Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)
FFVI Worlds Collide

#11
Posts: 2
Threads: 0
Thanks Received: 0
Thanks Given: 0
Joined: Jan 2020
Reputation: 0
Status
None
The random prices are extremely silly. Selling items for random prices is actually much sillier than buying them for random prices. After you open a few chests you're almost guaranteed to find a few worthless items that sell for an obscene amount of money. It's not very satisfying, especially since it requires manually checking the sell price of everything you pick up early on.

My suggestion for the random prices would be for items to each be worth anywhere from half to double their original price, instead of a totally random amount. Or possibly for prices to be shuffled among items that were sold in the same shop in the base game, though that sounds way more complicated to code.

Meanwhile the non-random prices result in elixirs, merit awards, gauntlets, and many other items being sold in shops for 2 GP. That's not okay, rofl. Either items that cost 2 GP need to be excluded from shops, or they need their prices manually adjusted.

My initial read on the "scaling enemies" mode is that it's extraordinarily dumb. Like most games with scaling enemies, every level you gain makes you weaker. Unlike most games with scaling enemies, 99% of encounters can be avoided, and bosses don't give XP. So the optimal play by far is to gain a few magic points on the veldt and then end the game at level 5. I'm not a fan of this mode at all. A more interesting mechanic might be for enemies and bosses to scale based on how many bosses the player has defeated, instead of based on the player's level. This would let the player do the game in any order, which I think is probably the goal, but leveling up would actually make the player stronger instead of weaker.
  Find
Quote  

#12
Posts: 6
Threads: 0
Thanks Received: 0
Thanks Given: 0
Joined: Jan 2020
Reputation: 0
Status
None
(01-12-2020, 02:44 AM)NPCnextdoor Wrote: Thank you for your swift reply.

Here are some other bugs, sorry!
  • In Mobliz, in the injured soldier house, the event that shows Duane being worried and the dog going in the basement is active, even though it shouldn't.
  • Also, it doesn't seem that you can open the hidden chest normally containing the Relic Ring between the three doors in Owzer's house. And the 3x NightShade battle seems to have been removed.
  • In Cyan's dream, the moving chest that needs the Lump of Metal to stop is unresponsive. The chest behind it is therefore unreachable.
  • Albrook's Pub in the WOR is still full of Imperial soldiers and waitresses.
  • Umaro appeared under a rock after Kefka's defeat.

And as for the shops, I agree that randomized should be well... randomized. I will be waiting for your second option, then. Wink

I just finished my first seed. I like it! Well done, sir! Smile

Awesome, well done! How long did your run take?
  Find
Quote  

#13
Posts: 1
Threads: 0
Thanks Received: 0
Thanks Given: 0
Joined: Jan 2020
Reputation: 0
Status
None
So i just finished playing through this and really enjoyed it. i played with everything on random and had all the options turned on just to see how stuff worked

i learned that the option for no running means the guardian boss in vector ends with death and while i didn't actually fail at my run i was thinking that it is possible to fail a run if you have max characters/espers required for kefkas tower and miss one of them, like choosing wrong for lone wolf. another missable is on the phantom train, the ghost gave me an esper. not sure if i would be able to go back in if i hadn't found it before beating the train. also, i went for every esper, so i  enjoyed the option for not allowing doom gaze to run away

i played with random shop items and prices and for the first 15-20 minutes of my run i was pretty much just looking for potions and stuff to sell to buy way overpowered equipment but once i started going money stopped being a problem and i started needing more hp to survive things that my items didn't protect me against so i stopped using moogle charms because they were just making bosses too hard. my next game will be with shuffled shop items and no random prices, i think that'll be a better balance for me

also, i missed one esper, i didn't stop by the underground castle when moving figaro and missed that dragon and by the time i realized it i was already near the end of kefkas tower and really tired


[Image: JscsSNd.png]


Attached Files Thumbnail(s)
   
  Find
Quote  
[-] The following 1 user says Thank You to beep for this post:
  • AtmaTek (01-12-2020)

#14
Posts: 18
Threads: 3
Thanks Received: 0
Thanks Given: 0
Joined: Nov 2019
Reputation: 0
Status
None
I want to thank everyone for trying out this mod and their feedback! Today has literally been overwhelming. I was not expecting so much interest and I am very happy people are enjoying themselves.

