Training and Sleep time shenaningans

[Burnerbro]

Just found the site a week ago, loving the game so far. While playing on both last month's and the latest public patches, I have encountered some quirks of the Sleep and Training options when it comes to processing in-game time. Both have aggravated my personal mind goblins related to optimizing time efficiency in game.

1. For Training the time is skipped until the morning of the day after the next, regardless of how much time was left in the current day.

2. For various Sleep options the time is skipped until the morning of the next day, again regardless of how much time is left, with a small bit of extra weirdness in that the cutoff point is set around 6-7 AM and not at midnight. So 5 minutes can be the difference between having a full rest in under an hour or sleeping a whole day away.

3. All Training scenes mention the player character having a full night sleep, however no dream scenes ever seem to trigger during that, including Kiyoko's Astral Plane visits. More importantly, any negative status effects that should get cleared on sleep don't, and the level ups don't trigger for PC or current companions.

Being new, I have decided to ask about whether or not some of these are bugs/oversights before creating a report. Out of all of them only the third point seems like an almost certainly unintended one, and then it can be argued that the PC is just too tired and the companions are too busy enjoying some time away from their favorite weirdo.

 

[Savin]

The third one isn't intended but might not really be workable. Worth bringing to the codeboys' attentions either way. 1 and 2 are working as intended.

 

[Balaknightfang]

I seem to recall that that's intentional, but I can't recall the reasons offhand

 

[Burnerbro]

Thanks for the quick reply. If possible, can you post here after clearing things fully with the code folks?

There is a couple more issues I wonder about in terms of whether or not they are working as intended. Would it be better to make separate threads for those or post them here.

 

[Savin]

Post here, might as well.

 

[Burnerbro]

Kay.

1) This one I'm almost certain is either an intentional design choice or caused by the way things are set up under the game's hood, but it is pretty perplexing to me still: why do powers granted by items need to take up power equip slots? Specifically the ones that aren't powerful summons, those should be heavily limited. However the rest are usually on par with or weaker than learned powers with similar effect of the same tier and simply have an extra pre-requisite.

2) You can freely swap any equipment in combat and it doesn't even take an action to do so. I'm in two minds when it comes to whether or not swapping weapons as a free action is good for balance, and that part might be intentional. However being able to swap armour in-combat on the fly doesn't sound right.

3) Aroused status effect doesn't make it easier to tease and otherwise arouse your opponents while Terrified status effect can do so against high level opponents, since the latter lowers the Mental Resistance. Those two stand out among otherwise very intuitive status effects pool of the game.

Edit:

4) Supposedly purely magical ranged weapons like Metal Wand and Mushroom Staff use Attack Power for their damage calculation, making their auto-attack significantly worse when used by magic user builds as opposed to warrior builds. At the same time, they are compatible with range powers you learn from Leorah, leading to some wombo-combos, like Crackling Powder into Crowd Control using Metal Wand.

 

[Burnerbro]

Found things to be added to my initial point of inquiry: sleeping with Atugia, sleeping with Anna on her farm and sleeping with Ahmri in your camp applies the post sleep buffs normally but blocks any dream scenes. At first I thought it was common for all the scenes where PC goes to sleep together with someone, but sleeping with Brint or cuddling and sleeping with Cait doesn't do that, instead allowing for any potential dreams to go through normally.

 

[Savin]

why do powers granted by items need to take up power equip slots?

Cuz otherwise they'd be OP. The fact that you're limited to the five power slots available is a major balancing crutch of the game, and that goes out the window as soon as you start equipping piece after piece of power-bearing gear. Recharge rate/cooldown of powers is another big balance point, too; part of what balances powerful abilities is long cooldowns not just because you can't use them again, but because you'll have to spend more time auto-attacking afterwards. If you can just keep up an infinite rotation of powers, that goes out the window too.

being able to swap armour in-combat on the fly doesn't sound right.

That is weird but I'm not sure we can allow one without the other. At least not without a lot of code hassle.

purely magical ranged weapons like Metal Wand and Mushroom Staff use Attack Power for their damage calculation

I didn't even know those exist lmao.

 

[MeIsntVeryCreative]

4) Supposedly purely magical ranged weapons like Metal Wand and Mushroom Staff use Attack Power for their damage calculation, making their auto-attack significantly worse when used by magic user builds as opposed to warrior builds. At the same time, they are compatible with range powers you learn from Leorah, leading to some wombo-combos, like Crackling Powder into Crowd Control using Metal Wand.

I find the attack power scaling fits for the range physical (Thief) build, the attack being magical supposedly to circumvent armor and other physical defense stats which even with high physical penetration, the damage penalty from those stats may still be noticeable in some encounters. Get double divine blossom and one shot everything/breeze through mobs with crowd control which is essentially free power anyway and doesn't cost any time compare to the usual training.

