Question on random battle levels

[Kropolis]

I think I already know the answer to this question but I'm asking anyway...

Here's my issue: My game requires a fair amount of back-tracking. The game itself is based on a text story I wrote years back and the protagonist does lots of traveling from village to village, temple to temple in the same general location. The distance apart is decent, spanning six fields so far.

I've managed to work through the problems of monster levels so far. As of now, ten kills or so later you level up. After spending the time traveling from town to town and back again they may still be in level range. I know before long its going to work out that the monsters are too low. I guess I'm okay with that, since the story will pick up and move to some other places where the fighting will become more intense.

The real issue is what happens when the main character returns home? I can't seem to find a way to increase the monster levels from the lower levels at the game's start to convey a difficulty for the level that is required. I don't want to depend solely on dungeons and event battles to solve the problem because fighting monsters granding miniscule xp will quickly become an annoyance. I don't want to (and haven't found a way to) turn off these random battles because then it would defeat the purpose of playing the game and turn into running from point A to point B to get cut-scenes.

The perfect solution to this problem would be to run an event that changes the properties of the fields' monsters from levels 10 to 30 or so.

The only alternative I've found so far is to duplicate the fields for the higher levels and eat a huge chunk of memory, which is something I won't know if I'm able to do or not until end-game.

Any suggestions?

[Perversion]

Re: Question on random battle levels

I feel your pain. My game involves a bit (okay, more than a bit) of backtracking as well, and when you return to the first area, it's pretty pointless to fight all the level 1 monsters, as you are only getting 41 exp spread out over 4 characters. I have not figured out a way around this problem yet, but I might go home and look to see if this is possible. I have to work on my game anyway *sigh*...

[Kropolis]

Re: Question on random battle levels

Well poo.

I guess for now I'll stick to my plan to tweak the xp, possibly the xp gain and adjust how soon abilities are learned. Maybe if I'm lucky at the end of the game I'll be able to duplicate fields. At this rate I doubt it, as I've barely started it and used nearly 20% due to the numerous locations.

[Perversion]

Re: Question on random battle levels

You think that's bad? After my first area, I had used 27% of available memory. After making the second area, I was up to the 70% range, which only left about 25 or so percent for my last area. You want to try something difficult? Try to fix a bug in your game after having used 99.5% of total memory without deleting anything important. It's VERY difficult, as most events, people, etc, in my game are there for a reason, not just as window dressing. BTW, check your private messages, Kropolis. It's at the top right of your screen. Just wanted to welcome you to the boards.

[Kropolis]

Re: Question on random battle levels

So far I haven't wasted any space with people that have no purpose. I wanted to because it adds to the atmosphere. Its one of those things I'll have to combine with side quests. So far I have one. Its a slow process in my case because most of the ideas I have so far are mid-game things. Trying to get there is becoming a journey in itself. Every day I find a new problem to over-come.

[Crimson Knight]

Re: Question on random battle levels

It seems like a duplicate area and monsters will solve your problem.

[timefaerie]

Re: Question on random battle levels

ummm,,, in mine... if this isn't to late. i made all the beginning monsters impossible, so when i came back they would be high enough of a level to fight, this caused one problem however... i have to run from them until after the first dungeon...

[Perversion]

Re: Question on random battle levels

ummm,,, in mine... if this isn't to late. i made all the beginning monsters impossible, so when i came back they would be high enough of a level to fight, this caused one problem however... i have to run from them until after the first dungeon...

Not a good idea. The game I just posted has (from what people are telling me) hard battles when you first start playing, and they've had to run away from many of them. If a player is running away from too many battles, they'll lose intererst in the game, and not want to continue playing. Which is what I'm praying not to happen in my game. I hope people stick it out for the first few levels; it gets better after that.

[tjoris9]

Re: Question on random battle levels

What you may want to do is introduce a form of fast transportation (Opening a balloon route, for instance) when it comes time to go back to the easy area for an extended period of time. That way if the player wants to, or needs to, do some XP building they can go to one of the more XP rich areas without having to fight tons of low-level monsters and spending time travelling.

Alternatively, if the backtracking involves going to dungeons, you can probably make several dungeons which are locked until the party returns.

Personally, I don't foresee a real problem unless if the player really needs to build XP and gold (Which is probably an easier balance problem), or if you have insanely large distances to travel between locations.