My face when the Cleric beta is released.
this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
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Awesome 🥳
The Cleric looks awesome so far
Happy holidays Evan
I know in the past you've said you don't want to change the default targeting rules, but the fact that the Bless spell auto targets a nearby enemy instead of yourself doesn't make much sense, and makes casting it very awkward.
Edit: I just tapped the Bless quick cast by accident instead of the Tome, then rather than cancel, I went to open the Tome to cast Guiding Light and blessed the bat. Feels bad. ☹️
100% user error, but it doesn't have to be this way. If I had blessed myself by accident, it would have been OK.
The main problem with changing the auto-target is deciding what to aim at. Currently the behaviour is simple, it targets whatever enemy is your current focus, but there's no equivalent for allies. Perhaps in these cases autotarget should just be off entirely.
It could be coded differently for helpful spells versus attacks. Helpful spells should default to yourself. And then you can tap an ally if that's who you prefer to bless, or a bee, or an amok enemy, or whomever.
What about wand of warding, ally-helping darts, regrowth bombs, wand of transfusion, etc.
These things are more complicated than they seem, and trying to assume what the player wants to target outside of simple 'just highlight the currently focused enemy' starts to get into a mess of circumstantial cases very quickly. This is why I've preferred not to make a bunch of specific cases for targeting behavior.
What about wand of warding, ally-helping darts, regrowth bombs, wand of transfusion, etc.
I can come up with logic for all of those things, if you're genuinely asking.
The quality of life improvement from fixing targeting for those things works be huge! I'd be so psyched!
(I know you're not genuinely asking, but it would be huge. ☺️)
No, see, that's the problem. Yes, of course targeting logic can be thought of for each of those items, which would be correct most of the time, but then the targeting system has 5+ different behaviors depending on the context and most of them make assumptions about what the player wants to target that may not align with what a particular player wants to do. This means that the player can no longer rely on the targeting system to act in a predictable manner.
But they would just be default suggestions. The player can overrode the target just like they are forced to today. Players can get used to the intelligent defaults.
For instance, having Wand of Warding target an enemy makes no sense. Having it target nothing would be preferable. Having it target the last targeted ward on the current floor would be brilliant! How would that be in any way confusing to the player? It would be wonderful. And if there is no ward on the current floor, it targets nothing.
I don't see why having 5 or so different targeting rules is going to ruin the game when those rules make more sense than the current one rule. People have been asking for a Wand of Warding fix for ages, for example. When you have players begging for a change, having you tell them the change would confuse them is... I don't even know what word to use. Maddening, for one.
Having the Bless spell target yourself by default just makes perfect sense. Players would understand that and benefit from it. Having it target an enemy by default is so egregiously bad, I'd think it was a bug.
You're programming one of the most challenging, hard to learn games there is, and you're saying your players won't understand a few exceptions to the default targeting rule? I just don't follow that logic. Especially when it comes to items like Wand of Warding and spells like Bless.
Just please consider it. Try changing a few of the more obvious items mentioned above and see how it goes. For the borderline ones, like Healing Dart, or Bomb of Regrowth, maybe you never change them, and that's OK, but I just don't understand this position of "changing certain targeting rules might be confusing" means "I can't change any of them". Please, please just consider changing the obvious ones like wards and Bless, etc.
You are seriously overestimating the player's ability to reflexively understand multiple default targeting behaviors depending on context. What I want to avoid is the player tapping an item and either having to pause to see what it is auto-targeting, or making an incorrect assumption about what was auto-targeted and firing at the wrong target. If either happens with any regularity then auto-targeting becomes pointless. That's why the behavior is extremely consistent and simple: "always auto-target the currently focused enemy", rather than trying to make decisions for the player based on context.
Obviously this isn't perfect (auto-targeting enemies for buffs being the biggest example), but in my view it's preferable to trying to decide what the player is going to want to do for them based on context.
That already happens tbh, don't worry if that's your only concern. I've targeted many more piranhas and wasted more throwables because auto-target targets the piranha instead of the enemy I'm fighting right now and let's see who's the guy that's retrieving the item cuz I am not way more times than I'd wish to recognize.
There is no context needed for Wand of Warding or Bless. Wand of Warding would always target the last targeted ward (or nothing). Bless would always default to yourself.
You never want Wand of Warding targeting an enemy. Targeting an enemy sometimes plants a ward at their feet where they immediately melee it (unless they are targeting you), but often it does nothing and wastes the charge.
It would be desirable to force the player to select a location (and perhaps actually prevent them from targeting enemies since that behavior is so inconsistent). And once a location is selected, the best next step is to target the same ward again. It's the thing you will do literally hundreds of times in Wand of Warding run, yet the game doesn't help you do that. Instead, you are forced to manually target it over and over and over, leading to mistaps and wasted charges.
What I want to avoid is the player tapping an item and either having to pause to see what it is auto-targeting.
