raics

Feedback and Suggestions

599 posts in this topic

24 minutes ago, Zanmato said:

Yes, but in the knight class description it says "a capable defender and strong attacker"

Yeah, I think they switched that around, should be 'strong defender and capable attacker', and they're pretty capable, just not amazing and I don't think they should be.

The customization in this game happens on a different scale than in FFT, over there you got a 5 man squad of versatile units, here you got a 12 man squad of more specialized ones so there's no need for every class being able to do everything. I've been asked fairly often 'why are spellblades weak' or 'what should I do with my warlock', as the classes whose role isn't as clearly defined tend to stand out a bit.

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It is understandable, anyways i forgot we also have white knights and Paladin that can use 2h swords which should be a better version of knight.

I wish we had an evil/dark tank option, like the terror knight, but more focused on defense

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6 hours ago, raics said:

I've been asked fairly often 'why are spellblades weak' or 'what should I do with my warlock', as the classes whose role isn't as clearly defined tend to stand out a bit.

I'm sorry, Raics

But Spellblade is really, really bad

No clue who said that about warlock though, they're very capable and very intuitive to use.

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I personally used my Spellblade as an MP battery for my casters (Spellcharge), and as an enabler for weapon procs on my frontline/scout units (Fated Circle). Many of the postgame enemy-only units are pretty damn bulky/evasive, and having a 100% chance to Fear/Stop/Slow them with just weapon procs is really useful. Units using inaccurate weapons like Barbarian Swords really appreciate the Surestrike buff to help them get their TP generation rolling, and buffing ranged units with the occasional Flame Fusion helps them reliably snipe enemy Rogues or Wizards that are just out of reach for the Spellblade.

Edited by Rucession

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I was thinking... Would it be possible to put each class active skill on Arts of War, as you did with ninja and swordmaster and make it learnable with scrolls or something, while keeping the restrictions?

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10 hours ago, Zanmato said:

I was thinking... Would it be possible to put each class active skill on Arts of War, as you did with ninja and swordmaster and make it learnable with scrolls or something, while keeping the restrictions?

No, only the first X ability slots are indexed in the spell list and there's no room left for more.

Edited by raics

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Hi raics, thank you for your continued work on this mod. I've been playing it for some time now and I really enjoy it.

Here is some feedback and some questions and wishes for the future:

1. The charm debuff wears off immediately at the start of the unit's turn. I have tried using it in different circumstances, and the result is always the same. Is this a known bug? I have not noticed it happen with other statuses.
2. stun disables mind's eye (this might be the case in the original as well, not sure).
3. the slow in sludgebind does not increase rt like a normal slow spell would.
4. floating units can stop onto water tiles and poison, but not lava. I know it's not a big deal, because there are not as many lava maps, but would be nice to have for consistency sake
5. How do burst spell work exactly, what is their formula? I have tried using them with different units, but they always seem to be much worse than just attacking with the equipped weapon, or casting a (low tier) projectile spell.
6. End game classes (buccaneer, and paladin and astromancer in particular) seem waaay overpowered and simply better in every regard than any other similar unit. I understand that they are meant as a reward to the player for making it that far in the game, but they make classes such as knight and wizard pale in comparison.
7. In the previous version, pumpkin bomb exploded bushes and other obstacles, but this seems to have been fixed in 0.93.
8. I like the new support abilities on beast tamer, however would it be possible to modify the class a bit to make it more desirable to use without pairing it with a monster unit? I tend to not use monsters very much, and it's hard to justify using a beast tamer in a monsterless party.
9. Walrocks/witches, on the other hand, got a LOT of love. I love the class, I have several different units in this class performing various functions, and they all have their niche function, which i really like. I would love to see such an evolution on other classes as well. "Smaller" versatile skills, such as mindblast and the warlock-specific instill skills, are the way to go in my opinion. At least, I've had most fun playing around with those.
10. I really like the end-game equipment, which defies the norm (two-hand 1-H katanas, 2-H fists etc.) and would love to see more of that. It allows for some interesting builds.

