Final Fantasy Hacktics

Quote from: Eternal on March 25, 2015, 08:18:05 pm
I sadly can't edit things like that. The AI is just really derpy sometimes.

EDIT: Should Lullaby be moved to a later item for Bards? It's something I'm considering.

Provided you want to up the enemy levels again, you'd have to cut reviving spells/abilities from a few fights that way. If I remember correctly, Lullaby is the only early control ability. Not having access could make certain fights with multiple reviving enemies (not too uncommon) somewhere between stupidly annoying and unwinnably difficult once you lose a member yourself. If you keep the current leveling curve, moving Lullaby could work. Keep in mind that it's pretty much the only ability that makes Moogles remotely useful in the early game, since Moogle Mages are terrible (removal of Geomancy cripples Moogle Black Mages, Nou Mou and Humans get Magic Power + and Double MP to cope) and Thieves aren't terribly useful until you get access to higher-level abilities.

Got a bug similar to the Mediator one today - the sprite of the Reaver in the Gelp: Gotor Sands (at least I think it was that mission) disappeared after attacking. When the Reaver was supposed to die, the game stopped processing.

Quote from: Eternal on March 20, 2015, 07:36:04 pm
-Mog Lance -should- be working correctly. Have you used it after you were wounded? If so, you probably were healed and there was just no animation of it. That said, it -will- be buffed to be weapon range instead of 1 Range. Currently it's just Steal: HP with a different name.

You're right, it's just the HP gaining animation that doesn't play. Hadn't thought of checking that, sorry.

Quote from: Eternal on March 20, 2015, 07:36:04 pm
-Loss seems flagged correctly. Did you have Immune: Confuse gear equipped?

Pretty certain I didn't, especially not by accident on my whole team. The skill persistently had a 0% chance to hit on everybody

Quote from: Eternal on March 20, 2015, 07:36:04 pm
-The Mediator bug is probably sprite-related. What skill did it use before it vanished?

The first action the Mediator takes vanishes his sprite. Attacking, using a skill, being attacked etc

Quote from: Eternal on March 20, 2015, 07:36:04 pm
-Crush inflicts Slow, not Blind. If the skill inflicts damage, it has (100 - Enemy Debuff Resistance)% chance to proc Slow. This holds true for any skill with a status proc.

Okay, I'll check for that. Slow/Haste caused by Myrmidon and Samurai skills never show the status notification and don't violate related laws, so I thought the tooltip for Crush was correct and it was supposed to cause Blind instead. Thanks for clarification



And a new report:
- There's something wrong with the Help: Materiawood map. The game sometimes freezes, crashes etc - white screen, black screen, frozen screen all happened after a few turns. Can't quite tie it to a certain action yet.
- "Engagement", probably the Assassin Combo skill, is on a staff-type weapon (Dreamwatcher) and hence unacquireable
- Bard skill "Rime" has no tooltip and can't be targeted at anything

I can totally see now why you nerfed Mateus. Dunno how I did it on my first attempt - he probably never used Apocalypse - but on .992, it was the second really difficult main quest fight (after the Salikawood one which is still hard after the nerf and level scaling change).

Apocalypse is just painful, dealing about 1/3 to 1/2 to everybody. Used magic/totema to empty all vampire's mana pools so they can't miasma, gave everybody dark and some frost resistance to avoid Drain Touch and Mateus' Blizzard and Freeze. Immunity to Stop was also useful. Dunno how I would have done this fight pre law change - maybe using absorb elementals to heal up

Also, new bugs crawling in:
- Moogle Dual Wield (learned as Juggler) doesn't work

New bug report:
Mog Aid - which I guess is supposed to be a Moogle version of Revive from the tooltip - has range 0 and is hence unusuable

Edits:
- Beastmaster Skill "Malboro", learned by Aona Flute, has no skill name
- Mog Lance doesn't Drain HP, just deals damage equal to a normal attack at range 1, so a glorified attack command (it's only useful against Strikeback)
- Reavers cannot equip Shields, even though Shields list Morpher (Reaver) as potential users and the Round Shield supposedly teaches Shieldbearer to Morphers (Reavers)
- Adrammalech's "Loss" skill seems to never hit, ever
- the sprite of the Mediator from the "Help Aisen" mission sometimes disappears (might be a general Mediator problem, never seen/used any not a general problem, Mediator in Wanted: Gabbana Brothers works fine)
- the Weapon "Osafune" doesn't teach the skill "Osafune" to Samurai
- Myrmidon skill "Crush" seems to never cause Blind or anything else, even tho the "Sweet Spot" message appears
- Bomb/Blue Mage skill "Blowup" only ever deals 29 damage

The new level scaling kinda crippled the difficulty. Breezed through the earliest missions, up to and including Eluut. Monsters still hit fairly hard, but die much more quickly now

The only thing that gave me some trouble was Raven's Call, or whatever that mission is called, with the Paladin/Black Mage combo. Very high variance on level in there - with an average level of 4, they can be 2/2 and 8/8.

