Good to know you are still working on the game. Hopefully you will continue to visit these forums and keep us updated.

Care to address these issues people constantly bring up:

1. reroll/banish on all characters?
2. pick character chest reward instead of it being random?
3. all maps available for endless mode?
4. disable flashing enemies when damaged?
5. colour palette changes?
6. salvo needing you to move to target enemies - why doesn't it work when you stand still?
7. salvo balance overall being a poor performer / poor interaction with many perks.
8. lack of stats of any kind (damage, rate of fire, effect chance, range, etc).
9. xp orbs bug drop location when collection range is really high.
10. no auto-collecting xp orb mechanic (ie. when defeating a boss?).
11. lack of enemy variety and/or lack of new bosses.

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥ Goblin:

1. reroll/banish on all characters?

This would take a longer post to really discuss my thoughts on this. I used to be extremely against this idea, since I really look up to roguelikes like Binding of Isaac and Slay the Spire, and huge part of the allure of these games is that the RNG provides enough variance that every run feels a little unique. But I've come around on the idea a little more now because for those games to work like that, the characters you pick are more flexible in the way you can build them. But the problem for 20MTD is that players already have a build in mind after they pick their character+weapon combo, before they even start the game. So then it's frustrating for players when they don't get stuff that synergizes with their character+weapon, since it's a lot harder to adapt to what you're given. I've more opted into designing characters that are more flexible in how you build (like the new character Katana scales dmg with reload, on-hit effects, summon damage, bullet damage), so that you will never see a set of upgrades that don't benefit your build at all, eliminating the worse case scenario of RNG. Still some of the older characters are really specific in the way the build, (like Scarlett only goes for on-hit/fire rate builds and Lilith only goes for summon builds), so it's still a problem. Not to mention I think 20mtd players like to theorycraft builds so forcing them to adapt to the RNG is more frustrating than in games like Binding of Isaac or Slay the Spire. Adding a reroll function is literally like less than a half-hour workload for me since the functionality is already in the game from Shana, but it's not really a feature I can take back once I add it, and it's not something that would has no cons to adding it. But I am open to some level of RNG mitigation mechanics, even if it's not rerolls.

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥ Goblin:

2. pick character chest reward instead of it being random?

Again as with the issue above, I think some level of variance is needed in a roguelike. I think the bigger problem is that character upgrades are hugely unbalanced. Some characters have extremely build defining upgrades (like Scarlet's Pyromaniac), so it really sucks not to get them until late. I actually kind of want to rework some of the character upgrades so that all 3 are build defining, so players will build around whichever one they get first. But reworking them for all characters is a lot of work that might not be worth it, so I'm actually a lot more open to a band-aid solution like just letting players pick their character chest upgrade.

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥ Goblin:

3. all maps available for endless mode?

Part of this issue is that it's a lot more work to implement than you would think because of how the codebase is set up lol. But yea, at the end of the day, I want to just rework Endless mode somehow, since it's unbalanced and unfun imo, definitely open to suggestions here on how to rework endless mode in general, or ideas for a replacement.

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥ Goblin:

4. disable flashing enemies when damaged?

This is the first I've heard of someone requesting this. It would make the game feel worse tbh, but I can see maybe some player being too photosensitive to the flash. Are there other players that want this option?

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥ Goblin:

5. colour palette changes?

I'm open to testing this. It's unfeasible to recolor literally every sprite in the game multiple times, so it would probably have to be done through a shader, which may hurt game's performance, although the hit is probably small.

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥ Goblin:

6. salvo needing you to move to target enemies - why doesn't it work when you stand still?
7. salvo balance overall being a poor performer / poor interaction with many perks.

That literally the point of the weapon though. It synergizes and scales with move speed and movement abilities and it's part of the identity of the weapon. It's a weapon where basically movement replaces fire-rate. And the weapon can clear the game just fine though. I don't think I'm going to rework this.

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥ Goblin:

8. lack of stats of any kind (damage, rate of fire, effect chance, range, etc).

I'm open adding this. Definitely won't be in the next patch, but could be added in the future.

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥ Goblin:

9. xp orbs bug drop location when collection range is really high.

This really only happens in endless mode I think, but yea I'll fix this.

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥ Goblin:

10. no auto-collecting xp orb mechanic (ie. when defeating a boss?).

I'm open to adding something like this.

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥ Goblin:

11. lack of enemy variety and/or lack of new bosses.

Yea sure there will be some more added, but it's kind of hard making interesting enemies in the current combat system. To have a LOT of variety would mean a lot of the enemies would just be reskins. But people seem to be okay with Vampire Survivor's enemies which are just mostly just reskins, so it might be okay to add more variety through that route.

Just when I finally earned every achievement, you went and added a new character.
... Keep em' coming.

Love this game. I'm looking forward to the sequel.
Do you have any plans on making a campaign or even a story mode? A dozen femme fatales reminds me of Kill Bill, Charlie's Angels, and Cowboy Bebop. Every one of your characters has a story to tell. I'm excited to see where you go with it.

