Final Fantasy 5: the brainstorming

Edit: download in new main topic

So I got the feeling that the increasingly misnamed Final Fantasy series is wholly underrepresented on this site at only 5 out of 13 uploaded mods.

Jokes aside, I wanna brainstorm some ideas what could be done with this game.

1) MP/action economy

Battle starts with 0 MP, except for certain class bonus (below) and some equipment.
ELEMENT1 spells would cost 0 MP, stronger and more specific spells > 0.
Magic damage would have to be reworked so that even the lowest spells remain relevant.

Guarding would grant 100 MP, next to the usual recovery options like Ethers and Osmose.
If MP is at least 100 at the end of a turn, that character skips wait and immediatly gets to act again.
If you're seeing parallels to Bravely Default, it was kinda the inspiration.
To make that relevant, a form of nATB is required.
And yes, that makes the Quick spell useless. Replace it and be happy over some freed RAM.

2) classes

We have 4 characters and all have access to the same 22 classes, including Freelancer and Mime.
No more!
Noone gets to keep the Hobo class, they learned a profession after all
Aside from that, I'd block 6 classes per character, so each one has 15 classes to choose from. E.g. Bartz can never be a Chemist while Lenna just doesn't have it in her to go Berserker.
Less breakage, more character diversity.

Each class gets to teach 7 abilities, some duplicates across classes for the basics, but the heavy stuff like !X-Fight and !X-Magic should stay unique and as a 7th ability.
Additionally stupid stuff like White1-6 goes and only teaches White once. You don't have to learn 6 times how to wield a sword either, neither has !Blue that problem.

Changing into a class no longer changes stats, instead levelling a class grants permanent stat bonuses, 3 out of HP, MP (starting bonus and max), STR, AGL, MAG, VIT. Duplicates possible.
E.g. each level of Monk gives +2x VIT and +1x HP (30 HP before VIT %bonus)

ABP required should not be based on which ability you learn next but purely on how many class levels you already have.

3) items

Consumables aren't used up, instead you get a cooldown during which you can't use !Item.
Higher item stacks increase effect or lower cooldown. E.g. 1x Potion heals 30 HP, 99x Potion 2000 HP.

Would probably require to prohibit out of battle healing coupled with a free mini heal after victory.

4) equipment

Equipment is changed from Helm, Armor and Relic to 3x Relic.
Non-shields would have to get renamed.

5) elements

Everything could get one of the eight elements this game has instead of 90% neutral.
Weapons could belong to one element per type, i.e. swords would be fire except for special cases.
Armors for defensive obviously, each element would give 2 resistances and 2 weaknesses, mix gear badly and you're suddenly weak to 6 elements.
The only thing I'd allow to be neutral would be the final boss. Everything else, enemy or otherwise, should have elemental affinity (i.e. weaknesses).

Warning: utter drawing incompetence ahead (8x8px per icon times negative talent)

to the left how it could look ingame,
to the right just all 8 element icons: fire, ice, lightning, water, wind, earth, poison, holy

Man. How did I miss this wonderful topic? FFV is one of my favorites and I just let this topic get ignored without saying a thing! 

1) This sounds interesting, but I'm curious about this: if I guard for instance, and then I attack, does that mean that I'll act like I'm under the quick status forever? I'm not sure I completely follow this at all. That said, I do like the idea of being able to guard and recover MP. I think that's a really good idea, it makes guard a bit more useful for mages, and in addition to that, it lowers the need to spend a ton of money on items / ethers. Especially because MP usage basically forces Mix to be used as the best alternative for MP restoration in the late game. 

2) I'm curious why you wouldn't use the FFV: Advanced version for this on this note. If you haven't started already on the SNES version, I'd think it would make more sense to do it there because it has extra jobs, which means that you can make each person have more jobs if need be. That said, I'm fine with the SNES version, but I do prefer the cleaner official translation over the dry SNES one or the "interesting" PSX one. 

For jobs, I'd probably break them down based on how the character's bases were in the original game. 

Bartz: Bartz starts the game with higher strength than anyone else in the game, so naturally, we'd make him have a bias towards physical attack. But since he's afraid of heights, he won't be acting like a Dragoon any time soon. He's also pretty clumsy with handling of animals, so he doesn't have any sort of ability to tame or communicate with them. 

15 Jobs per character? 

Physical: Knight, Monk, Berserker, Mystic Knight, Ninja, Thief, Samurai

Magical Nuke: Red Mage

Support: Dancer, Geomancer, Bard, Mime, Blue Mage 

Defensive Magi: Time Mage, White Mage, 

Lenna: The princess of Tycoon. She's very kindhearted and talented mage to boot. She's also good with animals, and the affinity shows with her choices of jobs.  

Physical: Thief, Mystic Knight, Beast Master, Ranger, 

Magical Nuke: Black Mage, Summoner, Red Mage, 

Defensive Magi: White Mage, Time Mage, 

Support: Chemist, Bard, Geomancer, Mime, Blue Mage, Dancer

Galuf: A veteran warrior and an amnesiac. There's more to this hardy old man than meets the eye. 

Physical: Monk, Knight, Ranger, Samurai, Dragoon, Beast Master, Thief

Magical Nuke: Black Mage, Red Mage

Defensive Magi: Time Mage 

Support: Chemist, Mime, Geomancer, Blue Mage

Faris: A pirate that decided to join the adventure. Has an arsenal of adventure skills from experiences at the sea. 

Physical: Thief, Ninja, Ranger, Beast Master, Monk, Berserker, Samurai

Magical Nuke: Summoner (if only because it makes sense for a certain plot point), Black Mage 

Defensive Magi: White Mage 

Support: Blue Mage, Mime, Chemist, Bard, Geomancer

They all get Blue Mage because unless you can make learning apply to just seeing the move done, this is a nightmare no one should have to deal with. 

I'm not sure how I feel about the growths being on the job though, especially if there are no multipliers. I'd rather have both tbh. And yeah, if you're planning on making every class able to equip everything, Mime pretty much makes Freelancer pointless, as the biggest draw to Freelancer was the fact that they got bonuses for mastered jobs and could equip everything. 

3) Items

This is an interesting idea, I'm just curious how this would work with mix too. Would it make both items fall on a cooldown, or would it work on its own. That would certainly humble mix to have a cooldown on multiple items. Not sure how much that would nerf it, but it certainly wouldn't be nearly as busted, that's for sure. For free heals after combat? That'd be a nice idea all around for both HP/MP. Maybe not to full health, but certainly enough to where it can help with the item changes. 

4) Relic System

Could be interesting, but what exactly do the relics do? Are they just relics that give extra passive abilities like "Blind immunity," while giving more accuracy, or are they going to be things like "physical damage -25%?" Because with a relic system, I really don't like the idea of relics become obsolete like standardized equipment. 

5) Elemental. 

That sounds... Fine actually, especially sense you could change weapons whenever in 5, there's absolutely no problem with this. 

1) it's not like the quick spell, it just makes you need 0 atb ticks to your next turn instead of whatever you have to wait based on haste/slow and agility.
so if you use jump you still have the start-up delay, then the air time before the hit and only then makes it a difference; if you have 100 MP, those are used and you can act again right now if not, wait.

there'll also be some "physical" spells to use the MP, not many just 2 sets of 8 "spells" (3 shared because the spell list is just that full already).

2) I don't like the advance version, dunno it just doesn't "click" with me, sound is weird and also:

• I have 0 idea about GBA assembly but a bit for SNES asm, call it a home advantage
• more content (classes, items) means more problems and redundancy; with the other class edits I already have trouble filling the base 21 classes with 7 non-trash abilities, adding another 4 classes... please no
• the snes game has a ton of more documentation

this is my current class setup.

each character got a "main" stat and a "secondary" (top), each class as well (left).

If the primary match they get them (green), otherwise it is only a "priority" class but not must have.
I mostly focused on preventing the broken combos that lead to the likes of Dual-Wield, X-Fight, Spellblade.
The obvious problem being that little child Krile will replace the hardy Galuf but there are worse things in fiction than the little girl being the main tank.

Currently every class can equip all items, has one fixed ability and minor stat adjustments; otherwise the player has 3 slots they can fill as they want.

3) I have no idea how I should treat mix and drink.
Item has one cooldown per character, not per item. I just don't have much RAM.
If you use a potion you can't use !item for 2~3 turns but the other characters still can, if you use a elixir you better not need an item any time soon from that character.

I think !drink can just use a shared cooldown with !item and !mix gets to burn in hell has no cooldown but still uses items up.
Or !mix gets dropped completely, that'd work too.

MP doesn't change after battle since it gets reset on battle start anyway.
Otherwise you could in use a tent for full MP heal and then start a boss battle with 10 turns on all 4 characters, yeah, no.
For HP I went with 1/8 maxHP + 8 * (VIT - 22)

4) relics is just the same as armors, helms and relics were in vanilla. Some give just defense or stats, other cut MP cost in half, give status immunity, etc.
Items with unique effects survive longer than just stat sticks.


5) keep in mind that !item is optional, so you can just be stuck with ineffective damage on a character.
availability and weapon types are other problems; swords can be two handed, knives can't, so if you have to abandon the sword, you have to use a shield when you didn't want (or have) one or waste more class levels to learn dual wield parallel to two handed. jump builds will really hate trading a lance for a sword.

also armors affect your elemental coverage in good and bad way. with a fire armor on, you take less damage from fire but more damage from water attacks.
and you can't change armors in battle (or I missed the totally obvious thing for 15 years), only a shield for that purpose.

6) difficulty slider:
lazy numeric increase/decrease for now
message speed was doing nothing so there it has a use now

7) encounter rate slider:
want to grind? set it to 1
want to run to the boss almost unhindered? set it to 6

(sacrificed not/barely working message and battle speed for that)

I can maybe release a proof of concept this weekend, no promises.

1) Alright, that makes more sense. I see what you're saying now. 

2) That's fair for ASM. Honestly, there wasn't terribly new items for the most part, but it did have some extra summons (like Leviathan for instance), but those could honestly be added later on. As for the sound, you're right, it is worse, but there's actually a restoration patch created to help that. It also fixed some damage formulas that acted a bit weird in the SNES like blood suck. Documentation is probably the biggest reason though. 

