GH2: Game Balance Issues?

[Joseph Hewitt]

There are a few balance issues in GH2 which probably need to be addressed (a few? ha!). In this thread I'll list some, list some of my ideas for fixing them, and open the floor for discussion and lamentation. Before we begin, two notes on how I personally think about game balance:

- Game balance should be balanced for a fair playthrough. What's that? No savefile editing, no script cheating, no NOAUTOSAVE, no save scumming, no other forms of cheating. Basically you play the game the way it comes out of the box. I'm willing to accept reloading from a final death, but not reloading to avoid permanent injury or because you lost a mecha. More about final death later.

- Mecha Piloting should be the only skill that's absolutely necessary.

On with the list...

Gladiator Pit, Monsters in general
Too easy? I'm thinking about increasing Dodge for higher tier monsters, increasing the difficulty progression of the Gladiator Pit and adding some cover.

Initiative: Too powerful?
Giving you more attacks than your opponents is a huge bonus. I'm thinking of increasing the baseline, so a character with high Speed/Initiative can get one and a half to two times as many attacks, rather than 3x or 4x as many.

Athera Garden Concert: Too easy?
I've noticed several players who complete the Garden Concert quite early in the game; it takes away some of the prestige when the concert can be done by an unknown singer with a performance skill of 8. Should the difficulty be turned up? Should there be a renown check, such that you can only advance to the upper levels once you're well known?

Electronic Warfare
Meant to be a specialist skill, but currently a useful skill for everyone. Here's an idea: remove the EW defense roll and replace it with usable EW systems. You use EW against an enemy team. The best EW user on your team rolls off against the best one on their team. If you win, you scramble their systems and their entire team will get a penalty to hit you. This penalty will remain in effect until countered by an opposing EW attempt. The current ECM system might provide individual defense against EW; if your team has a -2 penalty but you have a Class 2 ECM maybe they'd cancel each other out. Software could be used to generate special EW effects.

Alternatively- using EW can give your team a bonus to hit against a different team, and ECM counteracts this. Maybe ECM could also counteract certain bonuses to hit, such as Speed Compensation?

Specialist skills in general
Maybe on the second floor of the Cavalier's Club there should be a whole bunch of hireable specialists. This would provide the PC with almost-guaranteed access to every skill in the game, making players feel less obliged to take every skill personally.

Endgame: Too easy?
The later difficulty levels haven't really been adjusted for the 3 mostly-guaranteed lancemates. Are things too easy past Renown 50 now, or do you simply progress through the game faster?

Mysticism
I think this can be used as a buff skill. Using Mysticism will temporarily increase your stats; the amount of increase may be based on your Spirituality score. This buff does not stack with cyberware. Certain shrines/items might provide an additional bonus, such as +1 to a skill or immunity from particular status effects.

Science
You should be able to invent things. I'm thinking that a point-based system might be nice... completely random items are fun too, but more abusable. Robotics needs to be improved.

Insight
Using Insight on a NPC should provide special information- character traits, and maybe some special plot info. CLUE scripts could be built into personas to do this.

Final Death?
The original plan was to allow all PCs one free "get out of death" card, then allow resuscitation rolls thereafter. Your chance of being resuscitated depends on your Heroism score and whether or not anyone in your party knows Medicine. Should there be a final death which deletes the PC (turning them into a NPC to show up in later campaigns), or should it just be a matter of permanent injury?

Thoughts? Anything else that's currently overvalued/undervalued/too easy/too hard?

[Katyusha]

On gladiator pit - It seems kinda hit or miss at the moment. With characters meant to fight through it, it goes down easy (which I suppose is the whole point of taking levels in personal combat skills). For characters lacking the personal combat skills however, I generally only do well when hauling in a pair of bazookas + extra heavy armor and healing pills.

On Initiative - Well, considering that even with a full lance, you're usually outnumbered at least 2-1 (sometimes even more), it personally seems fine.

Concert - I have admittedly never tried this with low levels of performance.

EW - I dunno. I like how most combat mecha have their own self-defence ECM systems (just as all modern fighter jets have their own ECM systems as well). Pure dedicated EW craft which operate on a whole other league from 'personal' ECM would be fun though (such as how real airwings maintain dedicated EW craft for when heavy-duty jamming is needed).

