Final Fantasy VI: Divergent Paths

[Ligeia]

I've thought about it many times. It's the one thing people focus on the most in their reviews, and it tends to overshadow positive things said about the hack. The answer is "no". There were 3 reasons to make Tools breakable:

1. In a lot of playthroughs of vanilla I've seen, people rearrange Edgar's command list so Tools is at the top, because why bother with Fight when you can use a Tool every turn? I wanted people to explore more options with Edgar, as he's got some surprises up his sleeve. For example, he can equip a wide range of weapons that ignore rows, single out flying enemies and do massive damage, etc. He also has a great stat balance, being almost a Red Mage build... good in all situations.

2. Shadow's skeans cost the same as a Noiseblaster in vanilla, and are a 1-time use item. They are similar in strength to Tools, but you get to use one of them once, and the other infinite times. From a design standpoint, that makes Tools ludicrously out of balance with their closest counterpart. Shadow gets additional use out of Throw by being able to chuck old inventory, so rather than making Tools consumable, I gave them a slight chance of breaking. They're still overpowered compared to Shadow's Throw, but they're less overpowered now.

3. There is a really awkward piece of code in vanilla that prevents the player from buying more than 1 of each tool. And yet, Tools are common drops/steals from enemies. Something in that is really off. It makes me think that Tools NOT being consumable was a last-minute addition to the game. Just prior to release, and they threw in a quick line of code to the shops to prevent you from buying more than 1. To me, that explains why there are so many balance issues with Tools.

Taking all of those together, I think that the BEST version of FF6 is one in which Tools break. I knew it might not be a popular choice, but it was the best for the gameplay itself. I offset tools breaking by doing a few things:
1. Halved the cost of all tools. With Edgar in the lead of your party, you can get a Tool for as cheaply as 125 GP. (That's less than half the cost of a Hi-Potion at a normal shop.)
2. Allowed you to stock up on Tools by removing the purchasing restriction.
3. Gave you a free set of your first tools (talk to Mid when you first get to Figaro).
4. Made all Tools unbreakable until after the Doma Imperial Camp.
5. Any time you are away from Figaro for a long time (Ghost Train, Vector, Esper Cave), I increased the number of enemies who have Tools as steals/drops, and in the case of the Ghost Train, added them to shops.
6. Allowed you to recruit Mid to the Falcon for easy re-stocking in WoR.
7. Finally, I made the 2 tools you get from chests (Debilitator and Air Anchor) unbreakable.

If you watch the videos I have on Youtube, or you played version 1.0, I understand feeling like Tools break too often. I had a tough time getting the calculation right. In 1.0, it was still off, and tools were breaking 4x more often than they should have. (I've considered taking down the Youtube videos and starting over for that purpose alone). However, right before writing this comment, I put Edgar and Gogo into a party and TRIED to break a Tool. It took 41 tries.

Thank you for the reply. I understand your points but still disagree with them, for several reasons :

- Tools greatly streamline random battles, which is pretty appreciated when I just want to make progress in the game or grind without taking too much time in them ;
- A lot a grinding is required to max out every esper and Edgar's tools would also have been appreciated to speed up this process ;
- What you say about unbreakable weapons being a last-minute thing is pure speculation. It might be true, but we don't know for sure. Since the original intent of the hack, as far as I understand, was to add content while staying truthful to the original game, I feel this change was uncalled for, is too drastic of a choice and strays too far from the original game.
- Breakable weapons is generally a poor design choice. Very few games are able to pull that off successfully, like the Fire Emblem series. It usually ruins games, like Zelda Breath of the Wild, because it adds nothing but unnecessary tedium.
- Making weapons breakable is already one thing, making them break randomly is another thing entirely and adds insult to injury. This hurts Edgar usefullness tremendously since you can't rely on his weapons and can't plan or control anything. I tried hoarding lots of weapons to use them consistently on random battles, I was baffled at how quickly my weapon stock diminished, so I ended up keeping Edgar on the bench to use more consistent characters. I played v1.3 btw.

