The more things change... (Old usenet group posts about Final Fantasy)

[Pike]

...the more things stay the same.

What did people do before EoFF was a thing?

Bitch about Final Fantasy on Usenet, of course!


The challenge in the series has been degrading rapidly. FF7 is the easiest FF to date, IMHO. In part, I suspect this is being done so that they are more appealing to larger masses of people that are normally outside the typical RPG audience. This increases sales, but will inevitably begin to take some of the enjoyment out of the game for many RPG fans.

January 11, 1998

(most of the rest of the thread is filled with people agreeing and talking about how FFVII is "just graphics" and heralds bad things for RPG fans)

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Now that we basically know what FF7's system is about (Materia Orbs), anyone want to speculate on how FF8's system(overall) could be lightyears ahead of FF7? I can't even imagine how the game would look like with graphical improvements in the year 1999.

December 8, 1997

(presented without comment)

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PLAYSTATION SUCKS


I have both a PSX and an N64 and the N64 is definitely better. Why buy a PSX just for FF7 when it will probably come out for Windows too.

December 22, 1996

(thread is promptly derailed into console vs. PC (Windows 95 to be exact))

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I do miss the good old days. Still, I do love the potental these games can get and wonder WTF are the easy ones comming here. Why don't they try a hard one with us. Test the waters. Again, maybe I'm asking too much. oh well

December 28, 1996

(This is an excerpt from a huge post detailing why FF started going downhill after FFII/IV.)

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Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe a game like FF7 will actually prove to ba a challenge. Maybe my faith in the universe will be restored.
But somehow, I doubt it...

December 27, 1996

(This is the end of a huge rant about how RPGs had been going downhill and FF6 just proved it.)

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It's because, as someone stated earlier, starting with Nintendo's release of Super Mario World, everyone has been making games "for everyone", not just for the esoteric few who are familiar with a certain genre of games.

Anyone remember the very first few SNES games (Super Mario World, Zelda, SimCity, etc.)? All of them had online help everywhere in them (I hated how you got that stupid "you can throw bombs now" message whenever you found/bought bombs in Zelda) and could have been a lot harder if they removed the training wheels.

December 27, 1996

(Yes, he's talking about how SNES games are for casuals and little kids.)

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I'll dig up more of these later if I get bored :greenie:

[Madame Adequate]

These are utterly magical. SNES games are for casuals and scrubs. Even SimCity is for casuals because it has online help.

Man, these folks must have been RIPSHIT PISSED about the Wii

[Colonel Angus]

Wow, I didn't even really interwebz back then & am glad I di'n't. I dunnae if I'd make it this long on all that negative jive. The internet has always been a terrible place. :lol:

[Shauna]

Hahaha, proof that nobody will ever be happy ever.

[Pike]

FF5 is IMO the last of the FF series that may pass as an 'intellectually challenging' RPG.

A tidbit from December 1999.

And here's a gem from June 1996:


FINAL FANTASY III'S LAST BOSSES ARE THE BIGGEST SHAM IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY

(III referring to VI.)

The fact that VI is "too easy" and "not as good as IV" comes up a LOT on this newsgroup. That last quote comes at the end of a huge rant about how FFVI is both easy and very boring.

[The Man]

Well, they are right that VI and VII are easy. But boring? I don't think so.

[Ayen]

FINAL FANTASY III'S LAST BOSSES ARE THE BIGGEST SHAM IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY

WHAT?!

*grabs a baseball bat and goes back to 1996 and kick that guy's ass*

Come here, you!
Raging Fan: Ahhhhhhhhhhh!

*bash his head in with the baseball bat and take his kidney* Give me that! I know a guy in nineteen years who is going to need this a lot more than you do!


PLAYSTATION SUCKS

That's it!

*more violence*

[Pike]

I do want to point out that not everything in the usergroup is negative and all of the games had a lot of enthusiastic fans. But because I am terrible, those aren't as fun to post.

[Galuf]

i never heard anyone speak bad about FFVI before lol. atleast not that bad.

i like how people back then couldnt enjoy those games. but heres me who started playing FF in 2014. and grew up playing shooters and stuff on the xbox. and i LOVE the FF games. so weird

[VeloZer0]

If you want a real laugh look back at historical documents concerning youth. There is an almost unbroken 2500 year chain of writers complaining about how bad 'kids these days' are and that they are an indication of everything going to hell.

