CIVIC DUTIES
Another week has passed, and we have even more changes to balance and presentation! I learned a lot this week from the release of our demo on PC and Xbox One, and the lessons learned there will be the focus of a few of the changes coming soon. If you didn't get to check out the demo, no worries! It's still up on PC, and will return to the Xbox marketplace later this year when I have the time to update it with a bunch of changes. With that out of the way, let's talk about this week's changelog, and the remaining path from where we are now, to our full release!
Ephemeral Tale 1.17.1 Changelog
- Polished the title screen some more
- Lowered the amount that damage taken reduces durability by 50% (in other words, stuff should last longer)
- Fixed a bug where the Blessed Flask could revert into a normal Flask
- Fixed an issue where Mimics had an insanely high hit rate
- Internally, these were still treated as Blessed Flasks, so simply resting at a campfire in such an instance should resolve this issue
- Further increased the elemental weaknesses of enemies to 200%, universally (up from 150%)
- There is no longer a fee associated with entering the dungeon hub
- Made Bobbity-Boo’s sprite slightly smaller in order to maintain consistent pixel size across assets
- Intimidating enemies will now properly grant Power as a source for leveling up
- Cleaned up the presentation of some dialogue in the Forgotten Forest
- Bunnet now drops the Cauldron 100% of the time, if that step of Sabrina’s quest is active
- Gribbler now gives 33% more Power upon defeating him
- Darune now gives 33% less Power upon defeating him
- Lowered drop rates of Disco Kicks and Icarus Greaves by ~20% (give or take)
- Lowered Slugger’s defense slightly
- Lowered Grumptoad’s defense slightly
- Lowered Kingpinch’s defense slightly
- Tweaked balance of the Lost Caverns
Last week, I promised a look at what's to come to Ephemeral Tale. I plan to deliver on that promise, so let's talk about the road to release.
When Ephemeral Tale entered Early Access in January, I thought that the game was in much better shape than it actually was. You guys took every bone that the body of the game had, and shattered it into a million little pieces. We've healed since then, and grown stronger because of it! Recently, we released a demo on Steam, the Microsoft Store, and Xbox One as well (with the itch.io demo coming in the next day or two). The feedback we’ve received has been incredible for figuring out what exactly needs to change for the game moving forward, and where we’ve improved since making the demo (as it’s based on a build from around the end of May).
In plain English, what does this mean? I have a list of planned changes to work through before I can call my work on Ephemeral Tale finished. Let’s go through that list, starting with difficulty, moving into content, and wrapping up with the story.
First thing’s first: difficulty. One area where the game has consistently been weak (but grown stronger over time) is in the difficulty curve. For quite some time, the game has been balanced in such a way that you would get used to being slapped around like a ragdoll in the tutorial, and then that would slowly dissipate over the next few hours. Starting this patch, I’m doubling down on my efforts to address this. The immediate way that I’m addressing this is through throttling the action economy of enemies within a certain threshold, and this change went live today in a testing capacity. Without going too deep into it, the general gist is this: if you’re under level 15, enemies in the Lost Cavern will be more likely to waste their turns with a “wait” action instead of attacking. This is a common balancing tactic, but one that I previously tried to implement via hit rates instead of straight action throttling. This will ultimately result in the player taking more hits to kill, surviving longer, and progressing further each time they delve into the Caverns.
In the near future, I plan on adding some more tutorialized sequences to better explain some of the mechanics in the game as well, such as resting as a camp fire (which is admittedly not the most obvious action ever), the lack of consequence of death, and the repair/break system. Next up, let’s talk about content.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve continued to add/expand on content within Ephemeral Tale. We’ve added three new quests (two bringing unique drops, the third bringing a new system for gear recycling) in that push, and I still plan on doing more. I’ve got a couple of ideas for quests, but these ones are slightly more involved (more in terms of implementation, not so much in complexity) and so won’t necessarily drop immediately. Sabrina’s quest also is not yet finished, as she currently allows you to recycle gear into Blue quality gear (with a chance of Purple). While the final upgrade is built and functional internally (Purple with a chance of Orange), it’s not been put into the game yet as I’m planning on pairing it with a future content drop. Right now, players are rather likely to hit the current point in the quest right about when they head to the final dungeon. Adding another asterisk next to the quest would, as such, be rather silly. This also leads into the formal announcement of the next Major Update, Major Update #5. I’ll give it a tagline later, no worries!
I’ve been planning and working on Major Update #5 for some time now, and is planned to introduce more story elements, more zone content and of course, more gear! When Major Update #5 releases, Sabrina’s quest will be completed (either the week of, or the week before). I don’t want to give too much away in the off-chance that plans change, but Major Update #5 will expand on the core (mandatory) content. This will make the pacing of Sabrina’s quest make more sense (in terms of context) in the overall game. After that, we’ll target a further expansion of world-building by bringing more dialogue and personality to the companions. I’ve remarked in the past that I feel that they’re a weak-point of the narrative, so there are plans to address that.
I’m not ready to discuss a lot of these elements yet, however I wanted to give you guys a rough idea of the roadmap I have planned in my head and encourage you (once more) to deliver any feedback you may have, positive or negative. To round out this week's Pupdate, I'd like to give you guys a heads up that next week's patch may be slightly smaller than usual. I've been summoned for jury duty, and that's going to eat into some of the normal development schedule! As such, I'll be putting more of an emphasis on spending the time I have this week on the next content drop as opposed to a more balanced approach (in order to ensure that we don't get too far behind schedule). Regardless, I'm excited for the weeks ahead, and I can't wait to share more with you guys!
Until next time, stay safe and have fun!
-- Ryan