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1

Game Design and Modifications / Re: The Final Fantasy 3/6 Eviltype 1.1 and Variations topic

« on: September 21, 2013, 08:07:52 PM »

I'm right at the end of the standard version of 1.1 -- I've really enjoyed the hack. Done everything except the final boss and SkullDrgn. I have some random (minor) feedback, mostly about steal, and some bugs to report, though! Including a couple major ones which I'll save for last.

Great job, though, overall. Really consistently tough and fun.

- Some common steals of Amulets and (especially) DragonBoots really throw off the money curve towards the end of the WoB. I don't mind money not really being an issue, but with a vaguely capture oriented Locke simply visiting all three towns on the Imperial continent results in effectively unlimited GP, which felt a little odd. Otherwise, having played a steal-centric game I can report that WoB balance for the most part actually felt really good: getting lots of curatives is really useful and feels like a good balance to focusing on a less useful character. And in WoR there are some ridiculous steals but the difficulty is high enough that it doesn't feel undue -- taking the time to steal in a lot of battles can actually be tricky.

- This is probably endemic to the game itself, but Sniper/Offering + capture doesn't work right -- it will attempt to steal until it succeeds at something, and then it will keep attempting but any successful steals will tell you that you got another copy of whatever the first thing you got was (emptying out that enemy), but you'll only ever actually get one item.

- There's an exploit where if you unequip a capture weapon (Guardian or ThiefKnife) mid-battle, capture doesn't revert to steal (or vice-versa).

- More significantly, Atma in the final dungeon has very few hitpoints, probably 1 or 0 -- he dies to the first hit.

- The PlutoArmor rage is broken, one of its abilities screws up the graphics and crashes the game, at least on SNES9.X. Magitec status?

- And SkullDrgn seems to use the same ability, which means I haven't been able to beat it yet. Little frustrating.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: December 20, 2012, 05:54:58 PM »

Agreed. It's actually sorta neat, I think, how they lead to different overall play styles. Good gets you a constant trickle of energy, but you have to be somewhat careful with your expensive powers, evil you run out of juice and need to recharge more often regardless (and you can be knocked off an enemy you're draining, so it can be tricky in tougher fights), but you get these bursts of unlimited power for hilarious mayhem.

Goes beyond just the inherent boosts, but I'd call it a wash until about halfway through the game, give or take, where you get the tier three powers on your basic attack. Good gives you a full-auto bolt, evil gives you a big burst. Really no comparing them, boltstream, the good power, is hax and meshes very well with the recharge. Good also gets a much, much better mobility ability.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: December 08, 2012, 12:34:43 AM »

Still playing XCOM. Finished Classic/Rigger, one human plus Shivs. Early SHIVs are garbage, hover SHIVs are hax, SHIVs do not show up in cutscenes, so some of the later stuff with the Volunteer is a little bit odd.

Now playing Impossible. The first 6-10 maps are fuckin' brutal, but I'm actually warming up to it towards the mid-game. It's still hard, I wipe fairly often, and there are definitely times when RNG just fucks you for no reason -- not so much in hit rates, since those become manageable tactically and in prep, but more in how the enemies move pretty randomly, so you might just have six Mutons dropped on you in a pincer while you're already tangled up with a bunch of enemies. This would be fine if it was planned, but that it occurs more or less randomly (since there are basically always enough enemies somewhere on the map to overrun you) can be a bit annoying. I do like the bit of extra urgency that the slightly more difficult base management offers, too. Altogether it's gelling quite well now.

Also playing Slingshot, the DLC, which... well, the new missions are fun enough, though they suffer a bit from the final dungeon's predictability -- once you've wiped on them once, you know where the reinforcements are coming from and can plan accordingly.

Zhang, the special character, is definitely a little problematic. I'm not sure if his stats scale to Impossible, so he joins with literally double the HP of your ordinary squad (to be fair, he's over levelled, but still, 10HP vs 5 is huge), plus inflated hit and will stats. He's a Heavy, so that's some balance, but it makes the aim bonus pretty noticeable too (he's got 75 at Lieutenant, which I think is about 5 higher than average?). Throws off the curve of the game quite a bit, I definitely understand why some people are bummed by that.

