MV - Fidel & The Pauper's Paradox (Sean Murray)

● ARCHIVED · READ-ONLY
Started by TheAM-Dol 140 posts Page 7 of 7 View original ↗
  1. TRIDIUM
    #122 Source
    Erif said:
    No way to recover ConP (beyond Poise, I might have not noticed the recovery of the other skills) [Maybe restoring 2 or so ConP after defeating an enemy?]
    Just to clarify, I do believe taking damage and using the attack command recovers a bit of ConP.
    There's also the wind skill that applies the "green" state (can't remember the name) and steals ConP from the enemy .
  2. Erif
    #123 Source
    TRIDIUM said:
    Just to clarify, I do believe taking damage and using the attack command recovers a bit of ConP.
    There's also the wind skill that applies the "green" state (can't remember the name) and steals ConP from the enemy .
    To clarify the clarification, I meant "big" ways. Poise, as far as I saw restores 4 ConP and the other skills range from 1 - 2, if I saw correctly
  3. RCXGaming
    #124 Source
    So funny thing. I recorded a two-hour playthrough for Nolan to scan through so it wouldn't just be me saying things in the void + he can observe someone (that isn't one of our normal streamers) play Fiddle in real time.

    I chose to play in the sea dungeon instead of Caldera Collosso because I wanted to see new content, and well...

    Fidel Thoughts
    + I do like the new photosensitivity/brightness warning at the start of the game.

    + So just gotta say right now - love, love, love the new sprite of Fidel. She (and Joy) are extremely adorable, and she has an incredible amount of personality with the way June depicts her.

    + The way Fidel mispronounces things is super cute, and it genuinely feels like she is in fact A Child and not what an adult thinks a child should act like.

    + This CG work at the beginning is pretty gorgeous. It feels art-game-y in a good way.

    + Cool collapsing bridge animation.

    + The math-generated transitions are incredibly sick, that and the battle stinger SFX is pretty cool to fit it. A lot of the effects in the game help the game look stunning.

    + The warning signs during the tutorial fight are super stylish. I also like the way you streamline the tutorial, even if I feel it's a bit much that you have to explain every part piece-by-piece. A certain someone whose name starts with a T might not like that, haha.

    + Music is consistently amazing. The battle theme in particular I can never get sick of.

    + HP Bars always being visible without having to mess with the default settings is very nice. It relieved a lot of the stress, if I had to be completely honest. (That said, the way they're all displayed regardless of whether you're selecting the enemy in question is pretty messy.)

    + The attention to detail that the townspeople have different things to say depending on whether you talked to them or not before going into dungeons is pretty neato.

    + The enemies look quite nice. Are some of them from packs?

    + The custom sound effects that ARE there / everyone having a unique speaking sound is very nice, though I do think the priest guy having a church choir every time he speaks is a bit much.

    + The randomly generated trash events on the town map are pretty cool. Never figured out what they were for, though.

    + The summoning animation for the Maker where the camera zooms in with an ear-ringing SFX is awesome. Really sells the impact.

    + (Post Maker fight) Oh my god it's the actual RPG Maker dropdown menu. This is the meta nonsense I like. That and Syntax's error message made him actually kinda frightening, almost made me think the game was legitimately bugged.

    + Really love this idea of teleporting only to the most important areas for the town tutorial. Helps guide the player through the town without tiring them out by actually walking through the entire place.

    + I do think the townspeople for the most part are quite charming, but they're pretty flat compared to Fidel and Joy's interaction. Their little cutscene together is easily the best thing in the game. (Felix and Fidel doing the victory theme is a near second though.)

    + I'm in love with this shop interface, even if it is just putting a bunch of icons on a table and making a cool evented(?) show picture(?) setup. It's a hell of a lot cooler than anything I've ever seen done with shops in RPG Maker.

    + Huge fan of these mid-dungeon teleport things. Every game with heavy exploration elements needs something like this, and I'm happy to see it here in RPG Maker. The echoing filter on the sound effects is also pretty sick.

    + The "throw fish to summon a platform on lava" bit will never get old. Fish torture is the best part of this game, to be honest.

    + Huge fan of how you can tackle the game's dungeons in whichever way you want. It allows for a lot of player freedom, which is always a big plus from me.

    + The three-crystal puzzle is pretty neat in the sea dungeon.

    + The maps are very well designed. Lots of pretty-looking scenery.

    + I like the IDEA behind the Syntax fight. Hit the guy with the matching color when he uses the element shield of choice. Too bad it just felt like it went on for longer than it should.

    + The fights are not mash to win. You have cleared the preliminary obstacle. That said... :LZSoops:

    + Love that you can create your own shortcuts in the dungeon. That's very Zelda of you.

    = Are the chickens debug markers?

    = Hey, I recognize a lot of these animations.

    = The beginning of the game in the shiny diamond void dimension seems quite resource-heavy, since I don't experience lag anywhere else in the game, even for my toaster laptop.

    = Gotta say, I didn't notice that you were using borders to signify when a cutscene was running. All of the other UI elements like the game's name didn't make me feel like it meant anything visually. But when I picked up on it, I realized what you were doing. Maybe you should have added another text box angrily saying "DEFEND YOURSELF WITH THESE."

    = The math-summoned battle transition is awesome and all, but it seems my computer doesn't enjoy it since it would occasionally get hung on them for 5-10 minutes or more if I was unlucky. The game itself already asks for A LOT of my memory (it got as high as 1300 MB at one point). I hope this is not an issue people with much better computers than me face.

