Thank you! Those are interesting and I might try them out sometime.
I still find a lot of use in the "all four circumstances hit" Demon Commander, even now when I've got most of my Forsaken at the strength I want to have and the cost I want them to have. It's a very useful thing to have early in a Loop, especially right after the big EE hits after Distortions go through.
So now in Loop 16 I've got all my Forsaken built out and I'm probably roughly evenly matched with the last time I was this deep. I've got the Strategic Advantage system this time for more bonuses, but I've also got Splendor making me a bit weaker. But while I was skipping levels, I was definitely behind the curve.
Loop 3 was fine, my Chosen weren't really ready to use yet but a Superior Forsaken doesn't present much of a challenge at this level of play.
Loop 5 was really the rough point--that was the only loop I had to play *perfectly* and restart multiple times. I don't think I would have been strong enough to take an Animalistic Chosen through a distortion without the EE from breaking T3 on the other Chosen. Loop 3, if you warp over Loop 2, is also the first time you get Chosen that can be buffed by other Chosen's Punisher effects, which are essentially my baseline level of Chosen for most of the game. I don't just want a Tempted Forsaken, I want a Tempted Forsaken that's had her PLEA damage buffed by being Hypnotized by another Chosen, because that's the level of specialization I need to do damage through later loops. By Loop 5, if I warped through Loop 4 I've only had those Chosen for a few days and they're not ready to use at the start of the loop, which is another reason I did not use the warp offered after Loop 3 (main reason was the item offered was incredibly weak). Some extra days of training here would really smooth this difficulty out, if your main goal is making both paths give roughly the same benefits.
By Loop 7, I was definitely picking up speed and filling in the last holes in my roster, and I don't feel that this needs to be adjusted at all, and by the time Victory came around I had enough abilities that she presented a not overwhelming challe3nge the first time I fought her.
I'm one of the ones who is guilty of not always reading all the text and sometimes missing new stuff as I speed through. I know how hard it would be to draw attention to new strings or events because of how scene descriptions are generated, so until then I'll try to catch the ones that I can, which will mostly happen when I'm paying more attention to the text, like during the unique fights.
I'm glad you like the ideas. There's plenty of room for adjustment. Narcissism could be remade into a "whole team" distortion, where they all hate each other and start physically attacking each other in the same fight, if you wanted. Their Extermination% could go up and their Evacuation% could disappear entirely, since they no longer view other people as having "real lives". Codependence could make the Chosen take extra damage when they're alone at the start of a fight (like removing the level +1 limiter on circumstance maybe until another Chosen arrives?) You've created a lot of room in your design for growth without the need for complicated new systems, and that's how you've built the game up to what it is now.
That seems to be it. Her Obedience was at 33%. I'm sure that was documented somewhere but I don't re-read the text files; I mostly skim them.
I mean this display on a Chosen in the fight, where the current weakness of Animalistic Chosen shows up in green:
I'd like for it to do something like that when I click on the Info Button in the shop screen to show their Vulnerability Break status (quick drawing on my Snipping Tool)
I can cross-reference it myself with the information displayed on the shop screen, but I feel like that's an unnecessary complexity in a game that is frankly already quite complex.
Oh, and I noticed a definite bug. I think it has to do with passing days and the High-Rises objective. I'm not sure if it's just an error in the numbers displayed or an error in how something is being calculated.
To recreate:
Load Save 1 "bugtest"
Click "Pass Time"
Send out a Commander--I used Mistress, but you can probably use anything or even not use a Commander.
Send her against Sacred, you'll notice something odd right away
But the real oddness comes when you click Capture:
1) Sacred should be at 0 Circumstance, not 980, because I skipped the previous day.
2) The displayed math is very, very wrong. I suspect that some numbers have actually gone negative somehow, because the game doesn't act like she's at 980 of every circumstance (notice, no multipliers in the trauma damage). There's obviously code written to treat negative numbers as zero because nothing else crashes or goes negative or fractional. When I capture a second Chosen, she's getting no modifier to her circumstance damage from the EXPO of the first chosen, either, despite her having been captured at least long enough to raise EXPO to 100. [EDIT] Further testing and I'm pretty sure the actual values are negative.
Anyway, great game, still fun, you're keeping it interesting.
I haven't shared my thoughts on the Strategic Advantage system yet. It comes in very late, and I understand you're trying to keep down the complexity at the beginning because it's already a lot for a player to absorb, but right now at loop 16 it's just a set of buttons that I click to win more because my Forsaken already do all they need in order to win. That may change if I can get up to higher loops with damage resistance over 50%, but I don't have much interest in playing further right now.
Oh, one other question--when a last remaining Chosen kills themselves there is a scene with Crown stating that their martyrdom provides a lot of energy for their side, or something along those lines. I'm curious if this is linked with the loop difficulty system: i.e.--does it bump up the difficulty? I let a chosen kill herself in Loop 10 fighting Victory and I seem to be seeing higher Damage Resistance numbers than I recall the last time I got into the "teens" during the challenge earlier this year.
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