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Vanilla rebalancing patch. Longer and more challenging fights.

Started by C1REX, February 25, 2018, 10:08:44 am

C1REX

Hi,

At this point it's a work in progress as I already invested many days of editing and testing.
I do this patch to make the game more challenging but keeping as much of vanilla feel as possible while making it also more fun.


Few main ideas:


- First of all all playable characters have flat grows. I've done it as I was fed up to be stuck in monk/knight/ninja for males all the time for best stats.


- PA/MA multipliers slashed in half. This makes few things - damage is much lower. Difference between males and females is reduced. Items makes bigger impact than levelling. Fights are longer and often harder when facing non human enemy. Monster are relatively stronger and more usable at the same time.

- Magic is scalable when possible. My aproach is to add MA+X to items so bolt 1 will still do damage relatively similar to knights or monk at similar level from lvl1 to lvl 99. Higher tier spells have damage reduced and balancing is achieved by playing with CT, MP, range.

- Most skills have max hit rate to reduce rng. Stealing, breaking weapon, charm, all have max hit rate what is only reduced by shields and enemy evasion. To balance some skills like poison and charm I played with CT, MP, range and how long that status lasts. So for example poison spell is instant last long and affects big area when charm lasts only 20CT what should be 1 turn. Haste lasts only 24CT instead of 32. Dead and frog will work only at minimum distance.

- Jobs and skills are rebalanced so less popular ones are accessible earlier and are way more powerful. No more monks/ninja + holy knights all the time. Now oracle, orator, chemist, archer, thief, geomancer are very powerful. It's not perfectly balanced but it should encourage different approach and different gaming experience. Thieves will be accessible very early on and will be much better at fighting - this makes sense as you get knives earlier than bowes and you see first thief before archers.

- Haven't tested it yet but I consider making all jobs strong and weak at some elementals. So for example priest is strong at holy magic and has high defense at it but take double dark elemental magic.


- I want to leave many OP items and techniques but to make it available for enemies as well. So group of female fighters with chantage + blade grasp + 97 brave and with items/white magic is possible.


- Smaller things: Remedy is more rare and very expensive. Mustadio get 2 new skills: missile and head shot. Initial move find items for all and with only rare items to find. Better basic items from poaching so no more potion or phoenix down. Shields greatly improved. Axes way stronger now. Dash has 2 square range.

- JP cost greatly reduced especially for the core skills like potion, phoenix down, bolt 1 etc.

- Last boss from deep dungeon  joins after fight.

- All enemy levels are increased by 2 when possible - this means nearly all the game apart of DD where last boss had lvl70. Random encounters shouldn't be 4x harder than story fights any more :)
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

Xifanie

Cutting PA/MA in half sounds like a terrible idea.
You already start the game with 3-4 PA/MA... you really want characters to start with 1-2 PA/MA instead, and have them get a 50% or 100% power boost once they level up enough? And what about accumulate and other stat-boosting abilities? That would make them far more broken.

And without stat buffs, this would make knives the strongest weapon in the game, at least at first.
  • Modding version: PSX
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C1REX

I like how I start with low PA/Ma and my attacks do less damage. I don't know how otherwise to avoid 1HKO and cap endgame damage at about 300.
I only done rough few tests on chapter 1 and 2 and I love it.

I additionally removed all PA+ bonus from all items and left only one Speed +1 bonus on thief hat. To make low level spells scaling work I added MA+ bonuses to weapons for MA oriented jobs.

All growths are flat for all jobs. PA/MA growth is at 50. HP is also improved on some jobs.

I end up with about max PA 10 for males and MA 10 for females.
PA 10 gives about 100-150 damage for Monk depending on brave and zodiac. Knight regular attack with good sword does about the same.
Bolt or fire 1 with late weapon and extra MA does about the same 150 damage what I like. My scaling idea works as intended.

Accumulation is something I haven't work on yet. It's twice as strong as before so I may either: remove it or balance it with heavy MP cost or big enough CT to lose a round.

What I don't like about accumulation is that it makes weapons useless. Knight with PA 4 after accumulation would do more damage bare hands than if holding a broad sword - that is just wrong. Vanilla Ninja with Martial arts and no weapons do more damage than with rare ninja swords. PA boosting is a big balancing problem.



I nearly finished all jobs and need to think how to deal with monsters. Easy approach is to just cut multipliers in half but I don't like how stat growth works on monsters - monster have bigger power boost per level than humans and the difference between lvl1 and lvl99 monster is huge.
I may end up reducing PA growth instead - not sure yet.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

Zantetsuken

I've made some changes to my game to make fights last longer and more strategic, seems to be working really well.

I made most of the changes using ASM hacks from the patcher suit:

- increased % dmg reduction of protection, shell, magic def up and defense up;
- gave innate defend, weapon parry, magic def up and defense up to everyone including monsters;
- gave innate attack up and magic attack up for all monsters;
- used the unknown 1, 2 on itens tab to give physical and magical % dmg reduction for all armors and some acessories (heavy armor gives more phisical dmg reduction while light armor gives more magical dmg reduction);
- made all skills avoidable;
- gave some M. Evade and P. Evade to some acessories;
- reduced the healing off all skills and itens, including leeching effects;
- tweaked monsters stats since they cant use any equips

My goal is to make fights last longer, more strategic and more random since you can now avoid any attack.
  • Modding version: PSX
  • Discord username: Zanmato