Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!
One suggestion on the topic of combat balance:
I don't think this is the case yet, but could a grappled character get the same damage resistance (to outside attacks) that grappling characters do?
That way, a grapple might feel less like "get stunned while the other enemies wail on you" and more "temporarily removed from combat"...
This is a really great idea, in my opinion. Either make grapple a vulnerability for both, or protect both. The way it is just feels wrong.
What? To break out of a grapple you just hit the left and right arrow keys, at least if you're on No Wait (which is actually the easier battle mode to handle grappling enemies), there's no "luck" involved. No idea what you mean by the struggle mechanic being "broken". If anyone is to understand where you're coming from, you're going to need to provide context. What enemies or enemy encounters have this problem? Are you at max lust or none? Have you been playing in the dark areas without the NV goggles?
The "mash left/right buttons" dynamic is a complete pain in the ass, particularly when you have so limited a time window to do it. There is no dynamic feedback between the player's actions and the enemy's actions and the grapple, just a simple deduct X mechanic. See Anthophobia as an example of a game which did it much better. Best of all is to get rid of the "Push X to escape!" dynamic entirely and come up with something more creative.
Besides, I like playing on wait mode so the game doesn't feel like one giant quicktime event.
Personally speaking, with both characters at level 05, with max lust and broken armor as well as fighting enemies in dark areas and having given Neon the NV goggles, I find little to no trouble fighting off ANY enemy encounter, that includes the double vioreaper + tentacle monster (which along with the triple vorepups and the final boss is the enemy encounter with the most grapple enemies, to my knowledge). You just have to be strategic, keep an eye on which enemy is going to charge up a grapple next, and save Neon for her Distracting Shot.
Alternatively, even when both characters get grappled, all it takes are 2 turns of struggling (at max lust, usually only takes 1 otherwise) and they're free. If there are three enemies and 2 are in the middle of grappling your party, that leaves only one free enemy left. Plus, once the tentacle monsters consume a character, that character is safe from any damage, and you have just enough time to escape before the submerge phase begins (if you're fast enough). Enemies aren't just spamming grapples again and again and again and again constantly. Depending on the time you free, say, Neon from a grapple, both the enemy you just got free from and the other un-involved enemy may still have to fill up their first action bar, and to grapple they have to fill up the 2nd. Neon's Distracting Shot only requires 1 action bar to get ready (as well as a bit of time to select the right enemy, if need be).
So I really don't see what exactly is "broken" in this game.
I didn't say the game is difficult, I said it's got flaws.
See below for more explanation.
While I certainly appreciate the feedback and the chance to make something productive out of it, please try to remember this is a work in progress! Some of your suggestions are on the to do list or have been discussed pretty extensively in previous posts.
If you want your players to have a more clear idea of what your demo is, put it in the OP of this thread, where it's easy to see, or somewhere else similarly obvious. A list of specific planned tweaks, changes, or intended improvements that isn't buried in 74 pages of discussion would be enormously beneficial. It sounds, honestly, like the demo right now is a "tech demo", which is worlds different from a game demo. If I'd been thinking of it as a tech demo, I'd be a lot more forgiving in my analysis.
The battle engine is basically a total rewrite of RPG Maker's, and a lot of features still aren't in place yet. This naturally affects our ability to balance combat quite severely. It would also be a huge task to re-balance combat every build since a lot of the mechanics aren't even finished yet.
I'd like to respond to some of your points however, as I feel like you're missing some points of the bigger picture.
This is definitely not final. While their success rate can be balanced later quite easily, there will definitely be skills designed to actively defend against or even counter H-attacks.
Well, duh. You're going to need all the input you can get to determine if your attempts to balance the system are working correctly, or not, and whether players like them. I didn't say the game is hopelessly fucked, just that it needs adjustments.
This is completely intended, and your second sentence explains why. Lust is the real parameter to watch out for, and allows for carrying a build up of H-related effects between battles. If you could reduce Lust on the fly, then you'd simply never see H content unless each battle was very difficult. This is a huge problem with most H-RPGs out there, as once you are capable of defeating enemies in an area then they pose no threat at all since you begin each battle refreshed.
You are taking a potential problem, the "post-area overpowered player" phenomenon, and engineering an excessively blunt solution to "fix" it.
On the one hand, I do agree that having the enemies continue to be a compelling threat is a great idea, and that making the game feel like it continually challenges the player is a good thing, but making there be a single cumulative damage state that CANNOT be mitigated is simply bad design. Give the player options: "lust reduction" items, or make defending reduce arousal (this actually makes sense, if it's allowing a degree of self-repair), or create a sexy "stress relief" minigame that can either reduce arousal on success or increase it on failure, or (as you mention in the interview), make it so that arousal is another resource to manage that has both advantages (using H attacks against your enemies, counters, etc.) and disadvantages (loss of control of characters, possibly, and certainly increased vulnerability to grapples and H attacks)
Ultimately, however, as the players progress in level, the enemies WILL become less and less of a threat. If you work too hard to counter this, you will end up with a situation where there is no sense of progression in leveling up.
I'm not sure if you're being literal here or not. The manual struggle mode actually was broken in V0.041 as some of the UI graphics were not displaying, but was fixed with the hotfix located here:
"Broken" meaning it comes across as being a pain in the ass, instead of being something that feels like it adds tension to the game. It's tedious to break out of grapples, yet fails to incite a real sense of urgency, since you already have to try pretty hard to get into a situation where you're getting grappled at all, and since the only way to get H content is to be high lust, it's not like the player gets into that situation "by accident".
It feels like this: "I want H content, so I'll get my arousal high; now I have to continually break out of grapples to do ANYTHING". The fact that some enemies have 1HKO finishers simply makes it seem even more tedious and contrived. (Though if there were sexy unique KO animations for player chars killed by an H finisher, that would significantly improve the situation)
However, as you mention in the interview, additional skills that allow arousal to be a RESOURCE (admittedly, a resource with some potential caveats) instead of a pure liability, would massively improve the situation.
The idea here is that the Resist category of skills has more importance placed on it since an enemy can't easily be killed during an H attack. I disagree with the idea that being able to easily kill an enemy that performs an H-attack would be a good thing.
It's "good" in the sense that it's intuitive, and makes sense. However, CrazyPerson's idea is also a good compromise. There are a million ways to tweak the balance so that grapples feel like a real threat, but aren't so annoying that they detract from the game experience.
See post #1044, you'll be pleased I think
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Yes.
I agree! Remember, just because it's not in the game now doesn't mean it won't be. This is an idea I've discussed in the interview found here:
Well, duh. I'm glad you've already thought of it, but it never hurts to reiterate support for a good idea.
Different map sprite graphics for H-related effects are actually planned, but aren't really of the highest priority right now.
I meant the paperdoll in combat, not the char sprite in the map. The map sprites are too small for me to really care, though they should at least have animations corresponding to the battle sprites to avoid a continuity issue.
In other words, literally the only time you see pink with Neon is during her damage flinch animation. (Or during grapples)
Some of your other suggestions were discussed heavily in this topic around the release of V0.03 (early November I believe) EDIT: Sorry, I meant the public demo... mid February. It's very easy to take what you see at face value, but realize the current demo still only covers very low level play, and isn't intended to be representative of the final game. Instead, it's meant to represent what's possible with the final game.
The specific term you want is "tech demo". This is good, in the sense that it means that this really is just showing off the platform you're working with, but you should make that more obvious on the public demo page.
