DARK GAIA'S PROFILE

'kay, so I've figured out how I'm going to balance the Sub Classes. Sub Classes now only grant you access to Techs and not equipment, and equipping them now incurs a small (10%-15%) stat penalty. This way, there's more incentive to only have a Main Class, but equipping a Sub Class is still a viable option.

New version (1.2) uploading now.
This version fixes the following errors that were present in Beta version 1.1:
- Vanishing characters issue is fixed.
- Skipping the intro no longer prevents your characters from getting skills and items.
- Sub Classes no longer provide you with additional equipment options.
- Equipping a Sub Class now incurs a small statistical penalty, to attempt to balance equipping it.
- The Shield Earring no longer grants Attack. It now only grants Defense and Wisdom like it was meant to.
- The Swift Shoes now increase Agility by 20 instead of 50.
- There are no longer squares in the battle text.
- Enemies have had their Attack, Wisdom and Defense increased by 10%.
- The Curse Dryad is no longer encounterable in random encounters.
- Silencing now prevents Magus, Cleric and Rogue Techs from being used.

Hi Crystalgate. Thanks for playing!

I found out what was causing the bug with the characters: basically, in cutscenes, I make the player visible and use events for Lionel and the others (to account for the fact that I don't know what order your party is in and I can't disable it) and there were a few things that were confusing me with how transparency states work in Ace (I'm using a badly translated Japanese version). I've fixed that up now, and in the new version I uploaded a few hours ago, it should be gone, as far as I know.

As for the difficulty and balancing... I didn't use an offensive party like you did, so I didn't run into the same issues. It's likely I'll change the Shield Earring (it's not supposed to raise Attack) and add some more HP and Defense to the later enemies and bosses (those bosses were of moderate difficulty when I faced them).

In terms of story, you can definitely tell the focus is on the macro events. I basically have only inserted the scenes about Lionel and Clara to serve as a basis for the morality system that will come into play later on (I found it better to have Lionel have a catalyst than to just be a soldier mindlessly following orders; he needs to have internal conflict, and dealing with grief seems to work). I also thought I'd try to experiment with characterisation, as Legionwood 1 was light on it, but it obviously does need some work. I didn't really want you to care about Clara, as this happens within the first 20 minutes of gameplay; it's pretty much a catalyst to cause Lionel to have internal conflict, and I want you more to care about his relationship with Felix and the others.
The focus actually shifts away from the characters in the next chapter and onwards, since the introductory character exposition has been dealt with. I can definitely tell you that the story does center around the war and the other elements, just as Legionwood 1 centered around Castoth and the Swords. That said, I was more focusing on getting the game mechanics and maps done at this stage, and didn't pay much attention to the dialogue. The characters could probably be written more effectively, but my main priority was to get the game playable first, and only have it very roughly done. I'll work on it later.

Thanks for your comments.

EDIT: I'll have a new version up within the next 2 hours with the Earring fixed and Defense increased for enemies. Dialogue rewrites will have to wait until the next major release, though I'll likely be doing those too, depending on what feedback I get. I was hesitant to do micro characterisation in this game, and originally intended to focus on the world events only at first, I just wanted to see if people thought having a focus on the actual characters in the sense that Legionwood 1 lacked was "working" or not.

I'm from Australia but I can speak it, so I used certain words in the game.

Hi everyone!

@Rainen: That duration of the status effects (at the moment) is based on a set minimum number of turns, and then a random chance to abate each turn after that (for example, Toxify lasts a minimum of 5 turns, then has a 50% chance of fizzling out each turn after that). As for AoE spells, my general rule this time around is that they will be weaker than single target spells, to prevent them being spammed. There will be more AoE attacks in Legionwood 2, than in Legionwood 1. You can't enchant equipment at this stage but that's a good idea (and possible in VX Ace). Encounter rates are roughly the same as in Legionwood 1.

@AntarcticTiger: Yes, that was evident because of the way RPG Maker VX's attacking formula was rolled. In VX Ace however, we can input custom formulas, so the rate of hits to misses should be better.

Hi!

I have no plans for passive abilities. In Legionwood, most anything you'd want out of a passive ability comes in the form of equipment. As for status conditions relying on the caster's stats... it's not currently implemented that way, but I like that idea. It'd probably take a bit of scripting to figure out though, so it may not be implemented in the first release.

The battles will be longer than most games, with more strategy involved but more rewards and EXP. I don't want battles where you win after three rounds of clicking "Attack" - Legionwood 1 was close to what I want from this, battle wise.