LFT: An FFT mod (The final release is a lie. Download here!)

[Fuzzypickles]

They're human units every time though, and I think they've all been male. Can't say that one for certain.

[metroid composite]

I know you guys mentioned earlier that you tried tweaking the AI to prevent them from using equipment breaks as often. Was anything else changed? I've been playing around with auto-battle lately and I've been seeing the AI make very... uncharacteristic moves. The AI is attacking characters that will die when another action resolves (ie: attacking a unit about to die from a Jump). They revive units that will die from a slow action as well. The second of these might occur in regular FFT, but I know the AI was usually decent about the former. Also, Sing/Dance. The AI uses a Dance but they are faster than the Dance so they get another action before it resolves. Instead of simply waiting... they start the Dance again causing an endless cycle where the Dance never resolves. Typically the AI is a bit more competent. I'm just wondering if these are all quirks I've never noticed before, or if you guys have any idea of changes that might've caused this?

Both of those already existed.

The AI does not understand Jump.  It will jump on targets who will move out of the way before the jump lands.  And yes, the AI generally starts a new Sing/Dance at the start of every turn.  It does get that right occasionally for longer dances, but not consistently.

[Fuzzypickles]

Really? I can't recall ever seeing an enemy unit miss a Jump unless something like Haste, Slow, or Yell changed the target's speed. Guess I'm entirely unobservant.

As for the FFT PvP tournament: not too many interesting results. Draw Out is still very powerful and has pretty much decided the tournament. A team with two Dancers/two Mimes does quite decently when the AI decides to Dance properly. When teams are built for OHKO they OHKO. Not really much of a surprise I suppose. The videos are being put on Youtube if anyone's interested in watching one or two:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuFt8hd8RT0

Other random things:
Nerfing the Squid family's PA has made Tentacle deal comically low damage and has made Chakra piddling as well.
Bad Bracelet hasn't been renamed, although the other Breath abilities have.

[metroid composite]

Draw Out is still very powerful and has pretty much decided the tournament.

Not too surprising now that I think about it.

Draw Out...
*Is good against other human setups you'd see in a versus tournament--it gets through low-Faith Blade Grasp.  It gets through Feather Mantle+Abandon.  It gets through elemental absorption.
*Is good in the hands of the AI.  It's not like Short Charge Meteor, which, in the hands of the AI, is just as likely to backfire.
*In-game is held in-check by the high JP cost, the high money cost, and the fact that much of the skillset is only available half the game or less.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, Jump has always been a bit glitchy with the AI for some reason. Izlude's version I've never seen cause problems, but normal Jump? Definitely. Remember that it hardly existed in vanilla FFT so it would make sense that you'd see the problems more now. It has upsides for the enemy, though; they can use Jump on your Transparent units, for instance.

Sing/Dance has always been broken beyond belief in AI hands (and I don't mean "overpowered"); it's not a coincidence that the game didn't have enemy Bards or Dancers I'm pretty sure. Actually, on the LFT playthrough I discovered the enemy used Sing/Dance more effectively than I thought they did; they actually don't always reset a Song/Dance every turn like I thought!

[Laggy]

Good point on the squid family bit. I may just swap around their PA/MA instead and make Mind Blast's base hit rate higher to make their other attacks more relevant. Also will fix Bad Bracelet.

I do find it amusing that despite being hit with a mult nerf from 16 to 12, Kiku remains prevalent and ridiculously good.

There were a few things I'm surprised to not see on the tourney though... no one using Calculators with Time Magic for instance? (Noncharge Meteor and all.) Less Knights than I expected, as well.

I was going through the Board 8 topic on the tourney for a moment. LFT didn't modify base FFT AI in any manner, just made specific skills less likely to be used (on the PC side, the only relevant one I can think of are the equipment breaks on Battle Skill).

[Fuzzypickles]

Curious: how exactly did you begin to toy with the AI in that fashion? It's interesting to me.

And yeah, the lack of Calculators was a huge shock to me. I thought a x4 Calc team with Summon or Time Magic would be popular since you'd bring about 4 instant giant nukes one after another. Even with 40 Faith you'd probably be dead. But most people on that board aren't incredibly familiar with FFT (well, I think I've gotten a few to start LFT playthroughs =]). I'm surprised at the lack of Time Magic in general. Very few teams have any access to Haste, and the ones that do have other problems (eg: Equip Sword Summoner). Throwing together a restricted list could make things more interesting and less OHKO-y.

