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I just beat all the dark aeons/penance, you really don't need to grind blitzball if you don't want to. I used rikku/tidas/yuna for all the fights and I totally overdid it on the stat maxing part. Maxing out str/def/mdef helps a ton and is easy, but maxing luck is the worst. I got it to 200 and then said gently caress it, and just killed all the dark aeons/penance with ease. I really don't think you need that high of luck, maybe like 100-150 and then a combination of evasion/accuracy(which are easier to grind than luck spheres). I also made ribbon/break hp limit/autoprotect/autohaste for 3 characters and I think that was excessive too, considering how easy all the bosses were. Penance was also pretty boring as far as super bosses go, just kill the arms over and over and over again and zzzz he dies.
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Mar 25, 2013 19:18
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Stupid Dimensions question: Does your character order affect enemy targeting distribution, like it did in FFI? At the game outset I got the impression that it might, but now I'm sick of switching whoever is tanking to the front of the party.
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Mar 25, 2013 19:21
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Slider posted:I really don't think you need that high of luck, maybe like 100-150 and then a combination of evasion/accuracy(which are easier to grind than luck spheres). With high enough luck (around 220), you can have 0 Accuracy and Evasion and still hit every time and dodge most things. Luck does the job of both of them combined, only it effectively does it better because of the way the hit rate is calculated. Having 150 luck and a high evasion/accuracy means you'll still get hit more than you think you should, and miss about a quarter of the time too.
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Mar 25, 2013 19:28
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So I finally ground out the AP needed for Phantom Rush in FF Dimensions and popped it on the next boss I found. Sweet loving christ. 
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Mar 26, 2013 06:25
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Kyrosiris posted:So I finally ground out the AP needed for Phantom Rush in FF Dimensions and popped it on the next boss I found. Now try out Spreadshot and realize leveling Dancer was for naught if you didn't mind lugging !Aim around on your Ninja. 
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Mar 26, 2013 08:35
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Shaezerus posted:Now try out Spreadshot and realize leveling Dancer was for naught if you didn't mind lugging !Aim around on your Ninja. Said ninja is lugging around !Dark Blade for Last Resort. Last Resort + Phantom Rush is... obscene. All I can say is that it's obscene.
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Mar 26, 2013 09:34
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Shaezerus posted:Now try out Spreadshot and realize leveling Dancer was for naught if you didn't mind lugging !Aim around on your Ninja. Those two slots are worth way more. Now you can have a Warrior with Dual Wield, Backliner, and STR+20% and still have your massive damage ability.
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Mar 26, 2013 13:23
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Stop it guys you're going to make me buy FF:Dimensions when FF5 might be coming to iOS this week :I I like Job Systems
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Mar 26, 2013 13:26
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They should do a streamlined re-release of Vagrant Story for portables.
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Mar 26, 2013 13:30
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So it seems Square published another really bad fiscal year: http://www.hd.square-enix.com/130326.pdf This has apparently made Wada resign: http://www.4gamer.net/games/999/G999905/20130326067/ http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/20130326_02en.pdf Pretty bad news, especially when they mention that their big console games sold poorly in the west. I actually thought Deus Ex, Tomb Raider, and Sleeping Dogs sold more here than in Japan. No idea what this means for Final Fantasy.
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Mar 26, 2013 14:32
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Dross posted:Those two slots are worth way more. Now you can have a Warrior with Dual Wield, Backliner, and STR+20% and still have your massive damage ability. A Ninja with Backliner and SPD+10% is going to be doing more damage even with Phantom Rush instead of Spreadshot versus a Warrior with that setup - certainly not per Rush, but the enormous Speed difference is going to win the long haul almost immediately.
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Mar 26, 2013 14:40
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Shaezerus posted:A Ninja with Backliner and SPD+10% is going to be doing more damage even with Phantom Rush instead of Spreadshot versus a Warrior with that setup - certainly not per Rush, but the enormous Speed difference is going to win the long haul almost immediately. If you can win before you run out of MP, since PR costs 34 which is massive for a physical class so I've always found damage-per-mana efficiency to be useful, not to mention the ability to wear better armor. It's a tradeoff that is mostly dependent on preferred playstyle, sure. I don't like spending turns renewing MP or healing if I can help it. Dross fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 14:44
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Alchemist really renders any MP conservation points moot, especially if it's on a secondary damage dealer. One turn for 300 MP (double Dry Ethers) is pretty amazing.
