Suggestions about balance (stamina, health, transformations)

[FalNiX]

First my apologies to anybody who feels I stole his idea in this suggestions post and I'm sorry if this has already been discussed. Also I'm sorry because it is too long to read. If you don't understand any of the sentences I wrote, let me know, I will try to explain myself better.

This suggestion post aims for the balance of the game. So I'm going to talk about stamina and transformations.

Fist Stamina.
I think the system should be the following. A character starts with an amount of stamina, I mean a big amount of stamina, and it decreases when you fly, shoot a beam or hit another character. So, every combat action makes your stamina decrease, but your power level decreases along with your stamina. If you think about it, it's just like the DBZ series. At the beginning if the fight they are at their maximum and as the fight goes on they start getting tired. That was the advantage the cyborgs had, infinite stamina. Following with that idea, there should be a maximum and a minimum power level you can reach. For example, you begin the fight with 1000 units of power level and maximum stamina. That’s your maximum power level you can reach (for now) and your minimum is 200 units. What happens when you run out of stamina? Well not only you will be at your minimum, also you will start losing health. If you shoot a beam when you have no stamina then, depending on how powerful the beam is, you could kill yourself, but the beam stills on game and you can kill some enemy. Useful for one shot kill energy atacks. There should be a green zone of the stamina counter where your power level doesn’t decrease.
But then everyone would die because of the stamina in the end. There should be a way to refill your stamina. I suggest by eating something like senzu beans. Also you could just hide and rest a bit. If there is some possibility I also suggest than if you stand still for a while, you character could sit down and your power level be hided, I mean not having PL = 1 when you sit down, simply you don't appear in your enemy's scouter. I think stamina should only increase while resting, but not take so much time. For example after 20 seconds you are at maximum. You may think that this will slow down the game. I think it will give a little strategy and more teamwork.
So you recover stamina. What happens next is an increase of power level. You had a fight so hard that got you to your limits. Now you are stronger. For example, you are resting with a power of 500 units and zero stamina. You wait 10 seconds until your stamina is at half maximum. At that point your power level increased to 1500. The increase of power level when recovering stamina depends on a factor that I call power gain.

Transformations.
There should be different kinds of transformations. I mean, the way they make you stronger. For example: Frieza's could be of the kind that increase you power by 50% each transformation. That means if you are at your minimum power level, well you power increase won't be so big. Different should be for saiyans. They get a bonus power level, so if for example you are at your minimum power, you transform and boom you get a bonus that does not depend on your actual power level. Let's say you are at 500 and you transform and you get a bonus of 1000 taking you to 1500 units. If you were Frieza you only get a power of 750 (500 + 500*0.5).

When your stamina reaches zero, if you have a character with non-permanent tranformation you will automatically descend.

Well, since you transform and got a higher power you are forcing your body. Your stamina decrease should be higher. This is for saiyans and Frieza characters only. Characters with non-permanent transformations should have a new stamina limit once they transform for the first time. This way, with a new and higher limit they can still transformed for longer. Later, transformations like ssj 1 will be nothing because of the increased stamina meter.

For me that looks good for saiyans and Frieza. But what about Cell and Buu. Well they don't descend levels. Once they transform they can't go down. They get a bonus power level like saiyans but their stamina doesn't decrease faster. In fact I suggest for Cell that his stamina decrease slower, because he is on a more perfect form. So, for Cell, along with the bonus power level his stamina also decreases slower. So it is just like having more stamina like saiyans, but not. Cell is an android, so in his perfect form he won't have any stamina decrease like the other androids like C-18. Buu is a similar case. Turning people into candy and eating could increase his stamina. Buu also has his regenerative ability but if his stamina goes down certain limit he should not be able to regenerate. I suggest that Buu's stamina could only be filled eating candy. Resting could help too, but not so much, because he already can fill the stamina by other way so it would be a bit unfair. Also Buu should not refill his stamina eating senzu beans like saiyans and humans do. I think that because he is not made of the same organic material.

Talking about auto regeneration, Piccolo could have a faster stamina recovery when resting and a health recovery. His transformations are permanent. I suggest his transformations increase the stamina efficiency.

