I feel like part of what made Hades popular is both how much control you have and the characters. And removing the keepsakes hurts both, since you cant try for a build you just have to be lucky (especially a problem in Tartarus when you can often get forced into single choice boon rooms) and it become a nightmare to progress story and dialogue with any boon gods. Honestly this feels like a take from a roguelike fan who has long run out of things to do rather than what the casual majority would want. Plus if you want to play full random...you can. Just take Coin Purse or Mom Pom or whatever other keepsake and play full random.
Hard disagree. Never been a roguelike fan myself before Hades and the lack of control that the game offers is generally the fun part of the game. It's the "okay, how do I make this work" since almost any combination of 4 *gods* can make a solid build (as long as you make smart boon choices). Sure, it's fun to have a build in mind and the game offers a lot of ways to pull a run in a direction you want (like rerolls), but when I've had most fun is whenever the game has made me need to be thrifty and smart when it comes to my build. Also noteworthy that a lot of people get a most/least favored god, and removing those keepsakes might actually improve the experience when it comes to the story elements you mention.
I think the best part about hades is the fact that you have the choice to play with or without God keepsakes. You get to decide if you want randomness or choice
I think modular difficulty is good for hades both in terms of accessibility and longevity but I think some pacts, which define high level play are really unbalanced which makes the post 40-ish heat unbearable and just too steep a step. The pact that disables mirror traits for example is just massively above any other heat in terms of impact and personally I'd like if hades 2 has modular difficulty then the high difficulty is a bit more gradual so that the highest possible difficulty still feels hard but the journey to get there is more sloped than stepped
I thibk good game design has elements which can alter the game in fu engaging ways. Not nessarily good, but transformative. Beating games with janky builds is fun, beating games with consistent strong builds is fun. Beating games with boring overtuned items gets old and losing due to poor tuned items feels bad. I do think in general hades does allow for some jank, and I appreciate that. Fully customizable loadouts feels not in the spirit of a rogue lite. Why play a rogue light if you want a ton of control of the experience?
Maybe instead of a free try out room, give players the option to reuse builds they already had in a testing environment. That way you have to find builds first but can practice them. This would not be the desired solution but maybe one that could encourage additional runs
For hammers: unlock Daedalus as a character, get option to pay him something like 5 diamnonds before the run to select 1 hammer that will appear in a pool when you first find a hammer. This way you get this option only later in the game, and when you first get the opportunity it will be a choice between story progress (you need diamonds for that) and build guarantees. At the very late game when you hoarded enough crystals anyway it's just a qol
For hammers in Hades 2, I'd personally just like to see more focus on "synergy". Some of the most fun runs in Hades are when you get those 2 magical hammers that play off each other really well, like Cluster + Rocket rail, or Exploding Launcher + Charged Skewer spear. Not that they all have to be OP, but those types of combinations almost completely change the feel of the weapons, it'd be interesting to have more of those types of interactions between hammers. I think in essence hammers shouldn't just be a power-up, but should change the feel of the weapon you're using to keep each run feeling unique (for a long time anyway).
My idea: god keepsakes in the 1st biome only You can still start off by almost guaranteeing a core you want, but the rest of it is luck and skill in not taking unhelpful gods
Don't really agree with removing God keepsakes. Why would you want more RNG? If you made videos with your cool builds then we as viewers wouldn't be able to replicate them which like you mentioned, lots of people like to do.
I think God keep sakes might be better if they were delegated to a second biome. Like your first biome is just running through with limited control, then you can try and make it work with a God keepsake to add to it in the next biome.
One thing i really hope is in Hades II is an endless mode of some form or something. Ive had so many runs where my build doesnt come together to the last moment and that just sucks. I think theres a mod called Endless Hades or something like that where you just keep going through with harder and harder enemies and you just end up seeing how ridiculous you can get near the end, which i think would be nice
I think Roll-able Hammers are okay, so long as it's a lot more difficult to earn than say, rolling boons & poms. In what form would that be, i dunno. Maybe you need to beat the game however many times to even unlock the mirror for it, or it costs a boon/death defiance. I think there's a way to make it possible but with slightly heavier consequences to the player. Also the problem with hammers is that there aren't that many for each weapon, right? There's only like 9 or 10. If you pick up a hammer and none of the options are the one you want, the hammer you do want is highly likely just 1 roll away. This might incentivize the devs to add more hammers but that risks growing that imbalance of hammers that are useful and ones that just dont do anything.
