Author Topic: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v2.0.99994)  (Read 4836682 times)

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7125 on: 2018-07-28 12:23:42 »
I don't know if this exists but is there a bestiary somewhere online? Something that just lists hp and whatnot of monsters in the mod? Really love it, btw.

Technically no, but if you download the Proud Clod tool hosted here on Qhimm and open the mod's scene.bin (located either in FF7/DATA/Battle folder or the FF7/DATA/lang-en/battle folder if steam) you can view enemy information that way: http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=8481.0

Regarding the Cosmo memory getting Aeris's Fury brand from vanilla effect....

I like the idea of his LB granting party support, but honestly, I find current cosmo memory way too overpowered.

In vanilla, I viewed Aeris as the best character, because everyone could essentially become the same and have the exact same strengths, and what separates them is ultimately, Limit Breaks, and Aeris had the ability to give 2 LB's for 1 (and great gospel).


Now as it stands with Red XIII, I'm getting 9999 on all targets (damage on Carmine weapon) with Cosmo Memory, and 2 free Limit breaks, which are for me Omnislash and highwind/big brawl (cause I just got highwind).

This makes Red XIII's Level 4 Limit Break Objectively the strongest LB in NT, as it basically three for one, which makes his final LB god tier, no one else LB's can compete as it's worth is literally triple that of anyone else's.

I think the reason why Aeris limits were so crazily strong in normal is that they knew you couldn't take her to end game and to help immortalize her, they gave her incredible LB's.
So I really don't think their effects should have a place in NT. And I'd also like to add, Fury Brand was understandable on Aeris, even if it was overpowered. It did no damage, and she had no damage LB's so it made sense and fit in with her self-sacrifice character-arc. But it doesn't fit in with red XIII at all really.

I'd also like to point out that Aeris essentially Sacrificed her Limit for yours, making it two LB's for one. Red XIII's is not sacrificing his, he's just giving two extra on top of his, which makes it so much stronger than Fury Brand.

I like the idea of restoring some balance for Red XIII's limits, but this goes too far imo. As I've said before, I use all characters, and I find pretty equal worth in them all, and so far at least nothing massively elevates one character above them all without having some negatives, but this LB changes that. I'm now nerfing my party if I'm not using Red XIII due to Cosmo Memory alone.

Like I said I like the idea of his LB supporting, but I'd try it in another way. Maybe take on effect buffs for red xiii instead? Like maybe lucky pills effect, or maybe the vanillas effect of Big Guard? Lot of possibilities with buffs alone. If you do want to keep it with him filling other party members LB's, I'd at the least limit it to one party members instead of both. It's just too powerful as is imo.

Maybe, yeah.

I support the idea of a bestiary.
In addition to that, I'd also like a document that lists weapons and abilities in detail(Showing their strength, too, for example).
Giving the player information in a strategy game is a good thing. It allows for informed decision making.
A spreadsheet containing information about magic, abilities, limit breaks and weapons(Especially the ones with special formulas/effects) would be really nice.

While I would recommend the other tool, Wall Market, for viewing that info it has visual basic dependencies that mean it doesn't run out of the box without some legwork. I could put something together but it'll probably fall out of date relatively quickly.

Hi I don't know if this is a bug, or I'm just missing something massive, but Powersoul Keeper is impossible for me. He does not enter berserk and casts trine constantly once his HP reaches around 16k. He cast Trine, then attacked a character, I chose an action (quake 2 I think) then he immediately cast trine again before my characters performed anything. That is just one example, I've tried him for hours. Looking at other playthoughs on Youtube he barely casts trine, and goes into berserk at low level. They were playing the 1.4 version though. Any information you could provide would be great. Thanks.

That was a fairly old bug, are you using the IRO from the 7H catalog? Either update using the main installer or download the IRO from the link on front page of this thread and use that instead.

levantine

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7126 on: 2018-07-28 19:01:20 »
Hey !

Downloaded the last version and have some question, is that normal that steal materia give -25%hp penality? Also chocobo have a -50 str and osmose skill has been removes (only have esuna and resist on the materia) is all this case normal or did i have a trick somewhere?

kamek523

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7127 on: 2018-07-29 13:23:20 »
When is the Documentation going to be updated? I'm using the excel sheet for steals/morphs/drops but it's very inaccurate. Some bosses are different now, some were added, a few enemy skills were moved/changed. It's very hard to search through this massive thread for every tiny change that was made. Are there patch notes somewhere?

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7128 on: 2018-07-29 14:24:52 »
Hey !

Downloaded the last version and have some question, is that normal that steal materia give -25%hp penality? Also chocobo have a -50 str and osmose skill has been removes (only have esuna and resist on the materia) is all this case normal or did i have a trick somewhere?

No, the .exe sounds like it's not been patched. If you check in the main installer folders (or 7H folders if you downloaded the IRO) you should find some .exe files you can use to replace your current one. Sometimes the patcher doesn't get the .exe correctly, and 7H has no way to patch an .exe directly at present.

When is the Documentation going to be updated? I'm using the excel sheet for steals/morphs/drops but it's very inaccurate. Some bosses are different now, some were added, a few enemy skills were moved/changed. It's very hard to search through this massive thread for every tiny change that was made. Are there patch notes somewhere?

It'll be a while, it takes time to rewrite it all. Your best bet at the moment is to download the Proud Clod (PrC) tool and open the game's scene.bin (this can be done even while the game is running) and using its built-in search function to find enemies and check their stats which also lists their steals, drops, and morphs: http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=8481.0

Manifestations2

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7129 on: 2018-07-29 15:05:47 »
Hi I don't know if this is a bug, or I'm just missing something massive, but Powersoul Keeper is impossible for me. He does not enter berserk and casts trine constantly once his HP reaches around 16k. He cast Trine, then attacked a character, I chose an action (quake 2 I think) then he immediately cast trine again before my characters performed anything. That is just one example, I've tried him for hours. Looking at other playthoughs on Youtube he barely casts trine, and goes into berserk at low level. They were playing the 1.4 version though. Any information you could provide would be great. Thanks.

