IDDALAI'S PROFILE

You cannot be reasoned with. I think I was fair in my comments and replies. But you're being stubborn and seems like you ignored what I said (not talking about game feedback here).

You were the one who started by comparing our games in your feedback. A fact you pretend to ignore over and over. But then you offend me because I did the same!? What the heck, man!?

How exactly are my comments "sour grapes"? It makes no sense.

Acting upon my feedback does not excuse your behavior.

Because, I disagreed with the fact that you chose to compare my game to yours while incessantly complaining about difficulty.

You didn't disagree, you exploded in a huge block of text. That's when I figured something weird was happening here.

I never said "complain" was an insult. But I like to clearly define things. I provided feedback and for a lot of it I wasn't annoyed of disliked the stuff, but I mentioned what I noticed (like the game being ruthless at the start). You used "complain" in a rather negative way as if I had attacked you consistently as means to justify your behavior.

My game has a problem with balance. I am trying to address it.

I'm not sure it has. This will the third time I try to tell you that I was the only one who thought the game was unbalanced. I don't think you should change your whole game based on a single person's feedback.

There is an overall tone of hostility to your critiques that I wasn't going to let stand. I called you out on it. You needed to be called out on it.

I am literally speechless at this sentence. The hostility was all in your head. I had no need to be called on anything I didn't do. But you DO need to be called on your BS.

The version of your game that I have is "Magic_Quest_2ndBugFix", this is what "curse" looks like on my end:



I assure you that I didn't change anything. I believe we may have different versions of RPG Maker 2000 Official English version (it's the only explanation).
I can also confirm that indeed the screen flashes red for every step I take, because I tested it, in case the interface text in the program had errors.

I never said you dismissed my feedback, what I said was that "explaining to a person providing feedback, how to play the game, feels like brushing their feedback aside". Which it does and which is why I didn't tell you more about the mimic.

I had an issue with something you said, and I kept that on my gamepage, off of Waka's event. Then you come here, right on Waka's event page, and throw my "thank you" back at me.

Because it was insincere. I first checked the event page and found you being all thankful, then I visit the gamepage and I'm throughly insulted.

First, I wouldn't have commented about it at all in the event page if you hadn't posted that comment (other people simply replied on their gamepage), secondly I didn't bring anything to the event page with my comment alone, you did, after exploding again.

I don't think I have anything else to tell you. I will only reply again if I feel the need to defend myself from your insults.

I just started playing this game, but it's pretty promissing: Abdogtion

Really unique look. Earthbound influenced with a bit of Moon and Superstar Saga combat system!

This was frustrating, had I known you'd react this way I wouldn't have said anything.

You are overreacting, taking it too personally, blowing my comments out of proportion and making some rather unpleasant accusations.

I had to try and keep my head cool not to lose my temper with your replies and I hope I managed to reply them them fairly without this devolving into a mud-slinging contest.

You start with 100 gold. I recommend getting the Gambeson and a wooden sword to start. The spatha doesn't hit very much harder, but the Gambeson gives you good defense for the first area.

OK, but as a player I won't really know that and will assume the most expensive stuff is the best. Usually offence is the best defence, not here though but that's not an issue.

author=pianotm

author=iddalai
The custom graphics are a mixed bag. On one had I have deep admiration for those who make all of the graphics for their games, on the other hand some of the custom graphics don't look so good.

I wouldn't say the sprites are better than the original Dragon Quest though :P

I'm sorry.

You have nothing to apologize for here.

This breaks the game. I don't know why, but it refuses to trigger the fade in.

I talk about this in detail below.

It is also 100 percent derived from Dragon Quest. I'm frankly shocked that it took almost no effort to make the RPG Maker 2000 battle screen look like Dragon Quest. Virtually the only difference is positioning of the text boxes.

It's similar, but not quite the same since in Dragon Quest you could see the overworld map behind the battle screen. However, I think that the way your game does it, where it frames the battle screen in a black frame, actually adds to its unique style.

Thank you! This also reinforces the point that I didn't make my late stage enemies nearly hard enough. Decky was saying that my final boss was a cakewalk. I'm not going to change him, though, since I have trouble with him even cheating as a developer. The other monsters, though. Once I get to level 12, hard or easy, monsters just do zero damage if they straight attack. I might give more of the harder ones slam.

Enemy attack randomness can also have something to do with how easy/hard they are.

I can't really talk about the difficulty in later stages of the game since I stopped on the first dungeon. But I can comment that enemies dealing zero damage probably means they need to be buffed (unless you're going for that kind of game).

