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ImpAtom posted:I don't think it's good by accident. Toshiro Tsuchida was the battle director and actually has some chops. (he also left S-E after FFXIII so...) No idea who that is, but they didn't even know how it would play until they made the demo. That's a terrible sign of how that game was developed.
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May 23, 2015 03:10
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The Flying Milton posted:Is Final Fantasy 12 goon approved? That was my favorite recent one. It had some bad design choices but the art direction was cool and I enjoyed the combat. FF12 is one of those games people either really like or really dislike. It's not quite as contentious as FFXIII but it had a lot of negative response and honestly opinion on it hasn't really changed much since it released.
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May 23, 2015 03:11
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The Flying Milton posted:Is Final Fantasy 12 goon approved? That was my favorite recent one. It had some bad design choices but the art direction was cool and I enjoyed the combat. We still lament that IZJS never made it over but otherwise it's alright.
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May 23, 2015 03:11
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The Flying Milton posted:Is Final Fantasy 12 goon approved? That was my favorite recent one. It had some bad design choices but the art direction was cool and I enjoyed the combat. The International version is, yes.
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May 23, 2015 03:13
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The Flying Milton posted:Is Final Fantasy 12 goon approved? That was my favorite recent one. It had some bad design choices but the art direction was cool and I enjoyed the combat. It's very divisive. People either tend to like it a lot or hate it. That said, I've always wondered, is there anyone that liked 12 and 13?
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May 23, 2015 03:13
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Kyrosiris posted:It's very divisive. People either tend to like it a lot or hate it. Yes. 13 a bit less so but I recognize that it does have merits and I like games where characters aren't carbon copies of each other mechanics wise.
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May 23, 2015 03:14
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Momomo posted:No idea who that is, but they didn't even know how it would play until they made the demo. That's a terrible sign of how that game was developed. He was the battle director FFX battle system and was the director for every SRPG Front Mission game besides the first (where he was a scenario writer and producer). They certainly hosed up FFXIII's planning but the combat system being what it was wasn't really an accident. They were building it off the FFX-2 combat system as early as the PS2 demo of the game so whatever lack of planning they had, they had the basic idea in play even then. (And FFXIII's combat system really is a clear spinoff of FFX-2's.) Kyrosiris posted:It's very divisive. People either tend to like it a lot or hate it. I liked a lot of FF12 but I absolutely hated the combat system. It's kind of the opposite with FF13. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 03:18 on May 23, 2015 |
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May 23, 2015 03:15
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ImpAtom posted:I think it's also worth pointing out that FFXIII's basic design is not necessarily 'objectively wrong.' (This is why trying to claim objective game design is silly. It doesn't boil down to easily objectively right or wrong) There's a reasonable defense to be levied from a game design perspective for a lot of FFXIII's design. What it failed to do what present those elements in an engaging way. FFX shares a number of gameplay design elements with FFXIII but it managed to present them more coherently so it isn't even like we don't have a strong example of what FFXIII wanted to be. (Nor is FFX without flaws but that's neither here nor there.) Final Fantasy XIII's combat model provides such poor feedback to the player that many people will fight Barthandelus or Orphan for half an hour until the game times out and kills them and they will complain about it while having absolutely no idea what they were doing wrong. This is about as close as you can get to an objectively bad design in a very subjective medium. I like playing FFXIII 'the right way' and it's still average or better than average for a FF system but it ends up being mindless data entry where you're just going through a preset script once you understand optimal play not unlike Resonance of Fate. In fairness, this is as much a flaw of the nearly nonexistent character customization system as of the combat model itself. Kyrosiris posted:It's very divisive. People either tend to like it a lot or hate it. Yeah, sure. Not at the same level, but both have their good and bad sides.
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May 23, 2015 03:29
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Kyrosiris posted:It's very divisive. People either tend to like it a lot or hate it. Now that I've gotten around to playing more of XII, I do. They both have flaws, but neither are outright terrible games.
