How would you fix FFVI?

[Roogle]

Replace it with Tactics' battle system. Thread over.

That is an interesting concept. I have wondered how Final Fantasy games would fare if you could switch the battle system around. For example, a lot of people like the battle system of Final Fantasy X-2. I would love to play a version of Final Fantasy VI with the battle system of Final Fantasy X-2 with party members switching out instead of jobs -- wouldn't that be interesting?

The Final Fantasy VI modding community does a lot of work for this game through emulation and ROM hacking. Major bugs are fixed. There is a difficulty hack that I find myself fond of, not because of the increased difficulty, but because the battle theme does not play when you have a simple enemy encounter consisting only of one or two smaller enemies. This lets you enjoy the music and see it in a whole new light during battles. That's one thing I would change!

[Spooniest]

"How would I?"

More like "How did I."

And if you don't like it, don't tell anybody, let them get stuck playing it like you did!

[Greatermaximus]

What can make any game better is a way to select the task variation/difficulty level. That's why we go at final fantasies at lower levels.

[Wolf Kanno]

I will have to come back to this thread when I have more time cause I can honestly write a book on how I would tweak the gameplay to make it even more awesome.

[Jiro]

Put a copy in every person's hands.

[Quindiana Jones]

I would make it so that you could put different hats on all your characters.

[Christmas]

Graphics!!!!

Yes, I am a graphic whore.

[Slothy]

I would make it so that you could put different hats on all your characters.

You work for Valve?

[Wolf Kanno]

I am going to break this up into sections to make this easier on... well everybody.

Characters

Terra - Honestly there isn't much I would change about her. Trance/Morph is a good ability, it's just a great ability in a game where it's not really needed. Tweaking the enemies and gameplay difficulty would be enough to make this skill stand out. Other than that, I might actually rearrange her natural level magic acquirement cause I find it silly that she learns some great spells at ridiculously high levels. I would allow her to learn some of her spells a bit earlier.

Locke - I would make his steal/mug command and thief weapons be based on his Speed stat a la FFTactics. It would make his gear and Esper growth a little more important and I feel it would make him more unique from the other brawler characters like Sabin and Cyan. I would also remove his ability to use the Illumina/Lightbringer cause he already gets the Valiant Knife and I like how this makes getting rid of the Ragnarok more of a difficult decision for some fans.

Edgar - Obviously, his Tool Command needs to be nerfed. There are a few ways to do this:

Easy Way 1: Make all of his tools 1X use per battle so you can't spam them. This still makes him pretty strong in the game, but not outright overpowering in boss fights.

Easy Way 2: Redo the damage formula and make his level no longer a factor in it. Instead rely on his stats, as this will make the esper system more practical as well as his equipment.

Medium Way - Make his tools have cool down times in terms of battle. So using AutoCrossbow in a battle makes it unusable for three battles afterwards. The number of battles needed to recharge is based on how broken it is. I feel this would greatly balance Edgar out while still keeping his Tools pretty powerful.

Hard Way: Create a Fuel system, though I feel this would be more cumbersome than balancing. I noticed most people don't like characters who have to keep track of arbitray ammunition in Turn Based RPGs. Just ask Billy Lee Black in Xenogears and Rangers in FFIII.

Other than that, I would probably strip him of being able to use the Ultima Weapon and Lightbringer as well, since he can use the Dragoon combo build. The guy has way too many options.

Sabin - Mainly nerf Blitz a little more, either by making them cost MP, or weakening it by changing the damage formula.

Celes - Like Terra, I wouldn't mind if her acquisition of natural magic spells was a bit more convient rather than having her learn Meteor at Lv. 99. Beyond that, I would work on Runic. My favorite choice would be to just give her a Relic or two that changes the Runic command around. My favorite choice would be for her to have it work like an Counter Magic ability if a spell is used on her. Another intriguing choice would be for her weapon to be endowed with the properties of the spell she absorbs kind of like the Mystic Knight class in FFV.

Shadow - Power down his Throw command, he does way more damage than he should with Shuriken, or you could jack up the price of his throw items by ten fold. Other than that, he's actually pretty balanced.

Cyan - Needs a new input system, my favorite idea would be to adapt the Super Combo move from Breath Of Fire where you have a short amount of time to input certain commands and depending how many you get in will determine the move he uses. Granted the game will tell you as you input them that you've put in enough to reach the next rank of his Bushido. Either his levels or a Relic can increase the amount of time for you to input commands. I also would allow the Gauntlet Relic to work in his Bushido moves.

Gau - He needs a glossary to tell you what each of the Rages do, and the player needs to be able to customize the list. One option would be that Gau can hold maybe 10 Rages at a time from his overall list so you don't have to get unnecessary hits while your cycling through his huge list of Rages. They already got rid of God Wind Gau mode so he's pretty tame now. Though I may still feel some of his Rages need to be nerfed.

Setzer - Make all of his Gambler weapons have secondary effects to offset their crummy attack power and his average stats, and maybe give him a relic to power up his slot ability.

Mog - Needs a relic to increase the success of his dance. I also feel some of his dances need to be reworked cause half of them are pretty worthless while the other half is devastatingly powerful. There is no middle ground with them.

Strago - Needs to have his Lores spaced out better in the game. He only gets a few worthwhile ones in the WoB and most of his really good ones are wasted because you can get his ultimate Blue Mage skill right off the bat in the WoR after you recruit him. Perhaps make some earlier boss also use Force Field and prevent Strago from doing the Hidon quest until he gets the majority of his Lores first. He also needs better magic enhancing gear, he gets the short end of the stick among all the mages.

Relm - Is honestly pretty balanced. I know people whine about sketch but if you are not using the Fake Mustache relic with her, you are simply using her wrong. I can't really think of anything to make her better without making her broken.

Umaro - I wish you could use Green Cherry's on him to make him stronger like in his boss battle. That would actually be kind of cool, to allow you to use certain items to temp raise certain stats or add properties to his attacks. It would make using him more strategic.

Gogo - Probably give him a better weapon/equipment pool, maybe some relics that can increase his ability with other party member skills.

[Roogle]

Relm - Is honestly pretty balanced. I know people whine about sketch but if you are not using the Fake Mustache relic with her, you are simply using her wrong. I can't really think of anything to make her better without making her broken.

I would add that the results of Sketch and Control would be based off her stats rather than the monsters. Since monsters typically have very low stats due to the nature of the characters' stats, attacks that Relm makes through Sketch and Control do very little damage to enemies.

[Wolf Kanno]

I'll get to that when I talk about monster scripts and tweaking overall gameplay difficulty.

Editga: Though in hindsight, it probably wouldn't help anyway since Relm has an abysmal Physical stat anyway, so you would still be screwed.

[Hollycat]

I would make it so that you could put different hats on all your characters.

You work for Valve?

Not possible, this was FF3.

[Jiro]

Let's see if I have any comments or additions.

Characters

Terra - Honestly there isn't much I would change about her. Trance/Morph is a good ability, it's just a great ability in a game where it's not really needed. Tweaking the enemies and gameplay difficulty would be enough to make this skill stand out. Other than that, I might actually rearrange her natural level magic acquirement cause I find it silly that she learns some great spells at ridiculously high levels. I would allow her to learn some of her spells a bit earlier.

I didn't see enough of a boost from Terra's Morph/Trance, honestly.

Locke - I would make his steal/mug command and thief weapons be based on his Speed stat a la FFTactics. It would make his gear and Esper growth a little more important and I feel it would make him more unique from the other brawler characters like Sabin and Cyan. I would also remove his ability to use the Illumina/Lightbringer cause he already gets the Valiant Knife and I like how this makes getting rid of the Ragnarok more of a difficult decision for some fans.

I agree with this. Locke is far too "warrior" build for such a thief character. He also misses his steals way way too much.

Edgar - Obviously, his Tool Command needs to be nerfed. There are a few ways to do this:

Easy Way 1: Make all of his tools 1X use per battle so you can't spam them. This still makes him pretty strong in the game, but not outright overpowering in boss fights.

Easy Way 2: Redo the damage formula and make his level no longer a factor in it. Instead rely on his stats, as this will make the esper system more practical as well as his equipment.

Medium Way - Make his tools have cool down times in terms of battle. So using AutoCrossbow in a battle makes it unusable for three battles afterwards. The number of battles needed to recharge is based on how broken it is. I feel this would greatly balance Edgar out while still keeping his Tools pretty powerful.

Hard Way: Create a Fuel system, though I feel this would be more cumbersome than balancing. I noticed most people don't like characters who have to keep track of arbitray ammunition in Turn Based RPGs. Just ask Billy Lee Black in Xenogears and Rangers in FFIII.

Other than that, I would probably strip him of being able to use the Ultima Weapon and Lightbringer as well, since he can use the Dragoon combo build. The guy has way too many options.

I'd like to see Edgar set up as far more of a dragoon. He's already well on the way. I'd say the 1x battle method is a bit trout, if only because it makes stuff like Bioblaster and the status effect inducing ones even more useless. You need to nerf the physical damage a bit and then maybe the balance would be returned.

Sabin - Mainly nerf Blitz a little more, either by making them cost MP, or weakening it by changing the damage formula.

Or make the combos really really really hard

Celes - Like Terra, I wouldn't mind if her acquisition of natural magic spells was a bit more convient rather than having her learn Meteor at Lv. 99. Beyond that, I would work on Runic. My favorite choice would be to just give her a Relic or two that changes the Runic command around. My favorite choice would be for her to have it work like an Counter Magic ability if a spell is used on her. Another intriguing choice would be for her weapon to be endowed with the properties of the spell she absorbs kind of like the Mystic Knight class in FFV.

She should learn magic a little faster, but still slower than Terra. After all, her magic ability is engineered and not inherent.

Shadow - Power down his Throw command, he does way more damage than he should with Shuriken, or you could jack up the price of his throw items by ten fold. Other than that, he's actually pretty balanced.

Yeah Throw was pretty OP.

