Chrono Compendium
Zenan Plains - Site Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: ZealKnight on July 10, 2012, 12:58:14 pm
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Ok everyone likes to complain about Final Fantasy. It's become fashionable in the video game world to hate on Final Fantasy. So in complete seriousness how would you fix the franchise?
If it were me, I'd start with canceling all these spinoffs. Not because the suck, but because they waste personel that could be used on speeding up the process of creating the franchise. FF12 took four years to be released and 13 took three. I'm not saying a game should only take one year to make, but two years should be a max.
Next, I'd fire Toriyama. Maybe Kitase too. Toriyama has pretty much proven himself unable to direct a game at this point. Yes Toriyama was credited as director of X but so were three others. He was not given full directorship of that game he did receive full directorship of X-2, XIII, XIII-2, XII:Revenant Wings, and Blood of Bahamut. Each of those games were decent, but they don't have the mass appeal of the old FF games. The reason I might fire Kitase is because he has TOO much power. At this point he is a symbol of FFVII and less of a creator. He probably is still a great writer, but he is such a supporter of Toriyama it makes me question is thought process. But the main reason I would fire him, is because of his inability to get along with Hiroyuki Ito. If you don't know who Ito is let me first direct you to his Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroyuki_Ito Basically he created the ATB system, Gilgamesh, the Job system in V and Tactics, Directed VI, The trial scene in Chrono Trigger, the materia system, Directed FFIX, the ATE system in IX, Mognet, Chocobo Hot&Cold, and Directed XII
Now here's the issue. Ito believes a game should be about how the player interacts with the story and Kitase believes a powerful story should take full precedent. I don't think they get along. If possible that they could work together the best Final Fantasy ever could be made. I.E. another FFVI
As far as battle system is concerned I'd start by taking XII's system and evolve it. I'd use the WiiU. I think the tablet is a great idea for JRPGs. You can use the analogue stick to walk around and use the the touch tablet to control your characters. This would ease the interface and if done well enough could get rid of the need for gambits. Use some standards in Western RPGs, such as auto attack after the initial choice to attack and auto attack things that attack you. If this still is too difficult gambits on all party members excluding the main character could be utilized. As far as Limits are concerned I'd like to include double tech and triple techs. They should be cut scenes similar to quickenings in XII. To get new single techs you would level up. And double techs would be gotten similar to Persona 4 where increasing your relationship with other characters can get you double techs. This would be similar with triple techs, but instead the three characters should have a group affection level as well. Add the idea where you can date any character you want. Hell why not make a character gay if you want. Have each of the characters hate the villain for reasons similar to Tifa's and Aerith's reasons for Sephiroth. (the only way of learning it though is by building the relationship with the character as to not have one character's story overshadow the other) As far as character design is concerned Nomura usually has that done pretty well, but if I had to suggest something (although really unimportant because he's great with this as it is) I guess I would take inspiration from some Kpop groups. I mean 2ne1 and Bigbang dress like a bunch of FF characters. In the first 6 seconds of Fantastic Baby we see G-Dragon looking like a FF villain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAbokV76tkU As for 2ne1 if you're interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC9yVkniWQ4
The ATE system would be a great way of allowing the player to interact with the characters and build relationships. The ability system could use the crysterium system of XIII but instead of it being already done for you, you create the grid yourself. You start with 10 empty nodes and infuse materia (not really materia but I'm assuming it would be called something crystal like, basically items that hold a certain amount of nodes stats and abilities) into them to extend the grid. Of course by infusing some you sacrifice something, either they might be hard to come by or they take a bit of your stats. (like how equipping certain materia lower certain stats) Also Summons wouldn't replace the party, instead they would be a big attack that attacks all aggro enemies, there would be a short cutscene though so don't be too disappointed. I would make nine playable characters, each with their own unique weapon and starting stats, however the stats are completely customizable but for example a character that starts out as a mage is harder to turn into a tank but is possible to max out their stats in this way if you really want. As for leveling up, it does need to be there, the way stats would increase would be on a percentage scale, depending on which stats you increase on the ability grid. In other words if you spend most of your stat increases on HP in the ability grid then when you level up you get more HP than any other stat. Save points refill Hp and Mp. I'd include the battle chain from XII. Treasure Chests would not be random (WTF were they thinking putting that in FFXII!?) Weather like XII, but it could be done a bit better and traps could exist still.
Next I wanna stress Mini games should be involved in the main story at least once, like VII and X. And the FFIX or FFVIII card game. Also all sidequests should be available at all times, but most importantly they should yield the BEST equipment and abilities and should have just as compelling a story as the main story and be about major characters (not necessarily the playable characters, but major characters none the less.) not some random NPC whose entire creation was solely for the sidequest to exist. This is what made Chrono Trigger's sidequests so great and why I do the everytime I replay it... every year.
A world map would be awesome, but I could deal with a FFXII style of map. Another thing I would like is just conversation for the sake of conversation like in WRPGs where I can ask anything I like. That's only my take on the franchise though. I'm sure I missed something in this rant though. lol
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Is XII's battle system really so great? Has it devolved so far as to have gambits do most of the fighting for you? I'm not bashing it (I think it a rather neat concept), I'm honestly curious to know if that is the prevailing opinion. Personally, I have always enjoyed X's battle system the most--simple and turn-based, with a clearly defined turn order (and one that doesn't cheat either; I'm looking at you, Radiant Historia). I would like to see that utilized again.
I'm short on time, but one thing I would love to see every RPG implement is The World Ends with You's difficulty settings. Story is important, and to have an enemy you just can't seem to defeat get in the way of that is frustratingly frustrating. As such, difficulty should be a challenge, not a necessity. TWEWY's option to modify difficulty (even after losing a battle) is quite a boon. Even leveling up is an option; Neku gains levels from experience, but you can reduce them (and thus his overall strength) to raise the chance of looting. Neat, huh?
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I was not particularly impressed with any aspect of FFXII, and the battle system did not strike me as something worth emulating (a friend of mine failed to finish the game because of it—it was just too twitchy for her. I did get to the end, but I don't think I'm going to repeat the experience any time soon). Furthermore, even if some of Squeenix's executive may claim that story is paramount in their games, FFXII's plot was murky and difficult to keep track of, and most of the characters were unengaging. Flashy video cutscenes do not a story make.
Basically, the problem is that adding WRPG/MMORPG elements to what was originally a series of hardcore JRPGs messes with players' expectations, and not in a good way. If I'd wanted one of those other types of games, that's what I would have bought: there are plenty of them out there. By contrast, the number of true JRPGs released in English for the major consoles seems to have been in steep decline since the middle of the PS2 era...or is it just me?
This doesn't mean that JRPGs can't or shouldn't innovate—it means that substituting bits and pieces taken from other people's games in an attempt to pursue the mythical mainstream audience isn't innovating. Neither is adding an idiot like Van to a game as the main character because they think that's what some demographic or other wants (IIRC, Basch was originally supposed to be the main character of FFXII). Squeenix needs to get back to its roots and not worry quite so hard about what the market wants (newsflash, guys: if you start building a game right now based on what the market wants most at this point in time, by the time it's released, the market will have moved on. You don't catch the damned rabbit by running to where it was ten minutes ago).
