Incoming updates

Hey everyone! 

Hope you've been enjoying the Demo. Over the weekend I will be pushing a new update to the game. Now that I am done with finals and have roughly a month before class starts again, I should be able to churn out plenty of updates for the game. As per some feedback here are some changes happening along with a few that were already on the way. 

Changes per player feedback:

Astrid

She's got style, she's got grace, she'll drive her axe through your face

In addition to a dedicated face portrait and battler (Bye bye DF-Actor) here are some notes on her per feedback and the changes being made. 

Astrid in the initial build was underwhelming compared to Sigvar and the rest of the cast when it came to Role, Utility and damage output. This was mostly because of my good old ADHD. Here are some of the changes coming in the next update. 

• A taunt ability to further flesh out her role as the tank style character of the cast 
• 4 New abilities (1-2 buffs and 1-2 attacks)
• An implied combo structure of either taunting and a stance or a buff into two different abilities. 
• Raising the Attack stat of Axes and balancing those numbers roughly with spears

Sigvar

Sigvar if you play him by his combo structure does an insane amount of damage which makes him an MVP. Since there may be parts where he will not be in the party, I need to make some changes to the amount of damage he is doing so that he still retains his role as main damage dealer next to Alva and other characters but I do not want you the player to run into that issue we all ran into during the 90s and 2000s where you had one character that was just so good so you always had him in your party to the point that if he dies in combat or isn't in the party, things drastically change. Here are some upcoming changes for Sigvar:

• Increasing Windshear MP Cost 50 --> 100 per cast 
• Increasing Job point costs for each skill along with adding "Sword manuals" as an additional requirement for some of his skills. Like Rain of Fangs and Stormspike Descent
• Removing broken or otherwise unusuable skills.

Fennwick

I didn't get a lot of feedback for Fennwick other than some confusion about what soothing wind does since there was no description for it.  Here are some of the changes happening with the next update:

• 4 new enemy debuff skills and 4 equal party buff skills
• 2-4 Bow related skills 
• Descriptions for each ability as intended

Alva

Initial feedback for Alva was that she was simply not doing as much damage even when exploiting enemy weaknesses. I did some digging and here are some of the changes happening to fix that and some additions: 

• Staves were only adding to her attack stat. Since she's a caster, that is on the lowest priority of parameters that need to be increased so staves have been reworked to add a flat amount to Magic Attack instead of attack 
• 4 new spells related to status ailments 1-2 new special abilities.  Since Fennwick is handling buffs and debuffs, I felt it would be necessary to have Alva be the one adding status ailments to balance out party roles a bit. 

Torren (Early access)

His adventure hook has already been written up. As opposed to just using a placeholder and coming back like I did for the initial 4 of the cast, Torren I intend to build from the ground up. The general gameplay for Torren looks like this: 

• Monk character who uses various gloves and claws a la Yang (FFIV) and Sabin (FFVI) for equipment
• Stances will be related to traditional Martial arts form with a JRPG twist i.e. Wind Snake Style, Lightning Tiger Style etc

Gameplay Related Changes

Based on player feedback, here are some other changes coming up in the demo and early access build:

• After the fight with the Forest Guardian, dialog has been added to allude to speaking to the beast instead of going to the crystal. 
• After the talk with Brynhilda post the Forest Guardian fight, Brynjar will have a line or 2 of dialog when you exit the building and the player gets teleported back to Encordia to mitigate the amount of backtracking
• Kordella caves was seen as confusing due to a lack of landmarks in addition to its size so landmarks etc. have been added to give an implied route to travel to get to the mansion
• More Dialog cleanup and adding new faces.  

Story

The first chapter seems very fun and silly or one could say "Spoony Bard" coded. I wanted to give it that Ted Woosely 90's era vibe for the beginning because the gameplay mechanics could seem confusing to some, especially those who have never played mystery dungeon style games before. The goal I had in mind with this is so that you (The player) can focus a little bit more on learning the general gameplay loop and have a fun story along the way. Everystory beat post demo will be caught up to speed with my full intended narrative direction for now. The feedback I got from my roommate is the Tournament Arc reminded him of Breath of Fire III's  tournament arc. I found that funny since I played bits of that game but never got to the part he's talking about haha. Maybe later down the road, I'll rework the beginning but for now since the only feedback so far has been it's fun, I see no real reason to change it. 

(Early Access)

The next story arc revolves around 6 areas:

1. Bastions Hollow, which is North West of Encordia
   1. A medium-sized town that is now dealing with a growing bandit problem. 
   2. A little bit of dialog between Alva and Fennwick
2. Encordia Lower Residence and the Sewers (The next Main and then Potential Mystery Dungeon)
   1. Debating on whether this involves a time skip of 2-4 weeks prior to show passage of time from a narrative perspective. Maybe even a montage event scene.
3. Logos Tower (First Sea Voyage with a few character growth moments thrown in)
4. Leifheim, which is on the opposite side of the mountain range south of Sigvar's house. (Potentially adding a squatter merchant that moves into Sigvar's house) Introduction to one of the Elven Factions happens here. 
5. Mt. Kordella Mystery dungeon opens up.