Example: In Runescape, it's been a known thing for a long time that Strength (a stat determining maximum damage with melee weapons) is is significantly more useful than Attack (which determines hit chance)
This seems to be the case in many RPGs and I find it unfortunate.
There's a long standing discussion in the FFXIV community about accuracy, and it generally tends towards "this stat should not exist at all". Accuracy is not like other stats. It doesn't exist to make you stronger. It exists to punish you for not having enough of it.
Accuracy is not like other stats. It doesn't exist to make you stronger. It exists to punish you for not having enough of it.
Also this is really funny
To expand on this: In FF I main Scholar, a healer/DPS hybrid class. Most of my damage comes from Damage over Time effects, which means I am generally juggling 5 timers at any given point.
2 of my DoTs can miss, which A) unsyncs my timers, and B) means I need to spend 2.5 seconds recasting.
I also have an ability which deals damage and regenerates my MP, at the cost of a stack of Aetherflow, which I get 3 of per minute, and is also used for my most powerful heals. If I miss, I regenerate no MP.
So, what purpose does accuracy serve in this situation?
This is a short visual novel by Jason Steele/Filmcow/that guy behind Llamas with Hats and Charlie the Unicorn, though the material is definitely of a different bent. You're a melancholy anthropomorphic raccoon who works as a spirit medium for a strange species of 'Shape People'. Literally just shapes with faces. You basically go through a few short vignettes concerning these Shape People and their dead associates, while slowly giving a look at the raccoon's empty life and his search for his lost shape. It's about 20 minutes and I found it kind of interesting, so I hope you'll take a look at it
I remember in WoW the +hit cap was really well-known, so you just got enough of it to maximize accuracy then prioritized everything else as usual.
Of course it also kind of made sense, since your chance to hit scaled directly from level difference and bosses were all slightly higher level than you specifically to leverage that. It was also hilariously easy to get from the first expansion onward even before they made all gear give you every stat (including ones that were useless), so...
More MMO thoughts: How are players who have managed to reach the endgame so bad?
Background context: Recently, Final Fantasy XIV reached a new patch. Two pieces of content, the 24 man raid Weeping City of Mhach, and the 8 man trial Final Steps of Faith, have had their difficulty tuned slightly higher than normal, and there are already murmurings about possible nerfs. The reason for this is that there are a load of players who just can't handle it.
It's important to note we're not talking hardcore raid difficulty here. They're nowhere near that hard. And to reach this point, which is endgame content, in an expansion, you have to have put dozens of hours into the game.
To give an equivalency, this is like a Binding of Isaac player who has played for 200 hours but has never beaten the Caves, or a Doom player who regularly dies to 2 soldiers. People are still repeatedly dying to mechanics that have been drummed into their heads since level 1. Not difficult mechanics like "Dodge this unmarked linear attack based on the position of 3 dragons" but mechanics like "don't stand in the glowy orange circle".
...Not difficult mechanics like "Dodge this unmarked linear attack based on the position of 3 dragons" but mechanics like "don't stand in the glowy orange circle".
Progression to the level cap rarely offers significant challenges that absolutely require understanding of your character, roles, or greater awareness, and those that do are always skippable. Also people stand in death cookies because they never keybound their controls and their eyes never leave their button bar.
I always wished WoW inplemented a mandatory solo dungeon, complete with supporting NPCs, that literally forced these things down your throat, would restrict key features until you completed it, and would offer tutorials and assistance if you failed. Vanilla used to have outdoor stuff for some class skills, but they all got removed because they were too spread out and kept using elites that you weren't actually expected to fight on your own merits.
Also 8-man party is just asking for trouble. 5-man parties in WoW were bad enough.
Jade Empire was free on Origin a while ago, so I'm starting it now. Enjoying it so far, trying not to stress over ability/style point configuration even though I just discovered the style I put the most points into can't even hit ghosts. Oh, well.
I forgot how badass Melia is in Xenoblade. Chained three thunderbolts on a miniboss for almost 20k damage, and I'm not even sure the first big one was a crit. Shulk is lucky to backstab for 8k.
Also, Jade Empire's autosave points seem very arbitrary. I guess I got used to, say, Fallout where it autosaves every time you enter a new area, and as a result lost a bit more progress than I expected when I got massacred by ogres.
