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FFVI Worlds Collide

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I was going to wait until much later to suggest this, but since people are already posting about characters already. Here is my take on characters. There should only be 14 characters in the roster (Terra up to Umaro). But now, here is the fun part. Baram, Leo, Banon, Kefka, Gestahl, "Cadet", "Merchant", "Doma Sentry", "Narshe Guard", Maria, Daryl, Rachel, Yura, Maduin, and many other Final Fantasy VI characters should be available to the shuffling of the character roster (14 only). I even saw a bird/seagull made into a character, how imaginative can one be! For the Morph sprite (Esper Terra), a male equivalent should be created by giving short hair and a male torso. A male character can end up with the Morph command.

Many of these characters already have a full spritesheet, including chocobo riding sprite and portrait while others are lacking (chocobo riding sprite) such as Kefka for example (last time I check). But these can be made. The "nameless" characters can be assign these unused actors who have names; Tork, Jade, Custer, Fabian, Drake, Sara, Case, Siele, Ray, Reiker, Lance, Bob, Pepper, Tau, Victor, and Ho. Only characters with full spritesheet should be accepted and used. If portraits prove a nuisance for spriter(s) to make, maybe do away with portraits altogether and replace them with the idle sprite of said character similar to how Final Fantasy V's main menu.

There should be an option to choose our 14 characters right at the start. Of course, the characters being totally randomized (any character/free for all) should be present as well.
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Request: By default, all new games should start with an esper that grants a stat bonus, either random or selected from the list of all espers. This way, level ups feel less wasted.

Alternatively, implement the Brave New World esper level system which mostly fixes this problem. (Characters gain a separate batch of EXP/AP for espers that grant bonuses at esper levels which are separate from character levels.) Alternatively, give each party member who's mastered an esper a level-independent scaling bonus, like +10% Stamina or +30% MP, so players needn't micromanage their team so much.

Request: Add the option to start with a certain number of characters, random or/and chosen from a list. (For example, you could start with 3 randos, Celes, Edgar, Gogo, and Setzer.) I was disappointed at the general lack of party members in the early game.

Request: Add an option to randomize the location of all party members. Exclude from this list espers, items, and non-PCs.
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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?
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  • AtmaTek (02-04-2020)

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@Mogram: Normally in Kefka's Tower, you can return to the start and use a crane hook to leave. I only learned this many years after I beat the game the first time.

@AtmaTek: Adding an option to toggle which super items are available in shops or in the game world at all would be handy. I've never found a Paladin Shield in shops, nor do I ever recall uncursing one, but a Pal Shield seems super powerful for good reason.
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  • AtmaTek (02-04-2020)

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(02-01-2020, 05:10 AM)Mogram Wrote: 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. 
For now, in a race setting, it may not be feasible to grind ~200k GP to get four of them depending on the game settings, notably the GP multiplier. Races can be done in probably 90-150 minutes in general, and even spending 10 minutes on it may be an overall loss in a race. It's possible that the defensive bonus doesn't help much if the player handles attacks with other methods, and Ultima isn't the only high tier offensive option. There's also the potential fix farther in the future where shop prices can be more than 65535; this would also solve the problem.

Quote: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.
Given that it's an option, there's no reason to remove it. It's a great option for newer players, and for experts, it allows a clever player to get through the game faster without the solution being "to just grind" because there's a lot that can be done without grinding, and it's naturally faster to do it this way.
Quote: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.
Do you mean something other than the text document that's generated with each seed? Like, just a description of how to get each item, instead of making players look at the text file and spoil what they'd get for going to some location? I think such a document exists, but yeah, could be prudent to add a link to said document to the site itself; I think a link to it only exists somewhere on the Discord server.
Quote: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.
If you have all parties step off the switches, and then step back on to the switches, it opens the path back into the first half of the dungeon, so there's no risk of bricking the seed this way.
Quote: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.
Level scaling does help with this; it's possible to take level 3s in there and have them provide meaningful support, allowing your damage dealers to be attacking more consistently.


