"One to be born from a dragon..." -- Let's Play Final Fantasy II

These are all just single deaths due to bad luck though, right? I wouldn't call it a general widespread problem with the series unless there was like, a part of the game you took forever to get through because instant death spells just kept trashing your whole party (although, even then, Skies of Arcadia specifically, intentionally has an area where that was the idea and I actually liked it).

I really, really, really wish that were the case. But these are just the worst-of scenarios I've run into. In any given session of a DQ game that is not 6 or 7, I will almost assuredly see at least one of the following during 75% of battles: an enemy critically hits an ally and usually instakills them, an enemy uses a ridiculously overpowered attack and knocks everybody in the party down to low HP, all enemies gang up on the character who is supposedly the "least" likely target by virtue of being in the last party position, an enemy will use a random-chance effect attack like Snooze, Surround, Fuddle, or Death Dance and have it hit a minimum of 2 of my party members, Surround status causes a bare minimum of 75% of all physical attacks to miss.

I have the Anti-Luck with games that put stock in randomizer rolls, plain and simple. When things aren't going horrendously wrong for me in these sorts of games, they're still going pretty wrong. I can't even play Final Fantasy Tactics because of it; every time I try, 90% of my attacks miss, enemies do near-constant criticals, and not one single probability-based attack from the enemy party misses even if the listed odds are sub-10%.

I've always wondered about this. I always put my healers/squishy mages into the back because of this, and in every situation when I play DQ IX, they're the ones who get attacked first.

Speaking of DQ bullshit, the legacy bosses are pretty much the epitome of not fun. My party can pretty much steamroll any grottos they find, but the legacy bosses? The level 1 form of one of them started the battle by immediately killing two of my characters with hilariously powerful attacks, and while I tried to heal immediately party wiped me with a flame breath. And when I tried buffing? DISRUPTIVE WAVE.

(I could understand giving the final boss or a super bonus boss the ability to cancel buffs, but why give it to every single grotto/legacy boss? Why would you purposefully remove a viable strategy?)

Because Dragon Quest is about slamming your face against a rock until the rock breaks. Forever.

Doesn't every FF game put stock in randomizer rolls as far as accuracy is concerned?

That can happen, but only with certain moves or equipment. For the most part, unless the enemy is designed to be extremely evasive or your characters are Blinded, missing isn't going to happen. Especially if you're Squall, AKA Mr. "All my weapons have 255% Accuracy because why not?"

Not if your attack actually has a tangible cost, by default. For the most part, if it costs an item, MP, or gil to use, it has a 100% chance of working unless some sort of status effect is in play or the monster is immune. Status-only spells have a similar roll for effect too, but that's understandable as having a 9-man opposition would be too-easily earned exp after applying Blind or Sleep to everything and ganging up on individual targets.

Tactics is probably the sole exception regarding accuracy on all abilities, but the point of that game was to get and maintain ideal positioning on the map; move to the other side of where the opponent is facing to maximize your accuracy. (Even there though, I'm pretty sure HP/MP-healing effects were guaranteed, so you always had that.)

Accuracy in most Final Fantasy games is really weird. In FF6 through 10, most of the time your accuracy is actually over 100% with most weapons and spells, believe it or not. In fact, your chances of missing against most enemies in any given middle-era FF game are quite literally 0% unless you're wielding a weapon with abnormally low accuracy, have a status that drops accuracy somehow, and/or are fighting an enemy with actual evasion.

For FF1-4, accuracy and hits are calculated individually, which helps mitigate accuracy problems significantly (even if one of your hits misses, there's a decent chance at least a few of the others will land and you'll just do a bit less damage instead of outright failing to hit anything).

FF5 is the only mid-era FF where accuracy is neither tallied hits nor usually over 100% for every attack. And it has so many always-hits skills and spells in it that this is only ever a problem when doing a pure Freelancer run.

Sky's point, which I agree with, is that you shouldn't lose a life to blatant bad luck. If you play well, you should succeed. FF gameplay evolved to facilitate. Apparently, DQ's didn't.

We have one guy defending DQ'S dice-based deaths, and another guy defending Zing!'s failure rate on the basis that "you should not need to use it". Either way, DQ's got issues.

I would argue that dying in Dragon Quest isn't losing at all, and in fact is integral to the experience.

And I would argue that this argument is complete and utter horse hockey since full party KOs are not even remotely slap-on-the-wrist. You lose half your cash on hand when that happens, which is devastating early on when A.) you have no access to the bank, and B.) the minimum deposit of 1000G increments takes over a dozen battles just to build up. DQ8 especially is nasty about this: there are zero banks until Pickham, everything's expensive as hell, and getting a full party wipe is extraordinarily easy to have happen even when you're in top shape. And to add insult to injury, you have to pay to revive your allies who aren't the hero, depleting your already halved funds even further and potentially leaving you grinding for a while just to be able to afford their resurrection.

