Some Random Comments

I know it's been a while, but I didn't forget about this mod. Instead of doing a full LP, I'm planning to get used to the huge amount of content first and give some feedback along the way. I'm not a big fan of massive walls of text, so I'll keep it short.

I'm now in chapter 2 and this time I went with an offensive caster Ramza, which I feel is a tiny bit broken. He now has Analytic, Arcane Focus and Amplify which is a lot of fun to use with Quick to support him and there are enough means to heal MP. It will be interesting to see how long this build is going to be viable. Although of course it will be important to farm other jobs each battle. 

So far I have to say that I'm noticing a ton of improvements since the last time I played. Really liking the design for Knights. Ranger seems like it's more of a middle/late game class. It's hard to resist nuking everything with black magic. I'll post more comments once I make some progress.

Zaland Fort City is a ridiculously well-designed battle. Had a couple of resets because I was unsure of what to do with Ramza for a while, which is really a mistake because Ramza's role turned out to be completely irrelevant. I guess Talk Skill would be a good choice to disable some of the dragons quickly, but I don't have it unlocked.

The dragons are some of the most annoying enemies ever, and they synergize extremely well with panthers. They're extremely fast and hard to take down. Reflect protects them from a lot of statuses and Confuse can be an instant gg. The panthers are also very tanky and caused some resets with their annoying statuses. My auto-pilot mode of bringing Ovelia and hoping to land a good Bad Breath failed and because I was biased against a lot of monsters from earlier versions, so it took me a while to realize that

This is a really good example of how FFT balancing should be done. There should be a lot of "broken" stuff which can easily be countered by the AI, instead of nerfing everything to the point of where it's just a game of targeting priorities.

On 19/12/2017 at 8:20 AM, Quad said:

I'm now in chapter 2 and this time I went with an offensive caster Ramza, which I feel is a tiny bit broken. He now has Analytic, Arcane Focus and Amplify which is a lot of fun to use with Quick to support him and there are enough means to heal MP

Ramza and Agrias should be seen as wild card: You don't need to think of builds around their characters but rather "what they need to synergize with the team at hand". Or at least I like to do that (Also, casters are OP when silence/reflect aren't prominent in a fight

22 hours ago, Quad said:

The dragons are some of the most annoying enemies ever, and they synergize extremely well with panthers. They're extremely fast and hard to take down

Wait until you see the new battle Emmy added at Goland. I bet you will tear your hair apart 

22 hours ago, Quad said:

This is a really good example of how FFT balancing should be done. There should be a lot of "broken" stuff which can easily be countered by the AI, instead of nerfing everything to the point of where it's just a game of targeting priorities.

MT is a really obtuse game of "who is weak against X monster" which I really love since there's variety.

However I also poited out the use of healing/reviving skills everywhere but I guess it's just a minor thing

A side note: When all fails, spam boosted summons. You will be amazed how things fall like flies

On 21.12.2017 at 1:16 PM, ronlyn said:

Ramza and Agrias should be seen as wild card: You don't need to think of builds around their characters but rather "what they need to synergize with the team at hand". Or at least I like to do that (Also, casters are OP when silence/reflect aren't prominent in a fight

MT is a really obtuse game of "who is weak against X monster" which I really love since there's variety.

This is probably true most of the time. I guess once there's more gear with powerful initial statuses like Haste or Undead, they'll have a more prominent role. 

On 21.12.2017 at 1:16 PM, ronlyn said:

However I also poited out the use of healing/reviving skills everywhere but I guess it's just a minor thing

I'm now past Goug and have mostly used Ovelia for revival. Blaster seems way too OP at this point, hopefully the late game has more charm immunities. Maybe make it not instant and less accurate? So far panthers have been the MVPs, although not having revive is sometimes scary. If the enemies can break out of charm you essentially give them free turns by hasting them, and there have been some insane comebacks, which never happens in 1.3 because having more units alive is a big deal. 

Poison is incredibly strong against enemies that like to sandbag. I've gotten more use out of it in a single fight than I ever did in 1.3.  

Panthers have No Guard, which turns everything they use and everything used on them that has non-0% accuracy into 100% accuracy.  The checks for abilities like Blade Grasp, Runic, Concealment, Bulletproof happen independently of No Guard's (so a character with No Guard will still benefit from those abilities). There are quite a few fights where that ability comes to bite them - evasion is really nice to have in some fights, and some moves like Venom and Baleful Polymorph, you do not want enemies to have 100% accuracy with those on you.  

On 23.12.2017 at 9:34 PM, Emmy said:

Panthers have No Guard, which turns everything they use and everything used on them that has non-0% accuracy into 100% accuracy.  The checks for abilities like Blade Grasp, Runic, Concealment, Bulletproof happen independently of No Guard's (so a character with No Guard will still benefit from those abilities). There are quite a few fights where that ability comes to bite them - evasion is really nice to have in some fights, and some moves like Venom and Baleful Polymorph, you do not want enemies to have 100% accuracy with those on you.  

