pogeymanz

After the Phoenix Cave, I only received three Phoenix Tears as my "reward". I chose not to open one of the boxes in the cave. Did I miss out on more of a prize?

I hear what you're saying. And I don't really disagree. It's just that if I didn't have the Tiger Mask (if I sold it or didn't get it), I don't think the battle would have been (reasonably) winnable without just excessively grinding levels. That's what bothers me.

I feel that there should be *something* for a player to exploit to build a strategy for the boss that doesn't require planning way ahead. I.e., next time I play, I'll surely grab some Wall Rings in Thamasa, but that's not fair to expect a player to do. It doesn't take away from the planning and strategizing, IMO, to realize you need some extra magic defense or fire defense. Put something in a shop nearby or in a treasure chest that gives mdef/shell/fire-defense.

I did have the Ribbon. I decided to forgo it because it didn't keep anyone up and useful or prevent me from losing. Thus my (bad, IMO) Zombie Army strategy.

PRE-EDIT: I guess the Tiger Mask is for sale in Tzen, so maybe one could trek all the way back to Tzen if they realize they need fire protection. But how do you even figure out that S. Cross is fire elemental without the Tiger Mask (that's how I knew)?

I didn't see Nowea's analysis, but I'd assume his calculation was assuming throwing stars or regular Fight damage, right? The wind procs would be extra to add in, since they're random.

Also, it goes without saying that elemental scroll DPS is independent of vigor and stamina but dependent on speed, so if your plan is to throw lots of scrolls, your DPS is highest with 100% speed.

6 minutes ago, BTB said:

The flip-side of that is that higher vigor and stamina ups his survivability.

How big of an effect is that really, though? Especially with +1 and not +2. (Genuine question, not a snide rhetorical)

Two more things

1. I think Dullahan is a little too tough. Well, not Dullahan itself, but the game around it, I guess. I had the stars misalign for the battle and I had to rely on luck way more than I'd like. My characters were right at level 20, maybe one or two at 21. None of my characters had any HP esper bonus, yet. I had not bought any wall rings when I was in Thamasa.

So Dullahan's S. Cross would wipe Edgar and Setzer, even at full health. Celes and Sabin could survive only if they were very close to full health. After some trial and error, I discovered that S. Cross is fire elemental. The only fire elemental thing I had access too was Sabin's Tiger Mask. So, I put that on and geared up the rest of my party to maximize 'Fight' damage (Edgar with Fire Lance, Power Armor, Dragon Helm, Dragoon Seal and Power Glove = <3). After the standard slow + dispel ritual, I just let my party all die, except Sabin. The other three became zombies and I just crossed my fingers that they wouldn't hit Sabin. His job was solely to throw a tonic at himself after an S. Cross. After five or so tries, the RNG gods smiled at me and let Setzer hit with some good dice rolls and Edgar got in a couple of double jumps for ~7000 damage.

My only suggestion would be to add Wall Rings to a shop that we have access to at this early point in the WoR. Kolighen would obviously be preferred. Maybe for 2.1?

2. When you get Terra back, I think she said "awhile" instead of "a while". I could be mistaken because I read and smash A pretty quickly sometimes...

15 minutes ago, BTB said:

Because there's really nothing missable except Water Rondo >.>

And the guy who *does* the water rondo... But, sure, I guess we'd mostly expect BNW players to have played enough FF6 to know that, already.

But, I was thinking more about rage and lore formations. If I remember correctly and it hasn't changed for 2.0, there were several formations that needed to at least be encountered in the WoB so you could Veldt them later. Is that not correct?

Also, I thought there were two espers in the WoB that you couldn't get later, but that's wrong?

People ask all the time, apparently. It would be nice to have a reference to the "important" missables such as Rages, Lores, Dances, Espers, hidden Characters, etc, no?

Or is this part of BTB's old-school gamer ethos?

Thank you guys for the input. While my original question was, indeed, about those items, it is very helpful to hear that either character can do decently well without them. I can especially see that for a Vig Terra not needing the sword as much.

Please remind me (maybe with spoiler tags?).

Looking at the printme that came with the ROM, both Terra and Celes get some pretty awesome weapons and accessories. I'm, like, 90% sure that they probably can't BOTH have their cool swords and cool accessories. Is that correct?

