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Equipment
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Newbie_Power




Joined: 04 Sep 2006
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 12:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
However, Air Blast is the best wind-elemental attack in the game and can easily clear out a horde of monsters in the late game (try it in Narshe's caves, for example).

Gau + Merit Award + Tempest + Stray Kat = HOLY CRAP WIND AND SWORD SPAMMAGE.

Actually, I don't remember where you get the Merit Award so you might still end up using Sabin as your Wind attacker, heh.

Quote:
- A weapon that damages MP instead of HP. Obviously a specialty weapon, but it could be invaluable against certain enemies.
Too bad you can't kill enemies (or die yourself) by running out of MP like you can in Star Ocean 3. That was probably one of the coolest and more creative aspects about that game.

Quote:
- Two types of armor: one gives little defense, but increases max HP; the other doesn't increase HP but does provide defense. You can use a standard progression here and still make the choice interesting.
Oh, didn't Final Fantasy Tactics do this? I didn't even know a defense stat existed in that game until I payed close attention, as I thought Armor was mostly for increasing HP/MP.
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msw188




Joined: 02 Jul 2003
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 1:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You don't see many universal truths outside of mathematics, but Moogle1 may have hit one here:

Quote:
Suplex is just funny


I like the idea of a weapon that only hurts MP. I also like your normal/blunt/sharp triangle, I had trouble making good use of the 'sharp' damage type. I hadn't thought about how much more sense it makes with a multi-hit attack to really punish low defense. I'm not as keen on increasing HP and MP with 'usual' (not rare) equipment. Just a personal preference, that's all. It kind of destroys for me what HP is supposed to be.

Here is an idea only partially ripped off from the Dragon Warrior series. How about armor that can reflect back a portion of the damage received, either physical or magical (maybe even both). It then puts an interesting twist on your other equipment choices; do you want to maximize defense to prevent damage (preferable for a low HP guy), or let your defenses down a bit to allow good damage reflections? Just another thought.

Also, Uncommon, you must have posted while I was making my previous post. The Merit Award is such an interesting concept for a relic, simply because it allows you to break the existing equipment balance, but for only one character. Brilliant!

[totally off topic FF VI discussion]
But I think you are mistaken about Sabin. Sabin is your biggest damage dealer only if you concentrate on him alone. His elemental claws are quite limited (fire and pearl I think that's it), and he only gets one each so he can't genji them for maximum effect. Terra, Celes or Relm rocking any of the "2"'s can outdamage him with single targetting and good elemental usage. If you take the time, Gau can usually outdamage him right away, and throughout the game. But it is mostly later that his usefulness fades to me. Your Coliseum point is iffy at best. Genji double Fire Sabres is better than Fire Claw, Graedus is at least equal to Dragon Claw (to say nothing of Excalibur or Illumina), and with Sabin you run risks of pointless blitzes, in addition to whatever pointless magic he has at the time. Personally I find Terra and Setzer to be very good in the Coliseum (no extra pointless skills, fairly easily brought to high Mg% early on). But the longer the game goes, the more magic you get and the better equipment you get, and Sabin is not strong in either of these categories in my opinion.

Sorry, I haven't talked about this game in detail for a while, its fun to remember some of these little things about one of the funnest parts of the game, the item depth and variety.
[end of off topic thing]
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Moogle1
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 1:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Newbie_Power wrote:
Oh, didn't Final Fantasy Tactics do this? I didn't even know a defense stat existed in that game until I payed close attention, as I thought Armor was mostly for increasing HP/MP.


No, but FF12 does. Actually, it has three armor types: light armor gives HP boosts, heavy armor gives strength boosts, and mystic armor gives magic boosts. FFT's armor only increases HP and MP (except shields, which usually only increase evade).

[offtopic]
Sabin is usually a poor choice for the Colosseum, but only for one reason: Spiraler. Maybe it's just my luck, but he seems to love using Spiraler in the Colosseum. With regards to his damage output, it's not all about his equipment. He has the highest Vigor (i.e. Strength) stat in the game. If you're playing a no-Esper game, he's the best pure fighter. You can also get extra elemental claws, but that's beside the point.

