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Some of these changes WERE warranted...but jesus gently caress, devs, let people have SOME loving wiggle room for strategies, a lot of these just seem way out there to gently caress everyone over. And then there’s the life shoom shortage where you can’t gently caress up, like, at all and hope you don’t get teabagged too hard by the following bosses. Definitely gonna opt into their junior hard mode patch, because...yea, gently caress a lot of these changes.
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Nov 16, 2019 21:21
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I think the devs are assuming that people are going to be playing with save states and that's partly why it's so unforgiving.
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Nov 16, 2019 21:29
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I was chuffed to see that there were LPs of Paper Mario, Door and Super PM on the archives, then I realised that all of them were video LPs (I vastly prefer SS) and two of the three were no longer watchable due to dead video links. What an anti-climax.
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Nov 16, 2019 21:54
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loving love Fiona Apple posted:I think the devs are assuming that people are going to be playing with save states and that's partly why it's so unforgiving. I got kinda curious, so I asked on the Discord. quote:Me: Hey Thamz? (a brief discussion follows among other members of the discord about save states) quote:Thamz: using them inbattle is lame And there we have it.
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Nov 16, 2019 22:04
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A lot of these "gently caress you" formations make more sense when you view them as immediately repeatable puzzles with no penalty for failure. The difference between Meat Boy and Dark Souls, if you get what I mean.
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Nov 16, 2019 22:13
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If that's the plan is there any plan to make escaping 100% so you can engage, find your setup is trash and run so you can retool instead of finding you're wrong and then getting stomped if you flubbed button mashing?
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Nov 16, 2019 22:16
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I'm no expert on the subject, but like many difficulty mods I almost feel as if this hard-type mod would work better if Mario A) had his Heart Points and Flower Points restored after every battle and B) he could freely shuffle his level-up benefits between Max HP, Max FP and Max BP at no cost. It's a lot easier to balance "one solution" type approaches when there is foreknowledge of the entrance state of the player.
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Nov 16, 2019 22:28
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I will say it. I hate this style of hack. Extra difficulty is one thing, but "One True Tactic" style balancing where you methodically murder-nerf every single potential strategy except the one that you want people to use for any given fight is just insulting and, IMO, egotistical. It reminds me of the devs for the Long War mods for XCOM Enemy Within and XCOM2, who made sure to nerf into the ground any tools or abilities the player had that were remotely reliable and consistent. I will continue to follow this LP, but goddamn I hate this type of developer. JustJeff88 posted:I'm no expert on the subject, but like many difficulty mods I almost feel as if this hard-type mod would work better if Mario A) had his Heart Points and Flower Points restored after every battle and B) he could freely shuffle his level-up benefits between Max HP, Max FP and Max BP at no cost. It's a lot easier to balance "one solution" type approaches when there is foreknowledge of the entrance state of the player. Also this. And frankly, that admission from the dev about Savestates is kind of damning. He's basically admitting that there are times when you need to retreat to healblocks after every fight. Which, in a game like this, is *not fun*. BlazetheInferno fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Nov 16, 2019 |
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Nov 16, 2019 22:32
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BlazetheInferno posted:And frankly, that admission from the dev about Savestates is kind of damning. He's basically admitting that there are times when you need to retreat to healblocks after every fight. Which, in a game like this, is *not fun*. I agree. I also think that we all have to tacitly admit that mods like this are not just to give more legs to a game for which people have mastered every intricacy, but also for many of said people to feel superior to those who give up due to not having fun and/or not possessing the time and/or physical abilities necessary to win (e.g. me with virtually any RTS). For some people, "fun" is feeling smugly superior to other people who aren't willing to go through the same bullshit, despite also being unhappy oneself. It's a bit like hate-loving, but with video games.
