Combat and 10.1 Progress (Patreon)

Greetings! Thank you for your comments in the last post - I’ve decided what to to do with combat in 10.1, and I wanted to update you on that, as well as let you know how progress is coming on 10.1 as a whole. So let’s get started!

Why Combat Won’t Change (Much) in 10.1

I’ve long thought the combat system was a bit lackluster, and had “make it more interesting” on my to-do list for a while. Looking at the overall plan for chapter 11, I also wanted to completely finish the Military District before moving on to the Commercial District. There’s only one thing left for the Military District - the Arena - and that seemed like a good opportunity to make combat changes, since it would give people a means to test it out.

In reading your comments and giving further thought to the matter, however, I’ve decided not to change very much about the combat system. There are a few things I’ll try to do, but these are mostly tweaks and quality of life fixes rather than substantial changes.

There are several reasons to keep combat mostly the same, and they’re all kind of related. The first is that combat is a pretty small part of the overall game, so effort spent on giving it a lot of depth would probably be wasted. The main draw of this game is the story and/or porn, not the combat. Even if I did overhaul the system to give it a lot of depth, combat is (intentionally) so infrequent that you wouldn’t have much time to appreciate it.

More complex combat would also make it more difficult to tune boss fights. Complexity would greatly widen the difference between good play and bad - so which one should I tune for? If I just go for a middle-of-the-road approach, it’ll be too hard for the bad players and too easy for the good ones. “Just make different difficulty modes,” you say. “You do it already.” This could work, but I’d feel a need to give the good players more rewards to make up for the greater challenge, which would lead to a self-reinforcing cycle where you have to beat previous hard modes to have a chance at beating future ones.

As it is, normal mode is the way the game’s intended to be played. Easy mode is for folks who are just here for the story/porn, or who really just can’t seem to beat a challenge for whatever reason, with the only cost a vague threat of missing out on an H-scene or two someday and the subtle disappointment of the video game gods. I like putting interesting puzzles and challenges into the game, but I want the game to remain fundamentally casual-friendly. I think a lot of combat depth and a bunch of different difficulty modes would change that feel.

Final point: the purpose of revising combat is to make it more interesting. It occurred to me, though, that the only meaningful combat in this game is boss fights, and they already have a source of interest - the boss' abilities and other mechanics of the encounter. If a boss fight isn’t interesting, the answer is to design a better boss fight, not trying to make combat so cool that you’ll go around looking for packs of slimes to bully (spoiler: there aren’t any.)

10.1 Combat Changes

There will (probably) be a few minor changes, though. Not sure I’ll be able to make all these work, but I’m trying:

• Removing resource bars people don’t use. Ana can’t do anything with MP and Alex can’t do anything with TP. Since they can’t use them, why are they there? (This is already done.)
• Adding a way to fast-forward combat. Action sequences make the combat more visually interesting, but may get old after the hundredth time. I’m working on this one now, but there’s a chance I may not be able to do it.
• Adding more information about states. What do all those little symbols mean? It can get confusing in some fights. Not sure yet how to handle it, but I think I’ll find a way to help.

10.1 Progress

In addition to the combat tweaks mentioned above, 10.1 will add the following things:

Gems and enchantments: These are gear enhancements using items you probably acquired in 10.0. The first time you get either uncut gems or enchanter’s powder in 10.1+, you’ll get a quest to visit the newly-added enchanter or gemcutter in the Sorcerer’s Society. Don’t worry, though, when loading a 10.0 save you’ll automatically get the quest(s) if you have the relevant item(s). All this is already done.

Arena combat: Fight for fun and prizes! I have the basic concept for this worked out, but still need to implement it. It’ll probably be organized in waves, where each time you sign up to fight you’ll fight a single wave. Waves will probably consist of a few groups of trash mobs, followed by a boss encounter.

I don’t want fighting in the arena to either be or feel necessary, so I don’t want the rewards from it to be too good. And since it won’t be necessary, I don’t want to invest a ton of time in coming up with unique boss fights. I’ll probably design 1 unique boss, but the rest will likely be reskins more or less of previous ones. Well, an old, slimy friend may get his own boss fight (again) so maybe that makes 2 unique boss fights :)

The arena will also have some interesting characters to meet and some skits to see. But that’s pretty much all I had planned for 10.1.

Conclusion

The original plan was to have 10.1 out by the end of the month. Not sure if that’s quite going to happen, but I’m going to try. 10.2 will consist of an H-scene (I’ll have a poll up once 10.1 is out) and 10.3 will feature the reopening of the Commercial District. Oh, and a semi-serious bug was brought to my attention recently, so there will be one more hotfix to 10.0 coming out soon. That’s all I have for now - please let me know your thoughts, and thank you for your support!