One side effect of being sick: Imagination goes into hyperdrive.

[xaq_the_aereon]

Still fighting that cold...it looks to be losing, but its mustering its remaining forces up in my head. Sinuses have been running like a waterfall today. Blugh.

Anyway, a minute ago I got kind of a goofball idea in my head for a Final Fantasy stat-boosting system. It's basically FF VIII's spell-junction system mixed with FF VII's Equipment-based system. Basically, rather than linking the spells to your character's stats to boost them (thus eliminating one of the more idiotic systems of the game by letting your levels become relevant again), you'd junction them to your equipment to grant boosts.

You could junction Black Magic to your weapons in multiple ways, either for stats (to increase the damage they deal) or for elements (to let your weapons do elemental damage), among other possibilities.

One somewhat ridiculous idea was the ability to junction magic to accessories as well. A Wall Ring, which reflects magic, could be linked with Status-Effect Magic to cause the reflected spell to do additional things, for example.

Monster tries to hit you with Blizzaga. It bounces off your character, hits them, heals them for 450 HP, and, thanks to what you had connected to your Wall Ring...instantly kills them!


...So yeah, like I said, still sick, but getting better.

Comments

[davidn]

I get a lot of ideas during ill or jetlagged sleep, as well :) Some of them are even coherent...

One of the other problems with the FF8 system was that it discouraged you from actually using magic - casting one of your stock of 99 Ultima weakened your junctioned strength or HP ever so slightly. It should have been some other resource - but one that had some other advantage to using it as well so that you didn't just stockpile them. Hmm. That might have been the idea of doing it with magic.

I wonder if FF8 would have worked better if it had just abandoned levels entirely, like FFX was brave enough to do later, and let you customize character growth entirely through a junction-type system.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Yeah, FFX's was definitely my favorite stat-management system. Gave you a nice degree of customization on characters and let you do low-level challenges much more easily.

The only problem I ever had with it, as well as with games like 5/6/7, was that it was actually too customizable, to where if you had enough patience (or a Gameshark-style device) you could just turn someone (or everyone) into a godly, master-of-all-trades powerhouse. (Yuna with max HP/MP, able to cast every spell in the game, steal items, and dish out more damage with her staff than Bahamut does with Megaflare? That's just wrong.) Some degree of versatility is fine, but that's just too much.

I think the best system I ever saw for this kind of thing was in the original Vandal Hearts. Every 10 levels you could give a character a class upgrade. From 1-9 they had a generic specialty, then at 10 you could either put them in a class that upgraded that specialty or diverge them to a class that had some of that but offered other bonuses.

For example, your spellcasters (white and black magic alike) could either gain access to higher-end magic of their type, or trade that away for greater offensive power and a more balanced mix of magic, while your archers could either stick with being archers, or trade their ranged attacks for greater mobility.

...Of course, that game also had the hidden option of turning your main character into the ultimate game-breaker, casting a "hit every enemy for mass damage" spell for cheap and being able to cast ITEM EFFECTS (including one that restored his own HP and MP to full and one that restored the party's HP to full) as no-cost spells, so maybe that's not the best example....



Oh, in other news? Cold's about gone finally. Still got a bit of the sniffles, but compared to yesterday I feel fantastic. I'd put myself at about 85% operating capacity now.

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

Man, you don't even know how broken FF5 was in terms of the job system. Certain combos are just plain unfair. Often times I would get around bosses I'd gotten to while underlevelling by setting a bunch of berserkers up with 2hand, so they'd punch the shit out of a boss while having additional damage through natural Berserk status. Set them up with the appropriate equipment (wall rings, etc) and you're pretty much waltzing through some areas.

GP Toss was usually pretty nasty, too.

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

Oh, you mean like FF2? The more you use something, the more your stats go up. Why use swords when you can double up your shields and avoid any physical damage while slowly increasing your defense/evade to godlike proportions as soon as you hit the world map?

Granted, FF8 was pretty level-free for the most part. It scaled with most enemies, and as long as you had Squall (or Zell, or anyone else, really) in the yellow he could spam Renzokuken and it didn't really matter what happened at that point. Some pretty crazy bugs and exploits happen during speed runs.