We Need to Talk About the Shi Association

[Flygoniaks]

I'm probably going to draw some targeted fire for this but here goes.

Over the past month, I've been thinking about how this game's balance evolved as more Key/Combat/Abnormality Pages were introduced and things had to be changed. I quickly remembered that there was one particular set of Key Pages that have impacted the game's balance multiple times; these are the ones belonging to the Shi Association.

Allow me to make a bold statement: The Shi Association's Key Pages have affected the balance of the game more than any other Key Page. The reason for this is simple: The max HP of the Shi Pages is MUCH higher than anything else we are able (or will be able) to obtain. Their absurd max HP doesn't make any sense from a story perspective, and has made them an absolute nuisance to balance for the developers and testers (that's us!).

Let's look at some examples ("cases") of how the Key Pages impacted game balance:

Case #1: Abnormality Pages

Shortly after (?) the Shi Association's release, Project Moon had to add maximum values to a bunch of Abnormality Pages related to healing or dealing a percentage of a character's health as damage. This is because using these Abnormality Pages during the Shi story reception or on Shi Key Pages resulted in totally absurd amounts of damage or healing, respectively. Just to be clear, I do NOT have a problem with these limits. However, they probably didn't need to be added until the Shi Association was released.

Case #2: Instant Cooking/Corpse Cleanup

With the new Passive System, "Instant Cooking" and "Corpse Cleanup" were quickly found to be disgustingly powerful, especially on Shi Pages due to how high their Max HP was. A few updates later and these two passives were given HUGE nerfs in terms of cost, healing, and even getting maximum values. Please note that I am NOT saying that these passives shouldn't have been nerfed. What I AM saying is that these passives being extremely strong on Shi Pages was likely a major factor in HOW HARD they were nerfed.

Solution: A "revamped" Shi Association

Because the Shi Pages already have a history of interfering with the balance and will likely continue to do so, something needs to change rather soon. I know there was a discussion about this same topic a few weeks ago and that person proposed making Shi Pages unable to heal; however, I don't think this is the right solution. This is because healing synergies with the Shi Association can be really useful/fun due to their low starting HP. We shouldn't get rid of this entirely when there's an easier way to solve the problem!

My proposal is to cut the max HP of these Key Pages in half, and make "Extreme Fatigue" start them with 50% HP instead of 25% (this means they would have the same starting HP as before). I've done some rough calculations and found that this will probably make the max HP of these Key Pages about on par with the Key Pages we'll have by the end of the story. This means that Project Moon will not have to constantly consider the Max HP of Shi Pages when balancing the game, making development easier.

Before you ask, yes, this is technically a nerf. But it's honestly not a huge nerf, and it will be good for the health of the game overall. Rest assured that with this "revamped" Shi Association, any synergies you previously used (including healing or low-health builds) will still be viable, just not game-breakingly powerful. If the Shi Pages become too weak (which they probably won't) Project Moon can also include some small buffs to their favorite Combat Pages. Apparently they tried this in the rolled-back September 11th update?

Disclaimer

As usual, please be respectful to me and other users in your responses. Also, please don't attack this discussion if you're just afraid of your favorite Shi Pages getting nerfed, but if you do, please provide good arguments against my proposal. I can't guarantee that I'll be able to keep up with the discussion activity, but I promise that I'll try my best.

[DarkVortigan]

I get what you mean, but my Yujin faint memories... :d

[DarkVortigan]

jokes aside, they did this in the update that was reverted (I can't remember the update name)

[Traumaturgy]

I was the one to make that Shi thread a bit back. I think the 50% idea has more merit than my own, thinking it over. If this change were to be implemented, I think that the Shi-affected items should be tinkered with, like the two healing passives and Abnormality Page percentiles, as well - nerfed from their prime, sure, but buffed from their current low.
Also, yeah, this change was in the reverted update and it felt fine to me so there's that.

[Leviathan]

They could just change the threshold from 25 to 50% HP on Faint Mems, Overcome and Endless Battle(I think it was endless battle?).

Or maybe just raise it a little bit for FM if its too easy for everyone else to abuse it.

[Flygoniaks]

Originally posted by Traumaturgy:

I think that the Shi-affected items should be tinkered with, like the two healing passives and Abnormality Page percentiles, as well - nerfed from their prime, sure, but buffed from their current low.

Originally posted by Leviathan:

They could just change the threshold from 25 to 50% HP on Faint Mems, Overcome and Endless Battle(I think it was endless battle?).

Or maybe just raise it a little bit for FM if its too easy for everyone else to abuse it.

As a note, changing Faint Memories from 25% to 50% could make the Tomerry fight harder than intended, though they could just make a boss-exclusive version of the Page instead. They could also just increase the base values of the dice slightly instead of the % if they wanted to buff it.

It seems that a lot of people are thinking that this change to the Shi could come with adjustments to a few of the related cards/passives, though we are debating on how exactly they should be changed. But I think we can all agree that making this work is totally possible. Thanks everyone!

[BrownianMotion]

I recall that in the initial 9/11 patch PM did made the switch where Shi pages where at 50%; however i guess most people werent able to test that out due to the roll back. iirc, i think i heard that the main drawbacks that many brought up was due to faint memories yujin synergy like mentioned above.

But now that we have our passive transfer system, imo that combo might be overshadowed by other stuff.

