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Project Orlandu

Started by MysticKnightFF5, January 01, 2012, 03:26:55 pm

MysticKnightFF5

January 01, 2012, 03:26:55 pm Last Edit: January 27, 2012, 12:10:08 pm by Dunkelritter Luna
This is a patch I've started on since the objective for Project Secular has been completed. I will still be working on Project Secular, but at a reduced pace. Most of my attention will be to this--Project Orlandu.
Project Orlandu was very ironically named, because it's a patch completely dedicated to balancing FFT while keeping the original maker's ideas and dreams intact. This means almost all editing will be done in the numbers.

Objective: To provide the most evenly powered classes possible and to reorganize internal affairs to make it easier to edit. Should all go well, this is to be the base for all future patches.
In addition to the objective, I want to make an offshoot of my own project implementing the improved dialogue and increased difficulty. Finally, I want to, at a future date, create an FFT Arena using this.

I realize, however, that this is a rather difficult undertaking and I intend to go about this as intelligently and methodically as possible. Thus, I have devised suitable means for achieving this goal.
Means: Any and all changes will not only be posted, but a logical argument will follow. The arguments will have rules to follow, so that I will always stay true to my objective.
The rules are:
1. No ability text, job text, or non-event text may be changed unless to fix translation errors.
2. No editing elemental or special effects of skills. I.E. Throw Stone cannot be made to cause petrify or have the earth elemental.
3. orgASM may not be implemented unless to aid in the changing of statistics, passive skills, or counter skills. I.E. Purchase broken equipment back at the Fur Shop
4. Formulae may not be modified.
5. Only PA, MA, and HP may be modified on monsters. This includes everything relating to monsters. (I.E. Poach Items)
6. ENTD cannot be changed unless to compensate for a statistic change.
7. Counters cannot be removed.

The rules may be added to, but not deleted or modified.


Changelist:

Change: MA growth modified from 50 to 40.
Reason: Final MA count is too low, and while this does further strengthen the already OP magic damage of mid-game, steps will be taken to smooth out the magic damage curve through the story.

Change: Draw Out Y modified. In this order: 6, 7, 5, 11, 11, 0, 14, 13, 0, 18
Reason: Draw Out final damage can easily one hit KO, with no CT or MP cost.

Samurai MA Multiplier buffed to 110
Reason: Same as the calculator, the class was weak but the skillset was strong. By reversing the two, I intend to make this a class more accessible to everybody.

Change: Golem set to add: protect.
Reason: This can easily be manipulated by two or more summoners to create infinite invincibility. In addition, it simply absorbs too much.

Reason: Breaks rules 2 and 4.

Change: Chakra Y is debuffed from 5 to 3.
Reason: Starting game healing is far too powerful. When coupled with MP healing, this skill should stay useful to mages regardless of level.

Change: All Geomancy infliction chances increased.
Reason: Being the only purpose behind ever using geomancy, I feel it's appropriate to make it a more likely scenario. As it stands, the odds are far too little to make Geomancy worth while.

Change: Geomancy range reduced to 4, 1 AoE.
Reason: Helps to prevent kiting and compensate for the increased proc.

Change: Stasis Sword Y buffed to 3. Lightning Sword Y debuffed to 2, Lightning Sword no longer inflicts a status effect, Holy Explosion Y and Range debuffed to 4.
Skillsets should, for no reason, make other skills within itself redundant or outdated. Balance within itself is important for balance throughout the game.

Change: Lune Knight renamed to Rune Knight
Reason: To fix a blaring text error.

Change: Deathspell renamed to Dispelna, and Despair renamed to Dispel.
Reason: To fix a blaring text error.

Change: Death Sentence has been changed to a CT of 2.
Reason: Death Sentence as a status effect is not only worthless but does not work as Death Sentence traditionally has.

Change: Calculator...
Speed Multiplier buffed to 85
MP Multiplier buffed to 120
MP Growth buffed to 9
CT skill removed.
Multiplier of 3 skill removed.
Calculable Spells: Fire, Ice, Bolt, Poison, Cure, Reraise, Regen, Esuna, Blind, Silence, Pray Faith, Dispel, Don't Move, Float, Reflect, Demi.

Reason: Calculator had low stats but a rigged skillset. Switching the two allows for higher character diversity.
CT was removed to prevent CT5, and Multiplier of 3 was removed to prevent easy level calculations.


!Change: Added these cool exclamation marks to all new changes.
Reason: Heeeeeeeell yeaaaaaaaa

Change: Archer PA Multiplier buffed to 140, PA Growth buffed to 40.
Reason: Increase effectiveness of archers as fighters.

Change: Death Sentence set to ignore Cancel: Dead
Reason: Gives it a viable edge over Death. I wish for every status effect to have a use and not be redundant.

Change: Blade Grasp only against bladed weapons. Blade Grasp now only works (B*2/3)% of the time.
Reason: Blade Grasp was too likely to happen and put other evasion skills to shame. Also, the description states it's to be used only against blades.
Change: Arrow Guard set to work against guns.
Reason: Arrow Guard is too weak working only against arrows.

