CRYSTALGATE'S PROFILE

I think that replay value should never come at the cost of the main game. For example, if you make a branching path, but don't have the diligence to flesh both paths out properly, I think it would have been better had you just made one well written path than two poorly written ones. I also think the game will have more replay value that way. Going with the ingredients analogue, if the food tastes bad, nobody will want to eat the same again even if you have ingredients with high "re-eat" value.

The fewer NPCs you have, the more effort you can realistically put into each of them. I also prefer a quality over quantity approach, it's better with a few well thought trough NPCs than hundreds of NPCs with backstories like "I was born a farmer, but became a fisherman and my dad also died when I was ten".

Personally, I don't think a backstory adds that much, rather you should think trough what they should say.

Either works for me. Pick whatever your system naturally leads towards. For example, if you get X amount of stat points to allocate each level up, it leads naturally to customization.

author=Anaryu
I can't say much on the surreal aspect - by the time I really got a grasp of what to do with surrealism in a game, it was weeks into the project (we'd have an amazingly surreal entry if we had to do it again) - I think complex themes like this should be announce a week or two ahead of time, even at the risk of people cheating a bit, to give the creative range it's own time to mature, just like the game itself has time.

I can imagine that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think making a good game within such a time limit requires you to start and proceed quickly while making a good surreal experience requires you to slow down and think things trough while giving creativity some time.

2. Enemies should be fairly fast to kill (lower HP) - too much HP will extend the strategy aspect in a fake way, but frustrate and annoy players
- I made this mistake often in my earlier games, by making battles longer strategy and optimization were more useful, but it was dull and after a while all you wanted was each fight to END ALREADY : )

I agree that battles should not be to long, if they are, then the player will settle into a series of commands that are repeated.

There is one age old problem lurking here though, usually battles are won as soon as you kill one enemy. Assuming X enemies are threatening, but manageable, X-1 enemies are usually a breeze. If battles are to fast, the player can get that first kill which guarantees a win almost immediately. If the enemies are sturdy enough so that the first kill doesn't happen so quickly, then killing the rest of them takes to long. There's the option of assuming the player will kill one enemy quickly and balance their damage output thereafter, but that comes with the risk of making all strategies except blitzing unfeasible.

3. I wanted people to be able to win with any combination of skills and strategy
- Want to carefully fight while keeping HP at max, that's viable - want to spend several turns stacking Spirit on someone and using a high-spirit value skill to do damage 3 to 7x their normal max? No problem there either.

You have four difficulty levels and I don't think it has to be possible to win with any combination of skills when playing "Insane", at least not unless you're really good at breaking enemies. At that level the player should be expected to choose skills that actually complements each other. For example, if you want to blitz the enemies, the player should have to choose a strong offensive setup to pull that off (again, unless he/she is really good at breaking enemies).

There is one other thing also, my strategy had the characters only use half of their skills. Edan and Alaria only used attack skills while Flynn only used support moves. Against bosses, Alaria would use support as well (exclusively against the last boss), but Edan's and Flynn's strategy pretty much stayed the same. This means that I had practically unused slots to set up more strategies. However, were I to actually use the skills in those slots, the game would have punished me by making battles take a longer time.

...and Agility is how fast you are.

Agility is also invisible as it doesn't appear on the status menu. In any case, I think you do right to keep the base mechanic simple.

1. Spirit needs to be reworked, the way it is you can too much too easily and it's effect is too great because it's based on addition instead of simple % increases (spirit is always considered at 100% since they have 0 in the stat by default)

Yeah, I quickly noticed that +75% spirit boost would increase damage a lot, even on a character with 0 spirit. There also isn't a +75% attack boost available either. I will try an attack setup during the next play-trough though.

3. Enemies need to be more interesting and dangerous - if a strategy works against all enemies, then if I make the enemies more variable and identifiable, your strategies can't always work and instead become your 'optimum state' that you develop many little strategies to achieve (destroy this enemy first because he can break shields, break this enemy as much as possible because they strip my Spirit buffs, then with the key enemies gone your strategy still works.)

