Gentrieve Feedback Thread - Gentrieve 2

I've been playing a bit of Gentrieve over the last few weeks and I want to like it, it's so nearly a good game, but there are a few flaws that are spoiling it for me.

1. Room difficulty is really variable. In particular every single game I've played has within 2 or 3 stages dropped me in an unsurvivable room. One spawned you next to a boss that vomits out missiles/rails/shots/whatever else and you die before you can even try and reach cover. Another is underwater and again you spawn in the middle of a room, this time you are surrounded by the little robots but there are at least 4 or 5 of them (maybe more) and again they are all firing rockets/etc. I can't dodge the rockets cos of the huge explosion radius and its one of the rooms you need to run to objectives to open the doors so I cant even run for an exit.

1a. I've on one game found a +1000 health, and in one game found a shield. Both helped a bit but only got me so far.
1b. The weapon power ups don't seem very useful. The missiles only ever actually hit bosses, the beam thing is short range but ok sometimes. The scatter shot scatters so much it never hits anything.

2. Save rooms are REALLY far apart. To the point that I've now tried to play about 8 maps and NEVER found one beyond the original. It's not fun to jump into a room, die in 30 seconds (see 1) and then have to run/fight all the way back through the rooms you already went through several times in order to then die in seconds again.

3. Minor point but the double-tap to run is actually really awkward to make work. I've mostly got it now but it's really fiddly.

The platforming itself is really fun and really well done but the lack of balance in the enemy robots is ruining it for me. I've been through rooms just as hard as the ones killing me - but as soon as it spawns you in the middle of an open area surrounded be enemies you are basically dead. This is then made much worse by the complete absence of save points as it quickly becomes old running through the same rooms time and time again.

One thing I forgot to say as well. Once you kill a boss it drops tonnes of health + missile type powerups all over the room. Like 5 times as many of each as I can possibly use.

It might make things more interesting if those all dropped at the start since it opens up more tactical options (although it's actually fairly rare I have a close fight vs a boss - generally either I maul it from range/behind cover or it kills me in seconds from my spawn location).

v1.7 was meant to even out +1000 health upgrades to help resolve balancing issues... are you sure you are playing v1.7? You've played 8 maps and only have found 1 save room..? Is that after exploring the whole map? There should be a handful of them in every complete map... let me know, I can still make changes..

I just found my first save room (other than the one at the start) last night. Considering the distance in I found this one then in all the other maps I think I was fairly close to it but I always found an unbeatable room first (or at least a room where my survival time was so low that after the 4th time through all the proceeding rooms I deleted the level rather than trawl through them all again just to die instantly. I never got very far exploring those maps because there was an unsurvivable room and that room was so far from the save that it was frankly tedious beyond belief to try more than 3 or 4 times.

My last 2 games are 1.7 and I deleted all my old games when I installed that so there is no risk of confusion. I've not seen any health upgrades.

The most recent game I've found one force shield. So far I have both heat and cold protection, fast move, missiles, charge fire, and grappling hook (that I can remember off hand), don't think I've anything else yet on that map. The good news is so far no insta-death rooms but also no health upgrades.

Played a bit more this evening. Got swim, scatter shot, slow shot, gravity gun....and just found my first +1000 health a 4th save point. So far no secret doors and no "paths to nowhere" that might be worth shooting at to find one.

Now I'm past the first bit the save points seem much better placed (since you run past them a few times anyway). It's just the distance until you find the first one that is too long really. I've also not run into any impossible rooms/bosses yet, a few nasty fights but that's ok so long as they are beatable!

What information did you use to generate the world you say there are no health upgrades? E.g. what is the world name, was it a custom game (if so, what options did you pick)? This will allow me to generate the same thing & take a look..

Aye, I can second some of what he said.

I think I have an idea as to just what's happening with the health pickups though: The game may be putting most, or even all, of them in hidden rooms.

