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Originally Posted by
WildRaubtier
The issue you've described is non-existent after you follow the example through to its logical conclusion. By Junon, you're only going to have 6 or 7 materia slots per character for a lot more materia - something in the range of 15-20. Even at the end-game, you're limited to 16 slots for an entire collection of materia.
To be clear, the amount of abilities you have to choose from will grow much faster than your ability to use them.
Contrast with 6, where once you gain your first espers you already have 15 spells unconditionally.
Except Espers are not the sum total of the customization system, you still have relics which are more useful in-game not to mention that of said 15 spells, only four of them are useful at this point of the game and I seriously doubt you'll be using any of them by end game either.
This is also the issue with materia in VII. The game isn't difficult, you won' be needing all the materia you get, which means that your options are largely cosmetic and not practical. You'll eventually stop using a lot of the materia cause not only can you get most of the benefits of the materia from just Enemy Skill but you can eventually get just better alternatives like replacing elemental materia with Summons. Ultimately you'll still most likely end up with a clone army by games end.
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Yes, the bog standard support materia like added cut and steal as well will still work normally - however, the advanced support materias like Counter will perform randomly (ie poor connectivity), or Elemental materia which, contrary to your assertion, does the exact same thing as any other materia without an elemental affiliation listed as well as providing no benefit whatsoever to added effect (ie limited connectivity).
Finally, there's no "Master Support" materia which means it's impossible to have every support effect with every ability, unlike 6 (which is a bogus assertion anyway because there's no equivalent).
This is mostly true, except for the fact that 7 gives you 2 enemies where your materia setup will actually matter, no matter how much grinding you've done.
Except you don't need the advanced support materia to beat this game. It's not terribly hard and god knows the ultimate weapons and level 3 and 4 limit breaks will do most of the work of anything the story or arena will throw at you. You need the Counter Magic materia for exactly two fights and a game that has to build it's battle system around an optional boss fight is just silly if you ask me since it should be designed around the use of the whole game. Barring the special materia needed for the WEAPONs let's face it, VII is as hard as a wet piece of paper. You don't need most of the deep customization for 99% of the game since hitting X will do fine as well. The rest of the game isn't really a matter of tough choices either, like equipment you simply replace weak materia with stronger materia. Just how in VI while you can teach everyone every spell, you are most likely going to use five of them by the end cause the rest of your spells are either weak or impractical. Teaching everyone to use Muddle doesn't really weaken the overall game since you'll use it once on one playthrough and ignore it forever afterwards.
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Compare to 6, where the hardest enemies can still be beat by simply holding down X on fight at level 99. You need more than that for Ruby/Emerald.
We'll have to wait for the inevitable remake of 7 to settle that second point, though, since it's not really fair to be comparing original content to re-release content :p
trout GBA VI wasn't even a remake just a port, nothing stopping SE from letting the Steam version of VII get some extra love outside of perhaps the studio not having the capability to make cruddy 3D graphics like that anymore. Yet seriously the GBA rematched with the Dragons are actually really clever and challenging, from Fire Dragon that has a move that makes him immune to damage, to Zombie Dragon only being able to be killed by having his MP depleted to the fact their stats are high enough to actually decimate my Lv. 75+ party with any of their skills.
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Originally Posted by
Flying Arrow
This is a terrible trade, especially since the second half of the game throws multi-party dungeons at you. Kefka's Tower asks you to build a team of 12 to take it down - losing Shadow means losing one of the 14 possible characters for that section. This means you're forced to use one more of the four gimmick characters (Gau, Mog, Gogo, Umaro) rather than a fully-decked-out heavy.
And I just want to also say that this fully-decked-out heavy with a unique Throw ability is way less grind-intensive than a lot of the other characters in the game. Without this heavy in your party have fun jumping through all the hoops to make Gau, Strago, or Mog interesting or at all fun to use. Also, have fun teaching Esper spells to Relm that everyone else already knows because, well, you tossed Shadow in the garbage to give her a more central role in the party.
It's a choice dude and perhaps the player likes the more grind heavy gimmick party members though Umaro and Mog hardly count, Mog can actually be built into a better Heavy melee fighter than Shadow actually (Holy Lance, Dragoon Boots, Dragon Horn). Not to mention if you know what you're doing Gau and Strago are not too difficult either since you can simply just teach them their useful abilities. You're also forgetting that Relm is actually the game's best Mage barring Terra in her Trance form. Even with low level magic she can do as much damage as most of the character using Tier 2 spells. Making the best mage more powerful and freeing up Terra or Celes to go melee with their access to the best weapons in the game is not a bad deal.
