First of all, I like criticism. Let's see what you got here.
However the first 5 chapters I was able to kill everything on the map including the epic bosses.
Then you must be really good player. Elite and Epic Bosses should be very very hard for a first timer(or the game fails that they're not strong and unique enough).
When I reached chapter 6, suddenly there are bosses lvl160??? wtf, half the bosses on the map are quadruple my level and no way can I even scratch them. What's with the HUGE difficulty jump from chapter 5 --> 6? (playing on normal)
Yea well I pretty much realised that too when I was playing. Levels doesn't actually tell anything. I could easily and quickly re-arrange all boss levels. So start to throw some bosses which you think were too hard. Also remember that almost all of the bosses in this chapter have some tricks and tactic is need to beat them. Sometimes they seems to be superb but they actually aren't.
You need to fix the Vampire Lord so that 'Fradz's Illusionary Double doesn't work on his 25% HP recovery ability. I.e. everytime he 1 hits the illusion he gains 25% HP back, which meant I had to sit Fradz out for the whole battle. Either way his still stupidly hard to beat compared to any of the other main quest bosses.
Yea I was having really hard time with that boss. Now I removed the whole recovery thing it was buggin too badly.
So who wants to tell me what I'm doing wrong in terms of they game getting stupidly hard all of a sudden, I'm talking about the whole of chapter 6 not just any 1 boss. Did I miss getting an important item or something? Or is there a crucial fundamental mechanic I don't know about the game?
Nothing. I didn't get too good items and I was having hard time with some bosses. I was playing with normal difficulty as well. Vampire Lord and the dragon boss were just too strong I couldn't beat them. Those will be fixed at least. I was able to beat with
**** items Narsi, Xod and Fudo. I'm not sure about others.
It takes a ridiculously long time to reload the prolouge and then setup all the characters again. There should be a button that says "Keep previous setup".
Are you sure about this idea? When I usually select things it just takes few minutes nothing more. Of course I'm now not talking about the ridiculous loading times.
The gold you carry over is barely enough to make 2 x lvl1 synthesis items
One guy had after 2 or 3 give ups 600,000 gold. That's pretty much. The best items at the moment costs about 10k to 20k.
Even if you were able to carry over 1000000 gold it wouldn't make a difference since the pieces for the synthesis items you don't get till later chapters so your carried over gold is still pretty useless. Plus you have to find all the pieces all over again!
Yea, well, that's for the balance. It would be stupid to have the best items in the beginning of the game(the best items are really imba). Also the give up is actually meant for players who want to reveal more about the story by beating the strongest bosses in the game.
Of course this at the moment fails because player is not able to complete the game. If player would see the end and all that mind
**** in the end then there would be a bigger chance actually try to play the campaign again and see what's going on. You'll get the basic idea how the story goes by just completing the main quests.
Those optional stuff tells you more about the background and more about the dragons.
You have no idea how frustrating it is to restart with no items after you worked so hard to get them in the first place.
I have played a lot of different kind of singleplayer RPGs and so far I haven't see a RPG where you can load your equipment from previous save.
Player-base wise, if you want lots of people to play your game you should avoid creating the situation where only a niche amount of players (i.e. the ones who are willing to spend weeks and weeks replaying the same campaigns) can enjoy it.
I like to make games that are easy to learn but hard to master. With Easy and Normal difficulties player should be able to complete the whole game without much trouble(I don't mean Elite and Epic bosses).
...So how do I avoid creating the situation where only a niche amount of players? Give me some ideas.
Analogously, take any WOW or any other RPG similar to that, how would it feel to play halfway through the game only to reaslise the ONLY way to enjoy all the features of the game is to restart from lvl 1. But when you restarted you don't even get to keep your items. I would instantly uninstall a game like that from sheer rage.
WoW is a massive multiplayer online role playing game and this is a singleplayer RPG. Anyway you're able to do that in a little other way: for example with gold you can buy very good equipment already in chapter 1. With good items from shops you can beat already all the mini-bosses in that chapter. And once you have beat all the mini-bosses you have enough of good items to beat the elite and epic bosses.
For example look this picture by Killa.
http://www.tcocampaign.com/index.php?action=media;sa=item;in=9He's pretty tough. Shame I don't have anymore that picture when he had like 2000 hit points and he was only level 1!
I understand this map is currently in Beta, but I implore you to not KILL your own creation by limiting the amount of 'FUN' us 'casual' players can have.
How do I kill my own creation? How do I take the fun away? By making some bosses player is not able to defeat in the first play through? Doesn't that make player want to try again increasing the life span of the game? The game is build that way and I see it pretty cunning.