What job changes did you make in your patch?

[Timbo]

Inspired by my own desire to patch a custom version of Final Fantasy Tactics and the Least Favorite Jobs thread.  Seen Here: http://www.ffhacktics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3314, I want to know how everybody modified their job tree and their individual jobs.

For example.  I'm planning on giving Meliadoul's Mighty Sword Zalabag's ruin skills.  Also, I'm considering redistributing the Mediators abilities to other jobs like the Thief and maybe Squire and replacing him with a Blue Mage.

What did you do?  What jobsdid you hate?  What jobsdid you change or replace?  What new jobs did you include?  Finally why?

[Kaijyuu]

I quite like all the original jobs, just not necessarily their implementation. Case and point: Calculator was a great idea, I think, but not charging and no MP cost = what the hell?!

So in my personal patch, all I did was redistribute some abilities, remove gained JP up, balance out total JP cost to master jobs, bump up JP requirements for raising job levels, and other minor tweaks. No giant changes to any one job.

[formerdeathcorps]

I care more for overall balance between generalized categories (magic vs. physical; status vs. damage; specials vs. generics) than making all unit classes roughly equal in capacity or use.  Personally, I prefer difficulty and tedium over what most people on here consider balance.

More specifically?  I have a massive list.  If you want, I can PM you it.  I'll just say that I consolidated bard/dancer, replaced calculator with red mage, and redid almost all the previously boring unit classes (yes, even partial workarounds for mime, samurai, lancer, and geomancer).  All the specials except Mustadio and most enemies have been replaced with personal RP characters or various online personalities from the various forums I visit.
As for abilities?  I deleted blade grasp (and hamedo, effectively) from player use.  I redistributed all the counter abilities and created FFTA's bonecrusher ability.  Moved Gained-JP Up to a master class.  Made two key unit classes dependent on spillover JP for proper mastery (partly as a workaround, partly as a restriction on the number of physical fighters).  In every instance except one, JP costs for abilities or levels either stayed the same or were increased, but effectiveness was rarely reduced except on the most broken attacks.

[Timbo]

I quite like all the original jobs, just not necessarily their implementation. Case and point: Calculator was a great idea, I think, but not charging and no MP cost = what the hell?!

So in my personal patch, all I did was redistribute some abilities, remove gained JP up, balance out total JP cost to master jobs, bump up JP requirements for raising job levels, and other minor tweaks. No giant changes to any one job.

So when you balanced out the total JP cost to master jobs, did you standardize a set per job total and them split that total among the individual skills?

I care more for overall balance between generalized categories (magic vs. physical; status vs. damage; specials vs. generics) than making all unit classes roughly equal in capacity or use.  Personally, I prefer difficulty and tedium over what most people on here consider balance.

More specifically?  I have a massive list.  If you want, I can PM you it.  I'll just say that I consolidated bard/dancer, replaced calculator with red mage, and redid almost all the previously boring unit classes (yes, even partial workarounds for mime, samurai, lancer, and geomancer).  All the specials except Mustadio and most enemies have been replaced with personal RP characters or various online personalities from the various forums I visit.
As for abilities?  I deleted blade grasp (and hamedo, effectively) from player use.  I redistributed all the counter abilities and created FFTA's bonecrusher ability.  Moved Gained-JP Up to a master class.  Made two key unit classes dependent on spillover JP for proper mastery (partly as a workaround, partly as a restriction on the number of physical fighters).  In every instance except one, JP costs for abilities or levels either stayed the same or were increased, but effectiveness was rarely reduced except on the most broken attacks.

Yes I would love a PM of your list.  I personally, want to start with making some small changes to vanilla like, playing with jobs, at first.  However, re-balancing the magic vs. physical jobs is something I'm concerned about as I get a better hand at this.

Oh, and I can't seem to find a single red mage build topic.  Are people just required to pay the jp cost to re-learn the various spells from white & black magic again, or is it possible to use the calculators ability to re-utilize all of the spells the character has all ready learned in those other magic classes.  Because, that would be gangster.

[Kaijyuu]

So when you balanced out the total JP cost to master jobs, did you standardize a set per job total and them split that total among the individual skills?

I essentially gave everything a minimum (was ~4000 I think), and if the job currently didn't have enough, I raised JP costs of current abilities and/or moved abilities from jobs that cost a lot to master.

Since every job inherantly has gained JP up in my patch, this isn't totally unreasonable.

[Timbo]

I've been toying around with giving every class gained JP up inherently as well.  I love the ability but thats because its basically metagame.  People on the D&D boards cry about how you HAVE to take some feats, they call it a feat tax.  I guess gained JP up is a support ability tax.  I guess, I'd probably get rid of it as well.

[Rythe]

I eliminated all but one job requirement from the job tree since I wanted jobs to be balanced instead of tiered. I made Mime require 8 in everything and gave it nice stat growths; the main reason was to have enemy units know plenty of abilities from each class so they can have random setups and still be somewhat threatening, but it's also a nice incentive for me to master everything. The biggest problem I see is that enemies will only know skills from their primary class if the job they have unlocked in FFTPatcher is set to anything but Mime.

