Critical design flaws

[superaielman]

This board is focusing on RPG game design right now, which is cool.  Making a topic about game design, specifically design choices that rub a player the wrong way.

I tried to avoid ones that are system limitations- IE, load times on the PSX or limited save spaces on carts. The issues I bring up detract from the overall gameplay experience to me without adding much (if anything) in return. Feel free to comment/argue/suggest your own issues here.

1. Limited saving/saving is a finite resource/only one save spot.

Offenders: Dragon Quest 9, Breath of Fire 5, Final Fantasy 3 DS, later pokemon games, Ogre Battle SNES.


There is no excuse for this to me, outside of early pokemon games where cart limitations were a factor.  BoF5's system not only combined finite saving, it had limited times for you to save *and* banned you from copying the data. It was an unbelievably poor decision. FF3DS had the wonderful decision to have a giant final dungeon with no save points and punative death (IE you lose your progress) in it. DQ9/Pokemon give you one save slot each. Screw that, I want to be able to keep my uber file and start a new game without buying a new copy of the game.


2. Menu lag

Offenders: FF1 PSX, FFT War of the Lions, Tactics Ogre PSX

FF1's lag isn't too bad (You get a 'wrong' input every so often). War of the Lions menu lag makes the game near unplayable.  If you can't port a game without the menus beinig quick/reliable/right every time, don't port it.

3. 'Exploration' sidequests/forced minigames/certain types of fetchquesting

Offenders: FF13-2, FF9, Dragon Quest 7

Dragon Quest 7 has the worst intro of all fucking time. Why? You spend three hours talking to people in towns, 'exploring' a dungeon with no monsters and solving puzzles before you get a single fight or bit of the main story. In a game filled with terrible design choices (Dharma, JP caps, the way it handled changing party members), this one stands out as the worst.  FF13-2's ore quest is another wonderful example there. Plotless, gameplayless sidequest that has you wandering around blindly to find items to finish the game. It's not fun or interesting and just makes you run to a FAQ. FF9 towns... well, see Lindblum. Don't force me to explore your town and do dumb sidequests. I'll do that on my own if I want. Arcs this like kill replay value and just make the game less fun to play in the end.

4. Unskippable text/cutscenes

Offenders: Dragon Quest 9, Final Fantasy 10, Final Fantasy Tactics

L-i-t-t-l-e m-o-n-e-y. Incredibly annoying and hard to forgive in a game made after 1993.  PSX era had lots of this, which leads into the next one.


5. Slow battles

Offenders: VPDS, Xenosaga 1, FF8, FF9, Tactics Ogre: Knights of Lodis

This can be caused by a lot of things. VPDS's sin system is a terrible design choice, since it slows down the game for absolutely no reason. If it was every once in a while for awesome rewards? Cool! As it is, yuck. I would hate FFT if it make me have to use steal on every enemy in every battle. XS1/FF9 have really long, slow, unskippable battle animations. FF9 also has terrible load times and awful battle speed in general. Fuck FF8's draw system. Long battles can be fine, especially in SRPGs. Long battles because of unskippable animations, having to draw/steal/take something from the enemy is not fine.  FF9 and Lufia 2 don't have a significant gap in battles, but the former makes you spend way longer in combat, just due to how slowly it moves. This isn't to defend Lufia 2 combat; just to note how bad FF9 got.


My own personal rule of thumb for RPG design is: Will this be fun in ten years or after a couple of replays? Games like Saga Frontier benefit tremendously by taking a no frills approach, whereas a lot of Square's other PSX titles look really bad in retrospect thanks to these aforementioned issues.

[Meeplelard]

For "unskippable text", I'd add in "inability to increase text speed."  Sounds like DQ9's is bad not only because you can't speed it up by pressing A or anything, but it also lacks a Text Speed option like many games have, to make the natural scrolling just faster.


As another thing that's offensive, at least among more modern games (earlier games, this was either space limitations, or being the norm of the time, was never considered) is with-holding basic information about things.  Examples of offenders:

FF9 Stat System: HEY! This game has a Growth System for power gamers that want to break things!  But we won't tell you it exists at all, nor even hint at it.

