WHY DOES DYING HAVE TO SUCK?

post=133592
If you die in a dungeon and literally the only way you can do better is grinding, it's an issue of terrible design, not the system used.

Edits galore: "Cautious play" means not mashing attack or BIGDAMAGESPELL on everything

I wouldn't be surprised to be able to do better on the fight that I died on. It's those fights I had in the dungeon leading up to that, that I've already succeeded on once or twice with near-identical stats so I probably already know the best way to deal with them.

(It's also worth pointing out again that these are common issues, not universal ones. If I were to point out, say, Megaman Battle Network, not only does some twitch keep it more exciting, but battles you've gotten good at tend to go quite fast, making this not so much of an issue.)

I like retries so I can get back in the game faster :)

post=133620

post=133610
It all depends on what you mean by "grinding". If you skipped all the fixed/random encounters in the dungeon and enter the boss underleveled, then it's your fault. On the other hand, if you fought every fixed/random encounter thus far, get a game over, reboot, and try it with the correct strategy....then there may be a problem.

Then the Final Fantasy series has a problem. Because I often find myself underleveled and out-classed when I fight the bare minimum of necessary encounters.

People (myself included) have pulled off all kinds of low-level/whatever madness challenges in those games, so they certainly are more tactics than brute force oriented.

I am willing to acknowledge the possibility that I just fucking suck at Final Fantasy games. I have only ever beaten two of them out of over a half dozen I've played so...yeah.

I am thinking in particular of Final Fantasy 8, which I played many, many years ago (my understanding of RPG theory is rather stronger now). Basically, I had no interest in the systems (I still dislike the draw/junction system and found it to be really alienating, inaccessible, tedious and un-fun, the exact opposite of the materia system in other words) and just wanted to advance the story. So I avoided battles when possible and didn't engage with the systems more than the bare minimum. And I wound up perhaps 2/3rds through the game (perhaps less) with my only remotely current save in effectively an unwinnable state with a severely underleveled Squall and Rinoa as my only characters on a space station or some such with no way not to die.

Unwinnable States = Much Worse Than Game Overs.

post=133623
I am willing to acknowledge the possibility that I just fucking suck at Final Fantasy games. I have only ever beaten two of them out of over a half dozen I've played so...yeah.

I'm trying to think of a way to sort of defend your gaming honor but maybe you do just suck at them! Final Fantasy VII for example is notorious for being able to just spam 'Attack' for almost every single solitary battle in the game, and even the more challenging FFs have been beaten at the bare minimum of levels, equipment, and time.

post=133623
I am thinking in particular of Final Fantasy 8, which I played many, many years ago (my understanding of RPG theory is rather stronger now). Basically, I had no interest in the systems (I still dislike the draw/junction system and found it to be really alienating, inaccessible, tedious and un-fun, the exact opposite of the materia system in other words) and just wanted to advance the story. So I avoided battles when possible and didn't engage with the systems more than the bare minimum. And I wound up perhaps 2/3rds through the game (perhaps less) with my only remotely current save in effectively an unwinnable state with a severely underleveled Squall and Rinoa as my only characters on a space station or some such with no way not to die.

To be honest though this is your fault entirely. However I don't think it's possible to be underleveled in FFVIII since everything is scaled to your level in that particular entry.

The failure of enemy scaling: Scaling to an arbitrary number instead of the player's strength :tear:

post=133606

post=133577
I suppose that is a decent argument, but I don't think that you really need to get the player limping around because they had to escape instead of retry. Retry doesn't mean that they'll NOT limp around, just that it might take a little longer to get there.

What I meant by the "realllly out there" is that tonfa and I were discussing this (kind of) in terms of my Demon Tower/Diablocide series of failed projects, where the pacing/setup/dungeons/etc. are very, very different from the average RPG.

I am confused...are you saying you CAN'T Escape, i.e. Retry REPLACES Escape?

Because if that is the case...can't the player hypothetically get locked in an unwinnable state in the battle and have no way of, well, escaping, just retrying to lose again and agian because their stats/stocks are are too low?

1) Save anywhere and 2) if that happens, it's my fault because it SHOULDN'T happen. Since you cannot grind in Diablocide X... yeah. That would be an issue beyond the player's fault (unless they reaaaallllly sucked). Thankfully, I am also incorporating a leveling system akin to Knights in the Nightmare, where you can just play a few quick battles instead of the actual game and get a little bit of XP to push you along. Hooray for scripting!

Because the game stops. People don't like the game to stop. Dragon Quest kept the game going with half the gold.

So wait, because you died once ever from a mass status effect, it's bad? =p