Turn 5 Twister Strategies Compendium

[Soukyuu]

I guess SE's idea behind it is to go against the rotation of the twister, thus slowing it rotation speed and not allow it to lift you up..

but really, that's just so awfully gimmicky

[NarwhalShadowsun]

I guess SE's idea behind it is to go against the rotation of the twister, thus slowing it rotation speed and not allow it to lift you up..

but really, that's just so awfully gimmicky

What's wrong with that?

[Senzura]

What's wrong with that?

It's gimmicky because he didn't think of it

[Soukyuu]

What's wrong with that?

Game mechanics are supposed to be... how do I phrase it.They are not supposed to be perfectly obvious, but they should also not go against mechanics you already learned before. There is a video that goes over the other extremes in gameplay design here, namely making things too obvious aka spoonfeeding. But it also mentions things like mechanics being inconsistent being a no-no.

For example: If you always had to dodge out of AoE range, it does make no sense to suddenly having to perform anything special except for get out of it's range! Why do I have to suddenly have to... spin around the AoE or similar? They could just as well have suddenly required you to jump out of AoE. A similar mechanic wasn't introduced anywhere before, and by introduced, I mean a way to properly convey the player "you have to do this or you will die" without implicitly spelling that out.

They did it quite nicely with the "don't let the tonberry stalker catch up with you" by first showing you how it kills the treasure hunters (and then repeating it for the dumb with the onscreen message). The also did the same with AoE, by displaying a red marker, the color red being a warning psychologically, telling you to GTFO out of it.

With Twisters however, you don't have a mark targeting you or your teammates, no AoE marker, no damage display, you just... die. No hints on how to avoid it. This is gimmicky, bad design in my book.

It's gimmicky because he didn't think of it

Very funny. Did you?

[Raiz_Cineris]

snip

But you illustrate the EXACT issue with game mechanics these days. The "heads up" display, i.e. "Don't let the stalker get you" and big red circles, you get these days is exactly why games and communities are being dumb down. We should NEVER be fed these mechanics unless it has something to do with story progression of some type.

If people actually figured out how to avoid it then it means there was a subtle hint in game that provided them with an idea. Its just a matter of how obvious it was. Its more likely things hiding in plain sight that people decided to ignore.

[Richard_BG]

snip

There were actually very subtle notions that helped reinforce (and when I say reinforce I don't mean that these little "hints" formed our strategy. I just mean they bolstered our thought process behind how SE designed such a mechanic) our strategy behind how we do twisters. They are very subtle but when you think about them all together, we can see where SE was going with the design. Due to their nature, Twisters have very tight movement requirements and the 85-90% dodge rate we have is only because we are not meeting those requirements. We can play better to reach 100% dodge rate - hands down. The only RNG involved is what 4 players they will target each rotation.

What you all "see" in the video will not make you accurately understand the methodology about why we are going in circles. We will be doing a framework write up of the fight in the next week or two that goes over in-depth specifics. Please look forward to it!

[Soukyuu]

But you illustrate the EXACT issue with game mechanics these days. The "heads up" display, i.e. "Don't let the stalker get you" and big red circles, you get these days is exactly why games and communities are being dumb down. We should NEVER be fed these mechanics unless it has something to do with story progression of some type.

I guess I didn't bring the point over clear enough. There is a difference between "in your face" hints of the likes "don't let him get you" and showing you an example/hint of what you have to do. They could have did it differently, namely by just letting the stalker catch up to you and stab you - you have a hint (treasure hunters dying) and punishment for not following the hint (you getting stabbed)

With AoE the hint isn't that subtle, yes. In 1.0, we used to have to watch the monster for hints, their pose switched depending on what they were going to do. For example watching Ifrit's leg positioning to anticipate eruption - which gave a visual hint by itself.

If people actually figured out how to avoid it then it means there was a subtle hint in game that provided them with an idea. Its just a matter of how obvious it was. Its more likely things hiding in plain sight that people decided to ignore.

With twisters, you do get a visual mark, the small vortex appearing under you just before it blows you up - the problem is that it looks similar to, say, eruption's visual hint which tells you to go away - if you do that with twisters though, you blow up - inconsistent input to the user from the game that video I linked touches on as well.

The only RNG involved is what 4 players they will target each rotation.

I'm not really complaining about RNG, only about the seeming obscurity of the mechanic that is inconsistent with what the player learned so far.

My problem with "difficulty by obscurity" is that an encounter designed like that becomes much easier, sometimes trivial, once you figure out all mechanics, rather than to rely on actual player skill. This is not to say this particular encounter is easy, or that people will be winning against Twintania with ease now, but we just went from "unbeatable" (=difficulty level infinity) to "beatable with enough effort". That's already a significant drop in my eyes.

[Remilia_Nightfall]

just went from "unbeatable" (=difficulty level infinity) to "beatable with enough effort". That's already a significant drop in my eyes.

..which is what happens when progressing, really. Everything that's not "unbeatable" can be "beatable with enough effort" once you figure out what to do.
You would have preferred to let her keep the status of "unbeatable", instead?

It was bound to be killed, sooner or later. And this is way better than discovering it was bugged for a LONG time and that people wasted time and effort banging their heads against a bugged fight.

[Soukyuu]

..which is what happens when progressing, really. Everything that's not "unbeatable" can be "beatable with enough effort" once you figure out what to do.
You would have preferred to let her keep the status of "unbeatable", instead?

It was bound to be killed, sooner or later. And this is way better than discovering it was bugged for a LONG time and that people wasted time and effort banging their heads against a bugged fight.

This is really not the problem I am describing. There is no progression involved in solving an obscure mechanic for you as a player. You are not getting better with your class. Your skill is irrelevant while you are beating against the obscurity wall with random tries to figure out what to do, or trying to find hints you might have missed.

There is no wall. Just a fight that requires proper execution and excellent play to overcome.

That is only true if you figured out the mechanics of the twister only, though.

edit: your double post just switched the order of the posts @_@

[Richard_BG]

My problem with "difficulty by obscurity" is that an encounter designed like that becomes much easier, sometimes trivial, once you figure out all mechanics, rather than to rely on actual player skill. This is not to say this particular encounter is easy, or that people will be winning against Twintania with ease now, but we just went from "unbeatable" (=difficulty level infinity) to "beatable with enough effort". That's already a significant drop in my eyes.

It was never "unbeatable". Hasn't been beaten yet =/= unbeatable. Let the crying masses get into your head and you start to believe the hype. We always knew it was beatable with proper execution. As to it being "beatable with enough effort", we didn't throw ourselves at a wall until it fell over. There is no wall. Just a fight that requires proper execution and excellent play to overcome.