What do *you* want improved in Legionwood?

[Dark Gaia]

Hey everyone!

I need your help and I want to know your honest opinions. If you've opened this thread, then I know you're already familiar with Legionwood and know that it is my ongoing project.
I realise also that there are a lot of aspects of the game which (although the game does have its fans) you aren't too happy about and that there are some parts which you dislike with a passion.

I recently decided that as Legionwood is my main project that I work so hard on that I want people to like it, so in order for that to happen, I want to find out once and for all what you think needs to be changed so that I can make the game more fun for you to play. I want my main project that I spend so much time on to above all be a fun game which people enjoy.

So, tell me. What do you hate about Legionwood? How can I make it better? What would you like to see in it? Are the battles balanced improperly? Is there too much dialogue? Are the characters bland? Is the lag too much?

I want to hear your opinions. With that said, please don't flame me, just say what you think would make the game better for you. Also, keep in mind that Legionwood is already in a late stage of development. Know that I am not going to redo the tilesets/charsets etc at this point.

If you aren't familiar with Legionwood you can view and download the game here: http://www.arpgmaker.com/threads/67738

 

[moog]

Perhaps itd help if you posted a link to your thread and gave a little insight on the game? Maybe some people who havent heard of it would still like to help if they had more info on it.

 

[Dark Gaia]

Ah sure, hadn't thought of that. Will do.

 

[OrbitDuke]

Just going off the top of my head from when I last played the game, I really think the battles are little to difficult. I know there is a cave for grinding and the like, but I don't think it's necessary. I'm not sure if the monsters you SHOULD fight first (the weaker ones) match the ones in the cave, but maybe you could lower their strength a bit to ease the player into a more stable difficulty curve. I died a few battles in because I decided ''lol i dun wanna levl', but I do have a bad habit at rpgs of not wanting to grind levels at all.
Just my thought from memory. I'll boot up the game again and give you some other idea's sometime when I do that.

 

[Dark Gaia]

Ah yes, I thought that might come up. That's actually the first thing I changed when I sat down to work on the next version of the game. I've made two major changes: the battles in the early stages of the game have been made much easier (you can beat the Selatan Plains at level one; Snakes can be killed with 2 or 3 physical attacks now and only deal 12 or so damage per hit for example) and the battles in the later areas have been made a bit harder as they were far too easy.

I've also decreased the amount of EXP you need to level up, so you don't have to grind.

 

[OrbitDuke]

That sounds like a good improvement alone! I'll grind a bit in this here cave so I can get through the game a bit to give better feedback on something other than just battles. :grin:

 

[Dark Gaia]

The main things people have complained about are the dialogue and characterisation. I'm working hard to improve these aspects as well, so if you feel they could be improved somehow, don't be afraid to speak up. I appreciate your feedback.

 

[OrbitDuke]

The only thing I could say about the speaking and cutscenes doesn't even have a lot to do with what's being said...
it's....the typeface.
This is completely just how I feel about it, and maybe it's because I'm trying this again in the dark, but I am not a fan of the typeface used in the game. It DOES communicate a kind of 'royal' or 'elegant' feel to it, which is a good thing, but I just don't think it communicates well as readable. I blame the fact that it's a serif font that's REALLY fancy, but thats just it; it is a little to showy for the cutscenes and talking to people. It looks good in the menu, though. I could also be saying this because I'm a sans-serif kinda guy when it comes to typography. I don't know...

What are people saying about the customization? I'm kind of indifferent to it. I think it works well, and does what it needs to do.

 

[Dark Gaia]

Well funnily enough the character advancement/customisation hasn't really drawn too much bad attention. People either like it or just forget to use it.

The font... I've been toying with changing it for a while now. Some like it and some don't. I personally like it, but I think I'll include a feature where you can choose to use something like Arial if you like.

In the current version you're playing, you can just uninstall the font and it'll use Arial.

Also, there's a WHOLE LOT of bugs near the end of Chapter 3 which I'm going over. There are event mishaps, duplicated characters and a boss which dies in one hit.

