praetarius5018

Final Fantasy 5: the brainstorming

121 posts in this topic

Edit: download in new main topic

 

So I got the feeling that the increasingly misnamed Final Fantasy series is wholly underrepresented on this site at only 5 out of 13 uploaded mods.

Jokes aside, I wanna brainstorm some ideas what could be done with this game.

1) MP/action economy

Battle starts with 0 MP, except for certain class bonus (below) and some equipment.
ELEMENT1 spells would cost 0 MP, stronger and more specific spells > 0.
Magic damage would have to be reworked so that even the lowest spells remain relevant.

Guarding would grant 100 MP, next to the usual recovery options like Ethers and Osmose.
If MP is at least 100 at the end of a turn, that character skips wait and immediatly gets to act again.
If you're seeing parallels to Bravely Default, it was kinda the inspiration.
To make that relevant, a form of nATB is required.
And yes, that makes the Quick spell useless. Replace it and be happy over some freed RAM.

 

2) classes

We have 4 characters and all have access to the same 22 classes, including Freelancer and Mime.
No more!
Noone gets to keep the Hobo class, they learned a profession after all :P
Aside from that, I'd block 6 classes per character, so each one has 15 classes to choose from. E.g. Bartz can never be a Chemist while Lenna just doesn't have it in her to go Berserker.
Less breakage, more character diversity.

Each class gets to teach 7 abilities, some duplicates across classes for the basics, but the heavy stuff like !X-Fight and !X-Magic should stay unique and as a 7th ability.
Additionally stupid stuff like White1-6 goes and only teaches White once. You don't have to learn 6 times how to wield a sword either, neither has !Blue that problem.

Changing into a class no longer changes stats, instead levelling a class grants permanent stat bonuses, 3 out of HP, MP (starting bonus and max), STR, AGL, MAG, VIT. Duplicates possible.
E.g. each level of Monk gives +2x VIT and +1x HP (30 HP before VIT %bonus)

ABP required should not be based on which ability you learn next but purely on how many class levels you already have.

 

3) items

Consumables aren't used up, instead you get a cooldown during which you can't use !Item.
Higher item stacks increase effect or lower cooldown. E.g. 1x Potion heals 30 HP, 99x Potion 2000 HP.

Would probably require to prohibit out of battle healing coupled with a free mini heal after victory.

 

4) equipment

Equipment is changed from Helm, Armor and Relic to 3x Relic.
Non-shields would have to get renamed.

 

5) elements

Everything could get one of the eight elements this game has instead of 90% neutral.
Weapons could belong to one element per type, i.e. swords would be fire except for special cases.
Armors for defensive obviously, each element would give 2 resistances and 2 weaknesses, mix gear badly and you're suddenly weak to 6 elements.
The only thing I'd allow to be neutral would be the final boss. Everything else, enemy or otherwise, should have elemental affinity (i.e. weaknesses).


Warning: utter drawing incompetence ahead (8x8px per icon times negative talent)

pic_a.pngpic_b.png

to the left how it could look ingame,
to the right just all 8 element icons: fire, ice, lightning, water, wind, earth, poison, holy

Edited by praetarius5018

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Man. How did I miss this wonderful topic? FFV is one of my favorites and I just let this topic get ignored without saying a thing! 

1) This sounds interesting, but I'm curious about this: if I guard for instance, and then I attack, does that mean that I'll act like I'm under the quick status forever? I'm not sure I completely follow this at all. That said, I do like the idea of being able to guard and recover MP. I think that's a really good idea, it makes guard a bit more useful for mages, and in addition to that, it lowers the need to spend a ton of money on items / ethers. Especially because MP usage basically forces Mix to be used as the best alternative for MP restoration in the late game. 

2) I'm curious why you wouldn't use the FFV: Advanced version for this on this note. If you haven't started already on the SNES version, I'd think it would make more sense to do it there because it has extra jobs, which means that you can make each person have more jobs if need be. That said, I'm fine with the SNES version, but I do prefer the cleaner official translation over the dry SNES one or the "interesting" PSX one. 

For jobs, I'd probably break them down based on how the character's bases were in the original game. 

Bartz: Bartz starts the game with higher strength than anyone else in the game, so naturally, we'd make him have a bias towards physical attack. But since he's afraid of heights, he won't be acting like a Dragoon any time soon. He's also pretty clumsy with handling of animals, so he doesn't have any sort of ability to tame or communicate with them. 

15 Jobs per character? 

Physical: Knight, Monk, Berserker, Mystic Knight, Ninja, Thief, Samurai

Magical Nuke: Red Mage

Support: Dancer, Geomancer, Bard, Mime, Blue Mage 

Defensive Magi: Time Mage, White Mage, 

Lenna: The princess of Tycoon. She's very kindhearted and talented mage to boot. She's also good with animals, and the affinity shows with her choices of jobs.  

Physical: Thief, Mystic Knight, Beast Master, Ranger, 

Magical Nuke: Black Mage, Summoner, Red Mage, 

Defensive Magi: White Mage, Time Mage, 

Support: Chemist, Bard, Geomancer, Mime, Blue Mage, Dancer

Galuf: A veteran warrior and an amnesiac. There's more to this hardy old man than meets the eye. 

