Staff of Ages (SoAXNA v0.1 out now!)

[InvdrZim13]

1) Is there a restore staff that I missed somewhere?

2) Hexing Rod, while interesting to see that you managed to get it working needs to be tweaked. Badly if it doesn't recover during the chapter and acts like Fates.

iirc 8 and 9 had restore staffs for sale.

HP lost to the hexing rod is restored after the chapter is completed. Just telling me it needs to be tweaked isn't very helpful.

[Augestein]

iirc 8 and 9 had restore staffs for sale.

HP lost to the hexing rod is restored after the chapter is completed. Just telling me it needs to be tweaked isn't very helpful.

I might have missed it, because I don't remember seeing it there, but I recorded myself so I could give better notes anyways.

I know. I'll explain then. I was going to save it for when I had completed everything so I could give you my thoughts all at once, but I'll explain now then:

Hexing Rods being like they are in Fates in this is no good. A unit that gets hit by a Hexing Rod in this is pretty worthless if it's not a healer. A unit that has halved hp can contribute very little in this if it's not healing, as there are several 1-2 range dog piles that happen at moments in this hack (too many for my liking tbh). Compound that with siege tomes in various areas with people with low res, and you can essentially have a unit that's not able to contribute really because of how awkward it is to use them.just taking a ton of damage. IE, Grace getting hit by a Hexing Rod leaves her with hp of like... 14 which allows her to be OHKOed by a siege tome now rather than just taking damage for the turn. In Fates, getting hit by a Hexing Rod is bad, but here's the thing, that unit can still contribute with attack stances by either having the player calculate attack stance damage so if they attack first, they can kill enemies without fear of retaliation, they can be a secondary follow up attack for another unit if their attack is high enough, and most importantly, the player can essentially remove the unit off the map by using pair up-- which has the added effect of giving the player more stats when done and allowing for negations of attacks with dual guard (both from random attacks after the gauge is filled and stopping enemy dual strikes). Here? The unit becomes dead weight. If you rescue it, that essentially takes out two units as the unit doing the rescuing has its speed and skill destroyed. Or forces you to leave a unit just standing around outside of the range while you go to dispose of the siege tome user.

It should also be noted that Fates' Hexing Rods also exist in a world where siege tomes don't exist and their replacement, Fire Orbs, don't actually KO units, so the possibility of being hit by a hexing rod and then immediately followed up by a siege tome for a OHKO isn't a possibility. While you could argue that a player shouldn't leave that up to chance to be hit by both, all it encourages is a sluggish, play style that turns maps into slower maps because it encourages doing things like staying in range of the HR while staying out of range of the long range spell despite having enough movement to move into both because of the of this. IIRC, there's also no chapter in Fates that utilizes siege tome replacements and hexing rods at the same time. While that could be considered something that you wish to tackle that the actual creators did not, I'm of the opinion that this was intentionally done on the account that the devs believed it to be a bad idea because of the above that can happen.

And just because you were talking about the subjectivity of liking characters, I'll also say that I like Owen more than Sawyer, although Sawyer has grown on me more as we got further.

Edited December 3, 2016 by Augestein

[TheNiddo]

I do have to admit that when my units got hit by a Hexing Rod, they were just sidelined for the rest of the map doing nothing.

Would it be possible to say, have their max HP incrementally return over turns? Like say, after the first turn their max HP increased by 3 each turn until its back to the previous maximum? That way they aren't just sidelined, they'll eventually be usable again and you might not even have to wait until they got all of their HP back. Its still say, 5 turns to get back to max HP if your unit started off with 30 HP originally.

[urug99]

I did alright when they got hit. I just rescued them until I could get get rid of the siege attackers. I mean yeah they were definitely side lined for most of the battle though. Honestly there was only 1 usage, I should have just baited with a high res character so it would miss.

[Augestein]

I did alright when they got hit. I just rescued them until I could get get rid of the siege attackers. I mean yeah they were definitely side lined for most of the battle though. Honestly there was only 1 usage, I should have just baited with a high res character so it would miss.

Which is a bad thing. You shouldn't want characters to be hit by something that makes the character useless and never cures. And considering that even with higher res you can still have a chance of getting hit, this doesn't help. Even worse, is that you shouldn't have to do something like halt all of your units and walk in range of a Hexing Rod. That just demonstrates why this item is bad for a map if the player is prompted to do things like this. It just slows the map down and its existence is a negative to the map design rather than an extra challenge to think about.

[urug99]

Which is a bad thing. You shouldn't want characters to be hit by something that makes the character useless and never cures. And considering that even with higher res you can still have a chance of getting hit, this doesn't help. Even worse, is that you shouldn't have to do something like halt all of your units and walk in range of a Hexing Rod. That just demonstrates why this item is bad for a map if the player is prompted to do things like this. It just slows the map down and its existence is a negative to the map design rather than an extra challenge to think about.