This is all what I can think of at the moment. Not sure if it is helpful to you, just wanted to share my thoughts on the subject :) Cheers!

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4 hours ago, buttwag said:

Hi raics, thank you for your continued work on this mod. I've been playing it for some time now and I really enjoy it.

Here is some feedback and some questions and wishes for the future:

1. The charm debuff wears off immediately at the start of the unit's turn. I have tried using it in different circumstances, and the result is always the same. Is this a known bug? I have not noticed it happen with other statuses.
2. stun disables mind's eye (this might be the case in the original as well, not sure).
3. the slow in sludgebind does not increase rt like a normal slow spell would.
4. floating units can stop onto water tiles and poison, but not lava. I know it's not a big deal, because there are not as many lava maps, but would be nice to have for consistency sake
5. How do burst spell work exactly, what is their formula? I have tried using them with different units, but they always seem to be much worse than just attacking with the equipped weapon, or casting a (low tier) projectile spell.
6. End game classes (buccaneer, and paladin and astromancer in particular) seem waaay overpowered and simply better in every regard than any other similar unit. I understand that they are meant as a reward to the player for making it that far in the game, but they make classes such as knight and wizard pale in comparison.
7. In the previous version, pumpkin bomb exploded bushes and other obstacles, but this seems to have been fixed in 0.93.
8. I like the new support abilities on beast tamer, however would it be possible to modify the class a bit to make it more desirable to use without pairing it with a monster unit? I tend to not use monsters very much, and it's hard to justify using a beast tamer in a monsterless party.
9. Walrocks/witches, on the other hand, got a LOT of love. I love the class, I have several different units in this class performing various functions, and they all have their niche function, which i really like. I would love to see such an evolution on other classes as well. "Smaller" versatile skills, such as mindblast and the warlock-specific instill skills, are the way to go in my opinion. At least, I've had most fun playing around with those.
10. I really like the end-game equipment, which defies the norm (two-hand 1-H katanas, 2-H fists etc.) and would love to see more of that. It allows for some interesting builds.

This is all what I can think of at the moment. Not sure if it is helpful to you, just wanted to share my thoughts on the subject :) Cheers!

 

Right, about those

1. Charm and Bewitch are very powerful and cheese-prone status effects so there's a chance the target will snap out of it on its first turn, that's intended.

2. That's the way that interaction works, not much I can do about it.

3. Slow in sludgebind is the same as all other sources of slow, other effects that it inflicts are separate from it.

4. That's because if float gets cancelled by leaden you just drop down into the water, if you drop into the lava you'd probably die so it's understandable that it works this way.

5. Formula is same as area spells, however they also have a crushing damage component so are resisted more easily by heavily armored units (which is also why light burst doesn't do extra damage to undead and dark is still able to damage them), they're mostly intended to finish off a unit near death and hit another one so they aren't meant to be stronger than normal attacks. Properly covering the whole game with just two spells isn't the best scenario so the first burst will get outdated by the time you get the upgrade, not much that can be done about that either as the ability space is very limited, especially so for spells.

6. Yeah, there were a lot of complaints before that they aren't worth the trouble.

7. The AI was a bit glitchy with it so I ultimately reverted it close to what it was in vanilla.

8. Beast master is a heavily specialized class, fairly simialar in that regard to dragoon. However, if you haven't been looking at guides you have no knowledge or control over whether the next battle will have any monsters or not so I made dragoon more widely useful, bringing a beast along is your choice so it's perfectly fine if using a beast master is pointless if you don't.

10. Sure, I'll add more if I get any good ideas but the space in equipment list is very limited too.

Thanks for the feedback, it's always welcome

Edited by raics

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18 hours ago, raics said:

4. That's because if float gets cancelled by leaden you just drop down into the water, if you drop into the lava you'd probably die so it's understandable that it works this way.

