comments for Four Divine Abidings
sort: go back
developer response: Thank you for the kind words :)
Some minor quibbles/feedback:
- it's possible to earn Insight, and buy the "Insight Reward Chance" skill, before being able to access the explanation of what Insight does. I spent a while trying to find it assuming I'd accidentally skipped it.
- In the Qualities page, Mental Energy is listed first, but in the Encounter Information, Physical Energy / Tick is listed first.
- I don't really understand the reason for preventing another full respec until you complete a few encounters, since you can just manually reset each individual skill and insight to achieve the same result at any time. Yeah, there's the Realignment milestone that could be cheesed, but there are plenty of tasks that can be cheesed the same way.
- I haven't unlocked the first level of Mala Beads yet, so it shows it locked behind Tier 2. Why not show this in the same way as the other tools locked behind Rebirths?
- Click Boost Length feels very weak if not pointless, since it's only relevant for active builds but playing actively means you can just boost after each effort tick anyway.
developer response: Thank you for the feedback and art compliment :)
- it's possible to earn Insight, and buy the "Insight Reward Chance" skill, before being able to access the explanation of what Insight does. I spent a while trying to find it assuming I'd accidentally skipped it.
I'm not sure what to do about it. For a very idle playstyle, game sequence might shift a little bit, but nothing game breaking. Do you consider it a big or a small inconvenience?
- In the Qualities page, Mental Energy is listed first, but in the Encounter Information, Physical Energy / Tick is listed first.
Good catch! I will fix this one.
- I don't really understand the reason for preventing another full respec until you complete a few encounters, since you can just manually reset each individual skill and insight to achieve the same result at any time. Yeah, there's the Realignment milestone that could be cheesed, but there are plenty of tasks that can be cheesed the same way.
It's just little steps to get into game systems. I left some small things being more effective than others at different stages of the game. So attentive players get some rewards faster :)
- I haven't unlocked the first level of Mala Beads yet, so it shows it locked behind Tier 2. Why not show this in the same way as the other tools locked behind Rebirths?
When unlocking Tools by Rebirths, you unlock them forever, as Rebirths don't go backwards. On the other hand, Tier locks will be effective each new Rebirth. Given Mala Beads example, it still can only be accessed on Tier 2 after the Rebirth. This way I tried to create balanced experienced, enjoyable through many Rebirths.
- Click Boost Length feels very weak if not pointless, since it's only relevant for active builds but playing actively means you can just boost after each effort tick anyway.
Give it some time, please :) There are different, evolving, intertwined game loops, not all of them are obvious at the early stage of the game.
One of game's design goals was to leave no useless Skills, Insights, Tools and other mechanics. I'm very curious to hear from you again :) I'm still polishing the game before Steam and mobile releases.
⬖ Claiming Milestones now requires additional click to confirm, so rewards can be previewed for more informed decisions.
⬖ Minor early Path balancing.
⬖ Minor UI/UX improvements.
developer response: Thank you for the feedback :)
⬖ Game Speed setting in the main menu: can be increased up to 3x.
⬖ Minor UI improvements.
So far this strikes me as some kind of "meditation aid" based on the feel.
Not sure if I should give the game a score or not. It's clearly not for me, but given the lack of interest on my end I can't really say whether it's good or not.
developer response: Thank you for the comment. Indeed, this is not classical number go up game, though you get to higher numbers in the end game, they are still in the range of millions.
developer response: This automatic doing is a core loop, this is a fairly idle game. According to previous feedback, the game takes some time to get into, it uses some experimental gameplay and terms. Kindly let me know any further feedback or if you stopped playing altogether, I'm still tuning things.
Thank you for the comment.
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Positives:
- I mentioned this before but the art really is amazing, especially for a genre all-too-often afflicted by "programmer art".
- Tools are fun. They're relatively well balanced, they all get their fair share of use (I lean into a lot but that's just a playstyle preference). I kinda wish there was some way to mitigate Attachment (Karma ability?) to allow for a Tool-heavy build.
