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Quote from: paladin679 on October 31, 2017, 10:28:19 am
Just finished chapter 1. A couple comments/questions: 1. black mages are insanely overpowered early game with innate arcane strength, i do see that this will make magic much more useful late game however. 2. I like the addition of lifefont/manafont on most units. It forces you to actually finish off units as opposed to just having them run away. 3. Do units upgrade equipment as they level with you?
1: The innate arcane strength has 2 main effects:
a. It allows black mages to select another support ability without lowering their per spell damage output
b. It means that each point of MA that they are buffed/debuffed by has a larger impact on their damage output. Every 3 points of MA should essentially be viewed as 4.
Also, I agree that magic can be seriously overpowered in this mod during early stages. I believe that on my last test run the final fight in chapter one consisted of casting tailwind and then flare to alpha strike the assassination target. Once flare resolved the fight was over. There are two major reasons for magic being really hard to balance early game imho.
A. The strength of the spell is based off of an unchanging value that is then multiplied by your MA stat. As such you can simply access end game spells in order to be able to produce relatively high damage with an undeveloped MA stat. Melee classes either need to access end game weapons or in the case of a monk develop their PA stat.
B. The speed of the spells does not change over the course of the game, and is only modified by one player available support ability. As such spells will generally feel like they cast faster at the start of the game simply because of units having undeveloped Speed, and thus there are usually more clock ticks between unit turns after the first round(s) have resolved. This is also related to why status effects appear to grow in duration as the game progresses.
2: It was also intended to at times make actually moving when it isn't necessary be a tactically sound choice rather than saving CT. Also, it generally means that mages will continue to have low tier spell options even if a fight drags on. Furthermore, if you apply the current version fewer of the melee based units have lifefont since they were more durable than they were supposed to be or they simply had other means of healing from their class.
3: Enemy equipment will increase in quality as their levels increase. Nearly every enemy outside of MD/DD is based off of the highest level party member that you have. One thing to note is that every now and then you will encounter something strange like a level 80 enemy squire in a random battle using a broadsword. Since I am not currently aware of how to set a max level limit on items available to be equipped I am uncertain of how to remove this quirk.
I believe that in version 0.9.78 I had adjusted the minimum level requirements for most equipment so that players would be less likely to become heavily outclassed if they did minor grinding. Of course at the same time this means that enemies may become outclassed in a low level run through the game. Starting at Version 0.9.76 I began editing descriptions to be more informative/accurate/helpful.
P.S. Thank you for the input, and apologies in advance for how some of the changes to skill sets may effect your current party members. (Mostly you might end up missing or with different r/s/m abilities due to changes)