Final Fantasy Hacktics

Been browsing these boards for a almost a year now, and finally decided to sign up and talk on here. Greetings all!

But anyway, to the main point. I've been trying to cook up an idea for a great strategy RPG, something that could match FFT's awesome factor, but at the same time fix the issues that it still has. Bouncing ideas between my friends only goes so far, so what better idea than to go ask a community of SRPG fans?

First off, gathering my personal experience on SRPGs, and complaints I've seen elsewhere on these boards and others at times, I've been devising some basic rules that every good SRPG should follow. If you have any other suggestions, shoot 'em my way. But what I have so far is thus:

1.) My personal Golden Rule of an SRPG that FFT really falls flat on, but Disgaea does almost perfectly is that as you get stronger, leveling your units, picking up skills for them, etc. should get easier, and take less time.

I formulated this one by thinking a lot on how FFT goes down as you get later in the game. You start to pick up special units and even when you do get your first one, Mustadio, you already come to the realization that it's kind of a pain to get him up to speed with your current party set up. This just compounds the farther you get and even your own leveling can work against you, as you recruit late game people like Beowulf, and then realize that not only do you have to go through the tedious process of bringing him up to speed with the party, but that if you leveled up a ton at this point, you pretty much missed out on tweaking his growths to your preference with his Job Class, as his joining level is based on yours. And don't even get me started on Cloud. CLOUD!! Disgaea series, mainly 3, remedies this by having your specialists who expedite the leveling process a ton, however still require you to be strong to get the optimal benefits of it, as you have to venture into the more challenging Item World to collect them. Bringing units up to speed is made rather quick and painless this way, and the speed at which you can do it usually matches how far you are in the game, for example how Disgaea 3 varies the strength of the specialists depending on the rank of the item, so you need to get stronger to collect higher level specialists, and it all ultimately leads to it's duping item being a post game acquisition, which REALLY speeds up the process. There's the argument of the game needing to have the reverse true to keep it challenging and have the skill system rewarding, but if you scale the game's difficulty  to where in the beginning you don't need a ton of skills to win and by endgame you'd better have a lot of skills amassed then it still works out to be rewarding, yet also not a tedious grindfest. Plus, the whole making leveling/skill acquisition take longer as you get farther doesn't play out as well in SRPGs, as you'll be dealing with WAY more options opening up as you progress, like late units, job classes opening up, etc. as opposed to being set with a specific set of characters who do a specific role like the standard RPG.

2.) Even though I mention this second, this one definitely holds the most weight, so ignore the fact that it's the 2nd thing listed. A good SRPG needs to be balanced. Fairly obvious, but then when you look at the ones out there, you notice that this is such a hard rule for developers to get down. My idea of what an SRPG needs to be balanced are two simple things:

a.) All classes must be useful, and viable for combat. Part of the fun of an SRPG is the variety of units to use. However, this is killed when you realize that out of your 50 choices of classes, only 2-3 are ever worth giving a damn about. FFTA and Gunners/Assassins. Why use any other class? They own! FFT and Calculators. Same story.
b.) All strategies on approaching a battle should be at least viable. Not to say that everything works because it's so easy, but rather make it to where one specific strategy isn't needed to win every battle. What's the fun in having 50 classes when the game's designed to where certain battles mandate that you need this many of this unit with this setup, or you will lose, ALWAYS! It'd be like solving a jigsaw puzzle, but then having it tell you that you need to do it on Tuesdays only while it's raining on a full moon or it is unsolvable... and it will kill your family (somehow).

3.) A good SRPG needs to give you as much customization as possible. When it comes to tweaking your units, gear, items, etc. the sky should be the limit. The more limits you impose on customization, the more you limit the viable strategies a player can preform. A pretty simple example with this one. FFT vs. FFTA. On FFT, you had a slot for a movement skill, and you could use it to compensate for classes with lackluster movement range, Jump, or even add another supporting effect, like Manafont. FFTA cuts this out, so all of a sudden now classes who have limited movement are suddenly screwed as now there's not a way to work around it. And you may say "Give them long range skills by using X Command." but then it's violating section B of rule 2 of making all strategies viable. Now your limited movement guy MUST have this command, or they are relegated to being trash.

4.) A good SRPG needs to be challenging. Part of the reason you're playing an SRPG is because you're looking for a challenge. Nobody jumps into any strategy game hoping for a cakewalk. So you're worried about the newbies getting frustrated on battle X and not playing to the end? Then add an Easy mode where the enemy will bend over and hand you the sword which you will use to violate their poor butts. For everyone else, focus on making the regular mode a challenge. Unpatched FFT, Disgaea series, and Valkyria Chronicles are some examples to name a few who really fail on this. FFT is so easy you can solo run it. I don't take being able to solo run it as a testament to my skill. I take it as the game showing that it's so freakin' easy, one dude can trample every battle. Disgaea loses it's edge if you even venture into the Item World even a little, and Valkyria Chronicles has it's Alicia Rush, which it THE strategy for that game. SELVARIA SHOULDN'T BE BEATABLE ON TURN 1 FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

Those are what I have so far. I'm not going to toot the old horn of "A good storyline." because every game needs to work on that, and that's just an obvious given one. Now for the game I'm personally cooking up, I've got ideas to try and address some other issues in SRPGs, and I'd like opinions on the idea.

Playing FFT 1.3, and especially against friends, the sandbag tactic gets annoying. Basically how they constantly revive dead units and it takes you forever to gain any ground as you keep having to kill off guys you just dealt with. Limiting revival is too restricting in my book, so I thought of a Morale system. How it would work is both sides start neutral, and based on the flow of battle, it can go for or against you. As you gain Morale, you can gain some favorable advantages for your team, like your skills becoming cheaper on MP to use. And if you can really boost it in your favor, each class has a form of super move which will pretty much devastate the opposing team, and make finishing up a battle easy. With this in place, let's say your enemy keeps trying the sandbag crap. Well they'll be losing a lot of Morale for pulling this, so you can let them keep at it because you know that when you've got enough Morale, you can rain hell upon them from which they'll be hard pressed to recover from. Same applies to yourself, though, so don't think you can just let people die carelessly. Morale would also be influenced by your actions in general throughout the fight. For example, causing abnormal stats, hitting criticals, leaving people in critical/dead too long, curing/buffing a lot, etc. Opens up new ideas to approach winning, and rewards smarter playing rather than rushing in with Chaos Blade.

Also, been debating on the whole starting MP at 0 and slowly regenerating as opposed to starting at full MP with no regeneration. Pros of 0 MP is that you can't rush in with your best skills and wreck everything from the get go, but the cons is that you'll be having to wait to do all your cool stuff until you get everyone's MP up, which can make battles slow and tedious. I've considered something like FFT's charge time, but that's kinda what killed a lot of magic classes later on, and Cloud. Any good thoughts/ideas on this?

Wall of text is done now!

Wow, well, first off, congrats on your transition from lurking to posting. Wow, so much.

Quote1.) My personal Golden Rule of an SRPG that FFT really falls flat on, but Disgaea does almost perfectly is that as you get stronger, leveling your units, picking up skills for them, etc. should get easier, and take less time.

Definitely agree with this rule. Not just for SRPGs either. But technically, FFT doesn't fall flat on that either, at least when it comes to JP accumulation. The amount of JP you earn is based on level and Job level.

QuoteI formulated this one by thinking a lot on how FFT goes down as you get later in the game. You start to pick up special units and even when you do get your first one, Mustadio, you already come to the realization that it's kind of a pain to get him up to speed with your current party set up. This just compounds the farther you get and even your own leveling can work against you, as you recruit late game people like Beowulf, and then realize that not only do you have to go through the tedious process of bringing him up to speed with the party, but that if you leveled up a ton at this point, you pretty much missed out on tweaking his growths to your preference with his Job Class, as his joining level is based on yours. And don't even get me started on Cloud. CLOUD!

Too true in Vanilla. Mustadio just ends up gathering dust on the unit screen. I felt it was pointless to bring him up to speed anyhow since endgame Thief Hats are everywhere, and you have better strategies at hand anyhow. Beowulf was the only unit you really wanted, as he made the Oracle obsolete.

QuoteDisgaea series, mainly 3, remedies this by having your specialists who expedite the leveling process a ton, however still require you to be strong to get the optimal benefits of it, as you have to venture into the more challenging Item World to collect them. Bringing units up to speed is made rather quick and painless this way, and the speed at which you can do it usually matches how far you are in the game, for example how Disgaea 3 varies the strength of the specialists depending on the rank of the item, so you need to get stronger to collect higher level specialists, and it all ultimately leads to it's duping item being a post game acquisition, which REALLY speeds up the process. There's the argument of the game needing to have the reverse true to keep it challenging and have the skill system rewarding, but if you scale the game's difficulty to where in the beginning you don't need a ton of skills to win and by endgame you'd better have a lot of skills amassed then it still works out to be rewarding, yet also not a tedious grindfest. Plus, the whole making leveling/skill acquisition take longer as you get farther doesn't play out as well in SRPGs, as you'll be dealing with WAY more options opening up as you progress, like late units, job classes opening up, etc. as opposed to being set with a specific set of characters who do a specific role like the standard RPG.

I don't know about the Disgaea series. I've only played Disgaea 2, but if I wanted to bring a new unit up to speed, I wouldn't go to the Item World, although maybe I should have. Not only would I have brought characters to speed, I would have gotten better items out of it. Then again, it was a pretty dangerous in a high enough item.

When you talk about Specialist, you're talking about those guys you save in Item World that buff up your item? Sorry, I'm a little hazy about the details of Disgaea.

Quote2.) Even though I mention this second, this one definitely holds the most weight, so ignore the fact that it's the 2nd thing listed. A good SRPG needs to be balanced. Fairly obvious, but then when you look at the ones out there, you notice that this is such a hard rule for developers to get down. My idea of what an SRPG needs to be balanced are two simple things:

a.) All classes must be useful, and viable for combat. Part of the fun of an SRPG is the variety of units to use. However, this is killed when you realize that out of your 50 choices of classes, only 2-3 are ever worth giving a damn about. FFTA and Gunners/Assassins. Why use any other class? They own! FFT and Calculators. Same story.
b.) All strategies on approaching a battle should be at least viable. Not to say that everything works because it's so easy, but rather make it to where one specific strategy isn't needed to win every battle. What's the fun in having 50 classes when the game's designed to where certain battles mandate that you need this many of this unit with this setup, or you will lose, ALWAYS! It'd be like solving a jigsaw puzzle, but then having it tell you that you need to do it on Tuesdays only while it's raining on a full moon or it is unsolvable... and it will kill your family (somehow).

Also very true, but it's also very difficult to accomplish. Look at how long 1.3 took for it to just get out of the beta phase. It took an entire forum years to make 1.3 what it is today. Much less a handful of developers balancing something you are making from scratch. Even if you have an army of beta testers combing over your work, it's very difficult to see inequalities between units, especially at higher levels.  Time and budget constraints from the higher ups don't help things either.

Which is why I think it's a good idea to have FREE updates and an open dialogue with your audience. Your audience has the ability to really put your game to the test and find it's flaws and inequalities and bring them to your attention, far better than any beta testing can do. It also as a nice side effect of making the users feel closer to the game because they feel their opinions are being heard and thus crops a community, that ultimately nets you more sales. I remember I was reading an article from Penny Arcade. In this particular article, they actually condemned Team Fortress 2 for making their customers "unpaid beta testers".

I think TF2 was on to something about how to balance their game. They still don't have it on track because their dialogue with their customers isn't very open. Granted, their fanbase happens to be the Steam Forums, but for every 100 whiny loser, there is a intelligent, reasonable user that really sees an inadequacy that should be address, and in fact, provides a good solution. Unfortunately, all input, good or bad, is swept into the abyss of the forum, never to see the light of day. Which is why Demoman and Soldiers dominate TF2, especially at higher levels, while classes like the Pyro, the Spy, and the Engineer suffer badly at high level play.

But enough about my grievances with TF2. My point is, users could find flaws in games in months that it would have taken years for developers to find, or would have never found. Listen to your fanbase, but at the same time, don't make the process a democratic one, or god help you, a poll. The voice of the majority is not always right. Never forget that when it comes to making games.

Quote3.) A good SRPG needs to give you as much customization as possible. When it comes to tweaking your units, gear, items, etc. the sky should be the limit. The more limits you impose on customization, the more you limit the viable strategies a player can preform. A pretty simple example with this one. FFT vs. FFTA. On FFT, you had a slot for a movement skill, and you could use it to compensate for classes with lackluster movement range, Jump, or even add another supporting effect, like Manafont. FFTA cuts this out, so all of a sudden now classes who have limited movement are suddenly screwed as now there's not a way to work around it. And you may say "Give them long range skills by using X Command." but then it's violating section B of rule 2 of making all strategies viable. Now your limited movement guy MUST have this command, or they are relegated to being trash.

Again, totally in agreement. That's what makes FFT one of the best games I've ever played. It's pushing 20 years and it's customization is still unmatched to this very day.

Quote4.) A good SRPG needs to be challenging. Part of the reason you're playing an SRPG is because you're looking for a challenge. Nobody jumps into any strategy game hoping for a cakewalk. So you're worried about the newbies getting frustrated on battle X and not playing to the end? Then add an Easy mode where the enemy will bend over and hand you the sword which you will use to violate their poor butts. For everyone else, focus on making the regular mode a challenge. Unpatched FFT, Disgaea series, and Valkyria Chronicles are some examples to name a few who really fail on this. FFT is so easy you can solo run it. I don't take being able to solo run it as a testament to my skill. I take it as the game showing that it's so freakin' easy, one dude can trample every battle. Disgaea loses it's edge if you even venture into the Item World even a little, and Valkyria Chronicles has it's Alicia Rush, which it THE strategy for that game. SELVARIA SHOULDN'T BE BEATABLE ON TURN 1 FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

I really like the idea of having a challenging normal mode and an easy mode. I don't see this enough in RPGs. RPG's that would have been really good get really suffer because it's too easy, the Final Fantasy series comes to mind in particular. Okami is another game that would have benfitted from having more challenge.

