The cool thing about and indie developer is that we might actually see some stuff like this patched in over time. Nintendo itself would never do such tweaks.
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Wargroove |OT| Advance Wargs
- Thread starter hersheyfan
- Start date
The cool thing about and indie developer is that we might actually see some stuff like this patched in over time. Nintendo itself would never do such tweaks.
Yes! It'd be nice if like pressing A skipped that specific battle if you don't want to see it.
If you hold B (Switch controls) it will skip after 2 seconds.
You can skip battle animations by holding B down on switch and waiting a few seconds!
holding down B also speeds up enemy movement during the AI's turn. You can also use this to get across the world map faster!
I was on the fence after hearing about difficulty and long battles but then I watched gamexplains review and saw the difficulty sliders and was sold.
If something gets too hard I'll just cheese it and move on to avoid frustration
If something gets too hard I'll just cheese it and move on to avoid frustration
Invite codes and match listings as well as quick play match making is a lovely mix, and fix for cross play love it.
Awesome!
This is great, thank you!
In this case, it is something that IS already added to their games. QOL options on the later FE are great and would almost certainly trickle in to the next Wats game.
Nintendo also actually does do tweaks to games this generation. This isn't the Wii/DS era.
Congrats on an awesome game that really takes me back to Advance Wars!
My slight nitpick about this skip function is that the timer says 2 but it feels like three seconds waiting overall, after first pressing B and the delay before the timer starts. IMO it could be trimmed about a second and feel snappier.
Any chance you could add a "Random" for the animations? I sometimes might want to see them (maybe during crits that kill), but often times I was just skipping, so I just turned them all off.
Tried a little of the Play Anywhere version on my break.
Its just fab, love the pace of the campaign and had to go back and redo the second mission due to 1 star.
Played on my Surface Book and my ONLY feedback is the touch screen mouse controls dont work.
Can't wait to get stuck in later.
Its just fab, love the pace of the campaign and had to go back and redo the second mission due to 1 star.
Played on my Surface Book and my ONLY feedback is the touch screen mouse controls dont work.
Can't wait to get stuck in later.
Wish you could just mash a key to skip battle animations and have a permanent quick movement setting. Also use that unused face button for enemy range management or something.
The core gameplay has been amazing, just a few QoL features would go a long way for the people inevitably spending 100+hrs on this game!
I agree with this. I'd love an "instant skip" button, maybe with the + or - button?
I just played the first few missions. I knew I missed Advance Wars, but I didn't realize I missed it this much. Might be a potential GOTY candidate with the map sharing features.
The newer FE games have it so holding down L as you enter any animation would do the opposite of what was set in the menus.
Watching a streamer play this now. I'll definitely be grabbing this soon. The MP feature with Cross Play is doing it right
Does this support family share on steam? Can I buy a copy for my friend and we take asynchronous turns through family share? Considering buying for a friend and I play in switch but then also utilize the steam version when on my pc away from my Switch
Could play using Parsec (https://parsecgaming.com)? I'm gonna use that to play co-op with friends since it doesn't seem we can using the lobbies without the map being a scenario.
I put up the first 39 minutes (usually do 30 minutes, but didn't want to cut mid-battle) for people who want to see some early missions.
I hesitate to post my impressions and nitpicks, as the game feels really mostly great otherwise and the general mood here is very positive, but coming off a marathon of all previous AWs, I can't help but notice a few elements that could hopefully be improved, since devs are looking at this thread, to hopefully turn this game from a good-but-with-caveats experience to a legitimately great AW successor (since this is why it clearly aims to be, and the comparisons simply cannot be avoided).
-the battle skip option has been mentioned a few times: one of the face buttons could be used as an instant skip option. As it currently is, the "hold to skip" timer makes the function essentially useless, as the anims are halfway over by the time it triggers. Ideally, this "hold to skip" would be left it, and another "instant skip" would be mapped to the remaining face button to have the best of all worlds. Maybe take inspiration from SRW as well with its numerous function for battle scene management: shortcuts to activate/deactive battles individually, buttons to fast forward by scene, etc...
-when selecting to attack, the cursor stays on the character, and needs to be manually moved to a target, even if there's only one in range. This is probably the thing that most needs to be adressed, as it was integral to the snappy feel of AW battles: many situations are just 1vs1, and there's no extra need to select individual targets. When selecting "attack", the cursor should default to an enemy unit, so it can be confirmed straight away with another button press.
-the fog of war, while lovingly animated, makes every unit movement feel laggy, as it needs to disappear after the unit's movement is complete. This should be instant.
-the "end turn" option ought to be at the bottom of the field menu (as in earlier advance wars), or offer a prompt to confirm (as in SRW/Days of Ruin). As is, it's far too easy to accidently skip turns when going fast.
-the codex/field info button doesn't readily display the most useful information for commanders, it requires pressing a number of additional buttons before reaching the groove explanation (the little animation showcase are, however, an excellent touch).
