Rate it

[Xno Kappa]

And it's also a "Rate It" thread. Not a thread for irrelevant nonsense like your favorite Final Fantasy or to enforce your own personal definition of gaming greatness against the opinions of others.

You guys want to rabble on about stupid shit only you care about, sure, go start your own thread for it though and stop derailing others.

[dejet]

So optimally there would be no arguments on videogames?

yes, no arguments at all. they all rock.

[Celeras]

Arguments are fine. But when you're quite clearly in the fucking minority you need to shut the fuck up and stop trying to force your views on other people as if they're fact.

[dejet]

Arguments are fine. But when you're quite clearly in the fucking minority you need to shut the fuck up and stop trying to force your views on other people as if they're fact.

no,no,no BRP is right, we should not fight at all.

[Tyrath]

Arguments are fine. But when you're quite clearly in the fucking minority you need to shut the fuck up and stop trying to force your views on other people as if they're fact.

Personally I just don't understand why people go into threads/forums about games they clearly hate. If I don't like a game I'm not gonna waste my time convincing everyone who does like it that they shouldn't. I move on to talking about games I do like.

Sure, discussions are fine, but you can only go on for so long about how much you dislike a game before you've made your point and it's time to move on.

[Correction]

The fact that nobody here can vote in the poll without extensive posts explaining the significance behind their number means the thread is dumb and should never have existed.

I love this game! I give it 6 ganondorfs!
I hate this game! 2 energy tanks!
You have bad taste!
NoU!

Y'all should be ashamed of yourselves.

[BRP]

Arguments are fine. But when you're quite clearly in the fucking minority you need to shut the fuck up

At least you are straightforward with this type of bullshit lol. The mob always wins.

stop trying to force your views on other people as if they're fact.

Pretend I say "in my opinion" before all my posts if you really think it changes anything.

Deject is smoking something powerful.

Tyrath this isn't entirely about saying FFXIII sucks or not. A lot of explanation behind those opinions is being demanded. (Also why can't we not like FFXIII in the FFXIII section. That is very dishonest. No one is disrupting the info gathering threads as far as I can tell. So let the threads asking for criticism "Rate it" be full of criticism.)

[Tyrath]

I never said you can't dislike the game. I said after a while we get your point and stance on it, why post it repeatedly? Thats all.

[BRP]

Just like I said, something else is being said here. But fret not, I am just about done. I've been this far with Plow before and I already know he can't refute what I am explaining at the moment. Since I will have entirely explained what I meant earlier in the thread I will basically be done. Free from any more challenges or requests for explanations.

[Jakson]

The mob always wins.

lol, the man trying to keep you and your against-the-grain video game philosophies down?

[BRP]

If I misunderstood your redirect to "strategy" threads as evidence for the argument, then it is my mistake.

you're pretty well worthless when it comes to meaningful discussion.

bwahaha.

You're idiotic enough in terms of storytelling to think stating that a game with dozens of hours of full on storytelling wouldn't be very good if condensed down to a 2 hour movie time frame is meaningful to anyone with their head on the outside of their body.

Because the game(like most games) has many hours worth of story filler which only delays the main developments. It is like this because most of the time they wanted reasons as to why you are at a certain somewhere or fighting a certain something. The storyline is after all just another element of the atmosphere. (It should be noted you are putting words into my mouth with 2-hour movie bit. It could even be a 20-part 20 hour movie for all it would matter.)

attempting to force everyone to comply

lol, yes, because I am a motherfucking tyrant!

Having a strong opinion doesn't mean I am going to be sending people to prison camps anytime soon. Why do people try to act like victims when they start to be unable to rely on anything but "it is my opinion"?

Thanks. I think I do a pretty damn good job of existing in an imaginary world.

Or is all that save data on my ps3 really just a figment of my imagination?

The data on the PS3/disc isn't actually a world. It is data! We will call it an imaginary world because while it exists as data, it certainly isn't really a world. I really hope you get this in one shot, because it will be trouble if you don't know the difference between fantasy and reality.

