Incitement - a sci-fi thriller

[Matseb2611]

Cool, thanks for checking them both out.

How come? Is the first boss too hard? Did you pick up all the healing stuff to help you in combat?

 

[DoubleX]

The below videos are my tries(after dozens of failures each) on defeating Cadmoralus and Jorgen with character levels being 14-15:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9kp98Vc_TA&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGKgYxA-rJU&feature=youtu.be

 

[Matseb2611]

Oh cool. That's pure craziness to fight those guys at lvls 14-15, but seriously well done. Many people told me they were very hard bosses, and normally when playtesting I tackled them at around lvl 18 myself. Your strategies stood up really well that none of the party members got K.Oed at all. How would you say these compare to the final boss in Incitement 2?

 

[DoubleX]

Oh cool. That's pure craziness to fight those guys at lvls 14-15, but seriously well done. Many people told me they were very hard bosses, and normally when playtesting I tackled them at around lvl 18 myself. Your strategies stood up really well that none of the party members got K.Oed at all. How would you say these compare to the final boss in Incitement 2?

I've to take the whole gameplay into account in order to truly compare the boss fights. It's the whole boss fights but not just the bosses themselves that really matter to players. Even without mentioning ammo stations in Incitement 2, I still think the final boss fights in Incitement is at least a bit more difficult because of at least 3 reasons:

1. If Aelon, the only healer, is dead, players are probably done unless the bosses are about to die as well. This causes keeping him alive in Incitement to be almost always the top priority. If the bosses damage him too often, players basically won't even stand a chance. Anku can somehow help here but sometimes misfortunes just come. But that's not quite the case in Incitement 2 as everyone can heal although Eryn is still a much better healer.

2. Fighting Jorgen underleveled needs atk and def buff to at least counter the debuff counterparts, and only Aelon can buff atk and another one to buff def. This causes Aelon to be nearly, if not already, overburdened as he's the only healer. Whereas in Incitement 2, everyone can buff atk and def, making all characters much more effective and flexible in the final boss fights even when those buffs are almost mandatory there unless they're overleveled.

3. Although the final boss in Incitement 2 is mostly a nice mix of those in Incitement thus making him much more dangerous, the former only uses Physical Shield once while Jorgen alternates between both shields until he dies. This alone makes Jorgen much harder to defeat as physical attacks in both games have a much higher damage to ammo ratio and are much more damaging than magical ones, meaning I've to turtle while the Physical Shield is on to conserve ammos or they'll likely run out before the boss is dead. If the final boss in Incitement 2 used Physical Shield on a regular basis, I'd doubt if I can even defeat him with my characters just being level 19.

(If they use Physical Shield all the time, I guess some players may just rage quit and never touch both games ever again )

For my videos, my so-called 'strategies' are actually educated gambles based on dozens of failures with the winning chance not much higher than 50%. I've to hope the bosses won't damage Aelon nor disable any other party members so often and the damage is spread among all party members to maximize the effect of regeneration mist. I also need to hope I won't trigger Cadmoralus's force actions when at least 1 party member has low hp as I don't know the precise amount or percentage of hp for the trigger nor his current hp. If all characters are level 18+, the fights would be almost guaranteed wins as Aelon could use heal all

 

[Matseb2611]

Yeah, I kind of thought so. The second game makes the overall gameplay easier and more forgivable by making Strengthen and Enforce more available to everyone and having heal and ammo stations a lot more frequently in the levels. Believe it or not, both final bosses in Incitement 1 and also the AI boss and the Arena boss were all significantly harder in the original release. The final two bosses were hard enough that even fighting them on lvl 18-19 required precise strategy and making one mistake could be deadly. I eventually turned their difficulty down because many people were struggling. But yeah, thanks for the videos again. You've handled those bosses really well.

As for the force actions:

Spoiler

Both bosses have 10,000 HP.

All Cadmoralus' dialogue and actions happen after he loses every 20% HP. So the actual plasma wave attacks happen at 60% and 20% HP.

Jorgen summons the ticks at 65%, 55%, and 45% HP left, and he powers up his stats when he has 15% HP left.

 

[DoubleX]

I've read the previous replies here and knew that you've reduced the difficulty before and it seems that at that time you didn't expect players would skip most or all random encounters like the below example:

I've been stuck on this mainframe boss for at least an hour, this thing is just OP.

I mean it completly disables Anku from the fight and he was my main party member so that's that.

