Town Hall 2nd Edition (Recap)

Greetings, tacticians.

This week's Town Hall took place during our monthly dev stream! One town hall out of the month will always follow this format. This is an officially curated series of questions answered by Ocean Drive Studio's Creative Director for Lost Eidolons, Jin Sang! Every week we take questions asked by our community about the game, studio, or the people working on it and put it together in an official format. Check it out below.

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❈ Town Hall | Alex14ac: "Is there any way to edit any of the characters' features such as face, hair, or body proportions?"

• CD Jin Sang: "The answer is no. I wanted to, but I didn't get a chance to."
  
• CM Pat: "I think it's okay. Every character that can be recruited has their own place in the game's story. Modifying their look from the original design could alter the immersive feeling of each grounded appearance."

❈ Town Hall | Bodin: "Will the units interact or speak with one another during the story or will they mainly only interact with the protagonist Eden?"

• CD Jin Sang: "Mainly they'll be interacting with Eden, but sometimes you might approach some people talking in the camp and overhear some of the residents talking, almost as if you're not supposed to be listening in."
  
• CM Pat: "Oh! This is a question from me then. If certain characters are supposed to have specific dialogue among one another, is it possible to miss dialogue by not recruiting certain characters?"
  
• CD Jin Sang: "If that happens, yeah that conversation just skips. But you can't miss mandatory/main sequence dialogues because they'll be dealt by characters that the game gives you through the story."
  
• CM Pat: "Well that's cool. Might encourage some replayability since you can't recruit all the characters available in the game in a single playthrough."

❈ Town Hall | NoirValentine: "We're nearing the funding goal. What stretch goals do you have in mind after Permadeath? Will the community be able to vote on which stretch goals they want?"

• CM Pat: "We did have a plan for stretch goals, but we may modify them as we approach the last stretch (pun not intended). Besides for Permadeath, we had Hell Mode and something called the Debug Menu, but we're open to ideas from the community pending viability."
  
• CD Jin Sang: "Hell Mode wouldn't just be an increase to HP. They'd receive new skills which could largely impact their overall AI and behavior on how they attempt to defeat the player."

❈ Town Hall | NoirValentine: "Will people be able to continue to back the project after the campaign has ended?"

• CM Pat: "This is TBD. We know there are some services that allow pledges to be given after a campaign has already ended but it's tentative."

CM Pat: "How does working from home affect the team and development of the project?"

• CD Jin Sang: "As a developer, you need good tools, and having to remotely connect to the office to access everything is just slow and a hassle."
  
• CM Pat: "We've been working from home for how long now?"
  
• CD Jin Sang: "Like a year? A year and a half now?"

❈ Town Hall | Saint Furfur: "Are there any plans to have monsters playable in the future? If not, can it be considered later in a future update?"

• CD Jin Sang: "While I've thought about other playable races, there isn't really intent on making monsters a playable type of unit. Maybe in another installment, or a sequel."
  
• CM Pat: "Wouldn't it be a logistical nightmare to have playable monsters? Don't they occupy multiple grid cells?"
  
• CD Jin Sang: "Depends on the monster. Some are small and occupy one cell, some occupy multiple."

❈ Town Hall | jord: "Are there any plans for a photo mode for people who want to take artistic screenshots?"

• CD Jin Sang: "Hmm, never thought about that..."
  
• CM Pat: "You never looked at your project and thought, hey this is a pretty good looking game?"
  
• CD Jin Sang: "Well it's not really an open-world RPG so I hadn't given it much consideration while building the game. Anyways, we'll think about that feature."

❈ Town Hall | Tsu: "Aside from stretch goals, will Lost Eidolons continue to receive content support after the launch? For example seasonal/holiday updates?"

• CD Jin Sang: "As far as I'm allowed to say, I'm willing to add more features and possibly story contents focusing on characters other than Eden."
  
• CM Pat: "We're operating on relatively tight deadlines trying to deliver the game in early 2022 in its fullest. Maybe not everything we want to do can be done at that stage and we might want to finish the spit-shine and polish post-launch."

❈ Town Hall | Severance Bane: "Will there be any randomized battles either during or after the campaign to extend playtime?"

• CD Jin Sang: "Outside the main story, there will be battles for level grinding and those will have some form of randomness."
  
• CM Pat: "It's good to recap that there's an intended amount of EXP we plan on players to be able to get from grinding. But it doesn't actually hard-stop anyone from really grinding out levels if they have the patience."

❈ Town Hall | Severance Bane: "Are there any class-specific items to equip? What about character-specific?"

• CD Jin Sang: "There are some specific items where you need to be in a certain classes, for example magic spelltomes can generally only be equipped to mages. There are certain items that are specific to characters per the lore but they don't actually have a restriction on who can wear them."
  
