FFT: ASM'D main info/discussion

[Smitson]

@Sephirot24, those just happen to be a few battles where there were some rare equipment (although, very desirable to the point where I'd assume that it was intended for players to take the stealing challenge). We can neglect some of these battles, even the one on Rooftop Riovanes.

Consider the last Wiegraf battle where he has the ability to 1 hit KO you, or 1 hit Death Sentence (basically same thing) you? Was it intended for the player to wear a Judo outfit (prevent KO, and obviously, no access to Angel Rings at that point of the game, either that or one or the other)? As far as I could remember it, I was only able to nab two of these equipments during my playthrough up to that point. What if I had forgotten to steal these equipments then what? The Wiegraf battle would have become nothing more than playing with a slot machine. Yes, you are going to tell me that I don't need the Judo outfit to win this fight. Possibly indeed, that is exactly what I did -- I won that fight with a setup that favors fighting Velius instead. Knowingly, I resetted over 15 times just so I don't get one shotted by Wiegraf. So this is definitely possible, but should such a fight be designed like so? If the developers really intended the fight to require Ramza wearing anti-KO armor (which cannot be bought in shops until you are much higher levelled than you are suppose to), why not actually make Wiegraf's Crush Punch inflict at 100% KO instead of this slot machine bullshit?  Surely, I am positive that there must be better ways to design such a challenge, one that becomes equally (if not more) rewarding while not being so luck reliant on the player's side. Less frustration, less resets gives a better enjoyable gaming experience. That's my opinion. You are free to disagree, of course.

Hey let me sum this up. You suck balls at FFT. That is all.

[boomkick]

Play vanilla if you want FFT to hold your hand.

The people on these forums (people who actually participate and love 1.3) are people who are tired of vanilla and it's "easy way out" tactics. RNG doesnt always go against you and u can use it too, if your lucky.

Less resets dont give a more enjoyable experience, it reduces the rewarding aspect of you beating a battle with odds stacked against you. More resets (or the harder the battle), the more rewarding after your strategy beat them.

And FYI, this is very based on the player. You always have one advantage that the opponent can never have: human brain processes and analytical thought.

[SilvasRuin]

Less resets dont give a more enjoyable experience, it reduces the rewarding aspect of you beating a battle with odds stacked against you. More resets (or the harder the battle), the more rewarding after your strategy beat them.

Last Remnant's Gates of Hell.  x_x  I was so ecstatic when I won.

[philsov]

mmmk... did a little touch up work on the zodiac boss fights.  They all sport a primary and secondary reaction, complete with finger guard for no Br reduction funsies -- ranging from Abandon + caution (+ mantle) to damage split to MP Switch/Move MP Up combination, so those fights will certainly have a flavor to them.    Still slowly working on the ENTD (more on setup than placement for the time being).

Also constructed a new job tree.  Squire, Knight, Archer, Priest, and Wizard are all immediately available, and the circular/composite wheel makes the higher-teired job classes less so.  But each unlock has more than one unlocking requirement, so for some classes theres no big change (thief needs both archer and squire, for example), while others go through a minor paradigm shift.

[attachment=0:hg3ds5p3]asm_tree.PNG[/attachment:hg3ds5p3]

[Dokurider]

Where's Mime?

[Zaen]

That's confusing... also, what's up with BM (Black mage?) and Wizard both being on there? Or is that something else...?

[AeroGP]

To answer both of your questions: I'm assuming Mime was kicked since it doesn't fit in well with the branching job tree philsov's developed, and Sage was replaced with Blue Mage.

[philsov]

Mime is a composite from all the tertiary jobs.  I could do a loop-around square, but eh.

And BM is blue mage.  New class~

[Sephirot24]

It seems a little confusing

So, to sum it up:

BASIC JOBS: Chemist, Squire, Knight, Archer, Priest, Wizard.

SECONDARY JOBS:
Monk: Chemist + Knight
Lancer: Knight + Archer
Thief: Archer + Squire
Blue Mage (yaaaaay!): Squire + Wizard
Oracle: Priest + Wizard
Mediator: Chemist + Priest
Geomancer: Knight + Wizard

TERTIARY JOBS::
Samurai: Monk + Lancer
Ninja: Thief + Lancer
Dancer: Geomancer + Lancer
Time Mage: Mediator + Oracle
Summoner: Oracle + Blue Mage
Bard: Geomancer + Oracle

Only thing that's left to know are the lvl requirements. I hope they are not too high as I hate grinding as much as you do Phil

[philsov]

good summary.

Secondaries will be needing job level 3 in their parent classes.  Tertiary will need jlvl 4.  Mime will need jlvl 1 from Ninja, Samurai, Summoner, and TM (ie, 4 on all secondaries, nevermind my previous comment.)

