doing the side-quests should be enough to complete the main story and you naturally get a bunch of Grimoires and Gospels in this game, so you can skip the raw grind.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Fake and gay. 5 is the least grindy game in the series.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
You can beat 5 on hard without ever getting into a single random encounter
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Doubt that seeing how the damage formula is heavily tied to levels. Getting out of early game sounds really annoying without fighting random encounters.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
This is the problem with discussions like this. You're operating off a "it's not worth doing it" level, while anon is operating on a "it's technically possible" level
Both of those are true
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
You can beat 5 on hard without ever getting into a single random encounter
It's not just technically possible, the game is balanced around it. You get all the EXP you need from sidequests and fixed bosses and midbosses. The game provides you with methods to level up your party without ever having to fight a single regular enemy. It's a game with literally no grind.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
>dude, don't do any of the random encounters >but definitely make sure to do every single last sidequest!
You're moronic
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
In what universe is doing side quests or unique story content grind?
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Side quests are always considered grind. In fact one of the most common design issues in JRPGs happens to be that if the player chooses to do all available side quests before completing story objectives, they will often find themselves overlevelled.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
But in this game you won't be overlevelled. You will be right where you need to be. I consider grind to be doing random battles or repeating mini games purely to make a number go up. If you're going through some sort of curated segment, how can it be grind? That's just playing the game.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
>how can it be grind?
Hence why the "design flaw" bit. Devs tend to balance story bosses or forced encounters around not playing side quests at all, which means that the XP you get from side quests makes you stronger than expected as if you were grinding.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Side quests are always considered grind
You'd be hard pressed to find Jrpgs where side quests give you a substantial amount of EXP to be considered a grind or don't have some form of exp scaling especially in the modern day.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Side quests are never considered grind unless they have no worthwhile content on their own and are spammable.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Welcome to moronic discussions around SMT 5 having bad "level damage scaling" despite the game giving you more than enough XP if you don't just speed through every map.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
You don't need to grind at all, but at the same time if you don't grind the game is dull as hell. I hope that gets fixed in the re-release.
The opposite is way more interesting
Name some games where you get punished for grinding
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Pikmin 1+3
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
SaGa
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Elaborate, please. I wanna play Frontier soon
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Several SaGa games have a battle rank system, where the amount of enemies you fight determine how high your rank is. Battle Rank determines game progression, so the higher it gets, the farther into the game you'll be. It also controls how strong the random monsters you run into will be.
This means there's zero benefit at all to grinding, and in fact there's only downsides. Grinding will cause you to miss out on quests because you'll skip their BR requirement. Additionally, it'll just end up making the enemies you fight stronger much faster than normal. SaGa games in general do not give you the option to grind to overpower encounters.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Frontier is very lenient on this, yes you run into stronger monsters after fighting a lot, but by then you will have a team of killing machines (literally if you take mecs) and no monsters can survive for a turn or two
When I was a kid I skipped every encounter I possibly could play M&L Partners in Time, then when I got to the Petey fight he slaughtered me.
Ever since I've never skipped encounters in JRPGS
Pokemon yellow. You try walkin right at brock with that pikachu bro
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Does it count as grind if you are just using the pokeballs you were given to catch something that's not a pikachu and making it fight mandatory trainer battles before Brock?
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Yes.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Why though. You are just allocating unavoidable XP into something that can actually beat the upcoming boss fight instead of a mon that will quickly prove itself to be useless for progression.
If Ash could do it, I can do it. >he needs some bubble blowing baby to take care of the rock snake
Loving Every Laugh
Rock snake is a fricking joke.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
You didn't beat the game
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
no
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
If Ash could do it, I can do it. >he needs some bubble blowing baby to take care of the rock snake
Loving Every Laugh
If I'm invested in an RPG I usually consume all the content and end up as overscaled as possible. Isn't great for challenge, but who ever played a jrpg for challenge, this way I can focus on the story.
I love grinding in RPGs because I don't like running from battles which means I level a lot which makes the next battle easier etc etc.
I hate games where enemies level up with you. If I fight monsters I obviously want to feel strong.
I used to play underleveled, but truth is many games make it difficult. I found that I spend more time avoiding battles and getting pissy about xp bonuses than actually enjoying the game.
For example, one of my pet peeves is fighting against core mechanics of RPGs that give you bonus XP for doing normal gameplay mechanics as a "reward". I don't want XP, b***h! Xenoblade is extremely terrible for this.
For Xenoblade specifically it encourages me to run around the map and not engage in fauna unless I have to. Feels like I'm on a safari. It's not in character to kill every mob I see just because. But it also means I'm disengaging from combat as much as possible, and that can get old.
I start raging though when, say I've reached a boss checkpoint with multiple mobs. Then, I slay a few of the mobs but die. Now the checkpoint reloads and I have XP I don't want from the slayed mobs. I end up reloading the save unless I really don't care.
But all the bonus xp is stored and you have to choose to use it.
Hello ACgay.
Xenoblade still stores XP from side quests for you to add later at your own leisure by the way.
>but anon, what about the reserve xp mechanic in the newer titles
Just adds another layer of moronation. This is fine if I'm doing the main quest because I can pace my level ups. But uh oh, looks like you missed some side quests!!! You have to down level now if you don't want to steamroll!!! It wasn't until 3 that they FINALLY put a recommended level on the quests; before then it was a crap shoot if you were accepting a quest and not knowing if you're overleveled before you reached quest-exclusive battles. Even then, you still can't BATCH CHANGE your team's party members, you have to do each one individually!
