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Final Fantasy Tactics: Redesign Job Discussion [Newest: Formula Updates/Misc!]

Started by RavenOfRazgriz, March 06, 2011, 07:46:08 pm

The Damned

[Insert long-suffering sigh here.]

Damn it. I hate it when I forget stuff right before I'm about to post.

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on March 10, 2011, 04:10:19 am
Changeling would fit a Morpher more than a Blue Mage, and honestly Morpher's a better name.  Animist/Animalist are still some of the best I can get.  Erm...Druid?


No! Kill it with fire!

QuoteI hate skills that outright demolish you just because you have a playstyle, and not because anything you're doing is actually wrong besides "this reaction says all magic suckzorz!"


What reaction says that, though? Doesn't Reflect not work. Similarly, couldn't you say the same of Arrow Guard and Iro...Finger Guard?

I mean, I can understand you're getting rid of Maintenance and Innocent, the minimalist route, but there are other abilities that tend to screw over particular skillsets and always will. (Hey there, Counter Magic Ahriman.)

Since we're talking about this, though, there's something was I wondering: What exactly did you intend to set the reaction response to?

I was going to ask something entirely different because of Fury, but then I remembered you were using a flat rate of reaction for everything, so....
"Sorrow cannot be abolished. It is meaningless to try." - FFX's Yunalesca

"Good and evil are relative, but being a dick cannot be allowed." - Oglaf's Thaumaturge in "The Abyss"

"Well, see, the real magic isn't believing in yourself. The real magic is manipulating people by telling them to believe in themselves. The more you believe, the less you check facts."  - Oglaf's Vanka in "Conviction"

RavenOfRazgriz

Always fun to forget stuff!  So not Druid.

I more meant the Reflect Status.  What you said is why the player doesn't learn Arrow Guard, Finger Guard, Catch, etc. and why they're all on the list of shit I can disable and write over.

Lol, 1.3's Counter Magic Ahriman is very mean.  Difference is with that (and my somewhat less mean carry over of Double Magic Ahriman), you can just break the MP score down to disable Counter/Double Magic then cast it to death.  Both Oracle and Wizard have means of doing this in the caster trees alone, in my case.  ;p

QuoteWhat exactly did you intend to set the reaction response to?


Huh?  Maybe it's because I just woke up a few hours ago and am going back to sleep soon but I have no clue what you're asking.

The Damned

Sorry, I meant "percentage-wise", you said that you're having all reactions trigger at the same percentage independent of Brave/Fury/whatever. Merely asking what it was if you would be willing to divulge.

I remember Fury status bugging me before I remember just as I was posting that you said you had reactions as fixed percentage.
"Sorrow cannot be abolished. It is meaningless to try." - FFX's Yunalesca

"Good and evil are relative, but being a dick cannot be allowed." - Oglaf's Thaumaturge in "The Abyss"

"Well, see, the real magic isn't believing in yourself. The real magic is manipulating people by telling them to believe in themselves. The more you believe, the less you check facts."  - Oglaf's Vanka in "Conviction"

RavenOfRazgriz

Oh.  I said in the other thread that all the Reactions are on a flat 100% trigger up front.  I'm just in the process of fixing up what they trigger against and stuff so that "weaker" Reactions have the advantage of triggering a far greater number of times than "stronger" ones.  Eg, Blind Will/Fury and Calm Mind/Heart are "weak", in that they don't add to your DPS directly but rather modify it over time, but they trigger against basically everything that's not your own Cure spell.  More powerful ones like Adrenaline require damage, still more powerful ones in terms of direct DPS like Counter / Double Magic / Nature's Wrath have unique triggers, etc.

Tl;dr the rate's 100% and the main balancing factor will be manipulating what sets them off, not how often they get set off, so you need to choose quality vs utility.

The Damned

Ah, I see. I was wondering how you were going to differ them.

Sigh. If only we do that right now instead of the "mere" Counter Flood and Counter Magic prompts. (I'm not counting Blade Grasp just because no one gets that broken POS anyway.)