That was a fairly old bug, are you using the IRO from the 7H catalog? Either update using the main installer or download the IRO from the link on front page of this thread and use that instead.

Thanks. I'm downloading the latest version from top of this page. I think I am using an older version. I do not know what an IRO is, unfortunately. I'm a total novice with computer stuff. I can follow explicit step by step instructions, but have little clue what I'm doing.

levantine

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7130 on: 2018-07-29 15:42:06 »
Ok i changed my exe and now steal give me -1 str -1 vit +1 intel and +1 other thinks and chocobo give ehh nothing to the stats^^ so i think it's ok now, about osmose i read that you make it an alone materia that can be obtain in aerith garden, but i'm at junon atm, how can i get it ?

Manifestations2

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7131 on: 2018-07-29 16:05:18 »
Hi. Now the mod will not install as it is saying that "The destination directory does not contain any files to update. I'm selecting the Data file, in the FF7 Steam apps. I have literally no idea what this means, or what I am doing. It worked fine with the older version with the aforementioned bug in it. I unistalled/ reinstalled the game to remove the older version. I'm completely stuck on what to do. As I've said, I'm a total novice.

Vaylen

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7132 on: 2018-07-29 16:14:21 »
Is there a way to effectively level my characters down via an editor or the like?
I tried using Black Chocobo, but it seems to use its own xp/health/mp curves. As the NT-curves for all 3 are non-linear from what I can tell, it is difficult to calculate the values of any given level.
If I had the proper XP/HP/MP values, could I effectively level my characters down via Black Chocobo?
« Last Edit: 2018-07-29 16:35:52 by Vaylen »

levantine

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7133 on: 2018-07-29 16:34:48 »
Edit : download your files and replace my .exe with your, everything is ok (bolt give -3 vita - 3 intel and +3% max mp :)
For osmose i think i just have to continue the game and get the 2 others, i don't really want to restart new game just for this cause i can't go back to the garden

Vaylen

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7134 on: 2018-07-29 21:19:51 »
Edit : download your files and replace my .exe with your, everything is ok (bolt give -3 vita - 3 intel and +3% max mp :)
For osmose i think i just have to continue the game and get the 2 others, i don't really want to restart new game just for this cause i can't go back to the garden
You can only get a single osmose anyway. Corel should be the next one, I believe.

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7135 on: 2018-07-29 21:50:19 »
That was a fairly old bug, are you using the IRO from the 7H catalog? Either update using the main installer or download the IRO from the link on front page of this thread and use that instead.

Thanks. I'm downloading the latest version from top of this page. I think I am using an older version. I do not know what an IRO is, unfortunately. I'm a total novice with computer stuff. I can follow explicit step by step instructions, but have little clue what I'm doing.

An IRO is a mod package used by a mod-loader program called 7th Heaven, which is a bit like the mod manager for games like Skyrim or Fallout. What it does is break a mod down into its required parts so that they can be more easily mixed with other mods (usually graphical mods with gameplay-altering mods).

Ok i changed my exe and now steal give me -1 str -1 vit +1 intel and +1 other thinks and chocobo give ehh nothing to the stats^^ so i think it's ok now, about osmose i read that you make it an alone materia that can be obtain in aerith garden, but i'm at junon atm, how can i get it ?

Osmose can be picked up from 3 locations; where you're at now, the next opportunity to grab it is at the Ropeway Station by the stairs. Picking up any one of the 3 Osmose materia will cause the others to vanish (the 3rd is on board the Highwind).

Hi. Now the mod will not install as it is saying that "The destination directory does not contain any files to update. I'm selecting the Data file, in the FF7 Steam apps. I have literally no idea what this means, or what I am doing. It worked fine with the older version with the aforementioned bug in it. I unistalled/ reinstalled the game to remove the older version. I'm completely stuck on what to do. As I've said, I'm a total novice.

Sorry, the mod installation directory changed with the newer versions as it now incorporates .executable changes. Instead of the Data folder, direct it to the folder above it called 'FF7' (or Final Fantasy VII).

Sometimes the executable doesn't patch however due to security reasons or the like, so when you load the game after installing the new patch check your magic materia (like Fire, Ice, or Bolt) and that they give: -3 vitality - 3 Spirit and +3% max mp. If they're giving different benefits/penalties, then look inside the Main Installer folders for the emergency .exe files and drop the one you need into the FF7 folder (or all of them, if unsure which to use).

Is there a way to effectively level my characters down via an editor or the like?
I tried using Black Chocobo, but it seems to use its own xp/health/mp curves. As the NT-curves for all 3 are non-linear from what I can tell, it is difficult to calculate the values of any given level.
If I had the proper XP/HP/MP values, could I effectively level my characters down via Black Chocobo?

For all characters:
Lv.10: 627
15: 3682
20: 10228
25: 28674
30: 58645
35: 115939
40: 196828
45: 319097
50: 477183
55: 704855
60: 987692
65: 1,369,184
70: 1,827,266
75: 2,356238
80: 2,961200
85: 3,709,881
90: 4,569,189
95: 5,553,080
99: 6,375,746

However, checking this in-game it seems that more is needed than the listed values. I guess the formula confused Wall Market a bit, cause by 99 it's off by a million or so.

Manifestations2

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7136 on: 2018-07-30 01:06:26 »
Hi Thanks. That worked. And Power soul keeper was much more manageable, but now when I used Mr Smiley he's only giving me 1 of each source?

Vaylen

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7137 on: 2018-07-30 06:09:37 »
Will lvl-modifying actually work properly(via Black Chocobo) when I just adjust the xp values?

Haven't used Wall Market yet, as you mentioned it was a bit difficult to setup.

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7138 on: 2018-07-30 13:54:08 »
Hi Thanks. That worked. And Power soul keeper was much more manageable, but now when I used Mr Smiley he's only giving me 1 of each source?

Did you check that your .EXE was patched? Sounds like it isn't; go into the mod installer folders and look for the .exe files and drop them into your FF7 folder, overwriting the old ones. As an extra step, right-click those .exes and go to properties; if a button called 'Unblock' is there then click that.

Will lvl-modifying actually work properly(via Black Chocobo) when I just adjust the xp values?

Haven't used Wall Market yet, as you mentioned it was a bit difficult to setup.

Should do, but you need to change the actual level itself as well. If you get a visual glitch with the gauge, this'll correct itself when the character levels up once.

malexj93

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7139 on: 2018-07-31 00:17:37 »
Thanks for helping out with the last bug, the July 17th version fixed it.

Here's all of the notes I have now that I've basically done everything:

Spoiler: show
The SP system is great, but seems a little buggy. Sometimes my characters will stop being able to rank up even though they aren't at level 8 yet. I know there's the guy in the Highwind that resets it to level 1 or 4 for everyone, but it can end up making some characters overpowered if I'm not keeping track of ranks on my own. Additionally, as someone else mentioned, it would be really nice to be able to see the current ranks of each party member other than when they go up. It would also be nice to see when I SP and if possible how much. In the earlier versions, it looks like there was a message at the top of the screen when you got SP, but that appears to be removed. Most normal enemies don't really seem to give SP, but it's hard to tell if I'm wasting my time or not trying to grind for it, other than in the crater. One last thing that would be very convenient, though potentially very difficult, is to allow characters to reallocate their stats. Even if it's only allowed on disc 3 to avoid balance issues, it would be a very nice feature. Many characters have their usefulness in certain areas change depending on what equipment and materia is available at the time. My Red XIII is completely useless because I never really knew what to do with him, but now that I'm at the end of the game and have to use him for his sidequest, it'd be nice to be able to patch him up just a bit. I can reset his rank to 1 (along with everyone else) and just add on to him that way, but it feels kinda cheap. Also, for rank 6 and 7, it showed up as 16/8 and 17/8 for multiple characters. Seems to be just a visual bug, but it's there.

Carmine and Viridian are both significantly easier than in the base game. Each has around a quarter of the max HP, so Carmine can be easily defeated in well under the time limit, and Viridian is always damageable and goes down pretty quickly as well. I'm not sure if they were intended to be this easy, maybe you're meant to fight them as soon as they become available? If this is the case, I was fooled. Given the increase in difficulty and all the extra superbosses added, I assumed that these two fights would be enormously difficult. But, I ended up easily overpowering them when I finally got the courage to fight them.

Balance overall is very good, I never felt like I needed to grind at all in the main part of the game, and each boss provided a fun challenge that could be overcome with some smart thinking. Whether it's good or bad, it's worth pointing out that the weakness system of this game really prioritizes Earth and Lightning spells, since most bosses are big and some are also robots. This also makes Kjata severely overpowered early on, and is likely one of the first methods to do 9999 on bosses -- however, I feel that summons are appropriately balanced so even having an easy 10k by the end of disc 1 isn't gamebreaking, but still might be worth tweaking. Fire and Ice both were extremely underused for me, most of the time bosses were not weak to them, or were also weak to either Earth or Lightning. The same goes even more so for Holy and Water, which I didn't have until I got Planet (didn't really do Enemy Skill). I basically had all my bases covered with just two magic materia, occasionally using poison-all for fights against multiple humans. So, I think more variety in weaknesses would be good. Also, it's pretty unfortunate that Sense stops working, because it would be nice to be able to see the weaknesses for endgame fights, but I know that can't be fixed.

The fight with the second Jenova form was almost a welcome difficulty spike, if it weren't for the cutscene. I liked the idea of zombifying my team members one by one, and it was a very challenging and rewarding fight. However, while I was doing the fight, it was mostly just infuriating, because every time I lost I would have to watch the "famous" cutscene in it's entirety. The boss for Cloud's sidequest had a great solution to this, where after losing you can go into the menu and change your loadout before fighting again without the cutscene. If that could be implemented in the Jenova fight as well, it would help it immensely.

One more issue with balance is the stardust item. It can be reliably farmed starting at Midgar raid, and you get a few before that too. It's a free 24k on basically anything. Even without W-Item, it potentially trivializes the rest of the game if you let it. Especially thwarted by it are the KOTR guardians, who each have very low HP but take very little damage to compensate. However, 2 stardusts is nearly enough to kill each of them, and 3 is more than enough. This means that one of the hardest bosses (in my opinion) guarding the most powerful summon can be beaten in 2 rounds by any party tough enough to survive a few hits. With W-Item, it's an objectively superior alternative to 4x-Cut or Quadra Magic (except Ultima), by doing 48k non-elemental in a turn. W-Magic + Quadra Magic is potentially better, but has pretty high costs unless you also make sure to have MP Absorb, and you may need MP Turbo to reliably exceed 48k. Aside from the fact that Quadra Magic + MP Absorb locks the game against a few enemies, like Carmine and Pinnacle Seph, it also takes up quite a few materia slots that stardust doesn't need. The only deterrent to doing this is the time it takes to gather stardusts (with the hopeful assumption of not abusing the W-Item glitch), which isn't really that long once you have the Conformer, and is still the path of least resistance for beating a lot of the harder bosses in the game. I went out of my way to avoid abusing the item after realizing its power, but I imagine that if you go all in, you can really ruin all of disc 3 for yourself.

Some glitches: having anyone that's not Cloud as the leader tends to have some weird effects, though mostly minor. I never really used Tifa so I can only say for Cid. The jumping animation on the field (used a lot in the crater) tends to cause an additional animation which takes like 2 seconds. It's not much on it's own but it makes navigating the crater with Cid very annoying. Also, generally when walking into a room where the current leader is supposed to be staged as an NPC, you will spawn at the NPC location rather than the entrance you walked in from. I mentioned this in my previous post with the highwind, but it's happened to me in a few other places as well. In a similar vein, during the escape from Junon, the last cutscene before you get to the airport allowed me to use the PHS, and I could freely move anyone in and out of my party. This allowed me to make a team without Cloud, Tifa, or Cid, meaning I could run around with Red XIII for example. Changing screens too much seemed to crash the game, and at that point I was more interested in playing the game so I didn't play around with it further. I'm sure there's some interesting things that could happen because of that.

A minor bug/oversight is that for some characters, their canon names and given names show up inconsistently for their innate ability messages. For example, I named Vincent "Raven" in my game, and the message said something along the lines of "Raven's Innate Ability: Vincent will regain HP". For Cid, it was switched and had Cid in the header, and his given name in the body. Doesn't really affect anything, but it was just something I noticed that made me do a double take.

Goldberry seems to do some weird stuff, and I'm not sure if I just don't understand it or if it's not working properly. From what I understand, it prevents you from blocking status effect with e.g. ribbon (and possibly resist? but I didn't have it at this point). However, often I would be unable to heal from these status effects too. I would need to use multiple remedies and dispels in order to recover from the effects, but I could never tell how many. I have a feeling that status effects are possibly stacking. For example, normally if you are poisoned, another attempt to poison you will fail; if the Goldberry is somehow bypassing that check, it may possibly poison you multiple times, and hence would take multiple tries to heal. This is just a guess, and I didn't test it too rigorously because I was pretty frustrated at the fight. Also, they will not kill you if you don't attack them. If you have the game on wait, and they get you into a situation where you can't attack (say, by Stop-ing your whole party), then fight never end. I waited for about 20 minutes watching them walk around to see if the petrify counters would ever go down or if stop would go away, and neither of those things happen. It was kind of funny and a little annoying, but once you know that happens you can just reset right away. And speaking of Resist, I'm unable to pair it with all; it only casts single target, while Esuna targets all. I feel like this may be an intentional balance decision, but I wasn't sure about it.


That's all I have. This mod was spectacular and I can't wait to see where it goes in the future. The minor issues that I've had with the game are more than made up for by the sheer amount and quality of the material added/changed in this mod. It gave me a reason to revisit one of my all time favorite games, and it's some of the most fun I've ever had with this game. I really hope that some kind of New Game + is still in the works for this mod, as it would be great to keep playing! For now, I may try out the Arrange mode and randomized SP stats to see how that goes, and I'll definitely be checking this thread for any major updates in the future. Best of luck with everything, and thanks so much for making this mod!

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7140 on: 2018-07-31 14:18:56 »
Quite a long post, so I'll go through it bit by bit.

-) The SP system

DLPB is currently working on a .dll that enable some custom field opcodes to be used that would enable savemap editing; that means in a future build it'll be possible to not only eliminate the need for sources all together, but to also reset characters and rebuild them.

As far as tracking SP goes, there are two options. One is to have a single SP 'bank' like gil that the player spends on characters (with successive ranks costing more and more) that can be tracked via the in-game party menu. This would get rid of some of the clunkiness with the current system. The other option is to do away with SP altogether and have ranks unlock after specific story bosses.


Carmine and Viridian are both significantly easier than in the base game. Each has around a quarter of the max HP, so Carmine can be easily defeated in well under the time limit, and Viridian is always damageable and goes down pretty quickly as well. I'm not sure if they were intended to be this easy, maybe you're meant to fight them as soon as they become available? If this is the case, I was fooled. Given the increase in difficulty and all the extra superbosses added, I assumed that these two fights would be enormously difficult. But, I ended up easily overpowering them when I finally got the courage to fight them.

The original Ruby and Emerald were specced to face off against maxed characters capable of throwing out 9999 damage per hit, or who had access to KOTR among other things. In NT, the damage cap isn't as easy to hit and I didn't want the fights to drag out. I'll review them when Dan's .dll releases and I start working on the 2.0 rebuild.

Balance overall is very good, I never felt like I needed to grind at all in the main part of the game, and each boss provided a fun challenge that could be overcome with some smart thinking. Whether it's good or bad, it's worth pointing out that the weakness system of this game really prioritizes Earth and Lightning spells, since most bosses are big and some are also robots. This also makes Kjata severely overpowered early on, and is likely one of the first methods to do 9999 on bosses -- however, I feel that summons are appropriately balanced so even having an easy 10k by the end of disc 1 isn't gamebreaking, but still might be worth tweaking. Fire and Ice both were extremely underused for me, most of the time bosses were not weak to them, or were also weak to either Earth or Lightning. The same goes even more so for Holy and Water, which I didn't have until I got Planet (didn't really do Enemy Skill). I basically had all my bases covered with just two magic materia, occasionally using poison-all for fights against multiple humans. So, I think more variety in weaknesses would be good. Also, it's pretty unfortunate that Sense stops working, because it would be nice to be able to see the weaknesses for endgame fights, but I know that can't be fixed.

Earth did come out as being more favoured than the others as the rule I laid down for elemental weaknesses used size and most bosses are, well, big; lightning kind of has an innate advantage in this game as well due to the higher number of mechanical enemies wandering around. Part of the problem is maybe that I tried to avoid elementally-themed bosses.

