Genre discussion.

[jrubz]

I honestly think this game has made me board a better franchise. While MH is a solid game, this game has seemed to make me hate MH over just what you can actually do.

I just tried to play MH3 U again, and I felt like a sluggish old man who could never deal damage. While this felt exilarating for a while, it got boring. While the game forces you to commit to certain attacks, it forced you to take damage by just simply entering the fight.

While Toukiden has it's share of unforgiving moments (such as high damage spin attacks that have basically no tell or warning), I honestly feel toukiden makes me feel that it's my fault when I get hit.

I also appreciate the revival mechanic of this game. The number of times it's easy to die to a combo in MH, in this game, it's fair, cause your teammates can redeem mistakes you make.

If you get my point now, here are at least some things I wish Toukiden would do in the future to make an even better hunting game
(note this is ignoring port issues)

gameplay
-give monsters clear tells, or balenced the damage to suit
-more ways to get stamina back for high consumption weapons
-rebalencing every weapon so each deals an even DPS (I'm looking at rifles...)
-make the amount of damage your doing clear (having VERY large impacts to indicate ideal damage, and small nicks to indicate that the zone your attacking isn't the ideal location to hit.
-even more mitama skill varieties (I love the use of skills over items, that's what makes this game simple, however, I would enjoy seeing more spells you could activate)
-rebalencing of mitamas (attack mitamas have too much over others, they can restore their own health and stamina so easily, while most other's are crippled and need augmentation to really make as much of a difference
-add slots to armor (while I love the fact that this game has simpler armor, I would love to see the option of adding even more skills by attaching mitama to armor
-(hard to coordinate, but) a possible story line for multiplayer, or short stories to give more interaction with the in game world
-(it's a dream, but) allow up to 6 players rather than just 4 (6 would make a hunt even more dynamic and team oriented, Oni would need to scale to suit the extra pummeling, but it would make it so much more fun. 8 would be a bit to much though)


structure development
-refine online gameplay (this isn't hard to program or develop, it just needs the right dev on the job to make it seamless and more interactive)
-add keyboard typing support (words hurt, but it hurts more not being able to say what I need to to total strangers, no keyboard makes interactions impersonal)
fix online glitches, but allow for multi united destroyers (the multi united destroyer triggering is currently a programming error, however, this really comes off as a feature, as it really then is a united destroyer, not a "give the one dude who did the most damage a free damage boost" attack)

I know devs don't read these things, however, these kinda things are what I'm looking for in these kinda games.


What are your thoughts?

[JKthree]

Time for my wall of text!

After coming back from Final Fantasy Explorers, i feel grateful for toukiden. While FFEx has some great concepts it reminded me of all the terrible game mechanics devs do in the hunting genre, whereas TK said "**** it lets ignore all that stuff and make the game fun instead".

Things FFEx did better that TK should take note of for future Toukidens
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The ability to upgrade any weapon or armor to endgame tier.
In Toukiden every endgame player is wearing either the Ultimate or Outcast Ninja set (and rarely the Anamalos or Shiranui sets). Being able to play fasionista or using any weapon they want without elitists judging you for not using a Divine Fox weapon would make the community a better place. (especially that awesome DLC or cross-promotion game weapon or armor you liked to wear but had crap stats)

Being able strenghten your attacks easily.
Lots of people of Toukiden especially Swords and Rifles went for the abilities that made certain attacks better, Gouge Master, Tempered Blade, Mitama Pulse etc. so they'd always cling to these very few certain mitama like Date Masamune. It was very easy to customize your attacks with better abilities in FFEx (and many different ways as well like adding multiple ailments or elements on one attack)

Damage numbers
You said it yourself in toukiden its hard to tell what build or attack on a body part is working and what is not. (unfortunatly figuring out stuff like this in FFEx is harder even with damage numbers due to other factors adding and subtracting to the damage)

Aggro notification
In FFEx a red circle outline will appear under the character the boss is targetting, something like this would be great on Toukiden on some of the more annoying projectile attacks

Death Penalty takes 5m off of your time limit instead of a shared life limit.
Online Scenarios in toukiden of 3-4 human players where the entire team was wiped at the same time, while very rare, was an instant mission fail. FFEx still gave you a chance to succeed (though this would be bad in strict time limit missions)

Repeatable farming subquests.
In FFEx there was a repeatable quest you can do for any boss where killing it 3 times gave some of its parts (and could be save-scummed to get that rare material you need for that weapon, FFEx really needed too because they don't drop parts unless you are near maxed on gear) Something like that would've been a godsend for Toukiden, especially on Aurogrinder farming.

