Story Dungeon Feedback - Devastation

[DirkTheAverage]

Apologies if this isn't the correct location, but I wanted to give my feedback on the Devastation story dungeon. Spoilers for the dungeon, obviously.

To start with, I really like the time swapping gimmick, and the first part of the dungeon where you go underground is amazing. Those kinds of puzzles are a lot of fun, and the varied environments where you use the destroyed components in the present to break into the intact components in the past is great. In addition, there's a lot of hidden loot squirreled away in corners or slightly less obvious paths. It's a wonderful part of the dungeon and our group of three really enjoyed it.

Then we got to the tower.

The first couple of levels of the tower were okay, but a confluence of a few factors made it really unpleasant. And I should emphasize that we had the setting where we kept our whole inventory on death, so our many, many, many deaths weren't as grating as they could have been. There are a few main issues we ran into:

1. Lighting - you're gonna be in the tower climbing it for an hour or two at minimum, which means that night is going to come. We can't place things (and we can't build a camp just outside the dungeon), so there's no option to sleep through the night. The aged planks and dark walls make this worse, along with the soupy brown sky. The tower needs lights in the present so that you can actually examine the puzzle at night because an iron lantern just isn't cutting it

2. The floors are set up so that there is only one path to the goal and there's no indication as to where the path is. We need one or the other. Either there need to be more paths to the top, or there needs to be some subtle indicators as to where to start on the path to the goal, with some landmarks more highlighted. It doesn't need to be as obvious as yellow paint from Abiotic Factor, but some lights or sparking machinery or anything to draw the eye would make a big help, even if it's just something that steer players vaguely in a direction. Lights from the above suggestion would be a natural way to draw the players' eyes and give us a direction to start working towards.

3. The exploded tower is neat, but there are a lot of holes to fall through when you're jumping from the past to the present and vice versa. This is a problem because the game is asking you to experiment, but frequently experimenting means splattering onto the pavement five stories down and having to run back from outside of the entire biome the Devastation is housed in. Even if you don't die, you're still down a level or two and a chunk of health. We spent a lot of time on the elevator. One of the big reasons we enjoyed the underground section so much is that you could experiment with only a minor injury from falling at most. When you're on the devastated floors on the top of the tower, they extend out much further than the past tower rooms, so you can phase back to try to orient yourself only to find that you're now falling to your death. It makes exploration much less fun.

4. The boss fight is cool! I like that you can pick up arrows and javelins, and I like that you can dodge the boss by jumping into the past. I would really like to be able to see a shadow of the boss in the past though. It's a great solo boss fight because you can control and time when the boss is attacking. In multiplayer it's a mess of people phasing in and out with no indication of where the boss is. I ended up sitting in the past and playing combat medic to revive my friends when they inevitably got hit. Incidentally, I did run into an issue where reviving someone would use two bandages instead of one sometimes, which was very odd.

Overall it's a really cool dungeon with a great gimmick, but it does need more indication for players, better lighting, and safer landing areas so that players can experiment with going between past and present during the tower climb and not die horribly in the process.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

I think adding lighting would detract from the whole "dilapidated and exploded tower" vibe that's going on. Safer landing areas? I mean VS describes itself as uncompromising, so I guess just have better control of where you go? I could see a lighter version of the tower having these things, but this game isn't for kids. It's hard and frustrating and really not for the faint of heart.

[williams_482]

Interesting that you mention the day/night cycle, because when I did the devastation tower I don't remember noticing any changes to the lighting over time, and I was definitely in there for more than a day. I assumed the devastation zone had an ambient light level independent of where the sun was at, like the nether in Minecraft. 

Have other people experienced problems navigating the devastation at night? I wonder if you ran into some kind of lighting bug (or if I did, but mine was helpful). 

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums!

6 minutes ago, williams_482 said:

Have other people experienced problems navigating the devastation at night?

I have. When it first released, there was a proper day/night cycle, among other things. As for now...I think the top of the tower may be perpetual daylight in order to make the boss fight more manageable, but I could be wrong. As a general rule, dealing with dark areas is something that's just a part of playing VS.

