|
ImpAtom posted:I'm not sure how you can think that this is anything new. Since the SNES era Final Fantasy has been about presentation over gameplay. FFV is probably the only real exception and they were worried about releasing that overseas because of that. Oh I absolutely agree and if it wasn't for the fact that there's apparently a word limit if you're both a) discussing Final Fantasy in the Final Fantasy discussion thread and b) Me, as well as that A Brief History of Final Fantasy's Fuckups and Contextualization Regarding This Point would hardly be brief, I probably would have gotten into that. It seems like limitations of earlier hardware and the tighter coupling of display code and mechanics kept them from completely phoning in mechanics and game systems, though at least for the most part the core intended gameplay and systems were solid, just some things on the edges broke if you played outside the lines. As soon as they could just make CG movies and 3D assets all day and worry about game systems later though? They chose later every goddamned time. It's clearly a habit and a huge rut they've gotten themselves in, and one that really wouldn't be that hard or expensive to fix with what and who they have access to, but I'm not convinced yet that the Save Final Fantasy Committee (No Nomuras Allowed) has noticed this. The closest thing so far is Yoshi-P's Features of a Modern MMO spreadsheet, which so far seems to have been a one-off instead of the company-wide fundamental change in approach to game system design that they need.
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 06:10
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 10:15 |
|
|
Brother Entropy posted:Bumping up midgame enemy stats could probably do it, some balance issues doesn't mean the entire game's system is 'fatally flawed' Let me remind you that the problem is that players are just turtling through every encounter and winning. How do you solve this by increasing stats? You're making an offensive strategy even riskier and reinforcing the idea that turtling is the way to play Final Fantasy XIII. ImpAtom posted:You do know the 20 minute timer is only a specific boss's gimmick, not something present in every fight, right? I know that it isn't. In normal gameplay you'll only see Doom on the Eidolon fights and Orphan, but many major bosses besides Barthandelus have a Doom timer including Cid and Dahaka. ImpAtom posted:Different enemies, especially marks, have various methods to punish you for turtling. They power themselves up or change their attack patterns or have an attack pattern designed to outpacing turtling/healing unless they get staggered or heal themselves if given enough time forcing you to go aggressive so they don't heal. There are other factors they could use that I don't think are in FFXIII but are present in other games like Etrian Odyssey such as "go berserker if they detect too many buffs." Like who? And if so, why didn't they use any of these methods instead of a Doom timer introduced after 20 minutes? How do you introduce this mechanic to every meaningful encounter in the game so that turtling becomes an option instead of the default option? ImpAtom posted:Also the argument of "players might do something boring, ergo this is a flawed game mechanic" strikes me as pretty silly. You can play Devil May Cry by equipping Ebony and Ivory and standing back to slowly plink bosses to death with low-damage shots but at no point would anyone actually listen to the argument that it means DMC is "fatally flawed" because you can do that since the game absolutely encourages other things even if you can win that way. It's not that it's possible, it's that it's appealing to the risk-averse or (in the worst case scenario) optimal. DMC2's helicopter boss is some loving awful design for the exact reason you describe. Francis fucked around with this message at 06:27 on May 23, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 06:23
|
|
|
Considering poo poo not working right in earlier FF games includes stats outright being useless (Intelligence in FFI), and spells doing literally nothing (TMPR, SABR, XFER, and LOCK, again FFI), I don't know if I'd say that was just the edges breaking when you played outside the lines.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 06:23
|
|
|
If you wanted to go wild, you could take out the HP bar entirely and make the entire encounter about staggering the enemy.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 06:26
|
|
|
The fact that the battle system was inspired/based on X-2s kinda affirms what I've felt about it, though. That's interesting to know.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 06:32
|
|
|
whats wrong with the doom timer
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 06:32
|
|
|
Francis posted:If so, why didn't they use any of these methods instead of a Doom timer introduced after 20 minutes? How do you introduce this mechanic to every meaningful encounter in the game so that turtling becomes an option instead of the default option? You don't, because turtling being an option isn't an inherent flaw. Like this is the core problem with your argument. You boil it down to "someone can play the game wrong, ergo it is fatally flawed." The ability to play a game 'wrong' isn't a fatal flaw as long as there is a strong encouragement to play it another way. FFXIII uses both positive methods (the stagger meter) and negative methods to do so. I'm curious. What do you consider an RPG system that isn't fatally flawed. Every conversation I've had with you boils down to you being negative about something. I've never actually seen you actually positively describe something. What are you comparing FFXIII to in this regards?