    = I did not experience any (hard) crash at any point of the game.

    = Mallory's a bit of a weak character to me. The fact he never says what's bugging him outright and the fact he claims Fidel took his home makes him seem even more of a drunk homeless man than he probably actually is.

    = Fidel's portrait sprite in the actual text box pops up alongside her actual bust at random times, which feels pretty wonky - especially when her bust and her face image are complete opposite emotions.

    = I've noticed the raining effect is custom.

    = It's a bit odd that some treasure chests that are opened make it look like there's still gold inside.

    - Why do the names for keys in the keybind look like this? I can't even read what some of these are when they're shrunk like this.

    - I do think it's bizarre that you have soooo much custom SFX and art... yet you still use the base RTP sound effects for taking damage, healing and even use the bodyslam attack with the same SFX that I've seen in a million other games. You should really change this, since it's the sound effects we hear the most in combat!

    - Small nitpick, but in the tutorial where you have like, 20 icons to display the effects of juggling? It feels quite excessive, since it's literally just Wind -> Electric -> Fire repeated over and over. You could get away with just showing just the three and then (and back again), since a person's eyes can glaze over and think that the sequence changes somehow given how long you've made it.

    - I notice Fidel's sprite occasionally pop out of existence every now and then.

    - I hate unwinnable(?) battles like with the Maker Demon guy, especially after how Fidel gets a literal Super Saiyan power-up and unlocks all of her moves to fight him. Like you built it up like it's supposed to be a hype moment, yet it doesn't really matter.

    - Those are some very incomplete-looking menus.

    - I got legitimately softlocked after defeating the mimic! Fidel's sprite was fixed into her "item get" pose and I couldn't move, yet I could still open the menus and even save.

    - Was there supposed to be a penalty for letting the monster reach the top of the map first in that one sea dungeon cave?

    - Oops, I can see the edge of the world if I go to the far east in the sea dungeon map with the boat.

    - I had no idea what to do for that one puzzle where you had to light up all of the crystals before they ran out(?). Like am I missing something here? Was it meant to be a timing thing or a "correct order" thing?

    - So. I'm going to keep it real here. The fact Fidel cannot outrun enemies that chase her when they see her, especially since the only method of slowing them down is an object you gain after some way into a dungeon, is actively detrimental to the game's pace.

    She moves at a permanent 4 speed while the enemies charge in at 5 speed, and keep in mind - your only method of stunning them has limited charges, and gaining new charges hurts Fidel! Every moment when I was able to successfully sneak past them felt like a miracle, since I did not want to deal with them.

    THE BIG THING:
    - I appreciate the attempt at making a game with low numbers. But despite this, the HP of the enemies is Too Damn High: combine this with the fact you always face like three-four dudes in one troop (maybe even more) and the fact YOU CANNOT ESCAPE NO MATTER WHAT... it felt extremely punishing in a way that made me question why I should even bother fighting enemies to begin with.

    I understand the point of giving enemies high HP for something like this - you want to encourage the element-stacking system so the player will experiment and cycle between their skills when needed. Only issue is that by artificially bloating EVERY enemy's HP like this, especially if they're random encounters you're meant to deal with quickly, and throwing so many of them at the player... :kaoback:

    It was stressful trying to avoid enemies on the map because of this, especially with the above issues with map movement. It felt like every single fight was a mini-boss encounter where you had to put in all of your effort, and demanding that same energy from every fight legitimately exhausted me.

    - Likewise, rewards were unbearably scarce compared to the effort it takes you just to defeat one troop / explore. If you could dispatch the enemies quickly, then it wouldn't be as much of an issue. (Seriously though, there was that fight that had four enemies but they only give you 3 rank points [your stand-in for EXP?])

    I would think it'd be a great incentive if the first level/rank/thing was easily gained yet the subsequent levels would ask for more and more, or if it functioned like Paper Mario where you only need 100 to get a full level every time, but you get less star points from enemies you've already defeated over and over to dissuade the player from staying in the same spot over and over.

    But as it stands, it's a bit of a slap to the face for so much effort, yeah?

    - The fact the element stack states are NOT guaranteed. There were multiple times in my playthrough that I tried to get combos going, but they just... refused to land on enemies. Blustery Day to set up an MP leech effect? Nope. Faraday Surge to paralyze an enemy? Nope. Not even Butane Lighter to set up damage over time. If you're going to revolve your game around this mechanic, at least make the effects always land!

    This is also ignoring my issues with what it does to enemy design, since it boils down every enemy, regardless of their design or where you fight them in the game, to the identical blobs of stats that you dispatch in more or less the same way every time.

    - I should stress this right now in big bold print: THE COMBAT WAS NOT HARD.

    I only died twice - first against the Maker and second against the fishman guy. Otherwise, I was able to keep myself afloat with Fidel's healing move every other time. But it should be stated that the COMBAT WAS TOO SLOW. It also did not inspire confidence with the elemental system, since at one point I was like "Oh, this is going to be how the entire game plays, huh?" and that dampened my mood too.

    - The maps are too large for this walking speed. I'm aware you've been resistant to increasing the speed due to how it looks + have some kind of dashing upgrade in mind in the future based on a puzzle I came across at, but Fidel's walking speed combined with how huge the maps are make exploration a slog. Traversing the huge sea in particular felt like you could shrink the map down and/or position the islands closer to each other and you wouldn't lose much.

    - Fidel interacting with the librarian guy was my least favorite NPC interaction because it's just kind of annoying. It's the same joke of "young child argues with deaf old crackpot" for about 4 minutes, and I just kinda groaned when I knew where it was going.

