Almasy Tactics - Simultaneous-Turn Class-Based Tactics

[conix]

Hey, I'm currently working on a simultaneous-turn, class-based tactics game and am looking for some feedback!



The game is kinda like Final Fantasy Tactics + Battleships (but with lots of room for customization!).  The game is still a little rough around the edges, so I'm looking for any kind of feedback!

Some Instructions: Turns are simultaneous and double blind. So, each turn, each player first selects actions for all 3 of his/her characters. Characters will move in order of character speed. It's extremely important to move characters in order of speed so you don't accidentally block the path of your own unit.



Character Creation: You can choose a class, a weapon, and 2 skills for each character. There's tonnnss of character ability combos; I think a large part of the fun is just finding broken combos. Every time you level up, you can unlock a new skill.



I'm interested in any feedback you have, but primarily:
* If you played the tutorial, did you feel like it did a good job explaining the basic mechanics of battle?
* Is there anything that is/was confusing, or you wish you knew?
* How do you feel about the pacing of battle? Does it drag out too long, or is it too short?
* Is creating a character/thinking up of new combos encouraged enough?
* Any other feedback, positive or negative is appreciated!

Almasy Tactics game link:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2020953/a2.2/index.html


Thanks

[Angel]

I gave the majority of my feedback already in IRC last night, but because I don't want this to be ignored...

Xifanie and I played around with this last night, and it's really a very cool and interesting strategy game. Since all commands are issued to all units at once, and executed one by one based on speed rating and ability usage, some very interesting scenarios come up, and they seem to be handled well so far. If the spot you picked to move to is impossible to move to due to another unit moving into your path, you still attempt to move to the closest panel possible, and thus may still be able to pull off your desired AoE attack unhindered, which is awesome.

I'm not a game breaker, though we did still find some abilities that could use adjustment. The BALANCE BALANCE BALANCE people we have around here would likely have a million words to say about them, but seeing as I am not in that crowd and never will be, I'm happy with most of what I've seen so far.

It's a cool little game, and obvious that a lot of work went into it. I hope it keeps getting more attention!

[conix]

Hey Toshiko, thanks for testing it out! I'm glad you found it interesting

Do you remember what skills you felt needed adjusting?  The feeling that I want people to get is "Wow, thats so OP! I wanna try it!", but obviously there's a threshold of how broken things should be.

[Angel]

It was what we discussed already in chat (I'm Angel, btw), such as where xifi one-turn killed me. :v

[conix]

Ahh! Hi again . Hmm, for now, I'll just wait for a general consensus that something is OP before nerfing anything.

If anyone played yesterday, I fixed many of the bugs that were found yesterday:
- Classes with disable skill can be created now.
- Chat will appear in the post-game screen, even if it's hidden mid-game.
- When selecting a class while creating a character, the HUD did not appear all the time
- Unlocking a skill while creating a character now can be used immediately (instead of needing a relog)
- Action Circle + character HPs are no longer obstructed by the top game bar.
- Renaming Characters now possible
- Skill Point count in skill screen moved
- Characters don't continue moving after all enemies are dead.

[conix]

Hi, I updated the game a bit. There's single player challenges now alongside a plethora of balance changes. There's also ~sound~ now! I'm still working on the UI, but I'd really appreciate any feedback you guys give!

[conix]

Hi! I've made a ton of new changes to the game. It's not an eyesore to look at anymore, and there's music, too!

Here's a picture of someone taking down King January with a plethora of status effects!


Anyways, a couple of the changes are:
   

• Battlefield UI has been rehauled, and doesn't look like you're fighting in a grey void

   
• Battle music! Here's one of the songs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLxmmHBBSC4.

   
• Tutorial redone - the previous one wasn't very descriptive, so I've split it into a couple, each focusing on one concept.

   
• AI is a bit smarter and actually provides a challenge (sometimes!) That being said, PvP is still way more fun.

If you're interested, you can try it out at www.almasytactics.net!

[conix]

Hey, I'm going to be running a playtest today, in about 20 minutes!

