Spell Arrangement

First off let me say this really isn't a big thing, but the OCD side of me freaks out every time I look at my master list of spells...For some reason unknown to any but Altana and Promathia there are some spells that do not follow next in tier below their 'weaker' counterpart. (Look at Reraise1 and Reraise2 for example, I don't know why it does this but it does when you autosort)

WHITE MAGIC
Cure I > II > III > IV > V > VI
Curaga I > II > III > IV
Cura I > II
Raise I > II > III
Regen I > II > III > IV
Refresh I > II
Stat ailment removals (all of them; Single target first then AoE)
Erase > Esuna > Sacrifice
Protect I > II > III > IV > V
Shell I > II > III > IV > V
Protectra I > II > III > IV > V
Shellra I > II > III > IV > V
Blink > Stoneskin > Aquaveil > Haste > Auspice > Animus Augeo > Animus Minuo > Adloquium > Reprisal
Gain- spells
Boost- spell
Barspells (single target then AoE)
En- spells
-storm spells
Reraise I > II > III
Slow > Slow II > Paralyze > Paralyze II > Silence > Repose
Dia I > II > III
Diaga
Banish I > II > III
Banishga I > II
Holy
Teleport- spells
Recall- spells
Invisible > Sneak > Deodorize

BLACK MAGIC
Single target magic spells (like they are listed now)
Firaga I, II, III
Firaja
Blizzaga I, II, III
Blizzaja
Aeroga I, II, III
Aeroja
Stonega I, II, III
Stoneja
Thundaga I, II, III
Thundaja
Ancient Magic spells (as they are in same order and list now)
-helix spells (same order of element as now)
Burn > Frost > Choke > Rasp > Shock > Drown
Drain I, II
Aspir I, II
Absorb- spells
Poison I, II
Poisonga
Bio I, II, III
Stun > Break > Blind > Blind II > Bind > Gravity
Sleep I, II
Sleepga I, II
Dispel
Endark
-spike spells
Klimaform
Tractor
Escape
Warp I, II
Retrace


Ok I know its a long list, and I think I have included all the current magic for White and Black (sorry I don't know of any great orders for blue magic and I think summoning magic and Ninjutsu are pretty cleanly organized already; to my knowledge)

I leave this in closing, asking that, am I the only one here that gets a strange quirk every time I see the odd auto-arrangement of spells? If you feel the same, like this post and comment below. Like I said I know its not a priority fix, but I think it would be quite simple and quick to fix in the same token.

I only react to spaces. Like between teleport-vazhl and the other teleports.

It gets even worse when you get some of the level 76+ spells - they sort wayyyyyyy down the list, below ninjutsu and songs.

The only one that really annoys me, which I always adjust after I autosort my spell list, is moving Monomi from the TOP of the Ninjutsu list to the BOTTOM (you know, putting it next to Tonko... where it should be).

Saw title and thought we were talking about the evil autosort that you click for ONE magic category and it affects ALL your magic instead.

But yes, some of the spell orders confuse me a bit, which is why I manually set them and rage whenever I accidentally autosort them XD

They need to organize BLU magic also.

Just saying.

Yeah, BLU needs a big overhaul too. :s It was good 'til end of ToAU... at Mind Blast it started to go wonky. I liked the original setup: Physical spells by level, then Fire > Ice > Wind > Earth > Thunder > Water > Light > Dark spells by level in that order.

Now it goes Mind Blast after the dark spells then they jump all over the place generally in the order you can get them level-wise now. :s

This is why I organize manualy.

Yeah, seems like any spells after a set point of the game's life now auto-sort oddly regardless of previous sensible conventions. Knowing pretty much every spell in the game and having to do a manual re-sort after a reinstall thanks to my West Saruta files glitching, spending the hour+ it took to arrange everything was just mind-numbing.

I just seems silly that you need to manual sort the list in order to get it in the logical order...that's what the auto-sort should be for! ._.;

Yeah, it's been a problem ever since they started adding new spells to anything. It has to do with how spells are organized by ID, I'm sure. Why SE can't organize them properly in the spell list, I have no idea...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OMEGA_HACK

I just seems silly that you need to manual sort the list in order to get it in the logical order...that's what the auto-sort should be for! ._.;

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It was never logically organized automatically, even back in '03.

same goes for inventory too

ps2 limitations

This just strikes me as a rather small update that they could do that probably wouldn't take more than an hour to do and puzzles me as to why it hasn't been done. They don't need to add any new coding, just re-arrange the lists which shouldn't take more than 10 minutes and then adjust the code for everyone accordingly which would be the only real time consuming part.


Does this even need to be part of a major/minor update? Pretty sure they could just do it in a quick emergency maintenance patch.

