Dissidia Duodecim Final Fantasy continues Squeenix's tradition of stupid titles

[POS Industries]

Originally Posted by mudah.swf

-Faster attacks or changed Dodge mechanics, so you can actually hit people or not get massively punished for ANY whiffed attack.
-The total removal of the Chase sequences, they add nothing to the game.
-Faster EX meter growth maybe? Make it rise with hits taken or something.
-More combos! Implement some form of damage scaling to prevent people building up masses of Brave with a single combo and then whacking you with an unavoiable HP attack, which wouldn't be very fun.
-Remove levelling and have some other form of progression, or give players in multiplayer matches an option to boost their characters to equal levels.
-ONLINE PLAY, JESUS CHRIST I CAN'T EXPRESS HOW IMPORTANT THAT IS. SO MUCH SO THAT I'M TYPING IN CAPS.

Pretty much seconding all of this. I'm okay with not completely removing chase sequences but I would like to see the number of moves that trigger them greatly reduced and replaced with link attack triggers, balanced out by a way to break out of attack links other than hitting EX-mode. Maybe something like a mini EX-guard that drains away some of your EX gauge in the process?

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by mudah.swf

Just a polite question: Why on earth are you bringing traditional fighting games into this? Dissidia doesn't control like any of them, it plays differently, it has nothing in common with them except you deplete another guy's health bar. Traditional fighting games have almost always been built around a 3-6 button arcade stick and also tend to include various button combinations, but they're not bad because the layout of the controller makes stuff like that easy to do. It's when they're ported to consoles and thus become playable on pad they get uncomfortable to play.

Dissidia has a whole host of different functions, such as camera control, 360 degree movement, an individual block button, a button for running around on the environment, a button for jumping and two attack buttons, as well as a button combination for EX-Bursting and a button for disabling the lock-on feature. All these use every single button on the PSP already, and if the bars in that one scan are any indication, Square are adding MORE stuff, which would need at least a two-button combination to activate unless Square remove some functions, which I doubt they'll do. Considering that the PSP is a small machine with a somewhat cramped button configuration and one analog slider, I personally think that Square would be better served with a console controller that has real room for what they want to add, rather than making the player put up with another button combination.

But I do see your point, Blue. In fact, thinking about it more I would say that the button layout itself matters a lot too. Fighting games can be played comfortably on a stick, but not so much a controller. It was even worse on early handheld systems, where fighting game ports could only use two, maybe 4 buttons, so had to use a terrible control scheme involving holding buttons (such as the Gameboy SF2 port) or removing normals entirely, thus limiting what a character can do, and in the case of characters with PPP/KKK moves, removing them entirely.

Well, as (hopefully) the last word on this, my reasons are twofold: 1.) because, as I admitted, I have never had the opportunity to actually play Dissidia despite it having been a fixture in our house since shortly after its release, and 2.) because the same idea applies when considering controls regardless.

Simply put, when you start making a game, you look at the controls you have to work with and cater your design choices to that. If you change platforms, you may need to rework your systems to fit the control scheme. DOS games abused Ctrl, Shift, and Alt because those are the only 3 keys on the keyboard that are able to register alongside other keys by default. You otherwise had to go through the mess of directly accessing the hardware and writing tons of code to allow multiple interrupts and it was just easier to use those in combination with other keys and each other. When you have 6 gameplay buttons, Start, Select, a D-pad, and a stick, you (hopefully) work that into your calculations.

Button combinations don't necessarily have to be painful, either. Slamming both shoulders is a quick and easy action that takes two fingers otherwise not doing anything, for instance.

As for the controls in Dissidia, FFWiki doesn't have them, so I really don't know how they handle. We have zero info on the new bar, so there's no indication if what it does will even need a button press. We'll just have to wait to find out, but I'm sure they'll try to make the command as painless as possible (or as painful as balance requires).