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Nov 16, 2019 22:41
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FeyerbrandX posted:If that's the plan is there any plan to make escaping 100% so you can engage, find your setup is trash and run so you can retool instead of finding you're wrong and then getting stomped if you flubbed button mashing? No plans for further balance changes (to MQ Full) at this point. An announcement was just posted. Also, update from Thamz. quote:Thamz: using them to rng cheese is more what I meant Quackles fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Nov 16, 2019 |
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Nov 16, 2019 22:53
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Honestly, if you're going to do stuff like this, just give the player a full refresh after every fight. It just saves time, right?
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Nov 17, 2019 00:38
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Capfalcon posted:Honestly, if you're going to do stuff like this, just give the player a full refresh after every fight. It just saves time, right? When I first encountered a game like that more than a decade back in The World Ends With You, I wondered why I hadn't seen other games attempt that, even if it doesn't make sense in every case it's so perfect when it does. Still waiting, at least platformers are starting to ditch lives now.
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Nov 17, 2019 01:09
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One More Changelog Thing The 3-Red-Clubba fight by Mega Rush has had a Bristle added to the formation.  Verdict: UGH. UGH. (The new formation has the Bristle 2nd or 3rd in line. My strategy of Power Quake / Power Bomb, then Power Bomb / Double Dip Fire Flowers will still work, fortunately.) Interestingly, Thamz doesn't remember adding this one, and suggests that one of the other dev team members must have snuck it in.
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Nov 17, 2019 02:01
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gourdcaptain posted:Still waiting, at least platformers are starting to ditch lives now. As long as the player has a number of ways to recover spent lives (such as an infinite lives trick) and the game doesn’t punish you TOO heavily for running out, I don’t mind Lives as a mechanic, but I admit some games do tend to go too far in one direction or another in regards to that sort of thing. A healthy challenge with a way to replenish resources is one thing, being too easy with too many lives or too hard with few chances to get more is another thing entirely.
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Nov 17, 2019 02:06
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Quackles posted:One More Changelog Thing The biggest problem with this fight is that there's no indication that it's suddenly going to be a miniboss fight and have the formation that it does. And you can't run from it. The Bristle sounds like it has exactly one purpose, and that's the add a tiny amount of extra damage to the fight, making the amount of damage you have to tank a little worse per turn.
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Nov 17, 2019 02:08
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Once we got past the "load game in final world only to start with 5 lives" stage of gaming, we were fine
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Nov 17, 2019 02:09
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I regret that openemu doesn't have a windows version; it looks intriguing. There are some platforms for which I have emulators that I love, but there are still a few (N64 and PSX foremost, probably) for which I'm still searching. Everyone talks about RetroArch, but I find it overcomplicated and obtuse.
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Nov 17, 2019 02:13
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gourdcaptain posted:When I first encountered a game like that more than a decade back in The World Ends With You, I wondered why I hadn't seen other games attempt that, even if it doesn't make sense in every case it's so perfect when it does. I think the reason so few games give you full heals is because attrition is very much a valid challenge you can apply to a player. Consider Darkest Dungeon where things like limited inventory space and stress are explicitly designed to slowly bleed you out over the course of a dungeon run. Consider Etrian Odyssey or its peers in the Wizardry style dungeon crawler where the game is built around trying to reach further and further into the dungeon by slowly leveling and gearing up so you can make your limited pool of resources stretch longer and longer. Consider Persona, where the nature of the game's time management and calendar mean that you want to get as far as you can in any given visit to the dungeon and creates difficulty by encouraging you to press your luck. Of course there are many games where you could totally strip attrition out of the equation and not really have a major effect on the game, and in those cases I assume its just design cargo culting. Pokemon is a good example, how much would be lost if you were given a full heal outside of every battle? Not much, Pokemon is a game with designated free heal spots in every town (and even many dungeons) it never really pushes you to progress in the majority of gameplay. Up until Gen 7 the only time the game stopped you from popping out to heal after every trainer fight (with few exceptions) was when you were challenging the Elite Four. Before that point nothing but sheer tedium was holding you back from visiting a Pokemon center after every battle, and at that point why have HP and PP carry over between battles? Paper Mario is another game like that. The vanilla games are usually very easy, with the only place where attrition is a real aspect of design being the Pit of 100 Trials. Master Quest is not easy (And not in a good way, I'd argue), but it's another game where attrition is not a real mechanic and for basically the opposite of the original game. Paper Mario is easy so you can easily breeze through random encounters with little worry. On the extreme other side of he spectrum Master Quest's encounters are SO overtuned and SO difficult and each fight's One Correct Strategy SO specific that trying to fight two enemies in a row without healing is a disaster. The game even seems to expect you to fully heal between every single fight, so I agree, why not bake that into the experience? If Master Quest is so dedicated to turning every single encounter ever into a puzzle why not go all the way in on it and take out any sort of carryover between fights? Right now the carryover is just as constrained as the valid strategies, you're either at max resources (or near enough that it doesn't matter) or you don't have enough HP and FP and are dead. Bottom Line? Master Quest should go on as it means to start. Full heal after every battle. Why not? The game wouldn't be any easier just because of it.