There's been some skill changes made; here the ones I think are most interesting:
- Armor Break (Mastersmith class skill): Instead of reducing the target's defense by a flat percentage, Armor Break now removes all Defense/Resistance the target has, and decreases the Defense/Resistance permanently by 15%. This defines his role more as a "wallbreaker".
- Thunderbolt: Instead of % chance to paralyze, which relied too much on RNG to dictate how the match pace went, it now paralyzes 100% if it hits someone faster than the target. So, it's now more of a combo piece (stun someone, then paralyze) or single targeted damage from afar.
- Sharpshooting: This used to only increase the damage of physical ranged attacks. In addition to that, now it increases all ranged skills' max range by 1. I'm hoping this will make for some interesting sniping plays.

Also, I've been slowly improving the UI bit by bit - biggest change is the character creation:

[conix]

I've made a big big update today! There's a ton of new stuff/polished up old stuff here and there, but most importantly there are new skills and classes!
The Pilgrim is a mobile healing class. Support/Mobile typing is pretty tricky to work offensively, but the main draw of the class is his Rescue skill, which can pull an ally from pretty much across the map, while healing him. Perfect for hit and run attacks, or if you get caught in binding glyph, or even starting a flank!


And the other one is for people who love breaking the game even more than it's broken - Druid. His class skill is proliferate, which copies target's statuses to the characters around him! Hello, meditating Witchdoctor!  Hello, Phoenix Spirited Cleric! Hello, Bloodthirsted Dragon Knight!


There's going to be a playtest today, in about 3.5 hours (2 PM PST). Hope to see you there!

[conix]

Hi! It's been awhile.  Since last time, I've polished up a lot of things, and implemented a ton of new skills! Here's a couple:

Novablast AKA solar beam: User has to charge up for one turn, and then deals huge damage in a straight line the next turn (if he uses it again). It does a TON of damage and has great range with a low cost, but since it's used over two turns, it's easy to predict.


Tenacity:  This is one of the first "anti-status" skills that I'll be implementing. This is a Melee-category skill, meant for close range fighters to easily fight through statuses.  Tenacity dispels all statuses on the character, and heals him for an amount based on how many statuses he ate.


Petrify: Petrified is a new status effect. It stuns a character, but protects him slightly.  You can use it to take an enemy out of a fight at the right moment, or protect one of your own characters from damage if they're taking heat and you want him to gain speed.  This combos pretty well with Death Knight's Dark Pact, which makes it so he can move/attack even while stunned.


There's also going to be another tournament/playtest session this weekend at 5PM! The starting map is Lightacre:

Lightacre is a longer-ranged map. I've had moderate success with this team:

Cannoneer is the main damage dealer of this team, while the Death Knight and Arbiter to try to force enemies into the cannoneer's range. When an enemy is caught in 2-3 turns of cannon barrage, he's pretty much dead.    Haven, which blocks enemy movement, is great on this map since there's a ton of chokepoints - it's awesome on Cannoneer since she really shines when she has some breathing room.

The arbiter is there for support. He uses a lance in case if you need to inflict poison, but more than often he's just there to put Enchant Poison on your other guys, Critical Weakness on enemies, and then just block people in the front lines since he's so beefy.

Death Knight is the secondary damage dealer of the team.  Usually during the early phases of battle, he's there to  inflict statuses to try to stop enemies from getting into good positions.  Binding Glyph can trap someone in a cannon barrage, while Cleave can either 1. Injure enemies to discourage them from moving, or 2. reduce their defense for more beefy Cannon Barrages.

For the ruleset, I've gone back to the counterpicking choices of the first tournament - only the losing player can change his classes, but the winning player can switch up the stats/skill of his current classes.


Anyways, I'm currently working on 2 things: Guilds and an actual website. I think I need a "landing page" thingie because otherwise, people have no idea what the game is about when they just visit the site.  Here is a page of what I have so far: http://d8u1nmttd4enu.cloudfront.net/designs/42826116~5c28bab8ea98c27d6c851eab3b1ef47baf5fd0f4-original

Guilds are in preparation for this feature that I want to make, where players can fight over territory in the map. I think it'll be cool, since it gives some context for battles.


Anyways! If you're interested in the tournament/playtest session, I've got a thread here!
http://forums.almasytactics.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&p=1736