I like the other content, though, the new armour, haircuts and helmets. So worth the $7, as far as I'm concerned, but definitely not a bargain at that price.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: November 19, 2012, 10:46:49 PM »

The game's other major flaw has to do with the way enemies spawn, at least on Normal (I've heard Classic changes things a bit here?). Since they literally don't exist until you see them, a few oddities get introduced, such as (a) you don't want to move too far on your own phase once you've burned several of your own turns, as "seeing" a new enemy late in the round gives them chance to attack you before you can do anything about them. And (b) you can totally, utterly annihilate the game by inching forward slowly turn after turn... possibly with a bunch of the rest of your army on overwatch as you do it. This is pretty horrible and I don't do it because ew, gross. It's far from alone about this for SRPGs (many others get broken by a very slow progression in this style) so obviously this isn't a fatal flaw, just eh. Terror missions were some of my favourites just because this approach obviously wouldn't work.

The inch-forward technique is pretty much the only way to go on the harder difficulty modes. The major difference in Classic+, AI-wise, is that enemy units move around the map themselves, either wandering randomly or homing in on noise you might make (bursting through doors, breaking windows, and presumably also gun-fire? Weirdly, not actually sure about that.). So once you've engaged the first group of enemies on the map (hopefully getting the drop on them via overwatch), you often stay engaged as the rest of the map's forces come running. You've still got a bunch of advantages, if you're conservative about exposing yourself you'll always almost get the first round of fire against incoming aliens, but it's at least a little better than on Normal, I think.

-The final battle was pretty fun, once it decided to get serious (the first few rooms were admittedly very boring/easy). Someone (Ryan?) said that he thought it was worse than the battleship; I thought it was much better because (a) two sectopods at once, and (b) that final room is pretty glorious. I lost three people (one vs. the sectopods, two in the mind control room... both gunned down by my assault as it turned out) and had to tough the battle out with a 5-HP sniper as the volunteer, one support who was all out of tricks, and said aforementioned Assault, who ended up killing the last two Ethereals herself with some timely help from the others. Good times.

Two sectopods is definitely a good fight, especially since they've got good terrain for them. But the rest of the dungeon is pretty easy even on normal, and as far as I can tell change at all on harder difficulties, so the first two rooms become even more dull and trivial, and the end loses some of its shine. Particularly when you realize (as I did on my second playthrough) that the uber ethereal is load-bearing, and you can ignore its support entirely.

I think the battleship is somewhat random, so I'm sure experiences vary, and I didn't get it in my first playthrough at all, but in games 2 and 3 waves of Mutons supported by Sectopods made it a long, tough, fun map, probably the highlight of any of my playthroughs.

It's a fun game, certainly, but part of me really wants to see where a few iterative sequels of gameplay refinement might take it. What was it Fenrir said about FF13? Change a bunch of things about XCOM and you have a 10/10 game. That pretty much sums XCOM up perfectly to me; it's a good game, but one that has potential to be considerably better. I just hope those sequels happen instead of getting XCOM: the FPS or XCOM: the RTS.

Strongly agreed. I think that's a lot of why I'm so enamoured with the game, that there really seems like there really might be the strong foundation for a whole new SRPG franchise to obsess over. Fingers crossed.

My SHIV-only game is finally getting moving, though it took a couple months of game-time to get there. It'll be the dramatic story of how Major "Strings" saves the world with her posse of robot sidekicks. Who are very cute and eager to please, but painfully incompetent and surprisingly delicate. We'll see how it goes once she starts upgrading them.

