Mod to balance axes, hammers, bombs: the randomer weapons

[Vir027]

These could feel more balanced and useful. It doesn't matter much in this version, but I've been thinking about how to do it anyway. Here are, in my view, some basic directions one could try toward a better balance and I'd be happy for your thoughts.

1. Give an Atk boost to each weapon until its average dps for some character is very comparable to a contemporary sword, say. This might seem at first like the natural solution, but I find it problematic. It would seem to be a lot of mathematical input for an unreliable input, because the actual character and battle variables involved in the user's experience won't match the spreadsheet, which may or may not leave the problem solved. It's possible I am wrong about this, but I don't think two such different multivariable expressions are likely to have their graphs held close together by changing one variable?

2. Give the weapons some other advantage than damage. Rather than make them all special snowflakes, possibly a small categorical edge would do well. Say they all had a low standard chance to cause Slow or something. Some weapons of these classes could of course still be special with higher chances for something else. This is a sidegrade solution as it does not address the original concern directly.

3. Switch out the formula for a more reliable one. This solves the damage problem most simply, but at the cost of variety.

[Hinnyuu]

The main problem lies in the disparity between worst case and best case. Worst case is literally 0 damage, while best case is hampered by overkill. This flushes the expected average down the toilet, and introduces very uncomfortable variance. As it stands, the only breaker weapon ever worth anything is Vrscika, and only because it's available so exceptionally early. And even then, it's outclassed very quickly.

One idea that came to my mind was to go full throttle on the whole "breaker" idea - and give breaker weapons a chance to actually apply breaks. A low chance, to be sure, and you'd have to be VERY careful where you put Wither - but it would certainly make Foebreaker more desirable as a job if it came with a way to gain access to the most powerful breaks before the postgame dungeons.

Ideally you'd tweak the damage formula as well, but I'm not sure if that's possible right now. I'm also not sure how exactly you'd change it, but probably something to balance out the low end a little. The 0-damage cases are just too painful.

[Vir027]

Good points. I am already conversant with the specifics of the problem to be solved, but your good design ideas are beyond my capabilities with the Nexus' mod tools. I do quite like the chance to apply breaks, especially.

What is your view of the three options I've thought of as available?

[Hinnyuu]

Originally posted by Vir027:

What is your view of the three options I've thought of as available?

1. It's hard to accurately pin down the average, due to how DEF works. But simply increasing the attack power and hoping for the best might be the most feasible approach (albeit not the most elegant one). You run the risk of high-roll scenarios with absurd numbers, but perhaps that is not such a bad thing - it's what you get for gambling.

2. I like this in principle, however in practice it would have to be very good bonuses indeed to make those weapons viable to use. What would you be willing to trade for the damage loss? Hard-CC (Stop, Disable, etc.) tends to be worse the less reliable it is. Damage buffs (Bravery, Berserk, etc.) are counterproductive to the idea that you're giving up damage. Defensive buffs, maybe? Emphasize Foebreaker as a tank? That would work out best mechanically, but I'm not sure it's good flavor for the job. Then again, it IS a heavily armored shield user... So maybe something like passive Protect, or even Lure? There aren't that many buffs to work with.

3. This is probably the best solution, but I'm not sure it can be done. You'd probably need to change the range from 0~1.111 to something like, idk, 0.5~1.25 or something? Or even 0.5~1.5? Needs more math, which I'd be willing to look into if I knew it was possible to implement with the current tools. Basically you'd want an average about where the other weapons lie, but with a greater variance for flavor. I'm not sure if the average should be greater than other weapons but with higher variance, or lower with smaller variance, though. Lower with high variance seems the least desirable in any case.

[Vir027]

1. Yes, that's just the problem I run into playing around with some graphs.

2. Lure is interesting to me mechanically, if we want also to give the weapons remarkable EVA. For my purposes, I have already made a Lure accessory, but I could revisit accessories if this were an attractive option for more than my personal purposes. It would strike me as conceptually odd, but it wouldn't be the only weapon design choice of the bunch to do so. Disable, Immobilize, Slow, Doom seem more intuitive options to me. It is of course valid that proc CC is not very useful strategically. Another option would be to consider elemental power up properties to improve breaker, err, meta-strategically instead of tactically.