FF12 Strengthening:  So FF3o told you about it (if it didn't do much), FF9 told you about it, and FFT did, but FF5 did not for a few equips like Air Knives...clearly, FF5 is the golden standard here, WE MUST NOT MENTION IT FOR ANY EQUIP!

FF4:HoL/Suikoden 2/Suikoden 4 Spell/Weapon Proficiencies:  An integral part of the game where Jobs/Characters/etc. can share abilities and some do it better than others, but there's really no indicator in the game other than observing damage differences.


Again, willing to give a pass to games like FF4 where it had a bunch of hidden qualities, but actually indicating them was not considered a quality at the time, and "Trial and Error" approach was more normative.  Anything from late SNES (we'll say FF6 as a cut off point) and after though has no excuse in this regard; games made around this "cut off point" are up in the air (Lufia 2 not telling you about status resists comes to mind.)  Its still a flaw of those games, make no mistake, but one I'm willing to accept was less "poor design" and more just something that hadn't been considered, if that makes sense (and some were limitations on the game itself of course.)

And when I say hidden qualities, I don't mean something you can check in game through cross referencing, if a pain in the ass (again, FF4; yes, stat boosts were hidden, but you could at least check them by cross referencing stats)

Oh, and lastly, willing to give a pass if the game actually tells you about this stuff in the manual.  Manual's are a form of tutorial, after all, and placing details in there shows the developers DID want players to know about it, rather than stumble upon it accidentally.  This is true more for older games than newer ones, naturally.

[superaielman]

Yeah, unadjustable text speed fits in with unskippable text.

Lack of documentation is something I am less tolerant on nowadays too. I think I draw the cutoff there as the PSX era.  SO2 irks me for that, Lufia 2 does not.  Mechanics don't have to be super clear like FE's, but listing hidden item properites and the like? Yeah, that is need to know stuff.

[Fenrir]

I don't really mind saving as a finite resource. It was used along with the D-Counter to add some tension in Breath of Fire 5, in a way similar to survival horror games. (I think some Resident Evil games have limited saves too? Code Veronica definitely does)
As long as soft saving is there to make you get away from the game anytime you want, I don't see a problem. (Soft saving was ditched for the PAL release, of course)

Limited saving is something I outright like sometimes. Having to choose between backtracking to town or dwelving more inside the dungeon, not really knowing what's ahead, is fun. The final dungeon in FF1 was tense as hell, even if all the bosses look tame on paper, in a stat topic. (I'll admit that FF3 went too far. Fuck that two headed dragon)


I don't really like sweeping generalizations about this kind of subject. "Bad" mechanics can be used to add atmosphere, and they can be used well.
For example you'd think all massive text dumps should go die in a fire after playing Xenogears Disc 2, but it's actually the best part of Lost Odyssey.

That said I generally agree that most of the times, most of the things you listed are awful. Especially anything that slows the game down.

I'll add:
- Lolis.

[Dark Holy Elf]

As long as soft saving is there to make you get away from the game anytime you want, I don't see a problem.

If the power goes out while you play BoF5 you can lose a huge amount of progress depending on where you are, and that's bad. I believe there are stretches that go notably longer than FF1/2/3 with no hard saves, and FF3's final dungeon already goes further than what can be objectively justified (fortunately BoF5 is easy enough + non-luck-based during those long stretches so there isn't much actual risk beyond a power failure, but that still does the game no favours). If that had happened to me I would just have put down the game forever, and I don't think that's something you want as a game designer.

The way the game acts like a complete nazi over copying saves / having multiple files is also just insulting to the player, and I really didn't like it. I just can't imagine if I'd played a game like that back when my brother and I played all the same games. I guess he is supposed to buy his own memory card or something similarly dumb. And then of course there is "what if I actually miss enough save tokens to not be able to save". I guess that's tension to encourage you to explore but ugh.


Anyway I generally agree with most things raised so far in this topic. While I do agree with Fenrir that sometimes something that sounds bad (or even is bad for most games) can be made to work, many of the things in this thread so far are just bad, period.