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Mar 26, 2013 14:48
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Kyrosiris posted:Alchemist really renders any MP conservation points moot, especially if it's on a secondary damage dealer. One turn for 300 MP (double Dry Ethers) is pretty amazing. The limiting factor is a physical damage dealer's max MP. I will admit that I never tried Alchemy, does it let you use the two Dry Ethers on two different characters? Doublecast lets you do whatever so I assume it would. Still, again, that's using slots for something you don't have to use slots for. The opportunity cost is usually not worth it to me. If I did use Alchemy, I'd put it on my Magus. Dross fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 14:49
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Cardboard Fox posted:This has apparently made Wada resign: Good. Screw him for ruining what once was my favourite videogame company. 
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Mar 26, 2013 14:50
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Dross posted:The limiting factor is a physical damage dealer's max MP. My ninjas in early postgame nearly have 300 MP. MP growth on Ninjas is not that bad.
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Mar 26, 2013 14:51
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Dross posted:If you can win before you run out of MP, since PR costs 34 which is massive for a physical class so I've always found damage-per-mana efficiency to be useful, not to mention the ability to wear better armor. Well if it's MP efficiency you're looking for, Spreadshot costs 19, and with Dual Wield deals about 30-50% more damage than Phantom Rush.  Ninja also has more than twice as much MP as Warrior.
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Mar 26, 2013 14:57
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Cardboard Fox posted:So it seems Square published another really bad fiscal year: How the gently caress do you miss a sales target by 3% and then your return on sales drops from 2% to -9%? That's not "primarily due to slow sales of major console game titles in North American and European markets" at all. I'd like to see a breakdown of this because it makes no sense Edit: Their new president was formerly their CFO and president of SE Finance before that, I'm 90% sure this is mismanagement of funds. THE AWESOME GHOST fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 15:00
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Spreadshot costs 19 and two ability slots. And isn't aimable in the instances when you need it. Re: S-E sales in NA markets, I know Hitman Absolution was not received nearly as well as they'd hoped and had some game breaking bugs in the console versions. Also, I don't know how FFVII PC 1.1 sold but come on you guys the game is 16 years old and really looks it. Sleeping Dogs was my single player GOTY though, and that's saying a lot in a year that includes XCOM. Maybe if they focused less on porting the awful FF3 remake to every device in existence and making lovely freemium smartphone games, and actually developed a good RPG for Western release, like we all want, they'd do okay. Dross fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 15:00
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Dross posted:Spreadshot costs 19 and two ability slots. And isn't aimable in the instances when you need it. The problem is not handhelds at all, if anything that's where they always consistently see some profit.
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Mar 26, 2013 17:23
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I think the JRPG as we know it, which was always S-E's development side's bread and butter, has had a difficult time evolving to latter-day hardware. Every console generation has brought with it massive changes in possibility, from the gigantically long quests and amount of dialogue of the SNES games, to the FMVs and prerendered backgrounds of the PSX, to the voice acting and living worlds of the PS2. Now we have all of those possibilities and the genre seems to be having trouble finding a new direction. S-E as a publisher/marketer seems to need a better understanding of what is fun. Sleeping Dogs was one of the best games I've played in a long time, its character development and voice acting were actually good and the gameplay was a simplified mishmash of several other games that I also loved) but I didn't know it existed until months after its release. Meanwhile, Absolution got a ton of hype and, by most accounts, was very mediocre.
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Mar 26, 2013 17:40
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Dross posted:Maybe if they focused less on porting the awful FF3 remake to every device in existence and making lovely freemium smartphone games, and actually developed a good RPG for Western release, like we all want, they'd do okay. If anything, this is a sign that SE is going to get farther away from consoles. http://www.joystiq.com/2013/03/26/square-enix-weak-sales-tomb-raider-hitman-absolution/ The "weak sales" they're complaining about include games that sold millions of copies in a couple weeks (e.g. Tomb Raider). Either SE is looking for a scapegoat for their horrible financial situation and have chosen consoles and the Western market for that auspicious honor, or they have horribly unrealistic sales expectations for their games. This restructuring seems to be focused internally on SE itself (which has had a laughable decade, honestly), while they're heaping the blame on Eidos and other development houses that actually consistently put out decent games- seems a bit suspicious. I'm hoping that the restructuring will result in games getting to market in less than a decade, and continued support for consoles. But I'm afraid this will be a sign of SE retreating to phones and portables more and more as they start pushing Flash games they threw together in a week and charging $30 for them.
