Am I growing soft or are RPG's using more bs tactics?

[hickwarrior]

Oh god, don't remind me about 'reinforcements' for fire emblem. The moment they came on was the moment I restarted and made a mental note of it happening. It's just trial and error for no good reason. I get the idea of chaos on the battlefield, but if I incur heavy penalties(because losing a character for good is pretty heavy) while the AI does not, something's not right.

So, I guess reality is unrealistic... [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnrealistic]

 

[syaoran728]

While on the topic of RNG and turn-based combat.
Could someone please explain to me why the enemies in Shining Force II tend to have multiple turns with the same unit before I have even moved all of mine? It really throws off any kind of tactics when you can't plan ahead.
What I really loved about the first Shining Force was how I could beat the AI simply by taking advantage of the turn-order.

If I remember correctly turn order in Shining Force is based on the speed stat and unlike most strategy rpgs there is no turn counter on the map. This means that faster units get turns more often. You might have gotten a lot of poor level ups on your characters since they generate stat gains really randomly or you might just be under leveled in general.

 

[tippy2k2]

Are the ambushes you mention more like FE6's or FE7's? Regardless, this BS has always been in the series, it's just that the games have recently toned down on the difficulty in general.

Awakening has ambushes where the enemies appear wherever on the screen during the enemy turn, there are usually a handful of them, and they get to move and attack on their turn (basically, unless you've played the level before so you know where they're coming from, there's not much you can do about it except take it and hope they don't murder your healer).

Since it's essentially unfeasable to make an AI that can continue outsmarting and surprising a human being even after hours of gameplay, the only other options available to make games harder (in strategy/tactic games, as opposed to skill-based games) is to ramp up bullshit, RNG, unforeseeable ambushes etc.

Maybe I was just dumber as a kid but I had games like the original "Advanced Wars" actually outsmart me while I was playing. Fire Emblem wasn't always the best about it but it wasn't stupid like the new one felt like. For example...

In Awakening, everyone attacked whatever enemy was in range regardless of their chances. I won 75% of my fights by putting Frederick (tank guy) up front for enemies would literally throw themselves on his lance. They couldn't hurt him; they had a 0% chance of hitting and Frederick would rip them apart. Yet, everyone would attack him and get slaughtered.

To me, RPG's used to at least have some sense of challenge because of mechanics and AI but now it feels like all they can do is stack the deck against you because the game isn't smart enough to take you on legitimately. Again, maybe it's always been like this but being at the old age of 28 has made me wise enough to see through it and not get fooled by the AI...

 

[Vern5]

Snip

You need demons with Devil Speed and/or Flight in order to handle this mission. Also, a fun way to deal with tanks is to ind a way to inflict the Stone status on them and then blast them apart with Zan.

As for Fire Emblem's Ambushes... Yeah I have no advice for dealing with those as the designers thought that they should be in every mission. No warning or anything. Just random dudes coming in from your flanks to make sure you're awake. Yet another reason why FE:A is a terrible tactics game and pales in comparison to its predecessors.

To be fair, games have been pulling this shit forever. Ninja Gaiden is probably the first offender of this fashion.

 

[Zinzinbadio]

You are actually mistaken turn order in Devil Survivor is not determined by RNG. Each unit has a speed value which determines initial turn order. Performing actions such as moving, attacking and using demon abilities will consume the move bar increasing the time between character turns.The enemies are probably units with a fair bit of speed and since all they do is move they will have turns more often

For the mission your on I would recommend demons with the racial abilities of flight, animal leg, bind and the one that swaps places with a teammate(swap or something like that). Probably are a few more than those you could use but it's been years since I played it.

 

[RJ 17]

I swear to God I am about to throw this God damn game in the trash. This is the second RPG in a row that got HUGE critical acclaim and I feel like it's just garbage and here's why:

Bu-Bu-Bu-Bullshit Tactics

Spoiler: SMT: Devil Survivor Overclocked: My problems with the game

Now I had a previous issue with this game that grinding took care of but now I'm just so sick of this game that I'm ready to smash it with a hammer. I'm at the point where even the Hard Free Battles I can sleep walk through (so I can't grind because it does dick for me) but I'm stuck on this bullshit of a mission. A number of enemies are running away from me and you have to kill them before they escape (never mind that I already fought these fucks and I had to stop them from escaping so that they wouldn't come back...I guess the game forgot that part).

