Testers wanted! Final test demo! (update)

Need some players to do a beta test on my chapter 1 for ragefest echoes. Need as much data as possible as soon as possible. I am sad to say I have been playing Fire Emblem Heroes for too long and I can’t trust my judgement in the testing phase at the moment.

Have some images to make you curious

Mechanics:
-Flooding
-Complex AI

What I am looking for:

  • This hack is suppose to be brutal, if you can’t beat it please tell me why.

  • If you can beat it tell me how you did it and in how many turns.

  • Opinions and criticism on the overall difficulty and suggestions.

  • Names have not been edited so bear with it

Patch is attached, please get back to me as soon as possible. Preferably before monday. Going to spend the rest of the day coding chapter 2.

RFV Chapter 1 Demo.ups

edit: patch is for FE7

I can’t download. Can you put it on Dropbox or Google Drive?

sure https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxxFB5s9Qjz1dWNKZDFqVG8teGs

that should work.

I tried your hack, i’m sorry to say i didn’t find it very difficult or interesting.
If you want, These are my opinions in how you can improve it:
-In the map there are some unpromoted units, is there any reason for it?
-In general almost ALL of the enemy units don’t put much of a fight, boss included;
-What’s the point of having shops on the map if you don’t have money?
-The flooding causes some problems at the graphics.

Thank you very much for testing it. some notes

  • unpromoted units are meant to stall, also to provide death by a thousand cuts. they will be getting a buff because others have said the same.

  • one house does give money, you can also sell stuff but I am still thinking about what to put in it.

  • what kind of problems exactly? as in does it glitch out or you mean the village closing early?

It’s not really a glitch, pratically when the starting area floods the wood doesn’t get flood and reamain on the water.
In general the graphics of the map is kinda ugly, but i’m sure it’s because is a demo.

Oh I think I get which part you are taking about. That’s just a preview to let the player know the map is flooding, there is a second map change later that really floods that area out. I’m guessing you beat it within 15 turns and only saw puddles?

Unfortunately i haven’t watched how many turns i took for clearing the map, but i guess you’re right.
I also forgot to tell you that even if you can buy at the shop there’s not really any point to buy things at the shop.

Yeah, plan to add more things to it.

Also for those who already beaten it, if y’all don’t mind, can y’all see if you can beat while visiting the village. (note the village closes automatically by accident but thats like in the 20 turn+) Want to see if the hack gets radically different opinions or if it’s about the same.

The map was uninteresting and did not add a new dimension to the gameplay, you might as well have just had a blank green field to be honest. It is also way to easy, definitely not ragefest level at all. I suggest buffing the enemies, making the weapons/items more detrimental or less plentiful and having a shop kind of ruins that. There’s also several “cheap” ways you’ve tried to make it more difficult, like the rain and poison weapons for example. The story was an interesting idea and I’d like to see how you could build on it but the characters are kind of bland and boring, just tropes, they’re not very unique and they don’t have very much personality, same for the bosses. Also, a puzzle aspect is also prevalent in most Ragefest entries just to make it even more of a battle of wits and this hack is sourly lacking in that regard. You could also add more jokes and Ragefest references to the hack, I know it’s not really a critique on the hack but I think that it would really add a great extra layer of flavor that would make this hack even better.

Im sorry if I sounded mean or harsh in my critique but I feel that that’s the only way to truly improve, just don’t take it personally okay? I can’t wait to see what you could cook up next!

Noted, not surprised on the story stuff because honestly I really don’t want to bother with it and just make something with pure gameplay. For now the story is going to be bare bones and won’t be high on my list of priorities. Although if I finish with spare time, I will try to give the story more depth.

Gameplay wise I am curious in how many turns you beat it to say the map is uninteresting because the others who have said the same thing beat it before the flood and that would mean I need to revisit the map design.

No apology needed, very happy with the data you provided and it seems to line up with what the other testers said.

