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FFT: WOTL - Valeria 2.4 "Ivalice Remastered"

Started by Windows X, December 11, 2017, 04:33:54 am

Windows X

Quote from: ej1999ej on March 14, 2022, 09:28:44 pmHello, I just started the mod and am having a fun time so far, just started chapter 2., and I have a question. Does crystalizing an undead with burial count as it being killed toward dark knight requirements since it becomes a crystal?

Also do reaction abilities still have bravery decide if they trigger or not? I kept the game default units since brave and faith don't scale anymore and they don't seem to be responding to attacks as much as my normal 70 brave units usually do.

To be honest I haven't tried that yet myself but unit that triggers crystalization should count technically. The purpose of Burial is to convert enemy's unit to learn abilities instantly rather than waiting 3 turns for chance to be crystal or chest.

Most reaction abilities are based on bravery points as before. Some may not use bravery point like original. Only brave/faith manipulation is removed and revamped into something else that can be useful or contribute other jobs better.
  • Modding version: WotL

Ananda

Hello!
What program do you use to patch the game?

Greetings
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

Blank??

ranger skill has barrage not lightning strike on the patch i downloaded, and orator praise and weaken has 5 tiles cros layout, is this a bug?
  • Modding version: WotL

Windows X

Quote from: Blank?? on March 29, 2022, 09:19:03 amranger skill has barrage not lightning strike on the patch i downloaded, and orator praise and weaken has 5 tiles cros layout, is this a bug?

barraged is modified ma/2 * ma magical attack 4 times now in 2.4. about 5 tiles across layout, please check your equipped weapon as it looks like book's weapon range.
  • Modding version: WotL

Blank??

a correction of my statement above, i meant was the radius of praise and weaken has 2horizontal and 2vertical, the range is normal.
this can be abuse its like giving 5 chars +1 PA every turn

also the preotecja and shellja skill and some other skills has ct 100? or ct 00
  • Modding version: WotL

Windows X

Quote from: Blank?? on April 02, 2022, 03:58:16 pma correction of my statement above, i meant was the radius of praise and weaken has 2horizontal and 2vertical, the range is normal.
this can be abuse its like giving 5 chars +1 PA every turn

also the preotecja and shellja skill and some other skills has ct 100? or ct 00


Ah I see. The Praise one is a bug. It's supposed to give to one unit only but I got mixed up with other AoE debuffs. Will fix that in next update. As for weaken, it's intentional to have AoE level down with 50+MA chance and evadable also. Enemy with higher magic evasion will have less chance to success.

Protectja/Shellja/Hasteja/Slowja has CT 1 with 100 Speed. Speed is calculated from 100/CT. Ja tier will cast spell faster with higher success rate and range.
  • Modding version: WotL

Jappadog

Hi I just modded the game and I was wondering if it would be possible to fix the ui glitches and japanese text that shows up in battles.

For example:

UI glitch: https://imgur.com/IqVsJVS or https://imgur.com/cPjvErl

Japanese text bug: https://imgur.com/uJbF2P3
  • Modding version: WotL

Seirno

I can say I enjoyed a majority of this mod, but a lot of it was equally frustrating too.  I played up to the chapter
3 monastery sequence before I just got bored with it.  Part of it was the mod, the other part is that's just how FFT goes when you've played it for 20 years.  Magic and rangers are straight up overpowered compared to a majority of things available in the game.  I can't really agree that this isn't an "added difficulty mod" overall.  For the points below, keep in mind I did next to zero additional grinding, as that was stated in the OP that the game was intended to not grind through.

Some good stuff:
1.  I like the unique flavors of some of the classes with how their skills are handled and changed up.
2.  The innate passives are an interesting touch and changes the way some of them are played.
3.  Removing/changing a lot of the overpowered abilities definitely makes you think of other strategies to finish some fights.
4.  Most of the equipment changes were good changes, though I feel the shield nerfs were unnecessary (except maybe the ultimate shields.)

