Natural 20 posted:

If the monsters are avoiding you you are explicitly overleveled according to the game. There is a loading screen tip that literally says you need to find stronger enemies.

Of course if you don't fight any enemies the dungeon is going to be short. You're not actually doing the dungeon, you're just running through a corridor.

Borsche69 posted:

Then we both agree that the dungeons are short.

Kyrosiris posted:

The game's already been beaten on a no-EXP-gained new game plus on hard so I dunno what you want from it.

Borsche69 posted:

Then we both agree that the dungeons are short.

Andrast posted:

Borsche69 posted:

He can fight as many enemies in the dungeon as he wants and if he starts getting bored/thinks hes taking too long in the dungeon he can just pop a ward light. He is the master of his own experience and it feels like he's going out of his way to punish himself. Again, he's spending 2 loving hours in apparently every dungeon so far.

Natural 20 posted:

I'm starved of [...] JP

Natural 20 posted:

Let's take what you've said as reasonably as I can.

I pop ward light and just run through half of every dungeon because I'm bored. I come up against mandatory boss fights that eventually start breaking me because I'm starved of XP and JP. At some point then I have to just sit and grind to deal with the problem I've caused by skipping half the dungeon. Bearing in mind that I'm already, per the game, underleveled, I'm exacerbating a potential issue that already exists.

That is a completely undesirable situation in every sense of the word.

I suspect that I'm never going to get through to you on this.

The options to change difficulty/encounter rate are fine but they aren't a substitute for actually curating a level curve and dungeon time that feel rewarding. If a player plays the game as I have, which is, I think, in a really reasonable way, the game becomes a boring slog and that's bad. The solution you present is "Just don't play the game," which is valid but also proves the point I'm trying to make.

Kyrosiris posted:

So go spend like 5 minutes on the prologue seashore chaining mobs for lots of JP and move on?

Like, idk, the game is very much like FF5 where it's quite easy (and even more efficient in some ways) to skip most of the randoms and spot-grind as you encounter resistance to unlock more job functionality.

Squinky v2.0 posted:

Even if that was a full 12 hour boat, you missed out on like 4 JP orbs. The boat system asks very little of you and gives pretty minor rewards. It痴 just not that big of a thing at the end of the day.

grieving for Gandalf posted:

the dungeons in BD1 didn't feel great because you'd end up running through them with the encounters off and not even looking at the actual dungeon, you were looking at your map, which ends up feeling wack. it's good they put the map away

Josuke Higashikata posted:

Same goes for the boat thing really.

Think I got less overall from my last 12 hour maxed trip than 2 fights overall.

Srice posted:

I've been doing zero grinding and I've found it makes the boss fights challenging in an exciting way, and perfectly doable; at worst I wipe once and reconfigure my team setup to counter what they do.

Harrow posted:

How are people getting like 10-battle long fight chains? I don't think I've ever gotten more than like 4.

Harrow posted:

How are people getting like 10-battle long fight chains? I don't think I've ever gotten more than like 4.

Ojetor posted:

I've not really run into that problem. Yes, getting to a new area will have monsters glow scary red but then I gain one or two levels and it stops. That's a level curve that is right on point.

Someone mentioned this earlier but you really need one or two characters built for clearing random encounters. Berserker is great for this (strong physical AOEs) as is Monk (Pressure Point only costs BP and oneshots most monsters).

THE AWESOME GHOST posted:

I知 about to start this game (Persona Strikers distracted me)

I知 a big big BD1 fan, but was a bit disappointed with the battle system in the demo - how are people finding it in the full game

raditts posted:

Unless you run from literally every encounter or are otherwise explicitly avoiding it, you should have at least one character maxed on Freelancer by the end of the prologue and all of them by the end of Chapter 1. Which means all your characters should have Body Slam available, which is effective for one-shotting trash mob enemies at least as far as chapter 3, but at that point you should have comparable abilities from other jobs that do way more damage for the same BP cost.

What was the boss everyone was talking about that some reviewer was saying was too difficult, by the way?

THE AWESOME GHOST posted:

I知 about to start this game (Persona Strikers distracted me)

I知 a big big BD1 fan, but was a bit disappointed with the battle system in the demo - how are people finding it in the full game

THE AWESOME GHOST posted:

I’m about to start this game (Persona Strikers distracted me)

I’m a big big BD1 fan, but was a bit disappointed with the battle system in the demo - how are people finding it in the full game

raditts posted:

What was the boss everyone was talking about that some reviewer was saying was too difficult, by the way?

Natural 20 posted:

If you're the kind of person that will grind for fun ahead of a dungeon and go in overpowered then you'll have a fine time

Natural 20 posted:

Ironically I feel like the player agency, so difficulty setting / encounter setting is worse in this. Grinding is harder to do overall because you have to be a sheepdog to get enemies coralled for a decent grind rather than just turning up the encounter rate and oneshotting everything for chain kill / no damage bonuses.