The fight with the second Jenova form was almost a welcome difficulty spike, if it weren't for the cutscene. I liked the idea of zombifying my team members one by one, and it was a very challenging and rewarding fight. However, while I was doing the fight, it was mostly just infuriating, because every time I lost I would have to watch the "famous" cutscene in it's entirety. The boss for Cloud's sidequest had a great solution to this, where after losing you can go into the menu and change your loadout before fighting again without the cutscene. If that could be implemented in the Jenova fight as well, it would help it immensely.

Could do, I'll see about adding one.

One more issue with balance is the stardust item. It can be reliably farmed starting at Midgar raid, and you get a few before that too. It's a free 24k on basically anything. Even without W-Item, it potentially trivializes the rest of the game if you let it. Especially thwarted by it are the KOTR guardians, who each have very low HP but take very little damage to compensate. However, 2 stardusts is nearly enough to kill each of them, and 3 is more than enough. This means that one of the hardest bosses (in my opinion) guarding the most powerful summon can be beaten in 2 rounds by any party tough enough to survive a few hits. With W-Item, it's an objectively superior alternative to 4x-Cut or Quadra Magic (except Ultima), by doing 48k non-elemental in a turn. W-Magic + Quadra Magic is potentially better, but has pretty high costs unless you also make sure to have MP Absorb, and you may need MP Turbo to reliably exceed 48k. Aside from the fact that Quadra Magic + MP Absorb locks the game against a few enemies, like Carmine and Pinnacle Seph, it also takes up quite a few materia slots that stardust doesn't need. The only deterrent to doing this is the time it takes to gather stardusts (with the hopeful assumption of not abusing the W-Item glitch), which isn't really that long once you have the Conformer, and is still the path of least resistance for beating a lot of the harder bosses in the game. I went out of my way to avoid abusing the item after realizing its power, but I imagine that if you go all in, you can really ruin all of disc 3 for yourself.

Stardust has been brought up a few times, it's nice that items can be made into decent damage-dealers but I've went a bit too far with this one. I'll see about limiting its availability.

Some glitches: having anyone that's not Cloud as the leader tends to have some weird effects, though mostly minor. I never really used Tifa so I can only say for Cid. The jumping animation on the field (used a lot in the crater) tends to cause an additional animation which takes like 2 seconds. It's not much on it's own but it makes navigating the crater with Cid very annoying. Also, generally when walking into a room where the current leader is supposed to be staged as an NPC, you will spawn at the NPC location rather than the entrance you walked in from. I mentioned this in my previous post with the highwind, but it's happened to me in a few other places as well. In a similar vein, during the escape from Junon, the last cutscene before you get to the airport allowed me to use the PHS, and I could freely move anyone in and out of my party. This allowed me to make a team without Cloud, Tifa, or Cid, meaning I could run around with Red XIII for example. Changing screens too much seemed to crash the game, and at that point I was more interested in playing the game so I didn't play around with it further. I'm sure there's some interesting things that could happen because of that.

A minor bug/oversight is that for some characters, their canon names and given names show up inconsistently for their innate ability messages. For example, I named Vincent "Raven" in my game, and the message said something along the lines of "Raven's Innate Ability: Vincent will regain HP". For Cid, it was switched and had Cid in the header, and his given name in the body. Doesn't really affect anything, but it was just something I noticed that made me do a double take.

The thing with the animations is that those three characters have different skeletons to each other, so they can't use each other's animations easily. Cid can sort of do it (and does so in the base game) but Cloud's anims break his feet and cause them to point straight up. So for navigation I tried to use anims that were either as close to Cloud's, or at least functionally equivalent to them (gold saucer was a bit of a nightmare).

PHS in Junon Raid should have been removed, but I'll check again just in case. And I'll sort out the names in the innate text boxes, sometimes I hammer out the name of the character manually instead of using the special tag for it.

Goldberry seems to do some weird stuff, and I'm not sure if I just don't understand it or if it's not working properly. From what I understand, it prevents you from blocking status effect with e.g. ribbon (and possibly resist? but I didn't have it at this point). However, often I would be unable to heal from these status effects too. I would need to use multiple remedies and dispels in order to recover from the effects, but I could never tell how many. I have a feeling that status effects are possibly stacking. For example, normally if you are poisoned, another attempt to poison you will fail; if the Goldberry is somehow bypassing that check, it may possibly poison you multiple times, and hence would take multiple tries to heal. This is just a guess, and I didn't test it too rigorously because I was pretty frustrated at the fight. Also, they will not kill you if you don't attack them. If you have the game on wait, and they get you into a situation where you can't attack (say, by Stop-ing your whole party), then fight never end. I waited for about 20 minutes watching them walk around to see if the petrify counters would ever go down or if stop would go away, and neither of those things happen. It was kind of funny and a little annoying, but once you know that happens you can just reset right away. And speaking of Resist, I'm unable to pair it with all; it only casts single target, while Esuna targets all. I feel like this may be an intentional balance decision, but I wasn't sure about it.[/spoiler]

Goldberry makes use of an oddity with how status defence works in this game. Basically, if a character resists something then all it does is prevent the flag for the status from being toggled. However, this works both ways so if you get a status ailment, and then apply Resist to that character, you'll be unable to remove the status until Resist has been dealt with because this essentially 'locks' the toggle of the status flag.

That's all I have. This mod was spectacular and I can't wait to see where it goes in the future. The minor issues that I've had with the game are more than made up for by the sheer amount and quality of the material added/changed in this mod. It gave me a reason to revisit one of my all time favorite games, and it's some of the most fun I've ever had with this game. I really hope that some kind of New Game + is still in the works for this mod, as it would be great to keep playing! For now, I may try out the Arrange mode and randomized SP stats to see how that goes, and I'll definitely be checking this thread for any major updates in the future. Best of luck with everything, and thanks so much for making this mod!

