FFVI Worlds Collide

So I spent a lot of time churning through my first full play through of the game (18-20hrs slowly combing through) and overall i have to say it is truly great! Turned out to be a long post, lol. Thanks for the read.

First and foremost Paladin Shield needs to be removed from the shop list. Cursed shield is fine but Paladin Shield just negates 70% of all attacks in this game and there is no price tag you can put on it where it simply is not optimal to find it in a shop and grind the GP to buy 4 of them without shooting the economy of the game in the foot. Add that everyone who can equip things (basically no umaro/gogo) can where it and it just should not be buyable. Cursed Shield at least takes 256 battles if you have 7 to unlock 4 Paladin Shields and one Cursed Shield takes 255. Buying Adamant in FF4FE is fine because of the economics of it as well as all items being in the pool for all shops making it super rare. Its fine to have OP stuff in chests and Coliseum because of the work needed to get them. There is little lost to just search the shops as that is kind of something you want to do anyways and you just write down notable items to buy later. If I see Paladin in shop I just beeline to the veldt to grind GP early and make up the lost time later. There are other items that might also want to be cut from the shop and make them chest/coliseum only but nothing as obvious as Paladin Shield and you can always have an option to add it back in to the shop tables for those who want that chance at easy God Mode. Did I mention Pally teaches Ultima? Its great.

Which brings me to the Veldt and Exp in general. So right now there is an obvious best strat regardless of settings. Find yourself one or two characters and some basic usable gear, hunt espers fighting as little as possible until you have some good magic to learn and then fight on the Veldt to earn GP and Magic Points. Continuing to fight as little as possible use said GP to upgrade your gear, find the +mag espers, find the characters you need for Kefka's Tower, Power Level until your magic stat is super high without pushing your level too high and then tackle the tower to beat the game. Rinse and Repeat. One solution to this is to add Exp to the vedlt and bosses. I'm not a fan of this option as the point of a randomizer is to expand your options, not limit them. The solution then is not so clean. The problem is being caused by two major factors, one of your making and the other natural to FF6. Basing the levels of the enemies on your party needs to go away, period. At least for bosses. You can't hand that level of control into the hands of your players or they will solve your game. Rando's are not meant to be solved, only examined for strats, or else each new game is not a puzzle to be solved by itself. Setting the BASE Level of enemies to a party average might work but then how do you modify it? I suggest that you modify it by area based on the encounter tables. so every enemy in the Narshe mines in WoB might have a +0 to the enemies level effectively making no change. But say by the time you reach the raft section of the gam, Lethe River i believe, the enemies get a +1. not much but it is still an early game area. by the time you reach WoR nothing has less than a +5 and I probably would go no higher than a +10. You can also add EXP adjustments based on scale. So if someone loads up a times 10 exp game, that would be the MAX exp gain but early game enemies might have only half of what was selected. Just a thought. What this means is that easy areas give less exp but are less dangerous and harder areas would give more exp but be at a higher level. Risk vs reward. The second issue you have though is the stupid Esper tied to stats issue. I love the Espers as a whole but that one decision kind of spoils it for me. Honestly i would just look at what people liked the most from other hacks of FF6 and just implement that unless you have something specific in mind. What ever you do Stats need to be Unlocked from only a few Espers or the Exp issue is not gonna go away. A rebalance of Magic Damage vs Physical Damage might also help but i would look at that much later as its more a band aid than a solution to the current issue.

One small but important thing i feel would be nice is something, in game or on the site, that tells you what events where removed. Took me a while to figure out there was no character to get in Coliseum, only one character on the veldt and not two (Wob and WoR), thought the burning house had been taken out until i rested in the inn, etc. just a lot of confusion as i tried to figure out the new rules of the road. I was able to suss out most things, looked up a few things on these forums or asked in the chat of someone playing it on stream but i have played FF6 for thousands of hours collectively. I imagine someone who has only played FF6 2-3 times and thinks they know the game in and out would not be able to figure everything out and might get frustrated. Even if you plan to add a tutorial of sorts in Narshe later, a Text Document or something in the actual site page would be helpful in the mean time. Could also be a nice place to post patch notes as you go through the Beta.

One last thing before I forget, In Kefka's tower, there is a place you could soft lock the game. In the place before you fight Guardian and the Statues you reach a spot that you can't go back. If you have all three parties there then your stuck if you can't beat the bosses for what ever reason and dont have some form of the spell warp. This isn't a problem in the main game because you definitely has the esper for warp so you could always learn it with someone and get out but here you might not have it. Also, people who have played the game a long time tend to go in with only one real party to fight the bosses and just go in and out of the tower while running from enemies. If they do this while forgetting to check if they have warp, because they usually always do, they could get themselves stuck. One solution might be to somehow have every character start with warp learned or something like that but I was wondering if there wasn't a way to just not have to switch between 3 parties. like maybe when we hit the button to switch it just swaps the party we are using with the other party as well. Kefka's Tower just slowed to crawl once I got there and i hope the answer isnt that I just need 3 useable parties to tackle the Tower. It never felt so sluggish before but then the game was more sluggish too. With this open and free experience it just makes the closed off and forced final dungeon stick out more. Moogle Charms help but, meh. if there is nothing to be done then don't sweat it, i'll live. but if you can do something to open the place up it would be much appreciated. Maybe something like the Pass from FF4FE could work to take you straight to the Kefka fight bypassing the Tower itself much like how the Pass bypasses the moon?