Hi Sega Chief,
I had an alternate idea for how players could get new spells without having as many materia equipped as possible all the time. The idea of finding materia with ap already on them would work, but requires players to replace their existing materia. So I thought of a way that would allow the player to level up his or her own materia without equipping it when they don't want to use it. You could set up either forced optional events when you think a player should gain a new spell. I'll give an imaginary example because that's easier to communicate:
You decide that before fighting bottomswell is when players should gain bolt 2, and level 2 cover. You put an NPC in Junon that tells you he can upgrade your magic, but you have to do what he says. He tells you to equip your lightning materia and cover materia but remove all the others. Once you do that, you enter a battle with him in which you just cast bolt on him or something and then the battle is over. He gives you the exact amount of AP to level up those 2 materia. Done.
To make it a little more interesting the NPC could be like a Magic Pot enemy and demand that you give him an item. This item could be something that you have to win from a tricky or difficult normal enemy. Maybe buff the Zemzelet a bit and make his drop the item you need to give the NPC. That would make it kind of like a mini-quest to upgrade your materia.
The weakness to this solution would be that it relies on trusting the player to actually remove his or her other materia (a reward of 1500 ap would be hard to pass up). But if players wanted to cheat and make it easy for themselves, I kind of feel that that's up to them. They can choose whether or not to follow the rules and really play NT like it's supposed to be.
Anyways, I think that either solution could work. I hope this latest idea is helpful, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with your mod.
The problem right there is trust; I don't trust anybody
I like the idea, though. Materia is basically a grind, and it's always been a hard grind in FF7. I've tried to set up basic Materia to level up at certain points in the game, but unlike level there's too much variation to do it reliably; encounters fought, AP growth of equipment, whether or not player has Materia equipped, etc.
In Karifean's Super Boss Rush mod, he tried to set up a field-script check that would look for banned Materia in the player's inventory and remove them but I don't think it worked (the commands seemed to be there, but it was non-functioning or had been interpreted wrong by the tool). So I think the only way to make instanced fights for AP work is to 'trust' the player, but if they make a mistake or keep their other Materia on then it's going to fall apart.
So I think dropping the actual leveled Materia might be the way to go, maybe combine it with the current system if these drops were limited (so for instance, only one Bolt2 Materia would drop from an event; for a second or third, you'd need to be building one with AP; keeps 2x & 3x growth equipment and high AP monsters relevant). That way I could ensure every player has at least the bare minimum needed to effectively tackle enemies/bosses as they progress, with the option there to better equip yourself if you decide to keep some Materia on for AP. It also gives people some extra gil if they decide to sell their older/newer Materia instead.
Or would combining the two be a bad idea? They'd undermine each other to an extent. One thing I really liked in the Nightmare mod was that Materia was quite rare and expensive, so when you found one of the new Materia drops it was a big deal. What I could do is set up variables, etc. so that Materia becomes much rarer and hard to obtain when playing on Arrange (disabling Materia shops, shifting around placements, etc).
I could get some decent mileage out of it for small side events too. The more critical pieces would probably be dropped after certain boss fights or mandatory story events, but I could tuck some optional pieces away here and there.
Gold Saucer's Event Square
The theater for movie and music is good idea!
(can be an issue for original 1998 version since the movie are played on different Disc. but not a real problem I think).
Make a Boss at Disc 2 on this Event Square, like after Junon's Escape before the team know where Cloud is.
Then after defeating this new boss the player unlock the theater and 100 GP or maybe a cool armor/items.
Make movie free to watch but they 're unlocked after seeing them in game. Music could cost GP to unlock but are free to listen.
Also, you can add some PNJ like the one for Boss Rush in the Highwind. Plus why not a save point?
The auction ala FFIX why not
Another suggestion about Event Square:
Would be fun if the player can re-play the date scene but with a "new threat scenario" at Disc 3 before entering North Cavern.
The participation would cost GP (or Gils?), and give a reward depending of the player's choice.
The Dragon could be a new threat enemy too
About Save Point :
A mini-quest that consist to find all the Save Point in the game (except from North Cavern).
It's mostly for the fun of the completion, a reward is not necessary, maybe an useless key-item
In the mythril cave the PNJ give you information and say how many Save Point the player is missing.
Then hide some Save Point in the game and/or make one that attack the player on contact.
Not a hard battle ofc and the fake Save Point become a real one after the fight.
There's a lot of possibilities; a theater mode might be the easier thing to do, but it'd be nice to make lots of different things available in Event Square. But what's a PNJ?
Yay palmer boss fight works now! Neat attack Btw! Thank you
Glad to hear it; sorry for the trouble.