Achievements and Trophies

[Wolf Kanno]

First off, the bolded part is how banks make a lot of cash. When they round away a penny from you, you say, "Oh, it's just a penny." Do you know what 1,000,000 pennies add up to? TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS >:0
Case in point, I'll take that 50 or 5 xp that wouldn't have existed in CoD4 because it will add up, and it's neat to do the things that get you it.

Next, switching from 999 to 9,999 had a big difference. It allowed the experience curve to be manipulated. Same with FFX. It allowed almost layered gameplay. Sure Braska's Final Aeon is tough at a lower level. But once you can deal 99,999 per hit he's easy. However, by that time you have to deal with Nemesis/Penance.

Except Braska's Final Aeon isn't actually that terribly difficult (Yuna's Limit Break combined with Anima at full Limit Break = instant win) and being able to break the damage barrier allows a powerhouse like Auron to "one shot" the "challenging" final boss and thus completely destroys game balance. Damage breaking in X was horribly implemented cause most of the story bosses and enemies barely had health higher than 90,000hp. Its only purpose was for the asinine Monster Arena and your only reward was to better tweak your party and make them more godlike which was redundant cause you need to be able to beat the game to actually stand a chance against anything in there and even then it basically comes down to power-leveling and abusing Quick Hit.

Not that achievements are actually that new. The Sky Pirate's Den in XII was essentially an achievement list anyway. There were plenty of sidequest monster kills in there (Gilgamesh, Carrot, etcetera). Though, looking back, it is sad how few of even those monsters had any story or dialogue tied to them.

No, you just don't pay attention

Gilgamesh is a wandering swordsman and follows his traditional cameo storyline of seeking out the greatest swords in the world.

Carrot is a running gag Monster hunt from the original FFTactics and thus follows the same story as always of being the beloved pet of some noble who accidentally escaped and became wild. You are sent to retrieve it but ultimately have to destroy it.

Most of the Mark hunts actually have back story. Hell, even Omega MK. XII actually has a backstory if you read the special Beastiery notes.

Personally, I liked the achievements in XII and kinda wish XIII followed its example.

If you round the numbers it works out even in the end. Many games truncate the number at the end, but that only results in you loosing 0.09% of your damage going from 99999 to 9999, and 0.9% going from 9999 to 999. A small price to pay for actually knowing what is going on. (For the record, I feel 9999 isn't too high, but equally good as 999).

This over inflation in games isn't caused by them wanting to add more detail, it is caused by them wanting bigger numbers, because I focus groups said they liked them. If you look at the combat formulas as the series progress they start moving from (when you break it down) [stat]+[stat] to [stat]*[stat] to [stat]^3. This isn't adding detail, it is just making a steeper and less linear curve.

To me this over inflation is a gimmicky way to make the game feel substantially different from the beginning of the game. This is something that should be done by forcing innovations in tactics through a well designed encounter and leveling system. If you take FFT as a case in point, the way I usually build my party, I hit most of the damage I want to do a little less than half way through, and for the rest I spend on developing mobility, 100% chance to hit, ect. And by the time I reach the end of the story, it is like a completely different game with the new abilities and tactics I employ. Compare and contrast Disgaea, where you are using the same moves and same tactics for most of the end game, but the damage keeps going up and up and up. One keeps me interested for long periods of time, one does not.

I'm in agreement, the high damage in Disgaea only works because it is utterly absurd and Disgaea is not meant to be taken terribly serious. In an FF title like FFX or Crisis Core it still looks terribly absurd, destroys what little game balance these titles had, and looks pretty sad cause the games are very serious despite the fact your party is dishing out "crazy epic damage yo!".

I generally hate overpowered game mechanics in a title cause I feel it often cheapens the story, one of the reasons why I can't take Sephiroth seriously as a villain cause he can be taken down in a single round with only minor effort, Braska's Final Aeon is even worse since he can be taken down by a single character only using a single attack... Seriously, that just sucks the "epicness" I could ever feel for the story fight. I feel its poor game design when I have to avoid using overpowered attacks and have to intentionally nerf my party just to get some challenge out of a game and this has been a bad trend for the FF series since it started in FFVI.

Granted, XIII looks like they are going to up the ante with normal encounters but I'm pretty sure they will only make the game challenging based off the poorly designed "school of FFVIII difficulty" which is basically make the monsters have tons of more HP and raise their stats a bit to cause more damage, but this creates the problem I had with VIII, X, and Crisis Core that use these systems so thoroughly, it doesn't make the games harder it just makes battles longer and usually more tedious cause I end up just spamming overpowered attacks over and over again and thus I'm back to the problem of most RPG where the only attack option I really need is the Fight command cause there are very few things in an RPG that offer enough challenge to warrant using real attacks.

