My scores were submitted August 9th; I started playing them after the deadline in case people needed to resubmit their entries.
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I have a feeling burnout (due to the large number of entries and bullheading the “every judge plays every entry”) affected score bias and hampered the results (or lack thereof). The theoretical “people stifling their feedback while the iron was hot so judges could provide the first feedback” burned too (hint hint any future MAFCs nuture an environment for community feedback/people playing the hacks or something).
Did I misjudge my expectations of host follow-through? Yes. Can’t do much else than chalk it up to a lost gamble and pull the rest up to experience gained/lessons learned, though. If a contributor wanted to salvage their chapter, I think the best thing at this point would be post your work seperated from the contest and ask for individual feedback (either a topic or requesting a stream).
End of the day I’m still glad to have been a part of and contributed to the contest. Went in to push out a chapter and it served that purpose.
[Edit: working on a small compilation spreadsheet for kicks]
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[quote=“SageMatthis, post:143, topic:5426”]
The first part is not exceptionally specific, just that it requires strategizing to remove the bigger threats first?[/quote]
Yes, it’s realistically much more “I did not have fun playing this and it took time and effort” than a real complaint. It was well built; just not my cup of tea.
imo, the only actually significant problem can be summarized very effectively:
Make a fun chapter. Not annoying. Fun.
The other issue is the enemies have crit rates and the player has miss rates, but you can’t afford to miss many times at all.
Second part I agree. How would I improve that concept?
Deleting it. It sucked immensely. If you actually are insisting on a puzzle, let the solution be figured out from clues that are visible from the beginning. I scoured for a difference and all the ones I noticed were not indicative of the answer. “Attack the top Pegasus and then kill the Monk”, when the dialogue all said “There are three” is absolutely ridiculous and feels disingenuous; as does not having any way to find the answer.
I may be colored by the fact that I sat there and spent over an hour and a half before clearing it, because I was playing the thing legitimately.
Fourth part, sounds more like eventing issues. I thought I fixed them all. Did you skip the text? That may be what causes it, but I think I thoroughly tested each one to make sure it works without issues.
I did not skip any text. I don’t know which one, let me go find it –
The middle left one does not reset when you say ‘No’ to it.
I didn’t like it because if I actually Talk to the statues, I can run out of turns a little too easily.
The expected outcome of buying the wrong item should result in eventual game over from running out of time, or did that not occur?
It does occur, yes; I just don’t find it acceptable because I have to go replay the whole chapter because I didn’t perfectly remember the statue dialogues.
Fifth part, again, what would make it more interesting?
Literally anything but a 1 v 5. Killing a boss is always the most boring part of FE, especially a boss that can critical and inadvertantly one-round some of your units, causing another reset that demands you go through the entire chapter again.
Sixth part, I think the bonewalkers dying early was intentional, though I forget exactly. The thieves with the mine should spawn relatively early, second or third wave at latest for the first round of them. This was definitely a more technical part and less gameplay, requiring going outside normal gameplay to pass. I had to account for the possibilities of what could occur while the glitch was active(dropping items that are not intended to be dropped, moving units that should not be moved, etc.)
I do not, personally, feel that “use the mine glitch” is ever acceptable for gameplay; is kind of the issue.
Part 7, I admit that it is pretty specific, though if reviewed beforehand, the invisible walls can be identified from the get-go, the traps, less so, but I tried to make each trap stand out visually, probably not enough though(specifically the mines), reading through your comments?
The traps do stand out on backlit graphics – but not very much so, without also having blown up graphic sizes. I could barely see them while I was playing on 3x video size with poppy bright style backlighting.
I would say exploiting a glitch is less gameplay-oriented and more… technical-oriented? More of a “use all resources available” type thing that requires a tad more thinking than straight fighting/gameplay, if you will. Would displaying stat boosts in the help/description box have helped significantly?
No, because it’s stupid and dumb and awful to make me use the mine glitch in the first place.
(Yes, it would have made the solution more obvious. “How can I get the boss to use that weapon?” → “I can’t.” → “There must be something in inventories somewhere.” → “Mine? You want me to mine glitch your chapter? Seriously?”)
I am kind of under the assumption of savestate use since those are always available, especially with the more trial-and-error sections. Not that I am saying that it should be required, but I keep in mind that those are always available, and the submission can only be one chapter long.
This is, in my opinion, absolutely inexcusable because playing with savestates is gross and awful.
It was basically required for yours to use them, especially considering how much time it took to go through each iteration.
