Game Mechanics

[Ilium]

Mechanics of the game. Currently studying: www.gamefaqs.com/ps/197339-final-fantasy-tactics/faqs/3876

[Ilium]





STRIKING WEAPONS | Range: 1v3 (from above) / 1v2 (from below)
==============================================
Bare Hands**...... damage = [(PA * Br) / 100] * PA    XA = [(PA * Br) / 100]
Knife ............ damage = [(PA + Sp) / 2] * WP      XA = [(PA + Sp) / 2]
Ninja Sword ...... damage = [(PA + Sp) / 2] * WP      XA = [(PA * Sp) / 2]
Sword ............ damage = PA * WP                   XA = PA
Knight Sword ..... damage = [(PA * Br) / 100] * WP    XA = [(PA * Br) / 100]
Katana ........... damage = [(PA * Br) / 100] * WP    XA = [(PA * Br) / 100]
Staff ............ damage = MA * WP                   XA = MA
Rod .............. damage = PA * WP                   XA = PA
Flail ............ damage = (1..PA) * WP              XA = (1..PA)
Axe .............. damage = (1..PA) * WP              XA = (1..PA)
Bag .............. damage = (1..PA) * WP              XA = (1..PA)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
** If a unit is barehanded, weapon-elemental attacks will receive the bonus
  from the Martial Arts support ability (they don't if the unit is equipped
  with any weapon -- see 6.2). For barehanded units, WP = 0 in any equations
  that use WP (e.g., BATTLE SKILL success rate).

[Mordred]

FFT game mechanics have a glaring flaw you need to address and fix if you hope to adapt them directly to FFS. This is the physical versus magic gap.

Physical attacks generally follow the PA * WP pattern, as you can see above. Physical classes gain PA from level up and WP from Gil spent on new weapons. So far so good.

Magic attacks, however, deal damage based on an MA * Q scheme, where Q is a variable defined by the spell in question. This is why there need to be Fire 1, Fire 2, Fire 3, Fire 4. So, mages gain MA from level up and Q from JP spent on new spells. However, as Q rises, MP cost also rises, so mage classes must spend Gil on +MP items. Still, we're ok.

The problem comes in when you consider that Q is limited by a mage's spell list, while WP goes much, much higher. Also, as fighters gain in speed and strength, they gain a much greater damage per clocktick output than a mage due to spells' charge times, MP limitations, and, worst of all, the Faith defense.

It goes pretty much without saying, IMO, that Faith (and the Innocent status!) need to be taken out of the damage formula in a PVP environment. It's way too cheesy, to the point where it literally makes mages unplayable. Additionally, spells need to be fast or instant cast in most cases to let mages keep up with fighters in damage output.

And finally, something must be done about Q. Besides your basic +MP gear, a mage only benefits from +MA gear, which is rare in FFT terms. Mages and fighters play totally different games, in a way - fighters are all about pursuing Gil to pay for increasingly expensive power-boosting items, whereas mages only need as much Gil as it takes to keep them in ethers, since as long as you have the MP for a single cast of your strongest spell, a friendly Chemist could keep you topped off even if your MP pool gets drained.

I suggest that every weapon have 2 attributes: WP and FP, where WP is its Weapon Power - e.g. how good it is for smacking a bitch with - and FP is its Focus Power, which governs how good it is as a focus for mystical effects. This effectively removes Q from the equation, producing the following benefits immediately:

1) Mages and fighters are once again playing the same game, aligning their interests in the pursuit of Gil for more powerful items.

2) Mages no longer get outclassed by fighters in damage/clocktick, at least they don't if you take my advice about charge times and Faith

3) You can kick all the extraneous levels of basic spells out of mages' spell lists. Instead of Fire, Fire2, Fire3, Fire4, you can have a basic Fire spell, which gains power along with its caster simply as a matter of course. Different spells would remain differentiated from each other with a vestigial "Q"-esque score, which would of course no longer play as important a role; the formula for magic damage would be of the form MA * FP * Q.

My $0.02.

[Schwerpunkt]

The class discussion topic touched on this. Basically, you're exactly right as to why we had multiple tiers of spells. The case I made there was that, by figuring out how to change the way spells are cast, we can simply negate the need to have more than two tiers of spells (I generally envisioned tier 1 as single target with low cast time, tier 2 as multi-target with longer charge times).

I wasn't quite sure how to do that, but FP provides us with a very solid option. It also lets us give the Runic Blade item sub-set high FP values, addressing the question of "how do we balance spellswords?" pretty easily.

As I stated in a separate topic (the Archer's?), Innocent was ridiculous and shouldn't show up again. So I'm with you on that page.

And, frankly, I think I agree with Faith not playing a role in determining whether or not an attack hits. I'd prefer if Brave and Faith were focused primarily on governing Reaction abilities and such.

[Mordred]

Yea, Faith governing magic Reactions with Brave governing physical ones seems appropriate to me.

Having multiple tiers of spells, with tiers governing spell function rather than power as you describe, seems like a good idea to me.

[kablizzy]

I agree on that point - I have a problem with 'Single Fire Spell' because of the fact that it doesn't address the Range / Effect problem. Fire as an E: 1 spell eliminates a ton of options around what FFT and Tactics in general are all about - strategic grid combat.

Innocent was silly, I don't think I expected to see it in this game at all. Or if it does ever appear, it'd be rare, and have a plethora of ways to mitigate it easily.

