Board 8 > My wife says ffx has bad game design

(+) Yeah! (+)

azuarc posted...

If you could actually control anything, maybe I'd have played more than just the initial match.

lmaooo

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things are bad because i can't read

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Blitzball might get better the more you play it but by the time the first match was over I'd already sworn off it forever

I felt that way the first time I tried playing Triple Triad as a 13 year old in 1999 and I never seriously never gave it another try until my third or maybe even fourth playthrough

13 year old me was young and naive

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As a 13 year old I felt that way about everything that wasn't Triple Triad in FFVIII

Uhhh only replace match with "first stretch of game after playing Triple Triad to death"

Didn't actually beat FFVIII until my early 20s.

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Well I played it for the first time about 2 years ago, maybe I should try again when I'm 40 >_>

Lopen posted...

As a 13 year old I felt that way about everything that wasn't Triple Triad in FFVIII

Uhhh only replace match with "first stretch of game after playing Triple Triad to death"

Didn't actually beat FFVIII until my early 20s.

We all make foolish assumptions in our youth

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Tetra Master on the other hand.

Now there's a game you could really sink hours into wondering what the hell is going on.

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One time I tried to play Tetra Master with the same regularity I played Triple Triad, thinking I might come around on it too

I made it to Dali before I gave up

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pjbasis posted...

Tetra Master on the other hand.

Now there's a game you could really sink hours into wondering what the hell is going on.

yeah at least there is a tutorial for triple triad. tetra master they try to keep half the mechanics secret


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Tetra Master is poop.

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The more you understand about Tetra Master the worse it becomes.

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Tetra master is just the poor mans dumb triple triad.

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Steiner posted...

lmaooo

What? I hit every damn button on the controller trying to influence my character's movements or something. All I get is the option to pass through defenders that horribly out-stat my weaklings. Somehow I lucked out and beat the other team once after resetting like five times, and I don't remember what I got for it, but it wasn't worth the trouble.

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you seem to have missed the button that opens the settings which allows you to turn on manual control

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Considering I played exactly one blitzball match, required by the story, and never went back, why would I even look there?

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azuarc posted...

Considering I played exactly one blitzball match, required by the story, and never went back, why would I even look there?

First things first, let's go over the basics again boys.

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azuarc posted...

Considering I played exactly one blitzball match, required by the story, and never went back, why would I even look there?

then you can't complain the game didn't do a good enough job explaining things for you

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azuarc posted...

Considering I played exactly one blitzball match, required by the story, and never went back, why would I even look there?

oof

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azuarc posted...

Considering I played exactly one blitzball match, required by the story, and never went back, why would I even look there?

but there is an infodump explaining how to play before the game. like, you can't not read the instructions and then say "i couldn't figure out how to play" - that's not criticism of the game, it's just admitting you're too stupid to play a game for 12 year olds. which is fine but don't lay it on the game

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hate when just randomly pushing all the buttons doesn't give me the results i want

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https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/i03cuf/tidus_irl/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Anyone who likes Blitzball should play Captain Tsubasa II, where Blitzball obviously got the inspiration (except it's like a poor man's Captain Tsubasa II). It has an English patch, too.

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The fact that wakkas ultimate weapon is tied to blitzball further shows how useless and trash he is.

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Some of the other characters have weapons tied to far worse minigames than Blitzball.

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Wakka's weapon was the only one I would get through my normal play.

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I'd rather dodge 600 lightning strikes in a row than play blitzball to get his ultimate weapon

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azuarc posted...

To finish? Nah. I only ever kinda got stuck in two places, and one was me being stupid. The other was the water temple, which I eventually worked my way through.

I dunno, I'll totally argue this. This shouldn't be necessary, but I'll put spoilers just in case anyone somehow both hasn't played this game *and* will in the future. Off the top of my head, stuff that a normal player could totally get stuck on without a guide:

1: Knowing to play saria's song for the goron king in order to progress. I wasted a ton of time exploring literally everywhere else in the world first

2: Knowing how to attract the zora king's attention. Knowing to go to lake hylia to look in the lake for a bottle with ruko's note in it. Same as above

3: Knowing that to get epona you have to pay evil luigi multiple times to just hang out with the horses- you can't get her the first time. Then, you have to be riding epona, z-target luigi, and speak to him. Doesn't work the first time you pay. IIRC epona isn't technically required to beat the game, so this one almost gets a pass.

4: It's established in the fire temple that the hammer is just as good as, if not better than, bombs for blowing up terrain... until it suddenly and quietly isn't anymore, starting with the water temple.

5: Knowing the only way to progress in goron city in the future is to blow up peaceful gorons with bombs

6: Knowing that you can stab through walls with bars, but can't shoot arrows through them.

Granted, I feel like 60% of players might get these by happenstance, but it completely blocks the game for the other 40%. And I could be wrong about one or two, my memory is a tiny bit hazy. The game wants things to be intuitive... it just fails sometimes

There are a couple of walls that have zero hints that they can be blown up except for the sound when you slash them, but i'll give that a pass. I'll also give a pass to anything optional, like golden skulltullas or upgrades

LOL imagine thinking a Nintendo game was obtuse

lmao imagine being a ding-dong with poop in your pants

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Lucavi000 posted...

