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It's been a while since last release and I've been testing and working on re-balance and improvements on various jobs. 1.3 will have a big update with real effort to keep things more balanced and improve enjoyment.

Since there's a lot of changes going on in 1.3, I'd appreciate if anyone can test my mod before releasing. Please let me know if you're interested and I'll send current Valeria 1.3 update for you.

-Archer will have abilities similar to aim with status infliction added
-Some spells has been adjusted and reworked
-Monk has some offensive abilities reworked for situational use and adjusted support abilities not to render spells useless
-Summoner receives magical attack and spells boost now
-Holy Knight and Sword Saint abilities is now nerfed to be more balanced
-Some adjustments on items making ranged weapon be more useful and balanced

This new patch will totally change the way you play the game since tutorial. Ladd can be hit by Archer. Sword skills won't work right away and hit weaker. It may raise the game difficulty a little but also make some fights easier too.  Please let me know what do you guys think about these changes and have fun.

43 minutes ago, Kyrios said:

No, you got downvoted because your logic is flawed, your points were silly, and when pressed, you tried to defend yourself by saying it was an "opinion." Who cares if it's an opinion? We know it's an opinion; that does not mean you shouldn't be defending it. It being an opinion and not fact does not save it from being criticized, which you took to poorly. No, you were warned because you were one step away from insulting someone over a simple disagreement in game tactics. And it wasn't even a warning, it was me asking you to take a step back.

Your negative rep came from three posts before this one where you threw your hands up like an infant and stormed out. You're not being bullied. If you don't want to be treated like a child, then stop acting like one.

He asked me

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

That's out of topic question from 1.3 development. It was part of my suggestion mixed with my opinion that I felt that lower RNG isn't something to be used strategically (and everyone in here also agreed from what I read).

It has nothing about defending when I answer his question that it's my opinion. if Administrator think it deserves down voting due to misunderstandings or whatever, fine. I don't care anymore at this point.

So I got down voted from expressing my opinions and got warned to stop talking about 1.3 updates due to misunderstandings. Nice. I wish you luck from now on. I'm done.

What? I got told to avoid speaking because I disagree about their ideas about 50% RNG? Are you serious? I already told them I'm on the same boat about their opinion but we should respect for people who have that taste about RNG elements for making 1.3 better.

Fine, I'll leave this 1.3 improvements stuff and wait to see its outcome from the sidelines. I hope it's not all about talking and do something real to make 1.3 better so I can actually play and see.

For better reason, lower RNG gives you more variety sense of adventure. If you want to make your own mod for realist with real world's strategy, it's fine. I'd love to play your finished work too. I'm speaking in topic about making 1.3 better in this regard.

31 minutes ago, AbnormalVoid said:

There is no good strategy to low chance RNG in the context of a Total Success/Total Failure situation. The only good strategy is to avoid it entirely. High risk/Reward is exactly how Lotteries take advantage of people who don't understand statistics (to a far greater extent, granted). It doesn't matter how great a successful outcome is, a low chance of seeing that outcome completely removes the strategic benefit of that outcome existing at all.

The low chance means the ability will be used very little, because while you're missing constantly, an enemy will walk over and rip your ass open. The times it will be used is as a last-ditch gambit, where it's your only option of success in an already hopeless situation. You use it, it fails, you fail anyway. You use it, it succeeds, you succeed, but do you really deserve that success? Every poor choice you made led to that hopeless situation. It's only the result of an overpowered ability, locked off with a measure that doesn't actually make it any more balanced, that completely bailed you out.

The player then moves on, learning nothing from their mistakes, and gaining no actual strategic benefit beyond relying on terribly designed abilities. Congratulations, the depth of your game has been subverted entirely.

Charm was only an example. The point of the example is that abilities should be balanced by what they do, not by the chance that they'll do it.

Giving players the ability to formulate strategies based on weighing the positives and negatives of using abilities in regards to a given situation is infinitely better than constantly rolling the dice on boring, broken abilities. It's one of the few things the original FFT never really grasped, which is a shame, because the potential for it is staggering.

Personally, I'm on the same page with you about not relying on low chance RNG. However, there's also a few players who enjoy that kind of high risk high reward from low RNG abilities. Let's see the case of steal for an example. It has low chance and stealing is hard to do for some fights but many tried to get cool items regardless of risks.

If there's no low RNG abilities, there'll be some abilities being abused like Arithmetician, Dancer+Mimic, Rend/Steal party, etc. And ended up having to remove some abilities to keep the game from being abused. Sometimes seeing enemies using low RNG abilities give us thrill to spice things up. Without such element, it'd make the game less enjoyable to me personally.

As for abilities with advantage/disadvantage has interesting concepts but harder to utilize since most of them are about status ailments, buff/debuff. I think the merits for this should be designer's responsibilities. When modding game, I'll think about benefits and loss between players and enemies. If I add this ability or modify it like this, will it balance benefits between player and enemies better or something like that.

I think it'd be more preferable for more players to have 1.3 with low RNG support and provide flexibility to utilize more strategies without having to resort to sandbagging.

I think lower RNG has its room for player to plan their strategy whether they should utilize high risk high return approach in the game play. If it works, you'll gain a bit more favor. If it doesn't, how will you recover from such situation. I for one who doesn't like low RNG ability because I hate it when it fails but I understand the mindset of putting this on.

Removing such elements will make the game more solid but also lose some rewards. If I were to make 1.3 better, I'd tone down the extremeness of overpowering and punishing players down a bit to add more variety with RNG and some certain abilities to be more balanced between players and enemies.

As for Charm + Slow, I disagree as fellow who use Female Thief charming Knights and Wizards. The merit of Charm is you can stall their movement that can be harmful down a bit and enemies aren't stupid so closest unit will knock their friends back to their sense as I did to mine. Adding Slow means you'll also gain favor of slowing down enemy if it is hit before acting in your favor.

If I were to add abilities baesd on my gameplay, I'd rather add something giving benefits enemy unit like Regen so he can gain portion of HP back after being hit from friends and you won't gain benefits from such ability too. Though I'd prefer charm to be as is as it seems fine to make enemies hitting each other instead. Or you can change from Charm to Confuse to reduce the benefits to your side a bit.

On 12/27/2017 at 1:41 AM, AbnormalVoid said:

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

I said "In my opinion".

That's why I tried to make my own re-balance instead of fixing 1.3. It's beyond my skills to make proper balance on 1.3.

In my opinion, some abilities with low RNG means, you shouldn't use it. If it's set to 50% or higher, people can abuse it and game will be broken like dancer's forbidden dance. It really should be forbidden.

