Damage Formulas

[Rolina]

Well, I must make a slight argument against that - The mage end focuses on the Spell Tier and Group.  The warrior end focuses on weapon power and unleash effect.  When we hit endgame, there needs to be a little more growth - basically, enough spells left to match the uber-equipment they'd find if they went on some serious sidequesting.  They probably won't know Grand Gaia yet, and they'd MAYBE know Stone Spire (though that could be pushing it), but they also don't have the BEST equipment.  They'd have to hunt down rare drops, the frustratingly rare weapon forges, take down the uberbosses of the game to reap the rewards...

End the end, the final tier of psynergy should be comparable to the uberweapons in the game.  Cursed uberweapons should be a tad stronger than both - Cursed mage weapons grant spells even stronger than most psynergy (though costing a bit more, due to the versatility tax on cost), while Cursed fighter weapons have noticeably more powerful attacks and unleashes.  But you've only got one cleric's ring, and if you're gonna give them that, then you're gonna miss out on some better equipment, such as the Ring of Awakening.  Not to mention that I want there to be additional penalties to wielding cursed equipment... Perhaps the Cleric's Ring prevents the curse effect from happening in battle, but will halve your luck?

...Jeez, what's it with me and tangents recently?  Meh, anywho, the point is that the 'endgame' weapons and psynergy should match, but there should still be a spell or two left to learn above the target level.  They're the 'post-game' spells.  Along with the uber equipment, which are basically the 'post-game equips', they should balance out in the end.

Basically, balance the uber with the uber, and we should be set.  The formulas should take care of the rest.

[Rolina]

I just realized... we totally forgot to take spell resistance into account.  Hmm...

How's this, then?

Damage = ([(Base + Caster MPP/4)*(1 + Caster MPP/1000)] - [(Target MPP/6)*(1 + Target MPP/1000)])  * ((400+Staff Mod)/400) * ((400-Ankh Mod)/400) * (power/resistance modifiers) * (range penalties, if applicable)

By including the target's max PP in the equation for resistance (although not as high as for power, reflecting the natural growth for attack vs defense), we make it so that mages also naturally take less damage from mage-type attacks, while fighters naturally take more.  Stereotypical, sure, but that's the point - it's not like GS tried to break any stereotypes.  It embraced them.  We're just taking it one step further.

Also, I think we should keep Base Damage and call these new damage formulas "Spell Damage" and "Spell Damage (diminishing)".  Base Damage should still be in effect for things like usable items and certain skills/spells.  After all, you should be doing more damage with an oil drop at a higher level - it's the item's power that's being unleashed, not the power of the person using it!

[leaf]

Well I suppose I should stop being lazy or otherwise distracted and actually reply here...

Well, I must make a slight argument against that - The mage end focuses on the Spell Tier and Group.  The warrior end focuses on weapon power and unleash effect.  When we hit endgame, there needs to be a little more growth - basically, enough spells left to match the uber-equipment they'd find if they went on some serious sidequesting.  They probably won't know Grand Gaia yet, and they'd MAYBE know Stone Spire (though that could be pushing it), but they also don't have the BEST equipment.  They'd have to hunt down rare drops, the frustratingly rare weapon forges, take down the uberbosses of the game to reap the rewards...

(snip)

...Jeez, what's it with me and tangents recently?  Meh, anywho, the point is that the 'endgame' weapons and psynergy should match, but there should still be a spell or two left to learn above the target level.  They're the 'post-game' spells.  Along with the uber equipment, which are basically the 'post-game equips', they should balance out in the end.

Basically, balance the uber with the uber, and we should be set.  The formulas should take care of the rest.

Well I certainly don't disagree about balancing uber with uber, early game with early game, and so on. But... a few things I'd like to say on the matter.

First off, weapon power... is essentially the same thing as unleash effect at high levels, where you can boost a character's attack to 999 after anywhere between a single high impact and two impacts (888 (+12.5%), 800 (+25%), 727 (+37.5%), and 666 (+50%) are the magic numbers, for each level of boost). If you're not talking about very high levels, then yeah... weapon power matters. However, in your own suggested method of balancing, you give the spellcasters a boost through their weapon equip as well, and a large one at that. This makes the reason for mage growth somewhat the opposite of warriors. Warriors get a whole new primary attack when they get a new weapon equip, whereas mages are simply strengthening their old options. When warriors level up, they're just strengthening their old options, and while the same will hold true for mages if we use the maxPP bonus, they also get new attacks as they level.

Yes, I am referring solely to staffs and ignoring ankhs for a reason. Ankhs by their very design cannot be useful on anything except a healer/support character. Staffs will be used for any mage actually trying to do damage. As a random note, I think that the ankh boost should also apply to healing for this reason. The character's attacks will be far below the standard if they're using an ankh; giving up a viable offense for a (probably unnecessarily) stronger defense when you already had a viable defense to begin with is in general a bad trade.

You know... the more I think about this, the more I think we're overcomplicating things. The fewer variables to something there is, the easier it is to control it. Base damage psynergy has very little going into its power right now, which is a problem, but it doesn't need a bunch of inputs, either. I'm... actually not entirely convinced anymore that we need to involve maxPP at all. Something you need to keep in mind is that these formulas are going to be used by bosses, too. That's why I actually think that maxPP should have fairly little effect on the final damage - if any - for risk of breaking psynergy in the hands of a boss that carries as much PP as the party combined. A boss like this would not only do absurd damage to the party with psynergy, but it would also take minimal damage from spellcasters, ironically making them worthless again for an entirely different reason.

Beyond that, though, there are other methods of fighting, too. It's an entirely viable strategy to simply cycle through djinn and summons with all four characters using base classes, or spamming a certain element's djinn or two and its(/their) respective summon(s) with multi-elemental classes, never touching the attack command, and only using psynergy to heal or use support spells (although both can be done with djinn as well, if you use them intelligently). In fact, I'd argue that djinn cycling is the most universally effective strat in the game, capable of incredible self-sufficiency. It's probably a large part of why I liked golden sun so much... the djinn system was so different from other games, and allowed for some very versatile ways of playing; even if you didn't use them in battle at all, your entire strategy still revolved around the use of djinn, as they're what formed your classes.

Of course, when unleashed, djinn use the attack stat, which inevitably leaves the mages behind here, as well. I almost wonder if the best way to implement the staff and ankh bonuses would be directly in the elemental power and resistance section, adding or subtracting an additional amount before dividing by either 200 or 400 for base damage or elemental physicals respectively. This would naturally make summons more powerful when used by a mage, and it would in general have to be done very carefully to avoid making mages overpowered with elemental attacks overall, but it would essentially amount to being able to bypass the 200 power/resistance cap, something very easy to reach due to summons, and of course allow editing of the stat with only one "special" slot in the item editor.

So you have the old formula for elemental physicals, which looks something like this:
((attack - defense)*multmod/10 + addmod) * (1 + (power - resistance)/400)
And the old formula for base damage psynergy and summons, which looks something like this (where p is the percent mod for HP for a summon, and h is the foe's max HP):
(base + p*h) * (1 + (power - resistance)/200)

Which would become, where s is the staff bonus and a is the ankh bonus:
For elemental physicals:
((attack - defense)*multmod/10 + addmod) * (1 + (power - resistance + s - a)/400)
And for base damage psynergy (and summons):
(base + p*h) * (1 + (power - resistance + s - a)/200)

However, as having it affect summons may be too powerful, it should be possible to make summons ignore the staff and ankh bonuses, by having a check for:
If:
p>0
Then:
s = 0
a = 0
Else:
s = value determined by item
a = value determined by item

Although it would allow mages to use elemental physicals more effectively by using this method, you'd have to remember that their only sources of elemental physicals are their psynergy and the djinn; if they wanted to use an unleash, they would need to forego the staff or ankh bonus. Not to mention that elemental power/resistance only has half as much of an effect on elemental physicals as it does on base damage.

Now that I've got that out of the way...

They'd have to hunt down rare drops, the frustratingly rare weapon forges, take down the uberbosses of the game to reap the rewards...

Rare weapon forges and rare drops shouldn't exist imo. The game engine already took care of the second one for us, but the first is still a bit of a thorn. Players should be rewarded for exploration, solving puzzles, and defeating difficult foes. Rewarding them for the item equivalent of level grinding is counterproductive, and only serves to artificially extend the length of a game. Soft resetting until you got the right forge was dumb and ultimately pointless in TLA, when they could have just let you choose what item you got to begin with for the same end result. Rare drops were mostly negated due to one of the RNGs in the game being easily manipulated, which I actually believe may have been intentional. If the same system returns in GSDS, then I'll be quite confident in that assessment. I have nothing against a player manipulating the RNG to obtain a "rare" item. Items and equipment are meant to be used; they are not and should not be trophies. Making a player spend a little time and effort to get an item that otherwise has no strings attached (ie. solving a puzzle or beating a boss) is fine, but the player should not be forced to throw themselves at an RNG all day if they want to obtain that item. Being able to manipulate the RNG in a way that is ultimately non-influential to gameplay let's a player spend time on the part of the game that's supposed to actually matter. The only difference between a party that's been fighting mooks all day trying to get a rare item and one that used an RNG method is that the one that used the RNG method will probably be at a lower level due to having less experience; ironic that a time-saving shortcut actually makes the game harder.

As for this, which I cut out from what I quoted above:

End the end, the final tier of psynergy should be comparable to the uberweapons in the game.  Cursed uberweapons should be a tad stronger than both - Cursed mage weapons grant spells even stronger than most psynergy (though costing a bit more, due to the versatility tax on cost), while Cursed fighter weapons have noticeably more powerful attacks and unleashes.  But you've only got one cleric's ring, and if you're gonna give them that, then you're gonna miss out on some better equipment, such as the Ring of Awakening.  Not to mention that I want there to be additional penalties to wielding cursed equipment... Perhaps the Cleric's Ring prevents the curse effect from happening in battle, but will halve your luck?

Cursed items should indeed be better than anything else obtainable at the time, especially the endgame cursed weapons, but only slightly better. Ultimately what it means is that a player will outfit a single character in fully (or almost fully) cursed gear with the cleric's ring, giving that character a boost that certainly overshadows whatever was lost due to not being able to use some other random ring. However, if the benefits of cursed gear are only slightly greater than that of normal equipment, I think the punishment of only being able to outfit a single character in cursed gear is enough; it acts more as an inventory management puzzle than anything. I think any additional punishment would end up negating what little benefit you gain from the cursed equipment.

[Rolina]

Warriors get a whole new primary attack when they get a new weapon equip, whereas mages are simply strengthening their old options.

AHA!  But you forget!  Staffs, Ankhs, and Maces have unleashes too!  What applies to warriors in this case ALSO applies to mages, ever since we changed how unleashes work!  I can see where you're coming from, though... the only way to get a Impact-like effect for spells is to equip a staff, and even then it's not quite the same (impact doesn't work when you hit 999 Attack, while the staff bonus is still applied after max PP).  But if we simply use the current plan to manipulate unleashes, then if they trigger the 'free unleash' by the attack command, the unleash, though single target, will STILL have the basis of power it has.  Look at some of the hacking videos.  One person made the longsword unleash Defend, thus putting the target into a 50% damage reduction barrier.  Mean?  Yeah, sure.  But it's a great proof of concept.  Not to mention that base damage still does what it would have done anyways for a character, only being single target instead of multi-target.  Damage really doesn't change.