(01-12-2020, 02:44 AM)NPCnextdoor Wrote: Thank you for your swift reply.

Here are some other bugs, sorry!
  • In Mobliz, in the injured soldier house, the event that shows Duane being worried and the dog going in the basement is active, even though it shouldn't.
  • Also, it doesn't seem that you can open the hidden chest normally containing the Relic Ring between the three doors in Owzer's house. And the 3x NightShade battle seems to have been removed.
  • In Cyan's dream, the moving chest that needs the Lump of Metal to stop is unresponsive. The chest behind it is therefore unreachable.
  • Albrook's Pub in the WOR is still full of Imperial soldiers and waitresses.
  • Umaro appeared under a rock after Kefka's defeat.

And as for the shops, I agree that randomized should be well... randomized. I will be waiting for your second option, then. Wink

I just finished my first seed. I like it! Well done, sir! Smile

Thanks a lot NPCnextdoor! Don't be sorry at all I really appreciate the feedback, that is great info. I will look into all of that tomorrow. I fixed the Strago npc error you mentioned with 0.1.2. Great job finishing your first seed, I hope you had fun.

(01-12-2020, 03:59 AM)LockeZ Wrote: The random prices are extremely silly.
That is an option you can change. However, as I mentioned in a previous post I will likely change the default setting to "Shuffle" instead of "Random" for the "Normal" preset tomorrow since a lot of people have been giving the same feedback as you. However, I have also seen some people laughing and having fun with it which is what the overall goal really is.

(01-12-2020, 03:59 AM)LockeZ Wrote: Selling items for random prices is actually much sillier than buying them for random prices.
There is only one variable for buy/sell prices so whatever the buy prices are randomized to the sell prices will be half that. Changing that would likely be a lot of work. If people show a lot of interest in this I can look into it more.

(01-12-2020, 03:59 AM)LockeZ Wrote: My suggestion for the random prices would be for items to each be worth anywhere from half to double their original price
I also mentioned this idea in my previous post, I will try to find time to look into implementing it. This will still have the issue of items that normally sell for 1 gp being very cheap.

(01-12-2020, 03:59 AM)LockeZ Wrote: Or possibly for prices to be shuffled among items that were sold in the same shop in the base game
That is an idea I had not thought of before. This might be a good option to investigate. Thank you for the idea.

(01-12-2020, 03:59 AM)LockeZ Wrote: Meanwhile the non-random prices result in elixirs, merit awards, gauntlets, and many other items being sold in shops for 2 GP.
Those are the original prices. Items not normally sold in stores are 2 gp and random inventory picks from every possible item.

(01-12-2020, 03:59 AM)LockeZ Wrote: Either items that cost 2 GP need to be excluded from shops, or they need their prices manually adjusted.
Blacklisting items that do not normally sell in shops is essentially what the "Shuffle" option does. A random option to only select from what is already sold could also be implemented.

(01-12-2020, 03:59 AM)LockeZ Wrote: every level you gain makes you weaker
I will have to see more data on this. I believe players may find that levels are more of an inverted bell curve rather than logarithmic.

(01-12-2020, 03:59 AM)LockeZ Wrote: So the optimal play by far is to gain a few magic points on the veldt and then end the game at level 5.
Maybe an option to not earn magic points on the Veldt would solve the issue.

(01-12-2020, 03:59 AM)LockeZ Wrote: A more interesting mechanic might be for enemies and bosses to scale based on how many bosses the player has defeated, instead of based on the player's level.  This would let the player do the game in any order, which I think is probably the goal, but leveling up would actually make the player stronger instead of weaker.
That is an interesting idea I had not considered. It might be possible by using an event word to keep a counter of bosses defeated. I was hoping to possibly eventually implement an option like free enterprise where bosses are shuffled.


Overall, I hope the randomizer can be as easy or hard as people want to make it. It is very difficult to balance such vastly different stages of the game and different player goals such as competition and solo play. I appreciate all the feedback I have been receiving and am working on prioritizing and fixing the issues people have discovered.