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  • AtmaTek (02-04-2020)

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(01-27-2020, 09:50 PM)Fenrir Wrote: Baram, Leo, Banon, Kefka, Gestahl, "Cadet", "Merchant", "Doma Sentry", "Narshe Guard", Maria, Daryl, Rachel, Yura, Maduin, and many other Final Fantasy VI characters should be available.
Thanks Fenrir. Do you mean more than just changing sprites/names? Only Banon and Leo have abilities so including all the others would require making up new abilities for everyone.

(01-31-2020, 06:20 PM)Endarire Wrote: Request: By default, all new games should start with an esper that grants a stat bonus, either random or selected from the list of all espers.  This way, level ups feel less wasted.
You can find espers without gaining levels if you are interested in min/maxing. The option you mentioned is also possible although I probably would not make it the default. The most worthwhile bonuses are typically on good espers that might make the early game too easy. Randomizing/shuffling bonuses/spells could help.

(01-31-2020, 06:20 PM)Endarire Wrote: Request: Add the option to start with a certain number of characters, random or/and chosen from a list.  (For example, you could start with 3 randos, Celes, Edgar, Gogo, and Setzer.)  I was disappointed at the general lack of party members in the early game.
There would need to be a limit on the number of characters you could start with and would mean more item rewards from events. Maybe just allow choosing a starting party? It would also help me with debugging. That alone might be worth it haha.

(01-31-2020, 06:20 PM)Endarire Wrote: Request: Add an option to randomize the location of all party members.  Exclude from this list espers, items, and non-PCs.
I apologize. I do not understand what you mean by this. Can you clarify?

(02-01-2020, 05:10 AM)Mogram Wrote: Thanks for the read.
Thanks for the post!

(02-01-2020, 05:10 AM)Mogram Wrote: First and foremost Paladin Shield needs to be removed from the shop list.
Paladin Shield only appears with the random option. It is also available as a possible reward from events. I think you are suggesting a new random option that does not include Paladin Shield? If so, I would not mind adding that if there is demand for it. I'm somewhat afraid of decisions like that becoming a slippery slope where people then ask why is Illumina, Ragnarok (also teaches ultima), snow muffler, economizer, gem box, etc... in random shops. I would want to draw a definitive line somewhere before adding the option. Maybe the items available from events should be the ones not in shops?

(02-01-2020, 05:10 AM)Mogram Wrote: 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
I currently disagree with this. In addition to the points Cecil made, I think many conditions can make this suboptimal. For example, the optimal strategy might change depending on what else is in the shops. Great weapons/armor/relics for much cheaper which take less time to obtain may be a bigger benefit. Or if you think your race opponent believes this to be the best strategy and your only option to win is to not also do it then your strategy may change.

However, I am very open to changing my mind on this. If every race begins turning into a grind for paladin shields I will absolutely make this (and any other necessary) change.

(02-01-2020, 05:10 AM)Mogram Wrote: all items being in the pool for all shops making it super rare.
I might misunderstand, but this is how it works in Worlds Collide also. There are a lot of shops so Paladin Shield is likely (not always) somewhere but you will have to do some searching (and possibly never find it).

(02-01-2020, 05:10 AM)Mogram Wrote: Its fine to have OP stuff in chests and Coliseum because of the work needed to get them.
That is a good point. Removing things like Paladin Shield from shops would help increase the value of the Coliseum. Chests, however, may actually be more valuable than shops because they require no grinding and can often be easily checked while aiming for other goals. While one player grinds for 4 shields, another may find 2 on the way to characters/espers.

(02-01-2020, 05:10 AM)Mogram Wrote: So right now there is an obvious best strat regardless of settings.
I very much appreciate all your feedback. You have obviously given this a lot of thought which is excellent. However, I am very skeptical of this claim. How are you defining best? Could you please specify which times you are achieving? If there really is a best strategy regardless of settings that will take immediate priority. I would be horrified to learn that all of the settings I have worked on are irrelevant.

