Final Fantasy Hacktics

hi i wana do dis ty

i dun wana no mime or sumoner thx bye

Argy's going to rip me a new one.

I'm in.  Submitted my team to Barren (PM over Discord).

Bumpin' for 1.42!

First of all, I want to give a big "thank you" to Barren, Gaignun, Heroebal, and Reks for all of the hard work they put into this tournament.  It's been a blast (even though we probably should've banned Consecration and Seal Evil... oh well.  ).



I hope that everybody had fun watching/participating in this tournament.  The next tournament will be a normal one, and it will probably begin in October or November?  Version 142 has been underway for quite some time now, and a live release is expected to happen within the next couple of weeks.

Catchy title made me click on this thread!  Cool beans!  It looks like you've put a lot of time and effort into this patch.  I hope that it gets a good amount of attention.    Some changes that really stood-out for me:


1) Reduced JP costs.  If there's one thing I've always hated about starting a new game, it's having to grind for all of the skills that I want.  I'm the type of person that likes to have their "final" party assembled ASAP, so this is a big plus.

2) Monster rebalance.  Most of them stunk in vanilla, so it's nice to see that you could roll with a bunch of monsters (in an increased difficulty mod, at that) and stand a chance against what the game throws at you.  Good stuff.

3) Recruitables have more unlocked.  This ties into my first point.  No much more to say, honestly.

4) The patch maintains a lot of the vanilla flavour.  There's a lot of patch creators out there who change nearly every single aspect of the game (that they have access to), so it's refreshing to see a patch that emulates the best of what vanilla has to offer while staying true to the original game.

5) Start skips events.  When you've seen the game's cut scenes a billion times, this is a godsend.  Also, it's nice being able to choose whether or not you want to do a random battle.


Keep up the good work!

Thanks Barren for getting this going, and everybody that has participated in some way or another.  This tournament has been absolutely hilarious (we probably should have banned Consecration/Seal Evil, oh well ).  A very big "thank you" to Gaignun for sitting through match 11 *and* taking the time to provide commentary (during the parts that weren't sped-up).  I'm so sorry, LOL.

I SHALL BE THE FINAL PARTICIPANT!  MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

EDIT: Do not use this right now, as it hasn't been updated for 142.

Unfortunately, due to a game hack we use, most information for most items will not display in the memory card generator.  However, Gaignun's team builder tool in this thread works for this purpose!

You were definitely onto something about Excalibur.  RavenOfRazgriz recently checked Arena out, and he gave us shit about this weapon, lol .  He suggested for it to go back to being 14 WP and forced two-hands, but have elemental strengthening be replaced by +1 Speed to make it easier for paladins and male mystic knights to get to the higher Speed levels, while still dealing okay damage.  Since Swift Plate now blocks Haste, this could be an interesting and effective way to buff Excalibur.

Heya, Gaignun, it's been a while!  Thanks for taking the time to update your team-building tool.


CHEER UP
I would be okay with it gaining some form of AoE.  2 range three-directions?  Should it affect the user, as well?

REFUTE
Its accuracy has been MA+55 since 1.39c, at the very least.  While it isn't exactly reliable, it *does* dispel everything!  Despite this, I'd be fine with a small accuracy increase, like +5.

BATTLE ORDERS AND PATHOS SPEECH
We just talked about it in Discord.  What would you think of MA+45% accuracy and 6 CT?  Unlike the old songs/dances, Short Charge can reduce the CT of these two skills; so, with these adjustments, you could have a 3 CT and 70%~ accuracy Battle Orders/Pathos Speech kicking around for your team, putting them on par with (or even better than) the old songs.  Mind you, the AI's low priority for using these skills hampers their usefulness on smaller maps.

EXCALIBUR
The Genji Shield's +1 PA and Darkness immunity offsets the WP decrease, which still makes it great for Grand Cross funsies.  Yeah, you have more P-Ev because of the shield, but most Grand Cross units don't always need healing, and again, Darkness immunity FTW.  In essence, it's now the knight sword, holy-elemental version of the Giant Axe.

+1 MOVE ON SAMURAI / NERF BIZEN BOAT
For a short period during 141 development, Samurai were at 8/10 MA due to receiving buffs in other areas.  However, some players disagreed with the MA nerf, and after some lengthy debating, their MA was brought back up.  Would you be fine with Bizen Boat if Samurai had their MA brought back down to 8/10 MA again, or do you feel like Bizen Boat itself would need to be nerfed instead/as well?

PEACEMAKER
I full-heartedly agree with you on this one.  I feel like both it *and* the Flare Gun don't need shield access.  They gained shield access because players wanted for shield access to be consistent for guns, but there wasn't much of an argument made for this change.  I would be fine with both of these weapons going back to being forced two-hands.

SPELLGUNS
Ultimately, we decided that it was their elemental property that made them so deadly, due to elemental strengthening being an extra multiplier that pushed their damage over the top.  Yes, you could've went White Robe to mitigate their damage, but the units that didn't suffered big time.  The Flare Gun is our compromise for keeping this kind of weapon in the game.  It's still capable of dealing great damage (especially when combined with MAU/Faith), and is a great choice for taking out the legion of low-Brave mages wandering about.


- Andrew

It's mostly Arena modders/players in our Discord channel.  We do not spend our time badmouthing you, I promise you this much.  In fact, whenever your name is mentioned in our channel, it's usually because we're talking about ASM.  After all, you did make the tournament hack *and* the memory card generator, two things that are essential for Arena!