[Monkeyfinger]

3. 'Exploration' sidequests/forced minigames/certain types of fetchquesting

Offenders: FF13-2, FF9, Dragon Quest 7

Dragon Quest 7 has the worst intro of all fucking time. Why? You spend three hours talking to people in towns, 'exploring' a dungeon with no monsters and solving puzzles before you get a single fight or bit of the main story. In a game filled with terrible design choices (Dharma, JP caps, the way it handled changing party members), this one stands out as the worst.  FF13-2's ore quest is another wonderful example there. Plotless, gameplayless sidequest that has you wandering around blindly to find items to finish the game. It's not fun or interesting and just makes you run to a FAQ. FF9 towns... well, see Lindblum. Don't force me to explore your town and do dumb sidequests. I'll do that on my own if I want. Arcs this like kill replay value and just make the game less fun to play in the end.

I wouldn't write these arcs off as "bad no matter what". Instead I would say:

If you're going to add an arc like this to a game, make the setting interesting.

Puzzle sections of Lufia 2 are pretty popular and fondly remembered because players liked the puzzles themselves.
In Baldur's Gate 2 you have to explore athkatla doing sidequests till you have 15,000 gold for the plot requirement + whatever you spend on items, but the quests themselves have a lot of interesting content so people tend to like this part of the game.
A lot of DLers like the city settings of Suikoden games, especially 5, because they actually enjoy listening to the characters talk - so a section of game devoted to running around chatting with people doesn't seem like a bad thing.

You can't half ass this sort of thing, putting together a long but barebones quest structure with a few fucktard NPCs shouting 2 generic lines at you, but you can do it right with effort.

You say these arcs kill replay value. I say replay value is usually stillborn. Most people I've talked to only replay games they really like on the first go - standards here tend to be pretty strict.

 It feels to me like "replay value" isn't its own category of game evaluation at all, but rather just a synonym of "how good the game is".

[Dark Holy Elf]

With regard to that last point, I don't necessarily agree. Maybe I replay games more here than most people, I dunno, but there are many games I think have high replay value relative to their quality (e.g. Final Fantasy I, Seiken Densetsu 3, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon) are games with low replay value relative to their (higher) quality (e.g. most Suikodens). I somehow doubt I'm along here... I know the DL has a few people who rarely/ever replay games except the ones they truly love, but I don't think it's nearly everyone.

There are some things games can do to help their replay value, and some things games can do to hurt it. I do think that type of time-wasting Super describes really does hurt replay value... I enjoyed FF13-2 well enough but I'm certainly not too inclined to replay it and the thing it pulls which Super mentions is one reason.

(Also, notably, with Suikoden, you can choose not to talk to people in the cities, speeding things along both on a replay and on a first playthrough if you aren't in the mood. This is good.)

[Meeplelard]

Super noted a point that Monkey also kind of glossed over.

Namely:

Don't force me to explore your town and do dumb sidequests. I'll do that on my own if I want.

If a player truly treasures exploration, they'll do it on their own accord.  Continuing plot and what not should be straightforward and simple, rather than nonsense of "talk to a bunch of NPCs" or "Find random location with no real indicator", what have you.

What makes the scenario in FF13-2 stand out so much, for example, is that until this point, FF13-2 is actually very good about this stuff, in terms of forced content. The hidden stuff is all optional, rewarding you for exploration, and that's cool. When you're in a town or in an area with many pathes, the game gives clear indicators on your goal, like "follow arrow to next point." 

The Core quest kicks in and suddenly everything FF13-2 was good at AVOIDING, it spits in your face.  Its a huge contrast to everything beforehand and not in a good way.

Again, super acknowledged that exploration isn't a bad thing, but when its in an area with 0 gameplay, and its just a tool to stretch plot out without actually pushing it forward, it kind of fails.  In Suikodens case, if people do in fact hype that, its mostly optional stuff, like "searching for new Stars" or "Find neat new scene."