Physical: Monk, Knight, Ranger, Samurai, Dragoon, Beast Master, Thief

Magical Nuke: Black Mage, Red Mage

Defensive Magi: Time Mage 

Support: Chemist, Mime, Geomancer, Blue Mage

 

Faris: A pirate that decided to join the adventure. Has an arsenal of adventure skills from experiences at the sea. 

Physical: Thief, Ninja, Ranger, Beast Master, Monk, Berserker, Samurai

Magical Nuke: Summoner (if only because it makes sense for a certain plot point), Black Mage 

Defensive Magi: White Mage 

Support: Blue Mage, Mime, Chemist, Bard, Geomancer

They all get Blue Mage because unless you can make learning apply to just seeing the move done, this is a nightmare no one should have to deal with. 

I'm not sure how I feel about the growths being on the job though, especially if there are no multipliers. I'd rather have both tbh. And yeah, if you're planning on making every class able to equip everything, Mime pretty much makes Freelancer pointless, as the biggest draw to Freelancer was the fact that they got bonuses for mastered jobs and could equip everything. 

 

3) Items

This is an interesting idea, I'm just curious how this would work with mix too. Would it make both items fall on a cooldown, or would it work on its own. That would certainly humble mix to have a cooldown on multiple items. Not sure how much that would nerf it, but it certainly wouldn't be nearly as busted, that's for sure. For free heals after combat? That'd be a nice idea all around for both HP/MP. Maybe not to full health, but certainly enough to where it can help with the item changes. 

4) Relic System

Could be interesting, but what exactly do the relics do? Are they just relics that give extra passive abilities like "Blind immunity," while giving more accuracy, or are they going to be things like "physical damage -25%?" Because with a relic system, I really don't like the idea of relics become obsolete like standardized equipment. 

5) Elemental. 

That sounds... Fine actually, especially sense you could change weapons whenever in 5, there's absolutely no problem with this. 

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1) it's not like the quick spell, it just makes you need 0 atb ticks to your next turn instead of whatever you have to wait based on haste/slow and agility.
so if you use jump you still have the start-up delay, then the air time before the hit and only then makes it a difference; if you have 100 MP, those are used and you can act again right now if not, wait.

there'll also be some "physical" spells to use the MP, not many just 2 sets of 8 "spells" (3 shared because the spell list is just that full already).

 

2) I don't like the advance version, dunno it just doesn't "click" with me, sound is weird and also:

  • I have 0 idea about GBA assembly but a bit for SNES asm, call it a home advantage
  • more content (classes, items) means more problems and redundancy; with the other class edits I already have trouble filling the base 21 classes with 7 non-trash abilities, adding another 4 classes... please no
  • the snes game has a ton of more documentation

this is my current class setup.

class_chart.png

each character got a "main" stat and a "secondary" (top), each class as well (left).

If the primary match they get them (green), otherwise it is only a "priority" class but not must have.
I mostly focused on preventing the broken combos that lead to the likes of Dual-Wield, X-Fight, Spellblade.
The obvious problem being that little child Krile will replace the hardy Galuf but there are worse things in fiction than the little girl being the main tank.

Currently every class can equip all items, has one fixed ability and minor stat adjustments; otherwise the player has 3 slots they can fill as they want.

 

3) I have no idea how I should treat mix and drink.
Item has one cooldown per character, not per item. I just don't have much RAM.
If you use a potion you can't use !item for 2~3 turns but the other characters still can, if you use a elixir you better not need an item any time soon from that character.

I think !drink can just use a shared cooldown with !item and !mix gets to burn in hell has no cooldown but still uses items up.
Or !mix gets dropped completely, that'd work too.

MP doesn't change after battle since it gets reset on battle start anyway.
Otherwise you could in use a tent for full MP heal and then start a boss battle with 10 turns on all 4 characters, yeah, no.
For HP I went with 1/8 maxHP + 8 * (VIT - 22)

 

4) relics is just the same as armors, helms and relics were in vanilla. Some give just defense or stats, other cut MP cost in half, give status immunity, etc.
Items with unique effects survive longer than just stat sticks.


5) keep in mind that !item is optional, so you can just be stuck with ineffective damage on a character.
availability and weapon types are other problems; swords can be two handed, knives can't, so if you have to abandon the sword, you have to use a shield when you didn't want (or have) one or waste more class levels to learn dual wield parallel to two handed. jump builds will really hate trading a lance for a sword.

also armors affect your elemental coverage in good and bad way. with a fire armor on, you take less damage from fire but more damage from water attacks.
and you can't change armors in battle (or I missed the totally obvious thing for 15 years), only a shield for that purpose.

 

6) difficulty slider:
lazy numeric increase/decrease for now
message speed was doing nothing so there it has a use now

7) encounter rate slider:
want to grind? set it to 1
want to run to the boss almost unhindered? set it to 6

(sacrificed not/barely working message and battle speed for that)

 

 

I can maybe release a proof of concept this weekend, no promises.

