Seiken Densetsu 3 (aka Trials of Mana) Hacks Discussion

[soul_knight]

This might be a dangerous thought, but is there a way to make the "countering enemies/bosses" (such as Bill/Ben, Lugar, and Black Rabite) use their counter skills randomly (instead of those skills being activated by being attacked by magic), just like the "non-countering enemies/bosses"? (such as Full Metal Hagger, Jewel Eater, and Tsenker)  Of course, all bosses should keep their unique HP threshold moves (such as Knights starting the fight with a Saber magic, and Lugar/Gildervine transforming, and Black Rabite using the spell combo and Ancient).  That way, the players will have to be always vigilant, instead of just using melee to not activate the counters (personally, I think Luck Denies Counter still discourages players to use skills, simply because there's an option to not activate the counter skills at all -- by just using the boring melee).  While I was testing, I fought against Black Rabite, and I specifically didn't use any skills (I only had v1.8 enabled), and honestly, BR was extremely easy.  But if BR used his counter skills randomly (like Supersonic, or Great Demon summon), then I would constantly have to be vigilant (esp my healers), which would make the fights more difficult and interesting.  Actually, some players might still die, because player damaged BR enough to activate the spell combo, while BR was activating a random powerful skill.  But that's half the fun.  Being vigilant while fighting.

Huh.  I didnt' think about that.  That sounds good, at least on paper.  But you need to understand that it may raise the difficulty a bit too much.  I mean, because of bad draw from RNG, Bill/Ben may both end up spamming Shadow Dive.  Or Lugar might end up spamming Seiryuu Death Fist (which equals total party kill).  Or a group of normal enemies with lv3 tech enemies (ex: Bloody Wolves x2) may end up giving you total party kill.  Having said that, I do agree that Black Rabite needs a bit of help.  If you cast Anti Magic on him and only use melee, he only uses skills twice (spell combo, and Ancient) in the very long fight.  Maybe just change Black Rabite, and leave the rest alone?  I don't know if that's even possible.  I always enjoyed watching BR summoning Lv99 Great Demons.

I think the green aura is when you apply the same buff as before (and green aura indicates that whatever buff you did, you're not getting anymore buff).  I'm guessing yellow aura is the same thing, except for debuff.  And as for Stat up and down after another, I think it cancels each other out, making it neutral.  At least, that was true for HP Up/Down.  I'm guessing it's the same for other stat up/down.  So if an enemy did Power Down on you, and you want to increase your melee attack (relative to the normal state), then you need to apply Power Up twice.

Thanks.

Btw, for your next Balance update, can you give guys like Duran and Kevin some non-screen-freezing skills, like Firedrake's flamebreath?  That'll be very interesting.

[hmsong]

If praetarius5018 doesn't do it (if it strays too much from the original game design) I would appreciate that you make a patch for it.

I'm afraid I don't have the skills to make that.  If I did, I would have already made it.  I can only plead to praetarius5018 and hope that he makes it.

Btw, for your next Balance update, can you give guys like Duran and Kevin some non-screen-freezing skills, like Firedrake's flamebreath?  That'll be very interesting.

I don't know how to do that.  I don't even know where to look for that one.  I'd sure like to experiment.

[praetarius5018]

This might be a dangerous thought, but is there a way to make the "countering enemies/bosses" (such as Bill/Ben, Lugar, and Black Rabite) use their counter skills randomly (instead of those skills being activated by being attacked by magic), just like the "non-countering enemies/bosses"?

For my other hack I managed to make those reactions triggerable by melee damage as well (instead of RNG it is a "aggro meter").
So in a way the answer is: yes.

Also, I think M.Def buff is a bit too much.  Based on the number, M.Def Up should only raise the M.Def by 20%.  Duran had M.Def of 138, and with the buff, he got 165.  So he should only reduce the damage by ~27 points, right?  But when I got attacked by BR's Dark Force, the damage got almost halved (216 reduced to 114 points).  But that doesn't seem to be the case for M.Def Down (Angela did 367 damage with Evil Gate against BR, and the same spell did 467 when BR had M.Def down).  That seemed a bit weird.  Can you check that out, and if possible, make M.Def buff a bit less powerful?

