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Messages - leaf

#1
Project List / Re: [RELEASE] Golden Sun Reloaded
21, January, 2018, 02:41:23 PM
I only checked my level after the tret fight (lv9), but I think I was was lv7ish for most of the tree, having leveled up to 8 near the end, and then again vs tret. I checked with the editor, and indeed it should be lv8 that isaac starts to outspeed the bees. I think if you dropped bee agility by 4 to let isaac outspeed them one level sooner, it would make that enemy a lot more reasonable.

This is what I'd do:

Drone Bee: 43 agility -> 39
Troll: 144 HP -> 129, 10 regen -> 15
Ghoul: 141 HP -> 111
Grizzly: 155 HP -> 135
Amaze: Ghostly Rumble (2) base damage 15 -> 13
Tret: 1012 HP -> 922 HP

This makes the Troll and Grizzly reliably one-roundable if you focus three psynergy on them, unlike at present which absolutely requires either a summon or double-hit gust. Same for the Ghoul, who is frankly well above the curve for that point of the game, and has absolutely no business being that tanky while also being able to drain tank with high damage. At 111, it should die to a double-hit gust + off-range aoe, or to three focused aoe psynergy. The slight nerf to Ghostly Rumble is simply to reduce the ambient damage from Amaze while you focus on other, bigger threats.
#2
Project List / Re: [RELEASE] Golden Sun Reloaded
21, January, 2018, 12:33:22 AM
So, I started playing this hack, starting with TBS.

Re: Djinn fleeing: Forge trying to flee on turn 2 after a reset is absolute bullshit. I spammed all of my strongest attacks, and couldn't kill it before its turn came up. I had to keep resetting until its flee failed, then kill it the following turn. Honestly, djinn fleeing adds nothing gameplay-wise and is just a frustration factor for the player. It was lame in vanilla and it's lame here. There's no reason to keep this mechanic at all.

Everything else up to kolima seemed fine, but the enemies introduced in kolima and tret are... a bit much. I assume that the "intended" fighting style here is psynergy spam, but even that isn't enough to kill the enemies before they put down some serious hurt, so your PP ends up going both toward damage *and* healing. Fighting normally and healing between battles isn't really sustainable, so I ended up having to rely on summon spam to get through it. Surprisingly, even with summon spam, I was still unable to one-round some enemies (trolls are notorious for this), and the agility of the bees and gnomes meant that I was always going to take some damage from them, even if they *do* die to two lv2 summons.

Unless summons are the intended way to get through this area, either atk or hp should really come down for these foes. They simply do too much damage for how sturdy they are. Even after switching to summons, I still had to heal frequently enough that I had to use a mountain water on isaac before taking on tret (speaking of which, I'm really thankful for this item being in the game).

Specific enemies:

Bees: Faster than isaac until he reaches a certain level (wasn't keeping track of what level that specifically is, whoops), inflicts over 30 damage on a single attack and can stun. Extremely high priority to get rid of these things, but with their agility value, they'll always get off something before going down. I'd say drop agility a few points so isaac can outspeed them at least one level sooner.

Trolls: Way too sturdy. Damage is fine considering their low agility. I'd reduce HP and increase regen.

Spiders: Seem fine, for the most part. Maybe a bit lower hp to more reliably one-round them?

Amaze (or whatever variant this one is called, idr): Its bulk and damage reminds me of GSC suicune. It doesn't do a lot of damage at once, but it lasts long enough that it builds up. It really likes spamming ghostly rumble. I think its bulk is fine, but it could do with a touch less damage, so you aren't punished so heavily for ignoring it while you deal with other bigger threats.

The tret battle seemed reasonable, but I only had a single ally fall asleep throughout the entire battle, and it happened to be near the end. With how frequently he spams sleep star, if someone were unlucky and had it trigger more often, they'd probably lose. A small nerf to HP would probably make this fight consistently winnable, since I was basically completely out of PP when victory came through.

---

Moving onto bilibin cave, holy @#$% the ghoul is so overpowered. High hp, high damage, and it drain-tanks. You must really want me to summon spam through this. If summon spam wasn't an option here, I would probably just straight-up flee when I get an encounter like double ghoul+double ooze. I nearly wiped on that party once, and had to trek back to bilibin to revive isaac.

Outside the cave, grizzly is another enemy that just has too much HP. Even with full focus from all three party members, they don't die in a single round unless you target focus summons on them. Atalanta+Ramses barely kills one if both are focused on the same target. Meanwhile, most psynergy at this point doesn't even break 50 damage, with gust as the only non-summon option for one-rounding them (deals 100+ damage on a double-hit, but is unreliable).

