[WIP] FFVII Job Class Kernel.bin

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I see you've allowed the beserker to use both cover and counter attack it should be interesting to see how you have balanced that out.
 
I have big plans for the Berserker in this mod.  When it is all said and done, the Berserker might be a little overpowered, but every party slot is so valuable and adding a Berserker to your party really limits you as a group.  The SOLIDER/Knight has some elemental skills and a few support spells, but he can also attack very well; the Black Mage can't do much of anything except for cause magical damage; the White Mage is gonna have a lot of trouble trying to cause significant damage and so on.  So there are the more versatile classes like the Ninja, Dragoon, Time Mage, and Blue Mage, and the Pure Classes like Black Mage, Summoner, Berserker.  The Knight, White Mage, and Samurai (kind of like a Monk), lie somewhere between the versatile and pre classes. 

The Blue Mage is basically a Mage with White, Black, and Time magic, a moderate ability to physically attack, and some excellent support abilities.  However, the Blue Mage is king of none of these abilities.  The Dragoon has a healthy Mdef, a decent Pdef, and fairly average stats all around, combined with access to a healing spell, a drain spell, and a mdef/def boosting spell, and a moderately powerful summon, the Dragoon is another jack-of-all-trades, but master of none.  The Ninja offers unmatched Speed and Luck, but with modest Str and Mag, and virtually no Vit to speak of, they have many useful skills and promote a more technical style of play.  The Time Mage will be spending most of his time inflicting positive and negative statuses, but will also be able to deal some damage, and he will do so with a higher Dex than any other mage. 

The Black Mage is designed for pure magical assault.  98% offensive magic, with the ability to use Drain and Hp Absorb.  The Black Mage is armed with the highest Mag stat in this mod.  The Summoner's Mag comes in at a close second.  Although the summons are generally more powerful than Black Magic, they require more MP and can only be cast a limited number of times.  Each of these classes are practically incapable of fending off physical attacks.  The Bersker on the other hand, is gifted with the highest Str of all the classes.  Combined with the Berserker's unique selection of equipment and accessories, he is a formidable unit indeed, but don't expect to do anything with him besides cause physical damage to enemies.

The Knight or SOLDIER, has the second highest Str in the mod, but also has a few tricks up his sleeve in the area of elemental abilitieshigh physical defense, and access to a select few supplemental spells.  The Samurai (is basically a Monk), combines status inflictions with physical attacks to damage and humiliate the enemy.  The Samurai's stats are slightly more balanced than the Knight's, Berserker's, and Ninja's.  The White Mage is primarily a healer of course, but with the barriers, drain, death, and possibly Alexander or Phoenix, it can produce effects other than healing..  The White Mage also has Holy Ray and Holy Flash, both of which are among the very few Holy Damage inflicting spells in the game.
 
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Just thought of something that might be interesting if it can work.

Is it possible to add the effect of powersoul/master fist on other peoples equipment? If so I beleive it could make for a nice "glass cannon" beserker weapon.
 
It is entirely possible, and quite likely.  I like "Glass Cannon"  :)
 
Might I suggest changing the "ninja" class' title into maybe Rogue or Thief? My reasoning for this is that none of the skills really reflect what a ninja does (I'm talking videogame ninja here not real ninja) which is sneak around and silently take out targets, except for the pre-emptive materia which is the only thing that really reflects ninja. Most of the other skills scream thief to me (steal,mug,steal as well) and rogue (4x cut) Anyway just my 2 cents.

Also any way to implement a class having low level magic? eg. time mage having access to Fire 2 or Cure 2?
 
It will remain Ninja, because within the confines of FFVII, the ninja in this mod will look like a ninja.  A Ninja in FFVII is a fast and lucky character that uses fire and water skills (Yuffie has high luck and dex in the regular game, uses a fire attack when you encounter her, and leviathan is the Wutai/DaChou summon).  In this mod, most Thief abilities will be available before most Ninja abilities, keeping with the FF tradition that the player must master the Thief class before gaining access to the advanced Ninja class.

Allowing the use of lesser spells for all classes, or groups of classes defiles the essence of the Job Class mod.  I've allowed for transference between certain skills for certain classes in an effort to maintain effective functionality, but any access at all to other classes' primary abilities causes the contributing class to become a little less useful.
 
Alright, Do you mind explaining your reasoning of the White Mage having Death? That one confused me.
 
The most pertinent reason is so the White Mage doesn't get stuck with a limited repetoire of Esuna, Cure, Life, and Barrier.  But I think its reasonably justifiable that if a WhiteMage can grant life, that s/he can also take it away.  I'll be tinkering with Death's success rate and its ability to target one or all enemies.  If I recall correctly, the standard Death spell in VII has like a 25% success rate and can be cast on multiple enemies.  For this mod Death will probably be a single-target spell with a 40-50% chance of success.  I will also be fiddling with various enemies' immunities.  So, there may be enemies that Death has no effect on and enemies that always succumb to Death, i addition to enemies that have the standard chance of being instantly dispatched or missed.

The short version is, So the White Mage doesn't suck.

I understand that my representation of certain classes may not necessarily coincide with other players' idea of a particular class, but FFVII was not designed to easily accommodate rigid job classes.  Therefore, I have to do the best job that I can with the resources at my disposal.  While some classes may have a skill or spell that seems "off" to some, I assure you it is in the best interests of playability and functionality in the big picture.
 
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I totally understand that square did not have the job system in mind when they thought of the materia system and that it may not be very suitable to the game. This is a big task you're undertaking and I wish you the best of luck with it. I apologise if my previous comments seemed to be bashing the mod and I assure you that was not my intention, my intention was to give you some constructive criticism as well as better understand the reasoning behind the choices you have made. Some would not have been the choices I would have made but I can understand why you have made them. and hey if you listen to everyone this mod will never be done.