Androids like C-18 at the beginning won’t have a stamina decrease. It's unlimited. But also their power level doesn't increases so fast. Killing enemies makes them stronger. When stronger the enemy they kill stronger they get in power level. I know in the series this doesn't happen, but let's say androids get “experience” showed by an increase of power level. Later if they get damaged they start losing stamina. This could also work for Cell in his perfect form.
At this point cyborgs, are the best at power struggles. They endure much more because of the stamina.

Next we will talk about humans and Ginyu force. These people don't have any transformation and their stamina system is like the saiyan's one (not unlimited). So why would you choose any of these characters?. Well we could make a mix of abilities. They can be characters who have a bit of the abilities of the others (not like Cell does). I mean, their stamina decreases slower than a saiyan or Frieza. His power level when recovering stamina increases not so much like the saiyans.

Now let's talk about turbo. I think this is the final step to a balanced game. Turbo for any character who can transform and androids is limited. I mean, turbo doubles your power if you charge it, but no more. Turbo is like transformation, it drains your stamina, not your Ki. In fact I suggest that when you use turbo, it automatically fills your Ki draining it directly from the stamina pool. So you won’t need to stop the turbo to charge. Then in a power struggle you use turbo and your Ki won’t go down. Of course turbo will drain the character’s stamina very fast. If you still on turbo when you reach zero stamina you health will decrease. Turbo is for an emergency. I like to see turbo as a kaioken that anyone can use.

There is where turbo balances the human characters and others that can't transform

As a side note I suggest using turbo with an android character should drain your health. Let's say you overclock your PC. It shortens the life of your processor. So does with androids.

In the case of humans and Ginyu force, the poor people who can’t get their hair blond and in the case of Krillin get hair, the turbo applies with other rules. Turbo can increase you power 10 times for example. It has to be much higher than others because they can't transform. But it will increase slower; I mean you have to hold it longer than a saiyan to make your power 2 times higher. For example, Goku holds turbo for 2 seconds and his PL is doubled, then Krillin holds turbo for 20 seconds and his PL is doubled. When doing this your aura gets bigger so anybody can see you and try to stop you. You will have to hide. Your stamina won’t decrease so fast at 2X because humans have higher stamina efficiency. I would also suggest that if you stay longer in turbo (human or Ginyu) you stamina limit increases slowly so, as the battle goes on, you can still on 3X for example and not even notice.

Intelligent humans (and Ginyu) trained turbo because they noticed of their disadvantage in fight. You can make Ginyu stamina decrease faster than humans because he has his buddy so he didn't train so much in turbo like humans did. That is the explanation of why humans can use turbo better than saiyans.

Health.
Well as we know some characters like Piccolo can regenerate. What about the others? I think if this is a death match style game, there should be some way to refill your health. There could be some steaks and other food that refills your health a bit and senzu beans that don’t appear very often that fills your health meter at maximum. For androids there could be some machine garbage they could use to replace the broken parts.

Well it's over. Thanks for reading. I hope it helps. I will try to think about other ideas. Of course I respond any questions about this.

 

[Grega]

I only read through part of that so ill only coment on that now. Ill coment on the rest when i read it.

Stamina: Sounds exactly like what ZEQ2 has. But there is a difference in gameplay and gameplaning. They are using STAMINA, KI and HP as part of a integrated system. Meaning its all bound to one another. Where ESF uses KI like amunition, HP as your standard health and STAMINA is used as a limiter. It prevents you overspamming some moves. So basically the mindsetting is different. If we wanted to change it to the way you suggested , then weed need to rewrite preety much the entire health, KI, PL and STAMINA system and i think its to far in the developement to make such a big gameplay change.

Your idea about the androids does bring it closer to the show. but havint unlimited stamina would mean you can use those features, that we put a STAMINA spam block on, all the time. And that would totally overpower those chars.

The idea for PL gain on transformations allso favours greatly the ones with a multiplier. Taking your example with a bit different numbers.
A Frieza with minimum PL of tiwce what the Saiyans gain would gain minimal that of the Sayians themselves.