I just realized that I'm really looking forward to the scene in the ending where a team-mate beckons frantically at the Volunteer as they flee. Shivs don't show up in some cut-scenes, but I hope they do in that one.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: November 16, 2012, 09:30:53 PM »

XCOM: Finished classic/ironman. Difficulty took a nose dive in the final quarter when 5 of my 7 core units turned out to be psychic. So there's a weird sort of RNG hiccough for you. Made the final dungeon even more trivial, though I had a few difficult moments in the Overseer battle (he's much scarier with two Sectopods in the hallways outside his room for backup, particularly when one blows a hole in the wall and draws him and his bodyguards into the fight early ), and then one genuinely brutal terror mission immediately where I lost a couple mid-rank characters. But the second half was still unquestionably much much easier than the first. The final dungeon in particular is just disappointing, it barely seems to scale up from normal. Though I guess there's always the battleship if you want a similar experience except totally merciless.

Still not sure if I want to do Impossible on ironman, though, I just don't dig the very real chance that some bad luck could kill (another) several hours of play time. So I think I'll do normal, but forgo in-battle saves, a la non-10 Fire Emblem. Should be an okay balance. Since Slingshot seems on the horizon I might wait for it to come out before I tackle Impossible, though, and do that rigger playthrough first, pick up the Ain't No Cavalry Comin' trophy while I'm at it.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: November 15, 2012, 07:02:52 PM »

I like how some soldiers cackle evilly while they tear apart aliens' minds.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: November 14, 2012, 11:24:01 PM »

XCOM Enemy Unknown

I would argue that Double Tap is better on Normal (and I guess on Easy), worse on Classic and a wash on Impossible.

On Normal you normally don't have that many targets onscreen at a given time, so In The Zone tends to either equal Double Tap (if you can guarantee kills) or fall short of it (if you can't). And eliminating one or two aliens is all you ever really need - one survivor won't kill your guys if you're playing right.

On Classic you get much larger enemy formations in the lategame than you'd see on Normal. If you can soften them up to set up In The Zone your sniper will look like a god, and if you can't, you may well die even if you can Double Tap down one enemy because there are two many surviving aliens and they'll attack your position too aggressively.

On Impossible you straight-up can't weaken the more dangerous aliens enough to In The Zone them.

This sounds about right to me. I vaguely recall being more impressed with Double Tap on my normal playthrough (where because I really lagged with other weapon upgrades I was hella reliant on my Plasma snipers to dish out the big hurt), I've just spent so much time in Classic since that the memory's faded.

Speaking of, fuck Impossible. It's hard in a distinctly unfun way, and I don't have any real desire to keep trying it. Classic is borderline for me, coming close to having too much randomness. I think the next serious playthrough I do, I'll want to try one of the mods that puts Classic AI and Normal enemy health together.

Can't really comment on anything but the first act of Impossible, which I've now stumbled through I think three times before abandoning ship, but that was definitely my impression so far. Does it scale a little more effectively than Classic through mid- and end-game? Might end up being like FE10 hardmode, where I do it once and never, ever again.

(abandoned my last Impossible playthrough when on maybe mission 5 I had skin-of-my-teethed it down to two Sectoids on the other side of an office building, my whole troop alive, mvp rank-3 assault in their sight range pistol overwatched under full cover and smoke to hopefully draw one forward, she gets crit-killed through the cover, a recruit panics and shoots my sniper dead, rest of the squad panics, wipe. And don't get me wrong, it was fuckin' awesome, but I just can't bring myself to go back to the file, which now has no ranked soldiers and is about to lose a bunch of countries. Sigh.)

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: November 14, 2012, 12:16:26 AM »

Part of it is probably that I can't see move and shoot sniper as anything more than a shittier Assault honestly.  Huge part is how short range the basic view distances are.  Squadsight lets you reach across the map and snatch the life straight out of the most threatening guy around.  Once you get Double Tap you can rip half a Sectopod's health off.

Yeah, I've definitely experimented with both, but increasingly found myself benching the move-shooters. Especially since it doesn't mesh well with either of the excellent colonel abilities.

Incidentally, I find Double Tap much better than ITZ.  ITZ is great when it is good, but that is normally situations I consider under control anyway.  Double Tap is just flexible for taking out 2 targets or handling strong single targets.  ITZ also leaves you at the whims of your clip size more than Double Tap does since Double Tap scales well with you controlling the flow of the battle (where ITZ completely changes it to be fair when it kicks in).

