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[RELEASE] Golden Sun Reloaded

Started by Caledor, 22, December, 2016, 03:56:07 PM

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Caledor

#680
Whelp, this is a lot of (amazing) feedback. It's been a while since i played so i don't think that taking my time in answering will change much, i'd rather write immediately what comes to mind.

So:

Quotedouble dragons in Mars Lighthouse
This fight is very tricky, no doubt about it. I clearly remember having my @#$ handed to me last time i played and i was about to nerf them cause they felt very unfair and overwhelming, especially right after fighting them in Jup Lighthouse. But i realized i made a fundamental mistake in the strategy i used, and by doing the exact opposite the second time, with the same team more or less, it became quite the easy win. I don't wanna give it away since you haven't beaten them yet, so all i can tell you is that strategy is key against them. Pick the wrong one and yes, you'll probably feel like it's completely hopeless. I don't know exactly how you approached them but this was my experience.


QuoteRank 3 Psynergy should have higher costs relative to their effect
Interesting point. I honestly don't remember right now why i made them that way, so atm i tend to agree with you.

QuotePP regen on equipment switched to other stats.
With PP doubling up as an offensive stat on top of being fuel, PP regen is needed. Healers are supposed to pick PP regen due to high cost of AOE healing, losing in offense, while offensive mages pick +PP equipment. Never running out of PP is a lesser issue for me. But it's still an issue... and my feeling is that addressing the point above might kill 2 birds with one stone.

Quote(B) Reducing the factor of RNG in the outcome of combat
That's the hardest part to "balance". There will always be that unlucky streak when it feels unfair so i can only look at crude numbers, draw a line and say "this much is fine".

About HP/damage it sounds a bit odd to me... after JL is basically endgame but the stat progression follows a mostly linear growth. Actually i remember feeling that the "hardest" point of both games was the beginning, while as i progressed, with more options being available, fights tend to be safer and safer. For example... djinn are very unforgiving at the beginning but in lategame i can steamroll them with ease.

Instant death... it's been brought up many times before but i honestly still think it has a purpose. I think it's possible to tweak teams and classes to somehow improve the odds against it so it encourages variety. Your statement about stun and sleep wearing off on their own suggests that this might be mostly a gut reaction cause not addressing the issue immediately is much worse unless you're being insanely pressured. Aka either the fight is so easy you can take you time and let the issue solve itself (so it's not an issue at all) or it wouldn't have made much a difference wheter it's death or stun since you're facing too much pressure nonetheless. HP to 1 already exists within the game and has a different purpose... dunno honestly how the unavoidable curse will change or improve the current mechanics, need time to think about it.

Quoteenemies should call for reinforcements more often
gut reaction to this and the +50% HP suggestion was that random encounters might become a chore. Also, there are technical limitations for numbers of enemies in a fight and depends mostly on enemy size. It's easy for oozes to be in groups of 5 but there are some enemies where the screen will glitch at 3. Oozes are actually the exception.

QuoteLevelling speed doubled, levelup bonuses halved.
Lv99 is not required at all, as is most RPGs. 99 is just a number, it exists for those that enjoy the grind. There's no point in tweaking the entire game only to ease Lv99 if end result is the same as current Lv 50 or 60. Stat bonuses already take a big hit after lv 40 and are affected by diminishing returns. Powerlevelers should be a bit rewarded for their efforts and the game is balanced for those that avoid the grind route. Yeah, on this front i think that status quo is best.

QuoteMaybe each cursed item should autoboost luck to 40. [...] Is it possible to also change the "cannot act because cursed" effect of cursed items to something else like "loses 25% of their max hp due to curse"?
Won't happen, actually the ring decreases luck (power has a price), and the turn loss basically guarantees that the cursed user has the ring. I'm a big supporter of this kind of "make a choice" gameplay elements since you can farm both stuff for mage and warrior but use only one at any time. Glorified poison (the hp loss) would take that away imo.

QuoteIs it possible to re-code the djinn set-standby-recovery [...] This would block the above tactic I mentioned of cheesing fights with interchanging Shade and Flash, which in turn would make other defensive Djinn and abilities more appealing.
I feel like i can easily achieve that goal by nerfing a bit more those djinn, since those are the only one responsible for the problem.

QuoteOnce again, thank you for the awesome mod to one of the best JRPGs ever.
I'm glad you enjoyed it so far and i'm the one thanking you for taking the time to write this report, seriously. Thanks a lot! :D

Condrak

#681
Hello all,

I have been using the hack for GS1 and was wondering what happened with enemy spawns. I cannot seem to be able to get a specific enemy when hard resetting, I assume this is intended, since Caledor points to a RNG guide instead of going for vanilla methods. Is this the case and if so, how do I even calculate the RNG by the time I get the enemy I want? Or are hard resets a thing from the past that don't really matter? I was under the impression RNG values changed with previous encounters.

This is because I am seeing things like this in the guide:

"To sum it all up:

-Hard Reset (turn GBA off/on)
-Battle Start
-Six Attack Psynergies
-Djinni unleash (DP method)
-Enemy dies
-Item dropped at end of battle"

Doesn't that mean that I need the required enemy in the first battle after a hard reset?

