~ Suggestions & Improvement ~

[Adrian]

*gasp!* cliffhanger!

[Leoshi]

Speaking of semi hidden characters, how about Jere? He seems really interesting but the adventure and event for him don't really show his personality.

 

Anyway, let us fix some spelling (Haha) / grammar mistakes.

 

Random Event Spellcasting 5 - investigation success --> Verni (?) students

 

Debatters adventure 4 - You push but the door does budge. But the door does NOT budge right?

 

The Dance of Fools 10b - an assortment OR taffies, nougats, and candied apples.

 

For the Zoology field trip --> Professor Pachait strokes his beard? Shouldn't it be twirls his moustache?

 

And I think I saw DormTowerEight during the Pitts Adventure 1. It is that bad for Avila boys? Talk about high standards.

 

Hopefully I'm not annoying the team with all this. And also congratulations on your first anniversary. I didn't see it until today because of exams.

[Legate of Mineta]

Leoshi;

 

Thanks! It's not an annoyance at all: we really appreciate it, as it helps us improve the game.

[MadHatt]

If I may pitch in with some spelling mistakes also?

 

Student Adventure Magsa 5 (Arithmetic one) the link for Professor Valenta is showing her biography.

 

Random Event Theathre 6 (Composure exit, I think) it says scepter instead of specter

 

The Awesome Community Event 31 is all in red.

 

Student Adventure Uliva 10b, the first exit is named Exit 2 and isn't described at all. It just shows Exit 2.

 

Student Adventure Alan 5, Alan's link is showing his biography.

 

Random Event Thieves Guild 13 (Enchantment exit, I think), retieve instead of retrieve (twice both in spell name and as verb) and tranfers instead of transfers.

 

Student Adventure Philippe "Shall we dance, without stepping on my feet" the Deceit Exit, it says "It'll look like he's doing whwhat's" - what's

 

And for "Elementary my dear bruiser" - the Diplomacy Exit (or conversation where you ask if he has friends) the link for his familiar is odd. "It's only his Her" referring to his spider.

 

Student Adventure Katja Quinnecht 00, again, link.

 

Ylegh Adventure 01 puts Durand's name instead of Magsa at the end.

 

 

Is the Research Monster supposed to fail so often? I had a Reserch of 12 and Intelligence of 10 and it didn't work for me at all, even with Reload-Fu.

[Legate of Mineta]

MadHatt;

 

Thanks, please do! We'll check all of these for DLC 13.

 

Research Monster is a good find, actually- that is failing because the Monster System was removed just prior to launch. It looks like this remained undetected by us until now! We'll correct this in DLC 13 as well.

[Mikka]

Ilaro is a cheapskate. Well, not him himself (...wait, scratch that, he is a cheapskate), but his adventure is, anyway. Ilaro 9, one of the four exits offers a stat raise. Ilaro 10, all you get for success is Escape Artist, no matter which option you choose.

 

Where, on the other hand, you get an artifact or a luck boost if you fain for the Triplets main quest adventures, and all of the pirates and captains exits give you a stat point if you succeed. (I admit to not having done Orsi's recently, but I'm pretty sure there's either stat bonuses or glory, there).

 

Considering that the rolls for Ilaro are 27 to 28 (compared to Pirates 11 and Captain 12, which are 20), it seems almost unfair to just get Escape Artist point... as well as ending on 'Ilaro escapes from jain, and Orsi is actually his friend!' (with no explanation in that route- you almost have to have played Orsi's and the Triplets to make sense of it) with no followup. All you have is 'You break Ilaro out of jail, with sudden Orsi appearance' and no bonus or explanation. It really feels like you should get some sort of followup and reward.

 

 

...on the other side of the suggestions, do you have any suggestions on where a player could find the lottery? I see the adventure in the modtools, but... I don't know where to even find a chance to play the lottery, much less win it!

[Legate of Mineta]

Mikka;

 

Haha! I agree. That needs to be changed.

 

For the Lottery, I think it's a lottery to get! It's a really obscure, and very random Adventure which comes from a Random Event, if I remember correctly.

[Mikka]

Hm. I need to make friends with Vincent the Random Event boosters, and buy that ring... /jots down notes\

 

I find both the Rabbit adventures cute, but it would be nice to have an adventure where the character can adventure with their rabbit. It's sort of strange that Rabbit has two 'as familar' adventures while everyone else has one 'as familar' and one 'as player and familar together'. Well, everyone but Pamela. Admitedly, that would make things uneven, though I'm sure a bunch of us would be happy to try our hand at writing other familar adventures if they'd be neccessary to balance.