Thanks for the feedback, I'm working on FF8 NT at the moment but I'll be coming back to FF7 NT to do a rebuild afterwards.

Vaylen

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7141 on: 2018-07-31 16:33:12 »
Uuuhh, FF8 NT sounds nice. I'm in.


On balance discussion:
A problem I've ran into is, that it is hard to support a variety of physical damage dealers with Materia. There aren't many stat boni via Materia around for physical characters and stuff like Slash-All or Double Cut are pretty late into the game.
Additionally, Added Cut is pretty iffy to use and Command Counter is essentially a worse counter for most of the game, until you get Deathblow... Which you'd rather pair with Added Cut anyway.
Attack not being combinable with most support-materia is a problem, making it very difficult to increase its power(Again, until you get your Attack-Altering or Quasi "Attack" Materia).
The setups for physical characters become solved:
Elemental/Added Effect/Counter-Stacking/Deathblow(Or Morph/w Ancient Weapon)+Added Cut;
The limited availability of most of the listed materia makes it pretty difficult to deck out your whole cast, too.

In contrast, magically based characters have Summon-Materia to increase their raw power, a large amount of spells to choose from, Magic Counter, MP-Turbo, All, MP-Absorb.
Due to limited slots, Magical-Setups are a lot more interesting to setup and involve decisions, while Physical setups are pretty solved from the get-go.

A few materia that boost physical offence(Lck, Str) would go a long way. Increasing the availability of Attack-replacing Materia would be rather useful, too. More independent Materia that supports raw physical offence would be another possibility. Overall, I believe the Materia System could use some more innovation, especially when it comes to stat-increases and attack-altering Materia.

Furthermore, physical characters especially could benefit from triple or quadruple-linked materia slots, allowing, for example, one Deathblow to be linked with Added Cut and HP Absorb or Command Counter. Those multi-linked slots could be exclusive to weapons found on physical-based characters(Cid, Tifa).


And lastly, a point about elemental balance:
Lightning(And Water) is naturally overrepresented due to the amount of machinery one faces - hard to change that and I think that is fine.
Earth, however, could balanced by more enemies resisting earth and tinkering with the Earth spells themselves: Possibly tune them a very small bit weaker and/or more costly than other comparable elemental spells. Would stand as a strong "go-to"-elemental spell, but oftentimes be outclassed in turn. I like the second option I named more, as it is rather annoying to have Earth as your go-to Elemental-combo for an unknown area, just to be helpless against resistant enemies.

On top of that, Ice/Fire are in... annoying spots. You usually only need one of those, not both. They are meant to be strong against Beasts and the obvious elemental enemies. It may be beneficial to tinker with their range of effectiveness, for example:
Fire: Beasts, Ice-based, Undead, Plant. 
Ice: Fire-Based, Water-Based, Small Enemies, Small Flyers.
« Last Edit: 2018-07-31 16:41:32 by Vaylen »

Vaylen

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7142 on: 2018-07-31 16:35:52 »
Accident ~.~

Jcdarden

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7143 on: 2018-07-31 19:02:55 »
Thanks for all your help. I'm just finishing up the game now - just a few more optional bosses to take out. Had a great time all the way through, and only had a few critiques/questions:

The goldberry battle is pretty obnoxious. I don't really mean difficulty, but sitting around as all six of the goldberries slowly move in a different direction multiple turns in a row was kind of frustrating, especially when you're spending plenty of time in between turns just healing status. I don't really know a fix for this, given it's how tonberries work, more just a comment.

The only other thing (and this didn't really bother me until the later battles) was the Dual status. Is it intentional for remedies to not remove it? There are a lot of bosses late game, especially optional ones, that inflict Dual + other statuses, and having to use two separate actions to remove them because remedy/esuna doesn't work is pretty annoying, particularly because there are no good accessories that prevent dual (other than a ribbon, but since they've been nerfed to infinity, I only found them useful in very situational battles like the platinum match).

Reylenblader

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7144 on: 2018-07-31 19:14:55 »
Hi , I think i found a bug with the rank up system . I'm currently in the corel prison near dyne , and i finally can rank up cait sith but normally i can only do 1 rank up with him but actually i can rank up 3 times. Is this normal?

jugend

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7145 on: 2018-07-31 21:02:56 »
Quote
The setups for physical characters become solved:
Elemental/Added Effect/Counter-Stacking/Deathblow(Or Morph/w Ancient Weapon)+Added Cut;
The limited availability of most of the listed materia makes it pretty difficult to deck out your whole cast, too.

Quote
Furthermore, physical characters especially could benefit from triple or quadruple-linked materia slots, allowing, for example, one Deathblow to be linked with Added Cut and HP Absorb or Command Counter. Those multi-linked slots could be exclusive to weapons found on physical-based characters(Cid, Tifa).

I think these are interesting points. I try to make my characters as unique as possible, but if you are going for variety in melee characters, they mostly come down to everything feeling very samey for most of the game.

Once you get deatblow+added cut, that helps separate the physical attacker in your party, the damage output really becomes ridiculous, especially when paired with elemental.
But thats really only one option that differentiates them, and it's quite late into the game.

I've thought about the benefits you would get from adding multi-cut, or slash all earlier. But, they both seem imbalanced to include earlier. Enemies would have to be greatly beefed up imo, to compensate for the additional damage up. Also, weapons like enemy launcher that hit all opponents would suffer a little if you had access to slash all.

Another point would be, to even be capable of doing things like mp/hp absorb to be used with physical skills, you'd need multiple copies of death blow. And you get that pretty late, and you aren't gonna master it for a very long time. By the time it happens, it'll basically be irrelevant. And even still, it's like, 10% hp gain? It feels next to worthless for two copies of deathblow, which you won't even have access to.

