Maids & Masters (& Act 2 Part 2 & Patreon)

As expected, I'm still busy with playing through the game, so this is going to be another fairly boring post. I'm close to the end of current content, so the actual playthrough won't take much longer, but I do have some outside work to take care of as well, so I won't have much in the way of development news for a little while.

That said, playing through the game again has still been productive. Most of the errors I'm finding are smaller nit-pick type things, but I'm glad I'm getting them fixed. I also had some concerns about the length of the more recent updates, and playing through the game again as a player has more or less set that concern to rest. There's a lot of game in Maids & Masters, and I'm happy with (and occasionally surprised by) myself for making what I have.

Self-aggrandizing aside, I do have some news to share. First, the less fun news - between outside work and keeping up the pace on my own projects, I haven't found the time to make an April Fool's project. As much fun as they are, I just don't have time this year. In more exciting news, I've found out that I'm eligible for a feature I've been wanting to implement on Patreon, so I've been looking at other potential changes to go alongside it. Right now, there's a poll open to Patrons that will be closing the Friday after next (April 5th) regarding changing how early access works for Patrons. If you're a Patron (or are considering being one and want to get a vote in) click that link and leave a vote. If you're not a Patron, a public version of the poll will be going out to gather more information this Friday. That poll will also close on April 5th.

Once both polls are closed and Patrons have had ample time to make their voices heard, I'll be making another post on April 5th to announce the new feature along with whether or not the change to early access is being implemented. It's not a huge change, but the votes have been tied since the poll launched, so I'm eager to find out what everyone thinks of the potential changes.

After that, it's back to development, and I'll have some more substantial news regarding the updates coming in the second half of Maids & Masters Act 2.

Maids & Masters (& Following Up on v0.15)

This might be kind of a boring post. Not because I don't have anything to say - if you've been here for a while you know full well I can ramble on about nothing for a good long time. No, it might be kind of boring because all I really have to say is that my follow-up to v0.15 is to play my own game like a player for the first time since the remaster.

It's something I've been meaning to do for a long time, because it gives me better context for what the player experience actually is. Sure, I playtest everything - often multiple times - but that's mostly an attempt at making the game "work right" rather than trying to figure out how fun it is. That's one of the reasons I appreciate feedback so much. If you're still having fun, I must be doing something right. If I play through a section and I don't have fun, I'm definitely doing something wrong. Having gone so long without playing my own game just for the fun of it, that's an extra check that I've been missing.

Doing a detailed playthrough like this also means I can finally re-create my checkpoint saves. Those are nice to have for a couple of reasons, with the two big ones being that I can provide saves to Patrons if they lose their data (something I typically avoid doing, but my Patrons get special treatment), and if someone reports something I'm having trouble finding on the back end I can look for it on the front end. That second thing also makes investigating certain bugs much, much easier. Sometimes you just can't understand what's happening until you experience it, and doing that part of the research has been a lot harder without having those saves ready. Of course, this does mean that the next few days are going to be dedicated to something other than development, so next week's post might be a bit boring, too.

That's not to say there's no development happening, though. While I play through, I am still hunting for bugs, typos, and keeping an open mind to anything that might need to change. So far, I've found and fixed a couple of bugs (including a rat fight engaging during a save transfer from Arrival; turns out it was triggering because you already beat it, but the self-switches are set differently between Arrival and the main game) and have started taking a closer look at progression to see what I can change to improve the overall experience without affecting existing saves too much (which so far just means that boss encounters give more XP now). On that second note, I'm a little wary of changing things like that, but even counting the XP increases to some enemies that happened in v0.15, existing saves are still only down one fifth or so of a level if they've cleared all current content. The biggest difference this change makes is that Maids are more likely to level up after clearing a boss, which adds to both the reward and incentive to getting through those challenging fights without really affecting the long term balance of the game.

Once I'm through this, it'll be on to development on v0.15.1. Probably. I have some things I need to talk over with my Patrons about how to best go forward on developing the second half of Act 2, so the next release might just be v0.16. If you want in on that conversation, it'll be open to all of my Patrons.

Maids & Masters v0.15 Release

This update is in kind of a weird spot length-wise. The story bit is one of the shortest it's ever been, but with the new arena, it might take multiple hours to get through if you decide to do everything.

 

I'm working on an idea to try and make these updates more substantial going forward, but that's a post for Patreon on a future Friday. For now, here's the changelog:

v0.15
Added the next main story segment - the remnant of an Estate that played both sides of a war.
- A new Estate to explore, including dozens of new optional challenge fights.
- A new trophy, awarded for becoming the champion of the new arena.
- The fourth cult investigation segment.
Added an abandoned house to Magach.
Fixed a bug that caused wake-up events to occur before the Maid’s affection was high enough.
Fixed a bug that caused some Estate grounds statues to not change when customized.
Fixed another handful of bugs that caused the player sprite to be temporarily incorrect.
Fixed a bug that caused the second half of Quinn’s Freeze event to replay after completion.
Fixed an incorrect hint description for the eastern puzzle of Farquhar’s hold.
Fixed a bug that caused the sword butler fight to not trigger in the Bancroft dungeon.
Fixed a bug that may cause Melissa’s extra Freeze scene to not trigger correctly.
Fixed a bug that caused Insulting Blast to debuff the incorrect enemy stats.
Fixed a bug in the second Adelade conversation that caused the screen to never fade back in.
Fixed a bug that caused the new equipment event to appear in Emily’s shop when it shouldn’t.
Fixed a bug where Emily’s shop gave out too many Experimental Concoctions the first time.
Updated Emily in Act 2 to explain why your free samples stopped coming in.
Updated several customizable Estate statues to have dialogue and fix a “turning” issue.
Updated experience values of Sword Butler, Assassin Maid, and Cave Bear.
Various other minor dialogue and event updates.

