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 A Town Called Malus wrote:


The Final Fantasy series has pretty good pedigree for annoying as hell methods for obtaining the best weapons.

It seems to have been a Japanese thing in general. For example, IIRC, Both of the Persona 2 games had extremely good gear that could only be obtained by quite literally winning various in-game lotteries. You only had a very slim chance of winning each of the lotteries (and there was more than one in each game). Compounding that, to even make the lotteries available, you had to spend resources to use the games' rumor system (start a rumor about something, and it becomes true if enough people believe it) to change the reward for the lotteries (which were contests in magazines) to the item you wanted.


They've toned it down recently, though, probably to avoid ticking off the Western players who tend to get more annoyed with that sort of thing.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Then there was stuff like dodging 200 lightning bolts and beating the Chocobo minigame with a time of 0:00:00 in FFX.

The Final Fantasy series has pretty good pedigree for annoying as hell methods for obtaining the best weapons.

It wasn't always that way, but each game pushed the super bosses a little harder until they got completely out of hand. FWIW, X was the game that completely broke the appeal of loot for me, having done all the nonsense to turn the final boss into a one shot devoid of challenge. I'm kind of grateful, as it meant all the skinner box stuff that started to get really out of hand during the MMO craze had zero appeal.

Eumerin wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:


The Final Fantasy series has pretty good pedigree for annoying as hell methods for obtaining the best weapons.

It seems to have been a Japanese thing in general. For example, IIRC, Both of the Persona 2 games had extremely good gear that could only be obtained by quite literally winning various in-game lotteries. You only had a very slim chance of winning each of the lotteries (and there was more than one in each game). Compounding that, to even make the lotteries available, you had to spend resources to use the games' rumor system (start a rumor about something, and it becomes true if enough people believe it) to change the reward for the lotteries (which were contests in magazines) to the item you wanted.


They've toned it down recently, though, probably to avoid ticking off the Western players who tend to get more annoyed with that sort of thing.

The best example of this kind of thing that I have ever heard was on Ultima Online - back in the early days of the game when it was as hardcore as anything, you used to just get murdered and your stuff stolen as a matter of course. (Always think people complaining about being ganked in WoW - after they have chosen to play on a PvP server - cannot compare to you being murdered repeatedly, all of your stuff stolen, and then following the guy around begging for him just to give you a few coins to get going again! )

You had items that were 'relics' and old versions of items, some of which were absolutely broken they were so unbalanced - but for some reason rather than remove the code for these items, instead they would stay in the game until they were lost or 'decayed' leave an item on the ground for a period of time it would disappear etc.
So eventually most of those items disappeared, in the bank vaults of cancelling players and things like that, or just lost. But, there was the odd one that would surface now and again and then rumours would spread around the community.
A friend of mine had a suit of armour that was one of these items and almost invaluable - can't remember the specifics but it had a ridiculous defence stat and let you use magic without needing re-agents.

Basically one day as he was travelling between towns a group of guilds had been waiting for him and tried to ambush him. Think he put up a fight but eventually weight of numbers brought him down. However the moment that happened whatever 'truce' had been signed between the guilds that were working together evaporated and they all started killing each other for it. I don't know what else happened (perhaps a corpse fell behind a bush and couldn't be seen?) but the suit of armour was lost and never found again! My friend was pretty miffed about it but it was funny..

I managed to get through the Pitioss Ruins in FFXV. I followed a guide for the most part because I knew it was going to take hours regardless and I didn't want to waste even more time figuring out which was I was supposed to go. The dungeon was long and somewhat frustrating but I quite enjoyed it overall. Jump physics are not the game's strong point but it worked well enough. Two things that I think would improve the dungeon significantly though. 1 - more of a hub system rather than a sprawling mess that lets you open up shortcuts. Towards the end I kept ending up back at the entrance, struggling to work out where all the shortcuts where that let me get back to where I was. 2 - no time requirement for entering the dungeon. This adds nothing whatsoever and just serves to frustrate players who come out to save and then have to stand around waiting for the clock to tick down. No reason for that to be there. Still,overall the dungeon was a fun challenge.

I also took down the Adamantoise. This just reinforced all of my feeling about the combat system of the game being completely broken. Warp striking with the Ragnarok did thousands of damage, often hitting the cap of 9999. Any other attack was either limited in its usage or was far less effective. The monster seemed to be incapable of hurting me (most of my damage came from falling until I got the hang of the postioning and timing), so I just warp struck it over and over and over again before point warping to a recovery point and repeating. For about and hour. The game has a huge selections of weapons, multiple ally techniques and a complex spell crafting system, but nothing seems to compare to endless warp striking. I don't get it. It eventually died and I felt no accomplishment because the fight was so dumb.

