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.
@beardalaxy I made adjustments to reduce the amount of SP or mana allowed for mage characters, there's needs to be a limit, can't have a mage solo the whole game 😆
@beardalaxy this was one of the reasons I decided to make my RPG game turn based, so each player have effectively use their skills and not skill spam the same attack endlessly and we all know frens who play like that.
@lnx yeah mine is turn-based too. i find myself having to just guard with the mage sometimes so that the other party members can get some hits in and that's obviously a problem.
@lnx yeah, that would essentially be the same as increasing the SP requirement for spells. i actually had to increase the amount of MP they have so that they would be usable at the earlier levels. getting a mage out of that early slump is a bit of a struggle, but once you do they take off like crazy and that's the part i'm trying to reign in a little bit.
i think i'll start with an extremely small increase to the exp curve, and then increase the SP requirement for spells by about 10%. that'll make it so that early-game mages can still make it work (since that's ALL they have at their disposal). then i'll increase the all-enemy ones by more, maybe 50% seems a lot better. currently they require less SP than the best single-target spells, which i thought would be fine since they do less single-target damage, but they do so much more overall damage.
that's not even getting into the all-enemy spells that can cause status effects, either. lightning, with the chance to paralyze, can be absolutely devastating.
i guess there is the caveat that mages are going to be better for mobbing but not for bossing, but that doesn't really matter as much when you get your mages to such a high level that they just blast through bosses anyway.
@beardalaxy that's sounds about right. I guess it's also depend on the world mechanics. I believe status effects are very beneficial to both the enemies and players. I put in a lot of elemental properties into my game cause besides the status effects and buffs, I want the weapons to also possess some attributes, but getting back to the mages. I've given them some basic attacks as well in case their mana depletes, this way they are of some use even when their mana is gone, I did the same thing with healers cause if they don't attack, they end up being dead weight for a party.
@lnx the mages still actually work pretty well as battle mages. you can equip spears to them and they have a lot of HP and defense against magical attacks, which is what the more dangerous enemies tend to use. they can still use spells while wielding a spear too, it's just that they won't be as good. they don't get access to physical skills. i know some games like to give access to a lot of different types of skills to every class, but the mage in my game is its own beast entirely whereas the other three classes have a bit more overlap but no access to magic whatsoever (unless through an item).
now that i think about it, since the healing spells go off of magic defense instead of magic attack, you could make a pretty good battle cleric if you wanted to.
that is all to say that the option for physical offense is definitely there, but if you want higher damage output then using spells is way more necessary.
@beardalaxy I can definitely agree, mages using skills is much better suited for their class. I have some AoE attacks setup as well but that's only after a few levels have gone by. How does your attacking work out, I've been thinking of either having my characters have 4 skills to choose from or one base attack and 2 skills to choose. The exception is that my characters can only change out their skills when located in a town and I do want to get some base skills that can be leveled up at a cost so it instead of a skill being upgraded into a new skills, the old skill will be upgraded to enhance its stats plus a possible new stat.
@lnx all 4 of my classes (adventurer, rogue, warrior, mage) have a basic Attack option. it goes off of the attacker's ATK stat and the targets's physical defense, which can be affected by any number of things but mostly weapons and armor.
Rogues, Warriors, and Adventurers have 4 skill slots. You can buy skills in shops and swap them out at any time outside of battle. Most of them are based on physical attack as well, but the Rogue does have a spell that will analyze an enemy's stats.
Mages have 6 skill slots, because they have way more of them to choose from and 4 felt a bit too cramped for them. All of their skills go off of their magic stats.
In addition to the above, the luck stat is always taken into account, so the more lucky your character is the more damage they will deal and that gets applied after everything else. Rogues are the most lucky and warriors are the least.
re: Advice wanted for my RPG
@beardalaxy Why not just reduce XP received from AOE kills then. Divide the XP by the number of enemies times some constant I guess
re: Advice wanted for my RPG
@frost i thought it would be a great idea to give experience based on the amount of damage you deal relative to the value set for the enemy's EXP it can give out. i've never seen another RPG do that and i understand why now lol. there are so many more problems to think about and not just with balance but with mechanics too, i've had to do some pretty crazy workarounds for some exploits regarding it and there is still one left that i don't think is actually possible to fix without punishing players who don't abuse it as well.
the default behavior of rpg maker is that everyone gets experience points from a battle once it finishes, and characters who got kills get a little extra. if i'm not mistaken. that would be way easier, but definitely less cool. i also wanted to implement this system so that even if you lose a battle, you can revive at a church and continue playing. it helps ease the grindy aspect (although i feel like i've done a really good job with the game in terms of not needing to grind).
with your suggestion, i'd have to divide by the amount of enemies a spell targets, or something along those lines. i certainly could do that, but i think i'd rather try and balance it out with higher costs and such too since it is still dealing a fuck ton of damage... it's not solely a leveling problem, basically.
i think a part of the problem may also be that i'm comparing them to the Warrior class, which doesn't have any mobbing capability to speak of and only does a lot of damage to a single enemy. rogues and adventurers both have skills that can target multiple enemies. Warriors focus much more heavily on attacking single enemies multiple times, which is why i think lowering the SP cost of their moves would do them some good too.
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
Advice wanted for my RPG
@beardalaxy Make the xp rewarded based on effort imput, not kills.
re: Advice wanted for my RPG
@beardalaxy You can make XP gain tied to actions taken instead of kills/damage. If you want to keep class level parity, adjust the curves by the class' actions per time.
One could game it by choosing weaker actions, but you can't stop a player wanting to grind from grinding. If you must, you can also adjust XP gain by the relative level difference between the player and his targets, give the greatest XP for fighting enemies slightly higher level.
@Morghur very cool, unfortunately not exactly the setting for it
@Morghur just not the direction that I decided to go. That sort of thing is usually more dark fantasy and mine is a bit more lighthearted. There are technically a bunch of different kinds of spellcasters but in the game you really only play as one type. Mage with a natural inclination to magic that learns more, kind of a crossbreed between a D&D Wizard and Sorcerer. There is Holy magic too but you only get a small taste of that through technically illegitimate means. Then there are the "green mages" which are like druids but that got cut from the actual game pretty early on.
Also the game comes out in less than 3 months so that's not exactly a change I can make xD
And there is also divine magic, but for that you not only need to enter a covenant with a god but also pay a price after using spells
Advice wanted for my RPG
I think what I'm going to end up doing is a mix of all of these, but in small amounts. I've increased the SP cost of spells, decreased it for skills, and increased the price to buy all skills and spells. I've reduced the SP gain per level for mages, and also slightly increased their EXP curve.
All of this was done to relatively minor degrees, so I'm hoping that it eases things a little bit. Mages have been a thorn in my side ever since the beginning of the project. They have always gone between being too weak and way too strong and it's been really hard to balance them. I'm hoping that this won't put them back into being too weak again but it's hard to say when I can't have a whole QA department testing this kind of shit. The game has been not only a monumental task to create, but also proven quite difficult to test. I mean, I'm on my 4th playthrough and I've got the biggest patch list so far. There will certainly be bugs still by the time it releases and it is really unfortunate that I won't be able to catch all of them, especially big ones like soft locks. I guess it sort of hearkens back to the NES days where you had like 5 people working on an entire JRPG and they forgot to test walking up stairs a bunch of times which just like warps you to the credits or some shit like that.
Every game I make from here on out is going to be much, much smaller. Or, at the very least, much more focused. It'd be easier to test a 50 hour long, linear, story-based game than a 25 hour long open world one.