pogeymanz

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

92 posts in this topic

11 hours ago, AbnormalVoid said:

Yeah, they're a redundant factor. They're inherently balanced, but considering the fact that they're an independent system that doesn't rely on any outside input, the entire system balances itself into oblivion.

They're balanced over a long period of time or in a scenario where the first turn isn't that impactful. In Tactics Ogre, which has more people on the field and generally longer battles, you usually don't worry too much about potential random factors because what will cause a restart won't be the very first action. However, it can be a problem in FFT, and it's definitely a problem in 1.3, because when done wrong FFT turns into rocket tag with a quickness. Whether an enemy advances or retreats is also a big deal and they consider factors like compatibility in doing so, so you can never be sure if that guy's going to be lured in to get jacked or charge something nasty and wander off out of range each time you restart. If you have to restart a lot, it becomes considerably more frustrating.

So one way to address the issue is just to treat the other problem and ensure that the first turn of any given map does not have a massive and potentially determinative effect on the outcome of the attempt. That's something that is an aspect of 1.3 that could stand to be significantly altered, and doing so largely eliminates problems that random Br/Fa/Sign can cause.

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11 hours ago, Nakar said:

They're balanced over a long period of time or in a scenario where the first turn isn't that impactful. In Tactics Ogre, which has more people on the field and generally longer battles, you usually don't worry too much about potential random factors because what will cause a restart won't be the very first action. However, it can be a problem in FFT, and it's definitely a problem in 1.3, because when done wrong FFT turns into rocket tag with a quickness. Whether an enemy advances or retreats is also a big deal and they consider factors like compatibility in doing so, so you can never be sure if that guy's going to be lured in to get jacked or charge something nasty and wander off out of range each time you restart. If you have to restart a lot, it becomes considerably more frustrating.

So one way to address the issue is just to treat the other problem and ensure that the first turn of any given map does not have a massive and potentially determinative effect on the outcome of the attempt. That's something that is an aspect of 1.3 that could stand to be significantly altered, and doing so largely eliminates problems that random Br/Fa/Sign can cause.

My point wasn't that Brave/Faith is a problem because of the unfair odds it may provide. My point was that it's pointless, in the grand scheme.

Adding a factor of forced randomness that does little to affect the outcome of a match (beyond short, concise matches, as you mentioned) does nothing to increase the depth of the experience.

Even in those short, cramped matches, where Brave and Faith do make a difference, one just needs to do a quick reset to roll the odds back and get something that's hopefully more preferable. It's very important to keep in mind that the worth of every engagement can only be judged by the best and worst case scenarios. If those scenarios are wildly different, for no other reason than because of an arbitrarily random, substance-less system, then it's a poor way to add randomness to the game.

It's better to focus on creating a challenging engagement, without the worry that it will fall into the territory of unfairness, or otherwise, trivialize the engagement by becoming too simple. A game like Final Fantasy Tactics thrives around designed engagements. Where random engagements may be fun or interesting in certain situations, they're also, in all likelihood, going to suffer from not having a synergistic approach to their equipment, abilities and teamwork. Not that I don't think they should still be included, but a system that gives them a reliable leg-up is preferable.

The system I detailed previously, in regards to a revamped Zodiac system, supports this concept instead of working against it. Instead of working in a manner that is unpredictable, where one cannot say if they'll have the signs necessary to be compatible with a foe, it's designed around altering the inherent qualities of the unit itself, providing sufficient context to the player in regards to what they're going to be up against. It allows for each unit to be given proper signs to enhance their most important qualities, and allows for units to function quite differently from one another. A Virgo Priest might be entirely different from an Ares Priest, but there could still be depth behind each.

It's a best-case pipe-dream system, as I'm not sure something could even be implemented with FFT's limiting code, but I feel it accurately details the kind of system that would be desirable as opposed to the ill-conceived system in place by default.

