Kyrios

Final Fantasy IX - Work In Progress!

45 posts in this topic

56 minutes ago, Kjata said:

I think having party wide buffs that quickly expire is a better direction than having buffs last longer.

My only problem with this is that it kind of nullifies characters having self-buffs. I feel it removes a layer of depth.

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Just now, Kyrios said:

My only problem with this is that it kind of nullifies characters having self-buffs. I feel it removes a layer of depth.

Not when buffs dont really overlap, or if self buffs give more statuses or also heal hp.

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Just now, Kjata said:

Not when buffs dont really overlap, or if self buffs give more statuses or also heal hp.

It still makes them worth less by default, and it makes it way easier to fully buff up the entire party, which in a way diminishes the effect of stuff like Trance Aura and Mighty Guard, not to mention Rei's Wind.

In short, I feel like that causes more problems then it fixes. Raising spirit across the board at this point in time I feel like is a better solution.

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Mighty Guard does both, Trance Aura does both as well as reraise, and Reis's wind does more or less the same thing (gives a defensive buff to the party).

 

I guess I should state I am specifically talking about Protect/Shell, since my brain is stuck in disc 1 mode right now.

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The reason to not have all buffs be party-wide is related to character sinergy.

For these things you have to consider that you play with a full party, each one fulfilling different roles. Zidane, for example excels at speed, which makes him useful for quick reactions to different situations. When your party is pushed, he can quickly recover the team with item spamming.

Then you have to consider that in FFIX, you have two basic acts in a battle: You either deal damage to be closer to ending the battle, or you heal or buff or debuff the enemy, to gain tempo to theb do the former. Every action fits in one of those two categories. Considering that the White Mages in this game are not really White Mages, but Red Mages (because they can fulfill every role that is not tanking: Damage, Healing, Buff and Debuff to an extent), then having party-wide buffs offsets their role, makes them too powerful. The balance of a jack-of-all-trades cones when each action loses power. Also, garnet is crazy fast. Even more powerful.

My solution? Keep Dagger as is, lower her damage. Lower slightly her HP. Lower slightly her speed. Consolidate her as a Red Mage

Have Eiko be equipped with party wide spells. Protectga, Hastega, Shellga, and so on. Make her really squishy. Make her really slow. Consolidate her as a pure White Mage.

In conclusion, whenever you're discussing a certain character design in a RPG, you always have ti consider its role in a battle. Vanilla FFIX did it wrong, where they made two identical characters with the same role. Which is terrible if yoy consider the richest thing about FFIX is that it forces you to play with vastly different clases.

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Is it possible to allow the player to shift the class's focus?

E.g. your white mage has default access to the basic spells cure1, protect, etc.
And the play has then to somehow choose what he wants to primarily advance, e.g. via mutually exclusive items you can get either Cure2/3,Life OR Protectga, Hastega, Shellga.

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Just now, praetarius5018 said:

Is it possible to allow the player to shift the class's focus?

E.g. your white mage has default access to the basic spells cure1, protect, etc.
And the play has then to somehow choose what he wants to primarily advance, e.g. via mutually exclusive items you can get either Cure2/3,Life OR Protectga, Hastega, Shellga.

To be perfectly honest with you, I doubt it would go in that direction even if the option presented itself.

But at this point in time, no.

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15 hours ago, Kjata said:

I don't undestand what everyone's deal with the level up stat items is.

Because the late-game is incredibly easier if you avoid leveling up in the early-game. Or worse, if you level up mid/late-game with bad equipment, your stats will suck. This mean that every time you level you have to make sure you have the right items equipped. This doesn't really matter in vanilla but it creates a lot of variance in higher difficulty settings. 

Also on topic of buffs duration, it's indeed annoying but unless you force Active ATB it's a necessary evil. If you just buff the duration, you can still artificially increase it even more by going in the menus with the Wait ATB option. 

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i think interesting things can be done with stat bonuses. Turning them off completely seems like a waste. Changing them so there aren't bad items to level up in might be a better option.

