Friends, Gamers, Pan-Countrymen,
It's been the consensus for quite some time that FFT could use an update. Some new content to mix things up and a few fixes. I've toyed with this idea before and even put quite a bit of work into some graphics and personal experiments, but the time has come to make this project official. For those of you who have seen my other threads, you have some idea of what I'm working on: it will be very similar to 1.3 in terms of design and difficulty, with some changes, but mostly with added content and a greater variety of enemies.
In the coming days I'll update the mod's status and project a release date. Anyone who would like to contribute to graphics, ASM, or other modding is welcome to do so, as well as testing when the time comes. Ideas/suggestions/critiques are also always welcome, but may or may not be implemented.
Here's a short list of the changes I've planned:
-Consolidate several similar weapons/armor/items/ and create new items
-Add several all-new allies and mystery enemies
-Buff Orlandu
-Scrap Rafa, Malak, and Marche for other characters...
-Buff non-endgame Shrine Knights
-Add new unique classes
-Give Worker 8 fly. Or +2 move, not sure which yet
-Buff monsters by making their special skills always available
And...one question regarding how FFT 1.3 was assembled - I may be mistaken, but it appears that 1.3 has more text than vanilla (e.g. names of things that were formerly blank), and I'm wondering whether this was accomplished via FFtactext.
Other than that, that's all. Feel free to share suggestions or offer help, and stay tuned!
FFT 1.4: Awesome Difficulty, The Official Development Thread
#2
- Challenger
- Job: Member
- Posts: 801
16 March 2017 - 03:22 AM
Keep Rafa, and Malak. And buff Orlandu...? Do you mean 1.3 Orlandu? Because all he needed was his growths fixed.
Sounds like it could be fun.
Sounds like it could be fun.
#3
- Creator of Monster Tactics
- Job: Modder
- Posts: 987
16 March 2017 - 08:13 AM
Must haves for new mods:
1. Address speed vs. CT. One of the most unique and interesting things about FFT as a base game is charge time as an additional balancing factor to ability usage, but the way vanilla handled it was bad because characters got faster and CT of abilities remained the same. There are a few ways to approach this problem: freeze speed such that characters no longer gain speed, change the ct of spells so that it goes down as characters become faster (this can be done by ct = patcher ct - character speed, floor = 1 to prevent underflow, for example), or capping the game's level at a fairly low point (no more than 50).
2. Figure out whether you want linear or quadratic formulas and stick with your decision for all abilities. Because of the way FFT's scale runs, there's no real good way to balance both in the same game and have all abilities keep their utility for the whole game. This was a problem because combined with the speed vs. ct issue, spells that did broken amounts of damage at lower levels became not worth the action to cast at later levels. If you don't want to do this for whatever reason, your best bet here is to cap the game's level.
3. Learn how to balance boss pacing, innates, and skillsets such that you don't have too many scenarios of a boss that takes a long amount of time to fight past where the player establishes a win condition. Ideally, the boss itself should be the win condition (since it has ??? hp), and should be doing something interesting for the whole fight no matter what the player does to it. This concept is very hard to get right, especially if levels are scaled. There's a lot to consider here: what the boss comes with in terms of skills and innates, the boss's mooks if any, how much time is spent actually dealing damage to the boss vs. recovering from what the boss is doing to you, etc. You also need to consider possible party compositions and how much damage the player is likely to be dealing to it.
4. Make as many abilities as possible interesting and useful. If you don't see yourself using an ability, neither does your player. The base minimum I used for abilities is if I can't think of a reason to give it to an enemy that'll make it different from any other enemy you're fighting, scrap it in favor of something that does. This goes for both action abilities and r/s/m.
5. Vary your fights! There's no excuse for having every other fight feel the same as each other, especially with all the asm that's currently available. Even if you're not using much in terms of asm, stuff like nerfing ribbons and removing evasion as a factor from status effect spells goes a long way to make fights more than just dealing damage to the enemy and healing your own. Same goes with varying the numbers/speed/placement of enemies on a map.
Specifics to mods with significant (1.3ish) difficulty:
1. Eliminate or significantly reduce assassination missions that are not boss fights. Just change these fights to "defeat all enemies" or a boss, and go from there. These fights as they were handled in 1.3 were just a race to do damage to the enemy before it heals itself back to full again. And while that could be an interesting mechanic in 1-2 fights, it's not for 50% of a chapter.
2. Scale enemies' levels and stats in such a way that you're not actively punishing a player for being anything other than artificially low level or lv 99, and that you're not actively punishing playstyles other than hyper offense. This means enemy lv = party lv, not party lv +25. This also means that enemy only classes shouldn't just have more speed than a ninja, more hp than a knight, innate def/mdef up/maintenance and rare items that add protect and shell, etc. There is a lot of merit in having enemies that for example have below average stat distributions and skillsets that warrant that (status effects, support abilities, fractional damage, etc), or high impact moves coupled with low survivability. Be creative!.gif)
Likewise, player HP vs. enemy damage output should be designed so that player HP matter enough that some players will choose to use a defensive playstyle and not be punished for it in every fight. High impact support skills such as Raise 2 should have high impact in that the vast majority of enemies shouldn't just be able to ohko a defensive character from full.
3. Use RNG as a tool to make things more interesting, but not in a way that encourages players to reset repeatedly for it. Generally speaking, high impact status effects like Frog and Charm are more interesting at non-100% accuracies. And fights should not be designed in such a way that it's more efficient to set up for and reset them until you get 4 damage splits/mbs going off in the first turn than it is to beat them with direct damage or status.
4. Be careful with your usage of immortal flag. It is not a good idea to arbitrarily flag as immortal too many enemies who aren't actual bosses, important characters, or map mini-bosses. Status effects such as Frog or Petrify should be an important part of the game, and not only when the enemy uses it on you.
1. Address speed vs. CT. One of the most unique and interesting things about FFT as a base game is charge time as an additional balancing factor to ability usage, but the way vanilla handled it was bad because characters got faster and CT of abilities remained the same. There are a few ways to approach this problem: freeze speed such that characters no longer gain speed, change the ct of spells so that it goes down as characters become faster (this can be done by ct = patcher ct - character speed, floor = 1 to prevent underflow, for example), or capping the game's level at a fairly low point (no more than 50).
2. Figure out whether you want linear or quadratic formulas and stick with your decision for all abilities. Because of the way FFT's scale runs, there's no real good way to balance both in the same game and have all abilities keep their utility for the whole game. This was a problem because combined with the speed vs. ct issue, spells that did broken amounts of damage at lower levels became not worth the action to cast at later levels. If you don't want to do this for whatever reason, your best bet here is to cap the game's level.
3. Learn how to balance boss pacing, innates, and skillsets such that you don't have too many scenarios of a boss that takes a long amount of time to fight past where the player establishes a win condition. Ideally, the boss itself should be the win condition (since it has ??? hp), and should be doing something interesting for the whole fight no matter what the player does to it. This concept is very hard to get right, especially if levels are scaled. There's a lot to consider here: what the boss comes with in terms of skills and innates, the boss's mooks if any, how much time is spent actually dealing damage to the boss vs. recovering from what the boss is doing to you, etc. You also need to consider possible party compositions and how much damage the player is likely to be dealing to it.
4. Make as many abilities as possible interesting and useful. If you don't see yourself using an ability, neither does your player. The base minimum I used for abilities is if I can't think of a reason to give it to an enemy that'll make it different from any other enemy you're fighting, scrap it in favor of something that does. This goes for both action abilities and r/s/m.
