Dawn of Heroes (WIP) (Updated 03/11/24)

Yeah, a lot of the time, I feel like a side character, and there are like 3 people that are stronger than me lmao.

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I donā€™t have a favorite carrier route. They all contribute something different towards the end of the story. The CEO route has a more notable impact depending on what choices you make dealing with the money laundering part of the story.

She is an antagonist, yes. The only character close to a villain thatā€™ll be a RO in this story is Camouflage, but her romance status might change as I am going over everything. At this time the only RO I am guaranteeing is the carrier route RO. For the sequel (not the parallel story) I do have a villain romance planned but that is subject to change.

I do hope to add moments to make the MC shine. I think part of this issue comes from me trying to make the side characters not seem incompliant and I way over did it. I may end up going over some older scenes to assist with this, too. I read a few stories were the side characters feel incompetent when in the presence of a Mary Sue like MC. Hopefully I can find a balance.

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Yeah, to add on to what the others are saying, when you give the player the option to set their own power level, thereā€™s a certain expectation that they will be one of the most powerful characters in the story when they max everything out. Yet even a fully maxed out character is, not counting Breaker, who isnā€™t a superhuman, the characters at the distillery, who you just cut, Dr. Ellisā€™s experiments, who seem to be there just for Aegis to beat up while the MC stands there largely helpless, or Kelly, who is just a teen with a very minor power, objectively in the lower half of superhumans weā€™ve seen. This is my list of power rankings as of now, assuming an MC with maximized attributes resulting in Strength 84, Stamina 68, Toughness 84, Reflexes 68, and Speed 68. Weā€™ll also used maxed out regeneration, which lets us heal from a sprained ankle in 4 days instead of 14.

Jordan is our least powerful so far. Super strong and supertough, possibly super fast given how quickly he got from the restaurant to the kidnappersā€™ warehouse. Heā€™s bullet proof, which is more than we can say about anyone else, but his strength and toughness didnā€™t compare favorably to a slightly weaker MCā€™s when I tested in chapter 8. Since he seems like a bit character, Iā€™ll pencil him in as the weakest.

Genesis. Hard to say, actually. Sheā€™s enough to take on smallish groups of goons, though we have yet to see anything truly impressive in combat. Versatile, but with normal human physicals. Passed out trying to locate the kidnapped children at the docks, a task which took a lot of time and effort for her. Iā€™m placing her above Jordan simply because sheā€™s a more important character.

MC. Able to take on groups of goons, compared favorably to Jordan, gets decked by every other superhuman they fight. The actual numbers are posted above.

Lugh. Lugh is a character we actually see the stats of. Strength 95, Stamina 100, Toughness 85, Reflexes 68, Speed 48. Our MC is clearly outclassed in Strength and Stamina, barely edged out in Toughness, equaled in Reflexes, and is clearly faster. Lugh more than makes up the speed difference with a horribly overpowered spear that can casually skewer Tougher characters than the MC and fight independent of Lugh. Oh, and, he regenerates thousands of times faster than the MC. Yā€™see he healed from being impaled by his own spear in what appears to be less than a minute. Take that, four day sprained ankle!

Pykrete. Iā€™m addressing him after Lugh not because heā€™s more powerful, but because establishing Lughā€™s power helps establish Pykreteā€™s. Pykrete is strong enough, fast enough, and tough enough to brawl evenly with Lugh. Full stop. All his physicals are comparable, and he uses his elemental powers to great effect even when fighting in melee. I will say Lughā€™s spear and experience should give him the edge in an objective power scale, but Pykrete is close enough that we can comfortably say he outclasses our MC.

Aegis. Ah, yes, Aegis. Strength 100, Stamina 99, Toughness 100, Reflexes 90, Speed 90. All her physicals are significantly greater than an MC who specifically optimizes for that specific ability. She, like Lugh, fully recovers from being impaled after a few seconds to a minute. Of combat. With Pykrete. Do I even need to say anything else on the subject?

So, of the actually significant superbeings, a fully maxed out MC is, objectively, in the lower half of the power rankings. Now, if we add in the people I cut and make a lot of guesses as to how powerful they really are, we might come to the conclusion our MC is in the top half. Possibly top quarter. Butā€¦thatā€™s not really great when the player has been led to the assumption theyā€™ll be one of the most powerful. Honestly, I foresee a lot of your potential problems rising from a disconnect between player expectations and the actual gameplay.

These are just some thoughts and observations. I really love what youā€™ve done so far. Please donā€™t take this as a negative. Thank you for continuing to take feedback and update your work!

