GAME PET PEEVES

post=140399
I thought everyone knew that in RPGs you don't really 'die' in battle. Unless it's Dragon Quest, I guess.

Unlimited free healing doesn't mean there's no challenge. Have you played Final Fantasy XIII? If you have unlimited healing built into the game, then you design the difficulty and challenges of the game around this concept in order to maintain the difficulty.

That's 'if', though. Certain games may or may not. Some games, like FF XIII and Saga Frontier have their battle systems to work with unlimited free healing, because battles are 'in the moment' and less about attrition and resource management. In games where managing your resources and not overexerting yourself over time is important, unlimited free healing no longer really works.

I don't think it's fair to say that there's no way to make it work. If you had that as a premise, there are plenty of things you could do. Persona 3 made it extremely easy to get free healing and it was still one hell of a challenging game.

post=140412
I'm not saying there's no way to make it work. I just said before, Saga Frontier and FFXIII are both challenging games that make it work. But that's the types of games they are, it works BECAUSE battles are in the moment and those games are less about attrition and managing resources and more about challenge within its own sphere. But games where managing resources over time and not overexterting yourself is important, it couldn't really work.

...this is the exact same thing I posted before did you read my post?

I just cited an example of a game which is that kind of game and it does work. Did you read mine?

I didn't say they were. The example I gave was Persona 3.

I would say that in the majority of newer RPGs (Playstation and forward), managing your resources is a minor problem. Either the game sells MP restoration really cheap or managing resources means only using attack and heal. Providing a save point that give full healing will not break anything in those games. As a rule of thumbs, if during the time that the party has used up one ether's worth of MP said party also acquired money from enemy drop worth far more than one ether, resource management isn't really an issue.

Anyway, a pet peeve related to this: Game designer not being aware of what threat the enemies poses. In general, there are two kinds of threat from enemies. They can wear out your resources and/or they can KO all your characters. Some games have their enemies pose only one kind of threat and then gives the player a tool against the other kind of threat. For example, if the main threat is running out of MP, then giving the player an expensive spell whose purpose is to mitigate damage, is pointless. Likewise, if resources are plentiful, but enemies hits really hard, the player will not be interested in "weak, but free" skills such as Final Fantasy pray command. Don't give the player tools against non existing problems.

That's why they have challenges! If you don't want to go full-out, just try simple stuff like "only use the sphere grid after beating a boss."


EDIT: MOG DID YOU READ THAT POST

Don't like numbers = shouldn't be playing RPG's.

I've never seen those numbers before though. Highest I've seen is 99,999 in FFX and I was damn happy they finally brought it past the measly 9999. I guess I like big numbers :\

If the photo in your avatar is you, I'm not surprised :\

Crisis Core did this too with a fair bit of Limit Breaks. Rush assault comes to mind. You're right too, they could have been replaced with "fuck you's" and I couldn't have given a damn about it. FFX did it right though.

bahleted