Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[Grefter]

I'm getting my butt handed to me in Sahasrara in DDS. All my characters are now:
Serph - 46 ----
Serph:
MAG 40 *

* : ] for Snow! _{But I'm going to balance it out the next few levels}

I've come to the conclusion that I'm inadequately leveled in beating these bosses. ... mastering the wrong Mantras because I still need two people to use Media rather than having her learn the Mantra that has that ability . . .  Yeah, so apparently I have some grinding to do.

Nah, you are just doing it wrong.  Should have maxed Magic already.  Everything but Magic and Vit is wasted. Can't blame you for the Mantra's though because that takes way more precognition than it does to know that Magic = broken in a SMT game.

[Magic Fanatic]

BtB - Port Town Luna means I never have to worry about money for the first half of the game.  Got Tont in my party, and I'm getting ready to see if I can play with his level-ups to get awesome stats or something...  Assuming I don't get bored first.

[Clear Tranquil]

I has a SO4~

[Idun]

I dunno. If a boss can kill me in two turns without their highest magic attack, I don't think it's saying something about my magic. That said, it'd probably be beneficial to take Gale out in the first boss fight in Sahasrara being that he's weak to electricity. But I don't wanna, because he has all the dynes. So perhaps I'll give him elec resist once I get him up to the last elec mantra. I'll persevere without spamming magic. . .  I decided to get the blue and yellow card (Nama) but now I don't even feel like exploring.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

It's not a matter of making the game harder or easier, really. You already know that magic >>>>>>>>>>> all in DDS, but you wanted to not optimize. I'm not going to nag you for that, and hey, it's not like it really makes the game actually more challenging. Even with mild gimping, DDS only threatens you with annoying design, not actual enemy competence. Optimizing Serph for Mag/Vit would've made things faster, though! Remember Lupa? He's impressively pathetic when he's getting 3-4HKOed by ultrapowered Mabufudynes.

[Idun]

I believe I killed Lupa in about seven rounds without that because I figured out the moves for the individual heads. I'm not saying spamming Mag sucks. It'd definitely be the easier way to go. : P

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Indeed. DDS1 battle design just generally sucks, though, so I prefer to optimize my party in a way that makes me deal with it as little as possible. And given how everything is horribly frail outside the last boss' second form (that thing isn't really impressively durable either!)... yeah. DDS2's battles aren't as obnoxious and the fights are decently better on competence than DDS1's, but not really enough to not make the game ultimately very easy.

[Idun]

I've learned that DDS has some AI that constantly works. Well, for Ravana, it is almost guaranteed that after he makes your entire party hungry, he's going to do his Wind special that normally left me either dead or with 20-50HP. So, Null/Drain wind with whoever was healed by Sera. So I don't know if that's good AI more than it is patterning, or after x, do z. But for that Catoblepas monster, and for the thing that alerts killing Asuras under the Sahasrara temple, they've got some pretty damned good AI. The enemy in the temple will not use any of its ice attacks if you null ice, but once you decide to not keep that barrier up, it ices your face off, freezes you and destroys! :[ I'm working on Serph getting all the dynes for the moment, and I'm debating on leveling up a bit more with target members (excluding Argilla) to master the Mantra that has their weakness Resist ability. That'd only be. . .Serph and Gale. Shouldn't take TOO long. >_>

[Hunter Sopko]

Playstation Home- Xi- I guess I'll explain this one, since it works better with context. So. PS3's online service includes a free area called Home to roam around in and meet people. Originally it was just an area that included a theater that played trailers, a bowling alley with a bowling mini-game, a pool one, as well as arcade units with brickbreaker and a dumbed down echochrome. There was also a mall to go and buy stuff for Home, as well as chess there.

A few months ago it was all revamped. They changed the look and added a bunch of new shit, as well as spaces for games like RE5, Warhawk and other games, each with minigames of their own.

However, they ALSO added an ARG called Xi, which was basically a long series of mini-games and riddles with a longrunning plot. The basic story stuff were rewarded with fragments, the challenges were rewarded with butterflies.

Butterfly 18 involved the most awesome, most hilarious, most retarded global scavenger hunt ever. I'll take you through step by step.

Step 1: Simple enough. The Hub had a link to an origami puzzle that you could print out. When folded, it spelled out wired.co.uk, where there was an article about Xi on the website.

