BTB

He's on it.

So, something else that's come up from watching LPs is the encounter rate. After discussing things in Discord, it was proposed to make an adjustment that, in simple terms, raises the minimum number of steps you can take without triggering a battle while leaving the overall rate unchanged. Seibaby has coded this change and it will be present in the next Frankenbeta patch he puts out. If I could get some testing on that, it's one less thing Synchysi will need to do when he puts out a proper beta.

1.8.6 is the most current version. 1.9 is mired with a nonfunctional beta until Synchysi can get a new one out.

That's fine with me, then.

I'll upload a new ROM with the name reverted and a few dialogue changes I made to the Beginner's School in response to some of the LPs I've been watching when I get home, and that's about it for the loose ends for me.

Nobody has commented on it, no. It's just something I wanted to change for the sake of consistency.

I would want to avoid Cloak on the sole basis that we already have a cloak as a relic. That said, Mirage Suit or Mirage Gear are both acceptable candidates.

EDIT: Mog getting Odin would be *way* OP. MT death attacks are much stronger in BNW than anyone gives them credit for, and they are thus balanced by only being available to the two slowest characters in the mod.

Some stay dry and others feel the pain...

(Also, the Tritoch/Maduin thing was discussed at length in chat and was decided against unless someone else can provide a *very* compelling reason to the contrary)

On a separate note... since Stealth Suit has been vetoed, I'm still looking for a different name for the Mirage Vest the drops "Vest" since vests are equippable by everyone and this is instead the top of the line for "light" armor. Here are some more suggestions, most of which are clearly inspired by Circle of the Moon:

-Night Suit
-Soldier Garb
-Fatigues
-Zero Suit (lulz)

Also, following some discussion in chat, I'm going to make some slight statistical alterations to the Hobos in Zozo to prevent the occasional double Acid Rain from fucking up your day like it currently does.

So, just letting the group know that we're still alive over here, just been rather busy lately.

As we've been waiting for the next update, I've been pondering an oft-repeated suggestion from @thzfunnymzn to swap the EL bonuses on Tritoch and Maduin. This will have an overall positive effect on Mog as it gives him back his +2 stamina esper, thus allowing him to meaningfully hybridize stamina levels with vigor. The only concerns would be 1) Mog's healing dances may be somewhat OP with access to a +2 stamina esper, and 2) Terra's magic esper gets pushed back to Tritoch.

My knee-jerk reaction is that there are worse things that Terra's magic build can invest in than early MP levels from Carbunkl. In fact, I would dare say that extra MP is much more valuable to her in the early game than +1 magic is. I don't like the idea of her only magic esper being pushed *so* far back, though... even though she was deliberately given only a +1 magic esper since her magic is plenty powerful enough on its own.

Thoughts from the community?

12 hours ago, Reiker said:

The script/character changes just don't make much sense for the game. I don't understand why Sabin is some weird hillbilly/redneck stereotype. Edgar does all kinds of very clever stuff in the game, he's a genius mechanic, but then BNW has all of these scenes where the joke is that he's a complete moron. Setzer is an older dude who's traveled the world but has the dialogue of an edgy teenager. This isn't just the opinion of some professional whiner, the script really does come off as bad amateur fanfiction.

And to answer these really quick...

Sabin is a wholesale copy of Rei from Breath of Fire 3. If you're at all familiar with the game, it's pretty easy to compare Rei to vanilla Sabin and see some striking similarities in their outlook on life. So, I just went ahead and matched them up.

I'm... guessing that the scenes you're talking about with Edgar are the ones where Setzer is being kind of a dick to him? And it would stand to reason that Setzer would really be the only character in the game who would have no reverence for royalty and be a complete jerk to the guy.

Setzer, as I mention in the Unlockme, is a very different character in the Japanese and American versions. The only character trait common to the both of them is that he's kind of a dick, so I took that one and dialed it up a few notches. It wasn't particularly difficult to write for a chronically depressed person like Setzer being a chronically depressed person myself (at the time, anyway). Mog may be my direct mouthpiece in Brave New World, but Setzer is my spirit animal (and Sabin is my homeslice).

12 hours ago, Reiker said:

I'm curious why it wasn't possible to keep the original script.

 

There's really two questions here. One is "why *couldn't* we keep the original script. The other is why *should* we?

