Author Topic: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v2.0.99994)  (Read 4837241 times)

Tsuna

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5000 on: 2017-03-06 08:25:30 »
Yeah its a full game voice over mod. Not just sound effects. Its called project Echo-S. Look for it on YouTube. The link is also under my picture on here

fool

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5001 on: 2017-03-06 09:24:22 »
Amazing work. The voices match pretty well.

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5002 on: 2017-03-06 12:47:29 »
Sure. In any case do I have your permission to petentially ads voices to your mod. If I cannot make it compatible I would have to release my modded version of your new threat myself but would be owned by you

Right, so an issue here would be that I'm in the process of rewriting all the text in the game (it's been an ongoing process, some parts of the game aren't done or are in 1st draft but I'm definitely more than halfway there) which means spoken dialogue samples won't match up to the text. It's not just a rewrite though, it's editing of actual scenes themselves so there's new text boxes and scripts floating around in there as well which compounds the issue of compatibility.

Materia Stuff
Multiple Master Commands aren't that bad, on physical attackers i use normally 2, sometimes 3 Master Commands (steal as well, hp absorb, mp absorb) which makes random encounters a bit easier later on + the chance for a lot of items to the steal as well materia, you still need to get 700k AP to get at least one (the 8 slot watch can help to get it within one battle, but ok that's another story and also hardly to achieve before disk 3) and without ultimate weapons the healing isn't that big either. 300-500 hp/hit with masamune's equipped is kinda low compared to cure or regen, even with double cut materia.

Master Summon is fine with only one allowed, i absolutly agree to that and if you can keep the normal summon materias, then please add some negative effects to master summon if possible, like 25% hp loss, hardly reduced vit/spirit (max 25/stat) and/or change the unlimited access to 1 or 2. (2 because of W-Summon)

Master Magic is really hard to decide if just one or multiple should be there, i hate this switching around of the materia all the time and try to get some useful builds on all chars, therefor sometimes multiple Master Magics aren't that bad at all.
For example one Mime-Counter which never stays in team with this Flash-Healing (as for v1.4 you can't change that fact ;P), one only for summons and/or offensive magic, one for offensive/supportive magic, a magical tank, a physical tank, one or two Allrounder etc.

I'm just thinking for balancing it's better to only have access to 1, but swapping about set-ups for Magic/Commands can be a bit of a pain later on so maybe multiple should be available.

Status alignments & elemental attacks Flash, Slash, Vincent & Co.Well i think, almost no one was, i've never seen this setup in a video before and it can be useful, but requires a lot of farming in vanilla too. Just re-add the restriction for Flash and the biggest problem therefor is fixed.
Slash-All/Mega-All/4x Cut are fine as they only have a low chance to be triggered then. They are not the big problem with the Death Recover, because even 4xCut has only a 20% chance to trigger for every single hit and it's target is random, so you will never know who gets "Recovery" by using this, it might just be amazing in solo fights, but there aren't that many. With 4x Cut the chance to trigger it once is also just 25% overall. (for example Hades with 6 status effects has like 31% chance to proc at least one effect with every hit without flash)
With Vincent's Shotgun and 2x/4x Cut it can be useful, if Vincent is used as a healer, but his magic value is a lot more useful for summons and offensive magics than any other char. Also his Limits will prevent him from using Attack/2x/4x Cut as well. So it's not a big deal on him, even with a Slash-All Weapon + 4x Cut. As long as you invent nothing to prevent limit-grow on a char (except peerless) it is not useful on Vincent either. Also you could remove Materia Combination-Slots from Vincent's Shotgun, which would prevent this also as he can no longer attack with elementals with 4x hit and death. Or reduce it to only one combined Slot and he can't use it anymore either, as he needs death and elemental attack to make it work.
And as long as you are not planning to add any accessory that gives Elemental Hit-Damage and/or Death-Hit everything is fine.
Damn... so many ideas... xD
Added Effect has a 20% Chance for each attack (calculated for every effect once per hit), same chance applies to weapons with this effect build in and a 100% chance to block on armor.
Flash works like most limits work that cause Death, it just invokes a 100% Death chance, that's all. But combined with other stuff like Hades it transfers this 100% also to those status effects.

As long as Twin Viper uses the Effect Poison and not the Element Poison everything is fine. Element always has a 100% Chance, Effect is only 20% and can't be absorbed (weird fact: it can be nullified if Element Poison is nullified), if inflicted with Poison Effect and absorbing Element Poison it works like a tweaked Regen.
Fun fact: The opposite doesn't work, if you attack with Element Poison an Enemy/Teammate that resists to Effect Poison the Attack gets nullified.

Edit: Tested it with Yuffie & Twin Viper, equipped Bio + Elemental to armor to absorb "Poison" Element and Flash at any slot => Killed & Poisoned the whole party with one hit. Game over. :)
Therefor the weapon has no combined slot, it can't be abused with it.
Ok it can be abused slightly... but this will use up to many materia slots on all chars. (Resist to Death Effect + Poison Absorb Element = 4 Slots used) and it would just be a better or additional Regen-effect.
It could've been more evil with Barret's Enemy Launcher, but thank god, Flash overrides "Unfocused" so he doesn't heal & kill everything on screen and therefor it can't be abused. Except for healing/absorbing the given Element in that Double-Slot of that Weapon, but enemys can profit of that too. So it's kinda useless. :)
  • Change the effect of Tifa's Weapon "Kaiser Knuckle" as they can invoke Death by default.
  • Change the effect of Yuffie's Weapon "Wind Slash" it uses Wind Elemental. (inflict slow/stop?)
  • Change the Materia Slots of Vincent's Weapon "Shotgun" from o=o o=o to o o o o.
  • Change the effect of Cid's Weapon "Trident" it uses Lightning and Water Elemental. (i have almost no idea idea what to use here instead / maybe inflict debarrier - that it can break peerless/wall etc. on enemys, would be great for that physical tank as the weapon has only 3 single slots and low atk, it can be useful for a supportive debuff build with counter-attacks & cover)
Status effects are great on weapons, maybe Tifa's doesn't have to be changed (just 20% chance), but everything that can be absorbed should be replaced and only be invoked by materia if possible (except for aeris weapons with restorative element).
Bug: Barret's Enemy Launcher + Double Cut (2xCut) Softlock the game after the first hit as the 2nd attack has no target priority anymore. 4x Cut works fine as it overrides unfocused.

(Flash is after W-Item, the most game breaking thing FF7 has :D, thanks that it is only available on late disc 2, so it's fine)

Thanks for this info + testing; the Enemy Launcher bug is a big problem, I'll likely need to either change the weapon or the behaviour of 2x-Cut to match 4x-Cut. It sounds though that Status: Death + Elemental can be used with any weapon so long as there are two linked slots on there, though a 20% chance isn't great/reliable so it might be OK.

Cait Sith's SideQuest
You still can use a different Item, name it Cat's Bell as well (or Cait's Bell) and give it a useful effect, like a one time full-rebirth (could be so damn useful on this tanky heroes) or imunity to all "uncontrollable" negative effects which should only be sleep, berserk, petrify, stop, manipulate and paralyzed (except the hidden ones) and change the Description/Effect of the normal bell to "It's just booby trap." or so which sends the char into Death-sentence status at battle start. But make it worth, selling it to NPCs then for like 5000 Gil. It's not that much, but it helps. Especially because of the chocobo racing.
For example get rid of the Sprint Shoes, they are not that helpful in this mod because most of the hard bosses have a sneak attacks or a greatly filled timebar and high speed and there are a lot of other items that help more during those fights.

Other stuff
The ribbon and the resist buff should just allow pearless, to make Aeris' Lvl 3/4 Limits not useless, the rest can or better should stay blocked even the hidden status-buffs like lucky crits. A great and maybe useful fact: Cids Innate bypasses the Barrier/MBarrier block from Ribbon, which is great and useful for a tanky build on him. (Maybe add that to the Readme for Cid)

I also thought of one line of your readme, that you didn't want any item to be missed, well you moved the absolutly visible Ramuh out of the Chocobo Jockey Room, but Neo-Bahamut can be missed too. I know this... i already missed this... at my very first playthrough... when i was young... damn how time passes by. :roll:

Another thing i remember right now is that Vincent's ulti lvl 4 can be aquired already at the middle of disc 2 right after you got the submarine or if you got a green chocobo. Maybe change the trigger for the fight that it is only available after you visited bottom crater like the rest of the new threat sidequests.

The North Crater trigger is being dropped, stuff will be unlocking as early as possible for 1.5. The text that happens at the bottom of the cave will still happen though to have 1st time players aware that there is stuff to do. Sprint Shoes I agree is pretty useless as a +50 Dex bonus (or thereabouts) is the equivalent of having Haste except you can cast Haste on top of it (and have some extra evasion); I'll probably add a Dex bonus onto it of some sort and maybe some Time-status immunities.

Bizzarro
  • make the fight a lot harder, at least for the main party
  • give the body more HP (80k for lvl 99 party after beating nemesis is a joke at the final fight) and absolutly change his fighting style when the belly-core is defeated
  • when belly down => no more restore, but a complete new skillset, maybe statchange too (physical def maybe 0, see below why)
  • after he uses heartless angel he should directly use a 100% hit attack on any party member to make sure, they have to use revive (maybe only for the 3 member partys)
  • strengthen him, you got the hero medal item... this seems like to be perfect for him used as a multiplier
    • for example: hp = hp * ((1+stack[hero medal]) * 0.5)
    • with this he could be the toughest boss in the game with up to 4kk HP, if you got a stack of 99 Hero Medals, staying concentratet for that long is hard and it can't be done by an autofighting script like on Yiasmat in FF12 ;)
    • Note: also beating nemesis 99 or 100 times isn't that easy either :D
  • the hero medal as it is, can't be sold, thrown or used in battle/menu right now, that's why i suggest it, i haven't found any use for it yet otherwise... if there is one... except unlocking the special ending (Note: see italic text below)
  • also the most players won't have more than 1 or 2 of those, so he would only have around 80-120k hp with that formular
Well yeah, the medal can be refused as it is a drop from Nemesis, but normally no one does, except he knows about this and wants him to be easy or add it as forced drop after the player got the W-Item, so he has to challenge Nemesis at least twice to get the Hero Medal.
The party got so much ap, free stuff and equipment from all those new threat sidequests... and everyone who plays this mod and made it that far, should have a good know how of how FF7 works to beat him with some more HP.
I just recommend it, as you give so many grinding and "free" ap during the sidequest/new threats phase (most of the bosses give a great load of AP, i think for the same reason as movers, to reduce the grinding)
Bug: I just found that the Hero's Medal does something similar to my suggestion, by searching for "New Threat Mod Hero Medal", i got this save request, but can't save w/ 1.4 standalone + nemesis fix, i can't even move the curser in the save window. I can upload the save if you want to.
Spoiler: show
But i can save before the 'final encounter' with Sephiroth with Jenova's "Ghost"(?)