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I was not particularly impressed with any aspect of FFXII, and the battle system did not strike me as something worth emulating (a friend of mine failed to finish the game because of it—it was just too twitchy for her. I did get to the end, but I don't think I'm going to repeat the experience any time soon). Furthermore, even if some of Squeenix's executive may claim that story is paramount in their games, FFXII's plot was murky and difficult to keep track of, and most of the characters were unengaging. Flashy video cutscenes do not a story make.
You didn't like Basch, Balthier, Ashe, or Fran? I personally love FFXII. I'm not sure you really played much XII if you're still trying to use that old argument of "game plays itself, lol!"
Gambits are there as an option, but you absolutely do NOT have to use them. There's an option (on by default, I believe, but it's been a while since I've played, so I could be wrong about that) to have the game pause when you open the battle menu. From there, you can flip between characters and put in your own commands for each character. You can play it entirely manually if you wish.
As for the gambit system itself, it will only do what you tell it to do, so while it does automate some basic things, it's still entirely your call as to what it's automating. If you know that every time you have your main character attack a monster you're going to go give the rest of your party an order to attack the same monster, why not just set a gambit for that? It streamlines the combat which is something that I think everyone can agree is not a bad thing. You're never going to be running into a situation where you're thinking "why are you doing that, gambit system? That doesn't make any sense and you're stupid!" (unless you misunderstood the "program" you entered ;) And even then, if the gambit has gone off the rails, your manual inputs will override the gambit so you can fix the issue immediately, then you can go back into the menu and tweak the gambit to fix whatever issue has arisen. They did purposefully make it in the image of an MMO, but for every person like you who takes exception to that, there's at least one person like me who loves the idea. The bits that they took from MMOs work really well and because it's single-player, you don't have to worry about other idiots fuckin' around with your ability to enjoy it. Because it's offline and non-subscription, they don't have to build the game to be a total boring-ass grindfest.
Being able to see the mobs (and thus being able to choose to avoid them if you wish) is the single best thing to come about in JRPG design in years, I'd say. It's really no different than being able to Run from battle which you've been able to do in every FF ever, it's just less tedious. If they need to force you into a battle, they have ways to ensure you can't get away, but for what would be random battles in prior installments, you get the choice ahead of a loading screen/battle-start-animation of whether or not you really want to bother.
As for gambits, again, you're right, nobody at all seemed to mind them in Dragon Age: Origins... I didn't hear word one about that game playing itself, but it had literally the exact same system. The difference was the Final Fantasy fans don't want the franchise to stay fresh and ahead of the genre. They want Dragon Quest with Tetsuya Nomura's art.
You set up gambits for your party members, so that they will do exactly what you want them to do. If you want them to deviate from that, just give a direct order and it will override it. You don't need to turn the entire system off to get the manual control. If 90% of the time you're going to have all three party members attack one target, tell me why it's better to have to input that Attack command three separate times EVERY time? Wouldn't it be smoother to tell the game "hey, unless I tell you otherwise, I want these two fools to attack whatever I'm attacking"?
Everyone makes out like FF12 was this radical departure for the series, and while on the surface it was, when you think through the mechanics, it's really not that far off of what came before. Besides I said try to get rid of the gambits with forced direct control using the tablet of the WiiU. That should be the goal of the battle system for FFXV honestly, a way of having a Nomura style FF game with the enemy/battle on the field with direct control of each character. I just said if the interface is still too hard or if the PS or XB is the chosen system then the gambit system is perfectly fine.
As far as characters are concerned Basch and Gabranth are two of the greatest characters in FF history. Between the dialogue and motivation or the design they are all around lovable. Ashe was strong but not sociopathic, in contrast to lightning. Balthier was witty and badass. Vann is the only worthless character in the game. At least Penelo befriends Larsa and uses him as a MAJOR bargaining tool with Arcadia. Fran was sexy, interesting, and informative. Shes basically Lulu with an interesting past, and a sexier design. I won't say the game was perfect. Parts of it were down right stupid. I liked Vayne. I just don't think the epic things he did were presented as epic as the should of. Like when he killed his father. I believe he killed all his brothers too. Too bad they didn't say anything about that.
Honestly if you really want the classic JRPG experience Dragon Quest might be your thing. FF is always trying to evolve to stay ahead of the rpg genre. DQ is just classic fun. You should try that out. It might be your thing instead of current FF. That and the 4 warriors of light and bravery default.
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Wow, I just re read that post and it sounded very dick. I'm sorry. I just meant if you go back to FF12 I think you'll find that it is still fun and respectable. I can't do that with 13 or 13-2. They're very hard to go through again. And FFX's battle got so boring at times and SO easily exploitable. I think it's a great game, but I think it was directed very well that you don't see the flaws easily.
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Balthier and Basch managed to hold my attention to some extent—without them, I likely wouldn't have finished the game at all. The girls I remember only vaguely—it tends to be more difficult for female characters to catch my interest (I couldn't even remember Fran's name until you mentioned it). Van, the other girl (Penelo?), and the NPCs, including the antagonists, mostly didn't work, and what little I remember of the plot is a jumble of politics that didn't seem to make much sense at the time, never mind a couple of years later.
As for the combat system, there is nothing you could possibly do to make me like it. The problem isn't that it's too complicated, the problem is that I want to be able to focus on one thing at a time rather than having to keep track of what three characters and some number of antagonists are doing simultaneously. Screaming, "WILL YOU KEEP THE FUCK OUT OF MY HAIR WHILE I [DO X]?!?!?!" at the screen isn't fun—it's stressful, and I play games to destress. (Oddly enough, I have less of a problem with this in the Star Ocean games, suggesting that there's something additional about the implementation here that's messing with me, although it could be just the difficulty level.)
So yes, I do want to put in the attack command three separate times, thanks very much. That doesn't make me get ticked off at the game.
The Final Fantasy series up to and including X did constantly reinvent certain things about its gameplay, namely the skills/magic and sometimes the levelling paradigms. The only significant change in the combat paradigm, however, was from the pure turn-based system of the NES days to a system of turns assigned by speed. Moving away from that seems to have been a large part of what made the games less enjoyable for me.
I get the impression that what I want from these games may be completely the opposite of what you want from them. Which is fine, but it does mean that we're never going to agree on what needs to be done to "fix" the series.
(And actually, Dragon Quest—at least the early games in the series that I've played—doesn't wow me either. I'm more of a Suikoden fan.)
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ZealKnight, have you played Xenoblade? MANY of the aspects your describe are actually evident in Xenoblade... The FFXII semi-real-time combat, the weather system, the character affinity, etc. Double tech's and summons weren't included in Xenoblade, but I didn't miss them, to be honest.
Honestly, Xenoblade felt like a more refined FFXII. It took the combat strengths of that game and made them so much more user-friendly... and more fun. And we all know that at the end of the day the 'fun' factor takes center stage. I'm still slowly playing through it (having a baby makes video game time a rare occurance) and have been LOVING it so much. It's one of my favorite video games ever, and that's saying a lot. Each time I play it it is an absolute treasure.