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May 23, 2015 03:32
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Francis posted:Final Fantasy XIII's combat model provides such poor feedback to the player that many people will fight Barthandelus or Orphan for half an hour until the game times out and kills them and they will complain about it while having absolutely no idea what they were doing wrong. This is really not true. (The time limit is way shorter than an hour, but I expect that was hyperbole.) The game absolutely does provide feedback. The problem is that people ignore the feedback. Or, honestly, the biggest problem is that people ignore their options. Almost universally the problem people have with those fights isn't that they didn't understand what they did wrong, it was that they ignored the options available to you. You can go back through this thread and find plenty of examples of people going "Well, of course I didn't use buffs/debuffs, they're never useful." The bulk of FFXIII's problems are not feedback-based but that even with feedback players will ignore options available to them. Now, it's fair to say that is a flaw, but it's a flaw because of something that represents part of the trouble in game design. What do you do if you give someone an option and they refuse to use it? Especially when it's already an extremely powerful option to begin with? Francis posted:it ends up being mindless data entry where you're just going through a preset script once you understand optimal play This is just a bad argument because when you reduce it to that level you can apply it to most RPGs in general. Video games are, at their core, very often extremely repetitive when you get to their optimal play patterns. There's certainly an element of illusion and switching things up but at the end of the day non-action RPGs are games about figuring out what the winning script is and then executing it. Something like FFXII just erased the illusion there and let you customize the script. The only time this really changes is for timed-hit stuff like Paper Mario/Mario and Luigi and even then it's not really a case of changing up the pattern, just of hitting the buttons properly to keep the pattern going. And that's fine. The act of figuring out the winning pattern is fun! It doesn't sound fun when described like that but you can apply that to almost any genre on the planet. (See people describing shooters as "point and click, repeat" or action games as "button mashers" or whatnot.) ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 03:51 on May 23, 2015 |
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May 23, 2015 03:35
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YIKES Stay Gooned posted:Where the hell is Lightning Returns for PC, Square.
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May 23, 2015 03:40
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I'm suspecting it got quietly canned. 
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May 23, 2015 03:51
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ImpAtom posted:I'm suspecting it got quietly canned. You think? That seems crazy
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May 23, 2015 03:52
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I have a weird history with FFXII because I played the demo and hated it, and even after it was announced they made changes I'd already decided I hated the game and would never buy it. Then I listened to some of the music on Youtube and the Giza Plains music and Dalmasca Estersand music caused me to go and buy the game. I played it for a bit and went "The game looks amazing and I love the soundtrack but hate the combat system" and I got to Arcadia before I stopped playing because I just didn't like the combat at all. Then one day out of the blue I decided gently caress it, I'm going to play FFXII and do literally everything there is to do in it," and I did, I filled every single page of the Clan Primer's bestiary (repeatedly spawning that lone Garif Adventurer in Ozmone Plains was a pain in the rear end), I got every trophy in the Sky Pirate's Den, and did every hunt. I sat back and said "Finally, now I never have to play that game again." And now here I am going "What the gently caress Square release FFXII HD Remaster for the PS3" because I want to play it again so badly.
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May 23, 2015 03:53
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YIKES Stay Gooned posted:You think? That seems crazy It's sort of weird otherwise. LR was kind of a weird cludged-together mess and I kind of wonder if they just couldn't get the port running well. FFXIII-2 is easy once you have FFXIII running.
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May 23, 2015 03:55
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I like XII but I thought everything from post-Mateus to Draklor was horrible padding dungeon wise. Especially Archades, that was a terrible place. It's almost like SE just screws up cities beginning with A on purpose (Archades, Academia) or make them have horrible disasters during the game (Alexandria, Academia).
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May 23, 2015 03:56
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ImpAtom posted:You made your point. The thing your refuse to acknowledge is that you made a claim about a game you didn't understand and tried to claim that you were objectively right despite not actually having an understanding of what you were talking about. I have played FF13 but I hated it and could not stand it enough to get to completion. I also played the 13-2 demo long enough to find out that they didn't fix anything that I personally didn't like. I personally hate the combat system, it doesn't click with me and it rewards a kind of gameplay that is to me like nails on a chalkboard. I see the appeal, and again (and again), it's totally fine that many people like it. If you notice, what I said about it earlier while listing things that are just objecti--I mean clearly technically faulty and poorly designed, all of them are more about the game's overall structure and stuff surrounding the combat than the actual combat itself, which at its core is not fundamentally hosed up in any ways that aren't subjective. (I also hope this awkward double negative use of "subjective" helps explain what I mean when I say "objective", as I am not using it for emphasis or as a way to dismiss anyone with different tastes than mine as wrong. I am using it to talk about things that are clearly broken or ill conceived and executed regardless of personal opinion, mine or anyone's. I agree it's hilarious when self important dipshits use the word "objectively" incorrectly, however I am using it to mean something specific in this context and I do not feel like