Step 2: The article had an embedded picture of a maze in it. However, the maze was just a red herring, and thanks to the wonderfulness of pattern recognition we get...

http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/4522/xi1.jpg

After a bit of searching, KLue ends up being KLue Magazine, a Malaysian pop culture magazine.

Step 3: This is where I was able to get on my own. This is also where it gets funny. After about 24 hours of searching the KLue website fruitlessly, with lots of false leads (A photo of the current issue hinted at whats on Page 19, but Page 19 is not on the website), someone e-mails the editor of KLue, who responds back that the ad that was supposed to run on page 19 was bumped to page 21 at the last minute. Said ad appears to be another puzzle, and the editor graciously e-mailed the ad to the person. So this is something that probably only someone who had gotten the actual print copy would have been able to find out.

The puzzle was a large table of random elements, with numbers running along the top and the right side. Someone figured out that if you filled in the intersecting squares where the numbers added up to the element in the box's atomic number (or weight, can't remember), it spelled out the next clue...

http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/9335/xi2solved.jpg

Step 4- This is where everyone remained stuck for another 48 hours. People e-mailed staff of Timeout NY, Chicago, etc, asking if they had a copy of the recent Mumbai issue. Nope. Tons of crazy theories were thrown around, the website was scoured over, the site's internal search engine got a good workout, nothing. Finally, someone got a hand on an actual copy. There was an ad with the picture building sign with Xi symbol and the caption "Look behind you, now." Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of the ad.

EDIT: http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/2347/xi4.jpg

Step 5- The building turned out to be the Royal Exchange in London. Looking at Googlemap's streetwalk proved fruitless. All you could make out were two indistinct buildings. It took someone actually going down there and looking at the area to pull this one off. Said hero discovered that the two buildings in streetwalk had nothing to do with it... but there was a chocolatier NEXT to them that had an odd crossword puzzle in the window! One cameraphone picture later...

http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/4012/xi3.jpg   (Forgive my crappy mouse penmanship)

Step 6- www.ebcdl.net ended up being the last leg of the journey. Looking at the sourcecode, all the dimensions are there, but you had to find them. Luckily, someone who was browsing from his PS3 said that he could see Dimension 3 but not 1. Print Preview ended up having the last one, so the answer to this whole mess is canada483.

I have to say one thing. This was one crazy awesome community building exercise for the Home community. Every region chimed in and helped out, and between two foreign print magazines, a chocolate store in London and Wired UK, it utterly engrossed the community for ~84 hours.

My brain needs rest.

[Yoshiken]

Wow. That's an awesome idea, but must've been damn annoying at times. XD


I've gone back to Shadow Hearts: Covenant, after a small break thanks to fucking up with the combo system. Turns out I've somehow improved at the Judgement Ring while not playing it, and now I'm getting through without any trouble.
Couldn't help but laugh at how much the game hates Gepetto, though - mostly found it funny because I hate him too. The Party Members tutorial has three teams to begin with:

Joachim, Yuri, Karin, Blanca
Joachim, Karin, Gepetto, Yuri
Joachim

The first thing it does is build a team out of the third set: Joachim, Blanca, Karin, Yuri. Then, it shows how to change party members by taking Gepetto out of Team B and replacing him with Blanca. The game creates three teams for you and none of them have Gepetto. This is pure awesome. <3

[NotMiki]

Indeed. DDS1 battle design just generally sucks, though, so I prefer to optimize my party in a way that makes me deal with it as little as possible. And given how everything is horribly frail outside the last boss' second form (that thing isn't really impressively durable either!)... yeah. DDS2's battles aren't as obnoxious and the fights are decently better on competence than DDS1's, but not really enough to not make the game ultimately very easy.

Oh, come now.  DDS is not a particularly easy game.  It is a game that becomes easy when you have a solid understanding of the system (as opposed to many RPGs that are that easy to begin with).  It was my first SMT game, and I assure you I'm no chump at RPGs, and it was certainly tougher than average.  Name some RPGs that people would actually be inclined to play for reasons other than masochism, that are tougher, and maybe I'll buy your constant antihype.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

There is a difference between "challenging gameplay" and "requires lots of level grinding and sometimes the RNG fucks you in the ass." Most RPGs don't know the difference, though.

[Captain K.]

Taking a week off from Pokemon to clear my head before I start training for Nationals.  And to try to erase the memory of being humped by a giant Turtwig.

