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Post by countlieberkuhn on Aug 3, 2011 11:08:25 GMT -8
Okay I sooooorta have an idea for how to make summoners unique and interesting. Sorta. Right now my idea is that there will be an initial casting timer that depends on the Aeon. 1 turn = Valefor, 2 turns = Shiva/Ifrit, 3 turns = Bahamut. During this time, the summoner isn't doing anything else, and takes a small amount of increased damage when hit. Once summon timer has completed, then your big shiny Aeon appears to help you for 3 turns, and fights in your stead with their own miniature skillset, as with FFX. The caster is protected by the Aeon, and takes only 50% damage (maybe more, maybe less, maybe varying for each summon) as well as not suffering any status effects. Aeons can be inflicted with status though. If you guys are liking how this looks on paper, then I present you with 2 questions: 1. Should the Aeons have a HP stat that, if depleted, prematurely ends the summon? 2. Should summoners begin casting a specific aeon from the get go, or should they begin summoning, then at the start of each turn perform a RNG, and if it returns true then cast an aeon that is available at the current summon cast count? So if you've been summoning for 2 turns, if it returns true you'd summon Shiva or Ifrit, and if not you'd go ahead and try to summon Bahamut next turn. If I went with the former I'd make Bahamut less likely to occur than say, Valefor, but personally I'm leaning toward the latter. But I figured I'd ask you guys to see what you thought
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Post by Fleck on Aug 3, 2011 13:38:00 GMT -8
1. Yes. But give them a lot of HP to make this relatively unlikely.
2. This one's trickier, because it will seriously affect how useful summoners are. Personally, I'm leaning towards the RNG thing (although I have no idea what that stands for). With the RNG thing, the summoner has a chance of summoning something each round, instead of spending X number of turns being totally immobile. It's a matter of luck either way, but the RNG thing seems more balanced to me.
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Post by countlieberkuhn on Aug 3, 2011 13:51:01 GMT -8
RNG stands for Random Number Generator.
And yeah, I do think it'll be more fun to do it that way. It'd probably make things more exciting on a turn-by-turn basis at least, and it'd give me more leeway to make the higher summons more powerful, as you have to pass say a 50% thing 2-3 times to get to them.
As for the HP, I'll have to think about whether or not the HP is preset for each Aeon, or if it's somehow linked to the caster's stats. Maybe linked to the magic stat, then I could balance the toughness of the aeons against the squishiness of the person casting it. And yeah, the HP would be pretty high, although eating a flare to the face from someone with high magic should be enough to take one out. Except maybe something like Bahamut. He'd be badass.
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Post by Bob on Aug 3, 2011 17:54:55 GMT -8
1. I'd say see how both go. I almost think it'd make Summoners too powerful since if I'm understanding correctly, summoners will either be summoning something and have the FF8 summon shield up, or there's a summon out there fighting for them, so I see Summoners being semi-invincible in a sense. Yeah, you can knock the summon away, but wouldn't they just start summoning again? *shrug* I just foresee them being very defensively able.
2. I like the idea of doing a general summon, then if it appears early, it's a weaker Aeon. You could make it so that if it's turn one, it's the weakest summon, turn two it's either the weakest or second weakest, turn three it's the weakest, second weakest, or third weakest, etc. That way if you make it all the way to the final turn, there's STILL a chance of using a bad aeon, so you could make Bahamut incredibly powerful because if he comes out....damn, he'll murder. But that really might make summoners too lame, I dunno. Anyway, my vote is RNG.
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Post by countlieberkuhn on Aug 3, 2011 18:18:11 GMT -8
During the summon time (before the Aeon comes out) there won't be any Aeons blocking the damage. It'll just be the summoner taking direct hits, with increased damage as a tradeoff for casting an epic summon thingy. Good news is, I've done all the framework code for handling Aeons (i think), so now it's just a matter of assigning stats and abilities to each Aeon, aka the easy part. As per, the way I've handled Aeons is very clunky and not very adaptable, but it should work
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Post by Fleck on Aug 3, 2011 20:38:14 GMT -8
I guess my only question now is.... when does the beta come out?
