I hate holding the shift key, so I only skipped dialogue when something I already read took too long to appear.
;) Problem's only if I think there'd be the same lines again and it's something different this time. But this may have to do with me being an impatient player/reader.
Ah, I thought Teleport was deactivated due to story reasons. After finishing the Nexxus, the Druid said something about not teleporting there so I guessed you just forgot to tell the player.
The thing with the boat following sounds nice.
:)
I don't think you'll ever please everyone no matter how good you balance those characters.
;) Had I equipped Shade with anything defensive and healed a bit more with Willard (I usually prefer buffing the party's defense instead of healing) then she also would've survived more often. Well, she only died twice. And I would have revived her hadn't it been for the next attack killing the respective bosses.
Spoiler
The mushroom was the savepoint? I was used to those magic circles being the savepoint and was a bit confused that the circle in the room with the Lich wasn't. That's a little inconsistent, which usually should be avoided. ^^"And for the common event thing: I use Tsukihime's
Scene Interpreter for stuff like that, maybe it also works for you?
Spoiler
Regarding the maps, The Yank already said most things, I think. When visiting the slums the first time I was like "Oh, isn't finished yet?", especially compared to the main street of the town (so I'd say the slums being among the worst ;) ). Also the basement (?) of the lighthouse felt weird. Not very basement-y.
A friend of mine told me many years ago to work a lot smaller when mapping (when in doubt, decrease the size) and not to forget the map's function. I think that's also said in all those mapping tutorials out there. The maze actually was quite pretty due to maze-y space restrictions whereas in other areas I was just running around comparably aimlessly because it was just a big boxy area with almost no points of interest (meaning in terms of directing the player). When mapping, just imagine you'd go through that area for the first time. Would you understand where to go? Can you navigate freely but not too unrestricted?
Sorry, could only say more general things. ^^" But usually, as soon as one understands such things, mapping and such gets a lot easier. At least it was like that for me. ;)
Actually the bit with the Druid was just flavored based. If you had used teleport afterwards, and it worked nothing bad would have happened. At least not yet when someone isn't watching you after you have the Crown. This is not yet implemented.
Thank you for the recommendation. I will certainly look at that to make life easier, he is a complete lifesaver when it comes to scripts.
EDIT: Oh sweet Pelor. It works, and it's magnificent. You are a life saver. I will be sure to tell Hime how wonderful he is.
Very sound advice thank you. Less space, more focus.
The slums (where the beast men live) needs a LOT of work, as does the nobles district, especially near where Link and Navi are. The area above the piano in the nobles district church needs a lot of work, and I feel like the inn is too big. The stair connecting the altar room to the barracks is an example where you should not have "retain direction" checked. The passability settings also need to be fixed, I can walk on some walls and the overturned cart in the slums.
The main street of Silver town is a map that I feel is quite good, as it is just the right size. If you make maps too big, detail that you add can feel forced and not natural.
Upstairs merchants house is too empty and big, also why aren't there any people?
The sign in SIlver town feels a bit weird, I feel like something better to do would be have a choice when you leave town that asks you where you want to go, because a lot of the time I acidentally miss the sign and end up outside of town, then I have to go back in to the sign again.
In the room next to the lighthouse I accidentally skipped the text when I stepped into Willard's room because I was holding shift- add a balloon icon or a pause or something so that we know theres text incoming, or it might get skipped.
The first part where you enter the lighthouse via floorboard is too empty. Make it smaller, theres a giant patch of empty space in the middle.
The text had too much unnecessary stuff at the beginning, as the game progressed it got better. The main thing you should NOT do is dump a lot of stuff in the first 5 mins. Tell them the background information bit by bit. The moment you start the game you get prompted to read a wall of text in your journal about Beastmen. Not exactly an exciting start.
Battles are boring mainly because of how long you have to take to kill 4 rats. The delay between the animation and the rat blinking and then taking damage is too long, if possible (not sure) make it shorter. Bosses were well designed, but suffer from the same problem of slow animations. The idea of charges is good, though. Boss fights were well designed, except I was wondering why staff of fire deals more damage to the green spider than Ice, despite the fact its weak to Ice.
I feel like the three characters are balanced ok, unlike what other people say. I made Emmet the tank, Willard healer and Shade the main damage. Sleep accuracy should be increased, not left at the default 50. It allows for better strategies, eg. Set up Emmet with provoke, have WIllard buff him with MDEF and DEF boosts, which is basically the only thing you can do if you make an enemy fall asleep (since they get woken up by damage).
Music was the best part of the game, imo
It's good to know I have an ear for music, even though I am completely tone deaf =D Thanks for spending a bit more time with your post as it helps me a great deal to let me know specifics, and you had a great deal of valuable information for me.
Hmm, that sign will either need re positioning on the entrance of town or eliminated altogether. I like your suggestion about the leaving town boarder called common event, and prompt the player for a decision. That might be the best way to go. Thank you.
Ah the rats. They have a history. There used to be 7 rats. I put it down to 4 as a rare encounter, and it seems people just hit them too often. 1-2 will do, and yes animations have already been in place in the fixed demo, though I suppose they don't help in the exchange of hits which is battle message speed. I have adjusted that to 25 originally 40 at the request of a player who was new to rpg and wanted to read everything that happened. Now that I know battle log scripts exist, I can pump up the speed much more. No one seems to think it's very heroic to beat down rats.
Hmm, and the intro will help with the basics where people are willing to sit through 2 mins of filler. The journal entry was more if you wanted optional reading, the fact so many people saw it as necessary means I denied people a lot of what they were hoping to see happen. I'll definitely keep that in mind. It's been said so many times now I cannot ignore the obvious "Show don't tell".
That's a first for the characters! Yes that is how I intended the flow of battle to go. I think I understand what happened now, I've given so many options for players that they went with thier instincts and simply played the characters in brute force mode as opposed to how you approached things. I'll definitely up sleep's effectiveness for trash. More toward 75% seems fair for humanoids and monsters that do sleep. Be aware though undead
never sleep. I may need to included that in Libra or having Shade say it on the way into the Nexus. Shade will also get some spells like "Time Stop" that will prevent actions for a limited number of rounds and allow damage not to break it. The problem here is the variance is different for everyone rather than a set 1d4+1 rounds for all creatures so monsters or players would break out first before the effect officially ends. We're still looking into it. Kendra has hold person which work to paralyze a single monster and allows damage to be done without breaking the effect.
I think I know why the staff was too pumped up. It may be that the skill it's linked too isn't tagged as an element "fire" for damage or the spider's information is boggled. Thank you for that.
Understood about the lighthouse basement from both posters. I will make sure to do so when constructed parallax versions of maps to keep things tighter. I also have the means to make the beast man area a bit more detailed and have more of a staging ground for events and cut scenes.
Hmm a prompter for a text may be useful, thought keeping it unskippable for the first page may also help. I'll think more on this, as I didn't understand why it took so many people by surprise. With good reason, as you mentioned no prompter.
I appreciate the extra time you spent to tell me the specifics. I'll be able to act more on the problem now that I am aware of new information.
