Si / Gi / Ra merges

Rambo

Rambo

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I've been thinking about this lately and I believe these would be great items to have in the game.

Considering that the way forces (are supposed to) play in parties is providing support rather than spamming techs, I think these would be mostly helpful for single player play.

I also don't think these would be game changing, broken or anything like that. Quite the contrary.

Anyways, I was wondering what the rest of the community thinks. Would love to hear some feedback on this.
 
Cool, ty for the reply.

In any case, I never played on other servers, but I did see some MA4C videos on Youtube where these existed and clearly the dmg done by techs isn't because of the merges. Like 900+ gifoie dmg on lizards, for instance. There were, of course, other buffs.

Maybe if the boost was 20% instead of the 30% from the specific merges ppl would like the idea more?
 
We already have weapons that serve as Si / Gi / Ra boosters. It would be a little redundant if we had barriers that boosted them as well unless no one cared one bit about class balance.

Yes, we do have weapons AND barriers that boost all techniques of one element (using a Red/Yellow/Blue merge and one of the elemental wands), but the most you're going to get from that combination is 40%, whereas you could achieve a 50%-60% boost if you focused more on one tech while still having a decent boost elsewhere (70% with the Foie/Zonde/Barta canes and Foie/Zonde/Barta Merge at the cost of no boosts elsewhere). But if if you had, say, a Gi or Ra Merge with even a 20% boost, and you paired that with a Magical Piece (+30% Gi boost) or Psycho Wand (+30% Ra boost), you're looking at a 50% boost across all three techs of those teirs. Slap those boosts onto a FOnewm, and...well. You just made what's considered the most powerful Force offensively (+30% boost to Gi/Ra techs and 2nd highest overall MST in the game) EVEN MORE OP by giving him a 50%+ boost for EITHER of the tech tiers that he's good with (or +20/30% across the board if he uses Magical Piece/Ra Merge or Psycho Wand/Gi Merge), rather than having him pick and choose which tech gets the larger boost for the situation at hand.

Same reason why people are against boosting FOnewearl's Si tech advantage further than what she has, despite being considered a poor FO for Normal party play. She's got everything she needs to do alright solo, especially in the early game when weapon/merge boosts and Gi techs are scarce without trading or shared bank usage, and she's the BEST Force in Challenge Mode, where Gi techs aren't nearly as useful in general (in a few stages, sure, but Si techs are the most reliable overall since I'm sure the 1v1 rule is still a thing), and any Ra techs that DO show up are a waste of TP. And while she technically can achieve a total 90%-100% boost with her natural Si tech boost and the proper weapons/merges, that 90%-100% boost will always be restricted to either Foie, Zonde, or Barta. With the elemental wands and Red/Yellow/Blue merge, the most she can achieve total is 70% for her Si techs (though her Gi/Ra techs would have a 40% boost as well).

Honestly the only actual change I know about that wasn't cosmetic was giving HUnewearls the ability to use Clio, but only because it didn't make sense for RAmarl to be the only one able to use it when HUnewearl also has access to Zalure and can meet the 900 MST requirement (HUmar has Zalure, but his MST cap is 732, not high enough to use Clio).


Edit: It probably IS possible for a FOnewm to do the high Gifoie damage you said you observed, even WITHOUT a Gi Merge. Just needs to be at cap MST, equip the Magical Piece and Gifoie Merge, and use level 29/30 Gifoie on enemies with about 10 or less fire resistance (a majority of Ep. IV enemies are weak to Foie, hence why FOs have an easy time level-grinding MAEp. IV).
 
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Personally, I wouldn't mind this, but I think maybe a Resta boost on V1 to heal a small amount to everyone and nerf the higher levels to do a little more than the one before it until 30 where it heals completely like a Star Atomizer?

EDIT: I do think that the merges could be doable, but here's another idea...Make them cost more TP if you merge them?
 
Better to bring up other Techniques in another topic, Mewgal. I agree with the first part, however.
 
Chronos Notashi said:
Edit: It probably IS possible for a FOnewm to do the high Gifoie damage you said you observed, even WITHOUT a Gi Merge. Just needs to be at cap MST, equip the Magical Piece and Gifoie Merge, and use level 29/30 Gifoie on enemies with about 10 or less fire resistance (a majority of Ep. IV enemies are weak to Foie, hence why FOs have an easy time level-grinding MAEp. IV).
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Gif caps out around 650ish with max boosts on newm v lizards. The 900 stuff comes from servers with boosted techs
 
I disagree with the statement that forces are supposed to mainly play support. That's a bare minimum, and choosing when you don't need to Jellen enemies and tech (or insert other damage dealing weapon) instead is the difference between an ok force and a great force. Lizards are the perfect example, a great fonewm can spawn kill lizard spawns with good gifoie stacking and the right merges, while jellen is completely useless. Making this feat easier discounts the skill it takes to be great.