Change: Hamedo set to (Br/2)%.
Reason: Being the spiritual counterpart to Blade Grasp, I feel it appropriate to balance against Blade Grasp. Thus, it is less likely to happen, but works against all weapons within your weapon range and strikes back instead of just evasion.

Change: Mana Shield made penetrable.
Reason: Mana Shield is just far too strong without being penetrable.



Support, testing, and especially suggestions would be most appreciated.
Also, if you feel the need to debate any of my changes, please do. The entire purpose to posting them and posting a reason is so that they can be freely debated. If I can't defend my choice appropriately and logically, then it isn't a choice I need to make.


Dome

You want to balance FFT by only changing numbers? Good luck, 'cause you will need it
Btw, if you are serious about this, use this patch as a starting point
Consolidated Statuses and Item Patch

"Be wise today so you don't cry tomorrow"

MysticKnightFF5

Thanks Dome, and no. There are many doors besides the numbers still open to me, but my primary objective is the numbers.
Also, keep in mind that I'm trying to say aligned with the maker's original goal, so I can't guarantee every skill will be useful. (I.E. Counter Tackle will still go out of date.)

Generic19

January 07, 2012, 05:05:35 am #4 Last Edit: January 07, 2012, 05:40:23 am by Generic19
Questions:
Does this patch aim to reduce the ability to 'abuse' the system?

How are you going to deal with skills like abandon and blade grasp?

Are you going to alter any statuses (blind I'm looking at you)?

Brave and faith modification, in or out?

Will brave and faith work the same as they do now, or will they be altered, like something FFT: Arena uses?  I assume brave and faith will remain standard or else it would fall under formula modification?

Will Two swords and/or two hands be altered?  

---

As far as suggestions...  I'm not sure two hands even needs to be in the game.  I think perhaps making more weapons 'forced two hands', and then greatly increasing their WP, is a more interesting solution that is easier to balance (knight swords, spears).

I'd like to see bows get a big WP boost.  What do you think about archers in general?

Lastly, what are your plans for magic in general?  I know one route is to decrease ct on spells (along with speed alterations across the board), to try to keep things more balance late late game.  I think it would be interesting to keep slightly longer charge times then some other patches, and instead have higher spell damage.  I think it would give it a different 'feel' (more faster spells vs less stronger spells).

Dome

Questions
What are you going to do with Mp Switch + Move Mp-Up?
Blade Grasp?
Golem?
Ct5Holy?
Orlandu?

"Be wise today so you don't cry tomorrow"

MysticKnightFF5

January 07, 2012, 12:54:28 pm #6 Last Edit: January 07, 2012, 10:43:15 pm by Dunkelritter Luna
Quote from: Generic19 on January 07, 2012, 05:05:35 am
Questions:
Does this patch aim to reduce the ability to 'abuse' the system?

How are you going to deal with skills like abandon and blade grasp?

Are you going to alter any statuses (blind I'm looking at you)?

Brave and faith modification, in or out?

Will brave and faith work the same as they do now, or will they be altered, like something FFT: Arena uses?  I assume brave and faith will remain standard or else it would fall under formula modification?

Will Two swords and/or two hands be altered?  

---

As far as suggestions...  I'm not sure two hands even needs to be in the game.  I think perhaps making more weapons 'forced two hands', and then greatly increasing their WP, is a more interesting solution that is easier to balance (knight swords, spears).

I'd like to see bows get a big WP boost.  What do you think about archers in general?

Lastly, what are your plans for magic in general?  I know one route is to decrease ct on spells (along with speed alterations across the board), to try to keep things more balance late late game.  I think it would be interesting to keep slightly longer charge times then some other patches, and instead have higher spell damage.  I think it would give it a different 'feel' (more faster spells vs less stronger spells).

1) In certain respects, yes. I don't plan on fixing infinite chaos swords/chirijiradens from throw or any other "issues" like that. Any game designers will tell you some exploits were purposely included, and I have no way of knowing which exploits were on purpose. Instead, I will focus on balancing all generic classes against eachother and all special classes against eachother.

2) For blade grasp, FDC has been in development of a tool that I do wish to employ for this mod. This tool will be able to modify blade grasp's effectiveness-as far as I know. For abandon, I am still unsure.

3) I will be altering many of the statuses. Especially silence.

4) Since it was the designer's original intent to allow Br/Fa moding, I will be keeping it.

5) It would not fall under formula modification assuming I use Fury/Will, however I will not be implementing that if I can help it.
I'm not sure how I'll be counteracting low faith modding, but it no matter what I decide to do, it won't be difficult.

6) I do wish to reduce two swords to 55% damage per strike and reduce two hands to 150% per strike. The reason for two swords being reduced to what is essentially 100% damage is because of the ability to wield multiple passive effects at the same time. (I.E. Excalibur + Save The Queen) In addition, Attack Up will be reduced to 125%. Arcane Strength will not be modified.

--
Suggestions:
1) Forced two hands does not give the bonus two hands the skill does. If I do implement forced two hands as the only means of using, then those weapons will have much higher WP. In addition, two swords would be forced into being innate only.