You exist outside this data and you can only exist in one way. You exist in THIS world, the real world. And you are looking at your videogame through a tv/monitor, interacting with it through a controller. You don't actually exist in some representation of a fictional world. (As if human beings found(or could find) some entirely synthetic way to recreate existence.)

At this point I can't make it anymore clearer. It is an activity to look at this game's setting(like as if it was picture) or to play it. This is the activity you get immersed with. It is not an activity to just have it exist on a disc. The problem is that if you would like passively browse the game's story you can't because you need to play it. That shatters any hope of immersion from the storyline. What the storyline needs to do is making playing more immersive. I actually think it is easier to understand the first time I mentioned it.

BRP admits he's aware that nobody else in the world gives a flying fuck about his personal definitions of video game adjectives and adverbs.

I've explained this to you before a long time ago. You get so MAD because I use specific words as strict as possible. This doesn't mean I won't temporarily adopt the words someone else uses(I do this all the time, I did it in this thread). The only problem arises when they begin speaking nonsense. At that point I will point out how they are not making sense and from there they have the opportunity to explain their meaning without that word. The goal is to create better communication and people DO get tripped up on simple name-tags, time and time again. (In this thread, for example: Someone started treating the depth of games the same as depth of movies. This turned more complicated games into shallow games and shallow games into DEEP movies.)

I did. That entire fucking quote was exactly what I described.

I am going to continue to ignore it as yet another off the cuff insult because you don't even mention where I was being vague. The only word there that might be called a buzzword is "gameworld" something I picked up from the other guy(as I explained) which simply meant atmosphere. I even broke it down in your quote so it was quite clear exactly what I meant.

Hence why I asked if you're being sarcastic or what. What is your point? Are you attempting to insult FF13 by comparing it unfavorably to one of the most popular games ever? Really?

My point is that as much as it would seem people would like ignore the existence of combat systems, but that is only something they can freely change it in a game like DnD. You don't get to play a FFXIII where the combat system isn't the main part of the game.

You declare your definition of certain terms, based on how the game fits your definition of those terms, you pass judgment. You further proceed to tell people that if they disagree with you about an aspect of the game, they're wrong because it's not your exact definition.

As untrue as that is, I can see why you are getting confused. See FFXIII was admitted to be a somewhat shallow game outside the storyline, graphics, or whatever portion of the atmosphere people want to praise. The argument begins when people making it seem like this isn't a devastating flaw.

But go ahead and blame my "definitions" yet again if it is easier to swallow.

No, I don't. If you're talking quantity, you are flat out wrong. The raw quantity of depth in FF13 is greater than the vast majority of video games.

If you're talking about quality, then you're using your personal definition.

This isn't a hard concept for someone that's not completely obsessed with their own opinions.

Quantity/Quality lol. Here is more of that "opinion obsession" you can't stop yapping about: Depth only comes in quantity! It is how you measure a game's meaningful complexity. You could say quality applies to complexity as there is complexity and fake complexity(which speaking of which FFXIII has a lot of: Levels, equipment, farming, and so on). Fake complexity doesn't add much to depth.

Which you just utterly and completely confirmed beyond any possible doubt by claiming that because there's no script and the plot is fluid, D&D is not centered on storytelling.

DnD isn't about storytelling. What you do in the game only becomes a story if you record the events and read it back after they have transpired. You simply play the game using skills, abilities, and character traits like you would any other game with those qualities. The big difference, what separates RPGs from other games, is that the narrative hasn't been written. So DnD would actually be the opposite of storytelling, something videogames do just fine has their sequence of story events are set in stone(or in some cases, only just about are).

Entirely your opinion on what is the "meat and bones" of a final fantasy game. When I buy a Final Fantasy game, I buy it for the story. So do countless other people. What you refer to as the meat and bones is secondary to us.

No it is not open to anyone's opinion what the meat and bones of a game is, just like it isn't open to opinion what the meat and bones of an animal is. When trying to understand what something is it doesn't matter why someone buys anything or hell why they even enjoy it. People can find the wildest alternative uses for anything.

This is the really important part of the post: You got to ask yourself what is the difference between a game and a piece of media. This should be an easy answer, right? You play games, you don't play media. Playing is very different from reading, watching, listening, or browsing because while those are passive activities, playing is active. This is the distinction(and one hell of a distinction it is). Every game is centered around being active participant even the ones which show you movies and make you temporarily passive. Opposed to movies which can never be active.

It doesn't stop there: Not only is "playing" the essence of games but being an active and passive participant are two very different experiences. They don't mix very well. The more/longer cutscenes you have the more jarring the break up of playing becomes. And even if you those cutscenes were entertaining once you had finished them you would be ripped from the experience of watching them and back into playing.

So a videogame can never be as good as a movie when it comes to being a movie(or a book or whatever really weird standard you want to apply on it) and can only suffer from interrupts after a certain point. To put it simply that point is when storyline stops becoming apart of the atmosphere and starts to become "the point" of the game. We are talking about Metal Gear Solid 4 MerylxJohnny scenes here.

Note that I am not trying to divide the whole "experience" into pieces or anything. The storyline very much plays a role when existent. It is only that is is the atmosphere which is only there to give a mood to the game. (I believe I said before "Atmosphere is always secondary")

The word reasonably prevents you from doing so. Sure, you can pass judgment. You'll just look really dumb.

BRB, watching Avatar without sound so I can reasonably write a review.

Not perfect, but it is very reasonable. A real bottom-line kind of judgment. Your example reaches too far and makes no sense. Playing a videogame can easily exclude cutscenes(where you literally can just put down your control and wait until they finish or skip them) but when you talk about watching movies listening is included if there is sound to be heard.

What do you think they spent the most time working on for FF13?

"They" lol. Well who are they? Are they the people behind the battle system, monster AI, etc? Do they direct the plot? How about producing!? Marketing?!?!

You never got to explain why this is important in deciding the main part of a game is. Just more Plowgic.

Have fun ignoring the bulk of my post

Quoting the entire thing would be pointless, so I quote the main parts of the post and ignored repetitions. (Don't worry about replying Plow! I ain't answering! But if someone else wants to try to tackle this, I'll give you a turn assuming I don't suddenly lose access to this forum for being a minority like Domon.)

[Xno Kappa]

The fact that nobody here can vote in the poll without extensive posts explaining the significance behind their number means the thread is dumb and should never have existed.

I love this game! I give it 6 ganondorfs!
I hate this game! 2 energy tanks!
You have bad taste!
NoU!

Y'all should be ashamed of yourselves.

The whole thing started because someone said the story was boring when they admittedly cut through every cut-scene. The act in itself is not wrong but to criticize it when you don't even understand it is dishonest. A story is a story, regardless of what medium it's being told through. Then something about books/movies/whatever/blahblahblah. No one was knocking anyone for stating anything else about the game at this point. Opinions were for the most part, respected.

Then comes along BRP and basically rambles on about crap completely irrelevant to the original discussion. Reviews can indeed be passable without paying attention to the story, if it were to focus on just the game-play, except you know, we were talking about the story. There was also the random FFXII > FFanything!!1! from the usual suspect.

tl;dr. Trolling twin powers were activated, many were baited, heavy derailment ensued, BRP walks off with a "Fuck Yeah" grin after destroying another thread.

[Kyo]

You forgot how Steve Nash is like FF XII.

[ArchDizzle]

The whole thing started because someone said the story was boring when they admittedly cut through every cut-scene. The act in itself is not wrong but to criticize it when you don't even understand it is dishonest. A story is a story, regardless of what medium it's being told through. Then something about books/movies/whatever/blahblahblah. No one was knocking anyone for stating anything else about the game at this point. Opinions were for the most part, respected.

