• Welcome to Final Fantasy Hacktics. Please login or sign up.
 
March 18, 2024, 11:28:56 pm

News:

Use of ePSXe before 2.0 is highly discouraged. Mednafen, RetroArch, and Duckstation are recommended for playing/testing, pSX is recommended for debugging.


Suggestions

Started by Ilmauriciano, March 02, 2014, 10:48:37 am

draco13

Ah, sorry about that.  Didn't know about the edit function.  And I guess I just kinda forgot that it was a mod with the thrill of just getting some ideas out there.  But as for how it could work, I don't know, maybe send Snake sneaking through a group of enemies to interact with something in the environment to help the others while they're holding off a strong foe?  It was just an idle thought of how to use Snake's skills.

I guess I just got lucky with the hammer then, which is odd because usually whenever I ask RNG-sus for a favor he responds by stabbing me in the face.

I really do have trouble remembering this is a mod sometimes.  I've tried one other mod for FFT.  It did not impress.  Nothing like trying to give a character regen and ending up tackling the poor bastard.
  • Modding version: PSX & WotL

Nyzer

To make that work you'd not only have to be on a map that forcibly separates Snake from the rest of the party and keeps it that way (because otherwise there's no plot reason as to why Dante can't just self-Quick to the same interaction, or why the player can't just brute force through with any other character) but you'd also have to account for a player not using Snake's base job or skillset.

Anything we might do along the lines of "correcting" what players might do in that regard would effectively force Snake into a box; the player would lose the freedom to grow Snake the way they like if that way wasn't "the stealth guy". IIRC Elric once toyed with the idea of giving the Five exclusive job trees, which would have been a direction that could better support such a setup, but that idea was discarded when he realized how badly it would limit general job progression/access. And that was before the decision was made to make Jot5 feature significantly more event/Mark battles than FFT.

It's just far better to let the player have the option to use Snake's swift stealth, but not to enforce it.

As for Alma, I also forgot to mention that special fights like that one are supposed to lean heavily in the player's favor (a bit like the WotL Delita fights, just not as braindead easy), to make up for forcing you to play pre-rolled characters that you can't customize. That's why Alma, Rad, Lavian and Alicia all have slightly more job progression than Ramza will at that point. (Aside: the plot explanation for her initially superior combat prowess is that Ramza's arm was badly broken during/following the Altima battle in FFT, and it's taken some time to work it back up to fighting condition. Look at the Brave Story letters if you want to learn about a few other things like that!)

Also, here's a little tip for you: Don't fall into the FFT special character trap. The Five have great baseline jobs, but their skillsets are all meant to be paired with something. If you look at what they've got, you'll notice there's very little for reliable/multi-target buffing/debuffing/healing. As tempting as it is to grind out all of their cool base skills first, quite a few skills from the second tier of jobs fill gaps that greatly benefit you. This isn't FFT where the special characters are staggered out until later in the game and come preloaded with jobs unlocked (I mean some of them will be, just not your starting roster), the enemies almost exclusively have weak skillsets, status effects are nearly pointless, and generic jobs suck.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

draco13

Alright I see your point about Snake.

As for the "special character trap," I've had very little chance to fall into it.  I came into this from WotL and that first battle against the skeletons kicked my ass first time around.  It got to the point where it was down to one on one and I realized that I couldn't kill the skeleton faster than it could heal, so I exited out and started over, using the Disgaea strategy(see DOGPILE!) and I was BARELY able to squeak past.  It really hammered the point in that I needed to make sure and make sure that each of my guys could use items, and not to go to my preferred strategy of splitting up the party to take out multiple enemies at once.  Add in the fact that I could only use base job and chemist for the Barious Hill fight and I was MORE than happy to branch out a bit.

On a related note, was the arithmetician's JP movement skill from WotL or the original?  Because if it was original, then why did you guys decide to go with a different formula?  [It's entirely possible you didn't and I either don't remember right, or the original is different.]  Keep in mind I'm not being sarcastic, I am genuinely curious.

Finally, I have mixed feelings about the fact that just about every ability has an MP cost.  Don't get me wrong, some skills are kinda broken if you can just spam them forever,(see Holy Knight and vanilla Ramza's Mettle abilities) but at the same time that leaves me worried about if I can-for instance- make Ramza a black mage without completely forsaking his ability to do anything else in the battle.  I understand that you ARE going for a game that relies more on actual strategy rather than making every character a force of nature, but at the same time making sure that that MP doesn't go to waste, or that my more magically inclined characters weren't totally useless once they were out of MP was one of the things that really helped make my ability choices feel great, as if I'd helped to train a truly well-rounded and flexible company of heretics.  I guess my issue is that it makes sense for some abilities to have an MP cost, but it seems like some of the others are either 'overpriced' or situational enough/ weak enough not to need an MP cost at all.

Of course both of these points can be counter-acted by the fact that I've yet to get very far in the mod, and I'm just not seeing this stuff when you've got a couple more levels under your belt and have a bit more flexibility in both equipment and unlocked jobs.

I freakin' love this mod, but dammit, I've gotten farther, faster in X-COM.  Not that I won't keep at it, but I can only take so much abject failure before I have to put the game up for a while.
  • Modding version: PSX & WotL

Nyzer

Very late response on this, so sorry if you're still around to see me say so. (And if you're not, then I'm not sorry. I won't apologize into a void! :P)

I don't think anything is different about the Move-JP Up skill? But I never used it in the main game myself. I'm pretty sure Gained JP Up was discarded because it cuts out way too many useful support skills instead, since it's far too useful itself. Move-JP Up is better balanced against what else that slot has to offer.

As for MP costs: Ramza and Link both have MP restoration. The Chemist and Guardian jobs have MP restoration. Cloud and Snake's base jobs don't use MP. The Chemist and Squire jobs don't use MP. Regen now restores MP. The Ranger comes with Critical: MP Restore. I'll admit that the game pushes you a little too hard towards getting MP restoration skills, but the balance is way better than in vanilla FFT, and you have so many options that it works out perfectly fine if you just make sure to make use of 'em.

And, yep, the game's supposed to be challenging enough to make you work for it and push you towards better strategies. There will be an easy version released not long after future release versions, though.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

draco13

Hey, still here, and I wasn't saying the difficulty was a bad thing, just illustrating a point, and having tried to play fft Twotl again, I REALLY see how the difficulty and balancing needs work, but keep in mind, I was posting this shortly after getting smeared across the landscape by the Beastmaster story encounter a couple of times.
  • Modding version: PSX & WotL

Nyzer

Yeah, if there's any deliberate aspect of Jot5's difficulty I have to criticize, it'd be that it does throw you right into the thick of things from the get-go. That's part of the reason that you'll be able to recruit a Chocobo from the Soldier Office before that fight when we get the rerelease out - having access to a party member with White Wind Choco Cure should help tide you over until you can pick up AoE healing from the second tier of jobs.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown