Hard Mode: Would make every final fantasy a million times more fun and addictive.

If anyone here is familiar with the star ocean series, then you might know what a hard mode can really do for a game.

The first time you play, everything is foreign, you make a ton of mistakes, and you eventually learn how to work the mechanics of the game. Then once you do EVERYTHING IN THE GAME IS RIDICULOUSLY EASY. At that point what you want is something that will actually require you to apply your new mastery of the game - where the game will absolutely massacre you if you do not use every trick in the book.

Doing this requires virtually no additional content (although it COULD be added) and instead just some formula/resistence tweaking or whatever other kind of tweaking they can think of to make the game tougher.

Every single Final Fantasy game I have played suffered from not having this. Every one had really interesting mechanics that could be toyed with to make your character more powerful which at first would captivate you and get you power leveling until finally you realized - There wasn't a single enemy in the game that a person without a clue in the world couldn't beat.

See this is why I never used New Game+. It seems like it would make things ridiculously easy (unless it amps up the difficulty for those games)

The only problem I'd see is if the game isn't entertaining enough to warrant a second play-through. But I guess the save would always be there for you to come back to years later (if hard mode is an unlockable, otherwise it wouldn't matter)

Final Fantasy would be a better series if it was in the hands of a company that wasn't only seeking profit. Square-Enix :bou::bou::bou::bou:s out the same game with different characters (but the same character types) every couple of years and people eat them up and praise their creativity because of the label, not on the merits of the games themselves.

I like it mainly due to the story and the characters. Dun really mind the gameplay or how it will take 1 hour just to kill a Lvl 1 Goblin should there be a hard mode. :bigsmile:

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Originally Posted by Ewookie

Final Fantasy would be a better series if it was in the hands of a company that wasn't only seeking profit. Square-Enix :bou::bou::bou::bou:s out the same game with different characters (but the same character types) every couple of years and people eat them up and praise their creativity because of the label, not on the merits of the games themselves.

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what company doesn't do that? I mean honestly. i guess the ones that use the same characters. And i honestly don't see any company NOT seeking profit, also the purpose of a company.

THE JACKEL

It would also be cool if there was at least one thing that could only be done in "Hard Mode" if that makes sense.

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Originally Posted by ljkkjlcm9

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Originally Posted by Ewookie

Final Fantasy would be a better series if it was in the hands of a company that wasn't only seeking profit. Square-Enix :bou::bou::bou::bou:s out the same game with different characters (but the same character types) every couple of years and people eat them up and praise their creativity because of the label, not on the merits of the games themselves.

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what company doesn't do that? I mean honestly. i guess the ones that use the same characters. And i honestly don't see any company NOT seeking profit, also the purpose of a company.

THE JACKEL

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I didn't say seeking profit. I said only seeking profit.

Hard modes can indeed make a game more entertaining. However, I dislike it when hard mode is merely 'computer cheats' mode. I don't mind the computer getting some 'cheats' since artificial intelligence is just that, artificial. But at least 'improve' it for hardmode. If needed wait a few months and then release it as an 'update patch'(this way you can see unexpected ways to work the system used by players and incorporate an AI that does the same, and then some, it would still be an imitation, but likely a more challenging one than the default AI).

The Game Utawarerumono for example has a godly hard mode option. Not only do the enemies become progressively stronger and more numerous on the higher difficulties but they begin utilizing better strategy as well. Kinda annoying actually. . . I still haven't beaten it on the hardest mode. 1 mistake and it is pretty much game over! The computer really abuses any mistakes you make!

Being harder and requiring a semblance of real strategy from the beginning and throughout the game in general would make most FF's better.

I think hard mode isn't a solution if we consider that there will be extra grinding involved.Do you want a challenge in FF? A better solution is to ditch level up systems and stats or cap the level the characters can achieve but it will end up like a puzzle game after a while.

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Being harder and requiring a semblance of real strategy from the beginning and throughout the game in general would make most FF's better.

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A real strategy is just a theory, , there is always going to be an obvious solution. There isn't any game in the market where i make a compelling choice in every battle, we are talking about games which have 100+ encounter.

Bottom line :making it harder won't make it any more fun.

Some games sucked badly even in one normal playthrough. Let alone in another hard one.

I think a Hard Mode or a special type of New Game + Mode would be great for any future Final Fantasy title.

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, recently released on the PSP, allows you to travel to various points in the game to pick up nearly anything that you might have missed the first time. The game has a total of three paths spread out over four chapters, and it is impossible to get everything on the first run. The WORLD System, as it is called, added a lot of replay value to the game. Every battle after The WORLD system is activated scales to the level of your party for the rest of the game, so there will always be an additional challenge factor.

This is one example of a recent Square Enix game with a type of mode that allows the game to be more challenging and more complete. I know that they have the capability to do so.

You guys misunderstand S-E's vision. Replay value is poor business. People playing the same game over and over again doesn't bring more money in their pockets, so it is a waste of money to code it in.

Instead, it is better to focus on getting the next FF-related game out as fast as possible. That's where the money is.

I'm thinking of The World Ends With You in how to implement it. It did a pretty snazzy job imo. You can control the difficulty of the game as you go along, meaning that if you start getting your ass kicked in a boss fight you, can switch it to easy mode and win, or likewise, if enemies are too easy, you can ramp up the difficulty and make yourself an extra challenge. I feel such a set-up would allow even new players to work their way into more challenging modes of play instead of feeling inadequate by having to ask lots of questions when they finally attempt to play the game on a harder mode.

I feel the biggest challenge with RPGs (really this applies to lots of genres in general) is that too often developers feel all they need to do is make the enemies stats 25% higher and lower you're effectiveness by 25%. Anyone who has played KH on hard mode or Crisis Core will know what I mean. The mechanics and the strategies are the same, its just the enemies hit harder and you take more damage and while that is effective in making you gain a zen like state with abilities that prevent this, I don't necessarily feel it creates real challenge, its just you trying to overcome a statistical handicap and often times it just means pushing your own parties stats to 11. This creates a scenario of mindless grinding and spending more time in the menu trying to build god-mode. Even worse, it makes going back to normal or easy mode impossible cause these same exploits work in that mode as well so the challenge is completely negated.

The other big issue with JRPgs in general is that the genre has given players too many perks. The biggest one is the fact that you're party is usually well rounded. By which I mean that not only are they effective mages and warriors but even flimsy mage type characters can take surprisingly high amounts of damage before going down and warrior characters get equipment that makes them immune to all of their weaknesses and generally their physical brawn is effective on everything. You're party is often times too effective for whatever the game throws at you and thus customization is left to exploiting their strengths even more so or giving them more of an absolute defence but really you don't need any of these buffs.

RPGs need to make your whole cast have well defined weaknesses that can never be actually overcome and instead build a combat system that simply allows you to mitigate the damage at best. In games like P3/4, the early bosses have weaknesses that can be exploited but in the second half of their games, the tables are turned and instead, you're building your party in a way to lessen any advantage the computer can have. You're forced to remove heavy hitters in your party cause the computer can exploit their weaknesses and ultimately destroy your party in a few rounds because you were silly enough to bring them in. I pretty much love this way of thinking and if their was a way to bring this into other RPGs without building an elaborate Pokemon style system, it would be awesome.

FFIV and FFV also had some clever checks and balances that made them much more difficult. In FFIV, you had the retort system where enemies would counter attack if you hit them with certain moves and combining this with the fact these games stuck to the whole "resource management" style of early RPGs, this became an issue as you would inadvertently make battles much longer and take more damage than was necessary. FFV on the other hand made multi-hit abilities less effective by either randomizing damage or adding target boxes that only multi-hit attacks could see and have these invisible hit boxes have no stats so you would waste half of your attacks on something that wasn't there. There is a reason why Neo-Shinryu and Enuo are some of the tougher fights in FFVAdvance.

