Liberal Arts Major
Level Restrictions and Stat Points
The previous level restriction was a blanket 200, if I recall correctly, which meant any given character could go through a maximum of 1,200 levels (no class, first class, second class, third-class, Necromancer, Lich). This was suboptimal for two reasons:
1. It was a ridiculous grind.
2. Having a total of something like 6,000 stat points (SPs for short) and the base, stat-point-free max HP/SP somewhere on the order of 3,600 per character makes it very difficult to balance anything at all, e.g. items need to give ridiculous bonuses to be significant, Poseidon could be soloed, etc.
The elimination of special classes helps a bit, but not enough. So, I've instituted the following level limits, based on a character's class status:
No class: 10 (can change class at any level)
First class: 20 (can change class at 15)
Second class: 25 (can change class at 20)
Third class: 80
(As an aside, Mounts still gain experience, but they no longer gain levels. I haven't figured out what I want to do with them.)
I've also changed the SP distribution. Now characters get SPs based on their total level, which is what their level would be if it had never been reset. (Note, however, that the exact level a class change occurred is not recorded.) Counting starts at the first class change - classless characters have a total level of 0 regardless of their level. It looks like this:
No class: 1 SP
Total level < 30: 2 SP
Total level > 30: floor (Total level/10) SP
So, a character with total level 30-39 would get 3 SP, 40-49 would get 4 SP, etc. The maximum total level is 125, the maximum number of stat points is 758 (assuming I did the math right, of course), the base maximum for HP is 435, and the base maximum for SP is 420. In addition, player characters get one extra SP per level, as noted before. So they can have a maximum of 893 SPs.
The class ceiling may be raised in the future; we'll see how this works out.
There was also a change to the quantity of experience required to gain a level. Previously the quantities were calculated according to some formula I don't remember and would increase after each level. Now, instead of the quantity of experience required changing and the experience gained from an arbitrary battle being constant, it's exactly backwards: each level requires a flat rate of 1,000 experience, and the experience earned in battle varies. How exactly it does so is explained below.
Experience
The formula for experience from a particular opponent is BASE EXP (B) * NET DAMAGE PER TURN (NDPT). NDPT is a general figure calculated as follows:
NDPT = ln ( | ( DAMAGE DEALT - DAMAGE TAKEN ) / TOTAL TURNS | )
Or, in other words, it's the natural logarithm of the absolute value of the quantity composed from the total damage your team dealt minus the total damage your team received (from any opponent), divided by the number of turns the battle lasted. A character only gets experience if it's still alive at the end of a battle.This is an experimental metric that could easily change, but we'll give it a shot for now. Experience from battles isn't the only way to gain experience, either: now there's quest experience as well.
Quest Experience
Quest experience is given through quests/events (formerly labeled cutscenes - I'll discuss this more Thursday) and, unlike normal experience, is distributed as a constant value: any event X will give Y quest experience to any user under any conditions.
Also unlike normal experience, quest experience is never reset and applies uniformly to all characters, including those you get from the Tavern and Reflecting Pool. So if you accumulate, say, 1,000 quest experience through some means, all of your newly-minted characters will start on level 2 instead of level 1. And, because of this blanket-compatibility, the total quest experience isn't reflected in the experience total, but is listed separately.
Like this.
The battle system!
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~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Editor
If by soloed you mean "by one player", yes, it technically could be, but even with a party of level 800 characters (and level 200 mounts) it was extremely difficult for me without abusing glitches/exploits/broken ****. >_>
Now, if by soloed you mean "by a single character"... yeah... I'm not ruling that out completely, since I think I might have been able to pull that off with Unnerfed Necrosis, but...
Anyway, seems like good changes all around.
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"There's a pony in the shop, but don't buy it. It might do something unfortunate to you." ~from the first Summoner's Seal topic
Liberal Arts Major
So. You know.
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~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu