Possibility of a new FFT A2 Rebalance Patch.

[FrozenDragon150]

bcrobert
Yikes, too advanced for my blood XD

Is it really that hard to modify the Jobs A-Ability unlocking requirements? What were the devs thinking?! I mean, I figured it would be hard to change, say, the Fighter's unlocking requirement, since it requires to complete a quest in order to unlock, but i thought it would be easier to modify the other Job's requirements, like making a Black Mage not need any White Mage A-Abilities mastered to unlock, guess i was wrong :/

I suppose i could instead make her a Ninja upon recruitment and give her Thievery as a secundary, much simpler to do than tinkering with what unlocks which Heritor Skill, and hey, it is still a better class than the Thief.

Blue
Just what i was looking for, i used that data to find Frimelda, Hurdy, Vaan, Penelo and Al-Cid's starting classes and secundaries. *grins*
Now i can give Al-Cid a secundary Command, like the Fusilier's Gunmanship, after, of course, making the skills available to him (Good thing there are Equipment and Ability editors)

[advfox]

Funny, I was thinking the exact same thought earlier - Adelle joining as a Ninja, accopanied by a few mastered Steal abilities in her secondary skillset. But then again, if rebalancing is the goal here, Ninjas being a better class than Thieves (stat-wise at least) shouldn't really be that big of an issue anymore by the end of all of this.

Back on the subject of rebalancing, there's nothing we can do about the AI stupidity, but enemy jobs, equipment, level, and most importantly abilities for all missions can all currently be changed. I'm going to skim through it all for a while and see what big changes clearly need to be made.

Edit: Right off the bat, one of the changes that needs to be made is the ability for Moogles and Nu Mou to enter and act in water. Problem is, their sprites don't support this. I don't know - maybe remove the ability for everyone to enter water entirely? Everyone's Jump value could be increased by one to compensate. That's just a rough idea.

[FrozenDragon150]

I just thought about 2 topics for a rebalance:

-MP should not regenerate normally, instead, it always starts at max every fight, this way you can use your spells from the beggining, but you'll need to keep an eye on it so you don't spend it all too quickly, while the MP Channeling priviledge would enable MP regeneration again.
There are some skills made to reduce the impact of losing your MP too quickly, the Arcanists Syphon skill normally absorbs mp and restores your HP, now it should absorb mp and restore mp too, Recharge should cost no mp to use. Later on, due to higher MP stat higher level mages have, you'll probably not have any MP problems. Plus, this kinda nerfs Blood Price, since it's only remaining advantage would be in the early-midgame where you'll mp would be fairly limited and with self-healing using elemental spells and robes you can use blood price spells pretty much forever, but later on you won't probably need this.

-Speed growths, seriously, what's up with this? Either you do the tedious speed resetting to get a point in speed or you change to a frail class like thief or ninja to get any common growths, or you remain a turtle forever.

What should be done then? I dunno XD maybe give all classes a 99% Growth in speed, so that Speed's impact on the game is lessened, and instead alter the base Speed of the classes, so everyone should be able to max, or near max, speed, only that they do it at different speeds (speeds, geddit?) I dunno, i think speed is way to important, so for the purposes of a rebalance it also needs to be balanced rite?

Ideas and opinions welcome :3

[advfox]

I agree with the part about MP completely.

Speed growth...that's going to be a little difficult. My recommendation would be to buff most of the slower classes a little (but not too much), and nerf the faster classes to no more than something like 85% at most. You can't really give everyone 99% - that would break the game even further than it already is if you think about it. Classes focused on speed would also lose a valuable reason to be used.

Stat growths really need to be paid attention to in general - making sure each class in each race has at least one stat advantage over another, for example. Of course, a "balanced" class for each race would also be nice.

This is can be seen as both a benefit and a drawback on the players side, but I personally like the idea of special characters joining at levels in single digits (e.g Montblanc joining at no more than LV5). This would permit the player to control their stat growth more if they wish to do so. The downside is that many players may not want to have to grind the characters.

[FrozenDragon150]

I mostly said that about the Speed growths because both the player and the enemies would benefit from it, as far as i'm aware, enemies stats are determined on-the-spot when the battle begins, based on their level and Job, is this correct? If so, then enemies will always have a speed stat proportional to their level, as if they always gained a point in speed every level.

As for recruitment, is that possible to do? I would also like to limit the recruitment level. Once i can get to read Lennart's notes i'll try to figure something out XD

[advfox]

No, enemy stats are determined the same way they would be if you were to recruit a new unit. Stats are based on Level/Job, but they're also randomized, and this doesn't exclude Speed. You might just be imagining things

Both recruitable special and generic units have a Min/Max level they can be recruited at. Adelle has a minimum level of 9, and a max of 50, Montblanc has a minimum level of 45 and a max of 99, etc. Their levels are determined by the clan's average, of course.

[FrozenDragon150]

Really? Oh, well, i could have sworn i had readed that somewhere, but, eh.

Guess that's back to the drawing board there XD

Btw, i just realized that there is no 'Nightfall' (ewen's class) in Lennart's editor, how weird, guess i'll have to retool that one manually and maybe give it another Action Command, Ninjutsu kind of sucks.

Also, input here guys, should Ultima skills be removed altogether? After all, if they're nerfed, it just wouldn't be Ultima, and if it is removed, then it's a big weapon on each race's arsenal gone.... Mmmm, i guess i should give a few tools more to the classes that lose it, unless they're strong to begin with.

[advfox]

Since starting with full MP with be a thing, you can just adjust their MP costs to something more appropriate. Maybe something in the 60~75 range.

[FrozenDragon150]

I just don't want them to be spammed to hell and back until the battle's over, which kinda finished off the original's difficulty. Besides a higher MP cost, maybe they should be limited in range or something?

