Difficulty mods/modifiers

[Kyren]

Hey!

I've been loosely following the discussions about the game since the release of this port, and what kept me from getting it so far were the mentions of it being dumbed down in difficulty. Are there any mods by now that fix this? Or have the recent patches changed the difficulty to something reasonable again?

I'm aware that there's a gamemode where characters don't level, but I'm more looking for a normal playtrough that offers a reasonable challenge, e.g. like the original game was. Any advice for that?

Thanks beforehand!

[Daedalus007]

The Nexus is the home of the FF Zodiac Age (TZA) modding community for the moment.[www.nexusmods.com]

That said, I also have a collection of useful mods in my Daedalus Mega ModPak[www.nexusmods.com]. A difficulty mod is currently in the works by eternal248 but has not yet been publicly released. They're still in the testing phases of it. Testing is important since they may need to drastically change a few things and then it would just require disabling the old version, grabbing the new one, then activating it.

Personally, for my mods I release what I have and ask users to help me work out any bugs. But some modders like eternal248 prefer to release a nice polished mod and I do not fault them for that one bit. It is commendable :)

Right now, TZA modders have the capability to:
-Completely hide the minimap all the time via a 3rd party patcher[github.com].
-Prevent the game from pausing in the background when you alt-tab (perfect for streamers and multi-taskers who are grinding using gambits) using that same patcher.
-Remove the black bars during cutscenes using my 'Cutscenes Unleashed' mod.
-Edit the Bazaar Goods entirely using Raiden_Ripper's Bazaar Goods Editor.
-Edit all equipment in the game including changing stances, stats, monetary values, elemental/status properties/resists, and even changing the model of equipment to something else entirely like enemy-only equipment.
-Make NPC-only weapons like the ones carried by Reddas/Larsa to become available for sale and use by the party via purchasing them from a Giza Plains (Dry) vendor.
-Remove the putrid-green 'fog' the game seems to keep around for some reason as a leftover masking of draw distance from the PS2 era. Most noticable in Rabanastre.
-Enhance the clothing colors of characters to really have them stand out. I nicknamed this the 'Washed Clothes' mod ^_^.
-Remove all starting licenses to make sure that the jobs chosen for your characters truely fit and you don't have a Black mage automatically starting with Cure; also useful for custom boards.
-Alter & insert fully-custom license boards for each job to configure them as you see fit.
-Reskins and face enhancements and all kinds of stuff!
-Much more that isn't listed here.

So uh...TLDR.

Yes there's a 'hard' mod already in the works but it'll be a while before it is ready.

My own 'hardcore' mod (nicknamed Ivalice Incineration) is a long-term project and I'm waiting on the various editors to be done before diving in and doing everything in one go. I may release things piecemeal as editors are done but I prefer to have all the tools available and test for balancing and such.

[Hinnyuu]

I'm looking forward to any difficulty mod, and will definitely try them all out. There's probably some engine limitations, but when hasn't that been the case for FF games? Let it take years, I don't mind - I still play FF7 with hardcore mods, after all this time ;)

[Kyren]

Thanks for the detailed reply, I appreciate it! Looks like I'll have to wait a while longer and get the game once the difficulty mods are ready, but that's something to look forward to already :)

[eternal248]

Hey guys! Eternal here. I'm heading out of town soon for a few days, but I wanted to confirm that yes, I'm working on a FFXII mod. There's a lot to go over, and my time is fairly limited right now, but there are a few big things that the mod changes:

-Each character has their own License Board and a set role. Vaan is a speedy Thief that focuses on debuffs and evasion, Penelo is a White Mage that heals and smacks enemies with Poles, Balthier is an Item healer with a focus on Guns and Spears, Fran is a Black Mage that can fire off arrows when her MP is low, Basch is a physical attacker/tank, and Ashe is a Red Mage-ish Time Mage that can focus on either her physical or magickal blows, being able to use Time Magick to debuff enemies.

-Character stats have been revamped to better fit their roles. Basch has the best Vitality now, Penelo has the most MP, etc.

-License Boards are linear, giving a greater sense of progression, similar to FFX's Sphere Grid, or XIII's Crystarium.

-Each Esper is assigned to a certain character, and gives them access to a Gambit Slot.

-Espers have additional skills in their skillsets that compliment their set Summoner.

-Many spells have been rehauled. Gravity/Graviga now deals normal damage and is Earth Elemental, Bio/Scourge are now Water Elemental, Vox/Stona/etc. are AoE, Poison is AoE, Toxify inflicts Sap/Disease, etc.

-Certain Technicks have been altered to be more usable. For example, First Aid recovers a flat 10% of an ally's HP, making it great for use outside of battle. Bonecrusher deals 25% damage to an enemy and inflicts Immobilize, and Sight Unseeing Steals from multiple enemies at once.

-Enemies are buffed. Roughly, enemies have about 2x HP now, and a 30% buff to all other stats. This allows them to be tougher and more durable, but not overly so.