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Mar 26, 2013 17:55
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Considering FF13 sold something like eight million copies, and 13-2 over 3mil, i doubt it's a problem of FF13. I guess it's the small fact that they had to throw out FF XIV and make another game from scratch to replace it, free of charge? Meanwhile, sleeping dogs sold just 1.5m, and Tomb Raider around 3.5m. ... I guess it's FF XIV. Everything else seems pretty successful.
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Mar 26, 2013 17:56
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Dross posted:I think the JRPG as we know it, which was always S-E's development side's bread and butter, has had a difficult time evolving to latter-day hardware. Every console generation has brought with it massive changes in possibility, from the gigantically long quests and amount of dialogue of the SNES games, to the FMVs and prerendered backgrounds of the PSX, to the voice acting and living worlds of the PS2. Now we have all of those possibilities and the genre seems to be having trouble finding a new direction. There is also the problem of other genres taking cues from the RPG model. I feel you have about a 50/50 chance of picking up a game that includes some sort of level up mechanic, drops and rare drops, abilities or magic with elemental attributes (complete with strengths and weaknesses), quests/missions, and world building. You no longer need to go to the RPG genre for an epic story where your character develops new skills and abilities, interacts with other characters in the world, and has, well, pretty visuals and music. Plus, let us not forget about MMORPGS. Instead of putting up with massive initial development costs, creating a massive world with unique characters, voices, locations, weapons, etc. that is only used once, publishers would prefer a system of on-going subscription fees (sometimes supplemented by a one-time upfront cost), in-game purchases, and content updates that smaller development teams can work on (and charge upon its completion). Aureon posted:Considering FF13 sold something like eight million copies, and 13-2 over 3mil, i doubt it's a problem of FF13. But how much did FF13 COST to develop, and how long did it take? Making relatively small profit off of something that took resources from other projects over a 5 year period is unacceptable. Prowler fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 18:03
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Didn't SE state not long ago that they'd be moving away from mobile and social games to focus in "true" games?
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Mar 26, 2013 18:04
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Veks posted:Didn't SE state not long ago that they'd be moving away from mobile and social games to focus in "true" games? No, they said they would be moving away from "cash grab" mobile games requiring a million microtransactions to unlock the content, often with a random chance of unlocking things. These "games" are more in the style of collecting baseball cards and are not designed to be fun. They claim they're going to focus on mobile games that are actually designed to be games and fun to play.
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Mar 26, 2013 18:24
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THE AWESOME GHOST posted:How the gently caress do you miss a sales target by 3% and then your return on sales drops from 2% to -9%? That's not "primarily due to slow sales of major console game titles in North American and European markets" at all. I'd like to see a breakdown of this because it makes no sense Square is a publicly traded company so all their financials are completely transparent. Sales are only one factor in "return on sales" - there are also fixed & operating costs to consider, so it is quite common for a restatement to yield different deltas to the "sales" and "return on sales" line items. In the statements you're quoting - you can see that sales have decreased by 5M yen, but they've adjusted their operating income downward by 13.5M! You're right that it's not "primarily due to slow sales of major console game titles in North American and European markets". In those FS you're quoting, Item #2 "extraordinary loss" indicates restructuring costs being the primary driver behind the losses, not market conditions (which taken in isolation would only yield a 3% difference from forecasts). quote:In view of the rapidly changing environment of the game businesses, the Company has decided to implement major reforms and restructuring in its development policy, organizational structure, some business models, and others. The Company expects to incur loss of approximately ¥10 billion from such restructuring efforts to be recognized as extraordinary loss about loss from restructuring in the settlement of the account for its fiscal year ending March 31, 2013 So it wasn't unrealistic sales targets yielding bad results, but an unexpected group restructuring that wasn't in the company's forecasts to begin with. I'm pretty lazy but I'm sure that a further breakdown of each of the restructuring costs is publicly available somewhere.
