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

[OblivionKnight]

It's his gigilo name

[Laggy]

>_>

wut

[OblivionKnight]

Laggy you whore

[Grefter]

My question is, why wasn't he always Gaffgarini

[Excal]

Thanks to the miracle of digital cameras, we present to you the dread Gafgarini.  This is all happening right before Zirikile Falls, if it makes any difference.  (Also featured, Marza and Batman)

[Luther Lansfeld]

:p No Desmond 

[metroid composite]

Gaffy's quote should be "How much are you going to pay me for that?  I don't work for cheap, you know."

[metroid composite]

Okay, Laggy had me stealth edit in another patch, but there's enough here to be excited about or interested in that it's worth mentioning.

* You don't need someone with Secret Hunt to see the Fur Shop
* Broken and stolen equipment ends up at the Fur Shop
* Defending now reduces physical damage by 25%
* Reraise was removed from Math Skill; White Magic version was buffed significantly (much higher hit rate without the MP cost of Raise 2).
* Oracle MP dropped to 90.  Innate Move MP Up seems to get the class plenty of attention, and mage MPs are still mostly very close to each other.
* Magic Attack Up boost changed to +20% (from +33%), JP cost still 600.  It's still the best way to boost a lot of things like Draw Out and Math Skill (although Two Swords for double Wizard Rods might actually be mildly competitive, but mages like getting 600 Wizard JP a lot more than they like getting 1000 Ninja JP).
* Attack Up JP cost changed to 300.  It's just getting a lot of competition from Martial Arts, Two Hands, Concentrate, and Two Swords.  It's sometimes the best option, yes, but at 600 JP when I often had two other good options already learned that I could switch between (for, say, a Ninja (Con/MA) or a Knight (TH/Maintenance)) I usually just wouldn't bother with the  JP detour.
*Item changes (whatever was decided with Jav 2, Es 2, etc.  Also, Poison Rod got a WP boost, and so did all following rods for consistency).

[Luther Lansfeld]

Boooo to Reraise being removed from Math Skill.

[metroid composite]

I didn't have a particularly strong opinion on that one (I see arguments from both sides, but I was mildly opposed to it, if anything) so I'll leave justifying that change up to Laggy.

[Laggy]

Eh, the case basically goes that while it does add dynamic to Math Skill and is interesting, MS is in danger of being too good, not being too weak, and the better solution is to make Reraise more prevalent through other skillsets (changing Reinforce, upgrading the Reraise spell). The drawbacks of tossing Reraise on your opponents is pretty minuscule compared to, say, Haste, and doesn't really require you to set up your entire party to deal with it (unlike CT5 Don't Move, Fire, etc.), mainly because FFT AI at critical health is so boneheaded. There's also a myriad of storyline fights (zodiacs, assassination missions, etc.) where throwing a fieldwide Reraise is pretty much a "of course you would do this" situation, and even in neutral situations it tends to result in a net win for the PC side, which is something you'd want to avoid with MS. What I would have liked to do is either change the AI there or make Reraise give back more HP on trigger but... unfortunately both were not possible at this time.

[Dawglicious]

I just came across this patch recently, and I love it! I was just wondering though, where is this "shadow edit" patch available? When I dl'd and patched from the link again, it was in fact still the same patch from before. Unless I need to start a new game to have the changes there, but I don't think I need to...

Also just curious, but am I the only one who has come across a problem with the monsters hidden skill? I have had a few enemies able using their fourth skill without any other monster near them. Made black goblins quite interesting to say the least.

Anyway, any help is appreciated and keep up the awesome work

[Laggy]

Also just curious, but am I the only one who has come across a problem with the monsters hidden skill? I have had a few enemies able using their fourth skill without any other monster near them. Made black goblins quite interesting to say the least.

Yes, we are aware of this issue and have no clue what causes it, but it makes monsters more interesting than not so we've decided to more or less leave it in. It should be noted that they don't always act as though their monster skill is available, only in certain situations (you'll almost never see Bombs use Spark normally, for instance, but they seem to use it 100% of the time after being reraised.)