Thank you.

Caledor

RNG values haven't changed. What changed is damage and HP, so strict methods with a specific chain of actions to do that guarantee the kill on the last one, don't work anymore.

As for enemies, they might have changed after a hard reset cause i rearranged enemy groups.

Condrak

#683
Quote from: Caledor on 24, May, 2020, 08:29:34 AM
RNG values haven't changed. What changed is damage and HP, so strict methods with a specific chain of actions to do that guarantee the kill on the last one, don't work anymore.

As for enemies, they might have changed after a hard reset cause i rearranged enemy groups.

Sorry but that's not what I was asking, your last sentence is the one I care about.

My question is, are you able to get any item now that the enemy we need is not appearing the first battle after a hard reset?

I tried for the 2 Fenrirs(whatever they are called) in Altmiller cave for prophet's hat and also tried for the kikuichimonji, but they never appear in the first battle after a reset. I don't really care about how they are, the whole game has been really fun with your mod, I just want to know how am I supposed to get any item now that the order in which they appear after a reset makes them the 4th encounter or more. Thanks though!

Edit: I might not be explaining myself clearly, every time I hard reset in either Altmiller or Venus lighthouse, the first enemy is a specific one, the order of the following battles always follows the same pattern too. So, for example, in Altmiller cave, the 2 fenrirs appear always at the 4th battle when trying the hard reset method in the Djinn room

Caledor

Quote from: Condrak on 24, May, 2020, 08:47:25 AM

Sorry but that's not what I was asking, your last sentence is the one I care about.

My question is, are you able to get any item now that the enemy we need is not appearing the first battle after a hard reset?

I tried for the 2 Fenrirs (whatever they are called) in Altmiller cave for prophet's hat and also tried for the kikuichimonji, but they never appear in the first battle after a reset. I don't really care about how they are, the whole game has been really fun with your mod, I just want to know how am I supposed to get any item now that the order in which they appear after a reset makes them the 4th encounter or more. Thanks though!

Edit: I might not be explaining myself clearly, every time I hard reset in either Altmiller or Venus lighthouse, the first enemy is a specific one, the order of the following battles always follows the same pattern too. So, for example, in Altmiller cave, the 2 fenrirs appear always at the 4th battle when trying the hard reset method in the Djinn room

I don't think fleeing consumes RNG other than the one for the "got first strike" in the first fight after a reset, so you can keep fleeing until you get the desired fight and start counting RNG from 1.

In the worst case scenario, there's always the brute force method. That is, count your rngs until 31 and tweak stuff from there with savestates, like adding or subtracting a few by altering your actions slightly.

Condrak

#685
Quote from: Caledor on 24, May, 2020, 09:17:24 AM


I don't think fleeing consumes RNG other than the one for the "got first strike" in the first fight after a reset, so you can keep fleeing until you get the desired fight and start counting RNG from 1.

In the worst case scenario, there's always the brute force method. That is, count your rngs until 31 and tweak stuff from there with savestates, like adding or subtracting a few by altering your actions slightly.


Ah I see, thank you sir. I will try then. I just thought the hard reset before battle was a requirement to have the RNG "clean" by the time you kill the enemy with the item.

Oh and really, amazing mod so far, will go for the lost age after this. It gave the game a much needed refresh and a harder difficulty. I love it, thanks a lot for your efforts.

Caledor

#686
v1.76 coming IS UP.

Changelog:
- PP cost of all base damage and healing spell recalculated with a new formula.
- Slightly lowered the strength of the 4 best staff unleashes
- Berserk circlet unleash rate down to 10%
- Base damage psynergy bug fixed.
- Guardian class: +5% HP, -5% MP

About the bug: E.Power was contributing only with half its intended power to base damage spells and EPAs. No big deal for the latter since it's never been high to begin with, but it was pretty important for endgame base damage spell balance, where the difference is between a x1.8 (intended) multiplier and a x1.4 (resulting) on average.

I'm updating the docs in the meantime. If you notice any mismatch, especially with PP values, after the patches are released, please leave a comment at that cell within the doc (with the right value) and i'll fix it.

About the nerf to the staff unleashes:

I think that, while warriors have unleashes as a primary damage source, for mages it should be their secondary, with their psynergy set being the primary.

Reasoning is that if unleashes for mages are always the best option, the offensive part of the psynergy set would lose all meaning, since the unleashes are free. Oh and BTW, if you choose to build an unleshing staff user, keep in mind that EPower is very important. Trading epower for unleash rate (example: replace robe with mithril vest) might imply a loss of damage on average.

Tests were done with my usual Fateweaver Sheba, by comparing Lachesis Rule against Scrouge at 55%, 90% and 100% Unleash Rate (Tip: the 90% unleash rate build was better on average than the 100% one :P).

If you happen to discover that for some offensive mages unleashes completely dominate their psynergy set, let me know and i'll look into it.