100% disagree about removing god keepsakes or fundamentally changing how they work. I think this is an instance of, as you say, a player identifying a pain point but not knowing exactly what the problem is or how best to fix it. Hades is my favourite game of all time and that's only because of the god keepsakes. The total randomness is fun at the start of the game, when you're learning the ropes, meeting new characters and getting new dialogue, discovering all the boons, and blindly trying out new combinations. Once you've seen all the boons and understand which ones work well together and with what weapons, you want to play with specific builds. I don't have unlimited free time, and Hades gets only a portion of it, so I wouldn't want to play much beyond the end of the story if I didn't have the control that god keepsakes afforded me to play the game as I wanted. Besides, you might guarantee a god, but you can never guarantee a specific boon, nor its rarity, and guaranteeing multiple gods when the game wants to give you different ones is its own challenge with risk:reward decisions. You also don't control how many boons you get per run. Yes, you've got rerolls, and again, Hades wouldn't have the same longevity for me without them and the control they afford you, but everything still has a significant element of chance. If the god keepsakes make the game too easy on a personal level, you can always play without them. If they make the game too easy on a competitive/speedrunning level, they can always be banned by whatever "authority" you submit your runs to. The strength of god keepsakes is also contingent on the quality of a god's boons and how easy it is to get the best ones. In Hades 2, we're going to have more boon-giving gods, and I imagine their boon pools will be larger than the Hades 1 gods' because the nature of sequels is to make everything bigger. Plus, there might be new attacks or abilities that can receive boons, increasing the amount of tier 1s across the board-being able to manipulate your tier 1 boon selection is arguably the most impactful form of boon control. Ergo, if the problem doesn't sort itself out through scale, you can always make your own choices about what's fun to play with. At the end of the day, it's a video game and the only thing that matters is fun, and I think removing the god keepsakes would make the game a lot less fun for a lot of people.
I doubt anyone's going to be reading the. Comments in this video anytime soon, but I feel like the hammer problem could be solved by allowing rolls on the second hammer only.
I agree with no god keepsakes. To me it doesnt even feel like a rogue like when youre using them. Still love the game, but they are incredibly strong, and imho part of the great part about diving in and trying to solve a "puzzle" figuring out how to win with what youre offered. As opposed to just deciding what god you want on your special or attack or whatever and then if theres a core second piece, guaranting yourself you get it in Asphodel
it would be cool to be able to roll ONE of the options for the hammer. We would be able to choose which hammer we want to reroll, obviously using F.A. just an idea!
i feel like a "sandbox" environment as a late game unlock is quite good, the reason i come back to hades is that i wanna try a build i saw you do or just a random build i like, but if i cant pull that off because its inconsistent in a normal run then it kinda puts me off, as a late game pick up it forces you to complete (or close to it) the game before you can do whatever you want with it. i can compare this to a game like risk of rain 2 (i know its not the same but the idea remains the same) that the command artifact (basically sandbox mode) is an unlockable you have to achieve, and in the harder difficulties (eclips) its completely locked off (no progression while using it).
@@GhabrielPepernah maybe seeded, you can start a run and you can see what you start off with then give up and he makes content based off what pops up in a run... Just a guess idk for sure if that's the case
Re: hammers Part of the issue (IMHO) is that you almost never want certain hammers/always want a particular hammer. They range from "objectively amazing" to "doesn't do much," or are reliant on two specific hammers for excellent results. Like, the rail has some great hammers, but no combo is outstripping cluster rockets. Some ideas for how it could be improved in the sequel or a similar game: 1. Let players choose between special or attack focused hammers, and you get 2-3 choices from there. This keeps the randomness, but leaves a bit of input. Maybe this could be reserved for a costly anvil-esque option? 2. Make most hammer options a bit more powerful on average. Or maybe *noticeably* more powerful with visuals and secondary effects. Cluster Bomb isn't just a cool hammer because it does a lot of damage; it also looks noticeably different and thus gains some cool factor. The sword and spear especially lack "cool factor" hammers where cool stuff happens on screen because of a hammer effect IMO. 3. MORE HAMMERS. More choices could make it feel a bit less painful when you don't get the perfect one. Maybe best paired with idea 1 or 2?
