TheRebalancer

On 10/6/2017 at 2:57 PM, Hart-Hunt said:

First of all, I approve of you making a thread instead of bleeding into the Mistery Egg thread.

Second, don't take it too personally if they've edited out that small detail. No one said you weren't trying to be helpful, it's just that it's a part of the community's culture to not massively divulge it in the forums.

And yeah, we're pretty down to earth and we like intelligent posts. We try to steer away from the asshole aspect that some communities could tend towards. Hell, we sum up the first rule we have as "Don't be an asshole". Personally, my view of an ideal site also is one where we don't tend towards elitism. Why am I saying all of this? Because you asked for the rules, but in fact you seem to be interested / concerned about how the community is, and not about its rules per se.

So yeah. Give it some time, don't be quick to judge, and just accept that what happened is, someone asked a question, the creator of the mod didn't want to particularly spread that little piece of info, you tried to regardless, and the content got removed. I hope that perspective helps you a bit.

You're welcome. You are only one of three 3 people at all positive in this community. At ... all ... In fact one of the few people to also put together just how damning the communities responses were, got threatened with evidence that amounted to no more than the same domain (gmail is one of the most common) and the same date joined, possibly back to back. If it were back to back then this suggests incredible foresight from the person. Perhaps he already knew the community was toxic (unlike me). In that case, he should be commended for sticking it out.

I didn't take it personally, because I found it funny. Of course, humor is not tolerated in toxic communities. That's why the thread was first split and then locked. If I still thought the community worth anything, I'd edit my own posts with more humor. But I just don't have it in me. I've rather keep all the "you're incoherent" and "you're wrong" responses so people can see that, aside from being slowly added notes over the course of hours of gameplay, nothing I've written is that far-fetched. It will serve as a better warning to anyone who pokes around the community before joining. Perhaps I should have done that more. I was too excited about the product.

I wish you the best in fighting the elitism tendencies. As a brand-new / FOB kind of immigrant here, I'll point out how glaringly obvious is was that there are a huge amount of chiefs and not very many indians. I hope you get to stay a chief. I asked for the rules partly to see what the restrictions were on said chiefs. You seem to be the only chief I've seen (there could be even more!) who takes the "don't be an asshole" rule seriously. It's a very hard rule to get people to obey on 'teh internetz.' After all, anonymity + audience = @%$#!

I've done as you ask and given the community some time. I didn't mind being immediately shit on, as it happens in a lot of big communities. In big communities people disagree afterward to cancel on the "first!" effect. Except it became clear this one was small, and thus a majority of those "shitposts" as that other mod (but without a title) put it were all there were. When the majority of people are the shitters, the community itself just kinda becomes shitty. I feel bad for you in that respect. I get to leave, and although I don't believe this community is good enough for other even half way normal gamers to join, I hope you don't leave. I would, however, totally understand if you did.

If I were the lead coder in BNW, I would be quite ashamed of the posters here. The reason I chose to shift a run that was very special to me was because it appeared as if BNW had delivered a superior version of one of the best RPGs of all time. I do not regret doing so, but I do regret expecting any kind of friendly help when I asked for the tiniest amount (concerning putting SP back on track). I put in more than that half hour of holding the turbo button and got nothing out other than a laugh at knee-jerk reactions (how dare I say their work isn't perfect!) and forum etiquette (usually mods in small communities PM users whose posts they edit so they can be made aware of a rule, especially if that person is new). I'm not saying that the product is dependent on the community, but it does pull it down. Instead of wanting to redo the run and share it, happily pointing people here, I'll not mention it to my gamer buddies. If I see anyone find this place like I have, I'll be sure to share my story of yet another small toxic community on the internet and tell them to not waste their time.

