PS2 prototype 0.6.4

[jack1974]

Is there any particular reason the average non-boss enemy would ever have a defense value higher than the player's damage value? I'd expect shooting for 1 damage to only happen on an intentionally hard fight. Remember in PS1 mobs would die in about 2-4 hits on average.

No, but in PS1 everything was fixed, so much easier for me to balance. No randomized weapons, no randomized enemies, etc.
But I am trying to do something like this even here, so that every level has certain values, and unless you equip items of very lower level (like level 1 against a level 4 enemy) you should always do more damage than the defense.
So I think it's just a matter of balancing it here, also I need to do checks for higher levels, and I'm adding XP boosts so people can try level 5 then level 10 and so on (to make sure the damage progression is OK).

As for the boss I screwed up something - you always do 1 damage no matter what. It's fun to read "30 weapon+skill - 8 defense = 1 damage"

I'll check about the download, I think I might have made it available only for Windows or something. I'm doing a new update today anyway with much better balancing (hopefully) and fixes!

[jack1974]

After a morning of tweaking I think now the situation is much better! I used the method of giving more HP (both to party and enemies) and tweaked also the damage, accuracy, etc of many items. Version number is 0.6.2, I didn't fix any of the other bugs (except damage on boss enemy) since I wanted to get the damage right first

[DarkWolf]

Now weapons seem a lot more balanced, but armor is way too strong. This is a result of 4th battle in hard mode without using any healing:



I barely take any damage from them.

There's still seems to be issue with Damien's time bomb and choice of difficulty level at start being ignored.

As for auto equip, that was my misunderstanding. When I saw "Auto equip" I thought there was a way for you to click on button and be automatically equipped with the best items available to you at a moment.

[jack1974]

Yes the player armor is still too strong, I agree. Even if the boragrub are one of the weakest enemy for attack, it's still to strong. Also probably the Resilience is too high (basically if it's 10, enemies need to hit you 10 times to lower 1 defense point with normal attacks).
For the other issues, yes I hadn't time to fix the bugs you reported, I'll do it tomorrow thanks for testing, seems I'm moving closer to nicer/more balanced prototype.

[Troyen]

As for auto equip, that was my misunderstanding. When I saw "Auto equip" I thought there was a way for you to click on button and be automatically equipped with the best items available to you at a moment.

That's my assumption based on how that feature works in other games too. The game itself decides what's "best" by looking at primary stats for the character (even if sometimes it doesn't pick the best secondary stats).

[Troyen]

Yes the player armor is still too strong, I agree. Even if the boragrub are one of the weakest enemy for attack, it's still to strong. Also probably the Resilience is too high (basically if it's 10, enemies need to hit you 10 times to lower 1 defense point with normal attacks).
For the other issues, yes I hadn't time to fix the bugs you reported, I'll do it tomorrow thanks for testing, seems I'm moving closer to nicer/more balanced prototype.

Is there a way to make it a rating? Basically change Resilience to be a bigger number and divide that by 10 to determine how many attacks it takes to reduce defense. So 32 resilience takes 3 attacks (or 3.2 if you keep track of the decimal part) and 40 takes 4 attacks.

Main reason is because it sounds like Resilience needs to be a small number to be balanced, but small numbers tend to be the most imbalanced in terms of increased benefit. Going from 1 Resilience to 2 Resilience right now effectively doubles your defensive value, whereas the difference between 12 and 13 is much smaller due to diminishing returns. I worry it would make battles much harder to balance in the 1-3 Resilience range.

[jack1974]

That's my assumption based on how that feature works in other games too. The game itself decides what's "best" by looking at primary stats for the character (even if sometimes it doesn't pick the best secondary stats).

I'll change the name then (I used it since Loren so that's 4 RPGs) Doing auto-equip of best item wouldn't probably work well (too hard to determine). Maybe I change it to auto-filter or something.

As for Resilience I could easily just have some fixed smaller values, like light 1, medium 2, heavy armor 3. Then based on rarity could increase by very small ranges like (1-2) so at maximum would be 5.
Higher than 5 probably it's too much since at higher levels you can have high armor values. Or I should change how it works, like the damage absorbed by the defense is subtracted from that value or something, like:
defense 10, resilience 15. enemy attack for 11, 1 dmg but resilience reduced by -10
I should do some tests to see how this system works though.

[Jaeger]

Some random opinions on various skills

- Raise Morale: Unfortunately this seems only work on self, instead any ally
- Time Bomb: As mentioned by DarkWolf, it doesn't work currently. Even if it did, I looks like it would need serious tweaking anyways, it may need need percentage-based damage so it can scale better. The higher tiers increase the number of turns required to detonate increases each turn, making it even less appealing.
- Quick Reload: This skills seems to have good synergy with Kill Them All. Otherwise, it seems to be of dubious worth, needing a high investment combined a weapon with an extremely low ammo capacity to take advantage of it.
- Drunk Shot: Maybe, I'm just having rotten luck, It seems like the Shots graze most of the time and once in a while hits the intended target for full damage. I never seen it hit a random target like the description says.
Toxins: The fixed damage is miniscule. However, it might still be worth it because it's DOT effect, and it's the only one available.
SootStrike: Again, the fixed damage may hurt in the long run.
Weakness: Is it me or it doesn't seem to work anywmore?
Harm: Can be good first attack to soften up foes with very high HP, but loses its value as the battle goes on. Too bad it's useless against bosses, where it may have been the most useful.
Finisher: Competes with Chain Shot to deal with nearly-dead enemies. Chain Shot seems better unless the enemy has too much HP remaining to be killed.

[jack1974]

today I'm taking time to review all the reported bugs with skills and maybe tweak them like I just did with Harm. A skill that just doesn't work on bosses is bad design Now it's even useful, since for example against the boragrub boss, even doing 10 dmg only is not bad at all (of course I'll design the other bosses so it's less powerful/they can get around this).
I have also tweaked the values more so that armor aren't so powerful at higher levels, before a heavy armor could have 112 defense towards level 30 which was definitely too much, even if I'll scale the enemy damage, that was too crazy
I'll upload a new version probably tomorrow, I'm also keeping a changelog since even during this stage will be useful for me to keep track of what I changed (and for the few brave testers here )

[Jaeger]

If it was 10 damage, I would just stick with pistols since they don't cost PP and inflict almost as much damage. Considering soldiers and scouts can inflict at least twice as much damage on their turn, it would be better just save the PP for any healing or debuffing. Maybe instead of fixed damage, have Damage = Base damage + character level. Alternatively, you try reduced percentage for bosses (example: 20% for regular enemies 15% for bosses).

More feedback on skills
-Steal Life: It doesn't work as described. Life drained seems to be based on current HP rather than total. Despite the description, it still steal below the minimum HP. I think Heal is a better overall when it comes the psionic's role as a support class.
-Into the Fray: I'm not sure what's supposed to do. I haven't found any use for it yet
-Critical Hit: The description could use tweaking to indicate how much delay is reduced without pointing points and resetting.
- Drain Power: I could see it being useful at higher levels when enemies may have a higher HP pool. At the moment, it's pretty useless.