Maybe a good compromise would be to make an optional patch that keep Edgar's weapons non-breakable ? Just sayin'.

Please keep in mind that while I'm here focusing on the main negative aspect of the hack, I love it very much and had a great time playing it.

Or if you were to characterize it as ammo being expended instead of the whole device breaking it might change the way players perceive it. It's not like Final Fantasy is a stranger to buying arrows for your bow.

Except nobody ever uses bows on FF games for that reason, do they ? I for one sure never bother. This would just be a cosmetic edit that wouldn't change the fact that Edgar is rendered useless for not being reliable enough. And ammo is not supposed to be random, it doesn't make sense.

[PowerPanda]

Thank you for the reply. I understand your points but still disagree with them, for several reasons:

And thank YOU for the good discussion on this. Let's dive into it a bit more.

- What you say about unbreakable weapons being a last-minute thing is pure speculation. It might be true, but we don't know for sure. Since the original intent of the hack, as far as I understand, was to add content while staying truthful to the original game, I feel this change was uncalled for, is too drastic of a choice and strays too far from the original game.

Well, I mean, EVERYTHING in this game was last-minute, so it's not TOO speculative. (Seriously, read any developer interviews, and you'll be shocked at how close this game came to being a complete disaster.) So much of what I did in Divergent Paths is speculation; looking at what might have been intended and taking it from there.

When you really start to dig into this game, Tools really stick out. If they were not meant to be consumable on some level, then why have a shop for them at all? Why not make them rare items to be found in chests? For that matter, why make them an item and not a key item? Why does Edgar need to collect Tools, but Cyan doesn't need to collect Bushido scrolls? Why is the Auto-crossbow, a non-missable Tool that you automatically get when Edgar joins, available for purchase in shops, and stealable from monsters in the final dungeon of the game? What possible purpose is there for that? So yes, it's speculation, but it's not WILD speculation. There are some game design choices here that just don't add up, and point back to an original intent that was lost, or changed late enough in development that they couldn't go back and clean up the rest of the game.

- Breakable weapons is generally a poor design choice. Very few games are able to pull that off successfully, like the Fire Emblem series. It usually ruins games, like Zelda Breath of the Wild, because it adds nothing but unnecessary tedium.

Funny enough, I actually put in a mod for Breath of the Wild to make weapons unbreakable, and the game really lost something. A few hours into my 2nd playthrough, I switched out the unbreakable mod for one that made weapons 5x more durable. I wanted to be able to get through a whole area of the game with one weapon, but not be able to hold onto it indefinitely. That hit the sweet spot. The problem wasn't that weapons broke, it's that they broke too frequently.

- Making weapons breakable is already one thing, making them break randomly is another thing entirely and adds insult to injury. This hurts Edgar usefullness tremendously since you can't rely on his weapons and can't plan or control anything. I tried hoarding lots of weapons to use them consistently on random battles, I was baffled at how quickly my weapon stock diminished, so I ended up keeping Edgar on the bench to use more consistent characters. I played v1.3 btw.

Maybe a good compromise would be to make an optional patch that keep Edgar's weapons non-breakable ? Just sayin'.

I will not release optional patches for Divergent Paths, unless it's something that doesn't affect gameplay (ie - The MSU-1 patch will be optional). Tool durability just isn't a realistic possibility with this old SNES game, as that requires 8 ram bytes that are backed up to SRAM. If it is, it will need someone far better at ASM than me.

There are 2 possibilities I COULD see adding to 2.0, but both of them would make save files incompatible between versions 1.x and 2.0, meaning anyone who played would have to start a new save file from the beginning. I've been hoping to avoid that.

1. Create a Relic, something like "Safety Goggles" or "Hard Hat", that drops the likelihood of Tools breaking threefold (so a 1 in 96 chance). This would only be possible if I switched the Moogle Charm and Moogle Lure into a menu option, which is code that Madsiur wrote AFTER Divergent Paths was released, based mainly on what I had done with those relics. That would also give me space to add the Genji Glove relic back in, which in DP would be a relic that simply acts like another piece of armor.

