FFVII Remake: Intergrade Yuffie DLC Announced

[Makoeyes987]

So for a given fight that you want to be so hard: make stagger weaker, or make it harder to inflict stagger. Don't just say "NOPE, YOUR ATTACK DOESN'T WORK FOR NO OTHER REASON THAN WE SAY SO AT THIS ARBITRARY AND UNMARKED AMOUNT OF HP :3 And you won't get the chance to use it back either, asshole."

So you want to make bosses be as tanky as Hell House and take forever to beat?

Again. Why use the Limit Break early if you know the boss fight is just beginning and they can shift and stop you? I don't get why someone would do that knowingly. And if you did do it and lost the limit break .. then you lost a free attack and will now know better. It's not the end of the world in terms of the boss fight. It's simply lesson. Attacks whiff all the time.

Some boss fights have like two billion phases what is this shit about using it early. And if it takes long enough to fill the stagger gauge to where the boss is close to yet another phase change then it feels unsatisfying because you can't use your big guns when the game has trained you to use them. In this case it's just better to use LB right after a phase transition even though it would be far more satisfying to wait for a stagger.

The most phase shits bosses have are 2. Sephiroth is the exception because he has 4.

It's "unsatisfying" to not use your big guns early? Okay, then you can risk using them early and pushing aggressively. However. Just like in any other action/ARPG you're simply taking a calculated risk. That's why overextension is risky in most games with combat or fighting.

The fact there is nothing to prevent this in bosses with no phase kinda strengthens my point that the phase transitions are at best only doing this unintentionally.
The phase transition stops you from doing damage regardless of whether you where overwhelming the enemy or not. Maybe you're not doing too hot but finally got the boss to stagger 2/3 into the fight and want to unleash a limit break for this occasion...only for you to get a single hit in before another transition. The game didn't balance the fight, it just cockblocked you from having a sweet moment of "I'm doing the fight correctly!"

In normal first player playthroughs, you don't even see or come to the hard limit where a boss's HP gauge freezes any additional HP loss. The HP mark is an approximation where once you hit close to the hard threshold, the phase changes. If you are hitting the ceiling of the boss's HP, you're aggressively pushing the boss to not even get a chance to properly shift to next phase without locking you out. That's how it works. Phase shifts don't just happen on a hard HP cut off. You hit a certain number close to the cap to make the boss move forward.

Now, certain circumstances can happen where you somehow are losing while aggressively dealing damage but those seem to be exceptions rather than the norm. I don't see why that game design would be bent towards that.

If it was a revenge type mechanic it would specifically do shit to counter overwhelming a boss. But it doesn't. It'll do its thing at fixed points regardless of how well you're doing. If this was intended to be that type of mechanic it would still deserve to be criticized because it doesn't actually punish you for getting too greedy, it just requires you to know when phase transitions occur.
The revenge mechanic in KH2 for example will only ever be relevant if I start combolocking the shit out of a boss. The boss will not break out of a combo just because it's entering a different phase or arbitrarily regardless of how well I'm doing (the latter which happens in BBS, which is why pro players fucking hate it )

That's still a "mechanic that prevents the boss from being obliterated through early zerg rush damage before it gets to retaliate or fight back." I call it revenge because it's basically the game stopping you from annihilating the boss and forcing you to slow down the flow of the boss fight. Yeah, it can rarely cause a poor player to lose their limit break but guess what? They'll learn not to do that again. Also, you don't always hit that ceiling of HP damage. The phase shift happens when you reach close to it. If you're hitting the ceiling, you've managed to just syphon out all its HP in an efficient and effective manner.

And I would say staggering the boss early with the percentage at 310% and just smashing its face to the point it'd literally die if the game didn't interrupt is the equivalent to KH2 combomastering a boss to hell with a Decisive Pumpkin Keyblade. You knocked the thing silly. It'd be dead if the game didn't intervene.