Prolly comes down to playstyle, but I really value the multi-takedown potential. In endgame I'm usually running a 2-3 Assaults up front, supported by 1-2 supports and maybe a heavy, with 1-2 Snipers tailing. A single moderately lucky Assault or a well-placed Heavy can take down a Sectopod solo, so the thing that threatens me most often is two or more groups of enemies appearing at once. In that sort of pinch ITZ is almost always good for at least one free shot, (finishing a Berserker, a Heavy Floater, or a Sectopod), and if you're lucky or with the right enemies (Chrysalids, mostly) you can empty a clip *and* reload in a single turn. But if taking down Sectopods is more of a problem (with a more defensive squad, say, that can weather hordes of smaller enemies a bit better), I can definitely see the argument for Double Tap's higher damage.

Oh, another sidenote, for the in-defense-of-Heavies file? Bulletstorm is phenomenal with Ghost Armour -- take a shot, go dark, run into the middle of a group of enemies. Repeat as necessary, burn an extra charge of invisibility if you can spare it for a guaranteed massive crit. Can take a huge amount of pressure off of those awful protracted firefights with lategame posses of Muton Elites.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: November 13, 2012, 11:48:38 PM »

Yeah, could just be a pistol thing. They definitely follow a few different rules (unlimited ammo, only one In The Zone shot, don't work with some clicky abilities etc), could very easily have a slightly different range/LOS calculation.

Spot on with the value of pistols.  Gunslinger is my choice over the bonuses to higher ground for most of those reasons and it just makes Snipers far more flexible.  It is a little shame you can't make the same argument for whatever it was on the same tier as Squad Sight.  Just way too important.

I forget what it's called, but the alternative lets you move and shoot with a sniper rifle, at a 20% (I think) aim penalty. So it's great, but Gunslinger gives you a decent move-shoot option, without sacrificing the whole-map control of Squadsight.

Edit - Part of my wonders if Squad Sight wasn't the first tier Sniper skill at one point in development and was swapped with Headshot to make the first unlocks consistently something that is a clicky.

I might buy it, since Squadsight seems in some ways quite equivalent to rockets. On the other hand, its alternate ability leads to a pretty different paradigm of Sniper (moves around, mid-long range, probably meant to take the high ground and opportunity boosting skills with it), and the trees definitely seem built towards distinct subtypes (critboost/dodgetank Assault, mobile/Squadsight Sniper, massive damage/support-tank Heavy, healbot/smokebot Support) and Squadsight plus moveshoot would be pretty hax.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: November 13, 2012, 11:06:12 PM »

Cool, so you've had situations where you had a legal shot with a rifle, but not a pistol? With Squadsight, my theory had been that all medium-range weapons have a range of exactly as far as a unit can see, so squadsight targets (which are by definition outside of the sniper's personal sight range) will always be outside of pistol range. Haven't seen a counterexample, as in, a squadsight shot I could take with a pistol, but I definitely don't check constantly. But if even medium-range weapons have slightly different max ranges, then it's clearly a little more complex than I'd thought. I haven't noticed much of a range cap on shotguns, mind you, other than the brutal penalties, and I do check between pistol and shotgun pretty regularly (though to be honest in Classic I mostly drop shotguns for plasma rifles asap, and only come back to Alloy Cannons once Sectopods and Muton Elites start cropping up regularly).

As a side note, I've fallen a little more in love with pistols each playthrough. The whole unlimited ammo/decent range thing can make them a very good option for Rapid Fire, and also makes a case for mid-game shotguns, and Gunslinger makes it much, much easier to take Squadsight, which... is a good thing, I think, no matter how tempting the alternative might sound. That and a ready supply of early game plasma pistols (if you're good at zapping Sectoids) makes a pretty good option for an early research push.

