ZOMBERO'S PROFILE

Hey, thanks for the interest! I have every intention of finishing this project, I've just been busy working on a hack for Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen. It was a project I intended to only take a few months, but I kept adding and adding to the scope of the project and now I've spent over a year on it. I've gotten to the point where I'm releasing individual stages for that hack now, though, and I hope to have it done within a couple months.

Some info on what has been done with this project, that is not in the current release: over 80% of the remaining maps in the game are complete. Maps are my least favorite thing to work on, which for some reason translates into me wanting to get them done first. LockeZ helped with several of them as well (along with a good portion of the maps already in the game). I've also picked out hundreds of enemy names and sprites and come up with a general sequence that I expect to include them in the game. Though I'd like to replace a lot of the current enemy sprites (all the ones that now use RTP sprites), which will inevitably involve renaming them and some tweaking of their souls in places where their skills or stats no longer fit. So most of the things I have left to work on are the stuff that I enjoy more: enemies, skills, equipment, battle mechanics, etc.

Something I have been thinking I would like to do soon with this project is make an update that drastically tones down Ares. He has been beaten by one person, so it's possible, but there are several people who I personally know that love difficult RPGs and hard boss fights and have not beaten him, which tells me he needs to be less difficult. And it kinda sucks to leave this game out there with a final boss that is nearly unbeatable. I'd also like to put savepoints before the 2 major bosses. I originally didn't include them to prevent brute forcing the bosses, but I think it's pretty clear that the bosses are completely unkillable, no matter how many times you try, unless you apply the correct counters to their designs. And lastly, I'd like to add the elemental shield consumable items to the beachside shop.

author=EdgeOfChaos
Haha, well it certainly was something... I do appreciate the difficulty of this game. Too many RMN games are the type where you can, quite literally, autoattack everything including bosses until they die. It's rare to come across a game with this level of difficult and well balanced difficulty. Most of the time, a "difficult" rpg means one you need to grind exp for hours to beat the enemies, and THEN autoattack them to death, and you more-or-less avoided this trap of just "give the enemies a crapload of stats to make them just like every other enemy but harder".

It's definitely a conscious effort. I enjoy having some grindy things to do in RPGs, but I hate when it's possible to grind to an extent that the next forced encounter will be trivial. Hence why I put so much focus on finite sources of grind (soul drops, gold for equipment, learning skills, etc) and so little on just grinding for XP. Really, the only reason XP and levels exist at all is I also don't like it when there's *zero* reward for repeat encounters (or when there's no option to repeat encounters).

author=EdgeOfChaos
That said, the difficulty here will be too much for most people. This is the type of game where enemies can bring you from full to 0 easily in one turn, and you need to win despite this, so I doubt the casual RPG player will like it. If you want to get the game noticed/played by more (and it can be, it is high quality) you might consider adding difficulty settings. So if you like the soul-crushing difficulty of the game, you could play on it, and if you don't you could still enjoy the game at an easier level (maybe some % stat reduce for enemies or higher % drops). Though I could totally understand if you think this takes away too much from the essence of the game.

It's definitely something I've considered a lot. Overall, the pros of adding difficulty settings absolutely outweigh the cons, so it is something I intend to do. In the mean time though, I have enjoyed that the feedback I get is generally from players who enjoy challenge and complexity in RPGs. I would never want to make a change that could drive off a significant percentage of hardcore players in order to appeal to a broader base, but I don't think the inclusion of difficulty settings would do that.

author=EdgeOfChaos
I would like it if the first FOE you fought had a 100% drop rate, because the first FOE (before you have his soul) is always the hardest. It sucks so much to have to restart the game when you kill the FOE, it drops nothing, and you don't want to rest 3 times to respawn it and waste money.

Yeah, the theory was that there's about 3ish FOEs, so a 40% chance generally means you'll probably get one soul from killing all of them, but it doesn't work out great in practice. A 100% drop rate if you've never had the soul could be an alternative if I decide against a 100% drop rate always.

author=EdgeOfChaos
What exactly was Siegfried's trick? (And dragon's for that matter? I don't remember using any trick besides fire guard.) I just slap them with attacks 'til they die.

I'll pm you it, I don't wanna give away everything on here.

author=EdgeOfChaos
(edit) I'll restart lping when the game is updated, actually, not right now (too soon after anyways)

Is this in reference to the screenshot LP? I saw the first installment you posted, but I didn't get a chance to respond yet, and it seems to be gone now.

author=EdgeOfChaos
Whenever there's some update about ares+others, I'll see.. Though, would seeing a second LP even be fun? (even if it was done better? I think I learned a lot about how to show the game here)

Yes! Definitely. I'm inclined to think I'd prefer the vid, even with the jumping around, but a good screenshot series could be interesting as well.

author=EdgeOfChaos
I searched Naraka for ages and I believe found one there. I left many treasures after I saw they were garbage (like 3 phoenix down). I specifically remember one, but I may have found two, I hardly even remember.. Are there even two there?

