Yes, I know. I've disappeared again. Well, sort of, but not really. I just haven't been updating this blog because I'm a lazy ass. But never mind that, things are going to change now.
Why?
Well basically, I've dropped a certain time consuming hobby/obligation that has been stealing away nearly all my time. It was fun for a good while and I improved my writing and characterization because of it. But now, it's time to get this show back on the road. My timing has been freed up now, so I'm going to throw myself back into the fray working on SEM.
Now, what needs to be done since I left off and what HAS been done? Let's see...
Firstly, the battle system needs to be adjusted. Thankfully it's not anything major or system altering. I've released several behind the scenes demos to friends for evaluation and such. And I've managed to learn some veeeery interesting things regarding the gameplay as a whole. And to address this, here's a couple additions to battles that will be implemented
- There will be more of an LF penalty for using Strike Chains when you don't have enough EP. In one playthrough I watched, the player was able to utterly destroy a boss by linking several strike chains back to back while ignoring their EP. This is wildly amusing, but at the end of the day, it's not exactly balanced. So there will be a larger penalty now. Currently the LF penalty is 10% per stage. I'll be increasing it to about 15% for a grand total of 75% LF loss overall if you use a chain without EP.
- Passive EP recovery has been removed, but in return, the Focus command recovers a full 10 EP per use now. It's not as if it was a problem before, but I felt that EP gain was too slow and stifled the pacing of battles. Easing up on EP gain should allow for faster battle speed. I may look into implementing both at the same time however. We'll see.
- Burst Skills will now have a base damage addition. Because I've seen that Burst skills do less damage than even Chains sometimes because of severe elemental penalties and the rather tight damage algorithm. In order for them to be useful again, their base damage should be guaranteed.
And secondly, the symbol map system will be getting an additional overall so that there is more to do than just battle your way from node to node. This comes in the form of Trap Tiles and Reward Tiles.
- Trap tiles can be anything ranging from status effects such as Poison, Burn, Freeze, Burst Seal, Ether Seal, Stun, Stat Debuffs, etc. There are two options you can select when deal with a trap tile. You can spend a bit of TP to nullify the trap and move on. Or you can try and take the chance to dodge it. Trap avoidance is based on the party's stats. For example, to avoid a Power Debuff trap in a midgame symbol map, you must have a total party power rating of 400. If it's lower than that, then the chance to dodge turns into a random roll, the range of which is the difference between the party total and the target number. Basically this is also something to spend TP on other than avoiding battles.
- In the case of Reward Tiles, the player will be rewarded with a certain kind of positive effect. Effects can be Stat Buffs for one, Stat Buffs for all, Regen for one, Regen for all, Extra SP, Extra RP, TP replenishment large or small, memory fragment replenishment, Etc. Rewards will be presented in a choice of three. The choices will be predetermined by me from tile to tile. This is present to offset Trap Tiles. It can't all be punishment, right?
In any case, this is what I will be working on for the time being. As for overall progress, both Days 1 and 2 have been completed at their base, barring a few visual assets, but those can be added later. Day three is in progress, but I will be withholding work on that to complete these changes.
SEM is not dead! Though I admit, it can be a bit of a trial working on this project sometimes, but I definitely will not give up!
Thanks for reading. For your time, have a Priel!
This is not her SEM design, but whatever! I'm too lazy to dig around for something specific to SEM!
Anyway, this is Skie signing out! Till next time!
