anyone else think that summons are just plain dumb in most FF games? they are only occasionally useful, use too much mp, and take too much time even if there are shorter animations available
>NES/SNES era
not that bad because they take as long as any other special move but none of them are that good. obviously in VI you need them to learn magic but that has nothing to do with using them to attack
>FFVII
knights of the round is literally the only useful summon because it's one of the most damaging moves. takes way too fricking long though
>FFVIII
once again you need them to learn abilities but GFs are completely outclassed by limit breaks
>FFIX
completely useless except for phoenix
>FFX
more interesting, but no reason to use them except when you have to obviously. yojimbo spam is sort of useful
>FFXII
completely useless
>FFXIII
completely useless
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FFX aeons were useful before endgame because they were immune to status and could take big hits you were underleveled for (if doing a low level game)
FFXII espers would be perfect if they filled the Guest slot instead of taking two party members away. But they are MUCH better in the SFF mod that gives you direct control over them and auto-provoke
Type 0 has a good system.
They're just glorified mid tier black magic spells in a series where offensive magic is 90% garbage.
But we all know that FF is all about the spectacle anyways, nobody plays that shit for the horrendous gameplay
>Type 0 has a good system.
>Literally "EIDOLON: have a nice day my man": the system
>Good
Schoolgirl Shiva skating around was cute and that was it, you'll still be chaining dodges and potshot with crits with Ace/Cater/King if you want to be efficient
yall have a point that summons are mainly just for fun. obviously in FF games you can pretty much do what you want and still win the game. the thing is though, rarely is a summon even cool or fun to watch more than once
>muh efficiency
Have you tried having fun?
Final Attack + Phoenix was op in FF7. Opinion discarded.
Mediocre bait
not bait it's my honest opinion. i'd love to hear what you think though i started this thread for discussion purposes
>dying in a game as easy as FF7
interesting how your first two examples both involvednot playing the game the normal way
Hey man, I didn't know I had to like two seconds to pick an action before everyone died.
>interesting how your first two examples both involvednot playing the game the normal way
Final Fantasy games are easy as hell, using good abilities only matters when you're adhering to some special challenge.
>not bait it's my honest opinion. i'd love to hear what you think though i started this thread for discussion purposes
You're looking at things from purely an endgame perspective. Summons have a lot of use and viability up until you start min/maxing and even then there's still some use for them in most games.
>it's my honest opinion
You know what they say
The problem i see you have with them is that their long animations bother you, of course you can finish the game without them but that doesn't mean they aren't useful, since in general they are a strong attack
>FFVII
There are many ways to do damage but magic here has limited shots, so its a useful source of damage
>FFVIII
Same as before
>FFIX
I had both summoners for my party doing solid damage
>FFX
this
And also they are a sponge for damage for hard bosses, you can set them to fight first then have your party to fight
At high levels they one shot everything
They're cool even when they're just bigger black mage spells. But the best implementation of summons is in FFXI.
summons are decent in ff4 because you get access to elements like water and earth, and some of the summons you get early on will massively outdamage other spells you have available at that time. same situation in ff5. never used them in 6 so idk about that one.
ff7's summons are mostly useless but hades can be used to cheese ruby weapon at least. iirc the later versions of bahamut also do decent damage.
ff9's summons are NOT useless. they're a magic damage option for when you don't have vivi or if you're just not using him.
ff10's summons are cool as hell even if they're unnecessary, they're pretty well-developed so they're fun to use. shame most boss fights and post-game content just invalidates them.
>ff12
i'll give you that but that's just a symptom of a bigger problem, that being ff12 is an actual dogshit game
>ff13
i remember using them a bit but never feeling like they were necessary. iirc there were some fights you could cheese using hope's summon.
overall yeah they're mostly a flavor thing but the series as a whole is easy enough that the poor balance is never enough of an issue to stop you from using whatever you like, and if you like summons, they're cool.
The better summons in 6 were utility or support, most of the offensive ones were too expensive to use on mobs but have less power on single enemies than regular magic
They're really underwhelming for how much the story pushes them
It doesn’t really push summons. It pushes materia, but using them to actually summon espers is an afterthought compared to the stat improvements or magic learning.
Most of the time summons are unbalanced because other classes are unbalanced. In general you have little access to water, earth, air, holy, dark elements besides summoner.
IMGO Summoners are supposed to be generalist power mages, who can heal, revive, de/buff, remove de/buffs, absorb hp, absorb mp, do percentage damage, and hit every elemental weakness... but they can only do it at huge MP cost and over a large AoE.
Consider the context too:
>Black mages get 6 or 7 elements with 3 spells each (all but holy); plus power mage stats.
>White mages get the 3 holy elemental spells, 3 cures, de/buffs, and de/buff removers; plus speed mage stats.
>Time Mage is as normal just with 3 demi/gravity spells; plus power mage stats.
>Green Mage gets drain, osmose, all the debuffs time mage doesn't get, all the buffs white mage doesn't get, and maybe 3 dark element spells if you don't put them on black mage; plus speed mage stats.
>Red Mage gets all the minor de/buffs, minor de/buff removers, level 1 elemental/cure/demi spells, drain, osmose, and balanced stats.
>Blue Mage gets a bunch of weird shit that somehow covers all the bases, and a more melee focused build than the Red Mage.
So the Summoner can do all the things the other mages can do, just way expensive and powerful. You want to keep him in the back spamming utility mage weapons that proc spells, heal allies, or whatever, until you're in big trouble and it's time to nuke the enemy formation.
>FF6
Summons could have but mostly failed to fill a niche of useful one time spells for all the people who can't use magic. They should have had espers grant use of the spells they offer, but not teach them; have them grant 5 or 6 spells per esper and let everyone equip 2 of them. Their stat gains should be more varied, and you need a way to redo them if you frick them up.
Do that and:
* Limit actual magic learning to Terra, Celes, Relm, Strago.
* Make Blue Magic, Blitz, SwdTech, Runic, Rage, Dance, and Sketch suck less.
* Make all the Tools useful all the way to end game without being OP.
* Make Morph easier to use and more balanced.
* Give Shadow more useful things to Throw.
* Have some way to improve Gogo's stats.
* Make summoned monster spells cover every niche and consistently useful from start to finish.
* Track esper stat gains separately from character levels somehow.
... and you have a much more balanced game.
>FF7
Summons would be better if they weren't all outclassed by KOTR, and if the beginner ones scaled better to end game. I have the same complaints about summons not hitting all the elements and various effects.
>FF8
I don't have enough time to talk about its problems.
>FF9
Summons aren't bad, other than all but 3 or 4 being useless by end game. Same scaling issues.
>FF12
Summons would be way better if they were a customizable pet you could summon in exchange for your summoner's magic usage (and they didn't have an expiration date), instead of replacing the rest of your party.
>FFT
They almost got Summons right, but the odd skill distribution and moronic stat growths for mages fricked everything up.
>FFTA
Somewhat better than FFT, but why use a Summoner when you can use an Assassin?
FFT Summons aren't so great, they have super long charge times even with Swiftness.
That's a major issue too, especially the more powerful ones. FFT Summons should all have charge times between Fire 2 and Fire 3, but closer to Fire 2. All spells in general should be at least one step faster.
FFT summons are great if you know what you are doing. Though it's true you don't need more than a few (ramuh, odin, clops, maybe ifrit and shiva and a healing one. And having a command set with both damage and healing is useful). Golem is good too.
The issue with FFT is that anything above tier 2 spells isn't worth it.
Just allowing you to control Gau when he emulated a monster would have made it great. You'd just change his action list to the monster's.
Gau has issues.
Lack of control and limited skills after selecting a monster are big ones, but the biggest is lack of informative menus for his skills. Especially battle menus. If you simply made the menus tell you everything about a form quickly and succinctly, gave each form 4 skills instead of 2, and let you control Gau then he would be probably the most useful character in the game barring 2x ultima for 2 mp and offering + genji glove + illumina + atma weapon.
Obviously if you rebalance the OP monster forms, reorder them in enemy ID order, let the player sort the menu various ways on the fly, and rebalance the really op shit I mentioned above Gau remains really flexible if you put the time in.
The issue with summons in FF isn't balance, it's the usual design issue of overlapping functions, because at their core summons are, for most of the series, glorified black magic spells, in a series where non support magic is weak 99% of the time because again, it overlaps in function with normal attacks or skills.
Why should anyone bother watching minute long animations for some generic AoE fire/water/wind whatever spell when generic tier 3 spells do the same thing at a fraction of the time, or worse, elemental weapons that do the same thing, often at no cost whatsoever?
