FF: Combat improvements

by Mike Lemmer

For a while, I've been thinking about how I would improve the Final Fantasy series. To start with, the one thing in the game that makes it a game rather than an interactive story: the battle system. The battle system is tried-and-true, and I believe a couple changes could really bring out the versatility and strategy of it while keeping it accessible to novice RPGers. Of course, before I even go about mucking with a sacred game series, it's vital to point out a couple features that make Final Fantasy stand out: (Besides the fact that the number of Final Fantasy games will surpass the number of Super Bowl games in a couple years.)

-A mix of magic and technology (starting with Airships & Robots, then continuing through Magitek and futuristic worlds)
-A real-time battle system
-Attaching magical spirits to characters (remember the Espers?)

And now, for the main changes I hope on making to the FF battle system (and level-gaining):

-A magic system where the skill in one area affects the others.
-A larger variety of options for non-magical combat. (No more repetitive Fight-clicking!)
-The addition of Stat Points, Skill Points, and Abilities for level-building.
-The use of MP as an energy source (think batteries) as well as something to cast spells with.
-A variety of spells & abilities that affect MP, such as Drain, Disperse, and Overload.
-The ability to use spells and weapons while not in combat.
-A more strategic battleground that allows the characters to move in and out of range, protect other characters, and use areas of effect.
-Useful effects that last longer than just one battle.

THE MAGIC SYSTEM:
Almost all of the spells in FF (and then some) can be divided into three main families, each of which has a "positive" end and a "negative" end. The three families and their ends are:

KINETIC
Positive: Fire
Negative: Ice

FORM
Positive: Energy
Negative: Matter

ORGANIC
Positive: Life
Negative: Death

Up to 4 skill levels (explained later) could be invested in each end. However, only 4 skill levels could be invested in a family. How would this work?
For an example, let's take Celie the Mage. Celie really likes watching monsters run around screaming while they're on fire, so she builds up her Skill Level in the Fire end of the Kinetic family. She starts out by building it up to 1 Skill Level (the minimum needed to learn spells of a certain family). Her maximum Ice Skill Level drops to 3, since she's already invested 1 Skill Level in Fire, and there's a maximum of 4 Skill Levels per Family. Now, after seeing an Ice Mage freeze a group of monsters in their tracks (making easy targets for fireballs), Celie decides to have some Ice spells, too. She builds up her Ice Skill Level to 1. Now she can reach a maximum of 3 Skill Levels in Fire OR 3 Skill Levels in Ice.
After much more experience, she's invested 4 Skill Levels in the Kinetic family. If we follow the pattern above, she could have any of the following Skill Level combinations:
3 Fire Skill Levels, 1 Ice Skill Level
2 Fire Skill Levels, 2 Ice Skill Levels
1 Fire Skill Level, 3 Ice Skill Levels

As you can see, she can either be moderately good at both, or specialize in one and ignore the other. However, she can't be excellent at BOTH. (This would prevent the player from making ultra-powerful characters that know every spell under the sun.)
Not only would the power of her spells be determined by the Skill Levels she's invested in them, but by how often she's used them recently. By constantly using the spells of a certain end, she could become "aligned" to that end, and the spells she casts of that end would become stronger, while the spells of the opposite end would become weaker. For example, if Celie's exploring the frigid tundra (where the enemies are really vulnerable to getting roasted), the power of her Fire spells would increase as she uses them more often. However, if she runs into a creature that requires Ice spells, her Ice spells would be weaker than normal. The remedy would be to cast a lot of Ice spells, thus causing her alignment to drift towards the Ice end and away from the Fire end and making her Ice spells stronger (at the cost of weakened Fire spells). "The more you use it, the better you get at it."
NOTE: Alignment could also have other effects, such as resistance to certain spells and colored auras (a Fire-aligned person could glow red, while an Ice-aligned person could glow chill blue).
Finally, there would be one alignment that would affect the strength of all spells: the famous White vs. Black. (Yes, you know I would work that in.) White spells would help (heal, stat increasing, and defensive) while Black spells would hinder (damage, stat decreasing, and offensive). Celie's White/Black alignment would affect whether she should be dishing out damage or throwing up defensive walls against enemy attacks. This alignment would work exactly like the one above, except that it affects ALL spells, regardless of family. Even the Life/Death ends would have both types (the damaging Black spell Life Force for Life, the protective White spell Ward Death and ever-popular Resurrection spell for Death).
This careful combination of balance and extremes would lift FF's spell system far beyond the usual "learn every spell and blow them away" system.

