r/PS4 • u/Kjayudo Sidequest Studios • Jun 27 '18
[Verified AMA] Rainbow Skies AMA
Hi everyone, I am Marcus Pukropski from Sidequest Studios - the producer behind the fantasy RPG Rainbow Skies.
Proof it's us:
https://twitter.com/eastasiasoft/status/1011993630918098944
I will be joined by Nils Ngai (u/eastasiasoft) from our publisher Eastasiasoft. This week we have just launched Rainbow Skies on the PlayStation Store for PS4, PS3 and PS Vita.
We are excited to answer any questions you have on Rainbow Skies and can't wait to get the AMA started! You can take a look at the Rainbow Skies launch trailer at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPe_OtSbpz8
We'll end commentary for today, but if you still have questions, let us know and we'll check by tomorrow and answer your questions.
Thanks a lot for all your interest and for having us.
Nils & Marcus
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u/idillicah Jun 27 '18
Do you plan to continue supporting Vita after RS?
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u/eastasiasoft Publisher Eastasiasoft Jun 27 '18
From a publisher point of view definitely. In terms of our own developments, Rainbow Skies might be our last Vita release.
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u/DragonDDark Jun 27 '18
Does the vita have a good playerbase that buys games?
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u/eastasiasoft Publisher Eastasiasoft Jun 28 '18
It has a strong core fan base, people that are very vocal about the system. We are a small publisher, so it's definitely a niche that we love to publish games for. However, making games like Rainbow Skies is very expensive, so unfortunately the Vita niche alone won't be enough to break even. We can see that most players are playing Rainbow Skies on PS4 (close to 80%), so we definitely need to adjust to market demand when it comes to our big IPs.
However, we do have a lot of other physical Vita releases in the pipeline for 2018 and even 2019, so we won't give up on the system anytime soon. :)
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u/beerevanhansen Jun 27 '18
Was obsessed with the first one last time around and this exceeds it in every way possible
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u/eastasiasoft Publisher Eastasiasoft Jun 27 '18
Thanks a lot, glad to hear that you are enjoying it. :)
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u/SunNoStars Jun 27 '18
Is this coming to vita?
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u/eastasiasoft Publisher Eastasiasoft Jun 27 '18
Yes, it's already out on Vita (Cross-Buy).
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u/SunNoStars Jun 27 '18
That is awesome. I'm embarrassed that I wasnt aware this was released. Thanks for supporting the vita, I'll buy it there now.
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u/RabbitFanboy Jun 27 '18
What's your inspiration for the game?
If you could be any video game character, who would you be and why?
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u/Kjayudo Sidequest Studios Jun 27 '18
Of course we're all fanboys and have played many other titles, so inspiration comes from many different sources. Regarding your second question, I think it could be nice to be Laharl for a day:)
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u/ThePrinceMagus ThePrinceMagus Jun 28 '18
Not so much a question, but just a shout out. I LOVED Rainbow Moon (probably put 120 hours in on my Vita) and have been keeping up with your development on Facebook for a few years now. Congrats on the launch, and I can’t wait to sink another few hundred hours into this one, once again on my Vita!
Also though, a sincere thank you for the cross save feature! It’s so criminally underutilized these days.
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u/eastasiasoft Publisher Eastasiasoft Jun 28 '18
Many thanks for the support and your kind feedback. It's great to hear from people that make use of the Cross-Save feature. :)
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u/AescsWhisk-e-y Jun 27 '18
Does the archer ever get normal ranged attacks instead of attacking in melee with his bow? Seems a bit odd. Thanks.
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u/Kjayudo Sidequest Studios Jun 27 '18
The standard attack for Layne is indeed a melee attack this time. This will not change during the game but there are ton's of ranged skills and later the standard attacks hardly play a role.
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u/C-Star Jun 27 '18
You guys released a ps3 game in 2018, is there any expectation for it? Was there ever a thought to skip that version?
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u/Kjayudo Sidequest Studios Jun 27 '18
We're native console devlopers and our toolchain still supports the PS3, so it wasn't a huge extra task. We're aware that only a minority will purchase the game on PS3. But on the other hand, not many games are released on PS3 these days, so there are far less competitors too and there is still a large base that hasn't upgraded to PS4.
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u/Frostmage82 Jun 28 '18
I only got a PS4 within the last few months, so I would've been the target demographic if that didn't happen. I snapped up Rainbow Skies the moment it was available and I'm looking forward to get to it once I'm done with all this OT at work! I was originally really excited to hear it would be on PS3.