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 06:35
|
|
|
AngryRobotsInc posted:Considering poo poo not working right in earlier FF games includes stats outright being useless (Intelligence in FFI), and spells doing literally nothing (TMPR, SABR, XFER, and LOCK, again FFI), I don't know if I'd say that was just the edges breaking when you played outside the lines. The difference is that there's still a coherent framework surrounding these bugs, whereas more recent entries the problem is the framework itself. This does get into another interesting way of looking at the problem though: they're good at throwing production value at things until they're the only game in town operating at that level. Even from the start, Final Fantasy basically took Dragon Quest and made it a lot shinier in a way nobody else did, and I'd argue Enix never figured out. Final Fantasy XI was the first MMO that didn't make your eyes bleed and was at all approachable outside of a specific type of hardcore gamer until WoW. This worked when noone else could do what they we doing, but now they aren't able to maintain that exclusive superiority in ability to provide production value. Look what happened when they tried to release XIV as XI: HD in a post-WoW world for the ultimate example. This gimmick of throwing production values and spectacle into games is just not going to work forever since they don't really lack competition able to crank out games with their formula anymore. It might, though, keep them on top if they stop loving up their games' systems to the point where it drags down the production values.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 06:48
|
|
|
Boten Anna posted:You called into question my credentials to have this discussion so I showed them to you. Holy gently caress, can you believe this guy's credentials? How can you argue with this CV!? Szurumbur fucked around with this message at 06:54 on May 23, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 06:52
|
|
|
I actually think speedruns of the XIII series are very interesting, because they actually have to use the staggering mechanics/character abilities to their fullest extent (for example, did you know that blitz is the best power for a fair majority of Lightning Returns, but then the best way to beat the final boss is to spam certain spells, or that Sazh is actually mechanically the best character in XIII-1 because of the way his shots spread from his gun when using certain abilities?), and all the interesting ways to dodge enemies in the maps that's sort of action RPG esque in a way, but as far the actual games, well they exist and stuff.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 06:54
|
|
|
LR videos get pretty nuts. Almost on the level of a DMC combo video.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 07:16
|
|
|
ImpAtom posted:You don't, because turtling being an option isn't an inherent flaw. Again, it's not that it's possible, it's that it's appealing to the risk-averse or (in the worst case scenario) optimal. The guidance the game offers is extremely weak and easy to ignore. I don't care that I know how to play or that you know how to play but a significant number of people who played FFXIII didn't, for dozens of hours, and the game was completely fine with that until they hit a doom wall twenty minutes into a boss fight. It's particularly telling that most of the people asking for help about this aren't asking how to fight faster or for general gameplay tips but specifically how to cure the Doom status effect. Even at its most heavy-handed, Final Fantasy XIII still utterly fails to guide its players. rocket slime owns More seriously I think FInal Fantasy XIII is pretty unique in this regard and as you might recall this was originally a point about whether game design is entirely subjective or if something can be said to be objectively bad design. (I make no claims towards there being any kind of objectively good design though.) In specific I think that making a certain strategy untenable but only after the player has committed a significant amount of time towards that strategy is a poor design choice in an objective sense, and emblematic of poor design elsewhere in the game. It is behavior I cannot justify under any circumstances. There are other dick moves that are unfair or unexplained or equally punative, like a boss instakilling the party for using items or SMT's bonus boss berserk mode. These might or might not be justified in an individual case but I wouldn't say a designer should never do them.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 07:21
|
|
|
Edit: Eh, we're just gonna keep going back and forth and it's already been multiple paragraphs. Let's just end it here.
ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 08:40 on May 23, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 08:11
|
|
|
Just admit that casting Doom after 20 minutes is basically the worst possible design option or explain why it's totally awesome. That's all I've really cared about this entire time.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 08:49
|
|
|
It's actually neither, you're just bad at games.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 09:17
|
|
|
Francis posted:Just admit that casting Doom after 20 minutes is basically the worst possible design option or explain why it's totally awesome. lol
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 09:33
|
|
|
Francis posted:Just admit that casting Doom after 20 minutes is basically the worst possible design option or explain why it's totally awesome. FF5 is great because I can win every encounter by casting Quick + breaking a Venom Rod and slowly watch every single enemy die of HP Sap while I do nothing.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 10:43
|
|
|
A boss with a time limit is neither inherently good nor inherently bad.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 11:26
|
|
|
Has there ever been a Final Fantasy game you couldn't beat in the most catastrophically stupid manner imaginable by just ignoring everything in the combat system, spamming your regular attack, and cracking potions when necessary? Like yeah, there's probably a more elegant way to enforce actually playing the game (like soft enrage mechanics, or I guess big flashing YOU hosed UP TRY USING RAVAGER tutorial popups for the people who apparently didn't notice the single most prominent piece of eye candy in the UI) but is this the hill you're choosing to die on? If you put a gun up to my head and asked me to actually justify the doom timer, it's a safety valve for stupidity. The designers really didn't want people grinding their way out to Gran Pulse, picking up a hunt, and pushing X for three hours in SEN/MED/COM. Better to have a forcing function much earlier in the game. It could definitely have been handled with more grace--if nothing else they could have used a word that RPG veterans don't associate with a curable status effect--but it's a commendable thought.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 11:26
|
|
|
Doom is in all of the eidolon fights though, that's plenty of time to get the idea across that it's not curable.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 11:46
|
|
|
That said though, when I had it cast on me in the Barthandelus fight I freaked the gently caress out trying to cure it anyway
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 11:49
|
|
|
Reiterpallasch posted:Has there ever been a Final Fantasy game you couldn't beat in the most catastrophically stupid manner imaginable by just ignoring everything in the combat system, spamming your regular attack, and cracking potions when necessary? Like yeah, there's probably a more elegant way to enforce actually playing the game (like soft enrage mechanics, or I guess big flashing YOU hosed UP TRY USING RAVAGER tutorial popups for the people who apparently didn't notice the single most prominent piece of eye candy in the UI) but is this the hill you're choosing to die on? Ironically enough, XIII goes here too. Orphan 2 literally can't be hurt by anything until you stagger it, has a 500% stagger meter, it has a 4300 Doom timer from the start of the fight, and once it gets up to ~400% he starts charging an attack which resets his stagger gauge unless you stagger him before it goes off. Admittedly anyone who gets to Orphan 2 had to get through Orphan 1, but Orphan 1 can be cheesed with Poison so...
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 12:49
|
|
|
Can we at least agree that XIII had cool menus
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 13:16
|
|
|
That should be mirrored so she's looking towards the skills. As it is it's just distracting and leads your eyes the wrong way.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 13:29
|
|
|
Terper posted:That should be mirrored so she's looking towards the skills. As it is it's just distracting and leads your eyes the wrong way. Watched it loop twice, then immediately realized there was a skill menu on the right side because of you. drat.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 13:36
|
|
|
Help Im Alive posted:Can we at least agree that XIII had cool menus You show Lightning's but not Sazh's? His is the best one!
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 13:38
|
|
|
Mega64 posted:You show Lightning's but not Sazh's? His is the best one! Fine 
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 13:51
|
|
|
Much better, thank you.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 13:52
|
|
|
On the issue of player feedback regarding Doom (and ignoring all the other glowing neon signs scattered about the game that tells you to use the Stagger bar), I think Doom was not the best choice because it registers as a status effect and most players' first response is to try to purge that poo poo off, not think that something has gone wrong with the battle.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 13:56
|
|
|
Boten Anna posted:I have provided examples though? Here's a few things about Theatrhythm off the top of my head that are very bad design: Most of these are fixed in the sequel, which is the game you should get anyway because the only thing the original has over it are different EMS songs and Somnus being available as DLC. quote:* You have to play every single song on Easy to unlock the whole game (and if I recall, to access DLC or make it even relevant) which is tedious and mind-numbing and takes several hours CC lets you pick any song difficulty off the bat, so it's no longer an issue. quote:* The RPG elements don't make much sense, with many decisions boiling down to choosing between different options you have no real control over Still kind of an issue in the sequel, although you can customize your characters more with the previously useless cards, and if you're OCD enough, can even make ridiculous gimmick builds that can tank their way through entire songs without you hitting a single note yet killing a lot of enemies in progress with Counter skills. quote:* The only good thing to grind to unlock a good chunk of hte game's content is the Chaos shrine, but DLC never appears in the Chaos Shrine. Neither do the EMS (movie) stages, or several other regular songs, and there's only one difficulty which is harder than normal and easier than hard usually; it's way too inflexible and limited for as much as you need to play it to access game content Parts of that are still kind of an issue in the sequel: while getting specific Chaos Maps is much easier now and there's a lot more song variety, there's no EMS songs and while DLC songs do appear in maps, they