Ephemeral Tale News

Hey all,
Today's patch is another smaller one focused on refining the current balance. Also fixed a couple of bugs, and sprinkled a few lines of new dialogue in there. At some point in the future, there will be a patch that adds a chat option to your mercenary friends, further fleshing out the world and characters. Ideally, they'll each get a quest line that will take you to special areas eventually. No clue when the quest lines will be added, but I'll be sure to let you know when I have more of a grasp on that.

• Fixed a bug where Shoddy Twine’s ability would stay active when unequipped
  
• Upped base player Hit Rate
  
• Drastically lowered Evade Rate on all enemies
  
• Adjusted stats on some enemies
  
• Upped Kingpinch’s Health pool by 20%
  
• Further adjusted stats on Clarke, Merlin, and Siegfried
  
• Small universal adjustment to enemy health pools
  
• Added a few lines of dialogue here and there
  
• Fixed a bug where a room in the Corrupted Castle was inaccessible
  

This patch is focused mostly on balance stuff again, with another fix included! Additionally, a few lines of dialogue have been added to help with world building and expanding the story. While I never really envisioned Ephemeral Tale as particularly dialogue heavy (I prefer more exposition style storytelling, ala Dark Souls, personally), there has been feedback that implies that you guys may want more depth to the narrative. As much as I can add to that, I’m committed to doing!

I’m currently beginning to plan the combat/statistic overhaul. I’m guessing that it may take a few weeks to fully prepare it for Live, as there’s a few systemic changes that will need to be made. While I can’t guarantee that this will be exactly how it plays out, here’s the general goals of the changes and what I hope to accomplish:

1. Player has stats that go up per level, like classic JRPGs
   
2. Player can also assign bonus stats manually, to encourage building around their gear set
   
3. Enemies will provide a consistent experience assuming even stat distribution and no bonus stats distributed
   
4. Players can go to any zone in any order, with exceptions (first and last dungeon)
   
5. Gear will not scale with the player, adding another vector for replacement and experimentation
   

I feel that most of these are pretty self explanatory, but we'll go through em anyway just to be clear. Points 1 and 2 are to allow for both player experimentation with builds, but also avoiding the player messing up their character beyond redemption. Think of it as "you can do whatever you want, but there's a safety net in case you're a big 'ol dumdum."

Points 3 and 4 are again tied together, where I'd like players to be able to go to any zone in any order (including future zones). Assuming that you move from the Forgotten Forest to the Corrupted Castle with the exact same gear, same level, etc., the enemies should pose roughly the same threat to you. I'll be focusing on Green rarity gear as a baseline for difficulty, so that those with higher geared characters can express their power advantage over enemies.

Point 5 is a bit harder to sum up in a bullet-point, but it's more or less about shifting the gear to be closer to other loot driven RPGs. So if you're level 25, you won't want to use that Legendary item you got in the Caverns at level 5. This change will likely result in the doubling of all item durability, or the removal of durability entirely.

As these are large, sweeping, systemic changes, they won't be something that drops in a random patch (say tomorrow, this weekend, next week, etc.), it'll be in a weekly patch and stated in advance. Anyway, keep the awesome feedback coming, and I'll keep working on improving and extending the game!

Have fun,

-- Ryan

Hey all,

Small patch tonight. There may be some lingering issues w/ pushable blocks in the last dungeon, if there are please let me know!

• Fixed a bug where the “fog of war” effect of the last zone would persist when leaving the zone.
  
• Fixed a bug where Kingpinch would continue to inspire his followers, even in death.
  
• Adjusted some text to give proper feedback on Upholstergeist’s Ethereal ability
  
• Adjusted Merlin's base stats to make him less of a FSU-Kinda guy (he got the nerf, but smol-boi nerf)
  

Wanted to give you guys an update on a current bug, as well. Right now, Scrolls of Power will appear to have no impact on player stats. From what I can tell in my testing, this is due to the clamping of stats that I implemented in v.98. Your stats are being upped, but the current formula is lowering them more than they're going up so it's not visually showing in the menu.

This is going to be addressed in a future patch. I'm leaning towards leaving the game in it's current balance state for a few days to a week as I work on a complete overhaul of all the in-game systems. This would include:

1. Damage formulas
   
2. Stat formulas
   
3. Stat numbers
   
4. Gear drops
   
5. Boss mechanics
   

Pretty much, completely change the damage numbers you see in combat, completely change the numbers in the menu, change how gear stats are determined, make boss mechanics more intuitive, and add non-unique (no special ability) gear to a world-pool. SirSquatch has given me some awesome ideas and feedback, along with Sylardean as well. To implement it requires taking the time to ensure that the changes are made properly.

In theory, these changes shouldn't be incompatible with existing saves, but I don't want to mislead you and say that your saves will 100% be forward compatible with this overhaul. I feel comfortable saying I'm 80% certain they will, though.

Thanks to you guys, we've improved the game a massive amount already. I can't wait to see where it is in a month! I hope that despite the wild-ass balancing issues, you're enjoying your time with Ephemeral Tale! I'm enjoying updating it for you, even if I've started forming my first gray hairs due to it.

Thanks a ton, and have fun!

-- Ryan

Hey all,

Got a micro patch here. This was supposed to be .98b but I had already uploaded and tested the build by the time I noticed I didn't update the header. So now it's .98a2!

Mostly balance changes from the feedback I've seen today, and a bug fix thrown in for good measure. I'm still looking for more information on the bug where bridges become unusable in the Oasis, so if you've encountered this and can recall anything, let me know!

• Lowered encounter rate in the Forgotten Forest
  
• Lowered encounter rate in the Corrupted Castle
  
• Adjusted the scaling of enemies stats universally
  
• Adjusted potential stat variation on equipment generation
  Previously, items could generate with up to +4 points in each stat. As of today, they will generate with up to +2 points in each stat.
  
• Adjusted scaling of players stat
  
• Adjusted damage formulas to be more forgiving
  
• Fixed an issue where losing against a boss would still reward the Guardians’ various blessings
  

Finally, because of the changes in regards to balance today, those of you who have amassed (hoarded) a trove of treasures (Lv. 5 gear) will probably (almost definitely) be a tad overpowered. Last night's 3am patch had some negative impacts on less geared out players, and at the moment it's hard to tell what of that was new gear being had from the update versus scaling changes gone awry. I decided that it's likely better to let the strongest of you have fun whappin' on everything like the brutal loot-seekers that you are, than to punish those who aren't quite at that level yet.

It's incredibly likely that once the balance is in a tolerable, if not a bit painful state, I'll be going through and retuning everything to better fit the current needs of the sandbox. Damage formulas will likely be done from scratch, enemy scaling, equipment scaling, etcetera. Because that's a much larger endeavor than these adjustments I've been making so far, I'm not committing to a specific time frame for that quite yet-- it'll require a lot of internal testing, then probably slowly bringing it for you guys to ensure that it scales well on the higher end.

Again, thank you guys for all the patience as I sort through these issues, and for your awesome (no, seriously, it's amazing) feedback! As always, if there are any problems that flare up, let me know in the discussion forums!

Have fun :)

-- Ryan

Hey all,

Sorry for the late night patch! Due to the issues with items not feeling significant enough, .98 took some drastic measures to increase the feeling of satisfaction given by items. Unfortunately, I may have swung the pendulum a bit too far in the opposite direction and caused some issues. One of our members at the discussion forums managed to one-shot a boss, dealing almost 40,000 damage in a single blow. At the risk of being the fun police, I thought I should address it before it got too bananas.

• Fixed a bug where Dabby’s chat option could lock up
  
• Lowered bonus stat rate of higher rarity items. For example, the boost from .98 was 40% on a Lv. 5 item. It is now 20%.
  
• Fixed a bug where you couldn’t interact with the Keeper during a certain sequence.
  
• Fixed a bug where after draining the Oasis, re-entering could cause you to enter the wrong instance of the Oasis (drained, but you went into full, for example)
  
• Added a few folks to the credits for their amazing help w/ the game
  
• Adjusted how parameters (atk/def/mat/mdf/agi/luk) interact with stat rate from higher rarity items
  

These other changes are due to feedback again given on the discussion forums. I apologize immensely for the necessity of these quick-succession patches-- there's a lot of moving parts to the balance of this game, and my small testing circle can only catch so much. We had 3 separate, successful completions of the game without issue (minus balance concerns), so to find out that there's these many annoying little bugs still left is super frustrating for me as a developer.