It is said amongst the open source OS community that the biggest threat to a good, but small, new OS isn't that people don't know about it. It's that people know of an alternative that is just creaky enough to use, albeit after much complaining about how unwieldy it is. This is BNW's problem with FF6 vanilla. It doesn't matter if its superior. People know that vanilla works just enough to use under their own constraints. After all I could have finished the run in vanilla and then posted the results on a vanilla FF6 board and probably gotten the kind of excited, positive responses one might hope for from this place. If I need some feel good attention later on, I might just do that. I joined a product in development to purposely give a unique viewpoint in hopes of making the product better. Vanilla doesn't have that potential. Now, I'll just leave and not care if BNW gets ignored in gaming history. So long and thanks for all the fish  (I received none here).

PS that title is oddly ironic. A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World is a book everyone should read, at least as long as liberalism and (post)modernism lasts. It along, with with 1984 which I alluded to earlier, has a lot to do with the censorship, immorality, and the crippling of the morality that led Western culture to define the world at large. If a youngster is thinking of playing this mod and has not read the book, please, stop playing the mod, and read the book all the way through first. Then when you come back, you'll have a whole difference appreciation for toxic communities.

On 10/7/2017 at 3:14 PM, Bauglir said:

By "problem", I mean the issue that you can't proceed without grinding. If you had known about the cap, the extra SP you would have had might have been enough to make the difference

Pointing out version mismatches and that sort of thing is useful, and thank you for doing that. Stuff like pause vs. ellipsis is a matter of taste, since I believe they both take the same amount of space in the dialogue banks, but it's fine to voice your opinion. Those kinds of comments are the ones nobody's addressing because nobody has any feelings on them one way or the other. They would both be likelier to be seen if they were clearly separated from your opinions that are influenced by your choice of run, like whether or not there's a Monster-In-A-Box in the collapsing house in Tzen.

The changes you made include the cheat codes you used - if you're not aware, those work by altering the game's data. They're functionally equivalent to very small patches, and do not take advantage of any functionality that's actually built into the game. The only difference between them and something like Bob New Ross is scale and some technical details.

PS. Why do you ask?

Because the magic system is split up, and I wouldn't know who would be useful, I basically did something very close to a natural magic run too. The only time I spent magic was during the first atma and maybe umaro. I kinda trusted the game about it being okay to bank SP, so it was basically the whole game's worth of SP that's "lost". Obviously I can turn off xp and put in a half hour, so its not that big a deal. But this would have been the case if I hadn't run from all random battles; I still wouldn't have trusted the respec option later and would have trusted the banking. Basically I put my faith in the wrong mechanic.

But again, I took detailed notes, so a few minutes of "virtual grinding" with the XP gains off would put the run exactly back on track as if I had known of the SP cap. Its not a big "problem." The only reason I mentioned it was in case there was a game genie code someone had. I did not expect such massive "anti-cheating" backlash from a ROM hack community. It can be ignored.

Also, turbo/game genie is a built in feature unless there is some Bob New Ross code I'm unaware of.

PS. I have spoken with you on other boards, potentially.

On 10/7/2017 at 6:27 PM, Yuyu said:

Alright, I'll pipe back up now. When I initially aimed criticism over your editing of the mod, it had looked like you had made, or alluded to, adding or changing other things besides being able to move around faster or removing random battles. In fact, if I pull more of the quote past what I put in, it states:

So, you also edited experience points from certain fixed encounters so you could get characters to your expected levels? The vague nature of that entire paragraph about what you did edit is exactly why I nailed that down first and responded as I did: because you edited things beyond simple quality of life (for yourself) improvements, despite your claims otherwise.

You said you would provide a rom that would match identically to a stock 1.8.6 rom. Because of the above in your original post, I don't believe that to be true, but I would welcome to be proven wrong. That is providing you don't remove any of your edits to the game that you made so Edgar or others could join the party at differing levels so you could avoid grinding to your favoured levels. 

For the record and second time in case it wasn't apparent: quality of life changes are one thing, but editing anything to give you more EXP like you did with the chest fight in the Beginners school is another, and what I was annoyed about. That led me to be dismissive of your ordeal and comlaints regarding balance in the game.

Everything before that point I did look at and scrutinize for valuable input regarding varying parts of the mod, but as I said in my post.

I should have also been more clear: anything you typed after that regarding balance of any concern. Other things mentioned after the point in question have seen discussion periodically on the Discord.

So, yes, a good portion of it is an interesting read, if not a muddled jumble. 

Off topic for here, but I did notice in a different thread that you discovered what Leo's Crest did, or at least the bulk of it. Have you managed to figure out more hidden effects besides the Mystery Egg? I know of a few effects of it myself, but I keep it to myself as requested.

It's not quoting the part where you quote me in the quote button. Ug. That's why I like to not use quote buttons on boards and instead do things manually with quote tags. You never know what they will do. "I turbo'd through to include some fixes on additions to the mod that I believe are a mistake" is off by one letter. It should have said "or" instead of "on". I've edited that letter. Anyways, the statement is correct but not very relevant. For instance when I go grind back the SP to put the run "on track" I will be using turbo to correct for one of those things I think are mistakes, or atleast oversights. Why cap the SP at all? I also tested the no-XP mode at the very end of WoB (to gain gold for those magicites that I otherwise shouldn't have by the rules of the run) after I realized the null SP gain was retained from vanilla. This way if the mod didn't have vanilla's "cheaper magicite" option in WoR, I wouldn't lose anything.

I didn't mention the null SP thing because it was a hold-over from vanilla and thus not relevent to direct criticisms of the mod, but I think that near the null XP mode (which of course limits EL) there should also be a secondary null-SP mode. This allows the SP that you would gain from newly entering characters to rack up. An example is Setzer joining after fleeing the magitech factory. You don't have the option to equip an esper on him before, so you lose some SP. Again, its a small feature request but it always bugged me that vanilla did that.

About level amounts: There's a reason its hard to follow that. I'm glad you asked. What happened was that I basically edited the rules of the run temporarily to see if it would make the atma fight any different (spoiler, it didn't). I was curious if the fight would be doable if BNW had followed vanilla's level amounts. While it did make the fight shorter, it also make the choke points harder. Specifically, because the levels went up it caused the damage formula of one of atma's attacks to go even more off the scales. That's when I knew something was wrong with the attack. Grinding is how you make the game easier, not make your TPKs even more pronounced.

That's why I so heavily disliked not knowing what was going on in the damage formulas. In vanilla, it kind of doesn't matter because levels are ... good. But in BNW levels are almost useless. What really matters is ELs. This reaks of the classic "you must use my mechanic to proceed" gaming flaw that almost all games have to some degree. For a particularly glaring example, try playing Starcraft II wings of liberty on the train mission and not using diamond backs on brutal. It's almost impossible. I spent three and a half hours grinding it out just because being shoe-horned into a bad unit type was not my idea of fun. Years later I redid the level and it took a half hour to use their (forced) tool. But I digress.

You're misreading that one sentence. I did not in fact edit "anything to give you more EXP like you did with the chest fight in the Beginners school." Do you really think I took a hex editor to an already hacked game (after decompiling it) just to maintain the integrity on a run that, frankly, no one else has the balls for? No, of course not (especially considering I've stated I don't want it to take any longer than it has to). All I did was track how much it should have given (remember that I've restarted this run many times, some in vanilla) and then fight a random battle to simulate that XP. Being off by 5xp makes no difference when character levels are re-averaged.

Sigh. Again, since I have not edited the game (only the run retroactively), of course the ROM will be the same as anyone else's. Give me an upload link and I'll throw it up for you. Zzz

As best I can tell, I've tested out every piece of interaction I can tease from the mod. I did not enjoy that process because it slowed down an already very long run. Remember that in addition to playing the game, I'm trying to ascertain if the run is even doable at all, since no one else has done it. I don't want to give up, post the details here, and then be told that somebody else did it successfully (insert dark souls meme here).  You might be able to show me things that I don't know, due to having no random battles.

Specifically, I had to make sure at each of my three choke points, that there wasn't something I was missing that would allow me to progress. I was mocked earlier for not doing my research prior to the run earlier, but that's a direct contradiction to the "go find out for yourself" mentality about certain things in BNW, but not others. And the line is arbitrary, and unspoken. But I won't rehash that here. I will say that its completely in line with my request that more enemy information be in the printme. Its BNW-only information so I literally cannot go research it if I wanted to: BNW monsters are no longer vanilla monsters.