They tried to correct this in some games, like FFX, where summons were more than a longer cutscene for a spell, but then they kept falling into the same pitfall by making summons some glorified party member that has mostly the same exact functions as a party member but with lower firepower in most scenarios, or other problems depending on the entry.
FF's issue isn't really balance, it's that nobody thinks things through so they end up with layers upon layers of overlapping functions that end up cannibalizing themselves, this is what actually leads to bad balance, it's that the the functions themselves are badly balanced, it's just that:
a) there's too many ways to do the same exact thing
b) there's not enough mechanical complexity so functions that are potentially different on paper end up being the same as another one in practice because the games are just too simple
c) FF is all about the spectacle more than anything so nobody really bothers in the first place
We can spend hours analyzing every single entry and you can always chalk it up to the usual issues.
If one thing is objectively better than another in every circumstance, that's a balance issue. Overlapping functions is necessary in a party based game with unique classes. Do you want to play a game with one healer, one elemental attacker, one debuffer, one buffer, and so on? The key to balance is varying *how* they fill their roles, which determines the circumstances in which they're useful.
You seem to be responding to what the original games are rather than my proposed modifications to them. If you can't read what I write, rather than what you think I wrote (or just ignore what I wrote altogether and read off a script in your head) then of what use is your input?
Minute long animations are only an issue - among the games I mentioned - in the PS1 era games. I agree that they should be sped up, but the core issue is imbalance. That imbalance comes from some things being objectively more useful than others in many - or all - circumstances. Make some less useful, and others more useful, and everything evens out while retaining flavor.
>Overlapping functions is necessary in a party based game with unique classes.
If anything that's precisely what you want to avoid, if anybody can do anything in the exact same way then what's even the point of having different classes?
Not to mention this is not an issue of class based FFs at all, it's a general issue, and not strictly related to summons either.
FF8 is perhaps the most glaring example of bad summons in the series and it's not a class based system, FFT is strictly class based and it isn't much better, same with FF5, or 4, but 4 kinda gets away with it because you don't really get to choose your party so Rydia doesn't really feel that useless as there's little overlap in her functions, even though the various remasters or remakes do have that issue.
>You seem to be responding to what the original games are rather than my proposed modifications to them
Because your proposed modifications don't fix anything on top of being extremely vague, I don't give a shit about you finding anything of use in my input, just saying you're off the mark.
All it would take to make summons, or anything in FF really, suck less would be to add a tiny bit of mechanical complexity, that alone would go a long way.
Say you want to make Ifrit worth your while, give him something more than just different flavours of fire damage, make Hellfire debuff physical or magical defense for instance, that already makes it a bit more interesting to use even if damage wise you want to keeps it inferior to other options.
Add proper formation mechanics and different types of AoE, say you've got enemies with a ice weakness in a row formation, then you make something like Shiva's Diamond Dust hit through a row based AoE which hits harder than other types of AoE, which could be given to things like Blizzaga, make it a full field AoE that is weaker than Diamond Dust but also hits indiscriminately so both have their uses depending on enemy formations, it's really that simple.
>If anything that's precisely what you want to avoid, if anybody can do anything in the exact same way then what's even the point of having different classes?
That's the opposite of what I said you fricking moron. Did you even read my reply? Here, I'll repost it for you:
>The key to balance is varying *how* they fill their roles, which determines the circumstances in which they're useful.
>Because your proposed modifications don't fix anything on top of being extremely vague, I don't give a shit about you finding anything of use in my input, just saying you're off the mark.
You clearly didn't read a fricking thing I wrote, and if you read it you didn't understand it. If you can't read a goddamn sentence, why on Earth would I ever listen to your opinion?
>Did you even read my reply?
Yeah, and you didn't mention anything of value outside of vague "just balance it well bro" statements that go nowhere, then you get mad at people who actually elaborate on things.
And no, you want to avoid overlap as much as possible when it comes to class systems, no ifs or buts, no coping with different stat ceilings, we all know how that ends up, it ends up in trap options you'd never use because somebody else can do the same exact thing but better due to sheer statistical advantage, rendering the entire point of classes useless, something FF historically always suffered from.
You mentioned Green Mages before, those are possibly one of the worst offenders in terms of class bloating, because they exist for no reason other than filler, stealing a select couple of functions from white mages and putting it into another container isn't a good move, it doesn't balance anything, it only adds tedium.
The same was true for Time Mages back in the days and a lot of different classes, even FF1 Red Mages would have sucked balls were it not for the INT bug, most of it is filler that doesn't add anything of value to any of the games in which they're featured, for example nobody bothers with rangers in FF5 because the only thing they're good for is Rapid Fire, which is better used on other classes, once you unlock a Calculator in FFT you have no reason to bother with other casters because you have access to all the spells but with immensely better casting conditions, what was the point of having all those other classes then? I don't think even the designers knew.
Take FFTA2, which added a shitload of new worthless classes by stealing tools from other old classes, making those old classes worse for no reason and those new classes just a meh package of things old classes had as a full kit, who the frick things FFTA2 green mages were a good idea? It's just there as grind fodder, nothing more.
>Why use the Knight then?
First off nobody's saying every summon should have things like stat debuffs as secondary effects, it was just an example of possible options, in general you'd want summons to be more than damage sticks in a series where everyone and their mother can easily be a damage stick and the only thing that matters is a raw damage race against helpless fodder.
Secondly, Knights can offer different things, not the same stat debuffs for instance, or they can offer the same stat debuffs but with different caveats, such as not needing to spend MPs on those, you can even do something similar as your stat based proprosal and have them debuff single targets with the DEX as main stat for success and debuff potency instead of, say, INT for a caster, so if you have a character with high DEX that is a knight he can still be a competent single target debuffer as a knight but not as a summoner, granted you're not committing the usual FF mistake of making stat sheets tied to classes instead of the character.
Lastly, you can also tie some actual roleplaying elements to these classes, as in you need a certain character to have a certain set of non stat related requisites to a be a Knight or a summoner, as in he needs to make certain choices that lead him to unlock the class and not just grind the Squire class to level 3, or be able to make certain choices that aren't available to other classes, but then again this is FF so it would never do something like that.
Or really just play better games because there's no point in trying to salvage a series such as this which has no purpose other than catering to casuals who really don't care about gameplay, every sort of fix you can find about these games is just band-aid tier and doesn't solve much at all, they're just fundamentally unsound systems with next to no thought put into anything, it's honestly all just wasted breath.
I don't think that's very fair to FF as a series, though I understand your point of view. Playing through them many of the mechanics are dated, but keep in mind that even by the time of FFVI's release it went out the gate in 94. Six games in 7 years, and they made many strides and evolutions with varying battle systems. I'd argue their game design didn't truly stagnate until X, and the series as a whole has a good blend of plot and gameplay. Sure it's not as intricately fine-tuned as other JRPGs, but it was the perfect blend and was a flagship because of how cutting edge it was in many regards.
I mean, how many series do you get where each entry radically changes much of its battle system? You'll see it occasionally where things are changed a la BoF III and then tinkered with in IV, but it's rare that you get something where it jumps from the job system of V to the magicite system of VI.
>Or really just play better games
From what I can see ITT your ideas are worse than what Final Fantasy already does. Looks like hiding behind FF being for casuals to hope nobody notices your inability to make any other good points. If you're a moron, nobody is going care what games you think are better and frankly you'll just embarrass legitimate high-iq fans of those other series'.
Those baseless insults won't do anything other than highlighting your butthurt as a FF fan
I'm scouring your posts looking for something worth responding to that doesn't require elementary spoonfeeding and I can't find anything.
And yet you keep responding just to posture and sling elementary school tier insults instead of actually bringing anything to the discussion, not just because you have nothing in the first place, but also because you're a butthurt FF fanboy.
You sling elementary insults at videogames because you're a passive-aggressive homosexual who can't make an interesting point. And I'm pretty sure I did give you a serious reply early on. You never answered because you're too busy riddling your posts with excessive and unnecessary subjectivity and generalization.
I can't take you seriously if you talk about adding complexity by adding summon spells with debuffs, while you totally ignore the massive increase in fundamental complexity (and its attendant tradeoffs) between mainline Final Fantasy and FF Tactics. Summons have a solid niche in FF Tactics: they have large, party-friendly AoEs balanced by longer charge times and MP costs. Summoners as a class also have tradeoffs in speed and magic power in return for their good spell selection. FFT is able to do this because the game has deeper core mechanics due to the presence of the 3D grid-based battlefield. There's no real concept of an "AoE" in classic Final Fantasy because there's no concept of "area" in the first place.
