Alright, so concluding remarks:
1. opane thing that isn't exactly my thought but a few people have brought up as I recommend your mod - why is Rinoa White Mage and Selphie Black Mage? It first hit me when I got Angel Wing and realized Rinoa can't really do much with it in this mod. And others have brought up how Selphie's unique spells are very WM like Full-Cure, Wall, Rapture, etc.. Is it purely based on their personalities? I can understand that - Selphie is basically like a cartoon Black Mage, all burn, kill, destroy.
Basically, yeah. In addition to what you said about Selphie, Rinoa has no combat training and part of her arc is about her hesitation to fight; she doesn't really seem like the type to brandish Black magic spells. (Also, I guess I just like the archetype of the knight hero and the healer heroine.) At some point I realized that switching them would make more sense in pure gameplay, but it was a case of "Well, too late now." One could argue that Rinoa being a White Mage shows through gameplay that a sorceress is something she doesn't want to be, recalling her description in the game's manual as "becoming warped" over the course of the story, but that's only a post-hoc justification :-D While it's not stated anywhere I'm fine with her having powerful spells in her inventory to cast during Angel Wing and "Ultima Wing" is something I take into account when balancing her character. I figured people would understand that since Angel Wing really sucks with her normal spell list and there's no rule against it, but maybe I should make a note of it somewhere...
Actually, you reminded me that back when this was only a self-imposed challenge made for vanilla, Rinoa started as a White Mage but then became a Sorceress and could cast anything. It makes Selphie seem rather redundant, though, and I wanted to impose as few "rules" as possible. Maybe I still have the old challenge doc on a hard drive somewhere.
2. I know some people will balk at this but it feels like Drawing is the main source of magic in this mod? I'm sure you know how everyone Drew magic as a kid and then you get older and are like "use Card Mod, dumbass." But with Card Mod gone and only getting the RF abilities pretty infrequently from levels, Drawing was the easiest way to obtain magic for me. Now, you made it so it's almost guaranteed that you will draw 15 spells from an enemy so it really doesn't bother me. But Drawing Magic just really pisses off some people and wile you made items purchasable for the elemental spells to be refined from, there are many, many other spells besides that which Drawing was the best and most expedient source. I got my 200 or 300 spells from Drawing all game and only very rarely refined items into magic. Do you think this is a problem or is Drawing supposed to be the main source of magic?
Just thinking maybe stealing or item drops can be increased a decent bit to compensate.
Well, for one, having 100 of a spell isn't as important as in vanilla since only elemental and status Junctions are available. Also, with Tool-RF you can get BLK-RF-1 after Timber; WHT-RF 1 before Deling City; WHT-RF 2 as soon as you get the mobile Garden; and BLK-RF 2 as early as the Garden chaos if you mug a Dragon Skin from the Grendel in one of the fixed battles during that segment. (This made me realize that I need to put a mid-level Grendel on the world map so that you can get BLK-RF 2 in the same timeframe as WHT-RF 2.) It's actually possible, albeit unlikely, to get WHT-RF 3 before Disc 3 if you kill Snow Lions. BLK-RF 3 requires an Energy Crystal, though.
You mentioned being able to buy items to refine into elemental spells, but just in case: you can also buy items for refining into most of the basic status ailments as well as things like Protect, Shell, and Life. I don't know whether you did the Sorceress Memorial sidequest I added (if you didn't, you should, if only because it was such a pain to create D= ), but the reward from it is intended to make it easier to get certain late-game spells.
Anyway, increasing the refinement values/item drops is something I go back and forth on. I can see where you're coming from, but I also don't really mind Drawing and I actually like the opportunity cost of deciding to Draw a useful spell from a boss a few times. But if there are any spells you thought were particularly troublesome to acquire, I'll check 'em out.
(One of my dreams with this mod is to be able to add entities to fields so that I can use those boxes from D-District as treasure chests and just
give the player items to refine. Doubt that one will come true, though.)
3. It's over now so I don't mind asking but where was another Adamantine for Squall's final gunblade? I just needed one more to complete it but never found one. I recall they used to be dropped or mugged from Adamantoise but if that's still a thing, I didn't get itt o happen.
Adamantine only drops from high-level Adamantoises, and there are two places that have them: the beaches near the Chocobo Sanctuary, and Ulti's Castle. It's possible to Mug Adamantine but it's more likely to drop if you kill one. Is hiding them on those beaches too mean? ;D
4. Speaking of missed stuff, I never got Shockwave Pulsar for Quistis because, looking at your doc after I beat thE game, you get Dark Matter from PuPu. I tried going to his spots on Disk 4 but he never appeared so I never got the item and her best LB.
Are you sure you were in the right locations? I just triggered all four. I certainly didn't change their locations or anything. I'm a little bummed that you couldn't trigger it as I'm pretty fond of the changes I made to the UFO and PuPu battles. (Even if I will never try to make anything like PuPu again...)
5. I think Seifer 3 could stand to be buffed a decent bit. Squall with Darkside and 100 Pains to Elem Attack-J will do near max damage and kill him in no time.
I'll check it out. Maybe I'll think of a great gimmick for Seifer 3 while I'm at. ;D By the way, I've been thinking of how I can implement that late-game 1v1 I talked about and was wondering if you'd give me your input as a Seifer fan. If you're up for it, I'll PM you the details.
EDIT: Decided to do this. Working on some other things for him too due to my aforementioned habit of working only on what interests me at the time.
