pogeymanz

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

92 posts in this topic

Yeah, and with best compat, concentrate, and decent speed, steal can get up to 50% as it is, might as well keep it at that constant rate.

Something that might make it more interesting is if it was conditional, and could only be used on enemies who were in critical status, or maybe turned into a "Loot" command, and could only be used to take equipment from KO'd units. Could also make it so it only affected enemies on the same height level, and only from the back, making it so it can be effectively blocked, instead of unreliably dodged.

I regards to something like Invite, it would be interesting if it was made conditional to the effect of only being able to be used on the last remaining enemy, when they're in critical status. This way, it can't be used to cheese fights, and you can fill your roster without it having much effect on the difficulty of battles.

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3 minutes ago, AbnormalVoid said:

Yeah, and with best compat, concentrate, and decent speed, steal can get up to 50% as it is, might as well keep it at that constant rate.

Something that might make it more interesting is if it was conditional, and could only be used on enemies who were in critical status, or maybe turned into a "Loot" command, and could only be used to take equipment from KO'd units. Could also make it so it only affected enemies on the same height level, and only from the back, making it so it can be effectively blocked, instead of unreliably dodged.

I regards to something like Invite, it would be interesting if it was made conditional to the effect of only being able to be used on the last remaining enemy, when they're in critical status. This way, it can't be used to cheese fights, and you can fill your roster without it having much effect on the difficulty of battles.

And yeah, I know it is probably impossible without heavy assembly. lol

It's why I started working on a new game instead of modding.

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15 hours ago, Emmy said:

Some amounts of RNG is fun.  For example, randomized brave and faith, zodiac signs, and randomized monster stats between male/female variants (the way MT does it, not the way vanilla does it) can make it so that the ai doesn't always choose the same things first.  However, having to rely on accuracies below 50% too frequently shouldn't be a thing in a strategy game.

Yeah, the difference with those is that in a perfect world though, it still balances out and actually does add some strategic depth. IE, is say, 70% is the base for accuracy of spells on a unit with decent faith and the enemy with decent faith, sometimes with compat, this can make it bump up to 90% or go down as low as 50% (just spitballing numbers, don't take that too literally). The difference here is that the 50% itself may be "unreliable," but it's unreliable on that specific enemy, it's not unreliable always, and even then, this still works in at least MT, because you can use buffs like say Faith on you or the enemy to make yourself more accurate despite the compat issues. Combine that with Brave and Faith abilities being decently accurate, and it does become strategic because you can weigh the option if you're in a good enough position to go for a lower accuracy, or take the time to buff you or the enemy with faith or faith raising skills to make it 100%, or at least close enough to be reasonably accurate. 

9 hours ago, Kaffe Myers said:

Low RNG skills are only really a good thing to add if you plan on them being used when you have control over the situation (so a miss doesn't mean that much). Like, invite is a good example -- it's not really to be used in a hectic battle where all your moves matter, but I wouldn't want it removed completely just because it's a low percentage. But that's corner case more than anything, and has little to do with actual battle balance -- High RNG risk elements simply isn't a smart way to go.

Invite is a perfect example to also demonstrate how you can make RNG still work and not necessarily lock it behind low RNG. FFT Invite just sucks tbh. Tactics Ogre has a much better invite system. The invite chance of success is based on the remaining hp of the unit and the loyalty of the unit to the commander, meaning that you can reliably recruit units that are at low health in it. This means that Invite is still reliable while not being the stupidly broken  Hail Mary skill that it is in FFT. You know, the useful-useless move? If you beat everyone else down but that one ninja, what's the point from a design perspective of having the player box the units in for 5+ turns attempting to nab that sweet Invite at 23%? Tactics Ogre does it better, because Invite has idiotically low chances at base (like 4% I believe), but can scoot to as high as 90% at moments. 

On a side note, the GBA version of Tactics Ogre expanded on this by making it to where classes actually mattered as well. Using FFT classes for a moment, it was where classes that were in the same job paths were easier to recruit with one another, and higher tiered units had an easier time Inviting lower tier. IE, a Knight has an easier time with invite on a Squire than a Knight trying to recruit a Chemist. 

It's stuff like this for the reason that Death in FFXIII was actually so good. It was a skill that did damage even if the Death effect missed, and the more status effects you put on the enemy, the more accurate Death was. Stuff like the above are good mechanics with RNG, where the player has some control of it and can fudge the numbers. Otherwise, it ends up falling into a "don't use" or "use this, it's really good." 