I also love the idea of FP, especially for rods, staves, and the like. That does bring up a couple issues, though - What's the difference between Fire and Flare? Fire and Holy? Fire and Aero? Fire and any other ability? Is it just the rod? Is it just the caster? I don't think so. I think there's got to be another element there, and while I agree that Q shouldn't be the sole proprietor of spell power, I think there has to be an extra variable in there to justify the JP cost of spells. Otherwise, you buy Fire, you buy a big rod, and you go to town.

Edit: Ah, you mentioned FP * MA * Q. Perfect.

CT can be edited, but I'm not sure I like Charge Times for spells. Thusfar, we seem to be doing away with CT for quite a few things, but this is a decent point of discussion. But I did always have a problem with the concept that Spells were more expensive, slower to cast, at a lower damage rate, on a squishy caster frame, AND there was nothing to be done about making the spell better through equipment, save for MA+ stuff.

[Schwerpunkt]

I think, no matter how we look at it, we need a CT system. Something has to govern who gets a turn when and, short of doing an RTK sim where you just rank people in order of initiative and that's the sequence we go through in a turn (so you can be 'faster' than another guy, but you can never lap him, so to speak, which is a big draw for classes like Thief/Ninja).

I think the problem with having all spells do an AoE is that we're (probably) using hexes, which naturally means that any single tile borders six other tiles (rather than just 4). So the "cross" of the traditional Fire 1 becomes an asterix, which naturally means a lot more potential damage. And when we start dealing with summoners (which will probably get one additional tile effect greater than the wizards), you're talking about this massive area nuke.

What I'd like to see is your basic magic spell, which we'll call Fire, simply smacks one dude for 75% damage. Fira, the upgraded version, smacks that dude (for the full 100%) and everyone adjacent to him, but has a damage drop off (say, non-targets only suffer 75% damage). For the summoner, who will get one additional tile beyond that, we see 100% on target, 80% on secondary targets, and 60% on tertiary targets. And, while we're not there yet, I'm also in favor of making it so summons don't discriminate -- you wield ridiculously powerful forces and any ally that gets caught in the middle is screwed.

So, with the above, charge times would only be applied to the aoe spells. If your Wizard just wants to cast Fire on Boco the Malevolent, that's perfectly kosher (provided he's okay with having his eyes pecked out next turn). He doesn't need a casting time for that. But if he wants to nuke everyone around Boco too, he needs a casting time -- which, of course, means he has greater damage received, potentially lower Evade ratings, and may even get interrupted somehow (we explored this with the Knight's Shield Bash -- I'd like to see more two or three more classes that have an ability that has the potential to interrupt the target).

Magic is inherently chaotic. I'd like to represent that in-game by making it more dangerous, but also something you want to be careful about using. By making Fira do about 25% more damage, you incentivize people to use it and therefore expose themselves to getting beat on while charging. But if they don't want to take that risk, they can play it safe and just lob single-target spells.

I'm thinking this would be the best of both worlds.

[Mordred]

As far as CT goes, Vosh and I were able to set it up in an automated way for WotD with nothing but MS Excel and a lot of time on our hands. With a real programmer on staff, the possibilities are limitless.

I don't think hexes really play well with the AoE from FFT: with hexes, an AoE 1 spell hits 7 people, with squares, it hits 5. AoE 2? hexes: 19, squares 13. You see the problem. The only reason HoI used hexes is because they used the Battletech Map Editor to generate their maps, which was itself a legacy holdover from SimRTK. Mappy is a map generator that's just as easy to use and uses squares, so I don't see why hexes would be necessary.

Reducing damage on multi-target effect spells OR giving them charge times: either is acceptable, I think, but having both might be too much. At least we can all agree that standard Fire should be instant-cast, single target, right?

Being able to interrupt charging effects, though, is very dangerous. You're basically opening the door to mages becoming useless in the endgame again, because all the biggest, flashiest spells will likely have CT... and remember, fighters get a LOT faster than mages. Have a Ninja/Knight come in and Shield Bash any Summoners who are working on a Cyclops, and you may as well take Summoners out of the game.

[Schwerpunkt]

Honestly, I prefer hexes because those are what I use for my tabletop games. But I can work with squares fine. I think, however, that hexes actually give us more opportunity for big fireballs of death. One of the problems of casters is they can't keep up with raw physical output -- but if you can drop Ifrit on 19 tiles, there's really not much excuse for not being able to deliver wtfhuge damage. Squares would also make the mechanics of the claymore regular attack and the shotgun cone a bit more sensible.

The purpose of damage drop off, by the way, was to account for the number of hexes. At 100 damage per tile, an effect of 2 hits 7 tiles for 700 damage without drop off. With a 25% drop on those non-target tiles (of which there are 6), you wind up with a total of 550 damage, which is 10% more than the "hit all 5 tiles for 100% damage" you'd get from a traditional square grid. With the summoner scale, we hit the main target for 100%, the 6 secondary targets for 80%, and the 12 (?) tertiary targets for 60%. Assuming 100 damage again, that works out to 100, 480, and 720 for a grand total of 1,300 damage. A summoner nuking 13 tiles would do the exact same damage. I may actually want to see coefficients increased slightly (85% and 65% gives us 510 and 780 for a grand total of 1,390 damage, which isn't quite a 10% increase but it is notable).

Shield Bash does horrible damage and only interrupts something like 25% of the time. And it requires a shield, which won't be all that common (probably just Knight and Lancers for basic classes). Additionally, when we go back over the classes again to review how abilities can stack together (because that's an entirely separate review process), we may very well end up cutting Equip: Shield altogether. I would be surprised if we had more than three interrupts total in the entire basic class list (probably 'Kick' or something for the Thief, an ability with an emphasis on knockback and a low chance to interrupt).