only do so rarely. quote:* Speaking of the EMS stages, there are a lot of good songs that are EMS but only appear in the game mode where you select one song at a time, which has the worst rewards This, if anything, is made worse in the sequel: for whatever reason, the timing of the notes in EMS songs is a lot stricter than in the original game, making them even more pointless to play. quote:* You cannot get a perfect score unless you unequip everything, which is a tedious and manual process, and there are no gearsets Also fixed in the sequel: the only thing unequiping everything does is to give you a small Rhytmia bonus and you can always get maximum score in every song the first time you play them without having to gently caress around with your gear. quote:* I have played well over 100 hours and am not even close to unlocking all the characters. This is also what I mean by the Chaos Shrine being the only thing worth grinding, as it's about the only way to unlock characters sometime before the heat death of the universe, yet does not let you experience the full breadth of the content in the game, nor any additional content you paid for (and from a business standpoint, it's totally hosed up to basically make the additional add-on sales force you to play the least rewarding game mode instead of having it enhance the more rewarding parts) Likewise fixed in the sequel: while everyone beyond the first 4 party members you pick need to be unlocked seperately, the game is infinitely more generous with crystal shards, giving multiple ones as guaranteed rewards for beating Chaos Maps, requiring much less shards for every character unlock, always giving you crystal shards you don't have all of as Rhytmia rewards and putting multiple characters under a single type of crystal you can choose from. The only hard-to-get type of crystal is black, but you can still get them pretty easily by playing online against anyone with an appropriate Chaos Map. quote:* This one is more opinion, but the separation of BMS/FMS abilities and the weird sacrifices and choices you have to make to balance the two (especially for Chaos Shrine grinding) is just not very fun or good, especially if you are trying to level a bunch of people more than build an optimal party where you don't always have good control over who you can take that specializes in what (nor is this always clear on a character you haven't levelled yet) Somewhat fixed in the sequel: characters no longer have fixed passive/active skill slots, allowing you to use any combination of them and since you can increase CP up to 99, you can give them multiple high-level abilities. quote:* In order to fill the critical meter on a given stage you have to purposefully gently caress up summoning then get perfects on the non-summon part which is just really weird and not fun at all Aaaand fixed in the sequel, there's no more Critical Chart splits and instead of not summoning anything, you'll always summon at least a Chocobo.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 15:25
|
|
|
Only mechanic downside with Curtain Call is that you now have to get all Criticals in a bar for it to fully count towards the chart, rather than allowing you to just Crit whatever notes you missed last time. Also a bit sad some of the old EMS movies aren't back.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 15:37
|
|
|
AnotherGamer posted:
If you unequip everything in the first Theatrhythm, you no longer have a summon so you actually don't have to purposefully mess it up. (It's actually a lot smarter to play like this because you get like a 2 million point bonus for not having anything equipped)
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 15:39
|
|
|
Wait a minute, I'm not defending anybody here, I'm not really even reading any of it because this whole thing is stupid, but is your counterpoint to his points about Theatrhythm really "well, the sequel fixed these issues"? Because that's not really arguing against him.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 16:02
|
|
|
Francis posted:Just admit that casting Doom after 20 minutes is basically the worst possible design option or explain why it's totally awesome. If a player is doing so loving bad at the game a boss fight took you 20 mins instead of the sane 3-6 mins then they're probably doing something really really wrong and the Doom clock is cool because it's basically just saying "Come on, just try again, maybe do something different?". Which is completely fair because, like most FF, if you got stuck on one boss that hard you would not be able to handle anything that came after it. Basically get good.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 17:38
|
|
|
We even have a Final Fantasy emote for it 
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 17:40
|
|
|
Terper posted:We even have a Final Fantasy emote for it Hildebrand would never say something so rude. Too much the gentleman.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 17:43
|
|
|
ZenMasterBullshit posted:Hildebrand would never say something so rude. Too much the gentleman. Uh he's saying it right there, seems pretty clear 2 me.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 17:55
|
|
|
AngryRobotsInc posted:There is no way Square would win trying to remake FFVII. One way or the other, they'd piss off one section of the fanbase. And it'd cost way more than they'd likely see in sales. No it wouldn't Needs would soak it up even if it was half-assed garbage. We'd complain loudly on Internet forums about it but we'd buy it in droves. The Black Stones posted:I finished and got the Plat Trophy in Type-0 today. "This game was bad so I spent 100 hours on it and exhaustively beat every possible thing in it"  ImpAtom posted:Yes you do. and they spend literal hours telling you this ImpAtom posted:Edit: Eh, we're just gonna keep going back and forth and it's already been multiple paragraphs. Let's just end it here. I'll say it: anyone who doesn't figure out that staggering is important by the 5th hour of the game is either being wilfully obtuse or is an actual retard, and of all the possible complaints about XIII, this isn't a valid one.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 17:55
|
|
It is literally the thing the combat system is built around. It is the reason you bother swapping paradigms! The entire point of Commander/Ravager is that they have different impact on the stagger meter!
|
if you want an actual flaw with XIII's combat, the main character dying being an instant game over is raw dog bullshit
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 17:59
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 10:15 |
|
|
Wasn't 13-3 supposed to come out on Steam? I want to play it but I'm holding off on the PS3 version because it was supposed to be on Steam along with the others.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2015 18:05
|
|