Dark Mits

Thank you for the swift reply. I revert with further feedback ^^



Quote from: Caledor on 22, May, 2020, 06:34:39 PMdouble dragons in Mars Lighthouse
I will retry them with a new tactic. There are definitely more options that I have not yet explored, especially since I have locked myself to monoelements for this first playthrough with the mod. I have also tried the tactic of having 2 djinn on standy per character, to have rank 4 summons available on turn #3, without positive results though.

Quote
With PP doubling up as an offensive stat on top of being fuel, PP regen is needed. Healers are supposed to pick PP regen due to high cost of AOE healing, losing in offense, while offensive mages pick +PP equipment. Never running out of PP is a lesser issue for me. But it's still an issue... and my feeling is that addressing the point above might kill 2 birds with one stone.
What you say is indeed true. My observation is that right until the fight in Jupiter Lighthouse PP is a resource that has to be managed. However, once the group goes to 8 members, then we simply exhaust the front party's PP, switch to the back party and repeat. Due to the high PP regen available from both equipment (during combat), spammable Ether, Ember and Aroma, and walking around (out of combat), I have been able to do random encounters in Mars Lighthouse without ever needing to go back to Prox to sleep. On the contrary, up to Jupiter Lighthouse I remember burning Mountain Waters and Psy Crystals.

Quote(B) Reducing the factor of RNG in the outcome of combat
I found the contrary relating to Djinn. Maybe that was though because I was trying to get them always as soon as they were available. In fact, my major gripe with Djinn fights is that they tend to run a lot, which is compounded by their multiple actions per turn in mid and end-game ^^. 2 specific Djinn that I remember being slightly harder than the rest are:
- That Venus (or was it Mercury?) djinn south of Naribwe
- The Jupiter djinn southwest of Tundaria Tower

Regarding instant death, I will admit my feedback comes from an additional specific limitation that I impose to myself on all RPGs that I play; permadeath. Basically, if a single character dies a non-scripted death, I consider it as a game over and reload from the last save. This is indeed a personal gripe, and I admit I should not have brought that up, when death is technically just another "debuff" like sleep or stun.

Quotegut reaction to this and the +50% HP suggestion was that random encounters might become a chore. Also, there are technical limitations for numbers of enemies in a fight and depends mostly on enemy size. It's easy for oozes to be in groups of 5 but there are some enemies where the screen will glitch at 3. Oozes are actually the exception.
This was a large typo from me which I didn't notice because I did not proofread my entire comment... I meant for bosses to have more HP and less damage, in order to further reduce the effectiveness of summon rushing, while also allowing characters with djinn on recovey to not die after 2 enemy attacks. I do know about the 16383HP limit, which could "circumvented" by allowing bosses to passively recover HP per turn, but that brings the issue of bosses becoming even harder than intended as more turns pass.
Random encoutners are fine. Though I do admit I have trouble with Wonder Birds, but that's something that reaching lvl45 should fix.

Quote(regarding Shade and Flash) I feel like i can easily achieve that goal by nerfing a bit more those djinn, since those are the only one responsible for the problem.
I fear that nerfing them to be equal to Granite would simply make them "stat Djinn", like many other Djinn that we don't bother using since there are other more powerful options. In fact, outside of Flash, Shade, Aroma, Eddy, Kite, Ground, Petra and Haze, I don't remember using the rest of the Djinn for anything other than putting them on standby before a boss to unleash them.

I'd say that this is a general issue with the whole concept of Djinn that no number-tweaking can solve, and which would require reworking the entire battle and class system.

Pie Burritos

No luck with Dullahan yet. I've been a little depressed with how easily he's crushing me and have lost a bit of motivation. Ok, maybe more than a bit.
Anyways, I wanted to get in on this. The Fire Dragons are really the first boss fight you face after you obtain your second party, so it stands to reason that it would be very difficult without any sort of change in tactics. Also, limiting yourself to mono-classes will naturally make things more difficult... mono-classses suck.

Quoteonce the group goes to 8 members, then we simply exhaust the front party's PP, switch to the back party and repeat
I think of this as good design! It forces you to use all your adepts, and it's basically necessary, especially in fights like the Star Magician, which is a huge endurance battle.
Quote1 free Wish Well per 2 rounds
Sounds like using Pure Wish every single round will put on a considerable PP drain then. (Which I know for a fact)

Quoteif a single character dies a non-scripted death, I consider it as a game over and reload from the last save
Are the Doom Dragon and Dullahan even beatable with this little rule? (Technically yes, but the chances seem beyond minuscule without power leveling)

Quotemy major gripe with Djinn fights is that they tend to run a lot, which is compounded by their multiple actions per turn
I found this very frustrating as well, but it helps to try to poison them with a djinn unleash like wheeze. They take poison damage every single action, and it kills them off pretty effectively. You can also psynergy seal them to cripple their offense (I think).

