Final Fantasy general

The Materia system was clunky and really ended up lacking overall. It would have been nice to have more types of materia, allow you to equip more, have more complex combos and such.

Considering how many materia was Dummied Out like the Aero line the remake could enable that.

And the stats imbalance was one of the biggest things on why Aeris was such a big loss to the combat system.

Are you hoping that they put all that dummied out materia back in? Seems like it'd be the smart thing to do, but if they're redoing the entire battle system they may just take the materia out. Although I suppose that last is not all that likely.

(I'm still kind of ticked that Rk doesn't currently have the Aero magic in the black magic category and only as a spellblade option.)

I'm expecting fewer materia, not more. I'm willing to bet Enemy Skill at least will get nixxed on account of being too complicated, and the enemy list being smaller. Recent games have moved away from having so many options given how much development time these things already take.

edited 26th Jun '16 6:51:19 PM by Hashil

It would be a shame, since the Enemy Skill Materia is where half of the game's fun Game Breakers came from. And yes, I do consider that to be a good thing. Though I would like if it became a unique ability for Red XIII, under the twisted logic of "he's an animal, therefore he can learn the abilities of monsters". They could also take away the Steal Materia so that only Yuffie can do that.

Does making animations for spells and abilities really take that time and resources? I get that the graphics are better, but something seems wrong if they don't have the time and money to make some fire and water and missile and whatever animations.

It's not just the animations that take time, Kuro.

Are you going to expand on that, or are you just going to leave me hanging?

Like is the amount of time needed to balance and bug test also a lot longer?

I... they're remaking the entire battle system, that's way more extensive than just making new animations, dude. So yeah, bug tests and balance. As well as programming all the moves to start with. And probably a whole lot of other things I'm ignorant about. The point is it's strange you think the only thing they've got to do is animate the effects. I mean, I don't know that it takes all that much longer to program all the stuff they originally left out, but I know it's more work than just animating them.

edited 26th Jun '16 11:47:25 PM by AceofSpades

That still doesn't really answer my question. What things would they have to do with programming these abilities for the new battle system that makes it more difficult than when they programmed those abilities for the old battle system?

My first thought goes to animating it, because things like testing and balancing seem like they should take as much work the second time as it did the first time. Am I wrong about that, and why?

Hmm... it really depends on how the battle system works. When doing a real-time, sort-of-action system you have a lot more variables to consider than in a turn-based one. If it was a turn-based system like in the original FF 7 then yeah, I'd say the most expensive part of adding a skill is the graphics.

There's also the fact that more abilities isn't always better. Personally, I usually like games with a smaller number of skills/magic/whatevers but finely tuned so that they all feel different from each other. Adding another spell to the list of "completely identical spells with different elements" would feel completely uninteresting to me, for example.

edited 27th Jun '16 12:36:25 AM by Cozzer

Final Fantasy has a habit of leaving off skills that are part of it's element system.

For VII it was wind element that was so extremely rare, there were only 3 ways of ever doing wind damage in it, which was stupid. The Aero materia was put in Before Crisis too.

I point to crisis core, or more recently, Final Fantasy Explorers as to why having recoloured attack options isn't always the best option.

Yeah, in most FF games it often feels like the skill/magic design and monster/encounter design was done by two completely different teams. You get enemies with weaknesses you can't ever exploit, skills that you've no logical reason to ever use, bosses with mechanics that would be interesting if you had skills to counter them or interact with them in any way, but that in the end become boring timesinks...

edited 27th Jun '16 1:00:38 AM by Cozzer

Like how my one big complaint against XII is that monsters weak to Water or Earth may as well not have any weaknesses at all.

You get a water spell at least, Earth not so much. But at least there is Earth and Water elemental weapons and ammo every so often.

edited 27th Jun '16 1:13:38 AM by lycropath

Yunalesca is weak to holy

I got news, if you ground holy before yunalesca you will hit the damage cap with or without the elemental weakness.

Water, yes, but Watera and Wateraga are enemy-only skills and by the time you get to that point Water is so massively outscaled it may as well not exist. Water and Earth weapons and ammo are on the rare and precious side, too.

Kefka joins Dissidia Arcade.

Next character comes next month. Clues are Speed-type and not with Chaos.

edited 27th Jun '16 7:19:32 AM by LordofLore

Probably Prishe

It's probably Noctis. Get him out in arcades as promotion before the game releases. Although IMO Luna should be first and let her be playable somewhere.

Tifa also would likely be speed so it could be her as well.

Tifa is also likely but its already been confirmed that Noctis wont be added untill after XV releases (or at the very least around the same time)

Since they've speeded up updates I could see Tifa being added after PSX/the next VIIR trailer.

Would Laguna be speed as well?

Probably Shoot-type.

The different types IIRC are Heavy(hard hitting characters like Cloud), Speed(quick hitting characters like Tidus), Shoot(magic or distance characters like the different mages) and Unique(characters that don't fit).

Kain would be pretty cool with the levels being so open now. Imagine Jump!

edited 27th Jun '16 8:03:55 AM by LordofLore

Edit: We all have this happen at one point in our lives.

Edit 2:

edited 27th Jun '16 11:14:01 AM by LordofLore