Endgame: ...Admittedly, I generally have a lance of 3 arena champions with me by then, so its fairly easy, but then these are arena champions.

Final Death: 1 of the attractions that got me into playing the game, personally was it being slightly more forgiving on your character than "oops, I failed my save on a fluke that instantly slays me". "Goddammit I need new eyes" is inconvenient, but then much better than "Welp, there goes the past 2 weeks because a lucky shot got past my dodge and acrobatics and dealt a few hundred damage to my face, time to start a new campaign."

[plllizzz]

Final Death should happen in some bonus, no-rescue type dunegon/quests [like Ziggurat in GH1]

the sort of places you know they are dangerous, you know noone will go there to take your wounded ass back, the sort of place you risk your behind only for profit

and they aren't neccesary to finish the game <-- you take the risk of dying completely on your own, and you can only curse your stupidyty/overconfidence when you do

how does that sound?

[JohnnyDmonic]

As for the endgame, I think as far as mecha scale goes it's mostly just faster.  Certain weapons or mecha can still ruin your whole day, and it may help that they have multiple targets, or having more firepower to end them quickly, but it doesn't necessarily change the level of difficulty they represent. Personal scale the lancemates may make it too easy.

I think some random cover would up the difficulty of the Gladiator pit considerably.

I think I like the idea of EW as an active skill, but it'd need a lot of thought as to what and how.  So, here's my thoughts on one possible system, that takes as much of an advantage as possible from a specialist skill, but still maintains use of the current ECMs:

One: Instead of an active skill, it's passive.  One thing I've learned from the developer chats on WoW is that pressing a button every cooldown isn't really a choice, and doesn't really provide much gameplay.  So imagine at the start of a combat, both sides highest EW makes a skill roll, and that sets the bonuses for the battle.  Avoids having to go party mode to ensure that your EW specialist hits it, etc. (If the EW specialist gets taken out, it forces a reroll using the next highest, or the highest available ECM unit)

So, what it does:  Based on the EW skill rolls, each side gets maneuver bonus/targeting negative (whichever makes the math work better) related to missiles and ranged weapons.  ECM units create a field whose size Range equal to the class of the ECM.  If the opponent is outside your sides ECM range the modifier only applies to missiles (maybe both, not sure), inside both missiles and ranged.  Additionally, while inside the ECM field itself, the modifier is doubled.  ECM also counters the modifiers on a straight class to modifier ratio.  So if one side doesn't have an EW expert, their ECM is just countering the EW field, if both sides do, then both are suffering, but ECM counters it to an extent/perhaps fully.  Also, the addition of Ranged weapons while inside the range of the M-Field means if a close combat mech can close to within the range of his ECM field (and has EW up) he has a much better chance of surviving to land a few hits.  Probably have a side with absolutely no EW skill make a skill roll at rank equal to highest ECM unit to avoid the lack of a EW specialist being absolutely crushing.

I also like the stealth idea, but how about instead of adding to stealth skill, it adds to Cover (figured at start of battle, and reduced by opposing ECM class)  for any unit inside the range of a friendly ECM unit greater than their own.  Portable Electronic smoke screen.

So, the numbers are the real issue.  If I was doing it with dice, the statistical form I'm most familiar with, I'd say..every two 'successful' rounded up should equal 1 point of modification.  So if you have an ECM 1 on your team that's a -1 on a successful roll, ECM 2 works out about the same but with a higher chnace, 3 gets either a -1 or -2 depending on rolls, etc.  ECM 6 is the highest unit available, so the best a non-EW specialist team would get is a -3 modifier in general (or -6 if the enemy is inside the range of your ECM field).  Whereas someone with EW skill might get as high as 12 or 14 requiring the enemy have the highest available ECM just to be on even footing at range, and be reduced practically to melee only inside the ECM field.