The enemies need some better advantages and the player characters need to be nerfed a bit in order to create a system that is about creating the best party dynamics for the scenario you need.

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Originally Posted by ShinGundam

A real strategy is just a theory, , there is always going to be an obvious solution. There isn't any game in the market where i make a compelling choice in every battle, we are talking about games which have 100+ encounter.

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Every battle, no. Nearly every time fighting a new enemy, yes. The first time I face something I like to have to find a good pattern and have a reason to use it and not just hammer on "Fight" 95% of the battles, with the occasional "Cure".

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

best. In games like P3/4, the early bosses have weaknesses that can be exploited but in the second half of their games, the tables are turned and instead, you're building your party in a way to lessen any advantage the computer can have. You're forced to remove heavy hitters in your party cause the computer can exploit their weaknesses and ultimately destroy your party in a few rounds because you were silly enough to bring them in

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Aegis with the rign that nullifies Ligthing, Ken with the Ring that Nullifies Dark, and Doggy with the one that stops Light. No stat weaknesses on those three now, as well as three immunities on the dogs part, (Light, Dark, and Fire).

Top that off with the Beelzebub I made, I was strong or Immune to everything but three things, two types of Phsyical and a weakness to Ice. Guess what Accessory he could equip? :p

Of course you can't pull that until after sleeping table, and if you beat that smurfer you're set for the game.

That said, there is plenty that makes that game hard outside of the computer exploiting Weaknesses. It also has a vicious AI, abilities, and various monsters who's attacks help the others out in a single fight.

Straight up weakness exploitation is to easy to overcome in just about any game, even Persona, so it takes a lot more then that, though it is a positive step.

You left out the fact that getting all of those Null elemental items requires you to obtain endgame Personas (Surt is the lowest level Persona at Lv. 50 and Beelzebub is Lv 81; meaning that many of them are either endgame high level monsters or can only be obtained by completing social links and achieving the level needed) and even then you have to learn all their skills to produce the item. Unless you knew exactly how to get them and went straight for it, chances are you won't be using any of those items until you're fighting the final boss and even then, they are useless against Elizabeth.

So yeah, I would say P3 has it covered, still. :p

I guess a bigger issue is making the game mechanics relevant. I work in mathematics and theory and often when I play games like this I do things like reduce certain abilities to others in terms of effectiveness both in general and under certain circumstances.

In FF 99% of the time all the cool game mechanics become irrelevant and it comes down to one command. For most of the game it's just fight/attack etc. If you could miss or not do most of their health in hp per attack it might actually be worth it to do something else. The other frequently relevant mechanic involves resource management, so maybe steal etc to get more valuable items so your fight command becomes stronger.

Designing a system where other things become relevant takes brains and is almost and art form but as someone who is capable of doing it, it is endlessly frustrating to see these game companies spend tons of money on art, music etc. and ruin what could be a really addictive game because a couple formulas taking up a few lines of code are not what they should be. Sometimes it comes down to something as simple as changing a single number to something else to make a game 10x more enjoyable.


But sadly to know what that number SHOULD be takes more brainpower and knowledge than anyone involved has and so 50$ million dollars becomes half as effective. I have seen developers frequently make absurd comments like "our game designers usually start out as level designers... we find that people capable of making well designed levels make good overall designers as well"... morons...

Someone who would be capable of making really well designed mechanics would be just as effective as an engineer, economist or something much more important. But there are such people around that we just don't use. It really just comes down to one number: IQ.

The real problem is that relatively stupid people don't know that they are relatively stupid and there are more of them. They are insecure about being inferior to people of higher intelligence and thus do their best to force handicap and punish anyone with a higher level of ability. I am sure there was some guy at SE that said "hey wait a minute, the numbers are all wrong the game is going to be boring and repetitive once the grandeur wears off" and some relatively stupid artist said "hey what do you know".

If we would accept and understand intelligence and just put everyone's IQ on their record EVERYTHING would be a million times more efficient.