Difficulty modifiers you can add at will.
I'm not the hardcore type so you won't see me play online for the instant kill Special Large oni missions like Demented Daruma or 70+round ultimate infinite missions, but being able to do this besides whenever you want would be a welcome addition for the Hardcore demon slayers (and maybe in other ways too like the attack speed modified oni from the DLC missions, i'd get into that)



Big no no's FFEx did
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Unavoidable attacks. This was the killer for me, this isn't like those near instant spin attacks Toukiden got. This is "haha my lock-on is unavoidable for this charging attack, running does nothing, all you can do is sit there and pray the attack misses". It made me miss how everything in toukiden was dodgeable with the right timing and more skill based than luck

Infamous examples
- Diablos' Dark Messenger pulls you in the second he charges it, you can barely outrun the pull but its impossible to break free from it unless you were already far away being ranged, the attack when fired is outrunnable, still continues to pull you and other distant players to it if it missed you and constantly hurts you down to 1HP (it doesn't kill, but the flinching makes it impossible to act or heal) where diablos or his clone may decide to finish you off.

- Shiva has an instant leg sweep where she may or may not to decide to follow up with a shooting ice tornado that does constant damage and sends you far back, it either kills you or leaves you frozen to be finished off. Staying even a slight distance and she locks onto you with Diamond Dust which is a big ice kamehamaha which is unavoidable instant death unless up close. Endgame missions have you fighting 2 of her at the same time

- Fenrir's attacks have a chance of paralysis, his signature move he lunges far back and forth around a set area, if you are paralyzed once you are screwed and to add the middle finger he can clone himself twice meaning fighting 3 at the same time.

- Bahamut's Megaflare also has an unrunnable set damage gravity pull, but it can kill and his mutant variant, the pull affects the entire area which will kill you if you are melee (can't get far away enough in time unless you predict he'll use and stayed a distance ahead of time). He also has a really annoying possibly bugged thing were he may decide to walk to you faster than normal (outrunning you and it also hurts and may trip you to the ground So he may literally walk all over you to death). Bahamut and Phoenix also have a long distance glide attack which may sometimes be unavoidable but never fatal

- mutant Leviathan's Tidal wave hits the entire area, hits several times, and afterwards summons 3 pink flans that rush to him and fully heal him which ruins all the damage you did if you died from the tidal wave. Melee players may have a chance at survival if they stay at the eye where the damage is less (its like a hurricane) but either way you need a ton of water resistance to survive. regular leviathan has Tsunami which has a long time and is weak along with high safe spots to avoid the attack but the zone is very big and you can't hit him there (but of course he can hit you if he decides to attack when the tsunami hits) and of course getting hit by the tsunami sends you to the start of this large zone.

- Alexander's Divine Judgement hits you no matter how far away unless you hide under his body, ranged characters usually cant make it to his body in time and die.

- Gilgamesh's Whirls Slash moves towards you, faster than you can run and is damage is dependant on the weapon he wields , if he has excalibur and you're melee or even remotely close and you're dead

- Omega paralyzes everyone in front of him before charging hiz wide arc lazor, with him so easily able to lock on to a character, is where the "sit there and pray it misses" really shows when he freezes you near the line of fire

There may be a secret method or 2 by certain classes to avoid one of the unavoidables (like reflect working on Dark Messenger and Megaflare) but for the others its death, and of course as a middle finger there are missions like toukiden where you have to kill more than one "different strategy type" boss.

