Hello there.

First of all, my congratulations to the developer for the release of this game! Telepath Tactics was one of my favorite PC SRPGs, but I've never finished the original game due to a well known engine problem (related to Adobe Air, if I remember correctly) that made the game pretty much unplayable after a point. So yeah, great to see a new engine and a bug-free experience this time around. The game is clearly a product of love & passion and a promise fulfilled made some years ago, that the original game will be remade in a new engine :)

Anyway, I've encountered what I considered a pretty big "design flaw" that I quickly remembered is something taken straight from the original game, something that never got fixed.

All the maps in the game have several optional chests on them, containing items. Those items are unique or not (I don't remember). In order to collect the items you have to move right next to the chest, attack the chest (which has health points on its own, usually 10HP) then move on its tile and collect the loot.

So if you want all the chests on the map in a battle, what you want to do is POSTPONE victory in order to have time to collect all the chests. That means:
1) Send your fastest characters (with the most movement points) to collect the chests
2) Let yourself be hit & then heal using bandages in order to give time to your other characters to collect the chests
3) Run around the map and make enemies follow you

As a design decision on its own, you could argue that this makes sense, right? If you want all the goodies, you have to plan around it a bit. Like in real life, haha. It will actually help you in the future, because the more you postpone a battle, the more XP you gain.

...And that's where the unfair metagaming part comes into play.

During the 2nd map of the game (called "Adelbrae Battle" you have 3 chests on the map. However, the way the mission is designed makes it impossible to collect all of them during the battle no matter how much you plan around it and no matter how much "metagaming" you do.

Here are some pictures so you can visualize the whole issue: https://imgur.com/a/cSprYvW

Why is it impossible?

1) The conditions of the battle are: survive 8 turns to win OR kill 4 bandits to win.

This means that if 8 turns have passed or you killed 4 bandits, the battle is automatically won and you don't have any more time to collect the chests. Even if the 8 turns condition wasn't in place, you'd still risk to trigger to winning conditions by accidentally killing the 4th bandit. How exactly? Many playable characters will randomly counterattack if they are attacked, so even if you plan not to kill more than 3 enemies in order to have time to collect all the chests, there's a random chance of that happening. Your plan can be easily ruined by RNG.

2) "But maybe you can collect all the chests before those 8 turns are over"

You can't. And that's because CHEST #1 is surrounded by destructible bushes. You could destroy them, sure, but that will take more turns than the 8 turns you have. In the meantime you're also getting attacked by the enemies. Moreover, out of 6 playable characters in the battle, only 4 can damage the chests, because the other two are "magic users" and chests are invulnerable to magical damage (for some reason).

This is actually an issue that, if I remember correctly, you'll encounter in a lot more other levels too. And it gets frustrating very fast for people who will want to collect everything because you will restart the level to collect all the chests. Sometimes you're at RNG mercy, some other times it's simply impossible given the constraints.

My solutions to these problems are:

1) Remove the chests entirely in missions with such winning conditions, or at least put less of them (1 or 2 in the level above is more than enough).
2) Remove some of the conditions themselves, but this would go against the plot of some levels where the idea is that you have to "survive" or "escape"


My question for the developer AND the players is: do you consider this a good design decision? If so, why. Even if those are optional, I know a lot of people, especially completionists, will try to collect all the chests during a mission. You don't know what type of item you're missing, and even if you'd somehow know, if the chests are on the map, it would still make sense to be able to collect them all.

However, in missions such as the 2nd level, collecting them all is simply impossible, no matter how much "metagaming" you're willing to do to get them.

What's the point, then?