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Forums - Gaming Discussion - WRPGs versus JRPGs, or: My mis-adventures in KOTOR

darkknightkryta on 25 October 2012
Jumpin said:
darkknightkryta said:
Scoobes said:
 

There were plenty of items that were effectively redundant. Half of Irvine's amunition was useless, the attack/magic stones were just an alternative to drawn spells (and were doubly redundant because spells were useless once Junctioned.... why bother with magic when your STR is at 255?!), and most of the construction items used to upgrade weapons just built up and collected virtual dust with the exception of the few you actually needed, lol.

Now take Final Fantasy VII as another example of redundant items in the series. What was the point of the attack items like "Fire Veil" when Fire3 was easily attainable by the time I got my first "Fire Veil" anyway? The only time I used those items was if I did Yuffie's side quest because your materia gets taken away. By the end I had quite a collection of attack items I didn't ever need to use. And what about most of the nuts? The only useful ones were Carob and Zeio nuts! The rest were just filler. Or the absolutely useless "Easter egg" items like the 1/35 soldiers or the tissues! These were doubly annoying because they took up space in the long inventory list, yet were absolutely useless!

What I was trying to get at is "JRPGs" don't fill your inventory with junk and useless armour. 

Xenoblade does =P

Never played Xenonlade.  Does it have smithing?



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Mr Khan on 25 October 2012
darkknightkryta said:
Jumpin said:
darkknightkryta said:
Scoobes said:
 

There were plenty of items that were effectively redundant. Half of Irvine's amunition was useless, the attack/magic stones were just an alternative to drawn spells (and were doubly redundant because spells were useless once Junctioned.... why bother with magic when your STR is at 255?!), and most of the construction items used to upgrade weapons just built up and collected virtual dust with the exception of the few you actually needed, lol.

Now take Final Fantasy VII as another example of redundant items in the series. What was the point of the attack items like "Fire Veil" when Fire3 was easily attainable by the time I got my first "Fire Veil" anyway? The only time I used those items was if I did Yuffie's side quest because your materia gets taken away. By the end I had quite a collection of attack items I didn't ever need to use. And what about most of the nuts? The only useful ones were Carob and Zeio nuts! The rest were just filler. Or the absolutely useless "Easter egg" items like the 1/35 soldiers or the tissues! These were doubly annoying because they took up space in the long inventory list, yet were absolutely useless!

What I was trying to get at is "JRPGs" don't fill your inventory with junk and useless armour. 

Xenoblade does =P

Never played Xenonlade.  Does it have smithing?

Everything in Xenoblade actually does have a use. Collectables and enemy loot is good for either trading for rarer collectables/enemy loot, getting Colony 6 rebuilt, or "gifting" from one character to another to improve (or not) the bonds between them.



Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.

Player2 on 25 October 2012

I'll play the devil's advocate role and mention Fallout 2. It does have a proper turn-based combat system, unlike WRPGs like Baldur's Gate where you have to pause the game every ten miliseconds to get the most of the combat system. It is an old game so your PC sholdn't have problems running it.



Scoobes on 25 October 2012
ishiki said:
Scoobes said:
darkknightkryta said:
Scoobes said:
darkknightkryta said:
 

May I ask which "JRPGs"?  Except for Star Ocean 3 and Final Fantasy XII, that I've played, all my inventory was filled with healing items, current armour, or items used to enhance weapons/armour/stats  (Which doesn't make them useless FYI).

Nearly every Final Fantasy game since the SNES days (possibly before but I never played I-III for any decent length of time), Grandia 1 & 2, Xenoblade Chronicles and StarOcean 3 (never played 4 and I only vaguely remember 1 & 2). I mean, just take FFVIII for instance. You collect a range of items in the game, but for large portions I didn't even bother having the item command in battle as I could get by based on Junctioned magic. Actually, at the end of most Final Fantasy games I had a whole host of useless items I never needed to use because I either had an equivalent spell or a more powerful/useful ability already available. The items I actually used (healing potions, elixirs, ethers, heroes etc.) were the very items I would be short of or at the very least tactically rationing. Not to mention that most weapons and armour are useless after a short period anyway.

I make the same argument for the likes of Mass Effect 1, Neverwinter Nights or Dragon Age. The problem isn't something that's exclusive to one sub-genre of RPGs. There's also the argument of how the RPGs organise items. Few manage to get an intuitive system together. They usually just boil down to edited/sorted lists or in the worst case scenario, something resembling an Excel spreadsheet.

Now, I could say the likes of the Deus Ex series or Mass Effect 2 & 3 are examples of WRPGs getting inventory systems right, but that wouldn't be very representative.