QuoteRank 3 Psynergy should have higher costs relative to their effect
Honestly, I feel that it's fine how it is for ST healing. Bosses in the endgame (where tier 3 healing is gained) have the potential for ridiculous amounts of damage (this is a good thing) and ST healing should be very strong considering that MT healing is otherwise massively better. And by design, MT healing should be better, but ST healing does need a bit of help.
Wait, I think I got a little off track. Anyways, my point is that it's ok for tier 3 to be more efficient than tier 2 because mid game threats don't deal as much burst as endgame threats, with maybe the exception of a few bosses. But if the rest of the bosses got adjusted...?

QuoteI don't remember using the rest of the Djinn
A bunch of the EPA style djinn aren't very worth using, but I've found uses for agility boosting djinn (Balrog), defense reducing djinn (Sentinel), as well as Mud and Flower during the midgame for sustain while out exploring (also Mud is used in some boss fights as a replacement for agility boosts).
And on that note, as much as I love Mud and Flower, consider nerfing them Caledor, since they are incredibly free sources of strong damage and healing during the midgame.

QuoteBase damage psynergy bug fixed.
WHOA NO WAY! Scourge users are pleased with this. Also I might have liked this for Star Magician... It would have been nice to sweep those balls out of the way with a barrage of MT psynergy instead of having to rely on stronger Unleashes and EPAs and taking them down one by one.

Dark Mits

Quote from: Pie Burritos on 27, May, 2020, 01:05:28 AMAlso, limiting yourself to mono-classes will naturally make things more difficult... mono-classses suck.
Indeed, which is why I want to retry the game with dual-element, and possibly later with tri-element classes. Of course I understand that they need many Djinn to "take off" compared to mono-element, like in Vanilla ^^

Quote from: Pie Burritos on 27, May, 2020, 01:05:28 AMI think of this as good design! It forces you to use all your adepts, and it's basically necessary, especially in fights like the Star Magician, which is a huge endurance battle.
I agree. Requiring to use all 8 members is indeed an amazing design. My observation was simply that:
(a) Player power effectively tripled immediately (instead of gradually) once you get Isaac and co.. Double number of members, with additional equipment that has been brought over and can be exchanged between them, and with better Djinn distribution options. The result is that the front row party can experience a significant power increase, and the back party can immediately take over if something goes bad. For example, with 4 members if your main-healer gets stunned you have to use an elixir on the exact next turn and also use another character to take over healing for that round, but with 8 members you just replace your main healer with the back-party healer and waste 0 actions.
(b) Random enemies retain their linear power progress and do not immediately increase in power. For reference, I completed Magma Rock in one single go, whereas I had to retreat to sleep and restock for Air, Gaia and Water Rocks by up to 5 times (Air Rock especially since you only have 3 members).
(c) The first boss you encounter with 8 members (the double dragons) is a case of avoiding OHKO. For all games once you can guarantee that you "can't die", a fight becomes an issue of attrition. This is true for nearly all boss fights in the Reloaded mod, and something that I love. But with 8 members there is no attrition, PP becomes infinite. So the difficulty stems from simply avoiding getting OHKO'ed.

Quote from: Pie Burritos on 27, May, 2020, 01:05:28 AMSounds like using Pure Wish every single round will put on a considerable PP drain then. (Which I know for a fact)
I admit I still do not have access to Pure Wish, but Wish Well and Cool Aura are already doing more than enough in combination with 100% uptime on damage reduction buffs (Mia's Wish Well heals ~250HP per round per character at 195 base Mercury power, Jenna's Cool Aura ~310HP per round at 184 base Mars power)

Quote from: Pie Burritos on 27, May, 2020, 01:05:28 AMAre the Doom Dragon and Dullahan even beatable with this little rule? (Technically yes, but the chances seem beyond minuscule without power leveling)
Only if RNG favours you, and really just a personal thing. I shouldn't have brought that up.

Quote from: Pie Burritos on 27, May, 2020, 01:05:28 AMI found this very frustrating as well, but it helps to try to poison them with a djinn unleash like wheeze. They take poison damage every single action, and it kills them off pretty effectively. You can also psynergy seal them to cripple their offense (I think).
Honestly it's not their damage output that makes them hard, it's that they flee. I remember the Mercury Djinni in Sea of Time Islet Cave go (1st action) Attempts to run, but failed, (2nd action) Attempts to run, but failed, (3) Runs away, all in one round.

Quote from: Pie Burritos on 27, May, 2020, 01:05:28 AMHonestly, I feel that it's fine how it is for ST healing. Bosses in the endgame (where tier 3 healing is gained) have the potential for ridiculous amounts of damage (this is a good thing) and ST healing should be very strong considering that MT healing is otherwise massively better. And by design, MT healing should be better, but ST healing does need a bit of help.
This is basically a "what does the developer want" issue. My personal preference is also that ST healing should be better than MT (like double healing since it's all on one target), but MT healing can heal 4 targets for total healing which is twice the amount of ST healing. But this double amount of healing should also cost at least double as much PP if not more.

