basic ways to make fftwotl more challenging/interesting

[Vajra]

so i've been at patch work till 6 am the past few days doing silly little things all in effort to change the basic game play and increase the difficulty. mostally along the lines of changing skill sets and making various weapons.

so are there any basic or even elaborate ways to accomplish my goal without getting into stuff like sprite and text editing?

[philsov]

ENTD.

What's harder?

Monk
52 brave, 64 faith
Punch Art (knows Spin Fist)
Basic Skill (knows Throw Stone, Dash)
Weapon Guard
Defend
-

-
-
-
Brigandine
Rubber Shoes

OR

Monk
75 Br, 50 Faith
Punch Art (all skills learned)
Charge (all skills learned)
Hamedo
Attack Up
Move +3

-
-
-
Judo Outfit
Power Wrist

[Donkeyton]

Late reply to an aging thread, but honestly, I've found that a great way to increase difficulty is to do some ENTD editing and make it so that all of the enemies in fixed battles have "Party Level - Random" as their level, rather than a set level. If your guys are in their 30s, for instance, where's the challenge in facing down a group of enemies in their 20s? This fix will change that whole dynamic. Now, your enemies will be at your level -- always, and not just in the random monster battles -- and will have weapons and armor and skills drawn accordingly from that higher level pool. It definitely makes fights more fair, especially toward the end of the game.

Unfortunately, I don't know of a quick way to implement this patch. It involves going through every fixed event in the game and changing every single enemy's level to "Party Level - Random" if they're not set there already. About an hour or two of your time, depending upon how quick you are and what your tolerance is for repetition. But it's definitely worth it. It's by far the best way to ramp up difficulty without using artificial means (such as giving enemies tougher skills or what have you).

[VampragonLord]

you DO realize that levels mean VERY LITTLE in this game? It would be more "efficient" to add more complex/synchronized set ups instead.

This game has been beaten by a level one ramza (with a gameshark to prevent leveling).

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Instead of trying to make it more difficult, why not make it more unpredictable?

Something I was thinking about recently... Tactical and Strategic abilities.

For the purposes of this post, I will define Tactical as something that gives you an advantage for the duration of the current battle, and Strategic as something which gives you an advantage in future battles.

Skills can be Tactical, Strategic, or both.

For example, Tactically, Break is more useful than Steal.  Equipment Breaks have a better chance of hitting, but Steal is more Strategically useful than Break, because it allows you to harvest rare equipment to make future battles easier.  The only problem is that Steal is so Tactically useless - the poor hit rate - that if you can prolong difficult battles (cough Elmdor cough) and survive long enough to Steal the rare equipment, you're probably so strong that you don't need it to win future battles anyways.

The problem is making every skill, skillset, item, job class, and piece of equipment Tactically useful, while leaving room for the player to develop Stratagies of their own.

Balancing a mod is tricky buisness.

[Donkeyton]

you DO realize that levels mean VERY LITTLE in this game? It would be more "efficient" to add more complex/synchronized set ups instead.

This game has been beaten by a level one ramza (with a gameshark to prevent leveling).

True, but every bit helps. You'll steamroll a party of level 40 enemies if your party is in the 90s, whereas you'll face a very slightly more even playing field against enemies in their 90s. I'm not claiming it evens the odds entirely. Obviously it doesn't, given the overpowered nature of Ramza and most of the special units. But raising the enemy levels makes things slightly less of a total cakewalk. It also, if my understanding is correct, ups the weapons/armor pool from which enemies draw their equipment. So, if you don't want to go through each ENTD assigning specific equipment to specific enemies, raising their levels will raise the quality of their random equipment setup. Since equipment is everything in this game, raising levels is an indirect means of raising equipment, which is a means of raising difficulty.

I'm not claiming this is the only method, or even the most effective method. But it can't hurt, and it certainly helps in many instances.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

All enemies, including high level ones, routinely draw crap equipment for battles.  I'm trying to rebalance the equipment so every item is useful, sort of like in Mercenaries.