What this accomplishes:  Overall at low levels not too much, an additional -1 or -2 isn't huge when you're already likely running mechs ranging from -3 to -4.  In the midranks it starts to pick up, facing (and using) more -2 TR mecha and pushing the battlefield back down another -2 or -3 resulting in combat looking fairly similar to the low level fights.  At the high range it's possibly problematic.  Teams/mecha without ECM may be all but unable to hit their opponent without closing to melee.  In any level, it means closing to melee will be a much more viable tactic, or that if not melee oriented staying at range is far more critical instead of just running pell-mell across the map towards each other.

It also basically enforces the Gundam version of why mecha were invented, because the M-particles made ranged combat a headache and all that.

Things that would be needed to make it work:  Aside from the rewrite of the Start Combat code to make the EW rolls and set up the battlefield modifiers, and the rework of the ECM code, and all those headaches, I think to make it 'fair' and reasonably intuitive to newer players ECM equipped mecha should have a visual 'ring' around them displaying the range of their ECM field.


Mysticism:  I like the idea as a good alternative to cyberware/making for an interesting specialist choice.  Perhaps also add a Regen effect.  Or if used on another lancemate a small QuickFix effect.  It shouldn't be as good as medicine, but I'm imagining it having multiple effects ala the Pray command from other roguelikes.

[Katyusha]

I'm not entirely sure about ECM being just a single roll though. While this might be convenient and easier, it also takes out abit of what makes it... itself really. Real jammers for example, have a wide variety of modes: Noise (trying to hash every radar set in the area), transponder (exactly what it says), repeater (trying to make it seem like there's multiple of you), pulse (clouding your position on radar), continuous wave (similar in concept to pulse but via different methods) etc, each of which, can be dealt with by a skilled sensor operator, forcing you to either amp up the jamming or continually switch modes as needed to continue to spoof the radarsets. While this doesn't really have to do with actual balance per se, it's just my 2c on the issue. On a semi related note, how about offsetting said ECM with sensors? Since sensors dont seem to actually be used for much at the moment. (And it'd give reason for dedicated ECM craft. Sure the average ECM package will spoof random low or medium end mecha, but it takes powerful mongo jammers to deal with say, class 10 sensor arrays, just as real aircraft have issues jamming large, extremely powerful arrays unless they're pure EW Aircraft like the EA-6.)

[Daemonward]

- Mecha Piloting should be the only skill that's absolutely necessary.

I'll believe it when I see the victory file.

[JohnnyDmonic]

Sensors is a good idea.  It means that pretty much all mecha have some counter to EW, and ECMs would only be 'mandatory' on the EW specialists mech and maybe close combat assault mecha.  On the other hand it risks turning it into a background noise issue that you only have to pay attention to at ridiculously high levels.  But I suppose that's just a matter of balancing the math around.  It might be simpler as a straight -1 (or some such) modifier that swings from side to side as the opposing EW specialists win rolls against each other. (but that takes away the increased effectiveness of melee which is one of the things I liked, as it stands I almost never even carry a melee weapon).

[Frumple]

Only point my fried brain can make at the moment is a resounding 'please no' to the Final Death thing, barring the earlier suggestion of within certain areas (That are blatantly, pop-up-window-with-glowing-doomletters marked.). GH's open roll thing means that you're pretty much always going to die and you're very much likely to die more than once.

Further, the only warning you usually get when you're in over your head is when you get your machine one-shotted out from under you; killing the player off with no real warning and no reliable method (not even previous experience) of telling they're having problems isn't balance, it's gratuitous punishment of a kicking-the-puppy variety.

Permanent injury's fine, between it and mecha loss there's plenty of cost to careless playing. Honestly, I think GH2's death system is handled pretty close to perfectly at the moment; I might suggest tweaking it a bit further toward permanent injury before death, but it's good as-is.

Of course, just adding it as a config-file option might not be amiss...

Minor points:
Point-based invention would be freaking awesome. Please.

On specialists-for-hire: Would temporary contracts be a possibility? Maybe even a new talent involving mercenaries that could allow you to manage a part-timer over the normal lance-limit. The for-hire dudes should probably be a point or two lower, stat-wise, than non-hires though, I think. Rarity is generally a good thing to correlate to power, after all. Random idea: It might be interesting to keep certain character's 'on retainer', so you can call them in to deal with non-time-sensitive skill roll stuff.

