[FF7PC-98/Steam] gjoerulv's "Hardcore" mod (v1.0.7.2)

[LJH]

It's an accessory. It doesn't actually show Haste protection, I beleive it's a glitch resulting from Slow protection.

Anyway I finally managed to beat her. I'm up to Dyne now... and my only comment... WTF, 500 damage from Needle Gun?! o_O
I'm starting to think I'm seriously underlevelled... xD Barret has about 950 HP, Cloud's just broken the 1000 mark.

[drfeelgud88]

It's an accessory. It doesn't actually show Haste protection, I beleive it's a glitch resulting from Slow protection.

Anyway I finally managed to beat her. I'm up to Dyne now... and my only comment... WTF, 500 damage from Needle Gun?! o_O
I'm starting to think I'm seriously underlevelled... xD Barret has about 950 HP, Cloud's just broken the 1000 mark.

What the? You serious?

I think by that time I had a lil over than 1100 hp. (kept dying on certain bosses, which was tickin' me off so I started training -- also died on a few randoms). XD

[gjoerulv]

is there any actual reasoning behind making jenova weak to CUT? I found that to be really really weird.
if anything it should have elemental resistances because, you know, it's jenova. and weak to cut? it's not a plant.

Yeah, I know, it's kinda cryptic. The only reason is that cloud is in all those fights. If you find more of this cryptic sh*t let me know. I think I'll remove it.

[LJH]

I generally tend to play RPGs with my levels a bit on the low side... but when you get to bosses like Dyne, which are nothing but pure power in a one on one match, this makes things quite hard. Guess I've got a bit of grinding to do...

Also, a minor thing, but I found the naming of the Earth spells kinda weird. "Stone, Stonara, Stonaga" just seems... a bit odd. :/ Would've preferred "Quake, Quakara, Quakaga" personally (since FFs generally refer to earth spells as "Quake"), but that's just me.

[BloodShot]

So, just to make sure, the link in this thread -
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=6818.msg84974#msg84974

is the latest release right?

I wouldn't normally ask but its just seeing no posts throws me off.

[LJH]

As far as I know, it is.

[gjoerulv]

Yes, the latest release will always be found there.

[Tenko Kuugen]

actually, haste, slow and stop are all different effects and have to be set to 'protect' against it. if it nulls haste, then there is a 'nullify' tag on haste in the headband data.

as for the jenova thing
there was some weird stuff on some bosses. Elemental resistances can make them really difficult, for example. Jenova Birth was poison, earth, gravity immune and halves fire, ice, bolt
Jenova life nulled fire, absorbed ice and water, took double from bolt, etc
I overworked most bosses like this. I gameover'd at bottomswell three times in a row now, despite having Beta. ever tried using fire magic against a boss thats water alligned? yeah. it's not a good idea, i tell ya.
This mod might be hardcore for the casual gamer. For the hardcore gamer, it's just a notch up in difficulty. I made my version so hard that you have to stop sometimes and grind exp / materia / gil ( yes, gill, stuff if horrendously expensive now )

[LJH]

That's just stupid IMO.
A hard mod should be hard because it requires strategy, not grinding. Otherwise it's just an extra-grinding mod.

[Tenko Kuugen]

Thank god your opinion is about just as good as mine. Thus, I can safely ignore it and move on.
Even with grinding, you need stragety. For example, the diamand weapon is unbeatable unless you nullify or absorb holy element in your armor because it's special skill does [kills x10 damage], is holy element and it has enough HP that you wouldn't be able to kill it in time even if you spam KOTR
and there's enough other stuff like that. Grinding just enables you to have a more.. dynamic strategy because stuff doesn't one-hit KO you and you get access to higher level spells and stuff.

also, what is stupid and what not really depends on the person playing. ever heard of disgaea? Or elona? that must be stupid to you too then, since the gamses are essentially one big grinding sandbox. and yet they're awesome.

welcome to the land of opinions, where yours is worth the same as everyones else: nothing.

[sl1982]

Unless you are me. My opinion has much worth.

[LJH]

That thing with Diamond Weapon is an example of *good* stuff for a hardcore mod. Requiring pointless hours spent grinding is not.