Meaning this system greatly overpowers Frieza or the Sayians dependsing on the bonus or the time of the game. At the begining the Saiyans would have the advantage, but as the game progresses cahracters with 50% gain would overpower the bonus gain ones like there is no tomorrow. Simply because while their increase is only 50%, the increase depends on the initial PL and grows along with it, where the bonus chars allways have a constant PL gain.

And multiplications are not a good thing.

A second problem would be transformations alltogether. Since we are basing transformations on the PL you have you would loose a transformation depending on how much stamina you have. And that would be weird. Beeing able to transform at one time, but not 5 seconds later.

In any case thats as far as I read.

 

[Disguise]

I think there's some good ideas in there. I like how you value the diversity of gaining and using Power Level, so it's not the same all around the board. At the same time though, such variances make it harder to balance. Some things need to be kept static to allow others to shine.

Stamina is one of those things. If it varies TOO much between players, it becomes difficult to handle.

I like the idea of Turbo draining stamina and increasing your Ki. If you were in the middle of combat and your Ki was getting low, turning on Turbo would really help you bounce back, among the other bonuses it offers.

I also think it's interesting how you envision the stamina levels for Buu and Cell, making it unaffected until it's lowered. It means they'd have to fight more conservatively to keep that bonus, and others would have to be more aggressive to knock it down. It'd be like giving them the advantage at the start.

Maybe instead of a constant health recovery for Piccolo and Cell, they could have a critical health recovery. If they fall beneath a certain HP level, maybe 10% of their maximum, they'll regain it back up to 10%.

Overall I like the ideas, but I would consider revising some. Make it known what things will remain constant between characters. Then say what things will vary between them and why. Maybe some characters will be better at bouncing back from nothing, others will be stronger with the advantage, others more consistent.

Like Grega said, be careful with the multipliers. Don't put too much emphasis on how PL should work, since that's more like the 8 Ball on the pool table.

Here's something good to mention. Which things do you think PL differences should influence more and which things less?

 

[Dokutayuu]

This was pretty tough to read through but I feel that I've got the jist of it.

The only issues I have with stamina are the sitting down part, it could disrupt gamepace, and that it seems like people would have to worry about Stamina management along with Ki management, which might be overbearing. The system isn't horrible though.

Some of those PL multipliers on turbo are a little weird. How long would it take to charge to 10x PL and how long would it last? Bonus transformations would have to be a fair bit larger to even attempt to keep up with multipliers, which in turn causes balance issues.

I do like the character differentiation though, it'd give people a reason to choose a character for something other than them being their favourite.

 

[FalNiX]

Hello. Thanks for all the answers.

Meaning this system greatly overpowers Frieza or the Sayians depending on the bonus or the time of the game. At the beginning the saiyans would have the advantage, but as the game progresses characters with 50% gain would overpower the bonus gain ones like there is no tomorrow. Simply because while their increase is only 50%, the increase depends on the initial PL and grows along with it, where the bonus chars always have a constant PL gain.

Yes, of course everything you said there was right.
The PL system should be then of all chars using multipliers or, in the other hand, all chars using bonus. But I think these two options have their weak points because PL bonus, in a long game, becomes useless. The amount of power gained thought bonus doesn't make the difference. And multipliers make those chars with non-permanent transformation the stronger ones in a long game.

However I think the best option are multipliers. These players with permanent transformations, once they reach their "perfect" form should have the system of "turbo advantage" that I suggested for humans and Ginyu.

Maybe instead of a constant health recovery for Piccolo and Cell, they could have a critical health recovery. If they fall beneath a certain HP level, maybe 10% of their maximum, they'll regain it back up to 10%.

That's a good idea and I think that the percentage should depend on factors like how much do the other characters increase their power after transforming in relation to Piccolo and/or Cell.

Some of those PL multipliers on turbo are a little weird. How long would it take to charge to 10x PL and how long would it last? Bonus transformations would have to be a fair bit larger to even attempt to keep up with multipliers, which in turn causes balance issues.

That's the idea. You won't be able to power up to ten times unless you spend too much time. So it won't unbalance the game for those characters that have to reach certain PL to transform. And as a normal turbo would, your PL decreases every second. Of course those characters that use this system should not decrease their power as fast as a normal turbo user like saiyans.

