Before we get to anything else, you better know we're part of the Steam Summer Sale. Were you waiting for good deals to buy one of our games you've had your eye on? Now's the time!
Full notes
Full DommeBreaker update
Read the full published notes in a cleaner layout. The original post stays linked below.
What changed
0 fixes3 additions4 changes0 removals
Maps
Balance
addedMoving on to DommeBreaker, we finished the initial version of Shizuru's Stage 3 combat last month. This month, we tested and the results are gonna take some explaining. Stage 3 is a whole new type of fight, because it involves a third character (Erica) performing the 'attacks' in a way that affects both the player and Shizuru. This means the player has to account for Erica's damage to Shizuru when trying to set up a combo or plan out future turns. On the one hand, this gives us a handy new tool for balancing, because the more damaging attack patterns can do more damage to Shizuru, thus off-setting difficulty to the player. On the other hand, it makes it way harder to predict how the fight will go.
addedSo the first thing we changed was the Second Wind system, which normally allowed a player to combo a Break with plenty of Shattered stacks to burn through a lot of the timer. Planning attacks so that Erica Breaks Shizuru during her turn and allowing the player to add Second Wind on top was way too over-powered. Okay, easy fix: if Erica breaks Shizuru, Second Wind is disabled for the player in the following turn. Cost/benefit analysis for the player: do you let Erica do the break, allowing it to happen a turn earlier, but losing maximum combo potential or do you do less damage now and prep a guaranteed full combo on your next turn after tanking one more turn of damage?
addedSo far, so good. I personally found setting up Erica for the Break while making sure I had full Stamina next round was my best strat, because it meant I didn't burn Second Wind offensively and could use it defensively when necessary to remove debuffs or add defense. End result? I beat Shizuru Stage 3 at 135/200 damage taken. That's... low. For the final fight of the DLC, we were hoping for a closer fight. Here's where the problem of balancing starts, though: we've designed every element of this game and spent a whole lot of time testing it. We're effectively experts at the mechanics. How far do we balance this for players?
changedSee, when we released the demo featuring the Stage 1 fights for the 3 base game girls, some people left feedback saying they had to grind too many losses to save up points in order to buy upgrades that allowed them to finally win. This was surprising to us, because the Stage 1 fights were all balanced to be beatable without any upgrades. In fact, I think it's been over a year since I lost a Stage 1 fight while testing. That's not meant to make fun of the players who left that feedback, but to show we've gotten too good at the game to predict how the average player will do. So we're not gonna tune Shizuru Stage 3 to be challenging for us, but we do feel she needs to be a little harder than the current version.
changedOur current idea is to increase her health a little and maybe tweak some attack numbers, but we don't wanna mess with it too much. For now, we're gonna make an internal demo build of Shizuru that's all 3 fights in a row and we're gonna test for difficulty and mechanical progression/complexity. Once we feel the Stages escalate well, we're gonna have our small group of closed testers try their hand at that version to see how they feel about the balance. Hopefully, that'll give us a better idea of how the average player will do and how far we need to tweak each fight. In the meantime, we'll continue working on the story scenes that are set before, in-between and after the fights. ROADMAP
changedShizuru Stage 3 initial testing and tweaking
DommeBreaker changes
addedMoving on to DommeBreaker, we finished the initial version of Shizuru's Stage 3 combat last month. This month, we tested and the results are gonna take some explaining. Stage 3 is a whole new type of fight, because it involves a third character (Erica) performing the 'attacks' in a way that affects both the player and Shizuru. This means the player has to account for Erica's damage to Shizuru when trying to set up a combo or plan out future turns. On the one hand, this gives us a handy new tool for balancing, because the more damaging attack patterns can do more damage to Shizuru, thus off-setting difficulty to the player. On the other hand, it makes it way harder to predict how the fight will go.
addedSo the first thing we changed was the Second Wind system, which normally allowed a player to combo a Break with plenty of Shattered stacks to burn through a lot of the timer. Planning attacks so that Erica Breaks Shizuru during her turn and allowing the player to add Second Wind on top was way too over-powered. Okay, easy fix: if Erica breaks Shizuru, Second Wind is disabled for the player in the following turn. Cost/benefit analysis for the player: do you let Erica do the break, allowing it to happen a turn earlier, but losing maximum combo potential or do you do less damage now and prep a guaranteed full combo on your next turn after tanking one more turn of damage?
