Needing to level up too many characters, and the new Shining Pom system is a drag

[Dragon]

So I got to Chapter 7 and farmed Shining Poms in Amberl Tower.

This aspect of the game is very poorly designed because:

1. That tower is a very confusing maze, so climbing or descending it is a colossal pain.

2. You have to exit the entire tower through the front door on the bottom floor in order to make the Shining Poms respawn.

3. You have to go back to HQ and switch out your party members with new ones, then go all the way back up the tower, so that the new ones can level up too. Then you have to climb all the way back down the tower too and repeat the process with more characters.

4. This process in point 3. is further exacerbated by the fact that you are forced to take Estelle and Josh in your party at all times, so therefore you can only level up 2 new characters at a time, instead of 4 which you would otherwise be able to do if it didn't dictate that you must have Estelle and Josh in your party.

FC is a lot better in these ways because there is no section of the game in FC that drags like SC does in places like Amberl tower.

That is because FC:

a) puts Shining Poms either in a zone or not, so you therefore don't have to go through the grinding of bumping into, and then fleeing from, trash mobs constantly in order to make Shining Poms spawn.

b) puts Shining Poms in easily-accessible locations that are simple to return to, as opposed to being buried at the end of a convoluted maze like in SC.

c) doesn't give you tons of characters who you have to constantly switch out and grind Shining Poms with in order to keep them at your own level.

Those changes in SC suck the fun out of the game by making the repetitive grind become way too excessive. And they also destroy the momentum of the story.

[butterbattle22]

Oh, actually one of the better threads you've made......in a sense.

I still completely disagree. The main problem here is you make it sound like it this is something that you're forced to do. No, repetitively re-entering a dungeon with different characters to grind shining poms over and over is not something that SC has railroaded you into. It's just something you've chosen to do. Generally speaking, I just kill shining poms when I happen to run into them. Holy crap, I can hardly imagine the frustration of climbing Amberl tower over and over just to grind out every two characters. Why are you doing this to yourself?

Your stated reason is that you need to level up everyone. Well, your OCD notwithstanding, here's why that's bull****.

First of all, even on nightmare, you can beat pretty much every boss with the right setup and tactics at a level that you can automatically earn from killing regular mobs as you run into them. And this game has a very strong exponential exp scaling system. If Tita is 10 levels under, I can just tuck her in for a couple of sheep or something, and her level will skyrocket instantly. Naturally, you also have quickly diminishing returns on the upper end. Once you're at a level where you can pummel the next boss, and you're barely getting exp from regular mobs, any more grinding is a complete waste of time. Shining poms give you a bit of an extra boost, to get to a slightly higher level that it would be hard to get to otherwise, but there's only a couple boss fights in the entire game (and again, only on nightmare) where you could argue for that kind of grinding, and, honestly, the two main ones I can think of are in the prologue and a one-on-one fight respectively, which makes your situation irrelevant.

Furthermore, once you get through the tower, whatever area is comin' next is gonna have higher level mobs anyways. You can just pick an underleveled character at that point. You only have to fight with the four characters that you peak the tower with, so there's zero utility to everyone else being at the same level.

[Gin-chan]

Why oh why do you think you need to level up characters with shining poms before progressing? Havent you noticed how the EXP scale by playing almost 2 full games of this already? Hell people who are underleveled will catch up just from having random battles while on the way to the boss youre gonna fight. There's never any need to keep everyone at the same level because the game will make the lower level ones catch up very quickly if and when you do decide to use them.

[Mizufluffy]

The only time I remember grinding up levels from shining poms in the SC was in the final chapter when I found a good spot to do it and even then I did it only for my main party and only because it was fun for a while. You can't even have more than up to four characters with you so there really is no real reason to level up characters that aren't with you. Also, butterbattle22 and Eleventh Doctor already explained this but the experience scaling makes it really quick to level up characters that are much lower level so if the game decides to force a character to your party who is much lower level than the rest of your party members then he or she should be able to get a good experience even from a few common enemies.

[myhr2]

I guess some design choices will always be considered quite minors by some and totally deal-breaking for others.

That being said, I don't recall farming Shining Poms before the last dungeon. Never needed it, random encounters were enough. Plus, I only leveled all the characters at the end just for completion's sake, and some minor dialogues. I think you're kinda shooting yourself in the foot, there.

