@Agriculture ...What? The game literally tells you how to switch targets in a tutorial. Even then you could just press left on the D pad it would've shown you how to target enemies.
As for the fishing minigame which I believe you're referring to salvaging which isn't hard to comprehend. Even if you miss the QTE the first time, the location of that specific salvage point never changes allowing you to learn it.
You are miss-remembering. In order to start a fight in Xeno 2, you have to first draw your weapon, then release the draw weapon button and then press the attack button. I didn't release the draw button (probably because I am used to playing DMC where you keep holding the targeting button). Either way the game is convoluted and while you might say "it's not for you" what matters if the mainstream. Xeno 2 is almost a 2018 Switch game (it came out dec 2017) and while no one would expect it to sell as well as Breath of the Wild, the difference is over 7 times less.
@Agriculture Sorry that the game doesn't "organically" blend perfectly together with the mechanisms just to explain one simple thing for you. We're talking about a simple button press here. It's inevitable to get a wall of text with a complicated game like xenoblade, other JRPGs do this as well. Your examples come from simpler games that doesn't relate to the genre of xenoblade.
@Agriculture Sorry that the game doesn't "organically" blend perfectly together with the mechanisms just to explain one simple thing for you. We're talking about a simple button press here. It's inevitable to get a wall of text with a complicated game like xenoblade, other JRPGs do this as well. Your examples come from simpler games that doesn't relate to the genre of xenoblade.
The more dangerous enemies in Xeno2 have numbers attached to them. You walk into an area and you see lv. 50 on a mundane looking enemy and that's how you know it's dangerous. Breath of the Wild has bokoblins that are weak, moblins in the middle and lynels as dangerous foes. Think about that, the design from the ground up tells the player what is going on.
Xeno2 isn't well crafted enough for mainstream success. Nothing about the design is intuitive, or follow any coherent structure. This was going to be the big 2018 RPG for the Switch. Again, I don't think 2018 is a disappointment for the Switch, but unless they release better designed games in 2019 it will start to become a problem.
@Agriculture You are miss remembering as well. There is no attack button, only a button to draw out your weapon which auto attacks. There are however arts and specials you can do with your weapon. As for starting battles there are multiple ways to do so; you can throw a rock at an enemy by pressing down on the d pad (you still have to draw out your weapon to attack back mind you), attacking it with an auto attack or art, and lastly the enemy can start a battle yourself if it sees you and you aggro it, this is typical for higher level monsters and unique monsters which attack you no matter the level.
Your example you typed proves my point - you aren't familiar with the game. You mistook the button the press because you were playing a game you were used to playing and the further you played it you realized you didn't like it. That's fine, that just means the game isn't for you.
The mainstream doesn't matter. The game isn't targetted for the mainstream unlike Mario Odyssey or Botw. JRPGs have always been niche. Persona 5 an even more highly acclaimed JRPG sold only around 2 million.
Despite it's niche genre, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 sold well, in fact it's the best selling game in the series.
@Agriculture Zelda isn't an RPG so that comparison is useless. Levels are everything in RPGs.
Again, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 isn't targeted towards the mainstream audience like Botw. Just because the game is too complicated for you doesn't mean it's designed poorly.
It was already the big RPG for the Switch, and it sold well.
@Agriculture Zelda isn't an RPG so that comparison is useless. Levels are everything in RPGs.
Again, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 isn't targeted towards the mainstream audience like Botw. Just because the game is too complicated for you doesn't mean it's designed poorly.
It was already the big RPG for the Switch, and it sold well.
Game design is game design, it doesn't matter what genre Botw is, it has great game design throughout. And RPG doesn't really mean the same thing today when games like Skyrim and Fallout 4 have been released, an RPG can be anything, it doesn't need to be a convoluted mess to qualify. And yes, if a game relies on walls of text to explain how to use it, then it does mean it's poorly designed.
And yes, if a game relies on walls of text to explain how to use it, then it does mean it's poorly designed.
No, that just means it has a poorly designed tutorial. For example, Monster Hunter games (especially the older ones) give you about ten tiny text boxes to explain the controls and that's about it, leading to many new players being lost and having absolutely no idea what to make of the game and giving up. That doesn't mean the game is bad, it just means the tutorial is bad.
The level design should be part of the learning experience. Like in Axiom Verge where you get a new item and is immediately presented with an obstacle that requires the use of said item.
@Agriculture Zelda isn't an RPG so that comparison is useless. Levels are everything in RPGs.
Again, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 isn't targeted towards the mainstream audience like Botw. Just because the game is too complicated for you doesn't mean it's designed poorly.
It was already the big RPG for the Switch, and it sold well.
Game design is game design, it doesn't matter what genre Botw is, it has great game design throughout. And RPG doesn't really mean the same thing today when games like Skyrim and Fallout 4 have been released, an RPG can be anything, it doesn't need to be a convoluted mess to qualify. And yes, if a game relies on walls of text to explain how to use it, then it does mean it's poorly designed.
The game design goals of an RPG are very different then the game design goals of an action game or survival game. To use Breath of the Wild as an example, enemies need to always provide a challenge while being a fair challenge at any given point. You can defeat any enemy in Breath of the Wild at any point in the game, is you're good enough at the game. The player progresses by gathering stronger equipment, gaining more health/stamina, and becoming a more skilled player. When you confront Ganon your skill as a player is naturally higher then it was when you first started the game.
This is true of every action game. By the time you manage to complete Dark Souls or Ninja Gaiden (any of the original NES games or the first xbox one) you have become a far better player then you were when you first started out. This happens in Bayonetta and Devil May Cry as well. Thus as you progress through an Action game enemies have to become more difficult to defeat so that you're still being challenged. BotW does this by introducing stronger enemy varients when you've achieved certain amounts of hearts/stamina.
In a survival game the challenge comes from resource management. Depending the sub-genre enemies may or may not get progressively more dangerous. But resource availability is the main game challenge the player faces. IZombie for example never really introduces any enemy variants that are that much more dangerous then anything else in the game. But resources are scarce. If you engage enemies in melee, you risk getting bitten (instant character death) and potentially losing all the scavenged equipment (if you die again before reclaiming the stuff). At the same time, your ammunition for ranged weapons is very limited, so you constantly have to weigh your options.
Both of those genres can (and often do) tell a story, but their main focus is on the core game play. An RPG on the other hand wants to tell you a story first and foremost. Game play mechanics are important, but they are there to support the story rather then as the main reason for the game existing. This is especially true with a JRPG. While character growth is an important part of these games (as is acquiring better gear), this is all in service of being able to progress the story. Getting stronger isn't the goal of the game at all. In fact some JRPGs are actually easier if you don't do a lot of level grinding. Final Fantasy 8 among them.
TL:DR version: "Good game design" depends entirely on what genre of game you're making. Good game design for a Puzzle Platformer is different then from an Action, Survival, or RPG. An Action RPG will have different criteria for good game design then a JRPG.
TL:DR version: "Good game design" depends entirely on what genre of game you're making. Good game design for a Puzzle Platformer is different then from an Action, Survival, or RPG. An Action RPG will have different criteria for good game design then a JRPG.
It's slightly different depending on genre of course, but all the examples I've brought up are universal. In FFX a Marlboro looks like a tough fight and it is, the same is true for Lynels in botw. And a game that introduces a new mechanical can always rely on letting the player use it to move on in the game, it doesn't matter if it's a puzzle game like Portal, or an action game. It's like the game version of "show, don't tell".
TL:DR version: "Good game design" depends entirely on what genre of game you're making. Good game design for a Puzzle Platformer is different then from an Action, Survival, or RPG. An Action RPG will have different criteria for good game design then a JRPG.
It's slightly different depending on genre of course, but all the examples I've brought up are universal. In FFX a Marlboro looks like a tough fight and it is, the same is true for Lynels in botw. And a game that introduces a new mechanical can always rely on letting the player use it to move on in the game, it doesn't matter if it's a puzzle game like Portal, or an action game. It's like the game version of "show, don't tell".
Actually, a Marlboro isn't that tough of an enemy in FFX. You encounter a boss version very early in the game, and it's not a particularly hard fight. Annoying maybe, but not hard. The normal enemy versions are no tougher. In fact, many "strong" looking enemies in the Final Fantasy series are actually fairly weak, while others that look pathetically easy (tonberry and cactaur) are extremely difficult fights that can easily cause a party wipe.
