Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Yes, but you being the benefitiary of luck in DDS doesn't really matter, since you're fighting waves and waves of enemies. If you crit an enemy, it's just speeding up slightly a random battle you'd win anyway outside of RNGs, and if they miss, same thing - and the game unsubtly tries to tell you that you shouldn't even be letting randoms get turns (of course, it has giant RNG and that's just entirely impossible due to initiative failures). If an enemy crits you, it gets another turn to wipe out your party with things that are entirely outside of your control. If you miss an enemy, you gave them the free chance to do that and you couldn't prevent it in any way. Raising the Luck stat is also self-defeating, since it doesn't erase those chances, just lowers them some, and you're facing them so often that even lowering them isn't enough. It's simply very inefficient and ineffectual. I raised my Luck stat fairly in my playthrough for half the game and then realized it was helping basically nothing, and when I forsaked balance for offense, suddenly the game just sorta blew up outside hax.

This is what I'm getting at against your defense: you -can- minorly plan around RNG hax in DDS! It's just incredibly inefficient and annoying to do. It's more of a chore than just gritting your teeth and blowing things up until you get haxed, and -that- is a chore already. DDS's RNG adds no tension to its gameplay and it doesn't force you to be more careful the way it's implemented, it just makes it less fun and more numbingly obnoxious. Like being gnawed by your cat on your ankles is. 

[NotMiki]

You're right, of course.  Video games are a pointless endeavor.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Nah, a pointless endeavour is calling other people's frustrations with a game "laughable" and then being all surprised when they get defensive!

[NotMiki]

* NotMiki steals a line from manipulative parents

I'm not surprised.  Just disappointed.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, I was pretty disappointed when I first learned people were capable of having different opinions from me, too.

[Grefter]

The fact that DDS gives you that much control and you can still be chain fucked by RNG is why it is bad design.  I do not see how this is hard to understand.  It is better than FE RNG rape, but it still game overs you beyond something you can control.  Neither of these is good.  That said, this isn't why DDS is difficult either, it is just a dick move.  DDS is difficult because of more usual SMT stuff with enemies that liberally use status, elemental reflects that are risky outside of scanning, bosses that have non-trivial moves while you are still fishing for what they do/weaknesses to exploit and so on.

That said, magic twinking in DDS is just plain stronger than physical twinking (for most of the game?), pays off much quicker and so on.  DDS is also a system that quite openly from it's beginning wants you to specialise due to the mantra system.  Jack of all trades is the worst possible route you can take and it isn't something the game tricks you into.

[Meeplelard]

DMC4 Hard Mode: Just beat Echidna as Dante.  Unsure what I said since last update, so I'll just start with Bael!

Bael was...pretty much the same fight, I felt.  He did his little hide stunts more often, tried to be a bit more aggressive, but he's too predictable to really change all that much.  Extra damage doesn't hurt, of course, so dodging him is a bigger priority and such.

Agnus' Computer...same fight as always.  Pick up Swords, throw it at computer, jump to middle of room when he charges, ideally stay airborne with sword slashes if possible! 

Echidna...wow, what an improvement.  She stops doing that failure cage move which is "Use Devil Bringer on me now for free damage!"  and does more that big spear vine move.  Plus she flies around like a moron less, actually trying to attack you when she does.  Also hurls projectiles at you alte in the fight.  Was shocked how she actually puts up a fight now, one on par with DMC Hard mode standards, considering she was like the easiest DMC Boss ever, "Tutorial" Bosses (like that in Chapter 1) and DMC2 (which never counts) aside...ok, and FINAL MUNDUS!! of DMC1, but he too doesn't count <_<

Chimera Seed enemies are also very "What the fuck?" inducing now.  They're massive upgrades to the point where I died on randoms.  It felt pathetic, but when fused with Assaults, OW!  PAIN! DEATH!  They shave off health like crazy, not something you expect from a small, mundane DMC enemy (its usually the big scary things that do this!)

Credo is a lot more aggressive, and gets pretty psycho at low health.  I was trying to chip at him but that wasn't working, cause eventually he'd just overwhelm me.  The buster wasn't doing much damage either!  Then I got the REAL buster hit on him, shaved off a fuck ton of health and was reminded that, as far as meleeing him goes, you need to treat him like any other Angel; break down the shield, THEN use the Buster.  Remembering that made the fight a lot easier since I could actually damage him <_<

Agnus...is Agnus.  As Nero, he's a pretty damn straight forward fight.  Buster the Support, using it against him, slash the fuck out of him when you get the chance, otherwise, sit back and use Blue Rose (ideally charged shots.)  If he is ever stunned, Buster to the face, watch his health drop!

Sword Fight...uh, yeah, suitably insane.  Took me about 4 tries to beat it, where I finally was able to corner him and just keep pressure on and get a few good busters in.  You really CANNOT play defensively here; he starts pulling out shit you didn't see in Normal Mode like LONG RANGE SHOT GUNS or he starts punching you with organic fist of death.  You pretty much have to go on the offensive a good part of the fight, and this includes using Blue Rose properly to lure him towards you, as you don't want to be the one to charge.  Yes, its a fight you have to approach carefully...which makes things even harder cause like all DMC Sword fights, its incredibly fast paced!  Probably the best fight I've had in a DMC game, though, when I get to DMC3 Hard, I suspect the last Vergil fight will say otherwise!

The Pope was...pretty much the same fight as before?  He's more of a douche about retreating back, and the windows of opportunity to hit him are lower than before, but otherwise, not much changed.  I guess he does use a few new moves he'd normally only use in the final battle, and is a bit more aggressive, but the differences aren't major; even his damage didn't seem significantly higher.  I did die to him once, but that's cause I entered the fight at like half health.

THEN WE GET DANTE!
...I notice pretty fast that Dante loses health faster than Nero.  This may be partially cause Dante lacks Nero's Regen Up in DT skill, but it seriously seems like Dante just takes more damage than Nero in general.  He also seems less suited to take out Blitzes, due to lack of Buster; best Dante can do is DT Kick 13's which need more precision and promptness.   Part of the problem with Dante, if you can call it that, is that I have been playing as Nero for a while, and hadn't played as Dante in a while (even with my recent playing of DMC3 for some casual stuff, I was mostly playing as Vergil so...), so I had to remember stuff like "Oh, right, Dante lacks an Aerial Sword Combo without Swordmaster!" or "Oh yeah, his charge shots function COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than Nero's!" and such.  I probably should have done some normal mode things with Dante again first to re familiarize myself with his exact physics.  In Normal mode, you typically get use to Dante on grounds the early stuff he faces sucks, and he's really damned strong out of the gate, so that first mission is basically "learn to use Dante!"  Hard Mode?  Doesn't really work, since now enemies fight back!

Anyway, also fought Echidna as Dante.  She's...a lot easier as Dante than Nero.  E&I work better at sniping thing than Blue Rose does, and Pandora (and probably Shotgun?) is better at just nukage damage than Charged Blue Rose shots.  Considering she rarely uses the Cage now, Buster is less meaningful.  Meanwhile, her little "Sit there and spear you" move?  DT -> Kick 13 -> watch her health drop.  Rips her in half really fast.  If she DOES use the cage move, either go with Dark Slayer or Swordmaster Rebellion, and slash the fuck out of the pod!  Oh, she's harder than in Normal mode, cause she has actual damage and you know, fights back rather than flying around and just dying to E&I, but yeah, a lot easier as Dante than Nero.
She did get me once, but due to some bad luck on my part, such that she got her spears up just where I was and I couldn't get to her in time to shave off that last bit of health, and she got me on a blind side charge (which REALLY HURTS.)

[Clear Tranquil]

SO4- I has a Faize. First boss fight was a pain in the ass but I eventually won by spamming Earth Glaives up it's when it's shell broke ^_^ Oh and Edge died when I was exploring the planet before Faize joined so I ended up soloing most of it with Reimi >_> I found a random Fresh Sage for Edge in a random hole later though so that was ok. I heart Reimi, her cuteness and Sonic Thorns. Picked up a bunch of trophies with her already. There sure are a lot of attack X times from long range ones :O As much as I love her already though I'm going to control Faize now because of spoilers~

[Grefter]

SO4 also - I am up to whatever the second planet is called.  Chaining system is less arghlefuck easy to break, but again gives really good bonuses.  The key offender here though is the Ambush one which gives you SP.  SP is life.  Getting a full board of Ambush tiles is incredibly useful.  This promotes incredibly long play sessions, so SO4 is pretty much relegated to weekend play for me.  It also makes it pretty annoying when you lose the tiles though when locked away from the starting planet (which has a spot that it is ridiculously easy to rack up those 14 Ambush tiles in pretty quick succession).  Getting one or two things on the board that you don't really want that play session is annoying as well, you either live with it and make your board more fragile than it really has to be or start building it all up from the beginning.