If that's the way classes are done with equipping all items, that will help with equip problems as some classes have really bad equips like Geomancer but have okay abilities (Elemental isn't terrible but it's not great either). X-Fight, dual wield, Spell Blade is one of those things that are a little too good, I agree. I think humbling them isn't worth the time, but keeping a person from getting all 3 is a must. Seems we both thought of the same thing there. 

But for growths, I guess I'm just a little worried on the account that someone might want to be a physical unit for awhile, and then have a hard time with that and try to switch to a mage, only to be kinda lame on it, and the big draw to the job system is being able to switch classes on the fly. 

3) For Mix / Drink, you could have the items that you combine for mix / Drink act like a tier of item. IE, something like Potion + Potion acts like the cool down of a High Potion. That might be a bit difficult / tedious to do for all items, but it's a thought that could help. It'd also stop someone from being a mix machine as they'd have to have something to do in the meantime. 

4) Sounds kinda Saga Series inspired honestly. Some of them were just plain better as some were Defense and others were Defense +. I just remember the remaking trying to make all of them have some sort of viability though. 

5) Nah, you're right. Only Left and Right hands can be switched in combat. It sucks, but that's how the game rolls. And that's fair, it's still something worth considering at moments depending on what class you are and what you're doing. After all, if your spear heals someone, it really doesn't matter if Jump is going to do less damage with a sword. You can actually damage it in that scenario. 

6 and 7) are QoL additions that would always be welcome. 

2) I don't know of any new summons there, Leviathan is definitly in SNES version.
X-Fight, dual wield and Spellblade are currently crying in a corner from the nerf hammers;
X-Fight no longer ignores def or evasion.
Dual wield takes a 3/16 penalty to attack power. 2handed took a dive from x2 damage to +25% attack power.
Spellblade is no more x2/3/4 with def=0 imba nonsense:
tier1 just doubles damage, keeps def intact. Tier2 increases attack slightly and 0s def. Tier3 is somewhere inbetween.

Apart from that, I HAVE to add a few items. Otherwise certain elements are just criminally underrepresented over long game stretches.

You still can switch on the fly and be somewhat competent at it. Even at the bare minimum you have about 28~30 in a relevant STR/MAG stat.
Add a bit gear with stat bonuses and you should be able to hit 40 without too much trouble.
A specialist will be stronger, yes, I estimate about a 60~70 stat without min-max and overgrinding.
(my math is based around the assumption that a player can finish with moderate levels of 30 char and 20ish class)
Since STR/MAG is a linear factor in the damage formula he'll be 50~75% stronger.
A bit much, sure, but those missing 20~30 points must be somewhere else; AGL? VIT? Nothing that hurts to have more.
Maybe STR, but I planned to make that reduce weight a bit which means slightly faster ATB.
MAG gives more max MP which can at least be useful if you plan to store a lot of turns at once for a big attack rush.

Or just ask a bard to sing, that can increase strength and magic to 99.

Does it even matter? The damage potential is absurdly high.
Not in the damage cap sense but orders of magnitudes beyond that.
At one point a thought experiment ended at 240k theoretical damage, not even sure how.

4) Not sure I know any of those games.
At the end of the day "relics" are just equipment, hopefully with more "not just defense" variants.

Crud, I'm thinking of FF6. Yeah. Yeah, you're right on that. And those nerfs are crazy. I'm down with that. 

Alright, if the leveling is like that, that's fine then. 

Seems I need to play the game again, I've forgotten stuff about it. 

proof of concept

No idea how far mostly unchanged enemy stats will let you get.

Btw. if an enemy doesn't have any symbol in front of his name, he'll have unchanged resistances/weaknesses from vanilla.
Otherwise it overwrites those values.

How you know !item is on cooldown:

The evils of math:

 

For the elements on everything notion, will we be getting a free scan spell? Everything having resistances sounds good on paper, but it'll make things confusing fast. Or will all monsters be labeled with an icon on what their element is so we don't have to worry about it?

In so many words: both.

Every monster HAS to be labelled with 1-3 element icons because that is what my function reads: the monster name (and those icons are part of it).
Whether you know which monster name belongs to which sprite/target is another story sometimes...

Every character has a minimum ability knowledge of !Fight, !Item and !Observe. The later tells HP and weaknesses but costs a turn.
And you have to equip and use it of course.

I'll maybe change it so that !Observe and its big brother give you a free turn afterwards.

Consider me officially intrigued by this hack.

Love the limited class selection & class-based level ups. Not sure what I think about a whooping 15 out of 22 classes being available for each character. Having 2/3 of the available classes still seems like an awful lot. Might be my subjective opinion though.

Available classes can still be changed.
How much lower would you go? I had already trouble deciding on 6 classes to ban for each character.
Certain things just don't work when you remove too much, imo.
The game kind of requires that everyone can deal physical damage (guaranteed with !Fight and no gear restriction) and has at least access to one form of magic damage; and that's where trouble starts.
It's hard to count !Gaia and !Animal as they are almost exclusively one element, the later has it even worse with all the damage ones being also ground type (i.e. useless to flying).
Some support abilities would also be nice and so on.

I don't know where the 15 originally came from.
I just needed a number for a start. A loss of 30% is already a lot for me, I want some player choice in this and not a preset path.
And we need enough jobs per character after the first crystal obviously.

I mean I could have made all wind crystal jobs available for all and only restrict the rest and end up with 12 jobs each or something.

Disclaimer: the following values are for my dev version, not what I have posted above, differences will happen.

For me the amount of classes counts less than to block "critical" abilities.
A "rapid fire" setup requires:
1) Ninja for dual wield (2x 13/16 attack)
or the "inferior" 2handed (1x 125% attack) from Knight or Berserker
2) Ranger for X-Fight (rapid fire, 4 hits at half power)
or the inferior TwinCut (2 hits at normal attack power but doubled defense, mostly meant for axes as they ignore huge chunks of defense) from Berserker
or try to be cute with Knight's Stomp (1 hit against halved defense)
3) Magic Knight for spellblade (only for swords and knives)
or Thief for Crit Up (axes, katana, bows)
or Monk for Brawl (unarmed)
lances go with (S-)Jump instead, the rest are defensive backrow weapon types
4) Dragoon or Time Mage for Pierce (passive, not innate, bypass immunities; kinda required if you want to stick to your weapon of choice for spellblade)

E.g. Lenna currently has no access to any of 1), Faris has no spellblade and Galuf has to take the slightly worse choice on 2).
Originally I wanted to hard cap class levels at 20 total, so even though all 4 could entertain a form of a rapid fire build at that level, all would have to be a different flavor.
Or a bit more than flavor, those restrictions indirectly affect which elemental damage you can throw around (e.g. Sword = fire, bad without rapid fire)

My initial guess was maybe 11 - 13 classes. Maybe missing one of the classes with their "primary" stat," maybe not even the same number of classes for each character (small variation). Mind you, I'm not saying my way is better - I'm making a guess here. And, yeah, everyone needs a healthy selection from the Wind Crystal.

For !Gaia and !Animal, are you not able to shake up those abilities with different elements, buff/debuff moves, etc? Then again, I'm guessing for the beta release, you don't want to shake the abilities up to much, lest it become overwhelming.

Both have the same two problems:
1) very limited elements, Animal has only earth/ground type attacks (earth being the actual element and ground meaning it is helpless against float status, i.e. all birds) and a fraction move
2) what spell you get is purely random, in case of !Animal it subjectively even gets worse with higher level.
!Gaia is edited to choose its 4 spells per area evenly, 25% chance each - in vanilla that was based on level, good luck getting level 60 in the noob cave to have a chance at the best effect for that.
the spells are based on the area you are in, so you can get a super powerful tidal wave on the sea - which helps little if that area is obviously flooded with water resistant types.
I think that problem can be "solved" by making those spells very strong under the assumption that you'll 90% of the time have those resisted?
Fire2 has 110 power, split for multitarget, double on weakness; so a typical gaia move could have 150 power with multitarget no split damage?
or more dynamic 120+5x Geomancer level? no idea.

!Animal is a different beast of a problem.
you unlock new better spells but the obsolete old ones still clutter the list the result is chosen from.
so at level < 10 you only good the mysidian rabbit that now functions as a cure1
at level 50 when that is not so good anymore you still have a good chance to get that rabbit when you'd rather get the cure3 tier unicorn.

the list includes party wide healing, earth/ground single target attacks, a percentage attack, status effects (poison, paralyze, blind).
the list isn't bad but again random. with gaia you're at least 90% sure it will hurt the enemy, here... thx for the heal on fully healed party?

Sounds like both abilities need a bit of a revamp. Modified percentages & elements for Animal, different spells in a given area for Gaia. Though I don't know if that's feasible, given the code. And, like I said, probably best to get the base idea done first.

BTW, do all 4 characters still have forced "Fight" and "Item", or are one or both of those now freely changeable with other commands?

Every class is setup like the vanilla mime:
class ability + 3 abilities of player choice
!Fight, !Observe and !Item are always available to be equipped but not forced.
And yes you can screw yourself over by choosing e.g. 4 mages with 3x !Item and not even knowing any attack spells, so no way to win,
which is a scenario I tolerate as you really have to try.

!Gaia should be ok as it is, maybe some number changes. It mostly does what it should; if you take it you know it will hurt the enemies in some way;
a lot of aoe damage (similar power to !summon), slow, blind, poison, confusion, HP-to-1 effects, even direct death is under the possible effects.
It is kinda like !Dance, you use it, don't know what exactly will happen, only that it will hurt the enemy in some way.
It more or less works when you look for a way to kill stuff.
 

!Animal has a mixed bag, it can deal status effects, deal damage, heal, cure status.
So sorta like FF6 !Slots without a way for the player to influence it and without a insta-win jackpot.
You take it and have absolutely no idea what will happen; do you get the single target attack? does it heal the party no matter if HP is full?
It is unreliable in that sense. If you need healing, you usually need it now and not maybe now, maybe in 5 turns.
That way it fills no niche. It has no high power reward like dance, it doesn't even have a reliable "direction" (keep party alive longer vs kill enemy faster), it is just there...?

What can be done with !Animal?
One way would be to give it a fixed 3 pet list based on level in Ranger/Bard/Beastmaster (all three teach this skill) and the character that uses is (i.e. Bartz doesn't get the high tier healing one, Lenna refuses the Skunk).
Each use you would rotate through this list, so pet A -> pet B -> pet C -> pet A -> ...
And the starting point for each battle would not be fixed "pet A" but based on, let's say VIT, specifically VIT mod 3; that stat wants some more love too.