Basically, the point super is making is how do these factors being required actually help the game?  I think its best summed up as "At best, they're benign meaningless factors, while at worst, they can be huge wastes of time that just hurt replays or the flow of the game."  When your "at best" is basically a neutral point, then its a bad thing.  Furthermore, in what way does making this exploration optional actually hurt the game?

[superaielman]

Limited saving is something I outright like sometimes. Having to choose between backtracking to town or dwelving more inside the dungeon, not really knowing what's ahead, is fun. The final dungeon in FF1 was tense as hell, even if all the bosses look tame on paper, in a stat topic. (I'll admit that FF3 went too far. Fuck that two headed dragon)

Limited saving can be a fine mechanic. Actually limiting the number of times you can hard save is never, ever acceptable. BoF5 had other issues there as Elfboy noted.

FF1 had tense dungeons, but they also were not super long on the whole. The real hard parts were the midgame dungeons when getting jumped by randoms were game over. Final dungeon felt pretty easy outside of Green dragons.

For example you'd think all massive text dumps should go die in a fire after playing Xenogears Disc 2, but it's actually the best part of Lost Odyssey.

What really needs to die in a fire there is Xenogears being an unfinished game. 

(Will respond to Monkey in a bit)

[Meeplelard]

Actually, missed that regarding Fenrir...

The Lost Odyssey vs. Xenogears isn't exactly fair because, well, goes back to what I said about Optional vs. Forced.

Lost Odyssey Dream Sequences are optional and something extra on the side.  If you don't like them, don't read them.  Simple as that.   They're also not integral to the plot, so getting lost in one doesn't mean you're missing something in the story. 

Xenogears Disc 2, meanwhile, you have to deal with it if you want to finish the game, whether you like it or not.  It gets tiring of seeing hours upon hours of text with maybe about 10 minutes of gameplay in between.  Allegedly, Metal Gear Solid 4 has the exact same problem, though people are more forgiving since its notably more cinematic thus feels like watching a long extended movie, but I digress, its a pretty bad design nonetheless.

There are other things Lost Odyssey's Dream Sequences have going for them that Xenogears Disc 2 does not, but won't get into details.  In the end, its not just how they were handled, but the shear fact that LO's are optional gives the player this mindset of "ok, if I don't feel like reading this, I can just skip it or come back to it later."  I never did this since I liked them, but I can see them getting tiring for someone who just wants to play the game, so them being avoidable is a significant feature.  In Xenogears, I had moments of "Oh yay! A dunge-...wait, they just narrated through that entire sequence and just went back to more shenanigans? ^*&@("

[Dark Holy Elf]

I have to completely disagree with Meeple's most recent post, on the other hand.

I personally thought XG's long scenes were just fine (they needed the option of sceneskip and faster text speed in general, of course, but those are separate issues) since the story is why I was playing XG, after all, not dungeons! I thought the worst part of XG disc 2 was the final dungeon (god that thing is terrible), whereas the story stuff leading up to the final dungeon had me riveted.

I also don't think Lost Odyssey would be a notably worse game if you were forced to watch the dream sequences, since again, they're such a strength and are probably a big part of why you are playing the game (everyone I know has called them this). It would help if you wanted to replay the game for gameplay and/or "main" plot, but of course the game isn't good enough for that! Although I will agree it is nice that you could temporarily put them on hold and watch them later if you didn't have time (though even if they were forced, the game could just as easily have accomplished the same goal by letting you save before/during them).

[Fenrir]

Yeah, the dreams would still be the best part of LO if they were mandatory.
I didn't mind XG disc 2 that much for the same reasons NEB posted (well, I liked Citan MVPing his way through the game, but the gears gameplay was a chore), but it's a notorious example. I could have used Tales of the Abyss instead for a more personal example.

If the power goes out while you play BoF5 you can lose a huge amount of progress depending on where you are, and that's bad. I believe there are stretches that go notably longer than FF1/2/3 with no hard saves, and FF3's final dungeon already goes further than what can be objectively justified (fortunately BoF5 is easy enough + non-luck-based during those long stretches so there isn't much actual risk beyond a power failure, but that still does the game no favours). If that had happened to me I would just have put down the game forever, and I don't think that's something you want as a game designer.