I doubt you are really meant to abuse it that much, but SP honestly seems to be having that much of an effect at this point in the game and I can imagine it is only going to be more so when I get more characters with more skills and so on...

That said, due to excessive abuse and honestly a bit of grinding just for the sake of poking and prodding the system, I have maxed out Beat style A on Edge and Style B on Reimi.  Swapped them now just to build stuff up.  Hurts Edge a bit and breaks Reimi a bit more.  She is pretty nuts at the moment.

[NotMiki]

Yeah, I was pretty disappointed when I first learned people were capable of having different opinions from me, too.

I know!  What's wrong with you guys?

[Grefter]

They haven't played Fallout.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

S3 - Estella's more useful as an A Pale Gate mage than as an S Rage Runer. Go figure.

[SageAcrin]

*Looks up at discussion, shakes head.*

This highlights a problem that I was thinking the DL has had for a while yesterday, whilst working on other stuff.

We use the term "Good design" wrong.

Good design is shooting for, planning for, and successfully executing what you plan on.

For an example.

A skydive does not appeal to everyone.

Megaten's way of using randomization to provoke certain emotions and play in people does not appeal to everyone.

Both are not badly designed, they are psychologically narrow appeal. Not everyone will like the emotions involved or appreciate them. To many, they will feel just stupid wastes of time and money. Nonetheless, they have a wide base appeal.

Some people are definitely going to like the Megaten ideal, as it feels like a "hard game", with actual risk, with actual potential for the game to not only kick your ass but shove you back an hour. If you haven't seen people say stuff like this about Megaten games, you haven't looked at Megaten fans. We tend to say they confuse hard games with frustrating ones, true, but in actual fact it just means we have a different view of good hard.

Objectively, there's very little "better" about the way the DL tends to like hard(That is, single, very hard battles that you don't have to worry about low odds randomization and resource management as much on.), as it's worthy of note that this form of hard can kill you just as much or more and waste time just as much as hax, in practice.

In fact, if both are done well(That is, the minimal hax required to give the feeling of hardness vs the minimal amount of challenge to feel like you're actually facing a challenge often), I suspect that the latter would probably give you more overall wasted time.

What Megaten's design is, is psychologically narrow. Anyone that's just playing the game to play the game is not going to appreciate the ideas it uses. Only a narrow base will. But if you're selling to that base, you will reliably sell to that base, they will reliably like it, etc, obviously this is not bad. And if you sell a skydive to an agoraphobic, it's hard to say they should get their money back, because really it's not the seller's fault the person didn't know what they were getting into.

Of course, in P3 this just means it's your own drat fault as P3's Easy gives you Haxproof in the form of ten Plumes of Dusk(fully revive your whole team on a game over situation) and nothing else changes; If you hate P3's hax, play on Easy.

Indeed, Megaten games overall have been getting progressively much better about trying to narrow the amount of time and trouble and effort wasted, to the point where making massive, multi-paragraph rants about a game wasting an hour of your time when things like FFX's ultimate weapons exist is beyond me. As an objective thing, it's simply not that much of an issue. (I say an hour because P3, total, wasted an hour for me with hax. Admitably the final exists, but. DDS meanwhile wasted 15 minutes in 1 and I can't recall a single drat haxdeath in 2. I would have surely had more in, say, FF1, had I not savestate abused.)

Bad design and psychology would be, say, BtB, which is striving to reach it's goal of being unutterably generic and failing both for design and psychological reasons.

Good psychology with bad design focus is harder to pin down, as rarely do people make appealing games by accident, but Grandia might be one of the better cases, as it's theoretically a game about exploration and a game with a fair deal of focus on combat, by default, due to the plot getting sparse at points. And it completely misses both points by the end with pathetic steamrollable battles and a jarring, sudden focus switch to generic save the world views. Oh, and it's exploration was always utterly linear.

Despite missing what apparently was it's point, rarely do people find Grandia worse than bland, and many people quite like it, because there's very little that can psychologically hit a nerve on people in it.