[Dragon]

Originally posted by butterbattle22:

. The main problem here is you make it sound like it this is something that you're forced to do. No, repetitively re-entering a dungeon with different characters to grind shining poms over and over is not something that SC has railroaded you into. It's just something you've chosen to do. Generally speaking, I just kill shining poms when I happen to run into them. Holy crap, I can hardly imagine the frustration of climbing Amberl tower over and over just to grind out every two characters. Why are you doing this to yourself?

I disagree that it's not something I'm forced to do. At the very least, it's coercively forced upon me by way of how the game is designed in various ways, even if I'm not outright forced to do it.

I need to do it because:

a) I don't know when I'm going to encounter Shining Poms again in Chapter 8.

b) when I looked up the location of them in Chapter 8, it was a place I've never been to before. For all I know, that could be located inside, or just before, the final dungeon of the game ... in which case, I might have to go through Chapter 8 with under-leveled gimpy characters. And I don't want to look up where that location is because in order to do that, I'd have to spoil the game for myself.

c) In regards to the exp scaling point - yes that, that mechanic exists, but it's kind of a moot point, because:

1) I don't want my characters to be gimpy while they are trying to scale.

2) most trash mobs give barely any exp, so I'm presuming 'scaling' doesn't work when I was only going to receive 1 or 2 exp points for winning a battle anyway.

3) exp scaling stops working if you are above the level that the game decides you are "supposed to be" in a certain zone. For all I know, I've already over-leveled the two main characters (and many of the others), way past what is "supposed to be" the number that the game decides they "should be" at for all the zones in level 8. That might have happened by way of me needing to use those characters to farm Shining Poms excessively in Chapter 8, since as aforementioned, they are mandatory and I can't kick them out of the party.

d) In addition to the aforementioned reasons, I also have to farm Shining Poms for the sepiths, since trash mobs hardly give any, and also don't give the right varieties. I especially need to farm Shining Poms for sepiths since opening the new third slots for everyone, on all of their quartzes, are really expensive, and so are level 4 quartzes, and there's also the fact that Olivier randomly left my party and I presume stole all of the expensive level 4 quartzes that I had bought & equipped on him immediately prior to that.

[Serval]

Stop bullying a person just because he plays the game as he wants. Let me tell you something.

I completed the game on Nightmare from the very start and I want to admit that I spent descent amount of time on grinding. Although the levels were not the goal. The sepith was. I needed lots of time sepith to fulfill all my needs with quartzes. I had several "grinding sessions" as I call them.

1) Le-Locle
2) Ruan (with Kevin)
3) Ruan (with Olivier))
4) Ruan (with Kloe in Old Schoolhouse)
5) Zeiss (with Tita)
6) Grancel (doesn't matter with whom, I needed sepith)
7) Bose (that was big as I needed ~3500 time sepith)
8) Final Chapter (I got everyone up to level 90 while getting ~7k time sepith on total EVEN after spending lots of Mira in Grancel on it. The levels were enough for the super boss you know)

I should say that for chapters 5-7 I was way over leveled. At least for the reason that I used 4 Cat Maid Sets and had insane speed. And that lvls 90 are not enough for HIM, but you can never have enough =)

I agree that putting poms in common monster battle is... Bad. Really bad. Not only getting the needed encounter is random, but effectively killing poms might be hard if you use only Shadow Spear (or Death Scream in ch. 5). I dislike this design, it really made me spend too much time on just finding the conditions.

Speaking of spending time on restoration... Well, there are some extremely good locations. Bose and Final Chapter are the example. Farming in Amberl Tower... Well, you're desperate, let me tell you that =)

[butterbattle22]

*sigh*

Okay, out of respect for Serval and because I feel like Dragon didn't actually read my post, I'm just gonna ask this first.

Dragon, are you playing on nightmare? Yes or no?

[Serval]

Butterbattle22

It's true that farming is not mandatory in this game, even on nightmare. It's highly optional. I decided to be totally prepared for everything aside from fact that speed is valued higher on higher difficulties, so every additional point really matters. That's why I grinded, but it was done in some selected points in the game. All in all, levels on nightmare don't matter that much, while quartzes and optional equipment do. It highly depends on playstyle.

The question of the thread although wasn't about the need to grind. I agree that the way shining poms spawn in SC and TC is irritating and frustrating. First game did that better, but I can understand why Falcom decided to "hide" poms into normal battles - to avoid abuse and make grinding harder. Was it a good decision? Partially yes, grinding became harder and less desirable. Partially no, as the time spent for the game was increased artificially with some sort of "filler" instead of something more useful. Yes, you can "avoid" this "filler", and that's why it's not that big of a deal, but for those, who want to grind the way it is designed is kinda too time consuming.

