...devlog, day 1
Because I can't just sit calmly for a while and need to do s o m e t h i n g n e w
Welp
I am making another rpg. It's going to be called something like "Crypts of Kayith Ulnorr" (working title, I need to make it sound even more dungeon synth-y)
I think I've learned quite a lot of lessons from Nilvreth Sagas, and eager to apply this knowledge now.
So (besides madly scribbling a bunch of concepts and ideas into my notebook), spent today on implementing a proper random encounter system. It tracks if player actually moved or not, so no more encounters while trying to walk into walls. Also planning to add some delay counter at the end of battles, so you won't get encounters right next step after you finished fighting.
Also, done a quick sprite for protagonist. Because I can.
Actually thinking on making NPCs constantly play their walking cycles like in old ff/dq etc, purely for more motion present on the screen.
Also I'll implement a proper roleplaying system this time, I swear. Will event try to do a ~dynamic spell menu~, so I am pretty sure I's gonna get rough really fast.
And oh, I'm gonna document it all here In unnecessary detail, yep. Brace yourself.
kknots
I think the main issue with random encounters was not that which you described (most players, I believe, were not even aware of the key holding mechanic), but rather the lack of reward and lack of control over obtaining new healing items. You see, even in Dragon's Quest I you would get gold and EX from every enemy slain, and for that gold you could buy new and better equipment, healing and support items and increase your stats. In Nilvreth Sagas, you only increase stats, which is nice I guess, but ultimately you fight the same 2 enemies per level and really just want to get to the next level as soon as possible to unlock more content. So you only really want to level up just enough to progress.
After that you really, really want to avoid fights. But they keep happening. Let's say, you want to get to a mini-boss (like Observer) or a full boss (Arane, I think, was his name). Well, you want to save your mana for that encounter, in order to have as much of it as possible. And, as one reviewer (the long one) said on Nilvreth Sagas, you nerfed the physical attack dramatically on your protagonist, so he takes a load of damage if he tries to just use physicals. You tried to patch that up by giving us healing potions, but the problem with that is that we, as players, don't know what will happen next in the game. Maybe we're stocking those potions for some really tough level ahead, and we don't know when or if we will get new potions, because you have deleted the economy from the game (remember gold and shops to buy stuff from? That thing), and so we really don't want to use potions without necessity.
I think that is the problem with random encounters in your game so far.
You could remedy this by introducing different types of terrain containing different types of enemies in them. I believe, in DQ I you would mostly encounter slimes on plains that die in one hit, while in forests you would encounter tougher enemies. Similar situation in FFVII. So you could use this to, let's say, put tougher enemies in high-reward areas around chests and key items, while putting weakers enemies everywhere else. You even sort of did with the Observer and Guardian Obelisk. Or you could solve random encounter annoyance by having more types of enemies per level, so that the player is interested to encounter them more and they exhaust the content just as soon as they reach the new level. Having backtracking really aggravates this issue (this was also mentioned by the big reviewer).
Anyway, that's my two cents on this. Don't take this the wrong way, I am NOT bashing you, I really look forward to your next project, however many enemy types it contains.