Quote from: Pie Burritos on 27, May, 2020, 01:05:28 AMAnyways, my point is that it's ok for tier 3 to be more efficient than tier 2 because mid game threats don't deal as much burst as endgame threats, with maybe the exception of a few bosses. But if the rest of the bosses got adjusted...?
This is where I disagree. I will bring a weird analogy to convey my point.
Let's suppose I want to drive a distance of 800km / 500mi. I can retain a conservative speed of 80kph/50mph to get me there in 10 hours, and spend 70$ on gas (this is an example, I am not aware of gas prices in the US ^^). But if I am in a real hurry, I can speed up to 160kph/100mph to get there in 5 hours, but the car will burn more than double fuel, and cost me 170$. So I get to my destination at half time, but I spend more than double cash on gas.
This is how I think of resource costs in video games too. I can either use the PP-efficient Psynergy and have battles last longer (with the added danger of extra damage from enemies), or I can use the PP-inefficient Psynergy that deals more damage to dispatch enemies faster, but I will have to go back to sleep/restock after a lower number of battles.

Quote from: Pie Burritos on 27, May, 2020, 01:05:28 AMA bunch of the EPA style djinn aren't very worth using, but I've found uses for agility boosting djinn (Balrog), defense reducing djinn (Sentinel), as well as Mud and Flower during the midgame for sustain while out exploring (also Mud is used in some boss fights as a replacement for agility boosts).
Being able to act first sounds good on paper, however I actually found that for most bosses I want my healer to not act first but after 1 or 2 actions from the boss. Since bosses can kill a mage-type (*cough*Ivan*cough*) in one round even when not targetting them exclusively with ST abilities, then being able to have a fast character heal as first option, then have the boss act and then my main healer heal again is a tactic that I used in virtually all bosses with 3 actions per round.

Caledor

PP issue: Before ramping up the PP multiplier by adding PP/8 to the base power, i followed a strict formula that obviously became useless with that change, since i had to slightly nerf the actual base power of skills by hand.

Kept tuning stuff for many releases but never thought of finalizing the process with a new formula, which is what i did now. BTW overall result is that midtier abilities were overcosted, endgame and earlygame are mostly the same.

Djinns running away: single turn ones have their chance set to second lowerst, 2+ turn ones have their chance set to lowest, like 4%. One further change i could do is take 3+ turn ones, remove their flee chance completely and greatly power em up, so they become like mini bosses.

Shade and Flash: they have already been nerfed to 50% and 66% respectively. With my design limitations the only thing i can do is lowering flash to 50% as well.

Healing: Difficulty in golden sun comes mainly in multi target attacks. You're often 4 vs 1 so it's either MT or way more stronger ST attacks that could either whiff or kill 1 adept/round. Basically the game becomes way more RNG oriented unless the enemies get some kind of AI.
So in lategame ST healing loses a lot of value and i think it's fair if it's cheaper than MT healing. Despite what raw numbers say, it simply has less utility by game design.

PP Costs: I tend to agree with Mits. We're dealing with turns and here, stronger abilities increase the damage/turn ratio so it's fair that their damage/pp ratio is lower than weaker ones. We could ignore this if abilities also had a "turn cost", like a slower recovery time for the strongest ones. In such games you can either chain multiple weak abilities in the same time or less stronger ones. It's a different "cost" we don't have here so all shifts to PP.

As for the Base Power bug, i can only apologize, deeply. It's a mess so big I can't believe i actually did it and even more that it went unnoticed for so long. I discovered it by chance while working at this release... numbers felt very wrong while comparing Scourge and Lachesis and I had to do the math on paper to finally figure it out. Thankfully the fix was very easy but it also adds to my shame.

KisukeOboro

Hello, I just beat Sentinel, and I revisited this thread, and I didn't realize that it got updated. But I don't think that it matters because the updates that you wrote don't seem to be relevant to the feedback I wanted to post.

Alright, so the first thing I thought might be an issue is that at the reunion, Mia's stats and class were pretty messed up where she started with a ? class and 0/0 HP and 0/0 PP. Luckily it went away after I changed the Djinn around, but the glitch certainly gave me a scare and made me think that she wouldn't be useable during this run.

Speaking of glitches, whenever I soft reset the game in TLA, it displays random data and images while it's soft resetting. It didn't do this for the TBS version, but I was wondering why it was for TLA.

I couldn't find anything regarding the Rising Mace being mentioned anywhere in the list of drops from Estere Baron. It would also be nice if you could list where you've put these new monsters you've taken from the source code. I've been paging through wikis and not finding the ones you've put in from the source code and just been having to guess and run around to try and find them.

Remedy is excellent, but I think that functionally it's less useful than cure poison or restore separately because I can't use Remedy in the field, and it isn't an option. I have to downgrade Djinn first until Remedy downgrades to Cure Poison and Restore and use Cure Poison and then reset the Djinn again. It's pretty irritating to do every single time whenever someone gets poisoned, and the battle ends.

