at-a-glance wrote:In PS1 I used Phillip’s mission (the Apex lair) for grinding, a lot. Nelson and Phillip were necessary for the mission and even after I leveled those two all the way up the experience points were divided four ways among the party. Has there been any discussion of tweaking that in future games so excess experience points in combat go to party members who haven’t already reach the level cap? In Loren it wasn’t necessary because grind was so much easier, but if PS2 is going to be similar with limited number of spots where grinding is possible it would be a nice addition. Just something to think about.
I think the current idea is to have grinding offer not much XP, but more powerful equipment and/or money to buy better equipment. Or there could still be a level cap, but based on some points of the story. For example:
beginning -> until key point of the story 1 = you can level up skills up to tier 1
beginning -> until key point of the story 2 = you can level up skills up to tier 2
beginning -> until key point of the story 3 = you can level up skills up to tier 3
this way it would be possible maybe in Easy/Normal mode to not reach the level cap for the next "key point", so playing in Hard mode it would be needed/suggested. This system would let me balance the fight much better since I would know exactly which skills the players CANNOT use in certain battles something I couldn't really tell in Loren.
Wow, that's much more efficient than what I was talking about. This is why I play games and don't make them.
P_Tigras wrote:
If you could create memorization shortcuts for SOTW like shift-F1 to memorize your current configuration as weapon/shield configuration 1, and F1 to equip it that would be great. A bit more work would be creating the ability to set and select between several possible party weapon/shield configurations.
I think both should be possible, will check it in next days
Excellent! Oh, and just to clarify, what I meant in the second sentence above was:
A bit more work would be creating the ability in the inventory screen to set and select between several possible party weapon/shield configurations.
So yes, keyboard shortcuts would be great and satisfactory for me, but working them into the inventory GUI, while more work, would be ideal from a user interface perspective.
at-a-glance wrote:In PS1 I used Phillip’s mission (the Apex lair) for grinding, a lot. Nelson and Phillip were necessary for the mission and even after I leveled those two all the way up the experience points were divided four ways among the party. Has there been any discussion of tweaking that in future games so excess experience points in combat go to party members who haven’t already reach the level cap? In Loren it wasn’t necessary because grind was so much easier, but if PS2 is going to be similar with limited number of spots where grinding is possible it would be a nice addition. Just something to think about.
I think the current idea is to have grinding offer not much XP, but more powerful equipment and/or money to buy better equipment. Or there could still be a level cap, but based on some points of the story. For example:
beginning -> until key point of the story 1 = you can level up skills up to tier 1
beginning -> until key point of the story 2 = you can level up skills up to tier 2
beginning -> until key point of the story 3 = you can level up skills up to tier 3
this way it would be possible maybe in Easy/Normal mode to not reach the level cap for the next "key point", so playing in Hard mode it would be needed/suggested. This system would let me balance the fight much better since I would know exactly which skills the players CANNOT use in certain battles something I couldn't really tell in Loren.
After a quick look I think it shouldn't be hard to have "weapon/shield sets", the major problem is if you sell one or more items, so the configuration "breaks" Of course is nothing impossible to fix, but have to find the simplest solution... because I'm a lazy coder anyway I'll try to have this in place for the game beta after the Summer!
jack1974 wrote:After a quick look I think it shouldn't be hard to have "weapon/shield sets", the major problem is if you sell one or more items, so the configuration "breaks" Of course is nothing impossible to fix, but have to find the simplest solution... because I'm a lazy coder anyway I'll try to have this in place for the game beta after the Summer!
The simplest solution is probably to have that configuration unset so it can no longer be used if one of its items is sold. On the other hand, as long as a message saying that an item in the configuration has been sold is displayed, I wouldn't mind the configuration could still be used, with the exception that it does not touch that one item.
jack1974 wrote:Yes true, I think the main problem of Loren was that (as a reviewer pointed out) the weapons didn't make MUCH difference. Yes they made some, but not enough to justify the bother of grinding for them. So you would grind more to gain levels, more HP/SP and of course, new skills. In the next RPG I want to address this issue by making the weapons have more impact.
In PS, you could level up the skills of the less used characters with the training center, but yes there could be some that were "left behind" a bit
During my PS playthough, Lisa at endgame was 4-6 levels above the other party members. I tried to rotate party members, but some members such as the Psionics were too important for most encounters. Although the training could give a boost to lesser used characters, you had a lot less control over distribution of points since they come in sets.
It would be preferable that the Levels/XP is shared among the party, like what was done in Mass Effect.
Last edited by Jaeger on Tue Jul 02, 2013 8:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
Well if I use the "tiered system" above, I can share the XP for the keypoints among all the party, and the extra grinding only with members that take part into those missions. This way there should never be a big difference in levels, maybe a slight one in skills, and since the other stuff you can grind can be shared with the party (resources, money) shouldn't be a problem either. I still like the idea of showing how effective some party members are, so maybe will add some statistics like number of kills, damage done, etc. Like what you see at end of each battle in the first game, but saved for the whole game. This last thing probably just for fun, don't think will have any real impact on the game
jack1974 wrote:I think the current idea is to have grinding offer not much XP, but more powerful equipment and/or money to buy better equipment. Or there could still be a level cap, but based on some points of the story. For example:
beginning -> until key point of the story 1 = you can level up skills up to tier 1
beginning -> until key point of the story 2 = you can level up skills up to tier 2
beginning -> until key point of the story 3 = you can level up skills up to tier 3
this way it would be possible maybe in Easy/Normal mode to not reach the level cap for the next "key point", so playing in Hard mode it would be needed/suggested. This system would let me balance the fight much better since I would know exactly which skills the players CANNOT use in certain battles something I couldn't really tell in Loren.
So this seems to be "officially" included in Seasons of the Wolf, as per todays blog post.
I am not exactly sure what happens during grinding, if I grind too much? So at x XP I get another level, and every y Levels I get to choose another skill. Level Ups in the early parts of the game would let me choose a tier 1 skill. But if I get a level up and no more tier 1 skills are available? (OK, this means some serious grinding would be going on, but someone is bound to try...) Would the skill point be saved until more tiers become available, or what?
Or you could just let the chars say "no, we are bored of the ginding, let's rescue the world" if they are near this point, until passing the key point in the story.
Well for PS2, it will use a different level up system. For SOTW I was planning to have a mix between Loren and PS1, so with higher skill values (but of course is still experimental).
But yes I think worse case you would get 0XP from battle, but still money/items, so in a way it could still be worth it, since with better equipment you'll have easier time in battles (assuming this time I manage to make the item have a much bigger impact in the game!).
I am not sure yet, but I might use a tool called Tiled (thanks to Aleema for telling me) to do isometric maps for the next RPGs:
I managed to import the map in Ren'Py hacking the map file. Not perfect but works. Maybe when Anima is free from the PS2 framework I'll ask him to do a full parser
The advantage of using an external map editor is that is much faster than one built-in in the game, and even if we use it only for the terrain/background layer, it will still improve the map creation speed considerably
something I couldn't really tell in Loren.
This is why I play games and don't make them.
