[FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v2.0.999992)

[Kryalis]

Have you gone all the way down too the bottom of the Northern Crater yet? At the very bottom where you reunite with your party, there is a scene that triggers most if not all new content for the endgame.

Ah, right. Thanks for correcting me.

 

[Sega Chief]

You will still have to move somewhat quick through the battles, but doing this effectively reduced SC's stalling shenanigans to zero and give you a bit more room for error.

I am fond of shenanigans.

 

[SirDrD]

I do like the idea of the number of people in each row determining the modifiers, but like you say it'll be tricky to mod correctly. AI can implement an effect of some kind, though not the actual %-damage reduction and I'm already out of space in the kernel.

I was expecting that was wishfull thinking. It would be cool though, and give the feeling that the fighters in the front row are protecting the back row characters. Anyway as I am progressing through the game, and I specialize Tifa more on strength and speed, and can do more to raise her vitality, it does make more sense to use her as melee.  (For progress I just left the gold saucer for the first time.) But for cloud, who I am keeping the stats balanced, he does seem to do better with magic then melee. And this is with his original weapon still, not the ones that give magic bonuses. It is easy enough to cast some element that enemies are weak too, so it almost always does more damage then melee.  And he seems to have more then enough MP to cast continuously. I think it is the amount of MP that he has that is the balance issue. I think it should almost be halved. But I am not taking into account that melee attacks are faster, and can critical hit. So maybe melee does give better damage output, but it is just harder to notice. And maybe it will be balanced better once I get him his first sword upgrade.

For the back row vs front row, I don't think the back row damage reduction should be reduced. It is there to make low vitality character viable. But there needs to be more front row advantages. There should of course be fights designed to be fought from the back, but the players should feel more handicapped in those fights. (My vote would be to give short range too many of the limit breaks. Tifa's should be short range, but Cloud can have a mixture of short and long range limit break options. Such as braver being long range, but cross slash short range) And some of the enemies attacks (particularly the ones that effect the whole party) should be set as ranged so they do just as much damage to the back as the front row, but have damage reduced to match what they do currently to the back row.

And Saga Chief, as you suggested else where I do think sadness damage reduction should be reduced. It should be a bad status effect that players don't want, not a good one. And barriers should be an aid, but not feel so essential. Haste and slow are spells help, but they are not required. Barriers should also help, but not be required.

And there is that defend option, which me along which probably most players, completely forget about. But it would be cool if knowing when to use defend in some fights is needed too survive instead of players abusing back row, sadness, and barriers. You might have even designed some fights that way, but we haven't noticed because we forget about defend. It would require enemies having either predictable sequences, or the most powerful attacks having a long recharge time. To get people thinking in terms of defend, it would help if there was in combat dialog the first time such a fight occurs, with Cloud mentioning something about it.

 

[SirDrD]

The following is some other random ideas that I have. They are not ones that I expect to get implemented, as  they would likely interfere with the balance that has been built into the mod, but hopefully might inspire something anyway.

I have never like the way spell progression works, such as with fire1, fire2 and fire3.  As well as not being creative, they make it feel like leveling up material is more important then the characters stats. I really think that 'fire' should be a bit more dependent on the mag stat, so that fire2 and 3 are not needed.By the  time a character would normally get to fire3, 'fire' should be doing the same damage 'fire3' would based on the mag stat increase.

I would like to see instead of fire1,2 and 3, they are changed to allow for more variety, with different ones doing different things, and none of them becoming obsolete. So instead of those, we could have:
Fire1 =>Flame Strike: shoots fire at a single target from a distance, . (LIke the fire spells work now)
Fire2=>Flaming Hands: A close range version of flame strike, but is faster to cast.
Fire3=>Fire Dart: A long distance spell that has the advantage of both of the above, but is the least efficient in  MP consumption.

