Superbosses

[Qeo]

Man, I thought this thread died.

Ksi - you and I aren't going to see eye to eye about the Weapons. We'll just agree to disagree.

Hian - I know that is the case with many genres, but with RPG's it's particularly horrible. A quote from yahtzee explains it pretty well:

"I like games where the story and gameplay go hand-in-hand, while in most JRPGs, story and gameplay are kept on either side of a wrought-iron fence made of TIGERS."

Oh, and as for this "People who find that problematic probably shouldn't be playing games, or strictly stick to simulation games."

Not the first time I've seen that kind of post on this thread. Suggesting I should stop playing games because of my opinions.

I can deal with the many nonsensical things in RPG's [Going into people's houses and stealing everything, Inns that heal you, getting money from monsters when you kill them, etc...] in fact I enjoy them. But when my characters are trying to hide from two armed guards when their guns do very little damage, and the guards themselves have very little HP... There is a big problem.

Back when I was a child I could let this go, but this sort of thing just isn't cute anymore. You want these guards to be a threat storywise, then make them a threat gameplaywise.

 

[Vinedrius]

Action games like Metal Gear are ripe with gameplay vs narrative inconsistencies.

I am interested in hearing some examples (not saying there isn't any, I just want to learn)

 

[hian]

The reason people say "maybe you shouldn't play that genre if you don't like that aspect of it" is because it is a perfectly reasonable thing to say if the thing you're criticizing is essentially one of the defining features of the genre.

If you don't like romance centered stories, you don't go and rent a romantic comedy.

The idea that genres and content creators should be tailored to the tastes of people that by their own admission don't like large portions of said genre is extremely silly, especially when you consider that there are probably tons of people who like the genre the way it is.

What people seem to forget is that there is such a thing as a target demographic, and creator vision or intention. Most jrpgs aren't produced with westerners in mind, and they certainly aren't produced with simulation and action adventure fans in mind. For that reason, a lot of criticism here simply isn't apt .

Finally, as I've said, abstraction is a thing in games. Kids who play war, don't beat eachother to death to entertain an ideal of realism.

Add in hardware limitations, and it should be apparent why at least RPGs from the ps2 era and before, feature a lot of strange mechanics.

As for mgs - consider how snake can take multiple hits of most weapons without dying. Yet, he he is captured at gun point several times in cut scenes. That's inconsistent, seeing as snake could just start running and gunning, and most likely be ok by just chewing a ration once his health got low.

In other words, mgs's health system is an abstraction. So is the item system, and so is the field of vision system and many other aspects of it that routinely break with cut scene logic.

I mixed some points in this reply, so I hope nobody takes it the wrong way.

 

[Qeo]

The reason people say "maybe you shouldn't play that genre if you don't like that aspect of it" is because it is a perfectly reasonable thing to say if the thing you're criticizing is essentially one of the defining features of the genre.

If you don't like romance centered stories, you don't go and rent a romantic comedy.

The idea that genres and content creators should be tailored to the tastes of people that by their own admission don't like large portions of said genre is extremely silly, especially when you consider that there are probably tons of people who like the genre the way it is.

What people seem to forget is that there is such a thing as a target demographic, and creator vision or intention. Most jrpgs aren't produced with westerners in mind, and they certainly aren't produced with simulation and action adventure fans in mind. For that reason, a lot of criticism here simply isn't apt .

Finally, as I've said, abstraction is a thing in games. Kids who play war, don't beat eachother to death to entertain an ideal of realism.

Add in hardware limitations, and it should be apparent why at least RPGs from the ps2 era and before, feature a lot of strange mechanics.

As for mgs - consider how snake can take multiple hits of most weapons without dying. Yet, he he is captured at gun point several times in cut scenes. That's inconsistent, seeing as snake could just start running and gunning, and most likely be ok by just chewing a ration once his health got low.

In other words, mgs's health system is an abstraction. So is the item system, and so is the field of vision system and many other aspects of it that routinely break with cut scene logic.

I mixed some points in this reply, so I hope nobody takes it the wrong way.

"The reason people say "maybe you shouldn't play that genre if you don't like that aspect of it" is because it is a perfectly reasonable thing to say if the thing you're criticizing is essentially one of the defining features of the genre.

If you don't like romance centered stories, you don't go and rent a romantic comedy.

The idea that genres and content creators should be tailored to the tastes of people that by their own admission don't like large portions of said genre is extremely silly, especially when you consider that there are probably tons of people who like the genre the way it is."

The idea that I should stop playing games because I don't like how some games have too much gameplay and story segregation is silly.

After reading your post I take it you don't take stories in games very seriously.

If you think there's something wrong with me taking the story of games as seriously as shows, movies or books then that's your problem.

Now, who resurrected this damn thread of mine... DoubleX!

Well, DoubleX's post was actually quite good. It wasn't a "Here is why I am right and you are wrong" post, it was an actual new idea on how to make a superboss work for a story.

I still wouldn't put any superbosses in my game, but any ideas on how others would implement them is encouraged.

 

[Kread-EX]

Are you seriously implying that superbosses break your suspension of disbelief more than monsters dropping armour or gold coins? Than inns magically curing near-fatal wounds? Than weapons made of gold?

There are many many things in RPGs that make much less sense than a superboss, so your aversion to them and the attempt to justify said aversion by throwing around "immersion" and "taking the story seriously" strikes me as pretty... odd to say the least.

