On making a good SRPG

[Eat_an_Octorok]

Been browsing these boards for a almost a year now, and finally decided to sign up and talk on here. Greetings all!

But anyway, to the main point. I've been trying to cook up an idea for a great strategy RPG, something that could match FFT's awesome factor, but at the same time fix the issues that it still has. Bouncing ideas between my friends only goes so far, so what better idea than to go ask a community of SRPG fans?

First off, gathering my personal experience on SRPGs, and complaints I've seen elsewhere on these boards and others at times, I've been devising some basic rules that every good SRPG should follow. If you have any other suggestions, shoot 'em my way. But what I have so far is thus:

1.) My personal Golden Rule of an SRPG that FFT really falls flat on, but Disgaea does almost perfectly is that as you get stronger, leveling your units, picking up skills for them, etc. should get easier, and take less time.

I formulated this one by thinking a lot on how FFT goes down as you get later in the game. You start to pick up special units and even when you do get your first one, Mustadio, you already come to the realization that it's kind of a pain to get him up to speed with your current party set up. This just compounds the farther you get and even your own leveling can work against you, as you recruit late game people like Beowulf, and then realize that not only do you have to go through the tedious process of bringing him up to speed with the party, but that if you leveled up a ton at this point, you pretty much missed out on tweaking his growths to your preference with his Job Class, as his joining level is based on yours. And don't even get me started on Cloud. CLOUD!! Disgaea series, mainly 3, remedies this by having your specialists who expedite the leveling process a ton, however still require you to be strong to get the optimal benefits of it, as you have to venture into the more challenging Item World to collect them. Bringing units up to speed is made rather quick and painless this way, and the speed at which you can do it usually matches how far you are in the game, for example how Disgaea 3 varies the strength of the specialists depending on the rank of the item, so you need to get stronger to collect higher level specialists, and it all ultimately leads to it's duping item being a post game acquisition, which REALLY speeds up the process. There's the argument of the game needing to have the reverse true to keep it challenging and have the skill system rewarding, but if you scale the game's difficulty  to where in the beginning you don't need a ton of skills to win and by endgame you'd better have a lot of skills amassed then it still works out to be rewarding, yet also not a tedious grindfest. Plus, the whole making leveling/skill acquisition take longer as you get farther doesn't play out as well in SRPGs, as you'll be dealing with WAY more options opening up as you progress, like late units, job classes opening up, etc. as opposed to being set with a specific set of characters who do a specific role like the standard RPG.

2.) Even though I mention this second, this one definitely holds the most weight, so ignore the fact that it's the 2nd thing listed. A good SRPG needs to be balanced. Fairly obvious, but then when you look at the ones out there, you notice that this is such a hard rule for developers to get down. My idea of what an SRPG needs to be balanced are two simple things:

a.) All classes must be useful, and viable for combat. Part of the fun of an SRPG is the variety of units to use. However, this is killed when you realize that out of your 50 choices of classes, only 2-3 are ever worth giving a damn about. FFTA and Gunners/Assassins. Why use any other class? They own! FFT and Calculators. Same story.
b.) All strategies on approaching a battle should be at least viable. Not to say that everything works because it's so easy, but rather make it to where one specific strategy isn't needed to win every battle. What's the fun in having 50 classes when the game's designed to where certain battles mandate that you need this many of this unit with this setup, or you will lose, ALWAYS! It'd be like solving a jigsaw puzzle, but then having it tell you that you need to do it on Tuesdays only while it's raining on a full moon or it is unsolvable... and it will kill your family (somehow).

3.) A good SRPG needs to give you as much customization as possible. When it comes to tweaking your units, gear, items, etc. the sky should be the limit. The more limits you impose on customization, the more you limit the viable strategies a player can preform. A pretty simple example with this one. FFT vs. FFTA. On FFT, you had a slot for a movement skill, and you could use it to compensate for classes with lackluster movement range, Jump, or even add another supporting effect, like Manafont. FFTA cuts this out, so all of a sudden now classes who have limited movement are suddenly screwed as now there's not a way to work around it. And you may say "Give them long range skills by using X Command." but then it's violating section B of rule 2 of making all strategies viable. Now your limited movement guy MUST have this command, or they are relegated to being trash.

4.) A good SRPG needs to be challenging. Part of the reason you're playing an SRPG is because you're looking for a challenge. Nobody jumps into any strategy game hoping for a cakewalk. So you're worried about the newbies getting frustrated on battle X and not playing to the end? Then add an Easy mode where the enemy will bend over and hand you the sword which you will use to violate their poor butts. For everyone else, focus on making the regular mode a challenge. Unpatched FFT, Disgaea series, and Valkyria Chronicles are some examples to name a few who really fail on this. FFT is so easy you can solo run it. I don't take being able to solo run it as a testament to my skill. I take it as the game showing that it's so freakin' easy, one dude can trample every battle. Disgaea loses it's edge if you even venture into the Item World even a little, and Valkyria Chronicles has it's Alicia Rush, which it THE strategy for that game. SELVARIA SHOULDN'T BE BEATABLE ON TURN 1 FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

Those are what I have so far. I'm not going to toot the old horn of "A good storyline." because every game needs to work on that, and that's just an obvious given one. Now for the game I'm personally cooking up, I've got ideas to try and address some other issues in SRPGs, and I'd like opinions on the idea.

