Fixing FF8 Junction System ideas

[Lulcielid]

Junction System and how to fix it​

Final Fantasy VIII customization system, this was a sytem that can store 32 different forms of Magic with a stock of 100 units of each form. The system acts as a type of filter, filtering out magic (known as drawing) from a being or entity and storing it ready to be used or junctioned by the user.

By junctioning Guardian Forces (GF) (Guardian Force, FFVIII summons) to the party members, the player can customize them in terms of stat upgrading, ability commands that can be used in battle, and later on, what elemental and status ailment attack/resistances that character has. What precisely can be upgraded depends on the GFs the player has junctioned, and what the GF has learned.

To upgrade any stat and/or attack/resistance, magic can be junctioned to the stat provided a GF junctioned to the character in question has learned the corresponding Junction ability. The more magic junctioned, the better the effect.

To upgrade basic stats, for example HP and Strength (Str), any magic can be used for junctioning, but some magic will have a larger effect on certain stats; for example, junctioning the Haste spell to the character's Speed stat boosts their speed to a much larger degree than junctioning Scan or Fire, there more specific status upgrades I will keep this “short” by centering only on the basic stats (HP, STR, MAG, DEF). The more magic you have stocked in the stat, the bigger becomes the upgrade in said stat but this leads to the main problem with the Juction System: Using Magic decreases your stats.

The above issue causes the following:

• Penalize players in a semi-permanent way for casting magic.
• Discourages the use of Magic, making them “useless”.

Before we talk about some solutions, we first need to know how exactly each Magic increases each stat.

Each Magic increases the stats by a fix amount per single stock, this can be seen In the following chart, credits to FFWIKI.
I will use a small segment of that chart for explanations:

As you can see a single Ultima gives an increase of 60HP meaning that 100 unit stocks of that same spell gives an increases of 6000HP. This also means that if the player uses 1 unit of the 100 stocks, said boost will go down to 5940HP and so on if the players keep using more units.
The following solutions will try not radically change the system but keep it as similar as possible (i.e: stats being tied to the number of Magic units)

The most fiting solution I came up with was making the boost come from multiple unit stocks instead of a single unit stock. I came up with some variations of this idea:

• [1=<Unit Stock of Y Magic<=20] = Y Magic Boost value for respective junction stat*20
• [21=<Unit Stock of Y Magic<=40] = Y Magic Boost Value for respective junction*40
• [41=<Unit Stock of Y Magic<=60] = Y Magic Boost Value for respective junction*60
• [61=<Unit Stock of Y Magic<=80] = Y Magic Boost Value for respective junction*80
• [81=<Unit Stock of Y Magic<=100] = Y Magic Boost Value for respective junction*100

Using Ultima once again as an example, using the above equations + Ultima HP Junction value:

• [1=<Unit Stock of Ultima<=20] = 60HP*20 ---> 1200HP Boost
  
• [21=<Unit Stock of Ultima<=40] = 60HP*40 ---> 2400HP Boost
  
• [41=<Unit Stock of Ultima<=60] = 60HP*60 ---> 3600HP Boost
  
• [61=<Unit Stock of Ultima<=80] = 60HP*80 ---> 4800HP Boost
  
• [81<=Unit Stock of Ultima<=100] = 60HP*100 ---> 6000HP Boost

This means that regarless whether the player has an stock of 23, 29, 32, 35 or 40 Ultimas they will still have the 2400HP Boost.
Other variations I came up use this same equation but changes the values to instead of bein pairs of 20 units, they´re pairs of 5 units, 10 units, 25 units.

Not necesarily all stats would follow the same equation, for example the STR (strenght) stat could work with the 10 units pair equation while HP works with the 25 units pair equation.

Then we have Elemental Attack and Elemental Defense, which they use %values instead of fixed amounts unlike the other basic stats but I won´t covering them right now.

What do you think about this idea?

 

[BladeRunner]

I actually thought about it recently and I have a hard time coming up with a really good solution that fixes all the issues. Tha best I thought of would be to separate the magic used for junctioning and the magic for casting. For example, the magic you get from drawing and refining would be a "raw" magic that can be either junctioned to increase stats, or fused into magic "items" that could be cast in combat.

 

[LeonBlade]

I think the Junction system is flawed from the point of having to use magics as a catalyst for stats but they never run out. However, as you mention, if you use the stock of magic you have it does effect your stats ultimately. This is flawed ultimately, because, as you mention, it discourages you from using magic.

The solution I would go for is to keep the GFs working the same way roughly, with them giving you access to specific stats. However, the difference would be in how you store magic. Instead of it just being slotted in, I think you should have to spend your magic into your stats.

For example, if you wanted to raise your HP stat, you would need to Junction a GF that allows you to gain access to your HP pool. Then you would select the magic you wanted to use to enhance your stat. Let's say, you decided to use Quake. So, Quake would have a base value that it could effect your stats. When you spend one of your magics, it becomes unusable in combat and becomes part of your character's stat semi-permanently. The "semi-permanent" bit is just about GFs still being needed to let you use these stats. Also, lesser tier spells will become ineffective at certain levels, meaning once you've used a certain number of lower level magics they will stop being useful towards your stat.

There's no need to put different spells in different slots the way it currently works, just let you level up your stats by spending magics like currency.