I agree that other forces could probably use better tech boosts if that was the only way to deal damage but fomarl has cards/demons/guns and fomar has melee. Boosting foney alone is a whole other discussion. Adding these merges is pretty broken for the other classes in my opinion. I appreciate the thought you put into it though!
 
To be fair, there's a big difference between going Lee's route and making Si Merge boost Simple Techniques by 90% and simply shuffling the existing 20% boosts on Red/Blue/Yellow Merge into groupings that are actually useful. Having 20% boosts on the elemental wands is fairly effective since you can switch weapons quickly, but it doesn't work very well on shields, since there's no quick menu to change between them.
 
We suggested this internally when I was still a GM, the answer was firmly no from Soda and Tofu to my memory, even at a disadvantage to the dedicated (Rafoie, Gifoie, Foie etc) merges by 10%.
 
Aizen said:
I disagree with the statement that forces are supposed to mainly play support. That's a bare minimum, and choosing when you don't need to Jellen enemies and tech (or insert other damage dealing weapon) instead is the difference between an ok force and a great force. Lizards are the perfect example, a great fonewm can spawn kill lizard spawns with good gifoie stacking and the right merges, while jellen is completely useless. Making this feat easier discounts the skill it takes to be great.
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Absolutely. I suppose saying this was a way to reinforce my point.
 
Aleron Ives said:
To be fair, there's a big difference between going Lee's route and making Si Merge boost Simple Techniques by 90% and simply shuffling the existing 20% boosts on Red/Blue/Yellow Merge into groupings that are actually useful. Having 20% boosts on the elemental wands is fairly effective since you can switch weapons quickly, but it doesn't work very well on shields, since there's no quick menu to change between them.
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As I said before, I never played on other servers, but the impression I get is that when people hear about the idea of having Si, Gi and Ra merges here, they make an automatic link to merges that boost techs by insane percents and to op forces in general.


Again in regards to Aizen's post, this would change nothing in terms of killing lizards. Gifoie merge gives a 30% boost to gifoie, while a Gi merge would either give the same boost or maybe 20%, making gifoie actually weaker.


If these were in the game, I seriously believe it would only make a noticeable change for single player play. By noticeable I mean it would be the difference between taking 10 rabarta casts to kill Astarks to taking 9 (altough I haven't tested anything, the difference would be - if there was any - a 1 tech cast difference to kill a certain mob). That's hardly broken. It really seems the community overestimates the difference these would make to tech power.
 
Ryan said:
See also: hit RM, hit Girasole, hit Type weapons.
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Right, I forgot about Rambling May, and you have a point with Girasole. Giving both weapons the ability to gain hit (and other attributes) does give them more power than they had on the official servers (since they were originally event/roulette-only weapons). But, to be fair, they don't QUITE affect class balance any more than giving Clio to HUnewearl does, and I'm pretty sure Hunters and Rangers have better options. Bazookas (and probably other shot/multi-hit/single-target weapons) for Rangers, and the latter for Hunters would, in practice, only have more benefit over Vivienne, Black King Bar, or partisans (when considering mob DPS) for DF users due to its HP-cutting special. So hit RM and Girasole mostly benefit Forces that don't want to rely purely on tech damage or are fighting high-res enemies (similar to how Excalibur and Charge Gungnir help Rangers deal with lizards).

So yeah, not as balance-breaking as having a third +1.3x boost to all Si/Gi/Ra techs for the classes with boosts in those techs. Giving a 90%-100% boost to one tech at a time is already giving FOs a good bit of power in areas where they excel, and a 60% boost for all Si techs for FOnewearl with Summit Moon and 60% Gi/Ra boost for FOnewm with Magical Piece and Psycho Wand (Gi techs for FOmar) is already large enough.

Eva said:
Gif caps out around 650ish with max boosts on newm v lizards. The 900 stuff comes from servers with boosted techs
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Okay, I wasn't aware of that. But I'm not sure of the calculations for tech damage in Blue Burst, and I wasn't able to find elemental resistances for Ep. IV enemies, so I tried to use a tech damage formula I found for the Gamecube version with a FOnewm at max MST, 29/30 Gifoie, the highest Gi boost obtainable in Ephinea, and 10 fire resistance. Though it's possible I made a miscalculation or two, so I'll take your word for it.
 
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Chronos Notashi said:
But, to be fair, they don't QUITE affect class balance any more than giving Clio to HUnewearl does, and I'm pretty sure Hunters and Rangers have better options.
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I wasn't arguing that they were anywhere near the same as adding tech level merges, just throwing out all the differences from non-vanilla that Ephinea's racked up. I definitely don't have any complaints.
 