-far more complex to fix, but I feel the iconography in the codex is a bit muddied, and it's hard to tell units apart in the "strong/weak against" sections. I have no suggestions on how to approach this issue, but it lacks in clarity compared to AW (again, this would probably fly unnoticed if the comparisons weren't so obvious).
-it's been covered at length in other topics but I'm also hoping a mid-battle save function will be considered down the line, as all battles so far have been extremely lengthy by AW standards (and the pacing is already arguably a bit off because of the causes of aforementioned lag, ie fog of war/additional selection, etc). I understand the design intent to have players carefully consider their moves, but this option shouldn't be outright removed from the player, either - it's part of what made AW so accessible and memorable in the first place, and even Fire Emblem attempted it after a while, initially with save points on the field, then eventually outright saves in the later entries. To clarify: I do not mean "suspend" saves that get erased when reloading the game, but bookmark saves whose purpose IS to be reloaded mid battle. In short: how Advance Wars always did it worked just fine!
-it seems the cursor defaults to a 1.1 position at the start of some campaign battles, after the intro dialog has positioned the camera elsewhere, resulting in a jarring camera snap at the very the first move.
-after a campaign battle, pressing A immediately skips the result screen, which is the opposite problem from the battle scene skip - this time, it should really wait until the score/rank is displayed, as it's far too easy to press A to pass dialog and end up skipping the entire ranking screen. Also, the notation "turn passed/enemies cleared/units lost" aren't informative on their own - what matters is the relative idea of how much they affected the overall score, and what we need to work on to achieve a higher ranking.
-holding A to check the enemy range, then moving the cursor: the selected enemy gets overriden when passing over a new enemy if A is held (and not depressed then pressed again), which makes calculating distances more troublesome as we need to plot cursor paths around where we actually want to go to avoid other enemies that could be in the path. Holding A should only show the range of the enemy first selected, not the ones the cursor passes next if the button has not been depressed.
I'll admit my initial reaction to the game is a bit dampened because I'm coming off said AW marathon, and I find in most QoL aspects, it compares defavorably to even AW1's game feel (the snappy cursor control, the menu layout). But those are extremely minute nitpicks and the underlying strategy layer appears extremely solid, most notably the capture system, which is so far the most removed from AW, to great success. The rest of my muddied reaction admittedly comes from a very subjective matter of taste, as I don't gel with the fantasy setting and characters as much as I hoped, though I won't expand on that as it's not so much criticism as a matter of taste.
Still, I hope for *great* things for this game and for it to carve its own place, not just as yet another AW-like attempt, but a legitimately great title on its own right, and I feel the above QoL points would go a long way towards making that achievable in the long run.
Signed, a long-time AW fan who wants nothing but the best for Wargroove!
(EDIT: all of the above come from playing on Switch, I'm not sure if those are applicable for PC)
-the battle skip option has been mentioned a few times: one of the face buttons could be used as an instant skip option. As it currently is, the "hold to skip" timer makes the function essentially useless, as the anims are halfway over by the time it triggers. Ideally, this "hold to skip" would be left it, and another "instant skip" would be mapped to the remaining face button to have the best of all worlds. Maybe take inspiration from SRW as well with its numerous function for battle scene management: shortcuts to activate/deactive battles individually, buttons to fast forward by scene, etc...
-when selecting to attack, the cursor stays on the character, and needs to be manually moved to a target, even if there's only one in range. This is probably the thing that most needs to be adressed, as it was integral to the snappy feel of AW battles: many situations are just 1vs1, and there's no extra need to select individual targets. When selecting "attack", the cursor should default to an enemy unit, so it can be confirmed straight away with another button press.
-the fog of war, while lovingly animated, makes every unit movement feel laggy, as it needs to disappear after the unit's movement is complete. This should be instant.
-the "end turn" option ought to be at the bottom of the field menu (as in earlier advance wars), or offer a prompt to confirm (as in SRW/Days of Ruin). As is, it's far too easy to accidently skip turns when going fast.
-the codex/field info button doesn't readily display the most useful information for commanders, it requires pressing a number of additional buttons before reaching the groove explanation (the little animation showcase are, however, an excellent touch).
-far more complex to fix, but I feel the iconography in the codex is a bit muddied, and it's hard to tell units apart in the "strong/weak against" sections. I have no suggestions on how to approach this issue, but it lacks in clarity compared to AW (again, this would probably fly unnoticed if the comparisons weren't so obvious).
-it's been covered at length in other topics but I'm also hoping a mid-battle save function will be considered down the line, as all battles so far have been extremely lengthy by AW standards (and the pacing is already arguably a bit off because of the causes of aforementioned lag, ie fog of war/additional selection, etc). I understand the design intent to have players carefully consider their moves, but this option shouldn't be outright removed from the player, either - it's part of what made AW so accessible and memorable in the first place, and even Fire Emblem attempted it after a while, initially with save points on the field, then eventually outright saves in the later entries. To clarify: I do not mean "suspend" saves that get erased when reloading the game, but bookmark saves whose purpose IS to be reloaded mid battle. In short: how Advance Wars always did it worked just fine!
