raverofsouls

New Member
Oct 16, 2019
13
3
i got the same problem when you do to the bench in other places and if you look in your recipe list and press left or to the right you get it
 

Ferghus

Engaged Member
Aug 25, 2017
2,854
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That may be an asshole design, but that's a pretty realistic scenario. Physically weak healer naturally would not stand a chance of surviving in the forest overrun with rats, giant wasps, wolves and boars.
So I concluded that blood magus is made for experienced players who already played this game before.
In a realistic scenario, all of the townsfolk should be dead because of their proximity to the forest. The gravekeeper who's literally in the monster spawn zone should be extra dead. In a realistic scenario, people don't travel alone through the woods even when there isn't a supernatural fog and strangely aggressive animals running around. In a realistic scenario, a blood magus training to be an adventurer would have made himself physically fit enough to not die to a single rat. The reason the blood magus is fragile isn't because of realistic reasons, it's because of a game design decision. If you play tabletop RPGs, you'd know that traditional healers are the opposite of fragile. Wimpy healers isn't a universal concept.
That's not my problem that you can't accept that games can have steep learning curve. Whining will not make a game easier. Git gud.
What "learning curve"? The first few hours of the game is straight up dice rolling and save scumming. There's no skill or tactics involved.
 
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SylvieRose

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Jan 27, 2021
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That's not my problem that you can't accept that games can have steep learning curve. Whining will not make a game easier. Git gud.
If its not your problem why bother? You know that people can "git gud" and still point out the flaws right? I like the game too but it doesn't means I will turn a blind eye to the cons like a die-hard fanboy
 

YouShallNotLol

Well-Known Member
May 6, 2022
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What "learning curve"? The first few hours of the game is straight up dice rolling and save scumming. There's no skill or tactics involved.
I literally started playing this game yesterday and I have not been one-shot by anything even once. I died a few times but only because I was overconfident and didn't pay attention. I don't know how badly you manage to fuck up your character every time to have such horrible experience. I can only feel pity for your struggles.
 

Ferghus

Engaged Member
Aug 25, 2017
2,854
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I literally started playing this game yesterday and I have not been one-shot by anything even once. I died a few times but only because I was overconfident and didn't pay attention. I don't know how badly you manage to fuck up your character every time to have such horrible experience. I simply pity your struggles.
I never said I got oneshot. I died over the course of being attacked several times in short succession. I don't know if you've tried any other class or not take foibles off the bat, but as a default lv1 Leader, which appears to be the default class, I pretty much died every 5 random spawns. If the barbarian is the only class capable of ignoring the early game issues, then the problem isn't the players, it's the current game mechanics. Because there's basically not much you can do early on to offset that problem other than taking foibles, which is a permanent commitment, second only to picking your starting class, which you have no way of knowing what it does until you actually get past the prologue. That's not an issue of skill, that's an issue of game balance.
 

balitz Method

Active Member
Jan 30, 2018
913
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The expectation isn't the problem though. I had a hard time just avoiding fights. The way I remembered it, sometimes the game drops 2 wolves on me and I either die instantly or lose like 3/4ths of my health when I fail to escape. Or the game drops 2 boars and it takes out anywhere between 1/3 or 1/2 my health. And this is just the first area.

As for the blessings, I wouldn't know. When I played it back in 3.9.7, I got the blessing I still died a few dozen times. No idea what a particular blessings actually does though, but I remember getting one from the person asking for donations.

Also, honestly speaking, the way you phrased your explanation comes off as condescending and unhelpful. Like first of all, you're already making the assumption that "people don't want to have to relearn things from scratch". You're already in the mindset of discrediting other people's opinions and deflecting their negative experiences. I don't even know why you brought up "reinventing the wheel" and "revisit[ing] basic game design ideas" because these are just empty statements. We haven't even talked about if and how this game brings something new to the table, let alone whether or not people are at odds with it.
I brought them up because most of the people who say they have trouble will describe how they -are- going in with expectations that things will work a certain way - that they can use typical random encounters outside of the starting area to level up, that they can take what are now being called foibles without thinking about them, that they should be able to restore their MP with potions, that they should be able to fight effectively right out of the gate - and get frustrated. My first experience with it included getting slaughtered by random encounters, too, but as I experienced more of the game I learned how to play it. Now I can breeze through the beginning. It's not being dismissive of people's experiences; it's letting them know that you have to challenge a few of your basic assumptions to learn to play it and the game does do a decent job of introducing you to its own mechanics if you listen to it.

Foibles for instance will often impact agility and HP to the point where monsters get the first hit and kill you before you can act. RNG shouldn't be a huge factor in fights so hearing people describe their struggles with it signals to me that they took a rough combination. I know because I did the same thing the first time around. By level 3 none of the classes should have trouble with random encounters and that's a quick milestone if you learn that EXP comes from quests and take on the early-game ones meant to get you there in the first two areas. That's a bit of reinventing the wheel when it comes to character progression in an RPG and it's clear to see that there are a good number of people who don't like the idea of restructuring things like that - especially if it frustrates the way they're typically played.

