pogeymanz

I get what you're saying about the Elixirs. But, I think that even if it were a rare ability with an MP/CT cost, it would either be too good or useless, depending on the costs. I think the only way to balance that would be to get pretty creative. Something like fully healing HP+MP, but also petrifying them or something (as just an off-the-cuff example). What's so bad about poaching? Is it just the tedium of getting the rare poaches that offends you?

I feel like it only became "okay" to suggest things like that or to criticize 1.3 in the last year or so. Before that, you just weren't hardcore enough. These days it's finally okay to say that the game isn't perfect and that some of the "challenge" is just bullshit. I ... might just remove Elixir altogether- or rather, just replace it with a more nerfed healing item. That's a super cheap item.

Ah, yes. So, there's two points in there. One is that MP Switch, specifically, isn't good enough. And two is that enemies have access to setups that the user doesn't. Fixing #2 is just a matter of reviewing each battle and making sure that the enemies have trade-offs like you mentioned. I'm not sure I'm able or willing (yet) to do anything about #1. Agreed 100% on evasion and concentrate. The hesitation that I have with making (some) statuses easier to hit is that it will then make Item and/or White Magic basically required for many (most?) battles. Then again, maybe that's already the case anyway, since revival is so important in 1.3 (and even in Vanilla, really). This would definitely make the game more interesting, but my first priority is making the game easier. So, the status stuff might go into my lower priority pile, but the Concentrate and evasion shenanigans is in high priority. The other nice thing about the xp/jp by battle is that (I assume?) everyone gets the same amount. So your summoner, who only gets off one or two actions wont lag really badly behind your fast melee dudes. Ah, yes. Fair point.

Thanks for replying, Emmy! These are too vanilla for me. In particular, I hate the vanilla Archer, Lancer, and Wizard skill sets, and these preserve those, making those classes still very uninteresting. Could you elaborate on the content changes that you think are the most egregious? I think the fixed story battle levels is a mistake, but what else? I agree 100%. Can you give an example of how you might achieve this? Do you just nerf damage output from almost everything? Do you make statuses hit rate higher and/or make damage attacks miss more often? If the enemy levels are always fixed to your party's, then the only concern for overleveling is from them having equipment that you can't get. That's not _that_ bad, but I do like this idea. The only thing I worry about with having abilities being too cheap is that you might have everything (you care about) unlocked long before the end of the game. The shitty thing in Vanilla is that I always know what is good, so I just get that stuff and by mid chapter 2, I basically have my end-game build. How hard is it to implement this change? Agreed. That's bullshit. What are some examples of this? Is this easy to fix in the patcher tools? Truth.

So, I actually did #1 for myself once. I went through with FFT Patcher Tools and changed the levels of all story battles to be fixed and the same as Content. The problem with that is that I didn't change the randoms at all. So the randoms were still insanely brutal and actually, the story battles were WORSE in the early game (I only got part way into Ch 2 before not having time anymore and not caring because it wasn't fun) because I was sometimes more than 1 or 2 levels below. I think that having the story battles just be Party Level, with the occasional Party Level + 5 (or whatever) for bosses would be good, like you suggested. The other thing, though, is how are the randoms in Content compared to regular 1.3? I've never played Content, but the worst part of my bastardized 1.3 run was that randoms were still mostly pretty brutal. I feel like an "easy mode" of 1.3 would have to edit most of the encounters- at very least the easy way out would be to just remove a couple of units from most randoms.

I don't know how hard it would be, but it would be nice if the home page's "Topics" section (the one that shows which threads have recent posts), would also show some kind of info about which forum the thread is in. There's a thread right now called "Feedback and Suggestions" in there and I'd love to read about feedback and suggestions if it's relevant to one of the mods I enjoy. If it's for a mod I haven't played, then I don't really care.

Yeah, I agree with most points you made except about Rafalak. I like using Rafa, even in vanilla, so it's a play-style thing. Especially if this mod is overall less brutal than 1.3, it means there's room for them to be legit party choices.

Nope. I just tried it now. It's nice. The only problem (for me) is that I often browse the site without being logged in. I can understand, though, how having the Unread Content kind of makes my complaint/suggestion seem redundant or not worth the effort.

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's true- the number of turns eaten by Battery/Osmose kind of cancels out the speed benefit. Is Gogo any better at taking a hit than Strago? It seems like it would be easy to give Stam/Hybrid Strago some ground by just changing some of the Lores to depend on Stamina. Since they are unique to Strago, it doesn't seem like it would have any ripple effect across the overall balance of the characters.

It sounds like even with Haste, you don't seem to think X-Mog will be very viable. I just think it's a shame that 2/3 of the people who can equip this super-cool item don't even care about it.

I figured that's what you meant- just wanted to make sure. He's a pretty bad-ass Dragoon... It seems like most people around here only think that Locke is worth having X-Magic on. I'm surprised, since I'd think that X-Magic would be considered pretty damn OP, even with a non-ideal selection of magic.

It looks like the README is updated to include the changes for 1.9. How did Cover and Counter work in 1.8(.6)?

Better than Dragooning?