[Mordred]

Right, I understand the potential use for a drop-off with hexes or tiles. Even so, the original FFT didn't have such a mechanic because it takes strategy and timing to land something like a Fire4 on a pile of enemies at once due to its low speed. I think I'd most like the solution of a damage drop-off over area if FFS were to eliminate the notion of charge times entirely. Your analysis notwithstanding, I still think it's needlessly punitive to have both a charge time and a damage drop-off on area spells.

Ultimately I prefer squares only because it's a fuckload easier to determine facing with squares rather than hexes. Your point about the cone effect is a good one as well.

One thing that keeps popping up in all kinds of game design is "it's not broken because it has a low chance to proc." That way lies madness, despair, and failure. If the only way to balance it is to RNG screw it, it's not balanced.

[kablizzy]

I'd prefer squares since that makes our balancing easier - every single ability and weapon in the game was made with squares in-mind. The only reason we used hexes at HoI is because there weren't any acceptable square tile-editors.

Insofar as Charge times, My jury is still out on eliminating charge times - Aside from spells, there's a lot of benefit to CT and adds tons of strategy, but I'm wondering if it's worth it. It would also eliminate some of the tactics element, and at that point, I'd wonder if we'd even want to run on a grid, or keep speed, or what-have-you. And at that point, if we're not doing CT or having a map, or keeping speed, then we may as well just not do a FFT sim at all. So, I dunno. Yes, it sucks to be a mage-class and have your face turned inside-out by an interrupt, but again, that was one of the basest concepts of FFT - I'd even go so far as to say that CT (Or ATB) is one of the basest Final Fantasy concepts ever.

So, I guess my questions regarding game mechanics are threefold (Fourfold now that I remember) -

1. CT - What do we want out of CT? Why have it? With the majority of our first class drafts, CT has been done away with almost entirely. However, the MOJ tree uses it 700% more than the POJ tree. So, I guess my question is this - Do we try and balance all spells/skills against free CT-counts? Do we keep going with CT as it is? Make the lower-quality spells lower CT and the higher-quality ones slightly higher? Make the big guns do monumental damage on the concept that they might get interrupted? I'm not sure that's the way to fly. Eliminating CT would go a long way to easing our workload, but I believe that there are other ways of doing that also (Getting the right tools to run this thing).

2. 1H vs. 2H - So, we've been dancing around the topic in a few threads, and I want to hammer it out here. What constitutes a One-Handed weapon and what constitutes a Two-Handed weapon? Can any weapon be used with both hands (Without the ability)? What's the effect of using two hands with each weapon? Can swords be held with two hands for extra damage? Howabout spears? Bags? Guns? Which ones? Why?

3. Weapon types - We've got a separate discussion thread on this one, but I want it to be a priority right now, because a lot of our class-work is going to be dependent upon what we come up with here. What weapon types are we going to have in the game, and why? Obviously, Knights use swords. Lancers use spears. But do we want each class to have two or three weapon types to impact multiple situations? What about pros / cons of each weapon type?

4. Primary / Secondary / Tertiary / Prestige Jobs - What are we going for here? What are the JP cutoffs for each? We've probably already violated some of the breaks for these classes because I don't have a specific amount of JP in mind for each class.

Here's my take on these: In regards to CT, in FFT it is a necessity. Taking it away not only takes away the concept of the game, but also eliminates a large chunk of the game's abilities (Time Mage no longer exists without CT). Now, with that said, I think that a lot of the caster classes have too much reliance on the system, and that should be brought down a peg. There's no reason why Fira should have a charge time. But some of the wackier status effect stuff, sure. If you're going to cast L5 Doom, you're going to take a minute at doing it. Same with physical classes - and these should be brought into direct line - If your ability does 360% damage, it should probably take a minute to set that up.

1H vs. 2H - I want the ability to equip weaponry to be fluid - So if you want to wield a 1H sword as a 2H, you can. However, we have a lot of stuff that's 2H only. Can you choose to wield those as a 1H? Why have 2H weapons whatsoever if the effect is identical or better by using a 1H weapon in its stead? This then opens the door to 2H weapons being strictly better than 1H weapons, and also makes caster classes get no bonus from that concept. Also, as damage scales up rather quickly, I'm not sure we have room for making 2H weapons that much better by default than their 1H counterparts just to give them a reason to exist. Plus, I think we can operate within the parameters of FFT mostly with the weapons they included (With a few tweaks and exceptions) and a few extra categories to flesh out classes that may not have been present in the original or WotL. Now, the concept of Bow, Crossbow, Longbow, Greatbow - all as classes for bows - is silly. So I want us to flesh this out as best we can before heading forward with more classes, since this'll affect how we do it.

Weapon types - I guess I just want to make sure we have a reason for each weapon type existing, and have it be a good one.

Class tiers - So, I'm used to the Primary / Secondary / Tertiary / Prestige concept, capped at 750 JP for Secondary and 500 JP for Tertiary / Alternate. I'd like to see those caps get lowered to 500 / 250 if it'd work. I think limiting the number of abilities available for each class is going to be better for all things involved. Plus, it gives us a good concept of what we're working with for each class to set their role as a non-primary job.

[Schwerpunkt]

Squares are easier to balance, hexes gives us more options. I don't really care either way, but there needs to be a decision. Preferably sooner rather than later. Note that hexes also seriously reduce the viability of tanks (because, working with a hex system, you can 'tank' the frontal cone of 3 tiles; that's not an option with squares unless you can tank stuff beside you, which is kind of silly).