Bizarro is a big problem (the three last story bosses are, each for different reasons) as the fight is slow and clunky especially with 3 party members. My plan is to tackle his AI again using everything I've learned since I started modding to make a more dynamic fight that adapts based on parts destroyed to avoid the problem where he's left spamming a single attack. The suggestion to have Hero Medal change the way those last bosses behave is a good idea, I removed all the modifiers from their AI for stats but I could see about reneging on this to adapt the last story bosses to be a better fit for the party the player has taken down there (for instance, a party that has went straight for them at the start of Disc 3 will be vastly different to one that has done all the optional Disc 3 content in terms of power). Not sure what you mean about this old save file though, I'll have a wee peek at that. Is it the New Game+ holding screen?

Big Materia Storyquest
This is more a personal request: Can you please add a boss for the red submarine, the one you can only get when failing the submarine mission at this door the dog guards in junon underground. But it should've been something funny that reminds the player on failing that pretty easy minigame over and over again during the fight.
Like sending Torpedos that deal 0 damage with recovery element, this should always produce a "Miss". With a Battle-Text Message like: "I don't get, i just do it like you did on your last mission."
This is one of the funniest part in the whole game: Screen 1 Screen 2 Screen 3 Screen 4 Screen 5 Screen 6 Screen 7 (no red submarine on the ground :D)
Other stuff related to it:
  • Don't forget to "dognap the dog" ;)
  • Fort Condor permantly cuts the rope if you fail the final fight
  • Rocket makes no difference
  • It is possible to miss the train completly and Corel never gets destroyed, just wait the 10 minutes at the other train
  • If you fail all 4 big materia missions, without obtaining a single one you'll never get access to the observatory platform at Bugenhagens house
Bug: You missed to add Aeris to that part somehow, she is missing at all following scene at Junon Underground & inside the red submarine. (Screen: http://i.imgur.com/fZgGAV8.png & http://i.imgur.com/iWSFFQZ.png)
Please check if you have updated the Script for Rocket Town & Fort Condor w/ Aeris in Party when totally failed. Same for Bugenhagen when you got no Mega Materia.
The Train Mission has by now 4 different outcomes i know you changed ultima there, i just mention it, because it's easier for me:
  • Stopping the train (no crash, mega materia, free ultima)
  • Reaching the first waggon, but failed to stop it (crash, no mega materia & paying for ultima)
  • Failed to reach the first waggon (crash, no mega materia, no ultima)
  • Never reaching the other train (no crash, no mega materia, no ultima)
Have you updated all those scripts w/ Aeris?

As Phoenix and Bahamut Zero can be obtained from Bone Village by digging them up, you wouldn't miss anything important when failing all Mega Materia Missions.

I think all the scripts do have Aeris there, but the Sub fields were tricky if I remember right and I think the Red Sub ones were busted so I had to restore them from a backup. I'll double-check just in case; I'm also going to do something about the Huge Materia being missable. I'll set the Corel Train to crash if you don't catch up to it in 10mins (or I'll set the boy NPC to just appear and sell you Materia anyway although Comet might be moving elsewhere, more on that later when I get back from college). If I have some time I can mess around with the red sub scenario as well.

Dark Cave related
Spoiler: show

Bug: Savespots work like you just started the game, no possibility to use SP System in there. The one at the Slums doesn't even allow Quick Tent. Same bug occurs during Midgar raid when you are able to revisit the Shinra building. Or with other words, it occurs for every save spot before you get access on that Leveling-System.
Bug(?): The soldiers before you jump on the train are the basic soldiers with 40 health, nothing modified on them. But only the 3 fights you can avoid. (not sure if this count's for the normal Midgar part too.)


The Midgar Save Points were left as normal pre-SP ones; I think there was an issue with using the system there that I still need to figure out. There's no real DK-specific enemies populating the sidequest besides the bosses either (and a lot of them are just reused assets). Probably my least favourite thing in the mod and I'd be happy to just cut the whole thing, despite the time that got sunk into it.

fool

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5003 on: 2017-03-06 14:00:32 »
I'm just thinking for balancing it's better to only have access to 1, but swapping about set-ups for Magic/Commands can be a bit of a pain later on so maybe multiple should be available.
Yeah in vanilla you mostly pick your 3 heroes and play with them the whole game, here you need different heroes for different bosses and that's really a damn good thing. <3

Thanks for this info + testing; the Enemy Launcher bug is a big problem, I'll likely need to either change the weapon or the behaviour of 2x-Cut to match 4x-Cut. It sounds though that Status: Death + Elemental can be used with any weapon so long as there are two linked slots on there, though a 20% chance isn't great/reliable so it might be OK.
It needs an Elemental and Death yes and it requires 2x2 linked Slots if the weapon doesn't have any elemental or death proc by default. FF7 veterans would dislike a randomize 2xCut, so would i.

As great as the effect on Barrets weapon is, it's not so useful as long as he doesn't heal&damage with it at the same time. Better change it's Unfocused behavior to something different. There is no weapon that invokes berserk, which kinda buffs the enemy. But it can be deadly for the team if it procs on a strong enemy with high str, but also deadly for magical enemies which don't have a high str-value.

Bizarro is a big problem (the three last story bosses are, each for different reasons) as the fight is slow and clunky especially with 3 party members. My plan is to tackle his AI again using everything I've learned since I started modding to make a more dynamic fight that adapts based on parts destroyed to avoid the problem where he's left spamming a single attack. The suggestion to have Hero Medal change the way those last bosses behave is a good idea, I removed all the modifiers from their AI for stats but I could see about reneging on this to adapt the last story bosses to be a better fit for the party the player has taken down there (for instance, a party that has went straight for them at the start of Disc 3 will be vastly different to one that has done all the optional Disc 3 content in terms of power).
Haven't you modded all 4 fights? Jenova, Bizzaro, Safer Sephiroth and Sephiroth/Jenova Solo Fight? :D

For Bizzarro that sounds amazing, it should be possible to start with the 2nd party (or just straightly switch to it) and remove this asking for "worried about the others?" - just switch to party 2 right at the beginning => let them finish => party 3 => let them finish all => main party and that fight is more dynamic and ends a bit faster.

If possible replace/shorten his acting, the extreme long & repitative animations slow the fight down that hard. The skillcast animations are just fine as he just rises an arm => done.

For the hero medals to avoid that someone gets there without having at least one => give the 3 Gatekeepers on the 3 paths in the crater each one Medal. So you can easily make sure that the player has at least 1 medal and as long as they are below 4 or 5 (just cleared the crater and/or 1 maybe 2 optional bosses outside) it should be the easiest version of the bossfight.

If each optional boss would then drop a hero's medal, this could give a good challenge lateron if the formular matches well enough as there would be at least 25 of them or more, if you add them to the Junon League too.

Not sure what you mean about this old save file though, I'll have a wee peek at that. Is it the New Game+ holding screen?
Nah, i meant the save with the setup/vars/stuff i use atm and the bugs that are in there, for example this video related bug for the cave/crater.
And the Screen i am talking about where the "Save" Option doesn't work is right before the fight with bizzarro starts. It displays a box, asking to save, if i try to move the cursor to no, i hear that moving sound but there is no movement. If i press confirm, the box closes => battle starts as it should, no saving option. Anyway, i saved short before the Jenova fight and she isn't that hard as soon as the tentacles are down. :D

I think all the scripts do have Aeris there, but the Sub fields were tricky if I remember right and I think the Red Sub ones were busted so I had to restore them from a backup. I'll double-check just in case; I'm also going to do something about the Huge Materia being missable. I'll set the Corel Train to crash if you don't catch up to it in 10mins (or I'll set the boy NPC to just appear and sell you Materia anyway although Comet might be moving elsewhere, more on that later when I get back from college). If I have some time I can mess around with the red sub scenario as well.
Yeah okay, thanks for that check on Aeris' Script.
Comet can still be found at the Junon Harbour, so there is no need to force the crash at corel or anything. Just check if Aeris is implemented in all 4 scenarios that can occur. :)

The Midgar Save Points were left as normal pre-SP ones; I think there was an issue with using the system there that I still need to figure out. There's no real DK-specific enemies populating the sidequest besides the bosses either (and a lot of them are just reused assets). Probably my least favourite thing in the mod and I'd be happy to just cut the whole thing, despite the time that got sunk into it.
The values of the SP System you use for Barret, Tifa, Yuffie and Aeris are from the Gold Saucer Dating Event and they where used in a lot of  Midgars script, maybe that's why it gives some trouble there? But as long as thats the reason why i can pick the datescene manually, i can life with it and just love it... I can be as rude to everyone as i want to and they will still date me if i want to. ;)

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5004 on: 2017-03-06 14:45:37 »
Haven't you modded all 4 fights? Jenova, Bizzaro, Safer Sephiroth and Sephiroth/Jenova Solo Fight? :D

For Bizzarro that sounds amazing, it should be possible to start with the 2nd party (or just straightly switch to it) and remove this asking for "worried about the others?" - just switch to party 2 right at the beginning => let them finish => party 3 => let them finish all => main party and that fight is more dynamic and ends a bit faster.

If possible replace/shorten his acting, the extreme long & repitative animations slow the fight down that hard. The skillcast animations are just fine as he just rises an arm => done.

