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Squeenix Final Fantasy VII Remake Integrade - now on Steam

Makabb

Arcane
Shitposter Bethestard
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Joined
Jan 7, 2012
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guy(not Jim Sterling) splains why ATB is bad:

http://www.thejimquisition.com/2015/12/counterpoint-regarding-active-time-battle-systems/

I wanted to talk a bit about Active Time Battle systems, why they aren’t en vogue any more and why I think that’s a good thing.

ATB systems – and really any menu-driven, turn-based, combat system – is something I’ve had the opportunity to think a lot about. As someone who grew up with the very beginnings of Final Fantasy, I had the benefit of being able to draw upon a lot of experiences with these kinds of systems (for better or worse).

While turn-based combat (TBC) systems give designers some great structure, they also create a lot of problems, specifically with difficulty.

Newer players experiencing TBC for the first time will probably not [stumble upon the game-breaking secret] to TBC, but it will probably become apparent eventually – If you can push more healing in a given turn than a given encounter pushes damage, then you cannot lose.

My favorite example of this idea in action is the Zeromus fight in Final Fantasy IV. It serves as an outstanding example of where TBC kind of falls flat. A great example of the “HP-IN > HP-OUT” strategy can be found here:


It’s largely uninteresting – and at its most difficult, instead of being engaging, it’s tedious as you spend a lot of your turns keeping your party alive while you slowly poke away at a boss when it’s ‘safe’ to do so.

I don’t think early designers realized how problematic this idea was, and how damning it can be to the entire system. Evidence of this I think can be seen in fights as early as Warmech from the original Final Fantasy, fights which are ‘hard’ because the numbers are big, and whose solution is to simply find a way to put more HP on your party than is being taken away, which often comes in the form of ‘more levels’ – it’s extremely uninteresting.

I also think Square figured this out and started down a road where fights had less emphasis on raw numbers, resource management became a little more tricky, and bosses became closer to puzzles than simple number checks. I think Yunalesca from Final Fantasy X might be the best example of this, but forcing a party to deal with status effects can be seen pretty much anywhere a Malboro exists, and perhaps most notably against Necron in Final Fantasy IX.

With all that in mind, I think not only do designers see it as potentially boring for the fans well-versed with TBC, but also boring for themselves.

When you are working with a set of systems you already know is flawed from the ground up, it’s hard to get excited about it. It’s hard to pour passion into that, and instead of blazing a trail and making something that is a reflection of your ideals, you’re instead trying to patch together a game on the back of systems you might not even like.

I think it’s this attitude which birthed systems like Final Fantasy XIII‘s combat system – it’s definitely turn-based, but the rapid pace and partitioned turns make you think about combat a little differently, even if you are a veteran of TBC. Was it perfect? Certainly not, but the idea oozes passion and I am of the opinion that it’s a net positive for the series to at least try these kinds of things and see where they go.

So when it comes to the Final Fantasy VII remake, should they abandon the traditional TBC that it helped further solidify as the mainstay of all JRPGs? Maybe not. I think there is something kind of sacred to maintaining the systems that were in the original game. Minor tweaks and changes would be okay in that regard, but a total overhaul of the combat systems might be too much.

At the same time though, I can’t help but be excited for what might be. It might be super cool to see familiar bosses presented in a new way on the back of a new combat system. There is a lot of potential to bring a new experience to people, even to those that have played VII several times, and I think there can be value in that. Will it be for the better? I guess time will tell.

I hope in this rambling, I helped explain why turn-based combat might not be as acceptable as it once was.


His problem with ATB/TB is that the way to not die is to keep your HP from hitting zero?

This man is a genius, please let him advise all developers on how to make their games tactically interesting.
 

Avellion

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That HP in > HP out design was the result of poor balancing and shallow combat design. Where survivability overemphasized healing while neglecting other, more proactive means. Not turn based combat or (in his case) ATB combat.

I do agree that ATB sucks though, but his rant was way off the mark.
 

TigerKnee

Arcane
Joined
Feb 24, 2012
Messages
1,920
That rant had absolutely nothing to do with Turn-Based Combat and was instead about the common failing of battles being boring because you can heal faster than the enemy can damage you without ever running out of the resources to power that.

I think I would grade him an F on that essay for making the amateur mistake of not actually making points to support your thesis.
 

Mozg

Arcane
Joined
Oct 20, 2015
Messages
2,033
His hair is still too stylized, not sure if fits the story.

"This is a dangerous mission, but first I'm going to stop by the hairdresser"

The spiky hair shounen guy like Goku was originally just shorthand for making them out to be wild high-energy boys with unkempt hair. When it's transposed onto realistic 3D models and it doesn't mutate into different shapes in every stylized 2D comic book frame it's cargo cult stuff.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,982
That rant had absolutely nothing to do with Turn-Based Combat and was instead about the common failing of battles being boring because you can heal faster than the enemy can damage you without ever running out of the resources to power that.

I think I would grade him an F on that essay for making the amateur mistake of not actually making points to support your thesis.
Pretty much. His complaint is about a legit problem, but that problem isn't turn based gameplay but rather bottomless healing resources. Games that either limit inventory harshly or balance healing properly don't have this problem. It's not even terribly difficult to balance- it's simply a matter of ensuring that healing during combat is more powerful than damage taken (otherwise it'd be useless) but limited by mana pools or scarce resources. Though imo healing outside of combat should be made scarce as well, so that attrition becomes a problem over the course of a dungeon. Lots of old jrpgs did this just fine, before putting save/rest points right before every boss fight came into vogue (no doubt due to shitty players wasting their resources on the way to the boss and then complaining of having to do the 'trivial' dungeon all over again that they fucked up the first time so badly they had nothing left for the boss.)

Ironically, FF1 (where he bitches about Warmech) was balanced pretty well in this regard; considering it let you build whatever kind of party you wanted from the available classes and some of those could be pretty gimped. But you could easily have something like a team of black mages that are far better off burning down a bosses with high powred spells rather than using shitty healing items, and even a team with healers on it could easily be running low on available spells by the time the boss showed up.
 

ColCol

Arcane
Joined
Jul 12, 2012
Messages
1,731
http://gematsu.com/2015/12/final-fantasy-vii-remake-part-one-scenario-complete

As previously announced, Final Fantasy VII Remake is being broken up into parts as the density of the original game would not allow a remake to fit into a single release, according to Square Enix.

  • They want add delver further into Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie.

It sounds like this is getting the Hobbit treatment, secondary characters getting their own arcs that either have no meaningful impact on the story or end up retconning stuff, just to pad out the playtime in each environment, to suit the episodic format.



Always fun to develop characters everyone knows are doomed.
 
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http://www.dualshockers.com/2015/12/21/413208/

The date event will be fully voiced, but due to changes in the social situation certain scenes have to be implemented carefully, like the Honey Bee Inn.

We all knew this was coming.



Mg3ZJ0z.png




"Yes, it's true; this company has no dick."
 

Blaine

Cis-Het Oppressor
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Grab the Codex by the pussy
Final Fantasy VII is one of the shittiest Final Fantasy titles, and people who hold it in high regard are retarded, period. Notice: If you're preparing to quote this sentence and argue the point, please be aware that a smirk and a slight, indulgent shake of the head will be my only response. I may also add that sucking air through the teeth noise that truculent black people do, but I'm not making any promises.

However, even VII doesn't deserve this sacrilegious mistreatment, particularly when it comes to "being sensitive" about the cross-dressing scene. Square and Enix were wonderful developers in their heydays, and even Square-Enix turned out some good games, but they're so far over the shark at this point that they've nearly circumnavigated the entire globe and are on course to jump over the same shark a second time.
 

Grimlorn

Arcane
Joined
Jun 1, 2011
Messages
10,248
WHAT THE FUCK!!

Japan's so crazy. It's funny because Lightning was created to just be female version of Cloud.
 

vonAchdorf

Arcane
Joined
Sep 20, 2014
Messages
13,465
I really don't get why Lightning is that popular (or SE thinks that she is popular). She's probably in the "popular for being popular" phase already.
 

Talby

Arcane
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Messages
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Codex USB, 2014
I've got to hand it to Square Enix, ever since they announced this remake they've been very diligent about fucking it up in as many ways as possible.
 