If aim controls damage reliability, yeah, the case for scope goes way up, and it's already plenty high. It would also make bum-rushing Sectoids in Impossible a little more appealing (since you really, really want to be killing them in one action), even without a flank, and would make the manoeuvring through cover game even more vital.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: November 13, 2012, 10:13:26 PM »

Double Tap's great, but I honestly think In The Zone is broadly better -- if nothing else it allows you to chain kill flyers and Chrysalids, synergizes very well with non-lethal rocket blasts (e.g. taking out groups of Mutons in two actions). But yeah, Colonel snipers are pretty much the best thing ever, regardless.

I'm about 3/4 of the way through my third playthrough (Classic/iron man), having decided the Impossible/Iron Man was too punitive. Kinda regretting that decision now, since the difficulty really falls away after the first month or two once you know what you're doing, and now I feel kinda like I'm coasting through the back half of the game. I'm thinking I'll do some variety of Impossible next, and then maybe a rigger playthrough -- mostly SHIVs, no primary weapon use from humans (so they'll be able to fire pistols and rockets, throw grenades, operate arc throwers, and be psychic for story purposes). Don't think it'll be super difficult, but should be fun, and will definitely be different. Maybe I won't get so weepy when my SHIVs die, but they're pretty cute so I probably will.

Still loving the game, obviously. Not sure if it's true on lower difficulties, but higher up it's clear that enemy units do move around through the fog of war (and may even be attracted to noises you make), which I wasn't sure of it first, and thought the game needed. So I guess that's good, but I really wish they did so a little more tactically -- I really feel like an element of the game/genre should be assymetrical information, where the aliens know more about where you are and than you do about them. As it is, the opposite is almost true, as you often have a vague sense of where the aliens are, and overwatch leapfrogging through the map will almost always lead to them blowing the first round of engagement blundering through your fire and then wasting their whole turn on the seeing you and taking cover routine. And aliens never overwatch before they've seen you, so even if you do stumble into them, you still get the remainder of your turn to attack and/or take cover. So there's a pretty significant structural advantage in your favour, and I feel like it should be the opposite.

The recent patch seems to have handled the frequent crashes I got on the PS3, which is nice. Runs pretty painlessly now.

Particularly since the sight-lines are a little screwy, I'm definitely with David on it being a shame you don't get to preview attack range as you move. One of the areas of poorer documentation is different weapon ranges (there's literally nothing in the game other than short/medium/long, and even now I'm not sure if Sniper Rifles actually have longer range than other weapons without Squadsight, or simply no penalties at range), so there'd be an opportunity there to implement a teaching tool for weapon choice too. Definitely the biggest narrow gameplay complaint I have.

On the numbers side of things, does anybody know how actual damage is calculated? Casual googling doesn't yield results. It seems like you basically do 50-100% of maximum weapon damage, then apply any modifiers, but is it my imagination or do you tend to do full damage more often at very high hit rates? Snipers in particular seem to overperform in this regard, and Heavies seem less reliable, but there's no real way to tell if that's a function of weapon type, aim score, my imagination... Would also believe something weird like it being related to crit rate, honestly, or that sniper reliability was a function of being out of enemy sight so often, or of attacking flanked/out of cover enemies (which could also be part of the crit hypothesis). But it would be nice to be able to account for this to crank down the RNGness of Impossible a bit. Fuckin' immortal sectoids.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: November 05, 2012, 09:18:08 PM »

Yeah, I think Impossible will be fine after the first third or so of the game (once hit rates climb above the 65-70% ceiling, and an enemy critical doesn't mean a dead squaddie and rolling panic), but for that first third I'll just need to come to terms with the fact that I can lose a team to bad luck even if I make no poor decisions, and that some countries will just poof away no matter what.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: November 05, 2012, 09:05:18 PM »

I seem to recall reading that the XCOM console and PC control schemes were generated independently of each other (luxury of a genre where mechanics transcend control scheme), so neither is a copy of the other -- both are the original intent.