Good point, it didn't occur to me.

I have also been trying to use the crossbow sidegrades (the ones that have 14 range and can't shoot diagonally). They are really bad. The trade-off of having a longer range is worthless, mainly because the vertical tolerance is so poor. I believe that improving the vertical tolerance a bit or adding a pierce effect (like spears have) would make them more usable and much more fun. Or even maybe adding a new gimmick to it, like status on hit or something. The documentation mentions that they can fire through some obstacles, but it does not seem to be the case with the usual obstacles found on maps. As they are now, it is necessary to come to an almost melee distance of the target in order to shoot, unless the map is very flat (there are maybe a couple of such maps) and there are no friendly units in the way. By comparison, a fusilier with a 2H fusil and course correction does all of the above and much better. The skill is cheap and allows the unit to safely snipe from afar, saving RT on move and gaining insane amounts of TP every turn.

 

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1 hour ago, buttwag said:

I have also been trying to use the crossbow sidegrades (the ones that have 14 range and can't shoot diagonally). They are really bad. The trade-off of having a longer range is worthless, mainly because the vertical tolerance is so poor. I believe that improving the vertical tolerance a bit or adding a pierce effect (like spears have) would make them more usable and much more fun. Or even maybe adding a new gimmick to it, like status on hit or something. The documentation mentions that they can fire through some obstacles, but it does not seem to be the case with the usual obstacles found on maps. As they are now, it is necessary to come to an almost melee distance of the target in order to shoot, unless the map is very flat (there are maybe a couple of such maps) and there are no friendly units in the way. By comparison, a fusilier with a 2H fusil and course correction does all of the above and much better. The skill is cheap and allows the unit to safely snipe from afar, saving RT on move and gaining insane amounts of TP every turn.

They can't fire through destructable obstacles, they would go through a wall or set of stairs but not through anything with a HP bar, sadly, vertical tolerance for line attacks is hardcoded so there's nothing I can do about it right now and you can't just slap piercing on it. The whole system is pretty limited as a lot of things are implemented with one specific use in mind, it isn't very modular and modding-friendly in general.

It's a situational weapon of sorts and I can't relax the conditions but I could try increasing the reward when you are in a situation to use it, I suppose.

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Ah ok, I didn't know it was that limited. So you can't really extend or modify the functionalities much, but only make combinations of existing ones?

One other addition that I really liked was the new use for Trajectory. Small but meaningful changes to skills used by many units are very welcome, if you ask me.

Regarding sprites and portraits, I am happy to see Donnalto reverted to the original. I have nothing against having new portraits and palettes for semi-generic or semi-unique units.

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Hi raics. Thank you for making this great mod. I played the vanilla version until the beginning of the palace of the dead(finished the game on the 3 routes before going there), dropped because of the class imbalance and the crafting system mostly.

The main improvements for me are the following:

1 - The crafting system is better with fewer ingredients required and without that chance to fail.

2 - The auction provide better items. (Thanks about the glass pumpkin from the cyclops, a reliable way to recruit deneb in her special class)

3 - The overall balance between the classes is way better when compared with the original PSP version. 

4 - About the classes the biggest standouts for me are the hydra(Amazing offensive monster with cool skills and special attacks - I love disembowel with empower dragon!!! - for example), the terror knight(My favorite class in the vanilla) is better with more defense and stronger offense and thanks to the skill system, now the skills slots are not wasted with strengthen and spellstrike for example and the wizard is pretty good as a offensive caster(all of the unique skills of the class are useful for that). 

5 - The skill system is another great positive(I favor removing those -ourology skills if it means classes with fewer unique skills like the ranger can get new ones). 

6 - The spells are way better too, specially those status removal spells being AOE now, they are great. And the imbalance between the elements was reduced(ice is great for example);

7 - The changes made to equipment are great,  and looking at the equipment chart i think you were trying to make it so that no equipment of the same class completely outclasses the others in endgame. This means that in most cases elemental weapons with cool effects don't combine well with the strongest finishers(this is good because the choice of equipment is meaningful).