Edited by praetarius5018

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1) Alright, that makes more sense. I see what you're saying now. 

2) That's fair for ASM. Honestly, there wasn't terribly new items for the most part, but it did have some extra summons (like Leviathan for instance), but those could honestly be added later on. As for the sound, you're right, it is worse, but there's actually a restoration patch created to help that. It also fixed some damage formulas that acted a bit weird in the SNES like blood suck. Documentation is probably the biggest reason though. 

If that's the way classes are done with equipping all items, that will help with equip problems as some classes have really bad equips like Geomancer but have okay abilities (Elemental isn't terrible but it's not great either). X-Fight, dual wield, Spell Blade is one of those things that are a little too good, I agree. I think humbling them isn't worth the time, but keeping a person from getting all 3 is a must. Seems we both thought of the same thing there. 

But for growths, I guess I'm just a little worried on the account that someone might want to be a physical unit for awhile, and then have a hard time with that and try to switch to a mage, only to be kinda lame on it, and the big draw to the job system is being able to switch classes on the fly. 

3) For Mix / Drink, you could have the items that you combine for mix / Drink act like a tier of item. IE, something like Potion + Potion acts like the cool down of a High Potion. That might be a bit difficult / tedious to do for all items, but it's a thought that could help. It'd also stop someone from being a mix machine as they'd have to have something to do in the meantime. 

4) Sounds kinda Saga Series inspired honestly. Some of them were just plain better as some were Defense and others were Defense +. I just remember the remaking trying to make all of them have some sort of viability though. 

5) Nah, you're right. Only Left and Right hands can be switched in combat. It sucks, but that's how the game rolls. And that's fair, it's still something worth considering at moments depending on what class you are and what you're doing. After all, if your spear heals someone, it really doesn't matter if Jump is going to do less damage with a sword. You can actually damage it in that scenario. 

6 and 7) are QoL additions that would always be welcome. 

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2) I don't know of any new summons there, Leviathan is definitly in SNES version.
X-Fight, dual wield and Spellblade are currently crying in a corner from the nerf hammers;
X-Fight no longer ignores def or evasion.
Dual wield takes a 3/16 penalty to attack power. 2handed took a dive from x2 damage to +25% attack power.
Spellblade is no more x2/3/4 with def=0 imba nonsense:
tier1 just doubles damage, keeps def intact. Tier2 increases attack slightly and 0s def. Tier3 is somewhere inbetween.

Apart from that, I HAVE to add a few items. Otherwise certain elements are just criminally underrepresented over long game stretches.

You still can switch on the fly and be somewhat competent at it. Even at the bare minimum you have about 28~30 in a relevant STR/MAG stat.
Add a bit gear with stat bonuses and you should be able to hit 40 without too much trouble.
A specialist will be stronger, yes, I estimate about a 60~70 stat without min-max and overgrinding.
(my math is based around the assumption that a player can finish with moderate levels of 30 char and 20ish class)
Since STR/MAG is a linear factor in the damage formula he'll be 50~75% stronger.
A bit much, sure, but those missing 20~30 points must be somewhere else; AGL? VIT? Nothing that hurts to have more.
Maybe STR, but I planned to make that reduce weight a bit which means slightly faster ATB.
MAG gives more max MP which can at least be useful if you plan to store a lot of turns at once for a big attack rush.

Or just ask a bard to sing, that can increase strength and magic to 99.

Does it even matter? The damage potential is absurdly high.
Not in the damage cap sense but orders of magnitudes beyond that.
At one point a thought experiment ended at 240k theoretical damage, not even sure how.

4) Not sure I know any of those games.
At the end of the day "relics" are just equipment, hopefully with more "not just defense" variants.

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Crud, I'm thinking of FF6. Yeah. Yeah, you're right on that. And those nerfs are crazy. I'm down with that. 

Alright, if the leveling is like that, that's fine then. 

Seems I need to play the game again, I've forgotten stuff about it. 

Edited by Augestein

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proof of concept

No idea how far mostly unchanged enemy stats will let you get.

Btw. if an enemy doesn't have any symbol in front of his name, he'll have unchanged resistances/weaknesses from vanilla.
Otherwise it overwrites those values.

How you know !item is on cooldown:

FF5_item_cooldown.png

The evils of math:
FF5_too_much_damage.png
 

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For the elements on everything notion, will we be getting a free scan spell? Everything having resistances sounds good on paper, but it'll make things confusing fast. Or will all monsters be labeled with an icon on what their element is so we don't have to worry about it?

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In so many words: both.

Every monster HAS to be labelled with 1-3 element icons because that is what my function reads: the monster name (and those icons are part of it).
Whether you know which monster name belongs to which sprite/target is another story sometimes...

Every character has a minimum ability knowledge of !Fight, !Item and !Observe. The later tells HP and weaknesses but costs a turn.
And you have to equip and use it of course.

I'll maybe change it so that !Observe and its big brother give you a free turn afterwards.

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Consider me officially intrigued by this hack.

Love the limited class selection & class-based level ups. Not sure what I think about a whooping 15 out of 22 classes being available for each character. Having 2/3 of the available classes still seems like an awful lot. Might be my subjective opinion though.