Unless steal that I will really need to get no matter what, I won't use low RNG abilities in my gameplay.

I'm against making 1.3 easier as it's supposed to be hard to enjoy. That's my point here. I think it'd be better to focus on 1.3 without comparing to vanilla.

Charm + Slow sounds interesting but enemy will also knock charmed unit back to their sense so we'll get enemy unit being hit and slowed instead.

I agree that some physical skills need CT added in 1.3 to balance things out with spells. I don't agree about coin flip limit of RNG though. Some hard to infllict status has its own charm too.

13 hours ago, Augestein said:

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On contrary, while Vanilla wizard has poorer scaling, -ja spells does better job with balancing against physical damage than 1.3 did. If you prefer magic being useless during lategame in 1.3, fine.

Your issue about vanilla spells was taken care off in my mod with 2 radius for -ga spells and add status effect on -ja spells. That's how I fixed it and it did work well enough for me right now.

Elemental damage has less role to play in FFT than others which I do agree. However, it's still usable with monsters and some re-balancing can work on it in if you try.

And if you think Vanilla is too hard for early game, it means you need to learn and understand more about tactics. I used to be FFT noob and I felt it was hard before too. But that's not issue about learning how to play properly.

Nerfing Orlandu might sound proper in re-balance but some fights in endgame can be tought and easy mode unit can help such players getting over it. He's a sword saint and probably the strongest knight in FFT. Do give him some credits OK?

As for your excuse to make the game easier and more reasonable for you, asking creators why you put this on and you should remove it is asked before and the answer was there. Accept it.

As for speed manipulation issue, it's an issue with 1.3 where CT on spells isn't balanced. 1.3 favors physical with no CT so you might as well remove CT altogether to fix it. That may work.

Hi guys. Version 1.2 is out now. I've finished my big projects so I can focus on finalizing 1.2 release. This time it's another big update on spell improvements in this re-balance.

Back then spell tier are classified strictly with less favorable merits. Upgrading to -ra spells is OK but -ga spells are some what redundant and make people feel like I should save up for -ja spells instead.

In this re-balance, I added extra merits to -ga and -ja spells to make it more worthwhile. I increased effect area on -ga spells and added status effects on -ja spells so you can use -ga spells as shorter chant version with the same effect area.

I also add increased effect area and vertical range on Cure spells and all other status spells including spells on -ja spells for enemies too along with some other minor spell improvements.

As I was informed about Archer's Arm/Leg Shot bug not working with Aim skillset in previous release, I decided to build a new skillset for Archer. This new archer abilities will have the follow abilities.

Venom Fang
Oily Touch
Leg Shot
Arm Shot
Seal Evil

I tried playing optimized aim with CT and power for a while but gotta say it's dull and boring. So I decided to make archer abilities around status inflicting instead based on Machinist and monster abilities.

I also increased physical attack multiplier to make up for missing aim abilities. Archer will hit a bit harder than vanilla version but not too broken like Tactics Ogre but can be fearsome with Focus/Tailwind added.

1.2
-Added status infliction to abilities' description
-Changed Archer's Aim abilities to Venom Fang/Oily Touch/Leg Shot/Arm Shot/Seal Evil
-Increased Archer's physical attack a bit
-Changed CT time of Wall ability to 6 and no more additional MP cost
-Revised Cure spells MP cost to 5/10/16/24
-Cura has 2 Vertical range now
-Curaga/Curaja have 2 Effect area range now
-Protect/Shell has 1 Vertical range now
-Protectja/Shellja have 2 Effect area range now
-Holy has chance to inflict Blind status and reduce damage by 20% and cost 48MP
-Thundera MP cost is now 12 like others
-Firaga/Thundaga/Blizzaga spells have 2 radius now
-Haste/Slow/Stop has 1 Vertical range now
-Hasteja/Slowja have 2 Effect area range now
-Graviga spells has 2 Effect area range now
-Changed Meteor CT to 16
-Kotetsu is now Dark element attack
-Adjusted Arithmetician's physical/magical attack to be little weaker than Chemist
-Changed Machinist new abilities to Focus/Rend Helm/Rend Armor
-Toadja/Gravija/Flareja/Blindja/Confuseja/Sleepja have 2 Effect area range now
-Innate abilities also be apply to more enemies' jobs variants like Undead and others
-Elmdore's Safeguard innate skill is replaced by Arcane Strength
-Move/Find items will be rare or better items now

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ecd3ai1o99lv948/FFT WotL - Valeria 1.2 (PSP USA).ppf
http://www.mediafire.com/file/rogvat6p0c3wre3/FFT WotL - Valeria 1.2 (PSP EUR).ppf

In this release, I also tested abilities and performed test run with 1.2 changes to make sure everything is working and also balanced. Machinist also works great with Focus ability now that I wish Mustadio should have it as every generic can do with guns.

On 12/20/2017 at 3:15 AM, Augestein said:

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

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

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

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

On 12/20/2017 at 3:15 AM, Augestein said:

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

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

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

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

On 12/20/2017 at 3:15 AM, Augestein said:

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

After collecting feedback I received, I plan to work on spell improvements for next 1.2 release. Stay tuned.

I'm glad to hear. I'm working for future updates right now so you might see another update in next month. This time I'm thinking about how to make -ga spells more useful while being in original fashion.

2 hours ago, pogeymanz said:

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

Because it'll be a trackwreck regardless of either choice so why not trying someone else's work and be done with that? There's also 1.3 with vanilla fights as I suggested before which should be less hassle than content version. I played it, built my own for a while and yeah. It's not really fun like original 1.3 where Archer's strike means your fate of that battle.

2 hours ago, pogeymanz said:

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.

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

2 hours ago, pogeymanz said:

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.

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

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

2 hours ago, pogeymanz said:

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.

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

2 hours ago, pogeymanz said:

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.

Vanilla battle can be boring because developers don't want to make it too hard. Imagine they put Mystic/Orator and spam status infliction on your team. It's a taboo for mass SRPG genre and I don't think it's going to work for public releases. However, you can also make Vanilla fights more interesting like Black Mage can OHKO your Thief, Squire and Chemist can do decent damage, Archer has more effective Aim and some disabilities. It's not going to be so easy as much as before. And I have my share of fun making it my way with balanced mod mindset.

2 hours ago, pogeymanz said:

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...

You know it only took me few days to make the first balanced mod, few days later to improve and fixing stuff. Well, learning curve and expertise takes time so you may need more time to work on it. Before I work on my own mod, I spent a few weeks on working on 1.3, a few months playing other mods and by far Kind of was my favorite. It's the closest to balanced mod to my ideals though he made things a bit to easier for him for some aspects like reducing CT excessively while shorten cast time ability should be used instead for an example.