 

[Crystalgate]

I'll focus on the Attribute Assignment system then.

I would have liked it more if the game didn't bias the characters towards either physical or magical build with either equipment selection or natural growth.

Second, only Attack, Defense and Intellect seemed really useful.

At one point when I got a new character, I saved the game and raised his HP. That turned out badly for that character. He had more hitpoints, but less defense. The result was that he died much faster than characters who spent on defense instead. Basically, having more hitpoints didn't compensate for having less defense. This is despite the fact that defense is useless against magical attacks. Did you ever check the math and made sure the benefit of HP and Defense is balanced?

You get enough SP from leveling up so there's no reason to spend there either. Early in the game you may be a bit lacking in SP department, but 1/3 trough the game you will have enough.

Agility could be useful. The main benefit of agility however is reactive healing, something I didn't really need. Apart from the very beginning, enemies were way to weak to pose any threat.

Does Accuracy even do anything for skills like Double Strike? I never spent any points into it and hit just fine. Also, Accuracy is way overpriced. It starts out with four times the cost Attack does and is in no way or shape four times as useful. How does the hit algorithm work? Does it do Chance to hit=Accuracy-Evasion or does it first make an accuracy check and then an evasion check? If it's the latter, you can't ever become good at hitting evasive enemies. Besides, mages can deal with evasive enemies just fine.

Evasion works against physical attacks just like Defense, right? Experiments I did showed me that by spending points into Defense I toke about 1/3 or 1/4 the damage I would have taken if I hadn't spent any points there. It means I need an Evasion score of about 70 or so to make Evasion as useful as Defense. That didn't seem likely, especially not since Evasion is just as overpriced as Accuracy.

Critical does nothing if the character is using a skill, even if it's a physical skill. Taking that into account as well as the fact that you can increase damage by spending points into Attack instead, Critical isn't very effective.

What does Luck even do? I admit that I can't say it's useless since I have no idea what it actually does. However, I can definitely say I did just fine without spending any points there.

I think you need to tone down the impact on damage Attack, Defense and Intellect has. Critical needs to work on Physical skills and not only on attacks. Other than that, spend more time calculating the effects of the various attributes. For example, more accuracy means more hits which is good, but that does not guarantee that the math will add up to Accuracy being a viable choice of spending Attribute points on. You will have to calculate it's advantage and compare that to the advantage of other attributes.

 

[Dark Gaia]

Sure, I'll make those changes. I'm working on getting Accuracy and Critical working on skills as well as they seem to only work on normal attacks. Also, since it's KGC's script I actually have no clue what Luck does either... Maybe I should remove it?

I was thinking this would be a good way to make you spend your AP more wisely; I cut down the amount of stat growth you get from level ups and equipment to a minimal level, making your AP purchases THAT much more powerful?

The thing is... i never really envisioned the AP system as a main character advancement mechanic. It was generally meant to go in there so you could modify aspects of your character that WEREN'T getting addressed by other means. Not gaining enough Intellect from your level ups? Wanna cast strong magic? Buy Intellect!

But your changes sound good, so I'll tone down the natural growth and make the system far more valuable.

 

[zchin]

You know what I don't get, or probably missed... But why did you make a concept here if you already had a thread somewhere else. Why not ask in that thread? I really don't think that you would need another thread to ask what people hate about it. But I think that it being VX that I can't really download it, and that I'm on a computer that isn't mine....

Thank you and have a nice day!

 

[moog]

If youd read around this forum, you'd understand that this is about development of ideas for games, not discussion of the finished project. Discussing ways to help improve his game is a perfectly acceptable thread for this forum.

 

[Dark Gaia]

Also, it includes the VX RTP, so you can download it.

On topic, I've overhauled the combat system completely. I've made enemies decidedly easier, but still not so easy that you can spam Attack and win.

I've removed all restrictions which characters have and everyone can learn and equip everthing. Even character specific abilities such as Frenzy attacks and Dual Wielding are now purchasable for everyone.