Funny you mention FInal Fantasy 8 cause every item has some kind of purpose, like giving str+20% to your GF, teaching Quistis limit breaks.  There's nothing in that game that's sole purpose is to be sold for money (Cause you can't).  All the Final Fantasies bar 12 use items as some kind of enhancement to something.  And I agree, Mass Effect 2& 3 get it right, but then again they removed most of it (Which I agree with).

There were plenty of items that were effectively redundant. Half of Irvine's amunition was useless, the attack/magic stones were just an alternative to drawn spells (and were doubly redundant because spells were useless once Junctioned.... why bother with magic when your STR is at 255?!), and most of the construction items used to upgrade weapons just built up and collected virtual dust with the exception of the few you actually needed, lol.

Now take Final Fantasy VII as another example of redundant items in the series. What was the point of the attack items like "Fire Veil" when Fire3 was easily attainable by the time I got my first "Fire Veil" anyway? The only time I used those items was if I did Yuffie's side quest because your materia gets taken away. By the end I had quite a collection of attack items I didn't ever need to use. And what about most of the nuts? The only useful ones were Carob and Zeio nuts! The rest were just filler. Or the absolutely useless "Easter egg" items like the 1/35 soldiers or the tissues! These were doubly annoying because they took up space in the long inventory list, yet were absolutely useless!

not entirely true. For instance if you used like strength +20% you could use a magic that isn't like ultima or meteor (comet I forget) to get to 255. And not junction more than  a couple magic to magic wielding characters. Or junction magic to certain characters to give ice affinity, or poison/blind status. It's not useless because you can't get infinite magic easily, so you have to allocate carefully atleast in theory. It just has a different utility than most other games, but the idea is cool.

However the issue with that and basically every FF game is there's a way to exploit it the battlesystem, so the systems are never as deep as they should be, except for a few optional bosses like making squall/zell 255 strength with aura and lionheart and zells QTE's. Pretty much beats everything in the game, except like omega weapon (because that boss involves a bit of luck+that).

But I agree with you, both JRPG, and WRPG's have useless stuff. But imo RPG's should have some of that.I mean maybe generally WRPG's have more useless stuff, but tactics ogre, last remnant, dark soul's, and countless other JRPG's give you useless, or semi-useless.

But generally I just sell my shit so I can buy things, problem solved :P

To be honest, I don't remember much of the game anymore. I remember the theory of the Junctioning system was brilliant (lots of options and customisability), but in practice it was ridiculously open to exploits. Like you said, Squall/Zell, Str 255 and Aura beat virtually everything. Even with Omega weapon I used the same tactic but just used heroes constantly (the Laguna card gives you 100 heroes) so I was effectively invincible. Maybe I played it too much because I remember having 100 of a lot of magic (100 Ultima, Curaga, Meteor etc.) so my stats were ridiculously high.




Get your Portable ID!

Scoobes on 25 October 2012
darkknightkryta said:
Scoobes said:
 

There were plenty of items that were effectively redundant. Half of Irvine's amunition was useless, the attack/magic stones were just an alternative to drawn spells (and were doubly redundant because spells were useless once Junctioned.... why bother with magic when your STR is at 255?!), and most of the construction items used to upgrade weapons just built up and collected virtual dust with the exception of the few you actually needed, lol.

Now take Final Fantasy VII as another example of redundant items in the series. What was the point of the attack items like "Fire Veil" when Fire3 was easily attainable by the time I got my first "Fire Veil" anyway? The only time I used those items was if I did Yuffie's side quest because your materia gets taken away. By the end I had quite a collection of attack items I didn't ever need to use. And what about most of the nuts? The only useful ones were Carob and Zeio nuts! The rest were just filler. Or the absolutely useless "Easter egg" items like the 1/35 soldiers or the tissues! These were doubly annoying because they took up space in the long inventory list, yet were absolutely useless!

What I was trying to get at is "JRPGs" don't fill your inventory with junk and useless armour.  "WRPGs" give you a lot of stuff for the sole purpose of selling, but they don't really let you know what you can use for smithing.  And as I said before, they give you so many useless armour and weapons, you'd spend a good hour trying to see what improves your stats or not so you can sell it later.  Or they'll give you weapons and armours that no one can equip cause you didn't pick the right class.

Much of that is simply due to having a huge levels of customisability, including spending ages trawling through inventories for optimal equipment. Also, in most party based WRPGs you should have at least one character that can utilise equipment that your character can't.




Get your Portable ID!

