Poor Balancing

[Lights]

So, let me preface this by saying FF12 is one of my favorite games of all time and final fantasy as a whole is one of my favorite series of all time. FF12 has been a massive influence to me as a game developer and has been a great experience since the mid 2000s when I first played it. But that said, the game's balancing is pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

From what I can gather, the general philosophy used is "lets provide some really overpowered things (stop, death, warp, doom, vanish, reverse, wither, disable, confuse, sap, etc.) and make a really diverse pool of things you can do- but by late game, lets make 80% of them useless on any given enemy".

I absolutely love the variety in this game, all the spells are pretty great and its one of the better aspects to the game in my opinion- but balancing them by just making them unusable by late game is frustrating. I'd doing a NG- playthrough, which in and of itself limits how you play a bit, that coupled with the fact that half the things you can do in game are made useless due to immunity is just a slap in the face.

Shields? whats the point other than elemental immunites. Half the spells do nothing to most late game enemies. By endgame most equipment is useless other than accessories and some of the late game gear (ie. Guns, greatswords, ninja swords, and a few items from each weapon/armor type.) Sure the great trango is a good sword- probably a bit too good. Kartaka is good against enemies vulnerable to confuse (saved my ass against archeoaevises). blood sword is situationally useful too (fafnir). but by lategame, all the non-super weapons end up just being pointless. And even Accessories breaks down because things like the Ribbon, Niho, Gengi Gloves, sage ring, etc. are so much better than most other things (though granted a lot of equipment is situationally useful).

I'm made bitter over the fact that many options are presented as viable early game just to be taken away. You get Warp in the Nebreaus Deadlands, off the beaten path. I didnt find it on my first run through the area- by the time I found it the first time (and id guess many others) it was useless.

Theres a lot of examples to give and I'm sure most of you know them, so I'll cut them off there, but it leaves me a bit bitter. This game would benefit a lot from slightly less powerful abilities, but having less enemies immune to them outright. (instead of ignoring evasion, having above 100% accuracy to offset the evasion stat- calculating warp's accuracy based on level difference between caster and target, calculate doom's accuracy based on % of max HP left on the target, etc.)

I think the game would benefit a lot from a fan-mod that redoes the mechanics of these things to remove the need for everything to have an immunity.

[Hinnyuu]

Balancing games is difficult. Balancing games with such a diverse audience even more so. FF games suffer from the fact that they're too popular - with anything from the casual couch crowd to hardcore gamers. But making a game that is adequately difficult for all of those people is just an impossibility - particularly problematic because the demographic isn't a uniform distribution. Which means casual players make up the bulk of the audience, and thus are the ones that are catered to the most. Hardcore aspects shine through sometimes in optional content, but even there veterans will destroy the game with little effort.

That extends to the games' item/ability systems as well. You want cool stuff like Death, Warp, etc. - but if those worked on everything, you'd make the game trivial. In fact, these abilities can only be as cool and powerful as they are BECAUSE they don't work on everything - if they did, they wouldn't feel special, they'd just feel like lame I-win buttons.

In addition, systems are generally kept at a lower level of complexity so as not to confuse new players. Many already feel overwhelmed by the game's various mechanics, adding further differentiation to intricate details of damage calculation etc. would only exacerbate that. That means things like shields work intuitively for the most part - you just block stuff, and how much you block depends on the evasion stat. Looks nice and simple, and works fine for 95% of the game. The problem is that the supposedly difficult 5% of the game need to stay difficult - if you allowed blocking against, say, superbosses, they'd very quickly be trivialized by stacking evasion as you'd become virtually become immune to physical attacks. But if the system was made more complicated to account for that (by whatever means, diminishing returns or damage-reduction-based evasion or whatever) then it'd confuse the people who don't actually care about superbosses and just want to understand quickly and easily how combat and stats work.

The only real solution is differentiating the game based on personal choice, i.e. the equivalent of difficulty modes. FF has long since resisted that (with only a few careful forays like "easy mode" in XIII-2 etc.) but now that it's establishing itself on the PC platform hopes are high that the community can work towards fixing that problem. Difficulty is a very intricate puzzle to solve, and the best way, really, is simply to have things tailor-made for niche audiences - something which, for obvious reasons, is not commercially viable on a large scale, but has been working well on an enthusiast level.
There's precedents. FFVII is my favorite example, because there is a truly excellent difficulty mod available for it: gjoerluv's Hardcore Mod. It's an uncompromising experience aimed at hardcore difficulty gamers, and is very comfortable with kicking the butt of anyone who doesn't know the ins and outs of the game. It's not intended for a casual audience, and as a result, it doesn't have to cater to anyone but those who know what they signed up for.

That, in my mind, is the only real solution to the conundrum. Everything else will be a patchwork fix that is more likely to frustrate than to actually solve things. I hope that in the years to come, modders will come up with amazing mods for this game as well - delivering to us the difficulty we deserve, and the challenge we desire.

