Ephemeral Tale News

Ah, yes. Here we are again! As the days pass, so do the Pupdates! This week, I brought the balance changes that we tested out last week into the rest of the game. Additionally, we've got some tweaks to tutorial prompts to better the presentation, and a few changes to drop rates as well as status effects in order to make them more consistent! Additionally, I'd like to give you an update on a bug we've been tracking.

There's currently a bug in the menu system that can cause the menu to enter a "timeout error" upon using a consumable item. This is perceived as a "hang," where your input locks up entirely and you can't do anything about it. This is a tricky bug to squash, as it doesn't consistently appear-- additionally, it's appearance seems to be hardware based rather than software based, so short of us building whatever rig causes this to occur, it's difficult to nail down why this is occurring. Right now, the plan is to simply re-write the portions of the menu that are causing problems. The code is some magical, black-box voodoo trickery at the moment, and when we re-wrote the portion that caused problems (that we were aware of), it broke other stuff. So we're now playing whack-a-mole with the menu bugs!

Now that we've discussed that, into the changelog, and then we can discuss a point of feedback that you guys gave us through the demo: loot!

[h2]Ephemeral Tale 1.18.1 Changelog[/h2]

• Brought balance changes from last week to all remaining (and future) zones, including:
  
• Forgotten Forest, Corrupted Castle, Occluded Oasis, Great Palace, Sunken Summit, and Mute Mountains (+ future zones)
  
• Those changes ensure that if the player is under a certain level (15), the likelihood that an enemy will “wait” for their turn is significantly higher. This should allow for newer players to get used to the different pace of the game, as this will gradually lessen as you approach level 15
  
• Fixed a bug where under certain circumstances, the above protections could be turned off early or randomly turned back on
  
• Added additional tutorial prompts to guide players understanding of the game
  
• Added an additional room to the large tree in the Mute Mountain
  
• “Ignite” state (Faerie Fire burn) now lasts a set 3 turns (instead of a variable 3-5), and has a new icon to differentiate it from Bobbity-Boo’s “burning” state caused by her boss mechanic
  
• “Poison” state (Hurf’s enraged attacks + others) now lasts a set 5 turns (instead of a variable 3-5)
  
• Adjusted colors on a few icons for various equips
  
• Lowered drop rate of the Scepter of Worlds slightly
  
• Lowered drop rate of Goldbloom’s Manabranch slightly
  
• Lowered drop rate of Cape of Magician’s Envy slightly

There’s been quite a few folks that have remarked on wanting there to be a wider variety of loot w/ effects available. I actually find myself in agreement with this general concept, while disagreeing on specifics. Let me explain myself here.

When we released into Early Access, loot was very simple-- each enemy had one item dedicated to them-- if you wanted that item, you farmed that guy. An example would be the Burning Ring:



This item drops (almost) exclusively from Bibbity, an enemy found inside of the Forgotten Forest. You can also get it in some rare circumstances via a Mimic or some other “treasure goblin”-esque enemy, akin to a Dablin or Bunnet (or randomly from Sabrina). In general though, the easiest way to farm for a specific item is to identify what enemy it drops off of. This is incredibly difficult to do at the moment due to the “world” loot pool.

When we dropped Major Update #1 way back in February (I think?), I added a large amount of items to the game that had no abilities attached. This was done for a number of reasons. For example, one of the issues that plagued the game initially was the lack of sense of mystery to loot. Since each enemy had one item that they dropped, you only saw new drops as frequently as you saw new enemy types. Additionally, for the same reason, players felt that loot was overall too sparse and infrequent, with you getting a piece of gear once every few fights.

The new items that were added were added into a separate loot pool from the individual enemy drops, and that list is currently shared across the various zones of the game. That loot pool currently holds 24 items. In order to further improve the “feel-goods” (a very in-depth, technical term that means “thing feels good, oog boog”), I’ve got some ideas that I’m going to start really hammering down over the course of the next few weeks.