I think what I'd like to see is another true offensive melee type of materia earlier in the game. Maybe a new one entirely?

you have added cut + death blow for 3x total damage (can pair with hp/mp with multiple copies)

2x cut for 2x damage (can't pair with anything)

4x cut for 4x damage (can't pair)

slash all for 1x damage vs all (can't pair)

Deatblow is interesting because you can pair it, but for all the others listed, you can't. What would be cool would be an in-between that could link, that isn't as powerful as deathblow or 2x cut, but would effectively work with support materia. Let's say just for example something like "insert name here" 1.5x attack, paired with added cut, and a second copy paired with hp absorb, for a 2.5x damage attack, that could be really fun, but if you got it too early it'd have the same imbalance issues as getting 2x cut too early. And if you get it too late, it'd lose most of its use, unless an additional rank was added to power it up (but that would have to taken insane AP, so you couldnt get it until the same time as 4x cut)

Maybe a less complex addition could be Darkside, sacrifice 30% hp, to deal 2x damage, something like that, on your tank characters.


Just ideas, I dunno, I do think it's a waste that most interesting attack command materia only comes late game, cause you lose that variety for 75% of the game. It's also a problem that things like hp absorb require 2x of the paired materia to be worth it (cause you wanna use added cut always), and also the HP restore thingy is only 10%, making it feel worthless anyways.

general, the fact that most good command attack materia can't be paired, and for it to be worthwhile, you need multiple pairs, makes it feel a whole lot less interesting than it could be, and I do think thats a shame in general, but it's really the fault of the base game.

I think some cool things could be done to fix that, but it would be a lot of work, potentially create balance issues, and probably you would have to throw away other skills to make way for new ones (morph:)?)
« Last Edit: 2018-07-31 21:10:57 by jugend »

UpRisen

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7146 on: 2018-08-01 00:04:51 »
Hi , I think i found a bug with the rank up system . I'm currently in the corel prison near dyne , and i finally can rank up cait sith but normally i can only do 1 rank up with him but actually i can rank up 3 times. Is this normal?

Cait sith, vincent, and cid can have multiple ranks stored up before you meet them to make them closer to the rest stat wise when you get them.

Reylenblader

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7147 on: 2018-08-01 00:24:57 »
Quote
Cait sith, vincent, and cid can have multiple ranks stored up before you meet them to make them closer to the rest stat wise when you get them.

I know but 3 rank when my cloud is only rank 2 seems strange.

malexj93

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7148 on: 2018-08-01 01:02:15 »
... and stuff like Slash-All or Double Cut are pretty late into the game.

I've thought about the benefits you would get from adding multi-cut, or slash all earlier.

Slash-All and Multi-cut can be accessed as soon as you can breed to get a Green chocobo, which is when Cid becomes party leader. Not too late in the game at all, honestly. You do have to beat a boss to get Multi-cut, but it is definitely possible at that point even with no grinding.
« Last Edit: 2018-08-01 01:07:28 by malexj93 »

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #7149 on: 2018-08-01 02:21:40 »
Uuuhh, FF8 NT sounds nice. I'm in.


On balance discussion:
A problem I've ran into is, that it is hard to support a variety of physical damage dealers with Materia. There aren't many stat boni via Materia around for physical characters and stuff like Slash-All or Double Cut are pretty late into the game.
Additionally, Added Cut is pretty iffy to use and Command Counter is essentially a worse counter for most of the game, until you get Deathblow... Which you'd rather pair with Added Cut anyway.
Attack not being combinable with most support-materia is a problem, making it very difficult to increase its power(Again, until you get your Attack-Altering or Quasi "Attack" Materia).
The setups for physical characters become solved:
Elemental/Added Effect/Counter-Stacking/Deathblow(Or Morph/w Ancient Weapon)+Added Cut;
The limited availability of most of the listed materia makes it pretty difficult to deck out your whole cast, too.

In contrast, magically based characters have Summon-Materia to increase their raw power, a large amount of spells to choose from, Magic Counter, MP-Turbo, All, MP-Absorb.
Due to limited slots, Magical-Setups are a lot more interesting to setup and involve decisions, while Physical setups are pretty solved from the get-go.

A few materia that boost physical offence(Lck, Str) would go a long way. Increasing the availability of Attack-replacing Materia would be rather useful, too. More independent Materia that supports raw physical offence would be another possibility. Overall, I believe the Materia System could use some more innovation, especially when it comes to stat-increases and attack-altering Materia.

Furthermore, physical characters especially could benefit from triple or quadruple-linked materia slots, allowing, for example, one Deathblow to be linked with Added Cut and HP Absorb or Command Counter. Those multi-linked slots could be exclusive to weapons found on physical-based characters(Cid, Tifa).


And lastly, a point about elemental balance:
Lightning(And Water) is naturally overrepresented due to the amount of machinery one faces - hard to change that and I think that is fine.
Earth, however, could balanced by more enemies resisting earth and tinkering with the Earth spells themselves: Possibly tune them a very small bit weaker and/or more costly than other comparable elemental spells. Would stand as a strong "go-to"-elemental spell, but oftentimes be outclassed in turn. I like the second option I named more, as it is rather annoying to have Earth as your go-to Elemental-combo for an unknown area, just to be helpless against resistant enemies.

On top of that, Ice/Fire are in... annoying spots. You usually only need one of those, not both. They are meant to be strong against Beasts and the obvious elemental enemies. It may be beneficial to tinker with their range of effectiveness, for example:
Fire: Beasts, Ice-based, Undead, Plant. 
Ice: Fire-Based, Water-Based, Small Enemies, Small Flyers.

Can't make any promises but I'll do some experimenting with the commands. I'd like a darkside-style command or something to maybe replace Flash or Morph.

