Some people privately or in forums posted about the grindiness. In the latest update (0.6.6) I added the possibility to do the auto-battles for random encounters to make some XP without fighting, and managing the shop to increase money faster.



I'm open to suggestions for other ideas. The main issue is that while for the catacombs I can tweak and make it challenging (since are fixed room/enemies) for the robbery missions this is basically impossible to do in the normal ways.



The complaint I got so far were at Normal difficulty: maybe in Hard/Nightmare the robberies are still challenging?



One thing I was thinking to do is reduce the amount of XP needed in later levels. So far it looks like this:
[code]self.xpNeeded = [0,100,250,500,750, 1000,1000,1000,1000,1000, 1250,1250,1250,1250,1250, 1500,1500,1500,1500,1500, 2000,2000,2000,2000,2000, 3000,3000,3000,3000,3000, 5000,5000,5000,5000,5000][/code]
I put a space every 5 levels so until level 10 you need 1000 XP, from 10 to 15 you need 1250 XP, and so on.

Since the end of the game should be played at level 25+, I am thinking to lower the amounts overall from level 10 and above (just slightly though), so people should get the XP needed more easily.



Anyway, any feedback is welcome. I think balancing this right will be the hardest thing of this game

I did play it once as the VN, and it did feel super grindy, which is odd since it was the VN mode. Normal mode is just too much, having to do the same thing over and over is a bit much.



Maybe if you could have enemies give a lot more exp?



The issue is the battles are very much like SotW, but SotW had a continuing plot with each battle and you didn't heal at the end of every fight. Often on other things, normal fights are pretty easy but the boss fights are brutal. Even if the boss fights were easy it'd be a bit grindy, but make normal battles easier (read quicker) and give more exp and the need for it to be a grind might be easier?

I did play it once as the VN, and it did feel super grindy, which is odd since it was the VN mode. Normal mode is just too much, having to do the same thing over and over is a bit much.

That was before last update though, right? since in VN mode you don't need to "earn XP" because the battles are all skipped, the only grindy aspect was the money. But now with the shop auto-run, takes only a few clicks to reach high money amounts.

Maybe if you could have enemies give a lot more exp?



The issue is the battles are very much like SotW, but SotW had a continuing plot with each battle and you didn't heal at the end of every fight. Often on other things, normal fights are pretty easy but the boss fights are brutal. Even if the boss fights were easy it'd be a bit grindy, but make normal battles easier (read quicker) and give more exp and the need for it to be a grind might be easier?

Yes well in practice is what I was thinking to do in the first post: reducing the XP amount needed on each level, that is the same as increasing XP. I might also increase XP though.

Also, I might try to do on next update this: swap HP for Attack in enemy level up. Which means that higher level enemies have more Attack, instead of HP (so they are more dangerous, but quicker to kill). Perhaps this way the normal battles could be more of a challenge, but still quick to win if you get them right?

The battles don't seem too hard to me...one thing I often forget (and I believe the people who find the game too grindy do too) are the items such as the paralyze potion or the one that slows or the explosives...seems like this time they will be important and used often as we just have so limited resources...or at least in the beginning.

Another thing that is important and shouldn't be overlooked are the gems - I like to rob merchants for the money first (so I can buy few explosives. more than few small health potions and 1-2 big ones) then do the noble's houses for gems - which I use on the armor and don't sell...



And finally some suggestion for jack1974: if you are worried about the game being too hard - maybe start the game (on easy!) with a spend free skill/existing ability? Like taunt and such important skills. That way people that want to play (on easy!) will not have the option of messing up and not have an option to control the battle...

...to me it sounds like a good fix, but maybe it is too hard to make...?

...in case I didn't express myself right - this is only (already learned ability) for the EASY difficulty....

I let the player pick a skill at beginning of game, but they can choose what they want. I could maybe show some pop-up help, or ask (only for easy mode as you said) if they want to automatically pick a predefined skill.

However I think I expressed myself badly: the robbery part CAN be hard, since aren't required to advance the plot. In kadakithis case, maybe she had bad luck and found a high level target (the targets have varying levels, can be lower or higher than current's party level).