1. CT - What do we want out of CT? Why have it? With the majority of our first class drafts, CT has been done away with almost entirely. However, the MOJ tree uses it 700% more than the POJ tree. So, I guess my question is this - Do we try and balance all spells/skills against free CT-counts? Do we keep going with CT as it is? Make the lower-quality spells lower CT and the higher-quality ones slightly higher? Make the big guns do monumental damage on the concept that they might get interrupted? I'm not sure that's the way to fly. Eliminating CT would go a long way to easing our workload, but I believe that there are other ways of doing that also (Getting the right tools to run this thing).

CT has shown up very surprisingly often, especially relative to FFT. Snapshot trades attack power for getting your turn sooner. Defend doesn't reset your CT to 0, so you get your next turn sooner. The Knight can smack you and reduce your CT, thus delaying your turn.

If we cut CT, not only is the Time Mage completely screwed (as you note), but we also render Speed meaningless. Speed then becomes Initiative and merely decides who acts in what order. That's fine, but it renders the big appeal of classes like the Thief and Ninja -- their ability, over the course of a battle, to get more turns in than other classes -- more or less moot. It castrates one of their biggest attributes in favor of what's basically misplaced egalitarianism.

MOJs are not inherently weak because they use CT. Seeing as how we haven't even gotten there, I'm not even sure why we're simply accepting as fact the notion that magic users are going to suck. It's kind of odd to be arguing this position (especially since I'm in the "it's a waste of time to try and fix the Squire class; just cut it and move on" camp), but there it is. We haven't even brainstormed how magic is going to work, so immediately starting off with the question of what to do with CT -- by far the single most definining attribute of the entire MOJ tree -- strikes me as bizarre.

2. 1H vs. 2H - So, we've been dancing around the topic in a few threads, and I want to hammer it out here. What constitutes a One-Handed weapon and what constitutes a Two-Handed weapon? Can any weapon be used with both hands (Without the ability)? What's the effect of using two hands with each weapon? Can swords be held with two hands for extra damage? Howabout spears? Bags? Guns? Which ones? Why?

A spear is not a pike, a sword is not a claymore, a rapier is not a scimitar, and a hatchet is not a battleaxe. The reason we have all these terms is because they all mean something very specific. A dirk is a knife-like weapon that's intended for thrusting -- it probably doesn't even have a cutting edge. A katana does have a cutting edge, but only on one side. A feudal arming sword is typically double-edged, has a sharpened point, and has a fuller ("blood groove") down the middle to lighten the weight.

It's inevitable that people will use incorrect terms. D&D's infamous "platemail" comes to mind -- the closest possible armor is "plated mail," which is a type of splintmail and looks absolutely nothing like plate armor. There's actually a classification of weapons known as "rifled muskets" despite the fact that, by definition, a musket cannot be rifled (granted, this term is largely the result of changing nomenclature). And, naturally, I don't expect perfect accuracy from players. A given player may not be able to tell me the difference between a spear and a pike. That doesn't reflect poorly upon them (unless they have a history degree). It does, however, reflect poorly upon a site that's literally had months to research, check, double-check, and re-evaluate its nomenclature.

We're playing a sim set in what is basically the Middle Ages with the addition of some high fantasy elements (namely weird technological progression and magic). But when you get right down to brass tacks, it's really all about the feudal era. The plot is driven by feudal politicking, the big players are feudal lords, religion has an influence similar to what the Catholic Church had during the feudal era, and so forth.

I suppose what I'm getting at here is "terms are important and we should make a conscious effort to use terms that accurately reflect what they're supposed to reflect." Which is to say we should clearly divide weapons on the grounds of role and class.

3. Weapon types - We've got a separate discussion thread on this one, but I want it to be a priority right now, because a lot of our class-work is going to be dependent upon what we come up with here. What weapon types are we going to have in the game, and why? Obviously, Knights use swords. Lancers use spears. But do we want each class to have two or three weapon types to impact multiple situations? What about pros / cons of each weapon type?

Set an arbitrary goal like three weapon types and you just make class development that much harder. I mean, how would you even give the Archer three weapons? Do you shoe-horn a dagger in there and then give them almost entirely useless skills so they don't feel like tards for bringing a dagger with them?

Knight - Sword-and-Board, Claymore
Lancer - Spear-and-Shield, Halberd
Archer - Crossbow, Longbow
Thief - Knives. I'd actually like to see sword mainhand, knives offhand, but that's for the actual topic to discuss.
Samurai - Katana.
Ninja - Ninja Knives. This is so they can dual wield, but we can reduce their damage with each individual weapon so they're not wtfgood.
Geomancer - Swords, axes.
Spellsword - Runic Blade, a high-FP sub-group of the sword category.
Monk - None.

And we can worry about MOJs when we get there. I would expect them to be primarily equipped with staves or knives with a few outliers (rod for oracle, gun for mediator, harp for performer).

4. Primary / Secondary / Tertiary / Prestige Jobs - What are we going for here? What are the JP cutoffs for each? We've probably already violated some of the breaks for these classes because I don't have a specific amount of JP in mind for each class.

Assuming you want people to be able to master a class in 15 levels, and assuming 4:1 ratios of JP to XP, we have a functional cap of 6,000 JP per class. Assuming two 6k JP classes and one 9k JP class (prestige), we have enough skills to get people all the way up to level 52.5 without running out of stuff to buy. Then, on top of all of that, we'll probably have a pool of generic ("Civilian"?) skills that anyone can buy from, which would include stuff like Poach and Move +1 -- stuff useful to pretty much everyone.

