FFT: ASM'D main info/discussion

[philsov]

Ooooh... here's a thought.

Toggle most (keeping a handful) of the assassination fights to a "defeat all enemies" for less well-calculated sniping and more all out party bouts.  sounds good, maybe?  

And then give all the supporting enemy characters item secondary.

[Dokurider]

I would like that immensely. I always felt that assassinations battles were unsatisfying.

[Sephirot24]

How's it going Phil?

Just wanted to ask if you still need testing and if you changed something after Raven's tests. I'm back at home and if you want to give this a little update and want me to test it I can do it now. I'll try to read through the new comments later =P

[philsov]

woot!

Yes, I've updated the patcher to include Raven's notes so far and cleaned up a few other things that I saw.  Dunno where Raven's flown off to; he couldn't get the get the text edits to work and I left for vacation and haven't seen him back since =\.

But again this means most of the mechanical progress is done; I'm still slowly but surely working on all the events which is working out to be far more time consuming than originally planned.  I'll hook you up with updated information in a day or two

[Sephirot24]

woot!

Yes, I've updated the patcher to include Raven's notes so far and cleaned up a few other things that I saw.  Dunno where Raven's flown off to; he couldn't get the get the text edits to work and I left for vacation and haven't seen him back since =\.

But again this means most of the mechanical progress is done; I'm still slowly but surely working on all the events which is working out to be far more time consuming than originally planned.  I'll hook you up with updated information in a day or two

It seems real life takes time =P
Cool ^^ I'll be waiting for it. Don't need to rush though, I don't think I'll be leaving again for a good couple of months.

[SilvasRuin]

The talk of Chocobos and their usefulness in 1.3 got me thinking.  What do you think about making Chocobos moderately powerful at best and then making them the farthest moving monsters/characters in the game as their strength?  With the stronger emphasis on positioning, this will wind up making mounting them much more appealing.

[philsov]

that was actually planned already hybrids.  Blue mage?  Red mage?  Mystic knight?  Other?

[SilvasRuin]

If you've got more elemental weaknesses across the board, then a Mystic Knight would give melee units the ability to take advantage of that instead of leaving it all to the mages.  The Sword Skill animations could easily fit into elemental themes.

[Dokurider]

How about something along the lines of instant damage magic? Fire0, Ice0, Bolt0, Demi0. Single target, CT0, deals low to moderate damage, and in Demi0 case, 25% damage.

[philsov]

oooh, that sounds like goodness.  Perhaps they'll adopt the MA*Y formula as well (ie, faithless).

[Dokurider]

Cure0 as well while I'm on a roll.

[Sephirot24]

Personally, I'm all in for a Blue Mage because I think that'd be the most unique class, but I know blue mages need more planning. Take Quina for example: you could easily learn all his/her spells as long as you used her throughout the game constantly. Every now and then new enemies with more powerful/useful abilities appeared, and that made Quina very versatile. In fact, Blue mages may be too useful =p

Hey! Maybe you can add a white chocobo (I'm sure we have palettes for that) and make it the Rideable chocobo.. so that you don't have to completely nullify one of the current ones we have..

[philsov]

As for choco nullification, there's spare palettes, but there's just no spare monster slots.  I'll prolly dick over the black choco, but hopefully do some palette swapping all the same.  

But, hm.  Think I'll go with a blue mage.  There isn't that much elemental weakness to exploit in the realms of the mystic knight, and the insta-magics, while an awesome idea, will instead be rolled into the parent classes and take the place of other abilities (goodbye level 4s!). I don't think I'll be able to spread out the blue magic abilities quite like Quina, lest I prevent many monster families from cropping up too early, but the skillset won't be able to completed until chapter 3 probably.

Balance is going to be tricky matter -- I want the skillset to be good, but not steal every iconic monster ability then trump them all by being able to do it all at the same time -- so very likely the blue mage's choco meteor (e.g.) will never be stronger than a real choco's.  Coeffecients and monster PA/MA will need to be adjusted, but that's a minor matter in the scheme of things.  I think I've worked out the spellbook too

*runs off to fftpatcher*

[Sephirot24]

Great to hear Phil Blue Mages are one of my fave classes.

I have a question about their learning process though; how do we learn the skills?
Either:
a) Spend JP to learn, like any other job.
b) Get hit with the corresponding ability.
c) Spend JP OR get hit with ability. This means any will suffice. IE: I can either learn goblin punch if a Goblin uses it on my Blue Mage or spend 200 JP to learn it.
d) Both spend JP AND get hit by ability. This means that, to learn Goblin punch I have to meet both requirements.

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OFF-TOPIC PS: wft am I doing wrong with my sig's url? Or are urls forbidden in sigs now?
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[philsov]

B.  Certainly don't wish A or C, and I don't know how to rig up D.

12 of the blue magic abilities will come from monsters with a decent spread from all the monster families.  2 to 4 will come from various bosses.

Suggestions on unlock requirements?  Thinking having mediator as a parent class seems a bit excessive, and the old calc/sage requirements don't really seem to fit here.  

As for your sig, we upgraded forum format so a few things became pure text in the transition.  Just "change" your sig and it should be back to goodness.

[Dokurider]

Level 6 Squire, Level 6 Chemist, akin to the Onion Knight?

[formerdeathcorps]

I'd rather keep the class requirements vaguely about nature and monsters.  If blue mage is to replace calculator, I'd make the requirements level 4 mediator and geomancer (since he is a hybrid: mage + physical fighter).

[Sephirot24]

Blue Mages are a class you'll want early on, because you have to travel the world map in search for monsters in order to learn abilities..

How about lvl4 Wizard, lvl4 Priest and lvl3 Geomancer? Some leveling in the 1st 2 mage jobs available, and then a little more with an advanced, physical-magical hybrid job. Playing normally (no grinding) it'd take around beginning of CH2 to unlock I guess. Not too early (as the class is a very useful one), and not too late.. (so that you can learn abilities as you play instead of having to travel through the whole map at once to find monster variety.)

EDIT: My post came out in some horrible English so I edited it  

[R999]

This is my first time reading this post. This looks like one heck of a killer patch Philsov! I was going to give 1.3 easytype a run but it looks like I might have to wait for this.

[philsov]

I was going to give 1.3 easytype a run but it looks like I might have to wait for this

Eh heh.  Don't hold your horses.  The more and more I play around with the data the most interested I am in this being less of a 1.3 piggyback and more of a stand alone game thats loosely based on vanilla -- so I'll be ditching a majority of the 1.3 iconic changes -- crit quick queklain, doubleshot x-bows, etc -- and inserting my own little twists everywhere.  A very evil part of me will steal the mercenary job classes/system should it become available.  

As for the blue mage... in FFTA the unlocks were White Mage and Black mage, so I'll probably hold onto that... but geomancer seems a bit far down.  Maybe combination knight/archer/wizard/priest?