 

I'm not telling you to try my mod and enjoy it based on my answers. There're plenty of good mods in communities that'll suit your taste better than 1.3 variant which it will never be casual friendly style. Some mechanics in 1.3 will just break balance in casual play and there're tons of examples to demonstrate that. So you should at least try other mods and open yourself up to possibilities of something outside 1.3. Stop clinging to the hype and enjoy the game in the way you truly want it.

 

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Hi everyone. It's been a while. I'm so busy with big project I'm working on but now I have some spare time to finish this update with bugs I need to fix and stuff I need to revise and improve.

Let's start with Archer again. After revising Aim to be more balanced and enemies sure use it well with Aim +2/3 on me. However, I find Aim +10/15 charges too long and ridiculous for JP cost to learn.

I checked Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and it looks like Archer over there is OP with cheat abilities. I noticed Arm/Leg shot from Machinist was there too. It looks like we get crippled Archer and Machinist here.

So, to balance things out a little bit. I removed Aim +10/15 and replaced with Arm/Leg shot. I also add Aim abilities up to Aim +5 on Machinist so this job will be more like Archer variant. This applies to Barich and Undead Archer too so be careful.

Next is about innate reacion ability bug. We can't add it so I replaced innate reaction abilities to something else available. I also moved some abilities between jobs to balance things out better.

Some support abilities can be quite and might break the game so it needed to be tested for a while. Fortunately I found it's still within safe region thought it may increase challenges and make things a bit easier sometimes.

Squire: Defend/Beastmaster so they can always defend and enhance beasts
Chemist: Treasure Hunter since Chemist already has Throw Items
Knight: Reequip improving versatility to re-equip weapon depending on situation
White Mage: Arcane Defense increasing surviability against magicks
Black Mage: Arcane Strength making Black Mage becoming more threats
Monk: Lifefont increasing tanking capabilities
Orator: Defense Boost so to work as physical oriented mage job better
Geomancer: Attack Boost/Lavawalking and Geomancer abilities won't hit your friends now
Dragoon: Ignore Elevation so Dragoon can move at any height with his jump
Bard: Faith Boost improving magical efficiency during battle
Dancer: Bravery Boost improving physical efficiency during battle
Mime: Poach to match with innate Beastmaster skill as a real beastmaster
Machinist: Safeguard because machinist always keep things safe

Black mage will hit you a lot harder enough to OHKO some of your units but still manageable. Moving Reequip to Knight was a great decision as he can change elemental weapon without support skill required now, very nice.

Orator now has innate Defense Boost from Mystic so he can keep shooting and taking damage while enticing your foes to support your cause. Equip Guns is moved to Chemist now so you can pick to learn this or Throw Items support.

Next is about improving Squire's abilities. Some people added Tailwind so it won't become too useless but I disagree with this idea. Everyone casting Tailwind will break the game balance literally so leave those talk skills it to Ramza and Luso.

I revised Stone to use PA/2*MA for damage formula with chance to inflict Oil status so mages can cast fire spells for more damage though chance aren't that high but still fun bonus to add.

After adding inflict status with Stone, I also added status infliction on other high level spells like Regen with Curaja, Disable with Firaja, Immobilize with Thunderja, Stop with Blizzaja and some other spells including only enemies ones.

After playing for a while, I feel current version stable and balanced enough so I'm releasing version 1.1 here for both USA/EUR ISO as usual. Here's summary of changes in version 1.1

1.1
-Added Aim abilities for Machinist up to Aim +5
-Changed innate abilities on some classes to Support/Move only (Please re-read again)
-Moved Reequip from Chemist to Knight job (So he can use it as an innate skill)
-Moved Equip Guns from Orator to Chemist job
-Moved Defense Boost from Mystic to Orator job (Orator is like physical mage type so this should fit him better)
-Rush damage formula is now 50% of physical attack (Random 25-100% is too unreliable)
-Stone's damage formula is now PA/2 * MA. It will also have chance to inflict Oil status
-Increased Rend Speed's speed reduction by 1 for more viable effects in early chapters
-Curaja has chance to inflict Regen status
-Firaja has chance to inflict Disable status
-Thunderja has chance to inflict Immobilize status
-Blizzaja has chance to inflict Stop status
-Meteor has chance to inflict Dead status
-Gravija has chance to inflict Stone status
-Flareja has chance to inflict Confusion/Berserk status
-Reverted Cyclone damage boost
-Potions will heal at rate 30/80/180
-Changed Archer's Aim +10/20 to Leg Shot and Arm Shot

http://www.mediafire.com/file/e8eswq88dtktckj/FFT WotL - Valeria 1.1 (PSP USA).ppf
http://www.mediafire.com/file/3kar9kvkc44ts5u/FFT WotL - Valeria 1.1 (PSP EUR).ppf

You can patch with original USA/EUR ISO and enjoy Veleria 1.1 mod. I thought I wouldn't mess with special jobs but Machinist is too pitiable to ignore. If you have any suggestion for further improvements with this mod, please let me know.

Regards,
Keetakawee

3 hours ago, Hart-Hunt said:

I've been out of the FFT scene for long, but nevertheless I've yet to play a good rebalance FFT classic mod. So I'll be following both FFT projects closely! I'll give my insight to both independently in the future as well.

 

I completely agree with your statements. It's really hard to make a balanced classic mod. Some jobs has unusual uses that often ignored and re-balance often ignore those aspects. Moving skill or add mechanics will easily ruin the game and classic feels. Not that I'll do any better but I'll try to stay faithful to vanilla. I'm doing FFT mod for real now unlike the past noob me who thought giving this into the game would be more fun.

After trying 1.3 vanilla and other vanilla mods, I feel the urge to make my own to have good balancing with Tactics Ogre and Wild Arms XF. They're great SRPG games in my book.

Innate abilities can't have reaction since it'll enforce its own into battle so I'm working with different reactions and might move some skills to balance between jovs better.

This might sound little bit strange to talk about my project on someone else's thread but I believe this information will also be useful for him too.

Thank you for sharing your feedback with us. Inflicting zombie status is quite complicated situation to put on unlike Immobilize or Poison which penalty isn't too severe. It can break the game balance and make you feel like you're playing a different version from the original FFT. I found that happened to a few mods I've played before claiming it's re-balance or improved vanilla but some changes made me feel it's different from vanilla style and mine may probably feel slightly different for some others too.

I thought about raising potion's price too but innate tackle and increased damage from Squire and Chemist will hurt stronger. Sometimes Argath will fall before your turn if he's really unlucky which makes Chemist being more useful to toss items to heal and position your troop right for urgent crisis.

