Insane Difficulty: gear progression - Insane Difficulty

Currently gear upgrades are entirely linear:
stuff bought from pedan is clearly superior to stuff bought from the cats before, etc.


One option would be to make new gear less about better defense and more about special properties, attack/defense calculation would have to be adapted.

Possible properties on weapons could be:
increased chance to hit
increased chance to land a critical hit
chance to inflict status ailments
high constant attack bonus but low attack factor for STR or vice-versa

Possible properties for armor could be:
increased evasion
armor with high p.def but low m.def or vice-versa
high constant defense bonus but low defense factor for VIT/PIE/INT - or vice-versa - in any combination
status ailment immunity
resistance to elemental damage

(each weapon has 22 bytes, armor 26 bytes, so there's enough room for interesting stuff)


This is currently only a idea thrown into the room.
Originally asked by Krause.

Any opinions/ideas/suggestions on this?

It's a shame that nobody has given their word on this... but I'm all for this idea, to be honest. I'd be glad to see a little variety in the weapons and armor rather than just boost attack/defense.

Maybe I should add a bit more to give people an idea what it could look like:

the gear you can buy in wendel would have "medium" values in attack/hitrate/critrate/defenses/evade.
That'd mean e.g. the defense would reach about 280-300 at max level with 30ish VIT.
Later armors would not be strictly better than that. Instead they would have - compared to the Wendel items - some benefits and drawbacks.
Dwarf armor could have increased physical defense but less evade, like classic heavy armor.
Armor from Rolante could have lower defenses but much higher evade, basically light armor.
Other armor might have immunity to single status effects or the like.

So for armored knights you could use the rolante armor to counter their low hitrate and use the dwarf stuff for Bill/Ben.
In total you could just keep the Wendel armor up to the finale, but changing to specialised armors for the situation could make a lot of stuff easier.


Similar plan for weapons:
wendel weapon are average (small bonus to hitrate and critrate)
Dwarf weapons could have high attack but no bonus to hit/crit.
rolante weapons could have higher hitrate (e.g. to counter certain ninja's evade).
Weapons that inflict status ailment are possible, too. (well, except for sleep, as that likes to crash the game)

Again, the Wendel stuff could carry you through the game but specialised stuff makes it easier.
Or you keep only the wendel stuff and have more money for byzel items, that works too.


Clarification:
no bonus to hit/crit/evade is exactly what equip gives atm.

I'm all for more flavor on the equipment. It'd let us have a choice on load out, and make the game more nuanced. Give us different ways of rolling with the various heroes.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: I agree as well. I would like a little variety in the armor/weapons. It'd give us a bit more of an edge against bosses, implement strategic thinking as well.

Velsper, on 05 November 2014 - 12:10 PM, said:

Don't forget to vote "yes", Velsper... just a recommendation.

This sounds fantastic, that'd make all weapons and armor infinitely more interesting. Reminds me of enchantments in Elder Scrolls games. I like the idea of a silence/poison/sleep saber.

eltiopepe, on 05 November 2014 - 05:21 PM, said:

Sleep on physical attack will not happen; it was exactly this that caused the game to crash often when used by Needlebirds repeatedly. Something to do with out of memory, so nothing I could even remotely try to fix...

Silence, poison, petrify, death... are still on the table, though.
Depending on how bosses react to status ailments... something might happen there to some, maybe, possibly.

Some gear that strengthens spells might be possible too.
Or maybe rings that boost weapon damage.

Everyone has like 20 weapons, not counting those that are blocked because of incompatible light/dark classes.
Plus some 15 armors, 9 helms and 7 accessoires (same restriction) - so... enough room to experiment I guess.

Got any ideas for special item effects... speak up, I might give it a try.

Maybe an accessory that fills 2/4 (depending on the character) slots on the tech bar per hit as opposed to one? Though this might be kind of obsolete if you end up implementing the charge function... I don't know. Beyond status effects/elemental bindings I can't really think of anything. What about a ring that adds a certain spell (if you have room) to your character while it's equipped?

eltiopepe, on 08 November 2014 - 02:53 PM, said:

charge was on a "might happen if I can get it to work properly"-list, which was not the case.
x2 tech gain might be an idea

You might be able to remove items from the black market if you tie spells to accessories. Don't know if it's viable to do it though.

There's no point in removing the black market items; they can be gotten from chests/seeds.

Could someone enlighten me, what the point of those spell-teaching-while-wearing items would be?
Damage spells rely on casting stats (INT/PIE/AGL) that only those have relatively high that learn those spells naturally - or already use all of their spell slots, the damage would be low; plus I plan to make an accessoire that boosts spell damage, so even bigger gap.
Buffs... well one-use items already exist; why should you waste 30k gold and an item slot if you can just buy a life-time supply of 20 uses and wear something else?
Heal light... would be same case as with why I removed it from dark Charlie; it's basically/almost an entire character role, wouldn't sit right with me to pass it easily around.

Praetarius5018, on 09 November 2014 - 03:09 PM, said:

Having item equivalents of the same spell...? Here's my argument, Prae: what if you're silenced and you're not Duran with an Oath Shield? Let's say you don't have any way to access Tinkle Rain and/or an item equivalent, on top of all that. So, if you have the same spell in the form of an item, and that boss is weak to it... you can cast that spell in the item format. You only have 9 shots, yes, but you could whittle away HP with physical attack (in the original game, that works especially well since most enemies are vulnerable to physical damage.)

Now, about Stats buff/debuff items? ...Yeah, no comment on that.

But if I've taken that out of context, then my bad.

Colar, on 11 November 2014 - 02:18 PM, said:

What I understood was originally suggested:
while Kevin has a specific ring equipped he can cast e.g. Fireball, from his own MP pool with damage based on his own INT value. That way he would still not be able to cast it if silenced.

Fireball as a one-use item already exists and is even buyable: flame coin
(in fact they are even 20-25% stronger than the same spell currently)

sorry, but I don't get what I want to tell me here

First of all, allow me to apologize for quoting out of context.

Second of all, so what you're saying here is you don't see the point of an accessory being able to give a spell. Well, take people like Duran and Kevin for example... they are not that skilled in the art of magic. But before I begin, two factors are what I need to know:

• Would the Fireball spell that Kevin has, in theory of course, be able to be manually casted?
  
• Or, is it based on randomness? As in, whilst fighting, Kevin has a chance of automatically casting the spell?

If the former: You only get 9 shots with an item equivalent of a spell, and once you use them up during the boss battle, i.e. all 9 Darkness Coins/Shade Statues against Lightgazer... what also doesn't help is that you can't open the storage menu during the boss battle, and as stated, you can't carry no more than 9 of said Darkness Coins/Shade Statues. I believe it would be efficient for someone who's going for a "Zero item run", meaning no items such as healing items, spell items, throwing items, etc. can be used (storyline items being a different matter), and their team lacked a magician/healer.

If the latter: How often would the spell trigger? It wouldn't be to the point of consistency, would it? Now, I can see demerits for this plan such as more work for the patch and having to take off the accessory before going onto the arena if the spell is controlled by randomness.

Colar, on 11 November 2014 - 03:18 PM, said:

yes

Colar, on 11 November 2014 - 03:18 PM, said:

I wouldn't even have an idea how to implement something like that

Colar, on 11 November 2014 - 03:18 PM, said:

I'm of the believe, that if you're doing a self-imposed challenge run you should work within the game's constraints, not remake the game around the self-imposed challenge - plus, it's a clear sign that the game's too easy, which, given the title, is unacceptable

If not spells, then what about accessories that give access to (through temporary replacement) other class's techs? Like Lord Duran with eruption/vaccuum/flashing sword rather than magic circle if he's wearing one of three certain rings or something. They could be some sort of endgame deal, maybe pop out of ??? seeds? Again, just brainstorming here.

Praetarius5018, on 11 November 2014 - 11:30 PM, said:

Fair enough. I just wanted to let you know my standpoint on the matter.

I also forgot to mention something else; if the enemy is immune to physical damage in your patch, and you have no spells for offense during said Zero-item run, you're pretty much thrown for a loop.

eltiopepe, on 12 November 2014 - 12:30 AM, said:

I might look into that. Remember that ST does more damage than MT for Lv2/3 techs now, so it would work both ways:
Lord could get MT flashing sword while Paladin could trade for ST magic circle to add damage against a boss or something like that.



@Colar
I regret to inform you, that that is currently not much of an issue.
Final bosses can be hit with physical attacks; and a "normal" immunity to physical means only 1/4 for weapons instead of 0.
No promises that it stays that simple.

Voting isn't over, is it, Prae?