yesssss i love this build!! one of my favorites, just a shame it's dependent on a hammer so you have to just hope you get it. love to see the health bar just chunk away edit: i'm so mad spread fire/rocket bomb is literally the combo i go for with this build yet somehow i haven't seen it in MONTHS
Maybe removing gods from the god pool could cost heat. Having all 12 gods possibly be offered until you have boons from 4 of them is the default, but if you add X heat of difficulty, you can take out one specific god from the pool. Maybe the heat costs grow as you remove more gods. I think the problem with the god keepsakes now being too powerful is that there's no cost to the control you gain (really only the opportunity cost of not using a different keepsake for a biome).
Top of my wishlist for Hades 2 is an ability to ban one god from your run with something like an anti-Heat level. Or adding other benefits that lower your heat level. I wish there were a way to make certain builds more likely for higher risk, without killing the difficulty
They just need to make a separate save for speedrunning that would solve a lot of the problems, also removing god keepsakes would make the game less enjoyable for 90 percent of players, could have them off in speed run mode tho ?
I think the combination of no god keepsakes and an unlockable sandbox mode would be cool. Like maybe once you’ve completed the story you can access boons/hammers you’ve already gotten but with your run data marked differently or something. That way they could keep the joy of discovering new play styles alive imo
I think the most even heat set up for streaking would be em4, benefits package, middle management and tight deadline, plus one weapon with no god keepsakes allowed
I like the keepsakes because I enjoy interacting with the gods as characters, especially pre-true ending when trying to get all the storylines done. It’s also why I keep coming back to this game time and time again even though I dislike rogue likes. The characters are extremely interesting. For hammers, rather than rerolling I wonder if there could be different hammer types. I can accept the first random one, but it’s frustrating to get all special hammers one I have no use for an attack build. I’ll even be ok if they were rarer but had more specialization, or require use of gold/resources to customize. The purchasing system is quite straightforward atm so there’s potential in integrating it further.
It would be cool to decide 1 or 2 gods to be guaranteed and remove the god keepsakes, and also only being able to choose 1 keepsake and having to stick to it the whole run
I definitely agree that Hades 2 should not have God Keepsakes. As much as I love using them, I feel that the randomness could make the game more interesting in a way.
Respectfully disagree. The randomness and starting from scratch was always there at our first playthrough, or fresh save file. Which gave the sense of mystery and really made those first 10 wins feel earned. However i feel like the reason the game has so much replay value past the main story is because after grinding a save file, you have the ability to go for the builds you want but still have the randomness in what may or may not be offered anyways (i.e. Chaos, Hammers, Heroic Swaps, etc). Plus, you can just not equip a keepsake, if thats your style.
@philgitate6518 of course! Plus like Dan said, if we see a build they're doing after all the people we watch find the cool stuff, it's gonna be basically impossible to try and replicate said build without something like the keepsakes. And even with those, as we've all experienced, we can still get scrammed by the RNG. 😂
I feel like part of what made Hades popular is both how much control you have and the characters. And removing the keepsakes hurts both, since you cant try for a build you just have to be lucky (especially a problem in Tartarus when you can often get forced into single choice boon rooms) and it become a nightmare to progress story and dialogue with any boon gods. Honestly this feels like a take from a roguelike fan who has long run out of things to do rather than what the casual majority would want. Plus if you want to play full random...you can. Just take Coin Purse or Mom Pom or whatever other keepsake and play full random.