One question about removing the cool line of Psynergy from Piers. Why specifically was it removed? I can't find it but I think you gave a reason because you added in Prism to his class and it would make him have too many strong Psynergies to his base class. If that's the case then can't you just nerf cool instead or something? If I'm remembering correctly the advantage of cool was that it hit more enemies as opposed to douse and froth, which only hit 5 targets. Also, it might just be me, but I felt like the cool line was more or less Piers' character identity in a way if that makes any sense at all lol. Let me explain myself: one example of a good change I thought you made was giving Garet blast and having Jenna have flare instead, based on Garet's personality it made sense for him to have blast instead of flare. So for Piers, I'm not sure Froth fits his characters' personality as opposed to Mia, where I think Froth would fit her better TBH. I mean I get that Mia is from the cold north and Piers is from ocean environs, but based on their personality I feel that Mia's character is warmer than Piers is, where she is pretty much non-hostile and very agreeable and doesn't take much persuasion to join the group. Piers, on the other hand, is more defiant and basically argues with Felix's party when they have their first conversation in Kibombo and it takes a bit of warming up to them before he decides to take them to Lemuria. So with Froth, I think of something warm and bubbly, which I don't think fits Piers's personality all that well as opposed to Mia. Obviously they learn it with Djinn swapping and Mia can learn Prism in several classes, but I'm talking about base classes here. I don't know lol you can probably disregard all that, but I felt that was something I needed to say because it was a strange change to me.

I probably should have also made a post after I beat TBS, but I was so excited to get into TLA that I couldn't wait, so I'll put some of my thoughts that I remember when I beat TBS a couple of weeks ago.

So there's a couple of issues story-wise and Colosso mechanics-wise with how Ivan's default Psynergy doesn't include both whirlwind and growth (when given a Djinn like in base game). The story-wise is where when Ivan rejoins your party, and he uses whirlwind to blow the rock clean of ivy when by default he doesn't get whirlwind unless you give him Flint. I'm not sure how specifically you can fix this when I know that you made Ivan and Sheba completely different intentionally, and it does make more sense for Sheba to inherently have Whirlwind because of the Garoh and Air's rock subplot. Would it be possible to make an addendum or add-in lines where he says something along the lines of "oh hey, Isaac let me borrow Flint for a second" and then uses Whirlwind? IDK I'm just throwing ideas out there.
The other part for Colosso - and I can't remember the specifics - where on the first turn, I believe Garet was required for a moving puzzle. There was a growth puzzle in a different section, and Ivan couldn't do anything or participate because he now no longer learns growth when you give him Djinn if I remember correctly. And there were only three cheering locations so I couldn't have him do anything else. Maybe I'm misremembering, or perhaps I didn't mess around with the classes properly, but I do remember being stuck at that one specific part in Colosso and just had to have Ivan do nothing for that turn because he doesn't learn Growth.

I felt like Fusion Dragon was much more difficult than Deadbeard. Maybe it was because Fusion Dragon used more hard-hitting AOE attacks and kept using Break like every other turn on me, but Deadbeard just kept wasting turns buffing his attacks instead of actually hitting me. I don't know if I just got lucky, but I felt like it really should be the other way around. Or maybe I just suck lol IDK.

Overall though, I really like a lot of it, and it made it fun to play. Some bosses were challenging in a fun way, while others were difficult in a frustrating way. I've forgotten which ones specifically outside of Fusion Dragon and Deadbeard ack >_<; but I do remember Kraken being super difficult though, but I can't remember specifically why.

That's all I can remember from TBS, I'll try to play it again once I've finished TLA.

I saw a couple of posts above about the healing PP, and I'm a little bit torn on it. On one hand, I understand what you're trying to do, and it does make sense and I think that it does provide an interesting challenge having healing costing more. The new healing cost works fine for Mia, Ivan, Sheba, and Jenna, but the problem is that the ~50 PP cost for Wish is just devastating on Felix, Isaac, Garet, or Piers, which really limits which classes would be ideal to put them in. I think Garet would only be able to cast it like 3 or 4 times before he's just absolutely drained. And plus I didn't see too many PP restoring equipment for the warrior Adepts as opposed to one of the caster Adepts that can get like every piece of gear be PP restoration along with a huge PP pool to use them with. I might need to mess around with the classes a bit more but I wind up with either not enough Wishers with the Djinn combination or too many Wishers. Maybe I need someone to explain to me an ideal setup though haha

One question I had was about Luck. So I was wondering what the formula was for Luck and how it worked with Ailments because it seemed like using Ailments was really useful in some bosses but not others for reasons I don't understand, and the game does a really poor job at conveying specific information whether an ailment cast just failed because of a bad roll or if the boss is just straight-up immune.

That's all for now, but I'm really enjoying myself with the changes and I'm generally having a blast going through these games again and having to actually strategize and think through my turns more than in base game.

Caledor

Hi KisukeOboro, thanks for the feedback! Let's see:

QuoteMia's stats and class were pretty messed up where she started with a ? class and 0/0 HP and 0/0 PP
That's cause GS slots have different alignment from TLA slots. So for example Mia's class was the 15th in GS, when ported to TLA that 15th is something else so numbers don't match. Extremely minor issue though: any djinn change will immediately load the right class.