The "shadow edit" should already be in place; if you downloaded the patch after mc made her post, you should be fine. Just make sure you're applying it to a fresh FFT ISO; applying a patch to an already-patched ISO leads to Bad Things.

EDIT: Out of curiosity, how did you hear about the patch?

[Dawglicious]

Yea, I dl'd and patched to a fresh iso. I just tried it one more time to be safe, and I ended up with it being the same as before.  The only things I have to verify if it installed or not is Geomancer's attack up still cost 600 jp, and Reraise's description still says it works with Math Skill. So I dunno if it wasn't uploaded properly or something, but yea the link is still to the older patch, none of the new things mentioned are there.

As far as hearing about this: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3201522

Someone made a thread about FFT 1.3, and a lot of people complained about it being stupidly hard, so someone mentioned and linked to your patch here.

[Laggy]

Huh. Strange. Well, I'll check it again tonight when I'm off work. You can resume save files just fine through these updates, so you don't have to worry about it for the time being.

[Taishyr]

Heh, welcome.

Also, a bit of an aside to what might be already-resolved issues, but I'd have to agree with MC's assessment of the Golden Estublarghl and Javelin Squared. The level they're competing at really shouldn't be the other spears - it's effectively aftergame, as far as I can tell. Sorta the same policy you guys went with for Calc - if someone's willing to grindbreak that badly, let 'em. I'll just sit here with ZOBMIE and FENIX DOWN DOWN DOWN, thanks. >_>

[Dapifer]

I would like to say that, personally, I really like the idea of the Gold Esc to be renamed into the Paladin Shield, gotta love the throw back, and not only in name, the concept of a supershield like that one is the one that should be the best shield of the game. Having ridiculous EV is all good and dandy, but that Paladin Shield concept was an all round protector, it felt like a true "final rare" item. I would very much apretiate the change, and even if not, at least a name change, Escutcheon II is... well... not that impresive for an "Ultimate Shield".


As far as the Javelin goes, Chaos Blade (Ultimate Sword) and Chirijiraden (Ultimate Katana) have only big numbers going for them, theme wise, it's congruent with the rest of the ultimate weapons, but... as someone mentioned, it's really hard to get the Jav II, so just like the shield, I wouldn't mind an upgrade. Or at least a name change. Again, Javelin II just doesn't feel all that "Ultimate", to me at least... Kain's Lance maybe? A tribute to the finest Lancer of all the FFs.

Now, here's a humble proposition, what's with the lack of love towards armors? We can all agree that Clothes are simply better, even with your nerfs in HP, the status protection and boosts far outweight the HP boost that Armors have. Now, this means that classes that can't wear clothes are at a disatvantage, I know that Samurai and Knight have recieved a great boost overall, but here is the thing that bugs me...

Equip Armor, the game conciders armors as better items than clothes, because there is no "Equip Clothes" support, that means that classes that have clothing available are at an advantage, if armors somehow got better, this would make classes that wear them better as well, but, contrary to Clothes, a class that wants to wear armors can do so with Equip Armor, but a class that can't wear armor, and would benefit significantly with their boosts, gets shafted, not to mention, this would give the Equip Armor support at least some appeal, otherwise it's just there... this last playthroughts I found out that I never buy the ability... it's just not worth it, specially with the Knight having better abilities in their roster, it's just space in their sheet.

Anyways, that's my humble opinion.

[metroid composite]

Now, here's a humble proposition, what's with the lack of love towards armors? We can all agree that Clothes are simply better, even with your nerfs in HP, the status protection and boosts far outweight the HP boost that Armors have. Now, this means that classes that can't wear clothes are at a disatvantage, I know that Samurai and Knight have recieved a great boost overall, but here is the thing that bugs me...

