S
Sega Chief
Guest
Can't make any promises but I'll do some experimenting with the commands. I'd like a darkside-style command or something to maybe replace Flash or Morph.
The trick with elements is getting it so that its consistent enough that you can tell from looking or enemy behaviour what it'll be weak to, with Sense to cover instances where it's maybe not conveyed by appearance/attacks. I think I made plant-based enemies weak to fire, but there's not a lot of them kicking about.
One possibility is to use the enemy AI to react to elements a bit more directly so they have different effects (or put the effect onto the spell(s) themselves) but that'd be a pretty major change and not sure what those effects would entail exactly. At the moment all element-based spells are mostly identical save for the element they represent which I'm not too wild about.
Goldberries will be retired when I do a rebuild, or at least moved elsewhere and revised to sort out the pace of the fight.
FF7 splits effects into two camps; ailments and spell effects (at least going by how Esuna and Dispel operate). Dual isn't usually a factor, but I decided to have it be treated as a spell effect rather than an ailment because it juxtaposes Regen, placing it under Dispel's list of removed effects.
One thing I did though was put Dual onto the Antidote item for status-healing, which runs counter to that idea and creates an issue with Remedy, which is supposed to be the item-version of Esuna but is missing the Dual effect that Antidotes can heal. But at the same time, I don't want Dual to be removed by both Esuna and Dispel; it's a tough one to figure out a decent solution to.
Physicals are quite straight-forward with very few horizontal options; mostly it's just vertical, adding more attacks on with multi-cut/added cut or counter attack. Limits mix it up a little but only when they come up.I think these are interesting points. I try to make my characters as unique as possible, but if you are going for variety in melee characters, they mostly come down to everything feeling very samey for most of the game.
Once you get deatblow+added cut, that helps separate the physical attacker in your party, the damage output really becomes ridiculous, especially when paired with elemental.
But thats really only one option that differentiates them, and it's quite late into the game.
I've thought about the benefits you would get from adding multi-cut, or slash all earlier. But, they both seem imbalanced to include earlier. Enemies would have to be greatly beefed up imo, to compensate for the additional damage up. Also, weapons like enemy launcher that hit all opponents would suffer a little if you had access to slash all.
Another point would be, to even be capable of doing things like mp/hp absorb to be used with physical skills, you'd need multiple copies of death blow. And you get that pretty late, and you aren't gonna master it for a very long time. By the time it happens, it'll basically be irrelevant. And even still, it's like, 10% hp gain? It feels next to worthless for two copies of deathblow, which you won't even have access to.
I think what I'd like to see is another true offensive melee type of materia earlier in the game. Maybe a new one entirely?
you have added cut + death blow for 3x total damage (can pair with hp/mp with multiple copies)
2x cut for 2x damage (can't pair with anything)
4x cut for 4x damage (can't pair)
slash all for 1x damage vs all (can't pair)
Deatblow is interesting because you can pair it, but for all the others listed, you can't. What would be cool would be an in-between that could link, that isn't as powerful as deathblow or 2x cut, but would effectively work with support materia. Let's say just for example something like "insert name here" 1.5x attack, paired with added cut, and a second copy paired with hp absorb, for a 2.5x damage attack, that could be really fun, but if you got it too early it'd have the same imbalance issues as getting 2x cut too early. And if you get it too late, it'd lose most of its use, unless an additional rank was added to power it up (but that would have to taken insane AP, so you couldnt get it until the same time as 4x cut)
Maybe a less complex addition could be Darkside, sacrifice 30% hp, to deal 2x damage, something like that, on your tank characters.
Just ideas, I dunno, I do think it's a waste that most interesting attack command materia only comes late game, cause you lose that variety for 75% of the game. It's also a problem that things like hp absorb require 2x of the paired materia to be worth it (cause you wanna use added cut always), and also the HP restore thingy is only 10%, making it feel worthless anyways.
general, the fact that most good command attack materia can't be paired, and for it to be worthwhile, you need multiple pairs, makes it feel a whole lot less interesting than it could be, and I do think thats a shame in general, but it's really the fault of the base game.
I think some cool things could be done to fix that, but it would be a lot of work, potentially create balance issues, and probably you would have to throw away other skills to make way for new ones (morph?)
A solution would be to try and adjust how Morph and Flash work to create two new options to work alongside Deathblow, Added Cut, and Slash-All. Darkside is an obvious candidate, and Flash could be good for it as it has that nice effect on its animation.
Something that uses MP to boost attack power might be nice, and give a physical damage-dealer something to push their MP toward instead of support magic. Maybe Morph could ignore or alter defence of the target (with it's original effect of turning defeated enemies into monsters still in place)?
I could maybe stand to make Slash-All available earlier, and reneging on putting Deathblow in Great Glacier and move that earlier again too.
