Character - Monster skills

[Dr. Sprite]

is there any way to set it so the higher my level is, the higher the monster's I run into randomly are?

Also, for boss battles and such, if a gamer keeps doing random battles, the boss battles may be hard to determain what level I should leave them at. Any way to even this out?

[thetruecoolness]

Re: Character - Monster skills

Well for the monsters there are two ways to keep the monsters at a certain level. Either you can check the parties level when they enter a map using the various member data load commands, and then you can set up which units the party fights. Another way is to "level" up the monsters with the party. This is done by setting the enemies stats at the beginning of every battle by loading in all the stats and raising them in proportion to the enemies base stat, and the character in the party with the highest level (or average level of the party). Then you save these stats back. It's been a while so tomorrow I can tell you where to put this script, since I worked on it and I believe I got enemies leveling up to work correctly.

For your second point that's really up to you. I notice most of the games I play through end up being fairly easy because I spend tons of time leveling up, because I like to explore every possible place on a map. This leads to me getting into tons of random battles. So you can either level up your bosses like above (and FF8, and some other RPGs I'm sure). FF8 also added certain skills to bosses depending on what level you were, of course this also had the possibility of giving an advantage to those who don't level up.

Balance is one of those things you just have to fool around with a lot until you get it right. There is no real magic forumula or best way to do it. This is quite possibly the hardest part of making an RPG besides balancing story/gameplay, and making sure the game is fun and not tedious.

What most people do though for bosses is determine what the average amount of battles a player should get into before a boss and use that to determine what level they will be at and what stats they will have. Really if the player wants to become this uber guy and be able to breeze through the bosses by leveling up a lot, to either get through the game, to the side quests, or to continue the story quickly, by all means they should be able to cause that is what they find fun. Whereas other people won't want to get into too many random battles and are prepared to fight large bosses. Speaking of large bosses, you should always have some save point, or other obvious indicator a boss is coming at all times. Try not to take away from the game, but there is nothing more annoying than playing for 1-4 hours in a world map or dungeon just to get stomped in a minute by a boss you weren't ready for and then have to do it all again.

So the short answer to your questions

1) yes

2) yes, but maybe it's might be better not to