5. Vary your fights! There's no excuse for having every other fight feel the same as each other, especially with all the asm that's currently available. Even if you're not using much in terms of asm, stuff like nerfing ribbons and removing evasion as a factor from status effect spells goes a long way to make fights more than just dealing damage to the enemy and healing your own. Same goes with varying the numbers/speed/placement of enemies on a map.
Specifics to mods with significant (1.3ish) difficulty:
1. Eliminate or significantly reduce assassination missions that are not boss fights. Just change these fights to "defeat all enemies" or a boss, and go from there. These fights as they were handled in 1.3 were just a race to do damage to the enemy before it heals itself back to full again. And while that could be an interesting mechanic in 1-2 fights, it's not for 50% of a chapter.
2. Scale enemies' levels and stats in such a way that you're not actively punishing a player for being anything other than artificially low level or lv 99, and that you're not actively punishing playstyles other than hyper offense. This means enemy lv = party lv, not party lv +25. This also means that enemy only classes shouldn't just have more speed than a ninja, more hp than a knight, innate def/mdef up/maintenance and rare items that add protect and shell, etc. There is a lot of merit in having enemies that for example have below average stat distributions and skillsets that warrant that (status effects, support abilities, fractional damage, etc), or high impact moves coupled with low survivability. Be creative!
Likewise, player HP vs. enemy damage output should be designed so that player HP matter enough that some players will choose to use a defensive playstyle and not be punished for it in every fight. High impact support skills such as Raise 2 should have high impact in that the vast majority of enemies shouldn't just be able to ohko a defensive character from full.3. Use RNG as a tool to make things more interesting, but not in a way that encourages players to reset repeatedly for it. Generally speaking, high impact status effects like Frog and Charm are more interesting at non-100% accuracies. And fights should not be designed in such a way that it's more efficient to set up for and reset them until you get 4 damage splits/mbs going off in the first turn than it is to beat them with direct damage or status.
4. Be careful with your usage of immortal flag. It is not a good idea to arbitrarily flag as immortal too many enemies who aren't actual bosses, important characters, or map mini-bosses. Status effects such as Frog or Petrify should be an important part of the game, and not only when the enemy uses it on you.
#4
- Impostonator
- Job: Regulator
- Posts: 3,847
16 March 2017 - 08:44 AM
To do something like this, you need a vision that is broad enough to understand what makes 1.3 fun, and what could be changed to make it what you want it to be. You should really plan way ahead and know exactly what you want before releasing versions or making radical changes.
Let me share my point of view on 1.3.
Strengths:
- Doesn't change the skill tree, keeps a similar idea of all jobs to vanilla for a familiarity feeling
- Tries to keep most skillsets relevant, while being unique to each other. Including specials and monsters
- Most skillsets aren't "independent", and depend on other skillsets: With one skillset you normally can't do more than 3 of what I call roles:
a. Dealing strong damage
b. Dealing AoE / ranged damage
c. Healing,
d. Reviving,
e. Buffing your allies
f. Debuffing the enemy
(I might be missing a few)
This complements the job /class system perfectly. The exceptions to this rule are White Mage, Monk, and some specials.
- The design is not afraid of trying gimmicky moments for the sake of flavour and keeping the game fresh. Perfect examples are Zalmo 1, following Izlude, which encourage very different playstyles, and only have 1 battle between them.
- Chapter 1 to mid 3 have teams that synergize which eqch othrr within the boundaries of the system for maximum tactics (Should I focus my attention on this group of enemies, or that another one? Those are the correct decisions one should be making)
Weaknesses:
- Horrible growth and modifier parameters. They're just terrible and badly planned out.
a. Speed goes sky high. Speed should always be at a value below 10 throughout the game, given the game's system. Here, it's easy to have 15 speed and a low higher in chapter 4. Not helped at all with haste, which speeds you up to 50% more. Suggestion about that is changing this to 25%.
b. While speed scaling makes 1.3's casters unable to cast spes easily, MA scales equally to PA, so mages are a bad choice in mid-late/late game. Quadratic formulas pidgeonhole you into less types of units focusing on damage as well. In mid Chapter 4 onwards, you'll end up either using specials only to deal damage, or anything with 2 swords, or monsters( unless you go out of your way to use magic, which is not optimal in many cases). Suggestion is better balance and removing all quadratic formulas.
c. MP's growth is massively high. It starts at a decent balance, and quickly goes sky high. Doesn't help that equipment boosts it enormously either. Suggestion: extremely low growths and low bonus by equipment to keep MP management as relevant throughout the game.
d. HP's growths have the same problem. They are balanced between units, but special Jobs like the ones the enemy have (Assassins, White Knights) easily reach 999 or close to it, with additions like Defense Up. Another clear example is the Lucavi fights.
- Move and Jump are insanely high, rendering a lot of tactics based qualities nullified. With jump being this hugh, all of the maps seem plain, and with move this high, all of the maps seem small, and a lot of melee attacks can be do the back. Solution: Remove Move +1. Remove Move +2. Remove Jump +3. Remove Jump +2. Remove Teleport, Ignore Height, Fly. Keep those for monsters. Don't have any units with 4/4. Either 3/2 for casters, or 4/3 for a particularly weak but agile unit, like thieves. Ninjas could have 3/3. Lancers, 3/4 and spears giving +1 jump, maybe.
- Status immunities. We all knwoe about Chapter 4 being filled with enemies with status immunities. But the same problem is had with the player. Change the effect of Ribbons, Barettes, Cachushas. A player should never be able to nullify the entire spectrum of status, and only think about HP and MP.
- On the same train of thought, evasion goes sky high. It doesn't​ make any sense to be able to have something as ridiculous as 100% physical and magical evasion, but it can be done here. At the same time , Archael went around this with a lot of units having Concentrate. There needs to be a much better balance on this.
- From a modder's perspective, the worst thing about 1.3 is the quick, badly planned changes, hotfixes that happened over, and over, and over, and slowly made part of 1.3 a mess like you see me describing above. 1.3 doesn't feel like it's a whole thing. You have status, but you can't use them wholly in late game. The enemy can use elixirs (wtf?). All battles scale, which is good, but at higher levels, which is a terrible choice, because the difference becomes null at level 99. All of those thi gs are the worst thinf about it.
This is all only from the top of my head. I'd be glad to help brainstorm and test this, but just remember: Even with the least optimal design, your project needs to look true to a vision or scope. Do not rush things, and do not hotfix things without thinking them through. That's the best advice I can give you.
Let me share my point of view on 1.3.
Strengths:
- Doesn't change the skill tree, keeps a similar idea of all jobs to vanilla for a familiarity feeling
- Tries to keep most skillsets relevant, while being unique to each other. Including specials and monsters
- Most skillsets aren't "independent", and depend on other skillsets: With one skillset you normally can't do more than 3 of what I call roles:
a. Dealing strong damage
b. Dealing AoE / ranged damage
c. Healing,
d. Reviving,
e. Buffing your allies
f. Debuffing the enemy
(I might be missing a few)
This complements the job /class system perfectly. The exceptions to this rule are White Mage, Monk, and some specials.
- The design is not afraid of trying gimmicky moments for the sake of flavour and keeping the game fresh. Perfect examples are Zalmo 1, following Izlude, which encourage very different playstyles, and only have 1 battle between them.
