Development Update: April 6, 2015

[yossarian]

Thanks, James.

 

Way too late to be requesting features, but it would nice to be able to at least see detailed breakdowns of a given run: total turns taken, enemies KO'd, times spotted. Track some of those, custom settings incl. difficulty etc. — and allow me to see details of friends' runs too — and I'd be more than satisfied.

 

I think even the level of detail e.g. Mark of the Ninja tracks would be enough for me to have some competitive/comparative sense of how I'm playing.

 

There are far more important things for Invisible, Inc. to nail than this, but it'd be nice to have.

 

(And I agree about FTL's scoring, but I also don't think I'd have played Risk of Rain so many times without its scoring system.)

[jamesl]

Totally agreed, Risk of Rain has a particularly excellent scoring system that adds a ton of value and replayability. 

 

We do have an all new stats screen, level by level. Hopefully it'll hit that spot for you  

[5thHorseman]

We do have an all new stats screen, level by level. Hopefully it'll hit that spot for you

That sounds infinitely better than a score system for me. Instead of trying to raise some number that has little to do with the difficulty of the playthrough or the player's skill, you can try instead to get the most money, knock out the least (or most!) guards, finish levels quickest, etc. Plenty of replayability there.

One more question on this topic from me, will there also be a "full game" summary? So you can see the total number of missions you played, how many total guards you KO'd or killed, etc?

[RizzleQ]

That sounds infinitely better than a score system for me. Instead of trying to raise some number that has little to do with the difficulty of the playthrough or the player's skill, you can try instead to get the most money, knock out the least (or most!) guards, finish levels quickest, etc. Plenty of replayability there.

One more question on this topic from me, will there also be a "full game" summary? So you can see the total number of missions you played, how many total guards you KO'd or killed, etc?

 

I'd love to see detailed stats like this. On par with something like Minecraft that keeps statistics of every single action you've taken, every enemy killed, item obtained, etc. would be cool.

[wwarnick]

I personally have never enjoyed playing games the way you have to in order to get a high score.  But I do like seeing my stats.  I think that's a good choice.  However, I would probably still measure my own performance in my own way.  For example, I'll probably measure it based on how well I perform in the final mission.  How well I perform up to that point will show in how prepared I am when I reach the final mission.  I do it the same way with FTL and the final boss battle.  It's not a precise metric that I can measure against my friends, but it's a more meaningful indicator to me than a number.

[chieftainjoe]

 

We went back and forth about this quite a bit in-house, and discussed it pretty intensely. Alas, in the end, we removed the score because it kept causing players to play in weird ways. Mostly, we found it caused players to act in ways that work against the player (e.g. find every single console in the level, hack every single thing in the level, etc).

 

I think it's possible to come up with an interesting scoring mechanism, but in the end we wanted to focus all our energy on creating a game the rewarded any play style rather than tell them it wasn't "good" because their score wasn't high.

 

We also think it would work as a separate game mode, like Endless is. But as development goes, we have limited time before shipping the game and we were only able to work on one, so we focused on Endless.

 

Hope that makes sense!

 

Not only does that indeed make sense - in my eyes this answer could hardly have been more perfect. Score and Invisible Inc was just something that never matched for me. And as you (and some others said), it would only lead to some unlogical manoevers if one did indeed aim to maximize the score.

 

Frankly, for me it's not that much of a big deal, as i've consequently ignored the highscore since i started playing Invisible Inc but still...i just feel like the whole highscore concept didn't really fit and I am glad to hear that you focus all your effort in the other (extremely) exciting topics mentioned in the opening post instead of putting too much energy in trying to establish a halfway decent highscore system.

 

And apart from that: Oh my god everything sounds so awesome. I really really can't wait. Also looking forward to the cinematics

[KazaaakplethKilik]

May I ask a small-huge question? You know, while playing Invisible inc. for some first (hundreds of)hours I were completely sucked into the game. Though, when i opened every single starting thing, i realised, that I continue playing the same layout, over and over again. Even considering the fact, that I could change pretty much anything about this layout, the only point untouched every time was Banks with her no-card-needed special tacti-X. Fusion really overpowered the basic drain, using Rapier over Lockpick was rarely done by me and was hillarious, but Banks, and from the "recent" update archived deckard, was over-value, wiping out a point of the game, basically. What was done to balance them out? Did you add some new stuff, that was equally cool? Did you pump up the old guys as well? I really want to see, what you did right there, but waiting another month is just painfull. 

[jamesl]

We did a balance pass on all the characters. I think they're all pretty viable now, although I'm sure you'll still find some stronger than others.

[Bigfoot]

FWIW, we still argue in the office about which characters / programs / items / augments are best to use

[WilliamGreywind]

Shalem 11 for life! Can't wait to see what changes you made to Lebanese Golgo 13.

[yossarian]

FWIW, we still argue in the office about which characters / programs / items / augments are best to use

 

As long as there are arguments, the balance can't be that bad.

[MycoLogical]

FWIW, we still argue in the office about which characters / programs / items / augments are best to use

Hi 

 

Just wondering, you mention that there are six alternative character modes, but we only have five at the moment. Does that mean Nika has that last one or one of the four new characters have it?

 

Oh, and why don't all ten have them?