there are synonyms that more accurately explain what I mean, and anyone who cannot leave the word's baggage behind is not going to understand what I am saying.) I have, however, played Theatrhythm for triple digits worth of hours hence why I've gone into more detail into specific examples of how that game's design is really hosed up. I like discussing Theatrhythm in this context because there's a lot there to deconstruct, especially as a particularly interesting manifestation of the good and the bad of the overall state Square Enix is in. I have also played Final Fantasy XIV for what could very well be in the quadruple digits worth of hours, from the closed beta of 1.0. Let's just say if you're on SA and questioning my familiarity with XIV, you're probably not familiar with XIV yourself. (Or avoid the goon presence entirely in which case I don't blame you.) To be blunt, the assertion that I have not played the games I'm discussing is loving absurd, as is that I or anyone needs to play to completion to discuss them. I also don't have to have beaten the entire goddamned 13 trilogy to know that SE has outright admitted that the combat and game systems were hastily thrown together at the last minute. That my rabid ff obsession could not override the flaws in a game I highly anticipated and bought on launch day, and despite that I have before and since shoveled broken Final Fantasy-branded garbage down my gaping maw and enjoyed it, and that I am by no means unique in this regard, is pretty goddamned relevant to the point I'm trying to make. Trying to dismiss my point this way is really weirdly defensive. I don't know how I could possibly be in a better position to point out that SE's lack of dedication to their game systems and mechanics is kind of a problem for them, and for us as fans who want them to stay in business and keep making stuff. Also, when you say: quote:Like seriously you repeatedly go "I haven't played these games but I'm right about them anyway." it's very obvious that you're not actually reading or understanding what I'm saying, as I did not say this, nor am I asserting my opinions about them as some kind of universal truth. I've been very clear about this. I have plenty of opinions on every FF game, but again, the overall point I'm trying to make that there's a clear pattern of SE putting game mechanics and systems on the backburner and failing to attract or develop expertise in this field, and it is a problem.
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May 23, 2015 04:02
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Shut up
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May 23, 2015 04:04
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My advice is to not use a dozen words when one will do, goddang
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May 23, 2015 04:07
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lmao
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May 23, 2015 04:08
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That's a shocking amount of words wherein you admit playing thousands of hours of video games you appear to aggressively despise.
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May 23, 2015 04:09
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Also if everyone keeps misinterpreting an argument, then the argument is phrased hella poorly.
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May 23, 2015 04:09
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Boten Anna posted:To be blunt, the assertion that I have not played the games I'm discussing is loving absurd, as is that I or anyone needs to play to completion to discuss them. I also don't have to have beaten the entire goddamned 13 trilogy to know that SE has outright admitted that the combat and game systems were hastily thrown together at the last minute. That my rabid ff obsession could not override the flaws in a game I highly anticipated and bought on launch day, and despite that I have before and since shoveled broken Final Fantasy-branded garbage down my gaping maw and enjoyed it, and that I am by no means unique in this regard, is pretty goddamned relevant to the point I'm trying to make. You disliked FFXIII. That's fine. What you keep trying to do is go "I disliked FFXIII and that must mean something is broken with it because I like Final Fantasy games!" You don't actually bring up anything to discuss, you just go "it's broken because I didn't like it." You also completely ignored Lightning Returns having a dramatically different system in general, to the point where people in this thread and others who hate FFXIII have said they like it. Instead you just keep going forward and insisting you are right because you have to be right. The other thing you don't quite get is that a combat system that is thrown together quickly is not the same as a combat system that is fundamentally flawed. You want to know a combat system that was thrown together quickly? The Arkham Asylum combat system, which actually began life very differently to the point drastically different versions of it existed in press demos and demo kits. It is a combat system that became one of the new standards for action combat and was repeatedly mimicked despite that. (And despite Arkham City making a lot of cleanups and adjustments to it.) FFXIII's combat system was thrown together quickly but it was based off the combat system for FFX-2. They didn't built it from scratch and while it was not the result of long years of coherent design that doesn't mean it doesn't work either. A does not mean B. Telling us that FFXIII's system was thrown together quickly doesn't mean we're going to agree that it is fundamentally broken because one does not mean the other.
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May 23, 2015 04:12
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YIKES! Stay gooned, my friend.
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May 23, 2015 04:14
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If something being thrown together quickly makes it objectively bad, then a majority of classics are actually bad, instead of good. Happens to so many large scale projects. Judge the final product, not how they got there.
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May 23, 2015 04:15
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Why post a few words when an entire loving essay of non-information and drivel will do.
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May 23, 2015 04:16
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kirbysuperstar posted:Why post a few words when an entire loving essay of non-information and drivel will do. I read the whole thing and I can't tell why FF13's combat is supposed to be bad because there's nothing about the actual gameplay in that wall of words.
