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The reason I prefer Beta over Aqualung is because as long as you remember to get the Elemental materia from the mayor before leaving Midgar, you can junction that to Fire in someone's armour and survive the Zolom, therefore learning Beta even at a crazy low level like 15 or 16. It's also impossible to miss that Zolom fight provided you don't bother getting a chocobo before crossing the marsh. Learning Aqualung is a little trickier and takes another several hours, plus if you miss your chance at it you won't get another until the end of Disc 1. So if you want to start your steamrolling spree as early as possible, get Beta. You should still get Aqualung anyway though, plus Magic Breath later on, for wide elemental coverage. closeted republican posted:Big Guard and White Wind These are essential as well. Big Guard renders Barrier and Time materia almost completely obsolete, while White Wind is superior to Restore as long as you keep the caster's HP up. Additionally, I'd recommend Magic Hammer; it's invaluable against certain bosses and helps counter some of the (relatively) heavy MP requirements on Enemy Skills, which is probably the only downside to spamming stuff like Beta as early as possible. Still, MP Plus/MP Absorb will help a lot with that too, but if you can drain MP from a dude like Godo, you should totally do that. kirbysuperstar posted:Also how easy is it to get Enemy Skills? As long as the character holding the Enemy Skill materia can survive the attack, they can learn the skill. It's also worth noting that for defensive Enemy Skills like White Wind and Big Guard, you'll need to take control of enemies and cast those skills on your party yourself with a Manipulate materia. You might want to do this with offensive Enemy Skills as well just to eliminate the waiting and random factors.
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Jan 3, 2014 10:39
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Onmi posted:Nope, Kazushige Nojima. He is best known for writing several installments of Square Enix's Final Fantasy video game series—namely Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy XV—and the Kingdom Hearts series. Nojima also wrote the original lyrics of Liberi Fatali for Final Fantasy VIII and both Suteki da Ne and the Hymn of the Fayth for Final Fantasy X. Did...something happen to him? Like there's a clear line of shittiness that was crossed here. Did he experience an emotional breakdown? Did he just run out of decent ideas? Was he always this bad but the bloated size of design teams needed as the PS2 era progressed caused there to be fewer opportunities for awful ideas to get caught and turned around?
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Jan 3, 2014 10:42
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Mazed posted:Did...something happen to him? Like there's a clear line of shittiness that was crossed here. Did he experience an emotional breakdown? Did he just run out of decent ideas? Was he always this bad but the bloated size of design teams needed as the PS2 era progressed caused there to be fewer opportunities for awful ideas to get caught and turned around? The thing about a light novel is that it has a lot less oversight than a video game. Very few video games are the creation of a single person. A light novel is just the person writing whatever they want and with relatively little editing. (Due to what I mentioned before: Japan treats that kind of stuff as disposable and not as True Hard Canon.) So this kind of writing is basically "the writer shits something out and there's nobody else involved to temper it.' Again, it's pretty Star Warsian where Lucas' ideas were tempered, refined, adjusted or bounced off of the other people involved in the original films while he had immensely more control and less oversight on the second set of films. Add to that that anyone left at S-E from the FF7 days is probably a higher up in the company now and they probably don't have many people actually giving them oversight. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 10:48 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 10:44
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The GIG posted:I prefer to imagine every time he tried he either was too late or showed up at the wrong time. Goes to the bad end future in that one expansion of 11, shows up right before the end of Lightning Returns, Jumps into 14 1.0 just as Dalamud opens up, has to wait for 15 to even exist. Just jumping around getting frustrated everyone is beating him to the punch. Make this into a bonus video like that one MGS3 extra with Raiden time travelling to try to kill Big Boss and I'd probably buy X-3 no matter how lovely it is.
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Jan 3, 2014 11:05
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Delsaber posted:As long as the character holding the Enemy Skill materia can survive the attack, they can learn the skill. It's also worth noting that for defensive Enemy Skills like White Wind and Big Guard, you'll need to take control of enemies and cast those skills on your party yourself with a Manipulate materia. You might want to do this with offensive Enemy Skills as well just to eliminate the waiting and random factors. Hmm, and the Enemy Skill Materia and Manipulate Materia themselves? How easy are those to come across? Sorry for the questions, it's been..quite a long time.
