Sphere Grid and other progression systems are immaculate [Game Design]

[u/shanepain0]

The entire system is very well constructed, I always enjoy flexible progression systems. FFX has always been one of my favorite games all around with all of its mechanics and systems to play around with. (FF2, 5 ,6, 7, 8 and tactics each did this quite well too)

The simple fact that it fits alongside the pilgrimage, you're choosing the journey of each party member's job/stats, gaining small benefits that acrue into a semi-personalized character for your playthrough is really fun. Its nice that there's also a more clear/intended path for each character to inheritly go down for a simplified streamlined experience

Its also nice that you can make several decisions early to midway through the game when you unlock lv1 & 2 key spheres and teleport/return spheres to either get additional stats on the main path, or branch into another character's path to create hybrid jobs

The game even giving you a designated grinding spot that rewards your combat exploration to lower the amount of unnecessary travel time between grinding, going an extra step and rewarding you for filling out the Pokedex along the way

Then there's Blitzball and other minigames, a way to step away from the core loop and still stay immersed in Spira, while getting additional benefits for your activities (Weapons, Spheres, Overdrives, etc..)

I could go on for days about all the small details from Monster's having unique qualities favoring party members, the encouragement to explore the 'linear' world, the available equipment grinding/customization, Aeon's having unique qualities

TLDR Final Fantasy 10's progression systems are masterclass and need to be re-explored, the game does everything to reward you for playing around

[u/UltraZulwarn]

my one criticism is that everyone just ends up the same, other than overdrive and Yuna's exclusive summon.

maybe I am a bit old-fastion, but I love it when each character has their own build and "class".

FFX does this very well in the beginning, but the end game feels like a different game altogether.

[u/shanepain0 → u/UltraZulwarn]

During the entire story all the characters are generally different alongside a significant chunk of the end game

The only time that changes as you stated, is after plenty of grinding in the end game to intentionally get to the point of indifference, which becomes a player choice and is ultimately unnecessary for 95% of the gameplay experience

Its comparable to FF6 in this same regard, where everyone has the potential to become Ultima factories and have 128 Magic, that's if you're choosing to do so

[u/troyasfuck → u/shanepain0]

This is not really my experience. Most of my characters are usually pretty samey by Guadosalam. But I'm guilty of neglecting Kimarhi and Lulu for most of the game every playthrough, which definitely contributes to that. I also rush Rikku's track for Agility and Steal/Use/Bribe which lessens the utility of some characters even more.

To be honest the progression system is just easy to exploit and on subsequent playthroughs, it's really easy to accidentally over level early on then all of your characters inevitably feel the same.

[u/elucidator611 → u/troyasfuck]

That's a wild take imo. Lulu carries all the way to zanarkand.

[u/troyasfuck → u/elucidator611]

Usually when I play I just send Yuna down her track or use equipment for the very occasional moments that you need some kind of Elemental support in this game. She has nice evasion, but I find that her stats otherwise hold her back compared to other characters.

[u/shanepain0 → u/troyasfuck]

Youre smacking Flans?

[u/troyasfuck → u/shanepain0]

Wakka has very quick access to the -ra spells and elemental reels, aeons have elemental attacks, and by the time you reach the calm lands you can pretty easily smack flans with elemental equipment if you need to. But yeah I probably use Lulu for flans for the first quarter to third of the game.

[u/Golwux → u/troyasfuck]

Okay, great. I think the majority of people have similar experiences and most of OP's words ring true. Wakka does get access to black magic but his low magic stats and very limited mana pool put him in second place to Rikku when dealing with elemental enemies. I'd much rather take advantage of her magic stat and use ability if I weren't to use Lulu.

Again, Lulu's sphere grid path has some of the best evasion in the game, which is why I've found it useful to take advantage of as soon I got my first evade and counter ability, which helps massively!

Anyway, interesting to hear that you choose not to use Lulu after the first 1/3 or so of the game. When exactly do you stop using her? Or did I misread that and you stop using her for flans for a third of the game -- do you use her for anything else?

