Wolfire Games Forums

The title says it all, what were you annoyed by when you played lugaru and do you think it can be improved?

I'll start by saying that; the thing that annoyed me the most about lugaru was that it was mainly based on combat and not much else, whereas I would have liked it to be a little more interactive and with more choices than just "click here and you'll face some more enemies" it was too hack 'n slashy and did not leave that many choices to the player himself.
Offcourse that's what lugaru was all about: it's unique combat system (which i think is awesome) but eventually it became too trivial.
Take a game such as bethesda's The elder scrolls IV Oblivion, strip it off of all the roleplaying, interacting with npc's and choices of where to go next. Wouldn't that be a bit boring?
I'm not saying that i want overgrowth or any other wolfire titles to become oblivion or just an rpg, what I'm saying is that the nextgen games almost allways leaves multiple opportunitys for the players to choose from.
Say i met an evil rat lord in the deep forest, would i like him to send his minions at me? Or would i talk to the one of his minions standing and looking angry at him in a secluded place? Would i make him assassinate his lord? Or would i persuade him to retrieve the secret artifact the ratlord holds of which i was sent here to get my hands on?

Well now I'm saying this because i thaught more of overgrowth than of lugaru.
I'm not critisising in that way and i have the deepest respect for lugaru and it's creator. It's more about telling what should be improved in overgrowth compared to lugaru.

I guess I'm not just one of those hack n slash guys but if i were eventually i'd probably get bored playing lugaru too.
Anyways if Overgrowth ends up like lugaru did I'll just create a mod then, don't mind me.
But please renegade answer to the topic and not just my statement

m3nace wrote:Offcourse that's what lugaru was all about: it's unique combat system (which i think is awesome) but eventually it became too trivial.
Take a game such as bethesda's The elder scrolls IV Oblivion, strip it off of all the roleplaying, interacting with npc's and choices of where to go next. Wouldn't that be a bit boring?

I think it's pretty awesome that Lugaru didn't become too boring even when all roleplaying etc was taken out. I don't know about Oblivion, but at least Morrowind's combat system is horrible, and I don't really enjoy the combat.

This is also one of the reasons for the increased modding capabilities in Overgrowth.


I had several minor pet peeves with Lugaru. Not being able to jump down on an unsuspecting enemy (I never managed it), sneaking on an enemy didn't work well because basic move was too slow (and rolling looked silly), the enemies were really stupid at times, etc. Despite these minor problems with controls and such, I enjoyed the game.

I would have appreciated more differences between rabbits and wolves.

Endoperez wrote: I had several minor pet peeves with Lugaru. Not being able to jump down on an unsuspecting enemy (I never managed it), sneaking on an enemy didn't work well because basic move was too slow (and rolling looked silly), the enemies were really stupid at times, etc. Despite these minor problems with controls and such, I enjoyed the game.

I second this. One major example is when you jump on a ledge to avoid them, often enemies would give up the search but keep jumping at that ledge if they couldn't get up after the first or second try.*/**

Also, I didn't like how when you tried jumping down on an enemy, SOMEHOW, they managed to randomly see you and move out of the way and then they hit you as soon as you land.

Another thing I really didn't like is that where rabbits' attacks acted at the same speed yours did, wolves' attacks, which were also much more powerful, would move slightly faster than you forcing you to time each attack perfectly or die (this was made worse on higher levels of difficulty where one hit from a wolf meant instant death). It didn't help that I've often had wolves counter my counterattacks because of the small difference.***

Zhukov wrote:I would have appreciated more differences between rabbits and wolves.

Yeah, also agreed. They all had the same attacks...the only difference was the wolves had the power of a knife/sword behind them. A different, wolf-specific attack set would have been nice. Though since Turner is a rabbit, I didn't mind Turner and the rabbit enemies having the same attack set.

More realistic kicking animations would be nice too. I remember the roundhouse kick being rather...right angular...

I've gotta say that in story mode, some choices are on the wish list (at the very least, a classic "good" and "bad" ending), but that's all up to the team.

* Did this ever get fixed and I just missed something?
** It usually happened on ledges that had ground below them that had an incline, where you'd go up on the short side and they'd try getting up on the tall side...made it worse if you stood right at the ledge on the tall side to laugh at them.
*** Did anyone else notice this or am I just insane? A lot of my hatred for any level with more than one wolf came out of this

I'd say just having more mission possibilities will free up campaign designers, and the dev team has said they plan on adding a bunch more for OG.

if you can do more than just "talk to someone" or "kill everyone" (or "talk to someone" and THEN "kill everyone"), all kinds of stories will be possible. Clearly opinions vary about what's fun, but then maybe you'd be able to play the type of campaign you'd like and skip the kinds you don't?

EDIT: (from the "forum interview q's for the devs" blog post)
"1. In Lugaru there was only one mission structure: Kill Everyone. In Overgrowth we want to add a few more mission types. Things we are considering are: reconnaissance (obtain information/object x and bring it back), stealth (get from point A to point B without being seen), escape (get from point A to point B without getting captured/killed), race (get from point A to point B before the other guy or in a certain amount of time), assassination (kill a chosen few enemies on the map), survival (stay alive for X amount of time). "

Other suggestions for missions? (I know this has been hashed out already, but...)
I think a non-lethal competition/training dojo bit could be fun, but maybe that's just for multiplayer or tutorial. I just like the idea of a wrestling match or an archery or spear throwing contest at a country fair. Or a parkour contest, with npc's moving the platforms about randomly and spectators laughing at the crashes. Or a contest to see who can win stuff after they've drunk a gallon of control-randomising homebrewed beer.

Object quests? Diplomacy? Stealing stuff? Giving stuff away to help someone? Getting some help from an npc later if you do, but not knowing it's going to happen?


Back to Lugaru:
The ai's are a bit dumb about going back about their business once they've been alerted to your presence, but that's pretty common in games.

I'm not sure how fun people would find if they were absolutely swarmed by unrelenting enemies every time they failed a stealth kill... maybe there could be a 4th level of difficulty beyond insane for those with the skillz to handle that.

Lugaru was lacking puzzle solving, the combat system was eventuly easy to master once you got to grips with stop fighting so frantic and clicking away and hold down the mouse. when i leanred how to trach wolves the game became increasingly easyer.

The Wolves had an annoying kick attack that would one shot you if crouching or sevearly hurt you, and no mater what you have little chance avoiding it.

The End boss for some of us on our first encounter we had often triped Ash the Alphawolf and ended up killing him cause he landed on a rock (I know its happend to me, and it probobly happend to some one else).

Lugaru is one hellova gud game but it dose have its flaws.

that fifty level limit was the only annoying thing to me

what's yer point?!

The wolves have a claw move instead of the double-punch thing. Said claw move farking HURTS

Oh and on insane mode they can teleport.

oh and one more thing regarding combat.
I missed a flying kick, not like the rabbit kick, but one that could be initiated in mid air. Offcourse it shouldn't be as powerfull as the rabbit kick but more like a way not to get caught by your enemies while jumping over them.

invertin wrote:The wolves have a claw move instead of the double-punch thing. Said claw move farking HURTS

Yeah, there's a couple of other differences too. But I was expecting them to have a whole move set to themselves.

invertin wrote:Oh and on insane mode they can teleport.

Technically speaking, they can "pounce".

zhukov wrote:Yeah, there's a couple of other differences too. But I was expecting them to have a whole move set to themselves.

so did i
it would have been cooler if they had their own specific moves
and then it also annoyed me that they all looked the same, but i guess that won't be a problem in OG as they'll have all kinds of armor