Square Enix cut a game's worth of content from Final Fantasy XIII

[Coinspinner]

Re: Square Enix cut a game's worth of content from Final Fantasy XIII

What is pathetic? It is good design. There is no reason to make a player lose all progress from the last save point.

RPGs are boring as fuck to watch because unless you get cutscenes left and right between battles, you, as the spectator, will be sittin there watchin someone fight random mobs for who knows how long until the next important part of the story/boss battle.

Sports/racing/fighting/etc games are fun to watch because like Firewind said, they are already spectator sports in RL.

Coincidentally, that is exactly what FFXIII is like. No need to repeat what Firewind said, I read it fine the first time. I don't find sports interesting.

[Nazo]

Re: Square Enix cut a game's worth of content from Final Fantasy XIII

That's really pathetic. Thank god XIII isn't the only reason I want a ps3.

Yes, it was much better when you had to wade through umpteen random battles and watch the same cutscene over and over if you couldn't beat a boss.

[Lmnop]

Re: Square Enix cut a game's worth of content from Final Fantasy XIII

Um.

So I agree with Malacite. Just because many other RPGs did it, doesn't mean it's right.

Especially in a game with lots of customization for individual characters (I don't know enough about 13 so we'll take FF12, for example), you can choose different roles for different characters.

If dying = game over, you are a fool for putting your main character in a tanking/high risk position. That's simply not fair. If someone has to do it, I want it to be me.

Grats. Your brilliant gameplay idea has limited player potential. Good move.

---

I had a big list of games I've watched others play. It was impressive. In the name of a shorter post, I'll just tell you: I've watched dozens of games played and I feel it's just as gratifying as playing the game.

I could easily peruse strategy guides to make sure the player didn't miss items, analyze their current build and think about and provide opinions on how to do better, etc.

If it entertains you (as it does me), watching someone play a game really is every bit as good as playing it. Take Vagrant Story -- the only thing I miss out on is timing chain attacks and counterattacks.

That said, watching videos on youtube with mediocre translations seems very limited to me. You're probably watching someone speed through the game, taking the path of least resistance (afterall, they're exposing the game, not their hundreds of hours of grindfest).

[Feba]

Re: Square Enix cut a game's worth of content from Final Fantasy XIII

If dying = game over, you are a fool for putting your main character in a tanking/high risk position.

Not necessarily. You're assuming standard Final Fantasy "everybody dies five times on this boss, bring downs" mechanics apply. In some RPGs, enemies actually deal sane and manageable amounts of damage. Think about that for a second. You're also assuming that your main character is equally likely to die as subcharacters, and that subcharacters dying poses no problem. And that your main character even has the option of becoming a tank, instead of a healer or DD.

And to you people bitching about the game not punishing you heavily for dying, why can't you just reset your console yourself when you die? If you want to play with roguelike consequences, that's still possible, just take the extra five seconds to reboot your PS360, and the extra however-long-you-just-lost to your ego to recover the ground in the game.

I find it ironic that the person here who's keeping the most open mind about this is the person who has practically no interest in playing it.

[Mhurron]

Re: Square Enix cut a game's worth of content from Final Fantasy XIII

What is pathetic? It is good design. There is no reason to make a player lose all progress from the last save point

Lets take this to it's logical conclusion then, remove death. At which point you might as well remove all battles anyway. I bought a Final Fantasy, not bejeweled with Avatars graphics.

Removing risk removes a great deal of the fun in a game for me.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Square Enix cut a game's worth of content from Final Fantasy XIII

Not necessarily. You're assuming standard Final Fantasy "everybody dies five times on this boss, bring downs" mechanics apply. In some RPGs, enemies actually deal sane and manageable amounts of damage. Think about that for a second. You're also assuming that your main character is equally likely to die as subcharacters, and that subcharacters dying poses no problem. And that your main character even has the option of becoming a tank, instead of a healer or DD.

There's also the fact that Final Fantasy is rather generous when it comes to enemy analysis. Its a feature that's ritually taken for granted, but if I'm ever having a problem figuring an enemy I just have to turn to Scan or Libra to find its weakness. In SMT games, this is a feature that their games will punish you a bit harder for not taking advantage of it.

See, in SMT games, your skill with or resistance to elements, light and death magic and physical attacks is subject to change. If I'm vulnerable to wind magic and the zone is littered with wind magic users in a Persona game, I want a Persona that's resistant to wind and likely able to cast lightning magic. If it turns out lightning magic is out, at least I've prevented myself from being vulnerable to wind magic.