VPCotP:  Finally picked this back up and finished my solo C-ending run.  Thanks to Dhyer's mechanics notes, I found out that level is actually important in this game (affects damage dealt/taken directly, not just through stats) and dropped all my Expert's Experiences on Wyl.  That and switching to Helgi's Sword helped me kill Lenneth.  Way to fail, Angel Slayer.  You're not even the best weapon against the thing you're specifically designed to kill.

Then ran through the game again and plumed a different set of characters.  One more run and I'll have all the plume skills, and can actually start working on the endings.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Indeed. DDS1 battle design just generally sucks, though, so I prefer to optimize my party in a way that makes me deal with it as little as possible. And given how everything is horribly frail outside the last boss' second form (that thing isn't really impressively durable either!)... yeah. DDS2's battles aren't as obnoxious and the fights are decently better on competence than DDS1's, but not really enough to not make the game ultimately very easy.

Oh, come now.  DDS is not a particularly easy game. 

Even with my rock-bottom respect for RNG lols as actual challenge, DDS is probably not particularly easy for RPG standards, no, but those standards are stunningly low. And I'm not going to respect a game's difficulty for its ability to have its RNG gnaw you on the ankles constantly like DDS does. This isn't actual challenge, it's crappy design for the sake of crappy design that inflates difficulty in a way that involves absolutely no degree of skill. Anyone can make stupid obnoxious hax and steal game-overs. This doesn't make the fights any less pathetic the minute you realize that simple blitzing optimization turns the game into a failfest for difficulty (and pure blitzkrieg offense is just about the simplest strategy there is for just about any RPG). I had no knowledge of modern SMT mechanics when I played DDS and utterly demolished the game, myself. The enemies just utterly suck and bosses are hopelessly inept at outdoing your party tools outside their one-dimensional gimmicks. All your opposition can do at all is prolong their (and your) suffering by haxing you slowly, annoyingly and pointlessly. If you find this is actual challenge, more power for you. I just find it braindead bad design instead.

Now, if you're talking about hard mode, this is another can of worms, but I generally don't discuss SMT hard modes - I don't play them ever.

[NotMiki]

I find it laughable two people are complaining about RNG in a game where you choose your main characters stats, get to decide your combat order manually, and can pretty much shelf characters you don't like (oh, and one that has dozens of stat-boosting items to boot).

Jo'ou, does the 'easiness' of DDS really warrant these rants?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

RNG stupid is a fault of FE and it's a fault of DDS. Unlike DDS, though, FE has some semblance of execution and control over battle flow. I'd find DDS's minor, clunky turn manipulation to matter more if initiative wasn't utterly random, thus making how you control those turns matter a lot less, since you can't avoid enemies from getting turns if the game doesn't feel like it, thus initiating the idiotic continuous hax misery, which you couldn't avoid if you were a seer.

And it's not the easiness of DDS1 that annoys me. It's the fact that DDS is living proof that Atlus knows how to do good battle design and opts to do bad battle design instead just because it can without making up for it in any relevant way. Don't mind me, I just hate the game - and you'll get me to bite on, say, Shadow Hearts 1 with the exact same ease because it's a game I hate. Just like most anyone at the right moment, I can always get behind opportunities to snipe at things I really don't like. It's good for my health, even, since it keeps the venom concentration down.

[Yoshiken]

I find it laughable two people are complaining about RNG in a game where you choose your main characters stats, get to decide your combat order manually, and can pretty much shelf characters you don't like (oh, and one that has dozens of stat-boosting items to boot).

I was thinking the same thing, really. I don't see how the RNG screws you over so much when you directly choose 90% of the things that happen to your main party, including one member's exact stat growths, all of their skills, etc.
I mean, other SMT games can be much worse - see Nocturne and, from what I've heard, Persona, for randomly fucking with your abilities through sheer chance - let alone other RPGs that screw you over with RNG (like the odds of being hit by freeze in Pokemon, for example. >_>)

[Taishyr]

Persona 3's the worst about RNGrape. P2 has almost zero of it, P4 has inbuilt controls.

[Meeplelard]

The difference between FE and SMTs is this:

FE, you can actually see the chances.  You can SEE where the fuck ups occur, and you only bank on these random chances when your other options can't kick in.  You can actually plan around the RNG in many ways.  True, nothing prevents the Bad Level Ups, but FE games are nice enough to hand you at least a few characters who are strong regardless of the RNG, be it the usual Jeigan early on, some mid game Prepromo whose solid for the time, if still falls behind later, or a freak like Pent whose just jack shit insane cause he can be.