Equip Armor, the game conciders armors as better items than clothes, because there is no "Equip Clothes" support, that means that classes that have clothing available are at an advantage, if armors somehow got better, this would make classes that wear them better as well, but, contrary to Clothes, a class that wants to wear armors can do so with Equip Armor, but a class that can't wear armor, and would benefit significantly with their boosts, gets shafted, not to mention, this would give the Equip Armor support at least some appeal, otherwise it's just there... this last playthroughts I found out that I never buy the ability... it's just not worth it, specially with the Knight having better abilities in their roster, it's just space in their sheet.

Let me start with Equip Armor: it's fine, it's just very narrow.  Equip Armor Monk is actually very good, because they get headgear which they do not normally have (and they aren't using their clothes slot for anything but HP in Chapter 2 either).  Equip Armor is also good when you're doing Move-Find Item, as Armor is the only equipment that has Immune: Chicken (which means you can get 100% chances to get the rare item, instead of just 90%).  Outside of these situations, though, no: I haven't used it much--though honestly the above situations still mean I've used it more than Defence Up/Magic Defence Up in LFT....

Armor buffing--thing is I don't want to do an overall power increase on armor, since we've already upped the power of armor-wearing classes, we'd have to scramble to rebalance them.

However, yeah, we have incubated a few ideas on how we could make armor more interesting; there's a few restrictions on this, though:
1. It can't raise the overall power level of armor.
2. It has to make logical sense for armor--i.e. inherently defencive.  In other words, not armor that raises speed or movement or attack.
3. It has to have some flavour justification.

The change we discussed was as follows: several low-HP armors (10 HP is the number we were tossing around) with a positive defencive status such as Always: Shell, Always: Protect, Always: Regen, Start: Reraise.  These are interesting, since, say, Always: Protect with low HP makes you better against physical and worse against magic.  Always Regen is bad on paper, but combined with Knight defences it could be really hard to crack.  And so on.  Laggy was not fully comfortable with the flavour justification; he also said he really wasn't excited about different variations on defence (suggesting weirder stuff).  And...that was a couple months ago; maybe we should dig up that conversation again.

There's other options, but it's not what I'd call "interesting".  Half/cancel/absorb elements at the cost of HP has been done before (and armor classes tend to be able to use most of those armors anyway; white robe, chameleon robe, flame shield, ice shield).  Cancel: status is really dull; any one status is maybe useful in like...two fights, and in those fights it's just "well obviously this armor is good here".

[Dapifer]

That idea seems pretty well, 10 HP is really a pain, maybe a little higher? like 20?

But that was what I meant overall, not making them "like" clothes, that is, giving PA,MA,Spd, or status cancel, Robes handle elemental buffing/defend so those ideas seem pretty solid, it's just that late game the armors are just not worth it, once you have Crystal Mail, you might as well sell the other ones, because there is no difference between them, I like how in this patch, Judo Outfit gives more Hp than Power Sleeve, so there is a choice(however small) between that extra PA point, and this is true for most hats and clothing, but armors just stack against each other with the only thing they give: HP bonus, so the bigger the bonus, the better the armor, and that's that...

From what I can gather, now every class is worth using, every skillset is worth investing in, monsters are interesting(really interesting n_n) this last accesory overhaul was great, and that's pretty much my point, before, the accesory list was just a novelty, because there were obvious options and the rest were just filler, now there is a nice choice in set ups, that's what I would like to see in armors, maybe not that massive, but at least some sense that there is a reason to keep such a long list of armor items, maybe the most obvious ones could stay the same: Bronze armor, Plate Mail, etc. but Carabini, Crystal, and even the Chainmail, look different enough to suggest they are different than the rest of the field plates, of course it wouldn't make a difference in the overall good vibe the patch has, and even if nothing is done I wouldn't mind, but it would make me happy to see the armors get a little more attention.