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Jan 3, 2014 11:07
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Delsaber posted:The reason I prefer Beta over Aqualung is because as long as you remember to get the Elemental materia from the mayor before leaving Midgar, you can junction that to Fire in someone's armour and survive the Zolom, therefore learning Beta even at a crazy low level like 15 or 16. It's also impossible to miss that Zolom fight provided you don't bother getting a chocobo before crossing the marsh. Learning Aqualung is a little trickier and takes another several hours, plus if you miss your chance at it you won't get another until the end of Disc 1. I didn't get Beta because I didn't want to face the Midgar Zolom at really low levels. I had Elemental, but I wasn't sure if it would protect me enough. Oh well. Yeah, Magic Hammer is very useful. It saves you a lot of money, as you no longer have to constantly buy Ethers when going on an Aqualung/Beta rampage. Just break out Magic Hammer and you get up to 100 MP for the measly cost of 3 MP. I don't remember really using it in my last run years ago, but now I'm happy I have it. I keep some Ethers on me just in case, but I no longer chug the things down. It's handy even if you aren't going nuts with Aqualung/Beta. I used it on Demon Gate/Evil Wall after using Big Guard and White Wind over and over, which consumed a lot of my MP. kirbysuperstar posted:Hmm, and the Enemy Skill Materia and Manipulate Materia themselves? How easy are those to come across? Sorry for the questions, it's been..quite a long time. You get your first Enemy Skills materia in Hojo's lab after freeing Aeris and Red XIII, while Cait Sith comes with Manipulate. EDIT: Damnit.
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Jan 3, 2014 11:09
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kirbysuperstar posted:Hmm, and the Enemy Skill Materia and Manipulate Materia themselves? How easy are those to come across? Sorry for the questions, it's been..quite a long time. Enemy Skill is basically directly in your path, you can't miss it. It's in the tank at Hojo's lab. Cait Sith comes equipped with Manipulate.
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Jan 3, 2014 11:09
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ImpAtom posted:The thing about a light novel is that it has a lot less oversight than a video game. Very few video games are the creation of a single person. A light novel is just the person writing whatever they want and with relatively little editing. (Due to what I mentioned before: Japan treats that kind of stuff as disposable and not as True Hard Canon.) So this kind of writing is basically "the writer shits something out and there's nobody else involved to temper it.' Actually Nojima has been a freelancer since 2003. So while he still works for square he's not officially apart of the company, and I don't know if that would mean there's less to watch over him or not. Mazed posted:Did...something happen to him? Like there's a clear line of shittiness that was crossed here. Did he experience an emotional breakdown? Did he just run out of decent ideas? Was he always this bad but the bloated size of design teams needed as the PS2 era progressed caused there to be fewer opportunities for awful ideas to get caught and turned around? I have no idea, He's written a lot though. In the end I'll bring it down to this. A director exists to make sure that everything is being handled correctly, they okay/nope the creative team and the writers. There is no director on a Novel, or an Audio Drama. That's right, there's an Audio Drama released with X/X-2 HD that's following up on the crappy Novel! In it they talk about looking for Aurons Daughter, the fact that Tidus is super weak now (since he's an entirely new fayth I guess) and how Yuna pledges to kill Sin again, in the same speech she gave in FFX. Also unconfirmed not sure how much is someone taking the piss but Rikku and Paine are apparently lesbians, Paine dressess more colorfully and Rikku dresses so skimpily that Lulu asks her to leave. I don't know if that's true, or someone just seeing how much bullshit we'll accept given... everything else. But this has got to be the worst justification for a X-3 ever. Essentially there isn't a game because there's something to explore or a new foe or anything else. It's cause Tidus got horny and kicked a blitzbomb cause his girlfriend dressed skimpily in battle and gave him a boner. Sin came back because Tidus got a stiffy.
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Jan 3, 2014 11:18
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Onmi posted:Actually Nojima has been a freelancer since 2003. So while he still works for square he's not officially apart of the company, and I don't know if that would mean there's less to watch over him or not. Yeah, but he's still associated with those higher ups with is basically the same problem. He's not being given the same oversight he would have been in the old days. (And probably double true for a freelancer.)
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Jan 3, 2014 11:30
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ImpAtom posted:Enemy Skill is basically directly in your path, you can't miss it. It's in the tank at Hojo's lab. Cait Sith comes equipped with Manipulate. There are also three other Enemy Skill materia in the game, for a total of four, I just can't remember where the rest are. You only really need one for steamrollin' anyway, and the fourth is totally useless, but if you were to get three of 'em and backtrack a bit to relearn the best skills from that first materia, you could then build yourself a pretty crazy team of blue mages. But yeah, one Enemy Skill materia with the best skills is probably enough. In my latest run, having that has allowed me to almost completely ditch standard magic materia and use the free slots for stat boosters and commands, or just to level All materia to sell off later, since without much magic use they're almost totally useless.
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Jan 3, 2014 11:49
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closeted republican posted:You get your first Enemy Skills materia in Hojo's lab after freeing Aeris and Red XIII, while Cait Sith comes with Manipulate. ImpAtom posted:Enemy Skill is basically directly in your path, you can't miss it. It's in the tank at Hojo's lab. Cait Sith comes equipped with Manipulate. Wonderful! Thanks, all!