Finished Classic (the "perfect game" that I need to feel good about a second playthrough), bashed my head against Impossible Ironman for a bit, but it might actually be beyond me at the moment. I get very sad whenever a little soldier dies, which means I'm very sad ALL THE GODDAMN TIME RIGHT NOW. So I'm putting it off for now. Might do a Classic Ironman to get used to the somewhat different decision making process. Or a straight Impossible to get used to the pain and sadness. Haven't decided.

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: October 26, 2012, 12:09:10 AM »

Logging back in after god, I dunno, a year? Two? 'cause I wanna gush about XCOM. Unf. I've been stuck in FPS/over the shoulder-shooter hell for what feels like forever (with a brief foray into Rainbow Moon, an indie PS3 FFT clone that I thought was pretty good), nice to be playing a real game again.

Thanks for forcing it on the NEB and Ciato, Gref. My life is improved the more people I have to babble about it to. I ran into Ty (whazzee, Excal?) downtown yesterday and he was looking for a copy as well, having played a mission or two on their copy, so if your plan was to convert the DL Vancouver contingent, I think it's working.

I'm happier with the game than I have been with anything since at least FE10. Challenging, deep gameplay, mostly strong interface, lots of replay value. I finished a Normal game a few days ago, struggling through Classic right now. Strategy/base design in the harder modes is super unforgiving at first (half the funds, no officer training school to start, and it feels like the abductions come quicker).

I've got some complaints about the AI, it feels like the game could benefit from more active enemies, or more of a time limit in-mission. It feels like a super slow, overwatch reliant advance carries no real consequences -- enemies won't circle around to flank you because they don't activate until you find them, with the cutesy little double-take/run for cover routines they do (despite you rocketing in on a jet plane a maximum of, like, 200 meters away from where they are, often after having shot them down out of the sky), so you unless you fuck up and overreach in your advance you have a persistent massive tactical advantage, in that you're always already arrayed effectively in cover, etc.

Classic and Impossible apparently have slightly sharper and more aggressive AI, though I haven't seen much evidence of this yet, but I don't think it solves the initial problem of enemies not moving until you find them. Feels wrong, since the whole fog of war/Alien Activity paradigm sort of implies to me that there could be a Sectoid crouched behind any wall, waiting to take a pot-shot at you as you pass, or a whole troop of them moving through the city trying to flank you. And it feels like there should be more  of a sense of urgency in getting in and taking control of the situation.

Terror missions are the obvious exception: the aliens are out there killing civilians, and you've gotta rush in to save as many as you can. Definitely the hardest and most rewarding (thrill of success-wise), I found, especially once you've got a posse of high ranked, well equipped badasses and most normal enemy deployments aren't much of a threat anymore.

Class balance feels pretty good -- I've come around on the Heavies, they're obviously the worst in a bunch of ways (slow, inaccurate, and the whole issue with explosives losing you resources), but early in the game it's nice to have a get out of jail free card -- pinned down by 4 Thin Men, no actions left but the Heavy? No problem, their corpses are now scattered across three city blocks. And paradoxically they get even better once rockets aren't an instant kill anymore, since you can use them to soften up whole squads of Mutons (reduced to 2 HP and no more cover) at once without losing the bodies and weapon fragments. Good way to level up squaddies too. And towards the end game they're definitely the best way to take down Sectopods. Still probably the class I go without most often (there's something delicious about 3 assault, 1 healbot support and 2 snipers), but I feel like they've got an important niche that they fill well.

Heard a bunch of complaints about character design, and I see the point -- it'd be nice to have at least a few different body-types for each gender, and there's a certain sameness to the features. Having the armour colour expansion helps; were it me I'd happily spend the $5 to get it (came free with launch but it's DLC afterwards), but I can understand that some people will be less happy about paying for what feels like a pretty basic function. Limited though it is, I really like the female character design. It's realistic without being unattractive, and the range of hair (though it feels limited) is actually about right for military. My army brat girlfriend was impressed, generally there's a range of options that no military in the world would ever let you get away with. And I guess it's not to everybody's taste, but for beefcake factor its hard to argue with a male soldier in Psy Armour. Sploosh. Seriously don't see complaints about lack of attractive men, type-preference caveats aside. And if you like your boys skinny and pretty an army simulator probably isn't the game to go looking for eye candy anyhow.