Some bad stuff:
1.  Story fight scaling is fine if everything was still vanilla cost, but with the reduced/changed JP costs of some abilities, combined with the formula changes, it gets absurd very fast.  Level scaling is fine, but their gear should not be 1-2 tiers above what you have available.  With zero extensive grinding, around level 23ish, the knights at Lesalia had crystal equipment.  Such inflated HP totals that they almost literally just walked through everything I threw at them and proceeded to chop people for 80-90HP a swing while the monks sat back and spammed Aurablast or Shockwave.
2.  There isn't any consistency for the difficulty of the story fights.  My first point of contention was Dorter.  Already a fairly difficult fight in vanilla, this cranked it up to 15/10.  Having an archer with almost half the entire map as range (able to deal over 50% HP per attack), two black mages that instant cast -ra spells for 90-100% of your HP (I had my full HP knight one-shot killed several times), and a tanky knight that outclasses all of your gear just isn't fun.  Without excess grinding you don't have nearly enough available to match the enemy.  Every other story fight was a breeze up until the execution site.
3.  The execution site is where I adopted the "mass summoning until everything is dead" tactic because nothing else was working.  Gafgarion being able to move effectively across the map and deal 60-80HP with Night Sword is nuts.  Rangers are so fast that whatever Gafgarion didn't finish off, they could shoot across the map and finish off whatever he didn't before you even have a chance to recover.  Not to mention if the time mages woke up on the wrong side of the bed, instead of actually being a partial nuisance with haste/slow, they nuked everything below them with time/black magic.
4.  Magic and bows are overpowered.  I felt consistently much, much underpowered through the game because I just didn't have the HP totals to even remotely stand a chance against multiple mages or archers.
5.  I can understand why some of the nerfs were made to Agrias' skills but from what I saw, they were effectively a waste of a spot now, and you were better off just giving her magic instead.  Magic has better range, no vertical limits, does more damage, and hits more spaces with less restrictions than her sword skills.  She's nothing more than a generic 2.0 now.

There are probably a few other things I'm failing to remember, but that's most of my feedback for the mod.  What actually got me to stop was the dragoons in the monastery.  If I play the classes I want, they outspeed me and go stab people in the face for 90+ damage before I get a turn to move, while having almost 400 HP due to being in full crystal/platinum equipment.  If I try and build beefy characters or inflict status effects, it's back to relying on RNG to land the statuses while they're wailing on me for almost half my HP per hit.  I was back to either running way until they were sufficiently grouped and obliterated them with summons/magic or relying on RNG that everyone didn't get murdered before I could inflict them with enough status that I had a decent chance to live long enough to kill one of them.  It just lost its fun at that point.  If story scaling was removed, I think it would make it much more enjoyable to play through.
  • Modding version: PSX & WotL

Windows X

Quote from: Jappadog on July 30, 2022, 09:57:15 pmHi I just modded the game and I was wondering if it would be possible to fix the ui glitches and japanese text that shows up in battles.

For example:

UI glitch: https://imgur.com/IqVsJVS or https://imgur.com/cPjvErl

Japanese text bug: https://imgur.com/uJbF2P3

It looks like you used unclean ISO with Valeria patch. Please make sure you patch with clean USA/EUR iso and patch with right language version. Patching on unclean ISO will result glitches.

Quote from: Seirno on August 07, 2022, 09:30:20 amI can say I enjoyed a majority of this mod, but a lot of it was equally frustrating too.  I played up to the chapter
3 monastery sequence before I just got bored with it.  Part of it was the mod, the other part is that's just how FFT goes when you've played it for 20 years.  Magic and rangers are straight up overpowered compared to a majority of things available in the game.  I can't really agree that this isn't an "added difficulty mod" overall.  For the points below, keep in mind I did next to zero additional grinding, as that was stated in the OP that the game was intended to not grind through.