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Jan 3, 2014 11:59
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Well, I finished FF13-2. I actually finished it a few days ago, but I went through and collected all the paradox endings and did the miscellaneous stuff I was willing to. I finished with 158 fragments; I skipped the bestiary quest and the 'get 7777 tokens from the slot machine' fragments because hahahaha gently caress that. Anyways, I still overall like the narrative structure. It's like Quantum Leap/Sliders with two time travellers from opposite ends of the timeline trying to unfuck their universe. It was doubly awesome for me because it became FFXIII-2: Ezio and Commander Shepard's Excellent Adventure. I'm even mostly ok with the canonical ending as it uses a relatively simple trope of 'the villain planned for the heroes' success, and in fact required it'. That said, the general writing within the story was just so dumb. I don't think it had anything with the translation, because maybe better writing could have made the actual text less cringeworthy, but the sentiment would not likely have changed and that was the truly eye-rolling part. The paradox endings were also kinda entertaining in a 'holy gently caress, what did you do' sort of way. They can be kinda hosed up, too. I also felt like the gameplay was sort of a one step forward, one step backward thing. I really quite like 13's gameplay; it was like a mirror of FF12 where instead of making complex routines that were run automatically, you instead control a set of routines and the party members fight based on those templates, like ordering a siege tank in Starcraft to switch in or out of siege mode. Where FF13-2 improved was also where they screwed up. Instead of having a fixed party with a linear growth system, you've instead got this third-slot wildcard that can be filled with a monster who can supplement you in whatever way you need. While that opens up all kinds of options (and all sorts of silliness like having Lightning fighting alonside you in the final battle as two of your three monsters) it also kinda fucks things up because when push comes to shove, the really hard optional bosses (mainly the DLC fights; I can't think of any non-DLC fights that are really hard) all require way too much monster wrangling bullshit. The infusion system goes from a neat concept to an utter clusterfuck when you realize that making a 'good' Cloudburst or means a good 2-4 hours of grinding your dick off. I tried emulating strategies I saw in Youtube using the decently beefy monsters I had, but couldn't make it work because these strategies were so insanely fine tuned it was just silly. In FF13, though, you have six dudes with a more limited, but consequently more reliable power set. This made the really hard fights a matter of execution, whereas in 13-2 you have to do a ton of tedious monster grinding/leveling/feeding then you worry about the execution. I can handle grinding, but the constant jumping between worlds to farm a monster, then going somewhere else to farm the monster components to level them, then infusing and just fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
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Jan 3, 2014 13:45
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Yeah, that's a really lovely part of the post-game of FFXIII-2 is that certain DLC bosses (Gil and Valfodr) are insanely difficult without a monster that can pick up enough of the slack to basically beat them in like two or three staggers. It's really ridiculous to spend that much time just trying to prepare for a post-game boss even when your characters are max level and in the case of Valfodr, he can get stronger and open up more versions of himself to fight which requires more min-maxing.
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Jan 3, 2014 14:23
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WeaponBoy posted:It was doubly awesome for me because it became FFXIII-2: Ezio and Commander Shepard's Excellent Adventure. Its Laura Bailey not Jennifer Hale who voices Serah. Unless Hale does voice someone else idk. And I agree with you that 13-2 is easier than 13 simply because of the monster variable. Everything in 13 was tightly tuned, but they couldn't really do that for 13-2 due to the non linear nature and monster wild card. I still prefer 13-2 if only for the faster paradigm shifts. Goddamn it helps so much. edit: vvv derp I forgot all about that. CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 14:38
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:Its Laura Bailey not Jennifer Hale who voices Serah. Unless Hale does voice someone else idk. They're probably referring to the costume DLC.
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Jan 3, 2014 14:46
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Yeah, Serah was wearing N7 armor the whole game while Noel had Ezio's outfit from Revelations. Ironically, the N7 suit made Serah's weird proportions that much more pronounced. I'm not interested enough to do comparisons, but I'm starting to think that Serah and Lightning have identical bodies which is why Lightning's head looks so god damned weird.
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Jan 3, 2014 14:49
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It wouldn't be surprising. A lot of video game characters have identical bodies because it reduces the number of model types they need to make and they're usually disguised by visual design choices or just by emphasis on the head/hair to draw people's attention away from it.
