Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!
Hey guys!
Earlier this month we posted a survey on Patreon with 11 questions designed to learn more about our audience, as well as to get feedback on certain key topics about the game. The survey was for patrons only, however we ended up getting nearly 500 responses and some valuable data. I figured I'd show the results from that survey along with our interpretation of the data.
The results are highly favorable overall, and show that a lot of issues people had with the early versions have pretty much been taken care of. I'll go ahead and present my thoughts on the results question by question, along with some of my reasoning for asking the question in the first place.
Question 1 :
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What's Question #1 tell us?
This question was asked to get a grasp on where the audience was coming from. I wanted to know if the people giving feedback were more or less likely to have a knowledge of modern games outside the H genere or if their experience was more isolated to adult games. Obviously, they do! Except for dat one guy.
Question 2:
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What's Question #2 tell us?
This adds some more detail to the last question. This question tells me that while a majority of the patrons played and enjoyed some of the classics that this game is based on, a pretty surprising percentage did not. While it doesn't isolate a whole lot, it does suggest that some of the retro gameplay concepts that made the above games super charming (and nostalgic for many of us) could be entirely new to a significant number of the patrons. Not all of these concepts aged well, and it's possible that people who enjoyed these retro titles will find them more appealing than others.
Question 3:
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What's Question #3 tell us?
This was mainly out of curiosity. We plan on supporting these equally and making adjustments for each to make them fun. The results however are significantly different than we had guessed. We all figured a lot more people would use 'No Wait'.
Question 4:
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What's Question #4 tell us?
This suggests to me that we've zeroed on in a pretty solid sweet spot for difficulty. Granted, it's definitely going to sway back and forth as development progresses, but now we have an idea of what it should feel like. I'm not particularly concerned with the absolute difficulty as much as "is difficulty or a lack of difficulty settings hindering the player's experience?" I feel that's true for those who answered 'Too Easy' or 'Too Difficult'. You'll see however there's a question below that I think could remedy the rather high % of 'Too Difficult' responses. Note that just because of this favorable response it doesn't mean we won't consider adding more difficulty related options in the future.
Question 5:
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What's Question #5 tell us?
This is probably the most significant question of the survey for us, as it says what I suspected but wanted some confirmation on. I'd prefer for the teal color to be a lot bigger and the green and yellow to go away. That said, it's tough to isolate a reason for this right now, and it's definitely too soon to jump to conclusions about the overall design of the battle system (which I think that some players may be inclined to do). The good thing is, I believe there are a lot of ways that this can be remedied, and probably through relatively small changes. I'd really like to hear your input on this one! Just remember to consider small changes before big ones.
Question 6:
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What's Question #6 tell us?
I'm pretty happy with this result. I'm personally in the green category, as I more than anyone would like to be able to push more content out faster. In fact, we will have to. Of course, this is simply a limitation of resources. It's a bit of a catch 22 in that the faster we put out releases, the more members we can add to the team. On the flip side, we need the members to quickly push out enough content to keep patrons satisfied. A secondary issue is that we simply need leads for talented developers, and a lot of quality developers aren't going to want to work on hardcore adult material for the amount of money we can pay them (just a reminder that we are working for way less than a developer at any normal game studio would). AltairPL and I work anywhere from probably 10-19 hours a day 7 days a week, and are both very motivated, so hopefully the addition of TK as a full time member will be the first step to improving development speed (it's going great so far by the way). We also have a lot of areas (specifically with art) where workflow optimization can still happen, and TK is already proving to be a second set of eyes that can critique my workflow and offer better solutions. There'a also the factor where as engine development finishes, it will free up time for more content related work for both of us (AltairPL will likely shift to spending more time adding events for the game, and I can concentrate more on art). Granted, we still have some distance to go on that front.