I tend to hate each Final Fantasy the first time I play them. My first RPG was Chrono Trigger, followed by Secret of Mana, and then FFVII. Beyond FFVII I have have played each one in order. The first time I played FFVIII, I hated it; I hated the draw system and gave up on Disc III. I came back and played it a few years ago and absolutely loved it. To this day the Laguna story is one of my favorite video game stories ever - I think FFVIII could have benefited from more Laguna, in fact. Next I played FFIX and also hated it the first time I played it; the story didn't keep me engaged and the mechanics were just 'blah.' I played in again around 2005 or 2006 and loved it. In fact, it's my favorite Final Fantasy to this day. Time came and I played both FFX and FFXII (I skipped FFXI and plan on skipping FFXIV). I hated them both the first time I played them, got to the final dungeon, and gave up.
I think I get frustrated the first time I play through the games because they don't live up to my expectations that preceded them. I subconsciously desire a rehash of a previous FF title, and by comparison, the previous entry (which I have disliked to this point) looks good by comparison. It is this subconscious desire for more of the same that disappoints me.
I could say the same for why I think Chrono Cross disappoints some.
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ZealKnight, have you played Xenoblade? MANY of the aspects your describe are actually evident in Xenoblade... The FFXII semi-real-time combat, the weather system, the character affinity, etc. Double tech's and summons weren't included in Xenoblade, but I didn't miss them, to be honest.
Honestly, Xenoblade felt like a more refined FFXII. It took the combat strengths of that game and made them so much more user-friendly... and more fun. And we all know that at the end of the day the 'fun' factor takes center stage. I'm still slowly playing through it (having a baby makes video game time a rare occurance) and have been LOVING it so much. It's one of my favorite video games ever, and that's saying a lot. Each time I play it it is an absolute treasure.
I did play Xenoblade. That's actually why I thought of this. The first thing I thought was this reminds of of XII. I personally think Xenoblade is the best RPG I've played. If it had Chrono Cross or Trigger's story I'd stop playing video games because no game could beat its perfection. My only issue with Xenoblade (besides how freakishly long it is) was the abilities started to get confusing. When monsters started to see me reading the future my mind was crying. That's why an FF coating would be friendly and loving.
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I was honestly giving some serious thought about this until you made a dire mistake in claiming that an FF other than the most obvious FF in my mind to be the best in the series was the best.
I don't deny that you make a number of very good points about actually -fixing- the series being more important than just making fun of it... Though, anytime since XI, I sort of have trouble defending the series anymore... that aside... The one thing I just can't agree with you on... is that VI was the best. It just wasn't in my opinion... it was ok... I'd put it above X in plot, but far below it in terms of replay value... and X isn't even in my top 3.
I'd love to see the Classic ATB system turned into something maybe slightly new, just new enough to not be a carbon copy of of the rest... and nothing else done to it... Hell I'd love to see another turn based system...
I have a problem with deciding which mindset is more important though... Is a phenomenal plot more important than an interactive one... well there's no way to answer that really... both things are important, and ideally I'd want to have a plot that is both interactive and branching ad nauseum, and phenomenal at the same time... but it can't be done in the space of time that games are made in... it would take a lifetime to accomplish that, and that's if you have a large group of planners that are all perfectly synchronized in function and execution...
However, I can say that as things stand now, I'd prefer a mildly engaging plot with lots of options over another RPG-on-rails...
I heavily disagree on the XII battle system thing though... I hated it.
To be honest, I think the best thing that could happen to the series right now is if a small group of indie developers that haven't even become a "company" yet, were to make a game and bootleg it as "the next final fantasy." I'm disgusted with pretty much everything I see in modern FF's. Too much focus on graphical realism details... I've seen realistic style graphics... and that's all they are... a style... they don't look real enough to be worth it anymore... it isn't something new and cool... so stop acting like its the only style there is... (that goes for all modern RPGs these days really... if I wanted realism I'd go get stabbed by a hobo... THAT's a realistic scenario.)
Can the fancy menus. There's no point. No one looks at the menu and says "Wow this game must be great because of how beautiful these menus are."
Music. More of it. The last modern RPG I played, while I loved it and all and had probably 200 songs... felt very stingy with the music, and FF is certainly not getting better about its musical variety... And the music they do have, seems to be pretty unengaging lately.
One thing to avoid... Metal. A lot of the FF's are using less orchestral music and more modern style music... While this in itself isn't bad, the actual scores for the music are a lot less interesting... again this applies to most RPGs today...
Switch back to the time tested "I stand an inch away from you and press a button to initiate conversation" tactic. That worked. It worked really well. Also, don't use any fancy gimmicks like having high quality character render portraits in every conversation... It just feels cheap anymore... I want what you abandoned: Interactive speech, with a few minor character animations applied to it.... and I stress the character animations. It seems like the only thing any RPG character knows how to do anymore is stand up straight; I know there wasn't much other than that in XIII... I'm not saying you need to have a cutscene at every conversation... (in fact I'm getting tired of those too)... Nah, I just want the characters to fold their arms and think once in a while... maybe look surprised for a moment...
Well, for example, I know Crisis Core lacked a lot of realtime character animation (and reused most of what they had, far too often... and yet still not used often enough to begin with) because it was a limited medium. UMD's are pretty small. FFXIII had seemingly less realtime animation, and it had something like 40-80gb of space on its Blu-ray disc... Quit wasting space and in fact processing power, on making the graphics look "shiny" and make them feel "complete," by having some variety in what they can do.
Mini games... some people are probably scoffing at the mention right now... but think about it, a few FF's had some minigames that were genuinely fun... Chocobo Hot and Cold, while it could get annoying sometimes, was actually quite fun to me... it isn't even the kind of game I normally like, but it was done so well, that I could actually get into it. It was something that I could do when I was tired of playing through a particularly unenjoyable (or far too familiar) part of FFIX... Tetra Master and Triple Triad... they get a lot of flak, but hell, they were fun diversions too.
Locations. I like having locations, particularly ones that are connected somehow, but also ones that I don't have to traverse 500 times to get anywhere... Basically... a world map.... Not a list of destinations I can choose from in a menu... not a series of tunnels I HAVE to walk through to get from A to B... an actual overworld, with things to see and possibly fight, maybe even interact with. Sure they can get tedious... but they're much less tedious than spelunking the same four caves over and over... and they're a lot more fun than looking at a shopping list of locations...
Random encounters... I could go either way with this.. it's a touchy subject... but sometimes random encounters are less annoying than pre-programmed mandatory ones, or having to learn the patterns of every map enemy so I can avoid every battle... When I'm being chased by map enemies I often find myself paying more attention to NOT BEING TOUCHED BY THEM, than anything else in the game at all. So with that consideration, I spend the majority of the game stuck in a constant state of irritation. Random encounters aren't so bad if they're moderate. If I can move a decent distance without triggering an encounter, I'm pretty ok. What makes random encounters annoying is when they happen too frequently.
On the subject of battle, don't make every situation just another excuse for a battle. Sometimes battle is important, other times they seem to get in the way.
