Queen Of Thieves beta 0.6.5

A fantasy otome RPG about three young thieves with special skills https://www.winterwolves.com/queenofthieves.htm
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jack1974
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Queen Of Thieves beta 0.6.5

Post by jack1974 »

game info and pre-purchase: http://winterwolves.com/queenofthieves.htm
Current beta download: http://www.macgames.biz/games/QoT-0.6.5-all.zip

What's New in 0.6.5
- some gems on catacomb's level 7 weren't correctly added to the inventory (thanks to Franka for spotting this!)
- the honor reward item sets were wrongly assigned (shifted by 1) so choosing the "Nothing", you would get the "First Aid Set" and so on! Fixed :lol:
- the last scenes with Kira & Mary-Ann and Kira & Moirgane weren't working, now they should
- night music won't carry to the next day

Difficulty Tweaks!
- now you get 4 HP each point in constitution like originally I had planned, and all the difficulty levels are slightly more difficult (higher stats). Easy/Normal should still be no problem!
- I tweaked the catacombs in particular, since I designed those enemies first so they were weaker than the ones you find in the robberies :) In practice, for robberies the most noticeable effect is enemies with more HP and slightly more attack/defense/speed. For catacombs instead they should be much tougher, because before they were really too weak (basically I wasn't multiplying correctly the level*difficulty, so catacomb level 1 was supposed for a party level 2, etc!)
- nerfed Thalia's throwing knives so that the attack reduction effect is 15% instead of 25%, since was too easy to stack the condition and have enemies 25% weaker for 5+ turns!

In practice in Normal level you should be able to complete the catacombs, and have no particular problems in the robberies (of course, if the target level is more or less the one of your party!) except for the Military/Mercenaries, since that one should be difficult.
Instead for Hard/Nightmare, you should be well equipped with many gems to defeat the enemies.
I tested a bit the catacombs and it's tougher now, though probably there are still some levels that are slightly too easy. I'll wait for more player feedback for this. I don't plan to tweak the robberies much, unless you still tell me that they're too easy :)
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Franka
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Re: Queen Of Thieves beta 0.6.5

Post by Franka »

I think I burned myself out grinding the last 50+ robberies, and besides my work shift is coming up, so time to pass it on to the Nightmare players for balancing :!:

I enjoyed the romances, but I must admit that I was a little confused by the events of the ending; possibly that was just mental fatigue from the grind.

It sounds like you're moving away from the "short and furious" battles you had originally planned, I was already a bit surprised to see numbers go as high as they did in the game. I hope you didn't put more HP on the Heavy Guards though....
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jack1974
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Re: Queen Of Thieves beta 0.6.5

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Franka wrote:I think I burned myself out grinding the last 50+ robberies, and besides my work shift is coming up, so time to pass it on to the Nightmare players for balancing :!:
Yes I understand you completely, after testing the game for so long!!
Franka wrote: I enjoyed the romances, but I must admit that I was a little confused by the events of the ending; possibly that was just mental fatigue from the grind.
Cool. Well the ending events are voluntarily a bit vague. Sort of mini-cliffhanger to use in future games, a bit like Loren endings.
Franka wrote: It sounds like you're moving away from the "short and furious" battles you had originally planned, I was already a bit surprised to see numbers go as high as they did in the game. I hope you didn't put more HP on the Heavy Guards though....
All enemies have more HP but only in Hard/Nightmare, Normal is like the one you played. Yes in the end was hard to balance it so that would always result in quick battles. However if I measure the time of a battle, I think it's much shorter than those of SOTW for example. having 3 party characters and max 5 enemies (but often there are 3) surely helps :)
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Harbinger1975
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Re: Queen Of Thieves beta 0.6.5

Post by Harbinger1975 »

Hey Jack. So far, I like the game. I think there is only one little...I won't say it's an issue. Maybe more of a thought? As the game goes on and you go deeper into the story and the amount the dark figure wants goes exuberant (I'm at the 50,000 one), maybe I'm doing it wrong, but the payouts/what you can get seems rather meager compared to what the goal is. Now maybe I'm completely wrong and this is the way it's supposed to be. It's not supposed to be easy to get all that gold and yes, it takes time. But it does feel very grindy. Maybe the higher you go in gold to give the figure, maybe the payouts should be...I dunno, say 2000-3000 gold? I don't mind games taking a bit. But lord in heaven. This is definitely more than a bit. I mean, don't get me wrong. SOTW took a long time. But you weren't doing the same thing all the time. You had options. This one seems a bit more restrictive (Or again, I'm doing it wrong). THIS IS NOT A COMPLAINT, JACK. I'm just looking at it from a testers view. Just some thoughts.
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jack1974
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Re: Queen Of Thieves beta 0.6.5

