Feedback on balance? - VGF

Slife · 02-09-2008, 03:09 AM

So, I've updated and extended the RPG. (Problems with the armada? Talk to Recutus again.) Unfortunately, knowing the ins and outs of the RPG makes it kind of hard to balance challenges against real characters.

So, how is the difficulty scaling. Too hard? Too easy? Do monsters have too high attacks, or just take way too long to defeat?

Inquiring mind wants to know.

**S1x** · 02-09-2008, 05:57 AM

You just reminded me how old the "lock stats" topic is. Yee.

I'm going to look at some more stuff in detail (finally) and do some experimentation if I'm not able to do anything else over the weekend.

Sarai and Samiel · 04-17-2008, 06:17 PM

I hate those repair robots. Also, honey heals robots. D'ARGH. This makes the battles hard because you have to be able to survive for SO FREAKING LONG. It's really not very interesting at that length of battle. Just to make it worse, at level 21 there's nothing on the 'frontier' that I can fight that will give me more than 1 EXP per fight. My pet has rapidly closed the gap between its level and mine.

There really, *really* needs to be something done here...

Also, some more items would be nice. I can't find, buy, or have anyone make anything any stronger than what I've already got, really, and I've had the stuff since about level 13 or 14 when the bees were scary.

Crazybirdanimations · 04-22-2008, 12:54 AM

Extend the game, add more items, let bots join your team sometime and help you out, I see this huge map you have, but it's never updated.

**S1x** · 04-22-2008, 01:46 AM

Heh... sorry. This will be up to speed soon enough. I've made a lot of empty promises to myself and expanding this quickly is one of them. However, there are several ideas I want to implement, some of them similar to your suggestions.

Instead of saying I'll do stuff, I'll just do stuff.

Slife · 04-24-2008, 01:44 AM

A couple of responses:

Repairbots have been drastically nerfed. If you can't kill them first, perhaps you haven't spent your levelup points?

The Xp system is sadly out of my control. I either use the built-in unchangable system, or I give static awards for each monster. As the amount of XP to level is fixed, the second option is just stupid, as very quickly the best option would be to farm the low level monsters, which is no fun. If I increased the xp gains enough to counterbalance this, you'd level up multiple times every time you killed anything.

I'm afraid I can't do anything about honey healing robots. Potions work universally.

I'll see what I can do about making fights less tedious. I've been scaling them based on what would be a difficult challenge for a character optimized for that combat (PROTIP: Dual wielding is very good for melee beasts), but I don't know how much people actually optimize.

There are also some bugs that I'm trying to compensate for, which force me into design decisions I would prefer to avoid.

Guests joining the party is sadly limited to a single pet. If you have specific requests, I'll be willing to look into them. Even then, there are some issues with how the scripting process (doesn't) work, and the documentation is nonexistent. I've fumbled my way through on a couple of NPCs, but a chief concern of mine is that I can see no way to avoid characters collecting multiple rewards by talking over and over. This puts a bit of a damper on what I want to do.

Similarly, although enchantments with spells are possible in-game, I can't force them to drop from bosses, which kind of makes it lame...

The most I've been able to manipulate the AI has been with the wikivandals, and that's more of a cheap hack than anything else... best I can do at the moment.

I thought I had items made... maybe they didn't get put into shops or something. I'll look into it, just not at the moment (I'm overdue on RL stuff, which limits my time a tad). S1x shouldn't worry about stepping on my toes, so he can step in at any time.

I wish for the type of control over the RPG that the FF1 developers had. Unfortunately, the support forum requires some sort of registration key to prove you have the product, and Shane never replied to my PM...

Sarai and Samiel · 04-24-2008, 10:43 AM

This is me.

I have no difficulty hitting and damaging the Repairbots fast enough to kill them, particularly since I take something like three or four turns every round, wielding probably the two best weapons currently in existence, thanks to stupid levels of Speed. The difficulty is that then the Bees use the Honey on the dead Robot, which, since there's no lockdown at 0HP, is then alive again and shoots me. This is especially nasty when the Bees come in alongside a Disposable Robot *AND* a Repairbot. It doesn't help that my pet, who is geared for magic, can't do more efficient spells than 5 HP/round for 10 rounds that does not stack multiple castings, on account of the lack of decent attack spells (Feast of Blood is, IMNSHO, vastly overpriced, MP-wise.) and the cap on the existing ones.

Crazybirdanimations · 04-24-2008, 07:53 PM

Why not get a few more people working on this?

02-09-2008, 03:09 AM	#1
Slife Member Join Date: Mar 2000 Location: Swamped with work! Hanging with the zombies in the VGF RPG forum! Gender: Posts: 1,572 Thanks: 11 Thanked 13 Times in 10 Posts Points: 4,036.00 Bank: 744,498.81 Total Points: 748,534.81 Donate	Feedback on balance? So, I've updated and extended the RPG. (Problems with the armada? Talk to Recutus again.) Unfortunately, knowing the ins and outs of the RPG makes it kind of hard to balance challenges against real characters. So, how is the difficulty scaling. Too hard? Too easy? Do monsters have too high attacks, or just take way too long to defeat? Inquiring mind wants to know. Last edited by Slife; 02-24-2008 at 05:46 PM.