For the hero medals to avoid that someone gets there without having at least one => give the 3 Gatekeepers on the 3 paths in the crater each one Medal. So you can easily make sure that the player has at least 1 medal and as long as they are below 4 or 5 (just cleared the crater and/or 1 maybe 2 optional bosses outside) it should be the easiest version of the bossfight.

If each optional boss would then drop a hero's medal, this could give a good challenge lateron if the formular matches well enough as there would be at least 25 of them or more, if you add them to the Junon League too.

I've modded them, but the AI for Bizarro is more or less the same. It's as complicated as you'd expect with all the different parts, sides, and unique functions going on. Safer and Synthesis are safe to modify, but Bizarro is like the final exam for AI modifications. Animations are something I want to tackle too, but knowing my luck they'll be set to delay the battle for a set time so even with a faster/deleted frames I bet it'll still take the same amount of time to mill through; I think the game makes sure he finishes an Idle cycle before continuing or something.

Heading home now, assuming I've not got a shift at work to do in the evening (RIP night shift) I'll be posting some notes and ideas here for feedback tonight.


iDerek759

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5005 on: 2017-03-06 18:37:59 »
Found another text alignment bug for ya SC.

Spoiler: show

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5006 on: 2017-03-06 21:24:12 »
Found another text alignment bug for ya SC.

Spoiler: show


Yeah, I caught that during my playthrough. I was staring at it for like ten minutes saying 'how' over and over again.

Here's some of the proposals I had:

-) Elemental
I want to change most of the elemental defence available to only offer 50% reduction instead of Null and Absorb, with 1-Star Elemental Materia. There'd still be some armour/accessories offering null/absorb but they won't appear until much later in the game. The reason behind this is that I have a hell of a time trying to balance Boss attacks that use elements much later in the game due to the amount of ways that these attacks can be completely negated which is tough for balancing. 50% reductions, though, allow for a nice middle-ground that doesn't cripple the boss too hard. I'm pretty set on this but maybe someone can argue me out of it.

-) Junon Leagues
I hate this for two reasons: 1) it's too similar to Battle Square except much slower and less versatile with prizes, and 2) it revolves around 1v1 fights which are the hardest fights to make interesting without story context backing it up a little bit. So what I'd like to do is, at a later date, is revamp this completely and make it so that you manage a fighter rather than fight in it yourself (the battles would be organised to be super quick though, with a 3-5min countdown on them so they can't drag out). You'd customise this fighter with different parts to adjust stats/innate abilities and select which attack variants it will use in the AI cycle (so you could swap out a rocket punch with a flamethrower that inflicts statuses for instance).

Given how this might pan out, I'm not planning to do this for 1.5 but to instead keep Junon Leagues as it is for now but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

-) EXE Edits
I'm going to be rolling out a custom .EXE for 1.5 that has a gamut of NT-specific changes to Limit Breaks and Materia Equip Bonuses/Penalties. The last .EXE patch didn't do very well on this front, leaving players with barely enough HP to survive attacks and Limits that were weaker than physical attacks (somehow). I'll be keeping this in mind when making the changes but I've got a few changes that you might want to comment on:

Limits
1) Cosmo Memory and All Creation are single-hitting multi-target attacks; in the past I made Cosmo Memory into a support/buff Limit while All Creation applied status ailments to help them stand out from the multi-hit damage Limits other characters have.
2) Clear Tranquil changed from a 50% MaxHP heal to a 50% MaxMP heal with Poison, Silence, and Darkness cleared from the party.

Materia Bonus/Penalties
1) I'm avoiding HP penalties on standard Materia due to it quickly tanking characters who are magic orientated as they tend to need more stuff equipped.
2) I'm going to separate Strength penalties off Magic bonuses to make hybrids a bit easier to put together.
3) Support Materia will tend to have penalties on it to make it more of a double-edged sword rather than a splashable equip. Looking at things like HP/MP/Magic penalties on things like All, Strength loss on Added Cut, etc.
« Last Edit: 2017-03-07 00:04:02 by Sega Chief »

Dracozombie

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5007 on: 2017-03-07 00:40:36 »
-) Elemental
I want to change most of the elemental defence available to only offer 50% reduction instead of Null and Absorb, with 1-Star Elemental Materia. There'd still be some armour/accessories offering null/absorb but they won't appear until much later in the game. The reason behind this is that I have a hell of a time trying to balance Boss attacks that use elements much later in the game due to the amount of ways that these attacks can be completely negated which is tough for balancing. 50% reductions, though, allow for a nice middle-ground that doesn't cripple the boss too hard. I'm pretty set on this but maybe someone can argue me out of it.

Ehhh... maybe? I dunno, 50% reduction at max kinda cripples what Elemental is supposed to do. Maybe you could just limit the amount of Elemental materia we can obtain, like, there's only one or two available. Or, maybe you could set the maximum to Null rather than absorb. I suppose it's not a huuuuge deal since I use Elemental more for attack than defense anyway, but I will personally stage a revolt if you do a similar change to Added Effect. Elemental defense I can deal without; status ailment defense, no way.

-) Junon Leagues
I hate this for two reasons: 1) it's too similar to Battle Square except much slower and less versatile with prizes, and 2) it revolves around 1v1 fights which are the hardest fights to make interesting without story context backing it up a little bit. So what I'd like to do is, at a later date, is revamp this completely and make it so that you manage a fighter rather than fight in it yourself (the battles would be organised to be super quick though, with a 3-5min countdown on them so they can't drag out). You'd customise this fighter with different parts to adjust stats/innate abilities and select which attack variants it will use in the AI cycle (so you could swap out a rocket punch with a flamethrower that inflicts statuses for instance).

Given how this might pan out, I'm not planning to do this for 1.5 but to instead keep Junon Leagues as it is for now but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

1v1 fights in general tend to be some of the trickier battles, so I don't know if I could handle one involving an uncontrolled AI, even one that's well-programmed. Even with a good setup, I'm not comfortable depending completely on an AI. I don't mind the Junon Leagues, but if you don't want them to drag out, you could just implement the timer on what we already have.

Materia Bonus/Penalties
1) I'm avoiding HP penalties on standard Materia due to it quickly tanking characters who are magic orientated as they tend to need more stuff equipped.
2) I'm going to separate Strength penalties off Magic bonuses to make hybrids a bit easier to put together.
3) Support Materia will tend to have penalties on it to make it more of a double-edged sword rather than a splashable equip. Looking at things like HP/MP/Magic penalties on things like All, Strength loss on Added Cut, etc.

Now that's interesting. I don't know if you'd need to get rid of HP penalties altogether, though it's hard to go lower than 2%. I'm just so used to FFVII that it feels weird to not have some kind of HP penalty. But I guess it would make the 10% reduction from things like MP Turbo more bearable when you're already loaded up on standard magic materia. Not sure about penalties on support materia, especially when the major ones like Quadra Magic already have some hefty reductions. But Quadra Magic is major and deserves some penalties; why does All need them? All already has a built-in limit, that being how many times you can use it per battle.

Getting rid of the strength penalty would be great, though. It could just be my playstyle, but NT doesn't seem like a mod where you can afford to be too specialized. I'll be looking forward to making Cloud a real fighter-mage hybrid.
« Last Edit: 2017-03-07 01:42:04 by Dracozombie »

strife98

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5008 on: 2017-03-07 01:05:03 »
-) Junon Leagues
I hate this for two reasons: 1) it's too similar to Battle Square except much slower and less versatile with prizes, and 2) it revolves around 1v1 fights which are the hardest fights to make interesting without story context backing it up a little bit. So what I'd like to do is, at a later date, is revamp this completely and make it so that you manage a fighter rather than fight in it yourself (the battles would be organised to be super quick though, with a 3-5min countdown on them so they can't drag out). You'd customise this fighter with different parts to adjust stats/innate abilities and select which attack variants it will use in the AI cycle (so you could swap out a rocket punch with a flamethrower that inflicts statuses for instance).

Given how this might pan out, I'm not planning to do this for 1.5 but to instead keep Junon Leagues as it is for now but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Honestly, it might be better to have it set up kind of like Chocobo Races are. You can have the choice of participating yourself, or setting up an AI that you can customize. Maybe each give out different prizes, the AI one maybe giving better prizes since I would think it would be a bit harder to do. Maybe have the participated 1v1's give items that would add more customization options to your AI. I honestly really liked the 1v1's. The special enemies there were silly and enjoyable. I would hate to see it have the same thing happened to it, that happened to Blitzball in 10-2. Only thing I would suggest is more variety. Throw in some more enemies to battle. Could be some basic recolors of Shinra soldiers. Maybe make it more like a tournament brackets thing. And maybe have a different set of enemies to fight in the AI fights. Cause that would be a perfect way to implement a kind of side story where you are doing a kind of Robot Wars esque tournament, and have NPC's around Junon that you can interact with that will either help by supplying you with free basic customization options, or just chat about the Tournament. Would be a way to hint at something happening later when you first get to Junon. Maybe a couple NPC's saying how they can't wait for the AI Tournament. Have a guy set as a manager that can see potential in you and gives you a pass to get down into the Junon Leagues area where you can choose to do an AI battle, or a 1v1 to get more AI customization's. Though, saying that I know that is A LOT of work so what you suggested might be the best idea in terms of finishing in a timely manner, if it's even possible to do.

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5009 on: 2017-03-07 02:02:14 »
I've been replaying this, trying to go farther than last time (up to and after Tseng!), and so I come bearing bug reports and suggestions:

Spoiler: show
- The description of Vincent's innate still says it's passive MP regeneration. Not sure if Cait Sith's was also inverted.

- The Platinum M-Phone is Nibel Mansion is neat, but for such an early item, it really eclipses all the other magicking weapons. You might want to either move it, or tweak its boosts (Mag/Dex +25 is just silly)

- You mentioned adding more save points, please please add one somewhere in Nibelheim. Going back to Cosmo Canyon after the Commando/Lambda fights was soul-crushing.

- Dragon Armlets for morphing a Gaea Dragon is a valuable reward but miiight be a bit too much too early?

- I realize you've removed the damage immunities of the Keehaul Armor because it was a bit of a mess with the script and targetting, but now the boss seemed very easy. It might need a bit more firepower. Either that, or changing his script around a bit. Maybe let both arms be damaged at first (but not the body), and only remove the immunity once both arms are down? Up to you, but it feels like the boss's gimmicks didn't get enough time to shine.