You probably got too close to that first bridge. There had been a section in the first area you play in in Dragon quest where if you go to certain points, you face enemies that are supposed to be in an adjacent encounter area. I was trying to replicate that error. I realize that it is kind of silly, though, so I removed it.

I was literally walking back and forth in the horizontal tiles right in front of the castle so I didn't get nowhere near the bridge.

I didn't even enter the forest because at that time I didn't know there weren't encounter areas for different terrains. I can only assume this was due to RPG Maker battle formula randomness.

I think you should have left that “error” since it also happens in early Final Fantasy games and it's a nice easter egg of sorts. They usually did it in a peninsula. You'll be surprised to learn that I replicated the same thing in my game.

Buckler gives one defense. Bangle gives two defense. Large Buckler gives 3 defense.

For the price I expected it to be better. Sure, I could have saved before and tried each equipment, so that's my fault. With RPG Maker's battle formula, 1 to 3 defense is nearly useless unless the enemies attack for very low damage. (2 defense can negate 1 damage, but it's also dependent on a random factor)

So, I get that your complaints about difficulty aren't supposed to be positive, so my responses to you about it are probably rubbing you the wrong way. I don't mean to do that; I really don't. I'm really just trying to use your criticism to make my game better. But this particular comment has really irked me. You really should not be comparing my game to yours as a way to criticize mine. That's just a monumentally bad idea. I'll tell you, people have been telling me my game was really easy and I was really feeling upset over it. I've been trying so hard to make my games hard but winnable. I really felt like I failed to do what I was trying to do with this game. I'll tell you, your complaints about the game's difficulty have really made me feel a lot better. I am quite encouraged to hear that you had such a difficult time with the combat, when nobody else did. It tells me that maybe the gameplayers that I've been hearing from are just more skilled at playing JRPG type games than most players. Comparing this with yours takes an impressive amount of nerve.

My comments about the difficulty are aren't negative either, I'm just pointing out how I feel about the game-design. I don't think an old school style of game should be easy, but I think it should be reasonable, and I didn't feel that due to the experience I had with the equipment.

Also, in most games you don't get into your first battle and get completely slaughtered, unless the game has balance issues or is indeed that type of game that is purposefully unbalanced.

When you start Dragon Quest, you will only encounter weak slimes in the grasslands and you are encouraged to avoid forests until you have higher levels. In your game I can immediately encounter a Fire Drake which is quite strong for a level 1 hero.

pianotm, how much of an hypocrite can you be? This is the feedback you gave my game:

author=pianotm
OATH

Show

I kind of worried I was going to have the grindiest game in this event, but this one's got me beat by a mile. I think I should have probably been level 10 to tackle the mimic in Trial Bleu. 30 damage in a hot was too much for me at level 5. Interesting ideas in this game. As for choices, I feel like they're all bad ones. No matter what I answer, it's wrong.

You compared my game to yours to say it was grindy! But then I can't do the same thing!?
I know I'm the last person you want advice from, but it would do you well to look into the mirror before pointing your finger at others.

I disagree with your sentiment though, one can only evaluate things by comparing them with other things.

You are also assuming a lot from what I said. I didn't have a hard time with the combat, but from a fellow RPG Maker creator perspective, I simply felt it wasn't reasonable or well balanced.

I can only interpret your talk about “more skilled players” as a jab at me. I'm quite skilled at JRPGs, and played much harder ones, you misinterpreted my comments for inexperience.
I am experienced enough with JRPGs to pin-point potential issues.

Nothing gives us data quite like actual measurements and numbers. Duration, the way we tell time, is a measurement that gives us numbers. So, here's some measurements for you. It takes me an hour and a half to beat my game on both playthroughs (that is playing the game once and then playing it again in New Game+ mode.). It took other people, among them, Decky and Waka, between two and three hours to beat my game on BOTH playthroughs (according to Decky, it took him two hours flat to beat my game. Waka said two or three hours.): That is playing the game to the finish and then playing the New Game+ mode, to the finish. My game is roughly half the size of Dragon Quest.

I can only assume you are feeling particularly stressed about something and taking it out on me. Or you wouldn't accuse me of having the nerve to compare games, and then immediately do it yourself again.

FOR YOUR INFORMATION: it took me two hours of grinding to even get to your FIRST dungeon and I was still absolutely obliterated by the mimic. You even did the same thing I did where crossing bridges brings you to a higher difficulty encounter area and I had to go into a hellscape of enemies that could kill me in a single basic attack just to find a fort that was ridiculously hard to find with the encounter difficulty just so that it could give me permission to go to your first dungeon. This is one dungeon out of a bare minimum of four! Unless there's some plot contrivance that stops me from going to the other three; I don't know! I couldn't get past the first one! One for each direction. Meanwhile, you're complaining about having to level up to--me, double checking enemy difficulty--level 3 or 4 on a fast leveling standard to be able to comfortably clear the first dungeon.

