Crystal Hardness | Patreon Poll #46

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Hey Patrons!

In this poll I’m curious to get your feedback on how tough and taxing the new caves quest is! It’s been a little while since I’ve added new content like this to Shattered, and it’s positioned a little different compared to prior enemy/boss additions. I want to try and get a feeling for how well it’s fitting in compared to the rest of the game in terms of difficulty and complexity.

The results of this poll will help me decide on any followup tweaks I may make to the quest after v2.2.0’s release, and on how to tune the two upcoming quest variants.

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Please vote for one option within each of the two groups!

All patrons are encouraged to share their opinion by commenting and voting, but currently only the votes from Golden+ Supporters are counted when determining a poll winner. Votes from Shattered Supporters are worth double!

Difficulty

Firstly, I’m curious how difficult people find the new quest to be. This is a pretty straightforward evaluation of how often you expect to die, or how many resources you expect to burn though, to complete the quest. DM-300 is the most obvious point of comparison, so that’s what I’m asking you guys to judge this against.

Difficulty is also the main thing that I’ve toned down since starting the beta, as it’s the easiest thing to track. Due to a combination of those changes and people simply learning the quest the overall success rate has been steadily creeping up since BETA-1.0

Complexity

Secondly, I’m curious about how ‘complex’ the quest feels to you. Complexity is things like how much you have to keep track of at a time. Complexity and difficulty often go hand in hand but they don’t have to. A fight can be really complex but not very hard if you don’t take any real damage when you mess up. Similarly, a fight can be difficult but simple if it’s a big wall of stats without any special mechanics.

In general, when reworking enemies/bosses I’ve tried to increase complexity in Shattered without changing difficulty a whole bunch. As a simple example, DM-300 used to be a big wall of stats, but as part of v0.8.0 I reduced those stats significantly in favor of adding new abilities, the supercharge state, and the power pylons. As an example in the other direction, during the alpha for v2.2.0 the crystal spire’s attacks could be blocked by armor, which meant armor-focused runs could end up with a fight that had a lot going on, but was basically impossible to lose.

I have also toned down complexity for the crystal spire fight a little during the beta, mainly by nerfing the spire’s attack speed.