(I'm not on mobile) but I think its because this boards is "fancier" than a lot of others.

For instance, the numbering and the lettering of the thread URLs is independent. So you can typo it and still be correct! That's cool.

8 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

You can just hit the quote button multiple times, it'll insert the full quote each time and there you can delete the text you don't want quoted.

Thanks. I figured it out on the egg thread. The part that missed with my is that mouse wheel clicking didn't actually quote. Only the left click does. Other boards I use have both, but I only use the mouse wheel so I can manually adjust the order more easily. It's a minor adjustment for a newbie like me to make.

4 hours ago, Bauglir said:

Okay, but doing things optimally involves fighting random battles, unless you can explain why the no-random-battles restriction is contributing to some other goal. That's the part you can't possibly be an unbiased observer about, because it's something profoundly weird, which you chose to do, and which is the fundamental root of your problem. It's not purity - we had some guy who edited every character to be Relm for silly reasons, and we loved Final Fantasy 6: Bob New Ross. If you can change the game to make it better, that's great and you should absolutely do it.

The problem is that the changes you made and the criticisms you have are all based around balancing your challenge run. That challenge run isn't something BNW did. It's something you brought to the table. You're absolutely right that BNW is a poor fit for a no-random-battles run. But why shouldn't it be a poor fit? The facts and evidence you've provided make a fantastic case for not doing this kind of run. They say nothing useful about how BNW could be better at what it's trying to be.

That's fair. I don't really have a goal with the NRB, other than to see if its doable without too much time invested. Its a video game, so fun is always a consideration. It does allow a two birds with one stone. NRBs are wierd, but they have been done in other games with even more in-your-face / you-must-fight-all-monsters paradigms. Lobos Jr has a great Dark Souls 1 run doing this called "clear Lordaeron" I think.

But wait, what is the "problem" you're referencing? I've asked for nothing aside from seeing if anyone had a game genie code to save me a half hour of grinding to put the run back on track as if I had known about the 30SP cap (which I could not have possibly known about without literally taking notes on someone speedrunning this game). If no one has a game genie code, that's fine.

If by "changes you made," you mean "how I played the run", then well yeah I do give some uniquely valuable feedback. But most of the feedback is not specific to a RNB run like the ellipsis comment. But a themed run isn't me editing the game similiar to FF Bob New Ross.

The fact is, you don't know until the first person tries. If you have to learn from my mistakes and not try a NRB run, then it is a good thing I posted my experiences. I could have clammed up, not help the community, and then let the next guy feel the pain instead. See the tags (which I can't find now).

Also, FF4, chrono trigger, and FF6 vanilla are in fact great targets for a RNB run. Heck even a more hardcore game like DS3 is a good target, in my opinion. It's a better speedrunning target, but most games are.

PS. Bauglir do you play D&D?

2 hours ago, ninjasdf said:

@JKnox The key piece that I think you're missing is this isn't his first post.  He has basically come on board and complained that BNW is wrong because he can't do what he wants to with it.

If he complained about the removal and mentioned it could've been spoilered instead it would've been completely reasonable.  What's funny is the OP even asked for spoiler tags.

@TheRebalancer You can disregard rep.  That's fine.  It is far from the end all be all here and it really isn't overly important.  However, it works as a general guidepost for how a member interacts with others.

It was my, um 3rd post? But claiming that I've "complained that BNW is wrong" is a straight lie. Try in vain all you want to find where I said so. You won't because you know it doesn't exist either. You may, however be exaggerating. But if you're exaggerating negatively about someone else ... then that's more guns blazing than anyone I've said.

I only found the spoilers button after I went back to edit my second post. [spoilers] is different in a lot of boards. I would have found it very reasonable if the response was simply edited to be spoilered.

One of the nicer mods asked for some self reflection. So here's what karma is on a boards: its an unsigned variance measurement. But that doesn't tell me anything non-obvious. The reason its unsigned is because most people are true neutral alignment. This is probably the most insightful thing I've said on this board. I'll hop on dischord and explain it if you would like to hear the logic behind that result.

2 hours ago, ninjasdf said:

TheRebalancer decided to make some insulting metaphors instead.  If we really rolled 1984 style you'd both be gone for disagreeing and all history of your presence removed.

It was humor ninja. But if you don't find it funny, I'm getting a bit sick of no one quoting what they are talking about (as I always do) and then attributing things that don't exist. Feel free to ban me if you want to feel better about it not being 1984. You can delete the other two extremely detailed, helpful posts I've made. Then you can feel better that someone dared joke in your empire.

1 hour ago, JKnox said:

Since you mentioned it, I just glanced through his post history and none of it seems hostile. Unpopular? It could, but it has been labeled as toxic in this very same thread. Unless there's some pms I'm not seeing, this doesn't paint a good picture. Regarding your "insulting methapors" comment, in a time when everything and anything can be considered offensive I think you should know better. Considering his post was just literally erased, his joke was on topic

You hit the nail on the head. I've only invested half a dozen real posts here. If it stays oddly generalized and flame-y I can go with very little time lost. We'll see if the third strike comes. I know there's atleast one nice admin here.

The only PM I've sent has a reply of, in full, "Oh, that's neat. Thanks." when someone pointed out that this thread had been edited rather than spoilered. That was the only reason I even knew to look. Most boards I use don't even allow admin editing of posts so that way they bear no responsibility for what posters post. AGAIN, I'm fine with it in principal, but the stealth was surprising (and humorous). 

Edit: I FIGURED OUT THE QUOTING SYSTEM. Just don't "fight" the formatting. Use the multiquote add in the tiny "Quote 1 post" button pops up instead. Most forums' multiquote is kinda bad but this one is actually pretty good. The only downside is that you can't "do things manually" very easily. I wonder if I can delete my old posts to deflate the post count to its normal  6 or so.

On 10/6/2017 at 0:57 PM, Emmy said:

Why so many posts instead of editing one larger one? 

Anyway, the amount of fixes that were made to it were detailed in the readme.  There are hundreds of changes, if you're looking solely at code; and thousands of changes if you're looking at rewritten ai, effects of items, etc.  If you want to know exactly what went into this, read the readme.

Play the game how you want to.  But why not give it at least one playthrough without any of your edits to it, so that you can see what BTB had in mind when making those changes?  

Because "  apologize about the post spam, but the forum code doesn't allow me to highlight and copy paste everything into one big post. The quote blocks always fight me.." I can just use the /quote text I guess. I'll try it below and see how it goes. I did read the readme. It was amusing. What makes you think I edited BNW? Again, I have not modded the mod; my emulator file will exactly match yours (after I delete the saves).

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In addition, I was always under the impression that shops in RPGs tend to be balanced assuming that... you fight most of the randoms on the way.

It's not. I just thought it was well balanced that it's so close. No one else would be able to provide that feedback, so I thought I would.

Concerning your strawman, you've suspiciously dropped the full quote. Not only was I replying to someone who had a problem with speeding up the game with game genie codes, but I was actively saying that he can't possibly believe that. So really I was actively avoiding strawmanning him ... in two separate ways.

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Why introduce a cheat to do something that is literally in the config menu at the very start of the game? It takes less time to go to config menu and change an option than it does to put in a game genie code. This is what people mean when they are dismissive of your opinions due to you editing the game.

The answer to why I chose the sprint shoes cheat is that it saves time. You can preload it across plays and save time. The whole point of using the cheats I mentioned is solely to save time. The amount that it saves (8 hours vs 8 seconds) is neither here nor there. I purposely picked a clear-cut example of why using game genie codes should not automatically entitle dismissive responses to a playthrough that is identical aside from the speed.