2) Bows would get a very small WP boost--perhaps 1 per, 2 per on the higher tiers. I was thinking of giving archers in general a high PA boost, and a slight HP decrease. The purpose being not just to make them skilled with bows, but giving purpose behind giving an archer equip polearms. They would, if I choose to do this, be one of the highest damaging classes, but if I choose to do that, I will be weakening the bows.

--
Quote from: Dome on January 07, 2012, 05:57:28 am
Questions
What are you going to do with Mp Switch + Move Mp-Up?
Blade Grasp?
Golem?
Ct5Holy?
Orlandu?

1) IIRC, there is a hack developed that allows penetration of MP Switch. If this is correct, then I intend to make it penetrable and leave it at that. If not, then there is a good chance I'll be keeping it. The reason being, for all the counters that are currently allowed, MP Switch is the only one that works only once per turn.

2) Refer to the above Q&A with Generic19.

3) Golem will likely see a huge CT and MP cost boost. Mostly the MP cost. I honestly can't think of another way that doesn't break the rules.
Tha is, until I clicked on him and noticed a variable set to 200. While I am still looking into my options, chances are likely that the CT/MP editing will be what I do, though I am still unsure.

4) The calculator set as a whole will be seeing some huge changes. I understand the designers knew exactly how rigged calculator was and whatnot--after all, they kept him the same in WotL and added a "ban calculator" rule in the PvP. That being said, I'm giving them the finger on this one and greatly weakening calculator, while at the same time the calculator will see major buffs to his stats. CT5 as a skill will be removed. Holy will not longer be cast-able through Math.

5) Orlandu is Orlandu. Every game has one, and in this respect, I don't intend to change that. He will be weakened, but only to compensate for everybody else being weakened. The idea is to keep him OP, but not rigged.

----

INTEL UPDATES:
1) MP Switch will be made penetrable.
I.E. You have 100 Mana, enemy deals 200 damage. 100 HP damage received.

2) Golem will have a percentage chance of working, as well as a higher MP cost.

3) Abandon reduced to a percentage of C-EV. Percentage decided later.

4) Blade Grasp will now work only against bladed weapons.

doriantoki

Quote4) Blade Grasp will now work only against bladed weapons.


You are my hero.  :)

I believe this was the developer's original intent with this skill, anyway.  After all, it is called blade grasp, and we already have a skill that blocks projectiles (arrow guard).

RavenOfRazgriz

"Being the only reason to ever use Geomancy."

Um.

Um.

Um.

Um.

Have you played FFT?  Geomancer SSCC is (for the most part) one of the easier SSCCs because you can tag and run Geomancy all day.  Instant, unevadable, costless damage at a far range and multi-hitting.  Geomancy is good to the point it actually had its range lessened in that-mod-that-shall-not-be-named back when it was doing what you want to do. 

Just saying, rebalancing the game means knowing a lot more about it than basic methods of breaking it such as Martial Arts + Two Swords, Math Skill + non-Calculator + Flare, MP Switch + Move-MP UP, Golem + Hamedo, or other simple game-breaking combos you overlooked.

I like how your Abandon fix makes it weaker than Caution 100% of the time in any battle with more than one opponent.  You're not thinking things through.  There's a reason an "Abandon increases Evasion by 1.5x" hack exists.

If you're not applying the "Death Sentence pierces Cancel: Dead" hack, then Death Sentence is still derpy.

You want to fix magic in the early/mid game?  Switch which classes learn Half of MP and Magic AttackUP (Summoner and Wizard, respectively), move Elemental Rods to Chapter 2, and reduce the MAM of Wizards by 10.  Done and derped.

MysticKnightFF5

@dori It says in the description that it was only supposed to block swords, and as far as mechanics go, it makes sense.
So yes, in this instance, it's not even about balance, it's about fulfilling the maker's original intent.
Arrow Guard will, if I can, be made to defend against guns as well.

@RoR I'll tackle that Geomancy issue when it comes by.
As for those gamebreaking combos I overlooked, I've made a grand total of a dozen changes so far? This isn't even somewhat near to almost being 1/10 of the way done. Don't be so impatient.
Also, to what percentage did I set Abandon to? I don't remember ever mentioning to what degree I fixed Abandon. That aside, Abandon was meant for 1v1s and Caution was meant for fighting multiple enemies. So even if that does happen to end up being true, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Also, thank you for the reminder. Yes, I will set Death Sentence to ignore Cancel: Dead.

Yes, that is an option, though an extreme option. I'd much rather stick as close to my goal as possible, and that means attempting to balance them without changing around shop inventories and skills.

Quman

Eh, if I'm going to be watching this thread I may as well create an account so I can contribute.

Quote from: Dunkelritter Luna on January 07, 2012, 12:54:28 pm
Quote from: Generic19 on January 07, 2012, 05:05:35 amAs far as suggestions...  I'm not sure two hands even needs to be in the game.  I think perhaps making more weapons 'forced two hands', and then greatly increasing their WP, is a more interesting solution that is easier to balance (knight swords, spears).