Speaking of things that only the AI might get, when it comes to Maintenance, are you getting rid of it entirely? Or are you just getting rid of it for generics?
"Sorrow cannot be abolished. It is meaningless to try." - FFX's Yunalesca

"Good and evil are relative, but being a dick cannot be allowed." - Oglaf's Thaumaturge in "The Abyss"

"Well, see, the real magic isn't believing in yourself. The real magic is manipulating people by telling them to believe in themselves. The more you believe, the less you check facts."  - Oglaf's Vanka in "Conviction"

RavenOfRazgriz

The Blade Grasp prompt also controls Counter and I believe Dragon Spirit, so don't discount it yet.

Entirely. 

You can't break Weapons or Armor anyway, so there's no reason a boss would ever need Maintenance from a balance perspective.  (No taking their weapon and illegitimizing their skillset, for example.)   I'm actually keeping bosses on a basic level vulnerable to as many things as possible since random things such as nonessential immunities shouldn't make your playstyle unusable.  If your chosen style of play can't win, it should be unable to because it's either a poor playstyle or a poor choice based on the enemy team's composition or the map composition, not because some guy is randomly invulnerable to a bunch of crap because he has "Divine Knight" as a title or something.  If you need to be immune to something, use more evasion or a piece of gear that blocks it, that goes for bosses too outside of a few rare exceptions and the likes of the Lucavi.  I'm trying to keep the design both fair and consistent, so that it doesn't ever feel like the AI is "cheating", so to speak.

Honestly, if I have to give a boss protection from something because that something is just some cheap boss raper, I need to fix what I'm protecting the boss from to begin with.  The ones who need to block a status or two to function properly will have access to gear that grants that protection, etc., so the amount of innate status immunities and extra guards like how Maintenace was applied in 1.3 will be few and far between.

The Damned

I see. Well, I agree with that decision for the most part, especially if we're counting the Lucavi as separate--I'm trying to make the Lucavi more vulnerable to status, admittedly, though not as stupid as the whole "hey, let's Paralyze Vanilla Altima over and over again because it works!" thing.

I'd somewhat argue that as long as Knights and Thieves have skills beyond "break/steal equipment", that Maintenance as isn't nearly as stupid as it could be, but I'd only weakly argue that because I can see why you're getting rid of it and it's no skin of my back, honestly.
"Sorrow cannot be abolished. It is meaningless to try." - FFX's Yunalesca

"Good and evil are relative, but being a dick cannot be allowed." - Oglaf's Thaumaturge in "The Abyss"

"Well, see, the real magic isn't believing in yourself. The real magic is manipulating people by telling them to believe in themselves. The more you believe, the less you check facts."  - Oglaf's Vanka in "Conviction"

RavenOfRazgriz

"Let's Paralyze Altima over and over again!" is why Immobilize and Paralyze can't stack on top of themselves anymore and generally only last... 2 turns-ish?  Locking a unit down with that strategy requires constantly camping and reapplying the status... and in a ~5v5 situation, this is generally not something you want to be devoting 1-2 units to doing.  Obviously Lucavi will be immune to Paralyze and a few other uber-debilitating statuses because they're either alone or supported by very non-clerical units, but as usual it will only be the ones essential to making the Lucavi function how I want them to.  I do, however, have a few behind the curtain tricks planned for them too in order to offset this.

The deal with Maintenance in that regard is that both sets are designed to play into themselves.  With Thief, you use Muddle and Pocket Sand as means of making theft easier before slamming the opponent with a Toxic and getting the fuck out, with Knight, you lock the fucker down with Shatter Leg and just tank them through attrition as you break them down.  They still have other skills, but with Maintenance, neither class can really do what it's supposed to do.  (And yes, if you go through other skillsets, they all have at least one intended "default strategy" built into them like Break/Steal do.) 

While I'm remembering, you mentioned about both Thief and Ninja having Two Swords, which they both do, and they both share the same PA, but the difference is their base equipment and how their skills play into Two Swords.  With Thief, Daggers have piddling WP that has almost no scaling as the game progresses, and are mainly good for being able to deal an array of status at 100% on hit, so flinging around two allows you to fuck units up either before or after stealing in the same way a Thief would use Muddle, Pocket Sand, and Toxic.  Ninjas also have Dagger access because that kind of status dealing plays well with ignoring defenses and screwy Will-based skills, but they also have Ninjato (and possibly more when I decide a couple things), which are far more powerful in terms of raw damage, allowing them to actually use Two Swords to put holes in things like we remember it doing and not just status down a hoe.  It's the same basic concept between them, but abusing different synergies and skillset access to achieve a completely different end.