You can see Crits coming and such to a degree.  You attack an enemy, if that Crit Rate is not 0 and you are not avoiding a counter *AND* the enemy has a chance to live on that turn, you should make sure you can survive that Critical Hit, just in case.  FE lets you plan around the RNG to some degree within the battle itself.

SMTs, however?  There's no way to anticipate a critical hit giving your enemy far more damage, or you missing.  Furthermore, RNG rapage hits you harder in DDS than in FE cause you can't see it coming.  For example, you want to kill this enemy, you know you can do it, so you attack and...wait, did you just miss?  Shit!  THAT'S *2* Turns you lost.  There was absolutely nothing in your control about that; the game just shat on you, and you lost 2 turns cause the game hates you.  Elemental weakness/resist thing isn't too bad mostly cause it teaches you to pay attention.  Hit an enemies resists?  Ok, you lost 2 turns, that will teach you to NOT TRY IT AGAIN.  Maybe its a bit harsh, but its a fair thing; this is difficulty through trial and error which can work.
But there's no way to prevent that Spell missing just cause the game decided to shit on you.

Furthermore, the thing I find offensive about SMT RNG?  Surprise attacks.  You can't do shit about them, the enemy just jumps on you, attacks you with 3 big status moves, and before you can do anything about it, you're boned.  This happens relatively early in the game as well, when your methods of defending such asinine tricks are essentially active moves like Void Nerve or some such.  Its like how in WA2, while I like the game, I will not support the fact that the enemies can get a back attack on you, and nail you with MT ID, when the only way around that is Tim's Thanatos spell.  Sure, give the game MT ID if you want, but either:
A. Give you a means to block it.  Shadow Hearts vs. Wugui for example.  If Game of Death gets you the first time, that sucks.  When you face him again, you'll know to use those Leo's Bears, so nothing bad happens.
B. Game has AI set in such a way the enemies won't just pull the bullshit out turn 1.  FF games often do this from my experience; the enemies with big evil MT moves and such or what not often will hold off on the bullshit turn 1, having relatively benign actions there, only later smack you with the hate.  This isn't to say exceptions don't exist, of course.


That's the issue with SMT RNG; they whip it out on you early in the game and there's no real way you can deal with it, and a lot of the game's difficulty hinges on it.  There's maybe a decent boss fight here and there, but the randoms pretty much rely entirely on this crap.  FE, meanwhile, the RNG can bite you in the ass, but a lot of it can be planned around, and the chances of ALL your characters getting RNG screwed is practically non-existent.  Due to the WAY FE RNG works, chances are, if one character gets screwed, another character is going to have amazing level ups to compensate.  Furthermore, stat boosting items do exist to compensate for those bad level ups to some degree.  And bad level ups are really the only thing you can't defend against; the rest of the RNG is controllable, to some degree, since as I said, you can actually see what the chances that a fuck up can happen, and plan around that.

EDIT: With regards to Pokemon, the RNG works with you as much as it works against you, which is how it should be if you do something like that.  SMT, I've never really seen a case where the RNG comes in your favor, since the way its structured, its far more advantageous to the enemies than it is to you (In Pokemon, I've actually been saved by the RNG a few times as much as killed.  See my Diamond File where I swept the final boss due to Extransensory's Flinch kicking in on Milotic, and if he had lived, would have put me in some serious issues.)

[superaielman]

One thing I thought P4 massively improved on was no surprise attacks- you can in theory go the entire game without getting jumped, but good luck with that. (Timing on the attacks was painful for me most of the game).  The lack of MT status was also a good thing, though you could get wiped out by randoms pretty easily.

*stabstab* to the main character dying being game over though.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

At least getting wiped out in P4 can be acceptable because they're able to do that (and often do, even) without resorting to weakness-hitting and spamming status for years, since they have actual stats. It's less insulting. Having actual control over initiative also helps - at least, there's a degree of skill and a learning curve to avoiding the surprise jailbait rape instead of "oh whoops early midgame enemies went first now a fight lasts five minutes because they lucked out on annoying MT status that keeps stopping you from healing it even though you're at endgame levels and they 100HKO you~".

EDIT: Also, Yoshiken, other SMTs being much worse only reiterates my point. >_> I -loathe- the idea behind SMT basic design tenets, and they need to compensate really well for it for me to like a SMT franchise game. P4 is a freak incident in that regard due to excellent design consistency in most other areas, and P3 was an acceptable experience for me due to uniqueness and a few cool artistic ideas. DDS1... lacks that kind of compensation. Soooooo.

