So I spent most of Monday working on Fairy Side for MagicWhiteLady. Because we haven’t been able to get together to collab on dialogue and such, MWL is doing all of the game text as I type. But I was able to refine some of MWL’s ideas and made sure that, if nothing else, it’s a thing you can play through. The structure is there, and MWL is bringing the fun.
Also: I changed up my avatar. Wooser likes meat, girls, and money, and so do I. But don’t worry, I still fight for the greater good, Tau-chan has just been moved to my wallpaper. Exciting stuff.
Maybe I should actually talk about my game?
Okay, so I’ve been putting more thought into game balance lately and I’m personally wondering what characters people use, who gets teamed up with whom, stuff like that. I want to have the gameplay be pretty deep… or at least as deep as RPG Maker can get. Even if I can’t hit “deep”, “challenging but rewarding” would be a great secondary. So your feedback is important in this regard. Also, it might go into skills that appear on these characters in the future.
I also want to avoid nerfing the characters if I can. I’d rather maker under-used characters better than take away something that is already good.
So, here is sort of how I envisioned how each character would work.
Damagers
Elaiya
Pretty basic, glass cannon physical damage.
Strengths: She shoots for high damage, lets off the occasional burst fire. As for her other skills, Stealth keeps the heat off for awhile, Kneecapping will (next update) deal some damage with an evasion penalty for high-evasion enemies, Assassin’s Strike lets you gamble on an insta-death move.
Weaknesses: Enemy tanks with cover and lots of HP kind of ruin her day, since they can soak up multiple Barrage shots. Enemy damagers with multi-target abilities as well.
Future Plans: Right now my rough plan is for her Love Quest to result in an upgraded three-hit Barrage. The individual damage of her pistols will probably come down as I start running numbers and figure out what works for weak damage, and her crit rate will probably get nerfed. Maybe in favour of an “Aiming” self-buff that cancels Stealth but gives more crits.
Yamamaya
Yamamaya is a bit more complicated. She should bring to the table less (but still good) damage compared to Elaiya, but in a more robust package. Add in some racial immunities, and she can Rage if the player decides they’ve figured out the enemy boss and she can safely bash away without input.
Strengths: Racial immunities to most “mind”-type effects, highest Health on a damager. Her Techniques gives her some more options- Shockwave causes Thunder element damage and can deafen, while Strong Attack gives her a good go-to attack power when you don’t want her to Rage.
Weaknesses: She also hates enemy tanks, but slightly less than Elaiya because multi-targeting is less important to Yamamaya’s style. Turning on Rage can quickly bite you in the ass if the battle turns south on the player.
Future Plans: Strong Attack will probably get some kind of -Hit, +Damage change in the future and become a “Wild Swing” type ability just to be more flavourful and interesting. In general, I want her to be the “safe” damager with less risk, but less reward.
Kyrie
Kyrie is an uncomplicated nuker mage. She also adds a bit more enemy control- her acid spells cause -Defense and her ice spells will cause -Evasion and -Hit in time. But her power is limited because I want restoring Mana to be pretty expensive in this game.
Strengths: Lots of damage, multi-target spells, some debuffs. Also, Ice Armor stacks with other defense buffs. She can also take some damage to self-buff her Magic.
Weaknesses: Reliance on Mana, almost as weak as Elaiya, and nothing really spammable for mid-dungeon fights.
Future Plans: Getting her in the harem, for one. Despite being one of the first characters designed for the game, she remains elusive. Also, she will get some kind of “acid snow” multi-target ultima-type spell for obscene damage + obscene Mana cost.
Gargan
For the more discerning, cerebral player, Gargan provides good damage and can also do secondary tanking.
Strengths: Fairly sturdy. Uses Cape Stun and eventually Throw to inflict the Stun effect, and on the following turn can Stun Break* for extra damage and to ignore defense. Coup de Grace allows late-game Gargan to set up an insta-kill on a stunned enemy… if he has enough Momentum. Finally, Counter lets him/her secondary tank while still inflicting damage.
Weaknesses:You actually have to plan and be careful to use Gargan most efficiently. Even still, an enemy immune to Stun (mechanicals, catgirls, etc) will shut him/her right down into a less-efficient tank.