You know what I'd actually love to see? An RPG where you learn new attacks at set points, and your stats don't change at all (of course, they may vary from character to character). So that the difficulty comes purely from strategy.

[xLostWingx]

It seems more like Kuugen's mod has the option of grinding if you can't defeat the enemies.  I haven't played it, but based on what is being said.  Fight = Win = No Grinding;  Fight = Lose = Grinding if desired
To grind, or not to grind, that is the question lol.  But it is a question that exists in any mod of the game.

Oh, and if you use wallmarket, or gameshark codes you can make FFVII

An RPG where you learn new attacks at set points, and your stats don't change at all (of course, they may vary from character to character). So that the difficulty comes purely from strategy.

[Tenko Kuugen]

Actually you need both. You do need to grind some times because rushing through the game doesn't net enough exp ( I am using custom stat growth, hp / mp growth and exp curves. you need roughly 4x as much exp for lvl 99 as before, but you get much more hp/mp, while your base stats never really go beyond 100. ) to survive the bosses.
for example, I am lvl 20 at bottomswell, and he rapes me pretty hard unless I notoriously exploit his weakness ( bolt, slow, limit attacks with bolt element attached to weapon, etc ) and it's STILL hard then.
At some point, you ARE maxed out. you have all the strongest materia and maximum level. And at that point, you will still have non-optional bosses before you that will hurt you like crap.

Also, I said it's hardcore for a hardcore gamer. I guess that makes it some kind of over-the-top nonsense difficulty for a normal person. The kind of difficulty the original battletoads SNES game had. ( which was so difficult that it was near impossible to win even WITH INFINITE LIVES )

For example, Emerald Weapon has a lot more than just damage in it's repoirtare now. The eyes all cause several negative status effects, air tam storm is no longer fixed by materia but a 'shout' element attack that pierces def, status barriers and dispels you. Emerald Beam is reflectable now, but if you DO reflect it, it *heals* emerald weapon back to full health.  Also, it cuts the damage of KotR in half by resistance. Not to mention all the other crazy stuff.
Even with maximum stats and best equip, this guy is one hell of a challange.

I would release a patch for my version but I can't because of several reasons.
a) it is based on gjo's hardcore mod and includes his custom encounters ( all beefed up though )
b) I don't even know what changes I made where, so I would have to ship the entire scene.bin and flevel.bin
c) I dont think plagiarism is likely to make a good impression here.

I better stop going off-topic here before obesebear has a field day with me.

[LJH]

Oh, and if you use wallmarket, or gameshark codes you can make FFVII

An RPG where you learn new attacks at set points, and your stats don't change at all (of course, they may vary from character to character). So that the difficulty comes purely from strategy.

Yes, but unless you go and entirely remix it, it's not one that's designed for that purpose. An RPG would have to pretty much be designed for that to work well as that.

FFX is a notable exception here; if you play No Sphere Grid (for those who don't know, the sphere grid is the ONLY way to increase stats and abilities in FFX, you don't gain levels in a traditional manner), you can still beat almost everything through good strategy. Only things that require either abusing a loophole (which is that No Sphere Grid doesn't technically prevent you from powering up your aeons - which are the summons, but they act like characters in that they stay on the field until KO'd and you can control them) or Zanmato (FFX's instant-kill-anything-even-if-immune attack, for those who don't know) are 7 of the optional bosses Neslug, Ultima Buster, Nemesis, Dark Shiva, Dark Bahamut, Dark Yojimbo and Penance. When you consider that unlike most FFs which have maybe 5 or 6 optional bosses tops, FFX has over 60, this isn't so major.

[gjoerulv]

...
The kind of difficulty the original battletoads SNES game had. ( which was so difficult that it was near impossible to win even WITH INFINITE LIVES )
...

Don't you mean the battletoads for the NES? That's probably THE hardest game to beat (not counting hard games 'cause of bad controllers or bad design). I've never played any BT for SNES though...

