Meaningless Battles...

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Originally Posted by Hayden

Anyone else kind of OVER Square Enix lazy writing? Namely, battles that mean nothing.

Scripted fights that force you to lose, and serious boss battles where winning means nothing.


Winning the battle, and losing in the cut scene is a favourite trope of Square Enix and I'm kind of over it?

Like, give the villian a back up plan, make something else happen. Make my win feel like it mattered.

Quit letting villian's shake off asskickings.

Most recent update, the cut scene made that whole fight mean nothing, and I felt as if the work I put into winning was for nothing.

Eh, dunknow...it wouldn't be a big deal if they didn't pull this shit at LEAST once an Xpac?

just me?

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I am over meaningless trolling too but that doesn't stop it from happening every day on these forums.

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Originally Posted by Reap00

I am over meaningless trolling too but that doesn't stop it from happening every day on these forums.

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How is the OP of the thread meaningless trolling? And if it's not, why bring trolling up? I'm not opposed to snarky one-liners, but if you're gonna drop one, at least have it be related to the thread in at least some miniscule way so it lands well.

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Originally Posted by Banriikku

But Golbertz is just nope "Shake it off" + "Blood Whetting" and thats the problem. We handed him his Kupo Nuts and he just "Nah... dont think so".

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Whenever I get this trial in the trial roulette, everyone isn't good at it. Obviously I'm having no trouble because Blood Whetting, but in the trial roulette people will get hit by everything. The out mechanic and blade cleaves will stack up vulns, and then other mechanics will get them and raid-wides will actually hurt. One time I couldn't protect the healers enough and had to jump off because everyone had died.

Nevermind the extreme, which a large amount of farm parties are incapable of farming.

I feel like part of the problem is that the WoL never does much in fighting cut scenes. At most the game might cut back to us with a couple of mooks falling over, with the implication that we just finished them slightly off-screen. I get that having to make the scenes work with every race/class combo is a tall order (just look at the final scenes in Endwalker with a lalafell trying to fistfight Zenos, it's hilarious), but more often than not it ends up looking like we're just kinda waiting around for something important to happen.

Then there's the fact that it just doesn't make sense half the time. No matter how badly we're trouncing Zenos or Ran'jit, they just suddenly decide "Oh yeah, I'm supposed to win" and knock us flat. Golbez at least has the excuse of being in the Void, where nothing can permanently die anyway. We would've eventually tired out from repeatedly fighting him while he just keeps getting back up. Just would've been nice if they'd showed that somehow.

I'm not really bothered by it. The options are making a fight that you're required to lose, or making a fight you can feel satisfied about mechanically winning, and then the story continues past it.

It's not an FFXIV thing, it's just a videogame thing since forever and there's not really any way around it besides having the hero canonically win every fight.

I think doomed to lose style fights are a lot less jarring when the boss is actually handing your backside to you on a plate.

FFXIV sits squarely on the wrong side of this fence, you flawlessly beat down the boss without barely breaking a sweat if you've got some semblance of competency and gear only to 'lose'. It's lazy.

If you need a win condition for the fight, just make it so I have to survive for a certain length of time with adjustments in place to stop healers and tanks face rolling it.

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Originally Posted by Hayden

Anyone else kind of OVER Square Enix lazy writing? Namely, battles that mean nothing.

Scripted fights that force you to lose, and serious boss battles where winning means nothing.


Winning the battle, and losing in the cut scene is a favourite trope of Square Enix and I'm kind of over it?

Like, give the villian a back up plan, make something else happen. Make my win feel like it mattered.

Quit letting villian's shake off asskickings.

Most recent update, the cut scene made that whole fight mean nothing, and I felt as if the work I put into winning was for nothing.

Eh, dunknow...it wouldn't be a big deal if they didn't pull this shit at LEAST once an Xpac?

just me?

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Killing everything on a first encounter would be rather boring. It would also end the story very quickly, leaving nothing to do.

As for what happens in 6.4, isn't that the villain calling on their back-up plan when they realize they can't win against us through their own strength?

Things just handed to you tend to have less meaning than the things you have to put effort into getting.

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Originally Posted by Renalt

Tales of Destiny does it right. At one point you do a 4 v 1 fight and the kid is just decimating your group. You can kinda brute force it with a lot of healing items and what not and might get lucky if you did a ton of early story grinding. If not...he beats you into paste. HOWEVER if you beat him...game is over. You don't get thrown into prison that sets you up for the rest of your adventure. You win. You become successful lens hunters and that's it.

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Reminds me of Disgaea 2 on the ps2. Chapter 3 sets you up against Demon Lord Etna who is Level 1,000 and your party is on ng1 probably like lv20. No chance of winning at all, but if you come back on ng+ (or just grinded hard enough in the item world) you could win...and when you do, your MC inherits the title "Demon Lord" from Etna and loses the ability to battle Overlord Zenon (main antagonist), ending the game.

Same thing in Chapter...11 I think? The previous game's MC, Laharl, appears at Level 1,200 before the party. If you win, he throws an absolute hissy fit, leaps to orbit and glasses the whole planet with magical flames. I'd appreciate games to do stuff like alternate ends for beating what you're not expected to beat.

On a different angle for "alternate events if you win a fight you're supposed to fail", early in the original Kingdom Hearts game you get into a fight against a stronger character that you're expected to lose, but can win with skill and/or levelling up early in the game. If you lose, you're knocked out; if you win, you faint from exhaustion; the next scene carries on the same either way.

I'd like it if we could win those battles by showing our mettle~

But that'd mean having something akin to a high skill ceiling!

Maybe one day ;3