Post by WhoNeedsAUserName in Gameplay/Mechanics Discussion

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A few things
1) The stun having priority over your turns feels excessive, when you're already guaranteed to lose 2 turns to it

2) The stun should also just end your turn automatically? I don't see why it doesn't do that

3) The general lack of options you have access to leads to really boring battles, especially when the vast majority of the battles are just the same 3 hyena fight (maybe it gets better later, but the early parts of the game suffer playing less like a game, and more like a flowchart that's just "Hard Knocks -> Attack Lowest HP Enemy -> Repeat Step 1, use healing if 1-2 hits from death"), and the lack of any real energy management between battles also takes out a level of strategy, leading to combat feeling even more samey and bland

(Also, the fact that you can just get one turn subbed, because rngesus just said so feels wrong)

bitshiftgames333 days ago (1 edit)

1. I may not know enough about RPG Maker mechanics to answer this accurately, but from what I understand it's always in the same order: enemies do their moves, if able, in sequence, then you go, then they go again (Unless the game maker tweaks it, which I haven't). So I don't think the daze really "takes priority" over your turn: when it's their turn, and they can use it, they may use it, same as any other attack.

2. In my mind it made sense to have a null move to keep track of when each round of turns ended. Now that you mention it yes, it might be more elegant to just skip player turn, so I may look into that. There's a good chance I'd have to redo a number of other things that are relying on the timing to be as it is now though, so we'll see.

3. This is both by necessity and design. Designing super complex and satisfying rpg fight mechanics isn't really my forte, and I actually think it detracts from this kind of game. Grove for example has a lot of things going for it, but its battle systems are so complex they require multiple tutorials, and that ended up being a wall for me when I tried to play it.

I don't want to make things TOO simple, and I haven't. CS combat isn't just "Hit the enemies with your one attack until they die", there are some considerations for timing, whether you should recharge Hard Knocks, heal, or just go for a regular attack, whether you should risk more aggressive play to end the battle sooner or play it safe to avoid the risk of hypno, when's best to use the Dazzle Blast attack, and so on. And I do regret not being able to do a LITTLE more in terms of enemy variety.

But even if I could make the battle mechanics exactly as I wanted, with a bunch of new enemies and art assets, I still wouldn't make the mechanics all that much more complex. This just isn't that kind of game. The battles in CS are meant to provide some degree of challenge and risk and aid in the story that's being told. They're not meant to be the centerpiece. Or at least, not in terms of complexity and depth.

So the answer is that they're as good as I can manage, with my small brain. And they're as good as they need to be to make the game work overall. That's not to say I don't want to improve them: I'll continue tweaking here and there. I think GT's combat is a certainly improved from CS1. Just don't expect anything TOO elaborate.

Also unless I'm forgetting something, you shouldn't be getting one-turn-subbed, or at least one-turn-hypno'd, unless you're referring to the trainers. Daze does usually get your sub to 100, but "open" can't be applied until you're out of it, so you don't go from 0 to locked into hypno without a chance to fight back.

dasypygal333 days ago

The force daze after 4 fights of not being dazed happens at the start of turn 2 instead of during the enemy action, which interrupts the player action effectively adding an extra turn of stun. It's extra punishing but when it happens you just went 4 fights without being dazed so it's not too bad. This appears to be the only place where enemies act first. In other circumstances you choose your action, then you act, then the enemies act.

bitshiftgames333 days ago

Tested this out, fighting and letting myself gradually accumulate the hypno statuses.

Out of the battles accumulating the statuses, I got dazed once, and it was never an issue (IE, could have easily won the fight without hypno if I had wanted to).

Once I got to "Slipping", I saved and replayed the next battle several times:

-First time, no daze, no hypno. Defeated enemies without issue.

-Second time, defeated the enemies rapidly (3 turns), no daze, no hypno.

-Third time, no daze, no hypno. Defeated enemies without issue.

Given, this was an unusually good string of RNG. But the point is it's just that: RNG. There's no hard-coded system that ensures there's always a daze on the second turn (again, unless you happen to be on the fifth battle without daze, in which case, bad luck). And in general, the balance of the RNG isn't too brutal. Sometimes you'll get good strings, sometimes bad, but if you're managing time and items properly, you shouldn't be reloading THAT much, especially on the first half of Ent. Dist. I.

itch.io

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