The Damned

I see. Not much else to say besides that, though I do keep not getting around to my own equipment list. Fell asleep way longer than I meant today.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see how equipment is handled on certain units without Maintenance.
"Sorrow cannot be abolished. It is meaningless to try." - FFX's Yunalesca

"Good and evil are relative, but being a dick cannot be allowed." - Oglaf's Thaumaturge in "The Abyss"

"Well, see, the real magic isn't believing in yourself. The real magic is manipulating people by telling them to believe in themselves. The more you believe, the less you check facts."  - Oglaf's Vanka in "Conviction"

RavenOfRazgriz

Haha, I've had the same problem lately in terms of sleeping.

Today's update will be minor in terms of content posted.  Did some math, am deciding to actually not adjust PA and MA on any units at this time.  This gives more leeway for high power moves like the Samurai's Flair skills, plays better with the new Element application I'm using, and a number of other things.  Since I also decreased Defense Boost and co by a proportional amount, this shouldn't cause many problems, but rather just allow for more design space.  I may or may not buff the constant on bare fists and Monk skills by 2 though, currently undecided there.  Working on making sprite previews for the generic jobs, since there will be a few sprite swaps and new palettes on everything.  I need to adjust a few of the weaker palettes some and finish a pair of sprites I forgot to do, though, so that update won't be seen for a day or two and will be in the form of a third [ugh] thread with an [IMAGE HEAVY] warning so people aren't forced to load a crapton of images every time they check this thread for updates.  So yeah, expect that soon and don't miss it!

RavenOfRazgriz

Minor update because my weekend is busy and I'm not done with those sprites yet.

All of the Equip X have been merged into two simple skills: Any Weapon and Any Gear, both of which are fittingly available on the Squire class.  Added the Support Skill "Medic", temporarily located on the Priest class, which boosts any healing skill by 25%.

I still need ideas for my now... I think 12-13 free Support Skill slots and 7ish free Reaction slots.  Those with ideas, come forth!

Also, decided my two of my empty classes will be physical ones, one focused on offense and one on defense.  Thinking one of them should be a bow user and the other should use some weapon that is otherwise not used much, meaning Greatsword / Katana / Ninjato / Gauntlet.  Ideas on which class should be which, which weapons the close range one should use, skills for either, etc. are much appreciated. 

The Damned

(Ugh. Three and half hours later and I'm still tired yet still not tired enough to go to sleep; just too tired to think up good ideas, apparently. Still, I'll respond to this because I said that I would yesterday after the Chocobo thing.

Speaking of which...what are you doing with monsters anyway? I was speaking with FDC a bit four to five hours ago and he was under the impression that you using the ARH for them as well as using the monster slots because you had found someway around the Monster Skill limitation. I may be relaying that incorrectly, though. I must admit curiosity, though, given my own current dilemma over skill set space.)

As far as flaming monsters to replace pigs go, I still can't think of any. Even if I could, there probably isn't a sprite for it yet. Maybe you could just force in the Lamia sprite with some type of "Fire Kiss" attack or something. Shrug.

Concerning reaction and support abilities, I can think of nothing support-wise that isn't covered.* (In fact, if you could illuminate what exactly a few of them do, like Speed Boost, that would be great.) Reaction-wise, I've nothing inventive. Just that "return negative status", reactive-Shell and reactive-Protect reaction that I'm sure you've thought of before.

With regards to class ideas, having looked over both this thread and the original thread's contents more thoroughly than before, I think that I might be able to be of some help there:

1. Of whatever your close-range class does, it should be focused on either Greatswords or Axes since at present now other class besides Squire can use those weapons without Any Weapon. Similarly, it should probably be able to equip both.

2. Whether your long-range class is offensive or defensive, I don't think it should be or, rather, can be bow-based. I'm not saying this just because I'm still an impasse myself for making two other bow-based classes (though at this point I probably won't have to). I'm saying it more because your Archer/Ranger pretty covers EVERYTHING a bow-based class can do at present, even with the lofty aims of formula. Given that you're keeping guns widely available to Generics in your patch, you could maybe get away with the Gunner class I couldn't. After all, the FFX-2 Gunner was decently offense-based and I'm pretty sure you could make an defensive-based class if you put your mind to it, even if it would arguably be more difficult to do (with the way that Ranger is now).