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I can't speak for everybody that does challenge runs, but any time I go to start one I make sure I have all of the information needed to actually make it happen - if a game doesn't have the info I need available anywhere, then it's a matter of finding it myself through normal runs before starting the challenge as otherwise I'd likely end up in a point where the run ends early because I missed/overlooked something that would be needed to reasonably proceed.

I did the run 5 times, read everything I could get my hands on about it, but I can't simply monkeying someone else's work because no one else has done this kind of run for BNW to my knowledge. BNW is new and small.

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wat.

I'll settle for just putting it in the readme. After all, BNW has full control of all the algorithms, so there's no reason to not list it there.

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Your behavior doesn't match up with your stated goals. "I don't want to waste time, so I'm going to try and game the AI to proceed"

Almost. It more like "I know I've done everything optimally before this point (see XP list above), so either its a party swap/ strategy change or its AI manip. I only settled on AI manip as a last resort when no other strategies worked. You're welcome to try the run without using any AI manipulation and show me how easy both atma fights are for you. Just don't touch the turbo button or put in a RNB game genie code or everyone will taunt your run as "invalid" because you didn't want to step half your game time holding the run button.

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What's your actual desired outcome, here?

None. I am a blank slat. An unbiased observer, showing what would happen if anyone else tried what I am trying. I had no idea how it would go, specifically. If I had to guess when I started, it would be that atma would mulitple times in a row party-wide 1 shot and end the run. It didn't happen after I realized I could AI manipulate him.

I'm showing what anyone would encounter if they simply tried it. That's why my results are so useful (and compelling). There is very little bias in the results besides "let's try to make something agonizing not so agonizing." Apparently that rubbed a lot of purists the wrong way, along with all things "cheaty". I get it. I have friends who consider "hacks" like this "cheating" compared to "how the game was released." BNW is an abomination to them. I tell them to get over "mods", just like I've politely been doing in the above game genie discussion.

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nobody is going to come help save you from their inevitable, obvious consequences.

which is what, exactly? Failure in the run?

edit: Okay, when I use "quote=" like normal forums, it just eats the person I'm responding to. I guess I should have made several posts in a row....

11 hours ago, ninjasdf said:

BTB can correct me if I'm wrong, but your other post was redacted because it contained possible spoilers.  This isn't some 1984 shit, it's common decency and consideration for those who have yet to play the game.  If you used a spoiler tag it might not have been necessary to redact your post.

I've been keeping an eye on your posts and they're a strange mix between incoherent and condescending.  As you were answered in your post about where the forum rules are that this place is not toxic, I'd advise you to not be toxic yourself.  I believe you're the first new member here to get smacked with a lot of negative rep, and that's a very rare thing.

That said, do some self reflection and tone down the way you post and I'm sure you can turn things around.

It was removed rather than spoilered... Ask a simple question get a simple answer is normal conversation. There is no "strange mix" there.

I never pay attention to karma: it's like Who's Line is it Anyways (where the games are made up and the points don't matter). Partaking is just asking for ganks.

@Mishrak that argument can be reductio ad absurdum'd: why tell the player anything? They can have "fun" grinding out tests to reverse engineer the algorithms themselves. See timed attack and roll forumlae for Dark Souls to see it in action: the average player just shrugs and asks the guy doing the tests. 99% don't bother testing for themselves. They either look it up (like this thread is asking), or they complain about it. I prefer to be helpful (and funny) rather than pull things down.

@Hart-Hunt first of all I love the icon. It makes me hear "POWER OVERWHELMING" every time I see it. I figured it was a tradition thing. Other forums have threads like "common abbreviations", etc. In the few forums I am more than a passing member, I'm often the person who makes/adds heavily to them. I'll read any you point me to. But I'm noob, so I don't know any here yet.

Let's insert some humor into this Orwellian nightmare: QUICK SHOVE IT DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE! We are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia.

On 10/2/2017 at 9:59 AM, Mishrak said:

I needed a good laugh this morning, thanks.

Real talk: play the game without all that nonsense and then your post will be worth reading. BNW isn't vanilla dude, you can't expect to apply a bunch of vanilla fixes to it. 