It deals 300ish to everyone with like a 99%chance of confusion of at least 2people

It deals another 400 to everyone and it just loves to spam this twice in a turn

It summons 2 other robots to help which is just dandy.

I can't go back to get some more supplies to deal with this thing so... wtf

I had to sell all my other peoples weapons except one to even be able to purchase basic equipment, so Switching isn't an option.

^^^ This boss is just stupid... then that random cat thing wut?

Also Maddock that skill he has "Accurate Fire" = Always hits unless it misses... What the hell is the point.

The Scaling in the game is also quite bad, I mean I'm do almost the same damage at Rnk12 3hours in then I was doing in the very beginning.

Finally the list of weapons says that there is only fourish per character. I'm at the 4th weapon only 2-3hr's in. So I'm not getting any more equipment upgrade for the rest of the game (7hrs?)

Off topic:

I think you can try to state the expected level range in all areas. 1 such implementation is stating the virtual level of all enemies even though they don't actually have a level. For example, the name of the AI boss can be changed as "Lv 16 AI Mainframe". You can then state in your "List of Basics" that "enemies don't actually have a level, the Lv x prefix just tells you're expected to be level x when encountering them". If this were implemented, ArcaneEli would've probably noticed he was underleveled long before fighting the AI boss, thus reducing the chance of he being stuck there. Even if he would still get stuck there, the Lv x prefix would've already warned him beforehand. This implementation may have its drawbacks but I think the idea behind this is at least considerable.

Back to topic:

As my character levels were also 12-13 right before facing the AI boss due to skipping all random encounters, the playtime was also 2.5 hours, and I've checked the version updates of this game as well, I know he probably skipped most or all random encounters as well. I've also played v1.1 before so I know the AI boss can be really hard even with all characters being level 16+. For the 2 final bosses, I defeated them in v1.1 without using boosters but with all character levels maxed. Even then, those are not pieces of cake for me at least although such overlevelling almost guarantees victories.

For the Arena boss, I didn't feel much difference though, maybe because her HP is low enough for me to defeat her before the party has too much trouble. Of course I still have to play my cards well to stand a reasonable chance.

For the final boss HP, I somehow suspected they're around 10000 but I've only vague values about the force action triggers. If players do count how many damage those bosses have taken, they can exploit the HP info you've just spoiled here

My last thought here is the idea of health stations is excellent at least for me as it gives players 1 more option when they get into a really bad spot. It also reduces the demand of using spare ammos for healing and thus that of grinding for those not skipping random encounters. For the others, it removes the consequences of failing to escape random encounters as quickly as possible. In my case, I don't think either of my videos could exist without health stations

 

[Matseb2611]

Yeah. Because when normally testing, I don't tend to escape from battles all that much, so most bosses ended up at the difficulty assuming the player fights most battles they get into.

The lvl idea in the name is pretty good, though it might seem a tad odd for some enemy names and could break the immersion if I had names like Lvl 14 Magnoria, or Lvl 19 Jorgen or something. I think usually the random encounters have to be a good indicator of difficulty, and I guess most of the ones before the AI boss were way too easy, so when the boss comes along, it's a big spike in difficulty, so perhaps I should've made those encounters a bit harder. Also since there's that planet Abrelica sidequest available too, it's possible to do it before the AI base, meaning the player can gain an extra level or so during it. And so if someone decides not to do it, they'll be a level or two lower for the AI boss.

Ah well done for being able to complete the game during the v1.1. I honestly didn't know how many players managed to get to the end back when the game was still at that version. And I guess I am not too worried about players knowing how much HP these last two bosses have. I think these 2 battles are still pretty hard even if the player has that information at hand.

Glad you think health stations are useful. I think it's normally a good practice to give players a chance to fully heal before the boss fights, especially if they wish to grind a bit without wasting their healing items.

 

[byrdbones]

Nice style, I especially like the parallax backing. Definitely going to give it a try!

 

[Matseb2611]

Thanks man. I hope you enjoy it and let me know if you have any questions or get stuck anywhere.

 

[Matseb2611]

Heads up, everyone. The game has received a BIG update and is now v1.4.

At the moment this has only been done for the non-RTP version, which can be downloaded at RMN:

http://rpgmaker.net/games/5273/

I am going to upload the RTP-inclusive version soon too.