Make some battles unique... Involve the player in a select few battles that are a bit more interesting than just killing the baddie... maybe the enemy isn't even an enemy and you can win just by defending... maybe the enemy goads you and has small interrupt scenes... But there is a stipulation to this as well... it can't be EVERY battle... If every battle is like this, it just becomes part of the mundane, and is no longer engaging.
Enemies that have quirks... Can be killed by healing... Weakness to Soft... hell maybe one enemy is gay and runs away from female characters using charm or something (no offense to anyone if it is somehow possibly offensive...)... I don't know... be creative... for once...
Here's an idea... make Token Black Guy not be Token... Make him just be a guy that happens to be black. Hell, have a whole cast of different skin tones... I mean not everyone is Black, White or Asian...
Love stories... they're cliche and they're getting more and more annoying... honestly these would be a really simple way to add some plot variance to the game... Instead of setting up your canon couples... maybe give the player some influence over the inevitable relationship that is going to be unavoidably added to the story. Not only that, but if you're going to make such a romance be important, why would you NOT have it be influencible? Because it means you have to work a little? Because your plot is only solid enough to support one couple?
Plot. The plots, while seeming to be of the utmost importance to the new FF's above all else, including being above FUN, are crap. People rag on X all the time, and I can see a few good reason to do so, but honestly, in comparison between X and XIII... I'd go with X in the plot category any day. I'd go with nearly any of the FF's previous for that matter. VII isn't as spectacular as people claim it is, but it was engaging... More than that, it felt like something you were a part of, rather than something that was happening near you. The same goes for VI, VIII, IX, and X... Considering how much Kitase thinks plot should be the most important thing... the plots really haven't been that great of late.
The short of it is... To fix Final Fantasy as a series... stop Nintendoing everything. You don't have to make EVERY FEATURE different and completely new while at the same time being an idea we've all had for a long time anyway... Stop using fancy gimmicks and just WORK HARD on making a game. Pick an engine from a mid-early FF and start with that, and add a new plot and characters to it.. If you spend all your time on the actual plot, keeping interactivity, branches, side quests, and minigames in mind, you pretty much can't go wrong. Where you fail, Squenix, is in trying to make every little thing innovative, at the expense of being fun... and also making the graphics too obtrusively "LOOK HOW COOL I AM" pretentious. Make FFVI/VII/VIII/IX with a different plot, world, and cast. You'll succeed then.
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Oh shit... I did say VI was the best... I'm very bad at diction. Hard to argue, but I didn't really mean it was the best. But can't deny it's damn good. Also you said the music was failing. I COMPLETELY disagree. Not to say XII, XIII, and XIII-2 had amazing soundtracks, but...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOJ91H4mraU That's a great OST in a game. As for the World Map I think everyone who play JRPGs and agree that they were more than just a nice thing to have. They were, in a way, an interesting way of making a menu interactive. As for random enounters, I agree. It's not that random battles are bad, however, I think it's much harder to find a balance of whats too much. Pokemon is too much. Revelations: Persona too little. Agreed about the interesting enemies. Example: FFV I think V was the first game where zombie were killed by healing. Not to mention enemies were creatively hard. Atmos would spam meteor then when a character died try to eat them. To this day I can't beat ExDeath. (I did give up about 6 years ago and never tried again, I should go back and do that) Instead of Yizmat who just took forever. Oh lord how that was boring. And I don't think SE was trying to have a Token Black character. I don't think they are trying to be racist or even trying to appeal to every race. I think they thought Sazh was a fun character and decided to use him. I agreed. I mean Reddas was black. He wasnt a token black character. He was a character that happened to be black. And I thought the fact that Snow and Serah were not the main characters and them falling in love before the plot was probably the best part of XIII. It did a great job of getting rid of that cliche. Until XIII-2 decided Noel and Serah needed to fall in love. I don't think Kitase does much anymore. To be honest I think Toriyama does it all. He sucks. Play the new Parasite Eve. And by play I mean don't, it's story wasnt good at all. And also I think what made VII, IX, and X so great was that you EXPERIENCED the story instead of just being told it happened. Youre introduced to Sephiroth with a trial of blood. Instantly you fear him. You fall in love with Aerith and then he kills her. You being to hate him. You experience Sephiroth not told "He's powerful and evil dude." And you're absolutely right. Squenix thinks what made their games great were gimmicks, but what they thought were gimmicks were actually ways of evolving what they already had. Materia was a way of giving you control of a character's class. Instead of you can be any of these classes, it became create your class. This idea came back in VIII, X, and XII. This idea seems to be slipping with every game lately. XIII is a great example of that. Not only could you not choose your classes for 70% of the game but each character had a limit on what they could do in each class. This came back in XIII-2 except you had access to every class at the start.
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An interesting exercise, though perhaps I'm not the best person to comment. I have several games that I've either (effectively) never played or I haven't bothered to beat. I still haven't beaten 8, only played enough of 9 to make sure my disc was working, had beaten the first boss of 12 before getting distracted, and barely passed the tutorial of X-2. Even at that, it took me around...6 years, I think, to beat FF VII. Compare this to the first six, all (except II) of which were beaten within a year of me first getting a hold of them (and usually within 2 or 3 months). I STILL remember the first time I beat Golbez, in the crystal room of the Dwarf Castle, or driving to get FF VI (well, III) shortly after it had come out (on Mother's Day -.- In retrospect, that was rather a poor, insensitive decision, on my part, but I think help proves the point of me being passionate about those games).
So, what was it, at least for someone like me, that made the first 6 games so engrossing, and the last 8+ so... not? I would that I've changed, rather than the series.
I played FF6 again not THAT long ago, and I never finished it. I couldn't overlook the random battles. I would play until I reached a part that I loved, then quit afterwards for weeks. Or consider FFI: when it first came out (1990), my brothers and I would always grind monsters to make sure we had bought all the best equipment as soon as it became available. Of course, we didn't call it "grinding" in my day. Nope, we called it galumphing. And we didn't call them monsters, either, we calls'd em roys. Yup, we'd say that ol Steve there (steve being what we called players) was galumphing himself some roys, yessireebobsusan. I just don't do that anymore. And, when I go back to the old games, I STILL don't do that. The 1990 version of FFI hasn't changed, so if I don't find it as fun anymore, I must be the one who has changed.
Thus, perhaps the problem with the Final Fantasy series is that its fans have grown older, expect different things, and the series is still trying to market to the same old age group. That is a fine business model. I don't need, say, Nickelodeon to market to me anymore (although I wouldn't say no to a Dexter's Laboratory reboot, or, actually, a reboot of ReBoot). If they still want to make games that target me-if-I-was-20-years-younger-oh-my-gawd-I'm-old, good for them.
That said, IF SquareEnix wants to be Squeeeeenix again, I do think there are a few accommodations they could implement for someone like me.
First, let the player control the random encounter rate. I don't mean any of this "Oh, I'll just avoid the monsters" crap, I mean let me set the actual rate. If I only want there to be big bad bosses, let me set it that way. If I want to have an encounter every foot, let me set it that way. And, of course, let me change it from day to day.
