The whole Divine Dreams demo display definitely does look impressive! (I know I got carried away with the alliteration there but I'm not that sorry)
My own two cents:
- I'm really glad the reaction system is here to stay, and has been upgraded! It made a lot of difference to me to have that bit of interaction and made grinding a lot less painful than it could've been otherwise in MARDEK, which says a lot about the battling system. Perhaps skill acquisition (or permanent item boosts) could be linked to the number of times one reacted in the blue region/ equivalent? Hmm.
- I completely agree with the facial expressions adding to the dynamics; I wasn't too sure about the move to 3D from a player perspective but things look much smoother and dynamic (and are probably easier to create from a developer's point of view) so I can see the appeal!
- The speed rings are intuitive but I can foresee difficulties comparing whose turn comes up next if they're quite similar, especially when food digestion effects need to be taken into consideration; an optional turn counter could help for those who wanted one, without cluttering the screen for others happy to do without
- On items/ skills-- The current idea with changing skills and permanent boosts seems to be on the right track for me! MARDEK did had an overwhelming and probably uselessly high number of skills, and though I did like mastering them at the time, adulting does tend to get in the way of playing games to my satisfaction nowadays. One of the "pet peeves" I had with playing Taming Dreams was the linearity/ lack of choice mentioned, where the developer's perfectionism streamlined gameplay to the point where players had fairly little meaningful input, but hopefully DD will offer enough variation to avoid that particular trap. I also wonder whether DD will have the multitude of branching sidequests and secrets that MARDEK was so beloved for! ...Though that would definitely mean sacrifices on your part to implement.
- I like the idea of cooking and preparing food as per Breath of the Wild! Though I can also see a role for potions etc which could be a more magical, powerful version that would ostensibly be "lighter" on the stomach and probably not incur as hefty a speed cost but be far more difficult to acquire, I would imagine. I will admit that the eating animation will probably haunt my dreams, but it's also hilarious, as disturbing things can sometimes be! The ridiculous shenanigans that a Cook/Healer person could get up to, trying to bake ever-larger portions of food to keep up with Mardek's never-ending appetite (culminating in the Whole Baked Whale you mentioned in a comment above) amuse me!
Amazing work as always, looking forward to hearing more from you~
1
Tobias 1104~4Y
I absolutely adore artful alliteration!
That's a good idea about skill acquisition! Perhaps you could get 2 points for hitting the blue area, 1 for the gold area, 0 points for a miss? I'll probably do that!
I might add a turn order display thing like the one from MARDEK. Maybe. I could have it change accordingly when you were selecting food items or skills, to show when your next turn would be if you chose that action. I imagine that could influence decisions.
I'm certainly aiming to capture MARDEK's open world aspects, at least later in the story; currently, the plans for the first (or I suppose technically 'fourth') chapter are quite linear, since it's based on MARDEK 2 and that was, but you're given much more choice about what order to do things in in the other two chapters. I'm going to have to be careful about it though because I don't want to make it too linear, but it's very difficult to tell character stories in a way where the order isn't known! I think there are a lot of places in my current plan where your party is determined by the story, but it sort of has to be that way to make the development time sensible and the character relationships and story developments emotionally meaningful. I hope that I'll be able to find a balance though, since I know the freedom about skills, characters, and story direction was important for players in MARDEK (3).
Potions would make sense as light but powerful 'food' items that were difficult to acquire! I like the idea of potions being promoted from something so common you end up with 99 gathering dust before you know it, to something special and unusually effective, which is what a ~magic potion~ really should be!
My own two cents:
- I'm really glad the reaction system is here to stay, and has been upgraded! It made a lot of difference to me to have that bit of interaction and made grinding a lot less painful than it could've been otherwise in MARDEK, which says a lot about the battling system. Perhaps skill acquisition (or permanent item boosts) could be linked to the number of times one reacted in the blue region/ equivalent? Hmm.
- I completely agree with the facial expressions adding to the dynamics; I wasn't too sure about the move to 3D from a player perspective but things look much smoother and dynamic (and are probably easier to create from a developer's point of view) so I can see the appeal!
- The speed rings are intuitive but I can foresee difficulties comparing whose turn comes up next if they're quite similar, especially when food digestion effects need to be taken into consideration; an optional turn counter could help for those who wanted one, without cluttering the screen for others happy to do without
- On items/ skills-- The current idea with changing skills and permanent boosts seems to be on the right track for me! MARDEK did had an overwhelming and probably uselessly high number of skills, and though I did like mastering them at the time, adulting does tend to get in the way of playing games to my satisfaction nowadays. One of the "pet peeves" I had with playing Taming Dreams was the linearity/ lack of choice mentioned, where the developer's perfectionism streamlined gameplay to the point where players had fairly little meaningful input, but hopefully DD will offer enough variation to avoid that particular trap. I also wonder whether DD will have the multitude of branching sidequests and secrets that MARDEK was so beloved for! ...Though that would definitely mean sacrifices on your part to implement.
- I like the idea of cooking and preparing food as per Breath of the Wild! Though I can also see a role for potions etc which could be a more magical, powerful version that would ostensibly be "lighter" on the stomach and probably not incur as hefty a speed cost but be far more difficult to acquire, I would imagine. I will admit that the eating animation will probably haunt my dreams, but it's also hilarious, as disturbing things can sometimes be! The ridiculous shenanigans that a Cook/Healer person could get up to, trying to bake ever-larger portions of food to keep up with Mardek's never-ending appetite (culminating in the Whole Baked Whale you mentioned in a comment above) amuse me!
Amazing work as always, looking forward to hearing more from you~
That's a good idea about skill acquisition! Perhaps you could get 2 points for hitting the blue area, 1 for the gold area, 0 points for a miss? I'll probably do that!
I might add a turn order display thing like the one from MARDEK. Maybe. I could have it change accordingly when you were selecting food items or skills, to show when your next turn would be if you chose that action. I imagine that could influence decisions.
I'm certainly aiming to capture MARDEK's open world aspects, at least later in the story; currently, the plans for the first (or I suppose technically 'fourth') chapter are quite linear, since it's based on MARDEK 2 and that was, but you're given much more choice about what order to do things in in the other two chapters. I'm going to have to be careful about it though because I don't want to make it too linear, but it's very difficult to tell character stories in a way where the order isn't known! I think there are a lot of places in my current plan where your party is determined by the story, but it sort of has to be that way to make the development time sensible and the character relationships and story developments emotionally meaningful. I hope that I'll be able to find a balance though, since I know the freedom about skills, characters, and story direction was important for players in MARDEK (3).
Potions would make sense as light but powerful 'food' items that were difficult to acquire! I like the idea of potions being promoted from something so common you end up with 99 gathering dust before you know it, to something special and unusually effective, which is what a ~magic potion~ really should be!
Thanks for your interest, and your comment!