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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:so they've switched entirely to the fft death system. i wonder how hard it is to acquire the phoenix down equivalents? Good question. That said, I've always been opposed to perma-death. No-one in their right mind wants to lose forever something that they've built up and to which they are attached. I've never played any of the Fire Emblem games, and people talk a lot about how perma-death is a big part of those games. However, everyone I know who *does* play those games reloads if any units permanently die, so what's the point? In more recent games, they've given the option to disable that. Perma death is fine in games where units are generic and static. In games with serious progression, it's a terrible idea. Perma-death can work if it's a consequence of narrative decisions, but if it's just some random death in battle then it serves no purpose but to piss off the player or force them to try again. That happened to me once years ago in Baldur's Gate 2 during a very difficult fight. I succeeded on the 4th try, but one of my characters was permanently killed. I had means to raise the dead, but this was blown-to-bits no rematch dead. It took me another 18 tries to win without losing anyone forever.
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Oct 6, 2022 17:15
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Permadeath is an important balancing choice, even if the expectation is that no player ever loses a unit from it. If you make the choice to not have meaningful death consequences, people become immediately more flippant about allowing their units to die. And, even people who aren't fans of ironman style games will occasionally say 'gently caress it' and keep a run where they lose somebody but otherwise goes flawlessly. Loyalty is, likewise, a large part of setting up the feeling of game they are going to. The Arcyelle hit is a really good example of it, even. She joined you on Chaos after you showed her she was lied to, and that her lover had a direct hand in killing her family. She swears revenge on him and wants to undo all of his works. And then, on Neutral, you... just immediately go 'well poo poo nevermind man, let's team up'. Of course she's pissed at you! You essentially revealed that you didn't REALLY care about morality, and when the chips were down you sided with a monster. There's a reason the Neutral route is so dire. It's the game calling you the coward you are. Law and Chaos? Those are convictions. Neutral is weakness.
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Oct 6, 2022 17:28
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I am very glad that the game acknowledges Centrism as the ultimate cowards choice.
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Oct 6, 2022 17:33
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i suppose it differs from fft somewhat, as it is even more generous. the difference is consumable item slots and the instant turn on revival. so, everyone can revive others and once they are revived they can back off and heal themselves. since it is a 12 person party that's a lot of healing power. also, they didn't explain it fully but i guess charms are a different dedicated consumable slot for items with permanent effects. you can effectively bring tarot cards into training battles and use them on anyone at your leisure. they are post-battle rewards, too. i guess they have stat bonuses if you don't use them?
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Oct 6, 2022 17:38
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The Happy Hyperbole posted:There's a reason the Neutral route is so dire. It's the game calling you the coward you are. Law and Chaos? Those are convictions. Neutral is weakness. It's really funny how Neutral is the only route that can do the shaman quest line on the PSX version. I think Chaos is supposed to be able to do it too but one of the sisters' cut scene is bugged and never triggers so they don't join you even if they're alive and should, while in the Law route you have to kill one or two of them.
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Oct 6, 2022 18:33
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Permadeath is a dumb mechanic where the game effectively tells you that any unit dying is a loss condition unless you are looking at the 1 in 5000 scenario where one player decides to just keep moving on Loyalty is a dumb mechanic because the only consequence of it is not using the galgistani units because you have to kill so many of them in the story so all your galgistani units immediately desert if you ever decide to try pulling them out of storage. I did not know it affected the ending and apparently it only does if catuia doesn't kill herself and then it's just a binary flip between "denam is shot with a crossbow" vs "denam finds out lodis is gonna wreck valeris" I kinda just assumed you always got the crossbow and the only ending determiner was catuia dying. It sounds really cool but in practice it just serves to inconvenience the player for little benefit
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Oct 6, 2022 18:59
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Did the PSP version change the pistol to a crossbow? That stinks.