QuotePlaying FFT 1.3, and especially against friends, the sandbag tactic gets annoying. Basically how they constantly revive dead units and it takes you forever to gain any ground as you keep having to kill off guys you just dealt with. Limiting revival is too restricting in my book, so I thought of a Morale system. How it would work is both sides start neutral, and based on the flow of battle, it can go for or against you. As you gain Morale, you can gain some favorable advantages for your team, like your skills becoming cheaper on MP to use. And if you can really boost it in your favor, each class has a form of super move which will pretty much devastate the opposing team, and make finishing up a battle easy. With this in place, let's say your enemy keeps trying the sandbag crap. Well they'll be losing a lot of Morale for pulling this, so you can let them keep at it because you know that when you've got enough Morale, you can rain hell upon them from which they'll be hard pressed to recover from. Same applies to yourself, though, so don't think you can just let people die carelessly. Morale would also be influenced by your actions in general throughout the fight. For example, causing abnormal stats, hitting criticals, leaving people in critical/dead too long, curing/buffing a lot, etc. Opens up new ideas to approach winning, and rewards smarter playing rather than rushing in with Chaos Blade.

The Moral system is a very interesting system that I think FFT would benefit from. One problem I have with the game is that the battles simply take too long, mostly because of the sandbag/reversal crap that goes on. Another thing I think would really help cut down on how long the battles are would be to have an in game speed up option. Even in Vanilla, battles would just drag on so long and drain me of the will to keep playing. Which is why I've never completed the Deep Dungeon in Vanilla (that is, picked up every item). I'm not too sure about the super attacks though. Initially, I was like, No. But as I go over it more, I don't think it would be so bad. If the game was made to accommodate super morale attacks, it would be like Ubers in TF2.

QuoteAlso, been debating on the whole starting MP at 0 and slowly regenerating as opposed to starting at full MP with no regeneration. Pros of 0 MP is that you can't rush in with your best skills and wreck everything from the get go, but the cons is that you'll be having to wait to do all your cool stuff until you get everyone's MP up, which can make battles slow and tedious. I've considered something like FFT's charge time, but that's kinda what killed a lot of magic classes later on, and Cloud. Any good thoughts/ideas on this?

I think that's interesting idea, but yeah, that would make the game tedious and boring. Maybe that should the basis for an entirely new class instead? The problem with the charge system was that everyone was/is just too fast for it to be effective. You should try out the ASM'D demo in the New Patches section, which lowers everyone's speed and movement so that charge skills stay useful throughout the game. So maybe a charge addition wouldn't be so bad after all.

I had an idea on for FFT. What if we split the Speed stat? Currently, I think Speed is OP. It determines so much of what happens in FFT. Rather, I was thinking there should be two CTs/Speed stats, one for taking an action, and one for movement. I'm not too sure, though, it's hard for me to see all of the ramifications of doing this. What do you think?

Whew! That took me 5-6 hours to type out.

WELCOME TO FFH, WHERE ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE!!

QuoteDefinitely agree with this rule. Not just for SRPGs either. But technically, FFT doesn't fall flat on that either, at least when it comes to JP accumulation. The amount of JP you earn is based on level and Job level.

Yeah, the JP does increase with level, but it never gets to the point to where it's so easy that even end game you wouldn't mind recruiting a new unit, and training them up to your party's current status, as it's something that can be done in 15-20 minutes. And even if you're getting 99 JP per action, that still equals out to sitting on the map using Focus 51 times to accumulate at least 5000 JP, which is usually only enough to master some of the less demanding classes like Squire, and Knight. Compound that with 22 classes total and you'll be sitting there using Focus over 1,500 times to master every class. And that's for one unit! I'll be generous and subtract like 300 Focuses for spillover, but you're still at 1,200 Focuses!

QuoteWhen you talk about Specialist, you're talking about those guys you save in Item World that buff up your item? Sorry, I'm a little hazy about the details of Disgaea.

Yeah, I'm talking about those guys. Disgaea 2 probably does it the worst of the three, but still better than most SRPGs. The felonies system  (1 felony = 1% boost to EXP) of D2 was stupid and took too long. Made making post game characters like Laharl take way too long. D1 and D3 had Statisticians, which kinda worked the same way (1Statistician lvl = 1% boost in EXP) however you could transfer those to any item, as opposed to D2's limiting felonies to one character. Plus, D3 made it even better when they allowed Statisticians to stack past 1 and 2's 300% boost limit, allowing you to boost your EXP up to 9,600% with them alone, and you still had other methods to easily double your EXP gain some more. And the Armsmasters that 1 and 2 had made boosting your weapon skill level much easier as well.

QuoteWhich is why I think it's a good idea to have FREE updates and an open dialogue with your audience.

I can give FFT a pass on this considering it came out at a time where this wasn't possible, but they're still in the dog house for their lazy porting of War of the Lions.

QuoteI really like the idea of having a challenging normal mode and an easy mode.

I'd also like the idea of having a New Game Plus feature, however, on your second run through, the game expects you to have all the skills, jobs, and levels you need, so the enemies are are scaled up to you level, have all their skills open to them, and have end game equipment from the start. Units can be rearranged for each map to accommodate this, like having FFT's 1st battle, Gariland City be filled with Lancers, Summoners, etc. as opposed to Squires.

QuoteI'm not too sure about the super attacks though. Initially, I was like, No. But as I go over it more, I don't think it would be so bad. If the game was made to accommodate super morale attacks, it would be like Ubers in TF2.

Designing a system that would accommodate them is definitely a part of the plan in incorporating them. I can also see having classes that can manipulate it easier that most units. Like a Dancer class dropping enemy morale, and a Bard class boosting ally morale, as opposed to them having their abilities to do either 1HP to all enemies, or heal all allies by 1HP, with everything else missing half the time. Other than those classes, though, there shouldn't be any shortcuts to using them quickly, and they're only usable when you meet the moral requirements. Plus, the enemy should also have access to these units to make it a level playing field instead of how FFT just never gave the enemy access to classes like Dancer, Bard, Mime, Onion Knight, Calculator, etc.

QuoteI had an idea on for FFT. What if we split the Speed stat? Currently, I think Speed is OP. It determines so much of what happens in FFT. Rather, I was thinking there should be two CTs/Speed stats, one for taking an action, and one for movement. I'm not too sure, though, it's hard for me to see all of the ramifications of doing this. What do you think?

Something would having to be done about the Dancer/Bard class then because they'd be broken. When I was playing 1.3, I picked up a Bard and Dancer Ch.1 through much grinding, and I found that with everyone's Speed so low at the point in the game, they could shoot off 2-3 dances/songs before another unit's turn even rolled around. I was healing around 50-60 HP between waiting one unit's turn to another, while dealing 40-50 damage in that same time frame. 1.3 Fort Zeakden was a joke because of this, as was any battle where I could hide in a corner, or run away. Small maps were trickier, but even vs. Wiegraf on 1.3 at the Bard could heal me enough to slight invincibility on high HP units, and the Dancer dropped their Power to the point where I was invincible. Once I was under total control, I had the Bard sing till I had insane Power, and swept everyone under the rug. 1.3 Dorter was won for me solely on Nameless Dance shooting off so quick and Frog/Sleep/Stopping everyone to the point of 0 retaliation.

It's a good idea for sure, but the Preforming mechanic would have to be removed. As it is, it would broken with everyone's low Speed, and increasing it's charge time would make it useless.

Removing charge time, and adding in other methods of cost/requirements for skills would make things easier to balance. Only having an MP requirement is too simple. Playing TCGs like Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh provide some good insight. Yu-Gi-Oh is an example of doing it wrong, where a cost system wasn't built into the game, and as a result makes everything much easier to be broken. Magic is an example of doing it right, to where you have a cost built in, and it's not as simple as "This one thing like MP determines the cost for everything" but instead has the five different mana colors. Plus, some cards are set up to where even if you can pay the cost, you still need requirements in order to actually use it. In the realm of SRPGs, powerful moves should be difficult to set up, but devastating to use to the point of game winning devastation. They have combos like infinite loops and 1 Turn Kills, but usually the set up for it is difficult (unless it's banned) however it's not made totally useless because it's still a strong enough combo to where you can tailor your strategy to pulling it off, and still win, as opposed to usual RPG mechanics where super awesome moves have insane requirements but not enough payoff to make them worth using. This way, you could have a situation where a unit in your team is your game winner, and the other members are built to support this one unit setting up this game winning strategy. Of course your weakness would be that you have a single point of failure in that if your game winner goes down, your strategy falls apart. Anything that slows down/stops your setup can also make your strategy fall apart. Tactics like this should be high risk, high reward though, and certain classes should have options to specifically counter such tricks.

QuoteWELCOME TO FFH, WHERE ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE!!

Then why hasn't FFT gotten a proper, real sequel yet?  

/Off topic
I <3 your avatar
Advance wars rulez

One points 2 and 3 I agree.  These are what makes or breaks a game.  The freedom to experience the story and gameplay however you want is what sets gaming apart from novels, plays, and movies.  In an rpg or srpg, no strategy should work all the time, the player should be able to use several different strategies to win any battle, and - if at all possible - there shouldn't be any strategy the player can use that can't also be used against him.

QuoteThe freedom to experience the story and gameplay however you want is what sets gaming apart from novels, plays, and movies.

Seconding that statement.

Quote/Off topic
I <3 your avatar
Advance wars rulez

I'm glad someone else likes Advance Wars. Fire Emblem seems to get all the love. Also, I applaud you for Weegee.

Quote/Off topic
I <3 your avatar
Advance wars rulez

QuoteI'm glad someone else likes Advance Wars. Fire Emblem seems to get all the love. Also, I applaud you for Weegee.

I <3 both, they are awesome in their own way (Even if the last advance wars wasn't THAT awesome...WHY DID YOU REMOVE THE UC!!!! I WANT OLAF BACK!!!!)
However, yeah, Weegee is awesome, and won't steal your soul

I actually have all the advance wars series.
There all quite good.
Too bad there completely changed the characters in the last one...i know there wanted some changes but still.
The Dual one focuses too much on CO powers. (Trick to get 3 turns in 1 turn using some COs...game broken. At if u given Ramza Sword skills/teleport 2/no charge and boss only skills/insane growth in FFT...game broken!
The last one was balanced at less but sigh...i dont get the same feeling form it. (And so few character to chose form.)

Why the hell does Nell keep getting uglier?

I was thinking last night, "There are too many ways to nerf magic in FFT... should I remove some redundancy?"
Some ideas:
1.  Silence.  Possibly change it to Palsy?  That is, flag all the Physical abilities and Attack with silence and change it's name to palsy.
2.  Do something with reflect...  But no one ever uses it.
3.  Faith.  There's a hack that removes Target Faith from faith based formula. That nerfs Innocence/Low Faith as a defensive tactic.
4.  Berserk.  Allow control of character, keep the boost to attack damage, but disallow all abilites except Attack?  Change name to Fury?  Rage?
5.  Change Faith to Risk?  0 Risk = 100% Damage given and received, and 100% Hit Rate and Evasion.  100 Risk = 1000% Damage given and received, and 0% Hit Rate and Evasion.

Quote from: "Pickle Girl Fanboy"Why the hell does Nell keep getting uglier?

I was thinking last night, "There are too many ways to nerf magic in FFT... should I remove some redundancy?"
Some ideas:
1.  Silence.  Possibly change it to Palsy?  That is, flag all the Physical abilities and Attack with silence and change it's name to palsy.
2.  Do something with reflect...  But no one ever uses it.
3.  Faith.  There's a hack that removes Target Faith from faith based formula. That nerfs Innocence/Low Faith as a defensive tactic.
4.  Berserk.  Allow control of character, keep the boost to attack damage, but disallow all abilites except Attack?  Change name to Fury?  Rage?
5.  Change Faith to Risk?  0 Risk = 100% Damage given and received, and 100% Hit Rate and Evasion.  100 Risk = 1000% Damage given and received, and 0% Hit Rate and Evasion.

1. That's basically what Mercenaries does, Silence was changed to Addle, which does... basically that. Except still lets you attack.

2. Reflect in Mercenaries is extremely powerful, but its only available to a single class that has it (and thanks to Zodiac's hack will take the Reflect R/S/M for other classes to use)

3.Faith, hmm... very nice use! I like that alot.

4. That can be done with Zodiac's new hack and I have to say I like that idea A lot! Very nice!

5. Risk? Personally I would change Brave to Risk... though how do you plan to make that work? It seems nearly out of possibility, to create a hack of such magnitude. I think Zodiac's Fury hack exemplifies this a little better. Also with FDC's new findings we can link Supports to anything we so desire in the basic stats.

Quote from: "LastingDawn"

Quote from: "Pickle Girl Fanboy"Why the hell does Nell keep getting uglier?

I was thinking last night, "There are too many ways to nerf magic in FFT... should I remove some redundancy?"
Some ideas:
1.  Silence.  Possibly change it to Palsy?  That is, flag all the Physical abilities and Attack with silence and change it's name to palsy.
2.  Do something with reflect...  But no one ever uses it.
3.  Faith.  There's a hack that removes Target Faith from faith based formula. That nerfs Innocence/Low Faith as a defensive tactic.
4.  Berserk.  Allow control of character, keep the boost to attack damage, but disallow all abilites except Attack?  Change name to Fury?  Rage?
5.  Change Faith to Risk?  0 Risk = 100% Damage given and received, and 100% Hit Rate and Evasion.  100 Risk = 1000% Damage given and received, and 0% Hit Rate and Evasion.

1. That's basically what Mercenaries does, Silence was changed to Addle, which does... basically that. Except still lets you attack.

2. Reflect in Mercenaries is extremely powerful, but its only available to a single class that has it (and thanks to Zodiac's hack will take the Reflect R/S/M for other classes to use)

3.Faith, hmm... very nice use! I like that alot.

4. That can be done with Zodiac's new hack and I have to say I like that idea A lot! Very nice!

5. Risk? Personally I would change Brave to Risk... though how do you plan to make that work? It seems nearly out of possibility, to create a hack of such magnitude. I think Zodiac's Fury hack exemplifies this a little better. Also with FDC's new findings we can link Supports to anything we so desire in the basic stats.

4.  Do you mean his hack that changes Brave into Fury?  I was talking about the Berserk status effect.

5.  Who's FDC?  Can you link to the thread you're talking about?

EDIT

About splitting the Speed stat.  Split it into a Physical Speed, linked to PA, which determines Move CT; and a Mental Speed, linked to MA, which determines Act CT.  So the SP stat would still be intact, and it would still influence your Move and Act CTs.

Move CT
1 clocktick = (SP+PA)/2

Act CT
1 clocktick = (SP+PA)/2

There are some problems with it.  You need to change a lot of stuff so that PA Classes don't just play keep away and MA classes aren't overpowered, and a  lot of formulas need adjusting if every class has rebalanced stats.

Quote from: "Pickle Girl Fanboy"

Quote from: "LastingDawn"

Quote from: "Pickle Girl Fanboy"Why the hell does Nell keep getting uglier?