It did not take me long to beat it, you could almost solo this map with just Marc if you were patient enough and got lucky here and there. And no I did not get to see a flood

Ok cool

Also on the puzzle subject, that is not the goal for this chapter because that is for chapter 2. What I am going for here is a high level skill check that is always solid every time you play it which clearly isn’t there yet. However feedback like this has given me some great ideas to put in to help the pacing better. Also thinking of just redoing the stats from scratch across the board because the inconsistencies are too great.

  • I think that you need some more story, although this is coming from someone who tends like to write a bit too much, and this is Ragefest. I supose it’s up to you.
  • Portraits need some work in general. They just need some cleaning up.
  • Change the music when entering a house. I don’t like how it keeps playing the map theme in houses.
  • The mountains are poorly made on the map, and I think you should texturize some more and add some more forests, forts, etc. I really don’t like how rectangular it feels. Add some barriers too to make me go in a direction I don’t want to.
  • There’s lots of 50-70 range hit rates. This makes the game kind of luck-based, which I know Marc hates. Try going for 20-40 for inaccurate enemies and 80-100 for accurate enemies. This makes it more predictable when you go into combat and makes it more strategy-based. Also, the killer weapons increase the luck required with these low-health characters. If you just get screwed with an RN, you’re just screwed.
  • I think your map changes where the flooding starts could look a lot nicer too.
  • The boss was ridiculously easy. Don’t make her a sniper.
  • I didn’t have a chance to use the general a single time because of his terrible movement in the rain, plus you put him in the back of the group from the start.
  • I finished in 11 turns. I think I started to see a bit of flooding, but nothing like I was expecting.
  • The tier-one enemies were useless. I didn’t even attack them. They came to me and made absolutely no effect on my playing.
  • If you want to piss off the player by giving them a useless item in the village, you could do so much better. Make more enemies spawn or something unexpected.

Overall:
Firstly, I think that this needs some overall quality/asthetic-based work. I know that’s not necessary for a Ragefest, but it can’t hurt to have it look nice.
Secondly, the balancing issues mentioned above.
Thirdly, it needs to be harder, and there needs to be something else to make it interesting. I bet that if you make the player wait around for the full effect of the flooding, it would be more interesting. However, I think you might need a little something more. It just felt kind of boring moving two tiles at a time in the rain.

Also, I agree with everything that @Umbra said.

I think it’s a nice start, but you have lots to do!

1 Like

noted, will do what I can.

edit: also you didn’t see flooding, only puddles. In fact I don’t think anybody saw flooding at all which speaks volumes on just how ridiculously easy this is.

UPDATE: shit did not go as planned for chapter 2, the concept was a maze with 1 and only 1 overpowered enemy and nothing but traps in tharcia fog. However I found out there is a limit to fire traps in general (Add fire 184 traps and the game does some very weird shit. Also found out there is purple light arrows that randomly kill units who are not even there. I would use this if the game wouldn’t crash after walking through a certain part in the maze.) and it seems 80-90 is the safe number but pushing it. This also means this lowers the difficulty of the chapter as a whole.

So I am going to get creative, some traps will not work on purpose. The theme is madness so the op enemy won’t always chase you. Going to also add more poison traps to pick up the slack. May be more annoying but hopefully gives more incentive to visit the shop in chapter 1 and demands healing item management.

Hopefully I can get this done enough for y’all to test before the afternoon where I can’t work on this while being elsewhere. Haven’t even got to the adjustments for chapter 1 and that will most likely be monday.

Obviously there will be no 3rd chapter like I planned. Decided to cut that for now to polish chapters 1 and 2. (Sadly it’s kind of looking like I have to cut chapter 2) So expect 1 of the major changes in chapter 1 to be gameover if any character dies.

First I would like to say thank you once again to everyone for testing my hack and providing feedback. Chapter 1 will be updated soon and hopefully posted up tomorrow.