Then comes along BRP and basically rambles on about crap completely irrelevant to the original discussion. Reviews can indeed be passable without paying attention to the story, if it were to focus on just the game-play, except you know, we were talking about the story. There was also the random FFXII > FFanything!!1! from the usual suspect.

tl;dr. Trolling twin powers were activated, many were baited, heavy derailment ensued, BRP walks off with a "Fuck Yeah" grin after destroying another thread.

Ever since you changed your SIG/AV you have been on fucking point and can do no wrong, keep up the good work.

[ArchDizzle]

You forgot how Steve Nash is like FF XII.

Steve Nash IS like FFXII.

[Eggroll]

The fact that nobody here can vote in the poll without extensive posts explaining the significance behind their number means the thread is dumb and should never have existed.

I love this game! I give it 6 ganondorfs!
I hate this game! 2 energy tanks!
You have bad taste!
NoU!

Y'all should be ashamed of yourselves.

Well in that case I'll elaborate on why I really didn't enjoy the game.

The main reason why I found the game to be subpar FF game was because of the battle system and game mechanics. I already mentioned the battle system in my previous post, but just to reiterate, there seemed to be a lot less strategy involved in battles. Paradigm setups are universal, and you can use the same setups on a bulk of the mobs in the game without having to change anything. The AI also makes a lot of poor decisions (ex. rotating strike / spells as a ravager when either your strength or magic is significantly higher, buff / debuff priorities, etc), and you aren't given the ability to micromanage and override the commands. Also, status effects were much less threatening in this game and wore off quickly. I never thought I'd miss Bad Breath, but crippling status effects forced you to formulate strategies, and there was never a situation where I found debuffs to be debilitating at all. As a result, status recovery items and status resist equipment (which doesn't even grant full immunity), were almost entirely useless. Foregoing mp was also a big step backwards, and again took away from having to make up specific strategies. At any instant, you can cure someone who's in critical health up to nearly full, and you can do this for an indefinite amount of time. Also, not being able to move your characters was also an issue, sometimes your characters would all be clustered and if you're about to get hit by a big AoE, there's nothing you can do, whereas in other scenarios the same AoE will be much less threatening because your characters are distanced from each other. My last gripe about the battle system was also that there was no sense of progression at all. You still use tier 1 elemental spells, ruin, etc regularly, even though you've been using them since chapter 1. The only spell that comes to mind that really superseded it's predecessor was Curaja / Curaga compared to Cura / Cure.

As for the game mechanics, there was also a lot of problems. The biggest of these for me, was how restricted you are after you beat the game. Out of the 13 chapters, you only have access to 2 of them (11 & 12) after you defeat Orphan; you can't even run through the final dungeon again. As for the 2 accessible areas, there is very little use to return to Eden aside from farming turtles and sacrifices, and half the areas in Gran Pulse you can run through in 2 minutes (Suyla Springs, Vallis Media, Oerba). I don't think I need to say how retarded this is. It's a shame too, because areas like Gapra Whitewood and the Sunleth Waterscape looked amazing, but you only get to see them for ~1 hour per playthrough. Things like the monster arena and celestial weapons in FFX, or hunts, NMs, and farming bazaar items in FFXII gave you a good reason to go back to previous areas, and they really made the most out of every zone. Not to dickride FFXII too much, but another thing I really enjoyed about the areas was that a lot of the time there would be an area with higher level monsters which was blocked off that you could return to later after progressing through the game, and there was also a wide array of zones to chose from to level up (Henne mines, Lhusu mines, Pharos Subterrane, Great Crystal), whereas your options are more limited in FFXIII.

The method for obtaining weapons and accessories was also terrible. The sole method for obtaining virtually anything in the game was gil; you didn't have to do high level missions, kill hard enemies, complete an elaborate side quest or anything. To get any item in the game (except charms and elemental rings), the method was the same; farm turtles or sacrifices. Say what you will about dodging lightning bolts, but at least that was still infinitely more fun that having to farm the same mob for 1 week to upgrade a weapon.