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Oct 6, 2022 19:05
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The Happy Hyperbole posted:Permadeath is an important balancing choice, even if the expectation is that no player ever loses a unit from it. If you make the choice to not have meaningful death consequences, people become immediately more flippant about allowing their units to die. And, even people who aren't fans of ironman style games will occasionally say 'gently caress it' and keep a run where they lose somebody but otherwise goes flawlessly. both Law and Chaos routes show how Denam kind of leans fully into being a villain. Law route has Denam lean fully into the ends justify the means even if he pretends to be remorseful (because he continues to maintain a lie in order to prevent everything collapsing around himself as well as the various other actions he takes) and Chaos route he goes so far into the 'i am right you are wrong' stance that he involves a bunch of other innocent people and incites other wars in order to prove that he's right. neutral route has him working to better the lives of the common folk while everything else crumbles around him, but the route itself again has a fair bit of filler. it does have the best iteration of Vyce's character though since without Denam as a foil he becomes fueled solely by revenge and starts tearing everything down.
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Oct 6, 2022 19:24
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Chiming in to agree that loyalty is a dumb, grindy, mechanic that added nothing but a bother hurdle to see a better ending. Permadeath is also a dumb mechanic if you can just reload.
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Oct 6, 2022 19:35
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becoming king only to get assassinated because you weren't paying close enough attention to the racial animus within your own army rules
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Oct 6, 2022 19:41
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Permadeath and loyalty were both good.
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Oct 6, 2022 19:43
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Bonaventure posted:becoming king only to get assassinated because you weren't paying close enough attention to the racial animus within your own army rules Not if the only difference is a couple lines of dialogue and a different .5 second sprite animation playing, which also might not even matter if you choose to not let catuia kill herself
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Oct 6, 2022 20:34
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Schwarzwald posted:Did the PSP version change the pistol to a crossbow? That stinks. It might've been a pistol but I strongly remember a crossbow
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Oct 6, 2022 20:35
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The Happy Hyperbole posted:Permadeath is an important balancing choice, even if the expectation is that no player ever loses a unit from it. If you make the choice to not have meaningful death consequences, people become immediately more flippant about allowing their units to die. And, even people who aren't fans of ironman style games will occasionally say 'gently caress it' and keep a run where they lose somebody but otherwise goes flawlessly. Then make Arycelle part of the narrative with narrative ways to redeem yourself or just accept her loss as part of your decision, don't just slaughter a bunch of <ethnic group she doesn't like>. This game has loads, just *loads* of content. It's not a fee-based grind-tastic MMO and does not need to soak money from us beyond the already inflated cost of the game. Permadeath is moronic - full stop. Some (dumb) people want to play Diablo 2 HARDCORE. Let those lunatics do that in their own special mode, but don't impose it upon sensible people in our games. People who champion such things are like people who favoured the death mechanics back in the earliest days of EverQuest, around 2000-2002 or so. The game already was appallingly slow, but when you died you 1) Lost a massive amount of experience which took forever to get back barring one class that could help you, and that only at high levels 2) were teleported back to your bind point, which was often a continent away and 3) left all of your possessions on your corpse which could eventually despawn. People used to say that it added tension... no, it made people miserable and was a contrived mechanic to pad out a game without much content in order to soak people for more monthly fees. ninjewtsu posted:Permadeath is a dumb mechanic Correct x2 Orcs and Ostriches posted:Permadeath and loyalty were both good. They were not
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Oct 6, 2022 21:09
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Permadeath in strategy games are good, and I'm not some broken everquest grognard who thinks exp and equipment loss is good. It's a strategy game, weighing your choices as a series of risks and rewards. Permadeath is really the only risk, and unless it's a dumb level where 10 archers first-turn your character, it's also a result and your planning and strategy. You made them vulnerable, or didn't support them, and death is the result. If you take that as a lose condition and restart, that's your choice, but it also removes the larger risk of your actions.