A boss with a billion HP does not = challenge all it really means is that it might take more than an hour to kill it and frankly I have better things to do with my time. Beating a Grind boss isn't a challenge it just shows how much free time your really have. Go outside, meet a member of the sex you prefer, and start having a "night life".

Design crutches are the only way to make turn-based RPGs appear difficult. There's no such thing as a "difficult" boss fight in an RPG that is also well-designed; what most people perceive as difficulty in any turn-based game is a direct result of wasting the player's time through arbitrary design choices and/or RNG abuse.

Someone should play Persona 3 or Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. I feel these games not only introduced a very balanced combat system that offers great challenge for the players. It still allows you to get this sense of overpowered accomplishment but it actually requires strategy and effort on the players part but what makes it great is that the system works against you as well since enemies use the same system as your party and thus you have a real chance of getting killed by normal encounters. Its the only RPG series I know since maybe the NES days where you can't really over-level and overpower your way through the game.

There's a reason none of the situations you mentioned exist in single player games. I'm not talking about SRPGs, though.

I suppose I should say the only reasonable way to make an RPG appear difficult is to rely on design crutches. If you implemented true difficulty into an RPG, you'd get what would essentially amount to a multiplayer component with "bots." That'd be fine, I guess, but in single player form? Do we really want to force people to overcome extremely smart AI in a perfectly balanced environment just to progress through a game's story?

I think there are very plausible ways to build difficulty in an RPG without resorting to terribly cheap tactics. FFII had a tendency to throw high powered defense creatures (that actually have real defense) to offset a party who was abusing physical attacks and forcing you to rely on most likely the party's underdeveloped Black Magic...

The DS version of FFIV came up with the idea of giving monsters the ability to counter certain types of attacks and since most of the enemies usually have decent enough stats to overcome a first wave and usually the counter is devastating enough to stop most players from trying it again. Minor stat tweaking combined with a counter system could create some pretty epic battles.

FFV Advance also introduced a really cool concept that is in the original but I never noticed until I fought the new optional boss Enuo. To counter the overpowered Duel Wield/Barrage/ Magic sword combo, the game sometimes gives the boss creatures target points on their bodies that have no hp but are always present. What this does is make the character sometimes waste one of his 8 attacks on a target point that can't be destroyed. and thus prevent a character from actually abusing multi-hit attacks to one shot opponents. I don't know why this was not carried over to future titles cause god knows VI-VIII really needed this to curb some overpowered attacks/Combination/Limit Breaks.

XII toyed with something the MegaTen franchise has done for years and I would love to see the FF series (hell all JRPGs) to adopt which is the ability to relegate Physical attacks as a an element and thus create defensive measures against it. The palings were a nice element I would like to see in future titles but even more I want the Physical defense system from MegaTen, how amusing would it be to see Cloud fight some random encounter with his Ultima Weapon that does max damage only to have Cloud attack the creature and learn it "reflects Physical attacks" thus Cloud accidentally kills himself. That would keep a player on their toes...

But let's take a look at Yiazmat in comparison to other FF superbosses:

Yiazmat's AoE wind attack is easily countered by equipping wind breakers. Death touch isn't a big problem if you have Arise gambits, though it does get pretty brutal at the <10% mark. You don't have to fight him all at once, as you can go to the save point, save, and his HP total will remain even after you turn the game off.

Ruby I don't have much experience with, but I'm pretty sure he's also "cheaper" than Yiazmat with his Ultima KoTR counter.

If I had to rank them on "cheapness," I'd probably go Ozma>Ruby>Emerald>Yiazmat>Omega. However, if you're looking for a quick but intense fight, you probably want Omega mk.XII or whatever it's called, in the Great Crystal. I would argue that he's the real superboss of the game. I'd even say you should get an achievement for beating him. I have now segued back to the original topic of this thread.

Ruby in my experience is actually easier than Emerald mostly because Ultima is nowhere near as broken as it was in VI (Ignore all Defense, ignore all evade, ignores splicing damage when used on multiple opponents) so it hardly does a terrible amount of damage and at high levels Cloud and other party members can evade it on a regular basis. So the KoTR trick actually still works and is plausible especially if you use the HP/MP absorb materia correctly. Its Possible to take him down in a single round (that last twenty minutes but still a single round nonetheless).

For Yiazmat, I feel his real annoying trait is not his "Ultimate Attack" or instant death spell as much as its his ability "Growing Threat" which doubles his levels and thus significantly lowers the damage you cause and raises the damage he does...

In terms of Super Bosses, I sill prefer the original Omega from FFV. He doesn't have high HP or defense he's just terribly fast and horribly overpowered. Even though when you build the proper party set-up to beat him its still one of the most intense fight in the game despite only lasting 5 to 8 minutes. That to me is how a super boss should be not a time sink but just the most intense battle that turns a few minutes into what feels like an eternity.