Mega Man RPG Prototype News & Updates

This update is a little more important as it has to do with the actual game mechanics and have their been revised/rebalanced. There are a lot of changes in this update that might alter existing strategies, so please read.

Mission Turn Goals

The first update is in regards to how many turns it [should] take to complete a mission. Previously the game allowed 5 turns per robot that appeared in battle, and that number multiplied for higher level enemies (meaning some battles allowed up to 144 turns to defeat the opposing team!). While this made it very easy to score battle points, I felt that this was "broken" and have updated the script to allow fewer turns for each robot in a battle, regardless of level.

Now, each robot is assumed to take no more than 3 turns to defeat with each additional robot adding only 3 more turns to the overall goal. A battle with only 4 robots should now have a "Goal" of 12 turns - coming in under that goal awards more points than the predefined "reward" for that stage and coming in over that goal awards fewer points. This might make Battle Points harder to obtain at first, but as your robots get stronger these goals will be easier to achieve.

Ability Secondary Effects

As most of you are well aware, many abilities have secondary effects. Some abilities allow you to boost your own stats directly (Attack Boost, Defense Boost, etc.) and some allow you to break your opponent's stats directly (Attack Break, Defense Break, etc.) - these abilities will remain unchanged. There are other abilities, however, where stat alternations are not the primary function and are relegated to a side-effect, such as the attack boost that sometimes occurs when using Thunder Beam.

Previously, these secondary effects were hard-coded as specific percentages and were unaffected by field multipliers, core boosts, weaknesses, or any other modifiers that would apply to regular damage and/or recovery. This meant that an ability like Thunder Beam would only ever raise the user's attack by 5%, even if the user's core matched the ability's type (x1.5 boost) and even if the field itself had an appropriately typed multiplier (x2.0 boost). The ability's damage would be affected, but not the secondary effect.

Well, this has finally been changed! All effects - either primary or secondary - are now affected by multipliers. That 5% attack boost would be multiplied by 1.5 (for the core boost) and then again by 2.0 (for the field multiplier) - giving the user an attack boost of 15%! These secondary effects will always appear in the ability's description text, and are also dynamically modified with the conditions of battle. This change allows the various abilities to function much more dynamically and should give rise to many more strategies in the future, especially now that secondary effects of moves like Time Arrow can be further boosted by a target's weakness (33% speed decrease x 1.5 core boost x 2.0 weakness = ~100% speed reduction!).

Ability Rebalancing

As a result of the above change, all abilities have been revisited and rebalanced based on the multipliers available to it. Some abilities have had their effects boosted, some have had them lowered, and some of them have been revised in more ways than one. The aforementioned Thunder Beam, for example, now has a 10% attack boost instead of 5%, though it only happens 50% of the time instead of 75% of the time. Other abilities like the Leaf Shield and Super Arm have also been been "nerfed" a bit, but when used by the right robot on the right field it more than makes up for it. When used by Mega Man, for example, the Leaf Shield will only give a 20% defense boost, but when used by a Nature Core robot it will boost defense by 30% instead. Either way, active players should check the database for these changes and let me know if you have any questions.

As always, these changes could be AMAZING and make the game 100x better or they could be horrible and create a thousand bugs. Please let me know what you think either way, and I'll do whatever I can to fix any issues in a timely manner. Thank you for playing!