People had the same sorts of complaints about Demon's Souls and Dark Souls when those first came out. Sometimes a game is different enough that you have to learn how to play it.
 

balitz Method

Active Member
Jan 30, 2018
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What "learning curve"? The first few hours of the game is straight up dice rolling and save scumming. There's no skill or tactics involved.
The learning curve in realizing that fighting isn't necessarily rewarding, that finding quests in the first major city is the way to get your character to the point where you don't struggle with mob enemies, what your class is and isn't good at (and how to pick equipment to maximize it) and so on.

Leader for instance is a class that doesn't work well alone but it can equip the largest spread of equipment by far. For a leader the early game is about working out which among the many accessories and armors and such will help the most. Once they're properly equipped things turn around quickly.

That's all part of the learning curve.
 

F4S1

Member
Aug 29, 2019
145
138
WTF?! I went to the graveyard and talked to the only person there, and only point 3 was fulfilled. How to complete the 2nd point?
 

Ferghus

Engaged Member
Aug 25, 2017
2,854
4,378
I brought them up because most of the people who say they have trouble will describe how they -are- going in with expectations that things will work a certain way - that they can use typical random encounters outside of the starting area to level up, that they can take what are now being called foibles without thinking about them, that they should be able to restore their MP with potions, that they should be able to fight effectively right out of the gate - and get frustrated. My first experience with it included getting slaughtered by random encounters, too, but as I experienced more of the game I learned how to play it. Now I can breeze through the beginning. It's not being dismissive of people's experiences; it's letting them know that you have to challenge a few of your basic assumptions to learn to play it and the game does do a decent job of introducing you to its own mechanics if you listen to it.

Foibles for instance will often impact agility and HP to the point where monsters get the first hit and kill you before you can act. RNG shouldn't be a huge factor in fights so hearing people describe their struggles with it signals to me that they took a rough combination. I know because I did the same thing the first time around. By level 3 none of the classes should have trouble with random encounters and that's a quick milestone if you learn that EXP comes from quests and take on the early-game ones meant to get you there in the first two areas. That's a bit of reinventing the wheel when it comes to character progression in an RPG and it's clear to see that there are a good number of people who don't like the idea of restructuring things like that - especially if it frustrates the way they're typically played.

People had the same sorts of complaints about Demon's Souls and Dark Souls when those first came out. Sometimes a game is different enough that you have to learn how to play it.
I don't think people so much as expect the game to allow for grinding as they find it a more acceptable alternative to stumbling in the dark and having to constantly reload saves. Like if you look on the reviews of other RPGs or even Ren'Py games, one of the things people seem to really hate is grinding. The same could be said about the inability to buy healing items. The recurring issue is that there's no obvious way for someone to avoid being attacked and killed.

Like in my own experience, I wandered as far as the first main city and did the orphanage quest. I talked to all the NPCs, grinded gold to buy a very hammered nun more alcohol, and gave back an orphan's keepsake. I bought recipes, armors, and other stuff hoping it would help me improve my chances of survival. I didn't just run around randomly getting murdered, I made a genuine effort to try to level up and progress in the game. But despite spending a few hours trying to enjoy the game, I'm still constantly reloading saves every time I try to explore a new area. Like the problem wasn't that I couldn't easily heal or that I couldn't level up or whatever, the problem was that I spent a few hours trying to play the game and it doesn't feel like it's paying off. I don't know if it was just an issue with the specific version I played or what, but I didn't find enough quests to bring me to level 3 in the first 2 areas, if you're talking about the port and the village. I think I only encountered 3 quests; the 2 church ones I mentioned and the one where a lady is asking you to help recover her husband's corpse that he sold.

The comparison to Dark Souls isn't really a fair one. Dark Souls is a typical hack and slash with a fairly complex level design and leveling mechanics. But the thing with Dark Souls is that dying, for the most part, is avoidable. The skill ceiling might be higher than other games at the time, but enemies for the most part can be killed or avoided. Enemies spawn in set locations. But with the random spawns in this game, that's not the case. Everything feels like a random roll of the dice. Whether you get a rat or 2 boars is completely up to chance. Whether or not you can escape without getting hurt is up to chance. Whether an enemy spawns after 12 steps or 20 is up to chance. The issue has nothing to do with the game being "different", it has to do with how needlessly tedious early game feels. It's not reasonable to expect people to want to explore and learn the game when you're actively being punished for exploring. For reference, I've played Found Dead, which also doesn't have a traditional leveling system. 100% of your levels and gear come from exploring and doing quests. Sure, you can kill the zombies if you choose to fight them, but there's no real benefit and you'll probably lose half your health doing it. But the thing about Found Dead is that it doesn't have random spawns. The game doesn't arbitrarily force you into a battle screen every few seconds. It also doesn't force me to save every 10 seconds in case I drop dead because I failed to run away 3x in a row.
 