Assuming each base class gives you 9 abilities, you have 18 conceivable active skills you can unlock prior to getting your prestige. The prestige will probably have anywhere between 5 and 10, depending on how much we want to do with them (giving them more skills basically renders the basic classes useless, so I'm in favor of giving them like 4-5 abilities). Assuming 5, a given character will have 23 different abilities to choose from by the time they reach level 52.5 (probably much sooner).

As I see it, 23 abilities is way more than enough. A lot of those are going to be conditionals (see: Lancer's Falling Strike) and a lot of those are going to be skills you may not even use because they don't fit your specific build (see: all the shield-related abilities the Knight gets, which you obviously won't use if you're lugging around a claymore). It's plenty. By adding a tertiary class, we jump that figure up to 32, at which point I begin to wonder whether you guys have ever seen tactics written for characters who have 32 separate if-then-else conditions. It gets completely out of hand.

The tentative schedule Ilium and I worked out was you'd get your secondary at 15 and your prestige at 25. Note the importance of that: you get your secondary around the time you master your primary. The intent is have your secondary be a genuine secondary -- to show that you've reached a point of excellence in your primary class that you can then branch out and find different stuff to do. Or it shows that you picked your primary poorly and stockpiled a metric tonne of JP to spend immediately upon reaching level 15. Whichever works.

And I don't like the notion of restricting people from choices on their secondary. That was one of the dumbest and most arbitrary things HoI did in v2. Take the ever-problematic Rune Knight. By the time you go most of the way through the class, you could imbue your weapon with everything from Fire to Earth. And yet you couldn't take Nova Strike -- which basically imbued your weapon with all of those same effects -- entirely because of the arbitrary number associated with learning the ability. Or you run into a situation where the Priest, who has a half dozen healing (ie, holy) spells on hand, somehow can't cast Holy because it has a really high JP cost. Or you had the Thief, who literally could not steal from the enemy unless he was a Primary -- at which point I'm obliged to ask you what on earth the class is there for. I can go on all day; v2's classes were rife with bad balancing and class-defining abilities gated behind arbitrary JP limits.

As I see it, anyone who decides that, as a Knight, they also want the Thief skillset should get unfettered access to that skillset. That's the entire point of a secondary class. And yet the Knight/Thief thing didn't work properly because he could get the Thief's class-defining ability. That's bad game design.

[Mordred]

Clocktick time flow for initiative calculations can be kept while still discarding the concept of charge times for spells.

1H vs 2H weapons... The idea there is that 1H means you can also equip a shield. Two Swords mucks that up a lot, though. Two Swords should ideally become Two Knives. Making Weapon Evade a natural part of a character's Evade stat would go some ways towards making this an easier choice as well, since 2H weapons still have some level of W-EV. Two Hands is a silly, stupid-ass skill no matter what, since it just means you're using a 1H weapon in a way it wasn't optimized for. If you're using Two Hands and you don't natively have access to a naturally-2H weapon, you're doing it wrong. ((One Hand would be an OP alternative that would allow you to equip a 2H with a shield.))

Ninja Swords should not exist. Ninjas don't need the extra damage output. They can stick to Knives, and if that's not good enough, they should buy Equip Sword.

[kablizzy]

Squares are easier to balance, hexes gives us more options. I don't really care either way, but there needs to be a decision. Preferably sooner rather than later. Note that hexes also seriously reduce the viability of tanks (because, working with a hex system, you can 'tank' the frontal cone of 3 tiles; that's not an option with squares unless you can tank stuff beside you, which is kind of silly).

I'm not entirely sure what I want to do here. But we should decide this soon.

CT has shown up very surprisingly often, especially relative to FFT. Snapshot trades attack power for getting your turn sooner. Defend doesn't reset your CT to 0, so you get your next turn sooner. The Knight can smack you and reduce your CT, thus delaying your turn.

If we cut CT, not only is the Time Mage completely screwed (as you note), but we also render Speed meaningless. Speed then becomes Initiative and merely decides who acts in what order. That's fine, but it renders the big appeal of classes like the Thief and Ninja -- their ability, over the course of a battle, to get more turns in than other classes -- more or less moot. It castrates one of their biggest attributes in favor of what's basically misplaced egalitarianism.

And I'm happy with this thusfar. It's not a huge theme, but enough of a theme where it's working. I want to keep this.

MOJs are not inherently weak because they use CT. Seeing as how we haven't even gotten there, I'm not even sure why we're simply accepting as fact the notion that magic users are going to suck. It's kind of odd to be arguing this position (especially since I'm in the "it's a waste of time to try and fix the Squire class; just cut it and move on" camp), but there it is. We haven't even brainstormed how magic is going to work, so immediately starting off with the question of what to do with CT -- by far the single most defining attribute of the entire MOJ tree -- strikes me as bizarre.

Indeed. I had mostly MOJ classes when playing through FFT. I say jury should be out since we're pre-alpha, and continue developing as we have. If there's a problem at the end, we balance to that problem.

A spear is not a pike, a sword is not a claymore, a rapier is not a scimitar, and a hatchet is not a battleaxe. The reason we have all these terms is because they all mean something very specific. A dirk is a knife-like weapon that's intended for thrusting -- it probably doesn't even have a cutting edge. A katana does have a cutting edge, but only on one side. A feudal arming sword is typically double-edged, has a sharpened point, and has a fuller ("blood groove") down the middle to lighten the weight.

I suppose what I'm getting at here is "terms are important and we should make a conscious effort to use terms that accurately reflect what they're supposed to reflect." Which is to say we should clearly divide weapons on the grounds of role and class.