And narrow band psychology with good design is FE, is DDS, is most RPGs these days, seriously NI and Atlus tend to not make broad appeal stuff, they tend to sell to their niches. S-E hasn't been making enough RPGs lately. And FE, despite wonderful sales that show they really do a good job...well, if you haven't seen reactions that are "Oh my god no." to some of the basic concepts, you need to talk to Zenny more. Among people who aren't heavily into RPGs...my brother's reaction to FE was instantly an utter no due to permadeath, it is not a popular concept psychologically due to being a "Screw up and you're hosed." thing.

Similar to how people reacted to BoF5's Counter, which incidentally is another psychologically narrow appeal thing and one that ultimately failed on design as, really, there's almost no overlap with survival horror fans and RPG fans, sorry guys.

So yeah, basically haxdeath isn't bad design, it's just niche design. Really, what game companies need to do is come up with more easy band-aid fixes like P3 did for the problem.

(Incidentally, did Easy exist in vanilla, or was that a FES thing? I honestly don't know.)

[Dark Holy Elf]

Grandia 1's a little worse than bland to me, but not by a huge amount (though amusingly, I rate it below DDS). Good rant otherwise, I think I pretty much agree with the whole thing.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Some people are definitely going to like the Megaten ideal, as it feels like a "hard game", with actual risk, with actual potential for the game to not only kick your ass but shove you back an hour.

I entirely agree with you, and the part I quoted exactly is the precise reason why I bash DDS's attempt at that. DDS doesn't feel like a hard game. It doesn't successfully execute challenge. What you highlighted is stuff that games like P4 actually do. Outside the hax, DDS1 design is essentially a less extreme Grandia 1-2 enemy design (and, by the way: I -loathe- G1, partly for its poor design - and I rate it as lowly as DDS1 - and dock points from G2 due to implementation issues as well): terrible enemies with awful stats that tend to get easily MT OHKOed. Without random turn initiative+the tendency for the RNG to run against you, DDS would be one of the easiest RPGs ever. It's nowhere near difficult or interesting even with RNG gnawing due to the impossibly atrocious bases. So, no, in that case, it didn't manage to hit the narrow appeal in the head. So, if DDS aimed to make a challenging, even if frustrating experience as a design standpoint, it failed. This is why it's bad design. -That- is why it pisses me off.

(And I know I shouldn't be feeding more fuel to the fire, but you actually hit my exact feelings with a hammer about the whole issue and it somehow didn't connect that it's exactly for the things that make you right that I'm being annoying.)

[SageAcrin]

DDS also haxdeathed me 15 minutes total in either game, that I can recall. (Sakura Rage charmed someone and critted another. That didn't work out well, but it was near enough a save.)

Most of the challenge tends to be managable to a fairly large degree in DDS, though, you're right, it somewhat misses out on the effect on the flipside.

Most randoms can't deal enough damage to a fully healed team even with crits and ambush coming up. Not enough to get past well used items and skills, unless I'm missing something. They were going for a different effect; Not hax that could kill you no matter what you did, but hax that could kill you if you screwed up and didn't play very defensively. In other words, they were trying to make Megaten appeal to everyone.

When it's put like that, it's pretty obvious why it failed psychologically. People can handle the idea that lightning will strike them in the head. People don't like to think it's because they had an umbrella. Playing very defensively in DDS tends to make it slower and tends to not feel required, but they didn't mean to make it feel that way, it just happens. Then when you die from it, you want to hit something.

Personally I just played defensively and never minded, but now that you mention it, I can see the psychological effect as being annoying. But most Megaten games make you play like that, very obviously. Objectively it's no different, they were just going for a different psychological effect. It just happened to be an objectively good idea that is bad because of how people work.

(Also, hilariously, this probably means they would have been better off setting the game to Hard by default and having Normal as an Easy mode. Minds are funny things.)

[Hunter Sopko]

MK- Up to Chapter 3 Week 4. Having fun with the game. Liking Jess more than I ever thought I would. The cast plays off each other very well.

[Grefter]

Wait what?  So you are saying they are good design because they play like gambling with no actual risk factor involved?  What the fuck kind of games are you playing here?  Are you playing a game with plot elements that you want to witness or are you playing fucking Keno here?

Risk:reward ratio is a kind of game.  It is a game that is incredibly pure in terms of game theory and -that- is what makes things that incorporate it good design in that kind of thing.  Texas Hold 'em is a FANTASTIC game because it does this and is also highly emotionally taxing because of it.  You play Hold 'Em for no money and the game flies out the fucking window though.

