Chapter6-3 Map and System Corrections and Apologies
We were going to update this in a few days, but we have moved up the schedule. Thank you for all your patience.
The following adjustments have been made.
0 Replaced Life claymore in Mainstage with Auto weapon.
zInstead, we have increased the EXP of Tier 4-10 by approximately 1.25x and fluctuated the effect of Golden feather from 30% to 20%.
It is now easier to gain some levels during Tier 4-10.
zTier 11 EXP has been reduced from the normal 2.0x to approximately 1.25x.
zHeavenly potions placed at the edge of the map, instead of portals, have been changed to Drop of dream ocean.
The Overscore has been changed from 5,000,000 to 4,000,000.
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(The following is a slightly modified version of the text I posted on Discord. It's weird to copy and paste an apology.)
There have been many changes to the game balance, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause to our players.
The programmers were very busy this time, and the design of the balancing aspect was more complicated than usual, but even if we had been able to design the game as planned to some extent, there would have been about 1/2~1/3 of the amount of bugs and design errors that caused problems.
After Chapter-6, the focus of the developer's thinking has shifted from "the structure and balance of the stages" to "the systemic and thematic aspects of the stages that are intuitively interesting and easy to grasp the enjoyment of the stages.
This is for several reasons, but mainly because after the implementation of Legacy, the balance will not be as consistent as it has been in the past, and also because of ideological issues related to Sunstone's upcoming inflation.
For example, Tutorial 1 and Mini are already different games if they have 1000 Sunstones, and Sunstone will probably continue to inflate in the future.
In addition, there will be a big difference in the amount of time and the amount of game strategies depending on whether a player is a completely solo player or a player who shares information with others.
Furthermore, due to the introduction of dynamic gimmicks such as Legacy and Magic, it will not be possible to make adjustments as in the previous chapters, and we do not think it is a good idea to place Sunwishers like "spend 100 Sunstone to get ATK+1".
Therefore, we have a tendency to balance the game roughly from Chapter-6 onward.
Therefore, what we are focusing on adjusting is very different from the balance design as it has been in the past.
For example, OLD has a "tier system" where tiers change based on the order of entry, and Rainbow has a "64 maps with the same layout but different items in each map" in addition to the Job system. (This dynamic and intuitive nature of the system is what makes the game so unique.
(While this dynamic and intuitive nature makes the game work even if there are gaps in Sunstone, it also means that certain parts of the game are so poorly designed that taking certain steps could seriously disrupt the game. In fact, we enjoy it and embrace it in some aspects.)
We have been working on the structure of the stages and the game balance to some extent (including stages to be implemented in the future), but there are many stages and game systems that are no longer viable given Sunstone's inflationary nature.
Therefore, most of the work time has been spent on "drafting the system to be implemented and verifying the rough system" rather than "checking the balance of the stages", and the time spent on the verification of the balance has become much shorter.
(Actually, it would be most desirable to complete the stage gimmicks and systems and then continue to make adjustments for 2-3 weeks, but if a new system is sparked during the adjustment process, it cannot help but be implemented.)
In fact, it is possible that people who wanted balance for Chapters 1-2 do not want balance for the later stages and DLC, and we have received comments from players about this.
Also, as I mentioned, we should be thinking of a system that would be interesting as a game and adjusting the balance at the same time, but we are not good enough and it would probably take 3 times as much development work and more than 10 years to achieve it, so we can't do that.
(Perhaps the limit of the game balance we could achieve is Dawn, and after Chapter-6, there will probably be no stage that exceeds that in terms of completeness in the future.)
Since the existing system is no longer balanced, we are focusing on the abstract aspects of the game system and atmosphere, rather than on the concrete aspects such as the placement of items or the adjustment of parameters.
The players will not receive an abstract idea of a "game system" but a concrete idea of a "completed game stage," and it is only natural that they will have problems with such aspects of the game.
(As for Chapter-6, the price is fixed semi-permanently, but this is because after Chapter-6, it is no longer possible to design a balance with a concrete form like in the previous stages, and the game's enjoyment and direction will change greatly by focusing on an abstract balance design.)
However, due to our development stance and our bad habit of not being able to meet deadlines, we tend to make rough adjustments to the balance of the game, even if we can find room for it.
We think that a DLC system like this should be consistent in the way people enjoy it, but it is probably difficult to do so.
However, we think that this kind of phenomenon will occur in future stages, especially in the Very Hard stage.
We apologize for any inconvenience caused.