This is all well and good, but this does nothing for the argument of adding shotguns, halberds, and the like. While rapiers should totally be a distinct class from swords, that does nothing to answer the question of "Why add them?" And I think that's a question that needs to be asked for each weapon. So, yes, a spear is inherently different than a pike, and a pike from a lance, and a lance from a halberd, and all of those different in subtle ways from Glaives and Naginatas. But what weapons to Lancers use? There were ten spears in FFT - One of which was called 'Javelin', and one was called 'Javelin II'. Spear, Mithril Spear, Partisan. Obelisk, Holy Lance, Dragon Whisker, Gae Bolg, and Gungnir. I don't see any of these with the exception of Javelin that don't make sense. So, we can cut out Javelin if it's really a huge deal there. And I'm all about checking and double-checking nomenclature and being accurate, but having correct nomenclature and adding six weapon types are slightly different. Spears, in my eyes, are thrusting weapons. Unless we wish to add 5, 10, 15 spears to the list and are having extreme difficulty with nomenclature, I don't see why the class of Spears needs expanded upon. Shotguns, I get. Shotguns make for blasty fun! But who gets shotguns? Claymores, I also (kinda) get. They can auto-cleave. But do we need them? And more particularly - do we need them above and beyond what's already here? I kinda feel the same about status effects - do we need Flee and Flight and Hide and Duck and Cover, when all can be represented as a single ability?

Set an arbitrary goal like three weapon types and you just make class development that much harder. I mean, how would you even give the Archer three weapons? Do you shoe-horn a dagger in there and then give them almost entirely useless skills so they don't feel like tards for bringing a dagger with them?

I dunno, why make eight different types of swords? There are Swords, Knives, Katanas, Ninja Swords, Knight Swords, Fell Swords, and now Claymores. Certainly, we can boil some of these down a bit? What does each do that the rest don't, but more importantly, is it necessary? And I wasn't meaning to give a set number of weapon types, t'was just conjecture.

Assuming you want people to be able to master a class in 15 levels, and assuming 4:1 ratios of JP to XP, we have a functional cap of 6,000 JP per class. Assuming two 6k JP classes and one 9k JP class (prestige), we have enough skills to get people all the way up to level 52.5 without running out of stuff to buy. Then, on top of all of that, we'll probably have a pool of generic ("Civilian"?) skills that anyone can buy from, which would include stuff like Poach and Move +1 -- stuff useful to pretty much everyone.

Assuming each base class gives you 9 abilities, you have 18 conceivable active skills you can unlock prior to getting your prestige. The prestige will probably have anywhere between 5 and 10, depending on how much we want to do with them (giving them more skills basically renders the basic classes useless, so I'm in favor of giving them like 4-5 abilities). Assuming 5, a given character will have 23 different abilities to choose from by the time they reach level 52.5 (probably much sooner).

As I see it, 23 abilities is way more than enough. A lot of those are going to be conditionals (see: Lancer's Falling Strike) and a lot of those are going to be skills you may not even use because they don't fit your specific build (see: all the shield-related abilities the Knight gets, which you obviously won't use if you're lugging around a claymore). It's plenty. By adding a tertiary class, we jump that figure up to 32, at which point I begin to wonder whether you guys have ever seen tactics written for characters who have 32 separate if-then-else conditions. It gets completely out of hand.

I agree that this is more than enough, but "adding" a tertiary class doesn't make for any more abilities than this, and actually cuts down on the total amount of JP required, *and* adds to the number of combat options that class could have - You're cutting out the most expensive abilities of both the Secondary and Tertiary classes. Also, since there would be a JP cap, you'd be cutting out what would average out to be the top half of abilities spanning two classes. This would come out to be about 10 less abilities on average, giving us around 22-23, which is exactly no different, and also gives the player more options, at a lower JP cost than giving them the access that we currently have given them. I've also written and run for people with those tactics, and I'll be honest, it's not easy, but it's no less than reading through one of Iwan's if-then conditionals for SimRTK. So I don't see this as an issue at all, and in fact, the opposite.

The tentative schedule Ilium and I worked out was you'd get your secondary at 15 and your prestige at 25. Note the importance of that: you get your secondary around the time you master your primary. The intent is have your secondary be a genuine secondary -- to show that you've reached a point of excellence in your primary class that you can then branch out and find different stuff to do. Or it shows that you picked your primary poorly and stockpiled a metric tonne of JP to spend immediately upon reaching level 15. Whichever works.

And I don't like the notion of restricting people from choices on their secondary. That was one of the dumbest and most arbitrary things HoI did in v2. Take the ever-problematic Rune Knight. By the time you go most of the way through the class, you could imbue your weapon with everything from Fire to Earth. And yet you couldn't take Nova Strike -- which basically imbued your weapon with all of those same effects -- entirely because of the arbitrary number associated with learning the ability. Or you run into a situation where the Priest, who has a half dozen healing (ie, holy) spells on hand, somehow can't cast Holy because it has a really high JP cost. Or you had the Thief, who literally could not steal from the enemy unless he was a Primary -- at which point I'm obliged to ask you what on earth the class is there for. I can go on all day; v2's classes were rife with bad balancing and class-defining abilities gated behind arbitrary JP limits.

The concept behind the JP limits was threefold - First, that if you're not dedicated to that class, you're not good enough to do certain things that the class does. This applied to many things. Your primary was your identity - The thing that you do. If you are an archer, you're supposed to be peerless in that. Some dude who's been spending a week at it shouldn't be better than you. In the terms of Nova Strike, yes, you could totally take the lesser elemental abilities - because they are lesser. The arbitrary damage that Nova Strike did was also much higher than those lesser abilities. You picked your primary because it was supposed to be the thing you're the best at, and your secondary and alternate for options and identity purposes - Your character could be a Knight, but could also love dabbling in status effects - Oracle as Alt, perhaps? We also didn't want characters to go nuts - Ninja / Time Mage was an enormous worry for us for a long time, enough so that we changed the entire speed system to balance out such things. You could still be a Ninja that casts haste, but since it was your alternate, you wouldn't get the class until much later, but also would only be able to cast a few choice spells from that class - No more than a passing interest in it.