Forced two hands does not give the bonus two hands the skill does. If I do implement forced two hands as the only means of using, then those weapons will have much higher WP. In addition, two swords would be forced into being innate only.


It's not really unbalanced to wield a knight sword or spear with a shield, is it? If not, I'd prefer to just uncheck the "two swords" box in FFTPatcher for anything you don't want to be dual wielded (such as knight swords, spears, or the <nothing> at the top if the item list that represents fists, if you want to disable that combo.) Allowing the player to choose between carrying a shield or doing more damage with their weapon sounds more interesting than forcing one of those options on them.

VincentSarius

Quote from: Quman on January 14, 2012, 05:21:30 pm
Eh, if I'm going to be watching this thread I may as well create an account so I can contribute.

Forced two hands does not give the bonus two hands the skill does. If I do implement forced two hands as the only means of using, then those weapons will have much higher WP. In addition, two swords would be forced into being innate only.

It's not really unbalanced to wield a knight sword or spear with a shield, is it? If not, I'd prefer to just uncheck the "two swords" box in FFTPatcher for anything you don't want to be dual wielded (such as knight swords, spears, or the <nothing> at the top if the item list that represents fists, if you want to disable that combo.) Allowing the player to choose between carrying a shield or doing more damage with their weapon sounds more interesting than forcing one of those options on them.


Actually, I'd wager to say Knight Sword+Shield is pretty damn powerful.
Considering the very high weapon evade on Knight Swords combined with their Always: buffs and formula of (Pa*Br/100)*WP they make better one-handed weapons than two-handed in my humble opinion. Of course, weapon guard isn't the greatest reaction abilities but when you have something like Excalibur or Defender with 60 and 35 W.Ev respectively it becomes pretty strong.

Re: Geomancers.
Elemental is a very powerful skillset as it is. To illustrate a point, let's take Ramza as a Geomancer at lvl.50 and assume he has been in that job from lvl.1. He will have 11 PA and 10 MA, the formula for Elemental damage is [(PA + 2) / 2] * MA. So his damage on a neutral comp target will be 65 if he's completely naked. If we throw in say a Rune Blade, Bracer, Power Sleeve, and Flash Hat we have 113 damage. Which is instant, ranged, has a chance for a status effect, and is completely unevadable short of being immune to the element of the Geomancy used. I find the closest comparison to be a Mythril Gun, which is about half that damage. The only thing off about this-set up is the lack of movement, but you don't need a high move when you have such a good ranged attack.

Which has it's own issue, namely that arguably the two best Elementals Carve Model and Hell Ivy are incredibly abundant, have terrifying status effects (Stop and Petrify are really, really strong), and are non-elemental. Now if you still want to increase the chances of status effects, I'd probably shuffle them around. Have the less dangerous or fatal status effects be on uncommon terrain while stuff like Slow, Blindness, or Silence are common with the Don't Xs and Sleep middle-of-the-road. Probably throw in Earth elemental to Carve Model, Pitfall, and Helly Ivy as well though that may be overkill, it would add an interesting element to Geomancers as well, whereby they could act as emergency healers should there be a need but you'd be sacrificing upwards of two equipment slots for the luxury (Though this does break rule #2). Of course this depends on how you change the statuses to work.

As for my own questions:
1) How do you plan to internally balance Draw Out seeing as how 5 of the skills are identical?
2) What about Axes/Flails? In particular, Throw Axe when done with a Slasher does tremendous damage for how early it becomes available.
3) The Knight skillset and Archer skillsets, any alterations? The higher level Charges are redundant and serve only as a waste of data, the Knight skillset I assume will see increased percentages. In which case I have to bring up Ninjas and Speed Break being able to reduce a unit, any unit to basically uselessness in 2~3 turns. Disregard this if you decide to use the Ruins from the Zalbag skillset.
4) Rare equipment. Some of the items flagged as rare are quite funny, the worst offender has to be the Chameleon Robe. Something which for most robe wearers is less preferable to the Wizard Robe, it's only remarkable moment being Cancel: Dead, yet it's flagged rare. Gastrafitis is another offender that comes to mind, essentially a parallel of the Ultimus Bow yet a rare flag. Gastra could be debatable seeing as how the Xbow formula is certainly better than bow while offering you better defense.
5) How exactly do you plan to edit monsters. There are a few redundancies around which could be fixed. Perhaps the most glaring is the astronomical MA growth on monsters who never use MA, it's not harmful in any way but it looks very silly. The other matter is monster damage. The fact is aside from a few monsters (Hydra family, Behemoths, Demons, Sacred, Cocatoris, and Red Chocobos) the damage becomes laughable later in the game. Something caused primarily by gear dependency (I'll touch more on this), in other words since monsters rely entirely on natural growths for damage and health they need spectacular growths or unique skills to be threatening later in the game once your evasion, health, and damage have inflated due to most classes being gear dependent.