 

I kinda agree with Void on this one. Low RNG moves are really annoying and generally serve almost no purpose outside of either 1) Wasting the player's time 2) Screwing the player over. 

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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)

Having it randomized gives it an arbitrary feeling, same with Zodiac signs, since it creates such a huge difference in outcome with no control or ability or optimize. In addition to this, most units have random signs/br-fa, therefore you arbitrarily gain either an advantage or a disadvantage that averages itself out over the course of all battles, effectively resulting in no real depth gained.

Zodiac signs feel more like something that would benefit a game where A. You could see the enemy prior to a match, so you could match your stats with theirs, and B. Had a much larger team of simpler units so you could have a large variety of choices when assembling a team to combat your enemy's compatibility.

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What? I got told to avoid speaking because I disagree about their ideas about 50% RNG? Are you serious? I already told them I'm on the same boat about their opinion but we should respect for people who have that taste about RNG elements for making 1.3 better.

Fine, I'll leave this 1.3 improvements stuff and wait to see its outcome from the sidelines. I hope it's not all about talking and do something real to make 1.3 better so I can actually play and see.

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25 minutes ago, Windows X said:

I hope it's not all about talking and do something real to make 1.3 better so I can actually play and see.

That kinda requires someone taking real action to make something like this.  It won't be 1.3.  I hope whoever does it, does so as their own project and not as some kind of legacy project; because with the insane amount of work required, you don't want to be married to decisions made in 1.3 that you don't agree with or that break decisions that you make.

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So I got down voted from expressing my opinions and got warned to stop talking about 1.3 updates due to misunderstandings. Nice. I wish you luck from now on. I'm done.

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8 hours ago, Windows X said:

So I got down voted from expressing my opinions and got warned to stop talking about 1.3 updates due to misunderstandings. Nice. I wish you luck from now on. I'm done.

With that attitude, I'm not sure I care.

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21 hours ago, Windows X said:

So I got down voted from expressing my opinions and got warned to stop talking about 1.3 updates due to misunderstandings. Nice. I wish you luck from now on. I'm done.

No, you got downvoted because your logic is flawed, your points were silly, and when pressed, you tried to defend yourself by saying it was an "opinion." Who cares if it's an opinion? We know it's an opinion; that does not mean you shouldn't be defending it. It being an opinion and not fact does not save it from being criticized, which you took to poorly. No, you were warned because you were one step away from insulting someone over a simple disagreement in game tactics. And it wasn't even a warning, it was me asking you to take a step back.

Your negative rep came from three posts before this one where you threw your hands up like an infant and stormed out. You're not being bullied. If you don't want to be treated like a child, then stop acting like one.

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43 minutes ago, Kyrios said:

No, you got downvoted because your logic is flawed, your points were silly, and when pressed, you tried to defend yourself by saying it was an "opinion." Who cares if it's an opinion? We know it's an opinion; that does not mean you shouldn't be defending it. It being an opinion and not fact does not save it from being criticized, which you took to poorly. No, you were warned because you were one step away from insulting someone over a simple disagreement in game tactics. And it wasn't even a warning, it was me asking you to take a step back.

Your negative rep came from three posts before this one where you threw your hands up like an infant and stormed out. You're not being bullied. If you don't want to be treated like a child, then stop acting like one.

He asked me

"What is the purpose of including abilities that people shouldn't use in a game? Why have that ability at all?"

That's out of topic question from 1.3 development. It was part of my suggestion mixed with my opinion that I felt that lower RNG isn't something to be used strategically (and everyone in here also agreed from what I read).

It has nothing about defending when I answer his question that it's my opinion. if Administrator think it deserves down voting due to misunderstandings or whatever, fine. I don't care anymore at this point.

Edited by Windows X

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11 minutes ago, Windows X said:

He asked me

"What is the purpose of including abilities that people shouldn't use in a game? Why have that ability at all?"

That's out of topic question from 1.3 development. It was part of my suggestion mixed with my opinion that I felt that lower RNG isn't something to be used strategically (and everyone in here also agreed from what I read).

It has nothing about defending when I answer his question that it's my opinion. if Administrator think it deserves down voting due to misunderstandings or whatever, fine. I don't care anymore at this point.

I literally went back and checked the posts. We don't downvote for dissenting opinions, but rather for the content of said posts. That "I said it's my opinion" post deserved to be downvoted into oblivion.