If you're playing Valeria mod right now, you'll see how innate abilities bringing new light to each job while staying faithful to original game design. You'll feel like you're still playing FFT with new changes that blends well with the original concepts and have adjustments that balance out for both allies and enemies. It's like each job is doing what it's supposed to do in battles and enemies are doing that too.

Before releasing 1.0, I also did some experiments with status inflicting too like Blizzard inflicting Stop or Thunder inflicting Immobilize. I find that adding status ailments in early stages will break the game mechanics in one way or another like making Swordskills less useful, I need to remove status more often and can be annoying in some situation. I'll test for a while and see what I can do in future releases.

I'd love to try the idea of inflicting some status early too. Since I'd like to maintain the preserve the vanilla feel as much as possible, I may come up with some modified abilities to make use of it. If you have any suggestion for future improvements, please let me know.

I don't recommend adding status on early spells. That'll outshine Swordskills and break the game mechanics. I'm also testing status inflicts on higher tier spells and now it's only -ja level to make game balanced.

As for status inflicts percentage, you need to check on hit formula carefully. Spells has 19% chance unless specified and formula varies. I may boost some and nerf some a little but I won't go over 55% that's for sure.

I also like Meditate skill in Tactics Ogre allowing us to perform action and skill separately. Too bad Final Fantasy Tactics doesn't allow that and I think that will make Chemist obsolete in my opinion.

Early game has dedicated role clearly, Knight for tank/damage, Archer for ranged damage, White Mage for healing/buff, Black Mage for magical damage/bad status, Knight has sword skills for ranged physical with status.

If you try to make changes to those balance, game mechanics will crumble making certain abilities being OP or useless than others. But if you find spots you're OK and have fun with it, that's OK for you too.

I also tried other mods and felt like "This isn't FFT I played before." so I made my own patch to enjoy vanilla experience better. You can try my patch and feel free to give me your opinions too.

http://ngplus.net/index.php?/forums/topic/430-fft-valeria-psp-revamped-mechanics-and-re-balance-mod-for-better-vanilla/

At first I thought to make no grind run friendly patch but I ended up utilizing some new mechanics that blend with vanilla gameplay well especially innate abilities that provide benefits to enemies too.

-Squire with innate Counter Tackle will make me think twice before hitting on low HP and use stone more frequently
-Chemist can do considerable amount of damage so you can't ignore their attacks like nothing.
-Thief with Vigilance will increase surviability requiring more attention to take down.
-White Mage with innate regen will turn classic strategy shoot da healer to be harder to utilize
-Black Mage can counter with magic means you'll need deal focus on physical damage more
-Monk will counter your attack so you'll want to use ranged approach on him.

This will enhance gameplay experience without having to change battle mechanics. But if you inflict status on spells, you'll need to add status removal, the way game turns and resolve the issues in battle.

Sometimes you gain benefits that enemies don't making the game being unfair and boring. Sometimes certain fight will be too hard with unbalanced mechanics in battle. Like I increase Potion to 40 and Auto-Potion will make Chemist/White Mage obsolete with too high HP restored.

Well, I wish you luck in making a good mod you like. That's what it matters since they're plenty of FFT mods and we create our own to enjoy the way we want.

Version 1.0.1 is now released with some fixes and corrections as below.

-Added Slowdown fix for USA by Nexus and EUR by Eternal
-Crystalization causing game crash is now fixed
-Defend/Counter Tackle innate abilities are added to Delita/Argath too
-Improved Cure/Cura healing efficiently a bit to scale better and reduce Curaga MP cost a little
-Increased Monk's physical attack a little but still nerfed with default's PA Growth
-Reduced Fire/Blizzard/Thunder CT by 1
-Reduced Meteor CT by 5
-Potions will heal at rate 30/70/160

http://www.mediafire.com/file/9r4b2d657ncqj61/FFT+WotL+-+Valeria+1.0.1+(PSP+USA).ppf
http://www.mediafire.com/file/ekfdhimb8mn2miy/FFT+WotL+-+Valeria+1.0.1+(PSP+EUR).ppf

I play my mods for a while and found something like Auto-Potion being too powerful so I reduced it back with respect to original's abilities design and scaling. Cure/Cura are boosted based on +6 +8 +10 similar to damage spells at +4 +6 +8.

As fellow FFT modders, I'm glad to see more people joining in this classic game. I'm also working on my vanilla re-balance with some new battle machanics that will make the game more fun but not easier too.

Here's my suggestions for your ideas to work on.

Re-balance jobs (maybe some stat improvements or downgrades) and job tree
-I recommend trying to re-balance based on original concepts. Some classes may have unusually high or low for some reasons so try to make changes within the same level.

Re-balance enemies (stats, equipment and abilities) -- this is to avoid playing it only in hyper-offensive teams rather than a mix or defensive teams.
-I found re-balancing enemies is a bit hard to get it done right. I wouldn't recommend changing stats on enemies until you play with your mods for a long while.

Re-balance some of the equipment.
-That's interesting concepts and I recommend to do with moderation. Check weapon stats carefully and make changes that won't break the game balance.

Spells will generally be faster as to avoid being not used for the majority of the game.
-Spells are fast enough. There's a good reason why they have shorten cast time ability. Only the first level of spells are a bit too slow because CT 3 -> 2 won't be awesome so they raised to 4 instead. Reducing CT by 1 should fix it.

Make status spells GREAT AGAIN. (Aiming for 60-80% chances, need some insight on this)
-60-80% is too high. It's almost like you'll mostly guaranteed to hit. I set Rend with 35-45% chance in my mod but they work like 90% chance of breaking gears during tutorial with PA bonus.

Get rid of/balance broken shit.
-Agreed. Please remove Arithmetician spells.

Make all encounters go on average level with your party. (I think I'll have bosses start with +5 levels or something, thoughts?)
-5 levels above is too strong unlike Tactics Ogre where equipment matters more than levels and you can have abilities to boost freely. I recommend +2 is OK or +3 if you want challenge though I'd rather keep it vanilla since I'm no grind fan.

Implement a Exp/JP ASM hack if needed. Credits to Emmy of course.
-You'll need to work on PSX version for that. Maybe it's possible in some ways but not PSP for sure.

Change/remove some abilities, namely:

Cure 2 changed to Sanctuary -- heal in a large area.
-Large area heal and it'll heal your enemies too. Making it ally only would be too cheap.

Cure 3 changed to Nirvana -- sends a poor forgotten soul to heaven (or hell whichever you choose). Damage enemies with holy light. (yeah forget the first part)
-There's already Holy spell and strong enough to send some to heaven (or hell)

Cure 4 changed to Mana -- giff me 30 mana for 10 mana.
-Too broken and render Chakra/Ether useless. I wouldn't recommend that.