SUMMONING ADDITION:
Of course, summoning is also an important part of FF. I was hard-pressed to find someplace to include it in the spell system's families. Finally, I decided to make Summoning a generic magic skill (one that the player can just increase without worrying about opposition or alignment). However, the types of creatures that can be summoned will be determined not only by a character's Summoning skill, but also by his/her other Magic skills. Each summoned creature would belong to a certain family end and a Summon Level. To summon it, the sum of the summoner's Summon Skill Level and End Skill Level must equal or exceed the summoned monster's Summon Level. (Summa summa summa...) Say that a summonable Red Dragon belongs to the Fire end and has a Summon Level of 7. If Celie wants to call it, she better have a Summon level of 4 to go with her Fire level of 3. Otherwise, no Red Dragon.

NON-MAGICAL COMBAT
It always seems that non-magic always gets the shaft in FF games. After all, when was the last time you got excited about a new weapon in FF, compared to a new spell? This is another sad case. After all, FF has always prided its mix of magic and technology. Why not make the technology a bit more interesting, eh?
Of course, all the usual swords, staves, and bows would be in there for the fantasy purists. Throw some honest-to-goodness guns in there and you'll raise a couple eyes. Add in some blasters that can pelt an enemy with bolts of pure energy (thanks to the magical batteries mentioned earlier), medieval flamethrowers, and grenades, and you begin to realize that magicians won't get all the fun. Now have them driving tanks, mechs (Magitek!), and assault vehicles. Kaboom, anyone?
Right now, I bet half of you are thinking "This guy is nuts! He's gonna ruin the great FF fantasy epic!" and the other half of you are thinking "Fireballs and grenades? Coooool..." First, I would like to point out that FF has NEVER been pure fantasy (They included airships and robots in the first game, for God's sakes!), and that combining magic and machinery wouldn't ruin either if done right. It's called "steampunk", and a recent game by the name of Arcanum has used the same concept. (With much success, so I've heard.)
My own personal twist would use a classic FF concept (Magitek!) and turn it into a game concept: What if most of the machines were run by magic? Utilizing a special type of natural crystal that traps latent magical energy (Magicite, anyone?), machines could use them as batteries. Everything from mechs to energy blasters could use it. Now let's take this a step further: If they're powered by magic, and the magic's drained, what happens? They're disabled. Suddenly, MP-draining spells become much more important. This also ups the importance of the less-powerful fossil fuel-driven machines. After all, who cares if it's more powerful if it runs out of energy and it can't move, let alone attack?
The "crude" swords, staves, and bows would also have an advantage over the more-powerful guns and missile launchers: It's easier to enchant them. Later in the game (when the fun techno goodies enter the fray), the medieval weapons will hold their own by having enchantments that up their attack against certain monsters, cast spells, make the character swing faster, or cause special effects. Plus, swords and staves don't need ammo.
To increase attack versatility in FF, there will be a couple changes to satisfy the combat freak. First, each character can have up to two weapons selected. The character will be able to switch from one to the other with the press of a button. If Roy's shooting arrows, and a monster manages to get into melee range, he can switch over to his Sword of Doom and hack its head off. Or better yet, switch to the flamethrower and roast the bugger.
Second, most vehicles will have multiple actions. When Roy is piloting his Class-E Magitek Mech, he can fire an energy ray at a faraway monster, blast a group with a pair of missiles, or rear back and kick that annoying imp halfway across the map. If he really wants, he can jump out of the mech, go mano-a-mano or cast spells, then jump back into the mech when things get rough.