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This isn't a problem with the customization system, though. This is a problem with the game balance. As games, both VI and VII give you 10,000 guns when all you need are 5 or 6. This is true, mega-bosses or not (which make up < 1% of the playtime).
As individual customization systems it's the difference between giving the player a hand full of stuff to grind and permanently unlock and giving the player hand full of stuff that is already usable but can only be used selectively under certain stipulations. Both allow for "customization" in that the player can tailor his party just so, but only one isn't a grindy checklist open to every character and doesn't result in the player not beefing up his characters because the system itself holds the weight of a feather.
Except the lack of game balance largely makes VII's customization cosmetic, I don't even use Materia much anymore in playthroughs cause it's silly to reconfigure the party when I know I'm not really going to use them. Not to mention as I said before, Materia largely works like equipment in that you simply replace weak materia for stronger materia. If you are still using Fire and Ice materia for their tier 3 spells by Disc 3 for more than just laughs, then you really don't know what you're doing with the system. In VI you do permanently teach spells but most of them you'll probably never use and other will be useless. Yes I can teach everyone Fire Blizzard, and Thunder but I seriously doubt I'll still be using them by end game. Most of the end game spells have low learning rates, are restricted to usually one Esper, and there are better alternatives through relic and equipment combinations for several of the characters that teaching them is useless. Honestly the magic system's failing is kind of a moot criticism if you ask me.
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Think of FFVIII and the Draw mechanic. Why not just draw one spell and then have that character know it permanently, instead of making it a scaling inventory that incentivizes drawing 100 of every spell. This is just time-wasting, plain and simple, and most players have been saying this for years as the major flaw of VIII. Either get rid of the draw mechanic, create an alternative way to value spell totals re: Junctioning, or force some kind of limit on who can use what (rather than that limit being you don't want to waste your whole life drawing 3 sets of 100 Fire).
Well no, you do have better alternatives for gaining magic in VIII, it's the refinement system and it's what really breaks the games balance. Draw is grindy but I actually happen to like the novelty of it, though I do use it sparingly and it still has the draw/cast ability as well which is useful if situational. Likewise the limited usefulness of several magics makes it pointless to always try for 100 of every spell. In fact while it's useful to have 100 of every spell, it's not actually useful or practical for you to have 100 of every spell for every character.
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VI's system begs a similar question of, if there's no distinction or limit on usage, why not just GIVE everyone everything the second it becomes available and cut out the bulltrout grinding and swapping. But if they did this, there'd be no point to whole system. Their solution was to hide a checklist of skills behind miles of grinding, obscuring the issue.
Well you don't have to and you don't need to. I feel your issue here is one more about obsessive compulsiveness than one about practibility. As I said, there is no reason to teach several of the characters magic because they have better customization options that are more practical and powerful than magic. Your argument is simply that because VI doesn't physically limit the player that the system is weak because you feel compelled to teach every character every spell because the game gives you the option to do so. So to me, this logic is akin to me saying that I can make all my characters in VII into clones with the materia system and the system sucks because of it and my reason is because that since the game gives me the option to do it, that I have to. The reality is that to me this is really more of the player's problem than the games design, it's like the people who hate on the License Board because you can teach every character every skill and use of every equipment.
Of anything XII is probably worse than what you are saying cause it's actually possible to get multiples of most equipment meaning you can build a virtual clone party that's only differentiated by minor stats and graphics. Whereas in VI, some characters are not cut out to be using magic (Cyan, Gogo, Locke) have skills that are more useful than magic(Shadow, Sabin, Edgar), or equipment builds that are more powerful than magic(Terra, Celes, Locke, Mog, Edgar). If you think being able to teach every character Ultima permanently breaks the game, then you really don't know how to customize in this game and bring out the best in the party.
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Any garbage bin Materia you're leveling (and this is the argument) takes the place of something else in your team's Materia build. You can't level everything at once. So if you want to waste a slot beefing up Mystify, say goodbye to Steal, or Sense, or Deathblow, etc.
I don't think Sense or Deathblow are really a serious loss for the player. I mean we are talking abut a game where straight melee is often the most practical option in battles. This just comes back to the issue that the customization is fluff cause very few of the materia is worth using and that you're most likely to have one or two materia equipped for the sake of it. The Sense materia is a great example because it's utterly useless but chances are you do have someone equipped with one or both that are available before you leave Midgard largely cause you got free open slots that need to be plugged up unless you spent money on getting more of the Cure and basic elemental magic at which point I would point out you're not making the tough choices you keep talking about.