First, I’d like to lower the amount of items in that world loot pool. Not drastically, but enough to improve the “ooh, nice” element of getting a new item. Right now, I’m leaning towards lowering it to about 18. I’m also looking to break the world pool into a zone-specific pool, as this would allow for better theming of items to fit a particular zone. Take, for instance, the Leather Gloves:



Is there really a need for these to be available in a zone like the Corrupted Castle, where Floryn’s aren’t present? Ideally, I would be able to replace these with something more directly themed to the Castle, or whatever zone you’re currently exploring. This would also allow for more “storytelling through flavor text” opportunities, which is an added bonus!

Lastly, I’m leaning towards adding a handful of special (i.e., they have effects) items into these pools. This would mean that overall, you might get slightly less loot in your pocket, but it would be able to better serve the needs of the game (filling in lore, gaps in builds, etc).

I’ll likely begin to plot this out during the upcoming week. Something I’m also looking to address is the general view of difficulty in the game-- that could be a whole pupdate in-and-of itself, but the gist is that Ephemeral Tale has some presentation issues that cause the difficulty to feel completely wrong to some folks. A lot of this comes down to expectations: I imagine a fair amount of you started the game, got whapped in the mouth in the Lost Caverns, and were kind of taken aback by this. It’s intentional, and indicative of the rest of the game’s difficulty curve, but also rather misleading.

The game doesn’t get fundamentally too much harder than it starts off at, but rather maintains that flow throughout, while increasing the number of mechanics thrown at you (and as such, maintaining that difficulty level). This doesn’t really jive well with the traditional difficulty curve of JRPGs (which goes back to those Souls roots that the game once had), and can feel bad if you’re not properly made aware of those expectations.

As one person said in a Steam comment, they came in expecting a cute, relaxing experience and got the ever-living snot kicked out of them, repeatedly. They weren’t mad about it, just kinda… shocked. The goal is to properly set those expectations moving forward, and I think that's where the tutorialization is currently failing. So I plan to change that more as we get closer to release! As always, if you have any feedback feel free to chuck it my way!

Until next time, stay safe and have fun!
-- Ryan
Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/jpStbUf

Another week has passed, and we have even more changes to balance and presentation! I learned a lot this week from the release of our demo on PC and Xbox One, and the lessons learned there will be the focus of a few of the changes coming soon. If you didn't get to check out the demo, no worries! It's still up on PC, and will return to the Xbox marketplace later this year when I have the time to update it with a bunch of changes. With that out of the way, let's talk about this week's changelog, and the remaining path from where we are now, to our full release!

[h2]Ephemeral Tale 1.17.1 Changelog[/h2]

• Polished the title screen some more
  
• Lowered the amount that damage taken reduces durability by 50% (in other words, stuff should last longer)
  
• Fixed a bug where the Blessed Flask could revert into a normal Flask
  
• Fixed an issue where Mimics had an insanely high hit rate
  
• Internally, these were still treated as Blessed Flasks, so simply resting at a campfire in such an instance should resolve this issue
  
• Further increased the elemental weaknesses of enemies to 200%, universally (up from 150%)
  
• There is no longer a fee associated with entering the dungeon hub
  
• Made Bobbity-Boo’s sprite slightly smaller in order to maintain consistent pixel size across assets
  
• Intimidating enemies will now properly grant Power as a source for leveling up
  
• Cleaned up the presentation of some dialogue in the Forgotten Forest
  
• Bunnet now drops the Cauldron 100% of the time, if that step of Sabrina’s quest is active
  
• Gribbler now gives 33% more Power upon defeating him
  
• Darune now gives 33% less Power upon defeating him
  
• Lowered drop rates of Disco Kicks and Icarus Greaves by ~20% (give or take)
  
• Lowered Slugger’s defense slightly
  
• Lowered Grumptoad’s defense slightly
  
• Lowered Kingpinch’s defense slightly
  
• Tweaked balance of the Lost Caverns

Last week, I promised a look at what's to come to Ephemeral Tale. I plan to deliver on that promise, so let's talk about the road to release.

When Ephemeral Tale entered Early Access in January, I thought that the game was in much better shape than it actually was. You guys took every bone that the body of the game had, and shattered it into a million little pieces. We've healed since then, and grown stronger because of it! Recently, we released a demo on Steam, the Microsoft Store, and Xbox One as well (with the itch.io demo coming in the next day or two). The feedback we’ve received has been incredible for figuring out what exactly needs to change for the game moving forward, and where we’ve improved since making the demo (as it’s based on a build from around the end of May).

In plain English, what does this mean? I have a list of planned changes to work through before I can call my work on Ephemeral Tale finished. Let’s go through that list, starting with difficulty, moving into content, and wrapping up with the story.

First thing’s first: difficulty. One area where the game has consistently been weak (but grown stronger over time) is in the difficulty curve. For quite some time, the game has been balanced in such a way that you would get used to being slapped around like a ragdoll in the tutorial, and then that would slowly dissipate over the next few hours. Starting this patch, I’m doubling down on my efforts to address this. The immediate way that I’m addressing this is through throttling the action economy of enemies within a certain threshold, and this change went live today in a testing capacity. Without going too deep into it, the general gist is this: if you’re under level 15, enemies in the Lost Cavern will be more likely to waste their turns with a “wait” action instead of attacking. This is a common balancing tactic, but one that I previously tried to implement via hit rates instead of straight action throttling. This will ultimately result in the player taking more hits to kill, surviving longer, and progressing further each time they delve into the Caverns.

In the near future, I plan on adding some more tutorialized sequences to better explain some of the mechanics in the game as well, such as resting as a camp fire (which is admittedly not the most obvious action ever), the lack of consequence of death, and the repair/break system. Next up, let’s talk about content.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve continued to add/expand on content within Ephemeral Tale. We’ve added three new quests (two bringing unique drops, the third bringing a new system for gear recycling) in that push, and I still plan on doing more. I’ve got a couple of ideas for quests, but these ones are slightly more involved (more in terms of implementation, not so much in complexity) and so won’t necessarily drop immediately. Sabrina’s quest also is not yet finished, as she currently allows you to recycle gear into Blue quality gear (with a chance of Purple). While the final upgrade is built and functional internally (Purple with a chance of Orange), it’s not been put into the game yet as I’m planning on pairing it with a future content drop. Right now, players are rather likely to hit the current point in the quest right about when they head to the final dungeon. Adding another asterisk next to the quest would, as such, be rather silly. This also leads into the formal announcement of the next Major Update, Major Update #5. I’ll give it a tagline later, no worries!

I’ve been planning and working on Major Update #5 for some time now, and is planned to introduce more story elements, more zone content and of course, more gear! When Major Update #5 releases, Sabrina’s quest will be completed (either the week of, or the week before). I don’t want to give too much away in the off-chance that plans change, but Major Update #5 will expand on the core (mandatory) content. This will make the pacing of Sabrina’s quest make more sense (in terms of context) in the overall game. After that, we’ll target a further expansion of world-building by bringing more dialogue and personality to the companions. I’ve remarked in the past that I feel that they’re a weak-point of the narrative, so there are plans to address that.

I’m not ready to discuss a lot of these elements yet, however I wanted to give you guys a rough idea of the roadmap I have planned in my head and encourage you (once more) to deliver any feedback you may have, positive or negative. To round out this week's Pupdate, I'd like to give you guys a heads up that next week's patch may be slightly smaller than usual. I've been summoned for jury duty, and that's going to eat into some of the normal development schedule! As such, I'll be putting more of an emphasis on spending the time I have this week on the next content drop as opposed to a more balanced approach (in order to ensure that we don't get too far behind schedule). Regardless, I'm excited for the weeks ahead, and I can't wait to share more with you guys!

Until next time, stay safe and have fun!
-- Ryan

To kick off this week’s Pupdate, there’s now an Ephemeral Tale demo available for people to try if they’re on the fence! This demo will soon be available on Steam (going through the approval process as we speak), and is currently available on Itch.io, the Microsoft Store, and is also available on Xbox One! Yes, you read that correctly-- Ephemeral Tale is coming to console! When Ephemeral Tale leaves Early Access later this year (SoonTM, still some content surprises left to go first), it will release on Xbox One. In the coming weeks, we'll discuss this more in-depth, and talk about the challenges faced when bringing the game to Xbox. But for now, let's talk about this week's changelog!

