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Post by Vene on Oct 31, 2010 17:58:45 GMT -5
Maybe "special effects" was the wrong word, is "flash" better?
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Post by Napoleon the Clown on Oct 31, 2010 18:53:51 GMT -5
It's not bad-ass magic unless you're having a gran mal seizure while casting.
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Post by Vene on Oct 31, 2010 21:18:44 GMT -5
It's not bad-ass magic unless you're having a gran mal seizure while casting. I actually prefer minimal effects. Like, the mage glares at you and your skin starts to boil. Substance over style, preferably to the point where it becomes a style of its own.
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Post by Dragon Zachski on Oct 31, 2010 22:24:28 GMT -5
Maybe "special effects" was the wrong word, is "flash" better? Swinging an orb of ice at an enemy is flashy?
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Post by Napoleon the Clown on Nov 1, 2010 0:11:32 GMT -5
Which is more badass: The guy who flails about to land a hit or the guy who throws one swift punch into someone's face and drops them in an instant?
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Post by Vene on Nov 1, 2010 0:57:07 GMT -5
Maybe "special effects" was the wrong word, is "flash" better? Swinging an orb of ice at an enemy is flashy? Compared to the first 5 seconds of this video, yes. And, yeah, what Yoda did there, I find badass because of how dismissive it is. These are elite guards, the very best soldiers around, he dispatches them with little more than a twitch. Those few seconds are much more memorable to me than the fight with Palpatine.
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Nov 2, 2010 13:39:26 GMT -5
Which is more badass: The guy who flails about to land a hit or the guy who throws one swift punch into someone's face and drops them in an instant? The former. It's like watching a rabid monkey beat somebody up. Okay, having looked back at the OP: The problem is that, if you don't want the mage to be a fighter, there's not much point in them being physical. A fighter has to actually work to stab his enemy. If a mage can just make a bunch of swords with a snap of his finger & send them at you, why would he bother making a big show out of it? It would be a huge waste of time & effort. As for the Dissidia thing, if you watch closely, a lot of spells are still just the mage standing there & waving their arms around. For instance, Terra's Holy>Flare>Ultima combo: Holy: Waves a hand in the air. Flare: Holds her arms out & fires a bunch of fireballs. Ultima: Moves both of her arms in a sort of semicircle.
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Post by Meshakhad on Nov 2, 2010 20:58:04 GMT -5
- Badass mages should have scars and such. - Flashy spells that shoot out from your body are best. There's no obvious connection between the mage and the elemental he summoned, but it's obvious to see where the bolt of lightning is coming from.
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Nov 2, 2010 21:40:55 GMT -5
Avoidance of the "I'm so powerful nothing can touch me" thing they're so often guilty of. It's much more interesting when they're smart or violent, rather than just capable of dropping a continent on you with no noticable strain.
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Post by junastarrider on Nov 2, 2010 22:29:25 GMT -5
I have a canidate for a version of a 'bad ass mage" Jade Curtiss He's got the looks, the sense of humour, the glasses, and although he does do melee hits, he specializes in ranged spells www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgVMwOrstg4His parts start at about 2:00 Gotta love Indignation..
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Post by m52nickerson on Nov 3, 2010 22:20:23 GMT -5
Avoidance of the "I'm so powerful nothing can touch me" thing they're so often guilty of. It's much more interesting when they're smart or violent, rather than just capable of dropping a continent on you with no noticable strain. More interesting yes, more bad-ass, no!
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Nov 3, 2010 23:05:30 GMT -5
It looks incredibly ridiculous when you're unleashing all kinds of DBZ-style explosions & are beaten up by some kid with his bare hands.*
*=Specifically Fullmetal Alchemist. But the basic concept holds true with any sort of fighter beats superpowered mage scenario.
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Post by Dragon Zachski on Nov 5, 2010 14:14:37 GMT -5
It looks incredibly ridiculous when you're unleashing all kinds of DBZ-style explosions & are beaten up by some kid with his bare hands.* *=Specifically Fullmetal Alchemist. But the basic concept holds true with any sort of fighter beats superpowered mage scenario. And that is the key problem with video games, IMO. Especially MMOs that try too hard to balance things. It ends up being that the mage has to spend resources to deal less total damage than the fighter who spends no resources to do more damage. In fact, Genis from Tales of Symphonia suffers from this very problem. Unless you're controlling him and using the Randomize exploit, his DPS will never match a physical fighter's. Having him in the party with Raine results in heals that come too late due to the spell queue. In fact, Raine's "photon" spell seems to be the only spell actually worth using in the game simply due to the fact that it prevent the enemy from attacking for a bit. And if you really need magical DPS, Kratos/Zelos will fulfill that role just fine, since they combined spells with their physical attacks to create new elemental artes (such as thunder blade, a sonic thrust that causes a lightning bolt to drop on the enemy, and hell pyre, a sweeping uppercut that launches a fireball that deals pretty much as much damage as anything Genis could do, without the cast time.) And then in Final Fantasy 12, offensive magic becomes useless eventually due to another arbitrary spell queue, and the fact that choosing between a physical attack that costs nothing and does 9999x1-4 damage and a spell that does 9999 damage and costs MP is a no-brainer. This has officially been averted as of FF12 International: Zodiac Job System, which removes the arbitrary damage cap. The downside, though, is that we Americans have no access to the "International" version and would have to modify our Playstation 2's in order to play an imported one. Yes, I have major pet peeves.
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Post by RavynousHunter on Nov 5, 2010 16:03:35 GMT -5
Yeah, it kinda sucks that my level 24 epic fucking Sorcerer who can Wish a fucking elder dragon away can get whacked by a duo of hired goons. DAMNED GOONS!
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Nov 7, 2010 5:04:59 GMT -5
Implying I don't. I fucking hate FFXII. And it irritates me that people won't admit the developers made mistakes, even though they changed a shitload of stuff in the International Version.
Yes, because it's PERFECTLY logical to remove things that you thought were perfectly good gameplay elements.
But, anyway, I'd like to add that the reverse can also be true. In Birth By Sleep, magic commands pretty much eventually outclass physical attacks completely. There are enemies that can defend against physical attacks, but no enemy can defend from magical ones. Tank Topplers have penalties if you hit them from the front, but a lot of magic attacks bypass this. Magic attacks just tend to do way more damage & hits in a larger radius compared to physical attacks in the same class, even for Terra, who sucks at magic. There aren't even any particularly slow ones. Oh, & MP doesn't exist in this game.
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