[formerdeathcorps]

You don't balance jobs by removing requirements.  You do so by editing skillsets, weapons, and multipliers.  If you wish to add additional balance, you can add in job requirements.

If you're worried about the AI not knowing what to do, create duplicates of the player classes for all the AI classes to use.  If set as a secondary, the AI will use these skills 100% of the time (provided it's not one of hard-coded unit classes like lancer or ninja).

[Rythe]

I should've explained better. I know that removing job requirements alone does nothing. I'm working on all the other components. It's because I'm balancing the jobs that I removed the requirements, not the other way around. So far, the multipliers/growths are the most difficult. I have this dumb obsession that all five multipliers for each class need to average out to 100, and that the growths also need to be equal in some way. Doing this is making the classes a bit too powerful and somewhat hurting the diversity.

[Timbo]

That's not a bad obsession at all.  I outright neutralized stat growth in my game.  I didn't want to penalize players like myself who want to make Knights who are good at magic.

[Archael]

You get the penalty for using Knights with Magic anyway as long as the multipliers are different between jobs.

There's no way around that unless you equate all job multipliers as well job growths.

[Timbo]

Yeah, but if I won't get penalized for leveling up as a knight instead of a wizard.  It prevents players from making counter intuitive choices while leveling, like decided to level up as a monk before switching to a white mage.  I mean, with careful planning you could build a character who's good at both.  By leveling in a class with strong MA growth and then changing to a class with a High PA mult, you could be very successful at creating a hybrid character.  Is this balanced?  No.  The computer will throw classes that have been leveled up as pure classes only.  They will not be overly customized.

I'm actually on the fence about this.  A part of me loves the ability to super customize your units.  However, I think versatility is the more player friendly solution.

[Archael]

By leveling in a class with strong MA growth and then changing to a class with a High PA mult, you could be very successful at creating a hybrid character. Is this balanced? No

Yes it is, because the hybrid will never have as much PA or MA as the pure PA or MA grown unit. Not to mention that early growths (levels 1-30) matter more stat-wise than the others, meaning true hybridization is impossible without suffering a penalty somewhere or other.

The way you talk about stat growths in FFT leads me to believe you are not very familiar with how it works.

As long as no job exists which is supreme in all stats it is balanced.

You can grow a Knight 1-99 then switch him to a job with high MA Multiplier, but that won't mean that the character will be perfect at both physical and spells, far from it.

[Timbo]

I'm speaking very generally with broad strokes.  And there is a job with high stats in most areas, is there not?  I hear the mime is pretty good for everything except for hit points.

[Archael]

I'm speaking very generally with broad strokes

Yeah I can see that -_-



Mime is good for HP, PA, and MA

speed is average, MP is horrible

[Timbo]

Point Voldemort.

[formerdeathcorps]

In my opinion, this "penalty" is necessary.  Different classes should grow at different rates to reflect their skills.

A better reason, in my opinion, is if you have a specific complaint.  If you think knights are pathetic with mage secondaries, then design magic less dependent on MA  (more status magic), or damage "spells" costing MP but also using PA or SP in damage.  If you think speeds are out of control in vanilla/1.3, then renorm spells, ASM hack it, or reduce speed growths and equips.

[Timbo]

I guess my problem is that I can only see arguments against it.  I don't see any reason for it to exist.  People say that it adds an element of necessary foresight to character building or that inhibiting a characters ability to switch between magical and physical jobs effectively makes things more realistic.  These two arguments have very little effect on the mechanics of game play and do little to reward the player as far as fun factor goes.

[Archael]

These two arguments have very little effect on the mechanics of game play and do little to reward the player as far as fun factor goes.

Some people find fun in seeing their career-long thief out-speeding enemy units

etc etc

I know I do, and adds a ton of character to the characters I have grown personally

if you have all stat growths the same, every generic is essentially the same, apart from starting br / fa, not to mention it removes the growth penalties for otherwise very strong jobs (some jobs are very strong, but are not ideal to level in, similar to an ultimate weapon not letting materia grow in FF7)

[Kaijyuu]

On the other hand, some people see stat growths as a penalty for using jobs they like, or as an arbitrary requirement for making a decent character.


I made the suggestion in a similar thread that stat bonuses based on job should be tied to the job level, not to what you leveled up as. That has the obvious issue of everyone being the same again after every job is mastered.

Ideally I think everyone should be the same at absolute max power... BUT "absolute max power" should not be feasible to obtain in a normal game (normal game in this case including the bonus dungeon, all the side quests, ect ect). It should require ridiculous grinding and, at that point, you should be finished with the game already.

Too many games balance at max power and assume the player will reach it before the end. That's a flaw in design -- you shouldn't be able to reach max power before the end at all without specifically intending to.