You keep reading my feedback as “complaints”, which is just plain wrong. I'm not complaining about anything, I'm simply stating my experience with the game thus far! So that you can judge it for yourself if you need to make adjustments or not!

When you first gave me your feeback on OATH, I could have told you how to play it (like you've been doing with me), but I didn't because it would feel like I was brushing away your feedback.

I didn't want to discuss my game in your gamepage, but now I feel the need to justify myself.

I have no idea how you took 2 hours of grinding to get into the first dungeon, I don't think anyone who played the game did that, unless they were playing the unbalanced event version of the game (which I didn't test because I was ill).

As soon as you get outside you can grind up to level 4~5 in front of the castle or the forest nearby, it will take you maybe 5~10 minutes. Then you are ready to find the Outpost, during the journey there and back you'll level up enough to enter the ice dungeon (should be level 8~10), while exploring the dungeon you gain enough levels to beat it (people usually reach the boss at ~15).

You keep mentioning the mimic, but that is an optional battle, the chest has a different color to clue the player that there's something different there. On your defense though, you could not possibly know this! Which is why I didn't mention it before, because it would be unfair on you and your feedback. Instead it spurred me to find a way to mitigate this issue.

I'm as shocked as you are, when you mentioned how grindy my game was and then I played your game and found it grindy as well. How can you not see this?

Not to mention the fact that the first dungeon is entirely optional! Skipping it entirely will affect the game in no way. Of course, it'll be that much harder to get through the next section without the item that lets you go through the poison swamp without getting hurt. I wasn't trying to be as brutal as not being able to get past the first dungeon, but I absolutely was trying to make it Nintendo hard. I only wish that my game was as unforgiving as yours.

Just like the mimic, I had no way of knowing that your first dungeon was optional.

But this all just reinforces the fact that my late level enemies are WAY too easy. It seems to me less like I made the game too hard, and more like you don't like playing games where there's a chance you can lose. Slimes do five damage to you at first level. you have 20 HP. That's four hits to kill you, discounting the occasional critical hit. And you get a healing spell at first level. Even with the too-high AGI, these guys are really easy.

You're making all these incorrect assumptions about me, based on the information I gave you.

Would I really make my game “unforgiving” as you say (I disagree with this assessment though), if I didn't enjoy playing games were I could lose?

I don't like games that are unreasonably balanced, but I have no issue losing, specially in games such as your own where there's no penalty for losing.

The slimes are easy (and annoying when you miss 4 turns in a row), but when the first enemy in the game can damage you for a quarter of your single hero's HP and has 6 times more AGL, then I find it unreasonable and perceive problems with this balance in the long-run.

I can only comment on what little I played, thus my perspective is only based on that section, it's your duty as the creator to judge my feedback accordingly and understand if there's something you can use or if I'm totally off.

I don't know if the later enemies are easy, I quit playing before that, you are the one who will be able to assert if you indeed need to rebalance the enemies based on my feedback or ignore it.

Yeah, that is a little high. I wanted the slimes to be able to run away at high levels before you could hit them, but RM2K just doesn't offer a good way to give them the higher initiative.

You can create a battle event where if the hero's level is at a certain point then the battle will end with the slimes running (you can write it in text as if it was the battle system and make it skip automatically).

Been trying to fix the overlay erasure. Not sure how well I will do. OH! I have an idea.

RPG Maker 2000/2003 has a lot of quirks and I've had that issue in the past. What is causing it, is that the teleport event is conflicting with the parallel/automatic event that shows the picture (or other such events you may have, even potentially common events).

A way to fix it is to delete the event that shows the picture (or other parallel/automatic events) and instead change the teleport event to activate them after doing it's thing or doing it before it shows the map.

Per example: “hide screen”, then “teleport”, then “show the intended picture”, then “show screen” (if you had other parallel/automatic, then activate them here using a switch, remember to de-activate that switch when the player leaves the dungeon).

Then you make sure that all teleport events inside the dungeon activate the same functions and it should work fine to create the complete illusion of darkness, etc.

There are two to three pots in each town that give loot. I've got 180 switches dedicated to giving you loot. Because of New Game+ mode, those switches get used twice. I'm overloading you with loot and literally cannot think of what else I can give you.

I'm pointing out that many players will not bother with examining the pots any more, after they notice that 90% of them are empty and the others have nothing special.

Every four steps. It's set to 1 MP every 4 steps. (Checks in game). Yep, it flashes every four steps.