And I forgot about the Stray Cat combo -- the real ultimate combo is Gau + Merit Award + Genji Glove + Tempest + Tempest + Stray Cat. That brokenness aside, Gau is still probably the best character in a no-Esper game, but only if you know what you're doing. He's very hard to use effectively without a FAQ.
[/offtopic]

Also of note is ability/equipment synergy. Flame Shield + Merton, I'm looking at you. This is a rather obvious example, of course -- I'm sure there are lots of better ways to create synergy between what you do and what you wear.
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Newbie_Power




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PostPosted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 2:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
FFT's armor only increases HP and MP
*looks at Item FAQ*

By the dragons, you're right!
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Moogle1
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 2:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh, believe me, I know my FFT.

I think it's an interesting way to do armor. It works out especially well for a strategy game like FFT, where you can calculate the damage of an attack prior to battle. Then you don't have to worry about how much the damage will be reduced by armor, just how much HP the enemy has.

Of course, it can work in a regular RPG as well, and players may find strategic value in raising their HP if healing is based on a factor of max HP (like in every Tri-Ace game I've played).

Another interesting equipment detail in FF12 (which has quite a variety of equipment) is that rods raise Magic Power, whereas staves do not, but increase max MP and usually increase one element's damage. Gives a little variety to dedicated spellcasters, who usually don't have exciting weapons.

Unfortunately, for all the awesome in FF12's equipment, indiscriminate players will find it doesn't matter, since you can switch equipment at any time. Enemy targeting you with a nasty spell? Switch to Mirror Mail before it resolves. Aiming at a water-weak enemy? Switch to Aqua Shot before the attack goes off. The only balancing factor is that it's annoying to go to and from the menu so often.
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Newbie_Power




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PostPosted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 3:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
I think it's an interesting way to do armor. It works out especially well for a strategy game like FFT, where you can calculate the damage of an attack prior to battle. Then you don't have to worry about how much the damage will be reduced by armor, just how much HP the enemy has.
Why I like the idea of raising HP and MP for armor. Watching your HP grow is much easier to see the difference of than watching Defense grow.

Quote:
Of course, it can work in a regular RPG as well, and players may find strategic value in raising their HP if healing is based on a factor of max HP (like in every Tri-Ace game I've played).

It's not just Tri-Ace. I know that Namco's Tales of Symphonia has items that heal for 30% or 60% of HP. The only thing that stops items like this from making them truly better than healing spells is the fact that only the human player(s) can use items and the wait period between using items (at least in ToS or Star Ocean 2. Items ARE better in SO3.)

FF12 sounds like it does well with equipment (but not the fact that you can switch equipment so easily). I haven't played FF12, but from what you describe it does a good job using equipment to give flexibility like the Junction System did (which actually wasn't "flexible" so to speak once you figure out how to twink every stat).
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msw188




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PostPosted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 7:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Being able to change equipment would be a lot less of a balance killer if each person had their own limited item menu (I keep bringing this up, but that's only because it seems like such a good idea, and maybe Mr. Paige is reading and thinking about menu customization... actually probably not, he's probably wondering if anyone has been able to reproduce any of those music bugs).

I had forgotten about Flame Shield Merton, one of my old favorites with Gau (and for the record, I found that you spent enough time on the Veldt to learn what your useful rages were as you were trying to find more, so I never thought an FAQ was really needed for Gau if you had a decent memory). This idea about using equipment that your abilities can take advantage of is great, I'm trying to think of more ways to use this. Nothing clever is coming right now.

Newbie mentioning the wait period between items brings up a very simple aspect we can use in the OHR - wait times. Different weapons can have extremely different wait times for their attacks to balance some things out. Since this wait is not affect by speed, it can add another (limited) dimension.

[offtopic bit]
I tried a no-Esper game (it was pretty fun for the most part), and Sabin was definitely more useful. I'd never used that healing blitz before. Other characters still came out on top though - Terra and Celes obviously, Strago (Pearl Wind), Shadow (he'd probably get my vote for best pure damage dealer, plus his attack animations are nice and short), and of course Gau.
[end all]
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Moogle1
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 10:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Your mention of Shadow brings up another point: perhaps equipment has uses other than being equipped on someone:
- Throwing weapons is an obvious one.
- Several OHR games have let you consume equipment to learn a spell instead (famously FUABMX).
- Perhaps you could have an "ultimate armor" that gives one character a large boost if equipped and gives the entire party a minor boost if not equipped.
- Perhaps a character learns skills by equipping a certain kind of item, but can't use any skills other than the one he's learning if he's equipped a skill-learning item.
- Perhaps a powerful piece of equipment also casts a spell if used from the Item menu in battle -- but of course it'll only be in the Item menu if it's not equipped.

