Archibald said:
Mrowak,
i`m sorry, you`re one of few cool posters in this thread, its just that this thread pisses me off and i`m masochist so i continue reading it.
If the supreme god of awesomeness acts in battle like total nitwit not taking advantage of his full power, or game elements available to player he should have access to himself, allowing for the players to steamroll him I consider this an exploit, a bug or a design flaw inherent in game.
Maybe i don`t understand your position but here it`s how i see it:
Atlus creates bosses and whole system in megami games on purpose like puzzles. Thats how they want their game to be played. They make certain bosses with certain weeknesses and spells so that you`d have to build a party capable of withstading his attacks and able to kill him.
Now, on the other hand we have exploits like pre-buffing. I doubt that every fight in game is balanced for "honest" and pre-buffing players. If ambush is strong enough to kill you with your buffs then they should have even easier time with you when you`re not buffed. No? Therefore i doubt that developers in such games think "But they might come with buffs!" when creating encounters and as a result pre-buffing is not intended.
For me this is the difference. SMT`s system requires thinking and time. Pre-buffing requires to load game before encounter and push few hotkeys. SMT`s system is intended, pre-buffing is not.
How can it be design flaw when whole design is based around it?
Good point. You actually forced me to revoke my statement
So Japanese games are based around so called puzzles. The puzzle is to find out about your enemy's weakness and then use it to your adventage. The wholes system of combat is build around this premise. You can approach each puzzle in two different fashions. 1)force: grindan, bash, hack, slash, burn. - This approach, though effective is rather boring (we are in agreement, I trust). 2) Careful investigation of enemy's weakness, often through trial and error - attack enemy, see that he uses fire spell and is not resistant to "sleep" spell - use such spell / item / character combination that might work. Naturally this was a very basic example - the more difficult enemy the more challenging argorithm there will be to figure out. Obviously like with most complex problems there may be more than one solution to it.
So far we can agree, can we not?
The thing is the point 2) is nothing new in western RPGs or simple tactical games (not to mention real strategic goodness out there). Only in BG2 you had many occassions to do something like that - wizards, dragons, beholders ect. could roast your ass in a second if you weren't prepared. You used trial and error, you saw your enemy's weak spot, having got ass handed to yourself you adjusted your gear, spells, party setup - now knowing that the fucker is going to use flame breath you had protective buffs on yourself (or, if system didn't allow prebuffing you cast them immediately on your heroes once the combat started), you countered his spells with your spells (that you baught/memorised for this battle), items with your items and so on. You were victorious.
Therefore although we can say that jRPGs stress this particular element we cannot say it is exclusive to them. I could argue here that in fact wRpgs did this aspect better but this would be pointless - the disparity in our knowledge about the subject is too large to be objective for both of us.
At this moment I would like to correct my oryginal statement. jRPGs are not full of mistakes by their developers that allow you to exploit them. Rather jRPGs are designed to be flawed - the errors are not really errors but deliberate design choices that are there for the sake of the gameplay, sacrificing the consistency of the setting in the process. If they weren't there you would be forced to pick the route 1) (which, to my surprize most popamole consoletards do!).
And here is why I consider western developers of yesteryears superior to their asian counterparts. In the face of the choice, they would go into great pains to secure the high quality of both. If the combat system was wrong - it denied reason, or arsed the believability of characters and enemies they would not bother implementing it unless they found a solution.
Note here: by
making the setting explain what was transpiring in combat The dragon breath fire, flapped wings, cast spells, bit and hit you few his claws, but it didn't heal himself or raise motherfucking volcano under your feet because he was not a cleric or god of awesomeness. If he didn't have help from other figures it was explained as well - HE was the enemy of the whole populace and have antagonised everyone, or HE was too vain to recognize a threat in heroes (yes, often done lamely), or HE was deprived of his followers by you (be it as a result of subquest or linear story-progression).
And another amazing thing - the combat had to apply the same ruleset to everyone. Our dragon may have 500hp, damage resistance, immunity to fire - it is logical why. But he would use the same spells as your characters, apply the same feats, use the same items if possible. If he decided to join you party his awesome inborn facilities would not magically disappear or be diminished - if that could break the game it would not happen. And the settings rules once established would be applied to everything consistently. Even a god wouldn't magically breach your 100% immunity to death spells if the setting allowed you to have one.
Please compare this to a standard jap fare where you see stars falling during combat with no effect on the setting. Lords of hell behaving like total morons without a reason. Or the fact that if they decide to join you they suddenly become not as tough as they used to be to you.
Why a boss must act like a retard in order for him to be beatable? Why can't you simply insert a believeable explanation in game that he is limited to his current set of skills e.g. a powerful buddhist monk sealed some of his power - hence he cannot use healing spells - for that reason he will always keep a healer near him you must quickly dispose. Sounds more convincing than simply I won't because I won't?
Because not everything neads explanation. I can assume that evil black knight of genocide can`t learn healing spells because he is investing his time in black arts, therefore "light" spells aren`t aviable for him. And it works for me just fine.
You see, in my book everything needs explanation. No, not necessarily by saying in BIG BOLD words like to a retard why such and such is so and so. That would be setting breaking in itself.
But by application of the things I mentioned in the post few pages earlier
(page 17): narrative causality, common sense and logic even the most extraordinary, alien settings (through confrontation of these with what you are presented with e.g. Silent Hill 2) become credible and almost impossible to undermine.
If these were applied to our black knight he would at no place come across as silly. There must be a good reason why he survived for so long. Perhaps he was too busy killing things to learn healing spells but he certainly could have picked up those awesome healing potions you keep using like an addict. Maybe he cooperate with equally shady shaman for some magic items and extra healing. Perhaps he gained support of a powerful mage that has crafted him that cool looking armour and a sword. Certainly, both would support him in fighting your group if not out of good will
than because your agenda constitute a major threat to their plans. And instead of 100000hp boss that keeps recycling his attacks as if hit by severe case of autism we have a formidable opponent.
This is what you get when narrative causality, common sense and logic are acommodated. However, when these are not accounted for the setting, the events, the characters suffer. Terribly. And from my experience this is the case with most (if not all) jap animu-based games which try to reach beyond "childish" level. With the design which is not pro-setting but counter-it they keep retconing themselves causing a lot of nonsense few mature people are able to beare. And non of them with their faces straight.
So although I can certainly recognize merits in what you're saying: that the combat-puzzles can be quite interesting and complex, I still think that with if the design western games was preserved and incorporated into weeaboo design philosophy (rather than the other way round) they could produce some truly extraordinary titles. Alas, this has not come to pass. Pity
of Archibald.