Not all unleashes look at the attack stat in the rebalanced system.  In fact, not all of them will be offensive at all.  Some are healing or support in nature (and thus, don't trigger an unleash via attacking, or trigger a different, offensive one).  Some magic weapons could SHARE attack unleashes even!  Think:  Magic Pulse.  Instead of using attack as the basis for damage, it uses a non-elemental spell-type attack.  If we were to use Max PP as the basis of power, then it'd basically be like they were attacking a single target with a non-elemental spell.  It'd be doing damage arguably comparable to a warrior's physical attacks, if we were to pull it off right.

@Ankhs not being included - I totally understand, since they're a defensive weapon.  The main boost will come from staffs, and if we use MaxPP in the formula, a very MINOR boost will come from hammers/maces.

@Ankh boost and healing:  I am VERY wary of boosting healing.  It was broken enough in GS, so if we're going to go with that, we'll need to be very cautious as to how.

@Bosses and Max PP - Well, if we DO wind up making Max PP central to the damage output, there IS a way to make them reasonable without being godlike in power - PP Regen.  In such a case, we'll use Max PP to determine the power/resistance for monsters and bosses, and use PP regen to get the fuel effect.  Doesn't work for characters, but it should be sufficient.

@Max PP use - even if we look to other things, we should keep this in mind.  We may wind up seeing that this is possibly the best option.  Sure, we may be complicating things too bit, but too much simplicity is a danger as well.


@Djinn and the Attack Stat - no, actually, they each have their own ability.  I've gone into the editor and changed one to Base damage that may hit 1, 2, or 3 times.  It worked pretty nicely.  So we've got a LOT of options for the djinn.  The original programmers just really didn't look at them that much.  Just seems like wasted potential to me.  We can easily make djinn that are GREAT for warriors and totally suck with mages, but we can do the opposite too - make djinn that are GREAT for mages, but suck in the hands of a warrior.  It depends on what ability we give the djinn.

In reality, Djinn act just like any other ability out there, when you look at the hard data.  You can make a new psynergy that does the same thing as a djinn, and the only difference is that you don't have some djinn popping out in the animation when you pull it off.  This means we just need to approach djinn as we would any other ability, when you think about it.  Only, they have a different cost - lower stats and class alteration.

@Rare drop/forge argument:  Ah, but only those going for a perfect game or 100% completion really care about that stuff.  You can beat the game without it.  I believe that the game should be beatable, at at least 90% completable without too much grinding.  But if you want that extra 10% to finish it off, you're going to be in for the long haul.  Most players really don't care about that last 10%, so long as they beat the game.

In that last 10%, most of it is sidequesting and the uberbosses.  That last 1% are the rare drops and forges.  Not necessary, but they're there.  Sometimes a casual player will be lucky to get it, but most of the time it really doesn't matter to them.

@Cursed gear:  You and I are on the same page, then.  It should be better, like in GS1, not the crap we got in GS2 with the darksword and the like.  There weren't many uses for cursed gear at all.  Cursed Uber should be slightly better than Normal Uber, while Cursed Standard/Weak should be slightly better than Normal Uber/Weak.  The player must consider whether or not it's worth it to them to use the cleric's ring and forgo the benefits of other rings (such as the Ring of Awakening - which I plan to be the ONLY way for a person to EVER get more than a 25% of an unleash), or to take advantage of those benefits while risking being unable to act.  I don't think that it should be minor enough that they don't care, there should be some pros and cons into using it.

After all, I have one file where both Mia and Garet use cursed gear.  Garet hardly ever is able to act before all the mooks are wiped out by the first three attacks, but when I come across a situation where he actually gets a turn, to me it seems like a chance for a fourth attack, rather than a chance for him not to move.  In fact, in GS1/2, the slowest character in my team almost ALWAYS has full PP, simply because I kill everything before they get a chance to attack.  They are there for additional support in boss fights, but they're not really needed.  Sure, we may make efforts to change that, but enough grinding by the player and it won't matter anyways.  So the cursed effect isn't really leverage for many players, simply because it's not actually that crippling.

NOW, if we were to strengthen it, THEN I'd be with you on not needing to tweak things too much.  If the effect of curse was a lot more crippling than it is, then sure, I get you.  But as it is now, just lay all the uber cursed stuff on your slowest guy, and you have a chance of some uber punishment in fights when you need it.  In fights were you don't, it's not like they'd be doing anything anyways.  In the end, I guess this depends on how we wind up approaching this stuff.



@Complicating Spells:

Funny, last I checked, it looked like we were just doing this in a way that it's comparable to the attack formula.  Look at attack:

Damage = ((Base + Attacker ATK) - (Target DEF))  * (MultiMod) * (power/resistance modifiers)

It's not that much different.  Sure, it's not what the exact formula is, but it gets the point across.  This IS the general gist of it, just as we had the general gist for the spell power.  Only, we're using Max PP, while attack uses Attack/Defense.  Further more, to keep it from being too powerful, we may also be giving it range modifiers to spread the damage.  Since attack only targets one target, it doesn't need it (if it could attack multiple ones, it'd become broken if it did full damage to all targets).

All this boils down to is taking a different approach with the values we give spells.  What values those are will depend on testing, REGARDLESS of which formula we wind up using in the end.  It's not being overcomplicated quite yet, it's still somewhat managable.  So should we look into other directions for making spells dynamic and not static, we can always look back to this one if things aren't quite working out as intended.  In fact, it may be a good idea to make several formulas for testing, since theory is often quite different that what you'd see in practice.  Once we have the ability to manipulate damage formulas, we'll plug them in, find out how to give proper spell values for each of them, then figure out which is the best value to use.

Base damage should STAY, regardless, though.  Items like the Oil Drop NEED TO USE THIS.  It makes no sense if they don't.  You're not using the caster's power when you use them, you're using the power of the item.  It would make no sense for them to get stronger with level.  As such, we're not changing the Base Damage formula, we're making a new formula, Spell Damage, which we will change the casty-type abilities to being.

[leaf]

Warriors get a whole new primary attack when they get a new weapon equip, whereas mages are simply strengthening their old options.

AHA!  But you forget!  Staffs, Ankhs, and Maces have unleashes too!  What applies to warriors in this case ALSO applies to mages, ever since we changed how unleashes work!  I can see where you're coming from, though... the only way to get a Impact-like effect for spells is to equip a staff, and even then it's not quite the same (impact doesn't work when you hit 999 Attack, while the staff bonus is still applied after max PP).  But if we simply use the current plan to manipulate unleashes, then if they trigger the 'free unleash' by the attack command, the unleash, though single target, will STILL have the basis of power it has.  Look at some of the hacking videos.  One person made the longsword unleash Defend, thus putting the target into a 50% damage reduction barrier.  Mean?  Yeah, sure.  But it's a great proof of concept.  Not to mention that base damage still does what it would have done anyways for a character, only being single target instead of multi-target.  Damage really doesn't change.

Not all unleashes look at the attack stat in the rebalanced system.  In fact, not all of them will be offensive at all.  Some are healing or support in nature (and thus, don't trigger an unleash via attacking, or trigger a different, offensive one).  Some magic weapons could SHARE attack unleashes even!  Think:  Magic Pulse.  Instead of using attack as the basis for damage, it uses a non-elemental spell-type attack.  If we were to use Max PP as the basis of power, then it'd basically be like they were attacking a single target with a non-elemental spell.  It'd be doing damage arguably comparable to a warrior's physical attacks, if we were to pull it off right.

I was under the impression that most staffs and ankhs would be similar to clotho's distaff... carrying an effect with no unleash. At best having an effect as their unleash coupled with a high unleash rate. If someone wants to use the attack command for doing actual damage, though, using a spellsword character (probably the best description for jenna you could get), rather than just focusing on that character's spellcaster side, then they'd need to appropriately equip a light blade or perhaps a mace. Although I suppose every character was more or less a spellsword if you classed them right... the spells being stat buffs and healing, and the sword being everything else.

@Ankhs not being included - I totally understand, since they're a defensive weapon.  The main boost will come from staffs, and if we use MaxPP in the formula, a very MINOR boost will come from hammers/maces.

@Ankh boost and healing:  I am VERY wary of boosting healing.  It was broken enough in GS, so if we're going to go with that, we'll need to be very cautious as to how.

Healing will always be broken. Although being broken in the form it was in GS is probably better than the alternative. If healing wasn't powerful enough, you'd end up complaining that bosses are too random and whether or not you win basically comes down to if the RNG was smiling upon you that day, with the only other way around it being level grinding. I would indeed argue that having healing that is slightly too strong to have been better for the game overall, actually; it made players actually want to do things besides summon rush. Since you have to keep bosses beatable, if you're going to make them prolonged battles, you need to make healing powerful enough to keep up with the bosses. There's more I wanted to say here, but I'm not really sure how to explain it.

@Bosses and Max PP - Well, if we DO wind up making Max PP central to the damage output, there IS a way to make them reasonable without being godlike in power - PP Regen.  In such a case, we'll use Max PP to determine the power/resistance for monsters and bosses, and use PP regen to get the fuel effect.  Doesn't work for characters, but it should be sufficient.

Ah. That's a good point. I hadn't thought about regen.

@Max PP use - even if we look to other things, we should keep this in mind.  We may wind up seeing that this is possibly the best option.  Sure, we may be complicating things too bit, but too much simplicity is a danger as well.

Oh certainly. We need to keep it in mind, but we shouldn't get too zeroed in on it, either. At least not yet.

@Djinn and the Attack Stat - no, actually, they each have their own ability.  I've gone into the editor and changed one to Base damage that may hit 1, 2, or 3 times.  It worked pretty nicely.  So we've got a LOT of options for the djinn.  The original programmers just really didn't look at them that much.  Just seems like wasted potential to me.  We can easily make djinn that are GREAT for warriors and totally suck with mages, but we can do the opposite too - make djinn that are GREAT for mages, but suck in the hands of a warrior.  It depends on what ability we give the djinn.

Wasted potential? You mean not making a djinni that is obscenely powerful when you first get it and becomes utterly worthless by the time you reach the end of the game was a bad idea? Djinn pull from the attack stat for a very good reason: it keeps them growing with you. Although some may be drastically stronger than others, the damaging djinn never become completely worthless, since they scale with your attack stat, allowing you to continue dishing out damage to your opponent as you set up a summon. Djinn carry some much more diverse effects than regular psynergies do, especially when you consider nearly every effect usable by the player is performed by some djinni, and many exclusively by djinn.

You are correct that if we were to redo the base damage psys in the game to grow with you that we could also do the same with certain djinn, although that creates some new complications... you have the support djinn that are usable on anyone, the mage attacking djinn, and the warrior attacking djinn, which essentially relegates certain djinn to very specific archetypes. If attacking djinn are changed, I think it would actually be better if they were made to pull from the strengths of both warriors and spellcasters, rendering them useful for both, rather than making them specialize more. Because otherwise you're faced with the problem of there only being 18 djinn of each element, and needing to appropriately balance three archetypes of djinn rather than just two means you're spreading yourself more thin. Whether that's too thin or not we don't know.

In reality, Djinn act just like any other ability out there, when you look at the hard data.  You can make a new psynergy that does the same thing as a djinn, and the only difference is that you don't have some djinn popping out in the animation when you pull it off.  This means we just need to approach djinn as we would any other ability, when you think about it.  Only, they have a different cost - lower stats and class alteration.

Of course... except not really. Djinn have one very fundamental mechanic/additional effect that makes them different from everything else: the set-standby-recovery cycle. Djinn can only be used every other turn at best, even though they may be used infinitely. If done with summoning, this requires you to set up your summon and then actually summon in the same turn, otherwise you end up only being able to use the djinni once every three turns at best. If done by resetting the djinni to your character on the offturns, you end up essentially having an inactive character every other turn. The set-standby-recovery cycle is both what makes them useful and also what balances them. And of course, when not set, they also come at a cost to your stats/class. It's a whole other effect that accompanies djinn, which means you can't and won't emulate a djinni with a psynergy.

