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Mechanics Changes
Topic Started: Jun 26 2011, 12:50 PM (443 Views)
General_Banzai
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Since we're actually doing this from the ground up, I see no reason not to do mechanics changes.

Here are my suggestions.

1. If a unit has enough speed, they can potentially triple and even quadruple attack. For instance, normally having 4 more AS over an enemy allows one to double attack. But if you had 8 AS more than the enemy, you would triple attack, and so on. This would allow us to balance out the weak overkill speed units who typically are inferior to more balanced types.

2. Non-fixed growths. Typically, a unit just has 50% str, 40% skl, or whatever. Well, what if units had a base percentage growth, but added to it was a percentage of growth which was somehow related to what a unit's value in that stat was? For instance, let's say Bryant has 6 strength and a 40% strength growth, with a .5 statistical modifier to that growth. That would make his actual growth in the stat 43% (half of 6 is 3, turn that into a percent and add to the base growth). What we could do is even make the statistical modifier different per unit, so that Bryant has a .5 modifier and Diego has a .2 modifier (the modifiers could even be different per stat). What this would do is not only make stat boosters more valuable, but also allow us to control the actual RATE of growth. Furthermore it allows us to make units who start out with low bases and growths, but with ridiculous modifiers which make their endgame stats abnormally ridiculous. We can also do visa-versa and even put in negative modifiers, so that the more a unit gains in a stat the less likely they are to gain that stat again. I feel like this would allow us to make more variety in our units as far as stat composition goes. It also makes it so you can't simply look at 20/20s and determine the unit's overall quality. It makes the quality of a unit change over time in a way that isn't simply "good bases, bad growths" or "bad bases, good growths." And also, it allows us to make units who are more immune to RNG screwage, or more susceptible to it. Afa's Drops could also increase the MODIFIER and thus be more useful.

3. Since nobody ever uses Hammerne anyways, I have a suggestion for weapon repair. How about Armories can repair weapons for a fee. A repaired weapon gains slight statistical improvements over the original, so keeping your weapons from breaking would be a good thing. However, the price of repairs goes up the better a weapon is, so after repairing an Iron Sword a few times it may become too expensive to upkeep. Basically, it's kind of like forging. The Hammerne staff then would be nice because it would be a free repair, so it would allow you to repair, say, an S Ranked weapon (which would normally be incredibly expensive to repair) without any charge.

4. Weapon ranks. As well as determining what weapons you're able to use, I say that they should also give bonuses to hit and crit as they go up. S Ranking a weapon already gives you some hit and crit; but I don't see why lower ranks can give smaller bonuses as well. It seems to me like having an A rank in the weapon means you should wield that weapon more skillfully than someone who has an E rank.

5. Secret Shops. Not really a mechanics change, but I propose that Secret Shops sometimes stock rare, one-of-a-kind items which are nowhere else in the game (or maybe enemy-only). This would give you more incentive for finding them.

6. Byrnes actually suggested this one. Staves which buff allies (like Barrier, but for stats other than res). Compounding on that, staves which debuff enemies.

7. Experience stat. What this is basically a hidden stat which is unique to each unit. It will be a slight modifier on the experience formula which changes the overall amount of experience a unit gains. So, for instance, David and Ivan may start at the same level, but Ivan gains experience a little bit faster. To counterbalance this, David has better overall stats. It allows us to add another component to unit variety.

8. Arena wagers. You get to set how much money to wager in the arena, and the wager determines your opponent. Thus, if you need cash fast you can go and bet 5000 gold but you better be prepared for some tough ass enemy. If you're a pansy, you can wager 50 gold and get like a Soldier or something. Also, the skill of the enemy is not based on your unit's level at all. So, wagering 5000 gold with Diego gets you the same quality enemy as wagering 5000 gold with Cassandra. To prevent abuse, we put a cap on the amount of gold you can win in an arena per stage.

9. If a unit caps a stat, they instantly get a +3 bonus to that stat.

10. Crossbow-type weapons for bow-users. I think I could custom up some sprites for them without very much trouble.

11. Skills.

12. Brigands can destroy armories and vendors as well as towns and villages.
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Elite Lord Sigma
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1. I think this is a good idea, but I do question how exactly it would work. For instance, if you triple attack, would you get to attack once or twice before your opponent gets to counterattack?

2. This sounds quite complex, but it could be a great idea if done correctly as a justification for the overall lower growths. We also have to keep in mind that we don't want units to be too overpowered.

3. This could work with small additions with each repair. Making certain weapons lighter with each repair would be a decent idea, too.

