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I just finished your mod. What and refreshing experience. I liked your mod because you have extreme respect to the source material while adding numerous quality of life changes.
But I have many points to aproach here; I will talk about things I see that are great, and talk about what can be improved. Let's go:
One thing that bothered me since the first time I played FFT and switched on the AI is: the computer is absolutely stupid. The commands make the character act very counterintuitive and I spent a lot of time trying to understand how the AI select their next move. But in the end, I never been able to trust one character to AI and focus in control fewer units to play in the way I like. Because AI tends to suicide.
But in this mod, I've seen my white mage grouping with the party in formation for eveyone to recieve protect one round before the enemies reach to attack. And that almost made me cry. OH! I FINALLY can set one or two units to "Save Fading Life" and they ACTUALLY do that! Without throwing themselves to death or doing any stupid moves besides orders given. Thank you man.
Look, I'm not gonna lie, vanilla Blade Grasp is one of the gratest reactions in the entire game. I never thought in a good way to nerf this. Blade Grasp indeed need to be nerfed, for other skills to shine; in the other hand there's no reason to use this over Abandon or Damage Split. Why? Because I have to manipulate Brave to make it's evasion rate goes up. I only do that for the character I intend to equip Damage Split because it cuts the ALL damage in half and hurts the enemy at the same time; Abandon don't need high brave to work, raising my evasion for the majority of attacks and spells.
Perhaps Blade Grasp need to be rebuilt. I don't know.
In enemies MP-Switch feel like an weakness instead of a great defense tactics. If the enemy have something that requires MP, you can shutdown that ability just by attacking them. See that mage trying to cast that dangerous summon? Focus fire and the spell never goes off. Now the mage is useless and defenseless ready to run away in the next turn or die to the next barrage of attacks.
In martials MP-Switch feels like an weakness too because they naturally have low MP and if you equip items to boost max MP your HP goes down too much to justify the trade. And remember you're sacrificing one reaction AND one move to do that. In the other hand my ninja with Abandon is almost untouchable.
Maybe the best decision to make it balanced is make the damage taken be divided into HP and MP simultaneously. If you take a hit and have MP left half of the damage goes to your HP normally and the other half goes to MP without overflowing to HP again. With at least 1 MP you can trigger the reaction and cut damage by half, fair enough I think. Or you can refactor the skill, rename it and make it unite HP and MP into 1 bar, same effect as described before. You can even adapt the Half of MP passive to reduce the MP damage taken by half effectively allowing one unit to synergize 3 different skills into one build that reduce damage recieved to 75%. With that MP-Switch will now compete with Damage Split.
I compare the weight of MP-Switch to the Talk Skill. Talk Skill is AMAZING, but requires the sacrifice of one active skill and one passive to work with all enemies if you aren't a Mediator.
I've seen an minor graphical bug while reading some skill description. Some strange diagonal bars cutting the text box, but nothing game breaking besides that.
For me your mod is one of the best I've ever seen. Minor changes needed, but nothing crazy, you're in the right path.
One little suggestion I have to make every class worth taking is: make move and passive skills become native of the class once you reach lvl 8. If you do that, then will be a reason to use certain classes instead of the most powerful and obvious ones.
Another good change is rebalance the debuffs. Darkness must be, to the martials, what Silence is to casters. Silence prevents casting, but Dakrness must reduce the accuracy of all physical attacks and steals attempts a lot more then they actually do.
Poison need to be permanent until removed.
Slow must reduce move speed from the affected unit and reduce the accuracy of physical attacks or steal attempts.
Stop is better than Slow because it delays the enemy for several turns before it expires; and Petrify is better than Stop; because it's permanent until removed. To balance this Petrify shouldn't freeze the enemy instantly, instead it needs to take some time to completely halt them. Once you cast Petrify in an unit make a countdown of 2 turns (like Death Sentence) appear above the head of that unit, indicating that it will petrify soon. Until this affected unit become rock solid, their movement must be reduced (it makes sense, he's turning into stone so his movement is hindered).
Frog should be temporary, like other debuffs. I'll argue that it must be removable by Dispell Magic too. I think frog is too powerful to be permanent or to have only 3 options of removal (casting Frog again, Esuna and Maiden's Kiss). Remember, frog can be used with Math Skill, so it's easy to trivialize encounters with that. The same occurs with Petrify, Death and Stop.
Berserk, more often than not, is an excellent option to shutdown casters. This can't be permanent, because once your character is affected you lose control of that unit, cannot use any active skills and it's reaction ability is disabled while frenzied. Much more powerful than Silence. Berserk should end after the first kill or naturally by time.
My rule of thumb for balance is: powerful status effects must end faster than the less powerful ones.
And Monster Skill need to have 3 cell horizontal range instead of vertical.
Thank you for the experience with Spirit of '98. It'll be great to see an update somewhere in the future.
But I have many points to aproach here; I will talk about things I see that are great, and talk about what can be improved. Let's go:
QuoteQuality of life improvements:Everything here, for me, represents the gold standard of mods. Every mod should do this. The game don't need to be an slog, dragging you through slow animations and tedius waiting time. We already know the game from head to toe; we doesn't need that.