They don't inherently break your lore and the rules of your universe unless your final boss is for some reason hailed as the most powerful thing ever. Granted, Final Fantasy series in particular has the tendency to just shove them in without much explanation (the Weapons being a notable exception, whether you like it or not) but this doesn't happen because they are superbosses -- see Necron.

Now, I don't believe a RPG requires superbosses. You could very well have just a really freaking hard final boss. And even that is not required (see classic Atelier games). But games aren't hurt by their presence either. At most, they're hurt by shoehorned content, whatever the content is.

 

[Vinedrius]

@Hian, you can say the same thing for every single game where anything related to the real world is involved. There is no such thing as fiction with no inconsistency between its own world and the real world. Gameplay should be judged in its own consistency. A character getting killed by a gun shot in a cutscene but not in a random battle isn't really a good example in my opinion.

On topic: I don't belive a superboss can easily ruin the player's immersion unless the player can bump into it on the main road. I agree on the idea that it is usually better to have them engagable after the last boss (or any other final challenge that the player must beat to reach the end of the main story), because I think the last boss should remain (assuming it already is) as the biggest challenge until it is finally defeated, especially if the super boss doesn't have a reasonable back story to be active at the same time.

 

[hian]

@Hian, you can say the same thing for every single game where anything related to the real world is involved. There is no such thing as fiction with no inconsistency between its own world and the real world. Gameplay should be judged in its own consistency. A character getting killed by a gun shot in a cutscene but not in a random battle isn't really a good example in my opinion.

That's exactly my point though.

That's what I am arguing for here - namely that people need to recognize that in games, story and gameplay usually occupy two different spaces in terms of player enjoyment that very often don't match up, and don't match up for very good reasons.

The example of snake being able to take multiple hits in gameplay, but somehow acting as if one bullet might kill him in a cut scene, is no different than zack in FF7 being killed by a volley of machinegun fire in a scene, when that specific attack has something like 15 dmg in battles.

That's why it's a good example - because it demonstrates that the rules of gameplay are not the physics of the story.

As you recognize, they couldn't possibly be completely coherent, because trying to make them so would dictate gameplay to the point that RPGs themselves would be an impossibility unless we're talking about some sort of bastardized combination of skyrim and early Rainbow Six games.

I recent the notion that the previous poster made that this somehow means I don't take story seriously, because I play games mostly for the story, and prefer games driven by narrative over games driven by gameplay.

The point here though is that it is possible to enjoy the two separately.

The second point is that if you think gameplay elements that break with story logic breaks immersion, you're most likely applying your standard arbitrarily, or else you wouldn't be able to play almost any games at all, as I was demonstrating with my MGS example.

To say stuff like "superbosses don't make sense with the narrative" while playing and enjoying games like MGS(life system inconsistencies), call of duty(why don't dying soldiers in cutscenes just sit still for a while a regenerate health?) etc etc, is just plain silly.

For any game here that somebody singles out as having gameplay vs story inconsistencies I would challenge them to name me one they like that doesn't. They won't be able to unless they go into sports or simulation genres, so why bother raising the point at all?

RPGs that use a numerical system of abstraction for combat and character growth, but has a story that is supposed to be taken seriously as a sort of parallel to a real world, will have inconsistencies, because guess what? Real worlds don't have fights and character growth determined by numerical systems.

Real people don't have life bars, or infinitely deep pockets or backpacks. We can't do magic, and most skills such as cutting up dead things to extract valuable items or mine for ore requires years of training and are hard to pull off even when we have spent years training for them.

However, telling a good story doesn't require us to do justice to all of these issues - certainly not in games. If having a story in a game about harvesting, required gameplay to do optimal justice to the acts of harvesting materials, than each of these games would have to have a gran tourismo approach to training for the skills, and then have a surgery simulators approach to the execution of them.

Instead we reduce it to a button press and some calculations running in the background based on some fairly simple stat calculations.

Again, it's an abstraction. It helps the gameplay.

Life bars serves as a way of balancing difficulty and allowing players to indulge in the illusion that they are great fighters or soldier, when in a realistic scenario they'd be dead in the first five minutes of gameplay.

The unfortunate consequence of that of course, is that it will conflict with story sequences that imply that your character is in fact human, and actually would die from one or two bullets like anyone else.

Nobody cares though, because that's the game.

As I said - it's either accept it, or hope that every RPG from now on play like a combination of skyrim and rainbow six.

 

[Qeo]

"Are you seriously implying that superbosses break your suspension of disbelief more than monsters dropping armour or gold coins? Than inns magically curing near-fatal wounds? Than weapons made of gold?

There are many many things in RPGs that make much less sense than a superboss, so your aversion to them and the attempt to justify said aversion by throwing around "immersion" and "taking the story seriously" strikes me as pretty... odd to say the least."

Yes, it breaks my suspension of disbelief far more. But at least they are hidden [sometimes not so well...]. It's cutscenes where characters are FAR weaker in cutscenes than in gameplay that is worst of all.

"They don't inherently break your lore and the rules of your universe unless your final boss is for some reason hailed as the most powerful thing ever. Granted, Final Fantasy series in particular has the tendency to just shove them in without much explanation (the Weapons being a notable exception, whether you like it or not) but this doesn't happen because they are superbosses -- see Necron."