The exact reason why those 11 monsters are threatening are because they either have unevadable ranged attacks that work off of their vast MA, they have a lot of HP, they have ways to do immense amounts of damage to you (or in the cases of Hydras and Tiamats break the damage cap), or they have staggering movement and speed. Of these the Sacred and Cocatoris are probably the least threatening since one is a melee attacker with low move while the other ones damage formula for his unevadable gimps him and he lacks the godlike HP. The demons are close by since their growths are actually not too far ahead of humans but they have numerous unevadabe magical attacks and in the case of the Ultima Demon, insane melee damage as well. The Tiamat is of course Crown King of the Monster Kingdom since he boasts everything. He has an unevadable attack (2 in fact), Dark Behemoth levels of HP (in fact slightly better), 4 move+Fly for mobility, the strongest friggin percentile attacks sans Gravija (on par with Demi2), and he has among the best speed growth in the game, capping out at 14 @ lvl.91. His only weaknesses being vulnerable to all status effects (He also has no evasion but frankly with this much HP and Counter it's hardly a weakness).

Of course you shouldn't make all monsters have something like 200 PAM/39 PAC since this would make Chapter 1 nigh impossible. The only other ways are by either increasing their growths (won't work since they'll scale too fast) or altering the formula so that damage scales at the proper pace throughout the game, waxing and waning but staying within the norm. They could also use some Status Immunities which make logical sense. Like, how exactly is a Ghost vulnerable to Death Sentence or Dead. Or a Great Marlboro vulnerable to ANYTHING seeing as how it's basically a mobile virus factory.

6) Finally. Any plans to normalize Magic to Physical damage? This I admit would be an arduous task that I have not seen in any FFT rebalance mod but something that I've always found it a glaring omission. Magic starts out undeniably better than physical damage because of how it's formula provides a higher amount of base damage with just natural MA. While physical damage always relies on either WP for it's leaps in damage or items such as the Power Sleeve/Bracer/Twist Headband. Of course natural PA growth also serves to lengthen the gap. To illustrate this point lets take two extreme examples.

First, we have a lvl.19 Male Ninja in Chapter 2. Second, we have a lvl.19 Female Wizard with Shiva in Chapter 2.
Both are completely naked. The Male Ninja will do 90 damage if both punches connect on a single target while the Summoner will do 336 to a single target assuming 70 Faith on both, probably far more overall damage due to the large AoE. She can only cast Shiva twice off of her natural MP but that's still 672 damage, more than enough to kill potentially 4 targets in optimal cases.

Now let's take a look at these two fully decked out at lvl.99 with just store-bought stuff.
Ninja has on a Twist Headband/Power Sleeve/Bracer for a total of 26 PA/15 Sp, while the Wizard is decking a Wizard Rod/Flash Hat/Wizard Robe/Magic Gauntlet giving him 28 MA/12 Sp. The Ninja will do 946 damage to a single target of evadable damage, while the Wizard will do 999 damage with anything above the 3 basic elementals of unevadable damage. However, if you add Martial Arts to the Ninja or alternatively equip Knight Swords w/ Two Hands on say Ramza, you would be doing over 1000 per turn for no cost or charge time. This scaling really begins to pick-up around Chapter 3, whereby magic slowly whittles out as Swordskillers and Ninjas/Monks/Lancers/etc.. pick-up in damage. This is compounded by Wizard Robes, Triangle Hats, and Elemental Rods occupying a completely illogical location in terms of gear progression. They come when Mages are dominating, and make them dominate even longer while having physical classes continue to suck as far as damage is concerned.

I'd probably decrease MAMs while fiddling around with growths and change that particular gear availability to later on while increasing PAM for physical classes sans Monks, Monks are always useful just from having so flexible a skillset. The problem later on can be dealt with just by having Two Swords be just an innate, only work with certain item classes, or changing how goddamn strong fists are. It simply does not make sense that fists are the strongest weapon on the planet aside from the goddamn Chaos Blade.

Quman

Quote from: VincentSarius on January 25, 2012, 10:37:23 pmActually, I'd wager to say Knight Sword+Shield is pretty damn powerful.
Considering the very high weapon evade on Knight Swords combined with their Always: buffs and formula of (Pa*Br/100)*WP they make better one-handed weapons than two-handed in my humble opinion. Of course, weapon guard isn't the greatest reaction abilities but when you have something like Excalibur or Defender with 60 and 35 W.Ev respectively it becomes pretty strong.


That's only if you assume that knight swords aren't nerfed in some way. Personally, I'd prefer to weaken the knight swords so the player has more than one viable option rather than forcing the player to use knight swords with both hands, but I suppose it does make sense for those sorts of weapons to require both hands anyway, so I won't be upset if Luna goes that way. Still, it would be nice for the two hand support ability to actually be useful for some weapons.

MysticKnightFF5

January 27, 2012, 09:02:52 pm #13 Last Edit: January 27, 2012, 09:11:26 pm by Dunkelritter Luna
Quote from: VincentSarius on January 25, 2012, 10:37:23 pm
Actually, I'd wager to say Knight Sword+Shield is pretty damn powerful.
Considering the very high weapon evade on Knight Swords combined with their Always: buffs and formula of (Pa*Br/100)*WP they make better one-handed weapons than two-handed in my humble opinion. Of course, weapon guard isn't the greatest reaction abilities but when you have something like Excalibur or Defender with 60 and 35 W.Ev respectively it becomes pretty strong.