[Zaen]

Ah, ok. I got confused, because I noticed the Sa, and I instantly thought Sage, in turn forgetting Samurai. That makes a lot more sense. That's an awesome job tr...bush? Shrub? Ficus? Either way, it's pretty cool. Personally, I like the 3 branch tree that Skip made, and I use it modified to preference... I'll definitely make priority for this when it's done.

[Dokurider]

I had a really off color idea for summons. What if Summons just did a set amount of damage? Ifrit/Shiva/Ramuh did 180, Titan did 220 and so on. Moddable by faith? I'm still on the fence about that

[Skip Sandwich]

I don't think there are any formulas that deal set damage other then the gun formula and the potion formula (which heals), and though I suppose that the summon magic damage formula has more then enough room to e changed into F(X * Y), that would also change the damage formula for every other offensive spell, so it wouldn't really work.

[philsov]

What if Summons just did a set amount of damage?

Absurd early on and then tapers off.  The same problem is with the vanilla repeating first and dragon dash.  At least potions and guns got new ranks throughout the game, but its hard/nigh-impossible to rig that up with abilities.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

So, I'm sort of back.  Sorry for flying the coop, RL happened and is still sort-of happening.  

Last time I played I was testing out Dorter Trade City (I don't think I posted my experience there).  Long story short, they had Long Bows that were doing around 50 damage and wrecked me by default.  Hopefully this (and the Red Panther / Fist / etc) problems have been fixed, as I'm sure they're all stemming from the same thing (in respect to Br / similar values, most likely).

I like how this is shaping up though.  The new Job Wheel... err... Job Decagon looks pimp.  Odd question, though, are Bard / Dancer still gender-specific?  It could be kind of cool to have both jobs open to both genders, but I'm guessing that lack of sprites to accommodate that would be a giant hurdle for non-Special characters.

Are there any other updates I missed?  I'd still like to give this game a full video run-through when its finished up, as I've been looking for some more ridiculously hacked games to video run through as my time begins freeing up.  I'm thinking I might satiate myself with Advance Wars 1/2, but the number of mods for that are pretty limited, surprisingly...

EDIT -

Thoughts on some of the stuff proposed so far:

Turning most of the assassination battles into Defeat All Enemies battles seems like a great idea.  Some of the exceptions would obviously be most Zodiac battles, and also could include most of the Elmdor series of assassination battles, excluding maybe Outside Limberry Castle if you can rig it to have both Assassins run when one goes critical but have the Byblos stay and finish the fight.  There might be a couple others where exceptions might work, but a lot of others (both Miluda battles, Wiegraf battles, etc) all seem like they should be Defeat All Enemies, since even if the leader goes down, the others all hate your guts enough to still want to spill them all over the floor. That, and less assassination missions means less spots the game can be cheesed - definitely an improvement, since it means the difficulty can be kept steady without having to resort to some of the more ridiculous scenarios 1.3 went with.

Blue Mage seems fine to go over Sage.  I never used Sage or its primary skillset much, honestly, so I can't say I'll miss it.   As for some abilities that require you to take a hit from a boss to learn, I do hope by "boss" you mean something like an Arch Demon or Byblos or something that can be put into an end-game encounter in case the opportunity was missed and not on solely on something like a Zodiac monster.  That'd suck.  It's the reason I hate Zodiac as a Summon and love the Ultima Demon encounter 1.3 put in Finath River - abilities you only get one chance per game to learn on all of maybe 1 character unless you royally bust your balls don't have a place in a game like Final Fantasy Tactics, personally, considering you have 16 rotating and potentially changing party members and not just one or maybe two guys who can learn it unlike most other RPGs.  What I think would be cool, though, is to have every Zodiac monster have a higher-end monster skill that a Blue Mage can learn, and give the player the ability to learn the attack early by bringing a Blue Mage to that fight.  Then, in Chapter 3-4, have the monster sporting that ability begin to pop up in late random encounters once the player's had time to play around with their hard-earned toy.  That seems like a cool way to handle Blue Mage's 'rarer' abilities.  Too bad there's no plausible way to make Zodiac learnable end-game Chapter 4 outside of the Deep Dungeon, but then again... it's Zodiac, the ridiculous apocalypse Summon, and any way to get it outside Deep Dungeon would become the primary way to get it anyway.   Hmm... maybe have an encounter on the final Deep Dungeon floor after you beat Elidibs where an enemy can use Zodiac, and make the fight roughly as tough (maybe even tougher?) for Summoners to survive in as Elidibs so the player's still forced to work like hell for it.

