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[jack_norton]

I've received some reviews for my game Planet Stronghold, and most of them talk about hard difficulty. Honestly, I don't think it's THAT hard, but probably for the average-casual gamer (or someone used to play Fable 2 where you can't die lol) could be.
So I'm looking for that kind of feedback - the first battles are obviously easy, but already after the first training section, when you have to pass the test and then clear the colony from the rebels, things starts to get a bit more difficult.
You should play at the "normal" mode. Some people say is hard even at "easy" difficulty mode but I believe they're joking! 

Anyway for anyone who wants to try, here's the official game page: http://www.winterwolves.com/planetstronghold.htm

Direct download links:
http://www.winterwolves.com/download.php?game=PSDemo.exe (PC)
http://www.winterwolves.com/download.php?game=PSDemo.zip (Mac)
http://www.winterwolves.com/download.php?game=PSDemo.tar.bz2 (Linux)

And here's some screenshots:

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i think the problem may be perception. teegee told me about this once: it's not how hard a game is, it's how hard the player *thinks* it is (so they give up before really trying). i can say that from the screenshots of your game, i imagine all the numbers and words can be visually intimidating to casual players, even if it's actually very simple. i think casual is about the illusion of being easy rather than actually being easy, since there are plenty of casual games that area actually extremely hard but give the impression of being easy -- plants vs zombies is one example. plants vs zombies is one of the most difficult tower defense games i've ever played, but from its appearance, it's not threatening at all

anyway i haven't played the game so i'm not saying this is the case, it's just one thing you should consider: that making your game feel easy (by reducing the amount of information and choices that they see on the screen all at once so that they don't become overwhelmed) may be more important than actually making it easier (by reducing enemy HP or something)

[jack_norton]

Ah no, in reality people were really complain about BATTLES difficulty. Not like "the game is hard" in general. But the battles in particular! Perhaps because while in the first stages of the game you cannot really lose a battle and get "game over", later in the game when you explore the planet and get a random encounter, if you lose you really lose the game itself 

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

in that case, the solution might be difficulty modes (perhaps with different rewards for doing the harder difficulty levels)

what i did in immortal defense was have 10 difficulty modes, on a slider, which the player can adjust at any time. however, if they set it lower (which lowers the enemy HP), their rewards are also less: enemies give less gold if the game is set to an easier difficulty mode

so perhaps you could do something similar

[jack_norton]

tsk tsk you didn't pay attention! 
jokes apart my post had lot of texts so np, but yes, I have 3 difficulty levels: easy, normal and hard. By default I suggest player to try normal mode, but for casual player I also recommend to try the easy.
Problem is that some people/reviewed had troubles even at easy level! It seems though that they were simply pissed because heroes dies in battle (but you can resurrect them).
I think is something based on psychology, really. Hero dead=losing, while in reality is quite normal to resurrect a player during a fight.
Perhaps that was my mistake...

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

yes but my suggestion wasn't just having difficulty levels, the two crucial parts was a) giving rewards for higher difficulty levels and b) having a way to switch between the difficulty levels in the game itself (rather than just at the start of the game)

anyway, if they are still having problems on easy, then make an easier mode. make it 5 difficulty levels instead of 3 or something like that. very easy and very hard in addition to easy/normal/hard.

[jack_norton]

Yes you can switch anytime, except during combat
I could have added 2 more, and probably will in the add-on I'm making now. Also reconsidering the extra stuff in hard mode, seems a good way to reward "veteran players".
Thanks for the suggestions 

[dEnamed]

I've played it for a bit under the pretense that it would be too hard and I had to look for things that made it too hard. First things first: It's not really hard. It's actually fairly close to other RPGs in terms of difficulty. Then again, it's harder than it needs to be - and the difficulty doesn't come from the RPG Part itself. Also my words may sound a tad harsh, they're not meant to be. Whatever I say, doesn't mean its a bad game, instead I'm listing things that I think could improve the perceived difficulty. It's also quite possible I missed something very important.