[Pumpkin]

That's basically how it goes. The fans who came in on XIII will be going on in a few years about how XIX sucks and XIII was the last good one

[Scotty_ffgamer]

Final Fantasy II is way too easy! This must surely be the end of the RPG as we know it!

[Ayen]

That's basically how it goes. The fans who came in on XIII will be going on in a few years about how XIX sucks and XIII was the last good one

I don't even want to think about how bad XIX would have to be for that to happen.

[Spooniest]

My god

1999? people were bitching on the Internet in 1999?

I was learning Witchy Woman on guitar lol

[Sephex]

I'm looking at this sort of thing in a big picture sort of sense. People have always and will always bitch about things, especially things they supposedly love.

Take the Star Wars Prequels for example. Easy target there. God, so many things wrong with those films. Why can't we return to the glory days of the flawless original trilogy?

Except people did bitch about those movies endlessly. There is just no public record of it. I remember my dad telling me that he remembered a lot of people thinking the C3P0 was way too annoying and over the top in The Empire Strikes Back. There was also a time where people debated ENDLESSLY if Darth Vader telling Luke he was his father was the truth or an outright lie.

Return of the Jedi got the same treatment. Oh sure, everyone knows that the Ewoks were complained about, but not everyone swallowed the movie going, "btw Leia is Luke's sister. Yeah, just go with it, it makes the Vader/Emperor/Luke confrontation at the end carry more weight." One of the complaints of The Phantom Menace is that there is way too much going on during the films climax (Jedi Battle/Space Battle/Gungan Battle/Naboo Battle). Though not nearly as strong, there were people who felt the climax of RotJ had too much going on and screwed with the pacing.

Not trying to down Star Wars or whatever. I'm just saying that while it was very cool and amusing to read these comments, they hardly surprised me (partly because I was around for this sort of thing). It just goes to show that some times the test of time makes people reflect on things differently, as well.

[Bubba]

I remember reading about the internet in my Super Nintendo magazines back in the mid-90's. I kind of wish I'd paid it more attention at the time. I could have been a multi-millionaire by now. Either that or I could have slagged off a load of games to people I'm never gonna meet.

[Pike]

I'm just saying that while it was very cool and amusing to read these comments, they hardly surprised me (partly because I was around for this sort of thing). It just goes to show that some times the test of time makes people reflect on things differently, as well.

Agreed 100%, and in fact the reason I'm posing these to begin with is because it amuses me from the "this cycle truly never ends" standpoint. I've seen it before on multiple gaming sites: every time a new generation or game or sequel or expansion pack or whatever comes out, the one from one or two iterations before was the "last good one". Give it another couple of years and the cycle repeats.

Gamers in 20 years will be looking back at the stuff we're writing on EoFF now and laughing.

[Spooniest]

Eh, I already laugh at the stuff we say :monster:

[Loony BoB]

If you go back through the early threads (look for the ones with 30+ pages just around the time of release or after it) for each of the FF releases, you'll find people bitching about each of them. It's what Square Enix gets for innovating. In most series out there today, each game is fairly similar, especially if it's an FPS/TPS. SE however make big changes to gameplay all the time, and the result of that is a lot of new fans, a lot of moving with the times and - unfortunately - a lot of angry fans pissed off at how this isn't FFIV-2, FFVI-2, FFVII-2, FFX-2 (in this context, even FFX-2 wasn't FFX-2 xD), etc.

[Mirage]

FF 6, 7 and 8 are actually pretty easy. FF9 is too. FF5 was a bit challenging, but for me mostly because I was new to RPGs.

That said, the way developers made games "hard" back in the day wasn't actually very exciting.

[Freya]

Oh man, I love these! This would make a great article. "Even in '97 people thought the 'newest' FF was killing the series."

hahaha superfans are such old fogies. Then, Now, in the future. funny.

And let's throw in a BSG quote:

This has happened before, and it will happen again.

