75 replies to this topic

[Espinosa]

I'm in agreement with AquiIae on most things, but I would just like to bring up my doubt concerning the efficiency of sending your units to propositions. You need to walk around the map waiting for the dispatched unit to return, getting into several undesirable random battles in the process. There are some towns adjacent to other towns where this could be avoided, but not all of them.

[Radiant Dragon]

Aren't the propositions the same in every town, though?

[Espinosa]

I don't believe they are, but I think that is the case with FFTA.

[Aquilae]

Props vary from town to town, and new ones may appear after every story checkpoint (list of them here: http://project-yvali...act_Equip_Check). Props give more JP if you choose a longer duration, and have a higher chance of success if you send more people. You have to return to the bar to retrieve your units.

[Tyrant Sage]

I was given permission by the mods to update this tier list.

The following changes:

-Summoner moved to the top of the list.
-Ninja > Squire (Ramza) due to the former's move advantage, high speed, and excellent damage output. They're just so good when they're there.
-Holy Swordsman moved down to top of High, his availability hurts too much.
-Red Chocobo and Lancer down to Low Mid. Red Chocobos have offense issues early on and durability issues later while Lancers are basically knights who come later but use Spears instead of swords.
-Priest and Chemist moved to High tier
-Knight down to bottom of Low Mid, their abilities are meh and they have mobility issues and their ability to use Knightswords comes with an opportunity cost.
-Archer up a tier, their range and damage are good since they can typically 2HKO enemies like Summoners and Wizards, but can do so earlier than classes like Knights and Monks, especially if they're at high elevation. Lightning Bows can keep their offense afloat right through Part 2 and then they sort of taper off. Their early game contributions are underrated.
-Black Chocobo down to low tier, it's one of the squishiest units in the game and it's Choco Ball attack is fairly underwhelming.

[Espinosa]

Calculator probably should be Top Tier, seeing how the game's fastest speed run time relies on math skill almost exclusively throughout. Propositions are irrelevant in the argument seeing how they aren't available for a while; when they do become available, it's difficult to trigger them without wasting time running into random encounter battles, but what's important is that by grinding JP quickly (doesn't take nearly as long as you'd think if you kill all enemies and leave one weakened, causing him to hide away) you save yourself a lot of time, since the game eventually becomes text skipping + using math skill once you're done.

[eclipse]

Calculator probably should be Top Tier, seeing how the game's fastest speed run time relies on math skill almost exclusively throughout. Propositions are irrelevant in the argument seeing how they aren't available for a while; when they do become available, it's difficult to trigger them without wasting time running into random encounter battles, but what's important is that by grinding JP quickly (doesn't take nearly as long as you'd think if you kill all enemies and leave one weakened, causing him to hide away) you save yourself a lot of time, since the game eventually becomes text skipping + using math skill once you're done.

I suspect the problem is getting to Calculator in the first place, then getting the required math skills for it to be effective.

[Espinosa]

Grinding JP up doesn't take nearly as long as the time Math Skill saves you. Ramza literally ends most of the storyline maps in one single Math Skill action.

As displayed by the speed run found here, Math Skill is THE efficient way to play the game:
http://speeddemosarc...asyTactics.html

Not admitting that Calculator is at the top of efficiency play is much like discrediting FE7 Marcus for 'hogging experience', it's something you have to do to be efficient, which is what the tier is all about. The only difference is that using Marcus is a must in the first three quarters of HHM, while Calculator is a must in the last three fourths of FFT. Try speedrunning the game without Math Skill and tell me what time you'll have at the end. I can guarantee Ninja, Wizards, Summoners and Orlandu waste a lot more time taking out one enemy at a time (or occasionally small groups) than what you could've saved by training one single Calculator in Ramza.

[eclipse]

Speedrunning is not efficiency. What you linked is the former. Efficiency doesn't require a bunch of Chemists to punch the enemy Chemist in the first Gariland battle, for example.

EDIT: And it does not require the JP Scroll Glitch, either.

Edited by eclipse, 20 June 2012 - 02:27 AM.

[Espinosa]

You will still need to perform grinding actions if you want to unlock good jobs or skills, only difference is how much you do it, how you do it (I can think of plenty unnecessarily time-consuming ways to JP grind) and what you're investing this time into. Spending time on unlocking Bard or Dancer is pretty much the FFT equivalent of training Bors or Rebecca. Raising a Calculator, on the other hand, changes the time spent on storyline maps drastically, once unlocked, and there's no other way to match the sort of domination Math Skill does with a handful of other skills from other magical jobs.

