SAILERIUS'S PROFILE

I started playing Comrades, the multiplayer DLC for FFXV. It's pretty cool so far, and they've made some much-needed changes to combat. For instance, there are no more items, so there's no more pausing and navigating menus in battle.

I was the moderator of the project forum for a while in its latter years. It was a pretty friendly community, and I met a lot of friends there that I'm still close to years later. Ultimately, it couldn't compete with RMW, which had official Degica staff and support.

Good luck to everyone joining! I hope you all have a great time.

Unfortunately, I'm busy crunching for work this year so I won't have the chance to join. Maybe next time.

author=Feldschlacht IV
Sailerius is criminally wrong in almost literally everything he says but he's right about that; Quen is a fucking monster, and is, compared to everything else, the most amazing thing since sliced bread.

However, true to form of being wrong about shit, I'd say you're wrong in the application of how Quen is the best ability; this is assuming you do nothing but pump all of your points into Quen and only Quen, and it does take a while for Quen to get the abilities it does; you don't start the game off with it being able to absorb and reflect damage and taking multiple hits.

So technically yes, you can cheese through the entire game with Quen. In practice, however, it takes time and deliberate work on your end for you to do that, ignoring the multitude of easier, more fun, and more accessible ways to play through the game, and if you do power through the game with Quen at the expense of everything else that's your own damn fault.

I agree that it's not a fun way to play the game, but it is an easy and fast one. It's a good example of the principle of the burden of optimal play, in which the easiest, most reliable, and most efficient way to play a game is also the least fun, and is usually an indication of poor design. I honestly think the game would be better with Quen removed, because it trivialized the combat so much that I never felt the need to learn any other mechanic.

And yeah, you could say it's my fault for relying on it, but it's the game's fault for not balancing it. I feel that it is a game designer's responsibility to force you to have fun, and to aggressively prune ways that undermine that goal.

To get this back on topic, I feel like crafting often falls into a similar trap in games, where the mental activation energy required to learn it and engage with it is too high. The best example of crafting done right that I can think of is MGSV, where the interface and mechanics for it are dead simple, and it works seamlessly into the core gameplay loop.

A big part of it, I think, is that the first few things you can craft are free (require no items), then the next ones only cost money, and it's as you progress to the nontrivial blueprints that it starts throwing item costs at you. Once you get acclimated to doing it regularly, it becomes second nature.

Compare that to crafting in TW3, which I actually think is a cool idea on paper, but it's so involved and has so little introduction that I mostly avoided touching it.

author=Liberty
Maybe it's the way I play, but I don't find that it breaks the game or anything like others have said. It's useful, sure, but not the most amazing thing since sliced bread.

We're all agreed the Yrden is pretty much useless but in very few circumstances, though, right?

The ultimate form of Quen basically makes the game a joke. It absorbs all damage that you take as healing, takes multiple hits before dispelling, and reflects all damage that you take. In my first playthrough, I beat the final boss by standing still, holding down the Quen button, and never attacked as it kept healing what little damage it did to me and kept hurting itself.

I like the idea of Yrden but found basically no use for it. The problem with the signs, I think, is that they all have the same cost but aren't equally useful. Quen would be much less OP if you were forced to spend your sign energy on anything else. Igni is also pretty cool and I used it a lot in my first playthrough since you can stunluck enemies and keep them far enough away to never hurt you, but it takes so long to damage anything that way that I started relying on Quen+attack spam, which kills most enemies in seconds.