So here it is:
Right off the bat, I've noticed two things adding to difficulty that wouldn't be hard to fix. One seems to be a lack of auto-saving. It's a little comfort feature a lot of people have come to rely on. Did I miss it, or isn't there one? Having the game automatically save in the background wouldn't disturb the flow of the game, yet provide a safety net in case a battle turns out bad. And while it's true that you can save yourself, that however does disturb the gameplay flow.

Second problem - a lack of quickhints where they're needed. What the hell are those icons next to, well everything? The way I found out was to look up an item in the inventory, then compare the stats of an item with the numbers next to the Icon. That's rather unintuitive. It might potentially be explained in the Tutorial but to be perfectly honest, I got bored by the wall of text. (and so did your characters! "So far this is pretty boring" to quote one of them!)
I don't think the wall of text is really necessary though if you would provide said quickhints. Generally, there's a problem with helpful texts not being there when I need them. For example you provide a lot of information about classes. Cool. After you've picked them. Not cool. You can always go back and pick another one, but as I said, that's unintuitive and just that extra step.

Those two things, autosaving and helptexts are the biggest Issues I had. There are some smaller problems with difficulty:

Sometimes the game forces you to follow a sequence of events. That's okay. It's also okay to carry over lost hitpoints. The issue starts with the generally low amount of hitpoints at the beginning. My main character, a scout, had 20 HP in total. One attack by a normal non boss enemy left her at 4 HP. Ouch.
Problem is, healing items don't restore that much health initially, so you have the choice of either trying to heal it and needing two characters just to heal one single attack. Or you try to ignore it and power through the battle. Most of the time that's fine. Point being: The HP Buffer is quite a bit too small in the beginning. If a single non crit attack can take out 3/4 of it and healing items only give back 1/2 of it, you're fighting a losing battle if you bother with healing during combat.

Back to eventsequences, after a battle, the dialog often immediately carries you to the next battle. I often found myself calling out "oh come on! wait! I'd love to have atleast checked up on my team to see if I need to heal them up pre-battle?!". I'm aware that I could at any time have clicked Inventory and actually done that, but once again its disturbing the gameflow in the midst of a dialog.
It seems unintuitive to actively put the dialog/cutscene aside, to heal up and then resume mid dialog to continue. Maybe have some sort of battle preperation screen before a battle or something? I'm not sure how you could solve this. It's not really an issue most of the time but still somewhat annoyed me.

Concerning the RPG Mechanics:
They're solid, I think. Not too hard, not too easy (except for the HP in the beginning). Although I'm somewhat surprised you're stomping the player with a teamwide stunlock about 30 minutes into the game. That's usually something you don't see early in RPGs as it requires a fair bit of knowledge with the game to deal with it.
That's also point where I died, a group of three enemies kept my team stunned for the entirety of the battle. I tried to heal and defend but I eventually lost due to a lack of resources (out of PP and Medkits). That's also when I noticed the lack of autosaving. And when I stopped playing.

So here's the verdict:
It's a fairly easy standard RPG at heart, but there are some minor issues that make it a lot harder than it needs to be. You overexplain some things (the tutorial wall of text) while not providing informations in the necessary parts. Also I'd think about some sort of "examine" button and put the enemy introduction screen there, along with its weaknesses and strengths.
Most of the time, I don't particularly care about those things, yet they're there. Looking all scary and intimidating, even though they aren't. You might also want to consider a larger HP Pool in the beginning and lower the hp gain initially a bit. After a handful of levels, it wasn't an issue anymore but it turned out really frustrating in the beginning. Which is when most people gauge the difficulty.
Last but not least: AUTOSAVE, PLEASE, I BEG YOU! (and if its there, autodefault it to on!)

[Kicks]

Ah no, in reality people were really complain about BATTLES difficulty. Not like "the game is hard" in general. But the battles in particular!

Can you even fail in other parts of the game?

The battles themselves are really random. Randomness in a game should be used for variety and surprises. In this game I just got frustrated and felt out of control. There were no important or interesting turn by turn decisions. Just pick an ok strategy and hope it works by mashing the mouse button.