But the reason I brought up game difficulty is because perhaps by simple dumb luck or by use of repeated iterations of some mildly effective formula that no one at Square really understands the nature of a lot of FF games have like one semi-addictive element. But instead of needing it to survive making use of that element makes you steamroll the whole game.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

You left out the fact that getting all of those Null elemental items requires you to obtain endgame Personas (Surt is the lowest level Persona at Lv. 50 and Beelzebub is Lv 81; meaning that many of them are either endgame high level monsters or can only be obtained by completing social links and achieving the level needed) and even then you have to learn all their skills to produce the item. Unless you knew exactly how to get them and went straight for it, chances are you won't be using any of those items until you're fighting the final boss and even then, they are useless against Elizabeth.

So yeah, I would say P3 has it covered, still. :p

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Beelz was pretty much end game yes, but you can get some pretty rediculous defenses early on is my point. :p

Not once was covering my weakness an issue, those late game Items are just the point it wasn't even a task anymore. I mean, switching out a single party member many times is enough to prevent weakness exploitation.

I just argue that is only a small part of just why those games are hard, if anything it at least forces you to change up your game witch is more then welcome. :p

I don't see a reason for it. The games are as hard as you make them to be. I wouldn't mind a New Game+ like X-2 had though that way if I missed something my first time through I don't have to get everything I looked hard for the first time and the things I missed. I guess hard would benefit from a New Game+ if New Game+ carries over stats and highest weapons and equipment.

It's hard for RPGs to be challenging, especially Final Fantasy games, simply because of what you can do and the abilities you have. Many people complain about simply pressing attack and cure. I don't really mind that.

For me, there's no real need to make it more difficult, just keep it interesting. Difficult =/= interesting. If you have to only mash attack to win, then make attacking interesting. In my experience, the Golden Sun series did this perfectly by giving weapons unleashes. Special, flashy attacks that have a chance of appearing and break the monotone of simply attacking. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn made it even better by giving weapons multiple unleashes, with chances of you getting the best unleash (such as Megido) and bowling through everything being lessened because, even if you got an unleash, you have no way of knowing which one it's going to be. This is perfect for breaking the monotone of mashing attack, because even if you do, you won't always just "attack" even if you select "attack". That's cool. FF should implement this.

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Originally Posted by kriminal99

In FF 99% of the time all the cool game mechanics become irrelevant and it comes down to one command. For most of the game it's just fight/attack etc. If you could miss or not do most of their health in hp per attack it might actually be worth it to do something else. The other frequently relevant mechanic involves resource management, so maybe steal etc to get more valuable items so your fight command becomes stronger.

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In other words, you want to play an FF where spells/characters/summons/items only be used them in the right context, It will be something like this: make a choice, fail, start over, repeat. Personally, it isn't important factor to enjoy any FF. When i play an FF, i always try to build a party that will rock in ANY situation as opposed to specialize my party depend on specific situations . I don't know it isn't big deal to me. :eep:

Has anyone here ever played magic? If not, you probably wonder what the big deal is about all the geeks and their overpriced cards.

The big deal is that magic was created by a phd in mathematics. Besides all the art, the game has an unprecedented amount of depth. The game is set up in ways that make many many many different strategies relevant and effective. Every strategy has counters and things that it works well against.

Why is this so rare in video games? It isn't impossible to make an rpg similar to this. WotC did it a looooong time ago by making a video game magic version where you got new cards for beating opponents. They did it again recently by creating a tactical strategy game out of their card game, and converting their cards to theoretical equivalents in the new environment.

I don't play paper magic, or the new strategy game, but I do have the cheap streamlined xbox version and a magic online account. The only problem with WotC is that they are GREEDY GREEDY bastards. You have to pay real cash for new units in the tactical strategy game. I don't play paper, but they have an online version and an xbox version I have played both of. You can easily spend thousands of dollars on one of the non xbox versions if you are not careful.