Rest of the missions is usually underleveled, since I can't manage to keep an even level spread (mainly due to Marche/Montblanc not being able to gain abilities off dispatch missions, and my early recruit Beastmaster being kinda useless up to Eluut).


Also, reporting bugs:
- when Whirlwind hits too many targets (not sure about the exact number, but I think it's 5 or more) the game stops resolving the skill at the end of damage distribution. It doesn't freeze - running animations continue to play - but the game stops working, e.g. moving into exp distribution.
- Mug has some weird interactions. Seems to ignore Armor (just dealt sizeable damage to a flan) or maybe calculates off Magic Defense instead. Anyway, it's just not consistent with weapon damage dealt to the same target in many cases. Also, I'm pretty sure it sometimes triggers Counter and sometimes doesn't.

Quote from: Eternal on March 15, 2015, 07:17:50 pm
@Dragoon: I think what's happening is that the enemies are levelling up to their current level as their current job. So, say, a level 16 Thief has 16 full levels of stat growth as a Thief. If you- the player- have been switching jobs around while levelling, such as having your Myrmidon as a Bishop for a few levels, you're missing a few levels of ATK and DEF that you'd have gotten if you weren't a Bishop. I hope that example makes sense.

I only use highly specialized characters, because I don't want to fall behind in power. So said Myrmidon only has some levels in Warrior and Dragoon and hence should outdamage a Thief. For some reason, he doesn't. Might be the difference in gear and level combined, tho. I just found it weird that even with my one-role-only characters, I can never go 1v1 against most enemies.

On the topic of level scaling: setting it to average level will probably take a lot of sting out of the mod, especially if people run large lineups like me. I'll try to report once the changes hit. Since the changes for 0.992 seem to be fairly massive, i'll have to ask: can we expect the .992 release soon? I'd like to not waste my time on 0.991 (catching up on my .99 save) when the next version is soon to arrive

Oh and concerning Mateus: I think the fight plays out the same whether you change laws or not. None of my mages can counter-heal the incoming damage, anyway. I beat the map on .99 spreading frost (and some dark, if possible) resistance, then rushing down the boss and largely ignoring the vampires. With 700 effective life each (around level 35 - Marche gets a ton of free levels during the Totema fight with Babus) and being undead, it takes waaaay too long to kill them. Status doesn't stick either - on my winning attempt, i confused one of them, managed to exorcise two (20%!) and then burnt down the boss in a few turns. Don't see how access to Holy spells would have helped here

Quote from: Eternal on March 15, 2015, 06:41:36 pm
@RRS: Monster stats are being revised/reviewed as we speak, so they're going to be updated shortly. Like, within the next week, most likely.

@Dragoon: Doubleshot has been fixed for the next update. It was originally supposed to hit twice, causing knockback each time (so knocking a foe away two tiles), but it didn't work properly and I forgot to remove the MP cost and high AP requirement. Also, I actually nerfed Salikawood while nerfing Antilaws, so that was fixed for the next update anyhow!

Also, I changed around the level scaling hacks in AIO, so hopefully levels should go off of average level and not highest now. Thanks for all the feedback, every one of your posts is being read and acknowledged!

Sounds good. Great stuff with Doubleshot - guess there was a choice between making it the physical Viera's go-to move at a significant cost, or make it another utility ability, quite in turn with the way Sniper seems to be set up now. Guess I'm fine with either. As it is, only Bangaa and maybe certain Hume builds seem to be supposed to do physical damage, anyway (haven't had a shot at Reaver yet, seems more like a tanky caster anyway).

Do enemies receive flat stat bonuses? I never seem to be able to even deal equal damage, let alone outdamage them. Kinda weird when enemy thieves stab their puny knives at my armored Myrmidons and outdamage them easily :p

Another thing I noted: Drain Touch seems to slightly overperform. Unless the enemy has dark resistance, Drain Touch easily outperforms regular attacks and attack skills alike with the added boon of healing the user. Dunno whether it's intended, tho. Gonna make a Paladin/Blue Mage drain tank with huge armor + dragon buffs + drain touch and be unkillable!