The number of decisions and options a player has should generally correlate to the number of desires they have. In battle, all I care about is damage so I just crammed all my skill points into the character's equipped weapon type. I have no idea what sorts of scenarios I'd be in since I don't actually control much pacing of the story. If I could actively sneak as a player or already had multiple weapon types available, I might be more inclined to use other skills. Though this is only a slight inclination as the game merely presented boring die-roll scenarios for using the skills and the different weapon types merely had different damage types which applies to the defense of enemies which is something I have no control over. So I might as well just pick most damage.

The characters were all pretty unlikable and flat along with the story so I had no desire to even listen to the dialogue. There's no humanization of the character in the beginning so I cannot project myself to even begin caring about them.

Characters leave and enter the party without much explanation and further randomize the game to make the player care even less about the characters and mechanics.

The sound and visual effects in battle do very little to inform the player let alone any immersion or tantalization.

Awarding players XP is not a good incentive when there are very few battles to fight and very little knowledge of what I'm going to fight. There was little accommodation to let the player learn and discover any part of the game.

Navigating the menus made me want to shoot myself from all the lag. You can click in battle to make things progress more quickly, but you can often misclick on the next characters turn.

OK character art for the girls.

[jack_norton]

Wow thanks, quite good feedback
(even on other stuff than combat).
Some points:
- wall of texts: yes, the game initially was intended as a visual novel with light-RPG elements, but I got carried away and light-RPG became a full RPG, but still with a good VN component. So there is lot of texts indeed I know already the solution, that would be to split the texts in a more intuitive way, though I have to say even spiderweb RPG (not the last one, I played only the first ones) had quite lot of texts, didn't they ?
- autosave: renpy has it built-in but to be honest is not really intuitive (you need to scroll down on the bottom of the save slots to find the "autosave slots"). Something to remember for next game/add-on, perhaps use some sort of "checkpoint" where I automatically save in the game
- warning about combat: yes another good point. Probably skipping the text you missed it, but you can use mousewheel to "rollback" the texts (and event) so even if a battle starts you can use mousewheel to "go back" and prepare your team.
- quickhints: I decided to incorporate all the explanation in a tutorial part when you visit the training droid (lucille). You can ask her about the battle rules and they'll be explained in details. I know that this is not really standard, since most new games introduce you with the gameplay elements gradually...

Ah no, in reality people were really complain about BATTLES difficulty. Not like "the game is hard" in general. But the battles in particular!

The number of decisions and options a player has should generally correlate to the number of desires they have. In battle, all I care about is damage so I just crammed all my skill points into the character's equipped weapon type. I have no idea what sorts of scenarios I'd be in since I don't actually control much pacing of the story. If I could actively sneak as a player or already had multiple weapon types available, I might be more inclined to use other skills. Though this is only a slight inclination as the game merely presented boring die-roll scenarios for using the skills and the different weapon types merely had different damage types which applies to the defense of enemies which is something I have no control over. So I might as well just pick most damage.

Hm no, that's not true: the psionic powers for example have a big impact, as accuracy/evasion/armor skills as well surely not in the early stages of the game, but later on they're quite important. Some psionic can lower enemy armor rating so you can hit them and effectively do much more damage. See this video:



It shows how a battle can radically change using the right psionic skill. Another useful one (and perhaps I overpowered it!!) is the shock power.

About the flat characters, I don't want to comment since I think depends also on tastes. Later in the game you can romance them and they all show their personality, and also had many people telling me they found the characters interesting, so I presume it really depends on tastes. For sure, next games I'll use native english speaker writers :D

Thanks again for the feedback, very appreciated!

[Sar]

For what it's worth, I had a go with the demo when the game was first released, and I had pretty similar opinions to Kicks above...

- wall of texts: ... So there is lot of texts indeed I know already the solution, that would be to split the texts in a more intuitive way, though I have to say even spiderweb RPG (not the last one, I played only the first ones) had quite lot of texts, didn't they ?

I think you miss the point; you seem to assume that the problem with "walls of text" is simply that there's a lot of text, but that's not a problem in itself. I've played only one of the Avernum games from Spiderweb, and while it did have a lot of text, it didn't have Planet Stronghold's problem.

The problem isn't that there's a lot of text; it's that the player is basically told a million things all at once and expected to remember and understand them all, and then they're dropped in the deep end. Essentially, this:

- quickhints: I decided to incorporate all the explanation in a tutorial part when you visit the training droid (lucille). You can ask her about the battle rules and they'll be explained in details. I know that this is not really standard, since most new games introduce you with the gameplay elements gradually...