RPGs are not are not goddamned slot machines.  They are a piece of interactive fiction.  To be randomly cock blocked of your piece of fiction purely by something outside of your control is outside of the scope of the basic premise of interactive fiction.  It is not on the cards for a pure tactical game (Or a tactical game with a piece of fiction tacked onto it).  It is bad design because it is a zero risk gamble rolled into a game that isn't inherently about gambling.  

When we are talking SMT in general here as well it highlights another flaw even just on the gamble front as well that is you know BAD FUCKING DESIGN.  Death of the main character is game over.  The main character gaming you over in the games where it is bad design (like where there isn't actual plot dictating why it is a big thing WHOAMG your interactive fiction element fucking meaning something!) brings up this gamble as an inherently higher risk gamble than anything else on the board.  Random casts 40% MT ID attack (which you had no control over!  Unsolicited high risk gamble).  You have say a 4 person party, you roll 40% chance of mild inconvenience or 40% chance of game over.  The scale of risk there is completely and totally out of whack and you don't even actively engage in that gamble.  That is like playing a game of poker where there is a guy somewhere in the city that will walk into any casino in the city at random and bludgeon someone at random with a bat, with that being a part of the game that you are supposed to take into account.

That kind of thing would be fucking HORRIBLE design in an actual gambling game.  Shit like that doesn't get a free pass just because it is a zero risk piece of interactive fiction.  It gets even less, not more tolerance.

Sure they have a small devoted fanbase.  There is a fanbase that is devoted to Code Geass actually being a good show instead of just watching it to see how ridiculous it could get.  None of that changes the fact that Code Geass is a horrible pile of arse.  

You might design something to be a massive fucking pile of goddamned fail.  You might succeed.  That is successful design, not good design.  IWTBTG is a fantastic game, the design is brilliant, the execution is nearly perfect.  The design is fucking BAD.

Good writing, good art, good cinema, good music are all quite capable of being categorized.  The sub components of all of those, good editing, good brush technique, good lighting technique and good song writing are all capable of being categorized.   Games don't get to be any different.  Good games are able to be categorized.  Good design can be also.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Re: Sage

And not to mention that playing defensively with the tools ends up less efficient. They just didn't encourage proper usage of the defensive tools they give, and also tend to leave you bereft of them for too long - to the point that, when they become available, they're less efficient than blitzing through.

In terms of setups, the way the game was managed doesn't make defensive playing rewarding. sure, you now can immune hax at a certain point, but DDS has such outstanding offensive options and such a large emphasis on keeping enemies from getting turns due to the weakness system that a defensive game ultimately hamstrings you more than it helps, especially given how the most basic defensive measures (healing magic, items) are very strong and ultimately optimal for your needs in practice. It's impressive how badly bosses until the very lategame get badly walled by 1/3 of the party (one PC) having Mediarama alone, for an example. The skillset slot limitations hamper this further, and so does the clunky, linear mantra system, which doesn't reward synergy at all, only simple, single-minded specialization, as if the rest of the game didn't shrug at non-standard party synergy enough (a rather powerful flaw in a system that has a reasonably high level of character customization). It... adds up for a rather poor psychological effect.

[Hunter Sopko]

The scale of risk there is completely and totally out of whack and you don't even actively engage in that gamble.  That is like playing a game of poker where there is a guy somewhere in the city that will walk into any casino in the city at random and bludgeon someone at random with a bat, with that being a part of the game that you are supposed to take into account.

I could swear I've heard this argument somewhere else.

[SageAcrin]

Wait what?  So you are saying they are good design because they play like gambling with no actual risk factor involved?  What the fuck kind of games are you playing here?  Are you playing a game with plot elements that you want to witness or are you playing fucking Keno here?

Risk:reward ratio is a kind of game.  It is a game that is incredibly pure in terms of game theory and -that- is what makes things that incorporate it good design in that kind of thing.  Texas Hold 'em is a FANTASTIC game because it does this and is also highly emotionally taxing because of it.  You play Hold 'Em for no money and the game flies out the fucking window though.

Yeah, because people don't value their time.

Wait, what?

