What to do about Pressure and Resolve? At its core, this is a Stagger System. And what does as Stagger System imply in an RPG? In short, it turns your battles into a puzzle the player must solve. What problem does the battle present, and which tools do they have at their disposal to deal with it? This makes the main focus of your game the conflict, and tends to work best when you have limited action options, in order to keep the player from being overwhelmed with choices, and regretful if they chose the wrong one for this particular fight. In other words, a Stagger System’s strengths lends itself best to a game focused on overcoming conflict.

     And for that reason, I don’t think it works for Trailblazer. In addition to that it starts to feel like “mechanics bloat,” it just doesn’t lend itself to what inspired me to make the game to begin with.

     My two favorite RPGs of all time are Dragon Quest 3 and Wild Arms. At its core, I wanted to make a game that took the best things both of these games had to offer. Dragon Quest 5, 9, and 11 are also favorites of mine, and served as a major inspiration for how a traditional JRPG can be brought into the modern world. But all these games all have a certain number of traits in common and serve a greater purpose.

     In the DQ series, while there is some strategy related to each boss, overall that's not the focus of the mechanics. You get a lot of class and party customization in DQ games, and so the feel tends more toward customizing your party to play how you want to play. The bosses present you with problems for your party to overcome. In Wild Arms, even though Jack was pretty well set in his game plan, Rudy and Cecelia were HIGHLY customizable, and you'd want to change their setup based on what you felt was fun, and what you felt would be most effective in the upcoming encounters. The bosses all present problems to the player that they will want to find how to overcome with the setup they’ve chosen.

     In both Wild Arms and DQ Games, the focus is on customizing characters to be fun; playing the classes/builds you like, and using the strengths of those builds to overcome the problems bosses present you with. A Stagger System works the opposite way. Each boss becomes a puzzle that you need to find the optimal strategy to defeat. Instead of building your party for fun and finding how to win, you first find how to win then build your party for winning. In other words, a Stagger System’s core purpose is backwards from what Trailblazer needs. Since the story of Trailblazer is heavily character-focused and character-driven, the mechanics should to be in alignment with that story. I need to focus more on character mechanics and less on system mechanics. In other words: I want you to play the characters you have the most fun with, build them in the way you enjoy the most, then use the tools at your disposal to solve the problems bosses with present you with. 

     In closing, this has been a very long-winded way of saying that, while the Pressure and Resolve system was a great experiment, at the end of the day it was a failed experiment and so I’m removing it. But I’m glad I tried it, because it helped me to galvanize my vision for the experience I want to give the player. This should be the last major system-related change the game will see. Going forward, all system-related changes will instead focus more on refining and improving the existing mechanics, to make each character feel unique, useful, and powerful in their own right.

PATCH NOTES:

 Version 0.04.00
 - Removed Pressure and Resolve Mechanics
 - Jack Attack is now more effective against enemies behind Cover
 - Buffed damage on Ogoun's Spear to pre-Pressure damage
 - Changed mechanics on Mei Lin's Grit skill to be more synergistic
 - Characters not speaking English will now be displayed in Italics
 - Made dialog more clear for finding the Doctor's Office in Deadwood
 - Grit skills now better convey that they recover AP when used
 - Passive Skills are now more apparent in Skill Learn menu
 - Updated how guages in Duels display Nerve and Draw Speed for better understanding
 - Updated Tutorials to better convey information
 - Removed Optimize Command from equipment window until bug fix can be found