Dragon Quest XI has a "definitive edition" (that's priced lower than the vanilla version of the game) coming out early next month. A demo is available, so I gave it a try. Fun stuff if you're a DQ fan.

Still chipping away at FFXIII-3 Lightening Returns. Very odd FF game. Has a time limit and you don't get experience for fighting monsters only for completing quests. That can make fighting monsters become very tedious because you don't feel like you're progressing. However each monster only has a set number and if you kill them all that's it, don't have to deal with it anymore.

Despite the ticking clock its a very long game but nonetheless you still feel rushed all the time...

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Still chipping away at FFXIII-3 Lightening Returns. Very odd FF game. Has a time limit and you don't get experience for fighting monsters only for completing quests. That can make fighting monsters become very tedious because you don't feel like you're progressing. However each monster only has a set number and if you kill them all that's it, don't have to deal with it anymore.

Despite the ticking clock its a very long game but nonetheless you still feel rushed all the time...

Sounds...fun lol.

Just wanted to say that, haven't been playing games much as I'm trying to focus on NaNoWriMo this month.

I didn't like the concept of Lightning Returns on paper but when I finally got around to playing it I was hooked. I played through so many times to try to upgrade all of my spells as much as possible. It can be pretty daunting the first time but it really rewards multiple playthroughs.

 Bilge Rat wrote:
I didn't like the concept of Lightning Returns on paper but when I finally got around to playing it I was hooked. I played through so many times to try to upgrade all of my spells as much as possible. It can be pretty daunting the first time but it really rewards multiple playthroughs.

Ya, like when the heck am I supposed to tackle Ciaus? That Gauntlet to get to him is just killing me and he's no push over. I'm hoping after I complete the other 4 main quests (3 down so far) I'll be strong enough.

I'm still playing a lot of Fallout 76. I'm around level 125 now. Mostly doing the daily challenges to get my S.C.O.R.E. up for goodies and spending a lot of time building and rebuilding my camp in between boss fights. Supposed to be a big update with lots of new stories and quests in December.

Started up Need for Speed: Payback since it was the free PS+ game last month. Played it like mad for a couple days then went to upgrade to a different car only to find out the progression system they use "speed cards" don't carry over to new cars. For those who haven't played it. Speed Cards are basically equippable car parts and mods that let you have an almost RPG like build system where you can tailor cars to different types of race events. It also is a microtransaction/loot box system. So I wanted to try out a new car, you know the focus of racing games, and found that I would basically have to replay all of the content thus far that I had played in order to regrind the car up to the point that I could use it to continue the story mode. Feth that dropping the game.


Also, I finally finished Fire Emblem Three Houses. The ending credits where it gave me a small epilogue for every character, who they "married" (not all were romantic entanglements), and what they did post-war were surprisingly heartfelt and sweet. Despite just throwing 110+hours into the game, I pretty much turned around immediately to start on the second route.

Playing more wh40k: gladius before the big eldar dlc. I've been playing necrons and oddly i find it very fun. It's weird how playing imperial guard is so boring compared to chaos or orks and esp. necrons.

With necrons high influence and power allow you to teleport a ton esp. with proxy bases which i figured out as a tactic by myself. It's very helpful for defending allies, attacking enemy bases and having a good chokepoint to face enemies.

Anyway it's been good fun teleporting my forces out of a very likely defeat and using proxy bases to make attacks get instant reinforcements from a more valuable long distance base.

Suddenly necrons feel so cheesy but it's a lot of fun.

Eumerin wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:


The Final Fantasy series has pretty good pedigree for annoying as hell methods for obtaining the best weapons.

It seems to have been a Japanese thing in general. For example, IIRC, Both of the Persona 2 games had extremely good gear that could only be obtained by quite literally winning various in-game lotteries. You only had a very slim chance of winning each of the lotteries (and there was more than one in each game). Compounding that, to even make the lotteries available, you had to spend resources to use the games' rumor system (start a rumor about something, and it becomes true if enough people believe it) to change the reward for the lotteries (which were contests in magazines) to the item you wanted.


They've toned it down recently, though, probably to avoid ticking off the Western players who tend to get more annoyed with that sort of thing.

In asia they like grind in video games apparently. it's why "asian MMO" is useally short hand for "jesus there's a lot of grind in this!"

BrianDavion wrote:

In asia they like grind in video games apparently. it's why "asian MMO" is useally short hand for "jesus there's a lot of grind in this!"

