Insane Difficulty: What modifications would you make to the mod? - Insane Difficulty

Howdy y'all,
Finished this mod a few weeks ago, and I though I'd make a few special modifications myself.
But first I'd like to solicit your opinions. What are some ideas you all would like to see in a new FFT 1.3 (ID will be used as a base mod, rather than starting from scratch)?

The basic idea of the mod is to add new content
Here are my ideas so far:
-Buff Orlandu by giving him back all his swordskills. No other changes to him
-I never use Malak/Rafa. I may replace them with male/female Onion Knights or Dark Knights (changing Malak into Hitoshi)
-Add battles, including one with King Delita (gimmicky? yes. Fun? Yes), and one with multiple undead (and previously defeated) Zodiac bosses
-Take the immortal flag off a lot of units in randoms (while maintaining immunity to invite). Too many all-immortal battles get boring.
-Turn Rad into a new unit, the dragon knight, with dragon and hydra skills, and a couple swordskills (careful not to make him a Reis clone)
-Add enemies from other mods, like werewolves.
-Create a new boss goblin class that has all the punch-art skills and can buff other gobs.
-Create a new boss tonberry class that can equip weapons and use swordskills (plus vampiric gaze)
-Give all monsters their final skill without the need for a monster skill human.
-Probably replace Marche - I never use him. Someone else with similar stats/skills could be made.

But enough about me. What do you think of these ideas, and what others do you have? Whether it's that one character you've dreamed of adding to FFT, or changes to make it more difficult and fun, all ideas are welcome.

If you want to get into modding, definitely start with vanilla as a base. Keep in mind too, that the further you're willing to stray from vanilla's design, the more creative you can get both with fixing vanilla's issues and with adding your own ideas. And if more content is what you desire, you can literally quadruple content with the eventing/asm knowlege to do so.

I'd honestly start with Vanilla. That way you can make changes and better see what happens.

I'm entertaining the idea of using vanilla, but I would honestly re-create most of the 1.3 changes such that it might not be worth it - I've already implemented a few of these changes (male and female dark and onion knights, dragon knight) in the 1.3 mod; the hardest part remaining is the text since FFtactext doesn't work on patched ISOs, but I can hex my way around that. To reiterate, my purpose is more to make a few tweaks to the existing 1.3 and add some content, rather than start from scratch and create a new mod. So again, I'm open to it, but currently leaning against it.

However, I'd like to steer this discussion more towards ideas and things that y'all think would make the game interesting and appropriately difficult. Obviously I have some ideas, but I need yours as well. What do you think about these ideas, and what are some of your own?

Ok, these are my suggestions:

- Gave monsters some love: Grant some status inmunities (two or three) per monster family and put 5-6 skills on them (one of them would be their monster skill at a high MP cost and slow charge for balance)

- Limited money: I laugh my ass out of the fact that at the end of CH1, I can already buy 50-60 potions and abuse the hell out of auto potion for all it's worthy. This also make go shopping a little more interesting: Should I buy that awesome armor/axe or expend some money on healing items?

- Remove random encounters by passing around the area: those are cancer when you don't need them

- Remake boss battles so they last 30 minutes at max, even with heavy bad-RNG in mind and add some options to deal with them rather than a damage race

- Rather than remove Marche, remove the soldier office: put fixed br/fa to the starters and make it so extra battles grants you party members with unique skill-sets as squires

- Controlable NPC........PLEASE MAKE IT HAPPEN!!!!

and that's all I have for now

Ah, now that's more like it.

Quote

I like the status immunities idea, and will implement it. I'm not sure if 5-6 skills is possible for monsters, but I'll look at it. I might give them another innate, and I've always thought that tonberries could use +1 move.

Quote

Another good idea. I will probably implement this if it's not too involved.

Quote

Easily done with an ASM hack, I believe

Quote

I'm all about making things more interesting, but I don't anticipate making any bosses/enemies easier, at least for my purposes.

Quote

A cool idea. It may beyond what I decide is the scope of my modifications, but I'll think about it.

