Here are some ideas to help improve the gameplay. Note that I'm going to be very careful not to mention stuff that may interfere with future additions relating to support characters, player abilities, or player items. I'm pretty sure that you have all sorts of buffs/effects already in mind when it comes to those things, so I'll be suggesting universal improvements that can easily work in tandem with what you're already doing without breaking the game's design paradigm.
- Game Pity: The player should never roll two 1s in consecutive rounds. This scenario is so devastating gameplay-wise that it is easily the #1 cause of player frustration. If you haven't considered anything else in this wall of text, I beg you to please consider this one!
- Game Pity: Related to the first game pity, the enemy should never roll two max rolls in three consecutive rounds. This is just as devastating as the player rolling two 1s consecutively.
- Game Pity: If the player keeps losing multiple fights in a row, then they get some free stuff the next day as a handicap. These handicaps shouldn't happen too often, and should only occur once after three lost fights or so.
-- Jessica can make a comment that she felt bad for you and worked extra hard to marshal some extra troops for you, immediately gaining you 20 Troops.
-- Hana and Pixie can make you a special meal that they worked on together that gives you +1 to all stats for the entire duration of your next fight only. This effect can be used in tandem with other meals, and also stacks with the personal meal.
-- Ard can mock you and say that you suck at fighting, and then give you a special item that he charged up with his own Fey magic powers. This item automatically activates for the next fight only, rerolling any of your 1s over the course of the fight.
- UI Improvement: Players need to be able to forfeit a fight at any point during the fight. Right now, there is no way to do so, which causes defensive enemies like Terri & Tammi, or [shudder], Hazel, to kill you oh so slowly while you're just waiting for the fight to end. In this way, Ophelia is preferred because she will just kick the player's ass and be done with it, quickly freeing the player to do something else.
- UI Improvement: In a fight, the enemy dice should always be shown. However, depending on how the player used their troops, the dice shown will be different.
-- If the player used neither Send Troops or Scout, the enemy dice should appear as circles with question marks.
-- If the player used Send Troops without Scout, the enemy dice appear as their die types, but the values would still be question marks.
-- If the player used Scout, then the enemy dice appear as their die types and proper values.
(Note that this issue is related to one of the Troop Rebalance issues below that discusses Scout and Send Troops in further detail. The main point here is that the enemy dice should always be shown in some form, regardless of troop usage. Show the player that they used troops for it. Or didn't use troops. It's up to them.)
- UI Improvement: The current meal should be shown on the Stats page, preferably near the Troops number, and preferably with the actual effects listed.
- Meal Rebalance: Considering how long fights are, the player's personal meal is too weak for lasting only 1 round. Instead, personal meals should last for 3 rounds to make it more competitive with Fresh Baked Bread.
- Enemy Rebalance: Goons MUST be made easier to defeat! They're mooks, and yet their difficulty level is too high! The number one reason they are too difficult is because their clash ability is -1 Defense, which is the strongest effect in the game. To make them easier, you should change their clash ability to deal -1 to Attack, Seduce, or Clash, chosen randomly. Not only would this change make Goon fights a lot easier, the unpredictability of their clash ability would also make fighting them more interesting and more fun. Remember that Jessica says that these guys are bad shots, so this change would be in line with her statement.
- Enemy Rebalance: Speaking of Goons, the Trainer Goon is a very tough battle since you can't use any troops or stat boosts. In order to encourage players to try out the new battle system instead of simply turning on auto-win, this guy needs to be made even easier to defeat. The best way to do this is to apply a permanent -1 Attack to the Trainer Goon. Jessica says that these guys aren't shooting to kill, so they shouldn't be hurting you as much, right? Right?!!
- Troop Rebalance: Send Troops needs to do more than simply report die types. I can always look it up on the Corrupted Kingdoms Wiki and save myself the troops. Instead, Send Troops should report on die types, initial AI type, AI switches at low health (if any), and the names and effects of all clash abilities. Jessica shouldn't be giving you any free combat info -- rely on troops instead for your combat info to make troop spending here feel more relevant.
- Troop Rebalance: At 5 Troop cost, Scout is much weaker than Reinforce and seldom ever necessary. To make the die reveal actually relevant in gameplay, the Scout ability should be included with Send Troops, allowing the die reveal to be used in tandem with Reinforce. In other words, the new Send Troops would work like this:
-- Send 1 Troop: Reveal all enemy info
-- Send 2 Troops: Reveal all enemy info, reveal Die 1
-- Send 3 Troops: Reveal all enemy info, reveal Die 1 and 2
-- Send 4 Troops: Reveal all enemy info, reveal all dies
- New Troop Abilities: Right now, Reinforce is mandatory and needs viable alternatives to make gameplay more interesting. Here are some ideas:
-- Preparation (2 Troops): After the dice roll, the player may choose to reroll all dice. When this ability is used, the player must wait two more rounds before using this ability again. (This ability exists for when the player is low on troops. The player should never choose the option Go It Alone unless they are looking for a special challenge or unless they are feeling masochistic. This ability exists as an alternative to forcing the player to go back to the Manor and sleeping for a bunch of days just to build up more troops with Fresh Baked Bread.)
-- Distract (2 Troops): Enemy suffers -1 to Attack, Seduce, or Clash. This penalty is applied to only one of the aforementioned stats, and is chosen randomly at the start of each round. (Of course, -1 Defense is not present here due to its power. Otherwise, this ability would become an RNG battle unto itself, where the player hopes to get -1 Defense for that round. It's better to remove that temptation and leave -1 Defense out of this.)
