What (in your opinion) are some low-hanging fruits for making FFT 1.3 better?

pogeymanz · December 4, 2017

I really love the concept of FFT 1.3, but it can be quite frustrating and I just don't have the time or patience for that. I only got part way into Chapter 3 before I stopped playing (due to personal life things) and then I never felt like picking it up again because of how horrible I heard Chapter 4 is (and Chapter 3 was plenty tough enough).

But after seeing some of the great things in FFT 1.3, I just can't imagine playing Vanilla again. With shitty Archers, uninteresting Wizards, enemies that never unlock interesting classes, etc.

So my main motivation here is to change FFT 1.3 to be easier (like the "Content" version). Probably significantly so. But I want to do that by primarily taking away "cheap" shit, like having enemies be 10 levels higher than you, while also outnumbering you and starting with better field position. I feel like that isn't so much to ask.

I only want to make really simple modifications to FFT 1.3.

But there's another aspect to what I want to do. I also want to remove all speed growth from the game. @Emmy has discussed the issues with speed in FFT and has argued for several interesting solutions/mitigations. I'm going for simple and easy here, so I think I'll just take away speed growth altogether. This should keep mage classes useful and interesting for the whole game. I'll obviously need to tweak a lot of things to find a sweet spot for balance.

This is all really just being done for myself. I want a game that I will enjoy playing. But I'm willing to hear what you guys think would be good changes to make things more fair/fun/easy. I'll be happy to post the results here if anyone is interested. So far the only things on my list are these:

Enemy levels = Party level for all battles (except some bosses/assassinations can stay higher)
Fewer enemies in some battles, especially randoms- I want randoms to be mostly not hard
No speed growth
Far fewer enemies with immortal flags - this shit's annoying when they're so good at reviving
Maybe some innate Gained JP-Up or just a general JP price lowering? Opinions?

I plan on only using the FFT Patcher Tools, etc, because I don't know anything about hacking PSX games. Unless someone can point me to some "Learn to hack FFT" guide(s).

Edited December 4, 2017 by pogeymanz

Emmy · December 4, 2017

If you're just looking for a vanilla-ish but relatively easy patch, these patches are popular:

http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=11789.0

http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7182.0

IMO the "1.3 content" changes are the exact opposite type of approach to making 1.3 less difficult than the kinds of changes that should be made. Some things that could be done that you haven't mentioned:

1. Fix the game's scaling and make status effects an important part of the game. The game needs to not punish playstyles other than hyper offense and needs to not invalidate 3/4 of the game's skillsets; especially since status effects are one of the major ways to make the game have more depth than "punch shit" that doesn't require asm to change. If enemies are doing less damage to you but are now capable of don't acting your whole team, for example, suddenly they become more dangerous in a more interesting way. This should go both ways - the player needs meaningful enemies that are vulnerable to status, and shouldn't be able to just null everything with a ribbon either.

2. XP/JP by battle, not by action. This is a change I made to MT that I can't go back to not having after making that change. No more beating yourself over the head for 4 hours to just be able to do something other than punch shit. No more worrying about taking too many actions to beat a battle, and thus overleveling. Of course if you make this change, you absolutely need to fix the game's scaling to not punish you for more levels, since your game will now have a minimum level for every battle. The way I did it was to guarantee that no ability costs more than one battle's worth of JP to get, and action abilities are mostly cheaper than r/s/m including a few free abilities. That way your character is never helpless and trying new strategies is not particularly costly.

3. 100% transparency. Why have an ability that can cancel charging/performing, that doesn't work on units flagged by class, with no intuitive reason for the unit to be immune to it? It's one thing to have an ability that is immortal immune, that the player knows is immortal immune. It's another thing to randomly flag things as immune to useful sounding skills. Why even *have* a skill like that, if you don't want the player to use it?

4. Make bosses other than Velius, Queklain, and Adramelk interesting. Assassinations are generally garbage compared to a well thought out ??? boss, and the other ??? bosses aren't as well thought out here. Zalera is a joke, Zalbag is a punching bag, and Altima is a slot machine. Some of the issues with assassinations can be fixed with scaling/status effects, while those ???'s (and others) need to just be rewritten to have something interesting about them (status effects, nice abilities, etc). Be creative!

pogeymanz · December 5, 2017

Thanks for replying, Emmy!

1 hour ago, Emmy said:

If you're just looking for a vanilla-ish but relatively easy patch, these patches are popular:

http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=11789.0

http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7182.0

These are too vanilla for me. In particular, I hate the vanilla Archer, Lancer, and Wizard skill sets, and these preserve those, making those classes still very uninteresting.

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IMO the "1.3 content" changes are the exact opposite type of approach to making 1.3 less difficult than the kinds of changes that should be made. Some things that could be done that you haven't mentioned:

Could you elaborate on the content changes that you think are the most egregious? I think the fixed story battle levels is a mistake, but what else?

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1. Fix the game's scaling and make status effects an important part of the game. The game needs to not punish playstyles other than hyper offense and needs to not invalidate 3/4 of the game's skillsets; especially since status effects are one of the major ways to make the game have more depth than "punch shit" that doesn't require asm to change. If enemies are doing less damage to you but are now capable of don't acting your whole team, for example, suddenly they become more dangerous in a more interesting way. This should go both ways - the player needs meaningful enemies that are vulnerable to status, and shouldn't be able to just null everything with a ribbon either.

I agree 100%. Can you give an example of how you might achieve this? Do you just nerf damage output from almost everything? Do you make statuses hit rate higher and/or make damage attacks miss more often?

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2. XP/JP by battle, not by action. This is a change I made to MT that I can't go back to not having after making that change. No more beating yourself over the head for 4 hours to just be able to do something other than punch shit. No more worrying about taking too many actions to beat a battle, and thus overleveling. Of course if you make this change, you absolutely need to fix the game's scaling to not punish you for more levels, since your game will now have a minimum level for every battle. The way I did it was to guarantee that no ability costs more than one battle's worth of JP to get, and action abilities are mostly cheaper than r/s/m including a few free abilities. That way your character is never helpless and trying new strategies is not particularly costly.

If the enemy levels are always fixed to your party's, then the only concern for overleveling is from them having equipment that you can't get. That's not _that_ bad, but I do like this idea. The only thing I worry about with having abilities being too cheap is that you might have everything (you care about) unlocked long before the end of the game. The shitty thing in Vanilla is that I always know what is good, so I just get that stuff and by mid chapter 2, I basically have my end-game build.

How hard is it to implement this change?

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3. 100% transparency. Why have an ability that can cancel charging/performing, that doesn't work on units flagged by class, with no intuitive reason for the unit to be immune to it? It's one thing to have an ability that is immortal immune, that the player knows is immortal immune. It's another thing to randomly flag things as immune to useful sounding skills. Why even *have* a skill like that, if you don't want the player to use it?

Agreed. That's bullshit. What are some examples of this? Is this easy to fix in the patcher tools?

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4. Make bosses other than Velius, Queklain, and Adramelk interesting. Assassinations are generally garbage compared to a well thought out ??? boss, and the other ??? bosses aren't as well thought out here. Zalera is a joke, Zalbag is a punching bag, and Altima is a slot machine. Some of the issues with assassinations can be fixed with scaling/status effects, while those ???'s (and others) need to just be rewritten to have something interesting about them (status effects, nice abilities, etc). Be creative!

Truth.

Emmy · December 5, 2017

1. It's more that the only reason Content is easier is because you can grind to overcome battles with sheer numbers (when you can't in standard 1.3). This is the type of behavior that should be discouraged in patches, when you should be rewriting battles to allow for multiple types of strategies and not just a small handful. That will make it easier in a more enjoyable way, instead of easier in a way that allows you to combat tedium with more tedium.

2. The biggest thing wrong with 1.3's scaling is nicely illustrated by the way it handles MP Switch. Because MP switch is nerfed in a way that leftover damage from what hurt MP will roll over into HP, and enemies frequently do enough damage where they can kill someone through MP switch (unless you set up specifically to use it, but any setups made specifically to use it are better spent towards specifically using Damage Split or Meatbone Slash for the better turn economy), it's not very useful for the player to have. However, when the enemy has it, they have far more HP and MP than any player class, and the ability to heal BOTH to full at any given moment. This turns MP switch into effectively a second HP bar for the enemy. What you need to do is change the scaling of the game such that enemies don't have every single advantage. Enemy is tanky with MP Switch and lots of HP/MP to use it? Don't give it the ability to heal to full or deal much damage in one turn. Enemy has a OHKO move? It should have low speed or the defenses of a wet paper bag. Stuff like this will increase variety in the game and thus make it more interesting.

