Messages

Those are some really solid points, from a player feedback perspective they make a ton of sense. Like I said in my first post though, I was only judging Wish/Wish Well in strictly the first game, I never ended up at high enough levels for Pure Wish, still too low leveled in TLA for it too. Forced grinding is never a good thing though, and Caledor's done an amazing job avoiding making you feel like you have to at really any point, so I'd understand more people being against a nerf if it seemed like it would just lead to grinding it back to being more viable. I'd say theoretically though I'd 100% agree that nerfing Pure Wish against late game TLA bosses is just asking for a bad time, but I simply haven't gotten far enough in 1.78 to have a good opinion on that yet. I think the Aura series is hitting a really comfortable spot in terms of what it heals vs boss damage output, but I'd want to wait until I finish to fully judge anything, I only just finished with Serpent/Orochi today.

I actually really like your point about changing MT heals to use the same damage drop off (well, not damage in this case lol) that offensive spells use though, I've never considered that but I feel like that would be a really interesting system to experiment with.  Keep high powered MT healing, but make you actively think about who needs it most. It's kind of hard to judge how it would impact balance though since that would, as far as I know at least, be a first in the series, but definitely a cool concept!

I get what you mean, yeah, it's a fine line between a difficulty that still allows all play styles, and one that starts to limit a player to only a few viable ones. I can definitely see it being more of the way I play making encounters a bit easier and 'by the books', 90% of the time I do a play through (Vanilla or Reloaded) I end up focusing almost exclusively on Djinn usage. That would make sense for some of my points (e.g. larger enemy groups) since someone focusing on casting would have a much different experience.

But yeah, for Wish nerfs, it was just based on the idea of single target healing restoring less HP per PP spent while also being limited to one party member. Wish being more efficient AND hitting everyone seemed to make it objectively better in almost all situations. Since I didn't think it made sense to nerf single target heals, nerfing multi target ones ended up being my conclusion. I'd 100% agree with you though that if nerfing it led to party setups with 2+ Wish users, that would be way worse in terms of both balance and fun. I think nerfing multi target heals more would only really be viable in done alongside some of my other points, like higher damaging spells hitting less party members to encourage single target healing. Honestly though that's probably way to much to change to make just one psynergy series POSSIBLY more balanced, especially if I'm the only person asking for it lol.

Also I actually only noticed the description issues while doing my write up for TBS yesterday, but I wanted to get started on TLA so I didn't even bother changing them lol. Just a limitation of the game though I guess, nothing anyone can do.

But thanks for discussing your views on my suggestions, I appreciate it! I definitely have to clarify though since I didn't yesterday, I think the mod's at a very good spot right now in terms of balance for the first game, it's still leagues more challenging than Vanilla. if there weren't any further changes I'd have no gripes with that at all. Hoping I can get through TLA soon though!

[Isaac - 3 4 Leader, Garet - 4 3 Samurai, Ivan - 4 3 Divine Mage, and Mia - 4 3 White Mage]

TBS 1.78 is finished for me, so a few thoughts on it before starting TLA. I opted to stick with mono-elemental classes for most of the run, only switching over to tri-elemental once I collected all the djinn. Up until I had Wish available, I found most bosses I could stick with a very similar strategy and win with little trouble. In fact, Tret (done before Mercury Lighthouse) was surprisingly the only one I died to a couple times lol, two Sleep Stars one one turn to hit my whole party makes for a pretty quick loss the next turn. The main focus for all bosses though was making sure to use Breeze turn 1 (and Corona once I was through Mogall Forest) to tank everyone up significantly, then Granite and Zephyr turn 2. This essentially guaranteed that even with reduced stats from using Djinn, by turn 3 I'd be fast enough to start getting off summons, and still durable enough to survive after. If someone was hit hard on the first two turns, I could heal them with Fizz to set up for more summoning, or worst case, Isaac or Mia delays summoning by a turn to use Cure/Ply. Barring what I mentioned with Tret's Sleep Star shenanigans, no bosses were even able to down any of my party, even Ivan with his paper thin defense stats.