 

[Odysseus]

It doesn't even have to be a limit break, man. I just redid a bit of the story on Hard to get the last trophies I was missing, and this exact issue came up while I was fighting Air Buster. I staggered him toward the end of his first phase, had Cloud wind up to use infinity's end, then switched to Tifa to do some added damage. Tifa punches him a few times and he phase shifts, ending the stagger prematurely. I don't get that pop-off of damage I had been working towards because Cloud doesn't get to use his move. I'm sure things like this have happened to almost everyone who has played the remake. It's hardly a deal breaker, but it's definitely two elements of the combat design that come into conflict with each other.

 

[ForceStealer]

Now, certain circumstances can happen where you somehow are losing while aggressively dealing damage but those seem to be exceptions rather than the norm. I don't see why that game design would be bent towards that.

No, man. What are you talking about. You do NOT need to be aggressively dealing damage to hit a phase transition, they're set at arbitrary HP points and all the damage you do, however slowly, is cumulative.

 

[Makoeyes987]

It doesn't even have to be a limit break, man. I just redid a bit of the story on Hard to get the last trophies I was missing, and this exact issue came up while I was fighting Air Buster. I staggered him toward the end of his first phase, had Cloud wind up to use infinities end, then switched to Tifa to do some added damage. Tifa punches him a few times and he phase shifts, ending the stagger prematurely. I don't get that pop-off of damage I had been working towards because Cloud doesn't get to use his move. I'm sure things like this have happened to almost everyone who has played the remake. It's hardly a deal breaker, but it's definitely two elements of the combat design that come into conflict with each other.

So that sounds like overextension/aggressive greed. You were wailing on Airbuster. The stagger ended prematurely but you literally hit the ceiling of HP damage for that phase. You at most lost 2 ATB bars, but you wailed on the Airbuster and depleted its HP quickly. So, what's the problem? I get you don't like having the game act as a referee and stop the boxing match to let the enemy go back to their ring corner but you dominated it. That's what happened.

No, man. What are you talking about. You do NOT need to be aggressively dealing damage to hit a phase transition, they're set at arbitrary HP points and all the damage you do, however slowly, is cumulative.

I'm talking about how most times when you're playing the game, probably during your first playthrough, you hit the phase transition HP threshold without hitting the ceiling.

Boss fight phase shifts do not always occur when you hit that limit when the HP bar freezes and puts that sign up. Most times, it organically happens when you get close to that hard limit. And you don't even see that limit being reached.

When you're wailing on a boss to the point that ceiling is reached, yes. You have hurt that boss so badly it had to stop you and proceed with the next phase. The HP points are "arbitrary" but normally the phase shift happens when you get close. Not just hitting the hard limit.

 

[ForceStealer]

You shouldn't be hitting a ceiling during a limited-time stagger around which the entire combat system is based. If the time that a single stagger lasts is such that a player will kill the boss before anything else happens, then adjust the stats of the fight.

Maybe if the stagger bar ITSELF had a damage ceiling, I could maybe see where you're coming from. But as Tets has explained several times, if that stagger triggers when the boss has 2HP or whatever left before the phase transition, the benefit of the stagger is being taken away from you for no reason at all, not for balance. As there's nothing saying you got to that point easily.

Ody did not just lose out on "at most 2 ATB bars" He lost out on all the effort it took to stagger the boss in the first place.

 

[Makoeyes987]

You shouldn't be hitting a ceiling during a limited-time stagger around which the entire combat system is based. If the time that a single stagger lasts is such that a player will kill the boss before anything else happens, then adjust the stats of the fight.

Man. You just want to beat the breaks off these bosses, huh?

No limits. Just rip em. Smash em. Tear em.

You're essentially advocating for tankier bosses. Why?

First off, the damage multiplier of stagger can be easily manipulated. It won't naturally be at a level where you can nuke a boss in first stagger but if you use Tifa... She makes it happen. That's her gimmick.

Why is it preferable to have a boss take far longer unnecessarily than just letting the game set the pace? I don't think boss fights feeling akin to punching a tractor tire is just better than the fight moving along at the risk of sometimes maybe losing an ATB bar or a limit break because you're going aggro. You want the boss fights to feel tanky like hitting bosses in FFXIII without the stagger bonus...?

Maybe if the stagger bar ITSELF has a damage ceiling, I could maybe see where you're coming from. But as Tets has explained several times, if that stagger triggers when the boss has 2HP or whatever left before the phase transition, the benefit of the stagger is being taken away from you for no reason at all, not for balance. As there's nothing saying you got to that point easily.

Ody did not just lose out on "at most 2 ATB bars" He lost out on all the effort it took to stagger the boss in the first place.

You're just shifting the problem then. Why would capping stagger damage or length be better than the boss limiting damage entirely until it catches a breath and proceeds to the next phase?

And "all the effort" is again. Around 2 ATB bars. You're speaking towards a feeling but.. okay. If the game is going to be designed to just make it feel good to bully bosses... You think that's good in the long run? Like again. This doesn't always happen. If you're hitting that boss fight ceiling mid-phase instead of the boss shifting from you getting close to it... You beat it up.

 

[ForceStealer]

I don't understand how you're so afraid of people being able to nuke a boss, but ALSO afraid of a boss being tanky. Why is it perfectly balanced if I unleash three limit breaks and a shitton of damage directly AFTER a phase change, but it is completely unbalanced if I do all of that 2HP before a transition?

 

[Makoeyes987]

I don't understand how you're so afraid of people being able to nuke a boss, but ALSO afraid of a boss being tanky. Why is it perfectly balanced if I unleash three limit breaks and a shitton of damage directly AFTER a phase change, but it is completely unbalanced if I do all of that 2HP before a transition?

I mean, to be fair, it's a subjective thing. But I am saying there's a sort of flow or balance baked into the game where it is clearly setting the pace to prevent that kind of total domination.

Like, I get the reasoning and enjoyment behind having the freedom to simply curbstomp a boss with impunity but I really feel like something would be lost if all main story bosses let you do that. The bosses would be easy. Hell, OG FFVII was pretty easy back in the day. I like how this sorta keeps you from just wrecking it with impunity.

Yeah. I hate tanky bosses but I sorta like not being able to just sail through every fight, letting the fights be a sort of setpiece you enjoy and flow with. You're not completely in control. And I guess I just find that cool.

 

[ForceStealer]

I don't like tanky bosses either, but how is the alternative cheap wasted attacks with no warning?

The staggered status is on a time limit, there's no reason not to postpone the phase change until it ends (or freeze everything during it a la Scarlet and Weiss). If the issue is that Tifa can crank the modifier too high to skip the rest of the fight from a single stagger, then maybe you nerf her ability to do that. OR, you cede that ground to speedrunners and shit because they're going to break your game no matter what you do and almost no one is going to play to play that way.

Phase changes against Sephiroth or Rufus in my playthrough never once interrupted me from absolutely curbstomping them. All they did was rob me of the reward of the stagger that I had struggled and worked for over the last x minutes. It told me to not even bother with the stagger gauge because he'll probably phase change out of it once I can manage it. So I might as well just use regular attacks. This is the opposite of what the rest of the game is telling you to do.

 

[Tetsujin]

The most phase shits bosses have are 2. Sephiroth is the exception because he has 4.

It's "unsatisfying" to not use your big guns early? Okay, then you can risk using them early and pushing aggressively. However. Just like in any other action/ARPG you're simply taking a calculated risk. That's why overextension is risky in most games with combat or fighting.

Again with the "early". I'm not talking about "early".

Phase shifts don't just happen on a hard HP cut off.

I mean, they kinda do?
As far as I'm aware it's fixed percentages

And it's different for each boss.
For one boss it might be 75%->50%->25% for another it might be 70%->40%->10%

Should also be mentioned, the cutscene transitions can also negate curative spells you cast right before the cutscene. So you might have wasted an ATB and still ended up with no cure. Which is why I don't think this shit has anything to do with game balance at all.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Phase changes against Sephiroth or Rufus in my playthrough never once interrupted me from absolutely curbstomping them. All they did was rob me of the reward of the stagger that I had struggled and worked for over the last x minutes. It told me to not even bother with the stagger gauge because he'll probably phase change out of it once I can manage it. So I might as well just use regular attacks. This is the opposite of what the rest of the game is telling you to do.

