I'm pretty sure I know what "Grinding" is.
"Grinding(video games) - is the act of performing repetitive tasks to achieve a desired outcome."
I'm not talking about 1 route since yeah of course it's called "actually playing the game" and yes I'd definitely won't mind gameplay, but what I'm referring to it being grindy is the game as a whole. What if my desired outcome would be to unlock every CG. Since you've said we only get to pick one character at a time, that means I'll only focus on 1 route at a time, which means I'll surely miss a couple of CGs that isn't part of that route.
You cannot really call grindy a game only because you need to replay it in order to explore all of its content.
The great majority of the games require a replay or two to unlock/see all of the content... Even a Visual Novel will need you to perform the repetitive task of holding CTRL to skip all of the seen text in order to make a different choice.
By taking such a factor in account, that definition would mean that any game aside from kinetic novels is grindy, which is exaggerated.
I need to start at the beginning or at least near there just to get to the point where Ais' route starts and continue from there. I need to run through the dungeon again, kill mobs again, do the same things I've done on Hestia's route all over again but this time while pursuing Ais. That's also called grinding or am I wrong? I mean, those gameplay elements are the repetitive tasks I need to "grind" to get my desired outcome of unlocking all CGs. Things would be very different if there was only 1 route and there won't even be a grind since you only need to do it once but this game is not that.
It probably feels heavier in this stage of development because you can get to the end of the content for a specific route in a couple of hours or so, give or take.
However once the game is completed, completing a single route will require playing for much longer, and that means starting over because you want to make different choices will feel less repetitive because more time has passed inbetween.
Given the settings to make both combat and exploration faster, and the points I mentioned in my previous post, it'll be slower than holding ctrl only because you need to walk in the dungeons... But those are fairly small, and taking different turns or even trying specific things will unlock new material, so they are still worth going over a few times.
I am sure a few players missed the rest points and the whole banter system scattered in a few floors, some will never enter Liliruca's route and won't have love events scattered in the floors, some will miss the Nekoya's door on floor 11 unless they are made aware of it, and once I include secrets/puzzles to get artifacts, replaying the dungeon will be the only way to truly getting "everything". This means going through the dungeon is worth it on replays, even if it slower than holding CTRL in a Visual Novel.
The grinding I was talking about is the stats bit; some peeps may test/grind for stats at the start, so it's easier as they progress.
Stats were actually the reason why I have been asked to include a harder mode, because it was too easy to get maximum.
Now I can use the extra difficulty to include what fits my vision of the game while using the normal mode to include what the majority wants... Which also makes sense for those who have played more than once.
Currently the balance of the endurance is broken because I balanced it around the source material saying that Bell should gain 40 endurance for a goblin's slap, not my smartest decision
As much as I want to stick close to the source material, balancing a game around that is not always possible, so increasing endurance right now is really easy until I fix the formula.
That's what I had tried doing, but the 1st round of exploration nets you 300-ish no matter what, while the couple others (till Lilly) doesn't really give much. -- Because the mobs are weak till then.
Running away from mobs seem to give the best Agi increases, but you want to collect the monster stones for cash -- mainly for restoratives, because resting doesn't heal much HP; though expenses is another reason, especially if you get KOed.
The way you gain stats doesn't work like that actually, although I wish it did.
My biggest regret is having an integer as level for monsters, it may seem so at first even if you have read and watched the anime multiple times, but in reality monsters (and probably adventurers too?) should have a not integer level, allowing for goblins in the first floor to be "level 1" and goblins on the ninth floor to be "level 1.5" or something like that, since the excelia you gain is tied to the average challenge level (which is always 1, until you reach floor 11).
That being said, it still works just fine since Bell counts as a level 1, and the formula also keeps that into account.
In short, as long as you are level 1, the first 12 floors will always give you the same quality of excelia, and agility can also be increased by just walking around and playing Demeter's minigame as well.