2. Turn Tools into items that you find in chests or through events, with any World of Balance missables available for purchase in a shop in the World of Ruin. Divergent Paths already maxes out treasures, so doing this would mean replacing other items found in chests.

[Vanya]

Except nobody ever uses bows on FF games for that reason, do they ?

I wasn't aware there was fandom-wide consensus on the use of bows with tracked arrow resources.
And I don't see why that would be relevant.

I for one sure never bother.

I do.
I like leveraging the elemental damage and status effects they usually come with while taking advantage of being able to attack from the back row without penalty.

This would just be a cosmetic edit that wouldn't change the fact that Edgar is rendered useless for not being reliable enough. And ammo is not supposed to be random, it doesn't make sense.

It would most certainly come with some changes to the way the items are consumed.
Specifically I'd suggest different set number of uses before one "breaks".
It would allow for finer balancing of each individual tool.
I don't know if it would really be viable to program, but it's just an idea.

And even as is, I haven't seen where breakable tools have heavily impacted the way I use Edgar, let alone rendered him useless.

That being said, having optional patches to at least adjust how often tools break may be a good idea.

[ZeroXDash]

Is there a vanilla mod? One where you keep all the script changes and new characters but omit all of the fiddling with espers and existing move sets? This would be the best compromise.

[PowerPanda]

Is there a vanilla mod? One where you keep all the script changes and new characters but omit all of the fiddling with espers and existing move sets? This would be the best compromise.

No. This is a complete hack, meaning that the changes to the gameplay affect the script, and vice versa. You can't separate out the 15th & 16th character from the changes to the Espers.

For example, let's talk about Desperation Attacks. 2 more characters gives you 3 options for handling Desperation Attacks: (1) Don't give the new characters a DA, (2) Change the way DAs are handled, or (3) allow the game to crash when they hit a DA. Obviously, I wasn't going to do #3. At the same time, I was using B-Run's SRAM Rewrite to allow 2 more characters learn Magic, and that rewrite allows you to add 10 more spells, if you are willing to overwrite Desperation Attacks. So I chose option 2. There are 2 Desperation Attacks shared by all characters (Limit and LimitBreak), and the remaining skill slots for DAs were used to create 10 new spells (including 2 of the 3 spells from the GBA). 10 new spells means you need to add them to Espers, and you need to balance them out. Okay, well it doesn't make sense to put Flood on any existing Esper, and I also wanted to add Leviathan, so adding Leviathan needed to happen. But in order to add Leviathan I need to overwrite Raiden, and the scene where you would have normally gained Raiden is also where one of the major story changes happens, and now we've come full circle back to script changes. If it all seems like a tangled spiderweb, it is. Separating out the story changes from the gameplay changes would cause the whole web to unravel.

[NinjaMarion]

I reached the point where you gain control of the airship after getting Terra back, but anytime I try to fly with the B button, it lands unless I'm above tiles you can't land on, in which case it flies forward like it's supposed to. For some reason, the B button is acting as both accelerate and land. I'm forced to use Y to strafe around. Anyone hae this happen or know a fix?

[KingMike]

It's been so long since I've played FF6, but isn't that how it normally functions? Or was A the normal landing button?

[PowerPanda]

I reached the point where you gain control of the airship after getting Terra back, but anytime I try to fly with the B button, it lands unless I'm above tiles you can't land on, in which case it flies forward like it's supposed to. For some reason, the B button is acting as both accelerate and land. I'm forced to use Y to strafe around. Anyone hae this happen or know a fix?

It's been so long since I've played FF6, but isn't that how it normally functions? Or was A the normal landing button?

It's A to move, B to land.

[NinjaMarion]

It's A to move, B to land.