Another thing you mention is to make status effects have higher probability to hit. No one's going to go for a Petrify that has a 30% chance to hit when the enemy can just throw a Soft on it. Remove evasion from status effects and make it just a faith based check. That will give the player a way to increase probability of their own statuses, while at the same time being more vulnerable to enemy status (Faith status). And, since you mentioned evasion, lower the evasion given by shields/mantles and don't give so many enemies Concentrate. Nothing should have nearly 100% dodge rates without needing to spend an ability slot (abandon) on it, and you shouldn't need to have Concentrate in so many battles either.

3. Fixing items to not strictly be better than one another can solve this problem. This can be done by spreading out bonuses given by things. That way someone can make a meaningful choice between, say +200 HP, +100 HP and immune Frog, or 0 HP and +1 speed. Also there shouldn't only be 5 abilities you care about. Abilities should all have their uses so that the player doesn't just immediately buy Phoenix Down and ignore the rest of the Chemist set. The change to make xp/jp by battle instead of by action was hard to make, but easy for you to implement (you can find it in my asm pack).

4. Some examples of this are the bad tooltips in the game. Lots of abilities don't tell you what they actually do in their descriptions, lots of abilities are things that affect some units but not others, etc. You can fix this by fixing the text of the game. Tell the player when you make a unit innately immune to something.

Regdren · December 5, 2017

The reason I stopped playing FFT 1.3 was due to reaching the point where poaching became available. The impression I got was that I HAD to get all of this important gear but actually doing so without overleveling was a huge time waster. In the forums people were talking with a straight face (straight...text? what to you call that sort of thing on a forum?) about how it's find to just edit your file and add those things to your inventory to conserve your sanity.

I will admit that my motivation was not helped by the stories of absurd things that would happen from that point onward.

As for the question of how to make anything other than hyper-offense valuable, I do think increasing the effectiveness of status is good but just removing enemy elixirs is a huge step in the right direction. I don't care if that would make hard mode easier, that item single-handedly makes a large part of the game's skillset non-viable.

pogeymanz · December 5, 2017

12 hours ago, Emmy said:

2. The biggest thing wrong with 1.3's scaling is nicely illustrated by the way it handles MP Switch. Because MP switch is nerfed in a way that leftover damage from what hurt MP will roll over into HP, and enemies frequently do enough damage where they can kill someone through MP switch (unless you set up specifically to use it, but any setups made specifically to use it are better spent towards specifically using Damage Split or Meatbone Slash for the better turn economy), it's not very useful for the player to have. However, when the enemy has it, they have far more HP and MP than any player class, and the ability to heal BOTH to full at any given moment. This turns MP switch into effectively a second HP bar for the enemy. What you need to do is change the scaling of the game such that enemies don't have every single advantage. Enemy is tanky with MP Switch and lots of HP/MP to use it? Don't give it the ability to heal to full or deal much damage in one turn. Enemy has a OHKO move? It should have low speed or the defenses of a wet paper bag. Stuff like this will increase variety in the game and thus make it more interesting.

Ah, yes. So, there's two points in there. One is that MP Switch, specifically, isn't good enough. And two is that enemies have access to setups that the user doesn't. Fixing #2 is just a matter of reviewing each battle and making sure that the enemies have trade-offs like you mentioned. I'm not sure I'm able or willing (yet) to do anything about #1.

12 hours ago, Emmy said:

Another thing you mention is to make status effects have higher probability to hit. No one's going to go for a Petrify that has a 30% chance to hit when the enemy can just throw a Soft on it. Remove evasion from status effects and make it just a faith based check. That will give the player a way to increase probability of their own statuses, while at the same time being more vulnerable to enemy status (Faith status). And, since you mentioned evasion, lower the evasion given by shields/mantles and don't give so many enemies Concentrate. Nothing should have nearly 100% dodge rates without needing to spend an ability slot (abandon) on it, and you shouldn't need to have Concentrate in so many battles either.

Agreed 100% on evasion and concentrate. The hesitation that I have with making (some) statuses easier to hit is that it will then make Item and/or White Magic basically required for many (most?) battles. Then again, maybe that's already the case anyway, since revival is so important in 1.3 (and even in Vanilla, really).

This would definitely make the game more interesting, but my first priority is making the game easier. So, the status stuff might go into my lower priority pile, but the Concentrate and evasion shenanigans is in high priority.

12 hours ago, Emmy said:

3. Fixing items to not strictly be better than one another can solve this problem. This can be done by spreading out bonuses given by things. That way someone can make a meaningful choice between, say +200 HP, +100 HP and immune Frog, or 0 HP and +1 speed. Also there shouldn't only be 5 abilities you care about. Abilities should all have their uses so that the player doesn't just immediately buy Phoenix Down and ignore the rest of the Chemist set. The change to make xp/jp by battle instead of by action was hard to make, but easy for you to implement (you can find it in my asm pack).

The other nice thing about the xp/jp by battle is that (I assume?) everyone gets the same amount. So your summoner, who only gets off one or two actions wont lag really badly behind your fast melee dudes.

12 hours ago, Emmy said:

4. Some examples of this are the bad tooltips in the game. Lots of abilities don't tell you what they actually do in their descriptions, lots of abilities are things that affect some units but not others, etc. You can fix this by fixing the text of the game. Tell the player when you make a unit innately immune to something.

Ah, yes. Fair point.

pogeymanz · December 5, 2017

58 minutes ago, Regdren said:

The reason I stopped playing FFT 1.3 was due to reaching the point where poaching became available. The impression I got was that I HAD to get all of this important gear but actually doing so without overleveling was a huge time waster. In the forums people were talking with a straight face (straight...text? what to you call that sort of thing on a forum?) about how it's find to just edit your file and add those things to your inventory to conserve your sanity.

I feel like it only became "okay" to suggest things like that or to criticize 1.3 in the last year or so. Before that, you just weren't hardcore enough. These days it's finally okay to say that the game isn't perfect and that some of the "challenge" is just bullshit.

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I will admit that my motivation was not helped by the stories of absurd things that would happen from that point onward.

As for the question of how to make anything other than hyper-offense valuable, I do think increasing the effectiveness of status is good but just removing enemy elixirs is a huge step in the right direction. I don't care if that would make hard mode easier, that item single-handedly makes a large part of the game's skillset non-viable.

I ... might just remove Elixir altogether- or rather, just replace it with a more nerfed healing item. That's a super cheap item.

Emmy · December 5, 2017

Enemies having setups the player doesn't is fine. The problem comes when every enemy has every advantage. Immune to all status, high speed, 999 hp/mp, ability to heal this to full instantly, ability to ohko units, def/mdef up, abilities themselves are ridiculous (such as instant kills with long range, large aoe, no mp cost and/or no ct), ridiculous movement, etc. This tends to have the opposite effect as what is intended - it actually makes the game easier in some ways because you know exactly what to prepare for, and many of these enemies have stats so high that the ai would never consider using a status effect. Think of the enemies as playing certain roles in the formation. These can be stereotypical roles like tank, glass cannon, healer; or you can mix and match. Let's say for example you want to create an enemy with ridiculous speed/PA/MA. It should die if you sneeze on it, and have vulnerabilities to a handful of useful statuses like Slow and Don't Act. Then you can pair it with your tanky elixir user that is slow and has very low damage output. Stuff like that.

Removing elixirs is fine, but part of the problem here which makes elixirs annoying is that player access to the same item won't help as much as enemy access (even if the player got them). If enemies are just ohko'ing you anyway, it doesn't help you to heal your HP to full, and if they have so much HP that you can't kill them easily, that means an enemy throwing an elixir down will reset your progress. The problem isn't just the elixir itself, but the game's scaling and the distribution of the items. If instead of being an item, it's a move that is rarely distributed in skillsets and has a CT/MP cost/some other balancing factor to it, it becomes far less annoying.

Poaching is another issue that's leftover from vanilla that is a terrible mechanic. Easiest fix to it if you want to keep it is to get rid of rare drops. Best bet is to just eliminate it entirely in favor of additional sidequests or even just putting the items for purchase late into the game.

pogeymanz · December 7, 2017

I get what you're saying about the Elixirs. But, I think that even if it were a rare ability with an MP/CT cost, it would either be too good or useless, depending on the costs. I think the only way to balance that would be to get pretty creative. Something like fully healing HP+MP, but also petrifying them or something (as just an off-the-cuff example).