In my experience, you usually meet encounter with higher physical defense stats more often than the magical defense stats. (I usually maining mage since it is basically the only classes that allows Cunning+1 bonus to pass the Kinu's first shogi check)


PS: Honestly, the fact that training time cost does break my suspension for disbelief considerably since Champion is considered a protégé level of swift learner unless that aspect is exclusively to Champion of Keros canon, on top of the necessity to stop Kassyra asap. Obviously we can talk about how Champion can easily sleep only 3 hours per day and not dying from sleep deprivation if we wanted to talk about realism amongst many other details, etc.

PPS: Oh yeah speaking of realism, maybe we can implement a hunger/sleep mechanic for dark diffculty or as a separate difficulty option hmm although I expected that it will cost alot of coding mumbo jumbo for a niche.

 

[Burnerbro]

I didn't even know those exist lmao.

Definitely didn't expect that, lol.

On top of the two I mentioned, both of which the player can get pretty early on, the wiki lists three more being available through the Kitsune Den merchant. One of them even supposedly does resolve damage, which I was really looking forward to until I realized that as things are the damage scaling will be really bad for my main character.

Theoretically, if the concept of such weapons won't be canned entirely, mid and late game can have even more of them, especially if the new zones will have more magic users and magic related quests. Having some reliable magic pew-pew lasers in our pockets would be nice because it will free up the At-Will slot for healing and whatnot, or allow to double up on readily available elemental damage. Then again, that might go against the balancing philosophy you have outlined.

 

[MeIsntVeryCreative]

Definitely didn't expect that, lol.

On top of the two I mentioned, both of which the player can get pretty early on, the wiki lists three more being available through the Kitsune Den merchant. One of them even supposedly does resolve damage, which I was really looking forward to until I realized that as things are the damage scaling will be really bad for my main character.

Theoretically, if the concept of such weapons won't be canned entirely, mid and late game can have even more of them, especially if the new zones will have more magic users and magic related quests. Having some reliable magic pew-pew lasers in our pockets would be nice because it will free up the At-Will slot for healing and whatnot, or allow to double up on readily available elemental damage. Then again, that might go against the balancing philosophy you have outlined.

Well kitsune den dungeon are technically mid-game given that it is a level 4-5/5-6 dungeon (with/without Amulet). (X

My personal experience as a mage is that unless you had a tank companion (which I don't find them to be reliable personally) your hitpoint usually wouldn't last even if you had two healing companion which results in faster pace of combat in terms of effectively a damage race, later the game goes, (I am currently experimenting with tank white mage using mirror stance spell since it is the concept that White Mage class outlined that to protect your companion) Healing is still objectively one of the better At-will spell for this reason.

I suspected that the range magic weapon following attack power instead of magic power is for coding reason. Also there are at-will damaging spell which makes it less of a reason to implement the magic power scaling for the weapons. I don't mind more buff for White Mage/Black Mage classes but I don't think they needed it. The classes who need help are Warrior/Charmer to me. Thief is outright broken with its damage amplifying passive.

 

[WolframL]

Well kitsune den dungeon are technically mid-game given that it is a level 4-5/5-6 dungeon (with/without Amulet). (X

The Winter City is the end of Act One (of presumably three) so it's still early-game content in story terms despite being in the middle of the level range.

 

[Upcast Drake]

Currently the only weapon in the entire game that scales off of spellpower instead of attack power is kiyoko's. Making weapons the PC can obtain have the same scaling isn't out of the question, but it's not a step we want to take lightly since it'd basically invalidates strength as a stat and could potentially just make mages the best class in the game. Imagine if not only using basic attack wasn't punishing to mages, but suddenly all the weapon based powers are optimal for them. It'd be a major balance shift and we'd have to be careful about tradeoffs to make it feel OK. All that being said I'd wager it'll make it's way into the game eventually, but it'd likely have to carry with it some major penalties to justify it.

There's also the issue of communicating this to players. The larger than expected number of people who post bug reports about suddenly having massive tits from using the Hornet Ring proves that large bold text is not always sufficient.

 

[Burnerbro]

5) Accuracy and Critical Chance are the only two important derived stats that don't get displayed in the pop-up summary page for your party me!bers or the enemies you successfully used Sense on. Any particular reason why?

6) On mobile (my PC is dead so I wasn't able to test there) any scene that has enemy portraits displayed doesn't show author credits, I assume because of some conflicting UI elements. Not a big deal, but maybe there is something that can be done without too much hassle?

7) On mobile again having 5 enemies in a fight leads to the buttons that allow you to view the text for the previous scenes/turns becoming unusable for the duration of the fight, presumably because the 5th enemy's UI elements cover them - or get removed on purpose to make room.

If for any of these I need to post a proper bug report with screenshots and saves, please let me know.