Aetheria: Shadows of the Past

[parallax]

The idea of easy and hard varies, for me I think he was "easy" in the sense that his mechanics were basic and he was a sponge, but at the same time it's kind of hard because exactly that, he is just a sponge. It took me..quite awhile, Idk how long exactly, over 6 or 7 minutes i think to beat him just cause he absorbs so much damage.


I think some ways to improve the tower would make it more thematic. On the way up you have skeletons, oh and I like how they are called clinkers, but for some reason it sounds racist XD poor skeletons, and ghosts, but when you reach the top you have this giant metal knight. You start with an undead theme and end with a big humanoid, of course he could be undead under that armor, hell if i know.


You could improve him by adding dialogue to the fight, from him that is, not exactly a "big baddie monologue", but perhaps some lore or something. Also perhaps put a level requirement on the tower, in a subtle way though not a "you need to be x level to enter" kinda way, just because I'm not sure what level I was supposed to be up there at, I think i was around..6 or 7ish when I first went up there. Though this could apply to all levels, just subtle ways of hinting where to go when at what level, cause i tried the forest at level 3ish, lemme tell you that plant was not happy to see me and I wasn't happy to see him, i ran after that first fight pretty fast.


Oh and those weird colored bead items you get, forget the item name, what are they supposed to do? I see i can use them in combat, but i only got one or two and i didn't want to use them because of the text saying someone might want them.


The gear thing is fine, i understand not wanting them to trade off too fast. I ended up buying 3 sets of full iron for my party and upgrading their weapons +3 times and armor like once I think before I hit the tower a second time, so yeah even if there was upgrades in the second town I probably woulda just felt like crap since i spent so much cash buying armor and upgrading armor for them.


The problem with the weather is I have no idea how to find out what they do, Sal explains wind at the first fight, rain is explained to you by an npc, but night and light have no explanations or noticeable stat changes that I could find.

 

[raynesu]

For your experience against the boss, I think it was just bad luck maybe? Same thing with the bats, the frequencies they should be using the guard or sonic wave should be relatively low. Though it's hard to say. I'll look into it more.


Those beads... There are actually going to part of the trait system, relearning/ trading, etc. in the future. They aren't supposed to be used in combat or anything, a bug >.>. 


For the tower dungeon, on idea I was thinking about is making all the tower dungeons randomly generated. So each trip up is different, but we'll see.


For your information:


Wind: AGI up


Raind: AGI down


Night: Hit Rate down


Light: Critical Up


Clouds: Evasion Up


Sun:  Hit Rate Down


Miasma: Periodic Damage over time


There probably will be more, but that's all that's included in the demo. I will however find a way to explain each of them in game.

 

[parallax]

I was just playin some more cause I wanted to see what else there was, help out some more if I could, and I ran into the Slime King in the forest so a few things on that..


I'm glad he is actually a different color than the normal enemies, that helps a TONNN and I loveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee to death how he gets smaller the less HP he gets, that is such a great little detail. He wasn't a tough battle, but I enjoyed it purely because he got smaller as he got beat.

 

[raynesu]

Yeah most of the rare monsters are a different color, except the bats which I thought looked very strange red, blue, yellow, etc. Also I am glad you like the slime king, he was one of my favorites to make as well

 

[parallax]

Been playing a bit more, still wanna get to that Meteor ability to test that out, lots of grinding ahead of me though for that one, but a few other thoughts I had after ascending Mt. Idra.


The boss at the end, I feel like her super is maybe too super, it has no wind up and nearly decimates a full HP party, so some tuning could be used there.


The evasion rate of mobs there, dunno if it's just because of the night time bonus or not, but its insanely high, I could still deal with them easily, but their evasion is quite strong compared to anywhere else in the game world, especially at night. The spookies were the worst case, I missed nearly 5 hits in a row on one of them.