I mean there is no reason to not have the basic elemental materia on your party until they get useless around Disc 2. By then you've upgraded to Comet, Ultima and the plethroa of summons. The customization only really kicks in when you are dealing with rare one of a kind materia and you have to choose who gets it but this is a transient hang-up since mastering materia means you get a new one so potentially every character can be a clone of each other. The "customization" only happens for short periods of time but overall I am more likely to be looking at a party of Red Mages with a few command skills that differentiate them.
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Not to mention, the ultimate payoff (Master Materia) is much more demanding than about anything in VI. To get the Master Magic, for instance, you need to level up every green orb, including the one you only find in the game's final stage. Not only that, but say you don't stop the train in North Corel...
Yes it's true you can fail to get all the big Materia to get all the Master Materia but even then, it's not like you really need to be using every spell or ability master materia gives you. Also, despite what you may think, it's actually possible to permanently lose some of the espers in VI so it's not like they are a given either. Also since it's difficult to get consistently high ABP from Cauctaurs and Slagworms tend to use Sneeze before death to screw you out of their ABP, you are still looking at having to go through anywhere from 250-500 battles to teach everyone one end game spell like Re-Raise or Ultima, just like grinding to get copies of the unique endgame materia or Master Materia in VII is also impractical because of the huge grind. This grinding is suppose to detour you from teaching everyone every spell. Teaching every character magic in VI is like trying to get to level 99 in any RPG, just cause you can, doesn't mean the developers meant for you to do so.
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Whether the Master Magic requirements are good design or not, getting Master Magic is akin to a late-game bonus. Yes, it kind of dumps some of the customization intrigue of the Materia system, but it's buried way at the end of a game in which you've already been forced to play it straight for 95% of it.
Yes and Crusader itself is most likely going to be gained at the final dungeon as well which makes it impractical to teach Meltdown to every character since it arrives so late. Meaning unless you take the time to grind, you are not going to be able to teach every spell to every character.
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In VI, you're bogged down with worthless spells (as you'll yourself argue) and Espers before the halfway point. Since the game hands out ABP so liberally, you're expected to have started swapping and filling out the Esper checklist before you escape Zozo.
No other RPG makes me dread actually learning abilities for my dudes. Once you take down a 20ABP boss and your whole team clears 2 or 3 skills each, it's time to either play the swapping game or start making the cut on what you want people to learn because it adds nothing of value to their build. If the former, you're homogenizing and not customizing. If the latter, you're literally not playing part of the game.
Now you're just being dramatic, first off, you are pretty much at Zozo's entrance and past your time there by the time the game gives you access to your four espers. The average ABP you get in the WoB is 3 and that's when you reach the Sealed Cave about a good eight hours later, until then it's just 1 or 2 ABP per battle meaning that trying to teach all four of your party members every spell you have access to will take about 200 to 400 battles, considering stats only increase through espers and you're extremely limited at this point, you've just shot yourself in the foot cause you wasted about 20 levels to teach characters spells that will be easier to acquire later on. The average you get in the WoR is 4-5 so I wouldn't call that "liberally giving ABP" also bosses don't give that much ABP either until near the game's end. Yes there are APB grind points in both sections but depending on which version you are playing you are not likely to be bothering with this until WoR.
The last part of your quote pretty much goes back to the heart of the argument here which is that I don't believe teaching magic to every character has to be done. If you are not going to use it then why bother? It's like making Bartz in V master classes like Tamer or Black Mage despite the fact you have no intention of ever using them, but you do it cause your wasting all that valuable ABP by sticking to practical classes that fit your party and you've already mastered the classes you want. The Esper teaching magic is not the whole of the game's customization, it's a combination of teaching magic, raising stats, and the relics.
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I don't see how this is the case. Most players can see that Blitzes (for instance) are generally much more effective than most spells that Sabin can cast. But even if this is the case, you're now saying that VI's magic system is such an ill-conceived monstrosity that it actually hampers gameplay (it sucks, yeah, but it doesn't hamper character builds).