Future Plans: Get him/her in the party after a quest to cure his/her curse with mixed results. Also, decide on a pronoun for him/her and a way to make him/her cool with being a her that doesn’t cause my social justice-oriented friends to riot.
Overall: The Damagers are the least problematic characters in the game- Yamamaya and Elaiya are frequently stated to be top picks and Kyrie and Gargan bring new play styles to the table without being too difficult to understand. They just need tweaks and fixes to get them *just right*.
Tanks
Therese
Being the first additional party member, the tutorial sections pretty much explain how Therese works- Primary tank with secondary healing.
Strengths: Rough and tumble fighter who also heals. Highest Resist of all the tanks, and will be able to self-buff to stretch it even further. Can also use +Defense Prayers, and Stagger gives her a slightly boosted attack with an Agility debuff.
Weaknesses: Martyrdom lacks any of the bell and whistles of the other tank abilities- it just draws threat without benefiting Therese.
Future Plans: Her Lay on Hands is meant to be early game healing, she will eventually get the basic one-target healing Prayer at the same time primary healers get multi-target healing.
Doll
Doll is actually an old idea I had back in elementary school for a Final Fantasy class- low damage, but covers and auto-regens.
Strengths: Has innate Health regeneration. Defender of Life buffs her Health Regen while she draws threat. Vine Armour lets her self-buff Defense (and stacks with other Defense buffs), Regeneration lets her offer some low-grade heals, and somebody Shake It Off might do something useful.
Weaknesses: Lowest Attack of all the tanks. Regeneration is less useful in the face of high-damage enemies and is better for low-risk battles you can drag out to benefit from the most healing.
Future Plans: Nothing concrete at the moment, except adding something to Vine Armour to spice it up a little (like Ice Armour also granting Cold Resistance).
Raina
Raina is a pretty basic spear-and-board fighter, but has enough interesting twists. Mirrors her brother a little- Gargan is a primary damager, secondary tank who applies a debuffs and then takes it away for bonus damage, while Raina is a primary tank, secondary damager who applies a self-buff then takes it away for bonus damage. If you’re interested in how she works, go check out Fairy Side later today- Conall is functionally identical, except for a slightly different stat priorities.
Strengths: Highest Defense in the game. Has two options for threat-generating self-buffs- Phalanx, which generates threat and buffs Defense, and Deflect, which generates threat and buffs Resist. She can then Shield Bash to attack with her Defense stat before leaving her Phalanx/Deflect state. Shield Rush is functionally similar, except costs more Momentum and has a chance of Knockdown. She can also use Pommel Strike for a boosted attack with chance of Knockdown that doesn’t cause her to leave Phalanx/Deflect.
Weaknesses: Lowest Resist of all the tanks and lacks any healing ability.
Future Plans: Get her in the party and eventually the harem. Raina is slightly more complicated in this regard- she’s going to hang around the manor and join in all the fun adventuring, but won’t join the harem until you can make her love the Hero enough to accept his philandering.
Originally this post was going to cover all the classes, but after seeing how long it is, this is going two-parter. See you next week!
*I just noticed while writing this post that Stun Break does not work as intended, using Gargan’s Magic stat instead of Attack. Will be fixed in next version.
My standard party, unless required otherwise, is as follows:
Hero/Healbot/Doll/Elaiya
Doll’s damage output is tolerable, and her ability to draw fire and place regeneration on people is nice for when it’s needed. Mostly, though, I use her because the manor invasion doesn’t happen until after you actually have her in your harem and I do almost everything before I take it to that point. So I don’t have access to Therese until the last couple of missions. Then I just don’t bother with her because she has no love quest.
There may be others who provide a slightly better overall package than Elaiya, but when you fit her with a couple of weapon upgrades and some optimized equipment, she’s a force. Slap a blessing on her prior to going into the forest to kill the spirits and she can one-shot just about everything in there. The boss fight typically goes: Elaiya kills a meat shield in one hit. Hero kills the Spectre in one hit. Healbot and Doll finish off the other meat shield in one hit. The fight finishes after the second round. Third if someone misses in one of the two rounds before it.
Sorry, the above should have read, “Healbot and Doll finish off the other meat shield in one hit from each.”
My usual party is Hero/Felix/Elaiya/Chimei, with Meline subbing in for Chimei until I can pony up the cash. Buff/Heal&Buff&Disable/Damage/Disable&Damage.