But believe me, after completing something like Disgaea grind in Kiseki games is considered to be EXTREMELY WELL DONE. At least in terms of amounts =)

[butterbattle22]

Serval, it's cool. I don't think we disagree that much and consider your position to be entirely different from OP's. It's not like I've never grinded. Also, Dragon has made a ton of threads like these, and this is probably one of his most reasonable threads. I'm debating whether or not he's a troll, so take that into consideration.

Although *giggle*, while I think I get the point your making, I'm not sure if slamming on Disgaea is fair here as epically grinding is kind of the point of Disgaea. In contrast, Trails is primarily focused on story, and while the fighting is important too, grinding was intentionally kept at a minimum.

[Stabbey]

Originally posted by Dragon:

I disagree that it's not something I'm forced to do. At the very least, it's coercively forced upon me by way of how the game is designed in various ways, even if I'm not outright forced to do it.

I need to do it because:

a) I don't know when I'm going to encounter Shining Poms again in Chapter 8.

No, you don't need to do it, because experience scales to boost lower level characters.

b) when I looked up the location of them in Chapter 8, it was a place I've never been to before. For all I know, that could be located inside, or just before, the final dungeon of the game ... in which case, I might have to go through Chapter 8 with under-leveled gimpy characters. And I don't want to look up where that location is because in order to do that, I'd have to spoil the game for myself.

You are looking up spoilers for future chapters so you know where the best spot is to grind up XP in a game where people have repeatedly told you that you do not need to grind up XP at all?

Also, as people have repeatedly told you, you are NOT going to have to go through ANY chapter of the game with "under-leveled gimpy characters" because XP scales to catch those characters up. What you are describing doesn't happen.

In fact, I think that the problem is that what you think of as the the game making you use "under-leveled gimpy characters" is actually becuase your permanent characters are OVER-LEVELED, incorrectly making the weaker ones seem wimpy.

c) In regards to the exp scaling point - yes that, that mechanic exists, but it's kind of a moot point, because:

1) I don't want my characters to be gimpy while they are trying to scale.

Trash mobs are trash, and you always have two locked characters who will definitely be scaled properly thanks to them getting all the XP. Use the permanent characters to kill the TRASH MOBS.

2) most trash mobs give barely any exp, so I'm presuming 'scaling' doesn't work when I was only going to receive 1 or 2 exp points for winning a battle anyway.

If you are getting only 1-2 XP, that means you are overleveled. Enemies you are not overlevelled against give more XP.

3) exp scaling stops working if you are above the level that the game decides you are "supposed to be" in a certain zone. For all I know, I've already over-leveled the two main characters (and many of the others), way past what is "supposed to be" the number that the game decides they "should be" at for all the zones in level 8. That might have happened by way of me needing to use those characters to farm Shining Poms excessively in Chapter 8, since as aforementioned, they are mandatory and I can't kick them out of the party.

That's not XP scaling stopping working, it's working perfectly. 1 XP a battle means it'll take a long time to reach another level, which means you slow down gaining levels drastically, and so stop you from getting overlevelled..

d) In addition to the aforementioned reasons, I also have to farm Shining Poms for the sepiths, since trash mobs hardly give any, and also don't give the right varieties. I especially need to farm Shining Poms for sepiths since opening the new third slots for everyone, on all of their quartzes, are really expensive, and so are level 4 quartzes, and there's also the fact that Olivier randomly left my party and I presume stole all of the expensive level 4 quartzes that I had bought & equipped on him immediately prior to that.

This at least is a reasonable reason to farm, although I'm almost guaranteed that you're probably farming too much. But it's not the worst idea.

Don't really worry about Olivier and the allegedly missing quartz.

[Serval]

butterbattle22
I've never actually seen other threads so I might have took it a bit too serious =) Now I get your point entirely.

[butterbattle22]

*sigh* Well, I have more time now. I guess I'll address it anyways.

Originally posted by Dragon:

I disagree that it's not something I'm forced to do. At the very least, it's coercively forced upon me by way of how the game is designed in various ways, even if I'm not outright forced to do it.

How do I put this? War is peace? Freedom is slavery?

