Final Fantasy Tactics: Kind Of PSP (Current Version: 2.6)

[Nyzer]

Well, here's how I've planned my own OKs out:

Apprentice
Action Menu type: Monster; all abilities have "Learn with JP (Player)" and "Learn on Hit" unchecked
- Self Haste
- Self Regen & Defend
- Centered-on-self AoE Heal
Innate: Counter Tackle, Concentration

Master
Action Menu type: Monster; all abilities have "Learn with JP (Player)" and "Learn on Hit" unchecked
- Self Haste, Regen, Protect, Shell, & Defend
- Centered-on-self Chakra
- A self level up (that Banishes the user)
Innate: Counter, Concentration, Doublehand?

You can also spice it up a bit by adding Poach/Tame in there somewhere - I'm leaning in favor of giving them innate Poach myself, but only because in my planned patch the Fur Shop is meant to be used a bit more often.

And as for the level up: the Banish is really only there to prevent someone from just leveling 0-99 in one battle, but you can use any sort of restrictive measures you like on it. Or you can keep the Banish, but make it an AoE too - the OK will be banished but none of the people it hits will.
The Chakra could also be done as a wide AoE, a big group heal thing. Put a CT on it so it isn't HORRIBLY overpowered.

Alternatively, ignore all of these abilities and turn the Onion Knight into a complete support unit. Movement range of 1, no weapons, no PA, and give it your pick of three unlimited range, one-target support abilites:
- copy Move! from JoT5 but give it a (closer to) 100% hit rate, so the OK can give any of your units Quick at any given time
- Reraise
- Formula 49 to let you refresh an ally's MP by 30 for free
- Regen
- Esuna
- Sleep (for enemies; keeping this limited to one-target and the fact that Sleep breaks on hit keeps it from being TOO OP)
Plus an innate Vanish so enemies leave it alone more often

I mean, it kind of goes against the spirit of an Onion Knight, but it's an option.

Also, for what it's worth, the OK's Monster skillset can't be equipped by other Jobs. So you can give it some of the OP factor of Arithmeticians without having the whole "copy skillset to less awful Job for blatant abuse in game" issue.

[MithosFall]

Awesome, level 5 rather than 8 will allow for Agrias to become a Dark Knight alot faster.  =)

Also, my opinion on the Onion Knight is I don't like it's design.  Seems boring.  I would just get rid of it and replace it with either a physical class that learns magic (like Magic Knight or Red Mage), or a class that can learn enemy skills (Blue Mage).  You could make most of the abilities that it learns act like Ultima or Zodiac, in that if a monster uses a specific skill on it and the Blue Mage survives, it learns that skill.  Maybe have in the description of that class, or in the description of the Support Ability that enables any class to use Blue Magic, what enemy abilities it can learn.

[Nyzer]

I would just get rid of it and replace it

You can't. The hardcoding around OK makes it INCREDIBLY difficult to do anything with it. The best you can muster is to stack it with a limited amount of powerful Innates and three strong abilities.

Specifically:

- There's no easy way to get rid of the JP/EXP block
- There's no easy way to make the OK able to equip your learned Action, Support, or Movement abilities
- The OK's skillset can either be a <Default> which lets you use the same slots you've learned abilities in for your base Job, this works really badly in practice
- or it can be a <Monster> set which forces all its Action abilities on from the start, prevents the other Jobs from using that skillset, and limits the skillset to 3 abilities (4, at most, with a BM beside you)

I mean, you could replace the OK with maybe a Berserker that's got Innates. That's it.

You also can't just slap a new job in. The number of jobs on the wheel is limited to what's already there; any new job would have to be put in the Onion Knight slot, and would then come with all the disadvantages that current Onion Knights do.

Frankly, I don't know why Square fucked up the OKs so badly. The lack of passive abilities is one thing, the lack of a skillset another... yeah, they can equip some OP gear, but they're useless without it, and even with it they can't hold a candle to a dual wielding Dragoon with Iaido or magic and Shirahadori. Which you'll probably have long before you get a Master Onion Knight.