Re: Geomancers.
Elemental is a very powerful skillset as it is. To illustrate a point, let's take Ramza as a Geomancer at lvl.50 and assume he has been in that job from lvl.1. He will have 11 PA and 10 MA, the formula for Elemental damage is [(PA + 2) / 2] * MA. So his damage on a neutral comp target will be 65 if he's completely naked. If we throw in say a Rune Blade, Bracer, Power Sleeve, and Flash Hat we have 113 damage. Which is instant, ranged, has a chance for a status effect, and is completely unevadable short of being immune to the element of the Geomancy used. I find the closest comparison to be a Mythril Gun, which is about half that damage. The only thing off about this-set up is the lack of movement, but you don't need a high move when you have such a good ranged attack.

Which has it's own issue, namely that arguably the two best Elementals Carve Model and Hell Ivy are incredibly abundant, have terrifying status effects (Stop and Petrify are really, really strong), and are non-elemental. Now if you still want to increase the chances of status effects, I'd probably shuffle them around. Have the less dangerous or fatal status effects be on uncommon terrain while stuff like Slow, Blindness, or Silence are common with the Don't Xs and Sleep middle-of-the-road. Probably throw in Earth elemental to Carve Model, Pitfall, and Helly Ivy as well though that may be overkill, it would add an interesting element to Geomancers as well, whereby they could act as emergency healers should there be a need but you'd be sacrificing upwards of two equipment slots for the luxury (Though this does break rule #2). Of course this depends on how you change the statuses to work.

As for my own questions:
1) How do you plan to internally balance Draw Out seeing as how 5 of the skills are identical?
2) What about Axes/Flails? In particular, Throw Axe when done with a Slasher does tremendous damage for how early it becomes available.
3) The Knight skillset and Archer skillsets, any alterations? The higher level Charges are redundant and serve only as a waste of data, the Knight skillset I assume will see increased percentages. In which case I have to bring up Ninjas and Speed Break being able to reduce a unit, any unit to basically uselessness in 2~3 turns. Disregard this if you decide to use the Ruins from the Zalbag skillset.
4) Rare equipment. Some of the items flagged as rare are quite funny, the worst offender has to be the Chameleon Robe. Something which for most robe wearers is less preferable to the Wizard Robe, it's only remarkable moment being Cancel: Dead, yet it's flagged rare. Gastrafitis is another offender that comes to mind, essentially a parallel of the Ultimus Bow yet a rare flag. Gastra could be debatable seeing as how the Xbow formula is certainly better than bow while offering you better defense.
5) How exactly do you plan to edit monsters. There are a few redundancies around which could be fixed. Perhaps the most glaring is the astronomical MA growth on monsters who never use MA, it's not harmful in any way but it looks very silly. The other matter is monster damage. The fact is aside from a few monsters (Hydra family, Behemoths, Demons, Sacred, Cocatoris, and Red Chocobos) the damage becomes laughable later in the game. Something caused primarily by gear dependency (I'll touch more on this), in other words since monsters rely entirely on natural growths for damage and health they need spectacular growths or unique skills to be threatening later in the game once your evasion, health, and damage have inflated due to most classes being gear dependent.

The exact reason why those 11 monsters are threatening are because they either have unevadable ranged attacks that work off of their vast MA, they have a lot of HP, they have ways to do immense amounts of damage to you (or in the cases of Hydras and Tiamats break the damage cap), or they have staggering movement and speed. Of these the Sacred and Cocatoris are probably the least threatening since one is a melee attacker with low move while the other ones damage formula for his unevadable gimps him and he lacks the godlike HP. The demons are close by since their growths are actually not too far ahead of humans but they have numerous unevadabe magical attacks and in the case of the Ultima Demon, insane melee damage as well. The Tiamat is of course Crown King of the Monster Kingdom since he boasts everything. He has an unevadable attack (2 in fact), Dark Behemoth levels of HP (in fact slightly better), 4 move+Fly for mobility, the strongest friggin percentile attacks sans Gravija (on par with Demi2), and he has among the best speed growth in the game, capping out at 14 @ lvl.91. His only weaknesses being vulnerable to all status effects (He also has no evasion but frankly with this much HP and Counter it's hardly a weakness).

Of course you shouldn't make all monsters have something like 200 PAM/39 PAC since this would make Chapter 1 nigh impossible. The only other ways are by either increasing their growths (won't work since they'll scale too fast) or altering the formula so that damage scales at the proper pace throughout the game, waxing and waning but staying within the norm. They could also use some Status Immunities which make logical sense. Like, how exactly is a Ghost vulnerable to Death Sentence or Dead. Or a Great Marlboro vulnerable to ANYTHING seeing as how it's basically a mobile virus factory.

6) Finally. Any plans to normalize Magic to Physical damage? This I admit would be an arduous task that I have not seen in any FFT rebalance mod but something that I've always found it a glaring omission. Magic starts out undeniably better than physical damage because of how it's formula provides a higher amount of base damage with just natural MA. While physical damage always relies on either WP for it's leaps in damage or items such as the Power Sleeve/Bracer/Twist Headband. Of course natural PA growth also serves to lengthen the gap. To illustrate this point lets take two extreme examples.