Ganondorf is really kinda crap in Hyrule Warriors. Lots of slow combos, and 2/3 of the attacks miss because they all have way too much knockback and the AOE has crap range. Half his combo finishers are completely useless because the hits right before them knock everything too far away. I guess there's a reason every one of his missions bumps up the A-rank damage taken to over twice what it is for everyone else.
There is one rather questionable choice of mechanic in the new 24 man though: Meteors. To elaborate on this: Several people are marked, and after a few seconds, meteors hit the point they were standing on when the cast finished. They have a huge blast radius, and if two meteors are too close, they explode, wiping the raid. Also, the arena is shaped liked a doughnut and you can fall off if it.
The last time this variant on the mechanic was seen was in T9, which, done at level, is still considered one of the toughest fights in the game.
me last year: I think I'm just going to get Destiny: The Taken King on PS3, that way I can still play without having to make my parents drop the cash for a PS4
Ganondorf is really kinda crap in Hyrule Warriors. Lots of slow combos, and 2/3 of the attacks miss because they all have way too much knockback and the AOE has crap range. Half his combo finishers are completely useless because the hits right before them knock everything too far away. I guess there's a reason every one of his missions bumps up the A-rank damage taken to over twice what it is for everyone else.
Ganondorf's final combo is amazing though.
I do remember him being a lot harder to use before I got Hasty Attacks on him, but Hasty Attacks is great for everyone. It's gotta be the best special in the whole game.
Also 8-man party is just asking for trouble. 5-man parties in WoW were bad enough.
8 man parties are only used for instanced boss fights and hardcore raiding. Dungeon parties are 4, and casual/semi-casual raiding is 24.
Oh, so one-off bosses like Wintergrasp or Baradin Hold. That's fine.
I'm a bit perplexed as to why the casual raids are 24 though. I speak from experience when I say organizing 25 people is a hell of a lot harder than 10, even if it's a really good 25. And just fuck 40.
i seem to have lost my game boy -- and with it, my Super 105 in 1 cart.
well, okay, i've definitely lost it. i just want to figure out whether i can find it again.
this is bothering me, since i am quite fond f of a number of the games on that cart.
key to figuring this out is whether i brought my game boy with me to my apartment at school.
i definitely wanted to, because i knew of a game hardware repair shop near the school.
i have two vague memories of bringing it there -- looking at the three-pointed screws there, as well as thinking that i had brought over all my gaming stuff except for the NES and the SNES
but i can't be certain of those memories since they are very vague and they could just have been hypotheticals on my mind
what complicates thus is that my parents moved when i was at school (well i was kinda there when they finally moved out), and just now i've moved back in with my parents, so there are basically two bouts of chaos surrounding this
my last firm memory of my game boy is before my parents moved
i don't remember when i discovered that it had three-pointed screws, but that had to have happened before i developed the intention of bringing it to the repair shop, because i had to have realized i couldn't service it myself
was it before my parents moved?
when i made that box of gaming stuff with the rest of my game boy games, did i really forget the game boy itself?
did i really forget to count it when i inventoried the locations of all my games and decided that i'd brought over everything except my nes and snes?
did i somehow leave it at my apartment? i thought i did but my housemate and my landlady report not finding a game boy, and while i kinda think i had it with me there, i also can't remember where i would have put it
it's possible that i could have stuck it in some really stupid place just to hide it, but i had no reason to hide it at my apartment since my parents weren't there
I have a feeling that a good many of the people who praise Undertale for being an exceptional JRPG are not typical JRPG fans, but rather are the sort of people who are "this is the only JRPG I enjoy playing" type, who probably got into the game thanks to the publicity it's garnered.
Not all, obviously, but a good number of them.
(This is not a bad thing. But I think it just does temper some of the praise that's heaped on it.)
Really just of RPGs in general, though. My go to example off RPG excess is Dragon Age: Origins, which had a great combat system, fun (if diegetically nonsensical) progression, and some surprisingly well designed enemies that made every encounter interesting buuuuut it also had way, way too many encounters go the point where even if they're technically well designed they become unbelievably tedious
Compare Undertale whose biggest combat-related flaw is a lack of a boss rush mode
Really I spent a lot of time wanting to revisit Undertale "combat" system because I wanted MORE of it, a much smaller flaw than wanting less.
The really unfortunate thing about DAO is that atrocious early game. Playable on the first run, while curiosity drives one, but an unbearable combination of smug and boring otherwise.
