I think that's everything fixed up that was mentioned (thanks for the lists MoCheese & Purazis for the inaccessible pillar report).
No problem, although I bring bad news, which is off course, more bugs! Also opinions on things talked about recently, apologies for the very long read! The bugs will be in Spoilers after the opinions at the top here.
Sadness & Fury & Limit Breaks, oh my! - In regards to the Sadness damage reduction I am in half agreement, half disagreement. I think the mechanic should stay as it is because it is rather helpful for low Vitality characters that can't get numbers high enough to mitigate enough damage without having to heal them every hit. That being said, I do agree and believe Sadness and Fury could be re-balanced a little to make having either on more thought fight changing then they are right now, both in terms of numbers, and in effect. Right now as things stand, there's almost no reason to not have Sadness on. The slower Limit Break speed isn't strong enough in my opinion. So what could you do? Take Sadness for example, you could also add an effect where the character deals less damage as well. For high risk, high reward characters like Tifa and Yuffie having them take less damage while also dealing less would be something to think about. Even if the damage dealing reduction is something as "small-ish" as 10 - 15%, it would be felt and would certainly have to be taken into consideration when applying it or having bosses applying it to you. Likewise on Fury, you could make it so characters do more damage, while taking more as well. Same numbers as Sadness could be a starting point. Deal 30% more damage and take 10 - 15% more or whatever. The numbers could be worked out I'm sure and it would make people have to pay more attention to those limit bar colours. A boss putting Fury on Tifa then hitting her with a big physical attack could be devastating. Off course, doing things like this would also have to take into Limit Breaks into consideration. Personally I think they come way too quickly, even with Sadness on. With Fury, which I rarely ever use, I couldn't even imagine! If you did a system like this(If something like this could even be done), you could remove the Limit Break filling speed mechanic on Sadness and Fury and those abilities would improve or weaken Limits. Another thing this kind of system would accomplish is utilizing this as an actual weapon against bosses. All of a sudden, a new door to how the player wants to fight the enemy would be available. They could make the fight go quicker if they can handle the boss doing more damage, or they could take it slow and steady if they want to play it safer. The only serious problem I see with this relate to another issue I wanted to bring up...
The magic spell, Resist - In my opinion, this spell may need to be looked at as well. It's very strong as it is, and the reason for that is the fact that it never goes away. On bosses that rely on status effects you can effectively shut them down in one move. If Resist had a timer and a spell effect so players could know it's going, it would be another thing the player would need to be aware of. Off course, this is all riding on that fact that things like this could be changed? I have no clue. This one isn't a huge problem or anything.
Morphing - Ok, I need to speak on this one because someone brought it up in the past two pages. This might actually be my biggest problem with the mod, which is actually a great sign that the mod overall is in great shape! But this is one area that needs a big change. To put it bluntly, Morphing sucks. Here's the problem, either you spend 15 - 30 minutes a fight trying to morph those crater enemies or bosses for whatever it is you're looking for because you're too afraid to hit them with another normal move in fear you'll kill them, OR you try and shorten the time by hitting them with a normal move, killing them in the process and losing all the time you just spent! If that second thing happens, you turn the game off in frustration. If the first thing happens, you're so drained mentally that you turn the game off! At least that was the way it was with me. Morphing needs to be fundamentally changed. I read that you are removing boss morphs, which is a great first step but it needs to go further. Since we can't sense enemies, either move those weapon morphs and any other important morphs save for the Guide Book to stealing, OR give us some weaponry for ALL characters that have that Yuffie Conformer gimmick on them where they deal full damage when Morphing. A good place to start in my mind would be all the Crystal Weapons in Mideel, by that point you're through most of the game, they're easily obtainable, and there's nothing inherently special about them. This would make it so we're not pigeon holed into using a character we haven't used throughout the playthrough in order to Morph, and it gets away from the trap of people who built Yuffie into a caster and having a weak Morph because of low Strength. Do any other weapons have that gimmick on them? That's my idea, but yeah, please do something about this. I don't want to lose anymore hair in frustration.
I'd also still like to hear some thoughts on something that I raised earlier in regard to Cover: (Onto the opinion piece from me here, but I think Barret or anyone with high Vitality in the back row using Cover may need to be looked at in regards to balance issues. This really struck home with me during the Armour Keeper fight. It seems to be TOO effective at negating physical attacks. Magic damage doesn't have a way to just be cut in half like physical attacks do by doing something as simple as moving someone to the back row. I know elements can be negated and even absorbed, but what about non-elemental? Besides which, there are so many more forms of magic attacks that guarding against them all is impossible, while every enemy in the game can just attack. Seems to be a little one sided to me.
