Track this topic | Email this topic | Print this topic

what the hell r they and how do u use them?????

They are attacks that are used (I have no idea the values for this, i'm sure somebody else here can help you more) when you are low on HP. If you are near death, you know... kneeling down and you select the Fight command... there is a chance you will do one of these. They each have a unique name and animation and are usally good for 9999 damage (once you get up there... i have no idea about low levels and I've honestly only seen a few of them).

Desperation moves are triggered when your character is kneeling and you select the fight command. There's a low chance of it occuring everytime you select fight; you won't know until your character does something cool instead of attacking.

These only trigger once in battle and can only be done by characters. Some characters don't have them (Gau and Umaro, if memory serves well) because they don't have fight commands as such. Literally: there's no skill in the game that exists for them, so you can't just force them to have a "fight" command with a game genie.

Edit: Checked through my notes; here are the exact conditions.

- Cannot be a monster, Gau, or Umaro..
- At least one targettable enemy must exist.
- Character must be kneeling, but cannot be image, zombie, confuse, or vanish.
- Can only use once per character.
- At least 768 time units must've gone by in battle (ie, this cannot be triggered right away.)
- 1/16 chance of success.

Concerning the time units, Stop lasts 18 units, Wall lasts 26 units, and Freeze lasts 34 units. That ought to be a decent comparaison...

This post has been edited by Silverlance on 19th March 2006 00:09

--------------------

"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

thanx 4 that

That's the rare mechanic that I think was really improved in FF7. I think I got a limit break/desparation move once...you just don't hit 'fight' when your character is down, and the odds are pretty low anyway. I suppose it's more of an easter egg than anything else.

--------------------

I hear the jury's still out on...science.

That's it, you people have stood in my way long enough! I'm going to clown college!

Quote (Silverlance @ 18th March 2006 19:02)

- 1/16 chance of success.

What are you talking about? Not only have I used them in more than one battle, they've always connected for massive damage. I remember I had Sabin and Gogo get them first while I was in Narshe in the WoR and was like "Holy crap!" and called my best friend over (who was hooked on the game with me) and we spent the next hour or so watching everyones' attack.

I can post the assembly listing if you want to pick through it.

With all due respect, I trust a direct dump of the game's code more than anyone's memory. Unless you misinterpreted my post (once per battle means once per character, not per party. Not sure how the 1/16 factors into that.)

--------------------

"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Well SL in terms of statistics it's a simple 'or' equation
oncer per character
and you have four parties member each with a 1/16 chance of getting a desperation attack

so in an or situation your chance increases, so you add the fractions
1/16+1/16+1/16+1/16= 1/4

so witha full party you have a 25% chance of getting a desperation attack

--------------------

"Have you ever seen a baby do that before?"

Quote (Cloud_Strife510 @ 27th March 2006 11:31)

Well SL in terms of statistics it's a simple 'or' equation
oncer per character
and you have four parties member each with a 1/16 chance of getting a desperation attack

so in an or situation your chance increases, so you add the fractions
1/16+1/16+1/16+1/16= 1/4

so witha full party you have a 25% chance of getting a desperation attack

That's bad math.

Let's say that instead of a 1/16 chance, you had a 5/16 chance for each character. Then, four characters gives you a total 20/16 chance, which is greater than 1 (wait, that's bad!) and almost certainly implies that you will DEFINITELY get the desperation move. But that doesn't make any sense--no matter how high each individual chance is, the reciprocal chance of each one not getting the move is 11/16, so the chance of no one getting the move is (11/16)^4, which is kinda small, but definitely finite.

The exact same reasoning applies for the 1/16 chance: you can't just add up the probabilities. You need to apply the binomial distribution:

The probability of getting k (here, we really only want 1 character to do it on a single turn, so k = 1) successes on n trials (we have four characters, so n = 4) with the probability p of success (p = 1/16) is:

(n k) (p^k)(1-p)^(n-k)

where (n k) is the binomial coefficient = n! / k!(n-k)!

Working this all out, I get that the chance of one character doing a desperation move given that the conditions are met for all four is a little over 20% (on any given 'round' of combat that assumes one action per character).

This post has been edited by karasuman on 27th March 2006 16:56

--------------------

Veni, vidi, dormivi.

I DO hope you realize that DAs are per character, not per party, and hence all code related to them will apply to a single character. 1/16 is 1/16 for a single character. One per battle is once per battle for a single character. And so forth.

I have NO clue where this 1/4 chance came from. We're talking about individual characters, not parties.

--------------------

"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Quote (Silverlance @ 27th March 2006 16:51)

I DO hope you realize that DAs are per character, not per party, and hence all code related to them will apply to a single character. 1/16 is 1/16 for a single character. One per battle is once per battle for a single character. And so forth.

I have NO clue where this 1/4 chance came from. We're talking about individual characters, not parties.

He was talking about the chance of seeing a desperation attack (any desperation attack) in a single round. And it was wrong, because you can't add them up like that. But that's what my math is based on, too--the assumption that you had four characters who might be able to do their desperation attack, and that you just wanted to prove to yourself that such a thing existed.

If you really want to figure out the chance of seeing a certain character's desperation attack, just change n to however many rounds you're willing to wait to see it, and watch the probability go up. The above still applies for the chance to see a single character's desperation attack if you gave them four rounds to do it in.

--------------------

Veni, vidi, dormivi.

Quote (karasuman @ 27th March 2006 18:25)

He was talking about the chance of seeing a desperation attack (any desperation attack) in a single round.

Ah, my bad. I thought that was the chance for a desperation attack (for any given individual character) to occure. >"<

A hack to make DAs occure every time the fight command is picked would involve only changing a few bytes, at best.

--------------------

"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Quote

That's bad math.

I just did very simple math to show that the more characters you had in your party the higher the chance would be of getting a desperation attack. I didn't feel like completely divulging into more accurate math.

This post has been edited by Cloud_Strife510 on 28th March 2006 00:32

--------------------

"Have you ever seen a baby do that before?"

Too many numbers!

Can't we all just agree that it's random?

Quote (bad andy @ 28th March 2006 00:05)

Too many numbers!

Can't we all just agree that it's random?

If you pay attention, you might learn something about probability here.

The choose notation here is being used here due to the fact that order doesn't matter, we just care for a desperation attack. It doesn't matter if it's the first, or the second attack in sequence. In addition, we want any desperation attack. That would imply that the event that 2, 3 or all 4 characters pull out desperation attacks is also valid and counts towards our chances.

So to explain the bionomial distrubtion, it's a short form equation that quickly splits this probability problem into distinct events.

In the case of exactly 1 desperation attack, you have the probabilty p of that one person doing it, then (1-p)^3 for everyone else that didn't do it. Since order doesn't matter, we apply the coefficient (4 1) [4 choose 1 to be precise, I'll use karasuman's notation].

Rinse and repeat for 2, 3 and 4 desperation attacks. Add up all probabilities due to independence of each event and you have the precise probabilty of the event "one or more desperation attacks in a single round" defined by the variable p, which can be given by any ROM hacker or assumed to be something arbitrary if you really need to see a percentile.

--------------------

Visions of Peace - Four Generals, One Empire, and the Returners caught in the middle.

I've had only one or two. The most notable was when I was totally getting my ass handed to me by that fellow at the end of the magitek research lab (#128? Maybe? Looks like the Magi Master,) and Locke just comes out of nowhere with this thing that kicked the shit out of him. I was properly awed and happy since I was an inch from death.

--------------------

If you've been mod-o-fied,
It's an illusion, and you're in-between.
Don't you be tarot-fied,
It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean?
~Frank Zappa

Sins exist only for people who are on the Way or approaching the Way

In all the years I've played, I think I've only seen four or five Desperation Attacks. Though, I generally over level and don't like to stay critical for any length of time.

I've only gotten one in my countless play-throughs of this game, Celes'. (Or was it Tina's?) Well, one of them. It was a spinny blade thing, like a Wind Slash. Sorta. I used it to finish off Kefka, since I just wanted to kill him with physical attacks, and I think he used some spell to knock me to low health. It was pretty awesome when they did it though

--------------------

OSonic Rave
/ \Last Arcanum
[ ]Strike Raid
XRagnarok

I'm just playing through this game and I'm a little over half-way through right now, and I've seen Terra's move twice, Edgar's once, and I think Locke's, though it may have been Cyan.

...

I must get low on HP a lot.

--------------------

Come with me so I can show you how to live
Burning the candle at both ends
I’m gripping at the walls around me
Don’t complicate it
I’m addicted to this life
I’ll be your token of attention
All my lies come down to this
-Orgy, "Beautiful Disgrace"