Weekly Update/Preview Oct 15-23 (Patreon)

Hey there. Feels like it's been a bit since I sat down to write one of these out one of these. The weird release delay on 16 leading into another weird release timing for the bugfix version is the cause of that. This whole month has just been unusual as far as scheduling things. Although that might sound negative I don't really feel that way about it. I've been feeling pretty good mentally, but still need to convert that into doing good work for the next update.

In any case, I can talk about the couple of tweets that I put out, as well as...

Alpha 16.1 Release

Since the bugfix version went out I have had 0 bugs reported. I did find a single bug myself, but that was within the context of the debug menu, and it isn't even a particularly big deal. Seems like that should be something I could take as a pretty good sign of stability, assuming no news is good news. 

There is some nagging in my head that rather than that, it could also be the case that players just haven't bothered with 16.1 as much. There wasn't new content in it, so it probably wasn't as exciting to get a hold of and play. I can't really know if that's the case or not, and should probably just assume that thinking that is my anxiety talking. Endless hunger for feedback with no way to guarantee that I actually get any of it. You know how it is.

But yes. Bugfix version is, by all appearances, out and in good shape. I've moved on to working on new stuff. Art and such which is not necessarily placed in scenes yet, as well as some more bits of gameplay stuff, which is what I've been tweeting.

Adding a few more

I've said many times that I think the game is too easy, but I should probably note that saying that is from the perspective of starting a new game with no data. I should also acknowledge that while saying that, I have no actual data to back it up. While I personally feel like it should be more likely for a new player to be able to finish their first ever run than to lose, I have no way of knowing if that's actually true.

Still, even if it isn't correct, I have the general sense that the game is too easy. If you asked me for my opinion, I would say that from a general gameplay perspective you should be more likely to lose than you are right now.

Buuuuuut I know some people aren't that engaged with getting deep into the gameplay and just want to see events and smut and mind control stuff happen, so I'm not terribly torn up about it being less difficult than I would like, especially because of these difficulty increasing options.

I haven't actually tried playing with all of the difficulty options on. I also don't have a save file with all the research and KP that I would expect a high difficulty level player would have, so it makes it a bit harder to test how having all of these restrictions heaped on top of each other feels. I should probably do that at some point, although honestly it's going to be a pretty small minority of players who would even want to try doing something like that, so it may not be worth worrying about. While there will probably be a non-zero number of players who want the bragging rights of playing on maximum difficulty, it won't be required, nor will I make any promise about it being balanced.

On the whole, the point with these options is to increase customization/replayability and reward being good at the game by allowing you to pick up more new game+ benefits than you otherwise might be able to. I think it's a solid system, and is why I've chosen to go in and add a bit more to it.

This is Expensive

This seems really really strong to me, but I don't know how much people prefer natural skill learning vs learning from scrolls or memory. The skill system is another one that I'm actually pretty happy with in terms of all the different options having pluses and minuses and reasons why you might do one thing rather than another. I don't think having this bonus would tip that balance, but we'll have to see.

I did also make it rather expensive in terms of KP cost, but that's not necessarily a good way to balance these kinds of things. All of the KP costs in the New Game+ menu have been decided more or less arbitrarily based on some vague idea of perceived strength, but the total amount of KP in the system keeps increasing as more content is added, which I guess means the economy is inflating, which will mean that eventually 500 KP will be a smaller ask relative to how much KP an average player has. That would mean needing to rebalance costs later or keep adding things more and more forever and... I don't know.

It's an issue I'm aware of, but probably isn't that huge of a deal. Perfect balance isn't a real thing, and it's probably more important to give people the ability to select options and enjoy themselves.

Also writing this got me curious so I stopped between that previous sentence and this one to check and get some numbers. If you want to know as well (keeping in mind that some or all of these numbers will go up between now and the next update):

Total KP from dungeon events: 3110

Total KP from camp events: 360

Total KP from selecting difficulty increasing options: 1175

Maximum KP possible: 4645

Total Cost of all options on Melos Page: 3230

Total Cost of all options on Syra Page: 3100

Total Cost of all (non-difficulty increasing) options on Eschahn Page: 75

Total Cost of all non-difficulty increasing options: 6405

I don't know what, if anything, I should do with these numbers. Nothing here strikes me as particularly egregious. Like I said, I just ended up feeling curious to check. In this context, 500 feels like a still pretty significant amount for one thing to cost, especially considering that there probably aren't many (or any?) players that have 100% of the KP currently available. Also I guess I should mention that I dropped the cost of the retain spell options by a bit, so no other option currently costs 500 aside from this Expanded Repertoire one. Is it really the highest impact option on the list?

Dunno, just some interesting bits that I have to keep in mind and think about as I continue to add stuff. That's what you're here for, right? I hope so. I guess you might also be here to support a cool video game. That's also good. Thanks for that.