Also semi-related to the above section was just how ridiculous the gil grind was. Having to farm 1 mob, which drops an item worth a mere 150k, with a low drop rate, when you require upwards of 6 million gil. You pretty much have to farm turtles or sacrifices as well, since no other mob can be viably farmed to upgrade higher level items, making the entire process extremely monotonous. Combine this with the fact that equipment had far less of an impact, and you have a terrible system. When you can beat the hardest mobs in the game using no accessories, and starter weapons, something is wrong. If you use anything but top tier items against the hardest enemies in other games, you can expect to a rough ride, while in FF13 it may mean a fight takes a few more minutes to finish.

FFXIII was also lacking when it came to sidequests. Most of the Cie'th stone missions were just higher level versions of what you already fought, and they weren't really new. A decent chunk of them were also repeats (looking at you Zirnita), which seemed like a giant waste of time, and had there not been a trophy, there would be no point in doing the repeated fights. The rewards were also pretty junky considering the effort you need to put in, and although I already mentioned this, having all 64 missions confined only on Gran Pulse was also another bad move. This was also pretty much the only sidequest in the entire game as well, whereas FFXII had Phon Coast hunts, Marks, Rare mobs, optional Espers, bazaar items, and a few minor quests (unlocking the extra areas in the mines, fishing minigame, unlocking Barheim pass, etc), and FFX had Celestial weapons, the Monster Arena, and optional aeons.

As for the story, there were some problems but overall I found it to be pretty decent. Among the main problems though were how annoying some of the characters were in the first half of the game. Probably 99% of the cut scenes with Snow had something along the line of how he has to be a hero for Serah's sake, and again a majority of the cutscenes involving Hope were just him going off about how everything is Snow's fault, along with some ground punching action. They did a good job at fixing this in the later parts of the game though. One thing I really enjoyed was how they paced it and added cutscenes at the end of an area rather than the entire dungeon, it was a good decision to constantly alternate between gameplay and cutscenes. There were a few other problems in the story I had issues with, but they were all slight annoyances rather than major gripes so I won't bother mentioning them.



All I have to say for now, and I probably forgot to mention some things.

[Raen Ryong]

I agree with most of your points and feel they are valid criticisms. There are a few I disagree with though;

Also, status effects were much less threatening in this game and wore off quickly. I never thought I'd miss Bad Breath, but crippling status effects forced you to formulate strategies, and there was never a situation where I found debuffs to be debilitating at all.

I thought they were done fairly nicely actually. Bart v2's status effects were HELLA ANNOYING and Zirnitra/Gigantuar are complete assholes to fight because of their status attacks.

I do agree that the fact that accessories don't block them 100% when fully upgraded is a problem though ... should not be down to luck.

Foregoing mp was also a big step backwards, and again took away from having to make up specific strategies.

I thought this was an interesting touch, but not necessarily a bad one. Some enemies will overwhelm you if you try to play too defensively and don't keep them debuffed etc and some will Doom you. I think the main problem with the battle system is that there is no enemy which really pushes you to the limits of it, no superboss like there were in the other games. There's no enemy in the game that demands almost perfection from your play.

The method for obtaining weapons and accessories was also terrible. The sole method for obtaining virtually anything in the game was gil; you didn't have to do high level missions, kill hard enemies, complete an elaborate side quest or anything. To get any item in the game (except charms and elemental rings), the method was the same; farm turtles or sacrifices. Say what you will about dodging lightning bolts, but at least that was still infinitely more fun that having to farm the same mob for 1 week to upgrade a weapon.

Agreed 100% on this point. Gil was too important and too scarce in this game.

A decent chunk of them were also repeats (looking at your Zirnita)

SCREW ZIRNITRA! Such an annoying dickbag.