Natural 20 posted:

Like that's obviously incorrect for a lot of reasons.

If the level curve is off so you're constantly underleveled in dungeons that's a problem with the game. Again, I am playing this as predictably as anyone reasonably could do. If the claim then is "But the game assumes grinding" then I'm going to call it a bad game because no RPG in 2021 should assume that the player spends their time grinding trash mobs to stay on curve.

It equally should not be an expectation that the player goes into the dungeon overleveled without fighting anything for it to be of a tolerable length. I actually don't think being underleveled is significantly impacting me because I snapped the job system over my knee and it's only just catching up now. But in a world where I fight what comes to me, kill every encounter inside two rounds and continue on, these dungeons are taking upwards of two hours.

That is far too long and really bad design. The dungeons have impact and ideas for half an hour of content, not two. You could cut this game down by half and it would be a much breezier and fun RPG.

The fact that there are teleport points doesn't change the fact that I'm already really bored of the dungeon by the time I hit the midpoint. Most dungeons should end by the first teleport point as they stand.

For what it's worth I still enjoy the game because it's an FFV job system so how can I not. But it's such a step down from the previous titles in so many ways that I'm disappointed

Srice posted:

In the red mage fight there's also a monster immune to physical attacks but I was able to immediately nuke it down with beastmaster captures. The idea that killing it would take an hour like that reviewer said, is absurd.

Srice posted:

In the red mage fight there's also a monster immune to physical attacks but I was able to immediately nuke it down with beastmaster captures. The idea that killing it would take an hour like that reviewer said, is absurd.

Borsche69 posted:

okay here we go. i don't know how many times i can say this but use monster bait. its an insane increase in stat gain - corralling monsters like that will get you 1.1x or 1.2x at most, where monster baits will get you more like 1.6x exp (and even more if you combine it with the corralling technique - although i dont bother with that since its a pain in the rear end).

secondly with oneshotting - you can do that too. theres a bunch of jobs that are great mob control poo poo. red mage main with black mage sub will cast spells 2x for no extra MP cost. beserker has a great 'attack all enemies for huge damage' at the cost of HP. throw down some braves and go to down.

again, you are spending 2 hours in dungeons and having trouble clearing out mobs with 3000 HP at the tail end of chapter 3. this is an experience very clearly unique to you.

Evil Fluffy posted:

If dungeons take you 2 hours the problem is your party. I just grabbed the first job in Ch2 and that dungeon might've been 30 minutes including time I spent capturing monsters ans testing what their beastmaster effects are (which needs to be in the bestiary or something because come on game) and the enemies were red to me when I started the dungeon, though I picked up 2-3 levels inside. I also have pressure point on 2 characters and the other 2 had body slam so I can 1 round 99% of random encounters. Though if something survives then things can go badly for a few turns but the only way I see a dungeon taking a long time is if I'd run a group with really bad damage output.

Natural 20 posted:

So from the off. I really don't think the issues with dungeon length are unique to me. There are comments up thread about the water cave being too long and I've been chatting with a few people in discord who recognise the same issue.

It takes me maybe two rounds to clear 4-6 mobs at 3k HP. Which I think is probably reasonable. In chapter 3 I was using a BP battery to fuel pressure points from a monk, who would twoshot or oneshot enemies on a crit. Most encounters fall in around a minute.

I've found Red/Black mage to generally be pretty bad because the damage from spells is anemic and costs you MP that could be better spent on buffs for your BP spender classes.

As for Berserker, I used that and found the damage to be lower than what monk was putting out.

In terms of grinding, I still think the easiest system for grinding is the BD1 model of being able to run in circles holding down the y button and killing everything with no player input.


Which route did you take? One of those dungeons is absolutely fine and the other is far too long. In Ch2 I was largely oneshotting everything with Pressure Point.

Srice posted:

In the red mage fight there's also a monster immune to physical attacks but I was able to immediately nuke it down with beastmaster captures. The idea that killing it would take an hour like that reviewer said, is absurd.

Natural 20 posted:

As for Berserker, I used that and found the damage to be lower than what monk was putting out.

raditts posted:

Unless you run from literally every encounter or are otherwise explicitly avoiding it, you should have at least one character maxed on Freelancer by the end of the prologue and all of them by the end of Chapter 1. Which means all your characters should have Body Slam available, which is effective for one-shotting trash mob enemies at least as far as chapter 3, but at that point you should have comparable abilities from other jobs that do way more damage for the same BP cost.

What was the boss everyone was talking about that some reviewer was saying was too difficult, by the way?

Harrow posted:

I don't understand this because even with Chapter 2 equipment, my Berserkers can do almost 2k damage with a single Level Slash, 3k if they get buffed first. Monk skills hit harder single-target, but Level Slash, well, levels random encounters.