In light of that, one probably wouldn't want to build both of them as vigor builds or both as magic builds, right?

3 hours ago, Nowea said:

Rod jumping in general is less damage than rod fighting. If you have the MP for MP crits then being in the front row swinging the rod is a higher damage multiplier than jump. It's basically just a more 'defensive' form of rod fighting (jump delay and back row)

Ah! Good point(s). MP crits don't happen with Jump, right? That's a bummer.

10 hours ago, BTB said:

The Unequimp uses the same routine as before so we wouldn't have to create a new one.

Makes sense!

10 hours ago, BTB said:

The Leap description is accurate, still, but it looks inaccurate if you just read the first part.

Fair enough. I probably failed at reading...

10 hours ago, BTB said:

There is nothing more interesting/useful to put in the rare items screen.

What?! You could replace it with a pixel art picture of a banana and I'd probably still look at it more often.

I'm surprised to see that Cleric/Sage Terra is considered as more of a tanky healer build. With Maduin + Morph she'd outpace even Shiva Celes for magic damage. Of course, in reality, you'd need some Ragnarok and/or Phoenix levels in there, but still. She doesn't have to be sniping elements to see that one of Fire/Bolt/Ice will do decent damage, no? I've only played Stamina Terra before, so I was thinking I'd do a Maduin Terra this time and I definitely assumed I'd be nuking the hell out of things with Morphed Fire/Bolt/Ice3s...

This is my third time through BNW and, of course, I'm loving it, as usual.

I just thought I'd bring two things to your attention, in case they weren't known:

When your party splits in three after the Lete river stuff, there was something strange with the scenario selection screen... I just don't quite remember what it was! If I remember correctly, it was something like the Kappa allowing you the option to unequip everyone who isn't in your party. Well, nobody is in your party, because you're selecting the scenario as a Moogle. So, it kinda sorta makes you think that you can select, e.g., Sabin and THEN come back and unequip everyone else, which is obviously not the case.

Also, when you meet Gau, the Kappa's explanation of Leap is no longer correct.

And just for giggles, I wonder if you guys ever considered just doing away with the whole "rare items" screen in the item main menu to free up space for something actually useful/interesting... I don't give a crap that I have a "clock key" anymore...

How viable is doing a MagMogoon? As in, mostly Shoat levels, Dragoon Seal, and primarily just jumping with rods?

Obviously, the non-proc'd jumps will be lackluster compared to a Palidor build, but the proc'd casts will be really pumped by the high magic stat + jump bonus. Maybe it evens out? With the Moogle Charm, he'll still probably jump pretty quickly.

I wonder if the issue is less that stam Sabin sucks, but rather that Chakra sucks? Maybe he doesn't need or shouldn't have MP healing. I get that there's a cool synergy with Mantra (which, also isn't very good compared to almost all other healing options), but maybe it needs to be replaced with something totally different, but based on stamina?

Maybe the trade-off can be that vig Sabin is really awesome at single target damage and stam Sabin can be good at AoE damage (Fire Dance, Wind Whatever, and some replacements to Chakra and/or Mantra).

I also do agree with the idea that a general buff to stamina may be in order. Maybe making it more effective at the things it already does: tightening/reducing certain kinds of damage, higher regen ticks (so that it outpaces HP growth's boost to regen), more status evasion.

I'm still on 1.8.6, but I don't think my vote would change terribly based on the changes in 1.9. I've only got the dragons, Fanatics Tower, and Kefka's Tower left.

But, it's really hard for me to choose an MVP. I guess if we are defining MVP as most valuable over the course of the whole game so far, it would exclude Locke for me, despite being my strongest asset for much of the WoR.

So the running is probably Cyan, Edgar, and Terra. I'm doing Stam Cyan, Hybrid Edgar (10 Golem in WoB, 10 Siren in WoR), and Stam Terra. Cyan hard carried me for much of the WoB. Edgar is always tanky and super-useful, and stam Terra is whatever you need her to be: Huge regen ticks, huge magic damage, good physical damage, decent HP, etc, etc.

I'm also not surprised that Shadow and Relm are not ranked highly. It's not that they aren't awesome- it's just that they aren't going to be MVP. I think that's because Relm and Shadow are not as do-everything as the others who are ranking highly.