What's so bad about poaching? Is it just the tedium of getting the rare poaches that offends you?

Davzz · December 7, 2017

Most games with rare drops tend to be balanced around the power level of common/fixed (such as storebought) items, with Rare items being a nice bonus you get once in a while from the normal process of playing through the game.

1.3 raised the difficulty bar so high you end up feeling like you need Perfumes to compete in late game and thus having to go out of your way since Poaching for rare items is a boring and tedious activity you really must dedicate a couple hours to do if you intend to do it legit unless you're lucky.

(In a bit of irony, Perfumes were the COMMON poach item of their respective monsters in vanilla)

And outside of Perfumes, most poaches were pretty pointless too, giving you cheap storebought items. Tonberry Knives are like the only ones I can think off the top of my head that are useful.

Regdren · December 7, 2017

If I recall correctly, poaches are more important in 1.3 if you've been trying to run low level. That was my playthrough style, and I saw a pretty long list of gear that was better than mine. But the sheer time sink smacked me in the face and welp, there were other games I could play. So that's what I did.

Bishop · December 17, 2017

If I can reply to the presenting question: FFT 1.3 is one of the greatest video game mods of all time, despite its many flaws, and deserves a 1.4 the same way Philsov's 1.2 deserved Archael's 1.3. The "low hanging fruit" for 1.4.0.1 would be to simply remove some of the CH 4 immortal flags and make those battles more interesting than "Haha! Power Source!" Seriously, don't change any classes or abilities or speed-is-the-only-stat or anything big-picture like that, just find some ways to make those last-chapter battles a bit more differentiated one from another.

Even easier, there are a few quality of life improvements that would go a long way to making the game more enjoyable. Your first time through the game, it's easy to be unaware that some units are "immortal," and that can be confusing. Give them unique sprites. Honestly, just changing all the immortal-flagged or unique-classed or non-player-accessible-ability-having enemies to look different from the classes you can access as a player would be a great improvement. Start with Germinas Peak.

Windows X · December 17, 2017

If you're looking for proper vanilla mod, you can try my mine. It makes the game more challenging a little but it's still genuine vanilla. No more excessive equipment added like knight's sword, crossbow, shield, robe on squire or 4-5 move increase on some jobs. No more stupid boost that breaks the game balance between you and enemies.

What I disliked the most is making changes that benefits you but not for enemies and make some abilities useless. If you want to increase damage, just add Arcane Strength as innate on black mage instead of increasing MA on weapons. That way enemies will become fearsome force to reckon with too. Some jobs are nerfed with reasons and vanilla re-balance mods often disregard that.

1.3 is good for people who really want challenges but it's not really suitable for vanilla style. Some items and abilities really shouldn't be there in vanilla like Cancel Strike or add oil that makes the game too easy in vanilla. Oh, try to get Female Thief and female healer with best zodiac compatibility, it'll help you a lot.

Edited December 17, 2017 by Windows X

pogeymanz · December 17, 2017

14 hours ago, Bishop said:

If I can reply to the presenting question: FFT 1.3 is one of the greatest video game mods of all time, despite its many flaws, and deserves a 1.4 the same way Philsov's 1.2 deserved Archael's 1.3.

I agree. However, I do not have the audacity to label anything I do as "1.4". I simply don't believe I have the skills to make anything that good. Shit- I don't even have the skills to actually play 1.3, let alone make a successor.

Also, my mod will probably not be in the same spirit, just because I don't actually want it to be very hard. Harder than vanilla, of course, but no where near 1.3 hard (even pre-chapter-4).

14 hours ago, Bishop said:

The "low hanging fruit" for 1.4.0.1 would be to simply remove some of the CH 4 immortal flags and make those battles more interesting than "Haha! Power Source!" Seriously, don't change any classes or abilities or speed-is-the-only-stat or anything big-picture like that, just find some ways to make those last-chapter battles a bit more differentiated one from another.

Actually, I was planning on removing MOST immortal flags throughout the game. I think they only serve two purposes:

1. Give yet another unfair advantage to the enemy by allowing the enemies to be revived whenever the hell they feel like it, whereas we're stuck to three turns.

2. Making it so that you can face really powerful enemies, but don't get to absorb their crystal, lest you become powerful, too. Well, screw that. Either you can farm insane crystals for defeating insane enemies, or you don't get great crystals and don't face insane enemies.

That's just too lopsided for me. The battles are hard enough: you're usually outnumbered, they often have terrain advantage, they get infinite items, etc. God forbid you have some battles that are close to even.

Also, the more I think about the speed thing, the more I really want to stick to removing all speed growth. I was always frustrated in vanilla (and others agree it's the same in 1.3) that magic just doesn't matter at the end of the game- it's too slow for what it does. If we remove speed growth, we basically get two effects:

1. Magic stays relevant into the late game. You aren't going to get lapped by the enemies while you're charging a hard-hitting spell. Some CTs will likely need to be tweaked, etc.

2. Levels matter even less. I'm not convinced that this is a bad thing. Of course, if all battles scale with your level (instead of level +10 BS), this doesn't matter as much.

I see no downside, from a theoretical POV. There will of course be balance tweaks that need to happen (getting speed + 2 from some piece of equipment would be too good, for example).

14 hours ago, Bishop said:

Even easier, there are a few quality of life improvements that would go a long way to making the game more enjoyable. Your first time through the game, it's easy to be unaware that some units are "immortal," and that can be confusing. Give them unique sprites. Honestly, just changing all the immortal-flagged or unique-classed or non-player-accessible-ability-having enemies to look different from the classes you can access as a player would be a great improvement. Start with Germinas Peak.

Yup. That will happen by virtue of the above. Pretty much only special characters and guests will be immortal.

11 hours ago, Windows X said:

If you're looking for proper vanilla mod, you can try my mine. It makes the game more challenging a little but it's still genuine vanilla. No more excessive equipment added like knight's sword, crossbow, shield, robe on squire or 4-5 move increase on some jobs. No more stupid boost that breaks the game balance between you and enemies.

What I disliked the most is making changes that benefits you but not for enemies and make some abilities useless. If you want to increase damage, just add Arcane Strength as innate on black mage instead of increasing MA on weapons. That way enemies will become fearsome force to reckon with too. Some jobs are nerfed with reasons and vanilla re-balance mods often disregard that.

1.3 is good for people who really want challenges but it's not really suitable for vanilla style. Some items and abilities really shouldn't be there in vanilla like Cancel Strike or add oil that makes the game too easy in vanilla. Oh, try to get Female Thief and female healer with best zodiac compatibility, it'll help you a lot.

I'm not looking for a vanilla mod, though. After getting a taste of 1.3, I don't think I can go back to vanilla. The classes in vanilla suck really hard compared to 1.3. The worst offenders being Archer, Calculator, Wizard, Lancer, and almost all of the specials, IMO. They're so bland and repetitive (except Calc- he's just totally broken).

This is precisely why I want to make an easy version of 1.3. I don't want it to be exactly like the Content version, because I don't feel like brute-force grinding is fun, even though Content at least gives you that option. I rather that the game just be balanced in a way that is more "naturally" easy- meaning that enemies are not always so much stronger than you (like Emmy was saying).

Windows X · December 17, 2017

Trying to make an easier 1.3 is like a trainwreck version of comprehensive elements. Just play 1.3 original or easy mode. Archer sucks yeah I agree but not far from saving. Faster aim with arm/leg shot makes archer more desirable. Arithmetician is broken yeah I agree and I made him kind of Red Mage variant instead of making OP job with -ja spells like 1.3 (Too crazy for balanced game mod). Dragoon jump is boring I agree but that's how Dragoon works and 1.3 was like that too.

Specials are broken for special reasons and that's optional for people who want to take them on their own accord. I don't see anything wrong with Black Mage though. He has tons of good spells because he's the master of black magic. 3-4 tier spells has been there since early days of FF and it's tradition everyone is accustomed with. Vanilla is far from balanced and proper but it's not too bad to say it's beyond saving in my opinion.