So you have these four guys you're fighting. They have nothing but tanks on their team so killing them takes forever. Meanwhile, all they're doing is running away. I finally had the mission beat when the game decided it didn't say "Fuck You!" enough and had the guy move twice. Seriously...what the fuck do you want game? They get to move multiple times between my turn with these fucking tanks of an enemy and I can't get any higher level than I already am.

Spoiler: Soooo basically you would be Happy and the game would be The Clown?

Seriously though, I feel your pain my friend.

Spoiler: That's pretty much how I felt the entire time while playing Arkham Origins.

"Here's an idea! Lets make all the thugs hyper-aggressive!"
"YEAH! And you know what else would be sweet? Lets have them slide 10 feet across the ground so that no matter where you've moved to after they've started their attack animation they'll hit you unless you counter."
"But doesn't the counter button only work half the time anyways?"
"Yup! Now what else can we do?"
"Lets make 90% of the fights take place in confined areas making it impossible to get any kind of separation from the thugs, ensuring that if you take one punch you'll quickly take 5 more right after it."
"OH! And you know the Target Priority System that the previous games used to allow Batman to wisely target the greatest threat? You know, it let him do things like Disarm-Destroy a guy in the back with a gun rather than a guy in the front with a baseball bat? Lets just get rid of that and have all moves and gadgets target the closest thug!"
"THAT'S GOLD! On that note, lets not give them Disarm-Destroy until the very end of the game! Now what else have you got?"
"Well we could always post snipers on most of the rooftops half-way through the game, almost completely negating the convenience of the fast-travel system we built in and ensuring that navigation in general becomes extremely tedious..."
"BRILLIANT!"

 

[endnuen]

Try Dark Souls then. Only RNG there is in there is in regard to drops from the monsters.
All the other bullshit it throws at you is completely fair.

 

[Bad Jim]

Since it's essentially unfeasable to make an AI that can continue outsmarting and surprising a human being even after hours of gameplay, the only other options available to make games harder (in strategy/tactic games, as opposed to skill-based games) is to ramp up bullshit, RNG, unforeseeable ambushes etc.

While it's true that AI is never as smart as a seasoned player, that does not mean the AI has to rely on extremely annoying bullshit tactics. If the harder difficulty settings give the AI stat bonuses, numerical superiority, access to information it shouldn't have etc, then we can deal with it. We just need to play better.

Stuff like Fire Emblem's ambushes is bullshit because it is impossible to guard against, unless you have played the game before and memorised them. There are no clues that an ambush might happen, and no way to arrange your troops that is safe if an unforseen ambush occurs. And once you've played through enough times to memorise the ambushes, they no longer make the game more difficult at all. You just put the fragile units somewhere safe, trigger the ambush, then fight normally. At the point where you want a real challenge, ambushes fail to make the game more difficult.

 

[MoeMints]

Stuff like Fire Emblem's ambushes is bullshit because it is impossible to guard against, unless you have played the game before and memorised them. There are no clues that an ambush might happen, and no way to arrange your troops that is safe if an unforseen ambush occurs.

Can you give an example of this? Seriously, I don't get where people see ambushes as this giant difficulty leap.

Maybe I played Days of Ruin enough that I'm just used to keeping my units not easily blind sided and wiping out with minimal loss, but the only time I got actually rocked by reinforcements is Donnel fighting six people in a row with upgraded magic.

 

[Bad Jim]

Can you give an example of this? Seriously, I don't get where people see ambushes as this giant difficulty leap.

It won't affect the game much if you play casual mode since you get your units back. But in classic, they get killed for good, so losing a healer to an ambush is a major bummer.

And it's not that it's difficult to counter. It's just that the way to counter it is to know about it in advance, rather than any reasonable precaution you might try. Bullshit hard. Dark Souls is hard, but not bullshit. This is bullshit, but not hard.

 

[Hydrahunter]

The idea that same turn reinforcements are bullshit difficulty is laughable at best, especially in Fire Emblem where they are a staple of the series on higher difficulty levels. If you keep getting raped by them you should take some time to reconsider how you are tackling stages, perhaps you overstretching the reach of your units or focusing too much on the enemy before you without considering the possibility of an ambush, something a Strategist should do as part of Strategy is preparation and adaptation. From the sounds of it you have been trying to level weak units and aren't using the pair-up system which might be making things harder for you then necessary as Awakening was built around the Pair-Up System (Not just directly pairing up but having units next to each other).