People are still talking about the "Weapons"? They have a reason for existing, yes. There is still no explanation for why they are more powerful than Sephiroth. One of them is poorly hidden in the sand, another one isn't even hidden, you can find it easily when going underwater! If you're going to have a superboss, HIDE THEM. Otherwise the player will lose to them, and go against the final battle expecting an even greater challenge only to be disappointed and confused.

They didn't even get a boss battle theme, just the normal battle... A Superboss must have its own battle theme. If your ultimate enemy in the game doesn't have it's own awesome song when fighting it, that doesn't even make sense - isn't it supposed to be dramatic?

Now, let this be the last time I mention those boring things please.

Actually, now that you mention Necron... I can honestly say that character felt out of place as the final boss. Not sure why they didn't use him for a superboss.

"Now, I don't believe a RPG requires superbosses. You could very well have just a really freaking hard final boss. And even that is not required (see classic Atelier games). But games aren't hurt by their presence either. At most, they're hurt by shoehorned content, whatever the content is."

Are you saying classic Atelier games don't have a final boss or just that the final bosses are easy? If I played through a whole rpg and there was no final boss, I'd be pissed.

That's exactly my point though.

That's what I am arguing for here - namely that people need to recognize that in games, story and gameplay usually occupy two different spaces in terms of player enjoyment that very often don't match up, and don't match up for very good reasons.

The example of snake being able to take multiple hits in gameplay, but somehow acting as if one bullet might kill him in a cut scene, is no different than zack in FF7 being killed by a volley of machinegun fire in a scene, when that specific attack has something like 15 dmg in battles.

That's why it's a good example - because it demonstrates that the rules of gameplay are not the physics of the story.

As you recognize, they couldn't possibly be completely coherent, because trying to make them so would dictate gameplay to the point that RPGs themselves would be an impossibility unless we're talking about some sort of bastardized combination of skyrim and early Rainbow Six games.

I recent the notion that the previous poster made that this somehow means I don't take story seriously, because I play games mostly for the story, and prefer games driven by narrative over games driven by gameplay.

The point here though is that it is possible to enjoy the two separately.

The second point is that if you think gameplay elements that break with story logic breaks immersion, you're most likely applying your standard arbitrarily, or else you wouldn't be able to play almost any games at all, as I was demonstrating with my MGS example.

To say stuff like "superbosses don't make sense with the narrative" while playing and enjoying games like MGS(life system inconsistencies), call of duty(why don't dying soldiers in cutscenes just sit still for a while a regenerate health?) etc etc, is just plain silly.

For any game here that somebody singles out as having gameplay vs story inconsistencies I would challenge them to name me one they like that doesn't. They won't be able to unless they go into sports or simulation genres, so why bother raising the point at all?

RPGs that use a numerical system of abstraction for combat and character growth, but has a story that is supposed to be taken seriously as a sort of parallel to a real world, will have inconsistencies, because guess what? Real worlds don't have fights and character growth determined by numerical systems.

Real people don't have life bars, or infinitely deep pockets or backpacks. We can't do magic, and most skills such as cutting up dead things to extract valuable items or mine for ore requires years of training and are hard to pull off even when we have spent years training for them.

However, telling a good story doesn't require us to do justice to all of these issues - certainly not in games. If having a story in a game about harvesting, required gameplay to do optimal justice to the acts of harvesting materials, than each of these games would have to have a gran tourismo approach to training for the skills, and then have a surgery simulators approach to the execution of them.

Instead we reduce it to a button press and some calculations running in the background based on some fairly simple stat calculations.

Again, it's an abstraction. It helps the gameplay.

Life bars serves as a way of balancing difficulty and allowing players to indulge in the illusion that they are great fighters or soldier, when in a realistic scenario they'd be dead in the first five minutes of gameplay.

The unfortunate consequence of that of course, is that it will conflict with story sequences that imply that your character is in fact human, and actually would die from one or two bullets like anyone else.

Nobody cares though, because that's the game.

As I said - it's either accept it, or hope that every RPG from now on play like a combination of skyrim and rainbow six.

If you think it's fine, alright. I'm not going to try to change your mind.

But since you seem to be trying to change my mind, I'll show you why that's impossible.

I hope this is the last time I have to talk about FF7 on here, getting sick of talking about that game - but the whole time I felt like I was playing a super warrior, then they hit you with cutscenes that said otherwise. It's like telling two different stories. I don't want to do that.

Imagine Kratos, a man who kills giant monsters and gods by himself getting beat up by a thug with a baseball bat. That's what it's like.

They fixed the Zack crap in Crisis Core, where he is in fact killed by a whole army. Apparently they realized what they had done made no sense... Then again, considering what he's been up against those guys shouldn't be doing any damage. At least it's not COMPLETELY nonsensical.

"Real people don't have life bars, or infinitely deep pockets or backpacks. We can't do magic, and most skills such as cutting up dead things to extract valuable items or mine for ore requires years of training and are hard to pull off even when we have spent years training for them.

However, telling a good story doesn't require us to do justice to all of these issues - certainly not in games. If having a story in a game about harvesting, required gameplay to do optimal justice to the acts of harvesting materials, than each of these games would have to have a gran tourismo approach to training for the skills, and then have a surgery simulators approach to the execution of them.

Instead we reduce it to a button press and some calculations running in the background based on some fairly simple stat calculations."

Sounds like you'd be okay with a character suddenly not being able to do magic in a cutscene when they're great at it in battle. Like as if magic only existed in battles... I've never seen an RPG do that at least. And I've made it clear that the "cutscene incompetence" part of the story/gamplay difference is the only thing that really bothers me.

Strange how the talk of Superbosses has turned into this.

"Again, it's an abstraction. It helps the gameplay.

Life bars serves as a way of balancing difficulty and allowing players to indulge in the illusion that they are great fighters or soldier, when in a realistic scenario they'd be dead in the first five minutes of gameplay.

The unfortunate consequence of that of course, is that it will conflict with story sequences that imply that your character is in fact human, and actually would die from one or two bullets like anyone else."

I'm not sure how that makes sense or is okay with you. It makes the whole story a lie, because if they were that weak their entire quest would be completely impossible. As I've mentioned before Crisis Core fixed that, so yes the characters weren't normal humans, they were super powered warriors. Not sure why they had such a tough time with showing that in FF7 cutscenes... It's strange too because it was one of my favorite games.

"As I said - it's either accept it, or hope that every RPG from now on play like a combination of skyrim and rainbow six."

There's a lot of RPG's that don't piss me off with that "normal person in a cutscene" crap, so I'm not sure why you're acting like they're the only games.

I played Skyrim. Not my thing, don't do western rpg's. Wish there was one that could change my mind but for some reason they're stuck in "D&D" mode, except for the fallout series but that's just depressing. And Rainbow Six? Isn't that a first person shooter? I don't do those.

I don't know why western rpg developers are so afraid to go full out weird and make me feel like I'm in an interesting world. Not that JRPG's don't have their flaws [Really young main characters mainly]

@Hian, you can say the same thing for every single game where anything related to the real world is involved. There is no such thing as fiction with no inconsistency between its own world and the real world. Gameplay should be judged in its own consistency. A character getting killed by a gun shot in a cutscene but not in a random battle isn't really a good example in my opinion.

On topic: I don't belive a superboss can easily ruin the player's immersion unless the player can bump into it on the main road. I agree on the idea that it is usually better to have them engagable after the last boss (or any other final challenge that the player must beat to reach the end of the main story), because I think the last boss should remain (assuming it already is) as the biggest challenge until it is finally defeated, especially if the super boss doesn't have a reasonable back story to be active at the same time.

"On topic: I don't belive a superboss can easily ruin the player's immersion unless the player can bump into it on the main road. I agree on the idea that it is usually better to have them engagable after the last boss (or any other final challenge that the player must beat to reach the end of the main story), because I think the last boss should remain (assuming it already is) as the biggest challenge until it is finally defeated, especially if the super boss doesn't have a reasonable back story to be active at the same time."

Someone I agree with! What a crazy thing.

 

[Kread-EX]

Are you saying classic Atelier games don't have a final boss or just that the final bosses are easy? If I played through a whole rpg and there was no final boss, I'd be pissed.

They rarely have final bosses yes. It works for them though, since they aren't really battle-oriented games.

 

[Archeia]

Qeo avoid triple posting and just edit your previous post, we already verbally warned you for this. One more and you're getting a warning point.

 

[Qeo]

Qeo avoid triple posting and just edit your previous post, we already verbally warned you for this. One more and you're getting a warning point.

Thanks for editing it for me, but I honestly never saw any warning before this.

 

[Vinedrius]

That's exactly my point though.

That's what I am arguing for here - namely that people need to recognize that in games, story and gameplay usually occupy two different spaces in terms of player enjoyment that very often don't match up, and don't match up for very good reasons.

The example of snake being able to take multiple hits in gameplay, but somehow acting as if one bullet might kill him in a cut scene, is no different than zack in FF7 being killed by a volley of machinegun fire in a scene, when that specific attack has something like 15 dmg in battles.

That's why it's a good example - because it demonstrates that the rules of gameplay are not the physics of the story.

Yeah, I said it wasn't a good example because this;

I mixed some points in this reply, so I hope nobody takes it the wrong way.

It looks like I did lol. We are actually saying the same thing but I am not so good at following a topic with so many walls of text

Inconsistencies between how the game plays out and how the cutscenes turn out don't necessarily cause a player to lose immersion. No one would take a character serious who just got shot in the chest but still stands like it was no worse than a fly bite in a cutscene but in gameplay, we should have a chance to fix it, to fight back and keep playing. Who would enjoy a game over fest?

Edit: P.S. About Necron... That thing is not a superboss at all. It was totally the final boss of the story.

 

[Victor Sant]

I like the idea of Final Superbosses like Lucifer on STM3 or Limiter-off Indalecio/Gabriel from star ocean 2.

You must go through a serie of sidequest (that will powerup the party more than going the normal route) to unlock those stronger final bosses counterpart.

 

[Kread-EX]

^ Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song did that too. You get Fatestones during the game that the final boss is after and if you want, you can actually give them to him before you fight him. All 10 of them power him up like crazy, so much he's the hardest challenge in the game.

@Vinedrai: No one said Necron is a superboss, just that he's badly shoehorned into the game like the superbosses Qeo complains about.

 

[Qeo]

Yeah, I said it wasn't a good example because this;

It looks like I did lol. We are actually saying the same thing but I am not so good at following a topic with so many walls of text

Inconsistencies between how the game plays out and how the cutscenes turn out don't necessarily cause a player to lose immersion. No one would take a character serious who just got shot in the chest but still stands like it was no worse than a fly bite in a cutscene but in gameplay, we should have a chance to fix it, to fight back and keep playing. Who would enjoy a game over fest?