Hard disagree. Never been a roguelike fan myself before Hades and the lack of control that the game offers is generally the fun part of the game. It's the "okay, how do I make this work" since almost any combination of 4 *gods* can make a solid build (as long as you make smart boon choices). Sure, it's fun to have a build in mind and the game offers a lot of ways to pull a run in a direction you want (like rerolls), but when I've had most fun is whenever the game has made me need to be thrifty and smart when it comes to my build.
Also noteworthy that a lot of people get a most/least favored god, and removing those keepsakes might actually improve the experience when it comes to the story elements you mention.
I think the best part about hades is the fact that you have the choice to play with or without God keepsakes. You get to decide if you want randomness or choice
I think modular difficulty is good for hades both in terms of accessibility and longevity but I think some pacts, which define high level play are really unbalanced which makes the post 40-ish heat unbearable and just too steep a step. The pact that disables mirror traits for example is just massively above any other heat in terms of impact and personally I'd like if hades 2 has modular difficulty then the high difficulty is a bit more gradual so that the highest possible difficulty still feels hard but the journey to get there is more sloped than stepped
I feel like with all 12 gods, no keepsakes would be a bit much, but all keepsakes wouldn’t be random enough
Maby they should make a heat system where you take heat and you can add positive effects in return
I thibk good game design has elements which can alter the game in fu engaging ways. Not nessarily good, but transformative. Beating games with janky builds is fun, beating games with consistent strong builds is fun. Beating games with boring overtuned items gets old and losing due to poor tuned items feels bad. I do think in general hades does allow for some jank, and I appreciate that. Fully customizable loadouts feels not in the spirit of a rogue lite. Why play a rogue light if you want a ton of control of the experience?
Hammers should be rollable at the cost of 3 rolls
Maybe instead of a free try out room, give players the option to reuse builds they already had in a testing environment.
That way you have to find builds first but can practice them.
This would not be the desired solution but maybe one that could encourage additional runs
Hades 1: Fishing
Hades 2: Cooking
Game of the year
For hammers: unlock Daedalus as a character, get option to pay him something like 5 diamnonds before the run to select 1 hammer that will appear in a pool when you first find a hammer.
This way you get this option only later in the game, and when you first get the opportunity it will be a choice between story progress (you need diamonds for that) and build guarantees. At the very late game when you hoarded enough crystals anyway it's just a qol
For hammers in Hades 2, I'd personally just like to see more focus on "synergy". Some of the most fun runs in Hades are when you get those 2 magical hammers that play off each other really well, like Cluster + Rocket rail, or Exploding Launcher + Charged Skewer spear. Not that they all have to be OP, but those types of combinations almost completely change the feel of the weapons, it'd be interesting to have more of those types of interactions between hammers.
I think in essence hammers shouldn't just be a power-up, but should change the feel of the weapon you're using to keep each run feeling unique (for a long time anyway).
My idea: god keepsakes in the 1st biome only
You can still start off by almost guaranteeing a core you want, but the rest of it is luck and skill in not taking unhelpful gods
Don't really agree with removing God keepsakes. Why would you want more RNG? If you made videos with your cool builds then we as viewers wouldn't be able to replicate them which like you mentioned, lots of people like to do.
I think God keep sakes might be better if they were delegated to a second biome. Like your first biome is just running through with limited control, then you can try and make it work with a God keepsake to add to it in the next biome.
I like these types of videos where you talk to the person viewing instead of to the chat
tried this build a while ago but im probalby just not as good as you at the game and failed
One thing i really hope is in Hades II is an endless mode of some form or something. Ive had so many runs where my build doesnt come together to the last moment and that just sucks. I think theres a mod called Endless Hades or something like that where you just keep going through with harder and harder enemies and you just end up seeing how ridiculous you can get near the end, which i think would be nice
On your point about god keepsakes, i kind of agree but i feel like disabling them should be a heat option
I think Roll-able Hammers are okay, so long as it's a lot more difficult to earn than say, rolling boons & poms. In what form would that be, i dunno. Maybe you need to beat the game however many times to even unlock the mirror for it, or it costs a boon/death defiance. I think there's a way to make it possible but with slightly heavier consequences to the player.