- In the Gelnika, a chest contains a Farmer Glove, but the textbox calls it a Farmer's Fist.

- I've had the Unknown 2 (flower-skull) use ???? Needle twice in quick succession (generally near the end of a fight) for a cheap, unavoidable (??) game over, which isn't too bad considering how small the Gelnika is, but is quite vexing.

- Typo here, alignment here, this guy says nothing, and Tseng stands back up if you exit the rocket after entering it.


(PS: Did you change the chest in the submarine dock that used to contain a Scimitar? I missed it and have no idea where to dig to find what was in there.)
« Last Edit: 2017-03-07 02:28:25 by Miacis »

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5010 on: 2017-03-07 02:35:16 »
Ehhh... maybe? I dunno, 50% reduction at max kinda cripples what Elemental is supposed to do. Maybe you could just limit the amount of Elemental materia we can obtain, like, there's only one or two available. Or, maybe you could set the maximum to Null rather than absorb. I suppose it's not a huuuuge deal since I use Elemental more for attack than defense anyway, but I will personally stage a revolt if you do a similar change to Added Effect. Elemental defense I can deal without; status ailment defense, no way.

1v1 fights in general tend to be some of the trickier battles, so I don't know if I could handle one involving an uncontrolled AI, even one that's well-programmed. Even with a good setup, I'm not comfortable depending completely on an AI. I don't mind the Junon Leagues, but if you don't want them to drag out, you could just implement the timer on what we already have.

Now that's interesting. I don't know if you'd need to get rid of HP penalties altogether, though it's hard to go lower than 2%. I'm just so used to FFVII that it feels weird to not have some kind of HP penalty. But I guess it would make the 10% reduction from things like MP Turbo more bearable when you're already loaded up on standard magic materia. Not sure about penalties on support materia, especially when the major ones like Quadra Magic already have some hefty reductions. But Quadra Magic is major and deserves some penalties; why does All need them? All already has a built-in limit, that being how many times you can use it per battle.

Getting rid of the strength penalty would be great, though. It could just be my playstyle, but NT doesn't seem like a mod where you can afford to be too specialized. I'll be looking forward to making Cloud a real fighter-mage hybrid.

I didn't think of that, I'll see about adding the timer to the current Junon Leagues and balancing it around that timer; should make it much faster to go through.

Honestly, it might be better to have it set up kind of like Chocobo Races are. You can have the choice of participating yourself, or setting up an AI that you can customize. Maybe each give out different prizes, the AI one maybe giving better prizes since I would think it would be a bit harder to do. Maybe have the participated 1v1's give items that would add more customization options to your AI. I honestly really liked the 1v1's. The special enemies there were silly and enjoyable. I would hate to see it have the same thing happened to it, that happened to Blitzball in 10-2. Only thing I would suggest is more variety. Throw in some more enemies to battle. Could be some basic recolors of Shinra soldiers. Maybe make it more like a tournament brackets thing. And maybe have a different set of enemies to fight in the AI fights. Cause that would be a perfect way to implement a kind of side story where you are doing a kind of Robot Wars esque tournament, and have NPC's around Junon that you can interact with that will either help by supplying you with free basic customization options, or just chat about the Tournament. Would be a way to hint at something happening later when you first get to Junon. Maybe a couple NPC's saying how they can't wait for the AI Tournament. Have a guy set as a manager that can see potential in you and gives you a pass to get down into the Junon Leagues area where you can choose to do an AI battle, or a 1v1 to get more AI customization's. Though, saying that I know that is A LOT of work so what you suggested might be the best idea in terms of finishing in a timely manner, if it's even possible to do.

I'll see what I can do.

I've been replaying this, trying to go farther than last time (up to and after Tseng!), and so I come bearing bug reports and suggestions:

Spoiler: show
- The description of Vincent's innate still says it's passive MP regeneration. Not sure if Cait Sith's was also inverted.

- The Platinum M-Phone is Nibel Mansion is neat, but for such an early item, it really eclipses all the other magicking weapons. You might want to either move it, or tweak its boosts (Mag/Dex +25 is just silly)

- You mentioned adding more save points, please please add one somewhere in Nibelheim. Going back to Cosmo Canyon after the Commando/Lambda fights was soul-crushing.

- Dragon Armlets for morphing a Gaea Dragon is a valuable reward but miiight be a bit too much too early?

- I realize you've removed the damage immunities of the Keehaul Armor because it was a bit of a mess with the script and targetting, but now the boss seemed very easy. It might need a bit more firepower. Either that, or changing his script around a bit. Maybe let both arms be damaged at first (but not the body), and only remove the immunity once both arms are down? Up to you, but it feels like the boss's gimmicks didn't get enough time to shine.

- In the Gelnika, a chest contains a Farmer Glove, but the textbox calls it a Farmer's Fist.

- I've had the Unknown 2 (flower-skull) use ???? Needle twice in quick succession (generally near the end of a fight) for a cheap, unavoidable (??) game over, which isn't too bad considering how small the Gelnika is, but is quite vexing.

- Typo here, alignment here, this guy says nothing, and Tseng stands back up if you exit the rocket after entering it.


(PS: Did you change the chest in the submarine dock that used to contain a Scimitar? I missed it and have no idea where to dig to find what was in there.)

I'll change the text on the innates in the flevel, good thing you mentioned it because I missed that.

That M-Phone (used to be Silver? I forget) was changed to be like a Disc 2 weapon but I clean forgot to check if it was dropped anywhere during the game (I only checked the shops for it). I'll get that squared away.

1x Nibelheim Save Point coming up.

I'll maybe remove that from Gaea then.

Yeah, it was going to be a big brawl with Carry Armour because it's one of the toughest bosses in the default game (especially in challenge runs where MP draining isn't on the cards) but the length of the fight prompted me to remove the immunities from it. I'm going to try and make it work, I'll test your suggestion and see how it goes; shrinking it to 2 phases of attacks instead of 3 might be the way to go.

Unknown2 prob uses a random script; I'll set it to use a pattern instead to prevent successive uses of ???? Needle (or was that attack used as a Limit Break counter? I can't remember).

The dreaded it's's's. Alignment issues should be fixed out for the most part after I've done my run; I'll see about the hobo NPC and Tseng's sudden verticality too.

According to the flevel, the chest closest to Carry currently contains a battle trumpet and the 2nd one next to the new save point (which replaced the 3rd chest) has Leviathan Scales inside. Scimitar is, for some reason, all the way down in the North Crater Left-Down path in a green chest.

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5011 on: 2017-03-07 10:09:17 »
-) Elemental
I want to change most of the elemental defence available to only offer 50% reduction instead of Null and Absorb, with 1-Star Elemental Materia. There'd still be some armour/accessories offering null/absorb but they won't appear until much later in the game. The reason behind this is that I have a hell of a time trying to balance Boss attacks that use elements much later in the game due to the amount of ways that these attacks can be completely negated which is tough for balancing. 50% reductions, though, allow for a nice middle-ground that doesn't cripple the boss too hard. I'm pretty set on this but maybe someone can argue me out of it.

I am ALL for this change, and if it makes balancing things easier then that's just an added bonus in my mind. Elemental absorbs would be impossible to balance around if for nothing else then because no matter how strong you make an attack, if you absorb it then that attack gets taken off the enemy table and a turn is for nothing. And if you push it too far, then all you are doing is making absorption mandatory and that's just silly. Ideally the goal should be to have no AI turn as a "0 damage" turn. I'm fine with if you are overpowered for an area and an enemy does 20 damage or something weak because there should be progression, but complete negation or absorption shouldn't be possible at all without some sort of negative or hampering roadblock attached. Because the simple question then arises: "Why wouldn't I completely negate that attack or two if I can?" And it's true. If you can wipe attacks off the board simply because they are elemental, then what reason is there to never do it? You guarantee victory at the offset of killing the boss a little slower? Big deal. Meanwhile if you can only reduce damage, then it becomes a question of "risk vs. reward" while at the same time characters that do need the help are never safe even with the boost. A perfect example of this is Netz. All of those attacks did so much elemental damage at the time I fought him that absorbs almost became necessary. It should never be that way. I fully support this change. I even made this same point in the FF8 doc. The fact you can fully absorb ALL elements with ONE spell junctioned to Elem-Junc was beyond ridiculous. Either removing immunity or immunites with some negative is the way to go.

The only two things I would warn/bring up is how this works in conjunction with armours/accessories that also reduce elemental damage. I don't think you should have it to where elemental materia + an armour or accessory that reduces the same element = immunity, but maybe if you do have both on the effect could be stronger? Up to 75% reduction could be a nice middle ground for those who wouldn't want to see absorbs go away vs. those of us who think they should. I do not know if that would be possible within the coding and engine of the game, and I personally wouldn't recommend it because 75% seems to be too close to negation/absorption to me. But if you want to implement something like this if possible this may be the best way to appease everyone. I could live with this.

The other thing would be is if negation/absorption is removed, some enemy damage numbers would have to come down. That's balance stuff though.

-) Junon Leagues
I hate this for two reasons: 1) it's too similar to Battle Square except much slower and less versatile with prizes, and 2) it revolves around 1v1 fights which are the hardest fights to make interesting without story context backing it up a little bit. So what I'd like to do is, at a later date, is revamp this completely and make it so that you manage a fighter rather than fight in it yourself (the battles would be organised to be super quick though, with a 3-5min countdown on them so they can't drag out). You'd customise this fighter with different parts to adjust stats/innate abilities and select which attack variants it will use in the AI cycle (so you could swap out a rocket punch with a flamethrower that inflicts statuses for instance).

Given how this might pan out, I'm not planning to do this for 1.5 but to instead keep Junon Leagues as it is for now but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

I agree that Junon Leagues were kinda... eh. Didn't want to say anything about it since it was yours, but if you aren't happy with it I would agree that it didn't quite hit the mark. Not entirely certain that this "Robot Fight League" is the answer either, but I'd need to see it implemented first to judge. I do think that Tifa's Final Heaven should probably be removed from there, but I don't know where else you would put it? Single fights are tough to do right and usually they aren't the most fun, so having a lot of them in one spot is kinda grating. However and for spoilers sake:
Spoiler: show
Zack Fair was excellently done! So full credit there!


