A bit disappointed with Stone Vigil

[Zefiris]

I already did this dungeon almost 20 times and I read several different opinions in each party. Some favorable, as "I love this fight" (about last boss) or "Square should do more fights as this" (about second boss).

[Immut]

Stone Vigil HM may be the worst dungeon i have ever seen in my life, in any game, in any genre.

SE, please remember every single decision that went into approving this place, and make sure you never, ever do it again.

First and foremost, the dungeon layout is LITERALLY a hallway with random encounters. It's actually worse than Final Fantasy 1. Not that I'm dissing FF1 because it's a classic, but are we really going to accept game designs that are worse than games that came out 30 years ago from the same company? That's the big big thing. RPG Maker games have designed better dungeons. I've designed better dungeons MYSELF. I could pull a complete revamp out of my ass right here right now that would actually be fun to play. As it is, I will never do expert roulette again, for fear of having to go through this again.


The second boss is also absolutely terrible. Standing behind cannons for 10 minutes while nothing attacks you and you basically don't get to play your actual class is not fun by any stretch of the imagination. Did any of the devs actually play this and think "yes, this is fun"? Same problem with the final boss, tanks and healers just become worse dps because everything is dodgeable and there's no hate table. In a different game that didn't adhere so strictly to the tank/healer/dps trinity, it would work. Not in this one.

[Naryoril]

The cannons were more fun at normal mode too, here it's just random guys spawn, you aggro them, don't avoid anything and use cannons, or just keep aggro, if you are a tank.

Nah, as a tank you also man a cannon. The only one who might need to do something else than shooting a cannon is the healer.

About the last boss: it reminds me a lot of Monster Hunter, in that regard it was fun. But since i mostly play tank nowadays, especially in dungeons, i felt pretty useless in there.

I don't think it's a bad dungeon, but i think the trash mobs (especially those dragons on 2 legs) are more dangerous than the bosses in there... And after SV normal mode i expected it to be stellar, which it isn't.


@Immut: You don't need to look at FF 1, look at FF13 if you are looking for a hallway-with-random-battle RPG.

[Immut]

@Immut: You don't need to look at FF 1, look at FF13 if you are looking for a hallway-with-random-battle RPG.

Haven't played it, but I've heard more good things than bad about it. And the grassy area in the second half hardly looked like a hallway to me.

[WellFooled]

I agree that Stone Vigil Hard was the least impressive of the three and I agree that the disappointment was partially because the original was so good...but it's not nearly as bad as everyone is claiming. Every new set of dungeons has an easiest and this is it and we can hardly blame SE for trying new mechanics out, keeps things fresh.

Besides, as a tank, its nice to have less responsibility every now and again.

[Immut]

I agree that Stone Vigil Hard was the least impressive of the three and I agree that the disappointment was partially because the original was so good...but it's not nearly as bad as everyone is claiming. Every new set of dungeons has an easiest and this is it and we can hardly blame SE for trying new mechanics out, keeps things fresh.

Besides, as a tank, its nice to have less responsibility every now and again.

Nothing is new, and difficulty isn't the issue. The issue is it's a long boring slog. The first boss is just the first boss from story mode. Second boss is a less interesting Livia Sas Junius that takes five times as long. Third boss is just some guy with no hate table but we've had lots of those.

Once again I want to point out that Brayflox Longstop (story mode) is far and away the best and most fun dungeon in the game. The bosses all build up mechanically to the final boss. The final boss makes an appearance at several points in the dungeon, foreshadowing the eventual encounter. There's just a ton of optional stuff to do. You get a bonus gear chest for saving all the goblins, there are two huge areas with a bunch of trash you could choose to ignore if you really want to, but you don't want to because you GET STUFF FOR IT (exp and the aforementioned chest). It is the polar opposite of a hallway dungeon, and it's the model that every other dungeon in the game should be imitating.

And as much crap as I give AK and WP, they're ALSO fairly well designed. Lots of open areas, branching paths, optional treasure. The problem is the dungeon SYSTEM is poorly designed in that speedruns are the only thing anyone wants to do once EXP is out of the way. There are a few ways to fix this. One, obviously, is to give us bonus chests for killing the monsters. Especially with the desynth system. I've already bought and broke all the coke and peacock ore on the market. To that end, please add another source of i70 weapons that is actually practical to farm. You could also start putting bonus myth in chests. You could even combine the two, and have groups of monsters you kill for a bonus chest containing myth.

The point is, once you make trash both OPTIONAL and DESIRABLE, you open the way to non-hallway designs.

[Moqi]

There's no way to make Stone Vigil fun lol. I don't hate it but it's just boring. I had high hopes as well because I hate Haltali and Tam Tara, yet their HM versions are my favourite dungeons, so I thought it'd be the same with Stone Vigil, but alas...

[Naryoril]

Haven't played it, but I've heard more good things than bad about it. And the grassy area in the second half hardly looked like a hallway to me.

Not "second half", chapter 11 of 13.

It's the same as saying the second boss in SV HM isn't a hallway either, you have to branch off to get there. But honestly, almost all dungeons are linear, and not just in this game. SV normal mode for example is as linear as hard mode except it has about 3 rooms with monsters you can skip (where one of them only contains a single one).

[Immut]

Not "second half", chapter 11 of 13.

It's the same as saying the second boss in SV HM isn't a hallway either, you have to branch off to get there. But honestly, almost all dungeons are linear, and not just in this game. SV normal mode for example is as linear as hard mode except it has about 3 rooms with monsters you can skip (where one of them only contains a single one).

Yes, SVHM is actually a worse dungeon than SVSM, which is quite an accomplishment! They took out all the optional rooms, and optional trash. Now all the chests are just on the way and you have to fight every single thing in the dungeon every single time.

[Odett]

As someone that usual praises the hard modes, I must admit doing Vigil I had such high hopes, got in, one shot all bosses on an under geared character with an under geared group and thought "wait is that it?"

Yeah, as much as I enjoyed these new dungeons, they were waay too easy for their ilv requirement. These definitely did not feel ilv 70 to me.