Great work here I will continue to post my opinions as I find more about it.
 
Thanks, and I didn't mean any offense.  I was hoping that someone would come along and ask questions like yours so that I could evaluate my own choices for how I will proceed with the mod.  It also promoted the thoughtful discussion of some of the deeper details of the mod.  Your question about the White Mage and Death was only the first of, if left unanswered, many other questions with similar answers (Why does the Knight have Barrier?, Why do some of the Samurai's abilities inflict statuses?, Why can the Ninja cast Fire2?).  I had to eliminate roughly 20 of the original spells to make room for job specific abilities while at the same time considering which enemies use the spell I'm transforming (it wouldn't be good if in the first reactor mission an enemy suddenly casts Holy Flash on you), so there are bound to be spells that got sacrificed that you would have preferred stayed in the game.

I am completely open to complimentary, implementable, and good ideas, but with 96% of the blueprint for this mod complete, these types of ideas are harder to come by.
 
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So...I never finished the scene.bin for Revisited.  Revisited was my main project, but the changes left to be made are so boring and tedious that it really doesn't sound fun at all, especially since my current version of Revisited's scene has 95% of the alterations complete for the first 2/3 of the game, and 20% for the remaining third.  Also, the Job Class Kernel has generated a lot of interest, so the question becomes... ... ... Do I create a seperate scene.bin for the Job Class Mod, or do I go ahead and finish Revisited's scene.bin?

Working on Revisited's scene offers many benefits.  It would make significant progress on the Revisited mod, and also provide a quality scene.bin for use with the Job Class Kernel.  Keep in mind, the Revisited scene is a completely restructured edition of the scene.bin and includes enemies appearing where they never have before, having completely customized stats, customized enemy formations and optional boss battles, and many enemies have new skills as well. 

However, it would be relatively easy and quick to take a vanilla scene.bin or Lostwing's scene.bin and alter it for use with the Job Class Kernel.  Doing this would serve no purpose other than to make a complimentary scene.bin to go with the new Job Class System in FFVII...it could develop into a full-scale project though.

So the possibilities are that I either complete Revisited's scene.bin and kills two birds with one stone (but it would not be fun by anyone's definition); or alter LostWing's scene.bin (this would be easy and quick); alter the vanilla scene.bin (could be done relatively easily and just going through the motions); or embark on a journey to create a optimally complimentary scene.bin to go with the Job Class kernel (full-scale project, lots of time, lots of bullshit).  Obviously, the more efort an time-consuming ideas produce better results, but an altered LostWing scene.bin would be a pretty good match for the job class kernel.
 
Id have to say work on the Revisited scene. Quality > Quantity IMO
 
Go with what suits you. You're the one doing it, so you shouldn't feel weighed down by our expectations....

a question: if you made a completely custom scene.bin, would it be possible to enforce the job "classes" for materia and such?
 
That data isn't in the scene.bin, sorry  :-(

Yeah, all the ways that the Class System could be made mandatory involve something that does more harm than good.

There is no real way to encourage the player to use the classes if they don't want to.  All Materia will always be equippable by all characters, and job-specific materia is a prerequisite for a Mandatory Class System in FFVII.  The only other way that I came up with to enforce the classes  (and this method had numerous flaws) involved activating a gameshark code which, of course, is up to the player to do.
 
Hmm.. Is there a way to put the classes name in the materia that goes with it eg.

                 Fire
Materia details:                  |          Materia list
                                           |
*****                                 |
Black Mage       HP- 2          |
                        MP+2          |
                        st-1             |
                        mag1           |

Sorry for the mess But I hope it explains what I'm trying to say?
 
There is a way to do exactly the your diagram shows.  The method is explained in my FFVII: Lost Wing thread.  I haven't tried it, but it should work.  I was probably just going to include the Class Name in the Materia's description, but this way would be much classier.  I will keep it in mind.
 
if you can't make it mandatory, then the way that Livesey has suggested is pretty much the perfect way of doing it.
putting the classes in the description can get messy,  'cause you don't have a lot of space there....
 
Oh I definetely agree, it is just that with each passing week, I've made this project a little more difficult and a little more time consuming.  I will try out a few different ideas for communicating to the pllayer which materia can be used by which job classes, and if all the easy methods produce a bucket of crap, then I will definetely use this method.  It just requires me to do something that I haven't personally done before (as simple as it may seem), which involves additional time and effort.  Maybe next week I will actually start putting the manual labor into this project so I can evaluate some of the ideas for real instead of vicariously.  I do agree though, the above method would be the ideal method.  If someone wants to learn how to do that, Bosola provided instructions in my Lost Wing mod thread.  I can provide a list of precisely which materia will be converted into others to facilitate the process.  If it is left to me, then don't plan on seeing the fruit for several weeks or longer.

======================================


Actually it was the Revisited thread.  Check this out https://www.ff7catalog.com/posts/132963/

Livesey or royalmurder, if you wanna get in on this, let me know.
 
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I can help with the simple-but-time-consuming stuff.
especially as I just finished university for a month XD

so that link will help us figure out how to change the materia descriptions?
 
Yeah.  Bosola describes the process.  Sounds simple enough.  I would probably get to it eventually, but if you wanted to help contribute to the mod, then this would be an ideal way.  If you experiment and figure out how it all works, let me know and I'll give you the information you need to know in order to make the appropriate changes.  Only if you want to and aren't busy of course.
 
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