Defending XIII, not hating any other titles

I apologize for inadvertently insulting you. That wasn't my intent (I actually edited my first reaction before posting because I thought it sounded insulting when I read the post preview, but I clearly didn't edit it enough), and I may well have interpreted your comment differently from what you meant.

As for the rest, I'm sticking with "agree to disagree."


Cool! Nothing wrong with playing something that has flaws worth slamming--and FFXIII definitely has flaws--as long as it also has strong points. I saw you're planning to do an NCU run--hopefully that'll be fun! I don't know if I'll ever try that challenge; I'm a bit intimidated by the Destrudo dodge and the grinding. On the other hand, I do have some boss strategies I'd like to test NCU....

I'm sorry but you simply can't expect that you're really in the minority. So maybe its best to go with "agree to disagree" with every person who hates it. Because ppeople also hate plot and characters.


XIII is simply not worth defending especially if the true issue among the debate falls to "what you make of it personally"
 
I've played those games aswell, and i've gotten stuck a couple of times ( i actually got stuck in FFDimensions alot more than any other FF). You still haven't played FFVII and that one has the most difficult boss ever.

regardless, the difference being, FFXIII has two thirds of the game being AI controlled, with you only manually controlling your character. Yes paradigm shift does the job for you. but in the beginning of the game, it's so slow paced, that paradigm shift shouldn't even be necessary. One can manually control all 3. So unlike every other FF game, gaining momentum in battle is much easier in FFXIII then any other game out there.

with XIII you have less options to do the same impact, the "strategy" can be executed much quicker than normal 1 by 1 battle option. trial and error for the other games offers more "error" as for XIII doesn't offer that.

And that's simply what i don't want. i don't want a "personal" reward such as improving "how" i play the game, because i'll win regardless. Other FFs forced you to think of new strategies. And i don't think its good memory to remember how "easy" they were. At the time i was also new to RPGs (JRPGs to be exact) and playing the older ones with the new ones at the same time offered me alot of room to improve. But with XIII it was so noob friendly. I didn't have to "think" at all to play it. Because every outcome led me to win.

playing it better seems so pointless if i get most of the same outcome. For example: if the game offered a 70-100% 5 star rating reward through the entire game beating it, i would definitely consider replay value. But it doesn't have that.

The most difficult boss ever in FF7? I surely hope you dont mean Sephiroth, but merely referring to the emerald weapon right? Cuz sephy was Definitley way to easy for being an endboss considering i beat him my first try.
 
The most difficult boss ever in FF7? I surely hope you dont mean Sephiroth, but merely referring to the emerald weapon right? Cuz sephy was Definitley way to easy for being an endboss considering i beat him my first try.

I assume She meant one of the weapons (Diamond or Emerald)

Razberry Knight said:
XIII is simply not worth defending especially if the true issue among the debate falls to "what you make of it personally"

Can't you say that about any game/movie/book... anything actually? If you personally like something, does it really matter how you defend it? If someone liked the characters and you didn't, or the story line, then it comes down to taste.
 
I assume She meant one of the weapons (Diamond or Emerald)



Can't you say that about any game/movie/book... anything actually? If you personally like something, does it really matter how you defend it? If someone liked the characters and you didn't, or the story line, then it comes down to taste.
Most of the argument is about the gameplay. Its like a mock up of baseball where there's no room for an opposing team to beat you. You either make personal challenges in your head just for the sake of enjoying the game, or take it for what it really is.

There's a difference between personal taste and making the best of bad situation. That's what I see in tyornis

And that's what I'm saying, many people have every reason to HATE XIII. There's no point in defending XIII because xiii has too many flaws in the gameplay. You also have to ignore some plot holes between the strength and powers of a falcie and lcie too to consider it "solid". And you would have to like the characters from the start. How can lcie defeat beings that turned them into lcie in the first place?
 
I assume She meant one of the weapons (Diamond or Emerald)



Can't you say that about any game/movie/book... anything actually? If you personally like something, does it really matter how you defend it? If someone liked the characters and you didn't, or the story line, then it comes down to taste.
Most of the argument is about the gameplay. Its like a mock up of baseball where there's no room for an opposing team to beat you. You either make personal challenges in your head just for the sake of enjoying the game, or take it for what it really is.

There's a difference between personal taste and making the best of bad situation. That's what I see in tyornis

And that's what I'm saying, many people have every reason to HATE XIII. There's no point in defending XIII because xiii has too many flaws in the gameplay. You also have to ignore some plot holes between the strength and powers of a falcie and lcie too to consider it "solid". And you would have to like the characters from the start. How can lcie defeat beings that turned them into lcie in the first place?
The most difficult boss ever in FF7? I surely hope you dont mean Sephiroth, but merely referring to the emerald weapon right? Cuz sephy was Definitley way to easy for being an endboss considering i beat him my first try.

Either yyou maxxed out every character or something was wrong. Either way the weapons were still incredibly difficult. And the ff8 demo alone was difficult and I replayed it 15 times or more before actually buying the game
 
Most of the argument is about the gameplay. Its like a mock up of baseball where there's no room for an opposing team to beat you. You either make personal challenges in your head just for the sake of enjoying the game, or take it for what it really is.