4 hours ago, DirkTheAverage said:

1. Lighting - you're gonna be in the tower climbing it for an hour or two at minimum, which means that night is going to come. We can't place things (and we can't build a camp just outside the dungeon), so there's no option to sleep through the night. The aged planks and dark walls make this worse, along with the soupy brown sky. The tower needs lights in the present so that you can actually examine the puzzle at night because an iron lantern just isn't cutting it

If you go to the past, there is a usable bed and firepit at the tower's base. You'll need to complete the basement and unlock the door first in order to use it though.

As for lighting it in the present, this wouldn't really make sense given that the tower has been wrecked for years. It would also diminish the stark contrast between the pristine appearance of the past and the currently devastated present.

5 hours ago, DirkTheAverage said:

2. The floors are set up so that there is only one path to the goal and there's no indication as to where the path is. We need one or the other. Either there need to be more paths to the top, or there needs to be some subtle indicators as to where to start on the path to the goal, with some landmarks more highlighted. It doesn't need to be as obvious as yellow paint from Abiotic Factor, but some lights or sparking machinery or anything to draw the eye would make a big help, even if it's just something that steer players vaguely in a direction. Lights from the above suggestion would be a natural way to draw the players' eyes and give us a direction to start working towards.

There's a general intended path, which is described on the wiki, but there may be other routes as well. There are also subtle indicators on what route the player is intended to follow, but the player must be studying the environment carefully, both in the past and present, to figure it out. On each floor there should be a detail that stands out, like a lantern, window, metal tanks, etc., and those often prove to be the key to finding the route up.

 

5 hours ago, DirkTheAverage said:

3. The exploded tower is neat, but there are a lot of holes to fall through when you're jumping from the past to the present and vice versa. This is a problem because the game is asking you to experiment, but frequently experimenting means splattering onto the pavement five stories down and having to run back from outside of the entire biome the Devastation is housed in. Even if you don't die, you're still down a level or two and a chunk of health. We spent a lot of time on the elevator. One of the big reasons we enjoyed the underground section so much is that you could experiment with only a minor injury from falling at most. When you're on the devastated floors on the top of the tower, they extend out much further than the past tower rooms, so you can phase back to try to orient yourself only to find that you're now falling to your death. It makes exploration much less fun.

The underground section is meant to serve as a training puzzle for the rest of the tower, allowing the player a chance to get used to the timeswitch mechanic before the stakes are raised. The player can also use the elevator to travel to floors they've already been to, meaning that each floor puzzle really only needs to be completed once. When chapter two was first released, there was no basement area, no rest area, and the elevator would only activate after the player reached the very top.

As for the danger of falling...it's meant to be a tough area, and falling is one of the main hazards, which is fitting since the boss is a large mechanical bird. This is also why one of the rewards from the Resonance Archive is a glider schematic--the glider can help the player avoid lethal falls.

5 hours ago, DirkTheAverage said:

4. The boss fight is cool! I like that you can pick up arrows and javelins, and I like that you can dodge the boss by jumping into the past. I would really like to be able to see a shadow of the boss in the past though. It's a great solo boss fight because you can control and time when the boss is attacking. In multiplayer it's a mess of people phasing in and out with no indication of where the boss is. I ended up sitting in the past and playing combat medic to revive my friends when they inevitably got hit. Incidentally, I did run into an issue where reviving someone would use two bandages instead of one sometimes, which was very odd.

Honestly, I think that would make the fight more trivial than it is. Being able to switch to the past and be completely safe to heal at your leisure or leave the area is a significant advantage. However, that kind of power doesn't come without some risk. While the player is in the past, the Crow tends to circle the tower, since there's currently nothing there to attack. The Crow itself is slower than it was at launch, with very deliberate, clearly telegraphed attacks, so it should be rather easy to dodge. I think the main issue here is that multiple players doing the content at once tend to complicate things--in these situations, communication is critical(those in the present should be informing those in the past of the Crow's activity), and too many players in the same small arena is going to mean someone's inevitably getting hit.

As for the two bandages thing--it's a known issue at the moment. The game will sometimes use two bandages at once instead of one.

5 hours ago, DirkTheAverage said:

so that players can experiment with going between past and present during the tower climb and not die horribly in the process.

Eh...this is kind of part of the Vintage Story brand though? It's a tough game, and not unusual to die a few times while trying to figure something out. It's why the player character has the cheeky little line "Don't worry about me; I don't see to be able to die" when convincing the village hunter to share the Devastation's location. Also why it's a good idea to bring a few temporal gears with you on your travels, or invest in a terminus teleporter.

