Insane Difficulty: 2.0 Idea? Maybe? - Insane Difficulty

I've been doing a 1.7 run through (surprised by some of the changes between the beta I played and 1.7.4!), and if you all are scrounging for some gameplay ideas, I might have some.

It occurred to me that there are a number of points in the game where you are technically asked to make "choices" that aren't exactly choices. Maybe make some of these decisions actually affect the gameplay a bit? This could possibly introduce optional challenges into the game that you could tweak to reward the player in some way---some potential points (WoB mostly right now, since that's as far as I am, and I forget some of the specifics of WoR events):

--Terra in the Returners hideout: You can technically access Lete River at any point, so why not give the player the option to flee solo? Perhaps with the rest of the party following normally?

--Celes and the coin flip: How does Celes even know about Egdar's coin if you haven't activated the Figaro flashback? Maybe make her lose the bet and change the IMF events if you haven't activated the flashback, but things proceed normally if you have.

--Terra Flashback after the IMF: Maudin is given a choice to leave Madonna at the very beginning----maybe change something as a result of this? (I haven't given this one much thought yet)

--Shadow: Make getting all his dreams do something? Not sure how popular an option this would be, but I always felt this "sidequest" was missing something, and it might be a nice touch if there was some sort of bit you could do to change the man's ending (Full Disclosure, I'm a Shadow fan)

I'm not even sure if any of this type of stuff is doable, but it was just a thought that occurred to me while I was playing lately. Feel free to take (or demolish) what you like from these ramblings of a fevered mind!

maybe a sidequest in which you play as clyde and baram?

Some kind of dream-accessing item that you could get from Cyan's WoR quest, and helping Shadow come to terms with...things...would be great IMO!

I only hope it's a real, doable thing!

One way or another, he still needs to die at the end. As a huge Shadow fan, that's the only sort of closure that really works for him I think.

Bauglir, on 02 September 2016 - 08:13 AM, said:

Well, it's not known what happened to Baram. For all we know he could have been used in magitek experiments, or left in some forgotten prison facility. I don't know anything about coding these things, but maybe you could scrap all the dream sequences for event space, and make a whole new dungeon and sidequest for him? Possibly make it part of his recruitment, rather than the bland "bet this blade".

he's refering to shadow who dies in the end sequence.

lurker level: ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

I know that with 2.0 that the 'game' will be expanded (doubled) coding wise.

I also know that the creators want to get rid of the Collesium.

I also know that some equipment people can't experiment with before deciding on which one they need, and have to read the guide and plan ahead to make the most use out of before deciding whether to get it or not (which is not new-player friendly in the least, and my first encounter with BNW was an acquaintance handing me a copy of the modded-game and forgetting to include the fucking guide. Fun times).

I also know that some items have been made utterly worthless and/or missable.

I also know that a few things mentioned in-story are not shown at all in-game (gunpowder being a nice, easy example of that).

I know that every time the colored Dragons show up I want to start making dick jokes due to how they're named (which while good as 'cheap' juvenile humor, honestly makes it a problem when I try and convince others not into that sort of thing that the mod is actually worth playing).

So, my ideas? Putting "Superhappyfunball" type items back in (maybe with varying levels of damage depending on what item is being used?) and then changing their names to things like "Grenades" and whathaveyou, giving people a chance to actually play with items like the Gem/Soul Box's before deciding on which one they want to use (because there will be new players who either didn't get the documents needed or don't know which ways will be best for them to play, aren't good at long-term planning with lots of math involved, or are too young or stupid to read things before jumping in), and making the "Colored Dragons" seem less like 'cheap' dick jokes .

That's easy, simple stuff there.

For more off the wall type ideas?

Why not make a set of items specifically for Umaro? Like taking the "Economizer" and making it like "Leo's Crest", where wearing it with his other 'set items' gives Umaro more 'options' he normally wouldn't have. Or making it possible for players to get that "Robot Kappa" in the auction house in the WoB, and maybe use as an actual playable character or summon? Or making an item set for all the players that make their desperation attacks much more likely?

The dragons are over halfway into the game. I feel like the player would have their mind made up on whether to play the hack or not by that point.

Also, you really don't need an external guide to play BNW. You may miss a couple of game mechanics without it, but it doesn't make the game unplayable by any stretch of the imagination. You definitely don't need to do any "long term planning with lots of math involved" in BNW. Some people here find that sort of theorycrafting fun (and that's why we see so much of it), but it's not a requirement.

Lockirby2, on 18 September 2016 - 10:23 AM, said:

As one of those who find such theorycrafting fun, I agree with this statement.

The dragons' names aren't cheap dick jokes. They're so named because enemy names are capped at ten characters, so something had to give. Giving them proper names is an option, but one I don't particularly like.

The Gem Box/Soul Box effects are pretty straightforward - no amount of messing with them is required. That said, the player has ample time to use the Gem Box before deciding whether to trade it in for the Soul Box.

As for the "off-the-wall" ideas, the only one I'll shoot down from a technical point of view are the Kappa ones. Adding an additional character has been attempted by more competent hackers than I, and to my knowledge they were quite unsuccessful. Adding an additional summon faces similar technical obstacles.

Were the vanilla Odin and Raiden summons the same? If not, there's an opportunity to just replace the Raiden summon with something new.

SuperHario, on 18 September 2016 - 04:53 PM, said:

Not with the space we have left, there isn't.