So you should be able to just rush all your units in without thinking? Honestly that hexing rod was the least of my worries. I had to constantly halt my units, so they didn't get pwned. I just don't get it, yes you are right you shouldn't want your units to get hit by it, that's the point... and yes high res units CAN get hit, but the chances are much lower, so it does in fact help. A lot actually.

Don't get me wrong, I hate the hexing rod and I can't imagine anyone likes it, but it is an obstacle and .you should have to slow down for obstacles. That's the entire point of obstacles, either that or rush in and take risks. it's no different than having a couple powerful units in my way, or an enemy with a killer weapon. When this occurs, instead of rushing in with all my units, I halt and strategically place units that can survive the attack, or at least have the best chance of surviving the attack. At least with the hexing rod you recover at the end of the map, other mistakes or rng screwings are not as forgiving.

[urug99]

Shit it double posted, I was tryng to edit my first post, but quoting this opened a new post =/

I do have to admit that when my units got hit by a Hexing Rod, they were just sidelined for the rest of the map doing nothing.

Would it be possible to say, have their max HP incrementally return over turns? Like say, after the first turn their max HP increased by 3 each turn until its back to the previous maximum? That way they aren't just sidelined, they'll eventually be usable again and you might not even have to wait until they got all of their HP back. Its still say, 5 turns to get back to max HP if your unit started off with 30 HP originally.

This would be better though imo. Probably be a pain in the ass to code though =P

Edited December 4, 2016 by urug99

[Augestein]

So you should be able to just rush all your units in without thinking? Honestly that hexing rod was the least of my worries. I had to constantly halt my units, so they didn't get pwned. I just don't get it, yes you are right you shouldn't want your units to get hit by it, that's the point... and yes high res units CAN get hit, but the chances are much lower, so it does in fact help. A lot actually.

Don't get me wrong, I hate the hexing rod and I can't imagine anyone likes it, but it is an obstacle and .you should have to slow down for obstacles. That's the entire point of obstacles, either that or rush in and take risks. it's no different than having a couple powerful units in my way, or an enemy with a killer weapon. When this occurs, instead of rushing in with all my units, I halt and strategically place units that can survive the attack, or at least have the best chance of surviving the attack. At least with the hexing rod you recover at the end of the map, other mistakes or rng screwings are not as forgiving.

We already have 3 long range siege tomes in that area. You're already going to be going slowly on account of those because there's no one in the party that can realistically tank these so you're already doing a ton of baiting whether you are on the left or right. The left has a guy with a brave axe and a tomahawk a sentinel that you can't really afford to be hit by, and stepping too far gets you hit by 2 long range tomes. The right side has reinforcements for like 3 turns, people with 2 range, a knight with 1-2 range, a long range tome... And that's not even all of the units. Any unit that walks in this hallway of hell is dead unless you bait out some of the units slowly. No, we already can't move quickly here without luck. But that's not enough, we still have a onslaught of enemies that appear from behind as well. Quite a few of them have 1-2 range as well here. The Hexing Rod as it stands doesn't actually add anything at this point but add yet another thing to slow you down. The way the map is designed, there's a hero with silver weapons and a Bishop that can attack. The bishop isn't going anywhere even if you leave someone at low health because it has physic. The algorithm for sending a high res unit doesn't actually help that much on the account that something that lethal to a unit isn't 0. I've been hit by enough 20% attacks to say "no it doesn't help that much." Let's use myself as an example: so my highest res unit is Stark with 11 res. Assuming that Stark stands away from it at maximum distance, this is about an 18% chance of happening. Considering what the hexing rod does to a unit, I absolutely do not want this to hit a unit on the account that the unit pretty much becomes useless. Even if Stark is an archer it's still a problem because of how much 1-2 range enemies there are AND the siege tomes that exist. Even worse, is considering this, because res is already a problem all around, it becomes a "I hope you used Stark or Aurora" when a person may have chosen to use Rika and / or Oona instead-- both of which have lower res. Or any other unit. If teams are being forced to use a certain non-forced unit, there's a problem. I'll grant you that a person would probably want to use Stark on this chapter because he can talk to someone, but that doesn't mean the player will. Even worse, is that my Stark has 11 res because he's been leveled, so one that doesn't have use won't have 11.