4 hours ago, BTB said:

Yes, he does. I'm guessing Strago was blind at the time.

Hmm. I'm pretty sure he wasn't blind (is there anything that causes blind in the Hidon battle?), and I'm less sure he wasn't KO'd at the time that Gogo sketched it. Are there any other variables that might matter?

I already successfully defeated Hidon and got Black Omen thanks to the advice of Deschain and overwrote my save, otherwise I would do it again to verify.

1 minute ago, Deschain said:

  Hide contents

He only starts using Black Omen once you have killed all his Hidonites

 

Fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu!

Thank you.

After a long hiatus, I booted up my 1.8.6 save. I've gotten all of the characters and defeated Doom Gaze, but that's pretty much it. I haven't defeated any dragons, still need to do Cyan's dream, and the Fanatics Tower (and other stuff, I'm sure).

My first few attempts at Hidon got my ass handed to me. I was trying to use my lowest level characters: Locke (Phoenix build), Sabin (Vig), Gau (SPEED), and Strago (stam), of course. Let's just say that this didn't work at all. The random targeting of Blitzes and Rage are just not compatible with managing the hidonites.

So I compromised and redid my party to have one of my strongest characters plus some low level guys (that aren't Gau): Locke, Strago, Gogo, Terra (stam, MVP).

This time I'm able to defeat Hidon almost-consistently (Morhped Terra Fire 3 FTW). I just need to not get pummelled in the first few turns and it usually goes okay. The problem is that I can't get him to use Black Omen. He used it once in a battle I lost. But that's it- I've only seen him cast it once.

I thought I'd be so clever and have Gogo Sketch him. But apparently, Strago doesn't learn Lores if your team uses one against the enemy.

I've now beaten Hidon four times and fought him at least 10 times. I'm f-ing sick of this battle. How do I convince Hidon to cast Black Omen?

3 hours ago, ronlyn said:

My two cents on this whole deal is.....what if we wait for an actual rehearse of the mod and give out opinions and suggestions?

This feels repetitive when we had a 5 pages long discussion on Insane Difficulty.

If someone wants to make FFT 1.4, just do it and we play it and give out our reviews to enhance the experience, don't you think?

Yeah, that's a fair point. And just to be very clear again, anything I do with a tweaked 1.3 should NOT be considered a 1.4. I don't want that kind of responsibility.

I think these discussions are a testament to how much people enjoyed 1.3 and long for more/similar experiences. Everyone has strong feelings about what was right/wrong about the game because we all love it so much. And it's hard not to want to share your opinion when you care about stuff. That's pretty cool.

18 hours ago, Windows X said:

Trying to make an easier 1.3 is like a trainwreck version of comprehensive elements. Just play 1.3 original or easy mode. Archer sucks yeah I agree but not far from saving. Faster aim with arm/leg shot makes archer more desirable. Arithmetician is broken yeah I agree and I made him kind of Red Mage variant instead of making OP job with -ja spells like 1.3 (Too crazy for balanced game mod). Dragoon jump is boring I agree but that's how Dragoon works and 1.3 was like that too.

If you suggest playing 1.3 easy mode, then how can it be that trying to make 1.3 easier is a trainwreck?

18 hours ago, Windows X said:

Specials are broken for special reasons and that's optional for people who want to take them on their own accord. I don't see anything wrong with Black Mage though. He has tons of good spells because he's the master of black magic. 3-4 tier spells has been there since early days of FF and it's tradition everyone is accustomed with. Vanilla is far from balanced and proper but it's not too bad to say it's beyond saving in my opinion.

Wizard/Black Mage is very redundant. In vanilla, I usually only get Ice 1, Bolt 2, and that's it. Then I move on to a different, more useful, class (Summoner). Elements almost never matter in vanilla, so there's no reason to get Bolt 1 + Fire 1 + Ice 1- it's a waste of JP. In 1.3, the lower levels spells are all different, which is great because it gives you a reason to want all of them- the elemental part is very secondary. You can, of course, make Wizard better and nerf Summoner so that I want to keep using Wizard, but I still wont buy Fire 3, and Ice 3, and Bolt 3. The only way that will happen is if you tweak many battles to make elemental resistances and weaknesses
much more common.

