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Journey of the Five FAQ + Q/A.

Started by RavenOfRazgriz, April 21, 2013, 02:37:17 am

RavenOfRazgriz

April 21, 2013, 02:37:17 am Last Edit: April 21, 2013, 03:43:50 am by RavenOfRazgriz
I figure the first Chapter's been out long enough to warrant this.  NOTE: If you decide to ask your own question, know I will not tell you anything about the story that isn't already revealed, will not give you any gameplay advice that isn't already listed here, etc. I will only be answering questions related to the design aspects of various parts of Journey of the Five and the kinds of thought processes that went into them.  While my main involvement originally in Journey of the Five was gameplay, I eventually ended up doing a lot of everything so I can offer a lot of insight as long as it follows the above criteria.  Now, onto the "FAQ" part of this OP:

This concept is silly, and you're all silly!

Yeah we know and we don't care, and that's not a question.

How much of this game is actually edited?

Basically all of it.  Firstly, and most obvious as soon as you press the New Game button - the story has been obviously completely rewritten and all the spritework completely redone, setting the game as a sequel to the original FFT we know and love.  This would include a new, fully-functioning World Map to explore as well, allowing you to battle and grind to your heart's content.  Every Description, Help Text, etc. has pretty much all been edited in some way.  The Brave Story has been retooled to follow the Journey of the Five storyline, some unused menu entries have been adapted to create the "Letters, Journals" section where you can learn much about the gap of time between the original game and Journey of the Five, etc.  Obviously, like any FFT mod, this also applies to items, Jobs, stat growths and multipliers, available skills, ASM-related thingamabobbers, and even some things other patches don't touch like the raw stats of monsters themselves along with the effects and interactions of various Status Ailments.  There is also now a more expansive sidequest system (Marks) which will become more prominent as the game progresses.

Help!  I can't seem to unlock more jobs but Base and Chemist!  What do I do?

All Jobs in Journey of the Five require Levels in at least two or more Jobs to unlock.  In this case, the second Job "tier" requires 3 Base 2 Chemist for Knight and Ranger (physical Jobs) and 2 Base 3 Chemist for Priest and Wizard (magical Jobs).   As far as unlocking Jobs beyond that, you're on your own, good luck.  If you're wondering why we chose to make the Job tree this way, there's two answers:

1. AI.
2. To force players to make use of Chemists.

This is important because we know most people will want to run around in the unique Jobs of the Five, but the lack of new Jobs should quickly be a hint that they need to change to Chemist for a while.  This way, the player (you) will be guaranteed to have enough JP in Chemist to at least buy basic Item skills (Potion, Ether, Phoenix Down, Sapling) and in turn will have a much easier time in Chapter 1.

Why does everything always become Crystals?  I want that asshole's Bow Gun!

This originally started as a technical quirk of one of the ASMs we used, and we had intended to fix for the actual release.  However, we found that for various reasons, the game just played better with the 100% Crystal drop rate.  Many Journey of the Five-specific quirks such as the slower JP gain were easily addressed by simply making Crystals more common to ensure the player always had a basic set of skills, and it added more to the strategy and comeback-elements of fights by always having Crystals pop up for the player or enemy to grab.  It also meshed well with the "loot" system of Journey of the Five where every enemy in every fight already drops you an item upon winning - so not being able to get a random Treasure Chest here or there wasn't particularly a bad thing outside of making it impossible to Treasure Chest farm random battles for gear.

Why is the difficulty higher than Vanilla?

Because, we wanted a game that was more reminiscent of a NES or SNES era RPG (I think the Japanese release FFV would be a good example but my memory escapes me at the moment), and we wanted a game that would challenge fans of the original game in ways beyond just adjusting to the new content.  A few fights (namely end-Chapter bosses, a handful of optional battles, etc.) dip into the "Nintendo Hard" area, but this patch is ultimately designed to be playable on a Console once some ASM quirks are worked out, so there will never intentionally be anything that rates "Kaizo Hard" on the difficulty scale or require mass resets + RNG abuse to complete.

Wow, Gil is a lot harder to get! I can't afford Phoenix Downs!  Why?!