Example:
Butz has Ranger 1 so he gets his lowest list of: Squirrel, Squirrel, Mysidian Rabbit (changed from do nothing to minor party heal)
He has 24 VIT (or any other values cleanly dividable by 3), so his first and 2nd !Animal will be the squirrel, only every thrid will be the healing rabbit.
Lenna in the same situation might get: Mysidian Rabbit -> Squirrel -> Nightingale

What does that achieve?
We can know what we get, so it has become a reliable tactic.
It is not a "every turn full heal" spam fest.
Since it is based on VIT, the player has some agency in manipulating it. Find a good value and start the fight with the pet of your choice.
The "bad" pets will no longer drag the power of the skill down after you've achieved a few levels in the relevant classes.

Sounds good.

On 5/17/2017 at 2:54 PM, praetarius5018 said:

So I got the feeling that the increasingly misnamed Final Fantasy series is wholly underrepresented on this site at only 5 out of 13 uploaded mods.

Jokes aside, I wanna brainstorm some ideas what could be done with this game.

Hmm, I've played FFV a good bit (thanks to the Four Job Fiesta), so let's see if I can provide some feedback on these ideas.

As a whole, I'm kind of skeptical of...most of them, really, but let's see if I can give suggestions.

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1) MP/action economy

Battle starts with 0 MP, except for certain class bonus (below) and some equipment.
ELEMENT1 spells would cost 0 MP, stronger and more specific spells > 0.
Magic damage would have to be reworked so that even the lowest spells remain relevant.

Guarding would grant 100 MP, next to the usual recovery options like Ethers and Osmose.
If MP is at least 100 at the end of a turn, that character skips wait and immediatly gets to act again.
If you're seeing parallels to Bravely Default, it was kinda the inspiration.
To make that relevant, a form of nATB is required.
And yes, that makes the Quick spell useless. Replace it and be happy over some freed RAM.

The first half of this sounds really interesting, honestly. Lets mages actually do something for trash mobs and keeps bosses from being -aga spam. For reworking magic damage, possibly add a 'magic attack' stat that works like the attack stat that weapons have; Fire can, then, use 1x this 'MAtk', while Fire 2 might use 1.5x and Fire 3 use 2x.

I'm not really following how guarding's supposed to work? Like, I saw in one of your other posts that the MP is consumed if possible in order to get that instant turn, but wouldn't that mean that as soon as you Guard, you gain the 100 MP, then immediately lose it to get a new turn immediately (which removes the Guard)? Based on your comparison to BD, I assume the intent is that Guard skips that check and just forces you to hold the MP and wait? That could work, but it doesn't seem like it'd play well with, say, a White Mage, who probably wants to save their MP for their actual curative spells.

Personally, I think it'd work better if it was its own resource instead of being tied to MP, but I'd have to see it in action first, really.

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2) classes

We have 4 characters and all have access to the same 22 classes, including Freelancer and Mime.
No more!
Noone gets to keep the Hobo class, they learned a profession after all
Aside from that, I'd block 6 classes per character, so each one has 15 classes to choose from. E.g. Bartz can never be a Chemist while Lenna just doesn't have it in her to go Berserker.
Less breakage, more character diversity.

Each class gets to teach 7 abilities, some duplicates across classes for the basics, but the heavy stuff like !X-Fight and !X-Magic should stay unique and as a 7th ability.
Additionally stupid stuff like White1-6 goes and only teaches White once. You don't have to learn 6 times how to wield a sword either, neither has !Blue that problem.

Changing into a class no longer changes stats, instead levelling a class grants permanent stat bonuses, 3 out of HP, MP (starting bonus and max), STR, AGL, MAG, VIT. Duplicates possible.
E.g. each level of Monk gives +2x VIT and +1x HP (30 HP before VIT %bonus)

ABP required should not be based on which ability you learn next but purely on how many class levels you already have.

My first thought is that there's no way you're making 7 abilities each for 21 classes. Excluding abilities that were just higher-tier versions of prior abilities, like the various magic lists (though I did include the different HP/MP+ tiers), there are 73 abilities in vanilla FFV (EDIT: I forgot to take out the "Equip X" skills, so there's even less you've got to fill levels with); that's barely less than half of the number of ability slots you intend. While you did say you plan on making some abilities redundant to help cover bases, there's no way that can effectively double the number of abilities you have to work with. I do like the concept of making each job have a constant number of levels, though; maybe bring it down to 5 abilities per job? Cut out or condense some of the abilities from Knight, Monk, and Thief which already have more than 5 levels in vanilla (the magic jobs are already handled, of course).

I really don't think you should separate HP from VIT unless you plan on using VIT for more things. In vanilla, VIT has exactly two purposes: determining your max HP, and modifying the strength of your regen tick. That's it. And regen isn't exactly a powerful status in vanilla FFV.

And for one small little addition, I'd at least try to make sure that each character can use all the jobs of the crystal that they're associated with. (Even though, yes, that would mean Lenna has access to Berserker.)

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3) items

Consumables aren't used up, instead you get a cooldown during which you can't use !Item.
Higher item stacks increase effect or lower cooldown. E.g. 1x Potion heals 30 HP, 99x Potion 2000 HP.

Would probably require to prohibit out of battle healing coupled with a free mini heal after victory.

Erghhhh...I'm really leery of no OOB healing. It could work, though, if all battles were a full HP recovery and monsters were adjusted with this expectation in mind. It sounds like you want to move away from long-term resource management anyway, given the non-consumed consumables.

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4) equipment

Equipment is changed from Helm, Armor and Relic to 3x Relic.
Non-shields would have to get renamed.

Ultimately just a change of name for the most part, so sure.

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5) elements

Everything could get one of the eight elements this game has instead of 90% neutral.
Weapons could belong to one element per type, i.e. swords would be fire except for special cases.
Armors for defensive obviously, each element would give 2 resistances and 2 weaknesses, mix gear badly and you're suddenly weak to 6 elements.
The only thing I'd allow to be neutral would be the final boss. Everything else, enemy or otherwise, should have elemental affinity (i.e. weaknesses).

Warning: utter drawing incompetence ahead (8x8px per icon times negative talent)

to the left how it could look ingame,
to the right just all 8 element icons: fire, ice, lightning, water, wind, earth, poison, holy

This whole thing kind of rubs me the wrong way, but I think that's just my personal bias. So I'm just gonna not comment on it too much, aside from mentioning that by default, in FFV, resistances override weaknesses.

That said, I think it'd work fine as long as any given area only had monsters of two or three elements at most. Try to minimize the chance of someone walking into a dungeon blind and just getting pasted because whoops, this enemy they didn't know to expect hits their weakness, hope they saved recently.

(As an additional aside, if every class can equip everything, maybe remove the "Eqp:" section of the equip menu entirely., since it serves no purpose now.)

WallOfText warning!

The first half of this sounds really interesting, honestly. Lets mages actually do something for trash mobs and keeps bosses from being -aga spam. For reworking magic damage, possibly add a 'magic attack' stat that works like the attack stat that weapons have; Fire can, then, use 1x this 'MAtk', while Fire 2 might use 1.5x and Fire 3 use 2x.

I've realized the same effect by simply using the weapons attack power, or rather a factor of it;
Fire1 uses 85% (0 MP cost), Fire2 uses 110% (6 MP cost) and Fire3 uses 135% (14 MP cost)
with the advantage that I don't have to worry about hidden typos in M.Atk making some weapon useless or utterly overpowered.

Also that opens the way for axe wielding casters... could be worse.

I'm not really following how guarding's supposed to work? Like, I saw in one of your other posts that the MP is consumed if possible in order to get that instant turn, but wouldn't that mean that as soon as you Guard, you gain the 100 MP, then immediately lose it to get a new turn immediately (which removes the Guard)? Based on your comparison to BD, I assume the intent is that Guard skips that check and just forces you to hold the MP and wait? That could work, but it doesn't seem like it'd play well with, say, a White Mage, who probably wants to save their MP for their actual curative spells.

If you defend or guard you get +100 MP and end your current turn.
Otherwise the game checks if you have at least 100 MP, if yes lose 100 MP and take another turn.
Of course you can abuse that with always ending your turn defending..
1st turn: defend
2nd.1 turn: do whatever
2nd.2 turn (consumes the 100 MP from first defend): defend again

White Mage learns !Cure1 that is the same as the spell but free of MP cost and not multitargetable. So if you equip that to your White Mage, (s)he is never unable to heal, it just won't be as good as Cure2/3.

Personally, I think it'd work better if it was its own resource instead of being tied to MP, but I'd have to see it in action first, really.

Originally I wanted to change the game so that MP doesn't exist at all, 10 seconds later I remembered that Fire1/2/3 is a thing and gave up on that idea.
It shouldn't play too different than a system where all skills use a shared cooldown or charge time or whatever.

My first thought is that there's no way you're making 7 abilities each for 21 classes. Excluding abilities that were just higher-tier versions of prior abilities, like the various magic lists (though I did include the different HP/MP+ tiers), there are 73 abilities in vanilla FFV (EDIT: I forgot to take out the "Equip X" skills, so there's even less you've got to fill levels with); that's

barely less than half of the number of ability slots you intend. While you did say you plan on making some abilities redundant to help cover bases, there's no way that can effectively double the number of abilities you have to work with. I do like the concept of making each job have a constant number of levels, though; maybe bring it down to 5 abilities per job? Cut out or condense some of the abilities from Knight, Monk, and Thief which already have more than 5 levels in vanilla (the magic jobs are already handled, of course).

I think I'm fine on abilities.
I've converted the equip X skills into different passives and the lower tier HP/MP boosts have secondary effect to differentiate all of them. So 32 passive abilities currently, I can only add one more because of space.
On active abilities I've sacrificed the tiered color-magics so there are now a total of 65 active abilities by my counting.
Ok a couple are just "cast spell X for free without option to multitarget" it is still something.

I 

really don't think you should separate HP from VIT unless you plan on using VIT for more things. In vanilla, VIT has exactly two purposes: determining your max HP, and modifying the strength of your regen tick. That's it. And regen isn't exactly a powerful status in vanilla FFV.