The fact that wakkas ultimate weapon is tied to blitzball further shows how useless and trash he is.

Wakka is great and his weapon is great.

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9-year old me dropped off OoT for several years because I didn't realize you were supposed to burn cobwebs in the Deku Tree with fire

Rest of the game was easy outside of the Water Temple being garbage

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azuarc posted...

Considering I played exactly one blitzball match, required by the story, and never went back, why would I even look there?

azuarc posted...

I lucked out and beat the other team once after resetting like five times

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Why even reset is the real question. I wanted that shit over with asap

Leonhart4 posted...

Wakka is great and his weapon is great.

ok this is too far

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Evade & Counter and Attack Reels

Get wrecked

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the main thing I had trouble with in OoT was finding the motivation to keep playing it lawl

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Steiner posted...

hate when just randomly pushing all the buttons doesn't give me the results i want

I don't remember seeing this explanation you referred to in the previous post. I remember them explaining the game mechanics. If they snuck in something about some other mode you can access in the options menu, though, that obviously sailed right past me. So yes, the natural assumption is that I'm supposed to hit select or something to toggle a mode. Being primarily a PC player going back to the DOS days, I've learned that, when in doubt, hit every key on the keyboard and you might learn you can do something you didn't know you could do. It's always felt like there was supposed to be something I could do in blitzball. But why on earth would they default to some mode that's completely unusable?

Kingbutz: Yes? Are you trying to tell me something?

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You press triangle, one of the 4 face buttons on the PlayStation, and a menu pops up saying
"Manual
Auto"
So I don't think it's that unintuitive
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azuarc posted...

If they snuck in something about some other mode

there's literally an entire section dedicated to it when they first explain blitzball to you

they didn't "sneak" anything in, you just completely missed it

azuarc posted...

But why on earth would they default to some mode that's completely unusable?

Auto is supposed to be for beginners

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Steiner posted...

You press triangle, one of the 4 face buttons on the PlayStation, and a menu pops up saying
"Manual
Auto"
So I don't think it's that unintuitive

It is, there's very little indication that you press that button. I remember reading about the different modes in the tutorial as a kid and still not knowing how to activate them for a long time. After figuring it out then it's no prob though.

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foolm0r0n posted...

It is, there's very little indication that you press that button. I remember reading about the different modes in the tutorial as a kid and still not knowing how to activate them for a long time. After figuring it out then it's no prob though.

Fair, but

azuarc posted...

What? I hit every damn button on the controller trying to influence my character's movements or something

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Maybe he has a psychological condition that prevented him from seeing the triangle button

He probably didn't figure out how to guard in battle either!

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My wife also was very confused on how to guard for the longest time (to be fair I did have to google it for her after much asking)

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banananor posted...

lmao imagine being a ding-dong with poop in your pants

i came

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banananor posted...

stuff that a normal player could totally get stuck on without a guide:

I guess the main difference is that I never considered getting stuck a bad thing. Most of these issues are solved just by being a good gamer and interacting with stuff. There are absolutely hints about playing Saria for Darunia, and if you just explore the world you should find Ruto's bottle naturally. Getting "stuck" is an intended part of the game and it makes me terribly sad gamers think of these as bad game design.

I guess good game design just means having one of those call of duty "go here" meter markers. Or Quest Logs that tell you exactly what you need to do even if you ignore all NPCs!

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Hey man in a game like Xenoblade with a million sidequests I'm thankful for a guide and quest marker! I do think part of it is that we're older now so we don't want to spend a lot of our diminished gaming time just trying to figure stuff out. We want to stay in the action.

I don't mind getting "stuck" as long as the solution is something you can figure out if you're thorough enough. I feel like the only thing that you could never really figure out on your own in FFX is the airship coordinates.

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Good thing games made 20 years ago aren't even close to the size of games since!

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Leonhart4 posted...

I do think part of it is that we're older now so we don't want to spend a lot of our diminished gaming time just trying to figure stuff out. We want to stay in the action.

Yeah, that's a big part of it. Also just having access to more games. When I was a kid I would get a game for my birthday or something and it'd be my only new game for the next several months, so I didn't mind searching everywhere and doing every small thing. Nowadays I have too many other things that want attention.

I also want to say that a quest log doesn't have to mean complete hand-holding. Like if there's an NPC in town X that wants Y, I'd appreciate a log for that, even if it doesn't at all tell me how/where to get Y. It just takes out the busywork of remembering (or writing down) what the quests are and where things are located.
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pjbasis posted...

Good thing games made 20 years ago aren't even close to the size of games since!

Which is also fine! I don't think people necessarily want games to be smaller or shorter. Just to have less downtime.

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foolm0r0n posted...

Maybe he has a psychological condition that prevented him from seeing the triangle button

He probably didn't figure out how to guard in battle either!

I also don't know how to use the three seashells.

I had no idea there was a defend option in FFX. Like, what, when you're in the menu between attack and item and stuff, you just hit triangle instead?

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