The Balancing in this game is Atrocious.

[Proudly Toxic]

I see people complaining about the modern themes in this game. I'm going to be galaxy brained and instead actually complain about the gameplay.

I expected this to be a game where I would use the job system to tailor a well balanced team that could handle any situation thrown at it by being able to hit a variety of weaknesses, that I'd adjust further if I found that there was a pattern to enemy types in a specific area.

Instead the game has abilities that give you bonus damage and crit chance if you have duplicates of the same archetype in your party, and gives you access to a Phys Almighty skill with 35% crit chance before the first real dungeon.

Phys Almighty will benefit from Heat Up and from Discipline, since its a Physical Skill, despite doing Almighty damage. Because its Almighty, it will bypass phys repel, phys resist, phys null, and even phys absorb.

Because you can get its crit chance to 55% with 4 people going merchant, it is more effective than trying to hit weaknesses since you'll almost always crit and do more damage thanks to the 40% damage boost from Heat Up.

It costs money, but Merchant on the protag is a money printer anytime you kill lower level enemies in the overworld. So if you ever are running low on money, you can just go back to Akademia in whatever dungeon you are to force respawn all spawns in your current level to go whack a moling for cash.

I just did the second story dungeon, I'm thinking of stopping here, since I now also have access to sukunda, tarunda and rakunda as consumable items. The story boss was unable to get any of my party members below half HP, and if it wasn't for the fact he has a phase hp gate that stops you from killing him, I would've skipped his entire second phase with this strategy.

Do yourself a favor and skip this game if you haven't bought it yet. Who at atlus thought it was a good idea to give Phys Almighty to your character WITH NO MP COST this early in the game?

Phys Almighty has been Meta in every atlus RPG it has been available in.

[Proudly Toxic]

Opprinnelig skrevet av REBirthTheEdge:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Proudly Toxic:

If its intended, the game wouldn't have 25 archetypes when it can be beaten with 1.

That is the part of the game.

SMT has a lot of demons, you are to find the demon compositon that work.

That requires time, experimentation, and has multiple valid combinations. The busted combos that break the game require time, skill inheritance, and are usually story gated.

This is available before the first dungeon and has trivialized everything up to the second main story boss for me.

Like I said in my OP, a boss that I would've killed in 1 round if the game didn't have HP Gates to force a phase 2.

This is a game balance issue. If it is intended, it is bad design, which is what I'm criticizing.

It can be intended, and still be bad, because it means a majority of the archetypes in the game are archetypes you never really need or want to use.

I recently unlocked Faker. All it does is debuffs. I have 40 of each debuff in item form, so why would I ever equip Faker? For Debilitate which costs 3 press turns and requires a specific team comp to even cast? That is so action and composition inneficient I can just get a full 4 press turns of crits, and then throw 3 items to essentially do Debilitate, but still get damage in.

[REBirthTheEdge]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Proudly Toxic:

Opprinnelig skrevet av REBirthTheEdge:

That is the part of the game.

SMT has a lot of demons, you are to find the demon compositon that work.

That requires time, experimentation, and has multiple valid combinations. The busted combos that break the game require time, skill inheritance, and are usually story gated.

This is available before the first dungeon and has trivialized everything up to the second main story boss for me.

Like I said in my OP, a boss that I would've killed in 1 round if the game didn't have HP Gates to force a phase 2.

This is a game balance issue. If it is intended, it is bad design, which is what I'm criticizing.

It can be intended, and still be bad, because it means a majority of the archetypes in the game are archetypes you never really need or want to use.

I recently unlocked Faker. 40 of each debuff in item form, so why would I ever equip Faker? For Debilitate which costs 3 press turns and requires a specific team comp to even cast? That is so action and composition inneficient I can just get a full 4 press turns of crits, and then throw 3 items to essentially do Debilitate, but still get damage in.

I think you should keep playing and see how far you can get with the 4 merchant party, if you can indeed just mindlessly play the whole game with it, it is a balancing issue.

[Shiro]

Why are you trying so hard, it's just a game, enjoy it. Who are you trying to compete with.

[Proudly Toxic]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Shiro:

Why are you trying so hard, it's just a game, enjoy it. Who are you trying to compete with.