On the topic of adding team members, I think the next position we need filled is something I'll call a "community manager". At this point, I probably spend as much time handling community stuff and invoices / sending out rewards / etc. as I do on development, and that will likely only increase as we get more interest in the game. If you're motivated, trustworthy, have better social skills than a potato, hate your 9 to 5, are more interested in the project than in making bank right now, and want to have the opportunity to get in with what I think could eventually evolve into a successful adult game studio, let me know
.
Question 7:
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What's Question #7 tell us?
So, this wasn't quite what I expected. I guess what it does say is that I was aware of what the community was interested in, and even though the largest chunk is happy with the direction we've taken in V0.03 and V0.04 with regard to adding rounded out content, it's still pretty divided.
The main reason I asked this question was to get validation for what I want to add for V0.05. Really, it's more of what *we can* add, and I'm just seeking patrons' approval. AltairPL is knees deep in taking apart the map layer of the engine for the overhaul, which is naturally going to mean some work just to get back to where we were at once he's finished. To add to that, TK is hot on the trail of a great idea to revamp our map making process. He's basically started work on a 3D map editor in Maya, which we will then use to render out all maps similar to how the sideview maps are currently being done. There are a ton of theoretical benefits that I won't go into here (good topic for another post... with visuals), but the point is that I don't think it's a great idea to add new environments right now when they will likely just have to be overhauled soon. In addition, we really need to choose objectives so that I don't have to bug AltairPL while he works on the map engine overhaul. This of course goes against the (small) majority vote here, but my proposal is that the main objectives for the V0.05 development cycle be the following (in no particular order):
1. Map engine overhaul. Primary objective, no questions, this one has to be done sooner rather than later to minimize the work we have to redo later. Not only will it improve performance, it will make the process of making maps and events significantly faster.
2. Add Neon's second outfit and as much related artwork (and combat H stuff) as possible.
3. Cloud integration for development tools/assets and major software upgrades. As of today this is actually about wrapped up, as it is has been my major task for the past few weeks now.
4. Bring TK up to speed on as much as possible, and in doing so consider and implement as many workflow optimization solutions as possible.
5. Follow through with TK's new map editor idea.
6. Pull out the major puzzle area from V0.04 and replace it with more straightforward exploration. I'd potentially like to use this as an opportunity to create the replacement overhead maps using TK's new map editor system, assuming we get that far.
7. Add at least one new story H scene.
8. Anything else we can cram in that doesn't interfere with the map overhaul or create related work that we will need to redo later.
Let me know what you think!
Question 8:
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What's Question #8 tell us?
While not critical, the number of 'Too Slow' responses is pretty high in my opinion. I'd like to find a solution for this that doesn't make characters look like they are cheetahs with respect to the environment scale. I personally think a small speed increase could be acceptable, but unfortunately RPG Maker only allows for really significant changes in speed, meaning it'd have to be customized.
Question 9:
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What's Question #9 tell us?
This tells me that, pretty overwhelmingly, the issues patrons had with combat speed in the early versions of MATM are a thing of the past. For those that think it's too slow, I have a couple ideas. I think a portion of the significant % that think it is too fast may not have known about the Battle Time Mode option settings (see the next question).
Question 10:
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What's Question #10 tell us?
The number of patrons that didn't know about this was surprising to us. We also think it could be a reason for the 15% of responders to Q9 that think combat is too fast, as well as the 11% of responders to Q3 that feel combat is too difficult. Perhaps this merits a tutorial message in future versions!
What's Question #11 tell us?
As for Question 11 (which asked if patrons had any further comments), about a third of responders left comments! There were a lot of great ideas, and a few requests kept appearing over and over. The most popular three are listed below, with some feedback.
1. Animated H scenes. This is something I'd love to do, and it's possible that we could do this for some special events, but there would be a whole mess of obstacles to overcome to manage it successfully in combat (not to mention we'd need more artists).
2. Group H content in battle. We have plans for this!
3. An H scene gallery (or alternative). This is also something we plan on doing, though we don't have details solidified yet.
Sorry for the novel, but hopefully this sparks some discussion!