RPGs are not are not goddamned slot machines.  They are a piece of interactive fiction.  To be randomly cock blocked of your piece of fiction purely by something outside of your control is outside of the scope of the basic premise of interactive fiction.  It is not on the cards for a pure tactical game (Or a tactical game with a piece of fiction tacked onto it).  It is bad design because it is a zero risk gamble rolled into a game that isn't inherently about gambling.

Again, based on the idea that people don't value their time, and also is a narrow view of the genre. Clearly, people do enjoy RPG combat, or SRPGs wouldn't exist. (God knows, they didn't start out selling themselves on plot, if you look at the early ones...) 

When we are talking SMT in general here as well it highlights another flaw even just on the gamble front as well that is you know BAD FUCKING DESIGN.  Death of the main character is game over.  The main character gaming you over in the games where it is bad design (like where there isn't actual plot dictating why it is a big thing WHOAMG your interactive fiction element fucking meaning something!) brings up this gamble as an inherently higher risk gamble than anything else on the board.  Random casts 40% MT ID attack (which you had no control over!  Unsolicited high risk gamble).  You have say a 4 person party, you roll 40% chance of mild inconvenience or 40% chance of game over.  The scale of risk there is completely and totally out of whack and you don't even actively engage in that gamble.  That is like playing a game of poker where there is a guy somewhere in the city that will walk into any casino in the city at random and bludgeon someone at random with a bat, with that being a part of the game that you are supposed to take into account.

That hasn't been a problem in any game but SMT3, though. P3 and 4 have Homonculus, which makes said ID a low chance of losing an in-game resource, DDS1/2 don't have the problem. SMT3...theoretically you're supposed to build your character in such a way that they wall the ID in a dungeon and it can be done quite easily, also they innately resist all forms of ID. That doesn't make it a good design for the intent in SMT3, but it's a pretty minor problem, all told?

It may waste some time once, but so does Lufia 2's fetch quests, and they always do that.

That kind of thing would be fucking HORRIBLE design in an actual gambling game.  Shit like that doesn't get a free pass just because it is a zero risk piece of interactive fiction.  It gets even less, not more tolerance.

Yeah, but in games of chance where you can effect your odds, odds that bad if you're not doing anything to effect them are reasonable. You have pretty drat bad odds if you draw on a 20 in Blackjack, that is not the game's fault, objectively.

Sure they have a small devoted fanbase.  There is a fanbase that is devoted to Code Geass actually being a good show instead of just watching it to see how ridiculous it could get.  None of that changes the fact that Code Geass is a horrible pile of arse. 

Having not seen Code Geass or knowing anything but what people have said...it sounds like the drat thing completely misses having any sort of distinguishable, identifiable narrative point as badly as the Earth misses crashing into the sun. Again, things can hit good psychological points by accident as well as by design, and indeed you may well have gave me an example of that.

You might design something to be a massive fucking pile of goddamned fail.  You might succeed.  That is successful design, not good design.  IWTBTG is a fantastic game, the design is brilliant, the execution is nearly perfect.  The design is fucking BAD.

No, the psychological impact is horrible and will only appeal to a niche of freaks that like their games stabbing them in the face. Sadism gear is not badly designed if it works to it's purpose.

Good writing, good art, good cinema, good music are all quite capable of being categorized.  The sub components of all of those, good editing, good brush technique, good lighting technique and good song writing are all capable of being categorized.   Games don't get to be any different.  Good games are able to be categorized.  Good design can be also.

Yes, that all can be judged. That was my point. You shouldn't try to judge rock music as all horrible if you dislike the instruments involved. That's your taste. You shouldn't try to judge paintings as horrible if you dislike the paints involved, or the fact that there's horrible carnage painted. That's your taste. In either case, judging is unfair to yourself and others.

DDS1 for instance I will bash the horridly setup-and-cliffhanger plot. That's obviously a bad point to it, they used it to sell the sequel. That's bad.

Hax is not bad, it is skydive.

Re: Jo'ou:

That's also a good point. Resist elements, for instance, tend to be on the last Mantras(and while the various Null/Repel/etc spells for the team are indeed good, they tend to feel very slow.

DDS2 fixed the Mantra focus thing, in fairness. DDS2 is better than 1.

But yeah, DDS tends to have it's defensive tricks be somewhat linear. There's buffs, there's debuffs, and these take up slots on your limited skillset. Granted...I never did see a point to eight flavors of offense, on a single person, mind, either, so I usually sought them out. There's null spells, but they tend to be a boss thing. There's status blockers, but I tended to only give them to Cielo because they cover weakness(Meanwhile, many people outright do not use Cielo in 1.). I mean, no, it's not like this is much different from most RPGs in practice for defensive skillset, but...