The golem mini-bosses and their guardian healers are interesting, but using any AoE attacks instantly wipes out the healer grunts rendering them useless to the golem, they also start the battle with double heals. Perhaps make them buff the golem instead, that way if you choose to leave them easy to kill they at least have a purpose for the battle.

 

[raynesu]

 I will tell you right now that meteor may be a bit underwhelming visually lol, but thanks for all the feedback! I remember distinctly weakening the tornado ability, I'll look into that as well as other things on Mt. Indara after I sort out a few things with the Ruined Tower.


Base evasion is 5% I believe for all mobs plus 15% for the night weather. Maybe bad luck? I will also look into this, and perhaps lowering this. I just really wanted night to suck so you'd have to go to an inn.


Gosh, I don't know how to than you for all the help and for your time. In the mean time take another like. 

 

[parallax]

 I will tell you right now that meteor may be a bit underwhelming visually lol, but thanks for all the feedback! I remember distinctly weakening the tornado ability, I'll look into that as well as other things on Mt. Indara after I sort out a few things with the Ruined Tower.


Base evasion is 5% I believe for all mobs plus 15% for the night weather. Maybe bad luck? I will also look into this, and perhaps lowering this. I just really wanted night to suck so you'd have to go to an inn.


Gosh, I don't know how to than you for all the help and for your time. In the mean time take another like. 

The tornado ability would take my party down about 400-500hp depending, I had good armor on so I'm sure the damage was reduced by a bit. 


I guess it could just be bad luck, if you wanted weather to matter that much than I wouldn't change it too much, though you said you wanted it to make players go to an inn, that kind of defeats the purpose of nighttime though as if the enemies evasion is really high and players find themselves missing a lot they'll just not do anything related to nighttime, which also defeats the purpose of some of your rare hunts.


Also I have the Striker trait on Raid and upgraded my weapon to +5 Copper, I find myself hitting about 1.3-1.6k damage on my first melee attack, essentially wiping out any grunt level mobs and severely damaging, if not straight up killing, stronger mobs, don't know if you intended it to be that strong or not, personally I like it cause it makes those fights go a little faster, though since its the first hit only I don't think it matters too much.


After playing a bit more I think a bigger tweak of First Aid could be used, like i mentioned before it's pretty strong with characters that don't use FP for anything, or rarely use FP, raid and rylus, but I see that Rylus also has a healer tree and so does the mage you get after entering Castilla (pretty sure we aren't meant to see that since getting on the ship says its the end of the demo), basically First Aid should be reduced to a "oh i have extra FP, might as well use it to top off my party." kinda ability instead of a "oh time to fully heal and get into the next fight without spending any potions or mana." kind of ability.


I'm finding that it can be extremely easy to stun lock enemies using Rising Strike alone, but combined with Blunt Arrow it might lead to trivializing some fights, though not bosses because it seems like they cannot be stunned, any of them actually.


The sun weather effect needs to be tweaked, I miss attacks on enemies in the badlands far too often, I'm finding myself missing 3-5 attacks in a row constantly and shouldn't sunlight be more of a boon? Being light out makes it easier to see the enemy, unless you are going for the whole "its so damn bright I can't see ****" type thing, but the problem is the enemy near never misses while the PC has moments where they miss far too often in a row.


Ciel's Heartpiercer ability seems to never lower enemy defense, I don't know if it is just a really low chance or what, the ability itself is also about the same if not weaker than her basic attack.


Melee (Specials) Raid compared to Magic Raid is quite underwhelming, not sure if making Specials stronger or Magic weaker would fix this, but it is just something I noted while playing through a new save for awhile.


I think Ciel could use some different abilities like Raid and Rylus have, like Raid can be a magic damage dealer or a physical damage dealer, rylus is a physical damage dealer or a support, but Ciel is straight up physical damage dealer, I just think giving her a secondary role would complete the theme you have going there. I don't remember the mage's name or abilities really, just that she is a water mage and can heal and has some support abilities, but i'm excited to see her in action.


