Monster level up patch

I'm working on a monster level up patch. I started working on this when I was doing work on my hack but never finished the idea. I took the idea from chillyfeez on Slick Forums who has implemented the idea for his FFIV hack. I need some input on balance with the system I'm planning.

First I calculate the average party level (APL) and multiply it by 2/3, which gives the modified APL. For a average of level 18, APL is 12.

Then I calculate an adjustment ratio by doing modified APL * 100h / monster level. For a lvl 8 monster, ratio would be 0Bh * 100h / 08h = 160h

Then, if we take a monster stat, we do stat = stat * ratio / 100h. For a monster HP of 48, we would do monster HP = 30h * 160h / 100h = 66 HP. That would be his HP for the fight.

Obviously not all stats can be adjusted that way (thinking about speed for instance) so I'd like to know what should be tweaked with the base formula and what could be tweaked another way, preferably with the modified APL or ratio. I'm thinking excluding experience and gold from this. All stats that are 0 will never raise. The thing with the calculation for level is that the monster new level always en up being the modified APL. I haven't calculated for a monster who is a higher level than you but his stats and level should lower. If someone foreseen a problem with playing with monster levels, please let me know.

I'd like to release a nice system that gives more challenge than vanilla. Obviously all monster stats need to be tweaked, but after that you could only adjust the monster level to make him harder or nerf him. I plan on releasing a separate patch that balance the monster stats to the new system.

Hmm, this is pretty cool on a technical level, but I've never been a huge fan of enemies scaling levels with the party. Will it be possible to specify a min or max level for some monsters?

Will it be possible to specify a min or max level for some monsters?

I can max certain stats to a level (if stat > X; stat = X) but by applying the ratio formula to the monster level, you end up with the modified APL.

APL = 20, 36 monster lvl = 6, 48

ratio = 14h * 100h / 6 = 355h. Then calculating the new monster level is like doing the opposite operation: 355h * 6 / 100h = 14h.

ratio = 24h * 100h / 30h = C0h. new monster level = C0h * 30h / 100h = 24h.

So basically for monster that have a level higher than you, their level is scale to yours. For monster with a level lower than yours, the level is scaled to modified APL. I should really find a specific formula for monster level but the existing formula is good for other stats. A excel sheet that can calculate case scenarios would be a good idea also I think.

I use Excel (well, Libreoffice Calc) all the time for balance stuff like this. It's a great thinking tool. For the record I'm interested in this in the same way Lockirby, I think the idea has potential but is hard to pull off well. I can't think of any games offhand that did this well and that you could model but I'm sure examples exist. In any case it's an interesting technical challenge.

I think this is a fantastic idea... especially if you want to expand your available monsters... unimportant areas can re-use monsters in a higher level... you could even potentially create alternate palettes for breaking certain level thresh-holds to set them apart visually. This would be extremely handy.

I never really liked it in FF8, how it removed a very important aspect out of wanting to level up for me: to become stronger than the monsters in that area. This would make for a great patch though for sure, and could be used in creative ways like Edrin noted. I could see incorporating it somehow on a New Game + to increase difficulty for one. This is cool, almost as cool as a difficulty selection option...which I've been thinking a lot about lately.

This actually opens up other ideas to artificially increase your monster count... Hypothetically, intsead of a 1-1 level up method... you could do a step-up method based on any number of critera... zone, event bits, battle formation number, or level thresh-holds.... you could even branch the AI scripts to check their own level before choosing an action allowing there to be different attacks for different upgraded variants.... in fact... we are looking at basically infinite baddies. Can we increase the number of monster sprites yet?

... now i just need to work out doubling my map-space.

As others have said, this can be done really well to good effect, but you'll have to do some very hard looking at each stat, because they do scale differently.

On my very old, never finished hack, I intended to have (well, actually I did implement...) 3 levels of difficulty selectable from an event just before the opening sequence. The difficulty mode would essentially select one of 3 sets of monster stats, with (for instance) HP being doubled for regular enemies, and 10 times for bosses.

If you get a good idea of what formulas work on each stat, then it could be just a minor tweak to implement a similar difficulty setting to scale the different curves.

EDIT: (just read B-Run's comment above) I actually did have monsters check the difficulty level which was an event bit, (and also the current map) for some of their scripts. So you get fairly different experiences when you meet them on the Veldt as opposed to the original location. I believe that tweak made it into Pandora's Box also, now that I think back. I should disassemble it and see what all is done in the AI area.

On my very old, never finished hack, I intended to have (well, actually I did implement...) 3 levels of difficulty selectable from an event just before the opening sequence. The difficulty mode would essentially select one of 3 sets of monster stats, with (for instance) HP being doubled for regular enemies, and 10 times for bosses.

You don't happen to have that hack still laying around by some chance? Or some documentation regarding the selectable difficulty?
I've been trying to reverse engineer a Japanese hack recently that does this very thing, but it being Japanese it's that much harder, and today I've about given up. I'm very interested in alternate difficulty choice.

On my very old, never finished hack, I intended to have (well, actually I did implement...) 3 levels of difficulty selectable from an event just before the opening sequence. The difficulty mode would essentially select one of 3 sets of monster stats, with (for instance) HP being doubled for regular enemies, and 10 times for bosses.

On a side note I started working on the ASM of  2 or 3 levels of difficulty setting. However I plan on coding a small console application to manage the extra data sets localization in the ROM. I want to have a second (or second and third) set(s) of monster data, AI scripts, item data, formation data, zoning data, actor stats, EXP, MP and HP curves, spell data, esper data and shop data. I got all the ASM done except some code concerning item data, because well it'S all over the place... I plan on making the extra data set(s) optional meaning you could do a "custom" increased difficulty with only monster stats, AI data and formation data as an example.

What is also neat is that the extra difficulties could be all editable with FF3usME since with the application you could swap the default data sets with the extra ones. When you are done editing a difficulty, you re-swap the data sets and test your difficulty level.