    A lot of conversations tend to drag on, now that I notice.

    - The Rat Gauntlet during the torch quest was too much for me, since I had already found the combat to be slow and uninteresting + my stamina had already been pushed due to all of the various stumbling blocks I experienced off-camera. I am not ashamed to say that, in my state of exhaustion, I quit playing since it felt like the straw that broke the camel's back.

    ? I'm legitimately not sure how to feel about the dialogue between the Maker and the Pauper. Or any of the meta stuff beyond my positive initial reactions. Like is this a constructed world? Are Fidel or the rest of the inhabitants of the village not real people? If that's the case, then it'd make connecting to the people feel pretty worthless!

    So I'm gonna echo what @hiddenone said: if you want the meta elements, either play into them more or just remove them entirely. Like Fidel is different because she's a real person or something?

    The game has strong art direction - it's obvious from June's sprites and all of the cool effects (music, the echoing FX inside the void, the shop interface, maps, etc.) that you want this game to stand out compared to the crowd. Fidel, the title character, is also an adorable character that I'll never get tired of.

    Unfortunately, the game stumbles due to a consistent huge issue - speed.

    Combat is simultaneously not hard yet too slow - too many enemies with too much HP, doubled by the fact you cannot run from encounters once you get into them. Yet they run faster than you on the overworld if you can't use your limited use stunning function that only works from a certain distance. That also hurts you when you use it.

    It made me question why there were on-screen encounters if you can't really dodge them, to quote a certain person here. Also, I'm glad to know Fidel's slow walking speed wasn't just a "me" issue, especially given how large the maps were.

    That and the element juggling system doesn't really address that it suffers from the same thing most RPGs suffer from - poor encounter design. Because you can deal with all the enemies in the same way, more or less. The base system is interesting, but it stops at step 1, essentially.

    That said, a lot of this is easily fixable. Trim down those HP counts, let the player escape combat, shrink the maps, make Fidel move faster, make the enemies drop more rewards. Oh, and make her start out with enough ConP to at least use one move before she has to Poise over and over to get new ones.
  4. alice_gristle
    #125 Source
    I also played the beta!:kaoluv: I liked bein' able to shoot lightning at logs. And at Fidel. :biggrin:
  5. TheAM-Dol
    #126 Source
    Hey! Thanks everyone for taking the time to play the game and leave your feedback!
    I decided to go ahead and just read through some of it and process it. I've put some of the most relevant feedback into a document. Once everyone is done playing through the game, I'll talk about those points and my plans (or lack of plans) to change the problems.
    There has been a reoccurring theme in most of the feedback:LZSangel:


    That being said, despite the number of people who have left a comment here, I still only have 3 people who have filled out the feedback form.
    If you have a chance, I would really appreciate you taking a moment to fill it out.
    Thank you :LZSproud:
  6. TRIDIUM
    #127 Source
    I'm 99% sure I filled it out, but just to double check, you did get mine, correct?
  7. ATT_Turan
    #128 Source
    I am 33% of the cool kids!
  8. woootbm
    #129 Source
    Hello, it is I, The Bad Man, from the hater squad. You've seen the video, so here's my extra bonus dissection rant with bullet points. I'll try to only bring up stuff that hasn't really been talked about, from what I've seen. Also, I'm using my own video as reference, hence the weird order:

    Wall of text
    Options
    • For my own playthrough I changed every game rule that would make the game faster to get through/easier. Does this work if done from the start screen BEFORE pressing "New"? It didn't feel that different
    Intro
    • We did select the more "advanced" tutorials, but do we really need some of these things explained now? Like how effective each healing item is. Seems like the point is healing items are limited
      • These limits are quite restrictive. It doesn't seem like you get healing items that often either.
        • You do get a lot of presents which can have items in them, but often have 3 pennies. I think the normal player instinct is to save these for the townpeople, though
      • These items seem underpowered since they do not give "Healthy". The action economy value of Latte, in particular, is a net loss for a player's turn
    • You give us these very detailed, long tutorials to hype up these skills but then say things like "+ healing bonuses" and "Fidel's physical attributes". What's the point of this if you don't actually tell us these details?
    • Unnecessary to repeat so much info when showing each of the 3 element skills. No player is going to reread all of this
    • Fidel's motivation: she's told to fight so I guess she does. Later conversations make it seem like she still doesn't want to fight.
      • I like to harp on motivation a lot because it's what gives a lot of bonus points to a game's narrative. Sure, a lot of players just accept "I am RPG hero" and just do a hundred hours of mindless grinding. But a good motivation subconsciously drives player investment
      • I feel this is a key disconnect with the combat. Fidel is this cute little child but she's continually getting into battles to the death with everything. I think player expectation with such a character is that combat would be light and easy.
      • Either way, it would improve her character if she was more invested in why she's fighting monsters as opposed to just being told to "do it" a la Palpatine to Anakin (hey, more Star Wars prequel ref's)
    • The first boss fight gets its own section:
      • This goes on too long. At the very least, I'd suggest a troop event that ends the fight after 5-10 turns or something
      • What is the point of giving the player all these abilities?
        • We haven't had time to get a feel for these abilities so giving improved ones is meaningless
          • This is ineffective as a "carrot on a stick" because Fidel is still super weak in this fight. It would make more sense if she got some tough-ish fights then went super saiyan and was able to crush those fights
          • Is this supposed to showcase her power a la Alucard in SoTN?
            • If so, she still feels weak so it doesn't work
            • Also, that specific example is for when a character needs to be explained why they are level 1 when their powers are taken away. That is unneeded here
    Town NPC's
    • These intro's are very long and are mostly back-and-forth banter. I definitely think these can be trimmed down. You can always have more banter as the game goes on as the player builds investment into the game
    • NPC's tied to player progression (vendor, librarian) will automatically be "liked" more by players and favored for gifts. I hope this is accounted for in the town upgrade system
    Dungeons
    • Walk speed: a hot topic, yet Tony and I didn't comment on this in the video. I guess we're contrarians, but we weren't too bothered by it.
      • That said, it's fairly unanimous that players want to feel like they are moving fast in a game regardless of anything (although I'd argue that doesn't fit the pace of this game)
    • My REAL issue is being sent back to town when dying. Why not get sent back to the start of the screen you are on?
    Encounters
    • Are these randomized troops? There doesn't seem to be any ramp up in them. Tony's first fight is against three enemies. WOW
    • There's a lot of overlap in what enemies do. Also, I really don't get a sense of what enemies can do and why. It just feels random
      • For example, these rats are hitting me with lightning skills. Why?
      • There's just like slimes and skullslimes and jellyfish and ... a wisp? I get that JRPG's tend to have random nonsense attack you but it's always more immersive to have enemies relative to an area and who have motivation to attack the player. IE go into a forest and see bears. Why are bears attacking you? A ranger tells you a sorcerer poisoned their water and made them crazy. Something.
    • I really would recommend Yanfly's Battle AI or something similar. I'm rolling my eyes when enemies use abilities at the wrong time and waste their turn
      • Conversely, they sometimes use their best ability over and over and it gets annoying
    Sahuagin boss
    • I'm not sure how a player is supposed to figure out this shield thing. I did notice the shield is different colors, but I'm not sure players will get to USE that color
      • Maybe the shield icon should be neutral, but show the element piercing it? Hard to do with 32x32 I know