Out of the characters who are talked about in this update… Elaiya’s too strong right now. Way too strong. It’s very easy to get the Depleted Uranium before she ever goes into any serious combat, and that makes her the best damage-dealer for all of the current content… And that’s before Barrage. Its only real disadvantage, its high Momentum cost, is almost entirely offset by Improved Assault, especially since the +10 Momentum applies to the caster. Her offense, and the strength of currently available disables, make her weaker durability almost irrelevant. She needs to be brought down a little.
Yamamaya seems to have accuracy problems, and she’s competing with Elaiya, who will definitely have the Depleted Uranium by the time Yamamaya joins. Physical multi-target will help, and automatic status immunities are pretty amazingly useful when they come up,
It’ll be nice to have a magic nuke option, so I’m looking forward to Kyrie. I think Mana is a much smaller issue than you’re making it out to be here; you can effectively cast 8 MP spells up to and through the end of most combat scenarios (as Meline currently demonstrates), and Improved Assault can be worth casting for the +Momentum alone, so it isn’t too hard to get to 100 Momentum on a spellcaster in a boss fight. Just save the crowd control for a rainy day and she’ll be fine. (Though it was fun to spam those spells in No Party Like a Rescue Party.)
Gargan’s design a little too susceptible to being broken or useless; anything that disables is way too good on things that it works on reliably and useless on things it doesn’t work on. Focusing on those, therefore, makes a character’s usefulness stagger back and forth like a drunken sailor. Except that everyone levels simultaneously and there’s no experience penalty on the bench, so you can just use Gargan when he’s broken and bench him when he’s not. Problematic!
(My advice on the Gargan gender thing: don’t have his personality change as an explicit result of the change, especially not in any ways that conform to female stereotypes. That’ll really make people upset. Maybe focus on the ways people treat him differently, rather than focusing on how he feels about it himself? A lot of guys don’t like talking about their personal issues, after all, especially not if they consider it embarrassing or uncomfortable. I’d have him work way too hard to conform to stereotypes of masculinity, because he’d want to shore up his self-image as a man’s man. He already kind of did that before, so play on that more now. Additionally… Pronouns. Social justice perspective is to use “him” until he self-identifies as a lady (if he ever does), except from characters who explicitly don’t get it or who are being assholes.)
Therese has three issues. One: no status healing. That’s a really, really serious problem–a lot of the time, statuses are what make you lose control of a fight. Potions make actual HP healing much less important. Two, she’s not really good at damage or healing, and it looks like Raina’s shaping up to be a better tank. Three: she has nothing that’s uniquely hers other than a defense buff, and she’s not even very good at that right now. (Compare her buff to Assault, for instance.) That means Therese is the weakest type of generalist–she can do everything, but she’s not good enough at any of it to justify a place. This is a big cast already, and it’s getting bigger; if you don’t have something interesting to your name, you’re going to get lost in the shuffle.
Doll is a good design, I just don’t have room for her. No complaints. Raina sounds interesting both mechanically and story-wise, so I’m looking forward to her.
hero/felix/elaiya/doll
I change my party up fairly frequently depending on what I’m expecting but I always make sure I fill the tank, DPS, healer/buff and CC roles.
My Hero: I throw the heaviest armor on him to up his Threat. He spends most the time trying to buff
For the Tanking roll, I bring Doll if expecting drawn out fights or if I’m using Felix or Meline. Therese’s healing is more useful for end of fight healing that Doll’s regen and I spend all my Sil on gifts and investments so I don’t buy HP potions. When I could use Gragan he was my tank, between his Counter and his and the Hero’s naturally higher Threat they are already pulling the hits.
For DPS, Yamamaya and Elaiya go back and forth. Yamamaya’s better for longer dungeons because of her sustainability. Elaiya’s a beast for the Daily Quests and short quests. I might recommend putting the Depleted Uranium back to the 4th gun slot (3rd upgrade). Barricade/Specter are +85 ATK but the jury’s out until Yamamaya gets her next upgrade. Kyrie’s mana costs are easily handled with the Rhinestone Gloves to allow a lot of blasting.
Felix is a great heal/buff and light CC with Magic Missile. Meline is a great CC, Heretical Censure shuts casters down and daze is great for physical attackers. The ability to get her Cure Light Wounds makes her a solid heal option.
