I think I wrote this friggin' thing about three different times, each with a different approach to the topic at hand. What you're about to read may or may not be completely coherent, but I hope the general idea actually stick with you. If something here doesn't make any sense, feel free to shout at me in the comments. I'm going to go and sleep off this massive headache I got from thinking about this topic.

Don't think, people. Don't ever think. It hurts your brain too much. You can quote me on that.

Anyway, this past month saw me doing to battle balance what I did to the art last month. Now that I have a playable game from beginning to end, I needed to get a better feel for how the entire game felt from beginning to end. And let me tell you: I wasn't too happy with it. Especially the mid-late game.

The biggest balancing flaw was how equipment stat changes are handled. The original idea was that every piece of equipment you put on a character should have a dramatic effect on their stats, and even their intended actions during combat. Equip a piece of heavy armor should make most attack glance off of them easily. In the early parts of the game, this achieved exactly what it set out to do. However, the problems came at late game, when you had enough equipment to mix and match with, that stats took on a blatantly horrific amount of fluctuation. With enough tweaking, for example, a character's armor stat could range from 10 all the way to 78! Combine that between 4 stats across six characters, and you can imagine what kind of nightmare it would be to balance all of that. While it's fun to find optimal setups, this kind of fluctuation went FAR beyond what I was expecting.

The only thing I could do at this point was to put in the time to revamp the equipment system and battle balance just like I did with art. So that's what I did. While I was balancing, one system tweak led to another breaking, and fixing that led to another break somewhere else. Each breakage taught me a new lesson, and enough lessons built up over time that caused me rethink my overall approach to PotF's design. Fast forward a month later, and here we are with a revamped system and a new, more positive mentality.

Before we talk about what I mean by a more "positive" mentality, please take some time to watch this video by Mark Brown:



The long and short of it is: when you're developing a game with multiple approaches to solve a problem, like an RPG, it's typically better to encourage the playstyle you want instead of punishing the style you don't. This will allow players to play the way they want to play without being slapped in the face the moment they take one step off from the intended path.

Until recently, I've had "punish bad playstyles" at the front of my mind when designing the difficulty of battles: Enemies will attack allies with low SP to punish spamming that ally. Damage can be reduced to near 0 at max SP to punish players ignoring guard break attacks. Characters will be almost completely unable to move to punish overloading them with armor.

However, over the course of playtesting, I've adopted a mentality that I believe will achieve the same effects without being too much of an asshole to the player. Now, enemies will attack allies with HIGH SP in order to REWARD using your whole party. Damage reduction at max SP will be REDUCED in order to REWARD players who utilize guard break attacks (more on that later). Armor values have been tweaked in order to REWARD experimenting with different equipment loadouts.


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*Side note*

As I'm writing this blog, I keep thinking back to EvilEagles' article about more complex methods of implementing difficulty while maintaining immersion, and realizing more and more how such methods can be applied to PotF.

Punishment-based difficulty fell in line with PotF's hopeless setting; Death was everywhere you looked. Battles against even common enemies could lead to a party wipe if you weren't paying attention. Much like the characters, players would find their path to the end after getting knocked around over and over again every time a mistake was made, assuming they even get that far.

Switching over to a rewards-based mentality can affect the overall outlook of the game's world. Yes, it's still hard for those who don't pay attention, but the excitement over finding a way to survive is a reflection of the character's mentality. The story is all about how hopeless the situation is, and how Aeyr, Mia, and the others react in such a world. Finding solutions to difficult situations gives the player the same excitement as it does the player characters, which makes their reactions in a hopeless world all the more believable.

While I've still got a lot to mull over regarding that article, I realize I've got him to thank for reopening this line of thought that I haven't touched in a long time.

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With that said, here are the steps I've taken towards this new mentality:

1) Streamline stats and lowered armor value changes

There were two big reasons behind this decision. The first was to allow players to tweak the characters the way they wanted to. Since armor and Relics can't be swapped in the middle of battle, the biggest stat alterations were left to weapons and personal gear. This will allow you to switch strategies on the fly.

...And the REAL reason for this is because testing these wild stat changes was a friggin' nightmare, and I wanted to have this game done sometime this century.


2) Reversed targeting algorithm for enemies

Originally, enemies targeted allies with lower SP to punish players who used that ally exclusively. However, what turned out to be the case was players could just use two actions for one ally, then have that ally focus to get more defense. This was a rather timid playstyle that I didn't want to encourage, so I turned the targeting algorithm on its head to achieve the same result by rewarding players who USE allies that they don't want getting hit.


