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FFT Arena: Balance Discussion Thread

Started by FFMaster, July 13, 2010, 07:56:57 pm

dw6561

That's a good point. Also, will these skills be affected by magic attack up, or attack up? Because monks mostly rely on attack up/martial arts to get that damage.
  • Modding version: PSX
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Barren

I would think if the formula involves PA then Attack Up. Elemental is am exception because the formula also relies on MA. So maybe Nether spells can get geomancy formula but more emphasis on PA. Unless of course it does nothing to help
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown
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Gaignun

August 21, 2015, 02:37:22 pm #1822 Last Edit: August 21, 2015, 02:57:59 pm by Gaignun
I understand your concerns.  If possible, Nether Magic would be modified by Magic Attack UP.

Quote from: Mudvayne on August 21, 2015, 12:36:53 pm
Most of the proposed changes there I can get behind, Gaignun. I don't care for the 8 PA and 12 MA on the female Bard/Dancer class, though. It overpowers a female scholar who is only coming in at 10 MA and isn't female Wizards only 12 MA as well? Dancerbard shouldn't have the highest MA stat on a female unit, IMO. That doesn't seem right.


The female dancerbard (dancerbeard?) inherits the current bard's PA and MA.  The male dancerbard's PA and MA naturally result from FFT's stat growth differences between gender.  These high stats make up for the generally lousy primary skillset.

Quote from: Mudvayne on August 21, 2015, 12:36:53 pm
Male Netherseers with 12 PA are also pretty damn strong considering their skill set. I'm not entirely sold on the netherseer skill set having the skills be PA*X, it's not hard to get units with 18-20 PA like a monk for example who would now be able to successfully cast spells coming in at 250+ damage as well as doing 250+ damage punch arts?


The male netherseer has 12 PA to avoid being outclassed by male Monks (whose PA is reduced to 12 for the same purpose).  From here, the tradeoff becomes monks for higher HP and headbands, or netherseers for higher MP and better weapons. At 12 PA, netherseers are nearly equivalent to 12 MA wizards.

The big damage is definitely a concern, especially on tanky monks.  However, there are a few limitations that modulate the situation:

  • Unless monks wear Focus Band, they will be limited by a low mana pool, relegating them to mostly Nether Wind and Nether Holy, neither of which can be boosted with anything but 108 Gems.

    For example, the highest PA a monk could achieve with the above proposals is 19.  With this equipment, he could cast Nether Wind 2 only once and Nether Holy 2 only twice before needing to use Chakra to replenish MP.  Nether Earth 2 couldn't be casted at all.  Things get quite a bit easier for the monk if his PA drops to 18; Nether Earth 2 can be casted up to three times, then twice again for every Chakra.


  • Though Nether Earth deals the most damage and is boosted with Earth Clothes, the Earth element is hard-countered by the Float movement ability.

  • For big damage, monks will need to equip (Magic) Attack UP, neither of which boosts Punch Art damage as much as Martial Arts.  Accordingly, Punch Art will be only 89% as effective (with Attack UP) or 67% as effective (with Magic Attack UP).

    And perhaps most important of all:

  • High damage requires 40 Faith, so Raise 2 is relatively unreliable (e.g., 80% success rate at 12 MA and best compatibility)



I guess what I'm trying to say is that what looks strong on paper isn't necessarily strong in practice.  Nevertheless, if the current damage output is indeed too high, then we could drop all constants by 1.  Come what may, I would prefer to keep the formula at PA*X rather than change it to the geomancy formula, since so few jobs have sufficient PA and MA to make the geomancy formula work.

Quote from: Mudvayne on August 21, 2015, 12:36:53 pm
Also, I forget, is UnF now UnFury or UnFaith? And is that based off of your fury/faith, or the targets fury/faith, or both?


Sorry for the confusion.  UnF means UnFaith.  I was using abbreviations of brave & faith for brevity.

Mudvayne

I was actually thinking something like PA-1*X would be great but I wasn't sure if anyone would like that suggestion. I think that looks decent on paper and in practice as it does limit the potential for huge damage output from magic and physical moves on these types of characters. I used monks in my example for a unit being able to do high damage with their punch art skillset and the netherseer skill set but monks are not the only unit that could benefit from the skillset. You can achieve almost as high PA on a squire or dancer or even male geomancers. Max PA stacked gear gives +9 PA (Lionheart, Genji Shield, Twist Headband, Power Sleeve, Bracer) which squire and geomancer can both use that particular set up and both have much better MP pools than monks with much easier access to MP boosting equips.

Barren

Well regardless of how the changes go I'll make a promo video for the newest FFT Arena patch. Showing off the changes and everything else
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown
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Gaignun

Quote from: Mudvayne on August 21, 2015, 03:10:46 pm
I was actually thinking something like PA-1*X would be great but I wasn't sure if anyone would like that suggestion. I think that looks decent on paper and in practice as it does limit the potential for huge damage output from magic and physical moves on these types of characters. I used monks in my example for a unit being able to do high damage with their punch art skillset and the netherseer skill set but monks are not the only unit that could benefit from the skillset. You can achieve almost as high PA on a squire or dancer or even male geomancers. Max PA stacked gear gives +9 PA (Lionheart, Genji Shield, Twist Headband, Power Sleeve, Bracer) which squire and geomancer can both use that particular set up and both have much better MP pools than monks with much easier access to MP boosting equips.