Lockirby2, on 18 September 2016 - 10:23 AM, said:

There's a common complaint that pops up now and then with this mod. Great fun battle system, horrible item names and cheap humor/references that aren't as funny as they could/should be. Regarding the dragons though, every time they show up I keep being reminded of that happiness & cyanide strip. Ahh, found it. "It's almost as if she wants the D".

Synchysi, on 18 September 2016 - 03:51 PM, said:

Yeah, but like I said, first play-through was without any guides (and before I started learning how to do in-depth coding of any sort beyond 'simple' stuff), and I expected to be able to trade the item back as I didn't know how well it would work. I didn't realize until after I had saved. Whoops.

Granted, not that big of an issue as I did know FF6 (even as I was figuring out the modded changes), but that it happened at all means it will happen to others. It wasn't a big deal, as I had played the game lots of times before, but I didn't know to expect that and it's insanely easy as hell to miss without the guide (this was back during the early parts of 1.6 incase you were wondering). :shrugs:

Synchysi, on 18 September 2016 - 03:51 PM, said:

It's know it's doable as I've done it myself (if barely, and my attempts that worked still glitch the fuck out of things because I fucked up the coding somewhere), but yes, it is a major pain in the ass, I do agree with that.

Synchysi, on 18 September 2016 - 03:51 PM, said:

Yeah, I know it's a length issue, and I do understand that, but it still comes across like cheap dick jokes. If there are to be dick jokes, they need to be played all the way to the shaft. I know you don't want to take a hose to it, but it won't be like dealing with a stuck knob, or dealing with a tool you can't get a proper handle on. It's not a hard-on problem to deal with at all.

No, see, my advice if you're keeping the "D's" instead of finding other names for them, you need to include some One-Eyed Giants, or references to a rising magical tower , or maybe even some purple-helmeted enemies or items here or there.

Robo Jesus, on 18 September 2016 - 05:11 PM, said:

Most modders make the game that they want to play. It's never going to match up entirely with what you (or the other people making these complaints) want, since everybody wants different things out of their mod. That doesn't mean not to listen to criticism, but this is mainly a matter of taste.

On that note, BTB has said elsewhere that he has no issue with people using BNW as a base for other mods. If somebody likes BNW's mechanics and hates the text changes, then nothing's stopping them from making the mod that they want instead (other than the effort it takes to make a mod, of course).

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BNW doesn't settle for "barely". There are major technical hurdles to overcome in doing it right and not making a complete hack-job out of it. Forgive me if I'm skeptical, but I'm not convinced that your solution would be workable for BNW unless you managed to solve everything on this list:

http://www.ff6hackin...=32409#pid32409

to be honest it didn't even occur to me that d could mean dick in this context.

Lockirby2, on 18 September 2016 - 08:17 PM, said:

Huh, cool. I know one modder who will have fun with that then. Thank you for that information.

Lockirby2, on 18 September 2016 - 08:17 PM, said:

The summon bit is easier to deal with than the character bit (oh gods are there issues there with trying to insert another character, and while I've found it easy enough to get them to show up in the character menu, actually being able to do anything beyond that tends to result in glitches beyond fuck, but the summon bit should be easy enough to do by copy/pasting code from the GBA version around, because a lot more summons were added there (and Enix was lazy as fuck with things). Easy to fuck up if done wrong, but should be easily doable with the coding space being doubled), yeah, but like I said, random ideas thrown at the wall. Wasn't meant to be taken all that seriously (and the fact that you focus so much attention on that when it was just a random idle comment makes me wonder about your priorities), because, you know, random ideas thrown at the wall. :shrugs:

seraph9888, on 18 September 2016 - 11:44 PM, said:

Then you haven't hung around a lot of people, online forums, or watched many movies or TV shows then, because those sort of penis references are used in a lot of places where they don't want to get in trouble for saying "Dick". Though the fact that people here don't seem to appreciate the "One-Eyed Giants, Rising Tower, or Purple-helmeted" jokes in the previous post is a bit sad.

Well, if we were to add a new summon, bear in mind that we did take Raiden out back and shoot him. So the easiest solution would be to just repurpose his slot.

Seems the most obvious new summon is Leviathan. He's a traditional summon curiously missing from FFVI (added to the Advance remake though).

Robo Jesus, on 19 September 2016 - 05:21 AM, said:

My post was no longer than yours. And I already knew about the post I linked, since it was discussed on FF6Hacking a couple weeks ago. I think you've been focusing more attention on this thread than I have.

You threw random ideas at the wall, and we rejected some of them because they are technically unrealistic. Then you claimed that you had already solved the technical issues (or made a very similar claim that is practically the same thing). So it's very natural to rebuke that by saying that we're pretty sure you didn't solve the technical issues, regardless of how serious your comments were.

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Even if this comment was originally talking about the summon idea, it wasn't very clear about that.

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BRB, calling the police to report a homicide.

thzfunnymzn, on 19 September 2016 - 07:50 AM, said:

isn't there already dialog that mentions leviathan? i think it's some random npc in the wor.

Robo Jesus, on 19 September 2016 - 05:21 AM, said:

yeah but one place where that sort of reference is not used is jrpg's (at least none that i have played). also they're dragons, not dicks.

edit:

Lockirby2, on 19 September 2016 - 09:01 AM, said:

fuckin narc.

This post has been edited by seraph9888: 19 September 2016 - 09:14 AM