Playing FFT 1.3, and especially against friends, the sandbag tactic gets annoying. Basically how they constantly revive dead units and it takes you forever to gain any ground as you keep having to kill off guys you just dealt with. Limiting revival is too restricting in my book, so I thought of a Morale system. How it would work is both sides start neutral, and based on the flow of battle, it can go for or against you. As you gain Morale, you can gain some favorable advantages for your team, like your skills becoming cheaper on MP to use. And if you can really boost it in your favor, each class has a form of super move which will pretty much devastate the opposing team, and make finishing up a battle easy. With this in place, let's say your enemy keeps trying the sandbag crap. Well they'll be losing a lot of Morale for pulling this, so you can let them keep at it because you know that when you've got enough Morale, you can rain hell upon them from which they'll be hard pressed to recover from. Same applies to yourself, though, so don't think you can just let people die carelessly. Morale would also be influenced by your actions in general throughout the fight. For example, causing abnormal stats, hitting criticals, leaving people in critical/dead too long, curing/buffing a lot, etc. Opens up new ideas to approach winning, and rewards smarter playing rather than rushing in with Chaos Blade.

Also, been debating on the whole starting MP at 0 and slowly regenerating as opposed to starting at full MP with no regeneration. Pros of 0 MP is that you can't rush in with your best skills and wreck everything from the get go, but the cons is that you'll be having to wait to do all your cool stuff until you get everyone's MP up, which can make battles slow and tedious. I've considered something like FFT's charge time, but that's kinda what killed a lot of magic classes later on, and Cloud. Any good thoughts/ideas on this?

Wall of text is done now!

[Dokurider]

Wow, well, first off, congrats on your transition from lurking to posting. Wow, so much.

1.) My personal Golden Rule of an SRPG that FFT really falls flat on, but Disgaea does almost perfectly is that as you get stronger, leveling your units, picking up skills for them, etc. should get easier, and take less time.

Definitely agree with this rule. Not just for SRPGs either. But technically, FFT doesn't fall flat on that either, at least when it comes to JP accumulation. The amount of JP you earn is based on level and Job level.

I formulated this one by thinking a lot on how FFT goes down as you get later in the game. You start to pick up special units and even when you do get your first one, Mustadio, you already come to the realization that it's kind of a pain to get him up to speed with your current party set up. This just compounds the farther you get and even your own leveling can work against you, as you recruit late game people like Beowulf, and then realize that not only do you have to go through the tedious process of bringing him up to speed with the party, but that if you leveled up a ton at this point, you pretty much missed out on tweaking his growths to your preference with his Job Class, as his joining level is based on yours. And don't even get me started on Cloud. CLOUD!

Too true in Vanilla. Mustadio just ends up gathering dust on the unit screen. I felt it was pointless to bring him up to speed anyhow since endgame Thief Hats are everywhere, and you have better strategies at hand anyhow. Beowulf was the only unit you really wanted, as he made the Oracle obsolete.

Disgaea series, mainly 3, remedies this by having your specialists who expedite the leveling process a ton, however still require you to be strong to get the optimal benefits of it, as you have to venture into the more challenging Item World to collect them. Bringing units up to speed is made rather quick and painless this way, and the speed at which you can do it usually matches how far you are in the game, for example how Disgaea 3 varies the strength of the specialists depending on the rank of the item, so you need to get stronger to collect higher level specialists, and it all ultimately leads to it's duping item being a post game acquisition, which REALLY speeds up the process. There's the argument of the game needing to have the reverse true to keep it challenging and have the skill system rewarding, but if you scale the game's difficulty to where in the beginning you don't need a ton of skills to win and by endgame you'd better have a lot of skills amassed then it still works out to be rewarding, yet also not a tedious grindfest. Plus, the whole making leveling/skill acquisition take longer as you get farther doesn't play out as well in SRPGs, as you'll be dealing with WAY more options opening up as you progress, like late units, job classes opening up, etc. as opposed to being set with a specific set of characters who do a specific role like the standard RPG.

I don't know about the Disgaea series. I've only played Disgaea 2, but if I wanted to bring a new unit up to speed, I wouldn't go to the Item World, although maybe I should have. Not only would I have brought characters to speed, I would have gotten better items out of it. Then again, it was a pretty dangerous in a high enough item.

When you talk about Specialist, you're talking about those guys you save in Item World that buff up your item? Sorry, I'm a little hazy about the details of Disgaea.

2.) Even though I mention this second, this one definitely holds the most weight, so ignore the fact that it's the 2nd thing listed. A good SRPG needs to be balanced. Fairly obvious, but then when you look at the ones out there, you notice that this is such a hard rule for developers to get down. My idea of what an SRPG needs to be balanced are two simple things:

a.) All classes must be useful, and viable for combat. Part of the fun of an SRPG is the variety of units to use. However, this is killed when you realize that out of your 50 choices of classes, only 2-3 are ever worth giving a damn about. FFTA and Gunners/Assassins. Why use any other class? They own! FFT and Calculators. Same story.
b.) All strategies on approaching a battle should be at least viable. Not to say that everything works because it's so easy, but rather make it to where one specific strategy isn't needed to win every battle. What's the fun in having 50 classes when the game's designed to where certain battles mandate that you need this many of this unit with this setup, or you will lose, ALWAYS! It'd be like solving a jigsaw puzzle, but then having it tell you that you need to do it on Tuesdays only while it's raining on a full moon or it is unsolvable... and it will kill your family (somehow).

Also very true, but it's also very difficult to accomplish. Look at how long 1.3 took for it to just get out of the beta phase. It took an entire forum years to make 1.3 what it is today. Much less a handful of developers balancing something you are making from scratch. Even if you have an army of beta testers combing over your work, it's very difficult to see inequalities between units, especially at higher levels.  Time and budget constraints from the higher ups don't help things either.