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Available classes can still be changed.
How much lower would you go? I had already trouble deciding on 6 classes to ban for each character.
Certain things just don't work when you remove too much, imo.
The game kind of requires that everyone can deal physical damage (guaranteed with !Fight and no gear restriction) and has at least access to one form of magic damage; and that's where trouble starts.
It's hard to count !Gaia and !Animal as they are almost exclusively one element, the later has it even worse with all the damage ones being also ground type (i.e. useless to flying).
Some support abilities would also be nice and so on.

I don't know where the 15 originally came from.
I just needed a number for a start. A loss of 30% is already a lot for me, I want some player choice in this and not a preset path.
And we need enough jobs per character after the first crystal obviously.

I mean I could have made all wind crystal jobs available for all and only restrict the rest and end up with 12 jobs each or something.


Disclaimer: the following values are for my dev version, not what I have posted above, differences will happen.

For me the amount of classes counts less than to block "critical" abilities.
A "rapid fire" setup requires:
1) Ninja for dual wield (2x 13/16 attack)
or the "inferior" 2handed (1x 125% attack) from Knight or Berserker
2) Ranger for X-Fight (rapid fire, 4 hits at half power)
or the inferior TwinCut (2 hits at normal attack power but doubled defense, mostly meant for axes as they ignore huge chunks of defense) from Berserker
or try to be cute with Knight's Stomp (1 hit against halved defense)
3) Magic Knight for spellblade (only for swords and knives)
or Thief for Crit Up (axes, katana, bows)
or Monk for Brawl (unarmed)
lances go with (S-)Jump instead, the rest are defensive backrow weapon types
4) Dragoon or Time Mage for Pierce (passive, not innate, bypass immunities; kinda required if you want to stick to your weapon of choice for spellblade)

E.g. Lenna currently has no access to any of 1), Faris has no spellblade and Galuf has to take the slightly worse choice on 2).
Originally I wanted to hard cap class levels at 20 total, so even though all 4 could entertain a form of a rapid fire build at that level, all would have to be a different flavor.
Or a bit more than flavor, those restrictions indirectly affect which elemental damage you can throw around (e.g. Sword = fire, bad without rapid fire)

Edited by praetarius5018

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My initial guess was maybe 11 - 13 classes. Maybe missing one of the classes with their "primary" stat," maybe not even the same number of classes for each character (small variation). Mind you, I'm not saying my way is better - I'm making a guess here. And, yeah, everyone needs a healthy selection from the Wind Crystal.

For !Gaia and !Animal, are you not able to shake up those abilities with different elements, buff/debuff moves, etc? Then again, I'm guessing for the beta release, you don't want to shake the abilities up to much, lest it become overwhelming.

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Both have the same two problems:
1) very limited elements, Animal has only earth/ground type attacks (earth being the actual element and ground meaning it is helpless against float status, i.e. all birds) and a fraction move
2) what spell you get is purely random, in case of !Animal it subjectively even gets worse with higher level.
!Gaia is edited to choose its 4 spells per area evenly, 25% chance each - in vanilla that was based on level, good luck getting level 60 in the noob cave to have a chance at the best effect for that.
the spells are based on the area you are in, so you can get a super powerful tidal wave on the sea - which helps little if that area is obviously flooded with water resistant types.
I think that problem can be "solved" by making those spells very strong under the assumption that you'll 90% of the time have those resisted?
Fire2 has 110 power, split for multitarget, double on weakness; so a typical gaia move could have 150 power with multitarget no split damage?
or more dynamic 120+5x Geomancer level? no idea.

!Animal is a different beast of a problem.
you unlock new better spells but the obsolete old ones still clutter the list the result is chosen from.
so at level < 10 you only good the mysidian rabbit that now functions as a cure1
at level 50 when that is not so good anymore you still have a good chance to get that rabbit when you'd rather get the cure3 tier unicorn.

the list includes party wide healing, earth/ground single target attacks, a percentage attack, status effects (poison, paralyze, blind).
the list isn't bad but again random. with gaia you're at least 90% sure it will hurt the enemy, here... thx for the heal on fully healed party?

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Sounds like both abilities need a bit of a revamp. Modified percentages & elements for Animal, different spells in a given area for Gaia. Though I don't know if that's feasible, given the code. And, like I said, probably best to get the base idea done first.

BTW, do all 4 characters still have forced "Fight" and "Item", or are one or both of those now freely changeable with other commands?

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Every class is setup like the vanilla mime:
class ability + 3 abilities of player choice
!Fight, !Observe and !Item are always available to be equipped but not forced.
And yes you can screw yourself over by choosing e.g. 4 mages with 3x !Item and not even knowing any attack spells, so no way to win,
which is a scenario I tolerate as you really have to try.

 

!Gaia should be ok as it is, maybe some number changes. It mostly does what it should; if you take it you know it will hurt the enemies in some way;
a lot of aoe damage (similar power to !summon), slow, blind, poison, confusion, HP-to-1 effects, even direct death is under the possible effects.
It is kinda like !Dance, you use it, don't know what exactly will happen, only that it will hurt the enemy in some way.
It more or less works when you look for a way to kill stuff.
 