After getting a fourth Mercury Djinni in Altin though and getting Wish, I was pretty pleased that I couldn't just stick to spamming Wish every turn and go full offense with the rest of the party. Hydros Statue actually hit a very nice level of challenge in my opinion, where he had enough AoE damage to outpace healing with Wish every turn, so being forced to do some healing with the other three helped break up the strategy of buff with Djinn -> offensive Djinn -> summon ->repeat, since taking those extra turns to do more healing meant buffs wore off before I could get my summons out. Kraken wasn't too tough though, since I had all Djinn up to that point, I could keep Kite and Granite in reserve while still getting off tier 4 summons. Having those two meant that if Kraken ended up doing too much damage than Mia could heal, all I needed to do was use both the next turn to guarantee no one was downed (Granite) to allow Mia to catch up on healing, and the following turn having Wish available twice. By then, I'd have Djinn starting to recover, after which I could start buffing with them again. This Granite/Kite strategy got me through most of the rest of the bosses actually, and access to Wish Well made it VERY hard to die. Factoring in a Psy Crystal or two, and PP was never an issue either.

Deadbeard was a very, very nice step up in difficulty though, I attempted him as soon as possible when going through Suhalla Desert, I believe I was level 28 for the whole party. Last time I fought him on an earlier version of the mod, it felt doable in mono-elemental classes at this point thanks to the issue of him only using physical attacks after long enough, but since that was fixed, I couldn't find any viable strategy to fight him. It was entirely possible to last quite awhile against him through a combination of Psy Crystals to keep Mia's healing up, with the tried and true Granite/Flash/Kite combo, but keeping everyone alive while doing any meaningful damage just wasn't happening. I attempted it again at level 32 after grabbing all the endgame equipment from Lalivero/Venus Lighthouse, and it went a ton smoother. Still didn't get the win after 4-5 attempts with mono-elemental classes but I definitely think it would be doable. On a whim I tried messing with some tri-elemental classes and found a strategy that won on the first go. I'll have the specific Djinn setup pictured below, but it was Isaac - 3 4 Leader, Garet -  4 3 Samurai, Ivan -  4 3 Divine Mage, and Mia -  4 3 White Mage. While it isn't the intent of tri-elemental classes, this set up worked incredibly well for getting off summons. Mia was able to use all three Venus Djinn while still keeping access to the Wish series, and while this means she isn't healing, both Isaac and Ivan only needed to use one Mars Djinn each to shift into classes that also had the Wish series. With Ivan having Flash, and Garet having Granite, it was very easy to survive an extra turn if I was in trouble and end up with three wish users, which even against Deadbeard was very hard to lose with. Baiting out Break with a couple tier 1 summons to boost elemental power helped lower damage output a bit too. With Isaac ending up as the slowest , it worked out nicely being able to start a turn with only 2 Venus Djinn on standby, but with Ground and Granite both having priority, he could reliable get off tier 3 or 4 summons with minimal setup.

This strategy made even quicker work of S&M/Fusion Dragon, since Isaac and Ivan were the ones with Mercury Djinn, Mia was free to stick to healing rather than trying to work in some Venus Djinn usage while still being able to hit Boreas repeatedly. I was level 34 by the time I got back to them though, so that obviously made things a bit easier too. Both bosses went down on my first attempts, with S&M actually working nicely to let me set up for the second fight. Since Isaac and Garet both get a free PP refill between fights, I could use one of Isaac's Mars Djinn to give him access to Wish after downing Menardi, then refill Mia's PP and essentially auto attack until Saturos went down too. Saturos coincidentally hit after the other three but before Isaac, so it was actually impossible to not have Max HP & PP for Fusion Dragon with that setup.

I think overall though, while bosses still have some challenge, overworld enemies posed very little threat. Single enemies died to Djinn spam, groups of 2 as well since using Ground on one, and Mist/Squall/Scorch on the other basically made both unable to act before killing them. Groups of 3 or more were much better in my opinion, while none come to mind as being actually threatening to the party, they worked well in making me burn PP or items to stay healthy until the area's boss. Djinn spam isn't TOO effective on these groups, since no matter what it's tough to kill 3+ enemies with only 4 Djinn, so they'll generally get a few attacks off. It felt more necessary to use AoE psynergy to avoid prolonging the fight and taking more damage, which feels fitting for, again, wearing me down throughout a dungeon. It's worth noting too I think, the only time I did any kind of grinding was just outside of Bilibin to make some money for new armor (didn't gain any levels if I remember right), and 2 levels of grinding right before rematching Deadbeard, so I feel pretty confident saying I was going through all areas at their intended levels.

If I was going to suggest any changes though, I'd go with this:

- Changing enemy groups for random encounters to lean more towards 3+ enemy groups. 1-2 enemy encounters work as a nice break, but especially later on, it's far to easy to simply use Djinn to stun/sleep an enemy, then use Spritz/Ember to fully recover during the fight. It seems the further into the game you go, the less threatening small groups become. While it might be alot of work, reworking 1-2 enemy groups to favor high agility enemies may give them more of a chance to get some damage in. Possibly even agility buffs to even guarantee they'll at least do something before dying. It might just be me, but I found enemies that aren't threatening on their own weren't too engaging, they were more of a nuisance than anything.