[NotMiki]

Furthermore, the thing I find offensive about SMT RNG?  Surprise attacks.  You can't do shit about them

Except, y'know, increase your Luck stat, which decreases ambushes.  What I'm picking up here is that DDS is very offensive to control freaks, because there is an unacceptably high level of luck.  Bullshit.  If you think you have a high probability of missing on your attack, you CAN do something: pass.  or heal.  or grit your teeth and go for it.  Approach the game with the understanding that your characters miss sometimes, and plan accordingly.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Furthermore, the thing I find offensive about SMT RNG?  Surprise attacks.  You can't do shit about them

Except, y'know, increase your Luck stat, which decreases ambushes. 

It'd have to completely negate ambushes with relatively minor increases to make it worth it. If Raising Luck is gimping yourself in other relevant stats. Yay, I get the choice to hamstring efficient stat distribution for a bit less hax! I'm really impressed. It's still less efficient than just maximizing your blitzing powers to blow everything up.

What I'm picking up here is that DDS is very offensive to control freaks, because there is an unacceptably high level of luck.  Bullshit.

 

It doesn't have an unacceptably high level of luck. What it has is an unacceptably high level of luck being used as a catch-all buttplug that disguises itself as actual gameplay design. They drop tons of annoying hax on the game and don't give any sort of backup when the hax doesn't work. It's very similar to DQ boss design, which I'm just as willing to bash it as unmitigated trash as I am DDS. You certainly can "plan" against hax in DDS: it's also entirely inefficient and helps you in no real way. You grit your teeth and go for it, as you said very well, but it utterly doesn't matter that you can grit through it. Bad design is bad design, even in a good game or in good gameplay. This bad design happens to be the entire foundation of DDS1 and its only substance to boot, which is why I consider it a bad game. You can't make a giant RNG and claim it's challenge and creative battle design without getting called bullshit on it, and DDS1 attempts exactly that.

I can accept that my characters can miss. I can accept that I can have game-overs stolen from me. I just can't accept when a game bases itself entirely and solely around the concept of doing that -and only that-. P4 has similarly annoying hax, but it actually fights back, gives interesting fights and enemies capable of doing things that aren't hax. Then, I don't really mind, because there's actual energy invested into the game's challenge. Even DDS2 does much better in that regard than DDS1, to boot (they actually try with their boss fight designs, for an instance instead of DDS1's lazy fights). 

What I'm trying to say is mainly that it's not the RNG that is the issue. It's how the game approaches it.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Meeple pretty much hit why RNG is obnoxious in DDS.

And yes, the game is super-random. Not so much in the sheer number of things left to chance (which is certainly high), but in the consequences of the randomness. A crit is not only 1.5x damage, it gives the enemy an extra turn. Missing doesn't just cost you one attack, it costs you two. There is absolutely nothing you can do about these, unlike in a strategy RPG where you choose who enemies attack, and you can't see the numbers so that you can make calculated risks.

(Elemental resist system also sucks ass when you can't use Scan, which sadly includes every fixed encounter, so I'm not even going to hype that! It's fine otherwise, though not precisely a particularly strong point of the game.)

It's a pretty obnoxious system.

.  If you think you have a high probability of missing on your attack, you CAN do something: pass.

Uh, except that you have to attack with SOMEBODY. Obviously you learn not to attack when it can mean you lose your chance to heal, but sooner or later you have to attack, and there's nothing you can do about the fact that missing takes away two turns. If there were ITE options you might have a point. That's not even addressing crits and ambushes.

No matter what strategies you adopt, DDS inflates the consequences of randomness. This pisses some players off. Not a hard concept.

[NotMiki]

Uh, except that you have to attack with SOMEBODY. Obviously you learn not to attack when it can mean you lose your chance to heal, but sooner or later you have to attack, and there's nothing you can do about the fact that missing takes away two turns.

Well, you can time it so your big risk/high payoff attack happens last, if you need to, or arrange your party so that you can do it immediately and still get your healing in.  Look, I get that randomness bothers some people in principle.  That's fine, but these arguments are inflating the level to which you are beholden to it.  You CAN raise your luck stat, even though you'd rather not.  You CAN use a conservative strategy that mitigates turn loss, even if you'd prefer to go guns blazing on offense.  You can, without fail, put your healer in front so they always go first.  And, let's not forget, you can also be the beneficiary of luck as well, when an enemy misses, or you crit.