Because if I leave myself vulnerable to wind, the enemy is not only going to score a knockdown on me, he's going to get another chance to attack someone in my party. The system rewards efficient play and punishes failure. You might get a situation where the enemy gets the drop on you and someone get gets their weakness exploited, but then ambushes aren't supposed to be about fairness. Hopefully you're observant enough to know what your MC's weaknesses are at all times and adjust your strategy.

If your main character dies , he had it coming. Persona also has a means of protecting you from those exploitations on ambush and one-shot risks. If you play the game right in other areas, these elements come to light in combat. Example: In Persona 4, the story portion allows me to build stronger friendships between the MC and the party, in addition to other characters you meet in his day-to-day life.

The relationships with those in his party can lead to deeper interaction between those party members in combat. Exploit a weakness on a mob and occasionally one of them might be inspired to score a knockdown on another or boot it out of the fight entirely. Or if the MC is in serious danger, they'll dive in and take the hit without being asked because the care about the MC that much. There are items you collect in the game that shield you from the one-shots of death magic, too.

If the system gives you every opportunity to have knowledge and abilities available to you, its pretty much on you to take advantage. Its not the game's fault if you fail.

[Armando]

Re: Square Enix cut a game's worth of content from Final Fantasy XIII

Lets take this to it's logical conclusion then, remove death. At which point you might as well remove all battles anyway.

Chrono Cross did practically the same thing by letting you run away from any and all battles at any time, bosses included. Losing? No problem, run away. But you liked Chrono Cross. Why the inconsistency?

My take on it: I don't see it as an issue against bosses. Losing to a boss just means restarting from the last save point...which is invariably going to be right before the boss.

Whether I think it's silly to be able to do it on any battle, trivial or not, depends on the frequency, length, and difficulty of non-boss battles, and how much time lost a Game Over would cost me.

Suppose the game has 1.5 hours dungeons, and a miniboss halfway through, without a save point before it. Suppose this RPG somehow has a battle system that's actually deep and battles are like playing a game of chess. One blunder could cost you the fight, and along with it 45 minutes of gameplay. If that were the case, I'll gladly take the ability to restart.

But that's a rather tall order and I don't really expect any RPG to fill those characteristics. But then there's the flip side of things. You're not really gonna lose to a mook in any Final Fantasy unless the monster does bullshit like Lv.4 Death or Bad Breath as soon as you get into a fight. The only fights you'll ever want to restart are bosses and they're always gonna let you save and heal up before them.

[Malacite]

Re: Square Enix cut a game's worth of content from Final Fantasy XIII

Suppose the game has 1.5 hours dungeons, and a miniboss halfway through, without a save point before it. Suppose this RPG somehow has a battle system that's actually deep and battles are like playing a game of chess. One blunder could cost you the fight, and along with it 45 minutes of gameplay. If that were the case, I'll gladly take the ability to restart.

Well from what Bloodworth said, you basically earn "Crystal Points" that you can spend to level up your various job roles. Each character is assigned a job role, and you can tweak how offensively or defensively they play in a battle via the Optima/Paradigm shift. But that's it; you can not issue specific commands to them or prioritize in anyway.

This is why IMO the game is going to fail hard. For as much as I knock 12, at least the Gambit system was a stroke of genius (once you finally start getting the more intelligent Gambits anyway) 13 is basically being given a very much dumbed down version of gambits in order to keep the pace of battles faster, or so SE claims because apparently it's become too hard for people to select individual actions for each party member ...


orz

[Nazo]

Re: Square Enix cut a game's worth of content from Final Fantasy XIII

You're not really gonna lose to a mook in any Final Fantasy unless the monster does bullshit like Lv.4 Death or Bad Breath as soon as you get into a fight. The only fights you'll ever want to restart are bosses and they're always gonna let you save and heal up before them.

Some of the regular encounters are pretty tricky and can quickly wipe you out if you make a bad move.

Anyway, you don't have to restart the fight if you die, there is the option to go back to the title screen if you really want to punish yourself.

With the optima system you are constantly switching character roles in order to keep your pt alive and counter what the enemy is doing while trying to keep your chain bonus up. It can get very frantic and just wouldn't work if you were trying to coordinate all your party manually. It works really well and is a lot of fun to play, but it's not going to appeal to everyone.

[Feba]

Re: Square Enix cut a game's worth of content from Final Fantasy XIII

Each character is assigned a job role, and you can tweak how offensively or defensively they play in a battle via the Optima/Paradigm shift. But that's it; you can not issue specific commands to them or prioritize in anyway.

So how is this different from, say, Kingdom Hearts?

