Eternal's Den of Wonders*

[Dark Holy Elf]

Simply put, I'm a mage fanboy. I absolutely hate it when physical classes outshine magical classes- which is what happened in FFT, for the most part.

Yeah, I have to second mc here. I think physical classes are the ones being outshone quite substantially if anything, if we're talking about vanilla PSX North American FFT anyway. I think only ninja and geomancer can actually be argued as outright good classes on the physical side and some would disagree with me on the latter. Knight/Archer/Thief are basically jokes.

EDIT: This board has this running topic of rating PCs on in-game use, and it has done FFT generics. Worth noting, the classes that scored above 5.5/10:

Chemist: 7.80
Priest 5.8
Wizard: 7.48
Time Mage: 6.55
Oracle: 6.78
Summoner: 7.99
Geomancer 5.82
Ninja: 7.41
Calculator 5.78

Obviously these can be quibbled with (I think calc is too low, but it is admittedly weird so I understand why it is where it is... also Oracle > Time Mage jumps out as something I don't agree with) but they still represent the average opinions of a lot of people who are pretty knowledgeable about these things.

[TigerKnee]

Yeah, I don't mean to be rude, but the stuff that people uses to gamebreak in FFT are the magical skillsets like Summon, Draw Out, Math Skill etc... about the only good Physical class is Ninja. Heavy Armor Monk gamebreaks Chapter 1 and then drops off like a rock in usefulness.

Even with Special Characters included (and they mostly suck) just adds Orlandu to the Physical side. Magic side gets Beowulf though so it kind of even outs, and Reis can be either while everyone else is pretty much crap in comparison.

[Grefter]

I told you how mc is the best right?  Because mc is the best.

I remember reading this conversation this morning and wishing I could post from my phone.  I was all excited to chip in with something and now the only thing I can remember wanting to say was this to Eternal.

Don't worry so much about balancing numbers well at this point.  It is easier for you to balance around design choices you make along the way than it is for you to design around a bunch of balance changes you have made up front.

[Eternal248]

-You're right- Draw Out, Summon, and Math Skill were amazing- but their classes, not so much. They all seemed fairly frail and the CT for certain spells was way too high, causing them to be midcharged unless you had Short Charge or the like.

"I told you how mc is the best right?  Because mc is the best.

I remember reading this conversation this morning and wishing I could post from my phone.  I was all excited to chip in with something and now the only thing I can remember wanting to say was this to Eternal.

Don't worry so much about balancing numbers well at this point.  It is easier for you to balance around design choices you make along the way than it is for you to design around a bunch of balance changes you have made up front."

-I'm all about theme; balance and numbers have always came last to me. I would very much like to make it a balanced patch- and I'll do what I can to make it as balanced as possible- but it ultimately isn't my biggest fear right now, to be honest. (If that's what you were getting at.)

[TigerKnee]

-You're right- Draw Out, Summon, and Math Skill were amazing- but their classes, not so much. They all seemed fairly frail and the CT for certain spells was way too high, causing them to be midcharged unless you had Short Charge or the like.

Mmm, I don't agree with this. Black Mage is THE class you go to for any sort of magic-carrier because of its obscene MA multiplier, no question asked. The other carrier is Geomancer, which you can class as "Physical" maybe and that one is debatable amongst a number of people.

Almost all other mage class are at least usable with their own niches, for example Summoner being slow actually being sort of useful due to the CT system and Oracle can stick stuff.

On the other hand, for physical classes....

Monks - Terrible EQ choices and a skillset that's usually overhyped.
Archer - Charge longer than most casters, crappier results.
Knight - Takes decades to accomplish stuff, almost unusable without a ranged weapon like Gun, Heavy Armour sucks in FFT and doesn't really tank as well as you expect.

Really, physical classes for generic takes it up the bum if it wasn't just for one class - Ninja. I probably missed some physical classes which shows just how unremarkable they are.

[Eternal248]

I tried the FF6 hack!