- I really like the Tier 3 acclimation mechanic. Sometimes you're actively building it up, sometimes you're trying to avoid it. It's been interesting seeing the difference between my first T3 run (struggling to beat T3L1 to reduce my L0 acclimation and getting stuck with awful rewards) and later runs (relatively easily swapping between levels to maintain a good balance).
- The UI is effective at showing relevant information without being too overwhelming (another thing idle games are infamous for). The gritty details are readily available if desired but don't get in the way the rest of the time. Good stuff.
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Mixed:
- I really enjoyed some of the tasks; my favourite was probably as it really changed up my approach to the Rebirth. I think they're used well to encourage exploration of game mechanics the player might not have used before. That said, some tasks were either annoying () or very grindy (, ).
- I might be missing something, but does Calm Mode prevent the player from ever claiming Mindful Moments? I think it's a nice feature otherwise but this feels like an oversight.
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Negatives:
- Gameplay does get a bit repetitive after a while, though I realise this again kind of comes with the territory of idle games. The first few hours of each rebirth are now essentially identical with a hard cap on how quickly you can complete encounters for the early tiers. but I wish there was a way to speed it up with active play or reduce the number of required encounters. There are essentially three builds - - and the difference is only apparent once you grind back up to near where you last rebirthed.
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- It's really annoying how it matters what order in which you buy Insights with different costs. With my current Karma build, if I buy the Insights for Right Mindfulness from bottom to top it costs a total of 1,937 Insight, while buying from top to bottom costs a total of 145,419 Insight for the same outcome. All this really does is force more clicks to get what I want as I gain more skill points and Insight. Insight in general is a constant timewall so it's not something that you can afford to waste.
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Overall still one of my favourite games on this site and an easy 5/5 rating from me.
developer response: Thank you for such a thoughtful review. It was very exciting to read. I'm glad you are having fun with the game :)
Some balancing moments you mentioned will resolve on it's own as you progress further. In general, it was a design choice to keep things in a constant flux of effectiveness, rising and fading with players' progress.
"I might be missing something, but does Calm Mode prevent the player from ever claiming Mindful Moments? I think it's a nice feature otherwise but this feels like an oversight."
The idea of this feature was the calm observation of the game flow without manual interaction or visual disturbance. Some sort of meditation experience :) If you'd like a middle ground, I'd suggest trying turning off animation.
"- Gameplay does get a bit repetitive after a while, though I realise this again kind of comes with the territory of idle games. The first few hours of each rebirth are now essentially identical with a hard cap on how quickly you can complete encounters for the early tiers. Flow at least lets you leave it going overnight to get back to the later tiers but I wish there was a way to speed it up with active play or reduce the number of required encounters. There are essentially three builds - manual active, Dharma Wheel hybrid and non-Wheel idle - and the difference is only apparent once you grind back up to near where you last rebirthed."
Fair points. In my playthrough I looked into optimizing setups you mentioned for particular situations and mechanics. It mostly becomes relevant in the late game. The design idea was to shift the active part of the gameplay from clicking to build management. At T4 and Liberation chapter this optimizations can become really effective compared to completely idle builds. And if you do clicking progress at the same time, combined with Dharma Wheel, things speed up even more. Btw, did you notice that you can hold LMB instead if clicking? It becomes relevant with lower timeouts for active builds.
"- It's really annoying how it matters what order in which you buy Insights with different costs."
I'll look into it. I recently implemented smart refunds for Insights - so the order doesn't matter anymore for refunds. But for the "smart buying" costs information becomes not obvious. Now it's clear that costs always 10x, but for "smart buying" Insight costs look changing chaotically.
Do you think that adding additional button for all Insights respecc at once, for a given Skill, will make things better?
"Overall still one of my favourite games on this site and an easy 5/5 rating from me."
It's really joyful to read this :)
developer response: Thank you for the feedback. Do you think "enable pop-up tutorials" setting will improve the experience?
⬖ Tier 1 Level 3 where many players experienced a progress wall is now 60% easier. This will apply to new Encounters.
⬖ Fixed game import/restore during offline time calculations.
⬖ Minor UI improvements.
⬖ Hot keys: E ncounter, H ome, P ath, S kills, T ools, M ilestones, Skill sets: 1, 2.
