Improve a Battle System

[CactuarKing]

Well, that's just like, your opinion, man

I wasn't a big fan of the Junction system until I saw my wife master and exploit it to it's full potential effortlessly without a guide. That was super cool.

That's pretty smurfing badass.

I loved the GF system, but can also agree that it rendered all the useful magic in the game obsolete in your quest for perfect stats.

The Sphere Grid from X, or the licence board from XII seemed pretty good examples of giving you control over your characters and their development without holding you back (curse you XIII)

[Karifean]

I wasn't treating the disease, the Junction system, because I rather like it. I'm a sucker for systems that allow you to play around any way you want to and do some real stupid trout and have it work out. When you're unconcerned with minmaxing there's just so much fun to be had with it.

There are other problems in the game as well that they didn't address, like infinite invincibility items, the level scaling being outright opposed to Junctioning, etc..

Forgot about invincibility items. I didn't mention a lot of things, actually, but I didn't want to write a super long post. I did address level scaling though with my very first suggestion.

- Have everyone be capable of stocking only as many charges of one spell as their EXP level.

Btw you can see what any given license does what even if you haven't unlocked a license next to it in FF XII IZJS.

[Fox]

Suggestions like "just throw out the Limit Break system entirely' is a pretty good representation of how to improve FFVIII, I will agree.

And the problem is that they were treating the symptoms and not the disease. The disease being the Junction system, of course. As long as it exists, magic is worthless in FFVIII.

My changes treat the disease

- Untie magic stocks from stat junctions.
- Instead junction stats to 'magic usage' levels that increase as you use certain types of magic.

I like the Junction system in principle, however I agree with you completely that it being tied to magic completely stops you from using magic. Which is lame. Combined with 'Draw' it's also unbelievably exploitable. You can basically be God before the Dollet Mission. That's why my main change is to add the concept of a magic usage level (so the more you use a type of magic, the more the level increases) and tie that to the Junction system. This actively encourages you to utilise magic, whilst still maintaining the flexibility of the Junctioning.

Thinking about it I might just make it an 'Ability Use' level, not Magic specific, which would encourage you to mix up magic, attacks and GF. If I left it as magic only I might simply shift the problem from never using magic to only using magic, which is not the intent.

There are other problems in the game as well that they didn't address, like infinite invincibility items, the level scaling being outright opposed to Junctioning, etc..

This is true, although the thread is Improve a battle system, not Fix the game design in its entirety. One thing at a time

[blackmage_nuke]

FFVIII Allow stocking of 150 spells, only allow junctioning of 100, so you have a leeway of 50 spells to cast.

I mean i'd still hate the junctioning system but you can at least cast spells without deteriorating your stats.

[Fynn]

Idk, you just use some spells for casting, others for junction ing, problem solved.

[Skyblade]

There was an old thread where I looked at revamping the Junction system to make it more fun and viable.

Where was it...

Junction Redux

[Fox]

There was an old thread where I looked at revamping the Junction system to make it more fun and viable.

Where was it...

Junction Redux

I was reading that and my first thought was "Wow, everyone had the same avatars in 2011".



Some nice ideas in there to improve the system while maintaining the trade off of magic/stats, although my view is that that tradeoff is conceptually flawed and needs to change at a lower level. Even ignoring Junctioning, magic is at a disadvantage to attacks and GFs anyway because you have a limited stock (albeit one you can replenish through draws). So then when you include the added disadvantage of tying that stock to stats...

So yeah, there are two approaches. You can either greatly increase the overall power of magic to compensate (the way you go about it in your thread) or you adjust the junction system so that magic gets equal benefit out of it as attacks and GF, which is my approach.

They're both valid ways of tackling the problem.

[Zanmato]

FFX: Individual development system for each character.

The only, but the biggest drawback of the Sphere Grid is the similarity of all characters after mastering their grids and thus playing them becomes monotonous.
However, the combination of the Sphere Grid with the character classes would be a perfect solution!

I'd also add more status spells/attacks available to use like Berserk, Confusion or Stone Gaze.