Hi Nemesis,
(Beware all,
big big spoilers ahead!!)
Thanks for the honest and thorough feedback, especially from someone who has been involved in the mother project of Valyria Tear.
First of all, after a long pause I was really surprised about the status. There were some really nice parts in the game. Really nice parts were:
* The slime mother: nice idea. However, it only spawned two slime during my fight. Should be more.
* The harlequin
* The ball puzzles
* Orlinns fight against the final boss
* The rat chest
That was a massacre, but finally I won (after using 15 or more potions). It was the highlight of the game.
I'm glad you enjoyed some of the most scripted surprises
I'm also glad you enjoyed such a simple and deadly chest trap, btw.
As for the slime mother, there is something I need to tweak indeed. I'll have a look.
Speaking of this, does anybody managed to reach those chests?
Don't get me wrong. Although in the following a longer text about what was not so cool is given, everthing are only minor thinks.
Np, such a game will never be perfect and of everyone's taste, especially with the missing features it still has.
Balancing:
I was not happy with the fine balancing of the game. Over all, the balancing is already at a good stage. It was never too hard or too simple. However, especially the beginning was not really fun. One starts with level 1 and wins a fight without problems. However, I was very unlikely to win more then one fight without going to the statue. Money to buy potions was also not available. Thus, the first 15 minutes after leaving the village was (at least for me) fighting the enemy in the starting map again and again, until I've reached level 4. I didn't enjoy this part. Then, most of the battles very quite easy.
But this becomes a problem, since most of the encounters are really not challenging, but rewarded with still quite much XP. One goes up in the levels quite fast.
One option would be:
* Increase the required XP for leveling. One have to do lot of simple fights to level up.
* Reduce the XP reward at higher levels for low level monsters. This will require from the player to always go on and not farming XP with easy enemies.
* Introduce higher level versions of the enemies (as I have already suggested for Allacrost
. The red slime might be a result of this. Thus, you can gradually increase the difficulty.
The beginning of the game is indeed a problem and a not so easy to solve, I think. What I'd like to do about this is provide a few potions for a starter: If you go and see Flora as Kalya tell you, you'd be rewarded with a few free potions. What do you think? (Would be after the release, anyway.)
I will also add difficulty settings soon after this release, hopefully.
As for the enemies becoming too easy, were the snakes or the bats too easy, for instance? Note that difficulty is also a matter of taste, and you are among people who enjoy fighting 10 rats at a time.
Also, there is a long time the player cannot buy new potions (after finding orlinn until reaching the shrine entrance). It was not a problem for me since I fortunately bought enough in the beginning and didn't need all at the cemetery but it can be a limiting and frustrating point in the game.
Yeah, here, a merchant is missing. I'll have to think about this...
Game mechanisms:
To be honest, I really hate (
) save points. It forces you to sometimes spend more time for the game than you originally wanted. Also you always run into the danger of losing your progress when not reaching a save point after a long time. However, as you decided to use this system instead of "normal" saving, it is absolut acceptable for me.
Save points is a long story for me.
To be honest, I added such save points because it permitted to make sure a player was spawning at certain locations, permitting to lower the amount of tests when changing a map script, and giving me the possibility to add a reassuring visual, and test particles.
At first, I naively thought they would suffice, but many people hate them and for good reasons. To answer that problem, I decided to add support for auto save when you go from a map to another, and ask the player if he prefers to load the auto-save or the regular one. It means save points will stay as they still permit to make sure a player doesn't get stuck with less burden, while people will be able to quit and restart more easily with a minor (but existing) chance of being stuck in a map for any kind of reasons. Unfortunately, finishing the Episode I was demanding, and I got around solving this problem only rather recently, so it will have to wait the version 1.1.
Did you think about a teleporting system? At some points, I thought it would be really fancy to have to ability to e.g. teleport between the save points. E.g. you are deep in the forrest and want to go back to the village. You are still at a high level and the enemies are not challenging. So you go all the way back to the village, fighting boring fights (or dodging them) to buy potions (or what ever). Teleporting would not make the game simpler but a bit more fast paced. Also, one can avoid repeating fights.
In a word, yes.
Not implemented, but I wanted to make this possible through the worldmap menu view. Not yet there though.
You should think about adding a few side quests from the guys in the village.
I added grandma and her chicken, and wanted to add another one where you would have to do your first tutorial fight. Unfortunately, this is breaking a few things in the storyline and cannot be added simply before the release.
Other quests could be added, yet I didn't think about it yet, to be honest.
Did you think about a system of user-defined skill system? I.e., let the player decide where to add points rather then having a hard coded system. I though also about a level system for the skills, so the player can improve the favorite skill when leveling.
I also hate hard-coded evolution, so yes.
As a heir of HoA, Valyria Tear has followed that system since it was much more simple, but I'd like to add a system were you put spirits on your equipment to get skills, and then combine those skills between characters. That's the ultimate goal.
Later also, I'd like to ask the player to choose his skill path, instead of giving him the default one, even if first Aid and Shield shall remain first choices for obvious reasons.
This would completely break what we know as the current game, and will thus have to wait until I've done a good pile of awaiting refactorings.
Game content:
Can you add some kind of warning before the first encounter of the fenrir wolf to use (or buy) some portions. Basically, this fight is not so hard and should not be a real problem for the player, but you miss the chance of a good introduction of the first boss. I was really disappointed about the simple dialog in advance of the fight.
Makes me think I'd like to add hints when losing a battle, and during the battle when a character reaches a special state, or something, but it's not completely related.
Here, I don't really know. What would you suggest?
I did have the feeling of improvements of my weapons. I switch to the metal blade after leaving the village and got one of the improved crossbow for Kalya. However, in both cases, I didn't see improved damaged on enemies. I basically think this is caused mainly by improved enemy statistics later in the game, but one is losing the (happy) feeling of having improved weapons. Maybe you can think about increasing the hit points of the later enemies but also increasing the damage. The game will not change but the player has a better feeling.
Yep, that part is still a bit rough. That is true. Let me review all this once you've reached... Err nevermind.
I didn't really get why I have to kill all the enemies in the final map of the forrest to remove the stone. Though, it was not so hard to solve this quest, it was not really logic for me, how this should correlate.
Well, the base idea was a zelda-like one. Clean the room and you can proceed. But I suppose not the best one since a few have complained already. I'll add a note at changing that one with something funnier once I get the time to.
However, really thank you again for creating the first episode. I'm really looking forward for the next.
I am too, since it's the one where I'll work on adding the missing main party characters and on a skill system much closer to the final one I suppose
And of course a bit more of the story.
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I can also confirm a possible game crash after playing a long time. This happens also once for me. Sorry, a BT also not available from my side.
I need to do a playthrough with gdb, I guess. :S
Regards,