    Misc
    • Upper left logo blocks location name. This makes using the teleporter harder because I can't see the names of places
      • The names of places are also hard to parse. If we're being meta, why not just say "dungeon start" or stuff like that?
    • I know I'm heavily biased towards Standard Turn Based combat, but the use of RPGM's default turn-based (what is this called?) makes the game feel inconsistent
      • Since you only have one character and she has high agi, it tends to feel like STB anyway
      • It only becomes not STB when you have double turns or the enemy uses an AGI
    • I can point you to a Yanfly plugin that does eval text in descriptions so things like "30% chance to apply" will update with your stats.
  9. alice_gristle
    #130 Source
    woootbm said:
    Sahuagin boss
    • I'm not sure how a player is supposed to figure out this shield thing. I did notice the shield is different colors, but I'm not sure players will get to USE that color
      • Maybe the shield icon should be neutral, but show the element piercing it? Hard to do with 32x32 I know
    I just wanna share a funny detail about my playthru: I didn't even know this boss had a shield thing until y'all pointed it out. Me? I just put on like five fire stacks on him and then defended, watchin' him slowly burn to death. It wuz the only really fun fight I recall having! :kaoluv:
  10. RCXGaming
    #131 Source
    Woo brought up some points I straight up forgot to mention:

    Spoiler
    woootbm said:
    Options
    • For my own playthrough I changed every game rule that would make the game faster to get through/easier. Does this work if done from the start screen BEFORE pressing "New"? It didn't feel that different

    My issue is that the options require you to know what they even mean before you even start the game. Like a new player would be like "what the hell is ConP?" or "why is there a meter for trash collection?", or wonder what "community EXP" entails.

    I GUESS it's for players who played the game before, but wouldn't it be better to have these be things that could be changed as you were playing the game ala. Disgaea's Cheat Shop? As long as you built it in a way that couldn't be abused.

    woootbm said:
    • We did select the more "advanced" tutorials, but do we really need some of these things explained now? Like how effective each healing item is. Seems like the point is healing items are limited
      • These limits are quite restrictive. It doesn't seem like you get healing items that often either.
        • You do get a lot of presents which can have items in them, but often have 3 pennies. I think the normal player instinct is to save these for the townpeople, though
      • These items seem underpowered since they do not give "Healthy". The action economy value of Latte, in particular, is a net loss for a player's turn

    I looked back through my playthrough footage and saw that the limits were 3 Lattes, 2 of the 66% healing item and only 1 Espresso. That's kind of insane because like... it's not like Fidel's really gonna be using these on herself given that she's going to be Poising and trying to land stacks anyway.

    Also, I didn't even notice that Lattes are just Mend the Wound but worse. An insane visionary would make it so you could use any of the non-Espresso drinks without using up a turn, but you'd have cooldown based on the individual items.

    I mean, South Park: The Stick of Truth worked like that - you could use a single item without losing your turn.

    woootbm said:
    • Unnecessary to repeat so much info when showing each of the 3 element skills. No player is going to reread all of this

    I touched on this, but only really for the sheer amount of icons used to display juggling.

    It's kind of strange too when the skills in question are literally just "MP Leech", "enemy can't move sometimes due to paralysis" and "fiery damage over time".

    woootbm said:
    • The first boss fight gets its own section:
      • This goes on too long. At the very least, I'd suggest a troop event that ends the fight after 5-10 turns or something
      • What is the point of giving the player all these abilities?
        • We haven't had time to get a feel for these abilities so giving improved ones is meaningless
          • This is ineffective as a "carrot on a stick" because Fidel is still super weak in this fight. It would make more sense if she got some tough-ish fights then went super saiyan and was able to crush those fights
          • Is this supposed to showcase her power a la Alucard in SoTN?
            • If so, she still feels weak so it doesn't work
            • Also, that specific example is for when a character needs to be explained why they are level 1 when their powers are taken away. That is unneeded here

    The super saiyan power-up is really weird in a lot of ways that doesn't make sense:

    - It feels unearned because we literally started the game 5 minutes ago. We don't know who Fidel is.