Yeah, the m.def (de)buff does not only change the m.def value itself but gets also checked in the spell damage formula and does the opposite to the m.atk before m.def. Which has the weird effect that you need both def buffs to protect against several boss only spells (those that target p.def); p.def up for the raw increase of def and m.def up for the further 20% decrease before def.
Dunno if I should change that, that would be going too far for a "bug fix" patch.

Btw, for your next Balance update, can you give guys like Duran and Kevin some non-screen-freezing skills, like Firedrake's flamebreath?  That'll be very interesting.

This sounds dangerously close to SoM levels of magic stun locking becoming a thing again.

[hmsong]

For my other hack I managed to make those reactions triggerable by melee damage as well (instead of RNG it is a "aggro meter").
So in a way the answer is: yes.

I feel like Aggro Meter is a little overkill, but I'm definitely okay with that too.  So could you apply that to your patch?  If Aggro Meter is indeed overkill, could you apply it as RNG?  I'm okay with anything as long as it doesn't discourage players from using skills (ex: I think your Luck Denies Counter less discourages skill usage than vanilla, but it still discourages skill usage), but still makes the bosses harder by having them use their skills more than once (esp Black Rabite).

Yeah, the m.def (de)buff does not only change the m.def value itself but gets also checked in the spell damage formula and does the opposite to the m.atk before m.def. Which has the weird effect that you need both def buffs to protect against several boss only spells (those that target p.def); p.def up for the raw increase of def and m.def up for the further 20% decrease before def.
Dunno if I should change that, that would be going too far for a "bug fix" patch.

Yeah, so I tested the vanilla version, after soul_knight told me about it.  I think the original M.Def buff/debuff worked just fine (vanilla Magic Shield), but M.Effectiveness was what was screwing things up.  So if you simply get rid of the M.Def buff that M.Effectiveness gave, and simply kept the vanilla M.Def buff, I think things will work well.  And it would be in line with "bug fix" patch, since the vanilla already had working M.Def buff/debuff.

This sounds dangerously close to SoM levels of magic stun locking becoming a thing again.

I think he meant the slow-acting melee skills, similar to Lv1 techs, except those skills have a lot more recoil.  Things like Machine Golem's Rocket Punch, or Firedrake's firebreath, or King Rabite's Rabite Rainstorm.  The enemy guide from gamefaqs called them "e-skills".  I don't think they can be used to stunlock anything, as they have very large recoil.

Did you perhaps enable those for characters in your Sin of Mana?

[praetarius5018]

I feel like Aggro Meter is a little overkill, but I'm definitely okay with that too.  So could you apply that to your patch?  If Aggro Meter is indeed overkill, could you apply it as RNG?  I'm okay with anything as long as it doesn't discourage players from using skills (ex: I think your Luck Denies Counter less discourages skill usage than vanilla, but it still discourages skill usage), but still makes the bosses harder by having them use their skills more than once (esp Black Rabite).

Not sure I should, this would be a big difficulty spike for certain bosses like Bill/Ben and Lugar.

So if you simply get rid of the M.Def buff that M.Effectiveness gave, and simply kept the vanilla M.Def buff, I think things will work well.  And it would be in line with "bug fix" patch, since the vanilla already had working M.Def buff/debuff.

Mind Up gives both flags: +m.atk, +m.def
Magic Shield only gives: +m.def

In vanilla the actual modification to your m.def stat was governed by +m.atk, in the fix patch I moved that to +m.def since as you pointed out earlier it made magic shield worse as a defense spell than mind up.
The +m.def flag just reduces taken spell damage by 20% before atk, this is not changed.

So... what exactly should I change here now? Remove the +20% m.def stat?

I think he meant the slow-acting melee skills, similar to Lv1 techs, except those skills have a lot more recoil.  Things like Machine Golem's Rocket Punch, or Firedrake's firebreath, or King Rabite's Rabite Rainstorm.  The enemy guide from gamefaqs called them "e-skills".  I don't think they can be used to stunlock anything, as they have very large recoil.

Did you perhaps enable those for characters in your Sin of Mana?

Did not, couldn't if I wanted to; those "e-skills" are half just their L1 techs and have spells with ids out of range; Firedrake's fire breath would be id 1AB and your spell menu can only handle 8 bit ids, so FF or lower.
And even if that was solved those would most likely not work as player characters don't have animation data for that or any other reason SD3 can think up to screw you over.

[hmsong]

Not sure I should, this would be a big difficulty spike for certain bosses like Bill/Ben and Lugar.

Yeah.  But at least it would be fair, in that Angela won't be the only one who suffers.  I don't mind Lugar being harder, but Bill/Ben fight may indeed be a bit harder.  This is the sort of thing that really needs to be tested out, I suppose.  What is certain is that BR needs a bit of help.

How does everyone else think about this?  I'd sure like to know.

Also, I'm just checking, but are there any of the big bosses who do counters? (so Full Metal Hagger, Jewel Eater, Tsenker, Gorva, Genova, Gildervine, God-Beasts, final bosses)  Only the little bosses do counters, right?

Mind Up gives both flags: +m.atk, +m.def
Magic Shield only gives: +m.def

In vanilla the actual modification to your m.def stat was governed by +m.atk, in the fix patch I moved that to +m.def since as you pointed out earlier it made magic shield worse as a defense spell than mind up.
The +m.def flag just reduces taken spell damage by 20% before atk, this is not changed.

So... what exactly should I change here now? Remove the +20% m.def stat?

Actually, I figured you can just delete the m.def that was initially in the m.attack.  You know, "in the fix patch I moved that to +m.def since as you pointed out earlier it made magic shield worse as a defense spell than mind up" m.def.  That way, the vanilla m.def will still be used (which is the weaker version).  Did I overlook anything?

Did not, couldn't if I wanted to; those "e-skills" are half just their L1 techs and have spells with ids out of range; Firedrake's fire breath would be id 1AB and your spell menu can only handle 8 bit ids, so FF or lower.
And even if that was solved those would most likely not work as player characters don't have animation data for that or any other reason SD3 can think up to screw you over.

Yeah, you're right about that, in all accounts.  Well, worth a thought.  Not my idea, but still.

[Zimgief]

For counters, I suppose it can be balanced so to trigger more or less often depending on the boss?
Even, if Bill and Ben are supposed to punish the player if he tries too fancy  (i.e. you are not supposed to use any skill during their fight), they can counter as normal, but not the other bosses ?

[soul_knight]

I'm okay with either RNG or Aggro Meter.  If I have to pick one, I would prefer Aggro Meter, assuming it's only for melee (otherwise, one Death Spell or something powerful will trigger the counter).  I like something new, and as I said earlier, bad draw of RNG may randomly kill your whole party.  Too bad I can't control the stupid AIs to not use melee.  And melee Aggro Meter will probably count against the double hitters, which is a good thing.  And since it's being used in Sin of Mana (which I'm sure has been tested well), then it must be good.

Aggro Meter may not make Bill/Ben as hard, because the melee characters will attack two different targets (that also applies to Machine Golem bosses).  Lugar and Black Rabite will be hard -- all 3 will wail on one target, which will trigger Aggro Meter counter, but that's a good thing, as it'll make others back off a bit.  It really depends on how Aggro Meter works (is it based on how many hits it received in a given time, or does it depend on the total damage received?).

[Messianic]

I'm a fan of cool downs, specifically for normal enemies and party wide spells that there's atleast a 2 second window before another party wide ability can be used, unless it's two very weak ones.

It would have to be global though, so that if a Petit Tiamat uses Thunderstorm, the cool down has to hit 0 before any Nightblades could do their Silhouette Slice thing.