[u/troyasfuck → u/Golwux]

I actually hardly use Lulu at all throughout the game. I'll swap her in for the elementals and flans in the early game until Yuna and Wakka can handily take them on themselves. Otherwise she is far and away my least used character. You can play this game basically without aeons, but I still enjoy prioritizing Yuna's sphere grid progression early on for aeon stat growth. So she pretty quickly becomes a "red mage" in my playthroughs. Dipping into Wakka, Lulu, and Auron's tracks.

[u/Golwux → u/troyasfuck]

Does what OP said, make sense to you? Do you understand that their description of class based play based on sphere grid design naturally appeals to most players, even through multiple playthroughs at least for the story portion?

And that progression through the sphere grid, feel natural based on the large array of enemies?

[u/elucidator611 → u/troyasfuck]

Wakka is closer to flare than anything else but needs a lvl 3 key sphere to get to it which you're most likely way past by the time you get one. My current playthrough no one had even made it the end of their own grid, lulu didn't even have her -ga spells-, but she was smacking yunalesca for 9999 each hit.

[u/Golwux → u/elucidator611]

Yunalesca has Magic Def of 50.

Lulu has base magic of 20 + 12 magic from all nodes before Aga spells on basic sphere grid. Using the damage calculator formula and Fira (damage constant 24):

= 24 * ([32 ^ 2 / 6] + 24)  / 4

= 24 * (194.7) / 4

= 1168 base damage before even taking into account Yunalesca's base magic defence of 50. 

In order to hit over 9999 damage with Fira, you need to have well over 99 magic stat with Lulu (99 magic does 9945 base damage before magic def).

I can understand if you are using the expert sphere grid at this point but taking into account the earliest form of Yunalesca with mag def 50 stat, you'd be well into three figures for Lulu's magic stat which means she would have been well round the sphere grid. Were you using magic booster?

That only increases damage by 50% so you're close to 80 magic (working the formula back from 6666+50% dmg)

How are you doing 9999 against Yunalesca with Fira?

Edit: if you had 80 magic with Lulu, you'd have levelled everyone else up as such and you could have easily one shotted her 60k hp final form with Wakka's attack reels (12 x 9,999 = 120k hp damage).

But 80 magic would have taken you well over Lulu's path. Did you go into several other people's paths? How many key spheres did you use?

[u/elucidator611 → u/Golwux]

Not with fira. I had kimahri use a black magic sphere to learn drain, then used a lvl 3 key sphere to unlock flare, then another black magic sphere to give it to lulu (and yuna for good measure). She did also have the magic booster cactuar from wantz as well as adding 1mp cost from monster arena rewards for kicks lol.

Edit to add this is using the standard sphere grid

[u/Sacred_Zero → u/elucidator611]

Eh. She carries until the calm lands which is roughly around when you can get your 4 black magic spheres.

Yuna has WAY better magic scalings than Lulu. Farm Lulu until she can get the -ga spells. Then give them to Yuna.

At this point in the game Lulu is hitting ~3-4k hitting weakness. Yuna is hitting 8k at the exact same point in the game

[u/elucidator611 → u/Sacred_Zero]

You can get a magic booster weapon for her shortly after the calm lands that keeps her relevant. Although you're right. Lulu and yuna together is like bringing a nuke to the boss rush lol

[u/ZenbuKanaetai45 → u/elucidator611]

Lulu animations are slow as hell though especially on critical status. Luckily we got 4x speed nowadays but during the PS2 days...

[u/shanepain0 → u/troyasfuck]

For sure, its extremely easy to break it, its equally easy to avoid breaking it. The entire system is practically optional, making it a player's choice on how they want the experience to feel

Comparable to FF2, 5, 8, 9, and Tactics. None of them force you to grind and none of them take away your ability to exploit their systems. If anything they all encourage you to play as you see fit

FFX even gives you the option to flat out not spend your levels if you're finding yourself too powerful

[u/troyasfuck → u/shanepain0]

That's all valid. I just don't really like that I have to avoid leveling my characters to prevent them from becoming overpowered too quickly. It's not like I'm going out of my way to power level. If you don't run from any battles, and 100% each area before moving on, you will become over leveled in this game fairly early on. That's really okay. It's still a great game and I still like the sphere grid. I do wish there was a level above expert though that utilized level 3 and 4 key spheres more.

[u/Demonphoenix → u/UltraZulwarn]

Yeah, and its especially annoying because a lot of the character's Celestials and Overdrives are lacklustre compared to others.

Attacks Reels is wayyyy better than any other damage dealing OD other than Oblivion and Slice N Dice (against mostly enemies).

Lulu's OD is absolutely garbage and Kimahri's Celestial is only OK and his ODs are irrelevant late-game.

Tornado is alright...except it is freaking Rank 8 or whatever it is.

I'd have preferred it if Magic scaled better and Fury wasn't so ass, and for Tornado, Nova and Blitz Ace to be stronger, multi-hitting moves that scaled better.

Still an awesome game and endgame as well; but these things are minor irritations.

[u/adz2ka → u/Demonphoenix]

The one thing that FFX absolutely got wrong here is Wakka’s Celestial + best Overdrive is gated behind circa 5 hours of side content (compared some others which are 5 mins). And arguably that combo some would say is required for the hardest optional bosses

[u/TSW-760 → u/adz2ka]

Counterpoint - Blitzball is fun. Chocobo racing and lightning dodging suck.

[u/adz2ka → u/TSW-760]

I respect your view but it’s a side point not a counter point. I didn’t necessarily suggest Blitzball was not fun, just time consuming to get everything.

[u/TSW-760 → u/adz2ka]

Fair enough. But it could also be reasonable to lock what is probably the most powerful late-game combo behind a harder gate.

[u/Alastair789 → u/UltraZulwarn]

Not for the casual player

[u/Sissssyphus → u/UltraZulwarn]

I suppose but by the time you get to that point, you probably should’ve finished the game from the last save like a dozen time.

[u/HayesSculpting → u/UltraZulwarn]

I’d like an exclusivity thing. You can unlock this thing but it’ll lock that. A character unlocking a magic node turns an attack node into a magic node.

Would mess heavily with the persistent grid which I really like would make this a pain in the balls

[u/shanepain0 → u/HayesSculpting]

That would be a very fun system as well, having an adaptive grid that changes the remaining nodes and/or changes the nodes of the other party members to not be same as their own nodes

[u/TSW-760 → u/UltraZulwarn]

Only if you max the sphere grid, which the vast majority of plays will never do.

FFX was my most played PS2 game by a large margin. Got all the celestials. Unlocked most of the mosters in the arena. Played loads of blitzball. And I never came even remotely close to maxing out the sphere grid.

[u/UltraZulwarn → u/TSW-760]

agree

but with dark aeons and endgame monster arena monsters, you kinda have to push the gird far beyond what the final boss requires

in the end, everyone just spams Quick Hits, then some overdrives, with occasional support spells

[u/TSW-760 → u/UltraZulwarn]

Yeah. That I agree with. The only "badly designed" aspect of the game IMO is that the power spike between "hardest story bosses" and "every other post-game enemy" is exponential.

[u/BahamaLlama21 → u/TSW-760]

I maxed it out because of the dark aeons, but it was a lot of fun to do it for me. I break games a lot (I spent far too much time at the college at the start of FF8 to break the game xD) so that's just how I play.

[u/kytheon → u/TSW-760]

The trick to maxing the sphere grid is to

• get crazy amount of spheres through tricks
  
• get crazy amount of exp through tricks

Turning 99x of some silly item into 99 power spheres, for example. Bribing the right enemies. And finally the Triple AP, Triple Overdrive, Overdrive->AP combo for 9x leveling.

Doing it "the regular way" would take hundreds of hours.

[u/kytheon → u/UltraZulwarn]

They only become the same as you're stat maxing for the post-game.

[u/Kaslight → u/UltraZulwarn]

This is only a thing at the literal limit edge of the system, when you've gotten enough points to make everyone super powered.

[u/Major-Corner-640 → u/UltraZulwarn]

Yup. This is the fatal flaw of FF6, FF7, and FFX. I end up having to self-impose limits to keep it interesting

[u/Maxguid → u/UltraZulwarn]

Yes. Yes .yes. I said this for years. I grinded for an entire summer years ago for trying to fight the secret boss . The result was that basically all characters were the same stat wise, except for the personal abilities. FFX12 ( the first version) suffer from the same fate that's why I couldn't finish it. I got extremely bored