I used to play 1.3 for a while and I gotta say I love many things they did there though the game can be too cruel and unbalanced at times. Those broken suitable for easier mode. Wizard with one level spell like Explosion, Chain Lightning will simply abuse its abilities without AI knowing how to utilize it efficiently. Imagine they cast spell and you use those modded Plunder strikes. You think it's cool and all because it's deadly situation and status ailments affect gameplay a lot. If you make that in easier version, it's just abusing and plain boring. And adding broken spells from enemies to Ramza and Arithmetician makes them broken even more in easier mode.

Please don't get me wrong that I'm against 1.3 mod. It's an excellent mod deserving to be one of the best treasure in history of SRPG gaming. However, it was that good because it's hard and challenging. Trying to make easier version of 1.3 without losing its charm isn't possible. It's captivating because it's hard and that's why you love this. I also tried porting 1.3 abilities and some stuff to make it easier but it'll be just a trainwreck version of mashed up mods by beginners who doesn't understand the game, let alone understanding the purpose of modding.

If you truly want to make an easier version of 1.3, you can do that by trying to optimize each battle, adjust boss abilities and strength to be more acceptable with your standards. Do that for every single battle and every single character and job. If you can put that much time and effort to optimize it for non-hardtype version without breaking game balance and its charm, many of us would like to try that too. Or it would be better if you can try start modding on your own from scratch too.

And for last time, I'd like to tell you that I used to mod 1.3 to make it more easier and friendly for no more people too. I even went as far as porting vanilla fights back and adjust each battle as I believe it shouldn't be that hard with vanilla fights and fix some gears and skills. After trying that for a while, I realized that this isn't 1.3 that it gave me goosebumps and fun factor of risking your life every turn. It's just plain wrong, plain boring and IMO is worse than vanilla gameplay. If you wish to try that again, good luck or get vanilla story battle version of 1.3 to start with from here.

http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=3514.0

For me 1.3 isn't 1.3 if it doesn't have difficulty deserving for its changes. You need to understand how battle mechanics work, why they have this ability in this job and why it has something strange like White Mage having very high PA, even higher than Squire. Take hint why Summoner moves slower than others and why White Mage moves faster than average speed. How these affect battle mechanics and sequence of action. If I change abilities to this, will it break other job's abilities? In 1.3, they reworked every part to their liking with different mindset in battle mechanics. Sometimes it's too limited with only one way to win certain battles.

I modded my own game instead of trying to fix 1.3 to the way I like because I realized it's not a proper way to make things right and I did try before coming to this conclusion. I'm no longer a beginner who follow the hype and mash up things I like without giving a second thought to people who created it before anymore and that's why some modders left for their own creation rather than revising legendary 1.3 mod. They do it for their own satisfaction to play the game they feel right for them.

pogeymanz · December 18, 2017

18 hours ago, Windows X said:

Trying to make an easier 1.3 is like a trainwreck version of comprehensive elements. Just play 1.3 original or easy mode. Archer sucks yeah I agree but not far from saving. Faster aim with arm/leg shot makes archer more desirable. Arithmetician is broken yeah I agree and I made him kind of Red Mage variant instead of making OP job with -ja spells like 1.3 (Too crazy for balanced game mod). Dragoon jump is boring I agree but that's how Dragoon works and 1.3 was like that too.

If you suggest playing 1.3 easy mode, then how can it be that trying to make 1.3 easier is a trainwreck?

18 hours ago, Windows X said:

Specials are broken for special reasons and that's optional for people who want to take them on their own accord. I don't see anything wrong with Black Mage though. He has tons of good spells because he's the master of black magic. 3-4 tier spells has been there since early days of FF and it's tradition everyone is accustomed with. Vanilla is far from balanced and proper but it's not too bad to say it's beyond saving in my opinion.

Wizard/Black Mage is very redundant. In vanilla, I usually only get Ice 1, Bolt 2, and that's it. Then I move on to a different, more useful, class (Summoner). Elements almost never matter in vanilla, so there's no reason to get Bolt 1 + Fire 1 + Ice 1- it's a waste of JP. In 1.3, the lower levels spells are all different, which is great because it gives you a reason to want all of them- the elemental part is very secondary. You can, of course, make Wizard better and nerf Summoner so that I want to keep using Wizard, but I still wont buy Fire 3, and Ice 3, and Bolt 3. The only way that will happen is if you tweak many battles to make elemental resistances and weaknesses
much more common.

18 hours ago, Windows X said:

I used to play 1.3 for a while and I gotta say I love many things they did there though the game can be too cruel and unbalanced at times. Those broken suitable for easier mode. Wizard with one level spell like Explosion, Chain Lightning will simply abuse its abilities without AI knowing how to utilize it efficiently. Imagine they cast spell and you use those modded Plunder strikes. You think it's cool and all because it's deadly situation and status ailments affect gameplay a lot. If you make that in easier version, it's just abusing and plain boring. And adding broken spells from enemies to Ramza and Arithmetician makes them broken even more in easier mode.

I think I understand what you're saying. You're saying that the powerful spells are okay when the game is already very hard, but if we try to make it easier, it'll get to be too easy since the AI is dumb. I think that's a fair point, but again- it can't be worse than vanilla. Vanilla has Orlandu and Calculator and Blade Grasp and Auto Potion and Draw Out on Wizard and Two Fist Ninjas and Jumping Ninjas and... All kinds of stuff that the enemies never get to do.

18 hours ago, Windows X said:

Please don't get me wrong that I'm against 1.3 mod. It's an excellent mod deserving to be one of the best treasure in history of SRPG gaming. However, it was that good because it's hard and challenging. Trying to make easier version of 1.3 without losing its charm isn't possible. It's captivating because it's hard and that's why you love this. I also tried porting 1.3 abilities and some stuff to make it easier but it'll be just a trainwreck version of mashed up mods by beginners who doesn't understand the game, let alone understanding the purpose of modding.

If you truly want to make an easier version of 1.3, you can do that by trying to optimize each battle, adjust boss abilities and strength to be more acceptable with your standards. Do that for every single battle and every single character and job. If you can put that much time and effort to optimize it for non-hardtype version without breaking game balance and its charm, many of us would like to try that too. Or it would be better if you can try start modding on your own from scratch too.

The main idea for me is to mostly focus on enemy formations. I want to leave most of the jobs alone (except for the speed thing and maybe a few annoying abilities). The first things are to simply reduce the level gaps, take away (most) immortal enemies, reduce the numbers of enemies, and maybe just put fewer healers in enemy formations, (and do something about Power Source). I don't want the game to be *easy*, I just don't want it to be hair-pulling.

18 hours ago, Windows X said:

And for last time, I'd like to tell you that I used to mod 1.3 to make it more easier and friendly for no more people too. I even went as far as porting vanilla fights back and adjust each battle as I believe it shouldn't be that hard with vanilla fights and fix some gears and skills. After trying that for a while, I realized that this isn't 1.3 that it gave me goosebumps and fun factor of risking your life every turn. It's just plain wrong, plain boring and IMO is worse than vanilla gameplay. If you wish to try that again, good luck or get vanilla story battle version of 1.3 to start with from here.

http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=3514.0

I think that's partly because the vanilla battles are so boring- every enemy is Knight/Chemist/Archer for the whole freaking game. I can see how that wouldn't be fun with the cool, improved 1.3 classes.

18 hours ago, Windows X said:

For me 1.3 isn't 1.3 if it doesn't have difficulty deserving for its changes. You need to understand how battle mechanics work, why they have this ability in this job and why it has something strange like White Mage having very high PA, even higher than Squire. Take hint why Summoner moves slower than others and why White Mage moves faster than average speed. How these affect battle mechanics and sequence of action. If I change abilities to this, will it break other job's abilities? In 1.3, they reworked every part to their liking with different mindset in battle mechanics. Sometimes it's too limited with only one way to win certain battles.

I modded my own game instead of trying to fix 1.3 to the way I like because I realized it's not a proper way to make things right and I did try before coming to this conclusion. I'm no longer a beginner who follow the hype and mash up things I like without giving a second thought to people who created it before anymore and that's why some modders left for their own creation rather than revising legendary 1.3 mod. They do it for their own satisfaction to play the game they feel right for them.

Fair points. I will keep those things in mind when I eventually get to this. I've postponed actually working on it since I learned that I need to find another job soon...

Windows X · December 18, 2017

2 hours ago, pogeymanz said:

If you suggest playing 1.3 easy mode, then how can it be that trying to make 1.3 easier is a trainwreck?