- Terra can't equip the Dagger she has on at the beginning of the game, which seems to be a bug. This means I might never have Scan!
- I like how only the random-ass moogle team has a chance of beating the marshall. This took a lot more tries than it should have since the boss liked to target the only healer in the team with Stop, and unfortunately restarting this battle is a pain.
- Magitek armors. They are too overpowered. Mtek laser is a OHKO to both Terra and Locke and you have no options at this point. Restarting this battle takes ages if you don't savestate (I guess I should) This fight was just pure luck, I won by spamming Noiseblaster and... That's it. I got extremely lucky (For those who don't know, Noiseblaster targets your team too here)

Overall it's definitely fun, but so far there are a few issues. Most enemies have regular scrubby attacks + one giant pain in the ass attack (Blizzard, Marshall's charge, stop, sleep, Mtek laser for example so far) which makes randomness a big factor during battles.
Edit: And it makes some battles take longer than they should. Leafers have 100% sleep and like to use it -> Extremely long but not difficult regular battles.

1) Terra's Dagger has been fixed in the updating I'm working on. Knew about it for a while but kept forgetting to fix it. >_>

2) Each team generally has to work together now to beat all the enemies. Using Locke and Mog to steal and clear out the enemies respectively to prepare the all-NPC Moogle team for Marshal.

3) Magitek Armors have been nerfed in the update I'm working on.

4) Leafer's Leaf Dance has been made evadeable now.

Glad you're enjoying it! Keep up with the updates! ^_^

[metroid composite]

I told you how mc is the best right?  Because mc is the best.

Nah, it's more that I have years of exposure from my job and from attending 7 GDCs.  There are people who kick my ass at game design; I work with some of them--it's awesome.  I love getting my ass kicked.

-Regarding HP Growth/Multipliers... this is admittedly my weakness. I'm really not good at balance. This is further hampered by my indecisiveness about whether to maintain levelling (which I'll address below). For now, my primary concern is making sure skills work- growths/multipliers can be easily tweaked later and will likely be changed a ton anyways during playtesting.

Yeah, not to worry: this is largely a forum of math nerds and literature nerds, so...about half of us could help you there.  The gist of it is as follows: you'll want to adjust the raw starting HP/MP values for humans (because multipliers only go up to 255--which isn't enough; you'll probably want starting HPs more like 100 given your equipment numbers).

However, growth basically multiplies your level 1 stats, so...given classical FFT growths you'd be slamming up against 999 HP at high levels (making equipment that boosts HP kinda useless).  Realistically, you probably want it to, say, start at 100 HP and end at 200 HP (about 100 growth) or a bit more aggressively, start at 100 HP and end at 300 HP (about 50 growth).  Or alternatively, have the starting HP be 150 and go to 300 (about 100 growth).  This is about the range where both the HP boost from equipment, and the HP multiplier on the class play a noticeable role.  Obviously equipment will matter a bit more at lower levels, and class will matter a bit more at upper levels given these kinds of numbers, but neither one dwarfs the other in this range.

As far as choice paralysis is concerned, you absolutely hit the nail on the head. That is my single biggest fear right now is that people will patch the ISO, boot it up, beat Orbonne, look at all the new jobs, skills, and items, go @_@ and never pick it up again. I'm really not sure what to do in that regard, other than put a HUGE disclaimer beforehand about trying out all the new skills and such.

Well...hmm.  Here's a radical concept that I've considered in the past:

Consider having less than 20 classes.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1839/too_many_clicks_unitbased_.php?page=2

Generally humans can hold 6-8 things in their mind simultaneously, though for games this gets reduced to 5-7 for games because one of the multitasking items is just using the controller--reading the UI, interfacing with the game.

I don't think it's a coincidence, then, that WoW has exactly 7 classes to choose from at the start of the game (and, what, 5 races per faction?)  Furthermore, what's one of the most fun things to do in FFT challenges like SCCs?  Choosing what hat to equip, and choosing what robe to equip.  In the case of both hats and robes, there's...4-5 good ones that you'll be choosing between at most, and different ones are good in different fights.