GilToss was modified to be based mostly on VIT, as well as 2 physical skills from a new "weapon spell menu".
I may also include it in the formula for resisting status effects. Maybe.
VIT also increases the post battle healing a bit.

Erghhhh...I'm really leery of no OOB healing. It could work, though, if all battles were a 

full HP recovery and monsters were adjusted with this expectation in mind. It sounds like you want to move away from long-term resource management anyway, given the non-consumed consumables.

I wanted to keep the gameplay "fluid".
"Fight a 30 sec battle then spent 2 minutes spamming basic potions to get ready for the next fight"
and
"ok I beat the boss back to grinding 30 turtle shells so I can beat the next"
just shouldn't need to be.
If I have a class like chemist with its mix ability I want to be able to "push some buttons" as in use the friggin ability, and not keep it until I forget it exists.
Or when I'm supposedly in a hurry to "save the world" I can hardly take 8h timeouts every two steps to cook a meal and sleep.

And I had a... "situation" on hand.
If I'd be consequent you'd need to get a full heal after every battle if you have at least one (hi)potion in your inventory or an ether and any cure spell. Or a white mage lv1 (learns !Cure1 even if you haven't bought it) or a Chemist with certain other ingredients or bone mail and a death spell or element X absorbing armor and spell of element X... way too much to check if you want to be "correct".
So we have full power every fight; if we don't increase enemy power to be threatening they'll just feel like useless grind since it costs nothing except time.
And "purely strong" enemies imo work better in action RPGs since they have dimensions to work with that are missing here (e.g. movement/placement, obstacles) so that makes some situations just a "grind check" or a "lol, RNG, game over".
I should probably find a better phrasing for that..

Well, it is just a "yes but not all of it" recovery for now. Play poorly and you'll get worn down; then you need to set encounter rate to a minimum and run back to the inn to try again.
Worst case, there's the tried and true FF1 strategy of kill all but one enemy, stun it then spam freely available heals until 100% HP.

Ultimately just a change of name for the most part, so sure.

Could you equip a Flame Ring, Coral Ring and Angel Ring at the same time? that is honestly news to me.
It at least means characters can be a lot more varied.
Bone mail gives undead status but high defense? Ok, we go all the way and equip three copies of it for massive physical defense.

by default, in FFV, resistances override weaknesses.

that change here is mostly out of necessity. If I kept that resistance wins, you'd just equip 3 items of different elements to resist 6 elements total, and a shield that covers a 7th.
Maybe even all 8 elements when you use Flame/Coral rings or other items that cover more elements.
I don't think there would be much game left if you could cover everything so easily.

Maybe I'll change it so they neutralize each other, but resistance on gear overwriting weaknesses is a no go out of fear for godmode setups.

That said, I think it'd work fine as long as any given area only had monsters of two or three elements at most. Try to minimize the chance of someone walking into a dungeon blind and just getting pasted because whoops, this enemy they didn't know to expect hits their weakness, hope they saved recently.

A weakness hit now only halves the defense instead of zeroes it and gets +50% damage for physical or +100% damage for spells.
I wouldn't expect the player team to be THAT fragile.
Plus, as long as you have !Item equipped you can at least switch the shield on the fly.

(As an additional aside, if every class can equip everything, maybe remove the "Eqp:" section of the equip menu entirely., since it serves no purpose now.)

I've written on my todo list that I want to show the current weaknesses of a character there.

I know I'm bad at this, I'm writting a lot based on what I know, knowledge that is unavailable to you...

30 minutes ago, praetarius5018 said:

If you defend or guard you get +100 MP and end your current turn.
Otherwise the game checks if you have at least 100 MP, if yes lose 100 MP and take another turn.
Of course you can abuse that with always ending your turn defending..
1st turn: defend
2nd.1 turn: do whatever
2nd.2 turn (consumes the 100 MP from first defend): defend again

That seems needlessly complex to have something that amounts to "always have defending bonus"

I don't really have any other input... just that thought.

Yeah, it's currently a flaw in the system, not sure how to "fix" that exploit.

some more "issues":

DirtToss Zeninage:
currently the only skill that still permanently destroys ressources.
 

MP steal skills (Psych, Drain Sword, ..):
don't actually do anything. Monster have < 100 MP and no mechanism I know of to get more, neither do they use MP (currently monster cast for free).
So you spent a turn (which equates to 100 MP) to gain < 100 MP, always a loss with no gain. Simply defending would be better.

Someone forgot to tell Shinryuu that this game is 16 bit.

So what I've done:
potential max HP is increased from 65.535 to 524.272 (or up to 16 segments of up to 32767 HP)
Bosses and strong regular monsters can have "HP barriers", any overflow damage when reaching such a barrier is lost.
E.g. a boss with a barrier at 5000 HP is sitting at 5001 HP and hit for 9999 damage, he'll only drop to 5000 HP now and only the next attack continues as normal.
Upon passing a HP barrier the following stats increase slightly: attack, STR, MAG, AGL, evade, m.evade.
Upon passing a HP barrier maxHP decreases accordingly, meaning the enemy can never be brought back above such a barrier.
Successfully inflicting a death, petrify or similar status will not kill a boss/monster with HP barrier directly, only drop it to the next HP barrier.

In FF5 there exists a "nuclear option"; buff the target with Mix/Dragon Power (Dragon Fang + (Hi-)Potion) +20 levels until it has Lv255 and then spam Blue/Lv5 death.
No randomness involved, both parts have hit guarantee, the entire thing bypasses every protection I can give.
The effect of level on damage caps at Lv99 so it doesn't even rise the risk a lot.

So I embrace this in an absurd way:
status immunity is no longer 100% resistance.

Instead I calculate a chance to inflict a status based on

• a base rate depending on the status effect
• status "immunity" towards that status
• attacker's magic power
• target's vitality
• "boss/heavy" flag of the target
• if the target is a player (this reduces success chance)
• target's affinity towards a certain element, e.g. poison status checks against poison weakness and resistance

In short, if a boss is weak to element X you have a chance to use status effect Y on him even if he is supposed to be "immune".
Though if he resists that element and the status - forget it.

I'll have to nerf a few status effects of course..

Prepare for a guy who's never played FFV to destroy, or be destroyed by your mod.

Most likely both for an inevitable case of schizophrenic difficulty.
The odds of me getting numbers right on the first try is 0.

I'd honestly say that FF5 experts won't have it easy either; it looks the same but fundamentals changed.
Where battle speed was is now a difficulty slider; those that set it to max will have quite an experience.

1)  FF5's MP system is pretty garbo, so I like the idea of scrapping it.  I could see 0 MP cantrips working well, also.  It could ensure elements are at play for wizards even when they aren't spending MP.  It would kinda necessitate re-working rods and the like, though, since they would become rather pointless as weapons in their current state.  It'd also be cool to have some non-damage cantrips.

Using MP for a Brave/Default system sounds ugly.  Of course, this is a hack, so ugly sometimes comes with the territory, but it's still worth noting.  I also didn't personally get much enjoyment out of the Brave/Default system as a player, but a lot of players did, so I can't argue with its appeal.  I'm definitely in favor of scrapping standard ATB, though.

2)  Good idea.  It always rubs me the wrong way when a game with plot characters (i.e. not generics) uses a class system (or ff12 license grid, etc.) and then just doesn't bother making the characters mechanically unique in any significant way.  I'm fine with generic characters, but it's just that clash of differentiating the characters in the story, but not in the gameplay, that never jived with me.

3)  I feel like you should re-theme items in that case.  Potions are literally consumable, so the idea that you wouldn't deplete them by using them would be thematically strange.  Mechanically it's fine, though it introduces some problems with dungeon attrition that would have to be solved elsewhere, as you've mentioned.

4)  Not really enough information to comment in full.  But it sounds like it could strip classes of their complexity, or while increasing the quantity of EQ choices:  decrease the complexity of EQ choices.  Again, not really enough info to say whether that would be the case, that's just an impression.

5)  "The element count is too damn high!"  I really hate the 8-element system that is standard in so many FF games, it always feels bloated.  Since the game already has 8 elements, I'm not necessarily suggesting to reduce them, but I had to voice the opinion.  I like the idea of giving enemies visible elemental types, though, and that has the potential to mitigate a lot of what I dislike about having so many elements.

6)  Personal preference, but I dislike being able to 100% freely adjust the difficulty whenever you like.  I tend to prefer:  you can lower it whenever you like, but it can't be raised again, to ensure that beating the game on the hardest setting is an accomplishment.

7)  Ever since playing Bravely Default, I've tried to come to terms with how I feel about this mechanic, and don't really have an answer yet.  I do think that random encounter systems either need to be avoided or augmented, though.  So regardless of how I might feel about this specific approach, doing anything is generally better than doing nothing.

1) As said somewhere above, originally I wanted to remove MP altogether.
But that is kinda difficult if you have tiered spells. I mean sure, I could change it to Fire1 hits one target, Fire2 hits all with the multitarget penalty but what should Fire3 do then?
Or replace tier3 entirely, that'd work too.
Or scratch Fire2 AND 3, then keep Fire"1" as toggleable single/multitarget.
Ok, there probably aren't that many staples in the series we're missing AND can recreate.
Plus, certain classes would become overpowered just on the basis of sheer choices.
A Black Mage with 18 answers per problem instead of 5 would be terrifying.

And how'd you balance Fire1 against Fight AND X-Fight at the same time..
problems, problems..

And what to do with MP damage/stealing/regenating effects then.

3) This would just be a name change then.
I don't think that is really necessary when magic is so freely available that you can file it under "a mage was bored between battles".

4) Overall it increases the complexity of choice together with element changes.
Every item modifies elemental weakness and strength so on the open sea where water will be more present you'd rather not take fire items unless the side effects are really, really good.

5) "Many elements" is imo only a problem when ways to inflcit damage of that type barely exists.
At the moment I only recall one way outside of Gaia (I exclude it because of region lock) to inflict poison (Bio) and water damage (Leviatan; Aqua Rake is non-elemental).

6) Don't give me ideas.
Else I remember what the lowest difficulty was you used and then deny the final battle on difficulty 4 or easier.
And on a pure difficulty 1 playthrough you get a third phase on the final boss.

