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.
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.