Second, have adapted difficulty that doesn't ruin the concept of preparing. I stopped playing Oblivion because I hated the fact that the world leveled with my character. I had to jimmy the system to be more powerful than everyone else, and, if I didn't, I was less powerful. That was lame. One of the reasons I've never finished FFVIII is because it had a similar system. There were, at least, innately harder and easier enemies, but it still had too much subjectivity.
How, one might ask, can the first and second point be melded? Through D&D. As a DM, I know that I can either throw several easy battles at players, or a few hard battles, before they rest and recover. As one adjusts the encounter rate, have the enemies that do spawn be more or less powerful (and give more or less rewards) in an appropriate manner. The key is in thinking of battles as a group, rather than individually. Actually, the key is thinking of encounters, rather than battles. Which leads me into...
Point the Third: What is up with all these thief or thief-like characters and no thieving?! It doesn't matter if a character is an assassin, thief, spy, priest, guru, or pacifist. Whenever they seen an enemy, their first thought is to attack, head on. Allow us to avoid enemies (or, at least, some enemies), to incapacitate them, to talk them out of fighting us, etc, and, most importantly, give us rewards for doing so. How? I'll get to that...
The Great Lord Point, Fourth of his name: are character's blind? Enemies should generally be represented on the map. Chrono Trigger did it wonderfully well: why hasn't that been universally implemented and improved upon? This would also allow us to solve the above point: once an enemy (or other obstacle) is avoided, give the party XP. Then, if the party goes back to fight it, make it so the encounter doesn't net XP.
And finally, point 5, break the game up into easily digestible chunks. If I only have 10 minutes, I should still be able to sit down and get something done, even if I am in the middle of a dungeon. Maybe this means giving me perpetual access to a minigame like blitzball (except, you know, with better music), or some way to improve characters, play dress up, decorate a house, forge the doombringer sword, etc. It is hard for me to squirrel away an hour or more to play a game. Not playing a game means, well, I'm not playing it, and I'll be less excited about the next title because, hey, I have 3.5 unplayed Final Fantasy games already, waiting for me at home.
You'll note that I said nothing about plot, or actual battle, or anything else. The reason is quite simple: one of the things I love about FF is that it tries to reinvent itself with each iteration. That's fine and dandy, but the above are those obstacles that are preventing me from enjoying any iteration.
Edit:
To be honest, I think the best thing that could happen to the series right now is if a small group of indie developers that haven't even become a "company" yet, were to make a game and bootleg it as "the next final fantasy."
*looks around* Where's Faustwolf when you need him? We have the technology, we can rebuild the series. Make it faster, stronger, better.
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I couldn't stand Final Fantasy XII's battle system but I ended up cherishing the story. Basch's first conversation with Gabranth (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufOdx4PwAGQ), and the scene where Gabranth is forced to execute Drace (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLBGbUGryRE), are just gorgeous pieces of writing IMO. Balthier is always a treasure, and I found the ending satisfying. I still would have loved to see Matsuno's original plan of having the story centered around Basch and Gabranth (if I'm remembering the background notes right). Gabranth must have had some fascinating stuff going on in that noggin of his; too bad he just kind of peters out and loses his mind toward the end of the final version. Such a waste of a character's potential. It would have been a total treat if Drace had more screen time too.
I've been banging this drum for years, but I'm really keen on seeing someone mesh the battle systems of Xenogears, Chrono Trigger and Valkyrie Profile. Snappy turn-based battles with multiple actions per turn, player input for avoiding enemy attacks instead of leaving it up to a luck stat, and multi-character techs. I get excited just thinking about it!
I have a problem with deciding which mindset is more important though... Is a phenomenal plot more important than an interactive one... well there's no way to answer that really... both things are important, and ideally I'd want to have a plot that is both interactive and branching ad nauseum, and phenomenal at the same time... but it can't be done in the space of time that games are made in... it would take a lifetime to accomplish that, and that's if you have a large group of planners that are all perfectly synchronized in function and execution...
Yeah, this is something I've really come to appreciate after our various fan doings. Matsuno did accomplish it in Tactics Ogre (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kODztkdxm40), which had three paths. Three awesome paths! It's the only example of its kind I can think of too, unless we bring in visual novels like Radical Dreamers.
But there I go again, talking about non-Final Fantasy franchises.
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Matsuno did accomplish it in Tactics Ogre (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kODztkdxm40), which had three paths. Three awesome paths! It's the only example of its kind I can think of too, unless we bring in visual novels like Radical Dreamers.
You've just made a point you didn't intend when you said that... A good one, though.
If the developers were to take their most genius writer and create some sort of visual novel and call it Final Fantasy... keeping in mind a visual novel practically requires multiple branching plots and endings to succeed... （Ｆａｔｅ／Ｓｔａｙ Ｎｉｇｈｔ is the most famous example I can think of, and all of its plot arcs were coherent to the main plot concept... Tsukihime is less famous but had even more arcs and each was treated seriously as well.）
Would it not work as a successful Final Fantasy? Sure, it's not what you expect, but it does have the main points we ALL want in our FF... Good storytelling, interactivity with the plot, music... We must consider too that characters make a visual novel...
I would honestly be more intrigued by FF the visual novel than I would be by the announcement that they're finally remaking FFVII, faithfully. Who agrees? Anyone? I know I'm an oddball, but how much of one am I?
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To add a bit of history to the genesis of FFXII, as Faust said, originally the main character was Basch von Ronsenberg. However, the staff felt that a gruff, 30-second was too unlike the core Final Fantasy demographic, so they needed a new lead. Thus, Vaan was created. He was young, impressionable, and wide-eyed... much like the core demographic for the series. Of course, Vaan couldn't go at it alone, so he needed a best friend to tag along! Thus Penelo.
Both characters could have been removed from FFXII and the plot wouldn't have changed at all. It's true.
Think about it, almost every JRPG has a best friend for the lead character. Cloud had Tifa, Serge had Leena, Crono had Lucca, Shulk had Reyn, Ryudo had Skye, Fayt had Sophia, Zidane had Tantalus (and the underutilized Blank), Squall had everyone minus Rinoa, Tidus had Wakka, so on and so forth. I know this cliche isn't in every video game, but it's definitely something I've grown incredibly aware of over time.
I think FFVI, although not my favorite FF game, did the best job of balancing the cast with little overall character cliche. There was no headstrong hero, no princess, no muscle-headed boofus, no tragic knight full of regret. I just unintentionally described three Chrono Trigger leads, hahaha...
I think this balance is what Final Fantasy needs. No lead protagonist and a truly ensemble cast. Make each character shine, and make them matter. Make them unique. Don't give me a blank template to make each character a carbon copy of each other. I know some of you have described that facet as something you desire, but I don't want it. I don't want to customize my characters entirely. I'd prefer a tech tree for each character where the parameters are not endless and no two characters can be identical, but I can also personalize each hero to an extent. FFX did a decent job of doing this.
Just a few thoughts to add. I love this convo, btw.
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Your comments on game production show how little you understand the process. Adding more people won't necessarily get you a better game faster. It won't necessarily get you either of those things. I understand your frustrations with long development times and with companies seemingly wasting their teams on projects that don't interest you. What you have suggested is not a practical solution.