There's a difference between personal taste and making the best of bad situation. That's what I see in tyornis

And that's what I'm saying, many people have every reason to HATE XIII. There's no point in defending XIII because xiii has too many flaws in the gameplay. You also have to ignore some plot holes between the strength and powers of a falcie and lcie too to consider it "solid". And you would have to like the characters from the start. How can lcie defeat beings that turned them into lcie in the first place?


Either yyou maxxed out every character or something was wrong. Either way the weapons were still incredibly difficult. And the ff8 demo alone was difficult and I replayed it 15 times or more before actually buying the game

No i didnt, i just played through the story, i actually screwed up on the sephy fight & still easily beat him. i forgot to switch over my good materia to the team i was gonna use, for i had all lvl 1 spells & bad summons, for the fight & still won handily. did no excess training or sidequests, no ultima weaps or anything, just progressed in the story & faught the battles that i got caught up in along the way
 
No i didnt, i just played through the story, i actually screwed up on the sephy fight & still easily beat him. i forgot to switch over my good materia to the team i was gonna use, for i had all lvl 1 spells & bad summons, for the fight & still won handily. did no excess training or sidequests, no ultima weaps or anything, just progressed in the story & faught the battles that i got caught up in along the way
i didnt need ultima weapons either. but for the rest, younll just have to prove it. a video? you see how unbelievable your story is?
 
I'm sorry but you simply can't expect that you're really in the minority. So maybe its best to go with "agree to disagree" with every person who hates it. Because ppeople also hate plot and characters.


XIII is simply not worth defending especially if the true issue among the debate falls to "what you make of it personally"
You claim that FFXIII lacks optimization, but in fact the game allows strategic optimization, tactical optimization, crystarium path optimization, item upgrade/resource expenditure optimization, time optimization, and optimization along other avenues. FFXIII does prevent you from leveling up your characters to endgame max before endgame, and it does not have methods for optimizing the character's base stats, but these are hardly the only methods of optimization available in RPGs.

You claim that FFXIII fails to give you control over your characters, when in fact the paradigm system gives you control by allowing you to alter their strategic roles as needed throughout the battle. You can also execute finer levels of control through AI manipulation. You do not have as much control as you do in previous FF titles, but that is hardly the same thing as lacking control entirely.

You claim that FFXIII lacks challenge, because much of the challenge is tied up with winning battles efficiently, and you see no reason to be efficient due to the game's relative lack of resource management. You further claim that the game is flawed because it does not reward you for achieving 5-star battle ratings. In fact, the game does reward 5-star battle ratings with superior drops, so that efficient victories give you better tools for accessory and weapon optimization, potentially allowing for even more efficient victories.

You claim that it isn't difficult to produce high-skill play in FFXIII, and dismiss the videos I provided as stuff that it "doesn't take much of an expert" to do. In fact, it does take quite a bit of expertise, as I've discovered when trying to help other people by linking them to those vids and suggesting they duplicate those strategies (I don't link to the speed kills that way). Few people are able to execute the strategies in those videos, even though those strategies--again, speed kills excepted--are intentionally toned down and designed to be easier to execute than truly high-level strategies would be.

You claim that FFXIII is easy, while earlier FF titles were quite difficult. When faced with posters telling you that they had an easy time with the earlier titles, you do not reconsider your experience, investigate the feasibility of their claims (it took me less than 20 seconds to find this: http://youtu.be/a7A0BfFmXgE), or even allow that other gamers might have more skill than you in some areas. Instead, you suggest that their memory is faulty or outright accuse them of lying.

I'm not in the habit of agreeing to disagree with all FFXIII haters. I'm proposing an end to direct discourse with you because I don't see a point to further discussion with you. I will continue to defend FFXIII's strengths--the available depth of strategy in the battle system, and the empowerment offered by advanced levels of strategy--because they are well worth defending. But I'm done with trying to convince you to recognize them.

Oh, and you asked how l'Cie can defeat the beings that turned them into l'Cie in the first place. Simple: l'Cie--or more precisely, humans--are capable of growth, while Fal'Cie are not.

Of course, if given the choice, I wouldn't have any Stagger system, and I would include some form of method (a Gambit-lite method?) to help determine positioning of the characters in battle. There's only so long you can watch a regular battle go on for because the bollocks of a Stagger bar is taking five minutes to fill up, despite the best work of Ravagers, while area effect attacks arbitrarily hit party members because they're too stupid to NOT walk straight into the line of fire.
I missed seeing this earlier. I agree that better positioning control would be awesome, but I'm curious: why would you get rid of the stagger system entirely, and what were you fighting that was causing you to spend so much time increasing the chain gauge?
 
Sorry for going off topic but seriously Sephiroth was an absolute JOKE of a final boss. There was no challenge to him at all. It was honestly borderline insulting how easy he was.
 
