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Soul Shepherd

author=Omnion
this game, while it has fun interesting mechanics, is very very needlessly grindy

I read this comment awhile back and just didn't have very much to say in response. However, I recently had a lengthy debate with someone about grind in video games, and I feel I could give more of a response now.

To start, let me share a few thoughts about the presence of grind in general. Consider 2 scenarios: an area that would technically take 10 minutes to get through, but vaguely requires 20 minutes of grind, and an area that takes 30 minutes to get through, period. Here are some reasons why I, as a player, would prefer the former scenario. First off, the 20 minutes of required grind (in this game, at least) will be only vaguely required. I could perform only 10 minutes of grind and then accept some risk in pushing forward, if I wanted. But with a 30 minute area, I don't have as much control over my gameplay experience. There's nothing I could do to try and cut that time short, and I wind up feeling like the game dev is taking me by the hand and pulling me through the game rather than me defining my own route. I also feel that having some amount of necessary grind contributes to the oppressive and imposing atmosphere of the game, it makes the game *feel* harder. A game could be technically just as difficult without ever interrupting your forward momentum, but that interruption has a profound impact in terms of how dangerous the world within the game *feels*. This is a tone that I like to experience as a player, and want to create in my game. Of course, it is a balancing act, and I don't want to include much more grind than is necessary to accomplish the above goals.

As an aside, one grind-related mechanic I *do* hate is when games allow you to grind to an extent that makes the difficulty trivial, and this game doesn't allow that. Once you have the souls from the current enemies and the gold to buy the current equipment, merely gaining XP does very, very little to improve your performance. In fact, without acquiring any equipment or souls, the first boss completely wipes the floor with a lv 99 party. Additionally, this makes the grind in the game more targeted. You're grinding to get some particular soul(s) or some particular piece of equipment or to learn a skill from a soul you have, rather than grinding to gain some arbitrary amount of levels. I find it substantially more motivating and interesting to have such short term goals in my sights when grinding, and when in the right proportions, it doesn't really feel like grind to me. It just feels like playing the game.

Having said all that, I'm currently working on hardtype mods for Ogre Battle and SMT: Nocturne, but when I am done with those I plan to get back to this game. Once I am working on this again, I will do another run through the current game and see how I feel about trimming the grind in some areas. It's a thing that turns off a lot of players, but is also deeply valued by some players. At its current level, I'm inclined to believe trimming the grind some would do more good than harm. It would most likely come down to just deciding how much.

Soul Shepherd

Hey, suuuuper late response here, hadn't gotten any activity here for awhile so I haven't been checking it regularly...

Yeah, the beginning is easier. The longer the game gets, the more okay I am with the beginning being a bit more lenient. But I definitely prefer utilizing active commands to ease the difficulty (like the new Impulse skills) so that the relief isn't just handed to player, they have to actually make use of it. I wouldn't want it to get too much easier than it is now, though.

The skill limit was raised to 5, and it no longer goes up with level. Instead, it is raised periodically through boss slaying. This helps new players explore the skills more at the beginning, and they don't feel the impact of the skill cap until later on when they have an idea of what skills do. This has a similar tradeoff of being less hardcore, but it gives the game's difficulty room to grow (and grow it does ;) )

Yeah, eventually I'd like to add some flavor text lore on each of the soul's mythology, SMT style. I'm currently working on a SMT: Nocturne hardtype hack, it's about 3/4 of the way done, after that I plan on returning to Soul Shepherd.

Soul Shepherd

Dying to the first battle is unsurprising, but 37 times is a lot. Are you going south first like the NPC suggests? This may be too late, seeing as you deleted it already, but if you need some help getting through the first area: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6CA_Sf6Whww

Soul Shepherd

Well, the approach there is more about making level have little impact on the game than on setting caps, so the max is currently the final game's intended max of 99. Though even at 99, a party with the game's starter souls gets roflstomped by the first boss.

Soul Shepherd

author=Silently
I don't know if this can happen with other enemies, but a panicked Cancer attacked nonstop until it naturally resulted in a game over. This happened in 2.04 and the panic effect was caused by Blitz.

Good catch. Ironically this bug would occur on any panic-able enemy in the game EXCEPT the one I was testing: Vespa. Guess I shoulda been more careful. I've updated the file to 2.05

Soul Shepherd

If you're able to survive his first 3 breaths, you should be able to damage him down. If you aren't surviving them, you have to react to the type of breath he's about to use. If you are surviving them but still can't damage him down, then I guess you need to consider increasing the offense on some of your characters. Impulse damage is pretty important for this fight.

Soul Shepherd

Posted an update. v2.04

This fixes a bug that is both minor and major... minor in that you probably won't run into it, but major in that it crashes the game. When Vespas were panic'd they could crash the game by not having a skill to use, I fixed it to default to a normal attack.

Thanks to bigtime for pointing it out.

Difficulty: Challenge vs Frustration

"Frustration occurs when the player feels as if his time has been wasted, and that the game is at fault."

That's exactly how I feel when a game is not difficult enough.

Soul Shepherd

Posted a new, non-critical update. This update increases the starting skill limit by 1 (rather than having you get this skill slot through defeating Kerberos). Skill slots were previously a bit too constrained against the game's first boss, and this extra skill slot will allow new players to experiment with the game's skills a bit more and possibly discover new setups that they like.

Soul Shepherd

Released a new game file, v2.02

This file contains non-critical updates and is geared toward giving the player more tools to handle the difficulty at the very start of the game.

The changes are as follows:
-Added Rags as starting armor for the homonculi. These give 1 PDef/MDef, but more importantly give them a healing Impulse at the start of the game.
-Confuse ailment re-worked. Confuse now wears off from any form of damage AND any form of healing. Players have a 100% base chance of wearoff from damage/healing, enemies have a 50% base chance. AoE damage/healing have 1/2 the normal wearoff chance.
-Help file updated and made more fancy. Both the one included with the game and the one on this site.