I would love to try a game series where "level ups" are gated by area. I guess stuff like Nier counts, I haven't got very far in those titles though.
>But uh oh, looks like you missed some side quests!!!
So now you're complaint is >OH NO GAME BAD BECAUSE GAME SHIT EXPLORATION EXPECTED ME TO EXPLORE
You know, people would take you more seriously if you actually had legitimate criticisms instead of blaming the game for your own stupidity.
I can finetooth comb areas, that's the fun part. The not-fun part is the random expectations to recomb areas later for no explicit reason. It's a much larger problem late game. I'm just going to keep citing Xenoblade because it has the most problems. Once you get to the late/post game in XC1/2, sidequests run into two problems:
1) You are expected to retread old hubs for new quests, even when storywise it wouldn't make sense. Why would I be expected to fast travel from my epic world tree trek to go upgrade Poppi with no indication? Why would I be expected to fast travel back to the fallen arm to accept one (1) new quest once I reach agniratha, btw it's missable better load every other zone to make sure you didn't miss anything else!! (the cruelty of it: it's the only quest that unlocks once you reach Agniratha, but as a first time player I did not know that)
2) Even if you do retread everything successfully, unless you are given a recommended level indication like in 3, good luck guessing if you're overleveled and/or underleveled before reaching a quest battle. Sometimes I'll be wildly underleveled, which indicates I should just come back later (and possibly forget and whoops I'm overleveled now), or I'll wildly overleveled and have to INDIVIDUALLY down-level characters (why can't I batch change character levels again)?
So my point anon is that I have to do all this moronic management because quest systems typically aren't designs for autists like me who are obsessed with being underleveled.
>You are expected to retread old hubs for new quests, even when storywise it wouldn't make sense
Anon, most if not all quests in an area can be done then and there with exception to restoring colony six in 1 for obvious reasons. In fact, most are timed.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
1 is actually good about it, to an extent. You will be working on raising your area affinities, and then once quests stop showing up you can move on. Still doesn't address how there's no indication of recommended levels for quests so when I reach the post game, unlocked quests suddenly are separated by 10 or 20 levels between each other. Again that's why I liked 3 so much, you could organize all your quests by recommended level and go through them sequentially as your level grows.
But the thing is with 2 and 3, nope quests DO pop up as you progress chapters. This constantly happens in 3, you WILL miss quests if you don't load into the other colonies every time you start a new chapter. 2 does this as well and has more issues: because of how blade quests work, by the time you pull a blade you might be way overleveled for the blade quest and you're shit out of luck bumping down until post game. And again, you won't know you're overleveled until you get to the actual quest battle. Sometimes you're thrown RIGHT into a battle and you have to job it. Sorry, that shit is obnoxious.
Note how I didn't mention XCX until now? That's because it solved all these problems a decade ago: >the job board is your central hub for accepting missions; no more trawling around random areas >the exception are affinity missions, BUT almost all of the hexes are in new LA (except like 2?) and they will even tell you what chapter they unlock AND the recommended level >running away from encounters is actually fun because MOVEMENT in xcx is fun, whether it be on foot or mech. the other xenos completely shit the bed on this still btw >level cap at 60, so the post game quests are PROPER post game quests and are impossible to be overleveled for
XCX got so much shit right.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
cap at 60, so the post game quests are PROPER post game quests and are impossible to be overleveled for
You can't be overlevelled for postgame, but can definitely have inflated stats from augments especially if you were using the reward ticket system from online missions and global nemesis.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Actually talking about awful grind, the award ticket system is complete hell, it makes it impossible to make anything worthwhile endgame without playing the poorly implemented online component. It is in fact the only thing I dislike about X.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
It's technically possible to farm all the materials without using tickets at all but yeah, it's somehow the least painful way.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
You're comparing a whole bunch of different shit at once here. The job board in X is specifically for the trash tier quests, the list will infinitely generate. There are still plenty of actual side quests with named npcs around NLA and Mira. The trash tier quests got moved to the Blade affinity charts in 2 while the affinity quests are the actual important ones and named npcs still give out quests as per usual. I believe 3 completely removed the trash tier side quests. With all 3 games you're encouraged to go back to towns because of affinity/development level, quests from one region taking you to another, etc. so I don't really see an issue with quests becoming available as the story progresses. The same thing even happens in 1. Not only are there affinity requirements but there's also story requirements for some quests. For example, you can't begin The Old Soldier's Test in Colony 9 until you met Melia.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
>Still doesn't address how there's no indication of recommended levels for quests so when I reach the post game, unlocked quests suddenly are separated by 10 or 20 levels between each other.
Except the majority of low level quests would be lost by that point since they be one unavailable by the events of the mechonis core. >But the thing is with 2 and 3, nope quests DO pop up as you progress chapters
Not really, new quests often unlock with story progression or hero recruitment so they unlock in line with your level
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
>>the exception are affinity missions, BUT almost all of the hexes are in new LA (except like 2?) and they will even tell you what chapter they unlock AND the recommended level
You know, affinity quests are exactly what you think is wrong with the others because of the unavoidable affinity grinding.
If there's a job system or skill sets I'll grind, if level ups are pure stat raising then I'll skip as many fights as possible.
Bravely default is cool because you can disable exp gain but keep the Job point gain enabled.
