Meaningless Battles...

About the whole unwinnable fights deal, I feel that they are almost never done correctly, and even if they try to do such fights in the best possible ways, they're still underwhelming. It's why most games nowadays don't do it anymore and I don't really remember any case right now - I've read FFXVI has an example but I haven't played it, but also Dragon Quest XI does and it's "probably" one of the few unwinnable fights where it's also an integral part of the story...which I can't tell because it's major spoilers.

Either way, I feel that they're really not fun to do, and don't tell you much at all about it, other than "woops, you can't win, screw you". I'm honestly happy most games have quit doing this because it doesn't do anything other than prolong a fight. If you wanted us to show we were unable to win just give us a cutscene instead, at least we'd lose with style!

This reminds me of a game that I absolutely hated for this annoying gimmick, which was the Trails of Cold Steel games: they constantly throw you unwinnable fights with enemies that are considered Godly beasts, and it did work...the first time you meet them that is. But after the quintillion unwinnable encounter, you just go "urgh, fine, let's lose quick". Heck those games even tell you "lower X hp to 50% to win the battle" and even if you're in NG+ with level 200 characters and final weapons, and being able to use your S-craft with quartz that double your attack on first turn, doing literally hundreds of thousands of damage, and yet you can't win against this boss anyway! So why even bother?!

TL;DR if you want to show us unwinnable fights, make it a cutscene instead. At least it's an enjoyable defeat rather than a meaningless win.

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Originally Posted by Voltyblast

TL;DR if you want to show us unwinnable fights, make it a cutscene instead. At least it's an enjoyable defeat rather than a meaningless win.

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Different preferences I guess.

I personally dislike whenever my character is just suddenly shown "doing stuff" in non-interactive cutscenes — for me, it feels immersively-jarring to flip-flop arbitrarily between fully controlling my character's actions and decisions, to suddenly just sitting back and passively letting a cutscene make my decisions for me.

It's why I kind of tense up every time FFXIV decides to try to show the WOL "doing stuff", because usually that stuff doesn't feel like what "I" would do in the same situation, and it's... frustrating.

Given that, I really don't mind "guaranteed loss" battles, if the other option is a "get beat up" cutscene, because at least with "guaranteed loss", I get to experience a combat flow and make my own "decisions" about how the scene plays out (up to the scripted conclusion point).

The worst possible combination, however, is going through a scripted loss battle which then leads to a completely-separate scripted loss cutscene battle, making the mechanical battle itself feel completely like a pointless gameplay formality.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

It's why I kind of tense up every time FFXIV decides to try to show the WOL "doing stuff", because usually that stuff doesn't feel like what "I" would do in the same situation, and it's... frustrating.

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My WOL certainly wouldn't stand there like a dunce while the villain of the week monologues, but that's unfortunately 90% of the, not even just scripted loss, cutscenes lol.

Could be FFX and the "almost unwinnable" battle is your first Blitzball match. Win or lose changes nothing in the overall story. You're supposed to get your ass kicked.

I handed the controller over to a friend who wanted to see if it was possible to win that fight (and he was good at Blitzball.) The answer is YES! a good BB player can win as long as they manually control the players (the computer is bad.) Your prize is a slightly different cutscene and some of the opposing team's BB players going free agent later in the game. That's it.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

Could be FFX and the "almost unwinnable" battle is your first Blitzball match. Win or lose changes nothing in the overall story. You're supposed to get your ass kicked.

I handed the controller over to a friend who wanted to see if it was possible to win that fight (and he was good at Blitzball.) The answer is YES! a good BB player can win as long as they manually control the players (the computer is bad.) Your prize is a slightly different cutscene and some of the opposing team's BB players going free agent later in the game. That's it.

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The Jecht shot makes it much more possible. You get a goal or two and then just play keep away for the rest of the match. But yea, requires some knowledge of the game for sure.

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Originally Posted by Themarvin

they should introduce AI to the boss mechanics... would be interesting to never be able to cactbot or write any guides to anything, especially for savage and ultimates, it would be nice when we get to be it that it is the player having to do things and not by some dork with a mic video.

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I raided every expansion until part of ShB. I sort of got tired of the scripted battles. Don't get me wrong, they are challenging, but mostly just based on memorization. The name of the game was always being proactive, not reactive. They should really mix up these mechanics more than they do. Instead of just being:

Mechanic 1 followed by Mechanic 2 followed by Mechanic 3 or 4 followed by Mechanic 5 followed by unused mechanic 3 or 4 etc etc

It should be more like...