"When given the chance players will optimize the fun out of a game."

I am playing it the same way I play other Atlus RPGs. I'm trying to optimize my skill loadouts.

But this game allows you to optimize by just stacking 4 of the same class in such a way that you will never need to swap anything out until you unlock the evolved version of merchant.

[Bike Knight]

I'm with you on this, OP. It's never the player's fault for snapping the game over their knee, especially if the game's sandbox of options is sloppy and boiled down to one option so easily. Think I'll be skipping this one unless the royale vengeance edition in a year is more well thought out.

[REBirthTheEdge]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Proudly Toxic:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Shiro:

Why are you trying so hard, it's just a game, enjoy it. Who are you trying to compete with.

"When given the chance players will optimize the fun out of a game."

I am playing it the same way I play other Atlus RPGs. I'm trying to optimize my skill loadouts.

But this game allows you to optimize by just stacking 4 of the same class in such a way that you will never need to swap anything out until you unlock the evolved version of merchant.

I think this is the optimized party for dungeon diving, more of a jack of all trade since you rely on crit and skip Press-turn entirely.
It is not optimized for specific fights.

[REBirthTheEdge]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Bike Knight:

I'm with you on this, OP. It's never the player's fault for snapping the game over their knee, especially if the game's sandbox of options is sloppy and boiled down to one option so easily. Think I'll be skipping this one unless the royale vengeance edition in a year is more well thought out.

I don't think this is right.

The OP mentions in the beginning that he still has to go to Akademia to reset the spawns to grind for money to cast the spells in the first place.

I don't think this is the intended or optimized way to play the game since it is based on grinding and costing more times.

[Proudly Toxic]

Opprinnelig skrevet av REBirthTheEdge:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Bike Knight:

I'm with you on this, OP. It's never the player's fault for snapping the game over their knee, especially if the game's sandbox of options is sloppy and boiled down to one option so easily. Think I'll be skipping this one unless the royale vengeance edition in a year is more well thought out.

I don't think this is right.

The OP mentions in the beginning that he still has to go to Akademia to reset the spawns to grind for money to cast the spells in the first place.

I don't think this is the intended or optimized way to play the game since it is based on grinding and costing more times.

You have to do the same thing if you're using MP and get worse rates.

1 Use of Gold Rush = 500 Gold spent.

You get 290 gold from killing enemies as a merchant.

1 Use of Fire Spell = 4 MP spent

You get 1 MP per enemy killed in the overworld.

You will need to kill half as many enemies to get the resources back you spend for using this strategy as you do mana for the other classes.

As you get later in the game and MP costs increase, the ammount of gold per enemy kill only makes merchant more efficient. Since the gold cost is static, and your gold per enemy kill improves with enemy level.

[Shrinkshooter]

Assuming OP is correct and the devs have implemented overpowered busted mechanics that should have been obvious and toned down pre-launch, then no, self-imposed restrictions are not a solution to a design problem. It is not incumbent on the player to solve design problems by hamstringing themselves intentionally in the same way it isn't a reader's job to headcanon up some plausible explanation for a massive plot hole in a story. You shouldn't NEED to avoid interacting with something given to you early and at low cost that breaks game balance in order to have fun; that's a development problem not a consumer problem.

That aside it's possible OP isn't correct over the course of the whole game but obviously nobody's going to know that for sure for a while.

[REBirthTheEdge]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Proudly Toxic:

Opprinnelig skrevet av REBirthTheEdge:

I don't think this is right.

The OP mentions in the beginning that he still has to go to Akademia to reset the spawns to grind for money to cast the spells in the first place.

I don't think this is the intended or optimized way to play the game since it is based on grinding and costing more times.

You have to do the same thing if you're using MP and get worse rates.

1 Use of Gold Rush = 500 Gold spent.

You get 290 gold from killing enemies as a merchant.

1 Use of Fire Spell = 4 MP spent

You get 1 MP per enemy killed in the overworld.

You will need to kill half as many enemies to get the resources back you spend for using this strategy as you do mana for the other classes.

As you get later in the game and MP costs increase, the ammount of gold per enemy kill only makes merchant more efficient.