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 I feel the whole zodiac and Br/Fa deal can be only archive if we erase completely the soldier hiring option in the game and every generic the players has access to has said characteristics. I also got inspired by a fire emblem modder which gave several patches which you can use to change the experience each time you play the game (example: one patch have three male/one female generic at the beginning and other has two male/female units with different signs and stats compared to the last ones)  

Of course, this world of possibilities is tied to the modder's patience to deliver such patches since they aren't hard but tedious to handle without screwing something along the way

Edited by ronlyn

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2 hours ago, ronlyn said:

 I feel the whole zodiac and Br/Fa deal can be only archive if we erase completely the soldier hiring option in the game and every generic the players has access to has said characteristics. I also got inspired by a fire emblem modder which gave several patches which you can use to change the experience each time you play the game (example: one patch have three male/one female generic at the beginning and other has two male/female units with different signs and stats compared to the last ones)  

Of course, this world of possibilities is tied to the modder's patience to deliver such patches since they aren't hard but tedious to handle without screwing something along the way

I figure another way to make brave-faith better is to make their influence on chance-based abilities less noticeable. Say, reaction abilities chance could be like, 80% base chance and the formula could be ((Brave/5)+80)%. With a similarly lighter effect on spell power. Still a flawed system, but giving it a lighter influence to match its already forced existence in the game would at least be more tolerable.

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3 hours ago, AbnormalVoid said:

Even in those short, cramped matches, where Brave and Faith do make a difference, one just needs to do a quick reset to roll the odds back and get something that's hopefully more preferable. It's very important to keep in mind that the worth of every engagement can only be judged by the best and worst case scenarios. If those scenarios are wildly different, for no other reason than because of an arbitrarily random, substance-less system, then it's a poor way to add randomness to the game.

Frequent resets should not be encouraged behavior in a tactical RPG. It's one thing to restart a bunch and tweak your strategy or setup, but having to do it because sometimes the first enemy to move can kill two of your guys (or something unrecoverable, whatever that may be) isn't a good thing. If early misfortunes caused by randomness balance out in the grand scheme of a battle, then no big deal; however, that isn't always the case with 1.3. And rerolling a fight on purpose for more favorable enemy Br/Fa/Zodiac is, in my mind, basically cheating and should not be encouraged. It's fine if it's random but choosing to repeatedly reset until the randomness is in your favor is exploitative. The ideal setup should be to encourage the player to roll with the misfortunes and fortunes alike, assuming they're balanced such that you're likely to experience a bit of both in every battle.

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1 hour ago, Nakar said:

Frequent resets should not be encouraged behavior in a tactical RPG. It's one thing to restart a bunch and tweak your strategy or setup, but having to do it because sometimes the first enemy to move can kill two of your guys (or something unrecoverable, whatever that may be) isn't a good thing. If early misfortunes caused by randomness balance out in the grand scheme of a battle, then no big deal; however, that isn't always the case with 1.3. And rerolling a fight on purpose for more favorable enemy Br/Fa/Zodiac is, in my mind, basically cheating and should not be encouraged. It's fine if it's random but choosing to repeatedly reset until the randomness is in your favor is exploitative. The ideal setup should be to encourage the player to roll with the misfortunes and fortunes alike, assuming they're balanced such that you're likely to experience a bit of both in every battle.

It's never encouraged, but people are still going to do it. People are always drawn to the path of least resistance, it's a well known concept. Putting exploitable systems in your game, especially when they provide no real depth, is a terrible idea. You cannot fight human nature, never ever try.

Now, considering the fact that you're going to experience fortunes and misfortunes in regards to randomized elements, one must also consider how much depth is actually being added with this. If in the end, it, more likely than not, averages out, then was there any actual significance to the randomness in the first place? Over and above the actual structured depth of the game, did the randomness provide any real substance?

I'll say it again, I don't think additional randomness adds any depth to tactical RPGs, or for that matter, any game with sufficient strategic depth. The variety of outcomes already available through the vast array of choices and possibilities is staggering. Adding on top of it merely creates an annoying layer of strategic obfuscation.

Edited by AbnormalVoid

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On 1/1/2018 at 11:32 AM, Nakar said:

There were good and bad points to Death as implemented, from a balance standpoint. The only things I'd add to your general overview of its effectiveness:

  • When Death did miss and dealt damage instead, it dealt quite a lot; this made it worth using Vanille's entire ATB bar on Death as an alternative to Ruin spam as a Commando or something.
  • Death could only be cast in SAB which prevented Vanille from gaining damage bonuses from COM (though she could get the passive benefits of the other two party members being COMs, or the debuff boosts from both being SABs as well). That allowed the developers to make it incredibly strong because it was inherently impossible to use in Cerberus.
  • Death actually worked on things and could instant kill even powerful marks like Ochus and whatnot.