7) BD had the most hilarious version honestly.
By default you could turn encounters off or increase it up to almost every step.
BUT!
If you grind your starting class a whole lot you get "enemy lure" ability which increases the encounter rate as well.
Pointless.

Overall I don't have much problem with random encounters themselves.

1)  Ah, I was referring to what you're already doing (with having MP start at 0, etc.) as "scrapping" the system, so I was just saying I support that idea.  The SNES era FF MP system just strikes me of a brainless copycat of Dragon Quest's MP system.  Except in Dragon Quest games you have very limited inventories, sparse if any methods of restoring MP in a dungeon, and a significant focus on dungeon attrition, and these factors make that MP system work decently.  But in FF, with virtually limitless inventories, many MP restoring items, and less of a focus on dungeon attrition:  it just feels pointless.

5)  Sparse usage of the many elements is a frequent problem, yes.  But I would say that another frequent problem is when having so many elements makes it take too long to identify enemy weaknesses/strengths such that you don't discover them until the dungeon is basically over (or don't bother trying in the first place).  Showing the enemy element types addresses that issue, though.

6)  Hey it's not my fault if you carry an idea to its extreme!    I just like for being at the end of a game on "Hard" mode to serve as a testament to a Hard mode run that has occurred.  Rather than being some dial you could have turned up or down at any time.

7)  Well, I was only suggesting that unaugmented random encounter systems are problematic (in terms of appeal).  Examples of augments would be the BD thing or even something with minimal impact like the SMT/EO encounter radar (of green -> yellow -> red).  This isn't terribly relevant to a hack, though.  If the original game had no augments, no one is going to bat an eye if the hack doesn't either.  I only mentioned it because you're already looking to apply an augment, and I think it'll make for a nice bonus feature.

4)  So basically I was referring to the shift from "typed" slots (head/body/shield/etc) to untyped (all accessories).  I see both as equally viable, so I guess you could call this playing devil's advocate, but I wanted to point out the benefits of a typed system.  I dunno if you've played Fire Emblem Awakening or Fates, but in those games you can have your player characters marry and produce an offspring based on the parents.  However, each char can only marry one other char.  Because of this, when you have characters marry, you have to carefully consider all the other possible marriages you're giving up as a result.  If you could marry anyone freely, you'd have a lot more options to choose from, but the depth of the decision becomes a lot shallower, because you don't have so many opportunity costs to consider.  You'd just choose the most desirable partner in each individual case.

Similarly, with typed EQ slots, when you equip a helmet you're both deciding on that helmet and deciding against every other helmet.  This means you have to consider what kinds of benefits can be gotten from helmets vs. what kinds of benefits can be gotten from other types of EQ, and decide not only if this is the right choice to make for an EQ slot, but also if it's the right choice to make for the helmet slot, specifically.  So, compared to untyped slots, you have fewer build total options to consider, but the process of considering them is more complex.

1) Yeah I know; with certain other changes I made the normal MP system would be even more pointless:
minimal encounter rate to run back and forth between inn and dungeon almost unhindered and infinite ethers say hi.

5) To be fair, the Blue Mage teaches an ability to scan for elemental weaknesses.
And it just costs 10 ABP which is almost nothing compared to what you get over the entire game (2500+?).
Sidenote: in this hack you'll have it from the start and it'll use no turn - afterall it only gives the solution to a visible "math" problem of what does element1 + element2 have as a weakness.

6) Just look at SD3SOM, I rarely do things in moderation >.>

4) There are several items that are one of a kind, so to an extend the same sentiment still applies. It just extends the options for classes that are usually worse off.
And it is kinda required because I otherwise have not many options to give several items per element in each slot.
The game can only have a max of 95 defense items, spread over shield, helm, armor and accessoires.
Here now thanks to element changes also spread over 8 elements.
Also availability is a problem. I can hardly have 12 defense items before the first boss just to cover the basics (3 elements per item category).

I stand by my decision here.

I haven't played either game but I could imagine that a straight forward step by step choice in that system would lead to a seemingly good couple wise pairing of
char a1 marries a2, b1 marries b2, etc.
while a more optimal setup for the whole team would have
a1 marries a2, b1 marries c2, c1 marries b1
maybe because b2 is only 1% better than c2 for b1 but b2 is 80% better for c1 than c2

err what was that about again?...

hmmm ... would I break any "sacred FF rule" by NOT having tiered magic? Or cutting X-Fight to 3 hits instead of 4?

6 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

I can hardly have 12 defense items before the first boss just to cover the basics (3 elements per item category).

How many defense items does it take to cover the basics with untyped slots?

6 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

while a more optimal setup for the whole team would have
a1 marries a2, b1 marries c2, c1 marries b1
maybe because b2 is only 1% better than c2 for b1 but b2 is 80% better for c1 than c2

Yeah you pretty much got it.  And it's a maddening web of inheriting classes, skills, stat growths, and stat caps, along with each resulting child also being unique and having their own classes/skills/growths/caps to consider.  Combine the complications of gender, the fact that some character matchups won't mate regardless of circumstance, and an understandable refusal to engage in incest, and you get a maddening web of optimization that hasn't really been untangled yet even though the game has been out for over a year.

6 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

hmmm ... would I break any "sacred FF rule" by NOT having tiered magic? Or cutting X-Fight to 3 hits instead of 4?

Tiered magic is semi-sacred.  But then I've seen Chrono Trigger hacks that rename Luminaire to Holy and Dark Matter to Ultima, so apparently nothing is sacred.

X-Fight I don't think is sacred at all.  If anything, it sounds like it'd only hit twice.  Though you may as well just nerf it's power instead of its hit count so it can keep its flair?  Bonus points if the hits have more difficulty getting through high defenses.

3 hours ago, zombero said:

How many defense items does it take to cover the basics with untyped slots?

Without counting shields 1/3 of what typed needs. And 3-4 elements in the first area should cover everything needed.

3 hours ago, zombero said:

X-Fight I don't think is sacred at all.  If anything, it sounds like it'd only hit twice.  Though you may as well just nerf it's power instead of its hit count so it can keep its flair?  Bonus points if the hits have more difficulty getting through high defenses.

I can change:

• hit count 1-4 (5+ will crash the game if dual wielded)
• defense ignoring or not; vanilla had that set, my version has not anymore
• evade ignoring or not; vanilla used this as well
• 1/2, normal or double attack power (value before defense); this one has normal
• 1/2, normal or double damage (value after defense); this one uses 1/2

I already have a "X-Fight" clone that hits twice with half attack and double damage; so it has a much harder time against defense but at best deals double damage total compared to Fight.
So the idea was to make X-Fight hit 3 times with half damage making it always 150% of Fight but either above or below the clone depending on defense.

5 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

Without counting shields 1/3 of what typed needs. And 3-4 elements in the first area should cover everything needed.

Gotcha.  Well, with the limited total item quantity and proposed element system:  I can see why untyped slots would be highly desirable.  I'm currently deciding how many typed and untyped slots to include in a system, so the tangent was relevant to my own interests.

5 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

So the idea was to make X-Fight hit 3 times with half damage making it always 150% of Fight but either above or below the clone depending on defense.

Sounds like the best choice from the options you listed.  Though some of what you're proposing for this hack (and some of what it appears you've done for SD3) seem like ASM hacks of a level that would make circumventing these restrictions trivial?  Unless it's all being done with rather clever data manipulations.

3 hours ago, zombero said:

Gotcha.  Well, with the limited total item quantity and proposed element system:  I can see why untyped slots would be highly desirable.  I'm currently deciding how many typed and untyped slots to include in a system, so the tangent was relevant to my own interests.

In doubt, 3 is always a good starting number.

3 hours ago, zombero said:

Sounds like the best choice from the options you listed.  Though some of what you're proposing for this hack (and some of what it appears you've done for SD3) seem like ASM hacks of a level that would make circumventing these restrictions trivial?  Unless it's all being done with rather clever data manipulations.

Well, yes, asm edits are always involved.
The thing with X-Fight is that it is a multilayered problem actually.
X-Fight itself only calls the weapons attack several times with additional flags.
Certain weapons use magic damage formulas which ignore those flags, like the HP-stealing Blood Sword or most Rods.

...

You know, yes, I should just remove the half damage flag from X-Fight and add a hardcoded check at the end of the damage application that checks for the ability being used to being X-Fight and then modify damage there.
That'd solve so many problems at once.

Also X-Fight is so slow, especially with dual wield. That makes me like 3 hits instead of 4 even more.
Queue 2 dual wielding characters with X-Fight and you can make and eat breakfast before it is done.

I have a big suggestion when it comes to abilities.

It's great that each class, like Mime, would have the ability to equip more abilities.  However, one thing that has always irritated me about FFV is that every ability is weighted the same.  For example, Black Magic or Dual Wield is weighted the same as See Hidden Passages?  Really?  Why would I ever burn an ability slot on Auto-Shell unless I had no other option?

There's a couple of solutions for this, and both very likely involve some pretty huge hacks.

1.  Make it so the characters have a ton of ability slots, like 6 per class, and make it so each ability consumes 1-3 slots.  Then, you can assign a weight to each ability.  This is kinda like the system in Final Fantasy Dimensions.

2.  Make it so the abilities are given a type, kinda like in Final Fantasy Tactics; so there are counter abilities, support abilities, etc.

I feel that this would create a lot more in terms of customization, and would provide a great opportunity to balance all or most abilities; and not just have many of them be throwaways.

Also, I would make it a design goal to make the Mime and Freelancer classes more niche classes.  It would really be cool to have a system where you are heavily encouraged to choose actual classes for end-game, instead of us all having 4 mimes or 4 freelancers with our end-game party.

5 hours ago, zeteginara said:

2.  Make it so the abilities are given a type, kinda like in Final Fantasy Tactics; so there are counter abilities, support abilities, etc.

Yeah, I've always thought FFV wanted to have a separate passive ability slot, at the very least.

I can't add more slots but what I did was that in-battle passive abilities are replaced with certain active abilities, specifically with !Item, !Fight, !Brave (take two actions now, double delay until next turn), !Scan in that order whichever you don't have yet.

So if you put on your Thief:
!Steal (always set because of class)
Politics (passive that gives you 2x items on steal and from victory spoils)
Counter
Evade

you can in-battle select from:
!Steal
!Brave
!Fight
!Item

but still get the benefits from the 3 passive skills.