Post by jack1974 »

No problem that's exactly the kind of feedback I want to get.
I think in the end (as I'll write in tomorrow's blog post) I'll add in the options screen a way to set the game "speed". Right now is balanced so that's grindy, and for you could be a bad thing (for me too!) but for other players not (RPG players like to grind).
So I think the only solution to make everyone happy is to add something like a slider in the options. If you get more payout you should also get more XP probably, otherwise you could reach the end but still be underleveled :)
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Harbinger1975
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Re: Queen Of Thieves beta 0.6.5

Post by Harbinger1975 »

Also, Jack, and I know you can't probably control this. I know you talked about 'sexy images' (I've seen them), that option for 'suggestive material' is not there. Are those CG's that'll be added in later?
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jack1974
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Re: Queen Of Thieves beta 0.6.5

Post by jack1974 »

Yes though there's no real nudity in the missing images, they're sort of "censored", in a way. Hard to explain but you'll see when are ready :)
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BobTheMob
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Re: Queen Of Thieves beta 0.6.5

Post by BobTheMob »

jack1974 wrote:Right now is balanced so that's grindy, and for you could be a bad thing (for me too!) but for other players not (RPG players like to grind).
This brings up something I've been Curious about:

In Loren, there were the various spots one could keep going to to grind again and again--the Truth Temple and the goblins in the Citadel, for instance.
Such were not a feature in SOTW.

Just wondering, will we ever have those kinds of things in RPGs again? B/c I loved using that in Loren. :)
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DarkWolf
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Re: Queen Of Thieves beta 0.6.5

Post by DarkWolf »

Harbinger1975 wrote:Hey Jack. So far, I like the game. I think there is only one little...I won't say it's an issue. Maybe more of a thought? As the game goes on and you go deeper into the story and the amount the dark figure wants goes exuberant (I'm at the 50,000 one), maybe I'm doing it wrong, but the payouts/what you can get seems rather meager compared to what the goal is. Now maybe I'm completely wrong and this is the way it's supposed to be. It's not supposed to be easy to get all that gold and yes, it takes time. But it does feel very grindy. Maybe the higher you go in gold to give the figure, maybe the payouts should be...I dunno, say 2000-3000 gold? I don't mind games taking a bit. But lord in heaven. This is definitely more than a bit. I mean, don't get me wrong. SOTW took a long time. But you weren't doing the same thing all the time. You had options. This one seems a bit more restrictive (Or again, I'm doing it wrong). THIS IS NOT A COMPLAINT, JACK. I'm just looking at it from a testers view. Just some thoughts.
Regarding this, I also wanted to add that you are most likely going to finish all romance scenes during first 2-3 steps and see all robbery mission scenes by that time and therefore in second half of a game you want have much of a story in it.
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Harbinger1975
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Re: Queen Of Thieves beta 0.6.5

Post by Harbinger1975 »

jack1974 wrote:No problem that's exactly the kind of feedback I want to get.
I think in the end (as I'll write in tomorrow's blog post) I'll add in the options screen a way to set the game "speed". Right now is balanced so that's grindy, and for you could be a bad thing (for me too!) but for other players not (RPG players like to grind).
So I think the only solution to make everyone happy is to add something like a slider in the options. If you get more payout you should also get more XP probably, otherwise you could reach the end but still be underleveled :)
It's not that I mind grindy. For example. I love playing Skyrim. And trust me, that game can get VERY grindy. But...at the same time, it doesn't feel that way. Why? Because I can stop looking for Words of Power and go to say, Markarth and pick up a mission or two. I'm still leveling, I'm still grinding. But I'm doing something a bit different. I'm not saying grinding is bad at all. And I know you, and Forsaken and others have put their time into it. I'm just saying that the same missions over and over can get pretty monotonous fast. That's all. Again, not a complaint. Just an RPG player and tester trying to help out :)
"Direct intervention is necessary. Assuming direct control."
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