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Ferghus

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Aug 25, 2017
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The learning curve in realizing that fighting isn't necessarily rewarding, that finding quests in the first major city is the way to get your character to the point where you don't struggle with mob enemies, what your class is and isn't good at (and how to pick equipment to maximize it) and so on.

Leader for instance is a class that doesn't work well alone but it can equip the largest spread of equipment by far. For a leader the early game is about working out which among the many accessories and armors and such will help the most. Once they're properly equipped things turn around quickly.

That's all part of the learning curve.
I don't know why the assumption is that people are fighting things they aren't supposed to be. Like I can't even make it far enough into the game to get gear or use my skills, because I'm too busy dying just walking around. I'm pretty sure that most people can accept that you shouldn't try to fight everything. That isn't the issue here. The problem is that enemies will spawn out of thin air and sucker punch you. Constantly. Until you somehow stumble your way into level 3 before your patience wears out. Like that's not a learning curve. There's literally nothing you can do about that.
 
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Ferghus

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Aug 25, 2017
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Also, I want to note that I'm not arguing just for the sake of arguing. Obviously a lot of people enjoy the game, but I can't make sense of how you're supposed to get to level 3 without being put off by it. At first I thought maybe I just missed something extremely helpful and obvious. But the more we talk about this, the more it seems to me like there really isn't anything you can do except make it to level 3. But to make it to level 3, you have to suffer being beaten up constantly. I don't understand why that's a necessary part of the game. And I'd like to talk about it if you guys don't mind.
 

raverofsouls

New Member
Oct 16, 2019
13
3
want to get to lvl 3 on leader just get the 250% exp foiable then talke to the the man that wants scorpion skin at the docks then the old man in the docks get his axe to the guy in the next town then run to town of beginnings talk to a grandpa in the caste sqair and find the kid in the barrel then your lvl 3
 

balitz Method

Active Member
Jan 30, 2018
913
1,482
I don't know why the assumption is that people are fighting things they aren't supposed to be. Like I can't even make it far enough into the game to get gear or use my skills, because I'm too busy dying just walking around. I'm pretty sure that most people can accept that you shouldn't try to fight everything. That isn't the issue here. The problem is that enemies will spawn out of thin air and sucker punch you. Constantly. Until you somehow stumble your way into level 3 before your patience wears out. Like that's not a learning curve. There's literally nothing you can do about that.
Fighting before you're ready is the main mistake people make.

Fights on the world map can be avoided and every class other than Berserkers start with enough agility to run away from random encounters - and Berserkers won't have any trouble with wolves. In the docks, the first area, there are two blessings that you can get to help further: one that increases your max HP and grants regen and one that grants enough of an attack boost for rogues and blood mages to manage in an emergency. Each area leading up to the main town has quests that don't require combat and Beginnings has more. Doing those gets you to level 3 and grants enough abilities for each class to hold their own in a fight, and that's a start, but the next thing to learn is how each class is meant to fight.

Leader is actually the toughest class to start with because it relies so heavily on knowing how to take advantage of their ability to equip most things. Once you know what to look for with equipment you can quickly build a strong leader but rogues (evade and crit) and berserkers (attack and HP) have more obvious strengths to lean into and all blood mages need is to level up a couple of times to get their bread and butter skills. It's basically teaching you to approach things more carefully/thoughtfully by requiring you to get into that mindset to survive the beginning.
 

Ferghus

Engaged Member
Aug 25, 2017
2,854
4,378
Fighting before you're ready is the main mistake people make.

Fights on the world map can be avoided and every class other than Berserkers start with enough agility to run away from random encounters - and Berserkers won't have any trouble with wolves. In the docks, the first area, there are two blessings that you can get to help further: one that increases your max HP and grants regen and one that grants enough of an attack boost for rogues and blood mages to manage in an emergency. Each area leading up to the main town has quests that don't require combat and Beginnings has more. Doing those gets you to level 3 and grants enough abilities for each class to hold their own in a fight, and that's a start, but the next thing to learn is how each class is meant to fight.

