***Official Question*** Should we change Endless to Epic?

[Anthony]

So, the "endless" mode right now is obviously on the easy side once you've gotten pretty far into the game, and that's not really a problem. We're adding 2, perhaps 3 more endless modes soon to be more appropriate for high level players.

However, the game has some performance problems that really only creep in when you get to the upper nethers of the endless modes. As a result, I hear stories of people who leave their computer on for hours waiting for the game to just chug through it. In my opinion, this is boring and silly, and a poor user experience. So, my inclination is to change these to "Epic" levels that have 100 waves in them. That way there's a nice end to them, it's still a long and involved battle, and there will be less slowdown as the thing gets up into levels 200+. Hopefully that'll be long enough to satisfy the urge to go nuts on the upgrades and placement while not being so long as to cross over into boring, terious chores. I know some people will complain if I remove the "endless" portion, so I'm curious as to what everyone thinks.

[Ameluun]

I think you should just add an Epic mode. There are people, like me, who would like to keep Endless. xP

[Anthony]

Hmm, not a bad idea. I think what we might move to then is to have them all be Epic except for a single Endless mode that is much harder (and scales up in difficulty quickly). But I'll keep entertaining ideas and votes to see what people think.

[coyot]

There are a few possibilities for Endless:

1) To give a good user experience instead of chugging, allow something like ultra-fast-forward, a mode that would just do the calculations, but would not bother with sounds and pictures until something interesting happenned (where the definition of something interesting would be selectable by user from a) warrior dies b) McGuffin gets hit c) McGuffin dies).

2) Make the endless mode auto-adjust starting difficulty based on party level (say, average of top half of party) - or at least make this optional - that is, have "classic" endless and "challenging" endless.

3) How about tracking XP gain from endless for each party member and making it impossible to farm XP? Meaning that if you play once and gain 10k XP and then play again and gain 12k XP, those characters that already played would gain only 2k XP. Yea, it'd be a pain to track the data for all missions, but it would mean that we wouldn't really have any motivation to grind, except scrap, and we can grind that with text editor

[Syntropy]

Maybe have Epic modes starting at various difficulty levels and the "extreme" version of each is endless?

[Anthony]

Those are decent suggestions, but unfortunately all are pretty complicated and would involve a lot of new programming, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to shoot them all down purely on work-to-gain ratio. Sadly game design is not purely based on idea - practical implementation is just as important.

The only one I would shoot down on a gameplay perspective is #2 - what's the point of an endless mode if the parameters change? The you can't compare with other people. I agree that we need a harder endless mode, but I think auto-adjusting defeats the purpose.

[coyot]

The only one I would shoot down on a gameplay perspective is #2 - what's the point of an endless mode if the parameters change? The you can't compare with other people. I agree that we need a harder endless mode, but I think auto-adjusting defeats the purpose.

But what the purpose is? To compare my level25 party achievements with people who have spent ages grinding and have 12 evni swords and everybody at level 40 or even 41? No, I want to compare against people with similar party strengths. Achieving level X in endless is not something worth comparing with others unless I know with WHAT they achieved it.

What I would like to see would be some kind of sandbox mode, not for grinding but for comparisons. Make it i.e. tiered, adjusting difficulty for every 5 levels starting with 20, and allow free respeccing of characters (temporary just for the endless mode) - so that we can play with it and find out who can make the best setup given limited constraints.

Hidden in this is another feature request - editable character builds. To minimize developer resources, you could skip writing a GUI for editing it, using just a text/xml file, and you'd only have to write the usage GUI and logic in the game.
I imagine it as something like:
Buff ranger: Triple_shot, Sharpshooter, Deep_shot, Deep_shot, Deep_shot ...
Killer ranger: Tripe_shot, Sharpshooter, Sharpshooter, Sharpshooter ...
(basically, a comma-delimited list of skill names to automatically put points into, where if the next step is not available, character saves levelup points until it becomes available).
In-game, one would have the option to choose from the list of predefined builds for each character, which would be used for future levelups in normal game and for respeccing for endless game.
I believe that this would have a huge replay potential, as well as the possibility of simply sharing our build configurations.