Also a way to skip the intro cutscene (the meteor thing) would be good for players playing new saves, it'd especially help during demo playtesting I think.


If possible could you make it so saving on a new save moves to the next save slot, I just saved over my 4 hour save by accident


I was pretty much done with that one though i guess, so not the biggest deal.


My first save was mage raid and I just was playing through as melee raid, it changes up the experience going melee Raid as I have to use spells or potions to heal since his main damage comes from specials, but this kinda goes along with my opinion on First Aid, Mage Raid is just far superior in comparison to melee Raid.


And no problem  
I enjoy helping out.

 

[raynesu]

Once again thank you for all your time.


Critical Damage has been reduced. By default it was some insane number, 3 times normal damage which I find too much. Heartpiercer has like a 10% application rate of Def Down per hit and in my tests seems to apply it quite often. Also something to note crit is disabled for heartpiercer, though enabled for every other special skill. Another note I don't believe I've stated yet, melee attack is not dependent on physical damage alone, the formula actually takes into account both magic and physical when calculating damage, so don't feel pigeonholed into going physical for melee damage.


Yeah when I made sun I was thinking along the lines of "Oh god I can't see anything it's so bright!", though I do believe that 25% miss rate is a bit harsh. Possible rework on this in the future. 


I have increased the cost for first aid to make it less usable all the time, though I am not sure if I want to make it only usable in combat just yet. First aid was designed to be a healing skill for the special tree. So in case your whole party went specials, they would still have a way to heal the party other than using potions. As for the current abilities, there will be more later on, these are just the ones I have finished making for the demo. Meaning ideally when I'm done, every character except Ciel (Don't wanna be spoilers but Ciel cannot use magic since she doesn't have a spirit. Future chapters will focus on her getting magic) will have relatively balanced Magic and Special Trees and specializing in one or both will be purely up to the player. For the demo, I just wanted to make one tree more developed than the other so players would have some things the spec deeper into. So stay tuned for more abilities


As for stun-locking enemies, this is an intended strategy! Sometimes when confronted with 4 enemies using the stun abilities helps dealing with them. Stun abilities are also inherently weaker than the other ones, so if you want to only use the stun abilities, you won't be outputting as much damage. Cutscene skipping, I will look into this. Sour about your 4 hour save :c

 

[raynesu]

For those of you not from the United States, this week was Thanksgiving (gobble gobble), so I didn't really work too much on the game. However there are a few things I have addressed and have released Demo version 1.1. 


In this update I have done a few things. The first being the trouble people are having understanding some of the things in the game such as weather and item customization. So for this, I created a codex page in the journal. The codex will have entries describing the mechanics and features of the game players may not fully understand. To make way for the codex, the journal has been changed; it now only has a active quest, completed quest, and now, a codex tab instead of all, active complete and failed quests. I have added a few preliminary entries to the codex with more to come in the future, and possibly have some codex entries that are discovered while adventuring.


The next problem I wanted to address was the ruined tower. Understandably the tower was very bland with a very poor reward at the top. I have redone all the floors to make sure that they were not just copy pasted versions of each other. Additionally I've edited the boss on the top floor to be more manageable to fight rather than just being a damage sponge as well as adding a few other mechanics to the fight. The rewards have also been changed at the end of the tower, granting more in general, while still being repeatable.


Finally I have also edited the 2 other bosses to be a bit more interactive, since I believe that all of my boss battles could be improved. The main issue is that I felt many of the bosses lacked a clear identity since they didn't really have a "super" ability or a defining mechanic associated with them. So to fix this all the boss fights have been altered. 


As for the next thing I plan to work on, I plan to work on adding more abilities to characters to allow for more diverse choices of skills and builds.

 

[parallax]

Played a bit to get through the tower, maybe 2 hours or so put in.


Some typos first.


When explaining night to the player it says "Fighting at during the night".


During the demon dog fight it says "the bomb is start ticking".


