Meaningless Battles...

[Payadopa]

That's the thing that bothers me. I'm okay with the story needing me to lose, but then actually make the boss too hard to handle.

Make them an HP sponge that ramps up the mechanics spam until you can't dodge anymore or something, but XIV bosses get slapped around the room in solo fights with ease until they reach 1% at which point they just do their "you lose" move.

It feels cheap because the boss never felt like a threat until the cutscene goes "Ackchyually, the boss was totally too strong for you".

Oh yeah, that also grinds my gears. The opposite is true as well were the big bad in,say, HW is built up to be this all-powerful being and then you kill them within a minute and barely receive damage. Or you skip cutscenes. Why this is okay in a story driven game I have no idea.

[Renalt]

A few examples of unwinnable (or winnable by extreme amounts of skill/luck/stats) i enjoyed were the following and why.

Resident Evil 5 - Wesker fight 1. He starts off saying he only has 7 minutes to "play" with you. Ok. Survive is the name of the game. He dodges every round fired at him. However you can make him retreat earlier if you figure out how to get the door on the side unlock by letting him kick you through it. Now you can blindside him when he loses track of you. Do a LOT of damage and he retreats and you're rewarded with a gem that sells a lot.

Metal Gear Rising - Jet Stream Sam will straight up parry anything you do. If you parry HIM it still chips off a good portion of your health. It's battle of attrition and you don't have the resources if you are good or just get trounced if you are still learning the mechanics.

Metal Gear Solid 2 - Lady Luck. It shows in cutscenes that bullets swerve away from her and any explosives thrown/shot at her will just defuse and be duds. You fight her in a locked room and of course...bullets just swerve away from her. She fires at you and the only way to not die is hide. However she is destroying all the hiding spots. You notice the elevator is coming down so now you know it's a waiting game. The elevator comes down only for a wl2nd boss to appear right when you are pretty much down to the last bit of cover that exists in the room. The fight ends here.

Edit - 5 not 4. MY BAD!

[Misplaced_Marbles]

Resident Evil 4

I'm sure Wesker versus Leon would have been a short fight.

[Renalt]

I'm sure Wesker versus Leon would have been a short fight.

I dunno...Leon does have those sick roundhouses and suplexes.

I fixed it though.

[Kacho_Nacho]

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?

I'm not going to dunk you; because, you're right. Nothing annoys me more than having the control of my character arbitrarily taken away from me and it heartens me to read other players feel the same aggravation.

For example, there's a quest where you are setting up an ambush on a beast tribe because they were stealing crystals and kidnapping people for Ifrit. You end up being betrayed, and your ambush was in fact, a trap. I have actually been in the process of defeating all the amarji quite soundly only to have my victory snatched away because of " story reasons."

"..."

I strongly feel, rather than having our skill rendered meaningless due to linear quest line structure, the quest lines instead have branches which reflect our victory or defeat. It doesn't matter if the branches merge together later in the quest line. What matters is that we as players have our successes and defeats reflected in the story.

In the quest line I mentioned above, we could either have lost the ambush fight and ended up as a prisoner who breaks his bonds to face Ifrit, or we could have won the battle, followed the two bad guys as they fled to the amarji lair, and faced Ifrit in order to bring the merchant and his accomplice to justice. It could all be done with a few additional cutscenes and quest text.

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.

I fully expect this to happen in the future as AI and computing power increases. It'll be awesome!

This was a big issue I had with the latest extreme. Actually pissed me off a bit, it was so frustrating. Though I do have the stance of "if you have to force the protagonist to sit there and listen to the villain monologue/let the villain enact their master plan and the protagonist just sits there and lets it happen, your writing might not be very good". I don't appreciate forced idiocy/ineptitude for my character. It's not very hard to have SOMETHING happen that prevents the protagonist from not being fully capable of stopping you and just not doing it because we gotta let the narrative happen!

Yeah, monologuing and forced idiocy annoys me too. I hope that trope disappears some day.

[BaconBits]

Sekiro did it best imo with the first Genichiro fight. You're not expected to win against him but if you do you get a modified cutscene where Genichiro is visibly on the ropes and has to take advantage of Sekiro getting distracted by a Nightjar shuriken to lop off his arm.

It's a lot better than a villain going dusts off shoulder "That was an interesting little diversion, now die," after you just hit em with a 99 hit combo while they helplessly get juggled around like a ragdoll.

[TheMightyMollusk]

I liked how it was handled at one point in Tales of Symphonia. During the first visit to the Tower of Salvation, there's three boss fights in a row. The first fight has to be won. The second fight is nigh-impossible to win, but if you do (most likely because you're on a New Game Plus), you get a different cut scene afterwards, where the third boss interrupts you from finishing off the second boss.

The third boss handles it less well, unfortunately. Since it's a preview of the final boss, he just plain stops taking damage after a bit; you just have to hold out for a timer, then another cut scene takes over. Even if you're so over-leveled that his attacks are doing scratch damage and your healer can more than handle it, you still get "defeated" so the plot can go on.

[Chie_M]

Honestly, yeah. If I'm gonna lose anyway, I want the stuffing beaten out of me. I want to struggle. I agree with Renalt - I haven't played any of the RE games, but MGS/MGS2 handles it really well.

I have hope for 7.0 and beyond, though. I feel like with the ARR remake, SE is finally starting to get at least a little bit comfortable with making you take a beating. Spoilers in case any sprouts are reading this thread (what are you doing? go play the game!):

New Lahabrea defeats you during the fight. You are mathematically unable to prevent his attack, no matter the DPS you pump out, and you die. Hydaelyn rezzes you and you wipe the floor with him, but it's a start.

I really, really hope that this is an indication that going forward, story beats and instanced battles are going to be more in line with each other.

[Dzian]

I always had the feeling that our Wol is weak, and cant do shit w/o the power of friendship..x)

I dunno I mean we can take on entire armies and win single handedly, we can squish monsters like bugs. Ye those same monsters can tear and entire regiment of the maelstrom finest elites to shreds. They can't even scratch us though. Even if we fight 10 times as many of them single handedly..

Honestly it ruins the story with how powerful the player is. Dire peril world is doomed there is no hope. But along we come and save the day without even raising a finger or breaking a sweat..

Even the unwinnable battles. Like zenos. Oh okay he's big strong and powerful. The rematch against this guy is gonna be tough. But then you suddenly squish him like a bug... what gives....

Ruins the story and atmosphere. Hard won fights are never hard won.

[Renalt]

Oh I forgot about Star Ocean 2. When you first face off against the 10 Wise Men they set 2 of them on you while the others go bugger off. Till this point you are strong enough to do thousands of damage easily but against them you are lucky enough to get a swing on them before they are elsewhere and speed casting high levels spells on you. If you do manage to hit them it is pretty much a tickle. You don't need to "hold out till X amount of time passes", you don't need to "do x amount of damage", and there is no trick. They are literally the same level and strength they will be when you fight those two again later. It's basically a level 80 monster when you are level 50. The fight ends when they actually just put you down.