While I would never suggest removing the back row damage reduction mechanic, what I think could use a discussion on is the Cover materia itself. Maybe make it so Cover has a VERY heavy vitality reduction attached to it, a percentage perhaps? That way it can it stay evened out throughout the game. Maybe have it only absorb half the blow while the other half still goes through to the intended target, if things like that are even possible?
I'm sure you could think of something, if you even think this is a balance issue at all that is. There is certainly something to be said about leaving it up to the player to decide if they want to use this tactic or not. I know as it stands right now though, on my next playthrough, I won't use it. I think it's too strong personally.
Cover would certainly be a more interesting materia if something like the Sadness and Fury things I mentioned above and the Vitality reduction idea on Cover were in effect. Cover may not even need a tweak with the Sadness/Fury suggestion implemented. But yeah, thoughts? I think Cover is too strong as is.
One last thing:That's the key thing to tackle right now; Disc 2/3 random encounters with some boss tuning to make the fights fit faster. As it stands they've got too much HP and are hitting hard enough to make it tricky to juggle offence with defence.
Really drawing a blank on this one, what bosses are you referring to here? Short of bosses like Hojo, which I think has already been changed? Keelhaul which I mentioned quite a while back that I think needed a seriously overhaul. Was that ever implemented by the way? And maybe Tyrant, almost all the bosses fell into the 7 - 13 minute mark if I remember correctly. According to the video timers on my uploaded playlist anyways That is where you wanted them, no? For the record some bosses
SHOULD be longer then the shot 7 - 13 area. Bosses like Hojo for example should have a longer timer because he's a bigger or more important boss fight in the scheme of the game, compared to some of the more random ones like Illuyankas or Palmer for example. Also, two of the better bosses in this mod in my opinion were Mimic/Flares, and Abyss. They were both a little longer on the timer sure, but the mechanics were great. Overall, I think the bosses are pretty dang close to where they should be, other then the ones I mentioned above.
Holy jeez, I'm a windbag. Apologies! I know the things I've suggested would probably be a ton of work to not only implement, but balance as well. But I do think the discussions are good for coming up with some ideas for sure. Anyways, FINALLY on to the bugs, which will once again be behind the spoilers for those who haven't run the Dark Cave yet. The two most critical bugs are on top.
- In Dark Cave, at the save point right by the pillar after you've rested in 7th Heaven, if you save your game and restart, there will be an invisible wall preventing you from going up the pillar. Additionally, Tifa won't allow you to leave the screen, effectively locking you in that one screen, and forcing you to load an earlier save. If you don't have an earlier save file you're stuck. I'm not sure if I did anything else to trigger this. Is this the error Purazis informed you about? Because if so, it's still there.
- In Dark Cave, during the final escape, the save point right before Brute Justice still has a little window that shows up. At first I thought it wasn't important and just looked weird, but if you go and talk to the only NPC on the screen with that glitch window still on the screen, his text window won't show up and it will softlock the game, forcing a reset.
- In Dark Cave, I actually let the Mirage 20 minute escape timer count down, and regardless if you're in a battle or on the field, if the timer gets hits 0, the screen turns white and sound effects play simulating an explosion, then battle music starts playing, then the window from the very beginning of the mod that asks you what game mode you want to play appears and you get an unhandled exception if you select anything on it. Yeah, very strange.
- In Dark Cave, the battle with Swindler can be skipped entirely by hugging the wall on the left side (Swindler's right side) and slipping behind him.
- In Dark Cave, when escaping from Midgar, during random battles, the timer isn't visible.
- In Dark Cave, after Mystery Man sets the bomb on the first reactor and you get Tifa back in your party, if you leave the screen, then go back, another Tifa and Mystery Man will be there. You cannot interact with them.
- In Dark Cave, I found another "NPC Ghost". The dressmaker in his shop, the one behind the counter. You can talk to thin air there.
- In Dark Cave, random battles still have the boss music playing in the same room as Armour Keeper.
- W-Magic, Bahamut ZERO, and Phoenix are still not mastered and acquires AP just like Underwater as a 1-Star.(Wasn't this fixed a while back? I think I remember reporting this one? Anyways, it's back if so.)
Wow, this was one long long post! Apologies again!
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