FFT Arena: Balance Discussion Thread

[Barren]

Always oil is not a good idea on cursed ring users because that leaves them extremely vulnerable to any elemental attacks. Plus you can always inflict oil anyways and use a elemental attack that way. It defeats the purpose of hawk's eye and short edge inflicting oil.

[Elmdork]

removing null holy from cursed ring is a must. it just strangles out the whole holy equipment set, and now dark is the #1 most used/absorbed team and holy must fall dead last, when in all of FF history, holy has been this all-powerful spell, and still is, but diminished by dark skillsets and the use of cursed ring.

i like the weak: holy idea. should be like that for all undead units anyway. it's hard to touch this one as so many people use it and it has become a staple in the game. i agree it's overpowered, but we don't wanna piss anybody off either.

[Malroth]

Loose the speed loose the null holy and i'd be fine with cursed ring   although i'm still wanting another Null crystal equipment even if it requires someone else have to raise you manually.


Edit:   Always Faith on Cursed ring would be a Great drawback since its always used on fighter types.

[Elmdork]

Loose the speed loose the null holy and i'd be fine with cursed ring   although i'm still wanting another Null crystal equipment even if it requires someone else have to raise you manually.


Edit:   Always Faith on Cursed ring would be a Great drawback since its always used on fighter types.

lol then you'll get some nasty lore users with always faith and never crystal. that would be a whole next problem to balance. also disagree with the new null crystal item idea. crystallization is something that is supposed to happen. plain and simple. cursed ring is obviously the exception and already being debated for re-balancing. you could see a game literally go on forever if both teams don't have any sort of crystallization and start popping back up at random times.

i think the real issue here is undead not being a big enough drawback for people to even consider it a drawback, or the very RARE usage of the "undead" spell because of the lackluster overall power of it. i know many people are opposed to dual anything, but would you consider a dual weakness fair? weak:holy, fire? perhaps initial petrify or frog or something like that?

well, i'm still relatively new and by no means a programmer, so all i can do is spitball ideas. is this something discussed before and already planned for a change, or should we sift through what must and must not go? or is it just gonna stay that way and everyone should stop complaining?

[Malroth]

not popping back up at random but sticking around dead without a timer like Delita or Algus untill a resurection capable unit brings them back

[silentkaster]

I was thinking about the confusion status...is there a way to add it back in but put a CT on it to avoid endless matches? It could be long or short but might help out as far as balance is concerned. I think the Ancient Sword proccing petrify is a bit OP at times personally...but proccing confusion I wouldn't mind so much. If the CT was limited, I think this could really be a status that would be interesting to see and add some spice to some of the matches. Any thoughts?

[Dokurider]

Well, the other thing about Confusion is that it's plain inferior even beyond it's persistence. Confuse is one of those statuses that the AI ignores, and while Death Sentence and Charm have a pay off, Confuse doesn't. Maybe you'll get the AI to attack their allies, maybe they'll just waste turns, or maybe they'll just attack you anyways. Charm is better at turning allies against each other, and Sleep, Don't Act, Frog...um, almost every other control status out there really, is better at shutting down units than Confuse ever will be. All you have is a status that doesn't control well enough, yet the AI ignores anyways, often to it's detriment. It's just a liability and was outright inferior for anyone that choose to use it back then. Confuse would have be completely and utterly rewritten to be useful.

Of course, this is just a guess on my part. I wasn't there when the decision to remove it was made.

[CT5Holy]

The biggest reason for its removal is because the AI ignores Confused units. If the remaining unit on a team was Confused, the AI would just derp around, and the match would go on indefinitely (though obviously at that point you can call one side the winner).

Doku also makes excellent reasons for Confuse being really meh in comparison to other statuses.

[Gaignun]

On the subject of status effects, I've been thinking of ways to reduce the overreliance on White Magick for support.  I wonder how feasible coding the following status effects are.

Curtain: Add "Halve: all elements" (basically an "anti-oil." Whether it expires on hit is optional.)
Amplify: Add "Strengthen: all elements"
Veil: Add "Immune: all status effects" (or a limited number of status effects)
Transparent: Increase P-EV/M-EV (or both) by 50% (for a single hit or a short time)
Celerity: Add "Short Charge"

To help against the AI's general stupidity at applying anything proactively other than Haste, I'm thinking of having these buffs added using weak healing spells or to a version of the Haste spell itself.

[Barren]

I'm just wondering when in the world is FFMaster going to start working on 1.39? Did he disappear off the face of the earth or something? We all haven't heard from him in a long time

[Gaignun]

Maybe!  It's been nearly one year since the 1.39 summary was written.