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You claim that FFXIII lacks optimization, but in fact the game allows strategic optimization, tactical optimization, crystarium path optimization, item upgrade/resource expenditure optimization, time optimization, and optimization along other avenues. FFXIII does prevent you from leveling up your characters to endgame max before endgame, and it does not have methods for optimizing the character's base stats, but these are hardly the only methods of optimization available in RPGs.
Crystarium was a joke. Each time you had a limit to how well you can customize it. So even if you were to attempt of level grinding, it left you little choice in what to level up. Also the crystarium wasn't optimizable either. You could initially choose what type of combat you want to level up, but there is a limit, and the reason is because its meant to be completed. So its not like you get different results each time. Let's not forget crystarium is the leveling system. So its not like you have much option around it. This is also the issue of being too easy.


Strategic optimization? Tactical optimization? As to what? How much of an optimization can you do upon strategy when most of it is divided in paradigms?? I said it before, I will say it again: The game is setup to win, the "little" strategic optimization offers is rather unnecessary. Tactical optimization I KNOW is virtually useless among the plot.

With XIII 30% of the game being manual and 60% being paradigms, it just makes any method a strategy. The most strategy comes from actually performing a paradigm shift. The tactical optimization is choosing a different attack that makes little to no difference.

You claim that FFXIII fails to give you control over your characters, when in fact the paradigm system gives you control by allowing you to alter their strategic roles as needed throughout the battle. You can also execute finer levels of control through AI manipulation. You do not have as much control as you do in previous FF titles, but that is hardly the same thing as lacking control entirely.

This is also tied to optimization, but you simply have no control what attacks they give. No customizing paradigm attacks or ravager. You don't controll them, sure you controll the strategy, but not manually input. Its like saying I'm a passanger and I control the driver by telling him to drive in specific way but I'm not actually driving.

And simply word technicality, doesn't make your argument stronger. You know what I meant. That's not worth defending because its based on how I phrased it, not the point.

You claim that FFXIII lacks challenge, because much of the challenge is tied up with winning battles efficiently, and you see no reason to be efficient due to the game's relative lack of resource management. You further claim that the game is flawed because it does not reward you for achieving 5-star battle ratings. In fact, the game does reward 5-star battle ratings with superior drops, so that efficient victories give you better tools for accessory and weapon optimization, potentially allowing for even more efficient victories.

The differences between winning efficiently and winning suffiently are minor. You're better off not buying a single accesory/weapon to provide more of an RPG challenge.

Getting 5-star isn't as difficult as you make it out to be. Much of the challenge is "optional" in the sense that you get no real reward. Better drops? That's it? It would be great to get ultra rare drops like crisis core. Some form of magic jar random encounter, anything to actually help you beat the game. But then again, you don't "need" it, or rather you don't get much difference. It's like trying to turn that light breeze into still air.

The style of this game could've been expanded to much of crisis core style of options.

The type of reward I'm asking for is in the long run. If the game offered rewards based on 5 star ratio. If you had 100-70% ratio, you would get a new scene or a special mission. Also if the 5-rank would offer more synthesizing to make it more relevant to gaining better weapons if you're the type to collects them.

Again...the games too easy to even offer these additions.

You claim that it isn't difficult to produce high-skill play in FFXIII, and dismiss the videos I provided as stuff that it "doesn't take much of an expert" to do. In fact, it does take quite a bit of expertise, as I've discovered when trying to help other people by linking them to those vids and suggesting they duplicate those strategies (I don't link to the speed kills that way). Few people are able to execute the strategies in those videos, even though those strategies--again, speed kills excepted--are intentionally toned down and designed to be easier to execute than truly high-level strategies would be.

I saw those videos, but I didn't see much difference in how much damage a party took, or how much it affected one particular party member. By the time you get to the part where you can choose your party, the problem still lies with the need to do it. To me, passing the battles in general without taking much damage or mp is at high skill. The ranking system is the only thing providing pleasure. But even then that pleasure shouldn't last as there's no ratio of ranking you get, nor any reward. But do you see how much pleasure is revolved around one addition?

Without the ranking system, you most likely not care for any of these. Reasons why I don't is simply the fact that I don't appreciate games meant to be that easy. It defeats the purpose of an RPG.

In fact, if SE didn't add that ranking system, much more game mechanics could've been added.

You claim that FFXIII is easy, while earlier FF titles were quite difficult. When faced with posters telling you that they had an easy time with the earlier titles, you do not reconsider your experience, investigate the feasibility of their claims (it took me less than 20 seconds to find this: http://youtu.be/a7A0BfFmXgE), or even allow that other gamers might have more skill than you in some areas. Instead, you suggest that their memory is faulty or outright accuse them of lying.

Only you are saying XIII is as easy as the games after ffVI. The rest are saying ff7 boss sephiroth is a joke. And maybe you been playing jRPGs longer than I have considering I joined in the fandom around ff8. But it doesn't change the fact XIII is exceptionably easier than the rest.

I'm not in the habit of agreeing to disagree with all FFXIII haters. I'm proposing an end to direct discourse with you because I don't see a point to further discussion with you. I will continue to defend FFXIII's strengths--the available depth of strategy in the battle system, and the empowerment offered by advanced levels of strategy--because they are well worth defending. But I'm done with trying to convince you to recognize them.
I won't. Because in reality the strengths are optional to the players mind. Not within the game itself offers. What XIII offers is only strategy in the most broadest form. Its not depth, its just more apparent. It takes about 60% of the tactics away from the original ffs for most of the game 30% is left with most of the controls of your lead character.