This is what was happening in my previous world (which I just beat last night). One, and only one, health upgrade was in a normal door near the very end of the world: ALL of the rest were in hidden doors. I ended up with, ah, about 11000 max health at the end of that world. This world was generated in 1.6 though.

I've started up another world, which is already having the same problem. I can get past about 2 bosses, and the third boss just eats me: I have no chance against it. It's a twin boss, it spawns DIRECTLY overhead when I enter the room, and there's zero cover, and then the usual spray of missiles and lasers, and I only have bombs as a subweapon, which are great against normal foes but useless on bosses.

I've not seen even one health upgrade, so my max is still a mere 1000. Definitely need more to take on that nightmare of a boss. And the thing about this world: There's a few spots where I'm ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that there's a hidden door, due to really obvious visual cues, but I cannot make it appear. My theory is that the game is generating hidden doors of a color I cannot open, as I've tried checking these spots with both the basic shot and bombs, and I've seen it generate hidden doors that arent blue in my previous world. And I've gotten pretty good at finding hidden doors, even the sort where the visual cues are very subtle and really hard to spot.

I think though that the biggest problem is just the game's tendancy to ALWAYS put health powerups in hidden rooms. I've yet to generate a world where it DOESNT do this. My suggestion for this would be, to have it so that the game ALWAYS generates, say, 50% (or whatever percentage) of the health powerups in normal, visible rooms (of whatever color), and the rest are hidden. Health powerups really do make great items to find in hidden rooms, as they're satisfying to find and also more powerful than a weapon-max upgrade, but.... it doesnt work if they're ALL like that. Particularly near the very beginning of a world, where you might have very few weapons/options to work with. I would also say, consider making it so that hidden rooms (at least the ones with health items) are ALWAYS blue doors; they're pretty difficult to find as it is, without having to worry about firing every possible weapon at a likely spot. I dont think the hidden rooms need to be any more obvious or anything like that though. The way the game generates them currently is pretty good.

Here's the info for this particular world if it helps: The world seed is "WMr4Tkv3Np", and it's another custom-generator with the rooms-per-item set to 6, and all of the items on. Consecutive, with no random start item.

As far as save rooms, I've not had trouble with those. There'll sometimes be an area where I can end up being rather far from one, but the game generates the recharge rooms so often that even if I get mostly wrecked, there's usually SOMETHING nearby that can help restore health/weapons so that I can continue or retreat.

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All standard settings, I just hit "random generator".

I now have double jump and advance vision too. Should that have made hidden doors appear on the map or do I have to revisit the rooms? Because I checked the map after getting vision and couldn't see any obvious differences and it's going to be very tedious running back and checking every room just to see if a door has appeared.

Just ran into a nasty boss that is going to be a problem. Two of them, both teleporting, both as fast as me, both vomiting lots of missiles and shots. I can't get far enough from one to dodge without the other being on top of me

I've tried twice and I got them down to half health so with a few more health upgrades I'd be able to do it. I'll have another go this evening and see how far I get. This one doesn't feel completely unbeatable like the ones I ran into on my other games.

Just played a bit further, defeated two more bosses. Got gravity gun and super missile.

I'm now stuck for a different reason. I have 2 red doors (I think I need that short range beam gun thing for that) and 2 yellowy goldy doors. No weapon I have opens the doors. Even fired 3 super rockets at one of the gold ones from different angles just to be sure.

I can't see any other unexplored doors on the map...

Oh, I agree about the save rooms now I'm past the initial hurdle. It's just if the 2nd (3rd? I can't remember how many it is until first saves) of the initial bosses/rooms is a nightmare then you are stuck. Once you are past that they seem well spaced but you need more over the first few stages.

DainStormcrow, could you send me that world that you are stuck in (no openable doors)? You can just compress the User Home/Gentrieve 2/ folder and send it to a media hosting site.

