Let's Play Pokemon Reborn: This Trainwreck has no brakes my friend!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Let's Play Pokemon Reborn: This Trainwreck has no brakes my friend!

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Malachite_Dragon: Mar 31, 2010; Weaving Merry Christmas magic

Insofar as NPC trainers only get like 2 or 3, if I recall correctly. There was a lot less screaming "WILL YOU STOP loving DOING THAT?!" during my playthrough, I know that.

# ? Jul 3, 2017 04:12

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# ? May 9, 2024 22:09

The Golux: Feb 18, 2017; Internet Cephalopod

Also, regarding the number of machines for the blind girl quiz: my count

# ? Jul 3, 2017 04:21

Rainuwastaken: Oct 30, 2012; Another blue ribbon for Hecarim.

I'm honestly surprised they gave you a Happiny there. Isn't Blissey really good?

Seems awful nice next to stuff like Skitty and Litleo.

# ? Jul 3, 2017 07:55

Araxxor: Oct 20, 2012; My disdain for you all knows no bounds.

Maybe all the bosses from now on are gonna be physical attackers, which would render her useless.

Or they just forgot to replace her with a worse Pokemon or something.

# ? Jul 3, 2017 07:56

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Yeah, this is a work in progress game isn't it? Not the final version.

# ? Jul 3, 2017 08:15

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

krisslanza posted:

You know, the idea of getting most of your Pokemon via side quests or something isn't an inherently awful idea, I think? It's kind of neat or different but... given Reborn's awful balancing and all...
I mean, I guess so far, at least I can say Reborn wasn't stupid enough to lock Berries behind the postgame at least? Smallest of silver linings!

...have we even seen any non-Pickup berries yet?

# ? Jul 3, 2017 16:11

the Orb of Zot: Jun 25, 2013; Apport: the Orb of Zot
The orb shrieks as your magic touches it!
Yoink! You pull the item towards yourself.
You see here the Orb of Zot.

The Golux posted:

They did actually nerf hyper potions in sun/moon, didn't they?

Most of the healing items got knocked down a notch in SM, yes. Hyper potions went from 200 HP to 120 HP, so Max Potions in theory would be useful for endgame. In reality you just bought more Full Restores instead.

Rainuwastaken posted:

I'm honestly surprised they gave you a Happiny there. Isn't Blissey really good?

Seems awful nice next to stuff like Skitty and Litleo.

I already see the catch.

Happiny needs a specific held item to evolve into Chansey. A specific held item that has yet to appear.

I expect it to not show up for another 20-30 updates at minimum and be the reward for another sidequest. Or another 30-40 and only be available once you get the last floor of the Department Store opened up.

# ? Jul 3, 2017 16:38

Schubalts: Nov 26, 2007; People say bigger is better.

But for the first time in my life, I think I've gone too far.

Leraika posted:

...have we even seen any non-Pickup berries yet?

Only in the department store. There hasn't been a single berry tree or spot to plant berries.

# ? Jul 3, 2017 17:13

Randalor: Sep 4, 2011

the Orb of Zot posted:

Most of the healing items got knocked down a notch in SM, yes. Hyper potions went from 200 HP to 120 HP, so Max Potions in theory would be useful for endgame. In reality you just bought more Full Restores instead.

I already see the catch.

Happiny needs a specific held item to evolve into Chansey. A specific held item that has yet to appear.

I expect it to not show up for another 20-30 updates at minimum and be the reward for another sidequest. Or another 30-40 and only be available once you get the last floor of the Department Store opened up.

Floor 11 of the department store is specifically Evolutionary items. I'm guessing it's going to cost 10,000-15,000 dollars, and possibly be misspelled/mislabeled. Also, to get the the sticker to unlock the floor, you have to go through a gauntlet of the hardest battles in the game, because gently caress you.

# ? Jul 3, 2017 19:33

azren: Feb 14, 2011

So, I've only read up to update 2, part 1 so far, but I'm legitimately waiting for someone to get raped, and/or have an obvious rape backstory.

I don't want this, I just expect it at this point. :smith:

# ? Jul 3, 2017 20:43

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Randalor posted:

Floor 11 of the department store is specifically Evolutionary items. I'm guessing it's going to cost 10,000-15,000 dollars, and possibly be misspelled/mislabeled. Also, to get the the sticker to unlock the floor, you have to go through a gauntlet of the hardest battles in the game, because gently caress you.

