Amir0x said:
It is implied that anything from my comments is automatically "maybe for [me]", so the exposition to that effect was unnecessary. My team frequently made idiotic A.I. decisions, failing to capture the necessary nuance that any good self-respecting A.I. has - particularly in regards to buffing/de-buffing. Now maybe it's "good enough" for some people - obviously - but I definitely don't think settling does anything for the quality of the game. It's rough and could do with some improvements, no question about it, and incidentally including the option to not have to rely on the shit-ass A.I. wouldn't impact you or anyone else whatsoever. Options are good. Less options are bad.
Oh I don't disagree, more options is good, especially if other players have an issue for it. I didn't mean it in a sense that your complaint is not valid, but simply that not everyone sees it as a flaw so it's probably pretty low on a list of to-fix, compared to other more pressing issues. Ultimately, FFXIII-2 was never going to fix every problem for every player to begin with. That would require making a completely different game and would have been better off as a new IP. As it is, the sequel will target those who enjoyed the original game more first, rather than those who didn't enjoy the game much at all. So what the game changes and fixes will probably be slanted towards the feedback to those who had positive experiences with the game.
I don't agree that it isn't a town issue. I mean, I don't know about FFXIII-2's town thing, although I was almost certain I read an article (in GameInformer?) that said towns would be making a real appearance this time. Not the town "skins" that were in FFXIII, but actual towns.
By towns, I mean a location with many different buildings to enter, with shops to buy from, with secrets and maybe little treasure boxes to find in off areas. People to talk to that maybe give out sidequests. A town town. Final Fantasy RPGs feel desolate without some of these. They also give context to your quest, a sort of "what are you fighting for" undercurrent.
You'd know better than me as to its existence in FFXIII-2, however, since the only American article I've read on the subject has been GameInformer and they're GameInformer.
When I said that it isn't a town issue, I don't mean that not having a towns is a good thing. I meant that what FFXIII-2 is fixing is the pace and flow of the game, rather than adding what you think of as towns to the game directly.
We've both been playing RPGs for ages, so I think you know that I have a pretty good idea of what you mean when you talk about RPG towns. You're thinking of something like FFXII or Xenoblade, where there are big sizable areas which are specifically community based locations, with NPCs inhabiting the area and offering shops, going by their daily lives shopping/playing/talking/etc, and basically the feeling that this is a location where people live in and populate. Locations like the Citadel in Mass Effect, and Detroit in Deus Ex HR.
I do not believe that FFXIII-2 has towns like this. Based on all the media I've seen, and all the interviews I've read about the game, it is much more likely that they will simply be populating transitional areas between combat zones with NPCs and shops, so there's a feeling that the world is more alive, and there are people other than the player characters who are hanging around areas.
Think of locations like Snow's flashback in FFXIII, and the Nautilus resort, and also imagine if Vanille's old town on Pulse was populated by people walking around. That's probably a more reasonable expectation of what will be "towns" in FFXIII-2. I could be wrong, and there could be entire cities which are exactly like towns in previous FF games, but since we have seen nothing like that whatsoever, and the developers have specifically downplayed expectations on that aspect in at least one interview, and the game is 3 months away, I don't think that's something that I would expect.