About the Monk and Equip Armor, only early game, once Power Sleeve is out(or Even Judo Outfit), they are better, and Earth Clothes boost Earth Slash, their best attack, you are right in the sense that the ability sees some action, and again you know more about the game than I do, it's jsut that it has always bothered me that Clothes and even sometimes Robes are better body gear than Armors, yet Armors get the ability to be Equipable by anyone, one would think that this means they are superior, but in reality they are not.

[metroid composite]

That idea seems pretty well, 10 HP is really a pain, maybe a little higher? like 20?

May or may not be able to push them higher, yeah.  I'd want to back that up with heavy calculation.  Like, at the moment I'm thinking that Protect helps you more against physical attacks than a full HP armor.  It certainly does at high levels, but I dunno about low levels.

But that was what I meant overall, not making them "like" clothes, that is, giving PA,MA,Spd, or status cancel, Robes handle elemental buffing/defend so those ideas seem pretty solid,

Yeah, the idea is not to take away existing niches.  This does make it harder to design, though, yes.

once you have Crystal Mail, you might as well sell the other ones, because there is no difference between them,

Lategame there's Reflect Mail (which, incidentally, supports the idea that armors get auto-statuses).  Granted, there's not that many positive statuses, and some of them definitely do not fit on armour (Float...Haste...Transparent...).  The only other one that would fit, is Always: Defending, but there's no way that works.  *goes to test anyway*

OMG!!!: Always defending does work.  That's awesome, LOL Crystal Shield hax.  Okay, five statuses we could use....

From what I can gather, now every class is worth using, every skillset is worth investing in, monsters are interesting(really interesting n_n) this last accesory overhaul was great, and that's pretty much my point, before, the accesory list was just a novelty, because there were obvious options and the rest were just filler, now there is a nice choice in set ups, that's what I would like to see in armors,

Well...right.  We've kinda been tackling every slot one at a time; for instance, we no longer have everyone using Gained JP Up for the first 15 hours, which means a much wider array of support abilities get used.

I feel strongly, though, that in order to make a "slot" interesting, it needs enough options (probably four or five minimum) to give you a real choice.  I mean, if you only have two options, and you figure out that option A is overall better than option B, that's it, you never look at that slot again; it's degenerated and no longer interesting.  It's also, say we want to get people checking the store for new armour with genuine interest--if there's only one interesting offering all game, that ends up feeling unfulfilling.

This is a big part of why armor hasn't been done already, in fact.  It's not like armour had variation before and we're just making it balanced.  It actually requires a number of new, interesting, balanced inventions.

[Laggy]

@ Dawglicious: Okay, looks like the patch up wasn't updated after all. New one should be up now. Please verify if you can!

[Dapifer]

New patch works!

It even worked with my after game save, the Paladin Shield looks really sweet with all those bonuses and the new description, excelent work! n_n

[Dawglicious]

New patch works!

It even worked with my after game save, the Paladin Shield looks really sweet with all those bonuses and the new description, excelent work! n_n

So it works for you? I don't get it then... I applied onto a fresh iso with the new patch, and it is still not making the new changes. Out of curiosity Dapifer, how much does Geomancer's Attack Up cost jp-wise for you? And does Reraise still say it can be used in Calc? I am still on Chapter 1, and those are the two things I have been going off of to see if I have the new patch or not. The new patch should be making Attack up 200 jp, and Reraise not usable with Math Skill, so I dunno what's up at this point

[Laggy]

AU should be 300 JP, actually.

Reraise may have been an oversight of me, actually, which is stupid because I told myself to check it when you mentioned it. *checks* Uh... nope, I don't see Calc on it. Strange.

[Laggy]

Okay, just downloaded the patch off the link here to make sure. Applied to fresh ISO, and I see all the new changes. Dawg: is it possible you patched over your fresh FFT ISO at some point without realizing it? I know I've done that before with frustrating results until I realized I had.

Also, since you're still early on, let me know if Gaffy's name in C2 gets all fubared up for you. I STILL don't know what caused him to spontaneously name change into a gigolo.