Augestein

Armadillo, I have one. Honestly, I'd like for you to continue to go further underground until you hit some sort of core -- whether its fire or just energy pulse BS that Megaman has in it, Perhaps even adding in a bit where that's what X was investigating, and Armadillo fights him with that in the center of the boss stage. 

Poor Rafa. Becoming a dragon was the best thing that has happened to her recently. 

Hold on, are we conmbing aspects of the old and new? Or are you saying the old. OLD version of the game? 

That fight is really cool. I'm loving all of the maps she uses now.

Whew... Boy, the healing is insane here. This makes this game have, shall we say? Insane Difficulty?

The amount of new enemies in this is pretty staggering when compared to Vanilla. It still manages to provide a decent challenge without actually being too annoying in my opinion. 

On 8/25/2017 at 8:45 AM, Hart-Hunt said:

The reason to not have all buffs be party-wide is related to character sinergy.

For these things you have to consider that you play with a full party, each one fulfilling different roles. Zidane, for example excels at speed, which makes him useful for quick reactions to different situations. When your party is pushed, he can quickly recover the team with item spamming.

Then you have to consider that in FFIX, you have two basic acts in a battle: You either deal damage to be closer to ending the battle, or you heal or buff or debuff the enemy, to gain tempo to theb do the former. Every action fits in one of those two categories. Considering that the White Mages in this game are not really White Mages, but Red Mages (because they can fulfill every role that is not tanking: Damage, Healing, Buff and Debuff to an extent), then having party-wide buffs offsets their role, makes them too powerful. The balance of a jack-of-all-trades cones when each action loses power. Also, garnet is crazy fast. Even more powerful.

My solution? Keep Dagger as is, lower her damage. Lower slightly her HP. Lower slightly her speed. Consolidate her as a Red Mage

Have Eiko be equipped with party wide spells. Protectga, Hastega, Shellga, and so on. Make her really squishy. Make her really slow. Consolidate her as a pure White Mage.

In conclusion, whenever you're discussing a certain character design in a RPG, you always have ti consider its role in a battle. Vanilla FFIX did it wrong, where they made two identical characters with the same role. Which is terrible if yoy consider the richest thing about FFIX is that it forces you to play with vastly different clases.

Sort of? 

I mean, there's nothing that says that Garnet and *has* to be using both Protect AoE and Shell AoE. You could do things to mix them up. For instance, in Chrono Trigger, not all of the buffs were placed on one person, instead, you could have Garnet have Protect and then have Eiko have Shell. This means that to get both protect and shell on a party you need both, OR a Quina that knew Mighty Guard. Which means that it becomes MP costs versus party effectiveness (if one of the girls falls, you can still have buffs etc). 

True, but there's also a third one that doesn't see much use as well, but you can still use it. Damage Negation. Stuff like having Cover on characters or using things like "Long Range" passives are some of them, which just flat out lower damage or negate damage from others -- IE, having a frontlining Freya be covered by Zidane with Protect Girls on while he's in the backrow. Garnet in general needs help more than Eiko, because Garnet's best attribute is something that is more of an exploit of the engine itself than her actually being good. IE, during trance, just have her stand there and do nothing so she keeps getting free damage, and can be ready to heal. Eiko's damage is pretty much always better than Garnet's at any given point, and her summons are better too on the account that Carbunkle has AoE buffs of potentially 3 of Garnet's moves (you can't use all of them in combat at once, but it still stands), and some she can't do like Haste ever, and she doesn't get Holy or anything useful outside of the basic skills. The issue with FFIX classes is that there's already a ton of overlap. 

