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Post by Nauren on Feb 11, 2009 10:07:57 GMT -5
Actually there really wasn't any difficulty. You can chain your way to the end of the game at like level 30 lol. I'm not sure how you'd do this. Do you mean with quickenings? yes. You can beat the game at an absurdly low level with them. I can't remember the lowest level reported but it was crazy low. |
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Post by Jonathan on Feb 11, 2009 14:08:11 GMT -5
I remember 1-shotting some bosses with Quickenings, made me feel dirty.
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Post by Markus on Feb 11, 2009 15:56:18 GMT -5
I must be using them wrong or some shit...
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Post by Jonathan on Feb 12, 2009 0:09:38 GMT -5
When everyone unlocks one, if you happen to run into a boss with them all up or something (I forget how it works >.>) you can chain them all together or something and if the timing's good enough, the AoE Dmg is just crazy. I remember finally looking at the License Board Map that comes with the game, and then going specifically after one or two for each char instead of just lulzing it, and it pretty much broke the game for me >.>
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Post by lockejv on Feb 12, 2009 22:28:26 GMT -5
You can beat the game at an absurdly low level with them (quickenings). I can't remember the lowest level reported but it was crazy low. You can beat Yaizmat with a party of level 1 character using a gun because it can't miss. However it's faster and easier to just level up and beat him. Level doesn't have anything to do with difficulty. I'm going to guess it's probably faster to just level up and play the game normally than using quickenings to beat all the bosses. If you don't get the chain you're out of mp and will wipe quickly. So keep rebooting until you finally get a big enough chain to beat it? I can accept the argument the game was too easy when it came to the main plot. However there was plenty of challenge if you actually tried to enjoy what the title had to offer beyond the storyline (mark hunts, summons, Yiazmat, etc.). Saying it wasn't play tested because it's easy if you use a faq to find exploits and win at a low level is ridiculous. |
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Post by Markus on Feb 13, 2009 7:39:58 GMT -5
You can beat the game at an absurdly low level with them (quickenings). I can't remember the lowest level reported but it was crazy low. You can beat Yaizmat with a party of level 1 character using a gun because it can't miss. However it's faster and easier to just level up and beat him. Level doesn't have anything to do with difficulty. I'm going to guess it's probably faster to just level up and play the game normally than using quickenings to beat all the bosses. If you don't get the chain you're out of mp and will wipe quickly. So keep rebooting until you finally get a big enough chain to beat it? I can accept the argument the game was too easy when it came to the main plot. However there was plenty of challenge if you actually tried to enjoy what the title had to offer beyond the storyline (mark hunts, summons, Yiazmat, etc.). Saying it wasn't play tested because it's easy if you use a faq to find exploits and win at a low level is ridiculous. Yea this is the game that I am playing... I was just thinking that I suck at chaining. I just all my characters to 30, all but 2 have Quickenings. I'm going after the sword in that Temple hehe... I -had- to stop to level up, the mobs in there were whooping my ass and eating my items... Anyways, I think your all nuts, I'm loving this game. The last game that I played and enjoyed this much was Fable iirc. I lost interest in KH2. Best RPG I've got my hands on in awhile. And the graphics and weapons are beautiful. And a few things have been challenging or required figuring out. All of your opinions are invalid and you have all been smotten the appropriate number of times! hehe  |
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Post by Sosa on Feb 13, 2009 14:48:44 GMT -5
While I think you weren't referring directly to me, it bears mentioning that what I actually said was:
The level-grinding that is a requirement for accessing any of the "challenging" gameplay directly breaks the balance of the main campaign, which is where you will spend the vast majority of your time. I can see not wanting to balance the game around the harder content, but this problem could have been eliminated in a very simple manner by simply scaling the bonus content to streamline it with the campaign's difficulty, or changing the point at which it is accessible to a time more appropriate to the party's level (so that the level grind is based around the campaign instead of the much harder bonus content.)
A player's ability to time the quickenings is something that is variable. I personally had no problems with them at all. Considering a single well-timed quickening would frequently take a boss to half health, it's not a stretch to say that most players could outright kill story bosses with them with relative ease.
One could easily make the argument here that if you want a challenge you can avoid using them, but that doesn't change the fact that they're broken to begin with. The same could be said for every other aspect of the game's difficulty. Forcing players to jump through hoops in order to find the challenge in the game while effectively ruining other content if they seek it out is bad game design.
This is, perhaps, a poor example, but...
In the bonus features from God of War, the development team goes fairly deep into their production cycle to show how they play-tested and balanced the game. Throughout the entire process, players would provide feedback and they would monitor the way players proceeded through the game to make alterations to its difficulty or content. That's an example of good play-testing. FFXII, while still a good game, is completely derelict of such "personal touches" and it shows in the final quality of the game.
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Post by lockejv on Feb 13, 2009 17:28:21 GMT -5
So I guess it follows the same could be said about FFVII because of the optional bosses?
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Post by Sosa on Feb 13, 2009 21:18:28 GMT -5
Not really. Nearly all of the optional "challenge" bosses in FFVII become accessible only very late into the campaign, like the end of the second disk or very beginning of the third. At this point, the only remaining node of the story campaign is the actual fight against Sephiroth, and the party is left to explore the rest of the world at their leisure. FFXII's content essentially "comes and gos," starting at a very early point in the story. While most of the content may remain accessible towards the end of the game, it is then tuned far too "low" to actually be a challenge at that point, meaning that it should ideally be tackled at some point near when it first becomes available.
I get what you're trying to say, but there are two basic considerations for side-quest difficulty.
First is the level range of the content. If you are at a part in the story where your characters should be, say, level 20 - adjusting the content so it requires you to be level 40 is probably not a good idea. By the same token, if you do adjust it for level 40, when you make it available can have just as much of an impact.
This is my biggest problem with FFXII. Simply tweaking when the content is available would have fixed most of this problem without any need to adjust the content itself. Regardless, it was a good game. I just feel that it didn't live up to its potential, since some tweaks in pacing of the content (and item/license board system) could have made what was already a good game into something that had a lot more lasting appeal.
It also doesn't address how entire classes of items are utterly useless, the poor layout of the license grid, the poor balance of license grid components against each-other, the poor implementation of offensive magic, and a host of other issues I had with it. All of these factors combined add up to some fairly serious problems. Is the game still playable? Absolutely. It ruined a significant portion of the experience for me, however.
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Milara
Casual Member
Hawt yuri luvvin?
Posts: 25
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Post by Milara on Feb 14, 2009 3:39:53 GMT -5
That's really the Japanese mentality when it comes to video games though, and it's why, for example, Silent Hill: Homecoming was so much worse than the previous Silent Hills. A lot of games made in Japan have an easy mode for the casual gamer, or the gamer that plays these games for the story. They're the ones that make the "visual novel" genre so popular, the romance games, the trainer/raising games, etc. On the lowest level, games are of just enough difficulty to make it interesting for these gamers but not too hard that they can't beat it to experience the storyline.
But then you have the hard level, or the "meta game" or whatever you want to call it. This is like playing the Silent Hill games on the hardest difficulty, trying to beat the game within an hour and a half, and get a max end ranking. It takes a lot of skill, a lot of practice, and playing the game until you basically can run through the whole game, picking up just enough of what you need, and nothing you don't... finishing off the bosses taking minimal damage, etc. The same game offers both experiences.
The Final Fantasy games for the most part had the same things. They had the main storyline which you could get through with a minimal of grinding levels. Then there was all the optional sidequest stuff that was much harder in difficulty and usually required much higher levels. The mark "mini-bosses" were difficult to the point of often requiring the player to use protect, shell, cures, hastes, slows, etc anything to maximize the player's advantage over the boss and often it was still rather challenging. This was their meta-game. It was for the people out for the challenge. The "epeen" if you will of finishing all the marks and optional bosses, finishing all the side-quests, etc.
Games like God of War and Silent Hill: Homecoming are fine, but they only cater to one group of gamers. Those with the fastest reactions, the hardcore action adventure people who get bored if the game isn't very challenging. Consequently, they were both made by American gaming teams. For the most part American game designers don't believe in putting different levels in games. They want to balance the game around one style of play, one type of gamer, and screw the rest. Instead of making the game accessible to both, they make it accessible to one and let the other gamers go buy other games. So the people who love playing The Sims or whatever aren't included in the thought processes of the action or war game designers.
One main difference between the way Final Fantasy did their optional stuff and Silent Hill did though, is with the latter you choose your difficulty level at the start. In the former, you don't... though if you start doing the hardcore level grinding to do the optional stuff you basically make that choice anyway because the main storyline will become way too easy to still be a challenge.
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Post by Jonathan on Feb 14, 2009 5:12:05 GMT -5
I hate the idea of games with a 'mode'
For some games it works out nicely, but for most games I only want to beat it once. I'm likely going to reject easy because of pride, forget about starting @ Hard because I'm new at the game and will suck, and roll with Normal. After beating it on Normal, there's rarely much motivation to go back and redo the game on Hard.
Halo Co-Op is one of these exceptions. But Halo is a game you can play for so much and not get sick of, that beating it on Legendary becomes something you simply eventually have to do.
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FFXII Mark's were Insane. I loved them. The reward for them though wasn't enough I found, and they felt so completely detached from the Storyline. I don't think any game comes close to Zelda when it comes to main story vs. sidequests.
p.s. This thread needs more Codeine
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Post by Sosa on Feb 14, 2009 13:28:01 GMT -5
I second that.
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Post by Markus on Feb 14, 2009 14:29:59 GMT -5
PPS: This thread needs more FFXIII...
WAY TO DERAIL THE THREAD GUYS!
GAWD!
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Post by Nauren on Feb 14, 2009 15:47:16 GMT -5
Well here is some FFXIII news......
Development for DQ9 hit some road blocks which inevitably will delay FFXIII a little longer at least for Japan......way to go assholes......its a damned DS game...
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Post by lockejv on Feb 14, 2009 22:05:27 GMT -5
That's really the Japanese mentality when it comes to video games though...For the most part American game designers don't believe in putting different levels in games. They want to balance the game around one style of play, one type of gamer, and screw the rest. I guess at least American designers do MMO's right, right? |
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