Game is in four different languages. How are you going to sort them? Different alphabets... different spellings... different priorities. How should they be sorted? By level? By spelling? By type? Everyone has a different idea about how things should be ordered.

What's your preference?

It really bugged me back then when I saw Vazhl separated from the other teleports; being new I thought I had screwed something up. :/

You should see where they put Enlight. It ends up displayed below even black spells.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Laraul

Game is in four different languages. How are you going to sort them? Different alphabets... different spellings... different priorities. How should they be sorted? By level? By spelling? By type? Everyone has a different idea about how things should be ordered.

What's your preference?

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Start with White Magic, going by element, tiered spells running in sequence. (Cures 1-6, -a(ga)s, Raises, Regens, Refreshes, Prot/Shell(ra)s, then buffs by element)
Then Black Magic, going by element, tiered spells running in sequence. (Buffs, Tier 1-5, AM1-2, -aga 1-3, Ele Debuff, Helix)
Blue magic would be sorted with Physical spells first, then magical by element, order based on level learned.
Songs and Ninjutsu would also work like Black/White magic.
Summoning should probably be avatars first, then spirits.

By default, this likely won't be ideal for everyone, but it'd make things easier to juggle around instead of the default sort looking something like White Magic, Black Magic, Song, Blue Magic, White Magic, Song, Black Magic, Ninjutsu, Song, etc. if you do auto it for whatever reason.

ITT: Newbs who don't know how to autosort their spells.

The game sorts them by type -> element -> tier if you autosort. IE for my bard If I recall correctly the game sorted them Minnes -> Minuets -> Paeons -> Requiems -> Madrigals -> Mambos -> Resist buffs (pastoral etc) -> Marches -> Etude -> Carols -> Threnodies -> Lullabies -> Other weird spells at the bottom like Scherzo, etc.

Threnodies/Carols were then sorted into the elemental wheel. Automatically.

Urat, first off if you read the opening post it says and acknowledges the auto-sort function in the game, it also states (or maybe it was a post later by me, the OP) that I am unaware of the Bard songs and Blue Mage Spells (as I don't have these jobs leveled, so maybe the auto-sort really does it's job in the songs category; idk)

And yes I am sure everyone in this thread knows HOW to auto-sort that wasn't the question at hand, so maybe you aught to skill up those newbie reading/assumption skills.

To conclude, everyone is stating that the auto-sort should do a BETTER job at its sorting. With all the new spells that have been added (and are still going to be added) it would be nice to have stuff like Elemental damage spells all be near eachother (as it is now the -ja spells are below ALL the Black Magic spells). So yeah, we don't need to be schooled on how it works, we all know that, this is a suggestion to FIX how it works, because it's slightly inefficient as it is now.

There's some kind of "slot number" and "groupings" that get's assigned to all items and spells. The question is how hard is it to change these values. The logistics would have to be horrendeous concidering the sheer number of spells and items.

If they are somewhat organized they should have a separate bit of master coding that lists the ID numbers of the spells with the rest of the coding pulling from said master list (assuming there is any organization) which would mean its only a matter of changing the master list ID to make it auto-sort correctly and the rest of the coding shouldn't be effected by the change since it would still be the same spells, just with different IDs. (If that makes sense, it's hard to explain... :s)

WAIT WAIT WAIT

You don't use macros? Please don't tell me you still manually select you're spells from the spell list under magic...

As for the order in which they have been organized, there is a rhyme and a reason to it. They are grouped by the folder they are stored in, which follows by the ID they have been allocated to it within their .dat file.

As a coder, if someone told me to organize that mess by some obscure totally unrelated value in the file I'd tell them to do it themselves, unrelated sorting is a nightmare and would significantly slow down the parse of your window of spells everytime you load it up.

It probably is just a for each loop that loads up every spell from id 1 to whatever that is of the right type.

And yes bards are sorted properly except the few new songs we've gotten, so I don't know if maybe blm is just screwed up, but I have 0 issue with the menu. Then again, I pretty much never use it. Because there's this glorious thing called a macro that SE implemented for us so we don't need to manually select songs from a list of a hundred.

If you're casting spells from your menu, how are you swapping ele staves (and other gear)? Spellcast?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OMEGA_HACK

First off let me say this really isn't a big thing, but the OCD side of me freaks out every time I look at my master list of spells...

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Before I respond to anything you say I would like you to learn how to read please, thanks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OMEGA_HACK

Before I respond to anything you say I would like you to learn how to read please, thanks.

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And you should read half my post that addresses that exact part of your post. Along with towards everyone else going "hurr durr this would only take an hour to code, why no fix?"

The other half addresses a solution to your problem.

You should never have to look at your spell list if you are using macros. Problem solved.