IDK, I just hate "unique" abilities you're only given one chance to learn in terms of FFT.  This isn't a basic FF game where you have 8-12 characters who all have 1 job, and 1 of them can learn a couple extra abilities from certain bosses... this is 16 characters rotating between 21 jobs at any given time, with dynamic stat growths.  Truly "Unique" moves seem to have no place here.

Anywho, ranting, on to...

Crossbows!  Small WP boosts to compensate for no double-shot, and 100% statuses seems like it could be really cool.  Either that, or maybe make them Two Swords enabled so everyone can be like the Assassins in 1.3 *shrug*

Job Decagon seems cool, but each secondary job requiring two primary ones means it takes a deal of time to begin unlocking things.  Kinda depressing, but 6 jobs at start up seems like its fair enough compensation.  Does this mean the starting units in Magic City Gariland will each be in a different job?  There's 6 IIRC, so making 1 Squire 1 Chemist 1 Priest 1 Wizard 1 Knight 1 Archer instead of the 4 Squire 2 Chemist thing you start with would be really cool.

I think that covers most of what I missed.  Question: can we buff Mustadio a bit?  I remember him being rather useless once the other Special Characters begin showing up, even in 1.3.  Is it possible to give him something like inherent Attack Up / Magic Attack Up in his Engineer class so the "set" damage from Guns is useful for longer, and maybe tweak his PA / MA multipliers down some so that his net damage with non-Gun weapons pans out to be about the same.  Expanding his skill set would also be cool, since even with the old Knight skills Mustadio's skillset only does so much before inflicting raw damage or healing your own units becomes better than using them... especially since "boss" units are often immune to a majority of his skill set anyway.  I'd say dual wield guns akin to Crossbows, but that just seems silly.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

More random thoughts, that I'm quickly posting before I forget.

Zodiac Monsters -   Can you stack 3 Reaction Abilities on top of each other with a passive one in front?  If so, I'd rename Weapon Guard "???????" and give it to all Zodiac Monsters as their front ability in order to hide what their actual Reactions are.  It's not like the player will be using it, anyway, and Zodiac Monsters use no Weapons so it doesn't change how those fights will go down from your initial intent.

As for learning Blue Mage skills from Zodiac Bosses, I notice the OP has your current Blue Mage skillset outlook now that I bothered to check it for updates.  I noticed you left out Zalera and Elidibs, though, which is mildly saddening.  It'd be cool if every Zodiac Monster (except maybe Hashmalum) gave Blue Magic out, or at least Zalera did.  Bringing a team of nothing but Blue Mages and Summoners into Elidibs to learn Midgar Swarm and Zodiac at the same time seems like a hilarious concept.  Regardless, possibly a Bio spell from Queklain?  I'd say Seal from Velius, with some modifications.  Nothing distinct pops up for either Zalera or Aldramelk, though.   ), I'd just like to know if there's an exact reason for it that I'm not seeing / have forgotten, or if it was just so the class doesn't have too many ridiculous innates and becomes "too good" via doing a crapton of stuff.  Then again, it's a Mime, so...

Mantles!   I don't remember exactly what you said you were going to do with them besides lower their Evasion rates, but I was thinking that they should probably never break 15% Physical Evasion (due to innate Weapon Guard and global C-EV), but have more powerful beneficial effects in the vein of Wizard Mantle's +1 MA.  I honestly use Wizard Mantle for a long time after I get it (at least until I got Red Shoes off Alma or a Magic Gauntlet, minimum, and I could see myself using it for a very long time in ASM'D), so decent EV + a basic boost should generally result in an accessory that has utility for most of the game.  Unless you've a better idea - I'm just trying to think of ways to ensure stupid-high Evasion dudes can't become the things we're familiar with, since even with the -5% on a lot of mid-game and later Shields the free Weapon Guard percents will still leave you ahead and give you a nice baseline evasion from front and sides that normally wouldn't exist, especially with Global C-EV factored in.  I think that's my main worry, honestly - the side evasion numbers, since Weapon Guard, Global C-EV, and Shields already stack up high and make the otherwise high emphasis this game wants to place on positioning fall out.  Then again, you can probably just fix all these problems without needing to touch numbers at all by making all -EV stats "Global" in the manner C-EV is (100/50/50/25), though I think I've already suggested that before... and I get the odd feeling the main reason it didn't happen involved not having the ASM to do it, though my memory of our previous discussion on it is shaky at best.

The introduction of Blue Mages leaves me with another question though, now - what will you do with the Planar Magic skillset from 1.3?  It seems like a bit of a shame to lose player access to those Spells entirely, but there's obviously no room for them in the Wizard's or Blue Mage's spell books.  I'd like to see those skills incorporated into the game somehow, myself, especially since the lowered Speed values actually makes many of them worth using.  Thoughts?

I may have asked this before, but with Speed / Movement / every innate besides maybe Throw Item (for whatever reason) gimped, will something be done to buff Thief class at all, or do you hypothesize they'll be worthwhile to use as a mainstay class like they were in 1.3 (instead of say, learning Steal then moving to a Martial Arts Monk or some shit)?  Most of the reasons I personally used a main Thief for pretty much all of 1.3030 are gone (even if there were no big Steals, I'd probably have still used it because the class itself rocked), so I'm worrying if the class will still be worth something beyond "ability whore, move on" or not.

Also, Ribbons - they appear to be the only hair ornament class headgear left in the game, since you dropped Barette and Cachusa.  Is there a reason not to just take the Celia and Lede route and make them Accessories instead?  It'd break a lot of potentially "god" combos such as Ribbon + Setiemson, which pretty much lets you easy button against any end-game Assassin units you intend to place in Deep Dungeon or Murond / random battles, etc... especially since males can pull that off now too.  It seems like it'd be far more at home competing against the other end-game uber Accessories than the usually less-Uber Hats and Helmets, since it pretty much plays the role of an Accessory you wear on your head oftentimes anyway.
 
I think that's it for now.  I had the random thought on ??????? Weapon Guard on the car ride home tonight and just had a bunch of ideas at once, so I wanted to post before I forgot now that I'm at least mildly back again.  It's good to see this thing is still kicking, though.

[philsov]

heeeey, raven!  wb!

....and there's the wall of text I missed so fondly.

As for the blue magic abilities and bosses, I can throw in a late-late game random or DD fight with a mastered blue magic flinging stuff at you or a few boss throwbacks -- so the spells are not lost and gone forever, but at least just not available to the player for a majority of the game should the player opt out of bringing in a blue mage for the encounter (or some wonky AI that almost never uses said ability, but I'll try to rig that on my end to be a near non-issue).  

Dunno about xbows.  The only statii that are remotely balanced at 100% are blind and poison.  Two-swords is no-no on any weapon with a range greater than one.  

Musty can get a better skillset (ie, one or two new moves), sure.  Don't want to give him innate anything.

With two primaries needed for each secondary, its really no different than the old scheme of needing both squire and knight/archer or chemist and priest/wizard to progress, only now theres 7 jobs on this teir instead of 4 on the old scheme, and it cascades from there.  

As for zodiacs with innate ????, there's two things -- one, there's only 7 slots available for innates to the bosses -- all bosses are getting innate finger guard, def up, and magic def up for starters.  Then they're getting their primary and secondary reactions, and the other two innate slots are for various supports like two swords or concentrate or something.  I can stick finger guard in the front, but for all I know it may be a non issue since half of these guys will have a support in their reaction slot >_>

The selection on bosses for blue magic spells are because of their relative storyline points -- Andramelk is rather interchangeable with Zalera, but I like having something at the end of each chapter (maybe even something from Algus) thats BM-able.  Note that due to the nature of blue magic teaching it to other blue mages is worlds easier than, say, zodiac, because the current plan is to make them affect any target.  

Speaking of blue magic, all those spells are going to be given an MP cost ranging from mostly spammable to "use once, need refill", to help balance them out.  Seal is a possibility but ultimately the sky is the limit and I was planning on introducing new skills tacked onto the bosses in order to present some blue magic in the first place.

Yes, Bio consolidation is possible, and the old Ja/Planar magic skillset is also capable of being gutted for various purposes.  

Mimes lost innate monster skill in order to gain both innate counter and counter magic, also with their already present innate martial arts and concentrate.  I had thought to give them a catch-all reaction like Counter Flood, or even something devious like MA save + PA save, but dunno.

Stats/immunities to mantles over evasion is a good thought, I'll see if I can wrestle with that for a spell.  But I can't make them TOO good, as I don't want to overshadow all the other accessories.

Dunno bout ribbons, I like forcing the player to give up the health/stats from the helmet over perfume perks.  I can change this stance easily though.

Think that's all of it?  

Current plans are actually a bit of a personal paradigm shift.  Looking to crank out a demo through most/all of chapter 1 before continuing with further entd/event edits.  Hopefully looking to fish for a few more voices into the matter.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

*Edit:  I've edited this post a billion and a half times now.  Last at 2:37AM EST, noting so people (Philsov) remember to check for said edited parts when replying to this post in case they've already read it once previously.

heeeey, raven!  wb!

....and there's the wall of text I missed so fondly.

I will consume your soul if you ever TL;DR me.