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We can literally have super reflexes and pseudo spider-sense and yet we still cannot react in time for someone moving over to attack us, we just to see the kick coming before we get hit

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I think itā€™s a very good decision. Donā€™t forget to also think about how often and how well youā€™ll be able to include each power into the story and how youā€™d write a fight scene with those. Would be a shame to have a superhero game where the story is forced to dance around you actually using your powers and how.

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Yeah too many powers, I personally love mental powers as you can hear what other characters are thinking haha.

Also yeah in some instances my MC was kinda OP and a kicked Santa Muerteā€™s ass but vs Pykrete my MC was a ragdoll

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It may be worth limiting the powers to certain ā€œsetsā€ the player can choose between. Kind of like how I The Forgotten One uses its specialisations.

Maybe you could have your superman like abilities as one, magical abilities as another, speedster as another and so on.

I imagine it would be a lot easier to write the different variables for each scene this way.

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Thank you for your feedback! There is a specific vision and goals that I have had for this game/story and customizing superpowers is one of them. So while your idea for power sets isnā€™t bad, the closest I am willing to offer for this project are the preassembled powersets that I already offer. Now as I review the content that the powers offer some of these preassembled powerset may be removed. It is not my current focus, so I am unable to get further information at this time.

Thank you for that feedback. :slight_smile: I do hope to get to a thorough pass with each power once I get around to reevaluating powers. However, if the music is right I do get in the mood to dance. :dancer:

Thatā€™s a valid criticism, thank you for the feedback.

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Fair enough, I hope you manage to pull it off as it is a very cool idea to be able to customize your powers they way you have it setup at the moment.

(Donā€™t think I only want to criticise the game because it is good and superhero stories are weirdly few and far between on this forum)

As you said earlier in the thread, you donā€™t want the mc to be a Mary Sue/ Gary Stu which is very fair, but if thatā€™s the case, I would like one or two extra scenes where we can train our powers. Like, maybe after we first see the power difference between us and aegis we could decide to start training to improve and then get to a closer level to her and lugh maybe?

When youā€™re designing your powers, they all have the strength and weaknesses tabs and yet most of them only have ā€œis a spellā€ weakness and no strength, sometimes I just donā€™t think those options need to be there personally.

After the discussions and interest that has recently returned to this WIP and things that I have said and read I thought I would give some clarification to the choices I have recently made.

Due to me tackling multiple issues at once I think I have given a false impression into why I have made the choices I have and what those changes actually entail and for this I beg everyoneā€™s forgiveness. DoH is getting some content potentially cut due to an abundant power variety. The rewriting of the story is for better focus on prominent characters.

The rewriting is coming from feedback about getting more time with the team, not due the amount of content. When I started this project, I was aiming for it to be different than it is turning out to be when it comes to interactions and building up the main character. As my focus changed over time, I did not want to get rid of the content that I already had written. I liked that early on the hero had time to be an individual getting their feet wet before meeting others. I liked taking time with a few small crimes.

Before I ever got recent feedback, I was already having doubts about some of the older content but those doubts started to fade as I started connecting choices to changes later in the story. However as I received feedback from different sources that changed. A lot of feedback was about how little time we get with the team as a whole and how we get very little time with individuals I reflected on how to change that. There was other feedback that did not say this but could be address by the same fixes.

I considered just adding a few chapters and was recommended adding a chapter for each character. While this would fix that issue, it did not seem the best and the more I thought about it the messier it would make the flow. From there I thought that I would need to move things around. I have had personal issues with me introducing the team so late in the story for a few months but kept them to myself. So as the feedback came in, I already had an idea of where the issue originated from. I could see that if I would introduce them earlier it would open options. This required cuts to be made which in turn require other chapters to be rewritten in a domino effect.

I recognize too that I was thinking a lot of future projects and setting those up at the cost of making this project solid. I am removing content whose only purpose was the legacy of what this project was and setting up for the potential sequel.

Currently, I am open to removing powers but am committed to keeping as many as possible. I just need to see what fits and is worth the time an effort to better incorporate. While less can be more sometimes more is more it just requires more effort and/or a better plan of implementation. Keeping to a specific powerset is not going to happen, as I have core concepts that I set out to have in this project and excluding those concepts would get rid of my reason for working on this.

The two most core things I look to preserve in this project is a functionable power creation system and different occupations that have their own stories. I will try to keep other things as well, but in the end those two Iā€™ll not budge on. To do so defeats the point of it all. I do recognize that there is a lot of ground to cover on figure out which powers stay and incorporating them into the narrative better.