[Lights]

Originally posted by Hinnyuu:

Balancing games is difficult. Balancing games with such a diverse audience even more so. FF games suffer from the fact that they're too popular - with anything from the casual couch crowd to hardcore gamers. But making a game that is adequately difficult for all of those people is just an impossibility - particularly problematic because the demographic isn't a uniform distribution. Which means casual players make up the bulk of the audience, and thus are the ones that are catered to the most. Hardcore aspects shine through sometimes in optional content, but even there veterans will destroy the game with little effort.

That extends to the games' item/ability systems as well. You want cool stuff like Death, Warp, etc. - but if those worked on everything, you'd make the game trivial. In fact, these abilities can only be as cool and powerful as they are BECAUSE they don't work on everything - if they did, they wouldn't feel special, they'd just feel like lame I-win buttons.

In addition, systems are generally kept at a lower level of complexity so as not to confuse new players. Many already feel overwhelmed by the game's various mechanics, adding further differentiation to intricate details of damage calculation etc. would only exacerbate that. That means things like shields work intuitively for the most part - you just block stuff, and how much you block depends on the evasion stat. Looks nice and simple, and works fine for 95% of the game. The problem is that the supposedly difficult 5% of the game need to stay difficult - if you allowed blocking against, say, superbosses, they'd very quickly be trivialized by stacking evasion as you'd become virtually become immune to physical attacks. But if the system was made more complicated to account for that (by whatever means, diminishing returns or damage-reduction-based evasion or whatever) then it'd confuse the people who don't actually care about superbosses and just want to understand quickly and easily how combat and stats work.

The only real solution is differentiating the game based on personal choice, i.e. the equivalent of difficulty modes. FF has long since resisted that (with only a few careful forays like "easy mode" in XIII-2 etc.) but now that it's establishing itself on the PC platform hopes are high that the community can work towards fixing that problem. Difficulty is a very intricate puzzle to solve, and the best way, really, is simply to have things tailor-made for niche audiences - something which, for obvious reasons, is not commercially viable on a large scale, but has been working well on an enthusiast level.
There's precedents. FFVII is my favorite example, because there is a truly excellent difficulty mod available for it: gjoerluv's Hardcore Mod. It's an uncompromising experience aimed at hardcore difficulty gamers, and is very comfortable with kicking the butt of anyone who doesn't know the ins and outs of the game. It's not intended for a casual audience, and as a result, it doesn't have to cater to anyone but those who know what they signed up for.

That, in my mind, is the only real solution to the conundrum. Everything else will be a patchwork fix that is more likely to frustrate than to actually solve things. I hope that in the years to come, modders will come up with amazing mods for this game as well - delivering to us the difficulty we deserve, and the challenge we desire.

I mean yeah, I understand the value of simplicity and accessibility- though I would argue having enemies that just plain ignore evasion suddenly at the end of the game is just as offputting as your evasion stat not always being calculated out of 100.

A decent quality rebalance mod would do wonders for this game- its something i quite hope to see.

[Hinnyuu]

Originally posted by weeb:

I mean yeah, I understand the value of simplicity and accessibility- though I would argue having enemies that just plain ignore evasion suddenly at the end of the game is just as offputting as your evasion stat not always being calculated out of 100.

Not quite, because the casual players are less likely to actually run into superbosses. But if you made the system more complicated, they'd always experience that.

Originally posted by weeb:

A decent quality rebalance mod would do wonders for this game- its something i quite hope to see.

You and me both. I'm holding out hope for a hardcore difficulty mod with sweeping balance changes, but it might take a while. That FFVII mod I mentioned didn't come out until years later. Many, many years.

[DigginTiger]

Originally posted by Hinnyuu:

Balancing games is difficult. Balancing games with such a diverse audience even more so. FF games suffer from the fact that they're too popular - with anything from the casual couch crowd to hardcore gamers. But making a game that is adequately difficult for all of those people is just an impossibility - particularly problematic because the demographic isn't a uniform distribution. Which means casual players make up the bulk of the audience, and thus are the ones that are catered to the most. Hardcore aspects shine through sometimes in optional content, but even there veterans will destroy the game with little effort.

That extends to the games' item/ability systems as well. You want cool stuff like Death, Warp, etc. - but if those worked on everything, you'd make the game trivial. In fact, these abilities can only be as cool and powerful as they are BECAUSE they don't work on everything - if they did, they wouldn't feel special, they'd just feel like lame I-win buttons.

