Why are FF minigames so tedious?

[SenMithrarin85]

I thought FF10's were bad. FF9 so far has had jumprope which I had to give up on. The chocbo hot and cold which is only just about berable with the speed booster (F1), the card game which I cannot make heads or tails of and now racing a fat kid that's giving me arthritis!

[gandhi_the_peacemaker]

For what it's worth, most of the minigames can be ignored entirely without any ill effect on the overall game. Only Chocobo Hot and Cold has rewards that you'll find worth your while.

The F1 speedup function is doubly advantageous as it doesn't affect the clock, so you'll move and dig faster and still have a full 30/60 seconds to dig.

Apparently the jump rope game is easier with a mouse. Maybe the same is true for Hippaul racing.

[Vladislak]

I don't mind Chocobo Hot and Cold in small doses. And I actually found that I liked the card game once I understood the mechanics behind it.

As for the other two, they're so insignificant that I almost always just ignore them.

[Eduvizm]

Originally posted by Vladislak:

I don't mind Chocobo Hot and Cold in small doses. And I actually found that I liked the card game once I understood the mechanics behind it.

As for the other two, they're so insignificant that I almost always just ignore them.

How can anyone enjoy tetra master, seriously! I understand the mechanics but its just too RNG.. actually feels like its not even that RNG for me since for some reason my opponent wins like 70-80% of card battles even with 0x00 stats. So frustrating.

[Vladislak]

Originally posted by Eduvizm:

How can anyone enjoy tetra master, seriously! I understand the mechanics but its just too RNG.. actually feels like its not even that RNG for me since for some reason my opponent wins like 70-80% of card battles even with 0x00 stats. So frustrating.

It does have some RNG, but with proper strategy and understanding of the mechanics you can minimize your losses.

There's always going to be some degree of randomness, but to be honest that's sort of like real card games. Heck you could argue that many real card games are MORE random since many of them give you a random hand of cards instead of letting you choose your cards. Many real life card games randomly give you severe handicaps or outright make you lose due to the luck of the draw.

[gandhi_the_peacemaker]

Originally posted by Vladislak:

There's always going to be some degree of randomness, but to be honest that's sort of like real card games. Heck you could argue that many real card games are MORE random since many of them give you a random hand of cards instead of letting you choose your cards. Many real life card games randomly give you severe handicaps or outright make you lose due to the luck of the draw.

That's stretching for comparisons. Real life cards don't randomize the strength of the cards (and certainly not doubly so) AND their versatility AND the hidden subtracted number AND the layout of the gameplay area.

I've said it before, but a mod for this game that makes the arrows fixed per card type and eliminates the randomness (so that, like Triple Triad, a 1 will ALWAYS defeat a 0) would make the game much more tolerable than it is now.

[IHNN]

Remove the randomness and you have a game that you can win every time with the exact same strategy, and that's just not very interesting.

Fixed arrows- I wouldn't like fixed arrow patterns, but I wouldn't mind restricting the amount of arrows possible on a card. Say, Goblins will always have 2-4 arrows, Alexandria 5-8, and so on.
Fixed card power- again, I like how the cards you use get stronger as you use them. Removing the randomness would make certain cards either impossible to stop on offense, or impossible to stop on defense. Mostly the first one- recall that A type cards will attack the lowest value on the opposing card, and very, very few cards have a high stat in all 3- and none can reach 9+ in all 3.

Real life cards don't randomize because they can't randomize, but many other games do use, say, dice to get a random result for two things of different strength. Yes, one side is more likely to win, but it's not certain, and that forces adaptability in strategy. You can point to something like Go or Chess for good games without randomness, but then what about Backgammon or Poker?

Basically- Tetra Master breaks completely if you remove random battle results. It's a more complex game than Triple Triad and honestly not really very comparable. It sounds like you want the game to be something it's not.

Finally, I've played quite a bit of Tetra Master to get one of every card in a speedrun setting a few times. I win well over 90% of games regardless of opponent- the trick is to always have a back-up plan and never rely on any one card battle. Doesn't mean you'll always win, and I'll agree that it's annoying to lose by losing every card battle, but the opposite happens sometimes, too, where the AI attacks and should win the battle but doesn't. The RNG is fair, it just doesn't feel that way because it's harder to notice when it breaks your way. I always just save before playing games, anyway, to reset if I lose.

[Vladislak]

Originally posted by gandhi the peacemaker:

Originally posted by Vladislak:

There's always going to be some degree of randomness, but to be honest that's sort of like real card games. Heck you could argue that many real card games are MORE random since many of them give you a random hand of cards instead of letting you choose your cards. Many real life card games randomly give you severe handicaps or outright make you lose due to the luck of the draw.

That's stretching for comparisons. Real life cards don't randomize the strength of the cards (and certainly not doubly so) AND their versatility AND the hidden subtracted number AND the layout of the gameplay area.

I don't think it's stretching at all. They don't randomize the strength of the cards in real life, but they often completely randomize what cards you get, which is arguably MUCH worse. Imagine if they did that in Tetra Master or Triple Triad, it would be far more frustrating losing your cards due to some randomly assigned hand. (EDIT: My mistake, I forgot that they DO do that for Triple Triad, but my point about it being terrible if they did it for Tetra Master still stands)

At least with Tetra Master you know what you have available to you, there's a bit of randomness with it's reliability but you take that into account and build a strategy on it. After all, the enemy has that same RNG you do. And honestly I don't think the randomness varies by as much as some people say it does, yes a statistically weaker card has a chance of beating a tougher one, but it's not completely random as the tougher one is still much more likely to win.