I was thinking last night, "There are too many ways to nerf magic in FFT... should I remove some redundancy?"
Some ideas:
1.  Silence.  Possibly change it to Palsy?  That is, flag all the Physical abilities and Attack with silence and change it's name to palsy.
2.  Do something with reflect...  But no one ever uses it.
3.  Faith.  There's a hack that removes Target Faith from faith based formula. That nerfs Innocence/Low Faith as a defensive tactic.
4.  Berserk.  Allow control of character, keep the boost to attack damage, but disallow all abilites except Attack?  Change name to Fury?  Rage?
5.  Change Faith to Risk?  0 Risk = 100% Damage given and received, and 100% Hit Rate and Evasion.  100 Risk = 1000% Damage given and received, and 0% Hit Rate and Evasion.

1. That's basically what Mercenaries does, Silence was changed to Addle, which does... basically that. Except still lets you attack.

2. Reflect in Mercenaries is extremely powerful, but its only available to a single class that has it (and thanks to Zodiac's hack will take the Reflect R/S/M for other classes to use)

3.Faith, hmm... very nice use! I like that alot.

4. That can be done with Zodiac's new hack and I have to say I like that idea A lot! Very nice!

5. Risk? Personally I would change Brave to Risk... though how do you plan to make that work? It seems nearly out of possibility, to create a hack of such magnitude. I think Zodiac's Fury hack exemplifies this a little better. Also with FDC's new findings we can link Supports to anything we so desire in the basic stats.

4.  Do you mean his hack that changes Brave into Fury?  I was talking about the Berserk status effect.

5.  Who's FDC?  Can you link to the thread you're talking about?

4. Not quite... Zodiac has released a Revolutionary new tool with very little fanfare (because its in beta testing) which will (eventually I hope) allow you to Forbid skills based on the status effect you are afflicted with (and much, much more!)

5. viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5132 (http://www.ffhacktics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5132) There's thre thread, it was unfortunately ignored but his work is probably second only to Zodiac, even passing Razele by this point.

In regards to speed. An idea I had was that combat is divided into turns, and everyone goes once at least each turn, unless prevented from doing so, however, Speed would determine the order in which every unit would go for that turn. For example:

Knight has 7 SPD
Archer has 8 SPD
Ninja has 9 SPD

Then the order is Ninja acts 1st, then Archer, then Knight. Then it's moved to turn 2, and the order repeats again.

Also, in regards to your ideas on the change to Berserk to Fury and Brave/Faith to Risk.  That would be WAY too easy to exploit. Get a high Risk character, cast Fury on them, and have them wail on everything on the field with a long range weapon. At 1000% damage bonus, even an attack doing 90 damage is lethal to all but an iron wall character, and they'd still be nearly dead. With Fury on them, I can't see anything surviving with an even bigger boost. Even at a measly 50% increase, the Fury/High Risk combo would dominate all tactics. Imagine a Dancer with high Risk! Hide in a corner, and smack everyone on the map for insane damage. And again, even at just a 50% increase, that still totals out to a lot of hurt. And heck, even a low Risk Dancer would have such ridiculous hit, that her Dances would rarely miss the target, making Nameless Dance godly.

Inverting opposite values like you're doing with the Risk idea will not instantly create balance. For example, a loss in defense/offense will not amount to balance just because you give the same bonus to the opposite. The numbers might seem that way, but numbers don't tell everything. Using Advance Wars as an example, a character who's D2D gave 80% offense, 120% defense would be considered more powerful than a character who gave 120% offense with 80% defense. Why? Think big picture. With 120/80, you have more power to break though defenses. That's your big perk. With 80/120, you have the power to hold a better defense. That means you hold choke points easier, you're harder to force out of strategic locations, you're harder to stop from capturing, you're harder to stop spam tactics against, you get more bang for your buck from units because they'll survive more. And even your supposed "downside" of doing less damage is false. An 80/120 guy will put out more damage than a guy with 120/80 solely for the fact that he'll survive longer to do it. So an 80/120 guy actually has the same perk that a 120/80 guy has, and more!

Bringing this into FFT's perspective, FFT favors an offensive approach by default. When you're playing 1.3, what's the main thing that makes a lot of the battles harder? AI has more offense. When you want to get stronger to take on the tougher enemies, what do you do? Get a better offense. Since you have no Defense stat in FFT, playing offensively is always favored. It's more about who can hit who first with what to kill them. That's why Speed is so important, and that's why Two Swords is THE skill of the game, barring Math Skill, which is the ultimate offense. Any changes you make that will further offense's advantage over defense is just going to make FFT more broken. Not only that but FFT also favors physical offense by default. Even with 1.3's fixes, physical users still have the upper hand. Without Math Skill, magic can't match up to Two Swords. You'd need a Doublecast ability to even tip the scales for magic, but it would still have to charge, and magic is still screwed over by units who have low faith, which is FFT's equivalent to Magic Defense. Magic actually has a stat that helps resist it, where as physical doesn't. Plus, good physical attacks aren't tied to a skill, they're tied to your weapon, and all you need to do to utilize your weapon is chose the Attack command, which has no cost, works faster, and averages more damage overall.

And bringing it all back to the Risk idea again. So your dude's Risk is so high that he has a 1000% damage dealt/received bonus/penalty. Doesn't matter. He can 1 shot anything he hits with any move. If he uses an AoA move, he can potentially 1 shot even more than one unit. Killing him will always equal a -1 penalty to the unit's controller, but when he is on the offense, he also guarantees a +1 to his controller, BUT he can also net up to a +5, depending on how many units he hits in his turn. Not only that, but team him up with a 0 Risk user as he's got 100% Hit/Evade. Stack low Risk with defensive oriented gear/abilities and give him commands with pure support, mainly revival. 0 Risk unit's focus is to keep reviving/buffing high Risk guy, and let high Risk guy wreck the field. It's easy enough to revive high Risk guy, and he only needs 1 turn and 1 HP to lay down the hurt. If you get one Auto-Life on high Risk guy, he's GOING to bring someone down. You can't screw with his dead body, and he's not reviving till his turn comes around, which means he's going to kill someone. And again, even if you tone down the Risk factor to a 50% increase, this strategy will still be the most favorable one.

Focus on making defense better, rather than offense. FFT already did that for you. You don't need to compound it.

May I suggest a hack that sets the unit's CT to 0 once it recovers from death?

Quote from: "Zodiac"May I suggest a hack that sets the unit's CT to 0 once it recovers from death?

In vanilla terms, when a character is revived, or in terms of the KO not permanent idea mentioned above?

And you fucking destroyed my risk idea!  Wah wah wahahaha.

Here's another one.  Difficulty isn't achieved by giving the enemy higher stats/stronger equipment/more powerful abilities, but by allowing them a greater range of useful options and making them smarter and less predictable.  Anyone can give Miluda Sword Skills, but a real hacker makes it so she doesn't need super powers to kick your ass.

Agree or disagree?

One last thing:  I'm playing the original starcraft before I buy the new one, and I love the Zerg - except when I'm fighting advanced Protoss... fucking Carriers!  Anyways, how useful would some sort of infest ability be, like a functional Morbol Germ?  Or if you had something like a Queen's Spawn Broodling ability?

EDIT

More about risk.

I only intended to remove Faith... and even then, I'm not really removing Faith, I'm just making it apply to every action and removing some of the bonuses for high Faith, like improved hit rate, while keeping some of the penalties for high Faith, like high damage taken and lowered evasion for the character with high Faith.

This is just like Vagrant story Risk.  At 100 Risk, you do more damage, but you take more damage, you can't hit anything, and everything can hit you.  Your example, give a 100 Risk characer a long range weapon wouldn't work because he wouldn't hit anything, even with Concentrate, because all Hit Rates and inflict rates take Risk into account, and at 100 Risk all hit rates for your character are multiplied by 0.  He wouldn't be invincible because his evasion would also be multiplied by 0.  And as for the 0 Risk support character who revives him, we can always set Risk to drop to 0 when a unit is killed, and at 0 Risk your support character would just take Normal damage, deal Normal damage, and have normal hit rates and evade rates.

I'm sorry if I didn't explain everything the way I see it in my head.

What if everyone has 0 Risk, and permanent Risk alteration is disabled, so you start every battle with 0 Risk?

Create two new flags for every ability, and link Brave Up to one flag and Faith Up to the other.

Fix the bug/oversight that disallows multiple reaction abilities.

Change Brave Up so it reduces Faith by 1 point every time it's triggered.

Change Faith Up so it increases Faith by 1 point every time it's triggered.

Remove Faith from every formula where it's inherent.

Call Faith Risk.

Call Brave UP Risk Down.

Call Faith UP Risk Up.

Flag all abilities so they trigger either Risk Up or Risk Down.

QuoteIn vanilla terms, when a character is revived, or in terms of the KO not permanent idea mentioned above?

I'm guessing in general, as if it were only just during Auto-Life, it would still be exploitable. Just revive them when their CT is almost full.

QuoteHere's another one. Difficulty isn't achieved by giving the enemy higher stats/stronger equipment/more powerful abilities, but by allowing them a greater range of useful options and making them smarter and less predictable. Anyone can give Miluda Sword Skills, but a real hacker makes it so she doesn't need super powers to kick your ass.

That is true. But I don't know a whole lot about programming AI, so I'm not sure how hard it is to fix the AI's issues. Plus, AI can never be unpredictable, because they're programmed to follow a certain pattern, and trigger certain actions based on other actions.

QuoteOne last thing: I'm playing the original starcraft before I buy the new one, and I love the Zerg - except when I'm fighting advanced Protoss... fucking Carriers! Anyways, how useful would some sort of infest ability be, like a functional Morbol Germ? Or if you had something like a Queen's Spawn Broodling ability?

Taking away a unit from your opponent automatically gives you a +1 and them a -1. Charm can be devastating enough. Actually being able to control the unit would be insane. Adding an extra unit to your side of the field can amount to the same thing. Starcraft can work a bit differently because you produce units, rather than sending out a set number. If you loose some guys in Starcraft, just produce new ones. FFT doesn't have that option. You have to work with what you sent in. The strategies and moves a production strategy game like Starcraft has vs. a non-production game like FFT are very different.

Quote from: "Eat_an_Octorok"Taking away a unit from your opponent automatically gives you a +1 and them a -1. Charm can be devastating enough. Actually being able to control the unit would be insane. Adding an extra unit to your side of the field can amount to the same thing. Starcraft can work a bit differently because you produce units, rather than sending out a set number. If you loose some guys in Starcraft, just produce new ones. FFT doesn't have that option. You have to work with what you sent in. The strategies and moves a production strategy game like Starcraft has vs. a non-production game like FFT are very different.

Imagine you and your buddies are walking through Dolbodar Swamp, and you spy a little creature squatting in the bushes.  You shrug and decide to poach it.  As you approach, it launches a barb at the wizard to your left.  Within seconds, the wizard explodes, and in his place are two more of the little creatures.

What do you do now?

It's sort of like the auto-reset battles in 1.3, except you could maybe win, and get some kind of reward for doing so.

QuoteIn regards to speed. An idea I had was that combat is divided into turns, and everyone goes once at least each turn, unless prevented from doing so, however, Speed would determine the order in which every unit would go for that turn. For example:

Knight has 7 SPD
Archer has 8 SPD
Ninja has 9 SPD

Then the order is Ninja acts 1st, then Archer, then Knight. Then it's moved to turn 2, and the order repeats again.

I don't really like this as it really waters downs the combat. I really like FFT's turn system. I just don't like how Speed rules everything. If speed was split into 2 stats, traditionally slower classes wouldn't be so left behind in the dust.

QuoteHere's another one. Difficulty isn't achieved by giving the enemy higher stats/stronger equipment/more powerful abilities, but by allowing them a greater range of useful options and making them smarter and less predictable. Anyone can give Miluda Sword Skills, but a real hacker makes it so she doesn't need super powers to kick your ass.

That would be wonderful.

QuoteYour example, give a 100 Risk characer a long range weapon wouldn't work because he wouldn't hit anything, even with Concentrate, because all Hit Rates and inflict rates take Risk into account, and at 100 Risk all hit rates for your character are multiplied by 0.

If Risk overrides Concentrate, then that kinda kills the point of Concentrate. Also, guns don't miss, and have the highest attacking range. Dash doesn't miss either. Geomancy also never misses. Draw Out never misses. There are plenty of ways around it. You'd be making a lot of extra work incorporating Risk in.

QuoteHe wouldn't be invincible because his evasion would also be multiplied by 0.

The high Risk unit was never meant to be invincible. He's expected to die. It's just that dying doesn't matter to him, as revival is easy enough.

QuoteAnd as for the 0 Risk support character who revives him, we can always set Risk to drop to 0 when a unit is killed, and at 0 Risk your support character would just take Normal damage, deal Normal damage, and have normal hit rates and evade rates.

The whole point of the 0 Risk support unit was the fact that he has normal damage output/intake, not so much the hit/evade part. Plus, he'd want to keep his Risk 0 so he's not an easy target to kill. At 0 Risk, you'd have the least amount of damage intake, which is exactly what he wants. He's not looking to deal damage. That's what high Risk guy is for. The hit/evade part was just a nice addition, but that wasn't the key to the strategy.

QuoteWhat if everyone has 0 Risk, and permanent Risk alteration is disabled, so you start every battle with 0 Risk?

QuoteChange Brave Up so it reduces Faith by 1 point every time it's triggered.

QuoteChange Faith Up so it increases Faith by 1 point every time it's triggered.

Most battles won't last long enough to where a 1 point increase/decrease will amount to anything. Especially if everyone starts at 0 at the beginning, and they go to 0 if they die. Plus, I'd hate to sit through Brave/Faith Up after every action...

QuoteImagine you and your buddies are walking through Dolbodar Swamp, and you spy a little creature squatting in the bushes. You shrug and decide to poach it. As you approach, it launches a barb at the wizard to your left. Within seconds, the wizard explodes, and in his place are two more of the little creatures.

What do you do now?

It's sort of like the auto-reset battles in 1.3, except you could maybe win, and get some kind of reward for doing so.

In a case like that, you'd get a -1, and the enemy gets a +2, which is even more unfair. Plus, you only have 5 units to work with and you just got one snatched from you, and had 2 more added against you. That's just annoying, not challenging.

And finally, even with the Risk system added in, physical attacks still have the advantage over magic. Yeah, you removed Faith from the equation, but magic still doesn't have Doublecast, still has to charge, and still costs MP, where as the best physical skills don't.

Edit: (SO MUCH QUOTING!!)

