v0.1.5 Combat Revamp (devlog) (Patreon)

Greetings, Adventurers!

Normally I keep most previews and news about in-progress development under wraps and available to Patrons only,  but this post is going to be an exception. Most Patrons have already seen the previews related to these changes, and I'd like to talk about  the design process and my thinking behind it.

As you might have guessed from the title, v0.1.5  will bring along significant changes to the combat system. I'm not  overhauling it completely, or changing game genres, but merely replacing the systems that didn't work well and polishing the bits that did. Since the game has been out for a while and I was able to gather some feedback, I was able to identify what worked and what didn't.

Now, it's no secret that Adventurer Trainer is, first and foremost, a porn game. That fact is very important to consider in the design process: people typically don't play porn games for their deep and complicated tactical gameplay. At the same time, adventuring and combat are essential to the  storytelling of Adventurer Trainer. Finding the right  balance between simplicity and intricacy is essential to keep the player entertained. The combat system has to be easily accessible, intuitive, yet possess enough depth to present a challenge when it needs to.

With that in mind, let's examine the combat system structure as it was and what changes have been made to meet the outlined goals.

All-Out Attacks

First of all, what is the main expected combat loop? Player encounters a group of monsters, identifies their vulnerabilities (if  hasn't previously), exploits them until their shields drop to 0, which lets the player deal extra damage... and keeps doing that until the monsters are dead. There are two problems with this: while it's clear  that exploiting vulnerabilities is important to the outcome of the battle, it's simply not rewarding enough; and combat becomes a tedious hassle, rather than a puzzle to solve.

This is the first change that should address this: after removing all enemies' shields, your party performs an All-Out-Attack (kinda like in Persona), dealing significant damage to the entire enemy party. This achieves two things: it rewards the players for strategizing and overcoming the challenge presented, and it cuts down on the time spent on mindlessly pummeling enemies until they are dead.

Weakness Limits

Now the focus of combat has shifted: in order to  be most efficient, the player has to exploit the weaknesses of the enemies. However, once those weaknesses are known, how do we keep the combat engaging and stop it from becoming trivial? With that in mind, I made another change: for each monster, you can exploit each weakness only once. Attempting to target it again will not affect the monster's  shields, so for enemies with more than 1 Shield the player is expected  to utilize different damage types to break them. Once the monster has been broken and then recovered, the list of exploited  weaknesses reset, and targeting them becomes effective again.

Notice how the Direwolf's Sword weakness is in red? That means you can no longer exploit it

What exactly does that achieve? It introduces a layer of complexity to challenge the player. Each battle becomes a puzzle to be solved, and the player has to consider the tools they have in order to defeat the opponents. Obviously, you could still muscle your way through, but  solving the fight is now more rewarding than ever. This is really more of a balance problem, and for smaller fry (the monsters we see often  with only 1 Shield), this isn't really a big deal. The player is expected to beat them without a sweat.

Critical Hits now break shields as well. Not only does this  strengthen the impact of luck on the battle's outcome, but it also increases viability of the Crit-based metas.

Boost Points / Combo Points

Now let's step back for a minute and talk about Boost points. Previously, the Boost points represented a layer of resource management  during combat: the player had to wait for a couple of turns before they  became available, and the player had to think about their usage to  maximize efficiency. On top of that, Boost points coupled themselves with the narrative progression: increasing Affection with party members increased their maximum Boost points.

Boost points are a vital part of Octopath Traveler combat system, and naturally, I've tried integrating it here as well. However, at this  point, I'm less than thrilled about this system's performance. The biggest problem with it, in my opinion, is it takes multiple turns to  become available to the player. In my vision of Adventurer Trainer's combat, the battles are short and sweet. Remember the discussion a few  paragraphs above about how this is a porn game, first and foremost? Boost points simply don't fit in the design.

So in v0.1.5, they are replaced with Combo points. Each time you  exploit an enemy's vulnerability or score a critical hit, you will accumulate a Combo point. You can spend them much like you could spend  Boost points: by increasing the number of weapon attacks, or improving the potency of your skills. This change rewards the player even more for  exploiting weaknesses, and provides another tool for them to use to defeat monsters.

This blog post covered exactly four lines of the changelog. There are plenty more new things coming in v0.1.5, including but not limited to: ability modifiers, new status effects like Regeneration or Poison, new ability effects, Boss fights, and etc. But I felt it important to discuss these changes and showcase some progress before the new update drops.

Stay on the lookout for further announcements! I imagine the next post will be about the release ;)