3. If you want a defensive, close-range class, then there's of course Paladin, who could use great swords and unlike Dragoon heals/be concerned with allied units more actively. I can't really give skill suggestions, though, given that I'm both still largely unaware of your formula (aims) and that I'm still uncertain of my own (untested) Paladin, which I'd imagine you don't want to emulate anyway. There's the problem of Paladin potentially stepping on Agrias's toes, but since you've said absolutely nothing about special characters, I've no idea; I just know they're kind of annoying similar name-wise. Paladin, however, would at least give you the chance for more offensive, Holy-based attacks.

4. If you want an offensive, close-range class, then there's similarly always Berserker. It'd be something to perhaps give focus to the Axe, which, as aforementioned, like Greatsword is similarly "unloved" equipment-wise. It's not like they have to be focused around Berserk, though, oddly, Lancer/Dragoon give them the same problem that it potentially give Paladin when it comes to competition, especially with wanting to keep everything so minimalism--just for different reasons.

5. If you want a close-range class that could go either way, then you could focus a class on Greatswords (and/or Axes) and knockback since you seem so eager to spread that around. I'm not sure you're making formulas to affect AoEs--though I'm almost certain you're not because those are probably even more tedious--but having arching attacks that "clear out" hit enemies and such seems like it would at least be interesting. I have no idea what the hell you would call it, though.


That's pretty much all I have for now. I would have liked to be more helpful after such a delay, but I'm as bird-brained as the creatures that are now giving me trouble.

P.S. You used the name "Swiftness" for both a Dragoon attack and Dimensionalist's react with Haste ability. Also, Squire's "Blind Fury" has a minor typo.


*Well, that's not entirely true. I'm just not sure whether a support ability that allowed one's magic to ignore Reflect would be worth it and that, even if it was, it wouldn't be one of those supports you tend to not like such as Maintenance and such.
"Sorrow cannot be abolished. It is meaningless to try." - FFX's Yunalesca

"Good and evil are relative, but being a dick cannot be allowed." - Oglaf's Thaumaturge in "The Abyss"

"Well, see, the real magic isn't believing in yourself. The real magic is manipulating people by telling them to believe in themselves. The more you believe, the less you check facts."  - Oglaf's Vanka in "Conviction"

RavenOfRazgriz

I'm giving the monsters human skillsets.  You should already know this, since I'm the one who told philsov to do it.  No monster skills, no monster talk, no breeding, no bullshit.  Feels good man.  I'll figure something out for the flaming monster, maybe a Moogle carrying around a flaming marshmallow on a stick and a bottle of sake.  Speed Boost is +1 Speed, by the way.  I should note that more clearly if it's not already clear enough.  If there's others you don't get, feel free to ask about them.

I'm probably going to make more copies of Sunken State style and Counter Tackle style Reactions to fill my list out unless someone gives me a genius idea.

Knights can currently also use Axes and Greatswords as well as Squires, but one of the new classes will as well.  I've decided not to have a ranged class be one of them, because I noticed ranged weapons were far better spread than I was thinking they were.  Mustadio's going to be drawing from a few different Gunner classes to assemble his skillset, since he's losing Seal Evil and he'd only have 2 skills if he didn't get some nice gains.  I'm intentionally not having an outright Gunner generic class because this is still Ivalice, guns are incredible rare archeological finds, you'd not have a whole class of warriors specializing in it.  A few classes can use them (I removed both Chemist and Mediator, the only two that could in Vanilla, so I obviously had to change who could use them), but none are based on them.

The defensive close-range class will likely be a sort of Paladin, using healing skills based on PA and WP and equiping heavy armors.  I'm not entirely decided on the kinds of skills it'll have, but it'll be a PA/Fury based healer.  I'm not sure if these skills will be Weapon Ranged or not at this time though.

