I've maybe been a bit too cautious with enemy balancing for FF8; I try to aim for randoms taking only a few attacks to put down as larger groups can drag out if they have a bit too much durability. But one thing this game offers is level adjustment so I could try making the enemies themselves slightly tougher but having heavier level penalties when they appear with others.
One benefit of having support magic only boost secondary stats is that they can be made available in limited amounts through field draws or character starting stock to be used at the player's discretion without throwing the stats balance off. Offence spells by comparison I've found difficult to allocate because they can throw things off too much if made available earlier so that's a limitation of the 1 stock = 100 stock stat adjustment at the moment.
GFs I'm a bit lost with. The intended design was as a 'panic button' but that doesn't work here because unlike FF7 I can't limit the uses of a GF per battle. There is a reversal to how affinity works in that a GF loses affinity with each use, but it's limited in how much it can drop by so some sort of adjustment is going to be needed there in the assembly to make the affinity swings more pronounced.
I'll check into the gravity well thing and maybe replace it with something else.
Quirks
1) I reckon Auto is probably not checking the actual stat bonuses available on the spells, and instead going by a static list of spell IDs that would have been best in the default game.
2) Mid Mag-RF could be moved onto Carbuncle instead with an AP requirement so that it needs a little work put in to be used for the Disc 1 finale (but will unlock from AP if taken into the Disc 1 straight away). That way it'd be available when intended + offers option to get an extra stat edge if player is having trouble with that fight so they don't get stuck. I think the lower refinement cost was just so the player could quickly upgrade their elemental spells to the next step.
3) I haven't really tackled money yet but plan to do so.
4) An oversight I had with the items is that their in-battle effects are different to their field menu effects (this is the same for FF7) so I'll need to find where that is in the .EXE though I might have it written down somewhere.
5) I probably missed that string when rewriting it; intended effect is just to have a chance at inflicting Poison.
6) Wasn't aware that there were questions like that, I'll review them.
7) I must have forgot to set the EXP flag for their formation, sorry about that.
8 ) Yeah, I forgot to add that to the field script
9) My refines are full of holes at the moment, so having people find and report these is always helpful. I managed to avoid the shame of enabling a Disc 1 Lionheart at least, but I think some players were able to produce Punishment and other high level weapons so still got work to do on this front.
10) I intend Pain to only handle Poison status so I'll sort that out
Thanks for the feedback, bud; modding work has slowed down a bit because of a new job I unexpectedly came into but I'm chipping away at it. I have a last update for FF7 NT in the works so hopefully that'll assist in getting you past the 10hr mark; there's so much more boredom and misery to be enjoyed in FF7 that you're missing out on
