April 16 Update (Patreon)

TLS 0.66.0 is out. Basically fine, but a somewhat different release period than usual. Instead of a collection of bugs I need to track down, there's more work related to other aspects of the game. Many thanks to Arachne for continued support on his new gallery filter.

How many more times am I going to find some new image that needs to be changed to match the rebranded visuals? We'll see! I've done so much cropping and resaving pictures to match the appropriate format. -_- But thanks to Lamsey for taking much of this work off my hands.

I'm doing my best to keep working on 0.67.0 content. I should be putting together enemy stats/skills right now, and honestly I'm procrastinating via writing this update. If I can just do that, then run through all the combat testing, I'd be done with another piece of content, but I'm tiiired. And whiny.

Balancing a game involves a lot of factors, but one I didn't consider is a sort of "equipment fatigue". When playing RPGs, I definitely enjoy optimizing equipment, even micromanaging in some games. But when I'm playing my own game, trying to keep up multiple saves, especially when the realities of testing mean I need to go back and redo everything... I get tired of buying/changing equipment over and over again.

So my testing parties are usually running equipment much weaker than optimized saves. In the past I've considered this acceptable: if my test parties can beat a dungeon with subpar equipment, then it isn't over-tuned. But recently I feel like most players have said the combat challenges are trivial, so maybe this has gone too far and I need to upgrade some of these parties.

With a section as broad as the final open world segment, I do want a gentle difficulty curve so that players can tackle quests in many different orders. The early ones being harder and the later ones being easier is an acceptable factor in this, plus it makes the player feel increasingly powerful and prepared for the end. But a few of these dungeons are meant to be late challenges not tackled until the player is well-prepared, so they shouldn't be too easy.

Well, this has been a random selection of my thoughts. Eventually there will be a TLS 0.66.1, but I anticipate a great deal more feedback first. Hopefully I will get back to 0.67.0 work, but we'll see.