Future Changes to The Game

It's been one month and more since the demo has been released. And I have gathered enough feedback from people who have played the game to make a change. There will be substantial changes, but it won't be a major overhaul. The overall game structure and the story will be the same, but I plan to change the game flow. Here are the list on what is going to be changed:

The first boss difficulty is too steep

From what I have gathered, some of my players were having a hard time beating the first boss. Either it's because it's too soon that they are underleveled, or the boss simply too quirky as the first boss. While you should be able beat her, it wasn't a pleasant experience as the first boss.

As a solution: I decided to tune down the boss difficulty. But it feels like waste to nerf the boss since I personally like it. After some consideration, I decided to keep the original difficulty to the hard difficulty instead. In addition, I put an extra mid boss before her. And add a little exploration, which hopefully it won't feel too steep.

Armor Rating Increased

The original armor rating is 10% when the armor is up (And 20% for easy difficulty). Both frontline and backline has no difference aside from aggro value (Frontlines are likely being attacked). A funny quote from my friend "I've never cared about armor. The time I thought armor would save my life because the actor still has high armor HP, it didn't. Now I only care about actor HP". 

He is right though. Eventually, I thought that 10% defense is just too small to even consider it as a defense. I decided to bump the default armor rating value to 20% which hopefully it may change the perspective (and 30% for easy difficulty). I also add 20% unique damage cut modifier (stack multiplicative with armor rating) if the actor is placed in the backline (because they are the one that needs protection).

Chapter 2 map stages overhaul

Not gonna lie, but the chapter 2 map stages were made in rush and there was no solid plan on how I would do it. Mainly because of the demo deadline. The future changes will include the proper boss placement, proper boss difficulty, more reasonable map layout (not maze like), and probably adding more small cutscenes for story purposes.

Other Changes I'm considering (and still not yet find the solution).

• Revamp the damage popup to make it less bloated because of mixing armor damage, health damage, and resist/weak popup.
• Revamp the tutorial (to make it quicker)

Dual Tech Skill

In other hand, 'mI also considering to put an "ultimate skill". But instead of an individual skill for each of the actor, it will be a combination skill. These will be unlocked in the later stage of the game. You can see the preview here (there is no damage popup yet, only animations).

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Overall, the changes are driven toward to make the game easier. However, there is no plan to patch or release the next build any time soon. Although, I will keep the current build downloadable for people to look into my game.