Definitely think initiative should be matched up better with speed for its bang-per-buck ratio, but I'm not sure how that should happen. As mentioned, you're generally out-numbered, often pretty badly, and with dodging draining SP, being able to deal with multiple targets is pretty important. Maybe just talent out the extra bit, allowing the player to pick between Re/Pe weapons to be able to get that extra initiative boost to, up to current levels or what-have-you. Would it be possible to just limit the number of successive shots the player could make to a single enemy per-round?

[Joseph Hewitt]

On Initiative - Well, considering that even with a full lance, you're usually outnumbered at least 2-1 (sometimes even more), it personally seems fine.

But remember two points: 1) your enemies can get Initiative as well, and 2) the issue wasn't whether or not Initiative is justified, but whether it's so important/powerful as to be a necessary skill.

Endgame: ...Admittedly, I generally have a lance of 3 arena champions with me by then, so its fairly easy, but then these are arena champions.

Yeah, but by that point in time every PC has access to arena champions, and assuming you didn't kill off every lancemate you could find some of them should be pretty powerful by then as well.

It also basically enforces the Gundam version of why mecha were invented, because the M-particles made ranged combat a headache and all that.

We could keep EW as a defense skill, but limit its use in some way- say, it only applies at ranges greater than 15 tiles or something.

Another idea I had last night was to use EW for rolling special circumstances at the beginning of battle, which is similar to your idea to have EW be rolled automatically at the start.

A third idea: ECM counteracts targeting computers/etc. If the opponent has a positive bonus to-hit., ECM counteracts this up to its rank. A separate system, an EW cloak or somesuch, would provide "cover" to allied units within a certain radius. Maybe this effect wouldn't stack with regular cover, or something else.

I'll believe it when I see the victory file.

What I meant is that Mecha Piloting is the only skill which all characters should definitely have, not that you can complete the game with nothing but it... although if it were possible to create a character with nothing but mecha piloting that would make a great challenge game.

[CCC]

Athera Garden Concert: Too easy?
I've noticed several players who complete the Garden Concert quite early in the game; it takes away some of the prestige when the concert can be done by an unknown singer with a performance skill of 8. Should the difficulty be turned up? Should there be a renown check, such that you can only advance to the upper levels once you're well known?

To be picky, it can be done with a performance skill of 6, a +1 keyboard, and a Charisma of 21.

However, that character turned out utterly useless at mecha combat, and the original idea of "get M. Piloting high enough to dodge everything, and let a lancemate handle actually damaging them" didn't work out too well.

I think that any quest should be easy for a character entirely optimised for that quest. If a 21-charisma 6-performance +1 character is going to have trouble with the concert from a "performance checks" point of view, then I'd presume that it's going to be near-impossible for a 12-charisma character. Using renown to prevent it from going too fast is a good idea, however, I would also like to make a suggestion there.

At the moment, Phivos arranges a series of gigs, in a sort of "do-one-gig-succeed-and-move-up" kind of way. Why not, rather, have Phivos give you a gig depending on your renown; so if you have 0 renown you get to sing outside a shop, if you have x renown you give a free concert in a hospital, and so on up the levels until you have enough renown to enter the final stages of the quest (and, of course, Phivos only ever finds you one gig a day); then the last two stages (the gig for the DJ at the club and the Athera Garden concert itself) follow the current model (that is, you have to impress the club DJ before doing the final concert).

And then, finally, all the other steps - the shop promotion, the hospital charity concert, and so on - each add a small amount to your Renown, as your fame as a performer spreads. Technically, this does allow one to still complete the entire Gardens quest first, but now that may take 80 promo gigs, 50 hospital concerts, and so forth...

How does that sound?

Specialist skills in general
Maybe on the second floor of the Cavalier's Club there should be a whole bunch of hireable specialists. This would provide the PC with almost-guaranteed access to every skill in the game, making players feel less obliged to take every skill personally.

I really like this idea.

Hmmm... robotics is a talent on top of the Scientist skill. Would there be a robotics specialist? Or an innovation specialist? An entourage specialist would be kind of useless; he can take an extra lancemate but you still can't...

Endgame: Too easy?
The later difficulty levels haven't really been adjusted for the 3 mostly-guaranteed lancemates. Are things too easy past Renown 50 now, or do you simply progress through the game faster?