(02-01-2020, 05:10 AM)Mogram Wrote: 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.
I do not really mind if some players "solve" the game. I am more interested in if they have fun doing it. I would prefer not to remove a "solvable" option if people are enjoying it. I want casual players to find value as well. However, if there are ways to improve an existing option (there always are) I am extremely interested.

Additionally, I would be interested in hearing your opinion on the option to not scale the final battles.

(02-01-2020, 05:10 AM)Mogram Wrote: 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.
Please correct me if I am mistaken but this sounds essentially like vanilla. It seems difficult to hardcode some areas to be more difficult and give more rewards than others without the game becoming linear again.

(02-01-2020, 05:10 AM)Mogram Wrote: Esper tied to stats issue. I love the Espers as a whole but that one decision kind of spoils it for me.
The latest version (0.3.0) allows for setting no esper bonuses.

(02-01-2020, 05:10 AM)Mogram Wrote: 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.
I agree. Documentation is a major issue right now. The guides-repository on discord is likely the best source for that right now. Originally, I hesitated to provide too much information because I did not want to spoil the experience for people (I was also hoping for even just one person to play it). Now I am afraid new players may be turned off by the lack of guides and information. Things are still changing rapidly and documentation at this point would be one more thing to spend time on trying to keep in sync. As the game grows more stable I will definitely make sure to do a better job of addressing this.

If you are interested, this is an area where people (such as yourself) can contribute to help make sure others know about things like the coliseum, veldt and burning house.

(02-01-2020, 05:10 AM)Mogram Wrote: Could also be a nice place to post patch notes as you go through the Beta.
Absolutely. Clicking the version number should show a changelog. Right now they are scattered in this post and the discord announcement channel.

Another thing missing is a credits page. A lot of people have been helping out, giving feedback and ideas, and supporting the game so far. These people deserve credit for it and I am doing them a disservice. I will fix this as well.

(02-01-2020, 05:10 AM)Mogram Wrote: i hope the answer isnt that I just need 3 useable parties to tackle the Tower.
From a design perspective what I like about this is it gives value to having such a large cast of characters. For the same reason calmness is cast before Kefka, the original developers likely did not want the player to only use the same four characters.

(02-01-2020, 05:10 AM)Mogram Wrote: 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?
This can be probably be done. I personally enjoy the guardian and statue fights that would be skipped but I can add an option for players who prefer to skip them. Or maybe something in the middle where you select 3 parties and are taken to just before the guardians and statues.

Again, Mogram. Thank you very much for such in-depth feedback.
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  • madsiur (02-05-2020)

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Hi Atma,

I posted this on the Discord as well, but I know you said you also like to have things here for easier reference.

I was thinking that one very simple form of gating would be to require FC to get into WoR.  This would force folks to be able to handle the fights there, as well as push people into an often avoided area.  It would also remove some "Sphere 0" checks that people can do with no fighting, like the Phoenix Cave.
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(02-04-2020, 06:09 AM)AtmaTek Wrote:
(01-27-2020, 09:50 PM)Fenrir Wrote: Baram, Leo, Banon, Kefka, Gestahl, "Cadet", "Merchant", "Doma Sentry", "Narshe Guard", Maria, Daryl, Rachel, Yura, Maduin, and many other Final Fantasy VI characters should be available.
Thanks Fenrir. Do you mean more than just changing sprites/names? Only Banon and Leo have abilities so including all the others would require making up new abilities for everyone.
Good question, if new commands can be created. These newcomers would need to have some. The example bellow would be one of many options for characters shuffling.
 
I'll provide an example on what I was saying in my previous post, but first this is the vanilla game or non-randomized version.
 