18 hours ago, Windows X said:

I used to play 1.3 for a while and I gotta say I love many things they did there though the game can be too cruel and unbalanced at times. Those broken suitable for easier mode. Wizard with one level spell like Explosion, Chain Lightning will simply abuse its abilities without AI knowing how to utilize it efficiently. Imagine they cast spell and you use those modded Plunder strikes. You think it's cool and all because it's deadly situation and status ailments affect gameplay a lot. If you make that in easier version, it's just abusing and plain boring. And adding broken spells from enemies to Ramza and Arithmetician makes them broken even more in easier mode.

I think I understand what you're saying. You're saying that the powerful spells are okay when the game is already very hard, but if we try to make it easier, it'll get to be too easy since the AI is dumb. I think that's a fair point, but again- it can't be worse than vanilla. Vanilla has Orlandu and Calculator and Blade Grasp and Auto Potion and Draw Out on Wizard and Two Fist Ninjas and Jumping Ninjas and... All kinds of stuff that the enemies never get to do.

18 hours ago, Windows X said:

Please don't get me wrong that I'm against 1.3 mod. It's an excellent mod deserving to be one of the best treasure in history of SRPG gaming. However, it was that good because it's hard and challenging. Trying to make easier version of 1.3 without losing its charm isn't possible. It's captivating because it's hard and that's why you love this. I also tried porting 1.3 abilities and some stuff to make it easier but it'll be just a trainwreck version of mashed up mods by beginners who doesn't understand the game, let alone understanding the purpose of modding.

If you truly want to make an easier version of 1.3, you can do that by trying to optimize each battle, adjust boss abilities and strength to be more acceptable with your standards. Do that for every single battle and every single character and job. If you can put that much time and effort to optimize it for non-hardtype version without breaking game balance and its charm, many of us would like to try that too. Or it would be better if you can try start modding on your own from scratch too.

The main idea for me is to mostly focus on enemy formations. I want to leave most of the jobs alone (except for the speed thing and maybe a few annoying abilities). The first things are to simply reduce the level gaps, take away (most) immortal enemies, reduce the numbers of enemies, and maybe just put fewer healers in enemy formations, (and do something about Power Source). I don't want the game to be *easy*, I just don't want it to be hair-pulling.

18 hours ago, Windows X said:

And for last time, I'd like to tell you that I used to mod 1.3 to make it more easier and friendly for no more people too. I even went as far as porting vanilla fights back and adjust each battle as I believe it shouldn't be that hard with vanilla fights and fix some gears and skills. After trying that for a while, I realized that this isn't 1.3 that it gave me goosebumps and fun factor of risking your life every turn. It's just plain wrong, plain boring and IMO is worse than vanilla gameplay. If you wish to try that again, good luck or get vanilla story battle version of 1.3 to start with from here.

http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=3514.0

I think that's partly because the vanilla battles are so boring- every enemy is Knight/Chemist/Archer for the whole freaking game. I can see how that wouldn't be fun with the cool, improved 1.3 classes.

18 hours ago, Windows X said:

For me 1.3 isn't 1.3 if it doesn't have difficulty deserving for its changes. You need to understand how battle mechanics work, why they have this ability in this job and why it has something strange like White Mage having very high PA, even higher than Squire. Take hint why Summoner moves slower than others and why White Mage moves faster than average speed. How these affect battle mechanics and sequence of action. If I change abilities to this, will it break other job's abilities? In 1.3, they reworked every part to their liking with different mindset in battle mechanics. Sometimes it's too limited with only one way to win certain battles.

I modded my own game instead of trying to fix 1.3 to the way I like because I realized it's not a proper way to make things right and I did try before coming to this conclusion. I'm no longer a beginner who follow the hype and mash up things I like without giving a second thought to people who created it before anymore and that's why some modders left for their own creation rather than revising legendary 1.3 mod. They do it for their own satisfaction to play the game they feel right for them.

Fair points. I will keep those things in mind when I eventually get to this. I've postponed actually working on it since I learned that I need to find another job soon...