They could have done a better job with making you feel defense-oriented, it's true.

[Grefter]

For once I don't think I am actually referencing anything in particular other than real life incidents that aren't actually related to gambling that I am thinking of.

Time in a recreational setting is wasted by definition.  People may lose time, but they haven't lost anything substantial.  You spend your time whether you win or lose.  Your argument there fails.  You risk succeeding at your past time, the time is gone whether you win or lose.  If you play the game to win with certainty then you shouldn't be gambling, which is the whole damned point of the argument.

You miss the point.  It isn't about whether you like it or not (Stop fucking arguing that people.  Seriously.  DL should be fucking USED TO THIS FUCKING CONCEPT THAT GOOD AND BAD HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IF YOU LIKE IT OR FUCKING NOT).  The point is that as a piece of interactive fiction which is the heart and soul of entire RPG genre, be it good or bad plot, strategy game or not, nigh plotless dungeon crawler or cutscene sequence chain hidden, house stacked gambles are bad ways of executing a piece of interactive fiction.

This isn't sky diving or different genres or music.  You can listen to rock music and not stand it, you can still see that Jimmi Hendrix was an amazing musician.  I might hate actively reading children's books, but Harry Potter is absolutely amazing for children-young teens that it is written for.

Hax is not skydiving.  Hax is Code Geass.

Edit - To put this into perspective of another kind of interactive fiction.  There is stuff like the Lone Wolf books which you can see at http://www.projectaon.org/ This is interactive fiction that kind of plays as a poor man's D&D in a Choose your own Adventure book.  You roll the dice to see how well the fight goes and so on.  If you die you should in theory go back and read the entire book again rerolling up your character.  These books are notoriously brutal and harsh on the player.  You know what happens to these books?  They get cheated through one after the other (I believe the game is more to see how far through you can get -legit- rather than actually trying to win).  These books are poorly designed.  People have fun with them and they are actually being reprinted a good 20 years down the track since their original release.  They can be fun.  They are still bad.

[NotMiki]

Snow, you're reaching.  You're saying that the game dangles big offensive options with risk attached as opposed to more defensive ones that are less powerful and saying that's a bad thing?  A bad psychological effect?

And the mantra system is bad because it doesn't encourage synergy?  I mean, sure, skills are used singularly, but it's always good idea to diversify the skills characters have available to them.  It's not like you don't make meaningful choices.

Gref: There is risk in RPGs.  Risk that you will waste your time, however you define that.  Game Overs are a problem only if they give you the sense that you're wasting your time.  As a fan of PC games, surely you understand that.  As for the fanbase thing...go read Garfield.  It's got a huge, non-ironic fanbase, therefore it's empirically superior to, say, Zippy the Pinhead.  Right?

Sage: I broadly agree with what you're saying.  About the haxdeath, if it happens a lot a la P3 Death, it IS bad design (though you really ought to be going around with a Death-immune Persona up, the difficulty of escape still makes ambush Mamudoon a real problem).  I don't think DDS's occasional hax is in the same catgory, for reasons I've ennumerated.

[SageAcrin]

Time in a recreational setting is wasted by definition.

No, time is wasted when one time is spent not going towards a goal.

The goal can be literally anything, though. There's no real reason to, say, set "Getting money" as a goal any more than there is "Beating the game". There's merely psychological reasons for both. There are often a lot more of them for money, but if you already have as much money as you care about, beating a game may be much more of a psychological goal than getting money is.

In either case, getting set back from your goal is when time feels wasted. Getting docked hours of pay feels wasted time. Getting docked hours of gameplay feels wasted time.

People may lose time, but they haven't lost anything substantial.  You spend your time whether you win or lose.  Your argument there fails.  You risk succeeding at your past time, the time is gone whether you win or lose.  If you play the game to win with certainty then you shouldn't be gambling, which is the whole damned point of the argument.

See above.