Oh, yeah, (PA-1)*X could work if implementable.  It's damage difference with PA*(X-1) is (PA-X) -- slightly higher in practice.

I wonder if there are any ideas for replacing breath spears with something more useful to Lancers.  Shintroy proposed a Lancet ability for Lancers several pages ago.  If that is not implementable, I wonder if an HP/MP blood spear is possible.

Barren

Maybe turn the spear into a blood spear and probably change the sprite color to red?
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gatebuster202

Lancer can get another Skillset. However it is either Jump or another Skillset. Both can't co-exist without Alma. And RAD. Honestly, that might be OP in Arena.

Suggestion, a FFTA like Skillset for Dragoons. Three or Four Elemental Breaths, Lancet as above, Dive(Range 2, Vert 6-8, Requires Spear, WP*SP or PA), Osmoses (Drain MP like Lancet), Throw Spear (Range 4, Vert 2, Requires Spear, As Dive)

JP 150-300 Same RSM
Just a Thought, you could add a buff or two as well. I can actually do all but changing formulas if we need help on this. (I have Patcher down.)
  • Modding version: PSX
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Heroebal

August 22, 2015, 12:19:05 pm #1828 Last Edit: August 22, 2015, 12:41:26 pm by Heroebal
I wonder what sprites are gonna be used for the bard/dancer class ? Maybe just the dancer sprites could work for the female variant? I wonder if a new class name would be in order to reflect the merging of singing/dancing. Not sure what it would be though.

For lancer equip/abilities how about adding some modified versions of Reis abilities to the skillset? I think there's room for 4 more abilities. If needed to make more room I don't believe all the way up to vertical 8 jump is needed (I think up to vertical 6 would be suffecient). Units already have 3 jump + jump+1/2 or ignore height(movement)+ any jump stat increases from spears/hats/accessories.

(not sure how much of the following is code-able)
Lancet abilities:
fire/ice/lightning/holy breath--> stat damage could be ((pa+ma/2)*(wp+2) or ((pa+sp/2)*(wp+2) or ((pa+jump)/2*(wp+2) or ((sp+jump/2*(wp+2) or some other configuration, range would be current spear range (maybe able to damage units in both panels like dragon breaths).

Dragon Care: heals for x damage+damage caster for x/x amount, also cancel: sleep/charm/poison/stop, Range could also be like breath attack or current masamune range so it doesn't overshadow Heal/stigma magic.

Reis's other abilities are dragon tame, dragon powerup, dragon level up not sure atm how they could be changed/implemented or maybe not included.

Other abilities ideas: Maybe there's a way to add "special jumps" like one does AoE damage (I vote mimic titan for animation if implemented), another heals and/or removes statuses (like sleep/charm).

Spear ideas:
Spears/mythril/partisan/holy lance --> maybe leave the wpn element as is (non-elemental and holy ) but have it boost ice/fire/lightning respectively so breath procs do a little more damage (or just changes the formula calculation to something involving pa/sp/j). Another idea is for the breath proc to extend the reach another 1-2 panels worth of damage to potentially hit multpile units. Maybe a piercing support ability that allows the spears units w/in both of the normal 2 attack panels.

Also I wonder if it would be worth swapping the jump+x abilities to lancer and giving archer ignore height with the new changes coming. (although it might the way it is currently due to balancing issues).

How do we feel about a counter talk skill? It would be like counter magic but for talk skills could be 300 jp so 100 jp finger guard is still viable if trying to save jp. Could call it mock or rebuttal.

Have we've come to a consensus on stone gun* ? Some other suggestions on top of the ones I had earlier is it maybe could add petrify (or maybe 25% cast cloud's "finishing touch" technique) or chance to cast something like comet.

*I'm currently messing around with a test squad based around 2 stone gun users to see how powerful/effective it is currently. It consists of 2 stone mediators w/ counter or hp restore or damage split/attack up or unyielding or defend up/move-hp up/salty rage ( I could remove this for something else too but would lower damage alot) , 1 archer/pa user to remove stone and support damage/breaks, 1 support chemist or mime.  ..............berskerk was rough my archer/chemist basically left them to die on one playthrough {>.<}. Also even though I have stigma magic on the archer/pa on a lot of the maps it's still using up both the archer and chemists turns to undo the stone status. *

gatebuster202

Herobal- Jump Anything can't be used in concert with another type of abilities.(Anything not Jump.). Not without severe modding. The Game has several hard coded skillsets.

Item/Throw/Katana/Jump/Charge/Math/Mime. If you change these their are rules to doing so. Charge and Math can just be swapped to default and use other abilities. (The game supports 264 unique, changeable abilities, before Monster Abilities. So this isn't restrictive.)

Anything that accesses Inventory, must be overridden by ASMs. Item, Throw, Katana. Those can be made into normal skillsets but then they lose the acesss to inventory items. (Katana doesn't even roughly play by the normal rules, it's plain dumb, and hard to work with.)

Charge, Jump and Math - You can modify their JP, and Learn Rates(Not applicable in Arena.) Their formulas must be ASM'd from there. This is always harder then it sounds.

Mime isn't even touchable. Don't bother, as I believe the Damned is the only one who cared enough and we haven't seen him in a bit. Personally I never liked the classes thought it should have died long ago. Good for the AI in Story Patchs(for reasons to long to explain.)

Also "Bard" and "Dancer" are hard coded. In the sense that they can do anything, but their classes are gender restricted. You must have 1 Male, 1 Female and 1 Mime class Everything else is what you can mod.
  • Modding version: PSX
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Gaignun

Ah, so a female Bard and a male Dancer cannot be done?

For the sake of argument, would it be possible to swap Song with Time Magic and have both male and female Time Mages with Sing, or would Time Mages then become gender restricted?

Second, are the Bard and Dancer classes -- or perhaps their location in memory -- gender-restricted even if their skillsets are swapped to default?

CT5Holy

Blood Spear sounds cool! I'm going to toss out a few more ideas, meant to encourage Lancers using melee attacks (though I suppose this happens often enough given you aren't guaranteed to land a Jump every turn):

Spear with 50% Don't Move proc
Spear with 50% Power Ruin proc
Spear with 33% Undead proc
Spear with 100% Consecration proc
Spear with 50% cast Life Drain proc (redundant with Blood Spear, but this encourages high Fa Lancers, possibly even 40/70!)
Spear with 50% cast Stop (someone else had this idea before)
Spear with 50% Blade Beam proc or 50% cast Balance proc
Winner of the 1st FFT 1.3 AI Tourney

Heroebal

so it sounds like "special jumps" is out of the question.

But would something like.....
Jump/Lancet/Dragon skillset:
horizontal jump+1
...
horizontal jump+6
vertical jump+1
....
Vertical jump+6
Lancet/Dragon ability
Lancet/Dragon ability
Lancet/Dragon ability
etc.

work ? or would you have to get rid of the jumps entirely.

For Bards/Dancers it sounds like the gender thing is the issue not the skillset.
because i think a work around for the sing/dance thing would be set skillset to default. to create abilities similar to Lores but friendly/enemy units only respectively. If skillset is the issue.

So to simplify maybe bards get both sing/dance but can only be male and netherseers would only able to be female.

gatebuster202

@ Gaignun. Think of each individual part p the class as mutable. Skillset can be assigned anywhere. Stats can be changed at will, most parts of abilities can be ripped up, replaced and altered.

Names are just names. So a Male only class could have Ninja stats, Yin Yang as it's Skillset and Innate Two Hands. (We can give a class up to four RSM Innates but Reactions override an assigned reaction.) We could make so hell-bent unworldly complicated classes. I'll stress this is a BAD idea to do so. Changing and balancing Lancer alone to EVeRYTHING else is a four to six month job.

As a note, before we change one ability or item. Anyone play LoL or Heros of the Storm? Anyone get how hard it is to balance champs. They changed BF Sword items a while back and totally derailed the known meta. Now I am all for doing some alterations, so long as FFTMaster/whomever is in charge of the Arena is ok with our tinkering, but we do need to agree on a few things.

1st. A "base version" to come back to that all changes are compared against.
2nd. Not everyone produces and publishes changes. Just a single team of people. I know Barren and CT5 have the most experiance(or close to it.) I would differ to the vets before clamouring for change and telling other people to provide it.
3rd. From the sound of it Barren is working on changes that we have mentioned, lets give him a week or two show us what he has gathered.
4th. Compile everyone's thoughts. Get some polls on Quickening going, buffing Fairy, ect. Lets see what those changes do and then, revote them if we get some polarizing data.
  • Modding version: PSX
Winner of the 2nd FFT Arena SCC Tourney. -Geomancers

Barren

Well I did propose a few ideas already. Some did get rejected. But what I was going to show off was a video of the recent changes already made so that way people can get hyped up for the new FFT Arena.
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Reks

Also, I did test Shieldrender.

Still does 244 damage(as a start) with neutral compat and Warpath...

On a Geomancer with nothing but PA boosting equips, Two Hands, and Warpath.

That basically means 32 effective PA, and it was STILL not as good as a Two Sworded Platinum Sword with a little less PA, which hit twice guaranteed.



Oh and as a bit of amusement the proc also works with Counter.

I still stand by my suggestion of making it one-hand only but more WP.
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Barren

If there to actually make changes with FFT Arena like the ones we discussed I would work on the patch for it to be used. Like actually edit the patch with updates and such. Alas we wait for FFMaster to proceed
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gatebuster202

IF, I am not`mistaken, we have the patcher file. I have enough knowledge to poke around and find what's what. Might be a month or two though before I get anywhere.
  • Modding version: PSX
Winner of the 2nd FFT Arena SCC Tourney. -Geomancers

Jumza

FFTPatcher doesn't tell you about asm's and such that are used. You'd have to have all the info before not messing something up.
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Is there anyone else out there who even knows how to do the kind of updates FFMaster does?
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