Balance Numbers

[Wavelength]

I've changed from a flat damage buff to a more percentage system and that's working better though some fine tunning is needed. Again the problem was if I gave the attack to a Monster, it would break due to the fact that players don't have the HP to take a 250 hit. And giving it some massive defense boost to avoid instant killing players would give the boost to monsters and thus, not be worth using. The point is to have an attack that can inflict good damage to enemies without making it an instant kill vs players.

I could get some balance numbers out later tonight if people are interested in seeing how it looks now.

Again, your base damage is making up too high of a percentage in the formula. Lower the base damage, increase the effect of the offensive and defensive modifier parts of the formula, increase actors' ATK and DEF (and maybe their HP), lower enemies ATK and DEF, etc.... and then play around with the other stats to compensate for these buffs to the player if necessary.

 

[Tiamat-86]

i found excel very helpful for this.
could make a few columns have the players minimum, average, max stats
column for enemy stats.
make a few grids that mimic the damage formulas used for both player attacking enemy and enemy attacking player. ie. cell ( = B3 * 4 - F4 * 2 ) B3 would be a.atk and F4 would be b.def

then you would just change the stats numbers and the grid area would automatically update

its like simultaneously balance testing 120 skills both ways and you only have to change 8 numbers.
still need to do in game testing afterwords but thats moreso testing how the randomness of an encounter will play out while already knowing ahead of time the potential of each skill individually.

 

[MerlinCross]

Again, your base damage is making up too high of a percentage in the formula. Lower the base damage, increase the effect of the offensive and defensive modifier parts of the formula, increase actors' ATK and DEF (and maybe their HP), lower enemies ATK and DEF, etc.... and then play around with the other stats to compensate for these buffs to the player if necessary.

Which, as I had asked at the start, seems to be "Just do a full rebalance already" which I've already started in on .

i found excel very helpful for this.
could make a few columns have the players minimum, average, max stats
column for enemy stats.
make a few grids that mimic the damage formulas used for both player attacking enemy and enemy attacking player. ie. cell ( = B3 * 4 - F4 * 2 ) B3 would be a.atk and F4 would be b.def

then you would just change the stats numbers and the grid area would automatically update

its like simultaneously balance testing 120 skills both ways and you only have to change 8 numbers.
still need to do in game testing afterwords but thats moreso testing how the randomness of an encounter will play out while already knowing ahead of time the potential of each skill individually.

I can never figure out how to make excel work, it just breaks as I put things in regardless of what I'm trying to do, or not do(NO I'm not doing math here it's actual text, stop it).

 

[Wavelength]

Which, as I had asked at the start, seems to be "Just do a full rebalance already" which I've already started in on .

Good! As you rebalance, keep in mind that base damage amounts should rarely or never be the "main determinant" of how much damage a battler deals, unless you're designing the game specifically around it (which would usually be used for games where the characters don't grow in power by leveling). Also worth keeping in mind that usually actors will need higher stats than common enemies, unless they get an automatic full heal after combat (this one got me during my first attempt to make a game! - a single test battle felt great; an entire dungeon felt horrible, lol).

I can never figure out how to make excel work, it just breaks as I put things in regardless of what I'm trying to do, or not do(NO I'm not doing math here it's actual text, stop it).

Go to the Format Cells menu (should be available if you right-click the cell or a highlighted group of cells, but if not, look at the top menu bar for 'Format'), find the Numbers tab (or similar), and choose 'Text' as the Number Format or Category. That will stop Excel from automatically calculating totals and then formatting the result as a number. I think you can also type numbers as strings by putting them in quotes such as "34" this will cause the number 34 to show in the cell as text, rather than being treated like a number and formatted to 34.00 or whatever.

 

[MerlinCross]

Good! As you rebalance, keep in mind that base damage amounts should rarely or never be the "main determinant" of how much damage a battler deals, unless you're designing the game specifically around it (which would usually be used for games where the characters don't grow in power by leveling). Also worth keeping in mind that usually actors will need higher stats than common enemies, unless they get an automatic full heal after combat (this one got me during my first attempt to make a game! - a single test battle felt great; an entire dungeon felt horrible, lol).

I'm playing with small numbers on the actors so they really don't grow in power by simply grinding. New attacks sure but you start at about 60 HP and you're only going to get about 100 HP by level 10. So incoming damage from the enemies needs to be lower but outgoing damage from the PCs needs to be high so enemies don't die in one hit at least until certain benchmarks are met(gear and level). And I want some sort of damage from the enemies so it's not just 0 0 0 0 after a certain point. This isn't a grind them to dust dungeon but healing is going to be limited to just items and skills so having good management of them is a point in the game.

So I'm at the point where players need to do good amount of damage with their skills, while trying to hold some MP/TP back for healing and the enemies have to do at least notable damage so you have to worry about healing now or getting killed in the next fight.

 

[Tiamat-86]

having enemies use the same skills as actors only works if actors and enemies have comparable stats. if actors only have 100HP while normal enemies have 2500HP but both sides have the same attack and defense, ya going to need different skill set for enemies.
as a side note. depending on the engine (MV for sure can do this) you could have really long formula doing an if statement to check how much damage would be done, if over a desired amount just use the formula normally but if would be under the desired amount use different formula for simple flat value damage. this way 0 damage at higher levels just doesnt exist

 

[MerlinCross]

i found excel very helpful for this.
could make a few columns have the players minimum, average, max stats
column for enemy stats.
make a few grids that mimic the damage formulas used for both player attacking enemy and enemy attacking player. ie. cell ( = B3 * 4 - F4 * 2 ) B3 would be a.atk and F4 would be b.def

then you would just change the stats numbers and the grid area would automatically update

its like simultaneously balance testing 120 skills both ways and you only have to change 8 numbers.
still need to do in game testing afterwords but thats moreso testing how the randomness of an encounter will play out while already knowing ahead of time the potential of each skill individually.

I'm finding it hard to set things up in excel myself.

Right now I have it calculating the average attack across all party members(with and without weapons) and a couple scaling monster DEF values(18, 22, 25, 30, etc). And then doing the base attack skill formula against all monsters. Not sure if this is really properly organized but learning.

Gettting the skill section is gonna be a pain.

having enemies use the same skills as actors only works if actors and enemies have comparable stats. if actors only have 100HP while normal enemies have 2500HP but both sides have the same attack and defense, ya going to need different skill set for enemies.
as a side note. depending on the engine (MV for sure can do this) you could have really long formula doing an if statement to check how much damage would be done, if over a desired amount just use the formula normally but if would be under the desired amount use different formula for simple flat value damage. this way 0 damage at higher levels just doesnt exist

When I first started normal enemies had about 100 HP. With stats in the ballpark of player stats. The Boss has a trunk of HP.

I realize the mistake I made yes I get that. But the topic was more about "Hey which solution is probably the best way to go about it" than asking "Hey how do I fix this". The most common suggestion is to just rip everything out and rebuild from scratch. The issue I'm finding now is getting the numbers to the point monsters die quickly so battles don't drag on but also don't do stupid levels of damage back at the players.

Edit; Taking Tiamat's advise into account I'm slowly trying to rig a sheet together to try and handle the quick math rather than test, record, tweak, test, record. Not sure if this is a good organization though.