And then you can't get EXP with the job! Why would you ever use it? There are much easier ways to get a character that can avoid most sources of damage and hit the damage cap on a single target at max level. ¬_¬

[Eternal]

The challenge is that KO is still somewhat true to Vanilla, so I don't really like the concept of adding completely new abilities to the OK. That being said, if I were to do that, I'd probably do something like the following:

-Non-Master OK wouldn't have any skills. Master OK would have something akin to the following:

-Limit Break (Fully restores the user's HP and MP)
-Master of None (+1 PA/MA/Speed, +3 BR/FA, Vanilla Scream, basically)
-Overdrive (MA-based damage in a small AoE)

That way OKs could boost all their stats (since they're all-rounders, heal themselves, and use either their high MA for Overdrive or their high PA for physical attacks with PA-based weaponry). *shrug* That's just what I would do if I did something along those lines. That still strays a little too far from KO's mission though.

[Nyzer]

I'm not too sure why you chose to slap abilities on it in the first place then. 

It's easy to see that the (Master) OK's niche was supposed to be a powerful Job with high defense, raw attack power, and some good buffs from the Onion Armor (Regen, Reraise, Protect, Shell), for the tradeoff of not having Action abilities. The problem is that it doesn't really work - other jobs can do the whole brute tank thing with a lot less of a grind required (Knight + White Mage alone...), and the no-EXP thing just kills what little use the job might've had.
Plus the "reward" for Mastering a ton of jobs is a job that doesn't use any of the stuff from those jobs? What?

I mean, if you want it to stay close to its original niche, but still make it halfway viable, then perhaps putting some innates on it would do the trick? Innate: Doublehand (or Dual Wield?), Reequip, Counter; innate resistance to most negative status effects; innate Half resistance to (some?) elements...
and even if you dislike the idea of giving it some action abilities, maybe some that aren't that different from the other abilities in the game? Some ability that gives it Defend (if only to keep that final Innate ability slot free), and something that gives it some ranged/magic capability, even if not very far and only in a single panel?

I just think that leaving the OK as is would be a waste. Even the Arithmetician isn't this bad because at least it's broken in a way that rewards the player for unlocking it... but with the vanilla OK, you might as well slap on level 8 Bard and Dancer requirements just to keep it off the job wheel. ¬_¬

[MithosFall]

Eternal, would you want me to post my thoughts and ideas on changes that I would like to see to the mod?  Because I have noticed a few things that irk me a bit.  The thing is I don't want to be annoying.

[Eternal]

I'm on my phone so I can't type a full reply to you yet Nyzer, but Mithos, please, feel free to go ahead and post your thoughts. Anything- positive or negative- is helpful!

[MithosFall]

OK, cool.  Well, let me preface this by saying that I'm no professional critic or game designer, these are just my opinions from the perspective of a long-time gamer.  That means that my criticism could be wrong or invalid, and if you think it is, tell me why.  Also note that I'm real early in the mod so far.

The first thing that annoyed me was the fact that Chocobos can revive allies with Choco Esuna.  I don't have a problem with like lore or how it should work flavor-wise, what I have a problem with is that it doesn't really add challenge, it's just annoying.  Kind of how when a boss in another RPG heals itself.  It doesn't make it more difficult, it just makes it take longer to kill him.  Usually what happens in the battle with chocobos is it'll revive an enemy, and then I'll kill that enemy.  And it'll heal itself and then revive an enemy, etc etc.  It's not really fighting back, just making the battle take more time, which, again, is annoying.  I think the solution would just be to remove the revive effect from Choco Esuna.

The second annoying thing deals with the Black Goblin's Spin Punch move.  I don't particularly dislike it, but the problem is that that's the only move they ever use, because it has range, a high chance of hitting, and can't friendly fire.  So my characters will wind up getting ganged up on by Black Goblins that only Spin Punch, and they'll wind up doing an unavoidable 50 damage to my character, killing him/her.  It's annoying because they can continue to do that repeatedly since they're also pretty tanky.  And it's not like I just send my characters in the middle of the fray to kill them, I do plan my strategies out and it's still a problem.  Like I said before, I don't dislike it, so I think an appropriate fix would be to allow the Spin Punch to hit everything; allies and enemies.  That would force the enemy to have to strategize a bit more rather than forever spins.