I don't mean to be annoying, but checking the files, it's 4 MP every 1 step.

I've changed it to 3 MP ove 8 steps.

Dunno if this is important to the gameplay, but this new setup nerfs the curse (from 32 MP damage to 24 MP per 8 steps).

The reason I mentioned this in the first place was because I had people complain in the past about Poison status causing a red flash per step which was really harsh on the eyes, so I had to change it to deal the same damage but only flash every few steps (i.e.: 1 HP per 1 step becomes 10 HP after 10 steps so it flashes less frequently).

I really don't know the right way to respond to this. I've written six or seven different things. Just don't know what to say. I will point out that the passive-aggressive jab is not lost on me. It changes the tone of your entire criticism, which leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I actually enjoyed your game, and I enjoyed it mostly because of the insane difficulty, though I maintain the Mimic was a bit too much. Comparing my game with yours as a means of criticizing difficulty--wilst being absurdly oblivious to how hard your game actually is--and this passive-aggressive jab at me is really uncalled for.

There is no passive-aggressiveness here, I have no need for it. I tell things to people straight.

I was honest about everything I said, bumping into small issues frustrated me and I wasn't enjoying myself. I don't feel the game is on a level I can consider “good” and I said so, with more polish I would probably enjoy it more.

The reason I mention other people enjoying your game, is because I know how hard it can be when people don't enjoy our games, so I wanted to end this by reminding you that I was the exception. That other people liked it just fine, so that you'd keep that in perspective! To gauge whether or not to act upon my feedback.

TheRpgmakerAddict loved it! And he's got pretty good taste in RPG Maker games.

Now... after all you said I can only perceive your comments as being in bad-faith, and cannot believe you when you say you enjoyed my game, you certainly didn't show it before.

I also don't care for your insinuations and find them offensive to the point of never wanting to address you again.

author=Decky
I'm sorry for the reason you stopped playing, and I will do my best to be more considerate going forward. I already went into the database and changed the names. It didn't even cross my mind; I just named the items randomly with a bit of dark humor and did not even consider the implications in the heat of the development. Years of playing an MMO in a pretty toxic community has perhaps made me a little too desensitized to the implications of dark humor; sadly, sometimes slip-ups like this do occur, and I'll work to iron them out going forward.

I'm a little shocked and bummed out, as well as completely blindsided, but I shouldn't be in hindsight. There's literally nothing else like that in the rest of the game - it's not even really a comedy game per se - but oh well.

Edit: Would you be willing to give the expanded version a chance? It absolutely won't have those names included. Plus it'll be a bit more polished and will include at least three new dungeons. It'll be out soon (once I get more free time). I'll be sure to give your game another shot too :)

It didn't mean for you to change those names, but I appreciate the gesture and will definitely try out the new version once it's out!

I'm usually a fan of Dark Humor, but nowadays I play games for escapism and that just pulled me from the experience.

My game is still unfinished, but if you want to give it another try, then I recommend the gamepage version since I did a much needed rebalance and it's overall more enjoyable.

author=Addit
I see that staying home during the quarantine has gotten to you too, huh? Lol.

Addit's gonna Addit. Whatcha gonna do? :P

It's not really the staying at home that got to me, but rather everything else around it. Just like I said before, nowadays I play games for escapism and that just pulled me from the experience.

I'm finally back with *somewhat* extensive feedback on all the games (that ran on my computer)!

For those who don't know, I got ill midway through the event and couldn't even test/finish my own project. Still recovering but managed to play the other entries.

First of all, anyone who managed to finish a game for this event deserves CONGRATULATIONS! That alone is an achievement. As someone who struggles to finish anything, you have my deep admiration.

Keep in mind that I'm not afraid of criticizing, but I try to balance it with positive feedback.

Here's my feedback for the games! For those with gamepages I'm posting on both sides.

2033 Neo Crusader Squad



A Vacation In Nebula



Detective Waka



Dread the Rabbit



Floppy Disk Mainland



Fflo's Quest



Hyper Digger



Keep on smilin



Lily's Dream Land



Magic Quest



Project Spaghettivase



Romance in Shaly



Spider Trek


OATH



Oh no, it's my Crazy Ex-Girlfriend!



Rome Protector



Temple Guardian



Tesseract



The Fisherman Lived Happily Ever After



The Swamp



Ultra Smug



UnBit



Unchained



Villain



We Live To Serve This Ship



WolfCoder's entry (have no idea what the name is)



@coelocanth - Thanks for the feedback on OATH! I got ill midway through the event so I just wrapped everything up and couldn't test it. There's a much more enjoyable, rebalanced version on the gamepage if you're interested.