 

(I count the starting adventure as Platapuses character-and-familar.)

 

This is sort of spoilery, so...

 

Is Divaesque supposed to one day at random simply disappear from your inventory? I can't figure out if that's a bug, or if it's on purpose and I'm not summoning the terrors enough, or if it happens no matter what.

 

[Legate of Mineta]

Mikka;

 

Noted about Rabbit, although I am not sure we'll really do anything about that in Year 1, for the reason you noted.

 

As for the other...we'll review in DLC 13, thanks!

[Schwarzbart]

Can we player get some insight in the later years how the history is told in the view of the dragons?

[alurianknight]

I would like to second this motion

[Legate of Mineta]

Schwarzbart and AlurianKnight;

 

I think we can accommodate you.

[Schwarzbart]

Locked in the Library 05, just wondering wouldn't the people who take care of the wounds Barnes got also look at the wounds the player got?

At last after Barnes is patched up it sounds natural to me because it was the player wo unknowingly helped them.

[Legate of Mineta]

Well, that's sounds reasonable to me! I'll send it along.

[MadHatt]

At one of the Shade Adventures (My Shadow- Mountain Tops), I picked Fight the thief and then it exited the adventure without further steps in it and me losing the talisman.

 

In Magsa's quest (the extra credit one), at the final step, after investigating, you only get one exit instead of two. The Concentration one doesn't show.

 

Melisande Adventure shows up but after the Inquisitive Girl one, it doesn't show anymore. I think that it's only for Aranaz, but I was playing as Godina.

 

Is the "Short Changed" adventure restricted to Hedi? (Or should it be?). I wasn't in Hedi but that's what it said in the text.

 

In "Ivory Coloured Ribbons" for girls, Dale shows up as Yulia and as a 'she' in 05f.

 

In the Athletics Research, "Letter From Francine Debois of Avilia College" - Avilia not Avila.

 

Also a question....what does it take for the pirates to show up in Cirillo's Adventure...? Do they show up anymore? Are there prerequisites? I tested everything and they just don't show up!

[Legate of Mineta]

MadHatt;

 

Thanks! We'll look at these in 13.

 

For Cirillo, I'm not sure about the Prerequisites off-hand, but I'll note that section for review by the Content Team.

[Froide]

Hello everyone!

 

I've seen the game on discount on Impulse, about a week ago and said to myself "why not give it a shot"? So I downloaded it and tried it without expecting much...

 

Now, I've been playing it every day since then, and actually enjoying it! So, great job guys.

 

 

However (yeah, ought to be some "however", right?), a few things are somewhat irritating. I'm too lazy and unwilling to spend the time to skim through those 70 pages of criticisms and suggestions, so I apologize if what I'll write is already there.

 

-> I wholeheartedly agree with about everything Remeth wrote in his post.

 

-> Someone must have used a palette breaking spell or such, because it is quite surprising not to have purple sitting between blue and red. Took me some time to realize that purple lines were the impossible options while red were merely the difficult ones.

 

-> I can't figure out why the hell the game wants administrative rights. I first even hesitated to fire it at all, because requiring administration powers for mere gaming seems such an inherently insecure way of doing things. Might be my Linuxer habits showing up, but still...

 

-> Not having scrollbars is a real pain, particularly for loooooong lists. Not only is it uncomfortable, but I've noticed that you can actually miss options when using the mouse wheel because it scrolls further than the total length of displayed elements.

 

-> It's generally hard to keep track of things and I found myself writing key features on paper. Many things could help in that regard. For instance having a reminder of all active buffs and debuffs at the bottom of the "attributes" window, improving the way to navigate through those huge lists, using dynamic sheets or tree structures... Or even a search option !

 

-> Speaking of sorting... "Abilities" is a huge, chaotic beast. Why not move item-related ones to the "use item" list and create additional lists like "use location", "use student's ability" (would either be yours, like "bold action" or your clique members') and so on? Another option would be to sort by "goal", ie: grouping all abilities related to training, to work, to study...