[Eternal]

Now that I'm at my computer I can properly answer!

Nyzer: OKs in KO have innates. Apprentice OK has Reequip/Safeguard/Counter/Accrue JP. Master OK has Reequip/Safeguard/First Strike/Accrue JP. As far as giving them abilities, KO's purpose is to stay true to Vanilla, which means not making many new skills. In fact, the only truly new skill I'd say is Unction/Oil. That's why I opted to give them a single skill from each skillset that can be given- to give them a new role and still stick with what's already around.

Mithos: Something to bear in mind with KO is that part of it is to make monsters viable for the player's team, as well. Chocobos as such were given a little more utility to synergize well with other jobs, acting as an immediate and mobile battle medic. I lessened the amount of Chocobos in each battle early-game in 2.3 or 2.4 (I forget which), to negate some of the tedious battle frustration early-game. Ultimately, in battles early-game with Chocobos, you're going to want to aim for the Chocobo first. This goes for any unit with reviving abilities- take them out first and the battle becomes much easier.

In regards to Black Goblins, again, they're meant to compete with other jobs and have their own niche. For the record, Spin Punch's accuracy isn't something I can change. Its accuracy is based on the defending unit's evasion. Their niche is getting in close and crippling enemies easily. The best tactic with them is to nuke them with magic (preferably Blizzard), or shoot them down with arrows. The AI is quite adept at using the Goblin's skills, so they'll use others when they're viable.

This feedback is very helpful though. Please, keep it coming! And I'm almost always on IRC, so feel free to chat on there with me directly if you'd like.

[reversebustersword]

Are you able to get fell swords using this patch?

actually nvm.

[dc16]

D'oh I patched 2.5 to my USA iso. It definitely works. I haven't play mission 4 yet, but these are the things I noticed after wasting 5 hours this week:
Two Chocobos in a random encounter- They spam Choco Cure and Esuna (revives enemies)
Difficulty is up like nuts even if early missions should be relatively easy. (I'm at level 14).
Move +2 and stuff are still there, but it's okay.

Great patch, and it looks like its working as it should. Edit: Decrypted my save, but noticed save works regardless of region.

[Redimus]

Something that always bothered me about Final Fantasy Tactics was the fact goblins can't take class levels.

They're smart enough to have language, make their own clothes, and employ diverse monsters outside their own species for complex war but they can't figure out how to throw a potion bottle at some one?

[Eternal]

@DC: Glad to hear you're having fun! Early on, it's best to play defensively. In regards to Chocobos healing each other, Black Mages help significantly with their AoE.

@Rediumus: Unfortunately, classes and monsters are coded in such a way that they can't use Human skillsets.

[Redimus]

Would it be difficult to just randomly reskin new recruits with a monster sprite? Same stats and everything else just every now and then when you go to recruit a male or female soldier and the results come back with a goblin or Uribo?

Uribos are sapient, right? They look like they'd be sapient. Upright, thumbs, pathetic in nearly every other way... Sounds like a sapient species to me.

[Angel]

On PSP, no. On PSX, yes. My wife is awesome.

[queby]

i'm sure i sound like a fool for asking this, but is there a way to check what version of the game i have?

[Angel]

If your save data on your memory card is in a folder named ULUS10297FFT0000, then you have the US version. If it's ULES00850FFT0000, it's European.

[Bonesy]

Considering diving into FFT again, I remember playing Kind of PSP about 2 years ago. Do you recommend KO PSP or PSX for someone who hasn't played vanilla in a long time and generally prefers FFTA/FFTA2 (lol)?

[baldrat60]

Could someone please explain how the difficulty is increased in this if the levels scale. Im still looking for that hard wir#egraf and dorter city fight. Are they still in this.Ideally id like it to be a little harder overall.

[3lric]

With the amount of time you've spent asking how hard it is (which Toshiko already answered) you could've easily gotten to these battles yourself to find out... jus sayin'