Weekly Update (10-14-2024) (Patreon)

Breaking through the inertia to start a new update is always a bit of a struggle. I think I managed that effectively this week, thankfully, so hopefully work will just pick up steam from here. I'd hoped to do the first of my character trailers for this update's public release, but I just haven't had any inspiration yet. So, I'll hold off on that until I do.

Speaking of public release, that will, of course, be on friday. I'll post that retrospective post sometime around friday as well. And... force myself to do some advertising. :X Always my least favorite part of all of this. As ever, I'm open to more suggestions of places I should post about it. I probably also need to refresh some of the promotional materials with the new art.

In other news, the discord launch seems to have gone well. Overall happy to have it up, even if it can be a bit distracting, it's motivating to see people talking about the game, whether or not I join. XD Just a reminder, the poll on roles will be closing sometime tomorrow. Right now, roles per tier has a solid lead, so unless that changes drastically before the end, my thinking is that I'll do roles by tier as default, with the option to override that with a unified role color on request.

As a random-ish aside, combat balance is always an interesting thing to think about. People have very different views of some things, based varyingly on their different experiences and overall inclinations. Obviously I'll always be keeping an eye on balance and tuning things, but if nothing else, seeing widely different views on the relative strength of a character suggests that the balance is probably in a mostly good place.

On a related note, not 100% sure when, but probably next chapter, I'm thinking of adding some difficulty mode patches (mainly for the combat). One will be the Story Mode we already have available if you lose certain fights, which basically nerfs things completely. But I think it would also be nice to have an "Adventure Mode" that makes things a bit less challenging but not effortless (something like -20% dmg/HP and block certain mechanics). There's a part of me that's tempted to make a Hard Mode too, but that would require more actual work since I'd want to do more than just buff enemies HP/damage for it. This is something I might consider in the future, but I'd have to set aside a fair amount of time for it, so definitely not right now.

Anyway, back to work for the moment!