As for the blue magic abilities and bosses, I can throw in a late-late game random or DD fight with a mastered blue magic flinging stuff at you or a few boss throwbacks -- so the spells are not lost and gone forever, but at least just not available to the player for a majority of the game should the player opt out of bringing in a blue mage for the encounter (or some wonky AI that almost never uses said ability, but I'll try to rig that on my end to be a near non-issue).

Good.  I've always thought having "learn on hit" abilities in a game like this that could actually be missed were bullshit.  

...Maybe have an END encounter of ridiculous difficulty that contains an uber Blue Mage, an uber Elidibs with a different sprite, and possibly an uber Ultima Demon?

That way all the "on-hit only" abilities can be learned from the same encounter, but doing so will be exceedingly difficult.  You can make all the Blue Mage's skills learnable elsewhere as well for people who want to scour the planet for them, but something like that is a fitting way to force people to earn a second shot at Zodiac.

Dunno about xbows.  The only statii that are remotely balanced at 100% are blind and poison.  Two-swords is no-no on any weapon with a range greater than one.

True.

I just had the ridiculous idea of a Crossbow that inflicts Undead possibly 50% or the time or something but will heal any non-Undead units.

I have no idea why we'd ever want to add something like that to the game but it seems ridiculous enough to be worth looking into since its worthless against units before it proc's them.

I would make two of the bows inflict respective 100% Blind and 100% Poison, though.  There's no reason every single crossbow needs to conform to the exact same gimmick.

Musty can get a better skillset (ie, one or two new moves), sure.  Don't want to give him innate anything.

Very well.  It was just a passing thought on the innates since it would at least make him the best gunman in the game in his base class and as such worth using as an Engineer and not, say, a Chemist with Snipe and Defense UP.  I just liked the uniqueness of it since it makes sense for an Engineer to be the best gunner in the game.

I have no idea offhand what to add to his skillset, though, unless you make custom skills.  Hm... if they could be fixed, the old Squire Skills from 1.3029 would be a funky fix into the Snipe Skillset (or even at least one of them back into the actual Basic Skill set).

With two primaries needed for each secondary, its really no different than the old scheme of needing both squire and knight/archer or chemist and priest/wizard to progress, only now theres 7 jobs on this teir instead of 4 on the old scheme, and it cascades from there.

I suppose that's true.  The 6 open Jobs at the beginning actually will do a lot to help fix some difficulty issues I encountered when I patched a new ASM'D and tested more of Chapter 1.  (See end of post).

As for zodiacs with innate ????, there's two things -- one, there's only 7 slots available for innates to the bosses -- all bosses are getting innate finger guard, def up, and magic def up for starters.  Then they're getting their primary and secondary reactions, and the other two innate slots are for various supports like two swords or concentrate or something.  I can stick finger guard in the front, but for all I know it may be a non issue since half of these guys will have a support in their reaction slot >_>

XD;

I see.

That would work, I suppose.   You can't rename it to ??????? since the player actually uses Finger Guard, though.  Oh well.

...I just realized, can't we bomb Weapon Guard to have even more room for new skills, if you haven't already?  I know you were having issues with finding room to fit all the skills in before, hence this, the previous Bio suggestion, etc.

The selection on bosses for blue magic spells are because of their relative storyline points -- Andramelk is rather interchangeable with Zalera, but I like having something at the end of each chapter (maybe even something from Algus) thats BM-able.  Note that due to the nature of blue magic teaching it to other blue mages is worlds easier than, say, zodiac, because the current plan is to make them affect any target.

Speaking of blue magic, all those spells are going to be given an MP cost ranging from mostly spammable to "use once, need refill", to help balance them out.  Seal is a possibility but ultimately the sky is the limit and I was planning on introducing new skills tacked onto the bosses in order to present some blue magic in the first place.

Algus would be eh, him having Blue Magic seems silly.  I figured that on MP costs as well, and if you give such abilities to Zodiac Monsters, you can always take their MP dial and turn it up to "uber retarded" so they never suffer manascrew.

How about something like:

Queklain - Bio 3
Velius - Seal
Zalera - Flare 2
Aldramelk - ...I still got nothing.  IIRC he only uses basic magic and Bahamut, all of which are covered in other classs.  ...Wait, doesn't he use Confuse 2 or Sleep 2 or something?  I could totally see Zalera sporting Quake and Aldramelk sporting Tornado.

Mimes lost innate monster skill in order to gain both innate counter and counter magic, also with their already present innate martial arts and concentrate.  I had thought to give them a catch-all reaction like Counter Flood, or even something devious like MA save + PA save, but dunno.

The ability to take a Mime and four monsters reasonably through the story seems so novel to me, which is the main reason I lament losing Monster Skill.

