Introducing the PSO Rebalance Project: PSOBB REBORN

[ScoobyDew]

Nice font: SYSTEM

 

[Fire AKA Drazn]

Thanks ;3 Gives me a nostalgic JRPG vibe which i really like.

 

[Nightraven]

I've read through the entire thread and the manifesto. I have a few ideas that might be worth implementing as well as some feedback on some of the ideas.

Tech Limits
I can kinda agree on most of it, such as allowing anyone to learn most level 30 techs. I like the idea of Shifta/Deband and Jellen/Zalure being tweaked between RAmarl and HUnewearl, but I actually suggest that S/D be the focus for HUnewearl rather than RAmarl.

Part of the reasoning is that we (you) are aiming for hunters to be in the thick of things. Since Rangers are already ranged, it makes more sense to give them the ranged technique. Hunters having the support techs that are centered on them make sense thematically. In addition, this still allows you to keep the cross tech limit idea.

I'm not sure what your plans are for Megid, since that was also a force-only tech and you didn't address it at all, while Grants was only addressed as a balance issue. Keeping them force only would be fine by me, and they are still considered ra-level techs so HUmar and RAmar should never be able to learn them.

In regards to Anti, if you're going to cut the max level on it for HUnewearl and RAmarl, then you should enable both of those classes to learn Reverser as well. Currently, Support Forces still have a staple use by means of this tech. However, since it is a single level tech like Ryuker, it would make sense from a balance perspective to give the HUnewearl/RAmarl the tech as partial compensation for losing max anti levels.

Weapon Changes
First and foremost, there's an alternative to simply removing the fire/lightning specials and that's to make them scale off ATP. If that simply isn't possible, then ignore the next paragraph explaining the benefits.

The immediate result is that they suddenly have a niche for Hunters/Rangers, as they create a means for both classes to use tech damage without actually using techs. It would also create a new niche for certain high tier weapons like Asuka and Partisan of Lightning because they now deal scaling elemental damage. However, I also think that for these specials to maintain their niche, they'd need to use normal or increased ATA % (compared to the normal attack). The idea at this point is the thematic of a weapon being able to substitute as a tech. As part of the thematic, you can also enable the freezing specials to do EIC damage with ATP scaling. I don't immediately recall if freezing specials do damage or if they're simply "no damage but chance for effect" like its CC brethren effects.

Mag Changes
I can't say I like all of the ideas you're pushing for mags, particularly since you have some odd descriptions for the atomizers.

I can agree with a simpler system, I think we can do a little more to make sure that items have their niche in the feeding (thus increasing flexibility). Mates would be best for Hunter mags. Fluids for Force mags. And Antis for Ranger mags. Since Atomizers are specialty recovery, I felt it would make sense to allow them to focus on defense for those who wanted to create a character who could take a hit and keep going, something which will be important if you're drastically raising the threshold for knockdowns. I also feel like Star Atomizers should remain the "divine" food of mags for those who want something that works for everyone.

Here's what I think the simplified food values should be. For the following chart, I use multiple + or - to indicate increased effect.

Monomate: +Pow, -Mind
Dimate: ++Pow, +Dex, --Mind
Trimate: +++Pow, ++Dex, +Def, ---Mind
Monofluid: +Mind, -Pow
Difluid: ++Mind, +Def, --Pow
Trifluid: +++Mind, ++Def, +Dex, ---Pow
Antidote: ++Dex, +Pow, -Mind
Antiparalysis: ++Dex, +Mind, -Pow
Sol Atomizer: ++Def, +Pow, -Mind
Moon Atomizer: ++Def, +Mind, -Pow
Star Atomizer: ++Def, ++Pow, ++Dex, ++Mind

That's all I can currently think of. I like the idea of correcting some glaring problems without totally redoing everything.

 

[Fire AKA Drazn]

Thanks for the feedback : )

Changing core game mechanics, such as making elemental specials scale off ATP, is not currently something i'm capable of, and is on a pretty low spot on my priority list. For now if Hunters or Rangers want to do elemental damage, they should use their vastly improved attack techs. If I get the tools to change this at a later date I may do something more interesting with them, but in original and in Reborn they do not have a useful place in anyone's arsenal.

The reason for this is because elemental specials do a flat amount of elemental damage that is then reduced by enemy resists. The base values for this damage are painfully low in original PSO, so in Reborn where enemies have vastly different (mostly higher) resistances there is no way I can make them relevant without access to those base damage values. In their current state they would be less than useless and would only serve to confuse players, so they have been removed for now.