Devil Survivor, on the other hand, is a much different beast as its a game that depends just as much upon the company you carry with you as the levels of your company. While its been mentioned above by others id like to reiterate that Moves such as Flight (Ability to Traverse over Obstacles if you have the movement), Devil Speed (If I recall allows you to move 7 spaces a turn) and Bind (Restricts an enemies movement to 1 panel a turn) help immensely in stages like the one you are having trouble with. Take how turns work into account too, which Zinzinbadio described above, when "equipping" demons to people and where you deploy then as that can directly effect how easy you can handle the stage too I.E. Yuzu has the lowest base speed and movement in the game, IIRC, so she naturally gets turns less often and moves less panels then the rest of your party so putting her at the vanguard might be a terrible idea depending on setup and strategy.

 

[Shpongled]

Since it's essentially unfeasable to make an AI that can continue outsmarting and surprising a human being even after hours of gameplay, the only other options available to make games harder (in strategy/tactic games, as opposed to skill-based games) is to ramp up bullshit, RNG, unforeseeable ambushes etc.

Maybe I was just dumber as a kid but I had games like the original "Advanced Wars" actually outsmart me while I was playing. Fire Emblem wasn't always the best about it but it wasn't stupid like the new one felt like. For example...

In Awakening, everyone attacked whatever enemy was in range regardless of their chances. I won 75% of my fights by putting Frederick (tank guy) up front for enemies would literally throw themselves on his lance. They couldn't hurt him; they had a 0% chance of hitting and Frederick would rip them apart. Yet, everyone would attack him and get slaughtered.

To me, RPG's used to at least have some sense of challenge because of mechanics and AI but now it feels like all they can do is stack the deck against you because the game isn't smart enough to take you on legitimately. Again, maybe it's always been like this but being at the old age of 28 has made me wise enough to see through it and not get fooled by the AI...

I only played Advance Wars a little and i'm not going to pretend to have an extensive history with these sorts of games or anything. I do tend to agree things seem a bit easier nowadays, but like you i'm not entirely sure if that's my own gaming ability or the games themselves. The only point i disagree with you on is that when i look back at the harder games i've played, i don't remember particularly compelling AI, i just remember getting randomly 1-shot, or having to fight 10x more units than the AI should have in the circumstances... and basically that sort of thing. Stuff that i'd happily lump under the "bullshit" category.

Since it's essentially unfeasable to make an AI that can continue outsmarting and surprising a human being even after hours of gameplay, the only other options available to make games harder (in strategy/tactic games, as opposed to skill-based games) is to ramp up bullshit, RNG, unforeseeable ambushes etc.

While it's true that AI is never as smart as a seasoned player, that does not mean the AI has to rely on extremely annoying bullshit tactics. If the harder difficulty settings give the AI stat bonuses, numerical superiority, access to information it shouldn't have etc, then we can deal with it. We just need to play better.

See, personally i'd call that sort of stuff, for the most part, bullshit. In an ideal world the AI would have to follow the exact same rules as the player regardless of difficulty level, and the difficulty would scale up with how well the AI actually knows and plays the game. Unfortunately this is unviable for the most at the moment, so we have to put up with these ridiculous stat boosts.

Civ is a prime example of this - deity isn't hard because the AI is brilliant, deity is hard because the AI gains the ability to randomly spawn units out of their ass, to complete wonders they only just unlocked the tech for 2 turns ago etc. This is bullshit because it fucks with the players ability to plan ahead, and it's unfuriating because the player can spend months and months perfecting a very specific build order to get a specific tech at the earliest possible point so you can guarentee that wonder.... and then the AI gets it 8 turns ahead of you in his itty bitty level 3 city that he just founded 4 turns ago.

EDIT: Realised i went off on a bit of a rant about a different genre game than the thread subject, but i hope my point comes across!

 

[Kaimax]

I never had a problem with "Ambushes" in Awakening as I always keep the team together and make sure no enemy unit can reach my weakest units. If things get Harder pair them with the tanks and the agile ones. In Fire Emblem, if an area is unusually empty prepare for ambushes. Simple as that. So, You just need to be ready to deal with anything.

So, I guess reality is unrealistic... [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnrealistic]

QFT.