Regardless, I'm obviously still in it for the long haul and plan on making this into the best game it can be. To me, it doesn't matter that we're in Early Access-- I'm asking you for your hard earned money, so it's on me to deliver a product that you feel is worthy of your time and effort. Hopefully the majority of you feel that we're there, or on our way there. If you don't, then I apologize and hope to do right by you in the weeks and months to come.

Anyway, it's 3am and I've been working on patches for 14 hours today, so I'm going to bed! I'll see you guys on the flip side :)

Have fun!
-- Ryan

Hey all,

Got another round of bug fixes and balance adjustments today, thanks to Sylardean from the discussion forums and a couple of our friends from the Something Classic discord. Let's jump right into it:

• Adjusted how hit rates are calculated. The number shown in the menu should now better reflect the realities of combat.
  Please continue to give us your feedback in this regard!
  
• Gave Escape Rate two more iterations of adjustments. Escaping no longer considers agility, only the amount of alive enemies.
  This should feel significantly more consistent. Please continue to give us your feedback on this item!
  
• Fixed a bug where Scrolls of Power would be consumed twice (whoops)
  
• Fixed a bug where rescuing the Fairy locked in a chest could result in the fairy giving you the gift of Mimic (whoops)
  
• The Cloak of the Betrayer has rebranded itself, and is now the Crown of the Usurper
  For existing Cloaks out there, they’ll continue to be Cloaks until they break. There is no change to the effect, slot, or anything else outside of the graphic and name of the item.
  
• Fixed a bug where certain abilities (Cleave, for example) were incorrectly categorized, ensuring they would cause damage against particularly evasive enemies
  
• Fixed a bug where certain status effects would fall off when an enemy was damaged
  
• Dabby has taken business courses at his favorite college (Geaux Tigers), and has revamped his entire business model.
  
• Did a SFX pass, changing out a few sounds to be more intuitive
  
• Increased the amount of healing Potions give
  
• Increased the amount of health a revived party member starts with
  
• Increased the base statistics of all companions by a significant amount
  
• Universally lowered enemy HP
  
• Smoothed out variance in enemy level differences
  
• Massively upped the Bonus Stat rate of higher rarity items. For example, a Lv. 5 item used to get a 10% stat boost applied to all stats. The boost is now 40%.
  
• Fixed a bug where the player could get quadruple strike on non-bow items by equipping a bow and swapping
  
• Fixed a bug where the player could walk through certain walls in caves
  
• Fixed a bug where crit rate was lower than it showed in the menus
  

During internal tests, there was a case where the vendor update to Dabby broke a pre-release save file, but we failed to recreate this on live servers across any of our internal save files. If you experience an issue, we've created a new branch of Ephemeral Tale that you can access through right clicking the game in your library, and hitting properties.

The "previous_build" branch will contain the prior build of the game as a form of safety net should the update cause issues for you, so that you can continue to play the game.

If you experience any issues with a save, please post in our discussion forums and let us know. Additionally, we're still heavily looking for feedback on the general balance of the game. Is it too tough? Too easy? Are companions too weak, too strong? We're invested in your play experience with Ephemeral Tale-- and we can only improve it with your help, feedback, and passion.

Over the coming days there will likely continue to be more quick patches for various issues and balance changes, but once we're in a relatively stable place, we plan on patches slowing down to a weekly or bi-weekly cadence. Getting a build up and running on Steam takes a bit of time between packaging, uploading, testing, patch notes, etc. Ideally, we would like to have a weekly patch drop that would be a bit more substantial-- more changes to balance, content drops, etcetera. This would allow us more time to ensure that fixes are clean, but also spend more time developing additional content for the game. Again, thanks to Sylardean's fantastic feedback over on our forums, we have a great many ideas of things that we can tackle moving forward.

Anyway, I've talked enough for today! Please enjoy your evening, and have fun with this new version of Ephemeral Tale!

I also reserve the right to push another emergency patch in case somehow you guys find some other massive oversight that I've missed