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Jan 3, 2014 14:53
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:And I agree with you that 13-2 is easier than 13 simply because of the monster variable. Everything in 13 was tightly tuned, but they couldn't really do that for 13-2 due to the non linear nature and monster wild card. I still prefer 13-2 if only for the faster paradigm shifts. Goddamn it helps so much. I actually liked how finely tuned the difficulty was in XIII. It pretty much removed the need or ability to grind, outside of the Gran Pulse chapter. If you got stuck on a difficult boss, the only thing you needed to worry about are your tactics, since you had exactly the stats, abilities, and party members you need at that moment. Maybe it only seems good compared to XIII-2, which shows how awful a traditional JRPG can be handled, since every area besides the final one is terribly easy because you can visit them out of order. The monster system is needlessly tedious and confusing, although still better than Kingdom Hearts 3D's system. I'd like to have levelling up removed from JRPGs altogether, so every fight is determined just by your skill. You could still gain abilities through a job system or something, but it would just increase the number of options you have rather than your raw power. I liked how in FFX, none of the weapons or amour actually increased your stats, they just had a unique set of effects, such as elements or the ability to see an enemy's health and weaknesses. Coupled with FFIX's learning abilities from weapons and equipment, you'd have to balance which weapons give you a better advantage in battle and which let you learn abilities which will help you later on. If you think back to Dragon Quest I, that was just one big grind. It's just one character fighting one enemy, and with no choice over how you develop your character. Since there's so little room for tactics, the only option you had for getting through a tough area was just to grind. The game is fairly open from the beginning, but the difficulty of the enemies prevents you from going very far. However, this has continued to be the way JRPG progression works, while the battle systems have evolved dramatically. I would hate to buy one of the DLC bosses from XIII-2, only to find that it's impossible to beat without hours of grinding until I'm able to stand a chance. You can beat Dark Souls at level 1, or any Mario & Luigi game without ever taking damage, since these are skill-based games, but the only strategy of Dragon Quest I is to grind a lot.
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Jan 3, 2014 15:49
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That loving Sned posted:I'd like to have levelling up removed from JRPGs altogether, so every fight is determined just by your skill. The basic problem with this is the core idea why leveling systems exist in the first place. They serve a dual purpose and removing either one has a negative impact on people's experiences. The obvious is that people like watching numbers get bigger. It makes them feel more powerful if they can oneshot something that previously required a lot of time to defeat. It may require less skill but a lot of people aren't in games (especially single player games) to display skill so much as they are to get that nice empowerment fantasy. Bigger numbers feels better in a way that new abilities don't always, even if new abilities are technically more complex and interesting if you actually look at how you're interacting with combat. The other is that it provides a soft handicap for players. If you absolutely can't figure out how to beat an enemy you have the option to increase your numbers to make it easier to do so. Perhaps more importantly it sets a visible goal for overcoming a roadblock. A big problem in game design is figuring out how to keep people playing past roadblocks. If someone gets stuck on a fight, it's really easy for them to just give up on the game entirely. (Even if it's just in a "I'll come back to it later" and then they forget kind of way.) However a leveling system provides a clear objective to that kind of player for how they can get past a roadblock and on with the story, even if it is just "pound slimes for an hour." For all that it's commonly made fun of, there are a lot of people who play RPGs for the story, even if that story is stupid or anime or whatever. People like stupid anime poo poo and they buy the game for their dose of stupid anime story. A leveling system (as well as the sort of thing FF does commonly where 90% of mechanics are basically optional or hilariously overpowered) basically assures people playing the game for the stupid anime story are less likely to get stuck, and they're a pretty noteworthy part of the audience for RPGs as well. Dragon Quest 1 was that way but almost every modern RPG offers alternatives to grinding or quite frankly makes grinding entirely unnecessary if you're willing to learn and exploit the mechanics. There is still skill-based (or at least mechanical knowledge based) gameplay available to players but the leveling system serves to give options to people who can't or are uninterested in grasping those mechanics.I think that is basically the best balance you can expect. "If you know how to play the game you never have to grind. If you don't, you may have to." Not every game succeeds at it of course but I think it's a lot easier to find a grind-light JRPG these days than a grind-heavy one.
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Jan 3, 2014 16:22
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ImpAtom posted:Dragon Quest 1 was that way but almost every modern RPG offers alternatives to grinding or quite frankly makes grinding entirely unnecessary if you're willing to learn and exploit the mechanics. There is still skill-based (or at least mechanical knowledge based) gameplay available to players but the leveling system serves to give options to people who can't or are uninterested in grasping those mechanics.I think that is basically the best balance you can expect. "If you know how to play the game you never have to grind. If you don't, you may have to." Not every game succeeds at it of course but I think it's a lot easier to find a grind-light JRPG these days than a grind-heavy one. Lost Odyssey had a decent modernization of this wherein you leveled insanely quickly in a dungeon up to a softcap for an area and after that leveling more took considerable investment. At the softcap you were slightly overleveled for the boss and if you went even one level beyond it due to grinding you were ridiculously overleveled. Again though two fights screw that up and one of them is the very first boss fight.