 

[AuronFtw]

Stuff like Fire Emblem's ambushes is bullshit because it is impossible to guard against, unless you have played the game before and memorised them. There are no clues that an ambush might happen, and no way to arrange your troops that is safe if an unforseen ambush occurs.

Can you give an example of this? Seriously, I don't get where people see ambushes as this giant difficulty leap.

Maybe I played Days of Ruin enough that I'm just used to keeping my units not easily blind sided and wiping out with minimal loss, but the only time I got actually rocked by reinforcements is Donnel fighting six people in a row with upgraded magic.

It's a recurring bullshit theme in Fire Emblem, actually, the entire series being thoroughly mediocre for that and several other reasons (toying with true greatness and genius design, but always hurled far back because of stupid decisions and gameplay directions). In Frederick Emblem, playing on lunatic+ classic mode, it's not uncommon to have a unit instantly die to an enemy (or group of them) that spawn from a castle/behind you/sides of maps because they get to move immediately upon spawning, taking their pick of weak or stranded party members and typically critting them 100% of the time (because lunatic+ was designed by a fucking moron) leading to a soft reset, forcing you to re-play 10, 20, sometimes 30 minutes of a mission you were doing fine in up until you were blindsided and instakilled by mobs you literally could not counter.

The Fire Emblem series has always struggled with artificial difficulty, and it's usually the main thing holding it back from truly great TBS games like FFT, xcom: the new one, or even the old fallouts. FE8 had a shitload of fog maps where you had to tiptoe forward one step at a time, keeping your healers/support units completely surrounded in case a pack of 5 gargoyles was hiding and decided that would be the perfect time to make an appearance. It was frustrating and poorly designed. XCOM, by comparison, has literally every map fogged by default, and it's totally fine - the game mechanics actually support that kind of gameplay, and you're given audio cues (and visual, sometimes) that allows you to use a variety of proactive defensive skills and positioning to counter a superior enemy threat. FE games have none of that, and 8 just threw fog at you like it was totally fine. 8 was otherwise piss easy - none of the bosses/encounters you could see were any threat whatsoever, but having to replay the fog missions when your priest decided he was going to paint a target on his back for all the invis gargoyles was just dumb.

The spawn-and-attack mobs from Frederick Emblem are in a similar boat - they often blindside you and force you to replay through content you've already played, simply to get to a point where, with foreknowledge of spawn points and spawn turns, you can now progress through the level without any losses. In cases like this, the casual mode is honestly an improvement - I personally don't know anyone that plays through Classic and doesn't simply soft reset the game when they lose anyone. Casual mode is pretty much the same game with the same difficulty, it just allows you to avoid bullshit like wasting 30 minutes of your life on a mission where one guy gets instakilled by a crit from a monster that spawned and attacked him on the same turn. It "sucks" that you lose a guy, but you can play through and not have to waste the time you already invested in that mission. In essence, "casual" mode counters bullshit design, improving the game immeasurably with no detriment by removing one of its worst, most outdated and boring aspects.

The most difficult missions in Frederick Emblem (the 5-star dlc stuff on lunatic+, for example) often require meticulously preplanned parent/child graphs to port the "perfect" skills over, literal hours of grinding various (zombie) dlc maps for exp, cash or gear, and once you have everything perfect, you do the maps over and over until RNGesus smiles on you and you crit the bad guys more than the bad guys crit you, because even with a perfect loadout you can just get shit on by multiple crits in a row that reduce even the most minmaxed character with full support rallies to ash in a single turn.

It actually makes me think they call it lunatic mode because it describes the people who designed it, rather than the people it's designed *for.* Because if they were going for the latter, it would have to be "players who enjoy tedious, meticulous, grindy to the power of WoW cubed, frustrating and hilariously artificially difficult" mode.

It's an improvement that they realized their godawful permadeath system is a shitty one and granted players a way to avoid it, now they just need to realize their godawful RNGesus crit system is equally shitty and allow players to skip that, too. Preferably not with a DLC map where we kill zombies, though, because that shit got old a long time ago.

 

[Atmos Duality]

SMT: I have no comment on.

But having gone through a fairly large backlog of Fire Emblem games in the last 2.5 years (or so), I think it's safe to say that Fire Emblem has always been that way: Braindead, suicidal AI with "horde tactics", and random dick-moves.

Depending on the installment, it's either about holding the line against a gaggle of nameless dudes, or avoiding the random "goofbane" tricks it throws at your back line.