I would also like to address a couple other issues/questions I have heard from various places:
There is currently an issue with vargas/ultros in esper mountain where sabin/relm will be in the party for the battle but not actually be recruited if you have 3 or fewer party members which makes these battles trivial. This was an oversight on my end. I originally discovered an issue with sabin and relm not appearing in these battles when they were in your party. The character AI data has a bit to hide them (as well as x/y positions) which were applied regardless of whether they are recruited. Clearing this hide bit to restore the characters in the party will probably need to be reverted. I am still unsure of how to best fix this issue because there are no conditionals available in the ai data and may have to investigate the battle assembly for a permanent solution. In the meantime, a better alternative to the current situation may be to restore the original hide bits and have the characters appear halfway through the battle whether recruited or not. For now, enjoy the easy victories.

Additionally, the auction house does not necessarily have two espers. There are two slots for rewards which can each either be an esper or a "good" item. When "good" items are the reward it can be a challenge to distinguish them from the other randomized items. I hesitate to always make the rewards 2 espers since the time to acquire them might be too skewed compared to other events and might end up a necessity in competitions. For now, when you have the "Randomize Items" option selected I recommend using the WOR auction house which does not have the repeating Cherub Down item and you can more clearly figure out what the rewards are without resorting to the log. In the future, one idea presented that I like was to have an option to always make the espers/"good" items the first two things auctioned so the player can clearly know what the rewards are.

It is very late so I will have to continue addressing these issues tomorrow.
Thank you.
  Find
Quote  
[-] The following 2 users say Thank You to AtmaTek for this post:
  • beep (01-13-2020), juef (01-13-2020)

#15
Posts: 2
Threads: 0
Thanks Received: 0
Thanks Given: 0
Joined: Jan 2020
Reputation: 0
Status
None
Some bugs:
  • After beating the Imperial Camp near Doma, the western exit doesn't work.  You can walk quite a distance out of bounds off the side of the screen, but you don't transition to the world map. I don't THINK this happened in the vanilla game?
  • Some barrels in Thamasa in the world of balance that should have items don't seem to have items, unless I'm going crazy. I think the items normally disappear in the WoR or something.
  • Talking to the friendly ghosts on the Phantom Train doesn't do anything.  I understand you don't want them to join the party, but they should say "..." or something instead of turning toward you for one frame and then moving away.
Some more feedback:
  • Monster-in-a-box fights are terrifying.  I personally love it, but there should probably be an option to make them have the same monster they'd normally have.
  • I really like the way boss fights and events randomly give either an esper or a character.  It makes the combat in the early game a lot more interesting and more variable, since getting a full party has a much faster effect on what you can beat than finding espers.
  • The utter randomness of equipment makes all but the strongest equipment worthless, since you can find such good items in shops extremely early on in both shop-price modes.  In random-price mode you can afford everything almost immediately because you can sell an iron armor for 30000 GP (and there's no reason not to, unlike a more normal game where if something sells for a lot of money it's because it's useful, and thus selling it is a trade-off). And in fixed-price mode you can afford everything almost immediately because all the best items in the game cost 2 GP.
  • You could totally randomize the cost of Rust-Rid in Zozo.
  • Getting Sabin during the Dadaluma fight and then losing him afterwards feels really awkward.  I'd rather Dadaluma's HP just be reduced so he can be beaten without Pummel. (Edit: It looks like this is actually a bug. I thought it was on purpose because you were worried people couldn't win without him.)

I don't think removing magic points from the veldt would solve anything, personally. If there's no way to get magic points without getting XP, then I think that would just cause me to not bother trying to get any magic points either. When you're level 5, the enemies are also level 5, and you have two ragnaroks equipped, or fixed dice + offering, or some other good endgame equipment, it seems like you can kill every boss in one hit. It's possible I'm slightly exaggerating, since I haven't exactly played this a bunch of times (I've played two seeds now and watched someone on twitch), but that was how it felt.
  Find
Quote  
[-] The following 1 user says Thank You to LockeZ for this post:
  • AtmaTek (01-12-2020)

#16
Posts: 48
Threads: 7
Thanks Received: 0
Thanks Given: 0
Joined: Dec 2017
Reputation: 0
Status
None
For the prices, may I suggest that if randomized shops is chosen, then prices are given to every item in the game according to their rarity. They did that in Free Entreprise. So, there wouldn't be items that sell for 2 GP in shops, even with "Normal" prices. Also, randomized prices don't have to be a flat randomization, you could choose some formulas that makes the prices gravitate towards certain values (perhaps their "Normal" prices).

Also, it appears that Rare Items have been removed from the game. Do you intend to put them back so that the game becomes kind of a fetch quest, a la Free Entreprise? And if you're worried that there are not enough Rare Items to make it interesting, I have a couple of ideas! The Rare Items could be shuffled along with the other rewards.
  Find
Quote  

#17
Posts: 377
Threads: 34
Thanks Received: 10
Thanks Given: 7
Joined: Dec 2018
Reputation: 18
Status
Moog
(01-12-2020, 07:15 AM)AtmaTek Wrote: I want to thank everyone for trying out this mod and their feedback! Today has literally been overwhelming. I was not expecting so much interest and I am very happy people are enjoying themselves.

<...>

I would also like to address a couple other issues/questions I have heard from various places:
There is currently an issue with vargas/ultros in esper mountain where sabin/relm will be in the party for the battle but not actually be recruited if you have 3 or fewer party members which makes these battles trivial. This was an oversight on my end. I originally discovered an issue with sabin and relm not appearing in these battles when they were in your party. The character AI data has a bit to hide them (as well as x/y positions) which were applied regardless of whether they are recruited. Clearing this hide bit to restore the characters in the party will probably need to be reverted. I am still unsure of how to best fix this issue because there are no conditionals available in the ai data and may have to investigate the battle assembly for a permanent solution. In the meantime, a better alternative to the current situation may be to restore the original hide bits and have the characters appear halfway through the battle whether recruited or not. For now, enjoy the easy victories.

Additionally, the auction house does not necessarily have two espers. There are two slots for rewards which can each either be an esper or a "good" item. When "good" items are the reward it can be a challenge to distinguish them from the other randomized items. I hesitate to always make the rewards 2 espers since the time to acquire them might be too skewed compared to other events and might end up a necessity in competitions. For now, when you have the "Randomize Items" option selected I recommend using the WOR auction house which does not have the repeating Cherub Down item and you can more clearly figure out what the rewards are without resorting to the log. In the future, one idea presented that I like was to have an option to always make the espers/"good" items the first two things auctioned so the player can clearly know what the rewards are.

It is very late so I will have to continue addressing these issues tomorrow.
Thank you.

You could remove the event calls from the Vargas and Ultros (SketchTutorial) fight scripts.  Ultros is a perfectly viable and challenging boss without Relm to finish the fight, and Vargas's HP can be adjusted down to make the Blitz tutorial unnecessary.  This would also help advance your future goal of shuffling boss positions.

For the 'rare thing costs 2 GP' problem, you could assign a GP value based on what you think the thing should be worth.  Relics tend to be worth between 3k and 20k gold.  You could go up to 40k for rare weapons/armor.  Ethers could be worth 5x a Tincture and Dry Ethers 5x that; x5 again for Elixirs and Megalixers.  I know this isn't vanilla but I'm sure your players would understand you assigning a value you feel is appropriate for these items.


As for the auction house, maybe it should be espers/characters instead of espers/items?  You could tweak the 'robot imp' event you removed to make it the purchase of a party member (of course clipping the bit where the little rich kid forces the millionaire to buy them). Kappa!
"Next on our auction, it's ROBOT CYAN!".  It'd be funny and make it clear that the limited event has triggered.
  Find
Quote  
[-] The following 1 user says Thank You to C-Dude for this post:
  • AtmaTek (01-12-2020)

#18
Posts: 6
Threads: 0
Thanks Received: 0
Thanks Given: 0
Joined: Jan 2020
Reputation: 0
Status
None
I think that scaling enemies is a great way to start the game and learn it. Once you've really memorized locations and have routing established, I feel like the proper "hard" or "tournament" type of logic would be to run without the scaling. Yes, it's easy to completely overpower enemies once you get really good equipment (Which can easily happen). That's a little tougher when scaling is turned off. I thought it would be interesting if you could have a scaling feature but include a "+X levels" scale on ROM generation. So basically, the enemies will scale, but they'll also be X levels higher than the party is. This adds a level of difficulty to it.