QuoteI don't really like this as it really waters downs the combat. I really like FFT's turn system. I just don't like how Speed rules everything. If speed was split into 2 stats, traditionally slower classes wouldn't be so left behind in the dust.

Without a system like this set up, Speed really does rule everything. It's hard to change the general fact that a unit with higher Speed will have their turn come quicker than someone with lower Speed.

I think I just got served.
(http://www.funnystuffblog.com/images/cat-owned.jpg)

QuoteWithout a system like this set up, Speed really does rule everything. It's hard to change the general fact that a unit with higher Speed will have their turn come quicker than someone with lower Speed.

Well yeah, but now it's totally the opposite. Speed is now just an arbitrary number that sometimes factors in attacks. Who cares who gets to go first on your turn? I don't like how it dominates the game completely, but I don't want it to be basically pointless.

QuoteWell yeah, but now it's totally the opposite. Speed is now just an arbitrary number that sometimes factors in attacks. Who cares who gets to go first on your turn? I don't like how it dominates the game completely, but I don't want it to be basically pointless.

I'm not saying a turn only only includes your units. I'm saying a turn includes all units on the battlefield, enemy, and ally. The highest Speed gets to go 1st every turn, and the lowest goes last every turn. Better example:

Ally: Knight SPD 5, Archer SPD 7, Ninja SPD 9
Enemy: Priest SPD 8, Thief SPD10, Monk SPD 6

Order goes:

Enemy Thief
Ally Ninja
Enemy Priest
Ally Archer
Enemy Monk
Ally Knight

And that is 1 Turn. Then it goes to Turn 2 and starts from the beginning in the same order, unless someone's SPD is modified.

Ah, my mistake.

Still, in order for that to happen, magic has to become instant, and that while that would definitely  work, it would also make things a lot more blander and a lot less strategic.

I came this idea a while ago, but it was just until now that I realized it could be used to nerf Speed.

I was playing a FPS a while back (can't remember what) when I commented  to myself, "Gee, all this leading my shots business, imagine if I had to lead my attacks in FFT..." That struck me, at the very least, would make an interesting mod, but how would I represent leading in FFT? By giving everything a charge time. From Punch Art all the way down to Attack. I thought it was a cool idea, but I knew I couldn't do it completely because so many skill sets are so wonky and finicky are being modified, so I put it on a mental backburner for a while.  

Now I see it as a way to nerf Speed. By adding charge time to everything, Speed is no longer all powerful. There will be some exceptions that will have instant CT like Steal, some Basic skills, some Talk Skills, and some other assorted skills. The only problem is that the Charge penalities will make Evasion and being a tank worth less. The solution to that is to simply remove the penalties altogether. Charge would now just a preparatory status, nothing more. Maybe there would be an old school charge status with all the old draw backs for some magic skills/skillsets. And maybe different charges for different weapons.

Your idea isn't bad, it's just takes too much of FFT's complexity out for my tastes. Frankly, I would rather have Speed be OP then lose a major part of FFT.

QuoteBy adding charge time to everything...

Still wouldn't change the fact that physical > magical. Magic looses it's strike of having to charge, but physical still is 0 cost, outputs more damage, and there's no Doublecast. Also, with everyone needing to charge everything, Dancers and Bards would gain the upper hand as their Preforming status lets them continue actions between turns, and now everyone else is slower to responding to this threat. And the issue of them being overpowered due to everyone being so slow still isn't fixed unless Preforming status is removed. Slowing their CT on their Songs/Dances too much would just make them a useless class as well.

My vote would be to remove charge time and add in new costs. You could change it to where Brave and Faith are no longer values used in damage formulas, but rather a pool of points to use for skills. Brave for physical, Faith for magical. Different classes get different starting Brave/Faith battles at the start of combat, and you can increase/decrease Brave and Faith with skills. The power of basic physical attacks should be scaled down, and weapons that magic users attack with, like rods, staffs, etc. should preform a magical attack that's also scaled down on a comparative level to physical attacks, and so they won't be punished soley for the fact that all default attacks are physical based when their PA sucks. Then physical classes could have skillsets focused on dealing increased physical damage, since their regular attack damage has been scaled back, and magic users can have a skillset in the same vein, just magical oriented. Brave/Faith can also still determine your reaction chances but switch magic related reaction skills to Faith, rather than everything being Brave. Then it creates a system where yeah, you can spam your special moves and burn up your Brave/Faith, but then you're going to drop your chances of being able to use reaction skills, thereby making you have to find a nice balance between the two.

If you really want to make it interesting, since Brave/Faith are your new source of cost for skills, turn MP into a vital stat too, and make all magic hit at MP instead of HP, however, you still die if you hit 0 MP. This setup will truly make physical tanks like knights a physical sponge with their high HP, and magical tanks like Summoners a magical sponge with their high MP. Much better than having physical users always having the edge with higher HP totals and no need for high Faith and in turn high magic susceptibility. MP would need to be scaled for each classes though, as by default some are just way too low for this to be fair.

Now for an example to make this less confusing:

Our units will be a Knight, Archer, Wizard, and Summoner.

Knight: 500 HP, 250 MP, 70 Brave, 25 Faith
Summoner: 250 HP, 500 MP, 25 Brave, 70 Faith
Wizard: 300 HP, 350 MP, 40 Brave, 60 Faith
Archer: 350 HP, 300 MP, 60 Brave, 40 Faith

Brave and Faith values are all how much they start with. They can be increased/decreased in battle. There is no way to raise/lower permanent starting values.

Scenario 1: Knight attacks Wizard

Knight uses Stabity Stab skill, which costs 30 Brave to use. Knight's Brave drops to 40, and he deals 310 HP damage to Wizard. Wizard dies like normal.

Scenario 2: Wizard attacks Knight

Wizard uses Magic Missile, which costs 30 Faith to use. Wizard's Faith drops to 40, and he deals 310 MP damage to Knight. Knight dies as now 0 MP = Death.

Scenario 3: Archer attacks Knight

Archer uses Aim for Nuts, which costs 15 Brave to use. Archer's Brave drops to 45, and he deals 250 HP damage to Knight. Knight lives, with 250 HP remaining.

Scenario 4: Wizard attacks Summoner

Wizard uses Force Choke, which costs 15 Faith to use. Wizard's Faith drops to 45, and he deals 250 MP damage to Summoner. Summoner lives, with 250 MP remaining.

Scenario 5: Knight gets revenge for Scenario 3

Knight proceeds to attack Archer with a regular physical attack. Archer has Blade Grasp as his Reaction skill. Since Archer used Aim for Nuts, his Brave is 45, instead of 60. Now he only has 45% added to his evade, as he only has 45 Brave left, where he could have had 60% added if he didn't use Aim for Nuts earlier.

Scenario 6: Summoner gets revenge for Scenario 4

Summoner proceeds to cast Zodiac on Wizard. Wizard has Counter Magic as Reaction skill. Since Wizard used Force Choke earlier, his Faith is 45, instead of 60. Now he only has a 45% chance of countering Zodiac back, as he only has 45 Faith left, where he could have had 60% chance if he didn't use Force Choke earlier.

Scenario 7:Summoner wants to restore Knight's Brave

Knight used up his Brave on skills, now he's down to 0 Brave. His Summoner buddy wants to restore Knight's Brave, as at 0 Brave Knight can't use physical Reaction skill or physical attack skills. Summoner casts Lionheart on Knight, which raises Brave by 50. Knight now has 50 Brave.

Scenario 8: Wizard wants to damage Knight's Brave

Wizard knows Stabity Stab skill will rape him. He wants to hit Knight's Brave so he can't use it again. Wizard casts Chickenfoot, which lowers Brave by 50. Knight is back at 0 Brave, and can't use Stabity Stab anymore, as well as physical Reaction skills.

Scenario 9: Archer wants to restore Wizard's Faith

Wizard used up all his Faith on spells, now he's down to 0 Faith. His Archer buddy want to restore Wizard's Faith, as at 0 Faith Wizard can't use magical Reaction skill or magical skills. Archer uses Bible Thump skill, which raises Faith by 50. Wizard now has 50 Faith.

Scenario 10: Knight wants to damage Wizard's Faith

Knight knows Magic Missile will rape him. He wants to hit Wizard's Faith so he can't use it again. Knight uses Drawinism, which lowers Faith by 50. Wizard is back to 0 Faith, and can't use Magic Missile anymore as well as magical Reaction skills.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you still have any more questions on the matter, just ask. I tried to make it as non-confusing as possible. And keep in mind, all numbers/values can be scaled up/down for balance issues.

the current plan with the ASM'd patch is to apply both Global class evasion (50% effectiveness on sides, 25% effectiveness on back) and innate weapon guard for all -- resulting in anywhere from 10 to 30% base evasion for all non-back attacks, while halving speed growth (9 speed at level 99, possible 12 with speed-stacked equips) to make charge-time actions more viable throughout the game.  With both of these in place, the magic vs. melee gap is a LOT smaller, and it works within the already designed engine of the game.

Quote from: "philsov"the current plan with the ASM'd patch is to apply both Global class evasion (50% effectiveness on sides, 25% effectiveness on back) and innate weapon guard for all -- resulting in anywhere from 10 to 30% base evasion for all non-back attacks, while halving speed growth (9 speed at level 99, possible 12 with speed-stacked equips) to make charge-time actions more viable throughout the game.  With both of these in place, the magic vs. melee gap is a LOT smaller, and it works within the already designed engine of the game.

I will give it that it definitely is easier to accomplish with the game's preset engine, but if adding more physical evade options balanced the physical/magical gap, then vanilla FFT already accomplishes that with late game shields, mantles, Abandon and BLADE GRASP, which is supposed to be the ultimate "Fuck you!" to physical attacks. Physical > magical still. It doesn't fix the fact that physical attacks output more damage, have 0 cost, are instant, that magic has no Two Swords equivalent, and that magic has a stat that helps resist it, where physical doesn't. Also, Concentrate will just put physical back on it's untouchable throne anyway, as will physical attacks that don't miss, like Jump.

Also:

QuoteAnd the issue of them (Dancers/Bards) being overpowered due to everyone being so slow still isn't fixed unless Preforming status is removed. Slowing their CT on their Songs/Dances too much would just make them a useless class as well.

QuoteSomething would having to be done about the Dancer/Bard class then because they'd be broken. When I was playing 1.3, I picked up a Bard and Dancer Ch.1 through much grinding, and I found that with everyone's Speed so low at the point in the game, they could shoot off 2-3 dances/songs before another unit's turn even rolled around. I was healing around 50-60 HP between waiting one unit's turn to another, while dealing 40-50 damage in that same time frame. 1.3 Fort Zeakden was a joke because of this, as was any battle where I could hide in a corner, or run away. Small maps were trickier, but even vs. Wiegraf on 1.3 at the Bard could heal me enough to slight invincibility on high HP units, and the Dancer dropped their Power to the point where I was invincible. Once I was under total control, I had the Bard sing till I had insane Power, and swept everyone under the rug. 1.3 Dorter was won for me solely on Nameless Dance shooting off so quick and Frog/Sleep/Stopping everyone to the point of 0 retaliation.

QuoteI will give it that it definitely is easier to accomplish with the game's preset engine, but if adding more physical evade options balanced the physical/magical gap, then vanilla FFT already accomplishes that with late game shields, mantles, Abandon and BLADE GRASP, which is supposed to be the ultimate "Fuck you!" to physical attacks.

Yes, but mantles and shields come at the expense of equipment slots -- shields moreso as it meant being a specific class or waste a support slot, and even on a natural shield wearer shields = no two swords/hands.  Meanwhile vanilla blade grasp was doubly broken in that it brought things down to 3% hit rate (which is patently absurd, same as perma low faith imo), and that the player never had to deal with it on the enemy except 1 fight.

And again its more evasion plus speed reduction -- there's nothing quite like charging up a Demi2 and double-turning YOURSELF :'(.

QuoteIt doesn't fix the fact that physical attacks output more damage, have 0 cost, are instant, that magic has no Two Swords equivalent, and that magic has a stat that helps resist it, where physical doesn't. Also, Concentrate will just put physical back on it's untouchable throne anyway, as will physical attacks that don't miss, like Jump.

Faith status ramps up magical damage.  Magical damage has range, aoe, and less potential for evasion.  Concentrate means no two swords/two hands for anything other than a ninja, and Jump has a charge time.  Magical and Physical damage can be brought to a seperate but equal status.  

But going back to dance/song -- you can just make their abilities not affect the whole map -- something like a large radius around the performer should suffice.  Or, yes, you can simply not make their skills persevere and act like any normal charge time ability except under its current design performing loses evasion but doesn't have the charge-time damage penalty.

ITT: Walls of text

QuoteStill wouldn't change the fact that physical > magical...but physical still is 0 cost, outputs more damage...

True, but it does nerf speed, at least. And it also lessens the gap considerably. Physical damage can be nerfed by nerfing their biggest damage outputs, Two Swords and Two Hands. We can start by taking out the biggest offender, the Monk, by making bare fists no longer duel wield and removing Martial Arts as an innate. Then we nerf the damage multipliers of Double Hand and Duel Wield altogether (with Double Hand coming up on top) so they don't do as much. And if it's still a problem, we can just scale PA growth down a notch or two. I'm fine with Physical Attacks having no MP cost, but they should not be able to surpass magic in damage output. I think it's quite possible to balance the Physical with the Magical without rewriting FFT's game engine.  It just requires some fine tuning and lots and lots of ASM hacks.

As for Singing and Dancing, I think it's possible to strike a balance with increasing it's CT. As long as it doesn't go back to Vanilla levels, it will be okay. Alternatively, there is always turning it into a standard charge move, or nerfing it's range.

QuoteIf you really want to make it interesting, since Brave/Faith are your new source of cost for skills, turn MP into a vital stat too, and make all magic hit at MP instead of HP, however, you still die if you hit 0 MP. This setup will truly make physical tanks like knights a physical sponge with their high HP, and magical tanks like Summoners a magical sponge with their high MP

I just want to say that I actually like that idea.  It is similar to the very interesting combat strategies present in Star Ocean: Till the end of Time, and using something other than HP and MP for costs would make me far more inclined to actually go all out.  Star Ocean's problem was that I felt far too vulnerable using magic until I got those MP regen accessories, and then I never ever took them off except when upgrading to something better.  (The straight up upgrade to the accessory with 6% instead of 3% and that trophy that had the regen AND plenty of other powerful bonuses.)

Anyways, having to keep an eye on two statistics made things more interesting and it made characters more diverse in what they were effective against.

In vanilla, how useful would the mp regenerating licenses of FFXII be?
1.  Restore MP when you take damage, in proportion to the damage taken.
2.  Restore MP when you deal damage, in proportion to the damage dealt.
3.  Restore MP when you KO an enemy.