I don't know. I've never yet been there.

Science
You should be able to invent things. I'm thinking that a point-based system might be nice... completely random items are fun too, but more abusable. Robotics needs to be improved.

Oooh, yes, this could be fun. I'm already wondering if I can build a mad-science type character once this gets in.

"Pushing the envelope" as a talent fits that character idea well; you can choose to gain the benefits of an extra +x to Science (or maybe some limit is removed, as with Innovation for Mecha Engineering), at the risk of your invention blowing up randomly (this could also be used aggressively, if some way can be found to ensure that an enemy is near the invention when it blows up).

Insight
Using Insight on a NPC should provide special information- character traits, and maybe some special plot info. CLUE scripts could be built into personas to do this.

And this makes me start thinking about a Sherlock Holmes type character... "I observe that you are a twenty-year-old typist with a prediliction for small boiled sweets and you were recently on the losing end of a mecha fight."

A few random default observations (e.g. "You observe that <NPC name> likes spam email" for a villainous character) can ensure that everyone has something that can be observed about them.

Final Death?
The original plan was to allow all PCs one free "get out of death" card, then allow resuscitation rolls thereafter. Your chance of being resuscitated depends on your Heroism score and whether or not anyone in your party knows Medicine. Should there be a final death which deletes the PC (turning them into a NPC to show up in later campaigns), or should it just be a matter of permanent injury?

As long as it saves your last autosave.

[Katyusha]

But remember two points: 1) your enemies can get Initiative as well, and 2) the issue wasn't whether or not Initiative is justified, but whether it's so important/powerful as to be a necessary skill.[/qote]

Oh. Well, I wouldn't say it's absolutely necessary per se as much as "its helpful to be able to shoot just as much as the other guy in a given round when youre outnumbered 3-1.". Guess I'll play around without it for abit so I can talk on it properly. But the main reason the skill is useful per se (at least to me) has less to do with it's ability as a skill, and more to do with how the game handles encounters with enemies. When theres 2 or 3 of them for every 1 of you, you'd really REALLY like to grab everything you can get to even it out. While the PC is supposed to be better than the average cannon fodder, enough people shooting at you generally will kill you sooner or later, so being able to kill them off faster helps survival odds alot.

Yeah, but by that point in time every PC has access to arena champions, and assuming you didn't kill off every lancemate you could find some of them should be pretty powerful by then as well.

They pretty much are quite powerful yes, but I've also flunked battles horribly before despite the lancemates due to lucky shots. ("Well oops, we were winning the day except for that savin randomly blowing my torso off."). I generally find things much easier with them in a sense that "this is more firepower Im hurling and thus am more likely to kill them before they hurt me." This sort of has to do with why I found initiative useful. Well that and dividing the shots between us makes it less likely any single 1 will suffer catastrophic levels of damage.

[Joseph Hewitt]

To be picky, it can be done with a performance skill of 6, a +1 keyboard, and a Charisma of 21.
...
I think that any quest should be easy for a character entirely optimised for that quest. If a 21-charisma 6-performance +1 character is going to have trouble with the concert from a "performance checks" point of view, then I'd presume that it's going to be near-impossible for a 12-charisma character.

Yes, a quest should be easy for a character optimized for that quest. This doesn't mean that it should be easy right from character creation. A PC with Mecha Piloting of 6 and 21 Reflexes can't finish an arena. The Athera Garden concert is meant to be a big deal; if you can complete it easily with such low stat/skills that's a problem.

IMO, the quest should be possible to finish with a skill value of 20. This could be Charm 22 + Performance 9, or Charm 12 + Performance 12 + Intrument 2, or any other combination. It should only really become easy around a skill value of 25. The earlier concerts should be easier, of course.

[EuchreJack]

I'm thinking Mysticism needs more than a stat buff to be useful as one of my limited skillslots.

In the first Gearhead, it lead to a quest that gave permanent stat improvement, and was necessary for joining one of the factions.  That would be a start.

Perhaps certain holy weapons could be more useful on villanous/non-human opponents by adding Mysticism to the attack score.  Or perhaps it could check versus the enemy pilots so that if the enemy pilots have some mysticism, but far less than the player, then they run off from their "spiritual superior".