The addition of the ticking time bomb enemy was an interesting addition to the demon dog fight, but the combination doesn't feel right and it doesn't raise the tension to the fight or introduce any worry, I'm sure the bomb guy does a **** ton of damage if you don't kill him, but the dog is such a non-threat that it is easy to take a turn to kill the bomb without worry, or just AoE it down with Lunar Barrage or Wildfire.


On the ground floor of the tower, the moving platform, if you jump early it kinda just drags you to the other side behind the platform and doesn't make you fall like the top floor ones do. Also you should change them to if you fail you fall to the floor below, it makes more sense and it gives the player a better reason to not miss.


The addition of skeleton piles turning into mobs is neat, i wasn't expecting that and they caught me off guard at first, but unfortunately besides being all "Surprise! You thought I was just dead, but I'm spooky scary skeleton!" it doesn't serve much of a purpose and it no longer works as a surprise further along the level, not saying remove this addition, but perhaps force a combat advantage to them, like Ambush.


The boss fight was pretty good, I see you added a new ability to him, did a **** ton of damage to my party and I wasn't expecting it at all. However, his loot, while you get more of it at the same time it feels like you get less of it, the iron scraps weren't worth even getting really as grinding for the gold to just buy them takes less time than to clear the first two floors, the mana potions were nice since they are so expensive, but the gold reward wasn't good feeling to get at all, if it wasn't for the mana potions from the one chest it wouldn't have even paid for the dungeon crawling expenses, which is a big no no for most rpg players, if it can't at least pay for the supplies it wasn't worth it in the end. This doesn't count people who read the dungeon stories, if they have one(which is rare unfortunately) , but for the average player I feel they'd be very disappointed in the reward. Perhaps a special one time named item, armor or a weapon or accessory should be given the first time you beat him and adjust the rewards for multiple trips.


I feel like you could do more with the background of the characters as being part of this big organization, like more preparation for battle, like The Witcher, if you've ever played it. If you haven't, the main character, Geralt, can prepare potions, tonics, poisons, etc that are effective against certain creatures, raises damage and such, feels like the protags should have some sort of access to gear that would give them advantage against at least the undead. Just an idea for some new mechanics/features/whatever you call em.


Not sure how fast you want players to be able to upgrade their weapons, I upgraded mine to +5 on all characters before going through the woods and I went from doing like 200 damage with a spell to combo hitting 3.3k on a group of slimes and wiping them out. Being able to upgrade to +5 so fast pretty much negates the challenge and they can be maxed out pre forest or tower by grinding in the desert area for..maybe 20 minutes.


The boss in the tower is still tough, don't get me wrong, but it just feels like the power curve goes from 0 to 100 REAL fast, too fast. Maybe you could add a new item type at say +2 or +3 that needs to be used to upgrade weapons past that point, that also  can't be obtained until you at least pass through the forest to the other town.


EDIT: Forgot to mention the codex.


Great addition, spells out the mechanics real fast and easy to the players without any wishy washy bs. Explaining what all the weather effects do is the best for sure. 


Looking at the stats in the codex, I don't believe you have any armor pieces in the game that raise agility, I looked in both stores, but I might have just skimmed too fast and can't remember.

 

[gstv87]

I'm trying to download the demo, but it keeps getting to about 70% done, and then the dowload cuts out.


three times I tried, and three times the same result.


could it be a limitation by dropbox?

 

[raynesu]

I'm trying to download the demo, but it keeps getting to about 70% done, and then the dowload cuts out.


three times I tried, and three times the same result.


could it be a limitation by dropbox?

Thank you for your efforts, I don't l know. I can upload a mediafire version to see if it works.