I'll choose easy mode because I'm not wasting my time grinding and RPGs really have very little to no strategy so I'm just trying to get to the next storypoint.
I also don't play many RPGs
It's interesting because it shows that for every "wtf this boss is easy, you just attack it a bit?" post, there will be at least ONE person in the world who struggles with that boss. Even if it requires ignoring 90% of the game mechanics up to that point
I don't grind, but what annoys the frick out of me is when the encounter rate is so god damn high that you can't help but be overleveled. Breath of Fire and Lufia 1 and a bunch of other early snes rpgs suffer from this.
Definitely pisses me off about old-style random encounters. If you want to stay underleveled you are punished if you don't do optimal pathing. Some titles respect you by allowing you to completely skip encounters with skills or items (SMT), but they are exceptions to the rule.
I always avoid all possible random battles in JRPGs and run away from any I get into.
The games are all still easy even doing that. They're designed for literal morons. And most of their players ARE morons, which is why they complain you "have to grind".
What I usually do is fight enemy encounters until the EXP gets too low to make fighting them worth it. I find that usually puts you on the level of the next boss or maybe 1 or 2 levels below which is fine most of the time.
I'm playing Dragon Quest 11 with Stronger Monsters and it's impossible without grinding
If you don't grind, every boss "desperate attack" which they do every other turn will oneshot a party member
You can beat sandscorpion without grinding but you have to autism max and abuse the combat system 100% to do so which sort of does mean grinding is neccessary.
I'm not sure how that is possible regardless of how autistic you are. Or rather, it will always be RNG dependent because sometimes he will just decide to do a normal attack and then immediately a desperate attack on the same party member. There is no surviving that without having enough HP, no matter what you do
Desperate attacks are just shit, honestly
It's about level 11 if you don't grind, so you don't even have Zing yet. I beat it already, now cutting my teeth on the spiderfrick boss >You can apply them twice to get a bigger effect
I didn't know that, thanks. Was wondering why all the buffs only ever give a "slight" attack upgrade
I still have Nocturne PTSD so I make sure to apply buffs/debuffs more than once whenever I can.
DQXI can be beaten with stronger enemies in exactly the same way without grinding, though you have to keep in mind that debuffs can miss so it's more reliable to focus on keeping buffs up instead. Still, I doubt you can avoid every single random encounter here.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
It doesn't have random encounters except on the sea and in 2D sections. That's exactly why there's such a huge gap in levels between people who grind and people who don't, you can just run past every single enemy >debuffs can miss
Yeah. I'd also call that a shit mechanic, honestly. Making it so bosses get affected by defense down is great, having to restart the fight cause it missed 5 times in a row is shit
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
>It doesn't have random encounters
I know they are not literally random encounters anon, I was saying that if you are playing on stronger enemies I am not sure you can skip everything but bosses, even by relying on buffs/debuffs or knowing how to abuse mechanics.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Of course, that's a fair point. It's hard to tell which level the game expects you to be, especially cause the default is so easy
Nope, the single target version is a tier 2 buff. You can recast to extend the duration like with every buff and debuff, but you can't get any more agility.
I'm talking about accelerating the whole party with acceleratle (?). But given the fact that the single target 1 is a tier 2 buff, I assume that means the party wide one is a tier 1 one and can be re-cast. That's gonna be immensely helpful
It's because some are tier 1 buffs and some are tier 2. Sap is a tier 2 debuff while Kasap is an AoE tier 1 debuff. Oomph is a tier 1 buff while Oomphle is a tier 2 buff. Buff is tier 2 while Kabuff is AoE tier 1, etc.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Yeah I noticed that. Can you apply accelerate twice? Because that's gonna be a huge help if I can speed up my party even more
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Nope, the single target version is a tier 2 buff. You can recast to extend the duration like with every buff and debuff, but you can't get any more agility.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Not really necessary either way because every party member only gets 1 turn per round no matter how fast you are.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
>because every party member only gets 1 turn per round no matter how fast you are
Wait what? I'm fairly sure I've seen bosses act three times in a row, and one character of mine get more turns than the others
Am I moronic?
If nothing else, I definitely have gotten a party member killed because the boss attacked again before Serena got a turn again
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Bosses don't play by the same rules. Late game they will always get multiple turns in a row because frick you.
Party members will only get one, though it's possible some enemies skip their own at times.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Bosses get multiple turns, you don't. The reason it seems like there are times when a party member gets two turns in a row is because turn order for a round is determined, and when that ended the same party member that went last goes first in the following round. >hero goes >boss goes >boss goes >erik goes >veronica goes >serena goes >serena goes >hero goes >erik goes >boss goes >boss goes >veronica goes
These are two separate rounds of combat.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
>>boss goes >>boss goes
And then in act 3 it's >boss goes >boss goes >boss goes
Really fun if your characters can't survive it right at the start of combat.
It's very possible without grinding. He's vulnerable to sleep. Also use "defend" occasionally. I will concede that this is early enough in the game where your options are more limited. But I beat the game on Stronger Monsters without grinding. (That is, spending time fighting monsters specifically to level up, versus just fighting stuff as I explored/when I felt like it.)
You see the problem, right? You can't just say "I only fought monsters when I felt like it" because that's a completely useless metric. Maybe you felt like clearing the whole map
Sure. Then I'll clarify - I never felt like clearing the map. I beat the final boss with a party with levels in the mid to late 60s. End game spoiler: I used the Sword of Light on the final boss so it wasn't the hardest possible version, so you can ding me on that if you want.
