#Persona 4 High Frequency - Rebalancing affinities and aesthetics

319 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

covert marlin
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looks good so far

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As for what base power magic should be, unmodded Severe magic sits at 200, Primal Force sits at 1100, to make Severe magic on par with Primal Force it'd have to be around 300

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the ×1.5 and ×1.25 are Amp and Boost multipliers

sour sandal
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Yup, that is true

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And yea, that kinda adjustment would be done, basically

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Hm, what about the bosses and all that

covert marlin
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In school rn so I only have time to think about readjusting skills

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Also as a little suggestion: change Primal Force's skill description to say Massive instead of Severe, since it's significantly stronger than other Severe skills

sour sandal
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There we go

covert marlin
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Since Almighty can't benefit from Boost/Amp or Crits, I also recommend significantly buffing Morning Star and Black Viper so they can be roughly on-par with Primal Force but still give Primal Force overall more potential (cuz of the crit)

Top to bottom:
-Crit Primal Force
-Hypothetical adjusted Morning Star
-Hypothetical adjusted Black Viper

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as for the main Megido line, that'd definitely also need to be adjusted, but not nearly as much since they aren't exclusive

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Reason why I'm suggesting buffs for magic btw is because P4 is already full of damage spongey bosses so it's better to buff what's underpowered than to nerf what's overpowered

sour sandal
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Yeah, I knew that

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It's why one of the universal changes listed would be a buff to magic

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Cuz it absolutely not being on par woth Physical was verh strange

covert marlin
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yeah

sour sandal
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I did still lower some bosses' HP, mostly considering what would typically be available

covert marlin
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Plus you're giving some late-game bosses even more HP anyway from what my quick glance deduced so might as well give the player more power

sour sandal
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Yea

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Late-game bosses still had too little HP

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Which is kimda funny considering how spomgy the bosses are early on

covert marlin
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As for party member moveset changes:
-Give Yosuke both Charges. He's already practically a Red Mage and him not having Charges just makes him worse
-Move Divine Grace from Yukiko to Teddie. Teddie needs it more due to his generally lacking SP reserves + being more focused on full support whereas Yukiko is a hybrid of magic offense and support
-Have Naoto have more shield skills (like the ones from Digital Devil Saga). Her unique skill makes it seem like she'd be good as a party member designed for defense.
-Give Chie more Ice skills, even if she's generally more phys-oriented, her lack of higher tier magic kinda makes her lackluster for normal encounters (not that they weren't already sweeped by solo protag but y'know)

sour sandal
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Yea, I agree, she deserves a better Ice kit

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I was also considering giving Naoto Sukuna-Hikona's skills from SMT IV Apocalypse (Infernal Hail and Needlestorm)

covert marlin
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That could work

sour sandal
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Infernal Hail: Heavy Ice damage to all foes. Decrease Attack
Needlestorm: Heavy Wind damage to all foes. Decrease Accuracy

covert marlin
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Yeah I think we might have a more rounded party overall with these changes

sour sandal
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I agree

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Obviously can't forget piercing skills cuz the breakers are gone

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And Kusumi-no-Okami does get to keep her gimmick, even if her resistances got downgraded to nulls to work with the way I want the Pierce passives to work

covert marlin
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Also definitely make it so phys doesn't do jack shit to her

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The lack of Phys Break in P4G just meant you were forced to use skills that sucked in nearly every other instance in the game

sour sandal
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So you mean...remove her Phys null? Or am I misunderstanding

covert marlin
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Nah just add a way to make phys hurt her (I assume you're already adding Pierce tho so that shouldn't be a problem)

sour sandal
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Yea

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Added Phys Pierce

sour sandal
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Now added skill progression for Yosuke, Chie, and Yukiko

covert marlin
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Somewhat unrelated but

@sour sandal Not sure if you've played P2IS or not but a friend of mine has done a lot of work rebalancing skills for a P2IS PSX hardtype-style rebalance, I was wondering if you could help with enemies and bosses

sour sandal
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I could try, but I may be a bit less effective as I am less knowledgable on P2IS balancing, but if there is a server we can discuss this in, sign me up

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@covert marlin

covert marlin
sour sandal
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That is fine

sour sandal
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...

tepid moss
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yo i'd be interested in this too

sour sandal
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Lemme repost the link then

sour sandal
tepid moss
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oh yeah i saw that in the other thread

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only thing that sticks out to me as something i'm unsure is the instakill moves since i don't think it's possible for p4 modding to specifically code instakills not to instant bosses

sour sandal
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It actually is possible on P3

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Because the way it works is that Hama/Mudo are skills that do not inflict damage (as the calculation for it is kept empty) but rather inflict a special ailment (namely the instakill)

tepid moss
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huh

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so it might be possible for p4 is what you're saying

sour sandal
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Yea

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Since they work in a similar fashion