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20 hours ago, Kyrios said:

Raising spirit across the board at this point in time I feel like is a better solution.

there's a problem: spirit makes Trance last longer

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I like the idea of standardizing stat bonuses.  Say, for instance, all body armor gives +2 bonus stats for levelup but that which stats are raised varies by type and even by specific equip.  That way, the player will have growth even if they don't understand how the system works.  Also, more knowledgeable players can customize which stats they want to favor.  Stack Magic boosts for higher Magic growth, more Strength for strength growth, etc...  I'm thinking +2 on weapons, +1 for headgear, +1 for arm gear, +3 for body armor, and +1 (at most) for the Add-on slot but specific numbers can be tweaked at will with an equipment editor.

This opens up the possibility of equipment designated for higher or lower growth as desired.  Just as an example, I'd have the Tin Armor gives 0 stat growth as a drawback to its strengths.

One consequence is that characters that join at higher levels will miss out on growth opportunity.  Though this could also be intentionally invoked to penalize early overleveling.  I'm more in favor of raising the base stats of the late joiners a bit to account for a higher join level.  (something Square didn't do)

Enemies can be scaled as desired to compensate for the expected higher stats.  No need to stick to 10 Def. + 10 Mag. Def. all the time, among other ideas.

Edited by Love Colored Magic

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And LCM comes in with an excellent post about why "turn off stat growths" is a bad suggestion. It's lazy, it's boring, and doesn't help anyone except people who need perfect stats.

Stuff like penalizing early leveling and ending up with characters with slightly below pat stats is very deep balance talk, and probably not something me or kyrios want to worry about at this stage. But it is something to keep in mind, I suppose.

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On 8/25/2017 at 8:45 AM, Hart-Hunt said:

The reason to not have all buffs be party-wide is related to character sinergy.

For these things you have to consider that you play with a full party, each one fulfilling different roles. Zidane, for example excels at speed, which makes him useful for quick reactions to different situations. When your party is pushed, he can quickly recover the team with item spamming.

Then you have to consider that in FFIX, you have two basic acts in a battle: You either deal damage to be closer to ending the battle, or you heal or buff or debuff the enemy, to gain tempo to theb do the former. Every action fits in one of those two categories. Considering that the White Mages in this game are not really White Mages, but Red Mages (because they can fulfill every role that is not tanking: Damage, Healing, Buff and Debuff to an extent), then having party-wide buffs offsets their role, makes them too powerful. The balance of a jack-of-all-trades cones when each action loses power. Also, garnet is crazy fast. Even more powerful.

My solution? Keep Dagger as is, lower her damage. Lower slightly her HP. Lower slightly her speed. Consolidate her as a Red Mage

Have Eiko be equipped with party wide spells. Protectga, Hastega, Shellga, and so on. Make her really squishy. Make her really slow. Consolidate her as a pure White Mage.

In conclusion, whenever you're discussing a certain character design in a RPG, you always have ti consider its role in a battle. Vanilla FFIX did it wrong, where they made two identical characters with the same role. Which is terrible if yoy consider the richest thing about FFIX is that it forces you to play with vastly different clases.

 

Sort of? 

I mean, there's nothing that says that Garnet and *has* to be using both Protect AoE and Shell AoE. You could do things to mix them up. For instance, in Chrono Trigger, not all of the buffs were placed on one person, instead, you could have Garnet have Protect and then have Eiko have Shell. This means that to get both protect and shell on a party you need both, OR a Quina that knew Mighty Guard. Which means that it becomes MP costs versus party effectiveness (if one of the girls falls, you can still have buffs etc). 

