Gunboat Diplomat
06-05-2006, 04:02 AM
Final Fantasy Tactics is my first and favourite Final Fantasy game. I've played a couple of the others but have only finished FFIX. I've played FFT through twice now and have introduced the game to my other gamer friends.
Something I have noticed while playing is that you only get job points and experience points when you successfully do something. So, moving into position and "waiting" gains you nothing. If the tide of a fight goes my way, I tend to deliberately waste time gaining job and experience points. For instance, if the number of opponents has been reduced to one and only one character is in range of that last opponent, I'll actually have the rest of my characters fight each other because they'd otherwise be doing nothing and, this way, they'll be gaining precious job and experience points for it.
While this may sound perfectly reasonable (or maybe it just sounds neurotic, you tell me), it can easily get out of hand. For instance, I found myself in a position where I can heal three of my characters at a time with a cure spell! Sounds like basic FFT strategy but those three characters were surrounding an opponent who would also get healed by my spell. I just shrugged and thought "oh well, he'll just live longer to give my characters more experience points..."
As you can imagine, it's easy for this neurosis to worsen...
Now, one method of "fixing" this problem would be to make FFT more like the other FF games by making the character states persistent. That way, damage from one battle carries over to another and, thus, you will be using up precious resources to gain those job and experience points. However, I have always hated this aspect of the other FF games. Having character states reset after every battle in FFT means that all you have to do is survive the battle to make it through the next and this allows you to make FFT battles more challenging. I can't tell you how many times I've been down to my last one or two characters frantically trying to take down that last opponent before my character's crystalize out of the roster...
So, has anyone else found this to be true for them? Will you, now that I have explained it to you? Do you not give a second thought to characters just sitting around, doing nothing? Can you think of any ways FFT can be different to avoid this?
Thanks for you input!
Something I have noticed while playing is that you only get job points and experience points when you successfully do something. So, moving into position and "waiting" gains you nothing. If the tide of a fight goes my way, I tend to deliberately waste time gaining job and experience points. For instance, if the number of opponents has been reduced to one and only one character is in range of that last opponent, I'll actually have the rest of my characters fight each other because they'd otherwise be doing nothing and, this way, they'll be gaining precious job and experience points for it.
While this may sound perfectly reasonable (or maybe it just sounds neurotic, you tell me), it can easily get out of hand. For instance, I found myself in a position where I can heal three of my characters at a time with a cure spell! Sounds like basic FFT strategy but those three characters were surrounding an opponent who would also get healed by my spell. I just shrugged and thought "oh well, he'll just live longer to give my characters more experience points..."
As you can imagine, it's easy for this neurosis to worsen...
Now, one method of "fixing" this problem would be to make FFT more like the other FF games by making the character states persistent. That way, damage from one battle carries over to another and, thus, you will be using up precious resources to gain those job and experience points. However, I have always hated this aspect of the other FF games. Having character states reset after every battle in FFT means that all you have to do is survive the battle to make it through the next and this allows you to make FFT battles more challenging. I can't tell you how many times I've been down to my last one or two characters frantically trying to take down that last opponent before my character's crystalize out of the roster...
So, has anyone else found this to be true for them? Will you, now that I have explained it to you? Do you not give a second thought to characters just sitting around, doing nothing? Can you think of any ways FFT can be different to avoid this?
Thanks for you input!