The suggestions are the following:

1 - The notable exception about weapons in the chart that I noticed is the mordred's song dagger that is dark elemental(combine well with mesmerize), strongest attack, great ward and great effect. That weapon is too ahead of the others i think, maybe a improvement would be to make it a different element and lower its attack power.

2 - The way draconic magic is limited in the cases of most of the unique classes is great, i think something like that could be done with necromancy as well. For example the wicce and heretic classes should not be able to cast all necromancy spells, only the non-undead related. I think the lich, the lord and the necromancer should be able to cast all necromancy spells as it is now.

3 - If possible would you make a spell chart detailing what you changed about the spells, it would be a better format to read than the patch notes.

4 - Can you make the windshot spell air elemental for the vartan? I noticed that spell was not air elemental in the skill section

 

That is all i can think for now. Sorry about grammar erros, english is not my primary language.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Cagene said:

The suggestions are the following:

1 - The notable exception about weapons in the chart that I noticed is the mordred's song dagger that is dark elemental(combine well with mesmerize), strongest attack, great ward and great effect. That weapon is too ahead of the others i think, maybe a improvement would be to make it a different element and lower its attack power.

2 - The way draconic magic is limited in the cases of most of the unique classes is great, i think something like that could be done with necromancy as well. For example the wicce and heretic classes should not be able to cast all necromancy spells, only the non-undead related. I think the lich, the lord and the necromancer should be able to cast all necromancy spells as it is now.

3 - If possible would you make a spell chart detailing what you changed about the spells, it would be a better format to read than the patch notes.

4 - Can you make the windshot spell air elemental for the vartan? I noticed that spell was not air elemental in the skill section

Thanks for the input, it's always welcome

1. Sure, I can pinch it a bit, maybe remove the ward altogether.

2. That would make sense, I'll likely do it in some patch.

3. There's a consolidated changelog linked in the readme, that might be easier to read but there were too many changes to list every little detail.

4. Some like their vartans in different elements (lightning usually, maybe fire), and that would nudge people a bit towards air, I don't like element locking unless that's what the class is about, like necro or cleric.

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On 5/12/2019 at 11:55 PM, Valenhil said:

I'm sorry, Raics

But Spellblade is really, really bad

No clue who said that about warlock though, they're very capable and very intuitive to use.

Bit late on this one, but I'd argue they're borderline OP. Decent casters for taking advantage of parallel elements, an AoE move that guarantees hits and Procs, plus innate item throwing and heavy armor access. That's the fun, though, so many classes with their own tricks now. (I love the two tile push potential from Warlocks, though some prefer their casting options, other their items, etc)

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Except none of that is "its own trick". Many other classes can do all that, except the new surehit buff which is still comparatively small. And "can do a lot of different stuff" as a trick is sort of completely negated by your ability to field 12 goddamn units.

The fact you can use Spellblades effectively has more to do with the fights just not demanding as much yet. But if the fights were to be rebalanced so as to raise the bar to the point your character's specializations were actually required for them to function instead of determining how trivial fights become, Spellblade would literally be unable to do anything effectively. If a dedicated mage couldn't one-shot an enemy weak to magic, a Spellblade would barely be able to scratch it. If a Knight actually started taking meaningful damage from light melee, a Spellblade might as well have been naked. If a Berserker didn't instagib every single squishy in range, a Spellblade might as well throw rocks. And if no caster managed to reach 100% status effect chance, Spellblade wouldn't go past 20%.

The class is undertuned to compensate for a benefit that has no actual value in this system. The way forward is always specializing. Tradeoffs are fine in a limited way like say, Knight -> Terror Knight exchanging a bit of bulk for offense, but they're still very much specialized.

If you ever felt threatened by a Spellblade in the enemy team, please, do share. Because in my experience, I don't have a single unit vulnerable to anything they can do.

