Ladders need to be changed - info gathered from Steam forums.

[unmerged(655306)]

So, its gotten to the point where players are modifying the code to outright remove ladders from spawning. Just check the Steam forums and you'll see that one of the largest gameplay complaints is with ladders.

I've made this suggestion on the Steam forums and it met with high reception:

Ladders should be tied into surface raids. After the first 2-3 raids a ladder should spawn if you raid further. If you keep raiding eventually you'll get up to 4 ladders shortly after your squads return - this can be viewed as heroes raiding YOUR dungeon in revenge. Basically, ladders will only spawn if you do a lot of surface raids, the normal raid of heroes coming in the entrance will stay. This will encourage players to build the prison to get treasure rather than raiding for it all the time.

But now, how to deal with players trapping up the entrance and placing monster den/brewery near the entrance as well? Simple, just scale up the number of heroes that come through the entrance. Its a GOOD thing that players can make use of traps and hero weakening rooms! LET THE PLAYER trap up his entrance and strategically place a brewery and monster den near the start!

Players that modded out ladders have reported that the game has changed greatly and for the better! They state that coming up with good trap combos and room placements so they can fit in a monster den/brewery has made the game a lot more enjoyable.

Heres what one player that modded out ladders had to say:

The game has found a new form of 'fun' for me once I removed the ability of the ladders to spawn. Now, its trying to perfect my hallway of doom by the front door to be as deadly as possible that entertains me.

My squads could all chill in the kitchen as heroes died in misery on their own (at the start with 2 lvl 1 weak heroes) but now that the heroes are higher levels and have a cleric with them they sometimes make it through. It's become a entire second game for me to perfect trap placements and types/combinations.

 

[RedMattis]

I'd do what the steam-guy did. Just remove them. Letting heroes pop in randomly anywhere wouldn't be fun in Dungeon Keeper nor Evil Genius, and it isn't fun here either.

I get that you devs want to make the game challenging, but frankly what we've got today isn't "challenging" it's just a micromanagement whack-a-mole overload of randomly spawning heroes/ladders and teleporting squads in and out of the kitchen.

 

[unmerged(141552)]

Great more people who want Dungeon Keeper...

EDIT: sorry dry I meant only RedMattis.

 

[unmerged(655306)]

Its not so much wanting a Dungeon Keeper clone as it is making traps and hero weakening rooms worth a damn and getting rid of whack-a-ladder every few minuets.

I've set over a hundred traps across the campaign so far and NOT ONCE has a trap been used enough that it ran out of charges. You just don't leave heroes to wander around your dungeon in hopes of them stepping on a few traps; you kill them as fast as possible by teleporting all your squads onto them so you don't waste time or risk the heroes taking a turn you don't want them to and jacking up one of your rooms.

If you read all my post you can see that I am not wanting to get rid of ladders but instead make them only trigger when you've done too much surface raiding. I'm also all for maintaining some challenge by making the hero raids from the entrance larger.

 

[unmerged(665092)]

I want and absolutely need this Mod, please link.

 

[unmerged(655306)]

Note that this is player made so download and install at your own risk.

Scroll down to find the link to the mod: http://steamcommunity.com/app/202130/discussions/0/846945579825485370/

 

[unmerged(258450)]

I honestly don't know how the devs of this game found the ladder micromanagement to be something enjoyable. If at LEAST the squads would autoattack ladders, it would still be something reasonable. But no, we gotta go and make them manually attack ladders. pfft

 

[Scynix]

Forums are the last place I would "gather info". You can't base game design decisions on the vocally angry minority.

 

[unmerged(665092)]

Forums are the last place I would "gather info". You can't base game design decisions on the vocally angry minority.

Nor can they make design decisions on a very defensive minority either.

 

[City Builder]

I'm willing to try the ladder mod if the Steam Forums would come back online. Anything to re-coop my $19.99 and try to get some fun out of this title. Traps were always my favorite thing in Evil Genius, so if this helps to make traps viable and fun then maybe I'll re-coop my loses on this game so far.

 

[bumpinthenight]

Great more people who want Dungeon Keeper...

...and?

 

[Scynix]

Nor can they make design decisions on a very defensive minority either.

Because that makes SO MUCH SENSE. I mean, yeah, the "defensive minority" are obviously asking for changes.

Oh wait.

 

[unmerged(669344)]

I'd do what the steam-guy did. Just remove them. Letting heroes pop in randomly anywhere wouldn't be fun in Dungeon Keeper nor Evil Genius, and it isn't fun here either.

I get that you devs want to make the game challenging, but frankly what we've got today isn't "challenging" it's just a micromanagement whack-a-mole overload of randomly spawning heroes/ladders and teleporting squads in and out of the kitchen.

