Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grim Grimoire Beta 0.7- Last Updated: 2/25/16

[Ronin]

hmm its true that the AI make archer moove really too close of my melee char ^^'

[AugustDrake]

The Fighter's Backdraft ability is a sad joke, only learned in the name of getting the little Mastery star. Soldier A-Abilities are a total joke too, they exist solely to be a pitstop to a "real" class.

I've been sitting down myself trying to analyze the Parivir, and ultimately he suffers from two major problems.
- Geomancy exists. Seriously, try a Geomancy Parivir: Everything everyone says about them is true, they're insane.
- Flair ability debuffs are amazing.

Flair abilities really aren't that great. They do as much damage as a dual wielding attack; even if you dual wield, it only takes the damage of the "primary" weapon into account. Their ability to debuff is nice, but a Sniper/Spellblade can do that from across the map (this will lead into an eventual Blood Price discussion if I follow that rabbit hole); they might not debuff for as much damage as a Parivir can, but still. Anyhow, I think the real answer is that Geomancy needs to go. Black Mages suffer, admittedly, but they really suffer because any decent black magic requires downing an Ether turn 1, sitting around like a fool, borked MP screwery (Let's equip Absorb MP and get the Blood Price Summoner to doublecast Kirin) that really isn't worth it, et cetera.

The debuffs used by Flair are very reliable and potent. Tackling that is a hard question, and I think they need to be put next to the Spellblade to see what's acceptable. Is the Spellblade acceptable? (Again, outside of Blood Price, which is bananas.)

The worst problem with the balancing of the game isn't that any one A-Ability on it's own is bad. Hell, a Red Mage with Doublecast is nice, but if we're talking a "pure" Red Mage in a vacuum, it's not living terror. It's when the classes start to stack with each other that the insanity comes out - the Red Mage/Summoner is the real problem. Someone on the FFTA/FFTA2 design team looked at Calculators and thought yeah, more of this, this is totally acceptable.

I think that classes really need to be looked at each as their own beast. What role does X class serve on a tactical sense? There's a lot of classes that don't have any real role other than to fill space, be a gimmick, or do something badly that another class can do well, and there's other classes that if you're not using them you're a fool.

Maybe this is getting kind of tangenty.

[Eternal]

To ease some concerns, Geomancy and Blood Price are being flat out nixed when I can get to that.

As for each class being a gimmick... I find most of TA/A2's classes totally boring, quite honestly. When I have access to a more wide array of tools, I'll be retooling each and every one to fill a more unique role.

[Ethereal Embrace]

Black Mages suffer, admittedly, but they really suffer because any decent black magic requires downing an Ether turn 1, sitting around like a fool, borked MP screwery (Let's equip Absorb MP and get the Blood Price Summoner to doublecast Kirin) that really isn't worth it, et cetera.

Not necessarily. Actually, no, that's just not true. That is, in fact, a very common misconception when strategies are discussed in FFTA2. I was grinning between my teeth when I found that Eternal reduced Fire and Thunder damage by 20 % in favor of his changes because, unlike in FFTA, magick damage is arithmetically based.

In FFTA:
Fire = 30 base power
Fira = 40 base power
Firaga = 50 base power

And the formula for magick based damage = (Magick - Resist / 2) / 2 * base power.
This formula would make it so that Fira is always 33 % stronger than Fire, and that Firaga is always 67 % stronger than Fire.

However.

In FFTA2
Fire = 20 base power
Fira = 40 base power
Firaga = 60 base power

And the formula for magick based damage = (Magick - Resist / 2 + base power ) * .75

So, say if your Fire deals 5 damage. Fira, in turn, would deal 20 damage, and Firaga would deal 35 damage.
Say if your Fire deals 205 damage. Fira, in turn, would deal 220 damage, and Firaga would deal 235 damage.

In Eternal's hack (unless he's found a way to make spells have percentage based power), if Blizzard deals 205 damage. Thunder/Fire would deal 202 damage (because of 20 % reduction in base power), Thundara/Fira would deal 214 damage, and Thundaga/Firaga would deal 226 damage.

I can't tell you how much people have told me to get Half Mp over Geomancy. In FFTA2's system, Geomancy is by far the superior choice as, while Half Mp would allow one to use Firaga every turn...That would get you to do 235 damage each turn.

But Geomancy would allow you to deal 150 % damage so 205 * 1.5 = 307.5 damage. And when you save enough Mp to do Firaga then you get 352.5 damage.

In FFTA's system, however, Half Mp could be the better choice (except that people never fucking run out of Mp in that game, lol. Why bother with either of those abilities when you have Turbo Mp?).

[Ethereal Embrace]

C'mon guys. Snipers, Spellblades, Green Mages, Assassins and every debuff-based job are absolutely useless when you have...

Fusilier

Stop Shot. Charm Shot. Ultima. 8 to 9 range. nuff said.

One of the most broken jobs to ever exist, and they were just as good in FFTA.

[Eternal]

I'd like to note that Stopshot's debuff proc is 25% instead of 50% now, same with Charmshot and, IIRC, Confushot.

Thank you for the information on magick damage calculation, EE. I was under the assumption that they were the same. I can flat out reduce their end damage, but I'm not about to worry about Black Magick just yet.

