Halatali - Hard Mode Strategy

I wrote this up for Viva Eorzea. I did Halatali HM this morning. Here's how the bosses go.

Boss 1: Cyclops Boss

Avoid Swings/Swipes like Coincounter in Aurum Vale

When he prepares 1000 Tonze Swing (Super Move): (It takes up the whole arena) Hit the mammet contraption. The Mammet will spawn a blue protective circle, run into it to avoid damage.

Drops I've seen: 50 Mythology, Hardened Sap


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Treasure Box between Boss 1 and 2:

Dropped Darklight Earring of Healing

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Boss 2: Catoblepas

4 Panels. Designate each party member to one panel. Spawns orb (I'll talk about that later)

Spawns an eye add (literally on its eye) that does constant AoE pulse damage. You know this is coming when it says something along the lines of "The catoblepas eyes are turning yellow."

When eye add spawns, hit the orb on the panel you're assigned to to take a blindness effect, harder to hit mobs but pulse damage is reduced.

Titan-like plumes spawn on the battle field. Looks like a giant eye on the ground. At first only one spawns, near the end of fight, 3 of them spawn on battlefield. You have time to dodge it.

DD LB the second time he spawns an eye.

Drops: 30 Mythology, got Magician's jester hat (BLM/THM ilevel 70)

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Boss 3: Class Light Party: Healer, Archer, Gladiator Lancer

 We killed in order Healer >> Archer >> Lancer >> Gladiator

Lancer ignores any and all hate. Whoever it attacks, have them kite it.

Healer goes down pretty fast, same with Archer. Gladiator we got to 50% and then phase 2 of the fight happens.

Phase 2 - Beast add and Thaumaturge Lalafell

Kill the Gladiator and finish him off and then focus on Lalafell. The Lalafell will use a binding move, have the tank hold the beast away from the lalafell and hit the Scepter NPC that spawns to get rid of the binding move. Other party members will get stuck at times. Use the DD LB to finish off the Lalafell and then fight the beast down to claim victory.


Drops: 45 Soldiery, Potash






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I thought this was kind of funny

This was a message I received via Facebook. Name censored to protect the innocent.

I knew he meant well.

FFXIV Patch 2.2 hits this week

"Through the Maelstrom" patch for FFXIV comes out this week! It's a bit bittersweet that I feel that they're making some of the more difficult content easier a bit -too- early, but on the other hand I am excited for the additions that are coming. (Gilgamesh and Diabolos!)

Even with the limited play time I have these days, I am overall happy that I got to see and do 98-99% of the content, just wish there was more time to do the last 1-2% (Twintania!)

Whim Independent Studios - Development Log #24

Hey all, back with the 24th development log! Have you guys been playing our new demo? If not, take a play and let us know what you think of the game! We also put up a list of current issues, so if there's something you found that hasn't been caught by us, let us know and we can get it fixed asap!

This is our new official company logo! Designed by Geno Quesada, a long time close friend of mine. I like it, because it's short and straight to the point. The design for the lettering kind of looks like our protective door in front of our small studio too. So I think it works perfectly!


Website:

We now have a company website! As well as a new logo! It's pretty bare-bones at the moment, until we get someone to do promotional work for us to populate the page with.

Check it out!


Selatria:

We have finally released the new demo for Chapter 1 this past Saturday. We have taken it down for 9 months or so, but we've made large changes to the structure and mechanics of dungeons, implemented a new monster art style developed by Jennifer Gilliland, and overhauled a lot of the game mechanics, including swapping out one boss in Chapter 1-5.

You can download the new demo here. (~353MB)

Aside from the terrain assets which may go into development depending on Kickstarter, the goal of
this demo (aside from previous releases) is to show how the game will look aesthetically as far as faces, voices, and monsters go.

We also took player feedback that we didn't explain status effect icons well enough, and Hannah Bottenberg worked on high-res versions of the icons for tutorials throughout the game's first dungeon.

Check out the new screenshots and new music!

ANTics:

Unfortunately, this will be our last development log where we showcase ANTics as the game is now in its polishing phase, and released games will not be covered in development logs! (Well, unless we plan on adding more to it later, who knows!)

We originally planned for ANTics to launch on Google Play on March 10th, but we had several setbacks. We wanted to polish some things on the game before we ultimately got it running, and there was a loading issue with one of the themes for the boss at the end. We're going to be meeting on Friday to get more of it completed.

   

Next week, we'll likely release a 5 level demo of ANTics to test on others' devices. After that, we will go through the feedback and then launch the game on Google Play and Amazon. 

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That's about it for now. Play Selatria and let us know what you think and look forward to ANTics!

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Producer Rant

I find it insulting that team members say they're not being adequately involved with the production of the game. Last week we've had to adjust percentages of the team based on the amount of contributions that person has made relative to others in the project since the conclusion of the Indiegogo campaign.

Those in the team that stopped sending in contributions or messaging regarding art assets in the project had their percentages decreased, those who continued to send in assets to the project had their percentage increase.