And I don't mind the varying arrow and layout changes at all, the cards you get don't change their arrows once you get them so there's really no RNG introduced there in them middle of the game. It also encourages careful choice of cards. The layout changes also allow for some entertaining strategy.

[gandhi_the_peacemaker]

Originally posted by IHNN:

Fixed arrows- I wouldn't like fixed arrow patterns, but I wouldn't mind restricting the amount of arrows possible on a card. Say, Goblins will always have 2-4 arrows, Alexandria 5-8, and so on.

I wouldn't mind this, either, whether the arrows are randomly generated or not.

Fixed card power- again, I like how the cards you use get stronger as you use them. Removing the randomness would make certain cards either impossible to stop on offense, or impossible to stop on defense. Mostly the first one- recall that A type cards will attack the lowest value on the opposing card, and very, very few cards have a high stat in all 3- and none can reach 9+ in all 3.

I don't mind cards getting stronger, but that doesn't really have anything to do with the RNG. The leveling up is based on individual cards' own internal points system, which is perfectly fine by me. (The leveling system could use some tweaking of its own, but it's more well-designed than not.)

My cheated-in FAFF card SHOULD defeat a 0P01 and handily at that, not get to within a single digit of losing the battle (or indeed losing the battle outright). It's the card game equivalent of your maxed-out character dealing 1 HP of damage while your level 1 starting enemy hits you for 9999.

That's not to say that they couldn't keep elements of randomness. As you say,

many other games do use, say, dice to get a random result for two things of different strength. Yes, one side is more likely to win, but it's not certain, and that forces adaptability in strategy.

This is certainly true, and if Tetra Master had used randomness the way other games (like Risk, for instance) did, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But the mechanics it does have are both a) poorly designed, and b) poorly explained.

It sounds like you want the game to be something it's not.

Well... yes, you're right. Because it's a bad game and I don't have fun playing it, despite having a 10:1:1 win/lose/tie ratio.

EDIT:

Originally posted by Vladislak:

Imagine if they did that in Tetra Master or Triple Triad, it would be far more frustrating losing your cards due to some randomly assigned hand.

They do do that in Triple Triad, and it's one of the rules players do their damnedest to eliminate.

[CamelSAMA!]

did hippaul in 15 minutes, chocobo hot and cold can be completely done in half an hour. how is that tedious? because they didn't put in a bunch of assist and make a game ♥♥♥♥♥♥ easy? welcome to actual gaming dude, where it offers a challenge instead of just beng an interactive movie

[CamelSAMA!]

and tetra master is better even if you'd just look at how easy you can start it, triple triads, try ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ starting that, you get weak ass cards to start with, and every opponent you can find has way way stronger cards. never invested much time in it in ff8. so many missable cards which you can only get by reloading saves contantly hoping this time the enemy uses a worse tactic or uses worse cards. but then again i'm glad you guys aren't praising the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ff7 was.

[Vladislak]

Originally posted by gandhi the peacemaker:

Originally posted by Vladislak:

Imagine if they did that in Tetra Master or Triple Triad, it would be far more frustrating losing your cards due to some randomly assigned hand.

They do do that in Triple Triad, and it's one of the rules players do their damnedest to eliminate.

*facepalm* My bad, I'm not sure where my head was at. It's admittedly been a while since I played Triple Triad. But you get my point, it would be awful if they did that for Tetra Master.

[IHNN]

Originally posted by gandhi the peacemaker:

I don't mind cards getting stronger, but that doesn't really have anything to do with the RNG.

But the mechanics it does have are both a) poorly designed, and b) poorly explained.

Well... yes, you're right. Because it's a bad game and I don't have fun playing it,

Thanks for a reasonable response!

Anyway, the stat that gains a point after playing a game actually is randomly determined, and whether a card changes type to X or A is also random (1/64 and 1/128 on winning a card battle, respectively). I will concur that the mechanics are very poorly explained in-game, but I don't think they're badly designed. I like playing Tetra Master, and definitely get that most people don't- but thankfully, it's largely ignorable. The rules are poorly explained, I think, to make it rewarding to learn them through playing. For most, this has the opposite effect, though.

[gandhi_the_peacemaker]

Originally posted by IHNN:

Thanks for a reasonable response!

Thanks right back. At the end of the day, it's all a matter of opinion. And I'll admit, knowing the rules of the game now, I get much less frustrated with it than I did years ago.

Anyway, the stat that gains a point after playing a game actually is randomly determined, and whether a card changes type to X or A is also random (1/64 and 1/128 on winning a card battle, respectively).

Yeah, that's what I was referring to when I said that "the points system could use some tweaking of its own," but I couldn't word good at the time. I don't mind RNG there so much, since although the specific stat increased is random, there WILL always be a stat increase (with caveats). It's a consistent +1, +1, +1, and a very direct reward system: you win a card game, you get a stat boost.

[IHNN]

At the end of a game, win, draw or loss, a stat is selected for each card to gain 1 point. If the stat selected is already maxed, then no gain is made for that card after that game.

[solidap]

They're still not as bad as FFX. Seems like they flat out just did not care about designing something remtoely fun for FFX minigames.

I think Hot And Cold is pretty fun. The card game is a little nonsensical (not as well designed as FF8s) but it's still a game. Everything in FFX aside from Blitzaball is just tedious busy work garbage