Protect 2 & Shell 2 removed -- Protect and Shell now has a small AoE.
-Buff protect and remove Protectja? What about CT/MP penalty? That's not a wise idea if you aim to re-balance.

Removed Level 3/4 of black magic -- didn't make sense to have.
-It does. There's halve MP and shorten cast time making some exceptional strong be more useful.

Fire 2 changed to Firestorm -- same range as explosion bigger AoE.
-Bigger AoE means you'll have more chance to hit your ally too. Unlike TO:LUCT that have no CT, you'll find undesirable outcome sooner or later.

Bolt changed to Lightning -- single target spell that inflicts Don't move.
Bolt 2 changed to Thunder -- small AoE spell that also inflicts Don't move.
Ice changed to Frost -- small AoE spell that inflicts Don't Act.
Ice 2 changed to Ice Raid -- medium AoE spell that also inflicts Don't Act. (need a simpler and more creative name for this)
-Adding status effects with spells is interesting but that'll make Swordskills useless since its strength is being able to add status effects where spells can't.

That's my two cents and good luck with your mod. The important part is you make the mod you can enjoy.

 

 

FFT: WOTL - Valeria 1.5 "Ivalice Reborn"

It's been a while since last release of Final Fantasy Tactics Valeria Mod. I realized there was tons of bugs and inbalance to be resolved so I spent a long time fixing bugs and made massive adjustments through months of testing.

After coming back to Final Fantasy Tactics again, I tested playing the game from ground up time and time again to make sure every story fights will proceed without inconsistencies.

I thought I'd mod this game for the sake of no grind run at first. But I ended up doing a complete vanilla re-balance patch with adjustments based on Tactics Ogre and Tactics series released thereafter.

The goal of this mod is to breath new life to Vanilla gameplay with new mechanics and gameplay design. This Valeria mod will make the game more enjoyable without imposing difficulty.

I recommend to enjoy Valeria mod without excessive grinding. You can reliably beat boss battles with lower level though it maybe more challenging without cheesy tactics due to removal of some broken abilities.

>=== Reworked mechanics ===<

In this Valeria mod, I adjusted some battle machanics based on experience with Tactics Ogre and re-balance some items and equipment to be more useful and interesting.

If you're familiar with Tactics Ogre gameplay, you'll find this battle mechanics working in similar manner with some new fresh ideas while staying faithful to vanilla design.

[Re-balance healing mechanics]

Cure's healing formula should be 10/20/30/40 but they increased healing factor on Cure to 14 due to unreliability of faith based healing. However, it's far from optimal and need high MA and faith to make it effective.

Since all other HP restoration abilities are percentage based, I decided to change healing formula into faith-based percentage based at 30/40/60/100% with chance to add Regen status bonus.

Aside from percentage healing and regen status added, Cure spell will heal a single target and Curaja will heal with wider effect range similar to black magic's spells too.

In other words, you'll get more reliable Cure spells without MA in consideration with shorten charge time from 4/5/7/10 to 2/3/5/7 to make it more usable comparing to other healing methods.

Potions will also be adjusted for more balanced gameplay in consideration. Potion will cost a bit more at 80, Hi-Potion will heal 60 HP, and X-Potion will restore 120 HP with price decreased down to 500.

Other healing abilities are also nerfed a bit such as Chakra and Murasame but Summon will receive 20% boost on healing.

[Introduce proper status infliction mechanics]

In original gameplay of Final Fantasy Tactics, you'll hardly see enemies using status infliction because they need JP to learn and they barely use good ones. Most of the time attacking does better job since chance to inflict status is on smaller side.

We saw how some mods tried to make status infliction becoming more active and it was painful to play. Status infliction changed from contributing factor into core winning factor and many modders avoided such approach to make the game more enjoyable.

In Valeria, status infliction will be used more often. Some basic abilities has status infliction and they're useful without breaking game balance or most of them aren't at annoying level.

We have Mystic and Orator as magical status infliction but we don't have any job doing physical status infliction at all. In Valeria mod, some physical jobs will also have abilities about status infliction with one that won't annoy player too much.

I also considered Blind and Silence status for Archer too but they are permanent status with weapon range which will make the game too painful to play without status recovery setup. We all know that pain from difficulty mod.

Aside from adding status infliction on physical jobs, I also added status infliction on some magical abilities as below.

Some abilities are least desirable to use due to low success rate and require zodiac compatibility and faith to make so I also raised success rate of these abilities a bit more.

With success rate increased, I hope you'll consider giving those abilities more chance to try in your gameplay.

[Re-balance speed multiplier]

Default mage jobs are way too fast, as fast as Squire and Knight and White mage is even faster. Black mage sometimes kills enemies before they even act. By reducing speed multiplier to 90-95, they will act after other jobs making game more balanced.

Only White Mage, Orator and Bard will have the same speed as malee jobs. I won't decrease stats on some enemy's jobs so it won't decrease difficulty in gameplay.

I also decreased Speed Growth on Thief and Ninja so it won't have broken speed in late game fights. Thief and Ninja will have swapped speed multiplifer for re-balance purposes. They're still faster units but not way too fast.

[Re-balance PA/MA Growth for generic jobs]

Most physical jobs has high PA Growth from 40-48 for basic jobs but generic jobs don't have MA Growth except Mime. So I increased MA Growth for Magic oriented jobs based on half of PA Growth decreased from base 50.

Since maximum MA bonus stats are decreased and some spells are nerfed, higher MA Growth should compensate well. I also increased PA Growth on Black Mage/Time Mage/Summoner by 5 for re-balance purposes.

For physical jobs with PA growth, they'll have MA Growth decreased by half of PA Growth gained from base 50 except some hybrid jobs that won't suffer MA/PA Growth penalty.

[Remove Brave/Faith manipulation]

Some abilities can be too powerful or useless with brave/faith manipulation. So I changed most brave/faith manipulation abilities to PA/MA manipulation instead.

Mystic and Orator's abilities are adjusted to PA/MA manipulation for different uses. This also applies to enemies' abilities. Beowulf's Chicken will temporary inflict Chicken status without lowering Brave so it will work until enemy's turn.

I also removed Brave manipulation from Ramza and Reis' abilities too leaving only stats boosting. Bravery Boost and Faith Boost reaction abilities are also removed from Bard/Dancer.

[Remove abilities that break the game balance]

Despite having Brave/Faith manipulation removed from the game, some abilities are still too powerful to use. Here's the list removed abilities for re-balance purposes.