Quotewhenever I soft reset the game in TLA, it displays random data and images while it's soft resetting
couldn't manage replicate the issue, looks fine to me. Maybe it's due to a different emulator?

QuoteI couldn't find anything regarding the Rising Mace being mentioned anywhere in the list of drops from Estere Baron
My bad, I added it to the first post. Also i've rearranged sections by adding the boss to each block so now it's easy to tell.

QuoteOne question about removing the cool line of Psynergy from Piers
Needed one strong psynergy line: i could either move prism to piers or bump up the cool line. Doing the former would also free some icon slots i got to reuse for other new psynergies.

QuoteSo for Piers, I'm not sure Froth fits his characters' personality as opposed to Mia
It's much easier. Mia got "Ice" cause she comes from Imil, while Piers got "water" cause he's a seaman.

QuoteColosso & Ivan
I can test that and find a solution, but i need a savefile around that area.

Quotethe ~50 PP cost for Wish is just devastating on Felix, Isaac, Garet, or Piers
I actually think that a paladin can easily reach PP close to 400 with the Millennium helm, Cosmic Shield and the right djinn (which is the intended gear for a warrior caster). They don't have much PP regen but +PP for warriors have huge numbers (i could afford it since warriors lack staves).  BTW 400 is much higher than what my Pure Mage Mia has (~320) but she has PP regen.

QuoteSo I was wondering what the formula was for Luck and how it worked with Ailments
It's in the first post, now it's also bolded :P
Straight up immunity exists only for a few ailments (old + Sleep/stun). everything else (or everything if below 40 luck) has to go through that formula. But i doubt the formula can return 0% if you gear for ailments

KisukeOboro

QuoteMia has ~320 PP

That's really odd. My Pure Mage Mia has around 430 PP at lvl 43. Her Equipment is Lachesis' Rule, Psychic Circlet, Spirit Gloves, Iris Robe, Quick Boots and Wind Ring (because that's all I have lol), and Golden Shirt. So I did equip her with as much PP recovery as I could, but I only have two pieces of PP Max equipment. Even when I remove them she has around 370 PP.

Which I guess comes the question of what level are we using as a base for measuring these stats?

QuoteUse Millennium Helm and Cosmos Shield
Yeah, I was using the Millennium Helm on Paladin Isaac, but not the Cosmos Shield because then that would just waste the Jupiter power that Cosmos Shield gives. So I tried to change Piers into Holy Knight because then he'd be able to use the Jupiter Power but that just completely fucked up all of my classes and displaced too many Venus Djinn too much and now Garet has nothing lol. I guess I should just cut my losses on the Jupiter Power going to waste. Unless the weapons' unleashes factor in the characters' Elemental power? I could give Isaac one of the Orichalcum weapons and that might work if it does take elemental power into account.

Caledor

#694
Quote from: KisukeOboro on 30, May, 2020, 12:09:16 PM
QuoteMia has ~320 PP

That's really odd. My Pure Mage Mia has around 430 PP at lvl 43. Her Equipment is Lachesis' Rule, Psychic Circlet, Spirit Gloves, Iris Robe, Quick Boots and Wind Ring (because that's all I have lol), and Golden Shirt. So I did equip her with as much PP recovery as I could, but I only have two pieces of PP Max equipment. Even when I remove them she has around 370 PP.

Which I guess comes the question of what level are we using as a base for measuring these stats?

QuoteUse Millennium Helm and Cosmos Shield
Yeah, I was using the Millennium Helm on Paladin Isaac, but not the Cosmos Shield because then that would just waste the Jupiter power that Cosmos Shield gives. So I tried to change Piers into Holy Knight because then he'd be able to use the Jupiter Power but that just completely fucked up all of my classes and displaced too many Venus Djinn too much and now Garet has nothing lol. I guess I should just cut my losses on the Jupiter Power going to waste. Unless the weapons' unleashes factor in the characters' Elemental power? I could give Isaac one of the Orichalcum weapons and that might work if it does take elemental power into account.

You have Spirit Gloves and Lachesis Rule, while i have Selene's Armlet and and Clotho Distaff on her. That alone is ~60 PP even if our levels are about the same. Mine also doesn't equip many +PP increasing djinn, cause her job is to heal, but i can easily manage ~440 with your setup and PP increasing djinn. I just don't need all those PP on her, with my team they're better on Sheba and Jenna.

Elemental Power factors in EVERY elemental attack. For Elemental Physical Attack though (aka EPAs, like Ragnarok, non-staff unleashes and Quick Strike), the bonus they gain is halved when compared to non-physical elemental attacks (base damage spells, Summons and staff unleashes).

Both bonuses are unchanged from vanilla game. What i changed is effectiveness of EPower on healing (halved)

KisukeOboro

So which category are unleashes classified as? EPA or just Physical?

Caledor

Like i said, every non staff unleash is physical. 99% of unleashes have an element. So 99% of non-staff unleashes are EPAs.
"Just physical" is non-elemental... PA without the E. The only non-elemental unleash is Acheron's Grief.

