Possibilities for FFXV

[Burningthought]

I'd rather summons be fucking overpowered as shit, but come as a great cost. Kinda like what yoshi has planned for XIV with the whole card thing.

[Alkar]

I'd rather summons be fucking overpowered as shit, but come as a great cost. Kinda like what yoshi has planned for XIV with the whole card thing.

Simple: get rid of the "everyone can summon" and have a dedicated Summoner in the game. That usually worked in the series.

[miokomioko]

Simple: get rid of the "everyone can summon" and have a dedicated Summoner in the game. That usually worked in the series.

It works just fine both ways.

Everyone: 6, 7, 8, 12, 13
Summoners: 4, 9, 10, 11

[Crab_Cake]

I found summons very useful in FFXIII.
Damage + revival + full HP and status healing + invincibility? Sign me up.

If anything the problem is that they're very limited because of the slow TP recharging, but to say that they're useless is plain wrong.

Opps. Yes I meant they were kind of limited and most of the time you wanted to use Libra or Renew.

Summons are useful but for the wrong reasons .

When most saw that badass summon animation for the first time, most didn't think they were just going to use it to farm turtles . Most thought about owning up bosses with summons (inefficient for most of the game), rather then only using summons to farm turtles or the "poison trick" (where you just idle in gestalt mode while poison ticks).

But yes "Useless" is the wrong word, what I meant summons in FFXIII are impractical in most cases (like normal battles, boss battles, etc). They are useful but the things they are useful at aren't very exciting (farming turtles, healing everyone, and poison trick).

I liked FFX"s handling of summons.

To compare, all they need to do was just significantly increase the TP gain rate from ATB actions and/or maybe reduce TP cost of Summons to 2. Also they should let you increase the duration of summons (Summons always lasts 50 seconds. Also Gestalt mode is capped at 30 commands).

FFX allowed you to use summons (which were strong and practical to use) anytime.

What they could have done to make summons more useful:

Spoiler: show

1. Reduce TP cost of summons and/or increase TP gain through ATB commands. Currently it's almost impossible to fill up the TP gain through battle (you only gain a lot after defeating enemies). (You gain a small amount of TP every time you expend a full ATB bar)

2. Allow stat modding of Eidolons like Aeons in FFX (like spend 10k CP to boost strength, magic, duration, or SP for example. You can max out the Eidolon if you wanted [with enough grind]). I want Hecatoncheir to have Curaga also.

3. Make the stagger bar (and buffs + debuffs) pause while the summon animation is going on. Hey I want to watch the summon animation but the stagger bar is lowering while the animation is going on >.>.

Well the reason why I consider (impractical) summons being a fault is because one of the draws of the game were the summons.

FF1-9 (well besides 8) didn't really advertise the summons that much but in FFXIII they listed all the summons on the website (with videos) to hype you up. Also in FF1-9 summons were just a glorified nuke but in FFXIII is was advertised as something really epic.

It's not just me either because I've seen a lot of others mention the same thing too. Summons worked well but they could have been a lot better (and fun) in FFXIII.

[Corrderio]

Oh man give me a FF that goes back to it's roots please.

[Xno Kappa]

Didn't certain summons in FFVIII also give you stat boosts and abilities like quad attack when junctioned? That's why I remember them being useful but admittedly it's been forever since I've played that game.

[miokomioko]

They were entirely required for junctioning abilities and stats... but very rarely useful for actually summoning.

[hey]

Honestly, FFVIII, FFX and FFXIII are the only FF's I ever remember summons being useful

wat. Summons in ff8 were entirely useless. Auto attacking did far more damage. And they didn't last all that long in 13 either..

Anyway, i wouldn't even play an ff game that was modeled after the olde games. If i want to play ff1, i'll play ff1. Imo, they need to take what they learned from the last few games, and improve. FF needs to move forward, not back.

edit: oh, yeah. The avatars were stupidly overpowered for junctioning. You could nearly max out all stats without ever leveling up. However at no point is summoning them ever a smart thing to do.

[Nevex]

wat. Summons in ff8 were entirely useless. Auto attacking did far more damage.

This is false. If you have good affinity and you're facing more than one enemy, summons will deal more damage than auto-attack over time. Even against single targets I don't see auto-attack outdamaging summons unless you crit every round.

Once again the problem is not that summons are weak (even the starting ones like Shiva can hit 9999 damage fairly early), it's that the summoning sequence can't be skipped therefore they're not worth it.

Magic in FFVIII has the same problem. Using Meltdown and then spamming Meteorx3 or Ultimax3 every round is obviously going to outdamage physical attacks by a large margin. Obtaining these spells isn't even that hard ( just set Enc-None and go to Island closest to Hell/Heaven) but there isn't anything in the game that justifies such tactics.