True, but there's also a third one that doesn't see much use as well, but you can still use it. Damage Negation. Stuff like having Cover on characters or using things like "Long Range" passives are some of them, which just flat out lower damage or negate damage from others -- IE, having a frontlining Freya be covered by Zidane with Protect Girls on while he's in the backrow. Garnet in general needs help more than Eiko, because Garnet's best attribute is something that is more of an exploit of the engine itself than her actually being good. IE, during trance, just have her stand there and do nothing so she keeps getting free damage, and can be ready to heal. Eiko's damage is pretty much always better than Garnet's at any given point, and her summons are better too on the account that Carbunkle has AoE buffs of potentially 3 of Garnet's moves (you can't use all of them in combat at once, but it still stands), and some she can't do like Haste ever, and she doesn't get Holy or anything useful outside of the basic skills. The issue with FFIX classes is that there's already a ton of overlap. 

The solution for Garnet is just to flat out fix her. Because realistically, the best thing you can do for her is get a ton of Leviathan stones and pump at 9999 damage with it. Screw ark, screw Bahamut. It's all about Leviathan for most of the game. Garnet's damage is already bad. The only person she consistently out damages is... Quina, who is a utility monster and still has cheap things like Auto-Life -> Limit Glove or Frog Drop. And by the end game, healing isn't even *that* much of a boon because the animations are so slow that the best form of healing is literally auto-haste + auto-regen. Heck, I'd go so far as to make some of Garnet's summons function off of physical attacks so she can have an excuse to actually be more versatile. Change up enemy stats with some having really good resistance to magic or physical attacks, and Garnet could be a true Jack-of-All trades. Maybe give her access to Knives early game, and then eventually swords for Disc 3 so she can either be some sort of strange Physical unit with healing spells and AoE physical elemental attacks -- a property NO ONE has in the game in Vanilla. At least then, there'd be something to differentiate her a bit more with that. Plus, if you did keep stat growth on weapons, it'd at least have good potential for making Garnet one of the more interesting "growth" characters in that regard.  

Garnet and Eiko aren't supposed to be the same role sadly. Garnet just sucks because they didn't do things very well and is a prime demonstration that more abilities doesn't make you better. 

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Me and Kyrios are planning to have a pow-wow tomorrow and hammer out what the characters should look like. We would appreciate any suggestions or input you for the characters beforehand.

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Would this be for a PSX ISO or the steam version?

I believe reworking trance mechanics to remove the frustration of triggering it in the last turn of a random battle would be for the best.

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They said it'll be the Steam version.

For my own mod, I plan to make the following change about Trance. See if you want to use the same kind or if it gives you an idea:

I'll give Zidane a skill that can bring any single ally to trance provided that its trance gauge is already 50% filled. That way, you can choose the timing of trance most of the time while still having to fulfill some "stack the attacks on yourself" condition beforehand (and not being able to abuse trance transformation). I would probably give that skill as a reward for winning the Hunt with Zidane (and on a weapon in case you miss it). Since Zidane is quite always in the party, except in the Desert Palace and possibly in Memoria, it's enough for him to have a skill in order to change the trance mechanics.

Edited by Tirlititi

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while I don't have any idea how I would go about doing such a thing, the way I'd like to handle trance would be instead if the gauge emptying totally at the end of a battle it would empty by half. So if you got a trance at the very end and never even used it, then you would still have half a bar.

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On 8/29/2017 at 0:15 AM, Kjata said:

while I don't have any idea how I would go about doing such a thing, the way I'd like to handle trance would be instead if the gauge emptying totally at the end of a battle it would empty by half. So if you got a trance at the very end and never even used it, then you would still have half a bar.

Instead of doing that, perhaps it might actually be easier to use that as "High Tide" As it stands, High Tide in and of itself wasn't particularly great in the original. Just because you wouldn't have to make it a generalized mechanic and instead a special passive that already does Trance manipulation. 

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I suggest modifying the VIRUS status. I can understand if you're KOed or petrified, but to get no EXPs and APs cause I feel sick? That's absurd.

It also nullifies EVASION wich actually makes sense, you are sick you feel heavy therefore can't dodge.

Instead of no exp/ap, it could work as the MP version of poison, cause being sick drains your energy. What do you think?

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