On 21.12.2017 at 1:16 PM, ronlyn said:

Wait until you see the new battle Emmy added at Goland. I bet you will tear your hair apart 

Just finished chapter 3 and Panthers seem fine now. It's one of those cases where leaning towards the OP side creates more balance, because otherwise there would hardly be any reason to use them. Having enough support abilities has been a big deal since the end of chapter 2, so it can be very risky too bring too many units like panthers. 

I was actually hyped for Goland, but got somewhat lucky and beat it after a scouting run. Forgot how the Dragon got Don't Act, but that combined with other statuses and the insane damage output from the steel giant sealed the deal. 

So far my main issue with Monster Tactics has been the lack of a kind of flow if I can call it that. The mod isn't even that complex, you just have to learn a lot of new stuff and drop the Vanilla/1.3 habits. There were moments were it took me like 3 minutes to kill a Pudding, because I had no awareness for what the monsters could do, because each one comes with a ton of abilities. In 1.3 you can always tell when a battle is won or lost, but MT can be very unpredictable. It took some patience and a couple days of playing, but it was definitely worth the investment. If I had to make a suggestion, I would try to to cut out any redundant abilities that don't add much to a monster or don't fit with their intended role. Can't really name any concrete examples yet, though. 

Chapter 3 had a couple of battles which were a bit too easy, imo. I liked Velius, Riovanes Gate and Yuguo, everything else except for maybe Zalmo and Izlude was a bit underwhelming. It felt like you could just take some random monsters and get away with it. Riovanes Gate had the perfect difficulty, because you had to come up with some plan or the enemies would just buff themselves and take over with their number advantage, so there was pressure right from the beginning. 

Levels after Velius:

Pretty much only used the high level monsters for chapter 3. The Leaf Dance ability from the Tree feels a bit too strong. They shouldn't deal that much damage when they're mostly a support unit. Wave Cannon is also really strong when you get it, but it's chapter 2, so it's fine. Towards the end of chapter 3 I really liked to use Ramza with Throw and 18-20 MA, he one-shots mostly everything. I'll have to make more progress until I can comment on more stuff. 

Recorded the Velius fight because it was fun and to test my new settings. There must have been an easier way to trap him. Cornering him ends at 8:20. The plan was to keep Innocent on him and let Worker 8 the Steel Giant do the rest. 

Velius is actually a bit bugged in that version, to where he's *MUCH* easier than he should be.  Reason is when I changed things' skillsets, somehow he ended up with the squid set instead of the set he's supposed to have.  This'll be fixed if/when I release a new version. 

You are right in a lot of things not fully being cohesive. You can blame having to learn ASM as I go and plans for things being made as I figure out if things are possible, as opposed to having the coding skill right away to be able to come up with a cohesive plan from the start.  This is part of the reason why I share my stuff - I would like to see what someone else could come up with if they have 100's of things to to pick from in the start instead of the make up as you go strategy.

Zalmo was something I ended up nerfing around 7x due to complaints about difficulty.  Izlude was always one of those "hit or miss" battles where people either struggle with or wreck it with 0 in between.

32 minutes ago, Emmy said:

Velius is actually a bit bugged in that version, to where he's *MUCH* easier than he should be.  Reason is when I changed things' skillsets, somehow he ended up with the squid set instead of the set he's supposed to have.  This'll be fixed if/when I release a new version. 

You are right in a lot of things not fully being cohesive. You can blame having to learn ASM as I go and plans for things being made as I figure out if things are possible, as opposed to having the coding skill right away to be able to come up with a cohesive plan from the start.  This is part of the reason why I share my stuff - I would like to see what someone else could come up with if they have 100's of things to to pick from in the start instead of the make up as you go strategy.

Zalmo was something I ended up nerfing around 7x due to complaints about difficulty.  Izlude was always one of those "hit or miss" battles where people either struggle with or wreck it with 0 in between.

Ah, that makes sense. Initially I thought that Velius would be very easy because it's a 1vs5, but giving him haste with a ton of statuses + Innocent/Cursed is going in the right direction. But of course it's much harder to design a good 1vs5 instead of giving him a few ??? allies. I remember Zalmo in an earlier version taking like an hour to beat, glad this wasn't the case anymore. The problem with Izlude is that you can just Don't Act him and if you play carefully there's hardly any risk. 

I'll probably do a marathon run of this mod after I finish this file, take more notes and use some other monsters. The ones I used were really strong. 

