Final Fantasy Hacktics

1. Zodiac Compatibility will be lowered from 25 and 50% to 12.5 and 25%
2. Permanent Br and Fa changes will be removed.
3. Stat changes will have Min/Max values and are generally less abusible.
4. Exp/level draining abilities will be removed
5. Weapon breaking/stealing skills will be removed besides on select special characters.
6. Jp values will be severely reduced.
7. Gil rewarded and item costs will be severely reduced and recquire better management.
8. All avaliable shop items can be found in all open towns, no more running between shops.
9. Stat Growths will be less influential and rebalanced but still some difference across the jobs.
10. Status will be reworked and new statii will be added. Faith and Innocent replaced with Mist (regen mp)  Sap (poison mp). Also add Curse (add 25% extra  from all sources until death). Add Astra/Bless (does not remove statii but prevents any new ailments from stacking). Possibly remove Oil.
11.Remove Monster Skill and let beasts freely use their ability slots.
12. Chest status removed so units always crystal. Instead of chests most enemies drop items via end-mission bonus items and poaching.
13. Overhaul of items and weapons, removing underused weapons and potentially adding 1 or 2 new types. Changing several items' graphics. Adding new functionality to some items. Specifics in the Item updates section later.
14. Overhaul of Jobs both generic and Special. Aiming to improve balance, variety,  and genral fun of playing the game.
15. Reworking story and random encounters to be more interesting but not overly difficult, to scale with the party more fluidly.
16. Most abilities will be tweaked with new formulas, pushing to make most use quadratic formulas for straight damage and healing. Almost all abilities will cost Mp and managing status will be more important. Spells will generally have faster CTs. Specifics in Skillset changes later.
17. Remove 2 hands support, instead some weapon classes will always be forced 2 handed with appropriate changes to Wp dmg values.
18. Status buffs will have higher accuracy.
19. Fix poorly translated parts of story dialogue. Add a handful of custom events (events are pretty much the last thing I'll work on though).
20. Implement "Hold X to speed through text" hack
21. Add defensive values to all body and head gear and some shields/weapons
22. A huge overhaul of sprites including personal customs I'm working on

This is where I started, simply editing Jot5 Oracle sprites. A drastic change to the color pallet to make the hair white. Even my first endeavor taught me that portraits are much more difficult than full-body sprites, due to color limitations. How do you think they turned out?




My next work was choosing which sprite to use for my personal hack. I decided to use Bart from Jot5, but I personally didn't think the portrait matched without a cape. So i did a pretty major overall of the portrait. I'm mostly concerned if the colors aren't defined enough and if the cape over the shoulders looks alright. On the left is the original and to the right is my edit.
     

I have begun a few frankenspriting attemps, but making the colors work has made me scrape most. Still one is turning out well, i think, so it might be my next post. Simple stuff for now but I hope to be good enough to fulfill some requests some day.

I have seen a metric crap ton of formulas throughout the forum, so I'd like some opinions to help me decide. I understand balance is all relative and dependent on the game on a grand scale, so I'll explain some changes and numbers I'm thinking of implementing in my patch. In general everything will have higher Hp Multipliers, by 10-15%, and most stats will be slightly altered with stat growths varying between jobs. I plan on using an ASM to assign damage reduction values to shields and some, or maybe all, heavy armors (maybe helms too but probably not). With higher Hp and some protection I hope to make elemental weaknesses and buffs/debuffs more viable. Anyway, the primary user of this formula (replacing formula 8 most likely) would be my Black Mage. I want them to have the following skillset
1. Fire 1 Range 4 Radius 1 Vert 1or2
2. Blizzard 1
3. Thunder 1
4. Wind 1
5. Water 1
6. Earth 1
7. Dark 1
8. Fire 2 Range 4 Radius 2 Vert. 2or3
9. Blizzard 2
10. Thunder 2
11. Wind 2
12. Water 2
13. Earth 2
14. Dark 2
15. Death Range 4 Radius 0or1 Vert 1
16. Flare Range 4 Radius 0-2? Vert. 2-3?
Basically so he covers everything but holy dmg. So a formula that can keep magic relavent without the need for higher Y values from bigger tier 3 or 4 spells. Any advice or opinion or the skillset or other mentioned ideas is also welcome  :)

Also as a side note I'm granting White Mage 3 Cure spells,
so thoughts on a balanced formula for them would be appreciated. I personally feel a percentile heal of 33 or 50, 50 or 66, and 100 maybe?

I am wanting to assign certain, hell maybe most, monster skills to counter flood so that when equiped with cf innate the monster will retaliate with something more interesting than a standard attack. I also want to use this on my Blue Mage. I'm curious if this will work, use only known flagged abilities or if it uses all flagged abilities even if not in the caster's skillset, and if the monster ability animations would cause issue. As a further note what is the easiest way to let Blue Mage share abilities with monsters, animation-wise since i've read that humans look buggy using monster skills and vice versa. Also if I set Blue M/Monster abilities to cost MP would monsters be able to cast them for free? I read this somewhere before and I hope that's the case; because I feel these abilities come as naturally to monsters as running, but for a human mimicking the action would take energy/MP. If there's a better way or ASM than counter flood please tell me!

This one is simple. I just want some experienced opinions on whether MP regen is a good game mechanic in Tactics; whether it be natural and innate 5 or 10% from ASM or through the 'Mist' status provided in other ASM.
Perhaps both innate and Mist. MP costs are important here so I'll say that most spells will keep the same cost as in vanilla. Spells cost MP and most, if not all, have charge times. Magical abilities cost MP and are ussually instant but some take charging. Swordskills cost MP but are instant. Physical attacks have no cost but stronger or aoe phys attacks have charge times and can't follow targets (only target tile not unit). Pretty standard I'd say. But with these in mind does MP regen seem balanced and useful? Also most MP restore/absorb moves are free to cast but may have charge times.

This is probably a very simple noobish question on text editing. If I shorten or lengthen the name of something, say a job name, does that actively give me more/less letter space for other job names? Does it stop there or does the name change affect all text in the game? Could shortening a town name help add to an item description? Adding to a spell quote require cutting from anywhere, like story dialogue? These are random, wild examples but knowing how the text is grouped (or if it's just a large collective) would be great.