Makes sense. I hope you enjoy the game even if you feel like you have to grind at times. A tip some people don't know: once you have more than four party members, you can swap party members during combat, and it doesn't have to be on the turn of the character you want to swap out.Which means you can swap in a character midcombat with no penalty. You just have to make sure you swap a character out once they have already acted that round (you can tell by how their portrait is positioned on the battle screen).
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
I actually got a bit surprised at that already cause I thought switching would be instant like in FFX, not take someone's turn >I hope you enjoy the game
Yeah it's fun so far. If I get too sick of the stronger enemies I'll just disable it. But it's nice to have something in combat to look forward to rather than just mashing through easy encounters for the story
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Yeah, I like DQ combat in general and I like 11's system a lot in particular. Realize it's not going to be for everyone but I try to make a case for it when discussing. One more note in case you haven't noticed is if you have equipment in a character's inventory you can equip it midbattle without penalty. So you can swap weapons to use a different skill or equip a specific shield or accessory etc. Not necessarily going to be the most vital thing but can be helpful.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
>I like DQ combat in general
I was considering playing the older games afterwards but I don't think I can go back to random encounters after 11 lel
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
Try it to be sure, it might sound weird to say of a menu game but DQ1s combat feels snappy and satisfying, and getting caught in an encounter isn't annoying when most fights are over in less than 10 seconds.
2 weeks ago
Anonymous
I hope that's true. On the flashback sections in Tickington, every damn fight takes ages to finish because it has to slowly pop up the "slime has been defeated" text for every enemy
If I have to pick between those, I'd say underlevelled because more challenging encounters are fun.
But in reality I don't do out of my way to trigger more encounter but also don't avoid them. I just fight what's in my way and it's always more than enough in any RPG I have ever played - with very few exceptions from very old games where you are simply not given any other choice and your loss is all but purely mathematical.
I loved overleveling when I was younger.
Now I do normal playthroughs and, if I like the game and replay it, then I do either low level runs or implement some of my >can you beat the game with _____________
shit, or both at the same time.
Horizontal progression basically means getting stronger by improved skill of the player and just giving them new tools. Think items and powerups in Zelda and Metroid.
Vertical progression is to just inflate stats. More damage, more health, more defense, the mechanics stay the same.
To stay in Zelda and Metroid: getting health and ammo upgrades, but not new items. Or just you classic Mario game.
That way, grind will never make you stronger like that, at least not easily. Once you move on you get enemies that are more challenging by virtue of a more challenging moveset, not because of inflated stats. These are your typical looter action RPGs like Diablo.
I mean most games are "diagonal progression" in some way a mix of both. But leaning more in favor of one over the other.
Been playing Mother 3 with 0 grinding and most bosses were nail bitters, I love that feeling. Fassad was my first wall, apparently dude is 45 and my characters were 28-32.
>running from encounters
Couldn't be me. After playing FFV and learning how this works, I find that I run from encounters far, far less than I used to. It rewired my brain somehow.
I like making my characters strong but I hate wasting my time, so I only grind if I see a good opportunity or I'm near the very end of the game so I can safely grind without thinking higher exp is around the corner. Best JRPGs have content that's brutal at any level, like the final set of asterisk boss fights in bravely default 1
XB? Xenoblade, you mean?
In Xenoblade characters do attack automatically, yes. But that ''playstyle'' won't get you far. AI never uses skills, and not following the break-topple-etc. path will send you to an early grave.
It's not the best comparison, but ok. Final Fantasy 13. This is kinda similar. Tutorial is too long and you just use auto-selected commands and play with one hand. Then the game asks you to actually PLAY the game and people start seeing Game Over screen too much. Oh no, must be a bad game.
They both have their appeal. Generally on a first playthrough I just enjoy curbstomping everything and getting a general feel for all that will be in the game. If I decide to do another playthrough in the future that is when I'll set challenges for myself which may involve being underleveled. JRPGs are fickle though. It's often just straight up impossible to do stuff underleveled. Etrian Odyssey has always been one of my favorite series to do underleveled because it's generally just a matter of speedrunning and avoiding random encounters then get your butthole turned inside out by the stratum boss.
Most games these days have a decent level curve, I don't recall ever having to grind in a RPG since I was a kid. That being said I pretty much fight every chance given and I know alot of people like to skip fights and keep fighting to a minimum.
under leveled because they're already easy as hell
LARP
>smrpg
fricking kek
Black person, the question is about JRPGs in general. Learn to read, LARPer
name 1 game where you are supposed to grind.
>thinking I'm gonna engage further with someone who cannot read
Nope
yeah, run away, go grind so you can beat those baby games
SMT 5
doing the side-quests should be enough to complete the main story and you naturally get a bunch of Grimoires and Gospels in this game, so you can skip the raw grind.
Fake and gay. 5 is the least grindy game in the series.
You can beat 5 on hard without ever getting into a single random encounter
Doubt that seeing how the damage formula is heavily tied to levels. Getting out of early game sounds really annoying without fighting random encounters.
This is the problem with discussions like this. You're operating off a "it's not worth doing it" level, while anon is operating on a "it's technically possible" level
Both of those are true
It's not just technically possible, the game is balanced around it. You get all the EXP you need from sidequests and fixed bosses and midbosses. The game provides you with methods to level up your party without ever having to fight a single regular enemy. It's a game with literally no grind.
>dude, don't do any of the random encounters
>but definitely make sure to do every single last sidequest!