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so chances are, Hama/Mudo on P4 also work like this

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And just have their damage formula kept empty

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The change is relatively simple

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Just disable the special ailment affliction, adjust the accuracy and put in a base power for the skill

tepid moss
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and it might be possible for bosses to be immune to instant kills while still taking damage from moves like Death Flies

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huh

sour sandal
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Yes

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Since you just would be making them immune to that special ailment

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Anyway, we may discuss some more om the changes tommorow

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Also, I had confirmed that you can make skills do damage AND inflict a debuff

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Which makes Fang Breaker and the like possible

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At least on P3

tepid moss
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is there a way to have a second accuracy value for the instakill effect is the question

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i would assume so

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because the phys ailment moves don't constantly inflict you with their ailment

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thinking about it it would probably be easier to implement then like

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pierce

sour sandal
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Possibly

sour sandal
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Anything else?

sour sandal
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Cuz I do wonder if I did the bosses and forced encounters justice

tepid moss
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I mean i'm not an expert balancer but it seems pretty interesting

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I would offer to help make the mod but I kinda don't have the tools necessary

sour sandal
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I see. Interesting

sour sandal
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Anything else?

sour sandal
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Hello everyone. So I wonder, have I done all the bosses and forced encounters justice. I want to be sure as a just in case scenario

tepid moss
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i have some criticisms

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nevermind

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hmm

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actually, why'd you remove change teddie to be light-oriented instead of ice

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and i would include a Dark Equivalent of Judgement Light

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to put them on the same tier

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i think pierce is a tad too oversaturated

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if every boss has pierce it makes resistances worthless so i'd cut back on at least a few

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seems to be a lot of smtiv:a inspiration here and while that's good because SMTIV:A has the best combat system in megaten there is still some things i would do differently

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also what's up with naoto learning Ice and Wind boost and amp but not learning a singular Ice or Wind move

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a problem with the balance of the second-tier moves is that you can speedrun the SLs i think

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if it was able to be coded that like

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you learn it at a certain level but only when you have evolved that persona (and being over that level when the persona evolves will auto-learn it) kinda like how p3 works would make it better i think

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kamui is the only one that doesn't have this problem because teddie's is automatic

cerulean heron
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Since Hama/Mudo now deal damage, perhaps you could have party members specialize in either of them so that no two party members use the same element?
You added Amagidyne amagidyne

tepid moss
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see

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thing is I do not think that's necessarily needed

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making Light and Dark damage-dealer elements kinda balances itself in terms of party roles

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Naoto's Hamaon and Mudoon now being useful outside of random encounters

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and Teddie using ice where Chie uses it was fine to begin with honestly since Chie's magic damage is miserably bad

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chie hard-specs into physical moves anyways, Teddie was always more the Ice Guy

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I think the idea here was to make Teddie the Light party member and Naoto the Dark party member, right?

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I also think some of this is a bit poorly explained, like some of the new moves just are mentioned with no prior explanation

cerulean heron
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Why would you give Kanji an even bigger punch? I don't get it.

tepid moss
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they should be relegated to endgame mostly

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like in the SMTIII it was only phys and pure endgame, balanced mainly for the lucifer battle

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in SMTIV:A it was mainly endgame, with the passive itself being reserved for the final dungeon on the protagonist (Awakened Power) and a select few demons gaining the pierce passives

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Impaler's Animus and Will of (Element)

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are basically pierce but it requires a turn and sp cost

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which (one of) those being distributed earlier wouldn't be too bad

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but uhhhh i don't think coding those in would be possible but neither is pierce in general so fun concepting

sour sandal
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Needlestorm and Infernal Hail

tepid moss
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which is a dark move

sour sandal
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Nope

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Needlestorm is Wind, Infernal Hail is Ice

tepid moss
sour sandal
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Those are the exclusives she innately has

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It's Ameno Murakumo which is Dark

sour sandal
tepid moss
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is referring to

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like needlestorm and infernal hail are never mentioned prior and honestly i thought needle storm was a phys move

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by just looking at the name

sour sandal
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Hmmm

tepid moss
sour sandal
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Yeah, I guess

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Also, Pierce passives in this case are not accessible before Level 80+

tepid moss
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i mean

sour sandal
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And do not go past Repel or Drain, theoretically

tepid moss
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well that isn't explained

sour sandal
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Lemme recheck

tepid moss
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another point

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i would assume they would work how they do in other games

sour sandal
tepid moss
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pierce piercing everything

sour sandal
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In the New Skills section, it is clearly stated that they ignore Resist and Null

tepid moss
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ah

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my bad

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i just kinda assumed that like

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they would work how they do in all smt games

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but uh

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i think the pierce oversaturation still applies

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like half the bosses you rebalanced have pierce

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most of which are before any non-yu party member can even get drain or repel

sour sandal
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Lemme seee...