Oops didn't mean to leave you out. I'm glad you enjoyed my extreme mod (and tags? I know you liked those tags). For the record, I'm probably not going to play BNW normally, atleast until I AI manipulate all the way to the end. The only "fun" I'm missing is the random battles. The fanatics tower stands out.

Clearly I am aware that BNW!=vanilla, hence why I discuss the differences. But what fixes from vanilla are you saying I've applied, exactly? I haven't hex edited the mod or anything. I just checked my first post; I only use the subjunctive when talking about "fixes" for BNW.

Hey I'm new to this community and I need to know straight out where the rules on behavior are.

Basically, is it a toxic place to someone who is always time-invested, nice, and intelligent? Is this the kind of forum where mods will remove your posts, not because you've said something inflammatory or derogatory, but merely because they do not like the helpful, to-the-point content of your speech?

Last thing: Again, does anyone have a game genie code to force the SP "cap" (shake's fist) to 30? It would save me turning off XP and grinding to the value I have recorded.

Oh. Speaking of that. I kept very detailed records about every non-random battle (excluding secondary iterations of infinite nonrandom ones). In case this is useful to anyone else, I'll just dump the plain text from my spreadsheet:

The far right side fields are if I redid the area and had different things happen (as is unavoidable in a game that almost forces save states as per the ELs upon death -> game over screen discussion).

On 10/2/2017 at 8:35 PM, Lockirby2 said:

This game wasn't explicitly designed for an LLG, but it wasn't designed against it either.  Many of these changes were made for good reasons, and reverting them to benefit LLG/NRB players does not make sense because LLG/NRB players probably constitute 1% of the mod's following, if that.  Furthermore, I personally find these sorts of challenge runs more interesting when the developers *didn't* have a way to complete them in mind.  Instead of just putting together the developers' clues on what to do like in most other games, you can make your own solution.  Since both NRB and LLG are doable in BNW, I'd find those challenges to be less fun with twenty extra levels.

If you say so. My only clue was the Narshe beginner's room on LLGs. It's good to hear vague generalities about reasons for the levels, for instance, but I'll only settle for some hard specifics. I provided specifics. I presume you have some too. What are they?

I agree with you about the "make you own solution." That's why I didn't dig up BNW world guides. All I had was the game, which is why I talk about the printme so much.

On 10/2/2017 at 8:01 AM, Kain Stryder said:

Instead of replying to your entire post, which a lot of can be attributed to you don't pay attention (Celes and Shadow both get Float, and Shadow is forced upon you for Atma), or just down right looney

I missed Phantom in my esper/spell checking. Kudos to you finding that mistake. That makes me feel better out Gau/Sabin with Stray. What else is looney, though? The RNB part? I know I'm crazy to have tried that part.

Your atma fight looked like mine (you've got less HP, but far more options due to random battles with gau & strago). I enjoyed watching it. I'm not a guide-dang-it kind of guy so I didn't, like, spend hours researching or anything. I just played. It's not like anyone else has done a NRB run of this before, though. That's why I saved my valuable feedback.

On 10/1/2017 at 10:55 PM, Yuyu said:

I noticed you kept making comments about why BNW isn't this or that after this comment of yours:

"I cheated/turbo'd through to include some fixes on additions to the mod that I believe are a mistake"

You do realize that anything you typed after saying that in terms of criticism against BNW is null, because you've modified the game to no longer be BNW? 

So if any player accidentally hits the turbo button once, they are no longer playing BNW?

If a player introduces sprint shoes cheat to avoid having to toggle the "hold b button causes sprint" option, they are no longer playing BNW?

What matters is what the purpose of the alteration was. Mine was purely to save time. Because you so frivolously dismissed my post, I'll dismiss the rest of yours until you go to this sticking point (which you used to dismiss dozens hour of first hand, objective play testing feedback from a heavily knowledgeable RPG gamer)

On 10/1/2017 at 10:21 PM, artemi said:

> 23000 more gp is needed if players are expected to buy the 3 available espers without random battles. 

