JRandom

Suggestion: Research Skill Informs Research, while cool for the lore unlocks and the skill level 10 bonus, could be made more relevant by offering informs on skills for the same parent. It might be a lot of manual labor to add them all though! I'd start at skill level 3 and add an inform every odd skill level (3,5,7,9). If the parent skill has more than 4 other skills, it could be varied among the research skills which informs you receive. For roleplay reasons, it would make sense. If you are in the library digging up a book on Incantation Phemes, you may very well come across atleast the topic of Incancation methods, spells, and theory.

For adventures, there are only a couple of key things that should be there from the beggining. Adventure Name Time Frame Available Initiation Requirements Exclusive Adventures (i.e. if you do this, you can't do that) Skill Rolls > 15 (i.e. req. Running 25 or Diplomacy 28 to succeed at the final step) Rewards If this information were available for all of the adventures, the specific steps could be filled in later. Does that sound reasonable?

Suggestion for Improvement: Relationship Web Would it be possible using the games engine to create a relationship web for a player-defined group of students and also for clique relationships. I am picturing this as a list of students with either a check-box or the hold-ctrl and select function. Once selected it will bring up a relationship web defining how various student view one another. The view would feature each individuals portrait with a line connecting them to every other individual selected. For example, if two students are selected and they have a -10 relationship and a rivalry, there will be a bright-red line between their two portraits with a lightning-bolt on-top of it. If two students are in love with a +10 relationship, it could have a bright-green line with a heart on top of it. Things to display: -If the individuals are in a clique together -If the individuals are in a love-relationship -If the individuals are in a rivalry -If the individuals are in a friendship -If the individuals are in a jealous-state (i.e. both like the same individual) It would be very helpful to gauage how your clique-mates feel about one another, to see who the bullies are picking on, and who to gossip about. Thanks, Jordan

@retired_deer I could see skill-tiers as a viable alternative in future years and this notion would fit well with your suggestion and keep the difficulty levels in the game manageable as the years progress. Parent Skill: Athletics Basic Skills: Archery Running Swimming Wrestling Advanced Skills (Unlocked Once Basic Skill Reaches Level 10, applies X% benefit to parent skill) Archery: Indirect Fire Archery: Quick Draw Archery: Competitive Archery Running: Sprinting Running: Distance Running: Cross-Country Swimming: Diving Swimming: Underwater Swimming: Competitive Wrestling: Grapples Wrestling: Pins Wrestling: Throws This is just a broad-example, but would allow for specialization with a possibility for less powercreep in future years. Does that make any sense?

Suggestion: Accumulated Knowledge Pool Synopsis: Wasted skill points are accumulated into a "pool" that can be used to increase associated skills. Associated-skills would be ones that use the same primary attribute. Current Mechanics: A character uses the ability "Match Wits With the Emperor", this ability raises the following skills: Running (Random), Flowers (Random), and Mammals. The character already has Running at the maximum skill level, so the player sees the message that Flowers and Mammals were each raised by one skill-step. Currently, the point in Running would be wasted. However, this change would give the player some benefit for their work. It would also apply for skills gained from random-events and adventures. Suggested Mechanaics: Per the example above, the player's Running skill would be raised by one skill-step, but the skill is maximized. The change would be to create a pool for each attribute, this pool would work as follows. Excess skill points are placed in a pool linked to each attribute (Fitness, Luck, Insight, etc.). Once a pool has X amount of skill points in it, the player is granted a random skill-step in a linked ability. This would assume that they acquire related knowledge through similiar activities. This would be in a random skill, including currently untrained or unknown skills. The game would run a check to confirm that the skill gaining the new skill-step is also not maximized. If all skills of a related attribute are maximized, then any additional benefits would be lost. Would this be viable from a coding/game mechanics perspective? Would every 4 points of excess skill learning be too high or too low as a threshhold for the randomly gained skill-step? Would this increase game enjoyment?

