Speedrunner drama

Well, it turns out the FF4 speedrun community doesn't like change.

Yesterday, after the topic came up in Discord, I decided to hunt down the code that was supposed to fix the item duplication glitch, and write a patch that makes it actually work.  A few hours of RAM value hunting and assembly code writing later, FF4 ROM hackers now have a patch that can make GP actually matter in their projects if so they choose.  I posted the fix on Discord and left for the night.

Today I logged on to the Discord to find about 100 comments from speed runners who were furious at the concept that a version of FFIV without item duplication could exist.  Mind you, nobody had yet indicated that the patch would actually be used.  I find this situation frustrating because I designed my project to be a strategic / competitive experience and also to work best when resource management actually exists - while I don't generally want to take decisions on this sort of thing out of the hands of the players, I know that if a player wanted to play the game in the way I designed it, that player would have a terribly difficult time finding anyone willing to race against them that way.

In short, the severity of the opposition to the existence of the patch is itself a demonstration of why I may have to actually use it.  My project is largely one about resource management, but given the state of the community, I don't know how I can get anyone to actually manage their resources without using a heavy hand.


In other news, I've tested a few versions of cutscene shortening, and I've not found anything I like.  Most of the cutscene time is spent with the main character and/or NPCs walking around and doing other animations, rather than talking.  Removing those motions makes the game a baffling whirlwind of teleportations.  I'll keep thinking about the issue, but for now I have no clear path forward on that front.

I'm getting feedback that the distribution of items is not "nice" enough.  To some degree I think this is players' usual tendencies to call for power creep in every game, but in this case I do think that some improvements are in order.  My current plans are to:

• Mark items that are specific to one character, and remove those items from item sources from beyond the point in the game where that character permanently leaves.
• Increase the "level" of most chests in dungeons, while either leaving stores untouched or reducing them.
• Especially increase the "level" of chests that are trapped or out of the way.
•  Take some items that have a wide level range (stuff like the Gaea hat and elemental arrows that are still potentially useful long after they are current) and make them no longer have as high a "goodness" rating at the upper ranges.