Some good stuff:
1.  I like the unique flavors of some of the classes with how their skills are handled and changed up.
2.  The innate passives are an interesting touch and changes the way some of them are played.
3.  Removing/changing a lot of the overpowered abilities definitely makes you think of other strategies to finish some fights.
4.  Most of the equipment changes were good changes, though I feel the shield nerfs were unnecessary (except maybe the ultimate shields.)

Some bad stuff:
1.  Story fight scaling is fine if everything was still vanilla cost, but with the reduced/changed JP costs of some abilities, combined with the formula changes, it gets absurd very fast.  Level scaling is fine, but their gear should not be 1-2 tiers above what you have available.  With zero extensive grinding, around level 23ish, the knights at Lesalia had crystal equipment.  Such inflated HP totals that they almost literally just walked through everything I threw at them and proceeded to chop people for 80-90HP a swing while the monks sat back and spammed Aurablast or Shockwave.
2.  There isn't any consistency for the difficulty of the story fights.  My first point of contention was Dorter.  Already a fairly difficult fight in vanilla, this cranked it up to 15/10.  Having an archer with almost half the entire map as range (able to deal over 50% HP per attack), two black mages that instant cast -ra spells for 90-100% of your HP (I had my full HP knight one-shot killed several times), and a tanky knight that outclasses all of your gear just isn't fun.  Without excess grinding you don't have nearly enough available to match the enemy.  Every other story fight was a breeze up until the execution site.
3.  The execution site is where I adopted the "mass summoning until everything is dead" tactic because nothing else was working.  Gafgarion being able to move effectively across the map and deal 60-80HP with Night Sword is nuts.  Rangers are so fast that whatever Gafgarion didn't finish off, they could shoot across the map and finish off whatever he didn't before you even have a chance to recover.  Not to mention if the time mages woke up on the wrong side of the bed, instead of actually being a partial nuisance with haste/slow, they nuked everything below them with time/black magic.
4.  Magic and bows are overpowered.  I felt consistently much, much underpowered through the game because I just didn't have the HP totals to even remotely stand a chance against multiple mages or archers.
5.  I can understand why some of the nerfs were made to Agrias' skills but from what I saw, they were effectively a waste of a spot now, and you were better off just giving her magic instead.  Magic has better range, no vertical limits, does more damage, and hits more spaces with less restrictions than her sword skills.  She's nothing more than a generic 2.0 now.

There are probably a few other things I'm failing to remember, but that's most of my feedback for the mod.  What actually got me to stop was the dragoons in the monastery.  If I play the classes I want, they outspeed me and go stab people in the face for 90+ damage before I get a turn to move, while having almost 400 HP due to being in full crystal/platinum equipment.  If I try and build beefy characters or inflict status effects, it's back to relying on RNG to land the statuses while they're wailing on me for almost half my HP per hit.  I was back to either running way until they were sufficiently grouped and obliterated them with summons/magic or relying on RNG that everyone didn't get murdered before I could inflict them with enough status that I had a decent chance to live long enough to kill one of them.  It just lost its fun at that point.  If story scaling was removed, I think it would make it much more enjoyable to play through.

Thank you for your feedback. I do agree that it's a bit hard to balance magic with physical. It usually ended up being either too strong or too weak for most parts. When I first started playing FFT, I also found black mage being too powerful to deal with also.

However, if you are experienced player who can make use of positioning and CT properly, fighting with black mage is not actually hard with right tactics. I either use bait to tank black magicks or rush kill them before they can act. There's also a few options to recover HP and more abilities I added to disable magicks too.

Re-balancing doesn't necessary mean game won't be harder as player can't abuse cheat mechanics and enemies can fight more fairly against us with changes I made. To my understanding, difficulty mod is something like FFT 1.3 where it's guaranteed to get very hard with punishing level of content and unfair scaling, like over 10 extra levels for example. Mine has fair scaling and consider original being easy mode.

Still, I can see that this mod has been going through changes since first Valeria years back and new players who don't grow with older version may find some parts being too hard to adapt. Let's address the issues you kindly provided one by one here.