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Nov 17, 2019 02:17
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JustJeff88 posted:I regret that openemu doesn't have a windows version; it looks intriguing. There are some platforms for which I have emulators that I love, but there are still a few (N64 and PSX foremost, probably) for which I'm still searching. Everyone talks about RetroArch, but I find it overcomplicated and obtuse. The Windows equivalent is probably Bizhawk, at least in terms of platforms supported. I like OpenEmu's UI, though, and there are probably frontends that'll manage this stuff for you.
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Nov 17, 2019 02:20
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Omnicrom posted:Bottom Line? Master Quest should go on as it means to start. Full heal after every battle. Why not? The game wouldn't be any easier just because of it. My example would be FFXIII, each fight is its own thing, and at the end you're fully healed. Attrition happens within the fight and change your formations as needed, kind of like you'd do with your partner in fight. I guess if they won't let you 100% flee, maybe just give you a badge menu like the item option. Or innate quickswap. something, anything that lets them make each fight a wretched slog but gives the player a chance to face the slog besides save/load state before every fight.
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Nov 17, 2019 02:28
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I’m pretty sure you can perfectly flee any fight that isn’t a boss fight in Paper Mario. Also the fact that MQJr exists is I think a good sign that the developers are aware that Master Quest is a little unreasonable in difficulty, and likely the unreasonable difficulty is the point. They’re designing this explicitly for people who have mastered the mechanics of Paper Mario, as opposed to merely being a more traditional Master Quest remix. The health gating is perhaps the only really bad part of it in my opinion and I thought in Paper Mario you could swap your level ups for free or at least a minor cost whenever you want. Plus the availability of the HP and FP badges makes me feel it’s not quite as tight as it appears at first especially for the intended audience who likely are capable of guarding every attack by skill alone. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but if the developers have made what they set out to make, and their primary audience is happy, they don’t have to make something for everyone. Plus as I pointed out at the start, they didn’t have to make MQJr and did so anyway when they recognised that people who are not skilled enough for the full game might still want to experience it. Which is more than some triple A developers manage or care to do. Lord_Magmar fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Nov 17, 2019 |
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Nov 17, 2019 02:34
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Lord_Magmar posted:I’m pretty sure you can perfectly flee any fight that isn’t a boss fight in Paper Mario. Nope. Each enemy formation has a base 'run away' chance, and then you can button mash to increase that chance some. Then it's a percentage die roll. Failure, and Mario trips and has to try again next turn (if he doesn't get KO'd). quote:Also the fact that MQJr exists is I think a good sign that the developers are aware that Master Quest is a little unreasonable in difficulty, and likely the unreasonable difficulty is the point. Even more than that. They're designing for streamers who have mastered the mechanics. Which should tell you all you need to know.
