The Final Fantasy Mega Thread - Now playing FFXV

Nice, draw system for spells. Literally the worst mechanic ever created

I don't know what the draw system is but I like the idea of "crafting" unique spells. Enlighten me?

Noodleface said:

Nice, draw system for spells. Literally the worst mechanic ever created

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Wait, what? Not watching videos for spoilers so if this is FF8's system god help them as the meteor smites the whole damn company.

Is it bad that I am stoked for the feature where the game takes screen shots from Prompto's perspective during the day and he shares them with you at night?

Kriptini said:

I don't know what the draw system is but I like the idea of "crafting" unique spells. Enlighten me?

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In Final Fantasy 8 (also known as Worst Final Fantasy) in order to get spells, you had to "draw" them from enemies and from little, respawnable in some cases, fonts around the world and city/dungeon maps. Your characters didn't get stats/boosts from levels in the game, only from effectively equipping Summons on each character and then "equipping" those summons with spells to specific character stats. The higher the amount, up to 99, of a specific spell the more power would be added to a stat. This meant that the only real power gain in the game was through drawing spells. Since the respawnable nodes weren't all over the place and some spells were super rare, in order to really power up a character you basically needed to sit in combat with an enemy who had a certain spell and draw from it. Over and over and over and over again. You'd normally only get 1-2 of the more powerful spells at a time, and if you cast a spell you lose however many you cast and it lowered the stat it was attached to as well.

SO. This complimented the terrible system in FF8 where monsters leveled with you, but unlike you they actually gained power with levels and new/upgraded abilities, as well as changing the drop rate of items off of them from certain level ranges. So in order to really keep pace, you had to constantly draw the shit out of monsters in fights. At 1-2 per draw (spells were also per character. You could "swap" two characters entire spell inventories, but you couldn't just give spells to a single one) and needing 99 for the most potent stat boost, it was a seriously retarded system.

Which the game apparently knew deep down inside, as it also put in abilities on certain summons (referred to as GFs - guardian forces - in the game) to turn Cards which were earned through combat or from a sidequest into spells. So instead of wandering the countryside fighting things for 30 minutes at a go to learn one spell all the way up (even with haste, unless you're emulating a speed hack, it took a long time to draw at 1-2 per attempt up to 99) most people opted to instead play the card game, which is basically the absolute best part of FF8. Triple Triad, you might be familiar with, as it is also in FFXIV. Anyway, you would play the shit out of the card game and then use the GF card-transmute abilities to get enough spells so you didn't have to sit there and constantly use the exact same ability to draw spells over and over again.

Basically, a shittily implemented system that made other systems seem worse (the enemies leveling with you mechanic) as well as having players focus almost entirely on a sidequest cardgame in order to actively progress their characters.


And the story was retarded.

I must have ptsd because my mind completely blocked out how bad draw was

The worst part of the draw system wasn't even that you had to draw the spells, but that there was a limit on the inventory on how many spells each character could have. So, if you did the "let's power up the characters" and spent quite a few hours maxing them as you encountered mobs with higher level spells, you suddenly were forced to spend hours again using up the lower level spells to be able to draw new ones.

For FF 15 though, it doesn't seem like you need to draw to activate spells (he had Fire 1), but rather you draw the essence of the spell which you can use to combine into new ones. You have fire 1, ice 1, lightning 1, but you can also use the essence to make a combination spell of the three. In the video he combined fire essence with an item that appeared to create a cluster bomb type of effect after the initial spell went off.

Not sure how deep that mechanic goes, but I certainly can see potential similar to perhaps Divinity: Original Sin. Combine fire and ice which creates fog/steam which makes lightning more effective.

kegkilla said:

Bet it was delayed so they can make it compatible with the upgraded PS4 coming out this fall.

This is the first Final Fantasy in a while that doesn't seem to be packed with a bunch of weeabo faggotry. Maybe I'll check it out.

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Very much this. I may end up actually buying my first Playstation since PS2.

early reviews from people who got to play at Gamescom are pretty positive, especially from noobs to the FF genre. The only big complaint I saw was that the visual quality was poor in certain areas and aspects, like vegetation, bad jaggies, texture pop in, and inconsistent frame rates in the open world. Some of those things they can probably fix before release though.

pharmakos said:

video looked like the FF12 combat system stuck into Fallout...

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What's wrong with that? When I think Final Fantasy the first thing that comes to mind is button-mashing action combat. Can't wait!

/sarcasm
/vomit

Just wish we could have seen the evolution of the combat system in Last Remnant, and not the devolution of combat in FF. And I'm really worried that we're going to see shit like this in the FF7 remake.

I have this strange feeling that the FF7 remake combat will still be the same as the original version, it just seems like they can move around the battle field while waiting for commands(seems interesting)

doesn't really seem like the normal FF8 draw system either, more like a crafting system that you can get raw materials from the world, and later shops will just have the resources.

And another 2 months O no, so scary I'd rather have the Day-1 patch on the disc already versus having to download, a massive patch when I get the game.

Noodleface said:

I must have ptsd because my mind completely blocked out how bad draw was

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Oh shit. I loved everything about FF8. I never knew it was so reviled!

USed to get baked in high school and fucking crush draws and triple triad for hours. Triple triad is my favorite FF in-game game.

8's Draw system grew on me, I didn't like it when I first got the game YEARS ago..

Played thru the Steam release lately though, and was really impressed how custom you can make everything, course I don't remember playing thru the whole game when it was first released so maybe I never got that far into it...

Triple Triad was a lot of fun, but I never finished 8. I vaguely recall hitting some dungeon late game where you lost ALL your powers and had to fight bosses without them to get back like one per boss? Just didn't feel worth it to me, so I walked away and never looked back.

I always would draw everything i possibly could and level up a ton of AP before I even got to Ifrit and I never really had to bother with it for the rest of the game.

Raes said:

Triple Triad was a lot of fun, but I never finished 8. I vaguely recall hitting some dungeon late game where you lost ALL your powers and had to fight bosses without them to get back like one per boss? Just didn't feel worth it to me, so I walked away and never looked back.

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You were at the end of the game.