I'm surprised that Sabin is ranked so highly. In the WoB I feel like Stam Cyan is usually better (Better tank, early Bushidos > early Blitzes IMO, good healer). In the WoR I feel like Sabin's physical damage is good, but is it that much better than, say, Vig or Hybrid Edgar, or Vig Cyan?

I know he can element-snipe, but I often found the elements to be a liability about as often as they were an asset. He's honestly been one of my less played characters.

I voted for Edgar. I only just got everyone back in the WoR, so I'm not "end game" yet. But my MVP is pretty close between Edgar, Terra, and Cyan. (Stam) Cyan hasn't really started waning yet, like everyone says he does, but he's not nearly as versatile as the other two. Edgar has just been freaking solid the whole game. I did all Golem levels in WoB and I'm doing all Siren in WoR, so he has transitioned smoothly from Dragooning to playing more support (but still doing decent damage with Chainsaw and Drill).

14 hours ago, Bishop said:

If I can reply to the presenting question: FFT 1.3 is one of the greatest video game mods of all time, despite its many flaws, and deserves a 1.4 the same way Philsov's 1.2 deserved Archael's 1.3. 

I agree. However, I do not have the audacity to label anything I do as "1.4". I simply don't believe I have the skills to make anything that good. Shit- I don't even have the skills to actually play 1.3, let alone make a successor.

Also, my mod will probably not be in the same spirit, just because I don't actually want it to be very hard. Harder than vanilla, of course, but no where near 1.3 hard (even pre-chapter-4).

14 hours ago, Bishop said:

The "low hanging fruit" for 1.4.0.1 would be to simply remove some of the CH 4 immortal flags and make those battles more interesting than "Haha! Power Source!"  Seriously, don't change any classes or abilities or speed-is-the-only-stat or anything big-picture like that, just find some ways to make those last-chapter battles a bit more differentiated one from another. 

Actually, I was planning on removing MOST immortal flags throughout the game. I think they only serve two purposes:

1. Give yet another unfair advantage to the enemy by allowing the enemies to be revived whenever the hell they feel like it, whereas we're stuck to three turns.

2. Making it so that you can face really powerful enemies, but don't get to absorb their crystal, lest you become powerful, too. Well, screw that. Either you can farm insane crystals for defeating insane enemies, or you don't get great crystals and don't face insane enemies.

That's just too lopsided for me. The battles are hard enough: you're usually outnumbered, they often have terrain advantage, they get infinite items, etc. God forbid you have some battles that are close to even.

Also, the more I think about the speed thing, the more I really want to stick to removing all speed growth. I was always frustrated in vanilla (and others agree it's the same in 1.3) that magic just doesn't matter at the end of the game- it's too slow for what it does. If we remove speed growth, we basically get two effects:

1. Magic stays relevant into the late game. You aren't going to get lapped by the enemies while you're charging a hard-hitting spell. Some CTs will likely need to be tweaked, etc.

2. Levels matter even less. I'm not convinced that this is a bad thing. Of course, if all battles scale with your level (instead of level +10 BS), this doesn't matter as much.

I see no downside, from a theoretical POV. There will of course be balance tweaks that need to happen (getting speed + 2 from some piece of equipment would be too good, for example).

14 hours ago, Bishop said:

Even easier, there are a few quality of life improvements that would go a long way to making the game more enjoyable.  Your first time through the game, it's easy to be unaware that some units are "immortal," and that can be confusing.  Give them unique sprites.  Honestly, just changing all the immortal-flagged or unique-classed or non-player-accessible-ability-having enemies to look different from the classes you can access as a player would be a great improvement.  Start with Germinas Peak.

Yup. That will happen by virtue of the above. Pretty much only special characters and guests will be immortal.

11 hours ago, Windows X said:

If you're looking for proper vanilla mod, you can try my mine. It makes the game more challenging a little but it's still genuine vanilla. No more excessive equipment added like knight's sword, crossbow, shield, robe on squire  or 4-5 move increase on some jobs. No more stupid boost that breaks the game balance between you and enemies.

What I disliked the most is making changes that benefits you but not for enemies and make some abilities useless. If you want to increase damage, just add Arcane Strength as innate on black mage instead of increasing MA on weapons. That way enemies will become fearsome force to reckon with too. Some jobs are nerfed with reasons and vanilla re-balance mods often disregard that.