Ice1=>Icy Breath: A close distance ice spell
Ice2=>ICe Dart: A long distance ice spell that does slighlyt  less damage then  Icy breath, but can work from a distance
ICe3=>Freeze: Does the most damage, and from a distance,has  a chance to slow, but uses the most MP, and is slowest to cast.

I don't like the names of the above, (they don't seem very Final Fantasy-ish), but I do like the idea of each set having at least one short distance version, that is most efficient in either speed, MP, or damage.The fact is Final Fantasy VII is a game that incorporates magic into  fighting, so warriors usually do both. And even Aeris is more physically tough then white mages in usual FF games.   It makes sense for there to be short range spells, if that is possible to mod. And I always thought that even if Cloud has caster build, he is a warrior and has a large sword. Their should be an incentive for him to cast from the front, as that's what it looks like he should be doing and it is what his personality is like.   And like I said, I don't like the idea of spells becoming obsolete, and the materia level mattering more then the users magic stat.

But such as approach would also require characters gaining a lot less MP as they level, since Magic stat matters for damage more then higher level spells that consume more MP. I think a formula of 50 + Spirit would be about the right amount.

And as I said at the beginning of this post, this is mostly wishfull thinking. But maybe at least there is some way to give some sort of casting advantage to the front row.  :mrgreen:

 

[Murasame]

Can anyone refresh my memory where the Precious Watch is? In 1.35, I thought I stole it from the X-ATM in Junon when Barret is the leader but I'm not getting it now. Is it a rare steal or is it else where?

 

[magictrufflez]

Can anyone refresh my memory where the Precious Watch is? In 1.35, I thought I stole it from the X-ATM in Junon when Barret is the leader but I'm not getting it now. Is it a rare steal or is it else where?

Unless it's a rare steal from someone, the only one I found was in the Final Dungeon.

I am fond of shenanigans.

The first time I made it through the last 2 bosses and had to sit there and wait for those text boxes to take eternity to finish up, I about lost my mind.  Especially when the Scorp literally says he's trying to waste my time.

 

[SunnyD]

Two things:

1) I defeated Tseng in Rocket Town but have no Pulse Ammo. I even spoke to him afterwards but nothing happened there.
2) Any tricks to the Curator battle? I'm not sure if my party's just too weak but he obliterates me too quickly.

Can anyone refresh my memory where the Precious Watch is? In 1.35, I thought I stole it from the X-ATM in Junon when Barret is the leader but I'm not getting it now. Is it a rare steal or is it else where?

I stole it from Reno in the final Turks battle when returning to Midgar.

 

[Sega Chief]

I was expecting that was wishfull thinking. It would be cool though, and give the feeling that the fighters in the front row are protecting the back row characters. Anyway as I am progressing through the game, and I specialize Tifa more on strength and speed, and can do more to raise her vitality, it does make more sense to use her as melee.  (For progress I just left the gold saucer for the first time.) But for cloud, who I am keeping the stats balanced, he does seem to do better with magic then melee. And this is with his original weapon still, not the ones that give magic bonuses. It is easy enough to cast some element that enemies are weak too, so it almost always does more damage then melee.  And he seems to have more then enough MP to cast continuously. I think it is the amount of MP that he has that is the balance issue. I think it should almost be halved. But I am not taking into account that melee attacks are faster, and can critical hit. So maybe melee does give better damage output, but it is just harder to notice. And maybe it will be balanced better once I get him his first sword upgrade.

For the back row vs front row, I don't think the back row damage reduction should be reduced. It is there to make low vitality character viable. But there needs to be more front row advantages. There should off course be fights designed to be fought from the back, but the players should feel more handicapped in those fights. (My vote would be to give short range too many of the limit breaks. Tifa's should be short range, but Cloud can have a mixture of short and long range limit break options. Such as braver being long range, but cross slash short range) And some of the enemies attacks (particularly the ones that effect the whole party) should be set as ranged so they do just as much damage to the back as the front row, but have damage reduced to match what they do currently to the back row.

