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[RELEASE] Golden Sun: The Balance Age

Started by Caledor, 24, January, 2015, 12:29:46 PM

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Salanewt

I honestly thought that the two games were pretty comparable in difficulty, just with GS1 maybe being slightly harder for both the smaller party and the slower level gain. Punch Ants are one level higher than Vermin with only defence being higher (by a single point), yet they also give slightly more experience. Even the bat enemies are different. Standard GS1 bats and giant bats in GS2 have very similar stats for the most part, yet the bats in GS2 give six experience points while the ones in GS1 only give two. Same moveset, same attack stat... this doesn't seem to be true for identical enemies though, where only the level is boosted and/or a new vulnerability is sometimes added.

For a better comparison, you can look at the enemies in Taopo. Two enemies are new, and the rest come from around Kalay or the cave dungeon in Vault. The four highest experience counts in Taopo are listed below:

Ghost Mage: 80 exp
Cave Troll: 106 exp
Dire Wolf: 118 exp
Faery: 172 exp

And the only stat that the wolf beats the troll in is agility. Everything else, even coin reward, is either equal or lower.

So my suggestion would be to consider changing experience/leveling rates before going after stats themselves.
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Caledor

I don't really want to touch exp gained, cause it was made in a way that when the GS1 party joins, the 8 characters are pretty much at the same level. Moreover, the reason exp varies so greatly for no apparent reasons is that enemies carried over from GS1 had their level increased and everything else untouched. The wolf gives higher experience than the Troll cause the latter's "real" level is 16, not 23. And is one of the best level 16 enemies by exp gain. I think that enemies introduced in TLA give higher amount of exp than expected in order to address this "unbalance".

Rolina

Yeah, XP and cash rewards do need to be looked at at some point, that's a good point.  I hadn't actually considered that...  It might be worth looking into making a spreadsheet or something to gauge how to level enemies up and down based on the trends of their species lines in case you have to raise or lower a level, and some enemies just need to have reworked XP rewards in general.

GSDjinn

Hi i just done done playing your balanced version of GS and am now trying to transfer my save to your balanced version The Lost Age and it keeps telling me invalid password, i have made sure i copied the password perfectly, how do i fix this? :NeutralStar:

Caledor

#624
Quote from: GSDjinn on 22, December, 2015, 08:13:17 AM
Hi i just done done playing your balanced version of GS and am now trying to transfer my save to your balanced version The Lost Age and it keeps telling me invalid password, i have made sure i copied the password perfectly, how do i fix this? :NeutralStar:
Hi GSDjinn, first and foremost thank you for playing through the first half of the game with the mod.
About the password, i just tested myself and everything works fine, so my advice is to check your password again.
Anyway, if you upload your save file somewhere and post the link here i can test directly with yours and let you know.

Salanewt

Experience: While you definitely have a good point, I can't imagine it would hurt to consider just redistributing them a bit at the very least. Like that Faery; 40 or so points could be given to some of the other enemies to balance them out a bit without changing much else.

Role: Makes sense. I remember dropping coin rewards a lot for Disco Sun, but there wasn't a particular formula or anything. Would be interesting to see what you come up with.
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Caledor

Quote from: Lord Squirtle on 22, December, 2015, 04:42:38 PM
Experience: While you definitely have a good point, I can't imagine it would hurt to consider just redistributing them a bit at the very least. Like that Faery; 40 or so points could be given to some of the other enemies to balance them out a bit without changing much else.
It doesn't hurt at all. Actually it makes sense moving exp around to balance out things. But just moving exp would have no impact whatsoever on the actual game played, only on consistency (like the change i suggested some time ago, rotating the swords icons). So i'll leave it for later, when i'm troughly done with balancing gameplay and i can afford to spend time on those minor changes. It's just a matter of priorities ;)

Salanewt

That's a good point. Especially with how minor it would seem while also being a pretty major thing to actually change.

Just curious, but what are you prioritizing right now? Finished my last exam earlier, so I plan to get back to your earlier requests pretty soon (% Reviving and Mars Revive, I recall). I may know how I broke djinn animations, but it will suck if I'm right. Also helping someone else with something relatively minor yet potentially fun; that may only a couple more days or so, at least.

Let me know if you need a hand with anything else!
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Caledor

#628
@Priorities: tomorrow it's gonna be the (not so) great "gotta buy gift for parents and friends"-day, so definitively that one, haha.

Jokes aside, the plan is to get the rebalance of enemies done (still gotta decide HOW to rebalance them from the options i wrote on my previous post), add the "Mars Revive", the "Field 50% Revive" and release v1.30, which already contains the changes included in the changelog below.

Removing overflow classes from GS1 as well would be an added bonus that might come with or after v1.30. the only thing i need for that is a way to access the PC ID within the class function. TLA had it within a registry, GS1 doesn't and i couldn't find a pointer to the PC in RAM either... which is kinda strange IMO.

Anyway, that's all I have in mind ATM. As you can see here's no real priority system cause i just focus on a 1-2 thing at a time and get them done. I'll look for other things to change only after i'm done with those, unless someone else's comment brings up something interesting.