First, we have a lvl.19 Male Ninja in Chapter 2. Second, we have a lvl.19 Female Wizard with Shiva in Chapter 2.
Both are completely naked. The Male Ninja will do 90 damage if both punches connect on a single target while the Summoner will do 336 to a single target assuming 70 Faith on both, probably far more overall damage due to the large AoE. She can only cast Shiva twice off of her natural MP but that's still 672 damage, more than enough to kill potentially 4 targets in optimal cases.

Now let's take a look at these two fully decked out at lvl.99 with just store-bought stuff.
Ninja has on a Twist Headband/Power Sleeve/Bracer for a total of 26 PA/15 Sp, while the Wizard is decking a Wizard Rod/Flash Hat/Wizard Robe/Magic Gauntlet giving him 28 MA/12 Sp. The Ninja will do 946 damage to a single target of evadable damage, while the Wizard will do 999 damage with anything above the 3 basic elementals of unevadable damage. However, if you add Martial Arts to the Ninja or alternatively equip Knight Swords w/ Two Hands on say Ramza, you would be doing over 1000 per turn for no cost or charge time. This scaling really begins to pick-up around Chapter 3, whereby magic slowly whittles out as Swordskillers and Ninjas/Monks/Lancers/etc.. pick-up in damage. This is compounded by Wizard Robes, Triangle Hats, and Elemental Rods occupying a completely illogical location in terms of gear progression. They come when Mages are dominating, and make them dominate even longer while having physical classes continue to suck as far as damage is concerned.

I'd probably decrease MAMs while fiddling around with growths and change that particular gear availability to later on while increasing PAM for physical classes sans Monks, Monks are always useful just from having so flexible a skillset. The problem later on can be dealt with just by having Two Swords be just an innate, only work with certain item classes, or changing how goddamn strong fists are. It simply does not make sense that fists are the strongest weapon on the planet aside from the goddamn Chaos Blade.

Wall of text. tl;dr I got derprolled on this day.
Thanks for the input though xD
1) I really didn't think of how strong geo COULD be. In response, I'll lower the Y and make hit% of status effects based on how strong of a status it is, but don't go thinking these all-powerful statiii will stay that way.

2) I honestly do not plan to internally balance Draw Out. That was clearly grafted as a "step ladder" based skillset--seeing as how you're limited by when in the story you're allowed to use the skills.

3) I didn't think about axes/flails, honestly, and really nothing comes to mind for fixing them. If you'd like to make a suggestion, or anyone else, I'm all ears.

4) The knight stat breaks I am unsure of. RoR has suggested I remove them, and FFT 1.3 has suggested I make them debuffs that resemble the statbreak effects. Neither of them are really...my style. I've put some thought into forcing a CT on them. As for archer skillset, I am trying to avoid revamping or removing skills or skillsets. Thus, I have chosen to reduce CT so that later charge skills are still viable. Do not expect to land a charge +20, all the same.\...not unless they've been sleep'd...

5) I will be fixing rares to only include excal, chaos, chiri, etc. However, I believe they set it like that on purpose in order to prevent the random gear from selecting those.

6) I believe monsters were made that way on purpose, and honestly, I probably won't change them. If you'd like to come up with ideas for them, again, I'm all ears and may find them a good enough idea to implement. The main thing I want for this patch, is the ability to shove it in the maker's face and tell them, "this is how it should've been made. Idiots."

7) I do intend to fix the living CRAP out of magic vs physical. =D
That is at the very top of my to-do list, and thus far, meta game calculations has proven... not to go my way. Sorry for the lack of changes in a while, I've been testing in-game and metagame for the changes I have made while waiting for FDC's formula hack compilation thing to come out.

--

@Quman
I do have three options...nerfing knight swords attack, nerfing knight swords always, or nerfing knight swords less so and adding forced 2hand.
I'm learning towards a mix of nerfing the knight swords and nerfing their always abilities.

VincentSarius

Hehe, apologies for that massive wall of text. I actually only noticed how huge it was after I hit post.

1) Sounds good. I didn't know there was a way to change the % chance for Geo effects individually.

2) Hmm, I agree. It was more so a comment re: your previous statements about internally balancing skillsets. Though as a side note, I'd probably spread around the status effects at 12.5% chances seeing as how early on Draw Out is really rather weak. It only truly picks up in Chapter 4, by which point quite a few of the damage Draw Outs are already obsolete. Though, formula tweaking or item stat tweaking could fix this as well. Alternatively, level the curve of Draw Outs. Make the early ones stronger, the later ones weaker so that there isn't a "Oh hey, I can use Muramasa now. Draw Out is useful!"