1.3 is good for people who really want challenges but it's not really suitable for vanilla style. Some items and abilities really shouldn't be there in vanilla like Cancel Strike or add oil that makes the game too easy in vanilla. Oh, try to get Female Thief and female healer with best zodiac compatibility, it'll help you a lot.

I'm not looking for a vanilla mod, though. After getting a taste of 1.3, I don't think I can go back to vanilla. The classes in vanilla suck really hard compared to 1.3. The worst offenders being Archer, Calculator, Wizard, Lancer, and almost all of the specials, IMO. They're so bland and repetitive (except Calc- he's just totally broken).

This is precisely why I want to make an easy version of 1.3. I don't want it to be exactly like the Content version, because I don't feel like brute-force grinding is fun, even though Content at least gives you that option. I rather that the game just be balanced in a way that is more "naturally" easy- meaning that enemies are not always so much stronger than you (like Emmy was saying).

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?

58 minutes ago, Regdren said:

The reason I stopped playing FFT 1.3 was due to reaching the point where poaching became available. The impression I got was that I HAD to get all of this important gear but actually doing so without overleveling was a huge time waster. In the forums people were talking with a straight face (straight...text? what to you call that sort of thing on a forum?) about how it's find to just edit your file and add those things to your inventory to conserve your sanity.

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.

Quote

I will admit that my motivation was not helped by the stories of absurd things that would happen from that point onward.

As for the question of how to make anything other than hyper-offense valuable, I do think increasing the effectiveness of status is good but just removing enemy elixirs is a huge step in the right direction. I don't care if that would make hard mode easier, that item single-handedly makes a large part of the game's skillset non-viable.

I ... might just remove Elixir altogether- or rather, just replace it with a more nerfed healing item. That's a super cheap item.

12 hours ago, Emmy said:

2.  The biggest thing wrong with 1.3's scaling is nicely illustrated by the way it handles MP Switch.  Because MP switch is nerfed in a way that leftover damage from what hurt MP will roll over into HP, and enemies frequently do enough damage where they can kill someone through MP switch (unless you set up specifically to use it, but any setups made specifically to use it are better spent towards specifically using Damage Split or Meatbone Slash for the better turn economy), it's not very useful for the player to have.  However, when the enemy has it, they have far more HP and MP than any player class, and the ability to heal BOTH to full at any given moment.  This turns MP switch into effectively a second HP bar for the enemy.  What you need to do is change the scaling of the game such that enemies don't have every single advantage.  Enemy is tanky with MP Switch and lots of HP/MP to use it? Don't give it the ability to heal to full or deal much damage in one turn.  Enemy has a OHKO move? It should have low speed or the defenses of a wet paper bag.  Stuff like this will increase variety in the game and thus make it more interesting.

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.

12 hours ago, Emmy said:

Another thing you mention is to make status effects have higher probability to hit.  No one's going to go for a Petrify that has a 30% chance to hit when the enemy can just throw a Soft on it.  Remove evasion from status effects and make it just a faith based check.  That will give the player a way to increase probability of their own statuses, while at the same time being more vulnerable to enemy status (Faith status).  And, since you mentioned evasion, lower the evasion given by shields/mantles and don't give so many enemies Concentrate.  Nothing should have nearly 100% dodge rates without needing to spend an ability slot (abandon) on it, and you shouldn't need to have Concentrate in so many battles either.

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.

12 hours ago, Emmy said:

3.  Fixing items to not strictly be better than one another can solve this problem.  This can be done by spreading out bonuses given by things.  That way someone can make a meaningful choice between, say +200 HP, +100 HP and immune Frog, or 0 HP and +1 speed.  Also there shouldn't only be 5 abilities you care about.  Abilities should all have their uses so that the player doesn't just immediately buy Phoenix Down and ignore the rest of the Chemist set.  The change to make xp/jp by battle instead of by action was hard to make, but easy for you to implement (you can find it in my asm pack).

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.

12 hours ago, Emmy said:

4.  Some examples of this are the bad tooltips in the game.  Lots of abilities don't tell you what they actually do in their descriptions, lots of abilities are things that affect some units but not others, etc.  You can fix this by fixing the text of the game.  Tell the player when you make a unit innately immune to something.  

Ah, yes. Fair point.