It actually makes me think they call it lunatic mode because it describes the people who designed it, rather than the people it's designed *for.* Because if they were going for the latter, it would have to be "players who enjoy tedious, meticulous, grindy to the power of WoW cubed, frustrating and hilariously artificially difficult" mode.

Based on what I saw of FE: Awakening's reception by long time FE fans, I believe it was designed specifically for them.

But hey, if they love their artificial difficulty, who am I to judge?

...Well, I will judge the moment they shit all over the fact that it gives players a choice in the matter. More than a few fans did in fact, shit all over "Casual" mode for not providing and I quote "The PROPER Fire Emblem experience".

It's an improvement that they realized their godawful permadeath system is a shitty one and granted players a way to avoid it, now they just need to realize their godawful RNGesus crit system is equally shitty and allow players to skip that, too. Preferably not with a DLC map where we kill zombies, though, because that shit got old a long time ago.

Permadeath has had an interesting, if not outright hilarious effect on player behavior that outright defeats the purpose of it.

Most players don't take "acceptable losses", but restart whenever they lose a unit.

What does that tell me about the players and the game design?
Well, for one, the players are willing to endure a lot of tedium to do the game "right"; replaying the same levels repeatedly.

Another, it's possible that long-term goals demand you preserve your units in case they ever get good (never underestimate the whims of the level system); the longer you've had a unit, the better they're likely to be, save for late game crutch characters (not to be confused with the early game crutches, "Jeigans" and "Oifeys").

I dunno, maybe early on they instinctively guessed how much artificial difficulty they would have to deal with and planned to never get stuck in a situation where the game is unwinnable due to a shortage of OP dudes.

In which case, the defense for the artificial difficulty becomes a sad case study about dependency and abusive relationships. They love the artificial difficulty even when it does its damnest to hurt them. ;p

 

[Bad Jim]

Since it's essentially unfeasable to make an AI that can continue outsmarting and surprising a human being even after hours of gameplay, the only other options available to make games harder (in strategy/tactic games, as opposed to skill-based games) is to ramp up bullshit, RNG, unforeseeable ambushes etc.

While it's true that AI is never as smart as a seasoned player, that does not mean the AI has to rely on extremely annoying bullshit tactics. If the harder difficulty settings give the AI stat bonuses, numerical superiority, access to information it shouldn't have etc, then we can deal with it. We just need to play better.

See, personally i'd call that sort of stuff, for the most part, bullshit. In an ideal world the AI would have to follow the exact same rules as the player regardless of difficulty level, and the difficulty would scale up with how well the AI actually knows and plays the game. Unfortunately this is unviable for the most at the moment, so we have to put up with these ridiculous stat boosts.

Civ is a prime example of this - deity isn't hard because the AI is brilliant, deity is hard because the AI gains the ability to randomly spawn units out of their ass, to complete wonders they only just unlocked the tech for 2 turns ago etc. This is bullshit because it fucks with the players ability to plan ahead, and it's unfuriating because the player can spend months and months perfecting a very specific build order to get a specific tech at the earliest possible point so you can guarentee that wonder.... and then the AI gets it 8 turns ahead of you in his itty bitty level 3 city that he just founded 4 turns ago.

Well, there are different levels of bullshit. We should accept that the AI will not be very good without special advantages. The question is, what sort of advantages?

I'd say that having a productivity bonus or stat boost is a reasonably honest way to make the AI stronger. You know what you are dealing with and can plan accordingly. It also allows for a difficulty setting that is fair, even if it might be painfully easy to beat.

Having the AI see things it shouldn't be able to see is a little bit bullshitty, and rarely disclosed to the player, but it's often the only practical way to make the AI competent. An experienced human player can deduce a lot of information about what he can't see, and it's really hard to make an AI do this. We should therefore accept the AI taking a few sneaky peeks as long as it doesn't go too far.

The Civ AI pulling wonders out of it's ass, that has quite a high BS factor. More than that, it doesn't really build anything, it just gets it's improvements and units for free. It's not even trying to play the same game as you, yet the game presents the AI as though it does.

Back on the subject of Fire Emblem, ambushes are BS not because you cannot pull the same trick, but because they are more about trial and error than tactics. They are simply not fun, even if you do accept the AI playing by different rules. And they don't make they game challenging for experienced players, because experienced players have already tried and erred.