[Paheej]

Alright there are a lot of ways to increase the difficultly of battles besides just raising the levels of enemies.  Let's break down every way you can increase difficulty.

1.  Increasing Enemy Levels
The first and most popular way is to make enemies "Party Level" or "Party Level +X".  This improves not only the stats of enemies, such as their HP, PA, and SPD but it also allows them to utilize better equipment.  Of all the ways to improve difficulty this is probably the quickest to implement, as it just requires quick editing in the ENTD tab in FFTPatcher.

However lets also analyze the weaknesses of such a system.  First of all your player or end-user never gets to set the difficulty of fights anymore.  Leveling up has little consequence (all you want to do is job enough to unlock jobs) and some skills are made obsolete (Gained EXP UP, Steal EXP etc).  Players can no longer get to a hard fight and then if they having difficulty - level up to get past it.  You've made the game punishing for no apparent reason - if a player wanted hard fights in the normal game they could decide themselves not to level, why are you restricting the freedom of your players by not letting them set the difficulty?

Random battles are obviously fine with the "Party Level" mechanic as a player can always avoid them, storyline battles with this however can become not much fun very quickly.


2.  Manually Setting Equipment and Abilities
Our boy Phil suggested something different - to manually set the equipment and abilities of enemies to make them better.  This has huge upside because you can make battles challenging while keeping a static level.  However it does have one specific downside - every time you do that battle it will be the same.  In effect this is a one trick pony if you use it on every enemy in a Storyline battle, because if they ever replay that battle the enemy will use the exact same strategy.


3.  Open Up More Skills to Enemies
Another way to increase difficulty is the crank up the JP it takes to be level 8 to something like 5000 (from 2100).  Then you also set the primarily or unlocked class of enemies to level 8 in the ENTD.  You also crank the % Learned Rate of almost all abilities.  This will give most enemies access to many more skills.  You can of course do this for battles you think it is appropriate (for instance, battles past Chapter One) or you could blanket the entire game with this method.  The downside to this method is that it makes achieving Level 8 of Jobs more difficult and makes Mime much harder to unlock.


4.  Combo Method
Since each strategy to increase difficulty involves strengths and weaknesses which one should you go with?  I believe the answer is you use a combination of the available methods to dilute each separate methods weaknesses.  For instance I make a "boss" for every battle, typically whoever speaks in the cutscene right before the battle.  For that character I manually set his equipment and abilities.  Additionally I'll make sure he has level 8 of his primary class unlocked.  

That way their will be one beast guy who has the same setup every battle but the people around him may or may not have the same set up.  Outside of Chapter One I make every enemy have level 8 of either their primary or secondary job unlocked, therefore allowing them to use many more skills (Summoners may use the big guns like Bahamut for instance).

Also I may set one or two pieces of equipment on enemies but not their entire set up.  For instance I may put Magic Gauntlets on Wizards but leave everything else random - this means the Wizard may have different skills and setup everytime, but he will always be fairly decent at casting black magic.

Anyway that's a pretty decent analysis of what you can do to increase difficulty besides just pumping levels.

[Donkeyton]

However lets also analyze the weaknesses of such a system.  First of all your player or end-user never gets to set the difficulty of fights anymore.  Leveling up has little consequence (all you want to do is job enough to unlock jobs) and some skills are made obsolete (Gained EXP UP, Steal EXP etc).  Players can no longer get to a hard fight and then if they having difficulty - level up to get past it.  You've made the game punishing for no apparent reason - if a player wanted hard fights in the normal game they could decide themselves not to level, why are you restricting the freedom of your players by not letting them set the difficulty?

That's a very interesting analysis and a series of good points, but I suppose my answer is that I'm looking at how most players of modded/hacked FFT (i.e., hardcore FFT players) play the game. These players tend to grind up and min/max obsessively, if not to level, then certainly to unlock jobs. And, in the course of such leveling through jobbing, your party is going to be overleveled relative to static fights 9 times out of 10 unless you raise the enemy levels accordingly. You see raising levels as a means of negating the importance of leveling, whereas I see it as a necessary first (if not sufficient) fix to the overall difficulty problem.

