Fred's playthrough of Secrets of Grindea

Own

Moderator
http://www.twitch.tv/fred_pixelferrets/v/30619578

Can someone mirror this to youtube? Before Twitch automatically purges it, I doubt it will be under Past Broadcasts for long.

Random things I pick up while I listen to the stream (I've had to listen to bits over a few days, it's a long stream, you've been warned :p ):

Fred wants to change Vilya so her attack is much, much more obvious, people often die the first time against her. Personally, I enjoy the Megaman-style of bosses where you're expected to die the first time analyzing it's moveset, then go in swinging round two. Dying to her also helps people learn that it's okay to die. :)

Fred wants there to be a quest to free the frozen fairy. Funny you should mention that, after the festival there's someone in the world with a pick and hammer who has some free time on her hands. Quest: Find someone who can carefully carve the frozen fairy free? (See how long it takes people to find the stonemason in Belmont's. Or Banc, the hammer-banger. Or why not both, taking turns on either side?)

Fred mentions Teddy didn't like the idea of Puzzle Perfect'ing the puzzles in the game. :( But he did mention a Tower of Puzzles that essentially functions like this. Awesome! Hopefully puzzles unlock in there to perfect like bosses do in the Hall of Memories. Get through the Toy Factory Treadmill under # secs / taking 0 damage, dodge a lengthier hallway of bullets from Flying Fortress, complete Pumpkin Woods puzzle in minimal moves, woohoo. :)

Fred wanted Luke to just carve through all the blocks in the puzzle in a rage, and has an animation for them. But Teddy likes the cutscene as it is. Why not save that animation for a future scene with Luke, where he's put up against the most complicated puzzle ever / a literally impossible one and hulks out from PTSD (Puzzle Traumatic Stress Disorder)? :p "No... not again... NOOOOO! *Smash, smash, smash, smash, smash*"

Fred mentions the issue of pacing. I think it would help pacing feel more natural if - after you meet Naniva - she didn't immediately join you but instead asked you to meet up with her tomorrow at dawn near the west city gate in Evergrind, or the park. Fade to black, you get a new day with you appearing on the city phaseplate. Mainly because going Gundam -> Marino -> Turn in Amalet -> Acquire Naniva -> Save Santa Fae happens without any passage of time. Making it feel like time is passing could help? I dunno.

Not mentioned in the stream, but it is it not possible to perfect block Queen Bee's projectiles back up at her, knocking her out of the air? She'd be slightly less tedious that way.

Fred mentions wanting fishing in Arcade to shrink with each successful catch. I agree. :) So long as the harder and harder bars don't give you wimps.

Not mentioned in the stream, but it seems like a missed opportunity to have you rummaging around Ivy's office and not have documents on other collectors laying around everywhere. It would be interesting to get a piece of backstory on Luke, Marino, etc. Something like "Junior Collector Luke. Notes: ???. Stats: STR ***** DEX ** INT * LUK *". Doesn't seem like there'd be another opportunity to learn backstory or other secret stuff on the other story characters.

Not mentioned in the stream, but man, Fred's dragon cutscene looks wicked. Why isn't there a Mirror of Memories in the Hall of Memories you can rewatch major cutscenes in? Winter's Defeat, Slan'Kerz Cave... those are the only major ones, huh?
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
Talking of the hall of memories... why don't we just have all the bosses in there, whether they drop anything or not? You can go and grind anywhere at any time, but I'd love to fight the Setnry a couple more times, and currently, defeating Winter is my best judgement for whether a build is good or not.
 

Own

Moderator
Talking of the hall of memories... why don't we just have all the bosses in there, whether they drop anything or not? You can go and grind anywhere at any time, but I'd love to fight the Setnry a couple more times, and currently, defeating Winter is my best judgement for whether a build is good or not.

@Teddy isn't sure if he wants to keep the hall of memories in the game or remove it, according to Fred. That's why it currently exists in a very incomplete state.

Mainly because they're not sure if they want to guarantee boss drops equipment when you kill them. Or guarantee boss drops crafting materials, which you can use to craft their equipment. They don't know if there would be a point to the HoM if bosses guaranteed drops.

For me, personally, I would be so disappointed if the HoM was removed. Having to replay the game from the beginning to fight a specific boss - on Hard/Normal, or just in general - would remove a lot of enjoyability. The main problem with the HoM is that it is pointless 10 minutes after you first kill a boss, because you're more powerful now than the game was balanced to take on that boss. There's nothing fun or enjoyable about killing a boss in 5 seconds, leaving, re-entering and doing that over and over to farm drops.