    - The power-ups are a "doubled turns" skill, a status purge and an AOE physical attack. That you also don't keep after the fight ends. Hardly worth the power-up sequence, since none of them really change how you play the game in significant ways.

    - Pairing "hype moment where you power up" with "nigh-unwinnable fight" is ridiculous tonal whiplash. Even if the Maker didn't take so long to kill, it genuinely feels like a first draft version of this scene that wasn't planned out properly.

    woootbm said:
    Dungeons
    • Walk speed: a hot topic, yet Tony and I didn't comment on this in the video. I guess we're contrarians, but we weren't too bothered by it.
      • That said, it's fairly unanimous that players want to feel like they are moving fast in a game regardless of anything (although I'd argue that doesn't fit the pace of this game)
    • My REAL issue is being sent back to town when dying. Why not get sent back to the start of the screen you are on?

    You wouldn't have an online critique show if you weren't contrarians.

    My personal issue with the slow speed lies squarely in the fact you can't escape from enemies (both in terms of dodging their sprites on the overworld and you know... not being able to escape from combat.)

    woootbm said:
      • There's just like slimes and skullslimes and jellyfish and ... a wisp? I get that JRPG's tend to have random nonsense attack you but it's always more immersive to have enemies relative to an area and who have motivation to attack the player. IE go into a forest and see bears. Why are bears attacking you? A ranger tells you a sorcerer poisoned their water and made them crazy. Something.

    If I had to guess what the intention was, the sea dungeon is the "electric" area so that's why electric wisps are there. Jellyfish are there because lol ocean. I tend to associate slimes with water. No idea why there's electric rats though.

    But these are all like, conjecture and not actual reasons. It would have been a perfect opportunity for Nolan to be like "The Maker defiled the ocean - now the water eats up people who try to swim in it and the sea life attacks anything insight. Watch out for those brainsucking jellyfish, my child."

    Or something.

    woootbm said:
    • I really would recommend Yanfly's Battle AI or something similar. I'm rolling my eyes when enemies use abilities at the wrong time and waste their turn
      • Conversely, they sometimes use their best ability over and over and it gets annoying

    A thing I noticed was that a lot of enemies lacked MP to use their skills, so they just sat around doing nothing. Good for not dying, but it kind of made fights feel like we're waiting for a dentist's appointment.

    alice_gristle said:
    I just wanna share a funny detail about my playthru: I didn't even know this boss had a shield thing until y'all pointed it out. Me? I just put on like five fire stacks on him and then defended, watchin' him slowly burn to death. It wuz the only really fun fight I recall having! :kaoluv:

    Damn, Alice. You're the only person I know who can crush a man's spirit with a smile.

    Also, give me your luck because I couldn't try this even if I wanted to.

    woootbm said:
    Misc
    • Upper left logo blocks location name. This makes using the teleporter harder because I can't see the names of places
      • The names of places are also hard to parse. If we're being meta, why not just say "dungeon start" or stuff like that?

    Not gonna lie... gonna snatch that, because I was planning to have mid-dungeon teleports anyway.
  11. ShadowDragon
    #132 Source
    woootbm said:
    Hello, it is I, The Bad Man
    OHH Batman where is your mask?
  12. TheAM-Dol
    #133 Source
    I thought about posting this in my live-stream thread, but that's mostly about reviewing other people's games. In this stream I talk a lot about Fidel, it's inspirations, it's meaning, it's intentions (even if I failed to meet those), as well as future plans going forward with the game and how I am addressing some of the major underlying problems.

    There is a TON to talk about, and Ernest was there with me, playing through my game, so it is very, very long at nearly 7 hours long of talking about the game, the flaws, it's future, etc.

    - YouTube Oh my god, I don't know how to get youtube to embed the friggin video.

    Give it a try, I think it will answer a lot of feedback and questions y'all might have. I know it's long, so feel free to just jump around and skip parts and even set the playback speed to 1.5x (or 2x if you can understand us at that speed).

    There are no time stamps in the video, sorry about that. I will say around the 6 hour mark we really start to talk a lot about the story of the game and how that story will play out in the future of this game.


    There are still about 8 people left on my sign up sheet for the game.
    The unfortunate over-reliance on luck for the main combat gimmick has unfortunately turned most of all the feedback into really honing in on that. So rather than continue receiving similar feedback, from this point forward I will be sending the remaining people on the sign up list the version that Ernest played in the video.
    This version only has 2 minor tweaks made to it compared to the other version, but I think they make a huge difference to the overall feel of the game.
    1) The tutorial boss fight is slightly more aggressive and hits a little bit harder - still probably not to enough to prevent people from spending 30 minutes facerolling the boss, but hopefully it will discourage people from doing that. AND BEFORE YOU SAY ANYTHING: duh, that's gonna be fixed in 1.0. This was just a "hot patch" I did - a temporary solution.
    2) I changed the chances of applying stacks, where your skills will always apply the first stack, but each subsequent stack reduces it's chance of success by 50%. So it goes: 100%, 50%, 25%, 12%, 6%.
    Again, this was just another hot-patch that was done and is not finalized. Skill descriptions were not appropriately updated to match this change. In 1.0 these numbers will be tuned more. It's just a hot-patch.

