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Well, it's unanimous so far that haste is preferred over slow.  So, how do you think they could best even the gap between them?  Write-ins welcome.

I say let slow affect 100% to non-immune targets.

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I concur.  If Slow could work 100% of the time, then I'd be compelled to use it far more often.

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"I always have a quotation for everything - it saves original thinking."
~Dorothy L. Sayers

"The truly remarkable thing about television is that it allows several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely."
~T.S. Eliot

"Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as reality - in your own mind!"
~ Bruce Lee

im with super moogle on this one, if slow had a higher hit % then I too would be using it much more often!

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And then you die
So **** the world
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I guess you two are right. If slow did hit 100%, then I would be using slow more too. Then I guess I would say don't let haste work 100% of the time.

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In the darkness looking for a way out, then I hear a call from my heart telling me to go forward. Then out of nowhere I see someone waiting for me and as I get closer I hear these words "I Love You"

If the enemy AIs were higher and countered your haste with slow, you would be much much less inclined to use it, but to use the opposing effect on the enemy, that is unless they haste themselves!

The problem with countering their haste with slow though, is that then they usually make it counter slow with haste... hehe.  Thereby making slow useless in that situation as well.  =)  BTW, isn't slow more useful in FFX than in the others, because it does hit more often?  But still, how often would I use it over haste?  Perhaps I might use both, but I'd still prefer haste.  So there'd have to be a -good- reason to prefer slow at least in some situations.

Slow is decent in FFX, but it's rendered completely and utterly obsolete as soon as Tidus gets Hastega (which, if I'm not mistaken, is fairly early into the game).  Hastega is a sweet spell, and one of the few reasons I use Tidus as frequently as I do.  But I'm not afraid to admit that automatic Haste on all party members is a little cheap.

Really, Time Magic in general had a much greater usefulness in Final Fantasy X, due to the structure of the revamped battle system.  It's much more satisfying to have your characters go over and over again automatically, as opposed to seeing the ATB bar go a little bit faster every round, particularly since your newfound speed in ATB means little to nothing if you still input commands at the same rate.  Similarly, Time Magic was more useful in Final Fantasy Tactics as well, also due to the turn structure of the battle system.  Of course, this was balanced by the fact that you didn't have enough room in your party to make a truly dedicated Time Mage, since they are terribly slow, and have only one really good offensive option in Meteo.

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"I always have a quotation for everything - it saves original thinking."
~Dorothy L. Sayers

"The truly remarkable thing about television is that it allows several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely."
~T.S. Eliot

"Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as reality - in your own mind!"
~ Bruce Lee

You shouldn't be gaining Hastega until about Bikanel or Bevelle, unless you really over-level.

Well I have to say I got hastega well before then, and I didn't level up until the end of the game (airship). Perhaps you didn't use Tidus much?

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The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

I recall getting hastega absurdly early as well, and I keep my levels just high enough to advance the story.

The problem with haste goes hand-in-hand with the problems with the timing system in later games. It was pointless to put on haste in 8 and 9 when all your characters were waiting around in the queue, anyway. It was useful in 5-7 and chrono trigger, and far better in tactics and 10.

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Quote (Mithreel @ 17 Oct. 2002, 18:44)

You shouldn't be gaining Hastega until about Bikanel or Bevelle, unless you really over-level.

Heh, well, I have a terrible habit of ridiculously over-levelling.

I've no idea why, but my basic strategy for almost any RPG is to level my characters up to godlike proportions in the first few parts of the game, and then breeze through all the rest by virtue of my newfound omnipotence.

That being said, without Hastega, Slow is somewhat useful, but it's still far more efficient to get the same effect in FFX by Hasting all of your characters with Tidus.

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"I always have a quotation for everything - it saves original thinking."
~Dorothy L. Sayers

"The truly remarkable thing about television is that it allows several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely."
~T.S. Eliot

"Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as reality - in your own mind!"
~ Bruce Lee

I rotate all my characters until the Calm Lands or so, when I start to focus on 4-5.  But by Bikanel I only have 18-20 hours, with very few if any escapes.  So basically, if you go through the game linearly, you should gain hastega around the Bikanel area, perhaps Macalania, but you should have it before Evrai.  This is under the assumption that the end of a character's respective section is about equal to what you should be like within the last 10% of the game or so- which is basically where I have been every time I play through, even when I try to level.

As for leveling, overleveling should make things so easy you don't need haste.  If you do, it is for a major battle.  Since the battle is easy enough to bash through, slow would be useless.  Again, I don't really think that a 100% hitting slow would actually make it useful, just more useful than the more or less useless spell that it is now.

Ah.  I usually refuse to rotate all of my characters around, instead focusing on a few while ignoring the others.  While this may seem problematic at points where the group splits up, I've made sure to include enough swimmers (for underwater levels) to keep my party alive in different situations.

I typically ignore Kimahri, because he's useless, and Wakka for no particular reason.  Though Wakka can be a powerful fighter, I just don't use him much.  I don't really know why.  Maybe I'll make him a power player next time around.

Anyway, that leaves me to build up Auron (usually my most powerful character in the game), Tidus, Yuna, Rikku, and Lulu.  Tidus and Rikku are present for water levels, as mentioned before.

But I digress.  In compliance with your opinion, I too believe that Slow was somewhat pointless in Final Fantasy X, since the battles wouldn't be all that hard.  As I mentioned before, the ATB system doesn't lend itself well to time magic in general.  In Final Fantasy Tactics, Time Magic is very useful, but the usefulness of other Job Classes and Skills means that you can't really afford to waste a Skill slot on it.