Which is why I think it's a good idea to have FREE updates and an open dialogue with your audience. Your audience has the ability to really put your game to the test and find it's flaws and inequalities and bring them to your attention, far better than any beta testing can do. It also as a nice side effect of making the users feel closer to the game because they feel their opinions are being heard and thus crops a community, that ultimately nets you more sales. I remember I was reading an article from Penny Arcade. In this particular article, they actually condemned Team Fortress 2 for making their customers "unpaid beta testers".

I think TF2 was on to something about how to balance their game. They still don't have it on track because their dialogue with their customers isn't very open. Granted, their fanbase happens to be the Steam Forums, but for every 100 whiny loser, there is a intelligent, reasonable user that really sees an inadequacy that should be address, and in fact, provides a good solution. Unfortunately, all input, good or bad, is swept into the abyss of the forum, never to see the light of day. Which is why Demoman and Soldiers dominate TF2, especially at higher levels, while classes like the Pyro, the Spy, and the Engineer suffer badly at high level play.

But enough about my grievances with TF2. My point is, users could find flaws in games in months that it would have taken years for developers to find, or would have never found. Listen to your fanbase, but at the same time, don't make the process a democratic one, or god help you, a poll. The voice of the majority is not always right. Never forget that when it comes to making games.

3.) A good SRPG needs to give you as much customization as possible. When it comes to tweaking your units, gear, items, etc. the sky should be the limit. The more limits you impose on customization, the more you limit the viable strategies a player can preform. A pretty simple example with this one. FFT vs. FFTA. On FFT, you had a slot for a movement skill, and you could use it to compensate for classes with lackluster movement range, Jump, or even add another supporting effect, like Manafont. FFTA cuts this out, so all of a sudden now classes who have limited movement are suddenly screwed as now there's not a way to work around it. And you may say "Give them long range skills by using X Command." but then it's violating section B of rule 2 of making all strategies viable. Now your limited movement guy MUST have this command, or they are relegated to being trash.

Again, totally in agreement. That's what makes FFT one of the best games I've ever played. It's pushing 20 years and it's customization is still unmatched to this very day.

4.) A good SRPG needs to be challenging. Part of the reason you're playing an SRPG is because you're looking for a challenge. Nobody jumps into any strategy game hoping for a cakewalk. So you're worried about the newbies getting frustrated on battle X and not playing to the end? Then add an Easy mode where the enemy will bend over and hand you the sword which you will use to violate their poor butts. For everyone else, focus on making the regular mode a challenge. Unpatched FFT, Disgaea series, and Valkyria Chronicles are some examples to name a few who really fail on this. FFT is so easy you can solo run it. I don't take being able to solo run it as a testament to my skill. I take it as the game showing that it's so freakin' easy, one dude can trample every battle. Disgaea loses it's edge if you even venture into the Item World even a little, and Valkyria Chronicles has it's Alicia Rush, which it THE strategy for that game. SELVARIA SHOULDN'T BE BEATABLE ON TURN 1 FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

I really like the idea of having a challenging normal mode and an easy mode. I don't see this enough in RPGs. RPG's that would have been really good get really suffer because it's too easy, the Final Fantasy series comes to mind in particular. Okami is another game that would have benfitted from having more challenge.

Playing FFT 1.3, and especially against friends, the sandbag tactic gets annoying. Basically how they constantly revive dead units and it takes you forever to gain any ground as you keep having to kill off guys you just dealt with. Limiting revival is too restricting in my book, so I thought of a Morale system. How it would work is both sides start neutral, and based on the flow of battle, it can go for or against you. As you gain Morale, you can gain some favorable advantages for your team, like your skills becoming cheaper on MP to use. And if you can really boost it in your favor, each class has a form of super move which will pretty much devastate the opposing team, and make finishing up a battle easy. With this in place, let's say your enemy keeps trying the sandbag crap. Well they'll be losing a lot of Morale for pulling this, so you can let them keep at it because you know that when you've got enough Morale, you can rain hell upon them from which they'll be hard pressed to recover from. Same applies to yourself, though, so don't think you can just let people die carelessly. Morale would also be influenced by your actions in general throughout the fight. For example, causing abnormal stats, hitting criticals, leaving people in critical/dead too long, curing/buffing a lot, etc. Opens up new ideas to approach winning, and rewards smarter playing rather than rushing in with Chaos Blade.

The Moral system is a very interesting system that I think FFT would benefit from. One problem I have with the game is that the battles simply take too long, mostly because of the sandbag/reversal crap that goes on. Another thing I think would really help cut down on how long the battles are would be to have an in game speed up option. Even in Vanilla, battles would just drag on so long and drain me of the will to keep playing. Which is why I've never completed the Deep Dungeon in Vanilla (that is, picked up every item). I'm not too sure about the super attacks though. Initially, I was like, No. But as I go over it more, I don't think it would be so bad. If the game was made to accommodate super morale attacks, it would be like Ubers in TF2.

Also, been debating on the whole starting MP at 0 and slowly regenerating as opposed to starting at full MP with no regeneration. Pros of 0 MP is that you can't rush in with your best skills and wreck everything from the get go, but the cons is that you'll be having to wait to do all your cool stuff until you get everyone's MP up, which can make battles slow and tedious. I've considered something like FFT's charge time, but that's kinda what killed a lot of magic classes later on, and Cloud. Any good thoughts/ideas on this?

I think that's interesting idea, but yeah, that would make the game tedious and boring. Maybe that should the basis for an entirely new class instead? The problem with the charge system was that everyone was/is just too fast for it to be effective. You should try out the ASM'D demo in the New Patches section, which lowers everyone's speed and movement so that charge skills stay useful throughout the game. So maybe a charge addition wouldn't be so bad after all.