Here is a full list of updates in this version:

- Created two difficulty modes: Casual and Original
- Added Ammo Stations to the game on Casual mode
- Some enemy abilities have been locked on Casual mode and are only used in Original
- Reduced encounter rate in some areas
- Balanced enemy resistances
- All enemies that didn't drop money before, now drop sellable items
- Each playable character now has an attacking skill that uses no ammo
- Some skills will now be acquired at earlier character levels
- Slightly increased actor hit chance/accuracy
- Increased EXP gain from some early game enemies
- Shortened healing and assault rifle fire animation lengths
- Turned down the volume of some sound fx
- Balanced item prices:
    - Healing pills are now 15 astras
    - Stimulants - 20
    - Painkiller balms - 15
    - Curative tonics - 15

I am going to give the second game an update very soon too. Keep an eye out.

 

[CallMeASinner]

So I downloaded the game and played it for 4 hours straight.
I'm at this waterbase where I'm supposed to flood the whole thing and I'm fighting the boss guy thats working with Jorgen and I defeat him.
After that, I save, go eat, and go play again. 
But too bad, something happened.
I'm back at the beginning-cutscene, with all my teammates, items and even the damage i had still from when i was in the waterbase, but im actually at the first scene of the game again.
Nothing worked to restore it, and now i have to play 4 hours all over again
I was playing the no-RTP version if that helps, and i really dont know what to do now.

 

[Matseb2611]

Heya there. That's really strange. But you said you saved the game, right? What happens when you load your last save?

 

[CallMeASinner]

Heya there. That's really strange. But you said you saved the game, right? What happens when you load your last save?

I restarted the game, and it just keeps happening again.

Its like the save-file is now saved in the begin-scene and its not really loading anything else if i restart again.

Probably something with my laptop, but its still stupid that its happening to me because this is the first game i actually loved from all finished games i found here

 

[JoeFatherBr]

Hey my friends, congratulations on the excellent forum!

 

Here a Brazilian via Google translator speaking!

 

I'm downloading this game and I will play it from start to finish, and then I put my impressions, because I am passionate about the RPG genre.

 

Big hugs for everyone!

 

[Matseb2611]

@ CallMeASinner: Thank you for the kind words. I am trying to think on how to get you back to where you were. When you load the save, the progress is there, am I right? The characters are at level you were at and you have all your equipment? Which is the exact map you're at now? I am thinking if you send me your save file, I could temporarily create a transfer event in the game to put the team back just before the last boss you fought, then to make a new save and send it to you. How does that sound?

@JoeFatherBr: Thank you very much for checking out the game. I hope you enjoy it. If you have any questions, let me know.

 

[JoeFatherBr]

@JoeFatherBr: Thank you very much for checking out the game. I hope you enjoy it. If you have any questions, let me know.

My friend, I who thank you for the opportunity to play, after all, I know the work it takes to program a game.

 

Speaking of which already played a bit and arrived at the first boss and found it very interesting, for now, the plot, though my English is very bad , the scenarios, the difficulty, battle system mainly spending ammunition to face the enemy. Congratulations my friend!

 

Hugs!

 

[Matseb2611]

Brill. It is good to hear you're liking the game so far. I hope you find the rest of the game just as interesting.

 

[CallMeASinner]

@ CallMeASinner: Thank you for the kind words. I am trying to think on how to get you back to where you were. When you load the save, the progress is there, am I right? The characters are at level you were at and you have all your equipment? Which is the exact map you're at now? I am thinking if you send me your save file, I could temporarily create a transfer event in the game to put the team back just before the last boss you fought, then to make a new save and send it to you. How does that sound?

Sounds good, and yeah. I still have the equipment and all my partymembers on the level they were, but instead of being where im supposed to be, im now im the beginning of the game where you need to find out what happened with the gunshot thing.

 

[Matseb2611]

^That is so strange how that happened. I've checked the eventing and all seems fine. Not sure how you ended up there. But yeah, if you want, just send me your most recent save file via a PM and I'll get you back to where you were.

 

[CallMeASinner]

^That is so strange how that happened. I've checked the eventing and all seems fine. Not sure how you ended up there. But yeah, if you want, just send me your most recent save file via a PM and I'll get you back to where you were.

Well, i started playing again and its actually quite interesting to play through the game again with my high level team.

The funny thing is that i have most of the teammates duplicated right now, one of them being lvl 15 and the other one being lvl 3.

I think ill just stick to this and play the story again