And Saga Chief, as you suggested else where I do think sadness damage reduction should be reduced. It should be a bad status effect that players don't want, not a good one. And barriers should be an aid, but not feel so essential. Haste and slow are spells help, but they are not required. Barriers should also help, but not be required.

And there is that defend option, which me along which probably most players, completely forget about. But it would be cool if knowing when to use defend in some fights is needed too survive instead of players abusing back row, sadness, and barriers. You might have even designed some fights that way, but we haven't noticed because we forget about defend. It would require enemies having either predictable sequences, or the most powerful attacks having a long recharge time. To get people thinking in terms of defend, it would help if there was in combat dialog the first time such a fight occurs, with Cloud mentioning something about it.

Melee is dependent on Level for it's damage output, using it twice in the calc, and what occurs is that as you get higher in Level the increase to physical damage rises exponentially. Early-game, spells have a definite edge as they can output more damage with lower base-power even without the aid of a Weapon attack stat like Strength gets. But when you start to push past Lv.30, Lv.40, Lv.50 that's when physicals start to jump ahead and magic needs much higher base power to just keep up (for comparison, tier 1 spells use a base power of 8 and will out-damage physicals with double the base power at 16 but by the end spells need 70+ base power to compete with that same 16 when higher level is involved).

Physical hitters early on won't hit as hard as a spell, but you can help them along using Elemental Materia, some STR+ equipment, and Added Effect to have them mop up enemies that survive +All spells or to disrupt larger enemies with a debilitating status. It's round about Great Glacier when physicals will start to catch up to Magic, because you'll get hands to Added Cut (an impromptu 2x-Cut with Deathblow or Mug until you find the actual 2x-Cut Materia). But in order to preserve the balance between physicals and magical, Level will be treated in-battle as Lv.44 once characters go past this threshold. I think this is roughly where the 'sweet-spot' is for physicals before they start to scale too hard for Magic to keep up with.

The following is some other random ideas that I have. They are not ones that I expect to get implemented, as  they would likely interfere with the balance that has been built into the mod, but hopefully might inspire something anyway.

I have never like the way spell progression works, such as with fire1, fire2 and fire3.  As well as not being creative, they make it feel like leveling up material is more important then the characters stats. I really think that 'fire' should be a bit more dependent on the mag stat, so that fire2 and 3 are not needed.By the  time a character would normally get to fire3, 'fire' should be doing the same damage 'fire3' would based on the mag stat increase.

I would like to see instead of fire1,2 and 3, they are changed to allow for more variety, with different ones doing different things, and none of them becoming obsolete. So instead of those, we could have:
Fire1 =>Flame Strike: shoots fire at a single target from a distance, . (LIke the fire spells work now)
Fire2=>Flaming Hands: A close range version of flame strike, but is faster to cast.
Fire3=>Fire Dart: A long distance spell that has the advantage of both of the above, but is the least efficient in  MP consumption.

Ice1=>Icy Breath: A close distance ice spell
Ice2=>ICe Dart: A long distance ice spell that does slighlyt  less damage then  Icy breath, but can work from a distance
ICe3=>Freeze: Does the most damage, and from a distance,has  a chance to slow, but uses the most MP, and is slowest to cast.

I don't like the names of the above, (they don't seem very Final Fantasy-ish), but I do like the idea of each set having at least one short distance version, that is most efficient in either speed, MP, or damage.The fact is Final Fantasy VII is a game that incorporates magic into  fighting, so warriors usually do both. And even Aeris is more physically tough then white mages in usual FF games.   It makes sense for there to be short range spells, if that is possible to mod. And I always thought that even if Cloud has caster build, he is a warrior and has a large sword. Their should be an incentive for him to cast from the front, as that's what it looks like he should be doing and it is what his personality is like.   And like I said, I don't like the idea of spells becoming obsolete, and the materia level mattering more then the users magic stat.