Despite the problems you listed, which I agree with on the most part, I still greatly enjoyed playing through the game proper though the postgame is kind of lacking. If it wasn't for the fact I find the battle system so enjoyable, I would never have bothered with it.

[Plow]

bwahaha.

The fact that you actually think what you say is meaningful is the worst part about it.

Because the game(like most games) has many hours worth of story filler which only delays the main developments.

Yeah, god forbid they actually develop the background and side aspects of the story. Then you might have to admit that there's such a thing as depth of story.

Nope, all anything that didn't directly change what you do next did was to delay you from finding out what happened next.

You totally haven't missed the entire point of an entire genre of games o anything.

It is like this because most of the time they wanted reasons as to why you are at a certain somewhere or fighting a certain something. The storyline is after all just another element of the atmosphere. (It should be noted you are putting words into my mouth with 2-hour movie bit. It could even be a 20-part 20 hour movie for all it would matter.)

Right. It's completely impossible that they came up with the story, and had you fight certain things at certain times because it fit the story.

I mean, it's not like a fucking 2 year old could see that if they weren't directly forcing themselves to ignore reality.

Obviously the whole game was a list of fights, and then they said "ok, make a story that works with these fights."

lol, yes, because I am a motherfucking tyrant!

Having a strong opinion doesn't mean I am going to be sending people to prison camps anytime soon. Why do people try to act like victims when they start to be unable to rely on anything but "it is my opinion"?

It has nothing to do with victimization or "relying on it's my opinion."

It's about the fact that you pick arbitrary definitions based on how you want to use words, and then when people point out to you that nobody cares, you simple declare them wrong and proclaim yourself the factual guru on an argument without establishing even the tiniest bit of credibility.

The data on the PS3/disc isn't actually a world. It is data! We will call it an imaginary world because while it exists as data, it certainly isn't really a world. I really hope you get this in one shot, because it will be trouble if you don't know the difference between fantasy and reality.

It's not my fault if you have absolutely no imagination whatsoever. Holy fuck it would suck to try a live game with you, half the people in the game would have to be mages that can spam silence on you nonstop to avoid ever having to listen to your inane, unimaginative, self-obsessed bullshit excuse for a story.

You exist outside this data and you can only exist in one way. You exist in THIS world, the real world. And you are looking at your videogame through a tv/monitor, interacting with it through a controller. You don't actually exist in some representation of a fictional world. (As if human beings found(or could find) some entirely synthetic way to recreate existence.)

Prove it. Prove that my vanille does not exist.

She even thinks. When she's a secondary character, she decides her own actions based on her understanding of the situation.

If there's one thing we know about reality, thinking = existing.

Again, it's not my fault if you have absolutely no creativity whatsoever.

At this point I can't make it anymore clearer. It is an activity to look at this game's setting(like as if it was picture) or to play it. This is the activity you get immersed with. It is not an activity to just have it exist on a disc. The problem is that if you would like passively browse the game's story you can't because you need to play it. That shatters any hope of immersion from the storyline. What the storyline needs to do is making playing more immersive. I actually think it is easier to understand the first time I mentioned it.

No you don't. Go to youtube. You can passively browse the entire story, barring the exploration and combat which are used simply to advance it.

I've explained this to you before a long time ago. You get so MAD because I use specific words as strict as possible. This doesn't mean I won't temporarily adopt the words someone else uses(I do this all the time, I did it in this thread). The only problem arises when they begin speaking nonsense. At that point I will point out how they are not making sense and from there they have the opportunity to explain their meaning without that word. The goal is to create better communication and people DO get tripped up on simple name-tags, time and time again. (In this thread, for example: Someone started treating the depth of games the same as depth of movies. This turned more complicated games into shallow games and shallow games into DEEP movies.)

We all understood each other perfectly.

You came in and started spouting all of your bullshit that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the actual game (as I pointed out and you so expectedly ignored, you've spent 1 whole sentence in this entire thread doing anything but attacking definitions).

