Thread 12135084

If the Materia and Junction systems are the most fun magic systems in Final Fantasy (they are), would a mix between the two be the ultimate set-up? And how would that work?

>>12135084 (OP)
I'm afraid to ask what yellow command materia did you link with the All materia in his weapon. Actually, I want to know what that next 2 slots linked in his weapon is too with another yellow command materia linked with the blue materia

Junction summons then have a unique grid / board (see X, XII) for each summon where you set materia found in various ways, link or chain them for unique combos of things.

The one cool thing about VIII is choosing what to level up on your GFs.
So take that and add it to the materia system. Have materia all be condensed down into just being summon materia.
Each character starts with a summon materia, and they let characters learn the various spells, commands and effects of materia overall.
By the second disc you can equip two per character and by the third disc three per character.

>>12135084 (OP)
I miss when JRPGs had 'out there' skill systems like these ones

>>12135084 (OP)
ah yes the level doesnt matter system, a clever trap for all players

>>12135229
These systems evolve from trying to solve a problem, gradually losing touch with the verisimilitude of the game world. FF7's Materia system feels "out there" but if you look at the history of Final Fantasy, it's easily viewed as the next evolution of the "Job System."

The "Job System" is a solution to a gameplay problem: Players want to custom build characters, builds need some limitations for balance, and players don't want to have to commit a single build for the entire game then have to replay the whole game again to see another combination. It doesn't make any roleplay sense to be a Samurai + Black Mage for one battle and then a Monk + Thief the very next battle. But screw that, because the goal is to be fun.

The Materia System simply decouples the "JP" or "AP" from individual characters. This reduces the penalty for party-swapping that is otherwise inherent to the Job System games (note how FF3 and FF5 both have fixed parties, the only "character swap" is a special even where the new character inherits all of the old character's abilities). Materia also breaks up abilities into smaller groups. Instead of equipping "Black Mage" and getting access to all black magic, you can just equip "Fire Spells" and "Ice Spells."

>>12135084 (OP)
The point of FF games during the Golden Age was to introduce a new system for each game. Ever since Lightning: Corridor Fantasy it became just a crock of shit ultimately becoming real time "combat" (that weirdly looks similar to Xenoblade shit), where ATB system was completely fine.

>>12135107
Gil plus?

>>12135351
No wonder tendies loved that piece of anime cringe shit.
The only thing based about Xenoshit was the photo of Rex taking the photo of his three impregnated bitches.
What would happen if Pyra and Mythra combined into Pneuma while pregnant? Would the two fetuses combine into ultimate Rex child?

>>12135084 (OP)
you sound like an AI with your pointless and dumb question

>>12135084 (OP)
I prefer materia over junction. Even crystal system from IX is better than junction.

I never cared for the junction system.

>>12135351
>These systems evolve from trying to solve a problem, gradually losing touch with the verisimilitude of the game world
This is something that afflicted many JRPGs around the turn of the century. Suddenly, tried and true mechanics like "MP" and "leveling up" were deemed problems that had to be "solved". This lead to ass-backward, utterly retarded combat systems that the likes of FF8 and Chrono Cross had, where dimwits found them baffling, midwits were dazzled by NEW THING, and competent people wondered just what the fuck the point was after thinking about it all for a few minutes.

it's no surprise that modern JRPGs have returned to more traditional customization and progression systems. This era of JRPG mechanics was like the era of the automotive industry where money-drunk executives thought people wanted microwaves in their dashboards.

>>12135084 (OP)
>Junction system
The junction system is a tragedy. It somehow managed to take the concepts of spells, summons, stats, and equipment, and rolled them all into an amorphous blob of "endless possibilities" that ultimately has none—they made spells you didn't want to cast, summons you didn't want to call, stats that were meaningless, and equipment that didn't even exist, all in the name of a progression system where none of the characters or strategies feel special or fun. Once you figure it all out, there's no reason to even play the game anymore, because the story is ass and most of it is blatantly incomplete.

>>12135707
Right. It's reasonable to argue that FF7 is at least on the fence, the problems it was solving were fairly reasonable. They wanted the party-swapping of Chrono Trigger with the combinatorial addiction of Final Fantasy V. The solution was Materia.

FF8 I still am not really sure what they were going for with Draw.
FF9 is class-based but with a lame way to gate every ability by loot/content progression.
FF10 is a skill tree with visual obfuscation.
FF12 is a shittier skill tree.

>Suddenly, tried and true mechanics like "MP"
For what it's worth, I think MP is an over-simplified system and games could be a lot more interesting if an MP system was actually *expanded* rather than ditched. The NES Final Fantasy games had per-level MP. Maybe that's excessive, but imagine if there was MP for normal magic, but then there were also rare/special spells that used "Deep MP" which uses a different pool. Very simple tweak with lots of possibilities. For all the shit Final Fantasy Mystic Quest gets, its dumbed-down system has 3 different resource pools for magic (White, Black, and "Wizard").

>>12135084 (OP)
At least we can all agree that 7>8=9>>>>>>10

10s system was just soulless fucking slop

>>12135707
>the era of the automotive industry where money-drunk executives thought people wanted microwaves in their dashboards.
getting rid of cool extraneous features that only 0.1% of people use was one of the worst things that ever happened to modern cars. I miss my ford explorer with composite inputs under the screen.

>>12135390
...yes? Being able to switch materia combinations wholesale was a thing since the original

>>12135365
Since the merger it's basically just been the flagship brand they attach to their biggest-budget multimedia spectacle videogame project. The first project to do it was FFXI for obvious reasons given that subscription MMOs were massive cash cows at the time.

>>12136090
>For all the shit Final Fantasy Mystic Quest gets, its dumbed-down system has 3 different resource pools for magic (White, Black, and "Wizard").
Grandia had a similar system that worked really well. There were three different "levels" of MP tied to the general strength of the spell. It made you feel better about just burning MP on minor spells during encounters because you didn't have to worry about saving your stronger spells for the boss.

>>12136179
>getting rid of cool extraneous features that only 0.1% of people use was one of the worst things that ever happened to modern cars.
Lmao, not even close.

>>12136175
nobody agrees with your retarded take

>>12135638
>crystal system from IX
There were no crystals in IX, despite what the logo and strange marketing would lead you to believe

>>12137992
Meant the Crystarium fron FFXIII. FF games all blend together because they are so generic.

>>12138003
they all blend together because you never played them.Not gonna read your rebutai.

Y'all remind me that newer RPGs try to do too much for no good goddamn reason. You want to start up a new game and all of a sudden it's like

"Each of your weapons has an affinity stat that depends on the character it's equipped to and defines stat growth according to the skills used in battle"
"Skill cards are equipped to a skill slot but can't go over the character's skill point limit, any card above the SkPtL receives only 33% of AP after battle" and shit like that. Don't even get me started on "card-based roguelite deck building dungeon crawlers".

>>12135390
>tfw some people still haven't discovered the arrange menu

>>12137992
There is a 'crystal system' in FFIX. It's for setting automatic abilities like 'bug killer' and 'bright eyes' and 'counter'. It works kind of like an encumbrance mechanic where abilities cost crystal n slots and you have a maximum number of slots that can be used at once.

>>12135084 (OP)
I miss simply systems like that.
Any games with fun systems like jobs, the PS1 FFs and Grandia?