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May 23, 2015 04:19
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ImpAtom posted:It's sort of weird otherwise. i could see that, yeah. weren't the sales numbers on LR kind of disappointing? i think i remember reading that
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May 23, 2015 04:24
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jesus christ shut the gently caress up
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May 23, 2015 04:27
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you haven't said a single word about the actual gameplay mechanics of xiii yet. say it takes too long to open up, say anything at all and i think most people would get off your case. i'd even accept the "it plays itself" chestnut
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May 23, 2015 04:30
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Boten Anna posted:Let's just say if you're on SA and questioning my familiarity with XIV, you're probably not familiar with XIV yourself.  The biggest problem with XIII for me was how poor the voice direction and writing were. The whole cast was like a bunch of robots trying to imitate human behavior, which is weird because there were definitely talented people hired. That and Vanille's goddamn endless moaning and squealing in combat.
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May 23, 2015 04:31
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Speaking of Final Fantasy XIII, and PC ports! How does the port of XIII itself run if you don't quite meet the recommended specs, if anyone knows? I've been wanting to play it again, but I don't often get time with the TV our 360 is hooked up to, so I've been considering picking it up the next time its on sale through Steam. The only recommended spec I don't meet is the video card (ATI Radeon 5870 recommended, and I have a Radeon 5700).
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May 23, 2015 04:33
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your argument for why the mechanics are objectively bad is "i didn't enjoy it bleh" and saying that you've played thousands of hours of final fantasy so you know what good final fantasy is. that's what you're spending hundreds of precious words arguing
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May 23, 2015 04:34
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FFXIII's hatred tends to get over-exaggerated for a few reasons. It was the only non-MMO Final Fantasy in an entire console generation, and the last generation of consoles was looooong. It got two sequels and no replacements so there was a lot more time for frustration to build. It's also a convenient poster boy for a lot of general frustration with S-E in general. (FFXIV was too before they cleaned it up.) It's still a subject of discussion because we still don't have a new Final Fantasy game. Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XII lost their share of fans but there was a new game on the horizon to focus on, and more spinoffs to focus on, and so-on.it doesn't help that as the only console FF game for that generation it got sequels so S-E could reuse assets as cheaply as possible. I mean I don't want to downplay FFXIII's flaws because them are significant and many. It's just pretty hard to have an objective discussion about it when a lot of the ire over it is ire at Square-Enix in general rather than about the one specific game. FFXIII basically had an entire console generation to let resentment fester around it in the wake of S-E's general lovely practices. AngryRobotsInc posted:Speaking of Final Fantasy XIII, and PC ports! How does the port of XIII itself run if you don't quite meet the recommended specs, if anyone knows? I've been wanting to play it again, but I don't often get time with the TV our 360 is hooked up to, so I've been considering picking it up the next time its on sale through Steam. The only recommended spec I don't meet is the video card (ATI Radeon 5870 recommended, and I have a Radeon 5700). It's okay but you really want to use one of the fan-patches for it. The base game runs 'acceptable' but that's about it.
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May 23, 2015 04:37
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Hey everyone: you're not understanding what I'm saying, and I am trying to understand the disconnect and explain better. This requires words. Calm the gently caress down.ImpAtom posted:You disliked FFXIII. That's fine. What you keep trying to do is go "I disliked FFXIII and that must mean something is broken with it because I like Final Fantasy games!" Like here, I didn't say that at all. I spent a good amount of time writing a lot of words to you saying the exact opposite. You called into question my credentials to have this discussion so I showed them to you. Then I repeated for like the 10th time that my point is regarding an overall pattern of treating game mechanics and systems as an afterthought. Frankly, your rabid compulsion to defend FF13 from any perceived threat is really weird. It's the most Sonic of Final Fantasies in the sense that anything good about it mechanics-wise is probably an accident. That's fine that you enjoy it, but your weird crusade against us heretics that hated it is irrelevant to the point I'm making, much like my personal distaste for the game. quote:You don't actually bring up anything to discuss, you just go "it's broken because I didn't like it." You also completely ignored Lightning Returns having a dramatically different system in general, to the point where people in this thread and others who hate FFXIII have said they like it. Instead you just keep going forward and insisting you are right because you have to be right. I'm pretty sure that being so burned out on FF13 that even if Ligntning-senpai takes that train to France, boards an airplane, then drives to my house to cuddle and scissor me and we become BFFs yet I still don't buy LR because I don't want to encourage SE and the mountain of horrible decisions they made regarding FF13 is congruous with the point I'm trying to make, if irrelevant to it. quote:The other thing you don't quite get is that a combat system that is thrown together quickly is not the same as a combat system that is fundamentally flawed. You want to know a combat system that was thrown together quickly? The Arkham Asylum combat system, which actually began life very differently to the point drastically different versions of it existed in press demos and demo kits. It is a combat system that became one of the new standards for action combat and was repeatedly mimicked despite that. (And despite Arkham City making a lot of cleanups and adjustments to it.) Again, that they habitually throw game systems together at the last minute is a problem, as that doesn't always (or usually) magically work out in the end. Again again, that some parts of FF13 work well is irrelevant to the fact that it exposes a pattern (THAT THEY COPPED TO) of treating mechanics and game systems an an afterthought. How many times can they make the same drat mistake before they learn from it or drive the company into the ground?