Yeah, there's two there. The better treasures, and the second gem, are deeper in. Although Frock is a good one as well that's not very far in. Btw, I asked several other people and no one has the 4 hyper lag issue, so I don't know what to tell you there. :/

author=EdgeOfChaos
Oh, alright, that's useful to know. It's not really much of something to spend it on though, as you might break 1-2 souls max of the types you use. This doesn't matter for regular souls (when you have 30 of them), but it does add annoyance to swapping boss souls - especially when you only have one. I ran into that when trying to re-spec my characters, I had to go back and farm Seigfreid for so long to get it back...

Well, Siegfried would be a lot easier to farm with the consumable item that summons him. And I've been considering raising the drop rate on FOE souls, as well, possibly to 100%. Swapping souls is intended to come at some cost, though.

author=EdgeOfChaos
I like that. Yeah, those would be excellent changes. Also the lava part seems a bit too hard... I can rarely find my way back, because it's always blocked or long.

I'll redesign the map some such that every path leads back to the stairs up before it leads onto any other path, that way it isn't possible to go the wrong way, and see if that fixes things. Plus it'll have a lower encounter rate once the mook boss (Siegfriend/Dragon Whelp) summoning items are in.

Addendum: Now my girlfriend is playing this game, so I'll be getting even more feedback! It helps to see what kinda mistakes other players make and to what extent it's their fault vs. my fault, and I can see in real time how much she needs to grind and whatnot (that was how I made the observation that areas with entirely new enemies get souls at a reasonable rate, while areas with partially new enemies are slow). She's also making fairly heavy use of ailments (specifically Confuse) which I also do, but most other players don't do. I think most people just assume ailments will suck, because they suck in most RPGs.

author=EdgeOfChaos
Okay, not going to even bother if it's that absurd.

Probably a good call~ I was going to start feeling guilty and compelled to fix Ares sooner rather than later, but I really need to finish my Ogre Battle hack before I get too distracted. :S

author=EdgeOfChaos
Also, I never did find the last rare gem... is it some place after Ares?

Nope, it's before Ares. But if you didn't finish Naraka, that's probably where it is. Unless you also didn't go back to the Dragon Whelp door?

author=EdgeOfChaos
If people are teleported to a random point in the labyrinth, it seems quite unlikely that your character would be teleported to a town near the weakest land. I always thought that everyone was sent to the weak area first, and that's just where the portal drops you off. Oh well, it doesn't really matter

Yeah, but this is pretty much always the case in RPGs, even easy and commercial ones. If you had started anywhere but the first town or two, you'd just be S.O.L. on ever becoming an adventure. Game logic.

author=EdgeOfChaos
Curse animation is identical to Confuse animation (maybe change them). I mean when the stars drop down on the characters, not when they have the status.

That's probably just straight up an oversight... since I think I do have an animation for Curse made...

author=EdgeOfChaos
Why do some souls break when unequiped and some don't? Why do souls have to break at all? Seems unneeded.

Currently, the main char can switch souls without breaking them, and the dolls can't. This difference probably causes more confusion than strategy. There's a couple reasons why souls break: (1) it's something to spend souls on, which is something you've noted already as lacking, and (2) it encourages more care and forethought in who gets what soul.

author=EdgeOfChaos
I wish you could choose which slot on your command card the abilities go into. This isn't a big issue, and I don't even know if its possible on RPGMaker, but if you could, that would be a nice little bit of customization.

It's certainly possible with coding, which I've already done tons of. I'll probably do it at some point. I also want to create a help button at some point that gives info about whatever the cursor is currently on. It's just gonna be a lot of work to make...

author=EdgeOfChaos
Gloom has a high luck aspect and a huge reward, and I don't think it really has a place in a game where strategy is supposed to be the most important aspect. Other abilities are luck based, but insta death is too strong because if a character dies from it, it's VERY difficult to revive him. He revives at 100 or so HP, and most enemies have party damage at this point. For the player, it can wipe out hard enemies (esp. hypers).

For players, the main reason that I've found Gloom to be acceptable is that it can only be used in battles that you have to fight repeatedly, and hence the "luck" factor averages out over the repetition of battles resulting in a predictable amount of general usefulness. The rate could need to be downgraded if it too-reliably reduces the difficulty of random encounters. For enemies, players need a way to respond to Gloom that reliably neuters its effects.

author=EdgeOfChaos
The game is enormously grindy. This can actually be a pro or a con depending on what type of game you like. It was a little of both for me.

I think it's a little of both for people who *like* grind... which means it's too grindy. I'm going to have to find ways to reduce it. I feel like the current soul drop rate works well for areas that have entirely new enemies, but zones with only partially new enemies can wind up feeling pretty slow. Shop prices are probably a bit too high in some of the first half of the game.

author=EdgeOfChaos
Labyrinth seems pretty unfair. Especially with random-encounter bosses.

The random encounter bosses probably aren't going anywhere, but they need a rate reduction along with a consumable item that lets you fight them on demand. Naraka will most likely also be getting an encounter rate reduction and a hyper rate reduction. I want extremely hard battles at random to be a real possibility in Naraka, but currently the difficulty of the *average* battle is too high, and it causes a lot of drag. This actually sums up my theory on random encounters in general. I want them to be fairly quick, somewhat difficult, and randomly very hard. This philosophy begins seeing implementation with Hyper in the second half of the current game.