In summery the rewrite is happening to better focus on the team having time to develop as characters and to better connect some story threads. The powers are being reevaluated as it has been brought to my attention how powers do not have a proportionate impact compared to expectations, mine included. I have decided to halt further advancement in the story to address both issues. While powers are being reevaluated because of an abundance of choices, the story is not. The story is being refocused to allow for more character interactions with the team.

I hope this clarifies and allows everyone a better understanding and clearer expectations of what is happening with this project.

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I never incorporated in the script to get rid of Strengths when there were no options. I can try to do that. As for the ā€œis a Spellā€ that comes from most anything you can think of having a magical version of it. Perhaps I can move that into the power origin selection (the Inherit/power armor/artifact selection). Then I could put in script to not show Strengths and Weaknesses when there are none. :thinking: Thank you for the feedback.

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Yeah I know how hard it must be to cut content that youā€™ve already written with hard work. Its definitely a struggle to do so, thanks for your hard work. Authors who listen to feedback will always succeed than those who wonā€™t thats for sure. Weā€™re cheering for you bro.

Also yeah a story where you slowly meet the members of the team and interact with them is definitely good as when I played Dawn of Heroes I noticed that there are too many characters. The team itself is already quite abundant but outside of the team you got a reported, police officer, lots and lots of villains plus characters from your chosen background route.

Sometimes Less is more after all

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Hello everyone!

This last month has been a whirlwind! I no longer have my second job which has opened up for me to get more writing in. There have been other things to come up to complicate some things in my life too. All in all I have been trekking along.

I have done my first skeleton pass of the new Chapter 6 and Chapter 8. Once I finish Chapter 11ā€™s pass I will send the update to my testers. Once they give me feedback I will update the demo. I have been thinking about making a second demo so people might see the different between the two; I have not made my final decision on this yet.

As stated before this pass will be missing most power choice options and romance options. Malcolm is now a very minor character. His importance is to explain things for another character.

Until Next month!

Aprilā€™s Monthā€™s end update

  • Finished New Chapter 6
  • Finished New Chapter 8

Still working on:

  • New Chapter 11
  • Mechanic Job Route
  • Chapter 25
  • Adding a glossary
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Doing great

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I feel like itā€™s me, but the writing style for me is dry and too matter of fact. Like Iā€™m reading an IKEA instruction manual. I feel no personality coming off my character, or anyone else for that matter. Sorry if this sounds harsh

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Iā€™m really loving this game so far that Iā€™m still playing even now to make different playthroughs since most of these powers are very similar or the same as iconic characters like Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, Ironman and etc. So, itā€™s fun to either copy them mostly but with some slight changes to powers or to mix and match some for my own styles. I just wish there were more weapon and powers options like claws either like Wolverine or actual claws either from the armors or natural claws, shapeshifting powers and more powers in the offense category and also more options in the costume tab like; what if we wanted to have a tail (natural or tech based) as part of our outfit style? I would also like to see if there was a way we could do the Dock event better since it feels weird how for example, if my character has super high toughness and strength, they get sent flying and knocked down hard by Pykrete when they should instead be still standing after taking a punch from him and just start slugging it out with them right there if they wanted to, maybe even possibly saving all or most of the children and still get the evidence if your stats were high enough and you solved the whole situation fast enough. Anyway, really good game with good potential. Just hope the author is still working on it and manages to complete it.

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Iā€™m glad that you are enjoying my work! Yes, this project is still being worked on. I normally do a once-a-month check in these days.

As for more weapons an powers, well it take quite a bit to add a single power sometimes so I can understand the desire for more, but the effort on my end has already capped the power options for me. As it stands there is a lot that is subject to change within the powers but I know that I will not be adding more. Some powers might be removed by the final update; it is hard to say at this point.

The costume options that I have right now are not all of the ones that can be placed in the game. I do not have plans for what I am going to add for options, but I do plan on adding more options towards the end of development.

As for the concern in the fight, I do plan on going back over that fight to add different ways for the fight itself to play out. For the other hope in the spoiler section the heroā€™s arc does hinge on specific events unfolding so while I do plan on adding something to this scene, there will be no perfect outcome.

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For some reason I canā€™t select Kyra (AKA Camouflage) as a romance option in the chapter where the current demo ends at. Even though I was romancing her when she was both Kyra and Camouflage. Is this a bug or something?

It is hard to say as I would need to know more about your play through. Thank you for reporting this. Iā€™ll get around to looking at this when I go about reviewing romances again. There is a chance that I will change up the selection process in the future, so I will look into it at that time.

However I will say that if your character is aware that those two are one in the same, she will appear in the hero list instead.

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