And if every ability that could cost mp and have a charge time did so, how much useful would magic become?

Quote from: "Pickle Girl Fanboy"In vanilla, how useful would the mp regenerating licenses of FFXII be?
1.  Restore MP when you take damage, in proportion to the damage taken.
2.  Restore MP when you deal damage, in proportion to the damage dealt.
3.  Restore MP when you KO an enemy.

And if every ability that could cost mp and have a charge time did so, how much useful would magic become?

I think they would be unbalancing as an innate/innates. It would really nerf MP draining. However, as reactions, they would be excellent. Mages really lack good reactions, and these would be really good for them.

As for giving everything a charge time like I suggested earlier in the topic, it would really serve to keep the speed stat from being too important like it is now and FFT overall would be a better game for it. Not too sure about giving an MP cost to everything. I think giving everything a charge time will be sufficient for Magic.

QuoteConcentrate means no two swords/two hands for anything other than a ninja, and Jump has a charge time.

In 1.3 a Thief can do a Two Swords setup with Concentrate. And now that they equip Ninja Swords, they're actually viable to use. Or just abuse the Speed boost of two daggers. A Lancer doesn't need Two Swords. Attack Up + Jump is more than enough to devastate units, and as a plus Jump won't miss. Jump is free to use, charges rather fast, and gives a Lancer invincibility when they use it. Definitely nowhere near on the same level of magic's charging penalties of 0 evade, MP cost, and extra damage.

QuoteFaith status ramps up magical damage. Magical damage has range, aoe, and less potential for evasion.

Faith status also makes you super vulnerable to magic damage, and putting Faith status on someone with low Faith is hard enough already. And they could just cancel it with Innocent, which will be very easy to do since you just gave them Faith. Physical has range with Jump, Wave Fist, Earth Slash, Throw, the Swordskills, Bows, and Crossbows. AoE is on average going to get you 1 extra unit to hit, and the best spells, Holy and Flare, don't have it. And freaking Zodiac is hard enough to get, not to mention his enormous cost. Magic may have less evasion sources, but it has more resistance sources. Low Faith, Reflect, and null/absorbing an element. Plus a physical class will still be just as deadly with Concentrate on them, while a magic user will be crying for Magic Attack Up/Half MP/Short Charge with the same setup.

QuoteWe can start by taking out the biggest offender, the Monk, by making bare fists no longer duel wield and removing Martial Arts as an innate.

Removing their innate Martial Arts would kill their class. They can't equip weapons already, and now you want to steal their trump card? No Two Swords on fists is enough.

QuoteMagical and Physical damage can be brought to a seperate but equal status.

If you want to make magic and physical equal, then you need to give them both the same costs, and limitations. At minimum physical attack damage should be scaled back majorly, and magic user's weapons like Rods, Staffs, Books, etc. should do a magic based attack by default, rather than a physical one with whatever necessary scaling is needed there. Then both physical and magical users should have their more damaging/strategical moves be from their skillsets. Faith should be removed from magic user's equations, or physical needs to be given a stat of some sort that can help resist it's damage.

QuoteI'm fine with Physical Attacks having no MP cost, but they should not be able to surpass magic in damage output.

They should be on the same level of damage output, just that they're coming from a different source. Think of Pokemon with Physical vs. Special. They both have the opportunity to inflict equal damage as each other, but they're still very separate and unique, as you can't just have too many of one. That's the purpose of physical and magical attacks, to set up a scenario where you're not able to use only one move and one tactic to breeze through every enemy. But it doesn't work if they're not developed to be fundamentally similar in damage output, or if the scales are tipped in one's favor.

QuoteIt would really nerf MP draining.

I don't recall anyone ever bothering with an MP draining strategy. In fact, it's almost non-existent, because you don't need to. It's easier to just kill a unit rather than drain their MP, as most units who really need MP are made of glass. MP draining and/or disabling/ailments in general really only works if you're facing targets that are hard to bring down in 1-2 turns. Most enemies in FFT aren't, and the ones that are don't rely on MP to begin with, (Elmdor, Celia, Lede, Zodiac bosses to name a few).

MP cost is just a minor issue on the unbalanced scales of physical vs. magical. It's pretty easy to fix that with an Ether or Chakra. I mainly bring it up because it's unfair to magic that physical costs 0, but usually outputs more damage.

QuoteAttack Up + Jump is more than enough to devastate units

If I may interject, Jump is not effected by Attack Up or anything like that.

QuoteMagic may have less evasion sources, but it has more resistance sources. Low Faith, Reflect, and null/absorbing an element.

Yes, but Magic counters are by far less pervasive than Physical evade. EVERYTHING have Physical evade and can get really high. Besides, Low Faith and Reflect can backfire with being less effective with friendly magic, Silence is mainly used by another Magic Class, leaving only resist/null/absorb element, which is not very frequent.

QuoteRemoving their innate Martial Arts would kill their class. They can't equip weapons already, and now you want to steal their trump card? No Two Swords on fists is enough.

Having Martial Arts as a innate is like having Attack Up as a innate, except it only works on fists. Fists have an exponential formula, so they are already guaranteed to do the most damage out of all the Physicals. With MA and either Concentrate or Attack Up stacked on, they can either do a lot of damage you can't avoid, or just do a shit ton of damage. Currently, they can out damage Monsters attacks with ease. Factor in having multiple ranged attacks, the ability to heal HP and MP and status to themselves and multiple units, and the ability to revive, and I think Monks will be perfectly fine without Martial Arts.

QuoteThey should be on the same level of damage output, just that they're coming from a different source. Think of Pokemon with Physical vs. Special. They both have the opportunity to inflict equal damage as each other, but they're still very separate and unique, as you can't just have too many of one. That's the purpose of physical and magical attacks, to set up a scenario where you're not able to use only one move and one tactic to breeze through every enemy. But it doesn't work if they're not developed to be fundamentally similar in damage output, or if the scales are tipped in one's favor.

Except you need to consider exactly what kind of classes specialize in Magic and Physical. Most Physical classes can go toe to toe with other units, they are the front line. Most usually can't deal a lot of damage, but they have excellent survivability. Most Magic classes can't go toe to toe with other units because of their poor survivability. But they are very powerful. If both kinds of classes had the same Damage Output, then balance would fall to the Physical side. Why would you use the classes that can't survive for crap, when you can use the classes that can survive well and still have the same damage output? Generally speaking, Magic classes trade survivability for more power, while Physical classes trade power for survivability, so they are pretty equal, in theory anyway.

QuoteI don't recall anyone ever bothering with an MP draining strategy. In fact, it's almost non-existent, because you don't need to. It's easier to just kill a unit rather than drain their MP, as most units who really need MP are made of glass. MP draining and/or disabling/ailments in general really only works if you're facing targets that are hard to bring down in 1-2 turns. Most enemies in FFT aren't, and the ones that are don't rely on MP to begin with, (Elmdor, Celia, Lede, Zodiac bosses to name a few).

I (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnxPs49MDXU) did. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUPXLDamjH8) It's really one of those underestimated strategies IMO. You are right it's not so viable all the time, but it can be quite the Gordian Solution to a otherwise difficult battle.

QuoteMP cost is just a minor issue on the unbalanced scales of physical vs. magical. It's pretty easy to fix that with an Ether or Chakra. I mainly bring it up because it's unfair to magic that physical costs 0, but usually outputs more damage.

That can be corrected.

If almost every ability costs mp, then MP Switch+Absorb Used MP = Invicible.

QuoteYes, but Magic counters are by far less pervasive than Physical evade. EVERYTHING have Physical evade and can get really high.

Which can be solved as easily as attacking from behind. Low Faith can't be solved easily, especially if it's low enough, and impossible if it's 0. Reflect requires you to keep someone around with Dispel, or some kind of equivalent, which most people don't. Innocent is even harder to solve, as your magical solutions are all out the window.

QuoteLow Faith and Reflect can backfire with being less effective with friendly magic

The advantage of being immune to all magic far out weights the downside of not being able to use friendly magic, especially seeing as most friendly magic's effects can be duplicated from non-magical sources.

QuoteFists have an exponential formula, so they are already guaranteed to do the most damage out of all the Physicals.

Sounds more like the formula for fist damage with Martial Arts should be fixed then, rather than removing the skill from them. It's supposed to be their class perk after all.

QuoteGenerally speaking, Magic classes trade survivability for more power, while Physical classes trade power for survivability, so they are pretty equal, in theory anyway.

Something like that shouldn't come down to physical vs. magical. That should be class specific for each physical and magical classes. The purpose of physical vs. magical is so that you add variety to damage sources, making it harder for you to counter everything. The minute you're able to counter anything thrown at you, that's when you become unbeatable.

Having the physical and magical sources of damages is a way to stop you from being able to counter anything thrown at you. It's suddenly not enough to have the Armor of Infinite Defense because someone can blast your weak magical area and take you down. And mechanics don't allow you to equip both the Armor of Infinite Defense and the Armor of Infinite Magical Defense, so you decide on one, and have that guy's weakness get covered by someone else with the opposite setup. A good strategy game will force many scenarios like this on you to stop you from countering everything. So you got one guy with the Armor of Infinite Defense and another with the Armor of Infinite Magical Defense to cover him. You're unstoppable now! Except that status ailments exist, and some dude can come along and cast Death on both of them, which doesn't care about your defenses. Again, you're forced to include someone who can cover this issue, let's say someone with the Armor of No Ailments. Now you're invincible, right?! Nope, because you realize that your guy with the Armor of No Ailments can't cover physical or magical damage very well due to him not having infinite in either defense. Now he's become your single point of failure, and if he dies, you've lost your counter, which means game over.

A good strategy game will keep compounding these scenarios on you to the point to where you can't have an answer for everything, so rather than just trying to stop everything, you're forced to come up with a plan of attack and see if that tactic will prevail over what your enemy has in mind.

Limiting high damage, low life to one spectrum, and low damage, high life to another reduces the number of counters you have to deal with, because you already know how to deal with it's source in particular. If all sources of high damage are magical, then create a team that resists magic in every way, and your opponent will only be able to hit you with low damage physicals, giving you the upper hand. But when both people get the same idea, then both people have countered everything, creating a stalemate.

With both physical and magical having both high damage, low life and low damage, high life units, it becomes harder to counter everything. A Knight should be a low damage, high life physical unit, while a Ninja should be a high damage, low life physical unit. On the magic spectrum, a Priest should be low damage, high life, and a Wizard should be high damage, low life. You can't have the ultimate defense because in trying to completely cover one source, you're leaving yourself open to the other. That's the purpose of different sources of damage, not for one to be high, one to be low.

QuoteIf almost every ability costs mp, then MP Switch+Absorb Used MP = Invicible.

Except that they're both Reaction abilities. And a broken setup like that is the reason why you can never have two activate at the same time, or even set two.

QuoteExcept that they're both Reaction abilities. And a broken setup like that is the reason why you can never have two activate at the same time, or even set two

As a side note we can in fact set two (or more, max four) reaction ablities as innates for any given job.  However this hard-overwrites the equipped reaction slot so its best employed on monsters and enemy-only classes.  There's a priority system based on which innate slot each reaction goes in, or in cases of unique triggers (both counter and counter magic, for example) you see both employed rather well.

In the case of MP Switch and Absorb Used MP (plus Move MP Up!), they share triggers but with a mid-range brave value you can expect decent uptime out of both of them.  This multiple reaction thing is also really cool because even at said mid-range braves because you have all these reactions possibly firing off the time in which zero reactions go off is minimal, thereby always keeping the player on his toes.  It'd make a hellish boss!

QuoteWhich can be solved as easily as attacking from behind.

Well there's still mantles...

QuoteThe advantage of being immune to all magic far out weights the downside of not being able to use friendly magic, especially seeing as most friendly magic's effects can be duplicated from non-magical sources.

Not really. Regen's pretty cheap. Haste only other sources come either as an initial, or unreliably from Draw Out (and a rare Draw Out at that). Reraise comes pretty cheaply from Dragon Spirit, but you are sacrificing your reaction slot for cheap reraise. Otherwise, it's initial or unreliably from Talk Skill. Protect and Shell do come cheap from Knight Sword (which are limited in supply), Maximillan/Lordly Robes (which are really in limited supply) or as Salty Rage. The fact that Salty Rage is not in limited supply and gives you unlimited Protect and Shell is why some people think it's cheap. Other than that, only Kiyomori will give you Protect or Shell. Faith comes perament with Faith Rod, but is limited supply and Faith is a double edged sword. So is Reflect. The only thing that non-magic sources can out do magic pretty well in is actually healing HP/Status, which Item trounces White Magic handily, not to mention element absorb strats. Which is why I think Cure magic should heal by percentage, rather than it's current Faith_MA*X formula.

In my experience, low faith is major deal breaker. Haste and Raise/Raise 2 are a main staple of my strategy for FFT throughout the whole game, right up to the final boss. Yeah, 3 spells make me avoid low faith units.  Go figure.

QuoteSounds more like the formula for fist damage with Martial Arts should be fixed then, rather than removing the skill from them. It's supposed to be their class perk after all.

I definitely think Fists could use a different formula. Take this as an example. A unit with 20 PA and 75 Brave will do 300 damage with his fists, without MA factored in at all. Rune Blade, the most powerful weapon you can buy that isn't brave based or randomized, has 14 WP and will do 280 damage. The Kikumonchiji has 17 WP, but is brave-based, so it does 255 damage. The Giant Axe and the Slasher can do 320 damage and 400 damage respectively...when they feel like it. Now let's stack Power Sleeve and Bracer on that, bringing us to 25 PA and 75 Brave. Now fists do 450 damage, Rune Blade does 350 damage, Kiku does 306 damage, and Slasher can do 500 damage, when it's feels like it. Again, that's without Martial Arts figured in.

I really don't like innates that directly effect damage or negate major defenses(Concentrate) because it's abusable to being stacked. Having things like Duel Wield and Double Hand on units that other wise have decent survivability for free really unbalances things, leading to classes with High Damage and High Life. Meanwhile, classes that were built for offense like the Wizard and classes that were built for High Life like the Knight get left in the dust. If a class is going to have a innate, it should be something that just gives them utility, like Equip Change and Throw Item. And just because they learn the skill, doesn't mean they should have it as an innate. Wizards don't have Magic Attack Up as an innate, Geomancers don't have Attack Up as an innate, Ninjas shouldn't have Duel Wield as an innate, why should Monks have Martial Arts as an innate? They'll still have a variety of ranged and AoE attacks at their disposal and the ability to heal HP, MP and Status, Revive, and still can do some hefty damage with their fists. They'll still be a very viable class without MA. They'll just won't be able to one shot/drop to critical humans anymore.

