Insane Difficulty: Brave New World 1.6.4 is now available! - Insane Difficulty

The checkmarks are definitely pretty cool, and avoids color clutter. It does need to be a more prominent icon though but the layout is good.

I'm not sure I like the idea of MP Regen while out of battle, unless it were tied to a relic of some kind, or even some kind of in-battle stamina based MP regen like an MP Life Bell.

That's about the only style of MP regen I'd like to see in the game, personally.

(Sorry if this was already suggested, I haven't been following the conversation very closely.)

The SP hack looks really polished, nice work!

I agree with Mishrak, I wouldn't want MP Regen unless it was tied to a Relic.

A relic would probably be the only way to avoid a massive rebalance, that's true. If MP regenerates, either it's so trivial as to be pointless, or it upsets a huge assumption that went into the current balancing paradigm. So, while I really do like the idea, it's probably impractical? Such a relic would be on par with a Gem Box for value, just to eyeball it. Which is a shame, because I'd love it most in the mid-WoB, when I have the Rune Edge but can't bear to let anyone wield it.

Yeah, should've mentioned it, the SP hack does look nice, as does the check marks.

Mishrak, on 21 November 2015 - 06:56 AM, said:

It's not something I'm interested in implementing, really. It works for Romancing SaGa because the game is structured around that as a difficulty model; it doesn't really fit with the resource-management model that we're going for with the "Save Anywhere" thing.

Bauglir, on 21 November 2015 - 08:11 AM, said:

The concern was that the current balancing paradigm isn't... balancing... paradigmatically...? But in all seriousness, it's just a proposal for the sorta-issue of spell costs being prohibitively restrictive when free alternatives are on par. There are many other ways to address that, like making them much better alternatives in specific situations (as Tier 3 elementals basically are right now), or nerfing the free alternatives (which I doubt anyone, myself included, actually wants to see). There's probably another, much better idea floating out there that nobody's grasped at yet.

The main issue as I see it is less "spells aren't good" - as endgame spells like Flare, Tier 3s, Holy, and Ultima very clearly are - and more "Tier 1s become obsolete too quickly, Tier 2s are always either not cost-effective or not quite strong enough." Which suggests the problem lies more with Fire/Ice/Bolt 1-2 and maybe Poison/Bio. Clearly there's nothing weak about Flare, which was the issue I had with the MP regen thing potentially just making it even easier on Relm to spam her endgame stuff. And that's the unfortunate thing about MP regen, it helps the things one doesn't want helped (Cure 2/3, Life 2, Rerise, endgame spells).

One possibility would be a relic that's sort of like the Gem/Soul Box but static, though I'm not sure if that's even possible. Something that's like -6 MP cost reduction, perhaps tied to the Sage Stone (since, as someone mentioned, it's an issue most affecting Locke/Mog/Strago anyway). The difference between a 96 MP X-Fire 3 and an 84 MP X-Fire 3 is not terribly substantial: One extra casting per 8 casts, and Locke won't probably be casting that many times to begin with. But a 20 MP X-Fire 2 vs. 32 MP X-Fire 2? That's a little better: An extra cast for every three or so. And it's a drop in the bucket for spells like Quake, Dark, and Life 2, so it doesn't really help with those. It also would restrict it away from Celes/Terra (who already have the Box), Relm (who by no means needs it), or guys like Edgar who would essentially get all their cheap support spells for free. But again, I'm not sure static cost reduction is even possible.

BTB, on 21 November 2015 - 09:38 AM, said:

Here's my question: What resources are we managing under the new system? It seems like mostly MP and Items (HP too but you're probably using MP and Items to keep HP high). Certain abilities and certain builds and certain characters will be fairly insulated from this resource conservation system because their resources are infinite or effectively so.

• Siren/Shiva Celes is conserving her resources between healing points, but Zoneseek Relm isn't. Celes spends more to hit multiple foes as efficiently as Meteor, has a defense-ignoring spell weaker than Flare but only 5 MP less expensive, and can only get Osmose through a weapon proc. She's probably better after the Soul Box but that's pretty late.
  
• Cyan's combat medic role becomes incredibly potent and either of his builds can utilize it on top of having a resource-free primary attack. A party with Cyan in it is essentially fully healed after every random encounter. That was always true before, and a nice bonus, but it means more now.
  
• Shadow is effectively in the same boat he was always in, or rather everyone else is now in his boat, but he's sort of much better than them at the game if the resources are stockpiled, and now less worse off if they're not since he'll probably at least have Smoke Bombs and Shuriken even if pinching pennies. What I'm driving at is Shadow is kind of relatively better by others becoming more resource-dependent since he already was, and he's very good relative to other characters before that point.
  
• People with free party-wide healing like Gau/Setzer/Mog are significant beneficiaries, while not necessarily being any worse at what they do nor less optimal anti-boss choices (granted this has always been true of Gau). Setzer is arguably the most balanced in this regard as a high-sustain low-peak-power character as he's generally not the best at actually doing damage but can do damage battle to battle with minimal worry of running out of juice, but Mog and Gau are perfectly capable of both sustainable and high-power attacking.
  
• Gogo can swap from things that don't use resources to things that do later in a dungeon. Another thing one always could do but which matters a bit more now. Granted, Gogo probably needs this relative buff, but it's worth noting that Gogo's getting it. And Gogo has the same combat medic trick Cyan does.

I'm not opposed to the change (in fact, I'm very much in favor of removing Tents and the like), but there are a lot of ripples this may end up having on overall balance because not everybody is actually inconvenienced by resource restrictions, but other than Setzer and possibly Edgar (he's seen some nerfs to his max damage but remains sustainable) I'm not sure they're necessarily balanced around whether or not they are.

Nakar, on 21 November 2015 - 05:52 PM, said:

this.

i would suggest a very weak (out of battle) mp restore relic for the mid game, available for or found on the floating continent. it could easily be restricted to characters who actually need it: terra, locke, mog and celes. magic builds for these characters are borderline dead weight in long dungeons until the boss.

alternatively, it would be nice if the soul sabre was available earlier, but i prefer out-of-battle mp restore because it specifically addresses dungeon sustain.

Another idea is to just make the Soul Sabre better at doing its job of sustaining MP. Which...requires a higher proc rate. Something Locke cannot obtain, and it competes with Circlet on Terra / Celes (granted, once they use up that extra MP, I guess they can switch to the Veil).

There's also still the option of fiddling with the numbers for MP costs and/or BPows on early- & mid-tier magic to see if they can't be cost-effective, or at least, strong enough to be well worth the cost. Maybe it won't work, but its by far the easiest thing to try (doesn't require tweaking the resource management system). How many significant battles are there that would seriously have their balance ruined if tier 1 / 2 elementals suddenly became stronger and/or had lower MP costs? The only one I see is Atma.

Lowering the MP cost seems to be what everyone is shooting for. Would certainly make tier 2's more usable in the mid- / late- WoB, though they'll still start lagging behind come Daryl's Tomb.

since spirit rings now protect against against instant death, what kind of changes have been made to bosses that use id attacks (in particular wrexsoul)?

seraph9888, on 23 November 2015 - 03:40 PM, said:

None.

BTB, on 23 November 2015 - 03:53 PM, said:

you don't think they'll be too easy?

Not really, no. I don't rely exclusively on instant death attacks as a form of difficulty for any boss, including Wrexsoul.

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I don't think so. Let's take Doom Gaze as example: He's quite the pain in the ass, but not because of death and Comdenm: It's because his other spells are pretty much OHKO, and if you don't get killed by that, Wind Slash will do the trick

Other than maybe Larry, I can't think of a boss who spams instant death so often that blocking it would trivialize them, and Larry doesn't just use Death.

Death generally just makes things slightly more stressful if you forgot to protect against it. It's hardly a game changer being able to defend against it properly now.

It's coming...

Oh, I love sushi!

Whose the sushi chef? Sabin? Cyan.

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 25 November 2015 - 01:37 PM

Oh, yeah, Funnyman, I did make one last-minute change based on that long-ass post of your and bumped Dragon's power up to 50. Just FYI.