!Animal has a mixed bag, it can deal status effects, deal damage, heal, cure status.
So sorta like FF6 !Slots without a way for the player to influence it and without a insta-win jackpot.
You take it and have absolutely no idea what will happen; do you get the single target attack? does it heal the party no matter if HP is full?
It is unreliable in that sense. If you need healing, you usually need it now and not maybe now, maybe in 5 turns.
That way it fills no niche. It has no high power reward like dance, it doesn't even have a reliable "direction" (keep party alive longer vs kill enemy faster), it is just there...?

What can be done with !Animal?
One way would be to give it a fixed 3 pet list based on level in Ranger/Bard/Beastmaster (all three teach this skill) and the character that uses is (i.e. Bartz doesn't get the high tier healing one, Lenna refuses the Skunk).
Each use you would rotate through this list, so pet A -> pet B -> pet C -> pet A -> ...
And the starting point for each battle would not be fixed "pet A" but based on, let's say VIT, specifically VIT mod 3; that stat wants some more love too.

Example:
Butz has Ranger 1 so he gets his lowest list of: Squirrel, Squirrel, Mysidian Rabbit (changed from do nothing to minor party heal)
He has 24 VIT (or any other values cleanly dividable by 3), so his first and 2nd !Animal will be the squirrel, only every thrid will be the healing rabbit.
Lenna in the same situation might get: Mysidian Rabbit -> Squirrel -> Nightingale

What does that achieve?
We can know what we get, so it has become a reliable tactic.
It is not a "every turn full heal" spam fest.
Since it is based on VIT, the player has some agency in manipulating it. Find a good value and start the fight with the pet of your choice.
The "bad" pets will no longer drag the power of the skill down after you've achieved a few levels in the relevant classes.

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On 5/17/2017 at 2:54 PM, praetarius5018 said:

So I got the feeling that the increasingly misnamed Final Fantasy series is wholly underrepresented on this site at only 5 out of 13 uploaded mods.

Jokes aside, I wanna brainstorm some ideas what could be done with this game.

Hmm, I've played FFV a good bit (thanks to the Four Job Fiesta), so let's see if I can provide some feedback on these ideas.

As a whole, I'm kind of skeptical of...most of them, really, but let's see if I can give suggestions.

Quote

1) MP/action economy

Battle starts with 0 MP, except for certain class bonus (below) and some equipment.
ELEMENT1 spells would cost 0 MP, stronger and more specific spells > 0.
Magic damage would have to be reworked so that even the lowest spells remain relevant.

Guarding would grant 100 MP, next to the usual recovery options like Ethers and Osmose.
If MP is at least 100 at the end of a turn, that character skips wait and immediatly gets to act again.
If you're seeing parallels to Bravely Default, it was kinda the inspiration.
To make that relevant, a form of nATB is required.
And yes, that makes the Quick spell useless. Replace it and be happy over some freed RAM.

The first half of this sounds really interesting, honestly. Lets mages actually do something for trash mobs and keeps bosses from being -aga spam. For reworking magic damage, possibly add a 'magic attack' stat that works like the attack stat that weapons have; Fire can, then, use 1x this 'MAtk', while Fire 2 might use 1.5x and Fire 3 use 2x.

I'm not really following how guarding's supposed to work? Like, I saw in one of your other posts that the MP is consumed if possible in order to get that instant turn, but wouldn't that mean that as soon as you Guard, you gain the 100 MP, then immediately lose it to get a new turn immediately (which removes the Guard)? Based on your comparison to BD, I assume the intent is that Guard skips that check and just forces you to hold the MP and wait? That could work, but it doesn't seem like it'd play well with, say, a White Mage, who probably wants to save their MP for their actual curative spells.

Personally, I think it'd work better if it was its own resource instead of being tied to MP, but I'd have to see it in action first, really.

Quote

2) classes

We have 4 characters and all have access to the same 22 classes, including Freelancer and Mime.
No more!
Noone gets to keep the Hobo class, they learned a profession after all :P
Aside from that, I'd block 6 classes per character, so each one has 15 classes to choose from. E.g. Bartz can never be a Chemist while Lenna just doesn't have it in her to go Berserker.
Less breakage, more character diversity.

Each class gets to teach 7 abilities, some duplicates across classes for the basics, but the heavy stuff like !X-Fight and !X-Magic should stay unique and as a 7th ability.
Additionally stupid stuff like White1-6 goes and only teaches White once. You don't have to learn 6 times how to wield a sword either, neither has !Blue that problem.

Changing into a class no longer changes stats, instead levelling a class grants permanent stat bonuses, 3 out of HP, MP (starting bonus and max), STR, AGL, MAG, VIT. Duplicates possible.
E.g. each level of Monk gives +2x VIT and +1x HP (30 HP before VIT %bonus)

ABP required should not be based on which ability you learn next but purely on how many class levels you already have.