Dragon, what you're describing is an example of the game trying to force you NOT to do something. The reason it's frustrating is because it's very time consuming, and the game provides no shortcuts for it. The poms are placed near the end of the Dungeon, and you have to walk all the way back to the entrance and change characters. There's no shortcuts because they didn't expect people to do this. They expect the average player to maybe kill one mob of poms when they run into it.

And, regardless of how you may FEEL about it, objectively, you do not need to do this. And, 'need' as in this is not required for you to win subsequent battles or progress through the game or even get resources that you wouldn't otherwise be able to get.

So:

1) It's very time consuming.
2) The game maker didn't want or expect anyone to do this.
3) It's unnecessary.

Yeah, that's the game trying to force you to NOT do something.

a) I don't know when I'm going to encounter Shining Poms again in Chapter 8.

We've already explained this. I refuse to argue in circles.

b) when I looked up the location of them in Chapter 8, it was a place I've never been to before. For all I know, that could be located inside, or just before, the final dungeon of the game ... in which case, I might have to go through Chapter 8 with under-leveled gimpy characters. And I don't want to look up where that location is because in order to do that, I'd have to spoil the game for myself.

We've already explained this. It's literally impossible for you to go through any entire chapter with gimpy characters. The first couple mobs or first scripted fight will boost your level. You don't have to look up anything. Just play the frickin game.

1) I don't want my characters to be gimpy while they are trying to scale.

Already covered this.

2) most trash mobs give barely any exp, so I'm presuming 'scaling' doesn't work when I was only going to receive 1 or 2 exp points for winning a battle anyway.

Already covered this. If mobs only give you 1 or 2 exp, you're already overleveled.

d) In addition to the aforementioned reasons, I also have to farm Shining Poms for the sepiths, since trash mobs hardly give any, and also don't give the right varieties. I especially need to farm Shining Poms for sepiths since opening the new third slots for everyone, on all of their quartzes, are really expensive, and so are level 4 quartzes

Haven't covered this as much, but it's a similar deal. You don't need all the slots to be opened or all of the highest quartz that early. If you've grinded half as much as I think you have, you're already drastically overfarmed on sepith. Even people that intentionally skip quests and dodge enemies frequently will still be able to max out pretty much everything in the last chapter.

Basically, all you're doing is farming endlessly while refusing to move on to the next area because you're paranoid about being strong enough and/or having enough resources. We could apply this to literally almost any RPG or even other genres.

[Kyle G]

Oh yeah it was a drag having to walk from the air ship to the shining pom locations, to the tower stations where you had to buy the highest level quartz, then all the way back to the airship if you wanted to read more new dialogue of the Arseille crew or just to change party members, over and over again. Yeah I agree the final dungeon wasn't the best designed. Plus, the music was bland for something that is supposed to be the climax. Especially considering how awesome FC's final dungeon music was.

[Serval]

I found music of the town itself extremely appropriate for the idea of "flying city". Soothing and relaxing, it gave me joy every time I got upstairs from the tunnels. Tunnels were okay (if you don't listen to it all the time that is), and the Pillar was enjoyable. Not epic, but beautiful.

As for the design. Turbo mode and cloak quartz provided the needed comfort for travels =)

[Berahlen]

My first time through SC, I kept everyone decently even by just bringing them along on whatever I was doing, still avoided or ran from most enemies, and they all stayed decent level. FFS, I brought Tita up against endgame bosses after leaving her out for an entire chapter, and I still didn't have to grind. If you're getting 1-2 XP for things, you're long past the point you can obliterate them in just as many turns with zero chance of failure if you stop mashing the Attack button and expect things to turn out well. Trails rewards aggression in a way that often throws people at the beginning because it is legitimately unusual for the genre -- but one would hope after almost two full games you've recognized the pattern.

You don't have to open everyone's third slot. You don't even have to open their second slots. Not even for achievements. If you got far enough to know a third slot exists at all, you're long past all of the spots where grinding of any sort might have been remotely useful even on the hardest difficulty.

I agree this is one of Dragon's more reasonable whine threads. That isn't saying much. My God, man, why are you still playing a series you seem to despise so much? The game isn't flawless and no game is going to be for everyone and both of those things are OK, but you've spent the last month and a half just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nonstop about the most menial, nonsensical things -- not just on this game, but almost every single other one by the same company -- and often completely missing actual criticisms that could be leveled.

Originally posted by butterbattle22:

Basically, all you're doing is farming endlessly while refusing to move on to the next area because you're paranoid about being strong enough and/or having enough resources. We could apply this to literally almost any RPG or even other genres.