And yes, "Ice" specials only cause the Freeze status effect while doing minimal actual damage, less than a light attack if i recall correctly. It certainly isn't the reason why you use that special at any-rate

The S/D/J/Z max levels for HUnewerl and RAmarl are mimicking their HUmar and RAmar counterparts, where HUmar originally can only learn the J/Z series, and RAmar S/D. The main reason for keeping that theme for HUnewerl and RAmarl is to represent them being the-same-but-better when it comes to techs compared to their counterpart.

It also makes logical sense, as Hunters are most likely to be closer to the enemy, while Rangers will be somewhere at the back or middle of the group. I am happy with this setup so far, but i'm open to further suggestions as to why it should be changed.

Megid and Grants remain Force exclusive attack techs. I should probably update the manifesto for my planned changes to Megid, however they also fall under the instant kill special changes as well which I have not currently settled on.

The general plan will be to make sure instant kill attacks in general remain useful as a trash clearing tool without them trivializing the much stronger elite enemies, along the same line of effectiveness as the HP reduce series, while instant kill will be better for trash and HP reduce better for miniboss and lower enemies.

Max level Anti should also remain a Force exclusive, as should Reverser to ensure their place as the support class.

The last two levels of Anti remove much less common ailments (Jellen/Zalure at level 6, Freeze at level 7) one of which (Freeze) usually isn't worth trying to cast Anti to remove unless you can preempt it.

Arguably those last two levels are simply fluff, with the main meat of useful curables being within the first five levels (Poison, Shock, Paralysis, Confusion, Slow.) This change is more thematic than having any serious game-play repercussions for the classes it affects.

While in the case of Reverser, having only the lowest HP and fragile class being capable of infinite revival makes a lot of sense from a balance standpoint and promotes support orientated Forces staying in the proverbial back-row, and makes FOmar and FOmarl's improved defences compared to other forces that much more valuable.

Giving a high HP and defence class such as a Hunter Reverser risks trivializing content for groups pushing harder content, since with near infinite revives there is little risk of failure. Of course 4 people with 10 moon atomizers each and an inventory full of scape dolls already probably does that, but the goal was to fix balance problems, not make them worse ;3

This ties into an idea I was toying with which was to greatly reduce the number of Moons a player can carry, probably also including a reduction in the other atomizer items as well, which is also relevant to why each atomizer (apart from Sol, which i don't have a problem with at the moment) was given a utility role rather than a main one when it comes to feeding your mag.

The core of the Mag changes is to avoid the scenario where people accidentally feed their mag the wrong item and end up "ruining" their mag as there is no way to remove gained levels. For this reason there are few items that raise more than one stat at a time, while most reduce other stats as well.

This ultimately gives you complete control over how many levels and in what stat you give your mag, while in the original system you had to fight with it and plan around a ridiculously specific recipe of items in specific orders and numbers to get rarer mags.

I remain undecided as to whether the Anti items should give dual stats at all, and have been considering making Antidote the DEX item and Antiparalysis the DEF item, while doing something else with the atomisers along with the changes to the quantities you can hold.

However these changes are secondary to the monster rework, and I will sit on them until that is complete. Thanks for bringing these issues up though, as it gives me the opportunity to explain my thoughts in detail, while I can only address them generally with the manifesto.

Keep it coming ^^

 

[Nightraven]

I'm gonna address these in segments, to keep it more concise.

Thanks for the feedback : )

Changing core game mechanics, such as making elemental specials scale off ATP, is not currently something i'm capable of, and is on a pretty low spot on my priority list. For now if Hunters or Rangers want to do elemental damage, they should use their vastly improved attack techs. If I get the tools to change this at a later date I may do something more interesting with them, but in original and in Reborn they do not have a useful place in anyone's arsenal.

The reason for this is because elemental specials do a flat amount of elemental damage that is then reduced by enemy resists. The base values for this damage are painfully low in original PSO, so in Reborn where enemies have vastly different (mostly higher) resistances there is no way I can make them relevant without access to those base damage values. In their current state they would be less than useless and would only serve to confuse players, so they have been removed for now.

And yes, "Ice" specials only cause the Freeze status effect while doing minimal actual damage, less than a light attack if i recall correctly. It certainly isn't the reason why you use that special at any-rate

Understandable, but it's still an idea to keep for the future balancing.

The S/D/J/Z max levels for HUnewerl and RAmarl are mimicking their HUmar and RAmar counterparts, where HUmar originally can only learn the J/Z series, and RAmar S/D. The main reason for keeping that theme for HUnewerl and RAmarl is to represent them being the-same-but-better when it comes to techs compared to their counterpart.