Accessible from Gems of Advice near the Main Menu:
Highlights
⬖ 33 Steam achievements.
⬖ Cloud save support.
⬖ Linux support. Steam Deck support awaiting confirmations by players.
⬖ Save games import support from/to web version.
⬖ Display of large numbers increased by 1 digit for a smoother late game precision: 1.23m -> 1.234m, 12.3m -> 12.34m, etc.
⬖ UI polishing for Chapter VI.
For your questions:
- I hadn't actually noticed the ability to hold down LMB, I guess mostly because my active playstyle involves playing whack-a-mole :) but a nice tip for active Dharma Wheel builds.
- For Insights, the ability to respec all insights for a skill would be nice (not sure where the button would go though, logically it'd be in the "Skill level required | points cost" header above the other refund buttons but there isn't really room), but I think the root issue does need addressing. It should be possible to calculate the optimal cost for a given insight set (ordering from most to least expensive and multiplying each by the appropriate power of ten) and then display the difference as the cost for purchasing a new insight. I think this would've also given you the refund logic for free? I recognise your point that the costs change a little less elegantly (in my game at the moment buying "Gratitude in now" then "Honor the body" costs 176 + 288 = 464 Insight; buying them the other way around in the current system costs 29 then has the price go from 176 to 1760 for a total of 1789, while my proposal would have the price go from 176 to 435 to retain the lower 464 total), but this feels like a lesser evil to me.
For Insight, it's not a major issue at all, just a source of confusion that I ran into when deciding on early skill builds. It wasn't much longer after that when I unlocked Insights and learned what they were for anyway along with Merit and Karma. Perhaps a brief note could be added to the gameplay information for Right Livelihood, or the Insight, Merit and Karma scores in Home and Qualities could be revealed upon unlocking Skills, but certainly not worth affecting game balance over. Bear in mind this is a small nitpick that only came up because everything else was well polished!
Everything else makes sense. I figured Click Boost Length would come in handy much later down the line when effort recovery is (presumably) extremely high, but as you say, I'm still quite early in the game. For all I know there's an upgrade just around the corner that raises my divine abidings to the power of my click boost length and it becomes absurdly OP :) I'm at Wisdom 33 now so approaching the introduction of the Rebirth mechanic. I slowed myself down a fair bit by slogging through a T1L3 encounter a little too early, which got me thinking about sunk cost fallacy and the whole "letting go" concept. In a way I'm glad I made that mistake, because it linked back to the theming of the game rather nicely. Certainly more food for thought with this game than with TPT mod number 194.
developer response: Thank you for clarifying.
"... which got me thinking about sunk cost fallacy and the whole "letting go" concept. In a way I'm glad I made that mistake, because it linked back to the theming of the game rather nicely."
Reading this feedback brings joy :)
⬖ Added Library that features a new Timeflow mechanic and unites all lore and art in one place:
❯ After the first Rebirth, use Insight to activate Timeflow and skip time forward, collecting all the rewards.
❯ Use Merit to upgrade the length of Timeflow.
❯ Discover new setups that considerably speed the end game, especially getting those last Milestones.
❯ View all unlocked lore and art in one place any time; enjoy new full window mode to view the art without distractions.
⬖ Added new Path tasks that introduce Library and it's mechanics.
⬖ UI/UX improvements.
⬖ Save compatibility: your existing game will be automatically upgraded to include new features.
Have fun :)
developer response: Thank you.
The game always refunds Insight points in the optimal way. This is best explained on an example:
1. Let's say all Insights of a Skill cost 1 point each.
2. You got 2 of them, you spent 1 point for the first and 10 points for the second (as price 10x'ed). Total you spent 11 points.
3. Now, if you refund the second Insight you directly get 10 points.
4. But if you refund the first Insight, you'd get only 1 point in a direct way. Instead the game optimizes this for you and refunds 10 points: the same as you refunded both and only purchased the second Insight for 1 point.
Shortly speaking, the game optimizes refunds in favor of the player.
developer response: it was the game update, should be fixed by now.
Here is a link to hand-painted album: https://www.reddit.com/r/4da/comments/1jqvahx/hand_painted_album/