Let's Play / Master Classes Archive

Hey, I'm thinking of starting up the S3&K LP after I get back from S Korea/Japan in the first half of July. Does anyone have ideas on how to make it interesting? I want to go relatively in depth, but I'd like to show the flow of the game at the same time, and perhaps add in some sort of tweeest(!) for those that have already played it to death.

Time spent on the thread is not an issue, as I will be taking summer classes to fill out basic science requirements for my Japanese degree.

I do not understand. What's wrong with being able to update regularly?

Participation and the chosen medium. It's not "Let's Play" if you have 20 updates already done and people are just idly chatting between updates. That's, "I've played, here's some stuff, aren't I great."

I am just curmudgeonly about some of this. -.-

Brickroad asked us for party and name ideas and nothing else, and that's the LPA gold standard on Talking Time. Let's not get Platonic, here.

That's still SOMETHING. Having a whole bunch of updates ready to go before you've even started the thread suggests it's just an ego thing, and it is irksome. And also I place way more importance on semantics ("Let's Play" vs "Watch Me Play This Thing") so when I get one one of these kicks I'd honestly just ignore it. =p

BUT! That is my own preference and maybe those threads will turn out great. I am okay with being wrong, it is no big deal. Time will tell!

To me, it depends a bit on the game itself. If it's a game I know nothing about, the interaction would help get and keep my interest. A game that is pretty well known doesn't necessarily need to be done that way, imho.

*shrug* As far as I've seen, the only rule on a LP is "Wait your turn before starting".

I prefer let's play to be interactive most of the time, but in the case of the Final Fantasy run, it was such a game breaking, expert show that I really liked the way it played out. I think it just depends on what you are trying to do: Explore a game with the people, or put on a display of your e-penis at a game. Either is equally fun for me.

Aside from personal preference, many games simply don't lend themselves much to audience participation. Let's say... Vagrant Story or the Dark Cloud games: stuff like Weapon Crafting, Georamas, and a good deal of exploration can benefit from reader input. Pokemon... well, that's what made RedChocobo's SA threads so great. A Final Fantasy can coast along with choosing character names up to IX, and Tidus alone in X.

But other games simply don't give enough "choice" to let the audience determine the LPer's progress. I picked Okami, frex. While there are several sections where you can drift from the plot and explore, progress is almost ruthlessly linear. I do have some ideas for audience participation, though, but it's nowhere near as open as a Pokemon.

This is why I ended up changing mine. I was originally planning on writing this grandiose...thing about how great OoT was while simulatenously flaunting how great I am at it. You can sequence break a tiny bit in that game, and I was going to. But you know what? That whole thing was a friggin' awful idea. Everyone knows why it's a great game. They probably don't like it as much as I do, but it's not worth wasting an LP on. No one would be able to interact that much and I don't see a point in talking about how great a game that pretty much everyone likes.

Ogre Battle 64, though? It's semi-non linear, you have a lot of character creation options, I haven't played for years but I'm vaguely familiar with the game's systems, and I'm going to turn entire control over the game's progression to you guys. Well, not entire...but I'll only be guiding you all along. It's going to be great. Erm...I think. Unless if you guys screw it all up. That's part of the fun I guess.

But don't let this discourage you Zef. I know that I haven't played Okami and I'm sure a lot of people out there haven't played it either. I think that the "less participation"-style lends itself to lesser known games a lot more. So Okami should be great.

tl;dr I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS, and you can do it, Zef!

Reading this thread and some old LPs, I've been trying to figure out what exactly the "point" of a LP is and came up with these categories:

- Play with me
- Suffer with me
- Reminisce with me
- Worship me

Most seem to fall into at least two of those, from what I've seen.

Looking at it that way, I've crossed out most of the games I like from the list.


Anyway, if I can get FFX-International to work on an emulator when I get it, I'm gonna try an expert grid playthrough with reader input on stat development stuff (and whatever else). More interactive and accessible than Sailor Moon (and I have a magical girl centric anime blog to post that in anyway. )

I dunno, a great deal of my enjoyment at least for some of these LPs have been a kind of "Let me walk you through the motions of/Let me show off this", 'this' being a game I hadn't encountered. That's certainly what I'm looking forward to in a future Live-a-Live LP, and has been what I've enjoyed in FFL2's latter parts which I haven't seen before.

I suppose that most people tend to mix that kind of mere showing with doing it so well it becomes a "Worship me" thread, though.

I prefer to read the ones I have played at least some of before. The ones I'm totally unfamiliar with I can't get into at all. Like the Persona thread - very active right now, big shiny screenshots, but I just can't get into it 'cause I've never played a spec of the series.

