Long time lurker. Beaten 1.3 once (Never desired to do Orbonne more than once or completely conquer DD though) and played around in it countless times over the years with mini challenge runs and such. I love 1.3—a lot; it's my favorite of the FFT mods because of how well it resonates with the original while being more challenging. My issue with the mod always comes up in chapter 4 where speed is king and I end up having to go with high speed, no-charge units wielding rare gear. I know that this may be a result of being less skilled than others, but in general I feel that the variety of plausible play-styles and solutions funnel into a simple speed and grind fest in the late game. I have been working on my own personal tweak of 1.3 trying to balance these speed-related issues with my novice modding skills.
I am open to all ideas and suggestions, but here are a few theories of my own that I'd like to hear some discussion on:
My initial thought is to just eliminate speed growths and just have a flat standard of speed. The idea would be to retain class speed modifications (because clearly Thieves should be faster than knights) and some speed buffing gear with clear disadvantages for customization purposes. Thoughts on what that flat speed standard should be or if this idea is even reasonable?
As far as CT alterations go, I have seen this idea debated in past threads, but figured I’d bring it up again: making a few more spells instant cast, but weaker and more JP costly, so that magic can have some late game relevance and flexibility without being more oppressive than it already is in the early game. It’s a dangerous line to walk, but I feel a balance could be found.
Mitigating speed
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#2
- Improbability Breaker
- Job: Regulator
- Posts: 1,581
20 March 2017 - 12:50 PM
I would direct you to Emmy's post: http://www.insanedif...post__p__146651
She tackled speed well in her MT mod.
She tackled speed well in her MT mod.
#3
- Creator of Monster Tactics
- Job: Modder
- Posts: 987
20 March 2017 - 12:57 PM
Copy/Paste from this thread: http://www.insanedif...lopment-thread/
It's not a matter of being "unskilled" - a lot of skilled players have had that exact same critique of 1.3.
Your idea to freeze speed is reasonable. I did it myself for Monster Tactics..gif)
From experience, flat speed 6-8 gives the best speed levels to allow for varied CT amounts. I wouldn't suggest having too much in terms of instant skills - part of what makes the FFT engine unique and great is the CT system.
The main reasons that magic is irrelevant late into the game:
1. Speed growth - Spells that are reasonable to cast at 6-8 speed become unreasonable to cast at 13-15 speed. At that point it's more efficient to use instant moves or spells with faster CT and OP formulas (like Meltdown). Solutions: Freeze speed, cap level, or alter the spell CT formula somehow.
2. Spell formulas - In vanilla (also 1.3), magic is linear and physical attacks are quadratic. Yet both stats grow at approximately the same rate and there's a few exceptions on both sides. This is a disaster for balance. Solution: Choose whether you want quadratic or linear formulas and stay married to your decision.
3. Status effects - Accuracy of status effects are a bit too low, and most of them become completely irrelevant when everything is immortal. Buffs are mostly irrelevant (except for reraise or innates from items) when enemies are frequently dealing enough damage to ohko through protect/shell. Solution: higher accuracy on most status effects, give enemy classes normal multipliers.
Quote
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).
It's not a matter of being "unskilled" - a lot of skilled players have had that exact same critique of 1.3.
Your idea to freeze speed is reasonable. I did it myself for Monster Tactics.
From experience, flat speed 6-8 gives the best speed levels to allow for varied CT amounts. I wouldn't suggest having too much in terms of instant skills - part of what makes the FFT engine unique and great is the CT system. The main reasons that magic is irrelevant late into the game:
1. Speed growth - Spells that are reasonable to cast at 6-8 speed become unreasonable to cast at 13-15 speed. At that point it's more efficient to use instant moves or spells with faster CT and OP formulas (like Meltdown). Solutions: Freeze speed, cap level, or alter the spell CT formula somehow.
2. Spell formulas - In vanilla (also 1.3), magic is linear and physical attacks are quadratic. Yet both stats grow at approximately the same rate and there's a few exceptions on both sides. This is a disaster for balance. Solution: Choose whether you want quadratic or linear formulas and stay married to your decision.
3. Status effects - Accuracy of status effects are a bit too low, and most of them become completely irrelevant when everything is immortal. Buffs are mostly irrelevant (except for reraise or innates from items) when enemies are frequently dealing enough damage to ohko through protect/shell. Solution: higher accuracy on most status effects, give enemy classes normal multipliers.
#4
- Impostonator
- Job: Regulator
- Posts: 3,847
20 March 2017 - 05:16 PM
I think growths should never be removed, because it's arguably one of the defining parts of FFT as a whole. MT did the static growths well, but I'm of the argument that only because that worked well in one project, that normal growths can't work well in a more vanilla spirited project such as 1.3.
The idea of having growths is that two characters won't ever be the same. My idea of balancing speed growths would be to make them so small, that you would only gain from 0-2 speed, from lvl 1 to max lvl, depending on the character and the job's multiplier. This would most likely only work well by capping the max lvl to sonething around 50, which is another change I'd to the engine.