Actually basically the same thing happened in Evil Genius. Ive had my power room destroyed more then once in Evil Genius because an agent tunneled in and blew it up rendering my base useless. Thats when you learn to build multiple power rooms. In Impire the only path worth trapping is your path to your treasury as well as deploying some non-squadded fodder guards for it because every other room is expendable and free to repair. Ladders are as annoying as tunneling agents in Evil Genius but really I would settle for a rule about ladders not spawning within a certain distance of the treasury.

 

[unmerged(664912)]

Because that makes SO MUCH SENSE. I mean, yeah, the "defensive minority" are obviously asking for changes.

Oh wait.

First off dude you've got to quit being defensive of the game it has a lot of issues.

Secondly, this notion that you need to recoup *that's correctly spelled btw not re-coop which isn't a word* is ludicrous. You haven't lost anything you have the game, it may not be what you thought it was but that's life, deal with it. Not to mention they're going to fix a lot of problems so don't be so impatient.

All of you complaining endlessly need to give the Developers time to make the needed changes and take suggestions under advisement. It's been 5 days since the game came out, one of those days was a holiday so give them time. I'm on the last mission and I've had my share of bugs and crashes, still a pretty fun game nonetheless. *on the forums now because it crashed and I don't want to play atm*

 

[City Builder]

So, what during the beta all the players ravished praise on the ladders huh?

I imagine it went a little like this:
Beta tester: Ladders are bad, not a good mechanic and here's why...
Developer: Okay, we'll take a look at it.
End of discussion, nothing changed, nothing looked at.

It seems to me they had far too few beta testers else they would have gotten a lot of feedback upon what the general gaming public *IS* complaining about now. They had time to fix it but decided that they knew how gamers wanted to play a dungeon game better than the gamers themselves.

Yeah it's going to take time to do anything but anybody that thinks that they're going to do a major rewrite of this game into a more dungeon'esque *yeah I know, that's not a real word too* type of game is delusional. They'll probably fix the bugs, they'll issue some pay for DLC to get more money as that's now the trend and when first run sales are over they'll move over to their next title (if they're lucky enough to get one) which is what every developer has to do.

This is the way this game will be, they may tweak it, they may fix bugs, but ultimately this IS the game, good, bad or indifferent. It's only a shame that people are trying to make dungeon type games now a days but are not looking at what made the genre successful

 

[Scynix]

First off dude you've got to quit being defensive of the game it has a lot of issues.

Unfortunately I just plain disagree that the game's issues are as bad as people are implying. They aren't. The ladders aren't as big of an issue as people like City Builder and TemperHoof are trying to make it sound. If the devs took their extreme view and actually changed Impire to that extent, *I* wouldn't want to play the game anymore.

I also defend the ideas of Democracy and Chivalry, but that doesn't mean they don't have their own problems. When I see people start talking realistically about the issues and not spewing hyperbole, I'll stop "defending" it. One sided arguments never resolve anything.

 

[unmerged(585498)]

if *I* had a choice, i would connect the ladder system to something like the Heat gauge of Evil Genius, where the more you raid, the more ladders that appear to get 'revenge', whereas is you slowly hide away in your dungeon, converting mushrooms to mats, letting your big boys sit in the monster den to gather treasure, with only the occasional 'adventurer' party probing the odd cave in the hill

also increasing the time after ladders appear that heros jump down would be nice, my warrior-baal barely has enough time to drop a ladder, being teleported on top of it!

 

[Scynix]

I agree completely Zadey. That would actually be really nice, since there would be a down side to constant surface raids, which at the moment have essentially no cost to it other than the 1~ minute your squad is out.

 

[bumpinthenight]

Actually basically the same thing happened in Evil Genius. Ive had my power room destroyed more then once in Evil Genius because an agent tunneled in and blew it up rendering my base useless. Thats when you learn to build multiple power rooms. In Impire the only path worth trapping is your path to your treasury as well as deploying some non-squadded fodder guards for it because every other room is expendable and free to repair. Ladders are as annoying as tunneling agents in Evil Genius but really I would settle for a rule about ladders not spawning within a certain distance of the treasury.

At least with tunneling agents its only because you tried to purposely design a place within your lair that could not be walked to, that's why they were tunneling. Ladders on the other hand are a constant annoyance that appear like clock-work regardless of what you do and must be delt with similarly.

 

[unmerged(497946)]

+1 to the ban on ladders.
At least make them a game option. On by default if you must. =)

They are not a gameplay feature because there's no real decision involved in destroying them or not. It's a mindless chore that comes up over and over again.
Do not want.