Dissatisfied with Adventures

[Panpiper]

I am 'not' dissatisfied with the writing in the adventures. I have been consistently impressed with the high quality of writing in this game, when many other much bigger budget games have much worse writing. The stories are great. I just wish I still felt motivated to experience them.

 

The rewards for doing adventures are in my opinion abysmal given the cost involved in actually 'doing' them. If I am building a character that is intended to be as effective as possible for year two and beyond, I am not much interested in using up ten or more actions for a few skill steps and a random stat increase, maybe. (We have no idea going into an adventure what will be required to complete it or what the payoff will be, so it is effectively random.) Ten actions spent in libraries or with the Sphinx, results in thirty or more skill steps (which with me usually means three extra skills maxed over time) and a bonus that is at least equal to a stat increase. Moreover, much of those increases are targeted as opposed to the handful of scatter gun increases one might get from adventures.

 

Much of this problem might be avoided if all adventures were a single action for the whole adventure, that is interrupted 'only' by failing a skill check. Right now, most adventures seem to be automatically broken down into a separate action for virtually every skill roll, and that more than anything is what kills them for me.

 

It is perfectly reasonable to exit an adventure from a failed skill roll, permitting the player to then decide if they want to work on that skill before retrying. But forcing someone to spend ten or more actions for some unknown end does not work for me. I have largely forgone adventures now, unless I have learned in advance that it is a one action flow through.

[Schwarzbart]

Thats one of the reasons I have the modtoll running in the background most of the time to plan ahead what adventures I go through.

This also reduce for me the need in Reloading but I still save every day bevore processing the turn and still have many reloads.

(I think other players handle its the same way as I am)

Also most Adventures are more suited for the second half of your school year and without pre planing nearly all can't finished bevore midterm because of the skills needed.

[Panpiper]

Thank you Schwarzbart. That just reaffirms my position though, that if players feel compelled that to do adventures one needs to use a mod tool and save(reload) each turn, that the adventures are improperly implemented. It is especially problematic for me given that my system needs as much as a minute to do either a save or a reload. I would much rather be playing the game.

[Legate of Mineta]

Panpiper;

 

Thanks! It's been a long concern that Players have had that they would like to know which Skills are used in the Adventures, and it's a reasonable request. We've thought of several ways to address this, but I am afraid that the real relief won't come until Year 2.

 

Although Adventures were intended for the Player to try what they felt like trying, potentially fail, and return again if so motivated, that clearly has not been a popular choice.

[ShiningCity]

Panpiper;

 

Thanks! It's been a long concern that Players have had that they would like to know which Skills are used in the Adventures, and it's a reasonable request. We've thought of several ways to address this, but I am afraid that the real relief won't come until Year 2.

 

Although Adventures were intended for the Player to try what they felt like trying, potentially fail, and return again if so motivated, that clearly has not been a popular choice.

 

The problem is that the cost of potential failure is so high. Any day you use an action and don't even get 1 skill step blows. If it weren't for the fact that 1 skill step for me was auto worth a whole skill level due to attributes, I would not have done adventures. I did do like 10 or 15, but only because I figured I would be redoing my character anyways after many DLCs during the massively multiple year wait for year 2. Since any action that is not the sphinx or doesn't give you an attribute increase is a massively inferior move, pretty much 90% of the games actions are useless. That actually includes class as well. I would never ever go to class if I could avoid it. It might also be nice, if you guys would fix skill steps so that once you get the skill steps to raise a level, then the game puts the remaining skill steps toward the next level. I know there is already discussion about fixing research, too. I think that it would be good if adventures were set to 1 action unless you failed. Of course everyone knows if you fail you would just reload the save and do something else. Of course the problem with making adventures one action is, if you did that, than once people got a few special skills up high enough to pass adventures, they would never do anything else, since that would be the most efficient method of skill raising, although I suppose that is good in some ways. I think that maybe the game would be more realistic if you removed player saving and just autosaved the game when the player quit or after significant milestones.

[Legate of Mineta]

Mat;

 

Yes: 'Iron Man' mode! But that would only serve to place greater reliance on the wiki and the mod tools, and is a less friendly approach for most gamers (including some of us!) In Year 2 Adventures are handled quite a bit differently in terms of what you know you'll need for them (and how you get that information), so I think we've addressed the feedback...if not immediately.