Innate abilities now count for all classes, not only for Mime and Freelancer.

As for knowing which are innate:

Plus Freelancer is not selectable once you have switched.
Well, in short every class is like the vanilla Mime.

I hope that answers that slightly.

On 26.9.2017 at 4:05 PM, praetarius5018 said:

1) As said somewhere above, originally I wanted to remove MP altogether.
But that is kinda difficult if you have tiered spells. I mean sure, I could change it to Fire1 hits one target, Fire2 hits all with the multitarget penalty but what should Fire3 do then?
Or replace tier3 entirely, that'd work too.
Or scratch Fire2 AND 3, then keep Fire"1" as toggleable single/multitarget.
Ok, there probably aren't that many staples in the series we're missing AND can recreate.
Plus, certain classes would become overpowered just on the basis of sheer choices.
A Black Mage with 18 answers per problem instead of 5 would be terrifying.

not sure if I should corrected or have proven my point

new white spell list:

new black spell list:

new blue spell list

new time spell list

new spellblade list

additional changes:
MP "damage" that exceeds current MP damages ATB (= longer delay until next turn)

The relevant element for most attacks will be shown in the top display (only one color for those though...)

can now rename character in first slot any time that menu is available (just via holding L or R while entering menu)

doesn't affect "story" dialog yet, since those are hardcoded, only menus. maybe later.

Looking forward to trying this. I've always thought FFV was the most forgettable of the SNES FF's, but based on what you've done with Sin of Mana, I'm down to try this one out too. The ideas are interesting and I will probably get my ass kicked, which is the whole point. Will be staying tuned. Cheers.

Well, the influence from your SD3 experience is really obvious. I'm always for replacing resource management with active, consistent challenge and chances to actually use the tools I have.

8 minutes ago, Valenhil said:

Well, the influence from your SD3 experience is really obvious.

oh, is it that obvious it will be a total trainwreck?

If you also want a quicker win, a great idea for a patch would just be one that forces the Four Job Fiesta rules.  Not saying your patch/revamp wouldn't be better, but FJF is really, really fun.

I guess I kinda have that already as an option.

There's only a few major things stopping me from releasing a playable (unbalanced) beta alpha:

• a grind of 300 enemy formations
• a bug with x-fight + spellblade that kills the game
• a title for the hack

If you want to read, this is my current change list:

It sounds like your FJF style run is similar to a more FF1 like 'natural' run.

A true FJF unlocks only four jobs, but you can have all four characters eventually learn all four jobs.  While it's not quite as challenging as one job per character,  it does allow for some fun synergy.  Like a Mystic Knight with !Mug or !X-Fight for Chicken Knife awesomeness.  I really like that style of gameplay.

Would there be a way to have each crystal only unlock one job, chosen at random from the time the crystal shatters?

Would be theoretically possible.
But seeing how many variants are there - what would that gain?
I could accommodate one, not all.

I would say the 'normal' run, as that's the most commonly done run.   . 

AKA, one class per crystal, randomly assigned.

Still my question: what would that gain?
Regular FF5 FJF works already and has many, many more variants than could be added in the ROM easily.
Plus I've 0 idea for GBA ASM so that'd lose 4 jobs from the pool.

And I sadly doubt anyone would ever go so far as to do a challenge run in any of my works.

Either way, the "easist" way to get an FJF mode for my mod would be an external generator that modifies a few specific values in the ROM according to "better" randomness than FF5 itself can manage.
The FF5 RNG can only have 256 different states. Needed would be at least 720 (6 wind jobs x 6 water jobs w/ mime x 5 fire jobs x 4 earth jobs).
So that obviously makes 2/3 of all combinations not possible.
Just imagine that this could possibly mean that 70% of teams are stuck with Berserker, glorious times!

hmmm.... shouldn't be too hard to port the needed change to a regular FF5, though would still need to write that "generator" - I've no idea how to do that.

I was checking your comments about the wealth of elements and poverty in methods to use them. I don't especially mind that some elements are easier to use than others; that's a way to make certain spells more special. But I agree that it should be restricted to one or maybe two elements. No reason for water to be super-exotic, as you said. Would it be possible to make relics or other gear that changes attacks of one element to a related element? For example, your ice spells and attacks now deal water damage instead. Or your lightning attacks now deal wind damage. I said this with no clue how difficult it would be to code, so if it's not feasible I'll understand. I just wanted to throw the idea out there.

That would be certainly possible to code.
Though at this point I'm not sure how usable or OP this would be.

Stuff like Meteo, GoblinPunch and BraveBlade/ChickenKnife are "balanced" around the idea that it can only be one fixed damage type.
Will have to think about this one, not sure.

The idea wasn't exactly to make any element convertable to any other element, but I get what you mean. Didn't know about some spells being balanced around being one particular element. Maybe a better method for game flavor would be for some elements to be easier to access through weapons and others easier through attack spells. And you seem to be doing something along those lines already.

Everytime I write balance just imagine huge air quotes around it.
I just throw numbers at each other until shit stops working.

I sorta have such a split by necessity, I guess.

general rule:
Swords - fire
Knives - poison
Axes - earth
Katana - lightning
Lances - ice
Staves - holy
Bows - wind
Whips - wind but not many items
Rods - all over the place
Harps - technically no type since they use fraction spells
Bell - 3 water, 1 earth, yay?
unarmed - water (you know: blood, sweat, tears)
BraveBlade/ChickenKnife - water (fluid attack power)
Ragnarok - ONLY non-elemental weapon

considering which skills work with what weapon type and which not or which stats they use, each element is quite different.
and (current) max attack power varies as well:
fire tops out at 83, wind at 91, water at 100 (max braveblade)

then you have status effects that also belong to elements:
fire - berserk, HP leak
ice - stop, death
lightning - paralyse, old
water - toad, mini, doom
wind - confuse, slow
earth - sleep, petrify
poison - poison, zombie, HP to 1
holy - blind, mute, destroy

with that black may have access to all 8 elements but not equally;
e.g. its only holy type is a blind inflicting spell
for wind HP drain (better not try against undead)
and for ice well ice and death, etc.

white has fury/berserk for fire, nothing for ice, storm and charm for wind, etc.

Theoretically you just need fire, ice, lightning and wind to hit every single type weakness currently.
Most late game bosses have two elements, some regular enemies do too; those may have depending on combination 1-4 weaknesses (I extra checked that no combination results in 0 weaknesses).

If it was a fixed exchange like ice <-> water, poison <-> fire, etc. this would still be too much imo;
a too strong move would go from potentially being very good 25% of the time to 50%, have the right 2 and you're "done".
sorry, don't want that.

e.g. meteo is very problematic; it deals 4 hits to a random target though those may hit the same target, even for all 4 times if no other target is present, like in many boss fights.
it is insanely powerful if you can give it ideal circumstances - one target weak to earth, earth amp gear, mp to keep the spam going.
but that is also its drawback: if the boss resists earth it only/still deals above neutral damage in total - remember: 4 full power hits
I really didn't pay too much attention to what boss is weak to what elements and what that would mean, I just looked that I have something that fits and a good variance of types/weaknesses (e.g. the final boss's final form has unique weaknesses for each targetable part).
Meteo isn't alone, there are other insanely powerful moves - goblin punch, aqua rake, flare(s), echo, a dozen variants of "death", etc.
While they have a fixed type they are (almost) guaranteed to get their time to shine but (hopefully) not "solve" the game alone.
I'm not even sure how an element change on aqua rake could work, would it also change the anti-desert type? ouch..

Maybe we could pull a page from the Adventurers comic and have Meteo stop working after enough casts. I mean there are only so many meteors in local outer space, right? I kid, I kid. Even though I'd love to see a game actually do that.

The point of bosses and other encounters being weak to innately powerful spells is definitely an issue. As you say, we don't want these encounters to be "solved" too easily. The only solution I can think of that wouldn't make such spells useless would be to give very powerful spells a cooldown similar to items under your new system. Then we'd need to worry a bit less about some of the things you mention. Granted, this might be less of a drawback in random encounters, but at least in that situation you'd still have to charge up the MP. That would give the random monster some time to do devious things before the Holy or Flare or Meteor or whatever else.

That'd be... not that hard to do actually?
Flipside ofc. being that certain bosses "depend" on casting Meteo (desperation mode neo x-death), so if those count too...
and otherwise it gets weird... the player has no Meteo left but the boss can pull more stones from outerspace out of his ass...

Wow, I was only joking but I think it's amazing that the mechanic could be a real, possible thing. Maybe not in this game though. One issue is what you described, the other is that players would just only use it for the final boss. Or at least that's what I would do. *side glances at my supply of untouched elixirs at the end of every game I play*

Though if I was going to go with that mechanic, I would link it to the extradimensional shenanigans in the story line. Any time those gates to the Boss Dimension open up and scoop out towns or whatever, the leaked energy makes high level spells possible. A limited number though. Any time a story event like that happens the "supply" of super magic should be set to a specific amount rather than stockpiling it up. Gives the player more incentive to use what they've got. As for the monsters, well they LIVED there, they're soaked in the stuff so they have their own reserve. And the final dungeon is actually in that dimensional space so the power spells can be cast without limit.

Wait, am I actually suggesting this as a game mechanic? I swear I wasn't serious at first. But looking at it now, it seems at least a little bit interesting. What do you think?

eh, not that hard.
would just need a free byte in RAM (this is the hardest part, seriously) for the counter
and then when it is reached replace the active cast of "meteo" with a "out of space rocks" spell that does nothing, same effect as I already do with the echo spell.

But I'll still say no to this one (unless Meteo turns out to be super-broken OP), it feels arbitrary and unclear for the player.
Fire weak to water and other weaknesses - nothing outside the norm, maybe a few weird interactions in the chart but overall it makes sense.
But running out of space rocks for meteo but having enough for infinite comet casts (same sprite) and enemies still having some left - why?

For regular enemies you can ignore this mechanic since those come usually in packs of 2-8, hitting 4 of those is not much different from a regular aoe spell.

Yeah, the sort of limits on the highest spells as I described above would need to be transparent to the player for any meaningful decisions to happen. it would take a huge amount of work and balancing and I don't really see how it would be worthwhile from a practical standpoint. Better to just keep the spells balanced enough that the basic combat system isn't broken by them. it's just fun to throw ideas around sometimes.

