Physical-Magical balancement! Initial weapons and damage cap!

[SteahMeLee]

Well, among the various playstyles that I apply while playing a FF game it's one of the most important...

It's about the magic devaluation that occurs during the games progression...


You have surely noticed that in the beginning of a FF the damage done by spells outclasses that of physical attacks...
It's what it has to be... Mages are fragile in the physical side and their spell usage consumes, usually MPs but not only... They are consuming and so they deserve to do higher damage than physical attacks that consumes nothing...

It's would be actually true because often even using the high rank weapons the damage output of magic stays higher...

But to ruin everything we have the damage cap... Usually at 9999 damage...

That damage cap wastes the power difference between the various attacks... Maybe a physical attack has a damage output of, for example, 11.000 and it caps at 9999...

A powerful spell may be as strong as to deal a damage of, let's say, 30.000, but it's capped at 9999 as well vanishing the difference and making every attack flatted by the cap...


This can be countered by my strategy to keep the initial weapons to the characters (and they are often the signature ones, like Cloud's Buster Sword)... This gives a big limitation to physical attacks that hardly exceeds 3000 damage, so that powerful spells would still cap at 9999 but it's at least x3 damage than attack command...

I know it's drastic but it's the only way to have the Mages as powerful but fragile like they should...

Even with initial weapons the super special attacks of melee classes are still more than decent in terms of damage since they are often more than 10 hits combos... :p


Did you ever have such an idea?

It's one of my strange and obsessed plans to balance the classes and characters making them fair... ;)

[theundeadhero]

I personally rarely use magic so no loss to me.

[SteahMeLee]

I personally rarely use magic so no loss to me.

You don't use it because the games are flawed, as I just said...

If things where balanced as they should be, you would HAVE to use magic because physical attacks would be too weak to progress adequately... They are fast and free, so they should be weak! Magic is slow and consuming, thus it should be way stronger...

That's the customization I look for keeping the initial weapons...

It shall respect the tradition... A party is made of various classes to cover the various needs... Melee classes are there to be the casters front line and to dispatch of the minor enemies while casters with their spells could represent the limited heavy artillery when the situation gets hot...

The RPG party logic has been this since D&D and FF has its origin there of course...

If you could play a FF without having mages around it means there's something wrong in the balance...

[Quindiana Jones]

Pretty interesting idea, having two different damage cap. You could have the Attack command damage cap and the Special attack damage cap, which would obviously be much higher.

[theundeadhero]

It is a very interesting thought. I very well might have a different opinion if they just got rid of the damage cap.

[Mirage]

Pretty interesting idea, having two different damage cap. You could have the Attack command damage cap and the Special attack damage cap, which would obviously be much higher.

Or just no reachable damage cap at all. THen each attack would deal as much as it possibly could.

[SteahMeLee]

Pretty interesting idea, having two different damage cap. You could have the Attack command damage cap and the Special attack damage cap, which would obviously be much higher.

Thanks! :greenie: And yes, good point! It should be referred to special attacks generally, not just spells although in the early FFs the sole alternative to physical attacks were spells...

But I'd put in the category of special attacks not just the special commands or limits appeared in the later FFs but even the simple critical hit that gets totally undervalued if even the basic attack reaches the damage cap by default...

If we instead have the average normal attack damage not much above 1500 with the critical hits on 3000 damage, there's still plenty of range before reaching the cap and that range is to be occupied buy powerful spells or abilities that require some sort of consumption, be it of MPs or special bars or whatever...

This prevent weaker but multi-hits special attacks to overcome the strongest but single hit attacks...

If a multi hit attack does 5 hits of about 8000 damage it can greatly undervalue more powerful attacks that may deal a single it but far stronger (although capped at 9999)...

With my planning the 5 hits may be of 1000 damage x hit and it would be still better to use the most powerful attacks that deals 9999 anyway...

This could be applied to pretty much everything...


It is a very interesting thought. I very well might have a different opinion if they just got rid of the damage cap.

Of course and when they do it it's a lot better...

I can partially apply this in FFX where the cap is 99.999 and treating the game like the cap would be the usual 9999 I can make special attacks deal a lot more than 10.000 while capping the physical attacks below 10.000 or so...



Or just no reachable damage cap at all. THen each attack would deal as much as it possibly could.

:tongue: This would be perfection! Also, damage caps are not really necessary and removing them we would start to consider the real power of the various thing...

As far as I know we still lack a FF like this... :eep:

[Mirage]

There is always going to be *some* damage cap, because it's unfeasible to create game code that supports infinitely large numbers. However, it is pretty easy to make damage caps that are for example 100 times higher than what you can hope to achieve with every single piece of awesome equipment in the entire game, making the "cap" practially unreachable, meaning no one will notice that there is a cap.

