Iris Havengard Current Progress

What I'm thinking is, there's a limited number of Espers, so I would prefer that every time Iris fuses with a given Esper, she will execute a different move(s), to keep it from getting stale. The move would depend on her level, or maybe her current HP or MP. A system like that would help separate Fuse from the old, more fixed "learn set of spells X from Esper Y" system.

For example, if she fuses with Ifrit,

HP = 100% -> Inferno
HP = 50% -> Fire Breath
HP = 25% -> Napalm

Or who knows -- maybe invert that order, so that the less HP she has at the moment, the more powerful the move will be.

Anyway I'm just brainstorming, feel free to change/subvert/ignore all of this.

Expanding on FF6Fanatics idea... I was thinking something a little less controlled, but only to an extent...

Ok, so we define the espers by their elements, then when you select Fuse from the menu, it will automatically semi-randomly select one of X number of attacks based on that esper's group. I figure, in order to keep true to her themes, there should be some give-and-take with the abilities. For each esper, i suggest we use one of each of the following:

1. A "Backfire" - a weak attack that includes some kind of negative effect on Iris/the party
   
2. a normal attack - an average attack, nothing really special
   
3. a strong attack - a good attack on-par with mid-range spells
   
4. an "Overflow" - a massive attack that includes some kind of negative effect on Iris/the party.
   
5. a summon - the actual summon spell of the epser
   

we can tweak the odds for early balancing, but I'd suggest after her WoR subquest, the odds are changed and the "backfire" attack removed entirely.

If we create one of each of these kinds of attacks for each element (including non-elemental but maybe excluding poison?)... we can populate each esper's set of attacks based on some combination of those attacks. so this would give us ~40 abilities that get mix-and-matched throughout the espers, however keeping each esper more-or-less unique.

I am expanding commands/attacks, so we can fit the full set of abilities we want Iris to mix-and-match with. But we can also reuse some existing abilities (like adding in the summons). For a startup animation, unless someone wants to build a brand new one from scratch, id suggest the summon animation with a different palette.

Thoughts?

I think that idea is pretty cool thematically, but I think it will be fairly useless if the attack strength isn't bumped up a notch.  I'm assuming for the moment that it's highly unlikely she'll join before the Magitek facility.  It would be a lot more work and it would make zero sense with her story arc.  That means that by the time she's recruited, she'll have access to "mid-range spells".  Assuming that the "mid-range" spell for Ramuh is Bolt 2, for instance, 3/5 attacks are on par or strictly worse than what she could spam every turn, the fourth is an overflow with drawbacks, and the last is just the Esper Summon (which isn't great in this game).  It can't even really be useful by saving MP, since MP can easily be replenished by Osmose by that point.  The only use I can see for it is that you don't have to learn the spells before casting them.  I think that she'll need to be casting Bolt 2 and Bolt 3 (even in the WoB) instead of Bolt and Bolt 2 for this to work properly.

In a normal hack my solution would be to rebalance Osmose so it isn't broken, but that won't work here.

I also don't think this will work in the WoR at all, even if the backfire is removed after her sidequest.  Once you can spam the most powerful attacks at will, it's hard to justify using a move that will basically just use similar attacks sometimes.  That is, unless the overflow attack is still worth it, or you don't teach Iris every spell.  It might not be a huge deal though, as a lot of the skills slip into niche or outright useless roles by the endgame when compared to Magic, so Fuse would still be middle of the road in terms of usability.

Good points... Honestly, I'm more interested in it working thematically than it being extremely practical. Most abilities are outclassed by Ultima-spam... so it's par for the course. However, you think a power bump would help, which is perfectly fine with me. Any other tweaks to the idea itself? I just need some kind of confirmation so I can start coding this alongside the command expansion. It's hard for me to get a solid direction until I have a command to code in.

Are we at least ok with an auto-select ability? it would be easier to work out on the C1-side, and would make more sense with her power being a little out of control... Plus we can totally go menu-based on our 16th character.

I really need more input so I can get started on this.

Yeah, I agree that her being out of control would work.  I'm happy with the overall idea, but there are a couple things I have nitpicks about.

So if I'm understanding it right, we aren't going to have a menu at all?  Will Fuse work with the equipped Esper then?  I was thinking that we'd select one of a limited selection of Espers from a menu.  The awkward thing about using the equipped Esper is that most Espers have no elements, so they'd be hard to cram into a couple pre-defined categories based on elements.  Ramuh would be Thunder elemental, but I can't think of anything else that would be.  Most Espers would be non-elemental in this case.

On the other hand, if we limit the possible Esper choices to Ramuh, Ifrit, Shiva, Kirin (see below), Bismark, Alexandr, Bahamut and Terrato (which is my initial idea for which Espers to use), and let her Fuse with any at any time, every option has a clearly defined purpose.  The good thing about that particular selection is that it has eight options (like many existing skills), it gives her options immediately while still leaving room for progression, and hits 6/8 elements.

I also feel like one option should be a healing/buffing Esper, since many of the Espers are devoted to that.  I think that this would be great to give her more versatility, and to represent the Esper selection better.  But I'm not sure how much of a hassle it would be to handle the targeting with that, so if that's too much of a pain I'd choose to go with Palidor (Wind) or Shoat (Poison) instead.

