Insane Difficulty: BNW Fork Project: No Prayer for the Dying - Insane Difficulty

Since I've presently walled on my own project, I've decided to attempt to take BNW and expand upon it, in a manner not entirely dissimilar to Warring Triad.

I'm planning to import several hacks I've done for Meltdown, such as a major relic effect, a blind adjustment, possibly some basic text expansions, and a slew of AI script expansions. I'm open to ideas, but there is a limit to both my capability and what I'm willing to do. Balance is already extremely well tuned for the hack's intent, which is as an entry point for people even if they haven't played vanilla. I'm wanting to shoot a bit above that, creating a 'hard' mode, so to speak, but I'm aiming for that with BNW's overall design philosophy in mind. What this means is that, no, I will not have enemies with 16 million HP or 8000 bytes of script on one boss, but it will be moderately difficult even for somebody experienced with BNW.

What are general opinions on difficulty and balance that people would like to see looked at and possibly addressed?

I'm aware of issues like the Longinus/Gugnir and the whole issue with experience. I'm also planning to rewrite quite a few bosses, with varying degrees of change being planned for them. Since I've spent 6 years on my own hack and gotten virtually nowhere past mechanical and menu edits, I figured this time I might try a group approach. Input is welcome, as long as it isn't just bitching.

I'm all for playtesting & providing ideas for such an idea. Heck, I'm actually very interested in your ideas.

Is this a balance fork as well as a hard mode?

This post has been edited by thzfunnymzn: 02 March 2017 - 02:45 PM

I'm certainly on board with the idea, but you'll have to be careful with how you make the game more difficult.

The main aspect of "difficulty" in this hack comes from how you setup your party and what you do in battle. This is precisely why I, somewhat of a noob at FFVI can breeze through the game whereas a speedrunner of Vanilla can take FOREVER just to beat Atma Weapon.


In other words, if you're not going to rely on buffing enemy stats, your best option is probably to limit what setups/moves can be used to make it through the game. Having a plethora of solutions to any particular roadblock, provided you aren't performing Vanilla habits is one of the selling points of BNW, hence why even newcomers can play it (and are arguably better off for it)

You need to find a way to limit what works and what doesn't, which I'm on the fence about, as I love the hack the way it is.

Personally, a good idea, albeit cumbersome, is an idea I pitched to BTB awhile back known as the "Level Zero" approach, which has every character start and STAY at level 0, with set stats, meaning that the ONLY way to increase those stats is through your equipment setup. You'll be no "stronger" at Kefka's Tower than you are at Narshe, but the difference is the variety of equipment/relics you have at your disposal. This discourages grinding for EXP/EL's, which is indeed an issue that people come across (hence the option to turn EXP off)

This of course presents a problem with how you work out Esper Levels and the like. Perhaps you can you can remove Esper Levels altogether and just have each Esper increase stats upon equipping, which has it's own set of problems, of course.

Basically what it comes down to is: Does the mod NEED to be more difficult?, HOW can you make the mod more difficult, and CAN you do so without removing design choices that players of the mod have come to enjoy.

I certainly wouldn't mind a "hard type" hack of Brave New World, as I've been plowing through the game lately, but that's almost entirely because of my setup as opposed to grinding. (Do NOT make your hack more difficult in a way that causes the player to grind their way out)

its a great ideia to do this a hard mode for this game well ideias all caracters can use 2 espers change all bosses AI sript and some enemys nerf some things shock for Celes becuse it is very powerful in mid-end game and give some of the bosses auto haste and auto regen that my ideia

I've considered a level 0 hack several times, and there are a number of roadblocks with that, which ultimately make it not worth the work. The game uses level as a factor in several abilities, as well as basic formulas.

Balance is finnicky work, and requires a lot of time to iron out, no matter where you start with it. I have to set a baseline and then work from there, which is what I'm presently trying to do. Avoiding grind is a basic facet of that, though even then, some people apparently enjoy walking back and forth in the same patch of grass for 4 hours straight.

dee_ehn, on 02 March 2017 - 05:28 PM, said:

First Dragon Quest game wouldn't be so popular if this wasn't true.

Also funny you mention stats on equip with espers. There're two main reasons I don't do that.

1) It'd require upheaving all of synch's work, which I like and make the foundation of BNW's design.

2) This:

I'm always interested in difficulty mods, especially for BNW which just has a much more interesting combat system than the vanilla game.

I just started playing BNW recently and haven't quite finished it yet. That said, I've been pretty satisfied with the difficulty. Some things felt a bit too easy and some things felt a bit too hard, although that's the problem with balance - everyone's going to have a different experience depending on their own skill level, characters they brought, level/experience distribution, etc.

Overall I never felt too challenged in the WoB. I read that Dadaluma was supposed to be the first challenging encounter and I really had no problem with it, and I wasn't even using the really powerful stuff like Bio Blaster (didn't bring Edgar). I think overall the WoB is designed to ease the player into the mod and teach them about certain mechanics (WoB bosses have a lot more gimmicks while the WoR bosses are mostly high health, high damage). So, I think the difficulty of the WoB can easily be raised slightly without requiring additional grinding.

End game should really be balanced around a full level 50, 25 EL party otherwise there should be additional content past KT. We have this really cool character customization/specialization system, but BNW never fully takes advantage of it as the game is balanced around level 30 with 15-20 EL or so. Honestly I think that's the biggest shortcoming of the mod. We can do these cool builds and character equip loadouts, but the game never really requires you to do cool min/maxing type of stuff. I think that would be the main advantage of a BNW Hard Type.