@Rare drop/forge argument:  Ah, but only those going for a perfect game or 100% completion really care about that stuff.  You can beat the game without it.  I believe that the game should be beatable, at at least 90% completable without too much grinding.  But if you want that extra 10% to finish it off, you're going to be in for the long haul.  Most players really don't care about that last 10%, so long as they beat the game.

In that last 10%, most of it is sidequesting and the uberbosses.  That last 1% are the rare drops and forges.  Not necessary, but they're there.  Sometimes a casual player will be lucky to get it, but most of the time it really doesn't matter to them.

When you already are limited to 240 unique items to begin with, it's impossible to collect every item in the game without having to sell some things back to the stores... in fact, I don't even think it's possible to carry all of the unique equipment from the original game into TLA in only 120 item spaces. There's also no additional reward for getting everything, so what rare forges really do is just make people play longer for outfitting their party the way they want to.

The only reasons a player should be spending more time to complete everything is if 1) they're exploring, or 2) because they're actually playing through the bonus dungeons. A player should be racking up hours on the clock because they're playing the game, not because they're just mindlessly beating on monsters for a rare drop. Rare forges are an even more egregious crossing of those bounds, since hunting those down doesn't even raise the clock time in the game. Soft resetting for the right item increases your time spent on the game completely arbitrarily. That's horrible game design, arguably a form of fake difficulty.

@Cursed gear:  You and I are on the same page, then.  It should be better, like in GS1, not the crap we got in GS2 with the darksword and the like.  There weren't many uses for cursed gear at all.  Cursed Uber should be slightly better than Normal Uber, while Cursed Standard/Weak should be slightly better than Normal Uber/Weak.  The player must consider whether or not it's worth it to them to use the cleric's ring and forgo the benefits of other rings (such as the Ring of Awakening - which I plan to be the ONLY way for a person to EVER get more than a 25% of an unleash), or to take advantage of those benefits while risking being unable to act.  I don't think that it should be minor enough that they don't care, there should be some pros and cons into using it.

After all, I have one file where both Mia and Garet use cursed gear.  Garet hardly ever is able to act before all the mooks are wiped out by the first three attacks, but when I come across a situation where he actually gets a turn, to me it seems like a chance for a fourth attack, rather than a chance for him not to move.  In fact, in GS1/2, the slowest character in my team almost ALWAYS has full PP, simply because I kill everything before they get a chance to attack.  They are there for additional support in boss fights, but they're not really needed.  Sure, we may make efforts to change that, but enough grinding by the player and it won't matter anyways.  So the cursed effect isn't really leverage for many players, simply because it's not actually that crippling.

NOW, if we were to strengthen it, THEN I'd be with you on not needing to tweak things too much.  If the effect of curse was a lot more crippling than it is, then sure, I get you.  But as it is now, just lay all the uber cursed stuff on your slowest guy, and you have a chance of some uber punishment in fights when you need it.  In fights were you don't, it's not like they'd be doing anything anyways.  In the end, I guess this depends on how we wind up approaching this stuff.

Well, not all cursed equipment in GS2 was trash... stealth armor was decent if you didn't know the demon circlet existed, and the demon circlet was one of the best spellsword equips in the game.

I disagree about cursed equipment being worthwhile without the cleric's ring. Both with it being worthwhile in the canon games and with if it should be worthwhile in a hack.

For the former, this is probably due to us having very different ways of taking down mooks, although even if you did use primarily psynergy it seems like a bad idea to have the slowest character have a chance of not acting. I almost always used some combination of unleashing djinn and the attack command in the mid-late game, only occasionally mixing in area psys when faced with larger groups (assuming I wasn't just summon dashing through an area I didn't feel like actually fighting, in which case it was rare indeed for the fourth character to get an attack, but that wasn't something I figured out until a later playthrough, so... meh). Still, having a character "there to attack when you need them" and then having that character... not... do... anything... because of cursed equipment... seems kinda counterproductive. And as for the fourth character being "additional support" for a boss... I can't even really agree with that, either, since boss fights are so substantially different from the standard mooks to begin with.

Now... for the latter, I really don't think we should be trying to make cursed equipment useful without the cleric's ring, since that would just end up making it broken with the cleric's ring.

And as for one little comment you made in there I also feel the need to reply to...

(such as the Ring of Awakening - which I plan to be the ONLY way for a person to EVER get more than a 25% of an unleash)

We clearly have very different views on unleashes...

In my opinion, if a player wants a 100% unleash rate in the endgame, they should be able to get it. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean it's easy to get. With the better weapons, you would need to have just the right combination of equipment in order to get that 100% unleash rate. With... less impressive weapons, you would have a higher base unleash, allowing you to free up one or more of your equipment choices in order to get a more beneficial piece of equipment, such as one that boosts elemental power or resistance, luck, or agility. Or you could completely forego using an unleash at all and just go for the other boosts, which, if your primary method of dealing damage is not through the "attack" command will end up actually being the most beneficial.

@Complicating Spells:

Funny, last I checked, it looked like we were just doing this in a way that it's comparable to the attack formula.  Look at attack:

Damage = ((Base + Attacker ATK) - (Target DEF))  * (MultiMod) * (power/resistance modifiers)

It's not that much different.  Sure, it's not what the exact formula is, but it gets the point across.  This IS the general gist of it, just as we had the general gist for the spell power.  Only, we're using Max PP, while attack uses Attack/Defense.  Further more, to keep it from being too powerful, we may also be giving it range modifiers to spread the damage.  Since attack only targets one target, it doesn't need it (if it could attack multiple ones, it'd become broken if it did full damage to all targets).

All this boils down to is taking a different approach with the values we give spells.  What values those are will depend on testing, REGARDLESS of which formula we wind up using in the end.  It's not being overcomplicated quite yet, it's still somewhat managable.  So should we look into other directions for making spells dynamic and not static, we can always look back to this one if things aren't quite working out as intended.  In fact, it may be a good idea to make several formulas for testing, since theory is often quite different that what you'd see in practice.  Once we have the ability to manipulate damage formulas, we'll plug them in, find out how to give proper spell values for each of them, then figure out which is the best value to use.

Base damage should STAY, regardless, though.  Items like the Oil Drop NEED TO USE THIS.  It makes no sense if they don't.  You're not using the caster's power when you use them, you're using the power of the item.  It would make no sense for them to get stronger with level.  As such, we're not changing the Base Damage formula, we're making a new formula, Spell Damage, which we will change the casty-type abilities to being.

I always forget about the items... since you outgrow them so fast. Either way, iirc, items use 100 as the power regardless of your own, so they could just as easily also use 0 for any additional values we throw in there.

And what do you mean "to keep it from being too powerful, we may also be giving it range modifiers to spread the damage?" It already does this. I don't think that needs to be changed. And as an aside, there actually is one elemental physical that strikes three targets all for normalized damage: shuriken, which uses a .8 multiplier for the power.

I do agree with making several formulas for testing, as long as it's not too difficult for atrius to build into the editor, at least. Of course, by that point, we should be able to insert just about whatever we want into the game... and at that point it would certainly be foolish to not try everything we could think of.

[Rolina]

I was under the impression that most staffs and ankhs would be similar to clotho's distaff... carrying an effect with no unleash. At best having an effect as their unleash coupled with a high unleash rate. If someone wants to use the attack command for doing actual damage, though, using a spellsword character (probably the best description for jenna you could get), rather than just focusing on that character's spellcaster side, then they'd need to appropriately equip a light blade or perhaps a mace. Although I suppose every character was more or less a spellsword if you classed them right... the spells being stat buffs and healing, and the sword being everything else.

ALL weapons in ANY hack I have say in will have a 0% base unleash rate on ALL weapons, with a absolute max of 35% AFTER equipment bonuses, with 10% coming from the Ring of Awakening, of which there is one, and ONLY one (disqualified for drop/forge).  This includes all types of weapons - be them swords, axes, or staffs.  I had provided unleash rates for those whom don't wish to follow this principal but I for one will not allow any weapons that have an unleash rate of >0.  By using crit+ equipment, you can have a chance for either a 'free' or 'hidden' unleash.  All artifact weapons will now have the 'use for xyz' option, but they also have the setting of "Bestows Psynergy", meaning that the "Use for-" bit is now bestowed as castable.

This leaves a TON of options.  What the equipment can do depends on the equipment itself - it's got nothing to do with type, and more to do with thematics.  For example, the "Berserker Axe" in the examples.  It had a support unleash as castable.  The biggest difference between weapons is probably going to be the main type of damage - staffs, ankhs, and maces more often than not have more mage-y attacks, going for Spell Damage.  Axes, Spears, and Long Swords are more physical, going for added damage/multiplier.  Light Blades, Scythes, and Hammers will have a pretty even mix.  There are exceptions, of course.

Healing will always be broken. Although being broken in the form it was in GS is probably better than the alternative. If healing wasn't powerful enough, you'd end up complaining that bosses are too random and whether or not you win basically comes down to if the RNG was smiling upon you that day, with the only other way around it being level grinding. I would indeed argue that having healing that is slightly too strong to have been better for the game overall, actually; it made players actually want to do things besides summon rush. Since you have to keep bosses beatable, if you're going to make them prolonged battles, you need to make healing powerful enough to keep up with the bosses. There's more I wanted to say here, but I'm not really sure how to explain it.

Personally, I think that the best way to prevent it from growing too strong is to keep it as base healing. What the exact values for power and cost will be depends on how things turn out in the hack.  I already think we had this discussion on summon rushing - so long as the strategy is more than 'spam the strongest ones you can' then it should be considered a legit strategy.

Oh certainly. We need to keep it in mind, but we shouldn't get too zeroed in on it, either. At least not yet.

Thus my suggestion that we come up with several formulas and try each of them out.

Djinn carry some much more diverse effects than regular psynergies do, especially when you consider nearly every effect usable by the player is performed by some djinni, and many exclusively by djinn.

And should STAY that way!  The base damage one I mentioned was basically a proof of concept - I understand why they go off of the attack stat.  But when we're done, they no longer will have to.

We clearly have very different views on unleashes...

In my opinion, if a player wants a 100% unleash rate in the endgame, they should be able to get it. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean it's easy to get. With the better weapons, you would need to have just the right combination of equipment in order to get that 100% unleash rate. With... less impressive weapons, you would have a higher base unleash, allowing you to free up one or more of your equipment choices in order to get a more beneficial piece of equipment, such as one that boosts elemental power or resistance, luck, or agility. Or you could completely forego using an unleash at all and just go for the other boosts, which, if your primary method of dealing damage is not through the "attack" command will end up actually being the most beneficial.

Ah, but you forget, I made them castable.  Meaning, they're usable 100% of the time by default, should you have the PP.  This 25-35% is the max chance for a FREE, single-target version of the unleash.  In some weapons, it can actually penalize you... say, by having an awesome castable unleash, but the attack unleash could be "failed strike", dealing a non-elemental base damage attack of 1.  Basically, to encourage players to think outside the critical-hit box.  Of course, not many weapons will do that, most will have the 'chance for free single-target version'.

I disagree about cursed equipment being worthwhile without the cleric's ring. Both with it being worthwhile in the canon games and with if it should be worthwhile in a hack.

Quoted for Truth.  We don't know quite yet exactly how we're going to be approaching the hack.  We could very well make it so that it's not worth it at all if you don't have the ring, but in the end I suppose it depends more on player style than on coder intent.  We'll probably keep it as it is now, but depending on what happens, we may need to penalize the ring a tiny bit.