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Jan 3, 2014 16:33
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It is not wise to remove levels unless your plan is to replace them with a different feature that offers a robust sense of progression that is just as desirable and popular. Some people say that, "your personal skill improving when playing the game should be enough." But that doesn't sell enough copies. However, while I enjoy leveling in my RPGs, I am all for RNG being reduced and personal skill being a much greater consideration in combat. That is a lot more fun. I still like my various numbers, but I am in full support of them playing a smaller role. Mostly, I just want lots of options to both look and feel like a badass while beating the crap out of things.
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Jan 3, 2014 16:37
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I always like leveling in most RPGs because it meant that when you played the game a second time, knowing all the puzzles and where to go, you'd end up rushing through stuff at a lower level than your first fumbling attempt, and thus give a naturally higher difficulty to things. And then there are games like Sands of Destruction, where if you're one level under what you need for a boss, you do one damage, and one level over means you beat the boss in a single turn. That game was weird.
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Jan 3, 2014 16:51
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The GIG posted:I prefer to imagine every time he tried he either was too late or showed up at the wrong time. Goes to the bad end future in that one expansion of 11, shows up right before the end of Lightning Returns, Jumps into 14 1.0 just as Dalamud opens up, has to wait for 15 to even exist. Just jumping around getting frustrated everyone is beating him to the punch. I'm on board only if he meets Gilgamesh at some point.
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Jan 3, 2014 16:54
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ImpAtom posted:The obvious is that people like watching numbers get bigger. It makes them feel more powerful if they can oneshot something that previously required a lot of time to defeat. It may require less skill but a lot of people aren't in games (especially single player games) to display skill so much as they are to get that nice empowerment fantasy. Bigger numbers feels better in a way that new abilities don't always, even if new abilities are technically more complex and interesting if you actually look at how you're interacting with combat. I understand your reasons for keeping levelling, but this one in particular didn't matter to me in FFXIII. Since everything is determined by gauges, including your HP, the enemies' HP, and their stagger gauges, the numbers that pop up on screen are completely meaningless for the most part. I had no idea how much more damage I was doing in the final chapter compared to the first one because the numbers were all relative, and I'm always fighting enemies proportinate to my level. If I was somehow able to go back to chapter 1 and fight some of the enemies there, I'd notice the amount of power I'd gained, but outside of Gran Pulse that never happens. Besides, if most JRPGs offer enough strategy or skill to allow you to circumvent grinding, then why is there still the ability to grind when it has such an influence on the difficulty? It kinda turns the difficulty curve on its head, so new or impatient players that try to get through the story will get roadblocked, and don't have the knowledge to get round it, while the patient completionists will have no challenge whatsoever until the bonus bosses because they've done so much extra content. Games like Resident Evil 4 and Devil May Cry have a few RPG elements, like the ability to increase your maximum health to about double what it was at the start, but most of the progression comes from the new weapons you unlock. You're never forced to take damage, unlike Big Bang from FFIV's final boss, so your health doesn't matter if you can avoid getting hit, and even your starting weapon can still be reasonably effective late into the game. If Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts play like Devil May Cry, then they should try using its progression system as well.
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Jan 3, 2014 17:01
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Phantasium posted:I always like leveling in most RPGs because it meant that when you played the game a second time, knowing all the puzzles and where to go, you'd end up rushing through stuff at a lower level than your first fumbling attempt, and thus give a naturally higher difficulty to things. Sands of Destruction had such breakable combat that I barely even noticed noticed the levels, to be fair. Man was that an easy game to wreck. That loving Sned posted:Besides, if most JRPGs offer enough strategy or skill to allow you to circumvent grinding, then why is there still the ability to grind when it has such an influence on the difficulty? The real reason? A lot of people are really, really, really bad at video games. Even if they've been playing for years or love the genre or whatever. A brute force method is really important. I don't mean this in an insulting way or anything. It's just that a lot of people just don't care enough about video games, especially single-player video games, to devote the time and energy necessary to actually bother to care about or understand the mechanics even if it would save them trouble in the long run. And of course there's still just the fact that people like numbers getting bigger on a deep personal level. It's why things like Cookie Clicker or Tiny Death Star manage to draw people in despite being basically nothing but Number Get Bigger. Even if you remove the system in favor of a more tight and balanced system, that doesn't mean it would actually appeal to people more than seeing Cloud slam his sword into a dude for 9999 damage 10 times in a row. It doesn't work for everyone. (I really get bored of huge numbers quickly myself). But if it works for you, it really works for you. That loving Sned posted:Games like Resident Evil 4 and Devil May Cry have a few RPG elements, like the ability to increase your maximum health to about double what it was at the start, but most of the progression comes from the new weapons you unlock. You're never forced to take damage, unlike Big Bang from FFIV's final boss, so your health doesn't matter if you can avoid getting hit, and even your starting weapon can still be reasonably effective late into the game. If Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts play like Devil May Cry, then they should try using its progression system as well. The thing is that Resident Evil and Devil May Cry both have different kinds of soft handicaps which work for action-based combat. Resident Evil 4 has dynamic difficulty scaling. Your number of deaths increases ammo drops and weakens enemies. This is entirely invisible but still adjusts enemy 'stats', just based off death instead of grinding for levels. Devil May Cry has Easy Automatic mode and several of the DMC games also have scaling enemy difficulty upon death. (DMC4 is most noticeable about this and you will have a way easier time beating an enemy after a few deaths than before them.) A lot of games have these kinds of soft handicaps There's also a lot of difference in level and world design between something like DMC and something like Kingdom Hearts, for good or ill. A lot of why RE4 or DMC or similar games work is in how their level and encounter design is handled. RPGs tend to have different focuses, even relatively shorter action-heavy RPGs, and can't just copy the sense of encounter progression that a shorter focused game like DMC or RE4 has. (Also sorry to post so much, I just like discussing game mechanics and design goals for some stupid reason.) ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 17:02
