Feels awkward that it deals blunt damage but is classified as magical (Targeting Resistance). Having a whole bunch of armor should probably protect you from getting whacked by a few pieces of paper. I suggest the damage type be changed to physical, and that the loss of 2 momentum be subject to a turn of status immunity. Being hit for 30-90 blunt damage and then a spell, then only being able to act once that turn unless you are a Duelist who crits, is overbearing. Knockdown immunity exists precisely so that this doesn't happen.

So, I assume that this was an update to make SL2 more interactive, or more gamey, or whatever. But it introduced a cumbersome mechanic and did nothing to compensate for it, making fishing more of a chore overall.

Maybe it's just me, but often, the game refuses to recognize inputs, or lags when doing so. This means it's impossible to know whether or not that key you just pressed wasn't registered, or the game was lagging behind. Which leads to failed QTEs. Which leads to frustration, due to it not always being the player's fault.

This wouldn't be a problem in and of itself if you didn't have to wait for what feels like an eternity for the next QTE to pop up. So I have a few different ideas to make fishing more pleasant overall.

1. Only have QTE fishing during the fishing contest.

2. Keep QTE fishing permanently, but extremely reduce the waiting time for the QTE to pop up. Maybe around half a second.

3. Make the QTEs optional. Failing could give the fisher a single fish, while succeeding could give the fisher multiple fish in one go.


I believe that any of these suggestions, or a combination of them, would help to balance out fishing's effort/reward distribution.

EDIT: Sorry I haven't updated the Work in Progress part yet. Computer is crapping out bigtime. I think this is the end for my laptop. I can only use it for a little bit each day before it completely spazzes out.


I've been thinking about this a fair bit. And I think I've come up with solutions to please everyone. This is a rather extensive thread, so do make sure you have time to commit to reading it. I welcome any and all replies, but please read the whole thing rather than just seeing one thing you dislike and having a massive kneejerk reaction to it, thanks.


The Woes of the Anti-Summoner:
"Youkai have better stats than a lot of players."
"They can summon so many AND still use their other class!"
"They can install for bonus stats and I can't do jack all about it!"
"They can just sub GS and get infinite FP for their main class!"

The woes of the Summoners themselves
"They cost so much to upkeep, and it gets even worse as they level up!"
"Their AI is terrible!"
"A lot of their skills are largely just "do Will + 1/2 level damage." and they lack supportive options."
"I literally -have- to install if I want to have access to these secondary active skills!"
"They run out of FP way too fast in a long dungeon!" (Not applicable to Grand Summoners thanks to their youkai regen if unsummoned)


Global Changes to ALL Youkai:


1) New Passive: Summoning Sickness.

Youkai have really good stats, often making players look bad. And sure, Youkai kind of need good stats if they want to compare to min/maxed players who've LE'd dozens of times and have brains and good gear. But your average Joe gets ripped to shreds a little too easily. Simply nerfing youkai stats is often met with "well, that will make players who already have their youkai OP compared to newer summoners!" So that is what leads me to this proposal.

Upon being Summoned, A Youkai only has 3/4 it's usual stats, due to "Summoning Sickness" which lasts 5 rounds. This means a Youkai with 60 in a stat will only have 45. This will globally nerf all youkai to give players a fighting chance of dealing with the threat, while also giving the Youkai a chance against completely decked out players if they can survive a few rounds.

If you are concerned about the weaker youkai getting killed in PVE before their sickness wears off, see my proposed change to "The Contract."


2) Upkeep Costs, a new system: Brain Strain

Upkeeping an entire army of Youkai SHOULD be incredibly taxing, but just one or two...?

Under the new system, which I've nicknamed "Brain Strain," the more Youkai you're giving focus to, the more taxing it becomes. Add 5 to the cost of the youkai before it. Please not this means PER SUMMONED YOUKAI, not order on the list. If you only have your fifth youkai on the list out, it will cost the first youkai cost.