In any game, you can look for that special sweet zone of efficient battles. But with the previous games, they offered more room to find it. XIII doesn't.

I will say this, don't bother defending the points to a hater. They know these qualities you claim, but as an RPG and especially as a FF game. It lacks much of the finer tactic.

You think I'm the only hater who simply doesn't recognize the points you made???? I'm currently in a ff hate cllub and occasionally 1 fan tries to defend it all. And when 1 tries to defend the game mechanics, it always goes down to the 5 star ranking.

So think about the line between me (hater) and you (fan). What makes the hater stay a hater no matter how many points a fan makes? Your core argument is that you have the option to do what little it offers. Me? I want more, as every gamer should ask.

Oh, and you asked how l'Cie can defeat the beings that turned them into l'Cie in the first place. Simple: l'Cie--or more precisely, humans--are capable of growth, while Fal'Cie are not.
true, but that power is still granted by the Falcie. Even with strength, the idea to irradicate the falcie just popped out of nowhere. And worst is they defeated 1 in the beginning.
 
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Strategic optimization? Tactical optimization? As to what? How much of an optimization can you do upon strategy when most of it is divided in paradigms?? I said it before, I will say it again: The game is setup to win, the "little" strategic optimization offers is rather unnecessary. Tactical optimization I KNOW is virtually useless among the plot.
Elements of strategy in this game include, but are not limited to: team composition, leader selection, paradigm selection, weapon and accessory selection, target ordering, single-target vs. multi-target approach, damage amplification methods, and damage mitigation methods. Somehow, I quite a bit of that falling outside the heading "divided in paradigms". Tactics include ATB refresh, command role buffering, enemy juggling, enemy stun-locking, character position control, and various timing tricks; most of these are extremely useful for defeating the encounters along the storyline (just not necessary). I suspect you discount the impact of strategy and tactics in part because you fail to perceive many of the strategic and tactical options in the game. Your dismissal of the videos tends to reinforce this suspicion.

With XIII 30% of the game being manual and 60% being paradigms, it just makes any method a strategy. The most strategy comes from actually performing a paradigm shift. The tactical optimization is choosing a different attack that makes little to no difference.

This is also tied to optimization, but you simply have no control what attacks they give. No customizing paradigm attacks or ravager. You don't controll them, sure you controll the strategy, but not manually input. Its like saying I'm a passanger and I control the driver by telling him to drive in specific way but I'm not actually driving.

And simply word technicality, doesn't make your argument stronger. You know what I meant. That's not worth defending because its based on how I phrased it, not the point.
It's not just a matter of semantics. You're trying to impose a false dichotomy, and in doing so your argument becomes inconsistent. If manual command input doesn't matter--that is, if the AI in a given role is going to do what I would do anyway in that role--then I effectively have full control over my teammates since I control what role they're in. If full control matters--that is, if what I want to do is different from what the AI would do--then it clearly matters for the character I do exert full control over. You can't have it both ways.

The correct answer is that it does matter to have full control over the leader even though the AI is pretty good. You don't gain by leaps and bounds, but you do gain maybe 25% efficiency. By correlation, that means you also have a good amount--about 80% or so--of control over the AI characters even though you don't have full control. So, 100% of 33% + ~80% of 67% = 80-90% control over the battle. That's not 100%, but it's way better than the 33% you're claiming.

The differences between winning efficiently and winning suffiently are minor. You're better off not buying a single accesory/weapon to provide more of an RPG challenge.
So, "artificially" imposing challenge by valuing 5-star (and higher) ratings is bad, but imposing challenge by artificially restricting weapon and accessory selection is good? Right. I see this clearly now. /sarcasm

Only you are saying XIII is as easy as the games after ffVI. The rest are saying ff7 boss sephiroth is a joke. And maybe you been playing jRPGs longer than I have considering I joined in the fandom around ff8. But it doesn't change the fact XIII is exceptionably easier than the rest.
Considering that I started playing RPGs with Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior, yeah, I've been around a while. And I've seen at least as many claims that FFXIII is the hardest of the FF games as I have claims that it is easiest. Your opinion on FFXIII's difficulty doesn't qualify as a fact any more than those other opinions (or my opinion) do. Personally, I think FFXIII is easy to beat but difficult to master. Of course, I don't think any Final Fantasy game is hard; quibbling about whether FFXIII is harder or easier than FFVII or FFVIII is like quibbling about whether Connect Four is harder or easier than Checkers--either way, they're both easy, and if I'm playing them, it's not because of the baseline difficulty level.

And incidentally, I agree with the general sentiment that Sephiroth is joke-tier difficulty, even in comparison with other FF final bosses (although the overall battle is still awesome thanks to other factors).
 