-Start button now skips cutscenes, dialogues, and ability animations
-Holding X skips ahead as if you were mashing the button
-Smart Encounters: Random encounters will never happen if you are moving to a blue/town location, and will always happen if you move to a green/wild location.
-The title menu defaults the cursor to Continue instead of New Game.
-Excessive HP/MP recovery will not be displayed.
-Second Squad is optional, even if you have more than one unit.
QuoteFixes:Ok, great fixes, appreciated.
-All formulas properly apply element. Sword skills now work as intended, as does Oil.
-Equip Change now works properly with Two Swords.
-Minor Reraise icon glitch fixed.
-Removed the forced slowdown from Math skill.
Quote-AI now properly uses Protect & Shell preemptively, like they do with Haste.THIS! Oh my god, I felt genuine relief seeing this. I can't belive in my own eyes, the AI do improve A LOT because of this and other details I'll talk later. I have seen the AI indeed casting Protect/Shell and other buffs accordingly, choosing better options to deal with sleep/confusion/charm and even preparing ressurrection for the unit in range that's gonna die next turn. Amazing! That's so important to me because I dreamed about that for years.
-AI will no longer attempt to use Jump to wake sleeping allies.
One thing that bothered me since the first time I played FFT and switched on the AI is: the computer is absolutely stupid. The commands make the character act very counterintuitive and I spent a lot of time trying to understand how the AI select their next move. But in the end, I never been able to trust one character to AI and focus in control fewer units to play in the way I like. Because AI tends to suicide.
But in this mod, I've seen my white mage grouping with the party in formation for eveyone to recieve protect one round before the enemies reach to attack. And that almost made me cry. OH! I FINALLY can set one or two units to "Save Fading Life" and they ACTUALLY do that! Without throwing themselves to death or doing any stupid moves besides orders given. Thank you man.
Quote-Zalmo can now properly use his Oracle skills. In vanilla, he had Beowulf's sword skill versions, which he couldn't use.That's ok too, great fixes.
-The mistranslated 'bracelet' is now corrected to breath in the context of 'stop bracelet', etc.
QuoteBalance/preference changes:I have mixed feelings about this. The changes in Blade Grasp make sense. After all an skill with that name, originated from a Samurai it represents one quick reaction that stop the swing of a weapon by grabbing the blade with your bare hands. Makes sense that it only works with bladed weapons. But this nerf is... heavy.
-Blade Grasp now only works against bladed weapons (knives, swords, spears, and axes). This OP skill used to even stop the elemental guns, I think an oversight of the developers.
Look, I'm not gonna lie, vanilla Blade Grasp is one of the gratest reactions in the entire game. I never thought in a good way to nerf this. Blade Grasp indeed need to be nerfed, for other skills to shine; in the other hand there's no reason to use this over Abandon or Damage Split. Why? Because I have to manipulate Brave to make it's evasion rate goes up. I only do that for the character I intend to equip Damage Split because it cuts the ALL damage in half and hurts the enemy at the same time; Abandon don't need high brave to work, raising my evasion for the majority of attacks and spells.
Perhaps Blade Grasp need to be rebuilt. I don't know.
Quote-MP Switch overflows into HP. Still a good move, but no longer game breaking when combined with Move-MP Up.That's another punch. I know why vanilla MP-Switch is considered OP. Two HP bars are better than one, huh? To me, making the damage overflow into HP defeats the purpose of the skill entirely. To the point it's unusable. Why? Because you sacrifice your reaction AND move skill in your characters (usually a martial) to make it consistent. Or you can equip Damage Split and feel free to choose any movement you want while reflecting half of the damage taken back at your enemies. You can equip this combo in your mages but it's annoying to do that. You end up loosing casts due to the lack of MP more often than not.
In enemies MP-Switch feel like an weakness instead of a great defense tactics. If the enemy have something that requires MP, you can shutdown that ability just by attacking them. See that mage trying to cast that dangerous summon? Focus fire and the spell never goes off. Now the mage is useless and defenseless ready to run away in the next turn or die to the next barrage of attacks.
In martials MP-Switch feels like an weakness too because they naturally have low MP and if you equip items to boost max MP your HP goes down too much to justify the trade. And remember you're sacrificing one reaction AND one move to do that. In the other hand my ninja with Abandon is almost untouchable.
Maybe the best decision to make it balanced is make the damage taken be divided into HP and MP simultaneously. If you take a hit and have MP left half of the damage goes to your HP normally and the other half goes to MP without overflowing to HP again. With at least 1 MP you can trigger the reaction and cut damage by half, fair enough I think. Or you can refactor the skill, rename it and make it unite HP and MP into 1 bar, same effect as described before. You can even adapt the Half of MP passive to reduce the MP damage taken by half effectively allowing one unit to synergize 3 different skills into one build that reduce damage recieved to 75%. With that MP-Switch will now compete with Damage Split.