QuoteSomething like that shouldn't come down to physical vs. magical.

Well having high life and low damage isn't so bad. While they can't deal a lot of damage now, they can still end up dealing lots of damage over a period of time because they can survive.

But, if it really that necessary, the solution is quite simple.

Solution 1: Give Wizards a spell that uses F_MA*Y formula, but does Physical Damage instead and give Knights (or Squires) an attack that uses PA*WP or SP*WP, but does Magical Damage instead. Probably not what you want, but I think it's an excellent idea anyways.

Solution 2: Dancers lose evasion and maybe 1 move and lose some speed, maybe give them Rods and Staves, but keep their high ass PA. There, a Physical class that has low life, but high damage. Then, make Bards lose their high MA, give them a shield, maybe armor, maybe Sticks and books, better HP, same speed and move, better MP. There, a Magical class that has high life, but low damage.

QuoteA Knight should be a low damage, high life physical unit, while a Ninja should be a high damage, low life physical unit. On the magic spectrum, a Priest should be low damage, high life, and a Wizard should be high damage, low life.

Well, Ninjas aren't supposed to be a high damage/low life unit. Yes, they have low HP, but they got high speed, high evasion and a decent ranged attack, so they can easily play keep away. Ninjas are only high damage because of that accursed innate Two Swords. If it weren't for Two Swords, they would actually be low in damage output. They may not tank, but they can stay alive, so they still count as having "high life". Priests also aren't a high life/low damage unit. They may have slightly better HP and speed then the Wizard, but they have crap evade, low move, have decent speed, but not enough for it to really count (not to mention too much speed is a determent to Magic classes) only ranged attack leaves them wide open and takes forever to charge, and can't really tank. Low life unit. High damage? Technically yes. They may not deal damage most of the time (except Holy), but they do revive effectively, buff, and (in theory) heal very well so they count as having "high damage".

QuoteExcept that they're both Reaction abilities. And a broken setup like that is the reason why you can never have two activate at the same time, or even set two.

Quote from: "Pickle Girl Fanboy"I think I just got served again.
(http://www.funnystuffblog.com/images/cat-owned.jpg)

Quoted for relevancy

Why do I never realize these things until it's too late?

Does anyone else feel that there should be some more reactions like regenerator that give protect or shell, or randomly gives you one of several good status effects when you're attacked?

I think I could produce something like that, by modifying Counter Tackle/Dash to randomly give me one of several good status effects.

The opposite, Counter random bad status, seems doable to.  Did anyone ever verify if gilgame heart references steal gil?

I was thinking about how to bring NPCs up to speed.  I already playtested a patch I made where I removed Gained JP/EXP UP and Move-Get JP/EXP and reduced all ability costs to 2/3.  I was surprised that every enemy had better skills, but it makes sense, because the enemy will never use Gained XX UP or Move Get XX.  It's a player only advantage.  Anyways, why not give NPCs Gained XX UP and Move-Get XX in their NPC classes?  Learnable, not inherent.  Along with JP costs cut to 2/3, it should make Cloud less of a pain.

Why do so many early classes get really good reactions, while bard and dancer get cheesed with A Save and MA Save?  Doesn't A Save belong on Squire?  MA on Wizard, Faith Up on Priest, and Brave Up on Monk?  Speaking of Monk, why the hell does he have 3 very useful reactions?  If anyone needs hamedo, it's Thief.  Squire needs counter.

Lancer needs speed save.

I agree with you guys that Attack/Defense/Whatever UP and Concentrate and a lot of other R/S/M's make a lot of other R/S/M's obsolete.  Teleport, anyone?

Change List
Sunken State ->- Protect?
Caution ->- Shell?  Need to change the trigger too.
MP Restore -> Restore MP as you take damage.  Or deal damage.  Or something.
Distribute ->

Cheese List
Weapon Guard?  Just because there aren't any mage weapons with great evasion.
Abandon -> Super cheese power
Blade Grasp -> is so broken I think I'll make it Malak Only.
Attack/Defense/Magic Attack/Magic Defense UP -> requires no stratagy, causes no penalty.  What they need is a penalty:  boost defense at the expense of offense, offense for defense.  Even then, they're still broken.
Concentrate -> Broken  Maybe it should be weapon specific?
Martial Arts -> definately broken.  Maybe make it change the formula of another weapon, or make it screw around with weapon formulas?  Have it switch all instances of PA with MA, and vice versa?
Maintenance -> Should be a reaction.  Evade breaks & steal according to brave.  Why?  Because it makes equip change obsolete.
Teleport-> needs a penalty/more limitations.
Ignore height
Float -> better than any water-related ability
Fly

Hrm List
Meatbone Slash -> Reis, or A mage with high HP?  A class that doesn't usually do good damage?

Useless/Obsolete List
Move+1 or 2
Jump+anything.  There aren't enough levels with high buildings or big gaps, and ignore height, fly, and teleport are better.
Any weather
Any Ground
Anything water - not enough battles with lots of impassible water.
move on lava


Idea:  Change Martial Arts so it replaces PA with MA in the standard Fist formula.  Two words: Battle Mage.

QuoteWell there's still mantles...

Which also hurt magic.

QuoteWhich is why I think Cure magic should heal by percentage, rather than it's current Faith_MA*X formula.

Items would make more sense for being percent based. Hi Potions go out of style quickly, and Elixirs are hard to get. Same with Ethers. Magic healing needs a bigger boost to it's formula and more range than just a cross shape with barely any vertical tolerance.

QuoteIn my experience, low faith is major deal breaker. Haste and Raise/Raise 2 are a main staple of my strategy for FFT throughout the whole game, right up to the final boss. Yeah, 3 spells make me avoid low faith units. Go figure.

Ramza does decently for a Haste replacement, and Draw Out skill with Haste works too. Raise and Raise 2 are a waste of time to me. Bringing someone back with Phoenix Down puts AI in retard mode, where they'll only use an attack to try and finish you off, making them Hamedo bait.

QuoteNinjas shouldn't have Duel Wield as an innate, why should Monks have Martial Arts as an innate?

Really it's for the sake of variety. Take away some class' innates, and they just become a class who's sole purpose is to pick up the skills, and put them on a better class. FFT's combat system doesn't quite have enough variables to make every class unique without them having an innate. I mean, why would anyone use a Chemist if they didn't have Throw Item innate? It would be better if every class used their own default moveset better than someone who's setting it as a secondary, or had some kind of perk for being in the class the skillset belongs to.

QuoteSolution 1: Give Wizards a spell that uses F_MA*Y formula, but does Physical Damage instead and give Knights (or Squires) an attack that uses PA*WP or SP*WP, but does Magical Damage instead. Probably not what you want, but I think it's an excellent idea anyways.

Solution 2: Dancers lose evasion and maybe 1 move and lose some speed, maybe give them Rods and Staves, but keep their high ass PA. There, a Physical class that has low life, but high damage. Then, make Bards lose their high MA, give them a shield, maybe armor, maybe Sticks and books, better HP, same speed and move, better MP. There, a Magical class that has high life, but low damage.

The idea I would prefer would be having every class in the physical and magical be on a different level of damage to life ratio. Something like Knight should be on the far end of the life spectrum, and on the low end of damage, where something like Ninja should be the opposite. A good in between would be like Samurai. For magic, maybe chage a Priest to be high life, low damage (and take Holy away from them) while a far advanced magic class like Calculator should be at the opposite end of the spectrum. A good in between would be an Oracle. Skillsets would need to be modified to accommodate this, however.

And I know that in the real game, Priests aren't high life or anything, but I was referring my preferred style, not how they actually have it set up.

Quote(Anything related to two reaction skills at once.

Bad idea. There's a reason you only get one reaction skill. Even giving Weapon Guard as an innate to everyone is too much. If you guys figure out how to unflag two working at the same time, then Abandon with everyone having Weapon Guard innate would create ridiculous evade for everyone. Counter and Counter Magic at the same time would make you stupid hard to strike with anything without feeling reparations. Hamedo + Arrow Guard means it's suicide to try and attack you, especially if you change Arrow Guard to work on guns too. With MP Switch and MP Restore, if you're in critical HP, you're nearly impossible to bring down.

QuoteDoes anyone else feel that there should be some more reactions like regenerator that give protect or shell, or randomly gives you one of several good status effects when you're attacked?

Unless they're giving multiple good/bad stats at once, those skills are largely useless. The point of a reaction ability is to keep you alive longer more than anything. That's why Blade Grasp, Hamedo, Abandon, Critical Quick, and HP Restore are usually the skill of choice. One good stat/one ailment isn't going to help much unless you get a lucky Haste/Stone, or Quick/Dead.

QuoteI was thinking about how to bring NPCs up to speed. I already playtested a patch I made where I removed Gained JP/EXP UP and Move-Get JP/EXP and reduced all ability costs to 2/3. I was surprised that every enemy had better skills, but it makes sense, because the enemy will never use Gained XX UP or Move Get XX. It's a player only advantage. Anyways, why not give NPCs Gained XX UP and Move-Get XX in their NPC classes? Learnable, not inherent. Along with JP costs cut to 2/3, it should make Cloud less of a pain.

Removing Gained Anything Up is stupid in my opinion. No one wants to sit there using Accumulate or Berserk Frogs for hours on end. FFT's JP system needs cost cuts all around. We went through the trouble of getting a billion JP for ever class when we were 12 and this game just came out. Considering that anyone playing FFT 1.3 or other variations has probably gathered enough JP in their lifetime to master every class five times over, we don't need to incorporate stupid high JP restrictions anymore. Make the enemies have more skills earlier, and slash JP costs across the board. Gets the same job done without the need for stupid Berserked frogs.If you want to limit class availability, put a level limit on them instead of crazy JP requirements. Levels come easy, and it's not unthinkable to gain like 2-3 levels for a few fights vs. running the game 10 hours with stupid frogs.

Also, NPCs are good enough as it is. They really need no help. The only person who needs maybe a little tweaking is Mustadio, and anything you do would need to be minor at best, like giving Engineer innate Throw Items.

QuoteWhy do so many early classes get really good reactions, while bard and dancer get cheesed with A Save and MA Save? Doesn't A Save belong on Squire? MA on Wizard, Faith Up on Priest, and Brave Up on Monk? Speaking of Monk, why the hell does he have 3 very useful reactions? If anyone needs hamedo, it's Thief. Squire needs counter.

1.3 removed Brave and Faith modification, so that's not an issue. And if you don't see the use of A Save and MA save, then we need to talk. Don't forget you can hit your own people to trigger reaction skills. Throw Stone has a purpose you know...

QuoteI agree with you guys that Attack/Defense/Whatever UP and Concentrate and a lot of other R/S/M's make a lot of other R/S/M's obsolete. Teleport, anyone?

The game's limitations of giving you crappy skills that get phased out later is part of the RPG archetype. It goes on the system that you get the sweet stuff later on when you've worked hard for it. Of course the idea doesn't jive so well when you're trying to make a balanced SRPG, as you just create crappy classes and throw away skills like that. The system works better if when you get that sweet stuff later on, the sweetness also backtracks to your older skills from the beginning to make them sweeter.

QuoteSunken State ->- Protect?
Caution ->- Shell? Need to change the trigger too.
MP Restore -> Restore MP as you take damage. Or deal damage. Or something.
Distribute ->

Sunken State does kind of suck now, but you get one free hit with 100% accuracy from it at least. Still not worth being a reaction skill dedicated to it. Protect wouldn't be too bad, but there's still easily better options.

Caution doing Shell would be even more lame. It should halve all incoming damage if it wants to have some purpose over Abandon.

If MP Restore triggered outside of critical, you'll be finding a lot more people using Throw Stone again...

As for Distribute, try making an entire team with Distribute and have a Bard or two do his healing song. You'll see it in a whole new light.

QuoteCheese List
Weapon Guard? Just because there aren't any mage weapons with great evasion.
Abandon -> Super cheese power
Blade Grasp -> is so broken I think I'll make it Malak Only.
Attack/Defense/Magic Attack/Magic Defense UP -> requires no stratagy, causes no penalty. What they need is a penalty: boost defense at the expense of offense, offense for defense. Even then, they're still broken.
Concentrate -> Broken Maybe it should be weapon specific?
Martial Arts -> definately broken. Maybe make it change the formula of another weapon, or make it screw around with weapon formulas? Have it switch all instances of PA with MA, and vice versa?
Maintenance -> Should be a reaction. Evade breaks & steal according to brave. Why? Because it makes equip change obsolete.
Teleport-> needs a penalty/more limitations.
Ignore height
Float -> better than any water-related ability
Fly

Weapon Guard is just fine. All you really need to do is change the evade rates on said problem weapon to fix anything.

Abandon requires a dedicated setup to it at least. It's not bad, and you need a good mantle to make it perfect.

All the X Up has the penalty of taking away your Support ability slot. You're not getting those skills off of anything else. At most you could just scale down the increase. Think of Attack Up vs Equip Armor or Shield. You're giving up some good options by opting to set it.

Concentrate is there to make evade not be the end all stat. For a good example of what happens when you don't incorporate a skill like this, look at Fire Emblem and any class with high Speed and Luck. Plus you're again giving up your Support slot.

Equip Change > Maintenance. Yeah, your stuff can be broken/stole without it, but Equip Change gives you versatility. You can swap gear in the heat of combat, and give yourself a whole new setup of equipment to tackle a new situation. And if your stuff breaks, re-equip it.

Teleport has a good enough penalty. An extra 10% chance of failure for every panel above your move you try to move past is a risky trade off. Some people prefer Move + 3 for a guaranteed chance to get where they need to get. A unit with 3 base move trying to move 7 spaces that someone with Move + 3 and shoes has a 60% chance of actually making that move vs. 100%. Which odds do you prefer when a moment is critical?

Ignore Height is situationaly useful. You'll only have it for certain maps, then be done with it. Plus, you're giving up your Movement skill for this, when there are plenty of cooler options.

As yourself, how many times you set Float on a movement skill slot vs. casting it since it lasts the entire battle?

Fly is just a different flavor of Teleport and Ignore Height. It's a mesh up of the skills, with trade offs from each. It's just fine, and usually never gets used anyway.

QuoteMeatbone Slash -> Reis, or A mage with high HP? A class that doesn't usually do good damage?

*cough*gunuser*cough* Needs critical HP to activate. It's a fair trade off considering you need to leave yourself nearly dead, and evading a hit won't trigger it.

