[General Discussion] Overused Gaming Conventions

When I saw Qwarky talking about the (lack of) female armor, Lenneth was also the first female character that popped into my mind of at least decent armor, as well as Chris from Suikoden III.

So here's a thing that I mentioned in the FFXII thread regarding RPGs in general:

Originally Posted by Spatula

I'm wondering if there are any well...snow plains or terrain because I want to know of SquareEnix addresses the issue of characters changing their attire to suit the weather. This bothered me in FFX where Tidus and the gang would wear summer wear for like the Highland plains. As much as I'm hoping for, I doubt it will happen here.
A couple other things is how come, not only in FF games, but pretty much every other RPG game the monsters will ALWAYS team up against YOU; do they have some secret vendetta against your traveling party or something? You'll find the strangest combinations of like a Flim Flan teaming up with like a Bird or something which really don't have much in common, but the only thing on their agenda is to KILL YOU. I think this is why I generally enjoy fighting human like characters (seeing in the first few clips of FFXII) because you know the enemies have a reason to hunt your party down - this time probably because its a political difference in their system that they will wage war against your party.

So basically:

1) Proper clothes for the characters to cope with the environmental elements.

2) Monsters that well...behave more natural. But it does look like FFXII is stepping in the right direction reading a few replies after.

How ya doing, buddy?

The more I look at this picture...the more I wonder how the hell she'd survive with a fire ball blast, lest even a cast of Ultima in her groin region. Oh wait, let's back up a bit and put in a strike of a regular sword.

Oh well,

MAY contain spoilers in the very first bit of FFXII:

Her husband dies anyways, so no big loss. This really isn't spoiler material now is it? It's shown in the first 7 minutes of the opening CG.

I guess it's convenient for a quickie.

Originally Posted by Qchan

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Sounds like Gunpla talk.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

You'll also have to keep in mind for most RPG conventions that at most boss battles, the ratio is 3 turns for the player (assuming three characters are used in the present fighting party) versus 1 boss. This pretty much allows the player to execute three commands against the computer's 1 command per turn,whether turn based or ATB. The boss will obviously need to compensate in some departments, usually the max health and increased damage to give the computer's side a "fighting" chance, if you will.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

What makes these boss battles relatively easy, as you have stated, is that bosses which only have one turn. Many of these bosses in various RPGs that I've played so far spend that one turn on the attack command, or basically on a command that will damage your party through a spell or mal-condition. There are bosses which will do special commands, such as a block of some sort, to reduce or nullify attacks. But one thing I've noted is very few of these bosses bother to use that turn to heal themselves.

It looks like the programmers gave the bosses a priority on damage to the opposing party rather than healing the boss. Again, this also explains why bosses have such high hit point values to compensate for their not healing themselves. I personally found most to all of the bosses in FFX very easy, with the exception of the Sanctuary Keeper. After examining why I’m seeing the Game Over screen several times, it noted that this particular boss was exploiting the “Curaga” spell almost every second to give himself 9999 HP. This was the reason why it seemed to take forever to deal any decent damage and actually keep the damage there. If programmers want to make bosses more difficult, allowing them to heal themselves through perhaps an auto-potion or spell.

As well, the player’s party might only seem to have several “weaker” characters against the 40,000 some HP boss, where each of the characters might only have 1000 HP each. For argument sake, let’s assume that there are three characters in this party and each character has 1000 HP. This makes the player’s side have 3000 HP vs 40,000 HP. This isn’t the whole picture though. Recall that many RPGs employ an item system where usually most of these characters will have access to their inventory. Let’s suppose this player has 50 Hi-potions that regenerate 1000 HP and 100 small potions that regenerate 250 HP. This is already an additional 75,000 HP to the player, and this is excluding items which help bring back to life the fallen characters; an ability that is usually lacking in most bosses – to regenerate themselves.

As you can see now, programmers need to find a happy medium for the bosses to pose a challenge to the player without stalling their progress too much. If the bosses do have the ability to restore themselves HP, then the programmers need to be wary of not turning the fight into a battle of attrition, and seeing which side has more potions or abilities to make it out at the bitter end.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I was mentioning on a general sense. The more "bosses" you have in an individual battle, the more turns the computer gets per round. But, again re-iterating, most of the RPGs I've played so far have just one boss per battle. Also when I say "boss", I mean the general bad dude/monster usually at the end of a particular stage - I'm not referring to "super bosses" such as the Ultima weapon. Of course those bosses are engineered in such a way that even though they have one turn, they're attacks are absolutely devastating. Also note, that I obviously have not played every RPG in existence, so I'm sure my comment does have some holes in it, but at the same time, should make some sense.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Under the circumstances of anything MGS3 related, the US wanted to keep the whole operation under wraps, so sending in the marines and a whole battalion of tanks into the USSR would probably start raising a few inquries in the international community.

I understand what you are saying. Games such as Rainbow Six and the like do have world-effecting implications, and at least you have a team to take care of it rather than a one-man army. I'm trying to run other games such as this through my head but can't recollect at this moment. I'll check back later.

How ya doing, buddy?

Splinter Cell (I've only played the first one) was way too heavy on doing things a particular way, and that was the only way to do it. It was basically a trial and error game that tested your patience, in a wrong way.

MGS games in general also tested your patience in waiting for the right moment, but it allowed you freedom to do somethings your way, and you could still get away from "screwing up" the alarm which didn't add as much to the frustration meter.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?