Was there any content or ideas that were removed from FF7 beta that's still in the code that could be re-implemented for an idea as a replacement perhaps? If not, then the "RFL" will do. While we're on minigames though, what about the Gold Saucer minigames that no one ever plays? Could these be rebalanced to be a little easier or more fun to play with some better prizes or whatever? Can anything be done to incentivize people to play them? I personally liked the motorcycle and snowboarding games but I know a lot of people didn't. Regardless of preference it would be nice to see these get some sort of use at any point in the game. This isn't a big deal though, if you'd rather they just be left there for people to play if they choose too, that's fine.

-) EXE Edits
I'm going to be rolling out a custom .EXE for 1.5 that has a gamut of NT-specific changes to Limit Breaks and Materia Equip Bonuses/Penalties. The last .EXE patch didn't do very well on this front, leaving players with barely enough HP to survive attacks and Limits that were weaker than physical attacks (somehow). I'll be keeping this in mind when making the changes but I've got a few changes that you might want to comment on:

Limits
1) Cosmo Memory and All Creation are single-hitting multi-target attacks; in the past I made Cosmo Memory into a support/buff Limit while All Creation applied status ailments to help them stand out from the multi-hit damage Limits other characters have.
2) Clear Tranquil changed from a 50% MaxHP heal to a 50% MaxMP heal with Poison, Silence, and Darkness cleared from the party.

So long as there is some reason to actually use the damn things once you hit limit level 3-2, that is all that matters in the end. By the sounds of "single-hitting multi-target" I think you mean the same as Catastrophe correct? I personally think that they should hit all targets multiple times while being a little weaker then single target limits. I say this because the attacks blast that entire side of the screen so it makes more sense to me. If you don't want to do this for balance reasons or personal preference or whatever other reason it's fine. This is another one of those "not a big deals"

Clear Tranquil sounds fine to me for a level 1.

Materia Bonus/Penalties
1) I'm avoiding HP penalties on standard Materia due to it quickly tanking characters who are magic orientated as they tend to need more stuff equipped.
2) I'm going to separate Strength penalties off Magic bonuses to make hybrids a bit easier to put together.
3) Support Materia will tend to have penalties on it to make it more of a double-edged sword rather than a splashable equip. Looking at things like HP/MP/Magic penalties on things like All, Strength loss on Added Cut, etc.

You need to be really careful with these kind of changes. If the whole point of the mod is to return to the idea of the more traditional FF style with more staunch Fighter and Mage types then having hybrids works against this for the most part. Don't get me wrong, I realize that even FF1 had the Red Mage but that was one of the bigger problems with the game in my mind. A "Wizard" that could wield the Masamune while throwing good healing spells and buffs around was overdoing it. FF7 vanilla was a game where everyone could do everything and in the end it came down to what limits were the strongest or what characters you had the most attachment to. If you start making hybrids more viable it goes right back to the "Well why wouldn't you?" territory. Making characters excel at one attack style or another forces the player to make the choice, and the choice was the best part of the mod. Mages shouldn't be great attackers anymore then Fighters shouldn't have great spell casting abilities. Mages should have lower health and defenses compared to a Fighter that takes more magic damage while having low Magic stats. A "jack of all trades, master of none" is fine so long as Fighters and Mages perform noticeably better than a Hybrid in their respective fields at all stages of the game.

The Fighter/Mage thing did raise a question in me though: How are limit break damage numbers determined? Are they all based off of strength and the weapon being wielded? If so, how do Mages fit into this setup? Do they inherently have weaker limit breaks the Fighters?

As for All, I'd leave it alone. Since everyone uses All for many different reasons(Healing, buffs, attacks, debuffs), putting penalties on it would make it a tougher thing to balance and the penalties would hit certain builds stronger then others.

fool

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5012 on: 2017-03-07 15:56:34 »
Here is some that could be changed to allow more useful Materia combinations matching the effects of the Materia description and skill:
  • Materia Ramuh's Summon can inflict Petrify but the materia doesn't have the flag set for weapon/armor combinations
  • Materia Bahamut, Materia Neo-Bahamut and Materia Bahamut-Zero use Shout as Elemental effect not Hidden as all other "unknown" elemental Materials (this may be used as a big advantage with Materia Element which could allow you to absorb any physical shout attack from the enemys
  • Materia Neo-Bahamut can inflict Dual but the materia doesn't have the flag set for weapons/armors, even tho it's not visible at the status screen
  • Materia Planet's Skills can inflict Death and Sleep but the materia doesn't have the flag set for weapon/armor combinations
  • Materia Contain's Skills can inflict Dual, Confusion, Stop and Petrify but the materia doesn't have the Dual flag set for weapon/armor combinations
  • Materia Manipulate could get the status flag of manipulate to protect against it.
Accessoires that block Limits:
  • Amulet's Status says: Prevents [Barrier] - Lck +75, actually it blocks Barrier, MBarrier, Reflect, Shield, Peerless - A better description would be "Blocks any kind of protection."
  • Silver Refractor's Status says:  Prevents [Barrier/Time] - Spr +50, actually it blocks Barrier, MBarrier, Reflect, Shield, Peerless, Haste, Slow, Stop - A better description would be "Blocks any kind of protection and time manipulation."
  • Ribbon just should allow Peerless as already mentioned in the other posts same for "Amulet" and "Silver Refractor"

A fix for the Enemy Launcher would be give it the "Random" and "Start as Multiple" attribute and removed "Enable Selection" now, it randomly attacks any Target, even with 2xCut. Only Slash-All, Flash, Mega-All and 4x Cut will override this behavior now. => No softlock anymore with this weapon.

Coin can also be fixed by changing "One row only" to "All Rows" it will work on all, the cursor is just focusing on the enemy team but it attacks the team as well when casted. But still, the damage is to high and it can't invoke Wait. :(

Bug: Magic "Pearl" can be used as a frog.

-) Elemental
I want to change most of the elemental defence available to only offer 50% reduction instead of Null and Absorb, with 1-Star Elemental Materia. There'd still be some armour/accessories offering null/absorb but they won't appear until much later in the game. The reason behind this is that I have a hell of a time trying to balance Boss attacks that use elements much later in the game due to the amount of ways that these attacks can be completely negated which is tough for balancing. 50% reductions, though, allow for a nice middle-ground that doesn't cripple the boss too hard. I'm pretty set on this but maybe someone can argue me out of it.
Elemental can and will always be used in different ways, some for attacking, some for defending and for healing too. And if you change the Elemental Materia in the way it is, you take a BIG feature out of the game. It takes a lot of time in the early to level it, in late game you can't balance the elementals anymore except, you fully use "cut", "shoot", "shout" & "hit"  as elementals for the enemys since there is no possibility (except zietrich) to reduce their damage or to absorb it. (Except with the Bahamut change you did i mentioned above)
As long as you use a magical formular and not physical, even "cut" & "hit" will be threated as magical attack that doesn't matter.

Materia Bonus/Penalties
1) I'm avoiding HP penalties on standard Materia due to it quickly tanking characters who are magic orientated as they tend to need more stuff equipped.
2) I'm going to separate Strength penalties off Magic bonuses to make hybrids a bit easier to put together.
3) Support Materia will tend to have penalties on it to make it more of a double-edged sword rather than a splashable equip. Looking at things like HP/MP/Magic penalties on things like All, Strength loss on Added Cut, etc.
"Support" means making stuff stronger by supporting it in a different way, if you add penalties to support stuff, you'll reduce it's worth a lot. Before you get Mega-All or Master Magic you'll sometimes have 3 or more All Materias equipped, each would then reduce your low health supporting characters health even more.
I am ALL for this change, and if it makes balancing things easier then that's just an added bonus in my mind. Elemental absorbs would be impossible to balance around if for nothing else then because no matter how strong you make an attack, if you absorb it then that attack gets taken off the enemy table and a turn is for nothing. And if you push it too far, then all you are doing is making absorption mandatory and that's just silly. Ideally the goal should be to have no AI turn as a "0 damage" turn. I'm fine with if you are overpowered for an area and an enemy does 20 damage or something weak because there should be progression, but complete negation or absorption shouldn't be possible at all without some sort of negative or hampering roadblock attached. Because the simple question then arises: "Why wouldn't I completely negate that attack or two if I can?" And it's true. If you can wipe attacks off the board simply because they are elemental, then what reason is there to never do it? You guarantee victory at the offset of killing the boss a little slower? Big deal. Meanwhile if you can only reduce damage, then it becomes a question of "risk vs. reward" while at the same time characters that do need the help are never safe even with the boost. A perfect example of this is Netz. All of those attacks did so much elemental damage at the time I fought him that absorbs almost became necessary. It should never be that way. I fully support this change. I even made this same point in the FF8 doc. The fact you can fully absorb ALL elements with ONE spell junctioned to Elem-Junc was beyond ridiculous. Either removing immunity or immunites with some negative is the way to go.
With one spell it's really to hard, but that's FF8 and a completly other way to play, also farming 100x Ultima or Apocalypse before Mid Disc 3 is also... yeah... not that easy? ;)

Anyway, on FF7 you can't absorb all 15 elements (Restorative absorbtion would deal normal damage, so don't count this)
But i got another good idea to your last sentence on that part.
@Sega Chief, you could give all Items that have Elemental Absorbtion the Ability of restoratives absorb too. So healing would become a lot harder because you have to make use of fire skills or hidden skills just to heal that ally ("Recovery" from Elixiers will still work, but potions won't). Also this would force the player to overthink his decission getting this special item. Warning: This would block Phoenix Dawns and other forms of Revival too.

In NT you can just absorb 6 Elements at a time, Vanilla allows all 8 Basic Elements at once. Don't remove main features out of the game, reducing them to make it harder is fine.
Also keep in mind that it's just 6 out of 15. (and as MoCheese noticed in FF8 you could deny/absorb 8 out of 8, even tho a LOT easier than on FF7)
Just 40% instead of 100% is fine.