Criticizing the magic in FFT would take at least a whole post of its own though, and based on everything you've written I can pretty much guarantee I would be wasting my time. You haven't demonstrated a sufficiently solid understanding of the fundamentals. Here I am having to spoonfeed you on the concept of area of effect and friendly fire because you didn't realize it mattered.
>while you totally ignore the massive increase in fundamental complexity (and its attendant tradeoffs) between mainline Final Fantasy and FF Tactics.
There's no massive increase in anything, you just waste more time moving your damage sticks around to beat the equally helpless mooks, or you skip movement at all if you have a calculator.
Friendly fire is also a massive meme, which is why it has been almost completely abandoned as concept by most games around since it is never a good tradeoff for anything and adds nothing of value to most games, especially when it is trivial to avoid by design, which is why most RPGs are now moving towards the concept of arbitrary health tradeoffs instead, which is the same thing but less clunky.
At the end of the day RPG systems are barely disguised resource management games, and the only thing that truly matters is how much your investments are worth, you can embellish FFT as much as you want, praise the shitty maps and AoE design over mainline for hours and in the end it will all amount to nothing because the game is too easy and broken to enforce it on any level unless you, the player, gimp yourself to make those things relevant.
Which wouldn't actually be such a bad idea either if the game had a shred of substance to it, mind you, 99% of RPGs are like that after all, it's you who make things matter, supposedly.
But FFT, much like the mainline, doesn't have the meat to make it feel meaningful, there's no interesting roleplaying mechanics to it, the character building is nonexistent when you can just mix and match whatever and classes are again, mostly a matter of what sprite you like the best, the general mechanics are too barren and the content is far too linear and with too much handholding for any of your gimping to feel satisfying, there's not even the kind of masochistic pleasure you can find in something like Underrail because at least that one holds nothing back in terms of fights.
I'm interested in a FFT magic critique. I'm the guy arguing with the "FF games are for casuals" sperg.
Having too many stats - especially defensive stats - denigrates certain play styles and builds. FFTA has 3 dedicated defensive stats: HP, Defense, and Resistance. In that game tanky classes are largely worthless without special gear (various Paladin gear gated behind obscure quests) that boosts move. Classes with better offensive stats (Attack, Magic Power) and god stats (Speed) rule the roost.
FFT is better because it has one dedicated defensive stat: HP. Tanking is more valuable there because there's less fine detail.
On the other end you have SaGa games, where you have stats like Compassion in RS:MS which governs healing skills and deflecting weapon strikes on allies... and that's it.
FF5 would be better off at a minimum with Strength, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. Str, Int, Agi work as expected, while Luk affects everything in very subtle ways thus allowing for Luk builds.
Formulas suck in FF5, agree there. I hit that limit too many times to count. More of a lack of imagination on the devs part though, you can do a lot with 4 stats.
I agree strongly on stats changing with class. They should change slightly with skill learns, and carry over to other classes. Changing your costume shouldn't change stats.
I disagree on the progressive class unlock criticisms, largely because there's no downside to cross training like in FFT or FFTA. Who care if you learn a few monk skills until the next crystal, it won't hurt you?
My solution to FFT/A (and Tactics Ogre TKOL) is to put classes in different branches based on stat gains, and give later classes other bonuses besides stat gains so there's still a sense of upgrading. That way I don't feel compelled to low level gain.
idiot
>I'm interested in a FFT magic critique
tldr, and only the critique not the good stuff (eg how Faith works):
1. Speed growth with levels is hard to balance with charge times. Balancing high-level spells by giving them longer charge times winds up a compounded problem because higher level units get turns faster.
2. A lot of potential is left on the table with the Black Wizard specifically. There are too many redundant spells and not enough variety in terms of range and AoE pattterns. Instead of 4 tiers of fire/ice/bolt spells that differ only in damage type (and vertical tolerance for the L4 variants), you could have several different spell categories. (The FFT 1.3 mod does a great job here).
3. Holy is rather OP.
4. Discounting Math Skill, endgame caster builds can get a bit boring due to the limitation of never being able to access more than 2 spell sets at a time. Spells are already balanced by mana costs and charge times, it wouldn't break the game to allow a player access to a wider selection of spells across multiple different spellsets (to reward a player for having built up a good spell repertoire), or to have an endgame caster class with innate Short Charge or Half MP the way melees have Ninja with innate Dual Wield (hacks often give Samurai innate two-hand). Basically, I'd say the game needs some way to achieve the good things that Math Skill delivers without actually using Math Skill.
5. The general way FFT favors dealing direct damage and KOing enemies ASAP marginalizes the support mages somewhat (Time Mage, Oracle). This is significantly an enemy content issue though. If enemies had better defense, healing and restoration abilities, debuffs and general support would be more important. People complain that FFT battles take too long already, though, so I don't think the original balance is necessarily a mistake.
1. Couple fixes.
>Set limits on stat buffs/breaks to probably +-3
>Set a hard minimum SP of 5, as in it can't be broken below that
>Don't have SP boosting gear, or limit it to 1 SP in one slot (probably accessory, to tradeoff with other useful bonuses)
>Set up your growths so you have at least 6 starting SP, and 11 end game SP for the fastest classes in the game
>This sort of evens out SP, so at end game you'll be at most - if you min-max solely for SP - twice as fast as you were at game start.
>You could also increase the base HP/MP, reduce HP/MP growths, and have all weapons/shields/armor on the same tier (no gear upgrades ever) so that you can eliminate one tier of spells. I'd eliminate the top tier (Fire/Ice/etc 4) or two top tiers (Fire/Ice/etc 3 & 4), then give Fire 1 and 2 the damage levels of Fire 2 and 3, but slightly improve their speeds. This way it's not such a big deal if spells are fast and powerful in early game and taper off slightly because you'll have more HP at early game, but about the same HP as vanilla in end game.
>Image Related
2. I would rather give Wizard 14 spells: 2 tiers for each element except Holy. Have the first tier be the normal cross shaped AoE, and the second tier 1 tile larger and shaped more like a blob. They would still hit allies though, so you could use them for elemental healing.
3. I agree, Priest should get 2 tiers of a holy element spell (with a much shorter animation).
4. Supposedly you can have up to 5 skillsets on a character.
>Attack
>Skillset 1
>Skillset 2
>Skillset granted by a Support (Defend) 1
>Skillset granted by a Support (Equip Change) 2
Given that you can just make a normal skill that grants defend, and equip change is either OP or useless depending on how you balance your gear, I'd replace both of them. With what, I do not know.
Maybe make a "Red Magic" Support that builds a skill list based on the weaker spells of each class, and a "Sorcery" support that does the same but for the higher level spells. Put them both on the Calculator skillset for around 1000 JP and 2000 JP respectively.
This way you can equip the "Red Magic" support to get the cheaper utility spells of all 4 mages as another mage; maybe one that is highly specialized but powerful in it's own right, and needs options more than power.
Or you can equip the "Sorcery" support to get all the powerful spells - useful for a class that has more niche options and plenty of MP (or innate Half MP) but few powerful spells.
I think that every class should have it's iconic support as innate. Luckily there's a hack that de-hardcoces the innate skill check, and makes it check whatever that class have when assigning skills to enemies and AI generated allies. A short list:
> Time Mage: Short Charge
> Summoner: Half MP
5. While there are a few hacks that make the AI generated enemies make smarter gear equip options, and you can sort of tell the AI not to equip useless skills with skill learn percentages and JP shenanigans as I said earlier, the simplest and most sure fire way to make de/buffs useful is to make the weapons, shields, armor, and accessories tier-less, and to make them all roughly the same power level with different emphases. This involves:
> Distributing elemental absorbs and weaknesses evenly across all head and body slot gear, such that there is only one collision (weak + absorb) among all possible armor combinations for a given armor set (warrior helms/plates, light hats/clothes, mage ribbons/robes)
> Distributing debuff immunities evenly across the same, such that there is only one collision (immune to the same debuff) among all possible armor combinations for a given armor set (warrior helms/plates, light hats/clothes, mage ribbons/robes)
> Creating a sort of point-buy system for various weapon effects: WP, W-Ev, Range, Skill Procs, Status Procs, Elements, Element Strengthens, Weapon Damage Formulas
> Creating a similar point-buy system for accessories and their effects.