Also the problem with hammers is that there aren't that many for each weapon, right? There's only like 9 or 10. If you pick up a hammer and none of the options are the one you want, the hammer you do want is highly likely just 1 roll away. This might incentivize the devs to add more hammers but that risks growing that imbalance of hammers that are useful and ones that just dont do anything.
100% disagree about removing god keepsakes or fundamentally changing how they work. I think this is an instance of, as you say, a player identifying a pain point but not knowing exactly what the problem is or how best to fix it. Hades is my favourite game of all time and that's only because of the god keepsakes. The total randomness is fun at the start of the game, when you're learning the ropes, meeting new characters and getting new dialogue, discovering all the boons, and blindly trying out new combinations. Once you've seen all the boons and understand which ones work well together and with what weapons, you want to play with specific builds. I don't have unlimited free time, and Hades gets only a portion of it, so I wouldn't want to play much beyond the end of the story if I didn't have the control that god keepsakes afforded me to play the game as I wanted. Besides, you might guarantee a god, but you can never guarantee a specific boon, nor its rarity, and guaranteeing multiple gods when the game wants to give you different ones is its own challenge with risk:reward decisions. You also don't control how many boons you get per run. Yes, you've got rerolls, and again, Hades wouldn't have the same longevity for me without them and the control they afford you, but everything still has a significant element of chance.
If the god keepsakes make the game too easy on a personal level, you can always play without them. If they make the game too easy on a competitive/speedrunning level, they can always be banned by whatever "authority" you submit your runs to. The strength of god keepsakes is also contingent on the quality of a god's boons and how easy it is to get the best ones. In Hades 2, we're going to have more boon-giving gods, and I imagine their boon pools will be larger than the Hades 1 gods' because the nature of sequels is to make everything bigger. Plus, there might be new attacks or abilities that can receive boons, increasing the amount of tier 1s across the board-being able to manipulate your tier 1 boon selection is arguably the most impactful form of boon control. Ergo, if the problem doesn't sort itself out through scale, you can always make your own choices about what's fun to play with. At the end of the day, it's a video game and the only thing that matters is fun, and I think removing the god keepsakes would make the game a lot less fun for a lot of people.
I doubt anyone's going to be reading the.
Comments in this video anytime soon, but I feel like the hammer problem could be solved by allowing rolls on the second hammer only.
I agree with no god keepsakes. To me it doesnt even feel like a rogue like when youre using them. Still love the game, but they are incredibly strong, and imho part of the great part about diving in and trying to solve a "puzzle" figuring out how to win with what youre offered. As opposed to just deciding what god you want on your special or attack or whatever and then if theres a core second piece, guaranting yourself you get it in Asphodel
it would be cool to be able to roll ONE of the options for the hammer. We would be able to choose which hammer we want to reroll, obviously using F.A. just an idea!
I agree. I would be fine be able to roll the hammers just as much as with normal boons.
"I am The Scout here!"
easiest win of your life 😅.
I have honestly not particular wish/ idea for Hades 2. I am just a happy clam, waiting for the ride to start
i feel like a "sandbox" environment as a late game unlock is quite good, the reason i come back to hades is that i wanna try a build i saw you do or just a random build i like, but if i cant pull that off because its inconsistent in a normal run then it kinda puts me off, as a late game pick up it forces you to complete (or close to it) the game before you can do whatever you want with it.
i can compare this to a game like risk of rain 2 (i know its not the same but the idea remains the same) that the command artifact (basically sandbox mode) is an unlockable you have to achieve,
and in the harder difficulties (eclips) its completely locked off (no progression while using it).
how are you forcing the hammer to show up with what you want first? is it a mod?
Yes, I'm pretty sure
@@GhabrielPepernah maybe seeded, you can start a run and you can see what you start off with then give up and he makes content based off what pops up in a run... Just a guess idk for sure if that's the case
@@TMind109 that's possible, but I think he uses this mod when he wants to make a video to showcase a build, like in the last hitless run video
Please don't get rid of keepsakes I need them!!!!
