[Old] Things that will be implemented in the next release

[Dome]

FFT: Plus is going to be re-made from scratch :-)

[Kaijyuu]

Eww, those are still in? I dislike abilities whose sole purpose is to assist in grinding.

[Dome]

Yes, they are still in...you don't get many movement abilities early and they can be helpful if you need to train a unit a bit

[Dome]

Added some stuff to the list

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Don't the Summoners already have smart targeted attacks that hit every enemy on the map?   Unless their Ys are in the range of like... 6, that should be incredibly broken when used competently.

Why would they need more?

[Dome]

I'd like to give them a unique skill, but I don't know what...

[Dome]

Added some more stuff

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Skills using 2D will not proc a status if their Y is not 1 or greater.

[Dome]

Are you sure? Because I could swear I saw Stasis sword inflict stop, and the Y was 0...

[RavenOfRazgriz]

I am 100% sure and have many sources who can confirm it, Dome.

[Dome]

Oh well, then all Swordskills will be set to PA*WP+1 :-)

P.s: Added more stuff to the list (Thanks to "Kind Off")

[shoruke]

Would it be too broken to give Summoners the power to inflict a status effect on the whole field? It would have to have a lower hit rate than the basic summons, but blanket-poison would be a pretty solid tactic, blanket-don't-move would also be helpful for summoners...

[Dome]

Would it be too broken to give Summoners the power to inflict a status effect on the whole field? It would have to have a lower hit rate than the basic summons, but blanket-poison would be a pretty solid tactic, blanket-don't-move would also be helpful for summoners...

There is a Monster skill that does this :-)

[Neophyte Ronin]

You don't know what to add to the Summoner?  There's a suggestion box 'round here, right?

If you wish to homogenize the MP costs for Holy Sword Techniques, why not (with Holy Explosion as an exception) homogenize their range and area of effect as well?

[Dome]

You can discuss the changes you'd like to see implemented in the next release here, in this topic :-)

[Neophyte Ronin]

I could tell ya what sounds completely iffy as well.

- Reduce the Jp costs of A LOT OF abilities
- Increase CT of Oracle skills
- Death sentence ignores cancel: dead
- Gear scaled to story (Glain's ASM)
- Make Speed Save add +CT rather than +Speed.

JP Costs are fine as is.  It's possible to acquire which abilities are needed to specialize characters for battlefield roles in a few steps with the current values.  Changing the Move~Gain JP value is a perk--able to get it immediately, even though it's nowhere near being Gained JP Up (or needs to be), but 3 JP per move doesn't work if the player prefers tight, stationary formations.

Increased CT: does this mean you're decreasing casting times or increasing them?  If the latter is true, then monster hunts become harder due to greater emphasis on debilitating status effect magic to counter their new Active and Reactive abilities, and their Speed ratings are already higher, making this a chore at higher levels.  Your inspiration might have to do with "Giant Frog" being the answer for most encounters, but rest easy: Frogs can make a battle unplayable if they use Tentacle on you (see below).

Death negating Death Sentence is a nice bug.  I'd say get rid of resistance to Death Sentence entirely, but that would almost be logical.  Anyway, if you insist on making Death Sentence a threat instead of an exploitable defense against enemy attention, have it cast Death (the Spell) upon the Target at 100% power and no checking for Dead Protection (if that's even possible).  At least it'd be more dramatic than seeing blue text over some screaming sap, and it'd instill some urgency for players to not have this happen to his units.  While you're at it, get rid of the loss of priority upon non-doomed characters; a Doomed threat is still a threat, and should be treated likewise.  Losing the change-of-priority would enable either of our suggestions and, for the latter's case, nobody who knows how Undead respond to the Death Spell gets any bright ideas.