04-17-2008, 06:17 PM	#3
Sarai and Samiel Member Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Aisle 12, between the kumquats and the radicchio. Gender: Posts: 2,261 Thanks: 148 Thanked 124 Times in 86 Posts Points: 1,074.87 Bank: 47,885.39 Total Points: 48,960.26 Donate	Sarai Sez: I hate those repair robots. Also, honey heals robots. D'ARGH. This makes the battles hard because you have to be able to survive for SO FREAKING LONG. It's really not very interesting at that length of battle. Just to make it worse, at level 21 there's nothing on the 'frontier' that I can fight that will give me more than 1 EXP per fight. My pet has rapidly closed the gap between its level and mine. There really, really needs to be something done here... Also, some more items would be nice. I can't find, buy, or have anyone make anything any stronger than what I've already got, really, and I've had the stuff since about level 13 or 14 when the bees were scary.

04-22-2008, 12:54 AM	#4
Crazybirdanimations Platinum Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: California Gender: Posts: 4,610 Thanks: 233 Thanked 196 Times in 164 Posts Points: 8,816.26 Bank: 8,280.18 Total Points: 17,096.44 Donate	Extend the game, add more items, let bots join your team sometime and help you out, I see this huge map you have, but it's never updated. __________________

04-24-2008, 10:43 AM	#7
Sarai and Samiel Member Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Aisle 12, between the kumquats and the radicchio. Gender: Posts: 2,261 Thanks: 148 Thanked 124 Times in 86 Posts Points: 1,074.87 Bank: 47,885.39 Total Points: 48,960.26 Donate	Sarai Sez: This is me. I have no difficulty hitting and damaging the Repairbots fast enough to kill them, particularly since I take something like three or four turns every round, wielding probably the two best weapons currently in existence, thanks to stupid levels of Speed. The difficulty is that then the Bees use the Honey on the dead Robot, which, since there's no lockdown at 0HP, is then alive again and shoots me. This is especially nasty when the Bees come in alongside a Disposable Robot AND a Repairbot. It doesn't help that my pet, who is geared for magic, can't do more efficient spells than 5 HP/round for 10 rounds that does not stack multiple castings, on account of the lack of decent attack spells (Feast of Blood is, IMNSHO, vastly overpriced, MP-wise.) and the cap on the existing ones.

04-24-2008, 07:53 PM	#8
Crazybirdanimations Platinum Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: California Gender: Posts: 4,610 Thanks: 233 Thanked 196 Times in 164 Posts Points: 8,816.26 Bank: 8,280.18 Total Points: 17,096.44 Donate	Why not get a few more people working on this? __________________

02-09-2008, 05:57 AM	#2
S1x VGF RPG Mod Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Either over there or right here Gender: Posts: 4,671 Thanks: 14 Thanked 166 Times in 52 Posts Blog Entries: 1 Points: 47,281.52 Bank: 23,011.97 Total Points: 70,293.49 Donate	You just reminded me how old the "lock stats" topic is. Yee. I'm going to look at some more stuff in detail (finally) and do some experimentation if I'm not able to do anything else over the weekend.

04-22-2008, 01:46 AM	#5
S1x VGF RPG Mod Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Either over there or right here Gender: Posts: 4,671 Thanks: 14 Thanked 166 Times in 52 Posts Blog Entries: 1 Points: 47,281.52 Bank: 23,011.97 Total Points: 70,293.49 Donate	Heh... sorry. This will be up to speed soon enough. I've made a lot of empty promises to myself and expanding this quickly is one of them. However, there are several ideas I want to implement, some of them similar to your suggestions. Instead of saying I'll do stuff, I'll just do stuff.

04-24-2008, 01:44 AM	#6
Slife Member Join Date: Mar 2000 Location: Swamped with work! Hanging with the zombies in the VGF RPG forum! Gender: Posts: 1,572 Thanks: 11 Thanked 13 Times in 10 Posts Points: 4,036.00 Bank: 744,498.81 Total Points: 748,534.81 Donate	A couple of responses: Repairbots have been drastically nerfed. If you can't kill them first, perhaps you haven't spent your levelup points? The Xp system is sadly out of my control. I either use the built-in unchangable system, or I give static awards for each monster. As the amount of XP to level is fixed, the second option is just stupid, as very quickly the best option would be to farm the low level monsters, which is no fun. If I increased the xp gains enough to counterbalance this, you'd level up multiple times every time you killed anything. I'm afraid I can't do anything about honey healing robots. Potions work universally. I'll see what I can do about making fights less tedious. I've been scaling them based on what would be a difficult challenge for a character optimized for that combat (PROTIP: Dual wielding is very good for melee beasts), but I don't know how much people actually optimize. There are also some bugs that I'm trying to compensate for, which force me into design decisions I would prefer to avoid. Guests joining the party is sadly limited to a single pet. If you have specific requests, I'll be willing to look into them. Even then, there are some issues with how the scripting process (doesn't) work, and the documentation is nonexistent. I've fumbled my way through on a couple of NPCs, but a chief concern of mine is that I can see no way to avoid characters collecting multiple rewards by talking over and over. This puts a bit of a damper on what I want to do. Similarly, although enchantments with spells are possible in-game, I can't force them to drop from bosses, which kind of makes it lame... The most I've been able to manipulate the AI has been with the wikivandals, and that's more of a cheap hack than anything else... best I can do at the moment. I thought I had items made... maybe they didn't get put into shops or something. I'll look into it, just not at the moment (I'm overdue on RL stuff, which limits my time a tad). S1x shouldn't worry about stepping on my toes, so he can step in at any time. I wish for the type of control over the RPG that the FF1 developers had. Unfortunately, the support forum requires some sort of registration key to prove you have the product, and Shane never replied to my PM...