You make also use of this Elemental stuff extremly on early game, almost nothing on late game where the player start to do some damage the enemys won't heal each other anymore... give for example Nemesis a Poison absorb, let him Cast Regen & Poison on himself on a lot of enemies and i had almost no fight where i got healed by one of any enemies attack so far, except if i make use of poison... earth or gravity. Those seem to be the elements you use more than anything else on the attacks. I barely got hit by Fire, Ice or Lightning Elements.
A lot of your enemies also use Poison and Absorb Poison to get healed or even Gravity (Gi Nattak and that fight is horrible ;p). Why do you wanna deny this feature to the Player?

(but if you allow Regen on an Enemy like Nemesis, allow Dual too, else he can't be killed anymore or an extrem abuse of the so called "Wait"-Trick)

Just another thought of this nerfing features stuff: Isn't it a part of a single player game to try your best to win it? Getting strong and stronger defenses? Dealing fast and more damage lateron? Adding new features that allow more possibilities to hunt down the monsters are great, forcing the player to get on one kind of build sucks. Yeah challenging Battles are amazing and you get the very hard stuff to deal high damage and build up good defenses only in late game.
Start this game with each item and each materia 3 times in your Inventory and  it's also easy as vanilla...
« Last Edit: 2017-03-07 16:54:58 by fool »

Miacis

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5013 on: 2017-03-07 16:36:13 »
Quote
In NT you can just absorb 6 Elements at a time, Vanilla allows all 8 Basic Elements at once. Don't remove main features out of the game
Main feature or not, I do not think that it is fine to keep the ability to negate all "magic-oriented" elements, not without some serious consequences for doing so. Thematically, it seems to go against the initial philosophy of not making the endgame about physical attacks, and flavor-wise, it's just awful. If your super flying fire boss can't be super firey because Fire Rings are farmable, and can't use Wind either because Elemental-Wind exists, what else are you gonna do? Give ice spells to the fire boss? Give the boss more physical-element spells(??), so he has a chance to outrun the healing caused by his own attacks? You should not go into a boss praying for him to cast his more unique moves, but fearing his bites.

It's just silly. Elemental negation should either be the product of a unique item, or coming at some sort of price. Just look at the Relic Ring: absorbs hidden, but absorbs restorative; grants +20 Str/Mag, but is unique for... a good portion of the game. You actually need a bit of an elaborate setup to use it right, and you can't do it on your whole party.

So yeah, I'm all for changing materias or gear that [Absorbs] into [Halves] or [Quarters?], and [Blocks] for endgame or flawed items. Even if the flaw is just "Does not have any stat boosts" like the Protect Ring.

Quote
  • Amulet's Status says: Prevents [Barrier] - Lck +75, actually it blocks Barrier, MBarrier, Reflect, Shield, Peerless - A better description would be "Blocks any kind of protection."
  • Silver Refractor's Status says:  Prevents [Barrier/Time] - Spr +50, actually it blocks Barrier, MBarrier, Reflect, Shield, Peerless, Haste, Slow, Stop - A better description would be "Blocks any kind of protection and time manipulation."
Prevents [All Barriers] / Prevents [All Barriers/Time] should be concise enough. If we need to add more item text, I'd rather the character space be used on items that don't show their stat boosts (like the Platinum M-Phone, or the Cat's Bell). All three Bahamut materias (not the attacks themselves) also don't mention their DeBarrier/Dual/Dispel effect.
« Last Edit: 2017-03-07 16:55:45 by Miacis »

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5014 on: 2017-03-07 17:46:00 »
Main feature or not, I do not think that it is fine to keep the ability to negate all "magic-oriented" elements, not without some serious consequences for doing so. Thematically, it seems to go against the initial philosophy of not making the endgame about physical attacks, and flavor-wise, it's just awful. If your super flying fire boss can't be super firey because Fire Rings are farmable, and can't use Wind either because Elemental-Wind exists, what else are you gonna do? Give ice spells to the fire boss? Give the boss more physical-element spells(??), so he has a chance to outrun the healing caused by his own attacks? You should not go into a boss praying for him to cast his more unique moves, but fearing his bites.
It takes a lot of time to get "absorb" with Elemental Materia as it needs Level 3 to give that, this is not easy and requires a lot of grinding if you are not having access to the farming crater and/or triple AP Stuff. Added Effect for Example is A LOT stronger, it blocks the respective status changes on level 1 completly. Also if you wanna force the player to use only magic, block all physical attacks as weapons themself use "cut", "hit" and "shoot" as element which is... in would also just change the technique the player would use. If you want an immortal boss edit his AI Script and add Physical and Magical Imunity to it or attack him only with Skills he absorbs.

"Quarters" won't be possible without changing the whole Engine of the game, as it has only access to 4 states those are "normal, half, nullify, negate" for elemental Damage Types. As for Effects counts "Block or not".

There are not many enemies that use fire attacks lateron most use demi, earth, holy and hidden and everything except the extremly good stuff (except Masamune) is farmable.

Preparing for a bossfight is also part of a game like this. So yes i would farm Fire Rings to stay alive. Take the vanilla, you get aurora ring shortly before you fight the fire/ice dragon on gaes cliff... it helps you staying alive... the final-attack of each head is still damn strong and neutral. So don't kill both at the same time or you have to start over... and over again...

The bosses here are almost equal to that, you get some useful stuff right before them, but nevertheless they are still damn strong during story play and at the beginning of the sidequests (especially the solofight-bosses!).

I do not think that it is fine to keep the ability to negate all "magic-oriented" elements, not without some serious consequences for doing so.
You can't negate all at once. And the big consequence you are talking about is already there. You need 8 Materia slots to block 4 Elements, which prevents you from using other Materia. Also the equipment with 8 Slots is late game stuff and it has low physical defense and for example Nemesis hits really hard with his Armageddon. It can wipe out the whole party if no barrier is active.

It's just silly. Elemental negation should either be the product of a unique item, or coming at some sort of price. Just look at the Relic Ring: absorbs hidden, but absorbs restorative; grants +20 Str/Mag, but is unique for... a good portion of the game. You actually need a bit of an elaborate setup to use it right, and you can't do it on your whole party.
And yes the price for Elemental Materia is just "Time", it eats a lot of it as the fights early on are hard, even with Death-Added Effect. This absorbtion is only late game stuff.

All three Bahamut materias (not the attacks themselves) also don't mention their DeBarrier/Dual/Dispel effect.
They don't have the "Effect" at moment, that's why i mentioned it to add it, the Bahamuts themself display it at the help message.

Do you know how the Materia/Skill/Elemental stuff even works? Everything has 3 Parts: Materia itself posses an Element, the Skill the Materia unlocks could have a completly different Element (see Kjata or Typhoon), even so Materia can have an Effect like Hades does. If Kjata Materia would have all 4 Elements it uses in his Skill (Fire, Ice, Earth and Lightning) you could already block 50% of the visible Elements, or expect KotR with Elemental Feature... it "should" allow access to 10 Elements as the Skill(animation) uses 13 different Attacks, physical and magical punching, cutting. But every attack you see is the same skill. Or better gets calculated as the same skill.

The Restorative Block of the Cursed Ring blocks Revive from Phoenix Down and Life-Skill himself, but not from Phoenix or Life2 (you revive with 50% health and without the curse, still no life reg from cure/potions, BUT regen works as Dual from the cursed ring is off too regen is blocked by the ring itself, so just 50% life). Also Life2 is a lot earlier available than absorbing stuff.

@Sega Chief if you really remove the negate/nullify ability of elemental materia, you should make sure to cover all elements with items that can replace it. And not only 3 or 4 Elements like you do now. I know you wanna avoid something like this "Flash"-Recovery and that's good, but removing a part of the freedom this game gives to the Player isn't the best idea. Materia is the main feature and the more you progress, the stronger it gets, no matter if physical, magical or supportive to stay alive. If you wanna avoid it, remove "Flash" from the game, most ppl don't use it anyway, "Multihits are the key to Victory".

I for myself, prefer defensive materia builds that help me surviving, glasscannon's can be great too, but this mod builds on long fights... so... no.
Also i think some items should only be available VERY late like those triple AP weapons, in vanilla there are only 3 if i remember right, Apocalypse with just 3 Slots and the two others had just two slots. Having strong materia early on (like Destruct with his Death-Effect, i already mentioned) is challenge-breaking, not the late use of strong materia combinations.

Edit:
FF7 has 17 Elements one is really "hidden", let's just call it neutral Element, as it can only be used if the elemental flag of the given skill is "00", it can never be absorbed or anything. It counts as physical or magical (depending on the formular used) this Element is perfectly for skills that should never be blocked. I tested it on a fight against Bizzarro with an "extremly" overpowered Cat's Bell.
He still killed me with 1 Attack, because this attack had the neutral Elemental association. No matter how the animation looks.

The only way to protect yourself from this element are your stats, barriers, shield, peerless or physical/magical evasion.

And a lot of attacks/skills Sega Chief created have the "neutral element" or no elemental association. Almost ALL attacks from Nemesis for example... only White Wind uses Restoration. Therefor you can't absorb anything on Nemesis, instead Armageddon can be evaded, but needs a damn high evasion rate as it has 150 points on the hitrate flag. Screen

Visual Bug or missing Feature: Correct the "Restore Type" Flag for all self-made cure-pots: Maiden's Grace, Soft, Cornucopia that this Box with the Status Effects shows up.
« Last Edit: 2017-03-07 21:00:20 by fool »

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5015 on: 2017-03-07 23:35:28 »
The Fighter/Mage thing did raise a question in me though: How are limit break damage numbers determined? Are they all based off of strength and the weapon being wielded? If so, how do Mages fit into this setup? Do they inherently have weaker limit breaks the Fighters?

Well, Aeris has no offence Limits and Vincent's Limits utilise a physical and magical attack (maybe not for Chaos Saber, can't remember). Strength plays a factor in Limit damage so building that stat on characters like Cloud and Red XIII would make those abilities stronger. The weapon formula doesn't get used though. The characters this affects can be built either Strength or Magic so it doesn't matter too much.

I think hybrids would work quite well in this game, there's the Limits, Added Cut, Counters, etc. to piece it all together. Just need to be careful like you say about Hybrids becoming stronger than dedicated fighter/casters but I doubt that'll happen.