I'll probably work with a higher level expectation, but BTB's reason for that is specifically that the hand of the developer should be rarely seen, which means that caps shouldn't be noticable to the player without a lot of effort.

First third of the game is pretty much a tutorial, and has rigid character selection as well, so I can't do *too* much there. I do plan to do something, but I"m not sure what. I actually want to make the WoR bosses do more, as they have the most potential with more characters and builds to work with.

dee_ehn, it was MagiteKira who mentioned stats on espers, not me. Also, I don't understand what you are trying to say with that picture.

Reiker does remind me that I do wish the endgame was more balanced for a Lvl. 30, EL 25 party. The slow EL growth, late key equipment, and late key espers means that builds really don't come online until, at earliest, the Floating Continent. (I've been brainstorming / testing methods to eliminate the second of those for the past year or two now). More ELs with lower levels means more of what your character does is dependent on build.

I would not go to level 50 at all. If you're going to cap levels (fair for a hard mode), do it at level 30. It reduces the number of re-balancing you must do, and the numbers past level 35 start getting very out of whack.

Also, for a hard mode, might I mention reducing the HP espers? Instead of +60 / +30, reduce it to +40 / +20?

I was responding to MagiteKira there. The picture is from my own hack, which I'm actually trying *not* to recreate here.

I may lower the cap to 40. I feel like going any lower may cripple what I can work with. I was considering lowering HP bonuses as well.

Adjusting EL speed would mean separating its code from EXP, as well as its growth table. This probably wouldn't be too hard, but it'd take quite some time to iron out a second growth aspect like that. It'd really skew earlygame balance.

so wil you low the number of esper you can use and the spells that a caracter can use? that awesome that you bring back class names and you can learn for every caracter 10 spells for 1 esper?

Adjusting EL speed is as sample as raising the number of EP (sp?) earned in a given formation without raising the number of EXP. No need for all the fuss of re-configuring it to be independent of EXP. Just change the proportions. Only downside is faster learning of magic, which as of right now, means nothing.

Even level 40 is kinda pushing it. I haven't rigorously tested it or anything, but IIRC, once you get past 35, balance starts falling apart. 35 is an odd number to stop at, which is why I recommended 30. If you wanna go the extra mile and keep everything balanced up to lvl.40, be my guest.

It's something I'd rather see in action before making a final decision on. Even level 50 still isn't a free ride through the final dungeon as-is. It's easier, but not vanilla easy.

I may consider changing SP gains but I'd realistically need to also raise spell purchase costs if I do so.

I was thinking mostly raising SP gains in the WoR. An EL of 10-11, IIRC, can easily be obtained on the Floating Continent. That's not bad. Rather, it's that you're still struggling to hit 20 by Kefka's Tower, a whole half of the game later. SP costs could really go up all throughout the WoR: it's not exactly unflavorful either.

I'm not sure how much you need to increase spell purchase costs in the WoR, even if you increase SP earned all throughout the WoR. By that point in the game, most characters have earned their major spells anyways. For those who haven't, they'll have a bank ready when they get their one or two espers they don't quite yet have.

That, and any question of spell purchase is quickly solved with a short grind. >_> (I'm a terrible Veldt grinder, even if I avoid levels).

I think I have a few potential ideas about exp.

1) level compares and exp manipulation in script. this allows specific enemy compares where I feel it's appropriate, rather than a hardcoded check, but means somewhat more complex scripts that use more space.

2)using the metamorph byte (presently unused) as either a minimum or maximum level value, and somehow working that into a check.

3) making a new struct for formations, consisting of a single byte per formation, which will serve as the formation's level, which I can check against the party's average level to determine experience modification.

These are only cursory ideas though.

Random dumb thought:

Do away with levels. Characters have base stats, and progression is achieved through espers and equipment. Esper advancement is a sort of investment - some sort of EL gain occurs, but the player can reallocate their levels (either for free or with a cost, depending on what you want); that's still how they gain stat increases. Each character can gain up to, say, 30 total ELs this way, so you can't just keep grinding to beef yourself up in every area. Formulas need to be completely rewritten to accommodate this, so that equipment essentially totally takes over the place of level. How things that are learned at specific levels, like Blitzes, I don't know how to adapt off the top of my head.

If you go with a cost, I'd say require players to earn some number of spell-learning points with the Esper equipped in order to invest levels in it. That helps keep the points valuable even once you've hit max EL and know all spells, and it forces a significant time investment without making it impossible.

That's a massive fundamental change which makes it no longer BNW at all. It'd also require very substantial rebalancing. I'd basically be doing a full hack on a concept that is kind of sketchy to begin with.

Yeah, that is true. Spinning my wheels on this XP curve thing is pretty much all that was.

Currently considering adding individual HP and MP tables, but I'm not sure at this point how to balance that out with present party composition. I'm also bad in general at handling curves like that. Main benefit is it means I could avoid very low starting values while still keeping end values under control.

Also considering whether I want to overhaul bosses or try to retain their present theming. Most bosses run on a fairly simple template, with the exception of Ultros 2 and Guardian, though the latter is mostly just several phases. All dragons follow the same template, and most randoms run on their own template as well. Also trying to discern where I want to begin rolling out the big changes such as the new AI code which vanilla completely lacked.