PLADOUGH'S PROFILE

I know a lot of fights that have a boss whacking the party, but there's very little to think about. The boss whacks the party, the healer brings the party HP back up and everyone else chips away the boss' HP. Remove the healer and then strip the boss of any move that cases damage and you get the same result.

If you don't balance battles correctly, then there's very little to think about. If a boss can hit for more than a healer can heal, what's going through a player's mind? If a boss can perform two actions in a turn and do AoE damage, the player is going prioritize who's getting the best heals and who get the scraps.

Designing a boss with interesting mechanics can work though, but that sounds to me like instead of making healing something that requires thought, you make that element thoughtless and ask for strategy elsewhere. You can do that, but why not make both the healing and that elsewhere require strategy?

With a dedicated healer, you told me that there's no strategy involved. When there's strategy involved, it's better to put in more strategy? I don't think players like being tested too much.

I've also never seen the situation where changing up the roles have brought an unnecessary complication.

The game becomes easy when party members can do everything. It's also hard to design and balance battles to maintain a good level of difficulty. Having a dedicated healer gives you a leg up on how a player is going to react and what actions they're going to take based on what you have designed.

Battles are setup in a way that you need a healer for a turn. Someone is bound to be low on HP and they need a way to recover. One member is going to use up their turn to do so. It's just inevitable. You can't help that aspect of the game unless you fundamentally change the way battling works or how your game is going to be played.

That being said, there's nothing wrong with having a dedicated healer. If someone has to sacrifice their turn, it might as well be the priest or the doctor of the group. Having a dedicated healer just makes things simpler for everyone.

1) Chapter 1 is about 1 hour's worth of game play. If you want to rush through the thing, then it's less than that.

2) Any pathway a tester takes if fine by me. If the path they take is the quickest and leads them to no bugs, then I'm fine with it. The only thing I would want thoroughly done is typos. I can't stand having those.

3) It's mostly for quality assurance. If one wants to play chapter for the sake of being first to try, I won't stop them. If one wants to contribute and thoroughly test the game, that's fine too. Bug reports and general comments are welcome.

4) I'm fine with letting minor aesthetic bugs go passed my radar. For example, a weapon displaying the wrong animation. Absolute game breaking bugs which halts game play and typos are what I'm concerned with.

author=mellytan
I hardly have to sprite any battle character sets this way...

Hence the word clever. =P

Presentation doesn't suffer while you don't have to worry about battle graphics.

Turn-based game play is dead if you don't own a Nintendo DS. I get my fill thanks to that little machine.