The way the game acts like a complete nazi over copying saves / having multiple files is also just insulting to the player, and I really didn't like it. I just can't imagine if I'd played a game like that back when my brother and I played all the same games. I guess he is supposed to buy his own memory card or something similarly dumb. And then of course there is "what if I actually miss enough save tokens to not be able to save". I guess that's tension to encourage you to explore but ugh.

I agree about the multiple files issue.
I've had maybe... 2 power outages while playing a game in the last 10 years of frantic gaming?
I'm not saying that it cannot be a problem, but I'm not sure developers really should consider this while making a game.

You putting down the game forever in this case has more to do with you liking the game or not. If your console had eaten your FFT save, 30 hours in, your first time through the game, you'd have probably restarted immediately. I know I would. (And I could have put Tales of the Abyss down forever, if the power had gone out during a cutscene on top of a cutscene lategame)

Limited saving can be a fine mechanic. Actually limiting the number of times you can hard save is never, ever acceptable. BoF5 had other issues there as Elfboy noted.

What's the difference between limited saving and actually limiting the number of times you can hard save?

See saving as just another resource you need to consider. For example: If, for one reason or another, you decide to not save, stock up on healing items to lower your risk of losing progress.
This wasn't handled perfectly or anything, but I feel this was a nice experiment (and far from a critical failure) The SOL system helps allievating the game if you can't handle this on the first try.

[Dark Holy Elf]

You putting down the game forever in this case has more to do with you liking the game or not. If your console had eaten your FFT save, 30 hours in, your first time through the game, you'd have probably restarted immediately. I know I would.

Yes, thinking on it, this is very true. For me this actually -did- happen halfway through Metroid Fusion, a game I love, and I certainly did exactly as you said.

[Grefter]

I have to completely disagree with "exploration sidequests" being a negative thing nearly enough to be critical design failure.

Fallout New Vegas has an entirely optional nearly entirely gameplayless dungeon.  Best thing in the game.  1 fight in it, no real use for your other skills.  Just walking around finding out what happened to this place.  It is amazing world building and fleshes out 3 characters you never interact with at all because they are already dead.

Cube's quest in LaL is probably my favourite.  It also is a one boss fight quest with none of the normal gameplay. 

There is plenty of other examples as well.  I would say the vast majority of Ar Tonelico actually falls into this category and that is pretty far from the games biggest failing, it is something that I honestly do think it got fairly right.  It relies on the conceit that the player gives 2 fucks about the setting, but presumably if you are playing the game and are not a douche you are at least interested in it (because the gameplay is like being in a wrestling match with a wet paper bag).

Boring quests are just boring quests, I think you are more taking issue with mindless busywork and quest design rather than an inherent problem that is built in to fetch quests (which is largely what is being described here).  Fetch quests are just another tool in the tool box and are ultimately fairly harmless.  What you are taking issue with is pacing of gameplay/story telling and poor player engagement, not the tool being used.

If you do want quests that are nearly universally bad design though?  Escort quests.  Outside of ICO I can't think of any of any value ever in anything.

[Cmdr_King]

Ico is pretty much an experiment in trying to design a game around the escort quest and make it not the worst game ever.  It still has its bad patches but for the most part is quite possibly the only game to make a true escort quest anything but strictly worse than the same game without the escort mission (for the ~15% of the game I played, anyway).

Mind, the distinct but similar idea of just having an ally can be done well.  It often fails for much the same reasons escort quests do, but it's a lot easier to make it a memorable and engaging part of a game.

[AndrewRogue]

RE4 did... all right at it as well? But that was mainly in that it knew not to make you actually have to deal with it too often (and making the AI competent enough to at least cower out of the way most of the time).

[074]

Design choices that rub you the wrong way, huh?  Guess I'll list a few of mine when it comes to RPGs...