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It's a bit different because it's an MMORPG, but Guild Wars 2 has a level scaling system that I think works pretty well. You have your true level which makes you stronger as you advance further into the game. When you go back to an earlier area, though, your level scales down to fit the surroundings. So when a level 80 character goes back to the level 1-15 area, they will be scaled down to around a level 15 character. This prevents you from coming in and one-shotting all the enemies, but it's still easier than if you were level 5. I certainly think it works better than a FF8-esque system where enemy strength scales with your level and you never really feel stronger.
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Jan 3, 2014 17:38
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Grope-A-Matic posted:I certainly think it works better than a FF8-esque system where enemy strength scales with your level and you never really feel stronger. FF8 is the stupidest implementation though because while level controls enemy stats it has very minor bearing on your own. Hell the achievement for "Squall at starting level" in FF8 isn't much of an achievement because that is almost the absolute easiest way to play the game.
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Jan 3, 2014 17:40
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I wish another game would refine that style, though. In VIII, it boils down to each enemy having three tiers of stats and abilities, but before knowing the ins and outs of the game, it was a nice surprise to see some old enemy and they'd be tougher and use new abilities. I liked it more than pallet swaps and reskins. Tie the enemy level to something else, like location or story progress, I dunno. Probably hard to pull off without being effectively the same, though.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:10
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Mustach posted:I wish another game would refine that style, though. In VIII, it boils down to each enemy having three tiers of stats and abilities, but before knowing the ins and outs of the game, it was a nice surprise to see some old enemy and they'd be tougher and use new abilities. I liked it more than pallet swaps and reskins. Tie the enemy level to something else, like location or story progress, I dunno. Probably hard to pull off without being effectively the same, though. I liked the idea behind the mechanics in FFVIII and would absolutely revisit them especially if we could get some FFX turn order going. What they should have done is have a way to gate you from certain tiers of spells or junctioning x number of magics or drawing only y class spells or something to impede you. As it is the only thing stopping you from junctioning 100 meltdowns to vitality before the SeeD final exam is willingness to play a card game and do some light AP grinding. I like, for instance, Ultima's restrictions. Its an insanely powerful junction spell actually befitting its name but to make it early is really, really really labor intensive and to get it later you either need to have pumped up enemy levels high or abuse hidden draw points. It is an effectively gated spell that feels like you've earned something really worthwhile when you get it and its only really possible to do so late game. Unfortunately its just about the only spell to be gated in such a way. In addition like you said, enemy changes were basically 3 tiers of skill sets based on level with bosses having occasionally more gradations of changes. Its another neat idea but its not fully executed. If there had been better gating on the party those things might have mattered/been noticeable.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:16
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Grope-A-Matic posted:I certainly think it works better than a FF8-esque system where enemy strength scales with your level and you never really feel stronger. I think auto scaling enemies based on your level means your game has gone up its own rear end into an ouroboros of lovely design. Like, somebody came up with RPGs, so somebody later bolted on poo poo, and then somebody else later bolted on auto-leveling as a crutch to fix the fact that it was getting very difficult to balance the whole game consistently for different players. I think instead they'd be better served by going back and saying "why do we even have levels in the first place?" I mean if levelling makes me stronger but then makes my enemies stronger you're doing nothing except changing the ratios of the numbers on the screen. Maybe as I level I get slightly more strength than my opponents do as they level, so I feel stronger; why not just subtract the amount that your opponent gets from how much you get? Now you're getting much less per level, but the effect is the exact same! Its all just bullshit. Man people don't think poo poo through. I really hate autoleveling; Skyrim put limits on it and it was better than Oblivion (where magic was really broken) but there's just so many ways for it to fall apart, and at best it doesn't really DO anything. Really need to rethink the whole leveling thing. Also fixed leveling is pretty lame too, I really like having job systems at least. Tactics probably had the best system for customizing your characters, although it was also the most complicated. FF kinda settled on the sphere grid/licence board idea for awhile, but that's pretty lame really. Lazy design IMO. Speaking of final fantasy games, how they've changed mechanically over time, Why have we never gotten another RPG that plays like Chrono Trigger? Like gently caress, why didn't any of the FFs copy that style? It worked so well. Like, FFXIII still has that random encounter "break" thing where the screen dissolves to another screen; WHY? That used to happen for technical reasons because most world screens were actually 2d, so they'd make a seperate 3d arena of battle areas. But since FFX we've had fully 3D worlds! Actually, FFXII at least didn't do the dissolve thing, I liked that. Although FFXII was pretty different too, being sorta based on FFXI, which was an MMORPG. Also, those combination attacks in CT were brilliant, why didn't they adopt those into FF? Every FF after 6 should have had those. I think I heard one of the remakes on iOS added them or something? I guess FFXIII WAS their attempt at going back to the drawing board and rethinking the RPG thing. Except... they kept the things they should have changed, and changed the things they should have kept!