Because it'll be a trackwreck regardless of either choice so why not trying someone else's work and be done with that? There's also 1.3 with vanilla fights as I suggested before which should be less hassle than content version. I played it, built my own for a while and yeah. It's not really fun like original 1.3 where Archer's strike means your fate of that battle.

2 hours ago, pogeymanz said:

Wizard/Black Mage is very redundant. In vanilla, I usually only get Ice 1, Bolt 2, and that's it. Then I move on to a different, more useful, class (Summoner). Elements almost never matter in vanilla, so there's no reason to get Bolt 1 + Fire 1 + Ice 1- it's a waste of JP. In 1.3, the lower levels spells are all different, which is great because it gives you a reason to want all of them- the elemental part is very secondary. You can, of course, make Wizard better and nerf Summoner so that I want to keep using Wizard, but I still wont buy Fire 3, and Ice 3, and Bolt 3. The only way that will happen is if you tweak many battles to make elemental resistances and weaknesses
much more common.

While I do agree that Fire 1-2-3-4 are pretty redundant. That's the charm of classical Final Fantasy. It'd be nice if skill pops up according to job level but sadly you can skip some of them. In my re-balance, I tried mixing status effects with spells ans I found stable point at giving -ja spells with status infliction. It might mean skipping -ga spells completely for -ja but I'll try to re-balance spells better in next releases. You can improve black mage spells in Vanilla. It's always easier to address issue you have rather than fixing it.

2 hours ago, pogeymanz said:

I think I understand what you're saying. You're saying that the powerful spells are okay when the game is already very hard, but if we try to make it easier, it'll get to be too easy since the AI is dumb. I think that's a fair point, but again- it can't be worse than vanilla. Vanilla has Orlandu and Calculator and Blade Grasp and Auto Potion and Draw Out on Wizard and Two Fist Ninjas and Jumping Ninjas and... All kinds of stuff that the enemies never get to do.

It CAN be worse than Vanilla. Trust me. After playing 1.3 abilities and items mod on vanilla fights for a while, I feel like I'm cheating enemies and ended up stopping my 1.3 development. In my mod, enemies will mostly gain benefits with changes I made for most of the time. Enemy archer will use higher level aim on me or hit with no miss chance. Enemy Black Mage can OHKO my Thief. Changes like increasing steal or rend chance will also affect on me too. 1.3 will simply bring new benefits to you and vanilla won't gain much from it.

Orlandu is broken and everyone know this. Just don't use him if you don't feel like using broken characters. There's always generic and other guests available for people who want fair fights. Just stop making excuse like you can't stop using him. And I removed broken Calculator abilities on my mod and make it to be more fair to use job. There might be some tricks to exploit but it's not as bad as how 1.3 works in easier mode IMO.

2 hours ago, pogeymanz said:

The main idea for me is to mostly focus on enemy formations. I want to leave most of the jobs alone (except for the speed thing and maybe a few annoying abilities). The first things are to simply reduce the level gaps, take away (most) immortal enemies, reduce the numbers of enemies, and maybe just put fewer healers in enemy formations, (and do something about Power Source). I don't want the game to be *easy*, I just don't want it to be hair-pulling.

You're actually asking to make the game easy. Just stop pretending that you don't. Remove immortal? Reduce enemies? Reduce healers on enemies? How is that not making the game easy with 1.3? You have tons of broken abilties at your disposal. Why don't you try charming enemies, disabling or immobilize some more so it won't be painful as you are now? 1.3 was designed to abuse status infliction and if you can't do that well, you'd better consider another mod or make ones yourself that you feel good with like what I'm doing now.

2 hours ago, pogeymanz said:

I think that's partly because the vanilla battles are so boring- every enemy is Knight/Chemist/Archer for the whole freaking game. I can see how that wouldn't be fun with the cool, improved 1.3 classes.

Vanilla battle can be boring because developers don't want to make it too hard. Imagine they put Mystic/Orator and spam status infliction on your team. It's a taboo for mass SRPG genre and I don't think it's going to work for public releases. However, you can also make Vanilla fights more interesting like Black Mage can OHKO your Thief, Squire and Chemist can do decent damage, Archer has more effective Aim and some disabilities. It's not going to be so easy as much as before. And I have my share of fun making it my way with balanced mod mindset.

2 hours ago, pogeymanz said:

Fair points. I will keep those things in mind when I eventually get to this. I've postponed actually working on it since I learned that I need to find another job soon...

You know it only took me few days to make the first balanced mod, few days later to improve and fixing stuff. Well, learning curve and expertise takes time so you may need more time to work on it. Before I work on my own mod, I spent a few weeks on working on 1.3, a few months playing other mods and by far Kind of was my favorite. It's the closest to balanced mod to my ideals though he made things a bit to easier for him for some aspects like reducing CT excessively while shorten cast time ability should be used instead for an example.

I'm not telling you to try my mod and enjoy it based on my answers. There're plenty of good mods in communities that'll suit your taste better than 1.3 variant which it will never be casual friendly style. Some mechanics in 1.3 will just break balance in casual play and there're tons of examples to demonstrate that. So you should at least try other mods and open yourself up to possibilities of something outside 1.3. Stop clinging to the hype and enjoy the game in the way you truly want it.

Augestein · December 19, 2017

On 12/18/2017 at 0:36 PM, Windows X said:

While I do agree that Fire 1-2-3-4 are pretty redundant. That's the charm of classical Final Fantasy. It'd be nice if skill pops up according to job level but sadly you can skip some of them. In my re-balance, I tried mixing status effects with spells ans I found stable point at giving -ja spells with status infliction. It might mean skipping -ga spells completely for -ja but I'll try to re-balance spells better in next releases. You can improve black mage spells in Vanilla. It's always easier to address issue you have rather than fixing it.

On 12/18/2017 at 9:39 AM, pogeymanz said:

No. It isn't charming. It only made sense in the earlier ones because there was a clear progression. Under normal circumstances, you couldn't have Fire 1 and Fire 3, but not 2. In the world of FFT, you can, so it causes a bit of a problem. Fire 1, 2, 3, and 4 can basically be condensed into 2 spells. "Normal Fire Spell" and "Big AoE Fire Spell." The issue in FFT land is that you can grab Fire 1, and Fire 3 and basically say "Screw off" to Fire 2 and never get it. That means that there isn't a progression here. 1.3 definitely made the right call by mixing up all of the spells. Even in the original games aside from one, this was kinda dumb. Once you get Fire 2, you pretty much never use fire. The Wizard in FFT has an artificially inflated moveset. Compare that to say, Oracle, where it doesn't really have redundant moves and the picture is made perfectly clear what's wrong with the Wizard in Vanilla.

On 12/18/2017 at 0:36 PM, Windows X said:

It CAN be worse than Vanilla. Trust me. After playing 1.3 abilities and items mod on vanilla fights for a while, I feel like I'm cheating enemies and ended up stopping my 1.3 development. In my mod, enemies will mostly gain benefits with changes I made for most of the time. Enemy archer will use higher level aim on me or hit with no miss chance. Enemy Black Mage can OHKO my Thief. Changes like increasing steal or rend chance will also affect on me too. 1.3 will simply bring new benefits to you and vanilla won't gain much from it.

Orlandu is broken and everyone know this. Just don't use him if you don't feel like using broken characters. There's always generic and other guests available for people who want fair fights. Just stop making excuse like you can't stop using him. And I removed broken Calculator abilities on my mod and make it to be more fair to use job. There might be some tricks to exploit but it's not as bad as how 1.3 works in easier mode IMO.

I'd already stand that 1.3 is worse than Vanilla, as the biggest problem with Vanilla is that it starts out too hard, and the enemies just don't have any real sort of progression with their abilities or jobs and are definitely hurt by the sprite limitation-- not sure if that is a thing in the PSP version, but it's without a doubt, a problem in Vanilla. Especially if you try to mod it, as it's the first annoying problem you'll run into. 1.3 on the other hand, immediately starts the characters with better progression than any sane player could ever possibly have, and around Chapter 4, when you reach the same tier of strength as the enemy, Arch made the AI cheat through obscure tooltips, garbage multipliers (like Knight tier characters that can move as fast or faster than a ninja and have better than thief speed growth), impossible equipment combinations, and impossible faith combinations that you'd never see under normal circumstances.

Orlandu is overpowered. Broken is the Calculator class. The Calculator class takes a dump on 1) MP 2) Range 3) Charge Times 4) Vertical 5) Move 6) Jump It doesn't give a crap about any of that. Orlandu has nothing on the Calculator class. Fixing Orlandu is a good idea because he's so strong that there's no reason not to use him. In a mod that attempts to fix things, that's absolutely important.