Larelle is really the only one that doesn’t see much use. The ATK debuff is nice but she really doesn’t offer much else as there really isn’t anyone to capitalize off the MDF debuff.
-DK2
Some thoughts I’ve had while playing…
My party is Hero/Felix/Doll/Elaiya. Virtually the entire game, however, is a set up of “protect the team, then beat down foes slowly after killing the mages”.
The Hero’s only useful skill IMO is Encourage. Free heal with no loss (since momentum isn’t carried between battles anyways, I make it my expendable stat. I think you can make it carried…I’m 99% sure I have that in one of my projects) makes it a cheap alternative to wasting mana from other allies. Other than that, he’s the free item user/damage dealer with flexible turns.
Felix is probably too useful even if people complain about difficulty. As the only real medic I use, his damage is forgivable…even if all I do with him offensively is basic attack. He doesn’t die easily, heals well, and supports the team far more that you probably expected him to. One option may be to make him a Jeigan (sorry, old FE fan…)/crutch character by really knee capping his stats as levels improve so we have reason to force your designed medics over him.
Elaiya is pretty much the core of the team. Her auto attack damage is effective (though not really important)…Barrage, as is, is already amazing. Between that and actually liking her serious character design over the parody of the rest of the game, she’s pretty much won me over. Seriously though, two shots with slightly higher damage. I haven’t bothered cracking open the VX Ace code myself yet, but your critical calculations seem to allow her to do up to 800 even at early stages with critical Barrage hits…enough to make most fights trivial. And with expendable momentum, I burn through it every time I can, even if it’s not tactically optimal. I don’t even bother with using Stealth at the moment because the rest of the team can cover her really effectively if things go wrong…and I’m halfway to Barrage if I can use Stealth. Pretty much, yeah, I’ve found her game breaking via Barrage. I don’t bother with any replacement in this slot.
I actually don’t notice Doll’s low attack. Personally, she is just as useful as Felix for dealing damage and is really low maintenance. She and Felix typically run out of things to do by mid-boss battle and just start wailing on the boss as well. Fun when you have 90 momentum on both because you don’t bother spending money on stuff and don’t need to use their skills.
The mages I don’t typically use because I find MP regeneration too troublesome and a lot of your enemies encourage downing the squishy wizard first…so just blasting them with 4 characters typically makes them die. The team above takes care of most DPS enemies in a single round and will bring their HP to near full after.
On boss fights, the RNG typically hits the hero, who can be buffed for regeneration and (very frequently) +2 defence buff. So dying isn’t a huge concern most of the time. Barrage typically fires twice on one target, making it (again) a very effective skill.
Bear in mind though my bias…I don’t typically buy items. I just equip the optimal stuff I get off the ground. Don’t even know what the Depleted Uranium stuff is.
My main team is Hero/Elaiya/Doll/Yamamaya. Though I have been trying to use other characters, I end up only really using Chimei as a sub, usually replacing Yamamaya.
Elaiya is really powerful, that’s why she’s always on my team. I’ve always felt Yamamaya was supposed to be just a tad more stronger than she is. Never really seems that strong to me. That’s one reason I use Chimei lately. That and also the multi target attacks with Chimei.
Felix is used as a health potion in between battles. As well as Therese and Meline with basic prayerbook. Whenever Felix runs out of mana.
Looking forward to playing with the new characters and the changes you want to implement!
I find that I always use Elaiya because of her high damage and Felix because healing’s so rare and he’s the only healer who does decent damage, and it varies a bit who the last member is. But it does bother me a bit that Felix seems basically indispensible; you need a healer, and no other healing option is remotely as good. I thought the game was about collecting a harem? It shouldn’t be so hard to make a viable party without any guys besides the player!
My philosophy is that there is a ton of porn on the internet, if you’re here you want a game with porn, not some porn with a game attached. So yeah, I am concerned about game balance and making it somewhat challenging and I don’t think that’s contradictory.
Just a quick thing on Stats, Yamamaya has better progression in every stat except LUK, MDF, and AGI over Elaiya. The reason I think Elaiya has better damage is because of getting her second upgrade earlier than everyone else and her weapons are better in general. Comparing her ATK bonus for Archer/Huntress against the Orc Axe we see +50 ATK/+10% HIT vs +40 ATK/-5% HIT. If Yamamaya is taking a hit in accuracy, I think her equipment should be putting out more of an ATK bonus than Elaiya who is the most accurate party member save (surprisingly) Felix.