I had an idea on for FFT. What if we split the Speed stat? Currently, I think Speed is OP. It determines so much of what happens in FFT. Rather, I was thinking there should be two CTs/Speed stats, one for taking an action, and one for movement. I'm not too sure, though, it's hard for me to see all of the ramifications of doing this. What do you think?

Whew! That took me 5-6 hours to type out.

[PX_Timefordeath]

WELCOME TO FFH, WHERE ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE!!

[Eat_an_Octorok]

Definitely agree with this rule. Not just for SRPGs either. But technically, FFT doesn't fall flat on that either, at least when it comes to JP accumulation. The amount of JP you earn is based on level and Job level.

Yeah, the JP does increase with level, but it never gets to the point to where it's so easy that even end game you wouldn't mind recruiting a new unit, and training them up to your party's current status, as it's something that can be done in 15-20 minutes. And even if you're getting 99 JP per action, that still equals out to sitting on the map using Focus 51 times to accumulate at least 5000 JP, which is usually only enough to master some of the less demanding classes like Squire, and Knight. Compound that with 22 classes total and you'll be sitting there using Focus over 1,500 times to master every class. And that's for one unit! I'll be generous and subtract like 300 Focuses for spillover, but you're still at 1,200 Focuses!

When you talk about Specialist, you're talking about those guys you save in Item World that buff up your item? Sorry, I'm a little hazy about the details of Disgaea.

Yeah, I'm talking about those guys. Disgaea 2 probably does it the worst of the three, but still better than most SRPGs. The felonies system  (1 felony = 1% boost to EXP) of D2 was stupid and took too long. Made making post game characters like Laharl take way too long. D1 and D3 had Statisticians, which kinda worked the same way (1Statistician lvl = 1% boost in EXP) however you could transfer those to any item, as opposed to D2's limiting felonies to one character. Plus, D3 made it even better when they allowed Statisticians to stack past 1 and 2's 300% boost limit, allowing you to boost your EXP up to 9,600% with them alone, and you still had other methods to easily double your EXP gain some more. And the Armsmasters that 1 and 2 had made boosting your weapon skill level much easier as well.

Which is why I think it's a good idea to have FREE updates and an open dialogue with your audience.

I can give FFT a pass on this considering it came out at a time where this wasn't possible, but they're still in the dog house for their lazy porting of War of the Lions.

I really like the idea of having a challenging normal mode and an easy mode.

I'd also like the idea of having a New Game Plus feature, however, on your second run through, the game expects you to have all the skills, jobs, and levels you need, so the enemies are are scaled up to you level, have all their skills open to them, and have end game equipment from the start. Units can be rearranged for each map to accommodate this, like having FFT's 1st battle, Gariland City be filled with Lancers, Summoners, etc. as opposed to Squires.

I'm not too sure about the super attacks though. Initially, I was like, No. But as I go over it more, I don't think it would be so bad. If the game was made to accommodate super morale attacks, it would be like Ubers in TF2.

Designing a system that would accommodate them is definitely a part of the plan in incorporating them. I can also see having classes that can manipulate it easier that most units. Like a Dancer class dropping enemy morale, and a Bard class boosting ally morale, as opposed to them having their abilities to do either 1HP to all enemies, or heal all allies by 1HP, with everything else missing half the time. Other than those classes, though, there shouldn't be any shortcuts to using them quickly, and they're only usable when you meet the moral requirements. Plus, the enemy should also have access to these units to make it a level playing field instead of how FFT just never gave the enemy access to classes like Dancer, Bard, Mime, Onion Knight, Calculator, etc.

I had an idea on for FFT. What if we split the Speed stat? Currently, I think Speed is OP. It determines so much of what happens in FFT. Rather, I was thinking there should be two CTs/Speed stats, one for taking an action, and one for movement. I'm not too sure, though, it's hard for me to see all of the ramifications of doing this. What do you think?

Something would having to be done about the Dancer/Bard class then because they'd be broken. When I was playing 1.3, I picked up a Bard and Dancer Ch.1 through much grinding, and I found that with everyone's Speed so low at the point in the game, they could shoot off 2-3 dances/songs before another unit's turn even rolled around. I was healing around 50-60 HP between waiting one unit's turn to another, while dealing 40-50 damage in that same time frame. 1.3 Fort Zeakden was a joke because of this, as was any battle where I could hide in a corner, or run away. Small maps were trickier, but even vs. Wiegraf on 1.3 at the Bard could heal me enough to slight invincibility on high HP units, and the Dancer dropped their Power to the point where I was invincible. Once I was under total control, I had the Bard sing till I had insane Power, and swept everyone under the rug. 1.3 Dorter was won for me solely on Nameless Dance shooting off so quick and Frog/Sleep/Stopping everyone to the point of 0 retaliation.

It's a good idea for sure, but the Preforming mechanic would have to be removed. As it is, it would broken with everyone's low Speed, and increasing it's charge time would make it useless.