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Your comments on game production show how little you understand the process. Adding more people won't necessarily get you a better game faster. It won't necessarily get you either of those things. I understand your frustrations with long development times and with companies seemingly wasting their teams on projects that don't interest you. What you have suggested is not a practical solution.
Who are you responding to?
I hope not the whole thread. I think a lot of interesting things are being discussed here, and I think a lot of ideas that have been presented are very practical. Faustwolf's dream battle system, Satoh's desire to have deep interactivity, and Boo's tendency toward dynamic and distinct characters, just to name a few, and imagine them all together in one game! These ideas together would make a huge splash in the gaming world(at least in rpg country).
The time budget of two years is not wholly unrealistic for such a feat either, but you're right tthat the amount of people won't make it faster or slower. It's more about proper planning, getting things done on a shedule. Another factor is the passion of the development team. If they're gung ho, they're more likely to make a quality product, if they're in it for the money, they're more likely to make their deadlines. A balance is needed so the team is motivated but efficient.
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Game Informer had a great piece on Final Fantasy Versus XIII this month.
In the time since the game was announced (in May 2006)...
...we've had all three Mass Effect games.
...the entire Assassin's Creed franchise.
...the rise and fall of music games.
...four other main Final Fantasy titles: XII, XIII, XIII-2, and XIV.
...Bioshock, Bioshock II released.
...Call of Duty 3, World at War, and Black Ops released, along with all three Modern Warfare titles.
...the Playstation 3's entire life.
...the Wii craze.
...Sony and Microsoft introducing/releasing their own motion controllers.
...Duke Nukem forever released.
How's that for game production?
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Your comments on game production show how little you understand the process. Adding more people won't necessarily get you a better game faster. It won't necessarily get you either of those things. I understand your frustrations with long development times and with companies seemingly wasting their teams on projects that don't interest you. What you have suggested is not a practical solution.
to expand on RD's comment here, I'll explain a little of why more people != faster release and better product...
Ideally a product will be at its best if only one person is required to create it, because it will be fully coherent then. The world is not ideal however, and multiple people are needed in some cases to improve what a product lacks, and other cases to complete the tasks a single person is simply incapable of completing alone.
Given enough time, a single man can -not- create an entire title like is sold for consoles daily. On person will simply not have the skills required to complete every task, and even if they did, the number of resources(As in art assets, plot, scripting, music) it requires to finish any one console game (no matter how crappy) cannot be made in any feasible amount of time before the entire technology behind said game was obsolete.
Even asset-economizing games that reuse everything for everything, require a lot of resources. (I'm not talking about retro games like Galaga or anything)
This is why we add people... to finish resources, and to catch mistakes... however this is also where the misconception arises. There can very easily be TOO MANY people doing any one thing. Especially writing. More writers means more people weighing in their opinions, which inevitably leads to a product that satisfies no one. This is called Product by Committee. It will contain features meant to appease individual members of the group, and by the time all of these features are implemented, the end result is not something that appeals to any of them, and by proxy, none of us.
This doesn't mean two people working on something is bad of course, but there is a peak in the graph that optimizes the risks of too many people, with the costs of too few.
An example, if you have 45 chefs all cooking one dish, it would taste awful... Each would try to make it into something she wanted, and there would be a mixture of so many flavors it would be utterly disgusting.
There is also the question of quality in the workers themselves. Not all artists are the same, some may be better, some may be worse, some may be equal but not suited to the same kind of artwork... Some artists will be best at doing gritty zombie wastelands, and others will be best at cartoony flowery fluff... These kinds of artists may be able to work together, but the chances of that are slim.
Essentially, since we rely on human beings as the task force for our productions, we cannot in fact rely on shear numbers and expect quality and expedience.
For a long time, however, Capcom DID manage to use this brute force method of numbers to accomplish their spriting needs. They in fact hired people off the street to work for a day on individual keyframes of animations... Hiring over 600 people daily for a single day's work, they managed to cut a profit and complete the art task quickly... This is due to having redundancy and being able to simply throw out any frames that didn't meet the standard... as they had others to replace it... however, that only works with 2D animation... and no other field of work really. Since games are 95%+ full 3D anymore... this just doesn't work. It was interesting while it lasted though.
But back on the subject of FF and how can it be improved...
References. Cameos. Nonsensical storyline-unrelated throwbacks to other games. The bastard sword in the Lindblum Weapon shop, to which Zidane mentions a "spiky headed guy having something like this."
"Whatever you do, don't call him Atma"~FFX(2?) a reference to the misromanization of Ultima Weapon.
Hell, I'd like to see someone make mention of "Off course" and "No way," a typoed yes or no choice in FFVII.
I know they're trying to pull together all their terminology lately, making sure all the spellings on all the enemies are the same, renaming and retconing old skills with the ragaja theme... But I think what the series needs is LESS coherence. Less coherence in terms of strictness of pattern. They're doing exactly what they think we expect them to do... and because of it, they're not giving us anything to get excited about.
I'll admit though, I thought Lightning was a nice twist on the pattern... a female player protagonist that wasn't a girly girl with emotional issues coming out of every oriface... Hell, she was practically Cloud with ovaries. It was nice to see that such a character could finally exist... yeah... it was nice... until I realized how much the rest of the game sucked.
You know what would be really interesting? Take a level in Pokemon and give the player the choice of character gender... Oh but they'd never do that, because that would mean they'd have to either write a story unique to each character... or acknowledge that homosexuals exist in a fashion that isn't played for lols.
But even so, they could give us back a little freedom in the character... I don't want them to turn it into TESVI or anything... but well... ok lets start at the beginning... Name and Class. Final Fantasy I. That was one of the revolutionary things about FF, was that the characters were quite literally whoever you made them. There was a Thief, or maybe he was a Mage... His name was Bill... or was it Jim?
I think that's part of the problem... Not even the class thing, I can understand a character having a set class as it gives good dev control over a game mechanic... But not letting us name the characters anymore? After all the YEARS we could? And why? So you could make the voice acting fit perfectly? So you could make small puns about the names? Does anyone care?
It worked pretty well in FFX I thought. You never actually heard Tidus' name spoken allowed. Sure I'll bet it was hard to do all that writing and never say the player's name...
But would it be a really big issue if the FMV's said Chloe aloud while the subtitles said Lilly? If you did away with the concept of "every line must be voiced" it wouldn't even be terribly noticeable.
But that's just a few more suggestions of really small details I think would make a big difference in recapturing the feel of FF's past.
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Mr Bekkler, I was responding specifically to the initial post.
Satoh, you aren't expanding on my post. That's your own logic, and it has nothing to do with the experiences that lead to my comment. Having one person doing a game by themselves isn't ideal either; specialization is a good thing. I've never seen a situation where a bulk of writers was the problem, and either I'm misreading you or you have vastly overestimated the influence writers have in the game industry.
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I see. Thanks for clarifying! :)
What I'd like to see is a Final Fantasy that the developers are passionate about. Something their whole team wants to play. I don't think they've felt that way since at least as far back as FFX. Maybe even VII.