I have to say, crap like this and their constantly-revised Pokemon availability lists are what makes Uranium, despite all of its flaws, seem more like the more fun game to actually play (unless you pick the Grass starter, I guess). Uranium's design philosophy is basically "Pokemon where everyone in the world breeds for competitive play". There might be bullshit fights where some Trainer has a min/maxed beast with maxed EVs and perfect IVs and Natures and a synergistic moveset or whatever bullshit goes into making a Pokemon the best murderbeast it can possibly be, but at least you get superweapons like Tracton, Inflageta, and Nucleon to play with as well. Reborn's design philosophy is "because gently caress you". You need to fight tooth and nail in order to have literally anything, and nearly every encounter is a puzzle boss with exactly one solution which you have to do exactly as the developers intended. If somebody discovers a way out of their "clever" traps, the Reborn devs simply remove whatever Pokemon was used to circumvent their "devious and perfect" game design, because gently caress you, that's why.

krisslanza posted:

I mean, I guess so far, at least I can say Reborn wasn't stupid enough to lock Berries behind the postgame at least? Smallest of silver linings!

Maybe not, but you probably have to fight six Wonder Guard Spiritombs or something equally bullshit to get the watering can.

# ? Jul 3, 2017 21:36

krisslanza: May 6, 2011

Commander Keene posted:

I have to say, crap like this and their constantly-revised Pokemon availability lists are what makes Uranium, despite all of its flaws, seem more like the more fun game to actually play (unless you pick the Grass starter, I guess). Uranium's design philosophy is basically "Pokemon where everyone in the world breeds for competitive play". There might be bullshit fights where some Trainer has a min/maxed beast with maxed EVs and perfect IVs and Natures and a synergistic moveset or whatever bullshit goes into making a Pokemon the best murderbeast it can possibly be, but at least you get superweapons like Tracton, Inflageta, and Nucleon to play with as well. Reborn's design philosophy is "because gently caress you". You need to fight tooth and nail in order to have literally anything, and nearly every encounter is a puzzle boss with exactly one solution which you have to do exactly as the developers intended. If somebody discovers a way out of their "clever" traps, the Reborn devs simply remove whatever Pokemon was used to circumvent their "devious and perfect" game design, because gently caress you, that's why.

So basically Reborn devs are the guys who made Absolute Virtue in FFXI :v:

# ? Jul 3, 2017 22:03

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

krisslanza posted:

So basically Reborn devs are the guys who made Absolute Virtue in FFXI

I've never played FF11 (I don't play MMOs, and especially not ones that I'm required to pay a subscription fee for), so I don't know who or what Absolute Virtue is. I have a feeling that since you mention this one boss specifically, though, the rest of the game isn't like that. Reborn so far seems to be a game where every fight is like this Absolute Virtue. Literally every encounter. And imagine you were only allowed fight it as a Blue Mage with strictly controlled access to Blue Magic spells (can't have you using Big Guard, White Wind, etc. You know, any fun or useful Blue Magic). THAT'S Reborn's design philosophy.

# ? Jul 3, 2017 22:14

Lord Koth: Jan 8, 2012

Commander Keene posted:

I've never played FF11 (I don't play MMOs, and especially not ones that I'm required to pay a subscription fee for), so I don't know who or what Absolute Virtue is. I have a feeling that since you mention this one boss specifically, though, the rest of the game isn't like that. Reborn so far seems to be a game where every fight is like this Absolute Virtue. Literally every encounter. And imagine you were only allowed fight it as a Blue Mage with strictly controlled access to Blue Magic spells (can't have you using Big Guard, White Wind, etc. You know, any fun or useful Blue Magic). THAT'S Reborn's design philosophy.

I didn't play either, but let's just say I've heard enough over the years to say you'd be wrong regarding that era of Final Fantasy MMOs. Absolute Virtue was just the most egregious instance. It was also so bad it makes what you've been seeing in this game look fair and balanced.

Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Jul 3, 2017

# ? Jul 3, 2017 22:41

Robindaybird: Aug 21, 2007; Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Commander Keene posted:

I've never played FF11 (I don't play MMOs, and especially not ones that I'm required to pay a subscription fee for), so I don't know who or what Absolute Virtue is.

Basically Absolute Virtue was a superboss that's bullshit hard and anytime someone figured out a way to beat it, Square bans the players and change the boss's code to make that method no longer applicable. Granted, one method was using stack overflow errors, but more or less it's a boss Square would not allow anyone to beat.

# ? Jul 3, 2017 22:42

Regalingualius: Jan 7, 2012; We gazed into the eyes of madness... And all we found was horny.

I'm curious: did they outright make some classes useless in the process of closing whatever strategies players used to beat AV?

# ? Jul 3, 2017 23:54

Bruceski: Aug 21, 2007; The tools of a hero mean nothing without a solid core.

Robindaybird posted:

Basically Absolute Virtue was a superboss that's bullshit hard and anytime someone figured out a way to beat it, Square bans the players and change the boss's code to make that method no longer applicable. Granted, one method was using stack overflow errors, but more or less it's a boss Square would not allow anyone to beat.

I've lost track of what actually happened in that clusterfluffle and what was hyperbolic rumor. Did they actually edit things mid-fight to shut off one strat?

# ? Jul 3, 2017 23:56

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Regalingualius posted:

I'm curious: did they outright make some classes useless in the process of closing whatever strategies players used to beat AV?

By my understanding of the incidents, the alterations of the code were mostly applied to the boss itself, rather than the game at large. They closed the loopholes that allowed players to glitch the boss out, they upped its resistances or regeneration when players overwhelmed them, and basically did everything short of just making it completely untargetable.

EDIT: Just as a note, the "official" way to beat the boss was never discovered, with power creep eventually allowing players to just overpower the drat thing, which the devs didn't nerf because that would ultimately break their precious "intended" solution, which involved locking down its powers by having the players use their own matching powers the instant the boss used them, and then a bunch of other stuff the player base couldn't figure out from watching SE's official "dev team kills the boss for you so you plebs can finally do it RIGHT" video.

EclecticTastes fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Jul 4, 2017

# ? Jul 3, 2017 23:57

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

I mean, if the battle is supposed to be a mildly interactive cutscene, then they screwed up by giving the boss stats at all, or at least a finite HP value. That's just invoking the Lord British Postulate ("if it has stats, players will try to kill it"). Also, didn't the WoW devs do something similar when somebody beat a boss or entered an area in a way they shouldn't have? Although I heard they were less ban-happy and tended to give the player a small reward for "helping them discover bugs" or something like that.

And if they made it look like a normal boss battle, they double hosed up. IMO, a cutscene boss battle should be obvious within the first few rounds (in a turn-based game) or within maybe a minute at most (in a real-time game), otherwise you're tricking the player into wasting consumable resources. Anything else should be winnable, no matter how difficult. Personally, I'd prefer the game let you win all battles, even if it requires a specific strategy or deep system mastery (like the second time you fight Balio and Sunder in BoF3), or is only feasible in New Game Plus (like Etna in Disgaea 2).

EDIT:

Eclectic Tastes posted:

EDIT: Just as a note, the "official" way to beat the boss was never discovered, with power creep eventually allowing players to just overpower the drat thing, which the devs didn't nerf because that would ultimately break their precious "intended" solution, which involved locking down its powers by having the players use their own matching powers the instant the boss used them, and then a bunch of other stuff the player base couldn't figure out from watching SE's official "dev team kills the boss for you so you plebs can finally do it RIGHT" video.

OK, maybe these guys were on Reborn's dev team.

Commander Keene fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Jul 4, 2017

# ? Jul 4, 2017 00:15

Regalingualius: Jan 7, 2012; We gazed into the eyes of madness... And all we found was horny.

Wasn't one of those powerful abilities you were supposed to somehow know to counter an instant-cast "you heal to full HP" thing?

# ? Jul 4, 2017 00:39

Zore: Sep 21, 2010; willfully illiterate, aggressively miserable sourpuss whose sole raison d�etre is to put other people down for liking the wrong things

Commander Keene posted:

I mean, if the battle is supposed to be a mildly interactive cutscene, then they screwed up by giving the boss stats at all, or at least a finite HP value. That's just invoking the Lord British Postulate ("if it has stats, players will try to kill it"). Also, didn't the WoW devs do something similar when somebody beat a boss or entered an area in a way they shouldn't have? Although I heard they were less ban-happy and tended to give the player a small reward for "helping them discover bugs" or something like that.

And if they made it look like a normal boss battle, they double hosed up. IMO, a cutscene boss battle should be obvious within the first few rounds (in a turn-based game) or within maybe a minute at most (in a real-time game), otherwise you're tricking the player into wasting consumable resources. Anything else should be winnable, no matter how difficult. Personally, I'd prefer the game let you win all battles, even if it requires a specific strategy or deep system mastery (like the second time you fight Balio and Sunder in BoF3), or is only feasible in New Game Plus (like Etna in Disgaea 2).

EDIT:

OK, maybe these guys were on Reborn's dev team.

Just as a taste of Absolute Virtue's fuckery

quote:

-The methods to curb Absolute Virtue's difficulty were officially revealed when the development team released a video with hints on how to defeat it in 2008, nearly 3 years after the battle was introduced. However, the video was heavily criticized for being too vague and not providing adequate hints on how to defeat the monster. Furthermore, said method posted was quickly patched.

-Absolute Virtue had, on several occasions, been fought and held by linkshells for over 30 hours trying to defeat it, to no avail.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 00:49

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Wait, they patched their own intended solution out?

What.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 00:55

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Regalingualius posted:

Wasn't one of those powerful abilities you were supposed to somehow know to counter an instant-cast "you heal to full HP" thing?

Basically, yeah, it had access to every class's "Two-Hour" ability, one of which was an extremely powerful heal, and in order to lock them down, you had to have a character of the corresponding class cast their own two-hour within a couple seconds of Absolute Virtue doing so.

Oh? What's that? You don't know about two-hour abilities? Yeah, each class in FFXI had an ability that was very powerful and could turn the tide of battles and such. They had two-hour cooldown timers. That's real time. They were later reduced, when the devs decided two entire hours was a bit much, to one real goddamn hour.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 00:56

Zore: Sep 21, 2010; willfully illiterate, aggressively miserable sourpuss whose sole raison d�etre is to put other people down for liking the wrong things

Commander Keene posted:

Wait, they patched their own intended solution out?

What.

Yeah.

Like I said, everything surrounding Absolute Virtue is an exercise in hating that players.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 00:59

krisslanza: May 6, 2011

Zore posted:

Yeah.

Like I said, everything surrounding Absolute Virtue is an exercise in hating that players.

It's certainly something that the FFXI team went onto make FFXIV. When it flopped and ARR was made, the first thing they did was sack the entire original team, because they had no idea how to make an MMO.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 01:35

Seraphic Neoman: Jul 19, 2011

We must have gotten every garvage pokemon in the series in our party at this point.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 01:35

Omnicrom: Aug 3, 2007; Snorlax Afficionado

Commander Keene posted:

Wait, they patched their own intended solution out?

What.

Yep. Because it wasn't the "INTENDED" solution to killing Absolute Virtue.

Yes, the video that was posted by the devs as "this is how you're actually supposed to kill this boss" was not how you were actually supposed to kill this boss.

Seriously.

So a brief history of ways people killed Absolute Virtue:

Glitching him out. The world's first kill involved trickery relating to the layout of the zone, namely they got him caught behind one of the zone's dividing walls in such a way that people could hit him so they couldn't be hit back. The people who did this were banned. A very telling point of fact about this was that Absolute Virtue dropped nothing on this first kill, despite having items he was allegedly supposed to drop none materialized.

Glitching him out again. This second kill involved kiting him across an extremely dangerous zone to an NPC that let you rewatch cutscenes then doing shenanigans. The end result was that AV would glitch out and you could just kill him. The people who did this got drops, but were banned.

Then right around now was the Pandemonium Warden affair, were a group of players took on similarly OP (but mortal and killable) raid boss Pandemonium Warden for so long that some of them were hospitalized for dehydration. This was also around the period where there was that highly publicized marathon 30 hour fight against Absolute Virtue where he decided to fully heal for funzies leaving the raid to quit in disgust. For further reference the raid had managed to knock off a whopping two thirds of his health by the time this happened, yes after THIRTY HOURS. In response to this bad press double wammie Pandemonium Warden and Absolute Virtue were changed to only spawn for two hours and Absolute Virtue's HP was cut by a third. Now you still couldn't actually kill the fucker, but at least people weren't going to have severe medical problems while they were trying.

Following the HP nerf was Dark Knight Zerg Rush win. Dark Knights in FF11 had two specific abilities on hand for this strategy, one was Soul Eater which let them burn 10% of their Max HP to add it straight to their damage, the other was Blood Weapon, the DRK 2-hour ability which let you recover 100% of the damage you dealt for about a minute. Combining the two with the uber rare and uber expensive Kraken Club (which hit 8 times with every swing but basically had no stats) let a raiding party of very wealthy Dark Knights kill Absolute Virtue in under a minute. The players who did this were miraculously NOT banned, however immediately afterwards Absolute Virtue became the first boss ever to become resistant to Soul Eater so back to the unkillable status quo.

The video method vaguely revealed three years after the fact that was allegedly the "Intended" strategy was to counter all of his 2-hour abilities by having a raid member use their own two-hour ability within seconds of him charging it up (GL on lag for that one), but then like I said that strategy was patched out because it wasn't the super secret intended strategy.

I'm sure there were some other gimmicks. I've heard the "overflow error" in passing but I don't know the specifics on it but it wouldn't surprise me. To this day the "intended" strategy has never actually been revealed. Nowadays Absolute Virtue can be taken out by well geared level 99 players (since AV came out when the level cap was 75), but Absolute Virtue is still a punchline and still held up as the epitome of dev team hubris. Absolute Virtue is to MMORPGs what super protected precious Mary Sue characters are to bad fiction is to what stupid OP Metaplot characters are to Tabletop RPGs, an author's pet they refused to allow to be touched or besmirched by your dirty, scumsucking, media consuming, game playing hands. Absolute Virtue was too pure and perfect for this world and had to be protected, good game design be damned.

krisslanza posted:

It's certainly something that the FFXI team went onto make FFXIV. When it flopped and ARR was made, the first thing they did was sack the entire original team, because they had no idea how to make an MMO.

It's genuinely amazing that FF14 managed to become as good as it is today considering both the original design team and the Indian burial ground of coding it's built off of.

Meanwhile in the realm of Reborn I'll say the one thing I liked in this last update were the candy items. It actually makes a lot of sense to see Friendship boosting overpriced candy to act as a counterpoint to friendship lowering overpriced medicine, that's good fangame faffery. Also getting a Vanillite out of an ice cream machine made me chuckle. Meanwhile the Double Intimidate dogs, MECHANIGHTMARE and its nerfed as hell reward, the bullshit surrounding the department store, weirdly angry blind lady, the poor pacing of the game, ORIGINAL TEAM DUN STEAL, the incredible verboseness of the game in general, and the incredibly lame Lillipup chase remind me again this isn't a good game.

Honestly I wouldn't mind all these sidequests if there was a semblance of a main quest worth a drat happening.

Omnicrom fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Jul 4, 2017

# ? Jul 4, 2017 01:46

Malachite_Dragon: Mar 31, 2010; Weaving Merry Christmas magic

E: beaten, and in much greater detail, by the post above mine.

There are dumbasses on these very forums who have defended the devs behind the Absolute Virtue clusterfuck, if you can believe it.

Malachite_Dragon fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Jul 4, 2017

# ? Jul 4, 2017 01:47

MarquiseMindfang: Jan 6, 2013; vriska (vriska)

Omnicrom posted:

I'm sure there were some other gimmicks.

People tried coordinating 18 Scholars to cast Modus Veritas at the same time to kill it in one hit. MV doubled the tick damage of a Scholar's DoT spell, but halved the duration. The strategy relied upon trying to time it with server ticks such that even the halved-many-times duration would tick once and only once and deal its entire HP in one shot.

The strategy was never given a chance to be tried, sadly. Alexander came out soon after and that's what allowed players to weather the immense storm of damage and kill the loving thing.

It's also worth nothing that AV, for every kill after the first, had at least one 100% drop rate item, so that first kill with no drops, that was somehow intentional.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 02:38

Araxxor: Oct 20, 2012; My disdain for you all knows no bounds.

