Official FF6: Beyond Chaos thread (randomizer)

Honestly, I think all of the feedback is good, David. It's nice to see different experiences from someone with a different skill level and play style. It allows me to think critically about my own feedback that I wish to give. And speaking of...

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Ok, so really, I just wanted to make a singular point about game balance. The Meteor spell. The balancing around Meteor is something that I believe could be improved on. It's kind of weak when used by the party, and with an MP cost of 62, it's almost pointless to use unless you have an Economizer. It basically stands as one of my least used spells, especially because Meteor seems to be x1 on the same Esper as Ultima, which only costs 18 MP more. But the real kicker isn't when the party uses it...

The enemies using Meteor are generally the most annoying thing in the game. It's nearly impossible to deal with, even Ultima can be runic-ed. The enemies that use it are generally the exact same enemies(L. 90 Magic, Atma, Kefka, Inferno, and a certain enemy that counters most of the time with Cura(ga)+Meteor). Most of these enemies are way too powerful, unrandomized, and generally wipe the party without fail. Given that the rest of the hack is generally easy enough to get through without grinding, Meteor usually just makes certain battles random chance, or forces the player to grind, which is uninteresting given that after grinding, the only reason the character can survive is just due to having absurd amounts of HP.

During the final battle, it generally forces me to spam 8x attack, Quick+Ultima, or Step Mine+Shield breaking. If Kefka's Meteor were balanced, I wouldn't have to rely on 1 of 3 possible strats, and I'd be able to use characters that have more interesting options more viably.

TL;DR: Meteor is too weak when used by the party, and too strong when used by the enemy.

As for balancing it, I'm not sure what to be done about it. Inferno in particular balances Meteor well, with a combination of it not wiping your party, as well as the more interesting feature of Meteor only being used under certain circumstances, which the player can control. However, with other enemies that are also unrandomized using it, changing their attack scripts might be dicey. I guess that leaves changing the spell properties itself. Lowering damage so that it doesn't party wipe makes it a useless spell for the party to use. Raising the power so that the party can use it makes it too similar to Ultima, and makes it even worse when enemies use it. Changing the MP cost(specifically, lowering it) could be interesting. It offers no advantage to the enemies, who have obscene magic point totals anyways, but it makes it more flexible, and accessible earlier to the party. I suppose it could also be flat out removed/replaced, but I'm not creative enough to think of something that could take its place.

Also, as a side note, I play my games by randomizing Espers so that each Esper can only be equipped by one random character. I realize that most people probably don't do that, and buffing Meteor for the player might make it broken instead. I guess the only thing to do is leave that to abyssonym to consider if Meteor should be balanced, and if so, how.

Rant over.