Honestly, we're encouraging you to stop between battles and "grind" (or at bare minimum, fight any random encounters you run into naturally on your quest), because the design of the game expects you to have fought more than the bare minimum battles.  If you're skipping all random encounters, you are intentionally making the game more difficult on yourself and your ability to equip your party or keep up with the enemy's skills will reflect that.  Fighting random encounters will not only reward you with (some) Gil, but also a number of consumables equal to the number of enemies you battled against.  Fighting what appears to be a large and complex random battle (the one at Bariaus Hill North should be well known by now) may take a while, but it will offer tons in terms of monetary and consumable rewards as well as plenty of EXP, JP, and Crystals for your characters.  Yes, this means you will be rewarded in random battles directly based on the fight's difficulty, assuming you can win without using tons of Items in the first place.  Which is kind of a small caveat to this - we're also trying to encourage you to explore other means of playing the game beyond "Item, win.", which was a very easy way to beat the original game.  Many "good" things in the original were altered simply to make you look over your in-game tactics and knowledge of the game in general, so you can adapt yourself and have an experience that's actually different from the original game.

Why doesn't X Member of the Five have Y Ability?  He totally should!  This is stupid, you're stupid!

There's actually a short answer to this - FFT has very limited design space, and to make each character feel unique as the Five should, they had to be boiled down to the 'essence' of their character.  (Design space, for those wondering, is a term that simply means how much new and different content can be made before things overlap.  FFT is actually far shorter on this than you'd imagine because it's honestly a very simple game on a mechanical level.)  Basically, we had to pick a particular game or incarnation of that character (when applicable), then further narrow it down to what truly makes that character 'feel' like that character.

For example, Dante is based on his Devil May Cry 3 incarnation where you would choose one 'Devil Style' and are stuck with it for most of the level unless you visit a Goddess Statue.  In the case of Journey of the Five, you "choose" your Devil Style by setting Dante's equipped weapon, and can't get access to Equip Change because Dante can't change his Devil Style mid-battle.  Whereas Link, while he has many weapons known to him such as the Bomb, Boomerang, etc., the thing that truly makes him 'Link' is his great ability to make use of whatever items his current environment give him access to and switch between them on the fly in a tough situation.  This is why Link not only gets Equip Change, but his primary Job gets it innate as well as a learnable Support Ability on top of the ability to use most items without restriction.  Snake focuses on his 'sneaking' skills (Hide, Smoke Break, Sleeper Hold, etc.) but doesn't really get any damage-based skills such as CQC moves or a grenade because this would both not mesh with the majority of his skillset (where Snake is mostly a status-dealer), and would cause a lot of overlap with both generic Jobs and other members of the Five.  Other skillsets such as Martial Arts can make up for Snake's lack of damage-based CQC similarly to how they make up for weaknesses other members of the Five have.  Cloud and Ramza are mostly as you'd expect them to be from Vanilla since there's not as much for them to overlap with, though Cloud lost Cherry Blossom because it's stupid and Ramza lost Throw Stone and Dash because they no longer fit in with his Job, gaining a healing spell instead.

Will you be posting a Master Guide of all the changes in Journey of the Five?

No.  We're designing this as if it's an actual separate game from FFT and not just a mod, so we neither intend to or have reason to give a precise changelog that lays out exactly how everything works for the player.  Part of the fun of exploring a new game is the discovery of awesome skills, combos, etc. and this is intended to be no different.

Well, there's your FAQ.

Yes, there it is.  If you have something to ask that isn't covered here, feel free to ask, and if it doesn't violate anything I said above I MIGHT answer it.  But I promise nothing.

kyozo22

Hey, good read. Just out of curiosity, what consoles are you planning on making this playable on? Psx and Ps2 (modded of course?) Just wondering as would be good to change the Iso to an eboot if possible for use on my psp?

Thanks for reading.
  • Modding version: WotL

RavenOfRazgriz

It'll be compatible with modded PS1, PS2, and PSP EBOOT when all is said and done.  When it works on one it pretty much works on all three.  The bigger issue is actually bugtesting those platforms as none of them are particularly convenient to work with.

kyozo22

Well, that would definately make it one of my favourite all time patches of FFT! Can tell you now that if you can get through the first battle without it crashing then it should be fine - would crash on bartholumes second or third turn.
Seems to be guests that crash it - I imported my file from epsxe and it crashed as soon as Leesha(? olivanders sister) took a turn.