Another one:
6. Speaking of which, my favorite fights all game were Seifer 2, Edea 1 and Bahamut. I think Seifer and Bahamut especially you did a really great job with and made them very memorable Just great struggles that are every bit as tense and dramatic as they ought to be given the narrative surrounding them.
Thanks
I'll try to bring other important fights up to their level. I have a long to-do list and a bad habit of working only on whatever interests me at the time.
7. I definitely do appreciate how the game gets harder in response to you getting more options like you noted earlier. Still, I think the end of Disk 2 is when the game got noticeably more challenging and that is quite a ways in. I really wouldn't be averse to bosses and enemies before that getting buffed Up to you though, I'm not even sure how I'd go about making things harder.
I'm planning on doing enemy adjustments by the disc, with Gerogero being the first. More manageable that way. I'm also going to include changes to Ruby Dragon in the next update as well, since I originally planned to do that at the same time as the Fire Cavern battle. If you have any particular areas or enemies that you think are too easy, let me know. I'm not looking to make regular encounters really tough or anything, but maybe some of the earlier areas could stand to have the enemies' levels raised if nothing else. Speaking of which, any data you have on your characters' levels and ability progress at various points of the game would be helpful.
This is tangential, but I'm okay with lower difficulty if it comes about for what I think is a good reason. For example, the window in which to defeat X-ATM092 (rematch) before it summons is pretty tight, but after hearing your Tiamat strat I changed its AI to reset the counter after using Runaway Train so that the GF meatshield strat is more viable there. I'm not saying my mod couldn't do this better, but I want to reward clever strats and using the tools that are available to you.
8. On the viability of GFs later on, I really would suggest buffing their HP a lot. I know I mentioned it before but while Carbuncle is great and useful, it just always died so fast. Quistis and Mighty Guard is the only real way to get buffs on the whole party in a swift, reliable fashion. At least, compared to Carbuncle. Selphie's Slot is even more unreliable than Carbuncle in my experience - I never got anything good with it whenever i used her and she got in low health.
I may buff Carbuncle's HP more significantly in exchange for nerfing Mighty Guard, as I mention below.
Basically it seems like Quistis is far and away the best support character given full party heals and buffs. Which is fine - I wanted character differentiation and diversity and you gave me that. Also I use Quistis most of the time, anyway. Still, you pointed out a lot of strategies I never considered so maybe I'm just missing how good the others could be. But I shudder to think of facing the final boss gauntlet without Quistis and her Mighty Guard.
Quistis is a tough character to balance... I've considered nerfing White Wind and Mighty Guard many times, but I like the "flavor" of White Wind's healing calculation and Mighty Guard is
Mighty Guard, y'know? (That Blue Mage is my second-favorite FF class really isn't helping.) I also tried to make a niche for as many of her Blue Magic spells as possible, with the result being that she's just a strong character all around, with her only notable weaknesses being low Speed and a lower damage ceiling than the others. I think everyone has something about them that's pretty strong, though.
Honestly, I don't like abilities that instantly halve damage from nearly everything because of the escalation they necessitate, but I guess they're here to stay. I've thought about making Mighty Guard only inflict Protect or Shell at Crisis Level 1 as a check to its relative ease of use, though. Maybe I'll finally pull the trigger on that one within the next few updates.
I felt more free to let the final bosses have highly damaging AoEs since you have six characters to work through. Of the four bosses, Ulti is almost entirely magical (I doubt anyone will see Vacuum Wave unless they use Ultima on her). Griever is a mixture, with its normal attack, Death Sentence, and Absolute Terror being physical, while Shockwave Pulsar, Holy, and Draw-Cast are magic-based; however, Shockwave Pulsar is easily the biggest threat there and it's highly telegraphed. With the exception of Great Attractor, Ulti-Griever is mostly magical until its tail falls off, and final Ulti is mostly magic again. Mighty Guard is certainly quick and convenient, but I think it's manageable even if you're only using Stones. Definitely more difficult though, I agree.
9. This is a very random, minor thought but is there any way to implement an item that does Scan, like some sort of Scan Stone? Squall's magic sucks and so I just never even had that ability on his menu after a while and you could theoretically have nobody in your party who can cast Scan in this mod.
That is a good idea. I don't know if I'll be able to free up a battle item slot, but I'll see what I can do.
But yeah...I will maybe think of more stuff later on. I always miss a thought or two when I write these kinds of things. For now though, all I can say is I had a lot of fun. FFVIII is not my favorite FF but I grew up with it and have a soft spot for it and I'm glad people like you are trying to fix how broken it was so as to make it more entertaining on repeat runs.
Thanks again for all your feedback. Glad you liked the mod so much
There's still a lot I want to do with it, so maybe you'll find it worthy of a replay eventually.
EDIT:
Also, unrelated to your mod specifically, is there any way to tell if Protect and Shell are still on when you have multiple buffs? The menu only lists one thing and I'm looking at my bad final boss video and I tried tor reapply buffs that hadn't worn of yet because I'm dumb and thought they might have. I know you get the message at the top about them wearing off but I am very likely to miss that and I really wish there was another way to check if they were still on.
None that I'm aware... You can only see one buff/ailment in the mid-battle status menu. Would've been nice if the game at least cycled through each of the effects that you have.
It was still possible to beat it even when its level scaling was at the higher end, but if you didn't get an AoE Protect/Shell up ASAP, it tended to steamroll you. (I do kind of like how aggressive it is, though.) That aside, UW's behavior is actually the same as its vanilla counterpart. UW is a well-designed enemy--more difficult than vanilla Omega Weapon, really--but it's hard to appreciate that when you can kill it in a single Limit Break. :