*looks at thread title*
yes

Download

If someone wants to try it:
At this point I'm mostly looking for feedback on mechanics, less on numbers. Don't expect the later to be merciful.

Also, please change the names of all party members (hold L or R when opening the menu, opens name change for lead character)
and tell me dialogs where they still display the vanilla names, I might have forgotten a text box or fifty.

Beginner house has not yet changed dialog, I want to touch that once I'm certain mechanics work, and not just in the non-buggy sense.

And of course as is typical for me the package includes too much documentation nobody will read.
I hope this will not be as necessary at the end as with SD3, at most the element table will be...

well i will try the game to know about the mechanics i like your idea

one thing I might have not meantioned;
if an enemy has a rare drop (1/16 chance) and you have no copy of that yet (inventory, equipped or already in battle wards), you get it 100%.

this should happen as soon as the "tutorial" fight with two goblins, they have a rare drop of a ruby relic

well i have a questionm the first boss has a rare drop is worth to get all rare drop from enemys right now im testing the game in the single mode witch means if i get to the first cristal i have to choose one job from my party members it will be dificuly to choose any tips to build up a party bacuse this is diferent than the origeinal i played years ago right?

Sorry, but I won't even contemplate real party advise until I'm "95% done".
You can turn single mode off any time you want, only activating it is limited to the start.
Of course, you can get a penalty for "illegal" classes then (same as if you'd use the 10 gold Sage Stone from the first shop for that purpose).

Last I checked all bosses had guaranteed drops.
Or do you mean steals? Those haven't been changed.
So whether that is worth bothering is more or less the same answer as it was in vanilla.

i mean bosses i think some had rare drops can you check?

hmm... ok, a few do have rare drops.
but if you have 0 copies of that yet you should get it 100%, and I don't think you'll miss not getting a turtle shell from carbunkle.

when i was fighting the wing raptor  i was low level 3 i noticed that item usage is limited becuse has a timer? anyways i am trying to say i noticed that every time i use the item the number of itens dosent go down it was 3 when i used 3 times and contined 3 you know why 

That's a feature of the mod, read the first post.

This.

More in depth, you don't use any item up in this version, instead you get a cooldown for ALL items on that character, this includes !Item, !Mix, !Throw and !Drink.
A few items have fixed length cooldowns but get stronger with higher stacks, e.g. a 1-stack potion heals 50, 99 potions 1250 but cooldown is static; compare with elixir which always recovers all HP but gets cooldown reduction from "try again next battle" at 1 copy down to about 10 turns at a 99 stack; ok MP recovered increases also (15 -> 100).

Cooldown can be speed up with defending and the time spell "Renew".

Breaking rods does not give a cooldown but is one of two categories that still use up items at all.
The other being tents.

I'd not be surprised if this change dropped Chemist from most-powerful-job-if-you-know-what-you-do to second worst.

thanks for the info

2 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

This.

More in depth, you don't use any item up in this version, instead you get a cooldown for ALL items on that character, this includes !Item, !Mix, !Throw and !Drink.
A few items have fixed length cooldowns but get stronger with higher stacks, e.g. a 1-stack potion heals 50, 99 potions 1250 but cooldown is static; compare with elixir which always recovers all HP but gets cooldown reduction from "try again next battle" at 1 copy down to about 10 turns at a 99 stack; ok MP recovered increases also (15 -> 100).

Cooldown can be speed up with defending and the time spell "Renew".

Breaking rods does not give a cooldown but is one of two categories that still use up items at all.
The other being tents.

 

I'd not be surprised if this change dropped Chemist from most-powerful-job-if-you-know-what-you-do to second worst.

Do you think that you could also make a song that reduces cooldowns? Seems weird, but that could be an interesting combo. 

Depends, as a continous effect or a buff or one cast = less cooldown left?

Also not without removing any other song.
I'm sorta already at the limit of what can be added.

Small status update:

1) I found a use for the status screen, elemental affinities (replaces the "equip: any" part):

2) I can now add up to 10 new classes, but that's irrelevant, right?
Though they'd just be palette swaps, no unique sprites.

3) I've expanded my collection of square mechanics by something from Chrono Cross, field elements:

That are the 5 symbols above the enemies' names.
Matching icon gives +10% damage/heal or slightly increased chance to inflict a status effect, the opposing element reduces the same.
!Summon (the ability, not the spells!) is affected in a more extreme way.

4) Title Drop! A New Game Plus mode.
Character levels, job levels, items, magic and abilities carry over,
cap of total job levels increases from 30 to 70 (NOT enough to max all jobs of a character)
and enemy stats increase; enemies cap at NG+15.
Can be accessed at any time by holding L/R. when loading a save game.

5) Escaped monster grant 50% exp instead of 0.
Multi-killed monster (e.g. via Life, Gargoyle respawn) now grant the exp for each kill instead of only once.
Total exp gain per battle is capped at a measly 8,388,607 - though that was enough to go from Lv8 to 95, so...

Just patched this game. Before I stream this, quick questions:

Is there bonus content

Is this a complete ROM

Are there serious bugs

What are the major additions to this rom

Why haven't I seen this anywhere on the internet???

Mastered my first set of classes then realized.. there is no freelancer job..?

Do all classes gain the benefits of the mastered classes now? I.e. Faris mastered a blue mage and switched to thief, does she now have the innate "learning" ability of the blue mage for free?

I noticed also that my black mage had double grip from the mastered knight haha. Nice.

Most of the character abilities have random words with no description so I have no idea what some skills do.

The item system (at least the early game) is completely busted.

Of course I'm still at the wind shrine (or right outside of it)

A few screenshots from my game.

I just got the berserker and it's easily the most busted job in the game. I am putting out over 1k damage a turn and he doesn't even go into berserk (I control actions every turn). He has twin cuts which allows him to double strike and 4x double grip (mastered knight) and I can equip 3 more which all stack properly.

I also have a picture of my HP using 3x Bulwark. I'm only level 17 (not sure what the level cap is) and have 5000 hp.

Ive also experienced my first game crash. Right after I got the berserker, I put bartz with that job and began grinding right before the next town (I think it's the fire town) and I encountered a 6 pack of wolves, used twin cuts, and my game glitched up and froze. I tried recreating it but was unsuccessful. 

Otherwise, aside from how busted my characters are, I fucking love this game and what you're doing to it! I'm going to continue updating these posts with my thoughts. 

There's also many other thoughts and issues ice found in the game but they're all trivial.

18 hours ago, Fein-Life said:

Just patched this game. Before I stream this, quick questions:

Is there bonus content

Is this a complete ROM

Are there serious bugs

What are the major additions to this rom

Why haven't I seen this anywhere on the internet???

Not at that point, though the full version will have 10 extra jobs.

No, WIP

I hope not. No one's reported anything yet.

Can I just say, RTFM? (Item cooldown, MP=ATB, job restrictions/changes, element changes, ....)

16 hours ago, Fein-Life said:

Mastered my first set of classes then realized.. there is no freelancer job..?

Do all classes gain the benefits of the mastered classes now? I.e. Faris mastered a blue mage and switched to thief, does she now have the innate "learning" ability of the blue mage for free?

I noticed also that my black mage had double grip from the mastered knight haha. Nice.

Most of the character abilities have random words with no description so I have no idea what some skills do.

Jup, freelancer is useless; every job has now every innate ability.

16 hours ago, Fein-Life said:

Most of the character abilities have random words with no description so I have no idea what some skills do.

Still same as vanilla.

16 hours ago, Fein-Life said:

The item system (at least the early game) is completely busted.

Please explain what you mean.

2 hours ago, Fein-Life said:

A few screenshots from my game.

I just got the berserker and it's easily the most busted job in the game. I am putting out over 1k damage a turn and he doesn't even go into berserk (I control actions every turn). He has twin cuts which allows him to double strike and 4x double grip (mastered knight) and I can equip 3 more which all stack properly.

I also have a picture of my HP using 3x Bulwark. I'm only level 17 (not sure what the level cap is) and have 5000 hp.

Ive also experienced my first game crash. Right after I got the berserker, I put bartz with that job and began grinding right before the next town (I think it's the fire town) and I encountered a 6 pack of wolves, used twin cuts, and my game glitched up and froze. I tried recreating it but was unsuccessful. 

Otherwise, aside from how busted my characters are, I fucking love this game and what you're doing to it! I'm going to continue updating these posts with my thoughts. 

There's also many other thoughts and issues ice found in the game but they're all trivial.

pff, 1k damage is NOTHING.
Add spellblade for x2 damage if you can match the weakness (does NOT consume a turn, only MP to activate).
Power/Hero song, !Black/Tempr (or !Drink a power drink, same but only on user), something else I'm forgetting... I stopped buffing when my Lv8 char hit 20k damage. (admittedly he had a maxed Brave Blade)
But then later bosses can get 6 digit HP values so it isn't even near overkill.

Controllable Berserker is intended.

Level cap is still 99. Though HP (and damage) growth slows a lot after Lv30.

I've had a few non-reproducable bugs as well... let's hope I have them accidentally fixed?

Just as a warning:
I've one more bug to fix, then I can release a new version - which won't be compatible with old save games.

Wow, thank you for your in depth response.

Well, I love the controllable berserker.

The increasing ABP is rough. 

Of course it is rough - you're supposed to need only around 25 job levels, in fact it'll cap at 30 next version (or at 70 for NG+).

Are u planning on keeping full equipment selection for all jobs?

99% yes.
Equipment selection is kinda restricted by equip weight - which'll be based on STR.
You can wear as heavy as you want but higher weight gives significant penalties to speed.

Ah, gotcha.

I'm noticing that the berserker ability doesn't work. Your characters turn red but never actually attack. Bug I suppose.

Same as confuse - the characters are kinda moody. Sometimes they don't attack, other times they attack 20 times in a row.
Dunno what causes that bug, yet.

Added download link for new version to first post.

Lol. I just mastered a berserker for no abilities. And his level 5 ability was "drink"

Is there a big difference between the 2 patches? I just downloaded your new one. Deciding on whether to start my game over with your new patch

Holy shit, just started new file with your new patch; is the below pic right?

Kinda looks badass

What's the 19 / 5 thing, and why is Faris number so low?

Damn this leveling system is hard... Does the abp get better? This is the new patch.