As for shops/equipment, the more difficult, but I think possibly better option, would be to change it from a flat randomized price to randomizing the base cost of the item from X to +/- Y% which is generated randomly for each item. For example, if an item normally costs 100, it could randomize down to 10 or up to 1000 or even 10000 (Not sure what the limits you'd place on the % would be, mostly up to you). For the good/rare equipment, I'd say start their cost at maybe 50000 or 100000, maybe even higher, and then do another +/- Y%, though probably on a softer set of limits than basic items and equipment. This allows them to still be put into the pool but harder to buy as easily in the early game.

Obviously these would all be more complicated to implement but I think, personally, would make a better experience. I'm definitely having a ton of fun with the first couple seeds I've generated (Haven't finished one yet but I also haven't really "tried" to either...) and can't wait to see where this goes!
  Find
Quote  

#19
Posts: 272
Threads: 2
Thanks Received: 2
Thanks Given: 0
Joined: Apr 2013
Reputation: 3
Status
Prowess
Biggest thing to keep in mind is that the maximum price that an item can be is 65535 GP, so that's a limitation to work within. An alternate solution would be to perhaps make items sell for a quarter of their buying price instead of a half. That doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to me, and it would allow for a much higher barrier to buy the expensive stuff that can be alleviated by grinding out GP instead of just selling, thus introducing a potentially significant expenditure of time that the player now has to make a judgment call on if it's worth it or not.


The only thing harder than finding a needle in a haystack is finding a haystack in a needle. Laugh
  Find
Quote  

#20
Posts: 40
Threads: 25
Thanks Received: 1
Thanks Given: 0
Joined: Feb 2019
Reputation: 6
Status
None
I will say that at first, I was thinking this would be a one and done thing, and I think under normal circumstances, it would, but this is surprisingly a pleasant randomizer for people looking forward to having a pleasant time, while the Beyond Chaos randomizer is more for the people who like the challenge, as both have their own reasons to be played, but I figured this would be more for races.

- When I started, I thought the prices were outrageous, especially since we started with 0 GP, but we can get that no problem, especially since some good items are for a cheap price. I also notice the amount of duplicates in shops as I couldn't count how many slots Bio Blaster took up in the Figaro tools shop in world of ruin.

- The way things advance are clever, and you'd need the knowledge of how they advance, but there are things that I wouldn't know, but found by accident. Examples are the leader "boss" when I enter Doma in world of balance, and sleeping for the first time in Thamasa, even in World of Ruin.

- If there's one thing I do adore, it's the fact that during the escape from the floating continent, once you said wait on getting on the airship twice, you don't have to wait until the timer hits 5 seconds as the reward will show up after saying wait twice. I also like how you can enter Cyan's dream with a full party.

- But a few things I am a bit bummed out about is no sealed cave, which I guess means no banquet, but I can't be too harsh on this for the events to work properly. Another thing is more of a nitpick, but Kefka no longer does, in my opinion, the best line in Final Fantasy 6: "Wait! He says! Do I look like a waiter!?" Since this is for races, it's necessary to remove that, and even in normal play since Sabin's not with you most of the time, but I am bummed out about it.

The reason why this randomizer might be a one and done thing, at least for me, is because it doesn't randomize as much, but it does randomize enough for the normal player. The only bugs I found were the western exit of the imperial camp, which I guess is unused, but more importantly, the lump of metal not being able to be used to get the treasure chest. I also found another bug in the magitek section of Cyan's dream where graphics can glitch out in battle in certain formations, but I think this is the game itself and not the randomizer.

- When I say it doesn't randomize as much, it's because Beyond Chaos randomized a lot more, but I think it's for the best, especially when appealing to the target audience, but even though I can use other sources, like FF3usME and FF3 SE, to make each experience unique, it would be great if there was a way to randomize the sprites, just like the Link to the Past randomizer, even though they might not look good in certain palettes. I know this is a minor detail that doesn't really matter, but personally, I feel that these aesthetic changes allow me to replay the randomizer more.

In conclusion, I think this will be great for races while Beyond Chaos is great for a unique and challenging experience. Keep up the good work. I'll look forward to the official release, which would be version 1.0.
  Find
Quote  
[-] The following 1 user says Thank You to HoxNorf for this post:
  • AtmaTek (01-12-2020)



Forum Jump:

Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)


Theme by Madsiur2017Custom Graphics by JamesWhite