Kjata

If you had to describe someone on this site with a single video, what would that video be?

@Emmy

@Stann

7 minutes ago, Bauglir said:

These things help, but you can be a lazy, unfriendly moron and still be popular. Look at Nowea, for example.

Since when is Nowea popular?

That was the first tournament I'd ever done either.

while I don't have any idea how I would go about doing such a thing, the way I'd like to handle trance would be instead if the gauge emptying totally at the end of a battle it would empty by half. So if you got a trance at the very end and never even used it, then you would still have half a bar.

Me and Kyrios are planning to have a pow-wow tomorrow and hammer out what the characters should look like. We would appreciate any suggestions or input you for the characters beforehand.

And LCM comes in with an excellent post about why "turn off stat growths" is a bad suggestion. It's lazy, it's boring, and doesn't help anyone except people who need perfect stats.

Stuff like penalizing early leveling and ending up with characters with slightly below pat stats is very deep balance talk, and probably not something me or kyrios want to worry about at this stage. But it is something to keep in mind, I suppose.

i think interesting things can be done with stat bonuses. Turning them off completely seems like a waste. Changing them so there aren't bad items to level up in might be a better option.

Mighty Guard does both, Trance Aura does both as well as reraise, and Reis's wind does more or less the same thing (gives a defensive buff to the party).

I guess I should state I am specifically talking about Protect/Shell, since my brain is stuck in disc 1 mode right now.

Just now, Kyrios said:

My only problem with this is that it kind of nullifies characters having self-buffs. I feel it removes a layer of depth.

Not when buffs dont really overlap, or if self buffs give more statuses or also heal hp.

2 minutes ago, Kyrios said:

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

I think having party wide buffs that quickly expire is a better direction than having buffs last longer.

28 minutes ago, ManaKhe said:

It's a mixture of people not wanting to micromanage their stat level ups while they level(even if it's unnecessary, perfectionist tendencies in gaming haha) and wanting stats to be meaningful. I'd personally be all for completely removing stat gains based on levels and just having it attached to gear instead of the other way around, more customization for stats later on. I don't know which way would be easier though. I'd just go with the easier option.

 

It's just bad game design really.

 

Also I like your Eiko idea as well. They are just almost the exact same currently. Move Holy to Garnet, nerf Madeen and go from there adding support abilities.

Catering to completionists who min max unnecessarily isn't something I'm inclined to do. The "making stats actually meaningful" line intrigues me though, dare to elaborate?

2 minutes ago, Augestein said:

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

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

I don't undestand what everyone's deal with the level up stat items is.

The pc versipn, unless someone has a legit reason to not mod that one.

First of all, NOTHING is going to be done with Tetra Master. I'm not even going to fix the Rank bug. The most work im going to put into it is changing treasure chests that give you cards into something better.

As for Quina, I'm giving Vivi Scan so that when you get Quina you can see the hp values, which should make it easier to work out Eat. Cook can also be used on full health enemies, so Quina going into trance means no more fucking around.

As for differentiating between Eiko and Garnet, I have a few ideas for this. The very basic idea is to make Eiko very much a support character, like "uses rackets for damage" level of support. Basically the anti-Vivi, as Vivi doesnt do anything but fuck up the enemies, Eiko doesn't do anything but bolster the party. I'll have to look into what all can be done with abilities, but Dagger should basically be the middle ground between the other two.

A fucking zafire shoutout? Christ, you are digging up ancient shit.

@FFTAYou and your cousin look like the early days of Scorsese characters.

I was thinking Dagger could be more like the Oracle from FFT. Or something like that, I'd have to actually see what I could do before i could get a real idea. But since Dagger is the "summoner" and Eiko is the "White Mage" it would be weird to mix that up.

And no, I don't want the characters to fulfill their typical FF roles. Zidane shouldn't just be a thief, he should be a sort of "Jack-of-All, Master of All." Considering he is forced into your party for the vast majority of the game, I don't see him being the second best at everything. Especially with steal being such a prominent mechanic, having Zidane steal should mean giving something up. Give him great damage, great support, and be the thief.

Freya would be sort of the "third white mage." She wouldn't be as good at it, because she can actually kill things, but if you don't want to use Dagger or Eiko you can use her. She would also make a good secondary healer. 

You havent listened to Lateralus? Jesus. Fucking fix that, it's way better than 10,000 Days.

The problem is, FF9 is a shit game to mod. The damage scales like crazy, the enemies have a random attack pattern, and you have a forced party for like 75% of the game. I have ideas for how to make it better, but I don't know how easy it would be to implement them.

A quick list of what I would like to do:

1. Freya gets cure from the time you get her.
2. Change the damage of the base Black Magic spells, as well as their availability. As it stands, Vivi is the king of dps up until Lindblum, at which point his magic does low damage, costs a resource, and he fucking dies to an angry look. Then once you get Blizzara from Gizamaluke he is the main damage dealer for more or less the rest of the game. So he starts with fire, gets thunder in Lindblum which is a lot stronger, than gets Blizzard from Gizamaluke. I'm not entirely sure what to do with his later spells, but whatever.
3. Eiko and Dagger need to be differentiated somehow. They both have white magic, and the both have good damage. They also have the same equips. I get that a white mage is borderline required, but despite their differences they are still way too similar. I don't have a good idea for separating them, but I could come up with something.
4. The "Immune to X Status" abilities need to be moved to the late game.
5. The equipment availability and stats need to be reworked so the game isn't "one character does all of the damage while the other sit around and chuck potions and phoenix downs."
6. Quina needs to get abilities that are relevant when you get them. Both mods mentioned (Alternate Fantasy and Unleashed) are bad about this, giving you abilities that cost way to much or are otherwise useless at the time.
7. Bosses need more health and/or minions. This is one thing I feel is probably trick from a technical standpoint, but against a single enemy status effects are either useless or over powered. If Beatrix had 2 soldiers, or Gizamaluke had 2 crabs, casting spells that cause status would be useful without wining the fight instantly.

7 hours ago, Xontract said:

The only issue in this situation is if you have to end up grinding in order to beat those bosses which in turn would make the story encounters even easier.  All in all I feel like if you are going to add difficulty spikes optional content is the best way to do it because it is something the player doesn't have to do.

There isn't any story encounters left, you have to get to the end of the crater and be like 5 steps away from the end sequence to unlock them. I don't think the difficulty spike is a huge issue, when you get to the end of the game you have been beating bosses on your first try, maybe your second. Now you unlock bosses that are going to take up to a dozen tries. I died more times to one of the optional end game bosses than I did to the entire rest of the game combined.

Now don't get me wrong, I've said several times that I wish the main game was harder. But it's a pretty damn jarring shift, especially when all that's left is these bosses and Sephiroth, who is to my knowledge at least as strong. So you get a huge spike in difficulty with nothing else to do, at the end of a game that's pretty easy up to that point.

I thought Elric's pic was Kaffe at first.

Like Laith said, I've played it. While I like a lot of the changes to the party, I don't like the mod. It's barely more difficult than vanilla, I got past Cleyra without ever once dying, or even feeling like I was in danger of it. I don't have anything negative to say about the design choices, because I actually quite liked most of them. It just wasn't a mod made for me.

6 hours ago, BTB said:

Not sure if typo...

Yup, typo.

6 hours ago, Hart-Hunt said:

I know I started it, but now you're all driving me insane.

Thats not really difficult.