Leader is actually the toughest class to start with because it relies so heavily on knowing how to take advantage of their ability to equip most things. Once you know what to look for with equipment you can quickly build a strong leader but rogues (evade and crit) and berserkers (attack and HP) have more obvious strengths to lean into and all blood mages need is to level up a couple of times to get their bread and butter skills. It's basically teaching you to approach things more carefully/thoughtfully by requiring you to get into that mindset to survive the beginning.
Can doesn't mean it's always successful though. I think I grabbed the Max HP one pretty much immediately and still had trouble. It's the one with the lady asking for donations, right? As for Town of Beginnings, I've made it that far. As I mentioned in a previous post, it might have just been the version, but I didn't see that many quests, despite talking to pretty much everyone between the dock and Beginnings as well as Church Grounds. Apparently I also unfortunately picked the most difficult starting class. As for teaching you to approach things carefully, couldn't you achieve the same result with a lower spawn rate or introducing wolves later? Like my trip to the gravedigger and back got me attacked at least 3 times. To top that off, I ended up never completing that quest because one of the objectives never cleared for some reasons. I think it was talking to the guy that buys bodies. But if the struggle with low level enemies is so disproportionate between classes in the first place, shouldn't the enemies or starting gear be adjusted? Like if a berserker can defeat wolves off the bat, they're not actually "learning" the same lesson. If Leaders have a much shoddier chance of survival than the other class, they're going to have a skewed perception of the game's difficulty.

Like the idea is fine, but the execution is to be desired.
 

DreamyMilk

Member
Aug 25, 2019
191
133
is there a way to change the word font for joiplay? it's so hard to read the text
yes there is actually, if you go to where you installed the game, then you open the "Fonts" folder, then from there you can ether delete the ".ttf" files (this will put the text Font to the Default fore RPG Maker VX Ace).
or replace them with other ones if you know of an RPG Maker VX Ace Font you Can Read, just remember to Rename the File to the Exact same as the previous file
 

balitz Method

Active Member
Jan 30, 2018
913
1,482
doesn't mean it's always successful though. I think I grabbed the Max HP one pretty much immediately and still had trouble. It's the one with the lady asking for donations, right? As for Town of Beginnings, I've made it that far. As I mentioned in a previous post, it might have just been the version, but I didn't see that many quests, despite talking to pretty much everyone between the dock and Beginnings as well as Church Grounds. Apparently I also unfortunately picked the most difficult starting class. As for teaching you to approach things carefully, couldn't you achieve the same result with a lower spawn rate or introducing wolves later? Like my trip to the gravedigger and back got me attacked at least 3 times. To top that off, I ended up never completing that quest because one of the objectives never cleared for some reasons. I think it was talking to the guy that buys bodies. But if the struggle with low level enemies is so disproportionate between classes in the first place, shouldn't the enemies or starting gear be adjusted? Like if a berserker can defeat wolves off the bat, they're not actually "learning" the same lesson. If Leaders have a much shoddier chance of survival than the other class, they're going to have a skewed perception of the game's difficulty.

Like the idea is fine, but the execution is to be desired.
It's not perfect, but by now enough safety nets have been added to where most people can make it far enough to figure out how things work so long as they don't cripple themselves by taking the wrong foibles. Even with Berserkers their risky style of play can easily backfire. The lesson is that you have to be conscientious. Combat, once you learn the ins and outs, can quickly get trivial but that approach is still important. If you thoughtlessly do every event that gives you insanity for instance you could end up in the miserable position of being chased by very strong enemies any time you venture outside of towns.

You might not have found every area in Beginnings if those were the only quests you did. If 3.9.7 is the last version you played you'll have to start over anyway, so I'd suggest picking blood mage this time. They start neutral in the hormone stats and buying equipment for them is very straightforward: just get a decent staff and pick up voodoo recipes when they become available. Once you learn their main offensive spell you won't feel like you can't go anywhere without dying.
 
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Ferghus

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Aug 25, 2017
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It's not perfect, but by now enough safety nets have been added to where most people can make it far enough to figure out how things work so long as they don't cripple themselves by taking the wrong foibles. Even with Berserkers their risky style of play can easily backfire. The lesson is that you have to be conscientious. Combat, once you learn the ins and outs, can quickly get trivial but that approach is still important. If you thoughtlessly do every event that gives you insanity for instance you could end up in the miserable position of being chased by very strong enemies any time you venture outside of towns.

You might not have found every area in Beginnings if those were the only quests you did. If 3.9.7 is the last version you played you'll have to start over anyway, so I'd suggest picking blood mage this time. They start neutral in the hormone stats and buying equipment for them is very straightforward: just get a decent staff and pick up voodoo recipes when they become available. Once you learn their main offensive spell you won't feel like you can't go anywhere without dying.
I'll take your word for it.
Personally I wouldn't have thought to randomly grab foibles or drop my insanity for no clear reasons, but in general, I feel like most people don't make those kind of bad decisions. Like even if "standard" RPGM games are the only kinds of games you've ever played, there's pretty much no games out there that would reward you for doing those kinds of things. I feel the need to reiterate that the problem with new players isn't their unwillingness to adapt, or bad habits carried over from other games, it's that this game really doesn't give you much direction. It's very easy to accidentally go off-script and spend a few hours being frustrated. Anyhow, I'll try the game again in a bit.
 
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