3. I can't change what the formulae are, but I can change which one is used for a given weapon. I think if we don't come up with something satisfyingly creative in option 2, nor something mathematically astounding in option 1, then I am going to set axes and hammers to another formula (maybe two different ones?) and then work on a creative, not necessarily melee-damage-balanced niche for bombs to have while keeping their random damage. Elemental power up makes more sense to me for bomb launchers than for axes and hammers anway.

[Arkhne]

It always bugged me that bombs did random damage. Being hit by a bomb should be pretty damned consistent in the damage it does to you. Facetanking nukes with only a scratch or being ripped apart by grenades might seem like extremes, but that's precisely what handbombs are doing in FF12. Either you've been hit by the damned explosion, or you having. And if it doesn't hit you directly, the damage THEN scales by how close it is to you. Bombs take accuracy out of the equation to focus their sheer destructive power. Yet in FF12, they're arguably the single worst weapon type of all.

As for Axes/Hammers, I just avoid using them due to their ♥♥♥♥♥♥ low-end rolls. In my current playthrough, one of my characters is stuck with Foebreaker only for now, and they're terrible, they have massive hp, but their damage is worse than my white mage (granted, my White Mage IS Vaan, and my Foebreaker IS Fran, but the base stats aren't THAT far different).

[Hinnyuu]

Honestly, bombs should just follow the same formula as guns. Guaranteed damage, regardless of stats. Why WOULD explosives scale with how hard you throw them? Makes no sense.

Shift bombs to the gun damage formula, adjust their damage to be lower but charge faster, and give them status effects at fairly high chance instead of elemental affinity. That would make them quasi-spells that can be used as needed, or provide a stat-independent damage/debuff option for weak support classes. Heck a number of them already have access to bombs via Quickenings/Espers anyway, IIRC.

Shifting breaker weapons to another damage formula is a bit questionable imo, because then there's nothing to set them apart. They'd just be another sword/katana/whatever just on a different class. Very annoying problem.

[Sakhari]

On my end, I opted for #3 for the hammers and axes (strength formula, generally higher damage, slower charge than swords) and just upped the application chance and variety of effects on bombs.

This also comes with significant changes to license board structure and other across-the-board weapon and ability changes so it's a little easier to differentiate classes in my case and honestly, I think balancing weapon classes in a vacuum without also touching the character classes is going to be difficult to do in a varied and satisfying way. There are, what? 17 different weapon groups in the game? I'd say at least 5 of those are mostly garbage as-is and there just aren't enough meaningful combat variables to play with to make them all stand out.

If we could alter the formula, it might be a different story but as noted before, the details of the damage formulas seem to be pretty much set in stone at the moment.

[Hinnyuu]

As things stand, you have four types of weapons that are (objectively) the best to use:

1. Big Hitters - this includes guns as well as 2h weapons like Tournesol and Zodiac Spear. These weapons do one thing above all else, hit for big numbers. Not fast, not often, but big. They're great for trash clears.

2. Combo Hitters - these weapons hit moderately hard, but are used primarily because they hit often. VERY often. In the original this was largely to circumvent the damage cap, but as it turns out even without a cap they're great or amazing. These are the highest damage potential weapons in sustained fights.

3. Elemental Weapons - these weapons are used only for their elemental property, usually because it can be increased by boosting equipment. Examples include Excalibur + White Robes (though some overlap with 1. here) or Yagyu Darkblade + Black Robes (some overlap with 2.).

4. Utility Weapons - this includes boosting weapons like Flame/Glacial/Cloud Staff (of the Magi), but also weapons like Main Gauche and Mina. They're used not for their attack value, but for secondary effects.

Breakers don't fall in any of those categories, which is why they're not very useful. Also, within those four some are more useful than others; 2./3. especially are prime material, while 4. is usually very marginal to the point of virtual uselessness (e.g. Measures). I'm not sure where breakers would slot in best, but my tentative feelings would gravitate towards 1./4.