Your goal has absolutely nothing to do with improving communication, in fact it's quite blatantly clear that your entire concept of argument is that when you start to realize you're wrong, you simply make reasonable communication impossible.

I am going to continue to ignore it as yet another off the cuff insult because you don't even mention where I was being vague. The only word there that might be called a buzzword is "gameworld" something I picked up from the other guy(as I explained) which simply meant atmosphere. I even broke it down in your quote so it was quite clear exactly what I meant.

Ok, fine, I keep forgetting you're this dumb.


How? How is going back and forth between the battle system and story annoying or disruptive if you want a mix of both?

If I wanted *just* the story, I'd be reading a book. If I wanted *just* the battle, I'd be playing a pvp game. I want both. So I play final fantasy.

My point is that as much as it would seem people would like ignore the existence of combat systems, but that is only something they can freely change it in a game like DnD. You don't get to play a FFXIII where the combat system isn't the main part of the game.

That's not the point you're making, nor is it a valid point. We're not ignoring the combat system. It's also not the main part of the game.

And yes, this can be personal opinion.

Why?

Because main means most important. What's most important to you is not most important to others, no matter how much you want to convince yourself that it's required to be.

I can make a million arguments about what you spend the most time doing, what required and used the most development resources, the fact that advancing combat serves primarily to support and advance the story, etc.

But it doesn't matter. You simply have no argument to make here other than to attempt to change the definition of whichever random word you feel like and declare yourself unarguably correct based on said meaningless definition.

As untrue as that is, I can see why you are getting confused. See FFXIII was admitted to be a somewhat shallow game outside the storyline, graphics, or whatever portion of the atmosphere people want to praise. The argument begins when people making it seem like this isn't a devastating flaw.

First off, by who? I never said it was "a shallow game outside the vast majority of it." I'm not retarded.

There's no devastating flaw here because there's no problem to me. The combat is quite deep if you actually pay attention to how things work. More than deep enough for a game that focuses on things other than combat.

But go ahead and blame my "definitions" yet again if it is easier to swallow.

What's missing that would make the combat deep?

Positioning? Which is actually there, you just have to really master the game to get any meaningful control over it.

You sit around declaring that the combat is not deep, but you do not ever explain at any point what is shallow about it, or what makes other things deeper.

Quantity/Quality lol. Here is more of that "opinion obsession" you can't stop yapping about: Depth only comes in quantity! It is how you measure a game's meaningful complexity. You could say quality applies to complexity as there is complexity and fake complexity(which speaking of which FFXIII has a lot of: Levels, equipment, farming, and so on). Fake complexity doesn't add much to depth.

Depth can be shitty. Valkyria Chronicles adds depth through forcing you to be aware of the fact that while you're running towards people they can unload in your face, but they'll stop near instantly, even if you're 2 feet away, if you engage them or hit the end turn button.

That's depth in combat, executed terribly. I.E., low quality depth.

DnD isn't about storytelling. What you do in the game only becomes a story if you record the events and read it back after they have transpired.

...

There are no words.

You simply play the game using skills, abilities, and character traits like you would any other game with those qualities. The big difference, what separates RPGs from other games, is that the narrative hasn't been written. So DnD would actually be the opposite of storytelling, something videogames do just fine has their sequence of story events are set in stone(or in some cases, only just about are).

So if I sit down with my kids and tell them a bedtime... well fuck, there's no word to use here now, thanks to BRPtionary, so we'll call it a jubababslasa.

So if I sit down with my kids and tell them a bedtime jubababslasa, and I let them have some input. This is a completely made up as I go jubabaslasa, never told before. It will not be written down, it will never be told again.

Now, if I weren't enlightened to the brilliance of the burp, I'd have just told them a bedtime *story*. I didn't write it down. I didn't know it before. It's never told again after.

What just happened, now that I'm an enlightened one and the word story has no meaning except some random bullshit you came up with?