I think mc's got the Draw Out angle fairly well covered. I usually forget about the gil restrictions on DO since I usually don't bother getting around to it until late game (which alone should be a tip off). Still, Muramasa on a Wizard is generally a OHKO in all situations. Then again... on a not-Wizard it might be a bit lackluster. *shrug*

As to monsters: I've been toying around with a Mediator Ramza/4 Monsters game. The new monster changes are definitely fun. My only thought at the moment is that Shadow Stitch is a bit good (Stop Breath seems more balanced by the terrible range/height restriction which is difficult to use with monster skill). Still, most certainly an improvement over vanilla.

[Laggy]

There's an AI flag called "Random Hits", usually toggled for skills that are actually random hits (like Truth and Un-Truth abilities, etc.) which basically acts as a discourager to the AI to use the move due to the random nature of its damage/effect. I just flipped it on for skills I didn't want the AI spamming. Original FFT's Altima actually has this set on for All-ultima, for instance, even though the spell itself is not a random-hit formula.

I don't know the finer details of the setups, but you could encourage diversity by not allowing multiples of the same skillset/reaction/whatever on the team, yeah? (Or at least limit it. Blade Grasp on everyone feels a bit silly to me for interesting fights for instance.)

Shadow Stitch... is on an otherwise thoroughly unimpressive monster with pretty much no damage. The ghoul series kinda needs the help in general, so I'm not too bothered by it. It looks a lot better when your entire team can use it, though, but that goes for a lot of things (there was a similar reaction to the Mediator's Negotiate when someone was running the SCC for it).

[Fuzzypickles]

Ah -- clever idea on the random hits thing.

As for the setups, the only real bans were on Math Skill as a secondary (probably unnecessary in retrospect since most teams had 40 Faith) and your RSM had a JP limit of 1200. I didn't want to keep out most of the high leveled RSMs but at the same time I didn't want everyone taking Move +3 since there was no reason not to. I was hoping to avoid banlists altogether but clearly that's not an option. Either way, running a few matches with lots of options certainly was quick to show what needs to be nipped.

As for Ghouls -- eh. Teleport and MP Switch are both really nice. It's not that the whole team is using it (I'm limiting one monster/family to force variety, otherwise I think I'd be running 4 Bombs), it's just that it's very reliable compared to most other options. I'm willing to live with it; I'm just a bit bitter of getting wiped by that and Sleep Touch combined. =P

[Excal]

Math Skill as a secondary likely isn't needed anymore.  With the changes in place, there's really only the Elemental 1s and Cure 1/2 which care at all about your MA.  The rest of the skillset cares far more about faith in order to be useful, and regardless of how good you are, it'll be next to useless on enemies with 40 Faith unless you're pulling out something like Faith Rod.  Though, it does mean you can take advantage of low faith on the enemies in order to spam Cures, Reraises, and Haste and have fun with that.

[Laggy]

Random thoughts on Draw Out (this was spurred on by the discussion about it in the AI tourney, but of course the balance in question is for the normal game):

1. Lowering Kiku's damage more. It is clearly the most offending part of DO as far as making a case of it being overpowered (Yeah, Muramasa is good, but it's also range 2).
2. Lowering the range on Kiku (and Bizen Boat, by logical extension) from 8 to 6. This makes DO no longer an awesome option dominating that range (competes with guns and Jump... which have their own issues; guns don't go through things, need elemental guns to compete with damage and specific setups, while Jump is its own entire skillset.)
3. Making Draw Out no longer affected by MAU. I like this option the best (it would also make it not affected by MDU, but I have no issue with more anti-Knight options), but the FFTPatcher program doesn't offer a way to implement it and I'd have to look into how to hex it manually. Still, it shouldn't be hard on paper to do. And MAU is already an incredibly good support ability and slapping it on Draw Out users just seems like a no-brainer right now (design wise, bad, since you want alternatives available to make setups more interesting).

[Dark Holy Elf]

Kiku comes with a high price tag. Lowering its damage further starts to make that price tag seem like a slap in the face. I guess I wouldn't be horribly opposed if it come with a lowering in price of the weapon itself, but honestly, I think at 12 power it's fine. It's pretty hard to pump that past 300 damage or so, which is good but not overpowering like it was at 16 + better Wizard MA.

Not sure about it without Magic Attack Up, either. Hmm.

