Final Fantasy Hacktics

I know nothing about hex editing this game, but I'm pretty sure when I last played Eternal's GG mod that he had characters start with full MP with no MP gain over time.

For MP growth I was more thinking about it from the player side and not the AI side. Have you considered going the Eternal route by starting units at full MP and removing MP gain? Another potential idea is to add more variance to MP costs so some abilities can be used off the bat (I'm thinking about the fighter, whose skill set is greatly diminished if I can only use it once every other turn if everything costs 14+ MP). It's one thing to ask a player to trade off between now and later (E.g. Fire at 8 vs. Fira at 16, or whatever the vanilla costs are), but when everything is over 10 MP it kills the fun. I'm sure I could buy enough ethers or similar items and load everyone up at the beginning of each battle, but that gets really boring and tedious quickly.

I have a couple questions about high-level gameplay changes in this mod:

MP growth and cost: A lot of abilities, including those for physical jobs, have MP costs (many that are over 10 MP). At the same time, you seem to be set on removing abilities that tamper with MP growth rate / usage. This creates situations in which characters 1) are physically attacking when they can't use abilities, 2) are waiting and not moving/taking actions to get their next turns (with enough MP) sooner, 3) ether spamming (in theory - I haven't tried this yet). Is this the desired gameplay? What are you trying to go for with this setup? IMHO it creates downtime, which I find less fun.

Stat growth changes: I looked at the stat growth charts; there appears to be less variation across jobs than in vanilla. This seems useful for encouraging players to spend more time with jobs that are typically ignored in vanilla (or at least removing disincentives from using certain jobs). On the other hand, it's a pretty big nerf to some jobs, specifically those whose major selling point was speed (e.g. ninja, and I noticed the firewheel rod doesn't have haste as a spell - not sure whether it was moved to a different rod or removed). I'm only 40 missions in, so I don't have a full understanding of abilities and equipment (do late-game katana add speed?), but do you think these jobs still have enough going for them to make them viable in one form or another?

Not sure if this was intentional, but post-patch Luso's keeper class has gone a little wonky. When I started 0.98 Luso had the free energy skill that he learned from a card (the ace of spades?). After renaming the save file he can no longer use the skill or equip cards. I started a new game to see if it was just the save file - the Growth skill set got renamed Turning, and Luso can't use any of the skills even though he starts with the card equipped.

Small bug: the Loot skill appears to deal damage and not steal loot. Think I used it with Adelle.

Edit: nevermind, finally got the steal loot to fire. Looks like it's a certain % that's independent from dealing damage.

Thanks! I'll start a new game tonight - might be a bit before I can provide you with meaningful feedback.

Thanks for this and all your work on the editors!

How long do you think it'll take to mess with the formations? Trying to decide whether to start on this version or wait for the next one. Looking forward to playing it either way.

I started playing the mod with a brand new game and came across what appears to be a game-breaking bug: after the story mission in the Rupie Mountains, to proceed with the plot you have to visit Grazston and then Moorabella for cutscenes. Visiting Grazston triggers that cutscene fine, but when I enter Moorabella (the town, not the region), the screen goes black and the game appears to freeze. Anyone else have this problem? It's happened a few times in a row. I'm using Drastic on Android.

One other thing: the Pearls in the Deep story mission, which is (relatively speaking) one of the more difficult ones in vanilla, was really easy here because the boss seemed to skip close to half of its turns (just wait without taking any actions). Did anyone else notice that?

Thanks for the mod! I'm hoping to play it through further before giving more detailed feedback on it.

So long as you patch the clean rom properly, if you rename the 0.9 dsv to match the 0.91's filename, you should be alright. At least, that's what I did and so far it's working.

Looking forward to it!

I know the answer will be no, but we'd be happy to help test the balance issues in the meantime.

I agree with Eternal that the enemy data is the higher priority problem to solve and makes it easier for modders to work on the game (fewer obstacles to figuring things out).

Unless you really want to heavily micromanage when players could get certain loot, thereby affecting when they can get certain items at the bazaar, the other variables don't seem as impactful to most battles. Laws could be interesting! But, unlike FFTA, the penalties for violating them aren't severe enough to make modifying them a game changer.

The pdf is a classy touch to go along with the release.

Overall question - are stat growths unchanged from vanilla?

I've been looking forward to this update for quite some time. Thanks again for your continued hard work on this! Below are some very minor questions/feedback.

• Thief - I probably hadn't been playing close attention to the thread - so there's no more steal loot? Could steal armor be too OP?


• Samurai - Nosada feels like a throwaway skill


• Ninja - What's the purpose of fuuma? Why would someone want to use it?


• Blue Mage - minor nit, you're missing the name for Dragon Force in the guide


• Warrior - is there a big functional difference between Rend Speed and Mangle?


• Dragoon - if Wyrmkiller is limited to HP critical dragons, then how useful is it?


• Templar - Silence/Judgment and Rasp/Inquisition exhibit some degree of redundancy and I think could use a little more differentiation


• Moogle Hero - minor nit, the text for Diarama/Diarahan reads Diara for both


• Wyrmkin - does En Garde make sense on a Gria? I get it on a Viera because they don't get Counter as an R-ability, but Gria do

Thanks for all the detailed feedback!

With respect to the Seeq being annoying, one thing you could do with a Viking would be to turn it into a lightning/water-based version of the Vartan.

That's actually something you could play out across several different classes (a different one for each element). This could fill in some of your gaps, like the Alchemist. If you add elemental resistances/immunities/absorptions to monsters/jobs it makes things even more interesting.

This might beg the question of what to do with a job like a Black Mage if you have individual classes that can do a specific element better. Personally, Black Mages get kind of boring for me and the increased MP cost relative to increased spell power means that I never bother with them past early game.

You could refashion the Black Mage into an elemental-specific job. You could also change it into a reverse Red Mage - whereas the Red Mage gets cure/protect/shell (I'd probably swap silence for a buff), you could give the Black Mage poison/silence/blind/sleep/etc.

The War Medic looks like a cool job. Thematically its abilities are cohesive. I prefer it to your last iteration of the Berserker.

The one ability I'm not sure fits is Blast Wave. Doc's Code also might be a little OP (although if it's done in the same way as the Raptor's Bulwark, the unit would still be vulnerable to status effects).

Glad you're still working on this!

Some of the Berserker skills seem pretty intense and borderline OP. I can easily see using Scream and having another unit ping me for tiny damage to remove the Berserk debuff early on in a battle.

Does Final Heaven blind/berserk the target or the user?

With regard to Duel, is there a viable Seeq alternative R-ability to counter/blink counter? If not, is adding Counter superfluous?

The one gap I see behind the Fragmentation -> Detonation combo is that you're likely to have other party members take action in between the two Berserker moves, by which time it's not clear that a fire attack would still be super useful. Unless you ran multiple Berserkers.

EDIT: I'm down with the idea of using combos, but given the timing between single unit turns, what if instead of trying to let one job do all the work, you created synergies between two different jobs (different races, to force them onto different characters) for use? The only one I can kind of think of in vanilla is green mage/assassin tranq/last breath, which isn't the greatest, so I think there's room for improvement. If for example, you took the vanilla scholar and had a job that did party-wide buffs (like null-elementals), then you'd have a cross-job combo. Or, per one of my ideas below, if you had one job that used minor debuffs but another job that dealt big damage based on those debuffs, then you'd have another interesting combo.

I was also kicking around a few more ideas apropos of nothing in particular:
- Is it possible to structure A abilities based on specific status effects? I'm thinking a skillset similar to the Trickster's Traumatize, but based on specific statuses. Could do it based on user or target statuses to deal/heal damage or buff/debuff
- A slightly double-edged sword against mages would be to have an A ability that could MP turbo them. Basically to buy a turn or two in return for potentially higher damage coming your way later (of course now I forget if GG starts with full MP or gains it like vanilla)

If you're still in the market for ideas, I've been kicking around a few, but not sure if it's possible to implement with the out-of-the-box tools:

A couple for the ninja:
- Bunshin: create a level 1 ninja clone with no equipment and no abilities (replaces throw)
- Kage bunshin: halve character's level/stats and create a clone at the halved level that has the same equipment and abilities (replaces oblivion)

A couple others:
- Buff to increase range (passive)
- Buff to increase AoE (A-ability)

Also, on completely unrelated notes:
- How do you feel about giving many races/jobs inherent strengths and weaknesses? For example, you could make all Gria strong to wind and weak to lightning, then give a job like the Vartan an extra bump for wind (so immune to wind)
- I like what you've done with the Vartan and the idea of dedicating a class to an element. Seems like a ripe opportunity to rethink the black mage and specialize some of the elements around different classes

Looks like you're off to a promising start! I look forward to playing it once you've made more of the job changes.

Can you give the Gria and Seeq more jobs by removing some of the other classes out there (like monsters)?

As far as the locked jobs, most don't come too late (the big exception is Geomancer, as well as Seer, Ravager and Lanista, to a lesser extent). If there were a way to edit the quests to make them show up earlier that could do it.

Is it wrong that I check this thread almost every day for updates? Probably, but there are worse habits to have.

I had a couple other ideas for abilities:

- You could do a reverse quicken: delay a unit's turn until right before its following turn
- Teleport: warp another unit (either anywhere on the map or within a radius)
- Swap: swap the position of two units
- Are there any existing abilities that lower/boost elemental resistances? I'm thinking nul-fire/ice/etc. or geomancy as an active ability instead of a passive one
- Something else fun would be to swap a unit's weapon/magick values for a few turns

Looking forward to it!

The guide will be super-helpful for having the most up-to-date info.

Any updates on what changed from 0.85? I was in the middle of a run and want to know whether I should start over (or I can just use the updated file with the same save.