[Vair]

Some of my thoughts about the subject:

Initiative: Too powerful?
I'd rather set importance of stats/speed as far greater, this way nerfing it a bit and giving an edge to different creatures (or fast mecha) while still maintaining it's usability.

Athera Garden Concert: Too easy?
I'd rather settle for renown check.

Electronic Warfare
Another idea - EW works only for the mecha whose character has it and there still needs to be some mecha subsystem which allows to use the skill (I mean, just a guy sitting in a mecha can hardly counter any status/malfunction which may happen wherever in mecha's body without any software/hardware support).

Specialist skills in general
Why not, although I'd rather see an option one day to hire most non-vital NPCs which would also state on which skills they concentrate and offer as a part of their services before player will hire them.

Endgame: Too easy?
Or maybe we should kick out renown autoscaling levels of enemies and just set them as powerful in some cases. Then no matter how fast the player will progress, he needs to be strong one way or another. Other than this, I don't think this part needs to be that much modified as long as it does not allows player to one-shot things too easily without lot, really lot of preparation.

Mysticism
Actually, I would agree with opinion that setting mysticism as a buff skill kind of makes it pointless addition not worth a skill slot. Meditation is kind of nice but turning it into 'You get +2 to your rolls' thing just makes the whole thing sad. Maybe it should be more plot/role-playing oriented, useful in diplomacy with certain kinds of people, understanding certain processes etc? Maybe it would provide optional ways of solving some problems (doesn't mean that it would allow player to get some magical powers but use mystical/occult/whatever way of thinking and knowledge which would be most useful in pushing some plot further - reading some occult, secret writing, identification of some religious items etc).

Science
Inventing systems and developed robotics - great idea, I am all for it. Maybe even different ways and levels of complexity you can make your self-sentient robot. For example you can try to make human-looking one which would possess rather humane, even if high, stats (including decent charisma which otherwise shouldn't really be high for some robotic, efficient-but-freaky lance members) or tough, rough, smaller mecha counterpart with quite some power but limited intelligence and looks.

Insight
Well, just good idea. Maybe in future versions player could get more detailed fluffy description about items after checking them out that way.

Final Death?
Original idea was nice, but without Heroism score, making it mainly dependent on Medicine skills of lancemates, some stats and proximity to the nearest hospital (higher chance of survival when in the spinner). To make it more balanced for both veteran and new players, every failed survival check could provide permanent injury up to some very harsh limit which depends on toughness/stats after which, on death character is deleted completely.

Anything else that's currently overvalued/undervalued/too easy/too hard:
Less starting cash in the beginning. Player starts with enough money to buy quite some luxurious items right at the spot and he has most vital equipment - mecha provided as well. I would suggest giving some player's professions default equipment character starts with (soldier starting with some regular armor and a rifle, doctor starting with some medical supplies) or stat/talent boost (even generally unknown celebrity-professional is probably a bit charismatic and of some renown). Even newbie or unlucky player which will die in the very beginning should still have quite some chances and it would make jobs differ in something more than a couple of points in starting skills and a bit smaller/bigger fortune (at least by beginning's standards).

[JohnnyDmonic]

I'm still thinking about EW, btw.  It occurs to me that my previous idea still makes it too much of a necessity (at the very least in terms of having a lancemate with it).  I like the idea of it sometimes triggering combat events or something at the start of combat.  What I'm thinking now, maybe in addition to that, is rather than it providing a straight extra defense roll, make it more random.  I'm not sure how one would model when/how often a roll is triggered, but say: Occasionally it provides a burst of extra MV vs an incoming missile attack, occasionally it counters an opponents MV software for the next attack, sometimes when moving it provides a stack of Cover equal to skill level so the enemy loses track of you for a round or two, stuff like that.  Then ECM units could be changed to more of a 'U'sable system/similar to the Computer, and set up for certain lance-wide effects, perhaps based on the same sort of ECM rating=diameter of effect I suggested earlier.  So having an EW specialist/ECM unit can provide certain tactical benefits if not necessarily straight combat benefit, and EW provides a more random straight combat benefit.