4. Similar to how it was done in Shadow Dragon, you mean? If so, it should differ based on the weapon.

5. I'm all for it. Are you talking about items like the Hoplon Guard and Fili Shield?

6. Sure.

7. One implication that I like about this idea is that it would make giving Paragon scrolls to somebody a interesting choice.

8. I like this idea. It puts a limit on use of the arena as in FE4, so it might not be considered arena abuse anymore.

9. Would this apply to enemies, too?

10. I approve, as long as we can find somebody willing to sprite these.

11. We were thinking about this anyway, weren't we?

12. If it makes brigands more important, sure.


While I'm here, I'm going to make another suggestion: Add more affinities, like the ones introduced to the Tellius games.
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General_Banzai
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I would assume it would go like this:

You attack once, they attack once, and then you simply continue to attack until you run out of attacks.

Cap bonuses would apply to enemies as well, but probably most enemies won't cap too many stats, considering our allies hardly do. And for Secret Shop items, I was thinking those, and maybe we could create a few more items with similar types of effects. I'd probably do the crossbow spriting. Only four classes would need them (Archer, Sniper, Warrior, and Ranger), so it wouldn't be too hard.
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Othin
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1. Sounds good, as long as it's capped at quadruple. Anything more would be excessive. We'll need x3 indicators for the battle screens, but I assume that won't be the slightest bit of trouble. Also, x6 and x8 indicators for Brave weapons.

2. Far more complex than it needs to be. If we want the growths for certain characters to change with level, we should give them different sets of growth rates to use at different level parameters. We could also make certain growths change after promotion, for better or for worse. If we want characters to be protected from being RNG screwed, we should just use Shadow Dragon's dynamic growth system, which I'm totally in favor of.

3. Again, needlessly complex. If we want repairs, we should include repairs, although I say they should take place at dedicated repair shops rather than regular weapon shops. If we want to forge new attributes onto existing weapons like in Shadow Dragon, we should do that, although I suggest certain limitations on it.

4. Hey, yet another suggestion that was implemented in Shadow Dragon. Difference is, Shadow Dragon completely fucked it up by making it have different benefits for each weapon type, giving swords a power boost so much that they completely obsoleted axes. We should make the benefits universal to all weapon types - say, +5 Hit at C, another +5 Hit at B, +1 Mt at A, and +5 Crit on top of all that at S.

5. That's pretty much what they've always done, but okay. Unless you mean in limited quantities, like the Bargain shop in FE10? That's already been done, too... surely you can guess which game by now? Just as long as it's kept in check. FE10's Bargain shop, combined with all the Info conversations, pretty much completely replaced actually finding useful items within levels. The rarity of Secret Shops should ensure that that won't be an issue, though.

6. This has been done in FE5 for Magic, although it was the same stat as Resistance in that game, and in TRS for Strength, Magic, and Defense. It must be noted that a 7-point bonus in Magic is likely to change the game much more than a 7-point bonus in Resistance, and this was balanced in FE5 by the rarity and low uses of the combined M Up staff and that game's version of Pure Water. I've been a fan for quite some time of the idea of having items with separate temporary bonuses for Magic, with a higher rarity much like that in FE5, but I'm less sure about other stats. If other staves were made, they would need to be used carefully. TRS certainly screwed it up, having an 18-use Defense staff that would halve the damage received by an ally for an entire chapter. Granted, it could only be used by one character, but that seems like it would do little to make it less ridiculous. Debuff staves seem much easier to safely implement.

7. Sounds good. We could either make it a multiplier or a modifier to the character's effective level; I like the idea of the latter.

8. I think we'd be better off with a system more like FE4's. To apply it to an FE game like this... Let's say each chapter with an arena has six enemies in the arena. Each one has a certain wager attached to them. You get to pick any of the enemies based on the wager, and probably some other basic information too. Once a character has defeated one of the enemies, they can't challenge that enemy again, but they can challenge the remaining enemies, and any other character can challenge that same enemy.

9. I don't see the point of this.

10. Another idea I've been a fan of. If you've got it under control, let's go for it.

11. I'm obviously in favor of this. We'll need to be aware of the extra work it will entail in design, implementation, and graphical work, but none of that should be a huge issue.

12. Sure, why not.

13. I say we just take the whole FE9 support system - affinities, bonuses, and methods of increasing support. FE10 had the right idea with some of the bonuses, and we could take it in that direction a bit, but like most things in FE10, it was implemented all wrong. I think I found a good medium between the two - I've done some work on matters related to many of these ideas for my own project, and I'm willing to offer what I have to this project as well, within reason. Going too far with exchange of ideas at this stage would be highly undesirable for both projects.
Edited by Othin, Jun 26 2011, 03:36 PM.
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General_Banzai
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If we take PoR's affinities, we need to nerf Earth a tad. +45 avoid is kind of ridiculous.