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Jan 3, 2014 18:18
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I also think that FF8 would've benefitted from having being able to store up to 200 of a spell, and you could reserve up to 100 of it for Junctioning (which wouldn't get pulled from on casting), so the game wasn't just all limits, all the time. I mean, the end game would've been, but the midgame would actually have magic slinging and stuff.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:20
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Kyrosiris posted:I also think that FF8 would've benefitted from having being able to store up to 200 of a spell, and you could reserve up to 100 of it for Junctioning (which wouldn't get pulled from on casting), so the game wasn't just all limits, all the time. Yeah that's the big thing, the best magics provide the best results so your goal is to either not junction the best magics (if you plan to use them) or junction the best magic and not use them. I think FFVIII could have been fixed if they gave you static magic items that could be junctioned and allowed characters to infinitely cast the spell they have equipped (since 100 is effectively infinite as far as a boss is concerned). These magic items would be doled out by the game's main plot, sidequests, or in some cases synthesized by players by drawing out the component magic and collecting the parts needed to make them. It gives a smoother leveling curve, allows power gamers to break the system, and doesn't hinder the use of them while still keeping the junction system and drawing relatively intact.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:25
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Barudak posted:I think FFVIII could have been fixed if they gave you static magic items that could be junctioned and allowed characters to infinitely cast the spell they have equipped (since 100 is effectively infinite as far as a boss is concerned). These magic items would be doled out by the game's main plot, sidequests, or in some cases synthesized by players by drawing out the component magic and collecting the parts needed to make them. It gives a smoother leveling curve, allows power gamers to break the system, and doesn't hinder the use of them while still keeping the junction system and drawing relatively intact. That would've been awesome. Kind of almost a hybrid of materia and junctioning. You find/refine/whatever the Curaga stone and now you can junction Curaga to a stat as well as cast Curaga in battle.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:28
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8 had the first steps of what could have been a really great system, but the implementation didn't really have enough time and thought put into it that hindsight gives us now, and it would require much closer attention to balance than really any jrpg is ever going to give so that actually using spells or draw casting are worthwhile instead of just getting the stat boosts and mashing limit break. Bumping the cap on spells up to 200 and having only 100 maximum junctioned would be a bad fix because drawing and stocking sucks and is boring even if you only have to do it once and then ignore it. It makes you not want to use spells because A) you'll have lower stats afterward and B) you'll have to do some more drawing to fill back up later. I think it would have been better to set the cap much lower, like 20 or so, but make drawing a built in command everyone always has and incorporate it into the battle system more fluidly, and remove the link between the magic stat and how many you draw, so that everyone just always draws 5 or something. There are a few routes they could go with it past that: 1) Junctioning stays basically the same as it is now but with the lower cap, but draw cast is changed so that you still get to stock the spells, just a lower amount than a straight stock. Alternately remove the straight stock option entirely and make that draw cast mechanic the way you stock them. Basically stocking spells should always be coupled with an actual battle action so that it doesn't feel like a wasted turn. 2) Change the whole junction system away from passive boosts that you set in a menu out of combat into one where junctioned stats are per battle based on what GFs you have junctioned instead of what spells are junctioned, so having only Ifrit junctioned would would give you attack boosts when you draw anything, or having Ifrit and the minotaur brothers would give you attack and defense boosts when you draw anything. The higher the GF level, the better the boost. GF bonuses would overlap and have some redundancy, so you'd have freedom to have more specialized characters or go with more all-rounders if you want, and you could choose to slot fewer GFs or more GFs to alter the challenge level. I think you'd still want to do the same thing with draw as in the first suggestion so that drawing means you're still taking a real action. An additional thing that could be thrown in is drawing powers up the junctioned GFs so that they end up feeling like the super attacks that they should. I favor this option since it would minimize time spent in menus. I think 8 really did have some neat ideas for its systems but just kind of copped out before really developing them fully. It was a good try at removing MP from the genre, but they unfortunately added more tedium in the process with stocking and didn't particularly balance the various options characters have. Allowing draws from bosses gave hints on how to beat them and ensured you were never really up a creek when fighting them (like I doubt anybody would have remembered that float even exists for the brothers fight if they hadn't let you draw it from them). It could just be coincidence given how closely the two games came out, but it wouldn't surprise me if the ideas from FF8 had some influence on Chrono Cross's battle and magic systems. Edit: I think just coupling stocking to a battle action (drawing a cure lets you both stock and cast it at the same time) would be a significant improvement. chumbler fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 19:02