Chronos Notashi said:
So yeah, not as balance-breaking as having a third +1.3x boost to all Si/Gi/Ra techs for the classes with boosts in those techs. Giving a 90%-100% boost to one tech at a time is already giving FOs a good bit of power in areas where they excel, and a 60% boost for all Si techs for FOnewearl with Summit Moon and 60% Gi/Ra boost for FOnewm with Magical Piece and Psycho Wand (Gi techs for FOmar) is already large enough.
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Most of the time when this discussion pops up, people want a 20% boost, equivalent to the color merges that almost nobody uses. The percentages above are already possible in this game with single-technique merges, just not for the whole family of techs. I, along with many others, am vehemently against a 30% boost. Swapping to single-technique merges is an integral part of good/optimized gameplay for a FO.

These merges will allow for "lazier" gameplay, in that you can now potentially stay on a merge for longer without needing to swap, but aside from the best players, nobody was really swapping merges to begin with. I cannot imagine anything drastically changing in the public/pickup games that the majority of players participate in.

Such merges would definitely shake up the TA meta for forces, sure, but it will not be "balance-breaking" like you describe. I can't think of any specific examples off the top of my head, but at most we are talking about only a handful of frames saved per spawn.

Let's pretend that the merges will be a 20% boost. There will be occasions where:
  • using barehand vs P-Wand is now possible, netting a few frames saved per cast (can't think of any spawns off the top of my head)
  • using Ra/Gi merge is more advantageous for mixed-enemy spawns, potentially saving a few frames of merge-swapping, and also potentially saving 1 or 2 casts if the enemy's secondary/tertiary resistances work in your favor. Again, I'd need to note important mixed spawns and plug values into a spreadsheet to determine the exact frames/casts saved. I currently cannot think of any scenarios where you save more than 2 casts, though anyone is welcome to help me think of the edge cases
Here's where the actual controversy starts... those saved frames all add up, and will total to a non-negligible amount of time saved over the course of a run. Unfortunately, many old time attack records will become obsolete, especially those for one-person mode on a FO. This opens up a new can of worms altogether and leads back to the whole vanilla debate.

Although the time attack scene on this server is pretty dead to begin with, those holding records might be less than pleased if their times suddenly are under the threat of becoming obsolete. Since I don't have any records, I am not an authority to speak on this matter. I have only just begun my foray into the world of TA/optimization on FO's and have not been in the scene long enough to have any strong feelings on the subject. However, I will say that I personally find route-planning and theory-crafting extremely fun and would love to incorporate these hypothetical merges into runs, but again, I don't have any records at stake. Also, if I were in the shoes of a record-holder, I'd hate to see my record erased by someone with sloppier gameplay, only beating my time due items that didn't exist when I performed my run.

TL;DR: These merges will not change gameplay very much. Certain spawns will become easier and faster, though the core gameplay element of actually swapping merges remains the same. Only the time attack meta will be significantly affected, while gameplay for the rest of the server will remain largely unchanged.
 
I think the best argument FOR this change is it would not increase the maximum potential damage of any individual tech assuming you carried all the merges with you. There's no good way to implement a "quick shield" menu into the game, so this would help. "Speed in navigating menus" is not something that one should have to be skillful with to be efficient at the game (save for perhaps the Quick Menu). The interface is supposed to be an extension of the player, not a hindrance.

We could make these new merges very difficult to attain. For example, they could be Claire's Deal items in which you have to present each of the underlying merges and say, 50 PDs.

Better yet, we could add these items as extremely rare drops (ie. 1/5,000+) in areas with extremely weak drops, like VR Spaceship and Mines.

Adding these items would not "un-vanilla" the game because the maximum damage would not increase. It would simply tip the scales a bit more in the favor of FOs since their attack style is not menu-friendly.

Something like this would not be any more "un-vanilla" than adding stackable grinders or increasing the Bank meseta limit, which were universally accepted.

If old TA records get broken, that's okay. New ones can be set. It's just pride, anyway.
 
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I think they'd be fine either as percentage-equivalent replacements for the color merges, or percentage-equivalent alternatives for them. Or hell, if you're really worried about their strength, make their boosts a little weaker than the color merges, though I don't think that's necessary.

While I think they'd be nice and I'd like to have them, I also don't feel we're missing out by not having them either. Although, I have never seen someone using the color merges and I feel these would have more utility. So I dunno!
 
Si and Gi merges would be pointless. Si techs aren't very useful, and how often do you need to switch quickly between gifoie and gizonde? Almost never.

I don't think Ra merge should be added either. Being able manage your merges effectively is part of playing a force, whether you feel like you "should" have to be good at it or not. Turning Storm Wand: Indra into PoM wouldn't be a quality of life change, and neither is this. Not to mention, blatantly copying Schthack looks pretty bad too.
 
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