[Implemented] A Few Balance Ideas

[kestrel]

First of all I just want to say the new update is pretty great, floor 2 adds a lot of depth and strategy to the game and having levels capped is great since it forces you to think about your strategy.

I just did a playthrough where I tried out a character who had a negative stance on fat, and who did her best to keep her weight down as she went through the game. I know the game is nowhere near the balancing stage yet, but this was slightly disappointingly easy, even restricting myself to not using the weight-loss fairies.

The first reason for this is it was pretty easy to use health potions or even to allow oneself to be knocked out in order to restore health instead of eating the mysterious burgers. I would consider making health potions a bit more expensive so that the player has to choose between the cheap but fattening burgers or the expensive but low calorie potions.

The second way I’d address this is by adding some kind of weight penalty for getting knocked out. Perhaps the queen is behind it, giving you a snack while you’re knocked out or perhaps the villagers who rescue you invite you to dinner and you can’t say no. All in all from a mechanics standpoint I’m imagining getting knocked out leading to a full belly.

On a similar note I found the stretchy mail to be way too overpowered. Not only is it the best armor at the moment but its stretchiness means you no longer have to worry about your weight once you get it, at least as far as armor is concerned. In earlier builds I found testing the limits of the armor to be a lot of fun when faced with the dilemma of healing vs losing the armor. If I were running things I’d move the leather mail over to the tailors and make it less stretchy. Another way to address this would be to have say a metal armor introduced later that is stronger but not stretchy so players have to choose more armor or stretchiness.

Aside from these nitpicks I love the game so far and am excited to see where you go with it. The main reason I pointed these out is the main plot seems to set the player for quite the battle with their own waistline but in game it seems pretty trivial. I’ve got a list of event ideas I’ve been brainstorming I’ll message you later but for now thanks again for making this awesome game!

[Cryptic]

Thank you for the feedback. Firstly, the ease of which one can play through the game without gaining weight will be changed in the future. The code for adding new skills to enemies is very simple, so giving them feed/weight gain skills with unique properties would be possible. It depends solely on the writeups for these events and enemies to be made, and a deficiency of dialog is what’s holding things up essentially. When I write it takes me a very long time and I don’t even think the quality is anything special so if I could recruit some writers I think that’d be a blessing for the game. I haven’t contacted Droark in a while which is my fault since I moved from using skype to discord, so I can see if he’s still up for writing new stuff. He was responsible for writing the initial exit floor event, the description of the goblin chief, and the descriptions of the town areas so far and I think he did a great job on those.

A weight penalty for being knocked out sounds like a good idea, though I’m thinking the penalty would be different according to the enemy you fight. For example the succubus knocking you out would mean you’d revive with a ton of weight gained since that’s kinda her thing; she has all mind control and weight gain skills. In general most of the enemies in the tower are controlled by the Witch so knocking out would lead to weight gain to further her goals, but a third party enemy like a mercenary or thief would take money from you instead.

I agree that the stretchy mail is too overpowered. Stretchy armour in general is just overpowered in general given the premise of the game. In the future I will probably add 2 tabs to the blacksmith, 1 for weapons and 1 for armour, and add the Size selection to the armour tab with Stretch removed as on option. It wasn’t included in the current build cuz it’s been a long while since the last update and I just wanted to show people that yes I do have something to present here and that I wasn’t just dicking around for a month haha.

I would love to hear your ideas for events and such! Your suggestions have been very helpful.