That could be changed by making HoM bosses scale with your level, or have them get steadily more and more powerful each time you fight them (+# to boss level each time you win, over and over), making it so that you can refight the boss in a satisfying way throughout the game. I'm level 10, I kill the level 5 Gigaslime in a few hits. It's now level 10. I kill it again, it's now level 15. I kill it again after a longer, more difficult battle. It's now level 20. This continues on until I just don't have the stats to stand against it, or come back later in the game when I'm better.

That would be very interesting with me, especially if it increased the chance of boss drops and gold with each boss level up, or unique drops unlocked at certain levels. And maybe you could pay Oldman to reset boss levels if they are completely beyond you.

Would be nice to someday walk into the Hall of Memories and see "Phaseman: Level 100. Fight?" :) Or have achievements directly tied to getting the collective level of all bosses in the Hall of Memories up to certain numbers

I could, but wouldn't Fred have added the stream to youtube if he wanted the stream on youtube? :p

He went to bed right after the stream and is now gone for the holidays. By the time he returns it'll likely be deleted.
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
That could be changed by making HoM bosses scale with your level, or have them get steadily more and more powerful each time you fight them (+# to boss level each time you win, over and over), making it so that you can refight the boss in a satisfying way throughout the game.
I would love to see that. For that to work properly you'd need steady increases in things that aren't just health or damage, otherwise Gigaslime becomes too simple. If it doesn't start jumping faster or attacking quicker, or doing more of it's razorblade attacks, it's just gonna become one long boring fight where you it takes you 20 minutes to kill it, and it one shots you.

Or simply just have a cap. Maybe each boss has up to 5 different stages, each 1.3 times stronger than the last.

When I was first playing the game, I thought it might be cool if, once you've defeated a boss it's brought to the arena and there's a new area to fight it in. Instead of the hall of memories, you then get a ranked arena challenge to have a go at instead.

The simpler route is just have beastmode permanently turned on for those fights.
 

Own

Moderator
The problem with just using beastmode is the problem now - you've beaten it. You've proven you can do this. You can recreate the circumstance in which you beat it before. You're grinding it with no challenge, it just takes longer. That's why I would prefer infinitely scaling bosses, or those that cap off at 100.

Though, I would think that after a certain point, it would be impossible to have a 20 minute battle vs Gigaslime. It keeps sliming up the area, it's overpowered minions are everywhere, it's spin attack will break your shield in one hit and it will kill you in one hit. Same with Phaseman, one bullet killing you at a certain point. If you're refighting bosses to that point, clearly you want the challenge. :)
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
I'd love it to get to that point, but isn't that the point where the challenge should stop? Otherwise the hardcore completionists think there's more. Say, when we reach the end of the game - like difficulty, they don't get any stronger?
 

Teddy

Developer
Staff member
Fred wants there to be a quest to free the frozen fairy. Funny you should mention that, after the festival there's someone in the world with a pick and hammer who has some free time on her hands.

Good idea! That will be $£2000€!

Fred wants to change Vilya so her attack is much, much more obvious, people often die the first time against her.

He did?! Perhaps you misunderstood each other... last time we discussed this he seemed pretty sold on the benefits of "forcing" people to realize her weakness by having her basic attack being overpowered compared to her special attack, introducing the concept of pattern learning and that you can't bumrush everything! (...basically what you said :mad:)

If he's changed his mind... "Engine limitation, too difficult to change, has to do with the framerate and animation frequency mismatch, VSync, #bigsorry"

Fred mentions Teddy didn't like the idea of Puzzle Perfect'ing the puzzles in the game.

Too complex for my pigeon brain!

Fred mentions the issue of pacing.

Is there an agreed upon pacing issue here? I've never got that feeling from neither playing nor watching Let's Plays!

Not mentioned in the stream, but it is it not possible to perfect block Queen Bee's projectiles back up at her, knocking her out of the air? She'd be slightly less tedious that way.

Not against it, but it would require a new animation so it might have to wait! On the topic, at some point I want to go over a few battles to make perfect guarding make more sense. The main culprit right now in my opinion is GUN-D4M's hands, which are stupid to PG.

Fred mentions wanting fishing in Arcade to shrink with each successful catch. I agree.

Me too! Also, to make it fair and balanced only Wimps should be caught, ever!

@Teddy isn't sure if he wants to keep the hall of memories in the game or remove it, according to Fred. That's why it currently exists in a very incomplete state.

Let's put this in proper context! (Actually, you already did some of the work :D)

There are competing ideas surrounding the Memory Room and the Arena, which is why I don't want to spend time on that right now. For example, I've championed every boss getting a Furious version that scaled with player level (meaning Red Giga Slime would also scale), and if we were to remove or change boss drops the memory room's function would weaken two fold. It would basically become a "lol let's one shot this boss now". Kind of redundant apart from rare use cases.

The room itself could still be used as the portal to these many Furious versions, of course, but in this case the arena becomes the thing which is weakened from losing the boss battles!

I must say I kind of like the idea of the MR bosses scaling on beating them, though! Perhaps enough to start championing that, despite the arena facing bankruptcy. If the player could select the encounter level (unlocking the next difficulty jump upon each victory), it would be possible to keep practicing at a reasonable difficulty for that speedrun practice too.

Then again, scaling Furious encounters would be cleaner and have a more apparent win state...

We'll discuss this over some burgers tomorrow!
 

Own

Moderator
Is there an agreed upon pacing issue here? I've never got that feeling from neither playing nor watching Let's Plays!

Nah, he just mentioned that originally there wasn't going to be a festival, but then you guys went "there probably needs to be something here just to add a bit of pacing to the game." I just like the idea of there being visually a new day after each temple after seeing one after the festival, the feeling of one long, hard day's work finally being done. :p Not something that's really necessary.

For example, I've championed every boss getting a Furious version that scaled with player level (meaning Red Giga Slime would also scale), and if we were to remove or change boss drops the memory room's function would weaken two fold.

It seems to me like both functions could exist?

Memory Room: Refight old bosses for drops and gold. Gets stronger each time you manage to beat them. Get collective boss level above # for achievements.

Arena: Fight new versions of old bosses that don't get stronger for arena points, win new equipment. (Though, given that Furious Gigaslime dies in 5 seconds to 1 hit from Golden Heroic Slam, maybe the arena versions should have the ability to scale, too. S-Rank them once, they get harder, or S-Ranking them unlocks them in the Hall of Memories...?)

If HoM didn't exist and we only had the Furious versions of bosses in Arena, practicing vs various bosses with different builds for Arcade wouldn't be possible anymore. Also, I thought you only wanted to give the major enemies (Gigaslime, Gundam, Winter, etc) a Furious version, or has that changed? I'd love to be able to refight Vilya+Co#1, Marino, Sentry, Bossling+Block, Fae, Hydras and Vilya+Co#2 somewhere. :D

The main culprit right now in my opinion is GUN-D4M's hands, which are stupid to PG.

In the same line as PGing Marino/Phaseman allows for an extended window to attack them, it seems like there's a quick solution to that.

PG a hand, it goes back to it's original position with sparks flying off of it for a time. Attack it all you want, it won't move or fight back.

Unless you mean something fancy, like it's fist goes flying up to it's head, smacks the head and sends it bouncing up into the air / twirling around / rocketing up like a rock 'em sock'em robot. :p
 
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Own

Moderator
Good idea! That will be $£2000€!

Oh, man, I was so confused by this that I skipped over it. It just hit me hours later what you were refering to. I had my credit card out and everything just waiting to drain my bank account to rescue the poor, poor fairy...

http://www.secretsofgrindea.com/index.php/pre-order

Sold out? :( Guess I'll shovel it into the furnace to keep me warm this winter instead.

(Why would you ever put a limit on how many people can give you $2,000? :D)
 

Teddy

Developer
Staff member
(Why would you ever put a limit on how many people can give you $2,000? :D)

What G-Meister said!

(Also, since the Internet is a dangerous place when it comes to communications, let me clarify that I genuinely liked your frozen fairy idea, and not something we'd charge $2k to implement :D)
 

Teddy

Developer
Staff member
It seems to me like both functions could exist?

They could, but I feel they are competing features in a way that bothers me a bit. The infinitely scaling bosses take away much of the point of a Furious encounter, to my mind. Not all, but a lot!

practicing vs various bosses with different builds for Arcade wouldn't be possible anymore.

We're actually considering another solution to this (which might have originated on the forums - not sure), which is to have an unlockable NPC in Arcadia that lets you train against bosses you have battled at least once. I think the implementation currently favored would let you choose between your 3 latest builds you had when you reached the boss.

I know this wasn't your only comment on the whole Memory Room vs. Furious discussion, but I thought I'd throw it out there!