Then I got them backwards. I play on a ps4 controller. Either way, both A and B land, except the one that's supposed to move only moves if I'm somewhere I can't land. I've since checked and chocobos are affected as well. In addition, thinking back, it didn't do this at the beginning of the game when you have to escape Figaro on chocobo with Edgar. It didn't happen until later when I got the Blackjack.

I also tried patching both headered and unheadered versions and even trying both headered and unheadered 1.1. The ones that would load right still had this landing issue.

Edit: I guess it was a Retroarch issue. It forgot how to use any controls at all, so I ended up having to switch to snes9x and it's working now. Dunno what caused the issue over in Retroarch.

[TheChristoph]

Hey, does anyone know what CRC32 value the patch expects of the ROM? I've been using a copy of FF3US 1.0 that I've used for a bunch of patches over the years and I get problems with this one. The online patcher tells me that the checksum is not what is expected (I've used the online patcher as well as local utilities such as LIPS). My ROM is a27f1c7a.

The symptoms I am seeing is that the Equip/Status/etc screens are black sometimes (but not every time I enter the menu), the world map is glitchy, and if I use the packed-in save at the "Choose a scenario, kupo" point, Mog is in the party. This is on SNES9x 1.60 and 1.61 standalone. I've tried the 1.61 core in Retroarch; it seems like the black menu screens and glitchy world map are not present there, but Mog still joins the party at the "Choose a scenario" screen.

[TheChristoph]

(accidental doublepost)

[Mirage]

Hey, does anyone know what CRC32 value the patch expects of the ROM? I've been using a copy of FF3US 1.0 that I've used for a bunch of patches over the years and I get problems with this one. The online patcher tells me that the checksum is not what is expected (I've used the online patcher as well as local utilities such as LIPS). My ROM is a27f1c7a.

The symptoms I am seeing is that the Equip/Status/etc screens are black sometimes (but not every time I enter the menu), the world map is glitchy, and if I use the packed-in save at the "Choose a scenario, kupo" point, Mog is in the party. This is on SNES9x 1.60 and 1.61 standalone. I've tried the 1.61 core in Retroarch; it seems like the black menu screens and glitchy world map are not present there, but Mog still joins the party at the "Choose a scenario" screen.

From what I can tell, that CRC32 value is for a clean, unheadered v1.0 ROM, so your ROM should be fine. Can you make sure that you're applying the patch designed for an unheadered ROM (the one that has "NoHeader" in its name)?

[TheChristoph]

From what I can tell, that CRC32 value is for a clean, unheadered v1.0 ROM, so your ROM should be fine. Can you make sure that you're applying the patch designed for an unheadered ROM (the one that has "NoHeader" in its name)?

Yes, I did so. I used ROM Hasher and Advanced SNES Utility to confirm everything was right. I even added a header and used the Headered patch to see what would happen. I went as far as to do a big time no-no and found a pre-patched copy and tried that; had the same results.

I used the save right before the Choose a Scenario, Kupo screen with Retroarch and everything seems fine now. If I open the same rom in SNES9x I get the glitches, so Retroarch it is.

[chotabhai807]

Sounds pretty interesting. Giving Celes Jump is a pretty interesting choice. On one hand Runic is mostly useless and only ever matters as a gimmick strategy, but on the other hand it's pretty relevant to her background.

[PowerPanda]

Sounds pretty interesting. Giving Celes Jump is a pretty interesting choice. On one hand Runic is mostly useless and only ever matters as a gimmick strategy, but on the other hand it's pretty relevant to her background.

There are important storyline reasons why Runic was given to Leo, though they are not apparent until the World of Ruin. Having Runic on a physical attacker totally changes its utility, since the game tends to have enemies with high physical defense also be the ones that cast magic.

I was really nervous about giving Celes the Jump ability. I thought people would revolt out of a sense of purism. However, it really fits both her personality and her playstyle well. Now that I've played with it, I can never go back.

[TheChristoph]

There are important storyline reasons why Runic was given to Leo, though they are not apparent until the World of Ruin. Having Runic on a physical attacker totally changes its utility, since the game tends to have enemies with high physical defense also be the ones that cast magic.