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Mar 26, 2013 18:38
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Prowler posted:But how much did FF13 COST to develop, and how long did it take? Making relatively small profit off of something that took resources from other projects over a 5 year period is unacceptable. 8m copies means at the very least 300m of gross.
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Mar 26, 2013 18:39
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SE made their first mistake the moment they merged with Enix. Their second mistake was when they stopped making quirky japanese rpg's for consoles, you know, the product that differentiated them from other companies and what people in the west liked about them. Their third mistake was buying Eidos when they weren't even doing so hot themselves. Until they fix all of this, I don't see their situation improving any time soon.
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Mar 26, 2013 19:31
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Square's first mistake was making Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
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Mar 26, 2013 19:44
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Krad posted:SE made their first mistake the moment they merged with Enix. Hey, this led to Dragon Quest VIII and IX existing and being awesome. This is perfectly okay. 
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Mar 26, 2013 19:47
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Krad posted:SE made their first mistake the moment they merged with Enix. Without the merger, there almost certainly wouldn't be a Square around anymore.
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Mar 26, 2013 19:57
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Krad posted:SE made their first mistake the moment they merged with Enix. All the people that made those quirky games left before the merge (and not because of it, either). Those ideas left with those people.
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Mar 26, 2013 20:03
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I think a thing people don't talk about much is that JRPGs used to be THE graphics genre. In the SNES days and the PSX days there were barely any games that rivaled the graphics of the latest greatest JRPG. I don't think anyone wants to think of themselves as a graphics whore but I always have felt that is secretly part of the decline of JRPGs. Chrono Trigger is a good game because it's a good game, but I can't say part of it's lasting charm isn't that it's in the top 5 for best graphics the SNES ever produced and the art of THE biggest Japanese videogame artist ever. I think JRPGs don't compete as well when they aren't blowing your eyes out with the graphics. And that seems like a thing they might not be able to recapture, ever. Gameplay matters but graphics matter too, even in the core audience and for a long time Graphics was one of JRPGs dominating unquestionable strength.
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Mar 26, 2013 20:06
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Krad posted:SE made their first mistake the moment they merged with Square. Fixed that for you. Enix had always been, up until that point, a successful company, with a big flagship (Dragon Quest, just the biggest game ever in Japan until Monster Hunter) and a lot of niche support. Then they scooped up their longtime rival Squaresoft from their disastrous expansion attempts since until just right around that point Square had much greater worldwide appeal and Enix so really wanted to finally make a stab at being a worldwide mainstream, and the Square name has just kinda become an albatross around their necks since with Final Fantasy XII, XIII, and ESPECIALLY XIV being hampered with massive delays and extremely high budgets, and a lot of Square's own niche franchises taking wrong turns or just being put on the shelf to die. Meenwhile, Dragon Quest has finally made it to being a household name in places not-Japan, the Dragon Quest MMO is doing decently well in Japan (unlike a game which had to be remade from the ground up) and the addition of Eidos has done nothing but revitalize the company since many of it's current hits like the Tomb Raider games, Sleeping Dogs, and Hitman have been giving them the money they weren't getting from the Square branch of things. It's easy to see where the trouble in the merger is coming from, and I wouldn't blame it on Enix. Or Eidos.
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Mar 26, 2013 20:11
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:graphics Even now, Xenoblade, widely considered one of the best JRPGs of its generation, was a graphical minor miracle on the Wii. A huge, detailed, mostly seamless world with well-designed and executed monsters, vibrant use of color, and visibly distinct characters is an accomplishment for any game, but to have done so in 480p on an underpowered console with the game still looking great is incredible. Not to mention the emulated, upscaled Xenoblade screenshots in the Dolphin thread.