I was thinking that perhaps the overflow's effect could be cutting her HP by half.  That way we could at least be sure that it won't kill her.  If the overflow attack is powerful enough to be cool, I think that it wouldn't be looked down upon by most people.

not agree about a limited choice: i'd like to see what she can do with all the espers

So if I'm understanding it right, we aren't going to have a menu at all?  Will Fuse work with the equipped Esper then?  I was thinking that we'd select one of a limited selection of Espers from a menu.  The awkward thing about using the equipped Esper is that most Espers have no elements, so they'd be hard to cram into a couple pre-defined categories based on elements.  Ramuh would be Thunder elemental, but I can't think of anything else that would be.  Most Espers would be non-elemental in this case.

The idea is that the espers wouldn't necessarily be a single element. Since we have multiple abilities to fill, we fill out different moves with different elemtents. Most espers have at least thematic association with one or more elements. For example, Tritoch and Maduin could have an attack from each of fire/ice/bolt. Siren, even though it teaches fire, has strong thematic association with water. Bahamut, tho NE, could obviously use a wind elemental attack. and the mix-and-match style keeps us from having to create a full set of spells for each esper, just have them pull from a pool of spells. This would be especially helpful with the significant number of holy-themed espers.

On the other hand, if we limit the possible Esper choices to Ramuh, Ifrit, Shiva, Kirin (see below), Bismark, Alexandr, Bahamut and Terrato (which is my initial idea for which Espers to use), and let her Fuse with any at any time, every option has a clearly defined purpose.  The good thing about that particular selection is that it has eight options (like many existing skills), it gives her options immediately while still leaving room for progression, and hits 6/8 elements.

I have a hard time justifying this lore-wise. Why would she fuse to some but not others? the only real difference I can see as to her options would be what esper she has equipped. It also makes her esper almost like a gear extention, making that choice potentially important going into a major fight, adding a layer of strategy pre-battle, tho potentially a hindrance for random encounters.

I also feel like one option should be a healing/buffing Esper, since many of the Espers are devoted to that.  I think that this would be great to give her more versatility, and to represent the Esper selection better.  But I'm not sure how much of a hassle it would be to handle the targeting with that, so if that's too much of a pain I'd choose to go with Palidor (Wind) or Shoat (Poison) instead.

yes, healing/buffing setups totally make sense. They would just use basically the same categories as the "attacks". I didn't mean to disclude them, i just kinda lumped it all together.

I was thinking that perhaps the overflow's effect could be cutting her HP by half.  That way we could at least be sure that it won't kill her.  If the overflow attack is powerful enough to be cool, I think that it wouldn't be looked down upon by most people.

I figured the drawback could be different per spell... maybe some inflict blindness, or slow, or some hp damage. it adds variance and i think falls into her afflicted character well. Like, the more she pulls power from the esper, the more it costs her. It's almost a metaphor for what magitek has done to the empire (i totally just came up with that now). But the major idea is that it would be overall a good thing to pull that attack, just with some hindrance attached.


With all that in mind: do you still think we should go menu-based? Are any of your concerns appeased? I'm not exactly opposed to making a menu, but it will be more work (like that's ever stopped me). I really want to make sure we do right by the character.

Any other opinions? I'm still open to other ideas, I just want to get whatever we decide rolling.

this is a fantastic idea, I feel having it uncontrollable at first is great, this can give enormous potential to the char, I can think of a few ideas here and there, I'll get back to you for sure with something solid

Wow, somehow I completely missed the part in your original post about mixing and matching. I remember the sentence directly before and the sentence directly after, so I have no clue how I misread that.  My mental model was still closer to FF6Fanatic's idea.  So effectively, my comments were directed towards nobody's idea at all.

Without having to commit entirely to an element, I can see us being able to give the Espers a bunch more variety, particularly in the case of Espers like Maduin.  I still feel like non-elemental attacks will be most common, but not to the point of overtaking everything else anymore.  There's still some Espers I'm not sure about, but that's not a huge deal as I'm sure you'll have more ideas than I do about that.  With one element per Esper, I feel most of the thematic choices would have to be major stretches for this to work, but with this idea it should be just fine.

I like the idea of having individual overflow repercussions better as well.  I suggested something simple for your sake.

I guess once the ability itself is coded, we can put together a table of ideas for what the abilities should be.

I like the idea of mix and matching from a pool of spells. That way it becomes a matter of picking spells that are appropriate/make sense for each individual Esper. This also means that the number of spells available to choose from will be a big factor in how unique each of the Esper fusions will be.

Which kinda segues into my question: how unique do we want the Esper sets/Fuse options to be? Of course, a good number of spells will be shared between them; that's part of the mix-and-match model, if I understand correctly. But overall how similar will be they be? IOW, what degree of commonality will they have?

I'm foreseeing that a hefty part of the work will be coming up with spells and their animations. But that can be fun, especially if each of us designs a couple of spells. That's the idea of a community project anyway, amirite?

Also, like B-Run explained: with each Esper offering a more diverse set of spells/moves than the traditional element-based scheme, I can imagine each of the Espers having attack, healing and support moves, in any combination that makes sense. That's pretty cool IMO. On that note: do you guys think we should be able to pick between Attack/Healing/Support in a menu? Or just stick with the uncontrollable idea?

Finally, I'm still deciding if I'd like to see a menu, instead of just choosing Fuse and losing control of the character. Kinda torn between the two.