never coming back.

On the other hand, I've played non-Mentor matches at the 40-50% range that were significantly easier than the Mentor ones, as enemies didn't hit as hard and had less health.

This problem should be fixed soon. For veteran players it's just giving them an extra headache having to carry newer players through maps, and first time players are going to be wondering why this game is so hard.

I'd suggest just capping the difficulty of Mentor matches to a low level, around 20-25% difficulty, regardless of the average MMR of the Raider team. My MMR is around 85% right now, and so my presence is usually going to skew the difficulty quite a bit.

Bug report & Technical Support / Long interaction times for Host when someone disconnects

on: December 20, 2018, 04:09:48 PM

This bug's been around for a while, so I'll make a report.

What happens is that, when a player either disconnects or stays disconnected from the beginning of the match, the Host takes a much longer than normal time when interacting with objectives. Things like pulling a lever, or overloading something with Aleph, or even extracting, can take 15-20 seconds of continuous channeling to complete.

The other players aren't affected by this, just the Host.

It's quite annoying when this happens on Hanging by a Thread or A Low Blow, since it's pretty hard to extract.

Bug report & Technical Support / AI enemies' Aleph signatures disappearing

on: December 20, 2018, 04:00:20 PM

I've noticed sometimes that regular enemy Aleph signatures just disappear when they go into cover or behind a wall. I know they're there, since I can hear them, see their shadow, or see them on the radar, but I don't see their red glow through cover.

When they pop out of cover to take a shot and then return to it, their Aleph signature does come back though.

So far, I've only seen this happen with Hades troopers, so I'm not sure if this is a bug that affects those enemies or if it also occurs with the 5th Council and Wardog enemies.

Bug report & Technical Support / Possible bugs with Lycus' shield

on: October 08, 2018, 03:08:32 PM

I'm not quite sure if these are bugs or intentional, as they've been in the game for quite a while, but may as well comment.

Firstly, Lycus' shield doesn't charge when he's jumping or sprint jumping. It charges when he's walking, jogging, sprinting or sliding, but not when he's jumping, even if the jump is moving him forwards.

Secondly, his shield doesn't charge when he's carrying the encoder, or when he's carrying Schneider, on the In Medias Res mission. It does charge when he's carrying other objects though, like the bombs on Short Fused, or Kuzmann's head on Upside Down.

Gameplay Feedback / Antagonist Mode - Criticisms and Suggestions

on: October 08, 2018, 02:59:24 PM

I’ve been playing this game for a little over a year now, so I just want to share some of my opinions about the Antagonist mode, and what I think are its largest problems.

I’ll preface this by saying that I mostly play as a Raider, although I have played as an Antagonist, and whilst I have had fun playing as one, ultimately I’m just making the game harder for four other players, so I tend not to do it much.

My main criticisms are going to be towards the game’s scoring and rewards system, whilst giving some suggestions. I’ll touch a little bit on the balancing and MMR issues, though I don’t think them quite as important.

Binary nature of the rewards system

In short, the game gives the largest amount of rewards to players when they win. This affects both the PvP and PvE sides of the game.

Losing a match tends to give about half as much rewards as a win, and you can’t really score above a 4 no matter how ‘well’ you’ve done, on a loss. If a Raider team gets to 99.99% completion of a map, and then loses at the last second, they’ll lose a large amount of rewards, and will have wasted a lot of time. The Antagonist, on the other hand, could delay the match by 30+ minutes, and score 50+ kills, but if he loses, he’ll get a bad score and poor rewards.

The result of this is that closely fought matches, which should feel exhilarating, actually give out lower rewards for both sides. The scoring system generally wants players to win as fast as possible to get the most rewards, and lacks systems that reward individual performance. In Spacelords, the relatively binary, ‘all or nothing’ approach to reward acquisition, generally leaves both sides unhappy with one another.

A simple solution to make players more enthused about the Antagonist mode would be to raise the amount of rewards for all players when an invasion occurs. However, I think a system that rewards both sides for fighting and interacting against one another would be a better solution, though it may require more work.

Unrewarding interactions between players, poor scoring systems

Other multiplayer games tend to give players rewards and bonuses for competing against each other. So, for example, players will get points for kills and assists, heals and revives, capturing and defending objectives, etc. In this formula, longer matches that are more closely fought, give both sides more opportunities to acquire points, and may actually be more rewarding than a quicker victory. Individual performance is also rewarded, so even if a player’s team loses, as long as that player himself was playing well, he would likely earn a lot of points and other rewards.

As an example of a game that rewards both competing sides for interacting with each other whilst fulfilling their own, unique objectives, you can look at Dead by Daylight.

In that game, whilst the Survivors and Killer are diametrically opposed, and have differing objectives, there are systems in place that reward each side both for interacting with each other, as well as for actions undertaken during the match. So, whilst the Killer can acquire points by chasing the Survivors, the Survivors can also acquire points by escaping the Killer. Whilst the Survivors get points by fixing generators, the Killer gets points for damaging them. Whilst the Survivors can gain points by stunning the Killer with pallets, the Killer gets points by destroying them. Whilst the Killer gets points for injuring and hooking Survivors, the Survivors get points for rescuing and healing their friends, and so forth.

