Support NeoGAF

[Adam_Vania]

i dunno, seems like slow and stodgy battles is a time-honored tradition in FF games. i mean what are you try to skip forward to? the screen that lets you select "Fight" and makes you wait some more until the little avatar decides it's his time to act on that? all of it is "gameplay".

sometimes you wonder if people actually enjoy playing these video games or if they just need to complete them as fast as possible out of some dispassionate compulsion.

 

[Taruranto]

Meh, the mod some Gaffer ( Or was it some Steam user?) made that changes the game speed up option to x5 rather than x10 worked fine already.

 

[Syntsui]

You could as well call it FF X-2 battle speed mod =P

 

[Durante]

i dunno, seems like slow and stodgy battles is a time-honored tradition in FF games. i mean what are you try to skip forward to? the screen that lets you select "Fight" and makes you wait some more until the little avatar decides it's his time to act on that? all of it is "gameplay".

Waiting for battles to load or for your inputs to be processed is not "gamplay". It's waiting.

 

[NinjamicWZ]

Can't we accept that FF9 is a pretty good game overall, but its battle speed, transitions and the way it wastes the player's time at every opportunity are absolutely catastrophic?

Yes and no. A complete absence of loading in and out of battles in every PS1 FF would be great, and turning off cinematic attack animations is welcome just like it is when you get tired of critical kill cam in modern Fallout games.

That, and it's from that era and genre where every few steps you're annoyed by random battle until you get over it. It is extra painful in that era due to the battle transitions especially. Every JRPG should have been Chrono Trigger after Chrono Trigger, but almost none of them are... splitting hairs between PS1 FF's is just that.

I agreed that flexibility is nice earlier ITT, but I think there's a lot more to balancing an experience's overall pace and feel than just providing instant gratification for everyone at every opportunity. The last thing I want is for everything to be made like DRPG's with static images, zero animations or flair for anything, total streamlining between experiencing the environment in a clean, digital manner and offloading battle into that immediate sense of purposeful, tactile mobility... so that not even steps are "wasting my time" - with a narrative, aural and aesthetic experience boring enough to match it, so as not to be dissonant or distracting.

If someone wants to mod the game to be what they want, great, go for it. If people are going to start trying to make the FF they don't like the current red headed step child for awhile, with a bunch of nitpicky selective reasoning, the people who aren't so particular about "muh favorite FF" are likely going to pipe up and disagree. Especially with the "stockholm syndrome" choir coming out of the woodworks in here.

 

[Widge]

I feel like people in this thread never actually suffered through FF9's battles. Or if they have, they are immortals with infinite amounts of time..

They were VERY sludgy. My main gripe was the sheer amount of time the ATB took to fill. At the time you could just set the battle speed to fastest but still...

Wasn't overly bothered by the flyby that you got on it

 

[badcrumble]

FFIX abilities don't have charge times and do, in fact, get entered into the queue as soon as moves are selected, already. The issue with FFIX is that it has a lot of long animations and that the ATB doesn't pause during any of them (whereas IV/V/VI/VII/VIII *does* pause the ATB during longer animations and generally doesn't have animations quite so long anyway; hell, IV and V even pause the ATB for normal attacks), so turns get queued up long before the animation queue is ready to play them out.

Since it's the animation queue that slows the battles down, not the speed of the ATB, changing to Active mode or raising the battle speed doesn't make a big difference after a certain point.

This mod looks like garbage by the way.

 

[Nairume]

Every JRPG should have been Chrono Trigger after Chrono Trigger, but almost none of them are... splitting hairs between PS1 FF's is just that.

To be fair, while I get the sentiment (visible encounters), Chrono Trigger itself is kind of a terrible example for how RPGs should handle encounters since it does the whole visible encounter thing really poorly by tying them to walking into (often unavoidable) areas, rather than the monsters themselves.

 

[NinjamicWZ]

To be fair, while I get the sentiment (visible encounters), Chrono Trigger itself is kind of a terrible example for how RPGs should handle encounters since it does the whole visible encounter thing really poorly by tying them to walking into (often unavoidable) areas, rather than the monsters themselves.