Your posts that were downvoted had poor points, and thus poor content. Stop pitching a fit over it. 5 negative rep is very easily regained. It's not that serious.

Clearly you do care because you keep responding. This is the second time you've said that. :)

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52 minutes ago, Windows X said:

He asked me

"What is the purpose of including abilities that people shouldn't use in a game? Why have that ability at all?"

That's out of topic question from 1.3 development. It was part of my suggestion mixed with my opinion that I felt that lower RNG isn't something to be used strategically (and everyone in here also agreed from what I read).

It has nothing about defending when I answer his question that it's my opinion. if Administrator think it deserves down voting due to misunderstandings or whatever, fine. I don't care anymore at this point.

It's really NOT out of the topic of 1.3 development, as this is actually a bona-fide problem in 1.3. There are several moves that I'd say aren't worth having in 1.3. Jump for instance, still has this problem, there's no reason not to get Horizontal MAX and then the highest vertical Jump you can get. The rest of the moves are useless. Even having the skillset altered to Range +1 and having 6 copies of Range + 1 would be better than what it has now. Squire moves are still general bad, and having Throw Stone now is even more pointless with Squires having the ability to shoot with Crossbows-- which does tie into balance of classes. That said, if you believe the question is outside of the scope of the topic, the response is to send him a PM about it and discuss from there, NOT say "I said in my opinion." If it's a post on a forum, it's clearly understood that everything said is an opinion. So saying that just seems really dickish and dismissive. I'd rather someone just not respond than say "I said in my opinion," because it comes with the assumption that the person you're addressing is too stupid to comprehend that. 

It does though. Because everyone sees it as it is : a flimsy excuse to have a retort, but not actually answering the question. It's a legitimate question that you hand wave away. An ability able to be abused isn't a bad thing-- quite the contrary, that's a good thing. It's only a problem with said ability is the *only* skill worth using because the rest are bad. IE, going with your example with Nameless/Forbidden dance, this is a problem because the only other dance really worth using is Last Dance. Regular dances take too long and without enough potency to really take out a threat quickly enough to allow someone to survive longer. Your response actually brings up a point that many modders / devs actually fall for. "We can't make the move too good." YES. YOU. CAN. Just make sure that everything else is also good or has enough use, and you're golden. Take something like moves that interrupt charges, this move ranges from completely and utterly useless, to being able to save your party's bacon from oblivion. Good move, because it's a godsend when it's useful, and pointless when it's not. Is it worse than Reraise? Maybe, but considering that reraise and an interrupting move aren't on the same turf, there's no problem here. THAT, is why you got downvoted.  

 

 

 

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20 hours ago, Augestein said:

It's really NOT out of the topic of 1.3 development, as this is actually a bona-fide problem in 1.3. There are several moves that I'd say aren't worth having in 1.3. Jump for instance, still has this problem, there's no reason not to get Horizontal MAX and then the highest vertical Jump you can get.

I actually had an idea to make Jump a passive command, like Defend or Equip/Change, which is innate on Lancers, in addition to a more varied Dragoon skill-set.

If someone else wants to figure out how to actually implement that idea, they're more than welcome to it. lol

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1 hour ago, AbnormalVoid said:

I actually had an idea to make Jump a passive command, like Defend or Equip/Change, which is innate on Lancers, in addition to a more varied Dragoon skill-set.

If someone else wants to figure out how to actually implement that idea, they're more than welcome to it. lol

uhhhhh.......Emmy actually did that with jump, you should ask her

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2 minutes ago, ronlyn said:

uhhhhh.......Emmy actually did that with jump, you should ask her

Did she? Huh, good shit. It's honestly the best way to go. Jump is too limited to build an entire class around, in something like FFT.

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I see, so jump is applied as long as a character has the Lancer skillset equipped, as Primary or Secondary?

Edited by AbnormalVoid

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23 hours ago, Windows X said:

He asked me

"What is the purpose of including abilities that people shouldn't use in a game? Why have that ability at all?"

That's out of topic question from 1.3 development. It was part of my suggestion mixed with my opinion that I felt that lower RNG isn't something to be used strategically (and everyone in here also agreed from what I read).

It has nothing about defending when I answer his question that it's my opinion. if Administrator think it deserves down voting due to misunderstandings or whatever, fine. I don't care anymore at this point.