Removing charge time, and adding in other methods of cost/requirements for skills would make things easier to balance. Only having an MP requirement is too simple. Playing TCGs like Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh provide some good insight. Yu-Gi-Oh is an example of doing it wrong, where a cost system wasn't built into the game, and as a result makes everything much easier to be broken. Magic is an example of doing it right, to where you have a cost built in, and it's not as simple as "This one thing like MP determines the cost for everything" but instead has the five different mana colors. Plus, some cards are set up to where even if you can pay the cost, you still need requirements in order to actually use it. In the realm of SRPGs, powerful moves should be difficult to set up, but devastating to use to the point of game winning devastation. They have combos like infinite loops and 1 Turn Kills, but usually the set up for it is difficult (unless it's banned) however it's not made totally useless because it's still a strong enough combo to where you can tailor your strategy to pulling it off, and still win, as opposed to usual RPG mechanics where super awesome moves have insane requirements but not enough payoff to make them worth using. This way, you could have a situation where a unit in your team is your game winner, and the other members are built to support this one unit setting up this game winning strategy. Of course your weakness would be that you have a single point of failure in that if your game winner goes down, your strategy falls apart. Anything that slows down/stops your setup can also make your strategy fall apart. Tactics like this should be high risk, high reward though, and certain classes should have options to specifically counter such tricks.

WELCOME TO FFH, WHERE ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE!!

Then why hasn't FFT gotten a proper, real sequel yet?  

[Dome]

/Off topic
I <3 your avatar
Advance wars rulez

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

One points 2 and 3 I agree.  These are what makes or breaks a game.  The freedom to experience the story and gameplay however you want is what sets gaming apart from novels, plays, and movies.  In an rpg or srpg, no strategy should work all the time, the player should be able to use several different strategies to win any battle, and - if at all possible - there shouldn't be any strategy the player can use that can't also be used against him.

[Eat_an_Octorok]

The freedom to experience the story and gameplay however you want is what sets gaming apart from novels, plays, and movies.

Seconding that statement.

/Off topic
I <3 your avatar
Advance wars rulez

I'm glad someone else likes Advance Wars. Fire Emblem seems to get all the love. Also, I applaud you for Weegee.

[Dome]

/Off topic
I <3 your avatar
Advance wars rulez

I'm glad someone else likes Advance Wars. Fire Emblem seems to get all the love. Also, I applaud you for Weegee.

I <3 both, they are awesome in their own way (Even if the last advance wars wasn't THAT awesome...WHY DID YOU REMOVE THE UC!!!! I WANT OLAF BACK!!!!)
However, yeah, Weegee is awesome, and won't steal your soul

[SolidSnakeDog]

I actually have all the advance wars series.
There all quite good.
Too bad there completely changed the characters in the last one...i know there wanted some changes but still.
The Dual one focuses too much on CO powers. (Trick to get 3 turns in 1 turn using some COs...game broken. At if u given Ramza Sword skills/teleport 2/no charge and boss only skills/insane growth in FFT...game broken!
The last one was balanced at less but sigh...i dont get the same feeling form it. (And so few character to chose form.)

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Why the hell does Nell keep getting uglier?

I was thinking last night, "There are too many ways to nerf magic in FFT... should I remove some redundancy?"
Some ideas:
1.  Silence.  Possibly change it to Palsy?  That is, flag all the Physical abilities and Attack with silence and change it's name to palsy.
2.  Do something with reflect...  But no one ever uses it.
3.  Faith.  There's a hack that removes Target Faith from faith based formula. That nerfs Innocence/Low Faith as a defensive tactic.
4.  Berserk.  Allow control of character, keep the boost to attack damage, but disallow all abilites except Attack?  Change name to Fury?  Rage?
5.  Change Faith to Risk?  0 Risk = 100% Damage given and received, and 100% Hit Rate and Evasion.  100 Risk = 1000% Damage given and received, and 0% Hit Rate and Evasion.

[LastingDawn]

Why the hell does Nell keep getting uglier?

I was thinking last night, "There are too many ways to nerf magic in FFT... should I remove some redundancy?"
Some ideas:
1.  Silence.  Possibly change it to Palsy?  That is, flag all the Physical abilities and Attack with silence and change it's name to palsy.
2.  Do something with reflect...  But no one ever uses it.
3.  Faith.  There's a hack that removes Target Faith from faith based formula. That nerfs Innocence/Low Faith as a defensive tactic.
4.  Berserk.  Allow control of character, keep the boost to attack damage, but disallow all abilites except Attack?  Change name to Fury?  Rage?
5.  Change Faith to Risk?  0 Risk = 100% Damage given and received, and 100% Hit Rate and Evasion.  100 Risk = 1000% Damage given and received, and 0% Hit Rate and Evasion.

1. That's basically what Mercenaries does, Silence was changed to Addle, which does... basically that. Except still lets you attack.

2. Reflect in Mercenaries is extremely powerful, but its only available to a single class that has it (and thanks to Zodiac's hack will take the Reflect R/S/M for other classes to use)

3.Faith, hmm... very nice use! I like that alot.

4. That can be done with Zodiac's new hack and I have to say I like that idea A lot! Very nice!

5. Risk? Personally I would change Brave to Risk... though how do you plan to make that work? It seems nearly out of possibility, to create a hack of such magnitude. I think Zodiac's Fury hack exemplifies this a little better. Also with FDC's new findings we can link Supports to anything we so desire in the basic stats.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Why the hell does Nell keep getting uglier?

I was thinking last night, "There are too many ways to nerf magic in FFT... should I remove some redundancy?"
Some ideas:
1.  Silence.  Possibly change it to Palsy?  That is, flag all the Physical abilities and Attack with silence and change it's name to palsy.
2.  Do something with reflect...  But no one ever uses it.
3.  Faith.  There's a hack that removes Target Faith from faith based formula. That nerfs Innocence/Low Faith as a defensive tactic.
4.  Berserk.  Allow control of character, keep the boost to attack damage, but disallow all abilites except Attack?  Change name to Fury?  Rage?
5.  Change Faith to Risk?  0 Risk = 100% Damage given and received, and 100% Hit Rate and Evasion.  100 Risk = 1000% Damage given and received, and 0% Hit Rate and Evasion.

