Did you like FFVIII's junction system?
Yes
>>11490773junction is cooldraw/stock and card mod are notor are also cool if you just care about breaking games
>>11490773I wish I could get a GF on command, seems pretty useful.
>>11490773Its a neat idea that was poorly executed.Would have been infinitely better if you only had to equip 1 copy of spells instead of 100. Obviously this would mean changing drawing and stuff to only be 1 copy as well.
>>11490773I think the idea of casting magic, rather than costing MP, instead indefinitely lowering the stats of one of your characters is interesting. But because the max is 99 you have to really fucking spam a spell before you really notice a drop in stats.It does add extra nuance to spellcasting, but it also adds a lot of extra bookkeeping, especially with all of the party switching.I'm happy Square tried it once because it's very unique and a nice change of pace, but I wouldn't be particularly interested in seeing it come back.
>>11490792>divorce stocked spell quantity from junction power and simply let a given spell be worth (flat effect) on (junction type)>permit junctioning of magic as long as you have stocked it at least once, even if you have none left>open up all junction types from the get-go instead of gating them behind absurd AP grinding>limit junctioning of individual spells to 1 copy per character so you don't have people stacking Ultima in every slot for free>impose a junction capacity where spells have a "weight", with weaker spells having lower weight and stronger ones heavier weight>weight scales with player level, enabling a natural progression of strength>permit junctioning overweight but with steep penalties to dissuade players from stackingJust spitballing ideas on how to "fix" junction
>>11490792When I replayed it a couple of years ago I used a cheat to make it so when you draw spells you draw them 100 copies at a time, and when you cast it doesn't use them up. It's still not as strong as refining triple triad stuff in terms of overpowering yourself. I think it made the game more enjoyable since each time you check enemy draws you get a little RPG treat from it instead of leaving you to either condemn yourself to drawing for 15 minutes or ignore it depending on how autistic you are.
Not really since it punishes you for using your spells.
>make it so you're able to draw 99 spells per draw max instead of 9 spells>some commands like Item/draw/magic should be usable without GFs. change the lore to fit if you need to who gives a fuck>characters are allowed to have only 1 GF junctioned>rebalance or remove all refine skills, or give OP refine skills to late game GFs>Zell can't repeat the same Duel moves over and over>remove Aura or change it into auto-life or something>remove Meltdown
>>11490773
>>11490773Yes.It gave me reasons to collect more GFs.It gave ability to skyrocket my HP (and perform as many Limit Breaks as I wanted).When I went into battle, I got to try... most everything I wanted. And then settle on doing what I liked the most.Final Fantasy had Save Points, after all; it's not like risks were ever unfeasible.
>>11490773It's fine, but i agree that it punishes you for using spells. It definitely needed a better UI and better explanations in-game
>>11490951>but i agree that it punishes you for using spellsThis compromise could've been fine if magic was more powerful... but physical attacks vastly outperform it, and it's free. I think that's why they made Triple magic a thing, to compensate, but sitting through long animations thrice in a row is an absolute dogshit experience.
>>11490773no, they couldve expanded on the job and materia system but japs cant stay simple and effective
It's easily the second-worst progression system in Final Fantasy, just ahead of FFII. It's needlessly convoluted despite being completely inflexible. It effectively doesn't let you do anything other than make your numbers go up. There's only a handful of extra commands to unlock, and you only have three goddamn slots to equip them anyway, so most people are just gonna stick with the basic loadout. And it doesn't matter how you go about it- getting full stacks of magic is a time-consuming chore either way. No idea how they went from Materia to this.
>>11490773constant reminder I dont have a GF. 0/10
>>11490773>1 draw allowed per character per battle>1 GF per character>stat boosts are flat based off the spell and not quantity>card refining is removed or severely nerfed>limit break works like VII, no more aura>enemies dont scale with levelthere I fixed it. game is actually challenging now
>>11491205what actually is the advantage of "protect girls" other than lore friendly
>>11492195Keeping healers alive
>>11492195roleplaying
As a kid, I apparently didn't understand, or even really know about the Junction system. I don't know how I missed it, but I just beat the game the hard way I guess.
>>11492313I don't know why people have so many problems with it. Just junctioning a new GF brings up the auto junction options, pick STR and you'll have an edge already
>>11491205>t. Simp
>>11490779This. Junction is a great concept and draw/stock is completely pointless attempt to make it more complex when all it does is make everything infinitely more tedious. The interesting part of VIII is junctioning to get certain skills and unlock stats.
