To address this point and another point you made later about combat: If it feels like there is a gap in the player's utility, then there is likely a solution found somewhere else. Remember, you played a catered linear portion of the game, but the full game is non-linear, so the items you have in certain levels all depends on what levels you did before that point.
... Dashing on the overworld is... a perk your player can get?
:LZSskeptic:
I dunno, it just seems like a bizarre choice to gatekeep behind an accessory or a forced learn segment instead of having it be a thing you can enable/disable on your menu.
I agree with this. This is an unfortunate result of not having the custom battle HUD implemented yet. In hindsight, I should have disabled the plugin that does this for the beta test, but since I had grown so accustomed to it, it just didn't cross my mind.
See I knew it was something weird because even base RPG Maker blocks you from using skills you can't cast, no? I hope you get that fixed!
This point and I believe one of the other negatives you brought up have a similar answer to it: if I make it easy for players to avoid a part of my game, then I am encouraging them to disengage with a core mechanic. Dealing with stacks is a core part, and if I made it easy to remove stacks then players would no longer have to contend with a core mechanic of my game. That said, I do think there should be some stack resistance after using Sober Stabilizer so you can at least have some breathing room after using it. So thank you for bringing this up, this is definitely something I want to implement.
Well technically speaking you're already including options in Game Rules that would allow less honest players to brute force their way through the game (EXP multipliers, etc.), hence why I mentioned the Cheat Shop option from Disgaea.
Changing Sober Sterilization to heal a little HP wouldn't hurt, since as far as I'm concerned it was already a skill that only showed up in special situations.
Stacks in particular I see as a mechanic to help reward a player who is persistent versus one that just gives up easily. If they keep going their damage output is higher versus one that gives up and uses another element.
In fact, I would have found it interesting if using stacks and then pulling out into another element would temporarily do big damage before dispersing it into another stack and resetting back to normal damage.
EX. The tutorial made me think the elements were "Shock -> Wind -> Fire" and then back around.
How this would work in practice is that you have two(?) wind stacks for 2x damage then pop a shock attack that does 3x damage and then reset it back by removing the stack, but using fire would remove the stack with no extra damage since it's at the wrong end of the element cycle.
It would help add some spice to the stacking system, since the player has to leverage what option they want the most right now (stunning, MP drain or damage over time).
Since there's only three elements, there's only so many combinations... which would help streamline things for the player.
Including the second paragraph of this point because I wasn't on board with this idea until you brought up my "giving players options" mantra :LZSlol:
I'll add this to my game, but probably not in that way. What information you do know and don't know can radically change people's strategies. It is part of the tactical element that health bars are not shown. However, I had already considered adding a third "armor" slot for augments. Items that don't directly benefit stats, but give boosts in less direct ways. An accessory that adds the ability to see enemy's health bars feels acceptable as: the player would need to acquire this item first so it's not always available, and second, they must sacrifice the slot it takes in their load out in order to see health. (I'll have to think about it some more)
I think this out of everything this is the point we need to focus on the most.
Let me put it like this: how does your gameplay actually
change by having HP bars toggleable without it being tied to an accessory slot?
What in your skillsets for Fidel will force the player to change up their strategy if they can see how much health enemies have before they keel over?
You could say you want to have the "surprise" X factor of a player edging out a boss by killing them when everything seems like it's about to go sideways, but I've seen this be an extremely unreliable sensation since not everyone will see it the same way... and will probably just get frustrated that the enemies aren't dying after like four turns of straight attacking, especially if you're still only on one dude out of three.
Here's my points for pro-health bars:
- It's convenient to let the player see how much they have to whittle through before they're finished.
- Player can get a dopamine boost if they get enough stacks in a row and see their attacks do increasing amounts of damage.
- Not tying it to an accessory allows the player to use something that's actually useful to better strategize for fights. Even the slightest option like "Hey my ConP can naturally regen for 2 points with this on" can possibly make a huge difference, versus "hey I have the basic luxury of seeing how much my damage is actually doing to enemies".
- Knowing how close a boss is to death can actually be a subconscious sign for the player to heal up so they don't waste time attacking! And vice versa.
I asked around in the circles I frequent how peeps feel about deliberately obscured information like this. In particular the question was if they want to fight enemies in an RPG where they can't see the health bars.
The common consensus I got was a blend between:
- "No, that sounds like a pain"
- A compromise like "if the enemy is at 50% or below HP, I want to see the enemy turn into a 'bruised' sprite."
- "Paper Mario did a thing where you had to scan enemies to see what HP they had and the effect was permanent."
To quote someone I know:
"It really depends. For enemies that reliably drop in a small number of hits? It could be fine. Ideally 1-3, but so long as I have a solid sense of what it takes to drop an enemy.
Like, if I'm 6-8 hits in, the enemy hasn't dropped, and most importantly I don't know why, that could be very frustrating.
At that point I'd be wondering, "Am I doing this wrong? Is this form of attack ineffective against this enemy? Is this a fight I'm meant to lose, and I'm just wasting time and resources?
Attack! Little red "5" flashes above the enemy! Is that... good? Or am I ineffectually flailing at something with hundreds of hp?"
(This topic might need a thread for itself to be honest, just to see how many people feel the same.)
Your starting ConP is dictated by the "Starting ConP" formula. By default, this is based on Fidel's level. Game rules allows you to change this.