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Other than Rise, who is a gimmick boss

tepid moss
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that basically makes resistances obsolete

sour sandal
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Shadow Naoto is the first real boss to pierce resistances

tepid moss
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I could SWEAR i saw more

sour sandal
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There technically is Bifrons, but he is a miniboss ally for Dantalion, and I guess Leanan Sidhe before Rise

tepid moss
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aight yeah

sour sandal
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But it's only those two and Rise, and Rise is a gimmick boss

tepid moss
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i would still count minibosses

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rise is a gimmick so i won't count her but idk about naoto

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naoto's like

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a level 50

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on the scale

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and still several dungeons away from any sort of drain or repel

sour sandal
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Alright, removed the Pierce passives from Leanan Sidhe and Bifrons

tepid moss
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pierce is best used on late-game bosses to prevent resistance gimmicking

sour sandal
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Also removed it from Naoto and put Blight in

tepid moss
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however you can't really

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do that in modern persona?

sour sandal
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No, I mean like in the doc, rn

tepid moss
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yeah i know

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i'm talking about resistance gimmicking

sour sandal
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Shido could be cheesed before they gave him a Megidolaon spam trigger

tepid moss
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i mean

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most of the time

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you'll have other party members

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and all party members in modern persona games have entirely different sets of resistances

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you can't exactly just bring three phys and fire resisting demons to say

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a surt battle

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for example

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because in modern persona very few resist phys and you're never gonna have enough fire resists to make a full party

sour sandal
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Yeah, true, though generally when the protag is not in any danger of dying, that is oftentimes good enough

tepid moss
sour sandal
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Yeah, now Kunino-Sagiri is the first boss with one

tepid moss
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for kunino sagiri i don't think pierce works on his boss design

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his whole gimmick is constantly shifting between elements using quad coverage

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really pierce on bosses kinda has the issue of how do you make it not overly binary

sour sandal
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Yeah, but as you can imagine...

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Another 👏 boss 👏 where they said 👏 "What if it had all 4 elements"

tepid moss
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true

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but i'd say

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it works on kunino-sagiri specifically

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because of quad coverage

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i would rather axe other "4 elements" bosses

sour sandal
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I mean, I guess. I'll edit that a bit later tho

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And I axed other bosses in particular

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Ameno-Sagiri and Izanami

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Izanami is now basically just her IVA self on steroids

tepid moss
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i heavily disagree with this btw

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i guess it's trying to prevent fear into insta

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because of the two turn

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but i would honestly rather just rework the AI so he can't go for ghastly wail on the same turn as a fear-inducing move

sour sandal
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Adachi already was quite bugged tbh

tepid moss
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or scrap two turn altogether

sour sandal
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Some moves he has just are neved getting used in his normal moveset

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I think he has, like, Maragidyne and Mabufudyne, but his AI will never use them

tepid moss
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I definitely think the core part of his boss Design should involve necessitating keeping fear off in fear (naotroll ) of ghastly wail

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however outside that gimmick i'm not sure

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there should definitely be more to the boss to keep it from being a simple binary game of spamming Salvation (if you have it) or alternating between amrita/me patra and a mass healer

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actually here's my pitch

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Adachi has Magatsu Izanagi, have him use a modified version of Cross Slash to fish for crits

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it would be similar to p5's cross slash (maybe with the damage scaled back a tad) but it would have a high crit rate

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you could potentially give him a crit-boosting passive

sour sandal
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Not a bad idea

sour sandal
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Just reviving the thread is all

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Persona 4 High Frequency - Rebalancing affinities and aesthetics

covert marlin
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so i'm thinking about what'd happen if you took all skills that were in both P3 and P4 and just took the P4 versions and gave them their P3 base powers

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obviously boost+amp severe magic still doesn't outdamage hassou tobi

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(red = severe magic, purple = hassou tobi)

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great condition (or however it'd get the ×2 boost in P4) vorpal blade doesn't (this time Hassou Tobi is blue and Vorpal Blade is red)

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out of curiosity I halved Hassou Tobi's base power and now Boost+Amp Severe magic with P3 base power slightly outdamages (assuming no crits)

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Halved base power Hassou Tobi still outdamages P4 Primal Force though

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I think P3 in general just had higher damage values which may be why P4 bosses feel way spongier

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because it's very clear that P3 and P4 use different variations of the same formula (P3 is 7.1×√([atk÷def]×pow), P4 is 5×√([atk÷def]×pow), meaning even assuming same base power in stats, P3 skills deal more than P4 skills)

tepid moss
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was just scrolling through and this caught my eye

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i am absolutely for making kusumi-no-okami have more hp since her fight is pretty short but i'm not sure about the whole repel to null thing