Next I need chapter 2 tested while I am fixing up chapter 1. This link will have chapter 2 included and I am also linking my sav file so one can skip straight to chapter 2 to test it. Some things to know

  • To beat the chapter you need to stand on the stairs tile in the red carpet room with enragement ring in hand or it’s a gameover.

  • Time limit is 45 turns for now. If you get walled in the starting area consider it a gameover.

  • No text put in yet, so know you can loot the corpse for vital items. It is required to win.

Things I want to know:

  • How many turns you beat it and how

  • How many times you died

  • How many times Midas caught and killed you

  • Did anything glitch

  • If you were able to kill Midas

  • Overall difficulty of the hack, trying something new that I haven’t really seen in ragefest so let’s find out if it’s a good idea to begin with

Chapter 2 Demo

Sav file

I think you should change the text for the talk command to loot if you have no other talk convos. f you do, you can change something like ‘Arena’ to ‘Loot’ and make a LOCA event on the tiles surrounding the corpse with event IDs so that it can’t be looted twice. Also, try making the corpse green. I was confused at first and killed it.
I had this happen to me while looking at the map during the prep screen:

The idea where without warning, a soldier can ambush-spawn and insta-kill you is definitely not Ragefest material. Absolutely do not do that.
When you open the chest, it doesn’t actually open on the map. The tile change never triggers where it opens, so it just stays closed.
It’s pretty buggy overall. I saw a few random light runes appear and disappear, another Midas spawned when the first one healed himself after a big, yellow box appeared on the screen, but I was one turn away from finishing. I didn’t really matter.

Once again, I like your idea, but it was boring. I did restart when I realized I was at a dead end, but Midas never caught me once. The fact that I was shown the map in the prep screen made all the difference. I knew exactly where I was going. Maybe don’t show them the prep screen and make cursor flashes on where they need to go? Don’t show them the path to take, but don’t leave them completely in the dark.

I took me 20 turns to finish the chapter. I only used one elixir.

I think you need way fewer traps (for less bugginess and more Ragefestesque gameplay) with a few more enemy units that need to be defeated. Also maybe consider adding an ally to two. Chapters with very few allied unites usually don’t go very well from experience. This may be an exception with the maze idea, but just a suggestion.

Some notes:

  • the ambush spawn is a trap tile, one of 5 that is suppose to represent spikes that only a robe marc can survive.(might adjust it to 30 damage anyway) why I have set it up like this leads to the glitches you saw. A little too much traps. ( a little more traps added would have caused the gba scream of pain) so I had to rely on event based traps.

  • For the prep screen I was trying to find a way to block it like the final chapter light but having no success. I have an idea on what to do for that however. Plus the player can always check the map and it will be allowed.

  • Not happy the chest didn’t work for you, will figure out a fix/work around.

  • corpse is a enemy so the traps won’t attack it. not sure why your first instinct is to attack it unless…holy shit you just gave me a good idea…

  • It’s a story reason why he is alone (the ring demands it to be won), it was suggested to me that this could be a perfect excuse to use light runes. So I plan to make midas AI far more aggressive while adding two more op enemies in the maze to give chase. You also got the speed clear and barely saw the maze changes. (so far everybody got the speed clear, which is good news to me, was afraid it would be a bit much and I can really go crazy). May also break up the items given and spread them out through out the maze.

Thank you very much for your feed back. This is very good data and glad to know it wasn’t a terrible idea just needs more challenge.

Don’t have much to say that has not been said other than that it feels more like a cat and mouse game in a maze rather than a puzzle, I suggest remaking the map so it’s less trial and error and more of an actual puzzle by redesigning the map and reorganizing the traps and maybe adding more chests, keys, doors, and enemies to make it harder to reach the ring and the exit. Whilst playing I had an idea of making it sort of a “Saw” type of thing where you get hint’s on how you’re supposed to execute all of the steps in getting to the ring and if you succeed you get to proceed to the next little task, it would definitely make it more ragefest-esque and I’m sure Marc would appreciate it.