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+--- Thread: Racing on twitch with Beyond Chaos (/thread-2950.html)
RE: Racing on twitch with Beyond Chaos - MrEntity - 10-17-2015
You guys are worrying way too much about running away. This makes me think you're not really familiar with the speedcave.
Even if you're only going to the door YOU HAVE TO FIGHT MOST THINGS. If you don't, you will almost definitely die. This is because as soon as the music changes things will kill you in one hit or things will wipe your party in single attacks and you won't have time to run away.
The only point when running is valid is when you find completely unfair enemies or maybe once you get to the third section (though I would say by that point it is usually faster to just kill everything most of the time if you've set up your parties properly, built them reasonably, and fought most of the time.)
Unlike Narshe, in this mode it is usually both faster and safer to fight than it is to run.
RE: Racing on twitch with Beyond Chaos - abyssonym - 10-17-2015
I do think you need to fight some things in the first zone, but after you pick up a Genji Armor or Mirage Vest or Snow Muffler, etc., you won't need many levels to stay alive.
Anyway, I'll be making another update soon... I have a better idea of things to change when people are actively using the randomizer. Here's some changes I've got so far:
- Like the ancient cave mode, the speed cave will have regular item shops.
- The exp curve has been adjusted to lower requirements a bit for levels below 50.
- Esper pickups will be more common in the earlier zones of the speed cave.
- Party members found in the cave will join the active party if it's not full. As an aside to this, the speed cave will only start you with between 6 and 9 characters, instead of the full 12. I feel like this would be more interesting and reduce the burden of party planning at the beginning of the game.
I haven't pushed the update yet because I don't really grok the proposed endgame nerf. I don't see the advantages of nerfing the endgame over simply not playing it. Rather than cut out endgame content, I'd rather leave it in and let people choose for themselves whether or not they want to play the whole thing. Not randomizing monsters is also an option.
I could maybe change the rate of difficulty scaling, if you guys think that would be a good idea. But changing the rate of difficulty scaling means more difficult encounters early on, so the endgame doesn't come on so suddenly. It could easily backfire.
RE: Racing on twitch with Beyond Chaos - Lockirby2 - 10-17-2015
(10-17-2015, 05:28 PM)abyssonym Wrote: I do think you need to fight some things in the first zone, but after you pick up a Genji Armor or Mirage Vest or Snow Muffler, etc., you won't need many levels to stay alive.
Those were my thoughts on the matter. Like I said, you'd still need to probably play the cave with a party still to get stuff like that, but with one OP set of equipment the other parties could feasibly rush the cave.
(10-17-2015, 05:28 PM)abyssonym Wrote:
- Like the ancient cave mode, the speed cave will have regular item shops.
- The exp curve has been adjusted to lower requirements a bit for levels below 50.
- Esper pickups will be more common in the earlier zones of the speed cave.
- Party members found in the cave will join the active party if it's not full. As an aside to this, the speed cave will only start you with between 6 and 9 characters, instead of the full 12. I feel like this would be more interesting and reduce the burden of party planning at the beginning of the game.
I really like lowering the EXP curve a bit to make up for the lower amount of time to gain levels. I'm not sure I like the party member changes though, as I liked having to make decisions about who to put where, and now a bunch of characters are just going to be added to random teams that they might fit with or not. What are some other thoughts on the matter (besides Abyss', obviously)?
(10-17-2015, 05:28 PM)abyssonym Wrote: I haven't pushed the update yet because I don't really grok the proposed endgame nerf. I don't see the advantages of nerfing the endgame over simply not playing it. Rather than cut out endgame content, I'd rather leave it in and let people choose for themselves whether or not they want to play the whole thing. Not randomizing monsters is also an option.
I like the endgame nerf because I like the idea of having a game that has a raceable endgame with randomized monsters. I'd prefer to actually have an endgame to play, and I also prefer having monsters randomized. It's just what I think the ideal endgame would be. Well, for these races, anyways. An endgame difficulty spike is still a difficulty spike. Like Tenka said, it can be a separate mode for this kind of race and have Speedcave just be a shorter version of Ancient Cave whereas Racecave is just meant for racing. It's not cutting out endgame content either IMO; it's just adjusting the endgame content to mesh with the rest of Racecave's design.
That being said, despite complaining about the endgame issues I wanted to re-iterate that I think the race worked out great and was a lot of fun! Just wanted to throw that out there to reduce some of the focus from the negative here.