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May 23, 2015 04:43
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oh my god
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May 23, 2015 04:46
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ImpAtom posted:This is really not true. (The time limit is way shorter than an hour, but I expect that was hyperbole.) The game absolutely does provide feedback. The problem is that people ignore the feedback. Or, honestly, the biggest problem is that people ignore their options. Almost universally the problem people have with those fights isn't that they didn't understand what they did wrong, it was that they ignored the options available to you. You can go back through this thread and find plenty of examples of people going "Well, of course I didn't use buffs/debuffs, they're never useful." The bulk of FFXIII's problems are not feedback-based but that even with feedback players will ignore options available to them. Bosses like Barthandelus that cast doom do so after 20 minutes, so the time limit is about 23 minutes or slightly longer if you use summons. The game provides feedback? Like what, star ratings? They're mostly meaningless and sandbagging for shrouds is the only material benefit you get from them as far as I can recall. Most games punish you for 'playing it wrong' or ignoring mechanics or going somewhere you aren't supposed to go or whatever by killing you. Final Fantasy XIII cannot kill you creatively since the mechanics aren't deep enough to do anything more than apply damage to hit points or cast Doom. No encounter that deals enough damage to hit points to kill a player in triple sentinel (swapping between medic and keeping buffs up, etc) can be beaten and an unwinnable encounter is another strong contender for Objectively Bad Design so that leaves the Doom option. ImpAtom posted:Now, it's fair to say that is a flaw, but it's a flaw because of something that represents part of the trouble in game design. What do you do if you give someone an option and they refuse to use it? Especially when it's already an extremely powerful option to begin with? Basically this boils down to what the player's objective is, or what they think the objective of the game is. For a lot of players it's simply to win, or to win as stylishly as possible, or as quickly as possible, and so on. For a lot of people it's more like their goal is to Not Lose. Losing doesn't feel good and in an RPG it often results in the loss of hours of gameplay due to archaic save mechanics. You can Not Lose your way through Final Fantasy XIII very easily up until the game places a hard wall in front of you and punishes you for Not Winning. The game does not do much to encourage you to Win up to this point. Compare the benefits of the star ranking to, say, Tales of Graces and the insane loot bonanza you get in that game for high combo counts and playing on higher and higher difficulty settings. That is a game that wants you to Win, Win fast, and Win hard. What do you do about the willful players that insist that Not Losing is the way to play the game? I don't know. I don't care. But if you're going to tell them that they're wrong and they can't play your game any more, find a way to do it without wasting twenty minutes first. ImpAtom posted:This is just a bad argument because when you reduce it to that level you can apply it to most RPGs in general. Video games are, at their core, very often extremely repetitive when you get to their optimal play patterns. I can and will and this doesn't make it a bad argument. It's all a matter of degrees, and as you say execution is a small part of the combat puzzle in most RPGs. Final Fantasy XIII isn't one of those games. There's little planning involved and you've probably solved the combat before the game actually gives you a full party to make use of it. There are only a couple bosses that might make you stop and think about your paradigms. The Crystarium might as well autocomplete. Equipment is a joke. Timing your paradigm swapping is 80%+ of your involvement with Final Fantasy XIII. It's a good thing that doing that is actually pretty engaging, just more repetitive than it should be. ImpAtom posted:And that's fine. The act of figuring out the winning pattern is fun! It doesn't sound fun when described like that but you can apply that to almost any genre on the planet. (See people describing shooters as "point and click, repeat" or action games as "button mashers" or whatnot.)
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May 23, 2015 04:46
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Shut up. Just shut the gently caress up.
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May 23, 2015 04:49
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Who's hotter: Lightning, Fang or Vanille.
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May 23, 2015 04:50
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Lightning
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May 23, 2015 04:50
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