Hey again Chief! I've been enjoying working through the extra battles, and I'm making progress with the materia caves. Got a couple of final weapons. (I noticed I've picked Red's up somewhere from a steal or drop- not sure where)
Cloud has hit the level cap, but I've managed to get him up to Lv71 from some battles giving fixed EXP (SPOILER:
Like X-Guard Scorpion turning up AGAIN in Corel when you talk to the guy up front) I was going to try and identify which ones were doing this, but I'm glad I didn't as you're getting rid of the cap!
About the stuff-
-) Character-specific 'Ultimate Armor': at present, there's 7-8 pieces of Armor that have been, for way too long, 'set aside' for use in the New Game+ that's being made at the end of NT's development. It's probably about time to change this, and make these armors available now. Some have already 'leaked through' due to there not really being enough left over to dish out as rewards for beating end-game monsters.
An idea I had for it was to tailor each of the 8 armors to be used by a specific character, and perhaps develop some kind of sidequest around them. What would people think about that? It'd mean armors like Mystile, Imperial Guard, Ziedrich, etc. only being available to one character.This sounds good to me- I'm a big fan of the diverse stats across the party, as well as weapon utility (255% hit, status effects, blood sword), and special armours would make this even more cool! And how could I say no to more quests?
Not sure how tricky it would be to implement, but I had an idea reading this of an accessory which allows the character to equip someone else's exclusive armour at the expense, obviously, of an accessory! (Maybe it could be given by the
crossdressmaker in Wall Market when you return, as there are implications to this ability...)
-) Difficulty settings: Due to the way the new damage fix works, it's on the cards to create an in-game difficulty setting that adjusts enemy strength/AI. This may be pushed back to 1.4 depending on how it pans out. But the thing here is that it'd be possible to add other options, such as challenge conditions like No EXP, etc. Any ideas for what you'd like to see as options that could be toggled in-game?This sounds quite useful, and would increase replayability a ton. No EXP makes sense, maybe also a "Low EXP" where only bosses or mandatory fights give EXP to allow limited growth but remove the need to run from every random encounter (always feels cheap to me- those monsters should die!) to stay low.
A possible way to decrease difficulty would be to increase AP gain/decrease the AP cost of materia, allowing stronger spells earlier, but MP becomes an issue... I'm not fully convinced, but hey- it might help ya! Maybe learn limits faster?
-) Alternate character stat-building: At present, the character's stats are based on traditional trees that have an upper limit of 100 and steadily rise as you level up. The alternate system would have player stats be static throughout, with the player deciding which stats to develop so that they can 'build' and customise each character. This'll likely need to be tested by people in Arrange first, but just mentioning it as a potential development for NT 'Original' if it proves popular.My gut feeling is that this removes some of the coolness that is character diversity, by allowing anyone to be anything again- but without weapons to support these stats, the 'unexpected' builds would be less useful than the 'standard' ones. I feel like it would also allow fools like me to make terribly unbalanced min/max builds leaving the mod to face a wide array of party abilities to challenge.
That said, it sounds like a really interesting thing to do technically, and I'm certain that some people would love such control over the system, especially in limited level challenges or whatever- so providing it as an option wouldn't be a bad thing. It's just not my cup of tea.
RE:Yuffie joining event, I agree it sounds like a good solution to the 8 party members final battle problem, as well as saving on frustration trying to get her near Junon. I'm sure you'll find a good place to squeeze her in, from the care and attention to detail I've seen already in new dialogue and events! (I loved Kalm and Wall Market disc 3, and am excited to hear of more!)
And weather and time varying in towns are sick!!