1. Leveling scaling is something that can never be balanced out. I considered making fixed gears for level scaling but that wil demerit rewards on Thief job to steal more powerful items from harder enemies for some players. I added Weaken ability on Orator to reduce level if you over grind unit so you can use that ability on Ramza and his allies if you struggle with gear gap.

Another possible solution is to limit level cap per chapter. I can setup level cap for each chapter with new ASM hack so player won't have level too high. However, this will remove over grind run for some players who want to prepare level 99 and start playing with max levels.

Personally I think level scaling won't be a big deal with Weaken ability implemented to delevel Ramza to reduce level gap between gears and you can recover with better gears to steal over time. You can find monsters in random battle and reduce Ramza level to reduce gear gap and steal their items to grow your party so you can handle enemies with higher tier items better. You can also poach strong items too.

2. Dorter fight is the first difficulty spike to test mettle of players. I never struggle with Dorter personally knowing what I can do with my party members. I have Throw Items to give potions and phoenix down, Shell ability to reduce magic damage and knight's abilities to silence or cancel magic casting. You can pair Rend action/magick with archer to cancel their action or magic ability easily too.

If you stick with brute force method like vanilla, it will hard to tackle black magicks which is significantly faster. You need to learn to expand your strategies and possibilities to overcome challenges. Or I need to nerf black magicks so new players can have fun. I guess re-balance on black magicks is needed for new player and I'll consider that for next patch.

3. Gaffgarion with level scaling can be fearsome indeed. But his hands are fixed with Blood Sword and Mythril Shield so he won't hit you too hard even if you over grind your team. The problem is extra HP from over grind but you should have strong magicks to nuke him too with high level. You can use mages to cast high tier spells to burst him fast. Have White Mage casting Holy, Black Mage casting Unholy.

Ramza and Time Mage can also use ability to give turn to knock down Gaffgarion faster. This fight will test your mettle about separating your units to deal different group of units effectively. Agrias also receive a lot of buff for HP/PA with innate Arcane Defense so she should be able to handle Archer by herself with always hit holy sword abilities. Enemies above can be dealt with magicks and support abilities to keep momentum to your side. It shouldn't be too hard even with level scaling.

4. As for archer being too powerful, I don't think so personally. You have the same weapon range and no damage increment on chapter 1 weapons. Only 1WP added for chapter 2-3 and 2WP added for chapter 4. There's no damage increment abilities. Only status infliction and one last skill Barrage to do 4 hit MA damage with high JP cost so enemy won't likely learn it.

It could be an issue from gear gap due to level scaling where archer uses stronger bow on your lower HP gears. I wonder if you spend time farming stuff for so long and didn't ever use Thief or recruit enemies to take their stronger gears with you. If you keep upgrading gears with Steal/Recruit from more powerful enemies while grinding, that should resolve your gear gap issues.

I can understand that black magicks can be OP in early chapters for new players but archer job itself is fine. It's more about level scaling issue where you over grind your party members but neglect to use steal and recruit to take better gears from enemies to adapt. Once you do that, your issue with level scaling will be resolved. I also tested this stealing Crystal Helm and stuff with weaker gears and use Archer + Rend to break OP stuff I can't steal safely. They will become paper after having gears stolen/shattered.

5. To be fair, Agrias actually received a lot of buff for herself. High innate PA/MA Growth with increased PA Multiplier added so she'll join with more PA/MA. Her HP Growth is also improved with HP Multiplier and can even tank magicks better with innate Arcane Defense. Her tankiness is increased to Orlandeau tier and her PA/MA is closer to his level.

Although her Holy Knight's abilities will have damage decreased. But it's only 1WP reduction for most abilities. Only Judgement Blade and Hallowed Bolt having 2WP reduced due to being too broken but I also increased vertical to scale like black magicks so it's more like re-balance to trade damage output for more reach. Agrias is actually buffed a lot. And keep in mind Magicks will have CT when her Holy Knight abilities can work instantly with no MP cost.