Re: hammers
Part of the issue (IMHO) is that you almost never want certain hammers/always want a particular hammer. They range from "objectively amazing" to "doesn't do much," or are reliant on two specific hammers for excellent results. Like, the rail has some great hammers, but no combo is outstripping cluster rockets.
Some ideas for how it could be improved in the sequel or a similar game:
1. Let players choose between special or attack focused hammers, and you get 2-3 choices from there. This keeps the randomness, but leaves a bit of input. Maybe this could be reserved for a costly anvil-esque option?
2. Make most hammer options a bit more powerful on average. Or maybe *noticeably* more powerful with visuals and secondary effects. Cluster Bomb isn't just a cool hammer because it does a lot of damage; it also looks noticeably different and thus gains some cool factor. The sword and spear especially lack "cool factor" hammers where cool stuff happens on screen because of a hammer effect IMO.
3. MORE HAMMERS. More choices could make it feel a bit less painful when you don't get the perfect one. Maybe best paired with idea 1 or 2?
yesssss i love this build!! one of my favorites, just a shame it's dependent on a hammer so you have to just hope you get it. love to see the health bar just chunk away
edit: i'm so mad spread fire/rocket bomb is literally the combo i go for with this build yet somehow i haven't seen it in MONTHS
Maybe removing gods from the god pool could cost heat.
Having all 12 gods possibly be offered until you have boons from 4 of them is the default, but if you add X heat of difficulty, you can take out one specific god from the pool. Maybe the heat costs grow as you remove more gods.
I think the problem with the god keepsakes now being too powerful is that there's no cost to the control you gain (really only the opportunity cost of not using a different keepsake for a biome).
Top of my wishlist for Hades 2 is an ability to ban one god from your run with something like an anti-Heat level. Or adding other benefits that lower your heat level. I wish there were a way to make certain builds more likely for higher risk, without killing the difficulty
They just need to make a separate save for speedrunning that would solve a lot of the problems, also removing god keepsakes would make the game less enjoyable for 90 percent of players, could have them off in speed run mode tho ?
I think the combination of no god keepsakes and an unlockable sandbox mode would be cool. Like maybe once you’ve completed the story you can access boons/hammers you’ve already gotten but with your run data marked differently or something. That way they could keep the joy of discovering new play styles alive imo
I think the most even heat set up for streaking would be em4, benefits package, middle management and tight deadline, plus one weapon with no god keepsakes allowed
I like the keepsakes because I enjoy interacting with the gods as characters, especially pre-true ending when trying to get all the storylines done. It’s also why I keep coming back to this game time and time again even though I dislike rogue likes. The characters are extremely interesting.
For hammers, rather than rerolling I wonder if there could be different hammer types. I can accept the first random one, but it’s frustrating to get all special hammers one I have no use for an attack build. I’ll even be ok if they were rarer but had more specialization, or require use of gold/resources to customize. The purchasing system is quite straightforward atm so there’s potential in integrating it further.
It would be cool to decide 1 or 2 gods to be guaranteed and remove the god keepsakes, and also only being able to choose 1 keepsake and having to stick to it the whole run
I definitely agree that Hades 2 should not have God Keepsakes. As much as I love using them, I feel that the randomness could make the game more interesting in a way.
Respectfully disagree. The randomness and starting from scratch was always there at our first playthrough, or fresh save file. Which gave the sense of mystery and really made those first 10 wins feel earned.
However i feel like the reason the game has so much replay value past the main story is because after grinding a save file, you have the ability to go for the builds you want but still have the randomness in what may or may not be offered anyways (i.e. Chaos, Hammers, Heroic Swaps, etc).
Plus, you can just not equip a keepsake, if thats your style.
@@DatChanimal All very good points. I completely understand your reasoning in disagreeing, and I appreciate you in doing so. ;)
@philgitate6518 of course!
Plus like Dan said, if we see a build they're doing after all the people we watch find the cool stuff, it's gonna be basically impossible to try and replicate said build without something like the keepsakes.
And even with those, as we've all experienced, we can still get scrammed by the RNG. 😂
I mean, you have the choice to play full random if you want. Just take any general keepsake.