Barrage vs Strong attack. Barrage is just 2 basic attacks, Strong attack deals 25% extra damage. Mathematically, they’re the same as Barrage costs 20, Strong Attacks costs 5 is Elaiya didn’t attack in between Barrages. In four turns she gets off 3 attacks and one barrage, maybe two, for 5-6 attacks. Yamamaya, if she could use SA every turn deals equivalent to 5 attacks. Then again, there’s a Add State “Normal Attack” on SA which does something but don’t know what.
But don’t forget Yamamaya is immune to paralysis, stun, and possession. That might help out a bit more down the road.
And yes, Felix is good but that’s because there isn’t a “healer” in the harem yet and his stats are a basic average progression. He has no good stat so he’ll fall behind most characters in most stats save their weak ones. Meline has better MAT progression than him actually, meaning she’ll heal better on average.
-I guess this wasn’t that quick, DK2
Good points. I really need to sit down at some point and actually craft the individual character’s stat progression rather than using the quick assign buttons in the editor.
State “Normal Attack” means that the skill will have the same states as a normal attack. In other words, if Yamamaya’s Normal Attack has 25% chance to stun, then using Strong Attack will also have 25% chance to stun.
Element “Normal Attack” means that the skill has the same element(s) as a normal attack. If Yamamaya’s normal attack has Fire element, her Strong Attack will also have Fire element.
Since both skills have element “Normal Attack” the main advantages of Strong Attack over Barrage are that it can add states to the target (useful if you used something on Yama, such as Potion of Brutality) and that it lets you choose target instead of leaving it to chance.
The main DISadvantage of Strong Attack is that it has no Critical chance, while Barrage has (and since it hits twice you get two chances of a critical).
Great thing about betas, plenty of time to tweak the numbers.
Thanks Moonblack for explaining that, didn’t note the no crit on Strong Attack
-DK2
I start off with Hero/Felix/Doll/Elaiya early game.
As Felix is a good magic damager early game with the benefit of healing mid fight. Doll has mediocre damage, but useful skills. Lastly, Elaiya is high damage is a must have. Though some say her squishyness is an offset, I seen few cases where she actual takes one on one damage.
It eventually morphs into Hero/Yamamaya/Doll/Elaiya
Once Yamamaya comes into the picture Felix gets booted and she takes his spot, essentially creating a steam rolling team. Her damage is well between high and extremely high, good amount of health, and the fight is usually over before any member is below half health. At that point I get Felix and Therese to heal my injured party. I have not really met an enemy that magic is a requirement to encourage the use of mage and counter balance mana needs. Although my latest version is the November edition.
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Yes, I have noticed this trend. I usually use Felix, Doll and Meline in the early game since Meline’s Scintillating Shards are good for loweing accuracy, Doll is good at being a tank, and Felix has Magic Missile for times when Scintillating Shards don’t work, with good damage to boot. The hero is mainly used to attack or to Assault/Encourage whenever necessary (usually, Assault gets used once or twice with Encourage used the rest of the time). As soon as Elaiya comes aboard, Felix is relegated to being a healing potion and a cleanser of status at the end of every match. Her ability to ass-kick even in early levels won’t be denied and she can usually one or two shot kill an enemy. Using her abilities to increase her agility and evasion and to use barrage the rest of the time is usually the way to go with her. Once I get them, Yamamaya and Chimei will replace Doll and Meline respectively, since Chimei’s Lightning is better at controlling enemy status and Yama’s a good all-rounder who attacks and can take a hit. Often, I just attack with her until I can Rage. I realize this makes my team offense oriented, but I do maintain that a good offense is the best defense. The more I make my enemies die off early, the less damage I take in battle, and with this lineup, it’s not unheard of for one or more of the weaker members of the enemy party to go down quickly. Strategic use of Barrage and Encourage once both characters have all the upgrades makes for something that takes out even bosses quickly, to the point that the only ones that give them trouble unless sufficiently levelled up are the Mycons, but they ARE meant to be end game enemies after all.
Speaking of Yamamaya she is the only character who cant switch out her weapon why?