- Chapter 1 to mid 3 have teams that synergize which eqch othrr within the boundaries of the system for maximum tactics (Should I focus my attention on this group of enemies, or that another one? Those are the correct decisions one should be making)
Weaknesses:
- Horrible growth and modifier parameters. They're just terrible and badly planned out.
a. Speed goes sky high. Speed should always be at a value below 10 throughout the game, given the game's system. Here, it's easy to have 15 speed and a low higher in chapter 4. Not helped at all with haste, which speeds you up to 50% more. Suggestion about that is changing this to 25%.
b. While speed scaling makes 1.3's casters unable to cast spes easily, MA scales equally to PA, so mages are a bad choice in mid-late/late game. Quadratic formulas pidgeonhole you into less types of units focusing on damage as well. In mid Chapter 4 onwards, you'll end up either using specials only to deal damage, or anything with 2 swords, or monsters( unless you go out of your way to use magic, which is not optimal in many cases). Suggestion is better balance and removing all quadratic formulas.
c. MP's growth is massively high. It starts at a decent balance, and quickly goes sky high. Doesn't help that equipment boosts it enormously either. Suggestion: extremely low growths and low bonus by equipment to keep MP management as relevant throughout the game.
d. HP's growths have the same problem. They are balanced between units, but special Jobs like the ones the enemy have (Assassins, White Knights) easily reach 999 or close to it, with additions like Defense Up. Another clear example is the Lucavi fights.
- Move and Jump are insanely high, rendering a lot of tactics based qualities nullified. With jump being this hugh, all of the maps seem plain, and with move this high, all of the maps seem small, and a lot of melee attacks can be do the back. Solution: Remove Move +1. Remove Move +2. Remove Jump +3. Remove Jump +2. Remove Teleport, Ignore Height, Fly. Keep those for monsters. Don't have any units with 4/4. Either 3/2 for casters, or 4/3 for a particularly weak but agile unit, like thieves. Ninjas could have 3/3. Lancers, 3/4 and spears giving +1 jump, maybe.
- Status immunities. We all knwoe about Chapter 4 being filled with enemies with status immunities. But the same problem is had with the player. Change the effect of Ribbons, Barettes, Cachushas. A player should never be able to nullify the entire spectrum of status, and only think about HP and MP.
- On the same train of thought, evasion goes sky high. It doesn't​ make any sense to be able to have something as ridiculous as 100% physical and magical evasion, but it can be done here. At the same time , Archael went around this with a lot of units having Concentrate. There needs to be a much better balance on this.
- From a modder's perspective, the worst thing about 1.3 is the quick, badly planned changes, hotfixes that happened over, and over, and over, and slowly made part of 1.3 a mess like you see me describing above. 1.3 doesn't feel like it's a whole thing. You have status, but you can't use them wholly in late game. The enemy can use elixirs (wtf?). All battles scale, which is good, but at higher levels, which is a terrible choice, because the difference becomes null at level 99. All of those thi gs are the worst thinf about it.
This is all only from the top of my head. I'd be glad to help brainstorm and test this, but just remember: Even with the least optimal design, your project needs to look true to a vision or scope. Do not rush things, and do not hotfix things without thinking them through. That's the best advice I can give you.
#5
- Improbability Breaker
- Job: Regulator
- Posts: 1,581
16 March 2017 - 10:05 AM
Ditto what Emmy and Hart said. On thing I'll add, and I'm gonna be a hardass for a moment:
If your idea of "hard" is that enemies can spam full heal items infinitely, I will never play your mod ever. I don't want to see this ability in the game outside of maybe one or two occurrences total. I will actually go so far as to say don't bother updating it. /hardass
If you heed what HH and Emmy talk about, I will play this game probably as much as I play BNW.
If your idea of "hard" is that enemies can spam full heal items infinitely, I will never play your mod ever. I don't want to see this ability in the game outside of maybe one or two occurrences total. I will actually go so far as to say don't bother updating it. /hardass
If you heed what HH and Emmy talk about, I will play this game probably as much as I play BNW.
#6
- Challenger
- Job: Member
- Posts: 704
16 March 2017 - 11:35 AM
My two cents (as it happens, I have exactly two distinct ideas!):
1. Don't shoot for perfection.
Others above have talked about scope, and I'm just saying the same thing over again, but I tend to think about 1.3 in a different way (perhaps because I am not a modder myself). I had a metric ton of pure fun playing 1.3 the first time through. The game was a delightful puzzle the way I remember Vanilla being as a kid. Now as it turns out, yes, the key to the puzzle is "gotta go fast", and the vast majority of end-game battles guide you into perfecting one strategy which becomes the best and only strategy, but I'm not sure that's such a bad thing. Will the game get better if the issues so eloquently explained by Emmy are addressed? Yes, of course. But I think 1.3 was a necessary step to learn these lessons.
An analogy from the world of film: the 2002 Spider-Man movie was ... forgettable. Enjoyable perhaps, but not on many "best films of all time" lists. And yet Sam Raimi proved that technology had finally come to the point where superheroes could be convincingly portrayed on screen in the same way we knew them from from the comic books. The success of that film paved the way both for cinematic genius like The Dark Knight as well as for the hugely successful spate of recent Marvel films.
I think mods are like that: Philsov's 1.2 proved that there was an enormous amount of additional potential in this engine, and Archael's 1.3 continued to work out the implications of those explorations. (Various other FFT mods could be cited as well, of course.) Would Emmy's amazing work be here without 1.3? Even if it were, I'm sure it would not be as good, because from the community there emerged a lot of collective wisdom that has furthered the discussion. The conclusion I draw from all this is that so long as you set out to do something new and do that thing really well, whatever it is, it adds something important to the experience, even if it's not the definitive installment in the genre.
2. The script
There was a discussion very recently over in BNW about that mod's script, and I've vented here before about the terrible PSP translation for Tactics. You may decide that your scope will be limited to gameplay changes, but if you want a partner in crime for tweaking the script, let me know. I've already got some notes on the subject (this has been in the back of my mind for some time), including analysis of the Japanese from from a Discord discussion with Kain Stryder.
Good luck!
1. Don't shoot for perfection.
Others above have talked about scope, and I'm just saying the same thing over again, but I tend to think about 1.3 in a different way (perhaps because I am not a modder myself). I had a metric ton of pure fun playing 1.3 the first time through. The game was a delightful puzzle the way I remember Vanilla being as a kid. Now as it turns out, yes, the key to the puzzle is "gotta go fast", and the vast majority of end-game battles guide you into perfecting one strategy which becomes the best and only strategy, but I'm not sure that's such a bad thing. Will the game get better if the issues so eloquently explained by Emmy are addressed? Yes, of course. But I think 1.3 was a necessary step to learn these lessons.
An analogy from the world of film: the 2002 Spider-Man movie was ... forgettable. Enjoyable perhaps, but not on many "best films of all time" lists. And yet Sam Raimi proved that technology had finally come to the point where superheroes could be convincingly portrayed on screen in the same way we knew them from from the comic books. The success of that film paved the way both for cinematic genius like The Dark Knight as well as for the hugely successful spate of recent Marvel films.
I think mods are like that: Philsov's 1.2 proved that there was an enormous amount of additional potential in this engine, and Archael's 1.3 continued to work out the implications of those explorations. (Various other FFT mods could be cited as well, of course.) Would Emmy's amazing work be here without 1.3? Even if it were, I'm sure it would not be as good, because from the community there emerged a lot of collective wisdom that has furthered the discussion. The conclusion I draw from all this is that so long as you set out to do something new and do that thing really well, whatever it is, it adds something important to the experience, even if it's not the definitive installment in the genre.
2. The script
There was a discussion very recently over in BNW about that mod's script, and I've vented here before about the terrible PSP translation for Tactics. You may decide that your scope will be limited to gameplay changes, but if you want a partner in crime for tweaking the script, let me know. I've already got some notes on the subject (this has been in the back of my mind for some time), including analysis of the Japanese from from a Discord discussion with Kain Stryder.
Good luck!