Now, I'm not saying "you must have exactly 7 classes and 7 hats and...".  But, you might find that some of your classes are basically filling the same role (for instance...glancing through your spreadsheet, a bunch of your mages have pretty much the same three spells just with different elements, and then a mixture of three statuses).  You could probably combine some of these into one class, and end up with, say,12 classes that all have very distinct gameplay roles, instead of 20 classes, some of which are very similar.

Mmm, I don't agree with this. Black Mage is THE class you go to for any sort of magic-carrier because of its obscene MA multiplier, no question asked. The other carrier is Geomancer, which you can class as "Physical" maybe and that one is debatable amongst a number of people.

The physical carrier in Vanilla is Ninja, not Geo.  Quite a bit more PA multiplier than Geo (according to the FFT Patcher they actually have 122 PA mult, not the 120 the BMG claims--so even more of a gap above Geo).  120 speed mult, better attack and movement than geo.  Granted, there's only like...two physical skillsets to even be carried in vanilla (Jump and Punch Art), but Ninjas are also used as a speed carrier; best user of skills like Item and Talk Skill and such, and the status-based Mathskills.  (Although honestly, the biggest reason to run a Ninja is nothing to do with carriers, and everything to do with "I want to guarantee that I don't lose to Roof of Riovanes")

Geo has a carrier role in vanilla, but as a shield carrier; if you're up against Balk (either fight) where elemental shields are the best thing ever, then MAU Geo is marginally better than Equip Shield Wizard, and there's no equivalent for Short Charge Geo.  The other place Geo's good is Agrias--Geos equip swords and they're better than her base class.

EDIT:

They all seemed fairly frail and the CT for certain spells was way too high, causing them to be midcharged unless you had Short Charge or the like.

It's all about CT planning.  You can land Meteor, the slowest spell in the game, without Short Charge up through Chapter 3.  (In chapter 4 enemy speeds start to spread out, so you can't coordinate as effectively).

The place where spells really break down is level 99.  And...well, one solution to that would be to make speed growth slower.  If speed growths were typically 200 rather than 100, you'd have most classes capping out at 8 or 9 speed.  It will also help if Thief Hat is not the default highest-level hat that all level 99 humans wear.

[TigerKnee]

The physical carrier in Vanilla is Ninja, not Geo.

Yeah, I didn't quite make myself clear. I was basically saying the only other competitor for carrying Magic-based skillsets is Geo, although some people might consider it a member of the "Physical" classes. Basically the argument was that caster classes didn't serve their purpose well, but in my experience, they serve their roles MUCH better than the physical classes that I mentioned (Knight/Archer/Monk)

Heck, come to think of it, I think we can add Samurai to the list of "Physical classes that doesn't do their jobs properly" for the bone-headed move of having a MA-based skillset on a class with terrible MA multipliers. Casters really have the better skillset and class unless you want to bring in Orlandu or something.

[metroid composite]

Casters really have the better skillset and class unless you want to bring in Orlandu or something.

Even with Orlandu, almost every magic skillset has more versatility than All-Swordskill.  Granted, no: Black Magic doesn't, but even Summon has stuff like Golem, and the number of versatility moves in Yin-Yang, Time, and White is...actually pretty ridiculous; like more than half of the powerful effects in the game are largely restricted to those three skillsets (and Mathskill).

Most of the rest of the game is just...damage, or unique but very weak effects (like Battle Skill).  Orlandu's got power, and some versatility, but even if Holy Swordsman was a generic class replacing Knight, sure, it might replace your damage dealers (although mages probably outclass until chapter 3) but I'd still expect quite a bit of mage use for Haste/Protect/Shell/Raise/Faith/Quick, and maybe still Demi/Life Drain on bosses.

[Eternal248]

Casters really have the better skillset and class unless you want to bring in Orlandu or something.

Even with Orlandu, almost every magic skillset has more versatility than All-Swordskill.  Granted, no: Black Magic doesn't, but even Summon has stuff like Golem, and the number of versatility moves in Yin-Yang, Time, and White is...actually pretty ridiculous; like more than half of the powerful effects in the game are largely restricted to those three skillsets (and Mathskill).

