Advice wanted for my RPG
Problem: Mages still level up extremely quickly, and it's mostly because once they have access to spells that can hit multiple enemies at once, they gain all of that EXP from the damage they deal very fast.
I've already increased the EXP curve for how fast they level, making it a little slower. I've already reduced the amount of damage that those all-enemy spells do. It's seemingly not enough, though, because Mages still start off on the weaker side and then absolutely shoot up around level 20.
So, I'm considering several options at the moment:
1) Further increase the EXP curve for mages. This will fix their progression in the early-mid game, but might make them much weaker in the end game and would require a lot of tuning that I don't fully have resources for (not enough people testing, nobody doing rigorous testing).
2) Level gate spells. Currently, all spells in the game (including all weapons and armors) do not have level gates and can be obtained at any point. This kind of goes with the philosophy of the openness of the game, but if it is breaking balance perhaps it is a good thing to put a bit of a clamp on it.
3) Increase the price of spells. Currently, the general layout from the single target spells is like this: 19/61/122/379. The all-enemy spell is 513. If I increase the price of all spells universally by a certain percentage, and/or increase the all-enemy spell by a larger amount, it could help prevent players from obtaining these massive spells too early.
4) Increase the SP needed for spells. I have noticed that Mages, once they hit a certain point, will very rarely run out of SP (due to some recovery upon level up) unless they're using something like Restore to recover the SP of other party members. Increasing the amount of SP needed for spells could help since they would have to be more considerate about using the all-target spells.
Advice wanted for my RPG
@beardalaxy
Welcome to the world of game balancing.
It's not possible. Either all classes are the same, or they will be imbalanced. In WoW, I literally run around a field, collecting about 30 minions to strike at once. They were strong enough to kill me with 2, but I had enough slowdown, that killing 30 was just as possible as killing 1.
I wish I had better news, but the only way of stabilizing the leveling speed are daily soft XP caps, also known as dailies and well rested bonus.
Advice wanted for my RPG
@LukeAlmighty yeah, something like that unfortunately doesn't work for a single player game. i WANT players to be able to overlevel if that's what they want to do, especially if they're playing on a higher difficulty. i just want to make sure that if they are going for that strategy, their characters level up at roughly the same rate instead of having one guy at level 27 and another at 19.
if it were a linear game it would be much easier, but it's not :P deadass, the sequel to god's disdain is going level up characters only through story progression. it'll work a lot better for the type of game it is, but it'll also be so much easier to balance. that's why i do leveling by story progression for D&D too.
Advice wanted for my RPG
@beardalaxy
Btw, one of the most insane and unique leveling systems is in V Rising.
There, you unlock gear only through defeating bosses, and literally nothing else. And your gear sets your power level. :D
