MP Costs/Regen

This one doesn't really need all that much explanation. As it stands now, many characters have a few abilities or spells that cost so little MP that their natural MP regen cover the costs entirely. We can see examples of this even in the pre-made list of spells; level 1 spells cost between 40 and 60 MP, but you can regen more than that with a max MP as low as 800, which is obtainable as early as level 4 or 5. Now, the idea of a level 4 or 5 character shooting off spells nonstop without any penalty seems a bit much. Perhaps if it were level 40 or 50, but 4 or 5? Definitely not. There is also a second concern in that some abilities/bios don't even have any MP costs listed at all, although that is something we can discuss in more detail when we talk about OP characters/abilities.

Now, there are a few possible options for fixing this problem; we could go through and re-value the MP costs of, well, everything. Or, alternatively, we could reduce the rate at which MP regens. Originally on JE2 it was 1% maximum MP per turn, however, a character made an ability that granted 15%. I thought it was absolutely ridiculous to have MP regen at 15x normal rate, and rather than reducing the ability, mal increased the normal rate to 5%. So, a simple fix, we could just change the MP regen back to 1% each turn, or even get rid of it entirely, and just have a set amount of MP that decreases steadily as battle goes on.

Of course, there are downsides to any of those solutions. Obviously, re-valuing everything is a lot of time and work. And, if we reduce the rate of regen, or take away MP regen entirely, well, first off, characters would have to rely a lot more on restorative items, then, like Potions and Ethers. Ordinarily that would be fine, except we haven't set up a shop system yet, so for the time being, not sure how helpful that would be. The second issue with reducing or removing MP regen is that Lorenzo and Rena's abilities would need to be tweaked to match. Which honestly, isn't a big deal, but something to be noted.

There's also the concern of robot characters, however. The robot race ability is that they gain HP instead of MP through this natural regen. If we reduce the normal MP regen, we also have to reduce the robot HP regen. And if we get rid of MP regen entirely... well, then we need to find a new racial ability for the robots. K138Y in particular has an ability that grants her 10% HP regen, which would also need to be down-graded in the same way as Lorenzo's and Rena's MP regen abilities would. Again, if we're changing the whole system, I don't think maxxy would mind, but still, something to be aware of when discussing this.

So, thoughts? Which of those solutions seems best? Or do any of you have another idea I hadn't thought of? Or, do you disagree and think the MP system is fine as is?

I'd be fine with MP regeneration being taken out all together. Making it a more 'finite' number makes more sense to me overall - in the games, you had to work with what you had, while occasionally throwing ether / etc. into the mix. Run out of ethers? Uh oh.

It would put more emphasis on the need for a higher MP, as well. Right now, there's not much reason to, unless you're wanting access to huge burst spells and need the initial MP to cast them.

I don't think we'd need to remove the robot racial. They're robots. They can do that sort of thing.

I would mind.








That is all.

Maxxy, you are not a councilman. And if Mal decides that 10% HP regen is too much, than it's too much, it's really not up to you, or us, even to decide that. I merely brought it up as a possibility.

As for the topic at hand, I absolutely agree that a finite pool of MP is the best way to go. HOWEVER, I also recognize that we do not have a shop system yet, as I mentioned initially. That means, no Ethers. I would say we can discuss the shop system, but mal says we aren't to talk about additions, only alterations to the current stuff. So, because of that, I'm sort of leaning towards the reducing MP regen, rather than removing it. At least for now, because Ethers are more or less non-existent. Either way, Lorenzo and Rena's MP regen would need to be reduced from 10-15% to more like 1-3%. Or possibly removed all together. After all, no one else would have any MP regen. And, I can say, as the person who plays Lorenzo, I'm totally okay with that.

As for the robots, perhaps we need a race/class thread as well...?

=x Just means we need to be smart with our MP usage.

I think the classes / races are fine.

Calling for vote on the following:

Remove MP regen entirely ( take note Iblis won't be effected by this)

Yeah, that would actually be a good idea, I do vote for removing MP regen completely (at least the passive, not the CA's people could make).