Some general hints to other players:
- while recruited generics don't have combo skills (and I haven't figured out whether it's even possible to acquire any for them), recruited special Characters like Eldena, Lini etc come with Limit Attacks pre-learned. Lini doesn't wield Ultima any more, but Eldena still has Doublecast - very useful for those annoying, soon-to-be-nerfed storyline battles.
- use status. Certain levels become much easier if you put half of the enemy troops to sleep (or later, use Stop or Break). The third totema with it's three dragon adds becomes a cakewalk, since their sleep resistance is laughable. If you get an early Bishop (recruit a generic if you can), Sleep -> Break is a safe kill as long as you can prevent Esunas and the use of remedies (and hence is an assured kill against all-monster lineups)
- by the love of the gods, get a Beastmaster. Monsters are dangerous, usually streaking right for your Mages. Beastmasters can take some hits and take over those pesky beasts. Panthers, Goblins, Rockbeasts etc can be taken over fairly reliably. Lamias and Fairies are tricky, but very rewarding
- diversify your lineup. Get multiple healers. Try to have at least one Item user on your team, and keep some Phoenix Downs/Remedies ready. A bow user with Magicbreak wrecks enemy casters, provided you have enough power and can safely get close enough. Breaks in general are highly useful, as is Steal:Weapon and Steal:Heart midgame.

A question, first: do cpu enemies have flat stat bonuses? My characters never seem to be able to do comparable damage, noticeably with a purely Mage Hume doing a whopping 5 damage with his basic spells in early midgame battles to just about anything.

Quote from: thedarkfiddler on March 15, 2015, 11:57:52 am
Thanks. I'm surprised nobody else seemed to have trouble with the battle... Maybe I'm just bad at the game. Back to trying to catch my Human (level seven) to my Bangaa (level twelve), I guess.

Also, thanks for the stat explanation, Kai.

I feel like that battle can still be controlled using the status effects you have available. A Moogle using Sing, plus a Time Mage using Quarter. Take out the Item users first or body-block them from using Phoenix Down on their dead allies. At least the numbers aren't terribly unfair, laws don't screw you over, and the map position allows you to take out enemies one by one.


started over on 0.991, noticed a small issue:
- Doubleshot is busted. For 20 MP, fires two shots at 50% damage, sometimes only fires one shot (i presume if the second one misses, the animation just skips). I don't see any use in blowing 20 MP on an attack that regularly does less damage than the basic attack. Only uses might be trying to score a crit to knock somebody off a ledge (yeah, right!) and circumventing the "Fight" law.


As good as this mod is, the storyline fights get way too tedious for me at some point. Having to rely on 50% accuracy status effects to even have a shot doesn't make the game difficult, just annoying. I kinda miss my characters feeling powerful - it's mostly Sleep/Poison doing the work, with the other characters spreading some Speedbreak, Powerbreak and the likes. Physical Damage or Magic seem to do nothing, at any point.

Salikawood's 5v8 battle is a prime example. With a Sniper/Assassin hitsquad taking out my casters from half a screen away or putting 80% hit rate Stop/Doom effects on everybody, a backline that spams buffs and is basically unattackable until you get rid of the aforementioned Viera plus two Moogle thieves that will steal your gear and (one of them) spam Dagger at you. The battle is still eminently beatable, with the only reviver usually running straight into my team and dieing within the first three turns, but cleaning up takes forever (many "empty" turns spent on enemies rebuffing) and gets incredibly annoying thanks to the aforementioned disadvantages. Seriously, 80% accurate Doom?

First of all, thanks for creating this great mod - I've always wanted a new and improved FFTA to play around with.

I've put quite some hours into the 0.99 version, and here's some things I've noted (that haven't been adressed in here yet)

- only major issue not covered yet: Quarter seems to also induce Stop most of the time. Makes Stop useless and Quarter probably more than a little overpowered at it's current cost
- some info in the top post seems to be outdated: Dagger still incudes Disable (and sometimes deals 0/1 damage instead of full), I haven't ever seen a Samurai status somebody, and parts of the job tree seem wrong

gameplay-related issues/annoyances
- Green Mages seem to be largely useless for players. Since you're limited to 5 characters, there's rarely any need for Hastega/Shellga/Protectga. Of course, I have yet to receive their most powerful abilities. Some classes have similar issues for me as well (stuff like Summoner, Bishop, Mediator just not being up to par in power)
- considering the topic of buffs: at some point midgame, enemy parties start having every buff imaginable at hand. Turns take forever. Also, since the buff skills are usually spread among the enemy lineup, they will often waste turns spreading useless buffs (say, attack buffs on a Healer).
- some Laws just make certain maps plain stupid. Nubswood base (3v3 against RM/BM/WM, Color Magic only) and that fight against Babus and five helpers (forbidden to kill 4 of them) being major offenders.
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