I believe we're getting more than a little bit off topic now. I'll give a list of things I'd like to see changed in Dissidia 2:

-Faster attacks or changed Dodge mechanics, so you can actually hit people or not get massively punished for ANY whiffed attack.
-The total removal of the Chase sequences, they add nothing to the game.
-Faster EX meter growth maybe? Make it rise with hits taken or something.
-More combos! Implement some form of damage scaling to prevent people building up masses of Brave with a single combo and then whacking you with an unavoiable HP attack, which wouldn't be very fun.
-Remove levelling and have some other form of progression, or give players in multiplayer matches an option to boost their characters to equal levels.
-ONLINE PLAY, JESUS CHRIST I CAN'T EXPRESS HOW IMPORTANT THAT IS. SO MUCH SO THAT I'M TYPING IN CAPS.

I think keeping a level system is actually a good idea, to be honest. It just doesn't have to be a grind. Or maybe instead of 99 levels, they could limit it to fewer, like, say, 10. That would let them keep some character growth while also letting them store less data and providing easier points to introduce new skills. They'd need to rework the stats, I'm sure, to keep the disparity down, but if there's anything useful I learned from looking at FFWiki pages, it's that your game calculations don't exactly need to bend reality. A simple, elegant formula will get you much further than all the astrophysics in the world if you want pretty numbers.

[Kim]

Get rid of equipment cuz goddamn son.

[POS Industries]

Originally Posted by NonCon

Get rid of equipment cuz goddamn son.

I disagree. The customization options were one of the best parts of the games in terms of strategy. A better alternative would be to make the good equipment less of a pain to get, or remove the actual hard stat bonuses from equipment pieces in favor of additional effects. Or both, frankly.

Keep the customization, remove the grind and resultant gear divide.

[Kim]

Okay, yeah, I can get behind customization. I just don't like the idea that someone is going to have the game weighted in their favor because they got all the special fusing items to get the super special awesome accessory.

[POS Industries]

True, though it counterbalances out with the artifact equipment feature, which basically rewards you for playing against other people by giving you exact copies of their gear pieces with additional effects. It makes starting out in PvP matches something of a pain, but after enough time spent getting your ass wrecked you'll be running around in the exact same gear as them.

But this becomes problematic for tournaments where you have to accommodate for the fact that not everyone showing up is going to be a hardened online warrior and you have to dump equips entirely anyway. So something that better streamlines the process so that everyone can play the game as intended in a competitive environment would be for the best.

[mudah.swf]

[QUOTE=bluestarultor;1071878]

As for the controls in Dissidia, FFWiki doesn't have them, so I really don't know how they handle. We have zero info on the new bar, so there's no indication if what it does will even need a button press. We'll just have to wait to find out, but I'm sure they'll try to make the command as painless as possible (or as painful as balance requires).

Dissidia had the following scheme:

Square: HP attack
Triangle: General run-around-on-walls button
Circle: Brave attack
Cross: Jump
DPad: Camera
Slider: Movement
L: Something I forget, maybe lock-on.
R: Guard
Select: I forgot what this does.
Start: Pause.
R+X+slider direction: Dodge.
R+Square: EX Burst I think, or maybe it was L+Square
R+Triangle: Dash straight to locked-on object, once you had the skill required.
There was another combination for triggering a Summon but I forget what it was.

A pretty crammed scheme already. Admittedly it worked alright as it was, but anything more I can see becoming a bit unwieldy.

I think keeping a level system is actually a good idea, to be honest. It just doesn't have to be a grind. Or maybe instead of 99 levels, they could limit it to fewer, like, say, 10. That would let them keep some character growth while also letting them store less data and providing easier points to introduce new skills. They'd need to rework the stats, I'm sure, to keep the disparity down, but if there's anything useful I learned from looking at FFWiki pages, it's that your game calculations don't exactly need to bend reality. A simple, elegant formula will get you much further than all the astrophysics in the world if you want pretty numbers.