It also makes logical sense, as Hunters are most likely to be closer to the enemy, while Rangers will be somewhere at the back or middle of the group. I am happy with this setup so far, but i'm open to further suggestions as to why it should be changed.

Pretty much because of the thematic "close range vs long range". Even though the classes have this juxtaposed, it makes more sense thematically for the rangers to have the long range skills J/Z and the hunters having S/D.

Megid and Grants remain Force exclusive attack techs. I should probably update the manifesto for my planned changes to Megid, however they also fall under the instant kill special changes as well which I have not currently settled on.

The general plan will be to make sure instant kill attacks in general remain useful as a trash clearing tool without them trivializing the much stronger elite enemies, along the same line of effectiveness as the HP reduce series, while instant kill will be better for trash and HP reduce better for miniboss and lower enemies.

I definitely agree with this. The simple answer should be to simply adjust dark resistance for most creatures.

Max level Anti should also remain a Force exclusive, as should Reverser to ensure their place as the support class.

The last two levels of Anti remove much less common ailments (Jellen/Zalure at level 6, Freeze at level 7) one of which (Freeze) usually isn't worth trying to cast Anti to remove unless you can preempt it.

Arguably those last two levels are simply fluff, with the main meat of useful curables being within the first five levels (Poison, Shock, Paralysis, Confusion, Slow.) This change is more thematic than having any serious game-play repercussions for the classes it affects.

While in the case of Reverser, having only the lowest HP and fragile class being capable of infinite revival makes a lot of sense from a balance standpoint and promotes support orientated Forces staying in the proverbial back-row, and makes FOmar and FOmarl's improved defences compared to other forces that much more valuable.

Giving a high HP and defence class such as a Hunter Reverser risks trivializing content for groups pushing harder content, since with near infinite revives there is little risk of failure. Of course 4 people with 10 moon atomizers each and an inventory full of scape dolls already probably does that, but the goal was to fix balance problems, not make them worse ;3

Okay, that logic makes sense to an extent. However, I think level 6 Anti should be allowed on HUnewearl to allow an "empowerment tank" niche that isn't quite the same as drain tanks from Casts with life drain weapons. This would be further emphasized by allowing them to remove J/Z while enabling them to cast max level S/D.

This ties into an idea I was toying with which was to greatly reduce the number of Moons a player can carry, probably also including a reduction in the other atomizer items as well, which is also relevant to why each atomizer (apart from Sol, which i don't have a problem with at the moment) was given a utility role rather than a main one when it comes to feeding your mag.

The core of the Mag changes is to avoid the scenario where people accidentally feed their mag the wrong item and end up "ruining" their mag as there is no way to remove gained levels. For this reason there are few items that raise more than one stat at a time, while most reduce other stats as well.

This ultimately gives you complete control over how many levels and in what stat you give your mag, while in the original system you had to fight with it and plan around a ridiculously specific recipe of items in specific orders and numbers to get rarer mags.

I remain undecided as to whether the Anti items should give dual stats at all, and have been considering making Antidote the DEX item and Antiparalysis the DEF item, while doing something else with the atomisers along with the changes to the quantities you can hold.

However these changes are secondary to the monster rework, and I will sit on them until that is complete. Thanks for bringing these issues up though, as it gives me the opportunity to explain my thoughts in detail, while I can only address them generally with the manifesto.

Keep it coming ^^

Part of the idea was to emphasize a sort of "speed feed" with the more powerful food, enabling you to get levels in your mag sooner, and planning ahead with the otherwise simple setup.

If you really want to restrict it to no more than 2 attributes gaining per food, then it's a simple adjustment from my table because all we'd be editing is the Di/Tri Mates/Fluids.

The thing about the Anti vs Atomizer argument is that I feel we should encourage tank specialties for classes. This would be best done by making Atomizers the DEF boosters (and either Mind/Pow depending on which class your character is) and leaving the Antis for the variants on ranger classes. The other thing you might notice is that if we change the mag feeding to 4, a ranger can (more easily) give alternating antidote/antiparalysis for a pure dex build (not that they'd necessarily want to).

Something else I want to bring up, since I feel it's counter-intuitive, is Forces having the second lowest ATA.

This is simply illogical by all standpoints. They should have the lowest ATA since they are generally not working with weapons. I don't mind them having a smaller bridge to gap. But I do not like the idea of Hunters, one of the two weapon classes, being one of the worst when it comes to any facet of weapons use.