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Nov 17, 2019 03:21
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Quackles posted:Nope. Each enemy formation has a base 'run away' chance, and then you can button mash to increase that chance some. Then it's a percentage die roll. Failure, and Mario trips and has to try again next turn (if he doesn't get KO'd). Stryder7x, arguably the best and most knowledgeable Paper Mario 64 player in the world (all round, not just at speed running), seemed to find it a bracing challenge. Even he beat some fights only because of repeated Lucky dodges. Which no longer exist. I cannot F5 this thread hard enough.
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Nov 17, 2019 03:39
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Sorites posted:Stryder7x, arguably the best and most knowledgeable Paper Mario 64 player in the world (all round, not just at speed running), seemed to find it a bracing challenge. This, keep in mind he beat the hardest boss in the game because he lucky dodged it’s combo attacks like 4 times in a row. I’m sure that’s part of the reason why they were removed entirely.
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Nov 17, 2019 04:02
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I do not intend to play this hack.
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Nov 17, 2019 05:10
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Bogart posted:I do not intend to play this hack. 
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Nov 17, 2019 05:20
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I just noticed that on the Wii U VC (I really like my Wii U) that one can purchase Super Mario RPG from the SNES, Paper Mario from the N64 and Super Paper Mario from the Wii at reasonable prices, but no TTYD which, naturally is ludicrously loving expensive on GC disc. Bleh.Sorites posted:Stryder7x, arguably the best and most knowledgeable Paper Mario 64 player in the world (all round, not just at speed running), seemed to find it a bracing challenge. I watched the highlights of that run, in fact. He was *ludicrously* fortunate more than once, but I don't know how to describe fights in the game well enough to tell you where specifically. Bogart posted:I do not intend to play this hack. Me either, and it's not just, or even primarily, because I've yet to play the original. I could see the trying MQlite or whatever it is called at some point, perhaps... FFT 1.3 content was passable. JustJeff88 fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Nov 17, 2019 |
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Nov 17, 2019 05:59
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FeyerbrandX posted:My example would be FFXIII, each fight is its own thing, and at the end you're fully healed. Attrition happens within the fight and change your formations as needed, kind of like you'd do with your partner in fight. FF13 was a mixed bag for me on the full heal out of combat. On one hand, it was nice not having to manage mana and hp pools over the long stretches of game where it was just trash fights for leveling. On the other, it made random encounters in the open world more dangerous than bosses. Bosses were designed with strategic setups for long fights to justify use of your big summons and low rampup damage so there could be story interspaced into the fight. Random overworld were designed to be quick, but they needed to be threatening to not be dull. Since they weren't a resource drain, the burst damage on a rando robot formation in the mines ended up feeling like more of a threat than and of the bosses to me.
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Nov 17, 2019 07:41
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Bogart posted:I do not intend to play this hack. i'd wager many of its earnest fans don't intend to either, they just wanna watch streamers weasel their way out of crazy scenarios i mean here i am, reading this good lp
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Nov 17, 2019 08:00
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Jr. so far has been decent, most of the enemy damage has been reduced while keeping the formations and new content. There is legit new challenge that makes it more interesting but not ball busting hard so far. Basically it went from I can sleep through Paper mario to oh interesting I have to think about strategy now.
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Nov 17, 2019 10:15
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UCS Hellmaker posted:Jr. so far has been decent, most of the enemy damage has been reduced while keeping the formations and new content. There is legit new challenge that makes it more interesting but not ball busting hard so far. Basically it went from I can sleep through Paper mario to oh interesting I have to think about strategy now. About what I expected, and genuinely a cool move from the developers to do it that way.
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Nov 17, 2019 11:22
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I would just make Master Quest jr. into the official Master Quest, and turn the current edition into Super Master Quest Pro Mode Exreme Edition.
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Nov 17, 2019 12:30
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Paper Mario Master Quest: Master Quest. *nods sagely* But it is cool they went as far as releasing two versions of it. The Lite version seems quite reasonable from what everyone's said--challenging, but not balls to the wall insane like some of the stuff they just added in the final cut.