The trick with elements is getting it so that its consistent enough that you can tell from looking or enemy behaviour what it'll be weak to, with Sense to cover instances where it's maybe not conveyed by appearance/attacks. I think I made plant-based enemies weak to fire, but there's not a lot of them kicking about.

One possibility is to use the enemy AI to react to elements a bit more directly so they have different effects (or put the effect onto the spell(s) themselves) but that'd be a pretty major change and not sure what those effects would entail exactly. At the moment all element-based spells are mostly identical save for the element they represent which I'm not too wild about.


Thanks for all your help. I'm just finishing up the game now - just a few more optional bosses to take out. Had a great time all the way through, and only had a few critiques/questions:

The goldberry battle is pretty obnoxious. I don't really mean difficulty, but sitting around as all six of the goldberries slowly move in a different direction multiple turns in a row was kind of frustrating, especially when you're spending plenty of time in between turns just healing status. I don't really know a fix for this, given it's how tonberries work, more just a comment.

The only other thing (and this didn't really bother me until the later battles) was the Dual status. Is it intentional for remedies to not remove it? There are a lot of bosses late game, especially optional ones, that inflict Dual + other statuses, and having to use two separate actions to remove them because remedy/esuna doesn't work is pretty annoying, particularly because there are no good accessories that prevent dual (other than a ribbon, but since they've been nerfed to infinity, I only found them useful in very situational battles like the platinum match).

Goldberries will be retired when I do a rebuild, or at least moved elsewhere and revised to sort out the pace of the fight.

FF7 splits effects into two camps; ailments and spell effects (at least going by how Esuna and Dispel operate). Dual isn't usually a factor, but I decided to have it be treated as a spell effect rather than an ailment because it juxtaposes Regen, placing it under Dispel's list of removed effects.

One thing I did though was put Dual onto the Antidote item for status-healing, which runs counter to that idea and creates an issue with Remedy, which is supposed to be the item-version of Esuna but is missing the Dual effect that Antidotes can heal. But at the same time, I don't want Dual to be removed by both Esuna and Dispel; it's a tough one to figure out a decent solution to.


I think these are interesting points. I try to make my characters as unique as possible, but if you are going for variety in melee characters, they mostly come down to everything feeling very samey for most of the game.

Once you get deatblow+added cut, that helps separate the physical attacker in your party, the damage output really becomes ridiculous, especially when paired with elemental.
But thats really only one option that differentiates them, and it's quite late into the game.

I've thought about the benefits you would get from adding multi-cut, or slash all earlier. But, they both seem imbalanced to include earlier. Enemies would have to be greatly beefed up imo, to compensate for the additional damage up. Also, weapons like enemy launcher that hit all opponents would suffer a little if you had access to slash all.

Another point would be, to even be capable of doing things like mp/hp absorb to be used with physical skills, you'd need multiple copies of death blow. And you get that pretty late, and you aren't gonna master it for a very long time. By the time it happens, it'll basically be irrelevant. And even still, it's like, 10% hp gain? It feels next to worthless for two copies of deathblow, which you won't even have access to.

I think what I'd like to see is another true offensive melee type of materia earlier in the game. Maybe a new one entirely?

you have added cut + death blow for 3x total damage (can pair with hp/mp with multiple copies)

2x cut for 2x damage (can't pair with anything)

4x cut for 4x damage (can't pair)

slash all for 1x damage vs all (can't pair)

Deatblow is interesting because you can pair it, but for all the others listed, you can't. What would be cool would be an in-between that could link, that isn't as powerful as deathblow or 2x cut, but would effectively work with support materia. Let's say just for example something like "insert name here" 1.5x attack, paired with added cut, and a second copy paired with hp absorb, for a 2.5x damage attack, that could be really fun, but if you got it too early it'd have the same imbalance issues as getting 2x cut too early. And if you get it too late, it'd lose most of its use, unless an additional rank was added to power it up (but that would have to taken insane AP, so you couldnt get it until the same time as 4x cut)

Maybe a less complex addition could be Darkside, sacrifice 30% hp, to deal 2x damage, something like that, on your tank characters.


Just ideas, I dunno, I do think it's a waste that most interesting attack command materia only comes late game, cause you lose that variety for 75% of the game. It's also a problem that things like hp absorb require 2x of the paired materia to be worth it (cause you wanna use added cut always), and also the HP restore thingy is only 10%, making it feel worthless anyways.

general, the fact that most good command attack materia can't be paired, and for it to be worthwhile, you need multiple pairs, makes it feel a whole lot less interesting than it could be, and I do think thats a shame in general, but it's really the fault of the base game.

I think some cool things could be done to fix that, but it would be a lot of work, potentially create balance issues, and probably you would have to throw away other skills to make way for new ones (morph:)?)


Physicals are quite straight-forward with very few horizontal options; mostly it's just vertical, adding more attacks on with multi-cut/added cut or counter attack. Limits mix it up a little but only when they come up.

A solution would be to try and adjust how Morph and Flash work to create two new options to work alongside Deathblow, Added Cut, and Slash-All. Darkside is an obvious candidate, and Flash could be good for it as it has that nice effect on its animation.

Something that uses MP to boost attack power might be nice, and give a physical damage-dealer something to push their MP toward instead of support magic. Maybe Morph could ignore or alter defence of the target (with it's original effect of turning defeated enemies into monsters still in place)?

Slash-All and Multi-cut can be accessed as soon as you can breed to get a Green chocobo, which is when Cid becomes party leader. Not too late in the game at all, honestly. You do have to beat a boss to get Multi-cut, but it is definitely possible at that point even with no grinding.

I could maybe stand to make Slash-All available earlier, and reneging on putting Deathblow in Great Glacier and move that earlier again too.