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Oct 6, 2022 21:24
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if 99.9% of players just restart why bother, just make the game say mission failed and reset when someone dies and save everyone the time of rebooting that'd feel kind of silly though huh
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Oct 6, 2022 21:49
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ninjewtsu posted:if 99.9% of players just restart why bother If 99.9% of players just restarted, maybe. However, I have yet to see, in all the years this has been debated, any proof that the numbers are anywhere near that lopsided. Especially for a game like Tactics Ogre, where many of your units are generics that are relatively easy to replace. I know I've shrugged and moved on plenty of times when Random Jimbob bit the bullet.
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Oct 6, 2022 21:53
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perhaps if we add together everyone who says "i personally have moved on a couple of times across the many games i have played" we can prove that that number is more like 99.5%
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Oct 6, 2022 21:56
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what do you think the numbers are?
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Oct 6, 2022 21:58
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ninjewtsu posted:what do you think the numbers are? No way to know. I suspect it's far less (EDIT: less rare, that is) than 1 in 1000, but at the end of the day, I don't really care that much. I'm not so insecure in my own playstyle that I need to imagine millions of people all agreeing with me. Zurai fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Oct 6, 2022 |
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Oct 6, 2022 22:09
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Permadeath should just be an option. I like it but other people don't Autosave/ironman should also be an option just like in XCOM
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Oct 6, 2022 22:13
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Permadeath as an option is cool if death is unavoidable and you have to account for it. If the correct way to play is to never lose a unit, it's a dumb reload fest. See permadeath in Xcom 1 vs new Xcom.
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Oct 6, 2022 22:20
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ninjewtsu posted:Not if the only difference is a couple lines of dialogue and a different .5 second sprite animation playing, which also might not even matter if you choose to not let catuia kill herself Also she's locked into "definitely gonna die" or "might still die, either to suicide or trying to fight you which is also basically suicide" based on a decision a few maps earlier than the act happens, iirc. I just remember in the PSX route for Neutral, keeping her alive was a massive pain in the rear end because she basically chased my melee around and if she hit any of them they killed her with their counter attack. Zurai posted:Especially for a game like Tactics Ogre, where many of your units are generics that are relatively easy to replace. Except in Tactics Ogre you can and do get a shitload of non-generic people joining you over the course of the game and even the ones who use generic sprites in addition to generic classes are just outright better (stat-wise) than a generic unit. And then you have the maps where you need to keep someone alive and the AI was so suicidal that you had to hope their first 1-3 actions went a specific way or they were 100% going to die and you could not stop it in any way. Riovannes Rooftop has nothing on Tactic Ogre's suicidal NPCs.
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Oct 6, 2022 22:22
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I really hope they change the NPC AI so that it's easier to keep them alive. I tried to replay LUCT a couple years ago and stopped on the first map where saving someone is optional but I wanted to save them anyway. I got tired of reloading and gave up I might not always use every character but I want to have the option to do so and I always want to save as many lives as possible
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Oct 6, 2022 22:33
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WarpedLichen posted:See permadeath in Xcom 1 vs new Xcom. IDGI. You can avoid death in both, and you can get utterly screwed over by RNG in both. Evil Fluffy posted:Except in Tactics Ogre you can and do get a shitload of non-generic people joining you over the course of the game and even the ones who use generic sprites in addition to generic classes are just outright better (stat-wise) than a generic unit. Sure, and those people I'll generally reload for. But, again, I don't usually care that much if some rando dies unless their death leads to other deaths, etc. quote:And then you have the maps where you need to keep someone alive and the AI was so suicidal that you had to hope their first 1-3 actions went a specific way or they were 100% going to die and you could not stop it in any way. Riovannes Rooftop has nothing on Tactic Ogre's suicidal NPCs. If you're talking about escort battles where you get a game over if the NPC dies (Riovanes Rooftop), that's outside the scope of the discussion because it's exactly what people are asking to happen. If you're talking about needing to keep certain NPCs alive in other maps in order to set the recruitment flags, then obsessive completionism isn't a very good argument against permadeath. That's like saying stages in Spyro shouldn't let you end them unless the player collects every single item.
