[RM2K3] BALANCING SKILLS

This is JUST about skills and only that. Reason I'm bringing this up is I'm thinking of revamping a lot of skills in my game. However, I'm not sure how to go about doing this. It's mostly the damage > MP ratio, and setting them accordingly. My game in particular uses a level up system for skills, where you buy them at shops to upgrade or get new ones, so it's only naturally that they increase in MP cost every level up, and for those that do damage in power as well, and sometimes they gain added effects too like statuses or the like. However, I've come across an issue, mainly from watching a stream of someone playing my game recently, that skills...aren't actually that well balanced.

I'm just stumped at what to do to make sure things aren't too OP at the time you first get skills, but aren't too weak by the time you have to upgrade them. The damage cap I set for most skills is 2500 HP (some go way, way beyond that, and that's specific to some character's playstyles), mostly because I wanted the ultimate attacks to be extremely powerful too but not all be 9999 instant attacks.


To illustrate this point, let me give you an example of Reimu's skillset in my game with two skills, Fantasy Orb (which she starts with, and can upgrade to level 3 or level 4 by the time of Hakugyokurou) and Youkai Buster (which she can buy at level 1 at Hakugyokurou):


Name: Fantasy Orb (Fantasy Seal at Level 10)
Type: Magic
Target: Single Enemy
Attribute: Holy
MP Per Level:
1 - 3
2 - 5
3 - 8
4 - 12
5 - 17
6 - 23
7 - 30
8 - 39
9 - 49
10 - 60
Damage/Healing Per Level:
1 - 50
2 - 100
3 - 200
4 - 400
5 - 700
6 - 1000
7 - 1300
8 - 1600
9 - 1900
10 - 2200
Variance: ± 4

Now, keep level 3/4's MP cost and damage in mind, and let's look at Youkai Buster.


Name: Youkai Buster
Type: Magic
Target: All Enemies
Attribute: Holy
MP Per Level:
1 - 9
2 - 10
3 - 12
4 - 15
5 - 19
6 - 24
7 - 30
8 - 37
9 - 45
10 - 54
Damage/Healing Per Level:
1 - 300
2 - 500
3 - 700
4 - 900
5 - 1100
6 - 1300
7 - 1500
8 - 1700
9 - 1900
10 - 2100
Variance: ± 4

In no way is there EVER a reason to use Fantasy Orbs due to this one skill existing because it just trumps Fantasy Orbs in everything. Better MP cost, better damage, AND hits everything. And it's not a problem exclusive to Reimu either I found, many other characters share this same problem.

So what I'm wondering is, how does one balance skills such as these? And what would be a good ending point for the last level of skills for "average" characters (by average, I'm referring to those that don't hit super hard all the time)? I know this varies depending on game and HP and whatnot, but I just find it really hard to gauge and adjust properly. If you noticed with the MP costs and damages, they follow a set pattern per level up just about. That's what I thought was a good way of handling the MP costs per level and damage per level, but I think I'm really wrong about this...

Would anyone be willing to help me out with adjusting/balancing these skills out at all? It would help me out tremendously to balance the game and make it more strategic and whatnot. >_<

Hm...yeah. That'd be good, though how should the MP cost/damage ratio work in that case? Because here's the OTHER problem with balancing skills I find: While adjusting them to the character in particular is all good and dandy, other party members have to be taken into consideration too. Since my game in particular uses 4 party members often, I can't have the damage be TOO high lest there be a balance issue with one character being too strong, or all characters being too strong. Then I'd have to readjust HP of monsters and stuff (and honestly, I like the HP of my monsters right now...>_< ). Plus, I don't think there's a nice way to affect attributes like that without doing some other manner of coding since HP damage counts for other things like stat reduction/increases T-T

So while Reimu would be doing like 50 damage when first at SDM, Cirno could be doing 150 damage to all enemies and Meiling 120 to all enemies (yes, there's that balance issue too. Cirno's AoE is MUCH stronger than anything she has. Though her summons are stronger still, they at least require a respectful amount of MP to use. 15 MP for a 250 Wind-elemental AoE attack that inflicts Confusion sounds about right, maybe?? Summons don't upgrade except through story, and usually only once).

So yeah, while I WAS going to relook at the skills as the game progresses and balance them according to enemies on a player-to-enemy scale, I can't because of the other party members that are around too...uuuuuugh.

It's really hard, and would probably require me to have someone help me with balancing a lot in all honesty ha...^^;

Hm...that's an interesting way of handling that with AoEs. I may try that, though the way my damage and MP scaling works anyways is kinda all sorts of whacked hmmm...

