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Stream of consciousness - Switching gears?

  • Marrend
  • 12/06/2014 02:52 PM
  • 819 views
Before I experiment with a level 1 party against boss-like enemies found within the Temple of the Body, or much of anything else, a very important question that has been raised in my mind: "Is this even the story this game wants to tell?"

I've probably mentioned several times at this point about how dealing with regret is a main theme of this game. I'm looking over this demo, and the direction for where the game seems to be going, and, to be honest, I'm not seeing it. For a supposedly "main theme", this is a craptastrophe naming land. So, of course, thoughts have turned to scrapping everything, and doing a game reset. Well, okay, I don't have to scrap everything, but a re-assessment of the game is certainly in order.

Though, to link this with my previous blog, I have no idea what game balance issues this might create. If I go with my original-original idea, players would only have one character to control. Which might, ultimately, be a bad idea. So, maybe he would join the others along their journey? No, maybe it would be visa-versa. Players would still start with Hiroji and gang, and this other character would meet up with them somewhere before the Temple of the Body. Or maybe even in the Temple of the Body!

Oh. Riiiiiight. I mean, story-wise, this could work, but, yeah, game balance. With four characters in the party, this brings ability-sets back into question. The logical question to ask is if there is something this character does that Hiroji's party doesn't already do? Or, maybe, he can be a non-combatant that adds additional gameplay? Wait, synthesis? Ehhhh, I dunno about that. Darigaaz, WAND OF BLASTING VARIANT? No, Marrend. Let's try to keep that gameplay mechnanic to the true apprentice professional.

Posts

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Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
A few thoughts about this that have occurred to me over the past while. Allow me to share some of them.

I'm not going to add a fourth party member. Also, maybe not have Momo as a tag-along-guest-character anymore. However, that's not to say that I'm scrapping the encyclopedia idea. I'm leaning toward more towards the idea of Momo giving him her book for reference purposes, or he brings it along with him. Which lends more to it functioning exactly like the Case Notes of Konae's Investigations. Either way, I probably want to program a few basic entries into the encyclopedia, and leave off the rest until later on in the game's development.

As for Hiroji's debuff issues, I can definitely see me scaling it back so it's not so damn broken. Maybe give enemies a bit more STR anyway, since Oharu's Provoke skill eventually buffs DEF. Though, I suppose I can scale how much that skill buffs DEF as well. It'll take some experimentation!

Perhaps this is more of a spur-of-the-moment thing, as I was just listening to some classic Heroes of Might and Magic tunes, but, I'm thinking of switching off some of my music choices. Not that I have anything against Odin Sphere's "Valkyrie March", but, Darigaaz, that Knight theme from Heroes 2! Let's not even mention the Wizard theme from the Heroes 2 expansion!

Another side-thought is to get Yanfly's messaging system. You know, to actually have bold text for when I need to stress words, as opposed to using a different color.
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
Don't scrap everything. Like I said in my feedback, you have an excellent setup.

If the character count is an issue, I would direct you to Pixar's 5th rule of storytelling:

author=Pixar
Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You'll feel like you're losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.


In fact, it might be a good idea to look through all 22 of them.

I think combining characters might be exactly what Oracle needs.
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