And we do not lack an FF game with this. FF11 is a game where normal attack damage is around 100-800 damage, special skills range from 1000-8000 damage, and the damage caps at 99999. Even in special cases where you do extremely much more damage than normal (only doable with extremely rare and expensive one-time-use items, or on one single boss which takes extreme damage under special weakness circumstances), you usually don't get very far past the 50000 damage mark in a single hit.

Additionally, HP and MP is in the range of 900-2200 depending on job and race, while the maximum HP/MP is not 9999/9999. In fact, the HP/MP cap is unknown, but people have managed to get 10500 HP on a character, just as a test, so it is likely that that too caps at 99999/99999.

[SteahMeLee]

There is always going to be *some* damage cap, because it's unfeasible to create game code that supports infinitely large numbers. However, it is pretty easy to make damage caps that are for example 100 times higher than what you can hope to achieve with every single piece of awesome equipment in the entire game, making the "cap" practially unreachable, meaning no one will notice that there is a cap.

Yes, I totally agree! It wouldn't be that hard programming-wise, and it would solve problems! I don't know why they capped often at 9999 when it would have been easier to cap at 99.999 and give a way wider margin of differentiation of moves even at high levels!

But as things are now it's better to play on the lower line and keeping the damage as much far from the 9999 cap as much as the attacks used is weak!

Actually it's not often needed to reach the cap, instead the game is more fun when you are in a small pinch against bosses and other opponents and you should just use the various character skills and the power of strategy...

Also it's better to not under-value some attacks just because the 9999 damage cap pervents them to be stronger than they should...


And we do not lack an FF game with this. FF11 is a game where normal attack damage is around 100-800 damage, special skills range from 1000-8000 damage, and the damage caps at 99999. Even in special cases where you do extremely much more damage than normal (only doable with extremely rare and expensive one-time-use items, or on one single boss which takes extreme damage under special weakness circumstances), you usually don't get very far past the 50000 damage mark in a single hit.

Additionally, HP and MP is in the range of 900-2200 depending on job and race, while the maximum HP/MP is not 9999/9999. In fact, the HP/MP cap is unknown, but people have managed to get 10500 HP on a character, just as a test, so it is likely that that too caps at 99999/99999.

:) I didn't know about XI since I don't play online but it's a good surprise to know that the cap is virtually unlimited even if it has a limit, but it's impossible to reach it.

Basically with my playstile I fix the normal attack cap around 3000 at best so that the 9999 could be still reserved to strong skills/spells...

[VeloZer0]

The best example that comes to my mind is Chrono Trigger (as I don't have the esoteric RPG library experience a lot of you do). The most damage you are going to kick out with a single character magically is lv99,Magic** Luminaire for 6088 damage with the Prisim Specs. That is 4x what you are getting from the maximum strength physical attack*, 8x the non-critical hit damage. All done without a hints that the game has a damage cap.

*I'm ignoring Ayla's lv99 '9999' critical hit damage as it is just kind of a random outlier.

[SteahMeLee]

The best example that comes to my mind is Chrono Trigger (as I don't have the esoteric RPG library experience a lot of you do).

:roll2 Chrono Trigger is one of the best games ever made, so you don't have to blame yourself! XD :p


The most damage you are going to kick out with a single character magically is lv99,Magic** Luminaire for 6088 damage with the Prisim Specs. That is 4x what you are getting from the maximum strength physical attack*, 8x the non-critical hit damage. All done without a hints that the game has a damage cap.

I know! CT is really well structured on that side! Also, at some point in the game there is even a good justification in the story for magic to be used by other characters and not only by wizards...
Of course seeing the sword fighter Chrono that casts spells is still a bit of a nuisance for my aesthetic fantasy iconography... Hahahahaha!!! :jess:


*I'm ignoring Ayla's lv99 '9999' critical hit damage as it is just kind of a random outlier.

Well, she is pretty much a Berserker as class, I can accept it, but I leave her mostly unarmored in exchange! XD

It's the Berserk drawback also in the Final Fantasy series! XDDD The drawback I assign...

I rarely have Berserkers in parties! Umaro, Red XIII, Kiros... I leave all them with low protection! It's what to pay to have great damage output! :p

[Skyblade]

The best example that comes to my mind is Chrono Trigger (as I don't have the esoteric RPG library experience a lot of you do).

:roll2 Chrono Trigger is the best game ever made, so you don't have to blame yourself! XD :p

Fixed that for you. :)

[SteahMeLee]

Hehehe! :jess: Yeah, guess you can be definitely right! ;)