Sure if you want to build her with Magicks, she can be a fine mage also. Her MA Growth is quite high so you can level her up as Holy Knight a bit and switch to mage job or become magic knight is up to you. I also had a great time with Holy Knight/Iaido before and it worked pretty well.



With all things considered, the reason you stopped was actually from Dragoon with Crystal Helm/Platinum armor having high HP more than you can burn and outkill them reliably. It seems like your gameplay was ruined because you didn't adapt to level scaling properly. So I'll recommend 3 possible options for you to fix your play style.

1. Use Weaken on Ramza when level scaling hits you too hard
2. Use Steal abilities from Thief and Recruit from Orator to farm powerful gears from enemies
3. Use break abilities with Gun/Bow to break enemy's gears from distance

If you want to play this mod the way you want to, you can use weaken on Ramza and enjoy the game as you want it to be. Or you can try to learn how to adapt with level scaling better in future run. My version of level scaling is actually toned down a lot compared to other mods. Most high tier gears have HP/MP cap and nerf stats gained so difference won't be as big as others.

Still, people who came unprepared for level scaling will struggle hard like you. I hope you will enjoy Valeria better with my recommendations to progress better with level scaling. Maybe you can also consider using gears with speed bonus and use support abilities more which will help a lot.

I'm working on 2.5 update now and will consider your input to implement. For now here's my summary about possible changes I can implement on 2.5 based on your feedback.

1. Re-balance black magicks scaling (nerf tier 1-2 a bit so it won't be too OP perhaps)
2. Add level cap for each chapter (15/30/50/99) so player can't over grind beyond gears too much.
3. Increase success rate of Rend/Steal abilities to improve reliability of RNG a bit

Honestly I don't want to add level cap since it will make lv99 run impossible. I take that Summon and other magicks are fine right? Only Black Magicks that you find being too OP and nuke you too hard. I'll try to adapt new changes to be more friendly to new players so feel free to drop your feedback and I'll see what I can do.
  • Modding version: WotL

mosspimp

Hi i've been playing this mod and I'm currently having an issue unlocking Dark Knight on Orlandeau. I've gone through all the replies and from what i see the conclusion is that for Dark Knight, Orlandeau just needs to have lv8 black mage and knight (not mastered) and get 20 crystallization. I've gotten way more than 20 crystallizations but Dark Knight still has not been unlocked..

Please help :D
  • Modding version: PSX & WotL

Windows X

Quote from: mosspimp on September 23, 2022, 03:13:57 pmHi i've been playing this mod and I'm currently having an issue unlocking Dark Knight on Orlandeau. I've gone through all the replies and from what i see the conclusion is that for Dark Knight, Orlandeau just needs to have lv8 black mage and knight (not mastered) and get 20 crystallization. I've gotten way more than 20 crystallizations but Dark Knight still has not been unlocked..

Please help :D

Did you make 20 crystalization for that unit? It's not all combined but for each unit. You still need to master both Knight and Black Mage too. I wonder if I should remove these requirements and just leave both jobs to lv8.
  • Modding version: WotL

darun

after finish new tactic ogre  back to fft and start new run with mod,  and 1st thing i find pain is active group size, i forget how all small here.  so want to ask - is possible mod sameway active party size from 5 to 6-8, even with enemy hp boost or bonus enemys?
  • Modding version: PSX & WotL

Nyzer

  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

Kazu

Enjoying the mod so far. The added difficulty is fun and the overall rebalance feels fresh.

A few things

1. Flail/maces don't miss, is this the weapon's gimmick?
2. Any thoughts on making multiplayer items accessible outside of multiplayer? Would be cool.


Thanks for the wonderful mod.
  • Modding version: WotL

Windows X

Quote from: darun on November 15, 2022, 03:40:25 pmafter finish new tactic ogre  back to fft and start new run with mod,  and 1st thing i find pain is active group size, i forget how all small here.  so want to ask - is possible mod sameway active party size from 5 to 6-8, even with enemy hp boost or bonus enemys?

I don't think increasing party size is possible. Map design doesn't allow it.