Unreadable attacks unless locked on with a bad lock on system
Locking on makes enemies have a window appear with the attack they are doing in classic FF fashion, don't lock on and some attacks are impossible to read from its similiar ones or it'll too late to avoid it when you could. To make things more annoying the lock on can and will mess up on you such as delocking when a boss does a certain attack or losing the lock on and not realizing it like tall enemies or high flyers or having to constantly cycle the lock on to target the main body 3 times longer than it should even if it only has 2-3 parts (say if a target only has lock ons to 3 parts it can take pressing left/right 6 times to target the body a 2nd lock on try make only need 1 press). Sometimes ranged troll players disable locking on to screw with the melee players and hilariously die with them because they can't read the attacks

Ridiculously unbalanced classes.
In Toukiden I though everything was well balanced even Rifles with the right bullets can rival good DPS and ATK had its strengths and flaws but FFEx...dear god, there's no rolling/sidestep and ranged characters have no way to protect themselves except for a few magic spells (all of which have around 30-60 second cooldown). Swordsman can have a block skill that negates almost every attack (even some of the deadly unavoidables like Dark Messenger and Megaflare, but not all like Tidal Wave or Zantetusken, to somewhat balance them they are weak damagers but its still EZ mode for them), while other classes that can block only negate 50% and by brilliant game developer logic the block fails if the damage is too strong to make the character flinch, which is almost all of their attacks. Almost everyone can heal so supporters like White or Blue Mages are almost completely useless. Spear wielders have attacks with around 3+ whole seconds of invincibilty, yet Dragoon's infamous Jump only has i-frames for the first half second. (and like swords block those i-frame attacks can only stop some of the unavoidables, oh and of course "balancing" Spears/Dragoon's are one of the highest Damagers, the ones that beat in DPS either can't heal well or total glass cannons, Dragoons are everywhere online)

Online rank determined by playtime not player progress.
So that noob who decided to grind forever at the beginning can have a higher number than you.

AI of computer helpers are dumb as ****.
People saying Toukiden's AI is too good should be greatful, FFEx's can stand there and do nothing for 10+ seconds and then blindly charge and attack nonstop until they die within 30 seconds. And they have no pathfinding either so if there was a wall between them and the enemy on terrain maps they'd hug it all day.

Laughably bad online system.
I don't think i've ever seen a worse system on current gen style games.
-Lobbies are still open after the players left for the mission,
-HP is scaled based on the number of players which even though they already had low HP to begin with is bad for noobies with bad damage looking for online matches.
-You can't tell the other players progress unless you fully remembered the chapter names order #
-Also some quests are unlocked by odd conditions like having a certain # of equipment made so you won't know if that player has that mission unlocked unless they stumble through the chat log and find something close to explaining they can't do it.
-The difficulty modifiers aren't visible on the other players' quest screen without pressing the X button, so its easily missible when a game changing setting is on and you don't find out until its too late.
-And a big baffle for me, you can customize your chat (can't when in online lobby) but you can't customize your lobby information like comments except for really bad preset text (rough examples: "I'm a noob come help me" or "Let's have fun!")

Bad stats understanding for the hardcore
With the exception of a few abiltiies in Toukiden like Devastation or how much SkillName+(Rage etc) added . Everything else was easy to figure out, FFEx has had debates on what stacks and what doesn't because it was to hard to tell what worked or not due to other factors adding to damage and in the end it came down with having a certain weapon setup (which FYI weapon trees for each weapon in FFEx are all different, so say a sword tree might not have a high critical rate weapon where an axe has 1).

Long routes to the boss.
At first when playing the expansion part of Kiwami i kind of missed running around the map and searching for the boss after all the missions did that, but after playing FFEx i take that back. As other people said, in FFEx it takes more than triple the time to find/get to the boss than it is to kill it, farming them can be a total pain sometimes especially when those repeatable subquests are on cooldown.

tl:dr version: FFEx has a few fun moments and clever ideas but in the end, They tried turning MH into a crappier version of their MMOs

While i have vague memories of God Eater Burst i have high hopes that Ressurection and 2 won't have any major issues or annoyances either when it hits Steam and Playstation

[jrubz]

Originally posted by JKthree:

While i have vague memories of God Eater Burst i have high hopes that Ressurection and 2 won't have any major issues or annoyances either when it hits Steam and Playstation

That was an enjoyable read. (It let's me know what not to buy). It's interesting hearing from that game. I haven't heard of it, but I can understand the aspects you mention (to the point of feeling the frustration here and now).

In general I just love how Toukiden makes the gameplay as smooth as possible. It still has a ways to go as a genre, as it needs more flagship monsters (the Snowflame is a great design, but not enough is like it). The simple things like running to sheath though? That honestly blew my mind when I was learning the game. Running to sheath made it so easy to manuver, and there's hardly a chance I'll mess it up.