The Xenoblade Chronicles Series Thread: Definitive Edition (All Spoilers in Tags)

[Jumpin]

Volterra_90 said:

Jumpin said:

Heh, I actually loved the way XCX did it. I loved being dropped into the world and given more freedom; but yeah, I have probably played over 100 RPGs all the way through, and am into games like Dwarf Fortress. I also love exploring mechanics and UI on my own. So I'm not necessarily the best example of player to go by when thinking about how to design for most players.

The worst tutorial mess I ever saw was Final Fantasy 8. That seems to have messed up anywhere between 40 and 60% of players was Final Fantasy 8 and the introduction of the draw system and not having any introduction to the crafting system, which the should be introduced to the player before drawing.

Essentially, crafting/refining magic from materials is the primary way a player can get magic. Instead, players were just accumulating all those items that enemies dropped in battles, forgetting about them, and instead got all their magic from drawing instead; which is extraordinarily tedious, and likely ruined the experience for a lot of people. It's why you have a lot of people who have Final Fantasy 8 as their favourite Final Fantasy, and many who list it as their least favourite. If they ever remade Final Fantasy 8, then I imagine they would do things very differently in that regard.

Speaking of Final Fantasy 8, the Xenoblade games share some mechanics with that game. Takahashi was also one of the designers on FF8, so I imagine they are his work: draw points, proactive dialogue boxes, and refinement.

Heh, it's funny that I actually think that FFVIII is the worst game in the franchise (for me the franchise died with FFX, so everything after that is a disgrace xD). The tutorial system was some of the things I thought it was awful. And the combat system and how you can exploit it easily to be OP as hell, I thought that was a really bad decision. But, yeah, I'm the type of player who prefers a hand-holding when the game has an awful lot of gameplay mechanics and personalization. In games like BOTW there was no problem, because that game was fairly accessible to play. But in this game I'd feel at lost. It happened for me in XCX. I ended up loving the game and putting more than 150 hours on it, but at the beginning I was totally overwhelmed by it.

Incidentally, two of my favourite three Final Fantasy games are the easiest ones to abuse: 6 and 8. They are also two of the three Final Fantasy games that Tetusya Takahashi was a designer on. Both games have elements that made it into the Xeno-series.