There are several tools available for those who's not happy with the difficulty. Feel free to use my mod as some kind of "standard", or whatever, and make your own mod. I can even include it in my patch if you do. It would be ideal for me if you only mod the scene (and kernel), as there are no problems including it in my patch. If you have tweaked some field files however, I need to know exactly what you've done.

[xLostWingx]

Anyway you can make a Kernel.bin and Scene.bin only patch for PSX?  Or idk if that would work.  I really wanted to try this mod, but my FFVII PC is on some old harddrive in an unknown box somewhere at my mom's house, and I'm no pirate.  Is uploading/sending .bins illegal or agaisnt the rules?

Sorry I sound like an idiot in this post, but I've had a sh*tastic day.

Edit:  Battle Toads for nes was impossible.  Granted i was only like 4 years old, but I rented that game like 6 times an never beat it.

[Tenko Kuugen]

...
The kind of difficulty the original battletoads SNES game had. ( which was so difficult that it was near impossible to win even WITH INFINITE LIVES )
...

Don't you mean the battletoads for the NES? That's probably THE hardest game to beat (not counting hard games 'cause of bad controllers or bad design). I've never played any BT for SNES though...

There are several tools available for those who's not happy with the difficulty. Feel free to use my mod as some kind of "standard", or whatever, and make your own mod. I can even include it in my patch if you do. It would be ideal for me if you only mod the scene (and kernel), as there are no problems including it in my patch. If you have tweaked some field files however, I need to know exactly what you've done.

Might have messed up SNES and NES there. It's been a LONG time since battletoads. And yes, I mean THAT battletoads. The impossible kind. Because thats the kind of difficulty Kuugen Versions have ( old people here might know of a RVT patch for Grandia I that made the game ridiculously hard to the point where you had to be a jedi master to beat it. thats my patch )


What I did was basically change ALL items, materia, weapons, armors, accessoires, spells, attacks, limits, shops, prices, stat growth curves, and what else the kernel.bin offered. ( limits are obviously in the .exe and so are shops and prices )
I also changed about every enemy, a LOT of drops and stolen items, and so on.
The main problem is that while the kernel.bin and scene.bin can go by themselves, you really will run into problems without being able to buy the additional items from the shops later on. ( finally a use for those billions of gil you make by selling all masters )

I didnt make any significant changes to the flevel.lgp but unless there is also a way to patch the .exe with the necessary info, my mod wont work

[blankdiploma]

I made an account here just to provide feedback for this mod.

First off, great job! I got this mod as part of the remix project and it's been a great breath of fresh air for FF7. The difficulty overall has been pretty good, except for a few things I'd like to point out:

1) Random encounters that cause sleep/stop with physical attacks in the early game. Specifically those red hedgehog pies in Aeris's church.

This is a no-no for obvious reasons. When you've only got 1 or 2 party members, getting sleep/stop-chained until death isn't challenging or fun. It's just dumb.

2) Random encounters that are WAY above the average level of the area. Specifically Dragons in Mt. Nibel.

Getting your entire party wiped out instantly at the start of a fight with no chance to run isn't challenging. It's just obnoxious.

3) Mime materia cave

The boss in the Mime materia cave (Amaterasu/Tsukuyomi) is just absurd. First you kill a boss, then another, and then 2 each of the first and second bosses simultaneously, and they're immune to damage? Is there a bug here? What's going on? And how is it even remotely fair to fight two enemies who each have unresistable attacks that deal 50% max HP to all party members? If they both use Gold Dance at the same time (which happens all the time) then you're just dead with no chance to prevent it. At least give it an element or some way to cut the damage down a little. Also they seem to be immune to damage. What gives? I assume there's some secret to beating this fight - having bosses with some sort of shtick is fine, but when you bury that shtick at the end of a 3-stage fight, it's just infuriating having to go through such a long fight just to try again.

In general, I'd say all the materia cave bosses are WAY too hard. You say you put the northern crater materia in the materia caves instead so you "get it sooner", but that doesn't help if all the materia cave bosses are so much harder than anything else that doing the northern crater would be easier and faster than grinding to beat the caves.


Like I said, overall this mod is fantastic, but I feel like you've confused "very difficult challenge" with "totally unfair" in a few places and the mod as a whole would really benefit from a little tweaking.