For reference, I currently have isaac with elven rapier, garet with an axe, and everyone with the best possible defensive equipment available. I've just arrived at imil.
#3
Misc. GS Hacking / Re: Master Formula List
06, November, 2017, 01:13:10 PM
To clarify the above post, if the game would divide by zero, it instead divides by 1.
#4
Golden Sun / Re: help ingame - Babi lighthouse
08, October, 2017, 01:41:33 PM
You need to press and hold the run button (B). Running at a slight diagonal upward seems to be best.
#5
Feedback / Re: Can we please fix "Hiden" already?
02, October, 2017, 05:39:11 PM
Oh hey, this has been fixed. Nice, thanks.
#6
Feedback / Can we please fix "Hiden" already?
28, September, 2017, 12:37:35 PM
[spoiler]It's defaulted to this for years, and that single typo bugs me every time it shows up.[/spoiler]
#7
This is similar to what fio said on discord, but I'd much rather see status/debuff infliction via damaging abilities be consistent, but with a weaker effect (and less damage, if need be). If they can't be relied upon to inflict debuffs, then you're essentially paying a cost (lower damage) and not getting anything back for it. Offensive djinn are probably the most accessible debuffs in the game, but if the rate is @#$%, then it doesn't matter how accessible something is if you only end up using it because "it's a damaging djinni."
#8
Okay, that's what I figured when I saw those numbers. I guess I never noticed since when you're spamming lv4 summons, +100 epow probably caps you out anyway. It still doesn't explain why the damage increase from +0 -> +30 is so small, though, or why Nereid is only doing damage in the 90s from Mia.
#9
There seems to be something screwy happening with epow in general here.

Mia's Nereid damage with no mercury boosts: 93 damage
Mia's Nereid damage with +30 mercury power: 99 damage
Garet's Nereid damage with no mercury boosts: 78 damage
Garet's Nereid damage with +30 mercury power: 83 damage
Garet's Nereid damage with +60 mercury power: 82 damage (??????)
Garet's Nereid damage with +90 mercury power: 85 damage (??????)

Garet's Venus damage: 32, 38
Mia's Venus damage: 37
Isaac's Venus damage: 38, 40
Ivan's Venus damage: 35

Now, it's entirely possible I missed a "X's mercury power returns to normal" text, since I was watching the video at 2x speed specifically so I could look for summon damage, but something about these numbers feels very off. Garet's Venus damage should not be able to vary that much.

The 30/60/90 buff amounts were all within 3 damage of each other, so maybe epow buffs don't stack like I thought they did, but that still doesn't explain how +30 mercury power is only increasing damage by 6 or 7. At 70 base damage, 30 epow should give a minimum of +10 or +11 damage. Even if we assume that 78 was a high roll for Garet, that would imply that +30 mercury power only increased his damage by 7.
#10
I don't know what cal did, but even if summon HP damage was 1%, those damage numbers shouldn't be possible. 2% of 1700 is 34, and nereid's base damage is 60. At 1% per djinni, it would be doing at minimum 94 base damage, before elemental modifiers. At 2% per djinni, nereid should be hitting 128 base damage, before elemental modifiers. Even if saturos's HP were unchanged, it would still be 108 base damage. Meanwhile, mia, who has >100 mercury power against saturos's 72 mercury resist, only did 93 damage with her first nereid summon. Something is *very* wrong with these numbers.
#11
A game shouldn't need outside documentation. It's never bad to provide it, but unless it's something you have absolutely no control over, the player shouldn't need it. That doesn't change when it's a hack.

Anyway, you do recognize that it's a problem, so I'll stop harping on it.
#12
Quote from: Awec on 04, September, 2017, 04:29:46 PM
I think this is too early in the game to be analyzing it to be honest.
In my run, I found burst damage quickly became less feasible and I had to rely on Paralyze a lot, and use debuffs extensively against bosses. It was tough.
Delude probably could afford a buff though.

It's never too early to analyze, since it's entirely possible for something to be balanced later on, while being imbalanced early, or vice-versa. It's a matter of progression.

Quote from: CaledorI think i made crystal clear that only players experienced with GS should play the mod, and djinn swapping to get utility psy is a core mechanic.
I agree with Fio on this. I don't think it's reasonable to expect the player to need to switch djinn frequently just to get access to core psynergy. It doesn't matter how familiar with GS you are. Expecting players to have to mess with their class setup every time they want to use whirlwind or any other utility psy is just bad design. It's at best an inconvenience to the player that doesn't need to be there, and at worst can softlock a player's progress. Even if the player realizes "the hack creator is making us jump through hoops," the problem is, they don't necessarily know what hoops those are.
#13
No, the "easiest thing to do" is to leave it exactly as it is. Too many designers get worked up about giving every possible quest a gameplay-related reward. Sometimes, it's better to give the player a reward in the form of feedback - a cool cinematic, some story, etc, rather than something that directly impacts the gameplay. In a lot of cases, this feedback reward is more valuable to a player than getting a new shiny weapon. For many players, Iris is just that - it's a cool cinematic with an "apparently" broken effect.