Elements of strategy in this game include, but are not limited to: team composition, leader selection, paradigm selection, weapon and accessory selection, target ordering, single-target vs. multi-target approach, damage amplification methods, and damage mitigation methods. Somehow, I quite a bit of that falling outside the heading "divided in paradigms". Tactics include ATB refresh, command role buffering, enemy juggling, enemy stun-locking, character position control, and various timing tricks; most of these are extremely useful for defeating the encounters along the storyline (just not necessary). I suspect you discount the impact of strategy and tactics in part because you fail to perceive many of the strategic and tactical options in the game. Your dismissal of the videos tends to reinforce this suspicion.
Not exactly because its difficult to actually learn how to manage through it. And that's the problem with XIII. You see, this game gives you the option to enforce what little you can and the fact that you control one character 100%.

I perceive them, I just don't consider them much of an option at all. ATB hardly varies between attacks among the first 5 chapters. And again..I discount anything that doesn't offer them as necessary. In older FFs (even 7-10) monsters and bosses would impose a slightly new strategy (if not entirely) when there's a new area to explore.


It's not just a matter of semantics. You're trying to impose a false dichotomy, and in doing so your argument becomes inconsistent. If manual command input doesn't matter--that is, if the AI in a given role is going to do what I would do anyway in that role--then I effectively have full control over my teammates since I control what role they're in. If full control matters--that is, if what I want to do is different from what the AI would do--then it clearly matters for the character I do exert full control over. You can't have it both ways.
Nope, I stick by what I meant. How you perceive it, is on you. Me? I don't feel like I have control or rather NOT having full control is far too easy. Its inbalanced. The idea of control their role would be great if they weren't all linked into one paradigm, making the game slightly slower.

The correct answer is that it does matter to have full control over the leader even though the AI is pretty good. You don't gain by leaps and bounds, but you do gain maybe 25% efficiency. By correlation, that means you also have a good amount--about 80% or so--of control over the AI characters even though you don't have full control. So, 100% of 33% + ~80% of 67% = 80-90% control over the battle. That's not 100%, but it's way better than the 33% you're claiming.
Not the correct answer as its your opinion.

Not exactly. I divided it by characters. Including paradigms let's say...I split it at 15% (half of 30) for each character that is not the leader. Its 60% overall, and that's barely over 50. The 40% comes from manual input.let's look at the commands, roughly 4 attacks for each character only you get to control the 1 manually. That means there are only 8 commands out of the 12. And again, this me having more grander ideas of paradigm shifting between single party members, able to shift leader without dying like in XIII-2. Possibly a gestalt triple attack.

And of course monsters with bigger attacks to actually make all those editions matter. That's the problem with paradigm shift it makes more seem unnecessary, even when it does offer the very little it offers. It ramps up the speed of each battle, leaving you little room to learn from it and even then the game says "don't need to, go right ahead, once you go to point B there's no return.

So, "artificially" imposing challenge by valuing 5-star (and higher) ratings is bad, but imposing challenge by artificially restricting weapon and accessory selection is good? Right. I see this clearly now. /sarcasm
I was merely making an observation as how unnecessary most of it is. I'm not suggesting one would play the game with no weapon/accessory optimization because I'm still against playing it at all.

Sarcasmn on my not-so-exaggeration shows how difficult it comes off just by text.


Considering that I started playing RPGs with Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior, yeah, I've been around a while. And I've seen at least as many claims that FFXIII is the hardest of the FF games as I have claims that it is easiest. Your opinion on FFXIII's difficulty doesn't qualify as a fact any more than those other opinions (or my opinion) do. Personally, I think FFXIII is easy to beat but difficult to master. Of course, I don't think any Final Fantasy game is hard; quibbling about whether FFXIII is harder or easier than FFVII or FFVIII is like quibbling about whether Connect Four is harder or easier than Checkers--either way, they're both easy, and if I'm playing them, it's not because of the baseline difficulty level.

And incidentally, I agree with the general sentiment that Sephiroth is joke-tier difficulty, even in comparison with other FF final bosses (although the overall battle is still awesome thanks to other factors).
what's difficult to master in xiii isn't that difficult considering the less options you have in battle. So its not like your going to take a heap of expirementing to get where those players on that video got. And again I can't stress this enough but those videos only showed how quick they were to choose an attack and when to paradigm. It showed me nothing on how difficult that beast was, it didn't show me variation of monsters killing me. It only showed me how fast you can get it done.
 
Not trying to step on toes here, but did you really watch that Barty fight? He kicked the bosses ass in under a minute. Under a minute! That is easily a 10 minute fight, and for some it could take longer than that. That is mighty fucking impressive IMO.
 
if youre referring to the barthanthelus boss or whatever, yes i saw. however that was more of a boss attack and comparison to auto over manual. in which isnt as impressive for a boss battle. auto battle wouldve surely made things exceptionally slow.

Personally I don't see the difficulty to manage to get to the point where they did. Maybe because I got to 12 chapters and it just bored me through no end. Because most of that is divided by A) party members so there's only so many combinations of parties you can get, to get the paradigms you need B) you can only manually control 1 character's specific actions C) the idea of set up to paradigms means less choosing attacks, so its mostly AI controlled. So 60% (or 66.66% to be exact) are automatically chosen. So there's less time to focus and more actions being done. That cuts time by 2/3.