#7
- Impostonator
- Job: Regulator
- Posts: 3,847
16 March 2017 - 02:24 PM
Bishop, on 16 March 2017 - 11:35 AM, said:
My two cents (as it happens, I have exactly two distinct ideas!):
1. Don't shoot for perfection.
Others above have talked about scope, and I'm just saying the same thing over again, but I tend to think about 1.3 in a different way (perhaps because I am not a modder myself). I had a metric ton of pure fun playing 1.3 the first time through. The game was a delightful puzzle the way I remember Vanilla being as a kid. Now as it turns out, yes, the key to the puzzle is "gotta go fast", and the vast majority of end-game battles guide you into perfecting one strategy which becomes the best and only strategy, but I'm not sure that's such a bad thing. Will the game get better if the issues so eloquently explained by Emmy are addressed? Yes, of course. But I think 1.3 was a necessary step to learn these lessons.
An analogy from the world of film: the 2002 Spider-Man movie was ... forgettable. Enjoyable perhaps, but not on many "best films of all time" lists. And yet Sam Raimi proved that technology had finally come to the point where superheroes could be convincingly portrayed on screen in the same way we knew them from from the comic books. The success of that film paved the way both for cinematic genius like The Dark Knight as well as for the hugely successful spate of recent Marvel films.
I think mods are like that: Philsov's 1.2 proved that there was an enormous amount of additional potential in this engine, and Archael's 1.3 continued to work out the implications of those explorations. (Various other FFT mods could be cited as well, of course.) Would Emmy's amazing work be here without 1.3? Even if it were, I'm sure it would not be as good, because from the community there emerged a lot of collective wisdom that has furthered the discussion. The conclusion I draw from all this is that so long as you set out to do something new and do that thing really well, whatever it is, it adds something important to the experience, even if it's not the definitive installment in the genre.
1. Don't shoot for perfection.
Others above have talked about scope, and I'm just saying the same thing over again, but I tend to think about 1.3 in a different way (perhaps because I am not a modder myself). I had a metric ton of pure fun playing 1.3 the first time through. The game was a delightful puzzle the way I remember Vanilla being as a kid. Now as it turns out, yes, the key to the puzzle is "gotta go fast", and the vast majority of end-game battles guide you into perfecting one strategy which becomes the best and only strategy, but I'm not sure that's such a bad thing. Will the game get better if the issues so eloquently explained by Emmy are addressed? Yes, of course. But I think 1.3 was a necessary step to learn these lessons.
An analogy from the world of film: the 2002 Spider-Man movie was ... forgettable. Enjoyable perhaps, but not on many "best films of all time" lists. And yet Sam Raimi proved that technology had finally come to the point where superheroes could be convincingly portrayed on screen in the same way we knew them from from the comic books. The success of that film paved the way both for cinematic genius like The Dark Knight as well as for the hugely successful spate of recent Marvel films.
I think mods are like that: Philsov's 1.2 proved that there was an enormous amount of additional potential in this engine, and Archael's 1.3 continued to work out the implications of those explorations. (Various other FFT mods could be cited as well, of course.) Would Emmy's amazing work be here without 1.3? Even if it were, I'm sure it would not be as good, because from the community there emerged a lot of collective wisdom that has furthered the discussion. The conclusion I draw from all this is that so long as you set out to do something new and do that thing really well, whatever it is, it adds something important to the experience, even if it's not the definitive installment in the genre.
I think you're missing one thing here: For each one of these milestones to actually achieve what you mention, which is a step towards better modding and mods and fun, for it to happen the modders actually tried their best with what was available at the time to make the best product possible. So, in other words, yes, they did shoot for perfection and so should one trying a 1.3 type of mod right now.
From the inverse point of view, and using your analogy (which I 100% agree on), what would happen if 2002 Spiderman was released today? It'd be absolutely trash, because technology, and super hero movies directing and scripts have vastly improved. But at the time they did try their best to make a Spiderman movie that would be remembered. Bringing the analogy back to earth, if someone tried to make a good FFT mod and released a mod with the same problems 1.3 had today, then I'm sure we would just look the other way.
#8
- Novice
- Job: Member
- Posts: 6
16 March 2017 - 04:33 PM
The only real problem with 1.3 are the glaring moments of Artificial Difficulty that make it not fun at all to play. Before you can add on anything, you need a solid foundation to build on. So I would suggest rebalancing it first. I know I'm already going to be typing up an essay and I also know these are all things that have been beaten like a dead horse but need to be addressed and this seems like the perfect time to do this.
- The AI just flat out Cheats at times:
a. Letting the Enemy Dual Wield Guns is prob the biggest offender of this.
b. Time Mages that know All Magic.
c. Wearing Ribbons as Accessories instead of Helmets. Infact, it would be great if Ribbons were Accessories and not Helmets. Because then I would be able to equip them without sacrificing a Armor slot and would make me have to choose what would be between Salty Rage or Ribbon.
- The massive amount of Concentrate and Break Gear Battles.
a. Constantly getting my Gear Stolen or Broke doesn't add anything to the game, and just makes me have to shell out 50,000 Gil every battle. A prime example of this is Chapter 2 Dorter, with Archers that have Break Weapon. Its a good idea on paper, but when you are given 2 Guest that relay on their gear to use abilities can make that Battle nearly impossible at times. Giving Agrais Black Magic doesn't solve the problem, because once she runs out of MP shes pretty much a meat shield, and more times then not she will use Black Magic over Statis Sword anyday.
- Stat Growths are abysmal. Every single one of my Characters feel like a Jagen Unit.
- A lot of the Story Battles are just laughable because of all the bullshit that's in it and needs to be rebalanced. Prime Suspects:
a. The First Battle. The First Battle is made to set the tone for the rest of the game. It's suppose to draw your players in. And its even more important for Rom Hacks/Mods. You need it to show case all of the unique changes, other wise they are just going to play the original. So, the first battle is against the RNG, where you have a Knight with a Parrying Sword, Move HP, and runs around the map sand bagging people. Ramza can't kill him 1v1 because of his Move HP, so that leaves it up to the AI to help out, and we all know how stupid the AI is. This doesn't make the game challenging or fun. It makes it repetitive and boring. This first battle shouldn't take an Hour to Complete.
b. Elmdor. He can teleport right into the middle of your whole party and wipe you before you get a single turn. Elmdor is to damn fast and you are unable to spread your party out to deal with Chirijiraden. Being able to deal 500 DMG to your whole party before you can even move isn't good game design. It doesn't help that the Assassins have 100% Petrify to anyone that doesn't have a Ribbon on.
c. Ultima. Her stats are through the roof. She has no charge time so can spam Angelic/All-Ultima/Grand Cross consistently, and she can us Terror locking out your party members from doing anything for roughly 10 Turns and no Brave effects to remove it. I suggest making an Item that Cures Chicken or bring in Brave Effects back.
I honestly love all of job changes and some of the revampes, but all these problems just make it not fun to play. Sorry if I seem a little ranty. Follow the wise words of Hart and Emmy, and I hope you can make this Lurker want to play this Mod again.
Kudos to you sir, and Good luck in your Endeavors.
- The AI just flat out Cheats at times:
a. Letting the Enemy Dual Wield Guns is prob the biggest offender of this.
b. Time Mages that know All Magic.
c. Wearing Ribbons as Accessories instead of Helmets. Infact, it would be great if Ribbons were Accessories and not Helmets. Because then I would be able to equip them without sacrificing a Armor slot and would make me have to choose what would be between Salty Rage or Ribbon.
