Final Fantasy 7 Remake (PC/PS4) - March 3rd, 2020

[TheDirtyHobo]

I totally understand the "do it to say I did it" thing up to a point. Getting all the stuff in the game is fine, setting an arbitrary goal to grind to level [whatever] before [random point in time] is less so... but it's a personal choice, can't begrudge how people want to waste their time. I waste mine playing XIV anyway :D

The difference is that there's some element of challenge to it, this is basically just the act of mashing the x button to do basic attacks. The condition of "before [x] boss" doesn't make it more difficult, it just makes it more tedious and time consuming. The most impressive thing about it is that they managed to commit to such a stupid idea for 500 hours of their life over a year.

Salodin says you can focus on the "fun of the game" yet the plan starts with grinding for hours and hours before the first boss. Wat.

It's the video game equivalent of your mom telling you you have to finish your homework before you can play with your friends, and trying to convince you you'll have more fun because you won't have to worry about getting it done. Then you get to college and realize "Oh, I can just do bits and pieces of the homework whenever I have spare time that I'm not actively doing something else and life is much more enjoyable without segregating my time into huge chunks of pure misery and chunks of enjoyment."

[Tyrath]

But to me, being so overpowered and having all those limit breaks would cheapen the enjoyment of the actual fights and character skill progression. But like I said, to each his own.

[TheDirtyHobo]

To be fair, a lot of this can be done with automation with a turbo controller and only the occasional check for hp. The higher the level, the less frequent the checks. I originally did most of this by rubber banding joysticks and leaving attack on auto. No, you don't stare at the screen for hours on end; that's retarded.

Then that completely undermines what little value in 'achievement' of it there was to begin with. Why not just use a gameshark or something and set your level to whatever your stopping point was? Is it somehow more satisfying that it took 20 hours to be level-whatever without doing anything than if it took 45 seconds?

[notorious bum]

Boss battles that once required some strategy, gone in two turns. The Demon Door boss comes to mind as a cool design that would be completely trivialized as he won't even get around to using his rush move.

With that said, as someone who has already beat FF7 3 times from start to finish, I would have no qualms with using that rubberband method to level secondary characters. It would be useful to always have everyone at the same level with useful materia.

[vivbiibasjiu]

Reminds me of people that grinded to level 99 in Golden Sun before The Lost Age came out... now that takes some dedication. Enemies in that game give so little exp and you're lucky to be level 30 by the time you get to the final boss, and the exp to next level makes leveling in vanilla FFXI look like a breeze!

[Niiro]

I just don't get it at all in FF7, it's a very, very easy game overall, even with MDEF being broken (certain magical attacks tearing you up was one of the only real challenges in the game).

I once did a no-materia run through and was kind of disappointed at how easy it still was.

[Sephiroth]

Playing the PS4 version with its built in "cheat" buttons is interesting. I powered through with random battles off until I got the plane, went to the area near Mideel and spent about half an hour grinding. I had to because bosses were starting to one shot me. Afterwards bosses were just melting in a few turns. I'm only really playing through for the story though as it's about 15 years since I last played it and can't remember the finer details. It's amazing how fast you can get through areas like the glacier with battles off. I remember spending hours running around that shit in the PS1 version.

[archibaldcrane]

I used to set a controller to run "down" and auto-fire the X button on a beach with absorb-earth materia set, slaughtering sand worms all day while I was at high school to level up my dudes.

[mistmonster]

Isn't the best thing about RPGs it that you can play like you want to? Too hard for you? Level up. Want to beat the big boss at a low level? Go do it. Really hard core, do a speed run.

[bori]

Honestly - we've all played this game to death - so playing it a certain way shouldn't really be a surprise. If someone wants to grind that much in the beginning, so be it.

[Destinye]

But to me, being so overpowered and having all those limit breaks would cheapen the enjoyment of the actual fights and character skill progression. But like I said, to each his own.

A big part though is the requirements (which will probably change if they keep it) is you can easily get it if you're doing even a tiny bit of grinding. For example if you don't grind at all or run away from more battles than you actually fight it's a good chance you'll only have Cross Slash for cloud, at best, by time you hit wall market or even the train graveyard.

But then comes situations like Aerith where you'll almost never see her last limit breaks if you played "normally" so to speak, so it's really just how RPGs are lol. If you're taking the time to master materia and not doing it on AP efficient enemies, you're going to be overleveled pretty easily just because you were working on materia more than anything. It's like when you get Omnislash, even with it being "weak" it's still insanely OP if you get it pretty early on (like any of the OP abilities, especially on enemy skill and getting I think big/mighty guard the first chance rather than later) Stuff like that is bound to change now that they potentially have time to actually balance stuff out and re-evaluate some systems, since as said, some stats were just flatout broken.

So some things can be cheapened pretty easily, especially in highly action based systems, but who knows how the balance will be this go around.

[TheDirtyHobo]

I will 100% defend the concept of grinding. If you want to put in a ton of miniscule efforts so that you can feel powerful on a boss fight, do your thing. I do it sometimes, too, but not to that extent. It's nice to decisively see your effort pay off. If you want to cheat your way to level cap and just have the feeling of a god slaughtering peons throughout the game, by all means, do it.

What I don't support is not playing the game, i.e. leaving a rubber band on a turbo controller, or anything similar, and then acting like it's an achievement to do so, as if your "hard work" paid off.

[Eurell]

Thank god noone needs your support to bypass the unenjoyable parts of the game however they want then.

[Waraji]

That's what I love about single player games meng. Can do w/e the fuuuuuk I want.

[Salodin]

Another spot was the subway right before the second reactor. Going down the tunnel to the security station and just rubber banding and auto attacking. Much slower than other areas but at that level you can leave it for a few hours and still be alive with little useful materia. Would check and heal every couple hours and use those levels to ride me through to Juno with out having a hard time in the middle cause of underleveling.

[TheDirtyHobo]

Thank god noone needs your support to bypass the unenjoyable parts of the game however they want then.

Nice reading comprehension. I don't give a flying fuck if you do it, I just think you're a dumbfuck if you do it and then act like getting to that point is something special.

[Eurell]

Nice reading comprehension. I don't give a flying fuck if you do it, I just think you're a dumbfuck if you do it and then act like getting to that point is something special.

Not supporting and thjinking someone is dumb are too different things. Use the right words if you want people to know wtf you're thinking.

[TheDirtyHobo]

I'm sorry for using a more narrow term in redescribing something that had nothing to do with the original argument you made. The original statement had two conditions. You completely ignored one of them to try and make your point, even though I had previously stated I had no problem with just the singular thing.

[Elcura]

I dunno why anyone else gives a shit how someone else plays a game, especially one that's like 15 years old.

I'm sorry for using a more narrow term in redescribing something that had nothing to do with the original argument you made. The original statement had two conditions. You completely ignored one of them to try and make your point, even though I had previously stated I had no problem with just the singular thing.

This is super funny considering some of the shit you've said.

[Enedin]

The second time I played FF7, when I was like 13 years old, I beat Emerald Weapon by equipping my characters with a total of about 12 mastered Counter Attack materia (the purple ones). Was a good strategy, but it took me a long time to get that materia mastered.

Felt good to beat him after all that work. But I would never do that again now that I got a job and way less free time.