3) Well, flails frankly are probably okay on second thought. They are roughly in-line with Sword WP and the strongest store-bought Flail (16 WP) becomes available later than the Slasher. They could still use a new formula to be honest though, PA*F is absolutely horrendous. Flails could probably work fine off of a PA*WP (though that would be boring and they'd need some kind of gimmick to be on par with Swords) or alternatively cap the bottom F at something above well..1. My change would probably be WP*[(PA/1.5)...PA] this keeps their damage respectable without being laughable luck based (a lvl.30 Ninja would do 66 to 99 damage with a Flame Whip following vanilla stats).

As for Axes, well you have to nerf their WP to be more in line with swords . 16 WP on a Slasher, which is shop available just after I believe Orbonne series is stupid strong when coupled with Throw. The proposed changes are either removing the ability Throw Axe, or changing it's shop availability to the same as the Morning Star's (or changing the WP). This of course leaves making Axes a worth-while weapon, and for that I'm strongly in favor of them being WP*WP. The Slasher will do obscene damage but considering it's a Forced Two-Hands weapon that provides neither range, nor anything else sans damage I find it to be okay.

4) Hmm, CT'd stat breaks. Interesting. I'm un-sure how that work actually, would have to see it in action but it would be an interesting take. Though honestly, I would still remove Speed Break unless it get's such a long CT that it could only hit a sleeping target. Good idea regarding Archers, nothing to add there.

5) I think it had more to do with forcing their availability to be later on then you would reasonably get it from a random battle. Which is silly. An e.level 16 item available only after Queklain always made me laugh. Re: End-Game Weapons I agree, but I'd take away the ability to throw them from enemy Ninjas. Having them flagged rare but be easily obtainable via Catch is pointless. Of course, this makes Catch completely useless so it'd probably need to be changed to do something else.

6) For the most basic of changes. Give them some status immunities to shit that makes sense, buff their C.Ev, changed MAM and MAC for classes that don't use MA for anything to 100/100, give 1-panel 1-target monsters 4 move, increase their SpC. If possible, allow them to use their Monster Skill-skill always when on the enemy team but require the same rules as vanilla when recruited. This will still make them weaker than a human but at least somewhat of a creditable threat instead of lolfreexp.

7) I eagerly await to see what they are and brutally dissect them.

MysticKnightFF5

2) I will be internally balancing skillsets for everything else, since their skills can be learned anytime you want, which means summoner will be seeing some changes. Half of its skillset worth, in fact.

3) 4, formulae may not be modified. One of the rules I've found unfortunate up to this point, but will have to cope. My thoughts is simply unflagging Slasher as throw-able and balancing flails/axes against eachother, with flails being given 2 range.

4) I was informed that moving while charging forces it to end--enter, the derp AI which can't be fixed. I have a lot of options here, and the one I'm favoring at the moment is simply not allowing the AI to use stat breaks, seeing as they're useless unless a human is using them anyways.

5) I stated earlier that I didn't plan to fix the exploits, such as catching chaos and chiri or item duping through best fit. I will later if it really becomes that big of a deal for everybody, and if someone finds a reasonable fix to item duping.
I do not consider utterly removing a feature to be reasonable.

6) I agree with the status immunity, as well as C.Ev for monsters that make sense (panther and goblin), but I am unsure of the SP and move changes. I'll ask RoR about that Monster Skill thing, although I do have an idea which may work similarly. Remove overlapping skills, thus giving every breed in the tree their own "special skill".

7) I look forward to that, you've been helpful enough that I'd actually like to discuss more with you on IRC.

VincentSarius

3) That could work. Axes have higher damage but less range, Flails have less damage but are ranged. This at least makes flails more useful, Axes though are still pretty much useless. Yeah, the rule about not modifying formulas is quite restrictive.

4) Seems like an easy fix to it. Statbreaks rarely ever mattered from the AI, I agree.

6) Well, the issue with move range is more so to bring the melee monsters more in line with each other. As it is, you have Behemoths and Panthers who can actually reach you. And then you have Minotaurs, Bombs, and Goblins who will never reach a class with a ranged attack. Increasing their C.Ev partially fixes this problem (eventually they will reach you because of double-turns, your chances of killing them before they even reach you is less) but the additional move would help. As for Speed, I was actually thinking about how it is fine at the start since the player lacks Speed increasing equipment and their speed is about the same as a naked human. However, once the player gets access to Green Berets, Sprint Shoes, and the Godly God of God Thief Hat. Around when the player gets access to shop bought Thief Hats (after Limberry) he'll be around lvl.50 a Cocatoris (reasonably fast monster) will have 10 Speed while a Geomancer has 8 natural, so 10 with Thief Hat. Reasonable. While if we take a Living Bone, he only has 8 natural speed so he will be considerably slower than the Geo. This is compounded by the fact that the human will also have superior HP and damage. I'd just think balancing speed such that certain monsters will be around the same speed as an equipped human would make them not only a more reasonable addition to your party as well as a more-or-less equal threat to generic human enemies. Of course, this would need testing just to see how it all fits together at the end.

7) Answered in PM


MysticKnightFF5

So yes, this has been cancelled.
I began this project believing the forums needed one, but one was almost finished anyways. As Asmo was the one who designed the framework for it, I have faith it will be decent enough.
http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7431.msg166203#msg166203
Enjoy.