Slot 1: Terra - Morph
Slot 2: Locke - Steal
Slot 3: Cyan - SwdTech
Slot 4: Shadow - Throw
Slot 5: Edgar - Tools
Slot 6: Sabin - Blitz
Slot 7: Celes - Runic
Slot 8: Strago - Lore
Slot 9: Relm - Sketch
Slot 10: Setzer - Slots
Slot 11: Mog - Dance
Slot 12: Gau - Rage/Leap
Slot 13: Gogo - Mimic
Slot 14: Umaro - ??? (Berserker)
 
Let say the randomizer only has 19 characters available and only 14 out of those 19 will be chosen; Terra, Locke, Cyan, Shadow, Edgar, Sabin, Celes, Strago, Relm, Setzer, Mog, Gau, Gogo, Umaro, Banon, Leo, Biggs, Wedge, and Kefka. Now, let's assume commands are not shuffled to keep this simple.
 
Slot 1: Wedge - Morph
Slot 2: Umaro - Steal
Slot 3: Shadow - SwdTech
Slot 4: Gogo - Throw
Slot 5: Setzer - Tools
Slot 6: Leo - Blitz
Slot 7: Kefka - Runic
Slot 8: Relm - Lore
Slot 9: Terra - Sketch
Slot 10: Strago - Slots
Slot 11: Cyan - Dance
Slot 12: Banon - Rage/Leap
Slot 13: Locke - Mimic
Slot 14: Edgar - ??? (Berserk)
 
But of course, Terra's esper form would need a male equivalent for when a male character ends up with the Morph command. Take Terra's esper sprite and modify the sprite to have short hair with a male torso.
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(02-06-2020, 09:08 PM)Fenrir Wrote: But of course, Terra's esper form would need a male equivalent for when a male character ends up with the Morph command. Take Terra's esper sprite and modify the sprite to have short hair with a male torso.

Or Morph could turn the user into a moogle, kupo.   Confused


New commands can be created, but they have to be applied over existing commands.  This is because monster commands share the list that player commands do, and they don't play nice with menus.  It would take an exorbitant amount of adjustment to the battle engine to change a command beyond Magitek into something usable by the player, which is why it might be better to steer clear of that.

That said, Possess is a pretty useless command that is easily overwritten, and Health and Shock are easy to tweak.  There are a also few commands floating around this message board that can be swapped in for existing commands, such as one that works like Cover from FF4.
There are also some relic-upgrade commands that could be separated to give more variety to that list, such as Capture, Jump, GP Rain, Control, and X-Magic.
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(02-06-2020, 10:01 PM)C-Dude Wrote:
(02-06-2020, 09:08 PM)Fenrir Wrote: But of course, Terra's esper form would need a male equivalent for when a male character ends up with the Morph command. Take Terra's esper sprite and modify the sprite to have short hair with a male torso.

Or Morph could turn the user into a moogle, kupo.   Confused


New commands can be created, but they have to be applied over existing commands.  This is because monster commands share the list that player commands do, and they don't play nice with menus.  It would take an exorbitant amount of adjustment to the battle engine to change a command beyond Magitek into something usable by the player, which is why it might be better to steer clear of that.

That said, Possess is a pretty useless command that is easily overwritten, and Health and Shock are easy to tweak.  There are a also few commands floating around this message board that can be swapped in for existing commands, such as one that works like Cover from FF4.
There are also some relic-upgrade commands that could be separated to give more variety to that list, such as Capture, Jump, GP Rain, Control, and X-Magic.

Actually, Possess is the most broken command even. It can instantly kill anything, including bosses and the final boss. The user would reappear on the airship after being forcefully removed from the party after using Possess. Hence the reason why the ghost characters are unlimited. They are just kick out of the current/active party and need to be place back into the party manually.

I would rather see the Morph command stay true to Final Fantasy VI, being able to transform into an esper at will for the base randomizer. This however doesn't rule out the possibility to have an option to randomize the Morph sprite (esper Terra form) into a random sprite either.

An all character turned into Moogle option would be better, would love to have a full roster of moogles take on Kefka or whoever ends up the final boss if final Kefka gets randomizes eventually.

Being able to use Magitek armors at will would be nice, maybe an Magitek armor mode.

Add: Just remembered, there's also the Summon command and a fix to make it function normally.

I remember seeing a day/night cycle patch in the works, would be interested in seeing that implemented into the randomizer eventually down the road.
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