Most of the rest of the game is just...damage, or unique but very weak effects (like Battle Skill).  Orlandu's got power, and some versatility, but even if Holy Swordsman was a generic class replacing Knight, sure, it might replace your damage dealers (although mages probably outclass until chapter 3) but I'd still expect quite a bit of mage use for Haste/Protect/Shell/Raise/Faith/Quick, and maybe still Demi/Life Drain on bosses.

I would argue that the versatility provided by All-Swordskill is more useful than the versatility provided by magic. Being able to damage an enemy and break their gear, or drain a ton of HP/MP, or hell- even the statuses provided by All-Swordskill- are more useful than almost anything magic can do. This is admittedly in part due to the gear Orlandu has, but I'd say he's not less versatile than most of the mages (with the exception of the Calculator). Just my two cents.

[Meeplelard]

The thing that makes Orlandu SEEM better than he actually is goes back to the whole "insurance policy" thing he is.  He's always got this minimal level of worth due to high stats, strong skillset and coming equipped with Excalibur and a Bracer out of the box.  For most less-experienced players, he really stands out as being this omnipotent god of sorts, and tends to rule the late game in comparison.

For a more experienced player?  Yeah, he doesn't seem quite as dominating anymore; not bad, sure, but many will acknowledge he can be outdone by well built up characters.  He's kind of like FE10's Laguz Royals, except that FE10 is a game where "Stats mean everything" in a sense, so they ARE actually as good as they appear to be, where as Orlandu, he's only as good as your team is bad, if that makes sense. 

He kind of reminds me of people who claim "Sabin = Overpowered!" in FF6, cause to be fair, Blitz IS a strong damage skillset which insures Sabin's damage always hits above a certain threshold regardless of what kind of work put into him (well, that and a few areas are rather weighted in his favor.  The entire early WoR has a lot of Fire weak enemies, so if Celes doesn't know Fire 2, Sabin will REALLY stand out as some sort of offensive god there); anyone who actually takes time to look at damage numbers, recognize the truth of the scenario, and bothers to use the Esper System starts to notice Sabin, while not necessarily BAD, is not this "Overpowered Death God" some make him out to be.

Granted, Sabin's around for a good portion of the game while Orlandu is a late game person only, so its kind of a different scenarios, as Sabin's doing well the entire game = people use him the entire game = other characters don't get their chance to shine = HE'S OVERPOWERED!  Orlandu, its your team is struggling -> Orlandu joins -> Oh look, he just did MUCH MORE DAMAGE than anyone else in my team -> Maps get easier -> ORLANDU IS BROK'D!
Does everyone have this experience?  Of course not, but it happens enough that its understandable why that happens.

[metroid composite]

Casters really have the better skillset and class unless you want to bring in Orlandu or something.

Even with Orlandu, almost every magic skillset has more versatility than All-Swordskill.  Granted, no: Black Magic doesn't, but even Summon has stuff like Golem, and the number of versatility moves in Yin-Yang, Time, and White is...actually pretty ridiculous; like more than half of the powerful effects in the game are largely restricted to those three skillsets (and Mathskill).

Most of the rest of the game is just...damage, or unique but very weak effects (like Battle Skill).  Orlandu's got power, and some versatility, but even if Holy Swordsman was a generic class replacing Knight, sure, it might replace your damage dealers (although mages probably outclass until chapter 3) but I'd still expect quite a bit of mage use for Haste/Protect/Shell/Raise/Faith/Quick, and maybe still Demi/Life Drain on bosses.

I would argue that the versatility provided by All-Swordskill is more useful than the versatility provided by magic. Being able to damage an enemy and break their gear, or drain a ton of HP/MP, or hell- even the statuses provided by All-Swordskill- are more useful than almost anything magic can do. This is admittedly in part due to the gear Orlandu has, but I'd say he's not less versatile than most of the mages (with the exception of the Calculator). Just my two cents.