Bastion

Educated
Joined
Mar 23, 2016
Messages
52
I really don't get why Lightning is that popular (or SE thinks that she is popular). She's probably in the "popular for being popular" phase already.
Because kids can easily identify with Lighting? You know, pink hair, low IQ and the personality which is so common in Japanese cartoons (this game is like a cartoon anyway).
 

Duraframe300

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
Random Neogaf comment

I'd be into tonnes of streamlining, honestly. No real grinding (just hide secrets or additional challenges off the main path), streamline or cut aspects of the battle system and/or materia, node-based "over world," and so on.
 

Jacob

Pronouns: Nick/Her
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Grab the Codex by the pussy
Random Neogaf comment

I'd be into tonnes of streamlining, honestly. No real grinding (just hide secrets or additional challenges off the main path), streamline or cut aspects of the battle system and/or materia, node-based "over world," and so on.
But how to streamline a game as simple as FF VII really.
Seriously, the battle system will probably be more complex since ATB is much more simple than many action game, materia is one of the most simple customization system in FF game, and probably they'll use open world or connected maps for the game world (Do we have any info for this already?)
 

SionIV

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Aug 28, 2015
Messages
590
I'm a game collector of certain series, and Final Fantasy is one of them. I have every Final Fantasy game with the exception of the online ones, and I even have different copies of the same game (Steam, PS1, PC). To me the last Final Fantasy that stole my breath was IX, though I did love the combat and gameplay in 10. There have been awesome Final Fantasy games (VI, IX) and there have been good Final Fantasy games (VII, VIII, X), a few mediocre Final Fantasy games (Dirge of Cerberus, Crisis Core) and then there have been terrible Final Fantasy games (FFXIII, FFX-2, FFXII) but they are all on my shelf none the less.

For the first time in all the 20 years of collecting games from the Final Fantasy series, I'm not going to buy a game. God knows that I've bought some shit games to complete a series (Resident Evil : Operation Racoon City, Alone in the Dark on the Xbox360) but this time I have to put down my foot and not buy it out of principle. They are butchering everything that I liked about the game, and turning it into a 'new' linear game that cost 60x3 fucking euro. There is a reason that the game was so acclaimed back then, and it sure as hell wasn't because of linearity, censoring content, costing a fortune or going away from Turn Based Combat.

SquareEnix somehow keep surprising me in how far they can fall. I though it was bad when FFX-2 was released, then I was furious when FFXII was released. They fell so far that when FFXIII was released, I didn't even care anymore, any respect and excitement I had for their games was gone. Even after the third release of Lightning, I was indifferent. But this, this is just too much, I've gone from indifferent to disgusted. They have fallen to a new low, even further than EA and Blizzard and I will NOT support them anymore. I hope that they remove 'Square' from their name, so that the kids that are growing up now won't think of Final Fantasy XIII or Final Fantasy VII remake when they hear it, or they won't ever find the beautiful gems that are Final Fantasy VI and IX.

And to the people out there that are excited about Final Fantasy VII Remake, I would like to share my opinion on your character. You have a shit taste in games, and both the gaming industry and the gene pool would take a sigh of relief if you suffocated on your Fallout 4 CD and died a most painful death, you worthless shit.
 
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Makabb

Arcane
Shitposter Bethestard
Joined
Sep 19, 2014
Messages
11,753
There have been awesome Final Fantasy games (VI, IX) and there have been good Final Fantasy games (VII, VIII, X), a few mediocre Final Fantasy games (Dirge of Cerberus, Crisis Core) and then there have been terrible Final Fantasy games (FFXIII, FFX-2, FFXII) but they are all on my shelf none the less.


I guess there are two kind of FF people, those that think that VI and IX are best and those that think that VII is best and IX and VI are only good. I'm in the VII boat, but we all agree that FF's post X are shit.
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,810
You may not remember but already X was shitty game due to how linear everything was. FFXIII was basically sequel to design on FFX. Only difference was that it didn't have a map like FFXIII so people didn't notice it that much.

Only thing it rescued it was battle system
 

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