Scale Gear to Story: I assume this means that even at Lv 99 in Chapter 1, you don't get anything better than maybe Chain Mail and stuff off of enemies?  This accomplishes two things: it negates the necessity of Maintenance/Safeguard on enemies, letting them use whatever Support Ability they damn well please, and two, it negates one of the biggest, goofiest, most glaring oversights in Vanilla Tactics entirely.  Under current rubric, high-level human random encounters dangle their UBER-EQUIPS at others who may have ground too far before retailers start selling those pieces.  The dangling crap made me quit Diablo II on battle.net eons ago; in-game conspicuous consumption--just go and get awesome stuff just to show off.  Materialism at its worst: in a game, where you're meant to be escaping from the horrors of the world.  Well anyway, while Thieves and Knights are actually attractive units during random sorties now, the gear still ain't incredible.  That's fine: it ain't game-breaking, though everything is expensive nowadays.  To put a plug on the current version's monotony (perhaps the best part of all), enemy units will apply different support abilities and become far more diverse, more difficult encounters than before, thanks to weirdo combinations like Priests with pole-arms and stuff.  It makes for an interesting fight, akin to standard story battles except it's actually a RANDOM encounter.  That, my friend, would be fun: never knowing what to expect!  I fully endorse this endeavor above all others.  If the patch adds an addendum that enemies could also use legendary treasures at really high levels past the traditional story, say Deep Dungeon, that would be even funnier.

As for changing Speed Save to adding CT+20, don't.  Whoever has the current one can ask a Black Mage with a rod to swat their back flagellation style.  It may not be realistic, but the same thing occurs with PA and MA Saves.  In the greater scheme, a minute boost of +20 per hit means standard hits of 30-60% Health Loss will cause the character to respond at least 3 clock-ticks faster, assuming they react to begin with.  The gains decrease as the character levels up, and in terms of scale it isn't doing much of a favor.  It also takes the fun out of beating on people, since you're forfeiting your turn to possibly add +20CT to their gauge, when you could just wait after an action to get the same effect on you all the time.  Other Reaction Abilities (hell, all of them) will look far more attractive, including Critical Quick of all abilities.  Also note how Speed Save augments weapon strikes for Daggers, Longbows and Ninjato, about as fast as Accumulate/Focus.  PA Strike could do it too, but it doesn't help the character respond.  What I'm saying is: adding CT +20 per hit is lamer than if a Fighter could add it to his or her Bonus Feats.  Speed Save is fine.  If you insist, I suggest you treat it like Regenerator or Dragon Spirit--have it cast Haste instead.  That's adrenaline, and it isn't permanent at all, right?



Tentacles are For ******* with Your Game:

I swear I discussed this before in another post or wrote it down during bug-checking, but let's make it official.  Here's the issue with Frog and Berserk: both of them use a strange ability called Tentacle in place of a standard weapon attack, which lists its effect twice.  They overlap, but do not stack.  Meaning they only add their damage or special effect once, even though seeming graphical glitches list them twice.  That's fine, until we approach Knock-Back.  With a ten foot pole.  As a Physical Strike, Tentacle always has a flag for critical and also for knock-back.  Eventually, it happens.  The quirk about Knock-Back is that, if possible once, it happens again without bothering to check again if it is possible to happen for the next panel.  The ability registers the damage result twice, so the knock-back can happen twice, provided it is initially legal.  After which, it doesn't check--it can go into another panel whether or not it was supposed to happen.

Exceptions include height variance, so you're not scaling to a higher slope, thank God.  You go to the next panel of equal-to-or-lesser height.  That includes other buddies' panels and off the edge of the map.  Trouble erupts when it happens: you're not supposed to do that.  You are asked to move to an effective range instead of actually moving there as desired.  This may be constant for all known move abilities, including teleport and flight.  When you cast a spell on that panel, one animation affects one character and another animation hits the other guy immediately after.  Ranged attacks are impossible as the hugging character blocks line of sight.  Melee attacks are possible, but if you got glued to an enemy, you cannot attack them in melee.  The feeling is mutual.  Only way to treat this is with another knock-back that registers twice and gets you out of hugging formation.  Well, maybe, just a theory.  A theory we shouldn't have to implement.

