[RELEASE] Golden Sun: The Balance Age

[Salanewt]

Sounds good. Are there any other animations you would like me to take a look at and/or try to create variants for? Can't make any promises, but still.

Import animations: It could be pretty difficult because of how differently animations are compiled between the two games. But for things like Revive and such, I doubt it would be very hard to add variants that also exist in GS2. Making minor changes to animations like that is pretty easy for me to do.

Although if I were to try, this would be the first thing I would import (from GS1). This is the only good/almost complete animation I was unable to find in GS2. Also no sound, but that seems pretty common for unused animations in general.

[Caledor]

Sounds good. Are there any other animations you would like me to take a look at and/or try to create variants for? Can't make any promises, but still.

Animation-wise i don't think so, cause i always tried to avoid making abilities that would create those kind of problems, but the second revive was REALLY needed so i had to make an exception. And after the 50% reviving i don't think there would be anything left for me to do on in assembly, only small tweaks/fixes with the editor. It's very close to being complete :D

[Salanewt]

That's great! If I don't take a look at it after my exam tonight, then I will likely try to figure it out within the next couple days or so.

[Caledor]

That's great! If I don't take a look at it after my exam tonight, then I will likely try to figure it out within the next couple days or so.

As always, no need to hurry. I'm already very grateful to you and Fox for all the times you've helped me those 11 months and i certainly don't want to rush or pressure you. Good luck for your exam! :D

[Salanewt]

I'm always happy to help! Plus it's fun to dive into the code and...

Wait, 11 months? HAS IT ALMOST BEEN A YEAR NOW?! Damn, lol. I better get my butt going on Disco Sun soon. Might see if I can try out your hack for ideas first though. :P

[VardenSalad]

Alright, one of the real reasons that you feel that TBS is more difficult than TLA, especially before you're given access to good team-wide healing is the size of enemy parties. On average, you facing more random enemies per encounter in TBS than TLA, and it really shows when you can't AoE clear things that hurt, especially early. TLA decides to make you go 4v2 against larger minions, on average, versus TBS giving more smaller enemies.

I'll back this up with some examples of enemy parties in an edit, but it's time for bed here.

[Caledor]

Another thing to consider for sure, i'll be waiting for details

[VardenSalad]

Ok, I don't know the editor perfectly, but I could have sworn there was a way to see enemy groups as they appeared in each stage. If not, I'll just have to use anecdotes for remembering how, like, 5 little spider dudes show up to destroy your party in Kolima Forest and you face, like, an Emu and a Creeper in Air's Rock. Your parties are approximately the same level.

Sigh, Isaac isn't in Sm4sh. I'm pretty disappointed in this even though I had no reason to expect him getting in. I really, really just want Golden Sun 4 so I know how this story ends. Goddamn it.

[Rolina]

Yeah, with Bayonetta being the winner, I think GS is pretty much a dead IP until we get another chance when smash 5 comes out.

[leaf]

Ok, I don't know the editor perfectly, but I could have sworn there was a way to see enemy groups as they appeared in each stage. If not, I'll just have to use anecdotes for remembering how, like, 5 little spider dudes show up to destroy your party in Kolima Forest and you face, like, an Emu and a Creeper in Air's Rock. Your parties are approximately the same level.

Sigh, Isaac isn't in Sm4sh. I'm pretty disappointed in this even though I had no reason to expect him getting in. I really, really just want Golden Sun 4 so I know how this story ends. Goddamn it.

I don't remember the spiders being a big deal in kolima. It was the damn bees that always got me. They do crazy damage for how many they send at you.

[VardenSalad]

Yeah, I guess I just wanted to get the point across that TBS set you against a larger number of smaller enemies that were more difficult to AoE clear, while TLA generally sees you pitted against 2 (rarely 3) medium-sized monsters that generally fail to one round of weapon unleashes without doing any real damage.

I can't tell if TBS' enemies just had higher stats, were more numerous, if party composition changes were that great of an effect (2 warriors, a caster, and a healer vs 2 warriors and 2 casters), djinn availability at different points in the game, relative weapon strength, all that jazz. I have a sinking feeling it's all of those things combined.

HOWEVER, there is no reason that my party should not steamroll through the game if I have my djinn well-organized and my classes optimized. I don't want to make an impossible game, but I don't know how to swing the scale.

[Salanewt]

A part of that as well may be faster level/experience growth in GS2, since a lot of the GS1 enemies that are encountered in GS2 areas are much weaker than the other enemies they appear with. You are also expected to be higher leveled by the end of GS2 than in GS1. 38-44 vs. 18-22? By the time you get to Jupiter Lighthouse, you are most likely stronger than when you beat Venus in the first game. And then returning enemies, which are often weaker than or comparable to the other enemies around them: The fighter bee, since bees came up, may be tougher when you first encounter it around Kalay but is super weak by the time you fight them in the Eastern Sea, because they haven't been scaled up like the player characters. The Eastern Sea happens sooner than Kalay does, yet your GS2 team will probably be around level 19-20 by the time you start boating. Calamar(i), which can be encountered with the bee in GS2 and just before it in GS1, is even worse.