 

As for Skill Steps, we've gone back and forth- that's not actually a bug, but an intended design decision. I'm not sure what changes we will be making there, if any, yet.

[ShiningCity]

Mat;

 

Yes: 'Iron Man' mode! But that would only serve to place greater reliance on the wiki and the mod tools, and is a less friendly approach for most gamers (including some of us!) In Year 2 Adventures are handled quite a bit differently in terms of what you know you'll need for them (and how you get that information), so I think we've addressed the feedback...if not immediately.

 

As for Skill Steps, we've gone back and forth- that's not actually a bug, but an intended design decision. I'm not sure what changes we will be making there, if any, yet.

 

I know that the skill steps thing is done on purpose, but even total newbies will have access to the min max attribute boosting strategies thanks to the forum and the wiki, so all it does is make people feel bad that they are doing actions that waste skill steps. When I start my actual character to transfer to year two, I don't think I'll be needing more than a single skill step to raise a skill. I know adventures are different in Year Two. But I think its important to put in fixes to year one.

I also think its clever, or lucky if you didn't intend it, that you pretty much force players to replay characters every time you release another game year, at least for min maxers, since until we have played a few characters through the final year, we won't know what the most efficient strategy is.

[Legate of Mineta]

Mat;

 

Yeah, I was just thinking about that based on your comment in the other thread- what is important in Year 1 is not necessarily the same thing in Year 2. Well, you'll see.

 

As for Skill Steps, I can't comment on this now, but we may ultimately rework there. It's hard to say.

[Panpiper]

It seems to me that this could be a job for a modder, to go in and make all the adventures single action except for exiting upon a skill check failure for a future retry. I won't volunteer to do it myself because I haven't the slightest clue how to install the mod tools, let alone know what syntax would need to be changed. I 'have' done mod work on other games however, and usually the hard part is learning what you need to know, not doing the mod itself. I am pretty sure if I knew all I needed to know, making a mod that made all adventures one action would be at most, an afternoon's work.

[Mikka]

Doing that modding would not be difficult at all. In fact, it would be incredibly easy- you barely need to know more then a line of code.

 

It would, however, be incredibly tedious. That's not so much an afternoon of work as three full days, considering that some adventures branch and that there's no copy and pasting in the mod tool, so the code has to be selected and written each time.

 

If you want to know how to do it, I could write you a little guide, because it is really simple. But that's tedious beyond rechecking every personality quirk fifty times to make sure I kept the value as 5 and the magnitude as 1 instead of vice-versa, and that on its own is ridiculously tedious.

[Schwarzbart]

Ohh and after you finish with the moding you have to pray that you computer is strong enough to compile the modbase in the next hours so you dont end with nothing acomplished. ^^

[ShiningCity]

im pretty sure you can copy paste in the mod tool.

[Schwarzbart]

Copy & past is working but not in this special case because its a selector you haved to change for each and every succesfull exit.

That means its a looot of hangling trough the editor to get to the right postion and be watchfull to just change the right things.

Plus there are short loading waiting times at nearly every klick

(SO a 10 Step Adventure of just 2 exits each step is already around 120 klick and this without double checking and such things! Btw to just check out if the adventure continues or not at a exit is just 2 clicks less per exit.)

[Mikka]

You can copy and paste in to say, an event or adventure box (though you shouldn't, as that screws up the spacing: you need to retype it out for it be formatted properly without mistakes in game). But you can't copy and paste code. Pick an adventure, any adventure, and open up the benfits. You can certainly take '[Expand]Expand Subject/Skill Step/Selection of Skill/Ambush (Skill)/Traps (Sub Skill)' and copy it, but you can't paste it. You need to set things to Expand, then click Subject->Skill Step->Selection of Skill->Ambush->Traps, then go down and select Character->Self and type in Magnitude 1 everytime you want to do that- you cannot paste in to a code box.

 

Similar for the success and failure continues: you need to go and hit Date Range and select the exact stupid dates each time and then go in and select Main Plot Adventure Ilaro 10 (ILLARRROOOOOOOHHHHHH) for each exit rather then simply being able to copy that setting and paste it for all exits.