FFXII is a pretty great game too.

 

[Durante]

I agreed that flexibility is nice earlier ITT, but I think there's a lot more to balancing an experience's overall pace and feel than just providing instant gratification for everyone at every opportunity.

If you look at the type of games I play, "instant gratification" is really the last thing I'm generally looking for.

I think there is an absolutely massive difference between a game having varied pacing which might be important for its story or even mood, and actively wasting its players' time.
For both technical and design reasons, FF9 does a lot of the latter.

I think the real problem is that lots of posters (not necessarily you!) have a very hard time differentiating between criticism of one aspect of their favorite game and someone "shitting" on it.

 

[Onemic]

So many people exposing themselves today. smh

I mean, FFVIII easily has the best OST in the FF series.

 

[Serious Sam]

Waiting for battles to load or for your inputs to be processed is not "gamplay". It's waiting.

With that logic watching cut-scenes, standing still and listening to dialogues, reading quest logs and such is also not gameplay. We should just go back to Pong.

 

[Shari]

I agree with the OP and found the options on the FFX remaster about speeding up stuff an absolute MUST.

I cant stand when GAF turns into a pitchfork entity. So many useless comments in this thread.

 

[Durante]

With that logic watching cut-scenes, standing still and listening to dialogues, reading quest logs and such is also not gameplay. We should just go back to Pong.

Not at all. All of that furthers the story, or gives you more information about the setting.
Watching the same camera flyby or slow combat animation 1000 times does nothing of the sort.

 

[Serious Sam]

Not at all. All of that furthers the story, or gives you more information about the setting.
Watching the same camera flyby or slow combat animation 1000 times does nothing of the sort.

Tons of games from all genres, new and old, have repeating fly by cameras, repeating animations, unskippable intros, grinding and various other repetitions and time wasting. I still don't understand what's so special about FF9 that makes it so "catastrophic" as you put it?

 

[Prime crotch]

The loading is a definite issue, especially when it was loading magic effects and such; made the game feel sluggish. The camera pans are whatever.

 

[NinjamicWZ]

If you look at the type of games I play, "instant gratification" is really the last thing I'm generally looking for.

I think there is an absolutely massive difference between a game having varied pacing which might be important for its story or even mood, and actively wasting its players' time.
For both technical and design reasons, FF9 does a lot of the latter.

I wasn't talking about your tastes in particular, just what I see as the overall "not respecting my time" sentiment that pervades the right-left side threads like this.

It does waste your time loading, masking and queuing, but there are still going to be things about it's game archetype and entire pace that are inherently tedious. If tedium is completely insufferable for you, the game is still going to be "unplayable" even when it's fixed. You have to know as a DS2 fan, that it doesn't take a lot of concession and hyperbole about any game's faults and differences in a series for it to get steamrolled into "unplayable mess" and "Sonic was never good" status.

 

[Adam_Vania]

Tons of games from all genres, new and old, have repeating fly by cameras, repeating animations, unskippable intros, grinding and various other repetitions and time wasting. I still don't understand what's so special about FF9 that makes it so "catastrophic" as you put it?

these games are mostly random battles. why even battle at all if it's not adding to the story?

 

[Nairume]

I think the real problem is that lots of posters (not necessarily you!) have a very hard time differentiating between criticism of one aspect of their favorite game and someone "shitting" on it.

For what it's worth, FFIX is unequivocally my favorite game in the main series and, while I am honestly fine with dealing with the slow speed and don't really find it nearly as bad as people say it is, it is the one flaw in a game that would otherwise be perfect in my eyes.

 

[StereoVsn]

Great mod, OP. While your settings may be too quick for my taste, it's all customizable so I don't get the gripes from people. I mean I love FF IX, it's one of my favorite games in the series behind VI and VII, but the battle transitions are a killer and this Mod will help it to be more smooth vs default speed up.

 

[badcrumble]

The main thing that'd really fix FFIX is probably much too complicated to mod in: actually allowing one character/monster's attack animation to begin while another one is finishing.

FFIX's battle system was clearly all about internal goals for vastly improving the quality of the animations - and they succeeded! - but each monster's extended death animation (for example) basically pauses the animation queue until it's finished, and the poor decision to keep the ATB running during all animations means that you end up with turns queued in WELL behind the animations (and also makes Auto-Regen comically overpowered, since launching any long spell/summon animation ALSO adds enough time to regenerate your entire party to full health).

The material end result (slow-ass battles) is likely what led to the impetus behind FFX and FFX-2's battle designs (one of which doesn't even have an ATB timer, but both of which allow for simultaneous animations - one character in FFX can be running forward to attack while another is running back from just having performed one, for example). The quality of the animations is just as high, but they're allowed to play out simultaneously and that speed things up drastically. FFIX with Auto-Haste, for example, also in theory basically always has a character's turn ready to go off just like FFX does, but it's still drastically slower because basically only one animation can happen at a time and they're much longer than FFVII/FFVIII ones.

Shortening the length of these animations by speeding them up sort of works around the core problem without really solving it, and it ends up making the (very nice!) animations look like shit in the process.

 

[aravuus]

Great mod, OP. While your settings may be too quick for my taste, it's all customizable so I don't get the gripes from people. I mean I love FF IX, it's one of my favorite games in the series behind VI and VII, but the battle transitions are a killer and this Mod will help it to be more smooth vs default speed up.

Pretty much, while I do agree the first OP video looks way too fast, the first page reactions are kind of hilariously overblown.

I just use cheat engine, though. Can turn fast-forward on and off whenever I want and I can customize the speed as much as I want.

 

[Lumpy Onion]

Black Waltz looks goofy in that first vid. He's undulating and it looks like he's doing some kind of dance. And Zidane's arm movement looks silly too. Can't say this speed boost works for me because it makes the idle character animations seem off.

And as others have said, it looks like someone accidentally pressed the lowest fast forward setting while watching a DVD.

 

[badcrumble]

Black Waltz looks goofy in that first vid. He's undulating and it looks like he's doing some kind of dance. And Zidane's arm movement looks silly too. Can't say this speed boost works for me because it makes the idle character animations seem off.

And as others have said, it looks like someone accidentally pressed the lowest fast forward setting while watching a DVD.

I'd be really curious to see how regen/poison are affected by it, because it could actually drastically rebalance both of those status effects by accident.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

these games are mostly random battles. why even battle at all if it's not adding to the story?

I agree! I've been saying it for years.

I really want to see some RPGs that take a deep look at the entire concept of combat and focus on making it only happen when it's in service of either the story itself, or compelling gameplay. This middle ground (which applies to damn near all JRPGs, and most WRPGs) where you fight hundreds of times against enemies with no bearing on the story, world, or characters, often using fairly simple/repetitive strategies just makes no sense to me.

I tolerate it because I like the rest of what RPGs offer, but I really want to see some that treat combat like a big deal, and have it happen like, once an hour (on average) at most. After a lifetime of reading fantasy novels and playing/orchestrating tabletop games where this is the case, it makes me sad that RPGs have not embraced it.

 

[Andrew Evenstar]

"Actually playable"

The steam port is fine on it's own.

 

[Levito]

That mod looks god awful, to be honest.

 

[allenpergallon]

OP probably shouldn't have opened with that first video.

 

[Cindi Mayweather]

I feel like people in this thread never actually suffered through FF9's battles. Or if they have, they are immortals with infinite amounts of time.

The solution here isn't perfect, but it's a massive improvement over the default settings.

It truly is impossible they have experienced FFIX. Either that or FFIX stans are masochists.

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

It truly is impossible they have experienced FFIX. Either that or FFIX stans are masochists.

TBH I don't remember being that bothered by the slow battles. But I was also a stupid teenager that didn't valued his time enough, so I guess is normal.

 

[Cindi Mayweather]

FFIX stans:

I'm so glad I helped out anyone who cannot stand this insufferable God awful battle system. I have done my part. I have bit the bullet - just for you to bring you this wonder amazement. You're welcome!

 

[Cindi Mayweather]

I'm glad I played this game back in the day, since there's no way I would be able to endure this shit today.

It's even worse in the pc version! I swear I'd count the amount the screen was black and it was at least 5 seconds. In 2016! Nope, nope, nope.

 

[Antivoid]

FFIX is perfect.

 

[Cindi Mayweather]

OP, how fast is your slowest video there?

Is that like 2x normal speed?

Could you do one at 1.4x speed or 1.5x? Plus turn off the battle cam as you discovered in this thread. Record a couple battles. Maybe people would like it more.

No they won't. They haven't gotten through their thick skulls that you can customize the fps.

The speed is set to 2.5 in the second video.

This new video is set at three different settings:

1. 1.5 - far too slow for my tastes.

2. 2.0 - much more smooth but fast as fuck. The optimal setting for someone who has a problem with prior speeds.

3. 2.0 w/ turn based mode turned on.

https://youtu.be/uIN-098XTCg

Mod is godly. Anyone who finds FFIX an unplayable mess should get it. It's great.

 

[antitrop]

Is there a mod that lets you save your Trances for whenever you want them?

 

[Cindi Mayweather]

Is there a mod that lets you save your Trances for whenever you want them?

That's already in the game. Press F2.

 

[Paltheos]

Another problem with it is that it can't be activated by the controller itself. Or, I haven't found a way anyways. You have to hit F1 on the keyboard to enable it, so it's tedious to enable too because I'm sitting on my couch trying to get my FFIX on and I have to get up, making it entirely counter intuitive.

FYI, there are free programs available that allow you to bind keys to controller buttons. Ofc this doesn't fix the innate problem here, but it is a neat workaround that I've used myself before (mainly when my particular controller isn't supported by a game, but it works for getting other bindings all in one place too obv.).

 

[RainForce]

This is actually super helpful. Thanks

 

[rusteepot]

The videos gave me major anxiety. Even the slower one.

 

[yunbuns]

yuna is kween

 

[AgeEighty]

I think the real problem is that lots of posters (not necessarily you!) have a very hard time differentiating between criticism of one aspect of their favorite game and someone "shitting" on it.

And, I do honestly believe that the complaints are overblown. Unless you were a PAL region player; then you have a legitimate gripe. But I think another problem here is that posters like yourself have a very hard time differentiating between people saying "this issue isn't as bad as you say" and "this issue isn't an issue at all".

Having a mod shitposting in every thread related to the game doesn't help, nor does the fact that the OP has spent the rest of the thread insulting everyone who disagrees with her/him.

 

[Cindi Mayweather]

FYI, there are free programs available that allow you to bind keys to controller buttons. Ofc this doesn't fix the innate problem here, but it is a neat workaround that I've used myself before (mainly when my particular controller isn't supported by a game, but it works for getting other bindings all in one place too obv.).

Yeah, I still don't like it though because it's not optimal for me. I find it way too fast. I wish there were different speeds you could set it at. I also only want it during battle. The great thing about Memoria is that it affects only battles. With speed booster it affects other gameplay too and I find that pretty annoying. You have to keep turning it on and off every battle, which gets tedious. Memoria is God send for me due to how it's customizable and targets specifically battles rather than exploration gameplay.

This is actually super helpful. Thanks

You're welcome!

The videos gave me major anxiety. Even the slower one.

Why?

 

[TheJollyCorner]

Does this engine remove the Muppet-ness, Cindi?

 

[Cindi Mayweather]

Does this engine remove the Muppet-ness, Cindi?

And, I do honestly believe that the complaints are overblown. Unless you were a PAL region player; then you have a legitimate gripe. But I think another problem here is that posters like yourself have a very hard time differentiating between people saying "this issue isn't as bad as you say" and "this issue isn't an issue at all".

Having a mod shitposting in every thread related to the game doesn't help, nor does the fact that the OP has spent the rest of the thread insulting everyone who disagrees with her/him.

Duck isn't shit posting. He's being Duck - a lovable sweet heart with jokes. I don't appreciate you calling our moderator a shitposter.

As for fans of the game having a "negative reaction" to the game being called unplayable? Why? I said in the OP I love the game and am a big fan of it with some caveats. Many people in this thread have agreed that every other aspect of the game besides battles is on the ball. The battles are a big flaw, PAL or not. What other RPG would get a pass when it takes nearly 30 seconds to complete an action after inputting it? FFIX's criticism is deserved. It's among the slowest RPG battle systems I've ever experienced and I refuse to suffer through it.

 

[NinjamicWZ]

The only reason I'm not taking your bait is because I support the use of the word Stan.

 

[Son Of D]

Final Fantasy fans are so caty. The PopGaf of gaming side lol

In that case where do I hand in my FF fan card? Definitely don't want that association.

 

[Comfort Jones]

Tons of games from all genres, new and old, have repeating fly by cameras, repeating animations, unskippable intros, grinding and various other repetitions and time wasting. I still don't understand what's so special about FF9 that makes it so "catastrophic" as you put it?

So we can all agree this is completely moving the goal post from the strawman argument that was presented before, right?

 

[Quote]

I loved this game when it came out and was excited by the Steam release as it's my favorite Final Fantasy, but the camera panning and animations speed is too much of a slog to get through. Everything else is great, but this should have had better options to fix this for players like me for the Steam release.

Anyone arguing that long camera pans/slow animation speed is just as important as the battle system itself or the story is really stretching logic.

 

[-Mutsukki-]

Duck isn't shit posting. He's being Duck - a lovable sweet heart with jokes. I don't appreciate you calling our moderator a shitposter.

As for fans of the game having a "negative reaction" to the game being called unplayable? Why? I said in the OP I love the game and am a big fan of it with some caveats. Many people in this thread have agreed that every other aspect of the game besides battles is on the ball. The battles are a big flaw, PAL or not. What other RPG would get a pass when it takes nearly 30 seconds to complete an action after inputting it? FFIX's criticism is deserved. It's among the slowest RPG battle systems I've ever experienced and I refuse to suffer through it.

Ironic shitposting is still shitposting.

And people are disagreeing with your sentiment because it's just not true. Load times are slow, but it's definitely not unplayable at all. Your hiperbolic wording won't help you make your case either, and the thing is that the game is objectively worse in these videos you presented, while you still say it's what saves it. Overall this thread is just a huge mess that won't get anywhere.

By the way, in a world where FFII (JP) exists, there can hardly exist any battle system worse in any FF.

I loved this game when it came out and was excited by the Steam release as it's my favorite Final Fantasy, but the camera panning and animations speed is too much of a slog to get through. Everything else is great, but this should have had better options to fix this for players like me for the Steam release.

Anyone arguing that long camera pans/slow animation speed is just as important as the battle system itself or the story is really stretching logic.

Didn't someone post a menu option here that takes that out?

 

[Starwolf_UK]

I'd be really curious to see how regen/poison are affected by it, because it could actually drastically rebalance both of those status effects by accident.

The PSX hack that affects ATB spped posted earlier has this problem:

This. And if it's not enough you can patch PSX iso with this patch: http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1799/
There you go, FFIX with ATB at the same speed as in FF7.

I'm not so sure, from the review:

Second, not only are the ATB affected by this fast forward, but so are the ticks for status effects. This means petrify and doom timers move at ridiculous speeds (which makes a number of fights centered around them nightmares–especially doom since there are no ways I’m aware of to immunize yourself from it), as well as the ticks for other status effects like poison/venom. If you do not clear these ASAP with this hack activated, you will die a pretty terrible death…very fast. This also basically makes all support magic other than auto-skills worthless as the faster ticks cause them to wear off EXTREMELY fast.

Was FFVII really that bad?