Edit: P.S. About Necron... That thing is not a superboss at all. It was totally the final boss of the story.

"No one would take a character serious who just got shot in the chest but still stands like it was no worse than a fly bite in a cutscene"

The way you say it makes it sound like you're talking about ANY character who gets shot in the chest. If the character doesn't seem particularly special in game, then yes that wouldn't make sense. But if you're talking about advanced heroes or villains in an RPG, the opposite is true.

If you want your hero to be just your average guy, or maybe just a slightly strong human, don't make soldiers armed with machine guns as one of your first enemies.

Personally, I like games where a guy starts off normal, but gradually gets stronger through the game... just like you would actually be getting stronger through leveling, so both gameplay and story wouldn't be two different worlds. So average joe at the beginning but after a long adventure he becomes Supermanlike.

 

[arekpowalan]

Super bosses make sense, I guess. There's no rule that the final boss has to be the strongest. Powerful gods/devils are justifiable bonus bosses who don't want to get involved with things until they are challenged. Super monsters also tend to mind their own businesses until some heroes invade their spaces.

What I don't like about super bosses, however, is that they tend to come out of nowhere. Heroes jump into a battle with random big monsters without any dialogues, and finish them off without any dialogues, as if nothing important has happened. Unless it's a game where a player is determined to defeat stray giant monsters, I preferred those bosses fought as a part of sidequests, or at least their existences should have something that can be tied with the plot or the villains.

 

[Vinedrius]

@Qeo, It is not a must for a hero or a villian to be tougher than a peasant. You can shape the whole game around a weakling turning into an unexpected hero but that is another story. What I am talking about is gameplay consistency in its own reality. If a character is meant to not survive a gun shot at the start of the game but becomes bullet-proof near the end of the game, then it is still not right in its own reality because there should be stronger enemies who fire stronger guns or something similar. You may be a superman against the first enemy in the game but there will always be an enemy that can still hurt the character with the same type of weapon.

I want to look at this issue from a different perspective.

Let's say there is no enemy with a gun at the start but they still have many other less deadlier weapons (I mean practically). Your hero survives countless sword cuts across his chest, hammer blows to the head, dagger stabs in the guts, all kinds of poisons and curses and whatnot. But after travelling across the world and sending all kinds of bad guys to hell, he finally encounters a gunner. Would it make sense if he takes no harm from a gun at this point? By your logic, he should probably already be bullet-proof but up until that point in the game, there was no reference to enemies with guns and how stronger they get progressively. So we can't just assume that it won't hurt.

What I am trying to say is; even if your character doesn't encounter a gunner at the start, it doesn't necessarily make that gun any less deadlier far in the game. In most cases, you should even assume quite the opposite in such a case.

Edit: I think I should stop here or this will be going way off-topic. Done.

 

[Qeo]

@Qeo, If a character is meant to be killed with a gun shot at the start of the game but becomes bullet-proof near the end of the game, then it is still not right in its own reality because there should be stronger enemies who fire stronger guns or something similar. You may be a superman against the first enemy in the game but there will always be an enemy that can still hurt the character with the same type of weapon.

I want to look at this issue from a different perspective.

Let's say there is no enemy with a gun at the start but they still have many other less deadlier weapons (I mean practically). Your hero survives countless sword cuts across his chest, hammer blows to the head, dagger stabs in the guts, all kinds of poisons and curses and whatnot. But after travelling across the world and sending all kinds of bad guys to hell, he finally encounters a gunner. Would it make sense if he takes no harm from a gun at this point? By your logic, he should probably already be bullet-proof but up until that point in the game, there was no reference to enemies with guns and how stronger they get progressively. So we can't just assume that it won't hurt.

What I am trying to say is; even if your character doesn't encounter a gunner at the start, it doesn't necessarily make that gun any less deadlier far in the game. In most cases, you should even assume quite the opposite in such a case.

Edit: I think I should stop here or this will be going way off-topic. Done.

"If a character is meant to be killed with a gun shot at the start of the game but becomes bullet-proof near the end of the game, then it is still not right in its own reality because there should be stronger enemies who fire stronger guns or something similar. You may be a superman against the first enemy in the game but there will always be an enemy that can still hurt the character with the same type of weapon."

Well obviously there will still be powerful enemies and bosses that are a threat. Those guns would have to be some type of special super technology to be a problem.

And for the response to the rest of your post:

It would depend on what he has dealt with. Who or what is stabbing him, what kinds of knives they are using, and what type of gun the gunner using.

I would never make it so that the first gunners you meet do no damage or very little. I'd do medium to high damage, and I'd probably put them somewhere in the halfway point.

And I agree, people should get back onto the superbosses subject. I honestly have nothing else to say about superbosses but I feel like someone else is going to try to change my mind and say how silly it is. I'd advise against that, you'll be wasting your time.

Instead, talk about why you think superbosses are good or bad, or talk about new ideas on how to implement them.

 

[hian]

People are still talking about the "Weapons"? They have a reason for existing, yes. There is still no explanation for why they are more powerful than Sephiroth. One of them is poorly hidden in the sand, another one isn't even hidden, you can find it easily when going underwater! If you're going to have a superboss, HIDE THEM. Otherwise the player will lose to them, and go against the final battle expecting an even greater challenge only to be disappointed and confused.

