Dungeon Dashers - Multiplayer Co-op Dungeon Crawling

So I haven't done a lot of coding work on Dungeon Dashers over the past week, but I've been doing a lot of playtesting with other game developers and gamers alike. I've been collecting lots of data, and also trying to outline exactly what it is I want the game to have and what kind of game it will be. The game is at a stage where it can go a lot of different ways, and there's a nice base right now to build off, but I need to make the right decisions in order to craft it into a cohesive well thought out experience.

With that in mind, what follows is some of the feedback I received and my thoughts on that feedback from TIGJamAU. It might not be interesting to all of you, but those who want to see what sort of feedback I receive and how I deal with it, you might find it interesting.

Feedback received at TIGJamAU:
Tester 1

Not obvious that switches can be pulled/pushed more than once
>> I will explain through through a gameplay tutorial where you are required to do so.
Chests are fun to open "yay"
People melee with ranged characters
>> I need to make them use a ranged attack by default
Didn't attack "hard" with his players, he kept them close together and bunched up
"Dungeon Dashers" is an inappropriate name
AI bug where it gets stuck near a wall and hops on the same spot
>> I'll need to isolate and fix this, it happens with the goblin archer in the same spot each of the few times I've observed it

Tester 2

Needed to be told that you have to step off a tile with another hero and that you can't end your turn on the same tile as another hero
>> he said it made sense once told, I can probably fix this with a tutorial. It's easy to know once learnt.
>> Also adding more indications, perhaps making the other player more opaque and flashing them if you try to end turn on them
"I don't normally play games like this"
>> but he enjoyed it a lot and said it interested him so it shows that DD works for a wider audience. Same with tester 1.
>> he said it was easy to get into
"Did he kill the wizard?"
>> need to make player deaths more obvious, more dramatic, more painful to the player

My ideas

Need an icon to show when you have "freemove" and when you don't
Screen resolution isn't overscaled to take advantage of the wholescreen when not played at 16:9
>> Work something out

Tester 3

Stepped on the spikes by accident - "oh"
Tried to end turn on another hero

Tester 4

Suggested that the UI Square around a player seemed like a cursor (from games like Advance Wars) and confused him because he thought pressing up would make the "selection box" move up. Said I should change it to another cursor type.
>> Good idea, what I have at the moment is something that I implemented and it needs more thought. I'll change it.
He understood the attacking system early and easily
Shooting an arrow - "that's satisfying"
Bug/confusing: If you have freemove but 1 action point left then you can't step onto another hero's space.
On encountering a room full of enemies: "I just shat myself"
He said it was intuitive to walk into enemies to attack them, no other buttons to press.
Super good idea from someone watching over the shoulder: If you end your turn without using any movement points it should "skip" the current player and allow you to come back to them in the "same turn".
>> I love this idea. It gives the freedom of choosing the turn order for your characters without any extra UI or menus or flow breaking that my initial idea had in In Dev Build 1. It allows complex strategy for those who want it, with no extra overhead for those who don't care. Absolutely brilliant.
Targeting for arrows/ranged isn't intuitive. i.e. the way that it selects targets based on X position
>> I'll update this later in the future. It "works" for now but it's not that pretty I know.
Perhaps I should keep the player in "firing" mode for an arrow/fireball once they've shot one. At the moment they have to go "into" the skill again to use it twice in a row - which they often want to do.
>> May or may not be necessary. I'll have to test it out. It might be confusing if some skills keep you "in" them once you've used them once, and others don't.
"Dodge is shit". It would be cool if it was only on bigger monsters and scarier monsters who actually look like they have a chance of dodging. It doesn't make sense for small monsters like skeletons to dodge, and really it is just an annoyance and doesn't add anything to gameplay. It would make bigger monsters all the more scarier if you knew that they had this extra ability to dodge.
>> I agree completely. I'll remove dodge for shitty monsters. Good thing it's easy to do in code.
Player/enemy colour schemes aren't great for mainly the knight and assassin
   * Silhouttes aren't unique for these characters
   * Knight blends in because of his colour scheme
   * I should add a red sash or something to the knight and perhaps change his pose as well
   * Look at a different colour scheme for the assassin
   >>I agree with this now that I think about it, but it's another art expense, so it's costly to change but I'll definitely consider it, especially if my budget expands

Tester 5

"How do I select?", in conjunction with trying to move the "cursor" down
>> So this is a similar problem to the other tester. I should look into changing the UI on this.
Shooting an arrow: "hells yeah"
>> Arrow seems to be pretty satisfying. I think the sound helps a lot too.
Getting treasure: "nice!"
>> Treasure again is satisfying, even if it serves no purpose right now.
Said that the control scheme is easy
Said that Opening chests/doors is good with simply walking into them and no extra buttons needed
Line of sight for heroes isn't clear, hard to know what you can and can't shoot
   >> I agree with this as well. It's hard to know if you can hit an enemy without going to a tile first
   >> You kind of need to walk to a place first before you can see what you can do there, so for the more strategic players this is annoying
   >> I could add some kind of button to hold so that you can examine particular tiles, enemies, lines of sight, etc. With mouse controls that is easier.

Tester 6

Lots of discussion here but basically one of the main points was that I should be wary of the fact that if I try to make both a puzzle game (with sophisticated traps) as well as an action game (with going through a level killing everything) then it's possible that both elements could suffer.
>> That's a risk, but as long as I keep testing, iterating, getting feedback and keep that risk in mind, I think I am capable of managing it.
Action points don't reset after you kill all enemies, i.e. freemove doesn't give you unlimited points and it doesn't make 'narrative sense' when it's like you're recovering from battle
>> I agree with this, and it would fix the problem with another tester where you can't walk onto other heroes. I think I'll give the player full points here. There's no real reason why you shouldn't have them except that you can use a bunch of skills many times in a row, e.g. a healing spell if I have one later, however if there is some incentive to not muck around (e.g. you get a reward for finishing the level in less than 30 turns) then that will combat this sort of problem, and in effect, appeal to both casual players and the more dedicated, again allowing for both playstyles without compromising either.

And here is the tentative list of features I'd like to have in the game in order to help me work out where to focus my efforts - rather than just being feature driven and adding whatever I think is "cool" at any given moment.

What I need to have

Simple and effective Menus
Intuitive User Interface
Illustrated drawings for cover art and media
Online multiplayer
>> Chat
>> No desync issues
50 Levels
>> Replayable and diverse - some puzzly ones, some battle ones
Compelling loot system and reason for collecting gold
Level rating system (3-5 stars for doing well on a level)
A pick up and play, simple to get into and more complex to master combat system and overall game
>> balanced stats
Streamlined gameplay which allows for a quick slaughter if you are good enough
Intelligent, diverse and challenging AI leading to interesting battles
4 Well Balanced and fun classes each with specific roles which have some customization
50 Different Items
40 Different Skills/Spells (=10 per char)
An overarching, original, witty and sometimes humorous storyline
Story text for each level
3 Different map tilesets
20 enemy types
Epic soundtrack
Achievements system
Simple controls, not many buttons
Mouse and keyboard controls

What I would like to have

Public map editor to allow players to create their own levels
Cutscenes and a super compelling storyline
6-8 playable characters
Mac build
Linux build
Complex maps that have certain secrets that are only unlockable after playing them a second time with some new skills

What I would put in, given another 6 months and unlimited budget

Player vs Player area styled combat
Player vs Player where one player controls all the monster on the map
iPad build
iPhone build