- The massive amount of Concentrate and Break Gear Battles.
a. Constantly getting my Gear Stolen or Broke doesn't add anything to the game, and just makes me have to shell out 50,000 Gil every battle. A prime example of this is Chapter 2 Dorter, with Archers that have Break Weapon. Its a good idea on paper, but when you are given 2 Guest that relay on their gear to use abilities can make that Battle nearly impossible at times. Giving Agrais Black Magic doesn't solve the problem, because once she runs out of MP shes pretty much a meat shield, and more times then not she will use Black Magic over Statis Sword anyday.
- Stat Growths are abysmal. Every single one of my Characters feel like a Jagen Unit.
- A lot of the Story Battles are just laughable because of all the bullshit that's in it and needs to be rebalanced. Prime Suspects:
a. The First Battle. The First Battle is made to set the tone for the rest of the game. It's suppose to draw your players in. And its even more important for Rom Hacks/Mods. You need it to show case all of the unique changes, other wise they are just going to play the original. So, the first battle is against the RNG, where you have a Knight with a Parrying Sword, Move HP, and runs around the map sand bagging people. Ramza can't kill him 1v1 because of his Move HP, so that leaves it up to the AI to help out, and we all know how stupid the AI is. This doesn't make the game challenging or fun. It makes it repetitive and boring. This first battle shouldn't take an Hour to Complete.
b. Elmdor. He can teleport right into the middle of your whole party and wipe you before you get a single turn. Elmdor is to damn fast and you are unable to spread your party out to deal with Chirijiraden. Being able to deal 500 DMG to your whole party before you can even move isn't good game design. It doesn't help that the Assassins have 100% Petrify to anyone that doesn't have a Ribbon on.
c. Ultima. Her stats are through the roof. She has no charge time so can spam Angelic/All-Ultima/Grand Cross consistently, and she can us Terror locking out your party members from doing anything for roughly 10 Turns and no Brave effects to remove it. I suggest making an Item that Cures Chicken or bring in Brave Effects back.
I honestly love all of job changes and some of the revampes, but all these problems just make it not fun to play. Sorry if I seem a little ranty. Follow the wise words of Hart and Emmy, and I hope you can make this Lurker want to play this Mod again.
Kudos to you sir, and Good luck in your Endeavors.
#9
- Impostonator
- Job: Regulator
- Posts: 3,847
16 March 2017 - 05:20 PM
Love seeing a lurker stepping in just to contribute and give support. Welcome to the forums, good sir!
#10
- Gaming Addict
- Job: Member
- Posts: 406
16 March 2017 - 05:55 PM
Since everyone has cover the gameplay, I will go with some other topics:
- New/Revamped items: Power Source has to be banish from this realm, maybe you can make elixirs heal between 300-500 hp (no mp heal). Status healing aside of Soft and holy water should be condensed into two item who cover the rest (Remedy and Panacea).
- Curse,Rasp and Dispel statuses: Since we want status effects to be relevant thought the game, these three can also join in (especially curse: being able to block any buff on the enemy it's very important, and it can works both ways since the AI it's really smart)
- Dragoon: That class it's waaaaay too one-sided, it needs something new to keep the pace with all the other classes
AND THE MOST IMPORTANT FOR ME OUTSIDE OF EVERYTHING SAID ABOVE:
- Revamped equipment: AVOID spd+ gear like the plague unless it's balanced accordingly (MT's butter knife), mix up status inmunities, elemental nullification/absorption/weakness and maybe innate abilities so they can be used even on the late game and the decision isn't just a bland "what give me more PA/MA or HP/MP"
- New/Revamped items: Power Source has to be banish from this realm, maybe you can make elixirs heal between 300-500 hp (no mp heal). Status healing aside of Soft and holy water should be condensed into two item who cover the rest (Remedy and Panacea).
- Curse,Rasp and Dispel statuses: Since we want status effects to be relevant thought the game, these three can also join in (especially curse: being able to block any buff on the enemy it's very important, and it can works both ways since the AI it's really smart)
- Dragoon: That class it's waaaaay too one-sided, it needs something new to keep the pace with all the other classes
AND THE MOST IMPORTANT FOR ME OUTSIDE OF EVERYTHING SAID ABOVE:
- Revamped equipment: AVOID spd+ gear like the plague unless it's balanced accordingly (MT's butter knife), mix up status inmunities, elemental nullification/absorption/weakness and maybe innate abilities so they can be used even on the late game and the decision isn't just a bland "what give me more PA/MA or HP/MP"
#11
- Game Breaker
- Job: Regulator
- Posts: 2,015
17 March 2017 - 09:29 AM
This looks like an epic thread in the making. I will return (probably just to read and not contribute so much, but who knows)...
#12
- Challenger
- Job: Member
- Posts: 704
17 March 2017 - 11:21 AM
Hart-Hunt, on 16 March 2017 - 02:24 PM, said:
what would happen if 2002 Spiderman was released today? It'd be absolutely trash, because technology, and super hero movies directing and scripts have vastly improved. But at the time they did try their best to make a Spiderman movie that would be remembered. Bringing the analogy back to earth, if someone tried to make a good FFT mod and released a mod with the same problems 1.3 had today, then I'm sure we would just look the other way.
Fair enough!
ShadowCrimson, on 16 March 2017 - 04:33 PM, said:
<Lots of things that are true>
Hear! hear!
#13
- Novice
- Job: Member
- Posts: 26
18 March 2017 - 10:15 AM
My 2cents:
Why I play/love FFT 1.3:
Vanilla FFT was (and still is) my favorite video game. In my eyes, it is the Citizen Cane/War and Peace/Mona Lisa of video games. So a mod that retains the core of vanilla will always appeal to me intrinsically because of my love for the original. Thus, where 1.3 shines in my mind is when it is merely reworking items and abilities that never get used to make them valuable, nerfing things that are so good you always use them, and implementing scaling so you're always challenged. 1.3 is at it's best when it uses a light touch.
I am not saying that I don't like mods that completely rework the game and just use the engine. Those can be great, too, but they're something else; I measure them differently. I judge any "1.X" mod by how it improves/tweaks the game that I already love. I judge mods that totally overhaul the game on a separate scale and with a fresh start.
Thus, if someone was going to make 1.4, I'd suggest they refrain from doing things like adding in classes or getting rid of characters from vanilla. If someone wanted to use the engine and make something new, that's awesome, but in that case they might as well throw out most of vanilla and try to leave a mark on the community doing something original, like Monster Tactics.
What I'm basically saying is that a large part of 1.3's value to me is that it is faithful to the original. Push too far away from that, and you risk losing the mod's greatest asset without really gaining much in exchange.
How FFT 1.3 frustrates me (in a bad, not-fun way):
- Things that lead to boring character builds, including: the outsized importance of speed, the inappropriate frequency of maintenance, status-immunity, immortality, etc. Also the importance of having most of your team be able to rez.
- Scaling being overdone to the point where it creates two unavoidable metas: never gain any XP ever, or rush max-level in Mandalia. The whole get-JP-but-not-XP, milk meltdown/hamedo mini-game is disgusting; it almost ruins the mod for me.
The thing is that I don't see any really easy ways to fix these and keep things as hard as they are now. I can see why all of these problems evolved in response to advantage-exploitation by players, too.
I've come to believe that there is only so hard that a game can be and still have lots of options and not feel like it's just cheating. It may be that 1.3 has just gone too far down that road already. I don't really want the game to be easier for the sake of being easy, in fact, I'd like it to be harder if that difficulty could be "fun difficulty". But it looks like to me that all the things people complain about in 1.3 are things done to push the difficulty just that little bit further, and you can't have it both ways. The only way to solve some of these problems might be to back off the challenge just a little bit. People can always handicap themselves by playing with a small team or other limits.