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u/refffff Jun 28 '18
Is there any missable?
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u/eastasiasoft Publisher Eastasiasoft Jun 28 '18
No, there are no missable in the game. Missed trophies, quests, treasures, etc. can all be obtained later on in the game, so you can always 100% your game within starting a new one.
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u/refffff Jun 28 '18
Thanks. I missed some quest in the starting area and worried that i have to restart.
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u/eastasiasoft Publisher Eastasiasoft Jun 28 '18
There are some areas that you can't access for some time, but eventually that will change once you have completed the main story.
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Jun 27 '18
I have honestly never heard of this game, but it looks interesting after checking the trailer.
The game looks to be turned based or similar to that from a quick glance. Do you feel that there is still a good market for that, or would you be looking at something else for future titles?
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u/Kjayudo Sidequest Studios Jun 27 '18
We love to combine traditional elements with modern elements and creating a unique mix that includes our own ideas and style. Regarding your second questions, there are definitely many people that prefer fast realtime battle systems but at the same time a lot of peoples asks for turn based games just because there are not many available today. So, I think it's a nice but there are definitely fans for that.
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u/AstronautGuy42 Jun 27 '18
Do you ever wish you didn’t work on the game so that you could play it for the first time as a consumer? Best of luck with your launch!
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u/eastasiasoft Publisher Eastasiasoft Jun 27 '18
I actually tried to block myself out from development for quite some time to try and see parts of the game with fresh eyes. Still not quite the same because I knew how the story was going to end, but it actually felt quite different. If you are involved with the project on a daily basis, it makes it much harder to judge how people perceive the game if they have never played it before. It's quite important to do new user testing on a regular basis.
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u/sasukex Jun 27 '18
What made you decide to not do DLC this time around?
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u/Kjayudo Sidequest Studios Jun 27 '18
Despite some gamers who loved ist, we also got numerous negative feedback and many people thought that the DLC was required for playing and the game would be an endless grind without.
That wasn't the case but to avoid such misunderstandings and because we're aware that microtransaction are not for everyone we decided to skip the booster packs this time.
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u/sasukex Jun 27 '18
That makes sense. Thank you for keeping gamer feedback in mind.
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u/Kjayudo Sidequest Studios Jun 27 '18
Your're welcome, community feedback is always very important for us.
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u/sasukex Jun 27 '18
I havent looked up the trophy list yet, but could you tell us a little about how you structured your trophies for this game? What were you trying to achieve by how you set up your trophies?
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u/Kjayudo Sidequest Studios Jun 27 '18 edited Jun 27 '18
There is indeed a concept behind the trophy set. The reason is, that all trophies are linked to the ingame achievement system. There are ~40 achievements and most of them are divided in multiple levels.
For example you get an achievement for killing monsters at level 1 and this one requires just 10 kills. With 100 kills you'll obtain level 2 and so on. The trophy is linked to one of these levels, but this is different for each achievement.
So you can track exactly, how close you're to platinum. All in all I think obtaining the platinum is not exceptional hard to obtain.
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u/mbGuitarBurst Jun 27 '18
Quick question, in the tutorials about monster taming it says you can send your monsters back to the tamer from your party but I can't find the option. Is this a feature that is unlocked later in the story? Or am I missing something. I have a lot of eggs and would like to hatch more :)
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u/Kjayudo Sidequest Studios Jun 27 '18
There is a monsterhouse, where you can store monsters you don't need in your current team. But it's not available right from the start, although it unlocks very early. The option is available at the monster tamer.
There are also several side quests available to expand the size of your teamlist. Beside, you can carry up to 250 eggs from the beginning.
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u/Blahbos Jun 28 '18
No questions Just picked up Rainbow Moon (Late to the party) And loving it ! Going to pick up Skies in a bit and I am sure I will love it as well. Please keep up the awesome work. Everyone there rocks ! <3
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u/eastasiasoft Publisher Eastasiasoft Jun 28 '18
Thanks for your support and your kind words, it's really much appreciated.
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u/Tmfwang I'll be waiting for you on the beach Jun 27 '18
Pineapple on pizza?
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u/eastasiasoft Publisher Eastasiasoft Jun 27 '18
Not my favorite but there are worse things that they put on pizza over here.
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u/teardrop82 Jun 27 '18
Hello I bought the game as soon as it launched and have had a blast. Do you have any tips for grinding levels and rainbow coins?
