"Stop!" Question Time!

I searched for answers about this online, but all I could find were the facts, not the reasons... So, I guess I had to return briefly to see what you guys thought.

One of the unique (and, IMO, stupid) aspects of Final Fantasy IX is that the "stop" status effect counts as death when calculating a game over.

I've always wondered how a temporary status effect could possibly count as death toward a game over. Stone, I understand. Stone doesn't wear off until you cure it. But stop wears off. Even if your entire party is stopped, assuming the game doesn't call it a game over, all you have to do is wait, and anyone who survives will eventually no longer be stopped.

To me, this is tantamount of having an entire party with the "slow" status counting as game over. At least slow won't eventually wear off (until the end of battle or you manually remove it), so this actually makes more sense than counting "stop" as dead.

I don't know. A battle system that calls a mildly inconvenienced battle party annihilated just seems like a game-breaking bug to me. Can anyone explain what possible reasoning the folks at Squaresoft could have had when coming up with this one? Because I just don't get it.

Imagine a team not being possible to defend each other from a deadly attack.

Pretty much this, if your whole party is stopped in front of enemies, you are defenseless and will be killed.

Sephiroth summed it up best. Even if the enemy you were fighting couldn't one hit kill you or anything, by the time stop wears off they would have had more than enough time to bring your health down to zero. The game is doing you a favor by just cutting to the chase instead of forcing you to sit there and wait to be killed.

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Originally Posted by ToriJ

Sephiroth summed it up best. Even if the enemy you were fighting couldn't one hit kill you or anything, by the time stop wears off they would have had more than enough time to bring your health down to zero. The game is doing you a favor by just cutting to the chase instead of forcing you to sit there and wait to be killed.

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I actually meant it in a real battle. If we go for numbers we should have the chance as it is possible but really stopped, Monsters come and well, they do what they do when you 're KO as well. They would not care about causing 1 point, except they are squirrels. Other than that if it is no actual super armor or power or such pretty much everything should be able to really finish you off. Really, not stat-wise.

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Originally Posted by Ergroilnin

Pretty much this, if your whole party is stopped in front of enemies, you are defenseless and will be killed.

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Originally Posted by ToriJ

Sephiroth summed it up best. Even if the enemy you were fighting couldn't one hit kill you or anything, by the time stop wears off they would have had more than enough time to bring your health down to zero. The game is doing you a favor by just cutting to the chase instead of forcing you to sit there and wait to be killed.

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Not necessarily, though. Stop doesn't necessarily last long enough to kill your entire party. The enemies could be much weaker than you. Even if you're more evenly matched, let's say Zidane's stop wears off in literally less than one second when your fourth party member is stopped... Without this bizarre intentional bug, your entire party would only be stopped for a microsecond, and you'd hardly be handicapped at all. You're saying the game is doing you a favour by killing off your party?

I can't remember having my entire party stopped/paralysed ever causing a game over for me, and I don't think this game is doing me any favours by making it automatic should it happen here. Is that really their logic? People are so bad at games that they can't overcome an entire party being inflicted with that status? If so, that explains why they never did that before and they haven't done it since.

I already explained it has nothing to do with battle dimension logic but story battle logic. Just like attacks are a demonstration of powers to show what characters and enemies can do while in the story they still didn't attack earth, destroy suns and such.

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Originally Posted by Sephiroth

I already explained it has nothing to do with battle dimension logic but story battle logic. Just like attacks are a demonstration of powers to show what characters and enemies can do while in the story they still didn't attack earth, destroy suns and such.

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Is that what you were saying? I was having a hard time understanding. My mistake.

It does make sense when you look at it that way (unless they're really weak enemies who couldn't hurt you no matter what), but I still don't like it. I can't be the only one who feels that way since this is the only game in the franchise that does that.