Challenge!!!

[opiumcloud]

What do you guys think of the following FF12 challenge?

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1) Active ATB Mode
2) No Gambits
3) Max Battle Speed
4) Sub-20 hours completion

This challenge is just what it says. Complete the entire game in less than 20 hours with every character's gambits turned off. You must enter the config screen as soon as possible, and set the ATB mode to active and the battle speed to maximum, and play the entire game that way. As long as you complete the game within the time limit, there are no restrictions on character selection, character levels, running vs. fighting battles, equipment selection, or ability usage.

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I think this challenge would be reasonably difficult, since the player would have to rush a lot of battle commands in order to avoid wasting time in battle with a ready-to-act character, and killing any boss using the spam-4-long-mist-chains technique would eat up the game clock.

[Roto13]

I don't think it's possible with the time limit.

[Cruise Control]

Up it by 10 hours. Of course, I have yet to complete it with 40 hours.

[opiumcloud]

I haven't tried a regular speed run on the game yet, without the other restrictions of the challenge, but I was assuming that by leveling efficiently and skipping cut-scenes, the play time of ff12 could be cut from 50 hours down to about 15 hours with no other restrictions imposed, just like ff7-10. FF7 is probably the longest ff, and that game can be speed run in less than 12 hours. So I think it should easily be possible to clear FF12 in 20. The challenge would lie in powering up efficiently enough to be able to win the boss battles, when playing in such a hurried manner. The more I think about it, the more I think it's doable. Maybe I'll try it.

[remnant1]

lol when i first beat ff 12 it took me 94 hours lolol.theres no way i could do it in 20

[Tavrobel]

You can't beat the game at that time limit, unless you skipped all cutscenes, one-hit killed bosses with Quickening chains (30 or more, mind you), and had a perfect enemy distribution. The MAX+Active battle speed would, if anything, help your challenge go quicker, as long as no one dies or gets hit majorly to require mass Healing.

Also, since it's twenty hours, you won't be able to evenly level your characters to the point that you could get all your Quickenings or high enough levels as fast as you can to endure running through all the areas. Level grinding is out of the question.

Without Gambits, I'm clocking this challenge to be 26 hours or more. 3 less with. You need another five or ten hours if you want even an inch of leeway. However, if you try it, by all means, go ahead. Let us know how you do.

[hplvr]

me no way, im not even done the game yet and im already at like 74 hours, well thats because im doing all the side quests....

[nik0tine]

I don't see why the time limit is necessary and if I were doing the challenge I wouldn't implement it. But that's just because I don't like feeling rushed.

It'd still be quite difficult without the time restrictions I think. If you're really attempting this, good luck. It's completely possible but it's going to be frustrating as hell.

[Tavrobel]

I'm sensing another NSGIENC on our hands.

Pure luck.

[opiumcloud]

The time limit is necessary, because without it, it's too easy to overcome the other restrictions of the challenge, which are designed to make battling more difficult, simply by making a very powerful party to compensate. But it's hard to make a powerful party without spending time just leveling, so the time limit makes this a challenge, instead of just a level-up snorefest.

You can get all of the quickenings in FF12 without taking time to level the characters evenly, because characters who don't battle still get LP, and they even get double LP if you give them a golden amulet while they're not battling.

You can easily kill almost any boss in FF12 with the following technique. First, approach the boss with all 6 characters at maximum MP. Choose any character and unleash a level 1 quickening. Chain as many hits together as possible, always prioritizing mist charges over attacks, and low-level attacks over high-level attacks. This is because a mist charge refills three MCs, and a quickening only uses as many MCs as its corresponding level. The goal is to minimize the frequency of instances where you must reshuffle, because no character can perform an action. These reshuffles are the only thing that really eats significant time from the mist combo meter. The only time you have to reshuffle, is when the quickening chosen at random by the game for each character is of a higher level than their remaining MCs, and the game didn't choose a mist charge. Hence, if you can keep at least one character with three MCs during a combo, you always have an insurance policy against having to waste time reshuffling. Also, you can save time by remembering how many MCs each character has, so if you have to reshuffle, you can quickly afterward press the button corresponding to the character who has the most MCs, which will give you a maximum chance of immediately executing an attack after the reshuffle, even before the results of the shuffle have become clearly visible. With a little practice, you should start getting 15-20 hits every time. Now swap out ONE MP-depleted character for ONE reserve character with full MP, and have that character use a level 1 quickening. If you're not wasting time, the boss should have still not attacked. Even though only one character went into this mist combo with MP, the presence of mist charges should still allow you to get a decent combo off if you're fast and prioritize optimally. There's another 10-15 hits. Swap out another MP depleted character for a character with full MP, and mist combo again. Swap out another character for the last character with full MP and mist combo again. By now, you should have gotten about 60 hits in total, including the finishing blasts, and the boss won't have attacked a single time. If the boss has any HP left at all, use some kind of ether on any character, just enough to get him/her up to one mist charge, then use it to prime a fifth mist combo. This entire time, the boss should have gotten zero to 1 turns.

