nightguard

A what? Did I just volunteer to be an RA? If so, this better come with some better benefits than just having the dorm room closest to the stairway, a dubious benefit to be sure.

I think I can see what Schwarzbart is getting at, and I'd like to take a stab at giving a bit more complete answer. As the dev team has stated in at least one interview, part of the character of the respected fictional magical user is that they have great power, but they temper that with wisdom and responsibility. That is part of what the professors at the Academagia represent, and that is something that they are trying to instill in the students. Could your character pass their final exam halfway through the school term? Perhaps, but he has an obligation to attend classes, and if one shirks their obligations, can they really be considered responsible? Is it wise to pass up the opportunity to learn from someone more experienced than you if you think you've learned all the tricks they can teach you? To the contrary, learning all that you want to as quickly as possible and then running off is often considered a hallmark of an evil, greedy person. The staff and professors of the Academagia understand this, and they will do everything they can to help steer their students towards a path of morality and ethical living. After all, they realize better than most people just how much power a fully trained wizard can command, and just how dangerous that is for the world if used carelessly or, worse, maliciously. Hopefully this all sounds good to you, Legate. I also fully expect to see courses on philosophy and ethics in the later years at the Academagia. It's the responsible thing to do, after all.

Here's something I don't believe has been mentioned yet, so I wanted to toss this out here. Has any thought been given to accessability features for this game? What I mean is, I have a friend that I would like to suggest this game to, but he is color blind (red/green, I think, but I don't remember for sure which type.) Given that the game presents significant information to the player based on the color of the text, this might make gameplay more difficult for him. Is it possible to have a mouseover for options in events/adventures that shows difficulty, much like the colors currently indicate? (possible scale being simple/easy/normal/challenging/difficult)

I don't know if this has been suggested yet, but I find the small text window in the 'store/catalog' interface that displays what a given item does to be far too tiny to be practical. You can only see about 1-2 sentences at a time. Additionally, having you que an item up for purchase on click, even when you're just browsing the inventory, is a little counter-intuitive. Maybe a buy bucket similar to the knapsack/wardrobe interface in your room could be used? I know, this probably can't be implemented in Year 1, but it would be nice if we could have a slightly easier time reading an item description in the store, at least. I'd like to know what it is that I'm offering to buy.

Why not throw my two cents in and let everyone else start hunting me down, too. My handle NightGuard goes back over a decade to a name I picked out for a game, and it's just stuck with me. As mentioned in another thread, I found out about this game on Impulse and picked it up that day, although others certainly went from learning about the game to actually buying it much faster than I did. Currently, I do office work for a living, and spend most of my free time either reading or gaming. Given that Academagia is about equal parts of each, it definitely fits my interests. I've always had a love for dreaming up and fleshing out worlds, be it the people that live there, the customs, the history... Anything that lets me dream up wild ideas without any real constraints. And yes, that avi is a chibi version of me, made for me about ten years ago by a good friend. Like my handle, it's stuck.

Yet another response of Impulse here. I saw it listed as one of their new releases, was curious by the title, and decided I liked the sound of the game after reading the promo material. I will admit, it wasn't *exactly* what I was expecting, and the learning curve was a bit steep (as the Impulse version was transferred without a copy of the manual), but I've not been one bit disappointed with my purchase.

I haven't been able to keep up with the flood of suggestions, so this may have been mentioned already. Given my love of the 'exotic' familiars, I would love to have some way of knowing what kind of familiar I have when I get to name it at the end of character creation. I'm starting to build a mental list of the names for the ones I've seen already, but would it be possible to have the familiar type indicated on the naming plaque below the input window? There seems to be enough space there to include the information already.

Would you also be able to take a look at the passive ability for the Help Desk? As mentioned above, it appears as though using Research always fails there, instead of receiving the +1 bonus that the room's passive ability claims you should get.

@Medic Of course, there's another option to consider. Once midterms happen, you can see who ranked where on a given test. If you're trying to be the top scorer in a given class (a major theme in a lot of fiction that focuses on students), you can pick the person that ranked top, and just decide that you're going to antagonize them so much that they can't train/study enough to be in top form on the finals. You're pretty much guaranteed that they'll dislike you before long, and it'll give you a target for your own 'bully skills' without having to be the most hated kid in class. ~NightGuard

As many people have stated already, I feel that the major impediment to accessibility in this game is that the UI, while I find it attractive, simply isn't up to the task of helping the player manage the sheer volume of information that comes their way. I know that a lot of the improvements that I would like to see simply won't be possible in this game, but by mentioning them here, hopefully they can be considered and addressed for the planned sequal. If any of them can be implemented in this release it would be greatly appreciated, but I understand that recoding that much of the game is likely not possible. 1: The end of day display is terribly extended when you start receiving rumors on what people did in a given day, as you easily have 3 to 7 entries of activities for each of your fellow students. Having a separate tab in the end of day report for rumors would probably be the ideal solution, but even having a collapsable list of activities, similar to the collapsable list of skills in the left pane, would be an improvement. 2: The end of day display is also rather unwieldly to manage when reviewing the standings of students on their exams. Having the list display in order of descending scores would be much more useful, with highlights depicting where your character and clique members place being especially useful. Again, a separate tab for these readouts on the days when they occur would seem to be an ideal solution. 3: Right now, all of the actions are currently included in a single list in the 'abilities and actions' tab of the left pane. The same is true of the abilities. Having them broken out into specific subgroups, such as separating the combat actions from the noncombat actions, would certainly help the player understand what they can do when. The same is true of the spells listings. 4: When going through your list of spells to see what you might want to use, it's not always apparent what skills are checked in casting. A specific heading in the spell help page (or text at the very top of the description, so that it loads into the select action interface as well) that lists the attributes/skills checked would really help a player get a better handle on why something works or doesn't work. 5: I've already seen numerous requests for information on the parent skill of a subskill being listed in the helpfile, and I wholeheartedly support that suggestion as well.. If there was a way to have the skill names in an event/adventure's options link to the helpfile, that would be even more helpful. That way, at least the player knows what kind of skill they're looking at before going into the event. With all that said, I think this game is a very engaging and unique piece of programming. If only the UI were up to the task of helping the player manage all the information coming their way, I think there would be far more people taking a serious look at it. ~NightGuard Wow, two posts while typing this one. I really need to work on being more concise.