Savestates are not “always available”, as well. :\
Designing around savestates is, in my opinion, never going to be fun. Emulator tools are not really things that should be considered existing in my opinion because when you design for them you make things that – at least to me personally – are incapable of being fun because they involve trial and error, incredibly specific solutions, and easily get you softlocked (consider making a savestate too late for example – you end up having to replay anyway).
edit:
Why do you constantly edit away your posts both here and on discord? You know that admins can still see the message and that there’s no value in doing this, it just makes things annoying, right?
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You have a fair point. A bunch of numbers isn’t really helpful, and it isn’t particularly good feedback either. That being said, while all categories are very clearly subjective, gamefeel is clearly most so; the scores given any given chapter are going to vary wildly on any particular person’s taste. If you want verbalized feedback though, like I said, any can ask me and I’ll say what I thought.
Feedback
I enjoyed the amount of general effort that was put into the chapter and its presentation, among the most of any of the submissions given the title screen, music, and other UI elements. My issues are mostly about gameplay direction and signalling. The early part of the chapter feels messy; it doesn’t inform you what it wants you to do or what it expects of you. the map design does not corral you to any style of playing or in any direction, enemies just kind of swarm you from all sides and there’s an arbitrary-feeling area event for units charging that doesn’t help with that. The spawning of the knights implies a time limit which seems to push you forward but the units given are not conducive to that given the dearth of mages who can chunk them and are difficult to avoid in the close quarters. In essence, it feels as though there’s a strategy that you, the developers, discovered over the course of making the chapter but there is little indication of what that’s supposed to be to anyone else and the margin of error isn’t wide enough to make it fun for an uninitiated player (that is, me) to figure out. More generally, you want to make it somewhat clear, through narration or ideally through map design, what you expect your players to do to win while leaving enough room for them to come up with their own plans.
Also, again, I definitely appreciate the effort put into having a narrative with portraits and constructing elaborate cutscenes for it but the word restraint comes to mind. The intro cutscene is really long, like, longer than it should be for a single chapter hack. You don’t want to hold your player in background that long before letting them hold the reins or they might get bored before they get the chance to do anything, and that’s not a first impression you want to put out.
Hope that was what you were looking for.
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Thank you, I appreciate the feedback
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Alright, thank you for the feedback. I will keep these points in mind for future hacks and see if I can improve on the weaker areas.
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The early part of the chapter feels messy; it doesn’t inform you what it wants you to do or what it expects of you.
Incorrect. Goal window immediately tells you what to do (defeat bosses). You can approach this in any manner you wish, though later events will corral you in a certain direction. The only reason you aren’t swarmed to begin with is to ease you into the chapter and allow you to recruit the griffon knights.
there’s an arbitrary-feeling area event for units charging
What’s arbitrary about it? You need to reach that area to complete the win condition as well as not trigger the lose condition. Yet by making it an area event I give the player some leniency on when they want to approach it.
The spawning of the knights implies a time limit which seems to push you forward but the units given are not conducive to that given the dearth of mages who can chunk them and are difficult to avoid in the close quarters.
Why is it necessary that the given units be conducive to fighting the enemies? That’s the whole point. You’re given two very valuable units (the griffon knights) and despite their weaknesses in combat against certain enemies the chapter is very much doable due to their immense strengths, if you use good enough tactics and risk management.
In essence, it feels as though there’s a strategy that you, the developers, discovered over the course of making the chapter but there is little indication of what that’s supposed to be to anyone else and the margin of error isn’t wide enough to make it fun for an uninitiated player (that is, me) to figure out.
I would argue that the margin of error is plenty wide. Prior to submitting we had a number of playtesters complete it on their own. If you asked me right now I couldn’t tell you what the “best strategy” is, nor could I name you all the strategies that could work. The chapter is hard no matter how you go about it, there’s no magic solution. As the developer I gave the player tools that could complete the chapter; it’s not necessarily my job to help them figure out the solution.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think part of the awkwardness of the chapter for you is simply that it’s not clear what unit you’re meant to use to defeat certain types of enemies. Compared to something like Ciraxis’s submission, where you literally have slaying weapons, or Ephraim225’s submission, where the hierarchy of strength amongst your units is clear, in this submission there’s no one unit that will kill all the enemy mages, for example. You’re forced to come up with the solution for that problem in addition to the usual tactics. Maybe this makes the gameplay come off as unpolished or lacking much thought. But in general I use this characteristic in my maps to raise the standard of play from the player.
I will concede that the Wyvern and Warrior bosses are pretty pointless and could have been implemented better. They’re really only there to fulfill box requirements, and I can see how they can seem arbitrary and like a waste of time.
Anyway, thanks for the feedback, this is a good discussion.
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