If you could make stats be calls to an endpoint (on local machine) and let people develop their own game-synopsis visualizations that would be cool. And as far as I know a first.

This is a great game already, congratulations on such a remarkable success.

Originally posted by Captain Facepalm:

Just when I finally earned every achievement, you went and added a new character.
... Keep em' coming.

Love this game. I'm looking forward to the sequel.
Do you have any plans on making a campaign or even a story mode? A dozen femme fatales reminds me of Kill Bill, Charlie's Angels, and Cowboy Bebop. Every one of your characters has a story to tell. I'm excited to see where you go with it.

Probably not tbh. Emberpath will have some 20MTD lore, but still not really story heavy.

Originally posted by flanne:

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥ Goblin:

4. disable flashing enemies when damaged?

This is the first I've heard of someone requesting this. It would make the game feel worse tbh, but I can see maybe some player being too photosensitive to the flash. Are there other players that want this option?

Yes.

RNG mitigation would be an absolute QOL improvement. Pivoting build around what drops often isn't really viable. Low RNG dependence in my experience is a huge factor in build viability. Tomes are kind of the worst offender on this, the frequency with which I bin them because every option is straight downgrade on my build is kind of shocking.

I think that the current amount of RNG is fine. I don't want my build to be fully predictable as soon as I start a run. Sure, having an idea early might help, but being able to adapt to whatever the game throws at you and maybe even use it to your advantage is a skill that provides satisfaction too, imo. And it's not like picking up something less than ideal ruins a run completely. Having to keep planning your moves during the run and not just before it is kinda a given with some roguelites and can be executed well. And the very first character has rerolls, so if that's what a player is going for, just play as her...
As for my issues with the game, it's mostly the lag. I wish there were more options (like lowering the particle amount) for the low-spec players out there (myself included), so that the endgame with some particular perk combos would not make the game this choppy.
Another qol would be to give the player the ability to peek at their current perk collection while levelling up.

> some level of variance is needed

High RNG ruins this game. Do you think getting the +30% xp chest reward as the 1st character from the last boss (at 3min left in a run) is fun? What about unlocking t3 perks but not seeing them for the rest of the run - what fun is that? (ie. unlocking the 0.05% burn heal and never seeing it as a choice when leveling up) There are lots of these rng examples where RNG punishes the player/game/playstyle.

If you want to keep the RNG, then rework your code so you have a higher chance to see T2/T3 upgrade choices over T1 choices. Rework the upgrades to show at least one upgrade that synergizes with your other upgrades/perks (ie. if you have a summon, then at least one of the level up choices should improve your summons). As mentioned above, picking your chest perk is needed as it can greatly improve a run early on (especially in endless mode).

You know what the worst feeling is? Wanting to play a specific build (ie. shotgun holy arts) and not getting any of the perks you want. So you restart and restart and restart and finally you get the perks you want. This would be so much more fun if you could reroll/banish level up perks, so you aren't just restarting over and over trying to get the perks you want.

Is mod support still coming for this game?

Hey, pretty cool game!

+1 for displaying stats

also, a quality of life suggestion:
a option toggle automatic fire.

Most of the time, by some point in the run I will just hold M1 until the end which can be annoying, idk if the majority of players do this, just a thought.

To add to the photo-sensitivity options, a "low effects" mode should tone down lightning strikes somehow.
It's a really high-speed, high-contrast flash, especially from the Tome, especially when striking enemies at the bottom of the screen.
It would probably make the game look worse, but it's trade-off to keep the game playable.

I think you need a bit of a kick up the butt really, it's sounding a lot like you just don't know what to do with the game and have run out of ideas.

1. You don't even need to go fully into re-roll/banish to balance out an increasing pool of perks.

You can increase the given options if necessary, but one way other survivor-likes go about it is to just slightly decreasing the odds of a perk you have previously passed on from re-appearing and increasing the odds of perks being offered that either synergize strongly with a class/perk or are part of the upgrade tree attached to an already chosen perk. Decreasing the odds on passed on perks/upgrades re-appearing is as old as Magic Survival (The OG survivor-like).

The problem is right now you might get offered the same trash perks constantly out of 10 levels and they're just as likely to show up again, every time over and over.

If you code the odds to be slightly manipulated by your choices, then you would be able to get by fine without a re-roll and with just a few (3-5) banishes.

2. Might be speaking for myself here, but at this point I think more maps, enemy diversity and especially bosses should take priority for a over new heroes.

New enemies don't have to be drastically different, it can be a different projectile pattern, being slower but tougher, faster but weaker, weaker but in much greater numbers or moving in a different pattern. The VS way.

Though you can look at more advanced differences like teleporting/tunneling enemies, ones that deal no damage but effect the player with negative conditions, ones that explode on death releasing projectiles that can damage both yourself and other enemies or leave small areas on the ground of damage over time for a form of area denial.

Really VS is the bare bones standard of survivor-likes while so many out there are innovating on making combat far more engaging. You've taken a right step adding the manual aiming and ability/dodge button for that here as others have also done. but just take a look around if you are out of ideas or get somebody else to play them for you and tell you how they deal with certain situations.