- Most bosses other than Hydros Statue, Deadbeard, S&M, and Fusion Dragon had alot of trouble outpacing the damage that can be healed with the Wish series each turn. While I think they need higher damage outputs, I think there's a few ways that would work well without screwing too much with game balance. 1. Focusing their move sets on higher damage moves that are specifically 3 targets (Eruption, Ray series, etc.) I think focusing damage on fewer characters, but doing enough to them so that Wish can't fully heal each turn means other spells like Cure/Ply see more use, and allow a little more flexibility with the party, rather than one dedicated healer. 2. From what I saw in the editor there's a fair amount of unused ability slots, maybe use those for some boss specific versions of spells? e.g. Rather than, let's say, Manticore getting the same Nova that Garet learns, its version has an extra 10-15 base damage to slot it somewhere between the standard version of Nova and Supernova, or has a chance to inflict a status effect of some kind. This can buff their offense, but would probably require more testing to avoid them possibly ending up unbalanced. Adding boss-specific versions of spells also has the nice side effect of not needing to rework anything the party learns. This principle could also feasibly be applied to my first suggestion about bosses using more 3 target psynergies as well, using stronger boss-specific versions to up damage output on only a few characters. 3. I'd be more apprehensive about this one, but giving bosses some abilities that do percent based damage like summons do. If there's a target level range that each boss should be fought, and thus the general amount of HP any party member would have is known, being able to hit a specific percent of it may work for outpacing Wish healing, with the added benefit of still being effective on a party that's a bit over leveled, and not game ending one that's under leveled. I admittedly  don't know a whole lot about damage formulas for summons, other than it's base damage + percent of HP, but doing VERY low base damage, and having most of the damage come from the HP multiplier might be worth looking at.

- More Wish nerfs lol. Even with a much higher PP cost than Vanilla, it's still entirely possible to use spells from the Wish series without ever really running out of PP. At worst in my experience, I just had to delay an extra turn every now and then to use a psy crystal. I don't think upping the cost would do a whole lot more since that just means using psy crystals more frequently, but nerfing them from 80 & 160 HP (wasn't high enough level to get Pure Wish, so I can't judge that) to something like 70 & 140, or even a touch less, feels like it would be a nice spot to leave them at. Comparing Wish to Cure, it's (80x4)HP healed for 12PP, versus 70HP for 3PP. Wish has a better HP healed per PP ratio, with the convenience of hitting the whole party, which definitely doesn't feel right. Dropping the power further would be nice to make you think more about using, in terms of PP used at least, a powerful single target heal, versus a weaker multi target one. Side note I don't know if this is intended, but the power of Cure Well, Ply Well, Wish Well, and Pure Wish don't match their descriptions, they're all off by 10, 20 for Ply Well.

That's about all that comes to mind though, sorry for a big @#$ wall of text lol. Definitely still a WAY better experience than Vanilla, I'd just like to see a touch more difficulty on bosses and random encounters. As always though, thanks so much for making this mod, it's always a pleasure to play through it! :)

@Kuime
It might be a bit tedious, but if you're set on using specifically your file, I could recommend maybe using the password generator that's linked in Caledor's original post under the FAQ section. You could patch a ROM of TBS, then using the editor, compare what stats should be like for your characters in Reloaded vs Vanilla at your current levels and adjust them accordingly, give yourself whatever items, djinn, etc. you had.

Or if you're okay using someone else's transfer data, I actually just finished up a run of TBS last night, I can try and link my save file for you to use once I get home from work. Everyone's level 34, all djinn, all extra psynergy items, Cleric's Ring, and all extra events complete (other than maybe talking to Dora after Lamakan Desert).

Edit: Attached the password, you can either manually enter it from the text file, or if you're using an emulator that supports it like VBA, you can import the .dmp file directly into memory to avoid typing it (instructions in the download for the password generator I mentioned).

Looking forward to trying out the new Dullahan fight soon! Might be a bit until I can give any feedback though lol, I just started TBS 1.78 last night.

Hey Caledor, really loving the mod so far! I just wanted to mention a super, super minor issue I noticed with Isaac's attack growth when I was checking stuff out in the editor. At level 79 it's set to 289, but at level 99, it's set to 253. So according to level ups in battle, you actually 'gain' negative attack :p   I say it's minor though since I REALLY doubt anyone's gonna be insane enough to grind out that much in TBS lol. It looks like this is fine in TLA though, there it's set to 353 which seems a lot more normal, and it's actually possible to level him that high.

