Insane Difficulty: Redesigned Chip / Zenny Drops - Insane Difficulty

So, I'm redesigning the Chip and Zenny Drops from scratch.

What I'm here to discuss is how you guys would like to see the Chip Drops. Allow me to explain.

In vanilla Most enemies drop 3 or 4 codes of their respective chip. This is one example of it.

Enemy: Mushy
Busting Rank (BR): Drop
BR 1: 30z
BR 2: 30z
BR 3: 30z
BR 4: 50% 30z, 50% 50z
BR 5: 50% 300z, 50% Spice1 I
BR 6: 300z
BR 7: 300z, Spice S
BR 8: Spice S
BR 9: 46.75% Spice S, 46,75% 400z, 6.50% Spice B
BR 10: 50% 400z, 50% Spice B
BR S: 100% Spice1 B
BR S+: Spice1 *
BR S++: Spice1 *

But what in the hell are BR S+ and BR S++, you wonder? With Custom Style, you can get LV. S+ in a battle against regular viruses by scoring a LV. S without using Navi chips. Regular time-freezing chips are OK. If you do this without opening the Custom Screen more than once (including at the start of the battle), you will get LV. S++ instead.

So! To give one example, this is what I designed for the mod.
Enemy: Mushy
Busting Rank (BR): Drop
BR 1: 100z
BR 2: 100z
BR 3: 100z
BR 4: 50% 100z, 50% 150z
BR 5: 50% 150z, 25% Spice1 Z, 25% 200z
BR 6: 50% Spice Z, 50% 200z
BR 7: 25% Spice1 Z, 25% 200z, 25% Spice1 D, 25% 300z
BR 8: 50% Spice1 D, 50% 300z
BR 9: 46.75% Spice1 D, 46.75% 300z, 3.25% Spice S, 3.25% 400z
BR 10: 25% Spice1 D, 25% 300z, 25% Spice S, 25% 400z
BR S: 50% Spice S, 50% 400z
BR S+: Spice1 B
BR S++: Spice1 *

Phew... that was complicated to list. Anyway. The basic idea here is that there are more drops, increased Zenny, and more RNG rolls to make the experience more fresh. What I was wondering is if the differentiation between S+ and S++ would be a good way to go or not. I'm going for it, so far.

Thoughts?

Edit:
After a second view, I'm changing it so that BR S can never give out Zenny, and it instead gives either the old BR S reward, or the BR S+ Reward.

BR S+ and BR S++ would give the same chip, except in very rare cases, like Fishy 2 with the Burner / Burning chips.

I don't think BR: S++ should give something different, if you can, maybe skew the drop rates. Like S++ is the rare drop being pretty common, while S+ allows you to get it, but not often, and I didn't realize that the drop rates did that for rank 6 on some things. That explains why I always got money in 3 then.

Augestein, on 26 December 2014 - 11:38 PM, said:

Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing now. I've realised that S++ and S+ should always give the same reward (except some very specific examples). S+ and S++ basically are pretty rare to do, so tying them with RNG on top of them would not be a smart choice.

However, getting a normal S rank is a lot easier and common, which is why I am gonna make it so the enemy may drop two codes with an S rank, a 50% each. I'll update the OP with the new odds for you guys to see.

Thanks for the feedback, it helps me a fucking ton.

The less RNG the better in my opinion. Have the chips that are higher in rank appear more often in BR that have 2 different chip codes available. Personally, with your proposed changes to BR S, obtaining a Spice1 S chip would become incredibly obnoxious (the edit in the OP). I'm assuming by old BR S award or new BR S+ award you mean changing it to Spice1 B. That would mean you'd have a 25% chance to get a Spice1 S from BR 10 and a 3.25% chance from BR 9... I don't really like those odds. The difficulty of the game should come from the AI and damage changes, not from how long it takes to get the chips you want lol.

I like the idea you propose in your second post and I also hate acquiring zenny from S ranks. Maybe something more along the lines of this:

Enemy: Mushy
Busting Rank (BR): Drop
BR 1: 100z
BR 2: 100z
BR 3: 100z
BR 4: 50% 100z, 50% 150z
BR 5: 50% Spice1 Z, 25%150z, 25% 200z
BR 6: 50% Spice1 Z, 50% 200z
BR 7: 50% Spice1 D, 25% Spice1 Z, 25% 300z
BR 8: 50% Spice1 D, 50% 300z
BR 9: 50% Spide1 S, 25% Spice1 D, 25% 400z
BR 10: 50% Spice1 S, 50% 400z
BR S: 50% Spice1 B, 50% Spice1 S
BR S+: Spice1 *
BR S++: Spice1 *



This follows a pretty noticeable pattern and lightens the load for players attempting to fill out their chip library. I personally feel the difficulty of 100%ing a game shouldn't be bogged down by extreme cases of RNG, but a little here and there doesn't hurt. This is kinda like a compromise between your BR drop rates and vanillas to a degree and something I'd be much more comfortable with.

Yes, more or less, that's in general how I've redesigned the drops since my last post. S+ and S++ are the same. S has, depending on the chip, one or two codes, and no zenny drops. I realized what you're saying, that I need to minimize the RNG as much as I can.


The weird numbers listed like 3.25 are innate from the engine and I can't change them . Nevertheless, I've been studying the numbers and I feel confident they will feel natural for the player. (in the design I have on my sheets, which is pretty similar to what you listed). There's more room for chip drops in my design, but the higher zenny dropped should balance it out a bit. Thanks for the feedback. It won't take much for me to release a new version, with the updated drops.

How did you redesign the 6.50% into 3.25%? Does every drop after the first two split that percentage down, that sounds confusing not to mention hard to deal with when redesigning these drop rates.

All I know is that I already acquire plenty enough zenny by doing multiple net runs in the early game areas. Logging in and out refreshes the green data and not to mention your health, so its pretty simple to stay healthy and farm extra zenny and area specific chip drops. This becomes a lot harder later in the late game though from areas becoming a lot larger and in general more difficult. I just think that zenny drops shouldn't get too much in the way of chip drops. But I'll get a feel for what you want when the next test patch shows up with these changes, so I'll hold my theorizing back for now.

I've finished the normal enemies and tested day 1 and the experience is a completely different one. I ended up with a J, L folder and all HP upgrades and a few chips bought, all of this with absolutely no grinding. So far, this was a huge success.

I'll try to get the bosses done by tomorrow. If all works well, I'll be releasing v.0.4.0 tomorrow.