Why did you make that decision? Was there a game-flow or player-helping motivation, or did you simply not want to spend the time programming gradual-introduction hints? In fact, the gradual-introduction is very helpful to the player, as it means that they can learn and appreciate the mechanics in small chunks, which means they're much more likely to take in and properly understand those things, and once they've had a bit of practice at them, you can teach them new things that build on top of them.

For an excellent example of this kind of game design, look at a Zelda game. You start off being able to do pretty much nothing. After a while you get a sword, and you learn how to hit things with your sword. [One piece of new functionality, introduced all on its own.] You then go around a bit of the overworld where there are a few sporadic things to hit with your sword, getting some practice at hitting things with your sword. [An easy bit of introductory practice with the new feature.] Next, you have to venture into a dungeon where there are quite a few more things to hit with your sword, and it's more difficult. [A test, to make sure the player has properly understood the new feature before introducing anything else.] Deep in the dungeon, you find a new tool - maybe a slingshot. [Only introducing a new feature once you're sure the player understands the old one properly.] After this, you have to use your new tool to overcome a couple of simple puzzles to progress further into the dungeon. [Again, giving the player a bit of practice with his new bit of functionality] Finally, at the climax of the dungeon, there's a boss who can only be defeated with your new toy. [Again, a test to make sure that the player properly understands the new feature before allowing them to proceed.]

By the end of a modern Zelda game, you have an array of tools which provide different advantages, you've learned several different attack and defence moves with your guy (using the shield, rolling around behind Darknuts to cut off their armour, dodging to the side, etc.) and you have a solid understanding of the game-world's rules and habits, and you can use all of this effortlessly - because the in-game training is so good. In Planet Stronghold, on the other hand, the player feels basically like they've just been handed all that stuff right at the beginning of the game and expected to be proficient with it from the word 'go'.

Basically, if you're ever thinking to yourself "how should I design this part of the game", then thinking "What would Miyamoto do? How would this be handled in a Zelda game?" is probably a good step. Zelda may go over the top in easy-introduction, and for a complex RPG you can probably introduce two or three concepts at once with no problems, but not everything.

- autosave: renpy has it built-in but to be honest is not really intuitive (you need to scroll down on the bottom of the save slots to find the "autosave slots"). Something to remember for next game/add-on, perhaps use some sort of "checkpoint" where I automatically save in the game

As it goes - are you aware you can customise that? At the very least, you can do your own saving and loading with renpy.save and renpy.load, so you can offer your players a "you seem to have died; do you want to try that battle again?" option.

- warning about combat: yes another good point. Probably skipping the text you missed it, but you can use mousewheel to "rollback" the texts (and event) so even if a battle starts you can use mousewheel to "go back" and prepare your team.

Firstly, along the lines of the previous information topic; did you tell the player this at all? I don't recall it being mentioned when I tried the game, but I guess I may have forgotten 'cause I'm used to the system.

Secondly, doesn't this have the same flow-breaking problem as jumping out to the inventory in the middle of a conversation?

Hm no, that's not true: the psionic powers for example have a big impact, as accuracy/evasion/armor skills as well surely not in the early stages of the game, but later on they're quite important.

The "not in the early stages of the game" is the important point here, I think. I tried a couple of different classes, and my opinion of psionic powers basically went "Well, that's pretty useless, isn't it?".

Promising someone cool stuff later on in the game isn't going to persuade them that it's worth playing through the annoying earlier stages where their character is under-powered because they didn't choose "straight-forward-hitty-class". I can understand wanting to give the player a sense of progression, but if you just start them off on a bad footing, when they know they can start off on a much better footing with a different class, they're more likely to just shrug and say "OK, that class is rubbish".

About the flat characters, I don't want to comment since I think depends also on tastes. Later in the game you can romance them and they all show their personality, and also had many people telling me they found the characters interesting, so I presume it really depends on tastes. For sure, next games I'll use native english speaker writers :D

For what it's worth, I again had a similar impression. All I recall of the characters today is flat stereotypes, and Tom Shatz looking at everyone's crotch and grinning like a loon.