My first thought is that there's no way you're making 7 abilities each for 21 classes. Excluding abilities that were just higher-tier versions of prior abilities, like the various magic lists (though I did include the different HP/MP+ tiers), there are 73 abilities in vanilla FFV (EDIT: I forgot to take out the "Equip X" skills, so there's even less you've got to fill levels with); that's barely less than half of the number of ability slots you intend. While you did say you plan on making some abilities redundant to help cover bases, there's no way that can effectively double the number of abilities you have to work with. I do like the concept of making each job have a constant number of levels, though; maybe bring it down to 5 abilities per job? Cut out or condense some of the abilities from Knight, Monk, and Thief which already have more than 5 levels in vanilla (the magic jobs are already handled, of course).

really don't think you should separate HP from VIT unless you plan on using VIT for more things. In vanilla, VIT has exactly two purposes: determining your max HP, and modifying the strength of your regen tick. That's it. And regen isn't exactly a powerful status in vanilla FFV.

And for one small little addition, I'd at least try to make sure that each character can use all the jobs of the crystal that they're associated with. (Even though, yes, that would mean Lenna has access to Berserker.)

Quote

3) items

Consumables aren't used up, instead you get a cooldown during which you can't use !Item.
Higher item stacks increase effect or lower cooldown. E.g. 1x Potion heals 30 HP, 99x Potion 2000 HP.

Would probably require to prohibit out of battle healing coupled with a free mini heal after victory.

Erghhhh...I'm really leery of no OOB healing. It could work, though, if all battles were a full HP recovery and monsters were adjusted with this expectation in mind. It sounds like you want to move away from long-term resource management anyway, given the non-consumed consumables.

Quote

4) equipment

Equipment is changed from Helm, Armor and Relic to 3x Relic.
Non-shields would have to get renamed.

Ultimately just a change of name for the most part, so sure.

Quote

5) elements

Everything could get one of the eight elements this game has instead of 90% neutral.
Weapons could belong to one element per type, i.e. swords would be fire except for special cases.
Armors for defensive obviously, each element would give 2 resistances and 2 weaknesses, mix gear badly and you're suddenly weak to 6 elements.
The only thing I'd allow to be neutral would be the final boss. Everything else, enemy or otherwise, should have elemental affinity (i.e. weaknesses).


Warning: utter drawing incompetence ahead (8x8px per icon times negative talent)

pic_a.pngpic_b.png

to the left how it could look ingame,
to the right just all 8 element icons: fire, ice, lightning, water, wind, earth, poison, holy

This whole thing kind of rubs me the wrong way, but I think that's just my personal bias. So I'm just gonna not comment on it too much, aside from mentioning that by default, in FFV, resistances override weaknesses.

That said, I think it'd work fine as long as any given area only had monsters of two or three elements at most. Try to minimize the chance of someone walking into a dungeon blind and just getting pasted because whoops, this enemy they didn't know to expect hits their weakness, hope they saved recently.

 

(As an additional aside, if every class can equip everything, maybe remove the "Eqp:" section of the equip menu entirely., since it serves no purpose now.)

Edited by aturtledoesbite

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WallOfText warning!

The first half of this sounds really interesting, honestly. Lets mages actually do something for trash mobs and keeps bosses from being -aga spam. For reworking magic damage, possibly add a 'magic attack' stat that works like the attack stat that weapons have; Fire can, then, use 1x this 'MAtk', while Fire 2 might use 1.5x and Fire 3 use 2x.


I've realized the same effect by simply using the weapons attack power, or rather a factor of it;
Fire1 uses 85% (0 MP cost), Fire2 uses 110% (6 MP cost) and Fire3 uses 135% (14 MP cost)
with the advantage that I don't have to worry about hidden typos in M.Atk making some weapon useless or utterly overpowered.

Also that opens the way for axe wielding casters... could be worse.

I'm not really following how guarding's supposed to work? Like, I saw in one of your other posts that the MP is consumed if possible in order to get that instant turn, but wouldn't that mean that as soon as you Guard, you gain the 100 MP, then immediately lose it to get a new turn immediately (which removes the Guard)? Based on your comparison to BD, I assume the intent is that Guard skips that check and just forces you to hold the MP and wait? That could work, but it doesn't seem like it'd play well with, say, a White Mage, who probably wants to save their MP for their actual curative spells.


If you defend or guard you get +100 MP and end your current turn.
Otherwise the game checks if you have at least 100 MP, if yes lose 100 MP and take another turn.
Of course you can abuse that with always ending your turn defending..
1st turn: defend
2nd.1 turn: do whatever
2nd.2 turn (consumes the 100 MP from first defend): defend again

White Mage learns !Cure1 that is the same as the spell but free of MP cost and not multitargetable. So if you equip that to your White Mage, (s)he is never unable to heal, it just won't be as good as Cure2/3.

Personally, I think it'd work better if it was its own resource instead of being tied to MP, but I'd have to see it in action first, really.


Originally I wanted to change the game so that MP doesn't exist at all, 10 seconds later I remembered that Fire1/2/3 is a thing and gave up on that idea.
It shouldn't play too different than a system where all skills use a shared cooldown or charge time or whatever.