To that end, I have an idea in regards to TP/HP specials that would retain their use as sustain, particularly for the classes you intend to improve them for. Have those specials grant a passive 1/2/3/4 TP/HP regen (stacking with the android and newman regeneration passives). However, unlike the racial passives, these will be constant rather than requiring one to stand still emphasizing action.

That's everything I had to offer for now.

 

[Fire AKA Drazn]

Pretty much because of the thematic "close range vs long range". Even though the classes have this juxtaposed, it makes more sense thematically for the rangers to have the long range skills J/Z and the hunters having S/D.

Personally I do not view support skills as being "ranged" or "melee" it is just support. Giving the classes the type of support most relevant to their position in the group makes more sense to me, hunters fight toe-to-toe with monsters so they would appreciate them being weaker, rangers fight closer to the centre of the group so would be better suited to provide their allies support.

However, I think level 6 Anti should be allowed on HUnewearl to allow an "empowerment tank" niche that isn't quite the same as drain tanks from Casts with life drain weapons. This would be further emphasized by allowing them to remove J/Z while enabling them to cast max level S/D.

Considering how rare J/Z are in PSO's PVE, this would be an extremely minor point to consider as far as HUnewearl's balance is concerned. Ultimately forces having two things they can cure instead of just one thing (and arguably the least relevant one at that) helps better distinguish their support nature compared to Hunters or Rangers.

HUnewerl should remain a capable "tank" without being able to cure an extremely rare status condition that one Sol Atomizer will fix for her.

Part of the idea was to emphasize a sort of "speed feed" with the more powerful food, enabling you to get levels in your mag sooner, and planning ahead with the otherwise simple setup.

If you really want to restrict it to no more than 2 attributes gaining per food, then it's a simple adjustment from my table because all we'd be editing is the Di/Tri Mates/Fluids.

The thing about the Anti vs Atomizer argument is that I feel we should encourage tank specialties for classes. This would be best done by making Atomizers the DEF boosters (and either Mind/Pow depending on which class your character is) and leaving the Antis for the variants on ranger classes. The other thing you might notice is that if we change the mag feeding to 4, a ranger can (more easily) give alternating antidote/antiparalysis for a pure dex build (not that they'd necessarily want to).

In the current system each item of the same rarity/value gives the same total bonus when fed to a mag. For example a dimate raises a stage one mag's POW by 33%, while antidote raises POW by 11% and DEX by 22%. There is no improved leveling speed for feeding a mag a dual stat item compared to a mono stat one.

Having already made mag leveling around 3 to 4 times faster than in original PSO, I don't have any plans to make it even faster, nor make it slower if you wanted to level a specific stat.

While encouraging more build diversity is a good thing, MAGs are a poor angle to attempt that from as they cannot raise stats above the class' cap. For some classes you would have the max DFP even if your mag had 100 DEF rather than 20. You would simply reach this cap earlier, then suffer from not correctly capping your other stats later.

Currently MAGs are only useful to build diversity in that they can act as early game units that help correct your class' weaknesses, until you find endgame armour and weapons that let you truly diversify. Even then PSO remains a fairly rigid game as far as diversity inside of the same class is concerned, and is not really something I can correct for in any meaningful way without going the route of Ultima or making an entirely different game.

Something else I want to bring up, since I feel it's counter-intuitive, is Forces having the second lowest ATA.

This is simply illogical by all standpoints. They should have the lowest ATA since they are generally not working with weapons. I don't mind them having a smaller bridge to gap. But I do not like the idea of Hunters, one of the two weapon classes, being one of the worst when it comes to any facet of weapons use.

I do not think this is illogical for two major reasons, one of the class' theme and the other being purely balance/mechanical.

Force's are graceful technicians according to PSO's lore, and this fact is supported by their original class descriptions as both FOmar and FOmarl are noted to be "competent with weapons." It also makes sense from a design standpoint that FOmar would be the force equivalent of a Hunter and FOmarl the equivalent of a Ranger as it follows the Male/Female trend of differences (Female = higher accuracy/mental strength/evasion, Male = higher power/defense/HP.)

From a purely mechanical standpoint, both FOmar and FOmarl must have better ATP than their other Force counterparts otherwise they would simply be worse in every way, while Forces need to have higher ATA than hunters to avoid FOmar and FOmarl again being worse in every way compared to their competition outside of their class.

Their position as the versatile middle ground between Rangers and Hunters gives them a unique place in any group and is balanced out by their overall poor defence and tougher learning curve.