PG a hand, it goes back to it's original position with sparks flying off of it for a time. Attack it all you want, it won't move or fight back.

That's the solution we've been eyeballing!
 

Own

Moderator
(Also, since the Internet is a dangerous place when it comes to communications, let me clarify that I genuinely liked your frozen fairy idea, and not something we'd charge $2k to implement :D)

No worries, I knew you were kidding. I'm not the type to spend more than $30 on a game. :p

They could, but I feel they are competing features in a way that bothers me a bit. The infinitely scaling bosses take away much of the point of a Furious encounter, to my mind. Not all, but a lot!

To me, they would seem more like complimentary features, but this is how it worked in my head when I suggested it:

Arena: The place you go to take on various challenges when you want special rewards, that are always equally fair but challenging regardless of your level. Furious bosses auto-scale towards your level? Unless you want them to be something that can be overcome by grinding. Only a place to go to S-Rank things. (And maybe do minigames, as is a teased option? Curious to see what those will be.)

Hall of Memories: The place you go when nowhere else in the game proves challenging enough and you want to match up against previous encounters to the point of them being completely unfair, just to see how far you go before single mistakes end your match-up. An increasingly unfair place. All normal bosses (+special ones like Bossling/Block?) are added here, as are Furious Bosses from the Arena once they are double S-Ranked. You beat them fairly in the Arena, now beat them unfairly here.

Gigaslime / Furious Gigaslime seem like largely different encounters anyhow, because of the different patterns. A beefed up Gigaslime is still outclassed by Furious Gigaslime, especially once you grind Furious G's level up as well.

While Arena offers things like the Eggshell hat, Crown, etc for taking on fair match-ups, HoM could possibly offer (random options off the top of my head):

- Gold (+EXP?) for the first time killing a boss on a specific level, the higher the level the more gold.

- Boss drops. Earned at any level, but possibly with increasing drop rates the higher the level.

- Special gimmick rewards like Arcade has. Like, I don't know, fuzzy bunny slippers that make your steps squeak for beating Level # Vilya.

- Achievements for leveling up the bosses sufficiently. Get Phaseman to level 25, Gundam to 25, Gigaslime to 25 and Sentry to 25? 100 combined levels, achievement unlocked. Or just 'Get Phaseman to level # in HoM', etc

- A method to earn the boss cards and have it mean something more than restarting the same boss over and over to slaughter it effortlessly. Enemy cards are earned by RNG, boss cards could be earned through skill. A monitor in the Flying Fortress does say that killing enemies to the point of complete understanding / mastery is a way they drop, I think. :) Kill Gigaslime at a specific level? Bam, his card explodes out of him.

I dunno if this would necessarily be the most fun way, but the way it works in my head seems enjoyable. :) But I'm the kind of person who beastmodes through Arcade for a laugh, so...

Edit Though, now that I think about it, having the HoM increasing level gimmick include only bosses seems like it could be expanded on to beyond just bosses.

Memory of Beginnings - An elite Slime, Bee, Rabby, Boar and Bloomo to fight.

Memory of Pumpkin Woods - An elite Jumpkin, Pumpkin Mage, Scarecrow, Ghosty and Helloweed.

As The Zoo in Arcade shows, a group of elites can be harder than actual bosses. So many attack patterns to take into consideration all at once. :D Let me bash my character against everything in the game until the game finally bashes back. That sounds like a blast in co-op.
 
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The G-Meister

Giga Slime
Arena: The place you go to take on various challenges when you want special rewards, that are always equally fair but challenging regardless of your level.
So would they then be at the same rough difficulty the original boss was intended at, or a bit harder? If they are more difficult, then you reach the issue where you can't practice against that boss when it was at its intended difficulty, it will always be more difficult. I spose if Furious versions have the same attacks but use them in different ways (EG stronger, faster, different order) then it'll just make the original version seem like a breeze to plough through.

Arena offers things like the Eggshell hat, Crown, etc for taking on fair match-ups
If arena matches are going to scale with level, these items are going to become useless if you only come across the arena later. Say you're level 20, you've just defeated Winter on Hard, and you go and fight furious Gigaslime, to find it's a moderate challenge. You then do one or two more, and get your crown for instance. Well for all that effort you've just gone through, you get an item which is completely useless because you've got your Winter Mage hat which gives you +50 (?) MATK, much more than +15.

The only way to overcome that would to be make the rewards have stats which scale with level on the items, EG. crown now gives +8% DEF, +8% MATK, +8% ATK, and maybe keep the Max EP at +5.
 
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