Stylistically, can I add that I really appreciate that the game doesn't skimp about how awful and creepy a lot of what XCOM does is? As overtly evil as the aliens are, I still end up feeling kinda gross and uncomfortable through the interrogation scenes. That's a win, in my book. I like games with conflicted moral messages, and I'm impressed that one as skimpy on the story content as this one manages it. And in a subject area that's prone to one dimensional jingoism at that.

Gush over, relurking.

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (The final release is a lie. Download here!)

« on: January 13, 2012, 05:22:55 PM »

In unrelated news, Monk is now very much specializing in Undead, Stigma Magic being one of the only things that can cure undead (whereas it couldn't in vanilla), and Chakra being one of the only healing spells that heals undead.

That totally works -- funerals in Japan are mostly Buddhist.

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (The final release is a lie. Download here!)

« on: January 12, 2012, 07:59:07 PM »

I will totally delurk to cast a (doubtless redundant) vote in favour of anything that gives players a good excuse to zombify their own units.

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General Chat / Re: Desmond & Dragons - A DnD Chronicle

« on: July 13, 2011, 11:16:42 PM »

All talk aside, I'm pretty sure Feth isn't really murder happy so much as profoundly unconcerned about death and willing to inflict it when merited (call it the Raven Queen effect). That said, last I heard your bold company of sailor-entrepreneurs were also a bunch of mass-murdering multiple rapists, and so I don't think it'd be the worst thing ever if Feth was forced (forced) to disembowel them and make a sort of putrid meat sculpture out of their entrails.

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General Chat / Re: Desmond & Dragons - A DnD Chronicle

« on: July 13, 2011, 08:49:39 PM »

Desmond may be too delicate for the psion life. Aren't paladins immune to disease? Or is that an older edition?

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General Chat / Re: Desmond & Dragons - A DnD Chronicle

« on: July 04, 2011, 08:46:54 PM »

Goddamn it, forgot about the stat penalty. I suppose that means Feth has 6 wisdom now. Guess all the shadow makes it hard to see.

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (The final release is a lie. Download here!)

« on: April 12, 2011, 02:16:19 AM »

I don't really have a dog in this game, but I think there's a good argument for balancing some characters (and maybe Meliadoul is a good cut-off) for the aftergame rather than the game itself -- certainly this is the case for Reis/Beowolf/Cloud; no point comparing them to ordinary characters, little incentive to constrain them in the same ways. With Meliadoul, if you were to do such a thing, I suppose you'd counterbalance by raising JP costs sharply?

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (The final release is a lie. Download here!)

« on: April 07, 2011, 01:24:42 AM »

I'd argue that the correct MFI bitch was and still is Ramza. Scream to repair the brave once you're done + no annoying messages (and in LFT, since Carabini Mail allows your brave to go below 10 brave without being useless, no risk of leaving the party). Still, I'm probably the minority on that one.

+1

Threatening Ramza is also very satisfying.

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (The final release is a lie. Download here!)

« on: March 28, 2011, 11:11:23 PM »

I dunno.  On the other hand it's really not all that amazing?

Sure, but that's the case with a lot of stuff we made innate, like innate Monster Skill, innate Float, innate Train, innate Any Weather, innate Move on Lava.  It'd be more to stick it on there, and have someone forget about it, then 5 hours later suddenly go "oh, hey, I could Equip Change in this situation".

Chemist'd be the obvious one? Class doesn't need it, but it'd be a neat gimme for a class that's otherwise pretty much unchanged; plus stone gun is one of its best applications.

Theme-wise, there's something appropriate in my mind about sword users changing weapons (the Gilgamesh/Advent Children Cloud effect); so, Knight or Geo? ORLANDU?? Hell, all the NPC swordspeople?

Alternately, if we understand it to be choosing a different arrow, Archers would benefit from being able to switch status effects/elements, crossbow/longbow, draw/sheathe shields etc. Mechanically this might be relatively useful (though still not particularly noteworthy, obviously). Equip Gun Stone Gun Archer would be the best ever, too.