Grinding and a character creator you'll spend the first 4 hours of your playtime in trying to create the perfect catgirl.

Got hold of Space Hulk: Deathwing for a very reasonable price (missed it when it first came out so thought I would give it a go)

Was it worth a buy?

I suppose too much to ask that they are the native-American esque Deathwing from the original William King short story?

Finally finished Underhive Wars.

It was okay.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

In asia they like grind in video games apparently. it's why "asian MMO" is useally short hand for "jesus there's a lot of grind in this!"

Grinding and a character creator you'll spend the first 4 hours of your playtime in trying to create the perfect catgirl.

Monster Hunter would like a word with you.

True, in Monster Hunter World you can instead spend those 4 hours creating the perfect cat.

Been playing the hell out of CK3 and Warhammer 2. Taking a break and finally decided to sit down and play Breath of the Wild that I bought back in August.

I need to get back to MHW. But the new Spider-Man game release on Thursday...

Been catching up on the current Manhunt in Division 2. Soloing the final boss of Liberty Island sucked...

I'll say this, Sim Settlements 2 for Fallout 4 is impressive and I recommend it. I have 90 mods going and it might just be the best of the bunch.

Eumerin wrote:
I need to get back to MHW. But the new Spider-Man game release on Thursday...

Been catching up on the current Manhunt in Division 2. Soloing the final boss of Liberty Island sucked...

YES! That truly is a horrid experience, but it seems that the devs are somewhat aware of this and it dose not pop up too often in the Manhunt campaigns

I really hope they port over the same concept from the new Ghost Recon title update to Division. Raid loot is now in an explorable format of the raid locality plus the cosmetics as rank up rewards for the specializations.

 Trondheim wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
I need to get back to MHW. But the new Spider-Man game release on Thursday...

Been catching up on the current Manhunt in Division 2. Soloing the final boss of Liberty Island sucked...

YES! That truly is a horrid experience, but it seems that the devs are somewhat aware of this and it dose not pop up too often in the Manhunt campaigns

This is the first time I've seen it in a Manhunt.

The big issue was that I had party finder on for it the entire time (set to Open Party), and it ran right up until the final fight without a single person being placed in my party. No one wants to run it unless they absolutely have to. I can't say I blame people for taking that approach. The Keener fight is not a fun one (particularly if you have a gadget-focused build, like I do) But it is pretty frustrating when it's part of something required, like a Manhunt. And, of course, I was running it weeks after most people cleared that part of the Manhunt.

I'm in the dreaded "between games" phase. Cyberpunk 2077 is coming, so I don't dare start any new game that would take too long to play, as I need to be able to finish it by December 19. So, despite my enormous Steam backlog, I bought a new game that randomly pops up into the recommended games from time to time. Atelier Ryza. Never heard of the series before, looked like an easy enough game to pick up and have some simple fun with. And, yeah, it's fun so far.

Still working my way through Bioshock Infinite. Not sure if I enjoy it very much, it's quite a stark contrast to Bioshock 1 and 2. The world is really cool but the combat feels pretty empty. The AI pathing is predictable and stupid, there's no real tactics involved in the combat either and the answer to difficulty is throw more bodies at you.

There are none of the fun build-ups that you got at the end of each chapter when having to face a big daddy, which required some thought. Realistically, you don't even need to use vigors in the game save for when you want to hack a machine, the guns just do the job for you.

Hopefully the DLC redeems it when I'm finished by visiting Rapture.

I was able to play a couple of hours of Spider-Man: Miles Morales before I went to bed last night. It's more of the familiar Spider-Man goodness that I know and love.

Playing assassins valhalla on the series x. Put it on at 8 and just switched off now. Haven’t done much of the story , just waking sound and seeing what stuff I can find...

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
Still working my way through Bioshock Infinite. Not sure if I enjoy it very much, it's quite a stark contrast to Bioshock 1 and 2. The world is really cool but the combat feels pretty empty. The AI pathing is predictable and stupid, there's no real tactics involved in the combat either and the answer to difficulty is throw more bodies at you.

There are none of the fun build-ups that you got at the end of each chapter when having to face a big daddy, which required some thought. Realistically, you don't even need to use vigors in the game save for when you want to hack a machine, the guns just do the job for you.

Hopefully the DLC redeems it when I'm finished by visiting Rapture.

The DLC is like the actual game and a good wrap for the series. It's weird how that was the best part of it.

I'm currently playing through Red Dead Redemption 2, and playing a bit online too. Finished the online story missions so far in the dishonourable route and currently doing bounty hunting missions.