Messages

16

General Discussion / Re: Marathon Civilization II game captures gamers imaginations.

« on: July 17, 2012, 10:38:31 pm »

Well if you consider...

A game without a plot...
It can last indefinitely if the gameplay is solid. The story is whatever you put on it.

It's for that reason that old games like Starcraft are still getting the game hours that their newer counterparts get.

Some older games had charm in their lack of features in fact. Newer games, even in the same series as their still popular predecessors, don't see the same success, and I think it's because of the feature bloating, the fancy graphics, etc... They're just too different from what made them successful, even though they are still successes.

Some older series have even lost their customers for their new releases. They've gained a new market, but lost the old.

If I could figure out exactly what it is that makes the new series' different from the old, lacking that nostalgia...

But back to the point, I think it's simply that some old games are just more enjoyable than the new ones, and that's why they remain playable today.

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Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / Re: If I am correct ( Chrono Brake/ Break expiration date)

« on: July 17, 2012, 06:21:19 pm »

Lets raise the necessary funds and buy the rights to the name before they can renew it.

Then we will own the future of Chrono.

18

Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / Re: So, are the bonus endings supposed to be semi-canon?

« on: July 16, 2012, 04:17:58 am »

You didn't see the obvious affair-fodder between Glen and Leene? I caught onto it the first time I played the game... and it wasn't until a year later that I realized she was technically married already because the King is alive.

Also I'd forgotten there was an ending like that... I'd attributed it, all these years, to myself inferring things.

You've already given me something to think about. As for the reptite ending... I doubt it was intended to be canonical as such, but I wouldn't count it out of the realm of possibility.

Obviously if you count General Kid's ending in Cross, you can see it's kind of nonsensical, and not the true events that took place, however, it is still a logical possibility.

Lets think about this though, if Magus dies, and Glen becomes human again, does that mean that Glen has been sapping magic from Magus this entire time? If cutting Magus off from the spell nullifies it, then he must be maintaining it somehow.

Does magic also span time infinitely? The endings are all full of holes and possible fillings... What are some of the ones you find particularly of interest, aside from the Reptite ending?

19

General Discussion / Re: The Chrono Compendium - <you fill the slogan>

« on: July 16, 2012, 04:04:56 am »

Chrono Compendium: Generously allowing Square to remain in charge of our franchise (for now).

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General Discussion / Re: I posted this in Reddit but I thought why not see what my favorite people think?

« on: July 16, 2012, 12:14:51 am »

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.

21

History, Locations, and Artifacts / Re: the years between 1000 AD and 1999

« on: July 13, 2012, 07:22:40 am »

In theory, if they had nuclear weapons, and they went unchecked for an extended period of time, they would simply degrade into their silos... becoming toxic in near proximity, but otherwise harmless to the surrounding areas. The problem arises when nuclear weapons detonate, because that spreads the fallout all over, and destroys most biological matter in the blast radius nigh instantly, and disables any device susceptible to E.M.P...

It's not unfathomable that they had them, but I always imagined the pre-'99 planet to be more a peaceful society... That's just how it seemed to me anyway. Maybe that's counter-intuitive based on the shear amount of weapons in 2300AD... Honestly I think it would be more interesting to think about that last 300 years after '99. The 1000~1999 period never seemed like much really happened. I mean science advanced, but everything seemed pretty cozy.

I'd imagine whatever happened in the interim of antiquity and present probably continued to happen for a while... Maybe I'm just too tired right now, but I can't really think of much other than the fall of Guardia and deciding to make cities come in jar format.

22

General Discussion / Re: Humanity: Good News, Bad News

« on: July 13, 2012, 06:31:01 am »

I motion we band together and make a bill that says no prospective law can contain the letters IPA in its initials, as it violates the trademarked intellectual property of India Pale Ale, and by relation no legal acronym may contain IP as it is to be considered a -derivative- work on the former trademarked title.

There may never be another I think this would stave off a bunch of this crap while the asshats of the world try to think of new ways of legally addressing "intellectual property" and "internet piracy" without using those letters.

I'm honestly confused as to who they think they're helping... Are they just trying to make their bribes a bit fatter? Or do they genuinely think this crap will actually DO something other than oppress law abiding citizens?

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General Discussion / Re: I posted this in Reddit but I thought why not see what my favorite people think?

« on: July 13, 2012, 06:21:53 am »

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.

24

General Discussion / Re: The worst fucking thing

« on: July 13, 2012, 05:35:45 am »

I quite like their selection of metroid mixes... albeit not the ones they used in their metroid album... but the ones that were there before they started being a profited "organization."

There are a few select Chrono mixes I liked, and of course the MM and Sonic musics, and the a few of the FF mixes.

But the problem in my eyes... is that they're not just making money off of Squenix... they're following suit and becoming a non-indie corporate entity, without the perks that come from being corporate... and without the perks of being indie...