I'm enjoying this whole mega-rant and I don't mean to be Well Actually Guy, but I just have to insert a link here to a highly relevant installment of the best game design column on the web.

Short version: Fun = Pleasure + Surprise, so making randomness fun is a big part of game design. And one of the big shortcuts to doing this is to reward players randomly rather than punishing them randomly. Interesting! I thought.

That's fine, but you can't expect to convince this gaggle of Kool-Aid drinkin' FF fanbois. You certainly haven't convinced me!

eta: I also do not agree with "Fun = Pleasure + Surprise." That's a really subjective generalization, there.

I never said random was not a FACTOR in fun. I said that random ITSELF is not fun. It's a bit like how you can argue quite sensibly that salt is a key ingredient in cooking. While this is true, you wouldn't want to eat raw salt on its own. Similarly, a game that is too random loses all fun factor because there's no control at all; you're reduced to a passive observer of chaos in the worst-case scenario, and it's no longer even a game as a result.

Also, that article pretty much makes my arguments for me. Give it a read, it's very illuminating on how games can use randomizers without abusing them.

Don't remind me.

I never said dying wasn't a setback. The setbacks are a part of the experience.

I think there needs to be some perspective on the DQ/FF thing, particularly with regards to "Zing".

Zing, to my knowledge, has about a 50% success but it also revives the target to 50% hp when it works. This makes it a little more difficult to compare to a standard "Life" spell because while Life works with 100% accuracy it doesn't bring the target above critical hit points, requiring (usually) and immediate cure.

(and of course, "Kazing" works identically for all intensive purposes to "Life 2".)

I'm not saying it's wrong to desire the guaranteed revival (but small hitpoints) over the random revival (with 50% hp) but that it's not such a simple comparison. On that, yes in many FF's you can skirt through by the skin of your teeth without much grinding (I've been playing a FF3/6 game where I just got to the World of Ruin with an average party level of about 7 or 8), something which is more or less impossible in any DQ game.

But you know, I don't think a person who knows what DQ is about goes in thinking they will never hit a "wall." And as much as people gripe about the relative merits of "buffs" and Disruptive Wave there is actually, in my opinion, something more going on there which was alluded to earlier: the concept of risk.

Disruptive Wave is only a pain in the ass when it's sent you back to square one; if you don't buff your own dudes (or only debuff the enemy) it will in fact be a good event when the boss uses it, because it'll have effectively wasted a turn.

But yes, of course those buffs are helpful at surviving the potential attacks the boss can do, or to simply deal more damage quicker to the boss. But that's the point! With those buffs unchecked, very few DQ bosses would be any challenge. Bring the right buffs, win the battle. Disruptive Wave makes it all very chancy; do you risk trying to build up 100 tension to deal a lot of damage? Or do you simply buff with Oomph once and attack until it gets dispelled?

Very few FF bosses to my memory offer this concept of "risk". Bring the right items/relics/spells/etc. and you win. I'm not saying that makes FF better or worse, just different, and if you don't like that difference I would suggest that the problem isn't necessarily DQ, but your own personal preference.

- Eddie

There's plenty of risk-related options in Final Fantasy games. That's what challenge runs are all about. The problem with DQ games is twofold: you can only take the risk-related path, and the risk-related path has horribly unfair results should your risk-taking not pay off. Rare is the Final Fantasy battle where you can't muddle through with a combination of skill and timing. Rare is the DQ battle where you can rely on skill and timing to be of any use.

The two game series, played their intended ways, are representatives of order and chaos of a sort. Victory is assured to those who act intelligently in Final Fantasy games, while victory is assured to those who are lucky in Dragon Quest games. Luck factors little into the former series by default, while tactical planning has little impact on the latter series by default.

Yes, Eddie, it's all up to preference.

But this is an FF thread. What do you expect.

Let us have our fun Try the Kool-Aid.

Cash is just cash in DQ; losing half of it really is just a slap on the wrist because you keep all your experience. Your characters never become less powerful when you die in DQ, and levels will get you a lot further than purchasable items will.

And I think you're exaggerating on resurrection costs; they're a minor inconvenience at best. It's as Bongo Bill says, death is part of the experience of DQ. We don't deride roguelikes for their harsh learning curve and brutally short character lifespans; why do we therefore deride DQ for them? It's fair to not like how DQ plays, but it was never pretending to be a game that wasn't willing to wipe your party.

Anyway I've got my own kool-aid to drink! Why the hell haven't I updated my own LP!? Brickroad is going to start making me look bad! Again.

- Eddie

I won't deny that monetary setbacks, half-baked resurrection spells, and fatal randomness can be annoying, but if there's one thing I've always liked about Dragon Quest it's that you at least keep the experience and whatever new equipment or items you gained before you died. In most Final Fantasy games and way too many other RPGs to count, Game Over means losing everything you accomplished after the last time you saved.