Here is some that could be changed to allow more useful Materia combinations matching the effects of the Materia description and skill:
  • Materia Ramuh's Summon can inflict Petrify but the materia doesn't have the flag set for weapon/armor combinations
  • Materia Bahamut, Materia Neo-Bahamut and Materia Bahamut-Zero use Shout as Elemental effect not Hidden as all other "unknown" elemental Materials (this may be used as a big advantage with Materia Element which could allow you to absorb any physical shout attack from the enemys
  • Materia Neo-Bahamut can inflict Dual but the materia doesn't have the flag set for weapons/armors, even tho it's not visible at the status screen
  • Materia Planet's Skills can inflict Death and Sleep but the materia doesn't have the flag set for weapon/armor combinations
  • Materia Contain's Skills can inflict Dual, Confusion, Stop and Petrify but the materia doesn't have the Dual flag set for weapon/armor combinations
  • Materia Manipulate could get the status flag of manipulate to protect against it.

The Bahamuts used to have Shout but it was causing me problems with elemental attacks again. Some others don't have the status inflicted by the summon attached to the Materia because...the flags aren't visible in the editor! I don't know if this is a mistake in the editor's design or if the flags just straight up don't exist in that part of the kernel due to space. Planet & Contain can probably have their statuses on the Materia, but Dual can't be set. Manipulate I considered but thought it might be a bit odd as the only function of the command is to inflict that status; there are some enemies now that use Manipulate so I could just add that on anyway.

Accessoires that block Limits:
  • Amulet's Status says: Prevents [Barrier] - Lck +75, actually it blocks Barrier, MBarrier, Reflect, Shield, Peerless - A better description would be "Blocks any kind of protection."
  • Silver Refractor's Status says:  Prevents [Barrier/Time] - Spr +50, actually it blocks Barrier, MBarrier, Reflect, Shield, Peerless, Haste, Slow, Stop - A better description would be "Blocks any kind of protection and time manipulation."
  • Ribbon just should allow Peerless as already mentioned in the other posts same for "Amulet" and "Silver Refractor"

The kernel has some text compression issues that come and go from time to time, the cause of which I'm not too sure of. I suspect I've exceeded the safe size of the kernel which might explain why KOTR's summon text is gone/bugged. When writing descriptions, I tried to be as concise as possible and for those accessories I listed the blocked statuses by their Materia name rather than listing them individually. Barrier is probably confusing because of the spell with the same name, so I'll need to come up with another word for it. Protective magic maybe? I'm rewriting the kernel right now to try and fix the KOTR problem and chopping down the text again.

Peerless is going to be treated as the same as protective magic. It's a very powerful status and the last thing that should be getting a free pass; if the player has equipment on that blocks Peerless and plans to use Aeris' Lv.3-2 or Lv.4 Limit then that's a clash in their set-up they should be considering.

A fix for the Enemy Launcher would be give it the "Random" and "Start as Multiple" attribute and removed "Enable Selection" now, it randomly attacks any Target, even with 2xCut. Only Slash-All, Flash, Mega-All and 4x Cut will override this behavior now. => No softlock anymore with this weapon.

Coin can also be fixed by changing "One row only" to "All Rows" it will work on all, the cursor is just focusing on the enemy team but it attacks the team as well when casted. But still, the damage is to high and it can't invoke Wait. :(

I think Multi + Random would make it behave like Comet2, probably not much use. The whole thing with Launcher was that it was supposed to be a blender weapon but if it can't be that due to the bug then it'll either need to be something else or 2x-Cut gets the random target flag that 4x-Cut has. But seeing as it'd be a bit drastic to undermine 2x-Cut for one weapon, I'll prob change Launcher to do something else; maybe just as simple as making it behave like Shotgun with multi-target. Coin was global originally but I must have changed it for some reason, maybe someone found a problem with it.

***

I've been thinking that the best way to go about this elemental issue is to go with a combination of the suggestions made so they all meet each other halfway:

1) Leave Elemental Materia as it is; 2 slots for Null/Absorb late-game
2) Reduce elemental defence on accessories and armour by one tier (so Null on rings, Half on Armlets).
3) Reinstate Shout on Bahamut Materia
4) Design end-game enemies with less elemental attacks and more unaspected/physical element ones
5) Fine-tune elemental accessory stat bonuses/effects so that stat-boost accessories are still viable picks when elemental damage is a factor (for instance, Fire Ring gives +15 Str/Dex with it's Fire Absorption while Power Wrist only gives +20STR with Berserk defence which is a double-edged thing as Berserk can be used to raise attack power).

I'll need to keep an eye on Shield and Peerless, though. Aeris can only use it once with her Limits and they need proportionately more damage to fill the gauges again (Mime isn't an issue as any command taken would overwrite Planet Protecter/Great Gospel for copying, unless physical counter attacks aren't Mimed; can't remember, though I think that Magic/Command Counter will overwrite the action to be Mimed).

Shield has it's high MP cost and, as much as I hate it, the lack of an immediate visual indicator outside of bringing up the status box is also a drawback to keep it more in check than Peerless. Non-elemental attacks can also punch through it.

About vanilla Schizo, all of his attacks are elementally aspected; Fire/Ice breath, the Tremors are Earth, and the final attacks are Bolt. With Aurora Armlet + Fire Ring and two Elemental Materia you can easily make a character invincible or at least very unlikely to die in that boss; it's an extreme example, but those are the kind of situations I want to avoid.

Miacis

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5016 on: 2017-03-08 00:20:45 »
Toning down elemental protection from equipment seems reasonable too. For a game where Materias can also provide elemental mitigation, it's already very generous with the elemental protection. I'd leave the Adaman Bangle and Relic Ring untouched though, since they do have very noticeable drawbacks to them right now.

Quote from: Sega Chief
I'll prob change Launcher to do something else
Shame there doesn't seen to be a way to attach the "Eject" status to weapons. That'd be appropriate (and OP as fern) for such a weapon name. Instant-death with low accuracy...? :-P

They don't have the "Effect" at moment, that's why i mentioned it to add it, the Bahamuts themself display it at the help message.
That's what I said...? The materia description for the attack doesn't mention the effect, but the combat description does. I'm not talking about their attached Effect/Element, just the description of the summon.

Do you know
Yes. I do know. Chill. :c
« Last Edit: 2017-03-08 01:37:45 by Miacis »

fool

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5017 on: 2017-03-08 04:38:20 »
The Bahamuts used to have Shout but it was causing me problems with elemental attacks again. Some others don't have the status inflicted by the summon attached to the Materia because...the flags aren't visible in the editor! I don't know if this is a mistake in the editor's design or if the flags just straight up don't exist in that part of the kernel due to space. Planet & Contain can probably have their statuses on the Materia, but Dual can't be set. Manipulate I considered but thought it might be a bit odd as the only function of the command is to inflict that status; there are some enemies now that use Manipulate so I could just add that on anyway.
In the scene.bin everything is fine with Bahamuts, the Attacks have their respective Flag set for Dual and so on, the kernel.bin just doesn't have the flag for combination with Added-Effect.
Skillset on scene.bin for Bahamut: http://i.imgur.com/KozvMu0.png
Statset on kernel.bin for Bahamut Materia: http://i.imgur.com/2RSCoTy.png
Materia ID 63 = Attack ID 003F
That it works in the Editor and displays everything fine here another shot of Hades Materia with his 6 Status-Effects: http://i.imgur.com/WGV3hEd.png

About vanilla Schizo, all of his attacks are elementally aspected; Fire/Ice breath, the Tremors are Earth, and the final attacks are Bolt. With Aurora Armlet + Fire Ring and two Elemental Materia you can easily make a character invincible or at least very unlikely to die in that boss; it's an extreme example, but those are the kind of situations I want to avoid.
Yeah and vanilla even has an Item that could eat those 4 Elements (Fire, Ice, Lightning and Earth if I remember right) at once and it was called Tetra-Master or something similar, never played the english version of the vanilla. So I'm not sure about the name.

I think Multi + Random would make it behave like Comet2...
Not really, he attacks 2 figures on the Battlefield with Double-Cut giving no choice to select/prefer a Team. It can hit the enemy team twice or the own team. It's kinda funny but an useless combination for real games.

You could use the Random Damage Formula (68) on the Enemy Launcher, unfocused would match this wide amount of damagevariation too, but be careful as it ignores defense. So max weapon str 15 or 12 for attacking to keep it low. Combined with "Random" and no "Enable Selection" this weapon would be depending so hard on luck. Doing a good amount of physical damage... or just nothing.

Don't add manipulate as status effect as i suggested, you could manipulate your teammates if used as weapon-effect and the game would crash as they have never a skill set. Better add it to any equipment stuff of your choice, so you make sure it only gets blocked effect.

As for the Itemdescr. renaming, Protective Magic sounds good to me.

Quote from: Miacis
Shame there doesn't seen to be a way to attach the "Eject" status to weapons. That'd be appropriate (and OP as fern) for such a weapon name. Instant-death with low accuracy...? :-P
An alternative would be give the Weapon the "Ignore Stat Def" and then just equip a "Slash-All" Materia Lvl 2 or higher. Every enemy dies with one hit. Like you would use Cait Sith's Game Over Limit.
Or this method: http://i.imgur.com/kLuqCon.png extrem low hit rate (like 11%), then only 20% chance to trigger death, no damage otherwise, no materia slots BUT if it hits it kills every enemy instantly. "Lucky Shot" with like 2% kill-rate.

Quote from: Miacis
Yes. I do know. Chill. :c
Ok, now i know too. ;)
« Last Edit: 2017-03-08 05:32:05 by fool »

MoCheese

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5018 on: 2017-03-08 12:00:25 »
With one spell it's really to hard, but that's FF8 and a completly other way to play, also farming 100x Ultima or Apocalypse before Mid Disc 3 is also... yeah... not that easy? ;)

Anyway, on FF7 you can't absorb all 15 elements (Restorative absorbtion would deal normal damage, so don't count this)
But i got another good idea to your last sentence on that part.
@Sega Chief, you could give all Items that have Elemental Absorbtion the Ability of restoratives absorb too. So healing would become a lot harder because you have to make use of fire skills or hidden skills just to heal that ally ("Recovery" from Elixiers will still work, but potions won't). Also this would force the player to overthink his decission getting this special item. Warning: This would block Phoenix Dawns and other forms of Revival too.