But such as approach would also require characters gaining a lot less MP as they level, since Magic stat matters for damage more then higher level spells that consume more MP. I think a formula of 50 + Spirit would be about the right amount.

And as I said at the beginning of this post, this is mostly wishfull thinking. But maybe at least there is some way to give some sort of casting advantage to the front row.  :mrgreen:

I considered going down the route other mods have taken where the core elemental spells are changed to be more unique rather than just higher base power versions of each other. Problem is, the base power for these spells is static and Level plays a big role in the damage calculation for it; if the base power is too high, it'll rip early-game to pieces but if it's too low then it won't be effective for late-game.

Short range spells might be possible; it has the flag for it, but the damage formula for magic itself might not be coded to make the check for that range flag. I'd need to test it out. As for application, it might be interesting to have some 'melee' spells in the Enemy Skill section; perhaps something for Beta, Trine, Aqualung? I'll need people's thoughts on it first, though.

The first time I made it through the last 2 bosses and had to sit there and wait for those text boxes to take eternity to finish up, I about lost my mind.  Especially when the Scorp literally says he's trying to waste my time.

On a not so unrelated note, Arrange Mode is quietly coming along. I have such sights to show you.

Two things:

1) I defeated Tseng in Rocket Town but have no Pulse Ammo. I even spoke to him afterwards but nothing happened there.
2) Any tricks to the Curator battle? I'm not sure if my party's just too weak but he obliterates me too quickly.

I stole it from Reno in the final Turks battle when returning to Midgar.

There's a NPC on the Highwind that'll appear on Disc 3 after visiting the bottom of North Crater (near the chocobo pen) that can give Pulse Ammo if it was missed. Make sure the latest flevel hotfix patch is installed. There may be an accidental fight with a Tonberry involved.

Tifa can be handy for the Curator as she'll survive the initial blast no matter what (a Sneak Attack/Magic Counter + Phoenix would be a good opener if the other party members can't survive). Protect Rings can also be handy for getting through it as you'll start with Wall. I think the beam itself is Shoot element, so Protect Vests will halve the damage as well (along with a lot of the other attacks it has). As for the rest, you'll need to use whatever tools and tricks you have at your disposal.

 

[magictrufflez]

Short range spells might be possible; it has the flag for it, but the damage formula for magic itself might not be coded to make the check for that range flag. I'd need to test it out. As for application, it might be interesting to have some 'melee' spells in the Enemy Skill section; perhaps something for Beta, Trine, Aqualung? I'll need people's thoughts on it first, though.

I would be interested to at least give melee enemy skills a try.  I was extremely underwhelmed with the majority of the elemental attack enemy skills--I tended to opt for just using proper magic attacks.  Outside of Shadow Flare, I really only used the support enemy skills like white wind or death force, with some situational exceptions.

 

[deha0002]

While we are on the subjects of enemy skill and arrange mod, i thought i might add a few thoughts.

Enemy skill:
Even though i know this might not even be possible ( from what ive seen by using ProdClod and Wallmarket) but having spells be affected by both STR and MAG would be awesome. Then you could finally go caster with lets say, Tifa and Cid.

Other then that wishful thinking, there are a few things;
Frog Song doesnt really feel good since we have Lagomorph. Not sure how to "fix" it but it feels like Frog Song need some love.
Big Guard feels too weak (used it twice since it was changed over diff NT versions), but if it could go through resist, now that would make it awesome for many fights. Ofc this would probably mean a large increase in MP.

Arrange mode:
So Sega, whats the plan? Are you going with the straight up increase in stats or adding more depth to it? I know my opinion might differ from the rest of the NT players, but i personally feel that Arrange boss fights should be in line with what we had at the start of 1.4.

I am talking about the Rude and Elena fight, where Rude was Berz immune, and you had to use you newly acquired Choco summon (+ Added effect) or stealing Conf item. This i thought would be amazing for Arrange, where you probably have already played normal and know in general what is waiting for ya, while forcing you to think both before and during fights.

