I would have enjoyed 'X' if 'Y'

[immortalfrieza]

See, I can fault Square Enix for that, because it's not about how good or bad the AI is. It's about the fact that the AI completely removes the need for player input. In a video game, that's criminal. You should absolutely never, under any circumstances, remove all player agency from the gameplay of your game. And it was never a problem in previous Final Fantasy games, because the player chose all actions for the entire party, and it worked.

I get exactly what they were going for with the new system, but the problem is that I don't think it was a positive step for the franchise. When I play a turn-based or pseudo-turn-based JRPG, I want to feel like I'm actually making tactical decisions in combat, or at least like there's some stake I have in the encounter. Final Fantasy XIII didn't have that.

Would you rather the autobattle be so staggeringly stupid that it's suicide to ever use it? That's pretty much what you're asking for, for the party AI to be less competent. Besides, if it's such a problem why not simply not use autobattle at all and just actively participate then? I know I never use it.

 

[shrekfan246]

See, I can fault Square Enix for that, because it's not about how good or bad the AI is. It's about the fact that the AI completely removes the need for player input. In a video game, that's criminal. You should absolutely never, under any circumstances, remove all player agency from the gameplay of your game. And it was never a problem in previous Final Fantasy games, because the player chose all actions for the entire party, and it worked.

I get exactly what they were going for with the new system, but the problem is that I don't think it was a positive step for the franchise. When I play a turn-based or pseudo-turn-based JRPG, I want to feel like I'm actually making tactical decisions in combat, or at least like there's some stake I have in the encounter. Final Fantasy XIII didn't have that.

Would you rather the autobattle be so staggeringly stupid that it's suicide to ever use it? That's pretty much what you're asking for, for the party AI to be less competent.

No. I'm asking to actually have control of the party. I should think that would've been obvious. Auto-battle and partner AI should've never been something they shoved into the game in the first place.

 

[Angelous Wang]

Hello Guys,

The topic of this post is what would you have enjoyed more if it was a little bit different?

For example I would have adored Star Wars: The Old Republic if it was an epic single player RPG rather than an MMO because I find that it has great single player features but other than that its a WoW clone, Imagine:

8 Great story lines,
8 Different sets of great characters,
Thousands of weapons and armor,
etc,

Add in some more features from the earlier games like party based combat, crafting and character dialog it would be golden. I still think SWTOR is a good game I just feel focused too much on two opposing aspects.

I would too have liked SWTOR too if it had a different combat system. I just cannot play that same old D&D MMO combat system any more.

 

[immortalfrieza]

No. I'm asking to actually have control of the party. I should think that would've been obvious. Auto-battle and partner AI should've never been something they shoved into the game in the first place.

Why? What difference does it make? There's plenty of games with a party AI and autobattle features, in fact it's a necessity for real time combat games. What makes this so bad?

 

[shrekfan246]

No. I'm asking to actually have control of the party. I should think that would've been obvious. Auto-battle and partner AI should've never been something they shoved into the game in the first place.

Why? What difference does it make? There's plenty of games with a party AI and autobattle features, in fact it's a necessity for real time combat games. What makes this so bad?

I've already gone over this.

I'll roll with the comparisons to real-time games, though.

Imagine playing Mass Effect with a Shepard who used all abilities in combat without your direction, simply based on the class you chose and how you've leveled them.

Imagine playing a first-person shooter where your gun fired automatically every time your crosshair passed over an enemy.

Imagine playing a real-time strategy games where all of your units when built automatically went off to assault the enemy base or objective without you directing them or being able to micromanage their movements.

For something maybe a bit closer to the reality of Final Fantasy XIII, imagine playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown, except you only control one of the four-six squaddies you sent out on a mission.

Final Fantasy has never had complicated combat systems. But in every game prior to XIII, everything that happened during combat was directly on the player.

Also, personal preference. Final Fantasy XIII isn't a real-time game. It's the same pseudo-turn-based system used in a great majority of the games which came prior to it. In turn-based games where combat ostensibly relies on using strategic attacks, I don't like having the computer dictate what my party does. I can't play the Persona games without switching my party members to manual control, because I don't like the feeling of not having control over what my side does during combat. Do I need to say the words "player agency" again?

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I probably would have enjoyed Dark Souls more if there had been a better tutorial, or even a freaking manual explaining stuff. Heard they're addressing this in the sequel, so I'm giving it another shot.

Would have enjoyed Fable III a lot more if the final boss fight and the last half hour of the game wasn't such a fizzle of a letdown.

I greatly enjoyed the Mass Effect series, but I would have enjoyed it more if that ending hadn't...oh, sorry. I thought I saw the horse twitch.

I would have enjoyed X-COM: Enemy Unknown if the storytelling had been better.