1. That's basically what Mercenaries does, Silence was changed to Addle, which does... basically that. Except still lets you attack.

2. Reflect in Mercenaries is extremely powerful, but its only available to a single class that has it (and thanks to Zodiac's hack will take the Reflect R/S/M for other classes to use)

3.Faith, hmm... very nice use! I like that alot.

4. That can be done with Zodiac's new hack and I have to say I like that idea A lot! Very nice!

5. Risk? Personally I would change Brave to Risk... though how do you plan to make that work? It seems nearly out of possibility, to create a hack of such magnitude. I think Zodiac's Fury hack exemplifies this a little better. Also with FDC's new findings we can link Supports to anything we so desire in the basic stats.

4.  Do you mean his hack that changes Brave into Fury?  I was talking about the Berserk status effect.

5.  Who's FDC?  Can you link to the thread you're talking about?

EDIT

About splitting the Speed stat.  Split it into a Physical Speed, linked to PA, which determines Move CT; and a Mental Speed, linked to MA, which determines Act CT.  So the SP stat would still be intact, and it would still influence your Move and Act CTs.

Move CT
1 clocktick = (SP+PA)/2

Act CT
1 clocktick = (SP+PA)/2

There are some problems with it.  You need to change a lot of stuff so that PA Classes don't just play keep away and MA classes aren't overpowered, and a  lot of formulas need adjusting if every class has rebalanced stats.

[LastingDawn]

Why the hell does Nell keep getting uglier?

I was thinking last night, "There are too many ways to nerf magic in FFT... should I remove some redundancy?"
Some ideas:
1.  Silence.  Possibly change it to Palsy?  That is, flag all the Physical abilities and Attack with silence and change it's name to palsy.
2.  Do something with reflect...  But no one ever uses it.
3.  Faith.  There's a hack that removes Target Faith from faith based formula. That nerfs Innocence/Low Faith as a defensive tactic.
4.  Berserk.  Allow control of character, keep the boost to attack damage, but disallow all abilites except Attack?  Change name to Fury?  Rage?
5.  Change Faith to Risk?  0 Risk = 100% Damage given and received, and 100% Hit Rate and Evasion.  100 Risk = 1000% Damage given and received, and 0% Hit Rate and Evasion.

1. That's basically what Mercenaries does, Silence was changed to Addle, which does... basically that. Except still lets you attack.

2. Reflect in Mercenaries is extremely powerful, but its only available to a single class that has it (and thanks to Zodiac's hack will take the Reflect R/S/M for other classes to use)

3.Faith, hmm... very nice use! I like that alot.

4. That can be done with Zodiac's new hack and I have to say I like that idea A lot! Very nice!

5. Risk? Personally I would change Brave to Risk... though how do you plan to make that work? It seems nearly out of possibility, to create a hack of such magnitude. I think Zodiac's Fury hack exemplifies this a little better. Also with FDC's new findings we can link Supports to anything we so desire in the basic stats.

4.  Do you mean his hack that changes Brave into Fury?  I was talking about the Berserk status effect.

5.  Who's FDC?  Can you link to the thread you're talking about?

4. Not quite... Zodiac has released a Revolutionary new tool with very little fanfare (because its in beta testing) which will (eventually I hope) allow you to Forbid skills based on the status effect you are afflicted with (and much, much more!)

5. viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5132 There's thre thread, it was unfortunately ignored but his work is probably second only to Zodiac, even passing Razele by this point.

[Eat_an_Octorok]

In regards to speed. An idea I had was that combat is divided into turns, and everyone goes once at least each turn, unless prevented from doing so, however, Speed would determine the order in which every unit would go for that turn. For example:

Knight has 7 SPD
Archer has 8 SPD
Ninja has 9 SPD

Then the order is Ninja acts 1st, then Archer, then Knight. Then it's moved to turn 2, and the order repeats again.

Also, in regards to your ideas on the change to Berserk to Fury and Brave/Faith to Risk.  That would be WAY too easy to exploit. Get a high Risk character, cast Fury on them, and have them wail on everything on the field with a long range weapon. At 1000% damage bonus, even an attack doing 90 damage is lethal to all but an iron wall character, and they'd still be nearly dead. With Fury on them, I can't see anything surviving with an even bigger boost. Even at a measly 50% increase, the Fury/High Risk combo would dominate all tactics. Imagine a Dancer with high Risk! Hide in a corner, and smack everyone on the map for insane damage. And again, even at just a 50% increase, that still totals out to a lot of hurt. And heck, even a low Risk Dancer would have such ridiculous hit, that her Dances would rarely miss the target, making Nameless Dance godly.

Inverting opposite values like you're doing with the Risk idea will not instantly create balance. For example, a loss in defense/offense will not amount to balance just because you give the same bonus to the opposite. The numbers might seem that way, but numbers don't tell everything. Using Advance Wars as an example, a character who's D2D gave 80% offense, 120% defense would be considered more powerful than a character who gave 120% offense with 80% defense. Why? Think big picture. With 120/80, you have more power to break though defenses. That's your big perk. With 80/120, you have the power to hold a better defense. That means you hold choke points easier, you're harder to force out of strategic locations, you're harder to stop from capturing, you're harder to stop spam tactics against, you get more bang for your buck from units because they'll survive more. And even your supposed "downside" of doing less damage is false. An 80/120 guy will put out more damage than a guy with 120/80 solely for the fact that he'll survive longer to do it. So an 80/120 guy actually has the same perk that a 120/80 guy has, and more!