That does sound like a good idea, make any (reasonable) main strategy work, but force the player to make small adjustments. This brings me back to the point where I had half the skills unused, I definitely had room for minor extra strategies.

4. Improvement of the Aggro system - There's a lot of complexity people aren't aware of with this, but aggro systems need to be fast and easy to identify. I'm thinking maybe a way to assign 'initial buffs' at the start of a battle, so one character could start with hate from all enemies (slight, just to give them the first couple rounds of hate) while others might buff their speed or attack level or attack/spirit, etc.

Yes, aggro is something you want to catch immediately. The first one I encountered was Edan's kick. However, it's level 2, meaning the enemies could all gang up on Flynn before Edan can use it.

The initial buffs could work. There's the chance that it makes players feel obligated to stick to a specific plan though.

1. Speed of combat - if combat can be paused it totally unbalances play with it unpaused, making combat trivial and breaks the 'flow' that I believe helps combat a lot right now. I could slow down the overall turn speed, or just have it freeze when choosing skills and targets, but again I didn't really like the end result with it pausing, I may need some external feedback on this (maybe you'd be willing to provide feedback?)

I think you at least need a way for the player to answer the phone or the door without getting a game over. Other than that, I can't give much feedback. I used a strategy where I didn't need to bother with things like breaking and could usually just stick to a plan. This means the speed had relative little impact. I will in the future try a playtrough where I test other strategies such as breaking though.

2. How to balance damage and defense - As you said pure damage and offensive speed can ignore all other possibilities. I included enemies with really high defense that required you buff past their defense or reduce it (or both) but apparently those didn't prove any type of barrier for you! Maybe balancing spirit and making defense have more impact will help.

My main strategy involved buffing Edan's and Alaria's spirit with +75%, so if the enemies required me to buff past their defense, most likely I did that already.

3. How to make skill effects obvious and easy to digest (especially in battle) - Cast Time: 10 turns - well how long is a turn? half a second? What are "Recovery Turns" and why should I care? How can I show people what skill is ideal for breaking if they don't just remember it? What about the more complex skills like the amazing but underestimated like Crimson Storm? (this one doesn't make it's power obvious at all)

I would assume that 10 turns take twice as much time as 5 turns. I would also assume that recovery turns determines how far to the right a character is placed on the bar on top of the screen after performing the skill, where again, 10 recovery turns is twice as far to the right as 5 recovery turns.

One tactic I've been tossing around that I'd like feedback on is a grading system (kinda like the Tales games now that I think about it) - earning points or rewarding players for adjusting their tactics instead of trying to force it down their throats by limiting the systems.

I would suggest two grading categories then, speed and damage taken. Speed is obvious, and damage taken should be based on how much damage the characters take over the course of the battle where less is of course better. The system should be such that you get the best score by performing well in both categories rather than aiming for performing as well as possible in only one of them.

I'd like to mention several people have told me a similar thing: "I found a tactic that works too well" - but none of those have actually been identical yet. I think this means I've got a good start here, and I hate to rock the boat too much by changing the system, so I'm leaning more towards some extra statistical balance and rewarding players for being creative by using more unique enemies and some kind of reward system when they adjust their tactics to hit weak points.

I do also think the system itself works and that adjustments is a better idea than reworking it from the ground.

One thing I'm basically avoiding is elemental weaknesses. I've thought about having states that can increase your BREAK rating (in addition to the attacks rating) and having one that reduces their defense against elements, but then it's better just to stick to defense reduction anyway, right?

I agree with not including elements, but how does defense reduction cover states that increase break rating?

author=chana
ok, the name is Krayg_Alynn I think, He's on Starless Umbra's site, his game is, in the "Fire God Saga" topic in "miscellaneous", I also think it's one of the most elaborated and fun gameplay I've seen, a real treat. He gives a little bit of his version of what happened here, anyways, you should be able to contact him there..

All I found was "I was banned from RPGmaker.net because I kept it real".

Anyway, it was fun, except that I managed to trigger a game-breaking bug nobody else seem to have come across. I was considering starting over from scratch, but the author taking it down discouraged me. It's a pity he was oversensitive, the game is definitely worth a try.