There doesn't have to be an explanation for why Weapons are stronger than Sephiroth, because the plot never once implies that Sephiroth is the strongest being on the face of Gaia.

Sephiroth is only stated to have been the strongest soldier. Case in point, Sephiroth needs the black materia to summon the meteor and get his work done. He doesn't have the power to cause the kind of damage to the world needed for his plan to succeed unaided. Weapons on the other hand, can Level cities in a flash, and do so within the confines of the plot for gods sake.

If you think it's fine, alright. I'm not going to try to change your mind.

But since you seem to be trying to change my mind, I'll show you why that's impossible.

This is silly. I'm engaging in this argument for the sake of the topic, and for any reader that might find it interesting.

It's strange that despite claiming that you don't care to convince(which means you recognize it's possible to argue without necessarily trying to convince the opposition), you then go on to assume that I do.

Looks like projection to me.

I hope this is the last time I have to talk about FF7 on here, getting sick of talking about that game - but the whole time I felt like I was playing a super warrior, then they hit you with cutscenes that said otherwise. It's like telling two different stories. I don't want to do that.

And that's because you assume the Battle sequences are the truth of the state of affairs, when anyone can tell you they are abstractions. If they weren't, that would be inane.

That would mean that Cloud and Co gets repeatedly hit by bullets, cut by swords, scratched by claws, and smashed by Heavy attacks without suffering any real damage from it, which is ridiculous and clearly in conflict with the world that the developers made.

Imagine Kratos, a man who kills giant monsters and gods by himself getting beat up by a thug with a baseball bat. That's what it's like.

Except that's not what it's like at all. Not only does your example blow the issue out of proportion, it fails to address the fact that even Kratos behaves inconsistently with the gameplay in cutscenes.

Now, imagine if Kratos rutinely fought kids with baseballbats, and that in game they usually required somewhere around 10 hits to kill him, but in a cutscene he got hit over the head and fell after a single blow, would that effect immersion?

Probably not for the vast majority of players - because they recognize that to make this consistent, you'd either have to have a drawn out silly cut scene with Kratos getting hit 10 times, or you'd have to have gameplay where a single hit would give you the game over scene. Both of these options are less practical, and more frustrating than to simply keep the current system, and assume that players are smart enough to realize that the life bar, and the damage calculations during gameplay are absractions for the sake of making the game fun to play.

They fixed the Zack crap in Crisis Core, where he is in fact killed by a whole army. Apparently they realized what they had done made no sense... Then again, considering what he's been up against those guys shouldn't be doing any damage. At least it's not COMPLETELY nonsensical..

Actually, no. Crisis Core messed up the established canon of FF7 and made things even more crappier.

Sephiroth cut down Zack with a single blow in the original game, and only got bested once Cloud snuck up behind him and stabbed him through the back with the Buster Sword. That actually makes sense, even with gameplay in mind, seeing as Sephiroth was supposed to be the strongest Soldier in history. Crisis Core however, completely throws all this under the bus to satisfy the expectations of the new generation of fangirls and fanboys that Advent Children generated.

Sounds like you'd be okay with a character suddenly not being able to do magic in a cutscene when they're great at it in battle. Like as if magic only existed in battles... I've never seen an RPG do that at least. And I've made it clear that the "cutscene incompetence" part of the story/gamplay difference is the only thing that really bothers me.

Again, that is completely out of proportion. And again, it depends on the battlesystem and the general nature of the narrative. If Cloud couldn't use fire 3 in a cut scene despite being able to use it in battle, yes, I probably wouldn't give two tits about that. It simply isn't relevant, especially when you consider that spells like fire 3 aren't mentioned even a single time within the narrative.

I'm not sure how that makes sense or is okay with you. It makes the whole story a lie, because if they were that weak their entire quest would be completely impossible. As I've mentioned before Crisis Core fixed that, so yes the characters weren't normal humans, they were super powered warriors. Not sure why they had such a tough time with showing that in FF7 cutscenes... It's strange too because it was one of my favorite games.

No, it doesn't - it makes the gameplay a lie, and the gameplay is a lie god damn it, because it's an abstraction. Cloud isn't actually waiting for his ATB to fill up, and then run over to the enemy to cut the enemy with the same attack over and over again.

That's the games way of telling you "Hey, Cloud is fighting. He is awesome at it - but because of thardware limitations and because of gameplay concerns, we had to have the battles look like and play like this, rather than some sort of high speed Tekken clone with one-hit kills.

Also, you failed at understanding the FF7 plot. The only "superpowered" warrior in FF7 was Sephiroth. Everyone else were either ordinary people, or above average people(Cloud, Vincent and Zack).

That's why the cut-scenes make sense, and why Advent Children and Crisis Core don't.

There's a lot of RPG's that don't piss me off with that "normal person in a cutscene" crap, so I'm not sure why you're acting like they're the only games.

And that's because you're applying your standard arbitrarily, which makes your complaint hypocritical.

Again, mention any game, and I'll mention you an inconsistency caused by abstractions in gameplay.

You've just chosen one abstraction to make your pet peeve. I think that's stupid, and that's why I am writing this post - so nobody goes off this thread thinking that they shouldn't use superbosses because some people with an extremely selective mental process might lose their sense of immersion.