[yogsloth]

Where's the option to vote for "give me as many modes as possible"?

[wads]

As a result, I hear stories of people who leave their computer on for hours waiting for the game to just chug through it. In my opinion, this is boring and silly, and a poor user experience.

I have a pretty decent computer, so while I did notice quite a slowdown nearing the 300+ waves, it wasn't game breakingly slow on 4x.

however this problem seems to have been resolved with the new patch.

I'm guessing the performance hit was from the memory leaks that was recently fixed.

edit: actually the memory is still being eaten up, i started monitoring the usage at around wave 500 of endless, usage was at 1gb

now it's wave 700 and usage is now 1.25gb. despite this, the game is still running smoothly.

[JorgeLima]

I would say, let the endless mode remember how far we've gone. You already do this in the save game. We could start some 50 levels below our record to make time for preparations and stockpile on the Psi.

[JorgeLima]

Coyot, the save game is a text file - XML. It's awesome!
I've hacked the crap out of everything, which squeezed in a few more days of gameplay simply on account of experimentation.
Don't forget to make a BACKUP of your save file.

[JorgeLima]

What I'd actually like to see is XML rules/mobs/levels files etc. It would be awesome if we could do mods.
Minecraft is so infinitely moddable you will never run out of gameplay.
People are still playing Transport Tycoon after 18 years.

[Marak]

Hmm, not a bad idea. I think what we might move to then is to have them all be Epic except for a single Endless mode that is much harder (and scales up in difficulty quickly). But I'll keep entertaining ideas and votes to see what people think.

I know it's not on the poll, per se, but this gets my vote.

[coyot]

Coyot, the save game is a text file - XML. It's awesome!
I've hacked the crap out of everything, which squeezed in a few more days of gameplay simply on account of experimentation.
Don't forget to make a BACKUP of your save file.

Yea, it's good that it can be easily edited and shared. We could at least make comparisons in "endless level reached without respawning troops" for example. I managed 401, with a party that's almost "maxxed" (after I finshed my linear play, I set XP modifier to 300, replayed everything on perfect, hiring new recruits whenever possible, and I have top weapons and almost top armor on everyone (of course excluding the Evni, and I wouldn't bother grinding for it anyway when all I need to do is edit extra scrap in...)

[AlexxKay]

Hmm, not a bad idea. I think what we might move to then is to have them all be Epic except for a single Endless mode that is much harder (and scales up in difficulty quickly). But I'll keep entertaining ideas and votes to see what people think.

I know it's not on the poll, per se, but this gets my vote.

Ditto.

[Rayvenx]

Hmm, not a bad idea. I think what we might move to then is to have them all be Epic except for a single Endless mode that is much harder (and scales up in difficulty quickly). But I'll keep entertaining ideas and votes to see what people think.

I know it's not on the poll, per se, but this gets my vote.

Ditto.

+1

[larsiusprime]

All the game data is originally raw data files in xml format, they just get "baked" into the build. Separating them out is on our list of things to do for Gold if we have time. It's a little tricky to separate them with so many data files, because right now the entire game assumes all assets have 0 zero load time.

If we have time to do mod stuff, and if there's enough demand, this is what we'll do first - package the game data as loose, editable text files. This puts us short of FULL mod support (which would require loose graphics too), but I think it would get people most of what they want, and would take less effort than making the graphics editable too.

No promises, but we'll see what we can do!

[Defendor]

Hmm, not a bad idea. I think what we might move to then is to have them all be Epic except for a single Endless mode that is much harder (and scales up in difficulty quickly). But I'll keep entertaining ideas and votes to see what people think.

I know it's not on the poll, per se, but this gets my vote.

Ditto.

Agree

[meowww]

Maybe you can set the slope on "endless" different, so after level 100 monster strength raise quickly, making a soft cap that almost no party can make it pass like... level 120?

[Alexander]

It seems it was suggested many times but add button "end battle" in endless mode instead of "quit battle".