Q: Is a No Battle/Encounter Hack possible?

Very valid points, as usual. I didn't even think of editing non-skip battles to 1hp, that would fix the lack of leveling up without going superhulk on everything.



When I say "boring" I was refering to, as you said, there would be no reason to explore because you need nothing from those dungeons. I admit, I've played plenty of times on pretty much every FF game where random battles were nothing but a time wasting hassle, but turning them off always made me lean toward no looking at the story part much either. Why listen to what that boss guy, or train is gonna say if he's gonna die as soon as you highlight an attack?

An off topic example, I was playing the game Dead Rising 2 awhile back (PC version, the only way to go) and the time limit on the game just seemed to ruin it. You were always on a deadline, it was actually impossible to do every side quest in one playthrough because of it. So, break out the hacks, slow the game from... oh I think it was about a 60/1 speed on time, something like that, anyway I set it to 1/1, real time. And while kinda fun, it broke something.

You see, with the time limit, the world map seemed endless, the quest infinite. You could actually play the entire game successfully and never see a single boundry. Without it, granted you could spend hours hitting zombies in the head with golfballs, but game got old, quick.

The point, just as you've said in a much more direct and eloquent manner, while it sometimes seems like a practical idea to remove something annoying, without any limits (not necessarily "challenges" even) the world gets small... quicker than you might realize.

Not to mention, yes I liked the story in FF, but without the bonds you build through those many battles, it becomes kinda hard to care if any of them are gonna die.

And the reason I say:

I don't really see anybody spending time on actually doing it as a hack.

Is in referance to:

in which "I"(not me, as I lack the skills) hack

It would actually be a good project for the OP to learn those skills, but again I don't see someone else doing all the work. That being said, if this project was going to be done, it WOULD leave a LOT(dumping of the monsters/magic/weapons/etc.) of space for some really really hardcore custom events and it would make up for the lack of battles...