Under all that consideration, expirementing it would take to make such attacks? And this all under the assumption of not understanding paradigms, certain ones are given such as ravager and even if you don't know the main menu explains.


Under a minute doesn't surprise me in 13. I beaten some within 3 minutes (without trying to find a specific strategy) so if I tried, I know I can get it within the same time frame.

What would be more impressive (but not really) is if one beaten a boss by not making specific attacks, only by paradigm shifts. I honestly don't doubt it can happen.
 
I just have to say, all this talk about auto battle making the game insanely easy is all well and good, as is the argument that you don't have to use auto battle. I never once used auto battle in either of my two playthroughs of the game. Just simply on principle, I did not think it would be fun, so I manually controlled all my battles and selected which attacks to use. Because of that, I can't actually say how easy or boring it would be to use auto battle. However. I still found the game insanely easy, and strategy was so limited it was mind-numbingly boring. I tried hard to make the battles more interesting, to strategise and kill specific enemies in the best ways possible. But the game doesn't let you do that effectively. In 90% of the battles the best way to kill enemies is the exact same way as all the others. Also, the game actively discourages from taking your time and trying different things in battle. The rating encourages you to get through the battle as fast as possible, which is always to do nothing but button mash, any attempts at strategy take up more time and ultimately mean you don't kill the enemy as efficiently as possible.

And lets not even go there with the crystalarium. As far as I'm concerned this game might as well not even have had a levelling system where it made you chose where to go, because 'choice' is not something the crystalarium has. It is basically a staircase, with one direction you can go and absolutely no other options. It doesn't even let you level up at your own speed, it stops your growth at certain stages to ensure you have absolutely no freedom whatsoever in the develpment of the characters. It's abysmal.
 
In 90% of the battles the best way to kill enemies is the exact same way as all the others. Also, the game actively discourages from taking your time and trying different things in battle. The rating encourages you to get through the battle as fast as possible, which is always to do nothing but button mash, any attempts at strategy take up more time and ultimately mean you don't kill the enemy as efficiently as possible.
If you thought that 90% of enemies were best killed in the exact same way, then you were failing to find the actual best way to kill at least 85% of the enemies. The game gives you the Retry option in large part to facilitate experimentation with different things both during and before battles. Yes, the rating encourages efficient battling, but button mashing rarely leads to more efficient victories than well-planned manual strategies, even when those manual strategies involve a bit of lost time during command input. This is trivial to observe by contrasting AI SYN buffing patterns with a human casting exactly the buffs that are needed on exactly the people who need them.

And lets not even go there with the crystalarium. As far as I'm concerned this game might as well not even have had a levelling system where it made you chose where to go, because 'choice' is not something the crystalarium has. It is basically a staircase, with one direction you can go and absolutely no other options. It doesn't even let you level up at your own speed, it stops your growth at certain stages to ensure you have absolutely no freedom whatsoever in the develpment of the characters. It's abysmal.
If you grind CP to maintain maximum development development throughout the game, then this is correct. If you play through the game normally--no skipping fight but no repetition--then you start having meaningful choices in chapter 7 when you no longer max the Crystarium before opening the next stage. By chapter 13, development patterns can be extremely variable as the CP you naturally gain is nowhere near enough to bring the primary roles to max, let alone the secondary roles.

What would be more impressive (but not really) is if one beaten a boss by not making specific attacks, only by paradigm shifts. I honestly don't doubt it can happen.
Are you suggesting that Auto-battle makes it impossible to defeat a boss efficiently? Or are you just saying that Auto-battle isn't capable of matching the sub-50 second speed run on Barthandelus II? Because the second is certainly true, but the first is not. I can demonstrate efficient victories using only Auto-battle against every boss, although I'll note that five of the bosses in chapters 12 and 13 benefit greatly if manual entry is allowed for the character-specific full-ATB skills (Highwind, Army of One, et. al.).
 
If you thought that 90% of enemies were best killed in the exact same way, then you were failing to find the actual best way to kill at least 85% of the enemies. The game gives you the Retry option in large part to facilitate experimentation with different things both during and before battles. Yes, the rating encourages efficient battling, but button mashing rarely leads to more efficient victories than well-planned manual strategies, even when those manual strategies involve a bit of lost time during command input. This is trivial to observe by contrasting AI SYN buffing patterns with a human casting exactly the buffs that are needed on exactly the people who need them.


If you grind CP to maintain maximum development development throughout the game, then this is correct. If you play through the game normally--no skipping fight but no repetition--then you start having meaningful choices in chapter 7 when you no longer max the Crystarium before opening the next stage. By chapter 13, development patterns can be extremely variable as the CP you naturally gain is nowhere near enough to bring the primary roles to max, let alone the secondary roles.


Are you suggesting that Auto-battle makes it impossible to defeat a boss efficiently? Or are you just saying that Auto-battle isn't capable of matching the sub-50 second speed run on Barthandelus II? Because the second is certainly true, but the first is not. I can demonstrate efficient victories using only Auto-battle against every boss, although I'll note that five of the bosses in chapters 12 and 13 benefit greatly if manual entry is allowed for the character-specific full-ATB skills (Highwind, Army of One, et. al.).

