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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.

No problem, in this case makes sense since I've changed the damage calculation completely from the first test

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.

edit: 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.

and later edit:

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

Troyen wrote: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.

yayswords wrote: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

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