Most of them are reaction and movement abilities that I can't adjust to make it more balanced. Offensive support abilities are also removed so the game won't tilt toward offensive side too much with decreased over all HP.

It's a hard decision to remove so many abilities I often use but it also made me realized how much more viable other abilities can shine after removing obvious ones out.

[Unlock useful jobs for special characters]

Most special characters join with basic jobs unlocked making them subpar most generic you own before they join. So I changed unlocked jobs to be more appropriate to story progression better.

Mustadio: Geomancer(3) - So he can advance to dual wielding gun sooner
Agrias: Dragoon(3) - Making Iaido Agrias easier to grind and can get Dragonheart too
Luso: Summoner(6) - Making use of Summon will help a lot like Golem
Rapha: Black Mage(8) - Help Marach become a Dark Knight easier
Marach: Knight(8) - Become a Dark Knight faster
Beowulf: Mystic(8) - Mystic Arts is already good but can have higher level
Balthier: Monk(8) - Martial Arts is already good but can have higher level
Reis: Samurai(1) - For Equip Katana and Iaido becoming more viable without grinding
Orlandeau: Arcanist(1) - He holds Zodiac stone so let's give him some Lucavi spells bonus
Cloud: Time Mage(8) - Swiftness will help his meme-tier limit becoming more viable
Meliadoul: Ninja(1) - Dual Wield/Reflexes and higher speed growth job is welcomed to have

I've been thinking about changing this for a long before starting version 1.4 development but I wasn't sure that it will match will with story progression and character development. Now I'm certain this will work out for the best after trying generic run.

[Re-balance stats of weapon equipment]

After playing for a while with re-balance mod, I made numerous adjustments to weapons so it'll scale better with gameplay. Some items are better and some are nerfed a bit for re-balance purposes.

Knife equipment will be more useful with extra 10% evasion added and it can work better with Parry skill. I also added 5% to Staff/Rod/Crossbow/Ninja Blade too. This will make Parry much more useful to have.

Crossbow and Bow will have weapon power scaling over time better according to chapter progression to compensate Aim making Archer becoming more powerful. Bow's range is increased from 5 to 6 too.

Axe has randomized damage with unreliable attack power so I added chance to inflict slow status on all axe equipment to improve its usefulness. Using Weapon Strike won't trigger slow status so it's a good trade off.

Gun doesn't seem to scale pretty well in WOTL release with Balthier's gun doing 144 damage and Stoneshooter doing 256 damage. So I adjusted gun to be more balanced with Dual Wield in consideration.

Polearm has standard weapon power similar to sword but it has 2 range with 1.5x damage boost on Jump attack so I decreased weapon power down by 1 except Obelisk and Holy Lance.

Flail provides terrible damage so I changed Flail damage formula to WP^2 so it can provide better damage.

Ninja blade is meant to be next tier of knife upgrade for Ninja. Due to the nature of dual wield, its output is too high comparing to sword so I decreased weapon power by 1 for some ninja blades.

Knight's Sword is the most powerful weapon in single player game so dual wield will make break the balance. I removed Dual Wield support for Knight's Sword and add Holy element attribute.

[Re-balance HP/Evasion Rate of equipment]

Weapon Guard has low block rate but shields and cloaks has crazy high block rate during chapter 3-4. Aegis Shield giving 50% magic evasion rate is too powerful with 30% cloak and Reflexes.

Physical evasion can goes up to 40% stacking with 10-30% evasion from class meaning equipping shield will hit really hard and Concentration will be needed to make sure you'll land a hit.

However, most seasoned players will ended up using non-evadable attacks with attack bonus instead and the idea of adding Concentration to render evasion useless benefits player more than AI.

As a result, this re-balance will decrease evasion rate cap down to more reasonable level as below.

Weapon: 60 -> 35 (40 for Defender and Dancer's Cloth)
Shield: 40 -> 30 (40 for non-buyable shields)
Cloak: 40 -> 25 (30 for Invisibility Cloak)
Magic evasion: 50 -> 25

You probably won't notice significant changes during chapter 1 you won't get to see less than 70% success rate very often as much as before. Enemies will have Parry more frequently too.

Helmet and Heavy Armor may give more bonus HP in early chapters but bonus HP advantage later fall behind in late game with about the same amount of HP bonus rendering heavy armor useless.

In this re-balance, I'll setup HP bonus cap on buyable equipment as below.

Hat: 100 -> 50
Clothing: 100 -> 70 (80 for Rubber Suit)
Robe: 75 -> 60 (70/50 for Lordly Robe)

Sounds like a massive cap but fear not. Most items scale a lot around chapter 3 so you won't lose a lot of HP bonus until very late. Let's compare stats boosting items here for details.

Headband + Power Garb
Vanilla: 56 + 70 = 126
Re-Balance: 36 + 55 = 81
Loss: 45
Close Helmet + Golden Armor = 70 + 70 = 140

Celebrant's Miter + Wizard's Robe
Vanilla: 64 + 30 = 94
Re-Balance: 40 + 30 = 70
Loss: 24

This way mage units won't suffer much from HP bonus reduction and this will give more reason for Equip Heavy Armor to shine because it's going to give you 220 HP bonus over 80-120 HP from Hat and Clothing.

Since bonus HP is decreased a lot, I also removed offensive support abilities out from the game so player can't taking advantage of offensive tactics against enemies with lowered HP.

[Toughened bosses in important fights]

Some bosses can be exploited with status ailments to make battle easier. That's fine but Lucavi bosses shouldn't be affected by negative status like Slow/Immobilize/Disable.

Many fights are easier thanks to Slow ability so you have more time to prepare before getting nuked by bosses. In Valeria mod, those bosses are immune to those status now.

I also buffed up some bosses to be harder to defeat but there's also extra merits as well.

Gaffgarion: Added Safeguard so you can't steal/break his weapon now but you'll get Blood Sword as War Trophy after defeating him
Argath: Added Arcane Defense and wield Chaos Blade now but you can also get Chaos Blade from treasure hunt
Elmdore: Changed Brawler to Concentration but you can get Masamune as War Trophy after defeating him
Dycedarg: Added Safeguard so you can't steal/break his weapon now but you'll get Defender as War Trophy after defeating his Lucavi form
Aliste: Added Arcane Strength so his Iaido will hit harder but you can also steal his equipment and get Genji Glove as War Trophy instead of Genji Armor
Bremont: Added Defense Boost to his Dark Dragon form but you can also get Lordly Robe as War Trophy after defeating him

As this isn't a difficulty mod, I'll buff Argath and Elmdore's defense for story battles and buff Aliste and Bremont's offense for optional battles. You can control units you already recruited as a guest too.