On 12/18/2017 at 0:36 PM, Windows X said:

You're actually asking to make the game easy. Just stop pretending that you don't. Remove immortal? Reduce enemies? Reduce healers on enemies? How is that not making the game easy with 1.3? You have tons of broken abilties at your disposal. Why don't you try charming enemies, disabling or immobilize some more so it won't be painful as you are now? 1.3 was designed to abuse status infliction and if you can't do that well, you'd better consider another mod or make ones yourself that you feel good with like what I'm doing now.

On 12/18/2017 at 9:39 AM, pogeymanz said:

Removing immortal is a good thing actually. The AI actually behaves better when immortal is removed. It forces the AI to be more aggressive to pursue revivals and the like. And a lot of highlight statuses are removed when you have the immortal flag. And while you could simply remove those status immunity, all people would probably end up doing is hitting them with petrify instead of confuse / sleep and dealing with the annoying person. It also mixes up fights considerably more. 1.3 actually isn't entirely designed with status infliction. The best strategy for 90% of the battles in 1.3 is not actually status effects, but rather 1) Going faster than the enemy 2) Annihilating it before it can do much. In the event that you cannot do both, the response is essentially to slap Damage Split / Hamedo / Meatbone Slash on and survive the initial wave and then mop up afterward. There's a reason that most victory runs on videos are pretty quick. It's not because the people are just good, it's because the first two turns pretty much determine everything else.

The biggest issues with 1.3 that need to be done away with is the Power Source fest that is Chapter 4. Chapters 1-3 have some slight problems but aren't where most of the problems even start to crop up. I didn't even notice until I started playing, but Chapter 4 is just a chore, and it's longer than any other chapter in the game. It's literally almost as long as 1, 2, and 3.

Regdren · December 19, 2017

I agree that removing speed growth is one of the best ideas for balancing the game. Aside from not always having to level up characters in classes with good speed, it makes CT balance much easier. You can set CT knowing exactly how fast every character class is, and maybe try some interesting things with it too. Just beware of + speed gear. It's probably best to keep a tight rein on that stuff.

Removing power sources or nerfing them somehow would also be great. Maybe if the game was consistent and made them useable only by Worker robots on both sides of the field instead of just yours, we'd have a better situation. That could make it more of a rare problem to face instead of what we have right now. I have more thought on nerfing that thing but I'm not sure if it would be overkill.

Vanilla calculator needs to go. Maybe use that slot for some weird custom class. I wonder if a blue mage could be made using the game's inbuilt "learn when hit by something" mechanic.

Quad · December 20, 2017

The biggest issue 1.3 has is a clear lack of diverse abilities for the player. For most of its later development, people only focused on long balance discussions without giving any new creative suggestions, nerfing everything which could be considered too "cheap". I agree that Ch4 throws some BS enemy formations at the player, but this wouldn't be so apparent if there were more available options to deal with them, other than maxing speed and focusing damage on important targets, which can be fun, but which shouldn't be the main strategy for every battle. That's why I now enjoy Monster Tactics a lot more than anything which can be done in 1.3.

On the other hand, I completely agree with Bishop. There always used to be players who hated on the mod because they couldn't beat a battle and complained about unfairness and fake difficulty, which is really the motivation behind a lot of the criticism these days. 1.3 is not a perfect mod, but that shouldn't detract from the large amount of enjoyment it brought to many people.

ronlyn · December 20, 2017

My two cents on this whole deal is.....what if we wait for an actual rehearse of the mod and give out opinions and suggestions?

This feels repetitive when we had a 5 pages long discussion on Insane Difficulty.

If someone wants to make FFT 1.4, just do it and we play it and give out our reviews to enhance the experience, don't you think?

Edited December 20, 2017 by ronlyn

pogeymanz · December 20, 2017

3 hours ago, ronlyn said:

My two cents on this whole deal is.....what if we wait for an actual rehearse of the mod and give out opinions and suggestions?

This feels repetitive when we had a 5 pages long discussion on Insane Difficulty.

If someone wants to make FFT 1.4, just do it and we play it and give out our reviews to enhance the experience, don't you think?

Yeah, that's a fair point. And just to be very clear again, anything I do with a tweaked 1.3 should NOT be considered a 1.4. I don't want that kind of responsibility.

I think these discussions are a testament to how much people enjoyed 1.3 and long for more/similar experiences. Everyone has strong feelings about what was right/wrong about the game because we all love it so much. And it's hard not to want to share your opinion when you care about stuff. That's pretty cool.

Windows X · December 20, 2017

On 12/20/2017 at 3:15 AM, Augestein said:

No. It isn't charming. It only made sense in the earlier ones because there was a clear progression. Under normal circumstances, you couldn't have Fire 1 and Fire 3, but not 2. In the world of FFT, you can, so it causes a bit of a problem. Fire 1, 2, 3, and 4 can basically be condensed into 2 spells. "Normal Fire Spell" and "Big AoE Fire Spell." The issue in FFT land is that you can grab Fire 1, and Fire 3 and basically say "Screw off" to Fire 2 and never get it. That means that there isn't a progression here. 1.3 definitely made the right call by mixing up all of the spells. Even in the original games aside from one, this was kinda dumb. Once you get Fire 2, you pretty much never use fire. The Wizard in FFT has an artificially inflated moveset. Compare that to say, Oracle, where it doesn't really have redundant moves and the picture is made perfectly clear what's wrong with the Wizard in Vanilla.

What you said has answers in itself. You said screw fire 2 and get only 1 and 3. While some get Fire 2 and never use Fire anymore. I believe that calls flexibility and if you have free JP to spends, you'll eventually learn the rest.

However, I do agree that spell tier needs improvements on vanilla. While you appreciate the 'fresh' idea of combined spells with different patterns and stuff, I don't though. That's just the fancy idea from endgame mania who ignores the basics.

The main reason why you should upgrade spell is damage throughput and MP allocation. The reason why you should upgrade spell is to make more damage when caster can provide it. I do agree that -ga -ja spells need some adjustments so people won't skip easily though.

On 12/20/2017 at 3:15 AM, Augestein said:

I'd already stand that 1.3 is worse than Vanilla, as the biggest problem with Vanilla is that it starts out too hard, and the enemies just don't have any real sort of progression with their abilities or jobs and are definitely hurt by the sprite limitation-- not sure if that is a thing in the PSP version, but it's without a doubt, a problem in Vanilla. Especially if you try to mod it, as it's the first annoying problem you'll run into. 1.3 on the other hand, immediately starts the characters with better progression than any sane player could ever possibly have, and around Chapter 4, when you reach the same tier of strength as the enemy, Arch made the AI cheat through obscure tooltips, garbage multipliers (like Knight tier characters that can move as fast or faster than a ninja and have better than thief speed growth), impossible equipment combinations, and impossible faith combinations that you'd never see under normal circumstances.

Orlandu is overpowered. Broken is the Calculator class. The Calculator class takes a dump on 1) MP 2) Range 3) Charge Times 4) Vertical 5) Move 6) Jump It doesn't give a crap about any of that. Orlandu has nothing on the Calculator class. Fixing Orlandu is a good idea because he's so strong that there's no reason not to use him. In a mod that attempts to fix things, that's absolutely important.

Vanilla starts out too hard? I mean, seriously? The only fight where I feel it's quite a challenge at first was Dorter Slums and after I realize that we should follow NPCs to take archer on top, it became very easy. The idea is get to the high ground and lure enemies in to finish them off easier.

1.3 has fun aspects but I don't like the idea of enemies having better stuff and throw us a lot to force we play only specific strategy and jobs at times. If Orlandu is broken, don't use him. Think of him as easy mode unit. There's always a unit to help people finishing the game easier if they can't do it without easy mode unit. It's fine to leave Orlandu like that. If calculator skills are broken, change it to something else and I did nerve that job with some good trade offs.

On 12/20/2017 at 3:15 AM, Augestein said:

Removing immortal is a good thing actually. The AI actually behaves better when immortal is removed. It forces the AI to be more aggressive to pursue revivals and the like. And a lot of highlight statuses are removed when you have the immortal flag. And while you could simply remove those status immunity, all people would probably end up doing is hitting them with petrify instead of confuse / sleep and dealing with the annoying person. It also mixes up fights considerably more. 1.3 actually isn't entirely designed with status infliction. The best strategy for 90% of the battles in 1.3 is not actually status effects, but rather 1) Going faster than the enemy 2) Annihilating it before it can do much. In the event that you cannot do both, the response is essentially to slap Damage Split / Hamedo / Meatbone Slash on and survive the initial wave and then mop up afterward. There's a reason that most victory runs on videos are pretty quick. It's not because the people are just good, it's because the first two turns pretty much determine everything else.

