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My Personal GS Hack

Started by Awec, 31, March, 2014, 06:17:15 PM

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Awec

Hi guys, you may not remember me since I decided to vanish for a load of months but I'm back now and ready to hack!
This will be my personal hack for GS so naturally it's going to a mix of what I think it needs and what I think would be cool/fun. I'm probably going to be working on it little at a time so it'll probably take a while before I have something I think is worth sharing. I'm also going to hack both games to make it nice and continuous.

With all the intro out of the way here's some features I've thought up that I'm going to try to accomplish:

  • Swap Ivan and Isaac's elements - so Isaac will be a Jupiter adept and Ivan Venus. I've always felt that Earth psynergy was the weakest and just generally disappointing so having an Earth Mage means I can make some nice high cost spells for Ivan to cast. Isaac on the other hand... just feels like a Jupiter adept.
  • Rebalance the classes - Remember how everyone hated Garet? I'm hoping to change that. I've decided on very little at this stage but I'm thinking that whereas Isaac would be a fast hard-hitter with little defense (glass cannon) Garet would also deal heavy damage but more slowly and with more bulk to take hits. When I get on to TLA I'll be using the class separation patch too so hopefully the classes will be more interesting and useful than normally.
  • Rebalance psynergy - A recurring complaint seems to be that psynergy quickly loses its usefulness, resulting in most battles being mindless normal attacking. I'm going to try and change this, making higher costing and more powerful spells. Also going to attempt implementing more strategic spells.
  • Make djinn more important - so here you might be thinking there was nothing wrong with djinn in the original game, but let's not forget the tried and tested boss-fighting formula of spamming summons. With my system, that may not be a possible strategy: base classes will have their stats reduced and in particular the affinity each adept has with their element has been reduced, so psynergy spamming will be most effective with all djinn ready.
  • General increase in difficulty - Not sure how much more I'm going to deal with this but I might see about increasing the defense of most enemies to further discourage blindly relying on normal Attacks. I'll make sure to balance weapons with these changes in some way.

So yeah, leave me suggestions and tell me what you think.
I. Am. A. Spoon.
Yes, a spoon that is awesome that is a Jupiter adept that is one of the Anemos that lives on the freaking moon.
What of it?

Thunder-squall

I'd like to see your work presented as experiments.  For example, present a hypothesis for what you think the effect of changing class balance in a particular way may be, and then *test* how true that is.  I think that'll help you work, help us read your work, and also break down your larger goal into smaller, more manageable but still rewarding pieces. It's also good prep for future technical writing anyone might do.

Awec

Progress update: I've started experimenting with animations, ability effects and power - basically I'm trying to find out what looks cool and does cool stuff for the moment. In addition, I've been changing item drops in particular from Mimics. It always bothered me that Mimics were these interesting looking treasure chests that would spring a trap on you when you went over to investigate and yet after all your trouble you would only get a game ticket. Now Mimics will drop interesting artifacts that should make unique equipment slightly more varied.

@Thunder-squall I'm just playing round with the editor trying to have fun, that all sounds too in-depth for my liking. However, as an attempt to start:
Hypothesis 1: I am going to increase the difference in stat changes between "levels" in a class tree which should make using djinn have a higher cost and so balance out somewhat the strategy of spamming djinn and summons.
Hypothesis 2: I am going to increase the PP and power increases of spells in a psynergy tree or add additional effects to psynergy which should make using psynergy a more viable strategy later in the game.
Hypothesis 3: I am going to introduce new artifacts and modify existing ones to have more artifacts giving bonuses to elemental power and resistance, which should also make using psynergy a more viable strategy later in the game and also reduce the penalty in using dual elemental classes as opposed to single elemental classes.
Hypothesis 4: I am going to be introducing a variety of spells in attempt to make Garet's base class tree more useful.
Hypothesis 5: I am going to assign a category to each class tree labelling it as "Support" "Attacker" "Single-Target Nuker" "AOE Nuker" "Tank" (potentially others) by giving every character access to at least one class tree of each category I hope to make the game more varied and interesting.
I. Am. A. Spoon.
Yes, a spoon that is awesome that is a Jupiter adept that is one of the Anemos that lives on the freaking moon.
What of it?

Aile~♥

If I revived this topic on KC:MM I'd get a warn for it. Anywho, on the subject of buffing base damage Psynergy, since that does tend to come out as useless by the end of GS2: While spells would indeed appreciate an increase in power towards the endgame, another good way of "buffing" base damage abilities is to boost the Defence stats of foes while lowering their HP. This means that physical attacks will deal less damage (though it might still be the same damage proportionately depending), while base damage abilities deal proportionately more damage.

As for things that look cool, take an ability slot that already had a physical attacking ability in it (as in, where the character is shown to attack the foe in conjunction with the ability animation) and give it Animation #165, argument 4. The character using this skill will leap forward and strike, creating a sudden upward blast of purple energy. You can also use this animation on a spell slot and it will look good there, too. The character will strike their casting pose, and that same sudden explosion will go off in front of them. It looks very nice as an AoE spell.
[sprite=16, 6, 0]:P[/sprite]

Lloyd: Easy as pie.
Genis: Sweet!
Presea: ...Sweetie pie...
Zelos: Let's not start on this again...

[spoiler=epic mindscrew][/spoiler]