I'd also like to see something that fits the title "Final Fantasy", like actually have a fantasy setting instead of all this futuristic technology-driven-setting stuff, in a world similar to LotR or Game of Thrones. That is to say, a fantasy setting with a rich background story that unfolds with the main story and integrates into it. A place where magic used to happen but is gone, and has been brought back one final time to do...something.
Next, I'd like to see something that isn't extremely cliche in the FF/rpg universe. No damsel in distress(maybe a man in distress instead) no black and white good vs. evil, no amnesiac main character, no playables who are annoying kid characters or stupid little monsters that are supposed to be cute, basically no rehashing previous stories or game character archetypes, just real people with real problems and real faults who find themselves pulled into a crazy fantasy world as a proxy for the player.
They should use names that don't sound ridiculous. The names for just about everything are really bad in FF13. Character names (Vanille, Lightning, Hope, Snow, Fang), artifact names (L'Cie, Fal'Cie, Cie'th, Eidolon, Crystarium) Paradigm names (Ravager, Synergist, Commando, etc). I liked the name Pulse and Sazh, and that's about it. Everything else sounded very inappropriate for its purpose.
Lastly, no crystals. Stop it. Crystals suck. For reals.
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Mr Bekkler, I was responding specifically to the initial post.
Well, I was referring to the basic grunt programming. Not systems or whatever. More like scenery like rocks and trees. I remember an interview where a group of programmers were tell us about what they were working on was scenery. Their job was making sure the game was pretty. Spending a week designing a rock. I remember a designer said she spent a whole week programming a rock. I'm not talking about a writer. I'm not talking about a system. I'm not talking about ideas. I'm talking about all the grunt work. Which they are currently passing off to other developers. Like Tri-Ace. They did it in XIII-2 and they already said they are doing it again.
As for you, Mr. Bekkler, it sounds as if you don't want to play an FF game. No cute monsters? No Cactuar? And no pure evil villian? Did you play XIII-2 Caius isn't pure evil. He's evil from a loving place. Vayne isn't even really evil. And it's not very good. No Crystals? FFVIII was a good example of why I always want crystals in an FF game.
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Bekkler, to add to your most recent though, I think that's what they're trying to achieve with Final Fantasy Versus XIII. The game is pretty much Entourage-meets-Final Fantasy, hahaha...
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Satoh, you aren't expanding on my post. That's your own logic, and it has nothing to do with the experiences that lead to my comment. Having one person doing a game by themselves isn't ideal either; specialization is a good thing. I've never seen a situation where a bulk of writers was the problem, and either I'm misreading you or you have vastly overestimated the influence writers have in the game industry.
Pardon me, I haven't even read the thread at the moment (I haven't the time currently), but since your posts were concise my eyes fell upon them. While your experiences may be accurate pertaining to "number of workers" and "quality of resources" in game development, Satoh's suggestions* aren't precisely wrong either.
Adding more workers DOES produce a better game faster, but the problem lies in management of resource creation and integration. That's just the "secondary" problem, because with good management you can speed up production farms. The primary problem, however, is the production costs vs estimated profit. It's risky to spend too much when you're not confident of earning them back from the market, and the artists do tend to put their hearts into what they do.
The management of production pertaining to the number of workers depend on specialization, but even then the key-specialists are a handful (keyframe artists, art-directors, concept artists, cinematographers, etc.) -- after that, the management is scheduled and forwarded to (what ZealKnight likes to call) "Grunt Workers", who take on the tedious and hard-work of actually producing the "idea" that the key-specialists created. This is done in a hierarchy:
For instance, you're working on a film. One fellow writes the script. That's divided into there Acts, hence between one to three Storyboard Artists collaborating with the Art Director and Cinematographer (working on Animatics if in case of 2D). The contents of each storyboard is divided into sections, which is distributed among ten keyframe artists. Under each Keyframe artist, there are 50 more animators. Why 50? It's because those 50 animators actually consist of in-betweeners, outliners, and colorists. Then with the storyboard or keyframe artists (depending on which studio you're working for) there will also be background artists. Normally one would say that these numbers are actually more than enough for a studio, but strangely, companies like Ubisoft and others tend to outsource their work to India and China not only because production is cheaper, but they've also plenty of grunt work to distribute which may simply be too much for their primary studios in the First World.
If you've ever drawn 24 frames (even if ONLY outlining, without the tedious background) for each second of a footage, only to end up redoing them because the art director didn't like it enough, you know why they require so many workers. :lol: But then again, that's only the art side. Something tells me the technical side is even worse.
*I've only skimmed through Satoh's posts, so there's a good chance I might be missing details.
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As for you, Mr. Bekkler, it sounds as if you don't want to play an FF game. No cute monsters? No Cactuar?
I don't mind them that much, I just don't want to be forced to use them as playable characters. In FF6 it was cool using Mog because you didn't have to. The other characters were pretty much badass. In FF7 Cait Sith kinda sucked, but Red13 was pretty badass. I maintain that there could be a really good game made by combining everyone's best ideas in this thread, and that cute characters don't make a game good.
And no pure evil villian? Did you play XIII-2 Caius isn't pure evil. He's evil from a loving place. Vayne isn't even really evil. And it's not very good. No Crystals? FFVIII was a good example of why I always want crystals in an FF game.
I haven't played 12 or 13-2 yet, just the 13-2 demo, and I've seen the FF13Versus trailer.
I've always thought "crystals" were just a lame plot device. At least call them something else. CT had dreamstone, sunstone, etc. CC had frozen flame, dragon tear, etc. Crystal doesn't do anything for me, but for some reason giving it a different name gives it substance somehow.
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I've always thought "crystals" were just a lame plot device. At least call them something else. CT had dreamstone, sunstone, etc. CC had frozen flame, dragon tear, etc. Crystal doesn't do anything for me, but for some reason giving it a different name gives it substance somehow.
They've been doing that since VI.
FFVI - Magicite
FFVII - Materia
FFIX - The Crystal and I guess Jewels
FFX - Spheres
FFXII - Nethecite, the Sun-Cryst, and the giant one in giruvegan (although I don't think they said it's name)
FFXIII - Fal'Cie? Although they really overused the "crystal" root with Crystogen
Although I think they usually do a good job with it. XIII was the first time where there were too many crystals. At least XIII made them annoying.
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Magicite, Materia, Nethecite, all sound great. It's specifically the words "Crystal", or "Sphere", or "Grid" for that matter, that I find annoyingly uninspired. Though Spheres and Grids were used for a more practical purpose, a Crystal is just like a placeholder for an important item they didn't want to create a back-story for. It's a bland, vanilla plot device that could just use a drop of other flavor to make it intriguing. "Crystarium" was even kind of cool, but yeah, 13's reliance on the word "Crystal" is one of its several flaws in my opinion as well.
If they called it literally anything else I wouldn't be so adverse to it. Again, though, my opinion of 13 is negative mostly due to the name-bombing with crazy fake words that you're supposed to memorize instead of actually getting into the gameplay, you end up stuck on nomenclature.
L'Cie get a Focus from a Fal'Cie and if they don't fulfill their Focus they become Cie'th, while if they do fulfill it they become Crystal, but along the way some get Eidolons and can use their Crystarium to appoint Crystogen Points to their Crystal Grid to level up.