CASE IN POINT:
Celie was a Kinetic-mage burning with Fire energy. Roy was a bow-toting gun-shooting mech driver. Dylan could rush up to enemies on his Hoverbike, smack them with his Staff of Slowing, and let off a barrage of Energy Lightning spells on the way back. Rick just showed off his two scimitars and dared them to get into melee range with him, pushing them up with a Matter Shove spell if they didn't. And Cid, well... he just ran them over with his tank or tossed out a grenade if that wasn't enough.
They couldn't figure out why all the monsters were running from them...

LEVEL BUILDING AND POINTS
Possibly the most important (and customizable) part of the improved battle system would be the points. Many recent games, such as Fallout and Deus Ex, have used a point system that gives the player a guiding hand in the development of a character. Applied to FF, it means that every player would have a different party. Want the healing cleric to turn into a death-mongering necromancer? You can do that. Want the samurai to gain a crash course in mech driving? You can do that, too. The player could mold the characters to fit his/her style, rather than just switching to the usual swordplay or sorcery characters.
NOTE: Customizable characters would diversify parties so much that the notion of 1-on-1 Party Deathmatches could not only be feasible, but damn fun. ("Haha! My tank-driving mage just ran over your puny gun samurai! Booyah!")
The first part of the point building would be the Stats. Each character would have 6 basic Stats (Strength, Endurance, Dexterity, Reflexes, Intelligence, Wisdom) that would determine HP, MP, Attack, Defense, Speed, and so on. These stats would have numeric values that would increase after every level (nothing new there). Each stat would also have a Growth rating of 1-6. This rating would determine how fast the stat increases. Someone with a Strength Growth rating of 6 would increase Strength 6 times faster than someone with a Strength Growth rating of 1.
At the start, all characters' Growth ratings would have a value of 1-3. The player can increase their Growth ratings by using Stat Points. Each character would earn a Stat Point after leveling up so many levels (for example, 1 Stat Point for every 5 Levelups). The player could then increase one of that character's Growth ratings by 1, thus increasing that character's gain in that stat and increasing how fast he/she gets of Skill Points. (Naturally, Stat Points gained early would be more valuable than Stat Points gained later, since the early Stat Points would have more time to make the stats grow.)

In turn, as the player reached certain levels in each stat, they would receive Magic, Weapon, and Tech Skill Points (or SP). These SP would determine how good they are at doing certain actions, whether it's slinging spells, hacking with a sword, or driving a fully-loaded Genoa Personal Tank. Magic SP would be used on spells, Weapon SP would be used on most weapons, and Tech SP would be used on vehicles and advanced tech weapons.
This is a list of the stats that could be used to determine SP for each group:
MAGIC: Intelligence, Wisdom
WEAPON: Strength, Reflexes
TECH: Reflexes, Intelligence
As another feature, SP gain in each category would also be determined by how often you use the skills of that category. If you use spells, you gain more Magic SP. If you use mechs, you gain more Tech SP. "The more you use it, the better you get at it."

Stats and Skill Levels would then determine which Abilities are available to each character. Abilities are special traits that you can get for a character once he/she reaches a certain level, stat level, and Skill Level. Abilities would range from Attracting Magic (steal more MP, lose less) to Fast Hands (extra melee attacks) to Mech Repair (heal your mech during combat). There would be enough to give each character different abilities and still not have all of them. You would have to think hard about which abilities you want at which time, because you can only gain one new Ability for so many levelups (like one new Ability for every 10 levels gained).
If any of you PC gamers think this sounds familiar, that's because I stole it straight from Fallout. I think it will find a good home in the FF series.