From there on, other things come into place like a general decrease in speed, and so on.
The idea of having growths is that two characters won't ever be the same. My idea of balancing speed growths would be to make them so small, that you would only gain from 0-2 speed, from lvl 1 to max lvl, depending on the character and the job's multiplier. This would most likely only work well by capping the max lvl to sonething around 50, which is another change I'd to the engine.
From there on, other things come into place like a general decrease in speed, and so on.
#5
- Novice
- Job: Member
- Posts: 3
22 March 2017 - 10:21 AM
Emmy, on 20 March 2017 - 12:57 PM, said:
Copy/Paste from this thread: http://www.insanedif...lopment-thread/
It's not a matter of being "unskilled" - a lot of skilled players have had that exact same critique of 1.3.
Your idea to freeze speed is reasonable. I did it myself for Monster Tactics. From experience, flat speed 6-8 gives the best speed levels to allow for varied CT amounts. I wouldn't suggest having too much in terms of instant skills - part of what makes the FFT engine unique and great is the CT system.
The main reasons that magic is irrelevant late into the game:
1. Speed growth - Spells that are reasonable to cast at 6-8 speed become unreasonable to cast at 13-15 speed. At that point it's more efficient to use instant moves or spells with faster CT and OP formulas (like Meltdown). Solutions: Freeze speed, cap level, or alter the spell CT formula somehow.
2. Spell formulas - In vanilla (also 1.3), magic is linear and physical attacks are quadratic. Yet both stats grow at approximately the same rate and there's a few exceptions on both sides. This is a disaster for balance. Solution: Choose whether you want quadratic or linear formulas and stay married to your decision.
3. Status effects - Accuracy of status effects are a bit too low, and most of them become completely irrelevant when everything is immortal. Buffs are mostly irrelevant (except for reraise or innates from items) when enemies are frequently dealing enough damage to ohko through protect/shell. Solution: higher accuracy on most status effects, give enemy classes normal multipliers.
It's not a matter of being "unskilled" - a lot of skilled players have had that exact same critique of 1.3.
Your idea to freeze speed is reasonable. I did it myself for Monster Tactics.
From experience, flat speed 6-8 gives the best speed levels to allow for varied CT amounts. I wouldn't suggest having too much in terms of instant skills - part of what makes the FFT engine unique and great is the CT system. The main reasons that magic is irrelevant late into the game:
1. Speed growth - Spells that are reasonable to cast at 6-8 speed become unreasonable to cast at 13-15 speed. At that point it's more efficient to use instant moves or spells with faster CT and OP formulas (like Meltdown). Solutions: Freeze speed, cap level, or alter the spell CT formula somehow.
2. Spell formulas - In vanilla (also 1.3), magic is linear and physical attacks are quadratic. Yet both stats grow at approximately the same rate and there's a few exceptions on both sides. This is a disaster for balance. Solution: Choose whether you want quadratic or linear formulas and stay married to your decision.
3. Status effects - Accuracy of status effects are a bit too low, and most of them become completely irrelevant when everything is immortal. Buffs are mostly irrelevant (except for reraise or innates from items) when enemies are frequently dealing enough damage to ohko through protect/shell. Solution: higher accuracy on most status effects, give enemy classes normal multipliers.
Great feedback! Thank you! I never thought about the spell formulas' impact on balance before. Which of the two formula's did you favor?
I've thought on status effect magic a great deal, but wasn't sure how to balance them. I mean how much more accurate do you make them 5%? 10%? If they hit too consistently it makes some fights too easy, but then still do nothing against immortals. Buffs I think can safely be improved greatly though, because other than reraise, haste and (rarely) reflect I never used buffs much.
Hart-Hunt, on 20 March 2017 - 05:16 PM, said:
I think growths should never be removed, because it's arguably one of the defining parts of FFT as a whole. MT did the static growths well, but I'm of the argument that only because that worked well in one project, that normal growths can't work well in a more vanilla spirited project such as 1.3.
The idea of having growths is that two characters won't ever be the same. My idea of balancing speed growths would be to make them so small, that you would only gain from 0-2 speed, from lvl 1 to max lvl, depending on the character and the job's multiplier. This would most likely only work well by capping the max lvl to sonething around 50, which is another change I'd to the engine.
From there on, other things come into place like a general decrease in speed, and so on.
The idea of having growths is that two characters won't ever be the same. My idea of balancing speed growths would be to make them so small, that you would only gain from 0-2 speed, from lvl 1 to max lvl, depending on the character and the job's multiplier. This would most likely only work well by capping the max lvl to sonething around 50, which is another change I'd to the engine.
From there on, other things come into place like a general decrease in speed, and so on.
I appreciate growths as an original aspect as well. I'm not sure I like speed as a growth though--it plays a greater role in the game than other stats do; but you make a fair point about making the growth minimal--I'd be willing to try it. Does anyone know what growth rate in a 50 level cap setup would result in 0-2 points of speed growth?
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