>>11490854Meltdown feels like a last minute addition that wasn't tested. One of the bosses in the final dungeon has a gimmick where he has 255 Physical Defence and Magic Defence. He mocks you when you try to hit him with regular attacks for fuck all damage, reacts with fear when you use Demi/Diablos/Bahamut (all of which bypass his defence in some way), but doesn't react at all to Meltdown despite that being another hard counter to him. Plus the fact that there's zero immunity against it.
>>11492683Meltdown could've been fine if it only affected some enemies, but it affects ALL enemies. I agree with it being a late addition, mostly because of the super fucked up damage formulas and level scaling making offense very ineffective against high defense, so rather than rework the entire formulas, they added Vit-0 status as a stopgap.
>>11491205>Devour GF
>>11490773Not really, materia is better and they should have used that instead of trying to be over-clever.
It's the best
>>11493056I have no mouth and I must whatever
>>11492195It's good if you're using Dagger, Eiko or Freya.Freya has some really shit defense for being a Dragoon. Honestly I think she dies more than Dagger and Eiko. So, Protect Girls is a good skill to have.
>>11490773I did. Flawed sovl.
>>11490818Sticker Star moment.
>>11490779how can you have junction without stock. that's the whole point. you have a quantity of a usable resource and the junction's effectiveness scales against it
>>11493282>multiple anons have written potential ways to solve this problem>anon still asks the retarded question anyway
Yes, I like it a lot. It makes replaying the game fun. The junction system and card modding / item refining have enough complexity you can play several different "ways."I usually do auto-def then set custom elemental and status junctions.
>>11493325>galbadianHockey.jpgwhat's going on here
>>11493331The evil garden has a hockey rink room
Also, imagine being so scared of a minor stat decrease that you don't use magic.Ignore the garbage font in picrel, but beating this thing without using thundara or a strong thunder elemental junction to attack is a bitch. You can always get more magic after the battle and the stat difference from 99 thunders to 80 of them is like 1 stat point to whatever it's junctioned to, not a big deal.
>>11493075Freya has access to the same heavy armour as Steiner, but lower Strength probably leaves her with less HP. You can put her on back row as soon as Dragon's Crest becomes her primary form of damage.>>11493340The trick is to use your extra party members as magic stock mules, but this can backfire in certain situations like the Laguna flashbacks.
>>11493340>Also, imagine being so scared of a minor stat decrease that you don't use magic.NTA but I don't use magic (other than utility spells) because it's fucking weak in terms of damage unless you use triple, but that's fucking boring.
>>11493374>The trick is to use your extra party members as magic stock mulesAdvanced tek. The magic swap window comes in handy.>>11493438Magic is generally weak but against some enemies it'll do several times more dmg than attacks.
>>11493287why don't you explain it then wise guy
>>11493491The burden of reading the goddamn thread rests on your shoulders, not mine. Go ask mommy to read it to you if it's so difficult.
>>11493491I'll explain it.There are dozens of GF abilities that refine items into magic or magic into stronger magic, you technically don't have to draw at all other than to get GFs.Then Quetz has the Card and Card Mod abilities where you can convert enemies to cards which you can refine into items that refine into magic.
>>11493527Or you could play Triple Triad and get a bunch of cards which you refine into magic. Some people like that, I've never even started the Queen of Cards quest but I'd guess you can get a lot of magic doing that sidequest as you play.
I've never played this one, I think I bought it a couple years ago and just kinda filed it away. Is it worth playing? Haven't played FF since FFX which was the biggest ass turd Square ever shat out.
>>11493575It's a complete mess but it has some really cool moments. But odds are that if you didn't like X you won't like VIII. I guarantee that whatever you didn't like about X is three times worse here.
>>11493563It's weird how the CC Club quest plus Card Mod effectively makes a bunch of other side quests completely redundant.
Is who plays what level cards available anywhere? I couldn't find it so I started compiling it myself but playing TT 4 times with every player is tedious...
>>11490773Anyway I'm doing a low level run, kind of blind, and it's much easier to get strong junctions playing cards
>>11494338But I've spent a hell of a lot of time playing cards or doing nothing to progress the game this playthrough, I'm just outside Galbadia Garden
Instead of using a guide I'm constructing one myself as I go...