[h2]Ephemeral Tale 1.16.1 Changelog[/h2]

• Added a new animation for Mire’s Gambit’s burst ability that treats pixels with the respect that they deserve
  
• Added more feedback to the runic crystals in the main dungeon hub to better indicate that the player should be interacting with them
  
• Lowered the rate that Darune appears in the Occluded Oasis
  
• Added flavor text to some items that were lacking flavor text
  
• Whenever an item drops in combat, a sound effect will now play
  
• Note: This should inherit from your SFX volume, if it doesn’t for whatever reason please let me know!
  
• Fixed an issue with passability in the Mute Mountains
  
• Fixed a bug where the screen could be perpetually on fire after re-challenging Bobbity-Boo
  
• Added Corrupted Castle to the title screen
  
• Added new foundation to allow for controlled stat assignment in the future

This week’s changelog finds us addressing some community feedback and reported issues. I’ve changed an animation to treat pixels with respect (all pixels are equal, and should be treated as such), with more being worked on behind-the-scenes. Lots of SFX polish to do on those, yet. Additionally, I’m trying to better achieve a balance of “this game is comprehensible” and “this game doesn’t hold my hand like a child.” There’s a lot of weird little obtuse edges I’m trying to sand down in that regard, so if that’s been an issue for you please let me know.

Darune has had his appearance rate dropped by ~50% to reduce the likelihood that new players will get their butts removed from their bodies by him at random. Following that same train of thought, I’m starting to build out (internally) the ability for gear rolls to be more controlled. Right now, they assign their points completely at random, and so most pieces are split in terms of usefulness, and “god rolls” are hard to come by. The plan is that in the coming weeks, I’ll be able to allow for rolls to dump all of their points into 3-5 stats as opposed to the 8 they currently do, and this should increase the playability of various pieces of gear substantially in addition to allowing you guys more granular control over your builds. This will also allow for even more controlled rolls in New Game+, as well.

This Pupdate is on the shorter side, as I've been busy working on getting the demo ready to go and managing a bunch of behind the scenes stuff, but next week we'll discuss the next upcoming major update (which is still a number of weeks away), and what it means for the rest of the course of development.

Until next time, stay safe and have fun!
-- Ryan
Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/jpStbUf

Hello again! Another week, another Pupdate! This time around, we've got a batch of bug fixes, along with a new quest of sorts. I thought we could try something new, and so this week's quest will be one of an evolving nature. More on that after the changelog:

[h2]Ephemeral Tale 1.15.3 Changelog[/h2]

• Sabrina has made her way to the Pond of Respite
  
• Fixed a bug where it could snow in the Traveller’s Respite
  
• Fixed a bug where you could lose your tail in the Sunken Summit
  
• Fixed a bug where very frightening thunder and lightning could occur in the Mute Mountains
  
• Fixed a bug where benches in the Corrupted Castle had strange Z-ordering
  
• Fixed a bug where certain chests could award fractional Power
  
• Fixed a bug where there was a particular chest available twice, causing it to appear as if you had opened it
  
• Fixed a bug where the color-grading of the Traveller’s Respite could desync
  
• One of the ghosts in the Caverns now disappears upon finishing the tutorial
  
• Added rare enemy text prompts to indicate when a rare enemy type is encountered
  
• Lowered evasiveness of enemies in the Mute Mountains
  
• Additionally, lowered hit rates in Mute Mountains to match other zones

[h2]LOOP (loop, loop)[/h2]

I thought this week would be a fun time to explore the concept of what a "gameplay loop" is, how the content added to the game needs to fit into that loop, and how you can use that knowledge to ensure that what you're adding is valuable (or even using it at a metric to determine the value of the content you've added).



The above picture is an example of what a "gameplay loop" might look like at a fundamental level. The crucial bit that you should keep in mind is that a gameplay loop is, at its core, the flow of one in-game action to the next. If you're playing a shooter, that loop might be run -> aim -> shoot -> die. Well... that last bit might just be me.