Yeah, so, ramblling aside, that would be pretty great.
  • Modding version: WotL

The Damned

(I suppose I might as well indulge in asking this while preparing.)

About a week or so, Elric mentioned that "Ashley was scripted to be in Jot5 at the beginning. As were Alucard, Marche, Rei (bof3) as well as Crono". As someone who didn't really pay attention to the development of Jot5, I have a couple of simple, related questions:


1. Why is The Five composed of the characters it is outside of the obviously necessary character of Ramza?

2. Of the current Five, who would was the last to get in and why?
"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

That's one of the few things I really can't give you much insight to at all.  The Five was already decided long before I put any investment in Journey of the Five.

Originally there were 10 main characters, including Ashley Riot, Marche, Alucard, Crono, and I think Tir McDohl?, but Elric trimmed it down to 5 before even posting his original topic on the forum.  Why he went with this set of 5 I wouldn't know.  The notes are somewhere around here in a notebook but I've never remembered to ask him to read them over in detail and we never went into super huge detail talking about what his idea was like before it got trimmed down.  (I think it's pretty obvious to say the overall plot to Journey of the Five has changed quite a lot over the progress of Chapter 1, so originally the game was very different from how it is now.)

Jumza

I would Imagine that Elric changed it after realizing that the sprite limit was 9... Just a hunch though ;)
  • Modding version: PSX
Nyzer: Alma teleports out of her own possessed body.
Raijinili: Remember that you're telling a modding community that the game they love could use some fixing.

Elric

April 24, 2013, 09:19:12 pm #7 Last Edit: April 24, 2013, 09:51:33 pm by Elric
Well since I was the only one in the team back then, I guess I have to answer lol.

Honestly, out of all the characters listed, I know the most about Cloud, and the fact that he's already been to Ivalice once
made that choice a bit easier, giving Ramza at least someone familiar to him would ease the adding of 3 completely new people
also appearing in Ivalice.

Link made it in because when I wrote the original "storyboard" of Jot5 Chapter 1 a while before I joined FFH, the goal was
always for Link to be on a quest to find Zelda, as always. Maybe this was because I had just finished beating 7 Zelda games
back to back right before I wrote it, or maybe it wasn't who knows lol.

Snake and Dante I choose at the same time, because they both seemed wonderfully out of place in Ivalice, while they themselves
are what I would see as exact opposites in terms of Heroes. There was always meant to be conflict and bickering between Dante and
Snake, and although a bit of it has been removed, a good portion of it remains in the script. As for why I choose them, I suppose it
was to cater to my own needs.

When I started making events, I had trouble thinking up the actual intros for people. I wanted to have fun with this, as well as make
scenes you would never expect to see in FFT, Cloud gets thrown across a room, Link is playing his flute, Snake is all stealthy with his
little box and Dante is just... well, Dante. These events were too fun to pass up, and while I did have ideas for the other characters slated
to be in Jot5, they didn't seem nearly as doable nor as fun to make.

Another thing to note was that Cloud, Link, Dante and Snake for the above reasons were the first 4 events I ever made, and by the time I
was done with Dante, I had learned the sprite limit and realized how hard it would be to actually fit in 9 or 10 main characters... Impossible.

As for specific reasons why I didn't pick characters, I can go a bit more in depth with that as well.

Alucard was not very hard to lose, I've never personally played SotN, I've seen bits and pieces, and had his intro planned out to be similar
to the beginning of SotN right before he loses his powers, it was just not something I felt I could do proper justice to, since I didn't know
the character of Alucard well enough to properly portray his mannerisms.

Marche, well I never really enjoyed FFTA. Marche was mainly going to be added to pay tribute to Luso joining in WotL. However when
it came down to actually picking the final five, even with how silly the story can be at times, I just couldn't find a good enough way to
implement him into the story, if you can believe that.

Rei is someone I was actually sad to not be able to add in. The thought of eventing his Weretiger transformation just seemed awesome,
but the fact is, there was never a sprite that I could've used for him, or his transformation, so I regrettably had to scrap him. There were no
spriters in Jot5 at this time and even if there had, we already had 1 character with the ability to transform, not to mention there is no
practical way to make him transform mid-battle, which would've been half the fun.