[Ethereal Embrace]

If you wouldn't mind making Fira 25 % stronger than Fire, as well, and Firaga 50 % stronger than Fire, then that'd be great too. 

I never found confusion to be that good. It was too much of a mixed bag, and Charm was more common and far superior alternative. Same thing with berserk. Not sure if it does in any of the FFTA games, but in most games, Berserk raises physical damage by a lot. I say it needs to as well, in this game. And if it does already, the effect isn't very noticeable.

Also, the support abilities and stat buffs: Attack up, Defense up, Magick up, and Resist up are all arithmetically based as well. Unlike in the FFTA where they were percentage based. In FFTA2, they raise the stat by 35 (or so I've been informed). But in FFTA, Attack and Magick up raise the stat by 25 %, while Defense up and Resist up (AND Protect or Shell) boost the stat by 40 %. I have no idea how effective Protect and Shell are in this game (if I had to guess, probably another +35 instance), but they aren't good enough imo. Not saying any of those things should raise stats by 40 %. I think Attack and Magick should raise by 15 or 20 %, and Defense stats raise by 25 or 30 % (same thing with Protect and Shell, and or at least make those buffs last 5 turns instead of 3).

They aren't the only supports as well. Blood Price: Magick + 35 (which I'm actually fine with because Blood Price is really good/cheap). Doublehand: Attack + 5 (yeah, the coveted ability from FFT that raises damage up to 200 % only boosts attack by 5...) Pierce: the ability that allows one to bypass Reflect, Magick + 35 (might be a lower value, but I think it's good that it raises power because an ability that only lets one by Reflect is pretty useless imo).

A bunch of other things are included. And before you say anything about enemies and not being balanced, plenty of enemies have these types of abilities AND their better counterparts. For example, the ability Archmage functions as both Magick up and Resist up, and there is a physical alternative (I can't remember what it's called). But making those abilities percentage based can make the game harder as well as easier.

[AugustDrake]

(a bunch of awesome stuff concerning the numbers behind FFTA2's spellcasting)

Wicked info. I beat FFTA2 to 100% completion at least five times and that's just how unfamiliar I am with any spell that ends in -a or -ga; it's so not worth it, and this basically spells out that I missed nothing.

[Eternal]

Here are some images showing some of the changes in-game.

Slow Dance being able to target all enemies.


Flowsand Lord's new HP total and elemental affinities.

[Ethereal Embrace]

How do you plan on changing the stats?

[Eternal]

Quite honestly, I'm not sure yet. I'm pretty sure Monsters will get a Speed boost all around, but I'm not entirely sure what else should be changed yet.

[Eternal]

Okay, let's start a discussion about MP Costs. I propose changing Cure/Fire/Blizzard/Thunder to 10 MP, so that they can still be spammed, but if you want to use higher level magick, you'll need to at least wait a bit more than you'd have to now. Thoughts?

[Ethereal Embrace]

I don't agree with raising Mp costs of black magick. If the 2nd and 3rd level ones are stronger with % based damage, then I'd certainly attest to that.

I do agree with raising Mp cost of Haste and or (but especially) Hastega because they are way broken.

[Irish~GoodBye]

Hello. Sorry for reviving this old topic but i have been searching for any ffta2 hacks and this is the only one that i've found. However having played Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: Grim Grimoire from the advance game im sure this will be brilliant as well

So i have got two questions.

1. Is this still being worked on? ( yea i think i know the answer, just asking to be sure)

2. How playable is this jet? ( as in how complete are the changes; are there still major bugs; etc.)

Thank you very much in advance

[Eternal]

1) It's still being worked on, albeit slowly.

2) It's completely playable. Not very balanced and pretty untested, but it's playable.

[Irish~GoodBye]

Sweet! Thx for your quick reply.

Im trying it out right now

( on my Handy :3)

[Irish~GoodBye]

Hello so far testing has been great. Its alot more fun to play now^^

The only thing that would make this even better would be enemys scaling with your level. It still gets too easy as you get past midgame.

Great hack. Cheers ~

[ArcticPrism]

I agree to the level scaling thing. While I haven't played this hack, I've been adjusting most of the enemies to increase their stats and make them more unique like flan's having ridiculous physical defense in pretty much every other final fantasy game(even ffta had this but it was changed in ffta2). My biggest problem with difficulty atm is just I've out leveled everything. The game gives too much exp. In FFTA my problem was that by end game I was 10 levels behind because I didn't do enough missions, now in FFTA2 in midgame I'm 10 levels ahead and there is no challenge. I just send my mage to the front line and nuke everything.

[Eternal]

FFTA2 tools are very limited so far, but I'm making slight progress with A2 as well as TA. TA is my major focus right now, but A2 development is underway too!

[ArcticPrism]

That's good to know. There are hardly any posts in this section of the forum now so I figured most hacking for the games was dead. It's too bad one thing that will probably never be fixed is the game's ai. It really does feel like the a2 ai picks a random move to use on you. I can't tell you how many times I've had something with like 5 hp but the ai would rather  use confusion or some other non-damaging status rather than kill me. Using power break on black mages annoyed me too.