Balance Survey + Plans (Patreon)

So we posted a survey on twitter regarding the balance in Rejuvenation.
We know balance has been an mixed bag and we wanted to give players a chance to speak up and give their opinion on individual fights in the game. 

If you haven't taken the survey and would like to, you can do so here. PLEASE only take the survey if you've played/are a normal mode player. Intense mode has been discontinued.

Currently we have 181 responses!

And a lot of them mention how a lot of fights feel constricted-- You have to specifically build a team around a fight very often. 

I myself have felt very conflicted on the game's difficulty for a while. It's the primary reason why intense mode had been discontinued. The game was turning into something I didn't want/intend to, and it felt like too much focus was going into that mode over the normal difficulty. Well, with these responses in mind we've come up with a bunch of initial solutions. Some small, some pretty big. Let's talk about em!

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Early game:
We're looking to streamline gameplay in the early game. This means tuning down on difficulty and cutting down on how many mons trainers have. Starting the game off on the "easy" side and slowly progressing into a higher difficulty is the primary goal here. We're also looking into making Chapter 2 less awkward with exp (More details on that in a future post.)

Dimensional Rifts/Boss Battles:
So, plain and simple, we're dropping boss battles. They were a neat idea in concept, but they don't work too well in execution. Any idea to try and make this work just rounds out to "we should probably just remove it", and so we will!
On the topic of Rift battles, we're also considering (and leaning towards this outcome) merging them in with other battles. Most of them will no longer be just a boss vs 1 overpowered entity. We don't have details on every single instance of this as of yet, so allow us to work through trials of this before asking too many detailed questions. If there's any comparison that can be made-- PULSE battles in Reborn are the best I got.

As a result, I suppose strats like Destiny Bond will make its way back in again... Shrug. Let the player decide how they want to win fights.

Hidden Items:
Basically.... There will just be more hidden items! More opportunities to gather seeds, recovery items, shards, etc. Mining rocks will also become more lucrative, especially in hidden/out of the way areas. In addition to more hidden items, there will also be more useful items to find in your exploration such as mints and EV boosters. Items that can change your Pokemon's IVs will also become available. 

Encounters/Mon Availability:
We're looking at making encounters more interesting. Particularly late game encounters. More evolved mons, higher leveled mons. More variety etc. We're also introducing more mystery eggs earlier in the game as well! Additionally. various mons that appear a bit later than liked will appear earlier as well! Any Tynamo lovers in chat? 

Field Effects:
We're looking for ways to make changing fields easier + possible to do more often. I have absolutely no idea how or if it's something we'll address in 13.5 directly, but it's something I thought I'd bring to everyone's attention. It's something we're looking at.

Casual Mode:
...Is getting a rehaul! I wouldn't necessarily call the goal here to make it "Game Freak Difficulty", but the purpose of this mode is not to make things challenging, but to allow the player to play the game and get through the story easily. Of course, there will still be tough fights, but it will be a notch down from current normal mode. Oh, and we're also thinking of just renaming this mode to "Story Mode".

I would like to reiterate that these are long term goals. I don't think anything will be perfect by the time of 13.5's release. I'm not interested in overloading myself like I did with v13 (Even though I kind of already am, but details...). But yeah, just something to keep in mind.

That's all I wanted to discuss today! I hope you all are doing well and have a wonderful rest of your week! Until next time~.

#-------------------------- Quick Reminders:

Reminder! If you have upgraded to the Red Diamond tier and you still haven't submitted your custom playable character sheet, please do so here! (As well as your NPC name and Team Name.)

https://forms.gle/8STRg48DtZ5rBtqb6

For everyone who is sapphire and above, please fill this form for your in game NPC!

https://forms.gle/BoTz3S6aXpHED2hR6

Also another small reminder that the name Patreon gives me will be the name listed under the credits. If you want to be put down as something else please message me!