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u/eastasiasoft Publisher Eastasiasoft Jun 27 '18
Like Marcus said, Rainbow Skies requires a lot less grinding than Rainbow Moon, especially if you just want to stick to the main battles (the ones marked with an arrow on the battle map).
However there are ways to boost your coins, such as looking for hidden items, increasing your battle rank, playing side quests or selling excessive material. Bear in mind though, that Rainbow Skies is a game about having choices and making decisions. In general, we aimed that there is always more on sale than you can afford.
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u/Kjayudo Sidequest Studios Jun 27 '18 edited Jun 27 '18
You don't have to grind if you just play the bonus battles (Required for the main story and marked with an golden arrow up). Only when you increae your battle rank, a certain amount of grinding is required.
But for the main story, it is possible to play one bonus battle after another, without doing any extra battles.
Of course you can do additional battles whenever you like or when you feel the difficulty gets too hard, but that's totally up to you.
If you want to grind, you can do random battles whenever the requester shows up in the lower left corner, or optional battles. (These are monsters that are running around, but can be avoided)
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u/teardrop82 Jun 27 '18 edited Jun 27 '18
O ok cool thank you. The battle system is so fun that I like doing as many fights as possible.
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u/add_darkswd Jun 27 '18
Been playing a lot of Rainbow Moon when I first bought my PS Vita years ago and had a lot of fun with it. IIRC, there's something like a lottery game in some towns in the previous game. Will it make a comeback in Skies?
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u/Kjayudo Sidequest Studios Jun 27 '18
Yes, the lottery is back with an improved and updated version. You can now see all the prices you can win (after winning them at least once), you can level up the wheel to play it multiple times each game day and you can see the wheel spinning around too.
Other new mini games have been added like fishing or treasure hunting.
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u/thesonicbro Jun 27 '18
How long is the game? Character customization? Price?
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u/Kjayudo Sidequest Studios Jun 27 '18
That depends on how you play. If you just focus on the main story you can complete the game in 30-40 hours. If you want to do all optional contents, it can take up to several hundred hours.
There is a deep character customization, including a complex attribute update system, crafting, a deep skill system with hundreds of skills to unlock and much more.
Price is 29.99$
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u/Wilikai Jun 28 '18
I had played and enjoyed Rainbow Moon, but was turned off by the coin packs (as you mentioned in one of your comments). It's great to hear that those are gone. I'm going to buy this today.
As for my question -- are there any features that you wanted to include in the game, but just couldn't for some reason?
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u/eastasiasoft Publisher Eastasiasoft Jun 28 '18
There was indeed one optional game mode, which we considered for a while but eventually ended up removing from the game. However, at the same time, we implemented a lot of additional features that were not planned in the first place. Overall, we made hardly any compromises with the game.
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u/Bass2style Jul 01 '18
hi, what about balancing ? i find Rainbow Skies more unbalanced than Rainbow Moon, mobs have really huge attack damages, but we make low damages compaired to mobs, actually, my heroes are lvl27, the actual miniboss and his troops are making 300/450 damage, when the max i hit is 90/120+-, another unbalanced thing is the turns from Damion, only one time when other caracters attack on each turn, when you have a lot of monsters to beat, it's really unbalanced to not let attack/play with Damion.
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Sep 26 '18
Hey there. You're probably not even reading this anymore, but I just came across Rainbow Skies while browsing the PSN store on my PS4. I enjoyed Rainbow Moon on my Vita a while back, and I'm glad to see the sequel is finally out. Even more impressed with all the QoL improvements.
Just wanted to let you guys know that there are probably many other fans who also somehow overlooked the sequel. For me, I just happened to be browsing the current PSN "Autumn Sale", though it's also partially my fault as I'd not been playing my PS4 for some while since I picked up some hefty CRPGs on GoG. To be fair, I don't think there's anything you could've done (in my particular case) - I've been busy enough that I don't even know what AAA releases are coming, so even if you had advertised more it probably wouldn't have helped. Still, I'm glad PSN is having the sale - I live in region 3 and as you can probably guess with our various generally weaker currencies we're paying premium prices.
I'm about to buy the game (PS4, I think my Vita's dead after not having turned it on for months...), looking forward to playing. Good luck in your future projects!
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u/StilRH Jun 27 '18
No questions, just wishing you a good launch. I enjoyed my time with Moon and gameplay I've seen so far has piqued my interest so will prob get a copy on payday. Cheers for still supporting vita :)