QuoteUseless/Obsolete List
Move+1 or 2
Jump+anything. There aren't enough levels with high buildings or big gaps, and ignore height, fly, and teleport are better.
Any weather
Any Ground
Anything water - not enough battles with lots of impassible water.
move on lava

These all go back to that RPG mechanic of the rewards system. They are all pretty crappy though.

QuoteIdea: Change Martial Arts so it replaces PA with MA in the standard Fist formula. Two words: Battle Mage.

That just gives you even less of a reason to use magic.

QuoteDoes anyone else feel that there should be some more reactions like regenerator that give protect or shell, or randomly gives you one of several good status effects when you're attacked?

Absolutely. Speed Save adds Haste, A Save and MA Save gain new statuses that boosts PA by 25% and MA by 25%, respectively. Then, a Protect version and a Shell version. Maybe a Faith version too?

QuoteI agree with you guys that Attack/Defense/Whatever UP and Concentrate and a lot of other R/S/M's make a lot of other R/S/M's obsolete. Teleport, anyone?

My issue with supports comes in when they are innates and thus become stackable, causing runaway damage, although there is plenty of that too.

Another major issue with supports is just the sheer lack of variety. Most supports either boost/reduce damage or are equips. In fact, out of the 28 supports in the game, only 8 supports do not directly boost or reduce damage/effectiveness or aren't equip options and I was being pretty loose with the definition of boosting/reducing and maybe equipping. If I switch onto lawyer mode, it can go down even more. I remember in Raziel's topic, there was quite a bit of support ideas being thrown around. Like a support that when attacking a unit in critical, it would instantly kill them and drop their MP to zero or one that reduces death counter to 1 on units you've killed, or one that copies statuses from enemies in adjacent panels.

QuoteAbandon -> Super cheese power

I'm not really sure how to balance out Abandon. How about this?

1. Abandon boosts your evade by 3/2 or 4/3.
2. Abandon will only increase your evade Br% of the time.
3. Abandon only effects Character and Weapon Evasion, and even then, P-Ev only.

QuoteBlade Grasp -> is so broken I think I'll make it Malak Only.

Or remove it altogether. Remember when Rafa had Blade Grasp?

QuoteAttack/Defense/Magic Attack/Magic Defense UP -> requires no stratagy, causes no penalty. What they need is a penalty: boost defense at the expense of offense, offense for defense. Even then, they're still broken.

I don't think so. I think a free damage boost/reduction isn't bad, it's just currently it's your only real option. Increasing the number of supports available will put them in perspective, particularly supports that increase your opportunities for attack, rather than just boosting what you have.

QuoteConcentrate -> Broken Maybe it should be weapon specific?

I got a better idea. Concentrate is taken out the generic pool and given to Mustadio, maybe as an innate even, rename it Pierce. In exchange, generics get a new support that merely reduces target's Physical evasion by 50% and Magical Evasion by 100%, the new Concentrate.

QuoteMartial Arts -> definately broken. Maybe make it change the formula of another weapon, or make it screw around with weapon formulas? Have it switch all instances of PA with MA, and vice versa?

I don't think it's broken, it's just becomes broken when you stack it with other supports. It's basically Attack Up, only stronger and only effects certainly skills and fists. I still don't know what to do with fists.

QuoteMaintenance -> Should be a reaction. Evade breaks & steal according to brave. Why? Because it makes equip change obsolete.

Great idea.

QuoteTeleport-> needs a penalty/more limitations.

I remember another idea from Raziel's topic where Teleport allowed you to go anywhere you wanted, at the cost of not being able to act that turn. If you already acted, you can't move. Still might be OP though.

QuoteFloat -> better than any water-related ability

Not that hard, really. Yet another idea from Raziel's topic is that while in water, you gained 20 CT per turn. Float could have a drawback of being knocked back by any physical attack.

QuoteAny Ground

Another idea from Raziel's topic was that you gained or lost move depending on what tiles you are going through/standing on. However, I think they were going at this backward. Rather, you gaining or losing move depending on what tiles you are going through should depend on the tiles, and Any Ground should negate this effect. That way, you give a shit about the terrain.

QuoteItems would make more sense for being percent based. Hi Potions go out of style quickly, and Elixirs are hard to get. Same with Ethers. Magic healing needs a bigger boost to it's formula and more range than just a cross shape with barely any vertical tolerance.

Not with Autopotion in the game. Getting percentage healing every time you get hit would be insane. I know it's kind of lame that Hi Potions are obsoleted by X-Potions, but that's a casualty of game progress that has to be excepted. Item could stand a buff, but it's should not be a good healing source because it has no real cost in battle. You can spam Potion and Ethers and Remedies and Phoenix Downs all you want without any really risk at all, and it will always work exactly the same for everybody 100% of the time. It's only cost is that you have to buy them out of battle. That's why it shouldn't be as good as the rest of the curative skillsets. Besides, White Magic should rightfully be the best healing moveset and percentage healing is the way to go for them. They have to be able to beat out elemental absorb strategies in particular.

QuoteRamza does decently for a Haste replacement,

Also Faith-based, and it's only a single target, which believe or not, it what really makes it inferior to Haste. The power of Haste comes from not just being really fast, but having multiple people being fast. Haste will haste a lot people at the same time, allowing for a single unified powerful movement, as opposed to Yell, which will lead to multiple weaker movements with Haste constantly wearing off, force a Yell user to either just Haste 1 or 2 people, or spend all of their time hasting everyone. A Haste user can easily just Haste everyone in one go, opening up a free hand for the battle.

Quoteand Draw Out skill with Haste works too.

Masamune is rare and it only gives you Haste half the time.

QuoteRaise and Raise 2 are a waste of time to me. Bringing someone back with Phoenix Down puts AI in retard mode, where they'll only use an attack to try and finish you off, making them Hamedo bait.

That's kinda situational. What if he uses an AoE to attack you and the Item user? Then you'll be dead again. Or what if you are an Archer or using a gun? What if he attacks you from above where you can't reach him? What if he's a monster? What if he uses Repeating Fist or Dash because you have too much evasion for him to bother with? Besides, Hamedo's pretty cheap anyhow.

QuoteReally it's for the sake of variety. Take away some class' innates, and they just become a class who's sole purpose is to pick up the skills, and put them on a better class. FFT's combat system doesn't quite have enough variables to make every class unique without them having an innate. I mean, why would anyone use a Chemist if they didn't have Throw Item innate? It would be better if every class used their own default moveset better than someone who's setting it as a secondary, or had some kind of perk for being in the class the skillset belongs to.

I'm not against innates period, just ones that boost damage. Then again, I've having a change of heart on that. Bows offer a major range advantage, Spears do great damage and have extra range, allowing them to circumvent stuff like Hamedo and Counter, Shields are a major defensive advantage. I guess stacking isn't the end of the world. You have to understand though, I'm pretty bitter against innate Duel Wield and Martial Arts because they overcentralize the game so much. Because of their stacked cheese, many of the physical classes had to be really buffed up just to compete with Monks and Ninjas, and that in turn suffocated the magic classes and the physical classes that couldn't realistically keep up and fell behind as a result.

I'm thinking Martial Arts and Dual Wield in a new light. Rather than think they are a Attack Up clone, I should be thinking of them as an Equip Item option, like Equip Spear and Equip Katana. It's just that Dual Wield and Martial Arts do too much damage. I'm thinking MA goes down to 4/3 with a new fist formula, while Duel Wield total Damage Output should be either 5/4 or just 1(except on knives, current damage). Having the ability to increase your proc rate, and having multiple weapon bonuses, not to mention it's synergy with Break Item and Aim is already pretty good.

QuoteThe idea I would prefer would be having every class in the physical and magical be on a different level of damage to life ratio. Something like Knight should be on the far end of the life spectrum, and on the low end of damage, where something like Ninja should be the opposite. A good in between would be like Samurai. For magic, maybe change a Priest to be high life, low damage (and take Holy away from them) while a far advanced magic class like Calculator should be at the opposite end of the spectrum. A good in between would be an Oracle. Skillsets would need to be modified to accommodate this, however.

And I know that in the real game, Priests aren't high life or anything, but I was referring my preferred style, not how they actually have it set up.

Wouldn't that make Priests...Paladins? Actually, if anything, the Oracle should the high life low damage magic class.

1. Currently, Ying Yang Magic is far more reliant on Faith than MA, so high MA isn't necessary for Ying Yang to work.

2. Currently, Oracles have the highest HP for a Mage. They are already a high life class (for a Mage anyways), so turning them into a real high life class won't be a stretch for them.

In fact, I think they would greatly benefit from being a high life class. Give them a shield, higher HP, take away their MA, leave them with sticks, rods, books and staves, maybe give them armor, they'd become a status tank class. Very excellent.

However, I don't think it's a good idea to shoehorn classes into roles they weren't supposed to fill. The Priest? The Time Mage? The Summoner? They really benefit being from being what they are. Time Mages have the lowest health in the game because their support skills are so influential, not to mention being fast. I know you don't think much of them currently, and their other skills could use some reshuffling, but I can testify to Haste and it's effectiveness. Summoners also really benefit from being who they are. Having high MP and pretty good MA. I could also testify to the effectiveness of Summon Magic. The Priest, can be made better without fundamentally changing their stats.

The thing is, the idea that a challenge that would require low magical damage, but high survivalibity or vice versa (in theory), will never happen in FFT because it simply won't be allowed. In theory,the game was built around this limitation. You'll just never see The Armor of Infinite Physical Resist or anything like that.

Am I saying that FFT doesn't need anymore variety? No. Not by a long shot. I think your goal of having a more ratios represented on both sides would be accomplished much more naturally by introducing classes to fill out that ratio quota, rather than shoehorning existing classes. Although some current classes could stand some retooling. For example, the Samurai is kinda wishy-washy right now. You could change the Samurai into purely a Magical class. Or change them into a purely a Physical class. Or change them into a Physical/Magic class, like the Geomancer. Or divide the class and do all three!

QuoteBad idea. There's a reason you only get one reaction skill. Even giving Weapon Guard as an innate to everyone is too much. If you guys figure out how to unflag two working at the same time, then Abandon with everyone having Weapon Guard innate would create ridiculous evade for everyone. Counter and Counter Magic at the same time would make you stupid hard to strike with anything without feeling reparations. Hamedo + Arrow Guard means it's suicide to try and attack you, especially if you change Arrow Guard to work on guns too. With MP Switch and MP Restore, if you're in critical HP, you're nearly impossible to bring down.

Which is why it's reserved strictly for bosses. ASM'D did make make Weapon Guard innate to everyone, but we compensated for it. The evade itself is low, and Abandon was removed from the game. So was MP Switch, although I think some bosses have it. Probably.

I think you should seriously try out or look at ASM'D. I think it's your kind of patch. Only a demo is currently available, though, but I think you'll enjoy playing it.

QuoteUnless they're giving multiple good/bad stats at once, those skills are largely useless. The point of a reaction ability is to keep you alive longer more than anything. That's why Blade Grasp, Hamedo, Abandon, Critical Quick, and HP Restore are usually the skill of choice. One good stat/one ailment isn't going to help much unless you get a lucky Haste/Stone, or Quick/Dead.

Well, most of those Reactions are arguably pretty OP to begin with. Of course they are going to pale in comparison.

QuoteRemoving Gained Anything Up is stupid in my opinion. No one wants to sit there using Accumulate or Berserk Frogs for hours on end. FFT's JP system needs cost cuts all around. We went through the trouble of getting a billion JP for ever class when we were 12 and this game just came out. Considering that anyone playing FFT 1.3 or other variations has probably gathered enough JP in their lifetime to master every class five times over, we don't need to incorporate stupid high JP restrictions anymore. Make the enemies have more skills earlier, and slash JP costs across the board. Gets the same job done without the need for stupid Berserked frogs.If you want to limit class availability, put a level limit on them instead of crazy JP requirements. Levels come easy, and it's not unthinkable to gain like 2-3 levels for a few fights vs. running the game 10 hours with stupid frogs.

Quote from: "Philsov"Gain JP Up is the devil.

Truth is, I don't remember why it is anymore, BUT IT IS

EDIT: *Groan* I've been typing this post all day long.

Razele's topic is full of win.  Too bad he got hit by a truck.

I'm searching a save state for Cheer Up/Brave Up's Brave offset.  It will take me about 2 weeks.

I looked at the wiki, and there are a lot of reactions we could search for, even without any asm knowledge.  And since my life sucks monkey nuts right now, and I have unlimited free time...

Look at tigerspike's topic in help if you're interested.  All the asm guys will be horrified when they see my method, but I can't for the life of me comprehend asm, or keep any knowledge of it.  It just slips my mind.

QuoteI'm searching a save state for Cheer Up/Brave Up's Brave offset. It will take me about 2 weeks.

Hex Edits

QuoteChange brave gain by chickened units.
BATTLE.BIN
0x11C290 change 0x81 to 0xYY
The brave gained + 0x80 = 0xYY. Obviously, you cannot gain more than 127 brave.

Change brave gain by Brave Up.
BATTLE.BIN
0x124090 change 0x83 to 0xYY
The brave gained + 0x80 = 0xYY. Obviously, you cannot gain more than 127 brave.

Change faith gain of Face Up.
BATTLE.BIN
0x1240A4 change 0x83 to 0xYY
The faith gained + 0x80 = 0xYY. Obviously, you cannot gain more than 127 faith.

But cheer up is a function of fftpatcher, silly.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5132 (http://www.ffhacktics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5132)

So... since that's cracked, may I suggest locating the status-inflicting reaction slots?  With any luck they're a cluster, and you should be able to discern the byte value for the various statii given their order in fftpatcher.  Would love to change up caution/dragon spirit/regen/sunken state into new status (or multiples) -- as also stated in the topic above.

QuoteI think your goal of having a more ratios represented on both sides would be accomplished much more naturally by introducing classes to fill out that ratio quota, rather than shoehorning existing classes.

Adding classes would be nice, but I don't remember ever hearing mention of you guys pulling that off yet, just modifying existing ones. Working with the existing ones seemed to be the easiest idea to implement.

QuoteThat's kinda situational. What if he uses an AoE to attack you and the Item user?

From what I've seen, the AI will always try a regular physical attack to kill a weakened unit even if they have an AoE that could very will kill two people at once, or kill one and hit another. Sounds dumb, but I've been people beat Deep Dungeon 1.3 fights using this exact tactic to stop the super powerful mages and other units you encounter in there from using powerful AoE attacks, and Hamedo/Golem protecting themselves.

QuoteOr what if you are an Archer or using a gun?

