FFVI Project: Meltdown

I'm saving the event editing for when I"m finished with vanilla, sans some specific additions I have in mind.

RE: gem box

I actually hadn't thought of moving it to become a mid-game item. Interesting. This is why I need this kind of feedback. I was thinking of making it an option to make buffing more effective, as opposed to a de-facto go-to for nuking damage.

As for my back row damage modifier, I should note that's damage taken, not damage recieved. I always get that misinterpetation when I try to explain it. Any character in the back row takes more magic damage. It's experiemental right now in terms of balance, as I haven't even come close to the point at which it begins to matter, but I"m leaving it in for the meantime.

As for speed, I'm tightly regulating it. If I attach it to any espers, it'll come at the expense of something else. Speed effectively walled at 60 or so in vanilla due to animations, and removing that wall changes everything.


Decided I'm reinserting HP and MP restoration for the present. It distinguishes my hack and I think balance can be achieved with work.

The main issues I'm having at present:

Damage formula. I originally changed it as a lashback against the heavily level-oriented formula, but I'm having second thoughts, and the formula at present is wonky at best. I'm tempted to reinsert level as a factor to a smaller degree than was present in vanilla, but I'm unsure what to do in general. Vanilla's formulae are broken.

Esper bonuses. I have three options, though I'd love to hear alternative ideas:

1) remove them. This is a distinguishing feature of FFVI in general, so I'm highly adverse to this. Several hacks already do it, and understandably so, as stat bonuses vary greatly and make balance hard.

2) Restrict them by character. This is kind of BNW's thing. It'd function for me, but it'd feel samey on the whole.

3) Add stat penalties to the bonuses. Pandora's Box does this. It's the idea I'm most strongly considering, but I've been mulling this one for years and am still unconvinced it's the right path.

Quick is also something I need to take a longer look at. I'm considering either making it kill the caster (and thus making it required that the caster use it on somebody else, who then would have to make the decision of using one of their free turns to revive the Quick caster,) or removing it. Those are the only two ways I can think of to mitigate its potency, given my other balancing decisions (namely MP restoration makes MP use less of a mitigating factor, and slow just isn't potent enough to matter here, even with ATB differences.)