> Limiting classes to weapons, armor, and accessories with appropriate stat bonuses and other effects: mages get mage gear, warriors get warrior gear, and lightweights get light gear.
> Make separate warrior and mage accessory types, with appropriate bonuses. I'd go with gloves for warriors and rings for mages.
The goal of all this is to remove options from the AI so it can't make stupid decisions, and then to randomize it within the set of good decisions so it's not predictable and can't be exploited. Obviously this means that there is no gear that obviates any other gear, and no perfect protection (no "immune to all debuffs" Ribbon) or enhancement. Everything has a cost, even if just an opportunity cost.
There are a few big issues with this:
> There are just barely enough item attribute slots to pull it off. I would have only 8 item attribute slots left over for weapons, which I'd have to use for Elemental Strengthens.
> The existing reaction, support, and movement skills for the most part suck ass and need replacing. Even replacing them with things that call skills like Counter Tackle (but a more useful skill) would be a huge improvement.
>Most of the formulas suck even more than the R/S/M skills. I need about a dozen new formulas.
>A bunch of hardcoding issues, like with Talk Skill, Dance, Sing, Breaks, Steals, the various Holy/Dark/Arc/Divine Knight Skills. Skills in general have hard-coding issues as many of the flags are overridden in various formulas. I can go into more detail on this if you'd like.
>A lot of the status effects are OP, or they step on the shoes of other classes. For example, the Innocent and Faith status effects make Mediator almost completely worthless, even if you fix the Mediator's stats and gear. I would remove these status effects and alter several others.
>I want to put the Mediator's Brave and Faith modification skills on Squire, give Squire 2 more skills to buff SP and MA, make them all 2 range, give them MP costs, and give them charge times. To do this I need at least 1 new formula; and I need to de-hardcode the talk skills so I can set the amount of Brave/Faith damage/boost, make the boosts hit 100% of the time, and have a the damagers use both PA and MA for their hit rates so they're useful for all classes.
>I want to use the job slot freed up by combining Squire and Mediator to make a Blue Mage. Just one issue: monster skills assume high PA and absurdly high MA, so I need to plot out monster skill formulas using monster PA/MA, figure out the input/output curves, translate that to human PA/MA, adjust the monster skill X/Y values, then adjust the monster PA/MA values. Learning how to do this will take months.
>I would nerf Monk by making it use unmodified PA * current PA, if that's possible.
>Faith formula modifier change to: 50 + (Faith / 2)
>Brave formula modifier (for unarmed and whatever else uses it) change to: 50 + (Brave / 2)
>Reaction rate change to: 25 + (Brave / 2)
>Reduce zodiac compatibility formula modifiers to at most +- 12.5%
>More issues I wrote down as I encountered them but I can't remember right now.
All of this would be surmountable, except for the one thing that absolutely fricking drains my desire to think about FFT: the existing FFT romhacking community is run by a clique of comically delusional buttholes. Every time I think about working on it again, I just lurk in their discord or visit their forum and it's yet another completely insane, hypocritical, hyper-dramatic spergfest that makes me wish my mom had signed me up for wrestling class instead of buying me a PS1. And the worst part is they completely lack self-awareness of how awful they are; or they know, but they look out for each other so they can continue to squat on top of the fandom and swat away anyone who doesn't kiss their asses.
Working on a FFT hack would feel awesome, and I'd love to play it. On the other hand, it would draw innocent people to their site, which is where dreams go to die. I've seen so many projects - especially PSP projects, whom the site "founder" will literally harass you off-site for daring to make, and then claim you were stalking xir to poison the well and isolate you from the rest of the community - die it breaks my heart. I so wish I had saved some of this lunacy they posted, they so deserve a Kiwi Farms thread. But alas, it's gone.
To be honest every single moderator or admin of every romhacking site deserves a Kiwi Farms thread. They are literally all furries, e-girlcons, shotacons, diaperfurs, transgender, TDS sufferers, ex-Goons who posted racist diatribes, littles, bronies, or ….; you name it, you'll find a thriving community of them on a romhacking site.
tl;dr
Zero accountability, self-awareness, or sanity.
My time is better spent making my own tactical RPG, making it as easy to mod as possible, and making it so unpalatable to them that they will never even speak of it, let along have a modding community for it.
I might do a "low hanging fruit" version of my planned hack, with just what's feasible, but again romhacking FFT is a waste of time.
6. Math Skill is easy to fix, flag fewer skills as compatible with it.
7. Sort of back to point number 5, minus my autistic raving. I would make the following changes.
Note that CT means Clock Ticks to Resolution, so divide 100 by this number and throw away the remainder to get the skill Speed.
Wizard
>* 1st level: CT 4, MP cost 20, power 18, AoE 2, vertical AoE limit 2. //increase mp costs to account for increased aoe. 30/60 seems good, but 24/48 or 25/50 may be good too. other mages too.
>* 2nd level: CT 7, MP cost 40, power 36, AoE 3, vertical AoE limit 3. //flare power: 46, holy: 50, meteor: 60. this is fine though, we don't need 1hko spells.
>1 : Fire 1
>2 : Fire 2
>3 : Ice 1
>4 : Ice 2
>5 : Bolt 1
>6 : Bolt 2
>7 : Water 1
>8 : Water 2
>9 : Air 1
>10 : Air 2
>11 : Earth 1
>12 : Earth 2
>13 : Dark 1
>14 : Dark 2
The problem with math skill is that it ignores the otherwise fundamental rules about the game world. Unlike every other skill in the game, Math Skill ignores the meaning of distance, position, area, and volume. (Bard and Dancer abilities affect the whole battlefield, but are consistent with abilities you might expect to hit everything). Using Math Skill encourages the player to just line up meaningless numbers instead of thinking about tactics.
It's basically unfixable. It's a gimmick that you might find fun, but is basically impossible to balance because it breaks the rules of the game.
Agreed. Reducing their spell list to low power spells is cope tbh. I'd rather have a red mage class
Alternately, one could give their spells MP costs for every target, and make them reflectable.
Doesn't fix the fundamental problem. Again, the problem isn't just being overpowered. Adding spell costs would make the ability less ridiculously OP, but wouldn't change the problem of mostly eliminating the relevance of space and position. It's one thing to give a wizard the ability to cast spells through a wall that an archer could not shoot through. Breaking laws of physics is part of what makes magic cool
But it's another thing to just not have to think about walls or height or distance or anything at all because your ability set only cares about the abstract numbers. The player doesn't get the feeling of nuking someone from the other side of a wall, they just no longer perceive the wall as meaningful at all. They merely stand in whatever corner of the map they were dropped and unleash death by exploiting knowledge of numbers that characters in the world shouldn't even be able to perceive in the first place like CT, XP, and Level.
How is that different from us splitting atoms? Is nuclear fusion metagaming?
MP costs per target, weak spell list, and reflect enabled nerfs it.
That said, I'd rather have a Red Mage with double casting, or another class from an earlier FF game.
>Is nuclear fusion metagaming?
The issue is not metagaming. Math Skill is not metagaming it's straight up breaking the game's own established rules and the central conceit of the genre. Math skill doesn't mean anything, it's not a model of nuclear physics or any kind of physics at all, it's just pure abstract numbers extracted from the gameplay model matched with arbitrary set conditions. And the reason why this matters is NOT because of some high-minded concept of game purity. The reason why it matters is that it dramatically changes how the player plays and thinks about the game. Orlandu makes the game really easy, but at least it still feels like the same tactics game. Orlandu just has ridiculously powerful unblockable ranged attacks and Excalibur gives super-speed. THOSE are things that you can nerf to achieve balance if necessary. Math Skill cannot be fixed, it just does not belong in the game.
My argument is that if you're going to bother to have Math Skill at all, you may as well just leave it in its original ridiculously overpowered state. Players can exploit it to the max if they want or ignore it if it's not fun for them. Nerfing it with MP costs just makes it more annoying without fixing any of the real problems. Unless you nerf it to the point of being useless at which point why are you bothering at all?
Well it is the capstone color mage, so I can understand the argument for leaving some of it's power intact. It also requires learning a ton of spells in 4 classes, so that's another argument. I'd have to play it. As it stands, I think it can be nerfed as is by limiting it's spell list to maybe the weakest 1/3 to 1/2 of spells in each of the color mages and making it respect reflect.
I still think my argument that it's akin to us understanding quantum physics or nuclear fission is valid, because it requires understanding of things that no one in the game should ever know but which make up the logic of their world (charge times, HP, MP, and specific abstract values for those things and one's current height). These are as much the rules of their world as thermodynamics are those of ours, so it seems equivalent to me.
Maybe I've been reading too much TES lore recently. (Do Calculators CHIM?)
Anyways, the easiest fix for Orlandu is to:
>Give him the least powerful of the sword skills - the 3 weakest skills from Agrias, 2 least useful from Meliadoul, and the MP absorb from Gafgarion.
>Change the formula so the damage modifier can accept negative values, then make each strike weaker than a normal weapon strike.
>Slightly reduce the range of the more powerful options.
>Remove the require sword so he can use them in more classes, though I wish they took on parts of the damage formula for whatever weapon you have.
>Give each Swordskill user a specific stat niche
; speed warrior (less PA, more SP)
: power warrior (pretty much what you'd expect)
: tank warrior (same as power warrior but less MP, more HP)
: balanced warrior (more MA/MP, less PA/HP)
Speaking of which, what would you do with Beowulf? I think he should get Zalbag's stat break sword skills, which should be improved a bit.
I don't plan to have any weapons grant permanent or initial buffs, so that fixes Excalibur.
>I still think my argument that it's akin to us understanding quantum physics or nuclear fission is valid
Maybe so, but again you're missing the part where I explain the effect of calculators on how the game is actually played.
A player using calculator no longer thinks about the battlefield as a battlefield and no longer look at the enemy units as the units they represent. Traits no longer have consistent meaning. To everything else in the game, "level" is a marker of strength, a signal that tells you how experienced a unit is. To Math Skill, level is either divisible by 3, 4, 5, or a prime number; and that's all that matters.
>Without Math Skill
Player surveys the battlefield, assessing the enemy units vs his own units. He looks for good matchups between his units and enemy units. He thinks about how to get his units from A to B to exploit the desired matchups while holding back potentially vulnerable units. You consider movement abilities like float and walk-on-water or ignore height to improve your ability to secure exploitable terrain positions. You arrange your units to make good use the ranged abilities you have and try to get the jump on close combat melee. In other words, the player is playing a tactics game.
>With Math Skill
Player looks at each unit's stats to see whether they can be plugged into an arbitrary math formula. That's about it. Or you just go through the list of your math skills checking the current hit pattern on each one to see which one nails the targets you want. In other words, the player is not playing a tactics game anymore.
Math Skill is a trap. It's appealing because it's powerful and seems reasonable because it requires some work and thought to use it effectively. But the resulting gameplay gets boring. It's too divorced from the original concept and intent of the game, and ignores much of what makes the game good in the first place.
That's a compelling gameplay argument, and it jibes with my lore argument. Just like with Calculator, if you have nukes or relativistic weapons then you don't worry about fire, maneuver, training, logistics, or C&C; you just worry about getting your nuke supply chain ducks in a row and your delivery systems.
Does splitting the Calculator between Rafa and Malak sufficiently nerf it, in your opinion? Along with limiting the calculable spells to weak ones and making calculate respect reflect?
Priest //Maybe I should give the buffs and debuff removers CTR of 2?
>1 : cure 1. CTR 4, MP cost 20, power 18, vertical 2, same as the element 1 spells for wizard
>2 : cure 2. CTR 7, MP cost 40, power 36, vertical 3, same as the element 2 spells for wizard
>3 : protect. CTR 3, MP cost 8, X is 220, vertical 2.
>4 : shell. CTR 3, MP cost 8, X is 220, vertical 2.
>5 : regen. CTR 3, MP cost 12, X is 220, vertical 2.
>6 : reraise. CTR 3, MP cost 24, X is 220, AoE 1.
>7 : basuna. CTR 3, MP cost 20, X is 200, vertical 2.
> * cancels: Disable, Doom, Stop, Poison, Frog, Silence, Blind, Confusion.
>8 : esuna. CTR 3, MP cost 20, X is 200, vertical 2.
> * cancels: Immobilize, Sleep, Charm, Slow, Berserk, Vampire, Undead, Oil.
>9 : raise. CTR 4, MP cost 24, X is 190, Y is 50, AoE 1.
>10 : raise 2. CTR 8, MP cost 48, X is 210, Y is 100, AoE 1.
>11 : holy 1. CTR 4, MP cost 20, power 18, vertical 2.
>12 : holy 2. CTR 7, MP cost 40, power 36, vertical 3.
>13 : dispel. CTR 3, MP cost 34, X is 220, vertical 2.
> * cancels: Reflect, Haste, Protect, Shell, Regen, Reraise, Float, Invisible/Blink.
Time Mage //Spells all 2 AoE except Meteor. Roughly the same CTRs as Priest skills.
>1 : Haste
>2 : Blink/Invisible.
>3 : Float.
>4 : Reflect.
>5 : Quick.
>6 : Slow.
>7 : Stop.
>8 : Immobilize.
>9 : Rasp. Dmg_MP(MA*Y).
>10 : Demi 1. 25% of current HP, elemental damage modifications, Dark. Or Dmg_HP(MA*2)%.
>11 : Demi 2. 50% of current HP, elemental damage modifications, Dark. Or Dmg_HP(MA*4)%.
>12 : Demi 3. 75% of current HP, elemental damage modifications, Dark. Or Dmg_HP(MA*6)%.
>13 : Meteor. About as strong as strongest wizard spell, only player available non-elemental damage spell in game besides Demi spells.
Oracle //range 4, aoe 2, vertical 0 unless specified. maybe change aoe to 3 to give it a power boost if you keep vanilla hit rates; else boost hit rates.
>* Utility determines MP cost. Maybe determine CT, AoE, MP cost via point-buy system.
>* Speed mage needs fast spells, put most of the cost in MP rather than CT or AoE.
>1 : Drain. CT , MP cost , power , vertical , AoE 1
>2 : Osmose. CT , MP cost , power , vertical , AoE 1
>3 : Blind.
>4 : Undead.
>5 : Silence.
>6 : Berserk.
>7 : Confuse.
>8 : Disable.
>9 : Death. //maybe not. fixed oil instead? Dispel?
>10 : Sleep.
>11 : Petrify.
>12 : Poison.
>13 : Charm.
>14 : Vampire.
>15 : Frog.
>16 : Doom. //death immunity should not prevent doom.
Forgot to add to point number 4 in post:
You could just have 2 or 3 mages, you know.
If you set up Priest & Oracle stat growths to emphasize SP at the expense of MA, then you could have an Oracle or Priest with the other one's skillset depending on whose innate support skill or class specific weapons you prefer.
It sort of makes sense to put healing and debuffing on speed mages, as you want them to get turns often, and MA isn't as much of a factor for their spells (except for healing and holy spells).
You could do the same with Wizard and Time Mage, where Time Mage acts as the utility enhancement for the Wizard's skillset. And while technically Time Mage's skillset is even less dependent on MA than Priest, Time Mage uses Meteor and you'd want lots of MA for that. And again, the class's innate support skill determines which one you choose to be in.
And for your third mage you could have a Summoner with Calculate if you want power over speed, or a Calculator with Summon if you want speed over power.
As an aside, Calculator should be a turbo-speed mage because it can't have charge times, and the more turns it gets the more useful it is. The number of targets hit is more important than damage/healing done, so they don't need much MA.
Something similar occurs with Ninja and Chemist, who can't have charge times. I figure they can be the turbo-speed warrior, and either the turbo-speed PA/MA balanced or another turbo-speed mage as a precursor to chemist if someone wants levels in that early.
>idiot
btw sorry, originally I was going to reply to the dumbass homosexual, then decided not to but didn't delete the insult.
Anyway, just to follow on Math Skill. I generally ignore it when discussing the balance and design of FFT overall, since it's easy to just play the game and not use it. By this point everyone recognizes it's overpowered and there's even a speedrun category that bans its use.
Vague? I listed the spell lists & stat profiles, only thing I missed is gear. You are lying you autistic frick.
Green Mages are based on the FFT Oracle, which has debuffs (most NEVER found on White Mage) drain, osmose, and in my example dark magic. No healing, no buffing, opposite elements: are you high?
How can you look at the skill description I gave and not see Oracle? Have you ever played a FF game?
Calculators have worthless stats, only a moron would use them after getting their skills. You master Calculator then put their skillset on another mage - Wizard for power or Priest for speed. Everything you say cements my belief that you've never actually played these games.
Dex? Only FF7 to my knowledge uses that stat, though I'm not as familiar with FF1-4.
If summons add debuffs then you can't heal allies with them if you let them hit allies. If gear is properly balanced then elemental affinities are more common, letting you turn Wizard/Summoner into a healer with elemental attack spells.