Getting knocked off the edge of reality means that you cannot be targeted by or receive effects from other characters, as you cannot get the cursor out there to work.  BIG problem.  That's the sort of thing that made my eyes glaze over after it had happened three times so far on separate battles (often with Mustadio and Agrias, which is more than a little ironic).  I still don't know if Teleport or Flight have any bearing on how to get out of there.

If you haven't heard of this bug, it affects a multitude of abilities that display their information twice and also have knock-back potential.  Tentacle is one of them; it is a featured skill of the Marlborough series of creatures as well as on Frogs and Berserk directives.  It was FINE the way it was before, so this kind of bug needs major fixing because if Giant Frog or Berserker were standard procedure for players, they'd pick this bug up rather quickly and squeal to all their friends that the answer should never, ever be "Giant Frog".  My advice?  Nix "Tentacle" outright.  Too buggy to be safe.

Another idea that could be implemented is a heads-up that Undead mages have auto-charge and do not show their actual command abilities.  The Yuguo Woods had a Black Mage and Time Mage, the latter of which instant-cast Dark Holy and one-shot a healer despite not having the Planar Magic command displayed.  The online help lies.  It lies like a bastard.  You can spare players a few headaches and trial-and-error finagling if you just listed what an enemy's Command Abilities really were, instead of leaving them blank.  And if anything can be implemented in the next release, it is a polishing-up of the online help details for abilities.  (After the previous failure, I routed those bastards when my mage countered with Counter Flood and cast Carve Model/Contortion on each sucker, one after the other, petrifying both on the first try and leaving their buddies at my mercy.  LOL Counter Flood).

I'm starting to think that the Event Scripting might actually be easy--just a big load of work and trickiness with formatting.  I'm gonna go see if this stuff is feasible, before I request that someone else more interested in programming a functional game has to go edit text.



Post-Script: The Bull Demon/Wisenkin stats on the master guide are still down, at least for me.  Hope I'm not the only one that noticed this, and the link is no help, either.

[Dome]

- Oracle = High precision, almost all statuses, low ct
 They overshadow too much Talk skill, expecially with precision/short charge
- Speed save allows too much abuse at the moment, that's why I'm thinking about changing it
 (unless  there is just a way to cap how much speed you can get in a single battle...)
- I can see all the monsters stats just fine on the master guide...

P.s: Tentacled frogs will be dead in the next release, trust me

[Neophyte Ronin]

Is the Speed Cap something that's hard-coded or can that be adjusted instead?  I'm thinking either 17 or 20, because by Lv99 battles, the quick monsters have around 14.  Every 8 Clock-Ticks they get a turn.  If the caps on Power, Magic, and Speed can be dropped to 33%-40% of their original levels, then that would be far preferable than simply nixing abilities that adjust them.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Getting knocked off the edge of reality means that you cannot be targeted by or receive effects from other characters, as you cannot get the cursor out there to work.  BIG problem.  That's the sort of thing that made my eyes glaze over after it had happened three times so far on separate battles (often with Mustadio and Agrias, which is more than a little ironic).  I still don't know if Teleport or Flight have any bearing on how to get out of there.

Can you access these x-zoned units through the Unit Menu (it's above or below the AT Menu)?  Can you set them to auto-battle via the Unit Menu?  What do they do when their turn comes up, and they're still x-zoned?

x-zoned = pushed beyond the walkable boundries of the map, in either the x, y, or z axis.

[Neophyte Ronin]

I never thought about examining the Unit Lists or seeing how they act during Auto-Battle.  I assumed that, since there is no expressed height variance when in the x-zone, the CPU would be unable to move back to an in-map position.  So no, I didn't check.  I doubt that setting them to Auto-Battle would do anything; they'd just wait and wait and wait until they decide simply to wait for that turn, rinse-repeat.

Getting knocked out happened once, during the Sand Rat Cellar infiltration.  Getting knocked into another character happened more than once, in different venues.  Each one involved a technique that displayed its information twice (like if you used special graphic effects together with a longbow with an as-weapon range technique, or when using the aforementioned Tentacle technique), so if a Knock-Back was possible in the first instance, it's doubled instance would likely happen even if it wouldn't otherwise happen.