@parallax


As always thank you for your time. I can understand your sentiment for the rewards for the dungeon, I will look into adding some sort of unique item set from the dungeon, perhaps an armor set that increases AGI. Your idea for dropping floors when missing a platform is good, I'll add it (I can't believe I didn't think of it). Perhaps the bombs for the first boss need more health, although I still wanted it to be relatively easy since it is your first boss(and you might have been over geared? at least from the sounds of your grinding.  ). In that line, although bosses do not actually show a level like normal enemies do, they do scale based on level, so the difficulty of the tower boss may have been from that, because from my tests, the normal aoe attack he does, does not damage the party too hard, though the countdown mechanics should still hit hard. Anyhow, the inherent easiness may stem from the problem you pointed out that gear can be upgraded really fast, though I do not know they exact conditions you had when fighting each of the bosses. 


As for the organization concerns... stay tuned. I will tease however that the exorcist "organization" will allow you to do some unique things, like the trait re-learning or trait changing feature, an alchemy system which allow you to create some rare items, and a skill enhancing system.


I have a question, how did you get items to +5 so fast. Did you mostly buy your materials? I worry that they were too cheap, anyhow there will be a price increase next patch/version.

 

[parallax]

Thank you for your efforts, I don't l know. I can upload a mediafire version to see if it works.


@parallax


As always thank you for your time. I can understand your sentiment for the rewards for the dungeon, I will look into adding some sort of unique item set from the dungeon, perhaps an armor set that increases AGI. Your idea for dropping floors when missing a platform is good, I'll add it (I can't believe I didn't think of it). Perhaps the bombs for the first boss need more health, although I still wanted it to be relatively easy since it is your first boss(and you might have been over geared? at least from the sounds of your grinding.  ). In that line, although bosses do not actually show a level like normal enemies do, they do scale based on level, so the difficulty of the tower boss may have been from that, because from my tests, the normal aoe attack he does, does not damage the party too hard, though the countdown mechanics should still hit hard. Anyhow, the inherent easiness may stem from the problem you pointed out that gear can be upgraded really fast, though I do not know they exact conditions you had when fighting each of the bosses. 


As for the organization concerns... stay tuned. I will tease however that the exorcist "organization" will allow you to do some unique things, like the trait re-learning or trait changing feature, an alchemy system which allow you to create some rare items, and a skill enhancing system.


I have a question, how did you get items to +5 so fast. Did you mostly buy your materials? I worry that they were too cheap, anyhow there will be a price increase next patch/version.

I don't think I upgraded at all for the demon dog fight and I wasn't too high leveled, I think around 7ish when I made it to the demon dog fight. I just would combo Lunar Barrage and Wildfire and get my damage off on the dog and kill the bomb enemy, I'd use both even if it wasn't there as it is more damage than normal attacking and mage Raid is far stronger than melee Raid and if I had the FP, I'd use Ciel's Raid of Steel, which is EXTREMELY powerful, even against single targets. At level 10ish I can one hit a group of slimes in the forest with Rain of Steel, and against single targets I still get around 530-620ish damage from it, very powerful skill, which isn't a bad thing, but it makes the others not worth getting because they don't do nearly as much damage and they don't do anything special, especially since the defense down ability of Heart..seeker..striker, I can't remember the name, near never lowers defense. The only other ability Ciel has that a player would use is the one that stuns. 


I bought the upgrade components, I had some from a little bit of grinding and I did mine all the nodes, but at 20g each I can get full +5, for everyone, in maybe 15-20 minutes and completely decimate anything that I come up against. I don't really spend any money on armors early cause it is far better to go full offense, the power leaps when upgrading the weapons is extremely noticeable. I haven't played into the second half of the map yet so I can't tell you how it is with the other fights, I imagine you'd still want armor for the tornado girl fight cause that **** was nuts the first time around with some upgraded armor.


The change you made for First Aid, small as it was, really changed the feeling up of fights, I used a LOT more potions and even bought some because I couldn't afford to spam First Aid anymore, it was more of a "i'll top off the party with Raid's First Aid and use potions later" situation, much more balanced I think. However, with potions healing 500hp it makes the healing ability, the first one of which the name escapes me, is pretty invalid, it doesn't heal enough to waste the MP on when you could just use a potion and heal double that back. The regen per turn heal that Rylus has though, very good, it doesn't feel too overpowered and I found myself using it often, especially during the tower boss fight, good way to negate some of his damage and not have to spam heals.