Sounds horrible, right? Change the names, though and it's actually kind of cool:
The Branded get a Focus from the Divine and if they don't fulfill their Focus they become The Corrupted, while if they do fulfill it they become The Frozen, but along the way some get Guardians/Summons and can use their Crystarium to appoint Experience to their Level Grid to level up.
I don't mind breaking from tradition once in a while (FF7 is a good example of the right kind of breaking from tradition that proved very popular), but they don't need to rebrand EVERYTHING, they can keep some familiarity in the naming conventions that allow the player to sort of already have a clue what's going on and how to play, while still having original-sounding items, events, characters, and locations.
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Well, I was referring to the basic grunt programming. Not systems or whatever. More like scenery like rocks and trees. I remember an interview where a group of programmers were tell us about what they were working on was scenery. Their job was making sure the game was pretty. Spending a week designing a rock. I remember a designer said she spent a whole week programming a rock. I'm not talking about a writer. I'm not talking about a system. I'm not talking about ideas. I'm talking about all the grunt work. Which they are currently passing off to other developers. Like Tri-Ace. They did it in XIII-2 and they already said they are doing it again.
I don't think you remember that interview correctly. Your commentary incorrectly assigns tasks to team members. It's clear that you aren't familiar with the process of game development. That's fine; most people aren't. This paragraph is basically equivalent to saying that nine men could have a baby in a month.
Again, I realize your frustrations, but adding more people does not in principle make for a faster or better production. While tushantin doesn't get the details quite right, he is correct in identifying that management matters a lot in these situations, and the bigger the team, the more complex that becomes. Add to that the fact that not all tasks can be done in parallel, and it becomes clear that adding more people cannot even in principle always yield faster results. This is known as blocking. For example, if I need a piece of art to finish a level I'm working on, but tushantin hasn't produced it yet, then I am blocked on that task by tushantin. Having more level designers or artists isn't going to fix that.
I wish there were an easy answer to this problem. Believe me, the difficulties of game development are far worse for those on the inside. But adding people only works up to a point, and only when management is equipped to handle the team size and distribution.
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I've always thought "crystals" were just a lame plot device. At least call them something else. CT had dreamstone, sunstone, etc. CC had frozen flame, dragon tear, etc. Crystal doesn't do anything for me, but for some reason giving it a different name gives it substance somehow.
They've been doing that since VI.
FFVI - Magicite
FFVII - Materia
FFIX - The Crystal and I guess Jewels
FFX - Spheres
FFXII - Nethecite, the Sun-Cryst, and the giant one in giruvegan (although I don't think they said it's name)
FFXIII - Fal'Cie? Although they really overused the "crystal" root with Crystogen
Although I think they usually do a good job with it. XIII was the first time where there were too many crystals. At least XIII made them annoying.
Correction, since FFI. The Four Heroes of Light started the game with the four legendary elemental crystals. That was sort of a plot point, though it was hard to get the plot in that game being that there were no real 'major plot exposition scenes' all over... At least I didn't get the plot until I read about it after finishing the game. It seemed a bit like they were the world's errand-boys to me.
In any case though, every Final Fantasy in the main series has had a crystal that was somehow important to it.
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Correction, since FFI. The Four Heroes of Light started the game with the four legendary elemental crystals. That was sort of a plot point, though it was hard to get the plot in that game being that there were no real 'major plot exposition scenes' all over... At least I didn't get the plot until I read about it after finishing the game. It seemed a bit like they were the world's errand-boys to me.
In any case though, every Final Fantasy in the main series has had a crystal that was somehow important to it.
Correction, I was talking about renaming crystals.
I don't think you remember that interview correctly. Your commentary incorrectly assigns tasks to team members. It's clear that you aren't familiar with the process of game development. That's fine; most people aren't. This paragraph is basically equivalent to saying that nine men could have a baby in a month.
Again, I realize your frustrations, but adding more people does not in principle make for a faster or better production. While tushantin doesn't get the details quite right, he is correct in identifying that management matters a lot in these situations, and the bigger the team, the more complex that becomes. Add to that the fact that not all tasks can be done in parallel, and it becomes clear that adding more people cannot even in principle always yield faster results. This is known as blocking. For example, if I need a piece of art to finish a level I'm working on, but tushantin hasn't produced it yet, then I am blocked on that task by tushantin. Having more level designers or artists isn't going to fix that.
I wish there were an easy answer to this problem. Believe me, the difficulties of game development are far worse for those on the inside. But adding people only works up to a point, and only when management is equipped to handle the team size and distribution.
I wish I could find that interview for you, but it was by kotaku before XIII was released. Perhaps the time she spent on the rock is not remembered exactly, but I do remember her talking about the detail she put into a single rock. But what I'm even more curious about you, is the simple phrase "This paragraph is basically equivalent to saying that nine men could have a baby in a month." I don't understand. Maybe it's the fact that the I haven't eaten all day and it's late enough for bed. But I'm just telling you what SE says. They are literally outsourcing this grunt work. They just announced that. And that's what I'm referring to. I'm going to just guess that maybe if SE is outsourcing that work, then it can be done by anyone and that perhaps more workers and make it work faster.
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To be honest, I think the best thing that could happen to the series right now is if a small group of indie developers that haven't even become a "company" yet, were to make a game and bootleg it as "the next final fantasy."
*looks around* Where's Faustwolf when you need him? We have the technology, we can rebuild the series. Make it faster, stronger, better.
Why reboot Final Fantasy when we could make our own unique game, without ties to an existing franchise? Looking back through this thread... there are a ton of damn good ideas! And an indie game can't be C&Ded.
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To be honest, I think the best thing that could happen to the series right now is if a small group of indie developers that haven't even become a "company" yet, were to make a game and bootleg it as "the next final fantasy."
*looks around* Where's Faustwolf when you need him? We have the technology, we can rebuild the series. Make it faster, stronger, better.
Why reboot Final Fantasy when we could make our own unique game, without ties to an existing franchise? Looking back through this thread... there are a ton of damn good ideas! And an indie game can't be C&Ded.
LET'S GET DOWN ON IT! (After I get internet again!) I'M READY LIKE... er... SPAGHETTI!
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Why reboot Final Fantasy...
Because if we didn't, then I couldn't work in a Million Dollar Man reference :P
Though, for making the game, that could be fun, but to be realistic, we'd really need to hammer out engine, coders, and spriters first. Those are the things that there never seems to be enough of.
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:P
True. Without those essentials, I don't think the Compendium currently has the manpower to design another game. But it's nice to dream, and the possibility is now out there.
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Though, for making the game, that could be fun, but to be realistic, we'd really need to hammer out engine, coders, and spriters first. Those are the things that there never seems to be enough of.
JRPGs are relatively simple technically, but very content heavy. You'd want a team that was biased (numerically) toward artists, then designers, then coders. This is not to say that their importance is in that (or any) order, but where the most hours of work will likely be.
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Without those essentials, I don't think the Compendium currently has the manpower to design another game.
Challenge accepted! XD