Final Fantasy Hacktics

3) That could work. Axes have higher damage but less range, Flails have less damage but are ranged. This at least makes flails more useful, Axes though are still pretty much useless. Yeah, the rule about not modifying formulas is quite restrictive.

4) Seems like an easy fix to it. Statbreaks rarely ever mattered from the AI, I agree.

6) Well, the issue with move range is more so to bring the melee monsters more in line with each other. As it is, you have Behemoths and Panthers who can actually reach you. And then you have Minotaurs, Bombs, and Goblins who will never reach a class with a ranged attack. Increasing their C.Ev partially fixes this problem (eventually they will reach you because of double-turns, your chances of killing them before they even reach you is less) but the additional move would help. As for Speed, I was actually thinking about how it is fine at the start since the player lacks Speed increasing equipment and their speed is about the same as a naked human. However, once the player gets access to Green Berets, Sprint Shoes, and the Godly God of God Thief Hat. Around when the player gets access to shop bought Thief Hats (after Limberry) he'll be around lvl.50 a Cocatoris (reasonably fast monster) will have 10 Speed while a Geomancer has 8 natural, so 10 with Thief Hat. Reasonable. While if we take a Living Bone, he only has 8 natural speed so he will be considerably slower than the Geo. This is compounded by the fact that the human will also have superior HP and damage. I'd just think balancing speed such that certain monsters will be around the same speed as an equipped human would make them not only a more reasonable addition to your party as well as a more-or-less equal threat to generic human enemies. Of course, this would need testing just to see how it all fits together at the end.

7) Answered in PM

Hehe, apologies for that massive wall of text. I actually only noticed how huge it was after I hit post.

1) Sounds good. I didn't know there was a way to change the % chance for Geo effects individually.

2) Hmm, I agree. It was more so a comment re: your previous statements about internally balancing skillsets. Though as a side note, I'd probably spread around the status effects at 12.5% chances seeing as how early on Draw Out is really rather weak. It only truly picks up in Chapter 4, by which point quite a few of the damage Draw Outs are already obsolete. Though, formula tweaking or item stat tweaking could fix this as well. Alternatively, level the curve of Draw Outs. Make the early ones stronger, the later ones weaker so that there isn't a "Oh hey, I can use Muramasa now. Draw Out is useful!"

3) Well, flails frankly are probably okay on second thought. They are roughly in-line with Sword WP and the strongest store-bought Flail (16 WP) becomes available later than the Slasher. They could still use a new formula to be honest though, PA*F is absolutely horrendous. Flails could probably work fine off of a PA*WP (though that would be boring and they'd need some kind of gimmick to be on par with Swords) or alternatively cap the bottom F at something above well..1. My change would probably be WP*[(PA/1.5)...PA] this keeps their damage respectable without being laughable luck based (a lvl.30 Ninja would do 66 to 99 damage with a Flame Whip following vanilla stats).

As for Axes, well you have to nerf their WP to be more in line with swords . 16 WP on a Slasher, which is shop available just after I believe Orbonne series is stupid strong when coupled with Throw. The proposed changes are either removing the ability Throw Axe, or changing it's shop availability to the same as the Morning Star's (or changing the WP). This of course leaves making Axes a worth-while weapon, and for that I'm strongly in favor of them being WP*WP. The Slasher will do obscene damage but considering it's a Forced Two-Hands weapon that provides neither range, nor anything else sans damage I find it to be okay.

4) Hmm, CT'd stat breaks. Interesting. I'm un-sure how that work actually, would have to see it in action but it would be an interesting take. Though honestly, I would still remove Speed Break unless it get's such a long CT that it could only hit a sleeping target. Good idea regarding Archers, nothing to add there.

5) I think it had more to do with forcing their availability to be later on then you would reasonably get it from a random battle. Which is silly. An e.level 16 item available only after Queklain always made me laugh. Re: End-Game Weapons I agree, but I'd take away the ability to throw them from enemy Ninjas. Having them flagged rare but be easily obtainable via Catch is pointless. Of course, this makes Catch completely useless so it'd probably need to be changed to do something else.

