Help with balancing?

[Lyseth]

How do I balance a mage character who's support/offense?

I want her to deal very "okay" damage while also having a good support movepool, the problem is, the scaling seems skewed as she does A LOT of damage or next to 0 when I try balancing her.

 

[Frogboy]

Balancing is really tough in RPG Maker. I've resorted to using Himeworks Parameter Tables to get the precision that I needed. It allows you to build an Excel CSV table for your class' stats.

 

[Kes]

Balancing is a Game Mechanic, so ...
[move]Game Mechanics Design[/move]

As your question stands, it is impossible to answer. Just a few of the unknowns:
We do not know what counts as "okay" damage.
We do not know her stats, nor their progression.
We do not know the damage formulas of her skills
The amount of damage dealt out is also dependent on the stats of the enemies, which we do not know.
We do not know if any of her skills take advantage of debuffs that allies inflict.

You cannot provide that info in any sort of digestible form. What I suggest you do is to search the forum using 'balance' or 'balancing' as your search term, and restrict it by checking the 'search titles' box. You will find a range of helpful threads which will give you more ideas and tools.

 

[Lyseth]

Balancing is a Game Mechanic, so ...
[move]Game Mechanics Design[/move]

As your question stands, it is impossible to answer. Just a few of the unknowns:
We do not know what counts as "okay" damage.
We do not know her stats, nor their progression.
We do not know the damage formulas of her skills
The amount of damage dealt out is also dependent on the stats of the enemies, which we do not know.
We do not know if any of her skills take advantage of debuffs that allies inflict.

You cannot provide that info in any sort of digestible form. What I suggest you do is to search the forum using 'balance' or 'balancing' as your search term, and restrict it by checking the 'search titles' box. You will find a range of helpful threads which will give you more ideas and tools.

Yeah I have no idea how to do the "take advantage of debuffs" thanks to RPGMMV removing quick formula and making my previous version in RPGMVXACE obsolete.

 

[Silenity]

Definitely need more context to the situation.
For example "okay" damage in my project is in the 10-20s but yours could be in the 1000s.
What formulas are you currently using?

 

[Kes]

@Lyseth There is no need to quote entire posts to indicate who you are answering. Just use the username convention as I have done on this post.

To summarize: We can't balance your character for you. We can't even give sensible advice beyond the most general. Only you can do that. And for the debuffs thing - just ask a "How do I...?" question in MV Support.

Furthermore, this forum is for general discussion of aspects, so discussion of game balancing will - of necessity - range over elements which may not apply to you.
If you want to restrict the discussion to just your game, then I'm not sure what to suggest. We don't have a forum for that sort of individualized feedback. The nearest thing is the thread 'Features Feedback'. I could merge these posts into that.

 

[Andar]

The two main parts of balancing are mathematics and playtest.

You'll use mathematics to calculate the average amounts you want each battler to do and receive, before you set the damage formula to follow those values. And then you playtest a hundred times to see if your guessed mathematical values are correct in the context of the real game (which they often are not, they need to be adjusted).

RPGMMV removing quick formula and making my previous version in RPGMVXACE obsolete.

1) all the "quick formula" ever did was giving a window for entering values that could as easily have been entered directly - just write them into the damage formula
2) the "quick formula" was never balanced - it could never have been because does not give values, it only allows you to enter values that you need to have calculated before entering them (see "mathematics" above).
Using the quick formula settings does not help in balancing at all, it just helps a bit for people who have problems writing mathematical formulae, but still requiring them to know what they need to input there.

 

[Milennin]

You'll need a different formulae if the current one doesn't allow you to be precise. However, I don't get how a formulae can go from doing A LOT of damage to almost zero, with nothing in between.

 

[Kino]

@Lyseth if you ever played the new Persona 5 there is a character that fits the bill her name is Makoto.

She does fairly good damage and has support abilities. The way they balanced her was making her a tanky defense oriented support character with protection skills and less healing capability in her stats than other characters. A good comparison might be Red Mage.

Red Mage is a jack of all trades, but the trade off was less high level skills for flexibility. So, what you could do is give the character skills in each category, but give other characters better end game skills or damage stats for balancing.

Balance the character around the party members.

 

[bgillisp]

There little we can tell you as you didn't define ok damage, and we don't know your stats. So all we can say is it's math at this point. With more info we might be able to say a little more.

 

[Lyseth]

There little we can tell you as you didn't define ok damage, and we don't know your stats. So all we can say is it's math at this point. With more info we might be able to say a little more.

Yeah I had this issue with a glass cannon character and when I showed the stats they said I had to redo the formulas since the character practically 1-shot killed EVERYTHING, even with basic attacks.

So I don't see where it'll help if people aren't very good at helping to begin with, regarding the stats.

 

[Andar]

that's why we tell you that you have to start with the mathematics - unless you make sure the values and formulae you used are producing something that approaches balanced results, nothing can balance the game.
And the only way to achieve that is for you to calculate how the enemy and actor values should be - if you started the values by guessing what might be good, then it is almost sure that you have to scrap everything.

If you didn't calculate the values, start redoing them by calculating the formulae with Excel (MS Office) or Calc (OpenOffice) or a similiar program, because unless you do no one will be able to help you. You need to provide a basis that can be balanced first before anyone can help with the finetuning - and if you had that basis, you would understand what we were asking for when we ask about numbers and details.