So yeah I want an environment where the CPU can counter your techniques especially if you do the same thing over and over. I want fewer longer battles. Maybe even one that learns from you, doing things like casting protect if you just attack over and over.

In FF a team that can handle any situation really just means a guy who 1 shots 99% of the enemies with the fight command, and another that can wipe the whole enemy party 90% of the time and someone to keep you alive and use some cheap repetive technique to kill the last actually difficult 1% of enemies (usually the final boss)

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Originally Posted by kriminal99

In FF 99% of the time all the cool game mechanics become irrelevant and it comes down to one command. For most of the game it's just fight/attack etc. If you could miss or not do most of their health in hp per attack it might actually be worth it to do something else. The other frequently relevant mechanic involves resource management, so maybe steal etc to get more valuable items so your fight command becomes stronger.

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Oh, so what you want is 4 Heroes of Light

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Someone who would be capable of making really well designed mechanics would be just as effective as an engineer, economist or something much more important. But there are such people around that we just don't use. It really just comes down to one number: IQ.

The real problem is that relatively stupid people don't know that they are relatively stupid and there are more of them. They are insecure about being inferior to people of higher intelligence and thus do their best to force handicap and punish anyone with a higher level of ability. I am sure there was some guy at SE that said "hey wait a minute, the numbers are all wrong the game is going to be boring and repetitive once the grandeur wears off" and some relatively stupid artist said "hey what do you know".

If we would accept and understand intelligence and just put everyone's IQ on their record EVERYTHING would be a million times more efficient.

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Duhhhh, what? Okay, you just keep inflating your ego there, or whatever it is you're doing to make you feel good. I'll keep working with inferior people who still seem to have relevant insights and ideas.

~(seriously, what the smurf? You believe that bull:bou::bou::bou::bou:?)

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Originally Posted by Elpizo

It's hard for RPGs to be challenging, especially Final Fantasy games, simply because of what you can do and the abilities you have. Many people complain about simply pressing attack and cure. I don't really mind that.

For me, there's no real need to make it more difficult, just keep it interesting. Difficult =/= interesting. If you have to only mash attack to win, then make attacking interesting. In my experience, the Golden Sun series did this perfectly by giving weapons unleashes. Special, flashy attacks that have a chance of appearing and break the monotone of simply attacking. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn made it even better by giving weapons multiple unleashes, with chances of you getting the best unleash (such as Megido) and bowling through everything being lessened because, even if you got an unleash, you have no way of knowing which one it's going to be. This is perfect for breaking the monotone of mashing attack, because even if you do, you won't always just "attack" even if you select "attack". That's cool. FF should implement this.

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Except that doesn't work for me, I find Golden Sun boring because it is easy, for all its customization options, I still found myself using just attack/cure. I never understood the idea of creating a robust customization system if it was ultimately irrelevant cause the game was too easy to really utilize it. My point is that every gamer has something that makes the games enjoyable for them and often times one man's trash is another man's treasure.

NeoCracker: Its not the only thing that makes P3 hard but it is something that makes you think and forces the player to not stick to one strategy, instead actually branching out and trying all the other characters. I would argue though that switching out one party member for another in order to prevent the computer from exploiting their innate weakness is by definition strategy. :p

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Originally Posted by rubah

Duhhhh, what? Okay, you just keep inflating your ego there, or whatever it is you're doing to make you feel good. I'll keep working with inferior people who still seem to have relevant insights and ideas.

(seriously, what the smurf? You believe that bull:bou::bou::bou::bou:?)

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Yes, because it is the scientifically validated truth. Intelligence is a huge taboo in our society thanks to people like MLK. There is a reason why streets named after the man are ridiculously correlated with high crime rates. They are populated by people victimized by the idea that "all people are created equal". People who continually fail to live up to typical expectations because they were not created with the ability to do so.