FOnewerl and FOnewm however both have the worst ATP scores in the game, countered by their unrivaled MST. Where FOmar and FOmarl are combat mages, FOnewerl and FOnewm are pure tech users and struggle to do much else.

The reason for these positions of the ATP/ATA totem pole is to help solve a key balance problem in original PSO: Forces suck at everything other than casting max level S/D/J/Z. Tech damage falls off sharply later in the game and causes DMC, and their god-awful ATP and ATA stats make them pretty bad at everything else until you painfully manage to gear them back into relevance, only to find while you can finally kill trash at a decent pace, your Hunter is one-shotting entire rooms and Charge-Vulcan-ing bosses into irrelevance.

Simply put Forces were in dire need of a serious buff and these major stat improvements are part of that. Perhaps now people will consider taking more than one force with them, which will also help promote more multiplayer as an added bonus.

I have an idea in regards to TP/HP specials that would retain their use as sustain, particularly for the classes you intend to improve them for. Have those specials grant a passive 1/2/3/4 TP/HP regen (stacking with the android and newman regeneration passives). However, unlike the racial passives, these will be constant rather than requiring one to stand still emphasizing action.

By specials i assume you mean units? Or do you mean Newman/CAST passive regen? Either way, units are hard limited to no more than 1 per second (anything more will stack overflow and result in around 64 per second) while race specific regen I am currently unable to change.

I have already improved units along these lines, with the rarest TP/Regen unit giving the full 64 per second. It is however extremely rare.

 

[Nightraven]

Personally I do not view support skills as being "ranged" or "melee" it is just support. Giving the classes the type of support most relevant to their position in the group makes more sense to me, hunters fight toe-to-toe with monsters so they would appreciate them being weaker, rangers fight closer to the centre of the group so would be better suited to provide their allies support.

Most rooms are small enough it probably won't matter enough to be worth arguing further. I still feel it makes more sense for rangers to be debuffing and hunters to be buffing.

Considering how rare J/Z are in PSO's PVE, this would be an extremely minor point to consider as far as HUnewearl's balance is concerned. Ultimately forces having two things they can cure instead of just one thing (and arguably the least relevant one at that) helps better distinguish their support nature compared to Hunters or Rangers.

HUnewerl should remain a capable "tank" without being able to cure an extremely rare status condition that one Sol Atomizer will fix for her.

Guess there's no point in arguing it further.

In the current system each item of the same rarity/value gives the same total bonus when fed to a mag. For example a dimate raises a stage one mag's POW by 33%, while antidote raises POW by 11% and DEX by 22%. There is no improved leveling speed for feeding a mag a dual stat item compared to a mono stat one.

Having already made mag leveling around 3 to 4 times faster than in original PSO, I don't have any plans to make it even faster, nor make it slower if you wanted to level a specific stat.

While encouraging more build diversity is a good thing, MAGs are a poor angle to attempt that from as they cannot raise stats above the class' cap. For some classes you would have the max DFP even if your mag had 100 DEF rather than 20. You would simply reach this cap earlier, then suffer from not correctly capping your other stats later.

Currently MAGs are only useful to build diversity in that they can act as early game units that help correct your class' weaknesses, until you find endgame armour and weapons that let you truly diversify. Even then PSO remains a fairly rigid game as far as diversity inside of the same class is concerned, and is not really something I can correct for in any meaningful way without going the route of Ultima or making an entirely different game.

Since you are toying with class stats in the first place, it doesn't seem like changing maximum class stats is entirely out of the question. Regardless, it seems I must also drop this argument.

I do not think this is illogical for two major reasons, one of the class' theme and the other being purely balance/mechanical.

Force's are graceful technicians according to PSO's lore, and this fact is supported by their original class descriptions as both FOmar and FOmarl are noted to be "competent with weapons." It also makes sense from a design standpoint that FOmar would be the force equivalent of a Hunter and FOmarl the equivalent of a Ranger as it follows the Male/Female trend of differences (Female = higher accuracy/mental strength/evasion, Male = higher power/defense/HP.)

From a purely mechanical standpoint, both FOmar and FOmarl must have better ATP than their other Force counterparts otherwise they would simply be worse in every way, while Forces need to have higher ATA than hunters to avoid FOmar and FOmarl again being worse in every way compared to their competition outside of their class.

Their position as the versatile middle ground between Rangers and Hunters gives them a unique place in any group and is balanced out by their overall poor defence and tougher learning curve.

FOnewerl and FOnewm however both have the worst ATP scores in the game, countered by their unrivaled MST. Where FOmar and FOmarl are combat mages, FOnewerl and FOnewm are pure tech users and struggle to do much else.

The reason for these positions of the ATP/ATA totem pole is to help solve a key balance problem in original PSO: Forces suck at everything other than casting max level S/D/J/Z. Tech damage falls off sharply later in the game and causes DMC, and their god-awful ATP and ATA stats make them pretty bad at everything else until you painfully manage to gear them back into relevance, only to find while you can finally kill trash at a decent pace, your Hunter is one-shotting entire rooms and Charge-Vulcan-ing bosses into irrelevance.

Simply put Forces were in dire need of a serious buff and these major stat improvements are part of that. Perhaps now people will consider taking more than one force with them, which will also help promote more multiplayer as an added bonus.

This is where I have to speak up and hope I get through to you.

You're already buffing damage techs across the board and almost nerfing weapons across the board (you are still adjusting the damage of weapons for the sake of standardization between multi-hit/single strike and that's going in different directions).

With the tech buffs alone, you're indirectly buffing Forces by a huge amount. Since you're also tweaking monster resistances, you may as well make them weaker to tech in general since you're also removing elemental weapon damage (which for the time being, is understandable). Since you're also buffing monster defense, weapons are also universally becoming weaker.

With a lot of these balance changes, you're basically turning forces into "must haves" for 3 of your party members with a hunter or ranger to absorb blows. That's not balance, that's a table flip.

I realize that your aim is to make forces more relevant. That's fine. But I'm looking at these overall changes and it looks like you're adjusting more to make Forces similar to the Death Knights during the Wrath era of World of Warcraft (aka massively over tuned so that you were useful even if you played badly).

You're already making forces much stronger by buffing damage techs across the board, especially since you're otherwise not messing with resistances outside of Megid/Grants. Making forces weapon competent to the point Hunters are worse with weapons than they are is crossing the line. There is no excuse for Forces to be able to hit more often with a weapon (of any sort) than someone who specializes in it.

I can support balance changes. I cannot support something that goes against good design.

By specials i assume you mean units? Or do you mean Newman/CAST passive regen? Either way, units are hard limited to no more than 1 per second (anything more will stack overflow and result in around 64 per second) while race specific regen I am currently unable to change.

I have already improved units along these lines, with the rarest TP/Regen unit giving the full 64 per second. It is however extremely rare.

No, I meant weapon specials with the HP/TP/EXP stealing and granting those weapons an additional passive similar to the racial passives but constant rather than "while standing" or "while running" like a unit would grant.

 

[Fire AKA Drazn]

Since you are toying with class stats in the first place, it doesn't seem like changing maximum class stats is entirely out of the question.

Max stats have changed quite a bit already however I am doing my best to stick to the original theme of each class. Ultimately there is actually less of a stat difference between many classes which is part of an attempt to make each of them relevant as well.

You voiced a concern about Hunters having the least ATA despite being the de-facto weapon masters of the game which i forgot to address in my last post. This is also the reason, simply because thats how it is in original PSO and as a mechanic it works if done right.

Original PSO doesn't quite do it right and i hope to do it better, starting with reducing the total actual ATA difference from a 58% (!) accuracy difference to around a 20% or less one compared to their Ranger counterparts.

It shouldn't ever be a case where one class can hit something and another simply cant, it should only ever be a case of one hitting somewhat less but for somewhat more damage in return.

You also voiced concerns about forces having more accuracy than Hunters. Did you know the effective difference in this case is 10% or less effective accuracy? Accuracy in Reborn, while remaining extremely important, shouldn't be the unreasonably massive wall it is in original.

Guess there's no point in arguing it further.

I regret you feel that way, but I do have my own vision for the game that I want to stay true to. I hope you can understand and support that, and failing that we can agree to disagree. I don't mean you any ill will when I disagree with you, and hope this doesn't stop you speaking up at a later date. Like I said all feedback is welcome.

This is where I have to speak up and hope I get through to you.

You're already buffing damage techs across the board and almost nerfing weapons across the board (you are still adjusting the damage of weapons for the sake of standardization between multi-hit/single strike and that's going in different directions).

With the tech buffs alone, you're indirectly buffing Forces by a huge amount. Since you're also tweaking monster resistances, you may as well make them weaker to tech in general since you're also removing elemental weapon damage (which for the time being, is understandable). Since you're also buffing monster defense, weapons are also universally becoming weaker.