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Oct 6, 2022 22:34
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The suicidal NPC AI in rescue missions is a whole other issue, regardless of your views on permadeath. In one of the preview shots I saw elsewhere they had a cleric healing over 100 damage. If healing magic actually worked worth poo poo, that would go a long way in keeping NPCs alive. Any other improvements would be great. Orcs and Ostriches fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Oct 6, 2022 |
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Oct 6, 2022 22:35
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Zurai posted:No way to know. I suspect it's far less (EDIT: less rare, that is) than 1 in 1000, but at the end of the day, I don't really care that much. I'm not so insecure in my own playstyle that I need to imagine millions of people all agreeing with me. weird read for a discussion about a particular mechanic adding or detracting from a game
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Oct 6, 2022 23:05
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Evil Fluffy posted:Also she's locked into "definitely gonna die" or "might still die, either to suicide or trying to fight you which is also basically suicide" based on a decision a few maps earlier than the act happens, iirc. as far as i could tell in LUCT catuia's death was solely based off of a single dialogue choice where, cruelly/hilariously, both options are essentially the same but the wording is different (her decision depends on how you treat her not the logic of your argument). but also idk maybe i did the same choice on that previous map 4 times in a row or something one thing the remake should solve is when you're replaying a route and have to protect an npc that's a character you already have, so their level is 1 because they're in a class you haven't leveled and yes of course if they die here that counts as a death for the version of them in your party i bitch about it because it sucked but i did feel kinda clever making half my party strip naked so they would have the speed to run up and provide cover for the npc before they bit the dust ninjewtsu fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Oct 6, 2022 |
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Oct 6, 2022 23:08
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Zurai posted:IDGI. You can avoid death in both, and you can get utterly screwed over by RNG in both. Maybe you're much better at old Xcom than I am, but rookies always seem to die in droves for me. Even the humble sectoid can snipe a rookie with a plasma pistol. I have never done an old Xcom campaign without casualties. In new Xcom you basically don't lose anybody unless you really really get unlucky (seems like multiple 80%+ misses against an enemy to even get shot at, and then multiple hits/crits to die) and it seems very viable to save scum your way through without losing anybody. This is kinda shored up because of the far smaller squad size and deeper character progression, so a player is deeply incentivized to just save/reload if your one psi agent bites it for instance. It's very much like in Fire Emblem where you're way too attached to building up a specific character to accept losing them vs Advance Wars where its expected to lose some units every map.
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Oct 6, 2022 23:15
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they don't need to start characters at level 1 because they don't have job levels. it seems likely they changed it.
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Oct 6, 2022 23:25
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I am fine with loyalty and the mechanics around it being affected by what you do in the story and the choices you made. I am not fine with it being this constantly shifting thing because you didn't constantly check the clans of the people you were attacking.
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Oct 6, 2022 23:45
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ninjewtsu posted:Not if the only difference is a couple lines of dialogue and a different .5 second sprite animation playing, which also might not even matter if you choose to not let catuia kill herself Incorrect.
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Oct 6, 2022 23:53
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I think permadeath should be optional, or be implemented in a way where you can save a unit, but may be tactically difficult. Permadeath wasn't a thing in Triangle Strategy, and I don't think it ruined the strategic element at all. It did mean you could win battles with, like, 2 units remaining by the skin of your teeth.
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Oct 6, 2022 23:54
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Prowler posted:or be implemented in a way where you can save a unit, but may be tactically difficult. Good news: this is how it's gonna work in the re-remake. When a unit "dies" (reaches 0 HP), they become inactive and start a countdown. You have until the countdown ends to revive them (and possibly to finish the map? That's how FFT's system worked, which is what this one sounds like). Once the countdown ends, THEN the character perma-dies.