I compare the weight of MP-Switch to the Talk Skill. Talk Skill is AMAZING, but requires the sacrifice of one active skill and one passive to work with all enemies if you aren't a Mediator.
Quote-Lancer skillset is now incremental. They all increase the Jump range by +1, so each one has value. Now mastering the class is worthwhile. JP cost of these skills is also lower.Very very nice. I like the knockback, it adds some layer of strategy.
-Knockback chance is now 100%. This affects Dash, Throw Stone, Cat Kick, and Tail Swing (which all Dragons now have access to). These previously underpowered abilities can now be used tactically without relying on luck.
Quote-Undead revival chance is now 100%. This prevents the player's undead units from being permanently lost since they can't be revived normally.Another great change. Undeads now feels much more powerful, it feels like you're dealing with something beyond the natural cicle, a true undead.
-Undead now ignore Phoenix Downs. In addition to the above, this makes them more of a threat and justifies the use of Petrify abilities. Other healing skills still damage them.
Quote-Draw Out no longer breaks Katanas. I thought hard about this, and decided to implement this to allow the player to freely use the two unique katana skills. Most of these skills have been slightly nerfed in power to offset the removal of their natural 'cost.'OH YES! My goodness I loved this! Loosing my precious katanas is a huge headache. Thanks for that.
Quote-Math skill is reflectable.I like this too. Actually I like every change to Math Skill. It's still the best magic skill in the game, but it's much more balanced and combos perfectly with AI adjustments. One thing that bothered me in Math Skill since forever is: if I equip Math in one character I need to control that character manually. Because the AI always choose to cast CT4 Holy ou CT4 Flare. I remember that in one specific map (Yaguo Woods if not mistaken) I've faced many undead, halfway through the battle my team gets low in HP and my AI controlled calculator sended an massive healing wave to almost all units in the field damaging the undead and healing my allies in one move. That's awesome! Ah! Because only some low tier spells work with Math i've seen the AI using that to buff, debuff and heal accordingly. That's a huge plus. The balance is on point here, but I'll exclude Death and Petrify for the next update. Death and Petrify are too powerful to be used with Math.
Quote-Broken/Stolen items can be bought back at the fur trader. Similar to the above, I no longer want the player to feel pressured to reset due to a lost unique item.Fantastic. Love all of that.
-Random units appear with both more diverse skillsets and equipment. 'No longer should you see a Knight in Chapter 2-4 wearing linen.'
-The enemy units in some story and random battles have slightly altered or improved, primarily to give more screen time to some rarer skills, monsters, and job classes. Some pushover late game boss fights, like Zalera, should be slightly more challenging. More generics with Monster Skill should appear in random battles among monsters.
-Stats of some equips slightly tweaked or improved. Heavy armor provides a bit more HP than before. Some underpowered weapons like bows and books are buffed a bit. Shields are slightly improved, offering more magic evasion on average.
-Store availability of items modified a bit, giving a slightly longer window of usefulness of some items that got passed by in my experience. Potions are less available in order to help the Priest compete with the OP Chemist.
I've seen an minor graphical bug while reading some skill description. Some strange diagonal bars cutting the text box, but nothing game breaking besides that.
For me your mod is one of the best I've ever seen. Minor changes needed, but nothing crazy, you're in the right path.
One little suggestion I have to make every class worth taking is: make move and passive skills become native of the class once you reach lvl 8. If you do that, then will be a reason to use certain classes instead of the most powerful and obvious ones.
Another good change is rebalance the debuffs. Darkness must be, to the martials, what Silence is to casters. Silence prevents casting, but Dakrness must reduce the accuracy of all physical attacks and steals attempts a lot more then they actually do.
Poison need to be permanent until removed.
Slow must reduce move speed from the affected unit and reduce the accuracy of physical attacks or steal attempts.
Stop is better than Slow because it delays the enemy for several turns before it expires; and Petrify is better than Stop; because it's permanent until removed. To balance this Petrify shouldn't freeze the enemy instantly, instead it needs to take some time to completely halt them. Once you cast Petrify in an unit make a countdown of 2 turns (like Death Sentence) appear above the head of that unit, indicating that it will petrify soon. Until this affected unit become rock solid, their movement must be reduced (it makes sense, he's turning into stone so his movement is hindered).
Frog should be temporary, like other debuffs. I'll argue that it must be removable by Dispell Magic too. I think frog is too powerful to be permanent or to have only 3 options of removal (casting Frog again, Esuna and Maiden's Kiss). Remember, frog can be used with Math Skill, so it's easy to trivialize encounters with that. The same occurs with Petrify, Death and Stop.
Berserk, more often than not, is an excellent option to shutdown casters. This can't be permanent, because once your character is affected you lose control of that unit, cannot use any active skills and it's reaction ability is disabled while frenzied. Much more powerful than Silence. Berserk should end after the first kill or naturally by time.
My rule of thumb for balance is: powerful status effects must end faster than the less powerful ones.
And Monster Skill need to have 3 cell horizontal range instead of vertical.
Thank you for the experience with Spirit of '98. It'll be great to see an update somewhere in the future.