...Why would the game expect you to play it without random battles? 

Because a lack of grinding is the "control" or "baseline" for balancing RPGs. It's kind of an old standard for game development.

On 10/1/2017 at 10:20 PM, Bauglir said:

Kudos on getting so far when you made your first run a challenge run ... It just takes a ridiculous level of dedication and familiarity.

For instance, the levels at which characters join and rejoin has been deliberately altered from vanilla, and most people agree it's an improvement.

Thanks but yeah I don't want to put in 50 hours into a 25 hour game. As I mentioned emulators themselves have ways to help speed that process up. As for level integers of starting characters, I am aware that they have been adjusted purposely. The question is if it is a good thing. My opinion is that not having those free levels is bad. I gave a pretty detailed situation on one example where that's the case. I am open to debate on the topic, though.

On 10/1/2017 at 10:13 PM, BTB said:

So... it sounds like you tried a challenge run meant for vanilla and it didn't really go as expected. That's kind of what I'm getting from this whole post.

No, it did go as expected (except the cherub downs, ELs for HP and 30SP cap). But I'll be responding directly to comments, since that's the whole expectation of the above.

I apologize about the post spam, but the forum code doesn't allow me to highlight and copy paste everything into one big post. The quote blocks always fight me...

after action report (well, I am in kefka's tower):

No Random Battle Run, all items, no buyable offensive items, no glitches. Infinite nonrandom battles are only allowed once per, random battles for quest lines are forced exception (gau and gogo).

As a quality of life thing, put in the NRB game genie cheat (AADC-EDA8). Otherwise you may have trouble escaping:
        2 single sealed cave ninjas + 2 floating continent double ninjas
        Gorgimera in cave in the veldt
        coverts in zoneeater
        Rhyos cave on the veldt
        phase in phoenix cave
        land worm
        most of Kefka's tower

Prepare for a huge AAR. You have been warned. First WoB then WoR, then some misc.

The dragons party wipe once a round with unblockable, unreflectable, unrunicable magic damage in excess of my HP. I'll have to spend more ELs to tank them so I figure I'll do the magimaster and raid Kefka's tower first. The magimaster probably requires spending SP from my huge bank of ... 30 SP? WHY IS THERE A CAP OF 30 SP? WHY IS EXTRA SP WASTED? WHY IS IT 30 INSTEAD OF 39 (highest spell requirement + highest battle amounts before any would be wasted)? WHY DID THE GAME NOT WARN ME ABOUT THIS? WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

Does anyone have a game genie code so the SP isn't deducted while I spend SP? I don't want to grind up the exact number... Well ... AFTER spending SP the magimaster is fun. Not as fun as the 3 dream stooges though. Why does kefka's tower tell me "Lasciate ogne speranza voi ch'intrate..." ?

Anyway, I chunked through atma (it took an hour...) so I can do the same with the statues, etc. I even feel mildly competent about AI abusing the final gauntlet. But I suspect it would be agonizing and not much fun. I also never saw any hints about how to prestige class various characters. I suppose I could stop and grind the dino's as per vanilla, but I'll see if anyone can get me that above game genie code first.

I'm willing to share the save if someone want to try to grind out all 8 dragons, the gaurdian, and the statutes and put it on youtube. But I'm guessing it will be even more boring to watch (unedited) than play.

Edit: removed the sentence on float.

Edit 2: changed 1 letter and attacked a parenthetic that was talking about my NRB run, in case it wasn't understood already in the context.

Moogle charm makes mog almost usable without save states.

With save states? He's MVP healer. I "gave up" on trying just cross my fingers.

Without save states, just dragoon him like edgar with a bit more HP.

It (redacted -BTB)

[ edited by @Kaffe Myers ~ "Split topic from another thread" ]

Posting for posterity that in vanilla, I'd sabin (tank), Cyan (dps), Celes (magic) and then one "fun" character like Relm to control after getting a fake mustache or gau if farming rages. Strago often made a wonderful healer if I was having difficulty.

I'll edit this post last after finishing a BNW run, though