I realized that a game with basically all randomized contents (the robberies) will never be really balanced - the important is that the FIXED contents like the catacombs or the story missions are balanced (easy on easy, hard to win on hard/nightmare mode).

If a random robbery mission is too hard, you can skip and try another one. Instead you can't do the same for the catacombs or main plot missions

Well I mainly mentioned that one fight in the other thread because it seemed odd the guards my level were so much more difficult than the catacombs, but I do keep gems from the households and put them on, but the battles are just a bit too slow and take awhile, especially since most rooms trigger a fight, so it is less that most of them are too difficult to get past so much as they are a bit boring and a tad repetitive.



I love the catacombs and the forward movement of them, but the robberies can feel grindy and frustrating when sometimes you fought 6 battles and didn't get any gold or gems. Since it is the same enemy, when you are tough enough it is all about doing the same thing as a previous fight over and over. I wouldn't mind them being more difficult if they were quicker and/or less of the same enemy.



But later we're getting a meter that will gauge our success that will let us get exp from enemies without having to redo the process? That would solve all of my complaints.



Take all of this with a grain of salt. I prefer fast fights where you curb stomp most enemies but where bosses can curb stomp you. Here the bosses aren't that much more difficult, but everyone is tough and requires time to beat. This is way more strategic and I bet lots of people will enjoy that, so please don't change anything just because my usual style is different..

Yes, I added the auto-battle for the random fights while moving in the mansions, but some fights like the entrance points can't be "auto-resolved".

But later we're getting a meter that will gauge our success that will let us get exp from enemies without having to redo the process? That would solve all of my complaints.

I don't understand what you mean with this ?

While waiting for the main menu art I'm doing two things:

1) implementing a unique system for the target houses rooms (with help from a forum user!). In practice now you shouldn't see anymore two room of same type in the same house (except for "empty room" or "treasure room" thing).

2) for fun I added in the mercenary area a room with an Altar to Ibnesti with misplaced runes, so that would work in the opposite way: instead of sacrificing gold for honor, you sacrifice honor (experience points in this case) to get gold:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CqJRlSCWcAALMu8.jpg:large" style="max-width:100%">



I think it's a fun idea (it's optional obviously) and could solve the grinding problem if you're willing to sacrifice a bit of experience points for gold

I'm not sure if a gold and XP exchange will solve the grinding issue. In my first play-through (and so far the only, I'm currently in the middle of a second) my primary reason to visit dozens of shocked merchants were gems, a rare and random resource and totally unplanable



gems are _important_ in the later game and finding the correct set for the PCs with different demands can take a long time

I think the grindy issue was already fixed with the "run shop for X days" and the lower XP needed to level up. If people still think it's too grindy, I think it's better if they play it as visual novel? I am not sure how long it takes to finish playing the RPG part as well (even in Easy mode).

my definition of grindy is maybe different from yours?



grindy for me is maxing out because it's possible - in my example the chance to complete a gem set. my normal play-through was maybe 20 to 30 hours? with lots of fiddling around to get the dynamics, fine by me.



you could always use a deus-ex-machina approach: you already use recommended levels for your story dungeons, those could be triggers:



say a player dilly-dallys (like me currently : )) and never started the first lvl 5 story quest while the PCs are already on lvl 9.



as soon as all PCs are one level above the recommendation a forced father/kids talk happens, with the father explaining he found a treasure map* and will be away a while as it is paramount to pay the guy with the hood as he want to see his wife again. one more level of the PCs (the players will not listen!) another forced talk: the father found/got the money and will visit hood guy. at the next night the story mission starts.



no idea if this implementable, though : ) [but a more or less good/in-story way to enforce a planable pace and progress]



* or a long-lost friend will lend him money, or he's expecting a huge heritage or whatever

I don't want to put forced actions/events, since that was one of the most hated thing in SOTW (I had several people literally emailing me asking "WHY YOU PUT X DAYS TO NEXT EVENT NOOOO!!" ).