This leads to the second point - balance. There were some skill combinations that were kinda crazy - and we limited those through JP. The limits were in place so that if you wanted to be a Dual-Wielding Axe-Sorceror with a Jump +5 and Meatbone Slash, we made the decision that, no. We didn't want to balance for every single class combination possibility on the planet. It was already tedious enough. And to the third point - We made the Primary / Secondary / Tertiary concept specifically so that you could be good at your class (Geomancer) and also dabble in a couple other things. We didn't want Geomancer to be completely boned, though, so we gave him access to some other skills that could help him out from other trees. Nothing too crazy, though, because he's a Geomancer, and not a Ninja. But if Geomancer didn't 100% describe who he was, then that's cool. You can totally grab a few Ninja skills also. But that Geomancer was a Geomancer, and not going to be as good at Ninja-ing as a full-on Ninja. But then we figured that it might be an okay idea to give each class some access to a small pool of abilities from the other tree. So, if the Geomancer / Ninja wanted to pick up a small amount of White Mage, that was ok too. This meant that if the Geomancer got in a bind by himself, he had some options, but would never be as good at White Magic as someone who had been practicing all his life. That makes tons of sense. The third reason behind this was because a Berserker / Knight / Time Mage isn't going to have the MP to cast Meteor. He's going to be the crappiest Time Mage imaginable. He's not going to have the MA to make a big impact, and 95% of the time, he's going to use his primary skillset anyway, because that's what he picked as his Primary class. That's his identity, his growth rates are tied to it, and unless he picks three classes of the same tree, he's only going to be doing Secondary / Alternate stuff in times of trouble as options. So with this, we're giving them extra abilities in a secondary class in exchange for options in a third class, and why? Because we think adding a third class is arbitrary? I think that giving a class some extra abilities in a second class that they may not even be able to use well is just as arbitrary. 

I agree that v2 balancing was awful. That's because it never got finished. I personally gave up halfway through, handed everything off to Lion, who re-worked them about 20% through, and they launched with unfinished classes, half done by me, half v1 clones, and a random smattering of 20% that were done by Lion before he gave up. So, that doesn't have much to do with the concept of JP limits. Also, it added a level of strategy to planning your character that isn't present in just "Pick two classes." You had to be careful about what you chose (Or, at least, were supposed to be careful. Half of the classes not being done kinda hindered the process) so as to have the most choices in battle.

Which also leads back into Mord's point - If you picked your Primary poorly, and you don't want to spend JP on that class, you're automatically down one class. If we're giving a player full access to two classes, then why not let them hit both at the start? Why stagger them by 15 levels? That's also arbitrary and unnecessary. I wasn't around for this part of development, but I dislike it heavily. Especially if your character is a Berserker / Time Mage, I can't wrap my mind around that character being as good at Time Magic as a Time Mage / _____. Especially not just leveling to 15 and then automatically learning a bunch of high-level abilities. 

As I see it, anyone who decides that, as a Knight, they also want the Thief skillset should get unfettered access to that skillset. That's the entire point of a secondary class. And yet the Knight/Thief thing didn't work properly because he could get the Thief's class-defining ability. That's bad game design.

Then what's the reason behind giving them that at level 15? If we're doing this, we might as well go down Mordred's route of just giving the players access to all classes like FFT does and allow them to pick and choose abilities as they wish. And I figured that's not something we were doing for a number of reasons. Plus, I don't see how restricting players to certain abilities in a consistent fashion is bad game design whatsoever. As probably the only person here who's worked in actual game design, I'd challenge this pretty heavily.

Basically, I don't see enough in that to make a huge decision one way or the other. I can see some merit to doing two full class choices and unfettered access to both of those skillsets, but definitely not for the reasons that were listed.

[Schwerpunkt]

Mord: the idea I had was for the Ninja Knives to be roughly between regular knives and swords on the damage continuum, but you could dual wield them. That gives you the benefit of dealing more damage than you would with knives, but doesn't quite give you the "200% compared to Knights" thing that FFT has, which is extremely hard to balance.

This is all well and good, but this does nothing for the argument of adding shotguns, halberds, and the like. While rapiers should totally be a distinct class from swords, that does nothing to answer the question of "Why add them?" And I think that's a question that needs to be asked for each weapon. So, yes, a spear is inherently different than a pike, and a pike from a lance, and a lance from a halberd, and all of those different in subtle ways from Glaives and Naginatas. But what weapons to Lancers use? There were ten spears in FFT - One of which was called 'Javelin', and one was called 'Javelin II'. Spear, Mithril Spear, Partisan. Obelisk, Holy Lance, Dragon Whisker, Gae Bolg, and Gungnir. I don't see any of these with the exception of Javelin that don't make sense. So, we can cut out Javelin if it's really a huge deal there. And I'm all about checking and double-checking nomenclature and being accurate, but having correct nomenclature and adding six weapon types are slightly different. Spears, in my eyes, are thrusting weapons. Unless we wish to add 5, 10, 15 spears to the list and are having extreme difficulty with nomenclature, I don't see why the class of Spears needs expanded upon. Shotguns, I get. Shotguns make for blasty fun! But who gets shotguns? Claymores, I also (kinda) get. They can auto-cleave. But do we need them? And more particularly - do we need them above and beyond what's already here? I kinda feel the same about status effects - do we need Flee and Flight and Hide and Duck and Cover, when all can be represented as a single ability?