These are really good things and made Death worthwhile, but they did lead to one small problem that does remind me a bit of 1.3: Because there were no consequences for resetting a battle in FFXIII, there was no downside to fighting something way out of your depth and just starting over if you couldn't get Death to land in time. On the one hand, it's nice that Death actually did something. On the other hand, fishing for a Death proc felt cheesy and not terribly rewarding when you did win with it and you knew there was no way you could've won without it. While the ability to influence its proc rate via debuffing made it feel more like a legitimate strategy than a pure gimmick, it could still prove rather gimmicky against things with a low-but-nonzero chance of being affected by it.

I've always felt that things like random Zodiac and Br/Fa are the same kind of thing in FFT. The difficulty of a battle can be completely up in the air depending on something as simple as the compatibility between the first enemy to move and the nearest ally, and that's not only bad from a strategic standpoint -- I can't predict or plan when enemy behavior changes when I do the same things each time, unless I have encyclopedic knowledge of the game's AI -- but also from a player frustration standpoint. They add depth to the system just as Death does, but in a way that can occasionally encourage scummy reset style gameplay that's tedious when it doesn't work out and unsatisfying when it does. A risky strategy involving a powerful but conditional ability is perfectly fine, but when it's random or it doesn't feel like there's a viable alternative (which there often is in FFT, hence why the randomness isn't a huge gamebreaking problem), it can sometimes feel like the game is suggesting you use something that might work but probably won't for reasons outside your control.

Not that I have any good ideas on how you address that issue or if you even can. If nothing else I don't see how you'd do Zodiacs except either having them be fixed per battle for consistency's sake (which makes them exploitable with foreknowledge and doesn't help with random encounters) or leaving them random and just accepting that they'll alter the AI's behavior in potentially large ways each time you approach a battle.

Yeah, I think Death may be a bit too good, but the general idea of Death here is actually really good. It's damage is a little too high I think, but it's certainly not useless-- which in my eyes, is a bigger sin than it being a bit too good. There are still other viable ways of getting around bosses without needing to rely on a death proc. 

Even without Death Procs, you could go with things like SEN/COM/MED or SEN/SEN/COM to do chip damage provided there weren't doom counters on plenty of bosses. And more pressingly, I think that means that they should have put enemy stats as a buffer against Death Procs as well. That would have helped with this notion. 

 

For FFT, I still don't think Br/Fa are quite the same thing, all the zodiac signs encourage is having a more well rounded team to not have a "weakness." While it can seem kinda unfair, I think the "outside of your control" bit is happening because you can't see the enemies before you deploy your units. If you could see the enemy units before you deployed, I'd say this problem was mostly handled. Especially if units that you didn't use still could get EXP-- IE, FFTA and FFTA2 where you can send them on deployment missions to get JP while they weren't fighting and still get relatively decent AP. 

 

It's honestly not that bad-- it's the same way for Fire Emblem Lunatic+ mode, you always prepare for the worst possible scenario for your units. IE, if you *don't* want the enemy to run away, you prepare for the scenario for when it does. I stand by that the biggest issue here is not the random nature of brave and faith, but rather, the fact that you can't see them before you deploy. 

 

But I do like Void's idea of having the zodiacs have strengths and weaknesses to elements / statuses based on their sign. 

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Augestein said:

For FFT, I still don't think Br/Fa are quite the same thing, all the zodiac signs encourage is having a more well rounded team to not have a "weakness." While it can seem kinda unfair, I think the "outside of your control" bit is happening because you can't see the enemies before you deploy your units. If you could see the enemy units before you deployed, I'd say this problem was mostly handled. Especially if units that you didn't use still could get EXP-- IE, FFTA and FFTA2 where you can send them on deployment missions to get JP while they weren't fighting and still get relatively decent AP.

I was considering mentioning this possibility in my last post, but realized it wouldn't really be feasible, since it's more of a system that relies on having a larger selection of selection of units to meet the needs of each individual situation.