Bringing this into FFT's perspective, FFT favors an offensive approach by default. When you're playing 1.3, what's the main thing that makes a lot of the battles harder? AI has more offense. When you want to get stronger to take on the tougher enemies, what do you do? Get a better offense. Since you have no Defense stat in FFT, playing offensively is always favored. It's more about who can hit who first with what to kill them. That's why Speed is so important, and that's why Two Swords is THE skill of the game, barring Math Skill, which is the ultimate offense. Any changes you make that will further offense's advantage over defense is just going to make FFT more broken. Not only that but FFT also favors physical offense by default. Even with 1.3's fixes, physical users still have the upper hand. Without Math Skill, magic can't match up to Two Swords. You'd need a Doublecast ability to even tip the scales for magic, but it would still have to charge, and magic is still screwed over by units who have low faith, which is FFT's equivalent to Magic Defense. Magic actually has a stat that helps resist it, where as physical doesn't. Plus, good physical attacks aren't tied to a skill, they're tied to your weapon, and all you need to do to utilize your weapon is chose the Attack command, which has no cost, works faster, and averages more damage overall.

And bringing it all back to the Risk idea again. So your dude's Risk is so high that he has a 1000% damage dealt/received bonus/penalty. Doesn't matter. He can 1 shot anything he hits with any move. If he uses an AoA move, he can potentially 1 shot even more than one unit. Killing him will always equal a -1 penalty to the unit's controller, but when he is on the offense, he also guarantees a +1 to his controller, BUT he can also net up to a +5, depending on how many units he hits in his turn. Not only that, but team him up with a 0 Risk user as he's got 100% Hit/Evade. Stack low Risk with defensive oriented gear/abilities and give him commands with pure support, mainly revival. 0 Risk unit's focus is to keep reviving/buffing high Risk guy, and let high Risk guy wreck the field. It's easy enough to revive high Risk guy, and he only needs 1 turn and 1 HP to lay down the hurt. If you get one Auto-Life on high Risk guy, he's GOING to bring someone down. You can't screw with his dead body, and he's not reviving till his turn comes around, which means he's going to kill someone. And again, even if you tone down the Risk factor to a 50% increase, this strategy will still be the most favorable one.

Focus on making defense better, rather than offense. FFT already did that for you. You don't need to compound it.

[Xifanie]

May I suggest a hack that sets the unit's CT to 0 once it recovers from death?

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

May I suggest a hack that sets the unit's CT to 0 once it recovers from death?

In vanilla terms, when a character is revived, or in terms of the KO not permanent idea mentioned above?

And you fucking destroyed my risk idea!  Wah wah wahahaha.

Here's another one.  Difficulty isn't achieved by giving the enemy higher stats/stronger equipment/more powerful abilities, but by allowing them a greater range of useful options and making them smarter and less predictable.  Anyone can give Miluda Sword Skills, but a real hacker makes it so she doesn't need super powers to kick your ass.

Agree or disagree?

One last thing:  I'm playing the original starcraft before I buy the new one, and I love the Zerg - except when I'm fighting advanced Protoss... fucking Carriers!  Anyways, how useful would some sort of infest ability be, like a functional Morbol Germ?  Or if you had something like a Queen's Spawn Broodling ability?

EDIT

More about risk.

I only intended to remove Faith... and even then, I'm not really removing Faith, I'm just making it apply to every action and removing some of the bonuses for high Faith, like improved hit rate, while keeping some of the penalties for high Faith, like high damage taken and lowered evasion for the character with high Faith.

This is just like Vagrant story Risk.  At 100 Risk, you do more damage, but you take more damage, you can't hit anything, and everything can hit you.  Your example, give a 100 Risk characer a long range weapon wouldn't work because he wouldn't hit anything, even with Concentrate, because all Hit Rates and inflict rates take Risk into account, and at 100 Risk all hit rates for your character are multiplied by 0.  He wouldn't be invincible because his evasion would also be multiplied by 0.  And as for the 0 Risk support character who revives him, we can always set Risk to drop to 0 when a unit is killed, and at 0 Risk your support character would just take Normal damage, deal Normal damage, and have normal hit rates and evade rates.

I'm sorry if I didn't explain everything the way I see it in my head.

What if everyone has 0 Risk, and permanent Risk alteration is disabled, so you start every battle with 0 Risk?

Create two new flags for every ability, and link Brave Up to one flag and Faith Up to the other.

Fix the bug/oversight that disallows multiple reaction abilities.

Change Brave Up so it reduces Faith by 1 point every time it's triggered.

Change Faith Up so it increases Faith by 1 point every time it's triggered.

Remove Faith from every formula where it's inherent.

Call Faith Risk.

Call Brave UP Risk Down.

Call Faith UP Risk Up.

Flag all abilities so they trigger either Risk Up or Risk Down.

[Eat_an_Octorok]

In vanilla terms, when a character is revived, or in terms of the KO not permanent idea mentioned above?

I'm guessing in general, as if it were only just during Auto-Life, it would still be exploitable. Just revive them when their CT is almost full.

Here's another one. Difficulty isn't achieved by giving the enemy higher stats/stronger equipment/more powerful abilities, but by allowing them a greater range of useful options and making them smarter and less predictable. Anyone can give Miluda Sword Skills, but a real hacker makes it so she doesn't need super powers to kick your ass.

That is true. But I don't know a whole lot about programming AI, so I'm not sure how hard it is to fix the AI's issues. Plus, AI can never be unpredictable, because they're programmed to follow a certain pattern, and trigger certain actions based on other actions.

