Death of a Fansite - An EoFF RPG

[Wolf Kanno]

Good luck with some of the optional bosses. They're all pretty gimmicky, but some are SMT Strange Journey last boss-level luck-based fights I'm thinking of one fight in particular. Psy knows how much the RNG hates me.

I hope that I had my full RNG screw from the Gilgamesh 3 fight, I don't think I've ever seen a boss consistently get so many double turns in a row even with Slow activated on them. I've tried one of them already and was destroyed pretty quickly.

[Fynn]

Have you started using Fynn?

[Wolf Kanno]

Have you started using Fynn?

You'll be happy to know that my team for the final story boss was Psychotic, Pumpkin, Nut, Freya, and you. I decided to err on the side of caution and switched out Shauna for you. I'm sorry Formy, I still haven't used you yet.

Freya wins my MVP Award though. Pumpkin is in second. I never removed either of them from my lineup the whole game.

[Fynn]

Not as happy as I assume you are, since you've vinally caved and added in a dedicated healer

It's funny, in that I'm kind of the opposite. Freya saw a lot of use from me in the beginning, but later on I just struggled to find a good role for her. Pumpkin, on the other hand, was useful throughout the main game, but I exchanged her for Shauna for four of the five optional fights.

[theundeadhero]

It's weird that Shauna was the optional one I switched in for fights I felt I could use optional secondary heals on, but almost never used Pumpkin, and Freya was a staple for most of it. Fynn was in most fights.

[Wolf Kanno]

Not as happy as I assume you are, since you've vinally caved and added in a dedicated healer

It's funny, in that I'm kind of the opposite. Freya saw a lot of use from me in the beginning, but later on I just struggled to find a good role for her. Pumpkin, on the other hand, was useful throughout the main game, but I exchanged her for Shauna for four of the five optional fights.

I tend to be far more aggressive in in my playstyle, so I'll stick to builds with more dedicated offensive pushes. Not to mention that Lifesyphon + Healing Ointment Limit pretty much covered all of my healing needs, especially since you could get a rhythm going where she could pull off her limit almost every other round if you were careful enough. Her Drain Jump also meant she could heal herself and hurt the enemy as well.

I pulled your character into the final battle because it was spelled out to you that it was going to be an attrition type battle, so having a dedicated medic made sense, but I would also add that the special nature of the fight also gave me more options which finally made your character more appealing to me. I also tend to favor group healing over single target healing, you have a bit of the Yuna/X-2 White Mage issue where your lack of an effective group heal I can use in an emergency just made you less appealing in a life or death battle.

[Sephiroth]

Yeah, Healing Ointment is a great move. Fynn's only really important thing for me is that he has Raise. His Limits are good but the healing alone is not convincing enough for me. If he had no Raise and/or those Limits I would not even use him.

[Sephiroth]

Which brings me onto an idea. People have mentioned the idea of DLC. I've really enjoyed thinking up challenging bosses and such like, and I am wondering if other people might get the same pleasure. Would anyone be interested in a kind of design-a-boss thing?

Is this still an offer?

[Psychotic]

I'll tell you what, if you want to design yourself as a boss I'm all ears! Obviously don't make him too overpowered and have him be defeatable of course

[Sephiroth]

I'll tell you what, if you want to design yourself as a boss I'm all ears! Obviously don't make him too overpowered and have him be defeatable of course

This is gonna be good. How is the coding done in combination with the RPG maker? I mean, if I for example tell you about state machines (which in one way or the other is in the game already anyway) and all do you know what that is or is the RPG maker so good that you do not need to know that much about the coding itself? I assume it is written in C++?

[Psychotic]

Yeah RPG Maker does the majority of the coding, so there's no need to be overly complex with it, but yeah a state machine is already in built. If turn = X then do attack Y, if HP is below 30% then boost stats and use attack Z, otherwise do attack A at 50% and attack B at 50% for example.

[Sephiroth]

Yeah RPG Maker does the majority of the coding, so there's no need to be overly complex with it, but yeah a state machine is already in built. If turn = X then do attack Y, if HP is below 30% then boost stats and use attack Z, otherwise do attack A at 50% and attack B at 50% for example.

Well, basically it all can be done with it anyway. It might look complex but it still just consists of state machines and smaller state machines for the boss then. I assume you can add more variables? Also boolean values of true and false?

[Psychotic]

Yes all of those things are possible, but from experience of designing these bosses, it's best to keep things relatively simple as the more complex and interdependent elements of a fight there are, the more prone to it being broken in some way it is.

I don't plan battles from a programming perspective anyway. I think of what I want to happen from a gameplay perspective first, so I'd probably ask any suggestions of battles are written in those terms.

[Sephiroth]

Yes all of those things are possible, but from experience of designing these bosses, it's best to keep things relatively simple as the more complex and interdependent elements of a fight there are, the more prone to it being broken in some way it is.

I don't plan battles from a programming perspective anyway. I think of what I want to happen from a gameplay perspective first, so I'd probably ask any suggestions of battles are written in those terms.

The battle would not be all that more complicated than the final battle from a programming perspective. A four phase battle with a few extra variables that get relevant later and change his battle behaviour. But that's up to you, I can still reduce the half-assed pseudo code I wrote and that was there to explain you somewhat what the battle is like.

For the writing I also have dialogue included in, before and after the battle already.

That is the battle theme.

[Psychotic]

Probably best to explain as yeah C++ won't work on RPG Maker. Happy to also include dialogue, although I do reserve the right to edit and amend, particularly in the way of my own main characters.

For anyone else who wants to submit anything, first think of stats. HP, Attack, Mag, Def and Mag Def. No need for exact values, just on a 1-5 scale of how relatively high they will be. Then weaknesses, resistances, absorbed elements and status vulnerabilities.

Then for attacks, think of element, type (phys or mag), under what conditions does the boss do the move (does it always do it, does it wait until it's at 50% HP, does it need to have a status applied, does it use it as a counter etc) and strength on a 1-5 scale again.

I would of course remind everyone that having a boss with all 5 ratings is boring and lame. Bosses are fun when you can win!