Hello, Survivors.
Writing this first Developer Note since our official release feels truly special.
First and foremost, we sincerely thank you for all the love and support you've shown our game.
While dedicating ourselves to development for so long, the most regrettable part was not being able to directly feel what you liked and what you felt was lacking in the game.
In this note, we would like to discuss our core development intentions and future considerations regarding the issues many of you have asked about and suggested.
Pillars 'Fading Again': Dark Shroud and Respawning
First, let's look at the respawn experience, which greatly impacts the early game.
In the Pleasure District, the first zone you encounter, until you receive the Restoration 170 and 260 rewards respectively, stages where you have already lit the pillars will be obscured again by the dark shroud, causing monsters to reappear in those stages.
Actually, the development team's intention was not for players to replay and light up these stages (where you cannot even get rewards again). We wanted to encourage you to push forward quickly to achieve the next goal, so the revealed light does not fade again.
However, it seems that the light that has been already lit going out again leaves an uncomfortable feeling, often causing players to turn back. This drags out the game's tempo more than intended and makes it feel unreasonable.
For now, we want to emphasize that upon reaching Restoration 170 and clearing Sunset Docks, all faded pillars in the first half of the Pleasure District will light up again.
In other words, unless you return to the hideout too frequently, the basic gameplay loop is designed so that you do not have to replay a stage you have already cleared.
(By the same principle, the second half of the district brightens up completely when you receive the Restoration 260 reward.)
Considering the high rate of negative experiences that differ from our intended design, we are currently thinking deeply about ways to improve this in a more reasonable direction. We need to be able to provide a good gaming experience even for those who do not read the Developer Notes.
Corrupting Will: Turn Pressure Mechanics
First, we expect that opinions on this mechanic are extremely divided between those who barely feel any issue and those who find it very unreasonable. This is because, during pre-release testing, reactions varied greatly depending on play patterns and tendencies in utilizing 'turns'.
Various negative events affect Corruption, but the most significant factor is Turn Consumption. Even before you are spotted by enemies and an alarm is triggered, the moment you face an enemy, skipping just one turn will cause your Will gauge to be corrupted to a degree that cannot be ignored.
Currently, assuming a certain level of Memory Binding has been achieved, MEMOLITH allows each character to perform numerous actions in a single turn. We consider squeezing out resources to the limit to eliminate multiple enemies at once as a key fun element. This means that the value of a single turn is high, and we encourage players to take as many actions as possible within that one turn.
For instance, during ambush/assassination plays, we wanted to provide a path to a 'Stealth Victory'—winning a battle without ever being detected—in many encounters by properly utilizing Mienne's stealth or consumable tools like coins. However, maintaining this stealth state inevitably consumes more turns than regular combat. In this case, the Corruption gauge essentially becomes the player's opportunity cost instead of HP.
Since Corruption recovers when the 'Guiding Pillar' is lit, we expect that it generally will not be a frequent issue in normal stages. Rather, in the Pleasure District, problems will arise in stages like 'Dreamy Alley' or 'The Olive Branch', where multiple battles occur consecutively before lighting a single pillar.
- After a normal stage battle ends, rapid turn management is necessary so that Corruption is mostly removed entirely post-battle, or only about one block of Corruption remains.
- If you minimize situations where WP/TP are left over at the end of a turn as much as possible, normal stage battles are usually completed within 1 to 2 turns.
Unlike the respawn issue above, we believe the Will-Corruption system is close to optimal after testing various versions. Therefore, rather than fixing the system itself, if possible, we are considering strengthening the guides or UX to make it easier for players to understand.
Weapon Rarity and Characteristics by Type
We also feel the need to explain our intentions regarding weapon rarities obtained through the Blacksmith system.
MEMOLITH's weapon system was basically designed with the intention that even for weapons of the same rarity, the outcome will vary strongly depending on which character equips what type of weapon, with what Memory Binding build prepared.
Of course, if they are the same type, it is true that green-bordered weapons are stronger than white-bordered ones, and blue-bordered ones are superior upgrades to green-bordered ones. However, at the final rarity stage (as this is not a game oriented towards repetitive farming), we wanted to provide equal choices on what type of weapon to select with stats like attack and defense being identical.
Furthermore, for Unique weapons with gold borders, we adopted a system where their ceiling is higher, but their floor might actually be lower compared to Rare weapons with blue borders. 'Prototype #42' has very powerful ranged piercing capabilities but a wide random damage variance and weak durability, while a weapon like 'Black Anchor' can only deal damage through movement.
This design philosophy also applies to Unique weapons of the same type. For example, a Unique grade two-handed weapon like the Concave Poleaxe can simultaneously defeat 2 enemies from a distance using only 2 WP if the conditions are met. Conversely, its ability to cope with various situations might be lower compared to an ordinary two-handed axe.
In short, arming all characters with all kinds of Unique grade weapons does not guarantee a high win rate in combat. If you want to utilize the traits of Unique grade weapons, you will need secondary weapons (mostly of Rare grade) and Memory Binding builds that can compensate for those weapons' weaknesses.
However, tunning the clear specs based on fully optimized builds could make the game difficulty excessively hard. We proceeded with balancing aiming for a level where the game can be cleared comfortably if fully optimized, and progression is still possible, albeit difficult, even if not.
For this reason, those who expected the experience of continuously growing numerically stronger while getting weapons of higher rarity might find the situation where only weapons of the same rarity appear after the latter half of the Outer Ward District somewhat disappointing. We are curious about your opinions as players on this design.
Language Selection Feature
Unlike the gameplay issues mentioned above, this time it is a purely functional issue.
Due to feedback that multiple languages like Chinese or French were not supported, we looked into our internal code in bewilderment thinking, "What is going on here?". We found an issue where the function that recognizes the OS and sets the default starting language was only working for Korean and English.
We plan to patch this bug as quickly as possible. Separately, since the language selection icon on the start screen seems hard to notice, we have updated the language selection feature to display text directly on the title screen as shown below.
We apologize once again to the users of other languages who experienced inconvenience due to this unintended bug.
There are many other things we want to talk about or areas we feel we should explain further.
For example, it seems many of you are having difficulty with boss battles or the overall game progression. While we want to prepare helpful information, covering even these parts in this post feels like taking away the fun of challenge and strategy, so we will exclude them for now.
Furthermore, if you have any questions or information, you would like us to share, please let us know in the comments!
Thank you,
MEMOLITH