I played Skyrim. Not my thing, don't do western rpg's. Wish there was one that could change my mind but for some reason they're stuck in "D&D" mode, except for the fallout series but that's just depressing. And Rainbow Six? Isn't that a first person shooter? I don't do those..

Way to fail at understanding the point. My point is that if you want to make a game that has no plot and gameplay inconsistencies, you're going to have to make a game that runs pretty much like the combination of those two games.

So, unless that's the kind of game we're talking about, then there is no reason for people here to fret over whether superbosses are "inconsistent", because your game is already going to be inconsistent.

If your game is already inconsistent in terms of gameplay due to abstraction, then why would you bend backwards to satisfy the complaints of a marginal demopgraphic that "loses immersion" in an extremely selective fashion like the one you're fronting here?

My answer is: Don't.

Superbosses add content and challenge.

If you make your core plot line bosses too hard, you alianate players that won't be able to complete your game. Adding superbosses means that hardcore or competative players can get their fill of gameplay, without having to make the game inaccessible to weaker or more casual players.

Having the superbosses at the end makes sense because having them there usually means that you'll have the items, skills and levels necessary to walk into the challenge without it impacting the core gameplay.

If you add superbossses along the path of the narrative, strong players will go off the path, fight these bosses, reap the rewards and when they get back on track, no challenge is left for them.

There is a good reason why superbosses exist, and there is a good reason why they're at the end - it's because it's the best and easiest way for developers to add content for a wider audience without having to worry about how it will effect the game's balance.

Adding them doesn't harm anyone.

Anyone who would refrain from playing a game if they knew that superbosses would pop up at the end, are not a demographic worth worrying about.

 

[Qeo]

I'd have liked to put these in quote blocks, but apparently there's a limit to how much I can make.

"There doesn't have to be an explanation for why Weapons are stronger than Sephiroth, because the plot never once implies that Sephiroth is the strongest being on the face of Gaia.

Sephiroth is only stated to have been the strongest soldier. Case in point, Sephiroth needs the black materia to summon the meteor and get his work done. He doesn't have the power to cause the kind of damage to the world needed for his plan to succeed unaided. Weapons on the other hand, can Level cities in a flash, and do so within the confines of the plot for gods sake."

You're forgetting that Sephiroth transforms in the final battles. Even before the One Winged Angel form, his previous forms track name says "Birth of a God" so he's a God.

"This is silly. I'm engaging in this argument for the sake of the topic, and for any reader that might find it interesting.

It's strange that despite claiming that you don't care to convince(which means you recognize it's possible to argue without necessarily trying to convince the opposition), you then go on to assume that I do.

Looks like projection to me."

Here's the difference. Notice how I'm not responding to the people that claim to enjoy superbosses telling them how wrong they are for thinking that?

Some people are pretty much saying "That doesn't make sense, stop playing games." Isn't that rude?

If you like superbosses or want to use them, I respect that. If you don't mind characters being weaker in cutscenes, I respect that. But if you don't respect my views then I won't respect yours.

"And that's because you assume the Battle sequences are the truth of the state of affairs, when anyone can tell you they are abstractions. If they weren't, that would be inane.
That would mean that Cloud and Co gets repeatedly hit by bullets, cut by swords, scratched by claws, and smashed by Heavy attacks without suffering any real damage from it, which is ridiculous and clearly in conflict with the world that the developers made."

We already know you and I have a very different idea on what is ridiculous or not. I don't like story and gameplay segregation. You don't mind it. Move on, nothing left to be said on that topic.

"Except that's not what it's like at all. Not only does your example blow the issue out of proportion, it fails to address the fact that even Kratos behaves inconsistently with the gameplay in cutscenes.

Now, imagine if Kratos rutinely fought kids with baseballbats, and that in game they usually required somewhere around 10 hits to kill him, but in a cutscene he got hit over the head and fell after a single blow, would that effect immersion?
Probably not for the vast majority of players - because they recognize that to make this consistent, you'd either have to have a drawn out silly cut scene with Kratos getting hit 10 times, or you'd have to have gameplay where a single hit would give you the game over scene. Both of these options are less practical, and more frustrating than to simply keep the current system, and assume that players are smart enough to realize that the life bar, and the damage calculations during gameplay are absractions for the sake of making the game fun to play."

Well obviously the fact kids with baseball bats being able to damage him would already kill immersion. Maybe if they want to knock out a character in a cutscene, they would use an attack that would actually be able to do that in game? Is that so hard?

"Actually, no. Crisis Core messed up the established canon of FF7 and made things even more crappier.

Sephiroth cut down Zack with a single blow in the original game, and only got bested once Cloud snuck up behind him and stabbed him through the back with the Buster Sword. That actually makes sense, even with gameplay in mind, seeing as Sephiroth was supposed to be the strongest Soldier in history. Crisis Core however, completely throws all this under the bus to satisfy the expectations of the new generation of fangirls and fanboys that Advent Children generated."

I feel like what I've been doing sounds like FF7 bashing. I loved the game and still now I like it a lot despite some of the things I don't like about it.

That's another problem I had with FF7, how Cloud managed to harm Sephiroth with the first sword in the game, and at a low level. But I thought about it and it doesn't bother me, since I took it as one of those things that sometimes happen in anime - where the character is temporarily far stronger because of anger.

