The Problem with Transparent

[Neophyte Ronin]

Actually, there are several:

First, enemies seem to advance upon you whether they disregard your presence as open for an attack or not.

Second, when you hack it so that doesn't happen, you wind up getting nailed by people before you can execute your infallible weapon strike, forcing you to redo the whole Sunken State thing.  If your Brave ain't 100, there's a chance that you lose the opportunity.

Third: both the hacked and original versions don't really do the concept justice.

On one side, Dome thought of creating a version where you are invulnerable until you strike, and that Sunken State was the only way to cast the effect.  This way, if someone does attack you, you are hit for zero damage and it goes away (State might proc); it only goes away for real if you act.  Not bad, but I don't quite see it happening quite like that.

In my vision (close to FFVI), it shrouds you in a blurring effect.  Enemies have a general impression of where you are, but their attacks are less than accurate.  Kind of like the Blur Artifact from Doom giving you an easier time dodging enemy fire when you put distance between the two of you.  It would double your evasion rating, in other words.

Before you cry foul, devise a caveat to negate magic repulsion to 0%, making for a reasonable drawback we're comfortably familiar with (if you played FFVI and toyed with the Vanish/Doom trick, for instance), maybe even double the success of magic-based skills (but not amp up the outcomes of something like fire magic).  This makes Transparent into Ethereal, a glass cannon defense, even without the doubled success effect.

Seeing that Confusion negates Evasion in much the same way as Sleep and countless others, I don't see why you couldn't negate magic repulsion exclusively in the same vein of adjustments or negation of evasion working in the case of Darkness, Concentrate, Defend, and Abandon.  But I also haven't heard anyone who's tried anything but downsize Transparent to cut back on the unfairness toward the CPU.

[Dome]

IIRC, trasparent in vanilla makes you almost invincible: No enemy unit can directly target you

And, to be correct, my idea was
You get hit -> Sunken state triggers -> you get trasparent until the beginning of you next turn (And while trasparent, the AI ignores you)
So, you can get hit only once in between turns

...but I don't know if it's doable ASM-wise...

[RavenOfRazgriz]

You familiar with that episode of South Park where they keep doing things but the Simpsons did it first?  Replace "The Simpsons" with "Formerdeathcorps" and that applies here, unless my memory is grossly inaccurate.

[Dome]

If it's true, Raven, a link would be much appreciated :-)

[formerdeathcorps]

Dome, it's included in my ASMs for EGCC.

[Dome]

EGCC?

[formerdeathcorps]

Enforced Generic Class Challenge, my hard-patch, which can be found here.

[The Damned]

(That poor Enforced Generic Class Challenge seems so neglected, but with a new computer, I should finally able to play it. Anyway....)

Neophyte Ronin, what you want as a possible replacement for Transparent already historically has a name given your basic proposal: Blink/Image. Not that you can't name it "Etheral though.

Having otherwise outlined Transparent's problems rather accurately, I think I agree with the general idea that Transparent just doesn't really work as a status in FFT no matter what you do with, at least if you let it be freely available to add. Even you confine it to Sunken State, that still advantages to the player over the AI while it additionally continues to step on Concentrate's toes and put more value on physical attacks than magickal ones.

That said, I'm rather...apathetic to your current proposal of "Etheral" doubling physical evasion at the "cost" of making one more likely to get hit by magick. I mean, it "works", and it's certainly less dull than the version of Blink I briefly entertained, but it still comes off as a poor man's version of (fixed) Darkness/Blind, which I think is the problem with trying to use Blink in FFT too.

It's...annoying. Still a good start and better than a more active form of Transparent.