First Youkai: 5/turn (Total: 5)
Second Youkai: 10/turn (Total: 15)
Third Youkai: 15/turn (Total: 30)
Fourth Youkai: 20/turn (Total: 50)
Fifth Youkai: 25/turn (Total: 75)
Sixth Youkai: 30/turn (Total: 110)
Seventh Youkai: 35/turn (Total: 145)

You get the idea. Combined with Summoning Sickness, this helps balance Youkai by not murdering the FP pools of those who want fewer summons, while still hurting Mass Summoning Spam antics.



Changes to the Base Summoner Class:

1) The Contract: New Rank

Add a second rank to "The Contract" that enables the following Skills:

- Hold Position
- Hold Back
- Bombard
- As you were

Hold Position: All Youkai do absolutely nothing. They do not move. They will not attack if in range. This is good for levelling weak suicidal youkai, holding one back as you Buff/ Energy Transfer/ Heal it, or to place guards around a wounded ally who needs protection.

Hold Back: Standard Youkai fare, with the exception of not using skills. This allows the summoner to make them preserve FP in long dungeon crawls.

Bombard: All Youkai will ONLY use their skills, and will constantly move away to it's maximum range. The purpose is to allow them to avoid self-suicide on Electrojammers/Duelists/etc.Also to avoid running into deathtraps by a set-up class.

As you were: All Youkai return to default behavior.

Unfriendly youkai without affinity skills have a chance to ignore your orders. This is applied on an individual basis.

2) Sync Mind: New Rank

Rank 3 of Sync Mind would allow the Summoner to use their Youkai's secondary active skill without it being installed, but at a price: Double the FP cost. No effect if the Youkai's third ability is a passive.


3) Install: Massive Change

As it stands now, install is... a little too good. As such, I propose the following changes:

- Install no longer replaces base stats + Buffs. It now TRADES ALL STATS. This is more ideal for weaker players, but still allows tactical play for decked out characters.
- Player gains numerous qualities based on the installed creature. Chun install makes normal attacks deal fire damage and enables Nerhaven Elemental Impacts, for instance.
- Player recieves an FP cost reduction to the installed Youkai's abilities.
- Player has a chance (Lowered by Youkai Affinity skills) to be overwhelmed by the Youkai, taking no action for the turn.

EDIT: Also, for consideration: Instead of a fixed duration for install, how about adding an upkeep cost to be able to turn it on and off? This would let you just keep it on if you're willing to pay the cost, but also not just be "free stats."


4) Cracked Mirror: Function Change

A lot of people think summoner is cheap to sub since it gives free MP. So, as suggested by Soapy in another thread, let's reduce the FP regen and instead apply this directly to upkeep reduction!

Cracked Mirror now reduces FP upkeep cost by 1/rank (At rank 5, it effectively makes each youkai count as the one before it, in terms of cost.)

EDIT: This sounds powerful. I mean, it makes your first youkai literally free. But consider that you lose your FP regen. Also consider the scaling costs I suggested for having many youkai out, and suddenly taking 5 FP off each youkai doesn't sound too OP when you're still paying 20+ per turn for just a few Youkai WITHOUT FP REGEN. Basically, it -forces- the Cracked Mirror's effect to be applied to your Youkai instead of your Subclass.


5) Affinity Skills

- Remove the growth bonus and apply it innately. Low level summoners can't even summon if they don't want their Youkai to suck long term.
- Add a loyalty effect that negates chances of youkai being disobedient at 5% per rank and negates install dangers at 20% per rank.


6) Spirit Regeneration

- Move Spirit Regeneration from GS to Summoner; Bonder desperately needs this as well.
- If Deemed too strong for the early game, make the prerequisites R5 Cracked Mirror and R3 Sync Mind

7) Evoke Mastery

- Once again, Bonder desperately needs this.
- If deemed too strong for the early game, make the prerequisites R5 Cracked Mirror and R3 Sync Mind


Grand Summoner Changes:

1) Astral Aegis: Toggle and Cost

Astral Aegis is pretty intense. So, I propose making it a toggle skill, with an upkeep cost of it's own. The cost would be pretty small, but just a little something extra.

1 Youkai: 1/turn total
2 Youkai: 3/turn total
3 Youkai: 5/turn total
4 Youkai: 7/turn total

Etc. Just add 2 per youkai. Just a little something extra to counterbalance the absurd bonuses you get from a lot of Youkai.


2) Summon Storm: The revengeance of the return of the apocalypse

Inspired by something Catabur proposed in another thread:

50 FP, Rank B invocation (Yes, 150 FP total, and 4 turns to cast.)

Summons all available youkai. During their Summoning Sickness, they do not have FP upkeep costs. As soon as their summoning sickness wears off, the FP costs come back into play for any Youkai you have not dismissed. Incredibly powerful burst, yes, but good luck casting it in PVP without some serious teamwork. Useful for levelling large groups of Youkai in PVE, though.


3) Absorb Ether: Function Change

Once again, credit to Soapy for proposing the base idea for this.

1 FP regen/ 1 FP cost reduction to youkai per rank. Effect is halved, rounding down, if Summoner is not your main class.


Bonder Changes

1) Eternal Bond: Extramarital Affairs

Eternal Bond limits the Bonder to 3 youkai in the same way low Faith limits a freshly LE'd character down to 5. They can have more Youkai past the 3rd, but can only USE the three. This will help to allow a little bit of freedom in setups (Example: Swapping out a bonded youkai for a non-bonded youkai if you really need the benefits of only a single bonded youkai) while still limiting the Bonder to being... well... the Bonder.


Changes to individual Youkai (WORK IN PROGRESS)

Too many Youkai are too similar, anmd/or have skills scaling off their worst stats. Here's a few suggestions to diversify them.

Fairy:

Izabe: Working on a new Skill to replace Fairy Lance. Possibly a proposal to change Radiant Roa.
Asrai: Working on a new Passive or skill to replace Aquae Cristae.
Wawa: Working on a concept for a new active skill that suits her description.

Dragon

Chun: Fine as is/ working on an alternate AOE for consideration
Haku: Working on a concept for a new active skill (to differentiate it from the Miu spell)
Hatsu: Working on a concept for a new active skill (to better represent the acid)
Seiiryu: Working on a concept for a new passive.

Beast

Byakko: Fine as is
Kilkenny: Fine as is
Firefox: Working on concepts; all kinds.

Avian

Snow Crow: working on a Skl based attack that leaves ice tiles (working on Details)
Apus: Apodis is fine on it's own, but scales on it's worst stat. Working on alternatives
Hippogriph: Fine as is

Mystic:

Sazae=Oni: Fine as is
Carbuncle: Probably fine but I'm looking at alternatives to 777.
Terrasque: Working on it.

Night:

Yukionna: Probably fine? I'm looking into it.
Drowned Woman: Fine as is.
Lilu: Considering alternatives to Embrace's current function.

Plant:

Orbello: Fine as is
Jack 'o Lantern: Fine as is
Vampiric Legume: Fine as is

Posted on the board in Cellsvich, or wherever else it may happened to have appeared, is an advertisement detailing what seems to be yet another event hosted by Chimera Enterprises.

OOC Note: The event starts at 7PM EST, June 14th. The actual IC date would be there instead obviously, but, ya know, hard to calculate that. So just pretend it is.
PST: 4PM
EST: 7PM
GMT: 11PM
GMT+10: 10AM (June 15th)

So, due to the summoning costs change Summon Storm and Astral Aegis aren't very useful.

At level 60, a youkai takes 17 FP to upkeep. Most Grand Summoners will regenerate this every turn, so it's not much of an issue. However, keeping six youkai at once is 102 FP per turn, reduced to 85 with the help of FP regeneration.

Using up 85 FP a turn, the average mage will run out of FP in four or five turns. This gives them three or four turns, as Youkai do not act on the first turn, and considering the cost of Summon Storm itself, reduces the duration to about three overall. From full FP. With the summoner doing nothing that would cost FP.

Now, the cost of maintaining Youkai isn't the issue. You shouldn't be able to maintain a party of six indefinitely, and we all know how unfair Summon Storm antics were before the nerf. However, Summon Storm is an old relic from that time, and needs to be changed to actually be useful. Astral Aegis as well, though it's less of a priority.

But I don't have any ideas for this! So suggest some.