FFT's inability to name weapons really shouldn't influence us all that much. HoI had no problem coming up with distinct weapon names without drawing heavily upon mythology (which the Lancer did).

The intent is for each weapon to have a distinct purpose, a very specific job. A Lancer who uses a halberd loses his shield, but he does more damage with Jump and hits harder on just about everything else. That's the point. It offers the player a choice of saying "I want to be tanky" or "I want to post big numbers." It's about a degree of player choice that's absent in FFT and HoI.

I dunno, why make eight different types of swords? There are Swords, Knives, Katanas, Ninja Swords, Knight Swords, Fell Swords, and now Claymores. Certainly, we can boil some of these down a bit? What does each do that the rest don't, but more importantly, is it necessary? And I wasn't meaning to give a set number of weapon types, t'was just conjecture.

I, for one, see no reason to include Knight Swords. They're just really goddamn powerful swords that are restricted to really goddamn powerful characters. And there's literally no reason that Defender can't show up later as a regular sword (or, hell, as a spear). Fell Swords I'm drawing a blank on. Are we talking about Blood Sword, which has an extremely niche ability?

I agree that this is more than enough, but "adding" a tertiary class doesn't make for any more abilities than this, and actually cuts down on the total amount of JP required, *and* adds to the number of combat options that class could have - You're cutting out the most expensive abilities of both the Secondary and Tertiary classes. Also, since there would be a JP cap, you'd be cutting out what would average out to be the top half of abilities spanning two classes. This would come out to be about 10 less abilities on average, giving us around 22-23, which is exactly no different, and also gives the player more options, at a lower JP cost than giving them the access that we currently have given them. I've also written and run for people with those tactics, and I'll be honest, it's not easy, but it's no less than reading through one of Iwan's if-then conditionals for SimRTK. So I don't see this as an issue at all, and in fact, the opposite.

See, that's the problem. Tertiary classes add nothing to the game. In order to justify their inclusion, you need to make the player suck hard at them. This means that class-defining traits are suddenly no longer available. I mean, what's the point of taking a Ninja tertiary if you only get one Grapple ability out of it? The Ninja's ability to throw people and things is a huge part of the class I designed, but you, as a Knight/Archer, don't get access to it... why, exactly? Because someone drew an arbitrary line during development?

Look, I get the intent, but it's wrong. At no point should we say "you can take this as your secondary, but you're going to suck at it." That's not fair to players. It's bad enough if you're doing something ballsy and original like Knight/Priest, but it gets considerably worse if you want to take a class from each of the three trees. All we're doing is arbitrarily limiting character growth.

And to top it off, HoI's tertiary classes were almost entirely useless. You'd take it, get an extremely minimal stat bonus (wasn't there a class that offered just HP +10, which is utterly worthless at that level?), and that'd be about it. As I see it, that's a fundamental and irrevocable betrayal of the class system. The class system is about letting you mix and match and make combinations that otherwise wouldn't make sense -- all with the express purpose of doing some really cool stuff. But you can't do that with HoI's system, which basically says "you started as a knight, leveled as a knight, and anything you do that isn't explicitly knight-related is going to be goddamn terrible." HoI did not reward players for trying something as ambitious as Knight/Priest. They just punished you. Unless you got a really good Paladin-esque prestige, you were terrible at that secondary role.

The system simply didn't work properly. That's reason enough to not copy it.

There were some skill combinations that were kinda crazy - and we limited those through JP. The limits were in place so that if you wanted to be a Dual-Wielding Axe-Sorceror with a Jump +5 and Meatbone Slash, we made the decision that, no.

Then the game was designed improperly. Skills must always be evaluated in the context of every other skill in-game. This is necessary to both balance them and make sure that players simply can't stack overpowered abilities on top of one another. This is exactly the reason we cut Speed Save -- it's one of those abilities that is so easy to get completely out of control.

You also spend a lot of time talking about secondaries and how classes should be less capable at them. That's how it's going to work here, too. If your primary is a Geomancer, to use your example, you level on the Geomancer's stat growth template. When you choose Ninja, you probably get a decent one-time bonus and a small increase to your level-by-level growth. But no matter how you cut it, that Geomancer will never have the stat growth to compete with a pure Ninja. He simply cannot be as good as the Ninja by virtue of different leveling templates, specifically the one that puts Geomancer speed growth on a lower priority.

To then say "as a secondary, you can only spend so much JP on a given ability," you're basically smacking the Geomancer with two separate penalties -- he doesn't grow as fast and he can't get the same wtfgood abilities (because, and let's be honest here, HoI's top-tier abilities were always wtfgood -- and this poor balance was used to justify restricting their availability).

This all goes back to the class concept in FFT. In FFT, certain classes are better because they take longer to unlock. The Dark Knight will eat the Geomancer for lunch every day of the week. But we don't have that system. You don't have to play an Archer to unlock a Thief. It is therefore illogical for certain classes to get wtfgood abilities. All those abilities do is dilute the class' identity (Rune Knights just become "spam your super-imbue as long as you have mana" rather than "imbue your weapon tactically to reflect changing needs on the battlefield") and force us into a system where we have to establish arbitrary JP cut off points.

If we're giving a player full access to two classes, then why not let them hit both at the start? Why stagger them by 15 levels?

The idea was that you'd master one class and then immediately embark upon another. I doubt it's going to be easy to balance it with two classes obtained earlier. But that's a discussion worth having.