• CM Pat: "Good ol' past time of stealing all the cool unique items and putting them on your favorite characters."

❈ Town Hall | Severance Bane: "Can you upgrade or expand the camp?"

• CD Jin Sang: "As the story goes on, camp will be expanded and more of the camp's features will be unlocked."

❈ Twitch Chat | xxnoirvalentinexx: "Will we get to see any additional gameplay footage with commentary of combat battles or interaction scenarios with the companions/general camp life with the lore of the game etc before the Kickstarter ends :)?"

• CD Jin Sang: "Probably not during the remaining two weeks, no."
  
• CM Pat: "It's not like we'll stop giving updates though after the campaign has ended."
  
• CD Jin Sang: "Hopefully soon, maybe next month we can show more gameplay."
  
• CM Pat: "It's not like we'll stop giving updates though after the campaign has ended. That being said, status on the thoughts on the first playable demo?"
  
• CD Jin Sang: "We're building it now. I think we're planning by the end of May? It won't be fully-featured but it'll have a bit of gameplay of the camp and battles. Two episodes maybe? And no difficulties to pick from yet."

❈ Twitch Chat | TobenRacicot: "In a similar way to how Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy pulls in weapons from mythology like Caladbolg, etc, will Lost Eidolons pull in weapons from myth, maybe Korean mythology?"

• CD Jin Sang: "I've never thought about doing something like that, but it would be really cool to include really famous weapons from history. Especially with things like the family heirloom unique weapons."
  
• CM Pat: "It would be cool. Famous weapons like that you know are always badass. Like you see something called Excalibur, you know that's the real deal."

❈ Twitch Chat | benatsu: "can you play as companions in the camp? would you be able to participate in any activites like mock battles or mini games in the camp?"

• CD Jin Sang: "Only as Eden."
  
• CM Pat: "It's very centric around the protagonist."

❈ Twitch Chat | thegreatskeletor: "will there be a weapon durability system?"

• CD Jin Sang: "No durability."
  
• CM Pat: "It's always a hassle and often doesn't add much to gameplay."
  
• CD Jin Sang: "There is skill/magic durability in a way though?"
  
• CM Pat: "Oh yeah, skills and magics have limited use per battle so you can't just spam them. You have to actually carefully use them depending on the situation. It's not like you're bringing your spells and skills to a blacksmith to repair though."

❈ Twitch Chat | icy_skizors: "will the demo be available to all, or just Kickstarter backers?"

• (In Chat) Global Operations Director Jungsoo: "To everyone!"
  
• CM Pat: "Demo will be available for everyone, though the demo isn't as robust as the beta test we intend to have later on that all Kickstarter backers will have guaranteed access to. Also we know that a lot of y'all were hoping we'd reach out to more influencers; probably by this point we will once we have something tangible to put in their hands!"

❈ Twitch Chat | benatsu: "just from previous - is there actual like life skilling / time sinking activities in the camp or is that TBA"

• CD Jin Sang: "What does time sinking activities actually mean?"
  
• CM Pat: "It means walking over to a tree in the camp and cutting it down."
  
• CD Jin Sang: "Aha... there are some simple quests objectives that you'll have to do a few menial tasks but otherwise nothing really."
  
• CM Pat: "Simple enough. I think if people want Lost Eidolons to be a time sink it should be trying additional playthroughs or challenge runs or the like."

❈ Twitch Chat | jiyva00: "Are the races you said could be playable include races like Centaurs/Minotaurs with equipment restrictions?"

• CD Jin Sang: "Probably not no."
  
• CM Pat: "It's pretty grounded isn't it? Besides for the mythological creatures, humanity is all that there is and humanity are pretty its own oppressor."

❈ Twitch Chat | benatsu: "can you play cards with the boys, is OceanDrive planning to go witcher style and invent a mini game or is there like anything sort of 'casual and light' in nature lol"

• CD Jin Sang: "Ah, The Witcher. It's kind of like that, but kind of different. I want to add mini-games similar to this. The Witcher did Gwent, a card game, I wanted to do something like an in-game board game that simulated battles that had a separate set of rules from the normal combat."
  
• CM Pat: "Strategy game-ception. I really, really hope you'd have to collect the figurines to use in the board game from the main game."
  
• CD Jin Sang: "You challenge an NPC and their team of figures."
  
• CM Pat: "You challenge them and beat them and take their figures right? Like Triple Triad from Final Fantasy 8."
  
• CD Jin Sang: [laughs]

Have a burning question that you definitely want answered at the next Town Hall? You can have your question featured at the next Town Hall by asking it in the #town_hall text channel on our Discord!