Since there are no 'turns' (in FE sense) to speak of in FFT, the 'turns' part of 'efficiency' can only be replaced by the concept of time, hence I would say it's not a stretch to state efficiency equals time, or speedrunning as you put it, in FFT. And there's no faster way of completing the game than to turn Ramza into a Calculator at an earliest convenience.

JP Scroll Glitch wasn't used on chessjerk's earlier speedrun iirc, and Calculator was still by far his most efficient long-term investment. There, found it:
http://archive.org/d...tasyTactics_519

Even with the glitch though, you need to do a lot of manual ability grinding to unlock everything you need until the end of the game.

Can you match the time of 5:20 without Calculator?

[grandjackal]

I think the one reason that people are trying to talk you down from it is because you are basically killing any and all discussion. Seriously, if that's all it takes (for example, you haven't thought of how annoyingly difficult it is to grind a Calculator, and your assumption you need to grind at all). I would actually say that his time is not exactly that huge a change. Sure it's a lot more braindead to accomplish that time with a calc, but I'm not exactly spending a half hour on every battle.

[eclipse]

IIRC, efficiency and grinding don't go hand-in-hand.

[grandjackal]

IIRC, efficiency and grinding don't go hand-in-hand.

His argument is more that at first it's grinding, but the thing you're rewarded with supposedly saves more time overall than just going straight through. My argument is more that it doesn't really save that much time if at all. First you need the proper calc abilities which takes years on it's own since hte calc just...Sucks. Then you need the proper spells like Holy etc to make use of them, of which is also expensive on it's own. Ramza's Yell helps speed up this process sure, but it still takes a good amount of time. Then lastly, the game is not as long as he makes it out to be. It's not that hard in the later parts regardless if you have a command that automatically wins the map.

[Espinosa]

I don't want to discourage discussion, it's the opposite really - I want to provoke more thinking by expressing a strong opinion. Just feel like when we discuss efficiency, we just establish some sort of ideal efficient playthrough to which everything else should be measured, and criteria should be clear-cut and agreed upon. For example, is it time or reliability? Because what's quicker and more reliable than an instantly cast Holy against the entire enemy party that cannot be blocked or reflected?

I've done one playthrough where I avoided all random encounters and just tried to clear each map as quickly as possible, without doing any grinding. It still took quite long to finish, and I didn't enjoy having to use jobs like Thief and Archer to get to my planned destination for jobs unlocked and ready to go.

Really, a good way to describe Calculator using the FE universe is if you had an early game character, like Bors or Rebecca, whom you wouldn't really use in an efficient run, but all of a sudden, after being trained to promotion (a time-consuming and annoying task), that Bors actually became able to attack several times per turn, OHKO everyone and seize on the same first turn. Turns are very crucial in FE when we arrange options in terms of their efficiency, and so Bors would rank quite high if his performance really altered the game in this way. Indeed, looking at our turn counts, we would find that too much time is spent on getting Bors to 10/0 in order to promote, costing us turns in the earliest chapters (and don't we all want to achieve the lowest turn counts in those as well?), but once Bors does promote, he trivialises the rest of the game inexplicably. I feel that this is essentially what Calculator is in FFT, unless efficiency here means something completely unexpected to my imagination in this discussion.

As for your assumption that grinding isn't necessary... You're right, entirely so, it's not. In fact, you can dismiss using the rest of your team and ever reclassing Ramza to anything from his start as a Squire, and the game is very much beatable with complete disregard for unlocking any jobs and learning any non-Squire skills. However, even when Ramza isn't grinding, he's performing a multitude of tedious actions, not for the purpose of unlocking something but survival - such as Yelling himself until he can outspeed the opposition and then employ attack n' hide tactics to stay alive. You'll have to restart some maps of course, just because the enemies have all the wrong abilities that prevent you from winning, or luck doesn't like you this time (and maybe the next one too). The game is indeed beatable with no grinding at all, but it seems apparent that it is the choice to do no grinding that reduces the efficiency of a playthrough.

Then lastly, the game is not as long as he makes it out to be. It's not that hard in the later parts regardless if you have a command that automatically wins the map.

Path of Radiance is also an easy game, we say, and yet that doesn't encourage dumping Titania in Bottom Tier.

Edited by Espinosa, 20 June 2012 - 02:46 PM.