L40 Monk, Power Sleeve/Bracer, Attack Up: 210
L40 Wizard (LFT style), Flash Hat/Wizard Robe/Wizard Rod/Magic Gauntlet: 228

The two are fairly comparable on damage (ES starts out behind but boosts rapidly with PA), Earth is probably a slightly weaker element, and comes with 1 less vertical. The Earth Slasher has a free secondary, the Kikuer a free support ability, this probably balances.

Should they be this close? My gut is no. Earth Slash has a lower JP cost, on a more accessible job, and doesn't cost over 3000 gil per use.

The range nerf is the most interesting, although I don't think I really see it as necessary.

[Laggy]

Eh. It's more of a check on DO being such a good skillset in general, especially in the lategame (which... is when Kiku comes out anyway).

Unrelatedly! Mantle proposals. So many of them are trash. Since we already touched on statusblockers, they felt like the next logical thing to look at.

* Small Mantle (p.evade increased to 18%, m.evade increased to 18%)
* Leather Mantle (price changed to 2000 gil, added PA+1, p.evade decreased to 12%, m.evade increased to 12%, availability changed to Ch2 Meet Draclau)
* Wizard Mantle (p.evade decreased to 12%, m.evade decreased to 12%)
* Elf Mantle (price changed to 4000 gil, added Cancel:Slow) [note, Diamond Armlet will lose its Slow immunity for this]
* Dracula Mantle (make it no longer storebought and turn it into an interesting rare?)

Obviously trolling for Dracula Mantle ideas. >_>

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Clearly it should add Blood Suck - *Shot.*

More seriously, some thematic status immunities and stat boosts+a weakness balancing it out would be my immediate thoughts. That probably can be elaborated more elegantly by someone who actually has a knack for these, though.

[Laggy]

F-Bag already adds Blood Suck and Cursed Ring adds Undead w/ stat boosts, so you need to get creative here. >_>

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

... why do F-Bags add Blood Suck.

Anyhow, does the game cover much elemental shenanigans with lategame/aftergame equips? I'm thinking maybe elemental damage boosting/lowering+immunities+weaknesses (my thoughts were Dark/Ice/Water boost and immunity, weakness/damage lowering to Fire and Holy, plus some extra because that alone isn't good enough).

[Grefter]

Better question, why aren't you playing this game and making a Two Swords F-Bag female Knight Snow?

70% to both evasions Always: Regen, Undead maybe?  I dunno, just throwing it out there.  Edit - Strengthen Dark for flavour or something.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Better question, why aren't you playing this game and making a Two Swords F-Bag female Knight Snow?

I don't play thematic games.

Although the idea Grefter shot sounds fun.

[Grefter]

I think the Regen damage would be a bit too weak to be really punishing (Undead take damage from Regen right?  Well if not that would be strong and still thematically nice)

[Laggy]

Strangely enough, Regen works normally on undead (as in it heals them). Reraise does not function on them though.

[Grefter]

Well it kind of works, but I would probably want to cut back the evasion for it.  Regen when you are dodging that much is kind of shit to an odd degree or some such (gives it more time to work I guess when you do get hit, but ehhhhh).  Whatever.  I dunno, the idea is less fun like that.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

50% evasion would probably be enough there.

[metroid composite]

My suggestion (which wouldn't necessarily require making it not-storebought) was increased durability + undead.

I.e. something like Undead+Regen+Protect+Shell+Float (with minimal evade and weak: Holy, Fire).

A storebought accessory being able to boost durability is reasonable.  For example, two chapter 4 storebought items are generally considered to take you from dieing in 2-hits to dieing in 3-hits (Feather Mantle and Angel Ring).  It's just a question of how much durability...and Protect+Shell might be okay, although that's pushing it, but with Regen it would definitely be too durable...

...except Elemental weaknesses lower durability.  Undead in and of itself lowers durability--you die to enemy item users and white magic users, and can't heal easily, and can't use Auto-Potion and can't be revived.

Seems like it might be balanced among storebought items.  (Now if we're sticking with not storebought, it would need to be improved some, since yeah: nobody uses Salty Rage, and that's a common poach off of a monster that can be bred in Chapter 1).

[Grefter]

Met of course brings the better ideas with similar flavour.  Nice.  Not sure how I would twist it though.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

If it became a rare, it'd need some extra boosts to be kept competitive, but those bases are quite good. My mind doesn't wrap around defense as easily as it does offense for those kinds of things. Thinking about it, giving offensive boosts to that kind of equip would make it overkill, methinks.