Besides, debuffs are overlap, so by your own argument it's unbalanced on attack spells. I'm sure you'll ignore that I noticed this though.
As for "FF is unsalvagable": why did you come into a thread if you disagree with the basic premises of it's existence? Did you expect a medal? Did your parents lock you in a basement with a SNES as a child?
>Green Mages are based on the FFT Oracle
Which incarnation of green mages are we talking about? Because FFTA2 Green mages for instance aren't like that at all.
>Calculators have worthless stats
Doesn't matter, they hit more than hard enough to solo everything and you can effortlessly farm stats in FFT anyways so the point is moot, don't even pretend this isn't the case.
>Dex? Only FF7 to my knowledge uses that stat
It's AGI/SPD under another name, the effect is the same, unfortunately outside of XI/XIV it's not true Dexterity because FF is too miserable in terms of mechanics to allow any sort of complexity, besides it was just an example, you can make your knight use STR for debuff efficacy efficiency for how much I care, it's inconsequential
>If summons add debuffs then you can't heal allies with them if you let them hit allies.
Good, elemental healing is a dumb mechanic in the first place and needs to go and stay go
>I'm sure you'll ignore that I noticed this though.
I was just throwing you a bone actually, but it seems you're too stupid and full of yourself to realize that very evident fact.
>why did you come into a thread if you disagree with the basic premises of it's existence?
Because the thread is about discussing the issues of summons as a mechanic, not FF being a garbage series, which is an open secret, I'm sorry if pointing out the obvious offends you.
I don't know why anyone would ever call it cutting edge either, or say it made "many strides and evolutions", FF has always been a gimmick ridden mess barely held together by tape and good graphics and it stagnated since FF3 started rehashing FF1.
>it's rare that you get something where it jumps from the job system of V to the magicite system of VI.
Both are AP based slot systems with zero regards for any sort of mechanical coherency, there's no fundamental differences, it's all smoke and mirrors.
I never played FFTA2, the first was bad enough. To be fair FFT was the first to split many debuff spells to their own class due to lack of skill slots, but (after reading about it) the idea of splitting buffing from white mage is deeply moronic.
There are:
* stat profiles: mage, warrior, & balanced for attack type, modified by if they emphasize damage or speed for more turns.
* skill profiles: damage, de/buffs (one, other, or both), de/buff removers, revives.
* gear profiles: weapon range, power, & special effects (procs, heals, absorbs, damage mp); armor defense emphases; stat bonuses, accessory special effects.
There are only so many combinations of these things; overlap is inevitable.
My white mage idea buffs, damages (limited by holy element), heals, removes debuffs - all for fairy cheap mp costs. My summoner does all that (with more elements) and debuffs, but at exorbitant mp cost and with no fine grain targeting control.
You apparently want a game where there is only one right way to do everything, which assumes circumstances (enemies, mostly, but also access to MP restoration among others) is completely vanilla.
I want you to make a rebalance mod so I can laugh at it.
Calculators having shit stats matters cause the enemy can't use them as primary skillset.
It's not inconsequential if you don't bother to read.
Elemental healing is dumb? I thought you liked mechanical complexity and unforeseen interactions?
FF games aren't that bad. The ideas are interesting, the execution is poor. They're made for normies so they dial back the challenge. That's why I used to rom hack, and why I know you're mistaken.
>There are only so many combinations of these things; overlap is inevitable.
Overlap is only inevitable if you choose to make more classes than it's worth having, which is also a bad decision, which is why hard class based games like Potato Flowers in Full Bloom end up being actually pretty well balanced, they don't bloat themselves with 10 different flavours of the same exact thing so each class end up being actually unique and adding something substantial to the gameplay.
>You apparently want a game where there is only one right way to do everything
Not really, no, can't even fathom why you'd think that, again, go play the aforementioned PFIFB and you'll hopefully understand what I'm getting at.
What I'm saying is that class based games need to not have overlap by virtue of the classes themselves, that doesn't stop you from having something like four fighters if you want to, just that each class should have an actual strong identity if you want to bother with such a shitty system, at least make it good and make classes matter instead of being just a name or a different costume like in the FF games, or most games with hard classes really.
>I want you to make a rebalance mod
I'd rather make a good game instead of falling for your sawyer tier bullshit.
But I guess I saw some of your posts in another thread now that you boast about your shitty romhacks nobody plays.
>Elemental healing is dumb?
It is, no serious system includes something as dumb as people getting healed by being hit by a fricking ice block or a rock, adding more ways to heal is also dumb, heals should be very rare and mostly unviable and only worth it as an emergency tool possibly with a tradeoff too, so you avoid another issue that plagues FF and other shit games, healing loops that make everything even more braindead.
>FF games aren't that bad
You're right, they're worse.
You could have said "FF games have too many classes with weak core identities" earlier instead of beating around the bush.
My solution is to have tons of classes, but limited class slots and forcing certain groups of classes into each slot based on the archetype of the base class on the slot.
I do agree with some of your criticisms, especially of FF5. With no real spatial component like a TRPG, Summons really are too similar to other mages. They should've explicitly been a jack of all mages (decent at all things mage, but not really good at any one thing), or had a pet they bring to battle like Lufia 2 or iirc Breath of Fire 2 instead of one-and-done spells. I'm forced into the former due to engine limitations until I get off my ass and make my own game.
However with greater AoE options in a TRPG (or your row system) a large AoE jack of all mages is viable, provided you can get them enough MP. Easy enough to nerf them though, just give every enemy some elemental affinity.
I haven't posted here in years.
So undead shouldn't be healed by evil magic? Fire elemental critters - who live in fire - shouldn't thrive when you blast them with fire? I can understand people not getting this, but come on man it's magic, your grandfather's blessed oven mitts he wore at Treblinka should give you +50% fire resist and frighten ~~*elves*~~ when equipped.
I don't care if they're for casuals, I like them and want to make them better.
>I don't care if they're for casuals, I like them and want to make them better.
When I say FF is for casuals it's not an insult. All it really has to mean is that the bar for effective play doesn't have to be set very high.
healing is dumb?
>It is, no serious system includes something as dumb as people
What's really dumb is you demonstrating your extreme low intellect yet again and showing off your inability to follow a point in your desperation to shit on 25 year-old games (some of which take up less disk+memory than the Ganker image limit). The concept of "elemental healing" isn't that you design fricking heal spells to have elements. The mechanic comes from something like a fire elemental that is made of fire so fricking of course if you throw fire on it, it's going to get stronger. It shouldn't be an intended healing mechanic indeed the guy you are responding to pointed it out as "complex and unforseen." It's the kind of mechanic that typically requires preparation and ideally execution to pull off.
>heals should be very rare
Yeah yeah whatever. In theory I agree. In reality this is a non-sequitur and meaningless coming from someone who requires such painful spoonfeeding.
You're so frothing with rage that you're projecting your inability to understand the english language on me.
Elemental healing is clearly healing through elemental attribute you fricking idiot, healing as a concept is never, ever meant to be anything else than recovering your hit points, it is a tool, not an elemental property, but you're too butthurt and full of yourself to understand just how fricking moronic what you just typed is, because you're too interested in demeaning people who're better than you because they insulted a shit game you like.
You're an amateur more interested in simping for software than somebody who's truly investend in the medium, you'll always be, just like the other idiot who creams his pants for making shitty romhacks nobody plays, which is why you're still stuck defending the single most embarassingly bad RPG franchise around.
But yeah, it's all "nonsequiturs" to you even though you're clearly too mentally impaired to understand why elemental healing is bad even though you just agreed that healing should be extremely sparse in the first place, must be nice to live in your little fantasy world.
>"FF games have too many classes with weak core identities"
That's only one of the many issues with those games, which is why I didn't just boil it down to that.
And even when we look at that issue you'll quickly realize it's not a simple matter of just distributing tools more equally and with less overlap, it's a byproduct of overly shallow AND badly designed core systems, which, taking FF5 as a specific example, include but are not limited to:
>Bad stat design all around the board, too few to properly enforce class diversity to begin with
>Bad algorithms, which is also a byproduct of the previous issue, when all sort of physical damage is chalked up to a single stat across all classes you have a bad system, period.
>Bad class mechanics in general, you shouldn't get a class related variable stat sheet that changes your character to whatever you switch to, that kills character building AND classes by removing much needed layers of investments, identity and customization, especially in a game where you can freely switch to whatever you want
>Linear progression, with the added insult of having 90% of the classes locked behind main story progression, which further desecrates the corpse of that stillborn class system
And this is really just the tip of the iceberg, for a single game, even though those some of those issues are shared among other games such as FFT.