>=== Reworked jobs ===<

I find many jobs being unbalanced for better or worse especially for Archer with uselessly long Aim and Arithmetician being too over powered with math abuse.

Magicians are as fast as malee units and White Mage is even faster. It was very hard for beginners to land magic spells on enemies without making mistakes because you need to plan and predict everyone's move ahead.

So I decided to revamp some parts of jobs that need some works with some changes and enhancenents while staying vanilla but more fun to play with proper mechanics.

[Specialize jobs with innate abilities]

Back then when I was playing Wild Arms XF, I found each class being so useful with its unique abilities and you can learn that skill to use on other classes. Chemist with Throw Items is awesome and I wish more jobs can be like that too.

But this game can't add many skills freely so you're stuck with only one each making some abilities seem less useful than others and often ignored. Some jobs are utilized for getting abilities and move on.

The hard part is choosing the right abilities that makes job more interesting to play without breaking the balance between your units and enemies. Enemies will gain benefits too making gameplay even more interesting.

Some abilities can be learned without JP cost which will allow enemies taking advantage of those abilities more frequently rather than player using those abilities alone.

Reaction: Parry/Regenerate
Movement: Treasure Hunter

These will also increase enemy's evasion rate and surviability after taking damage. If they walk on treasure tile, they have high chance to steal your loot too.

[Re-balance Squire jobs]

Original Squire abilities are a bit too useless to be used with other jobs in after the first chapter. I decided to re-balance a few abilities in Squire job as below.

I also removed PA Growth restriction and decreased MA Multiplifer a little. Squire job will become more useful through later chapters in this way.

[Re-balance UberSquire jobs]

Ramza's Squire job is uber strong and always like that since the beginning of the game. So I locked PA and MA to be the same value as generic Squire in chapter 1. This applied to Delita and Argath too.

After chapter 1, Ramza's Squire job will gradually become stronger over the time based on Delita's scale as a reference. These changes will also apply on Delita and Argath as guest units too.

Ramza's job name will be changed over time as "Squire -> Mercenary -> Heretic". In his final upgrade, he'll have some stats increased comparing to original as below.

I believe this will balance out the game play experience better and also give more realistic challenges using starting Squire job without damage boost and get stronger over time.

[Revamp Chemist Items abilities]

Chemist in Valeria mod will have innate Treasure Hunter and Equip Gun support ability so you don't have to go all the way to Orator just to get Equip Gun for other jobs.

Gold Needle and Maiden's Kiss are least like be used items in FFT and superceded by Remedy. So I changed them to Protective Charm and Maiden's Blessing for providing Protect and Shell improving Chemist usefulness.

Now your Chemist can provide buffs to a single unit immediately which makes Items being more handy to have. I also removed PA Growth restriction and buff MA Multiplier a little so you can keep using Chemist without Growth penalty.

[Revamp Archer Aim abilities]

People often complain how bad archer is as they can't utilize higher than 3 so most will get some decent abilities and move on. Now archer is back, stronger than before and be more useful enough not break the game.

Aim will be changed to Precision having the following new abilities with status infliction based on later Tactics series. Original Aim is moved into Machinist's skill set with Aim re-scaling up to +7 with 10 CT.

Some new spells are shared with monster abilities and Machinist/Sky Pirate job. Machinist will take hybrid Knight/Archer setup with Rend stats as a bonus. I won't add Rend equipment as it'll work too well against Thief Cap.

I also improve Crossbow and bow's weapon damage scaling according to chapter progression so archer will hit harder with stronger weapons now. You can also use Equip Crossbow with other jobs to do more damage too.

[Re-balance White/Black Mage abilities]

As I explained before about changes in healing mechanics on White Mage, I also made some other adjustments to make these jobs performing better in this re-balance too.

Since Regen will be applied on Cure and Regenerate, ability Regen will not be useful anymore so I changed it to Meditate similar to Tactics Ogre restoring MA*4 with CT 5.

I also nerfed Holy spell since some people use it to OHKO some battles. Now it has damage factor decreased (50 -> 34), CT decreased (6 -> 5), and MP cost decreased (56 -> 30).

Holy will hit a bit weaker than Unholy Darkness but have less CT and MP cost to be more efficient. Celebrant's Miter and Luminous Robe will also strengthen Holy too.

Fire/Blizzard/Thunder spells are also upgraded with better scaling for different uses. First tier spell will hit single target and effect area keeps expanding after upgrading to higher tier.

Fire will have damage scaling changed from 14/18/24/32 to 14/17/23/32 which will have -ra/-ga tier little weaker. However, they can be casted faster with CT decreased from 4/5/7/10 to 3/4/6/8 so you can land more powerful spell more frequently.

Blizzard will deal more damage slightly with damage scaling at 15/19/26/36 and Thunder will have CT decreased by 1 having the same CT scaling as Cure spells at 2/3/5/7.

Since only Fire has Oil effect to double damage, I hope adding bonus to Ice/Thunder spells will balane things out a bit. These changes will also be applied to Summons too so please check in job's details.

[Re-balance Monk's Martial Art abilities]

Some Monk's abilities are overpower and much more preferable than spells due to instant cast time and its effectiveness. So I added CT and adjust some abilities as below.

This way Monk's abilities will still be useful but won't conveniently render white magic spells useless. I also adjusted Doom Fist to be more situational to use in different ways too.

[Rebuild Arithmetician as Arcanist]

The original Arithmetician is too OP and abusive with other jobs. Looking into its original state, it has terrible stats so most this job can't function by itself.

I decided to rebuild this job anew with lost magic from Lucavi demons and they can learn from story battles as blue mage. However, they still lack some interesting innate to add for their puny stats.

So I decided to rebuild this job based on Arcanist job in Tactics A2 version with poweful monster abilities. In this case, I use Lucavi spells which can be learned on hit with 100% or learn through 1200 JP.

I replaced broken abilities with lost magic from from Lucavi demons. Meltdown/Tornado/Quake can also be learned with 1,200 JP cost or learn on hit.

Arcanist comes with both Defense Boost Arcane Defense as innate abilities but have MA Multiplier slightly lower than Black Mage.

[Re-balance Bard/Dancer]

Default Bard/Dancer has a lot of disappointments like very low HP/MP and crappy evasion. It's like they're trying to tell you to not use these jobs more than support units.

So, in order to make these jobs actually useful as fighters, I compared stats to other jobs and try to find optimal niche it can fill in like having strongest physical attack in mage jobs and magical attack on malee jobs.

I boosted HP to only around Ninja and Summoner level with small Evasion boost so they won't break the game balance of other jobs. MP is adjusted with little higher than Mystic for Bard and Samurai for Dancer.

