I didn't get to play too far due to a bug which you were able to see from my stream but from what I was able to play, it did keep me interested.
I gave you most of my feedback on stream but I did forget to mention that I was overwhelmed by the skill/tech trees. At first glance it shocked me to see all the different skill trees but then it hit me that you were in a way, giving the player full freedom to pick each character's "class" in some way, which I thought was cool. I think each tree getting its own "window" or and isolated view in the center would help this though. Check out some info or videos on the Grim Dawn skill tress or Horizon Forbidden West skill trees, which in some ways were equally overwhelming to look at but managed it a little by providing a less compact view.
The skill trees you have aren't too complex against some of the other games I've seen, but the presentation makes it look way more intimidating than it is.
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Star Shift Rebellion's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Sound/Music | #3 | 4.750 | 4.750 |
| Art / Graphics | #5 | 4.750 | 4.750 |
| Overall Fun | #5 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Controls / UI | #21 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
If you have competed before, how has your game changed?
Any Streamer who wants to try this game out, please email admin@psychronic.com and we'll get you a Steam Key.
Genre #1
JRPG | CRPG | MMO| RPG
Turn-based | Card Games | RTS | 4X
Rating #2
Comments
Yeah with the skill tree , it's not as crazy as it looks. I might mod it at some point to only show the available skills you can learn "right now" and not the skills further down the progression.
It is set up so that you can learn pretty much anything you want for any of the characters (also any of the characters can equip the same items too, so you can build them how you like, although classes have their own unique trees and different base stats as well). There's a lot of ways to be successful with this in-game, the only way the player will get into trouble is if they have all 7 of their characters learn the exact same skills as each other. (As certain skills are better or worse depending on the enemies you're fighting).
But maybe a little bit more hand holding for the player on that part so they don't get overwhelmed would be a good thing to do for future titles. There's more Star Shift coming!
Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 7! My name's Hythrain and I'm one of the hosts and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!
So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.
When I started this up, I thought I was in for a typical RPG Maker game. I was surprised when the opening combat was a tactical RPG fight. Ok, this caught my interest. It then switched to a ground area, which also caught my eye. The opening combat was tough, but I was able to get through pretty easily. I was into the story in general, and particularly liked how you could run over people's bodies to search them for items. The speed of it all was nice, as well. However, by contrast it felt like I was being bombed with so much information and not being taught any of it. The skill tree's design is honestly a mess, both in UI and structure. It gives the player way too many things to look at and consider all at once, instead of easing the player into it.
And then I got to Echo Base and was met with the most brutal fight I'd ever seen in an RPG Maker game. Three of the enemies are capable of doing over 500 damage to every target, which is enough to wipe out your entire team if the RNG is unfair. Now I figured maybe I could dive into my skill tree and try to learn stuff, so this was when I finally went deeper into the tree and was actively trying to learn stuff. After learning enough to build some skills out and try to make my team more effective, I promptly got curb stomped as the RNG rolled into the situation I described above. Alright then, one more go. This time it worked, but only because the RNG was way more fair for me. I then went into the next tactical battle, which was a lot of fun. I then continued through the story up to the point where your team decides to go to Moletown.
This brings me to my main criticism and it's something I find exists in most RPG Maker games: incredible game difficulty by treating enemies and players as equals. Don't know what I mean? Lemme explain...
Normally in RPGs, player characters have a much lower max HP than bosses do. While the team may have 50 HP, the boss will have 500 HP. Damage, therefore, is based around doing far smaller amounts of damage. RPG Maker games tend to not do this, however, instead putting HP and stats in the same area for players and enemies. They also then do similar amounts of damage to each other. However, doing so makes RNG much more randomly deadly, especially as you add more enemies into the fight. And while I can understand why some people can prefer this, it's just not enjoyable when you're going to regularly fight 7 enemies. If RNG is bad, that has the risk of a player being just wiped out before they've had a chance to have a turn on a single character. I'd recommend changing this all up to make RNG less broken.
Thanks for the feedback, it's appreciated. All will be used to refine/improve the franchise. As a solo developer, not always able to test every scenario, but seeing how each person plays it a bit differently helps us to refine it to be better/more balanced.
As far as how we wanted combat to work. We wanted a "quick to kill/Quick to die" system. Not trying to have like 30 minute long battles or whatever. There's a little bit of RNG jank though as a result sometimes. It's a continuous process of evolution.
See, I had a feeling that was the design intent (quick to kill, quick to die). Trying to avoid 30 minute battles is always a good idea, but when RNG jank can make you take 30 minutes anyway? What was the point, right? Also, no matter what system, making OP AOE skills is always an issue. In the fight that kept killing me, I was getting mowed down by attacks that hit my entire party for around 500 damage per person. A far more reasonable amount of damage for that attack would've been 150 per person.
Yeah it's weird though because whenever I've fought that part and had some of the right mix of skills and equipment it was super easy. But it's one part that some people get massively obliterated in with the game. With 7 battlers and yeah the RNG sometimes, sometimes some unpredictable things happen. Still working on the overall balance for the larger game.
Hi, we are streamers for FeedBackQuest7, would you send us 2 keys please? One for @Oswinclankk and one for myself. Thank you.
Feel free to send me a key on Steam:
https://steamcommunity.com/id/amorlea/
And Oswinclankk here
https://steamcommunity.com/id/10292929393/
I suggest find the streamers and give keys individually from our front page, giving out keys like this can be confusing to which key is claimed and which is not and other people can claim it as well, not just the streamers. Alot of the twitch streamers have their DM open, you can DM them on discord or twitch.
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