The solution for Garnet is just to flat out fix her. Because realistically, the best thing you can do for her is get a ton of Leviathan stones and pump at 9999 damage with it. Screw ark, screw Bahamut. It's all about Leviathan for most of the game. Garnet's damage is already bad. The only person she consistently out damages is... Quina, who is a utility monster and still has cheap things like Auto-Life -> Limit Glove or Frog Drop. And by the end game, healing isn't even *that* much of a boon because the animations are so slow that the best form of healing is literally auto-haste + auto-regen. Heck, I'd go so far as to make some of Garnet's summons function off of physical attacks so she can have an excuse to actually be more versatile. Change up enemy stats with some having really good resistance to magic or physical attacks, and Garnet could be a true Jack-of-All trades. Maybe give her access to Knives early game, and then eventually swords for Disc 3 so she can either be some sort of strange Physical unit with healing spells and AoE physical elemental attacks -- a property NO ONE has in the game in Vanilla. At least then, there'd be something to differentiate her a bit more with that. Plus, if you did keep stat growth on weapons, it'd at least have good potential for making Garnet one of the more interesting "growth" characters in that regard.  

Garnet and Eiko aren't supposed to be the same role sadly. Garnet just sucks because they didn't do things very well and is a prime demonstration that more abilities doesn't make you better. 

1 minute ago, Kyrios said:

Okay, this is fair. What about raising Spirit across the board? What else does that affect? I mean I know it affects a lot of different things, I'm more wondering about problematic stuff.

Damage on some weapons for starters. It also affects Zidane's steal rate (thank all that is good in the world). 

Just now, Kjata said:

Buffs are typically going to be party wide, for this reason. I once tried putting Shell on my party during the BW2 fight, the first one ran out while I was casting the third. I went "fuck it" and left Garnet on standby ready to sling a cure.

Good shit. I approve. 

On 8/23/2017 at 11:18 PM, Kyrios said:

Not to dismiss this suggestion, but I feel like this is one of those "get gud" recommendations.

Early game has a ton of moments where buffs are useless because of how short they are. Garnet could literally spend an entire battle spamming protect on people and never actually manage to have the full party have it.  Which is ridiculously stupid. I mean, it doesn't need to last like... FF8 long (forever), but it could last a bit longer. 

Nice job guys. Also, I'm not sure if it'll come back this time. As even InsaneDifficulty is gone from Youtube. Seems that he flew the coop. 

I love that idea actually. Especially because incidentally, FF8 does have a level 100. 

1 hour ago, Sega Chief said:

Fixed levels on bosses could work because then you've got the option there to power up a bit if a fight is proving problematic. Randoms might need to keep their scaling though, because they get reused a lot throughout the game and if the level is set via script, then it means world map enemies would be tricky to set up.

The two possible solutions to Cards is to either lock Card Mod behind a high GF level, or to modify the Card Mod results so that they're less game-breaking. I want to go with the latter because the card game is popular and I don't want to undermine it by gating the item side of it right to the end of the actual game. The other Refines should be easy to set up though.

I've got draft notes similar to FF7 NT that'll set characters up with strengths and weaknesses. Selphie is being specced as a glass cannon; high attacking stats and speed, but low defensive stats & HP. I'm also re-gearing her Slots so that every result should spit out something worthwhile (so no Thunder x1, etc).

For a BNW-style GF system, we'd need to code that in from scratch and an adjustment made to the way in which the Stat+ abilities work (so that they're automatic rather than needing to be equipped). There'd also need to be a restriction of one (or two) GF per character (FF6 BNW it's 1 esper at a time). Then there would need to be a way to limit the amount of stat growth that can be acquired as FF8 has no EXP arcs, it's a flat req value per level with enemy EXP being adjusted based on level difference.

The current system I was planning to use was having GF affinity drop when they're used with regular Magic raising it again; for damage, they'll use a SPR-ignoring formula. Idea would be that if you rely on GFs too much then they get slower and weaker, so using them sparingly on high SPR targets would be the way with it.

But yeah, I think GFs will need hard hacks of some kind to get it interesting. A limitation on the number that can be equipped at a time would be a good first step.

I'm also not sure what to do with stat-progression at the moment, it's just going to be normal arcs that go up with Levels but I'd like to do some kind of system where the player can make character builds again.