Also, Removal skills, like Parley and Oust, i'm sure i should remove them and give their respective jobs more useful skills, why? Because they don't really add up to much, after all, it is quite a waste of space, having a skill that fails almost always instead of a buff, or a AoE skill, or something more useful.

[advfox]

I agree with you on that. I wish that could be done with Steal abilities, but then the Thief job wouldn't be a Thief. There might be a way to remove that 50% maximum steal rate somewhere. And about Ultima, I guess Weapon Range could be changed to a strict range of 1, and a vertical difference of 0. So the target would have to be adjacent to the user, and at the same height.

[FrozenDragon150]

Right, actually, there are 2 things that should probably be removed altogether, Enemy removal and Equipment breaking, these 2 are mostly just there to cover space and annoy the hell out of the player, respectively, after all, the turns you spend trying to convince the enemy to leave could be used to kick the crap out of it, and getting unique weapons broken is something that can seriously mess up a game. Steal: accesory is forgiven since it serves a clear purpose both on the enemy and the player, the enemies annoy the player and remove their accesories and benefits, meanwhile the player can use it to gain more accesories.

Actually, maybe the Ultima skills should get range based on the skill, Ultima Shot should be mid-range since, well, it IS a 'Shot'

Or maybe instead of that they should be Weapon-Specific, if possible, i think they are, since it appears on Lennart's editor, but i don't know the specific values for each weapon

[advfox]

No, currently they can be used with any weapon. Hence why broken things like a gunner using Ultima Sword or Assassins snipping with Ultima Masher exist.

Ultima Sword/Masher - Restricted to Bladed Weapons
Ultima Shot - Restricted to Bows? If so, this variant should be noticeably weaker and have a slightly higher cost due to the extended range.
Ultima Blow - I don't know what to do with this one right now.

Those are just some possibilities. I don't have time to think it all the way through right now.

[rrs_kai]

What should be done then? I dunno XD maybe give all classes a 99% Growth in speed, so that Speed's impact on the game is lessened, and instead alter the base Speed of the classes, so everyone should be able to max, or near max, speed, only that they do it at different speeds (speeds, geddit?) I dunno, i think speed is way to important, so for the purposes of a rebalance it also needs to be balanced rite?

Ideas and opinions welcome :3

Its not viable because you can simply recruit a low level ninja for the high base speed and train him as a paladin for the remaining stats.

Your idea would have been great if the base-speed of classes would change whenever you change classes just like the unarmed-weapon attack power.

[advfox]

- Doubleshot should be reverted back to the FFTA formula. It doesn't need an MP cost this way - it'd be more of a situational ability to ensure at least one hit on units with high evade.

- Parivir skills obviously need to deal normal weapon damage. They can keep their elementals and status inflicts, but light MP costs might need to be considered to avoid abuse.

- Soldier stat breaks should deal damage, or the Raptor's versions should have their damage removed. There's a serious balance issue there that might not be too hard to fix.

- Every class needs to have their status resilience lowered. Status spells and skills were always a waste of a turn; how often do they actually land with those >60% chances? From my experience, much less than the chances would lead me to believe.

Those are a few things I thought about overnight. There are many, many more issues that need to be addressed, but it makes sense to start with the major ones first.

[bcrobert]

Oh changing the ability requirements alone can be done. I thought you meant removing the mission requirements and giving the actual unlock a different mechanic or something.

Speed rebalance is easier than you might think. Just limit it. In one of my FFTA test hacks I changed the starting speeds to range between 111-118 and the speed growth to 1.1-1.8. The decreased range makes it so that speed simply becomes "who goes first" as opposed to "who gets multiple turns." I'm not opposed to the highest speed units getting occasional extra turns, but they should only get an extra turn after several full rounds of battle have elapsed. Whereas the 0.8-2.3 range had characters just flat out getting twice as many turns.

MP balance is tricky, but that's because MP systems are basically never balanced. Ever. They actually shouldn't exist. The closest thing you can get to "balance" is giving an incentive for using the weaker spells. Like higher damage in the long run per MP spent. Naturally MP needs to regenerate slowly (or not at all) for this incentive to matter though.

[rrs_kai]

- Every class needs to have their status resilience lowered.

I second this.
maybe check out the Green Mage skill 'Tranq'.

Speed rebalance is easier than you might think. Just limit it. In one of my FFTA test hacks I changed the starting speeds to range between 111-118 and the speed growth to 1.1-1.8. The decreased range makes it so that speed simply becomes "who goes first" as opposed to "who gets multiple turns." I'm not opposed to the highest speed units getting occasional extra turns, but they should only get an extra turn after several full rounds of battle have elapsed. Whereas the 0.8-2.3 range had characters just flat out getting twice as many turns.

Nice test. I like this, expect FFTA:DE to get a stat revision.

[FrozenDragon150]

Do you know how to do it? I'd love to implement a Starter-Advanced-Quirk kind of class system, which should be easily done by simply adjusting the Jobs A-Ability unlocking requirements.

Starter classes, as the name implies, should be those you start out with, or directly unlock through a quest, without needing X number of Abilities learned from a certain Job. Advanced classes are those which have Ability requirements, and are generally better than the starter ones at their respective role. Example: The Soldier is the Tank of the Hume starter classes, Paladins are the Tank of the Advanced classes, so they have higher defenses and better equipment options and abilities, so, to unlock the paladin, you need X number of Soldier abilities mastered.

About Resilence, maybe they shouldn't need to be lowered, Status attacks can be made more accurate, there are different accuracy types for debuffs in the editor, so i could just set them to the default '1x Debuff'

Plus, abilities giving Accuracy Up should be made more widespread.

Well, I'll only be able to log in again in 5 days, my cell phone's data plan is running out as well (How crappy ._.)