They were incredibly rude first, I responded in kind. And my opinion was that it was a good game with at least one really stupidly bad game design choice.
no, they weren't rude. you start the "rudeness". and said "stupid" in face of all evidence provided it's
incredibly rude.
repeat a thing the n-th time don't make it more true compared the first.
Balancing things based on having a character that is easily missable is poor design. It's not an opinion, it's just a fact. I understand that you like being able to easily miss a character for some reason, but it's poor game design. I can't fathom thinking it's good design the way it's implemented in this case. It's not a deal breaker or anything, but I was just commenting on it because it made me feel bad. Apparently this means I'm a stupid, spoiled, whiny, casual and throwing a virtual tantrum and without integrity(all according to snugglepuff).
- first you should start to
read the fucking replies to your posts.
- secondo no
mandatory fight in aka's route is balanced over 3 party memebres, there are two or three very hard
optional fights you
should, but not need, have here (one of them is pure xp and nothing more, i add).
- third stop repeat false and disproved claim as facts, because they aren't.
you don't have the character in party, you litteraly don't know her impact, both in fluff and crunch. so your nonsense it's at best speculative. you keeping whining about the absolute need of a missable charactetr to complete a section it doesn't is whiny e spoiled. and you just double it down ignoring anything is written in the reply to yours posts.
(1)Good design would be giving you the choice of saving her or not. A direct choice on whether to do one thing or another. You should know you will be missing out on her by choosing to do something else, (2)as it is you do not know until the game difficulty goes from 3 to 7 and you wonder why. (3)Then some quest text alludes to having to choose who to give an item to but automatically chooses one person because the other isn't in your party, so you wonder why the text even says that. (4)Not to mention that particular fight you have to wait for the enemy to miss or you to evade to even be able to attack because otherwise you have to use healing potions or revive every single turn. (5)So you eventually look up the walkthrough and find out you've missed a character in your party that you'd like to have, that will have story ramifications through the whole game and gameplay ramifications. (6)It wasn't made obvious that you missed them, despite going all over and attempting to not miss anything it still happened. I'm pretty sure I can continue on and continue enjoying the game without her, but I'm not going to without that character. (7)I do not want to miss a character that will have interactions with the whole cast and be a part of the whole game. The reason I feel so stung by it is because I was loving the game and missing out feels fucking bad. (8)It's a viscerally bad design choice that feels bad for the player if they missed it. And it's not like it's a sudden thing, you don't actually realize you missed out till hours and hours later so you've already saved over where you could go back. I had no idea, none, that I fully missed her.
(1) the choice is here. when you find her you can leave here where she is. and forget it.
(2) the game never go from 3 to 7 (i suppose out of 10, because out of 1000 will be nothing) in mandatory content. only optional content will be harder, as the spider house or the hidden port, and to complete optional content usualy is required some
optional prerequisite. it's basically textbook definition of challenging content in rpg.
(3) there isn't in the whole game a situation like that, what nonsense you are talking?
(4) if you don't understand the combat system isn't a problem of the combat system, but yours. i never, ever, used a consumables in the whole game {only orc section aside, because they don't have healing ability}, and i'm not talking consumables in combat, but consumables period. if you keeping dying it's because you don't know how fight, or you are so horrendously underleveled and underequipped. before accusing the game of shortcoming, start to check
your shortcoming. and you will sound a less whiny e spoiled
(5) great, you finally find the textbook definition of optional content. yes, it's how this thing works in the real (gaming) world. expecially in old school c/j RPG. in the time even doing the quest in particular order you can gain or miss characters. without any compensation if you miss it. [take the recent BG3 for example]
(6) if you where thoroughly you will never miss her, because a mountain with a road it's a significative indicator. you can miss it, but it's you missing an hint, not the game not giving it to it {and i think the hint it's to subtle, and some more strong clue should be given the time you can go and pick her, but it's lightyear away from your position}
(7) add a [optional] character and don't make her interact with any other character of the game,
that, will be a huge fucking bad design choice. if you add something, you must make it count, and not only in a mechanical level.
(8) you keep repeat it, but it's false as the first time. you never hear of things like "the true ending" you can unlock only if you do a series of action over the dozens if not hundreds hours of gameplay? and missing even one of it, at the start, mean you need to restart from the beginning? it was a very common occurence of the jrpg genere
Without getting into the whole "who was mean to who", "skill issue", and "you are supposed to need a guide" arguments, it is bad design that the timed-section automatically ends after doing Varia and the Impaler's quests.
prime directive of rpg genere, doing the main quest after all the side quests are done. you will never know when a section of the story and map will be blocked.
The problem is not that Altina is optional, but rather that she can be missed simply by doing things in the "wrong order" when the game does not give any reason to believe the order in which you do those things should matter at all.
this is a very common occurence in the c/j RPG genere. expecially in older one. i cannot said to agree with, expecially if no hint o deducibile logic order can be made. but exist.
Simply adding a "shiny spot" on the map where you can have Simon interact with it and do a little confirmation prompt with something like "are we certain we have done everything we should concern ourselves with in the Feroholm region before moving on?" would be a sufficient patch imo. You can keep Altina optional without inviting the player into a mistake they couldn't be aware of.
it's to blatant. just the first time you eneter in the feroholm region map simon said something about altina still in the keep and the general location of it. it's well enough.
Don't think this should be such a controversial take since I believe the dev herself has said that Altina's recruitment and the timed-section is one of the few bits of the game she might want to fix a little bit on the final polishing of the game.
but for totally different reason.
optional character, expecially with alternate "version" create a huge overhead of works. you need to take in account all the possibile permutation and because you can miss her, she will cannot have any prominent role in any section. or people missing her will be cut out of it.
in the game there are only two character with "alternative version" and one of them is optional, you find both of them at the same time in the story [earlier on].
nowere in the game you will find again a optional character [orc aside, but their sections are very limited in scope and size] or a possibile alternative between two. they will make an absurd amount of works for a single dev.