I'm curious, what kind of demographic do you get the "your characters are interesting" from?

[capn.lee]

Promising someone cool stuff later on in the game isn't going to persuade them that it's worth playing through the annoying earlier stages where their character is under-powered because they didn't choose "straight-forward-hitty-class".

first thing I thought of when I read that.

There has been a helluva lot of good advice in this thread and it would be a shame if you disregarded the comments that weren't aimed at the combat, that seems like the area that could be improved the most.

As for combat difficulty, rpgs aren't a skill-based game and the two things that can mess with that are relying too much on random numbers so a player can fail for being unlucky or the player hasn't entered the fight properly equipped to deal with the situation.

[jack_norton]

Quoting Sar reply is too long so will reply in points:
- yes I know what you mean about everything at once, and the problem was that I started the game BEFORE renpy got the big ATL update. So was a pain to add a step-by-step tutorial, while now could be easier. So yes, that was lazyness in my part.
Though to be honest, there are very successful wargames like cryptic comet ones that have NO tutorial and a huge PDF manual that you need to read :D my mistake was aiming at casual market without executing the tutorial / instruction in a way they could like.
- using autosave before each battle: lol that's a great idea and something I could definitely add even now, since is where people will have most problem. So at least I can put in game over "do you want to reload a savegame just before the last battle" or maybe better "retry battle"? thanks a lot, I think I'm really going to add this!
- yes I explain in the first screen mousewheel, but after it's shown once, it's not show again (didn't want to bother player) so probably you skipped the first time and then doesn't appear again
- player demographic of those who find characters interesting... hm not sure really, were people that posted in my forums or emailed me, but I think young teenager, and mostly female I believe
- about classes, I think I shouldn't have used a skill system but something a bit more like a skilltree. Also another problem is that there isn't the equivalent of "magic classes" in fantasy games, so not a "wizard" (damage dealer) or "cleric" (healer). That was another mistake, I should have forced some more strict class choice, right now every psionicist can be a sort of jack-all-trades of psionic, while should have been more specialized.

[MikeSw]

I've played it a bit on medium (and I plan to continue playing it since I'm curious about the story) and my initla feedback is this:
- Fullmetal Panic!, Mass Effect
- Indeed way to much text which becomes boring but I don't know how you'd tell a story with a low budget and minimum graphics/animations
- About battles I think they're a bit harder than average, but I managed not to get frustrated. I had to refight 1-2 battles from the training chapter (I've stopped playing it at the begining of chapter 2)
- I think too that initially the HP are too low or the healing items / psionic are weak. And the "defend" functin was almost useless to me
- I've reached the barracks and tried to change the team's gear. WHen I saw the table of weapons stats etc I've decided to stop playing for now since I need a brake before tackling all those stats. They really look scary and I've played a few RPGs in my life.
- I somehow get the feeling of both way too much clutter and lack of info in the battles. When hovering over an enemy I'd like to see the 'hidden' stats such as special attack.

That's all for now.

[Kicks]

Though to be honest, there are very successful wargames like cryptic comet ones that have NO tutorial and a huge PDF manual that you need to read :D my mistake was aiming at casual market without executing the tutorial / instruction in a way they could like.

- about classes, I think I shouldn't have used a skill system but something a bit more like a skilltree. Also another problem is that there isn't the equivalent of "magic classes" in fantasy games, so not a "wizard" (damage dealer) or "cleric" (healer). That was another mistake, I should have forced some more strict class choice, right now every psionicist can be a sort of jack-all-trades of psionic, while should have been more specialized.

Your mistake continues to be looking at other works and using the most contrived, copyable and formal elements of them as an excuse and guide for your own.
Skilltree/Skill List/Class Archetypes... None of that is what makes a game great.