If we end up not using it, we scrap the assets and give them back to the user for their personal use. It's not anything complicated, it's not personal, we just want the game done as soon as we can.

We have gotten emails from some that say they weren't informed of what we need in the project, and I call 'bull' on that. I make it a point to release large-scale developer logs and post to hundreds of people announcing on a large scale of what we're doing and how we're progressing. I post on our Selatria Development Team on Facebook with updates to the project on a near-constant basis.

To say that they aren't kept up to date with the project is outright insulting in my opinion.

That's the end of that.

Transferring from Gen IV/V to Pokemon X

Today's the last day of my free trial for the Pokemon Bank/Transporter, so after work continues the long convoluted task of getting all my Pokemon from Pearl, SoulSilver, Black, and Black2 onto my X game!

Now I wish I could transfer from Pearl and SoulSilver straight to X, but nope they make you transfer them to Black/White first, which makes this needlessly difficult.

Not to mention that to transfer to the Bank from Black Version, they only look at Box #1, so there needs to be constant game switching to get all the desired Pokemon over.

tl;dr - I'm not paying $5 a year for this bank service, and transferring two generations worth of Pokemon is WAY more difficult than it needs to be!

Game Design Philosophy: An JRPG with no experience points for character development

So I completed Final Fantasy II last Sunday (out of sheer frustration and a little bit... okay about 11 years worth of procrastination) and I was frustrated with the game design of progressing the characters without the use of experience points. That aside, I wanted to plan out my own design, how I would have developed the same kind of system.

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It's a very experimental concept, and I know I wouldn't have the time to develop this idea fully as its own game for quite a while (ever?), so I'm going ahead and posting the idea for anyone who cares enough to see it. Hell, if someone makes the game using this concept, I'd be flattered! 

Inspirations for Idea:

In Final Fantasy II, characters in the game do not have Experience Points or Levels, they level up through the activities they performed in battle. If you lost a lot of HP in a fight, the victory spoils would reward that party member with more HP, same with MP. If you attacked a lot, you would get a higher attack stat. If you used a spell 100 times, it would level up to the next tier (up to 15 tiers of that spell level).

Picture of Final Fantasy II taken from Source.

An issue with this system was that it was prone to abuse using what I consider to be very masochistic methods. In order to exploit the system, instead of aiming for victory against the enemies at hand, players would attack their own party members getting their health low on purpose to have the game reward them with a better HP pool. You could do the same thing with MP and all your other stats by intentionally delaying battles until you got the desired stats that you wanted.
 
Another inspiration for the design I have is the Pokémon series Generations III and on. In Ruby and Sapphire onwards, Pokémon possess a stat called Effort Values (EVs). Pokémon get EVs when defeating Pokémon specializing in a certain stat. A Chansey being defeated would reward the Pokémon with HP EVs allowing them to get more health. Likewise, defeating a Magikarp would reward the Pokémon with Speed EVs, making them faster.

Pikachu's EVs shown via the Effort-O-Meter in Pokémon X and Y. Source.

The limitation with the EV system is that only an x amount of total EVs can be allocated to a Pokémon at any one time. So if too much of an unwanted stat is accidentally allocated, it would need to be reset, and usually resetting EVs in a Pokémon game is punishing and time consuming. (As of X and Y, certain hard to come berries and "Reset" bags will allow you to delete all EVs, even ones you didn't want to delete.)

My Concept for Character Development:

Instead of being rewarded with stats or skill-ups directly at the conclusion of a battle, different type of monsters would drop consumables related to the kind of stats that they had. The player would then be able to have a choice on how to develop their party members.

For example, killing a wild defensive chicken monster in the early part of the game would reward the player with a Chicken Breast item that can increase their Defense point by 1.

As the game progresses and the players encounter stronger foes, monsters will drop loot that increases the stats by 2 and 3+, ... 

Aggressive offensive monsters would drop loot that increases party members attack power, Monsters that rely on using magic would drop loot that increases party members magic stat, and so on.

In terms of learning spells and abilities, they would be found as scrolls in rare chests throughout the world. The scrolls would then be tied to a party member. They can be untied and retied to another party member at will, but only one party member can use that type of spell/ability at any given moment.

Pros:

Customizable. The player can allocate their stats freely and develop the characters in the game however they please.

Players are in the know: The players can learn and find what monsters drop what boosting items and can map out the development of their characters well in advance.


Cons: 

Bosses would be hard to design. Many playtests would be needed to gauge how developed the player should be before reaching that point while attempting to at least make it challenging. Would there be an artifical stat cap depending on the progress in the story, do you allow the players to beef and grind their characters up to be able to one shot any thing in the game without the need for limitations?

With the lack of diversity, players can max out stats in every category if they please. Carbon copy maxed out characters everywhere with only differences in name and looks and the abilities they have taught the characters they developed.


Missing Ideas for the System: 

How would abilities progress? Equipment limitations?