You don't even need spatial components really, even something as simple as two rows would technically be more than enough to be interesting as long as you put some thought into it and enemy design, nevermind the fact that you don't need to make every single fight a test anyways, it's fine to have the occasional curbstomp, what isn't fine is when everything is a mindless curbstomp, which is again, something that happens because a long list of issues, not just one particular aspect or the lack of spatial depth, which is again, frankly unnecessary to have a decent game, especially a casual one.
>>>
>However with greater AoE options in a TRPG (or your row system) a large AoE jack of all mages is viable
Not necessarily, this depends on a lot of factors that not really tied how many flavours of AoE you give to people.
Case in point, Chrono Trigger had a lot of exotic AoE shapes you really didn't see at the time, coupled with the fact that the positioning system was (virtually) pretty freeform and dynamic that was a good recipe for an interesting system, ATB would have also added another layer of strategy in theory since enemies moved in real time.
In practice none of this happens, again, for several reasons:
>Enemies are far too weak and harmless to bother
>Enemies can move around, so slowly though it doesn't really matter, you have to actively wait for them to move into a position to make 90% of your special AoE matter, it's faster to just spam normal attacks or spells
>Enemies can move, your PCs can't, that further invalidates the entire system
>General lack of balance and care in terms of raw math and calculations, coupled with piss poor stat systems and piss poor systems in general
So while you have a good system on paper, surely potentially much deeper and a lot more complex than the FF of the time, it ends up being all fluff because nobody actually bothered to enforce anything about it on any level, on top of certain particularly awful decisions.
Complexity isn't necessarily related to just how much stuff you cram into a game, it's how much you make that stuff matter in the first place.
>So undead shouldn't be healed by evil magic?
No, undeads on average shouldn't even have the concept of free healing as part of their archetype, one thing is making a vampire regenerate by sucking blood, but having a skelly getting "healed" because you shot it with your edgy dark flame master fireball is comically bad and adds nothing to the system outside of needless rubberbanding and what you accused me of wanting, one clear way of doing things.
*low level game
Introducing variation in random battle difficulty is best done with extreme randomness IMO, though within a less tiered monster system. I'd give monsters defined roles (including weak mook), a level stat, and stat/skill progressions based on area (min & max level) and partially party level. But the difference in power level between 1 and 99 would be 3x instead of 9x or 90x, so even level 1 monsters could pose a challenge for the unwary.
I disagree on your denigration of space. Time is already a component of gameplay, space being one too is important. Something like formations in Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song or positioning and AoEs in Chrono Trigger.
Agree on all points except elemental healing. We'll have to agree to disagree. Shame they built a great system in CT then didn't use it.
What is rubberbanding?
Calculator is easily nerfed by limiting it's spell selection and making it respect Reflect.
It's hard to talk about fixing one aspect of FFT because you just pick another moronic and easily fixed aspect of the game to attack me with instead of consneeding a point. I would upload my changes.txt for it but I expect you'd say it's too long (duh) and refuse to read it. Hard to say you're arguing in good faith if you don't make the effort.
Mooks are only helpless in FFT because the AI is too dumb to use good gear/skills (or they have a tiered gear system and most skills suck). If we had PvP FFT would be a madhouse.
>All it would take to make summons, or anything in FF really, suck less would be to add a tiny bit of mechanical complexity, that alone would go a long way.
>Say you want to make Ifrit worth your while, give him something more than just different flavours of fire damage, make Hellfire debuff physical or magical defense for instance, that already makes it a bit more interesting to use even if damage wise you want to keeps it inferior to other options.
The issue there is that by varying it on more than one metric you obviate other jobs, and you're not considering roles. A black mage's role is hit-one/all elemental damager power mage, a summoner's role is hit-all generalist power mage. If you add stat debuffing, then a Summoner is now all of those things plus they're part of a Knight, doing stat breaks. Why use the Knight then?
Summoner Pros vs Black Mage
>Much more powerful.
>Hit more targets.
>Hit targets intelligently where that's an issue (ignore allies, ignore allies unless they absorb that element).
>Cover all the roles a mage could fill - elemental damage, de/buffing, debuff removal.
>Just one spell to buy instead of 3 levels of spells.
Summoner Cons vs Black Mage
>Much more expensive.
>Can't hit single targets in mixed elemental affinity formations.
>Add proper formation mechanics and different types of AoE, say you've got enemies with a ice weakness in a row formation, then you make something like Shiva's Diamond Dust hit through a row based AoE which hits harder than other types of AoE, which could be given to things like Blizzaga, make it a full field AoE that is weaker than Diamond Dust but also hits indiscriminately so both have their uses depending on enemy formations, it's really that simple.
Why did you ignore my variable targeting proposals earlier and then invent variable targeting here (granted I didn't mention rows).
Going to ignore Summons take much longer to cast than high level Black Magic?
>Summoner Cons vs Black Mage
You forgot
>Oh this group of enemies is weak to fire, but Ifrit was my first summon, so even with the weakness bonus it still wouldn't do as much damage as just using my most recent summon that hits neutrally
>Black Mage casts Firaga and one-shots the entire group because all his elements gain power together
I'm one of "those guys" who prefers having a tierless gear system where everyone's gear is available from the start or where you have multiple gear options per tier level. Customization > Progression.
I still like some progression, but I like higher base stats and lower growths. A character should get 2 to 3 times stronger from start to finish rather than 9 times as normal.
I think there should be several viable optimal options for each circumstance. I'm halfway between "make everything viable" and "make one thing viable".
I don't want to have every possible combination in 50 different classes, I want broad brush strokes for each class. The only way to do 50+ classes is to have maybe 15-20 classes, them let the player customize their characters class tree by introducing the varied versions of each class as a subclass.
Example: FFT player would either let generic Alice remain White Mage or customize into Cleric (better buffs & heals, worse offense spells), Exorcist (less effective spells overall but dedicated undead spells), Priest (better offensive spells, worse healing & buffs), or Paladin (lower MA & MP, better PA & PA, additional melee gear options, slightly worse spells, all spells take both PA, MA, and weapon formuls into account). Undoing this customization is impossible, therefore they must be balanced enough that fricking up isn't game ending.
Sort of correct, except that part of the issue is balance-- the games where summons fit their niche the best are the most well-balanced games (like FF4). Meanwhile FF6 is a badly-tuned, partially-baked mess balance-wise.
While it's true that the core problem is that the mechanics are simple, increasing complexity can only be a solution if done in a deep way (and not everyone wants that, FFT is not as popular as mainline despite having far deeper core mechanics). JRPGs often get soulless quickly here as they begin bolting on goofy mechanics that fill a gameplay niche and losing sight of the rule of cool. ATB itself is an example, albeit a pretty good one. FF8 has silly timed hits. In FF9 summon spells' damage formulas are based on gems in your inventory.
>Say you want to make Ifrit worth your while, give him something more than just different flavours of fire damage, make Hellfire debuff defense
Combining multiple effects is one of the laziest ways to add complexity. You're almost guaranteed to immediately fall into the trap of filling arbitrary gameplay niches with either blandly balanced, soulless combinations or one that's just stupidly more powerful than everything else. Meanwhile you wind up eliminating decision points, instead of having to decide between damage and debuff you just get the debuff free with damage.
People criticize FF for being easy and focused on flashy animations and such, because it is. But they still aim to get enough mechanical depth so that players can see consequences for different decisions (even if there's minimal pressure to avoid mistakes).
i think the more important question is which version of shiva is sexiest?
>which version of shiva is sexiest?
Yes?
Summons are great in 3, 4, and 5. They're okay in 6 and 7 though in 7 there are spells with a twentieth of the animation fime that do similar damage.
>Summons are great in 5
Not really. If you actually want to use summoner you're better off skipping the majority of them so your Call is better. Also the magic lamp makes the job completely obsolete in the late game.
Yes really. Call is a waste of time and Magic Lamp can only be used for a specific summon once.
My biggest beef with summons in FF is that there are cool ones outside of Ifrit, Shiva, Ramuh, Titan and Bahamut that just never get used.