It's not a good obstacle. It's about the same way that this game has a nasty tendency to place units in range where stepping 1 tile passed that 1 spot has like 5 enemies dog pile 1 of your units. The only response is to creep forward or pray you dodge. It's not particularly well done. Especially because of the fact that as I pointed out, this seems to be a thing from chapter 6+. There's never a push to move faster. Just creep, and the way reinforcements are done, this encourages you to do it more. Risks that are worth considering are things like going after a Sentinel with a spear but if you kill him you get a Dragon Shield. Do you think it's worth +2 defense to risk randomly exploding against him? I don't, so I don't attack him. I might steal the shield and then have a flier get out of dodge with Marques using a wall to avoid being attacked, but you know what? That's strategy. It's also something that you have multiple options against. You can kill him with unreliable methods, or you can do something safer that doesn't leave things up to chance. The Hexing Rod takes that away from you, and your main option is to just ... Go slowly. And it's something that's always done in SoA. The worst part is that it's not hard, just... Long for no real reason. Compare that to this: you know why having the player go against someone like Senaca with his critical is more fair? Because the game just gave you a Hoplan Guard, so you can have 0 displayed critical against him. You can pick a unit that's the best to fight against him, and then do so. Of course I would have preferred Senaca be a Hero-- I'm not a fan of critical machines being bosses, but nonetheless, I'll take that over the Hexing Rod. Because if I'm getting hit by critical hits that kill me because I didn't put a unit in range that will survive if hit by 3x damage or doesn't outright negate the critical against them, that's my fault. Hexing Rod on the other hand I can't do a darn thing about. I can't avoid it. All I can do is HOPE it doesn't mess with me too much. Such cannot be said for anything else in this game. Even if it's reversed afterward, it's still not good how it's done.

This would be better though imo. Probably be a pain in the ass to code though =P

Yes. But considering that the Hexing Rod already requires extra coding, I think it should be done. Because like I said, "it needs tweaks with how it works in this." I never said "it needs to be removed."

Edited December 4, 2016 by Augestein

[CrystalPoke]

So, I've encountered a bug in 1-4 (Revolution)

If Oona gets killed in the previous chapter (where you fight the brigands), she will still appear in 1-4, but she won't appear in the unit list and if you have autoend turns on, she kinda gets skipped, but you can still use her for healing and attacking.

(Also I killed Oona on purpose to see if there was some extra dialogue at the end of the chapter)

[Azama]

Wow, the votes are exactly 50/50.

Also, I absolutely love this hack. Keep up the good work.

[InvdrZim13]

So, I've encountered a bug in 1-4 (Revolution)

If Oona gets killed in the previous chapter (where you fight the brigands), she will still appear in 1-4, but she won't appear in the unit list and if you have autoend turns on, she kinda gets skipped, but you can still use her for healing and attacking.

(Also I killed Oona on purpose to see if there was some extra dialogue at the end of the chapter)

Well that's not supposed to happen. I'll try to see if I can figure out why it's doing that.

EDIT: Fixed it, messed something up with the unit loading.

Wow, the votes are exactly 50/50.

Yeah it's really surprising lol

Edited December 5, 2016 by InvdrZim13

[urug99]

The Hexing Rod as it stands doesn't actually add anything at this point but add yet another thing to slow you down

But it does add something, another obstacle, and a chance to half your characters hp for the rest of the map =P I mean the only real danger if your hp gets halved is the siege tomes. You talk about the 1-2 range attackers, but you could just not put that character in range of them. They can still assist, even melee attackers can finish people off. There is a lot of siege tomes and they piss me off a lot, but they definitely make you think A LOT about your movement. So if that's the intention then I'd say it's pretty well done. Same with the dog piles and creeping, if the intention is to force you to slowly advance, be aware of the enemies and plan your attacks/defense, then I think they did pretty damn good.

this is about an 18% chance of happening

That s a 78% chance to miss... I don't see how you could possibly say this doesnt help. We have all been hit with shitty luck, but that doesn't make evasion irrelevant.

I mean I'm gonna be biased towards difficulty, I say keep em coming, but idk it definitely had it's challenging moments.

*edit I don't care who wins the poll, I'm gonna riot! #NotMyLord

Edited December 5, 2016 by urug99

[Zane Avernathy]

#oven4lyfeunlesshestartswinning

[MCProductions]

#oven4lyfeunlesshestartswinning

[Augestein]

But it does add something, another obstacle, and a chance to half your characters hp for the rest of the map =P I mean the only real danger if your hp gets halved is the siege tomes. You talk about the 1-2 range attackers, but you could just not put that character in range of them. They can still assist, even melee attackers can finish people off. There is a lot of siege tomes and they piss me off a lot, but they definitely make you think A LOT about your movement. So if that's the intention then I'd say it's pretty well done. Same with the dog piles and creeping, if the intention is to force you to slowly advance, be aware of the enemies and plan your attacks/defense, then I think they did pretty damn good.