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Mar 26, 2013 20:45
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Dross posted:I think the JRPG as we know it, which was always S-E's development side's bread and butter, has had a difficult time evolving to latter-day hardware. Every console generation has brought with it massive changes in possibility, from the gigantically long quests and amount of dialogue of the SNES games, to the FMVs and prerendered backgrounds of the PSX, to the voice acting and living worlds of the PS2. Now we have all of those possibilities and the genre seems to be having trouble finding a new direction. The problem here is that Square rode the wave of gimmicks for way too long. I mean, just look at FFVII and FFX, which are their hottest sellers in their flagship franchise. Both of them managed a lot of attention just because they just happened to be at the right place, at the right time and had plenty of money. FFVII just so happened to be the RPG that proved the power of the Playstation and CD quality. Then you got FFX that once again proved the Playstation with heavy voiceovers and cutting edge graphics. (Notice how I'm not mentioning gameplay here) The problem here is that now there is plenty of competition for RPGs at this time and the bar and standards for RPGs have changed. They don't get that. They just think that as long as they wow people with cutting edge tech, they win every time and that just isn't the case. I can guarantee you that if they re-released FFVII or X at this point in time it wouldn't be anywhere near as popular as when it was first released. There isn't much out there from a technical standpoint to wow people on today. Now people are fooled by sandbox gameplay, "emotional content", "retro graphics", easy mode and cheap thrills.
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Mar 26, 2013 21:11
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Krad posted:Their second mistake was when they stopped making quirky japanese rpg's for consoles, you know, the product that differentiated them from other companies and what people in the west liked about them. The problem is that the push for "AWESUM GRAFIX" on consoles hits JRPGs particularly hard, since they have to code massive sprawling games on those engines compared to something like FIFA or Forza. When SE sells millions of copies of a particular game and it's a financial loss, something is wrong in that equation. Trying to forgo that time and moneysink by cutting down on your graphics budget can be a huge gamble if people don't buy your final product. It's really no surprise so many good JRPGs in the past decade have shifted to portables where their development is markedly cheaper. Edit: Way beaten by OwlofCreamCheese. Guess that's what I get for browsing on an iPad.
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Mar 26, 2013 21:14
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Cardboard Fox posted:So it seems Square published another really bad fiscal year: I'm probably reading this incorrectly; does that say that squaire lost 13 billion yen? Meaning they are in the hole something like 137 million USD, rather than a projected revenue of a few million? Schwartzcough posted:No, they said they would be moving away from "cash grab" mobile games requiring a million microtransactions to unlock the content, often with a random chance of unlocking things. These "games" are more in the style of collecting baseball cards and are not designed to be fun. They claim they're going to focus on mobile games that are actually designed to be games and fun to play. I have  for an iPad port of the PSP Tactics Ogre with your name on it, SE.They need to take those sprites from FF:ATB and make an actual cross-over RPG like Cross Edge or even Dissidia. Krad posted:SE made their first mistake the moment they merged with Enix. It's more like Enix's mistake was merging with Squaresoft instead of watching them go under after burning so much money on Spirits Within. Same end result; what was seen as a dawn of the golden age of RPGs was instead the Dark Age. But Rocks Hurt Head posted:Even now, Xenoblade, widely considered one of the best JRPGs of its generation, was a graphical minor miracle on the Wii. A huge, detailed, mostly seamless world with well-designed and executed monsters, vibrant use of color, and visibly distinct characters is an accomplishment for any game, but to have done so in 480p on an underpowered console with the game still looking great is incredible. Not to mention the emulated, upscaled Xenoblade screenshots in the Dolphin thread. Being only 480p was probably a blessing as they didn't have to tie up as much time and money in making higher res graphics and models, instead focusing on a story and gameplay that was loving amazing, while having the best sound track of pretty much any current-gen RPG. Plus it had great Heropon Riki who was a small ball of awesome. Riki sneaky Proto Cloud posted:The problem here is that now there is plenty of competition for RPGs at this time and the bar and standards for RPGs have changed. They don't get that. They just think that as long as they wow people with cutting edge tech, they win every time and that just isn't the case. I can guarantee you that if they re-released FFVII or X at this point in time it wouldn't be anywhere near as popular as when it was first released. You do know that FFX and X-2 are getting HD remakes, right? I mean FF7 had a re-release on the PC but it was completely absurd, while X/X-2 are actual 1080p games and look pretty amazing, so we're going to see how well they sell.
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Mar 27, 2013 02:32
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Krad posted:SE made their first mistake the moment they merged with Enix. Except that buying Eidos let them reap the rewards of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the Tomb Raider reboot, and the upcoming Hitman reboot, all of which are or will sell millions of copies. This was a GREAT investment by SE.
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