TBH Agriculture is not 100% wrong, there are things about XC2 that are simply atrocious design by almost any standard, and they were negatively mentioned in almost every review of the game.
The most annoying example that springs to mind is the fact that there is literally no in-game help, and all of these concepts you're discussing here are mentioned ONCE in the game. This is not a simple two-button sidescroller, it's an extremely complicated game. Fifteen years ago this game would have come with an 80-page manual. The modern equivalent of that is a Help section, which almost every mid-tier game includes. At the very least, the game should save tutorials for you to replay. Nintendo's AAA RPG should not force you to go online to look up game concepts that are central to beating the game. You can say that just means the tutorial is bad but the game is well designed, but the fact is the tutorial is part of the game. In fact the tutorials are still coming 20-25 hours into the game.
Where I disagree with Agriculture is the idea that being too complicated for mainstream success automatically makes the game bad. There's nothing wrong with a game aiming for more of a niche audience, being complicated and having multiple systems to learn.
Some of the greatest games use being complicated as a selling point. Hearts of Iron and Europa Universalis come to mind immediately, but even relatively mainstream titles like Civilization and GalCiv have dedicated audiences that adore them because they are complicated. And they're never going to sell as much as Call of Duty, but that doesn't make them bad games.
(For the record, I think XC2 is a pretty good game when all is said and done. I'm not a superfan, but I'm 45 hours in and still having fun, and almost definitely buying the expansion next month.)
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@ReaderRagfish Yeah they somehow forgot to let you review tutorial. And none of their updates addressed that part... I don't know how they somehow managed to did it while pretty much streamlining everything.
It's so... weird...
Nonetheless I must agree that XC2 has some atrocious game designs on some part, while on other parts it's really cool personally. Can't wait for the expansion to drop~ (Hopefully I finish Octopath before it)
@Agriculture No the genre makes a major difference in this factor. No examples you brought up are universal. You still fail to understand this.
You need levels in to differentiate enemies in games like Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
By your logic almost everyone pokemon needs a redesign.
And point of fact, new mechanic are not required by "good game design" to be mandatory for being able to progress in any genre. As an example, in Devil May Cry (an action series) Double Jump is usually an ability you have to unlock. And it's never actually required to complete the game. Neither are any of the plethora of combos you can unlock, or the Devil Trigger mode. You're usually not forced to use any of the new weapons you gained throughout the game either.
In Breath of the Wild you can complete the game without ever climbing a single wall, cliff, or other vertical structure. Someone has proven you can complete Mario Odyssy and Super Mario 3d World without ever jumping as well. Yes, it's more difficult to complete the game. But it is in fact possible. And nothing is forcing you to use the cooking system. The game is perfectly beatable without ever cooking a single piece of food. And you can go through the entire Final Fantasy 7 game without ever slotting a single piece of materia into your equipment.
Not using these systems naturally make the games harder. But the option to ignore them does exist.
@JasmineDragon Now that is actually valid criticism, something Agriculture needs to learn. I agree that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 doesn't do the best job explaining certain mechanics and it was a dumb decision to not be able to access the tutorials later.
That being said I hope you continue your playthrough of Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
Now if we can just get back to the actual topic of this thread...
@darkfenrir What's even weirder is that they have tutorials for the DLC. You can re-read info about Challenge Battle and Elma's special ability at any time.
The D-Pad in the field gives you control tutorials. Why they never applied that to the other ones is baffling. They've been messing up the tutorials ever since X, where that game's manual actually did not tell you all the important things, and the learning curve is much more steep than anything in 1 or 2. Meanwhile 2's tutorials are good, but they aren't revisitable at all which is dumb.
1 and 2 are just a cake-walk though. If you even pay attention to half of the things in those games, you can beat the main story with no problems at all. Hell in 2, you can literally just walk from the beginning to the end of the game without any sort of grinding and you'll barely need to stop and fight any enemy in 30-40 hours of a playthrough from beginning to end. 1 is a bit worse due to the dumb nerfs/buffs from being under/overleveled, but otherwise that game is also a cakewalk of just spamming Monado Armor and you win.
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