Gripes on replayabilty
PostPosted:Thu Jan 03, 2002 10:16 am
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>After getting beat up in the Chocobo Race once again, I decided I'm going to shelve FFX even though it's quite possibly the best Final Fantasy I've played. Not going to play it again or even level up because Tidus, a character I like, can't possibly make use of the grid if he can't get his ultimate weapon (74 str hits 9999 ALWAYS except on targets where Armor Break is mandatory), but that requires winning the Chocobo Racing game. Gave Blitzball a try, and it was okay with Wedge on your team, but I'm not exactly excited about playing 4 tournaments to get the Crest to get Wakka's Ultimate Weapon. Rikku's ultimate weapon requires the bulk of the Al Beda Primers and I'm not going to go on a scavenger hunt on this world without No Encounters, except that requires 30 or so Purifying Salts (rare steal) from the Fallen Monks in Zanarkand. Don't really want to wonder in that area over and over and steal with about 10% chance. Scratch that idea too.
I've noticed the newer RPG seem to derive extra playtime from:
1. Minigames
2. Incredibly tedious item hunting.
3. Instant smackdowns.
In the category of Minigames, we've FF8 with Triple Triad, FF9 with Tetra Masters. FF10 has Blitzball and the Chocobo Race. Tale of Destiny 2 seems to be one big minigame. This trend seems to have become progressively worse. Minigames weren't like this before. They used to be some cute thing you can do that's not supposed to beat you up and stomp you. They were cool back when no one thought of them... but even then they were never supposed to be the focus of the game. In going along with Stephen's theory of good gameplay over plot, it seems as if nowadays people don't know how to even make good gameplay so they try to throw you some minigames and hope you'll like one of them. Tale of Destiny 2 comes to mind as an example of this. Though as much as I love FFX, it sure seem as if Square didn't really think about what you're supposed to do after you're powerful enough to beat Sin, so they tossed some impossibly hard minigames to keep you busy so you can't access the sphere grid (well you could, but you can't hit over 9999, so what's the point?).
Insane item hunt is another. The best example I can think offhand is Diablo 2: Lords of Destruction. Everyone at some level is a treasure hunter. You know you don't need everything in a game, but you want to get them all. LoD had some incredibly low chance of dropping armor that statistically, you can be playing the game your entire life and never seen all the elite uniques or something along these lines. FF8-10 was also like this, though not as bad. People expects to be able to get everything in a game without spending 500 hours playing it. By putting items in the game that requires too much effort is bound to frustrate gamers, even if you warn them. Or they just cheat, such as Phantasy Star Online. Megaman Legend 2's Shining Laser requires about 100+ hours of enemy killing to get enemy money to upgrade, so I just got my Gameshark out for infinite Zenny, and make a note to think twice about the next Legends game. No one likes a system where the best items are readily accessible but you've a 1 out of 1000000 chance of getting it.
Finally, the instant smackdown. This is like all the optional bosses in RPGs, or anytime you hear someone praise a game for being hard and able to kill you before you realized what's going on. This is when you get hit by some boss for more HP than you have and you hear people say, "Wow that's great! Finally a hard game!" As if there is something you can actually do to survive that attack aside some more mindless leveling up! Frankly, I'm beginning to wonder why we even have optional bosses in RPG. Do game developers really think we RPG players are this dumb? Has there been a RPG where you can't get by using the same old strategy that has always worked, namely heal when someone gets low, and otherwise attack (casting helpful spells first, of course)? I've stopped attempting optional bosses because I think they're just an insult to a player's ability. The game attempts to create the 'elite' that can defeat such bosses, but those elite is just really good at leveling up lots. I hear people talk about how FFX's Nemesis is challenging because he hits for 99999 and has 10 million HP. Whatever. As long as you've Reraise, Three Stars (all abilities/spells/skills cost no MP) and the proper status protection (not sure if he even does status effects, if not he's much easier), there's no way you can lose. It's just going to take a very long time going through his 10 million HP.