[Arkhne]

Originally posted by Hinnyuu:

As things stand, you have four types of weapons that are (objectively) the best to use:

1. Big Hitters - this includes guns as well as 2h weapons like Tournesol and Zodiac Spear. These weapons do one thing above all else, hit for big numbers. Not fast, not often, but big. They're great for trash clears.

2. Combo Hitters - these weapons hit moderately hard, but are used primarily because they hit often. VERY often. In the original this was largely to circumvent the damage cap, but as it turns out even without a cap they're great or amazing. These are the highest damage potential weapons in sustained fights.

3. Elemental Weapons - these weapons are used only for their elemental property, usually because it can be increased by boosting equipment. Examples include Excalibur + White Robes (though some overlap with 1. here) or Yagyu Darkblade + Black Robes (some overlap with 2.).

4. Utility Weapons - this includes boosting weapons like Flame/Glacial/Cloud Staff (of the Magi), but also weapons like Main Gauche and Mina. They're used not for their attack value, but for secondary effects.

Breakers don't fall in any of those categories, which is why they're not very useful. Also, within those four some are more useful than others; 2./3. especially are prime material, while 4. is usually very marginal to the point of virtual uselessness (e.g. Measures). I'm not sure where breakers would slot in best, but my tentative feelings would gravitate towards 1./4.

I suspect the actual point of Breakers was to compete with Maces/1h-Swords, the utility of a Shield (which admittedly is pointless in the end-game). Maces being Magic-based, Swords being Strength-based, and Breakers having a higher Attack Stat, but higher variance (which would actually make sense, if the variance didn't end up lowering the overall damage so much through 0 damage and low enough to be killed by defense rolls). Which would make them precisely the 1/4 combo you were suggesting. I also agree with your suggested change for bombs.

[Daedalus007]

Based upon the modding tools available currently (as of Mid-July so far), the damage formulas for weapon classes can be changed as well as animations and a few other bits. The primary issue with balancing these is to make each weapon class feel unique/distinctive without that garbage RNG to get in the way.

Most Japanese game developers seem to love putting RNG and gambling mechanics into nearly every single game that they can possibly get away with. Just another of those cultural mentality differentiators.

[Arkhne]

Originally posted by Daedalus007:

Most game developers seem to love putting RNG and gambling mechanics (and/or Microtransactions) into every single game that they can.

Fixed that for you.

[Hinnyuu]

Originally posted by Warchild:

Fixed that for you.

But you removed all the covert racism! :gasp:

Originally posted by Daedalus007:

Based upon the modding tools available currently (as of Mid-July so far), the damage formulas for weapon classes can be changed as well as animations and a few other bits.

To clarify, does that mean you can change the actual damage formulas, or just that you can change which formula is assigned to a given weapon?

[Vir027]

Originally posted by Hinnyuu:

Honestly, bombs should just follow the same formula as guns. Guaranteed damage, regardless of stats. Why WOULD explosives scale with how hard you throw them? Makes no sense.

I don't take responsibility for why str+vit affects bomb damage conceptually lol

Still, Hinnyuu's suggestion for bombs is compelling. Perhaps the easiest thing for breaker weapons is as you say to leave the vit formula for the axes and to change one's mind instead: bombs can be the go-to and axes the never-mind.

[Arkhne]

Originally posted by Hinnyuu:

Originally posted by Warchild:

Fixed that for you.

But you removed all the covert racism! :gasp:

That WAS one of the things that needed fixing though ;)

[Hinnyuu]

Originally posted by Warchild:

I'm not all too familiar with sarcasm though ;)

Fixed that for you.

<3

Anyway, I played around a bit with breaker weapons in the SFF mod, where the hammers have various debuff procs like stop, slow, sleep, etc. They're still completely and utterly terrible. A large part of that has to do with the fact that bosses are often immune - and bosses are the only redeeming fights for breakers, since you have more hits there and thus more time to smooth out the variance. On trash fights, you hit for 0 damage (or near enough) twice in a row you want to jump off a cliff because you literally did nothing all fight, 10% slow nor not.