Augestein

Yeah, I found Cute but Deadly a nice back and forth boss battle. And just when you start thinking you could be tired of it, the boss blows up. 

You get it from Zalbag zombie. Just make your Ramza have a ton of resistance to status effects and buff him. You 'll get hit by it eventually. 

Did I think I'd find delita in the ghetto? Of course. Once a farm hand, always a farmhand. Keep it up. I get a nice chuckle from these during lunch.

First brainstorm , then try. What would you do hypothetically?

Oh goodness. You started this topic. Now you have to continue it! Post your crazy ideas.

Not anymore. They used to be in a private list, but now that the channel is gone I didn't think you'll have much luck.

On 12/17/2017 at 1:39 AM, vonriel said:

I'm looking at suggestions for builds that haven't been talked about yet, although I suppose I should be doing this in the Discord chat if I really wanted to make headway.

Anyway, I'm feeling one of two ways about Gau. The first is a symmetrical set of bonuses, while the second is more unique.

For the symmetrical set, Beastmaster would gain a bonus to monster-specific abilities, any 'Special' attack as well as any other attack that isn't shared by any other character. Berserker would gain a similar bonus to any ability not covered by this. The goal is for roughly half his abilities to be boosted by each set, although it probably would use some more fine-tuning. But in this case, you'd basically be opting for one set of Rages over another, and this would probably lead to, well, Berserker being the better healer, actually, which is weird. Anyway, I suppose the ultimate goal would be for Beastmaster to be good at utility/support with monster skills, while Berserker trucks things dead, but both are kind of lazy bonuses and don't feel fun to me.

Alternately, Beastmaster alters the chances from 66/33 to 60/40, or maybe even 55/45, although I feel like approaching 50/50 is too strong. And then Berserker grants some other kind of flat bonus. Perhaps something for just all "Special" attacks, maybe just a straight damage boost, I'm not sure exactly. If he didn't already have the lowest penalty and fastest command input, I'd say Berserker could reduce those in some fashion, but some kind of just straight power boost would make more sense to me. Your choice would then be between better utility, through normally rare secondary actions being made more common, or simply better trucking ability, through hitting even more really hard than he already does.

Both of these offer a generic "X% boost" that otherwise feels bland, but it's hard to come up with a non-gamebreaking but thematic idea for him given his unique set.

For Shadow, the one listed build already seems to favor attacking, so make his second one focus on throwing. As fast as he already is, I don't think he needs any kind of delay buffs, so perhaps simply a chance to not use the thrown item? Giving a throwing/supporting build better longevity and helping to alleviate the gp drain committing to this build could otherwise lead to. Other than that, it's hard to think of what a throwing build would want that it doesn't already have.

Oh, I know, just turn Throw into Mix! 

What if Gau's classes messed with his ai? You could reliability have less "no Gau! Not THAT move!" Moments.

I don't even have the original version, but I might check it out if multiplayer is fun. 

To be honest, it took me literally years to beat FFVI Vanilla. Not because it was too hard, but because it got really boring towards the end. WoR was just a disaster in my eyes. I couldn't get over how repetitive everything became after that point, and unlike before, there was no story to really make up for the gameplay at that point. 

In Brave New World, I feel that this is the opposite. The characters are different enough to where WoB is exciting before you get the Espers, and only continues to get better as you get further. By the time you hit the WoR, you're on a hunt to find new Espers about as you want to find party members because you want to diversify the abilities you can launch at the enemies. Each character having something to offer makes it engrossing in both ends of the spectrum. 

The first time I went through BNW, I happily finished it. When I beat FFVI: Vanilla, I beat it because I just ended up sharing the misery with a friend. 

I must be insane, because I kind of like random encounters. I just hate them when they are too frequent. Like final fantasy 2 levels of high.

This is hilarious. Also, I had no idea that this was one the PC. 

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. 

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. 

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.  

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. 

7 hours ago, AbnormalVoid said:

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

Not much. Hail Mary's are pretty pointless, and bad moves are even worse. And I DO like that Charm + Slow ability. It's interesting. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As usual, when I get back some time on my hands and all caught up with my friends on MMOs, I'm going to be back in the game. FFT: MT first, and then I'd be happy to play your stuff too. 

