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YOU KNOW YOU'RE A FINAL FANTASY FAN WHEN...
Posts
Trihan
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Close1. Someone says "whelk" and you automatically shudder.
2. At least one boy in every generation of your family has been named Cid.
3. When asked for "job" in an application form, you put "Thief" or "Black Mage".
4. You can identify which game a piece of music is from just by listening to it.
5. You understand that anything can be used as a weapon. ANYTHING. Frying pans, enormous heavy swords, umbrellas, guns, swordguns...physics, setting and rationality be damned.
6. You beat The Famed Mimic Gogo by actually depleting his HP rather than waiting.
7. You're in a band called "Warriors of Light".
8. You refer to yellow birds of any description (or blue birds, or purple birds, or red birds, or green birds, or black birds) as chocobos.
9. You actually got the King of Jump Rope.
10. Your phone's ringtone is the victory theme.
Feel free to expand the list!
2. At least one boy in every generation of your family has been named Cid.
3. When asked for "job" in an application form, you put "Thief" or "Black Mage".
4. You can identify which game a piece of music is from just by listening to it.
5. You understand that anything can be used as a weapon. ANYTHING. Frying pans, enormous heavy swords, umbrellas, guns, swordguns...physics, setting and rationality be damned.
6. You beat The Famed Mimic Gogo by actually depleting his HP rather than waiting.
7. You're in a band called "Warriors of Light".
8. You refer to yellow birds of any description (or blue birds, or purple birds, or red birds, or green birds, or black birds) as chocobos.
9. You actually got the King of Jump Rope.
10. Your phone's ringtone is the victory theme.
Feel free to expand the list!
12. You pretend to play with swords, but not as if it's a dynamic fighting style, as if it's just your turn to attack.
13. You consider playing boss battle music for daunting real life challenges.
14. You wish you could save at certain points so you can try something really stupid and dangerous without consequence.
15. You think that RPG soundtracks are legit music to play at a party.
16. You think of mundane tasks at work as minigames.
17. You keep a list of themesongs to play on loop on your mp3 player, as you do things. IE; An overworld theme for when you're walking around outside, or a city/town theme for walking in malls.
17b. You never get to use the battle themes on your list, because you're a Knight, not a Monk, and currently lack a weapon.
18. When you hear the word 'Holy' you think about lots of damage.
19. You have a collection of FF toys.
20. You know what, have played, own, and actually enjoyed the PSX Chocobo Racing game.
21. You want to take your girl to a ball with fireworks over a glass dome.
What FF were you playing that Holy did lots of damage? I've always found it pretty subpar for its MP cost in most iterations. Also, I totally have to start doing 13 combined with 17.
author=Trihan
What FF were you playing that Holy did lots of damage? I've always found it pretty subpar for its MP cost in most iterations. Also, I totally have to start doing 13 combined with 17.
FF3, FF8, FF9
Holy's good in 4. It isn't as good as Flare due to its bug but it's by far the best offense Rosa has. Plus it can be reflected to bypass counters. It's better than Flare in 5 as it can be element-boosted and gives an offensive option to !White and eats up less MP (but Black gets osmose so MP cost is moot).
22) Point out the effectiveness of Holy
e: Omega absorbs holy and has enough magic defense to make Flare's def-penetrating effect matter so I guess that's one place where Flare beats Holy
22) Point out the effectiveness of Holy
e: Omega absorbs holy and has enough magic defense to make Flare's def-penetrating effect matter so I guess that's one place where Flare beats Holy
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=TrihanNot only this, but also, when my boss calls it plays the FF7 boss music, and when my mother calls it plays Jenova's music.
10. Your phone's ringtone is the victory theme.
Not even kidding, either.
23) I have more soundtrack CDs than there are games, because I have the piano collections and celtic moon and orchestral versions and everything.
24) I have all the strategy guides, not because I needed them for playing the games, but because I needed them for making my fan-games more true to the originals.
25) I have FF art books and ultimania books that are in Japanese. I don't read Japanese.
26) I have books of FF sheet music, and they're the only reason I ever tried to learn the piano.
27) I have a custom-made bracelet that says LOCKE on it, because I was on vacation and a vendor was making personalized bracelets and I wanted that more than my real name.
28) I have a physical copy of every Squaresoft game they released before merging with Enix. This collection includes famicom and super famicom cartridges of FF2, FF3, FF5, Bahamut Lagoon, and Seiken Densetsu 3. Again, I don't read Japanese. I also don't have a famicom or super famicom.
30) I have four copies of Chrono Trigger for different systems; I don't even own one of those systems.
31) The first time I listened to each of the Black Mages CDs, I tried to recognize the songs without looking at the boxes. I got all but one of them right (FF2 battle music).
32) I have the damage formula for the first 9 FF games memorized, and can explain the balance problems it caused and the other decisions it influenced (FF6 starts you at a level higher than 1 because they didn't figure out a problem with how levels factor in until too late in the design process; they did the same thing again in FF7 because the solution worked)
It should have occurred to me that someone called LockeZ would turn this up to 11.