Calling it ego inflation is just circular reasoning. If you were one of those people of higher ability, you would be constantly attacked and force handicapped for challenging people sense of equality just by contributing and participating at your natural level of ability. Then you would have no choice but to step back and look at the situation to figure out what the heck is going on. And once you figured out what it was, you would have to draw attention to the natural difference in ability in people in order to ever get the problem resolved. That is not ego stroking.

sure it is! You've already assumed that since I disagree with you I am "inferior"~ Inferior relative to what or whom?

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

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Originally Posted by Elpizo

It's hard for RPGs to be challenging, especially Final Fantasy games, simply because of what you can do and the abilities you have. Many people complain about simply pressing attack and cure. I don't really mind that.

For me, there's no real need to make it more difficult, just keep it interesting. Difficult =/= interesting. If you have to only mash attack to win, then make attacking interesting. In my experience, the Golden Sun series did this perfectly by giving weapons unleashes. Special, flashy attacks that have a chance of appearing and break the monotone of simply attacking. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn made it even better by giving weapons multiple unleashes, with chances of you getting the best unleash (such as Megido) and bowling through everything being lessened because, even if you got an unleash, you have no way of knowing which one it's going to be. This is perfect for breaking the monotone of mashing attack, because even if you do, you won't always just "attack" even if you select "attack". That's cool. FF should implement this.

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Except that doesn't work for me, I find Golden Sun boring because it is easy, for all its customization options, I still found myself using just attack/cure. I never understood the idea of creating a robust customization system if it was ultimately irrelevant cause the game was too easy to really utilize it. My point is that every gamer has something that makes the games enjoyable for them and often times one man's trash is another man's treasure.

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Who customizes in Golden Sun, anyhow? I only used attack/cure, too, but, like I said, Golden Sun broke up the monotone of that by giving the weapons themselves flashy unleashes, so that even if you just picked "attack", you weren't sure what you were gonna get, unless you equip luck boosting gear like no tomorrow to spam Megido from your Sol Blade, but ah, they got rid of that in Dark Dawn. And the unleashes differed from weapon to weapon, so even if you mashed "attack", you could still get a nice series of different attacks because of this, thus breaking up the visual monotone of attacking. It's a good way to do things, and to ease the so-called pain of picking attack over and over again.

As if it's that bad. No less bad than having to grind because of the so-called difficulty just being overpowered monsters, for example. ;)

There's no need to customize in Golden Sun, everybody base class and that's how it's best. Never quite saw the logic of a Jupiter adept spamming Mars-based attacks. Base classes are the best. And weapon unleashes. Love those. Makes spamming attack fun. :D

Just my opinion though, all of the above. :)

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Originally Posted by rubah

sure it is! You've already assumed that since I disagree with you I am "inferior"~ Inferior relative to what or whom?

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I neither assumed that nor that you disagree with me. However you implying that I would assume you would continue to disagree with me just because of your initial response implies that you do not base your opinion on logic or reason because it is impossible to sway through logical argument.

What are you basing the inferiority part on.. saying if you were one of those people? Average is not generally inferior. I am talking about people in the 1 in hundreds range of ability... or higher. Anyways I did not mean to discount the possibility that you were in that range. There are plenty of people in that range of raw ability who do not develop a lot of crystallized knowledge on their own and are not particularly aware of themselves or their level of ability. They just learn things faster when they are told to and respect social order because their main drive is to go with the flow. If they are given a relatively stupid boss they just assume there is some reason why the social structure put that person in charge, and don't second guess it. They tend to be more successful in traditional ways than genius polymaths...

Before you know anything about it, IQ is hard to understand. You think things like you could just practice and get a higher score, or its biased towards some culture or type of information. You think it doesn't apply to everyday life. When you actually read about the science behind then you start to understand. Scores on all kinds of IQ tests are correlated. Vocab is a good measure of IQ up to a few STDs because people are constantly bombarded with words and their contexts, and only IQ limits your ability to extract their meanings. That same ability is what would allow you to quickly see the pattern in a string of numbers, or recognize a pattern in a sequence of abstract shapes. IQ is remarkably immutable throughout the course of a person's life. IQ is 80% heritable...