 

[SirDrD]

I haven't used enemy skill much myself.  It doesn't seem to fit in with the game very well. And it seems a bit hard to balance with the regular spells.

How I myself would use it would just be to add variety to the game. I would actually like to see it available at the very beginning. Like perhaps have Barett start with it. Then I would give it to one of either Cloud, Barett or Tifa, and have that be the only magic material that, that character uses throughout the game.  It would be used to make that character distinct, and add variety rather then min maxing. And it would be much easier to balance the skills among each other rather then with the basic magic system.

So that's one thought. The enemy skill material could give  a good bonus to both strength and magic, but disables the magic command when equipped. And yeah, having a  lot of the skills it has be close range would be interesting.

 

[Tavarcio]

Oh I'm not using any mods other than NT Sega

 

[Bowser9]

Changing the 2.5 level Enemy Skills into melee may not change anything in terms of whether it's used from the front or back row. The people that actually use Enemy Skill would still use it with reflect strats for massive damage without the need for +All.

Honestly, Enemy Skills feel pretty good right now. I've got no comment on the changes proposed by SirDrD because I'm an old FF fan. I've mentioned previously of how New Threat evokes the difficulty and diversity of FF5, and that's still true right now. I hold FF5's design as the best the FF series has ever achieved in terms of rewarding players for their decision making. Hell, a first-timer could win with with menu grinding alone as long as they used even half the jobs correctly. That's some serious flexibility awarded to intelligent players. So far, I haven't felt like anything was out of place or rigid in New Threat. I've been able to experiment with a crazy variety of strats and limitations. Barring super bosses, there really hasn't been an issue, and that's to be expected. New Threat is a blast to play every time.

 

[Sega Chief]

Oh I'm not using any mods other than NT Sega

I'll have a look then. Might be a missing model somewhere. You can disable random encounters using the save point to make it up the stairs to Hojo if need be, unless this is the catalog 1.35 version.

While we are on the subjects of enemy skill and arrange mod, i thought i might add a few thoughts.

Enemy skill:
Even though i know this might not even be possible ( from what ive seen by using ProdClod and Wallmarket) but having spells be affected by both STR and MAG would be awesome. Then you could finally go caster with lets say, Tifa and Cid.

Other then that wishful thinking, there are a few things;
Frog Song doesnt really feel good since we have Lagomorph. Not sure how to "fix" it but it feels like Frog Song need some love.
Big Guard feels too weak (used it twice since it was changed over diff NT versions), but if it could go through resist, now that would make it awesome for many fights. Ofc this would probably mean a large increase in MP.

Arrange mode:
So Sega, whats the plan? Are you going with the straight up increase in stats or adding more depth to it? I know my opinion might differ from the rest of the NT players, but i personally feel that Arrange boss fights should be in line with what we had at the start of 1.4.

I am talking about the Rude and Elena fight, where Rude was Berz immune, and you had to use you newly acquired Choco summon (+ Added effect) or stealing Conf item. This i thought would be amazing for Arrange, where you probably have already played normal and know in general what is waiting for ya, while forcing you to think both before and during fights.

Plan is for something in-depth; lot of events triggering that wouldn't fit well with a first-time NT run. It won't be stat gains for enemies either; there's more than one way to skin a cat.

I haven't used enemy skill much myself.  It doesn't seem to fit in with the game very well. And it seems a bit hard to balance with the regular spells.

How I myself would use it would just be to add variety to the game. I would actually like to see it available at the very beginning. Like perhaps have Barett start with it. Then I would give it to one of either Cloud, Barett or Tifa, and have that be the only magic material that, that character uses throughout the game.  It would be used to make that character distinct, and add variety rather then min maxing. And it would be much easier to balance the skills among each other rather then with the basic magic system.

So that's one thought. The enemy skill material could give  a good bonus to both strength and magic, but disables the magic command when equipped. And yeah, having a  lot of the skills it has be close range would be interesting.

