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Hello there! Welcome to Feedback Quest RPGs! My name's Hythrain, and I'm one of the streamer's for Feedback Quest and also a host for mini events like this. I'm writing this feedback after having played your game live. If you'd like a link to the VOD when it's posted, just let me know.

So right up front, this is a very RPG Maker game. It looks the most RPG Maker I've seen, it sounds the most RPG Maker I've seen, and its combat is the most RPG Maker I've seen. That is to say, it's insanely hard from the beginning with lots of misses and enemies having tons of health and such, where you could end the very first random encounter with your team half dead and one poisoned if you're not paying attention to how you're using your attacks rather than towards the end of the game. I went to the gameplay and immediately had no idea where I was to be going. After the first fight, I did indeed have a character poisoned and was trying to get gil to buy something to get rid of it. However, the only available town was way up north and I didn't even have half the gil I needed.

And this is before getting into a problem with making everything dark based if the dark-only character can't heal (Makes that person useless while pushing double duty onto the light-only character).

However, these are ultimately issues of RPG Maker itself. If a game was being programmed from the ground up, these are all things that would be made to operate differently. As such, what that leaves is that this title needs to be judged on its story. This, however, proved to be more difficult than I expected.

First I had difficulty figuring out what to do. The player starts with several options on where to go, even when only going gameplay, and the sheer difficult can make it difficult for the player to want to wander far from the only available town let alone take on a dungeon. However, once I got over this and got into the tower, I began moving forward. I had these two characters, who are essentially representations of angels and demons except reversed on the good/evil side of things; Argenti, the light angel who is basically a paladin with higher attack and defensive and Aegrit, the almost god-like priestess of darkness who for some reason refers to Argenti as "Prisoner." It makes me think that in this world, even evil or gross behaviors are seen as good and vice-versa. Then I learned this wasn't the case, that things of depravity are seen as things of Light thanks to erotic faeries. So instead, it turns out Aegrit is just an asshole.

This leads into the my eventual progression into the tower and meeting Cielle and the smashing of two things. When Cielle wants the shards, I ultimately had no items to give her despite collecting them. So not knowing what I was missing, I moved onto the next part, got to the town and then saw stuff I don't know if I'll ever unsee. Anyway, this leads into the final dungeon where I honestly didn't understand the clue being given for what to do. Then after a few teleports, I ended up on the walls and was in a panic trying to get down. Finally, I got to the boss and fought it, with things ending with them getting a seal that needed to escape wherever they are to get to wherever they're going.

If you noticed how I seemed to not understand certain parts, it's because your demo is set further into the story without any sort of proper introduction. I then remembered that at the start of the game was an NPC who said something about story. So I went back to it to read that story, thinking maybe you're making this story as episodic and perhaps there were three other games.

Nope, the bulk of the story was done in one dialogue box. The goal was given in the second. No answers were to be had for me.

So while this is a demo, not starting at the very start of the story hinders my ability to offer any proper feedback. RPG Maker things are just that: RPG Maker things. With that said, if you have other parts already made and you're only showing this later part, don't do that. Just let the player start at the beginning so they can judge things better. Either that or throw away RPG Maker and build your own combat system that would be suited to your story instead of using a generic and very punishing combat system, because otherwise you're not giving people anything to truly latch onto.

(+1)

Hi, thanks for the feedback! Really good stuff here!

You are right that it's harder than intended - unfortunately the submission is locked from updates atm, so the workaround is level-up at the cheat crystal before you start your adventure.  This is noted at the top of the game's description page, but sadly it seems like most folks miss that note and just play on hard mode. For context, The party feels balanced around level 6+ entering the tower, but you start at level 3. My bad XD

It's worth observing that nearly every stat/formula in the combat system was tweaked a bit, almost nothing runs on the "default RPG maker" formulas. Details are in the game design document if curious - part of why that document is so dang long! This includes the default hit/evasion calculation you refer to, Which is not in use in this game. Cause yep, it sucked, so I changed it to be a single combined dice roll rather than 2 separate rolls the default uses. However, both %'s scale a little bit with primary stats - So if under levelled facing a strong enemy, you will miss more and dodge less. I believe that's what you experienced.