[praetarius5018]

I don't have the ram here to make a aggro meter (I changed some ram parts in the other hack but that is too much effort for this one), so I'll make it as RNG chance.
I'll go with 1/8 of the counter vs spell chance.
E.g. 20 luck vs Darkshine Knight would be 20 in 51 to not get a counter with a spell or 31/51=60.7% to get countered, so melee would have ~7.6% to trigger his skills.

Actually, I figured you can just delete the m.def that was initially in the m.attack.  You know, "in the fix patch I moved that to +m.def since as you pointed out earlier it made magic shield worse as a defense spell than mind up" m.def.  That way, the vanilla m.def will still be used (which is the weaker version).  Did I overlook anything?

The more I read it the less I understand what the issue is...

Assume we have 400 m.atk spell vs 150 m.def target, so 250 damage normal.
If we add mind up/magic shield to the target we'd now have:
400 m.atk -> 320 m.atk and 150 m.def -> 180 m.def, so 140 damage.
What exactly is your goal in that example?

It seems that the new bugfix patch doesn't give the bonus EXP to the enemies with 00 Exp flag (ex: Armor Knight, Silver Knight, Dark Lord, Ninja Master, Wizard, Evil Sword, Black Fang, etc).  Changing that value to 80 fixes the problem, as 80 and 00 give the same EXP.

The weird thing is, it is not for the enemies without the 80 flag but ONLY for those with exactly the value 00. This game, man...


submitted v1.9

[kaine23]

there a collection of all of these together?

[hmsong]

I don't have the ram here to make a aggro meter (I changed some ram parts in the other hack but that is too much effort for this one), so I'll make it as RNG chance.
I'll go with 1/8 of the counter vs spell chance.
E.g. 20 luck vs Darkshine Knight would be 20 in 51 to not get a counter with a spell or 31/51=60.7% to get countered, so melee would have ~7.6% to trigger his skills.

Yikes.  7.6% RNG melee seems extremely high.  That's gonna leave a mark.  The first Bill/Ben will be a nightmare.

The more I read it the less I understand what the issue is...

Assume we have 400 m.atk spell vs 150 m.def target, so 250 damage normal.
If we add mind up/magic shield to the target we'd now have:
400 m.atk -> 320 m.atk and 150 m.def -> 180 m.def, so 140 damage.
What exactly is your goal in that example?

That may be because I absolutely suck at explaining things.  My apologies.  In your example, I wanted Magic Shield to not change anything in m.atk (so 400 m.atk remaine as it is), and 150 m.def to become 200 m.def (+33%) -- +20% was too small for sure though.  Basically the same as Power up and Protect Up, except for m.atk and m.def.

The weird thing is, it is not for the enemies without the 80 flag but ONLY for those with exactly the value 00. This game, man...

Must be because the value 00 must trigger something unintended (which explains why devs decided to use 80, although they clearly missed on some things).

Thanks for v1.9.  I shall try it out (load from one of the saves).
December 06, 2021, 04:36:43 AM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

there a collection of all of these together?

Nope.

[praetarius5018]

I feel like Aggro Meter is a little overkill, but I'm definitely okay with that too.  So could you apply that to your patch?  If Aggro Meter is indeed overkill, could you apply it as RNG?  I'm okay with anything as long as it doesn't discourage players from using skills (ex: I think your Luck Denies Counter less discourages skill usage than vanilla, but it still discourages skill usage), but still makes the bosses harder by having them use their skills more than once (esp Black Rabite).

Yikes.  7.6% RNG melee seems extremely high.  That's gonna leave a mark.  The first Bill/Ben will be a nightmare.

If 7.6% (about 1 in 13) is "extremely high", what exactly did you expect with your request?

That may be because I absolutely suck at explaining things.  My apologies.  In your example, I wanted Magic Shield to not change anything in m.atk (so 400 m.atk remaine as it is), and 150 m.def to become 200 m.def (+33%) -- +20% was too small for sure though.  Basically the same as Power up and Protect Up, except for m.atk and m.def.