Both are based on reset mob strategy and real time wasting when I can just return to the town and have a rest and move back.

The game gives you like 10 days for the first dungeon, plenty of times. Don't see the point for this optimized strat when you are wasting real time to make it work.

[Proudly Toxic]

Opprinnelig skrevet av REBirthTheEdge:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Proudly Toxic:

You have to do the same thing if you're using MP and get worse rates.

1 Use of Gold Rush = 500 Gold spent.

You get 290 gold from killing enemies as a merchant.

1 Use of Fire Spell = 4 MP spent

You get 1 MP per enemy killed in the overworld.

You will need to kill half as many enemies to get the resources back you spend for using this strategy as you do mana for the other classes.

As you get later in the game and MP costs increase, the ammount of gold per enemy kill only makes merchant more efficient.

Both are based on reset mob strategy and real time wasting when I can just return to the town and have a rest and move back.

The game gives you like 10 days for the first dungeon, plenty of times. Don't see the point for this optimized strat when you are wasting real time to make it work.

Spending more than 1 day doing a story dungeon = less time spent improving your social stats and developing social links.

[[[qig]]]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Proudly Toxic:

Opprinnelig skrevet av REBirthTheEdge:

I don't think this is right.

The OP mentions in the beginning that he still has to go to Akademia to reset the spawns to grind for money to cast the spells in the first place.

I don't think this is the intended or optimized way to play the game since it is based on grinding and costing more times.

You have to do the same thing if you're using MP and get worse rates.

1 Use of Gold Rush = 500 Gold spent.

You get 290 gold from killing enemies as a merchant.

1 Use of Fire Spell = 4 MP spent

You get 1 MP per enemy killed in the overworld.

You will need to kill half as many enemies to get the resources back you spend for using this strategy as you do mana for the other classes.

As you get later in the game and MP costs increase, the ammount of gold per enemy kill only makes merchant more efficient. Since the gold cost is static, and your gold per enemy kill improves with enemy level.

but you don't have to do the same thing if you're using mana and spells? i'm 4 story dungeons beaten (plus all optional dungeons complete) in 1 day and have never had to farm mp (haven't 'even touched mage on protagonist)

[shelledfade]

so if you put heat up on two mages, it's now considered the same archetype and is at 20% ? I would've assumed it requires you to be a warrior. I didn't think this game went that deep lol.

[Proudly Toxic]

Opprinnelig skrevet av eva:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Proudly Toxic:

You have to do the same thing if you're using MP and get worse rates.

1 Use of Gold Rush = 500 Gold spent.

You get 290 gold from killing enemies as a merchant.

1 Use of Fire Spell = 4 MP spent

You get 1 MP per enemy killed in the overworld.

You will need to kill half as many enemies to get the resources back you spend for using this strategy as you do mana for the other classes.

As you get later in the game and MP costs increase, the ammount of gold per enemy kill only makes merchant more efficient. Since the gold cost is static, and your gold per enemy kill improves with enemy level.

but you don't have to do the same thing if you're using mana and spells? i'm 4 story dungeons beaten (plus all optional dungeons complete) in 1 day and have never had to farm mp (haven't 'even touched mage on protagonist)

Depending on how many fights you take, and if you're not using a guide, you do. You will eventually run pretty low on mana and you'll either have to burn consumables or use mage to get your mana back to a decent level to take a boss fight.

[REBirthTheEdge]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Shrinkshooter:

Assuming OP is correct and the devs have implemented overpowered busted mechanics that should have been obvious and toned down pre-launch, then no, self-imposed restrictions are not a solution to a design problem. It is not incumbent on the player to solve design problems by hamstringing themselves intentionally in the same way it isn't a reader's job to headcanon up some plausible explanation for a massive plot hole in a story. You shouldn't NEED to avoid interacting with something given to you early and at low cost that breaks game balance in order to have fun; that's a development problem not a consumer problem.

That aside it's possible OP isn't correct over the course of the whole game but obviously nobody's going to know that for sure for a while.

OP is practically just doing the thing called grinding in RPG.

He resets the dungeon via Akamedia and spends times to farm money so he can cast spell without running out of resources.

The obvious flaw with this is that well, it costs real actual time instead of just playing normally.