How can Squeenix fix itself?

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by Had'ohken

"Innovation" means different things to different people, but IMO, mucking around with the battle system and adding new gimmicks is one thing that's HAMPERED each game in some way.

FF7: Materia - offered a wide range of customization with character spells and abilities. This opened the way for their other traits to let you play better as you liked without worrying about a class system.
FF8: Drawing...OH GOD, THE DRAWING - allowed you to gain spells easily, use them to boost your stats, and never worry about MP and MP items. You had a guaranteed max of 100 castings per spell per character.
FF10: Sphere Grid - allowed you to customize character abilities and character growth and get only the abilities you wanted per character. Negated learning spells per level up or needing to buy them.
FF12: MMORPG-lite, computer-controlled party members (only if you let it, but still) - offered you the broad ability to customize your party's AI, which is a lot more than other games offer. Manual control was still an option.

At least the earlier FFs were consistent with the battle system, now it's like they think they need a new gimmick to make it feel "fresh" in each game.

Well, it sounds to me like all you're really plugging is a class system, since you failed to mention 9 and 11, which feature classes heavily. Classes are fine, but they also can mean an incredible task of providing game balance and almost inevitably forcing players to use classes they dislike for certain jobs.

Oh, and Desperation Attacks are just as much a "gimmick" as anything else. That was in FF6. FF3 and 5 both had the job change system in battle, which was different. FF2 had a completely different way of handling weaponry and magic than any title before or since. FF4 was the first to introduce job techniques like Jump and Cover in a non-spell format, to my knowledge.

Your argument pretty much falls flat if that's really what you were getting at, because the only real thing tying the older games together was limited graphics technology.

[Regulus Tera]

Originally Posted by Had'ohken

Hey, hey, I'm not here to start fights. Cool down.

I'm just saying, if you are gonna rip-off anything at least rip-off something that's not a complete mess of a story.

[Loyal]

FF4 was the first to introduce job techniques like Jump and Cover in a non-spell format, to my knowledge.

Actually, that was FF3, but yeah. Carry on.

[The Wizard Who Did It]

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

Your argument pretty much falls flat if that's really what you were getting at, because the only real thing tying the older games together was limited graphics technology.

And poor hardware capacity that made whatever they had as text have to count, and actually limited them in terms of character development more than many people care to admit.

Also, gaining abilities from weapons, FF9.

Again, just fuck the offshoots and FFVIII.

Also, all of the FF games have the exact same tying them together. To be fair, it's about the same that ties Mario games together.

[Jagos]

Also, all of the FF games have the exact same ___ tying them together. To be fair, it's about the same _____ that ties Mario games together.

I'm guessing a noun? Pronoun? Adverb to complete this sentence?

[The Wizard Who Did It]

Originally Posted by Jagos

I'm guessing a noun? Pronoun? Adverb to complete this sentence?

The missing word is stuff, which I'm keeping as missing in my post as I like the way it reads better.

[Mike McC]

Originally Posted by Regulus Tera

More Dragon Quest
Less Final Fantasy

Enix > Square

Damnit, RT, I'm not supposed to agree with you!

I'll be interested in seeing how the next Star Ocean game comes out. As for it being a 'niche' series, Star Ocean: Till The End of Time did gain a greatest hits release over here in the states, so it can't be that niche.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

.




I suppose by that logic that books are a TERRIBLE way of telling a story, what with having so few choose-your-own-adventure novels around with so few options in the ones that are.

The honest truth is that a good story finds a way to get the reader involved one way or another, without necessarily making the reader a direct part of it. As a writer of currently several books and more than one game, plus an avid reader, I can personally vouch that storytelling is the art of making your audience care about events that happen only in text on a page and in the inner senses of their own mind, usually without any direct input from them. By that logic, a game's story is bad by its own merits, rather than someone's arbitrary and incredibly narrow definition. Yes, it's outright bad of a game to throw your input out and do whatever the hell it wants. MGS, in this case, is a terrible storyteller, from what I hear. However, if the story flows naturally from the actions of a player, even if those actions are fixed, then there isn't a problem in that respect. If you win a battle and the story hinges on you winning it, then the flow makes sense. If you win and still lose in the following scene, then yes, something is totally borked.

Again, it comes down to actually having limits to our technology. Any linear story is going to have the same beginning and end regardless of the middle because you have an intro scene and assume that the player wants to actually finish the game and win. An open world aspect is therefore prohibitive to having a complete story, because at most you'll have a choice of stories to follow to their linear conclusion. It's just life. You can mitigate linearity by offering choices, but we're back to Chrono and limitations on just what the player can choose.

Games will never be on par with your uncle bullshitting tales for you around a campfire.

The problem with this argument is that I cannot think of a single video game which has a story that would be any good as a book. The vast vast vast majority of videogames have batshit terrible plots. Thus they cannot be compared to books and to compete they need to take advantage of thier medium in a way that books can't.
Cause right now they really don't.

[Kim]

I would have played 12 more if I didn't hate the license system so much. I really like turn-based battles, though being able to avoid enemies Persona 3 style or even Chrono Cross style is preferential to random battles in my opinion. Am I the only person who thinks motorcycle summon is badass? Yeah, Nomura takes zelts and bippers to far, but it doesn't bug me too much. As long as 13 doesn't have license point bullshit or some similar thing, I'll probably enjoy the hell out of it. Not as much as some games, but still.

Also, multiplayer is not better than single player. They are two wholly different experiences, and bitching about a lack of multiplayer, especially when multiplayer wouldn't really work, makes little to no sense to me.

EDIT: Barrel, go play Mother 3. Seriously.

Addendum: I think it's funny how Hadoken rants on Squeenix, but as soon as someone says that Evangelion wasn't all that is awesome he says, "Not here to start fights. Calm down."

[Krylo]

Evangelion was terrible.

I had a long post refuting a bunch of other stuff, too, but I lost it.

So yeah, I'm just going to stick with Evangelion was terrible.