Locking Materia to a character is doable, but it requires a lot of set-up to make it happen (enough that it would have to be a separate mod built around the idea of character-specific abilities). Armour needs to be set to have zero slots and the Materia option in the menu disabled, along with any unequip calls made in the flevel script removed. Might be something for another project though.

Changing the 2.5 level Enemy Skills into melee may not change anything in terms of whether it's used from the front or back row. The people that actually use Enemy Skill would still use it with reflect strats for massive damage without the need for +All.

Honestly, Enemy Skills feel pretty good right now. I've got no comment on the changes proposed by SirDrD because I'm an old FF fan. I've mentioned previously of how New Threat evokes the difficulty and diversity of FF5, and that's still true right now. I hold FF5's design as the best the FF series has ever achieved in terms of rewarding players for their decision making. Hell, a first-timer could win with with menu grinding alone as long as they used even half the jobs correctly. That's some serious flexibility awarded to intelligent players. So far, I haven't felt like anything was out of place or rigid in New Threat. I've been able to experiment with a crazy variety of strats and limitations. Barring super bosses, there really hasn't been an issue, and that's to be expected. New Threat is a blast to play every time.

FF5 was pretty good for boss fights; I did more thinking getting through that game than I did with most other FF titles.

 

[SirDrD]

Locking Materia to a character is doable, but it requires a lot of set-up to make it happen (enough that it would have to be a separate mod built around the idea of character-specific abilities). Armour needs to be set to have zero slots and the Materia option in the menu disabled, along with any unequip calls made in the flevel script removed. Might be something for another project though.

Oh, sorry, I think what I said was misunderstood. I wasn't really suggesting character-specific abilities, just commenting on something I would like to try for myself.  Where I would myself  put enemy-skill on a character who doesn't have other casting materia, just for variety, and watch that character advance with abilities. If some of the abilities are sub par that also poses the challenge of finding the best ways to make use of it, and force other strategies of getting through parts of the game.  And although in my own playstyle I do theme the materia that goes on each character I do understand that  character specific abilities are not what this mod is.    At most I was suggesting that balancing enemy skill with other materia will be difficult. It could be considered to be there for players who want an alternative to the basic casting system. So redundant enemy skill abilities are ok.

 

[SunnyD]

Found something that doesn't seem intentional during the Hojo battle. If you have Resist on the party during the second form and have taken out his right arm, Hojo only casts Mako Spit and because of Resist it constantly misses. Does he have any other attacks or is he meant to inflict ailments on everyone first before using other attacks?

 

[Sega Chief]

Found something that doesn't seem intentional during the Hojo battle. If you have Resist on the party during the second form and have taken out his right arm, Hojo only casts Mako Spit and because of Resist it constantly misses. Does he have any other attacks or is he meant to inflict ailments on everyone first before using other attacks?

His AI is a bit limited; I'm going to re-do it from scratch so he has more abilities to use whenever a limb is gone.

Not sure if this is a glitch but the Fort Condor NPC doesn't teleport back to Fort Condor after he says "you need 4000 gil for troops". He just stands there....Is something else supposed to happen?

This happened at Gongaga after Temple of The Ancients and now Forgotton Capital (he's blocking a treasure chest)

Is the latest flevel patch installed? I can't remember if the fix is in the current files.

 

[Zara9]

Hey sega chief

you forgot to add a NT 1.4 picture on the first page of this thread

and how is the Dark cave side quest coming along

 

[Sega Chief]

Hey sega chief

you forgot to add a NT 1.4 picture on the first page of this thread

and how is the Dark cave side quest coming along

I decided to remove it; was taking up space.

I'm working on the DK sidequest just now; it's mostly adding small touches like ambience, dialogue, and fixing music triggers atm.

 

[badeco]

any have complete list  of monsters ,drop, morph and steal?in document text have  but  is not complete  :-\