Tossing out the Ultimate Weapons

[VeloZer0]

In my recent playthroughs of the game I have placed a moratorium on the use of Ultimate Weapons, and man it sure makes the game a lot more balanced and fun to play. Stuff like making all the cool high damage materia they give you in the end of the game relevant. IMO it would have made a lot better game if they had just left them out in the first place.

Do you guys do this/have tried this? Thoughts on the game balance when all the most overpowered items are removed?

[SteahMeLee]

What a coincidence! I have just linked you the discussion where I explain my strategy applied to every Final Fantasy about to give severe limitations to weapons because they tends to overpower normal attacks and make spalls/skills underpowered because of max damage limit...

I link it to you again:

http://home.eyesonff.com/general-fin...amage-cap.html

You will notice that I'm far more extreme that you on this matter, I extend it not just to ultimate weapons...

The concept is that spells/skills that have a cost should stay a lot higher in damage than normal attacks for balance reasons and the only way to do so is to keep the initial weapons (that are also signature weapons that fits the character as icons like Could's Buster Sword)... It's impossible to have a fantasy RPG where meele fighters can destroy the uber Arch Demon with just sword swings... Powerful spells and skills shall remain the key to win as you intelligently noticed... The damage cap is what ruins everything because high spells could still overcome Ultimate Weapons damage often but having everything capped at 9999 flats all out...

I appreciate a lot this idea of yours that is also mine...

[VeloZer0]

To be fair they are often swinging magic swords.

Personally I don't care so much for the aesthetics of combat between physical and magical, I'm just looking for a game balance that makes things interesting instead of just having one optimal strategy.

[SteahMeLee]

To be fair they are often swinging magic swords.

Hahaha my aesthetic tastes dislike hybrids, I'm for specialized classes! Probably you can understand why since you got my aesthetic ideas quite well...

Personally I don't care so much for the aesthetics of combat between physical and magical, I'm just looking for a game balance that makes things interesting instead of just having one optimal strategy.

Balance come as a natural consequence of respecting the tradition with classes and with physical and magical distinction... Traditional classes were already conceived to be balanced also in terms of gameplay...
Also, needing a strategy is a consequence of balance because when you are not overpowered anymore you have to rely on strategy and that's when the meaning of classes and their pros and cons start to make real sense, even in open development games like VII...

But as you intelligently got the first matter is aesthetic of combat... You are very smart to have understood it so fast... XD

[Greatermaximus]

There's plenty of ways to handicap yourself if you're creative enough. Low level is the most obvious and effective choice imo. Then it depends how extreme you want to get.

[Sephiroth]

I often fight Sephiroth with standard weapons, no Ribbons, White Cloaks, et cetera and no Materia.

[SteahMeLee]

There's plenty of ways to handicap yourself if you're creative enough. Low level is the most obvious and effective choice imo. Then it depends how extreme you want to get.

Yeah, I know! I already play with relatively low level, not as low as possible like the idea of "low level" suggests, but low enough!

My aim is not really to handicap characters to make them weak, my aim is aesthetical balance, for example the reason for the initial weapons is that thing about magic to remain stronger than physical normally...

In terms of difficulty I don't look for the ultra hard mode but for the decent challenge, but something that could be handled with a correct classes strategy... Mine are just small adjustments to the game, to solve some flaws like those caused by the damage cap...

I just want balanced characters, with a class and with a pretty much equal power/usefulness! I also want that you can't count of simple physical attacks to handle the serious issues... Just these things...