-The Seitengrat, Great Trango, and Gendarme now have models and can be acquired from the Bazaar.

-Weapons have been rebalanced and retooled.

-Certain Accessories have new effects. For example, the Firefly now reflects a small portion of damage back at an attacker.

I've done some streaming of what I've done so far, and if anyone can tolerate my terrible streaming voice, here's a video of the boss fight against Mateus:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/259957218?t=02h09s

[Sakuno]

thanks for the really good response from Daedalus and eternal. wondering if there is a quick mod in existence that achieves Just the 2x HP and 30% buff stats (to enemies) part? or something similar

Also i noticed watafuzz mentioned he has a modded team with 25~% reduced stats overall https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasy12/mods/42
is there an easy way to do this? ty

[Daedalus007]

Editors are available to modify the Bazaar, License Boards, Equipment, and Abilities (Techs/Magic) in the game. All that are really left for editors are the bestiary and character editors. Out of those two the Bestiary editor is probably one I'm most anticipating.

Watafuzz did it manually with hex editing, but the editors will hopefully allow a lot more modders to get into the mix.

You'll want to wait for the bestiary editor to be finished or just use watafuzz's mod in the meantime.

[M a Ƶ e - 迷宮]

There's quite literally two things that I would kill for to get in this game. One of the things I want (which I've been told will more than likely never happen) is for the Esper theme when you summon one to be removed so that the regular theme of whatever area you're in continues to play while you have an Esper out, which would make a Summoner only run not an absolute pain in the ass because all you hear is that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Esper theme over and over until you're forced to mute the music. Other than that though...
A difficulty mod is right at the top of the list. If I knew even the first thing about modding, I'd put some serious effort into going over each and every enemy in the entire game and fine tuning them with appropriate abilities, magic and stats to best suit them. See although I love difficult games I wouldn't just go around making every single enemy ridiculously strong or anything (although just about every single enemy in the game does need to be universally buffed, period). Rather I'd have the most common and plentiful enemies that you run across be at a adequate level as to not be trivial but not be irritating since you'll be coming across them a lot.
For example let's take the Stilshrine of Miriam, you have your Redmaw bats, your zombies and your facers which are plentiful and basically all over the place. They'd get a somewhat universal buff to to their stats but not really much more (although things like Facers usually die before they manage to do anything from my experience so they'd probably need a bit more of a bumping up than the others but I'm straying from the main point of what I'm saying here), then we have the Blood Gigas which show up along the corridor just before you get to the Sword of Kings. I've always thought these enemies should be a decent amount stronger than the other enemies you've faced in the dungeon but no, they go down just as easy and it's so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ disappointing.
Basically anything that looks like it should be big and scary I would actually make big and scary.

Things like rare game, hunts and bosses (especially story bosses, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, some of them look really great and intimidating but they're all basically complete pushovers, it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tragic) would recieve a significant power boost naturally. I'd like to actually be able to go through the game, do the optional stuff as it is made available and then continue on with the story without having it immediately become a joke.
I wouldn't normally advocate this since optional stuff should usually be a step up in terms of difficulty to the story things that are mandatory to beat but I think there's a case to be made for the story bosses in whatever FFXII difficulty mod that gets made should be harder than the hunts and whatever else that become available before them since the people who are going to be downloading this not only know what they're getting into but they're more than likely going to be actively looking to beat the optional stuff anyway. It would be a nice change of pace to have bosses like Tiamat, Judge Bergan, and Daedalus etc to all be a solid challenge rather than being absolutely 100% trivial. I've ran through the game before only buying my equipment from the stores and not overleveling and it's sad just how easy these bosses still are.

Honestly though I've ranted enough, I've always wanted a difficulty mod for this game in particular more than any other and I just hope whoever undertakes this task does it the justice it deserves. Like I said if I could mod I'd do it myself but unfortunately I don't know the first thing about it. Whoever does do it though will be a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ legend in my eyes.
If anybody does want an ''''ideas guy''''' or somebody just to test some early iterations out and give my thoughts on them feel free to drop me a message.

[Daedalus007]

Originally posted by M a Ƶ e - 迷宮:

If anybody does want an ''''ideas guy''''' or somebody just to test some early iterations out and give my thoughts on them feel free to drop me a message.

The best way to reach eternal, myself, and the rest of the modders is on the (unofficial) Zodiac Age modding discord server run by VaanRatsbane.

We hang out there and we do first previews and tests of things before posting anywhere else. In particular:

• Thanks to the wonderful work of Akita, we have a nice healthy set of save games available to help test out various bits and bobs when it comes to difficulty.
  
• Thanks to XaguraYiazmat and RaidenRipper, we've been able to figure out how to do a 100% steal success rate that steals ALL the loot (except for monograph-only mob drosp like Pebble/Arcana).
  
• Many others that have already released work on Nexus Mods and elsewhere.

Please do get in touch with me via Steam and/or Discord so I can add you. I'll want plenty of people testing the hardcore mod (and maybe dying a few times lmao) so that I can balance things properly.