--"Attack, Attack, Attack--it'd be Bolt-X but I'm not cool enough to be Jade"
Ah, the basic physical, often seen as a necessary evil to me.  Boring, but free of cost and rather functional.  Back in older days of RPGs, back when they were still emulating D&D or the like, fighters were expected to just have basic physicals and get by with those, while magic-users got all of these fun options that weren't pressing "Fight".  Nowadays, however?  There's no excuse for this.  Physical fighters are just as allowed to have options as mages are at this point, where even 4e D&D gave fighters abilities that weren't basic physicals but still usable at-will!

...and then the 5e playtest comes along and they decide that while the magic system and basic physicals are worth showcasing, but variety options for physical characters?  No, clearly not worthy of being in the playtest.  Goddamnit, I thought Mearls was working on this edition.

My problem here is with characters who have nothing but basic physicals, and that the basic physical is expected to be a major part, if not the entirety, of their "strategy".  Biggest offender to me?  Gryz in Phantasy Star 4.  The game showed more than enough competence in giving characters physical skillsets and the like (see Chaz, Alys, Rika, so on)...and then came Gryz.  Whose skillset consisted, by endgame, of Brose, Crush, War Cry, and Sweeping.  Brose is a crappy ID skill that is semi-reliable on machines, and that Gryz has the TP to cast...once, maybe twice.  Crush is shitty ID.  War Cry is a self-targeting attack buff.  Sweeping is an airslash clone.  One could argue that this is the best one could do for a magic-less "fighter" type--except that then they give you Demi while he's worn out his welcome (would rather keep Hahn than him, to be honest)...and then Wren right after, who pretty much obsoletes him in every single way possible.  And has a fully-developed skillset.

Gryz, you are emblematic of everything wrong with the mentality of giving fighters basic physicals and little to nothing more.


--"Heal plz, Heal plz, Attack plz...wait, what do you mean you can only heal?"
I've made no real attempt to hide it.  I hate characters who are set up to be healers and literally nothing more.  Particularly problematic in SRPGs where they're either helpless outside of it, or in the most egregious cases (hi, FE) completely incapable of doing anything -but- healing.  It's bad enough there, but then the Holy Trinity setup in MMOs?  Assumes a pure healer whose job is to do nothing but watch lifebars and heal people.  ...god, I hate the Holy Trinity setup.


--The Holy Trinity setup
Because the farthest we've come in MMOs is...creating false synergy via role assignment, giving meatshields and healbitches the social edge by their position and necessity among supply-and-demand, and making anyone who is neither of those simply "Yet Another Damage Dealer".  I'm glad there are games at least trying to break away from this.


--Blatantly And Unapologetically Broken non-Temps
Yeah.  This is annoying here, in my opinion.  And I don't mean types like Raven, Athos(Super-late joiner), Orlandu (Late enough that a well-built party can overshadow him)...but more like Yuna.  The types who can replace the entire party on their own.  And frequently do.


--Elemental Copypasta
You know what I mean.  Things that largely differ -only- in element; spells, weapons, bosses (hi, WA5!).  We have no reason why there shouldn't be extra variance at this point.  Made most egregious in Wild ARMs 5, where not only are the four Sentinels lacking any major quirks (after Brionac?  Shameful), but their most notable difference...is what elements they've got weakness/immunity to.


--Punching Bags of HP
I will admit.  Bosses need some durability.  And hell, there is a time and a place for a well-placed slugfest.  If you make every boss into a one-dimensional slugfest, though, few things bore me faster.  Another strike against WA5 to me.

[Meeplelard]

RE4 also had the ability to put Alicia into dumpsters, which means that even when escorting, you kind of aren't, because you can isolate the escorting with the battles entirely.

Though, AI is a huge deal in this regards.  Look no further than Dead Rising vs. Dead Rising 2.  In the original, escorting was one of the worst things ever.  If you had the option to carry, piggy back, etc. YOU TOOK IT, because even though it limits your offensive options, it can't be stressed enough how much taking away the AI issues does.  This is especially so if they got caught by zombies, because if they get caught once, they aren't breaking free...or rather, they'll break free, stand there for 3 seconds, then get caught again.