KisukeOboro

Alright so I just beat Doom Dragon and I gotta say that I really enjoyed it. It provided a good mix between difficult but not too difficult, unlike Fusion Dragon. Either it was because I had more party members and more options available to me, but whatever it was I enjoyed it greatly.
I beat all the optional bosses except for Dullahan. I feel like I need to be at level 60 or something before I attempt him because he just completely killed me so quickly.
Other notable bosses:
Poseidon: I felt like I had a bit of trouble with the given classes and Djinni at that point, where it required me to have Break on hand as well as MT healing. Can't remember specifically but I think I had to just buy a bunch of elixirs and give them to everybody just so I could have anybody remove any status ailments that occurred in the fight.
Agatio and Karst: I really like how they have you completely on the defensive at the beginning when it's just Felix and Piers, and it really feels like you're being overpowered by them both. Until Jenna and Sheba join you then that's where you finally feel like you turn the tide in your favor. Really nice job there! I also really liked their dragon versions too! It really buffed them up and made things really difficult for your first combined party boss, and it makes narrative sense why they would be much more difficult after being transformed into dragons.
As far as the optional bosses go:
Valukar (Balrog?): Definitely forced me to go mono element for the fight so I didn't mess up my classes. I remember it not really being necessary for the base game since the damage he did was pitiful, but now that he does much more damage it makes me have to be conscientious about when to swap when there were too many Djinn being set by him.
Sentinel: I really enjoyed this fight because it forced me to use all of my supporting Djinn to buff myself and Debuff him (since any Psynergy cast on him doesn't work) and then use the summons to damage him. Switching between the three shielding Djinn and using Luff and Gravity helped out a lot with damage mitigation and manipulating the turns in my favor.
Star Magician: I remember the usual strat in the base game where you kill the orbs and force him to summon the purple orbs so there aren't any buffs to himself. Unfortunately, this strat didn't cut it in this version lol. There was just too much damage going out that way that even shielding and pure Wishing each round would just kill me easily. So instead what I found was that actually going ham with my casters and nuking everything turned out way better since he used his turns to just summon more orbs and didn't attack me. The damage going out would kill the orbs before the orbs could do anything and keeping the pressure on him before he could have his orbs set up any buffs or heals for him. I liked it because it forced me to get out of the defensive playstyle that I've been conditioned to play as throughout these whole two games and to instead opt-in for a more offensive strategy. I really enjoyed that, but I did notice something about the battle system I wanted to address that I noticed during Star Magician.

So I don't ever remember this in the base game, or maybe because it was easy that it wasn't so much of a problem, but I feel that the way it's programmed it makes me feel like the computer is 'cheating'. What I mean by this is that I feel that the computer is playing action by action rather than turn by turn. So for example: I noticed this when I killed all of the orbs at the end of everybody's turn once they were done nuking Star Magician and the orbs. Star Magician immediately starts his turn by summoning two new orbs. Obviously he is only supposed to have four orbs out maximum. So why would he queue up his actions to summon more orbs when at the start of the turn he had the maximum number of orbs already. The only way he could do this was by playing by a different set of rules than how you play as, where you queue up your actions every 'turn', but he's playing by the Persona 4 battle system where you simply decide your action when it's your turn. I feel like this introduces a cheap advantage that the system has over you. Another example would be when you bind an enemy's Psynergy to stop them from casting. They will immediately, on the same exact turn, switch their action to instead either attack or use an action that isn't Psynergy dependant. If the roles were reversed, however, say that an enemy used bind on one of my party members and I had a cast queued up when their action happened, my party member would still try and cast the Psynergy. Because of the increased difficulty, this adds in an unfair advantage of the enemy being able to react to situations like this. I don't know, maybe it's always been like this and I've never noticed it, but the increased difficulty makes it very apparent.

One other note. I don't like how debuffing a boss only lasts for essentially 1 turn. It basically forces a party member to continually keep debuffing in order to keep the debuff up and if they miss with the debuff then you're back to square one that same turn. I'd expect at least 3 turns to pass before the debuff wears off and I feel like the debuffs that the enemies cast on you last longer than the ones you cast on them if I'm not wrong.

KisukeOboro

Oh, also I don't like how Waters of Life are essentially useless, especially since they're a rare item that you can only use once. They restore so little health that any enemy can one-shot you easily with how little health it gives you, added on top of the issue with enemies being able to adjust their actions after you have executed yours and you get cheeky actions where they'll single target attack a party member you just revived like how is that even possible

Caledor

I don't really remember how AI works. My guess for SM is that he rolls for ability like normal but then checks if there's space for more balls and eventually rerolls at casting time.

Debuffing healing rates have been on my to do list for a while, so definitively expect that on next release. Dunno when though, i'll be crazy busy in the next few weeks.

WoL being half as good as Revive is mandatory: WoL is farmable and Revive/Raise are a valuable asset of anyone's psynergy set. Also expecting to WoL someone and call it a day for that turn is quite naive: you always know the order in which characters act, WoL with the fastest and heal with second fastest