How exactly did FESD's dynamic growth system work again? I remember it having next to no bearing on the actual game. I want to have dynamic growths, though, although I'm open to suggestions as to how to have it implemented. Growths changing at promotion seems like it would be too sudden a change.

I don't see how the repairs idea is too complex. I actually think it simplifies things by having forging and repairing merged into one feature.


As far as graphics go.

I'm considering making a big graphical change to this game which would make it much easier for us (me) to do custom sprites. I'll, um, get back to you guys about that later. (I know it seems like a horribad idea to switch all our graphics to a different style when we already have so many sprites done, but just trust me on this for now. I'm experimenting with some sprites right now and if I don't like how things turn out I'll scrap the idea. But currently I'm having a lot of success converting our mugs to this style.)
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Othin
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You're thinking of FE10, where Earth had +7.5 Avo when it was already the best affinity in FE9 with +5 Avo. Granted, each affinity other than Wind got a bonus in FE10 to make up for the limit of 3 support levels rather than 5, but it didn't really put them anywhere close to it - Heaven gave +9.5 Hit rather than +5, and all bonuses to Attack or Defense became +0.8 rather than +0.5.

Looking at my chart, I kept the bonuses the way they were in FE9 with the exception of Earth and Heaven, which I have listed as giving +4 Avo and +6 Hit now, respectively, rather than +5 each. I think this is far more reasonable for balancing the best and worst affinities, and I suggest it for this project as well. What should be noted is that an Earth affinity character with 5 total support levels with other Earth affinity characters (presumably an A and a B) would still have +40 Avo as their only bonus on this system, but we can set up the supports so that such an arrangement isn't even possible - so long as no Earth affinity character can support two other Earth affinity characters, it won't happen. And looking at the supports planned, that should happen naturally even if we don't take much care at all with which characters get the Earth affinity. Unless those support lists are expanded a bit eventually; they look a bit small. Even then, we'd just need to make Earth a less common affinity and take some care with who gets it.

http://serenesforest.net/fe11/dgrowth.html

As for the effects... Let's take Lute in FE8. Her base Mag is 6, and her growth is 65%. At LV11, her average Mag is 12.5, but let's say she was screwed and wound up with a Mag of 9. This means her Mag increased on 3 levels and didn't increase on 7 levels. Based on the explanation on Serenes, a character with a 65% growth would have their growth increased by 6.5 for each level they didn't increase the stat, and have their growth decreased by 6.5 for each level they increased the stat. So Lute's Mag growth heading into LV12 would be 91%, a substantial increase from 65%, and one that would likely help bring her stat back to where it was supposed to be.

The repairs idea seems complex because you're assuming certain automatic effects for each repair. An FE8 Iron Sword has 5 Mt, 90 Hit, and 5 Wt. Let's say you use it once and repair it. Then you use it again and repair it. Would it have some set progression for how its stats and cost would change? And how would it even make sense? Would it depend on how many times it had been used? Relative to its total uses? There's just so much to be concerned with, and to determine for each weapon. And how would it even make sense?

I mean, sure, we could make it work. We could make it so that for each full time it gets repaired, it, say, gets its Mt increased by 1, its Hit increased by 5, its Wt decreased by 1 (to a minimum of 1), its Crit increased by 3, and its price increased by 100% of the original. The total number of uses that had been repaired would be added up, divided by the total number of uses, and multiplied by those numbers to find how much the modifiers would be for that particular level of repair, then rounded for ingame purposes. But then all you get is that the weapons forge themselves into a boring progression for no apparent reason when you repair them. So why do that when you could just use a regular forging system like FESD?
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Elite Lord Sigma
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Dynamic growths work like this. Basically, if a character failed to get a stat increase, 10% of that stat's growth rate is added to the base growth rate. If a character increased a stat upon leveling up, that same value is subtracted from the growth. However, negative dynamic growth rates are not applied to stats and are only remembered for future addition and/or subtraction, so a character's total growth rate will never drop below the base growth rate.
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General_Banzai
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Hrm... that system for dynamic growths may work, but I still prefer my suggestion, which makes the growths dynamic to a degree different based on each character. So, instead of 10% of the stat's growth rate being added, we can make it more or less depending on the character.