 

 

Fixed levels on bosses sounds like a good compromise. It was done in the original game anyways with the final dungeon anyways. So I have no qualms with that. For other monsters, I was wondering if the game was broken up by disc? If so, then it might be possible to actually have them be certain levels based on the Disc? Otherwise, yeah, that could be a problem. Running into Red Dragons for instance? That could be a huge problem. 

Yeah, I like Card Mod, as I find it much less of a hassle than Mugging enemies, so I'd rather see it nerfed than out and out removed. Plus, if you did put it on the late GFs, the only thing that would happen is that people would go through most of the game without it, and then snap the game in to the minute that they get it. 

Sounds good to me. I figured that was the case, I felt that it should be mentioned regardless. 

That could be interesting, but there's also the fact that in many cases, the GFs still do so much that I would consider doing damage with them regardless. I'd just turn the battle speed up higher to be less annoyed. However, perhaps combining it with the User's magic stat could be a thing? So instead of thinking of GFs free damage, think of them as a "physical attack" for mages. Though I do like this idea as a way of slowing down the dominance. For BNW, the 1 esper limit is actually a base game aspect. It's the limitation of what kind of Espers each character can equip that's interesting. My idea was to actually add more variance with level up bonuses as a passive (so you start with them instead of having to unlock them), which can immediately allow everyone to start being customized. 

Agreed on that front. 

Well, to actually start, we'll have to analyze what's wrong with the game in the first place (yeah, I know there's a lot anyone could rant about, but we need to focus on the big things). 

Levels: Don't matter in this game at all. As a matter of fact, in many instances, the levels are actually detrimental to the game. Sure, you get some extra hp and a little bit of stat growth, but the reality is that for the most part, leveling is bad because the enemy growths far outstrip the player growths. That's not necessarily a bad thing in some regards, because it can mean that the player needs to focus on mastering the junction system instead of just trying to brute force their way through the game, but the problem is that this also consequently has the result of causing people to just not level up at all, and reap the benefits of junctioning without actually leveling and thus closing the gap between monster stats and ally stats. 

My proposed solution? I actually have two solutions that are possible. 

1) Give the characters normal stat growths that can sort of compete with monsters and are specialized with any junctions applied being bonuses to either enhance what characters are already good at, or mitigate their weaknesses. 

2) Have monsters have set levels so that way the entire point of remaining lower leveled is effectively removed. You could have key boss fights be the party level like Seifer, but I don't see much point. It makes for better pacing and it's more difficult to have difficulty jumps when enemies aren't insanely spread out among their stat distribution. 

Acquisition of Items: Some of the refine abilities are ridiculous. And the worst part? You don't even need that much power. Their existence isn't the problem, as it's nice that you can actually use money and abilities to get better items, but some of them need to be toned down. Refining a Bahamut card just straight up gives you 100 MegaElixirs. Are they serious? Let's think about this for a minute. Okay, so 10 Elixirs are 1 MegaElixir, so having the Bahamut card is essentially worth... 1000 Elixirs. Come on devs, you cannot be serious. Yes, the card is rare, but it's not THAT rare! Honestly, I'd tone down the refines from most of the refines-- more so card mod than anything else. Most of the other ones aren't nearly as insane as they require multiple version of the card etc. In other words, make "rare" items less rare / tedious to acquire later on, but make some of the refines nerfed making for a more progressive feel to the game. 

Characters

There's almost no reason to ever use Selphie. Well outside of beating people up with a girl in a yellow dress. Quistis is pretty much straight up better, I think Selphie should get more than 1-3 for a spell if she's going to hang around. "The End" doesn't even need to be what needs to appear more often, she just needs to be able to do something that a player can't do about half of the way into the game. Full Cure is a nice start and should stay though, maybe making it appear more frequently would help. Perhaps change rapture to the Phoenix summon? So she has Revival, Full Cure, Wall, and The End? That'd be a lot better. Although, Wall should change to "Mighty Guard" essentially. It doesn't make sense that Quistis basically has all of Selphie's moves but better (with the exception of Degenerator versus The End with Degenerator only be listed for being more usable).  Also, kill Degenerator. It's too good. Or at the very least, making it a stat debuff would be useful and cool. 

