Hello, Survivors!
In our last post, we talked about how our internal evaluation of the First Test was not great due to unintended issues, including a bug in the "Roamer" enemy type.
Today, I'm going to talk about the results of the Second and Third rounds of Testing that followed after we fixed those issues, and answer the question, as the title of this post says, "Is it fun now?"
We took a week off from posting last week to answer the Livestream, so you might not remember where we left off, but you can check out our last post about the "1st, 2nd, and 3rd round" testing environments and the differences between them!
2nd Round Testing Results: Mixed Reviews
The results of the Second Round of Testing, which included fixing the Roamer bug and tweaking the difficulty, were pretty divided between "Fun!" and "Boring!".
To borrow a phrase from Steam, I'd say it was Mixed.
Once the Difficulty was normalized, most of the team found the Combat System, which was reorganized around "Surprise/Surrounded" with no “Caught” system, to be enjoyable. The differentiation of Character Traits was also well-received, with "Agility" specialists being better for Surprise play and "Strength" specialists being better for all-out battle using Surrounded or AoE skills.
However, the Main Issue was that the evaluation of the Farming Map gameplay, which was the core of the Continuous Map test, received mixed reviews. The purpose of this evaluation was essentially to confirm that the results verified during the Single Map test were not different when moved to Continuous Map test (and the new growth system supporting it.)
As I mentioned at the beginning of the Game Overhaul, one of the Main Goals was to break away from the Linearity of the existing gameplay and introduce Freedom by adding "Various Farming Maps."
This test was the final hurdle to answer the question, "Will the game still be enjoyable when we randomly generate these kinds of maps?" before ultimately applying the procedural generation system.
The biggest issue pointed out by team members who gave negative feedback was that while playing a Single Farming Map was certainly immersive and fun, their interest declined as they continued to play the second and third farming maps.
Of course, each Map differs in terrain and enemy placement, and a variety of rewards, including the core reward "Memories of the Dead," High-tier Weapons, and Firewood, are provided to give players sufficient reasons to farm.
Additionally, as mentioned in the previous Inventory System Overhaul, the intent was to offer players freedom by not forcing them to "search every nook and cranny of the map." Instead, players can visit the desired buildings to obtain necessary rewards and then decide on their own when to return to the hideout.
However, despite the value of the rewards and the variety of enemy placements preventing the experience from being "completely identical each time," the main critique was that it still felt like a similar experience was being repeated "on a larger scale." Some feedback even bluntly stated that it felt like "content was added half-heartedly just to fill the volume."
As I mentioned earlier, the feedback was mixed, so not all team members' responses were negative.
Team members who had participated in multiple Single-Map tests and were already familiar with the combat system and character skills often reacted with "this is boring." Conversely, those who were experiencing this "fully assembled" experience for the first time generally found it "sufficiently enjoyable."
The process of learning character skills, "Memories of the Dead," and the corresponding weapons and tactics made the overall game environment feel fresh. Therefore, instead of having the combat environment change drastically, the repetition of certain overarching patterns played a role in giving players time to become accustomed to the game.
However, we anticipated that even these players would eventually become familiar with the game, and at that point, the repetitive nature of the procedurally generated farming maps would become a significant issue.
Interestingly, though unintended, there were no complaints of "boredom" during the first test's hellish difficulty. Nevertheless, responding to feedback about repetitiveness with "excessively high" difficulty is not a good design direction.
During the first test, even experienced players gave up on progress, so switching from "boring" to "difficult" would only change the focus of the negative feedback.
Results of the 3rd Testing: Overall Positive!
Since the repetitiveness of the farming maps was an issue that couldn't be fundamentally resolved during this testing period, we decided to proceed with the 3rd test as originally planned.
The team members involved in the 3rd testing were generally less familiar with the game, so we needed to re-evaluate how the difficulty, which was deemed "appropriate to somewhat easy" in the 2nd testing, would feel to others.
We also made minor adjustments to other "easily tweakable" elements to reduce the sense of repetitiveness. For instance, we introduced a mechanic where the "Corruption" gauge increases after a certain number of turns during combat, encouraging the use of different characters for different stages.
Additionally, we varied the combinations of enemies placed in each building.