As a fan of interesting mechanics, I would be really interested in hearing more about #32, Locke.
As a fan of interesting mechanics, I would be really interested in hearing more about #32, Locke.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
The defense portion of the core damage formula in the FF series is (skill_damage * (255 - target_def) / 256)
This formula is used for both physical and magical attacks.
What this means is that someone with 255 def takes 1/255 as much damage as someone with 1 def. However, someone with 128 def only takes half as much damage as someone with 1 def. And someone with 255 def takes half as much damage as someone with 254 def.
This is an obvious problem when deciding the power for equipment. 5 points of def on a piece of late-game equipment can be worth dozens of times as much as 5 points of def on a piece of early-hame equipment. As a result, the "balanced" way of providing equipment upgrades would be for each equipment upgrade to provide less and less bonus defense over the previous tier of equipment. But this doesn't tend to happen. In fact, the opposite happens in some of the games: later piece of equipment provide bigger bonuses. Because all the other numbers are getting bigger as the game goes on, the designers sort of intuitively assumed that armor numbers should also, and as a result you can generally take like 1/20 the damage you're supposed to take at the end of the game if you know how it works.
--
The thing that causes the level issue I mentioned earlier is simpler: damage is multiplied by the attacker's level. By the time you're level 5 or so this isn't a game-breaking deal, but at level 1 it is. A level 3 character does triple the damage of a level 1 character. This creates an extremely steep learning curve at the beginning of the game; if you've ever noticed that you get your ass kicked at the beginning of the NES FF games until you get a couple levels, this is why. They couldn't make the enemies feel like anything other than exp pinatas for a level 2 character without making them mind-blowingly difficult for a level 1 character.
Most of the games from FF4 onward solved this by starting the party at level 5 or higher. FF5 solved it by forcing the player into enough unavoidable cut scene battles to level up to level 3 before entering the first dungeon. FF8 and FFT got around it by having the enemies level up with you. In exactly none of the games did the designers ever come up with the novel solution of just changing the formula to add 5 to your level... Reminds me of RM2K3 users. Adjust your core gameplay ideas to fit your damage formula instead of the other way around.
This formula is used for both physical and magical attacks.
What this means is that someone with 255 def takes 1/255 as much damage as someone with 1 def. However, someone with 128 def only takes half as much damage as someone with 1 def. And someone with 255 def takes half as much damage as someone with 254 def.
This is an obvious problem when deciding the power for equipment. 5 points of def on a piece of late-game equipment can be worth dozens of times as much as 5 points of def on a piece of early-hame equipment. As a result, the "balanced" way of providing equipment upgrades would be for each equipment upgrade to provide less and less bonus defense over the previous tier of equipment. But this doesn't tend to happen. In fact, the opposite happens in some of the games: later piece of equipment provide bigger bonuses. Because all the other numbers are getting bigger as the game goes on, the designers sort of intuitively assumed that armor numbers should also, and as a result you can generally take like 1/20 the damage you're supposed to take at the end of the game if you know how it works.
--
The thing that causes the level issue I mentioned earlier is simpler: damage is multiplied by the attacker's level. By the time you're level 5 or so this isn't a game-breaking deal, but at level 1 it is. A level 3 character does triple the damage of a level 1 character. This creates an extremely steep learning curve at the beginning of the game; if you've ever noticed that you get your ass kicked at the beginning of the NES FF games until you get a couple levels, this is why. They couldn't make the enemies feel like anything other than exp pinatas for a level 2 character without making them mind-blowingly difficult for a level 1 character.
Most of the games from FF4 onward solved this by starting the party at level 5 or higher. FF5 solved it by forcing the player into enough unavoidable cut scene battles to level up to level 3 before entering the first dungeon. FF8 and FFT got around it by having the enemies level up with you. In exactly none of the games did the designers ever come up with the novel solution of just changing the formula to add 5 to your level... Reminds me of RM2K3 users. Adjust your core gameplay ideas to fit your damage formula instead of the other way around.
33. You become LockeZ.
Jesus Christ, you sad little man.
Jesus Christ, you sad little man.
from DespiteFF8 doesn't have fans.
You guys must not be fans, other wise you would've caught my squall references.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=halibabicaThis is pretty much the final step, yeah.
33. You become LockeZ.
Jesus Christ, you sad little man.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Nope. Sounds like a pony RPG.
A normal RPG would just give the enemies lower stats than the player. But because of how Pokémon works, it can't have level 1 enemies that are far weaker than level 1 player characters. The enemies ARE the player characters. The only way it has to make them weaker is through levels.
author=CyberDaggerNo, this is for a different reason. Pokémon doesn't even use the same damage formulas as Final Fantasy. It just starts you at level 5 so that the enemies will all be weaker than you.
So today I learned why your starter Pokémon starts at level 5 instead of 1.
A normal RPG would just give the enemies lower stats than the player. But because of how Pokémon works, it can't have level 1 enemies that are far weaker than level 1 player characters. The enemies ARE the player characters. The only way it has to make them weaker is through levels.
