I was pretty disappointed after reading CashmereCat's review for the game (which you can find here:
http://rpgmaker.net/games/6014/reviews/4034/) because it seems like a lot of the changes I made to fix problems people had with the original release had gone too far. In trying to make the game easier, I'd made it too trivial and therefore boring to play through. Obviously this is something that needs to be fixed, and there are also other problems that I'd like to tackle at the same time. I'm going to be taking the current download down whilst I fix these problems.
Things That Need To Be Fixed
The main problem seems to be that battles are too easy to beat without actually thinking about what you're doing, which is obviously a big deal in a game that focuses heavily on battles. So first of all, I've gone back into the database and tweaked enemy damage and stats so that they're between when the original release had and what the current release has. This should make the game somewhat more challenging and force people to be more mindful of their strategies, especially against the mini-boss and boss enemies. As far as balance changes go, the pointers would be that:
- All enemies have had their HP raised by 150%. This means that it takes more than just a couple of attack-all skills to wipe out enemy parties, and puts more focus on killing enemies that cast heal-all first since you shouldn't be able to win a war of attrition against them as easily as before.
- All enemies have also had their main damage-dealing stat increased. This means that spell-casters have had their intelligence and that other enemies have had their attack raised by. Enemies dealing more damage will make healing less effective than it seems to be in the current release, which I hope makes things a bit more difficult.
- Poison and Burn are now retained after battle, and so need to be dealt with if you don't want to take damage whilst moving. Before, it was too easy to ignore these status effects if you were in a random encounter since the encounter didn't normally last so long that they'd become a massive problem. They were more of an annoyance, which isn't the point. They're meant to be a danger. They also won't wear off naturally (unlike other status effects), so they need to be dealt with in boss battles as well!
- Enemies that accompany bosses have higher HP in line with the fact that they're technically boss enemies themselves. This should make some of the boss encounters more interesting, such as the Frost Wyrm and the Skeleton King.
- It also seems that healing skills were too strong, so they've been nerfed twice over. Firstly, they now cost the same as they originally did, which is twice as much as they do in the current release. They also heal by less than they did before, so you're going to have to be more careful with MP use on your chosen healer (there are only really two...)
Another problem brought up was about the level design, specifically that bridges are too hard to spot, which I agree with. I'm personally pretty used to seeing bridges like the ones this game currently has and so I didn't notice it was a problem, but obviously I know exactly where the bridges are! Here is what the bridges now look like; note that there are gaps between the wooden slats so you can see through to the ground or, in this case, through to the trademark blue-hair of Zack!
Wooden bridges might not make a great deal of sense deeper in the cave, but I think that concession is better than making it hard on the player to see what the fuck is going on. The alternative would be no vertical bridges, but it's too late to reverse that decision...
There were also some other problems brought up about the battles that had little to do with balance, such as the game running too slowly etc. so there are some things I'm going to fix in that area as well:
- I'm going to find a way to make the battles go faster by messing with the agility stats of heroes and enemies. Hopefully this should be possible without using patches, but the fact of the matter is that the ATB in RM2K3 has always run a little slow and I don't know if there is anything I can do about it. I personally think the ATB runs at an okay-ish speed - approximately similar to some of the PSX Final Fantasy games such as Final Fantasy IX - but making it a little bit faster can't do any harm.
- I'm going to re-add the ability for people to choose between "Active" and "Wait" so that people can, if they so choose, give themselves more time to think about what they're doing in battle. It can be kinda annoying to have enemies hit you when you're still reading the descriptions of the skills available!
Something I'd Like To Add
Cashmere (and some other people) have brought up that they'd like more character customisation. Currently, the only customisation you get is in the form of amulets and rings that are dropped by Mimic-chests. I don't know if I really want to add additional weapons to the game because that sounds really difficult given that there are so many bloody heroes in this game; heroes also need to have the correct type of weapon equipped else they can't use some of their skills (although this is only really a concern for physical skills - I really should've made all the character's weapons "cursed" so they can't be removed by the player because that kinda fucks things up...)
What I will probably do is make it so that you can find "Orbs" or "Crystals"
or "Materia" or "Espers" (or whatever name I come up with) that equip to the "Shield" and "Armour" slots. The "Shield" set would increase a hero's stats, giving you some strategic choice, with more powerful increases causing a decrease in other stats to balance it out. The "Armour" set could give a hero a skill that they don't already know, which again gives you some strategic options. Does that sound like a good idea? I think that's a good idea to work with!
The Thing I Ain't Changing
There are, of course, some things from the review that I don't agree with. The main one would be that I don't agree the encounter rate is too high. I said in reply to the review that the encounter rate is triggered after 15 steps, but having now looked at the eventing I see that the encounter rate chooses a random number between 25 and 35 steps. I feel that having at least 25 steps - given that the maps are approximately 50x50 - is very reasonable. This is something that I won't be changing.
Conclusions
This game still isn't where I want it to be. I did mention when I released the "final" version that it probably wouldn't be the "final" version if people were forthcoming with criticism. It is clear that there are quick ways to make this game better than it currently is, so I'm going to look to implement them over the course of the next week. Hopefully people give it another chance afterwards, but they probably won't. Barely anyone has played it as is -_-