The answer to the first is actually more or less limited to the Beginner's School and things that BNW adds that didn't exist in the original, i.e. what happens if you try to enter Kefka's Tower without the key.

The answer to the *second* question is much more far-reaching. The original game did an exceptionally poor job of explaining the logistics of the early game (why does Sabin spend most of his scenario traveling in the opposite direction of his intended destination?) and telling you where to go next in the World of Ruin (the treasure map quest is a *very* notable offender here). Further, the World of Ruin was loaded with "unassigned" lines since it had no way of predicting who would be in your party, which Brave New World changed by rewriting those scenes to have the character being recruited do all of the talking. As Synchysi noted, Woolsey's characters were very bland since he really could only write at three speeds, and it really showed with characters like Cyan, who inexplicably lost his accent a third of the way through the game and just started speaking like a normal - albeit very bland - character. Fans of his work will remember a select few lines - all of which are retained in Brave New World - but really can't tell you why the *rest* of the script is in any way engaging.

Of course, people who bitch about our script for the most part aren't seeing any of the above changes and complaining about them. They take issue with the parts where our personality bleeds into the script to try and give it some character, and their resentment towards *those* changes manifests as anger towards any changes being made whatsoever. Retaining the entire vanilla script is, even from an objective standpoint, stupid. Things should be changed to match what the game is now and corrected wherever possible (and yes, I consider Cyan losing his fucking accent to be an error). Again, the issue is that people see the *subjective* changes and largely overreact by saying that any changes to the script whatsoever are unnecessary rather than giving constructive feedback about what specific changes they didn't care for and offering better alternatives ("change it back to how it was in vanilla" does not count as an alternative for the purposes of this diatribe).

I have no objections to Monet Brush.

43 minutes ago, Reiker said:

Anyways, this is all kinda moot now that BTB has said he's willing to release a vanilla script version of the mod once someone does... whatever one has to do to make that happen. I do feel a little bad complaining about the script without making any sort of effort to help the reversion, but to be honest I have absolutely no idea how to even start doing something like that.

Just ask me for the source dialogue, and I'll gladly provide it. All you'd have to do is go through every line and change it as you see fit while making sure to keep the final product just as large or smaller than the source, since the dialogue bank is currently full.

As it stands, the only "serious" translation effort that has been ongoing for awhile now is Fantome Ghost translating it into Spanish.

I, um... how do I put this...

No >.>

As was stated on Discord, I actually do like the name Mirage Vest. My only reason for wanting to change it is that Vests are a class of armor that all characters can equip while the Mirage Vest is the highest tier of "light" armor, so I wanted to pick a consistent-ish name.

Of course, now you just have me thinking about what would happen if everyone could use the Mirage Vest.

Back to yon drawing board, then.

Or I could just ask @Rynzer. He's the one that ends up naming all of our shit, anyway >.>

Yep

So,m I was having a look over the new changes and I realized that I have the new "Scimitar" weapon set to the same BatPwr as the Full Moon - which is available earlier. I also realize that dual Boomerangs are the current standard for early-game power, and thus deemed it necessary to give a power boost to the early swords on the whole.

See new settings here: http://btb2.free.fr/ff6/Printme.xls

It's also thematically appropriate, since it favors a magical approach to taking him down. That said, it's also fitting that Strago is very ill-equipped to taking it down on his own (since Hidon absorbs his most powerful magic), and Relm is one of the best support characters to have in that fight.

Hidon has his magic defense lowered, so you can burn him down with the quickness that way.

Insane Difficulty fall down go boom.

Most common criticisms are aimed toward the script (which is purely objective), the difficulty (which tends to go hand in hand with people who refuse to try any tactic other than direct damage), and the durability of end-game bosses (perfectly valid, and something we respond to with each new version on a case-by-base basis).

One thing of note is that I keep track of all of the feedback I get, but I also consider the source. Brave New World is rather unique in that it has a very wide audience for a ROMhack, so I'm getting feedback from everyone from hardcore vets (like the people who hang out around here) to total scrubs (what you tend to see on Twitch). I always consider the source of feedback, because otherwise I'm just going to end up with a complete mess.

Yeah, I actually watched him stream BNW. His complaints are pretty standard from what we tend to get from the Twitch community.

The first respec is relatively cheap (25k), and affects only the active party (up to four characters). Each subsequent respec is considerably more expensive (100k).