What alternatives do you actually see, for said genre?
Buying Azurewrath in a store?
Looting chests becoming the standard item find?
Killing Diablo, and then going around stabbing monsters with a chipped scale from his hide (the most realistic of drops)?
I prefer to whack a monster, and see it explode, like the damned loot pinata it is.
There is no viable alternative.
And who really cares?
The CLU train is a bullet-train, moving so fast that it and Azure occupy the same space-time, transcendentally, and it has looped infinity around and beyond you.
You all know like I know that some of these cliches are needed to add entertainment value and longevity to games. At some point, the things that you all think should be in games would ruin them. Creators can’t plan for every possible scenario.
as much as I hated FFVIII, I liked the idea of getting parts of monsters, then selling that for appropriate loot. Similar to ubers dropping demon guts, how hard is it to drop different things, like monster fingernails, testicles, etc, and you exchange those for the appropriate legend???
I found it funny that Squall is the only FF hero with a stable job and salary (though technically you could say Ramza was a contractor because he was stabbing fools and accepting propositions from that bar). You really didn’t even need shitloads of money in that game but you just get it for playing since Squall basically got payed by the hour. FF7 they were basically bums if you think about it.
Speaking of ff7 if you think about Cait Sith isn’t his whole design just too convoluted for Reeves? Just thinking that Reeves is controlling a cat who controls a fat moogle using a microphone. Why not ditch the goddamn microphone and the cat and just control the moogle?
I’d say Tidus in FFX pre-Sin (aka Pre-Start of Game) had a stable job. Idk how Blitzball salary works, but I would assume he was paid a hefty sum. And assuming he continued to play after his revival in FFX-2 (I’d spoiler it but…come on, it’s been a decade), he’s probably sitting on some good cash. Not as stable as being a SeeD member (not to mention the countless promotions Squall gets midgame) but still good.
Not when they were out adventuring though. Plus they start the game with a measly amount of money which doesn’t help their journey at all (I know ff7 had professions listed in the bios, but why are you guys all flat broke and cloud starts with only 1000 gil? Why the hell does Barret never foot the bill? Cloud has Chocobos to feed and they should feel bad for leeching off him the whole game .). I was responding to the fact that RPGs had to scavenge the corpses of their enemies to get gear and money, which doesn’t make sense when you are fighting giant crabs or something. Squall is the only one to actually make a career out of wandering around and doing stuff for shits and giggles with his SeeD salary.
i think he meant that you get a (somewhat) fixed amount of gil every so often due to your “job” in the game instead of during battles. so in that sense, you cant really compare it with lightning, or probably the majority of the characters from other ff games (cloud got paid in ff7 from barrett after his job lol but thats the closest i could think of).
I liked that you got paid regularly in FF8 instead of looting the dead for money that happens in like every other RPG. I wish more RPGs made more sense like that. If you have a profession, you should have a salary. Then, when you level up that profession, you get stronger, but you also get more money and maybe extra benefits. Why isn’t there something like this?
Because 9 times out of 10, in an RPG even if you had a job, it’s not gonna last very long into the game. Squall was lucky that essentially, it was his job to save the world. Cloud was a Merc, Tidus was thrown into a new world, Lightning was banished, Vaan was…well Vaan. When it comes to most RPG’s, their stories affect a grand scale…how often are you allowed to keep your job at that point?
I guess the problem there is that those games use the same “save the world” cliche. So the solution would be to not make the scope of the game’s story so large. Persona 4 is a good example; you live day-to-day, and you can choose to do jobs and get paid for them. But the game’s story isn’t grand in scope. All you’re doing is solving a murder mystery in an small town. You have a main quest that you need to do, but you still have a life to live outside of it.
Well it’s mostly because it’s hard to sell something like an RPG WITHOUT having a grand scale. Hell, that’s the sell on most RPG’s. How grand the scale of the game is. Most people tend to play RPG’s to have a giant adventure.
Maybe the true problem is RPG’s just don’t resonate anymore.
Its not a cliche, but i hate how secret of mana was not imitated by other developers. That was some good shit, so many great possibilities but only square did it. Now i gotta have a whole other console, and a tv just to even attempt co-op at something.