MarquiseMindfang posted:

People tried coordinating 18 Scholars to cast Modus Veritas at the same time to kill it in one hit. MV doubled the tick damage of a Scholar's DoT spell, but halved the duration. The strategy relied upon trying to time it with server ticks such that even the halved-many-times duration would tick once and only once and deal its entire HP in one shot.

The strategy was never given a chance to be tried, sadly. Alexander came out soon after and that's what allowed players to weather the immense storm of damage and kill the loving thing.

It's also worth nothing that AV, for every kill after the first, had at least one 100% drop rate item, so that first kill with no drops, that was somehow intentional.

Honestly it just sounds to me like it was never intended to be killable, but they just didn't give it straight up invulnerability or told players that because the devs enjoyed watching them struggle or something. That's the only sane conclusion I can draw after I heard that they patched out their own "intended" solution.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 02:52

krisslanza: May 6, 2011

Omnicrom posted:

Meanwhile in the realm of Reborn I'll say the one thing I liked in this last update were the candy items. It actually makes a lot of sense to see Friendship boosting overpriced candy to act as a counterpoint to friendship lowering overpriced medicine, that's good fangame faffery. Also getting a Vanillite out of an ice cream machine made me chuckle. Meanwhile the Double Intimidate dogs, MECHANIGHTMARE and its nerfed as hell reward, the bullshit surrounding the department store, weirdly angry blind lady, the poor pacing of the game, ORIGINAL TEAM DUN STEAL, the incredible verboseness of the game in general, and the incredibly lame Lillipup chase remind me again this isn't a good game.

Honestly I wouldn't mind all these sidequests if there was a semblance of a main quest worth a drat happening.

The Vanillite thing makes me think of the Dorkly series, Pokemon Rusty, where he actually DID buy a Vanillite... then got it melted by Blaine but, you know.
I think that was a Vanillite though. I might be reading too much into it being a reference, but...

Dr. Fetus posted:

Honestly it just sounds to me like it was never intended to be killable, but they just didn't give it straight up invulnerability or told players that because the devs enjoyed watching them struggle or something. That's the only sane conclusion I can draw after I heard that they patched out their own "intended" solution.

You know, I think EverQuest did this? They had an unkillable boss, for plot reasons. But at least that was kind enough to let you be aware of that. AV is just a horrible, horrid mess. It's like they saw One Sin from .hack, and thought "let's copy it!"
Forgetting that One Sin was actually defeatable.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 03:08

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Omnicrom posted:

Yep. Because it wasn't the "INTENDED" solution to killing Absolute Virtue.

Yes, the video that was posted by the devs as "this is how you're actually supposed to kill this boss" was not how you were actually supposed to kill this boss.

Seriously.

Why were these people allowed to make a video game? Were all of the intelligent, sane developers who made most of the previous FF games on vacation for FF11's dev cycle?

Dr. Fetus posted:

Honestly it just sounds to me like it was never intended to be killable, but they just didn't give it straight up invulnerability or told players that because the devs enjoyed watching them struggle or something. That's the only sane conclusion I can draw after I heard that they patched out their own "intended" solution.

Probably because they knew that their players would riot if they found out a raidboss was actually a cutscene boss that actually had invulnerability and they were afraid of dataminers or something finding out if they set an invulnerability flag or gave him infinite HP or something like that. I mean, think of it; a raidboss is supposed to be something a lot of players spend a significant amount of time on, and in the end discovering the drat thing was actually unkillable? I'd certainly quit a game over that kind of dickery, and I'd spread the word to anyone I knew thinking of playing it. I wouldn't even be surprised if some disgruntled players tried a class-action suit, which regardless of whether or not it worked, would draw negative attention to the game. "Players Sue Over Secretly Unkillable Video Game Boss" is a headline that would sound ridiculous to most people, but might well scare away potential players.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 03:37

Bruceski: Aug 21, 2007; The tools of a hero mean nothing without a solid core.

They approached the MMO problem of "we spend years on new content, and then people kill it 24 hours after launch and whine about wanting more stuff" (a problem to which I don't think there's ANY good solution) and "solved" it in the worst possible way.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 03:45

Araxxor: Oct 20, 2012; My disdain for you all knows no bounds.

Commander Keene posted:

Why were these people allowed to make a video game? Were all of the intelligent, sane developers who made most of the previous FF games on vacation for FF11's dev cycle?

Probably because they knew that their players would riot if they found out a raidboss was actually a cutscene boss that actually had invulnerability and they were afraid of dataminers or something finding out if they set an invulnerability flag or gave him infinite HP or something like that. I mean, think of it; a raidboss is supposed to be something a lot of players spend a significant amount of time on, and in the end discovering the drat thing was actually unkillable? I'd certainly quit a game over that kind of dickery, and I'd spread the word to anyone I knew thinking of playing it. I wouldn't even be surprised if some disgruntled players tried a class-action suit, which regardless of whether or not it worked, would draw negative attention to the game. "Players Sue Over Secretly Unkillable Video Game Boss" is a headline that would sound ridiculous to most people, but might well scare away potential players.

It wasn't a cutscene boss. Absolute Virtue had a random chance of spawning after killing another specific boss. (Nowadays it's guaranteed to spawn, but not when it was first released.) Absolute Virtue didn't have a grand entrance indicating that it was meant to be unkillable.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 03:49

Schubalts: Nov 26, 2007; People say bigger is better.

But for the first time in my life, I think I've gone too far.

Commander Keene posted:

Why were these people allowed to make a video game? Were all of the intelligent, sane developers who made most of the previous FF games on vacation for FF11's dev cycle?

They were busy with the GBA FFs, and then FF12.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 03:49

Malachite_Dragon: Mar 31, 2010; Weaving Merry Christmas magic

Dr. Fetus posted:

It wasn't a cutscene boss. Absolute Virtue had a random chance of spawning after killing another specific boss. (Nowadays it's guaranteed to spawn, but not when it was first released.) Absolute Virtue didn't have a grand entrance indicating that it was meant to be unkillable.

So even its introduction was a great big "gently caress you!" to the players. Holy poo poo.

E: Was this C-Team of devs who hosed up AV and then the first iteration of FF14 fired from Final Fantasy games or from Square-Enix entirely when they got sacked? I hope the latter.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 03:53

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Dr. Fetus posted:

It wasn't a cutscene boss. Absolute Virtue had a random chance of spawning after killing another specific boss. (Nowadays it's guaranteed to spawn, but not when it was first released.) Absolute Virtue didn't have a grand entrance indicating that it was meant to be unkillable.

OK, I suppose what I meant by "cutscene boss" was a boss whose "boss fight" is basically a semi-interactive cutscene; heavily scripted and with an outcome decided beforehand. It covers bosses whose fights are unwinnable, bosses whose fights you can't lose, and bosses where the "victory condition" is to survive a set number of turns/reduce its HP to a specific non-zero amount/use X item or skill on it Y number of times. Basically, most boss fights that aren't "murder with extreme prejudice".

# ? Jul 4, 2017 04:05

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Commander Keene posted:

Why were these people allowed to make a video game? Were all of the intelligent, sane developers who made most of the previous FF games on vacation for FF11's dev cycle?

Keep in mind FF11 predated World of Warcraft, and was drawing more from Everquest and such.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 04:24

Xelkelvos: Dec 19, 2012

Zereth posted:

Keep in mind FF11 predated World of Warcraft, and was drawing more from Everquest and such.

Japan's MMO scene seems to be heavily influenced by Everquest and such and secondary media (anime/manga depicting MMOs) seem to do the same, even nowadays.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 04:29

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# ? May 9, 2024 22:09

senrath: Nov 4, 2009; Look Professor, a destruct switch!

Bruceski posted:

They approached the MMO problem of "we spend years on new content, and then people kill it 24 hours after launch and whine about wanting more stuff" (a problem to which I don't think there's ANY good solution) and "solved" it in the worst possible way.

There's no real way to "solve" it but you can mitigate the problem by making content that's engaging enough to make people want to repeat it and rewarding enough that they're not just wasting their time. This is, of course, far harder than making an unkillable boss that appears to be killable.

# ? Jul 4, 2017 04:39

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Let's Play Pokemon Reborn: This Trainwreck has no brakes my friend!

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