So resuming my ideas are: (I modified a littile some ideas from the first post)

Stamina: You have much more stamina than KI, or it just drains slower. It puts a limit to everything. Every combat action makes it go down. Going under certain limit you start losing power level because you start getting tired. To refill it you have to stand still on the ground holding the button to charge KI. Recovering stamina makes your PL increase. Of course it won't fill up as fast as KI does. If you reach zero stamina you start losing health. Things like how much you can have, how fast it drains, the limit where you lose power, how fast it fills and how much increases your power when recovering depends all on the race of the character.

Power level: There should be 2 ways to increase it: normal fighting and recharging your stamina. Some characters use more one way on others the other way.

KI: This puts a limit to how much energy you can shoot or how long you can fly before having to charge it. This fills very fast and can be filled when flying. Turbo mode fills KI automatically but takes more stamina.

Beams: A single type of beam, like KKH, should have a higher charging time so his 100% of power can only by reached mostly by some powerful characters and using turbo because it fills their KI. However all characters should be able to get the 100% with more effort or less.

Health: This is mainly drained when you get hit. Some characters can heal themselves or heal allies (I think Piccolo and maybe Cell should be the only ones able to heal their allies using Namekian magic).

Turbo: Normal turbo instantly increases you power and fills your KI automatically. Charged turbo can increase the power up to ten times. All characters should be able to do this. How much it increases you power and the amount of stamina that turbo drains per second depends on the race of the character. The decrease of power level should be caused directly from the drain of stamina.

Transformations: They should work with the system of multipliers. Those without transformations should have other advantages. Some transformations are permanent and others not. The ones with permanent transformations mostly have a better turbo. The last transformation should be always the stronger and the one that drains more stamina.

There are some examples of how I think about the differences of characters races.

Androids: Androids should have unlimited stamina and they increase their power level directly, I mean without having to refill his stamina. For androids I think turbo should drain health but in this case they should power up faster. I think Cell should be considered under these rules once he becomes perfect.

Humans: Their (our) power up depends only on turbo. So they should have their advantage here and have less decrease of stamina than other characters. They use the two ways to increase the power. Fighting and recovering stamina.

Saiyans: They mainly increase their power level by recovering stamina and not too much by simply fighting. This is the “Zenkai” ability they have. Also they can turn into super saiyans that increases even more their power. However they are pretty dumb and don’t know how to use his stamina very well in base form. Much less when they transform. This makes they lose their stamina even faster. So they transform, fight, descend, rest (charge stamina), and transform again to fight.

Cell and Piccolo: They are pretty alike in the beginning. They can slowly heal and heal allies. However Cell, along with the good thing of the others, like Zenkai and almost all the techniques, he also gets the bad things too and his transformations are permanent. He can’t descend so he can't recover stamina faster. This is until he becomes perfect where stamina is unlimited.
Piccolo in the other hand can “transform” in some way by dropping his weighted clothes. He’s much smarter than saiyans: he doesn’t waste his stamina and increases his power mainly by fighting and his transformations makes him loose even less stamina.

Frieza: This guy doesn’t like to train, he is naturally strong. He increases his power mainly like saiyans and less by fighting. He is also very smart as Piccolo, so he doesn’t waste stamina. Then he doesn’t increase his power very fast like saiyans. But a single transformation makes him very powerful. But using his 100% takes much of him and stamina falls very fast to zero.

Ginyu: He has his buddies so his combined attacks of energy are stronger than any other and fighting doesn’t exhaust him very much. Much less when he has a buddy. Fighting is how he increases his power and not so much by recovering.

Buu: His transformations make him very strong especially the last one, and his stamina doesn’t drains faster in further transformations. In the other hand his turbo is the worst, it’s like he always fights in his limits. He also can heal himself automatically very fast, but not heal others. His auto healing ability drains his stamina directly. Eating candy recovers his stamina and gives him a bonus of power. He increases his power fighting and recovering stamina.

Thanks for reading me. I hope I can help with my ideas and I know that programming is very difficult. Mostly what I wanted is to let you know my ideas before the next version is released and if you apply them or not is up to you.