Final Fantasy Discovery

Don't worry, not too much is changing here, but Limit Breaks were in sore need of a balance update. So here's what we got:

• Previously, damage received awarded players a 50% increase in their Limit Break gauge, compared to the damage received versus their max HP. If that sounded like another language, here's what that means: if a party member with 1,000 Max HP took a hit and was dealt 500 damage, they gained 50% of their Limit Break gauge in one shot. I've gone ahead and lowered that by half, to 25%. Limit Breaks are powerful and count as Quick Actions, so having to wait a little longer in between uses was a logical step.
• Limit Breaks previously only consumed 1% of a full ATB gauge, allowing the party member to act again almost immediately. This functionality has been removed. Instead, when the Limit Break is full, a new hidden status will be applied to the actor, increasing their ATB gauge very quickly for exactly one turn. It's effect is far greater than that of the White Magic spell, Haste. Final Fantasy VII had a similar effect when a character reached their Limit Break's maximum without being ready to act.

Finally, I didn't change any of the character Limit Breaks, because I'm pretty happy with their assortment of abilities now, but I did do one small favor for the player: all Limit Breaks that deal damage now deal unblockable damage, so you won't be wasting any Limit Breaks on enemies that may absorb the damage (Cecil, I'm looking at you).

Other than that, most of my FFD time has been spent compiling tilesets lately. I think I mentioned before in a previous blog post about how horrible my understanding of how VX Ace tilesets were, and the sets I made before weren't utilizing them to their full capacity, so I've been rebuilding the sets and subsequently, the older maps. Those are done, now I'm working on the new maps. Getting closer to a demo release, yay!

I'll be honest, I have been sidetracked a little bit as of late helping out a friend with a VX Ace idea, but I'm pretty much just a consultant there (sort of like Iron Man; yep, I'm Iron Man).