Edited by Valenhil

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Hey raics, great work, I'm a huge fan of what you've done here! A few years ago I put about 250 hours into the game and looked into modding it myself, just for personal satisfaction. I didn't do much at the time, just adjusted weapon balance, removed level-up bonus, 100% crafting, made claws 1-handed, made it so most non-unique equipment could be found on enemies... Stuff like that.

I was wondering... At the time, I followed a thread on 2channel (now called 5channel) where people shared tons of information about the hex-editing, all the different files and what encounters they contained, etc. They were all for the Japanese version, so I don't don't know how much of it is transferrable, but I wonder if they're aware of the existence of your patch/you're aware of their efforts? The thread is still active-ish (well, not dead anyways, but the SNES/Famicon one gets way more love) and I'm sure they'd love to learn from you, and I wonder was there anything they could help you with or something. Not that it looks like you need it, to be honest. You seem to have a great grasp of what you're doing, so massive kudos for that! I didn't follow the scene at all before One Vision, so I don't know how you went about figuring this stuff out in the first place!

As an aside! I was playing today and my Sidearms-wielding lizardman Hoplite had a funny interaction. I had Evade up and went to activate Trajectory to make sure I could hit an annoying Faerie. As I activate Trajectory, my Evade plinks out and I'm left with neither Nullify or Trueflight! Funny interaction, not sure if there's anything you can do about it? It's super niche anyways.

Thank you for keeping my love for this game alive!

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1 hour ago, VIStrings said:

Hey raics, great work, I'm a huge fan of what you've done here! A few years ago I put about 250 hours into the game and looked into modding it myself, just for personal satisfaction. I didn't do much at the time, just adjusted weapon balance, removed level-up bonus, 100% crafting, made claws 1-handed, made it so most non-unique equipment could be found on enemies... Stuff like that.

I was wondering... At the time, I followed a thread on 2channel (now called 5channel) where people shared tons of information about the hex-editing, all the different files and what encounters they contained, etc. They were all for the Japanese version, so I don't don't know how much of it is transferrable, but I wonder if they're aware of the existence of your patch/you're aware of their efforts? The thread is still active-ish (well, not dead anyways, but the SNES/Famicon one gets way more love) and I'm sure they'd love to learn from you, and I wonder was there anything they could help you with or something. Not that it looks like you need it, to be honest. You seem to have a great grasp of what you're doing, so massive kudos for that! I didn't follow the scene at all before One Vision, so I don't know how you went about figuring this stuff out in the first place!

As an aside! I was playing today and my Sidearms-wielding lizardman Hoplite had a funny interaction. I had Evade up and went to activate Trajectory to make sure I could hit an annoying Faerie. As I activate Trajectory, my Evade plinks out and I'm left with neither Nullify or Trueflight! Funny interaction, not sure if there's anything you can do about it? It's super niche anyways.

Thank you for keeping my love for this game alive!

Hi, thanks for trying it out, it's always nice to see more people getting back to the game.

Hard to say to what extent it would be compatible, I imagine the Japanese version would just have different offsets due to different amount of bytes spent on text but the file structure should be similar enough, haven't heard of the place before so it might be worth checking out.

I'd have to do a bit of digging around skills, trueflight is considered a physical effect so it would remove evade just as it would remove apostate if it was a magical effect. I'd have to see if it's possible for an effect to be neither physical or magical, if it's possible at all it wouldn't be hard to fix.

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wasn't sure where else to ask this--is it a bug that many/most enemy units are showing up with "(nothing)" skills that keep their original descriptions? it seems like a significant edge up for the player if this is the intended behavior, but maybe it's fine if it's a technical limitation and you're balancing around it.

edit: while i'm here: what gates higher-tier skills showing up in menus? is it story progression? a problem i've been having is that certain niches for classes don't become apparent until later (still waiting on traps to show up for rogues), and if i was playing blind i would have trouble figuring out why certain classes are worth raising up without being able to peek at those higher-level skills.