The Special characters aren't seeing unnecessary amounts of retooling, Agrias still gets Holy Sword (renamed Holy Arts), Mustadio still gets Snipe (renamed Snipe Skill), etc.  I'm keeping them true to their Vanilla versions, seeing changes more like the Knight or Oracle received that merely enhance their focus and remove some redundancy in their sets. 

Berserker - Nah, unless it's "Berserker" in the historical sense and not the sense related to the Berserk status whatsoever.  In which case, I may as well make my aggro class a Viking.  Though, super-powered Weapon based skills are already covered in the Samurai's Flair set, so... heh.

Mixed, eh.  I'm not making any classes based on Knockback.  The AI couldn't use something like that correctly most likely. so I'd rather not.

I'm going with a Paladin-like concept for one of them, though, but I'd rather not name it Paladin if I can avoid it. 

I'll fix typos when I update the post later.  The Dimensionalist's Swiftness is on the way out, so that's fine.  I'm going back to using Vanish, oddly enough. 

Yeah, Supports like that aren't something I'm interested in.  Speaking of, however, I've got 3 more after some thinking and some discussion with FDC again for the first time in a while:

Range Boost
"Increase reach of long-range skills and attacks by 1."
Range of skills and attacks (including the Attack command) with range of 3 or more is boosted by 1.

Strikethrough
"Focus, striking through frivolous defenses."
Ignore modifications from Protect, Shell, Defense Boost, Arcane Defense, Focus Defense, Defiance, Bad/Worst Zodiac Compatibility, and Elemental Resist when attacking or defending.

Pullthrough
"Focus, pulling through frivolous assaults."
Ignore Berserk, Sleep, Frog, Chicken, Oil, Float, Attack Boost, Arcane Power, Focus Power, Vehemence, Turbo Mana, Good/Best Zodiac Compatibility, Elemental Weak, and Elemental Boost when attacking or defending.

Concentrate will also be replaced with Slipthrough, which nullifies all evasion on both the attacker and defender.  This means I no longer will be using the portion of FDC's hack that causes Confusion/Blindness override.  Accuracy Boost will now also grant Accuracy * 1.5, in an attempt to make it not suck (it did before) and fill the shoes of old Concentrate.  I may change this to be a hard boost to Accuracy instead though, I'm not decided on that yet.

The Damned

I thought that Monster Talk was still necessary even if you gave them human skill sets. Or do you just meant that you don't want Monster Talk around, so you're not going to need it to affect them?

(Anyway, looking at some old files reminded me there's at least 110 skill sets to used that are either unused or just plain redundant, so I should have room.)

Can't help you with things up names for Paladin that aren't Paladin either. I still can't even think of something for Blue Mage, especially now that "animist" will probably used for something else entirely for me.

I suppose you could name it Defender, but that's horribly generic. Defender of what? Defender of whom?
"Sorrow cannot be abolished. It is meaningless to try." - FFX's Yunalesca

"Good and evil are relative, but being a dick cannot be allowed." - Oglaf's Thaumaturge in "The Abyss"

"Well, see, the real magic isn't believing in yourself. The real magic is manipulating people by telling them to believe in themselves. The more you believe, the less you check facts."  - Oglaf's Vanka in "Conviction"

RandMuadDib

I will show you the power of SARDIIIIINES!!!!

RavenOfRazgriz

I mean there's nothing using the Talk Skill flag, actually.  If there were, Monster Talk would be innate all.

Yeah, there's tons of empty skillsets.  Speaking of monsters - if I found a way to bullshit them being able to hold equipment, what would the thoughts on them having access to some be?  Also, I'm thinking of just letting Monks use Hats and adjusting their stats to compensate because they now can use Weapon/Shield/Bodygear/Accessory anyway.

I'll just call it Paladin for now, I guess.  Templar is Beowulf's job, Justicar and Inquisitor is kinda eh period, and Crusader doesn't at all seem fitting for a healing class.

The Damned

(Ugh. Damn it. Fell asleep for like 10 hours. Stupid DST.)

Ah, I thought as with regards to Monster Talk.

With regards to monsters, I was contemplating allowing the more humanoid monsters like Goblins, Skeletons, Ithillids/Mindflayers and Bull Demons to wear armor, but, yeah, the equipment just kind of disappears if you try to directly bullshit it. Wonder if there's another way.