Weak! Goblin Shaman takes 52 Fire damage.
Weak! Goblin Shaman takes 52 Fire damage.
Weak! Goblin Shaman takes 0 Fire damage.
Weak! Goblin Shaman takes 52 Fire damage.
Weak! Goblin Shaman takes 0 Fire damage.
Weak! Goblin Shaman takes 52 Fire damage.
Weak! Goblin Shaman takes 0 Fire damage.
Weak! Goblin Shaman takes 52 Fire damage.


This was with Rank 5 Exgalfa, a tome, and about 80 will.

Exgalfa sucks, buff it.

(To note, this was while also buffed with Nerhaven. Amazing, right?)

Do we -NEED- more classes? No. Would it be FUN? Would it diversify battles, allowing more unique RP, and add new options to character builds you just couldn't quite manage before? Many much yes.

Here's a few rough ideas for new and exciting classes.


Base Class: Tracker (Axes, Bows, Guns)
Promoted Classes: Sniper, Geomancer
Gimmick: Mucking with terrain, creating healing glyphs/ mana crystals, placing pitfall traps, creating impassable terrain, etc. Snipers would be a long-range, low-move specialist ranged class, the polar opposite to the magic gunner, using terrain to slow foes and boost hit. Geomancers would deal magic damage based on the terrain they've placed.

Base Class: Tamer (Spears)
Promoted Classes: Beastmaster, Morpher
Gimmick: Capturing and taming monsters. A beastmaster would bring out the best of it's beasts via supportive buffs and the like, while a morpher would transform into them to grant full control to the player. Monsters would need to be trained like youkai. Different races could also have different affinities for different beasts, allowing cross-skill morph use (Example: Leporidae morph into vorpal rabbit can use Rabbit Leap)

Base Class: Alchemist (No innate weapon)
Promoted classes: Spitfire, Herbalist
Gimmick: Using a mechanic similar to Essence/Ki/Magic Bullets/Void Energy, they would gather materials on the battlefield and brew concoctions for fun and profit. Every turn they'd salvage a few items nearby, and could use M to look for more iitems if need be. These crafting materials would be exclusive to their skills. One promotion would specialize in offense (Buffs, Bombs) while the other would be more supportive (Debilitations, Recovery.)

I made a new Dullahan today, and something hit me. Like a truck.

Soul Rage + Tactician Trait = 10 Momentum
10 Momentum + Guard = 100% Damage reduction.

Yes, you still lose 10% of your hp per turn, but otherwise, you block ALL incoming damage. And there's ways to exploit this, such as biding time for an ailment to kill your enemy, waiting out turns to accumulate Ki/Void Energy/etc, or, the best two: Engineer bots and Youkai. If you can keep your Will low, your max FP won't even be high enough to be a concern with the 5% lost per turn guarding.

I propose capping Guard at 80%. It's a number a LOT of classes can achieve via damage between turns (Duelists via Riposte, Rogues via traps, Mages via Eruption, LB Via Raging Flame, Engineer via Flamethrower's Burn, hexers via Underworld Flame, MGs via Charged Fire Shells, etc, you get the idea) so it won't nerf anything besides Dullahans.

I know a lot of PVPers want Guard's percentage to be lowered, but that would just hurt PVE too much, IMO. Earlier today, I was in a Black Beast party; the only warrior in a group of spellcasters who didn't have fire (Priest/Tactician and Ice Evoker/Verglas.) Naturally, due to how beasts work, I rallied everyone around me and used Protect. Even at reductions of 70%, one of them needed to heal me every turn. We don't need to nerf Guard. This is just to prevent shameless exploitation by a single race whose unique mechanics happen to coincide with the issue.

Why is it that Dragons have a base total of 49, but Night only have a base of 41, and Sazae-Oni only has a base of 26?

Youkai base stats are wildly irregular, which leads them to be mismatched in power for installing. Their actives, passives, and install skills don't always make up for this either.

I support going back and redoing bases to make them slightly more uniform.

It's easy enough to do the math yourself, but Special Attack does not factor in modifiers.

Example: headshot gives -10% hit, +10% Crit. Across 2 turns trying against the same target, I managed to both miss and crit a 101% hit, -7% Crit.

I know it's been discussed before, but I didn't see the old thread anymore and I forget if this was ever noticed/acknowledged.