I also disagree with the conclusion that "Storyline [static] battles will become not very much fun" if enemies are always on par with your level. I disagree entirely. Storyline battles are no fun if they're trivial, which they are if you are permitted to outlevel your enemies. Remember, I'm talking about an audience of hardcore players here, not beginners. I enjoy the challenge of winning battles through tactics and outmaneuvering/thinking the enemy -- not through level grinding, per se. If we were talking about a mod I was designing for all audiences, I'd agree with you.

Your other points are equally good; I'm just defending my particular rationale here.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

I thought of something last night.  What if, in event battles, you mixed enemies with static levels and enemies with party level:random?  That way, the player who overlevels won't be able to completely steamroll the enemy, and players won't be able to do lvl 1 ramza gameshark playthoughs.

Also I may set one or two pieces of equipment on enemies but not their entire set up. For instance I may put Magic Gauntlets on Wizards but leave everything else random - this means the Wizard may have different skills and setup everytime, but he will always be fairly decent at casting black magic.

I made Rings only equipable by mage classes and Armguards only equipable by fighter classes, and then I gave each one bonuses appropriate to mages and fighters.  It's the only way I found to keep from fighting monks with magic gauntlets.

[formerdeathcorps]

I tend to set their skillset and avoid touching equipment except on bosses that I want to have a certain effect (like Gafgarion or Kletian).  Knowing from experience, if an enemy is skillset is too hard, most people would likely restart until they find an amenable one, so I try to lessen that.  Also, certain (usually weaker) unit classes (like archer) are really much stronger with certain combinations (like speed gear + steal or PA gear + break) than what the game tends to provide (jump or throw in Ch. 3-4).

As for the level 1 challenge issue, there's really no good workaround unless you ASM code in maximum level caps per chapter (or use the "soft" method of introducing guests at fixed levels at the start of each chapter).  You can certainly lessen the impact by:
1. Remove all forms of de-leveling (which is already implemented on most mods here).
2. Interspersing fixed and party dependent enemies (though too many will make battles too easy)
3. Removing humans from generic random battles or making them much rarer/more difficult/usually have maintenance with immortal/immunity to treasure box/invite.
4. Raise the JP ceiling/(re)move Move-JP UP and insist that any legitimate win does not involve using all jobs at level 1.
5. Ban Soldier Office recruitment.
6. Remove the "soft" methods of procurement (as in change the learn rates on throw and poach rates/rarities on monsters/move-find item--banning breeding and making certain monsters immune to invite helps).
7. Set Gained EXP-UP as innate (or use ASM hacks to cause units to level up faster--less job growth per level gained).
8. ASM hack to remove residual EXP/JP growth.

But technically speaking, someone who really wanted to could still level up an unwanted squad of level 99s, gain as many rare items as desired (unless someone went overboard with 3 or 6, which makes the game really not fun), dismiss the unwanted originals, and play through the game with Ramza + whoever else (since a Ch. 1 squire Ramza with DD items > level 15-20 unit).  However, if the battles were made hard enough, someone who had the skill and patience to do this could probably beat such a mod anyways without such help.

[Donkeyton]

But technically speaking, someone who really wanted to could still level up an unwanted squad of level 99s, gain as many rare items as desired (unless someone went overboard with 3 or 6, which makes the game really not fun), dismiss the unwanted originals, and play through the game with Ramza + whoever else (since a Ch. 1 squire Ramza with DD items > level 15-20 unit).  However, if the battles were made hard enough, someone who had the skill and patience to do this could probably beat such a mod anyways without such help.

Exactly. I think we have to assume that anyone who really wants to game the system -- regardless of how water-tight your modded system may be -- is going to do so. Accepting that as a fact of life enables us to move on, and to design mods for the legitimate player in mind. I define "legitimate," in this case, to mean a player who's going to play the game as intended and not mess around with exploits, leveling/deleveling, etc.