One of the most basic RPG's around is also one of the best: Paper Mario.
You are given skills gradually as you need them. This is what Sar and myself were talking about. New challenges yield new desires. New desires require new skills and tools. If I can simply Jump on enemies, then that's all I'll need. That simple desire and skill relationship is presented in a simple fashion with some candy coating: Wow! That was cool looking. And WOW! I can do more damage if I time the jump right. Once I've mastered that and the candy coating is all licked off, I need a new challenge or a new toy--like a hammer for damaging enemies I can't jump on. Now I have two options and a world of possibilities opens up with when and where to use the right skills and different ways you can add risk/reward to them. This is done extremely well in Paper Mario WITH ONLY TWO ATTACK OPTIONS! These options, of course, keep expanding as the game progresses, but generally it's also at a rate that meets my desires. These desires can come from the game and the player.

If I were to overhaul your game, I'd have every character simply have one overt skill in battle like: damage all enemies, guard the party from damage, increase attack power of allies, stunning attack, etc. I'd change your armor types to: None, Physical or Energy and attack types from weapons and skills to accommodate that. Make the equipment universal or nearly universal for all characters. Skill points would allow you to increase HP, MP, DEF, Weapons, Armor and Skill Power.

[jack_norton]

Your mistake continues to be looking at other works and using the most contrived, copyable and formal elements of them as an excuse and guide for your own.
Skilltree/Skill List/Class Archetypes... None of that is what makes a game great.

Hmm well I disagree on this I mean, OK, I know that is not the ruleset type who makes a game great, but great games like Diablo or Dragon Age 1-2 (I still believe the 2nd was a good game) use skilltrees. Is more about how you implement them, and in my case I used a skills system like Oblivion but I didn't differentiate the skills enough, I'm the first to admit it. Also probably I added many non-combat skills that aren't "so useful", I mean you can use them in some parts of the game , but probably most people will just focus on combat skills and stop.

If I were to overhaul your game, I'd have every character simply have one overt skill in battle like: damage all enemies, guard the party from damage, increase attack power of allies, stunning attack, etc. I'd change your armor types to: None, Physical or Energy and attack types from weapons and skills to accommodate that. Make the equipment universal or nearly universal for all characters. Skill points would allow you to increase HP, MP, DEF, Weapons, Armor and Skill Power.

I heard many times that game "Paper Mario", I need to find a way to take a look at him (I don't have a Wii, I'll try to see some videos on youtube about the gameplay).
I agree that adding skills gradually is probably the best idea to grab a more casual audience without boring them with lots of skills at once

[starsrift]

In a word, yes.

In more words, to keep tightly confined to the scope of your feedback request...

I chose a Psionic hero, at medium difficulty. I even had a little trouble with the tutorial battles as they all had high psionic armor. The psionic damage I could inflict from the start was less than a round of other unit damage, for the most part, though after I gained a few levels it got a bit better - but between the time spent recharging and casting, the psionic class still inflicted much less damage over time than the other classes. Perhaps this gets better at much higher levels, but it's hard to see. I did not bulk my points into combat skills, if I had, I imagine I could've done better.

As others mentioned, I found it a little baffling that all of the psionics were available from the go.

I gave up partway through chapter 2 - there is a part where you "split" up to defend both the king and queen - and the units you use are damaged from the previous battle against the 250hp alien outside. You cannot heal the units that got damaged in that battle, they aren't part of your party yet - so I would start both battles with half or 1 unit nearly dead and empty of psionics and health. However, in all the battles, I simply could not keep up with the damage being inflicted on my units unless it was a larger group of weak enemies that I could start attritioning off fast. It felt a bit like every battle was a "boss" battle, they were difficult.

[jack_norton]

Thanks, is interesting to see how other play the game.
Some things you could have done (of course, not your fault, is just some tips):
- you can go on barracks to rest and regain full HP/PP (so before the queen fight for example)
- in the barracks there are better psionic equipment that do more damage with normal attacks, even if the main role of psionics should be to either heal or buff/debuff enemy (or use Harm if you feel brave

But I clearly see my mistakes... giving too much freedom, without some hints for non RPG hardcore fans/experts can result in frustrating experiences like yours. Well I've learned lots of things for sure, thanks again for the feedback 

[capn.lee]

fyi, paper mario is an n64 game, the wii game with a similar title is not an example of good game design.

iv got nothing else to add to this conversation

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

there's also a paper mario game for the nintendo DS, if you don't have a wii or n64

also, for the SNES, mario rpg was similar