[Otabo]

Pretty certain I've seen a few videos on Youtube from FFM about 2 months back. Other than that, I dunno what is going on with him.

[ShadowDragon15]

I'd like to see Asura get a 33% chance to proc Oil. It might help Asura get used more often. I think of it as a nearly forgotten Draw Out.

[silentkaster]

Well, in this case, we could also argue that Stop is worse than petrify. They do the same exact things, but Petrify essentially kills them and has no end CT. It also gives the AI less to do since they dont have to do anything to that unit, but would still have to kill a Stopped unit. Does this mean that Stop should be eliminated in the game since it is inferior to petrify?

Putting an end CT to confusion could make it a viable status for abilities like Nameless Dance, a proc for Ancient Sword or Parry Edge, or making an ability like Beguile more balanced. Commentators often say that Beguile is a rarely used ability due to its low accuracy. Since confusion is not as strong as Charm, the accuracy being raised a bit might make it more balanced and more popular.

In any event, I know it is an unpopular choice, but just an interesting thought for an option. 

[reinoe]

Well, in this case, we could also argue that Stop is worse than petrify. They do the same exact things, but Petrify essentially kills them and has no end CT. It also gives the AI less to do since they dont have to do anything to that unit, but would still have to kill a Stopped unit. Does this mean that Stop should be eliminated in the game since it is inferior to petrify?

Petrify, the status, is very good.  However you can't take it alone in a vacuum.  There are more skills that proc stop.  Stop is a harder status to heal.

[silentkaster]

Petrify, the status, is very good.  However you can't take it alone in a vacuum.  There are more skills that proc stop.  Stop is a harder status to heal.

Right, and thats exactly my point. To say "The status is inferior" or simply "not as good" as a different status alone is not a reason to delete it. Take "Blind" for instance. Blind as it stood in Vanilla was not even relevant a huge portion of the time and when it was, it was generally a tiny inconvenience if that. Concentrate could still ignore Blind, and going in from the back suffered no penalty. It was rewritten in Arena to a very annoying, and often game changing, status. Having a Blind Berserked unit spells huge trouble for that team and is almost always a huge detriment and even Blind by itself can really hamper physical fighters now.

Similar logic for poison...the biggest reason poison is a more viable status is persisting through death and the long CT count. PD is pretty useless on a poisoned unit if they can't instantly heal and/or cure the poison.

Confusion isn't as strong as charm, and that's for sure. But DA? The Confusion still removes evade and might make the enemy advance rather than fall back (which may or may not be what you want). No, it isn't as good as charm nor should it be (in my opinion). Perhaps a longer CT than Charm or not being able to heal yourself from confusion (except by randomness) might make it a good balance?

BTW, this isnt a game make or break for me...it's just an interesting thought I had about this particular status.

[Dokurider]

Yeah Confuse would be good, if it was changed. I think another reason it was thrown out was that space at the time was at a premium, and trying to make room in Attributes for a less then helpful status just wasn't happening. And hacking statuses, to paraphrase Raven, is a pain. To quote the FFHwiki:

Current limitations:
1) We can only currently change the CT on spells that already respect CT; we cannot add new CTs to spells that previously don't end (0 CT = status doesn't end).
2) Some status effects (like berserk or charm) require an enemy attack or spell to grant the status effect in order to function properly, and some don't function at all when cast on the player (such as invite).
3) One cannot inflict the jump status without glitching the game; charging, defend, jump, and perform cannot be voided with "cannot stack on top of" by any status effect except the ones given.
4) Even if Ignore Attacks is removed, units with the status still usually cannot be targeted by the player or AI.

http://ffhacktics.com/wiki/Status_Effects

[ShadowDragon15]

Just a quick note on the Cursed Ring. Thanks to TL's elemental video, I noticed that Dark has nothing but absorb items, and Holy has only absorb or null items. Maybe to make the cursed ring more fair, would be to change it's absorb dark to null or half dark. and null holy to half holy.

Personally, I would lean to null dark and half holy.

[Barren]

CT5Holy and I were discussing last week that Moonlight should perhaps have cancel: regen because we need a way to make the blade beam proc more useful. You can still run move-hp up with it and still have the at good enough health in my opinion.

[Dokurider]

I don't really see what that would accomplish besides weakening the weapon. The AI is going to heal and you shouldn't prevent that. The truth is, you can't realistically get a lot of damage out of this weapon. The best you can hope for is 30-50% shot.