CRYSTALGATE'S PROFILE

The formula seems unnecessarily complicated.
Math.floor((2 * a.level) + (a.atk + (a.atk * 0.50)) - (b.def + (b.def * 0.35))) can be rewritten as;
Math.floor((2 * a.level) + (a.atk * 1.5) - (b.def * 1.35)) and it should have the same effect.

Also, how does this formula prevent 0 damage? Your text implies that the level times two part of the formula is a minimum guaranteed damage, but I don't see it. Once an enemy has a defense greater than 1.111... times the attacker's attack, the defense of the enemy will reduce the damage to less than level times two. In order for your formula to have its minimum damage, you have to give the (a.atk + (a.atk * 0.50)) - (b.def + (b.def * 0.35)) part of the equation a minimum of zero.

Mind you, I don't think your formula is bad, but I don't see how it does what you implies it does.

I do not like to be able to carry 99 of each item. If I can, the items could usually have been replaced by a quality of life mechanic.

99 of a status cure item is only useful if it's annoying. For example, the game make the status effect persist after battles and you need to open the menu to pop one of your 50+ status sure items. This could have been handled by removing status effects after battles instead.

If I can carry 99 potions, I can heal whenever I want. Why not just restore all my hit-points after every battle? The same goes for mana and 99 ethers.

This does not apply to crafting materials though.

I would advice trying to look at whatever you want to implement from the eyes of the player. How will the player use/abuse the feature you planned? Let's take the laser and ice as an example. I will assume that only the second target takes damage, otherwise the strategy will be very obvious, milk the refracting for all it's worth to double laser damage. With only the second target taking damage, the refraction will not be that useful for the player when it comes to single target laser attacks. Chance is the player will just target whatever enemy they want to injure rather than targeting the enemy that's frozen and then see who the attack refracts to. On the other hand, it will be annoying when the enemies uses that feature as it ensures they will focus their damage on a non disabled character instead of the one that has been disabled. Typically, if you have a disabled character and one that's not, it's better if enemies KO the disabled character.

With multi-target laser attack, it gets interesting, especially with multi-target freeze as well. You can freeze enemies and then cast the multi-target laser. By doing so, the damage gets concentrated to the enemies that aren't frozen, which are the enemies that you want to kill first.

By seeing things from the players perspective you can easier decide how exactly the rules of the conditional skills should work. Assume there is a boss that has 4 minions. Do you want the players to freeze all minions and then throw multi-target laser attacks so the boss takes 5X damage? Is this sort of strategy expected, optional or maybe it just doesn't work that way. Design the rules so it encourages the most fun interaction.

There is no best distribution, how you divide it up between base stats, equipment, buffs and so on depends on a number of factors. Also, it does not have to be the same for every stat. For example, if we only focus on the character's base stats and equipment, I may do 60-70 base stats and 30-40 equipment for attack, while I do the opposite for defense.

The reason for that is twofold. One reason is that there is typically more armor slots than weapon slots, so this system prevents weapons from overshadowing the body armor in importance. The other reason is that defense is often more sensitive in terms of balance than attack and you have a better idea what equipment the player may have than level.

Consider following, an enemy deal 100 points of damage and each point of defense removes one point of damage. The first 25 additional points of defense you get will reduce the damage with 25%. If you after that get yet another 25 points of defense, that will reduce damage from 75 to 25, which is a 33% reduction. The third set of 25 points will grant a 50% damage reduction and finally, the last set of 25 defense will grant a 100% damage reduction or 96% if a minimum of 1 damage is enforced. As you see, defense just keeps getting more and more powerful.

Let's consider attack instead. You deal 100 points of damage and each point of attack adds 1 point of damage. The first 25 points of attack increase gives you a 25% damage increase. If you get an additional 25 points of attack, your damage goes from 125 to 150, which is a 20% increase. This is in opposite of defense where the significance of extra points kept increasing.

As far as buffs goes, you should not ask yourself how much of the stat should depends on buffs, rather you should ask yourself how effective the buffs should be.

If we take attack as an example, how much damage do you want the player to deal with an attack buff compared to without? Let's say you think +50% damage sounds right. Now you take enemy defense into account. Let's say the average up to date enemy has enough defense to cut damage by 40% and it's a subtractive system. The attack buff should increase attack by 30% in order for the player to deal +50% damage.

Do the same for defense and any other stat. How much less damage do you want a player to take with the defense up buff compared to without?

Depending on engine, you could also cheat and just directly grant the effect you want without actually altering the stats. For example, if you're using VX ACE and wants a defense up buff to cut the damage a player takes by 25%, you can skip counting average numbers and instead make it so that the defense up buff just cuts physical damage by 25% instead of granting a defense up increase. If you do so, then obviously 0% of your defense will be buffs.

Basically, how your stats are distributed among base stats, equipment and buffs depends on whatever way they end up being distributed once the game is balanced. You should not start with choosing the distribution.

I beat Code Vein and got the To Eternity ending. The game is fun, yet I have a hard time to think of it as anything else than Dark Souls/Bloodborne minus.

The game uses Dark Souls like core combat, but goes in it's own direction in several areas. The problem I have is that the game does not take good advantage of what it has.

The storytelling is more JRPG like than soulslike. It has a lot of cutscenes and talky talky bits. However, the story and plot itself is way to soulslike for having such a cutscene heavy storytelling. Dark Souls plot is basically following; escape undead asylum, ring two bells of awakening, find Lordvessel, acquire the lord souls and finally beat Lord Gwyn. Code Vein's plot is the same except you replace escape undead asylum with escape blood bead slavery, ring bells of awakening is replaced by revive magical blood treas and so on. The story is also way too similar, instead of undead who eventually goes hollow we have anime vampires who eventually goes lost.

The problem is that Dark Souls (and Demon Souls and Bloodborne) had their stories designed with the idea that the games would be very light on cutscenes. They were not meant to be cutscene heavy. If Code Vein wants to go cutscene heavy, it needs a plot and story suitable for this kind of story telling.

The characters are also not that interesting. They do not really justify all the talky talky the game uses to tell their stories.

Code Vein has the partner system. I claimed earlier that it was balanced around you using a partner. I'm retracting that and I'll instead state that the game is balanced for neither. I noticed problems both when I tried to play with and without a partner. If you don't use a partner, you have too little healing and sometimes you get swarmed by more enemies than the combat engine is designed for you to handle. You can probably handle those situations with the correct gift optimization, but the core combat is not designed for those numbers. If you do use partners, a lot of fights, including most bosses, become too easy. Maybe the game was balanced for in-between those options?

The areas are rather bland. There's few landmarks and they are very large and samey.

Character creation is much better. You get far more options, especially once you realize that the accessory option actually lets you adds things that aren't really accessories, such a pony tails and pig tails to your hair. This gives you great control over hairstyle and to a limited extent over clothes. There are improvements to be made here though. The base clothes are way too restrictive. Males have rather bland options and female clothes are instead too exotic. A lot of the blood Veils also cover up too much of the clothes you designed and there's a lack of a "hide bloodveils unless used" option.

All in all though, the combat works, fights are fun and you can make fun builds. A Code Vein 2 that irons out the problems and takes better advantage of the opportunities granted when you deviate from the Dark Souls formula would be welcome.

I'm now trying a new character. The plans is to go mostly heavy weapons and dark gifts since I ended up doing to opposite with the first character. I think I am going to need Bridge to Glory though.