There are so many more options out there for possible enemy types. If you are struggling with this you should check in with some other survival-like games to get ideas or even get somebody to do it for you, so that you have somebody you can ask about how others deal with certain things. Taking other ideas or slightly modifying if you can is far better than just doing nothing and saying you can't think of anything.

Best case scenario you may even be inspired by them to do something more innovative.
Worst case scenario the players don't feel like features are missing.

A replacement for some of the bad runes that exist would be quite nice. Several are so bad as to be either completely unusable or damn close. Others meanwhile could probably use a nerf.

Some of the rune slots could also be dedicated to perks, so that you can get some pieces to help shape your build right away. We already have one rune that gives a perk, why not a few more? Just make sure they compete with each other so you can't stack a ton of them from the first level.


Sword 1...

Mysticism - Replace with Smite from Above. +2 damage per rank to Lightning and Smite damage. 2% per rank chance to Smite on hit, reloading strikes one nearby target with 5 base damage Lightning.

Sword 2...

Aftershock - Replace with Holy Arts, and increase Holy Arts range by 10% per rank.

Close Combat - Make it grant Glare on top of the current effects.

Elemental Barrage - Move to Wild Magic's spot. Replace with Pyromaniac. Gives Pyro Mage, and increase all burn damage dealt by 1 per rank.

Sword 3...

Gun Glyph - Just.... no. Get rid of it, move Dedication into it's slot, and make Dedication lock you to only being able obtain one summon pet tree (so once you pick a summon, any summon, you can grab Frenzy and Trainer, but no other summons would appear). Remove the Dedication "Only works if you have one summon" component. Mostly because it's buggy as hell. The fact you only can gain one should do the job, but also would allow things like the Magic Spears to work without an issue, and work on characters like Lilith that summon things. As well as working with the more spicy Sword 4 dedication rework Horde Master.

Wild Magic - Replace with Elemental Barrage.

Glass Cannon - -1 Max hp, +1 soul Heart. Otherwise stays the same. Makes you just a little more glass.

Sword 4

Dedication - Replace with something like Dragon Tamer, starting with a Dragon egg. Extra ranks could reduce the time till the egg hatches by 15 seconds per rank. Or if you wanted to get spicy, you could have it be something like Horde Master, triple the first Summon you grab, perhaps with a minor +summon damage and -bullet damage per rank component to pair with that.

Shield 1

Tenacity - Buff it so that it scales up with each missing HP below half, or perhaps a weaker permanent buff for every time your health is reduced to half or less.

Shield 2

Agility - I'd put forth Unburdened as a replacement. Increase walk speed by 15% per rank. Makes it compete with Momentum as a movement and kiting perk in the tier, and would be an actual choice I could see myself taking over it sometimes, especially on higher ammo cap weapons.

Seismic Ward - Inconsistent, and competing with far better runes in the tier. Just replace it with something usable. IMO, with 2 runes, one focusing on moving to gather XP, and another kiting and fighting, what makes the most sense is one that helps you stand in place and fight it out, and not need to push your way through the crowds to grow stronger. To that point, I say +3% pickup range per minute per rank. Instead of pushing your way through the crowds to get the XP to grow stronger, you can instead stay in place and only need to focus on minor dodging, and should claim a lot of the XP anyways.

Shield 3

Premonition. Just have it give Evasive. Premonition is bad unless you manage to stack up enough dodge to trigger it, and even then isn't all that impactful compared to the other T3 options. Having it at least have the base dodge chance from Evasive would do a lot for it IMO, and I'd consider it. You'd still need to find 15% more move speed to actually reach the new dodge cap... but considering that is literally just Haste, Windborne, or Windcutter to get, should be easy enough regardless of build/weapon anyway.

Healing. Rename to Vigor. Add Vitality to it. Done.

Blessing. Perfect as is, the utility of it granting the shield now balanced with the other 2 perks of this tree also giving upgrades.

Shield 4

Body and Soul. Have it give Soul Shield, remove the one Soul Heart every 300 seconds. Just really needs something to help it compete with the sheer power of the +20% xp from Growth, and giving the Soul Shield perk would be enough for that IMO. Wind Shield's projectile negation is a powerful enough perk to rival Growth for sheer potential negated damage over a run.

Honestly I think a decent band aid to that isn't necessarily a reroll system would be the ability to lock one tree as a guaranteed option each level up. So for example, if you're playing an SMG + lightning combo you could lock the fire rate upgrades so at least one of them will appear every level up. You may not specifically pick it, but it'd ensure you'd get something for your build without giving players complete control over what they get. Since I know when I go into a game I have a list of like 6 must grabs its never the easiest to decide which one I want to get.

Oh, yeah if you want a suggestion for a new weapon why not go with one meant to play around the dragon? Basically similar to the shield perk its main benefit is you start off with the dragon frame one and a weapon based around making the most use of them. Think maybe a bouncy fire ball staff or something. Could be cool see our little dragon actually get to grow up another stage. Either that or make it a character but I feel like we have a lot more characters than weapons right now.