Dead Rising 2?  Not only does AI actually follow you in a more logical pattern, like trying to actively AVOID zombies when possible, without deviating from the path too much, if they're caught, they will actually break free.  Now escorts went from painful to trivial, and Dead Rising 2 even had a few added conventions like Wheel Chairs, to let you control allies.

These two games alone illustrate the difference competent AI can make in escort missions, despite how they're handled basically the same in both games, DR2 AI being something above "not suicidal" makes a huge difference.

[Dark Holy Elf]

My problem here is with characters who have nothing but basic physicals, and that the basic physical is expected to be a major part, if not the entirety, of their "strategy".  Biggest offender to me?  Gryz in Phantasy Star 4.  The game showed more than enough competence in giving characters physical skillsets and the like (see Chaz, Alys, Rika, so on)...and then came Gryz.  Whose skillset consisted, by endgame, of Brose, Crush, War Cry, and Sweeping.  Brose is a crappy ID skill that is semi-reliable on machines, and that Gryz has the TP to cast...once, maybe twice.  Crush is shitty ID.  War Cry is a self-targeting attack buff.  Sweeping is an airslash clone.  One could argue that this is the best one could do for a magic-less "fighter" type--except that then they give you Demi while he's worn out his welcome (would rather keep Hahn than him, to be honest)...and then Wren right after, who pretty much obsoletes him in every single way possible.  And has a fully-developed skillset.

Wait, Gryz is your example here? Really? Never mind that he has, as you mentioned, Sweeping and War Cry and Crash (which is actually good... tends to hover around 80-90% and works on absolutely everything besides non-Igglanova bosses). Sure that's a narrower skillset than most PCs in the game (especially early when he lacks Sweeping or War Cry) but at least the individual skills are solid (outside Brose which mostly sucks). He's not a very good PC but that has more to do with his bad speed and only average pre-War Cry power so he lines up poorly against e.g. Chaz/Rika. (I'll still take him over Hahn though.)

There are so many better examples you could have used here: Rico, Kongol, plenty of low-magic Suikoscrubs, Zidane/Steiner (unless you consider "steal" to be skillset I guess), Yang/Cid, etc. They don't always bother me that much, especially when they're actually decent PCs (though they usually aren't)... using nothing but "attack" isn't too different from "use nothing but your best spell" or "use your best spell when you want to burn MP, otherwise use attack/a free spell". The last is a bit more interesting but not much.

[Meeplelard]

Gonna agree with Elfboy that I sort of scratched my head at Gryz being the primary example, because while less versatile, at least he has a modicum of a skillset.

Heck, Gryz isn't even remotely the best example from the series.  Both Rudo and Odin from previous games are definitely far bigger offenders (even if Rudo is a good character because HP + Good ITD damage + PS2 Balance is lultastic), as they don't even HAVE a skillset.

[074]

Fair enough.  I admit that Gryz was the first to come to mind (and thus got picked on).  He also stood out because PS4 was the first in the series to incorporate non-magic skills to begin with. (Okay, one could argue that ROPE in PS1 was first, but that was close enough to a spell, and worked off of MP anyway)--and the only skill he got real use out of most of the time was War Cry--Crash never seemed to work for me to the point where I was better off with damage (and other ID when you got it) than risking a missed turn, Brose was applicable for...two and two-halves dungeons, two of which are completely optional (Wreckage and Plate System).  Sweeping didn't even show up until you got him back for the final dungeon.

This led to him being stuck with basic-attacking most of the time.  And when your only choice of strategy in a bossfight is War Cry->Attack?  Feels more than a bit boring by my standards compared to...everyone else in the game.

[Tide]

Being stuck with Attack as your primary and most often used doesn't really bother me as long as it's effective and keeps up with the rest of the team. I mean, thinking on it, Raq has a bunch of other physical skills - they still don't get used more than Attack. You can occasionally sprinkle it with Intrude here and maybe Red Zone there, but the core of your strategy with her is to hit things harder. I never played PS4, but yeah. I mean in contrast to say Jude who has all these other options, but you don't really get a chance to do much with it? That annoys me more.