With a lot of these balance changes, you're basically turning forces into "must haves" for 3 of your party members with a hunter or ranger to absorb blows. That's not balance, that's a table flip.

I realize that your aim is to make forces more relevant. That's fine. But I'm looking at these overall changes and it looks like you're adjusting more to make Forces similar to the Death Knights during the Wrath era of World of Warcraft (aka massively over tuned so that you were useful even if you played badly).

You're already making forces much stronger by buffing damage techs across the board, especially since you're otherwise not messing with resistances outside of Megid/Grants. Making forces weapon competent to the point Hunters are worse with weapons than they are is crossing the line. There is no excuse for Forces to be able to hit more often with a weapon (of any sort) than someone who specializes in it.

I can support balance changes. I cannot support something that goes against good design.

Speaking of vision, I will defend my weapons vs techs decisions here.

This spreadsheet represents all my research and calculations related to weapon damage and tech damage, amongst other things.

I feel you are arguing a point from a position of not knowing the full extent of my planned changes. Partially that is my fault since I have been making rapid and wide-reaching changes for a while now and not been updating the manifesto with details on what those changes involve.

To put it simply I am not raising or lowering any one class, weapon type or tech, I am completely redesigning weapon/tech/monster dynamics from the ground up.

For example you are concerned about the Tech buff, and what you view as a nerf to weapon damage. What is actually going on is a fairly exact Equalization of the damage they do, so that Tech focused Forces such as FOnewerl can hope to somewhat keep pace with the DPS of a HUcast.

However due to the nature of Resistances and DFP, characters with high ATP will almost certainly do more DPS than a Force, especially when you are over-leveled or geared. However tech damage does have the advantage of remaining relevant for much longer when pushing harder content.

Likewise, while Forces have all round good ATP and ATA, the specialization and naturally more powerful weapon options will mean both Rangers and Hunter's will output more DPS in most situations.

Force is a support class, and while in Reborn they can pull their own weight far better than they ever could in Original, they are not in danger of being a better Hunter or a better Ranger. There shouldn't however be a case where groups feel their DPS is crippled by having more than one Force.

However the ATP/ATA balance of the three classes in its current form is important not only for forces, but for Rangers as well.

If I were to make Hunters the second most accurate class, either I would need to make Force's extremely inaccurate (and into run some of the same issues as Original, such as where FOmar and FOmarl become fairly useless for anything other than S/D/J/Z spam) or I would need to make Hunters more accurate and have them become more powerful than Rangers where my goal is to make them ideally the same strength.

Also, it is worth noting that it is only the combat focused Forces (FOmar, FOmarl) that have middling ATP. FOnewerl and FOnewm ATP are both the lowest in the game as i've noted once before, and FOmar and FOmarl's MST suffers quite a lot for that ATP boost.

Either way I have been thinking and debating these points with myself for several months now, with the intention of avoiding exactly the problem you are predicting with over-tuned classes of any sort. I hope you can find the time to examine the spreadsheet I linked in detail, hopefully it will assuage any more concerns you have about this project but if you do feel free to post again about it ^^

 

[Aleron Ives]

FWIW, it is super easy to fix Burning and Tempest: simply change the power level of these specials in the special attack table of the PMT from 4 to say... 50, and you'll be doing 1000 damage in no time. Just be aware that the damage formula takes your level into account, so a level 200 character will always do more damage than a level 1 character, no matter what value you select for each special. Also remember that these specials are immune to reduction, so you can't really select good values to make a Burning Gladius useful without also making Burning Diska/Vulcan/Arms completely broken.

 

[Fire AKA Drazn]

FWIW, it is super easy to fix Burning and Tempest: simply change the power level of these specials in the special attack table of the PMT from 4 to say... 50, and you'll be doing 1000 damage in no time. Just be aware that the damage formula takes your level into account, so a level 200 character will always do more damage than a level 1 character, no matter what value you select for each special. Also remember that these specials are immune to reduction, so you can't really select good values to make a Burning Gladius useful without also making Burning Diska/Vulcan/Arms completely broken.

Interesting, I had tried changing those numbers before but nothing seemed to happen. I might experiment more with it when I have time. However since I have changed resistances so much to fit around techs, and the fact there isn't an ice damage special, I doubt even with control over the damage i'd be able to make them relevant. Not to mention I would need to do some research to even know what damage values past 4 do.

Overall not too fussed about their existence either way. As I said before, pretty low on my priority list.

 

[NDW]

I look forward to seeing this project's progress.

Good luck!