 

-> Same story for spells and phemes. I've simply given up on using them because I can't make head nor tail of it. There are many spells and many phemes, and they're all packed into this single huge list with only alphabetical sorting. Are we supposed to actually remember everything as we acquire them if we want to be able to make use of them? For instance, I've never found which spell I could use "from novice to master" with.

 

-> Not sure yet if there is a point to familiars (besides lore and roleplay, of course!) Training them just looks like a waste of time, or maybe I've just not understood how it works.

 

 

And as a last remark, I've noticed some foreigners in the game speaking French (Katja's quest, IIRC), or rather a weirdish version of French (and yeah, I know my English can contain some weirdishiosities too). I don't know whether this is intended as whimsical and outlining the fact that it's not actual French or whether you just don't have someone fluent in that language among the developers. If the latter, I may offer some help.

 

Cheers!

[Legate of Mineta]

Froide;

 

Thanks for the comments! In particular, this is great: "Someone must have used a palette breaking spell"

 

Many of these issues have been also noted by other Academagians, and you'll see improvement (especially in the UI related ones) in Year 2. Organization is definitely an area of focus.

 

As for 'French', you are correct- it's a pseudo French being used, mostly for flavor.

 

Thanks!

[Panpiper]

How about making actions which right now can be used to raise the 'study' level of one's classes also be usable to raise the 'research' level of research topics?

 

Right now it takes a full ten actions to gain a single bonus. This is so expensive in terms of actions that I 'never' research. Being able to marry that up with the few mechanisms that exist to boost study levels might make it somewhat more attractive to at least level up a few research topics.

[Legate of Mineta]

Panpiper;

 

Not a bad suggestion at all! I think we may consider this one- good idea, thanks!

[retired_deer]

I like Panpiper's idea. He's definitely right. The research process is VERY unrewarding, except at the end. Granted, the flavor text is nice, and often well-written, but that doesn't detract from the point Panpiper brings up.

 

As a grad student, I enjoy researching. But given that this game is in a magical universe, why not replicate that joy of research on the level of a wizard? There are many excellent library events that I found myself laughing at, such as the books fighting over shelf space. Things like that could make the research process both a challenge and fun to do. Maybe when you discover one of the libraries listed in the locations, you would gain access to a "Research at ____ Library" ability or action that then allows you to select from a list of associated skills. For instance, the Venalicium Library Forbidden Archives would be a good place to research Gates and Mastery skills. Other libraries that specialize in one or the other of those could do the same, though with different results. What I am envisioning is the skill selection would then begin an event/adventure of some kind that walks you through research in a magical library. A purely Gates or Mastery library would yield a completely different adventure than the Forbidden Archives. The adventure could be purely text (perhaps for preliminary research), then gradually includes skill challenges and rewards (as you move into field research), culminating in the last 2 or 3 difficult research adventures, perhaps with multiple endings or directions (similar to the familiar good, evil, neutral paths, or the paths in the Main Adventure listed in the modbase). This captures the varying conclusions that could be reached in answering a research question. The end nets you the 10th skill step, the bonus, and maybe a secret location or shiny token for your efforts. Maxing out cooking, for instance, could earn you friendship with a cooking-oriented student or faculty member, and maybe an amazing chocolate cake, so delicious and moist.

 

The oddballs that stand out would be things like Diary of Edward Lamont. I'm sure something can be thought of for how to handle those.

 

This would, of course, be a long-term project to initiate given how many adventures/events would have to be drawn up. But it provides a direction that could prove interesting for the game. Makes the whole experience more immersive. I'm not about to suggest the same be done for classes. Most of us probably don't want to sift through Professor Monetario's class notes.

[Legate of Mineta]

R_D;

 

What you suggest would be a fantastic idea, but unfortunately the writing necessary to support this would add, well, years to the process. We've experimented with Research Adventures in the past, but to do them exhaustively is a problem.

 

Research is much more important in Year 2, but you will also find that the Research you have done in Year 1 benefits you...

 

More than that, I can't say at this time.

[Schwarzbart]

Can you make the extra Credit carry over to the next year? Because as it right now buffing via spell is more time economic then using any extra Credit action for geting a good exam score but if it carry over for all 10? exams then the thing looks different.

[Legate of Mineta]

Schwarzbart;

 

It's an interesting idea, actually. I'll pass it along! That might be very cool.

[Leoshi]

Is the platypus common in the world?

 

Because during the adventure where Oan talks to you about familiars, shouldn't she be surprised that you have a platypus for a familiar?