Then we have Limit Breaks in FFVIII which are stupidly powerful and outdamage everything else...

Honestly, I can't blame FFVIII and the other early FFs for lacking any balance, because they were never designed for that. FFVIII had an incredibly broken, yet fun and addictive growth system which was good enough for its era.
If they're going to remake it they'll probably adjust a lot of things, which will please many people but inevitably piss many others off.

[Spira]

wat. Summons in ff8 were entirely useless. Auto attacking did far more damage. And they didn't last all that long in 13 either..

i wouldnt actually say that.. in FF8, as with most classic FFs Summons were primarily useful for dealing AoE damage of specific elements. most of the time u just didn't have someone who could multi-target magic. And it'd also be useful against monsters with the reflect thing on..

Other than that, specific to ff8, not much use out of them.

well, summoning Eden lets you have a toilet break.

[hey]

This is false. If you have good affinity and you're facing more than one enemy, summons will deal more damage than auto-attack over time. Even against single targets I don't see auto-attack outdamaging summons unless you crit every round.

Once again the problem is not that summons are weak (even the starting ones like Shiva can hit 9999 damage fairly early), it's that the summoning sequence can't be skipped therefore they're not worth it.

What?

That's the point. 9999 damage is 9999 damage. Damage per attack is generally the same with all attacks, so the only difference is how quick they are. You can practically do more damage over time with auto attacks with unjuntioned str on a level 7 character. Damage per unit time is the only useful way to measure damage. And if for some strange reason you desperately need to do a lot of damage at once, you're triple casting, not summoning, so it's not even useful for that.

[Nevex]

Except summons are free, and no, regular physical attacks aren't powerful enough to hit 9999 on regular basis.

[Draylo]

I disagree with GF's being useless in FF8. I think they are more useful lower level than high level, but that still gives them usefulness. One example I can think of is using Diabolos when you're low lvl on a high lvl mob like the tonberries so you can deal 9999 dmg.

[hey]

Except summons are free

Hardly, it requires you to give up a command slot, whereas magic is likely to be set to everyone regardless.

and no, regular physical attacks aren't powerful enough to hit 9999 on regular basis.

Has been a while, it seems you're right. My maxed out level 7 squall was hitting around the 5k range to random enemies. Regardless, that is still far better damage/time than anything other than limit breaks.

[Crab_Cake]

To the question of whether summons are strong or not - It does depend what the player does.

If you max out the compatibility, you can actually summon a GF in 2.8 seconds. Wikia on GF compatibility.

Though in terms of "real time" spent, it is more faster to probably just strengthen your character normally and attack since the GF animation takes longer. Game time (that is time ignoring the GF animation) GF is more efficient (especially with max compatibility).

In the beginning of the game, I was able to obtain 5k HP and deal 2-3k damage using spells that I could obtain from Triple Triad (after obtaining the Ifrit card that is).

However if a player doesn't want to do the Triple Triad method, I can see maxing out a GF's compatibility (can do as early as you obtain the GF) as an alternative method that can be strong early game (having to watch the animation over and over may get old though).

Besides damage dealing - Cerberus isn't a bad GF to use though since it does cast double + triple on everyone, and Doom Train can cause meltdown. Eden can break the damage limit (can do 60k damage easily but the animation takes 3 minutes or so) and Phoenix has a badass summon animation (you can get unlimited Phoenix Pinions by refining something):

Spoiler: show

Honestly, I can't blame FFVIII and the other early FFs for lacking any balance, because they were never designed for that. FFVIII had an incredibly broken, yet fun and addictive growth system which was good enough for its era.
If they're going to remake it they'll probably adjust a lot of things, which will please many people but inevitably piss many others off.

Yeah FF8 is definitely broken though I felt FF12(regular version) and FF13 tried a bit too hard to keep players from being overpowered (both are really grindy).

It's a bit ridiculous how much grindy things have become in FF12 and 13. In previous games you probably need 10-15 hours to obtain every item/equipment and finish every sidequest. However in FF12 and FF13 it takes 30-50+ hours just to obtain everything (item/equip wise).

FF12 had rare spawns like FF11 (where said spawns have low drop rate). Getting a ribbon from a chest is a pain (50% chance for chest to spawn, then a 5% chance for a Ribbon to be in said chest. Also you need to zone 3 times for chest to respawn).