[grandjackal]

I don't want to discourage discussion, it's the opposite really - I want to provoke more thinking by expressing a strong opinion. Just feel like when we discuss efficiency, we just establish some sort of ideal efficient playthrough to which everything else should be measured, and criteria should be clear-cut and agreed upon. For example, is it time or reliability? Because what's quicker and more reliable than an instantly cast Holy against the entire enemy party that cannot be blocked or reflected?

Reliable? Sure. But I wouldn't sacrifice the time spent to have one unit do essentially nothing for a good amount of the game doing basically nothing, especially if it's highly unecessary.

I've done one playthrough where I avoided all random encounters and just tried to clear each map as quickly as possible, without doing any grinding. It still took quite long to finish, and I didn't enjoy having to use jobs like Thief and Archer to get to my planned destination for jobs unlocked and ready to go.

Well that depends, did you use Archer and Thief early? Cause that's where they're best anyways. If you wanna class that blows, use the Knight.

I did too by the way, and it didn't take that long, so...That's like...your opinion, man.

Really, a good way to describe Calculator using the FE universe is if you had an early game character, like Bors or Rebecca, whom you wouldn't really use in an efficient run, but all of a sudden, after being trained to promotion (a time-consuming and annoying task), that Bors actually became able to attack several times per turn, OHKO everyone and seize on the same first turn. Turns are very crucial in FE when we arrange options in terms of their efficiency, and so Bors would rank quite high if his performance really altered the game in this way. Indeed, looking at our turn counts, we would find that too much time is spent on getting Bors to 10/0 in order to promote, costing us turns in the earliest chapters (and don't we all want to achieve the lowest turn counts in those as well?), but once Bors does promote, he trivialises the rest of the game inexplicably. I feel that this is essentially what Calculator is in FFT, unless efficiency here means something completely unexpected to my imagination in this discussion.

You are ignoring the part where one asks "When does this magical promotion happen?" and "Once promoted, still takes work to fully set up". Godliness doesn't start with the calc. The calc takes a bunch of levels in specific classes, and then you need expensive abilities from said classes. By the time this happens, I probably don't care anyways. In fact, I would imagine that Calc is not happening super early without grinding, since I don't even think I had those classes until around the time you get Agrias fully intergrated into your team. By estimate, I would think that by the time you get fully set up, the game would at best be 2/3s done.

That or I can only imagine what the hell you were doing in your run.

As for your assumption that grinding isn't necessary... You're right, entirely so, it's not. In fact, you can dismiss using the rest of your team and ever reclassing Ramza to anything from his start as a Squire, and the game is very much beatable with complete disregard for unlocking any jobs and learning any non-Squire skills. However, even when Ramza isn't grinding, he's performing a multitude of tedious actions, not for the purpose of unlocking something but survival - such as Yelling himself until he can outspeed the opposition and then employ attack n' hide tactics to stay alive. You'll have to restart some maps of course, just because the enemies have all the wrong abilities that prevent you from winning, or luck doesn't like you this time (and maybe the next one too). The game is indeed beatable with no grinding at all, but it seems apparent that it is the choice to do no grinding that reduces the efficiency of a playthrough.

1. The whole tedium of Yell you just described is exactly the only thing Calc Ramza is doing for a huge majority of the game since him actually doing stuff takes longer, and deprives you of a combat unit early on, making the process even slower.

2. The whole luck thing you described has never happened. I cannot possibly be that obscenely lucky. In fact by mid to lategame, luck stops being a factor anyways because you have a lot of characters by then who don't give a shit. You mow through those portions anyways. The only luck based hard parts I could even kinda sorta imagine are during points in the game you couldn't possibly have a set up calculator by then.

Path of Radiance is also an easy game, we say, and yet that doesn't encourage dumping Titania in Bottom Tier.

Titania isn't the worst unit in the game for 2/3 of it.

I honestly think this is less an argument and more a tall tale with little appeal.

[eclipse]

More like hyping something that takes far too much effort for not much. In the PSP version, my idea of efficiency came from FF12 - hit from a distance, hit fast, and generally killed stuff once he learned Barrage (pretty sure a Calculator costs more than 1200 JP).

EDIT: Downside to Balthier was his join time - he showed up a bit before Cid. Before that was Luso, who was Ramza's slower, physical clone. Imagine two Yellers. . .yeah.

Edited by eclipse, 22 June 2012 - 02:54 AM.