Final Fantasy Hacktics

There are a lot of things I like about FFTA2: the variety, the sheer amount of content, the plot - I kid, I kid - but there are a number of things that strike me as less than ideal that I'd like to remedy. These include:

• The MP system punishes magick jobs and rewards physical ones
• Some of the jobs are too unbalanced
• Many of the jobs have a muddle of abilities, out of which you only need to use one or two; the rest are wasted
• While I'm no fan of hardtype mods, I find this game is too easy, even on Hard mode

At a global level, here are the changes I made:

• MP starts at max
• No MP regen (MP Channeling does nothing)
• All skills cost MP
• Magick spells have a range of no less than 4
• Debuff abilities' accuracy and damage vary by the severity and MP cost of the debuff
• Ultima is mostly gone
• Heavy armor-wearing jobs have 3 move
• Rebalanced job stat growths to remove clear-cut winners and losers
• Increased monster stat growths to roughly net out to characters stats + equipment and buff elemental resistances
• Rebalanced equipment so that mages' weapons give higher magick, not attack (unless this turns out to be too broken; I don't know what the damage formulas are)
• Equipment is more expensive than before
• Playable characters have inherent elemental resistances and weaknesses
• I don't know how to remove the halve MP clan privilege, but I tried te balance MP growths around not using it. All I can ask is scout's honor that you don't use the clan privilege

Outside of the global changes mentioned above, this is mostly a vanilla+ mod. I preferred to tweak, unless, in my opinion, a job or ability was untenable or undifferentiated enough. I nerfed some abilities and buffed others. I also did a lot more musical chairs - moving abilities one from job to another - than creating new jobs and abilities. There are physical jobs that specialize in every element (similar to the Raptor for wind). A changelog for jobs and abilities is below. If an ability isn't mentioned, it is unchanged. Nothing is final and I welcome your feedback.I'm looking for feedback on the following:

• Is there anything that's broken or freezes the game (I'll *try* to fix these ASAP)
• What jobs and abilities are OP to the point that you would never use anything else? On the flip side, what jobs and abilities are so bad that you'd never touch them (e.g. vanilla tinker)?
• How is the balance on the stat growths? Are jobs that can OHKO, like the Assassin, fragile enough? Do mages have too much MP growth that it's too easy to take a physical character and spend a couple levels as a mage to get enough MP?
• Where could the mod use additional polish (i.e. how apt are the skill animations)?

Here's what I'm dissatisfied with:

• Archer - unclear whether this job will be useful
• Space Mage - I wanted this job to manipulate ranges and AoEs. Would love to increase the AoE of Gravity and Repulse and have Repulse knock back several tiles
• Alchemist - couldn't get this skill set working properly as abilities to learn
• Idol - I wanted to focus this job around smash gauge mechanics, but couldn't figure out a way to manipulate them beyond what's in the ability editor (steal smash gauge)
• Psychic - I wanted to make this job like the Psychic in FFX-2, but I don't think there's a way to manipulate elemental resistances
• Green Mage - the skill set makes sense, but putting it on the vanilla Geomancer means by the time you unlock it you'll be up to the -ga spells so the others will be useless
• Couldn't remove the half MP clan privilege
• Not sure how to change the bazaar offerings - would like to remove the high-level equipment