Where games like shooters get their longevity (despite having simple gameplay loops) is by changing the rule-set of the game. Capture the Flag has different intrinsic goals than Team Deathmatch, so while the core loop may be unchanged, the goals of the player while interacting with that loop are re-contextualized and as such take on a different meaning.

In the context of RPGs, this same thing is accomplished by using things as an incentive (read: shiny object dangling in the corner of their sight) to change short term, mid term, or long term goals. That extra dungeon that's harder than the rest? Well, you want to do that dungeon, but need to grind levels to be able to. So now, you go and engage with prior content with a different contextual view of it than before (i.e., you're now focused on efficient EXP per hour or some similar metric versus the original goal of "hey I'm just playing the game") until you're ready to take on that special dungeon.

When designing content, the primary question that needs to be asked is effectively this: "where does this fit into the gameplay loop of this game?"

For Ephemeral Tale, most all of the new content added since the initial release into Early Access has been designed with that question in mind. I even have the gameplay loop featured front and center in the trailer, screenshots, and store description! Explore -> Fight -> Loot.

These quests we've been adding the past few weeks? That falls into Explore! You're re-engaging with existing content for specific reasons in order to achieve something (generally to gain access to an exclusive piece of loot), but it also serves as a way of building the world and letting the player know that things don't have to be super serious all the time. Last week saw you guys diving into an abandoned underwater city to collect a cookie recipe that was lost during a fishing incident with a mermaid. Sometimes, quests just need to be entertaining (that's my justification, and I'm sticking to it).

The extra bosses we've added? Those fit beautifully into the Fight category. New gear? That's Loot. New zones? Zones thankfully fill all three slots! This week though, I wanted to focus on Loot and Fight through a new lens.



This week's quest introduces a new face, Savvy Sabrina! She's quite gifted, and is able to take excess gear you have and turn it into new pieces. Granted, she's not always willing to give it her best effort.

Functionally, what does this mean? This is what I'm viewing as our first "living" quest. As of today, you'll be able to embark on a quest for her to retrieve a cauldron. Once she has that, she can start taking those excess pieces and making some fresh stuff with it. Today, that means 4 pieces of gear of any quality/level to get one of green or blue quality at your current level. Doesn't sound that great, but this is where the "living" part comes in-- next week, you'll be able to embark on another trip for her, and afterwards, you'll find that she creates gear of blue or purple quality.

Generally, this kind of "larger" system would be done in a bigger patch or held off until it's completed, but I thought we'd mix it up and see how you guys feel about this approach. This week, I've been pretty busy between working on the next major content drop (check out our Twitter for deets on that) and this. Balancing act, and all that!

I've gone on for quite some time this week, so I'll leave you guys to it! Until next week, stay safe and have fun!

-- Ryan
Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/jpStbUf

This week in Ephemeral Tale, we have another quest! To access it, you'll need to have unlocked the zone I put in the game way back in Major Update #2: the Sunken Summit. If you haven't unlocked that yet, there are rumors that there's a magical sea-shell that can reveal a path to a long-lost civilization, hidden somewhere long occluded.

We also get to talk about accessibility, and how color choice plays into that when designing/revising menus! Let's hop in, shall we?

[h2]Ephemeral Tale 1.14.1 Changelog[/h2]

• A new traveller has ventured to the Respite, Jesse!
  
• If you’ve unlocked the hidden Sunken Summit zone, he’ll seek your assistance
  
• Once the quest has been completed, you can farm for the new equipment piece (if you want a different roll) by fighting Ariella in the Sunken Summit
  
• Fixed an issue with graphic layering in the Corrupted Castle
  
• Fixed an issue where companions wouldn’t properly scale to the players current level
  
• Fixed a bug where certain encounters could remove the Tome of Lost Knowledge from the players inventory
  
• Cleaned up the presentation of vendor shops
  
• Enabled error logging to a local file (found in install location/www/)
  
• If you experience a crash or some other sort of issue, please email these logs to [email protected] or reach out through other means (Discord, Twitter, forums, etc)

[h2]I CAN SEE, I CAN FIGHT![/h2]

When developing a game, one of the things that I try to keep in mind is the idea of accessibility-- in many cases, this is easy enough to just think about. "Can this be done in less button presses? Do we have any timing restrictions here? Does this require complex input (i.e., multi-finger touch on mobile, LB+RB on controller, etc)?"