3) Reduced damage reduction at max SP from 75% to 50%

Working rather well with point 2, this reduction means that more damage is going to be inflicted on both the party and the enemy. With such a large damage reduction, players were encouraged to avoid using party members that they wanted to act as a damage tank. In addition, it was practically required to start battles with either a guard break attack or magic to inflict direct damage. While serviceable, it wasn't doing much to put players in a state of flow. Often the extra step felt more frustrating than it did rewarding. With the damage reduction lowered, you can immediately start inflicting damage physically, but you'll just be inflicting MORE damage if you open up with a guard break attack.

Combine this point with point 2, and the result is that the party will be able to take more hits before dying. You'll be given a bit more room to learn from mistakes without it being too frustrating.


With these changes, I hope players are more encouraged the find playstyles that suit them, rather than feel punished for trying to experiment.

Because I didn't want ANOTHER blog of assurances of continued work on the same areas, I kicked myself into overdrive the last couple of weeks to get a major milestone completed. Today, I'm happy to write that PotF is now playable from start to end credits. It's unrefined, unpolished, unbalanced, and un-insert-positive-descriptor-here, but it's playable.

Now that the framework on how the endings are managed has been set, the rest of the pieces will start falling into place much faster.

For those that don't know, this is a project that I've technically started waaaay back in 2009. So, really, it took me almost an entire damn decade to be able to write that last paragraph. I'll save the sappy monologue for after the game is finished, but Prayer of the Faithless' endgame has a little extra impact on me on top of the already substantial hype of completing a game.

From here on, I'm going to focus solely on getting the non-battle aspects of the game completed. This includes the dialogue, skits, art, and cutscene eventing. I'm doing this not only because it's a big milestone that I want to knock out before switching gears to battle balancing, but because testing the final dungeon with all the equipment and party loadouts has made me painfully aware of certain balancing issues that trance back to a few core components of the battle system that need addressing.

I'll talk about the specifics in the next blog, but the reason behind these issues lies in trying to optimize the game before having all of the core components together. Trying to fine-tune a battle system like this requires a stronger scope of the entire game than I had going in, and it was too easy to fall into the trap of fine-tuning character and equipment stats for a specific chunk of the game without minding how well that would scale 20 hours or so later. To be blunt: the endgame is an unbalanced mess that's far too easy to break (in unfun ways).

Whether this was a failure of proper scoping or an inevitable aspect of game dev in general, I can't say for certain. However, I have learned so much about what to do and what not to do during the course of PotF's development, and I know I am better for having jumped into the fire.

Thanks again for reading!

Last month I talked about how life hit a snag and that development on PotF will be slow. This month, I have yet to escape from the snag, and therefore development on PotF remains slow. On the bright side, I've made myself a little home in the area around the snag, so life is a little more stable. I'm still bleeding profusely, but at least I'll be comfortable while trying to get unstuck! As of this writing, there are a few prospective chances to get out of the snag within the next few days. Hopefully, I'll be able to get out of it soon!

Anyway, onto progress of the game. That's why we're all here, isn't it? As fun as it is to whine, that's not what you're all here for. So, without further ado...

Like I said last month, most of my effort will be getting the game playable, rather than polished. I won't be testing anything until I implement the final boss. So far, here is my progress:



Keep in mind that all this meter shows is the state of PLAYABLE content, and the testing color only shows what has been proven to work, not necessarily balanced. It does not take into account non-critical aspects, such as skits, new gear, etc, balancing, etc. I'll still need to do all sorts of balance testing and other boring stuff like that before I can truly call it complete. Once the meter is completely green, I'll be ready to send it off to testers.



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On the gameplay side of things, I've made a tweak to how armor is going to work. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen me talk about how I wanted to change how armor affects SP. Right now, all armor lowers more max SP depending on the weight. Now, armor increases the cost of all your abilities instead. Here is the most extreme example of Aeyr's Drives before and after maxing out his gear slots on heavy armor:



Again, this is after equipping two pieces of heavy armor on Aeyr, one of only two party members that can even wear it. You can lessen the SP cost penalty by equipping lighter armor, or go completely unarmored and play more conservatively.

To balance this, three changes have been made:

1: Armor's defensive bonuses will be increased to balance out the lack of mobility.
2: Armor will no longer reduce max SP.
3: All enemies will gain an extra bonus to damage to punish those who let their SP run out while wearing little to no armor.

So why make this change at all?

Well, the change to SP damage reduction from a hard amount to a % amount didn't compliment the bonuses given to armor. I wanted the decision to equip armor be one of managing mobility vs. defense. If you wanted to go unarmored, the thought should be "I'm going to keep my SP from running out to maximize my defense."

This didn't work well with SP damage reduction being % based. You could just equip heavy armor, then play the same way as if you were unarmored. There was no drawback. Therefore, the change was made. I'm very happy with the result.

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Moving forward, I'll be beginning work on Chapter 5. The first draft of all the cutscenes have been written, so I'll be focusing on editing them and designing the final dungeon before I'm ready to put it all together. Unity has completed all of the monsters, and Eric Ramos has completed all of the music. So that means all blame for the game's delays can be rested solely at my feet! Isn't that grand?