In Crisis Core cutscenes and in Advent Children it's clear Cloud is not just a tough human. There was a scene near the end where Cloud gets shot in the head point blank. He gets knocked out, but doesn't die. But I take it you don't take either of them seriously.

Cloud can kill a Weapon, [Oh damn it not them again] a city destroying robot with just his sword. Sure he he has a couple of friends helping him, but the fact he can help take it down proves he's not a normal human.

"Again, that is completely out of proportion. And again, it depends on the battlesystem and the general nature of the narrative. If Cloud couldn't use fire 3 in a cut scene despite being able to use it in battle, yes, I probably wouldn't give two tits about that. It simply isn't relevant, especially when you consider that spells like fire 3 aren't mentioned even a single time within the narrative."

If it was a spell he needed to use at the time which would solve his problem, then I'd have a problem with the cutscene.

"No, it doesn't - it makes the gameplay a lie, and the gameplay is a lie god damn it, because it's an abstraction. Cloud isn't actually waiting for his ATB to fill up, and then run over to the enemy to cut the enemy with the same attack over and over again.
That's the games way of telling you "Hey, Cloud is fighting. He is awesome at it - but because of thardware limitations and because of gameplay concerns, we had to have the battles look like and play like this, rather than some sort of high speed Tekken clone with one-hit kills.

Also, you failed at understanding the FF7 plot. The only "superpowered" warrior in FF7 was Sephiroth. Everyone else were either ordinary people, or above average people(Cloud, Vincent and Zack).
That's why the cut-scenes make sense, and why Advent Children and Crisis Core don't."

You're actually getting angry over this? Seriously?

Anyway, I'm not sure why you're telling me about that. Obviously the battle goes differently in the actual story. In your version I suppose he would get shot by the first soldier and die. I'm imagining a more Advent Childrenish style.

And if Cloud was just "above average" as you say he was, I doubt he'd get passed the first area. How was he able to kill Sephiroth on his own in the final battle if he wasn't super powered?

And I'm sorry, but anyone that can kill a giant city destroying robot with a sword is superpowered.

"And that's because you're applying your standard arbitrarily, which makes your complaint hypocritical.

Again, mention any game, and I'll mention you an inconsistency caused by abstractions in gameplay.
You've just chosen one abstraction to make your pet peeve. I think that's stupid, and that's why I am writing this post - so nobody goes off this thread thinking that they shouldn't use superbosses because some people with an extremely selective mental process might lose their sense of immersion."

Let's see... Last Story, Lost Odyssey, Star Ocean 4...  to name a few. Been a while since I finished them, but I don't recall anything that made me annoyed.

People will make the games they want to make regardless of what I say. I didn't post this thread to tell people not to put superbosses in their games.

"Way to fail at understanding the point. My point is that if you want to make a game that has no plot and gameplay inconsistencies, you're going to have to make a game that runs pretty much like the combination of those two games.

So, unless that's the kind of game we're talking about, then there is no reason for people here to fret over whether superbosses are "inconsistent", because your game is already going to be inconsistent.
If your game is already inconsistent in terms of gameplay due to abstraction, then why would you bend backwards to satisfy the complaints of a marginal demopgraphic that "loses immersion" in an extremely selective fashion like the one you're fronting here?"

The only story and gameplay inconsistencies I'm bothered with is: Cutscenes that pretty much ignore the gameplay as if it's another world, and to a much lesser extent, superbosses.

I'm not expecting people to change what they're going to do because of what I've said, not sure where you've got this from.

"My answer is: Don't.

Superbosses add content and challenge.

If you make your core plot line bosses too hard, you alianate players that won't be able to complete your game. Adding superbosses means that hardcore or competative players can get their fill of gameplay, without having to make the game inaccessible to weaker or more casual players.
Having the superbosses at the end makes sense because having them there usually means that you'll have the items, skills and levels necessary to walk into the challenge without it impacting the core gameplay.
If you add superbossses along the path of the narrative, strong players will go off the path, fight these bosses, reap the rewards and when they get back on track, no challenge is left for them.

There is a good reason why superbosses exist, and there is a good reason why they're at the end - it's because it's the best and easiest way for developers to add content for a wider audience without having to worry about how it will effect the game's balance."

Glad we're back on topic.

I personally think a challenging final boss would be great. Not one you have to grind for [i am definitely against grinding] I'd make it so that you're already at max/near max level by the time you're there. Yes, there's no challenge left if they're easy to find - I think we can both agree that if you're going to have a superboss, keep it decently hidden and only fightable near the games end.

One suggestion is perhaps make a hint to the boss in the ending, like where it is and what you have to do there to see it. That way you don't get disappointed with the final boss after you beat the superboss. Not doing this myself, just a suggestion.

"Adding them doesn't harm anyone.
Anyone who would refrain from playing a game if they knew that superbosses would pop up at the end, are not a demographic worth worrying about."

Sort of harms me and anyone who feels the same way. Maybe we don't count to you because we're not "a demographic worth worrying about."

Really strange that you're giving me so much crap about not liking inconsistency with cutscenes, seeing as this is one of your posts in the "5 Must-haves in an RPG" thread:

"3. Consistency
Consistency is the most important factor for me when it comes to telling good stories and building worlds.
If the world you build, or story you write doesn't make sense internally, I'm not going to play the game period.
I've played too many games where, after having killed a gazillion enemy soldiers, a scripted scene suddenly has my character being captured by four of those very same soldiers.
No more, seriously."