[xLostWingx]

That seems like a very well articulated set of arguements blankdiploma.  However, you must think about the benefits you would recieve from obtaining the Mime and other Special Materias.

So in terms of "this is a hard mod with hard enemies" those bosses might be very difficult and nearly impossible to defeat.  But in terms of "how much more powerful will my characters become after I defeat these bosses" the difficulty level is probably fitting.  I mean, Mime allows Limit Miming (unless that's been taken out of the game), Counter=Mime exploits, and at least half a dozen other benefits that are basically OP.  Of course I mean no offense, I was just thinking about reasons WHY those bosses might be so difficult.

Also, about difficult enemies like the Dragon at Mt. Nibel, wouldn't you prefer to essentially have an Optional Boss to go fight later?  Or to learn how to defeat in order to obtain some awesome spoils?  Or just to provide a challenge?  How exactly does the Dragon insta-kill the party?  Surely there is a means of preventing this.  (idk what he casts, I think someone said Comet2?  If thats the case try protecting against Earth or Gravity Elemental damage.)

[blankdiploma]

Agreed about the point of Mime being incredibly powerful. I'm not arguing that Mime should be *easy* to get - I'm just pointing out that adding incredibly powerful bosses that are guarding this materia is in direct opposition with the mod creator's stated goal of allowing you to get the northern crater materia "earlier."

If all the materia caves are supposed to be end-game difficulty, that basically removes any reason to bother with chocobo breeding until the end of disk 3, when you can do breeding as early as disk 2. Maybe have the materia caves ramp up in difficulty and shuffle the rewards from each? Say, have the final cave reward KotR and Mime, and then have the first two have significantly easier bosses (as in "actually potentially beatable on disk 2") and reward counter-cmd or hp<->mp or something like that that isn't as overpowered as Mime.

Also, Comet 2 is a non-elemental, non-reflectable spell that deals orders of magnitude more damage than your party can possibly survive in mt. nibel. Even if you get lucky and the dragon doesn't cast comet 2 immediately, he will melee each of your characters in turn for 30,000 damage before you can escape from the battle. Literally holding down the "flee" buttons the entire time starting at the beginning of the fight will just result in a party wipe. If the Dragon is meant to be an "optional boss" you come back to fight later, it should be guarding a specific treasure chest or something and not just be wandering around waiting to send you back to the title screen.

[xLostWingx]

Ah I see.  I hadn't actually played the mod so I didn't know the dragon was THAT powerful.  Gah, all the time I spent in Wallmarket has warped my memories about magic attacks!  I forgot, Comet2 is only Earth/Gravity in my mod, whoops!  Well I should probably not post about things I haven't personally had experience with, so good luck.

[Bosque]

I didnt make any significant changes to the flevel.lgp but unless there is also a way to patch the .exe with the necessary info, my mod wont work

I think you can release the patch as a seperate file to apply to the executable. Did Dziugo ever mention how to make patches for YAMP?

[DLPB_]

I use DUP2 (shown to me by Kranmer), that will create patches for you.  It isn't too difficult to use either.  Only bad thing is there are a few false positives with virus scanners.

http://diablo2oo2.di.funpic.de/dup.htm

[gjoerulv]

@blankdiploma

I've gotten some complaints 'bout those hedgehog pies, so I guess I have to remove those effects. I could also do something with those "impossible" encounters. In the case of the nibel dragon, I could make it do nothing the 1st couple of turns if you're party is low level (like it detects it lol). I must admit this is a bit over the top when it comes to difficulty.

Although I stated one could get those materias early, I didn't say it would be easy to get 'em. Actually, imo, those materias should be the hardest treasures to get in the game. I know of some who managed to get 'em before disc 3 without being over leveled (including myself lol). In the final "mime" fight you must kill the ones in the back row 1st to make the corresponding front rows damageable. There are some ways of doing this quite easily if you have enough counter attacks. The counter attack strategy may be the most efficient strategy against most bosses (never attack, just defend and heal when needed. Multiple counter attacks handles the rest).