LOL okay but you just admitted it didn't interrupt or keep you from curbstomping them! So you beat them up! You just didn't like the fact they got a *Reprieve* that prevented you from just blowing them out. I mean, that's what I'm talking about. Okay, I'll concede its sorta "the opposite of what the rest of the game is telling you to do," but that's because... The game wants you to simply not just beat the hell out of their bosses before they can fight back. That's the balance.

Again with the "early". I'm not talking about "early".

Well I mention the early phase of a fight because that's where its most likely to get damage denied via aggression. The HP pools of the middle and larger fights are more but sure it can happen anytime. The same principle of not overextending remains.

I mean, they kinda do?
As far as I'm aware it's fixed percentages

And it's different for each boss.
For one boss it might be 75%->50%->25% for another it might be 70%->40%->10%

No, it 100% isn't. You can trigger a boss fight phase shift by coming within a certain range of the precentage. So while you can hit the ceiling by hitting like, 25%, 75%, etc... You also trigger a phase shift getting close to that. Look at playthroughs from new players and whatnot. They don't always get the next phase shift from causing the HP bar to freeze.

Should also be mentioned, the cutscene transitions can also negate curative spells you cast right before the cutscene. So you might have wasted an ATB and still ended up with no cure. Which is why I don't think this shit has anything to do with game balance at all.

LOL oh come on. That is such a fringe exception right there. 99% of the time if you're fighting a boss aggressively and staggering them, you're going in to damage them as much as possible within that limited window. How likely is it that you're going to stagger, hang back and heal and the game just denies you that? I mean, yeah. It can happen but... That sounds so fringe and unlikely here.

Anyways, at the end of the day this is subjective. I guess I'm the minority that doesn't feel like the phase shifting is that big of a deal in this. They probably will change it up in Part 2 anyways.

 

[ForceStealer]

LOL okay but you just admitted it didn't interrupt or keep you from curbstomping them! So you beat them up! You just didn't like the fact they got a *Reprieve* that prevented you from just blowing them out.

No. I didn't mean that I was curbstomping them and the phase transition annoyed but didn't prevent me from doing so. I'm saying I was decidedly NOT curbstomping them and the game was punishing me for no reason. Indeed I was very close to losing to Sephiroth several times and the cheap blocked attacks only exacerbated that, it didn't give him a reprieve.

Okay, I'll concede its sorta "the opposite of what the rest of the game is telling you to do," but that's because... The game wants you to simply not just beat the hell out of their bosses before they can fight back. That's the balance.

No, Tets is right. Nothing about this suggests balance, it just suggests cinematic stuff between phases that is incidentally cutting off attacks. Tets made the point perfectly here, so lets do an example with numbers.

Sephiroth on normal mode has 65,157 HP. I don't know when his phase transitions are, but let's say the 4th phase starts at 15% HP (So no one's using anything early!) 15% is around 9,773. Let's say Ascension does 1,000 damage. Let's also say there is no stagger involved, maybe he's not even close. Sephiroth is at 9,900 HP, and you're low on MP and are feeling the pressure, and so trigger Ascension.

Your limit does 120 damage before a phase transition cuts you off. Now you're out 880 damage AND a limit bar for no real reason.
Alternatively, you fight just a few seconds longer. Again, you're not melting him, he's not staggered, you just happen to do 120 damage before triggering Ascension. Maybe the cat jumped on your lap. Now, you do a full 1,000 damage.

How does this achieve balance? Player A and Player B were fighting exactly the same way, but one got cheated out of 880 damage and the satisfaction of a limit break while the other didn't based purely on the luck of where the phase transition happened. Of course it's not the end of the world, but that's an element of the battle system that could absolutely use improvement. Something that they seemed to recognize based on Scarlet and Weiss freezing everything while they change phases.

So you could freeze everything like that, OR, if the phases had their own health bars, and Sephiroth had 120HP left in this current phase, you're obviously not using a limit break. You're just gonna mash square to get that last pixel of health down and use your limit on the next phase.

 

[Makoeyes987]

No. I didn't mean that I was curbstomping them and the phase transition annoyed but didn't prevent me from doing so. I'm saying I was decidedly NOT curbstomping them and the game was punishing me for no reason. Indeed I was very close to losing to Sephiroth several times and the cheap blocked attacks only exacerbated that, it didn't give him a reprieve.