RE: Racing on twitch with Beyond Chaos - abyssonym - 10-17-2015
Well I understand why the nerf is a good thing conceptually, but I can't visualize it. Are you thinking of having the same range of difficulty that exists in zones 1-3, but stretched out through zones 4-5 too? Effectively removing problematic enemies from Fanatics Tower and the like. And that being the case, the 5 endgame bosses (Triad + Guardian + Inferno) would be removed as well? Or I should leave the bosses in, but bring them down to the same level as their vanilla counterparts? If I leave them in without nerfing them, they won't mesh well with their surroundings.
I don't really like the idea of having a specific monster randomization for what I'll call "racecave". I think it's important for the 'm' flag to have consistency, so that users will be aware that setting that flag gives the enemies the same flavor as a standard playthrough of BC. Rather than compromise on monster randomization, I feel like it would be more elegant to compromise on something like the exp curve (which I already have, but I can be as aggressive there as I need to).
RE: Racing on twitch with Beyond Chaos - Lockirby2 - 10-17-2015
Now that you mention it, I think tweaking the EXP curve might take care of making the randoms in zone four more doable. Of course that's mostly if the numbers are right, which is hard to tell without playing it myself. I was thinking before that most monsters could be bumped down a couple tiers in terms of difficulty, but that doesn't make sense technically when I think about it more. If progression is much faster from levels 10-50 then it could probably work out.
I don't think the bosses should be removed, but I don't think they should be endgame tier BC level. Leaving bosses as vanilla might be enough though. It's hard to tell by theorycrafting. Whatever happens, it shouldn't be "There's Guardian, let's switch to the other team because I won't beat him".
RE: Racing on twitch with Beyond Chaos - Jackimus - 10-17-2015
as far as not randomising monsters go, that would make the endgame better since we've all played this game to death, would be fun to try sometime.
RE: Racing on twitch with Beyond Chaos - Tenkarider - 10-17-2015
@Abyssonym: You don't have to tweak speedcave due to the "whims" of a bunch of racers: (me included) speedcave is born to be 100% played and explored, but fast enough to be completed in few hours... not to race a ~50% of the rom and toss it away when the race ends. (still it fits well for that)
Speedcave is already good, anyway if we're talking about a race until final kefka at the current state it's not feasible in 4 hours, but that cannot break the current balance, what about speedcave normal gameplays? (like the one i'm gonna do after ROTDS) those changes might damage them... hence that would need of an extra code name, not a tweak to speedcave.
Exp curve tweaks is the best choice i think;
6-9 characters at the beginning is quite a dangerous scenario, expecially if all the last 3 shops have 1 character inside them and so you'll lack of members... well 6 chars i think might give some trouble, 9 should be more feasible.
Oh i never questioned it, but joining characters will start from lv1 or will start with avg party level?
BC must have randomized monsters or it won't be Beyond Chaos, the five bosses MUST stay at their places and must have a random AI, i don't wanna see vanilla remains somewhere... i dunno how exactly works the code, but they just have to receive a lower "rank"... say that from 1 to 16 they are strong 15, then they should become strong 13 or something...
Obviously only if changes to exp curve are not enough.
@Jackimus: not me(to death) the first official race i wanna do have to be a standard one
RE: Racing on twitch with Beyond Chaos - MrEntity - 10-17-2015
Why would you play speedcave if the goal is not to go fast? I can explore the first 75% pretty much fully in 2-3 hours. The last 25% is the only fuckety part.
RE: Racing on twitch with Beyond Chaos - Lockirby2 - 10-17-2015
I agree with Mr. Entity here. If you are going to play a regular playthrough, Ancient Cave seems to be built for that, Speedcave doesn't also need to be that mode. If I wanted to 100% explore the dungeon I'd just play Ancient Cave.
RE: Racing on twitch with Beyond Chaos - abyssonym - 10-17-2015
If you start with 6, that means 8 will be in the dungeon... every 2 out of 3 rest stops will have a character in it. The odds of being left with a party of two is less than 1%. The worst case scenario is actually starting with 8, and 6 in the dungeon. In this case, there is a 3% chance that the party you choose to have 2 characters will never get a third character.
In any case, I don't intend to nerf the speedcave much, but I do recognize the points raised by LK in this thread about suitability for racing and prioritizing the use case that actually gets used. I'm still not keen to vanillafy the bosses but if I do do something like that, it will definitely be a new code.