In NT you can just absorb 6 Elements at a time, Vanilla allows all 8 Basic Elements at once. Don't remove main features out of the game, reducing them to make it harder is fine.
Also keep in mind that it's just 6 out of 15. (and as MoCheese noticed in FF8 you could deny/absorb 8 out of 8, even tho a LOT easier than on FF7)
Just 40% instead of 100% is fine.

You make also use of this Elemental stuff extremly on early game, almost nothing on late game where the player start to do some damage the enemys won't heal each other anymore... give for example Nemesis a Poison absorb, let him Cast Regen & Poison on himself on a lot of enemies and i had almost no fight where i got healed by one of any enemies attack so far, except if i make use of poison... earth or gravity. Those seem to be the elements you use more than anything else on the attacks. I barely got hit by Fire, Ice or Lightning Elements.
A lot of your enemies also use Poison and Absorb Poison to get healed or even Gravity (Gi Nattak and that fight is horrible ;p). Why do you wanna deny this feature to the Player?

You can actually farm Ultima's mid-Disc 2 using the Shumi Trick. Not that this is an optimized or even smart use of your time, granted, but yeah. Regardless, you do raise a good point when it comes to Poison Regen. For the record I don't want any of the enemies to lose the ability to absorb elements since we're not the AI and we can adjust, but that Poison thing is a very good point. It's not so much that I want to remove absorption of elements in the game perse, so much as I want to make sure that it isn't either used or needed to be a crutch. I brought up the Netz example and SC brought up Schizo as another one where the entire fight can be either be circumvented or was almost needed to win, and that should never be the case. I also don't want to see later enemies and virtually all end game monsters becoming non-elemental to avoid you circumventing their elemental attacks. Because if you turn all the later game enemies non-elemental and remove/change attacks that do deal elemental damage, you're still removing a main feature of the game, only it's on the other side of the field this time are you not?

It's tough, it really is. The choices seem to be either remove immunity which some don't want to lose as it is a main feature even though it could be used to extremely strong effect or even fight breaking effect, or leave it in and turn enemies later on in the game into less "flavourish" versions going non-elemental and making things a little more streamlined. I don't know... Like I said, it's tough.

Well, Aeris has no offence Limits and Vincent's Limits utilise a physical and magical attack (maybe not for Chaos Saber, can't remember). Strength plays a factor in Limit damage so building that stat on characters like Cloud and Red XIII would make those abilities stronger. The weapon formula doesn't get used though. The characters this affects can be built either Strength or Magic so it doesn't matter too much.

I think hybrids would work quite well in this game, there's the Limits, Added Cut, Counters, etc. to piece it all together. Just need to be careful like you say about Hybrids becoming stronger than dedicated fighter/casters but I doubt that'll happen.

Is the difference in Limit Break power between a Mage with little Strength and a Fighter with a lot of Strength all that much? I'm thinking back to my playthrough and I can't recall noticing a stark difference? And for the hybrids, good stuff.

I've been thinking that the best way to go about this elemental issue is to go with a combination of the suggestions made so they all meet each other halfway:

1) Leave Elemental Materia as it is; 2 slots for Null/Absorb late-game
2) Reduce elemental defence on accessories and armour by one tier (so Null on rings, Half on Armlets).
3) Reinstate Shout on Bahamut Materia
4) Design end-game enemies with less elemental attacks and more unaspected/physical element ones
5) Fine-tune elemental accessory stat bonuses/effects so that stat-boost accessories are still viable picks when elemental damage is a factor (for instance, Fire Ring gives +15 Str/Dex with it's Fire Absorption while Power Wrist only gives +20STR with Berserk defence which is a double-edged thing as Berserk can be used to raise attack power).

I'll need to keep an eye on Shield and Peerless, though. Aeris can only use it once with her Limits and they need proportionately more damage to fill the gauges again (Mime isn't an issue as any command taken would overwrite Planet Protecter/Great Gospel for copying, unless physical counter attacks aren't Mimed; can't remember, though I think that Magic/Command Counter will overwrite the action to be Mimed).

Shield has it's high MP cost and, as much as I hate it, the lack of an immediate visual indicator outside of bringing up the status box is also a drawback to keep it more in check than Peerless. Non-elemental attacks can also punch through it.

About vanilla Schizo, all of his attacks are elementally aspected; Fire/Ice breath, the Tremors are Earth, and the final attacks are Bolt. With Aurora Armlet + Fire Ring and two Elemental Materia you can easily make a character invincible or at least very unlikely to die in that boss; it's an extreme example, but those are the kind of situations I want to avoid.

Well I still think too many absorbs/null options are too strong, but if this the halfway compromise than go with it. I only worry that every end game enemy will either be non-elemental and materia combinations will be more streamlined, or they will become a little too easy with most of their attacks being nulled/absorbed.

(Man, balancing stuff is hard, huh?)

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5019 on: 2017-03-08 12:09:29 »
In the scene.bin everything is fine with Bahamuts, the Attacks have their respective Flag set for Dual and so on, the kernel.bin just doesn't have the flag for combination with Added-Effect.
Skillset on scene.bin for Bahamut: http://i.imgur.com/KozvMu0.png
Statset on kernel.bin for Bahamut Materia: http://i.imgur.com/2RSCoTy.png
Materia ID 63 = Attack ID 003F
That it works in the Editor and displays everything fine here another shot of Hades Materia with his 6 Status-Effects: http://i.imgur.com/WGV3hEd.png

That Dual flag in the kernel is only one part of the status; there's two, Dual and Dual-Drain. Dual on its own does nothing except appear in status menus within battle, while Dual-Drain will crash the game unless it is inflicted with it's partner, Dual. I'm thinking that if the Materia only has Dual on it, then any effect inflicting Dual + Dual-Drain will only get Dual-Drain through and cause problems. I'll test it with the Dual flag on its own and see if it works or not.

Random might be too much as that's what Cait Sith's Dice uses and it tends to hit harder than his physical attacks in most cases; I think it ignores base power/Strength as well so a low attack power on it probably wouldn't slow it down. No defence ignore could keep it in check but I reckon it'll be hitting high even in its lower ranges. The damage ranges themselves depend on the level of the attacker, gaining a Dice for each 10 levels. You'd be around Lv.20+ or 30+ when Enemy Launcher hits the scene so that's 3-4 Dice with ranges of 600-5400, and 1000-9600 respectively; even with Defence Ignore off, I reckon it'll outstrip regular physical attacks completely bearing in mind it might be able to make use of Elemental for 2x (assuming the formula allows for that check). I'm going to check it anyway for curiosity sake.

Shame there doesn't seen to be a way to attach the "Eject" status to weapons. That'd be appropriate (and OP as fern) for such a weapon name. Instant-death with low accuracy...? :-P

Eject would be ridiculous; I think if it was used on an enemy they'd just freeze on the field rather than being removed from view (animations with eject like Hammerblow have data in them to correctly remove the affected enemies from view).

Is the difference in Limit Break power between a Mage with little Strength and a Fighter with a lot of Strength all that much? I'm thinking back to my playthrough and I can't recall noticing a stark difference? And for the hybrids, good stuff.

I think you'd only really notice it on Yuffie or maybe Red XIII when compared to, say, Cid if you've went with magic-builds for the former.

Asheep

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5020 on: 2017-03-09 01:25:30 »
I just fought that boss at Wutai on the fifth floor(Goto? Yuffie's dad) with Yuffie and noticed he was using a spell called aqualung.  I beated him and saved on all my save slots.(I regret doing so)  Than I started wondering about the water element and started looking it up and realized that it may be one of the few if not only water element attack other than Leviathan.  I tried to get it from the Garuda enemy in the Da Chao area but they are not using it.  I've stood there and let them spam there attacks and they're not using it.  Please help.  Did you move it?  Thanks.
« Last Edit: 2017-03-09 01:27:30 by Asheep »

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5021 on: 2017-03-09 01:26:31 »
(I was editing and saying different things on this message post and now it feels like a mess)  Please disregard this message. (I'm not sure how to delete it)   ;D
« Last Edit: 2017-03-09 04:04:05 by Asheep »

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5022 on: 2017-03-09 01:43:41 »
There's another water-element attack that was added to the Ultima Materia (renamed Planet as it has 3 spells on it) called Hydro. It's basically a Contain-level spell like Break and Tornado.

As for Aqualung, I think you need to Manipulate the Garuda to have it use Aqualung. If it says otherwise in the current notes then apologies.

fool

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5023 on: 2017-03-09 01:52:43 »
Random might be too much as that's what Cait Sith's Dice uses and it tends to hit harder than his physical attacks in most cases; I think it ignores base power/Strength as well so a low attack power on it probably wouldn't slow it down. No defence ignore could keep it in check but I reckon it'll be hitting high even in its lower ranges. The damage ranges themselves depend on the level of the attacker, gaining a Dice for each 10 levels. You'd be around Lv.20+ or 30+ when Enemy Launcher hits the scene so that's 3-4 Dice with ranges of 600-5400, and 1000-9600 respectively; even with Defence Ignore off, I reckon it'll outstrip regular physical attacks completely bearing in mind it might be able to make use of Elemental for 2x (assuming the formula allows for that check). I'm going to check it anyway for curiosity sake.
The speciality of this Random Flag on Weapons is, that it ignores the Str Value of the char completly, it just uses the Str Value of the Weapon for the max value, so 12 on Weapon str would be 1200 dmg max. No matter the level or any stat in game. Cait Sith's Dice Limit generate the STR Value with the dices and then make use of the random value. Just to mention it. :)

@ASheep only the Serpent (Sunken Gelnika) would use it again during battles. All other enemys that have Aqualung in their Code, won't make use of it unless you maybe manipulate them as Sega Chief said.

Otherwise you still could use Black Chocobo to add it.

Asheep

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.4)
« Reply #5024 on: 2017-03-09 02:04:22 »
Thank you guys for the quick replies.  :D  Take care.