Quote

Not a bad idea, although I would probably limit it to battles where the NPCs routinely goof things up (e.g. Alma). I like the idea of having an ally that I don't have to manage (e.g. Delita at Zirekile).

So what I'm thinking I could do is make an initial mod that implements the majority of player suggestions, and then make final touches for myself. But to justify that, I need more ideas from more people. Keep 'em coming. Also feel free to share your thoughts on the changes I've proposed.

You actually can give real skillsets to monsters! Just change the skillset the class uses to an unused set. To remove the glitchy job wheel that appears when you do this, use this hack:



Byblos/Apanda, the Demons, Holy Dragon, and Steel Giant classes all work as monster classes with actual skillsets. You can even attach a 2nd skillset, and additional r/s/m to monsters with actual skillsets via the entd. A monster like this can join via Invite or "join after event" and the new skills will remain fully functional! This means that whatever you give it as innates apply in addition to the new abilities you attach to them.

A monster with additional actual skills looks something like this:



Keep in mind if you give monsters multiple reaction abilities, that some might not be compatible with each other. The vanilla code divides them into priority groups, and will check priority 0 in the pre-attack phase, and groups 1-3 in the attack phase. For each grouping, it'll check if a unit has one of the abilities in the list, and ignore the rest of that list.

So I've gotten to work on this already: Here is a graphic for the Tonberry king, but I'm debating which one to use. I kind of like the original dark green skin, but I'd like a second (and third and forth) opinion


And more ideas...

I'm also working on a 4th goblin, I'll probably call it the Dark Goblin or something. Basically a highly intelligent goblin that is able to equip human gear (except weapons) for speed and other boosts, and has various punch art and steal skills

I honestly prefer the darker skin for the tonberry. Without it, it just starts to look a little weird, it took me a second to actually determine what on earth that thing was.

As for my suggestions?

Lower speed all around.

Yeah, I know people like knives to have some niche, but the fact of the matter is that knives aren't supposed to be a good weapon. More than half of the time, I use knives for the Speed + 1 instead of as an actual weapon. Carbani Armor is without a doubt the best armor all around because of its speed + 1, and Flash hats are THE hat to use in Ch.4 on the account that they don't provide the shitty hp that is a thief hat (and even then, in the later game THIS doesn't matter either). Unless you're doing something with say... Twist Headbands, I can't think of many reasons to use other hats. Instead, if you must keep the idea of knives having buffs, I'd say spread that nonsense around, have some knives do other things such as the Mage Masher -- as this knife actually has some use more than other knives because of its unique effect. In general, all of the enemies in the game need to have their speed lowered, magic is almost complete and utter shit in the end game without short charge and/or a faith rod. That's unacceptable. This was a problem in the original and it's worse here. This would also stop the need to even HAVE enemies that have things like Short/No Charge as a passive necessarily or constantly have it as their equipped support and allows for a more unique dynamic on the enemies the player fights.

Give Mustadio back his old multiplier to make him a bit above average in speed AND give him back the breaks that he had from earlier versions. In the earlier ones he had things like Power Break, Mind Break, and Magic Break. Since Knight no longer has it, you may as well give it to him. Heck, if you can, give him a healing move that scales with PA or something to make him more viable as well. He has nothing to do on most bosses with his lame damage, average speed multiplier and lackluster damage. I'd also let him equip crossbows as well in his base class.

If you're struggling around the notion of invite, I'd honestly just remove it from the game, or better yet, make it Ramza only by putting it on his moveset. It can be easily justified as the leader is the only one that has the right to invite. Plus, you could say it's a loose reference to Tactics Ogre: Let us Cling Together SNES where only Denim could recruit.

If anything, I'd eat Marche and give the moveset to Rad, Lavian or Alicia. As it stands, these generics are better than their original counterparts, but are by no means good.

Quote

What he means is that they don't necessarily need to be easier per say, but they don't need to be a slog where you're pelting the boss for several minutes after you've established some form of rhythm with the boss. A trend that seems to happen with a good deal of ??? flagged enemies.

In general? Tone down a lot of the multipliers and damage. The formulas at base are way too shitty to up the multipliers on the classes like they are in the original 1.3 lower that ish down.