 

TLDR: Copy and paste 'works' for large text blocks (as in, it'll show up, but it won't be same quality and formating- it's an issue with almost all the community adventures, and it makes my teeth grind), but it doesn't work for code, which is what you'd have to mess with.

[Panpiper]

Doing that modding would not be difficult at all. In fact, it would be incredibly easy- you barely need to know more then a line of code.

 

It would, however, be incredibly tedious. That's not so much an afternoon of work as three full days, considering that some adventures branch and that there's no copy and pasting in the mod tool, so the code has to be selected and written each time.

 

If you want to know how to do it, I could write you a little guide, because it is really simple. But that's tedious beyond rechecking every personality quirk fifty times to make sure I kept the value as 5 and the magnitude as 1 instead of vice-versa, and that on its own is ridiculously tedious.

 

Thank you Mikka for the offer, but I doubt I could maintain the motivation for three days of tedium. It's a shame the modtool is not more feature robust, at least as regards copy/pasting of code, or I might have been willing. But I have to go back to work in a few days and I don't see myself using what remains of my free time that way.

[CremePudding]

There really needs to be additional timeslots for Adventure usage

[sambrookjm]

Yes: 'Iron Man' mode!

 

Not sure how hard this would be to implement (probably very), but how about a true "Iron Man" mode similar to Alpha Centauri. If you exit the game, it's autosaved. If you save the game, you are kicked back to the desktop. Theoretically, you can reload, but that would entail restarting the game, reloading you save, and trying again, and getting kicked back to the desktop if you failed your daily adventure again.

 

The benefit in Alpha Centauri was that your final score was doubled. In an Iron Man version of this game, maybe your skill step increases would be doubled?

 

Just a thought.

[Legate of Mineta]

Not a bad thought for a bonus- I wonder...

[Schwarzbart]

First of all the team have to add the Autosave bevore we ever can see a Iron Man mode ^^

[Draigh]

Or you could play by the honours system and do it yourself

[CremePudding]

Or you could play by the honours system and do it yourself

 

Rather painful to manually add double bonus steps for every single actions, no?

[Draigh]

well.. technically you are asking the academagia team to do just that

But you could also increase your starting attributes, resulting in a decrease of needed skill steps. Besides.. even if you get 100 skill steps in one go, you only increase your skill by one level each time.

 

Besides.. Playing in Iron Man mode has it's own fun and honour. After all you can say that you actually went through the year without reloads

[sambrookjm]

well.. technically you are asking the academagia team to do just that

 

That was just a random thought as a possible bonus. Maybe just make the skill step bonus +1 for each activity, instead of doubling it? That way the code could be:

 

Skill step = normal skill step bonus + iron man bonus

 

where "iron man bonus" is 1 if you're playing iron man, and 0 if you're not?

 

But you could also increase your starting attributes, resulting in a decrease of needed skill steps. Besides.. even if you get 100 skill steps in one go, you only increase your skill by one level each time.

 

Maybe another couple of bonus points for character background generation?

Maybe an extra time slot on the weekends and holidays?

Maybe your maximum skills could go to 11? (Call it Spinal Tap mode? :-)

Maybe an "Iron Man" piece of equipment that gives your character some sort of bonus?

 

Just some random thoughts...

[CremePudding]

That was just a random thought as a possible bonus. Maybe just make the skill step bonus +1 for each activity, instead of doubling it? That way the code could be:

 

Skill step = normal skill step bonus + iron man bonus

 

where "iron man bonus" is 1 if you're playing iron man, and 0 if you're not?

 

 

 

Maybe another couple of bonus points for character background generation?

Maybe an extra time slot on the weekends and holidays?

Maybe your maximum skills could go to 11? (Call it Spinal Tap mode? :-)

Maybe an "Iron Man" piece of equipment that gives your character some sort of bonus?

 

Just some random thoughts...

 

Maybe a Iron Man background that give you a boatload of extra background points.

[cymrean]

Spinal Tap mode hehe I added the Up to Eleven trope to TVtropes description of Academagia.

 

Iron Man should also make then whenever you get vitality below 0 you die. Would be fair.