Though how do you decide on how much MP a skill would cost for a single target then? I wouldn't think you use levels for yours, so it's probably a lot simpler in regards to that (for instance, an attack that does like 500 damage may cost like 24 MP or something like that, which seems about reasonable, maybe more or less depending). But if it were you, how would you scale a level 1 ability to level 2 in terms of MP and damage like, say, the aforementioned Fantasy Orb (which you start the game with and can get to level 3 or level 4 by the time you can buy Youkai Buster at the same place as the current highest Fantasy Orb)? Any tips there from you?

Hmmm...so let's say I put Fantasy Orb Lv1 at 50 base power and 3 MP. If Fantasy Orb Lv2 was double that power, should the MP cost be doubled as well, or should it be slightly higher than double? And then if Level 3 was 200 power, it'd be double/250% that? Hmmm...

Perhaps a % increase in MP for each level works good enough? I'd LIKE for my character's stats (Attack and Magic in particular) to actually matter to them (so higher numbers in them = more damage on skills and regular attacks and whatnot), but I don't think there's a nice way of doing that either. >_<

Because as it was before, I was doing something like 1 MP > 2 MP > 4 MP > 8 MP > so on and so forth (and as you can see with the damage, it went +50 power > +100 power > +200 power > +300 power > +300 power > etc.

The thing about my system is that you HAVE to upgrade in order of level too. So you can't upgrade a Level 1 skill to Level 5 immediately, you HAVE to get the Level 2, 3, and 4 skills before you can get to Level 5. So there's that. But yeah, being able to buy a skill that just outright trumps every old skill the player had before it is a bit silly.

Hmm...reducing MP costs on skills? I do that on a couple skills IIRC. It's mostly though that they get more expensive, but better effects. For instance, Reimu's status healing move only cures Poison at level 1, but the higher it gets, the more statuses it cures (it's still single target though regardless). And status moves generally gain +5 duration to their starting duration (to a max of 50 turns/oo turns depending on the status at level 10).

Meanwhile, you have Marisa's Dragon Meteor and Final Spark (both require Master Spark Level 5 to get, and you can only get one or the other) that both have 5 levels each (Master Spark has 5 too). For each level Dragon Meteor gets, it gets +5% accuracy (it starts at 75%, but goes up to 95%) with a fixed damage of 2500 per level and fixed 15% MP cost. Meanwhile, Final Spark has a fixed 30% Max MP cost and fixed 60% accuracy, but gets +500 power each level (starting at 3000 and ending at 5000).

(The only DoT effects I have are Sap (1% Max HP every turn), and Poison (2% Max HP every turn) for HP, MP Sap for MP (1% Max MP every turn), and Venom (2% Max HP and 1% Max MP) for both)

Reason that my game uses the level up system, which is borrowed from Final Fantasy II to a degree, is I felt that there wasn't a good enough way of learning skills for what I wanted. I didn't want the player to just level up all the time to gain skills, and I didn't know how to make it so that equipping items or equipment would teach skills (back then). In addition to that, I didn't think it was doable to make it so that just using a specific skill would gain EXP to that skill before leveling it up, and I felt that would've been too cheap, so I took a middle road for that. Dunno what all ya'll use for your skill systems and how you decided to go about doing it for your games. ^^;


EDIT - So, now that I got the RPS+ plugin working, OMG does it add so much more flavor! So, now if I wanted to, I can attach attributes to my skills to put on cooldowns (ATB is faster/slower after using a skill, so I can make a character take twice as long to get to their turn by setting Slow to 100% on the attribute, or I can make them gain 50% of their ATB back after attacking. Or I can make skills miss when a target has Evade All Attacks (which couldn't be done before), or have an attack reduce a target's ATB when it connects, or ignore damage caps). Which means I can probably not have to worry about changing damage or MP, and can just tag on Slow% or Fast% to specific abilities to make the player think of what to use!


For instance, let's take Fantasy Orb and Youkai Buster as the examples again. Fantasy Orb probably wouldn't change much, but Youkai Buster could get something like Slow% 50%, so that if the player uses it, their ATB gauge is reduced by 50% after using the skill (so instead of starting at 0 ATB, they'd start at 50% below that, whatever that would be for them). Or if I really REALLY wanted to, I could make it so that Fantasy Orb fills Reimu's gauge by a % after using the skill.


Does this sound like a feasible idea?

Youkai Buster (and probably most AoEs) might get like 50% on cooldown just to make it a bit riskier to use, but still good. If there's multiple enemies around, it'd still be good enough to use against them as it's still good damage on them all, but in boss fights it'd get less use than say Fantasy Orb because of how slow it'd be to recover from. I feel that'd work wonders in balancing things out.

(Currently balancing skills by making all physical skills miss against targets with Blink status/Evade All Attacks. This is something I've been needing to make Blink useful for once! Will probably deal with the whole Slow/Fast part afterwards, or maybe try another part to balance things out as well)