The Threat System went out in public beta on Jun 22. The following days saw bug fixes.
I then asked the most involved and vocal players on discord this question:
“What needs to change for this to be released to everyone?”
Each person gave me their list of what they felt was missing or needed attention.
The good news: No bugs or stability issues! The game runs well. All of the problems are Game Design issues, which is exactly what I need help seeing.
I then collated each person’s list into this master list:
Combat
Reduce the starting difficulty of undead encounters.
Clearly explain that running away causes HP loss.
Reduce the HP penalty for running away, possibly by half.
Combat victories should also provide resources or equipment.
Ice spell damage did not increase while levelling.
Town Buildings
Ensure the starting region has an outfitter, healer, armorer, and blacksmith without requiring water travel.
Villages should have at least one useful building besides the Town Center.
Defending a village should cost much less than defending a city.
Markets should sell wood and stone.
Cities should always have a healer.
Ensure an outfitter and healer are available in the starting town or within about 30 tiles.
Map
Allow a more zoomed-out overhead view so players can understand their surroundings and direction.
Make world-map resources more common and easier to gather.
Show discovered locations on the map, allow map scrolling, and fix the player disappearing from view.
Allow players to click a destination for movement, and provide armor magic by default if healing magic is unavailable.
Towns beside large lakes should have docks.
Health & Wellbeing
Provide more ways to recover HP, including more healers or stronger healing from inns.
Provide more ways to restore wellbeing.
Threat
Add a grace period before the threat begins, more opportunities to gain power before the threat becomes overwhelming.
Clearly explain what “the threat will be more aggressive” means and how retreating affects threat values.
Reduce the extreme difficulty spike caused by lieutenants and global enemy buffs.
Increase rewards for jobs around town
Allow players to scout lairs and better explain loot, guards, player actions, enemy strength, and boss strength.
Other
Add a skippable tutorial that explains the current game and ways to earn money.
Bring back dungeons.
Fix the Mabren’s Tower quest by restoring dungeons or allowing other goblin kills to satisfy it.
Develop clues into a fuller RPG system with more flavor and immersion.
Allow more control over starting equipment, including weapon and tool choices.
That’s a good list and I really appreciate the time players put into playing and writing up their thoughts!
I won’t be doing all of it, but most of it.
I turned all the feedback into Jira tickets and put some rough estimates on them. Estimates are always difficult, because getting the Mabren quest to work could be 1h or 8h, but some idea is better than no idea.
So the list is about 8 work days of effort.
I already had about 8 work days of stuff in my queue, bringing the total to about 3 weeks. Considering how much of the game has changed, I think that is a very reasonable amount of time to plug all the holes and sure up the new stuff.
I’m starting on it right now and so it seems I may have a good release candidate end of August. We’ll see!
As always, thanks for your continuing interest in this project and the fun feedback. Together we’ll make this a great RPG experience!