VN Unity Legacy of Hestia [R35] [Winterfire]

[TheOtherDragonborn]

Quick question, how is strength progress actually tracked?

Many statements on this thread make it seem like it is related to the number of monsters slain, but I see minimal growth with large scale murder using earthquake.

On the other hand, intuitively, I would expect it to be related to damage done using a melee weapon (the knife), but I see minimal growth here as well.

Endurance is piss easy to grow in the later floors, but it is hard to develop a strategy to grow the other stats without clear feedback...


On another note, I suggest adding a way to level with Hestia even when it doesn't make story sense. It seems quite possible to softlock yourself in hard mode if you don't pre-grind before you hit a challenge. Buying spellbooks already does this so it shouldn't be difficult programming wise, but you can only buy 3 of them total so it doesn't work forever.

 

[Winterfire]

Quick question, how is strength progress actually tracked?

Many statements on this thread make it seem like it is related to the number of monsters slain, but I see minimal growth with large scale murder using earthquake.

Earthquake is a spell, using spells increases only Magic.

On the other hand, intuitively, I would expect it to be related to damage done using a melee weapon (the knife), but I see minimal growth here as well.

Melee, yes. Every strike increases strength.
Once you hit level 3 increasing your stats becomes much harder as most monsters you'll face are level 2.

On another note, I suggest adding a way to level with Hestia even when it doesn't make story sense. It seems quite possible to softlock yourself in hard mode if you don't pre-grind before you hit a challenge. Buying spellbooks already does this so it shouldn't be difficult programming wise, but you can only buy 3 of them total so it doesn't work forever.

No, that's equivalent to Bell running up to Hestia, asking her for status update, then run back to the Dungeon, rinse and repeat. It'd be kind of ridicolous, you need to decide how much to train each session and then have your status updated. Exiting the dungeon manually will tell you how much excelia you have gained in total, if you believe it's too little, you shouldn't hurry to progress the main storyline, especially if you are playing in Hard Mode.

 

[TheOtherDragonborn]

Melee, yes. Every strike increases strength.

If that is the case, shouldn't reposting also increase strength? From what I have observed, it currently does not. Additionally, because that ability cannot be deactivated, it becomes quite difficult to actually level your normal attack.

No, that's equivalent to Bell running up to Hestia, asking her for status update, then run back to the Dungeon, rinse and repeat. It'd be kind of ridicolous, you need to decide how much to train each session and then have your status updated. Exiting the dungeon manually will tell you how much excelia you have gained in total, if you believe it's too little, you shouldn't hurry to progress the main storyline, especially if you are playing in Hard Mode.

1) Bell is the only member of her familia. Even within the lore, that doesn't sound that out of place when his one and only goal is to grow stronger.

2) This isn't about lore or story or any of that. It is about making sure the game mechanics synergize well. As an RPG, the central gameplay loop is to fight, get stronger, fight stronger enemies, and repeat. Right now, if you pass an arbitrary story point without having ground out sufficient stats for the new area, you literally cannot progress. Adding something to let you fix that is more of a bugfix than anything.

 

[Winterfire]

If that is the case, shouldn't reposting also increase strength? From what I have observed, it currently does not. Additionally, because that ability cannot be deactivated, it becomes quite difficult to actually level your normal attack.

Riposte is about technique, if you slay monsters with your dagger after eating and increasing your excelia modifier, it shouldn't be a too big of an issue to increase your strength.

1) Bell is the only member of her familia. Even within the lore, that doesn't sound that out of place when his one and only goal is to grow stronger.

2) This isn't about lore or story or any of that. It is about making sure the game mechanics synergize well. As an RPG, the central gameplay loop is to fight, get stronger, fight stronger enemies, and repeat. Right now, if you pass an arbitrary story point without having ground out sufficient stats for the new area, you literally cannot progress. Adding something to let you fix that is more of a bugfix than anything.

While the game doesn't portrait that very well, going all the way to the thirteenth floor and back is something that takes a whole day, and only because Liliruca is skilled at quickly traversing the Dungeon.
Once Bell goes out, it's pretty safe to assume he won't be going in anymore (even if the player can).

If you manage it well, you can already max out everything early in the game, even in hard mode.
While I do not set hard limits and allow the player to grind as much as they want, some things are too senseless and would end up being useless mechanics since at that point I could end up doing without the whole Hestia segment and just raise the stats directly. It would no longer be a story limit, but a "Press a button to raise your stats", just an extra step.

 

[TheOtherDragonborn]

If you manage it well, you can already max out everything early in the game, even in hard mode.
While I do not set hard limits and allow the player to grind as much as they want, some things are too senseless and would end up being useless mechanics since at that point I could end up doing without the whole Hestia segment and just raise the stats directly. It would no longer be a story limit, but a "Press a button to raise your stats", just an extra step.

Uggh, you really are not listening.

While I respect your creative vision, I am telling you that these mechanics will fuck someone over at some point (as they nearly have me multiple times now), in a way that is only resolvable by either quitting, cheating, or going back to replay a huge chunk of the story. They add unnecessary obstacles to the gameplay and frustrate the player for next to no benefit.