No it is not open to anyone's opinion what the meat and bones of a game is, just like it isn't open to opinion what the meat and bones of an animal is. When trying to understand what something is it doesn't matter why someone buys anything or hell why they even enjoy it. People can find the wildest alternative uses for anything.

You're right about one thing, it's not anyone's opinion what the meat and bones of an animal are.

The meat and bones of an animal are the basic structure which supports and maneuvers the rest of the animal.

In FF13, that's the story and the game world, clearly (provided you're not retarded). You're entitled to disagree, it's not exactly something measurable and unarguably definable.

This is the really important part of the post: You got to ask yourself what is the difference between a game and a piece of media. This should be an easy answer, right? You play games, you don't play media. Playing is very different from reading, watching, listening, or browsing because while those are passive activities, playing is active. This is the distinction(and one hell of a distinction it is). Every game is centered around being active participant even the ones which show you movies and make you temporarily passive. Opposed to movies which can never be active.

No, they're not. A part of a game can be observing media.

In fact, it can even be centered around it.

There's this game I played not too long ago called Final Fantasy XIII. It's a perfect example.

It doesn't stop there: Not only is "playing" the essence of games but being an active and passive participant are two very different experiences. They don't mix very well. The more/longer cutscenes you have the more jarring the break up of playing becomes. And even if you those cutscenes were entertaining once you had finished them you would be ripped from the experience of watching them and back into playing.

This is entirely your opinion. I was never jarred by the split. In fact I thought the world, the combat, and the cutscenes harmonized extremely well, i.e. were the exact opposite of jarring.

So a videogame can never be as good as a movie when it comes to being a movie(or a book or whatever really weird standard you want to apply on it) and can only suffer from interrupts after a certain point. To put it simply that point is when storyline stops becoming apart of the atmosphere and starts to become "the point" of the game. We are talking about Metal Gear Solid 4 MerylxJohnny scenes here.

No. This is your opinion. If I want *BOTH* story and battle, the game is not suffering from having both.

I mean holy fuck, this is coming from a kid that worships at the altar of a game where you go "I SMITE YOU WITH MY DEVASTATING MASSIVE BLADE... hold up lemme roll this die to see how hard it hit you."

Note that I am not trying to divide the whole "experience" into pieces or anything. The storyline very much plays a role when existent. It is only that is is the atmosphere which is only there to give a mood to the game. (I believe I said before "Atmosphere is always secondary")

The problem is your refusal to recognize them as pieces. They are all pieces that fit together to varying degrees and contribute varying amounts.

Not perfect, but it is very reasonable. A real bottom-line kind of judgment. Your example reaches too far and makes no sense. Playing a videogame can easily exclude cutscenes(where you literally can just put down your control and wait until they finish or skip them) but when you talk about watching movies listening is included if there is sound to be heard.

No. It is incomplete. It is not reasonable to give a complete overview when your understanding is incomplete.


You can give a perfect review *OF THE BATTLE SYSTEM* without ever watching a cutscene, sure.

You cannot give a reasonable review of the entire game when you have not experienced the vast majority of it.

Seriously, this is just plain stupidity.

"They" lol. Well who are they? Are they the people behind the battle system, monster AI, etc? Do they direct the plot? How about producing!? Marketing?!?!
You never got to explain why this is important in deciding the main part of a game is. Just more Plowgic.

The entire group responsible for the creation of the game. You know exactly who I'm talking about, the developers. More time, money, and effort was clearly invested into the story and its delivery than the combat system.

Why is this important in determining the main part?

adj1. Most important; principal.
2. Exerted to the utmost; sheer:
n1. The chief or largest part:

Because, unfortunately for you, the rest of us actually have a meaningful definition of the word main.

Whatever the fuck you're going to transform it into has absolutely no value to anyone in the world outside of you.

[D44kpunk]

4th worst ff game ever made imo

edit: forgot about ffxi

[Foow]

8/10 is ok