The biggest game design offenders nowadays to me has mostly be covered. I really really hate it nowadays when games don't give you the option to scene skip. In this and age, it's really not an excuse. At the very least if you don't have scene skip, have TEXT SKIP. WA4 and P4 don't have scene skips but they do have text skippage which is pretty damn important. I can forgive pre PSX eras games that don't have it, but after playing games that do have this option, it's just a sort of polish where I cringe for when I play new games now that don't include this. Other things that need to go in this and age: Rare monsters and to a lesser extent, rare drops. Rare drops on rare monsters make me want to punch kittens. Rare monsters that are super powerful and can kick your ass from out of nowhere are also terrible. If you want those, make like an easy-to-reach arena that people can regularly go back to visit and just ramp up difficulties and rewards there.

Another annoyance for me are maps that are incomprehensible. I don't mind exploring, but if I want to get on with the story, I would like to have a *marker* if nothing else on where to go. Wandering around for hours sucks and is a great way to kill off any interest that I have. A sub caveat to that are plot summaries. These are good if I drop the game for a bit and don't remember where to go or what I need to do.

[Fenrir]

Giving a bunch of skills to FE characters (fighters/healers) would just make the games noticeably worse honestly. These games are all about positioning and choosing which weapon to use at the right time, adding another layer on top of that would remove what stands out about these games, and overwhelm players.

The higher difficulties are a nice chess-like challenge since you can easily predict exactly how much damage each enemy can do, where they can go, etc. Giving them all skillsets would make everything needlessly complicated. You'd have to spend 10 minutes every turn to analyze each enemy.


FFT with ~14 characters instead of 5, much bigger maps and a ton more enemies... Is not a good idea.


I think this is a good example that something that sounds good on paper (more variety!) can't really apply to everything.

[superaielman]

Stuff about exploration

Gref: The best examples of exploration done the right way are games like BG2  where you have freedom to explore how you want, or it's optional (IE your example of FO3). 'Wander around town, talk to people to trigger the next plot event or wander around to find item with vague/no directions' is what I really take issue with here. 

What's the difference between limited saving and actually limiting the number of times you can hard save?

I loathe the idea that you have to treat saving as a resource. I had to restart at one point because I saved at the wrong time in BoF5, which is obnoxious. If I get something awesome or a super rare drop two minutes after saving, I shouldn't have to decide (Or just do without if I have no save items) if I want to blow one of my limited save chances on that.

There are so many better examples you could have used here: Rico, Kongol, plenty of low-magic Suikoscrubs, Zidane/Steiner (unless you consider "steal" to be skillset I guess), Yang/Cid, etc. They don't always bother me that much, especially when they're actually decent PCs (though they usually aren't)... using nothing but "attack" isn't too different from "use nothing but your best spell" or "use your best spell when you want to burn MP, otherwise use attack/a free spell". The last is a bit more interesting but not much.

Cid is hopeless, but FF4 fighters generally had interesting niches. Yang was a fairly competent PC because he could hit elemental weakness or inflict status, and it was worth trying the various claws in each area to see what worked best. Kain had the option to be played as a berserker with the Avenger or used more normally with Jump.

[Meeplelard]

I dunno, super; Yang and Kain still fall under exactly what Nama was sniping at, that being 'All they can do is attack."  Oh sure, both can waste a turn to do more of the same thing on a follow up, and Yang has a weak MT attack that sees almost no use, but they're pretty damn boring and generic as PCs go.

This isn't to say they're necessarily bad, but well, at least Gryz has everything that Yang has, for example, and the instant death, and his MT is something people would actually use (provided they actually use him.) 

The "You can use Kain as a Berserker" as an effective strategy just sort of highlights exactly what Nama was complaining about, not offset it.  Its basically forcing Kain down a route that forces him to "only attack" and the losses by extension are practically zilch because he was basically doing that exact same thing anyway.


Again, that style of character can work, and nothing Elfboy said did state those characters suck (albeit, he stated "They often do"), just they're bigger offenders of "Attack Only" than Gryz.