The most I look for in the incredibly linear gameplay is make sure I got all items on the field and that probably caused some unnecessary grinding. Regardless, the crystarium is still the leveling up system and "meant" to be capped. And even if you don't, the game is setup to win. So the crystarium only offers what you need regardless of choice. The problem with XIII is that its so easy, and practically no freedom outside battles that what little iit does offer, feels like a hint of water in a desert.

As for strategy, the game is still setup to win. Not only that but its setup to gain 4 stars easy, so gaining 5 stars leaves much less difficulty than one expects.

As for my comment, I'm saying it would be impressive to beat a boss without making any attacks whatsoever by your leader. Instead let the AI do it all and all you control is Paradigms. And I'm fully aware of how eficient auto-battle is (too efficient is the key point). And yes I was suggesting auto battle isn't as fast as manual
 
If you thought that 90% of enemies were best killed in the exact same way, then you were failing to find the actual best way to kill at least 85% of the enemies. The game gives you the Retry option in large part to facilitate experimentation with different things both during and before battles. Yes, the rating encourages efficient battling, but button mashing rarely leads to more efficient victories than well-planned manual strategies, even when those manual strategies involve a bit of lost time during command input. This is trivial to observe by contrasting AI SYN buffing patterns with a human casting exactly the buffs that are needed on exactly the people who need them.


If you grind CP to maintain maximum development development throughout the game, then this is correct. If you play through the game normally--no skipping fight but no repetition--then you start having meaningful choices in chapter 7 when you no longer max the Crystarium before opening the next stage. By chapter 13, development patterns can be extremely variable as the CP you naturally gain is nowhere near enough to bring the primary roles to max, let alone the secondary roles.
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No, I assure you, almost every battle I was in had to be fought the same way, button mashing attack and ruin while someone else threw magic at the enemy. Considering this was the only way to get 5 stars in every battle, I'm fairly sure my deduction (that it's what the game wants) is fairly accurate. Whenever I swayed from that tactic (and I did it rather a lot because I was so bored otherwise) I never got the full 5 stars. The game discourages experimentation in battles. As I said, I always went manual, I never once used auto battle, but even going manual on this game, in order to get the star ratings, it's the same strategy for every battle. The exception being some bosses, and I was being generous when I gave 10% to them.

What you seem to be saying is that the game wants you to reload over and over. To do a sort of trial run, where you experiment with paradigms and abilities until you find the most effective way of attacking, and then quitting the game (or killing yourself) and reloading to the previous save and starting the battle again to button mash what you've found works. That is the very definition of discouraging experimentation imo, to basically encourage you to get rid of your work and start a fresh and mash the same pattern over and over again in the battle after you've spent so much time finding out what works is not what I'd call good gaming.

I wasn't grinding, I was following the long corridors and the few options to go off on a side trail to grab a treasure chest, and I still kept getting stuck waiting for the crystarium to expand. As for it giving you any sort of freedom or choice, not from where I was playing. I had all the roles maxed out (the ones available, which weren't much) pretty much all the time, and like I said, that was without specifically grinding, I just didn't run away from any battles and always went after the meagre treasures available. It gives you no options, you literally have to follow the paths the game gives you. I'm not sure what you're referring to in chapter 7 either, I know it's not until chapter 10 that you get more then your initial 3 roles and by then you're so close to the end you're characters are all set in specific roles already. [/FONT]
 
As for my comment, I'm saying it would be impressive to beat a boss without making any attacks whatsoever by your leader. Instead let the AI do it all and all you control is Paradigms. And I'm fully aware of how eficient auto-battle is (too efficient is the key point). And yes I was suggesting auto battle isn't as fast as manual
I'll see what I can do with this when I have a chance to play. Winning will be trivial; getting 5 stars will be more difficult.


No, I assure you, almost every battle I was in had to be fought the same way, button mashing attack and ruin while someone else threw magic at the enemy. Considering this was the only way to get 5 stars in every battle, I'm fairly sure my deduction (that it's what the game wants) is fairly accurate. Whenever I swayed from that tactic (and I did it rather a lot because I was so bored otherwise) I never got the full 5 stars. The game discourages experimentation in battles. As I said, I always went manual, I never once used auto battle, but even going manual on this game, in order to get the star ratings, it's the same strategy for every battle. The exception being some bosses, and I was being generous when I gave 10% to them.
Your deduction is not accurate because it is founded upon an incorrect premise: your strategy is not the only way to get 5 stars in battles. However, I understand how you reached your conclusion, and I can see why you thought the game discouraged experimentation even though I disagree with that statement.

In your experiments, you either overlooked numerous potential alternative approaches or you failed to execute them well. I know this because I rarely use the strategy you’ve described (even if you include healing), yet I consistently score well over 5 stars in my battles (I’ve also watched other gamers use a wide variety of alternate strategies in FFXIII, with many of them scoring 5 stars as well). Now, I said “rarely” not “never”, so let me quickly cover the situations where I do use that strategy:

---Controlling Lightning or Snow during chapters 1-2, against a single target.
---Controlling Vanille during chapter 2.
---Controlling Lightning in chapters 3-5 against a single weak target, or against two Soldiers who move away from each other.
---Controlling Snow in chapter 7 against small groups of weaker Soldiers.