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Oct 7, 2022 00:12
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Elephant Ambush posted:I really hope they change the NPC AI so that it's easier to keep them alive. I tried to replay LUCT a couple years ago and stopped on the first map where saving someone is optional but I wanted to save them anyway. I got tired of reloading and gave up Was it Sisteena? It was probably Sisteena. She's but a taste of the suicidal AI the game has.
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Oct 7, 2022 00:36
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Evil Fluffy posted:Was it Sisteena? It was probably Sisteena. She's but a taste of the suicidal AI the game has. Just rememberin Haborim / Hobyrim in Rime, man. For being an absolute monster petrifybot on your team, that guy sure loves to run his face directly into axes much more quickly than your army can react to. Or the same guy vs like 12 ninjas on Chaos. What a dingus.
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Oct 7, 2022 03:01
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FZeroRacer posted:"Chaos route he goes so far into the 'i am right you are wrong' stance that he involves a bunch of other innocent people and incites other wars in order to prove that he's right." Chaos route is really a lot more about the idea that being morally right is useless if you don't actually do anything to try and make the situation right. Denam is made a scapegoat for the Massacre, and the world turns against him. While he tries to lay low for a while, he's dogged by bounty hunters and former friends to help reinforce the idea that no amount of being correct is going to actually change this lovely war. The same way that Law examines the price of getting blood on your hands for a greater good, Chaos is about realizing that doing the right thing is often thankless and even outright disadvantageous. You spend the entire second chapter getting kicked in the ribs and just trying to reconnect with allies, which is what makes the offer to take the Neutral path tempting. You've been running for a long time now, surely you can put it aside to fight the battle that's REALLY important, right? Or, basically: Tism the Dragon Tickler posted:I am very glad that the game acknowledges Centrism as the ultimate cowards choice. Permadeath is very important to strategy games, and a recent run through Triangle Strategy really highlighted that to me. I had to play on hard so that enemies were difficult enough that I needed my entire squad to win, otherwise I could just throw bodies at a problem and win without any trouble at all.
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Oct 7, 2022 03:31
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Evil Fluffy posted:Was it Sisteena? It was probably Sisteena. She's but a taste of the suicidal AI the game has. My memory is having to keep some female character I was trying to save (I want to say Ozma) alive on a map where you start at the bottom of a sloped structure, she's in the middle, and a bunch of people are trying to kill her. That took me more than a day just trying to RNG her into not dying immediately. But it's been way too long since I played the game and my PSP's battery, uh, exploded so I ain't about to check.
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Oct 7, 2022 03:35
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Alkarl posted:Just rememberin Haborim / Hobyrim in Rime, man. For being an absolute monster petrifybot on your team, that guy sure loves to run his face directly into axes much more quickly than your army can react to. My favorite was always Radlum, who I swear had about a 90% chance to bullrush the nearest dragon and get auto-killed on the 100% accuracy counter. In the off chance he didn't do it the first round and wisely ran towards you, he was still highly likely to decide on his next action that he actually does want to go punch a dragon for 0-1 damage before dying. Sure, he's worth save scumming to keep alive because Wipeout is busted as poo poo like all Dragon Magic (in the PSX version anyways) but goddamn. Just keep running and get behind the wall of terror knights and dragoons coming to save your rear end rather than deciding it's ok to go run into the horde of poo poo you've been fleeing from all this time.
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Oct 7, 2022 03:38
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marshmallow creep posted:My memory is having to keep some female character I was trying to save (I want to say Ozma) alive on a map where you start at the bottom of a sloped structure, she's in the middle, and a bunch of people are trying to kill her. That took me more than a day just trying to RNG her into not dying immediately. But it's been way too long since I played the game and my PSP's battery, uh, exploded so I ain't about to check. Pretty sure that is her as this is very early in the game and you are still very much building up your team.
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Oct 7, 2022 03:46
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