It appears to just be the random generator putting health upgrades all behind secret rooms... although, I should have it coded so more health upgrades are not behind secret doors, and making all secret doors "blue" is a good idea. What is likely happening, is health upgrades are being too often placed either behind a secret door or a door you don't have a weapon for yet. I did want some secrets to be behind future weapons to reward people from selectively backtracking to get all of the items.

Putlocker.com

One other bit of feedback - it seems the "shootable off" bits on robots have too much health compared to the main body. It's very rarely worth targeting the sections in my experience.

Decreasing limb damage is a good idea!

I looked at your world... looks like the same problem Misery55 was having earlier... the bomb path didn't get created. However, it looks like this time I can reproduce the problem! So, hopefully I can fix it...

Is there any way to "fix" the world so I can complete it?

I don't think so... there was a bug (which I've figured out and fixed) that caused your world to not generate correctly... basically, what happens, is some rooms get assigned too many doors (more that can fit)... so a door gets thrown out, which in this case, happened to be the door that gets you the bomb. The world really needs to be re-generated... you could mess with saving your player folders, re-generating the same world in the upcoming fixed version, and then putting your saved folder back... but you'd also need to replace the room files in your player save with the newly generated room files. I'm not sure that'd "work", but it might

Lol. Well I'm not going to start any more worlds till this bug is fixed since I'll randomly find the in-completable :p

One more suggestion. When spawning the minor robots at the moment it seems to pick the strength and the number independently. This means you can end up with some "double six roll" type rooms with a swarm of really nails minions which is then very dependant on geography to be survivable. I'd suggest limiting the fire power (particularly missiles and the things that fire loads of shots at once) in cases where a lot of the minor robots are spawning. It would also help to limit how many of them can fly since that would reduce the number that can rush you at once.

v1.8 has been posted with fixes!

I finally managed to scrounge up the money for the game, and beat the game with a fairly challenging run. I agree with OP that the weapons in the game are mostly useless. Scatter shot can't hit anything out of point blank and the charged up version disappointingly is no different than your normal charge shot except its less accurate. The short range laser also has such a negligible damage increase that i would just stick to my regular, long range laser. the freeze ray could also slow down enemies a little more. Missile and super missiles seem kind of useless, they deal more damage than a laser, that's true, but the umph of them when used on later bosses is so bad. Its far more useful to use the gravity gun or tether beam and just deal a quarter or a fifth of the boss health bar in one swing. which, btw, the gravi gun and tether beam are overpowered as hell. was it fun to grab a box and decimate everything in my path with it? yes. is it a good thing to make one weapon a logical choice over the entire rest of your arsenal? not really... i never used my missiles for anything but doors and i only ever used my beams to kill enemies before i could get said over powered items. and again on the beams, the lack of damage of all of them made me REALLY sad :C. i understand they aren't for bosses and that the regular beam should be replaced later as well, but its just i feel no weapon really is all that useful besides the overpowered gravity gun, the tether beam, and the initial laser. I'd like to see super missiles actually be super, but less common. also i could never find a use for bombs. there's no real way to line them up the way most enemies work, because most enemies i would use them on fly or move so fast and unpredictable I'd be playing roulette to try. in addition to the power increases, please nerf physics damage of boxes, its terrible, and also having gravi gun makes tether beam nigh useless unless you don't have freeze beam charge shot. Is there anything else that can be done with it? another minor complaint is that i think it ought to not be possible to find s missiles before missiles, that seems a little derpy :T. oh, and leaving a boss room without taking the item makes it disappear, making your game unwinnable. bad stuff. The last thing is i think there needs to be more incentive to fight enemies. i know right now that the enemies still have real balance issues, but at the same time i feel like enemies are just flavor to the game and serve no function than to reduce your health before you get to the boss while you traverse the fun platforming. maybe rooms that require you to clear them of enemies before you can pass through the door. thats all the feedback i have

Lots of feedback! Basically, balance out the weapons a bit more. Although, you do say the game gave you a challenging run, so any weapon balancing changes should result in little change to the game's overall challenge (I don't want to make it too easy or hard, and it sounds like it is already neither).