Def up is the same as M.def up: 20%; the problem is that m.def is for players roughly half as high as p.def (best armor has x15 p.def but only x8 m.def).
For p.def you could get up to 60 damage reduction and the relevant attacks are much more frequent.
In 1.9 I reduced the 20% m.atk reduction to 12.5%; that changes the example to:
400 - 150 = 250 => 350 - 180 = 170, 80 damage less.
Which is imo a more acceptable level, 80 vs 60 reduction.

Must be because the value 00 must trigger something unintended (which explains why devs decided to use 80, although they clearly missed on some things).

Nah, that one was on me;
there was a check that explicitly checked against 00, if yes don't change the exp value; in case of 80 it calculated 0% of the exp and then reduced the exp by those 0%, meaning nothing changes.
My exp rubber band happened after that 00 check. So I just had to remove the 00 check since -0% was already ok, so why not +0%.

[hmsong]

If 7.6% (about 1 in 13) is "extremely high", what exactly did you expect with your request?

My apologies.  I don't mean to frustrate you, nor do I intend on sounding ungrateful.  In fact, I'm very grateful, for everything you've done.

First of all, your hack is working as intended.  Definitely counters melee and magic (tested both separately).

I think I need to use reference.  I fought against Lugar, with a team of Kevin D, Hawk L, and Carlie D, all 3 at Lv21.  I only used melee attacks, to see how often I get countered.  I fought him twice, and in both times, Lugar used his techs at least 16 times (I may have missed some), and Energy Ball once (I didn't even know Lugar can use Energy Ball).  If I subtract 2 techs (because 2 of his techs are HP threshold), that's 14 Lv2/3 techs and one Energy Ball.  That's a little too high, imho.  I was busy casting Carlie's MT Heal Light so much, and I had to use 4 Angel's Grail to revive dead Hawk or Carlie (usually because Lugar used two techs in a row -- the guy did that 5 times in the 2nd fight -- thank god some of those were throws instead of MT techs).  Oh, and Lugar killed my whole party once too.  Yeah... the difficulty spike was a little too much.  But if the frequency decreased, the difficulty spike won't be as much, which will make the fight significantly enjoyable.

I requested you to make the enemies into pure "RNG attack randomly, just like the big bosses".  But I must say that I like the melee counters too -- in fact, better than just pure RNG attacks that I initially requested.  The problem is the frequency of the counters.  Getting countered so frequently is a little... much.  I'm hoping the melee counter rate will be at least half of current (something like ~7 times per Lugar fight, hopefully).  I really don't want to be comboed by anyone, except against Black Rabite.  That's just a death sentence.

And the magic counter.  I used Angela (with a team of Duran and Kevin), and she got countered rather frequently.  I didn't count, because I kept running out of my resource due to high counters (only had 1 Magic Walnut), and had to eventually resort to melee to continue the fight.  I think someone mentioned it before (was it me?), but I'm hoping the counter denial will be a bit higher for skills (if the Luck is raised frequently, 40~60% with the worst Luck characters, and 70~90% with the highest Luck character -- yes, to make Hawk L classes better).  There really shouldn't be too many counters (I think that was one of the worst things in vanilla, hence why I requested No Skill Counter and why so many people PMed me for it when I removed it), although just barely here and there to remind the players that there's a chance for counter.

Def up is the same as M.def up: 20%; the problem is that m.def is for players roughly half as high as p.def (best armor has x15 p.def but only x8 m.def).
For p.def you could get up to 60 damage reduction and the relevant attacks are much more frequent.
In 1.9 I reduced the 20% m.atk reduction to 12.5%; that changes the example to:
400 - 150 = 250 => 350 - 180 = 170, 80 damage less.
Which is imo a more acceptable level, 80 vs 60 reduction.

You're right.  That does sound better.

[soul_knight]

@hmsong

Haha.  I see that you're trying hard to say what's on your mind, but you're not very good at articulating your thoughts onto the screen.  Not that I'm any better, probably.

Anyways, can you give the Dart (item) a poison SE?  Dart is so useless, esp in the beginning of the game with the new mechanics.



