Ariana Grande Joins Final Fantasy

[Psychotic]

Well, at least it feels like it's going somewhere. Something RK doesn't even pretend to do.

It does. Someone has smashed all the portraits in the royal archives and Dr. Mog has now asked Tyro to fix them. Where is it going? To the final boss battles of every game, and it's going to be great.

I for the life of me cannot see how RK's battle system is more strategic than FFT's, and yet here you both are.

It tells you beforehand what your enemy is going to do, its major attacks and what elements and statuses it might be weak to, and it sets you various target goals. Thus you set up your team before each battle, tailoring it to your foe. With FFT you have no idea what you're up against and so just use your basic party and hope for the best. FFRK has hundreds of different bosses, many of them having very different AI and playstyles. FFT's usual definition of difficulty is splitting your party up or else having them in one spawn point as long range units bombard them.

Oh and then you get Orlandu and he kills everything so there's no need for strategy for then on To be fair though, he's being added to FFRK soon and apparently they tried to make him as broken as he was in FFT so maybe this will be a moot point.

I think the problem is that you just haven't played any high level RK encounters. And hey, if you don't want to play more of it to get to that point then that's cool, not going to put a gun to your head and force you to do it. However I also think it means your opinion isn't going to be as well informed as it should be to make such a sweeping dismissal of it.

[Formalhaut]

I think the problem is that you just haven't played any high level RK encounters. And hey, if you don't want to play more of it to get to that point then that's cool, not going to put a gun to your head and force you to do it. However I also think it means your opinion isn't going to be as well informed as it should be to make such a sweeping dismissal of it.

I don't have a horse in this race, because frankly I don't have the time for mobile gaming alongside my console gaming. Having said that, this comment did interest me.

How important is it for a game to be complex and have rigorous game mechanics running all the way through? If you can only get the feeling that the combat is strategic and complex at the endgame, then I'd question the game design. A game should have tantalising combat strategy the whole way through, or at least the promise of even more to come, building on more mechanics as the player gets more skilled. But the base should be interesting enough as it is.

It's kinda like saying that a game only gets good halfway through. That requires a lot of faith on the player to keep on playing.

I really hope I'm not sounding too direct about this though. Sorry!

[Spuuky]

How "boring" or "bland" a battle system is has nothing to do with how strategic it is. Whether you find something boring is a matter of opinion. The level of strategic depth isn't particularly a matter of opinion. You're welcome to find chess too boring to play; many people do, I don't find it particularly enthralling myself. But you can't also say "I enjoy checkers more, so the level of strategy in each game is a matter of perspective."

If you think FFRK's battles are boring, bland and dumb, fine, you can think that. And there isn't much depth in the early-game fights where you just attack or cast an offensive spell, and sometimes heal when you get low. Just like in every single RPG ever made, in the early game.

FFT is a great, deep game - but it's not THAT deep or complex in general, it's just a lot of fun and deeper than most FF games in combat. Fun and strategic depth are entirely different spectrums. Spectra? Whatever. No one plays the start of Final Fantasy ANYTHING and thinks "wow, these battles are so complex and strategic!" when they're level 10, fighting random Imps and soldiers of various flavors.

[Formalhaut]

They're all good points. It's certainly a good idea to make the distinction between 'fun' and 'strategy', them being related but very different concepts.

[Psychotic]

I really hope I'm not sounding too direct about this though. Sorry!

It's cool, relax!

When Record Keeper released it had 8 characters, 20 abilities and maybe 15 battles you could do. It was fun, there was strategy involved, but it wasn't overly deep. It now has 150+ characters and 300 abilities. It has also had numerous new critical strategic elements added on top of that - I won't go into them in depth, but just take my word for it as a day 1 player that vital stuff was added in the following months. They've developed more complex and challenging encounters as a result and to compare 2017 RK to 2015 RK is to compare two almost entirely different games.

Fynn has kept his cards close to his chest as to how much of RK he has played so I've made assumptions as to how much of the newer, improved content he has played - he can correct me as and when he wants - but not very much. I think his opinion on RK in 2015 is valid and I agree with a lot of it. But given that, as I've said, 2017 RK is in my view a different game to 2015 RK, while I don't blame him for not having played 2017 if he hasn't enjoyed it, I don't think he can as accurately comment on it as he has before. He hasn't explained why he thinks there isn't strategy involved! And it wouldn't really be a fair discussion if he did.

In a wider context, this is a very common release model in the mobile gaming sector. I suspect if you compare how Pokemon Go will be by the end of 2017 to how it was when it released you'll see a much better game too with the additions of new Pokemon, trading, battling between friends and whatever else. Indeed in the Triple A gaming sector you're seeing it - look at Star Wars Battlefront. Indeed, on a lower level, look at how many games are adding features by patches. FFXV's director has talked about adding multiplayer. So has the dev of my GotY Stardew Valley. No Man's Sky is having a major overhaul. Games are no longer a static thing and we're going to increasingly see our opinions being outdated as games change. Which doesn't really harm anyone but devs, I guess, if you release a barebones or half finished game then you deserve to be judged for that. I'm more understanding of free to play mobile games or low priced titles, but full price retail games that do this can bugger right off.

[Spuuky]

I guess I'm probably lucky that I am a very late adopter of FFRK so I didn't see any of the early days. Or months. Or years almost.

You can probably thank the success of games like WoW, DotA, TF2, and LoL for basically proving out the fact that iterative game development (of already "completed" products) is a very successful long-term strategy.

[Freya]

Have a video!



an actual song of hers is getting the "FF" treatment.

[Night Fury]

SICKNIIIIIIIIIIIING BITCH.


SICKNING.


(That is one of my favourite songs on the Dangerous Woman album so yaaaaasssss mama werk!)

[krissy]

btw 82 comments
gj squenix x ariana
you've revived the forum