TLDR:
If I was going to make 1.4, my mission statement would be:
- Remain faithful to Vanilla FFT. If changes are made, they should be in the spirit of the original. E.g. if you add a character, it should be Olan, Balmafula, Gafgarion, Miluda... not Marche or Gatsu. If you change archer to make it not useless, it should still be about shooting arrows at things.
- Never discourage variety. This means nerfing auto-picks and buffing/reworking never-picks, but it doesn't mean making everything identical. It also means balancing the stats so focusing on any stat is viable, and neglecting any stat has a cost. If a status is too powerful, don't make everyone immune to it, make it wear off more quickly.
- Scaling should keep up with you as you unlock abilities and get better stats, not discourage you from ever gaining XP. This might be the hardest thing to balance perfectly, but I don't think it would be hard to improve on what we have now.
Why I play/love FFT 1.3:
Vanilla FFT was (and still is) my favorite video game. In my eyes, it is the Citizen Cane/War and Peace/Mona Lisa of video games. So a mod that retains the core of vanilla will always appeal to me intrinsically because of my love for the original. Thus, where 1.3 shines in my mind is when it is merely reworking items and abilities that never get used to make them valuable, nerfing things that are so good you always use them, and implementing scaling so you're always challenged. 1.3 is at it's best when it uses a light touch.
I am not saying that I don't like mods that completely rework the game and just use the engine. Those can be great, too, but they're something else; I measure them differently. I judge any "1.X" mod by how it improves/tweaks the game that I already love. I judge mods that totally overhaul the game on a separate scale and with a fresh start.
Thus, if someone was going to make 1.4, I'd suggest they refrain from doing things like adding in classes or getting rid of characters from vanilla. If someone wanted to use the engine and make something new, that's awesome, but in that case they might as well throw out most of vanilla and try to leave a mark on the community doing something original, like Monster Tactics.
What I'm basically saying is that a large part of 1.3's value to me is that it is faithful to the original. Push too far away from that, and you risk losing the mod's greatest asset without really gaining much in exchange.
How FFT 1.3 frustrates me (in a bad, not-fun way):
- Things that lead to boring character builds, including: the outsized importance of speed, the inappropriate frequency of maintenance, status-immunity, immortality, etc. Also the importance of having most of your team be able to rez.
- Scaling being overdone to the point where it creates two unavoidable metas: never gain any XP ever, or rush max-level in Mandalia. The whole get-JP-but-not-XP, milk meltdown/hamedo mini-game is disgusting; it almost ruins the mod for me.
The thing is that I don't see any really easy ways to fix these and keep things as hard as they are now. I can see why all of these problems evolved in response to advantage-exploitation by players, too.
I've come to believe that there is only so hard that a game can be and still have lots of options and not feel like it's just cheating. It may be that 1.3 has just gone too far down that road already. I don't really want the game to be easier for the sake of being easy, in fact, I'd like it to be harder if that difficulty could be "fun difficulty". But it looks like to me that all the things people complain about in 1.3 are things done to push the difficulty just that little bit further, and you can't have it both ways. The only way to solve some of these problems might be to back off the challenge just a little bit. People can always handicap themselves by playing with a small team or other limits.
TLDR:
If I was going to make 1.4, my mission statement would be:
- Remain faithful to Vanilla FFT. If changes are made, they should be in the spirit of the original. E.g. if you add a character, it should be Olan, Balmafula, Gafgarion, Miluda... not Marche or Gatsu. If you change archer to make it not useless, it should still be about shooting arrows at things.
- Never discourage variety. This means nerfing auto-picks and buffing/reworking never-picks, but it doesn't mean making everything identical. It also means balancing the stats so focusing on any stat is viable, and neglecting any stat has a cost. If a status is too powerful, don't make everyone immune to it, make it wear off more quickly.
- Scaling should keep up with you as you unlock abilities and get better stats, not discourage you from ever gaining XP. This might be the hardest thing to balance perfectly, but I don't think it would be hard to improve on what we have now.
#14
- Dicklord, Lord of Dicks
- Job: Regulator
- Posts: 5,398
18 March 2017 - 01:35 PM
This is a shitload of text to read through, so forgive me if I have nfi what I'm talking about.
But, you're seriously scrapping Rafa and Malak? They're kind of important to the story. The goal of 1.3 was always to keep the game intact and as close to Matsuno's vision as possible while enhancing it. You might as well just call it something else and make it your own mod.
Your other ideas seem fine in theory, but they're all very vague and open-ended so I have no way to evaluate them.
But, you're seriously scrapping Rafa and Malak? They're kind of important to the story. The goal of 1.3 was always to keep the game intact and as close to Matsuno's vision as possible while enhancing it. You might as well just call it something else and make it your own mod.
Your other ideas seem fine in theory, but they're all very vague and open-ended so I have no way to evaluate them.
#15
- The Handburglar
- Job: Administrator
- Posts: 8,862
18 March 2017 - 01:52 PM
Emmy, on 16 March 2017 - 08:13 AM, said:
Words
I remember when ye were such a wee li'l modder. Brings a tear to me eye.
#16
- Novice
- Job: Member
- Posts: 6
18 March 2017 - 07:58 PM
Thank you good Sir! I'll probably keep a close eye on this thread to see where it goes, and maybe put my two cents in every now and then.
Since we all agree that 1.3 definitely needs to be rebalanced, there are definitely some other interesting ideas you can insert as well.
All of this is extremely vague. If you could add on to some of these ideas, then we can probably throw in our own, but none the less, I will try.
- By Mystery Enemies, I'm assuming you mean special battles like the Warlock fight in Bariaus Hill. I thought they where a nice little touch, but he drops nothing, and raises my Level. So, after spending hours of spamming Geomancy (Because fuck Golem) on him expecting to get something cool, like a Faith Rod or a Summon Gun, you can imagine how pissed I was when I reset.
- I agree that Worker 8 could use some love. Hes suppose to be a giant, tanky, steel golem, not a god damn gundam. With that being said, he could definitely use a movement ability. Fly seems over excessive, Move +2 is more then helpful.
- Scraping Rafa and Malak? They are kinda important to the story. Marche is pretty meh. As far as I'm concerned, he was just put in for the hell of it. I personally never used him, I stole all of his gear and made him warm up the bench for my other units.
- Monsters could also use a buff. I've never bothered with Monsters (Even in Vanilla, I avoid them like the plague). And I hate the Idea of giving up one of my support abilities just to use another unit at "Full Power". I'm all for this change.
I skipped out on Item/Class/Character ideas because
1. Its late (11:22 pm EST) and I'm extremely tired.
2. I'm sure I'll write a whole book worth of Ideas later if I had the time.
Anyway, You have definitely caught my fancy, and I'm extremely curious as to where this goes.
Hart-Hunt, on 16 March 2017 - 05:20 PM, said:
Love seeing a lurker stepping in just to contribute and give support. Welcome to the forums, good sir!
Since we all agree that 1.3 definitely needs to be rebalanced, there are definitely some other interesting ideas you can insert as well.
Ansehelm, on 15 March 2017 - 09:50 PM, said:
-Consolidate several similar weapons/armor/items/ and create new items
-Add several all-new allies and mystery enemies
-Buff Orlandu
-Scrap Rafa, Malak, and Marche for other characters...
-Buff non-endgame Shrine Knights
-Add new unique classes
-Give Worker 8 fly. Or +2 move, not sure which yet
-Buff monsters by making their special skills always available
-Add several all-new allies and mystery enemies
-Buff Orlandu
-Scrap Rafa, Malak, and Marche for other characters...