I think Counter and Counter Magic is a good setup, better fitting for a Mime than Counter Flood.  I'm half tempted to ask the million-dollar "how many innates can we cram onto this boat?" question, because a Mime with a bunch of silly Innates just seems so appealing, if only just to say we did it.

Stats/immunities to mantles over evasion is a good thought, I'll see if I can wrestle with that for a spell.  But I can't make them TOO good, as I don't want to overshadow all the other accessories.

Of course.  The simple Wizard Mantle MA+1 and 15% A-EV was plenty for me in Vanilla and 1.3.  It was relevant enough to protect my mages for most of the game, and losing the 5%-10% evasion for the extra power if I wasn't Abandon-wrecking.

I'm assuming most mantles lost roughly 5% of their evasions already.  I'd say make all mantles have between 5-10% evasion on both ends (except for maybe 15% magical on Dracula Mantle), and give simple buffs.

Wizard Mantle gives MA +1, so its all set.
Elf Mantle... I've got nothing that would make sense being granted by an Elf's mantle atm, honestly.
Dracula Mantle could be something like Immune: Dead, Undead, Blood Suck, or Half/Absorb: Dark, or something.  Not really sure.
Feather Mantle could grant Always: Float.  Float Boots could be given something to allow it to compete with Feather Mantle in the way it had Move +1 back in 1.3, as I assume it no longer has that.

Dunno bout ribbons, I like forcing the player to give up the health/stats from the helmet over perfume perks.  I can change this stance easily though.

Initial: Haste seems more game-breaking than some HP in any situation where you'd actually want to wear a Ribbon, IIRC.

Having gone through the 1.3 Colliery at Level 50, I can't imagine anything I tried working if Ribbon weren't a hat/helmet, and I can't imagine any perk a hat/helmet would grant me that would be half as good.  Besides, if you don't know you're going to need Ribbon in a fight, you'll often use a stat plus headgear anyway, then do minor compensation via Ribbon + buff accessory / Setiemson / whatever if you find you need it normally.  Making it an accessory makes it a bit more worthwhile to actually just equip onto a character as the "primary" accessory.

Alternatively / in addition, make Twist Headband a hair ornament / otherwise make it equippable by Monks.  THE MONK SPRITE HAS A HEADBAND ON IT SO IT SHOULD BE ABLE TO EQUIP A FUCKING HEADBAND.

*ahem*.

Current plans are actually a bit of a personal paradigm shift.  Looking to crank out a demo through most/all of chapter 1 before continuing with further entd/event edits.  Hopefully looking to fish for a few more voices into the matter.

Can't wait.

Also, I did some streaming the last two days using the old version of the patch you sent me, and...





Captain's Log, Stardate Cancer 13.

Dorter Trade City -

I went in with 2 Knights 1 Chemist 1 Archer, Guests are Bow Gun Squires.  Archers peg me for 35 damage-ish. It takes us way too long to move in, Wizards close in by the time we're able to deal with said Archers due to low Move speed and no ranged abilities besides bows, we get wrecked.  It doesn't help that the Knight is a loving Item tank, and one of the Archers also has it for dickery.

Leave, raise a Wizard and a Priest with inverse Secondaries, come back.  Now I'm getting pegged for 50 a shot despite my average level never ascending beyond 3.  I think this is related to the glitch with the panthers and barehanded units, since that's ridiculous.  I would say best compat was the cause, but 45-55 was the average bow damage I received for most of the fight.  Needless to say, magic breaks this fight wide open.  It took a bit of getting used to the low movement ranges and such, but I beat it in one try with magic.

Summary: Fairly difficult.  However, having Wizard and Priest open at the beginning of the game now (something I couldn't access) probably makes this fight a deal easier, especially if the mystery of the ridiculous bow damage has been solved.  Then again, maybe it's just Archers having really high stats, as I'll hypothesize a bit later (at Thieve's Fort)...

Cellar of the Sand Mouserat -

This is where I learned that Monk and Knight are pretty good classes once they have Wave Fist and Ruin skills, respectively.  My first attempt was a standard formation, Ramza + Thief + Deleter taking one end with two Mages + Al Gore taking the other one.  (The Soldier Office allowed me to rename my Guest units, so the stream told me to rename Delita and Algus to Deleter and Al Gore, respectively.  It has no effects on their dialogue as of yet, and I'm pretty sure it won't affect Algus' name display at Fort Zeakden, but it's a funny little thing.  Reminds me of Pokemon and how you can rename your Rival and such, honestly.)  Knights raped Algus, then raped my mages.  Monks and Archers helped.  Everyone else got bumrushed by the entire enemy party and died.