Ok, I can't get into the Persona one, I'll admit - and that is down to me not understanding the series at all.
But I read the FF1 thread having only played the PSX port (though it made me go out and buy the PSP port - Square's marketing needs desperately to hire Brickroad), FFL2 having only played the first half or so, Bard's Tale, Arkham Horror and Lone Wolf not having ever encountered them before, and Silent Hill because I hadn't ever played it before.
Different people want different things in their LPs?

But aside from that one personal preference of mine, your list's spot on.

This LP is gonna RAWK. Try not to breed too many Uni-Unis or Unknown dragons; they're monstrosities against nature.

Make every Dragon merely live up to its elemental stereotype, in a meaningful message that no-one can ever change.

So, for my Mega Man X2 LP (coming 2009, apparently), what would you guys have me do? No powerups, all powerups, Zero, no Zero, normal boss order, reverse, clockwise, counterclockwise... I'm taking suggestions for it.

Get all the items (including Shoryuken) and play through to the good ending. Then play through a second time on your own and just show us the bad ending.

Sadness, I was really looking forward to the further adventures of Pants, the brawling mana girl. But I totally understand real life suddenly throwing a shit-storm at you. Here's hoping things work out for you and you can continue it later.

I never developed the Master Dragons because I liked the giant ass-kicking sprites used for the Light and Dark forms.

Supposedly, if you finish the game with no power-ups, Zero dashes alongside you on the highway at the end of the game. I've never done it. I challenge thee.

I'm taking ideas for my MMX playthrough as well. Coming in 2012: Rain, shine, or the end of the world.

I did that too, thus why I think Master Dragons is the way to go.

Funny story: the first time around in Bahamut Lagoon, I was afraid of my dragons turning into ugly beasts after running into an Uni-uni form while feeding them, so I reseted and kept them at their original stats and forms the entire game. I think I made it as far as the battle with the two Lucrecs (Chapter 25?) before it became impossible, after which I used up my entire stock of items and made a couple of Master Dragons. Needless to say, it ended up breaking the game. :/

In any case, I'm thinking of leaving the selection up to the audience for my LP so it'll have that interactive aspect everyone's talking about. Maybe even let them decide which stats to raise? I still have to figure out how that's going to work though, hence my starting so late.

I think I'll wait until a couple days before I'm supposed to start, then post the le games I'm considering, and letting you cats pick.

I don't want to say what they are yet because it's still over a month away and I don't want anyone to be like "well Brickroad called that game so now I can't do it".

I'm concerned by all the people picking super long RPGs to LP. I know that FF 1 and DW were two of our seminal threads, but those games are really short by RPG standards. Alixsar, you do know that Ogre Battle 64 takes like 70 hours to play, right? I mean, it's a great game and there's a lot you can do with it, but make sure you're up to the challenge of finishing it. You're not the only one, either; so far it looks like about 1 in 2 LP threads is fizzling before completion and it would be cool if people could see them through.

Also, giving the forum any measure of control over a OB64 will almost assuredly result in you capturing every city in the game and getting the worst ending - but that's actually fine.

I've not ever found Rudras that long, but I can see where you're coming from. I'm planning to essentially treat the timing of it like homework assignments, since I don't have any of those anymore, and I'll need some level of player input before each next installment. But I dunno, I think this is just quite an RPG-ey forum - and that RPGs lend themselves very well to LPs, since they're text heavy, action low. It's hard to show action in still frames and text.

I've said this like a million times now, but it bears repeating: these are way, way more work than you are expecting.

FF1 is a pretty simple game compared to some of the ones on the list, and it still took me 2-3 hours per update. It's a pretty major time committment.

Re-read poetfox's Arkham Horror thread, keeping in mind it probably only took her a couple hours total to play the entire game start to finish. Then consider all the images, write-ups, and rules explanations, and how many updates were involved. That was an 11-turn board game. Now extrapolate that over a 50+ hour RPG.

I've read LPs for long RPGs, and they're awesome when done well, but it takes a lot of dedication to see it done. I'll never do one, personally.

Can't you pull them out of a Uni-Uni or Unknown form with more feeding, though...?

If worst comes to worst, you can turn a failed dragon into the pretty cool-looking, albeit useless, black dragon.

Yeah, but I didn't figure that out until later though :s. Mostly I thought the original designs were the coolest of the bunch and I was hesitant to change them into something else, and it wasn't until late in the game that I realized I was being stupid and powered them up. And it worked out pretty well!

Yeah, I'm trying to add something more than just "This is what the party did next" to my LP and it's taking me forever (which is why I didn't get an update in last night). Hopefully once I get into the meat of the game (the characters get to level 3), it shouldn't take as long since there's less set-up and explanation.