You're moronic
In what universe is doing side quests or unique story content grind?
Side quests are always considered grind. In fact one of the most common design issues in JRPGs happens to be that if the player chooses to do all available side quests before completing story objectives, they will often find themselves overlevelled.
But in this game you won't be overlevelled. You will be right where you need to be. I consider grind to be doing random battles or repeating mini games purely to make a number go up. If you're going through some sort of curated segment, how can it be grind? That's just playing the game.
>how can it be grind?
Hence why the "design flaw" bit. Devs tend to balance story bosses or forced encounters around not playing side quests at all, which means that the XP you get from side quests makes you stronger than expected as if you were grinding.
>Side quests are always considered grind
You'd be hard pressed to find Jrpgs where side quests give you a substantial amount of EXP to be considered a grind or don't have some form of exp scaling especially in the modern day.
Side quests are never considered grind unless they have no worthwhile content on their own and are spammable.
Welcome to moronic discussions around SMT 5 having bad "level damage scaling" despite the game giving you more than enough XP if you don't just speed through every map.
You don't need to grind at all, but at the same time if you don't grind the game is dull as hell. I hope that gets fixed in the re-release.
disgaea
The opposite is way more interesting
Name some games where you get punished for grinding
Pikmin 1+3
SaGa
Elaborate, please. I wanna play Frontier soon
Several SaGa games have a battle rank system, where the amount of enemies you fight determine how high your rank is. Battle Rank determines game progression, so the higher it gets, the farther into the game you'll be. It also controls how strong the random monsters you run into will be.
This means there's zero benefit at all to grinding, and in fact there's only downsides. Grinding will cause you to miss out on quests because you'll skip their BR requirement. Additionally, it'll just end up making the enemies you fight stronger much faster than normal. SaGa games in general do not give you the option to grind to overpower encounters.
Frontier is very lenient on this, yes you run into stronger monsters after fighting a lot, but by then you will have a team of killing machines (literally if you take mecs) and no monsters can survive for a turn or two
FF8
When I was a kid I skipped every encounter I possibly could play M&L Partners in Time, then when I got to the Petey fight he slaughtered me.
Ever since I've never skipped encounters in JRPGS
Pokemon yellow. You try walkin right at brock with that pikachu bro
Does it count as grind if you are just using the pokeballs you were given to catch something that's not a pikachu and making it fight mandatory trainer battles before Brock?
Yes.
Why though. You are just allocating unavoidable XP into something that can actually beat the upcoming boss fight instead of a mon that will quickly prove itself to be useless for progression.
Rock snake is a fricking joke.
You didn't beat the game
no
If Ash could do it, I can do it.
>he needs some bubble blowing baby to take care of the rock snake
Loving Every Laugh
If I'm invested in an RPG I usually consume all the content and end up as overscaled as possible. Isn't great for challenge, but who ever played a jrpg for challenge, this way I can focus on the story.
Most of the time if you really do ALL content, the superbosses are mostly immune to overlevelling
I love grinding in RPGs because I don't like running from battles which means I level a lot which makes the next battle easier etc etc.
I hate games where enemies level up with you. If I fight monsters I obviously want to feel strong.
I usually only farm for money, drops or some other beneficial stuff and that only if I need them so the levels are just a plus.
I used to play underleveled, but truth is many games make it difficult. I found that I spend more time avoiding battles and getting pissy about xp bonuses than actually enjoying the game.
For example, one of my pet peeves is fighting against core mechanics of RPGs that give you bonus XP for doing normal gameplay mechanics as a "reward". I don't want XP, b***h! Xenoblade is extremely terrible for this.
kek, having to invent a whole different gameplay style cause the game is trying to force XP on you is pretty funny
For Xenoblade specifically it encourages me to run around the map and not engage in fauna unless I have to. Feels like I'm on a safari. It's not in character to kill every mob I see just because. But it also means I'm disengaging from combat as much as possible, and that can get old.
I start raging though when, say I've reached a boss checkpoint with multiple mobs. Then, I slay a few of the mobs but die. Now the checkpoint reloads and I have XP I don't want from the slayed mobs. I end up reloading the save unless I really don't care.
>but anon, what about the reserve xp mechanic in the newer titles
Just adds another layer of moronation. This is fine if I'm doing the main quest because I can pace my level ups. But uh oh, looks like you missed some side quests!!! You have to down level now if you don't want to steamroll!!! It wasn't until 3 that they FINALLY put a recommended level on the quests; before then it was a crap shoot if you were accepting a quest and not knowing if you're overleveled before you reached quest-exclusive battles. Even then, you still can't BATCH CHANGE your team's party members, you have to do each one individually!
I would love to try a game series where "level ups" are gated by area. I guess stuff like Nier counts, I haven't got very far in those titles though.
>But uh oh, looks like you missed some side quests!!!
So now you're complaint is
>OH NO GAME BAD BECAUSE GAME SHIT EXPLORATION EXPECTED ME TO EXPLORE
You know, people would take you more seriously if you actually had legitimate criticisms instead of blaming the game for your own stupidity.