A mentally challenged person cannot tell the difference between a cat and a dog. Why? Their brain only generates 2 categories when looking at either: and <4-legged>. If you ask one why they thought the cat was a dog, that is the explanation they will give. This problem does not disappear past the challenged level of ability. A person with a 150 IQ will more effectively be able to make abstract generalizations from their observations and deductively reason in a way that a person with a 125 level ability cannot.

Okay people, a few of you are getting off topic and I don't care for how the new subject is going so this is your first and final warning.

Elpizo: It's cool man, I was just pointing out that for me, even with a few flashy attacks, I found myself just finding every battle tedious and I would just mash X while I read a book or watched TV cause it was so easy, so having special attacks never really engaged me cause the challenge wasn't up to par (except for actually finding the djinn, some of them were a pain...) we all have different taste and that's why I feel if a game is going to be hard it should be an option.

Seriously? What the heck is your problem? So sorry Gaddafi, I thought intelligence was relevant to engineering psychologically addictive video games...

Problem is the fact that two members are arguing instead of debating and taking things to a personal level. Also that you're being pretty heavy handed with your ideas that most people suck. Generalizations don't make for very good reasoning.

If you want to discuss intelligence vs. game programming that's okay. If you want to talk about intelligence in general, make a new thread. Otherwise please drop it.

Also, really? Comparing Wolf to Gadhafi? Let's be a little more realistic, Wolf is more like the UN in this situation.

Winning a debate vs someone who falsely fancies themselves some kind of authority does not = Arguing or heavy handed tactics. Nor did I take it to a personal level.

I am sorry I know so much more than an ex forum moderator who is arguing not based on any kind of knowledge but on a belief that people will agree with her on the desire to see the world in terms of rainbows and lollipops.

It's really sad how the vast majority of human beings when given any amount of power over anything think then they are free to reinterpret reality so that anyone who disagrees with them and/or especially wins an argument with them has done something immoral and wrong. All power over anything is given to better handle some responsibility, and the need to best deal with that responsibility precludes any such absurd claims that anyone who disagrees with you has done something wrong.

No subject can be resolved when artificial boundaries are constructed regarding where the discussion can head. Every topic has dependent issues, which themselves have dependent issues, and nothing can be resolved until everything a topic rests on has been resolved first.

Some people just play games because hitting a goblin with ultima is fun in their opinion.

You don't need to have a hard mode made into the game for it to be fun, you can just make your own restrictions. Like no using espers in FF VI for example.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

NeoCracker: Its not the only thing that makes P3 hard but it is something that makes you think and forces the player to not stick to one strategy, instead actually branching out and trying all the other characters. I would argue though that switching out one party member for another in order to prevent the computer from exploiting their innate weakness is by definition strategy. :p

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We agree, I just think it's a relatively small part of the reason those game are hard, and the the switching of character is such a simple thing to do it's not exactly a heavy level of debpth. :p

Don't get me wrong, it's definately a good Idea to add that into the systems of other games, definately a step in the right directions.

But the last thing I want is for people to get the Idea that is so massively important to difficulty to the point it becomes a major focus, in which case it will either become massively easy to abuse or just straight up not fair. :p

Persona relegates it to a small and fairly easy to manage part of the difficulty on it's own, and they are wonderful for it.

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Originally Posted by qwertysaur

Some people just play games because hitting a goblin with ultima is fun in their opinion.

You don't need to have a hard mode made into the game for it to be fun, you can just make your own restrictions. Like no using espers in FF VI for example.

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I'd argue that is when a game developer has failed. One should not be required to make their own restrictions to make a game challenging. It is their job to entertain us, not for us to entertain ourselves.

Mind you, I don't like games being to easy though, so it's an issue for me, not so much for others. :p

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I'd argue that is when a game developer has failed. One should not be required to make their own restrictions to make a game challenging. It is their job to entertain us, not for us to entertain ourselves.