The biggest issues with 1.3 that need to be done away with is the Power Source fest that is Chapter 4. Chapters 1-3 have some slight problems but aren't where most of the problems even start to crop up. I didn't even notice until I started playing, but Chapter 4 is just a chore, and it's longer than any other chapter in the game. It's literally almost as long as 1, 2, and 3.

Maybe you should consider why they put those on in the first place. But if you want to make your own 1.3 mod without it, fine. Suit yourself. Sometimes mod also suggest me this and that and it's ultimately my decision whether I'll listen to the advice of more experienced modder or not. The only difference is I'm working on my own mod, not on someone else's mod.

To modify someone else's work and share it, you need to understand the reason behind the original and preserve the integrity of originals too. If you like 1.3 elements so much, try to make your own mod based on 1.3 implementation. It's not that hard to do actually.

As for people who complain about spell, I beg you to consider things like Haste/Quick/Swiftness/Tailwind and other speed manipulation attributes. Another possibility is to reduce the factor of speed growth and multiplier, making it less significant like from 95-110 multiplier instead. In my opinion, alternating speed will affect gameplay mechanics at lot and need to be extra careful on doing that.

Augestein · December 23, 2017

On 12/20/2017 at 5:13 PM, Windows X said:

What you said has answers in itself. You said screw fire 2 and get only 1 and 3. While some get Fire 2 and never use Fire anymore. I believe that calls flexibility and if you have free JP to spends, you'll eventually learn the rest.

However, I do agree that spell tier needs improvements on vanilla. While you appreciate the 'fresh' idea of combined spells with different patterns and stuff, I don't though. That's just the fancy idea from endgame mania who ignores the basics.

The main reason why you should upgrade spell is damage throughput and MP allocation. The reason why you should upgrade spell is to make more damage when caster can provide it. I do agree that -ga -ja spells need some adjustments so people won't skip easily though.

It doesn't call for flexibility. That's the issue. Fire 1, 2, and 3 are essentially the same attack. Fire 1 is too weak to use once you have Fire 2 and if you get Fire 2 when Fire 1 still has good damage, Fire 2 probably costs too much MP to be worth using. Instead, it's better to literally have a Fire spell that's always relevant and a big fire spell that hits a larger panel. The spells in this game scale like complete garbage. Both damage wise and speed wise. Without slowing the progression of either the growths, or physical scaling, spells will always have this problem in the game.

Yes. They do. It's not that I appreciate a "fresh" set of ideas with different patterns, it's that the spells actually *do* different things. Explosion in 1.3 is a low damage fast spell that can proc oil which enables damage spikes. 2 wizards can pack more damage than many things in the early game with it especially if they get lucky with oil procs. Mjonir is a good spell that is fairly strong, and has the ability to proc stops on people if you cannot kill them. Blizzard is a huge sweeping AoE that has a chance of stopping someone. Meltdown is basically explosion and actually gives you a reason to use Black Magic as a secondary if you're a physical user-- as in Vanilla it's just useless. With just these spells I mentioned right now, 1.3 Wizard is already superior to Vanilla Wizard. The biggest problem with 1.3 Wizard is that spells scale poorly in comparison to physical , and that's a problem that was present in Vanilla.

Which is that they need better scaling. However, fixing the scaling problem is what causes them to not really be necessary to have all of them. Take a look at something like say Knight (Vanilla or 1.3 are fine). Knight only has 8 moves in the game. However, its 8 moves are better than the Wizard's on the account that the Wizard has 16 moves total, but won't be using the other abilities later on in the game, while the Knight's skills are always going to be applicable to use at any given point. Knocking someone's speed down 2 points is always useful. Knocking someone's PA down 2 points or MA down to points may become *less* effective later on, but it's still useful because of the way stats scale in FFT. Compare that to the wizard where there is no real applicable difference between Fire, Ice and Electricity because there generally aren't enough dynamic weaknesses / strengths in gear to make them any different outside of cosmetic differences. Realistically, a person playing this game is better off grabbing for instance, Bolt 1-4 , Flare, and being basically done with the wizard skillset. But we'll be nice and grab Toad and Poison and Death as well. And considering that Bolt 1 and 2 do such lackluster damage, you'll be using Bolt 3 or 4 ~~(haha, no, you won't use 4, it's too slow without Short Charge honestly).~~ It's not the same as say, Final Fantasy 1, where Spells per day were a thing, so you can realistically run out of "Bolt 3" spells that you can cast, but you're still permitted to bolt 1 and 2.

On 12/20/2017 at 5:13 PM, Windows X said:

Vanilla starts out too hard? I mean, seriously? The only fight where I feel it's quite a challenge at first was Dorter Slums and after I realize that we should follow NPCs to take archer on top, it became very easy. The idea is get to the high ground and lure enemies in to finish them off easier.

Yes. It does. For a first time player, it most certainly does. Chocobos are incredibly nasty foes to be a basic enemy to fight in randoms-- sporting an AoE heal that doesn't cost MP, more move than any of your characters, Counter, a better reaction ability than any reasonable player would have-- where they probably have NOTHING, and enemies often outnumber you. If a person doesn't immediately gun for Gain JP Up, or a caster class, the game can be fairly difficult. After you beat Dorter, the difficulty just kind of disappears for awhile until you reach Wiegraf, and then disappears again. Chapter 2 is just flat out easier than Chapter 1. Not only are Gafgarion and Agrias able to take care of themselves better than Delita and Algus by being in naturally sturdier classes, but neither of them can miss their attacks, one of them can drain MP of casters should he choose to, and more pressingly, his single target attack that he has heals himself. So yes. Yes FFT Vanilla starts out too hard. By Chapter 3, enemies are still rocking basic gear and the same basic classes they were in Chapter 1. The only difference? You have 2 specials and a bucket load of JP under your belt that if you grabbed Gained JP Up, the difference between you and the enemy progression only continues to widen. By Chapter 4, the game just starts thrusting special weapons and special characters in your arsenal like Beowulf or Reis, and its no wonder people joke about FFT's difficulty.

On 12/20/2017 at 5:13 PM, Windows X said:

1.3 has fun aspects but I don't like the idea of enemies having better stuff and throw us a lot to force we play only specific strategy and jobs at times. If Orlandu is broken, don't use him. Think of him as easy mode unit. There's always a unit to help people finishing the game easier if they can't do it without easy mode unit. It's fine to leave Orlandu like that. If calculator skills are broken, change it to something else and I did nerve that job with some good trade offs.

Honestly, the enemies generally don't have better stuff than you in terms of equips. Most of the stuff they have, you can get, whether through a sidequest, secret hunt, or simply recruiting a character. However, the issue is that the enemy setups tend to be "sweeping AoEs from fast units" and they have Item as their secondary, and get 4x passives with a 5th one being their natural one. All of these things alone are not a problem. It's the fact that in 1.3, they tend to be the EXACT. SAME. THING. Over and over and over again with the generic enemies being the ones that generally mix things up, but not enough to stop the main problem. Or... You could just change Orlandu and have him be a unit. There's nothing wrong with the decision most people make to make Orlandu fix. If you're doing a rebalance mod, you may as well fix him. And the problem with Orlandu, is why give you an "easy mode" unit at the later half of the game? That's a really lousy idea. Calculator skills are actually broken plain and simple. Orlandu is just a bit too strong.

On 12/20/2017 at 5:13 PM, Windows X said:

Maybe you should consider why they put those on in the first place. But if you want to make your own 1.3 mod without it, fine. Suit yourself. Sometimes mod also suggest me this and that and it's ultimately my decision whether I'll listen to the advice of more experienced modder or not. The only difference is I'm working on my own mod, not on someone else's mod.

The consideration was "it'll be harder to win if enemies don't have counters." We've actually seen Archael say this. People had literally asked this before. We got answers.

As for the rest of this, I'm not even sure where you're going with this. Who said I was trying to force you to do anything? This topic isn't about you. It's about 1.3 and to a certain extent, the actual creator of the topic.