Fighting like this makes the game easy to beat, because the bosses never get to act, but it's not going to help the speed runner very much if the completion time is set at an appropriately challenging level, because using quickenings actually slows down the player, due to the long, unskippable attack animations. If I were to attempt a sub-20-hour run, I would try to not quickening chain anything, except maybe 1 or 2 bosses that would just be too hard to fight any other way at low levels.

The max battle speed certainly doesn't make the challenge any easier, despite the challenge being a speed run, because combined with the no gambits rule, it makes sure that the enemies get a lot more turns in battle than the heroes do, unless the heroes just repeatedly attack, or select other commands lightning-quick. Even so, some characters will end up "wasting" battle time during battles and getting beaten up as a result.

I think this challenge would be best accomplished by using ranged magic on monsters and melee attacks on bosses, but the player would need to waste no time in obtaining good equipment and licenses to carry himself through the game.

[Tavrobel]

Reshuffling doesn't take up a whole lot of time. You just aren't mashing R2 fast enough; and yeah, because I want to watch my characters do each and every single hit without Quickenings, Quickenings DEFINITELY takes up MORE time. As for the speed, yes it does help, because if you are attempting a challenge, I seriously doubt you have any problems with finding the D-Pad.

As I said, if you think you can do it, go ahead. You aren't really going to convince me it can be done until you do it.

[opiumcloud]

I've experimented with the quickenings a lot, and reshuffling definitely takes more time than anything else. You can do a hit on like .01 seconds if it's after another hit, because the options appear on the screen for the next hit a split second before the timer actually starts counting down, so it's just a matter of pressing the button quickly. But reshuffling takes .25 seconds minimum, plus however much on-the-clock time you take actually reading the options that have been shuffled up.

I'm not trying to convince you that it's doable. Otherwise, I wouldn't be talking about how slow the quickenings are, and how hard it would be to do with a strategy focusing on quickenings. I was responding to where you said "You can't beat the game at that time limit, unless you skipped all cutscenes, one-hit killed bosses with Quickening chains (30 or more, mind you), and had a perfect enemy distribution." by pointing out that the quickenings actually slow the player down.

It'll take me a while to attempt, because I'll have no chance of success unless I do a regular speed run first, in order to plot a course through the game.

But in a couple of years, I guarantee you that FF12 players will be attempting and completing harder challenges than this, like the FF8 challenge where you can't gain any EXP for the whole game, or use invincibility items.

[Cruise Control]

Well, I reccomend Gold Amulets until you get all your quickenings and charge. Then get the double exp accesory.

Charge is crucial. When you have at least 2 quickenings, you can sometimes fully restore your first mist charge with it.

Once I finish my first playthrough, I'll try it.


I'm sensing another NSGIENC on our hands.

Pure luck.
I tried that too. T_T

[Renmiri]

Eeek!!! 100 hours and I'm still in Bur-Omisace. But I play with my kids "helping" me :D

[Lynx]

the 20 hours seems to be the hardest part of it i could do it in 100 hours haha.

[remnant1]

ohhh so mist charge refilles your whole charges?i dint know that.I was thinking that maybe it adds more time to the gauge.well thats very informing and usefull.and as for the challenge,i could do it in 20 but i would change one thing,a 4 line gambit.that is reasonable right?