(Rather recently, I've been contemplating letting Chocobos and Bombs wear armor, but there's more for special events. After all, the intro has chocobos wearing armor IIRC & Boco would be even easier to differentiate that way and I always found the FFIX Grenade rather humorous to look at.)

As for Paladin, eh, maybe a better name/a name you like better will pop up once you decide on the abilities.

I forgot to mention that I'd could get behind Viking if you wanted to do that instead. It'd be a way to give a physical class Lightning and Ice/Water techniques given that Fire, Wind and Earth are so comparatively widespread.
"Sorrow cannot be abolished. It is meaningless to try." - FFX's Yunalesca

"Good and evil are relative, but being a dick cannot be allowed." - Oglaf's Thaumaturge in "The Abyss"

"Well, see, the real magic isn't believing in yourself. The real magic is manipulating people by telling them to believe in themselves. The more you believe, the less you check facts."  - Oglaf's Vanka in "Conviction"

RavenOfRazgriz

I've had a couple ideas regarding monsters, but need to test and see if my hunch is correct.  If so, I got this.

Yeah, I'm going with a Paladin of sorts and a Viking/Berserker-like unit of sorts, the former focused on healer and the latter focused on more reckless forms of rip and tear than the Samurai.  As for Element balance, outside of the two Element skills that Ranger has, I'm pretty sure there's almost a 1:1 correlation in spread of Fire/Bolt/Ice/Dark/Earth/Wind.  Ninja has a Fire/Bolt/Ice set, Monk as an Earth/Wind set, Samurai and Wizard have full sets of Elements, etc.  I'll probably spread a few elements around into the sets of these two jobs so the Fire and Wind skills of the Ranger class have complements as well, but I was rather conscious about keeping Element access roughly even.

Apologies on the slower updates, by the way, weekends are very likely to see little to no updates unless I somehow have sleep on them, and I've been busy contemplating, brainstorming, and designing more Support skills.  Tomorrow or the day after we should start getting back on track.

TheChad

Hi.  I'm relatively new to this community but I was excited to read about your project.  It sounds like you've got some really interesting ideas.

I was trying to think of any alternatives to Animalist and all I've come up with a few ideas, none of which I think are any better than what you've already got.

Echoist - this would be based on the class being able to repeat actions once it's experienced them.

Renderer - this sounds clumsy but I'm trying to think along the lines of Relm's Sketch command in FFVI.

Reckoner - this actually sounds cool, but it's a bit of a stretch.  It's along the lines of the "including" definition of reckon, as in the class includes learned monster skills.

Assimilator - the class absorbs and incorporates monster skills.

I like how you're trying to better differentiate the elements and give them a greater role in your project.  Some random element-related thoughts I had are related to weather...I don't think there's nearly enough content in this suggestion to propose a weather class, but it would be cool if there was a skill that could change the weather on a map.  Maybe a skill called "Storm Front" which would change a sunny day into a random chance of rain, thunderstorm, or snow.  You could combine this with ratcheting up the effect of weather on elemental damage.  For a longer battle, tipping the weather could help a party take advantage of an elemental setup.  I don't even know if this would be possible to do...you'd probably have to prevent it from working indoors...and even if you could implement it, it's probably not something the AI could use to its benefit.  On a related note I had an idea about a Hail Storm which would hit every unit on the map with Ice 1 or something similar, unless a unit was "taking shelter" under an overpass or overhang.  That would kind of be like how lancers can't jump on a unit that's under a bridge.  Again though - this would probably be something that would be too easy to exploit and that the AI couldn't coordinate using properly.

I look forward to reading further updates on your project.

Kaffe

I just feel like being cool and make a suggestion.

Breaker/Intercepter -- The whole skillset would be to disable something temporarily, including some, but not a lot, of damage (even if you're not killed by it, getting your arms dislocated is not all that pleasant). Melee fighter.

Skill names with corresponding effect (of the top of my head, to give you an idea, not meaning these should be the skills/names)

Dislocate elbow -- Don't act
Dislocate knee -- Don't move
Dislocate jaw -- Silence
Ear swat -- confuse
Eye poke -- blind

And so on. I find it to seem like an amusing class. :p
Worth thinking of?

Other skills would include some sort of guard to not get locked with these negative statuses him/herself.