Take two, I move all my characters to hold the single choke point near Al Gore, while Deleter pseudo-duels the Monk on the far end.  Multiple bows and magic blasts in a concentrated area took out the Knights and everyone else quickly enough, and I got 5 TREASURE BOXES (insert Brooklyn Rage here)!  Killed last Monk once he got done doing naughty things with Deleter's corpse, moved on.

Summary:  Hard if you try to do it the way you would in vanilla or 1.3.  Easy to moderate pending how much magic you're sporting as long as you focus on a single choke point because the AI doesn't like retreating if there's no targets behind them.

Thieve's Fort -

Sturdy mages, fast Thieves, and trying to ham Deleter and Al Gore as Chemists for free Spillover JP get me raped my first run through.  Take two, they're Squires, one with a Bow Gun the other with an Iron Sword.  I concentrate on taking out those enemy mages and the Item Thief quickly, and are able to soon start waiting for Crystals and such.  Miluda somehow knowing both Wish and Revive (wut?) causes me to lose out on a really good Thief crystal, but I nab one for my Priest that has Raise 2 and Cure 2.  She goes down easily once I'm done.  One thing I noticed here though was that my Thief's Long Bow only did about 25 damage, a stark contrast to the 35-55 I was being pelted with at Dorter Trade City from the same weapon.  Since I wasn't attacking any Defense UP units with, maybe it means it was just high PA / SP or the Archer class or something, pending what formula Bows currently use?

Summary:  Pretty challenging, honestly.  Focused blasts of Bolt on groups combined with my ever-nimble and highly underrated Thief were the main reasons I was able to win.  If Knights get some JP cuts on their abilities, I can see them being able to tank out this mission with a healer or two, though.  

Lenalia Plateau -

Jesus fucking assraping cockmonkeys.

Try one, my Thief eats a Charge +20 on the first turn and is OHKO'd (for 130 damage, and I'm like Level 6).  It goes downhill from there as the Knight Slows Deleter and the Archers begin to turn my mages into swiss blond people.

Try two, my Thief only eats a Charge +2 for about 50 damage.  We move up, begin bringing down magic and arrows.  The Time Mages begin spamming Fire 2 and Haste, with Defense UP making it take forever (3 turns + dodging) for my Thief to out them.  Wouldn't be as big a deal, but there's no realistic way for anything not using arrows or magic to hit them due to lowered move...  I eventually take it out after having to revive my Thief, and continue raining magic down.  Sadly, I'm only doing 25-35 damage per spell in their 140ish HP Knight hides, and I can't get close enough to spell-nuke either mage, nor am I mobile enough overall to heal my guys and get the hell out before the next wave of magic and arrows.

Summary:  They had mobility and sizable ranged damage.  I did not.  They had the high ground.  I did not.  They had the entire width of the battlefield to spread out horizontally.  I did not, due to having water on either side of me.  Maybe having Wizard and Priest open initially (meaning the player's able to acrue more JP for those jobs) and the aforementioned lowering of Break Skill JP costs will help this problem, but I can't really say for sure due to how much of an advantage the opposition starts with, in terms of both terrain and abilities.  I may go get Move +1 on more of my units along with some more powerful ranged abilities and try the fight again, but I'm thinking it might honestly be easier to go collect a few sets of monsters and play Beast Master due to the monsters and Monster Skills combining to actually give me some sizable mobility (and likely higher damage) in terms of ASM'D.  Then again, I know you tweaked monsters due to Blue Mage being included, so maybe this may not be the best idea on a newer ASM'D patch.  I would merely try not charging forward early on, but the Archers can hit me from ridiculously far away for huge damage chunks anyway and from a range I can't easily reciprocate.  Maybe getting Counter or Auto-Potion on my Bow-Thief would be prudent as well.

Notes:

*Starting with Dorter Trade City 1, I've noticed Knights are conistently useless in Chapter 1.  Their abilities cost too much JP, meaning they have a total of 3 range to attack each turn for the most part, low Speed, and honestly inferior damage output to a Wizard, who has a total range of 6 Spaces if you count the Black Magic and AoE.  They might be better once the player has some abilities and Move +1 and such (the computer controlled Knights with actual ability suites are rather threatening, so its not the class that sucks), but that's later on.  JP costs for Knight abilities should be slashed as far as Battle Skill is concerned, at least, else they don't learn their ranged skills fast enough to be worth anything during Chapter 1 without heavy training in other classes first.  This is something I found none of the other 5 classes you want to become base classes have a problem with.  They're all pretty usable out-of-the-box, so Knight should be too.  