Hi praetarius,

I have to say I'm really enjoying this mod so far! I like the idea of having the separate limited builds for each character rather than the ability to just max them all out like in the original.

The added Field Effect mechanic from Chrono Cross is a welcome addition considering the elemental focus of the gear. I'm also pleasantly surprised that swapping weapons in combat is actually useful this time around.

When I read the class skills list I knew I had to rush the !politics ability and it does not disappoint  it makes farming so much easier!

I think I've encountered a bug with turning off exp gain, it doesn't work, although maybe the feature was just disabled? I'll keep you posted if I encounter any other bugs.

Otherwise I just want to say this is the best Final Fantasy V mod I've played (not that there is a lot of competition unfortunately...) and that I hope you keep it up!

19 hours ago, Fein-Life said:

Is there a big difference between the 2 patches? I just downloaded your new one. Deciding on whether to start my game over with your new patch

Yes, a huge one.

Meaning most comments from the old version are useless to me as feedback...

3 hours ago, Fein-Life said:

Damn this leveling system is hard... Does the abp get better? This is the new patch.

ABP is base exp gain / 64

18 hours ago, Fein-Life said:

Holy shit, just started new file with your new patch; is the below pic right?

Kinda looks badass

What's the 19 / 5 thing, and why is Faris number so low?

Looks right, the 10 new jobs are currently just placeholders, no abilities, just stats, all but one have no palette yet even.
And because my graphical skills are non-existant they'll just stay palette swaps of existing jobs.

19/5 means you have 19 ABP and need a total of 5 for a job up, so jsut win a battle and you get it.
This is a result of why I said the new patch is not compatible with old save data.
I had to move some data around (job levels) and change the logic of how ABP is kept track of.
Specifically it is shared between jobs but gets cut in half when you switch a job.
I found it more important to add a few jobs and have room for other stuff than accurate per job ABP tracking.

40 minutes ago, Limstokes said:

When I read the class skills list I knew I had to rush the !politics ability and it does not disappoint  it makes farming so much easier!

What are you farming that you need that ability?

41 minutes ago, Limstokes said:

I think I've encountered a bug with turning off exp gain, it doesn't work, although maybe the feature was just disabled? I'll keep you posted if I encounter any other bugs.

Oh yes, right... forgot that one when I changed the exp gain stuff >.<

Other feedback is welcome as well, btw.

43 minutes ago, Limstokes said:

Otherwise I just want to say this is the best Final Fantasy V mod I've played (not that there is a lot of competition unfortunately...) and that I hope you keep it up!

Dunno, despite Four Job Fiesta being a big thing, FF5 doesn't seem too popular.
And the one hackng site I know of that had something on it... is down for quite some weeks now.

Can you please explain the battle system? From elemental damage, resistance, the element display above enemies and why it scrolls, why bosses are insanely difficult and immune to almost everything, why damage output swings greatly against a boss?

"element display above enemies", let's see what the README says about it

Quote

 

===Field Effect===

The battle terrain holds 5 elemental icons, displayed above the enemy names in the UI in the bottom left.
For each matching icon strength of attacks, heals and status effect chance of that element is increased.
Every element has one element that opposes it which lowers the above effect,
the opposing element is always the element that also resists it (but is not the same), e.g. earth weakens lightning.

The 5 initial icons are based on the current battle location.

Every time an action is used that displays its name at the top, that action's element gets pushed unto the terrain elements
and removes the oldest one (the left-most icon).

In short:
1) use attacks that hit a weakness to increase your offense power via field elements
2) use the opposing element of your enemy to greatly reduce their power
3) stack a status effect's element to have a greater chance to bypass status immunities

 

So if you have earth - bolt - water - holy - fire and use an ice attack (that produces a message at the top, e.g. not !Fight), the earth icon gets removed and it becomes bolt - water - holy - fire - ice
with that future ice attacks would be a bit stronger than before.
That's probably where your damage swings come from.

"bosses are insanely difficult"
Did you try the config menu? It has a difficulty slider where the defunct message speed was.
If you set that habitually to 1/high then... yeah.

The crab boss is supposed to take minimal damage from weapons that are not his weakness to make sure players have grasped elements at least a little - y'know, use either !Scan or the element chart from the zip to figure out a weakness and then abuse it, as a start, not as the only solution, mind you.

One more idea; if you've continued your save from the old version in the new version... you might have the NG+ flag set since that was one of the job abp values before the move.

Why is exdeath unnecessarily difficult in his castle...?

He's neutral and every attack does close too nothing. He starts out by putting a 15 or 10 second condemn which allows for only 2 actions per character.

I've tried so many configurations including using 3 blue mages with exploder which each hit for 20k damage, coupled with brave to do it twice each.

I've tried dragoon configuration to avoid condemn, but jump does virtually no damage.

I've tried killing off my own people and reviving which was my best bet but then he does condemn AGAIN with an even lower timer... Couple this with the item cool down and mp being needlessly low and there's no way to keep that tactic going.

I'm way overleveled even, at 63, and I've maxed out my job leveling at 30 abilities.

In the original game you would reach this boss around level 25-30 and he wouldn't be this difficult.

What changed and WTH?

Hilariously Gill toss hits for 800 damage, what's the math behind Gil toss? 

errr.... can you give me your save file (.srm) from before the fight?

Also you can cure the doom counter with Life or similar, no need to kill them off before.
And he should be weak to holy (!Scan is your friend on pretend-to-be-neutral fiends).

What's your email so I can send it

none
try a pm here or on discord

What's ur discord

To be honest, I didn't know u could remove condemn with life, that makes this fight doable.. lol

8 hours ago, Fein-Life said:

What's ur discord

same name as here: Praetarius5018

Finishing up the end game quests - legendary weapons etc. 

Enjoying the hell out of this. I have a lot of feedback if you're interested when I'm done.

Is there a farmable location for Kaiser gloves? The monk enhancement accessory?

50 minutes ago, Fein-Life said:

Enjoying the hell out of this. I have a lot of feedback if you're interested when I'm done.

Yes, please, all of it.

51 minutes ago, Fein-Life said:

Is there a farmable location for Kaiser gloves? The monk enhancement accessory?

I only found them on FallGuard/SteelArm or whatever dude #181 is called now.

Is gogo beatable in this version?  I've tried waiting until his script ends the battle and that never comes..

I've tried beating him and obviously he's not designed to be beaten. 

When time runs out u get Mime but your oxygen runs out simultaneously.

I think it's due to the way the in battle character gauge fills up.

Ok, so your Gogo is beatable through time but you have to keep defending in order to progress the hidden timer in battle.

I just cast sleep on my entire party and the Gogo fight is done in 5 seconds.

Gogo/mime is one of those things that doesn't really "work" for me;
mimic works on your allies but Gogo mimics his enemies.
Imo, Gogo should teach the player how mime works and not... this.

Even in vanilla this fight was wrong; you just have to pass the time and not do exactly what he does - reflect on party, then bounce spells off of that to hit him? perfectly OK.

Ya, but what I was saying is that you can't beat gogo in your version the same as in vanilla.

In vanilla you just wait for a few minutes until he leaves.

In your version you have to manually press the defend command repeatedly with your characters for several minutes until he leaves. It's the only way.

It's a bug in this version.

On a side note, I've discovered another bug that auto kills any enemy, including the superbosses, haha

7 minutes ago, Fein-Life said:

Ya, but what I was saying is that you can't beat gogo in your version the same as in vanilla.

In vanilla you just wait for a few minutes until he leaves.

In your version you have to manually press the defend command repeatedly with your characters for several minutes until he leaves. It's the only way.

It's a bug in this version.

nope, working as intended

2 minutes ago, Fein-Life said:

On a side note, I've discovered another bug that auto kills any enemy, including the superbosses, haha

details?

I'm going to make a video on this bug, I figured out how to recreate it.

It allows me access to everything in the game. Including some completely unusable stuff.

I used a spell called void divergence on Omega - pretty badass spell!

I'd like some words together with that picture.

It's coming. Just getting back to the hotel

let me guess...

open !blue, scroll down a bit, close it, then open !martial or !finesse, have fun?

Just beat the game - starting new game plus. Now I can get the damn rapid fire...

70 hours to max 30 abilities in this version and get to level 65 ..

What are the abilities you've given the Mime and what is the stat that mastering him carries over?

I'm at 65 out of 70 abilities with all my characters on ng+ and only 2 classes aren't getting mastered for each character 

glitch: so that was a yes
also that wasn't "everything", you can't get the !gaia, !mix or !animal spells this way, only the "spells" with id 0 to 255, including the enemy-only stuff that is enemy-only for glitch reasons.

3 hours ago, Fein-Life said:

What are the abilities you've given the Mime and what is the stat that mastering him carries over?

I'm at 65 out of 70 abilities with all my characters on ng+ and only 2 classes aren't getting mastered for each character 

check the classes.xls
it tells you which stats increase for each job level and which abilities they have and give.

91 hours to level 99.. Jesus

Did you HAVE to grind that much or did you just want to?

I see you didn't change the names of the other party members. Didn't want to?

I couldn't figure out how to change there names TBH but I also didn't dig deep to figure it out.

On the leveling, the difficulty curve on this game was up and down early on so I decided to grind to imrove odds of winning.

The elemental imbalance in the game -among other things -makes it truly difficult to defeat otherwise easy enemies/bosses.

I planned on going in depth on my thoughts and review as well as my own ideas maybe tonight or so.

But, basically, until you have certain things the game is frustrating. More than just a difficulty, it feels like an impossibility.

The levels in this game aren't as important as the jobs.

Jobs in this version are everything.

Weapons are mediocre in importance.

Summons are OP

Exploder is OP

Relics are irrelevant with the exception of a few 

Relic balance is bad IMO and needs an overhaul

Not being able to heal after a battle is reallybad in some situations

These are a few of the issues I see - I have a full list I'm doing.

I also have plenty of positive things to say as well - that's coming too.

Oh, and Faris is OP as fuck

Bartz is complete ass

I'd like less generalized statements and more explanation wtf you mean and why.

41 minutes ago, Fein-Life said:

46 minutes ago, Fein-Life said:

 

I planned on going in depth on my thoughts and review as well as my own ideas maybe tonight or so.

 

These are a few of the issues I see - I have a full list I'm doing.

I also have plenty of positive things to say as well - that's coming too.