[Mods] My Suikoden II Normal Mode Rebalanced Mod

If you are stuck in the Dunan Unification Wars; or wish for more details on the gameplay systems, this is the place.
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ninjaluc79
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[Mods] My Suikoden II Normal Mode Rebalanced Mod

Post by ninjaluc79 »

As the title states.

Over the past few days of 2021, I have been slowly making and playtesting my own mod based on psychedelist's Hard Mode Rebalanced Mod, but instead of making a Hard Mode mod like pretty much everyone else does (because really, Suikoden 2 was so easy I had to force myself to use bad characters to ramp up the difficulty), I have decided to make my mod as close to lore as possible and as close to the original game as possible.

General features I have in mind at the moment:

- Rebalanced enemies and playable characters. Enemies are scaled up and characters are scaled down to accomodate an endgame level of 90 instead of 60 in the original, you will reach close to 60 by the Luca fight instead, cementing him as the Disc One Final Boss of the game.
- Rebalanced Runes. While we all know physicals were really broken in the original, I just realized that lower level spells were too weak and higher level spells were too strong.
- Nerfed weapon growths and rebalanced armors. The original had weapon levels that scale too high while psychedelist's weapon levels scale too low (but at least that way he didn't need to touch enemies' DEF that much) so I might go halfway. I may not touch the armors for now, maybe tune them a little bit but I won't be able to do that for some time.
- I may not touch the shops and pretty much everything else, maybe just remove the stat stones entirely and replace them with something else, preferably the more niche runes like Balance and Firefly. Yes, Banshee, Slyph, and Nymph are niche too but they seem to get used more often than the above three.
- Improved RNG on stat growth. The idea is to reduce the crazy RNG on some stat levels, especially 03, 05, 07, and 08, and make their level 90-99 stats closer to MAG breakpoints for more MP, like 160 for 05, 200 or 220 for 07, and 220 or 240 for 08. If there is any mathematical or programming function I can use, please let me know.

Psychedelist's editor was a huge starting point in rebalancing playable characters and enemies but I am still a very long way from completing my mod according to my specifcations. Riou has gotten significantly weaker now than in the original that he basically needs to rely on his party to survive, but in exchange he is still an amazing support character despite the huge nerf to his stats.

I also wanted to make forced characters strong enough to actually hold their own weight in combat and preferably be chosen over someone else in the party, except I have no way of changing initial levels and equipment for now.

Nanami is actually pretty good now, I still use her as my Spark Rune bearer and secondary support alongside Riou with either Water or Earth. I have scaled down everyone stats by at least 1 level each (with some exceptions) but both magic runes don't really get affected by MAG in the original anyway so I was wondering if nerfing Nanami's MAG even further (currently at 02 which will reach 85 MAG at 60 and ~100 at 90)

I am not sure what to do with Freed. It's great that he's a more viable mage knight now than in the original whenever he is forced into your party but I don't know.

Stat Growths 02 and 03 are actually very good in my mod right now, although 02/03 TECH characters might struggle to hit anything early game which seems to be solved by high LUCK (for higher crits) or can be solved by Thunder Amulets and Skill Rings by the mid game.

I am sorry to let you know the mod isn't actually close to done yet, I am just gathering any progress, suggestions, and thoughts in this thread. What do guys think?
OneRune
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Re: My Suikoden II Normal Mode Rebalanced Mod

Post by OneRune »

Is it possible to change the leveling system so a character doesn't "Max out" in a certain area? By that, I mean, at the end of the game the party is somewhere around 61-65 every time. In some games you can keep leveling in a certain area (even though it might take a while.)

Definitely figuring out a way to make lower-level spells viable is a good idea. At a certain point, they get no use until a character runs out of the better spells. Maybe adding a backfire percentage as the spell level increases?

I never had a problem with Nanami. She was a good Spark bearer and fast characters with Down/Sleep runes just make random battles too easy.

I don't think it's necessary to buff "forced" characters, because aren't you trying to add some difficulty to the game? Not every character needs to be Georg or Luc. The forced characters are there for story element, and I think that's important to remember.

The balancing of things like enemy power, drops, runes, and other items is a good way to go IMO. Instead of changing the characters themselves, you're changing how you can optimize that character.

Make Double-Beat near impossible to get.

On your idea about finding stat stones: Have the Deity reward you with one-of-a-kind items you can't find anywhere else and Stat Stones with varying increases. The plans that are more difficult to attain could give higher stat buffs.

One thing that would Really set this game off is a mod to the Major Battles. Instead of the almost completely random damage probabilty, make it more of a d20 roll plus an Attack or Defense mod. Example: Riou's Unit has Attack: 8 Defense: 8. Enemy Unit is Attack: 8 Defense: 8. They attack each other. The game then "rolls" a d20 for each unit. Riou gets a 14 and Enemy is a 12. Riou is now a 22/22 and Enemy is 20/20. Riou beats the Enemy Defense but the Enemy does not beat Riou's Defense so Riou deals 1 damage. This quickens the battle, adds a little more excitement and danger, and you may have to plan out your moves a little differently.

All I got for now but I'm sure I'll have more later :)
STARWIN
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Re: My Suikoden II Normal Mode Rebalanced Mod

Post by STARWIN »

ninjaluc79 wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 5:12 pm - Improved RNG on stat growth. The idea is to reduce the crazy RNG on some stat levels, especially 03, 05, 07, and 08, and make their level 90-99 stats closer to MAG breakpoints for more MP, like 160 for 05, 200 or 220 for 07, and 220 or 240 for 08. If there is any mathematical or programming function I can use, please let me know.
Not sure what you are exactly asking here, but trivially, if you remove all RNG you can make it hit any number you want at a given level, as a starting point.
JohnHunk
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Re: [Mods] My Suikoden II Normal Mode Rebalanced Mod

Post by JohnHunk »

I hope when you finish your mod, you also add this patch fix https://github.com/pyriell/gs2-bugfixes
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ninjaluc79
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Re: [Mods] My Suikoden II Normal Mode Rebalanced Mod

Post by ninjaluc79 »

JohnHunk wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 11:26 pm I hope when you finish your mod, you also add this patch fix https://github.com/pyriell/gs2-bugfixes
I actually use bugfix patched ISOs as bases. I have kinda forgotten about this, but I might come back to it soon.
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Dauntless07
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Re: [Mods] My Suikoden II Normal Mode Rebalanced Mod

Post by Dauntless07 »

An interesting idea. The issue with a mostly vanilla rebalance is the original’s extreme ease. If the gameplay ends up like the original, with the player overwhelming most enemies with a single Unite/Spell/“Auto”, what point would there be in a mod? I assume this situation is what you are trying to avoid.

Some of my ideas,

Magic:
S2 made Magic even more OP than S1. Redoing Magic in general is fine and all, but with 3 Rune Slots you can still use all the best spells while ignoring the mediocre ones. Perhaps locking the strongest Magic Runes to the same slot, (right hand because story,) would tone down this issue. I trust you know the ones.

This seems perfectly consistent with the lore. It’s true the entire plot of S1 revolved around Windy trying to get multiple True Runes, but it established such a feat was rare, with only a few characters in the game conceivably capable of it. (Windy, Crowley, (and Luc, revealed in S3)).


Physical Attacks:
The above trick could be applied to stop similar physical cheese, (Double Beat + Fury anyone?) As with Magic, however, some of these Runes are so powerful, a nerf is in order regardless. Adding sensible negative attributes to such Runes seems like a good approach.

For example: the Double Beat’s 2x damage when counter attacked means nothing if a character’s Skill is sufficiently high, so make them more common with a % Skill penalty. For the Fury Rune, hit the equipped character with a % Luck penalty to reduce critical hits. Make Runes trade offs that have to be weighed, rather than all powerful buffs.


Unite Attacks:
S2 realized S1 went way overboard on the power of Unites, and tried to tone them down. However, they failed because a stupidly OP Unite nerfed a bit was still ridiculous. What difference does it make that the Unite with Jowy only does 50% damage now when it still kills everything in one hit? Nerf them all by an additional 50%. Their 100% guaranteed hit nature is more than enough compensation for mediocre damage.
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Re: [Mods] My Suikoden II Normal Mode Rebalanced Mod

Post by ninjaluc79 »

I'm back. So after playing through and tinkering of Psychedelist's Hard Mode Rebalanced mod all the way to Luca Blight, here are some observations and ideas I have in mind for my own mod:

- Turns out the reason why physicals are broken in the original game is that the weapon levels scaled too high, higher than the highest DEF stat from armor, in fact. I have decided to go halfway between the original and Psychedelist's mod, but I haven't gotten around to balancing weapon growths around that.

- Stats 02 and 03 are more unstable than I once thought, while the higher stat values are more stable than I thought. Gengen's MAG (02) high-rolled to 90 at 60, while Gabocha's MAG (03) low-rolled to ~95 at 60. I would like to have 02 high-rolls not exceed 85 and have 03 low-rolls not go below 100 so that 03 MAG units get their L4 spell by the time they get to 60 or close to it. I will need to get as many people to 99 as I could to see how high MAG values could go at each stat growth level.

- I have been thinking of making stat growths uniform across all levels instead of following the usual "1-19, 20-59, 60-99" sets. The problem, of course, is that only Stats 05 and above can reach 100 by level 60 that way, which is not good, especially for MAG. However, if there is a way to make everyone's stats start at 1 at "level 0" and everyone's HP start at 1, similar to Suikoden 4, and also to edit the MP Table so that characters can have level 2 MP at, say, 30; level 3 MP at around 50, and level 4 MP at around 80...

- I only read of potential uses for Banshee, Slyph, Nymph, and Wall but I haven't actually applied any of them to my playstyle. Wall + Panic + any magic rune comes to mind, but it comes at the cost of requiring three rune slots. Perhaps a Panic'd ally with *Mother Earth could spam Guardian Earth without using any MP that way. Any novel ideas about using the more niche effect and command runes will be appreciated.

- How do I edit everyone's starting levels and gears? Is it possible to make Clay Guardian, Guardian Earth, and Wind of Sleep to be affected by MAG and elemental affinities? Is there a way to edit the Instant Death spells so that they still deal damage even if Instant Death doesn't proc? Sorry for asking so many questions, I'm still very new to this thing.
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andreguidelli
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Re: [Mods] My Suikoden II Normal Mode Rebalanced Mod

Post by andreguidelli »

sorry i can't help, only here to endorse your project :D I'm excited to play it when it's done, good luck!
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