Quote from: Kazu on November 17, 2022, 09:18:28 pmEnjoying the mod so far. The added difficulty is fun and the overall rebalance feels fresh.

A few things

1. Flail/maces don't miss, is this the weapon's gimmick?
2. Any thoughts on making multiplayer items accessible outside of multiplayer? Would be cool.


Thanks for the wonderful mod.

1. It has fixed damage with unavoidable mechanics yeah.
2. I considered it but most multiplayer items are too OP and bringing them back with nerf will defeat its purpose.
  • Modding version: WotL

Xaneph

You should 100% change the Dark Knight requirements, It's one of the primary reasons I'm always torn between this mod and the Lion War. You already nerfed the Dark Knight a SMIDGE too much so removing mastery and crystal req in favor of Lv8 Black Mage + Lv8 Knight is the right move in my humble opinion. I Love your mod so much though so my intention is not to criticize.
  • Modding version: PSX & WotL

Windows X

September 15, 2023, 05:28:31 pm #176 Last Edit: September 16, 2023, 06:31:37 am by Windows X
Quote from: Xaneph on April 15, 2023, 01:57:22 amYou should 100% change the Dark Knight requirements, It's one of the primary reasons I'm always torn between this mod and the Lion War. You already nerfed the Dark Knight a SMIDGE too much so removing mastery and crystal req in favor of Lv8 Black Mage + Lv8 Knight is the right move in my humble opinion. I Love your mod so much though so my intention is not to criticize.

Those requirements will be removed in next mod. To be fair, it's more about re-balanced rather than massive nerf if you check stats.

[Dark Knight]
-Increase HP Multiplier (80 -> 100)
-Decrease PA Growth (40 -> 45)
-Decrease PA Multiplier (140 -> 120)
-Increase MA Growth (50 -> 48)
-Increase MA Multiplier (80 -> 100)
-Sanguine Sword/Infernal Strike can be learned without JP cost
-JP cost decreased for Abyssal Blade (1000 -> 600)
-JP cost decreased for Unholy Sacrifice (1200 -> 800)
-JP cost decreased for HP Boost (2000 -> 1200)
-Remove Vehemence/Move +3/Jump +3 movement abilities
-Add Vehemence as an innate ability

Dark Knight has more base HP, more MA growth and multiplier with decreased PA growth/multiplier.

You use 20% PA multiplier to buff 20% MA/HP multiplier with innate Vehemence. It's more about buffs actually for over all.

However, since you don't need ridiculous grinding, base PA won't scale much on this job. Most jobs won't get PA growth beyond 45 except Mime and Onion Knight (which won't level up through normal means)

So Dark Knight doesn't get nerfed hard but over all DPS is nerfed for better re-balance between offense and defense strategies.

I'm considering the idea about level limit across each chapter like 15/30/50/99 at the moment. I wonder if that's a good idea so people can grind job levels without being over leveled.
  • Modding version: WotL

Wernecksteiger

are the multiplayer items accessible without playing multiplayer?
  • Modding version: PSX & WotL
  • Discord username: wernecksteiger

seejay2

Is it possible to do a side patch to get dawnblade earlier? Having Ramza have an ability like that really is the biggest thing hooking me to this game, but I wish I could get it earlier, like at least Chapter 3?
  • Modding version: PSX & WotL

Deadwing

November 23, 2023, 12:03:50 pm #179 Last Edit: January 31, 2024, 03:22:02 am by Deadwing Reason: Finished game, more comprehensive experience and thoughts
So, gonna begin this post with some critique and considerations (which will probably result in you just calling me bad lol), but end on more positive notes!