-it seems the cursor defaults to a 1.1 position at the start of some campaign battles, after the intro dialog has positioned the camera elsewhere, resulting in a jarring camera snap at the very the first move.
-after a campaign battle, pressing A immediately skips the result screen, which is the opposite problem from the battle scene skip - this time, it should really wait until the score/rank is displayed, as it's far too easy to press A to pass dialog and end up skipping the entire ranking screen. Also, the notation "turn passed/enemies cleared/units lost" aren't informative on their own - what matters is the relative idea of how much they affected the overall score, and what we need to work on to achieve a higher ranking.
-holding A to check the enemy range, then moving the cursor: the selected enemy gets overriden when passing over a new enemy if A is held (and not depressed then pressed again), which makes calculating distances more troublesome as we need to plot cursor paths around where we actually want to go to avoid other enemies that could be in the path. Holding A should only show the range of the enemy first selected, not the ones the cursor passes next if the button has not been depressed.
I'll admit my initial reaction to the game is a bit dampened because I'm coming off said AW marathon, and I find in most QoL aspects, it compares defavorably to even AW1's game feel (the snappy cursor control, the menu layout). But those are extremely minute nitpicks and the underlying strategy layer appears extremely solid, most notably the capture system, which is so far the most removed from AW, to great success. The rest of my muddied reaction admittedly comes from a very subjective matter of taste, as I don't gel with the fantasy setting and characters as much as I hoped, though I won't expand on that as it's not so much criticism as a matter of taste.
Still, I hope for *great* things for this game and for it to carve its own place, not just as yet another AW-like attempt, but a legitimately great title on its own right, and I feel the above QoL points would go a long way towards making that achievable in the long run.
Signed, a long-time AW fan who wants nothing but the best for Wargroove!
(EDIT: all of the above come from playing on Switch, I'm not sure if those are applicable for PC)
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Am I missing something, you cannot save mid-battle? Damn these missions are LOOONG. I'm only at Act 2-1, and it's super long.
After having played for 2 hours or so, I can 100% agree with every suggested change here.
I think these changes would improve the game to a huge degree for players who want to spend a ton of time with it.
Wow. This post is completely 100%. Everything that I wanted to say about the game, this is it. Great post. I hope somehow this post reaches the devs. Maybe I'll Tweet @ them with a link to this post.
I agree. The missions just feel "slow", for all the reasons you said. It's not snappy. And not being able to save mid-game is baffling. After the first five missions I've gotten 1-2 stars on a few of them and I have NO desire to replay them, because for the exact reasons you said. Coming off of playing A TON of Into the Breach last year, this feels like a step back. That game was fast and furious, and thought provoking on every turn. This game seems to be a lot of the opposite: not fast, and a lot of monotonous choices that make the missions drag on for too long.
We're looking at all of the feedback we've received from reviewers and players now they have their hands on the game! I'm sure we'll be making some quality of life changes and additions in the future.
To prevent save skumming. A solution to this is allow you to save but you have to resume that mission when you start it up and then they delete the save.
Resellers like Amazon email you the download code so it is a matter of waiting to appear there
When missions can take over an hour, coupled with ambushes/events that require foreknowledge to appropriately deal with, it doesn't seem unreasonable to have the option to save. It could even be limited, such as a finite amount of saves per mission.
Is the term "savescumming" really applicable in a game with little-to-no abusable RNG? I don't think so.
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My only addition to Pehesse's excellent suggestions would be a "danger area" button. It's very slow and tedious to manually mouse over every enemy unit, then remember their ranges, especially on maps with high enemy count. Putting a danger area toggle on the unused face button would drastically increase the game's snappiness, Supernorn. (Thanks for reading feedback here, too! You guys are great.)
excellent post, I really hope the dev takes these changes to heart. I'll be buying it because I love AW and want to support the devs/game, but I really, really hope they make most if not all of these changes. outside of these my biggest concern is the long mission lengths without a way to save. thankfully the switch can naturally be toggled off/on to pause and resume!
No, but it would be pretty fucking nice to have a way to save considering missions aren't 5 minutes or even 10 minutes. Also, who cares if people want it in a single player game? I'll pick up if they add it later. I rarely have a full hour to dedicate to 1 mission.
More visibility here please. It includes just about every QoL frustration I've felt in the first hour, but couldn't describe as succinctly.
Yeah, I agree with most of this.
The game is already great so far as it is but there are some QoL improvements which would make it much better.
There is though. The message is just not very clear.
Thanks! That's great. I will also echo everything on Pehesse's post, it really nails what the game needs to feel as snappy as AW (quoting it below). IMO the auto-selection of enemy units (specially in 1 vs 1 situations) and an instant skip button for battle scenes would do wonders for the pacing. I'm loving the game so far! I'm on act 3 and having tons of fun :)