And for the small segment of the playerbase that manages to beat Dullahan but somehow falters on the Doom Dragon, it's very practical to summon using your second party. If you put the djinn on standby beforehand, you can turn 1 Iris after a wipe. It's conventionally more useful than any other 7+ djinn summon in the game.
#14
Considering the whole point of beating bonus bosses for many people is to say they did it, I think it's fine. The reward is knowing that you were able to beat the game's superboss, which is honestly a better reward than *any* item you could give the player at that point. Something awesome but impractical is *preferable* for this kind of situation, since the player isn't going to have anything left to use it on anyway.
#15
He was saying it would be okay if the cost was made cheaper to make it "OP" while keeping the effect. Personally, I disagree, since it'd be nice if the doom dragon still offered at least some semblance of challenge, even after beating all other content.

I'd rather just leave Iris as a trophy summon. It doesn't need to be practical. It's there to look pretty and to commemorate your beating of Dullahan.
#16
Yeah... Iris is probably best left as a gimmick in all honesty. Not everything *needs* to be practical, especially if it's the reward for beating the uber boss.
#17
Yeah, I'm not fond of the turn-gating solution, myself. You mentioned reducing djinn count and reducing power of multi-elemental summons on the discord, and that's definitely something I can agree with. Any summon that takes 7+ djinn is only useful for summon rushing, and is more of a gimmick than anything to pull out in normal combat. That would help balancing pretty much everything except Iris, since Iris's secondary effect (revive all party members, even those out of battle) is fundamentally broken; it would either need that effect removed or it would need to remain at a very high djinn count.

Higher enemy agility is actually pretty clever. If turn speed is balanced around the expectation of the player having djinn and having them set, that means that if the player *does not* have their djinn set, they'll end up moving after the enemies, which defeats the point of trying to summon against them in the first place. It would dance a pretty fine line to get it right, but it has the potential to fix the problem without having to change any basic game mechanics.
#18
Caledor is the one who implemented a system where you cannot use anything higher than tier 2(?) summons on the first turn of battle. Each turn, an additional tier would unlock.

I think your concern about the early game is misplaced, though. Even if someone were to spam tier 1 or 2 summons in normal battles, it's at a point of the game where it's arguably needed. In the early game, "attack" is not a valid way of doing damage. Tier 1 summons only have 30 base power, so they quickly get overtaken by area psys. Likewise, tier 2 summons only have 60 base power, which is comparable to psynergy available at that time. This essentially just makes tier 1 or 2 summons into a "free psynergy cast," but a single free psynergy cast is not going to win the battle for you; you'll still probably be expending PP elsewhere if you're trying to one-round an encounter - and if you don't one-round, you're going to be expending PP on healing instead. When tier 3 becomes available is the first time it might be considered a problem, since they have a base power of 120, and tier 4 is 240.

In regard to buffing psynergy... you wouldn't need to cut their cost in half. A small reduction would go a long way. Remember that PP regen is a thing. You don't have a fixed amount of psynergy you can spend, but rather an infinite resource that takes time to fill to a capacity. I do think area psy PP costs are slightly too high across the board, but even as much as a 20% reduction would let the player spam them considerably more.
#19
If you make the relative level mod bigger, it makes it impossible to flee against higher level enemies. If a 3 level difference results in a 45% flat difference in flee rate, you could very easily be locked into fighting something you can't beat. Considering that wandering into an area above your level and getting the hell out of there is one of the two main reasons someone would want to flee, I don't view that as an acceptable solution.

Changing the 5000 to 7500 would increase the base flee rate from 50% (wtf this is so bad) to 75%, which still results in a guaranteed flee at 5 level difference, but still favors the player until they reach a 5+ level deficit. Personally, if I was going to retune it to allow fleeing to fail, but do so rarely, I'd prob do something like...

8500 + 1200*flee fails + (relative level*300) >= random(0,9999)
#20
QuoteI do agree with this point, at least.  I'm thinking now, a better solution would be to just implement the "one turn recovery, then two turn recovery, then three turn recovery" thing I edited in to my last response.  That way we can keep the "ammo-based system" you're referring to while keeping things from getting too crazy.
That still breaks equilibrium, since after you exhaust each djinni once, you start running into longer cooldowns. For battles such as Star Magician or Doom Dragon that can inevitably become wars of attrition (even when played "normally"), this would be far too punishing, all for the sake of nerfing a fringe abuse case. It's especially punishing for mixed classes, since they may have djinn of a given element spread between 2 or 3 party members just by virtue of the classes requiring it.

QuoteActually, it does about 120-150 Damage per hit even with Mars.  Not great, but, enough to take him down after about...10 minutes or so.  That's still a reasonable enough time to be a viable strat.
It's absolutely viable. It's just slow. If you wanted to nerf it, all you would have to do is give the Fusion Dragon access to status moves. Disabling a character for a turn can break the cycle and force the player into a recovery state. You might consider nerfing its damage output alongside this, since a change like that will up the difficulty even for a "normal" battle style.