I can finetooth comb areas, that's the fun part. The not-fun part is the random expectations to recomb areas later for no explicit reason. It's a much larger problem late game. I'm just going to keep citing Xenoblade because it has the most problems. Once you get to the late/post game in XC1/2, sidequests run into two problems:
1) You are expected to retread old hubs for new quests, even when storywise it wouldn't make sense. Why would I be expected to fast travel from my epic world tree trek to go upgrade Poppi with no indication? Why would I be expected to fast travel back to the fallen arm to accept one (1) new quest once I reach agniratha, btw it's missable better load every other zone to make sure you didn't miss anything else!! (the cruelty of it: it's the only quest that unlocks once you reach Agniratha, but as a first time player I did not know that)
2) Even if you do retread everything successfully, unless you are given a recommended level indication like in 3, good luck guessing if you're overleveled and/or underleveled before reaching a quest battle. Sometimes I'll be wildly underleveled, which indicates I should just come back later (and possibly forget and whoops I'm overleveled now), or I'll wildly overleveled and have to INDIVIDUALLY down-level characters (why can't I batch change character levels again)?
So my point anon is that I have to do all this moronic management because quest systems typically aren't designs for autists like me who are obsessed with being underleveled.
>You are expected to retread old hubs for new quests, even when storywise it wouldn't make sense
Anon, most if not all quests in an area can be done then and there with exception to restoring colony six in 1 for obvious reasons. In fact, most are timed.
1 is actually good about it, to an extent. You will be working on raising your area affinities, and then once quests stop showing up you can move on. Still doesn't address how there's no indication of recommended levels for quests so when I reach the post game, unlocked quests suddenly are separated by 10 or 20 levels between each other. Again that's why I liked 3 so much, you could organize all your quests by recommended level and go through them sequentially as your level grows.
But the thing is with 2 and 3, nope quests DO pop up as you progress chapters. This constantly happens in 3, you WILL miss quests if you don't load into the other colonies every time you start a new chapter. 2 does this as well and has more issues: because of how blade quests work, by the time you pull a blade you might be way overleveled for the blade quest and you're shit out of luck bumping down until post game. And again, you won't know you're overleveled until you get to the actual quest battle. Sometimes you're thrown RIGHT into a battle and you have to job it. Sorry, that shit is obnoxious.
Note how I didn't mention XCX until now? That's because it solved all these problems a decade ago:
>the job board is your central hub for accepting missions; no more trawling around random areas
>the exception are affinity missions, BUT almost all of the hexes are in new LA (except like 2?) and they will even tell you what chapter they unlock AND the recommended level
>running away from encounters is actually fun because MOVEMENT in xcx is fun, whether it be on foot or mech. the other xenos completely shit the bed on this still btw
>level cap at 60, so the post game quests are PROPER post game quests and are impossible to be overleveled for
XCX got so much shit right.
cap at 60, so the post game quests are PROPER post game quests and are impossible to be overleveled for
You can't be overlevelled for postgame, but can definitely have inflated stats from augments especially if you were using the reward ticket system from online missions and global nemesis.
Actually talking about awful grind, the award ticket system is complete hell, it makes it impossible to make anything worthwhile endgame without playing the poorly implemented online component. It is in fact the only thing I dislike about X.
It's technically possible to farm all the materials without using tickets at all but yeah, it's somehow the least painful way.
You're comparing a whole bunch of different shit at once here. The job board in X is specifically for the trash tier quests, the list will infinitely generate. There are still plenty of actual side quests with named npcs around NLA and Mira. The trash tier quests got moved to the Blade affinity charts in 2 while the affinity quests are the actual important ones and named npcs still give out quests as per usual. I believe 3 completely removed the trash tier side quests. With all 3 games you're encouraged to go back to towns because of affinity/development level, quests from one region taking you to another, etc. so I don't really see an issue with quests becoming available as the story progresses. The same thing even happens in 1. Not only are there affinity requirements but there's also story requirements for some quests. For example, you can't begin The Old Soldier's Test in Colony 9 until you met Melia.
>Still doesn't address how there's no indication of recommended levels for quests so when I reach the post game, unlocked quests suddenly are separated by 10 or 20 levels between each other.
Except the majority of low level quests would be lost by that point since they be one unavailable by the events of the mechonis core.
>But the thing is with 2 and 3, nope quests DO pop up as you progress chapters
Not really, new quests often unlock with story progression or hero recruitment so they unlock in line with your level
>>the exception are affinity missions, BUT almost all of the hexes are in new LA (except like 2?) and they will even tell you what chapter they unlock AND the recommended level
You know, affinity quests are exactly what you think is wrong with the others because of the unavoidable affinity grinding.
But all the bonus xp is stored and you have to choose to use it.
Hello ACgay.
Xenoblade still stores XP from side quests for you to add later at your own leisure by the way.
I grind until I can hang with the current monsters. As it should be.
I haven't played a JRPG that required grinding in decades.
If there's a job system or skill sets I'll grind, if level ups are pure stat raising then I'll skip as many fights as possible.
Bravely default is cool because you can disable exp gain but keep the Job point gain enabled.
I'll choose easy mode because I'm not wasting my time grinding and RPGs really have very little to no strategy so I'm just trying to get to the next storypoint.
I also don't play many RPGs
=)
It's interesting because it shows that for every "wtf this boss is easy, you just attack it a bit?" post, there will be at least ONE person in the world who struggles with that boss. Even if it requires ignoring 90% of the game mechanics up to that point
I don't grind, but what annoys the frick out of me is when the encounter rate is so god damn high that you can't help but be overleveled. Breath of Fire and Lufia 1 and a bunch of other early snes rpgs suffer from this.