[Jei]

Re: Square Enix cut a game's worth of content from Final Fantasy XIII

I haven't played any Kingdom Hearts so I cannot give any insight about that. So far I think the optima/paradigm shift is a mixture of good and bad....

The combat in FFXIII is very fast, much faster than any FF. And the optima makes you have to think fast, you have to see the battle as a whole and strategize the battle in real time. But with a lot of things going on on the screen and automatic team mate tho it's easy to lose concentration... early in the game with Lighting running around and camera rotating all over the place, I really got confused and forgot about the optima/paradigm altogether. I even lost sight of my own HP ... resulting in many wipes -.-

In the other hand, optima got really annoying. Every time you shift it, the game cuts the camera to each character showing them do a little action with a flash light around them. Now, in later encounter sometimes you have to shift your optima 6-7 times in a matter of minute, Seeing these cuts all the time get SUPER annoying. Especially at end game, all you're doing is to hunt only 1 kind of enemy for money and drops.

You hear me right. Once you max out your characters abilities, it's time to hunt giant turtle. And that's all what people hunt. Over and over. I guess it's your choice, but turtles give drops that sell for the most money (15,000) and an item you need to upgrade your weapon to max. You need TONS of money to upgrade your gear.

Believe me, when I go walk around gaming stores in Thailand, every single store that shows FFXIII, are hunting turtles and nothing else. Turtles everywhere. They have tons of HP and you have to shift optima/paradigm almost all the time.

You always have to grind in every FF. And FFXIII's optima/paradigm makes it the most tiring of all.

What I hate the most about the game are

1. The minor characters.... especially Snow's pupils. There's 1 guy that looks like a doll with super bright blue hair. It just looks so wrong and stands out like soar thumb.

2. They way the game introduce summons. While you're running around in random dungeons (in straight line), your characters will break out random drama crap. And that's usually when 1 of your character accidentally call out their personal summon for you to fight and beat them.

You don't just fight straight on with summons. Most of them have specific things you have to do in order to beat them. I guess the game probably tells you what to do, but since I cannot understand the instructions, fighting and wiping to summons has been 1 of the most frustrating experience I have with this game -_-;; You don't even have a choice, you HAVE to fight them. Maybe it won't be a problem if the game's in English, but meh...

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Square Enix cut a game's worth of content from Final Fantasy XIII

Now, in later encounter sometimes you have to shift your optima 6-7 times in a matter of minute, Seeing these cuts all the time get SUPER annoying.

I'm fairly sure there's an option to tone that down in the configuration menu. Its been in FFX, FFX-2 and FFXII. They got a lot of nasty feedback from people over FFVII and FFVIII's summon or limit breaks getting that excessive. I doubt they'd repeat that mistake again.

Then again, using summons all the time in FFVIII was also very telling about the people playing it - they hadn't learned the system, so they just relied on summons, which actually made the battles more tedious and lengthy than the needed to be. Sephiroth's Super Nova attack was so excessive I could get up, go to the bathroon, take a leak, flush, wash my hands, then walk back and it he still wasn't done with it.

[Ketaru]

Re: Square Enix cut a game's worth of content from Final Fantasy XIII

I haven't played any Kingdom Hearts so I cannot give any insight about that.

You play one main character and are usually accompanied by 2 party members. The party members are completely AI controlled, though you can make modifications about how you want them to prioritize item usage, abilities, what types of spells they cast, and what enemies they choose to attack. Battles are real time and you cannot pause the action while selecting items or spells to cast. You also cannot change your party members' AIs mid battle. In the first Kingdom Hearts, you could crudely tell them what to attack mid-battle. Though it's interpreted in the game as "Calling for Help".

You play the party leader, and if you ever die, you lose the game, though you can choose to Continue from the moment before the area where you lost. If your party members lose all their HP, they are temporarily incapacitated until a set period of time has passed or you revive them with spells/items.

[Jei]

Re: Square Enix cut a game's worth of content from Final Fantasy XIII

The configuration menus you have are

- Camera control. Instead of using easy to understand x/invert x, they come up with names for each combination. Very confusing but thank god you only have to set this once.
- Subtitles on/off
- Display Speaker's Name
- ATB Speed
- Default battle command
- Target Selection
- Display help during battle on/off
- Brightness/Gamma

[Malacite]

Re: Square Enix cut a game's worth of content from Final Fantasy XIII

Yes but in Kingdom hearts you can also move around and are free to block/dodge attacks, it'd not turn-based combat.

I really don't see why they had to abandon the Gambit system instead of improving on it. I want more FF's like X-2, 12 or Crisis Core (in terms of combat)


Is 13 really the fastest-paced so far? X-2 could get pretty freaking hectic, especially if you chained attacks together.