Well, no. I more meant like, you have this fancy conversation system, sure. Is the underlying game actually GOOD, though?

They're promising a lot of really impressive, new features, ergo I'm sort of hesitant, because I can think of a lot more games that promised a lot and didn't make good on the promises than games that actually did. I think Oblivion had some promises for a revolutionary AI and NPC conversation thing. I can think of a few recent games that I thought really delivered on pretty lofty ideas (Dwarf Fortress) but...

Also, do all these details necessarily translate into fun?

It also adds some. Like, in Nocturne, most of the skills were useful in some way or other. DDS had... well, some skills that didn't seem even remotely useful. Also, DDS1's skill system was linear to the point of being limiting. DDS2's was much better. Also, er, actually, DDS2 just felt a lot better balanced. DDS1 never really got challenging till like, the end.

You're not supposed to learn every skill. That's why you get demons that have the skills you, er, don't.

Also, just decide on how on you want to 'build' your character and only take the relevant skills. What I mean is, do you want him to be physical, based on one of the groups of magic, more of a healer character, etc.

So for example, let's say you'd want a fired-based character. For this, you'd need:

1) The best available single-hit fire attack.
2) The best available multi-hit fire attack.
3) Fire-boost.

Basically everything fire-related you'd need would be that. Other useful skills:

4) MP-Drain (Magic based characters need this, and it's much, much more useful than Chakra Walk as it works in battle. Physical characters would need some sort of HP raising/draining ability).
5) General heal-all spell couldn't hurt.
6) Another stat-boost skill (MP boost or something) or one of the higher-level buff/debuff (Like Warcry) skills that demons don't get that often.

FFXI isn't indicative of MMOs as a whole.

To me, the reorganized map structure, which I guess was a result of the battle system, made the game feel different, as did the hunts, and some of the other things they did in regards to the town structures and the weather sequencing and whatnot. The structure of the game felt different, very.

but the battle system mostly just, er, felt the same and that sort of bugged me. it was SORT of action RPG, but not quite, because, well, asI said, you can't really meaningfully DODGE attacks, if an enemy targets you, they'll basically catch up unless you just leave combat completely, and while it's a small thing, you never actually actively attack yourself. You just make the menu choice.

Quickenings are also sort of lame. They're... just really strong attacks, ultimately, and they don't have any unique affects or anything. I even read they do the same relative damage. So they're basically only different visually. I'd sort of prefered, say, FFVIII style limit breaks for the quickenings, where, er, they worked differently from eachother, or FFVI skills where you'd be doing key commands or using machines or whatever. The non magic skills you get just aren't that interesting, and that's the main thing about the battle system that drives me nuts. Even if every character has a different weapon and magic specialization, they still almost all PLAY the same.

License Grid is standard FF loopy stat game. It'd have made more sense if they just said "skill grid" instead of "license grid" because the concept of licenses just doesn't make any sense. It's ultimately just a standard semi-non-linear skill progression system. If you want license to make sense, you need to like, implement a moral system and reward the player for not killing the living !@#% out of everyone to prove responsibility or something. I don't know.

I'd love to see gambits in an actually action rpg though. Instead of just generic "Conserve magic!" order sets and the like.

As for the bosses, the story bosses weren't too bad. The mark bosses, though? Those were just sort of cheap. They all seem to have "Regen" which, er, tends to completely heal them. The only viable strategy is to do absolutely massive damage as quickly as possible and er, that mostly involves spamming quickenings. If not, then the only other possibility is to find the single, rather esoteric strategy that works (Which is sort of aproblem the entire series has had -- really hard set strategies for bosses, making it less strategy, and more like puzzle solving, which is sort of lame).

In any case, if FFXII played like an MMO, you'd be able to spend five hours making furniture, and spam polarbears in the middle of town.

(Seriously, I've never played an MMO that had an fFish battle system. I imagined FFXI does, but, er, I've never played that, and it's apparently not indicative of the genre as a whole. i've seen WoW being played and WoW combat looks NOTHING like FFXII combat).

FFXII's gameplay is not MMO style. At all. It's just the same damn ATB battle system they've been using for years, only now you can walk around in battles (which doesn't seem to have any affect on the gameplay, really) and you have a really customizable auto-battle feature.

It's FF, so obviously :3

Just because I started playing it again lately... Dwarf Fortress.

http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2006/09/end-of-disenfranchisement-through.html

That blog post is really interesting and I think it hits the nail on the bong on a lot of points.

Here's another idea I'm deriving from that post. People want to influence the world in games? Makes sense. But it isn't exactly feasible. I mean, the world's pretty damn big, so maybe you CAN'T influence it at large, logically.

also, did I already mention that 'emergent characterization' think I was thinking about?

Anyway, in summation, if you do an open-ended game right -- and I mean really, truly, absolutely right -- then it's not just having a linear plotline where you can go off and explore at will, or a semi-linear plotline, ie, preset events that can occur in varying orders.

If you do it really, really right, you don't HAVE any set plot or story. Instead, you have a sort of history that emerges from your actions. That's what dwarf fortress does -- and this isn't just some side thing. It's a definite intent. The sort of "history tracking" the game does is enormous and deep. Even if you can't change the world at large, everything you do ultimately WILL leave some underlying mark on the world. It's this extra step of permanence that changes things completely. Other games HAVE offered this sort of freedom, but only a few work in such a way that allows for stories as emergent behavior.

Alisha, dawg, no offense, but nothing in that post made sense.

It's not that it doesn't work perfectly. It's that it doesn't work at all.

also, the rewards were usually those goddamn rabbit statues that did all of jack and &**!. Sure, you can sell them. Yey. That's not an interesting rewards. That's money.

It's also an incredibly contrived and meta-game rewards system. You know how to make exploration rewarding? Maybe adopt a system where you get experience for doing quests or just FIND strange, out of the way stuff, like in Deus Ex.

Better yet. You want a reason to explore? Okay. Those chest you usually have in dungeons. Put items in them that are ACTUALLY DESIREABLE. Make dungeon layouts INTERESTING. And maybe make NPCs and special encounters a bit more robust so there's a point in actually finding then.

I know I brandish Ultima 7 a lot, but really, it does pretty much a lot of the stuff I want done. Ultima 7 exploration had purpose because you generally found stuff, and it wasn't just getting paid for map completion. It ranged from bizarre, amusing NPC-related events to party members to the "Hoe of Death."

Telling the player to explore incredibly poorly designed and remarkably empty dungeons, not to FIND stuff int he dungeons, but just to complete some map, and then just dishing out some arbitrary, out-of-game reward, is not a good way to encourage exploration. It is a good way of encouraing me to not give a flying !@#%.

I also recall a few dungeons where it wasn't really possible to get 100% although maybe I just suck at the game.

How... do you even finish the game without quicksaves? That's... buh.

It had a part where you could do about three or so dungeons in any order, I think. Water, Fire, and some other temple.



Quite. Same for... the second, sort of. The Theme Item Per Dungeon gimmick is a tad oldish... And the whole "Item X has limited use outside of it's intended dungeon" DEFINITELY was in LttP.



Yeah, but this was, like, broken. While the idea was to "explore" the map,it was based on completely filling in the map. And doing so was stupid, because the area that got filled in on the map was very tiny in relation to your character, and you'd basically have to do two passed per each 'corridor' to fill it in on the map completely.

Russian :D Anyway, might I ask what Chetyre is, and what it's the fourth of?