I was really nervous about giving Celes the Jump ability. I thought people would revolt out of a sense of purism. However, it really fits both her personality and her playstyle well. Now that I've played with it, I can never go back.

I just made it to the World of Ruin in my run here, and I do really like her with Jump. It works really well, and it's a very interesting tactical choice during that early part of the WOR.

[TheChristoph]

I just finished the game tonight and man, what a masterpiece this was. The changes to the game and how they informed the ending were masterful. I can't thank you enough for enhancing my favorite game so much, Panda.

I never found the auction house espers (it was always marvel shoes; maybe I need to buy them to advance the items).  I never got Shadow's dreams and totally forgot about Gau's scene, so there's a couple reasons to dive back in. I hit the Mog sprite bug in the late WOR and all throughout the ending, so it doesn't seem like that one is totally squashed. But honestly, who cares. This hack was amazing and I loved reliving the game through it.

[PowerPanda]

I just finished the game tonight and man, what a masterpiece this was. The changes to the game and how they informed the ending were masterful. I can't thank you enough for enhancing my favorite game so much, Panda.

I never found the auction house espers (it was always marvel shoes; maybe I need to buy them to advance the items).  I never got Shadow's dreams and totally forgot about Gau's scene, so there's a couple reasons to dive back in. I hit the Mog sprite bug in the late WOR and all throughout the ending, so it doesn't seem like that one is totally squashed. But honestly, who cares. This hack was amazing and I loved reliving the game through it.

I'm glad you enjoyed your time. The auction house Espers are there, once you're in the WoR. It's all just RNG. Gau's scene will be worth it, especially if you have all characters. There are some bugs in the original scene that make it so that you will never see certain branches of dialogue. I've fixed the bugs, and added more interactions. Shadow's dreams... yes, you'll want to view those. I added a new ending for Shadow if you view all the dreams.

[einlanzer]

Hey Panda!

I know I'm bumping an old thread. But I'm replaying DP and honestly just want to chime in and say that I agree with you about Edgar's tools being breakable. It annoys me how OP they were in the vanilla game, and making them breakable is something I probably would have also done in your shoes. I think it makes you approach them more thoughtfully.

I was also one of the people that initially whined about Kappa, but she's really grown on me. The truth is I think it was a stroke of genius to bring it all together in that way and have the last nameless mascot actually become a named character that makes less gimmicky use of the Imp gear. Just as a random side-note one thing I did as an addendum to your patch is slightly modify Gogo's sprite and portrait to have a more feminine appearance, and was toying with just outright replacing him with Daryl. 

Your patch is one of the highest quality patches I've ever played. I love it, and it's along the lines of what i would do if I set on an extensive personal hack of FFVI. I just have a few things that I was hoping to get your perspective on:

- GP Toss going to Shadow instead of Setzer really bugs me and I don't get it. It's both way more useful and way more thematically appropriate replacing slots. I was curious if it was a simple ASM update to swap it back?

- I saw some chatter in a thread recently about Stamina being underpowered, and was curious if you ever thought more about this? TBH I think the HP & MP +10% bonuses are even worse, but I wondered how hard it would be to just invert Stamina's effect on poison and slip to where they do less damage instead of more as a quick and logical partial fix for it

- I was curious if you ever thought about or did any work to make Leo's sprite have a darker complexion to match his portrait. I like the idea of bringing them in sync, but also just giving him a more distinctive appearance against the rest of the cast (especially Edgar, who he kind of looks a little too much like). I know this is much trickier than it sounds. I in fact tried to to it myself and ran into issues.  So was just curious.

- Regarding the recent sketch update,(thank you!!! badly needed for the worst special in the game) I noticed that it works great with magical abilities, but when executing a normal/physical attack, it seems to be weaker than in vanilla instead of stronger. I'm curious if that's intentional or a bug.  All in all it's still a vast improvement (and Relm is primarily a mage, after all), just found this curious.