What am I doing in the other fights? I might be using area of effect attacks like Blitz, Hand Grenade, and Ruinga (and Quake and Fira, Firaga, Deprotega et. al.) to engage multiple enemies at a time. I’m almost always taking advantage of buffs and/or debuffs to speed up my actions, multiply my damage, mitigate enemy damage and disruption, disable or disrupt enemies, add duration to enemy chains, and/or improve my ability to build chain. I’m frequently using all non-SAB/SYN characters as RAVs to build chain faster (often on multiple enemies at once). On occasion, I might deploy a SEN to deflect enemy attention so my other characters aren’t being disrupted or killed (especially when this concentrates the enemies and makes AoE attacks more effective).

If all you’re doing is spamming COM attacks while your other characters support with RAV (and MED), then you’re missing out on huge chunks of the battle system.

Oh, one other thing here. Your wording ("someone else threw magic") implies that you might suffer from a common misconception about the game. Just in case, I will clarify: Commandos are not “strength based”, and Ravagers are not “magic based”. All Commandos and most Ravagers have attacks based on Strength, and all Commandos and all Ravagers have attacks based on Magic. A superior classification notes that COMs are non-elemental, while RAVs are element based.

What you seem to be saying is that the game wants you to reload over and over. To do a sort of trial run, where you experiment with paradigms and abilities until you find the most effective way of attacking, and then quitting the game (or killing yourself) and reloading to the previous save and starting the battle again to button mash what you've found works. That is the very definition of discouraging experimentation imo, to basically encourage you to get rid of your work and start a fresh and mash the same pattern over and over again in the battle after you've spent so much time finding out what works is not what I'd call good gaming.
Er, are you aware that the game allows you to Retry any battle from the Pause screen? I’m not saying that’s what the game wants you to do, but it certainly is something the game enables you to do. If you discover--after looking at enemy info or after a few rounds of battle--that your current paradigm setup and/or accessories and/or leader choice and/or battle team are not good choices for the fight, it’s up to you whether to soldier on, or to simply Retry, set things up in a way that you think will work better, and then re-initiate the fight. You lose maybe a minute of time and no previous progress; hardly enough to be worried over.

Obviously, if you’re making good use of this option, you are not just rehashing the same patterns; if those patterns had worked, you wouldn’t have needed to Retry.


I wasn't grinding, I was following the long corridors and the few options to go off on a side trail to grab a treasure chest, and I still kept getting stuck waiting for the crystarium to expand. As for it giving you any sort of freedom or choice, not from where I was playing. I had all the roles maxed out (the ones available, which weren't much) pretty much all the time, and like I said, that was without specifically grinding, I just didn't run away from any battles and always went after the meagre treasures available. It gives you no options, you literally have to follow the paths the game gives you. I'm not sure what you're referring to in chapter 7 either, I know it's not until chapter 10 that you get more then your initial 3 roles and by then you're so close to the end you're characters are all set in specific roles already.
I have a playthough where every battle (excepting optional areas of chapter 11)--including those guarding treasure spheres on side paths--was fought exactly once. Chapter 7 is the first chapter where playing this way does not max out the Crystarium prior to opening up the next stage of the Crystarium, which is why I brought it up. From that point until the end of the game, you are nowhere near maxing the Crystarium without grinding/repeating fights--or possibly doing the sidequests in chapter 11 (I know you get a lot of CP this way, not sure if it maxes you). If you are nowhere near max, then the order in which you learn things matters.

Calling chapter 10 “close to the end” is laughable. Chapter 10 is approximately the halfway point in terms of gameplay, even if it is well into the latter half of the story. Most RPGs have the majority of their gameplay occur in the last ⅓ to ¼ of their stories (i.e. when the characters have most of their abilities available to them); it’s just not usually as obvious that this is the case because most games don’t divide their stories into explicit chapters.

And finally, your claim that your “characters are all set in specific roles” is revealing. This statement implies a failure to understand a basic tenet of FFXIII’s strategy: all of your characters should be in the best (available) role for the situation at all times (this implies frequent paradigm shifts since the situation in combat will constantly be changing). This holds even if the character is relatively weak and/or underdeveloped in that role; for example, Lightning is not a very good Medic, but her MED role should still be used when healing is called for, because two MEDs make each other better in a variety of ways. By extension, many secondary roles are well worth a small amount of development. Hope’s Ruin is especially cheap at 6000 CP, and having the COM role available to Hope is well worth that investment. Fang’s RAV, Vanille’s COM, Lightning’s SYN and SAB, and Sazh’s SAB are all worth consideration during the late stages (chapters 12-13) of normal play.
 
I feel like your arguments are on?y based on how we phrase them. Not the general idea.

For one I can unserstand if the climax is at chapter 10, but to say its the halfway point????
 
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