Nothing can be balanced unless you start with mathematics - no matter how good someone is at helping, he needs that basis to work.

 

[bgillisp]

It also matters what your damage formula is. For example, the default formula 4 * a.atk - 2 * b.def is set up in such a way that any time the target's DEF is 2x (or more) the attacker's ATK they will take 0 damage, every time. So for that formula I've found the best way to keep that balanced is to never let DEF go over ATK at all, except for tanky characters, ultimate armor, and really hard to hurt enemies. But, that trick won't work for another damage formula.

Maybe what you need to do is back up, figure out what damage formula you want to use, then once you set that, figure out your stats to achieve what you want. The rest will work out from there. But, you will *have* to do the math yourself. There is no avoiding it. No one can tell you what damage formula to use with what you've provided so far, as there are way too many variables in play.

 

[Lyseth]

It also matters what your damage formula is. For example, the default formula 4 * a.atk - 2 * b.def is set up in such a way that any time the target's DEF is 2x (or more) the attacker's ATK they will take 0 damage, every time. So for that formula I've found the best way to keep that balanced is to never let DEF go over ATK at all, except for tanky characters, ultimate armor, and really hard to hurt enemies. But, that trick won't work for another damage formula.

Maybe what you need to do is back up, figure out what damage formula you want to use, then once you set that, figure out your stats to achieve what you want. The rest will work out from there. But, you will *have* to do the math yourself. There is no avoiding it. No one can tell you what damage formula to use with what you've provided so far, as there are way too many variables in play.

Idk how to make Formulas with the results I want, much less efficient ones, when I try my formulas I end up giving like a tank character (who has little damage) an ability that deals 20K, not my fault RPG maker chose this bs, the quick formula is HOW I got the results I wanted, I just put in the damage I wanted, then it would make the formula for me.

 

[Andar]

The you should look better at the results of the Ace quick formula settings - because that window is an extremely primitive substitution for the formula.
And basically you can simply copy the formulae from Ace to MV, because mathematics are always identical.

And those formulae are only a minor part of the true balancing, because balancing is much more than just the damage formula - for a truly balanced battle, the actor values and the enemy values need to be calculated in the same way as you did with the damage formula - but there are no quick settings for the enemy values, and the quick settings for the actor values have nothing to do with balancing.

 

[Lyseth]

The you should look better at the results of the Ace quick formula settings - because that window is an extremely primitive substitution for the formula.
And basically you can simply copy the formulae from Ace to MV, because mathematics are always identical.

And those formulae are only a minor part of the true balancing, because balancing is much more than just the damage formula - for a truly balanced battle, the actor values and the enemy values need to be calculated in the same way as you did with the damage formula - but there are no quick settings for the enemy values, and the quick settings for the actor values have nothing to do with balancing.

The problem is is that I've tried setting enemies to 999 DEF for a test and then abilities do like 30K to them which I don't understand

 

[bgillisp]

The problem is, 999 DEF is meaningless unless you tell the damage formula to use DEF (which is done with the b.def value). If that formula uses say MDF instead for defense, then 999 DEF will be as useless as 0 DEF as the formula isn't looking at the DEF. That's why I say it depends on what your formula is.

Edit: I looked at the quick formula in ACe, and all it is, is the following:

Base value + (Physical Attack value / 25) * a.atk + (Magical Attack Value / 25) * a.mat - (Physical Attack Value / 50) * b.def - (Magical Attack Value/25) * b.mdf

The important thing is it has some # * a.atk (your attacker's attack value) - half of that same # * b.def (the target's DEF value). So formulas will look like this for physical attacks:

4 * a.atk - 2 * b.def
10 * a.atk - 5 * b.def
2.4 * a.atk - 1.2 * b.def

See the pattern? From what you post it sounds like you are forgetting to factor in the target's DEF, which would make everyone do high damage no matter what. Remember, the formula will only do EXACTLY what you tell it to do for damage, no more and no less (within the variance that is).

 

[gstv87]

what's the unit for your game?
who has the "1" in any stat?

if you go around throwing random numbers anywhere, you'll always get random numbers that make no sense.
set up a test bed, with enemies set to "1", and testing equipment set to "1", and actors with "1" in every stat.
adjust one parameter at a time and record the results.
repeat until you've figured out how the game calculates damage, if you don't know or can't find the core formula.
if you can, or know the core formula, then, why are you asking this? 0o

 

[Lyseth]

what's the unit for your game?
who has the "1" in any stat?

if you go around throwing random numbers anywhere, you'll always get random numbers that make no sense.
set up a test bed, with enemies set to "1", and testing equipment set to "1", and actors with "1" in every stat.
adjust one parameter at a time and record the results.
repeat until you've figured out how the game calculates damage, if you don't know or can't find the core formula.
if you can, or know the core formula, then, why are you asking this? 0o

The problem is, quick formula is how I did it all in VX ace, Idk why the hell they removed quick formula in this version, it was really helpful

 

[gstv87]

my game is VXA, and I rigged it to use single numbers instead of formulas.
all the calculation is done at the core code, not through every skill's formulas.... the skill only provides *one* parameter, the raw damage.
I don't see how one feature has to completely break a game just because it was remade.