-Buff non-endgame Shrine Knights
-Add new unique classes
-Give Worker 8 fly. Or +2 move, not sure which yet
-Buff monsters by making their special skills always available
All of this is extremely vague. If you could add on to some of these ideas, then we can probably throw in our own, but none the less, I will try.
- By Mystery Enemies, I'm assuming you mean special battles like the Warlock fight in Bariaus Hill. I thought they where a nice little touch, but he drops nothing, and raises my Level. So, after spending hours of spamming Geomancy (Because fuck Golem) on him expecting to get something cool, like a Faith Rod or a Summon Gun, you can imagine how pissed I was when I reset.
- I agree that Worker 8 could use some love. Hes suppose to be a giant, tanky, steel golem, not a god damn gundam. With that being said, he could definitely use a movement ability. Fly seems over excessive, Move +2 is more then helpful.
- Scraping Rafa and Malak? They are kinda important to the story. Marche is pretty meh. As far as I'm concerned, he was just put in for the hell of it. I personally never used him, I stole all of his gear and made him warm up the bench for my other units.
- Monsters could also use a buff. I've never bothered with Monsters (Even in Vanilla, I avoid them like the plague). And I hate the Idea of giving up one of my support abilities just to use another unit at "Full Power". I'm all for this change.
I skipped out on Item/Class/Character ideas because
1. Its late (11:22 pm EST) and I'm extremely tired.
2. I'm sure I'll write a whole book worth of Ideas later if I had the time.
Anyway, You have definitely caught my fancy, and I'm extremely curious as to where this goes.
#17
- Novice
- Job: Member
- Posts: 37
19 March 2017 - 12:19 PM
Once again I prove myself incredibly influential: http://www.insanedif...__1#entry145562
Anyway I would recommend taking out silly ass random bosses that can crystallize your people, no one thinks that is fun or cool; same goes for permanent Brave reductions. Anything that would cause a player to a do-over nearly 100% of the time should go.
Anyway I would recommend taking out silly ass random bosses that can crystallize your people, no one thinks that is fun or cool; same goes for permanent Brave reductions. Anything that would cause a player to a do-over nearly 100% of the time should go.
#18
- Impostonator
- Job: Regulator
- Posts: 3,847
19 March 2017 - 01:00 PM
As it is, I'd just wait for the OP to give feedback on our inputs, which are a lot. And some proof or even statement that he's going to at least try to make this a thing. A lot of projects start out this way, and vanish in thin air when the makers realize how much work it requires to actually make something decent.
#19
- Novice
- Job: Member
- Posts: 26
20 March 2017 - 11:03 PM
Hart-Hunt, on 19 March 2017 - 01:00 PM, said:
As it is, I'd just wait for the OP to give feedback on our inputs, which are a lot. And some proof or even statement that he's going to at least try to make this a thing. A lot of projects start out this way, and vanish in thin air when the makers realize how much work it requires to actually make something decent.
I don't know, this has been a pretty interesting conversation already, and it doesn't seem to be over. If OP never does anything, I'll still have found everyone's opinions to be fascinating. Also, Emmy posted!
#20
- Creator of Monster Tactics
- Job: Modder
- Posts: 987
21 March 2017 - 07:02 AM
The conversation doesn't need to be over. Hart was saying not to expect much out of this project until the OP posts some actual work being done on it (a playable demo, asm hacks, sprites, etc; as opposed to just theorycrafting), because it's common for people to just play around with Patcher/other tools and not end up making a serious project once they figure out how much work it is to do so.
Anyway, the main flaws with vanilla that are hard/impossible to do anything about mostly are issues of scale (particularly, low numbers). For example, speed needs to be below 10 or you get the cases where you either have no variety in spell CT or characters end up being faster than their own spells. But speed <6 ends up creating characters that are too slow for their own game and seem useless as a result. Also with Haste and Slow - nerfing these to give a lower bonus will end up having the effect of the statuses not being useful enough for the player to consider using, which is bad in an engine where status effects are one of the more interesting features.
Movement/range is another issue of a small scale. Hart has mentioned he'd like to see low move. While low move and low range will be more interesting than high move/range on smaller maps like the Windmill Shed; on larger maps like Zeklaus Desert and Airship Graveyard, you get far too many "dead" turns (where characters can't really do anything besides buff each other, and it takes too long to get to the enemy or for the enemy to get to you). Some of the maps have some pretty large design flaws overall (like Deep Dungeon End and Zalmo 2's map), where you'd have to either edit these maps significantly or abilities to never have a significant vertical if you really want the 3 move/no teleport or fly concept to work on these maps.
Since formulas have been mentioned, there are benefits and drawbacks to both having quadratic and linear globally.
Linear benefits: 1. Easier to mentally compute expected values as opposed to relying on the preview. 2. HP and stats of everything can be scaled smaller. 3. Additional multipliers (such as Compatibility and Elemental Strengthen) are less compounded. Drawbacks: 1. Abilities directly outclass each other quicker (main reason I decided not to use them). 2. You need to learn ASM for these because mine are all quadratic and few others have worked extensively with formula ASM.
Quadratic benefits: 1. Abilities retain similar usefulness for the whole game, so you can get rid of crap like Fire 1/2/3/4 in favor of things that have unique uses. 2. Extensive custom formulas have been made. 3. Abilities like Sing and Accumulate are more efficient, making it not take fucking forever if you want to use these strategies vs. a boss. Drawbacks: 1. If you have lots of multipliers due to custom formulas and support abilities, you may see players hitting 999.
Overall, the #1 selling point towards quadratic formulas is to create abilities that don't become outclassed as the game progresses, which far outweighs its drawbacks and the benefits to linear formulas in a game where characters have limited skills per set and the whole game has limited skills. This is important because it means you can give everything a unique use that retains usefulness as the game progresses, and therefore create a much larger variety in viable abilities. Most of my abilities follow the pattern of w * (w+y), where w = PA or MA. Several are more complex, such as CT Burst, which is (2 * MA(128 - CT)/128) * (MA + Y). This simplifies to 2MA^2 if Target CT = 0, and outpaces MA^2 at Target CT < 64.
a. Fixable if you want to allow the player to control all their guests. This means that you're not sitting around for an hour and praying that your guests do something useful between your turns, and you can actively target the units you want to in order to reduce sandbagging from the enemy side.
b. This is largely a result of scaling issues. When it's more efficient to win a battle through damage split or meatbone slash than it is to actually take actions, and this mechanic is repeated a lot throughout the game, there is a problem.
c. Even better than curing chicken (which is impossible without increasing brave due to hardcoding to the chicken status) or bringing brave effects back, how about designing a boss that is interesting and engaging in its place? If literally everyone, including the people who are obsessed with 1.3 otherwise, think that a boss isn't interesting to fight, usually that's a sign it needs to be redesigned.
These actually can be fixed relatively easily and result in a game which still has significant difficulty. Easiest way to fix these is to nerf ribbons/enemy immunities, uncheck immortal flag on 95% of what has them in 1.3, scale damage in a way that the player could actually use status effects on themselves other than reraise or death sentence, and overall design the game around status effects being important. The whole get jp but not xp, meltdown/hamedo mini-game has been entirely removed from Monster Tactics. XP/JP gain formulas have been changed to a per battle instead of a per action, making it literally impossible to reach the end without being lv 78 or so. Non-boss assassination battles past ch 1 have been removed entirely. And Hamedo has been nerfed indirectly. Due to characters having entire skillsets of abilities that retain usefulness for the whole game, the attack command looks like a worse option to the AI and enemies very infrequently attack directly unless they have 2 swords or no other options due to being silence, berserk, innocent.