Agreed! We'll have to do something about Lorenzo and Rena's MP regen, but we can discuss that further whenever we get around to going over OP characters/abilities, since both of them would be on that list.

I disagree. A change to a fundamental part of the RP will force change in many other areas. You have to consider the ripple effect it will have. As Xeko has said here and already started pointing out in another thread, this one change will require other players to need change. Do you think most of those players want to go through the change as well? I see no problem with the MP regeneration as it stand.

Well, maxxy, first off, what are you doing here? If mal says you can join the council stuffs, fine, but I've heard no such thing thus far.  Second, both Lorenzo and Rena's MP regen (in my opinion) are too powerful ANYWAY.  So, if it were up to me, they'd have to change either way.  At the moment, it is only those two characters that would need to be altered due to this change in the system, and seeing as both characters have been around since JE1, or earlier in Rena's case, and have experienced PLENTY of changes already, without too much complaint, I don't think you're concerns are really warranted here.  If this were something like, changing the stat or level system... something that would require changes in CA's for EVERYONE, that'd be different.  But most character don't even utilize MP regen as it is.  So, most would be entirely uneffected by this change.

The problem I see is that it escalates quiet easily. It eventually renders MP costs useless unless they start getting huge amounts of MP. In no game do you have MP regen, it requires you to think of what you will do instead of "blindly" casting over and over the same spell, imagine at Level 15, someone with 3,000 MP. Any spell/CA < 150 MP is basically FREE. And the more MP we get, the stronger the free spells become. Add that to the CA's that regen mana and most of them become free spell casts.

Take for example, Arc. He has, at Level 8, 1,650 MP, that's a regen of 80 MP. Most of his Level 1 spells are basically Free (with the exceptions of 1 or 2 that are above that cost). By Level 15, he could easily have 3,000 MP, which would give him Free spell cast of 2 of his Level 1 Magics, Free spell cast or close to 80% of the cost of most of the Level 2 Magics, and a rather nice refill on the Level 3 Magics (witch exception of a chosen few, like Hastaga)

I don't think MP regen is a fundamental part of the RP, nor that it will force change in any areas, most of the characters that use magic already have CA's that give them regen, so I don't think that any change would be required by players who use this mechanic.

My vote stays the same, remove the MP regen (at least the auto one).

Exactly what Squall said. Just look at my own posts! I cast two shell spells, and ended up GAINING 5 MP from that turn. Earlier in the thread, I cast drain for free too. Rena has abilities that deal several hundred damage, and cost like 150 MP. She regens 135 MP a turn. In just one or two more levels, she'd be able to cast Kistune pulse, FOR FREE.

Now, there is one thing Squall is wrong about... you do have MP regen in FFXII. But that is 1 MP a second. Insignificant. and it feels like the only reason it's in there at all is because their Limit System uses MP. So, if we wanted to reduce MP regen to 1% or less, that'd work, too... but I do agree the BEST solution is to just remove MP regen entirely and set up a sort of shop system where people can buy Ethers and other restoring items.

Okay, now my thoughts on this are as follows. Since we have an item shop system in place now, combat abilities should reduce the immediate need for items, not trivialise items and make the effort put into the system a wasted effort. I'm going to vote, not to remove MP regeneration entirely, but to impose a cap on it.

From passive abilities MP regeneration should never be any more than 2% of the character's max MP value -racial/class abilities excluded- I would also like to suggest that a single character cannot create other abilities that would increase that, or have other abilities that would enable them to stack different MP regeneration abilities.

Other abilities should not be able to "heal" MP for free, those should function similarly to Magic Hammer from FF7, the skill should deal a set amount of damage to an enemy's MP score -whilst still costing SOME MP itself, but not enough to make the MP regain useless- and restore MP equal to the amount of damage inflicted. They should also not restore MP if used on an enemy that has 0 remaining MP.

This is about the only kind of way that immediately comes to my mind to not remove MP regeneration completely, but stop it from trivialising an entire system.