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Nov 17, 2019 13:58
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loving love Fiona Apple posted:I would just make Master Quest jr. into the official Master Quest, and turn the current edition into Super Master Quest Pro Mode Exreme Edition. Agreed. Just call it Master Quest: Streamer Edition since that is literally who it's designed for. It makes way more sense that the version people are actually intended to play be the main version.
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Nov 18, 2019 03:13
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Someone mentioned TWEWY, which gives me a good chance to talk about why I think automatic resource restoration feels different in it then it does in FF13(or would in PM:MQ) To me, its two factors, Contiguousness, and Chaos What I mean by Contiguous is that in FF13, the only resources that persist between fights are the annoying ones, Potions and Librascopes and stuff, there's no real challenge in losing those, just annoyance, the closest you get is TP for Summons, no fight in the game immediately follows with another fight with no healing or a persistence of effects Meanwhile in TWEWY, early on you get a passive called "Chain 4" and in Post/Endgame you can get its dangerous big brother "Chain 16", these let you decide to challenge multiple encounters at once, taking them in sequence, with risk and reward, Drop Rates are directly multiplied by the number of fights taken, and PP, your skill experience of sorts, gains an increasing multiplier for each fight taken, but your HP, Cooldowns, and Super Meter are maintained between fights, and later waves have stronger and stronger damage, creating a tension and meaningful sense of attrition for reward, without removing the free heals, oh and you get free Fleeing from anything short of a Boss, though it has a minor cost in pissing off your partner if you do it too much As for Chaos, FF13 has fixed formations, and the encounter with one position is always the same, add in no direct control, and you can generally solve the same formation with the same sequence of actions every time, nice for grinding, but utter tedium when things get tougher, its not a challenge, its just pressing buttons in sequence TWEWY is on the other hand, an action game, and with few exceptions, its hard to tell which encounter symbol is which exact formation for randoms, just a general sense of the formation flavor(an Elephant Noise Symbol PROBABLY has a fuckin Elephant Noise in it), more active movement, attacking, blocking, means that short of straight oneshotting things, you have to play a bit by ear, Chaining adds to this as well, what might be an easy formation at Chain 1, could be surprisingly dangerous as the 5th wave instead
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Nov 18, 2019 12:49
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Call it Paper Mario: Kaizo Quest problem solved
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Nov 18, 2019 21:18
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I just wanted to share this with you... I called my Friendly Local Gaming Store recently as I'm interested in a copy of Thousand Year Door; the bloke on the phone said that "the market" was at around $130. I just bought a copy complete with box and manual on eBay: $48 US I'm guessing that he was looking at "the market" for the Belgian franc that doesn't exist anymore. SSNeoman posted:Call it Paper Mario: Kaizo Quest Totally seriously, this is a great idea. Kaizo should be a standard, mandatory internet shorthand for "brutally hard game for nutters that 98% of the population would rightly despise"
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Nov 18, 2019 22:57
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JustJeff88 posted:I just wanted to share this with you... I called my Friendly Local Gaming Store recently as I'm interested in a copy of Thousand Year Door; the bloke on the phone said that "the market" was at around $130. I just bought a copy complete with box and manual on eBay: $48 US The resale markup in brick and mortar stores is completely ludicrous since their target market seems to be people who
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Nov 19, 2019 01:45
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These changes make me feel vindicated in my earlier suspicion that the devs were entirely focused on higher order decisionmaking and that performance in defense timing and attack performance is pretty much ompletely absent from the design process.
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Nov 19, 2019 01:50
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I dont know posted:The resale markup in brick and mortar stores is completely ludicrous since their target market seems to be people who I'd like to think that even grannies know well enough that $130 for a video game is bloody ludicrous, but I am neither a mother nor grand. On another note, I found out that my local Gamestop has Super Paper Mario for $10 and it's $20 on VC, so that's an easy decision. I still prefer physical console games when not ridiculously expensive as I'm always worried what I will do when servers go down.
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Nov 19, 2019 02:34
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