- Cyan doesn't get his Aura when you finish the dream sequence. It doesn't appear in the inventory and it isn't equipped on him when you swap him in. I tried it a few different times and it just never worked. This kind of undermines his usability in WoR. I'm guessing it's a bug.

Thanks again for this work of art!

[PowerPanda]

- GP Toss going to Shadow instead of Setzer really bugs me and I don't get it. It's both way more useful and way more thematically appropriate replacing slots. I was curious if it was a simple ASM update to swap it back?

Thematically, I felt that it fit better with Shadow. Shadow's entire gimmick is throwing money away for cool benefits. His one-time-use skeans are overpriced, you throw your equipment at enemies for one-time damage, you have to pay 3000 GP to recruit him during the search for Terra (and he still leaves randomly), and his dreams are only possible in places where you have to pay to sleep. I felt that literally throwing money at the enemy for increased damage was thematic, and gave him more late-game utility. It also directly mirrored the Throw Materia from Final Fantasy VII.

It's a very simple ASM Swap. My patch, Shadow's GP Rain, has all of the documentation you need, and even an anti-patch. Use the "no description" version of the removal patch.

- I saw some chatter in a thread recently about Stamina being underpowered, and was curious if you ever thought more about this? TBH I think the HP & MP +10% bonuses are even worse, but I wondered how hard it would be to just invert Stamina's effect on poison and slip to where they do less damage instead of more as a quick and logical partial fix for it

That's an interesting switch. I'll consider it. Stamina is basically worthless, but it was out of scope for the project to make it useful. I DID make the Tintinnabar, which is controlled by Stamina, restore MP with each step, so it is slightly more useful than vanilla.

- I was curious if you ever thought about or did any work to make Leo's sprite have a darker complexion to match his portrait. I like the idea of bringing them in sync, but also just giving him a more distinctive appearance against the rest of the cast (especially Edgar, who he kind of looks a little too much like). I know this is much trickier than it sounds. I in fact tried to to it myself and ran into issues.  So was just curious.

There is a patch that does this, and if you use FF3usME, you can upload that sprite sheet. I definitely thought about this, but decided to keep the graphics as close to vanilla as possible. I think the only graphic changes I made were fixing eyeshadow issues on Esper Terra's lefthand swing, fixing the Soldier's surprised face, and fixing one of Leo's overworld actions that had a stray pixel that made him look like he was giving an "O" face. Once you start down the rabbit hole of sprite swaps, it's hard to maintain professional-level quality with your changes.

- Regarding the recent sketch update,(thank you!!! badly needed for the worst special in the game) I noticed that it works great with magical abilities, but when executing a normal/physical attack, it seems to be weaker than in vanilla instead of stronger. I'm curious if that's intentional or a bug.  All in all it's still a vast improvement (and Relm is primarily a mage, after all), just found this curious.

Yes, that's intentional.

- Cyan doesn't get his Aura when you finish the dream sequence. It doesn't appear in the inventory and it isn't equipped on him when you swap him in. I tried it a few different times and it just never worked. This kind of undermines his usability in WoR. I'm guessing it's a bug.

That is DEFINITELY a bug. Thank you for reporting it. I will look into it.
EDIT: This will be easy to resolve in the next version, as I have 3 extra bytes at the end of this scene. For now, Aura is still obtainable as a steal and as a Colosseum wager.

Thanks again for this work of art!

Thanks for your kind words. There are other hacks out there that approach things differently, like "A Soldier's Contingency" or "Antinomia", but the goal of Divergent Paths was always to make the definitive version of FFVI that would have/could have been released during the SNES era. I spent a lot of time making sure that each and every change felt intentional, was something Square themselves would have done, and added to the overall experience. This includes the controversial breakable tools, which Square actually did before I did with the Samurai from Final Fantasy Tactics. (I just improved upon the idea by making the odds favor the player a lot more, and by making non-purchaseable tools invincible.)