Not really, because all I'm saying is that it only really benefits certain characters, Relm for instance can't learn magic but she has the highest MA stat so teaching her magic is of great benefit. On the other hand, she has a crappy physical stat so obviously I wouldn't equip her with the Genji Gloves/offering combo so choosing not to give her that set despite the fact it would undoubtedly improve her attack power is not saying I'm choosing to weaken her by not giving her something that would improve her versatility instead I am choosing not to give it to her cause it's more practical with characters with better builds. Likewise, I don't need to teach Sabin fire magic but I'll still use espers to raise his strength and Magic to improve the power of his Blitzes, and I'll equip him with an Atlas Armlet or Hero Ring to raise their power more. He's not weaken or strengthened by not knowing fire magic and I still customized him with the games other features.
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Using Blitz or Tools is much more intuitive than all the tedious swapping and spreadsheet-checking the Esper system encourages. Maybe by the end everyone is belting out Ultima and Cure3 to beat Kefka because the game has allowed the player to at absolutely no cost and very little time spent - but, well, therein lies the problem with this crutch of a system.
It being less flexible to VII isn't even the issue, though. We've (at least I have) been bringing VII into the conversation to shine a clearer light on what VI brings to the table with its systems.
I don't agree that the game encourages the teaching of magic to every character, it encourages using the espers but they have another function besides teaching magic and that actually is beneficial to every character it applies to. The relic system is also more useful for certain character over others The customization of the game is not about teaching every character every possible skill, it's about maximizing their strengths and the system does this beautifully even if the game isn't difficult enough to warrant the level of brokenness you can build. You can't treat it like it's VII where you are handed some blank canvesses and the game has to force you to limit your options just so you could add some personality to their play-style. Instead VI gives you a cast of characters that are unique from each other both in skills, stats, and equipment options, while the game gives you the freedom to let everyone use almost everything. These three limitations are suppose to guide you in how to utilize them with the games three systems of customization. It's not about building a party it's about tweaking them cause the game already gives you a party and you could just as well complete the game without ever using relics or espers because the party is already diverse and has roles. The system just allow the player flexibility.
I'm sorry you feel compelled to grind and teach everyone every spell but I then would ask if you do this in the rest of the series as well, do you complete the Sphere Grid in every playthrough of X and make sure to maximize the board as well?, get 100 of every spell in VIII for every character? master every job in FFV for every character? max every spell, stat, and weapon in II? or get a set of master materia for every character in VII? No? Why? because it's impractical? well guess what so is teaching magic to every character in VI and I would say that VI compels you do to so as much as every one of those other games compels you to do what I stated. The games you mentioned doing so only shows they are low hanging fruit compared to the ones you don't, and my argument is that you shouldn't be eating the fruit in the first place cause completionist games are for people who have way too much free time on their hand.
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In FFVI (and most FF games) gear generally does not equal customization. It's a linear progression from Iron to Steel to Bronze to Gold to whathaveyou. Bigger numbers as a result of getting to the next section of the game where enemies have strong numbers (so the player must, too).
Occasionally these pieces of equipment have a property that make them beneficial in some way for certain sections, but that's about it and is not unlike equipping the relevant ring. Not equipping, for instance, the Ice-absorbing Armor for the Ice Cave generally provides no benefit. The characters generally lose nothing for having a piece of equipment that either negates or absorbs damage. Not using the Ice Armor in this situation is a gimp-run and nothing more (much like not teaching your characters every Esper spell you can is a low-level run rather than customization).
So in the case of FF games, I think your statement is true. The only time it's not true is if a game is designed to focus not on bigger numbers, but unique properties, options and the dynamic between character and equipment.
I disagree about VI being purely a linear progression, weapons like the the Flametongue appear midway through the WoB and have properties that can keep them practical until the WoR. Locke himself can choose to use Dagger weapons that often give him stat boosts or a special elemental attribute or ability, but he can also use his Thief weapons that allow him to attack from the back row and have a chance of doing extremely high damage with it's special critical hits. Taking advantage of the special property of spear damage combined with dragoon boots means Edgar can bypass statistically better weapons as early as the Magitek Factory. VI is also one of the few games where the best weapon is debatable between the Ultima Weapon, Ragnarok, or Lightbringer and it really comes down to how you build your party which is more practical. I would argue that VI is one of the few FFs that bucks the trend of linear progression of equipment. The others being FFII, FFV, and then the PS2-PS3 entries.
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Ultimately guys, I feel it's time to just say we agree to disagree cause I feel we've reached a point where we're repeating ourselves cause we all just have a different angle on this subject and we're all pretty stubborn about our positions. It has been insightful and I enjoyed discussing this with everyone, but I'm bowing out cause I don't feel we're going to make any headway in this discussion.