Also, in this situation, you always get the upper hand, since the enemy has no ability to counter this advantage. While that's also true for the player's knowledge of static aspects of the opposing team's make-up, I feel like that's more in service to the enemy as a designed challenge, over the random nature of arbitrary strengths and weaknesses.

In regards to Brave and Faith, they're definitely very different in regards to their applications, but I feel they could be valuable assets if only they reflected the actual inherent job and equipment qualities of each character.

Such as how I had explained in this previous post:

On 12/29/2017 at 1:33 PM, AbnormalVoid said:

Instead of randomness for Brave and Faith, it would be better served by being a constant amount at its base, a straight 50Br/50Fa, for each character. (Or maybe 55/45 for males, and 45/55 for females, to match the existing delineation of Males as physical units, and Females as Magical Units.)

From this point, the character's Brave and Faith would then reflect:

  • Their job class, which makes sense, due to stats changing to suit the qualities of the job already.
  • Their equipment, since there's already a tiered system of gear that either leans towards a physical side (Brave/Armor) or a magical side (Faith/Robes) or a middling side (Light Armor/No Preference).
  • And, possibly, certain passive abilities and status effects.

(Again, yeah, all wonderful but unrealistic ideas for a scenario in which you could work past FFT's heavily hard-coded bad game design. lol)

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9 minutes ago, Augestein said:

It's honestly not that bad-- it's the same way for Fire Emblem Lunatic+ mode, you always prepare for the worst possible scenario for your units. IE, if you *don't* want the enemy to run away, you prepare for the scenario for when it does. I stand by that the biggest issue here is not the random nature of brave and faith, but rather, the fact that you can't see them before you deploy. 

True, but Fire Emblem for the most part has deterministic AI and fixed enemy stats. An example of where I think it's a problem would be if a certain enemy in Ch1 of Awakening Lunatic+ could random their Strength to either be high enough to damage Frederick or not, and if it couldn't damage Frederick it wouldn't move. Since a huge part of the Ch1 Lunatic+ strategy involves manipulating Frederick to take hits and eliminate problems on a very tight timetable (since Frederick is really the only unit capable of it), an enemy randomly either moving up on him and dying to a counterattack or not moving at all can completely throw off the map balance. This did still happen with Lunatic+ skills which is probably one reason why Fates Lunatic doesn't do random skills even in Conquest, which is the hard route for series veterans.

Being able to see enemy stats on deployment would help, but because there's often still a touch of randomness in gear assignment and Zodiac compatibility, you'd still end up having to know the AI backward and forward to know whether that Ninja is going to come in on you or not. Still, it'd be better than not even knowing what Zodiacs the enemy has until the map starts.

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OK, since this whole jungle bumble is really hurting my brain (I blame hours of gaming for that), I would like to simplify things so we can close some points and pass up to other things that needs to be discussed (example: 1.3 awful endgame, that thing needs help ASAP)

 

- About Br/Fa: I see two strong points out there and I see the wisdom behind them, but I do side with the idea of just put fixed Br/Fa and said stuff can either change via jobs bases or just left the thing like that because let's be honest here: Since I got Auto-Potion, I haven't get off the damn thing because how reliable is to have 72 br and yeah, that's good but it also downgrades Fa since up to this date, I haven't see ANY reaction being activate via Fa and Br buff/debuffing only matters when someone who can turn you into chicken is nearby (And even then that isn't balanced enough since we have MT where when that happens I just petrify/poison/stop/charm/don't move/don't act the first time he does that and push him to hell until it dies or 1.3 where losing even the tiniest of Br means you're death because surviving is now 0% possible)

note: at least MT has you distracted with other threats so you forget about that menace, 1.3 just outright push that boot up your butt without warnings

-About Death: I do feel instant death needs something to be attractive since failing the spell means wasted MP/CP. I do like however how Trails in the Sky make his approach: all attacks that have instant death attached to them have about 60 or 80% of the damage you do with a physical attack, so it doesn't feel like a waste when death doesn't proc but also makes you think if you should use it so it procs or just stick with normal attacks/arts

-About the USELESS jobs (Yes, I call them that if their only function is to reach samurai/ninja): Archer just outright needs to be rehashed from scratch, maybe giving him some tools to keep the enemy at bay OR even better, do something about the bowgun: some skills that works with bowgun (maybe some hard hitting abilities) while the bow does less damage but have nice debuffs/elemental attacks to keep it attractive.