I would change the magic cannon. magic cannon will do spell like all unknown spells like dark matter or bio 3 all bio spells. make available all magic in the game to characters.
characters with innate abilities must show all innate skills.

Sincerely,

HellKnight

HellKnight, on 25 October 2016 - 03:57 PM, said:

You're being your usual, odd-ball self, I see.

HellKnight, on 25 October 2016 - 03:57 PM, said:

.................

eh, better put some more ideas since I'm here:

- Something that I liked about Call of power it's his armor system that works like the weapon triangle in the fire emblem franchise: Swords are effective against characters wearing robes and crossbows/bows are effective against characters wearing armor. The point? This system can be added so certain classes are effective against others and even better, the "equip" tree of skills would be more valuable

- Change some skills of both Oracle and Mediator so they're more specialized: It's kinda sad that the Oracle have like 2-3 spell worth using after CH2 and the Mediator its fucking useful all around (even finger guard/ low hitrates can't completely nullify his assets)

- Augestein said it but I'm repeat it again: REDUCE THE SPEED GROWTHS/MULTIPLIERS OR ELIMINATE SPEED+ EQUIPMENT PLEASE: A game designed around speedy characters/enemies really sucks for classes that depends on CT (poor,poor Wizard.......)

- Since you're thinking about adding extra battles: make it so they also grants you unique equipment: it's just fucking dumb to lose that precious Semtiemson/Save the queen/Genji Helm without any way of get it back (Of course, that means extra battle should be hard as balls to compensate that)

More later....................

Liking the ideas (not that I'll implement all of them, but it's looking good so far).

Legal question: So in order to legally have the ISO, one should own a PS1. So, is it legal to share a modded iso file between two users that own the PS1 (I would imagine that is should be, although hard to verify)? The reason is that I find it easier to mod the existing ISO than make a patch that implements all of 1.3s changes plus my own (and I don't know how to mod the existing 1.3 ppf file)

Also, I'll take the speed ideas into consideration. I don't really mind the current situation, although I would like to see other stats/abilities that could compete with speed in certain situations. One thought would be to make a tanky unit with high evasion, resistance, and attack, but low speed. Something like a vanilla Orlandu, but with below average speed - i.e. he doesn't get too many turns, but when he does, stuff gets wrecked (this would be a potential option for enemy bosses as well).

The way we do it around here is using patcher's option to create a ppf file, which is a patch. Alternately, you can create a ppf file using PPF-O-Matic.

So I got that, but the issue is that I want to make a mod with 1.3 as its base. I believe the 1.3 ppf is not edit-able, so I either have to make all edits on the patched iso or basically make 1.3 from scratch plus my edits as a ppf, which is a lot more work. Hence my interest in the legality of sharing if I do it the much easier way.

Ansehelm, on 26 October 2016 - 06:03 AM, said:

You don't need to do that. The patcher has an option to open up patched ISOs. Just open up 1.3 in the patcher, and then save an individual patch for usage from the 1.3 ISO. Then give us that patch. Just go in the PSX option and use "Open Patched ISO." Work on the game from there, and then after you're done for the day save from the "File" menu rather than using the "Patch ISO" option that's under "PSX." If you have access to 1.3's ISO, you can save an individual patch from there.

After which, just work from your newly made patch rather than the 1.3 ISO.

Only thing to keep in mind if you do that, is that ASM, spritework, and eventing does not carry over; and you'll have to do these changes manually. For example, here speed save is coded to do ct save, but you'll still see "speed save" in patcher and it'll still be speed save until you update the asm yourself.

Less focus on speed sounds great.

This is more of a narrative concern, but I was always under the impression Ch. 2 Ramza was supposed to be a Dark Knight. I'd change his job to a version centered around sacrificing his own health.

Also rebalance reactions so there's more to use than Hamedo, Damage Split, and Abandon.

Cool topic.

I've had some things I would like to see different, myself. Mostly about the vanilla game, but the mod has some of these things, too.

1. Samurai

One thing that has always annoyed me is that Samurai cannot equip the best katana in the game and also use its associated skill. The simple solution is to add in more Chirijadens. If this were to make Samurai too strong then one might consider changing them so that they can only use the skill from their equipped weapon and then giving them an innate equip change (that only applies to weapons.) The bottom line is that Samurai should be able to wield Chirijaden and Draw it Out at the same time.

2. Difficulty

One thing I dislike in games is the save feature unconsciously being incorporated into the games difficulty. Many games that are considered "too easy" are considered such by people who have played through them many times and who therefore know how to dodge the pitfalls present in the game. An example from FFT is the battle formation screen before a battle starts. The basic assumption is that you should place your tough guys in front and your weak guys in the back, but the reality is that you need to know the exact locations of the enemies and the exact movement restrictions from terrain and place your guys accordingly in terms of turns/movement/range. This is information you only have access to if you have already played that battle and reloaded or restarted the game. You could make it show enemy positions, maybe even enemy statistics (maybe with the exception of thieves and ninjas) or simply skip it altogether and have characters be placed optimally. The main thing here is that the difficulty should require tactical thinking and mastery of the mechanics - not knowledge of the encounters. This also means you could randomize story battles to some degree in terms of henchman jobs/skills/equipment, for example, to make it impossible to metagame your enemies and add extra replay value to the game/mod.

Those are the two most important ones I can think of right now.

Djarnis, on 07 November 2016 - 09:54 PM, said:

In the case of 1.3, you can steal multiple Chirijiradens in the Deep Dungeon. Which means you gotta work hard to earn those, and one might argue that it's too late in the game for it to matter, but putting it too early could mean a chance to break the mod even more than it has already been broken.

In vanilla's case, you can catch those from high-level ninjas if you're level 99. Getting up to 99 is (a drag) pretty easy at any point in the game, so you can do that and get multiple Chiris if you want.

Djarnis, on 07 November 2016 - 09:54 PM, said:

I agree. There are mods that actually offer a pretty good challenge and reward the player's knowledge of the mechanics as they go, and it's also not as punishing as 1.3 with enemy-only classes having ridiculous growths and insane damage output, plus Power Sources and whatnot (that's 1.3's gimmick, though. Anyone willing to play it and stick with it has to acknowledge this is something you're supposed to circumvent with the tools at your disposal). 1.3 kinda puts you on the spot to learn mechanics by force, while other mods teach your way through it. The original game does none of this; you hardly have the need to learn anything meaningful to beat the original game.

I also think that it'd be nice for the enemy formation to be visible when deploying units, kind of like what FFTA did. But I also think it's too much work (I don't even know if it's possible within FFT to do this) for something that's not really necessary. While I agree that it's great to build your team the best you can without knowing what you're going against, trying to play your best game possible, you could still lose. Which means you will inevitably have information on the battle to try again. One might even argue that, since it's not possible to change around your equipment and R/S/M in the formation screen, having visibility of the enemy formation from that point and realizing your team isn't up to it might also lead to you resetting with information of the enemy formation, so it's pretty much just a time saver. A time saver that's probably not worth the effort, considering I'd rather look at the enemy formation AND see its behavior/synergy, rather than just looking at it on a formation screen and deciding whether or not my team is up to the task.

It's probably a matter of adapting to circumstances, which will change from battle to battle inevitably. I'd think it's good for fights to be varied and difficult, which means you will have to see what's going on and form your team accordingly. The difficulty, to my concept, has to be high enough to make sure things like one-build-teams don't happen, or the possibility of doing everything on your first try doesn't happen either.

Also, randomizing, while interesting for some (see FFT's randomizer), might end up making the difficulty rather inconsistent, even within certain parameters. Some fights will just be easier or harder within your own save and when compared to someone else's run. I don't remember vanilla much, but 1.3 still has random zodiacs, certain equipment on enemy units can be random (having a sword instead of a knife, which means no +1 speed and could be significant), as well as the Brave and Faith of certain enemy units, but the feel of the fight remains the same. You probably mean this kind of randomization, so I'll just leave it at that.

Consider trying out the other FFT mod hosted here, you'll probably like it considering it helps you out with mechanics (while adding very interesting and new content to it), and is still rather challenging.