My mistake, I misunderstood. I'm curious to how this happened then, but okay.

No, Tets is right. Nothing about this suggests balance, it just suggests cinematic stuff between phases that is incidentally cutting off attacks. Tets made the point perfectly here, so lets do an example with numbers.

Sephiroth on normal mode has 65,157 HP. I don't know when his phase transitions are, but let's say the 4th phase starts at 15% HP (So no one's using anything early!) 15% is around 9,773. Let's say Ascension does 1,000 damage. Let's also say there is no stagger involved, maybe he's not even close. Sephiroth is at 9,900 HP, and you're low on MP and are feeling the pressure, and so trigger Ascension.

Your limit does 120 damage before a phase transition cuts you off. Now you're out 880 damage AND a limit bar for no real reason.
Alternatively, you fight just a few seconds longer. Again, you're not melting him, he's not staggered, you just happen to do 120 damage before triggering Ascension. Now, you do a full 1,000 damage.

How does this achieve balance? Player A and Player B were fighting exactly the same way, but one got cheated out of 880 damage and the satisfaction of a limit break while the other didn't based purely on the luck of where the phase transition happened. Of course it's not the end of the world, but that's an element of the battle system that could absolutely use improvement. Something that they seemed to recognize based on Scarlet and Weiss freezing everything while they change phases.

Okay, in these two specific circumstances you're not necessarily achieving balance. But you must realize these aren't the only situations such phase shifts happen. Play through the game with a lower level and equipment loadout or watch new players play. The cut off doesn't only happen when you reach the HP value threshold. If you get close to it, the boss will phase shift before you end up "wasting" your HP damage. The trigger isn't only when you deal massive damage to hit that ceiling.

So you could freeze everything like that, OR, if the phases had their own health bars, and Sephiroth had 120HP left in this current phase, you're obviously not using a limit break. You're just gonna mash Square to get that last pixel of health down

Well I'm sure they'll probably move away from doing that kind of phase shift and just simply prevent you from going further. Therefore you won't be able to even act and potentially waste your resources.

 

[ForceStealer]

I'm curious to how this happened then, but okay.

Did you only have fights that ended immediately with your defeat or win? You can't imagine that someone could slowly get near one of phase transitions between tons of healing spells, buffs, and item-usage?

Okay, in these two specific circumstances you're not necessarily achieving balance. But you must realize these aren't the only situations such phase shifts happen. Play through the game with a lower level and equipment loadout or watch new players play. The cut off doesn't only happen when you reach the HP value threshold. If you get close to it, the boss will phase shift before you end up "wasting" your HP damage. The trigger isn't only when you deal massive damage to hit that ceiling.

The trigger not being massive damage is exactly why Tets and I don't think this has anything to do with balance. If it was about balance, it would specifically trigger if you were curbstomping the boss. Not just have done an amount of damage since the battle started, no matter how long ago that was.

And for limits specifically: Whether that last phase change triggers at 9,773 or 10,250, there's no reason for my Limit Break to not do it's full damage no matter what. Limit attacks are big deal, this is why they don't miss in every other FF unless they're basically casting Death or you personally screw something up like on Tifa's reels or the overdrive minigames.

 

[looneymoon]

The past shifts are designed to occur once you figure out how to stagger a boss the first time. The intention is to use that knowledge in subsequent attempts to stagger the boss quicker.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Mako, your argument amounts to "Why did you take out student loans to get a university degree if you wanted to be able to afford rent and a car payment?"

That's self-evidently absurd, and so is "Why did you bother to master the combat mechanics of an action game if you didn't want the game to pull some Infinity Gauntlet shenanigans to make that effort a waste of time?" -- and even more absurd is "Why did you bother to use a rare, non-replenishable desperation move during a moment of desperation in a boss fight if you didn't want the move to be wasted?"

That's without even getting into the fallacious "You were aggro and got punished for it!" thing, which may as well be a politician insisting that you're only broke because you spend all your money on drugs and avocado toast, allowing no possibility for any other explanation.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Dude, that's a lot of political parallels there. Did you just finish watching the news??