 

[Slick]

Really interested in this! Fantastic work keep it going this sounds very promising!

 

[TaoChaos]

Any and all constructive feedback is welcome. Any help, advice or encouragement doubly so.

This is totally epic, and props to you! I've been leery about making a FO because of how much tech falls off late game.
I was reading the back and forth on HU/RA and the s/d/j/z, and I had an idea:
Since HU like to get stuck in and covered in gore, maybe they would max shifta and zalure, since a melee character usually has a good amount of defense and evasion.
Then, RA get the deband/jellen max, since they are more prone to getting ganked hard in close combat. Also, it forces the HU and RA to rely on each other. Kind of a "cover me, I'm going in!" scenario, so the RA casts deband, the HU casts shifta, RA provides cover fire while the HU charges in with shields up.
Just a thought. Otherwise it makes sense the way you have it, where the HU render opponents helpless by debuffing, and the RA provide defense support

 

[Eistee]

How are you going to handle the fact that Hunters and Forces lose ATA when using a ranged weapon when not using SMARTLINK? Have you thought about tweaking that somehow?

It might be OK with your mod, though, since Rangers actually have lower ATP than Hunters and therfore could need an advantage like that. In Vanilla PSO, Rangers have 1 more open slot due to their built-in SMARTLINK which makes them even better than they already are.

 

[falkenjeff]

In Vanilla PSO, Rangers have 1 more open slot due to their built-in SMARTLINK which makes them even better than they already are.

Not entirely true. A hunter just has to sacrifice DFP/potentially resists and use a BOVN.

 

[Eistee]

Not entirely true. A hunter just has to sacrifice DFP/potentially resists and use a BOVN.

Right, sorry. But isn't it impossible for a HUcast to max ATP withouth V101?

But yeah, I forgot about BOVN, so my point is wonky. Still, the "lose ATA over distance"-matter has not been adressed at all so far - and maybe the OP has plans for that?

 

[falkenjeff]

Right, sorry. But isn't it impossible for a HUcast to max ATP withouth V101?

Yeah he misses out on like 3 or something.

 

[ScoobyDew]

This spreadsheet represents all my research and calculations related to weapon damage and tech damage, amongst other things.

Data is beautiful. I might just throw this in R for the hell of it. Seems like you got a couple of nice graphs there. Maybe I can improve on them a bit.

 

[Fire AKA Drazn]

This is totally epic, and props to you! I've been leery about making a FO because of how much tech falls off late game.
I was reading the back and forth on HU/RA and the s/d/j/z, and I had an idea:
Since HU like to get stuck in and covered in gore, maybe they would max shifta and zalure, since a melee character usually has a good amount of defense and evasion.
Then, RA get the deband/jellen max, since they are more prone to getting ganked hard in close combat. Also, it forces the HU and RA to rely on each other. Kind of a "cover me, I'm going in!" scenario, so the RA casts deband, the HU casts shifta, RA provides cover fire while the HU charges in with shields up.
Just a thought. Otherwise it makes sense the way you have it, where the HU render opponents helpless by debuffing, and the RA provide defense support

This is an interesting idea, but my goal is ultimately to stick to how things were in original PSO as much as possible, and this is the configuration they used.

How are you going to handle the fact that Hunters and Forces lose ATA when using a ranged weapon when not using SMARTLINK? Have you thought about tweaking that somehow?

It might be OK with your mod, though, since Rangers actually have lower ATP than Hunters and therfore could need an advantage like that. In Vanilla PSO, Rangers have 1 more open slot due to their built-in SMARTLINK which makes them even better than they already are.

Was debating removing Smartlink from the game however since Hunters cannot use Mechguns anymore the main problem with Smartlink is already gone. I will probably do some testing with it, maybe monitor people's reactions when i finally get around to releasing an alpha. Hopefully it won't be too much of an issue, I know how much of problem it was in original.

Data is beautiful. I might just throw this in R for the hell of it. Seems like you got a couple of nice graphs there. Maybe I can improve on them a bit.

Feel free to work your number magic, you mad scientist you ;3

 

[NDW]

Was debating removing Smartlink from the game however since Hunters cannot use Mechguns anymore the main problem with Smartlink is already gone.

Removing Smartlink would render the traditional usage of the following weapon types to be less accurate:

Hunters - Handguns and slicers.
Forces - Handguns, slicers, rifles, and cards.

It would also make Dark Flow special attack less accurate.

My reaction to this is I wouldn't like it and would rather Smartlink be kept in the game.

when i finally get around to releasing an alpha