[Twelve_H]

Another possible solution is to make "<25% HP" a keyword (something like "Fatigued"), bring Shi pages down to normal max HP(60-70) and add a passive that allowes them to gain benefits from cards with "Fatigued" regardles of their current HP

[DarkVortigan]

A simple fix would be to raise the threshold of hp% from 25 to 50, not only would this allow the shi pages to also have a similar change (from 25% to 50%hp, lowering their max hp to the 100), but it would make their pages more usable on normal keypages, for example, 80 hp pages would need to have 40 hp remaining (which isn't that hard nowadays).

[Sebee]

The original 1.0.2 that was reverted made those changes to all Shi pages, they were still powerful and Yujin especially still felt powerful despite having an overall health of 100 and starting at half of that.
Having three dice even if one is broken is an amazing ability. If they nerfed it like they did before, people would be mad, but it wouldn't make the Key Pages unusable. I think that this change was the one that led to the most death threats being sent to PM, because "you ruined MY Yujin" was the mindset of most cucks.

[Grim Xzag]

Yujin actually had more nerfs done back in version 1.0.2.0. I mean, they were still pretty powerful, but not as powerful as they were an update before.

[Flygoniaks]

Originally posted by Bam:

The original 1.0.2 that was reverted made those changes to all Shi pages, they were still powerful and Yujin especially still felt powerful despite having an overall health of 100 and starting at half of that.
Having three dice even if one is broken is an amazing ability. If they nerfed it like they did before, people would be mad, but it wouldn't make the Key Pages unusable. I think that this change was the one that led to the most death threats being sent to PM, because "you ruined MY Yujin" was the mindset of most cucks.

That was the reason I was afraid of getting flamed for posting this. I remember seeing several discussion posts on the 11th complaining about the changes to Yujin (and ONLY Yujin?) even though we didn't haven enough time to actually evaluate the new meta with everything changed. Yujin + Faint Memories has also been a huge meme in the community for a while, hasn't it?

Thankfully it seems like those people aren't on the forums right now so I'm probably safe. I like all these suggestions, but trying all of these ideas at once might create a bunch of backlash like before. I think Project Moon should probably implement just my health proposal first, and then they can introduce more changes (like the ones suggested here) as needed. No need to rush.

[Ekimmak]

The thing is... you're absolutely right.

Shi Corp have the most drastic effect on game balance, to the point that it's weird they haven't simply changed the group, rather than nerfing every HP% restoration ability.

There is a story reason to it, though. The idea is that these people are master assassins, but they're also on the ropes from being forced to deal with urban nightmares consistently over the last month, and incredibly exhausted.

So, you can tell that they'd normally all be boss-level enemies, but are incredibly exhausted, and so have much lower hp.

[Grim Xzag]

Man, that took forever to find that rolled back versions files. Here is an image of Yujin back in 1.0.2.0:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2268992962

Here is the link to that post I used to get this image:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1256670/discussions/0/4307086417517596651/

Anyway, if you can't tell from the image, eye of death and enervation had a rework (Nerf) to their effects. Instead of giving 4 power and -3 power, it instead increases damage by +2 and with a 30% an extra +1 Power while Enervation decrease damage by -2.

[Leyaliz]

I'm only going to explain why I believe it fits from a story perspective and why I believe we will end up getting pages that have this much hp by the end of the game contrary to what was stated by op. Massive story spoilers so dont read unless you have beaten all of the content currently please.




1st Roland said when Phillip first unlocked his ego that it was on par if not better them some of the best gear fixers can buy, Stat wise both Yujin and Phillip are similar in some ways showing that Yujin could go toe to toe with Egos.

2nd point is how different the mindsets of Yujin and the Liu association are showing that grade one fixers very greatly in power. When the Liu encountered the Blue reverberation they asked to leave and said that the Hana association would not allow what he was doing and send someone to hunt him. Completely opposite of what Tenma and Valentine said what Yujin would do which was first Kill the manager of shi asso, then the entire hana asso and then the blue reverberation, And Yujin did Not deny it it. It has also been said before that Grade 1 fixers very quite differently in level.

The 3rd in final point of why I beleive we will be getting pages that not only have the same hp values but actually even more, is from the Musicians cut scene and the latest one. We know that the body count of Distortian phillip was far lower then that of the Pianist showing that the Pianist was far more dangerous. To which a color, the Black Silence killed in a matter of seconds after arriving one the scene. Judging from that we can see that the colors including the blue reverb potetionally have the ability to kill a Max hp Yujin or a Ego Phillip in 1-3 scenes.

In ending I do believe that the Shi asso pages need nerfed however it makes sense story wise why they are like this. I would like to add a way I believe they could be nerfed and that is to add another wound to the Kizuna passive, so on addition to lowering the max hp by 25% all healing on them is also reduced to heal no more then 10hp or some other small number like that.

[Grey Rebl]

Originally posted by Leyaliz:

I believe we will end up getting pages that have this much hp by the end of the game.

As much of a leap it is from our current 90+ hp to a possible 200+ hp, this is an interesting take. It would take all these health regen nerfs with a different perspective, because if this were to be true, we'd have pages that would have similar problems as the Shi pages. i.e. a large health pool.

The relevant nerfs we have now would start to make sense. It'll explain why Project Moon had avoided changing the way health is managed with the Shi pages despite it being at the center of the problem.