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Scoobes on 25 October 2012
Jumpin said:
Scoobes said:
darkknightkryta said:
Scoobes said:
darkknightkryta said:
 

May I ask which "JRPGs"?  Except for Star Ocean 3 and Final Fantasy XII, that I've played, all my inventory was filled with healing items, current armour, or items used to enhance weapons/armour/stats  (Which doesn't make them useless FYI).

Nearly every Final Fantasy game since the SNES days (possibly before but I never played I-III for any decent length of time), Grandia 1 & 2, Xenoblade Chronicles and StarOcean 3 (never played 4 and I only vaguely remember 1 & 2). I mean, just take FFVIII for instance. You collect a range of items in the game, but for large portions I didn't even bother having the item command in battle as I could get by based on Junctioned magic. Actually, at the end of most Final Fantasy games I had a whole host of useless items I never needed to use because I either had an equivalent spell or a more powerful/useful ability already available. The items I actually used (healing potions, elixirs, ethers, heroes etc.) were the very items I would be short of or at the very least tactically rationing. Not to mention that most weapons and armour are useless after a short period anyway.

I make the same argument for the likes of Mass Effect 1, Neverwinter Nights or Dragon Age. The problem isn't something that's exclusive to one sub-genre of RPGs. There's also the argument of how the RPGs organise items. Few manage to get an intuitive system together. They usually just boil down to edited/sorted lists or in the worst case scenario, something resembling an Excel spreadsheet.

Now, I could say the likes of the Deus Ex series or Mass Effect 2 & 3 are examples of WRPGs getting inventory systems right, but that wouldn't be very representative.

Funny you mention FInal Fantasy 8 cause every item has some kind of purpose, like giving str+20% to your GF, teaching Quistis limit breaks.  There's nothing in that game that's sole purpose is to be sold for money (Cause you can't).  All the Final Fantasies bar 12 use items as some kind of enhancement to something.  And I agree, Mass Effect 2& 3 get it right, but then again they removed most of it (Which I agree with).

There were plenty of items that were effectively redundant. Half of Irvine's amunition was useless, the attack/magic stones were just an alternative to drawn spells (and were doubly redundant because spells were useless once Junctioned.... why bother with magic when your STR is at 255?!), and most of the construction items used to upgrade weapons just built up and collected virtual dust with the exception of the few you actually needed, lol.

Not really, refining isn't just an alternative to drawing, as refining converts all things collected into other items and magic, and drawing only gains small amounts of raw magic; you can draw magic, but that is incredibly tedious since you can only draw a small amount at a time. It makes much more sense to refine items into magic, and weaker magic into more powerful magic, because you are working with much larger numbers. The only time where drawing magic is useful is in the early stages of the game if you are having trouble; but you gain your first refine skill fairly quickly.

Magic is also not useless once it is junctioned, as it is now boosting your stats, effectively becoming your weapon, armour, or other piece of equipment. Also, if you had 255 strength in any FF game, you wouldn't use magic either with the exception of enemies that are strong to physical attacks.

From what I remember, that stuff still built up massively by the end of the game. It didn't take me long to have 100 of the more powerful magic spells

@ bolded

That was actually my point. There was no point in using magic as the most powerful spells that you would normally use were Junctioned to improve stats. You wouldn't use them as that would reduce your stats. The whole system was easy to exploit too; most of my stats were ridiculously high.




Get your Portable ID!

ishiki on 25 October 2012
Scoobes said:

To be honest, I don't remember much of the game anymore. I remember the theory of the Junctioning system was brilliant (lots of options and customisability), but in practice it was ridiculously open to exploits. Like you said, Squall/Zell, Str 255 and Aura beat virtually everything. Even with Omega weapon I used the same tactic but just used heroes constantly (the Laguna card gives you 100 heroes) so I was effectively invincible. Maybe I played it too much because I remember having 100 of a lot of magic (100 Ultima, Curaga, Meteor etc.) so my stats were ridiculously high.

I wonder if it's possible to mod the PC version of that... I've always wanted to rebalance that game (And like every final fantasy :P, maybe not 7 hrmm.)

There's DX:HR mod that changes balance makes it a bit harder (not sure if better, but fun so you have to use different tactics), but the guy who did it screwed up the inventory system.

I'm going going quite off topic.

But I think the topic has gotten silly (I'd use another word except the OP is a mod heh), because everyones arguing ZOMG i can trade this pelt for this banana, and get this thong to put on my female, so the pelt wasn't useless, compared to I can just sell the useless pelt and buy this thong etc, in a thousand directions. ugh.



Mr Khan on 05 July 2013

Mod Thread Bumping Powers, Activate!



Just downloaded KOTOR II (courtesy of our dear departed friend Khuutra).

Let's see if i like this one better.



Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.