Though the ultimate aim of the Survivors is to escape the map, and the Killer’s is to eliminate them before that can happen, a large majority of points can still be acquired by either side even if they don’t fulfil their objective. As such, closely fought matches reward both sides, and are more satisfying. On the Survivor side, a good player that helps carry his team is usually rewarded quite well due to the scoring system, which is based more around individual performance rather than team performance. Survivor players can also specialise in different roles, and be rewarded for it. As an example, one Survivor can pick skills that help them heal others, becoming a type of medic, and can earn points doing so. Another Survivor could specialise in fixing generators, helping his team to escape by completing the objectives faster.

Spacelords doesn’t really have any on these types of systems in place. In this game currently, the Raiders and the Antagonist don’t really get any benefits from interacting with one another in the match. The only thing that really counts is whether one side can win over the other, as that leads to the most rewards.

If an Antagonist interrupts or otherwise delays the Raiders from fulfilling their objectives multiple times throughout a match, but still ends up failing the mission, he doesn’t get any bonus rewards for having undertaken and completed those actions. As such, an Antagonist on Short Fused that blows up the bombs before they can damage the Wardog tanks is not really rewarded for those specific actions, no matter if he wins or loses the match.

Aside from a temporary reprieve, the Raiders don’t get any rewards for killing the Antagonist. Killing the Raiders is the usual means that an Antagonist can win a match, but unless it leads to a victory, all those kills are largely meaningless. There are also no real ‘comeback’ mechanics in the game, which would help one side at least claw something back if they were getting outright decimated. Things like breaking a killstreak or killing the strongest player on the other team tend to get rewarded in other multiplayer games. Applied to Spacelords, this could mean that a Raider team that is being killed a lot by an Antagonist, could at least gain some sort of consolation prize when they take him down. If an Antagonist is struggling against a Raider team, then perhaps Uras will give him the task to kill a specific Raider so as to earn a bounty reward of some kind.

Furthermore, there are no real systems in place that reward cooperative actions. Raiders that save a wounded teammate from being killed by the Antagonist don’t get a reward for such an action. Raiders that use healing and support weapons or cards to help their teammates, aren’t rewarded for it. A Raider that assists in an Antagonist kill does not get rewarded. A Raider player that carries their team by killing the Antagonist, gathering Aleph, completing objectives and the like, is not really rewarded for his own individual performance, as the game judges the team’s performance rather than his own. A Raider player that kills large numbers of the AI enemies and keeps the map clear, isn’t really rewarded for it.

A system could also be created to reward players for using their character’s powers well. So, a Harec that kills enemies whilst Stalking could get an extra bonus, as could a Hive that absorbs damage whilst overhealed, or a Kuzmann who kills enemies with his Blitzfaust, for example.

However, due to a lack of these scoring and reward systems, the Antagonist mode, as well as the cooperative mode, just seems rather unfulfilling to me. The Antagonist system seems a good idea on paper, but it needs more fleshing out. As it stands, whilst it does provide some variety, it’s largely just a way to increase the grind of an already very time consuming game. Players are already going to have to play for several hundred hours to acquire the millions of gold they’re going to need to purchase all the characters and weapons, and Antagonists are just an inconvenience to that, rather than something exciting. Considering that the Antagonist mode is one of the main features and selling points of this game, that helps it stand out from the crowd, it’s unfortunate that it’s so unrewarding to participate in.

Other problems

As a competitive mode, I can’t really take the Antagonist mode too seriously, as the implementation of passive skills and upgradeable weapons that scale off of player level just leads to imbalances between higher level and lower level players. Scaling the AI difficulty due to MMR differences when an invasion occurs also tends to the favour the side that has the lower MMR. In general, if the Antagonist has a higher MMR than the Raiders, the AI enemies will be weaker, and the level less difficult overall. If the Raiders have a higher MMR than the Antagonist, the AI enemies will be stronger, bosses and objectives will have more health, timers will be shorter, environmental hazards will deal more damage, etc. This tends to make the level easier for an Antagonist, and more unfair to the Raiders. In extreme circumstances, a low MMR Antagonist can go AFK and still win a match due to overpowered AI enemies.

This has been discussed in other threads, so I’ll leave some links.

https://www.spacelordsthegame.com/community/index.php?topic=2147.0

https://www.spacelordsthegame.com/community/index.php?topic=1583.0

https://www.spacelordsthegame.com/community/index.php?topic=1585.0

https://www.spacelordsthegame.com/community/index.php?topic=1503.0

https://www.spacelordsthegame.com/community/index.php?topic=1440.0

Even were there a consistent level of AI difficulty during invasions, balancing Antagonist mode itself is also going to be very difficult. There are currently 17 characters in the game, dozens of different weapons, and hundreds of cards, with no doubt more on the way. The time to kill in this game can be very short, even with the 50% damage reduction players can get in PvP, and adding critical strikes to weapons just exacerbates that further. The power gap between Rare and Common cards has also gotten bigger as the game has gone on, and they were all made a lot stronger during the Hades Betrayal update, which has led to pretty overpowered card combinations that can lead to relatively easy kills.