I think my real question is why it's a feature you can't change after the game actually starts.
At the very least make it the only Game Rules option you can modify during the game itself and make it something the player can utilize.
I dunno, for a section where you have to stay at low ConP otherwise the enemies get a buff?
This actually sounds like a bug, so if you have a chance could you go into more detail?
The intended way this should work is after applying a stack, elements of the same type will increase in damage. So repeatedly using wind attacks will boost the damage of wind attacks. Most enemies don't have resistances with a rare few exceptions.
From my own play testing I had never experienced a bug where stacking was working incorrectly, however the plugin I am using is known to be buggy so maybe something went wrong during your play through. I currently have someone rebuilding the plugin from scratch to correct some of the bugs.
Well... I kept using the wind attack on a cockatrice. The little icon showed up over its head, so I knew the stack was applied.
But every time I kept using said wind attack, it didn't go farther than 7 damage. My expectation was that it would be like 7 -> 14 -> 21, etc.
There is :LZSblush: It surprises me that you never saw the status effects. Wind drains ConP, Shock has a chance to paralyze, Fire does damage over time (though I do think the formula is borked in the beta build, so it does tick "damage" every turn, but it will just tick for 0)
I definitely noticed the Fire Stack was doing damage over time, and that Bool being Shocked had him occasionally not move... but the Wind one was completely lost on me.
I'm a little confused by this point, so I hope I can get to the bottom of it so I can correct it. First you say that he doesn't do anything interesting, just a punch and boosting his ConP - making it sound like it wasn't challenging. But you later say that you died a lot to Bool. Could you describe your experience in a little more detail?
Challenge and spectacle are
two completely different aspects of combat design.
:kaoblush:
I found him hard, but not in a interesting way. He only did those two things, but just those two things messed me up since I didn't have much in the way of answering them other than the heal I (thankfully) had.
Just getting punched by him didn't make for a thrilling fight, since we were doing that back and forth for like... ten minutes straight? It was almost a quitting point, because that and not being able to see his HP made it feel like I was chipping away a wall with little success.
It's not like I had to pay attention to a pattern that allowed my skills to do something other than their base status effects - re: why I mentioned having to use Wind attacks to blow away his arms so he doesn't do an attack that does Fidel's entire health bar in damage or at least 90% of her current HP to scare the player.
Let me put it like this: hitting Bool at a critical point to deal extra damage that he wouldn't otherwise take in addition to a stack is a great way to reward the player for paying attention that they wouldn't get if they were fighting blindly.
It's kind of the same reason everyone here disparages HP sponge bosses, and I personally think that if a boss is shorter but with more meaningful decisions... it tends to be more memorable in the long run.
To address the crystals in the fight:
You can build Fidel in 2 ways: prioritizing your physical attack, or prioritizing your magic attack. There are permanent stat upgrades, allowing the player to prioritize the way they enjoy playing (obviously not present in the beta build). However, in Colosso Caldera, any and all equipment is taken away, and you are stuck using whatever equipment you can find - which may not be the optimal equipment for the way you have built Fidel. The purpose of the crystals is to switch the crystal to the one that affects your current build the least (It's also in line with the whole theme of his name
:LZSangel: Bool)
See, that's interesting. But I think it would also be nice to give the player the ability to permanently delete them if they're going to keep doing that annoying debuff thing.
Them resurrecting constantly unless you figure out the elemental stack that properly superkills them. This helps the player feel like their choices in combat are meaningful.
That said. At the end of the day,
you are the person in charge of your game. You're free to disregard any advice of mine if it doesn't fit with what you want to create.
And just to clarify, not changing Game Rules is the intended way :LZSsmile: Game Rules make it clear that you are affecting the games intended balance. While I definitely want everyone to engage with Game Rules, which is why it's part of the game's marketing, I want players to know that...there is no way in hell I could play test every possible combination for balancing :LZSlol: Some of the major mechanic changes I've play tested a little (such as enabling ConBal for enemies and changing the ConBal type) but there are so many possible combinations (and more to come) that I'm putting the resonsibility of "balance" on the player if they dare to change any of the settings. However to make it less scary for first time players, I plan to implement preset profiles which will be play tested to ensure they aren't horrifically unbalanced. The intent is that with first time play throughs, players can select a preset just to get a surface taste of the power, and then if they chose to do a second play through, they can dive deeper and set up their own Game Rules profile. Preset profiles for Game Rules hasn't been implemented yet, though. Will many players actually use Game Rules beyond presets? Probably not. Does it delight me to no end that there is going to be 1 weirdo who will fawn over having this kind of control over my game? Absolutely, and is the motivator behind it's further development. This one's for the weird kid.
I admire the hell out of this, tbh.
Anyways, I really can't say enough how much I appreciate your thorough analysis. I've taken quite a few notes, and as I mentioned at the top of this, eager to implement some of these adjustments and changes.
You're welcome! I figured you wouldn't get defensive based on how you carry yourself in general, so I genuinely did not hold anything back when talking about Fidel, especially since you want this to be more than a typical RPG Maker game.
Not gonna lie, the enthusiasm to put what I said to work in your game is both heartwarming and kind of intoxicating. It definitely makes me feel like doing this reviewing stuff is worth it from time to time lmao.