Maids & Masters (& Putting The Finishing Touches on v0.15)

Being as close to release as it is, there's not a lot left to say about v0.15, so this is largely just going to be a "Patron appreciation post" for my high-tier Patrons. That said, there is some information to share.

As I mentioned in last week's post, there isn't nearly as much XP going around in Act 2 as I wanted there to be so I could build up to where I wanted levels to be in Act 3 properly. This can also create some progression-related issues, such as characters not having all of their skills, when we're getting to a point in the game where you should have more of those to be able to deal with some of the more strategically difficult fights. Lucky for me, my Patrons are amazing, and give me feedback. I discovered a bit of a flaw in the way I was calculating XP for the newer enemies, resulting in their XP values being significantly lower than they should be. 

Fixing this means there are some enemies (like the Cave Bear, Sword Butler, and Assassin Maid) that are already in the game that now give nearly (or more than, in the case of the Cave Bear) double the XP they did before. Thankfully these enemies are really rare at this point in the game, so anyone with an existing save that's already past where you encounter these enemies will be minimally affected - it's only about 1/7th of a level's worth of XP that's been added. The main thing that would be affected is the new arena and exhibition fights coming in v0.15. All of those enemies will be worth nearly double what they were when I originally did my own playtesting.

This also means I really need to do another in-depth playtesting run to look for bugs in parts of the game that I've already played through. I've been relying on having help playtesting a lot for Act 2, so my personal saves are kinda half-broken messes, and now I'm under-leveled as well. It'll also be nice to take a little "time off" and have work be just enjoying all my effort up to this point.

If you're interested in being one of those amazing playtesters, check out my Patreon. VIP Patrons get access to all of my test builds. If the high tier is a little too rich for your blood, I still love feedback, and Patrons get early access to published builds before it goes up anywhere else, along with a bunch of other benefits. Every bit of support matters - my Patrons are what keep me going.

Maids & Masters (& A Release Date For v0.15)

Kinda weird to think this is already the "end" of the first half of Act 2. There's obviously still all the side content coming in v0.15.1, plus v0.16 to act as the actual narrative mid-point, but this is pretty much it. I'm not totally sure how I want to handle the second half, either, despite it being literally right around the corner. Plus there's some story things that are mentioned (I would say foreshadowed, but it's a little too on-the-nose for that) in this update, which hopefully won't feel like it's spoiling anything that's coming. But now I feel like I'm saying too much, so let's talk about things that aren't so story relevant.

This segment is a little different from how I originally envisioned it, but I feel like this version is a little more in character for the Master of the new Estate. Mechanically speaking, that means this update is kinda reduced to the basics - a couple of character growth conversations and one big story conversation and otherwise functions as an introduction of a new feature. But I'm more or less okay with that.

There's two parts to this new feature. The first part is being able to participate in exhibition matches, where you can have your usual engagement team go through a shorter series of fights and make bets on the fight, so you can make a little Silcrow for winning. The second part is the arena, which will limit your party to a single Maid for one-on-one matches, just for the sake of seeing if you can win (though you do still get XP for winning). The second part is also where the trophy is, and where you'll need to figure out things like how to make, say, Ella win a relatively difficult fight without someone else there to pick up the slack in terms of damage. Which will probably make you wonder where Archibald got all that confidence all those updates ago. 

 

In both cases, these fights are limited, so there's still a limit to how much XP you can earn, but it helps solve a problem. Act 2 has been a lot lower on the combat end of things than I originally wanted it to be, which means characters are still going to be around level 20 going into the end of this first half instead of level 25-30 like I wanted them to be. Without the opportunity to gain those levels, it affects how difficult I can make Act 3 unless I do things like adjust XP values of enemies earlier in the game, but doing that would require a restart for existing saves, which I don't want to do. It's kind of a difficult design problem to have, and setting this arena up to create an opportunity to grind levels and make the later parts of the game easier on yourself is one way for me to avoid compromising my vision for how the gameplay fits into the story based on how hard or easy the game is.

As for what's left, v0.15 just needs the cult segment story-wise, so the test build will definitely be available to VIPs on Patreon this Friday. It may still not include the cult segment, as I have a lot of testing as well as some finishing touches on how exhibition and arena progression works to do between now and then, but it'll for sure be available on the 8th. That puts the early access release date for v0.15 on the 15th, which I suppose is about as appropriate as a release date can get.