Thing is?  Dead is dead.  If you know how to use mages in FFT, you should be able to OHKO two to four people in one spell, at least early on; Same with Orlandu late in the game...at which point any equipment breaking and statuses you might do is pretty irrelevant.  Healing HP/MP is All Swordskill's big point of versatility, yes...but it's also only able to heal HP/MP to the user--can't heal or revive a teammate (and even Summon Magic, the second least versatile magic set, can heal teammates).  And the point about good versatility is that there's always a niche for it--if you have four Holy Swordsmen in your party in Chapter 1, you're crazy not to pick up Haste, for example.  Maybe it's a Holy Swordsman with Time Magic secondary, but Haste is such a good buff that you shouldn't skip it.

[Grefter]

I told you how mc is the best right?  Because mc is the best.

Nah, it's more that I have years of exposure from my job and from attending 7 GDCs.  There are people who kick my ass at game design; I work with some of them--it's awesome.  I love getting my ass kicked.

You still have no idea just how much fun you are. >_>  Also holy shit it has been like 7 years now?  Time flies.  I forget how long you have been in the industry for.  Now I feel old and unfulfilled again.

Well...hmm.  Here's a radical concept that I've considered in the past:

Consider having less than 20 classes.
...
I don't think it's a coincidence, then, that WoW has exactly 7 classes to choose from at the start of the game (and, what, 5 races per faction?)  Furthermore, what's one of the most fun things to do in FFT challenges like SCCs?  Choosing what hat to equip, and choosing what robe to equip.  In the case of both hats and robes, there's...4-5 good ones that you'll be choosing between at most, and different ones are good in different fights.

Definitely not a coincidence, it really helps to be able to gauge what a class or player is likely to do at a given time based on their class in both PVE and PVP with group make up and combat in WoW.  Not only that but there has been recent discussions about the number of spells in the game and abilities that are used in core rotations and whatnot.  They have said they thing the rough floating point for number of skills you should have to use at high frequency is 4.  Now given that the magic number for short term memory is 7 that seems low so people bitch and moan about making the game easy mode for casuals, but that is ignoring stuff like movement, keeping an eye for boss abilities, using situational abilities that are good for that fight (dispels, interrupts, or just straight up obscure technical play) and where your allies are given how massive a component of WoW PVE you and where you are in relation to other players is for so many encounters.

Then of course we have the much better poster child for good design tm.  TF2 floats at the top end of the scale at 9, but given versatile roles and map types you aren't likely to run into all 9 at once.  You have to only juggle a certain amount of data at a given time and it does make for a fairly quick learning curve for a game that seems like it should be much harder to handle than TF2 is (ie see how much of a pain in the arse it was to learn all those same 9 classes in TFC!).  It is all of course magnified by how much Valve put into making everything so iconinc.

Also see all that talk about FFT?  The best.

[Fenrir]

Banon > Lete River

1) Terra's Dagger has been fixed in the updating I'm working on. Knew about it for a while but kept forgetting to fix it. >_>

2) Each team generally has to work together now to beat all the enemies. Using Locke and Mog to steal and clear out the enemies respectively to prepare the all-NPC Moogle team for Marshal.

3) Magitek Armors have been nerfed in the update I'm working on.

4) Leafer's Leaf Dance has been made evadeable now.

Glad you're enjoying it! Keep up with the updates! ^_^

Kohl mountains, Tunnel Armor, South Figaro and Doma Castle were all great. Edgars is OP, but that's to be expected.
The phantom train is annoying though. I don't think it was a good idea to make a place with no reliable healing source much more difficult. Bombs can easily OHKO for example, same thing with other monsters and Drain, and you can't buy phoenix downs. The only way to heal that is to buy sleeping bags from a friendly ghost (but you need to find it), then find a save point.
It gets better once you get to the restaurant though. I really liked the phantom train boss. (seems impossible, until you notice monsters drop phoenix downs / hi potions like crazy)

I've noticed this playthrough that this game's plot is really random and inconsistent. I just took it for granted before, as it was one of my first RPGs.
- Moogles ex machina out of nowhere to help you
- Random martial arts rivalry plot that gets resolved immediately
- Random phantom train that leads souls to death
- Giant talking octopus out of nowhere
- Sabin leaves the party because he does an insane suplex jump to that octopus
- For some reason Locke is so awesome he can guess a password without any hints
- Bad guy is a clown
- Random girl can suddendly be an opera singer. The tricky part is remembering the lyrics
- Opera out of nowhere, for that matter
- Dude attacks people with dices and slot machines
- Dude watches everyone he knows and loves, including his wife and his son, die before his eyes, then becomes comic relief 3 minutes later

[metroid composite]

Also holy shit it has been like 7 years now?  Time flies.  I forget how long you have been in the industry for.  Now I feel old and unfulfilled again.