Now, since Emmy did find out a way to make Dragoon less sucking, I........really don't have anything since the possibilities are endless while at the same time, all mods were balance only with jump while MT just patched up the problem. Dragoons are just.....weird and that's all I got

 

Sorry if this whole post seems pushy but when I see the four pages long threat that only talks about three points while the whole deal feels unsolved I feel waaaay back at ID so I feel this one needs to be more dynamic while picking up some slack from the past

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21 minutes ago, ronlyn said:

- About Br/Fa: I see two strong points out there and I see the wisdom behind them, but I do side with the idea of just put fixed Br/Fa and said stuff can either change via jobs bases or just left the thing like that because let's be honest here: Since I got Auto-Potion, I haven't get off the damn thing because how reliable is to have 72 br and yeah, that's good but it also downgrades Fa since up to this date, I haven't see ANY reaction being activate via Fa and Br buff/debuffing only matters when someone who can turn you into chicken is nearby (And even then that isn't balanced enough since we have MT where when that happens I just petrify/poison/stop/charm/don't move/don't act the first time he does that and push him to hell until it dies or 1.3 where losing even the tiniest of Br means you're death because surviving is now 0% possible)

Don't forget also that I had made br/fa changes no longer permanent, and 1.3 did not.  The reason I did this is so that if enemy uses chicken race on you, it's not automatically a reset; while in 1.3 it is because you can't buff it back and too many battles rely on the rng of reactions going off.  

25 minutes ago, ronlyn said:

-About the USELESS jobs (Yes, I call them that if their only function is to reach samurai/ninja): Archer just outright needs to be rehashed from scratch, maybe giving him some tools to keep the enemy at bay OR even better, do something about the bowgun: some skills that works with bowgun (maybe some hard hitting abilities) while the bow does less damage but have nice debuffs/elemental attacks to keep it attractive.

Pretty much all the useless jobs need to be rehashed from scratch.  I like 1.3's approach to Archer, it however both needs the bugfix fix I made for charged shots, and its status effects need to be more accurate and relevant to more fights.  Interrupt (i forgot what 1.3 calls it, but it's what MT calls Interrupt) needs to actually work on bosses or there needs to be a reason intuitive to the player for it to not work on everything.  Tying it to Faith is one approach, or you can give it a charge time so that it has a tricky CT to line up.  Something that'll make it actually worth getting and not confuse the player (past not knowing game mechanics) when it doesn't work.  I also don't care for its roulette like move, when I'd rather have something that is a 100% or nearly so of a minor status that would be useful to use at range.  Poison, Blind, Silence, Oil are good choices here, since they can lead to interesting strategies when combined with party compositions.

Lancer is an easy fix with my fix.  Autolearned jump, and actual skills in the real skillset.  Literally anything else in the real skillset would be an improvement.

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26 minutes ago, ronlyn said:

-About the USELESS jobs (Yes, I call them that if their only function is to reach samurai/ninja): Archer just outright needs to be rehashed from scratch, maybe giving him some tools to keep the enemy at bay OR even better, do something about the bowgun: some skills that works with bowgun (maybe some hard hitting abilities) while the bow does less damage but have nice debuffs/elemental attacks to keep it attractive.

Now, since Emmy did find out a way to make Dragoon less sucking, I........really don't have anything since the possibilities are endless while at the same time, all mods were balance only with jump while MT just patched up the problem. Dragoons are just.....weird and that's all I got

 

Sorry if this whole post seems pushy but when I see the four pages long threat that only talks about three points while the whole deal feels unsolved I feel waaaay back at ID so I feel this one needs to be more dynamic while picking up some slack from the past

Yeah, useless jobs are another one. Or more accurately, less useful jobs. It's not that they didn't have their strengths, but compared to other jobs, they were severely outclassed.

I feel in 1.3, too many jobs tried to do too many things, instead of being focused around doing one role really well. Now, there could be some variety within that role, but when designing a class for FFT, there needs to be a through line that ties it all together and subconsciously contextualizes it to the player. This is something I feel vanilla did really well. Some things just weren't as good as others for other reasons, like straight up power output, speed, movement and attack range.

Wanna have the easiest FFT run of your life? Play with 5 Ninjas with item. You win, period.

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1 hour ago, Emmy said:

Don't forget also that I had made br/fa changes no longer permanent, and 1.3 did not.  The reason I did this is so that if enemy uses chicken race on you, it's not automatically a reset; while in 1.3 it is because you can't buff it back and too many battles rely on the rng of reactions going off.  

Touche. But doesn't solve the problem of Br having more impact on the long run against Fa since not being able to use Auto Potion can make your tank a corpse while not having spells means you need equipment to inflict those status effects

1 hour ago, AbnormalVoid said:

I feel in 1.3, too many jobs tried to do too many things, instead of being focused around doing one role really

I can accept some experiment: Marksman was interesting and it could be decent if the creator bothered to refined such class. Alas, it's another case of "doing stuff half-way is even worse than don't bother at all" 

Edited by ronlyn

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4 hours ago, Nakar said:

True, but Fire Emblem for the most part has deterministic AI and fixed enemy stats. An example of where I think it's a problem would be if a certain enemy in Ch1 of Awakening Lunatic+ could random their Strength to either be high enough to damage Frederick or not, and if it couldn't damage Frederick it wouldn't move. Since a huge part of the Ch1 Lunatic+ strategy involves manipulating Frederick to take hits and eliminate problems on a very tight timetable (since Frederick is really the only unit capable of it), an enemy randomly either moving up on him and dying to a counterattack or not moving at all can completely throw off the map balance. This did still happen with Lunatic+ skills which is probably one reason why Fates Lunatic doesn't do random skills even in Conquest, which is the hard route for series veterans.

Being able to see enemy stats on deployment would help, but because there's often still a touch of randomness in gear assignment and Zodiac compatibility, you'd still end up having to know the AI backward and forward to know whether that Ninja is going to come in on you or not. Still, it'd be better than not even knowing what Zodiacs the enemy has until the map starts.

I agree that Lunatic+ had that problem. I'd honestly blame the stat distribution. But even then, enemy stats in Fire Emblem are random. The enemies have growths as well, and sometimes that can be pretty important, IE, 1 point of speed can be the difference between enemies doubling and not, which can be a huge problem at moments. 

Yeah. That's more so where I'm going with that. It's a shame the Tactics Ogre remake fudged this up really badly. 

4 hours ago, AbnormalVoid said:

was considering mentioning this possibility in my last post, but realized it wouldn't really be feasible, since it's more of a system that relies on having a larger selection of selection of units to meet the needs of each individual situation.

Also, in this situation, you always get the upper hand, since the enemy has no ability to counter this advantage. While that's also true for the player's knowledge of static aspects of the opposing team's make-up, I feel like that's more in service to the enemy as a designed challenge, over the random nature of arbitrary strengths and weaknesses.

In regards to Brave and Faith, they're definitely very different in regards to their applications, but I feel they could be valuable assets if only they reflected the actual inherent job and equipment qualities of each character.

Such as how I had explained in this previous post:

I don't know if it's feasible or not for splitting JP after battle though. I do wonder... 

Yeah, but here's a question I've always wondered, does the enemy really need to gain and advantage? I mean, the game is about providing the player different challenges. Not necessarily making the opponent able to kill the player. While I understand that a part of that is providing enemies that can fight back, the question still remains relevant. 

 

Perhaps. I'd honestly blame the issue of Br/Fa values on the shitty reaction system. As it stands, you never want low brave outside of the equally horrible Move-Find Item. However, if the Brave System had abilities that worked better when you were a coward or brave, there might actually be some strategic use, or value in having middling brave units. IE, say Auto-potion / Defensive reactions work better for cowards, while aggressive ones work better for heroic units. It has its place, it's just not utilized as effectively as possible. Faith works decently as is, because having lower faith has a benefit, and the same goes for high faith. The only problem I really have with it, is that casters tend to be weak to themselves, which is actually strange and kind of dumb. 

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2 hours ago, Augestein said:

Yeah, but here's a question I've always wondered, does the enemy really need to gain and advantage? I mean, the game is about providing the player different challenges. Not necessarily making the opponent able to kill the player. While I understand that a part of that is providing enemies that can fight back, the question still remains relevant.

It's less letting enemies gain an advantage, and more trying to keep the field as level as possible. Giving a pointless advantage in any situation only really devalues the inherent quality of the battle.

2 hours ago, Augestein said:

Perhaps. I'd honestly blame the issue of Br/Fa values on the shitty reaction system. As it stands, you never want low brave outside of the equally horrible Move-Find Item. However, if the Brave System had abilities that worked better when you were a coward or brave, there might actually be some strategic use, or value in having middling brave units. IE, say Auto-potion / Defensive reactions work better for cowards, while aggressive ones work better for heroic units. It has its place, it's just not utilized as effectively as possible. Faith works decently as is, because having lower faith has a benefit, and the same goes for high faith. The only problem I really have with it, is that casters tend to be weak to themselves, which is actually strange and kind of dumb. 

Faith works better, I agree, and tying reactions to it made no sense at all. I really like your cowardly attack idea, though. Attacks that do more damage with an inverse brave formula is a fun concept.

To fix Brave and Faith, I'd give the following addition to my previous fix for Br/Fa: Have Brave work the same as Faith, only with Physical damage instead of Magic damage. Consider how the stat is "Brave". Bravery can also be associated with rashness. From that mindset doing more and receiving more Physical damage makes sense, in the same way Faith works from the standpoint that when you believe more fervently in mystic powers, it makes them stronger, both for and against you. Mix that with my (theoretical) system where you can use equipment and job set-ups to determine your Brave and Faith, and you have an interesting system of give and take.

Now, this would obviously require a reworking of the formula, I suggest:

The Faith (and Brave, in this new situation) formula would  work as (CFa/50)*(TFa/50) instead of (CFa/100)*(TFa/100).
This way, 50 Brave or Faith would just be the regular damage of the ability.
The lowest and highest Brave and Faith would be 100 and 25 respectively. Meaning at 25, they'd take and do half damage, and at 100, they'd take and give twice the damage. The ability to get as low or high as 25 and 100 would only be possible under extreme circumstances.

Ugh, I spent way too long mulling over this theoretical situation, I'm like half asleep. In any case, I'd probably add the new formula to FFT vanilla, in place of the current faith formula. It would probably fix a lot of the problems with the accuracy of status effects. Would need to balance...every magic spell's power...but yeah, it's a good idea. rofl

Edited by AbnormalVoid

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On 1/4/2018 at 10:14 AM, Emmy said:

I like 1.3's approach to Archer, it however both needs the bugfix fix I made for charged shots.

There was a bug with charged shot? What was it?

Interrupt (i forgot what 1.3 calls it, but it's what MT calls Interrupt) needs to actually work on bosses or there needs to be a reason intuitive to the player for it to not work on everything

It actually did use to work on bosses and it was removed for balance issues because you could deprive a Zodiac Boss (that doesn't use Non-Charge) of all its turns if you set it up right.

Of course that kind of made it kinda useless since most enemies which aren't immune to it are usually more likely to be stopped from charging by just killing him, but Marksman is kind of a headache job where it's just more effective in the enemy hands than yours.

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Anything with a charge time, if the AI uses it and moves, moving will cancel the charging of that move.  It is something hardcoded to that skillset that I figured out the fix to fairly recently.  I put this fix in the spoiler tag below.

And it's these "balance issues" that I'm challenging here.  Why not be more creative in how you handle bosses?  Having it be faith based can allow you to set it to pathetic/0 accuracy with a low faith enemy, having an enemy using non-charge or having no moves with a charge time means that the enemy will be effectively immune.  Of course, you shouldn't be doing this to every boss and the move needs to have a use against some bosses.  Why punish the player for having access to a useful move by making the enemies immune for a reason that the player won't understand?

  <Patch name="Silly hardcoding removal, related to skillset 08">
    <Description>If you use skillset 08 (charge) for anything other than charge, you want to use this hack.  This eliminates the hardcoding that causes characters to cancel their own spells by moving.</Description>
    <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="1191a0">
FFFF0234
    </Location>
  </Patch>

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