MP STRATEGIES
In my FF game, MP wouldn't just be something you cast spells with. It would be an energy source, one that can be accumulated, overloaded, drained, and dispersed. I call this the "Osmose-Disperse-Overload" system, or ODO for short.
Here's how it works (while highlighting all the cool stuff):
1.An Energy mage casts Osmose on a magical bot, draining all its MP (thus disabling it) and adding to his MP.
2.The Energy mage, who now has plenty of MP, decides to help out the other party members by casting Disperse, which evenly disperses a large chunk of his MP to the other members (draining him while filling them up).
3.One party member already has max MP. However, thanks to the Overload Ability, she's able to temporarily store more MP than her max. She can either use this extra MP to cast spells or release it as a bolt of pure magical energy (draining all her extra MP, but causing massive damage to an enemy as the magic's ejected from her body).

First, with the Disperse spell, a single mage that can cast Osmose and Disperse could refill the rest of the party's MP. Thus, the role of "living magic battery", someone that gets and restores MP for the rest of the party while they cast the major spells.
Second, the Overload ability would allow characters that already have full MP to benefit from gaining more. They would be able to store extra MP for a certain amount of time, after which it would disappear. Until then, they can either use it to cast spells without wasting their normal MP or use it as an attack. (One that would cause lots of damage, relative to the amount of extra MP stored at the time.)
Combined with the strategy of disabling bots by draining all their MP, I predict that the gain and use of MP would become even more important than it is now.

USE OF COMBAT SPELLS OUT OF COMBAT
This one's pretty simple: let the player use spells & abilities outside of combat to their advantage. Have a locked wooden door in your way and no key to open it? Blow it up with a fireball, or a grenade, or a missile attack. Need to cross a chasm? Use a well-placed Ice Wall spell to make an arctic bridge across. See some monsters ahead and want to get the jump on them? Send a lightning bolt their way before you ever enter the Combat Screen!

STRATEGIC BATTLEGROUND
Instead of just lining up players and enemies in neat rows and having them duke it out, have a battle system like Crono Trigger: right on the map, with special area effects. Better yet, give the player some control on where the characters are.
First, when characters (or monsters) want to melee attack, they'll have to cover the distance between them and their target before they can attack. None of this "jump-in-range, jump-out-of-range" stuff, (Well, maybe if they have a "Jump Melee Attack" ability...) This would have three main effects:
1.Ranged weapons would let you get in a couple extra attacks, while they come in close to attack.
2.Area-effect weapons on monsters engaged in melee combat would be a bad idea, since some of your characters would get caught in the blast.
3.If a mage is unable to cast their spells when a monster's beating away at them, you'll need to assign someone to protect the mage from melee attacks.
That brings me to my next point: Protect. The Protect command would tell a character to stand close to another character and protect him/her from all threats, whether it's a melee attack or a lightning bolt. The protector would take most of the damage while the protectee could do whatever he/she needs to do. It would resemble Cecil's "Cover" command in FF4, except that the protector would do it automatically, and could do other actions like cast spells and shoot ranged attacks. The only bad thing is that having the two characters so close together is a tempting target for an area-effect spell.
Finally, there would be the "Dodge" command. Rather than the puny "Parry" command, in which characters would just stand there holding their arms up to lessen the damage, dodging characters would actually stay out of the range of the monsters attacking them. They would run away, circle around, get weaker monsters between them and their attacker... anything they have to do to keep away from them. Of course, it wouldn't work all the time, but it'd be a heckuva lot better than just having them stand there waiting to be attacked. Of course, it'd need some good AI to make sure they don't run into more trouble by running from it, but retreat and evasion are good strategies... why not use them?

LONGER-LASTING USEFUL EFFECTS
Who wants to use an Attack-increasing spell if it only lasts one insignificant fight? No one. That's why I say that all stat-increasing spells and other helpful spells have durations longer than just one battle. Perhaps a set amount of time, or a certain number of battles. Just make them LAST longer!
Better yet, why not let charmed monsters stay for a while? Have a special party slot just for them... go ahead, drag that charmed Red Dragon to a couple more fights and watch the monsters run!

Well, that does it for today's improvement ideas. Come back next time, when I explore improvement ideas for plot branches, multiple paths, interactivity, replayability, and Moogle arcade games!