Help with balancing?

[Lyseth]

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.

Because as I said, "I DON'T KNOW how to use formulas as I don't know how they work because I can't see the intended base damage"

 

[bgillisp]

Then how in the world did you ever use the quick formula button? That doesn't tell you the intended damage either.

As it is, the help tells you what each item means for the formula. From there you have to plug in what your stats are at that point in time, and that's the damage. For example, if you use the default formula 4*a.atk - 2*b.def, and your ATK is 40, and the target's DEF is 20, then the damage is:

4 * 40 - 2 * 20 = 160 - 40 = 120.

As it is, I think you need to sit down and learn how to work with the formulas. That is the secret to balancing your game. And that is all the advice I can offer as you still haven't told us your stats, your current formula, or anything, so I can't tell you more on how to balance your game.

PS: I posted the formula used by the quick damage formula a few posts back. Use that if you have to. It's the exact same thing used by the engine in ACE.

 

[gstv87]

I can't see the intended base damage"

in a base game, with no plugins, and no additional modifiers to the actors' settings, the base damage of a regular attack is literally the result of the skill's formula.
if you type 1, the base damage is literally 1.
no calculations, no nothing.

if you add any modifiers to the battlers in question, either by adding vulnerability to X type of element, or by boosting their stats in any way, or by adding states that cause any modification of the base set of stats, then the damage is ([base] * [vulnerability]) + [boost]

clean the actors of any modifiers, clean the enemies of any modifiers, and set up a testing battle, with each battler using the stock attack skill.
if you write a 1 in the skill formula, you should get an applied damage of 1.

 

[Wavelength]

It sounds like you've completely goofed the formulas.

At the most basic level, your damage formulas should increase with the appropriate stats of the user (nicknamed "a", so you can say something like a.mat or a.atk), and decrease with the appropriate stats of the enemy target (nicknamed "b", so you can say something like b.mdf or b.def). Therefore, a damage formula might be something like 250 + (a.mat * 3) - (b.mdf * 2) while a healing skill, which you don't want to decrease based on the target's stats (because there's no reason a target would try to resist a heal) might be something like 400 + (a.mat * 2).

If you literally don't know how to make a formula even after all the help @bgillisp gave you, then your best bet would be to literally copy and paste (into MV) the same formulas that "Quick Formula" made for you in Ace. Anything that worked there (except for complicated RGSS code, which you clearly didn't use) will also work in MV.

From a balance standpoint, I always advocate using multiplicative, rather than additive, formulas. These ensure that skills don't ever do zero damage, and they also tend to make it less likely for skills to do runaway high amounts of damage either. Additionally, you can safely leave out base values (like 250 or 400 in the formulas above) if you want to when you're using a multiplicative formula, which helps ensure that skills remain useful through the entire game even as the character levels up and learns new skills. An example of a multiplicative formula would be (a.mat * 50) / (b.mdf + 25) and the nice thing about this is that if you double a character's MAT, you will double the damage they deal - very easy from a conceptual standpoint.