The issue with 2P option

[Yekkusu]

SO, I was checking the forums and a lot of people complained about two things: Monsters not attacking and 2P mode being activated making your screen not moving if you are with an NPC.

I can understand why Monsters encounters OFF/ON being on the quick section of the menu, but 2P being there too instead of a quick change in the OST is weird. I mean, turning encounters off will make you not be able to fight most battles but turning 2P on will essentially lock your NPC in place, for some maps, that means not being able to move at all.

Why I need to enter the options, change the version of the OST there, and confirm my change for the OST to change, but any slip of a button before exiting the Save Menu with start pressed could potentially activate 2P mode. For people who never played the Original, they would never know that it's not a bug that you're stuck on one screen. Both characters need to walk together for the camera to follow and if a 2P is enabled the game will wait for input for that player to move with you.

It just sounds dumb for M2 to do this. Encounters are fine, we want to disable them quickly, but we don't have a second player with us every single time we play the game. However, we may want to change between old/new ost just to check the differences in a quick way.

Will M2 fix it? I doubt it, since when Square fixes their games on PC? Will, someone makes a mod to change the placement of 2P and OST on the options menu? I dunno.

But I do know it sounds silly. And this game does need some iron to fix some bugs, like missing sound effects or as lots of people seem to have trouble with: fixing the battle lag (which I don't have, but I do have a small delay on the bumpers to activate ST. it seems that if you press the button lots of times when there's nothing assigned to it, it won't make the error sound repeatedly, meaning the input is not being computed every single press. That being said, all the bumpers works, you just need to stop doing other actions to trigger the ST).

Anyway, I'm just here talking about this really weird design choice. What do you guys think, is the Enable/Disable encounters messing with you, is the 2P/1P options messing with your gameplay without you realizing it?

I had this problem just once, and it was with Encounters, and encounters are not an issue being disabled anyway, but having the game stuck must be a pain the socks if you don't know how this game works when you play with a second player.

[Jey Uso]

I wonder if the people who played this game can read. I mean, most of the people who play this game are 30-something shut-ins that live with their anime pillow, but I wouldn't imagine that would cause them to forget how to read.

[Chad "The King" ThunderCuck]

i dont think it has any bearing on the game in any way, as i can read and i dont just go around menus smashing buttons without paying any attention to what im doing, which is the only way you could activate 2p mode accidently.

[RighteousRahl]

Originally posted by Chad "The King" Thundercock:

i dont think it has any bearing on the game in any way, as i can read and i dont just go around menus smashing buttons without paying any attention to what im doing, which is the only way you could activate 2p mode accidently.

To be fair I did notice when I loaded a save that it was set to off when I never changed it to begin with. I have helped already like 30 ish people with that problem so I don't think all of them set the encounter to off and forgot about it.

[Yekkusu]

Originally posted by Chad "The King" Thundercock:

i dont think it has any bearing on the game in any way, as i can read and i dont just go around menus smashing buttons without paying any attention to what im doing, which is the only way you could activate 2p mode accidently.

Oh, the issue is more if you play with a Joystick though. Sometimes, people can accidentally trigger the 2P option or Battle Off without noticing since that menu doesn't give you any feedback like: "Do you want to change this?"

Look, you may be smart like the other guy above said he is, but remember that a good UI design is a thing a professional should know. Lots of programs and software are made easy to use and with good information in it for a reason. If windows was just a little more like Linus, people would be crazy right now.

What I'm saying is this: To add an prompt asking if you want to change an option that will change how the game works is easy. I understand why the option is outside the "options" menu, enabling and disabling battles should be fast, but enablind and disabling 2P is not a thing that the original game let you do in the fly. You need to talk with certain NPC's to trigger 2P gaming and that's not a design flaw, the camera will stop following you and will start following between you and the second player for now on, meaning if the second player wants to stay at the start of a map, you will be unable to advance. Simple.

Yes, lots of people playing this game already played it in the past, but a lot of people are new to it, never played it and want to give a chance, however we started to have too much hand holding nowdays, and this game is from a time where Handholding was on the Game Manual not inside the game. XD

So yeah, I'm not here saying: 'Oh god, this game is trash" it's not. I'm one of the guys who were deffending this game from the start when people were here in a rampage talking ♥♥♥♥ about this game because of the pixel art and price tag. I'm just here pointing out that as a game developer, someone who works on this area and enjoys a lot working on menus and UI, places you will interact without playing the game, that's a design flaw.

They probably thought that the original game is just weird to activate 2P controller, so they wanted to make it easier. But forgot to actually prompt a windows saying: 'You changed this, are you sure?'. I mean, if they don't want to change the 2P controller to the Options menu and bring the OST option to the Start Menu, they could at least add a small confirmation for that option only. Like I said, battles is fine. It needs to be fast.

Even if people wants multiplayer in the game, today it's quite rare for you to have someone local to play local multiplayer anyway.

But you're right, besides that issue, I have nothing bad to talk about Legend of Mana, there are some flaws but those flaws can only be fixed if the game is Remade, not remastered. After those flaws are baked in the game and changing them means remaking a lot of the entire game itself.

[Chad "The King" ThunderCuck]

i only play with a controller. this is a console game, period. playing it with a keyboard would just feel awkward, especially given how few buttons are even used. i feel like the reason they made 2p a menu option, was that they planned to have proper modern multiplayer i.e. online multiplayer, but decided "meh, too much work. just leave it as it is". chances are they started on it, realized the game engine wouldnt allow them to give people their own seperate POV's, and scrapped the idea half way through, cause that what Squenix does.

[Yekkusu]

Originally posted by Chad "The King" Thundercock:

i only play with a controller. this is a console game, period. playing it with a keyboard would just feel awkward, especially given how few buttons are even used. i feel like the reason they made 2p a menu option, was that they planned to have proper modern multiplayer i.e. online multiplayer, but decided "meh, too much work. just leave it as it is". chances are they started on it, realized the game engine wouldnt allow them to give people their own seperate POV's, and scrapped the idea half way through, cause that what Squenix does.

This is a very good point actually.
Which doesn't change the fact: That option should not be there without a confirmation window. Period XD. And yes, this is an old game, remastered and that's it. We should not expect the game to run better than it was back at the time or to have some crazy modifications in it. I never expected multiplayer to begin with.

[Mazzle Dazzle]

For the record, I have been playing it with remote play and having the 2p option is extremely helpful. You use to get stuck flat out unable to continue if a second player left mid section. Now you can do it anywhere. Its a huge improvement for anyone that plays co op. Its also very easy to swap back and fix it as people go to the bathroom or whatever. It definitely is perfect for anyone that actually uses the functionality the way it is.