As you may remember, Quarterstaff has an in-game feedback button, where you can report any errors, glitches, or general suggestions that you may have. Submitting your comments in this way is completely anonymous unless you wish to identify yourself in the description.
One of the biggest reasons we released Quarterstaff through Steam’s Early Access option is to gather feedback. We’re unable to have a dedicated QA team (not counting me and my constant testing of the build), so we’ve put this power in the hands of our players. We’re extremely grateful for any kind of feedback, and truth be told, we’re surprised that we haven’t gotten more!
In my last post, I mentioned that we managed to correct an issue where the game wasn’t launching at all. This was a critical issue that became our highest priority. With some troubleshooting, our in-house wizard and programmer, James, was able to solve this problem. It was highly fulfilling to hear that we were able to solve this bug! Additionally, we now have a crash-reporting function that will let us know whenever the build chooses to fail – which has been infrequent, thankfully.
None of this would’ve happened without the critical feedback provided to us by that one player. Being able to fix a major launch bug like that one ahead of our full release is exactly what we’re about, so keep them coming!
The feedback we’ve gotten hasn’t only been for bugs or crashes, but also our game design and balance. The most notable feedback we’ve received was about the boss fight in the Bandit Hills, which is easily one of the toughest fights to complete – that is, breaking the statue AND defeated the Bandit Alchemist.
Well, it was tough for me, anyway. I don’t know about the rest of you, but it took me a hot minute to figure out how to do both.
Sometime in May, we received the following comments (copied verbatim – forgive the typos!):
In the Bandit Nemsis stage, the enemy is able to act during momentum. I’m not sure why that is occuring if that’s a condition he is able to do normally, or a bug. Looking through the encyclopedia of moves there doesn’t appear to be an enemy status that lets them move during player momentum status. However, I could be missing something.
If it is intended the boss fight only seems possible by forcing the boss to walk through his own status clouds and doesn’t really feel rewarding if intended
I’m on Alpha build v0.0.27 if that helps
Two separate points were brought to our attention here. The first was that it wasn’t clear that some enemies have a “Fast” Status Effect, which means they’re able to take turns even while Kalresh is in Momentum. We’re working on better explaining this to the player during the tutorial section of the game, so players an understand enemy status effects more easily. More to come on this one!
The second point – and the one I’ll be addressing in more detail – is that the Alchemist was offing himself so quickly that the player wasn’t really able to “earn” the victory. If you dance around him long enough, he’ll hurt himself in his own damaging mist, and the encounter will end. You’ll win, but you won’t be able to destroy Guldaeva’s Statue and receive a “True Victory” outcome.
Not destroying the Statue in the Bandit Hills means that players won’t be able to unlock another helpful shortcut in the Tower. If you’ve tried to ascend the Tower, you already know how helpful these shortcuts can be, especially as you’re making attempts to defeat Guldaeva and beat the game.
Learning these details about how unsatisfying it was to take on the Alchemist moved us to action. Matt revised the Alchemist fight, and now players will have more time for trial and error. Plus, if you haven’t revisited the fight, you really should!
In addition to new and fancy maps, the Bandit Alchemist has a new design and animations. Be sure to revisit and enjoy all the new features we’ve added!
In short, please keep sending us your feedback! You never know – we may actually agree with it and make some changes for the better.
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Millie and the GLM Team