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Post by countlieberkuhn on Aug 4, 2011 3:08:39 GMT -8
Soon! Before Sunday, when I'll be going away for a few days. I'll have Internet access, but not my program code. So hopefully I can get a working executable file out before then and we can just spam it with characters and see what happens I'll also post my excel file that handles level up packages too. It works just like Bob's, only without gambits, equipment, and everyone's stuck at level 20. Unless we decide we want to raise/lower the level count after testing. As long as everyone's the same level XD
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Post by Bob on Aug 4, 2011 9:41:25 GMT -8
Wow, everyone's gonna be away next week! Poor Fleck. He'll be so lonely. Howl alone. Howl alone. I'll be away starting tomorrow and returning in about a week.
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Post by Fleck on Aug 4, 2011 11:15:13 GMT -8
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Post by countlieberkuhn on Aug 4, 2011 16:20:24 GMT -8
FLECK IS HORNLESS
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Post by Bob on Aug 4, 2011 20:28:13 GMT -8
BOB MAY GO. COUNT MAY GO. FLECKY NOT GO!
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Post by Fleck on Aug 4, 2011 20:54:21 GMT -8
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Post by Bob on Aug 4, 2011 21:12:36 GMT -8
That's it! No more Who's Line for you!
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Post by Fleck on Aug 4, 2011 22:19:31 GMT -8
LOL TIMES INFINITY! Fleck, I find your artistic use of images and the copy/paste command to be inspiring and incredibly arousing. If I weren't pretending to be straight with my sham marriage, I would totally be all over you! Thanks, Bob. You have fun going wherever it is you're going. I'll be sure to clog up the forums with more garbage while you're gone. Because I love you. Sounds great! I'm looking forward to it! Bob! Stop sending me messages from the future before I've even posted!
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Post by countlieberkuhn on Aug 6, 2011 18:54:02 GMT -8
FLECK! GET YOUR ARSE IN HERE SINCE YOU CLEARLY HAVE A LOT OF DIVINE TIME ON YOUR HANDS! But anyone else who is lurking may take a look too Right, so, we're ready for beta! Sorta. I've been busy most of today and I'm off tomorrow morning, so I pretty much just crammed the last bit of coding for summoners and spent about 10 minutes doing balance edits. I intended to add more summons and include 'tier 4' summons (such as Anima and Eden), but I didn't get that far. So right now, tier 1 Aeons are Valefor and Carbuncle, tier 2 is Shiva and Ifrit, and tier 3 is just Bahamut. All summons have 3 abilities, attack (or a variant thereof), a unique ability, and an overdrive ability. These have a 40%, 35%, and 25% chance of occuring respectively. An Aeon lasts for 3 turns and will perform a skill on the turn it is summoned, but if it uses an overdrive skill it will remove the Aeon from combat, regardless. The exception is Bahamut, who spends 3 turns charging his mega flare, during which time he takes double damage. If you can't kill him before then, then you're gonna take OMGWTFBBQ damage and probably die unless you have a lot of HP. blitzball.goatpen.org/miniarena/files/In the above link is a zip file containing the executable program file, the playerdata text file (which I've emptied except for Sephiroth, so you can see how its done), and an excel file, which contains all the info about the paradigms, their abilities and their damage calculations, as well as Aeons and how their stats are determined, and finally a level up page. The level up page contains the 6 level up packages, and calculates the stats as they would in the excel file for Bob's one. Just put '6' next to the Warrior package and it'll apply 6 warrior package level ups to the stats. Once you've got 20 level up packages selected, copy the stats that display in the excel file into the playerdata text file. The excel file is the same one I used to keep track of all my abilities, so it's can be a bit messy in places. So, what I want you guys to do is to start making a bunch of characters and try test matches, to see if you see any dodgy balance, find a particular paradigm over/underpowered or find a combo that wins almost every time against anything. Due to the heavy reliance on randomness in the program though, it's worth simming the same match a few times to get a better idea of things. Make sure you spell the paradigms exactly right including the first capital letter in the playerdata file, otherwise it won't work. Same goes for when you run the program - when it asks for a fighter's name, spell it exactly as you spelt it in the playerdata file, down to the capital letters. Also, if you spot any bugs, let me know. There's one that I know of that incorrectly displays the health of a player if they were defeated while they had an Aeon summoned, but all that does is show their health as a minus number rather than 0. It doesn't affect functionality though. Finally, it's worth noting that I STILL haven't gotten around to giving monks and ninjas an extra ability, so they seem slightly bland right now. Same applies to dark knights to some extent. Again, if you can think of a skill that fits the class and is at least loosely based on an actual FF skill, and would be useful to the paradigm, let me know. Now, go! Do my balance testing for me!
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