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it feels counterintuitive to hell just the flavor of it

sour sandal
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This is mostly because breakers got removed

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And the idea is that Pierce passives do not go past Repel

sour sandal
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Hence why I had to put her affinities to nulls

boreal sphinx
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Why was the OP deleted? Which post explains this concept now?

sour sandal
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Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh

sour sandal
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Now, I wanna make a confession - I think making this mod would be easier than making the P3 mod

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Mostly because there is no fusion spell-related BS I need to look out for

jolly roost
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huh i could swear i explained how to not deal with fusion spell cutins at all to you

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like fully detailed instructions

sour sandal
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About that...I have no clue where animations are stored and all that jank

jolly roost
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you could try looking for them yourself

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you can unpack the game and then check the files

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theres also amicitia wiki to help with that

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you cant expect all info to either be spoonfed or nonexistant lmao

sour sandal
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I did unpack, but still nothing that potentially pertains to animations

jolly roost
sour sandal
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Wait...no shot that's how animations are kept

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So all I need to do is rename those files to the ID of the skill I wanna assign them to? That's it?

sour sandal
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Yea, no

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I just tested and it does not work

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I tried it with Jack Bufula, it still has the same animation as usual as well as the cut-in

jolly roost
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the .pacs you see here are where both models and animations are stored

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every single skill has an ID in hex

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that hex id is the filename of the .pac you want

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so basically just get your debug/unused skill, check its id in hex

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then

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get the .pac for that skill (yes, eventho its unused a .pac for it should still exist)

sour sandal
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Okay, go on

jolly roost
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copy that filename, then dupe the existing skill's pac (the one you wanna copy its animation from) and then change its filename to the existing debug one

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then

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in amicitia, open up the .pac and rename everything inside to be correct too

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so to be the right hex id

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when youre done the debug skill will have the exact same animation and model as the existing skill

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and then you can go and edit the stats and shit

sour sandal
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Wait, so, in this case, I take the animation of Bufula and rename it to the ID of a debug skill?

jolly roost
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what are you even trying to do again?

sour sandal
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Make it so I can either:

A: Add an animation to a dummy skill
B: Have a fusion spell animation without the cut-in (important for Antichthon and such)

jolly roost
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all dummy skills already have animations as ive said

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if you wanna do A

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then just do what i said, get the .pac for the skill with the animation you wanna copy, dupe it, and make its filename the hex id of the skill you wanna copy animations to

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then open in amicitia and rename everything inside

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like i said

sour sandal
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I...I see

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I hope it works out...

jolly roost
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you can just do it and if it doesnt work then too bad yk

sour sandal
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I do use 010 for hex editing, as a note

jolly roost
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thats good but 010 was never mentioned?

sour sandal
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Eh, whatever

jolly roost
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nor was any hex editing

sour sandal
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Chances are it won't work

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And I have like...17 days left

jolly roost
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ive done this multiple times

sour sandal
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So I don't really hold out hope that the mod will be finished

jolly roost
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this exact process just a little altered works to even put p3p skill animations into p4g

sour sandal
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I need to go for 3 hours

sour sandal
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Well, I will say this...dummy skills apparently use the Zio animation with no sound effect

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That's...kinda awkward

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...Hmmm

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Hey question. Do I need to set a textures directory or something when it comes to unpacking, cuz if so, that's gonna be very awkward due to testing and whatnot

jolly roost
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?

jolly roost
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since theyre debug they usually just take some random unrelated anim

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doesnt really matter

sour sandal
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Yea, that's a problem

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We can discuss the issue tommorow

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It's getting late for me now

jolly roost
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is bro even following the steps i laid out for him

sour sandal
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...

jolly roost
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youre literally going to be replacing the animation

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it does not matter which one it has

sour sandal
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I feel like the dumbest man on earth for not knowing how to assign an animation to a dummy skill

jolly roost
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i gave you detailed instructions if you're not willing to read or follow them then im sorry but that's your problem

sour sandal
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Yeah

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It is

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Because apparently I cannot even comprehend it in a proper way

sour sandal
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WAIT, I THINK I KNOW WHERE THE PROBLEM CAME FROM, @jolly roost. I did not set a texture directory!

jolly roost
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you didn't set a what now

sour sandal
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Nevermind anyway

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It still did nothing

jolly roost
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were you doing this with the psp version or smth

sour sandal
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Yea

jolly roost
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lmao

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bruh

sour sandal
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I only have the PSP version

jolly roost
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💀

sour sandal
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That aside, let's actually get back to discussing P4 for this one

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Cuz we went on about P3P issues

sour sandal
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Well, from the looks of it, me testing this mod will be damn near impossible

sour sandal
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Question - what skills do you think should be Strength-based magic skills in your opinion

covert marlin
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Heaven's Blade should be St-based Light tbh