Tales of Naturia

I'm glad you're enjoying it so far! Your animations are amazing and I can get plenty of mileage from them. As for the various points, let me try and address them.

1. The lobby, I'll definitely need to look into. I personally haven't had issues, but if there is something about it causing to lag for other people, then I should at least see if anything can be done to fix it.

2. The Message Core thing isn't a bad idea, I just haven't had time to experiment with it during battle. I've been relying on just using the default setup and putting in icons where appropriate, though I could stand to do more. It's one of those things I considered waiting to do later once I had more things done since I want to get more of the main game started.

3. For Altered Artes, I currently have it where having the appropriate skill equipped will turn the base arte into its altered arte, but the version is weaker to compensate for using the base's TP. Using the altered arte directly is stronger, but with more TP. There are things regarding the battle system I'm still trying to work out, especially when trying to balance so many characters.

4. I would 'love' to do skits, I just need to decide how to implement them. They'll also require a lot of money on my end to get appropriate artwork made, so that is definitely a thing I'll have to plan for later.

5. I will give Arial a try. I am down for experimenting with font types.

6. Mimicopy is very clever. I will go ahead with that.

7. As a fan-game, I am taking a lot from various titles to help craft a story, though as I put more thought into it, things will be revised to hopefully be more original without needing to heavily involve those other aspects. This game is not just about me trying to do what I couldn't do years ago, but to help see if I can actually create a worthwhile story. Tales means a lot to me, and I want to make something of it, even if it's small.

I do hope to get an actual story demo done before the year is done, though with how much I have to do, it might not happen exactly as when I want it. Just a matter of needing to better manage my time, but at least now I have more input on what I can do to try and make it better. 

EDIT: Oh, and as for the Picnic Basket demo, I don't know if I'll update it with all the new stuff, I might just have to replace it with a new version of it that's set during the part of the story where it's properly introduced. Though that will take a long while, since I actually have to get to that point in the story. I'm still in the prologue portion of the story, and I'm currently planning to have the feature show up partway into what I consider the story's first chapter.

If at all possible, I would like to contact you in regards to a question I had to one of your concerns. If you are able, I am available on Twitter if you want to talk through DMs.