To answer the question; This is demo v0.0.1! The very first iteration. The "level 1-3 Story so far" is just a raw copy paste from my rough draft notes at the last minute. So, I wouldn't focus too much feedback on the story at this time - This is very much a mechanical and systems test. Think more "PTR for MMORPG balance testing", and less "Demo on steam trying to hook you into buying". Luckily, you gave some great mechanical feedback too :)

As for an actual tutorial/opening cutscene, that is one of the very last things added to a game of this scale. The reason is that it needs to be informed by everything that comes after -- To design it now would mean redesigning it a hundred times before the project is complete. Doing it later means it will benefit from all the lessons I learn making the rest of the game, and the first level will be the BEST level. This is advice from other published game makers, so I'll be sticking to it. 

But that leaves us a problem... I totally agree with your feedback about getting lost (I watched another streamer in the other game jam do the same thing!) So.. The Playtest NPC will learn some new tricks for next time to be a better guide for playtesters, rather than being a wall of text machine as he is now :)  It was his job to make sure players knew where to go and what to do, and it seems like he sucked at it.

Thanks much for the detailed feedback and for spending time in Asqueria. Hope we'll see you again in the next version!

I'm going to give you the #1 reason why a focus on story is more important for your demo than the mechanics: because you're limited to the RPG Maker engine, the gameplay and mechanics won't be all too different. There is another RPG Maker game in this jam that puts that focus on story in. It has its own small mechanic changes, but it makes sure the story is there to get the player involved and then brings those mechanics in. Sure, it's important to test your mechanics but turn based RPGs can only do so much in terms of gameplay and mechanics to differentiate themselves from other turn based RPGs, especially when in the same engine. It's story where these differences will exist. This isn't to say you should make a tutorial and change it over and over, because you're right about how that wastes time. However, you SHOULD  still give the player more about the story so they can get invested into things, and then use the story itself to introduce base mechanics. Doesn't need to be everything, just the things you know will remain.

Hi again! Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, I am new after all. I see you are listed as the host for this event. I assume that means you know all the rules that are written there (https://itch.io/jam/feedback-quest-rpg). Can you tell me the which one of the judging criteria that covers story? 


🔥RATING

Your game will be rated on the following criteria by your peers and the public.  The judges will also pick their own favorite games

  • Overall Fun
  • Controls/UI
  • Art
  • Sound / Music


So, Which one of those 4 relates to story and writing?  Is it "Fun", or "Art"? If that's the case, shouldn't that be described somewhere?

BTW, I also searched that page for the words, "Story", "Lore", "Writing", "Script", "Plot", "Dialogue", "Conversation".... not one of these concepts was mentioned anywhere in the rules or the judging criteria. I assumed the judging criteria was in fact the criteria we were being judged by. Is that not how this works?  Because you wrote so much about story, which isn't even part of the criteria, and you've flatly refused to give feedback about anything else even when specifically directed(per rule #7), I'm quite confused as to what we're doing here.  

Could you clarify - What are the official judging criteria? Is there another page where you are using a different set of rules?

Thanks again.

(+1)

You're mistaking my feedback for being the rating itself.

Written feedback like this can cover whatsoever the writer wishes to cover. It's not part of the actual rating criteria, though it can give an idea of where someone scores the entry when the feedback and the ratings align.

That said, I will admit that I should've changed the rating criteria rather than keep the default line up (something like Overall Fun, Story, Art/UI, Music/Sound) but this still has no bearing on written feedback. So don't look at my feedback as any basis for how I rated you (and generally you should assume this of anyone who gave feedback).

(1 edit) (+1)

That makes sense - thanks for clarifying! 

And don't worry, My poor submission is locked from updates for a whole month on this double game jam tour (well, only 8 more locked days now), So I know it's gonna take a beating while it's out here and I can't change anything, that's what it's for XD  Behind the scenes I've got a bunch of little things fixed up already.

Looking forward to posting a nice little v0.0.2 update/patch notes when it unlocks and then digesting some official judgements.

Thanks for spending the time with me!

Not a problem! I hope to see your title again! If you ever want to get some feedback in between jams, especially if it's in regards to story, feel free to let me know on the Discord server!