I believe I was only level 8 or so when I took on the tower boss, idk what level you expect players to fight him at, but that is when I did and that is when he did about 360 on his AoE slash, not the countdown attack, he never got that off in my fight.

 

[raynesu]

It appears the quote system is gunna do me like this, but the tornado boss I believe has been weakened a bit since last time, I've only tested this boss while about level 15 for all members with almost maxed out gears for the tier. I will say it was a challenge, but I like the difficulty it presented. Good luck if you are going to challenge them!

 

[parallax]

Tried the tornado boss, keep forgetting her name, without upgrading armor. Bad idea.

 

[gstv87]

Thank you for your efforts, I don't l know. I can upload a mediafire version to see if it works.

that worked.


EDIT:


ok, played and finished it, and it looks alright....


I could rant for half an hour about how to improve it, but I guess I can summarize it all in one sentence:


"it has too many different plugins"


unify it.


too much stuff working out of synch with each other.


you'll do much better if you design a solid system to drive an aspect of it (quests, battles, lighting, skills, etc) than if you load up many different systems that try to account for many different aspects because they're meant to be flexible across many different games.


take the plugin and integrate it with your game, don't just change the constants in the configuration.


or, design your own system... it will fit perfectly for *your* game, which is what you want from the beginning.

 

[raynesu]

Thank you for your feedback and your time! You make an interesting and valid point. Could you be more specific in what you felt was out of sync in the game? What do you mean specifically by change the constants? I would love to see your rant since it will help make my game a better experience for you.

 

[gstv87]

Thank you for your feedback and your time! You make an interesting and valid point. Could you be more specific in what you felt was out of sync in the game? What do you mean specifically by change the constants? I would love to see your rant since it will help make my game a better experience for you.

first, the interface.


it looks a bit too big and "in your face" sometimes, especially in the menu and the shop window, and other times it's too small, like the health bars in the battle window. I lost a couple of battles due to misreading of the status bars.


and if it were one unified system, all the text and gauges would be the same size.


then there's the art of the battle window against the basic player character sprite.


why not make all the sprites match? it saves space and processor power.


the battle system (or the hunt system, I don't know which drives which) seems to have an enemy calibration relative to the player's stats.


I was about to hunt the rat king, at level 9, against rats that I had seen before and were level 4.... and suddenly the rats became level 10.


I've seen that feature before, in NFS:Undercover, and it still triggers me bad today. It's just lazy..... you could have the best car ever, and the police would still catch you because they were designed as "always run 50kph faster than the player".


and even when they didn't need it, they would still obey that mechanic, relative to the player's speed: I was flat tired, and slowed to a crawl, and the super buffed police cars that had been chasing me around the city until then, instead of cornering me and stopping me, nope, they kept their line BEHIND me, waiting for me to crash.


here is the same thing... "man, finally I can fight that boss on equal ground", "nope! I'm still two levels higher than you. eat it.", "wtf!?"


if you're worried that the players would try to powerlevel to overpower your monsters, then apply a penalty of XP.


the greater the difference between player and enemy, the less XP they will get... that ensures that they always look for the next enemy in line, following the story.


the stage design is nice, but if you are going to have a day/night cycle, then make it universal and not relative to the player's location.


it seems like every time I enter or exit a building, it adds an hour.... so it could be midday inside the inn, but you get out to get across the street to the weapons shop, and now it's night... and they're closed.


if you want a day cycle, then use the timer system that's already included with the game!


also, too many effects and light glows during the night, in Castella at least, gave me some noticeable drops in FPS.


I don't know if it's a plugin or just eventing, but refreshing all those glows takes time.


some side quests and their resolutions are a bit out of tune.


like, the boulder scene, the guy is still there weeks after the fact.