Definitely pisses me off about old-style random encounters. If you want to stay underleveled you are punished if you don't do optimal pathing. Some titles respect you by allowing you to completely skip encounters with skills or items (SMT), but they are exceptions to the rule.
I always avoid all possible random battles in JRPGs and run away from any I get into.
The games are all still easy even doing that. They're designed for literal morons. And most of their players ARE morons, which is why they complain you "have to grind".
What I usually do is fight enemy encounters until the EXP gets too low to make fighting them worth it. I find that usually puts you on the level of the next boss or maybe 1 or 2 levels below which is fine most of the time.
I'm playing Dragon Quest 11 with Stronger Monsters and it's impossible without grinding
If you don't grind, every boss "desperate attack" which they do every other turn will oneshot a party member
You can beat sandscorpion without grinding but you have to autism max and abuse the combat system 100% to do so which sort of does mean grinding is neccessary.
I'm not sure how that is possible regardless of how autistic you are. Or rather, it will always be RNG dependent because sometimes he will just decide to do a normal attack and then immediately a desperate attack on the same party member. There is no surviving that without having enough HP, no matter what you do
Desperate attacks are just shit, honestly
Can't remember how early is that honestly, but if you have buffs and debuffs available use 'em.
You can apply them twice to get a bigger effect.
It's about level 11 if you don't grind, so you don't even have Zing yet. I beat it already, now cutting my teeth on the spiderfrick boss
>You can apply them twice to get a bigger effect
I didn't know that, thanks. Was wondering why all the buffs only ever give a "slight" attack upgrade
I still have Nocturne PTSD so I make sure to apply buffs/debuffs more than once whenever I can.
DQXI can be beaten with stronger enemies in exactly the same way without grinding, though you have to keep in mind that debuffs can miss so it's more reliable to focus on keeping buffs up instead. Still, I doubt you can avoid every single random encounter here.
It doesn't have random encounters except on the sea and in 2D sections. That's exactly why there's such a huge gap in levels between people who grind and people who don't, you can just run past every single enemy
>debuffs can miss
Yeah. I'd also call that a shit mechanic, honestly. Making it so bosses get affected by defense down is great, having to restart the fight cause it missed 5 times in a row is shit
>It doesn't have random encounters
I know they are not literally random encounters anon, I was saying that if you are playing on stronger enemies I am not sure you can skip everything but bosses, even by relying on buffs/debuffs or knowing how to abuse mechanics.
Of course, that's a fair point. It's hard to tell which level the game expects you to be, especially cause the default is so easy
I'm talking about accelerating the whole party with acceleratle (?). But given the fact that the single target 1 is a tier 2 buff, I assume that means the party wide one is a tier 1 one and can be re-cast. That's gonna be immensely helpful
It's because some are tier 1 buffs and some are tier 2. Sap is a tier 2 debuff while Kasap is an AoE tier 1 debuff. Oomph is a tier 1 buff while Oomphle is a tier 2 buff. Buff is tier 2 while Kabuff is AoE tier 1, etc.
Yeah I noticed that. Can you apply accelerate twice? Because that's gonna be a huge help if I can speed up my party even more
Nope, the single target version is a tier 2 buff. You can recast to extend the duration like with every buff and debuff, but you can't get any more agility.
Not really necessary either way because every party member only gets 1 turn per round no matter how fast you are.
>because every party member only gets 1 turn per round no matter how fast you are
Wait what? I'm fairly sure I've seen bosses act three times in a row, and one character of mine get more turns than the others
Am I moronic?
If nothing else, I definitely have gotten a party member killed because the boss attacked again before Serena got a turn again
Bosses don't play by the same rules. Late game they will always get multiple turns in a row because frick you.
Party members will only get one, though it's possible some enemies skip their own at times.
Bosses get multiple turns, you don't. The reason it seems like there are times when a party member gets two turns in a row is because turn order for a round is determined, and when that ended the same party member that went last goes first in the following round.
>hero goes
>boss goes
>boss goes
>erik goes
>veronica goes
>serena goes
>serena goes
>hero goes
>erik goes
>boss goes
>boss goes
>veronica goes
These are two separate rounds of combat.
>>boss goes
>>boss goes
And then in act 3 it's
>boss goes
>boss goes
>boss goes
Really fun if your characters can't survive it right at the start of combat.
Dragon Quest is not a game you should ever expect to not have to grind because it's the game that started the entire industry trend
Despite the fact that dragon quest never required a grind, in fact that anon even mentioned that it was only using stronger monsters
Playing XI without Stronger Monsters is so much worse. You are stupidly overlevelled at level 1
It's very possible without grinding. He's vulnerable to sleep. Also use "defend" occasionally. I will concede that this is early enough in the game where your options are more limited. But I beat the game on Stronger Monsters without grinding. (That is, spending time fighting monsters specifically to level up, versus just fighting stuff as I explored/when I felt like it.)
You see the problem, right? You can't just say "I only fought monsters when I felt like it" because that's a completely useless metric. Maybe you felt like clearing the whole map
Sure. Then I'll clarify - I never felt like clearing the map. I beat the final boss with a party with levels in the mid to late 60s. End game spoiler:
I used the Sword of Light on the final boss so it wasn't the hardest possible version, so you can ding me on that if you want.
Not gonna read the spoiler but I'll keep the level in mind and compare it to mine at the time
Makes sense. I hope you enjoy the game even if you feel like you have to grind at times. A tip some people don't know: once you have more than four party members, you can swap party members during combat, and it doesn't have to be on the turn of the character you want to swap out.Which means you can swap in a character midcombat with no penalty. You just have to make sure you swap a character out once they have already acted that round (you can tell by how their portrait is positioned on the battle screen).