You miss the point.  It isn't about whether you like it or not (Stop fucking arguing that people.  Seriously.  DL should be fucking USED TO THIS FUCKING CONCEPT THAT GOOD AND BAD HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IF YOU LIKE IT OR FUCKING NOT).  The point is that as a piece of interactive fiction which is the heart and soul of entire RPG genre, be it good or bad plot, strategy game or not, nigh plotless dungeon crawler or cutscene sequence chain hidden, house stacked gambles are bad ways of executing a piece of interactive fiction.

Interactive fiction is not the only point of the RPG genre anymore. It may be the point of a subgenre of it. It is not the only point. If it was the only point text adventures would drat well be RPGs. If it was the only point Tsukihime would drat well be an RPG.

This isn't sky diving or different genres or music.  You can listen to rock music and not stand it, you can still see that Jimmi Hendrix was an amazing musician.  I might hate actively reading children's books, but Harry Potter is absolutely amazing for children-young teens that it is written for.

Hax is not skydiving.  Hax is Code Geass.

Psychological points are psychological points. Just because you repeatedly say they aren't doesn't mean they aren't.

Again, there's objectively judgeable things, and then there's "lol crazy people like those" if you want to be nasty about how you put it. SMT falls into the latter. But just because crazy people like them doesn't mean they're badly designed for their focus, which is being sold to crazy people.

Shooters are for fucking crazy people. Shooters are not created equal. Shooters are games where you lose constantly in almost all cases, but that does not mean that within that there is not better/worse designs. That the psychological focus is narrow does not make the genre bad, any more than sports having a wide appeal means the genre is good. It is a commentary on people's heads being weird. That's all.

Sage: I broadly agree with what you're saying.  About the haxdeath, if it happens a lot a la P3 Death, it IS bad design (though you really ought to be going around with a Death-immune Persona up, the difficulty of escape still makes ambush Mamudoon a real problem).  I don't think DDS's occasional hax is in the same catgory, for reasons I've ennumerated.

You don't die in P3, from ID, by and large.

You lose a Homunculous. If you run out of those you die.

I think there was maybe five hours tops there where I saw enemies using ID and didn't have one. And I think I could have bought one with gems during that period. If you keep up on Homunculous it's just "Oh I'd better get another one.". It's not actually ID, it's ID with a buyout plan.

Considering that, as you said, there's ID resist/immunity/repel Persona as well, I can't really see that it's a bad design at all. There's tons of options around it.

Edit:

Edit - To put this into perspective of another kind of interactive fiction.  There is stuff like the Lone Wolf books which you can see at http://www.projectaon.org/ This is interactive fiction that kind of plays as a poor man's D&D in a Choose your own Adventure book.  You roll the dice to see how well the fight goes and so on.  If you die you should in theory go back and read the entire book again rerolling up your character.  These books are notoriously brutal and harsh on the player.  You know what happens to these books?  They get cheated through one after the other (I believe the game is more to see how far through you can get -legit- rather than actually trying to win).  These books are poorly designed.  People have fun with them and they are actually being reprinted a good 20 years down the track since their original release.  They can be fun.  They are still bad.

Hitting a good psychological point without intending to, yes. Exactly what I mean. You're better at finding examples of this than I am.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

The point is that as a piece of interactive fiction which is the heart and soul of entire RPG genre, be it good or bad plot, strategy game or not, nigh plotless dungeon crawler or cutscene sequence chain hidden, house stacked gambles are bad ways of executing a piece of interactive fiction.

That may be the point that is honestly arguable, Gref. I... don't really think it's reasonable to consider the heart and soul of the RPG genre to be interactive fiction (and, if it is, -the entire genre suffers from chronically bad design outside very, very rare exceptions-, because it fails hilariously both at fiction and effective interaction - often, any interaction - on average). Feels like the narrative focus given to RPG was more a result of circumstances than actual nature, and it frankly shows, considering how poorly RPGs tend to hold the narrative and interactive candles that you're claiming they're the hearts and souls of. I personally have no real idea of the actual point is, I just know which part of them appeals to me: menu-based, indirectly applied gameplay that focuses more on setups, management, synergy and thought-based processes (even if very simplistic in practice) than reflexes. And that's how it started, even if poorly. Narrative honestly feels like an afterthought even now.

Re: Miki:

The mantra system encourages synergy! In DDS2. In DDS1, you have a single linear road to unlocking skills and deviating from it just weakens you in the long run. I don't hate the DDS series, keep this is mind. I just hate DDS1, because it did the things it attempted to do poorly. And DDS2 shows why by not utterly failing at implementation.