Feedback Friday #163 - May 7-10, 2021

It’s Feedback Friday time!

Want free design feedback for your work in progress project? Then you’ve found the right thread! Feedback Friday runs from Friday to Monday every week.

What To Show

  • Minimally Viable Product (MVP) - Core game play > everything else
  • How To Scope Small (Unity tutorial)
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How To Ask For Feedback

  • Be concise.
  • Specify what you want feedback on and what you don’t.
  • Resist the urge to write an immediate defense. Take the time to understand their points. Remember that your friends here are taking time out of their busy schedules to help you for free.

How To Give Feedback

  • Be positive. There’s something of value in every game.
  • Focus on the design, not the designer.

Feedback Friday #162 is here .

3 Likes

Back again, my first ever consecutive week post.

Added a help screen in game with icons and their meanings. access by clicking on the “?” Question Mark button.

Icons I forgot to add in the help screen is green ^ and red v on the stat hud representing if it has been buffed up or debuffed down.

Added stat info HUD
7118887--849796--upload_2021-5-7_23-25-29.png

Added the logic of complementary abilities. So far:
Air and Poison complement Fire
Fire complements Poison
Ice and Lightning complement Water

Added Buffs and Debuffs. Cant stack buffs for now.
Added own party targeting for Buffs and Heal

AI can now perform Magic/Support abilities, dumb AI for now, chooses random ability. Can cast buffs/heal on self only and not party members for the moment.

I tried to add some logic behind the complementary attacks. But poisoned enemy getting double physical damage doesnt make sense, will add a bleeding status effect and add the double physical damage to that. Have completely ignored Earth for now. Just testing the system and will add more combinations when its done.

I am not able to put my focus on the Dice, maybe i am not used to it yet. But that means the user wont be as well. The dice animation was copied from google’s dice roller. Maybe i need a dice with all sides numbered and then it might attract more attention.
Should i add more delay between dice roll and attack implementation? So that the user has time to look at the dice. Thinking about adding a green/red aura to the dice based on if the roll was successful.

What do you think about user targeting own party members to remove status conditions? To remove Burning from an ally we could hit him with a Water/Ice attack, but that will give the normal ability damage to him as well.

I will be aiming the game only for 16:9 or wider aspect ratio. 4:3 and 5:4 wont be supported. With that in mind, is it fine to have the Ally/Enemy HUD on the right side and the battle a little to the left (not centered). Should the Individual HUD be near/over the head of each monster? RPGs i grew up on all had different positions and systems for HUD so i dont think it will be an issue but still asking.

Right now the ability selection shows its damage, this damage is the put in formula with enemy armor. Should i just show how much damage an ability would do to a particular enemy when they are targeted? Or is that something the user would like to calculate on their own?

Download Link : Google Drive 54MB

@Aseemy - You’ve made a lot of additions since last week!

I don’t see dice. I only see a number in the center of the screen. You ask a good question about the dice roll. It would be great to see the dice for a much longer time – perhaps they roll on the screen, then they gradually fade out as the attack actions happen.

It’s a little hard to know the combat order. Can you make it easier to know when each monster’s turn is coming up?

What do you think is fun about playing it in the state it’s in right now? How could you bring out that aspect more?

You dont see this? A blank dice which rolls and a number popping up in the middle.
7120105--850060--Dice Roll.gif

Hmm, can you send me a screenshot of what you see in game? In the combat order list i have shown if the monster is player/Enemy with P: or E:. then comes the monster name and then its level in case there are more than 1 monster with the same name. But this text system is for testing only. Later i will add icon based timeline with pictures of the monsters.

7120105--850066--upload_2021-5-8_11-16-52.jpg

I already think its fun, but Turn Based RPGs are my favorite type of games and i made this one, so i am not the best person to judge it. Need outside perspective. When i am just testing a small thing in combat, i end up finishing the whole battle because i am having fun. Then only unique/different mechanic in my game is the Dice roll, other than that its basically similar to any RPG combat, and i dont even focus on it. I think the attack starts too quickly and i just look at the combatants instead of what the dice rolled. When an attacks misses or crits, i assume the dice must have rolled 1 or 20. Need to make the user want to look at the dice.

Right now, all the abilities have higher damage/change of hitting for testing purposes. When they are scaled for a balanced battle then it will be more fun as tactics will need to be used.

No, I only see the white number, but I don’t see the red die.

Some games “roll” the dice from the bottom of the screen to about the center. It might be nice to see that animation in the future, although I acknowledge that it’s too early for those polishing details right now while you’re still refining the core gameplay.

My screen looks like yours. I wasn’t looking at the testing window in the upper left. (So there’s some playtesting feedback; players may miss that window.) I thought maybe the order would be indicated elsewhere on the screen.

As the designer, you’re the first person that the game has to be fun for. :)[/QUOTE]

I can do it if the whole animation takes 1-1.5 sec. Watching and waiting for that animation for every move might become boring.

The turn order will be easily visible later. plus user will get the tutorial as well. Similar to this.
7121254--850306--upload_2021-5-8_21-19-55.png

1 Like

I am planning to have monsters which may have multiple physical attacks or no physical attacks at all. So should i still keep a separate Physical Attack button or a single Heading for Both Physical and Magical attacks.
7122500--850520--upload_2021-5-9_11-17-49.png

vs

7122500--850523--upload_2021-5-9_11-21-45.png

The attacks can be differentiated with colors plus physical attacks wont have MP cost.

And i think i have come up with a name for my game “Kreature Kwest”, the monsters will be called Kreatures. What do you think?

Since you’re asking opinions (and this is just my opinion), I’m not a fan of that name. Also, there is already a Second Life game named Kreatures and some other uses of the name Kreatures.

Will think of more ideas then. And your opinion is highly valued.

Added some power effects. Makes the game look more dynamic.

All the Magic Abilities will be basically a Cast Animation and an VFX on the Target. Is that fine? Some games remove other enemies except the target and have a close up of the VFX, but i think i want to keep it simple. This will be my first PC game, dont wanna complicate it so much that i never finish it.

If you’re using Cinemachine, you could use a vcam that zooms in on the attacker and target.

But I recommend continuing to get others to playtest it and tweak the core gameplay until a significant number of people want to keep playing battle after battle. You don’t want to spend too much effort polishing things that may get completely changed or replaced through playtesting feedback.

This concludes Feedback Friday #163. See you all next Friday for the next one!