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"I always have a quotation for everything - it saves original thinking."
~Dorothy L. Sayers

"The truly remarkable thing about television is that it allows several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely."
~T.S. Eliot

"Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as reality - in your own mind!"
~ Bruce Lee

My idea is let slow be gained earlierand when capturing monsters or something you might want to cast haste and slow

This post has been edited by Michael Cook on 5th November 2003 21:18

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I find Slow to be simply a small annoyance when the enemy uses it on my character. I find Haste to be a positive side-effect of certain armor/relics. I have never actively cast Haste or Slow unless just to see its animation. For me, time effects are rather useless except for things like Stop, Pin, or Hold, which don't work all the time anyways.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

In my experience Slow has often missed its target, while haste was a life saver. If Slow always hit its target then everyone would use it more.

Haste has a HUGE effect. Put in a hastega, you just just got a whole lot more turns than the enemy (especially good on bosses).

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

The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

i dont need haste or slow magics anywho i just equip my trusty marvel boots and im faster than any mofo out there

Yeah, I'd probably use Slow more often if it WORKED more often. Same with Stop. Failing that, Haste is a nice tradeoff. I agree with the comments about the problem with the ATB system, though; it's the characters that are Hasted, not the player. Still, it does give you a bit of an edge; even if you input commands at the same rate, you do get those few extra seconds before the enemy makes its move. Plus if you've been playing the games for a while, especially in Active mode, you get used to inputting commands real quick-like.

Hastega is great. The one problem I've found with it is that it only affects the party members who are currently active in battle, as opposed to the whole party (boy, it'd be cool if it worked that way, huh?). This means that, should you need to switch people out (and in most boss fights, you will), you'd be better off just using Haste on the newcomers, since casting Hastega again is a waste of mana. So in other words, Hastega is only good at the beginning of the battle. But it is darn good.

I null voted because I like how the NES FFs did it. In them, you do multiple hits for an accumulated damage, and Slow decreases the number of hits you do, and Haste increases the number of hits you do.
Of course, with the ATB, everything is completely different, so 100% hit rate on Slow, I guess. Not like I use either one anyways.

This post has been edited by Dark Paladin on 14th November 2003 10:36

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"I had to write four novels before they let me write comic books."
-Brad Meltzer

I didn't vote because I think a lot of those would help out. I think a smarter combat system in general would help--if AIs did more frequently remove haste, it would make haste less useful. I'm not sure that's the best way to do it, though. I'd almost rather leave haste as useful as it is and just make slow a little better. Maybe having more monsters who hasted themselves?

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Veni, vidi, dormivi.

Quote (karasuman @ 14th November 2003 13:40)

I think a smarter combat system in general would help--if AIs did more frequently remove haste, it would make haste less useful. I'm not sure that's the best way to do it, though.

Dispel, or them casting Stop or Slow on you (Since it has a 100% hit rate against you unless you're wearing something against it).

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"I had to write four novels before they let me write comic books."
-Brad Meltzer

I find it annoying when an enemy casts haste to counter my slow spell. I think if your "slowed" then haste should just cancel the effect and force them to cast haste again to gain the speed from the spell.

And i realy hate when i make the move of forgetting that they had casted reflect on me, and then they get hasted and not me.

This post has been edited by Gilgamesh on 15th November 2003 00:49

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I personally love haste and hastega. Slowga starts to kick butt when there are a bunch of enemies, but the FF trend has gone away from 9 to 4 bad guys like in FF1, and is now more around 1 to 4.

If enemies casted haste on themselves more often then slow would be handy because you learn it before Dispel.

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Get me off this Disciplinary Committee so I can play any FF except for FF8!!!

beth -- there are several enemies who haste themselves -- and either in ffx's turn-based system or in active-mode atb, it's very annoying. personally, i don't think slow needs to be upgraded that much. haste is SUPPOSED to be better than slow. it generally costs more mp, anyway. if anything, upgrade slow's hit percentage a little bit -- but not to just a blanket 100%. ff8 did this well -- each enemy had varying hit percentages for each status effect. some enemies could be 100%, some 85, etc. what would be really cool would be if you could actually use slow on some bosses, and those bosses were very strong or wahtever, so it would be necessary to use slow on them. i wish square would make their bosses more powerful and let status effects be useful on some of them so you would have to think about a fight more than just, "ok, shell/protect/haste/pile on damage."

I always use haste on my guys and slow on most bosses because then you get twice as many attacks in as they do great strategy against atma weapon (ff6)

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Quote (Gilgamesh @ 14th November 2003 19:49)

I find it annoying when an enemy casts haste to counter my slow spell. I think if your "slowed" then haste should just cancel the effect and force them to cast haste again to gain the speed from the spell.

Indeed. Although, what about items that cast haste on you? Let's say you have an item that does so--slow is cast on you. No effect, cancel out the haste effect for the rest of the battle, or slow actually takes effect on you? I think in the games the last one is what happens.

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  I've no idea why, but my basic strategy for almost any RPG is to level my characters up to godlike proportions in the first few parts of the game, and then breeze through all the rest by virtue of my newfound omnipotence.

CHEATER!~ Yeah, that'll generally get you by on most older games, but I personally feel the games shouldn't require that. For example, by having no true level system or the way FF6 worked: unless you have an esper equipped, leveling up awards no stat gain. That way, you're encouraged to stick it out at least until you get a decent selection of espers. It's way more fun if you have to win battles by the skin of your teeth, in my opinion.

Quote (AndrewTS @ 4th December 2003 21:55)

Although, what about items that cast haste on you? Let's say you have an item that does so--slow is cast on you. No effect, cancel out the haste effect for the rest of the battle, or slow actually takes effect on you?

I don't remember anything concerning this in the FF games I've played, but I DO remember that in Chrono Trigger, Lavos's Invading Light (Slow) will simply override (rather than cancel out) Marle's Haste, and vice versa. I was expecting a cancelling-out algorithm, and was surprised to see this.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )