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Death and games with ballsy design decisions
- Thread starter PepsimanVsJoe
- Start date
PedroLumpy
Member
ElFly said:Oh, come on.
It's not hard to figure it out.
There's no cue that he'll come charging out when you kill the boss. You also don't know his range.
I certainly learned my lesson, but I do think that was too far. A one turn warning before insta-fail is all I ask.
PedroLumpy
Member
Man God said:It's the Black Knight. They show him clearly in the opening cutscene. You already know he is a total bad ass. It's really not that big a deal.
Well, I don't really think it's a big deal either.
I know he's in the opening cutscene, I know he's in the house. It's just that he comes out of the house and immediately gets a turn. There's not enough information to predict that he will come out on the turn you kill the boss, hence I feel one turn to run the fuck away would have been nice.
I gave it a rest for the evening, but I came back and beat that level and continued on through the game. It wasn't a deal breaker or anything.
Gabyskra said:Except that units who come in the map do not get to do anything before you do.
I have no idea where all those rumors are coming from. Impressions I guess.
For the record, this is not the case in FE5: units can pop out of nowhere and move before you get a chance to react. It pretty much sucks.
I'd also like to say that one of the things I dislike most about permadeath in FE is how in impacts the battle balance. It's just not fun, to me, wading through an army that can barely hit your close-combat units (mages and the like are still soft, which is nice). It's a dynamic where winning a specific battle is easy, and the only difficulty is winning without casualties. I much prefer systems like FFT. Hard battles in FFT mean that half your party falls and you have to limb by with the rest. And if you make a dumb mistake in FFT, it means you are penalized for the rest of the battle by the loss of a useful resource; in FE, instead you* are just forced to restart.
(*: By "you" I of course mean people like me who can't stand losing something forever. Be it an opportunity for a sidequest, a unique item, whatever, if I only have once shot at it and I know that, then I'm compelled to get it. Similarly, if once I lose something I can never get it back...)
Man God said:Restarting whenever you lose someone in FE is Easy Mode. The Hardcore way to play it, in my opinion is to just keep trucking. You'll soon see the pluses and minuses of using some of the lesser known recruits.
Fine. Then Easy Mode is frustrating and a huge pain in the ass. Sounds poorly designed to me.
I don't like missing out on things. It's not fun for me to lose a character I like because an enemy got a crit, or came out of nowhere, or because I didn't check each and every archer for a Longbow, or mage for Aircaliber. I'm sure some people like the risk. I don't. If I wanted to lose things, I'd go to Vegas.
i love games that have a lasting impact when losing. from Pikmin to Shiren to Fire Emblem, and one hit kills.
there's just a point where you end up zoning out, really trying to get good at the game. if the mechanics are there, and controls are tight you continue to enjoy being good at something.... it's a nice feeling. nothin' wrong with a game that wants you to become educated on its universe, there isn't anything quite like zoning out for your next move in a fire emblem.
Dead Rising had an interesting way of going about its challenge, it just literally needed more bathrooms to save at. The mall became too infested to hike through.
Monster Hunter is another one that can become punishing. after the first KO's reset you at camp you risk loosing a hunt you've been in for 40+ minutes ..... that game will really piss you off at points, but it's all worth it to have a twitch-based RPG you have to hone in on.
there's just a point where you end up zoning out, really trying to get good at the game. if the mechanics are there, and controls are tight you continue to enjoy being good at something.... it's a nice feeling. nothin' wrong with a game that wants you to become educated on its universe, there isn't anything quite like zoning out for your next move in a fire emblem.
Dead Rising had an interesting way of going about its challenge, it just literally needed more bathrooms to save at. The mall became too infested to hike through.
Monster Hunter is another one that can become punishing. after the first KO's reset you at camp you risk loosing a hunt you've been in for 40+ minutes ..... that game will really piss you off at points, but it's all worth it to have a twitch-based RPG you have to hone in on.
Man God said:Restarting whenever you lose someone in FE is Easy Mode. The Hardcore way to play it, in my opinion is to just keep trucking. You'll soon see the pluses and minuses of using some of the lesser known recruits.
I'm doing the same thing with Valkyria Chronicles. Though I have one team member I don't want to lose, Wendy. If she dies won't start over per se, but I'll overextend, look at the enemy's positions and patterns and let my entire party crash and burn.
Final Fantasy XI: you lose 10% of the EXP required to level up. In the endgame this amounts to a ~4k EXP loss, which is a good 2+ hours worth of playtime gone in a flash. You can be revived but you still incur an EXP penalty, albeit a reduced one. Losing EXP can even make you de-level, which can not only mess up EXP distribution for the party, but also strip you of equipment if you had it fully up-to-date (since you're now a level lower and cannot equip the stuff), rendering you a useless EXP leech.
If there is no mage to revive you, you're forced to respawn at whatever Home Point you anchored at before. This is an awful game design made worse by the fact that you're not even told where your Home Point is, you just have to respawn and pray for the best.
I can't remember the number of times I'd be questing with friends to have a retard train 30+ monsters our way, resulting in my death. There are now 30+ monsters sitting on my corpse making any attempt at reviving me an instant massacre. Home Point it is... but where is it? A little fishing village on the other side of the world map. Make that 5 hours of playtime gone in a flash.
If there is no mage to revive you, you're forced to respawn at whatever Home Point you anchored at before. This is an awful game design made worse by the fact that you're not even told where your Home Point is, you just have to respawn and pray for the best.
I can't remember the number of times I'd be questing with friends to have a retard train 30+ monsters our way, resulting in my death. There are now 30+ monsters sitting on my corpse making any attempt at reviving me an instant massacre. Home Point it is... but where is it? A little fishing village on the other side of the world map. Make that 5 hours of playtime gone in a flash.
Aurora said:Final Fantasy XI: you lose 10% of the EXP required to level up. In the endgame this amounts to a ~4k EXP loss, which is a good 2+ hours worth of playtime gone in a flash. You can be revived but you still incur an EXP penalty, albeit a reduced one. Losing EXP can even make you de-level, which can not only mess up EXP distribution for the party, but also strip you of equipment if you had it fully up-to-date (since you're now a level lower and cannot equip the stuff), rendering you a useless EXP leech.
If there is no mage to revive you, you're forced to respawn at whatever Home Point you anchored at before. This is an awful game design made worse by the fact that you're not even told where your Home Point is, you just have to respawn and pray for the best.
I can't remember the number of times I'd be questing with friends to have a retard train 30+ monsters our way, resulting in my death. There are now 30+ monsters sitting on my corpse making any attempt at reviving me an instant massacre. Home Point it is... but where is it? A little fishing village on the other side of the world map. Make that 5 hours of playtime gone in a flash.
It was an awful game design decision to be sure, but it kept the death mechanic in line with all of the other elements of the game -- unfun, unintuitive and totally antagonistic toward the player.
Ri'Orius said:Fine. Then Easy Mode is frustrating and a huge pain in the ass. Sounds poorly designed to me.
I don't like missing out on things. It's not fun for me to lose a character I like because an enemy got a crit, or came out of nowhere, or because I didn't check each and every archer for a Longbow, or mage for Aircaliber. I'm sure some people like the risk. I don't. If I wanted to lose things, I'd go to Vegas.
If you are losing people to criticals, you are either playing on Hard or being stupid around swordmasters
It had so many flaws, but I enjoyed my time with it. Would never go back though.Flynn said:It was an awful game design decision to be sure, but it kept the death mechanic in line with all of the other elements of the game -- unfun, unintuitive and totally antagonistic toward the player.
Oh, i could name lots of these....
- Marble Madness' time mechanic was very unique for the time. There were timed games before that, but it seems they were all "Extended Play" games, and usually quite old at that. You had X time to finish a race, and if you made it, you got a once-only time bonus. Marble Madness continued that over several levels, and in the early 90s to boot.
- Defender, for being so damn hard. It's so hard that it seems unplayable today, but people have rolled the score counter many times. It and Pac-Man were the big hits that year, and both came out of left field.
- Imagine what it must have been like to take that initial chance and develop SimCity?
- Pikmin ends after 30 game days, and you can actually lose at it. If you take to long to collect ship parts you can make the game unwinnable, and the game won't tell you if you've not gotten all the essential parts, it'll just let you LOSE. This game was released in 2001, years after this style of play had gone out of style. Pikmin 2 was great too, but it always felt a little weaker to me because of it.
- In the dice palace of Japanese Gunstar Super Heroes was a room where, if you accidentally landed on its space, it would threaten to erase your saved game if you failed to survive an extremely difficult vertically-scrolling area. (I hear it didn't actually, but imagine how many players turned off their system rather than face that possibility?) Oh Treasure, do you even care if you have fans or not?
- Marble Madness' time mechanic was very unique for the time. There were timed games before that, but it seems they were all "Extended Play" games, and usually quite old at that. You had X time to finish a race, and if you made it, you got a once-only time bonus. Marble Madness continued that over several levels, and in the early 90s to boot.
- Defender, for being so damn hard. It's so hard that it seems unplayable today, but people have rolled the score counter many times. It and Pac-Man were the big hits that year, and both came out of left field.
- Imagine what it must have been like to take that initial chance and develop SimCity?
- Pikmin ends after 30 game days, and you can actually lose at it. If you take to long to collect ship parts you can make the game unwinnable, and the game won't tell you if you've not gotten all the essential parts, it'll just let you LOSE. This game was released in 2001, years after this style of play had gone out of style. Pikmin 2 was great too, but it always felt a little weaker to me because of it.
- In the dice palace of Japanese Gunstar Super Heroes was a room where, if you accidentally landed on its space, it would threaten to erase your saved game if you failed to survive an extremely difficult vertically-scrolling area. (I hear it didn't actually, but imagine how many players turned off their system rather than face that possibility?) Oh Treasure, do you even care if you have fans or not?
there have been patches that have made the game user friendly.Aurora said:Final Fantasy XI: you lose 10% of the EXP required to level up. In the endgame this amounts to a ~4k EXP loss, which is a good 2+ hours worth of playtime gone in a flash. You can be revived but you still incur an EXP penalty, albeit a reduced one. Losing EXP can even make you de-level, which can not only mess up EXP distribution for the party, but also strip you of equipment if you had it fully up-to-date (since you're now a level lower and cannot equip the stuff), rendering you a useless EXP leech.
If there is no mage to revive you, you're forced to respawn at whatever Home Point you anchored at before. This is an awful game design made worse by the fact that you're not even told where your Home Point is, you just have to respawn and pray for the best.
I can't remember the number of times I'd be questing with friends to have a retard train 30+ monsters our way, resulting in my death. There are now 30+ monsters sitting on my corpse making any attempt at reviving me an instant massacre. Home Point it is... but where is it? A little fishing village on the other side of the world map. Make that 5 hours of playtime gone in a flash.
But seriously though, its just another Everquest clone, alongside WoW. Only difference is WoW kept the whole "find your corpse" thing, while FFXI just went with the exp loss.