[DirkTheAverage]

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

As a general rule, dealing with dark areas is something that's just a part of playing VS.

If you go to the past, there is a usable bed and firepit at the tower's base. You'll need to complete the basement and unlock the door first in order to use it though.

As for lighting it in the present, this wouldn't really make sense given that the tower has been wrecked for years. It would also diminish the stark contrast between the pristine appearance of the past and the currently devastated present.

Thank you for the detailed response!

We had three players, so while the bed did exist, it wasn't something that we could actually use to skip nighttime. We did thankfully bring enough food. Also our respawn point was a good few hundred blocks to the south since we cannot build (and were unable to use gears) in the immediate vicinity of the tower. And since we can't use the tools the game gives us (placing torches or other light sources) while within a dungeon, dealing with the dark is not something that we could actually do, beyond struggling in the darkness and then being able to progress marginally better in the light. Granted, it never got completely dark, but the difference was enough to be noticeable and frustrating.

I think the lighting could work - it doesn't have to be intact, but intermittent sparking, glowing rust patches, glowing goop, or other things could be used to give areas some light. Even allowing some of the damaged machinery to be used as a torch sconce (wedging a torch into a broken panel) could be used to allow players to light the area themselves.

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

There's a general intended path, which is described on the wiki, but there may be other routes as well. There are also subtle indicators on what route the player is intended to follow, but the player must be studying the environment carefully, both in the past and present, to figure it out. On each floor there should be a detail that stands out, like a lantern, window, metal tanks, etc., and those often prove to be the key to finding the route up.

There were three of us scouring the environment and jumping around like lunatics and it took us over 3 hours to ascend just the tower portion. The signposting is there in retrospect, but it's not clear enough to sight read easily (and the signposts changing each floor makes it harder to understand what the game is teaching you, not easier). And the ground is broken up evenly, so you're often not even sure which cardinal direction to start looking at to begin with. You're also sometimes being shot at by bowtorn or by the crow, and phasing between past and present to get a better look at the situation frequently results in falling to your death. I'm not asking for a complete walkthrough, but if there are 10 steps to make it to the next area, having some signpost at steps 2, 5, and 8 makes it really helpful for players to figure out where to start, where to end, and then fill in the gaps in a way that feels good to figure out.

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

The underground section is meant to serve as a training puzzle for the rest of the tower, allowing the player a chance to get used to the timeswitch mechanic before the stakes are raised. The player can also use the elevator to travel to floors they've already been to, meaning that each floor puzzle really only needs to be completed once. When chapter two was first released, there was no basement area, no rest area, and the elevator would only activate after the player reached the very top.

As for the danger of falling...it's meant to be a tough area, and falling is one of the main hazards, which is fitting since the boss is a large mechanical bird. This is also why one of the rewards from the Resonance Archive is a glider schematic--the glider can help the player avoid lethal falls.

The underground section was fantastic! It reminded me of a very good Zelda dungeon in a lot of ways. And yeah, the elevator was very much appreciated, though needing to use it as often as we did really started to grate after a while.

The problem I have with the falling is that it discourages experimenting. We are expected to jump while in the present, warp in midair, and land in the past, then repeat the process. The problem is that sometimes you try to look around to line something up, warp in time, and then all of a sudden you're plummeting through a floor or two, which then means you need to get the elevator, except one of your buddies died and is at the bottom of the elevator, so now you have to wait for it to descend 6 floors, then come back up to pick you up, and now you get to retry the jump again, but oops, you missed and now you're back down a floor or two and the fall damage has accumulated enough so that you're dead, and now you get to run a few hundred blocks back and hope you didn't forget which approach you were going to try. Then you succeed at the jump only to find that the path goes nowhere and when you warp into the past to see if it leads anywhere you're outside the tower and plummeting. Hope you like elevator rides!

It took us over 3 hours for a reason.We did have gliders, but the glider mechanics are really awkward, especially having come from Enshrouded as the most recent glider enabled game we played as a group.

