Post by Roads in Aftersoul comments

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- Balancing narrative pacing is a challenge for sure! The ability to make all text propagate at once helps with fatigue a bit, but I have no intention of removing the two-factor button presses to progress to the next block of text.

- Skills will be earned at pathway rank thresholds in a future update to better guarantee early skill power without needing a trainer. These skills will be unique to each pathway. This should better 'buff' the value of rank ups.

- Early feedback was to speed up the pace of combat because it felt too slow. 'Fast and hectic' shouldn't be the baseline, for sure, and it should never feel like raw RNG or grinding events you've already exhausted are your only pathways forward. This boils down to two things: 1. better balancing and 2. more content for your current power level.

- Locke's difficulty jump between questlines is too steep. Either I put a level requirement lock between quest steps, or I lower the requirement. Either way, the end of his questline will still be locked behind Act 2 (same as plantwolf).

- Shade's currently overtuned. Better balancing will take place with playtesting of the other narratives - each taking place concurrently w/ the Den story (estate + cultist questlines). I'm also just not satisfied with the complexity of the fights boiling down to 'rush her hp down before she rushes yours down'. It should have another layer of play to it.

- Plantwolf's final stage isn't intended to be beatable at current power levels. Victory against the foe will only have importance after Act 1 concludes (for the same reason Locke's is gated). Having early narrative threads like these with stark challenges should act as motivations to get stronger. The problem ultimately lies in there not being enough new content to do in the meantime.

Ancient Woods & the Estate are my next primary objectives up until v0.4.0. Hopefully your existing issues with combat pacing feel smoothed over by future releases!

Elanvess27 days ago

I would definitely say that combat is to fast right now. Once I got 3 party members I pretty much never had time to look and see what the enemies were even doing or what my attacks did to them. My recommendation would be to put in a combat speed slider in the options. That way if someone has difficulties with a harder fight they can slow it down and take they're time figuring out the best battle plan. While with farming essence they can crank the speed up for enemies they know they can blitz through.

Another suggestion since I'm here: I think the after battle regeneration should be buffed or changed. As is, I found myself having to go back to camp to heal after every "late game" plant fight. I see a few ways you could do this. You could just increase the max regen either by default, through an upgrade (like the teleport), or via level up. You could also make it so instead of healing to a set value every time, you instead heal a certain amount every time. The last possibility I can think of is to just regen to max every time, after all it's not really hard to move back to camp every fight right now, just tedious.

Suggestions aside, I really love Aftersoul! Keep up the good work.

Roads27 days ago

yep yep! combat speed button is scheduled for the overhaul to the combat UI (which is sorely lacking). the overall speed of combat currently slows down with each active party member added, though it doesnt feel like a fully polished implementation yet. additionally, there are two active defensive layers in the game that have yet to be added. health potions should increase your viability to stay in the fight for longer, acting as single target heals/resurrections within combat and full heals outside of combat - as well as a manual defend button that blocks all incoming damage for a few seconds. both should dramatically increase the time you can spend away from a sigil, and reward 'active play'

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