I'd also lower the multipliers on Zell's duel. That way people can't just use Punch Rush -> Booya combos for days. 

Honestly, maybe I'm a horrible person, but if you can, I'd make Renzokukuen use both magic and physical. The standard hits are physical, but the proc portions are all magic damage. That way, it's not enough to ignore Squall's magic and pump his strength. 

I'd also make some of the shots that Irvine uses magical in nature. Thus not pigeonholing all of the guys into melee builds and all of the females sans Rinoa into magical builds (seriously, was there any reason for this?).

GFs

It also might be worth your time taking a BNW approach and limiting which GFs people can get so that way you can make each character a bit more unique. I know this means basically ignoring compatibility on the GFs, but I'm not sure there's really much you can do to make this interesting-- although, if you could limit abilities that could be equipped based on affection between the partnership of the GFs and the unit in question, that *could* be interesting if they didn't all cap at 1000. I sincerely doubt that this is possible at the moment -- perhaps ever, so I suggest the initially proposed "limit who can equip what." 

Speaking of limitations, I think you should also limit how many GFs a person can equip. I'd say they should be limited to having 4 on at a time. Thus, making it pointless to just equip 3 people constantly and ignore the other 3. That's a huge problem in 8. There's almost no reason to use anyone except 3 units. It's really goofy. It could also serve to make the Laguna parts a bit more thought provoking rather than just jamming all of them on the 3 men. 

Also, magic should just plain hit harder. Considering I have to go out of my way to get it, it shouldn't suck so much. 

This fight is just weird. The succubi are annoying, but if you take them out, I think you can win this pretty easily. 

Yeah, I never got to play this version with friends, but I DID get to play with my sister on the original version, and I had a lot of fun playing that. I can only imagine how fun it would be to play a version of this with all of the bells and whistles it has now. 

YES. Thanks for the save. Now I can continue. And this battle was actually pretty fun. The fact that it's no longer an assassination mission makes this much better than it was before. You actually have to employ some other strategy besides just "rush Wiegraf down." And the battle actually becomes noteworthy in my opinion. 

Maybe it was because I was excited to be playing again, but I find this fight pretty easy regardless. 

Sounds like fun. I'd go for it if you could. 

Yeah, thanks for that. I'm not even sure what on earth happened there. It was just strange, Ramza suddenly didn't have abilities, Agrias lost EVERYTHING outside of Holy Knight Job Level 4. It was pretty strange and ridiculous. And while I know how to edit saves, I wasn't sure what effect it'd have on MT's mod. 

It's not that I don't want to play, quite the opposite, I was having fun with it, it's just that, after that upgrade, nothing seems to be working appropriately. And I'm starting to think it's my save file more than anything. It couldn't handle all of the changes as I was going through, and so it caused a problem. I know normally it's not good to keep saves, but this one didn't seem like it would have done all of that so I kept updating? I guess I could cheat and make Ramza stronger again...? Or would you guys rather see me go ahead and start over, but this time having the 

"Human Tactics" challenge added where I play through the game with 5 humans? What do you guys think? 

I think the title speaks for itself, but I had to hit the enemies with a barrage of status effects to ensure that I didn't die. 

Yeah, I might catch it when you're around. I love seeing people play this game. 

This fight is pretty different from the last. I don't think I've ever fought an undead boss before, but it has blade grasp and runic, which makes it especially difficult to hit with abilities. Basically, the 100 - Target Brave = Chance to hit. Which makes for most of your attacks having around 25% accuracy at base. 

How do you get around this? By hitting the boss with healing spells of course. This means that suddenly your white mages / healers become your best DPS and any other units should simply support. It's a pretty cool concept for a boss. 

But like most bosses in Final Fantasy Tactics, I'm not a huge fan of them if they have a chunk of hp, and they don't have multiple forms or allies to make them scarier.

Sure. I wouldn't mind doing feedback if you need some. Just post it sometime, and I'll get around to it eventually. 

The lesson here is be smart and read. Don't assume. It makes you act like a complete dumbass.