Anyway, the main flaws with vanilla that are hard/impossible to do anything about mostly are issues of scale (particularly, low numbers). For example, speed needs to be below 10 or you get the cases where you either have no variety in spell CT or characters end up being faster than their own spells. But speed <6 ends up creating characters that are too slow for their own game and seem useless as a result. Also with Haste and Slow - nerfing these to give a lower bonus will end up having the effect of the statuses not being useful enough for the player to consider using, which is bad in an engine where status effects are one of the more interesting features.
Movement/range is another issue of a small scale. Hart has mentioned he'd like to see low move. While low move and low range will be more interesting than high move/range on smaller maps like the Windmill Shed; on larger maps like Zeklaus Desert and Airship Graveyard, you get far too many "dead" turns (where characters can't really do anything besides buff each other, and it takes too long to get to the enemy or for the enemy to get to you). Some of the maps have some pretty large design flaws overall (like Deep Dungeon End and Zalmo 2's map), where you'd have to either edit these maps significantly or abilities to never have a significant vertical if you really want the 3 move/no teleport or fly concept to work on these maps.
Since formulas have been mentioned, there are benefits and drawbacks to both having quadratic and linear globally.
Linear benefits: 1. Easier to mentally compute expected values as opposed to relying on the preview. 2. HP and stats of everything can be scaled smaller. 3. Additional multipliers (such as Compatibility and Elemental Strengthen) are less compounded. Drawbacks: 1. Abilities directly outclass each other quicker (main reason I decided not to use them). 2. You need to learn ASM for these because mine are all quadratic and few others have worked extensively with formula ASM.
Quadratic benefits: 1. Abilities retain similar usefulness for the whole game, so you can get rid of crap like Fire 1/2/3/4 in favor of things that have unique uses. 2. Extensive custom formulas have been made. 3. Abilities like Sing and Accumulate are more efficient, making it not take fucking forever if you want to use these strategies vs. a boss. Drawbacks: 1. If you have lots of multipliers due to custom formulas and support abilities, you may see players hitting 999.
Overall, the #1 selling point towards quadratic formulas is to create abilities that don't become outclassed as the game progresses, which far outweighs its drawbacks and the benefits to linear formulas in a game where characters have limited skills per set and the whole game has limited skills. This is important because it means you can give everything a unique use that retains usefulness as the game progresses, and therefore create a much larger variety in viable abilities. Most of my abilities follow the pattern of w * (w+y), where w = PA or MA. Several are more complex, such as CT Burst, which is (2 * MA(128 - CT)/128) * (MA + Y). This simplifies to 2MA^2 if Target CT = 0, and outpaces MA^2 at Target CT < 64.
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- A lot of the Story Battles are just laughable because of all the bullshit that's in it and needs to be rebalanced. Prime Suspects:
a. The First Battle. The First Battle is made to set the tone for the rest of the game. It's suppose to draw your players in. And its even more important for Rom Hacks/Mods. You need it to show case all of the unique changes, other wise they are just going to play the original. So, the first battle is against the RNG, where you have a Knight with a Parrying Sword, Move HP, and runs around the map sand bagging people. Ramza can't kill him 1v1 because of his Move HP, so that leaves it up to the AI to help out, and we all know how stupid the AI is. This doesn't make the game challenging or fun. It makes it repetitive and boring. This first battle shouldn't take an Hour to Complete.
b. Elmdor. He can teleport right into the middle of your whole party and wipe you before you get a single turn. Elmdor is to damn fast and you are unable to spread your party out to deal with Chirijiraden. Being able to deal 500 DMG to your whole party before you can even move isn't good game design. It doesn't help that the Assassins have 100% Petrify to anyone that doesn't have a Ribbon on.
c. Ultima. Her stats are through the roof. She has no charge time so can spam Angelic/All-Ultima/Grand Cross consistently, and she can us Terror locking out your party members from doing anything for roughly 10 Turns and no Brave effects to remove it. I suggest making an Item that Cures Chicken or bring in Brave Effects back.
a. The First Battle. The First Battle is made to set the tone for the rest of the game. It's suppose to draw your players in. And its even more important for Rom Hacks/Mods. You need it to show case all of the unique changes, other wise they are just going to play the original. So, the first battle is against the RNG, where you have a Knight with a Parrying Sword, Move HP, and runs around the map sand bagging people. Ramza can't kill him 1v1 because of his Move HP, so that leaves it up to the AI to help out, and we all know how stupid the AI is. This doesn't make the game challenging or fun. It makes it repetitive and boring. This first battle shouldn't take an Hour to Complete.
b. Elmdor. He can teleport right into the middle of your whole party and wipe you before you get a single turn. Elmdor is to damn fast and you are unable to spread your party out to deal with Chirijiraden. Being able to deal 500 DMG to your whole party before you can even move isn't good game design. It doesn't help that the Assassins have 100% Petrify to anyone that doesn't have a Ribbon on.
c. Ultima. Her stats are through the roof. She has no charge time so can spam Angelic/All-Ultima/Grand Cross consistently, and she can us Terror locking out your party members from doing anything for roughly 10 Turns and no Brave effects to remove it. I suggest making an Item that Cures Chicken or bring in Brave Effects back.
a. Fixable if you want to allow the player to control all their guests. This means that you're not sitting around for an hour and praying that your guests do something useful between your turns, and you can actively target the units you want to in order to reduce sandbagging from the enemy side.
b. This is largely a result of scaling issues. When it's more efficient to win a battle through damage split or meatbone slash than it is to actually take actions, and this mechanic is repeated a lot throughout the game, there is a problem.
c. Even better than curing chicken (which is impossible without increasing brave due to hardcoding to the chicken status) or bringing brave effects back, how about designing a boss that is interesting and engaging in its place? If literally everyone, including the people who are obsessed with 1.3 otherwise, think that a boss isn't interesting to fight, usually that's a sign it needs to be redesigned.
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- Things that lead to boring character builds, including: the outsized importance of speed, the inappropriate frequency of maintenance, status-immunity, immortality, etc. Also the importance of having most of your team be able to rez.
- Scaling being overdone to the point where it creates two unavoidable metas: never gain any XP ever, or rush max-level in Mandalia. The whole get-JP-but-not-XP, milk meltdown/hamedo mini-game is disgusting; it almost ruins the mod for me.
The thing is that I don't see any really easy ways to fix these and keep things as hard as they are now. I can see why all of these problems evolved in response to advantage-exploitation by players, too.
- Scaling being overdone to the point where it creates two unavoidable metas: never gain any XP ever, or rush max-level in Mandalia. The whole get-JP-but-not-XP, milk meltdown/hamedo mini-game is disgusting; it almost ruins the mod for me.
The thing is that I don't see any really easy ways to fix these and keep things as hard as they are now. I can see why all of these problems evolved in response to advantage-exploitation by players, too.
These actually can be fixed relatively easily and result in a game which still has significant difficulty. Easiest way to fix these is to nerf ribbons/enemy immunities, uncheck immortal flag on 95% of what has them in 1.3, scale damage in a way that the player could actually use status effects on themselves other than reraise or death sentence, and overall design the game around status effects being important. The whole get jp but not xp, meltdown/hamedo mini-game has been entirely removed from Monster Tactics. XP/JP gain formulas have been changed to a per battle instead of a per action, making it literally impossible to reach the end without being lv 78 or so. Non-boss assassination battles past ch 1 have been removed entirely. And Hamedo has been nerfed indirectly. Due to characters having entire skillsets of abilities that retain usefulness for the whole game, the attack command looks like a worse option to the AI and enemies very infrequently attack directly unless they have 2 swords or no other options due to being silence, berserk, innocent.
