We all know there are ones already released, such as the '2x stats hardcore mod' and 'Hay's Reasonable mod'.
I've been wondering exactly what people are looking for in a reasonable-type mod.
I personally think these are the most important things that should be changed in regards to ff7's default difficulty:
- Prevent easy 1-command kills. By this, I mean being able to kill tough enemies in just one turn by telling each character to attack the same target, being able to wipe out all enemies with magic-all or matra magic in the early stages of the game, and being able to wipe out enemies with slashes at higher levels.
- Balance magic defense and physical defense for enemies. Magic is very strong early on, and each spell only costs 4mp, making spamming a fantastic strategy. Physical attacks get very strong later on during random encounters, however, thanks to things like slash-all and 4x-cut.
- Increase enemy speed and attack power. It's much too easy to kill enemies before they can attack twice. By increasing enemy speed and making their attacks actually do more than 1% of your hp, fights get more interesting. Some enemies in particular hardly get any time to attack before they get killed, and I intend to change this.
- Keep enemy levels the same. Increasing enemy levels has hardly any benefits. By increasing enemy levels, you make stealing and manipulation useless, which isn't a good thing.
- Don't bloat stats. By giving each enemy 2x stats, random encounters become tedious and too difficult. Higher stats doesn't mean a funner difficulty, it just means you'll be going through the motions for longer.
- Make some enemies unique from others. Small enemies should be faster than a petty 50spd, and large enemies should pack a bigger punch than a measly 40str at level 17. Enemy classes, to a light extent, makes things interesting. For example, giving the blue elephant enemies a large amount of hp (maybe even more than 2x) and large strength (maybe 2x), but a slow speed (maybe 20spd) and defense will make him mroe interesting to fight.
- Enemies must be balanced. If an enemy is a tank-class, then give him a slow speed, low magic defense, or low attacking power. If he has low attacking power, give him 1 or 2 speedy minions. If he has a slow attacking speed and packs a big punch, he handles himself pretty well on his own as long as you up his defense. Basically, treat each formation as a party of its own.
- Make things interesting. I've changed the Hell Rider VR2 enemy's stats (the warhammer-wielding enemy near fort condor) so he is Very fast, Very deadly, and has lots of defense and magic defense. Why? Because, when I first encountered this guy, I felt like I was going to be in for a great fight... and then he died after each of my characters attacked him once. Lame. I intend to turn these enemies into mini-minibosses who may have useful items that you can steal or win from them. At around level 17, they may have around 1000 hp which will take around 3-4 turns to take down, and you'll likely have to put someone on cure or potion duty, which is GOOD. Notice that this battle isn't extremely difficult or anything (you shouldn't get a game over if you encounter him with full hp, and he doesn't have any AOE attacks), but it WILL leave a dent and WILL be rewarding, which is the point.
- Random encounters are not random game-overs. I do not intend to make fights with, say, three Kalm Fangs to take out 50% of your party's hp or anything like that. When you win such a battle, they'll likely have taken out 25% of one of your party member's hp, which is an improvement over the petty 5% they'll deal in the original game's difficulty.
- Bosses will be difficult, but won't wimply have their stats multiplied. I hated fighting Missing Number and killing him in 3 turns, after reading in the faq that he's the hardest boss in the game at that point in the story. I expect my party to use cures and a variety of spells to take down the boss. Once the boss is defeated, I want to have to rest at an inn due to the mp or hp I've lost. I don't want to walk away with one character only having 75% of his total MP left due to casting Aqualung repeatedly.
- Lame strategies must go. This goes hand-in-hand with balancing enemy defense. It is much too easy to simply cast matra magic, Aqualung, or beta continually for every encounter, and simply use ethers when needed. I usually find myself playing FFVII like an efficiency-maximixing game. I know that, if I wanted to, I could simply nuke the hell out of everything and simply use a bit of recovery items when needed. However, I try to use as little items as possible, thus I shy away from using Beta and Aqualung to rape everything during the early stages of the game. What I intend to do is make the player use more resources during fights. This may require kernel editing (making certain spells cost more mp, for example), which I have zero ability in, but hopefully I can team up with someone to do this.
I could go on, but this post is getting much too long. I may begin a new difficulty mod that takes these things into account.
(Notice I comment mostly on Disc1 battles. This is because it's been a while since I've played disc 2 and 3. I'm currently doing another playthrough)