That's exactly what you have do today! Bless targets an enemy with a purely beneficial spell. Wand of Warding targets an enemy and does literally nothing. You are forced to manually target these effects every single time. They auto target the wrong thing every time.
You say you don't want players reflexively making mistakes, but I started this conversation explaining how I reflexively made a mistake and casted Bless on an enemy. That's exactly what I'm trying to avoid.
You don't have to change anything else. If you literally only changed Bless and Wand of Warding, I'd be happy, and so would every other player. You can't tell me that would confuse players or cause them to make reflexive mistakes. (They are not meant to target enemies!) Maybe it turns out that those are the only two spells or items that can be easily changed. That'd be fine. The game would be much better even with just those two changes.
If Evan added this I'd unironically rate the WoW higher
It'd be such a good quality of life improvement!
The items are the context. The point is that I don't want targeting behavior that changes and adopts one of several different behaviors depending on what item is used. I would rather have extremely simple targeting behavior that is correct in as many cases as possible and does not make circumstantial assumptions as to what the player wants (e.g. based on what item they're using). There is no way to add targeting behavior for these items/effects without making the logic far too complex, so instead it uses the same behavior as normal. The only alternative I would consider is turning off targeting entirely in these cases, but interaction-wise that pretty similar to leaving things as-is.
Jst add a button to toggle "smart targeting" on and off. Leave the current as default and make other 2 states: off entirely (doesn't even target) and smart targeting, it adds these QoL targets that CrayonRosary mentioned and I am too lazy to repeat (it's not laziness, it's just 8am and I am still awake, did not go to sleep yet) I think that'd make everyone happy and It'd be a nice QoL
Fair enough.
Thank you for continuing to update one of my favorite games. The priest so far has been a lot of fun to play!
Have a Merry Christmas!
You might just need to add helpful, aggressive and support, for targeting yourself, enemies and allies respectiveley!
In the Holy Time UI, have you consider swapping the function of long-press and the Info button? For me, it feel's much more intuitive to long-press a spell to read the description, and then you could make the button let you add a spell to the quick cast.
There are a couple other times in the game when long-pressing an item brings up its description since simply tapping would select it: the sell UI and the alchemy UI. This is why I keep wanting to long-press a spell to read it's description.
The other thing I keep doing is simply tapping a spell to read it, like a dummy, thinking the UI should be like scrolls in your inventory. It would be even more intuitive to make the spells work like scrolls in inventory, but that would be too many taps: open the book, tap a spell, then tap "cast". Yeah, too many taps.
I suppose once I get used to all of the spells, I won't have to use the Info button any more, but for now, it's kinda awkward.
genrally long-press is used for info if there isn't any other associated action. For instance you can long-press in the inventory to assign an item to the first empty quickslot, which is consistent wtih this new spell UI.
As you mentioned, the main reason it's done thia way is to minize taps for more experienced users. Info is a separate mode as the game is expecting you to mostly just use that once when first learning about the spells.
Yeah, that all makes sense. Thanks for listening and replying.
To fix this problem you could also do this: Let the info be a hold and for quick slotting, when you are selecting your target, to show on the popup that informs you that you are aiming to add another button on that same popup, a quick slot button. I find it natural and the solution that requires the least amount of taps, too. For inventory effects the button could be next to the inventory text. Instant effects are a bit more complicated, but my idea is that, when used, the quick use icon of the effect you just used would pop up, maybe on a color other than blue, that when touched opens a pop up asking if you wish to assign the spell as a quick slot. If rejected, would dissapear. The other colored icon would remain for only one turn. This icon may too have the least priority of them all, appearing on top of all other quick actions.
I've so far tried it twice and died, so it's going very good!
My win rate is like 20 games won...out of 800...
Hopefully god is on the cleric's side and I'll win more! XD
A little feedback about the cleric's holy tome. I keep misfiring guiding light because I double tap the spot where the spell is in the open tome instead of tapping once on the spell and then on the closed tome. It would be more streamlined if maybe the tome dialogue stayed open until the spell fired so you could double tap the spell instead of the spell then the tome.
Or maybe I'll get used to it the way it is, but the double tap dynamic is pretty built-in so it would make sense to stick to it.
If you're casting guiding light frequently, consider long-pressing on its icon to set it as the quick-access spell.
Good to know, thanks!
I feel like this is not intuitive enough
It's a brand new mechanic, binding a spell to a action/quick cast?
Maybe it would be better to have an option in the UI, or the tome artifact itself?
Also, guiding light works on the great crab for some reason, they don't block the spell like they would block a wand shot
The window to use spells literally states that you can long-press (or right-click on desktop) to set one as quick-cast.
Oh, so that's what it means
My bad,, I just brushed right over that.
I have been playing a game where quick casting and casting are basically the same
Maybe we could start with an ability in the quickslot from the beginning? Or maybe no ability, but just an empty blue box you can click and use it to set up a skill
My first ascent on v3. Seemed to be more challenging than prior releases. Skeletons on level 2 dishing out 25 points of damage.
Now to give the Cleric a workout.