Bonus points if Equip Change could be made to count as wait for CT purposes (if not the full 50 CT NEB suggested). I'd really dig that. Or if it came with the Defend status.

23

General Chat / Re: Desmond & Dragons - A DnD Chronicle

« on: January 17, 2011, 12:29:19 AM »

Worlds so far, since I don't think these will be real surprises to the players.

Erathis - Rome/London/Eagleland
Ioun - Girl Genius, Zombie Horror
Bane - Grimdark Futures, R/TBS worlds of infinite warfare.
Pelor - Golden Sun, Brave New World, Get Smart
Richard - Motivational Speakers, 80's Sitcoms, Dr. Claw

Have we been to Richard's world? It sounds terrible.

I haven't played Golden Sun or [experienced via whatever media it inhabits] Get Smart, but I had always sorta envisioned Pelor's realm, aesthetically, as an idealized Greco-Roman sort of place. I mean, a bit like the super cheesy renditions of Heaven, right? Lots of majestic white columns and wide open atria. Is it higher tech, or were you more getting at the creepy paternalistic totalitarianism of Brave New World?

Erathis' world I've always seen as a bit dirtier. More London less Rome (though I'll happily admit that if I knew as much about Rome historically as I do London, i.e. anything at all, I probably wouldn't think of it as clean). Y'know, a big busy bustling place full of productive social interactions and the awesome power of commerce, but probably also with sewage issues and terrible traffic.

I missed the sessions in Bane's kingdom where we did anything other than fight things or run away, but it seemed pretty low-tech (my mental image of it was something like the Orcish architecture from the Warcraft series).

So from a setting theme standpoint, here've been my perceptions:

Erathis: baroque (17th-18th C)-tech, mid-magic but highly codified, technocratic, everything has a price, and the co-decision of that price leads to civilization. Diverse within certain confines (lots of core races, relatively few of the weird ones).
Ioun: 19th century-tech, magic is prevalent, powerful, but unpredictable, anything is possible, everything is dangerous. Super diverse melting pot of everything.
Bane: ~early medieval-tech, mid-magic, magic is prevalent but carries a toll, not in the Erathian transactional sense but in a more primal, maybe Nordic pieces of your body and soul in exchange for power sense. Segregated races constantly at war. But like I said, I didn't see much of Bane's realm.
Pelor: Roman-tech, high-magic, but only in the hands of the worthy (mean power might be the same as in Ioun, but concentrated in a much smaller portion of the population, while the common people live more or less mundane lives)... Probably reasonable diversity of "good" races, but with a more generally human population than Erathis-land?
Richard: aargh

Some of these are probably a bit off, and all coloured by my terrible memory and spotty attendance.

Anyhow, needless to say, I think this is all really cool.

24

General Chat / Re: Desmond & Dragons - A DnD Chronicle

« on: January 15, 2011, 05:45:57 PM »

Water Margin, the ~16th century chinese novel upon which, among other things, the Suikoden series is based, agrees. Wu Song punches a tiger to death and he's pretty clearly not afraid of anything. Most of the Water Margin heroes die in an assortment of painful, grisly and ignominious ways, mostly at the hands of imperial soldiers, which is probably a direct consequence of them not punching tigers. Wu Song lives to 80.

Hmmm.. he's the 14th of the heavenly stars of destiny which means (...wikipedia...) that he shares stars with Valeria, Tomo, Hugo, Keneth, and Zegai, which is a decent enough assortment, I suppose.

So, Pete is the 14th star of destiny and will be fine all alone in Bane's kingdom, QED.

25

General Chat / Re: Desmond & Dragons - A DnD Chronicle

« on: January 15, 2011, 05:27:08 PM »

This thread doesn't even have exploits of punching tiger corpses.  Most disappoint.

It's true! I can't believe I forgot about Pete. Whom I think we left behind in Bane's kingdom in the middle of an endless civil war, but I'm sure he's fine.