Lag is also something that negatively affects PvP, and PvE to a lesser extent. Host advantage is pretty strong in this game, and at higher pings, the melee system is adversely affected. As an example, it’s difficult to counter a Grapple on reaction when your ping is +200-250ms. Certain characters, like Ginebra, can have a tougher time landing shots when they’re playing at higher pings.

These problems can be discussed more at length, but frankly, I think that making the Antagonist mode more rewarding to participate in is a bigger priority than balancing at the moment.

Bug report & Technical Support / Unable to pick a character in the character select screen

on: October 03, 2018, 09:48:48 AM

Another player and I both picked the same character at the same time. Whilst he got the character, I was unable to go pick another one. My cursor just changed into a spinning hourglass until the timer ran out, at which point I got assigned a random character.

Pressing 'back' or the Escape key didn't really do anything.

Suggestions / Show which threads have had a Developer reply

on: October 03, 2018, 07:53:47 AM

More of a forum suggestion than a game suggestion, but it would be nice to see.

Spacelords’ Advice / Low Pass Filter and Tsiklon

on: October 03, 2018, 07:32:48 AM

I was thinking that this combination would give Konstantin some extra damage reduction for free, since the Tsiklon doesn't need to spin up.

Unfortunately, the card doesn't work at all with the Tsiklon equipped, so don't waste your Faction Points for it.

Suggestions / Repeatable rewards for Solo mode

on: October 03, 2018, 06:44:32 AM

Even if you could only do it a few times per reward rotation, it would still be a nice way to get some extra gold on the side.

As it stands, once you've beaten all the maps on Insane difficulty, there's no real point to Solo mode aside from just testing things.

Suggestions / Mentor Matches - Feedback and Suggestions

on: October 03, 2018, 06:40:58 AM

I've done quite a few Mentor matches now, but the game still suffers from the same problems of high MMR players raising the difficulty too high for newer players to cope well.

As an example, I had a Mentor match that was set at 47% difficulty, even though we had a level one player there. Needless to say, he wasn't having a very good time of it, and would generally die a lot to regular enemies unless we watched out for him. A number of other Mentor matches I've played, were also set around the 40% difficulty range, which I would say is too high for beginner players.

I've also had Antagonists invade in Mentor matches, and they were always a far higher level than all the newer players. I had quite an annoying match on In Medias Res, where there was a level 150 Patient/Reborn Doldren who would just teleport around and one Strike down the lower level players. The level 2 Alicia ended up quitting after a few deaths, and the level 8 Lycus was basically a free kill for the Doldren. It was basically just me and another player having to do everything, whilst slowly losing lives due to the Antagonist picking off the Lycus over and over. I also had to fight a level 200 Shepherd Rak, who would generally just spawn next to the lower level players and one shot them, so the whole match became a glorified escort mission, which was hardly fun for anyone involved.

It would be better if the difficulty was capped to a very low level, perhaps around 20-25% difficulty at most, regardless of what the average MMR of the team is. Most newer players tend to Strike or Grapple spam their way through enemies, and that just doesn't work at higher difficulties. A lower difficulty would at least allow them some time to experiment with the melee system without dying over and over. Beginner players also don't have much, or any, weapon upgrades, so it would be better for them to go up against lower health enemies that don't require as many shots.

I don't think Antagonists should really be allowed into Mentor matches. Newer players just end up as free kills, and most of the time they just end up leaving. It's also frustrating on my end having to play babysitter. In cases where a low level Antagonist goes up against much higher level Raiders, they'd probably see it as being unfair too.

If there were no Antagonists and the difficulty was capped, I don't think older players would mind doing Mentor matches as much, since they would probably be able to carry without too much difficulty.

Of course, it's difficult to communicate with players at the moment, so that's still one of the more glaring issues of Mentor matches.

Spacelords Universe / Anniversary Thread

on: September 24, 2018, 06:27:24 AM

Well, the game's a little over a year old now.

Does anyone remember the good old days when Hans' jetpack had a 6 second cooldown? Or when Ginebra cost 360k gold? Or when you had to share 3k gold between 4 players?

I remember.

Suggestions / UI Suggestions

on: September 24, 2018, 06:22:49 AM

Currently, the players' nameplates at the top left of the screen just show how much Aleph they have, as well as their level and character.

It would be nice if the nameplates would flash red if a player's character is in the wounded/downed state. Perhaps also add icons that show if another player is low on ammo, or if their power is on cooldown.

That way, you could check on your teammates' status at a glance.

Suggestions / Add an option to change Hosts when in a match

on: September 22, 2018, 01:20:44 AM

I've had a match recently, which ended in a loss, because the Host was in Peru, and everyone else on the team had >999ms and couldn't even move.

An option to change Hosts would have prevented this. I'm not quite sure why the game even picked him to be the Host in the first place.

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