In short, money is the very thing that will destroy them, in one way or another... Quickly or slowly... Every time money becomes a primary factor, quality is sure to suffer, not in speculation, but by definition. Business is, after all, about getting the most money for the least amount of work possible. This generally turns formerly very qualitative products, into cheap(production-wise) crap that sells for only -slightly- less than when it was worth the money.

Selling a 1[currency] product to a million people is always better than selling a much higher quality product for 4[currencies] to a thousand people.

It's all very disgusting, and I hope I never whore myself out in such a way.

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Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / Re: Wanted to share how I feel about Chrono Cross, and why.

« on: July 13, 2012, 12:20:39 am »

Satoh, I didn't mean to be excessive in my reply. I was just reacting to your admitted ham-fistedness.

No harm done. I simply realized I wasn't getting my point across the way it was in my head, no matter how much dirt I shoveled. I wasn't going to reach the surface by digging more.

maybe, but Kefka was always a ruthless nutcase, even before he became powerful. he might've been a jester and a lackey at first, but he wasn't a joke. you were always more inclined to be disconcerted by him than to laugh. Dalton, on the other hand...

Interestingly enough, I didn't even realize Kefka was a jester until my third playthrough of the game. He was that evil. I always just assumed he was a poor dresser.

Likewise I didn't realize how high up Dalton actually is until a lot of thought on 12,000 B.C in general. He's just that foolhardy.

26

History, Locations, and Artifacts / Re: the years between 1000 AD and 1999

« on: July 13, 2012, 12:11:00 am »

I believe 1999 is considered a sort of 'death point' for the planet... so one could say that all normal life and evolution at that point stopped and only a few human stragglers persisted, while every other life form we see are the death throes of the planet. The distortions in its dream as it loses its grip on reality.

It is also possible that the mutants are a result of advanced science being let loose from controlled environments in labs and set upon nature, distorting the order of things in that way. Uncontrolled experiments... I always assumed the Labs 16 and 32 were literally scientific centers and the streets adjacent them, which would account for why there are so many mutants there.

If it were a nuclear problem, wouldn't it affect the human populace as well?

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General Discussion / Re: Stuff you hate

« on: July 12, 2012, 08:55:51 am »

Every game since about 2004 has been a disappointment... even the few I liked. The disappointments are getting bigger and the likability is becoming fewer and farther between

Oi, Bastion's good! And there was another I forget the name.... the silent, black game... And then there's Batman: Arkham City!

And I personally loved Street Fighter 4!

But I'd still agree with ya: games just aren't innovative anymore. (This means we've gotta make our own games, aye?)

You're forgetting nintendo... all they are is innovation... in fact they drown out the fun of all their games by having all these gimmicks to use without much choice in the matter...

However, I did say that there were games I liked... they were still disappointing.

I loved Star Ocean 4... but it was far from being the level of completeness that it should have been... in fact, the only game I can think of that I wasn't disappointed with in several ways was MGS4... it was everything I had come to expect... though perhaps not as diverse scenario wise as I could have hoped...

My point is... pre 2004 the games I liked, left me wanting more because of how much I enjoyed them... after '04 I wanted more because there was always, even in the best games, something missing.

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General Discussion / Re: The worst fucking thing

« on: July 12, 2012, 08:46:25 am »

That's the point. Why should they be able to profit from someone else's work?

My point is that unless someone stockpiles every remix before turning them in, all the remixes that are decent will be destroyed along with them...

I don't really care if they want to sell a bunch of remixes that are already freely available on their site... nor do I care that Squenix isn't getting a cut... What bothers me is how obnoxious they're getting about making albums out of stuff they already amassed, or hyping themselves up as anything more than a collection of independents that occasionally cooperate...

There was a time when they were a moderately humble repository of decent music... They're losing sight of that with every album they release... and the music isn't up to par anymore anyway... However, if they go away all the decent songs I haven't downloaded yet go with them.


This isn't a 'small fine' or 'cease and desist' matter. There is possible grounds for a 'fair use' defense or a defense calling into question how one defines what is and isn't a 'direct theft of musical information' as the defense has been used before successfully...

But regardless, if they are punished, it will be the final solution.

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General Discussion / Re: The Chrono Compendium - <you fill the slogan>

« on: July 12, 2012, 12:31:52 am »

The Chrono Compendium: Where Nostalgia is Worth Something
or
The Chrono Compendium: A Site on the Internet

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General Discussion / Re: The worst fucking thing

« on: July 12, 2012, 12:28:39 am »

While I agree that their pretentiousness with all these albums they're making is getting quite irritating... There are still a large number of mixes I do in fact like from them... The way things are going right now, reporting them full legit to Squenix would probably put them in the grave permanently much the way of megaupload or btjunkie... Sure they aren't pirating their files, but they are making money on someone else's intellectual property without direct consent.

I suppose what I'm saying is, don't sledgehammer your computer because it has a virus on it; there are still uses for it and it may be fixable.