Third Act Beta! - SOTW 0.8.38

[fabulaparva]

Any particular reason to use slow animations for crabsters? I tried with a 17-16 level party, using buffs, fast animations. Took more than 11 turns, but less than 30 seconds.

I do get your point about long vs difficult, especially regarding that Riley's golem. I'm just very used to very fighting-oriented RPGs so maybe grinding just doesn't feel grueling for me as fast? But then again, when I played through act 3, I didn't really give many visits to the crabs nor to the secret area grinding.... so maybe the marathon fights within the actual quests didn't affect me as much.

Also, when I was testing out Shea's romances at Normal difficulty in Act3, it took clearly under two hours (and not all of that was spent on the computer, I only have timestamps to go with here) to unlock both Krimm's and Riley's CGs plus the jealousy scene...this meant starting from 2 quests done going to 6 quests done, then reloading at 4 or 5 quests done and going up to 9 quests done plus some back and forth between the answers.

Aldorlea's Book of Legends (RPG-maker based game, not a VN at all, and no cntrl-skipping ... but there's a possibility to get "a romance CG" at the very end) took me almost 30 hours spread across multiple days to get to the end and I didn't find that grueling...so maybe I'm just a wrong person to give feedback on fight-lengths in something like SotW that will have a large, more VN-oriented RPG-playerbase.

[jack1974]

Yes exactly I think all depends on tastes. For sure compared to Loren IS different. That was my goal Since I had already Loren 2 in the works, which probably will be more similar to the first one (less combat and more story) I wanted to try something different with SOTW. (in theory was to be a shorter game but well... )
Is an experiment like Loren was. Depending on the results, will do more, or less. One thing is sure, SOTW took me a crazy amount of time to make, so unless people really appreciate it (which means, buy it) I don't think will be worth spending so many countless hours on a single game in future.
I remembered that I'll talk about this topic on next Friday blog as well

[Troyen]

Any particular reason to use slow animations for crabsters? I tried with a 17-16 level party, using buffs, fast animations. Took more than 11 turns, but less than 30 seconds.

I do get your point about long vs difficult, especially regarding that Riley's golem. I'm just very used to very fighting-oriented RPGs so maybe grinding just doesn't feel grueling for me as fast? But then again, when I played through act 3, I didn't really give many visits to the crabs nor to the secret area grinding.... so maybe the marathon fights within the actual quests didn't affect me as much.

I play with slow on all the time because when I run on fast, if multiple enemies go in a row I can't keep up and spend more time trying to figure out what just happened, so I know if I need to counter something. Only a few spells on slow really drag out, like Rally and purifircation.

I'm also not going out of my way to grind (aside from Act 1). I visit the crabs maybe once or twice between quests, if at all. I definitely don't want to spend a lot of time on the secret area.

I don't mind long fights per se, but I don't like repetition so much. E.g. on Riley's golem, it was the same three skills over and over and over for fifteen minutes. But also, some of these wave fights I'm fighting the same mobs in the same starting formation, and they use the exact same abilities, so I'm doing the same fight multiple times - and it takes a long time. I've killed a few dozen spiders by this point. When I change between areas or progress to a new part of the story or new mobs come in (like the first time the Empire mages), then it gets more interesting because I have to adjust my skill usage accordingly, but otherwise...

[jack1974]

Yes I agree. That's why basically the only repetitive fight in act 3 are the crabs/snakes/spiders but those are optional for grinding SOTW has a VERY HUGE variety of enemies. I didn't count them all but I think (including variations like skeleton of act1 vs act2) are over 100! That took a long time to do as well, that's why I'm really curious to see the results of all those efforts when the game is finished. Hopefully will be worth it. Otherwise I know what to do

[Franka]

At least I can see that I'm not the only one who gets tired of long fights in this game. I just take the more drastic solution, and play on Easy. Even then, some fights take forever - I'm looking at you, Kraken; 4 characters who act constantly and 2 mages with huge delays, bleh.

I don't have time to continue my NM run either, I was fortunate to have some free time when Act 3 came out, but too much work now. I'll make time somehow for Easy mode when Act 4 comes out.

[jack1974]

I see, well if you make a list of "fights too long" I can tweak the difficulty so that they have more attack but less HP. It should still keep the challenge up, but reduce the fight length considerably!

[Troyen]

I will have to do another play-through (sometime after I finish this one). Honestly, most of my complaints were in the first half, but there are certain spots here and there in Act 3 that I just don't want to touch with a ten-foot pole. (Looking at you oozes/grubs!)

But yeah, swapping to easy mode, one character can pretty much one-shot every mob on the screen. World of difference there!

[jack1974]

Yes the Easy mode = Normal of Loren, while the Normal mode = Hard more of Loren (more or less!)

Anyway after thinking more about it, I lowered a bit HP and increased Attack in some non-boss enemies, but I don't think the problem is in the battles themselves: I think simply is that the game is too long and has too many battles. Might be odd to say this about a RPG, but I think that's the problem. Yaysword replayed the first act 50 times, and the second a good amount too. It's just NORMAL that he got tired of it

[fabulaparva]

I'm just going to be obnoxious here and say (repeating myself) that considering that you can fasttrack a helluva lot of the fights in Act 3, you can cut corners in the steam tunnels by crossing over the vents (not a problem on easier difficulties), you can skip over the ants, in general you don't have to complete all quests to complete the game, you don't have to search every area on the first try, you can even trick and pay your way out of some fights... the game can be played fast and it can be played slow. And then there's the difficulty choice----So it suits both styles of playing. In my honest opinion. Looking to fight everyone possible can wear one out. But upon playing the finished game, that's a choice. *) We just are doing exactly that extreme fighting right now, choosing to play all the aspects of the game, trying to skip stuff sometimes to see if it breaks and then go back and fight everything possible, since we are betatesting, so our views will be affected.

Everything can be tweaked and bettered till kingdom come and I think it's really praiseworthy that you are striving to do that, Jack. If some monsters are clearly faulty, then yeah, tweak in order. But there's always the option of "good enough". Go for purrfect instead of perfect.

I friggin' love this game. :D


*)Which reminds me.. Aldorlea has always like a ton of sidequests, but they tend to mark the main quest differently in the quest log so it's clear for the player what is optional and what isn't needed for the "main" storyline. I know that the nature of their and Winterwolves' games is very different, but maybe that's something to consider?


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[jack1974]

Thanks! And yes I could add a text "optional" to some sidequests indeed