yayswords
May 17, 2015
Yeah, that sounds good. I was going to suggest something like it myself but I didn't wanna ask you to kill one of your babies today as well.
jack1974
May 17, 2015
No problem, in this case makes sense since I've changed the damage calculation completely from the first test
yayswords
May 17, 2015
I think this defense system will have less crazy swings the larger numbers we start working with. Reducing someone's defense from 2 to 1 means they will take double damage. Reducing it from 100 to 99 isn't even noticeable. And the "defense heal" becomes pretty huge. If you take someone from 100 armor to 40 (which would be a lot of work right now), you'll do 250% damage to them compared to what you started with, but all it takes is one expert defense heal and you're back to scratch.
[color=#FF0000]edit:[/color] Conversely that also means the defense heal is pretty unexciting with low numbers, but I think that could work out right in the long run. Early on battles don't need to be long.
[color=#FF0000]and later edit:[/color]
The only thing I'm unsure is if to keep the 1 attribute each level up as it is now, or bring back the 3+ attributes (depending on difficulty level) and the progressive reduction...
Drawing conclusions from this alpha is obviously worthless, but since you mentioned it anyway, I will say that even with going all-out on str/acc, my offense can't keep up with the defense gain (or well, just about can keep up with the defense, but they get more health too) of the skeletons. At best my team has reached level 10 (character level not opponent level) in endless mode.
jack1974
May 18, 2015
Good considerations, I should probably check which armor values you can get at end of game with all the top armor equipped and such, though I don't think will be possible to reach crazy high values like 100 armor. If early battles are shorter is good, though even latter battles shouldn't last like SOTW. Well considering the limited amount of healing and SP recover that shouldn't happen anyway I think!
Regarding enemies, yes is an alpha but it was helpful you tried. I know the reason
The enemies raise ALL their stats on each level up (except Speed and SP that gets raised every 2 levels I think), while you as player can raise only 1 (right now with 1 attribute point each level up). So for example:
Skeleton level 1: AT 3 DF 2 AC 4 SPEED 5 HP 20 SP 3
Skeleton level 2: AT 4 DF 3 AC 5 SPEED 5 HP 22 SP 3
and so on. I thought that since players can also get new equipment it would balance out in the end but probably I need either to go back to 3 attributes on each level or use a different formula for enemies level up (probably better).
yayswords
May 18, 2015
I thought it was pretty inconclusive since there's no equipment involved... and like half the skills are broken... and so on and so forth :D
I'd prefer more stats per level and the increased costs that you use in SotW. If I'm supposed to keep up with this mob scaling with stats + equipment, then clearly equipment will be doing most of the work by far. Also without the increasing costs I can see myself just pumping str/acc on Thalia and to a lesser extent Joanne, whereas with the slowdown I'd probably feel more inclined to grab some other stats.
Troyen
May 18, 2015
You liked the increased cost mechanic? I found it sucked after level 15 or so when you could no longer keep up with enemy scaling because you effectively gain one point in an attribute when they can gain a large quantity in the counter attributes.
jack1974
May 18, 2015
Well first of all I'll change the enemies leveling, though I'm still unsure how. I mean I liked each enemy to have a "personality".
So if at level 1 skeletons have weak attack, OK defense, etc even at level 5 they still have same relative values, only higher. If I change it so that the AI assign values based on level we could have different looking skeletons, for example just considering a few stats only:
level 1: HP 12 SP 3 AT 3 DF 2
level 2: HP 14 SP 3 AT 3 DF 2 (AI decides to raise HP first, by 2, since like for player each attribute increases HP by 2)
level 3: HP 14 SP 3 AT 4 DF 2 (AI decides to raise AT +1)
level 4: HP 14 SP 3 AT 4 DF 3 (AI decides to raise DF +1)
level 5: HP 14 SP 4 AT 4 DF 3 (AI decides to raise SP +1)
and so on.
If that's OK, then I can do it, in practice each level the AI would raise a stat based on an order: HP, AT, DF, SP, etc.
I can also raise the skill costs, though in this game they were supposed to just be a "level up" every time. So keep same SP but increase effects.
yayswords
May 18, 2015
You liked the increased cost mechanic? I found it sucked after level 15 or so when you could no longer keep up with enemy scaling because you effectively gain one point in an attribute when they can gain a large quantity in the counter attributes.
I never actually compared them like that. What I liked was the incentive to not just keep pumping a stat. As a druid for example, without the diminishing returns, I'd probably get some will and spam arcane with the occasional point into constitution. Instead, what I do on pretty much every class is get 20 of everything (maybe stop at 15 with will on some characters) and 40 con (more health=more mileage from % heals), of course in differing orders. But now that I type it out I guess a system that at best incentivizes stopping stat pump because they get expensive rather than because you've hit a sweet spot isn't much better if better at all.
Jack - as long as you don't keep the stats too low once we reach midgame or so. As I said, the larger defense values we're dealing with, the less dramatic it is if we lower it or overpower it with str/acc spam.
jack1974
May 18, 2015
Jack - as long as you don't keep the stats too low once we reach midgame or so. As I said, the larger defense values we're dealing with, the less dramatic it is if we lower it or overpower it with str/acc spam.