    Finally, before signing off, I just wanted to leave this picture here:
    foundIt.jpg

    February 7th, I called it.
  13. Canned_Dinosaur
    #134 Source
    TheAM-Dol said:
    The unfortunate over-reliance on luck for the main combat gimmick has unfortunately turned most of all the feedback into really honing in on that.
    This didn't bother me one bit... but it occurred to me that perhaps I am brainwashed by games like Unlimited: SaGa and SaGa Scarlet Grace, into thinking there's nothing wrong with that...

    EDIT: and also table-top RPGs with their pretty unforgiving dice rolls...
  14. ShadowDragon
    #135 Source
    I did saw "placeholder" on some places, could be a tiny cutscene or 1-5 pictures.
    but while in development it's a good way for the time being.

    New Game Name: PlaceHolder
    context: Place Holder
    Place Game
    "Place Holder Title Picture"
    start Game
    "Place Holder Text + Picture" In Progress!
    you beat the demo Place Holder!
  15. TheAM-Dol
    #136 Source
    werzaque said:
    This didn't bother me one bit... but it occurred to me that perhaps I am brainwashed by games like Unlimited: SaGa and SaGa Scarlet Grace, into thinking there's nothing wrong with that...

    EDIT: and also table-top RPGs with their pretty unforgiving dice rolls...
    I'm glad to hear that, though to be honest, I sort of knew this was coming.

    So mind you, and everyone else who left feedback, I played through the game, start to finish, probably about 5 times before considering it "ready for the playtest".
    During all that play time with my game, I - myself - quickly found the low chance to proc the state an annoyance as well. I didn't patch it for the final release because
    1) I didn't think people would hone in so much on just that 1 point of the game where there is certainly more to the content than just the combat.
    2) I still wanted to get opinions on the mechanic as it was before any adjustments were made.
    3) At the time, I didn't have a clear idea of how to fix it using existing tools in the project. I thought it would require a plugin to get it to behave better, which would require time searching for the plugin or possibly necessitating a custom plugin, which leads me to point 4...
    4) I really, really did not want to delay the play test any more. As my previous screen shot illustrated I've been talking about doing it since at least February, and the intent was to get the play test out by the start of May, but life had other plans for me, and so here we are doing the play test in August.

    Anyways,
    As Ernest in the livestream has pointed out, the biggest challenge with the system is not the system, but it's lack of communication.
    So in the end, I guess I need to find a programmer who can actually stay on the project and not just disappear or ghost me, so that this mechanic can be built exactly to spec, instead of being duct-taped together using janky public release plugins.
    Here's to hopin', ain't that right @Mac15001900 ?
  16. Slaughty
    #137 Source
    What can I say that hasn't already been said?
    Slaughty's Review
    Well for starters...
    During the intro boss battle, it crashed, I reloaded and then I never received the fire skill and I didn't know any better so I slogged through 3 hours of the slowest combat imaginable cursing Mr. Nolan for telling me to use WIND-LIGHTING-FIRE and not giving me the tools to do that. I came here to write a pretty scathing review when I read Alice's comment about burning everything and thought, "well.. maybe I hit a bug?" I restarted, it worked correctly and I walloped the Maker. Battles are way more fun being able to "juggle" compared to just wind-lighting over and over.

    I decided to go to the Sea and played all the way through the boss, which somehow wasn't as bad as the 4 enemy troops I kept fighting. Battle theme is still stuck in my head as I write this. Only time I ever died was during my second playthrough, which is funny considering I actually had the necessary skills to win on my second playthrough, but by this point I wasn't paying as much attention to battles anymore and was just kind of done.

    Sound & Music are exceptional. This is where FatPP really shines! Headphones are a must, especially with the long reverb/echo on the sound effects. There's little flourishes during dialogue that really give the game whimsy. Audio fades in when you get close to the river. Music is really well done and fits the moods and theme of the game really well. I saved in town and left the game on the save screen and took a 10-minute break and came back to no music playing. It was kind of weird. Talked to the Beinon (I can't remember how it's spelled) and it started playing again. One critique, with all the custom sounds and music, there's still some animations that are stock with stock sounds, like when Fidel is getting attacked by an enemy in battle, but it's early, I'm sure you going to replace it.

    Art & Aesthetics are also really well done. The few custom sprites look amazing and have a certain charm to them. The character art and busts are phenomenal and Fidel and Joy's character designs are really cute and adorable. I like how Fidel has an idle animation, I'm just unsure how to feel about it. Maybe it's just me, but it looks like she's dancing. Like, oh no, monsters! Better break dance! or You sad? Better breakdance in the library! I love the Void area at the beginning, it really stands out and is unique. All the mapping is well done, standouts really go to the interior maps. The whole art direction of the game is very pleasant and uniform. It has a modern/modernish/clean feel to it.

    What I didn't like was the font. It can be a little difficult to read at times with it's thin weight on a bright surface. Also the letter "e" will make a little line in the text box. The letter "e" & "c" look like twins, and the "f" & "t" can have their line faded out. I'm also not a fan of leaving Fidel's bust on screen when others are talking when they don't have a bust. It works well with Joy and that emo boy since they have busts but it can be a little confusing at times who is talking. Something else I noticed was I would read a text box, push confirm for the next one, and while my eyes are still at the bottom of the screen where the text box was, some action or a emote balloon would pop up and I would miss it as my eyes went from the bottom to the center of the screen. Maybe put a short pause or something.