So, does anyone prefer Stam Strago? The way thzfunnymzn describes it, it appears strictly inferior to Mag Strago. He gets bigger regen ticks, fewer status hits, and more counter attacks if you decide to do that. But does regen actually help him? Isn't he going to fall over in one or two hits anyway? And shouldn't someone else be doing physical damage? Also, if you aren't using Strago for big numbers of magic damage, isn't Gogo a possibly better Lore user? He can be geared up to be faster than Strago, which is important for these support Lores. He'd need MP support for sure, but he could Mana Battery himself, or have Osmose if Relm is in your party. So I guess that's two questions: 1. Is Mag > Stam for Strago? and 2. Is Gogo > Strago if you are focusing on support?

I'm not sure I understand your definitions of difficulty scope and curve, but I'll try anyway. I think that vanilla Chrono Trigger had a good difficulty ... thing ... for a mainstream, vanilla, game. The "curve" is probably pretty flat for people here. I'd say the difficulty only really increases (slightly) once you open up the end-game sidequests. There are a few battles throughout the game that are more like difficulty "humps," rather than a steady increase. But I think the baseline difficulty is high enough that having it increase throughout the game would be bad for a mainstream audience. If you think about the difficulty from the POV of a non-serious gamer or kid, there are plenty of battles that are tough: The dragon tank, with its stupid healing head; Yakra if you don't pay attention to positioning, Masa + Mune, Magus, Golem Twins, Nezbel, etc. Most bosses have a trick or two to make them easy, but if you're casually playing through, they're not easy at all. Now, if you asked about *bad* difficulty curves, that would be easier to discuss *cough* FFTactics *cough*

First, holy crap the FC randoms are rough. I may be underleveled- my guys are mostly levels 16-17, Cyan is 18. I haven't run from too many randoms as I've played, so I don't think I can be that far behind what's expected. Speaking of running. Running is really ineffective in this game. Running is almost never a viable option because you're just going to get your ass beat while you wait forever for your guys to run away. Why was running made so hard? Consider this my official request to make running way easier in the next version. Does Gau get better in the WoR? I feel like he's basically unusable for the latter half of the WoB- he's so fragile, and of course the randomness is always a steep cost. But he can't seem to stay up long enough to do anything against many bosses (I'm thinking of the magitek tracks boss, both of the later Ultros battles), let alone the randoms in the sealed cave and FC. I fully accept the possibility that I'm a freaking newb and don't know how to play, but I know what a good number of his rages do and I still just have the hardest time getting him to do much of anything before falling on his face. I have an idea for Relm. From another thread, it seems that a lot of people agree that Sketch is not that great of a skill. It's hard to know if something is sketchable, it's still random, and it's arguably way more situational than even Rage or Dance (maybe comparable to Runic?). What if Sketch just did some boring, old, Stamina-based damage? Maybe set a random status or something. Doesn't have to be a lot of damage, since Relm does have ways to do lots of damage, but maybe it can be something that gives a reason to do a Stam build on Relm? Or maybe it should be a lot of damage, that way you really have to choose stam-nuke Relm vs. mag-nuke Relm. Just throwing it out there. Also, potential spoilers, but I have a full esper list up to Seraph. Is that all of them for the WoB? The only optional ones I attained were Golem and Seraph.

I was asking about how expensive it is in terms of my precious time. Like, how long does it take to earn 100k toward the end of the game? Another question- I saw a dragon at least once on the FC and I'm trying to get Gau to leap on it, but I haven't encountered another one in a long time. Do they only appear in a specific part of the FC?

I've got one more question that I might as well chuck in this thread. How much to EL respecs cost, in a relative sense? I understand that the first few are cheaper than the full price, and I don't really care what the actual number is, since that will mean nothing to me until I get there in the game. I'm just wondering if respec'ing is something that takes, like, an hour of grinding per character or what.

Yes, I was just asking about those rages, specifically. I know that people seem to agree that speed Gau has, overall, a higher DPS. Another, perhaps better, way to ask my question would've been "Which scales faster: damage from those rages with respect to stamina, or number of turns with respect to speed?"

Ah, yes. That makes sense. Thanks. And, yes, I'm often triggered by status effects.

Why does he die less? Isn't the magical resistance benefit of stamina fairly minor? I assumed he would still die about as often.

So, would you say that DPS is better or worse for stam Gau using one of the stam rages than for speed Gau using the same rage? My hesitation is that when dealing with an RNG, I rather have more chances to get what I want, which is part of the reason I wanted to do full speed on him.

I was only running when I wanted to backtrack and see if I missed stuff, or from the scary guys on the floating continent. I didn't really consider that stam Gau would be viable. I'll try him out with some stam gear first before I "waste" my ELs.

Okay, I wont pull my hair out over the randoms quite yet. I'm running 1.8.6. Yeah, I used Conjourer quite a bit around Zozo. I did forget to think about the elemental and status protections- thanks for the reminder. And I actually had already downloaded your spreadsheet. It's much appreciated! I intend to go full speed ELs with him, because that seems strictly superior than including stam levels, so he's not fast, he's fragile, etc. I'll study the spreadsheet a little more and see if I can make better use of him. Thanks for the tips, guys.