Alora Fane

The idea of changing some numbers (such as item drop rates) in the Steam release of MARDEK has inspired a few comments on the previous post, but let's compile all the suggestions and come to specific decisions together.

ANOTHER UPDATE (3): When I opened this up as a possibility, I was expecting maybe a few numbers I could change in a few minutes... though the depth of the suggestions makes it feel more intimidating. I'm still willing to look into this, but I do want to stress that I really don't want to have to think about nitty-gritty details of this game at all, ideally. I don't want to devote days to figuring out my old code or thinking about gameplay balancing implications.

I appreciate that people care this much about MARDEK, though I can't help but wonder how many people exactly would benefit from these kinds of changes. How many people would you guess would buy the game on Steam? How much money do you think it'll make? And how much time do you think these changes would take me? Will it be worth it? Most people aren't hardcore completionists... but maybe it's the few who are who'll be most likely to get this version, I don't know.

I suppose I'd been feeling some relief at being able to bring people some degree of happiness by putting MARDEK on Steam, maybe even putting it behind me, but now it's just feeling like more work is ahead of me than I thought... The whole Steam release process has been like this. Not as quick and simple as I'd like! One hurdle after another. It's been getting me down. Feels like it's never over.

I spent most of yesterday focusing on Divine Dreams, partly maybe to avoid thinking about MARDEK. I really enjoyed that! I'll do the same again today. Then I'll worry about MARDEK stuff on the weekend. I'll probably need to manually compile a list of everyone's suggestions.

(Unrelated update (2): I was having issues with my tobias at alorafane email; I've likely sent out some replies which were never received despite them showing in my Sent folder, which is very annoying (I think I'm receiving email okay, but who knows). I've still got my old Gmail account, pseudolonewolf at gmail, but I've moved on from that name, so I've created another called alorafane at gmail. Just so you know! I'm adding it here because I don't know where else to mention it.)

(UPDATE (1): Here's the plan, then: I'll approve the comments here as quickly as I see them, then on Saturday I'll look through them all and make any suggested changes. So you've got until then to make suggestions. Don't worry about 'copying' other people; it's useful to know what you agree or disagree with from other people's comments so then I can gauge a consensus. I want to work on Divine Dreams for now, so I'll be focusing on that for the next couple of days.)

It didn't occur to me before that I could make some really simple changes to the game that might improve the experience for people (and make it worth getting). I wish it had! It's come up now, though, and I'm willing to make some of those changes.

But I want to be clear about exactly what I mean.

The game includes a database (sort of) of things like monster stats and drop rates, and skill properties (including costs to mastery). Number and text data. It's big, though; there's a lot in the game. It would be possible for me to go through this database and change some numbers in there without affecting the way the game runs in any major way.

Shops and things are more complicated since they're stored stupidly in the code, and changing or adding features beyond simply altering numbers would take too long and might break things, so I'm not doing that.

Many of you have a better idea of the nitty-gritty details of the game than I do. I did play through it recently, but I didn't stick with it to 100% (I didn't even beat Karnos), and it's been years since I thought about all the statistical ins-and-outs. Personally I don't care about balancing all that much since I'd rather make something that's fun for players (as long as it's not ridiculously imbalanced, obviously), but I think it's best for you, the players, to tell me which changed numbers would make the game more fun for you. I don't have an opinion myself.

If you have suggestions though, please make them extremely specific!! For example, "you should include more of Item X" isn't much use to me because, well, where do I add it? Should I think about the game as a whole, considering every possibility? How long would that take? "You should include more of Item X, maybe in Dungeon Y" is better, but again, where? Which chest, specifically? "You should replace the chest that contains Item Z with Item X in Dungeon Y" is even better, as it's a specific instruction that I can follow, quickly.

I don't particularly want to spend a lot of time thinking about the minutiae of this game at the moment, but if you want to think about that for me and make extremely specific suggestions, collectively - literally instructions that I can follow and not prompts to make my own decisions - then I'll gladly implement them. See what other people have suggested, let me know if you agree.

I wish this had come up sooner since it's going to delay the release even further (I've still not even moved to Coming Soon), but if it'd make the Steam version an improvement over the free one, it feels like it's worth it.

I suppose you could see this as a chance to make improvements to some little niggles you've had about the game over the years, a chance to make this the best version of MARDEK that it can be.

If you've already commented on the previous post, it'd be useful to restate your thoughts here so then they're easier for me to manage.

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