Ashley Riot is another character I simply didn't know enough about, I originally chose him because he is also from Ivalice
but just like Alucard, I didn't feel I could give justice to the character without having to do a lot of research first.

Crono is the only one that I actually had a full event written for, and I still do. It's still undecided whether or not he will ever make an
appearance in Jot5, though I would like to at least make his intro event and include it in the bonus scenes at some point, since it was
a pretty awesome idea. If I hadn't found out about the sprite limit when I did, and hadn't already thought up many ideas for what is now
the Five to fit together, Crono could very well have been one of them.


I hope this answers your question, I honestly never thought I'd have to answer it, so I guess I rambled on a bit more then I should've.
Either way, there it is.
  • Modding version: PSX

The Damned

April 25, 2013, 12:14:29 am #8 Last Edit: April 26, 2013, 12:02:36 am by The Damned
(Hmmm...I wonder why spacing of that reply is off.)

Regardless, considering this was purely a matter of curiosity, yes, that answer things rather well. I would have liked to see Alucard or really anyone but Marche, but that's because I pretty much know all of them a lot better than Link, Snake or Dante; this even though I never really played very much of Vagrant Story unfortunately. I can see why you would have chosen to leave them out even had the sprite limit thing not have been an issue though. For the most part, personality-wise they're still well enough represented. For example, Ramza's politeness and formality is rather identical to Alucard's; only real difference is that Alucard's less naive and Ramza's not a half-vampire.

But enough talk! Have at you! With another question, this time extremely self-serving since I'm trying to list all of the music credits before I post my videos:


1. What's the song used in Cloud's opening cut-scene? I can't seem to find it on the OST and it doesn't sound at all familiar on top of that, so I'm pretty sure it's not the unreleased Epilogue music.


Regardless, thanks for both answer and the celerity of it, Elric. Thanks to you as well, Raven, for at least attempting to answer despite it being of the things weren't certain of.
"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"

Elric

  • Modding version: PSX

Durbs

Quote from: The Damned on April 25, 2013, 12:14:29 am
but that's because I pretty much all of them a lot better than Link, Snake or Dante


Shame on you; play the games. :P
  • Modding version: PSX


Durbs

Quote from: RavenOfRazgriz on April 25, 2013, 04:57:10 pm
Says the guy who never played Devil May Cry or Metal Gear Solid.


DMC only out of the five. What are you talking about, I love MG. +_+
  • Modding version: PSX

The Damned

(I can't find where "Fear After" is from, but oh well. I'll just ask these while I'm putting in annotations in the next four videos.)

This just occurred to me while I'm beginning to annotate the fifth video:

1. Where did the concepts for Tesnya & Romar come from? And why did you choose specifically both to make them twins and use the Cyan sprite for them?


Quote from: Durbs on April 25, 2013, 04:20:55 pm
Shame on you; play the games. :P


What? I've played some Legend of Zelda and Devil May Cry. Just not every much.

As for Metal Gear Solid, despite my vague respect for Kojima saying he'd beat the crap out of Uwe Boll if he ever tried to touch his franchise, I currently still have very little interest in the series, especially since I pretty much know everything that happens.
"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"

Durbs

Quote from: The Damned on April 26, 2013, 04:34:30 am
1. Where did the concepts for Tesnya & Romar come from? And why did you choose specifically both to make them twins and use the Cyan sprite for them?


I can answer that in part (Elric / Raven, correct me if I'm wrong on any of this); having a secret information network of spies in place is actually mildly important to the plotline and Delita himself. Basically, we needed two characters working under him for this express purpose, so we drafted up their shady personalities to accompany that and in came Tesnya and Romar. The general reason for making them brothers was just that it seemed to fit (how many mafias do you know of that don't have family ties?), but there were a few smaller much less significant factors.

As for the Cyan sprite, I think it was by mutual consensus. I'm not sure if I was the one to specifically pick it when I wrote the basic script, but it is definitely the most fitting to their characters I think. (Don't view it as Cyan, my padawan, think of the sprite itself.)
  • Modding version: PSX

The Damned

(Not sure how I feel being referred to as a Padawan. Not exactly a fan of Star Wars either.)