Really just of RPGs in general, though. My go to example off RPG excess is Dragon Age: Origins, which had a great combat system, fun (if diegetically nonsensical) progression, and some surprisingly well designed enemies that made every encounter interesting buuuuut it also had way, way too many encounters go the point where even if they're technically well designed they become unbelievably tedious
Compare Undertale whose biggest combat-related flaw is a lack of a boss rush mode
Really I spent a lot of time wanting to revisit Undertale "combat" system because I wanted MORE of it, a much smaller flaw than wanting less.
uh
if you come into Undertale wanting combat, then you're looking in the wrong place
I assumed that "combat" in quotes involves the nonviolent form of combat.
Boss rush is not something I ever wanted out of Undertale but I don't think it's necessarily a terrible idea. Undertale's system is such that a pacifist boss rush is a thing that actually makes sense.
Comments
I want "boring but practical" to be a practical build, dammit!
2 of my DoTs can miss, which A) unsyncs my timers, and B) means I need to spend 2.5 seconds recasting.
I also have an ability which deals damage and regenerates my MP, at the cost of a stack of Aetherflow, which I get 3 of per minute, and is also used for my most powerful heals. If I miss, I regenerate no MP.
So, what purpose does accuracy serve in this situation?
Background context: Recently, Final Fantasy XIV reached a new patch. Two pieces of content, the 24 man raid Weeping City of Mhach, and the 8 man trial Final Steps of Faith, have had their difficulty tuned slightly higher than normal, and there are already murmurings about possible nerfs. The reason for this is that there are a load of players who just can't handle it.
It's important to note we're not talking hardcore raid difficulty here. They're nowhere near that hard. And to reach this point, which is endgame content, in an expansion, you have to have put dozens of hours into the game.
To give an equivalency, this is like a Binding of Isaac player who has played for 200 hours but has never beaten the Caves, or a Doom player who regularly dies to 2 soldiers. People are still repeatedly dying to mechanics that have been drummed into their heads since level 1. Not difficult mechanics like "Dodge this unmarked linear attack based on the position of 3 dragons" but mechanics like "don't stand in the glowy orange circle".
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Playstation does not list Castlevania: What Is A Man? Fail.
GBA does not list Metroid Fusion. Fail.
Mega Drive should have Streets of Rage 2, not 1. Fail.
Otherwise, not too bad
I assume those games would be all over an American version
is that racist to say? Maybe it is, I dunno.
The last time this variant on the mechanic was seen was in T9, which, done at level, is still considered one of the toughest fights in the game.
me now: shit.
well, okay, i've definitely lost it. i just want to figure out whether i can find it again.
this is bothering me, since i am quite fond f
of a number of the games on that cart.
key to figuring this out is whether i brought my game boy with me to my apartment at school.
i definitely wanted to, because i knew of a game hardware repair shop near the school.
i have two vague memories of bringing it there -- looking at the three-pointed screws there, as well as thinking that i had brought over all my gaming stuff except for the NES and the SNES
but i can't be certain of those memories since they are very vague and they could just have been hypotheticals on my mind
what complicates thus is that my parents moved when i was at school (well i was kinda there when they finally moved out), and just now i've moved back in with my parents, so there are basically two bouts of chaos surrounding this
my last firm memory of my game boy is before my parents moved
i don't remember when i discovered that it had three-pointed screws, but that had to have happened before i developed the intention of bringing it to the repair shop, because i had to have realized i couldn't service it myself
was it before my parents moved?
when i made that box of gaming stuff with the rest of my game boy games, did i really forget the game boy itself?
did i really forget to count it when i inventoried the locations of all my games and decided that i'd brought over everything except my nes and snes?
did i somehow leave it at my apartment?
i thought i did but my housemate and my landlady report not finding a game boy, and while i kinda think i had it with me there, i also can't remember where i would have put it
it's possible that i could have stuck it in some really stupid place just to hide it, but i had no reason to hide it at my apartment since my parents weren't there
i found it i found it i found it
i found it i found it i found it
That's fuckin awesome
Not all, obviously, but a good number of them.
(This is not a bad thing. But I think it just does temper some of the praise that's heaped on it.)
Compare Undertale whose biggest combat-related flaw is a lack of a boss rush mode
Really I spent a lot of time wanting to revisit Undertale "combat" system because I wanted MORE of it, a much smaller flaw than wanting less.
Boss rush is not something I ever wanted out of Undertale but I don't think it's necessarily a terrible idea. Undertale's system is such that a pacifist boss rush is a thing that actually makes sense.