[spoiler=Changelog in progress for v1.30]4 turn Death Curse in gs1
Remedy psynergy created (single target Tonic).
break cost increased to 12
restore cost increased to 6
potent cure cost increased to 14
nature boon cost increased to 18, bp decreased to 500
ply series cost increased to 5-10-24, pure ply bp decreased to 700
Haunt triggering rate to 40%
Delusion makes you miss 70% of the time
Base chance to inflict Delusion to 70%
Characters wrapped in Delusion can't unleash
Star Magician tweaked (yes, again)
New enemy: Brutal Wolf, replaces Creeper in the Air's Rock interior


Sticky minions:
   wild gorilla's hp +50
   turtle dragon hp +20 [/spoiler]

Salanewt

Sounds good. I'll take another look at the revive stuff again tonight, just doing some general research right now. Same with the revive I think. If you're set on the multiplier solution, then I would opt for increasing them in GS2 at the very least.
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Caledor

It's not like i'm set on that solution... it's just the first that came to mind cause it's easy and bound to get the job done. I'm leaning towards the -5%/+5% (=both games) due to the concerns i wrote about in that post, but i'm very open to other ideas.

Rolina

Hmm... you know, increasing enemy variety isn't that bad of an idea - I like the approach with the brutal wolf.  Maybe you could simply add a fourth tier for monsters to help better tweak the problem to what you need...

Also, what element is Remedy?  Mercury?

Caledor


GSDjinn

Quote from: Caledor on 22, December, 2015, 08:55:37 AM
Quote from: GSDjinn on 22, December, 2015, 08:13:17 AM
Hi i just done done playing your balanced version of GS and am now trying to transfer my save to your balanced version The Lost Age and it keeps telling me invalid password, i have made sure i copied the password perfectly, how do i fix this? :NeutralStar:
Hi GSDjinn, first and foremost thank you for playing through the first half of the game with the mod.
About the password, i just tested myself and everything works fine, so my advice is to check your password again.
Anyway, if you upload your save file somewhere and post the link here i can test directly with yours and let you know.

Here i think you can download it from here :NeutralStar:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B1ZS3mL5XTI3YTlybDZ2Ry1WNDQ&usp=sharing

Caledor

Quote from: GSDjinn on 23, December, 2015, 02:09:59 AM
Quote from: Caledor on 22, December, 2015, 08:55:37 AM
Quote from: GSDjinn on 22, December, 2015, 08:13:17 AM
Hi i just done done playing your balanced version of GS and am now trying to transfer my save to your balanced version The Lost Age and it keeps telling me invalid password, i have made sure i copied the password perfectly, how do i fix this? :NeutralStar:
Hi GSDjinn, first and foremost thank you for playing through the first half of the game with the mod.
About the password, i just tested myself and everything works fine, so my advice is to check your password again.
Anyway, if you upload your save file somewhere and post the link here i can test directly with yours and let you know.

Here i think you can download it from here :NeutralStar:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B1ZS3mL5XTI3YTlybDZ2Ry1WNDQ&usp=sharing

It works, check your password again.

Rolina

Quote from: Caledor on 22, December, 2015, 09:14:35 PM
Yes, obviously mercury
Eh, you never know.  You could have made a Venus or Mars recovery spell - was worth the ask. :3

Caledor

#636
Quote from: Rolina on 23, December, 2015, 07:39:57 AM
Quote from: Caledor on 22, December, 2015, 09:14:35 PM
Yes, obviously mercury
Eh, you never know.  You could have made a Venus or Mars recovery spell - was worth the ask. :3
Well it was more like i thought people knew the element from "single target TONIC", but the answer came like that cause i wrote from the phone for once and i don't really like doing so :P.
Anyway, i'm quite satisfied with how i balanced out the elements, so i don't think i'll give a recovery spell to other elements. Want to keep the best healing on mercury cause it offsets with having the weakest offense in the game.

Caledor

Progress report for v1.30

+ Implemented the -5%/+5% on enemy stats in TBS/TLA
+ Seal from Luff and Rime has a 150% base success rate and is affected by Luck.

The second was mostly done to avoid making Deadbeard a walk in the park.

Now all that's left is for me to check that all the enemies in TLA have the correct stats and a generic check of enemy abilities since I just remember that i've never done that.

There were other minor things that crossed my mind like making custom icons for the Herculean Axe and Vajra Mace, but i kinda renounced on that for the time being but might pop up again for a later version.

Another thing i gave up is the full class separation on GS1. That thing is way crazier than on TLA, I don't have neither the character ID (they literally don't exist in GS1) nor the class value stored. I'd have to implement or somehow replace the first, track the functions for the second and edit other 2 or 3 functions to create the space the whole thing requires. Basically, the effort is too much for the result. Maybe in the future i'll try again but i feel that this is the very last thing i'll ever do on this mod.

Rolina

Wait, double checking here - is that variable stats on foes, or minor tweaks on foes?

@Class Separation:  Wow, looks like that'll be a pretty tough mod, huh?  Do we know what exactly will have to be done, or is it still a shot in the dark at this point?

Caledor

#639
Quote from: Rolina on 26, December, 2015, 07:21:02 PM
Wait, double checking here - is that variable stats on foes, or minor tweaks on foes?

@Class Separation:  Wow, looks like that'll be a pretty tough mod, huh?  Do we know what exactly will have to be done, or is it still a shot in the dark at this point?
The rule of thumb is that every foe has now -5% to its stats in TBS and +5% stats on TLA compared to the current version. There are a few exceptions, like in TLA the superbosses weren't changed but i simply won't bother listing all of them.

About class separation, yes I know what needs to be done. The hard part is to track functions to find a point when is the class value stored in a registry. Then comes the VERY time consuming part of coding the whole thing (which is pretty much all in my head already). TLA was way easier cause we had a single function to tweak and both the class ID and char ID stored in different registries. Both values are needed for implementing class separation and in GS1 ATM i have neither of them. And as if this wasn't enough, the TLA function is split into smaller functions (hence the tracking required).