6) For the most basic of changes. Give them some status immunities to shit that makes sense, buff their C.Ev, changed MAM and MAC for classes that don't use MA for anything to 100/100, give 1-panel 1-target monsters 4 move, increase their SpC. If possible, allow them to use their Monster Skill-skill always when on the enemy team but require the same rules as vanilla when recruited. This will still make them weaker than a human but at least somewhat of a creditable threat instead of lolfreexp.

7) I eagerly await to see what they are and brutally dissect them.

Quote from: Quman on January 14, 2012, 05:21:30 pm
Eh, if I'm going to be watching this thread I may as well create an account so I can contribute.

Forced two hands does not give the bonus two hands the skill does. If I do implement forced two hands as the only means of using, then those weapons will have much higher WP. In addition, two swords would be forced into being innate only.

It's not really unbalanced to wield a knight sword or spear with a shield, is it? If not, I'd prefer to just uncheck the "two swords" box in FFTPatcher for anything you don't want to be dual wielded (such as knight swords, spears, or the <nothing> at the top if the item list that represents fists, if you want to disable that combo.) Allowing the player to choose between carrying a shield or doing more damage with their weapon sounds more interesting than forcing one of those options on them.

Actually, I'd wager to say Knight Sword+Shield is pretty damn powerful.
Considering the very high weapon evade on Knight Swords combined with their Always: buffs and formula of (Pa*Br/100)*WP they make better one-handed weapons than two-handed in my humble opinion. Of course, weapon guard isn't the greatest reaction abilities but when you have something like Excalibur or Defender with 60 and 35 W.Ev respectively it becomes pretty strong.

Re: Geomancers.
Elemental is a very powerful skillset as it is. To illustrate a point, let's take Ramza as a Geomancer at lvl.50 and assume he has been in that job from lvl.1. He will have 11 PA and 10 MA, the formula for Elemental damage is [(PA + 2) / 2] * MA. So his damage on a neutral comp target will be 65 if he's completely naked. If we throw in say a Rune Blade, Bracer, Power Sleeve, and Flash Hat we have 113 damage. Which is instant, ranged, has a chance for a status effect, and is completely unevadable short of being immune to the element of the Geomancy used. I find the closest comparison to be a Mythril Gun, which is about half that damage. The only thing off about this-set up is the lack of movement, but you don't need a high move when you have such a good ranged attack.

Which has it's own issue, namely that arguably the two best Elementals Carve Model and Hell Ivy are incredibly abundant, have terrifying status effects (Stop and Petrify are really, really strong), and are non-elemental. Now if you still want to increase the chances of status effects, I'd probably shuffle them around. Have the less dangerous or fatal status effects be on uncommon terrain while stuff like Slow, Blindness, or Silence are common with the Don't Xs and Sleep middle-of-the-road. Probably throw in Earth elemental to Carve Model, Pitfall, and Helly Ivy as well though that may be overkill, it would add an interesting element to Geomancers as well, whereby they could act as emergency healers should there be a need but you'd be sacrificing upwards of two equipment slots for the luxury (Though this does break rule #2). Of course this depends on how you change the statuses to work.

As for my own questions:
1) How do you plan to internally balance Draw Out seeing as how 5 of the skills are identical?
2) What about Axes/Flails? In particular, Throw Axe when done with a Slasher does tremendous damage for how early it becomes available.
3) The Knight skillset and Archer skillsets, any alterations? The higher level Charges are redundant and serve only as a waste of data, the Knight skillset I assume will see increased percentages. In which case I have to bring up Ninjas and Speed Break being able to reduce a unit, any unit to basically uselessness in 2~3 turns. Disregard this if you decide to use the Ruins from the Zalbag skillset.
4) Rare equipment. Some of the items flagged as rare are quite funny, the worst offender has to be the Chameleon Robe. Something which for most robe wearers is less preferable to the Wizard Robe, it's only remarkable moment being Cancel: Dead, yet it's flagged rare. Gastrafitis is another offender that comes to mind, essentially a parallel of the Ultimus Bow yet a rare flag. Gastra could be debatable seeing as how the Xbow formula is certainly better than bow while offering you better defense.
5) How exactly do you plan to edit monsters. There are a few redundancies around which could be fixed. Perhaps the most glaring is the astronomical MA growth on monsters who never use MA, it's not harmful in any way but it looks very silly. The other matter is monster damage. The fact is aside from a few monsters (Hydra family, Behemoths, Demons, Sacred, Cocatoris, and Red Chocobos) the damage becomes laughable later in the game. Something caused primarily by gear dependency (I'll touch more on this), in other words since monsters rely entirely on natural growths for damage and health they need spectacular growths or unique skills to be threatening later in the game once your evasion, health, and damage have inflated due to most classes being gear dependent.