Not really. You know what happens when that hits? I hit reset because of how useless it makes a character. They don't make me think about my movement. The best approach is simply to see the range, wait until they run out and then move. So basically the game says "it's unsafe to move for 10 turns" which means that this person is literally waiting 10 turns or until you manage to wade through a sea of reinforcements to eliminate it (as opposed to a standard game where siege tomes have 5 uses). It's actually not well done because creeping each turn isn't a good thing, it's generally referred to as a "bait and switch" strategy. There's nothing to make the player need to move quickly and there are no mini objectives that you need to hurry to before it's too late. Even with chapters like the survive chapter from earlier, there's plenty of time to reach everything but the first turn is best left with having most of your units not move. The whole point of maps like that is to have some enemies move while some don't and make use of reinforcements to cause you to get swarmed if you sit around. SoA never does this at any point. Reinforcements always appear like directly in front of you or so far away from you that there's never any real danger. The dog piles only happen because of the overuse of 1-2 range on enemies. It doesn't even make sense that there are moments where you'll see short spear x 2, short axe x 2, 1 swordreaver which opens up the possibility of 5 units attacking 1 unit with impunity unless you load all of your characters up with 1-2 range. That's not actually adding challenge.

That s a 78% chance to miss... I don't see how you could possibly say this doesnt help. We have all been hit with shitty luck, but that doesn't make evasion irrelevant.

I mean I'm gonna be biased towards difficulty, I say keep em coming, but idk it definitely had it's challenging moments.

*edit I don't care who wins the poll, I'm gonna riot! #NotMyLord

It's not 78% chance to miss. It's 72% chance to miss, and it's also about 1/5 chance to hit. So roughly 20% chance of being hit. That's horrendous considering what it does. There are certain percentages that come across as fair for what they do, this is not one of them, and I just explained why that's not low enough because there's nothing I can do to mitigate the effect. Challenge is not having something like this. Challenge is something like having to figure out how to get around Senaca's critical. Challenge is having to figure out to get Rika to talk to Kate to recruit her without killing her or getting yourself killed. Plus, as I stated before, there's no reason for a person to have to use certain characters like that as the teams are large enough to have enough variances to them to where they might not have them.

It's not hard. That's the problem. SoA happens to be fairly easy overall with many chapters being defeated on my first try. It's just that the siege tomes started to grate on my nerves, and the hexing rod hitting me at 18% was what caused me to just kind of stop at the moment. That's not a good sign.

[Zane Avernathy]

Mission accomplished. It's over, high-fives for everyone.

[CT075]

THE OWEN COMEBACK IS REAL

[InvdrZim13]

THE OWEN COMEBACK IS REAL

mfw it's been tied almost the entire time

[Augestein]

I can't believe they actually tied. That's nuts. Congrats on having characters that are equally liked.

[InvdrZim13]

I can't believe they actually tied. That's nuts. Congrats on having characters that are equally liked.

I'm certain some people are switching their vote around to keep it tied

[urug99]

So obviously we going to have to agree to disagree lol. I disagree with about just about everything you said, but I do agree with this... Oh and yeah 100-18=72 derp my bad

The whole point of maps like that is to have some enemies move while some don't and make use of reinforcements to cause you to get swarmed if you sit around

I'm obviously biased with difficulty. I enjoy tough situations, but I dont think I have ever really felt on the run, cornered or pressured when playing SoA. I might be forgetting a map or 2, but still feel like there is usually a lack of moving units and reinforcement placement. Although the reinforcement placement is not always bad, it still could be improved probably.

#SawyermakeSoAgreatAgain

Edited December 5, 2016 by urug99

[Azama]

Woah it's still tied

[Augestein]

I'm obviously biased with difficulty. I enjoy tough situations, but I dont think I have ever really felt on the run, cornered or pressured when playing SoA. I might be forgetting a map or 2, but still feel like there is usually a lack of moving units and reinforcement placement. Although the reinforcement placement is not always bad, it still could be improved probably.

I like challenge too (not necessary difficulty, but I might send a PM to explain that if you're curious what I mean). Look at it this way; with tweaks to the hexing rod, the hexing rod could have more uses than just... 1. You can safely use it more than once in this engine. You could get creative by having nasty traps with reinforcements that have Hexing Rods to muck with you to kill you for quick kills if you aren't paying attention. And that's my thing here. I want it tweaked because fixing it to the way that was suggested by Niddo would be amazing.

I definitely agree that the reinforcements could be improved a bit though. The maps, the music are fantastic though. Honestly the character balance is probably the best aspect that stood out to me so far. The ASM is impressive in its usage too. Seeing the growths of your units is VERY nice.

[InvdrZim13]

The problem with more than one use is that the AI will keep targeting the same unit and cutting their HP in half over and over again.

The suggested change to it is interesting but I don't know how doable it is.

[Augestein]

Damn. That blows. Props for getting it to work. Maybe when I have time could you show me what you did to get the Hexing Rod to work in the first place? I think I making the AI not be dumb about using it if I can figure out how it works. Or is that just a "we're keeping this ASM hidden for now until the hack is complete?"