Cyan - Needs a new input system, my favorite idea would be to adapt the Super Combo move from Breath Of Fire where you have a short amount of time to input certain commands and depending how many you get in will determine the move he uses. Granted the game will tell you as you input them that you've put in enough to reach the next rank of his Bushido. Either his levels or a Relic can increase the amount of time for you to input commands. I also would allow the Gauntlet Relic to work in his Bushido moves.

Bushido is trout. I would've been happy for it to be the same as Blitz, honestly.

Gau - He needs a glossary to tell you what each of the Rages do, and the player needs to be able to customize the list. One option would be that Gau can hold maybe 10 Rages at a time from his overall list so you don't have to get unnecessary hits while your cycling through his huge list of Rages. They already got rid of God Wind Gau mode so he's pretty tame now. Though I may still feel some of his Rages need to be nerfed.

I haven't been a big fan of Gau basically because of this reason. If all Rages had three-four moves listed out then it would be much easier to remember what ones you liked/needed.

Strago - Needs to have his Lores spaced out better in the game. He only gets a few worthwhile ones in the WoB and most of his really good ones are wasted because you can get his ultimate Blue Mage skill right off the bat in the WoR after you recruit him. Perhaps make some earlier boss also use Force Field and prevent Strago from doing the Hidon quest until he gets the majority of his Lores first. He also needs better magic enhancing gear, he gets the short end of the stick among all the mages.

Were Lores super powerful? I think the MP cost outweighed the use for me.

I'm looking forward to seeing what other ideas you come up with.

[ljkkjlcm9]

And at the end of the day i played this game mostly the same way I learned to play FF1. Magic is worthless, just attack. And that's what i did. Picked 4 of your physically strongest characters and just attacked. Soon enough they do max damage either way. Hell, one of the best things to do is take shadow and turn him into an Imp. Shadow, cyan, Edgar, sabin. Cyan used lvl 1 swdtech cause it was slightly stronger until he had weapons that would randomly do magic. Edgar used drill or chainsaw but in the end just attacked. Sabin was about the only one i kept using abilities but only cause i enjoyed doing the inputs and changed it up cause they all did max anyways.

And for all the comments about genji glove offering, possible in FFV as well. Most of the relics were just abilities from FFV.

Making it so only certain people could learn certain spells is completely against everything the storyline is. Making espers harder to find and making say terra learn spells faster down to Sabin/Cyan slower i could get on board with though. Terra learns ice 2 with 100 points. Sabin learns it with 1000 or whatever. In the end terra can learn ultima pretty easy but everyone else would take a lot more to. So in this way people can be more aligned with spells, but anyone can still learn anything.

THE JACKEL

[Wolf Kanno]

I didn't see enough of a boost from Terra's Morph/Trance, honestly.

It's hard to notice with equipment bonuses and if you are using end game skills. This is why rebalancing the gameplay and difficulty would make this skill useful.

I agree with this. Locke is far too "warrior" build for such a thief character. He also misses his steals way way too much.

Having a Thief style character be so warrior like tends to bother me, I have a similar issue with Zidane in IX. Though utilizing the Speed stat more is also meant to make that stat upgrade more beneficial.

I'd like to see Edgar set up as far more of a dragoon. He's already well on the way. I'd say the 1x battle method is a bit trout, if only because it makes stuff like Bioblaster and the status effect inducing ones even more useless. You need to nerf the physical damage a bit and then maybe the balance would be returned.

Honestly, I feel BioBlaster is pretty overpowered, especially in the beginning of the game when you're dealing with Imperial soldiers naturally weak to poison damage. Air Anchor and Debilitator may suffer, but not many people use them either. Honestly, I may say that Air Anchor should be dropped completely. If gameplay balance is fixed, then Debiltator will actually become more useful and overpowered if used wisely. I am honestly more inclined to go the medium route to be honest.

Or make the combos really really really hard

I feel that would make him frustrating to use, and depending on what system you are playing on, they can be hard to use. Though doing a Zell/Auron style time limit indicator could help as well but part of the issue with Sabin is that he does ridiculously high damage early in the game.

On further evaluation, I would also beef up Meteor Strike and make it work on more enemies.

She should learn magic a little faster, but still slower than Terra. After all, her magic ability is engineered and not inherent.

An interesting idea. Though tinkering with stat formulas can make her a bit weaker than Terra as well.

Bushido is trout. I would've been happy for it to be the same as Blitz, honestly.

The issue with doing that is that he would play exactly like Sabin except different equipment and stats to deal with. Part of VI's appeal was that every character plays differently and adds variety to the gameplay so I was hoping to find an alternative method rather than just re-using another characters playstyle.

I haven't been a big fan of Gau basically because of this reason. If all Rages had three-four moves listed out then it would be much easier to remember what ones you liked/needed.

Yeah, he's a bit annoying since you kind of need a guidebook to see which Rages are useful and which ones are suicidal.

Were Lores super powerful? I think the MP cost outweighed the use for me.

Actually they are, and like the Blue Mages in FFV, Strago was pretty much the go to guy for consistent and powerful Wind/Water elemental magic. The MP cost is high but getting some of his skills like Tsunami and Aero in the WoB may justify and balance them out. By the time you get them in the WoR, you have Grand Train and Ultima.