My first thought is that there's no way you're making 7 abilities each for 21 classes. Excluding abilities that were just higher-tier versions of prior abilities, like the various magic lists (though I did include the different HP/MP+ tiers), there are 73 abilities in vanilla FFV (EDIT: I forgot to take out the "Equip X" skills, so there's even less you've got to fill levels with); that's

barely less than half of the number of ability slots you intend. While you did say you plan on making some abilities redundant to help cover bases, there's no way that can effectively double the number of abilities you have to work with. I do like the concept of making each job have a constant number of levels, though; maybe bring it down to 5 abilities per job? Cut out or condense some of the abilities from Knight, Monk, and Thief which already have more than 5 levels in vanilla (the magic jobs are already handled, of course).


I think I'm fine on abilities.
I've converted the equip X skills into different passives and the lower tier HP/MP boosts have secondary effect to differentiate all of them. So 32 passive abilities currently, I can only add one more because of space.
On active abilities I've sacrificed the tiered color-magics so there are now a total of 65 active abilities by my counting.
Ok a couple are just "cast spell X for free without option to multitarget" it is still something.

really don't think you should separate HP from VIT unless you plan on using VIT for more things. In vanilla, VIT has exactly two purposes: determining your max HP, and modifying the strength of your regen tick. That's it. And regen isn't exactly a powerful status in vanilla FFV.


GilToss was modified to be based mostly on VIT, as well as 2 physical skills from a new "weapon spell menu".
I may also include it in the formula for resisting status effects. Maybe.
VIT also increases the post battle healing a bit.

Erghhhh...I'm really leery of no OOB healing. It could work, though, if all battles were a 

full HP recovery and monsters were adjusted with this expectation in mind. It sounds like you want to move away from long-term resource management anyway, given the non-consumed consumables.


I wanted to keep the gameplay "fluid".
"Fight a 30 sec battle then spent 2 minutes spamming basic potions to get ready for the next fight"
and
"ok I beat the boss back to grinding 30 turtle shells so I can beat the next"
just shouldn't need to be.
If I have a class like chemist with its mix ability I want to be able to "push some buttons" as in use the friggin ability, and not keep it until I forget it exists.
Or when I'm supposedly in a hurry to "save the world" I can hardly take 8h timeouts every two steps to cook a meal and sleep.

And I had a... "situation" on hand.
If I'd be consequent you'd need to get a full heal after every battle if you have at least one (hi)potion in your inventory or an ether and any cure spell. Or a white mage lv1 (learns !Cure1 even if you haven't bought it) or a Chemist with certain other ingredients or bone mail and a death spell or element X absorbing armor and spell of element X... way too much to check if you want to be "correct".
So we have full power every fight; if we don't increase enemy power to be threatening they'll just feel like useless grind since it costs nothing except time.
And "purely strong" enemies imo work better in action RPGs since they have dimensions to work with that are missing here (e.g. movement/placement, obstacles) so that makes some situations just a "grind check" or a "lol, RNG, game over".
I should probably find a better phrasing for that..

Well, it is just a "yes but not all of it" recovery for now. Play poorly and you'll get worn down; then you need to set encounter rate to a minimum and run back to the inn to try again.
Worst case, there's the tried and true FF1 strategy of kill all but one enemy, stun it then spam freely available heals until 100% HP.

Ultimately just a change of name for the most part, so sure.


Could you equip a Flame Ring, Coral Ring and Angel Ring at the same time? that is honestly news to me.
It at least means characters can be a lot more varied.
Bone mail gives undead status but high defense? Ok, we go all the way and equip three copies of it for massive physical defense.

by default, in FFV, resistances override weaknesses.


that change here is mostly out of necessity. If I kept that resistance wins, you'd just equip 3 items of different elements to resist 6 elements total, and a shield that covers a 7th.
Maybe even all 8 elements when you use Flame/Coral rings or other items that cover more elements.
I don't think there would be much game left if you could cover everything so easily.

Maybe I'll change it so they neutralize each other, but resistance on gear overwriting weaknesses is a no go out of fear for godmode setups.

That said, I think it'd work fine as long as any given area only had monsters of two or three elements at most. Try to minimize the chance of someone walking into a dungeon blind and just getting pasted because whoops, this enemy they didn't know to expect hits their weakness, hope they saved recently.


A weakness hit now only halves the defense instead of zeroes it and gets +50% damage for physical or +100% damage for spells.
I wouldn't expect the player team to be THAT fragile.
Plus, as long as you have !Item equipped you can at least switch the shield on the fly.

(As an additional aside, if every class can equip everything, maybe remove the "Eqp:" section of the equip menu entirely., since it serves no purpose now.)


I've written on my todo list that I want to show the current weaknesses of a character there.

 

 

 

I know I'm bad at this, I'm writting a lot based on what I know, knowledge that is unavailable to you...:$

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30 minutes ago, praetarius5018 said:

If you defend or guard you get +100 MP and end your current turn.
Otherwise the game checks if you have at least 100 MP, if yes lose 100 MP and take another turn.
Of course you can abuse that with always ending your turn defending..
1st turn: defend
2nd.1 turn: do whatever
2nd.2 turn (consumes the 100 MP from first defend): defend again

That seems needlessly complex to have something that amounts to "always have defending bonus"

I don't really have any other input... just that thought.

