Idea for Bionic Dues 2

[Chthon]

This game as it is represents a very good cross between rogue-like and RTS.  However have you thought of maybe making a Disgaea style TBS with your mission system?  You control each of your bots in turn for your turn, then hit end turn and the enemy moves?  Right now it feels a little weird that you have 4 tool sets available to you, but only one is actually physically there at a time.  Where do the others go when not selected?

Just to be clear, I love the game as it is right now,  just tossing an idea at you.

[x4000]

We actually started out with exactly that sort of design, believe it or not.  Originally the inspiration was FFT more than Disgaea, but the same sort of idea in general.  What we found was that, in practice, it felt way too slow.  Compared to those sorts of TBS tactics games, the battlefields here are enormous, as are the number of enemies.  The space during those battles in the other games are limited for a reason.  It was really cumbersome and un-fun to play, and after a month or so we wound up going more in this direction.  Some day I do hope to do more of a turn-based tactics game, but that would be a completely separate project, really.

[Chthon]

Well, then there is the idea of a Pseudo real time movement à la Fallout Tactics, or XCom: Apocalypse.  For the record those are 2 different systems.

Fallout Tactics allowed you to move your units in real time like a RTS until you engaged with the enemy, at which point it reverted to a turn based mode at the point of contact.

XCom: Apocalypse allowed you to choose real time or turn based at the mission start.  Maps were quite large, possibly even larger than your maps in Bionic Dues being 3D.  In Real time, pause was allowed, but otherwise operated like a RTS where you gave orders to move to X location, or fire at Y enemy from Z position.  Of course Turn based used the whole AP system XCom was famous for.

[x4000]

Yep, there are all sorts of systems along those lines that we might use for future games.  But if Valley 2 has taught us anything, it's that anything that is "within the same franchise" can't be changed too radically, or people start getting really angry sometimes.  I personally think that Valley 2 is a better game than Valley 1, although both really have a lot of cool unique things, but for people who wanted "Valley 1 but bigger and prettier," that is not at all what Valley 2 actually was.  If we had released Valley 2 as its own sort of game on its own name and story, I think it would have been taken more on its own terms.

[Chthon]

If Valley 2 is that different, perhaps I'm going to have to give it a try.  It isn't that I didn't like Valley 1; I liked it.  I played it with friends.  We divided to gather resources together, conquered the land together, and then finished the first area.  Then I realized everything resets in the next area and only adds a few new challenges, and I didn't have much reason to continue.

Not saying it was a bad design, but it's the same reason I stopped playing a lot of games.  Once you lose that feeling of progress, or even lose what progress you fought for, I tend to stop caring about the progress, or even playing.  This goes for character progression and story.  Final Fantasy 8 lost me at the end, wanting to do everything it had, but couldn't do most of it till right before the end, I forgot why I cared so much to finish it.  With Valley 1, instead I lost all my progression as a character, and had to learn everything over again.  It felt like I had gone backwards.  The Megaman syndrome, except within the same game.

Sorry if I went off on a tangent here.  I just feel that if you add a lot of extra content to a game, you have to give the player an emotional investment to it.  Tie it into/make it affect the plot for example.  In Valley 1's situation, don't make the characters suffer amnesia for each area, instead make them want to invest more points elsewhere, and keep the progression going.