On 12/20/2017 at 5:13 PM, Windows X said:

To modify someone else's work and share it, you need to understand the reason behind the original and preserve the integrity of originals too. If you like 1.3 elements so much, try to make your own mod based on 1.3 implementation. It's not that hard to do actually.

Okay? I'm not even sure what you're even prattling on about here.

On 12/20/2017 at 5:13 PM, Windows X said:

As for people who complain about spell, I beg you to consider things like Haste/Quick/Swiftness/Tailwind and other speed manipulation attributes. Another possibility is to reduce the factor of speed growth and multiplier, making it less significant like from 95-110 multiplier instead. In my opinion, alternating speed will affect gameplay mechanics at lot and need to be extra careful on doing that.

Yes. But it's not the speed manipulation abilities that are at fault so much as speed scaling of everything else. Spells in this game-- and largely 1.3 have problems because:

1) In order to use a spell, you have to deal with mechanics that other things do not: like physical. Like charge times.

2) It ends up doing less damage than a physical attack.

3) It has a resource that you have to manage that physical does not outside of sword skills. And unlike Samurai, unless it breaks, you can use it infinitely.

4) Movement makes the advantage that spells would have, a pointless endeavor.

5) Charge is basically a must for 1.3 by endgame.

Vanilla has this problem to a certain extent. However, people still liked spells because while their damage was worse, it wasn't so bad that spells because just flat out bad. They just weren't as good.

Windows X · December 24, 2017

13 hours ago, Augestein said:

It doesn't call for flexibility. That's the issue. Fire 1, 2, and 3 are essentially the same attack. Fire 1 is too weak to use once you have Fire 2 and if you get Fire 2 when Fire 1 still has good damage, Fire 2 probably costs too much MP to be worth using. Instead, it's better to literally have a Fire spell that's always relevant and a big fire spell that hits a larger panel. The spells in this game scale like complete garbage. Both damage wise and speed wise. Without slowing the progression of either the growths, or physical scaling, spells will always have this problem in the game.

Yes. They do. It's not that I appreciate a "fresh" set of ideas with different patterns, it's that the spells actually *do* different things. Explosion in 1.3 is a low damage fast spell that can proc oil which enables damage spikes. 2 wizards can pack more damage than many things in the early game with it especially if they get lucky with oil procs. Mjonir is a good spell that is fairly strong, and has the ability to proc stops on people if you cannot kill them. Blizzard is a huge sweeping AoE that has a chance of stopping someone. Meltdown is basically explosion and actually gives you a reason to use Black Magic as a secondary if you're a physical user-- as in Vanilla it's just useless. With just these spells I mentioned right now, 1.3 Wizard is already superior to Vanilla Wizard. The biggest problem with 1.3 Wizard is that spells scale poorly in comparison to physical , and that's a problem that was present in Vanilla.

Which is that they need better scaling. However, fixing the scaling problem is what causes them to not really be necessary to have all of them. Take a look at something like say Knight (Vanilla or 1.3 are fine). Knight only has 8 moves in the game. However, its 8 moves are better than the Wizard's on the account that the Wizard has 16 moves total, but won't be using the other abilities later on in the game, while the Knight's skills are always going to be applicable to use at any given point. Knocking someone's speed down 2 points is always useful. Knocking someone's PA down 2 points or MA down to points may become *less* effective later on, but it's still useful because of the way stats scale in FFT. Compare that to the wizard where there is no real applicable difference between Fire, Ice and Electricity because there generally aren't enough dynamic weaknesses / strengths in gear to make them any different outside of cosmetic differences. Realistically, a person playing this game is better off grabbing for instance, Bolt 1-4 , Flare, and being basically done with the wizard skillset. But we'll be nice and grab Toad and Poison and Death as well. And considering that Bolt 1 and 2 do such lackluster damage, you'll be using Bolt 3 or 4 ~~(haha, no, you won't use 4, it's too slow without Short Charge honestly).~~ It's not the same as say, Final Fantasy 1, where Spells per day were a thing, so you can realistically run out of "Bolt 3" spells that you can cast, but you're still permitted to bolt 1 and 2.

Yes. It does. For a first time player, it most certainly does. Chocobos are incredibly nasty foes to be a basic enemy to fight in randoms-- sporting an AoE heal that doesn't cost MP, more move than any of your characters, Counter, a better reaction ability than any reasonable player would have-- where they probably have NOTHING, and enemies often outnumber you. If a person doesn't immediately gun for Gain JP Up, or a caster class, the game can be fairly difficult. After you beat Dorter, the difficulty just kind of disappears for awhile until you reach Wiegraf, and then disappears again. Chapter 2 is just flat out easier than Chapter 1. Not only are Gafgarion and Agrias able to take care of themselves better than Delita and Algus by being in naturally sturdier classes, but neither of them can miss their attacks, one of them can drain MP of casters should he choose to, and more pressingly, his single target attack that he has heals himself. So yes. Yes FFT Vanilla starts out too hard. By Chapter 3, enemies are still rocking basic gear and the same basic classes they were in Chapter 1. The only difference? You have 2 specials and a bucket load of JP under your belt that if you grabbed Gained JP Up, the difference between you and the enemy progression only continues to widen. By Chapter 4, the game just starts thrusting special weapons and special characters in your arsenal like Beowulf or Reis, and its no wonder people joke about FFT's difficulty.

Honestly, the enemies generally don't have better stuff than you in terms of equips. Most of the stuff they have, you can get, whether through a sidequest, secret hunt, or simply recruiting a character. However, the issue is that the enemy setups tend to be "sweeping AoEs from fast units" and they have Item as their secondary, and get 4x passives with a 5th one being their natural one. All of these things alone are not a problem. It's the fact that in 1.3, they tend to be the EXACT. SAME. THING. Over and over and over again with the generic enemies being the ones that generally mix things up, but not enough to stop the main problem. Or... You could just change Orlandu and have him be a unit. There's nothing wrong with the decision most people make to make Orlandu fix. If you're doing a rebalance mod, you may as well fix him. And the problem with Orlandu, is why give you an "easy mode" unit at the later half of the game? That's a really lousy idea. Calculator skills are actually broken plain and simple. Orlandu is just a bit too strong.

The consideration was "it'll be harder to win if enemies don't have counters." We've actually seen Archael say this. People had literally asked this before. We got answers.

As for the rest of this, I'm not even sure where you're going with this. Who said I was trying to force you to do anything? This topic isn't about you. It's about 1.3 and to a certain extent, the actual creator of the topic.

Okay? I'm not even sure what you're even prattling on about here.

Yes. But it's not the speed manipulation abilities that are at fault so much as speed scaling of everything else. Spells in this game-- and largely 1.3 have problems because:

1) In order to use a spell, you have to deal with mechanics that other things do not: like physical. Like charge times.

2) It ends up doing less damage than a physical attack.

3) It has a resource that you have to manage that physical does not outside of sword skills. And unlike Samurai, unless it breaks, you can use it infinitely.

4) Movement makes the advantage that spells would have, a pointless endeavor.

5) Charge is basically a must for 1.3 by endgame.

Vanilla has this problem to a certain extent. However, people still liked spells because while their damage was worse, it wasn't so bad that spells because just flat out bad. They just weren't as good.

On contrary, while Vanilla wizard has poorer scaling, -ja spells does better job with balancing against physical damage than 1.3 did. If you prefer magic being useless during lategame in 1.3, fine.

Your issue about vanilla spells was taken care off in my mod with 2 radius for -ga spells and add status effect on -ja spells. That's how I fixed it and it did work well enough for me right now.

Elemental damage has less role to play in FFT than others which I do agree. However, it's still usable with monsters and some re-balancing can work on it in if you try.

And if you think Vanilla is too hard for early game, it means you need to learn and understand more about tactics. I used to be FFT noob and I felt it was hard before too. But that's not issue about learning how to play properly.

Nerfing Orlandu might sound proper in re-balance but some fights in endgame can be tought and easy mode unit can help such players getting over it. He's a sword saint and probably the strongest knight in FFT. Do give him some credits OK?

As for your excuse to make the game easier and more reasonable for you, asking creators why you put this on and you should remove it is asked before and the answer was there. Accept it.

As for speed manipulation issue, it's an issue with 1.3 where CT on spells isn't balanced. 1.3 favors physical with no CT so you might as well remove CT altogether to fix it. That may work.

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What (in your opinion) are some low-hanging fruits for making FFT 1.3 better?

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