Effortposts: Design Arcs, from pre-Alpha to [COMPLETE]

[Rivian]

A Story of Ellerie, Skills and Powercreep in Romhack Development

Early players of Cerulean Crescent might know that almost every unit was buffed (some in absurd ways) less than a year before the first 1.0 release, totally shattering game balance and making CC a far easier game than ever before. Why should anyone care? Regardless, time to get on my soapbox.

Part 1: Man, I sure love powerful skills

Let’s set the scene a little. The nice thing about playing a lot of hacks is that you really get a feel for you like. What I liked was skills that made me feel really, really powerful.

Here is good ol’ Lex from SGW who gets galeforce at level 5, double lion at level 14 (I hope I got the numbers right) and becomes a 9 move monster. Broken? I just think’s he’s awesome.

Now let’s see the first dev build of the thing that became Cerulean Crescent. Meet our lord, Ellerie. She is a strength-focused lance user with supply and staff access. She has a skill. Pretty solid unit, I’d say.

The thing is, I wasn’t satisfied in the skill, and the lord, just being alright. I wanted the player to feel powerful. I wanted especially the lord to feel like the lynchpin of the army instead of some liability to drag around.

Part 2: Iterating on the Lord

So I changed the lord a lot. (The previous screenshot was of 2nd iteration Ellerie, I don’t have a copy of the very first.)

1. Daunt
   Giving everyone tons of low% crit made combat feel too volatile, especially if you’re trying to feed kills to someone with the jeigan.

2. Armoured Blow
   I think I just found it too boring.

3. Silent Pride and Frenzy
   I wanted the lord to have more of a support focused skill rather than improve her own combat ability, being a commander and all.

4. AoE Sleep
   See below.

5. AoE Sleep + Opportunist (for synergy, but with +10 dmg)
   AoE sleep felt way too easy to just stop any enemy without any kind of thought. (I would add way more broken stuff than this in the future)
   Also, opportunist felt too easy to apply with lances beyond just the sleep.

6. Summoner
   No idea why I didn’t go with this. Vibes maybe.

7. Lead by Example
   

   
   
   Now that’s a skill that supports allies, but also makes the lord quite centralizing. +10 dmg easily turns 2rkos into orkos and incentivizes the lord top get into the thick of it.

We did it, we have the skill.

“Ellerie kinda mid tho”
-Someone in late 2023 probably

I can see the argument for this.

• As development was up to ch20, Ellerie was still stuck as a 5 move footie for most of the game.
• The dominant units were mostly canto+ mounts (I love canto+ and I won’t let some silly thing like ‘balance’ deprive me of my only joy in life) who outpaced her.
• One round killing wasn’t uncommon past the early game.

One could argue her skill was fairly situational and perhaps not worth the hassle of setting up a lot of the time, but I think when it does matter it’s still a powerful skill to have regardless, saving turns by turning 2 round kills into 1 round kills.

I think if I had not given in to my darker desires and shipped the hack as it was, I probably would’ve been satisfied.

That did not happen. I was determined to make the lord the most centralizing thing since… I don’t know, something at the centre. But what could possibly be better than saving actions by turning 2 round kills into a one round kills?
How about just actual actions?

8. Lead by Example Part 2
   
   

This is an AoE dancer. You might be thinking, isn’t giving the first unit you have a skill that can give 1-4 additional actions per turn a really bad idea for balance when you are already 20 chapters into development?

Anyways, this is now an extremely centralizing unit. The gameplay now revolves around her. A fitting change story-wise, honestly. Ellerie is someone who makes everything revolve around her. Sounds some high school English essay bullshit? Maybe. But it was enough to keep me satisfied.

This was just the beginning of the floodgates of the absurd wave of buffs to come.

Part 3: Big Bullshit Balancing

Here’s the funny thing. I was running out of ways to buff infantry. I could slap a skill that says “does +20000 damage” and it would barely matter, because infantry killing things is a given.
What’s the next step? I look at Ellerie. More actions.

Let’s take a quick look at some units buffs after Ellerie became an AoE dancer.

• Dancer now gets an extra action after dancing (I really wanted to push the idea of the combat dancer)
• Mage prf for siege lunge now gives an extra action after lunging (3 uses per chapter)
• Archer got a prf that gives an extra action after kills (6 uses per chapter)
• Soldier got a prf that gives an extra action after attacking (4 uses per chapter)
• Cyclops got a prf that gives an extra action after attacking (3 uses per chapter)
• Halberdier got a skill that gives an extra action after rescuing/dropping
• Hero got a prf that gives an extra action after healing (5 uses per chapter)
• Both bards now get a skill that gives them an extra action after every third attack
• Dragon veins now give all give an extra action (don’t recall if this was before or after dancer Ellerie, but vaguely a similiar period)
• Lots of other unrelated buffs like armoured units getting canto+, landboat going from 3 to 8 move, but they’re not the focus

You might notice that almost no mounted unit got buffed in this list.
Canto+ would do that.

Part 4: Difficulty Dives Down

It was time to make corresponding changes to the previous chapters to account for these buffs.
Except I didn’t. Almost every chapter remained the same. Chapter 1 from the very first version of CC is almost exactly the same as chapter now.

What’s the impact?
On any turn, players now can now have an additonal 1-13 more actions (depending on Ellerie’s skill use, prf durability and if you have the extra action units fielded).
Even if you are to bench every single infantry mentioned earlier, you have at minimum Ellerie to plan around +1-4 and the dancer with +1 (you wouldn’t bench the ch1 combat dancer, would you?)

Even if the actual chapters barely changed, the gameplay flow of CC is unrecognizable from less than a year earlier.

Here is a classic CC formation, the “3 way dance plus galeforce (using a weapon)” which allows Ellerie to keep a little squad and herself going. This can happen every turn.

This massive mini-finale chapter, which was originally a brutal battle to test everything the player has learned from early game, can now be essentially cleaned up in less than 4 turns.

Hell of a new direction, isn’t it? There’s a few reasons why I’m fine with this new direction:

1. I love taking 10 billion actions in 1 turn.
2. My tastes in games in general have shifted to just wanting a chill time rather than something that takes 100% of my brain. Perhaps I’ve gotten more tired or lazier, but I just prefer games that let me have a smooth experience.
3. It plays like a FE of all time. (Thanks guys)
   
   
   
4. I’ve been informed by Fire Emblem super elitists that the “harder difficulty thrown together with tons of enemy autolevels and zero playtesting” is actually pretty legit. There’s still that if the hack is too easy I guess.

Part 5: What is the takeaway?

Option 1:
It’s okay to make stuff easy.

Option 2:
Throwing random shit at the wall sometimes works.

Option 3:
Rivian’s approach to design is the worst thing I’ve ever seen and he should be thrown into a pot of boiling oil.

Take your pick.