I think with the changes I have done, it should be OK - I believe if people do the catacombs+plot missions, they should get enough XP to finish the game as well. They can run the shop to get the money as much as they want. For higher difficulty levels they might need also to grind a bit, but it's not different from doing the Loren's "city task" which people seemed to love so much

to digress more from the topic at hand and outside of the grinding scope (QoT is imo fine, at least on normal difficulty)



"my" level-based story trigger and "your" time-based one are imho with a different qualia. iirc SotW combined the limited amount of actions with the option to level-up to the suggested PC level, and such a system feels artificial and outside of the story line: The game announces that the player was too stupid to play it the way it was intended (hyperbolic on purpose).



progress based on levels could be integrated in the storyline much more easy and natural: the PCs outlived the current step on their way of life - and it may be even ease the game design as the level range for every given chapter is more or less defined.



personally I like the freedom QoT gives, but see the advantages for game design with a more railroaded progress - and can accept this, if it feels coherent within the game story arc.

For SOTW I did it that way because it was supposed to be a more difficult game, since I got some complaints that Loren even in Hard mode was too easy. But here comes the biggest dilemma of game developers... who is right? is it a vocal minority? etc. It's impossible to know if even 10 people posting in forums "game XYZ is too hard" justify changing things.

Because I like to experiment (I never reused the same framework for two games, I always heavily modified it) with SOTW I decided to do that. In roguelike or harder games in general, you learn by your mistakes. Initially I didn't even want to say "you have X days before next plot scene", because in life you don't know beforehand how much time you have to do something (unexpected things happens). But then I thought maybe was too hard, so I added that indication, which probably was a mistake, or misinterpreted: was like telling people "hurry up ! clock is ticking! etc" which for most players was a big turn off.

Loren 2 will be very similar to the first game, in the sense that there will be a plot but you can decide what to do. You want to stay in town and do 150000 city tasks? fine Maybe I'll add some time / level limit only in Nightmare mode, but otherwise I won't force player to do anything.

Loren 2 will be very similar to the first game, in the sense that there will be a plot but you can decide what to do. You want to stay in town and do 150000 city tasks? fine Maybe I'll add some time / level limit only in Nightmare mode, but otherwise I won't force player to do anything.

Does that mean the return of grinder areas, like the Truth Temple or in the expansion the Cyclopes?



'Cause I personally loved having those available for levelin' up!



And if there's opposition to that kind of idea like ya said w/ people complaining the 1st was too easy, maybe have something in the options of the starting menu that allows people to turn such areas on or off; that way everyone's happy.

Well the current plan is to allow limited grinding by using a level window. Basically there will be a target level throughout the game, we generally expect you to be that level and the game will be balanced for that level. If you're below the level you'll get more XP to catch up and if you're above it you'll get less. Until you reach 3 levels above where you won't get any.

That allows grinding if you want it, clearly communicates what level we expect, prevents you from accidentally over levelling and gives us an easier time balancing the game. It's also making sure that grinding is completely optional.

We'll probably add an option to play with the effective level a bit. Like treating you as x level higher then you actually are for low level challenge runs. Or treating you lower to make for easy grinding.

Yes that's probably the best system, since otherwise the same people who complain it's too hard, then after grinding for 150h when they reach the final boss (Fost) they say the opposite "the final boss was too easy". Then I ask "what level you were, it was designed for a party around level 17-18" and they answer "Oh I was level 26-27!"

There is certainly some "grinding" especially in the earn 25,000 and 50,000 areas but actually, I think the thing which made it feel "grindy" is that long before then, it seems, one has already played out the relationships (male, female or otherwise) to a point of forming couples so there do not seem to be any breaks other than wandering into the catacombs. It would have been nice if relationship "encounters" were to play throughout the game, including after a couple has gotten together, possibly even (where character appropriate) allowing the romantic partners to take part in some of the later adventures . One other question: it looks very much like there might be a sequel planned from the very ending concerning where all that money goes... Would strongly support this

Yes, the problem is that since many characters give bonuses related to robberies, we wanted to have them to end sooner to actually get some benefits from those bonuses.

Doing extra scenes at this point can't be done (there's already a lot of content). Not that is a bad idea, but first I'll see how it goes

I spoke with the writer and she has some idea for a sequel with Arianna and/or a DLC. The main issue is the artist that is a bit slow, but perhaps adding 1 CG for each romance combo could be possible in around a year or so.

Anyway nothing is decided yet, but if possible I would like to have another game featuring Arianna & her daughters too