-- Bolster (2 Troops): If any die rolls a 1, the player may choose to change them to 2s. When this ability is used, the player must wait two more rounds before using this ability again. (Rolling even a single 1 can ruin a round, and so this ability exists to mitigate that common scenario.)
-- NEW Scout (5 Troops): After the dice roll, the player may choose to reroll one die of their choice. (This turns Scout into something very useful. This should be a direct alternative to Reinforce, where the player must ask themselves, "Is it better to guarantee a more optimal roll on an existing die? Or is it better to upgrade the die type to achieve a potentially higher value at the expense of optimal rolling?")
-- Reinforce (5 Troops): Works exactly how it does in the current version -- upgrades 1 die to the next highest die type. (Very useful. In fact, all the other troop abilities are balanced around this ability's power level.)
-- Backup (5 Troops): Player gains +1 Clash for the entire fight. (Another direct alternative to Reinforce, as this grants the player a steady +1 stat bonus, compared to Reinforce which can still give you 1s. I am also foreseeing new player abilities that can be activated on a successful clash, like Endure, which would make this ability much more useful in future versions of the game.)
-- Sabotage (10 Troops): After the dice roll, the enemy is forced to reroll any dice that had a max roll. (For example, a 1d4 that rolls a 4 is rerolled, a 1d6 that rolls a 6 is rerolled, a 1d8 that rolls an 8 is rerolled, and so on. This can really take the sting out of RNG that gives enemies optimal rolls for consecutive rounds. Note that this forces a reroll on ALL max rolled dice, not just one, so it is possible for up to two dice to get rerolled. The reason Sabotage doesn't cost more is because it is also possible for the enemy to reroll their max roll and keep on going like nothing ever happened. It really sucks when that happens.)
-- Gambit (10 Troops): This ability may only be used up to 10 times per fight. The player may use this ability only when one of the following conditions are met:
--- If the enemy wins the clash, the player can choose to stop the enemy's clash ability from taking effect.
--- If the enemy wins a critical attack (dealing 2 damage), the player can choose to negate the attack and treat it as a normal attack instead (dealing 1 damage).
(This ability exists for players who want to play a slower and more tactical game. The main benefit of Gambit is that it allows the player to safely place 1s in Defense and Clash without getting completely destroyed. While the player can't do this forever due to Gambit's limited uses, it should be enough for players looking to win with Shatter.)
-- Guardian (10 Troops): Once every three rounds, the player gains +3 to Defense. (Note that the player should never receive any permanent bonuses to Defense, or else they will become virtually invincible! If for some reason the player would receive a permanent Defense bonus anyways, it should be purely for plot reasons only!)
-- Breakthrough (25 Troops): Enemy suffers -1 Defense for the entire fight. (The Defense stat down is currently the most powerful effect in the game, and should be treatedly very carefully. I wouldn't be surprised if this effect is still too powerful for a troop ability. Maybe it would be more appropriate as a support character ability for a very high level character. The only reason I'm listing this as a troop ability is to have a universal solution for breaking the defense of highly defensive enemies like Hazel.)
- New Fight Mechanic: If the enemy successfully defends for three consecutive rounds, the player gains a point of Guard Break (max. 3). Then, at the start of the round, the player may choose to spend a Guard Break point to deal -1 Defense to the enemy. This effect can stack. Also, Guard Break points reset to 0 at the beginning of each fight and do not carry over to other fights. Note that this ability should only be given to the player, but not to the enemies! Players should be allowed to use stalling tactics (the player trades their time for potential future progress), but enemies should never be allowed to stall (immediately impedes player progress). This change would make fighting defensive characters, like Hazel, a lot more enjoyable. It's perfectly fine to have slower paced fights in the game, but it's extremely annoying and unfun to have enemies endlessly stall like Hazel does. Adding a Guard Break mechanic is the way to break such stalemates.
Other Thoughts:
I haven't really thought these things through very much, so take these additional thoughts with a grain of salt.
- It would be really cool for the combat system to take stats into account. Even with all of the changes above, the combat system would still be very RNG based if left as-is. By using stats as base numbers and using dice rolls as additions, it is possible to reduce the randomness without eliminating it completely. Enemies would be given their own stats to provide extra balancing knobs for tuning their difficulty.
- If stats were used, then I'd set up the values like this:
-- Attack = Martial + Physical + [dice roll]
-- Seduce = Charisma + Insight + [dice roll]
-- Defense = Martial + Insight + [dice roll]
-- Clash = Charisma + Physical + [dice roll]
I'm already assuming that Magical will be used for certain clash abilities, which is why I'm not discussing it here.
- If player stats are used, then in order to not punish players who didn't stat grind during Act II, all stats should be fixed at 2 or so upon starting Act III, until the game allows the player to stat grind again. When stat grinding is allowed, the player's stats unlock and revert to what they were at the end of Act II, which would immediately reward the players that did stat grind. The locked stats could be explained by The Beast keeping the player's original power locked away, but the player can feel some of The Beast's power leaking out through him, hence the small amount of stats that he would have. And then the player does something or meets someone that unlocks his original power again.
So these are just a few of my thoughts about the state of Act III. I can already see a lot of huge potential for the combat system to be fun in the context of an eroge visual novel, without turning into some long-term grinding experience like Disgaea. TheArcadean, I truly wish you the best of luck and I hope that something in this wall of text helps you in making Corrupted Kingdoms even better than it already is!