The reason I downvoted the post that I did had nothing to do with disagreeing with it.  There are plenty of things that people say, in this thread and any other FFT balance/theorycrafting thread that I disagree with, some of which I actually upvote due to the person arguing his points in a way that contributes to discussion.  When you said something to the effect of "I said it's my opinion" and nothing else in your post, coincidentally that's the exact kind of thing that makes me not want to read anything else you say.  I know it's your opinion because you're saying it, and very few things in these topics are actually facts.  And since you had nothing else in the post, it didn't contribute to discussion.  

 

39 minutes ago, AbnormalVoid said:

Did she? Huh, good shit. It's honestly the best way to go. Jump is too limited to build an entire class around, in something like FFT.

Yes.  You still need to turn skillset 0x12 into a regular skillset, and whatever you put into skillset 0x34 is autolearned.  And yes, it will follow equipping the skillset.  Any time you have 0x12 as a primary or secondary, you will have 0x34 for free as well.

 

  <Patch name="Action menu expansion">
    <Description>Grants access to jump (0x34) if unit has skillset 0x12.  Original code by Pride.</Description>
    <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="e9994">
      12000934
      0300A910
      34000234
      0300E914
      00000000
      000002A2
      01001026
      FF000234
      000002A2
      0800E003
      00000000
    </Location>
    <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="e99c0">
      E8FFBD27
      1000BFAF
      12004392
      13004592
      12000934
      03006910
      00000000
      0500A914
      00000000
      21302002
      7E69060C
      34000534
      12004392
      1000BF8F
      1800BD27
      0800E003
      00000000
    </Location>
    <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="11a4f0">
      6542050C
      00000000
    </Location>
    <Location file="BATTLE_BIN" offset="13347c">
      7042050C
      00000000
    </Location>
  </Patch>

Edited by Emmy

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On 12/29/2017 at 0:35 PM, Augestein said:

It's stuff like this for the reason that Death in FFXIII was actually so good. It was a skill that did damage even if the Death effect missed, and the more status effects you put on the enemy, the more accurate Death was. Stuff like the above are good mechanics with RNG, where the player has some control of it and can fudge the numbers. Otherwise, it ends up falling into a "don't use" or "use this, it's really good." 

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.

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40 minutes ago, Nakar said:

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.

Zodiacs aren't even that important tbh since there are three conclusions to reach with them:

-If you have good compat, just target that unit with status effects and take your distance since things could get messy if said enemy does the same to you (I suggest poison)

-If you have bad compat, the unit (or the whole team if you somehow managed to do that) should abuse the fact that the enemy also does less damage and piledrop on him while buffing yourself to sail the point home

-If you have neutral compat, just have fun and see what works best for you 

 

Br/Fa are just there so you have an excuse to use abilities to enhance those in hopes to have better hit/damage with magic and better chances of activate something like auto potion/damage split   

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2 hours ago, ronlyn said:

Zodiacs aren't even that important tbh since there are three conclusions to reach with them:

-If you have good compat, just target that unit with status effects and take your distance since things could get messy if said enemy does the same to you (I suggest poison)

-If you have bad compat, the unit (or the whole team if you somehow managed to do that) should abuse the fact that the enemy also does less damage and piledrop on him while buffing yourself to sail the point home

-If you have neutral compat, just have fun and see what works best for you 

 

Br/Fa are just there so you have an excuse to use abilities to enhance those in hopes to have better hit/damage with magic and better chances of activate something like auto potion/damage split   

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.

A system where each Zodiac offered specific benefits and detriments, such as innate status buffs/debuffs, or innate stat bonuses/penalties, etc. would have been far more interesting. It would synergize nicely with existing systems, and create a huge opportunity for character building depth.

Systems in a game should work like an interconnecting web. where everything feeds into the strategic depth of everything else. Not like a pile of blankets, where each system is placed over top of the rest, only tangentially adding depth.

(Not a hard and fast rule, I know, but something to keep in mind.)

Edited by AbnormalVoid

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1 hour ago, AbnormalVoid said:

A system where each Zodiac offered specific benefits and detriments, such as innate status buffs/debuffs, or innate stat bonuses/penalties, etc. would have been far more interesting. It would synergize nicely with existing systems, and create a huge opportunity for character building depth.

Oh god.......I think I'm in love with that idea

Don't mind me if I steal it for later

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Go right ahead, all my ideas for FFT are fair game, since I don't really plan on modding it myself. lol

I just really appreciate discussing the structure and possibility offered by the design of the game, since it's so vastly open to interesting design

Edited by AbnormalVoid

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