"Why did you bother to master the combat mechanics of an action game if you didn't want the game to pull some Infinity Gauntlet shenanigans to make that effort a waste of time?" -- and even more absurd is "Why did you bother to use a rare, non-replenishable desperation move during a moment of desperation in a boss fight if you didn't want the move to be wasted?"

I mean, I didn't say you should never use your Limit Breaks early or in the middle phase of a fight. It's just a risk. Sometimes it's certainly worth it (like a desperate situation you can break out of), but then if you go ham early, you run the risk of reprisal/loss.

I don't think that's an absurd comparison or dynamic. Enemies in action rpgs will have outs.

That's without even getting into the fallacious "You were aggro and got punished for it!" thing, which may as well be a politician insisting that you're only broke because you spend all your money on drugs and avocado toast, allowing no possibility for any other explanation.

Come on, man. You don't think there should be some sort of mechanic to keep bosses from just being facerolled before they get a chance to even proceed to their next stage?

I mean, going by how people talk about it... I guess they want to make this glitch @Shademp found part of the game proper

Just straight up massacre a boss so bad they drop dead after their scripted lines and phase change

This is one of the most hilarious glitches in an FFVII game to me.

 

[Shademp]

@Makoeyes987
Can confirm that the glitch has acquired the name "Limit Flexing". Vincent flexes so hard Rosso just falls over from intimidation.
Speedrunners of Dirge are way more positive about this new trick than I expected.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Come on, man. You don't think there should be some sort of mechanic to keep bosses from just being facerolled before they get a chance to even proceed to their next stage?

That's never going to happen in an initial playthrough -- and if it somehow does, kudos to the player who could pull it off.

So no, I don't think if you're trashing Nightmare in "Soulcalibur" there should be an equivalent to the 20-point no-pressure rule in youth basketball. Incidentally, "Soulcalibur VI" introduced what are easily the most hated mechanics that series has ever seen: one-button Critical Edge attacks and the one-button Reversal Edge. Both are cinematic attacks that abruptly cut off whatever other animations you or your opponent may have had going on, not only rendering attacks moot mid-combo and interrupting the flow of battle, but also causing the individual battles to last way too long -- and in the case of RE, reducing combat for a prolonged moment to a simple special effects version of rock-paper-scissors ... and it's also spammable ... and it also refills part of the special meter that activates CE ... encouraging a loop of CEs followed by REs that lead to more CEs ...

And that's basically FFVIIR's boss fights, because -- like SCVI's nonsense -- even if you win, there's a good chance you're not having fun while doing it.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Damn, that's pretty harsh comparison to make towards FFVII-R's scripted boss fights. Even during the times I did get some of my commands interrupted, it never felt as no-fun as SCVI, lol

Well, I get your comparison and frustration. I just never thought of the mechanic as that... Disruptive. Almost all of the fights felt enjoyable to me and well paced. But, to each their own. At least as we saw with Intermission, that form of boss battling will probably not carry over into Part 2.

 

[ForceStealer]

Dude, that's a lot of political parallels there. Did you just finish watching the news?

This made me laugh

 

[LNK]

Geez, these last couple pages show how much of a "casual gamer" I am compared to some of you lol. It's nice to read what you all have to say about the details of the combat system though

 

[KindOfBlue]

I never thought I’d find a conversation that actually makes me miss arguing about skyboxes

 

[ForceStealer]

I consider myself pretty casual when it comes to this stuff. I haven't even gotten very far in hard mode. In fact that's why my whole position is that the interrupted limit breaks is so frustrating and not worth pissing off people that play like me just to make things a little harder on obsessive speedrunners

And there's no argument to be had about skyboxes, they're just wrong in Sector 5.

 

[Tetsujin]

Speaking of skyboxes, it seems the nighttime backgrounds have not been updated at all. Sector 5/6 still has that phantom sun lamp floating in the sky, too:



Speaking of sun lamps, why the fuck are they on at night anyway?
I thought the purpose would be to provide a semblance of natural light to the slums during daytime when the plates block sunlight for most of it. But they're off during the day.
And at night you don't need more than the street lights that are already in place now, do you? People are trying to sleep here, dammit!