I would have enjoyed Street Fighter IV if Seth wasn't a freaking cheater, even on the easy setting.

 

[The Brian J]

I would have enjoyed Chrono Trigger if the battle system had been one that I could actually get into.

Also if people hadn't hyped it as the greatest RPG of all time, but that's neither here nor there.

 

[immortalfrieza]

I've already gone over this.

I'll roll with the comparisons to real-time games, though.

Imagine playing Mass Effect with a Shepard who used all abilities in combat without your direction, simply based on the class you chose and how you've leveled them.

Imagine playing a first-person shooter where your gun fired automatically every time your crosshair passed over an enemy.

For something maybe a bit closer to the reality of Final Fantasy XIII, imagine playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown, except you only control one of the four-six squaddies you sent out on a mission.

Final Fantasy has never had complicated combat systems. But in every game prior to XIII, everything that happened during combat was directly on the player.

Also, personal preference. Final Fantasy XIII isn't a real-time game. It's the same pseudo-turn-based system used in a great majority of the games which came prior to it. In turn-based games where combat ostensibly relies on using strategic attacks, I don't like having the computer dictate what my party does. I can't play the Persona games without switching my party members to manual control, because I don't like the feeling of not having control over what my side does during combat. Do I need to say the words "player agency" again?

Imagine playing a real-time strategy games where all of your units when built automatically went off to assault the enemy base or objective without you directing them or being able to micromanage their movements.

I think tower defense games do that.

Again, don't use autobattle if you care about it so much. With FF13 you can easily just control the party leader while the AI controls the other 2, there's your player control, and with autobattle you don't tend to do all that well anyway, you'll probably win but not very effectively. A competent party AI just means you don't have to deal with micromanaging your entire party to do everything, which is a necessity when playing a real time game. As i mentioned I've played the Tales series and thus know how to deal with this sort of stuff. FF13 is also the first game in the series where it's mandatory for the player to choose the character's actions right away or they can't make the most of each turn they get.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

Yay, I get to rip on Final Fantasy XIII again. I haven't done that enough the past few days.

I would have enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII if it were still a Final Fantasy game.

Sorry, let me reign it in a bit.

If all of the pacing had been completely overhauled and the game hadn't been terrified of letting the player do cool stuff against enemies, I would've been able to put up with the extreme linearity, complete lack of world-building in the form of characters, NPCs, towns, cities, and side-quests, and the ham-fisted nature of the main character arcs (which was destroyed by the terrible pacing). Alternatively, if all of the latter stuff had been different, I would've been able to put up with the horrific pacing of the story and the game's over-reliance on using cutscenes to show the characters doing awesome stuff in what would've been normal combat encounters the player controlled themselves in any earlier Final Fantasy game.

Ninja! Sort of...

I would've liked FFXIII if the story had been told comprehensively in the cutscenes and the Datalog wasn't in any way required reading to understand/appreciate/enjoy the story...

OR

...I would've liked it if the battle system had been introduced at a good pace--rather than a snail-on-sleeping-pills pace--and I would have been given a consistent feed of interesting and tricky encounters (like the Bartandelas fights) as opposed to boring, repetitive battles in which it's possible to go Tank/Healer/Attacker and mindlessly hammer "confirm" until the battle is over (like >90% of the battles in the game.

If both of the above things were changed, FFXIII would've been one of my favorite games of all time.

 

[shrekfan246]

I think tower defense games do that.

And they're a different genre than real-time strategy games, so I fail to see how that's relevant. You should know just as well as I do that I was talking specifically about games such as Starcraft.

Again, don't use autobattle if you care about it so much.

Again, it's not about the autobattle system. EDIT: It's about how the combat system was designed in such a way that the autobattle system is the optimal way to play the majority of the game.

With FF13 you can easily just control the party leader while the AI controls the other 2, there's your player control

I don't want the AI controlling the other 2, because -

which is a necessity when playing a real time game.

- Final Fantasy XIII is not a real-time game. It's a turn-based JRPG with active time battles, just like Final Fantasy VI, VII, VIII, IX, and XII before it.

FF13 is also the first game in the series where it's mandatory for the player to choose the character's actions right away or they can't make the most of each turn they get.

Except that's not how it works, because you wait for the gauge to charge up further so you can do more actions, because spamming a single action every time it's charged enough isn't going to do anything to most of the enemies the game throws at you.

But, congratulations. I don't want to derail this thread any further, so I'm dropping out of this conversation.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

snip

I don't think shrekfan is saying that the system doesn't work; rather that the system is, from a series' perspective, a step back in player agency and control.

In FFXIII the player has less control over the party's specific actions than in any other main series FF game that came before it. Fact.