*collective gasp!*

Anyway, I'd ask this the Download thread, but I don't want to post there and clutter up with a question. This is rather specific with regards to the version just released:


1. When you say that Bariaus Hill was nerfed, do you mean the Story Battle for it? Or the Nintendo Hard Bariaus Hill North random encounter?


If it's the latter, then I'll want to try to record it before I finally update. Otherwise, I can finally update to the latest version after recording the past glitch at Zirekile East.
"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"

Elric

ACTUALLY... Tesnya and Romar was completely by chance. When we made the original script, Durbs forgot to write a scene for Bariaus Valley. So i made the scene we currently have there. Though it had still the enemy we first met in Dorter slums. However this did not evolve into being the Twins until the script was later redone to involve Delita. At which time this enemy from dorter was tied into a storyline with Delita and given a twin brother named Romar.
  • Modding version: PSX

RavenOfRazgriz

The Story Encounter was nerfed.  And by "nerfed", I mean Babus lost his Buckler and Spiked Shoes so he's easier to pin into a corner and gang up on.  I don't have any intention of nerfing the "Nintendo Hard" Random Encounters now that they're fewer and farther between since most of them are pretty easy once you get into a mindset that isn't "spam Attack and pray everything dies."

I will say that the Bariaus North one is probably the most difficult of the "Nintendo Hard" Encounters initially but it has weaknesses you can exploit after you begin learning a few more skills.

The Damned

(Ah, I see, on both accounts. Interesting with cards to the Twins.)

I'm glad to hear that actually, even though I didn't find the Story Battle difficult at all, though I can understand where people might have problems with it. I wanted to be able to beat Bariaus Hill North without it being nerfed, though I suppose that me recording getting my ass kicked there (again) wasn't for naught given the interesting things I cataloged for completeness's sake; those should all be fixed by now and if they aren't, well then you'll see Sunday I guess.

Hmmm...I feel bad replying in here without asking a question, but at the same time, I would feel bad monopolizing the Q & A. As usual, I am Damned if I do, Damned if I don't.

That said, given you said we could ask about design aspects and I can't think of anything else to ask that probably wouldn't end up having to be denied to potential spoilers, I'll just ask these two "final" questions for now. I suppose I'm also reminded that I still haven't updated the Human Advancement thread--thanks for the poll fix, Raven--just yet, so design space is on my mind anyway:


1. When it came to design aspects, what were the reasons for sticking Charge on generic-only Squires, for Ranger turning out as it did (read: as all damage abilities with 66% of them as damage + 100% status, but with steep MP costs) and for the changes to Chemist's Items, obvious "need" to eliminate Elixir aside?

2. This is a really basic question that I'm surprised no one has asked: Without spoiling the plot, though one can guess a bit, how many chapters are you guys doing for Journey of the Five, especially now that Chapter 1 has been more or less a large success?
"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

1)

a. Charge is on Squire because at it's core, it's a CT based, weapon ranged, evadable, single-target Swordskill.  That's a lot of qualifiers but on a formulaic level that's all it is.  Putting it on Squire meant I could minimize redundant skillsets for the Five and other Special units, make Squire a useful-ish class if anyone actually bought a Generic, and not need to waste actual Ability slots on it at the same time.  Giving Squire Charge also let me buff and differentiate Ramza's skills a bit more from Vanilla without those changes carrying over to Generics, as well, so I could show his skill growth from his experiences in the original game.

b. Ranger is basically filling a design gap as early game needed a utility skillset and access to some form of debuffs besides Snake.  It draws upon some of the FFTA and FFTA2 archery / gun classes for flavor but it was very much designed bottom-up with the skill utility coming first.

c. Chemist, as you've noticed, isn't designed to be able to lug 99 Phoenix Downs and 99 X-Potions to every single fight, so in order to be worth keeping around as a skillset or even main class, it needed more stuff to do.  Basic buff consumables and a better spread of anti-Status consumables were a simple answer to making Chemist able to compete with other support units like Priests (which also received buffs to their lesser-used support skills) and to make them more worth the added Gil and/or time investment.

2)

It's currently slated to be a 4 Chapter story across 3 disks.  (Oriignally 2 disks but we decided it'd be better to play it safe and just use 3 to make sure we can make everything fit on a technical level.)