6 years, just...my first GDC was like two weeks after I started.  And don't worry about feeling old and unfulfilled; I get that too, but probably for different stuff than you.

Definitely not a coincidence, it really helps to be able to gauge what a class or player is likely to do at a given time based on their class in both PVE and PVP with group make up and combat in WoW.  Not only that but there has been recent discussions about the number of spells in the game and abilities that are used in core rotations and whatnot.  They have said they thing the rough floating point for number of skills you should have to use at high frequency is 4.  Now given that the magic number for short term memory is 7 that seems low so people bitch and moan about making the game easy mode for casuals, but that is ignoring stuff like movement, keeping an eye for boss abilities, using situational abilities that are good for that fight (dispels, interrupts, or just straight up obscure technical play) and where your allies are given how massive a component of WoW PVE you and where you are in relation to other players is for so many encounters.

Then of course we have the much better poster child for good design tm.  TF2 floats at the top end of the scale at 9, but given versatile roles and map types you aren't likely to run into all 9 at once.  You have to only juggle a certain amount of data at a given time and it does make for a fairly quick learning curve for a game that seems like it should be much harder to handle than TF2 is (ie see how much of a pain in the arse it was to learn all those same 9 classes in TFC!).  It is all of course magnified by how much Valve put into making everything so iconinc.

Starcraft 2 (arguably well-designed) takes things way above 7.

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Zerg_Unit_Statistics

There's...20 things here.  The thing the game does is mentally group them.  Larva, Queens, Drones, and Overlords fall into the "macro" mental category.  Mutalisks, Brood Lords, and Corruptors are "air force".  Roach, Hydra, Zergling, Baneling, Ultralisk are ground army.  Spore and Spine crawlers are static defence.  Infestors, Overseers, and Queens are spellcasters.  Creep Tumors and Nydus Worms and Overlords are transportation.  In short, about six super mental categories, and then about 3-5 items in each mental category.

They also use a fair bit of mental trickery--there's only nine units you can build in the standard way.  But then there are five more units that another unit can morph into, and about five more that are constructed in unorthodox ways like casting spells or selecting a specific building.


And it should be noted, an experienced FFT player does something similar.  There's a mental split between carrier classes, skillset classes, and classes used for RSM pickup.  Furthermore, when constructing any one character, an experienced FFT player will mentally exclude about 10 classes this character is unlikely to ever use.  Granted, all this comes with experience--the same way a Chess player starts mentally grouping pieces together; this doesn't help the newbie.  (The job unlock sequence does help for newbies, mind you).

So yes: there are ways and tricks to get above 7, but 20 is definitely pushing the upper limit.

Notably, 20 tends to brush against some gameplay-role limit as well, where, in most gameplay systems, it's hard to have 20 unique roles; Blizzard gave a talk at GDC where they pretty much admitted "yeah, we don't know what we're going to do for Heart of the Swarm, because people will be expecting a new unit, and...there isn't really space for new units with unique gameplay roles, unless we obsolete existing units."  We definitely slammed up against that problem in LFT, too, where a few classes just ended up...similar with small differences; I'm not even talking about the obvious ones like Thief/Ninja here.  Bard/Ninja, for instance, both ended up near the top of the speed curve, with excellent physical attacks, low durability, and stats that don't make them especially attractive as a carrier.  (And sure, part of that is because we deliberately tried to stay close to the original FFT; you could probably squeeze out more unique roles than LFT did, but there's an upper limit before you start getting overlap).