    Gameplay is not bad, but it's not great either. The battle system needs more time in the oven. Maybe not so much frontloading at the beginning. I know it's hard to explain so I don't have any tips for this but as a player it's information overload since I just booted the game up. It's not a bad idea, pretty unique, but very prescriptive in how it plays and buddy, every single battle plays out the same way. Poise (Guard) - leech - Poise again etc... There's little room for experimenting or playing in a different style than what is prescribed. Fighting 1 v 4 means 80% of actions are me standing around getting hit or waiting my turn. Battles are long and slow and there doesn't seem to be any actual variety to enemies besides how they look. Maybe I'm wrong, but they all "FEEL" the same. Possible recommendations would include reducing the number of enemies per troop, reducing enemy HP, having Fidel start off with some ConP or have it carry over from previous fights. Maybe have certain enemies start out with a stack or be immune/resistant to a stack or something. I used attack like 2 or three times and the game basically teaches you that it's worthless and you're better off guarding and then using a skill.

    The town mechanics feel a little under explained. I like the idea of cleaning up the town or giving people gifts, but for what and more importantly WHY? Fidel says she wants everyone to be happy, but as a player I'm left wondering why because I don't know these people or care. I guess we just do it because it told us too and the rewards for doing this seem vague.

    I really really like the Zelda style exploration and the on map tools, the warps back to town are a great QoL. I like how the map kind of goes back in on itself with shortcuts. The riddle/puzzle on the little islands was nice. Not complicated or requires knowledge outside of the game world (It's harder than people think). I got the lightning thing and while it's nice to be able to zap obstacles, the penalty being HP in a resource stingy game, seems counterintuitive to exploration. In fact there's a few design choices that almost make it seem like you didn't want us to explore. The slow walking speed with no dash option. I get that you wanted to slow the pacing down so it doesn't feel like a caffeinated toddler speeding around the map and make it more methodical & strategic but it turns exploration into a chore rather than an adventure. It suffers from the prescriptive element as the battle system, play it this way and only this way. Which is kind of weird when you have so many options in the options menu to customize gameplay and you also turn the player loose in town, go and do whatever you want.

    Story & Writing What little we can gleam of the story is pretty intriguing. The opening Void scene is the most captivating and really leaves the player with some questions. The dialogue is very well written, all the characters have their own voice, mannerisms, goals, and personalities. None of the jokes made me laugh out loud, but a few made chuckle. The back and forth with the librarian over stayed it's welcome and beat the joke into the ground. It was gold, and then it kept going, and going... For me, this was the case for a lot of the dialogue. It was competently well written, it just had a tendency to overstay its welcome. Joy and Fidel's meeting is really well done but at the same time just over stayed it's welcome for me. If you take a shot everytime a character just says" Yeah." you're going to need an ambulance. Fidel's mispronouncation is cute and gives her personality, although it can a little hard to read outload. The Meta elements are actually done really well and add more intrigue, but I have to agree with Hiddenone, that you're going to have to lean into more or remove it.

    All the towns people seem fairly rounded out but what's Fidel's motivation besides, "make everyone in town happy."? Why? What difference does it make it? Why does Fidel care besides a childish view of the world? Why do I care as a player? After the intro my goal as a player is... Just wonder around and do what you want. Does Fidel want to get back home? Take revenge on the maker? Stop the Maker from doing something? Just live peacefully in the commune after making everyone happy?

    Pacing it's slow, you know that, I won't beat a dead horse into the ground. The combat is slow, the movement and exploration are slow and sometimes the dialogue is slow (either because it just keeps going or it interrupted something I was doing). I wonder if a stamina based dash would work at least for the dungeons or something.

    Technical & Issues This is weird because so much of the game is competently put together and you're doing a lot outside of typical RPG maker games but there's some weird things happening sometimes.
    -There's a few passiblity errors: there's a few tiles in a house that are just floor but cannot be walked on. There's books on tables that appear over the character. etc.
    -Opening the menu or coming out of certain houses in town would make the screen flicker and fade in an odd way.
    -Saving, I get that you are doing a custom system but until that point I don't see why this is necessary. Just do Yanfly's for now like you are doing or do the default and just disallow saving in certain areas.
    -There's a path in the sea area that goes down that doesn't have a fade in command and you are left playing blind trying to hit the transfer event back.
    -Only happened once, leaving the cave with the fish statue in town didn't do the fade in command so I think I went back into the cave and back out but then I was standing on a hill that should've been impassible.
    -I got the crash at the tutorial boss fight and then on subsequent game never received the fire skill.
    -Keybinding is almost unusable to anyone outside of RPG maker. I can't read whatever is displayed over the keys and I know it's the Yanfly one but it has always felt unintuitive to me. Guess what, I also play with a controller so not being able to reload the lightning on the controller becuae there's no R key sucks.
    -Would like some kind of HUD for the town stuff.
    (Edited to add)
    -interior maps: camera/screen scrolling would focus on the wrong area if the player goes back and forth repeatedly in the area where the camera pans over. I just wanted to see if I could break it, turn out you can.

    Summary It's still in early development so I get a lot of it is placeholder or will change. The art is amazing, the characters are fleshed out, it's a fairly unique concept and was never really UNFUN or anything like that. The Meta elements are really cool, the effects are awesome. The sound and music are really top notch above the rest. What really is eating you up is the pacing. I would just bring that up a little more. Not a lot, but it definitely crawls at times. I'm very interested to see where this projects goes as it shows a ton of potential and has a lot of love poured into it.
  17. ATT_Turan
    #138 Source
    TheAM-Dol said:
    1) I didn't think people would hone in so much on just that 1 point of the game where there is certainly more to the content than just the combat.
    There certainly is, but combat is the first...what, 20+ minutes of play?

    TheAM-Dol said:
    So in the end, I guess I need to find a programmer who can actually stay on the project and not just disappear or ghost me, so that this mechanic can be built exactly to spec, instead of being duct-taped together using janky public release plugins.
    I'm not going to watch a 7-hour video to figure out exactly what you're talking about, but I'm curious what you want to do with your states that can't be easily accomplished with Yanfly's Skill Core (or Buffs & States).
  18. TheAM-Dol
    #139 Source
    This is probably more deserving of a dedicated topic, but it's just that for my game, I'm just not satisfied with existing plugin solutions.
    A piece of missing info some people may have here on RMW is that also I have a PM from Turan that further elaborates, but since both seem sort of connected, I feel like I should just address the point as a whole.
    So his PM was basically wondering why I feel like I should throw money at custom plugins, rather than using the existing publicly released plugins.

    First of all; there is nothing wrong with anyone who uses them, this doesn't come from a place of superiority "because I can."
    It's mostly just that, many plugins just don't seem to meet my vision. It often feels like things have to be compromised on.
    Many plugins either lack enough customization, lack adequate documentation, lack notetags and plugin commands that I would need, always requiring me to find some sort of duct tape solution - never mind the fact that not all plugins are tested very well and often have oversights, crashes, or incompatibilities.

    I don't expect every plugin to have all of the features I want because they are offered for free or at the very least developed by a hobbyist programmer. But it unfortately means that the plugins just fail to meet my vision.
    Getting support for plugins is also tough; like Yanfly is pretty easy because it's so ubiquitous, but beyond that it gets tough to find people to help with specific plugins or patch things. Only some popular names stick out; SRD, Galv, Hime, and Eli. Even then, it took me some 4 - 6 months (I don't remember) to get the solution to a problem I had with galv's layer graphics.
    The number of problems that arise from introducing a new plugin to my project often just causes a lot of headaches; like, sure the plugin for what I want to do already exists, but then it feels like I often have to spend the next week just getting the thing to behave properly before I can even make the mechanic I want. Here's just a few examples of what I am talking about:
    • SRD has mindless copy-paste errors in some of his plugins, and poor documentation that sent me on a wild goose chase.
    • Aries charges money for their plugins but has a typo in the code that crashes the plugin if a specific function is used.
    • Not so long ago Arthran was having to patch a memory leak in Olivia's plugin. Not one I use, but again just goes to show, if you haven't read (and understood) the actual code of the plugin, you have no idea what you are introducing into your game.
    • The Pixi Filter's documentation is ultra dog-water that I spent like 3 days just trying to determine wtf the dev was talking about.
    • The number of weird things I've run into using Yanfly plugins; a simple example that comes to mind is, funnily enough, Keyboard config. Maybe it's just personal bias, but seems like a weird oversight that he has basically preset keyboard layouts (arrows or WASD) but there is no plugin command to set what the default preset layout is.
    • Documentation on creating options in Yanfly options core is a/s.

    Some more reliable plugin devs have minor annoyances that crop up, though admittedly these could just be because my plugin load is quite large.
    • Eli's escape codes everywhere plugin ruins the formatting of a lot of text in the game (you can see in my game where the word RANK overlaps Fidel's name in the victory aftermath screen) and the fix for this is located in a completely separate plugin that may be incompatible with one of my other plugins.
    • Hime's stuff is mostly reliable but just better hope nothing does go wrong because she's MIA, like many, many other devs.

    Galv at least still pops in from time to time to offer support for his plugins.
    I could probably go all day listing off all of these frustrations, but really my point is:
    You know what I really don't enjoy doing? Troubleshooting someone else's work. I just want to focus on making my game.
    All these points addressed above are the technical problems with using existing plugin solutions, this don't even address the resulting "cookie-cutter" nature that tends to come out of them.

    By having custom plugins made it means:
    I can spend more time focusing on making my game.
    The result will meet my vision both visually and technically.
    To me, this is worth the cost.

    That doesn't mean I'm saying "NO!" to all plugins. There are some plugins that I can still use. Especially utility plugins that don't add new mechanics but basically just expand on what the editor can do are very valuable (such as event spawners I would consider utility)

    What I am saying is that there are many aspects of my game that I feel it would be better to have something custom made for it.

    And I'm running out of time to type out this rant, lol. So let's leave it at that.
    We can start a topic discussing it if you want.
  19. Mac15001900
    #140 Source
    TheAM-Dol said:
    Here's to hopin', ain't that right @Mac15001900 ?
    We'll have to wait and see if this collaboration works out, but it would indeed be rather cool if it did ;)

    Things might be happening soon.
  20. TheAM-Dol
    #141 Source
    Long time no talk. The game's been a bit silent, and there's a reason for that.

    I will be talking candidly about the whole process of finding a (reputable) publisher, complete with a timeline of events, showing off my own pitch material, and the results. I've prepared a whole slideshow presentation for the topic!
    I hope you'll join me if you care about my game or finding a publisher.

    The stream will start Sunday 10PM JST, which is likely morning for the American folks and afternoon for the Euros. Click the link and find out.
    If you can't join, the archive will be available to watch shortly after the stream - you just won't be able to participate in the QA.

    - YouTube
    You might see me spam this across RMW, but I think it's a good chance for anyone who has thought about pursuing a publisher to learn about the process.