4 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Honestly, I think that would make the fight more trivial than it is. Being able to switch to the past and be completely safe to heal at your leisure or leave the area is a significant advantage. However, that kind of power doesn't come without some risk. While the player is in the past, the Crow tends to circle the tower, since there's currently nothing there to attack. The Crow itself is slower than it was at launch, with very deliberate, clearly telegraphed attacks, so it should be rather easy to dodge. I think the main issue here is that multiple players doing the content at once tend to complicate things--in these situations, communication is critical(those in the present should be informing those in the past of the Crow's activity), and too many players in the same small arena is going to mean someone's inevitably getting hit.

As for the two bandages thing--it's a known issue at the moment. The game will sometimes use two bandages at once instead of one.

Eh...this is kind of part of the Vintage Story brand though? It's a tough game, and not unusual to die a few times while trying to figure something out. It's why the player character has the cheeky little line "Don't worry about me; I don't see to be able to die" when convincing the village hunter to share the Devastation's location. Also why it's a good idea to bring a few temporal gears with you on your travels, or invest in a terminus teleporter.

Yeah, my perspective is from a multiplayer standpoint, and it is chaotic enough that I just stayed in the past to heal people for a reason. When I was fighting the boss alone before my buddies got there I found it to be a very pleasant encounter and quite manageable solo.

And I think a lot of my frustration with the constant deaths was the large runback we had. Since you can't build in the biome around the tower, and you can't build in the tower itself, the game has removed most of the interesting options that the player has to actually deal with things. My friends and I had put down gears in the region just outside of the biome around the tower and we respawned around 13 or so times each (and died many more times, but we revived each other frequently), with the vast majority of those deaths being in the tower section, whether that was from bowtorn shooting them or the crow shooting them. It's also a very different challenge from what we signed up for with Vintage Story - first person platforming is less than ideal at the best of times, and the engine is really not built for it - it's built for, well, building things to make the platforming easier or nonexistent. I understand why that can't happen in the dungeon, but I signed up to the game to starve to death while a bear chases me across the plains, not to platform in first person in a muddy skybox.

[LadyWYT]

8 hours ago, DirkTheAverage said:

We had three players, so while the bed did exist, it wasn't something that we could actually use to skip nighttime. We did thankfully bring enough food. Also our respawn point was a good few hundred blocks to the south since we cannot build (and were unable to use gears) in the immediate vicinity of the tower.

Ah okay, that makes more sense. Maybe some bunk beds should be in the tower, or a small dormitory. Large player groups would still be a problem, but a small group of friends(like, 5 or less) should be able to make use of a dorm.

Odd that you weren't able to use gears in the tower though. That should work. I seem to recall it working last time I was at the tower. I think the warning message will still appear when you use the gear but your spawnpoint should be set anyway.

 

8 hours ago, DirkTheAverage said:

I think the lighting could work - it doesn't have to be intact, but intermittent sparking, glowing rust patches, glowing goop, or other things could be used to give areas some light. Even allowing some of the damaged machinery to be used as a torch sconce (wedging a torch into a broken panel) could be used to allow players to light the area themselves.

Explained that way, yeah, I could see it working. I wouldn't go for sparks, but glowing temporal goop here or there would probably work...although all temporal fluid seems to have been burned off in the present. In which case, the torch idea is stronger. The Resonance Archive and procedural dungeons already teach players about torchholders, and there could be a stack of unlit torches as part of the tower loot if the player forgot to bring some(which the unlit torches can be lit in the past firepit).

 

8 hours ago, DirkTheAverage said:

It's also a very different challenge from what we signed up for with Vintage Story - first person platforming is less than ideal at the best of times, and the engine is really not built for it - it's built for, well, building things to make the platforming easier or nonexistent. I understand why that can't happen in the dungeon, but I signed up to the game to starve to death while a bear chases me across the plains, not to platform in first person in a muddy skybox.

I think overall, parkour is something that a player will either love or hate, since it tends to be fairly punishing toward mistakes. While I enjoyed the tower puzzle, I wouldn't mind seeing future timeswitch puzzles be a little more "grounded".

 

9 hours ago, DirkTheAverage said:

You're also sometimes being shot at by bowtorn or by the crow, and phasing between past and present to get a better look at the situation frequently results in falling to your death.

On this part, I think it would be nice if monsters didn't spawn around the tower due to the Crow's presence. While it's gone mad due to certain events, it was originally made to defend the tower, so while it might not be friendly to humans anymore it might not be friendly to rust creatures either. It would be an immersive explanation for stopping monster spawns around the tower, to be sure, as well as remove one of the more annoying hazards.