I always forget about the items... since you outgrow them so fast. Either way, iirc, items use 100 as the power regardless of your own, so they could just as easily also use 0 for any additional values we throw in there.

And what do you mean "to keep it from being too powerful, we may also be giving it range modifiers to spread the damage?" It already does this. I don't think that needs to be changed. And as an aside, there actually is one elemental physical that strikes three targets all for normalized damage: shuriken, which uses a .8 multiplier for the power.

I do agree with making several formulas for testing, as long as it's not too difficult for atrius to build into the editor, at least.

I meant we have to keep it in mind with the formulas we come up with.  It does it with base damage, but NOT with added damage - Shurriken does even damage to all three targets!  If we forget to add it like it is in base damage, we'll suddenly find ourselves wondering what the heck happened when we get spells doing full damage to all targets.

Of course, by that point, we should be able to insert just about whatever we want into the game... and at that point it would certainly be foolish to not try everything we could think of.

AMEN!

That's horrible game design, arguably a form of fake difficulty.

Er, no... the point is that they're not needed to complete the game.  Only for collectors (and collectors in GS brag not about what they have on them, but the shop selection they've built up!).  The point is to make the person WORK for that last 1%.  The other 9% isn't a total grindfest, but is noticeably more challenging than the main game, including our game's version of Dullahan.  It's the whole part of the 'OPTIONAL' thing.  Also... soft resetting?  I don't think we should need that AT ALL, at least not for the drops.  Forging items will STAY, that's for sure.  We may change how it's done, but it's going to stay.  Rare ones will be the costly ones - if selectable, then they're selectable.  If random, then they're the rarest chance.  Rare drops will ALWAYS be by repeatable bosses.  Something I hated about many FF games was that bosses had rare drops.  SO NOT COOL.  Repeatable 'area bosses'?  Sure, give them a 'rare drop'.  Not as rare as something from a common enemy, but rare in the sense that by djinn-killing it it's not a 100% chance to drop.  These goodies aren't necessarily the most powerful weapons/armor in the game, but they're important for collectors, whom were probably grinding the hell out of the game in the first place.  The VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE really don't care about them.  So long as we don't make some agonizingly rare weapon that's really powerful or required to enter a certain area (for example, I made an area where you need the three fate staffs to enter - meaning that they need to be gainable in a MUCH EASIER method than a rare drop!), but to truely call yourself 100% complete, you need Maxed levels, have attained at least one of every single item in the game, and have each and every artifact item/weapon available to the team either directly (in inventory) or indirectly (in shop inventory).  You know, kind of like how it is now. 100% is ALWAYS a grind-fest.  In any game.  But most people don't bother.  We need to satisfy normal people, while also the people who like those grindfest-y things.  And don't tell me they don't exist.  I'll have to stab you for saying I'm a figment of your imagination, since I myself ALWAYS try to get a 100% complete file on every RPG I play.

[leaf]

ALL weapons in ANY hack I have say in will have a 0% base unleash rate on ALL weapons, with a absolute max of 35% AFTER equipment bonuses, with 10% coming from the Ring of Awakening, of which there is one, and ONLY one (disqualified for drop/forge).  This includes all types of weapons - be them swords, axes, or staffs.  I had provided unleash rates for those whom don't wish to follow this principal but I for one will not allow any weapons that have an unleash rate of >0.  By using crit+ equipment, you can have a chance for either a 'free' or 'hidden' unleash.  All artifact weapons will now have the 'use for xyz' option, but they also have the setting of "Bestows Psynergy", meaning that the "Use for-" bit is now bestowed as castable.

This leaves a TON of options.  What the equipment can do depends on the equipment itself - it's got nothing to do with type, and more to do with thematics.  For example, the "Berserker Axe" in the examples.  It had a support unleash as castable.  The biggest difference between weapons is probably going to be the main type of damage - staffs, ankhs, and maces more often than not have more mage-y attacks, going for Spell Damage.  Axes, Spears, and Long Swords are more physical, going for added damage/multiplier.  Light Blades, Scythes, and Hammers will have a pretty even mix.  There are exceptions, of course.

(snip)

Ah, but you forget, I made them castable.  Meaning, they're usable 100% of the time by default, should you have the PP.  This 25-35% is the max chance for a FREE, single-target version of the unleash.  In some weapons, it can actually penalize you... say, by having an awesome castable unleash, but the attack unleash could be "failed strike", dealing a non-elemental base damage attack of 1.  Basically, to encourage players to think outside the critical-hit box.  Of course, not many weapons will do that, most will have the 'chance for free single-target version'.

Yeah... I heavily disagree. You're taking something you considered "broken" and in trying to "balance" it, you broke it again in the other direction, when the option in question wasn't even that broken to begin with. If it weren't for unleashes, the attack command would be worthless. The only time a character would use the attack command is to finish off some random encounter. You would never touch it, ever, against a boss, because you have other much more damaging options that are much more consistent. Neutering unleashes doesn't make players "think outside the critical hit box"; it makes them completely ignore it from the outset. It's almost laughable that you would punish players for using the attack command even more with some items... you're already making attacking a highly inferior option to anything else... do you want to make it less than useless?

Now that I actually know what it does, the ring of awakening is... cute. But with everything else you want to do with unleashes? It's made ultimately... worthless. Crit raising equipment will just be ignored in favor of equips that boost... anything else. Someone would need to be one crazy gambler to regularly use the attack command with only a 35% unleash rate.

This isn't balance. It's just shifting players away from one option and having them focus on another. In making everything castable, you actually reduce player options, and water down the decision making process that goes into outfitting your party. Unleashes need to be able to be consistent for them to be worthwhile using at all. Attacks that cost PP need to be more powerful than said unleashes to be worthwhile using at all. Equipment will take care of both of these requirements for us: to get a high unleash rate, you need crit raising equipment, but if you're not using an unleash, you can use other equips instead, such as those that raise your elemental power. The end result is you can have "free" attacks, or you can have attacks that cost PP but have better damage output. If you actually want to balance unleashes with psynergy, then this is the way to do it. If you want to make the attack command completely obsolete, you're well on your way to succeeding on your own.

In every game, you have to realize that there's an acceptable level of "brokenness" that a tactic can achieve before being determined as "too good" or "too bad." This is part of why having too many options is a bad thing, and why base damage psynergy is as weak as it is. This is actually a big part of why I think we're overcomplicating the BD psynergy thing: there will always be superior and inferior options, and the most you can do to remedy that is to mix up which options are superior and which ones are inferior as the game goes on, and make those options "less superior" or "less inferior," without ever actually changing the fact that something is going to be better than something else. The designers screwed up with making most EPA psynergy weaker than the available unleashes, which is why they seem so out of place. This doesn't mean unleash rates were too high, though; having a "free" option would squarely fall under acceptable levels of brokenness if there were other options that were stronger. Maybe the unleashes would still get used most of the time, but it's to be expected that something will end up on top.

Personally, I think that the best way to prevent it from growing too strong is to keep it as base healing. What the exact values for power and cost will be depends on how things turn out in the hack.  I already think we had this discussion on summon rushing - so long as the strategy is more than 'spam the strongest ones you can' then it should be considered a legit strategy.

That's the problem... I was referring to "spam the strongest ones you can" summon rushing. For future reference, I'll probably use a phrase like "summon cycling" if I'm referring to a more moderate use of summons, and "summon rushing" for just straight-up summon everything you can. Healing is what makes strategies other than summon rushing... work. Even if you are using a barrier djinni (or lull) every turn, you'll still need to throw in a healing spell every couple of turns.

And from your comment about "base healing," I'm a bit confused. Healing in this game is base healing in any castable form, and all djinn that restore HP do so on a percentage basis. If something says "heals 400 HP," it means it. Assuming, of course, your elemental power is exactly equal to 100, the "expected average" of your elemental power. Base healing being subject to elemental power is fairly intuitive, actually, since base damage psys are also subject to elemental power/resistance. Here, it's the same, but without resistance.

Oh certainly. We need to keep it in mind, but we shouldn't get too zeroed in on it, either. At least not yet.

Thus my suggestion that we come up with several formulas and try each of them out.

Of course.

I disagree about cursed equipment being worthwhile without the cleric's ring. Both with it being worthwhile in the canon games and with if it should be worthwhile in a hack.

Quoted for Truth.  We don't know quite yet exactly how we're going to be approaching the hack.  We could very well make it so that it's not worth it at all if you don't have the ring, but in the end I suppose it depends more on player style than on coder intent.  We'll probably keep it as it is now, but depending on what happens, we may need to penalize the ring a tiny bit.

We'll cross that bridge when we get there. I'm not seeing it as much of a problem, though.

I meant we have to keep it in mind with the formulas we come up with.  It does it with base damage, but NOT with added damage - Shurriken does even damage to all three targets!  If we forget to add it like it is in base damage, we'll suddenly find ourselves wondering what the heck happened when we get spells doing full damage to all targets.

That's a non-issue. This falls under "making sure what you programmed actually does what you programmed it to do." AKA. testing.

This also seems like a good time for a refresher on the original formulas (actually I just wasn't sure where to put this part in my reply so I tacked it on here).

EPAs: ((attack - defense) * multmod/10 + addmod) * (1 + (power - resistance)/400)
Base Damage: (base + (HP%bonusifsummon)) * (1 + (power - resistance)/200)) * (range mod)
And while I'm at it... Healing: (base) * (power/100)

A +10 to elemental power will raise an EPA's damage by 2.5% and will raise an area psy's or summon's damage by 5%. It will raise a spell's healing capability by 10%. For the staff/ankh thing, I think it would be best to simply plug the values into the power/resistance sections to act like an additional boost to power/resistance that bypasses the cap. The exception being healing, which would be boosted by the ankh bonus instead, and probably something like 1/2 to 1/4 of the original ankh bonus (hence, it's not that large, but is there). The other exception possibly being summons, which in that case would ignore the staff/ankh bonus. Note that since EPAs are affected less by elemental power and resistance than BD, this still means that the staff/ankh would be primarily boosting the power of or protecting against non-EPAs, even if it would affect them as well.

That's horrible game design, arguably a form of fake difficulty.

Er, no... the point is that they're not needed to complete the game.  Only for collectors (and collectors in GS brag not about what they have on them, but the shop selection they've built up!).  The point is to make the person WORK for that last 1%.  The other 9% isn't a total grindfest, but is noticeably more challenging than the main game, including our game's version of Dullahan.  It's the whole part of the 'OPTIONAL' thing.  Also... soft resetting?  I don't think we should need that AT ALL, at least not for the drops.  Forging items will STAY, that's for sure.  We may change how it's done, but it's going to stay.  Rare ones will be the costly ones - if selectable, then they're selectable.  If random, then they're the rarest chance.  Rare drops will ALWAYS be by repeatable bosses.  Something I hated about many FF games was that bosses had rare drops.  SO NOT COOL.  Repeatable 'area bosses'?  Sure, give them a 'rare drop'.  Not as rare as something from a common enemy, but rare in the sense that by djinn-killing it it's not a 100% chance to drop.  These goodies aren't necessarily the most powerful weapons/armor in the game, but they're important for collectors, whom were probably grinding the hell out of the game in the first place.  The VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE really don't care about them.  So long as we don't make some agonizingly rare weapon that's really powerful or required to enter a certain area (for example, I made an area where you need the three fate staffs to enter - meaning that they need to be gainable in a MUCH EASIER method than a rare drop!), but to truely call yourself 100% complete, you need Maxed levels, have attained at least one of every single item in the game, and have each and every artifact item/weapon available to the team either directly (in inventory) or indirectly (in shop inventory).  You know, kind of like how it is now. 100% is ALWAYS a grind-fest.  In any game.  But most people don't bother.  We need to satisfy normal people, while also the people who like those grindfest-y things.  And don't tell me they don't exist.  I'll have to stab you for saying I'm a figment of your imagination, since I myself ALWAYS try to get a 100% complete file on every RPG I play.

I didn't say grindaholics don't exist. And I most certainly didn't say completionists don't exist. I'm a completionist, myself, actually, more or less (admittedly not quite to the same extent as some people are). I don't generally bother with collectables unless it's necessary to get something else, or if there are actually relevant tasks to accomplish to obtain the collectables, although if the game actively keeps track of how much of something you've obtained, I will usually end up trying to find every last one. I've never considered an item collection where the game doesn't keep track of "obtained items/total items" being necessary to have "100%," nor have I considered "lv99" to be necessary, either (unless, of course, you needed to be lv99 to enter a dungeon or something... but that's just downright evil), although I do consider things like finding every treasure chest to be necessary for 100% completion, which generally equates to solving every puzzle and beating every boss. Unsurprisingly, I value exploration and smart play far higher than grinding. I believe that good games keep you playing because they're good games, not because you need to hunt down some rare item drops to get 100%.

Furthermore, if you want to make players think about what to equip their characters with, it becomes counterproductive to make rare item drops that most players will never see. You either end up taking away an option that would otherwise make for a difficult decision, or you end up just making the item so superior that it imbalances that process for the lucky few who do manage to get a hold of it.

I also never said that the forge shouldn't exist; I said that it should give you the option of which item you want. It did come down to soft resetting until you got the item you want in TLA. Unless you obtained way more of the forging material than you actually needed, you were going to be soft resetting until it gave you what you wanted.

[Rolina]

...No, the attack command isn't worthless.  For starters, if you need to conserve PP, then you attack.  Second - Many weapons will have a chance for a free unleash when attacking.  Some have a second unleash that can ONLY be done this way.  Usually this is good.  ON VERY RARE OCCASIONS, it's not.  And it should be obvious that it isn't - rusted gear, for example.  This is 0% by default, but many things increase unleash rate now, to a maximum possible of 25% without the ring.  The thing is, the 100% unleash setup was BROKEN in and of itself.  If you have a better idea than the one I've taken from Lbooksha, then lay it on me.

Furthermore... have you even looked at my ideas for equipment?  Such as... you know, light armor?  This is a kind of standard thing - all light armor will either increase agility or criticals.  For generic, there will be one of each with each piece of equipment.  One Heavy Armor that has an additional boost to Max HP, one for Attack.  One Light Armor that boosts criticals, the other boosts agility.  One robe raises max PP, the other luck.  Artifacts have additional boosts.

I've developed this quite a bit over in the equipment thread back in the bin of old ideas, and you'd really not mentioned anything until now.  Since there were no objections, I was gonna go ahead and implement it.  But if you can come up with something better than the boring old "BETTER VALUE, BETTER EQUIPMENT" thing that we have with GS1/2, then let me know.

@Base healing comment:  Yeah... I know... that's why I said that we should KEEP IT as base healing, and just tweak the numbers as needed.  Though it's a nice refresher for the resistance values.


If that's what you consider 100% completion, then that's easy to get.  I, however, consider that 90-99%.  The extra stuff is for the grinders.  Besides, remember that GS embraces RPG stereotypes - one of those is rare drops.  And rare drops include equipment.  I will not budge on this one.  UNLIKE GS1/2, the Rare Drops WON'T be considered the uber equipment, or there will be one of them available via chests, and drops are how you get a second/third/etc...  That way, those who want the best stuff won't have to waste their time on it, while those who go for TRUE 100% completion will.  Sure, you and I may disagree on this, but we're going to have to simply agree to disagree.  Rare drops are happening.

[leaf]

...No, the attack command isn't worthless.  For starters, if you need to conserve PP, then you attack.  Second - Many weapons will have a chance for a free unleash when attacking.  Some have a second unleash that can ONLY be done this way.  Usually this is good.  ON VERY RARE OCCASIONS, it's not.  And it should be obvious that it isn't - rusted gear, for example.  This is 0% by default, but many things increase unleash rate now, to a maximum possible of 25% without the ring.  The thing is, the 100% unleash setup was BROKEN in and of itself.  If you have a better idea than the one I've taken from Lbooksha, then lay it on me.

...Yes, the attack command is worthless. For starters, if you need to conserve PP, then you use djinn. Second - It doesn't matter if a weapon has a chance for a free unleash if you wouldn't have used the attack command to begin with. Some have a second unleash that can ONLY be done this way. Usually they aren't worth trying for. ON VERY RARE OCCASIONS, they're broken.

...

Uh, yeah... If djinn did not exist, I would agree with you about the attack command still being useful without a consistent unleash. But uh... they do. Which makes it worthless. If you're using djinn against mooks to conserve PP, it's not that hard to hit "set all" after a battle. Of course, against bosses, you should be going all out to begin with, so you don't really have time to mess around with fickle unleashes that barely increase your overall damage dealt, and you don't really need to worry as much about conserving your PP. If I'm attacking four times and only one of them gets an unleash, that unleash had better be very powerful to justify my having used "attack" instead of some psynergy EPA or a djinni those other three times (especially since if you were using djinn you'd then be able to pull out a summon). Of course, if it's that powerful, then you risk making some bosses too easy if the player gets several lucky shots in a row.

...and who or what is Lbooksha? Regardless, I've told you what I think already. You will always end up with one option being better than the other. Always. But... if one option doesn't completely overshadow the other, then it's acceptable. The attack command is worthless without a consistent unleash. A consistent unleash makes weaker EPA psynergy worthless. Hence... make it possible to hit a consistent unleash, but make the psynergy stronger than it. The psynergy doesn't have to be much stronger, since the player will probably be boosting their elemental power with their freed up equipment, but it needs to be stronger such that a player will have to choose between weaker "free" shots or burning through PP for stronger ones. In particular, note I'm balancing this around the djinn. An unleash has to be as good as a djinni, and an EPA psy has to be stronger than an unleash.

Furthermore... have you even looked at my ideas for equipment?  Such as... you know, light armor?  This is a kind of standard thing - all light armor will either increase agility or criticals.  For generic, there will be one of each with each piece of equipment.  One Heavy Armor that has an additional boost to Max HP, one for Attack.  One Light Armor that boosts criticals, the other boosts agility.  One robe raises max PP, the other luck.  Artifacts have additional boosts.

I've developed this quite a bit over in the equipment thread back in the bin of old ideas, and you'd really not mentioned anything until now.  Since there were no objections, I was gonna go ahead and implement it.  But if you can come up with something better than the boring old "BETTER VALUE, BETTER EQUIPMENT" thing that we have with GS1/2, then let me know.

I haven't, actually. I've only seen your general ideas for weapon balancing. I'll have to take a look what you have over there, and I might draft out what I'm thinking of for endgame equipment. I like the idea of different equipment types having a "theme" when bought from the shops, but I think the artifacts should be entirely their own thing, with boosts on an item to item basis. My main idea is to provide 3-4 different viable pieces of equipment of each type at the endgame (possibly more for some types), each offering different boosts or combinations of boosts. As long as the defense boosts are more or less in the same ballpark, they won't make much of a difference (although an interesting thing to play with might be having very low defense boosts on some items but giving them a stronger secondary effect). I'm not quite sure how I want to space the upgrades you obtain throughout the game, however the general idea is for there to be a surplus of equipment with different secondary effects, so when you obtain a new piece of equipment it isn't always just "oh who has the lowest defense that can equip this?"

@Base healing comment:  Yeah... I know... that's why I said that we should KEEP IT as base healing, and just tweak the numbers as needed.  Though it's a nice refresher for the resistance values.

Ah, k. I guess I misunderstood you.

If that's what you consider 100% completion, then that's easy to get.  I, however, consider that 90-99%.  The extra stuff is for the grinders.  Besides, remember that GS embraces RPG stereotypes - one of those is rare drops.  And rare drops include equipment.  I will not budge on this one.  UNLIKE GS1/2, the Rare Drops WON'T be considered the uber equipment, or there will be one of them available via chests, and drops are how you get a second/third/etc...  That way, those who want the best stuff won't have to waste their time on it, while those who go for TRUE 100% completion will.  Sure, you and I may disagree on this, but we're going to have to simply agree to disagree.  Rare drops are happening.

This seems like a good compromise. I'm all for putting otherwise useless trinkets (outside of their sell value at least) in as rare drops for the people who like collecting that stuff. Who am I to deny a grindaholic their joy? However, I'd rather there only be a limited quantity of high quality equipment in the game, lest the decisions a player faces come down to "should I sort out who would work best with which item, or should I just go hunt down several copies of the best equipment?"

[Rolina]

So basically, your argument is based on your personal playing style... If you're conserving PP, then you give the finger to maintaining classes, and just use djinn.

LBooksha from GameFAQs is the original creator of the 'bestowed unleash' idea.  I take no credit for it myself, other than playing around with it and loving the hell out of it.  Besides, remember what I said about embracing stereotypes?  The attack command is almost ALWAYS weaker than other options.  The ONLY exception was Golden Sun itself, because of the unleash system.  If you wanna do more damage, use an EPA or spell.  If you're conserving PP and DON'T want to screw up your classes, use the attack command.  If you don't care about your class situation, use djinn.  If you like to summon spam/rotate, then do that.

Play style is not a valid argument here.  The attack command was broken BECAUSE of how the unleash system worked - keeping it as it was only keeps it broken.  You can claim 'we just need more balanced unleashes' all you want, but five bucks says that if we do that, we'll overlook something that'll turn into a game breaker.

If push comes to shove, we'll make one with the system I adopted, and one with the old system.  I WOULD like to keep weapon attributes, though, such as the power boost from staffs and the like.

Ah, so you've not actually looked at them!  Take a look real quick, and get back to me.  Hopefully it'll clear up a lot of the misunderstandings going on.  With my system, only longswords affect only Attack (others affect other stats either positively or negatively), and very rarely will you find armor that only boosts defense.  It becomes less "Robes have less defense than Heavy Armor, and Light Armor is average", and more "Heavy Armor has boosts with Fighters in mind, Robes have boosts with Mages in mind, and Light Armor's boosts can be put to use by anyone".  I agree with your thematics, but I take it one step further - if, say, you come to a ninja village or something, or maybe just some oriental themed village, you ALSO find the thematic artifacts there - such as the Ninja Hood, Ninja Headband (aka Lucky Cap), Ninja Blade, and Ninja Tabi.  Kind of like how you got the China Dress from Xian.

@Misunderstood:  Yeah, I get that a lot.  I often just have a hard time getting across the point I'm trying to make.

@Compromise:  Compromise?  That's what I was planning all along!  I think you simply misunderstood me.

[leaf]

I'd like to apologize in advance if this post seems like it wanders a bit. And yes, I'm also about to go on a tangent right from the start because this whole post was written in a sort of mish-mash as I thought of things. You're just gonna need to hang with me here.

Play style is not a valid argument here.  The attack command was broken BECAUSE of how the unleash system worked - keeping it as it was only keeps it broken.  You can claim 'we just need more balanced unleashes' all you want, but five bucks says that if we do that, we'll overlook something that'll turn into a game breaker.

You keep throwing around the word "broken." Broken relative to what? Nothing is ever broken because of any one specific thing. A move, character, or mechanic is only ever broken because of the relative status of that move, character, or mechanic compared to the rest of the game. A move is broken when it consumes a character's playstyle, and as a result breaks the character. A character is broken when it dominates other characters or gets dominated by other characters. A mechanic is broken when it dominates gameplay. The vaguest of these is obviously a broken mechanic. It's highly subjective as to if the mechanic in question is actually broken, or if the game was just designed to favor that particular mechanic. It's not something that can be definitively answered; if it was, then there should logically be only one set of mechanics that is "perfect." There would be no reason to use anything different. However, people have different tastes in what makes a game "fun," so you could easily have two games and one player for each game that sees nothing wrong with a mechanic being overbearing in their chosen game, while seeing a different mechanic dominating gameplay in the other game, and call it "broken."

What does this mean? Mechanics are arbitrary. They're a vessel for enabling a player to play a game. When a developer chooses a set of mechanics, they lay the groundwork for how the game will be played, even though there are infinite number of possible things you could do within those mechanics. Although it may be very easy to break the game with the way you implement the mechanic, where implementation takes the form of the actual stats and characteristics of the characters and moves that interact with said mechanic, the mechanic itself is not necessarily broken. This point becomes especially clear when you take the logical extremes of the implementation of a mechanic: if it's possible to make it utterly worthless, and it's possible to make it utterly godly, then there is some in between where the implementation is "balanced," however difficult that point may be to find. This becomes even more complicated when you realize that it's not just the implementation of a single mechanic being balanced with static values around it; you're frequently trying to balance many implementations all together, of which there are an infinite number of possible combinations that would work. Notably, however, in any given domain, there will always be many many more combinations that result in an imbalance than in balance.

The only time I think you could objectively call a mechanic "broken" is if there is absolutely no combination of other values in the game that allow the characters and moves to be "balanced." Unfortunately (or perhaps... fortunately), in all except the simplest of games, no human has ever made a game that has achieved perfect balance. Thus, a developer must settle for a certain degree of "relative balance." They'll seek out values that get them as close to a point of perfect balance as possible within what their patience and time allows. Although when trying to draw the line on what is "balanced enough," that creates a new headache as to "how offbalance can something be before it's broken?" Again, this is highly subjective, as some people will argue that rock-paper-scissors is the only balanced game in the world (only 1 playable "character" with 3 moves that counter each other perfectly in a cycle), while others recognize that a game can still be considered "relatively balanced" even when some characters are overall slightly better or worse than others, and certain moves are clearly more advantageous to use than others. For obvious reasons, most players accept that "perfect balance" is not feasibly obtainable without sacrificing much of the variety in a game, the variety that keeps it "interesting." The very imbalances themselves are perhaps what make it interesting, as you see how move goes up against move, and character against character, all while causing the player to have to consider his or her actions, since in a game where not every option is equally viable, completely random play is not the most ideal strat; in a game where another player can defend against your actions, just spamming your best general option is also not the most ideal strat. This obviously applies more to multiplayer games than single-player games, but single-player games can be approached with a very similar mindset: give a player options that are characteristically different that accomplish similar things, each with advantages and disadvantages, and even when one option does end up being superior to the others, you will still end up with a game that people with different styles of play can enjoy, as there are several viable options. It's not a matter of making the options equally as good as each other; they only have to be viable.

So how does this all relate back to unleashes? That's two-fold. First, you're calling a mechanic broken and blaming it for the implementation of the mechanic. Second, your suggested "fix" ignores the possibility of tinkering with other aspects of the game.

To continue...

So basically, your argument is based on your personal playing style... If you're conserving PP, then you give the finger to maintaining classes, and just use djinn.

Bias exists as a result of different individuals having different experiences. You have biases and so do I, and these biases come out frequently in our arguments. It's inevitable that people will argue from the sources of their own bias, regardless of how "objective" they think they're being.

Instances of your own bias are evident from the relative balance you're aiming for. It's not unnatural to aim for a balance that places your preferred playing style at the top and ones that you loathe near the bottom. This might not be the way you actually played the game, but it's the way you want to. Whenever you give someone the power to make changes to a game, no matter how well-intentioned they are, they aren't going to let their favorites fall below the middle ground, and elements of gameplay that they like or dislike will inevitably be made to stand out more or less, even if they don't realize it as they're doing it. I know I'm guilty of bias, and I know everyone else I've worked with on balancing brawl+ is, too, to varying degrees. Theoretically, if you get a large and diverse enough group of people together who have an understanding of the game in question, the biases more or less cancel out, resulting in a collective bias that is less than the sum of its parts (of course we all know how well this works in politics...). It has worked out fairly well for brawl+, but unfortunately we don't have that luxury, here. There are only a limited number of people at this forum to begin with, and atm only you or I can even post in this section. You clearly harbor a bias against unleashes, hence your wanting to heavily nerf them. I, too, think they need to be nerfed somewhat, but not to the same extent you're suggesting.

Returning to the quote at hand... I find it interesting that you would say that playing styles can't suggest the power of something. In say... a fighting game, a person's playstyle can completely change the matchup; there are simply some characters where playing highly aggro, highly campy, or somewhere in between is just the best way to deal with them, even if your character might not normally fight in that way. In a single-player game it's a bit different; while there might be a "best" way to play, there's a good chance that this hasn't spread throughout the playerbase, thus giving the varied playstyles. Or a player may acknowledge that they're using an inferior strat, but don't care, since it still works (I'm definitely guilty of this). Now, I'm not going to claim that my strats are the definitive "best." I'm not that conceited. But if a playstyle can exist, it should be considered when balancing.

In my experiences, using a djinni (or two) per character in a fight against mooks gets the job done, and gets the job done well, since they don't really have time to pick on your weakened classes, if the djinni you used even dropped your class in the first place. It's slightly inconvenient that you have to set them back again after the battle, but I found it a highly valid method of circumventing PP usage before having access to consistent unleashes. However, I don't consider this as an issue. I don't actually consider much of anything an issue when it comes to beating down the mooks, which have only ever been there in a game to slow you down as you go from area to area, provide a little distraction, and let you gradually level your characters. As long as they make you heal every now and then they're doing their job. The foes of the game that are designed to challenge you - the bosses - are the ones that I would rather worry about the balance against.

And finally...

You can claim 'we just need more balanced unleashes' all you want, but five bucks says that if we do that, we'll overlook something that'll turn into a game breaker.

One of your arguments was that messing with stuff like this could create a gamebreaker...? Really? Of course messing with stuff can create a gamebreaker! It can also make the game more balanced, though. So what are you gonna do? If all you're worried about is breaking the game more then you should just not change anything at all. Whether you're buffing something or nerfing it, it's not very hard to break something in the process, so if you don't want to break the game any more, then why change anything? You can't use "we might overlook something that becomes a gamebreaker" as an argument against messing with the implementation of one or more mechanics in a certain way, and then also favor a very radical change to the spell system, so much so that you begin blurring the line between mechanic and implementation. Either be willing to get your hands dirty with this stuff or don't.

For the record, this is also one of my premises for why we're overcomplicating spell damage. We're trying to attack the mechanic and its implementation at the same time, instead of just going for the implementation of the mechanic.

You also seem to misunderstand my stance on unleashes. It is not just the unleashes that we would be messing with, but also EPA psynergy, such that as a whole, upgraded EPA psynergy with the extra elemental power boosts would be stronger than the unleashes you would get if you maxed out your crit rate. Unleashes would still be free, but at least they wouldn't have superior damage output compared to the EPA psys. Megiddo vs odyssey was a joke in TLA.

Besides, remember what I said about embracing stereotypes?  The attack command is almost ALWAYS weaker than other options.  The ONLY exception was Golden Sun itself, because of the unleash system.  If you wanna do more damage, use an EPA or spell.  If you're conserving PP and DON'T want to screw up your classes, use the attack command.  If you don't care about your class situation, use djinn.  If you like to summon spam/rotate, then do that.

I'm actually getting kinda sick of hearing you harp on about "embracing stereotypes" so much. There are a lot of things golden sun shares with other RPGs, but that's to be expected as part of the genre. Yes, the game draws from many common stereotypes, but it puts its own spin on them. The djinn system should be screaming at you right now. "Collect powerful things you can use in battle" may be stereotypical of an RPG, "summoning spirits to aid you in battle" may be stereotypical of an RPG, and "using some service to change your class" may also be stereotypical of an RPG, but the way in which djinn as a whole are used is not. Furthermore, an element system is also highly stereotypical of an RPG, but usually is only reserved for magic; golden sun makes liberal use of elemental physicals. Djinn are more or less the embodiment of the golden sun battle system, and contrary to what a through-and-through "stereotypical" game would have, are fairly unique. But really, it doesn't matter if something is or isn't "stereotypical," since nothing says that you need to either reject or embrace stereotypes. To use troper terminology, you're using "tropes are not bad" as an argument, but I'd like to remind you that "tropes are not good," as well.

If push comes to shove, we'll make one with the system I adopted, and one with the old system.  I WOULD like to keep weapon attributes, though, such as the power boost from staffs and the like.

I think you may need to clarify this, since I'm not sure exactly which system you're referring to.

Ah, so you've not actually looked at them!  Take a look real quick, and get back to me.  Hopefully it'll clear up a lot of the misunderstandings going on.  With my system, only longswords affect only Attack (others affect other stats either positively or negatively), and very rarely will you find armor that only boosts defense.  It becomes less "Robes have less defense than Heavy Armor, and Light Armor is average", and more "Heavy Armor has boosts with Fighters in mind, Robes have boosts with Mages in mind, and Light Armor's boosts can be put to use by anyone".  I agree with your thematics, but I take it one step further - if, say, you come to a ninja village or something, or maybe just some oriental themed village, you ALSO find the thematic artifacts there - such as the Ninja Hood, Ninja Headband (aka Lucky Cap), Ninja Blade, and Ninja Tabi.  Kind of like how you got the China Dress from Xian.

Wait, you mean this thread? http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?topic=224.0

I've read through that before. I see what you want to do, and I more or less agree with it (maybe not on the specific values you used, but we can get around to that later).

@Misunderstood:  Yeah, I get that a lot.  I often just have a hard time getting across the point I'm trying to make.

@Compromise:  Compromise?  That's what I was planning all along!  I think you simply misunderstood me.

Well, looks like misunderstandings abound, since we were both more or less thinking the same thing for random drops all along. ("Compromise" might not have been the best word I could've used.)

LBooksha from GameFAQs is the original creator of the 'bestowed unleash' idea.  I take no credit for it myself, other than playing around with it and loving the hell out of it.

I see. So then I must now ask... why hasn't the GSHC enlisted him/her(?) to help on this yet? =p

[Rolina]

Whoa!  Walls of text!  I'll try not to crash into them...

What is 'broken'?  When an ability is so powerful you'd be stupid to use something else, it's generally called a "Game Breaker".  Therefore, Broken.  The unleash system, though somewhat balanced in the beginning, becomes "Broken" about halfway through GS2.  Instead of focusing on better equipment and attack power, the second you get the Sylph Rapier, it's a matter of maxing out Criticals and spamming unleashes.  Better weapons can be had?  Who cares, the Sylph Rapier's unleash blows them out of the water, better stats be damned.  At least until you can get the Big Three swords, that is.  Not to mention that with enough crit+ equipment, you'll be dishing out major damage on a regular basis.  At that point, characters like Sheba and Mia, who cannot equip some of the best unleashes in the game, start to be used much less - especially Sheba.  Mia at least has a saving grace - Angel Mia is godlike simply because of the power of her healing, and how freaking easy it is to max out Mercury Power.

The thing is, EVERYONE pretty much ends up with the same setup in the end - Sol Blade, Tisiphone Edges, and Excaliburs.  The unleashes on these are so powerful it isn't funny.  Not to mention that you'll be spamming the crap out of them due to the abundance of Crit+ equipment.

There's two ways to fix this.  I use both.

The first is to put limits on crit+ equipment.  Basically, make an arbitrary max unleash rate, that EVERY character is limited to, and go with it.  This is why I chose Light Armor to be the crit+ focus type - anyone can use it, so it makes it MUCH easier to keep track of.
The second is to try and balance unleashes.  This is done by making sure that they aren't too powerful - very easy to do, so long as you follow the proper formula.

I also, however, use something else - unleashes are simply Added Damage, with a chance of effect.  That's it.  YAWN.  By ADDING the bestow-type unleash, you ALSO allow for a second style of unleash - basically, a form of psynergy unique to the artifact weapon.  You can cast this for a certain amount of PP, while still having that chance for a free (or, should the bestowed type be non-damaging or different in nature), traditional style unleash.

Balancing is easy.  I think you're just misunderstanding me again.  You can still do the traditional unleash.  Just... not near as often.  To counter this, though, Crit+ equipment is available from the get-go.  Depending on how much you have equipped, it will determine how often you can pull it off.  If you want to focus on something else, though - say, you like the Bestowed unleash's range, so you want to power it up with Attack+ equipment instead of Crit+ equipment - then you can without too much of a penalty.

Now, if you have a problem with the single-target restriction for traditional unleashes... you're not alone.  I hate it as well.  Even if you put freaking Charon as the unleash, it'll only hit the single target.  Thus, any ideas for multi-target unleashes MUST be the bestow-type.  The game won't let us do it otherwise... >_>


@Bias:  Arguably, our biases are probably going to make this much better in the end!  After all, we're going to work it out until we both like it, and I doubt you're going to compromise either.

As for me, my strategies involve EPAs like Shurriken and other forms of Area Spam for normal mooks.  Djinn exist for emergencies, RNG abuse, and Djinn Kill bonuses.  To me, they seem great as a finishing strike, rather than a strategic attack plan.  I don't think the class change is worth it - I like my class setup.  Of course, these strategies become moot against the likes of Dullahan (who's doesn't? XD), or arguably the Doom Dragon to an extent, though in that case I usually call on my reserves.  And Valukar has his own strategy, which is obvious to most people.  Heck, mine won't work against Sentinel, but by then, I've got the ability to pull off an Unleash Spam strategy anyways...

I guess what we need to do is one of two things:

1 - make it so that a huge variety of strategies will work
2 - make it so that we constantly make the player change strategy from area to area.

Personally, I wanna do a mix of the two.  Some areas will need certain strategies, otherwise you're in for a world of hurt.  Others, including the final area, can work with a wide variety of strategies.  Perhaps our arguing here will help us find a way to pull that off...

@embracing stereotypes:  Yeah, the djinn system was unique to the game, I'll give you that.  I plan to expand on it though, so it's not QUITE going to work like it did in the canon games.  Regardless, though, unless you're focusing that character for unleashes, which you CAN do, just not as much as to make it too abusable, you'll probably not be using the attack command much - probably because you're either using the Bestowed Unleash, using spells, or are using a totally different strategy.  ANY character, even mage-types, can and should have the potential for the same max unleash rate.  I use 35% as my standard simply because that was the typical Base Unleash rate in the original games.  This number, however, is a preliminary number.  It is subject to change, depending on how things work out.  If it turns out to be too low, then I'll raise it - either via base unleash rate (defaulted to 0 for me), or via equipment (defaulted to: 5% Head, 5% Arm, 5% Body, 10% Leg, 10% Ring of Awakening).  I do wanna keep that absolute max limited by the ring, though, even if we decide to change the max.

Basically, as with ALL values, the Max Unleash value is subject to change.  I... guess I'd assumed you understood me on that, but I guess I was wrong... my bad.

@Equipment thread:  Yup, that's the one.  Of course, those values are subject to change.  If the penalties for axes are too small, for example, they'll be increased.  I want to make the overall value equal, though... that way, no weapon is truly more powerful than any other weapon, from a statistical point of view (excluding artifacts, of course).  When you go to the shop to buy a weapon, they'll all be equal in power.

Artifacts still follow the basic values, HOWEVER... they also have bonus goodies, such as unleashes, elemental natures, extra statistical boosts, etc.  It's more or less obvious that they're better than a normal weapon of equivalent "weapon value".  Same applies with armor.  I'm not quite sure how I'm going to approach armor - I've not worked on it as much as I have with weapons.  I do know that I want each type of equipment to boost one of two stats OTHER than defense - which I stated earlier.  I just dunno how to go about properly balancing this.  Of course, Artifacts have other goodies as well...

@LBoksha (sorry I misspelled your name!): Well, it's kind of like this - we don't force people over here.  We welcome them if they come, but all and all, whether they do or not is up to them.  If they're not here, then they're not here, simple as that.  It's not like we sought you or anyone else out... you showed genuine interest in the site, came, and contributed.  

EDIT:  @Tropes are bad:  I disagree.  This is an instance where Your Milage May Vary.  Some tropes are bad and should be avoided - such as Mary Sues and the like.  Others however don't reflect badly on a medium, and if they can be use well, should be used.  If you choose to try and avoid all tropes, you'll get a blank slate after all.  Staff Chick, Kill it With Fire, stuff like that... these are things that we can't get rid of, especially considering the nature of the game.  Others should be looked at and considered for inclusion.  But only if it'll fit... As such, this is less Tropes Are Bad, and more Use Tropes Wisely.

[leaf]

What is 'broken'?  When an ability is so powerful you'd be stupid to use something else, it's generally called a "Game Breaker".  Therefore, Broken.  The unleash system, though somewhat balanced in the beginning, becomes "Broken" about halfway through GS2.  Instead of focusing on better equipment and attack power, the second you get the Sylph Rapier, it's a matter of maxing out Criticals and spamming unleashes.  Better weapons can be had?  Who cares, the Sylph Rapier's unleash blows them out of the water, better stats be damned.  At least until you can get the Big Three swords, that is.  Not to mention that with enough crit+ equipment, you'll be dishing out major damage on a regular basis.  At that point, characters like Sheba and Mia, who cannot equip some of the best unleashes in the game, start to be used much less - especially Sheba.  Mia at least has a saving grace - Angel Mia is godlike simply because of the power of her healing, and how freaking easy it is to max out Mercury Power.

The thing is, EVERYONE pretty much ends up with the same setup in the end - Sol Blade, Tisiphone Edges, and Excaliburs.  The unleashes on these are so powerful it isn't funny.  Not to mention that you'll be spamming the crap out of them due to the abundance of Crit+ equipment.

I didn't ask for a definition of "broken." I asked what specifically made it broken. Unleashes are broken in TLA due to a combination of several reasons:
1) Unleashes are capable of incredible amounts of damage.
2) The alternatives to an unleash (psynergy, djinn) are weaker than the best unleashes.
3) The alternatives to an unleash carry a cost.
4) Unleashes could be done for "free" with a nearly 100% unleash rate.

I'm not gonna go into djinn, since summons and a non-simple cost system complicate things quite a bit there, and that's a level of theory I do not feel like getting into right now. The comparisons here will thus be between unleashes and EPA psynergy.

Fundamentally, the reason unleashes were broken was because they were both stronger and less costly than the alternative, EPA psys. If they had the same costs, unleashes would still be broken. If they had the same power, unleashes would still be broken. If they had both the same costs and the same power, there would be no difference between them, and you'd begin wondering why a distinction was even made in the first place. So what do you do if you want to balance them? You give one a higher cost with more power, and one a lower cost with less power. Makes sense, no?

In a fighter, a character may have one very safe move (or combination of moves) that doesn't really lead into combos or anything, but they can keep spamming it and leave little room for punishment, as an effective zoning game. That character probably also has one or more riskier moves that give a higher payoff on hit. This does not correlate exactly into a turn-based RPG, where the "risk" could simply be a cost, but it correlates well enough. Using an EPA psy does not carry very much "risk," in that generally you won't run out of PP for the psy in the middle of a boss fight. In fact, unleashes arguably carry more "risk" without a perfect 100% unleash rate, it's just that it doesn't matter due to unleashes having such a considerably higher reward. Balance the risk with the reward, and you no longer have a broken game.

There's two ways to fix this.  I use both.

That's the problem. You don't need to.

The first is to put limits on crit+ equipment.  Basically, make an arbitrary max unleash rate, that EVERY character is limited to, and go with it.  This is why I chose Light Armor to be the crit+ focus type - anyone can use it, so it makes it MUCH easier to keep track of.
The second is to try and balance unleashes.  This is done by making sure that they aren't too powerful - very easy to do, so long as you follow the proper formula.

I also, however, use something else - unleashes are simply Added Damage, with a chance of effect.  That's it.  YAWN.  By ADDING the bestow-type unleash, you ALSO allow for a second style of unleash - basically, a form of psynergy unique to the artifact weapon.  You can cast this for a certain amount of PP, while still having that chance for a free (or, should the bestowed type be non-damaging or different in nature), traditional style unleash.

Do either the first or do the second. If a character has a 25% chance to unleash, the unleash should be strong enough to on average make up for the three other times it won't unleash. If you make unleashes weaker in comparison to EPA psynergy, then don't also nerf their rate, since then you end up making the risk far outweigh the reward.

Balancing is easy.

Didn't you just say...?

You can claim 'we just need more balanced unleashes' all you want, but five bucks says that if we do that, we'll overlook something that'll turn into a game breaker.

Is this really the same person talking here?

I think you're just misunderstanding me again.  You can still do the traditional unleash.  Just... not near as often.  To counter this, though, Crit+ equipment is available from the get-go.  Depending on how much you have equipped, it will determine how often you can pull it off.  If you want to focus on something else, though - say, you like the Bestowed unleash's range, so you want to power it up with Attack+ equipment instead of Crit+ equipment - then you can without too much of a penalty.

A "bestowed" unleash doesn't have any practical difference from psynergy, and in fact just serves to homogenize character attack selections all over again. You're not incurring a "penalty" when you go for... anything except crit+ equipment, because you're nerfing crits into worthlessness. No sane individual is going to gamble on a 35% chance for an unleash when they could just be casting an attack that's even stronger. Even if the weapon bestows the same thing that it unleashes, the bestowed version has the potential to be stronger due to the additional equipment being used for the purpose of increasing its power. Not only do you have a low probability of getting the "free" version, but you reduce your potential damage output if you even try to go for it. Using equipment to boost something you aren't actually going to use is pointless.

Now, if you have a problem with the single-target restriction for traditional unleashes... you're not alone.  I hate it as well.  Even if you put freaking Charon as the unleash, it'll only hit the single target.  Thus, any ideas for multi-target unleashes MUST be the bestow-type.  The game won't let us do it otherwise... >_>

Meh. It removes some things that you could play around with, but it's not my main concern.

@Bias:  Arguably, our biases are probably going to make this much better in the end!  After all, we're going to work it out until we both like it, and I doubt you're going to compromise either.

Not arguably. It will. Since usually... a person tends to agree with themselves. Whether other people perceive it as "better" or not is completely up to their own interpretation, since "better" tends to be a very subjective word.

As for me, my strategies involve EPAs like Shurriken and other forms of Area Spam for normal mooks.  Djinn exist for emergencies, RNG abuse, and Djinn Kill bonuses.  To me, they seem great as a finishing strike, rather than a strategic attack plan.  I don't think the class change is worth it - I like my class setup.  Of course, these strategies become moot against the likes of Dullahan (who's doesn't? XD), or arguably the Doom Dragon to an extent, though in that case I usually call on my reserves.  And Valukar has his own strategy, which is obvious to most people.  Heck, mine won't work against Sentinel, but by then, I've got the ability to pull off an Unleash Spam strategy anyways...