I've had a similar complaints about the spread beam not hitting things... but it is like a "flak cannon" -- it isn't meant to be accurate, it is meant to throw tons of projectiles forward, so multiple targets are being hit (or the larger bosses are taking more damage by absorbing all the projectiles). I should have the spread shot shoot out even more projectiles when charged.

The missiles are meant to be used along side your main weapons... so if they were made really powerful individually, you'd be able to put out "too much" damage, in my opinion. The missiles, and especially the super missiles, should take out all normal enemies in one hit. On bosses, it should only do a small chunk of damage, since I want the player to spend some time fighting bosses.

It does sound like I need to nerf some of the box damage, though. Also slow down enemies with the cold shot a bit more could help, too.

EDIT: I'm updating to v1.11

What Aardvark said, except that I didnt try throwing boxes at things so can't comment on what damage they did

I used spread shot against some bosses when they came close. Never used it against anything else. Charge shot didn't really seem very useful except vs disappearing bosses when I would charge till they appeared.

I did find bombs very useful though. When enemies are charging you drop a bomb and sit on it. You can also bomb things through walls/platforms (so jump up and drop a bomb just under a platform that has an enemy on top of it).

I agree missile should be found before super missile. I also thing dash should always be found as one of the first abilities, it makes both running around and fighting a lot more interesting.

maybe make the spread beam spread out but not in random directions, so its more aimable, like a box formtion. also, yeah i got that about the missiles, but come final boss time i had 10 super missiles and 5 missiles, and all i would have done was take maybe 1 fifth health bar at best, probably more like a 10th, as well as a lot of times super missiles did NOT one shot normal enemies. more missiles are necessary. and the challenge i talked about came from being almost dead while still using OP gravi gun strats =P. I'm just trying to look at things a bit in comparison to super metroid: i had a lot of health but i had damn near no missiles or bombs.

Edited by: AardvarkManix

As weapon balance goes, I didnt think it was too bad aside from the.... er.... point-blank laser thing, the one that opens the red doors.

Some of it I do think is more related to playstyle than anything. For instance, I generally dont find the Tether beam overpowered.... usually, I find it useless. Particularly in the later stages of the game when things zip around and teleport and generally go crazy. Wheras both missile types and also the bombs I use really frequently. Ice Beam and Spread shot also used pretty often.

Nerfing the boxes though is a good move. Those were OP to the point of being absurd. Even late game bosses could be taken out in 4 to 5 hits with those. They're still very powerful with the new update, but they dont instantly delete bosses anymore.

And one tip with those: Try grabbing one, and then just ramming an enemy with it while still holding it. I never tire of doing this. Dont do it with the red crates, of course, that's just silly.

As for the order of item appearance, I dont think it matters TOO much except maybe in the case of the dash, since it does make it easier to get around, and makes dodging actually doable even against missiles and their large explosions.

Reminds me, in my current world I found the advanced sight item REALLY early, like, after 2 bosses. I seem to recall that it's not supposed to appear that early in the game, so figured I'd mention it.

i think playstyle has a bit to do with it, and that being my playstyle is run pas all the shooty things and head straight for the door without any interest in small fry. hence why i said there needs to be some incentive to kill enemies because running pst everything instead of fighting them leaves me with more health and missiles for the bosses :<

Well I generally kill everything and still face bosses on max everything so I guess the pickups still work

(Obviously it depends on the room, sometimes I kill, sometimes not).

Even in the mid game you need 2 super missiles for a standard bad guy.

P.S. I found a secret door, they do exist \o/

Cold weapon seems better balanced too as I tried it a bit last night. Still rarely use it but every now and then it comes in handy. Not got spread or beam yet (or indeed any secondary weapons despite having got dash, double jump, gravity gun and tether along with the slow gun) in this game so will have to see on that.

Boss fights generally seem much more consistent so nice changes there, although I've only taken out 5 or 6 so far.