The affinities look fine.
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Othin
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Well, it doesn't have to be 10% for each character. I just think that's a better base system to use than the characters' stats.
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General_Banzai
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Yeah but FESD's system only really changes anything if you deviate from the average. What I want is for the actual growth to change over the course of the game, instead of fluctating back and forth to simply correct for RNG screwage.
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Othin
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That was the other thing I brought up. If we want the growths to change for certain characters, we shouldn't have them have one set of growth rates for all levels; we should design several individual sets of growth rates for some or all characters for different sets of levels to create that change rather than making it create itself.
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General_Banzai
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Now THAT seems like it'd be more difficult to figure out that just making a modifier like I suggested.
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Othin
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Figuring out how to get the modifier to yield the results we want is difficult. Giving a character, say, -5% Str and +5% Def after 10 levels or so and -5 Spd and +10% HP after promotion is easy. Or whatever would give us the results we wanted for that individual character. Sure, we'd have to do it for each character, and we might want changes a bit more complicated than that for some characters, but the amount of time it would take is so short that it really wouldn't be an issue at all.

For example, let's take Kemal. Say we want him to start with more physically-oriented growths to represent his past, but as he advances in magic, his growths start to tend towards more magic-oriented. So we give him, say, +10% HP and +5% Def at the start at the cost of -5% Mag and -5% Res. Then at LV10, we set his growths back to where they currently are now. Then at LV20/8, we reverse that trend and make his stats have -10% HP, +5% Mag, -5% Def, and +5% Res compared to what they are now. Of course, we could also spread it out more and make more changes, but that just goes to show how simple it is.
Edited by Othin, Jun 26 2011, 06:45 PM.
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General_Banzai
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I'm fairly certain with basic math skills we could figure the modifier out.
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Othin
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General_Banzai
Jun 26 2011, 06:41 PM
I'm fairly certain with basic math skills we could figure the modifier out.
To do what? To get anything meaningful like the example I provided with Kemal in the edit above, as opposed to simply making the characters' growths grow as their stats grow, we'd need several more carefully chosen modifiers for each character. Why bother?
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General_Banzai
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I feel we could do it. But whatever. >.>
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Blader8
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Lets go Hyorinmaru!
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Honestly, gotta agree with Othin on this one, while your idea sounds interesting Banzai, swapping growths at various intervals is a bit easier and allows for similar results, plus you could even have them be altered by story events, giving reason to use/not use certain characters at certain moments. like Lucas being the coward that he is would flee often and his growths would have a slight increase in speed, whilst after recruiting Brent and wiping out Alsace's threats, he could feel a bit more relieved and get some slight hope and courage, lowering the speed, but increasing something like Str or Def

As for the other stuff...

1. I kinda like the idea, but have to worry about people who are speed demons, since you could easily pump Str Boosters and Support Boosts onto them and have them go wild, especially with Brave Weapons

2. See above

3. Why not just make one shop that can do both Repairs and Forging and call it a smithy, have it available on certain maps.

4. Agree, and I agree with the suggestions Othin put up for rank bonuses

5. Kinda like this a little already, but ok

6. FETO did this, and it was horribad, then again, FETO was unbalanced as hell. The thing with this though, if theres a Staff for Str/Spd then it could make x3 attacks and higher be insane

7. Makes me think of certain units having minor elite, I like the idea, but kinda worried about how well it would work

8. Once again, like Othins idea

9. No need to do this, else I'll just take my lovely units that barely miss spd cap by 1-2 and use speedwings on them

10. Agree, just dont make them have fixed Power like FE10

11. Yay

12. Yay

Affinities: Yay
Edited by Blader8, Jun 27 2011, 07:31 AM.
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General_Banzai
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Have you seen the stats of our units? Vanity and Samuel are the only ones who cap speed and both have like ~15 str. Nobody else even comes close (except Cassandra, but that's a different story).
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Kenshin
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1. I'd consider limiting it to x3. and even a brave weapon shouldn't let you hit more then x4. Having some assassin hit my pally 8 times would be FUUUUUUUUFUUUUU worthy, for me at least

2. I really don't see the value. I personally see getting RNG screwed as part of the experience, if I ever even notice it. It's not like there's going to be a multiplayer versus mode, so It's not really that important.

3. I'd be down. It would require some playtesting though.

4. Makes sense.

5. easy enough to do. just a look-up table and a dPercentile, essentially.

6. Meh. That seems like it would result in too many staves. Maybe one that buffed your weakest stat and another that buffed your strongest? It seems like having a buff and debuff staff for each stat would get unwieldy.

7. It seems like we have enough ways to add to unit variety. This could result in characters being unintentionally useless, if it's not balanced carefully. I prefer this over (1) though.

9. Seems like if they cap it's already high enough.

10. What would the difference from normal bows be?

11. Meh.

12. Why not?
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Doga
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Kenshin, the point of crossbows is to give Archer's a direct attack. So they could attack at a 1-2 range instead of just 2.
Previously known as Link, so Kenshin doesn't get confused.
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