In addition, systems are generally kept at a lower level of complexity so as not to confuse new players. Many already feel overwhelmed by the game's various mechanics, adding further differentiation to intricate details of damage calculation etc. would only exacerbate that. That means things like shields work intuitively for the most part - you just block stuff, and how much you block depends on the evasion stat. Looks nice and simple, and works fine for 95% of the game. The problem is that the supposedly difficult 5% of the game need to stay difficult - if you allowed blocking against, say, superbosses, they'd very quickly be trivialized by stacking evasion as you'd become virtually become immune to physical attacks. But if the system was made more complicated to account for that (by whatever means, diminishing returns or damage-reduction-based evasion or whatever) then it'd confuse the people who don't actually care about superbosses and just want to understand quickly and easily how combat and stats work.

The only real solution is differentiating the game based on personal choice, i.e. the equivalent of difficulty modes. FF has long since resisted that (with only a few careful forays like "easy mode" in XIII-2 etc.) but now that it's establishing itself on the PC platform hopes are high that the community can work towards fixing that problem. Difficulty is a very intricate puzzle to solve, and the best way, really, is simply to have things tailor-made for niche audiences - something which, for obvious reasons, is not commercially viable on a large scale, but has been working well on an enthusiast level.
There's precedents. FFVII is my favorite example, because there is a truly excellent difficulty mod available for it: gjoerluv's Hardcore Mod. It's an uncompromising experience aimed at hardcore difficulty gamers, and is very comfortable with kicking the butt of anyone who doesn't know the ins and outs of the game. It's not intended for a casual audience, and as a result, it doesn't have to cater to anyone but those who know what they signed up for.

That, in my mind, is the only real solution to the conundrum. Everything else will be a patchwork fix that is more likely to frustrate than to actually solve things. I hope that in the years to come, modders will come up with amazing mods for this game as well - delivering to us the difficulty we deserve, and the challenge we desire.

This is well said and i totally agree with every idea expressed here.

[DigginTiger]

There are so many different players involved here.... only different kinds of difficulties could please/suit most of them and not a simple rebelance overall, it would be too radical (if this word does actually exist in english lol).

[Lights]

Originally posted by roro4066:

There are so many different players involved here.... only different kinds of difficulties could please/suit most of them and not a simple rebelance overall, it would be too radical (if this word does actually exist in english lol).

Adding in new difficulty tiers doesn't really address the flaw I'm outlining though. If anything, higher levels of difficulty just makes the flaw more apparent. My issue is with how many things in game just become useless towards the end of the game, rather than the challenge it imposes. I don't consider it good game design to get a spell towards the end of a story that most enemies you run into will be totally immune to. Or, as mentioned before, making an entire type of equipment effectively useless (shields)

[Hinnyuu]

Originally posted by weeb:

Adding in new difficulty tiers doesn't really address the flaw I'm outlining though. If anything, higher levels of difficulty just makes the flaw more apparent. My issue is with how many things in game just become useless towards the end of the game, rather than the challenge it imposes. I don't consider it good game design to get a spell towards the end of a story that most enemies you run into will be totally immune to. Or, as mentioned before, making an entire type of equipment effectively useless (shields)

They're not entirely useless, though - they're just not useful against (super)bosses. Shields etc. are still great against trash mobs. Henne Mines II is a lot easier with an evasion tank. Like, seriously a LOT. Some people also like to Warp on the path to Zodiark, to make it easier when reloading saves (since you don't get an autosave in Zodiark's actual room). Death is a great midgame tool with Indigo Pendant, allowing you to oneshot most things even at very low levels. Sight Unseeing is perfect for Poaching. And so on.

Not every tool at your disposal needs to have a use at every point in the game, or for every scenario - keep in mind there's things like Weak Mode, too, and that's part of why e.g. Gil Toss is found so late in the game, as it'd make many early encounters trivial in NG-.

Plus there's also the fact that there's things you use on superbosses you probably wouldn't use in other parts of the game, like e.g. <6.25% HP combo or Reverse tanking.

While I understand your sentiment, it's hard to make things powerful but not gamebreaking, and useful both early and late at the game, versus normal enemies and versus bosses. If you try to balance it out too much you run the serious risk of gutting flavor a lot.

[DigginTiger]

Originally posted by weeb:

Originally posted by roro4066:

There are so many different players involved here.... only different kinds of difficulties could please/suit most of them and not a simple rebelance overall, it would be too radical (if this word does actually exist in english lol).

Adding in new difficulty tiers doesn't really address the flaw I'm outlining though. If anything, higher levels of difficulty just makes the flaw more apparent. My issue is with how many things in game just become useless towards the end of the game, rather than the challenge it imposes. I don't consider it good game design to get a spell towards the end of a story that most enemies you run into will be totally immune to. Or, as mentioned before, making an entire type of equipment effectively useless (shields)

It will, if you do it accordingly to these levels of difficulties.
For example, since you seem to be concerned by the unusefullness of shields in late game,For the "EASY DIFFICULTY" just change the anti evade thing into a 50% chance to ignore evasion. It might not be the most well balanced thing to make, but you get the idea, right?
And you can do stuff like that for many many things until you think, well the game has been changed and balanced easily enough for the EASY DIFFICULTY.

The most difficult one would be the "hardcore/nightmare" difficulty to balance imo.

[Sakhari]

Originally posted by weeb:

So, let me preface this by saying FF12 is one of my favorite games of all time and final fantasy as a whole is one of my favorite series of all time... But that said, the game's balancing is pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Agreed and thanks to the work of the talented folks in the modding thread (among others, I'm sure), we already have the ability to make some of the edits necessary to help smooth things out a bit - which I'm sure will only get easier as time goes on. I'm in the process of reworking the class boards, license/equipment allocations, and equipment stats to suit my own view of a more balanced and variety-friendly game and I expect someone's more community-oriented edit-package isn't too much to expect in the next few months.

It's difficult to make a sweeping set of changes that everyone would be happy with but simple things like scaling back weapon power, balancing the effectiveness and distribution of high-end magic, giving underperforming weapon classes a clearer purpose, giving shields other benefits beyond evasion ratings, and so on are already well within the realm of possibility.

[Kartoffelsuppe]

Compared to Final Fantasy 9 this game is pretty weak in many departments but Balthier having a gun and being advertised as the gun guy but he actually sucks with guns is the most hilarious thing I have ever seen in a video game and takes the cake by a long shot. Who the ♥♥♥♥ designed this ♥♥♥♥??????????

If this is the rebalanced version then I don't wanna see the orignal.

[El Fuerte]

You should see Trails in the Sky. Most bosses are immune to every status effect from the start, but can inflict every status effect on you. It's pretty annoying.

But to be fair, that goes way back in games like Chrono Cross as well.

[Hinnyuu]

Originally posted by lolibus:

Compared to Final Fantasy 9 this game is pretty weak in many departments but Balthier having a gun and being advertised as the gun guy but he actually sucks with guns is the most hilarious thing I have ever seen in a video game and takes the cake by a long shot. Who the ♥♥♥♥ designed this ♥♥♥♥??????????

If this is the rebalanced version then I don't wanna see the orignal.

That's largely due to the fact that people are blowing things way out of proportion. While yes, Balthier has the slowest gun animation, that difference is an incredibly minor factor outside of like 5 fights in the game - in which guns aren't great to begin with and where animation differences will still just be a tiny, tiny factor in overall performance.

People make it out like this is a do-or-die bleeding edge scenario where two animation frames separate victory and defeat - but the reality is, you can put the worst characters in the worst jobs, and all that will happen is you'll take 50 minutes to kill one specific superboss instead of 45. Big whoop.

[Kartoffelsuppe]

Originally posted by Easy Killer:

You should see Trails in the Sky. Most bosses are immune to every status effect from the start, but can inflict every status effect on you. It's pretty annoying.

But to be fair, that goes way back in games like Chrono Cross as well.

Thats like every video game ever because if not bosses would be weak as hell.

Originally posted by Hinnyuu:

Originally posted by lolibus:

Compared to Final Fantasy 9 this game is pretty weak in many departments but Balthier having a gun and being advertised as the gun guy but he actually sucks with guns is the most hilarious thing I have ever seen in a video game and takes the cake by a long shot. Who the ♥♥♥♥ designed this ♥♥♥♥??????????

If this is the rebalanced version then I don't wanna see the orignal.

That's largely due to the fact that people are blowing things way out of proportion. While yes, Balthier has the slowest gun animation, that difference is an incredibly minor factor outside of like 5 fights in the game - in which guns aren't great to begin with and where animation differences will still just be a tiny, tiny factor in overall performance.

People make it out like this is a do-or-die bleeding edge scenario where two animation frames separate victory and defeat - but the reality is, you can put the worst characters in the worst jobs, and all that will happen is you'll take 50 minutes to kill one specific superboss instead of 45. Big whoop.

Yeah it was not such a big deal that I stopped using him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmMhzaF7puM

[Casurin]

that has been the case for nearly every FF game sadly.
With FF12 the most ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing imop is that while you have a big variety of equipment, it is mostly a linear progression and outside a very few monsters you are best with just going for the strongest non-elemental weapon - no need to swap aroudn for every 3rd monster.

With how the game is it would be far better in my opinion if there was a way to customize the weapons - or get them like in borderlands. Like why the hell is an ice-arrow doing more damage than 2 arrows? Excalibur was a good weapon, but ups, Yiazmat absorbs that element.


Balancing can be hard, if you just try to randomly adjust parameters. but it isn't that hard.


The game has a lot of balancing issues, but most of them are sadly very common in most games.
Just recently i finished FF X again... where bosses in general are immune to most status alignments, specially the optional fights - and the already weak endboss where you have extra buffs can be turned into a zombie -.-