If your unit has a bow/gun as well, you can Hamedo another long range attack, as long as you're still in attacking range. I've had a Chemist Hamedo a spell casted on him with their gun. Plus, this tactic is always paired up with Golem.

QuoteTruth is, I don't remember why it is anymore, BUT IT IS

If you don't like it, then blame yourself, or blame God.

QuoteAdding classes would be nice, but I don't remember ever hearing mention of you guys pulling that off yet, just modifying existing ones. Working with the existing ones seemed to be the easiest idea to implement.

True, but a lot of things we've been talking about aren't possible currently.

QuoteFrom what I've seen, the AI will always try a regular physical attack to kill a weakened unit even if they have an AoE that could very will kill two people at once, or kill one and hit another. Sounds dumb, but I've been people beat Deep Dungeon 1.3 fights using this exact tactic to stop the super powerful mages and other units you encounter in there from using powerful AoE attacks, and Hamedo/Golem protecting themselves.

See, that's less about being revived in critical is better than being revived fully, then about the foolhardiness of the AI. If you were up against a human opponent or an AI without that exploit, you'd be spiraling down to a sandbaggy death. If it weren't for that exploit, Raise would obviously be superior to Phoenix Down, charging be damned. Should the game be balanced around your faulty AI, or should you just admit the AI isn't perfect and just balance the game?

QuoteIf your unit has a bow/gun as well, you can Hamedo another long range attack, as long as you're still in attacking range. I've had a Chemist Hamedo a spell casted on him with their gun. Plus, this tactic is always paired up with Golem.

Of course you can, but it won't Hamedo an attack one or two panels away. Hamedo is only as effective as your weapon.

Quote from: "philsov"

QuoteI'm searching a save state for Cheer Up/Brave Up's Brave offset. It will take me about 2 weeks.

Hex Edits

QuoteChange brave gain by chickened units.
BATTLE.BIN
0x11C290 change 0x81 to 0xYY
The brave gained + 0x80 = 0xYY. Obviously, you cannot gain more than 127 brave.

Change brave gain by Brave Up.
BATTLE.BIN
0x124090 change 0x83 to 0xYY
The brave gained + 0x80 = 0xYY. Obviously, you cannot gain more than 127 brave.

Change faith gain of Face Up.
BATTLE.BIN
0x1240A4 change 0x83 to 0xYY
The faith gained + 0x80 = 0xYY. Obviously, you cannot gain more than 127 faith.

But cheer up is a function of fftpatcher, silly.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5132 (http://www.ffhacktics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5132)

So... since that's cracked, may I suggest locating the status-inflicting reaction slots?  With any luck they're a cluster, and you should be able to discern the byte value for the various statii given their order in fftpatcher.  Would love to change up caution/dragon spirit/regen/sunken state into new status (or multiples) -- as also stated in the topic above.

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4948&start=0 (http://www.ffhacktics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4948&start=0)
^I got Cheer Up to boost MA in a save state, but I can't find the string around it in BATTLE.BIN.  I need someone who undestands ASM to look at it.

From http://www.ffhacktics.com/wiki/Formula_Hacking (http://www.ffhacktics.com/wiki/Formula_Hacking):

Statuses

    * 0x0058
          o 0x80
          o 0x40 Crystal
          o 0x20 Dead
          o 0x10 Undead
          o 0x08 Charging
          o 0x04 Jump
          o 0x02 Defending
          o 0x01 Performing
    * 0x0059
          o 0x80 Petrify
          o 0x40 Invite
          o 0x20 Darkness
          o 0x10 Confusion
          o 0x08 Silence
          o 0x04 Blood Suck
          o 0x02 Cursed
          o 0x01 Treasure
    * 0x005A
          o 0x80 Oil
          o 0x40 Float
          o 0x20 Reraise
          o 0x10 Transparent
          o 0x08 Berserk
          o 0x04 Chicken
          o 0x02 Frog
          o 0x01 Critical
    * 0x005B
          o 0x80 Poison
          o 0x40 Regen
          o 0x20 Protect
          o 0x10 Shell
          o 0x08 Haste
          o 0x04 Slow
          o 0x02 Stop
          o 0x01 Wall
    * 0x005C
          o 0x80 Faith
          o 0x40 Innocent
          o 0x20 Charm
          o 0x10 Sleep
          o 0x08 Don't Move
          o 0x04 Don't Act
          o 0x02 Reflect
          o 0x01 Death Setence

What should I search for?  If I want to locate Sunken State, should I search for 0x005810?  I'm kinda bummed out you asked that, because that's the one thing I don't know how to look for.


Is there something like notepad that lets me hotkey blocks of text for multiple, separate copy and pastes?  And I need a hex editor that lets me search for something OR something else.
Like:
2400 OR 0024

QuoteWhat should I search for? If I want to locate Sunken State, should I search for 0x005810? I'm kinda bummed out you asked that, because that's the one thing I don't know how to look for.

It's probably not as simple as 0x5810... it's probably more like "10" with a 58 located within 3 lines of it.  Which... doesn't make things any easier.

QuoteIs there something like notepad that lets me hotkey blocks of text for multiple, separate copy and pastes?

Texter should do the trick for you.  Turn your "@" key into "ctrl F 10" and your "!" into "ctrl F 58" or somesuch.

http://lifehacker.com/238306/lifehacker ... er-windows (http://lifehacker.com/238306/lifehacker-code-texter-windows)

No clue about the hex utility though =\

I just realized, I only have to search for 0x005A.  0x005A gives transparent; if I replace it with 0x005B and Sunken State gives me Shell, then I found it.  I don't even have to worry about 0x10.

But be aware that my methods are incomplete.  I can find data in save states (which are just snapshots of ram), but I usually can't translate what I find into a specific offset in a file in the ISO.  If you want, I could generate a gameshark code when I find something, for easier reproduction.  Or I could just inport/modify/export battle.bin via CDMage, though that will take longer.

Texter looks sweet, btw.

well... the findings need to be reproducable.  If the savestate hacking can't be translated into a permanent and programmable change then there's no point.

Again, this is just a suggestion.  If you're scheming up something else then go for it.

They're reproducable, but it requires that I you also have a copy of the save state, the modified ISO (or a patch), and the search log.  Modding battle.bin won't be faster, and it might not even work at all if Square didn't put all the R/S/M and Formula data in one place, but at least once you find it, you're done.

I really hope someone can translate my find into a hex address in battle.bin.  I want an MA+ formula so freaking bad, and, the more we learn about formulas, the easier it gets to find them.

This thread really got off topic from the original discussion idea. Guess I'll try to steer it back with an idea I had. This is by no means an FFT related mechanic. In fact, it's conception wasn't meant for FFT, but rather for an idea on how to create a gridless SRPG. Think along the longs of games that have free movement like Valkyria Chronicles, Makai Kingdom, and Phantom Brave.

I was trying to think of a way to create a free movement SRPG that wouldn't have move be so broken like Phantom Brave and still retain the tactical aspect of positioning yourself correctly on the map for a strategic advantage. After all, with free movement, you can't hide your back in a corner to cover it, or block off paths from enemies by taking up the only tile that leads through it. The idea I came up with was implementing space control. Here's basically how it would work:

Every unit in the game has a circle around them that designates that area around them as their space, with I will call Zone of Control. The size of the circle varies depending on class. Some control large area, while others control small areas, and there's all kinds of in between. The game has five different types of space.

Neutral
Allied
Enemy
Disputed
Challenged

Neutral is the default type of space on any map you start on. It has no ownership, and it up to claim to whoever enters it first. Allied space belongs to you, however it is divided into two types, Actively controlled space, and Passively controlled space. Actively controlled space is the Zone of Control around an allied unit that they are currently owning. Passively controlled space is space that at one point your own unit owned, but have now left that area. It still belongs to you, but none of your units have their ZoC on it. Enemy space is just like this, except the opposite, it belongs to the enemy, yatta, yatta.

Now the differences of actively controlled and passively controlled allied/enemy space come into play when units start invading space they don't own. When two opposing unit's ZoC overlaps, the space that has them overlapping is considered Disputed space. That space counts towards both the enemy and allies possession, and can be utilized by both. (How space is used will be gotten into later.) This is what normally goes down when it's 1v1 on the units' ZoC. When the sides are unbalanced, however, things change. Let's say that one enemy and one allied ZoC are overlapping. If you were to bring up another allied unit, then their ZoC would be counted towards the ownership of the space in you favor. So what would happen is that any of the enemy unit's space in their ZoC that is overlapped by your two allied units' ZoCs will automatically become yours, while the rest that still has only 1v1 overlapping stays disputed. This compounds with more allied/enemy ZoCs brought in to factor too. For example three allied ZoCs overlapping two enemy ZoCs that are overlapping will beat out the enemy controlled ZoC and become yours.

For Passively controlled space, things work different. If an allied unit's ZoC enters Passive space of the enemy, that space's ownership is challenged. If another enemy unit does not move in to reclaim the challenged space before the invader's turn comes up again, then the passively controlled enemy space that fell into the allied unit's ZoC becomes allied space. Challenged space still retains ownership of whoever was controlling it before. Now you can get around the whole Challenge space waiting issue by moving another unit's ZoC within the Challenged space. Their two overlapping ZoCs will instantly change ownership of it without a challenge being allowed.

So after explaining all that technically jumbo, I'll explain why space is important. If you happen to find yourself in opposing space, or Disputed space, then you are vulnerable to being intercepted. Basically when you chose your action for the turn, you run the risk of it being canceled and receiving a counter attack from an opposing unit who's within interception range. In order to be intercepted, two requirements must be met. First, your unit must be in Enemy or Disputed space. You will not be intercepted in space you control. Second, when you are in enemy/disputed space, there must be an enemy unit who's equipped weapon is within attacking distance of your unit when they preform an action. If both conditions are met, you are vulnerable to being intercepted. The same applies to enemy units as well. Now the chance for interception to happen when the conditions are met varies. Every move has a preset difficulty of interception. Generally close range moves have the lowest chance to be intercepted, and long range moves have the highest chance to be intercepted. But this isn't set in stone and can still vary with the move. The distance a unit is from the unit they're trying to intercept also comes into play. For example, a character with a bow can intercept from a far distance, but the farther away they are, the lower the chance is that they actually will.

The idea I have for the classes is in general close range classes control the least amount of space, yet also are the hardest to intercept, while long range classes control the most space, but are the easiest to intercept, and of course there will be plenty of in between ones.

I know it kinda sounds really confusing, but I'll try to clear up any questions. So, some opinions on this idea?

what your proposing is basically Attacks of Opportunity from Dungeons and Dragons, only more complicated. In D&D, characters have a Zone of Control equal to their melee reach (units with long weapons have an extended maximum reach, but have to suffer from a minimum reach as well), if a creature attempts to move OUT of a space in your ZoC, then you get a free attack attempt against them, with units being able to make a limited number of such attacks per round, usually just 1, typically no more then 4.

So how do we adapt it here? Well, each unit has an Interception Zone determined by their reach, how this affects movement is simple, moving into an enemy unit's IZ ends your movement immediately (some unit supports/innates would be able to bypass this), and moving OUT of an enemy unit's IZ, or using an action capable of being intercepted while within it, triggers an Interception Attack from the enemy unit, provided they have such an attack available (# of interceptions per round is based on equipped weapon and modified by current class, unarmed attacks would have the most interceptions, while ranged weapons would have the least, and potentially zero interceptions per round).

I never intended movement to be canceled by interception, only actions. It's something that could be tried out, however. I've never played D&D so I'm not too familiar with the way they had it. Ideas like a maximum # of intercepts depending on weapon and a minimum range on long range weapons was also something I didn't consider.

My thought on the idea was to not have a limited # of intercepts, however, it only triggers when you try to use actions, not with movements, and it has a certain % chance of it happening. Plus, ZoC would be determined mostly by class, not equipped weapon. Of course this can be played with more, since I just thought this up not too long ago, and it's probably by no means perfect just yet.

I realize now that a lot of this stuff is off topic, but I spent a while typing it so I'm going to post it anyway:

- The AT system is really good but as has been said before speed needs a nerf in terms of its importance in combat. Within the system this could be accomplished by lowering speed growths and massively limiting speed boosting equipment. In a new system it would probably be better to start with a number higher than 100 for max CT and then fiddle with the speed increments until it's relatively balanced. This would also open up new options for spell charge times and potential speed lowering equipment with large benefits elsewhere.

- Short Charge needs to go. Every enemy that wants to cast a spell in 1.3 has short charge. EVERY SINGLE ONE. This support ability adds another disadvantage to the already fairly-weak-at-high-party-level magic commands and makes magic in general MUCH harder to balance. Either do away with it entirely and make magic some combination of faster/more powerful in general or have it innate on all spell casting classes to prevent whatever perceived abuse there might be from a samurai launching a short charge meteor. More interesting, perhaps, would be to give it to a single class with a poor magic modifier - able to cast spells really fast but without the power to back it up. Or, conversely, give it innate to all caster classes but one, and have that one have a much higher magic modifier. In a new system maybe having individual cast speeds per job or even a cast speed/damage/hit rate modifier based on the combination of job and skillset (wizards getting extra damage on wizard spells, etc.) would provide more incentive to use certain classes.

- Magic, as has been mentioned, needs to be more powerful at high levels in general. Probably the best way to do this within the system is to lessen the impact of faith on spell effects in general (I haven't done a lot of fiddling with the system, but if you can mess around with the general equations used for faith-based spells, you could probably mitigate its importance until it worked. This would require a lot of playtesting, I imagine.) Also, maybe have a number of high level caster only equips that give a solid boost to MA without making your hp suck. It seems weird to have wizard robe be at its prime early in the game when a +2 MA has such a giant effect in battle and then be relatively limited in MA boosting armor later on.

- Innates are good. Powerful innates on otherwise weaker classes give the user tactical variety and incentive to use those classes with poorer modifiers outside of just the skillset. One of my favorite things about 1.3 is that Thieves got concentrate. It makes them way more usable.

- Invis should probably work like it does in other final fantasy games. Phys attacks always miss, magic attacks always hit. Disabled upon being hit or using a physical attack. Obviously this would require some balancing, but it's a way more interesting play mechanic than 'gets to have concentrate for one attack'.

As for your concept of ZoC, I think it's important to have something that can get around it. Rogues in D&D, for example, would generally have high tumble to be able to easily obtain a flanking position (where they're much, MUCH stronger). This would create an interesting strategic dynamic in how you advance your front line as not to allow your wizards and archers to be picked off by an assassin.

About magic, just make it instant and balance the damage/effect/accuracy/mp cost