[DjinnAndTonic]

I've noticed this playthrough that this game's plot is really random and inconsistent. I just took it for granted before, as it was one of my first RPGs.
- Moogles ex machina out of nowhere to help you
- Random martial arts rivalry plot that gets resolved immediately
- Random phantom train that leads souls to death
- Giant talking octopus out of nowhere
- Sabin leaves the party because he does an insane suplex jump to that octopus
- For some reason Locke is so awesome he can guess a password without any hints
- Bad guy is a clown
- Random girl can suddendly be an opera singer. The tricky part is remembering the lyrics
- Opera out of nowhere, for that matter
- Dude attacks people with dices and slot machines
- Dude watches everyone he knows and loves, including his wife and his son, die before his eyes, then becomes comic relief 3 minutes later

You say "inconsistent and random", I say "brilliant use of dream logic and comedic timing"

I may, of course, be a tad bit biased.

[Eternal248]

Whoa, holy hell, for some reason I didn't get an e-mail regarding all of these replies! Sorry about that.

I'll address all your points in a bit. (Food time!)

[metroid composite]

Whoa, holy hell, for some reason I didn't get an e-mail regarding all of these replies! Sorry about that.

I'll address all your points in a bit. (Food time!)

Hm, maybe the forum reset email preferences for this topic when I spun the welcome posts into their own topic?

[Meeplelard]

I wouldn't say FF6 is inconsistent, but rather, more just bi-polar.  If you look at where this comedic stuff happens, its often right after some heavy handed stuff was dealt with, in a sense.

The Opera House is a big example to me.  FF6 just went into some depth with Espers, we learn Magicite is their remains and they're dying, that the Empire has imprisoned them, etc.  We also Terra's in this state where she's downright afraid of herself, and we learn we have to sneak the enemy strong hold to save these Espers, and potentially Terra.  This is all some serious stuff (or at least, relative to its era, it was)...

So what's FF6 do?  Lighten the mood with a completely absurd scenario in the Opera House.  The very nature of the Opera House was not meant to be taken seriously at all; that's why they can get away with stuff like "Celes learns the entire score in a single day!"   The sequence was meant to be a comedic interlude between the "deep" plot stuff and the actual going into enemy territory, to give you a breather from the plot and let the developers and writers just have some fun.  The entire sequence is absurd and very clearly meant to be comical, between the absurd scenario, dialog, etc. 

...and yet, people take the Opera as a moment of FF6 for HIGH CLASS DRAMA, which is just grating.  Ok, the scene is stylish (mostly for its unique merits), but stylish does not make drama, it jsut makes it "cool and memorable."  The scene is not an integral part of FF6, and the Opera itself does little for the characters in question.  It was clearly a humor toned sequence overall, but no wait, THE OPERA ITSELF IS SUPER SERIOUS THEREFOR THE SEQUENCE IS SERIOUS!
...uh, ok, so I guess FF9's early game Shakespeare Knock Off section must be entirely serious too cause I Want To Be Your Canary is a serious play; nevermind all the ridiculous stuff going on the side, including Steiner's poor acting, THE PLAY IS SERIOUS THEREFOR THE SEQUENCE IS!


...yeah, I just want to punch FF6 Opera Fanboys often, since they completely miss the point of that sequence

[metroid composite]

...and yet, people take the Opera as a moment of FF6 for HIGH CLASS DRAMA, which is just grating.  Ok, the scene is stylish (mostly for its unique merits), but stylish does not make drama, it jsut makes it "cool and memorable."  The scene is not an integral part of FF6, and the Opera itself does little for the characters in question.  It was clearly a humor toned sequence overall, but no wait, THE OPERA ITSELF IS SUPER SERIOUS THEREFOR THE SEQUENCE IS SERIOUS!
...uh, ok, so I guess FF9's early game Shakespeare Knock Off section must be entirely serious too cause I Want To Be Your Canary is a serious play; nevermind all the ridiculous stuff going on the side, including Steiner's poor acting, THE PLAY IS SERIOUS THEREFOR THE SEQUENCE IS!

http://www.ludix.com/moriarty/images/minigame.gif