I must apologize for not commenting here sooner... I've been aware of your really diligent work here for a while but never hopped in on the discussion for some reason... Anyways, I checked out your website for Blade Regalia and I found it to be pretty interesting read :) As an avid gamer I have some feedback also if you would hear me out.
Thanks for the feedback, and if I'm honest, this is the kind of feedback I would pay money for.
Consider adding at least an option for a comicbook outline reshade.
So on the topic of design I spent a lot of time considering how the characters should be rendered. I did actually try using outlines in the past, but I felt like it was better if it matched the 2D art style in the end. But I'm personally neutral on outlines or not, and so that's why i think you're idea is an absolutely great idea. Philosophy-wise, I'm a big supporter of players being able to choose the most fun way to play. It's something that I wish other game developers would do more. It would be fairly easy for me to add those kinds of options to the settings menu even having hatching and manga-style shading.
And yes virtually every background element is a placeholder, I've spent more time figuring out how the background should be rendered than anything else, and honestly I do think Breath of the Wild figured it out for me. We'll probably go for some kind of flattened, colorful, environments, but not actually cel shaded. I avoided cel shading the background because it ends up having very little depth.
I hear that Genshin Impact is doing really well.
So Genshin Impact has been an interesting topic of discussion because at first glance it seems like complete degenerate game design by the fact that it duplicates Zelda Breath of the Wild in almost every possible game mechanic, and then adds on awful mobile game mechanics and gambling. But the problem with writing it off is the fact that it is making millions of dollars very quickly, so that says to me that gamers like the things Genshin Impact is doing.
One thing I would say is very important to consider with the success of genshin impact is a theoretical topic that many failed games don't address. When you're working for a charity or non-profit trying to collect donations and you ask someone for $1, you don't know if they could afford to give you $100. So a lot of people collecting donations will start high, and then that person might say, "all I can afford to give is $10", or they'll say "give as much as you want."
You will only get as much as you ask for. So you should ask for more than what you need. Based on statistics most Genshin impact characters are worth about $20 each, and some characters (5 star characters) are worth up to $300 each. Imagine a game having a $300 DLC that just adds one character, it's no wonder games don't do that. Genshin Impact gets away with it because they turn spending money into a game. During the death of a game called Gigantic there were many fans who wanted to support the game financially, but the developers didn't have any avenues available to them. There were few micro-transactions in the game and the game itself was free to play which resulted in the development team working for months with no pay.
What sets apart Genshin Impact from other gambling games and even Zelda are many key factors just base on my assessment of it. 1) The developers are very passionate about the game, and people can echo that sense of passion. They work pretty hard on it and it shows. 2) They copied a good game, sometimes we take that for granted when games do copy other games. 3) The anime aesthetic. This is a big one, people want anime games. A lot of people would only play Dark Souls if it looked like Code Vein which is why Code Vein was successful. If Hyperdimension Neptunia released another game I'd buy it for no reason.
Genshin impact will suffer for a few reasons. It has some awful mobile game mechanics even though it's essentially a single player game. It has an energy system meaning you can only do a certain amount of actions per day (even if you pay money for more energy there's still a limit). If a game clones genshin impact and removes the energy system, it would absolutely decimate Genshin Impact. You should always put the customer first, and the player is the customer, and the customer does not like it when the game tells him to stop playing. This is exactly what Jeff Bezos would say is the most important factor of the success of Amazon is its dedication to customer satisfaction before anything else. The second issue is genshin impact punishes you for playing multiplayer. Much of the game is locked into single-player and it completely disenfranchises players from playing together. Blizzard Games makes basically all of their money off the idea that people like multiplayer gaming.
On top of this, your combat needs to be really well refined, responsive and just plain fun.
Combat mechanics are very important to all of us and the main thing I'm a fan of is responsiveness and control. This is the reason why I would never introduce an ability like "confusion" that changes your controls because it's mostly just frustrating. So I fully support animation cancelling, obviously some abilities can't be cancelled. Sometimes you have to commit like with an ultimate ability. In real life, if you wanted to do something you would just do it, you wouldn't do some crazy
step-back, punch, crouch, combo to do a special attack like they do in fighting games. It should be pretty close to just as responsive as your own mind in my opinion.
The RPG elements of the game are interesting. It looks like you have characters with base ability sets, and then you can unlock different regalia outfits for each that alter the abilities. There are a few pitfalls to watch out for here. Firstly, I don't think you want to completely change up a character's role, nor lose what a player likes about them
Initially we were conflicted over how to handle Regalia in the game vs the canon of the story. I personally think with all its strengths and weaknesses it will be something that helps blade regalia stand out. A core part of blade regalia is the idea that their fashion choices are meaningful with respect to combat. In other games cosmetic options are always purely cosmetic, but in blade regalia this will be different. So currently, the way it's being handled is that getting a new regalia is like basically getting a new character. We also plan on introducing a regalia sharing system where heroes with matching features can share regalia. This makes it reasonable to bring down the workload from 450 regalia (3 each for 150 characters) to somewhat fewer since there will be so much overlap . The main reason why the workload is so high is so we can continue to introduce new content over the next few years after its final release. So I would like for the game to feel complete even if it only has 20 characters, and every new character is just a welcomed bonus.
A big thing for me, which is why I stopped playing games like Warframe and Diablo III, is the requirement for constant narrative hook. If your game is going to be singleplayer/coop then player impact on the shape of the game world is just a necessity.
This is something we plan to cover when we start implementing narrative elements into the game. We definitely do have big plans for how the players will experience the story. Essentially I want for a player's personality to play a big role in how the game unfolds.
I believe that content in the game should always be unlocked by playing the game
I would definitely agree that it can be very un-fun when the game asks you to break from the regular gameplay to do something else. Looking at Genshin Impact again I find it hilarious how they try to set a precedent that your character is a 10,000 year old diety who battles dragons and then you're being asked to catch same random girl's pet cat. I understand that's a very MMORPG-thing to do. Since blade regalia is an action-adventure game, most of the conflicts are going to be solved through fighting and exploring. I can see how some developers think they need to
mix things up and just end up making things worse.
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