As always, thanks for reading! Seeing any kind of interest in the game after so long means the world to me.

I feel like I should save this for the monthly update, but I'm too excited about this to keep it to myself.

After countless hours of testing and watching other people play the game, I noticed a disturbing trend for Mia's party: there is an optimal flowchart of skills you can choose that lets you get through battles without much thought. For example: When an enemy uses Miasma Charge, always have Amalie use Piercing Light to cancel it, regardless of what other skills players have that grant various bonuses against charged enemies.

More disheartening, no one ever uses Mia's Rush stance. Ever. It is this problem that I will be addressing with this blog.

As an iaido style sword fighter, Mia can switch between a drawn and sheathed sword stance to change her role in combat. In sheathed stance (dubbed Saboteur), Mia could inflict debuffs and guard break attacks as well as steal buffs from foes. After enough penalties have been applied, players could optimize damage output by switching Mia to a drawn stance (called Rush) and using her enhanced critical rate combined with the rest of the party's attacks to unleash an explosive flurry of attacks. When she runs low on SP, Mia could then return to Saboteur stance by using a final attack to inflict massive damage or to calmly sheathe her sword to recover high SP, leaving her less vulnerable to attacks.

Here's how players use her: Use Lightning Draw to damage enemies, then immediately sheathe and recover SP. Don't bother with Rush stance. Just keep debuffing in Saboteur stance.

Debuff, then damage. Debuff, then damage. Focus, debuff, then damage. The same flowchart strategy that Prayer of the Faithless was supposed to discourage was now the optimal strategy. This had to change. Mia needed more than a tweak to her stats or even her skills. She needed a system-level mechanic that makes her unique as a fighter on a fundamental level.

After a while of searching and testing, I figured out the problem: Most of Mia's Burst Drives are too static. Too situational. The intent was to give the characters a variety of tools to make them more useful in different situations. Instead, the hard damage and conditional critical attacks were so restrictive that players would naturally gravitate towards the default skills and ignore any potential strategy the later skills would offer.

Now, though, I believe I have found the solution. I present Mia's Brand abilities.



Here is Mia's familiar Burst Drive: Lightning Draw. For those that have played the demo, you'll notice that there is a new state that Lightning Draw can now apply. This state is the core of Mia's new strategy, as most of Mia's Burst Drives now incorporate Brand in some way.

Branded enemies gain a slight weakness to all physical damage types, so the entire party can benefit from a branded target. However, the real meat of the Brand state is thus: When a party member (including Mia), performs a basic attack on a target, Mia will immediately follow up with a basic attack on ALL branded enemies at the cost of some SP without using one of your precious three actions during a turn.



The key term when designing Mia's Rush stance is "Burst Offence." With her sword out, Mia's primary role is inflicting physical damage. In this regard, she should have no equal. Not even Aeyr with his aggressive style of play and multitude of offensive options can match Mia's Rush stance. With the brand state, now I feel she can finally apply that key term in battle.

"But Nova, you said you wanted to discourage mindless button mashing. Won't this mechanic encourage spamming basic attacks?"

Good question. And one that inspired the title of this blog.

Simply mashing basic attack is a very bad idea with Mia in this state. Since each follow up attack costs SP, Mia becomes more and more vulnerable to damage as you lay down the offense. If you happen to brand a large group of enemies, Mia will run out of SP very quickly.

If you happen to drain Mia's SP to the point where she can't perform any more follow up attacks, she will incur a penalty:



Mia will automatically return to Saboteur stance, and you won't get to benefit from any kind of bonus had you switched back using a Burst Drive. This means you have to plan out how many follow up attacks she will do and act accordingly.

Now, let's examine the change to her overpowered Sheathe Drive:



Before, Sheathe would restore a static 40% SP (more than the standard Focus), as well as clear Mia of all emotional ailments. The ailment clearing was fine, but the SP regen was far too much. All players wanted to do was go immediately to Sheathe and not make use of Mia's damage potential in Rush stance at all. Now, the base amount has been greatly lowered, but the potential of restoration grows if you're successful in applying brands on enemies (which you have multiple options to do so, even after changing to Rush stance).

Regardless of the reason, reverting to Saboteur stance clears all brands from enemies. In addition, brands will automatically fade away after a turn or two. It'll be up to you, the player, to decide when to end your offense and return Mia to Saboteur stance.


This new brand system means that Mia's style better rewards skillful setups and environmental awareness. Players will have to think more about their actions, and can't rely on the same flowchart battle plan for every encounter. When you play the full game, you'll see how Mia's abilities give her more options against branded enemies.

I haven't tried adding these tweaks to the demo, yet. If I can apply these new changes to the demo without breaking anything, I'll certainly update the public build so you all can check it out for yourself.