Edited by cadence

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Those are old passive skills that got phased out, I'm removing them as I go, but the process is slow so only the first act is currently clean.

New skills show up when you're 5 levels from their learning threshold, changing that behavior is a bit tricky so it probably won't happen soon.

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ah, gotcha--you have to go through and change the skills for each unit for each battle? that does sound like a lot of work.

for the learning threshold, i'd imagine it's checking against a constant integer value, which would probably be a one-line ASM hack... is the hard part tracking down where this happens or am i importing the wrong expectations from romhacking other games? just curious.

also, i was wondering why every class seems to have the elemental Augment skills. is that hard-coded or did you have something in mind for it? 

Edited by cadence

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3 hours ago, cadence said:

ah, gotcha--you have to go through and change the skills for each unit for each battle? that does sound like a lot of work.

for the learning threshold, i'd imagine it's checking against a constant integer value, which would probably be a one-line ASM hack... is the hard part tracking down where this happens or am i importing the wrong expectations from romhacking other games? just curious.

also, i was wondering why every class seems to have the elemental Augment skills. is that hard-coded or did you have something in mind for it? 

Yup, every and the each one of 10,000+ unit entries because the game doesn't use any templates, when you add adjusting race templates, drops, steals and gear where needed it starts going real slow and I don't have much time recently either.

Exactly, fixing it wouldn't be hard but finding it would probably be tricky, of all the ways you could populate a list I can safely bet the devs chose the most awkward one.

Augments are just there because of weapon flexibility, I won't try to discourage knights from using a fire sword if they want. If an augment is missing that's because the class has limited or no access to that element, as is the case with knights and dark.

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re: augments, i think since the mod already uses TO's mechanic of transferring skills from other classes that Augments would be one of the best cases for it. as someone new to TO it took me a while to recognize which skills are important to classes because there are so many available from the start and as far as i can tell elemental weapons don't show up for a while. plus, idk, taking your knight example i think popping into sorceror for Augment Fire and being like a mystic knight is nice flavor as far as these things go. i'd also suggest maybe taking a similar route with the racial damage skills (making them rarer outside of dragoons, but transferable)--or at least level gating the race damage/recruitment skills so a new player doesn't grab Seraph Pact in chapter 1 or anything like that. 

as far as updating entity data goes--maybe i could help out a little with automating parts of it, provided you know how things are laid out in memory? let me know if you'd benefit from some scripts or hacked-together gui tools and i might take a shot at it. ^^

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If you had to level each character in the class so we had an investment, that would be a good idea, but as it is, once you have the class at that level it's just spending a few classmarks, which is the kind of trivial hassle people don't like to see.

I'm already automating a good part of it, the parts that can't be automated are troublesome, for instance I'd like to avoid each unit of the class to be exactly the same so I'm switching skills around on some of them, like giving wade to units on water levels, giving them different equipment and drops, steals should be the same so you know what to expect of each knight in the same chapter but for bosses they're different, so you can steal things like necro marks from nybbeth or 30 silvers from chaos vyce, things like that can't really be automated.

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Have you considered making a version of this with a raw sort of difficulty increase, something like increasing enemy hp/damage by 25% or more? Nothing too complicated, but a decent bump up in difficulty across the board. I think a lot of people who wish to replay these older games want to have a little extra challenge thrown at them.

Edited by vhatever

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3 hours ago, vhatever said:

Have you considered making a version of this with a raw sort of difficulty increase, something like increasing enemy hp/damage by 25% or more? Nothing too complicated, but a decent bump up in difficulty across the board. I think a lot of people who wish to replay these older games want to have a little extra challenge thrown at them.

It wouldn't be as straightforward as it might seem, the enemy uses the same racial templates as you do so any stat buff there would also apply to you, and if I use different templates for them, you could just recruit those and use them yourself.

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