@praetarius5018

Awesome.  I haven't tried the new version yet, but I shall try sometime soon.  I like how you kept your Luck stat relevant in determining the counter rate.

Based on what hmsong said, it seems that everything works great.  Having said that, I see that the problem I mentioned in the earlier post is reality now.  I don't mind the frequency of the melee counters -- ~15 times in a boss fight sounds reasonable -- slightly high, but not unreasonable.  The problem is the combo.  Getting hit twice in a row from Lugar's MT is indeed a total party kill.  Somewhat similar to what Messianic and hmsong said, could you make it so that enemies can't combo tech/magic?  That's just an overkill.  I know it's RNG, but getting your whole party wiped out by a bad draw of RNG is... less than desirable.  If it's Black Rabite or the final bosses, I'm okay, but for all other bosses, that's just an overkill.  Can that happen with the normal enemies too?

What do you think?

Can someone try fighting the first Bill/Ben fight, with 3 characters not including Carlie?  Your characters should be ~Lv12.  The recovery item will be limited, so the fight is gonna be extremely hard, I imagine.

[hmsong]

Haha.  I see that you're trying hard to say what's on your mind, but you're not very good at articulating your thoughts onto the screen.  Not that I'm any better, probably.

I feel like you're being passively insulting me, but I'll let that go.  Jk.  It's true that I suck at articulating my thoughts.  Gotta work on that.

Anyways, can you give the Dart (item) a poison SE?  Dart is so useless, esp in the beginning of the game with the new mechanics.

Uhh.  I think Darts are supposed to suck.  It's just a mean to use "magic" in the beginning of the game for those who can't use it.  I mean, Darts are 5 Luc, meaning 9 of them are 45 Luc, which is absurdly cheap.  That's why I upped the cost to 10 Luc in the Item (so 9 are 90 Luc).  Besides, I'm guessing you won't be using Darts at normal enemies.  But bosses are immune to all SEs, so giving it Poison SE will be meaningless.  In fact, all it will do is make Porons more difficult (they can use Darts in the beginning of the battle, or use it as a counter).  I can make Darts stronger, but again, making Darts stronger will make Porons more difficult.  I'm not sure how productive that'll be.



@praetarius5018

Holy crap.  I just fought Darkshine Knight with Duran, Angela, and Hawk (at Lv44), only using melee.  DSK used his MT tech 3 times in a row.  I was already dead by the 2nd tech, but DSK used another MT tech on my corpse.  Talk about overkill.  Yeah.  Combos are definitely a problem.

[praetarius5018]

Holy crap.  I just fought Darkshine Knight with Duran, Angela, and Hawk (at Lv44), only using melee.  DSK used his MT tech 3 times in a row.  I was already dead by the 2nd tech, but DSK used another MT tech on my corpse.  Talk about overkill.  Yeah.  Combos are definitely a problem.

The whole thing is a textbook example of "be careful what you wish for you might get exactly what you ask".
Even if it was only 1%, nothing stops you from getting 3 of those within like 5-7 hits. Since it is chance per hit it penalizes Hawk and Kevin extra. though that may be fair since they also gain TP at twice the rate.

So what now? How do you want to proceed with this?

[ifightdragons]

there a collection of all of these together?

Second this. There are so many individual patches for SoM 2 and 3 at this point, it's almost impossible to wade through them all.
Not to mention the frequent and neverending updates.

A finalized, single download would be incredible... much like the Zelda Redux projects. It would draw a lot more people to the games.

[kaine23]

Nope.

Bummer.

[Zimgief]

I don't know what hmsong meant by "3 times in a row": did one of the character strike the enemy between each counter?
If not - that is, that counters are are checked for each strike and stacked until all occur - said stack could be emptied after one counter?

Regarding a correct percentage for melee counters... The ideal should be a ratio of damage inflicted/damage received equilavent to that of the use of skills?

At the very least, if melee counters were a bad idea, I was worth trying I guess (experimentation and iteration are how games are developed ).