We created rooms with 4-5 Blisters, rooms with groups of three new high-HP creatures called "Blubber," and rooms featuring a high-defense Brute, which requires armor-piercing weapons, accompanied by a swarm of Knawers. These adjustments aimed to diversify the actions required in each encounter.
Thanks to these changes, almost all team members who participated in the 3rd testing provided Positive Feedback!
Rather than focusing on "overcoming extremely difficult challenges," we adjusted the overall content balance to "maintain tension while creating as many varied situations as possible." As intended, these elements received positive feedback. Many felt the difficulty was "neither too easy to be boring nor too hard to be tiring."
For players seeking a truly challenging experience, difficulty options can provide the appropriate level of challenge. Thus, our current balancing efforts focused on finding the "most average, developer-intended difficulty."
However, we found that there are still many fundamental aspects that need improvement before concluding that "the basic framework of combat is complete."
- The most negative feedback we've gotten over the course of two or three rounds of testing (besides the repetitiveness of the farming maps) has been that the damage calculation structure is hard to understand.
- While we've made sure that the three stats (Character Stats - Weapon Damage - Skill Power Coefficient) work in conjunction with each other to align with the new Strength/Dexterity stats, we've gotten a lot of feedback that it's hard to understand "why and how" your character is getting stronger based on the information displayed in the UI.
- Of course, we designed the game to be "gameplay friendly even if you don't know the exact mechanics," so the actual experience wasn't ruined by this, but...
- Given that the gameplay of "using the Memories of the Dead to set the build you want" is a key part of the new fun, we needed to make "which memories to set" a little more intuitive.
- Similarly, the new defense stat "Fortitude/Agility" and its matching structure, while understandable in a "vague sense," was rarely understood and used tactically at the "intended level" by testers.
- The intent was for enemies with "Increased Fortitude" (= stronger damage reduction) to be represented by rock icons, and enemies with "Increased Agility" (= stronger evasion) to be represented by wind icons, and for each to be "countered with a compatible weapon",
- However, we received a lot of feedback that the icons were either hard to recognize at a glance, or if you did recognize them, it wasn't immediately intuitive to know exactly which weapon to use.
In Conclusion.
As for the question, "Did it make it more fun?", I'd say it was a "half success".
- There's a clear sense of personality and uniqueness between the 3-6 characters, and there's enough tactical play with skills to make it fun,
- Almost all testers were overwhelmingly positive about the core "Memory Bonding" system, which allows you to customize the characters the way you want,
- The effectiveness of the Strength, Dexterity, Fortitudes, and Agility stats, and the feel of each stat's characteristics, were also felt to be meaningful, even if there were some UI issues.
However, given the “repeatability of farming maps” issue I mentioned, I would say that our initial goal of moving straight into procedurally generated system development after this test was ultimately defeated.
Above all, considering that the 3rd Test Group was closer to the group that was “experiencing the assembled game for the first time” (which had a positive response in the 2nd testing phase), it becomes crucial to address the repetitiveness of the farming map.
Development of the farming map was a key objective of the new redesign, so we are exploring various ideas and prototypes to find solutions to this issue. The results indicate that we may have found a direction that feels promising.
Currently, the development team is focusing on improving the UI/UX of the damage mitigation and balancing systems, which can be resolved more quickly. We are currently in the process of validating these improvements, and plan to summarize and introduce them soon
I mentioned the results of our first "integrated testing" after the overhaul, rather than individual system unit tests. Some may feel disappointed that despite the significant time investment, we're not completely satisfied yet, but there are also those who support the positive direction we're heading in.
Considering we're in Early Access, where we disclose versions under development, our goal is to unveil the game after receiving at least a "worthwhile" evaluation from within the dev team following major changes to fundamental aspects of the game.
We believe it's not respectful to those who purchased and are patiently waiting for a finished game if we were to release it in any other state.
However, what we can confidently say is that although we aren’t quite there yet, compared to the current Early Access version, we've made significant strides in the broader scheme of the game. We believe continual iteration through this process is the right way to achieve our goals.
Our best effort now is to transparently share the progress of development and our internal evaluations without reservation, aiming to continually improve and demonstrate evolving results in the future.
We sincerely appreciate your support, and starting next week, we'll delve into more detailed aspects not covered in this dev note and outline our future plans!
Till next time Survivors!
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