My argument against levelling is that it has a huge effect on the outcome of matches, regardless of player skill. The single-player Story mode proves this, since you can take on enemies at a far higher level than your character would be during a first run through of their Story mode, and as a result you, the player, has to play pretty much perfectly whereas the AI only has to get one or two lucky hits on you to drain your Brave and put you in a pretty bad position. The Summons help even this out, but most of them only activate once a round and if you mess up while they're on, you're kind of boned. Now imagine this with a skilled human player playing a high-level character vs a low-level one. Being able to even out levels during multiplayer matches will help keep the game fun to play, without making players feel like they have to grind to level 100 to have a hope of winning against people who have gotten several level 100 characters in the first few weeks. But then again, this game won't be taken seriously in a competitive, serious context, at least not among fighting game enthusiasts, so I suppose it hardly matters that there's a levelling system.

As an aside, fighting games had a grand tradition of not altering shit when it comes to ports, especially handheld ones. Street Fighter 2 on the Gameboy made you hold down one of the two buttons to get varying levels of normal, which didn't work out that well. Street Fighter Alpha 3 on the GBA made you press a two-button combination to get a heavy normal, making Gief's Lariat impossible. Some games included easy modes, like the aformented SFA3 port which had easier super motions, and Darkstalkers Chronicles on the PSP which also had an easy mode, but all they amounted to was different button inputs, and you invariably lost some control over the move you wanted to do. Easy modes in fighting games are more common nowadays but they're invariably gimped compared to the "real" controls, and universally hated because they tend to break the balance of the moves a bit.

[bluestarultor]

Not to switch gears again, but I just realized something so obvious I'm kicking myself. If they choose to have Vincent in, HE could be the swing character. He has the Chaos Gene. That means he could come under the influence of Chaos and go ballistic.


While I'm on the subject, I missed this:

Originally Posted by EVILNess

I would love to see the Blackbelt and one of the Fiends (FIRE) from one, Leon or Minwu and the other Emperor you fight in the side story for Dawn of Souls from two, have Luneth not just be a costume from three, Kain is fine from four although I would rather see Yang or Cid, Faris definitely from five, Celes or Locke from six, Tifa, Red XII, and Rufus from seven, Quitsis from eight, Steiner from nine, Auron and Seymour from ten, and Balthier from 12.

I would love to see Ramza from FFT thrown in there somewhere as well.

Rufus would be an interesting one to get from FF7. First off because he'd be a blank slate, but second off because he's basically the unsung badass from the Compilation. Also, he's got a great design. Sometimes simple is more awesome than all the bells and whistles you could bury someone under.

I think if they gave him an interesting style of play and didn't mess up his appearance too badly, they could play off his fangirl segment and he wouldn't even be Bishie. Seriously, not that it comes up much, but apparently he's got what it takes to make the ladies swoon, or at least certain ladies (my cousin is a dedicated fan), but he's cool enough that he wouldn't alienate the male audience.

At the very least, he could use Gil Toss. XD


Edit:

Originally Posted by mudah.swf

Dissidia had the following scheme:

Square: HP attack
Triangle: General run-around-on-walls button
Circle: Brave attack
Cross: Jump
DPad: Camera
Slider: Movement
L: Something I forget, maybe lock-on.
R: Guard
Select: I forgot what this does.
Start: Pause.
R+X+slider direction: Dodge.
R+Square: EX Burst I think, or maybe it was L+Square
R+Triangle: Dash straight to locked-on object, once you had the skill required.
There was another combination for triggering a Summon but I forget what it was.

A pretty crammed scheme already. Admittedly it worked alright as it was, but anything more I can see becoming a bit unwieldy.

That's actually pretty painless, all told. Still leaves room for the double shoulder mash at least.