*Equip Meleeset seems to do nothing unless I patched the game incorrectly.  (Note: I repatched the game and got the text working, so it should be correct unless I misclicked something in orgASM.)  It might be equipping Axes like it was originally intended to do but not Swords or Flails yet, if the version of the patch you gave me didn't have Equip Meleeset programmed yet.  Equip Clothes seems to allow you to Equip Swords, because I encountered a Thief in the Thieve's Fort battle using Equip Clothes + Iron Sword, which furthers my thinking you gave me text and learned class changes to those abilities but hadn't actually changed them yet.  Reporting it regardless, just in case it is a bug.

*Thief isn't useless, as I previously thought it would be.  The extra movement square and higher Speed are godsends, especially combined.  It's still a really good class just for those two things alone.  I worry if there will be any reason to use it instead of Ninja later on, but for now the Thief is great.  I use one with Move +1 and either Equip Bow or Throw Item for a fast ranged healer / fighter, and I can't say I'm let down.

*Shade of Grey and Turtle Shell have their names backwards in several places in the tactext file I have.  I haven't tested how either item works in-game yet, but I know their names are backwards in several places, including on the Ability list (clicking Select gives you a different description) and at the Item shop (again, Select gives you the opposite's description).

*Monks seem to still have innate Martial Arts, at least in this version of the patch.  I thought it was removed, or was that after supplying this version of it?  Martial Arts costs me 0000 and Thieves don't seem to have innate Concentrate, so I'm assuming it wasn't supposed to have innate Martial Arts.  Monks also seem to suffer the range problem I spoke of earlier with Knights.  They're really good once you get even something as simple as Wave Fist (I fucked up and got Spin Fist first, d'oh.), but before then they suck because they move slowly and can't do much until they're in range.

*Fire 1 isn't the same Speed as Bolt 1 or Ice 1.  I don't know if this is true of the other Fire tiers or not yet, though.  The descriptions all say that the three Spells are each Speed 25, but Fire is charging faster, making me believe its Speed 33, assuming your descriptions of their Speeds are accurate.

*The Throw Stone Spell Quote contains a typo, saying "Throw Stonet!" instead of "Throw Stone!"

*I may have just forgotten to click it in orgASM, but I noticed my W-EV wasn't being factored into defending against attacks during one of my Lenalia Plateau runs.  You may want to check whatever version of ASM'D you currently have to be sure innate Weapon Guard is working on it, just in case.

*My Time Mages could still learn Teleport.

I think that's everything I noticed while playing.  I don't know how many of my Notes were addressed in my absence, but I'm reporting everything just in case.

Random thought - Asmo recently expressed a concern about the spoof script.  Is it possible to make a version of ASM'D that doesn't include for the people who'd be bothered by something like that, or are you already at the point where that'd be far too big a bitch?

[Zaen]

TL;DR the summaries/battle notes...

There's not enough room in the Wizard Skillset for Flare 2 and Frog 2.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

There's not enough room in the Wizard Skillset for Flare 2 and Frog 2.

Goddamn Wizard and its having 16 Skills... erm, 7 Skills, 3 of which need to be arbitrarily divided into 4 tiers.

EDIT:  Is it possible to make Black Magic "scale"?  So that, in Chapter 1 say, my Wizard can learn Fire / Bolt / Ice, and at the beginning of Chapter 2 these skills become Fire 2 / Ice 2 / Bolt 2, with whatever ones I already knew carrying over and the remaining ones having their proper JP costs  (meaning when level goes up, Bolt 2 would cost 120 or whatever, etc).

This means you could have the 3 tiered magic that increments in power as the user plays, the 0 CT magic which has roughly the power of a tier 2 Spell and no charge for the times your spell is too slow, and Wizard would only have 10 abilities at a time, meaning there would be room for Flare 2 and Toad 2.  You could possibly have these Spells become available at the start of Chapter 3 to keep the "level up" feel the other spells have, though they should remain separate because of how functionally different they are from their originals, whereas Fire 1 is generally not useful anymore once you get Fire 2 save against uberspeed units, etc.

The main argument against such a thing would obviously be "but thas not the FFT way!", to which I'd say "defininitely isn't", but considering how Draw Out, Summon, etc got a bunch of new AoEs to shake them up and stop them from being "Elemental copy X of power tier Y", such a system with the four Fire/Bolt/Ice Spells (along with possibly Cure, Demi, etc.) is less of a stretch than it would be normally.  It also stops stupid things like "that CPU Wizard had Fire 4 at Zaland at Level 7!" BS by proxy if the CPU also scales in this way.  Plus, since there are time gaps between Chapters 1, 2, and 3, it makes sense that Wizards and co would have time to "ascend" between them.

Granted, I don't know how complicated that would be, such as if it would require each mage "tier" for that chapter having its own ability set, etc. since I don't actually do much hacking, but the idea seems solid enough and fitting enough in theory.  *Shrug*