I should have worded the first line better. "-Players can elect to incur up to a certain number of stress on any time-slot action. The exact number could be discussed later." I meant this more as, players could elect up to a maximum number of stress that would limit the number of minor, major, and greater actions that they could perform. For example, first-year students may theoretically be able to elect up to three stress. Minor actions = 1 Stress Major actions = 2 Stress Greater actions = 3 Stress Thus, you could use any combination of preparation actions that are equal to or less than the amount of stress allowed with perhaps a hard-cap at 3 actions for sake of input space & time. The suggestion would replace the current 1 stress = +1 bonus on rolls. You could increase the maximum stress bonus as the years go by so that perhaps a fifth-year student could elect up to 9 stress, but no more than 3 preparation actions for simplicity's sake. Hope that makes more sense than what I originally wrote!

Improvement Suggestion - Adventure/Action Preparation Slots The current system of adding stress to an action seems difficult for me to understand. I think there is an alternate method that may assist with game flow and improve adventures without needing to reduce the inherent difficulty or improve the rewards. Instead of adding a static 1+ stress, I would propose the following mechanical changes. -Players can elect to incur up to a certain number of stress on any time-slot action. The exact number could be discussed later. -Bonus actions would be recoded as "Minor, Major, or Greater" and each action would incur 1-3 stress. -These actions would be the stat, skill, spell, and item activiation actions that are currently each taking up one time slot. Example: A first-year student sets out on an adventure that they know requires use of the running skill. Prior to beginning the action, they can prepare by using a minor action to "Massage Muscles" that would incur one point of stress. They could then use a major action to cast "Deep Breaths" further increasing their running skill and Fitness attribute at the cost of 2 stress. Thus, a player would not need to spend 3 time slots for the adventure if they were willing to incur additional stress. It would also make better use out of a lot of the cool abilities and spells that are not used very often because the benefit is not worth spending so many of the limited time periods preparing for certain actions. I also see this as assisting with power creep from actions like Cleanse and Remake in future school years. If a character can only choose a few preparation actions, you can have more control over how many benefits they will be able to use at once and thus have a more consistant level of difficulty. This is a rough representation of the idea, but does it seem like something that: A) Makes sense from a mechanical/coding perspective Increases enjoyment from adventurers/actions rather than spending so much time preparing for one event that can still fail C) Allows for a more controlled difficulty level in adventurers D) Makes better use out of stress in future school years where many students never have to worry due to high fitness attributes. E) Alleviate the need for additional time slots specifically tailored to use for adventures. Sorry for the long post, Thanks! Jordan

@Schwarzbart I agree with you that crafting & forging seem to be weak from a cost/benefit ratio based on my qualitative analysis(I apologize in advance, I'm a CPA) at the present time. I plan in the next few weeks to develope some quantative statistical analysis for the various costs associated with the crafting skills. This isn't my area of expertise, but I am interested and figured it wouldn't hurt. Can anyone assist me with a list of some various measurements we can use to make informed decisions? The ones I am currently considering are as follows: -Time Units -Pims Cost -Material Rarity I will contrast this against the benefit received for purchasing similiarly priced items and the same factors of production.

Hello everyone, I have only read through the last few pages of this thread, but wanted to send my first pair of suggestions in. I apologize if this has been brought up before! Suggestion #1: Categorize Adventures in the Adventure Screen Categories I could see would be: 1) Main Quest Lines 2) College Quest Lines (Goddina, Aranaz, etc.) 3) Student Quest Lines 4) Familiar Quest Lines (Seems this label is already there) 5) Profession Quest Lines (Musician, Baker, Forger, Botanist) 6) City Quest Lines 7) Class/Professor Quest Lines I think keeping them organized into categories would better allow new players to recognize what part of the world they are looking to have an affect on. Suggestion #2: Completed Quest Histories I think this suggestion would take a significant amount of coding time and may not be feasible for short-term implementation. However, it could be incredibly useful from both a story-telling and personal enjoyment/achievement standpoint. Once a quest line is finished, it should be moved into a seperate section of the character history. A brief synopsis of each section of the quest would be displayed and the results listed (with rewards as well). Each section of the quest could be clicked on to bring-up the dialogue pages from the quest to read through all at once if a player wanted to go back and see how their actions in year 1 might affect a quest in year 3.

Hi all, I am new to the forums and still working through my first play through of Academagia using a Godina character specialized in music. I enjoy complex Indie games like Dwarf Fortress and grew up playing traditional text-based games on my Apple IIC. I enjoy the complexity and sheer volume of things to do in the game a lot so far. Best regards, Jordan