Have to admit that I really dislike the design for Doguola Pass. I mostly used 6-7 Speed units, and placing Goblins right where they are sure to disable two of them on the first turn means that I'm never getting any turns. If the panthers decide to charm my support units it's almost over. Speed should never decide a battle on the first turn like that, it's really 1.3 design but reversed. Additionally, 3 Plagues are overkill, especially since they're getting hasted. If you focus on damage output, they will outheal and revive you, and if you focus on status they'll just cure it. The Sacreds are very tanky and can deal a lot of damage. So basically, the enemy team has the initiative right from the beginning, and is also super tanky and offensive. As a player it's just frustrating in the wrong way, because the mod keeps being very unpredictable. I'm sure there are some easy ways to deal with this fight, like using Counter Magic, but as of now it seems too limiting. 

It really depends on what kind of difficulty you're aiming for, but Doguola did not really fit in with the previous battles. 

Managed to beat it after replacing Rafa with a Revenant. Ramza was previously a Monk/Knight to farm JP and he was completely useless. Even with a lot of PA he can't one shot anything. Rafa's cast times seem to hurt her utility a lot. Still, I'd recommend removing or replacing one Plague and maybe changing the Goblins' positions. 

On 29/12/2017 at 7:17 AM, Quad said:

Have to admit that I really dislike the design for Doguola Pass. I mostly used 6-7 Speed units, and placing Goblins right where they are sure to disable two of them on the first turn means that I'm never getting any turns. If the panthers decide to charm my support units it's almost over. Speed should never decide a battle on the first turn like that, it's really 1.3 design but reversed. Additionally, 3 Plagues are overkill, especially since they're getting hasted. If you focus on damage output, they will outheal and revive you, and if you focus on status they'll just cure it. The Sacreds are very tanky and can deal a lot of damage. So basically, the enemy team has the initiative right from the beginning, and is also super tanky and offensive. As a player it's just frustrating in the wrong way, because the mod keeps being very unpredictable. I'm sure there are some easy ways to deal with this fight, like using Counter Magic, but as of now it seems too limiting. 

It really depends on what kind of difficulty you're aiming for, but Doguola did not really fit in with the previous battles. 

Managed to beat it after replacing Rafa with a Revenant. Ramza was previously a Monk/Knight to farm JP and he was completely useless. Even with a lot of PA he can't one shot anything. Rafa's cast times seem to hurt her utility a lot. Still, I'd recommend removing or replacing one Plague and maybe changing the Goblins' positions. 

Hmm............perhaps I should stop screwing around and actually start playing CH4: That sounds kind of worrying 

Meliadoul was interesting and very similar to Izlude. You just have to stop any counterplay for half an hour. The AI takes forever to come up with a move and it's probably unplayable at 60 FPs. 

Finath River makes me want to stop playing. This is basically 1.3 all over again, where you have to plan the first few turns in advance. I guess I could grind some different monsters with secondaries and train Agrias, but don't really feel like doing that atm. 

57 minutes ago, Quad said:

Meliadoul was interesting and very similar to Izlude. You just have to stop any counterplay for half an hour. The AI takes forever to come up with a move and it's probably unplayable at 60 FPs. 

Finath River makes me want to stop playing. This is basically 1.3 all over again, where you have to plan the first few turns in advance. I guess I could grind some different monsters with secondaries and train Agrias, but don't really feel like doing that atm. 

I haven't hit a wall at all (Although, having some kind of knowledge kind of helps). My only advice for now is that after I watched your team I did noticed most of your team is lagging a good ten levels behind Ramza. I suggest doing an extra battle or two between fights to help you catch up while getting nice stuff as return (Hell, you can even replace your low level monsters with shinning new ones at party level).

Also, Agrias is the only one should tag along almost every time since having TWO trump cards tends of solve any kind of AI trickery overrall

Yeah, that's what I expected. Can't really blame the mod for this as it is related to the limitations of the game, but after playing FFT a billion times you don't really want to grind every five story battles. 

I feel like this is a great mod...If you have the time to spend 20 minutes on fights multiple times before things go south and have to reset.  Nearing 40, I don't have quite that kind of time to spend getting nowhere.  There were a few fights that just really turned me off of this mod.  The first was the Dorter Trade City where Vormav first appears.  The second was Zirekile Falls.  Both fights devolved into massive enemy sandbagging that caused the fights to drag on and on.  It wouldn't have been so bad if only 1 or 2 enemies have revive-type commands.  But when 3+ do?  It ceases to be fun.  And they seem to revive them right before the dead guy's turn comes up quite often.  Zirekile Falls ended up taking me a few hours from the setup that I had.  It didn't help that my Panther was somehow killed and stoned at the exact same time, so it could not be revived at all.  Despite that, I did end up winning, but the 2+ hours it took was the final straw.  I just don't have the kind of time this mod requires.  It seems great, but it requires an investment.