One area that this is incredibly complex to view through this lens is color, and colorblind settings. It's easier to design with this in mind from the outset, but isn't always necessarily possible.

As you guys (hopefully) know, Ephemeral Tale is a combination between a JRPG and a looter (i.e., games in the vein of Diablo, Torchlight, Destiny, Borderlands). When I launched into Early Access back in January, the design was still quite experimental in many, many ways-- one of the biggest differences between then and now was the loot system. In order to be "colorblind friendly," I relied on both color grading (white -> green -> blue -> purple -> orange), but also a "level" system that was strictly meant to help those with some form of color impairment by representing that same information via text. White was "Lv. 1," Green was "Lv. 2," so on and so forth.

This system would have been fine, had the design stayed that way, but one of the issues that crept up and needed to be addressed, fundamentally meant changing the way that gear was visually presented. As gear shifted to being "leveled" like a more traditional looter (where loot drops within a range of your level, and newer drops improve in total stats as you level up), this meant that the only clue left was the color grading. Seriously-- when I say the game has changed a ton in Early Access, I really do mean a ton!

Now, to be clear, there are plenty of ways that you can address this through iconography: maybe the border becomes more intricate, maybe there's a filter of sorts applied to parts of the border, you know-- stuff like that. In fact, Bungie does great work with this in Destiny, and you can see some of that right here, and over here is a great talk they gave at GDC a number of years ago. The bits at 18:50 on help shed some light on some of the "tricks of the trade" that they used for their iconography, and you might even spot how some of that is in Ephemeral Tale.

There are also other things to keep in mind as well during this process, the most important of which is color choice.

It's incredibly easy to get so used to how something looks, that you can't see the forest for the trees-- I'm guilty of this, even with Ephemeral Tale. Take for example, the gear menu:


This is how the menu had looked for quite some time-- in fact, it wasn't until Major Update #4 that this look changed! Let's examine this through a different lens, however, using a free tool: GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP.

GIMP is a free, open-source alternative to other, more expensive image editing suites. It also has a "Color Display Filter" tool, that can be accessed like so:


This filter is incredibly helpful when trying to determine how legible your colored items are to people with different viewing capabilities than your own. For example, that same menu from above, when run through a deuteranopia filter now looks something like this:


Uh-oh.

See, this reveals a few glaring issues! The Barkskin Chestpiece and Swiftstep Boots are entirely different rarities, but their color when viewed through this filter is practically identical-- additionally, the ability text (the red text underneath the flavor text, describing the ability) practically disappears into the background. Considering that the abilities are one of the more relevant features of any given item, it's important to be able to catch that at a glance.

I won't bore you with the details (as it was mostly through sheer trial and error, and consulting with artists [Thanks, Tim!]), but after many, many attempts of tweaking colors, I arrived at this configuration:


When filtered, that same image now looks like:


It's taken me some time to get used to the new color schema (and I plan for further changes in the future, in order to continue to boost legibility across the board), but it's a change that I'm happy to have made. No one should be unable to enjoy in our shared hobby of gaming-- regardless of boundaries, it's our responsibility as developers to ensure that our games are as accessible to everyone as they can be. Sometimes, that's harder than it looks, and I hope that this brief glimpse into some of the tools you can use for your own projects sheds some light on the ever-growing discussion around the topic.

As always, I hope this week's Pupdate gave you a better understanding of the development process, and that I've adequately shown how much effort goes into things that aren't immediately evident. The development of Ephemeral Tale is an on-going discussion between us as a community-- it's just as much your game as it is mine. So whenever I can make a change that helps bring the fun we have to more people, I'm going to make an effort to do so. We'll talk again next week, but until then, stay safe, and have fun!

-- Ryan
Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/jpStbUf