addedSo far, so good. I personally found setting up Erica for the Break while making sure I had full Stamina next round was my best strat, because it meant I didn't burn Second Wind offensively and could use it defensively when necessary to remove debuffs or add defense. End result? I beat Shizuru Stage 3 at 135/200 damage taken. That's... low. For the final fight of the DLC, we were hoping for a closer fight. Here's where the problem of balancing starts, though: we've designed every element of this game and spent a whole lot of time testing it. We're effectively experts at the mechanics. How far do we balance this for players?
changedSee, when we released the demo featuring the Stage 1 fights for the 3 base game girls, some people left feedback saying they had to grind too many losses to save up points in order to buy upgrades that allowed them to finally win. This was surprising to us, because the Stage 1 fights were all balanced to be beatable without any upgrades. In fact, I think it's been over a year since I lost a Stage 1 fight while testing. That's not meant to make fun of the players who left that feedback, but to show we've gotten too good at the game to predict how the average player will do. So we're not gonna tune Shizuru Stage 3 to be challenging for us, but we do feel she needs to be a little harder than the current version.
changedOur current idea is to increase her health a little and maybe tweak some attack numbers, but we don't wanna mess with it too much. For now, we're gonna make an internal demo build of Shizuru that's all 3 fights in a row and we're gonna test for difficulty and mechanical progression/complexity. Once we feel the Stages escalate well, we're gonna have our small group of closed testers try their hand at that version to see how they feel about the balance. Hopefully, that'll give us a better idea of how the average player will do and how far we need to tweak each fight. In the meantime, we'll continue working on the story scenes that are set before, in-between and after the fights. ROADMAP
Before we get to anything else, you better know we're part of the Steam Summer Sale. Were you waiting for good deals to buy one of our games you've had your eye on? Now's the time! Still considering that DLC that appeals to your niche taste? You should probably buy that while it's on sale. Give in to temptation.
Moving on to DommeBreaker, we finished the initial version of Shizuru's Stage 3 combat last month. This month, we tested and the results are gonna take some explaining. Stage 3 is a whole new type of fight, because it involves a third character (Erica) performing the 'attacks' in a way that affects both the player and Shizuru. This means the player has to account for Erica's damage to Shizuru when trying to set up a combo or plan out future turns. On the one hand, this gives us a handy new tool for balancing, because the more damaging attack patterns can do more damage to Shizuru, thus off-setting difficulty to the player. On the other hand, it makes it way harder to predict how the fight will go.
So the first thing we changed was the Second Wind system, which normally allowed a player to combo a Break with plenty of Shattered stacks to burn through a lot of the timer. Planning attacks so that Erica Breaks Shizuru during her turn and allowing the player to add Second Wind on top was way too over-powered.
Okay, easy fix
if Erica breaks Shizuru, Second Wind is disabled for the player in the following turn.
Cost/benefit analysis for the player
do you let Erica do the break, allowing it to happen a turn earlier, but losing maximum combo potential or do you do less damage now and prep a guaranteed full combo on your next turn after tanking one more turn of damage?
So far, so good. I personally found setting up Erica for the Break while making sure I had full Stamina next round was my best strat, because it meant I didn't burn Second Wind offensively and could use it defensively when necessary to remove debuffs or add defense. End result? I beat Shizuru Stage 3 at 135/200 damage taken. That's... low. For the final fight of the DLC, we were hoping for a closer fight. Here's where the problem of balancing starts, though: we've designed every element of this game and spent a whole lot of time testing it. We're effectively experts at the mechanics. How far do we balance this for players?
See, when we released the demo featuring the Stage 1 fights for the 3 base game girls, some people left feedback saying they had to grind too many losses to save up points in order to buy upgrades that allowed them to finally win. This was surprising to us, because the Stage 1 fights were all balanced to be beatable without any upgrades. In fact, I think it's been over a year since I lost a Stage 1 fight while testing. That's not meant to make fun of the players who left that feedback, but to show we've gotten too good at the game to predict how the average player will do. So we're not gonna tune Shizuru Stage 3 to be challenging for us, but we do feel she needs to be a little harder than the current version.
Our current idea is to increase her health a little and maybe tweak some attack numbers, but we don't wanna mess with it too much. For now, we're gonna make an internal demo build of Shizuru that's all 3 fights in a row and we're gonna test for difficulty and mechanical progression/complexity. Once we feel the Stages escalate well, we're gonna have our small group of closed testers try their hand at that version to see how they feel about the balance. Hopefully, that'll give us a better idea of how the average player will do and how far we need to tweak each fight. In the meantime, we'll continue working on the story scenes that are set before, in-between and after the fights. ROADMAP