This is also ignoring the fact that it's quite possible that GS2 (or even both games) have battle systems that are not set up for the sheer number of djinn you can find, and this is evident in GS1 where they start placing a djinn in every second room by the time you get to Kalay. Or so it feels like anyway. Very few enemies (exclusively bosses I think) actually have the ability to manipulate your djinn/class setups. And then you have Isaac & co's lower djinn count when not using transfer data, meaning that the expectation is for the player to not find everything in a given playthrough. Which, while fair, makes the games much easier if you actually do find everything... almost too easy.

Summary: Enemy strength scales differently between the two games, but player strength also grows differently. Your GS1 team is likely weaker than your GS2 game at almost every point (even starting levels), and the enemies in GS2 are not set up to deal with that. Especially true when considering djinn.

Stronger enemies are also present that are closer in strength to the player characters in the second game, but then everything you brought up becomes especially relevant when combined with some of these issues.

Summary of summary: GS1 is more balanced than GS2. At least without finding all of the djinn.


Not even going to bother talking about the summon system or Mia either.



Edit: Also, Caledor; I plan to check those things out for you soonish. Quite possibly tonight or tomorrow night.

[Caledor]

I'll try to put all those tips to good use. There are many ways to fix this... the easiest (and safest) one is to increase the stat multipliers for tla enemies. Another one is to increase the number of enemies but that has the side effect of increasing exp. Also keep in mind that the lower stat/level for enemies and higher number of djinn is somehow mitigated by weaker equipment (in my mod at least. in vanilla TLA equipment stats skyrocketed from the western sea onwards and made things even worse).

@Varden: from the editor you can view enemy groups by clicking on Individuals from the enemies tab. It doesn't list where they are but they are grouped by location and the wiki also can help with that

@Squirtle: Great! If all goes well, i should be done with this during the holidays, which is way earlier than my original goal (the 1 year anniversary of the thread).

[Salanewt]

Mars revive is good to go, and I even threw in a Jupiter one as an added bonus. It uses the same arguments as the GS2 overhaul patch, and the old Mercury revive pointer is deleted because it has been obsoleted. A couple variables and/or values have been tweaked slightly and made marginally less flexible, but that probably doesn't matter for the most part.

Apparently the Revive animation makes the target flash to a different palette swap briefly, which is noticeable on large enemies. I thought it was the patch, but I tested it on an unmodified version and it seems to do the same thing there. The animation itself obscures the swap on smaller enemies and probably the PCs at least. So... yeah. It should be available in the downloads section for anyone who wants it.



I haven't looked into advanced reviving yet, but I can't see that being too hard when the time comes. I'll take a quick peek soon enough, depending on how my studies go.

[Caledor]

Just patched it. Psynergy Revive works wonders for all elements but when using Quartz or Dew the djinni graphic becomes messed up (basically becomes missingNo from pokemon)

[Salanewt]

Huh. I'll have to take another look I guess; I forgot to test djinn. Sorry about that!

Edit: Aaaand I broke it. I'll get back to it later.

[Caledor]

no problem of course ;) just reporting back to you

EDIT: opening post updated. Made some rearrangements, added detailed info on debuffs.

[Caledor]

Ok guys, time for suggestions.

As you probably know, currently both in GS and in TLA enemies are stronger due to having x1.5 HP, x1.25 Atk, x1.2 Def, x1.25 Agi. The point is, GS is better balanced than TLA (TLA is easier) so having the same multipliers for both games is kinda wrong.

IMO there are 3 ways to address this: increase the TLA multipliers only, decrease the GS multipliers only, or reduce the GS multipliers AND increase the TLA multipliers. I also want to avoid to simply increase the number of enemies in TLA like varden suggested some time ago cause that affects experience earned.

I still haven't thought about numbers but in the first 2 cases it's likely going to be a ~10% increase (decrease) to TLA (GS) multipliers, while in the third a 5%~7% decrease to GS and a 5%~7% increase to TLA.

I'm asking you cause, while I seriously think that even a 15% increase in TLA might not be enough to bring it close to GS's level of difficulty, i'm really worried about early game TLA balance (eg. up to level 10-13 so Air's Rock). In this stage Sheba already faints a lot if you're not careful and it might become very frustrating with an increase in difficulty. Also, some early game bosses (and maybe some djinn or mimics) are already big threats as they are now (Briggs and King Scorpion above all).
But at the same time, GS's level of difficulty was generally praised for being fine.

ATM, i'm inclined to tweak both games. The effect on them would be less noticeable, especially early game, which is the the part that worries me the most.

What do you guys think?

PS. if you think you have a better idea to address this issue do not hesitate and let me know!

[Rolina]

Problem with TLA is that it goes full open for a while, and that's why things are considered to be "easier" - they had to be build to account for multiple sequences of completion.  To be honest... I've no idea how to address this, apart from maybe applying the monster coliseum monster level up feature into the main game. :/

[Caledor]

Problem with TLA is that it goes full open for a while, and that's why things are considered to be "easier" - they had to be build to account for multiple sequences of completion.  To be honest... I've no idea how to address this, apart from maybe applying the monster coliseum monster level up feature into the main game. :/

No wait, that's not the point. The point is that identical enemies in GS and TLA have different levels, being higher for TLA, which results in a easier game cause you fight the same enemy with a stronger party in the second game. The full open thing might be considered an issue but is not what i was talking about