2 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

This.

More in depth, you don't use any item up in this version, instead you get a cooldown for ALL items on that character, this includes !Item, !Mix, !Throw and !Drink.
A few items have fixed length cooldowns but get stronger with higher stacks, e.g. a 1-stack potion heals 50, 99 potions 1250 but cooldown is static; compare with elixir which always recovers all HP but gets cooldown reduction from "try again next battle" at 1 copy down to about 10 turns at a 99 stack; ok MP recovered increases also (15 -> 100).

Cooldown can be speed up with defending and the time spell "Renew".

Breaking rods does not give a cooldown but is one of two categories that still use up items at all.
The other being tents.

 

I'd not be surprised if this change dropped Chemist from most-powerful-job-if-you-know-what-you-do to second worst.

Do you think that you could also make a song that reduces cooldowns? Seems weird, but that could be an interesting combo. 

Yeah, I do remember you talking about this. Honestly, it looks more like a development tree for the original Tactics Ogre. I'm tempted to actually do a playthrough for people so they can see what that one was like. It was such a strange beast in comparison. 

On 11/20/2017 at 3:30 PM, pogeymanz said:

I would like that. Tell me- would it be easier to make "Hard Type" (1.3.0.8) into a Content version, or would it be easier to bring Content 1.3.0.6 up to the changes in Hard Type?

It would without a doubt, be easier to bring 1.3.0.8 into a Content version, as the Content version still has older stuff in there.

In terms of things that need to stand out to refine 1.3.0.8 into a Content type: 

1) Reduce level of enemies to be either set, or consistently party level rather than this stupid party level +. It's fine for an occasional boss, but constantly doing that is just a way to artificially make the player gain levels faster than they have any business doing. Which really doesn't help anyone, as once your characters reach the 50ish area, you may as well hit 99. And by the endgame, you should be 99 if you're anything near level 75. IIRC, in content, they were set levels so this could be removed entirely? It'll take awhile, but certainly less time than updating Fire 1, Ice 1 and Bolt 1 to the Wizard set as it is. 

2) Certain goofs like Meliadoul would need to be fixed-- as she has Mime unlocked, which results in her having almost NOTHING unlocked when you get her making her nothing more than a glorified Javelin 2 user for the most part. This was a goof as Meliadoul was supposed to have a lot of stuff unlocked, and Mime requirements used to be higher and were subsequently changed which screwed people over. 

Never seen anything like this. It looks interesting. 

On 11/14/2017 at 11:44 AM, Tenkarider said:

actually you can pass bulldozer without even losing a life, with any character at any difficulty: the best way to do that is using the special attack to get invincibility frames right before the bulldozer hits you, even in case the gauge isn't still filled(always better to get the small damage penality than being hit from the bulldozer)

you know what's better than SoR games? SoR remake, which combines all the stages plus some extra one from who made the remake: http://www.sorrcommunity.com/t27-downloads-streets-of-rage-remake-v5-1-ports-and-soundtrack

don't know if that link is good, btw

Fair enough. I might be forgetting because it's been awhile since I've gone through SOR3 (I usually just play BK3 nowadays or SORR). And yes, I love that remake. It's so good. With mods, it can be even better. I prefer the 5.0 over the 5.1 version though... Maybe I should make a middle ground of those two. 

On 11/12/2017 at 3:21 PM, Tenkarider said:

actually i like all stage gimmicks found inside SoR games, actually it would disappoint me a bit to know that in the 2 stuff like that is missing,

basically they are double edge gimmicks, both you and enemies can use it to kill the other side easier(ps. you don't have to stop the bulldozer, you have to run away from it)

aside that, i agree that SoR games in general have a good difficulty curve

Two has gimmicks, they are just more intuitive and not things that can kill instantly you. IE, the explosive items in Stage 3 don't kill you, and have a life up right next to them. The boss of the stage 2 is best beaten by backthrows and Jump attacks. Properly spacing and you can leave him locked down. 

I like that idea of using hazards to your advantage, but in many cases a man with a knife that hits you from off screen can result in an instant death. The bulldozer running isn't really feasible on harder difficulties if you're say... Skate for instance. 

Me too. I'm not saying SoR games are bad. Just that SoR2 is on point with it.