[Pumpkin]

I'm actually pretty good about that with video games. I like what I like I'll always give the newest one a try and generally be excited about it

Music though. Well pop culture in general. I'm laughing at myself because I used to think adults were so stupid because they couldn't keep up with pop culture. I can't read thos types of magazines or stories or cracked articles anymore because I have no friggin clue who these people are anymore. Like some woman named Iggy Azalea or something? That they mention on Cracked. I had to look her up and listen to her music and I was not impressed. I don't like new music anymore. New music is poo. New stars are poo

I'm getting old and I'm only 22

[Pike]

Oh man, I love these! This would make a great article. "Even in '97 people thought the 'newest' FF was killing the series."

hahaha superfans are such old fogies. Then, Now, in the future. funny.

And let's throw in a BSG quote:

This has happened before, and it will happen again.

62174

[Spooniest]

If FFXV tanks, SE may just give it a rest and start making new IP's

It's not like the series has any real defining characteristics anymore. Identity is only derived from an entity examining and interpreting its history; FF refuses to do this, hence, it lacks an identity.

[Madame Adequate]

If FFXV tanks, SE may just give it a rest and start making new IP's

It's not like the series has any real defining characteristics anymore. Identity is only derived from an entity examining and interpreting its history; FF refuses to do this, hence, it lacks an identity.

Well, they made Bravely Default, which is widely regarded as one of the best Final Fantasies in upwards of a decade.

They just didn't call it Final Fantasy for some insane reason.

[Mirage]

Maybe they just didn't want to have so much pressure on themselves. With a new IP, there would be no expectations. If it had failed, people wouldn't have said it was "yet another terrible FF".

[Del Murder]

If you go back through the early threads (look for the ones with 30+ pages just around the time of release or after it) for each of the FF releases, you'll find people bitching about each of them. It's what Square Enix gets for innovating. In most series out there today, each game is fairly similar, especially if it's an FPS/TPS. SE however make big changes to gameplay all the time, and the result of that is a lot of new fans, a lot of moving with the times and - unfortunately - a lot of angry fans pissed off at how this isn't FFIV-2, FFVI-2, FFVII-2, FFX-2 (in this context, even FFX-2 wasn't FFX-2 xD), etc.
It's not always the same people complaining and not all changes are 'innovation'. Speaking for myself, I was a big FFI-VI fan but still loved VII-IX at the time of their release, including all the innovations. Yet I was turned off by many features of XIII and anything that has come later. I wouldn't call that complaining about 'innovation'; I would call that complaining about bad game design.

Just because people don't like something doesn't mean they don't have perfectly valid reasons for not liking it and deserve some 'hater of innovation' label. Not that most of these guys have valid reasons. Some of them are absurd.

[Ayen]

If you go back through the early threads (look for the ones with 30+ pages just around the time of release or after it) for each of the FF releases, you'll find people bitching about each of them. It's what Square Enix gets for innovating. In most series out there today, each game is fairly similar, especially if it's an FPS/TPS. SE however make big changes to gameplay all the time, and the result of that is a lot of new fans, a lot of moving with the times and - unfortunately - a lot of angry fans pissed off at how this isn't FFIV-2, FFVI-2, FFVII-2, FFX-2 (in this context, even FFX-2 wasn't FFX-2 xD), etc.
It's not always the same people complaining and not all changes are 'innovation'. Speaking for myself, I was a big FFI-VI fan but still loved VII-IX at the time of their release, including all the innovations. Yet I was turned off by many features of XIII and anything that has come later. I wouldn't call that complaining about 'innovation'; I would call that complaining about bad game design.

Just because people don't like something doesn't mean they don't have perfectly valid reasons for not liking it and deserve some 'hater of innovation' label. Not that most of these guys have valid reasons. Some of them are absurd.

I agree with Del. I thought the transition from VII - X was pretty smooth despite things like Materia, Junction, and the Sphere Grid. If I played the last one I more or less knew what to expect. But the transition from X-2 to now is all over the place. X-2 gave us more fast pace action, XI was a MMO, XII was MMO lite, and XIII was back to turn based battles but you could only control one character, and then XIV we're right back to the MMO again. Those kind of changes are not smooth transitioning. They're flying off the handle! It's possible to innovate without changing so much from the last game you don't even recognize it anymore.

As for the actual topic, this reminds me of wrestling fans during the Attitude Era where people complained about The Rock almost as much as they do about John Cena now. We are all just living in the Reapers' endless and vicious cycle.