Yven, he's at the pub and at the tower gates, at the same time.... even after completing the tower.


what I mean by changing the constants is exactly that, changing the variables in the plugin, and letting the plugin work everything out by itself.


like I said, the author of the plugin can't have no idea about what their plugin will be used for, so they try to account for the bigger picture.


if you have specifics in your game, don't just put the plugin and expect it to work.... do change whatever you need to integrate it into the game.
 

 

[raynesu]

First off thank you for your response.


I'll see what I can do to increase the readability of some of the features in the game.


One reason I didn't want the sprites to match the in game battlers is that I wanted to avoid using sprite battlers since, in my opinion, they limit what I can animate. Sprites limit seeing some subtleties such as arm movement or leg movement, which the larger battlers I feel show. And since I am not the best artist, these battlers are the best I can muster that fulfill what I was looking for, but by no means do I feel these battlers are inferior; the artist did a wonderful job making them. 


As for the enemy scaling, basic enemies do not scale past level 10 and bosses 15, in the starting area. I can understand why you dislike the scaling enemies, not liking the fact that you never really felt that they got any easier as you became more powerful, however I am in the other camp for this one. I disliked how areas would become too easy as you get stronger. I will, though, look in to lessening the power as things level.


Regarding the day and night cycle, in town no matter how many buildings you enter time should not progress. Only when entering and leaving an "instanced" area will time and weather change. If time did progress for you in town, where did this occur because this would be a bug. As of right now I do not plan to use the timer, but I am open too it.


Good point out for some of the side quest npcs. They are not supposed to linger.


For plugins, many of the plugins I used have been edited at the source code level to be both compatible with each other and fulfill its purpose in my game. When you say just changing the variables in some cases that is all I needed from the plugin. In other cases the plugin, such as the skill tree, has been edited heavily to fit the specifications I wanted. 


Was there a certain plugin that you saw while laying that didn't fit in?


I appreciate the criticism and hopefully my game will be more to your liking later on.

 

[gstv87]

As for the enemy scaling, basic enemies do not scale past level 10 and bosses 15, in the starting area. I can understand why you dislike the scaling enemies, not liking the fact that you never really felt that they got any easier as you became more powerful, however I am in the other camp for this one. I disliked how areas would become too easy as you get stronger. I will, though, look in to lessening the power as things level.

yes, lesser areas will become easier, but with the offset XP gain, the player won't be able to benefit from it.


the worst case scenario being a player that would powerlevel at lesser levels in order to outlevel a higher boss.


if the boss is level 15, you won't be able to get to level 15 by farming level 6 monsters.... you'll get there faster by killing monsters the same level as the character.


my point being, if you mean to progress the story, the narrative grinds to a halt if you have to fight enemies at every turn, that are not related to the narrative. (also, it kind of defeats the purpose of gearing up.... the enemies are always stronger than the strongest of your setups)


the forest/boulder progression was nice: fight your way through the forest, get to the other side, solve the problem, and now you can go back without having to go through the forest again.


that's the same premise as leveling up and being able to escape enemies.

Regarding the day and night cycle, in town no matter how many buildings you enter time should not progress. Only when entering and leaving an "instanced" area will time and weather change. If time did progress for you in town, where did this occur because this would be a bug. As of right now I do not plan to use the timer, but I am open too it.

like I said, I think I was in the pub in Albin, got out, turned the corner and then it was night.


I was about to gear up for the quest, and I had to change plans.


and another time, I think I just entered the city at night, and I thought "I'd better sleep until the day" and then it was day... "ohp, nevermind then"


I had a feeling it was rigged to watch for stage changes.

For plugins, many of the plugins I used have been edited at the source code level to be both compatible with each other and fulfill its purpose in my game. When you say just changing the variables in some cases that is all I needed from the plugin. In other cases the plugin, such as the skill tree, has been edited heavily to fit the specifications I wanted.

ok, that's what I meant... that's integration.