Over this month, i've gathered some suggestions around the threads here and i've augmented them with my own findings in the last playthrough of the game.
Main goal of this post is to discuss balance in FFIX, aka change numbers and inner formulas without altering anything on the facade. Despite all the changes i've made, 99% of the descriptions of abilities and items haven't been touched at all.
I'll explore each section individually, analyzing the main issues and the solutions i've implemented:
Equipment:- Full rework of the numbers, rebalanced around a simple concept: Progressing in the story should give better equipment than those found at an earlier point. Main issues:
- Robes are far too good and/or light armors are underpowered, especially endgame. White and Black Robe are massively overpowered. Glutton's Robe at least has "only" OP stats.
- Brave Suit's Fire boost is never used by Zidane and Amarant -> Fire Immunity (Vir's mod)
- Masamune is made through Orihalcon but it's weaker.
- Dragon's Hair invalidates half of Freija's weapons, acquired that early. Fixed that, Holy Lance is next, albeit minor.
- Rods and Flutes are completely invalidated by Rackets
- Jewels being equippable but giving zero stat boosts.
- Overall rebalance of stat boosts. Each chara now has at least 2 weapons with stat boosts.
Shops:- Some buyable pieces of equipment become unavailable as the game progresses and some of those are required in crafting. -> Now those are also sold by other, permanent shops.
Character Stats- Minor: Lv1 stat rebalance, coupled with equipment stat bonus rebalance to reach uniform numbers at lv99
- True Lv1 Challenge / Perfect stats: 0 exp from Dantarian, Red Dragon and Pandemonium fixed encounters
Support Abilities- Cost rebalanced around the actual worth of the skill. Most of it came from Vir's mod.
Abilities- Swd Mag are A LOT weaker than Sword Arts despite restricting team comp. -> Swd Mag are now multiplier based (like thunder slash and cherry blossom) and i've nerfed a bit the knight's sword skills. Flare Sword must be stronger than Shock or there's no point in sword mag.
- Holy L4 is massively underpowered (Vir)
- White Wind can be buffed (maxhp/2) and Curaga nerfed a bit (down to 88, too efficient)
- Lucky 7 is too unreliable. Make 7777's chance depend on Zidane's level
- Jump is bad and actually becomes weaker with Trance. -> Made it a physical strike, so boosted by trance, berserk and by x1.5 from High Jump. Also takes the element of the weapon. Removed added randomness in the Trance version.
- Dragon Breath is either useless or a boss destroyer. Should have it's power halved or more, and its MP cost reduced.
- Six Dragons is unplayable -> Now it's single target
- Dragon's Crest scales too fast: made it FreyaLevel * Dragons Killed, like Frog Drop.
- Overall MP cost rebalance: for example Cherry blossom is very overcosted
- Most of Vir's changes regarding hit chance for status inflicting spells.
Summons:
- 60 to 80% of their power comes from the Inventory (or eiko's level). I'd reduce or cap the bonus and increase base power
- Boost removes short animation penalty without forcing full animation everytime (less boring, mitigates a bit Regen's OPness)
Battle Calculations- Physical Strikes (Shock) take the element of the weapon but said element can't be boosted through equipment: fixed, now it's possible
- Thunder slash glitch fixed, now it's a regular magical weapon skill
Treasures and steals- Steal from Ark: Holy Lance -> Bistrofork
- Steal from Earth Guardian: Rubber Vest -> Power Wrist
- Most of Clem Fandango's changes to Chocographs with some tweaks, like Gold chocobo available only in disc 4
- Dragon's Hair -> Obelisk (Oeilvert Crack)
- Gauntlet -> Defense Gloves (Oeilvert Crack)
- Defense Ring -> Rebirth Ring (Ice Continent Crack)
- Oak Staff -> Magician Shoes (Azure)
- Magician's Robe -> Silk Robe (Azure)
- High Mage Staff -> Octagon Rod (Red)
- Kaiser knuckles -> Priest's Racket (Red)
- Light Robe -> Coronet (Blue)
+ Rebirth Ring -> Defense Ring (Gold)
+ Potion x33 -> Dragon's Hair (Gold)
+ Priest's Miter -> Light Robe (Gold)
Skills Learned:
- Black Robe: Flare -> Death (either this or move both of them to disc 4)
- White Robe: Holy -> Dispel
- High Mage Staff: Osmose -> Flare
- It's also safe to remove a few Auto-Regens (there's a ton of them) and assigning them to rarer Abilities.
To Do List:
- Basic attack is probably too good with all those cumulative multipliers: Killers, MP attack, Berserk...
- If nerfing the above, consider making killer applicable to physical skills, as well as row penalty: to avoid having all characters stay in the back spamming skills safely.
- Accuracy+ shouldn't powecreep Bright Eyes
- Haven't touched enemies, except tweaking a bit their categories. Example: too many fliers and why isn't Mu a beast?
Google Spreadsheet with numbers:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wtX-cAgIbDEFcslSd1m46I3LtV9nS_m3Credits:
Clem Fandango's Mod:
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=19499.0Vir's Mod:
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=15217Conclusion:
Those are the changes i've implemented in my modded game. Let me know what you think of those and if there are more overpowered or underpowered / never used aspects of FFIX.
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