The exact reason why those 11 monsters are threatening are because they either have unevadable ranged attacks that work off of their vast MA, they have a lot of HP, they have ways to do immense amounts of damage to you (or in the cases of Hydras and Tiamats break the damage cap), or they have staggering movement and speed. Of these the Sacred and Cocatoris are probably the least threatening since one is a melee attacker with low move while the other ones damage formula for his unevadable gimps him and he lacks the godlike HP. The demons are close by since their growths are actually not too far ahead of humans but they have numerous unevadabe magical attacks and in the case of the Ultima Demon, insane melee damage as well. The Tiamat is of course Crown King of the Monster Kingdom since he boasts everything. He has an unevadable attack (2 in fact), Dark Behemoth levels of HP (in fact slightly better), 4 move+Fly for mobility, the strongest friggin percentile attacks sans Gravija (on par with Demi2), and he has among the best speed growth in the game, capping out at 14 @ lvl.91. His only weaknesses being vulnerable to all status effects (He also has no evasion but frankly with this much HP and Counter it's hardly a weakness).

Of course you shouldn't make all monsters have something like 200 PAM/39 PAC since this would make Chapter 1 nigh impossible. The only other ways are by either increasing their growths (won't work since they'll scale too fast) or altering the formula so that damage scales at the proper pace throughout the game, waxing and waning but staying within the norm. They could also use some Status Immunities which make logical sense. Like, how exactly is a Ghost vulnerable to Death Sentence or Dead. Or a Great Marlboro vulnerable to ANYTHING seeing as how it's basically a mobile virus factory.

6) Finally. Any plans to normalize Magic to Physical damage? This I admit would be an arduous task that I have not seen in any FFT rebalance mod but something that I've always found it a glaring omission. Magic starts out undeniably better than physical damage because of how it's formula provides a higher amount of base damage with just natural MA. While physical damage always relies on either WP for it's leaps in damage or items such as the Power Sleeve/Bracer/Twist Headband. Of course natural PA growth also serves to lengthen the gap. To illustrate this point lets take two extreme examples.

First, we have a lvl.19 Male Ninja in Chapter 2. Second, we have a lvl.19 Female Wizard with Shiva in Chapter 2.
Both are completely naked. The Male Ninja will do 90 damage if both punches connect on a single target while the Summoner will do 336 to a single target assuming 70 Faith on both, probably far more overall damage due to the large AoE. She can only cast Shiva twice off of her natural MP but that's still 672 damage, more than enough to kill potentially 4 targets in optimal cases.

Now let's take a look at these two fully decked out at lvl.99 with just store-bought stuff.
Ninja has on a Twist Headband/Power Sleeve/Bracer for a total of 26 PA/15 Sp, while the Wizard is decking a Wizard Rod/Flash Hat/Wizard Robe/Magic Gauntlet giving him 28 MA/12 Sp. The Ninja will do 946 damage to a single target of evadable damage, while the Wizard will do 999 damage with anything above the 3 basic elementals of unevadable damage. However, if you add Martial Arts to the Ninja or alternatively equip Knight Swords w/ Two Hands on say Ramza, you would be doing over 1000 per turn for no cost or charge time. This scaling really begins to pick-up around Chapter 3, whereby magic slowly whittles out as Swordskillers and Ninjas/Monks/Lancers/etc.. pick-up in damage. This is compounded by Wizard Robes, Triangle Hats, and Elemental Rods occupying a completely illogical location in terms of gear progression. They come when Mages are dominating, and make them dominate even longer while having physical classes continue to suck as far as damage is concerned.

I'd probably decrease MAMs while fiddling around with growths and change that particular gear availability to later on while increasing PAM for physical classes sans Monks, Monks are always useful just from having so flexible a skillset. The problem later on can be dealt with just by having Two Swords be just an innate, only work with certain item classes, or changing how goddamn strong fists are. It simply does not make sense that fists are the strongest weapon on the planet aside from the goddamn Chaos Blade.