From the sounds of things, we have very different strategies, which is probably a good thing. My playstyle has changed a bit as I've played through the game more times, but ever since the beginning I've been very reliant on the djinn. What I use against mooks has stayed more or less constant, starting with base damage psynergy in the early game, progressing to djinn when your attack stat starts letting you deal decent damage, and resorting to the attack command only 1) when I'm going through an area with weak monsters that don't need the extra damage from djinn, or 2) the very late game, when unleashes are consistent enough to be used as djinn replacements. I later picked up summon rushing mooks as a method to get through an area quickly, but other than that, I tended to stick with djinn for most of the game.

As for bosses... I think the only bosses that I've ever fought over the course of both games that I haven't used a basic "use djinn until you have a lv4 (or whatever your max is at the time) summon ready and then use that" strat against at least once are valukar and dullahan, the former due to not being able to set anything up reliably with summons getting used against you, and the latter due to having to summon rush if not at a stupidly high level. After I started messing with multi-element classes is when I started using the "set up constant summons" strat, which takes a bit more work to coordinate, but is oh so fun (and damaging!). The most important thing about classes to me has always been the support options, so as long as I'm not losing a key move, it's not something I really mind; the stat drops can hurt, but it's usually manageable. I have gone through the later bosses with unleashes before, and the strat is definitely powerful if you've got all the right equips, but it only seems to become really broken when you get to be overleveled, due to the way stat boosts work.

I guess what we need to do is one of two things:

1 - make it so that a huge variety of strategies will work
2 - make it so that we constantly make the player change strategy from area to area.

Personally, I wanna do a mix of the two.  Some areas will need certain strategies, otherwise you're in for a world of hurt.  Others, including the final area, can work with a wide variety of strategies.  Perhaps our arguing here will help us find a way to pull that off...

Indeed. It would be very nice if we could achieve that goal.

@embracing stereotypes:  Yeah, the djinn system was unique to the game, I'll give you that.  I plan to expand on it though, so it's not QUITE going to work like it did in the canon games.  Regardless, though, unless you're focusing that character for unleashes, which you CAN do, just not as much as to make it too abusable, you'll probably not be using the attack command much - probably because you're either using the Bestowed Unleash, using spells, or are using a totally different strategy.  ANY character, even mage-types, can and should have the potential for the same max unleash rate.  I use 35% as my standard simply because that was the typical Base Unleash rate in the original games.  This number, however, is a preliminary number.  It is subject to change, depending on how things work out.  If it turns out to be too low, then I'll raise it - either via base unleash rate (defaulted to 0 for me), or via equipment (defaulted to: 5% Head, 5% Arm, 5% Body, 10% Leg, 10% Ring of Awakening).  I do wanna keep that absolute max limited by the ring, though, even if we decide to change the max.

Thing is... you can't really focus on unleashes if you only have a 35% chance to succeed... the average damage output would be horribly low compared to almost anything else you could do.

Basically, as with ALL values, the Max Unleash value is subject to change.  I... guess I'd assumed you understood me on that, but I guess I was wrong... my bad.

I know it's subject to change. If I thought it wasn't, I wouldn't be expending the effort to argue with you about this.

@Equipment thread:  Yup, that's the one.  Of course, those values are subject to change.  If the penalties for axes are too small, for example, they'll be increased.  I want to make the overall value equal, though... that way, no weapon is truly more powerful than any other weapon, from a statistical point of view (excluding artifacts, of course).  When you go to the shop to buy a weapon, they'll all be equal in power.

Although that would be ideal, I don't think they're currently equal with the way you have it right now. I'll have to look at that more in depth later.

Artifacts still follow the basic values, HOWEVER... they also have bonus goodies, such as unleashes, elemental natures, extra statistical boosts, etc.  It's more or less obvious that they're better than a normal weapon of equivalent "weapon value".  Same applies with armor.  I'm not quite sure how I'm going to approach armor - I've not worked on it as much as I have with weapons.  I do know that I want each type of equipment to boost one of two stats OTHER than defense - which I stated earlier.  I just dunno how to go about properly balancing this.  Of course, Artifacts have other goodies as well...

Of course. If the artifacts follow a formula like the shop equips do, it'll seem forced. I think it'll just be a matter of continually checking back to make sure there are several viable options at any given time.

@LBoksha (sorry I misspelled your name!): Well, it's kind of like this - we don't force people over here.  We welcome them if they come, but all and all, whether they do or not is up to them.  If they're not here, then they're not here, simple as that.  It's not like we sought you or anyone else out... you showed genuine interest in the site, came, and contributed. 

Aw... I thought you would've realized I was mostly joking when I added the "=p"

EDIT:  @Tropes are bad:  I disagree.  This is an instance where Your Milage May Vary.  Some tropes are bad and should be avoided - such as Mary Sues and the like.  Others however don't reflect badly on a medium, and if they can be use well, should be used.  If you choose to try and avoid all tropes, you'll get a blank slate after all.  Staff Chick, Kill it With Fire, stuff like that... these are things that we can't get rid of, especially considering the nature of the game.  Others should be looked at and considered for inclusion.  But only if it'll fit... As such, this is less Tropes Are Bad, and more Use Tropes Wisely.

I never said that tropes are bad... I was just reminding you that tropes are not inherently good, either. Just because something's a stereotype does not mean we need to enforce it.

[Rolina]

Hmm... Well, it looks like we'll probably need to actually code some of these things and actually test them before we really get into this too much.  I mean... to compare the two ideas in practice.  For now, though, let's look away from the unleash argument and towards working on formulas like we should we should be doing. XD

After all, we've been a bit off topic for a while now.  I'll go make a "Balance of Powers" topic for future discussions on how to truly balance all the things together.  But for now, we need to try and come up with some secondary/tertiary options for the Spell Damage formula.


@Tropes:  You said "tropes are not good", which is more or less the same thing. :P  Anywho, we seriously need to look at which ones we'll employ, and which ones we should avoid.  I REFUSE to use Silent Protagonist, though.  It's just... no.  Just no.  I want some personality in my characters.  We'll need to work with the Writers for this, though.  It's usually a writer thing, save stuff like the Infinity Plus One Sword and the like.

[leaf]

Alright. We seem to both have said our share, so I guess it would be best to get this thread back on topic... funny, though, how these things are so related... it's tough to talk about any one thing for too long without getting into something else.

Moving on... you never commented on just treating the staff/ankh bonuses as additional elemental power/resistance.

Of course, when unleashed, djinn use the attack stat, which inevitably leaves the mages behind here, as well. I almost wonder if the best way to implement the staff and ankh bonuses would be directly in the elemental power and resistance section, adding or subtracting an additional amount before dividing by either 200 or 400 for base damage or elemental physicals respectively. This would naturally make summons more powerful when used by a mage, and it would in general have to be done very carefully to avoid making mages overpowered with elemental attacks overall, but it would essentially amount to being able to bypass the 200 power/resistance cap, something very easy to reach due to summons, and of course allow editing of the stat with only one "special" slot in the item editor.

So you have the old formula for elemental physicals, which looks something like this:
((attack - defense)*multmod/10 + addmod) * (1 + (power - resistance)/400)
And the old formula for base damage psynergy and summons, which looks something like this (where p is the percent mod for HP for a summon, and h is the foe's max HP):
(base + p*h) * (1 + (power - resistance)/200)

Which would become, where s is the staff bonus and a is the ankh bonus:
For elemental physicals:
((attack - defense)*multmod/10 + addmod) * (1 + (power - resistance + s - a)/400)
And for base damage psynergy (and summons):
(base + p*h) * (1 + (power - resistance + s - a)/200)

However, as having it affect summons may be too powerful, it should be possible to make summons ignore the staff and ankh bonuses, by having a check for:
If:
p>0
Then:
s = 0
a = 0
Else:
s = value determined by item
a = value determined by item

Although it would allow mages to use elemental physicals more effectively by using this method, you'd have to remember that their only sources of elemental physicals are their psynergy and the djinn; if they wanted to use an unleash, they would need to forego the staff or ankh bonus. Not to mention that elemental power/resistance only has half as much of an effect on elemental physicals as it does on base damage.

@tropes: Well the word "inherently" in there changes a lot, which is what I meant! And it's nice to see I'm not the only one here who hates silent protagonists, although that's getting pretty far offtopic now =p

[Today]

Today at 18:00:23

Teawater: By the way, I was wondering, did anyone else notice the ".gba" ROM in the Downloads section?

[Today]

Today at 16:54:26

JamietheFlameUser: Well, that particular Briggs fight was from a long time ago. I haven't been working on my current hack the past few days because of other stuff.

[Today]

Today at 16:40:10

Luna_blade: @Saturos: Your english exams?

[Today]

Today at 16:33:40

Teawater: Can't remember exactly what shae of yellow it was, so not sure it would be too close or not.

[Today]

Today at 16:30:58

Teawater: @KoP: Wouldn't Shiny Gold be for the Sol Clan?

[Today]

Today at 15:37:37

Salanewt: Oh wait, tag doesn't work down here. But yeah, how is your hack going Jamie?

[Today]

Today at 15:37:00

Salanewt: [me] considers giving him the Sol Blade...

[Today]

Today at 15:36:00

Salanewt: Oh my. To be honest though, I'd be more likely to give Briggs stuff from later regions; him being a pirate from another continent and all.

[Today]

Today at 09:36:58

JamietheFlameUser: How not to design boss fights: give human-type bosses stats and equipment on par for what the Editor says their level is and what equipment is available where they're from. You get stuff like an actually scaled to level 21 Briggs with a Great Sword, Silver Plate, Silver Helm, Vambrace, and Leather Boots. God, that was BS.

[Today]

Today at 09:09:49

Saturos: Wow first part of exam is ower (in english) tomorow speaking part.

[Today]

Today at 07:11:35

JamietheFlameUser: Eh, I didn't know the exact chance of Curse screwing you over. Still, that 6% chance to fail to act at all could screw you over when it matters most. The obvious solution, of course, is to stick that armour on a character who doesn't do anything but spam attack moves anyway.

[Today]

Today at 07:10:52

leaf: ...assuming I'm remembering the chance of curse taking effect correctly as 25%

[Today]

Today at 07:09:50

leaf: in fact, you get two turns the majority of the time (~56%), and only completely fail to act ~6%, the remainder of the time getting one action

[Today]

Today at 07:07:49

leaf: I like that stealth armor buff. it wouldn't make sense to do that with the clerics ring available, but if you remove that, it's actually an interesting item. On average, you get ~1.5 turns per round. it's potentially very strong, but carries risks

[Today]

Today at 07:04:59

leaf: lol

[Today]

Today at 06:39:21

JamietheFlameUser: Reading the Venus Psynergy topic and 'lol'ing at Role's reaction to a very simple spell idea I'd had (and still think is awesome), where rock explodes out of the ground from a single point in a focused, cone-shaped burst. Role read me the riot act about not combining elements again. lol.

[Today]

Today at 06:17:58

JamietheFlameUser: Well, one thing I came up with that was actually potentially cool is a modification to the Stealth Armour. I gave it +1 turns, under the assumption that the Cleric's Ring would be removed. You might get 2 actions that round, or 1 action, or maybe no actions at all! RNG at its finest.

[Today]

Today at 06:15:32

Knight of Purgatory: Nice orange text kain. Maybe it should be a shiny gold

[Today]

Today at 06:03:40

leaf: I concur. There isn't much I'd consider worth salvaging from dc in terms of work done, but reading the old threads can be quite amusing

[Today]

Today at 06:01:48

JamietheFlameUser: LOL I'm looking at the DCrisis Items/Equipment section. Role and I were both so immature about it (me especially) that it's hilarious in hindsight.

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