LEAPFROG'S PROFILE

author=LockeZ
Well, in games where there's player-enemy symmetry, it spans the entire game. You don't just do it for one boss in the middle of the game just because that boss happens to join your team later. You do it for every single enemy.

I was about to disagree, because carefully employed one-off symmetry can be great for employing a contrast with regular, asymmetrical battles to draw parallels between characters... but I can't think of any actual examples of that symmetry being used in an otherwise asymmetrical game. The illusion of symmetry is often employed, but actual implementation is a real pain to balance when a party has been beating up enemies with heavily inflated stats for the entire game. There usually at least has to be a hit point boost.

I can see how it could work, say, by giving the enemy in question a very high level in the battle and have them join the player when they've caught up. But you're right. It's still very rare, if not unheard of, outside of an already symmetrical system.

Well... unless the idea is to handily defeat the character in question. I believe that may have been done once or twice.

I think another interesting thing is the way guest NPCs are usually handled when they join your party. Characters like General Leo and Sephiroth, who are powerful in comparison to the party but still basically adhering to the player's rules - well, except for Sephiroth's invincibility.

I guess I know who my primary White Mage is going to be for the foreseeable future!



It was a toss up between Mog and Lenna, but I already like his survivability (which is apparently a big theme for me, between him and my reliance on Golbez and PCecil), and now this.

Still a fairly crummy draw, but I got something I was quite eager for, so I shouldn't complain.

I want Maduin's Horn, but even though I'm halfway (?) through the classic dungeons and still able to bring in Mythril fairly easily I don't know if I can justify a third FFVI pull with FFV just around the corner...

Speaking of dungeons, I feel I was led astray by the first few elites, which gave some decent unique SB equipment for the White Mage and Black Mage core classes. The equipment rewards have all but dried up, and I'm still hurting for certain weapon and armour types.

I'm also not getting stamina shards as often anymore, which makes tackling dungeons in quick succession a lot harder as I can't get frequent full refills. I'm well aware that the flow of Mythril will be drying up considerably as well.

Is this the plan? Present a sustainable and rewarding experience for long enough to get players invested and then gradually make it harder and harder to progress without paying? That's a much longer and more patient con than I'm used to with "freemium" models, but it's insidious enough that it's almost got me tempted to drop money. Almost.

Then again, they're fairly generous with their freebies - we all just got a nice accessory (which also completed my accessory quest) - so I guess I shouldn't be too cynical.

Man, I want those NES tilesets.

author=Jude
whereas a support character with Lifesiphon follows you almost everywhere.

Do they? As has been made clear by my earlier posts, I'm pretty new so there's a lot I'm missing about the game. So far the only real use I've had for Support skills is to use Revive, because I haven't made Raise yet and would be unsure about using up another white magic skill slot for it anyway. Oh, and I was using Salve before I realised it was taking up a slot for no real benefit.

If you don't mind me asking, what do they get used for primarily? Status attacks? They don't seem to have a good success rate for me. I know there's Boost, but I've been avoiding it because I find single target buffs finicky to employ with the touch screen interface and rather hard to find a decent use for...

But I haven't made any breakdowns yet and I can see the appeal in those.

author=Liberty
Then you'll want to cut out the pieces that are supposed to be set to the same level as the hero (things they can't walk on, but aren't overlapping them) and put them on a chipset

I might be reading this incorrectly, but is this just to set non-passable areas so the characters can't walk all over walls and rivers and the sky, etc?

In that case, would it be possible to just create a single, completely transparent impassable tile and just paint that over all the walls, etc, instead?