It was more about being "fair" vs the player
I mean when you see enemies gain more stats each level than you... some people could be angry!
There isn't a problem of keeping stats too low, since the plot fights will be crafted. But remember that this game is like Loren, since will allow unlimited grinding (otherwise, would be like SOTW, and that's not what I want). So if you grind and reach 10 level more than the recommended level for that boss... will be easy, of course
yayswords
May 18, 2015
Yeah but the AI is stupid, plus enemies don't really worry about items. Give them the stats they need to present an appropriate challenge for the difficulty level
jack1974
May 18, 2015
Yes, will do that. With unlimited grinding and even the option to flee from battle (for non-plot battles of course) it shouldn't be a problem even keeping current enemy level up
jack1974
May 19, 2015
I've finished Kira's skilltree (offensive/defensive). I tested all skills and they seem to work fine
I've also changed the Accuracy->Critical Hit increase: now every TWO POINTS spent on Accuracy will increase Critical Hit by 1%. Otherwise, at level 25 if you put all points in Accuracy you would have 30% Critical Hit, and this not considering even the bonus given by armor or skills. Getting a critical hit every 3 normal hit would be a bit too much!
I'm going to do Thalia now and keep Joanne's as last, since the Mage will need some planning. I want to have base damage but also some side effect or condition that can interact with other gameplay mechanics, as said before...
Troyen
May 19, 2015
Is it possible to have fractional Critical Hit increases? Like each point increases it by 0.5%? Otherwise every other point is "wasted" until you can spend two.
jack1974
May 19, 2015
In reality behind the scenes is what happens, but for practical purposes for example I display 17% instead of 17.5%
Jaeger
May 19, 2015
I've finished Kira's skilltree (offensive/defensive). I tested all skills and they seem to work fine
I've also changed the Accuracy->Critical Hit increase: now every TWO POINTS spent on Accuracy will increase Critical Hit by 1%. Otherwise, at level 25 if you put all points in Accuracy you would have 30% Critical Hit, and this not considering even the bonus given by armor or skills. Getting a critical hit every 3 normal hit would be a bit too much!
I'm going to do Thalia now and keep Joanne's as last, since the Mage will need some planning. I want to have base damage but also some side effect or condition that can interact with other gameplay mechanics, as said before...
If you put all points into Accuracy, won't your character be seriously weak in other areas? I mean, what is the point in raising critical, if you cannot derive raw damage from strength, constitution/skill for surviability, or agility to act more often?
yayswords
May 19, 2015
Jaeger is right, at least about the strength part. I thought I explained that well enough. If we say whoever dumps everything into acc ends up with 5 str 30 acc at level 25, that's 150 raw damage. The most even split at 17 str 18 acc is 306 raw damage. No matter the enemy's defense, the second split will do more damage on non-crits than the first will do on crits.
I'm not sure what kind of numbers you were working with when you made your decision, but at the end of the day, with the current system, there's no sense in nerfing accuracy based on what happens if you pump only accuracy. All the player is accomplishing is shooting themselves in the foot.
Also how does speed/delay work in QoT? It's the next big thing to know!
Jaeger
May 19, 2015
What about simply do away with the Defense stat can just work with HP? You can still have damage mitigation in the form equipment and skills.
jack1974
May 20, 2015
Wait the only thing I'm changing is the CRITICAL HIT chance. 1 attribute point is still 1 accuracy. So that's unchanged. I am only changing the critical hit, not base/normal damage calculations. Because if it's even only at 25% means that 1 hit out of 4 will be critical, and in this game is double damage, so it's quite likely can kill off an enemy or seriously damage it. It would be a cheat mode
yayswords
May 20, 2015
Yes but I'm saying if you dump everything into accuracy you will eventually do less damage with crits than someone who balances acc with str does with hits. You seem to be staring yourself blind at crit chance here.
I'm sure you can easily give yourself high attributes to test with, so just compare a 20 str/20 acc character to one with 5 str and 35 acc. See which one your monsters should really be afraid of.
jack1974
May 20, 2015
Yes I just tried, of course the balanced one is more powerful
I also tried a 31 AT 2 AC vs 2 AT and 15 AC (with the current system), and the 31 AT was doing more damage.
I tried another time with old system, so 31 AC and still the one with 31AT did more damage. So yeah I'm reverting back to the old system
Also how does speed/delay work in QoT? It's the next big thing to know!
Regarding this is the same system as SOTW but instead of 100 base value I picked lower values, characters usually starts at 5-6 speed. The current wait formula is:
[code]wait = pSkill.cWait / self.getValue("Speed")[/code]
which of course will be tweaked. I want speed to have some impact, while we limit HP and SP so it's not like players can spam special attack like in Loren/SOTW with super speed, even just the normal attack can do damage in the long run if a character is too fast. So I'll need to see a bit during testing but probably will reduce the impact a bit!
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