If you enjoyed the way that the player-agency-removal was employed in FFXIII's battle system, and believe that the system was better for it, that's great for you, but most series veterans, such as shrekfan and myself, see it as a negative and wish that the battle system had been designed differently.

 

[frobalt]

I would have enjoyed Borderlands 1/2 if the guns had a little heft or kick. That's far from my only complaint about Borderlands, but it's probably the most obvious issue in a game that's all about its weaponry.

The most obvious issue about borderlands games (Especially BL2) is that the enemies are just bullet sponges.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

I would've enjoyed "Amnesia: The Dark Descent" if it hadn't have kept interrupting MY experience with ITS stupid, stupid storyline. And flashbacks. (Oh God, the flashbacks.) Including flashbacks to events that the main character wasn't even present at - for example, the last thoughts of people who'd been left alone to die in the wine cellar / morgue.

I was expecting scary 3D survival-horror "Pacman". Now that would be a freakin' awesome game.

 

[teebeeohh]

I would have enjoyed Overlord 2 if I got it on PC instead of PS3.
That control scheme was built for a mouse and keyboard.

that's impossible, there are parts of that game that are literally impossible to do with m/k.

 

[Fsyco]

I would have enjoyed Overlord 2 if I got it on PC instead of PS3.
That control scheme was built for a mouse and keyboard.

Really? I got a serious vibe that it was built for controllers. The mouse control for the minions just flat out doesn't work. Maybe it's just a crap game.

OT: I think that "I would have liked x if y" is a bit broad, since I could say that I would have liked Katawa Shoujo if it were an open-world beat-em-up with less anime bullshit. But more in line with the spirit of the question, I think I'd have to pick Metal Gear Solid 2 (since someone already picked the Thief reboot and someone else did Dark Souls). If MGS2 was more original and didn't copy the first game so much, and then spent 45 minutes telling the player how genius it was for ripping off the first game, it could have been much better. Also Raiden either needed a major re-write or to be cut entirely, since he felt like a character out of some 90s cartoon that had nothing to do with the plot of the game. Having a new protagonist? Fine. Having all the characters talk about the old one, and then having the old one show up anyway? Less fine. There was all that crap at the end about his dark and edgy past but that felt really shoe-horned. Also cut out Rose entirely. That was really, really out of place.

 

[FPLOON]

I would have enjoyed X if Y hadn't Z with the Q!

OT: I would have enjoyed the Game of Thrones video game for the PS3 if the game was less buggy and the combat was more refined alongside it... Seriously, the story was basically the only part of that game that made it worth playing... and I couldn't finish it because of both the bugs and the combat...

 

[babinro]

- I would have enjoyed the God of War series if the combat related QTE's were severely toned down (boss ones / occasional use is okay)

- I would have enjoyed The Old Republic if the substantial travel grind to and from quest givers/locations was minimized

- I would have enjoyed The Dragon Age facebook game if the 'fee-to-wait' system was removed so I could actually play

- I would have enjoyed Zelda: Skyward Sword if I could control Link accurately (I am unable to properly do the motions and make Link do what I want him to do. If the game allowed for button presses I'd be good at the game).

- I would have enjoyed Resident Evil 6 if the game wasn't awful in every measurable way.

 

[putowtin]

I would of enjoyed Skyrim more if...
It had actual choice making decisions when you joined up with either the Stormcloaks or Imperials...
Far more variety in clothing and armors for everyone...
The Guards to stop disrespecting the Dragonborn whom saved their hides from Alduin, Vampire Lords, and more...
Marriage was actually a well-thought out mechanic rather than being so dull...

LUCKILY, mods exist. They easily fix all these problems!! ^_^

What mod changes the Civil War? (Still miffed that there wasn't a dlc that finished off the overriding issues with that quest)

OT
I would have enjoyed Fable 2 and 3 more if Peter Molyneux hadn't have promised the earth and failed to deliver yet again!
Oh and if the writers did't stick to the same old Hollywood formular, and they hadn't hired Johnathan Ross to do a f*@king voice, and the choices you made in the 3rd made a difference, and a million other problems that need fixing to make the games playable.

(I'll go mutter in the corner till I'm better)

 

[Colt47]

I would have enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII if the game wasn't a hobbling mess of automation, linearity, and insultingly stupid characters and story. That game and Two Worlds 1 are among the worst games I've had the misfortune of playing over the last few years.

 

[Smeatza]

Really? I got a serious vibe that it was built for controllers. The mouse control for the minions just flat out doesn't work. Maybe it's just a crap game.

that's impossible, there are parts of that game that are literally impossible to do with m/k.

It appears Overlord 2 just has really crap controls then as I can't even imagine how they'd get any worse than the gamepad controls.