It takes much more time to avoid GameFAQs and embrace xlsx/txt notes but I find it a bit more engaging to have to figure out the stuff myself (even though I've played this one before)
>>11494326There is probably some routine that handles this. There is a gameshark faq on gamefaqs that mentions you can change the location of unique cards, and gives values of 01 for the card queen and F0 for Squall, so that could mean around 239 unique players or even that many NPCs? The game might have an algorithm based on their id that determines what cards they use, or it might have a table that conveys the same information. With seven levels of cards it might use bits to denote each card level, so it could fit that info in a single byte. Figuring out what IDs correspond to what NPCs would be another challenege.If you want to do things your own way, using rewind or even just save states can be helpful assuming you're using the PSX version since played cards get decided the moment you hit play. You could also mod each region to use the open rule and nothing else.If you're doing a pure playthrough and not just messing around then none of this is helpful, sorry.
>>11494472I am using an emu but I'm also being an achievement fag so no rewind or save-states, soft-resets only. I can always switch to softcore just to fill this info in, though, which I probably just should. I was going to continue the playthrough to get to the point I can move QoC over so I get more cards but it would be faster to catalog it like you say.
>>11493331
>>11490783>>11491275maybe you did but then forgot
>>11490885>Final Fantasy had Save Points, after all; it's not like risks were ever unfeasible.You say this, but FFVIII is the only game in the series where I've had multiple people tell me they softlocked themselves due to being stuck at save points where they couldn't go back or swap party members and were too weak to beat the next boss because they weren't junctioned properly, and you can't get stronger just by grinding.
>>11494771You can cluelessly get through the game by just spamming GFs until Adel, the story bosses aren't simply strong enough
>>11494771Can you ever not pull a GF off a character? When you flip to Laguna are GFs ever locked off from being on another party member that's not dreaming? This situation you're describing sounds contrived - you should always be able to draw any trash magic from random encounters, and also there's no hard boss fights (outside optional ones).
BTW, if anyone is playing the remaster. It runs at like 15-21 fps and stutters like crazy without the speed boost on.You can fix this by starting the game with Special K, hit "Disable All But the Active API" and check "Sleepless Window Thread."Works like a charm, not choppy at all anymore.If you play or mod PC games you probably have Special K already, just link it to the remaster.
>>11494783Yeah, I was originally one of those retards who did just that. In hindsight I probably could've gotten past Adel if I knew the things about the game that I know now.
>>11493075For me it's Dagger, Eiko, and Vivi.
>>11490773I prefer 7's materia system.
>>11490773It just tickled the right part of my brain. I liked getting materials it felt like farming or mining or something. Allocating stats was fun to figure out. The most I abused it was harvesting ultima from the world map.
>>11492313>>11492339Kids can be retarded and do things like brute force things out of pure boredom like all those kids who only leveled up Charizard in Pokemon.
>>11494795The main example of this is if you save at the end of disc 3 (after beating Seifer). You can't leave the area and have to go into the fight with Adel, which walls people who spam GF because using GFs against Adel will just kill Rinoa and give you a gameover.Those files naturally ARE recoverable if people actually look at the commands and tools they have up, but if all they've been doing is spamming GFs they probably lack the initiative to start thinking about other options.
I think the materia system was the best because it meshed well with the game's lore while also being interesting to use. The remakes completely ruined it There are some things you could fix of course with the OG one, by taking some ideas from the junction system.
>>11490773Underrated, underappreciated and absolutely based system
spoony....
Almost to the Ragnarok. Not a fan of the space segment though.
i liked that you could junction 100 Death spells to Status-Atk and just one shot anything that wasn't immune to instant death
>>11499408100 Drain junctioned with St-Atk was great, specially in conjunction with Darkside. Not so much when you unknowingly hit an undead enemy.
>>11493056What was the idea behind this image?
>>11497350Although I never got past her on my first save, getting stonewalled by Adel taught me a lot about limits, the Meltdown and Aura spells, and how junctions actually worked beyond selecting Auto-HP.
>>11490773Yes. It's just a more malleable materia system without the colored orbs. Gays that cannot stand to see heterosexual romance will try to split hairs about anything though
>>11490773Command GF? This game is sexist af. Someone call the 2015 SJWs.
>>11493331Random enemies in Galbadian Garden ice rink. You can fight them at the end of the disc 2 at the Garden battle scene
Since waking up I've played this 6 hours and taken over 30 screenshots. Got Doomtrain, about to do the Deep Sea Research Center.This is my fifth playthrough but goddamn I love this game.