QuoteI know you meant this as part of a reason why I SHOULDN'T go through with what I propose, but, this is exactly WHY the Summon system is problematic in how it's set up.  There are absolutely no random encounters where Attack Psynergy is preferable to Summons; and very few situations where it's preferable against bosses.  Summons do more damage, always hit every enemy, and don't cost you anything to use.  Even the recovery times outside of battle are made moot by spreading your Djinn in the correct way.

So basically, what I want is to create a situation where Attack Psynergy is sometimes the better strategic option for going through a long dungeon; and more consistently the better option against bosses (instead of just spamming Unleashes and Summons. 
There are plenty of random encounters where attack psynergy is preferable to summons. When you're strong enough to the point that the attack command is enough to beat most foes, it's more optimal to set your djinn for the stats they provide, and then cover with an occasional AOE psy for the times when you face tankier enemies. Because of PP regen, this is just as sustainable as summon spam. At that point, the only measure of what is "more efficient" becomes how much time it takes, and in the cases where attack spam works, it takes less time.

Also, while it's often overlooked due to the power of EPAs, mages are actually balanced around a shifting role depending on the type of fight they're in. Against mooks, they trend toward being a damaging aoe caster, while against bosses, they trend toward healing and distributing buffs. They can attack, but unlike fighters, which have one singular role in all battles (single-target dps), they trade some raw physical damage to perform these two other roles.

QuoteThat's not laziness though; that's human nature.  We live our whole lives juggling financial and personal costs, deciding which options give use the greatest reward for the least amount of cost.  I do not think the player is to blame for coming to the conclusion that summons are more powerful, more reliable AND less costly to use in most situations.
Yes, it's human nature. Human nature is to trend toward what's easiest, i.e. laziness. I don't know how you got "blaming the player" out of that, though, because that's the exact opposite of the intention behind what I said. I was specifically saying that you can't blame players for taking the easy road, because it's human nature. What you can do, however, is incentivize them to make a different choice, one that's healthier gameplay-wise.

QuoteHence, the Flee mechanic works just fine; no tweaks needed there.  It's not always the best thing to do, has very clear penalties for using it improperly, but is still rewarding enough that it's still a viable option in some cases.  With any luck, we'll all succeed in doing the same with Summons :( ...
No, the flee mechanic is a horrible mess and doesn't work at all. Feeling already comes with a built-in cost: you're forgoing exp, gold, and potential drops by fleeing the fight, either because you judged the fight to be too difficult or not worth your time. This makes fleeing a tactical choice, with clear consequences. By constantly fleeing from battles, players can end up underleveled, which is a satisfactory tradeoff for the time saved by not fighting. However, if fleeing can fail, then the player is heavily disincentivized from fleeing: if they end up taking just as much damage as they would have if they had just fought the battle normally, there's no longer a tradeoff there; it's just all downsides. As a result, players are conditioned to avoid fleeing, since after it fails once or twice, they end up taking heavy casualties; the risk is not at all worth the reward.

QuoteBut that's an intangible quality.  The measure of "does this menu navigation take too much time for me" isn't something I can directly observe and measure like I can the question of "does Attack Psynergy cost PP and does Summoning cost PP?"
The concept of "too much time" can be quantified. You can directly compare how long it takes to complete battles using one method to another; the one that takes less total time is superior.

As an aside, I commend the players that figure out how to "break" a system. For how much we talk of how broken summons can be for normal battles, I think if you were to interview players about how they played GS on their first or even any subsequent playthrough, only a very small minority would say they did this. Most players wouldn't think of spreading their djinn to enable quick recovery; most players don't even know you can select a "red" summon, much less how the game decides which standby djinn to use. This is the kind of thing you only discover when you're interested in the underlying mechanics of the game and specifically try to get as much out of them as you can. These are power players that specifically look for how to push game mechanics to their limits, like you or I. But to the average player, they see a summon is available, they use it, and the game mechanics take it from there.

QuoteThe only thing is, I don't want it to be weaker against EVERYTHING.  I'm fine with Judgment doing enough damage to OHKO entire groups of enemies (provided there's a tangible trade off for that).  It's only against bosses that I think the damage numbers are too high.
You forget that summons also have a base damage. The base damage is what keeps them relevant against mooks, while the percentage damage is why they scale so hard against bosses. Judgment is 240 base power + 12% of the target's health. Against a 500 HP enemy, the HP% modifier only adds 60 damage. Against a 5000 HP enemy, the HP% modifier adds 600 damage. If you want to nerf summons against bosses but keep them roughly the same against mooks, it's as simple as adding a little more base damage while slashing the HP% modifier.