SWhite

I suggest modifying the VIRUS status. I can understand if you're KOed or petrified, but to get no EXPs and APs cause I feel sick? That's absurd.

It also nullifies EVASION wich actually makes sense, you are sick you feel heavy therefore can't dodge.

Instead of no exp/ap, it could work as the MP version of poison, cause being sick drains your energy. What do you think?

That's why you don't stack on magic

If you can steal magic, and magic can be stolen from you, no point in stacking.

Also, if stacking is inefficient, you can't exploit the broken junction system, so you can't get massive stat bonuses and "easy win" fights

On 18/8/2017 at 3:29 PM, Augestein said:

Well, to actually start, we'll have to analyze what's wrong with the game in the first place (yeah, I know there's a lot anyone could rant about, but we need to focus on the big things). 

Levels: Don't matter in this game at all. As a matter of fact, in many instances, the levels are actually detrimental to the game. Sure, you get some extra hp and a little bit of stat growth, but the reality is that for the most part, leveling is bad because the enemy growths far outstrip the player growths. That's not necessarily a bad thing in some regards, because it can mean that the player needs to focus on mastering the junction system instead of just trying to brute force their way through the game, but the problem is that this also consequently has the result of causing people to just not level up at all, and reap the benefits of junctioning without actually leveling and thus closing the gap between monster stats and ally stats. 

My proposed solution? I actually have two solutions that are possible. 

1) Give the characters normal stat growths that can sort of compete with monsters and are specialized with any junctions applied being bonuses to either enhance what characters are already good at, or mitigate their weaknesses. 

2) Have monsters have set levels so that way the entire point of remaining lower leveled is effectively removed. You could have key boss fights be the party level like Seifer, but I don't see much point. It makes for better pacing and it's more difficult to have difficulty jumps when enemies aren't insanely spread out among their stat distribution. 

Acquisition of Items: Some of the refine abilities are ridiculous. And the worst part? You don't even need that much power. Their existence isn't the problem, as it's nice that you can actually use money and abilities to get better items, but some of them need to be toned down. Refining a Bahamut card just straight up gives you 100 MegaElixirs. Are they serious? Let's think about this for a minute. Okay, so 10 Elixirs are 1 MegaElixir, so having the Bahamut card is essentially worth... 1000 Elixirs. Come on devs, you cannot be serious. Yes, the card is rare, but it's not THAT rare! Honestly, I'd tone down the refines from most of the refines-- more so card mod than anything else. Most of the other ones aren't nearly as insane as they require multiple version of the card etc. In other words, make "rare" items less rare / tedious to acquire later on, but make some of the refines nerfed making for a more progressive feel to the game. 

Characters

There's almost no reason to ever use Selphie. Well outside of beating people up with a girl in a yellow dress. Quistis is pretty much straight up better, I think Selphie should get more than 1-3 for a spell if she's going to hang around. "The End" doesn't even need to be what needs to appear more often, she just needs to be able to do something that a player can't do about half of the way into the game. Full Cure is a nice start and should stay though, maybe making it appear more frequently would help. Perhaps change rapture to the Phoenix summon? So she has Revival, Full Cure, Wall, and The End? That'd be a lot better. Although, Wall should change to "Mighty Guard" essentially. It doesn't make sense that Quistis basically has all of Selphie's moves but better (with the exception of Degenerator versus The End with Degenerator only be listed for being more usable).  Also, kill Degenerator. It's too good. Or at the very least, making it a stat debuff would be useful and cool. 

I'd also lower the multipliers on Zell's duel. That way people can't just use Punch Rush -> Booya combos for days. 

Honestly, maybe I'm a horrible person, but if you can, I'd make Renzokukuen use both magic and physical. The standard hits are physical, but the proc portions are all magic damage. That way, it's not enough to ignore Squall's magic and pump his strength. 

I'd also make some of the shots that Irvine uses magical in nature. Thus not pigeonholing all of the guys into melee builds and all of the females sans Rinoa into magical builds (seriously, was there any reason for this?).

GFs

It also might be worth your time taking a BNW approach and limiting which GFs people can get so that way you can make each character a bit more unique. I know this means basically ignoring compatibility on the GFs, but I'm not sure there's really much you can do to make this interesting-- although, if you could limit abilities that could be equipped based on affection between the partnership of the GFs and the unit in question, that *could* be interesting if they didn't all cap at 1000. I sincerely doubt that this is possible at the moment -- perhaps ever, so I suggest the initially proposed "limit who can equip what." 

Speaking of limitations, I think you should also limit how many GFs a person can equip. I'd say they should be limited to having 4 on at a time. Thus, making it pointless to just equip 3 people constantly and ignore the other 3. That's a huge problem in 8. There's almost no reason to use anyone except 3 units. It's really goofy. It could also serve to make the Laguna parts a bit more thought provoking rather than just jamming all of them on the 3 men. 

 

Also, magic should just plain hit harder. Considering I have to go out of my way to get it, it shouldn't suck so much. 

 

 

The major issue about levels aren't actually enemy stats, but drops.

Higher level foes drop higher level items? Neat! You may think... annoying is the reality. Commit the mistake of getting too much exp and you are gonna swear and a lot.

In ff8 there are plenty of skills that let you convert enemy drops into spells or other useful items, the problem is that when you need a certain drop from a monster, you often have to spam skills that raise/lower the enemy's level just, to increase the chance of getting the right item.

Sure, there's the card command, but still.

Now, to talk about what really bothered me when I played the game: DRAWING

Drawing is way to slow, it takes hours to get the spells you need to make your build, but that could be a matter of point of views, to me it's an issue, to others not.

The real fuck up IMO was that in the game I never, I say NEVER saw an enemy except for the final boss to draw magic from my party... and that's a very sad thing.

Think about it: the game lets you raise stats by boosting them storing magic, let's say you meet a boss that's vulnerable to physical attacks, good! If I was to develop the game, I'd make it so that boss was such a cunning bastard, that he would draw from my party the same magic I put into strenght, to lower my attack and strike me down at the same time. How cool would that have been?

And consider many enemies you encounter in the game are actual soldiers specifically trained to draw and use spells.

I think it would be very cool if that feature could be added to FF8, it would be a major improvement to the game.

Quick question: I'm playng BNW 1.9.0, when the 2.0 will be released, will I just need to repatch my game and keep playing from where I was, or will I have to start a new game?

As an expert on the matter, I can assure you dual wielding knives/swords is way more difficult than throwing a knife

Very few martial artist choose that option due to how difficult/impractical it is, so it's logicak to think that a dual wielder might be able to effectively throw

Sooo... On the name of "diversity" Shadow can imitate Locke by stealing, but Locke can't imitate Shadow by throwing knives, a kind of weapons he's adept with?

Yeah, your logic is flawless

Can I give a suggestion? Recently I tried FF6 - the eternal crystals... while the hack is absolutely unbalanced to the point of Reeeeeeeeeee, it had a cool feature, Locke could throw knives.

To me, it makes perfectly sense that a thief treasure hunter can throw a knife, and given that a lot of enemies carry mithryl knives, and stealing refills Locke's atb, it can be a very nice strategy to steal an enemy's knife and then "give it back" to the owner LOL.

Also it makes sense due to Locke's dual wield that gives him something in common with Shadow, the only issue would be making Shurikens and scrolls inaccesible to Locke cause he's not a ninja.