Play testing for the previous area went really well with a few tweaks. I've realized this is the part of the game where the player should be worrying less about money and allowed to collect as many of the new weapons as they want.
As much as I like a good long RPG I know not all of my players will share the sentiment. I'm trying to keep that in mind as I move forward with the project because not every game needs to be a black hole of logged hours to be good or interesting.
Optional dungeons have subsequently been short and worked into being part of side quests I had attached to the magic users and their ultimate spells. I figure doing it this way allows players to skip content if they don't like a character and choose to not develop them, or if the character doesn't fit into a final party setup the player may have in mind if they're replaying the game.
This also allows me time to properly develop more fun extra stuff later in the game because the player will have no reason to worry about missing something important.
I've nearly finished all the maps for the fourth area of the game's second half and I've spend a fair amount of time thinking over dialogue. My game has 3 chapters, each divided into 3 parts. I am beginning the second part of the second chapter.
The monsters have been planned and the difficulty curve has been set to match the previous area. This makes my job a little easier and lets the player develop their favorite characters to match the difficulty. I don't want this game to become a mindless fight to compensate for numbers that never stop rising. So far my play testing has been with a balanced party in which I develop each character without picking favorites to see how they fare in each new area. I believe everything is well balanced as it is if the player takes some time to understand my system.
My biggest concern has been HP, which I have made a little effort to limit. If I'm constantly making monsters hit harder to compensate for how much is available to a player everything quickly becomes a boring mess. By making HP gained from levels mean more over time I can make 200 damage feel like a fair and challenging amount for a long time. In doing so I hope to avoid weird balance issues I encountered while playing Final Fantasy 10 and The Legend Of Dragoon, despite how much I enjoy those games. :)
Of course anyone can circumvent this by overpowering 1-2 characters with more souls than others, but I also want power players to be able to break the system. If you're not a power player I want the game to be a fun challenge with a weird system to exploit and work with.
I think I'm on the right track and I'm loving what I'm building right now. Thanks for staying tuned. :)