5 > 1 > 3 > 5 > 6 > 2 > 3 > 4 etc

You get to a point in these savage raids where you are doing your rotation and looking for a certain "tell" every 30 seconds and going where you need to go. Don't get me wrong - when raids first came out, especially as the expansions went onwards, they came up with very unique mechanics. However, things are too scripted. Randomize it.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

You get to a point in these savage raids where you are doing your rotation and looking for a certain "tell" every 30 seconds and going where you need to go. [...] However, things are too scripted. Randomize it.

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Tough call. Part of what makes FFXIV stand out as somewhat-unique in terms of its raiding is how incredibly, precisely-scripted almost every mechanic and timeline tends to be.

This makes encounters become stale or "rote" faster, but it hypothetically also allows for more precise rotational execution, and more complex rotational design.

That said, if XIV continues to move in the direction of simplifying rotational execution and refinement, then maybe it would make sense to introduce a lot more reactivity and variation into the encounter designs.

Considerations regarding this include:

• How would it interact with XIV rotational design and the buff-alignment meta-playstyle?

• Would the "high end" XIV playerbase object to losing the ability to (in many cases) precisely-script their rotation, down to the GCD?

• Can the XIV engine / server responsiveness / etc, actually handle truly spontaneous, randomised, or unpredictable mechanics? (ie — How much of the current system "works" because players can kind of "compensate" for it by exactly anticipating many elements ahead of time, or otherwise compensating for erratic responsiveness with predictability?)

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Boss fights you're supposed to lose have been in RPGs for the past 30+ years and SE aren't the only ones to do it. Elden Ring even begins with one. It's just a narrative tool and I don't really see a problem with it unless it's an RPG with items and I end up wasting them, not knowing I was supposed to lose.

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The worst to me are fights you're supposed to lose, but you have to win. If you get KO'd early, you lose the fight/get a game over/etc.

Contrast: Kingdom Hearts 1 fight with Squall. If you lose, he knocks Sora out and the story continues. If you win, Sora demands answers but them passes out from the exertion, Yuffie makes fun of Squall for getting soft/weak, and you get a low level accessory reward for beating the fight. Winning doesn't feel like losing as you get some reward and stuff, and it's somewhat reasonable for (just starting out) Sora to pass out after that much effort against a seasoned fighter, but if you lose, instead of a game over, the story continues since Sora is supposed to be unconscious and taken to the hotel by Squall and Yuffie for the story either way.

However, in other "you lose in the cutscene" fights done wrong, you have stuff like all the Zenos fights in Stormblood where he DOES beat you in the cutscene, but if you lose the fight, you have to redo it over and over until you win. Instead, they could just do the KH1 thing. If you lose, well, you're SUPPOSED to lose, so the story goes on. If you win, you get some token reward and a slightly different cutscene, but are still beaten in it. "Well, it seems I underestimated you. Now I will not. /unleash big attack to knock you to your knees anyway" sort of a thing.

I don't mind "must lose" battles. I hate "must lose" battles where, if you lose, you have to keep doing it anyway and you have to WIN it...just to lose it in the cutscene. Those annoy me more than almost anything.

The very first unwinnable fight I have ever experienced was Breath of Fire 3.

You and your friends end up being Robin Hood of the town and ended up getting cocky and the rich hired these mercenary horse men (Humanoids with a horse head) and they destroy your hide out, they mock you for being just dumb kids and you shouldn't be doing things like this stating that things like this will get you killed at a young age.

Your friends get angry about that and they start combat, you can't beat them, the white horse man has a powerful AoE that can surely cause a total party wipe in two hits and you also have the brown horse man that attacks to finishes a single party member off with his high single target basic attack. You the protag survive and you believe your friends are still alive and out there somewhere and that is when you start your actual journey. When I got to that point in the game I was young and it actually did hit me that I need to get stronger to beat these bastards for killing my friends.

The horsemen end up being reoccurring enemies during this point in the game and I think it is a good way to show that the enemy is definitely stronger than you so you have to get stronger for your fallen friends and live on, maybe bring down revenge when you reach that point.

All my homies hate Balio and Sunder.