It's kind of funny. FFX's the first RPG I've managed to sit down and play 5+ hours in one sitting for a long time because it didn't feel like I was wasting my time running through some stupid dungeon all the time, but the game ends with the worse imaginable time sink possible in the forms of the ultimate weapons. Perhaps it's a good thing I never got the ultimate weapons so I can try to fill the Sphere Grid, though. I'd imagine a couple hundred or even thousands of battles to try to fill that grid can burn me out just as bad, if not worse. You'd think Square would see a clue when everyone starts using the AP cheat to get 99 sphere levels (and they're for people trying to fill it, not people who just started the game, since a lot of the stuff you need can't be obtained until you can go to Omega Ruins). Instead they decided to put a cap on the AP gain so you can waste even more time, and now people just tape down their controller in Omega Ruins and come back in an hour...</div>
I've noticed the newer RPG seem to derive extra playtime from:
1. Minigames
2. Incredibly tedious item hunting.
3. Instant smackdowns.
In the category of Minigames, we've FF8 with Triple Triad, FF9 with Tetra Masters. FF10 has Blitzball and the Chocobo Race. Tale of Destiny 2 seems to be one big minigame. This trend seems to have become progressively worse. Minigames weren't like this before. They used to be some cute thing you can do that's not supposed to beat you up and stomp you. They were cool back when no one thought of them... but even then they were never supposed to be the focus of the game. In going along with Stephen's theory of good gameplay over plot, it seems as if nowadays people don't know how to even make good gameplay so they try to throw you some minigames and hope you'll like one of them. Tale of Destiny 2 comes to mind as an example of this. Though as much as I love FFX, it sure seem as if Square didn't really think about what you're supposed to do after you're powerful enough to beat Sin, so they tossed some impossibly hard minigames to keep you busy so you can't access the sphere grid (well you could, but you can't hit over 9999, so what's the point?).
Insane item hunt is another. The best example I can think offhand is Diablo 2: Lords of Destruction. Everyone at some level is a treasure hunter. You know you don't need everything in a game, but you want to get them all. LoD had some incredibly low chance of dropping armor that statistically, you can be playing the game your entire life and never seen all the elite uniques or something along these lines. FF8-10 was also like this, though not as bad. People expects to be able to get everything in a game without spending 500 hours playing it. By putting items in the game that requires too much effort is bound to frustrate gamers, even if you warn them. Or they just cheat, such as Phantasy Star Online. Megaman Legend 2's Shining Laser requires about 100+ hours of enemy killing to get enemy money to upgrade, so I just got my Gameshark out for infinite Zenny, and make a note to think twice about the next Legends game. No one likes a system where the best items are readily accessible but you've a 1 out of 1000000 chance of getting it.
Finally, the instant smackdown. This is like all the optional bosses in RPGs, or anytime you hear someone praise a game for being hard and able to kill you before you realized what's going on. This is when you get hit by some boss for more HP than you have and you hear people say, "Wow that's great! Finally a hard game!" As if there is something you can actually do to survive that attack aside some more mindless leveling up! Frankly, I'm beginning to wonder why we even have optional bosses in RPG. Do game developers really think we RPG players are this dumb? Has there been a RPG where you can't get by using the same old strategy that has always worked, namely heal when someone gets low, and otherwise attack (casting helpful spells first, of course)? I've stopped attempting optional bosses because I think they're just an insult to a player's ability. The game attempts to create the 'elite' that can defeat such bosses, but those elite is just really good at leveling up lots. I hear people talk about how FFX's Nemesis is challenging because he hits for 99999 and has 10 million HP. Whatever. As long as you've Reraise, Three Stars (all abilities/spells/skills cost no MP) and the proper status protection (not sure if he even does status effects, if not he's much easier), there's no way you can lose. It's just going to take a very long time going through his 10 million HP.
It's kind of funny. FFX's the first RPG I've managed to sit down and play 5+ hours in one sitting for a long time because it didn't feel like I was wasting my time running through some stupid dungeon all the time, but the game ends with the worse imaginable time sink possible in the forms of the ultimate weapons. Perhaps it's a good thing I never got the ultimate weapons so I can try to fill the Sphere Grid, though. I'd imagine a couple hundred or even thousands of battles to try to fill that grid can burn me out just as bad, if not worse. You'd think Square would see a clue when everyone starts using the AP cheat to get 99 sphere levels (and they're for people trying to fill it, not people who just started the game, since a lot of the stuff you need can't be obtained until you can go to Omega Ruins). Instead they decided to put a cap on the AP gain so you can waste even more time, and now people just tape down their controller in Omega Ruins and come back in an hour...</div>