One last thing: I'm playing the original starcraft before I buy the new one, and I love the Zerg - except when I'm fighting advanced Protoss... fucking Carriers! Anyways, how useful would some sort of infest ability be, like a functional Morbol Germ? Or if you had something like a Queen's Spawn Broodling ability?

Taking away a unit from your opponent automatically gives you a +1 and them a -1. Charm can be devastating enough. Actually being able to control the unit would be insane. Adding an extra unit to your side of the field can amount to the same thing. Starcraft can work a bit differently because you produce units, rather than sending out a set number. If you loose some guys in Starcraft, just produce new ones. FFT doesn't have that option. You have to work with what you sent in. The strategies and moves a production strategy game like Starcraft has vs. a non-production game like FFT are very different.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Taking away a unit from your opponent automatically gives you a +1 and them a -1. Charm can be devastating enough. Actually being able to control the unit would be insane. Adding an extra unit to your side of the field can amount to the same thing. Starcraft can work a bit differently because you produce units, rather than sending out a set number. If you loose some guys in Starcraft, just produce new ones. FFT doesn't have that option. You have to work with what you sent in. The strategies and moves a production strategy game like Starcraft has vs. a non-production game like FFT are very different.

Imagine you and your buddies are walking through Dolbodar Swamp, and you spy a little creature squatting in the bushes.  You shrug and decide to poach it.  As you approach, it launches a barb at the wizard to your left.  Within seconds, the wizard explodes, and in his place are two more of the little creatures.

What do you do now?

It's sort of like the auto-reset battles in 1.3, except you could maybe win, and get some kind of reward for doing so.

[Dokurider]

In regards to speed. An idea I had was that combat is divided into turns, and everyone goes once at least each turn, unless prevented from doing so, however, Speed would determine the order in which every unit would go for that turn. For example:

Knight has 7 SPD
Archer has 8 SPD
Ninja has 9 SPD

Then the order is Ninja acts 1st, then Archer, then Knight. Then it's moved to turn 2, and the order repeats again.

I don't really like this as it really waters downs the combat. I really like FFT's turn system. I just don't like how Speed rules everything. If speed was split into 2 stats, traditionally slower classes wouldn't be so left behind in the dust.

Here's another one. Difficulty isn't achieved by giving the enemy higher stats/stronger equipment/more powerful abilities, but by allowing them a greater range of useful options and making them smarter and less predictable. Anyone can give Miluda Sword Skills, but a real hacker makes it so she doesn't need super powers to kick your ass.

That would be wonderful.

[Eat_an_Octorok]

Your example, give a 100 Risk characer a long range weapon wouldn't work because he wouldn't hit anything, even with Concentrate, because all Hit Rates and inflict rates take Risk into account, and at 100 Risk all hit rates for your character are multiplied by 0.

If Risk overrides Concentrate, then that kinda kills the point of Concentrate. Also, guns don't miss, and have the highest attacking range. Dash doesn't miss either. Geomancy also never misses. Draw Out never misses. There are plenty of ways around it. You'd be making a lot of extra work incorporating Risk in.

He wouldn't be invincible because his evasion would also be multiplied by 0.

The high Risk unit was never meant to be invincible. He's expected to die. It's just that dying doesn't matter to him, as revival is easy enough.

And as for the 0 Risk support character who revives him, we can always set Risk to drop to 0 when a unit is killed, and at 0 Risk your support character would just take Normal damage, deal Normal damage, and have normal hit rates and evade rates.

The whole point of the 0 Risk support unit was the fact that he has normal damage output/intake, not so much the hit/evade part. Plus, he'd want to keep his Risk 0 so he's not an easy target to kill. At 0 Risk, you'd have the least amount of damage intake, which is exactly what he wants. He's not looking to deal damage. That's what high Risk guy is for. The hit/evade part was just a nice addition, but that wasn't the key to the strategy.

What if everyone has 0 Risk, and permanent Risk alteration is disabled, so you start every battle with 0 Risk?

Change Brave Up so it reduces Faith by 1 point every time it's triggered.

Change Faith Up so it increases Faith by 1 point every time it's triggered.

Most battles won't last long enough to where a 1 point increase/decrease will amount to anything. Especially if everyone starts at 0 at the beginning, and they go to 0 if they die. Plus, I'd hate to sit through Brave/Faith Up after every action...

Imagine you and your buddies are walking through Dolbodar Swamp, and you spy a little creature squatting in the bushes. You shrug and decide to poach it. As you approach, it launches a barb at the wizard to your left. Within seconds, the wizard explodes, and in his place are two more of the little creatures.

What do you do now?

It's sort of like the auto-reset battles in 1.3, except you could maybe win, and get some kind of reward for doing so.

In a case like that, you'd get a -1, and the enemy gets a +2, which is even more unfair. Plus, you only have 5 units to work with and you just got one snatched from you, and had 2 more added against you. That's just annoying, not challenging.

And finally, even with the Risk system added in, physical attacks still have the advantage over magic. Yeah, you removed Faith from the equation, but magic still doesn't have Doublecast, still has to charge, and still costs MP, where as the best physical skills don't.

Edit: (SO MUCH QUOTING!!)

I don't really like this as it really waters downs the combat. I really like FFT's turn system. I just don't like how Speed rules everything. If speed was split into 2 stats, traditionally slower classes wouldn't be so left behind in the dust.

Without a system like this set up, Speed really does rule everything. It's hard to change the general fact that a unit with higher Speed will have their turn come quicker than someone with lower Speed.