Originally Posted by Mudah

My argument against levelling is that it has a huge effect on the outcome of matches, regardless of player skill. The single-player Story mode proves this, since you can take on enemies at a far higher level than your character would be during a first run through of their Story mode, and as a result you, the player, has to play pretty much perfectly whereas the AI only has to get one or two lucky hits on you to drain your Brave and put you in a pretty bad position. The Summons help even this out, but most of them only activate once a round and if you mess up while they're on, you're kind of boned. Now imagine this with a skilled human player playing a high-level character vs a low-level one. Being able to even out levels during multiplayer matches will help keep the game fun to play, without making players feel like they have to grind to level 100 to have a hope of winning against people who have gotten several level 100 characters in the first few weeks. But then again, this game won't be taken seriously in a competitive, serious context, at least not among fighting game enthusiasts, so I suppose it hardly matters that there's a levelling system.

Well, yes, that's really why these things should at least have brackets, or at least informed consent. Actually, a temporary level boost, all else held constant, would be the matter of one line of code to perform assuming all the stats automatically cascaded.

Granted, I can understand the perspective of not including any of those (minus informed consent) if they feel it would ruin the balance of the game (meaning they want to force you to grind to extend play time).

Originally Posted by Mudah

Holy shit, shitty ports!

Those would be examples of terrible ports. On the other hand, handhelds were not the primary systems they were designed for, so it's (slightly) less egregious. On the other hand, I know for a fact that Street Fighter works just fine on the original system in all cases, which is, in fact, good design for the planned context.

That's just a matter of them doing things right the first time around and it not working when they made a change much later.

[Eldezar]

Argument: Person X too much like person Y.
Rebuttal: Smash Bros. Brawl.

Argument: Relevent Programming Degree says design is more important.
Rebuttal: Relevent Business/Marketing says popularity is more important. Also, SSBB.

Argument: Popularity does/doesn't matter.
Rebuttal: Sonic (does). Geno (doesn't).

Argument: Roster.
Rebuttal: Brawl.

But seriously, the discussion here reminds me of the Brawl speculation thread(s) from way back, and so many things didn't happen on a design and consumer perspective.

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by Eldezar

Argument: Person X too much like person Y.
Rebuttal: Smash Bros. Brawl.

Counter-rebuttal: previous design choices.

Argument: Relevent Programming Degree says design is more important.
Rebuttal: Relevent Business/Marketing says popularity is more important. Also, SSBB.

Clarification: no, Relevant Programming Degree says compromises will be made between the project sponsor (marketing team) and the project team (developers) based on technical feasibility, technical desirability, sponsor demand, resources, and relation of technical issues and extrapolation of non-technical input via spokespeople adept in translating between the two.

(Translation: It's up to poor souls like me to sit down with the poor souls from marketing or whoever we're making the program for sent to deliver specifications and determine the specifications they actually want when they have no idea how to express it, whether they're possible, and whether they "really want it" (i.e. are they willing to cover the costs and give adequate time for the features they're demanding). The two of us will then go back to our bosses and tell them "everything," "no," "no, but they think they do," and "shoot me now" and "he took ten tries to rattle off something with big words and I nodded and smiled," "he said no, but computers are magic and he's lying," "they're trying to cheat us," and "throw him in the alligator pits," respectively.)

Argument: Popularity does/doesn't matter.
Rebuttal: Sonic (does). Geno (doesn't).

Okay, I throw up my hands at this one because there is no good answer. There are shades of gray here that need to be addressed on a case-by-case basis.

Argument: Roster.
Rebuttal: Brawl.

Counter-rebuttal: different system, different capabilities; different company, different culture.




I'm just going to finish this off by saying Dissidia is nothing like Smash in any form and the two should never be compared. Smash is Nintendo wanking off for the enjoyment of everyone born since 1980 with no rhyme or reason in who's included because they're casting a wide net to catch as many people as possible, where Dissidia is Square wanking off its properties for a much narrower audience in celebration of a single series with much more niche appeal.

Oh, and another thing, even the design philosophies are different. Dissidia's roster was carefully considered from the planning phases, where Brawl held a poll and ended up leaving in dead code for several characters, including Mewtwo, Dr. Mario, Roy, and even Plusle and Minun, some of which had model data that was repurposed for trophies.

In short, life's not so simple.