As for spell-ability synergy, it's simple enough to make an ability stronger if a certain item is equipped (use plotscripting to change the attack to a stronger attack), but I'm sure there are less obvious ways to do that.
- A piece of equipment that gives MP a huge boost, but gives a strong hit to attack and magic, plus an ability that consumes all your MP to do proportional damage to enemies.
- A piece of equipment that makes you weak to a certain element, plus an elemental healing spell (the more I think about it, the more I like this one)
- Anti-synergy -- how about a spell that fails if you have a certain elemental resistance?

Also:
Quote:
It's not just Tri-Ace. I know that Namco's Tales of Symphonia has items that heal for 30% or 60% of HP. The only thing that stops items like this from making them truly better than healing spells is the fact that only the human player(s) can use items and the wait period between using items (at least in ToS or Star Ocean 2. Items ARE better in SO3.)

The Tales series is originally tri-Ace. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_%28role-playing_game_series%29)
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Uncommon
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 11:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

msw188 wrote:
His elemental claws are quite limited (fire and pearl I think that's it), and he only gets one each so he can't genji them for maximum effect.

No man, you can totally get two of any of the gloves, Fire, Poison and Pearl especially. To get a second Pearl, you gotta keep in mind that the boss you steal it from is, in fact, two parts. Each one has a Pearl. Thus, you totally do better than any of the Genji'd swords. But, keep in mind, I was talking first two-thirds, though. Once you get the more powerful swords, higher level magic, or Fixed Dice, yeah, you totally have stronger attackers than him. Blitzes are still incredibly useful, though yeah, his equipment is balls.

Moogle1 wrote:
Sabin is usually a poor choice for the Colosseum, but only for one reason: Spiraler. Maybe it's just my luck, but he seems to love using Spiraler in the Colosseum. With regards to his damage output, it's not all about his equipment. He has the highest Vigor (i.e. Strength) stat in the game. If you're playing a no-Esper game, he's the best pure fighter. You can also get extra elemental claws, but that's beside the point.

I usually had all my business done with the Collosseum before I even learned Spiraler. And, yeah, I'd touched on his Vigor stat, even if it was just for a second.

But I'd bet he'd be relatively stronger in a Natural Magic game.
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msw188




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PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 8:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Item costs are definitely something that could be used to diversify equipment (the bow can hit even flying enemies that dodge virtually all other physical attacks, but darnit, arrows do cost money you know!). I'm also pretty intrigued by an armor that helps everyone slightly if left unequipped.

I was pretty happy with a system in my game where a certain character could only learn abilities from items (he was an "item-morph"). This would consume the item, and if you wanted him to learn some of his best stuff, it would cost you some rare (and powerful) weapons. Compounded with the fact that his regular unmorphed attack was incapable of doing more than 1 damage point, this made for a pretty interesting character, I thought.

Quote:
A piece of equipment that gives MP a huge boost, but gives a strong hit to attack and magic, plus an ability that consumes all your MP to do proportional damage to enemies


I don't understand what you mean here. "A strong hit to attack and magic"?

Quote:
To get a second Pearl, you gotta keep in mind that the boss you steal it from is, in fact, two parts. Each one has a Pearl.


I was totally unaware of this. What boss do you steal it from? I always got it as a 'treasure' from beating that pathetic monster-in-a-box in Daryl's Tomb, or whatever that place was called (I think). It's impossible to have Locke at that point (I guess you could skip it and come back). Where are you talking about?
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Moogle1
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 9:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Attack and magic take a hit. They go down. So the item wouldn't normally be useful except for heroes with fixed- or percentage-damage attacks (which would be another synergy, especially if those attacks are expensive).

Regarding Sabin's Pearl weapon, there are actually two: the Kaiser Knuckle, which can be purchased in the WoB in Jidoor, and the Dragon Claw, which is won from both the Presenter's shell and head (but you will probably not kill the shell). Sabin's ultimate claw, the Tiger Fangs, has a power of 215, comparable to Excalibur's 217 (except the latter is Pearl-elemental, where Tiger Fangs is non-elemental), tying it for 9th-most powerful weapon in the game (8th if you throw out the Imp Halberd, which you should).

Also, what about the intangible benefits of equipment? Remember the Moogle Suit? Awesome.
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Uncommon
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 4:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Or the Imp equipment, the stuff that was the most powerful in the game, but only if you use it while you're an imp?
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