It's not so bad when save points are frequent, but in a way losing progress is way worse than losing money. Final Fantasy III DS's final dungeons turned me off from the game.

Except in the cases of the DQ IX legacy bosses I mentioned earlier, the bosses are so overpowered that you need buffs to stand a chance. For gods sake, my team has mastered every vocation there is and are decked out in full Alchemiracle gear. They can still get party wiped almost immediately. But if I could buff? Then my party and the boss would be on even ground. The battle could go either way, and I'd be fine with that. But I can't buff, and the bosses are usually immune to debuffs, so the whole thing is basically bullshit.

I really do not see what is wrong with having the ability to effortlessly defeat every boss in the game if you use your character's special abilities. Isn't that what they're their for? To help you win?

EDIT: This isn't restricted to DQ IX. FF III DS' final dungeon and Iron Giant really pissed me off for the same reasons, though I eventually reached a point where the final dungeon was no longer a problem.

Less arguing, more photoshop!

The thing about the Dragon Quest randomization is that it adds zest to what would otherwise become fairly dreary random encounters. Final Fantasy offers more solid, consistent strategies, bu that comes at the cost of becoming extremely routine. Every encounter in a Final Fantasy game tends to have The Right Way to win, an once you figure it out, every repeat of that encounter becomes the same routine. Final Fantasy's encounters tend to be very safe and predictable, sometimes excessively so, slipping into a place where the encounters are completely mindless filler between boss battles.

In Dragon Quest, you can fight an encounter a dozen times, but on the thirteenth time maybe the enemies all use their most powerful attacks, or they spam status spells. Suddenly what would have been another autopilot encounter is deadly serious, and you're pulling out all the stops to try and turn the encounter into a win. This has the obvious aforementioned drawback wherein the game will very rarely decide that it is time for you to die, and wipes out your entire party instantly. That does suck. A lot. But the developers are aware of that, which is why death only takes away gold, not experience, items, or progress. And in most installments you can store your gold in a bank to minimize that loss, as well!

Final Fantasy uses encounters as a sort of training mode, teaching the player how to fight between well-scripted boss battles, which are the highlights of the gameplay, acting as small puzzles to solve. Dragon Quest places more importance on random encounters and less importance on bosses. Each encounter is there to drain resources and provide a legitimate threat to the party's well-being. This is also where the limited inventory comes into play, as a way of preventing players from succeeding by spamming consumables.

I'm not trying to harp on Final Fantasy here, because I do think very highly of the series, but the Final Fantasy theory of encounter design has it's own drawbacks. Dragon Quest doesn't handle randomness and encounters the way it does because it's dumb, or because it's deliberately being archaic, but because each individual encounter is an Important Thing, and each encounter needs to have an element of unpredictability to keep players on their toes. When you're exploring the depths of a dungeon, your supplies are running low, and any random encounter can become an impromptu miniboss-level fight, it adds an element of excitement that Final Fantasy's safe encounters don't have.

I suppose the best way to summarize this is this way: if you've finished a Final Fantasy game, you know How To Win. By doing the Things Needed To Win, you can guarantee a victory with no game overs. You can improve your game by figuring out how to win fights at lower levels, or win fights faster, or create better party builds, but once you know How To Win, you won't ever lose again unless you deliberately attempt something outside of the How To Win parameters.

In Dragon Quest, even if you've played a DQ game a dozen times and know it like the back of your hand, you will still run into extremely dangerous situations that may or may not result in a party wipe. Skilled play and knowledge of game mechanics can minimize the risk of loss, but never completely erase it. You always have to be on your toes.

I can't say that one is better than the other, because this is the kind of thing that really boils down to personal tastes more than anything. But I can say that Dragon Quest offers a kind of risk/reward gameplay that Final Fantasy simply does not, and I would be sad if it disappeared.

I guess the problem with me is that I when I think RPG, I think of Megaman Battle Network (which isn't really a RPG per se, but whatever). There, it is totally possible to get through to the entire game without ever getting hit if you know what you're doing and you have a good folder. Battle Network rewards skill by giving you better prizes and stronger attacks, and for the most part bosses are fair challenges to your creativity, dexterity and reaction time. Even better, random encounters are essentially the definition of optional, and there a variety of strategies to take out opponents.

But Dragon Quest? There, as Feynman said, even if you know what you are doing you can lose because of some bad luck, even if you made preparations to avoid something like that. Something like that is infuriating to me; why should the game arbitrarily decide it's time for you to die? And while we're at it, what does this mean about every victory you'd had so far? Were they really victories, or were you just lucky that the boss didn't decide to outright kill you?

Things like that keep me up at night. /sarcasm

I like RPGs.

Nerd.

Verily, Final Fantasy VI is the best of both worlds.

So I found some leaked screenshots of the next Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games!

Wow, I keep forgetting that we're going to have to start using "XV" someday.