But as for the mod itself, the difficulty is pretty close to perfect imo. I first started playing the games when I was 5, 22 now and I've always done 1 or 2 playthroughs of both every year, so I mean they're not REMOTELY close to challenging at this point, but I'm SO happy I can say that's not the case anymore with your mod :)   Last year I did full playthroughs of both games with Reloaded (can't remember which version anymore, whoops :p), just finished up a second run of TBS with 1.71 this week, and about to start TLA on my next day off soon. I really love that it's still completely feasible to get through both games with zero grinding, but I genuinely have to strategize for every boss, to the point where much of the time I'm anticipating what I might get hit with NEXT turn and preemptively have to setup a turn in advance for it. I find a lot of the time I'm not so much reacting to what my party gets hit with, and picking the 'best' option afterwards, but trying to read what a boss might do then covering as many options as I can, if that's a good way to put it?

It felt basically impossible to just have one person cast Wish each turn and everyone else spam djinn/summons, which is a very, very positive thing for me. If I wanted to use a lot of djinn and summons, it was definitely doable, but it required a lot of actual thought about not only when I'm using them to drop stats or inflict statuses, but actually the order I had to use them, and how long I could go without summoning, otherwise they wouldn't be set again by the time I needed to reuse them. Deadbeard was a great example for this, since when I fought him (around mid-late twenties I think), he easily out-sped everyone in my party, but Vine/Zephyr made Mia (who was healing of course :p) just fast enough to act before him. So that meant I ALWAYS had to be focusing on when their effects were wearing off, and again, when I'd NEED to summon or set them to get them ready again to either drop his speed or raise mine. Otherwise he hits last on one round, speed returns to normal, and downs most of the party at the start of the next round before I can heal, which at those levels was incredibly difficult to recover from. Managing Mia's PP (nerfs to healing in general were honestly really well implemented btw) while having to stall for a couple turns with Granite/Flash/Ground to let her recover PP, while now having to focus on when THOSE three djinn would be usable again, on top of STILL focusing on when to set/summon to keep Vine/Zephyr ready to avoid getting rushed by Deadbeard's buffed psynergy (loved the new damage formula for this too!) turned this into an incredibly cerebral fight. Whereas on Vanilla, running the same strategy meant just alternating Granite and Flash, Wish every turn, and summon whenever. This was genuinely the most fun I've ever had with a boss in any playthrough of the series.

The only sort of 'complaint' I guess I might have right now is by the time you hit Tolbi and have access to the slots, the boots/shirts/rings from those provide a pretty substantial buff to everyone, which really lowered the difficulty of random enemy encounters. Not that they weren't still difficult, they were still MUCH tougher than vanilla, but I didn't really need to worry nearly a smuch about trying to balance PP between offense and healing to avoid running out partway through a dungeon, since I could tank hits much better, and kill enemies before they could do as much damage. Maybe either lowering the chance of getting a game ticket to get less equipment, nerfing the equipment, or slightly buffing the late game enemies more could help with this a bit, or some combination of these? Early dungeons though (going through Kolima Forest and Tret back to back come to mind actually) I'd often find my stats low enough that just standard attacks weren't really viable, so I'd be more inclined to use psynergy to end fights fast enough that I wouldn't risk downing anyone, with the trade off being it was much more difficult to manage keeping enough PP to heal between fights without running out entirely. I really liked this since it meant I'd always be aware of what I was making throughout an entiere dungeon, and what consequences might come from them. Again, later areas are still tough, just kind of inconsistent with difficulty in the early game, you know?

It seemed too that since by this point you'd have access to Scorch/Mist/Squall, smaller enemy groups in general became much easier. Even if on paper they should have the ability to be threatening, being able to basically remove one or two of them for virtually the whole battle with sleep/stun meant the party was taking very little damage, and I could almost always be back to max HP/PP by the next encounter. Single enemy groups, like Tornado Lizards, were basically impossible to lose to because of this, even though they had the stats and abilities to make for a challenging fight otherwise. But other than directly nerfing those djinn, or sleep/stun in general, I don't really see much way to avoid this. Neither this or the stuff with the slots equipment are THAT big a deal to be honest though, like I wouldn't be disappointed if these never changed, they're just spots that have a notably different feel to me in terms of challenge.

But yeah, overall I absolutely love what you've done so far, it's a HUGE improvement on the vanilla games! I'm really looking forward to how the mod progresses, I'm hoping you'll keep going with it  :)

(also I really didn't think my first post would be this long, my b :p)