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I agree and disagree with this statement. Yes, if you are forced to handicap yourself on your first playthrough to make it fun then the game developer has failed. It is complete BS for people to say "maybe you just shouldn't have done 'x' and you would have had more fun."

However I don't see how this can apply to future playthroughs. Once you have already mastered the game and beaten it one or more times the difficulty curve will obviously be completely different for you than a first time player. So you might want to spice it up a little.

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It is complete BS for people to say "maybe you just shouldn't have done 'x' and you would have had more fun."

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I don't agree with that. I remember seeing a review of VIII from someone and he complained about having to sit and draw magic from enemies for minutes upon minutes. Drawing that much isn't necessary for that game. He was purposely making it less fun for himself by just sitting there and drawing from 2 enemies for 5 minutes. I won't blame a feature of a game that's not that detrimental in the first place. I only draw every once in a while when I play the game and do fine.

But you have to understand that for some people having to pass up 'treasure' is also un-fun and detrimental to the game experience. In that case it becomes a lesser of two evils question. And when your player is choosing game paths based on which they will dislike least I don't think you can claim success as a game developer.

This is the closes real world example I can think of. From time to time I will be presented with a extremely difficult physical task (lifting something heavy, new workout exercise, you get the idea). I just about always take on the task, often times inflicting some sort of minor injury (soreness, bruising, etc..) upon myself. Of course people say I am stupid for doing this, but what they don't understand is that if I didn't try I am going to be upset about it all weak. So the fallout from actually doing it is the lesser of two evils. Not performing the task isn't going to make me any happier. I hope this makes things clearer and not less. :D

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Originally Posted by qwertysaur

Some people just play games because hitting a goblin with ultima is fun in their opinion.

You don't need to have a hard mode made into the game for it to be fun, you can just make your own restrictions. Like no using espers in FF VI for example.

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Or an all freelancer / solo run in ff3. FF12 is full of self challenges, like a low level game, no license board etc. I like challenges like this but on games like final fantasy tactics A2 where I have to actually make obvious mistakes on purpose to give myself a challenge, now thats BS. (I like A2 but the AI is stupider then a bag of bricks)

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

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I'd argue that is when a game developer has failed. One should not be required to make their own restrictions to make a game challenging. It is their job to entertain us, not for us to entertain ourselves.

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I agree and disagree with this statement. Yes, if you are forced to handicap yourself on your first playthrough to make it fun then the game developer has failed. It is complete BS for people to say "maybe you just shouldn't have done 'x' and you would have had more fun."

However I don't see how this can apply to future playthroughs. Once you have already mastered the game and beaten it one or more times the difficulty curve will obviously be completely different for you than a first time player. So you might want to spice it up a little.

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I should be clear that I'm meaning soley on the first play through. Future play throughs are not at all an issue with me when it comes to difficulty. Otherwise I wouldn't have beaten Chrono Trigger as often as I did. :p

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Originally Posted by Depression Moon

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It is complete BS for people to say "maybe you just shouldn't have done 'x' and you would have had more fun."

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I don't agree with that. I remember seeing a review of VIII from someone and he complained about having to sit and draw magic from enemies for minutes upon minutes. Drawing that much isn't necessary for that game. He was purposely making it less fun for himself by just sitting there and drawing from 2 enemies for 5 minutes. I won't blame a feature of a game that's not that detrimental in the first place. I only draw every once in a while when I play the game and do fine.

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If you refer to 'The Spoony One's' review, he did that because 1) He got a :bou::bou::bou::bou: tone of requests to do a video of him Drawing, for some reason, and 2) He did it for laughs. :p

He even admits in the next part of the review you don't really need to draw that much, as there are other ways you can obtain the magic and faster to boot. His complaint was it still amounted to little more then Busy work to do it. :p

I also take issues with games giving you a system, and you can just out right ignore it and achieve the same results. It makes me wonder why the hell the system is there to begin with. But that's a topic for another time and place. :p