But that's not all, I changed success rate of some songs and dance too. I boost effective songs and dance a bit to 60-70% and keep broken abilites down to 35-40% so it should be fine and more useful.

They also have additional equippable weapon such as Gun for Bard and Ninja Blade for Dancer. Both jobs can also equip Robe too which I think it should be within balanced area.

[Re-balance Mime job]

Original Mime has a bit too abyssal growth to for growing very strong after a few level ups. I reduced growth rate from monster level down to human level with increased multiplier to compensate as below.

Mime's growth rate is still exceptional comparing to other jobs with big PA/MA Multiplier to compensate for lowered growth rate and no equipment.

[Re-balance Sword skills]

Holy Knights are known to have over powered physical move. They're non-evadable, hard hitting with status infliction and no CT at all. The worst part is Orlandeau has them all.

In this Valeria mod, I adjusted Sword skills to be usable for both player and enemies without breaking game balance as below.

This way player can't freely spam Hallowed Bolt, Divine Ruination, and Crush abilities freely. I also decrease attack power a little. Judgement Blade is ranged and multi-hit so no damage bonus.

[Re-balance Dark Knight job]

Original Dark Knight job is ridiculously strong with 140 PA Multiplier. Since it takes massive grinding on high PA Growth jobs, its physical damage output ended up being ridiculously high.

So, I removed level 8 jobs requirements making Dark Knight job becoming much easier to unlock. This way it won't have high massive PA Growth to booth and I also adjust stats as below with Vehemence innate ability.

Do not let 100 PA Multiplifer fool you. With Vehemence boosting 1.5x damage for both PA and MA, it's even higher than original 140. You can also stack with other support abilities to improve defense side too.

[Re-balance Onion Knight job]

Onion Knight is designed to be meme tier job since you need to master all other jobs for Onion Knight to have decent stats but still be subpar comparing to other jobs due to abilities restriction and can only level up is eating bacon from Pig.

So, I decided to rework on Onion Knight with same growth rate for both before and after mastering all other jobs and set all stats Multiplier to 100 and boost to 120 after mastered.

100 Multiplier may sound a bit too powerful with all equipment support but he can't level up normally and has no access to abilities so it's a good trade off from my testing run.

Speaking about abilities, it's a shame that he can't use anything but attack so I decided to give him some special abilities that can be learned without JP cost and use as below.

Since he can't gain EXP/JP or assign any ability, I also added remaining slots with abilities from monster which can be useful but not too broken in story battle too.

Oh. Onion can equip everything right but he can't make use of any weapon properly so I decided to change his innate abilities from buffing to abilities related to equipment as below.

May sound a bit too powerful to have Dual Wield or Doublehand innately but it won't hit unexpectedly hard with 100 Multiplier. Maybe this job can be great to use after mastered.

>=== Job leveling re-balance ===<

In this Valeria mod, level requirements for basic jobs are decreased by 1 similar to PSX version. This will allow player advancing to new jobs faster building up JP points for important abilities on time.

I also changed job progression path to be more friendly to no grind run and re-arrange job unlocking system to be more proper in my own understanding.

[Re-arrange job progression]

Why does Dragoon job requiring Thief job to be unlocked. Is it just me that Dragoon job is like Knight-varient? Why does Mystic unlock Orator not Time Mage when the job itself resembles Taoist who reads the star?

And Time Mage job unlocks Summoner that talks with espers instead of Orator that can talk with Beast and specialize in Speechcraft, not to mention both jobs are superior to Orator in terms of magic.

Time Mage needs massive JP to master so it should be on the same level as Summoner and makes more sense for Mystic job to advance to Time Mage that can call forth Meteor from stars.

Dragoon: Knight(2) -> Monk(3)
Geomancer: Archer(2) -> Thief(3)
Time Mage: White Magic(2) -> Mystic(3)
Summoner: Black Magic(2) -> Orator(3)

Since Monk can unlock Dragoon job directly, you can also proceed to Samurai and Ninja with linear job progression path as below.

Samurai: Knight(3) -> Monk(4) -> Dragoon(3) - No more Archer(3) -> Thief(4) requirements just to unlock Dragoon
Ninja: Archer(3) -> Thief(4) -> Geomancer(3) - No more Knight(3) -> Monk(4) requirements just to unlock Geomancer

This way, you can unlock Samurai and Ninja job naturally without putting extra effort as it should be. You can gain access to jobs around the time you get their items without excessive grinding required.

I also changed Dark Knight job's requirements to killing 20 enemies with Knight and Black Mage mastered only. Reaching level 8 jobs for Dragoon, Geomancer, Samurai, and Ninja is not possible without massive grinding.

The reason why Dark Knight is so powerful is due to massive grinding on high PA Growth jobs up to level 8 combined with 140 PA Multiplier. He's ridicolously strong thanks to high base PA. I also re-balanced Dark Knight too.

[Jobs' requirements summary]

>=== Items re-balance ===<

I found some items working differently from Tactics Ogre or some being way too unbalanced crippling main jobs too much so I made some changes to make items being more useful to some jobs.

Items re-balance

Weapon's stats re-balance

Job equipment re-balance

Weapon stats re-balance

Shield evasion re-balance

Hat's bonus re-balance

Hair Adornment's bonus re-balance

Clothing's bonus re-balance

Robe's bonus re-balance

Accessory's bonus re-balance

>=== Jobs and abilities re-balance ===<

I find switching to new jobs and have unusable main abilities unacceptable so having some skills that can learn immediately will help a lot. So I'll make basic abilities for each job usable and decrease JP cost for some abilities.

I won't change stats more than necessary like other mods as it might break the original game balance. Some jobs may have significant adjustments but won't go beyond original role to keep vanilla feel.

My changes won't affect game mechanics too much. It's still faithful to original design, just to make sure that it doesn't go overboard. I also add JP Boost with no JP cost required so everyone can learn and equip JP Boost to level their jobs even faster.

Since changes and improvements are too long to be listed in this main thread now, please download full valeria update from this link below for more details about Valeria Job System.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/vl9y0dfl1p89w6t

>=== Changelog ===<

1.5.1

 

1.5

>=== Download ===<

My patch comes in PPF format and available for both USA and EUR clean ISO. I also applied slowdown fix thanks to helpful members in FFHacktics.

FFT: WotL - Valeria 1.5 (PSP USA)
FFT: WotL - Valeria 1.5 (PSP EUR)

I hope you'll enjoy this Valeria mod as much as I do and thanks FFTPatcher team so much for this awesome utility that can help us enjoy Final Fantasy Tactics again.