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some more "issues":

DirtToss Zeninage:
currently the only skill that still permanently destroys ressources.
 

MP steal skills (Psych, Drain Sword, ..):
don't actually do anything. Monster have < 100 MP and no mechanism I know of to get more, neither do they use MP (currently monster cast for free).
So you spent a turn (which equates to 100 MP) to gain < 100 MP, always a loss with no gain. Simply defending would be better.

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Someone forgot to tell Shinryuu that this game is 16 bit.

FF5_doped_dragon.png

So what I've done:
potential max HP is increased from 65.535 to 524.272 (or up to 16 segments of up to 32767 HP)
Bosses and strong regular monsters can have "HP barriers", any overflow damage when reaching such a barrier is lost.
E.g. a boss with a barrier at 5000 HP is sitting at 5001 HP and hit for 9999 damage, he'll only drop to 5000 HP now and only the next attack continues as normal.
Upon passing a HP barrier the following stats increase slightly: attack, STR, MAG, AGL, evade, m.evade.
Upon passing a HP barrier maxHP decreases accordingly, meaning the enemy can never be brought back above such a barrier.
Successfully inflicting a death, petrify or similar status will not kill a boss/monster with HP barrier directly, only drop it to the next HP barrier.

 

In FF5 there exists a "nuclear option"; buff the target with Mix/Dragon Power (Dragon Fang + (Hi-)Potion) +20 levels until it has Lv255 and then spam Blue/Lv5 death.
No randomness involved, both parts have hit guarantee, the entire thing bypasses every protection I can give.
The effect of level on damage caps at Lv99 so it doesn't even rise the risk a lot.

So I embrace this in an absurd way:
status immunity is no longer 100% resistance.

Instead I calculate a chance to inflict a status based on

  • a base rate depending on the status effect
  • status "immunity" towards that status
  • attacker's magic power
  • target's vitality
  • "boss/heavy" flag of the target
  • if the target is a player (this reduces success chance)
  • target's affinity towards a certain element, e.g. poison status checks against poison weakness and resistance

In short, if a boss is weak to element X you have a chance to use status effect Y on him even if he is supposed to be "immune".
Though if he resists that element and the status - forget it.

I'll have to nerf a few status effects of course..

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Most likely both for an inevitable case of schizophrenic difficulty.
The odds of me getting numbers right on the first try is 0.

I'd honestly say that FF5 experts won't have it easy either; it looks the same but fundamentals changed.
Where battle speed was is now a difficulty slider; those that set it to max will have quite an experience.B|

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1)  FF5's MP system is pretty garbo, so I like the idea of scrapping it.  I could see 0 MP cantrips working well, also.  It could ensure elements are at play for wizards even when they aren't spending MP.  It would kinda necessitate re-working rods and the like, though, since they would become rather pointless as weapons in their current state.  It'd also be cool to have some non-damage cantrips.

Using MP for a Brave/Default system sounds ugly.  Of course, this is a hack, so ugly sometimes comes with the territory, but it's still worth noting.  I also didn't personally get much enjoyment out of the Brave/Default system as a player, but a lot of players did, so I can't argue with its appeal.  I'm definitely in favor of scrapping standard ATB, though.

2)  Good idea.  It always rubs me the wrong way when a game with plot characters (i.e. not generics) uses a class system (or ff12 license grid, etc.) and then just doesn't bother making the characters mechanically unique in any significant way.  I'm fine with generic characters, but it's just that clash of differentiating the characters in the story, but not in the gameplay, that never jived with me.

3)  I feel like you should re-theme items in that case.  Potions are literally consumable, so the idea that you wouldn't deplete them by using them would be thematically strange.  Mechanically it's fine, though it introduces some problems with dungeon attrition that would have to be solved elsewhere, as you've mentioned.

4)  Not really enough information to comment in full.  But it sounds like it could strip classes of their complexity, or while increasing the quantity of EQ choices:  decrease the complexity of EQ choices.  Again, not really enough info to say whether that would be the case, that's just an impression.

5)  "The element count is too damn high!"  I really hate the 8-element system that is standard in so many FF games, it always feels bloated.  Since the game already has 8 elements, I'm not necessarily suggesting to reduce them, but I had to voice the opinion.  I like the idea of giving enemies visible elemental types, though, and that has the potential to mitigate a lot of what I dislike about having so many elements.

6)  Personal preference, but I dislike being able to 100% freely adjust the difficulty whenever you like.  I tend to prefer:  you can lower it whenever you like, but it can't be raised again, to ensure that beating the game on the hardest setting is an accomplishment.

7)  Ever since playing Bravely Default, I've tried to come to terms with how I feel about this mechanic, and don't really have an answer yet.  I do think that random encounter systems either need to be avoided or augmented, though.  So regardless of how I might feel about this specific approach, doing anything is generally better than doing nothing.

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