I actually got a bit surprised at that already cause I thought switching would be instant like in FFX, not take someone's turn
>I hope you enjoy the game
Yeah it's fun so far. If I get too sick of the stronger enemies I'll just disable it. But it's nice to have something in combat to look forward to rather than just mashing through easy encounters for the story
Yeah, I like DQ combat in general and I like 11's system a lot in particular. Realize it's not going to be for everyone but I try to make a case for it when discussing. One more note in case you haven't noticed is if you have equipment in a character's inventory you can equip it midbattle without penalty. So you can swap weapons to use a different skill or equip a specific shield or accessory etc. Not necessarily going to be the most vital thing but can be helpful.
>I like DQ combat in general
I was considering playing the older games afterwards but I don't think I can go back to random encounters after 11 lel
Try it to be sure, it might sound weird to say of a menu game but DQ1s combat feels snappy and satisfying, and getting caught in an encounter isn't annoying when most fights are over in less than 10 seconds.
I hope that's true. On the flashback sections in Tickington, every damn fight takes ages to finish because it has to slowly pop up the "slime has been defeated" text for every enemy
If I have to pick between those, I'd say underlevelled because more challenging encounters are fun.
But in reality I don't do out of my way to trigger more encounter but also don't avoid them. I just fight what's in my way and it's always more than enough in any RPG I have ever played - with very few exceptions from very old games where you are simply not given any other choice and your loss is all but purely mathematical.
I loved overleveling when I was younger.
Now I do normal playthroughs and, if I like the game and replay it, then I do either low level runs or implement some of my
>can you beat the game with _____________
shit, or both at the same time.
If there's a difficulty spike (fricking Majima/Saejima from like a dragon) then I'll grind to match their levels
Can't be assed to grind all the way to 99 for true final millennium tower though
the correct way is to rush through then when you hit a wall you grind on stuff that give you the most xp/hr
I just like to wipe the map clean before moving on and by then I just happen to be overlevelled and the rest of the game is a boring cakewalk.
It sucks. And this is also why horizontal progression is better than vertical progression.
>horizontal progression is better than vertical progression
qrd?
Horizontal progression basically means getting stronger by improved skill of the player and just giving them new tools. Think items and powerups in Zelda and Metroid.
Vertical progression is to just inflate stats. More damage, more health, more defense, the mechanics stay the same.
To stay in Zelda and Metroid: getting health and ammo upgrades, but not new items. Or just you classic Mario game.
That way, grind will never make you stronger like that, at least not easily. Once you move on you get enemies that are more challenging by virtue of a more challenging moveset, not because of inflated stats. These are your typical looter action RPGs like Diablo.
I mean most games are "diagonal progression" in some way a mix of both. But leaning more in favor of one over the other.
>by improved skill of the player
That's quite literally the antithesis of an RPG. In RPGs, the player character is supposed to get stronger
Been playing Mother 3 with 0 grinding and most bosses were nail bitters, I love that feeling. Fassad was my first wall, apparently dude is 45 and my characters were 28-32.
>running from encounters
Couldn't be me. After playing FFV and learning how this works, I find that I run from encounters far, far less than I used to. It rewired my brain somehow.
Chicken Knife is better
"no"
I like making my characters strong but I hate wasting my time, so I only grind if I see a good opportunity or I'm near the very end of the game so I can safely grind without thinking higher exp is around the corner. Best JRPGs have content that's brutal at any level, like the final set of asterisk boss fights in bravely default 1
I'll just play normally on first playthrough.
Second playthrough is when I'm gonna grind like a motherfricker and become a God in the first zone.
Isn’t XB an auto battler ? Do morons really?
XB? Xenoblade, you mean?
In Xenoblade characters do attack automatically, yes. But that ''playstyle'' won't get you far. AI never uses skills, and not following the break-topple-etc. path will send you to an early grave.
It's not the best comparison, but ok. Final Fantasy 13. This is kinda similar. Tutorial is too long and you just use auto-selected commands and play with one hand. Then the game asks you to actually PLAY the game and people start seeing Game Over screen too much. Oh no, must be a bad game.
>mute game audio
>put on a podcast or some YouTube vids
>grind random encounters for about 15 minutes
>streamroll the rest of the game
ez
They both have their appeal. Generally on a first playthrough I just enjoy curbstomping everything and getting a general feel for all that will be in the game. If I decide to do another playthrough in the future that is when I'll set challenges for myself which may involve being underleveled. JRPGs are fickle though. It's often just straight up impossible to do stuff underleveled. Etrian Odyssey has always been one of my favorite series to do underleveled because it's generally just a matter of speedrunning and avoiding random encounters then get your butthole turned inside out by the stratum boss.
I always try to be higher level than my enemies, it just plays better into my power fantasy when they have no chance against me
Unrelated, but how the hell did SMRPG somehow sell LESS tham what was shown last fiscal report (3.14 mil)?
I played the SMRPG remake the same way I played the original, with no equipment or grinding. It was still really easy.
I don't really grind. Too many jrpgs have you overleved if you're just trying to be thorough and it's annoying
Most games these days have a decent level curve, I don't recall ever having to grind in a RPG since I was a kid. That being said I pretty much fight every chance given and I know alot of people like to skip fights and keep fighting to a minimum.