Discord is something we wanted to try out because it has voice support, which makes discussing pretty much anything a breeze, especially if there's a lot of people online.  Most of our vocal discussions are of the game-balancing variety, so this is why we've stuck to using Discord.

I hope that this clears-up any misconceptions.

- Andrew

I was mostly concerned about Bahamut and Zodiac damage-wise, yes, and Odin with its Dead proc would be equally scary, just in a different way; it's nice having the ability to evade Odin if you don't happen to have Dead protection.  Thanks for the numbers!  I have to admit, a bad habit of mine is estimating figures in my head and not doing actual calculated math and posting the numbers to support my argument.  Oh well. 

Looking at it some more, no longer do I find the proposed Cyclops/Salamander/Titan repulsive!  What of Salamander's proc... has it been lost in the nether forever?  Leviathan would definitely need to become 2 AoE (with increased damage), but that would make me a sad panda, as its one of the few huge-AoE skills in the game.  I wouldn't mind seeing Cyclops and Titan become evasion-piercing, as I like current Salamander (the Berserk proc gives it a unique edge that the other summons lack).

Counter Flood definitely makes Geomancy OP, with Counter Comet being a much more acceptable form.  A while back, us Discord folks considered the future possibility of revamping the terrain of each map in the game to make Geomancy a more reliable skillset to pickup, rather than just increasing its damage like before.  As such, removing smart-targeting would be a possibility.  I'll have more information on this if we decide to go ahead with it.

Yeah, Barren, like mentioned above, I think I'd be okay with an evasion-piercing Titan!

While the idea is intriguing, and your humour is always appreciated, I'm not a fan of the entire skillset becoming evasion-piercing.  With this form of Summon Magic, M-Ev would become a thing of the past, with every Faith-based team featuring a Summon Magic user for offensive means.  So, yes, you would see more Setiemson... a lot more Setiemson.  The game would be ushered into an evasion-piercing meta.  Lich would also go unused, since it's not evasion-piercing and has horrible accuracy, so there would be no point in using it when you have the revised summons at your disposal.

The mid-tier and high-tier summons would need to be tweaked a lot more to convince me that this would fit nicely into Arena.  60 MP Bahamut?  That's still not a big deal if you're a squishy, MA-stacking mage with reliable MP restoration (Carbunkle; Refresh; Move-MP Up; Chakra; Hi Ether; MP Restore; you name it).  All it would take is a Bahamut, followed by one of the less-expensive summons to bring down most enemy units, at 2+ AoE to boot (hell, even if you made Bahamut 99 MP, people would just use 1/3 of MP and stack MA to make up for the damage loss).  Being able to nullify M-Ev entirely (while also bringing incredible damage) is very scary, and more on that below.

As you've proven in the tournament, evasion-piercing skills that deal moderate-to-high damage (140a Geomancy) can be broken.  However, Geomancy requires a mix of both PA and MA to work, and isn't reliant upon Faith.  In the test patch, Counter Flood isn't a thing, nor are Bards, and non-elemental Geomancy had its bonus reverted to +2, with all of these being acceptable nerfs due to the nature of Geomancy.  New Summon Magic?  Slap a Faith Rod on and watch the enemy team run for the hills... unless they have Setiemson and/or Ragnarok.  Now, I know that Summon Magic costs MP and has a CT, but even 6 CT can be manageable with a mage going last and/or rocking Short Charge.

I think you would have to dip into the extremes some more (high MP, high CT, or a mix a both) in order to produce acceptable results, provided that you want damage to remain roughly the same for the mid-tier and high-tier summons.  However, if the CT is too high, then the skills would be useless due to midcharging/not getting them off in time; and, if MP is too high, then people would just avoid the skillset like the plague, or be forced into using 1/3 of MP if they're not a high MP squishy mage (then, what's the point if you can't make use of the support you want to?).

I know that you don't agree, but I'm still happy with our test patch Summon Magic; sure, some summons could be considered lackluster in comparison to what Black Magic can offer (especially on the test patch), but with Summon Magic having the superior utility, I don't have a problem with this.

Wow, these look absolutely phenomenal!  Keep up the good work!

Step 1: Join our Discord channel!  ( https://discord.gg/PpHst )

Step 2: Talk to people!

Step 3: Be a tester and play the test patch (it's going to be released to the public soon)!

Step 3: Have fun!


There's always people in the channel throughout the day, with a good chunk of veteran players (Barren, CT5, silentkaster, et cetera) on regularly.

Signing up to Discord is easy, just go to their website ( https://discordapp.com/register ), make an account, and then hop into our channel using their browser app, or their downloadable app.  We look forward to having you around.

Oh, and welcome to FFH.

Hello, Magic Gladii!  I recommend sticking to KO, as it doesn't deviate too much from the vanilla experience in terms of content and overall difficulty.

If you want to continue experiencing the vanilla story/setting, but don't mind significant changes made to equipment, jobs, and what-not, Celdia's Complete Patch (CCP) or Monster Tactics are great choices (the latter being pretty difficult in comparison to vanilla, though).

Call to Power and Journey of the Five (Jot5) are basically new games: not only do they have different settings/characters/jobs/whatever, but are also more difficult than vanilla, as well.  Jot5 only has its first chapter complete, though, (it's been like this for 3-4 years now) but a lot of time and effort went into it, and it definitely shows.

Regardless of which you play, I hope that you enjoy yourself!

Welcome to FFH.

1. Mime
2. Dancer
3. Summoner

So much fun!  Thanks a lot CT5 for checking out the test patch, and for your thoughts!  I look forward to the next stream!