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MinibarMatchman posted:I like all the "classic" poo poo about Bravely Default except the goddamn "GET BLINDED/SILENCED, STAY THAT WAY FOREVER UNTIL ITEM CURE." Come the gently caress on, was it too much to ask to have them wear off after like TWENTY MINUTES. Nothing's more miserable than being stuck in a dungeon with no MP and no Eyedrops. In the full game, once you know the enemies in an area inflict a certain status a lot, you have a few ways of dealing with it. You'll have access to the merchant job which, among other things, can exchange money for potions and remedies during combat and use them on any party member. You can give everyone monk as their secondary job, so they can use Inner Alchemy to remove their own debuffs. You could give everyone enough levels in white mage to use the Self-Healing support ability, which removes all statuses automatically at the end of combat. You could wear equipment that nullifies that particular status. You could make your party all magic-users and just ignore blind, or all physical hitters to ignore silence. Several jobs learn support abilities that grant immunity to a specific status, although they're all fairly high-level. Or you could just buy a fuckton of status cures because after the early parts of the game they're not that expensive  Edit: and if you're really stuck in the middle of a dungeon with no resources, there's nothing stopping you from turning the encounter rate down to zero and running back to town to sleep it off and stock up before going back. Suaimhneas fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 19:20
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Suaimhneas posted:You'll have access to the merchant job which, among other things, can exchange money for potions and remedies during combat and use them on any party member.  I need a 3DS so badly.
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Jan 3, 2014 19:22
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Kyrosiris posted:
It doesn't come out till February 7th so you've got time. Sadly for me I have a roughly 30 hours in the air alone followed by multiple train rides which ends February 7th so I can't play the drat thing while traveling. Jerks!
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Jan 3, 2014 19:24
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The draw mechanic and having an amount of a spell, like you have 40 firagas or whatever and then you cast one and have 39, kind of dooms the whole system to degenerate into boredom and grinding. Maybe if you took out junction amounts completely and just gave a fixed bonus based on the spell? I dunno it would have to be a different game in several ways. But the whole idea is kind of dumb, isn't it? "Accumulate this resource to get stronger, or spend it to have a minor effect on this battle and then get weaker." This in a game where you fight thousands of battles, where the main challenge is a constant drip feed of interchangeable battles.
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Jan 3, 2014 19:24
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swamp waste posted:The draw mechanic and having an amount of a spell, like you have 40 firagas or whatever and then you cast one and have 39, kind of dooms the whole system to degenerate into boredom and grinding. Maybe if you took out stat junctions and just had the elemental and status ones? I dunno it would have to be a different game in several ways. For the record I've always thought MP was a really stupid limiter. In a given fight MP won't matter and over the long haul it'll only be relevant if you're using it to avoid the tedium of running away or melee attacking things. Its an arbitary limiter on fun and used to cap ability usage in a fight. FFXIII's system of infinite but time-consuming spells or limited cast pool per combat are far better restrictions because it can make every fight independent from the previous. FFVIII's problem is that you tend to spend tons and tons of time just soaking damage because the optimal thing to do is draw 300 of each spell you want, never use them, then move on to the next battle. When you do get into a fight even using a single cast can drop your stat by a whole point so you just melee everything which thankfully is totally viable in the game. Its just the worst of MP brought to a head.
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Jan 3, 2014 19:26
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| # ? May 10, 2024 15:53 |
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Kyrosiris posted:
The Merchant job can also sell items to enemies for a higher price than what you'd get for selling it in a shop, they can deal a set amount of damage by throwing that much money on the enemy, they can increase your party members critical hit rate significantly by paying level times 50 gold, if you have at least one in your party (or increase their job level enough so that you can slot the ability onto the character no matter what class they are), you'll get a bunch more money when you win a fight. They also look swank as gently caress. 
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Jan 3, 2014 19:28
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