I get that you are using the Hestia scene to pace the difficulty curve, I do. But you already have controls for power growth in place, those being the hard stat growth within each level. Adding in even a paid option to 'give Hestia the day off from her dayjob to come and update your status' would add a release valve for a situation that could lose your game a player.

Obviously I, some rando on a pirate site cannot dictate how you should make your game. I only wish to convey the ways I think the experience could be improved while you still have the capacity to do so.

 

[Winterfire]

Uggh, you really are not listening.

While I respect your creative vision, I am telling you that these mechanics will fuck someone over at some point (as they nearly have me multiple times now), in a way that is only resolvable by either quitting, cheating, or going back to replay a huge chunk of the story. They add unnecessary obstacles to the gameplay and frustrate the player for next to no benefit.

I get that you are using the Hestia scene to pace the difficulty curve, I do. But you already have controls for power growth in place, those being the hard stat growth within each level. Adding in even a paid option to 'give Hestia the day off from her dayjob to come and update your status' would add a release valve for a situation that could lose your game a player.

Obviously I, some rando on a pirate site cannot dictate how you should make your game. I only wish to convey the ways I think the experience could be improved while you still have the capacity to do so.

Would adding more status updates within the story fix the issue?

I do not really think you can get locked from progressing though, as items can offer a huge advantage (especially once elixirs are added).
If anything it would make the fight longer, and you'd need to prepare yourself differently, but you should never find yourself stuck.

 

[TheOtherDragonborn]

Would adding more status updates within the story fix the issue?

I mean it would make that situation less likely, but not prevent it entirely.

I do not really think you can get locked from progressing though, as items can offer a huge advantage (especially once elixirs are added).
If anything it would make the fight longer, and you'd need to prepare yourself differently, but you should never find yourself stuck.

Again, a bandage that doesn't address the core problem.

Let me give an example of what I mean. Let's say that you are at the point in the story where you enter floor 13 for the first time. Your stats aren't very good, so attacking those enemies gives next to no improvement in the stats that would help (for example, in hard, I get attacked by 9 enemies and do about 1/4 of their hp per hit, meaning I take a total of 9 hits for each hit to increase my strength, so my endurance grows, but my attack does not). Knowing that this is the first time on floor 13, and not having seen the anime, I grind for a bit then complete the objective. I then see a lot of plot, get a level (which gives me mostly hp due to the above), then have to fight a boss.

The issue is that my attack is insufficient to damage the boss and no items will make that better. Potions do not restore enough hp to give me long enough to win, and maybe my agility isn't high enough to hit in the first place. So I lose and get kicked out to the town menu. But then what? The Hestia level scene already happened so I can't get better stats to redo the fight, and where I am in the story makes it hard to level strength even if I go back to before all the plot!

This is an example, and while there may be ways out of it, none of them are good and all of them are unnecessarily frustrated by my inability to level myself to overcome this situation.

A variant of this situation is what led me to post here initially, where I fought the greyback way too early but could not improve my stats. So instead I had to replay the fight until I got enough crits to barely pull through. I was then severely under leveled for the next bit where I had to dungeon crawl for a long time before I could increase my stats enough and grind efficiently.

So yes, more level up screens would help, but the best solution is to just let the player level their stats when they need to. It is far better for a player to accidently over level themselves than be stuck under leveled and unable to progress.

 

[Winterfire]

A variant of this situation is what led me to post here initially, where I fought the greyback way too early but could not improve my stats. So instead I had to replay the fight until I got enough crits to barely pull through. I was then severely under leveled for the next bit where I had to dungeon crawl for a long time before I could increase my stats enough and grind efficiently.

If you mean the Silverback (where you get the Hestia Knife), then you might misremember.
Hestia updates your stats before the boss fight starts, and if you lose, you can try again (and have the extra stats from the fight, so you'll eventually succeed), or decide to grind a little and try again.
That should be more of a chance to grind your stats up rather than a dead end.


As for the rest of what you have mentioned, I'll look into it carefully.
I am going to try with adding the elixirs and more stat updates screens, and then I could also an optional setting to enable warnings so that new players are made aware they are about to face a boss, and older players can simply toggle the warnings off.
Those warnings would be useful only for those bosses where a game over happens i fyou lose... There should be only two, for the rest as long as the other bosses work like the Silverback, it should be a non-issue.


I could also add in your suggestion partially for some story points: If losing to the Minotaur brings me back to a point where my stats are not updated like the Silverback, I could enable a button to have my status updated on the first loss, then disable it once you finally defeat the Minotaur.
I am sure if I implement all of these solutions, the issue will be fixed.

 

[Winterfire]

TheOtherDragonborn I was also thinking of toggling a status update everytime you finish 3 quests... Right now, aside from Demeter (which needs to be redone) and Airmid, quests do not give many other rewards, I'd like to rework that so offering a status update would probably work well.

 

[vilewe7570]

Bell is not a demigod, he's a normal human.

Is this like the anime version of "normal" because the demigod was more believable

 

[1Teddy1]

Is this like the anime version of "normal" because the demigod was more believable

The Gods/Goddess of Danmachi can't have children instead they give a blessing called Falna to mortals which is basically a Gamer like power to increase their stats by slaying monsters and a chance to gain skills.

 

[vilewe7570]

The Gods/Goddess of Danmachi can't have children instead they give a blessing called Falna to mortals which is basically a Gamer like power to increase their stats by slaying monsters and a chance to gain skills.

If there was any reason to deviate from cannon for the joy of the fans it would be letting Hestia and the other goddesses be able to get knocked up

 

[TheOtherDragonborn]

TheOtherDragonborn I was also thinking of toggling a status update everytime you finish 3 quests... Right now, aside from Demeter (which needs to be redone) and Airmid, quests do not give many other rewards, I'd like to rework that so offering a status update would probably work well.

Hmmm, that could help quite a bit. Could you also potentially add in a repeatable quest (maybe some sort of combat mission in the countryside)? That would cleanly address both my original complaint and your current misgivings!

Also as a quick question, I finished the content of R19 without directly encountering Aisha. I assume that content is in a later build (please tell me I didn't miss it...)?

 

[Winterfire]

Hmmm, that could help quite a bit. Could you also potentially add in a repeatable quest (maybe some sort of combat mission in the countryside)? That would cleanly address both my original complaint and your current misgivings!

Also as a quick question, I finished the content of R19 without directly encountering Aisha. I assume that content is in a later build (please tell me I didn't miss it...)?

It is impossible to miss Aisha, she will come to you, no matter how you handle Haruhime.
The most important thing is that you have no route, and you did all the brothel scenes (3 for Samira, 3 for Lena).
As for R22 (next alpha release) there's no Aisha yet.

I do not like repeatable stuff where I can help it, so my aim is to have enough quests to last till the end of the game, since they are minor quests it is not an impossible task.

 

[jadih96207]

Would adding more status updates within the story fix the issue?

I do not really think you can get locked from progressing though, as items can offer a huge advantage (especially once elixirs are added).
If anything it would make the fight longer, and you'd need to prepare yourself differently, but you should never find yourself stuck.

An item that would give you a glimpse into what your gains are could help. It's the mystery that makes people want to see how much they improved.

Does that grind translate to the strength bonus they are aiming for? If the only way to figure it out is to bug the shit out of Hestia well to some that's eccentric however in RPGs it's handled by the Guild

Having a plus color next to the stat would give an idea of where you at or if what you're doing is having the effect you want. Reasons why the official games don't follow canon and just update it like other RPGs is because some rules sound better in a story setting than when implemented as game mechanics.

 

[Winterfire]

An item that would give you a glimpse into what your gains are could help. It's the mystery that makes people want to see how much they improved.

Does that grind translate to the strength bonus they are aiming for? If the only way to figure it out is to bug the shit out of Hestia well to some that's eccentric however in RPGs it's handled by the Guild

Having a plus color next to the stat would give an idea of where you at or if what you're doing is having the effect you want. Reasons why the official games don't follow canon and just update it like other RPGs is because some rules sound better in a story setting than when implemented as game mechanics.

Not being an official game and not aiming to have "market success" is exactly what allows me to explore those possibilities and stay within canon as much as possible, with some exceptions like having colossal floors where you have to walk up and down everytime, mostly because I'd quit at that point myself

 

[letronix]

If there was any reason to deviate from cannon for the joy of the fans it would be letting Hestia and the other goddesses be able to get knocked up

I don't know how likely is for this to happen, but I would love for this to be the case. Seconding this, at least one can dream.

 

[Winterfire]

I don't know how likely is for this to happen, but I would love for this to be the case. Seconding this, at least one can dream.

Pregnancy is something that I want to add to all heroines, including some deities.
I do not want to make a cheap "Goddesses can get pregnant!", but obviously it won't be canon either. I had a pretty solid idea in mind for a while, and that's what I will ultimately go for.

However, in case you did not hear, all of that will happen in the sequel (different game, but all the data from this game can be imported). I aim to make a public post related to the sequel by the end of this year if I manage to do so!

-edit-
I do not have a pregnancy fetish though, so the pregnancy content will be about the same quality as Overlord H's at least when it comes to writing.
I am open to suggestions if you'd like to see anything in particular involving that fetish.

 

[trumbon]

Played Overlord and was damn good, so I decided to try this too. I really like the addition of the DC gameplay and the no harem but I'm not that interested in the current love interests.
What's in plan for the second part? I'd really love to see Loki and Tione, Tiona as love interests.

 

[Winterfire]

Played Overlord and was damn good, so I decided to try this too. I really like the addition of the DC gameplay and the no harem but I'm not that interested in the current love interests.
What's in plan for the second part? I'd really love to see Loki and Tione, Tiona as love interests.

There'll be no Tione, there will be Tiona and Loki is a possibility (I haven't thought about it yet).
In the second part, aside from continuing the current routes, the new ones you'd expect will be introduced (Riveria, Ais, Ryuu, and so on, in order as they'd happen in the canon story).

I'd also like to do something with the Xenos, I'll avoid any spoiler in case you haven't read/watched the anime, but I personally enjoy Monster Girls, especially spiders, so there'll be a few routes for them no matter what