(Though there is a way to manipulate the RNG in FF12. Wikia article on how to. I tested this and it takes only 2-3 minutes to get the right RNG. It's really easy to do [just make sure to keep count and follow the instructions exactly] and it works 100% of the time if you follow the guide. Can be used to obtain multiple Zodiac Spears too. I'm really impressed someone managed to figure out the RNG.)

If you want to test out the RNG manipulating trick (Spoiler contains a load of text):

Spoiler: show

Warp to "Port at Balfonheim" and go to Cerobi Steppe which is just north. Go to the save point and save. Turn off all gambits on your characters and leave only one character active (put rest in reserve).

Now exit the console or emulator completely and reload to reset the RNG. Once reloaded don't do anything until you get to the chest.

Use Nihopalaoa + Phoenix Down to take out any monsters (make sure the monsters do not hit you. So take out any that are near the chest or may go near the chest). This won't affect the RNG.

Zone into the area north of the save and make sure it's not raining (if it's raining the chest won't spawn in my experience). When you zone you should see a big rock to the right. Beyond that rock (more to the right) is another big rock and it should have a chest behind it.

Then once there follow the instructions. (Count the hits and make sure not to lose count.)

Wikia instructions. Take note that if you get a combo outside of the pointers (like if you get a 2-3 hit combo "before" the "17-28 hit" mark, ignore it. After that though follow the instructions (make sure to read everything). 100% chance to get a rare item using the trick.

Once you get a 5-hit combo (which should be around *50-85~ hits depending on which pointer you obtained), stop everything, equip Diamond Armlet, and finally open the chest for 100% chance to obtain a rare item (which in this case would be a ribbon)!

*Despite the fact the guide says around 80 hits, it's actually the 5 hit combo after any of the pointers listed in the guide (which means it could be around 50-80 hits).

Besides FF12 - We know about turtles and how expensive ultimate weapons are in FF13 (and how each character has around six ultimate weapons with situational uses).

They need to tone that down for future FFs. At least make it fun grind rather than the same thing over and over like in FF12 (chest/rare monster farming) or FF13 (turtle farming).

Hopefully FF13-2 and FFXV go the route of less grind (or at least fun grind like in FFX and FF8).

As for FF8 being broken (skip to 2:10 minutes for fun stuff):

Spoiler: show

Had to show this video if only to show that Rinoa can do that >.>.

[Spira]

I don't think XII held you back half as much as XIII. In fact there were so many ways you could be brokenly (not a word I know) powerful. Nihopaloa + remedy for one.. Reverse decoy.. Berserk and multihit.. Measures.. And so on..

But what really set XII apart was that the marks and optional bosses were equally able to be as cheap or broken as us.. Zodiark was always cheap and you'd need specific gambits to handle marks like diabolos.. Optional deeper dungeons were made to still be scary places to trek through even maxed.. But all that is optional of course..,

But the thing that set it apart from XIII was that it never felt as arduous.. XIII was supposed to feel more macro in terms of battle feel but the turtles didn't really allow for that. You had to literally micromanage in a game which wasn't made for it.. And that's what felt tedious for me.

[Xno Kappa]

My whole point about FFVIII and any other FF I mentioned about having useful summons wasn't about actually summoning them for one attack. FFVIII allowed for junctioned abilities and stats, FFX basically provided a tank to take hits and was the cornerstone of a NSG along with Rikku, and FFXIII made the stupid turtles a lot easier. A summon doesn't have to do 9999 damage in .02 seconds to be useful, we all know you can just spam attacks over and over and achieve greater damage in due time because no one has the patience for the animations.

Those are the only FF games I can remember where the summons weren't rendered completely useless come end-game.

[Elcura]

Summons are obviously useful if they're tried to character progression.

Summons are useless because the time vs damage ratio is heavily in times favour. If summons did more damage to compensate for the time taken to use them then they would be useful along with triple + magic or limit breaks. When you can do 9999x20 it kinda makes 9999x1 a total waste of time. Even Eden who could break damage limit was a huge waste of time for like 30k damage lol

[Omniyoji]

First time I played FFVIII I occasionally used GFs as meat shields when battles got rough. Also one feature I miss (although I only used it once) was the ability to use multiplayer in battle (FFIX). I think FFCC had something like this as well but I didn't play it. They should bring that back or at least update it to allow for more players/online co-op. What do you guys think?

[Hyan]

Fucking FF8. I didn't know leveling was pointless and the fact magic wasn't permanent I was too much of a scrooge to ever use any. I just spammed summons lol. My thumb still hates me for spamming the select+square. Not knowing how the series works after playing FFX I just assumed things wouldn't be that much different there.

Hopefully as far as XV is concerned the only thing they borrow from that game is the setting.