They ignore reflect and the damage isn't split, so that's something
Summons are fricking cool and the mechanical aspect is sort of irrelevant when the result is still
>everything fricking died
even when that's not what happens they're still fricking cool
summoner4lyfe
The guys disagreeing with OP make some points, but generally everything he is saying is correct. The entries in which summons are not generally useless or underwhelming they tend to be overpowered. The entry that comes to mind now that I'm playing through everything again but all the PR's is IV. Bahamut will wipe almost any encounter endgame, and Rydia has enough MP that you can spam it comfortably. And to boot, the summon animations weren't over the top. I do disagree that VII and VIII they are bad however. In VII they tend to be pretty damn good, and while there are better things to do they don't really jump out until later in the game. And unless you are playing with prior knowledge, boosted GF summons are generally the way to go for damage output until, again, later in the game when you get Aura.
In any event, I agree that summons are generally not all that interesting to me. As a kid I thought they were pretty cool, but even then I was puzzled by their continued story integration. I think XV really did it for me with how they were presented in appearance and effect at least, where they just fricking obliterated an entire area. I'm optimistic for how XVI handles them, seems like it could be cool. But we shall see
xvi will be cool in that the main characters ARE summons, so i assume summons will be like a powered-up mode
From what I can tell Summons are like styles in DMC. You have a number which you acquire throughout the plot and likely from sidequests, which can be swapped out to affect stats and more importantly give you a signature moveset which can be upgraded, while still keeping your basic moveset as well. I'm hoping the game is cool, but I've been burned every time since XIII so I'm not holding my breath.
If I understand it correctly, Eikons are magic mutants that can transform into summons ?
So something like how Shadow Hearts handled summons?
never got to play shadow hearts although i'd like to
>FFXIII
>completely useless
False. Summons provide a lot of utility. They’re usually less damage effective than what you’ll be doing with running your party, but you can still get a lot of use from them (and it’s not like you’re going to be spending TP on anything else but Libra). You get a period of invincibility on activation, they’re a full party heal, revive, and status cleanse (and can be used even if you’re hit with pain and silence), and later on you can break the damage cap with them, which can be useful in some circumstances.
Summons would be cool as an -extra- party member (not a replacement) that drains the summoner's MP every turn it is active. It would have access to abilities no other party member could match, like AOE physical attacks or special utility magic, but the MP drain should be fast enough to make it not the automatic option. This would require balancing such as limiting MP restoratives available, not giving any characters a clearly better similar spell or free AOE, etc. Maybe even as far as having the summon start draining HP after the summoner's MP is depleted.
This is sort of how they work in 7R, where you can summon them for a limited time as an extra party member and use your normal party members' ATB bars to use the Summon's special attacks
>takes so long the enemy attacks before your next guy gets to go
only real problem, they're usually worth the MP you can have your healer use MP items on the summoner
Reading this thread, I think I've just come to the conclusions that summons by their nature are just sort of boring. Even if they were mechanically balanced and usable as a class, magically summoning monsters to attack opponents just is not very compelling in my opinion. The only game in the series in which summons felt truly spectacular to me was FFXV, in which they destroyed the environment. I think that with games such as XVI and beyond where it seems like they're going above and beyond into action, it would be nice if summons functioned a bit differently as some sort of support function. Perhaps Shiva intervenes by freezing the ground for an opponent, making it difficult for them to move, or Titan lays down plateaus for you to attack from afar. Sounds stupid, but I'm just trying to think of something in which they aren't just another annoying party member with different attacks, it doesn't feel like gods intervening on your behalf but big monsters shooting a beam. I'm just kind of burnt out on some of the mainstays I think, it's nice to see old faces but it gets old.
>just another annoying party member
Are party members annoying to you?
Party members are people, controllable mortals with various abilities. In essence I don't have a problem necessarily with it, but in every application they just walk around and cast spells like everyone else. It doesn't feel like having some kind of divine entity intervening on your behalf, it feels like a monster albeit stronger, like a pet. I want to feel the raw energy and godly stature of having a truly powerful spirit or what have you interceding on your behalf. As it stands in just about every Final Fantasy you acquire them like little badges and then just spam Bahamut alone, and occasionally support ones like Carbuncle or Phoenix. How cool would it be if summons permanently altered the gameplay field or gave truly variant gameplay? Perhaps the summoner could call Leviathan to the field and flood an entire area drowning opponents that cannot swim, then circled below the surface and swallowed whole enemies that are trying to flee to safe ground?
I understand this is all conceptual nonsense, but when I call a powerful being forward I want to feel like it matters is what I mean. I've always gotten every summon in every game out of pure completionist's sake, but very rarely do I make use of them more than a few times unless they are wildly overpowered. It was never possible to really offer huge depth as early as FFIII, but now the technology is there to make classes wildly different, and if Square were a different company I would be excited to see the possibilities.
>special move but none of them are that good
Someone didn't play FF4.
There were really good special moves but also obscenely shitty ones. You're right though, the majority of them are pretty fricking good. It's just fricking annoying that you don't get to use most of the party members at the end and instead are stuck with 5 people you didn't necessarily want. Cecil, Rosa, and Rydia are fair, but Kain was rather last minute, and Edge while interesting feels like a literally who 5th character
You underrate them in the NES/SNES era even, I used summons against the final boss in 3,4 and 5, in 6 they are a bit obsolete because ultima is stupidly broken.
FF X summons are gud all throughout the game.
So the only good FF they suck in is IX.
IIRC the modern FFX speedrun devolves into having Yuna spam Bahamut on everything because their stat scaling makes it extremely easy to break the damage cap and end every story encounter far faster than the time it would take for you to get the shit needed for Trio of 9999.
Summons in FFX are fricking stupid if you invest even a bit of effort into them.
Send Yuna down Auron grid and you basically won the game.
I think players who only want to make the most "effective" most "optimal" moves are dumb.
also this
>starts a status effect every enemy run
>people who use their brains are dumb
Ganker is a home for the mentally moronic
have a nice day XIEVE Black person.
FF summons suck (mechanically) since they are just "muh big dick damage numbers" like everything else the series has to offer, utility approaches are non-existent or useful in the games in favor of just stacking the highest DPS option. Ironic how only FFXIII (for the most part) and its brother series (KH) got it right.
Summoning is a staple.
>FFX
>more interesting, but no reason to use them except when you have to obviously. yojimbo spam is sort of useful
She is literally the only one who is special when everybody else have maxed their sphere grids.
Summons scale heavily based on Yuna's stats allowing them to hit the damage limit far faster than people give them credit for. Yes you can frick around with Yojimbo gimmick to instantly kill monsters but Bahamut for example comes with Break Damage Limit innately meaning that you don't need to mess around with sidequests or customisation beyond filling out Yuna's grid to cheese the story. Anima is broken in the International version when they buffed her OD to hit 16 times.
How about summons in other games? How do they do it and do they do it better than Final Fantasy?
here's how you fix math skill in FFT, you split the skillset among rafa and malak, that's two birds with one stone
you've made rafa and malak suck less wiener and you nerfed math skill a little bit
How do you split it? It's hardcoded to that skillset IIRC.
Rafa/Malak fix:
>Set "ignore allies" so you can reduce AoE be targeting an ally tile.
>Reduce vertical tolerance to 2 so you can reduce AoE by targeting next to hills and ravines.
>Reduce charge times for their skills.
>Improve their stats and gear options.
>Make all their skills elemental to boost damage with element strengthen gear.
>Make them start with a high job level in an end game job unlocked.
I did it with FFTPatcher
Did it work?
yeah, turned the calculator into a blue mage and gave half the cals skills to truth and half to un-truth
What did you do to mediator?
can't remember, it was a long time since I was making my hack for shits and giggles
I think I removed invite and gave it exclusively to Ramza? I think I removed death sentance and gave it to time mage as Countdown
Some skills were also made innate to a class so you'd have a reason to use them beyond learning their skills (like giving squire innate train)
But what I really wanted to do was change the magic system, instead of choosing unit or tile you'd be choosing the way to cast a spell, Charging (but only able to target a tile) or MP (instant so no need to target unit), with most ways to replenish MP removed
didn't know how to do it so I made duplicate spells, one with only a charge time and the other with MP cost
Interesting concept, especially with no MP restoration. How does it account for skills that can't have one or both, or Song/Dance/Jump/Charge?
I don't think I changed song/dance/jump/charge
or maybe I gave breaking skills to archers (and called them break arts probably) and gave charge to the knight while making it based on weapon range and had them follow target
It's been years, I might check it out again if I haven't lost the files by now
I'm interested if you want to post it.
checked, I'll try to find it tomorrow but you'd do better by going to FFHacktics and downloading FFTPatcher to make your own hack
haven't found the patch, but I found the patched game I think
It's old shitty and unfinished, but here you go
https://ufile.io/m4oy5f0r