I've only gotten to Chapter 4 in my play-through, and I didn't fully understand all of the changes that would affect my game-plan until after I'd already made progress, so that will colour my experience. That said, I feel like I want to restart my play-through because of level-scaling and the counter-intuitively high JP costs of abilities. Again, I could just be bad, but my conclusion from my experience is that, if I have specific advanced job combos i want to try, I have to meticulously decide on my entire party composition before I even start in order to acquire the abilities I need for my game-plan. I don't know FFT inside and out like some, so while I did do planning and theory-crafting to the best of my understanding, it wasn't perfect. Thus, I needed to correct for mistakes during my play-through, make some job changes as I learned more, and do a little bit of grinding to make those corrections. Unfortunately, it feels like the balance of certain encounters becomes much more difficult due to the level-scaling, resulting in my first play-through experience being a slog at times.

Again, part of this is likely because it took me a while to really understand all the changes, so part of my critique might be pointed towards how the design and balance information is formatted and presented, as I've even found some information missing from the OP. And again, I know mods like these are generally meant for people very familiar with the game. That said, I think a bit of room to make corrections in a play-through would be a nice QoL change, as having to use Orator's Weaken to help balance things is a pretty unsatisfying "fix" for the issue. [See edit at end of post; I understand this might be beyond you.]

From my experience it seems like the encounter scaling is based on your highest-level party member. Is that correct? I personally like the idea of level-scaling, and I'm assuming you don't have the ability to make particularly nuanced changes to how it works, so probably best to leave it as it is. Instead, reducing some JP costs would provide some room to adjust your game-plan as you go. On that note, is there some sort of technical reason why JP Boost has to be kept in the game? Wouldn't it be better, design-wise, to remove JP Boost and simply spend time determining proper balanced JP costs? It would allow the player to experiment more with Support skills, if you'd be willing to re-design and re-add some of the ones you removed. Allowing more options in the Support slot instead of being forced to use JP Boost I think is a great secondary argument to JP cost changes. Of course, that would take more effort on your end, and at the end of the day that's your call.

All that out of the way, I want to also be very clear that I love what you've done with the mod! I've had a lot of fun overall, and even after feeling like I want to restart my play-through...Well, I mean, I want to restart my play-through--I still want to play this mod! it's super cool and such a fresh take on the game. Kudos!

Okay, thanks for reading this wall of text! I might wait 'til 2.5, but one way or another I am definitely doing a second run of this mod. Great stuff!

EDIT: on my second play-through I had a similar experience in different ways and at different times, but I'm starting to think if you're modding for WotL that a lot of these hang-ups are unavoidable since you can only alter so much, and nothing as fundamental as enemy AI. I beat the game, and the difficulty peaks and valleys for certain battles were still there and still jarring. You can still run-over a lot of story battles by one-round nuking the single named unit who is the sole victory condition. Not as bad as Cid walking-up and one-tapping people, but still a bit anti-climactic.

On the note of Cid, it'd have been nice to not have to grind to unlock spells for him and Valmafra at that point if we want to use them, which works against one of the main points of the mod. Generally, with this in mind as well as my earlier points, I think I stand by the JP Boost/cost critiques. I don't mind a bit of grinding being needed at hard-to-balance points later in the game to help preserve some challenge instead of the walk-over a lot of Chapter 4 is in the vanilla game, but it feels very arbitrary and avoidable in a case like this.

On the flip side, again, some missions feel like they absolutely require the "solution" being just having to do that. Argath 2.0 is such a case, where the fight design as a whole is a giant difficulty spike unless you bee-line to Argath and one-round kill him before he can heal everything back. Otherwise it feels impossible. I tried many things with a "proper" well-rounded comp, but in the end had to actually grind a bit to achieve a one-dimensional team that could take him out in the first round. It's pretty disappointing that Tactics has some really cool battle scenarios that are largely undermined by rushed or short-sighted scenario balancing. This feels like a design failing on a more fundamental level, and from what I've learned of WotL modding versus PSX modding I don't know if you can do anything, so I understand your frustrations addressing critiques in this thread.

At the end of the day, though, it was still a refreshing experience that, "good" or "bad," threw me for a loop at certain points and made me think where I never had to. In the original game most of Chapter 4 was a breeze (outside of the Barich fight,) so it was nice to actually have a few more hang-ups this time around. Thank you for all the effort!
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown