A concept forgotten: Rewarding those who work hardest

While I'm suspecting that I will hold this opinion in minority, I truly believe that RPGs should reward those gamers who are willing to put forth a consistent effort mass leveling, mass statusing and exploring environments to their fullest, that is, talking to all the civilians, searching ever corner of the map for items, getting the most out of their RPG world experience. It wasn't until I really started playing Heroes of Might and Magic V that I started to think about how Square has lost this concept at times during the FF series, and more often than not lately.

Take Final Fantasy VIII for example, a good game overall but not one to reward those who are willing to put in massive amounts of hours attempting to obtain every ability offered by the Guardian Forces. Why? Because in the process of obtaining these abilities, and this is especially a problem early on, your characters will level up causing all of the enemies throughout the game to increase in difficulty anyways, thanks to a good idea gone bad by Square. Why would I put in 20 hours just with Squall trying my hardest to learn all of the junctions available to me in the training center you ask? Because I don't want to use just a GF for the majority of disc one to kill enemies, I want to attack darn it! But, for those of us willing to put forth such an effort, we don't ever recieve our just rewards in that game until limit breaks take over from GFs and prove to be just as repetitive.

FFX is probably the biggest culprut of refusing to reward those gamers willing to mass level. When I spend 20+ minutes to level up my characters, I do not appreciate only recieving +1 Magic Defense for my efforts darn it! I want increases to my attack, defense, magic, luck, etc....Really, until you get further in the game (like inside Sin far) there is really no chance whatsoever to take advantage of your consistent leveling efforts! Heck, I train 5 hours plus before fighting Seymour for the first time and all I'd get is a magic or two with Lulu, a skill or two with everybody else and maybe +3-5 of the majority of stats available to me! Do appreciate spending that time just to get that? NO! Especially when I come across an empty node early in the game with no creation sphere. Its a waste of my time!

But the biggest thing that Heroes V made me realize is that it really blows not having a world map anymore to walk around on. I loved taking the time of exploring every square inch of the world, especially in FFs VII and IX, to find secret dungeons, secret treasures (chocobo treasure hunt) and even secret characters (Yuffie). You'd think that with the greater capabilities of the PS2, Square would be able to keep and improve on the world map concept, but no, they get rid of it so you can instead find all of these by easily inputting a code or two or just randomingly moving a cursor around on a displayed map. Hip hip hurray! Fun times! In Heroes, every map (mission) has a whole world to be explored with subquests built in! Now thats what I call a reward for exploration!

I don't mean to write an essay here, but on the topic of exploration, I was really disapointed with all of the next gen FFs lack of secret items. Remember in FFIX how if you scaled every inch of the map you'd get an exclaimation mark here or there giving you a secret item or two? Well, Shadow Hearts: From the New World has the same concept built in it, why not FFs lately? In Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, an amazing game, if you take the time to scale every inch of the map, you get Bunny Statues that can either be sold for massive amounts of money, or kept as collector items. Even this simple kind of reward isn't given by any FF on the next gen systems darn it!

In conclusion: Square has allowed the idea of rewarding mass leveling and exploration suffer in the face of experimentation and better cinematic presentation. There just seems to be a little heart missing in Square's FFs lately, and the reason I am presenting here is, in my opinion, probably the biggest reason why. It kind of takes away from the whole concept of an RPG experience, don't you think?

I don't want this thread to get off track, so please ignore this unless you are the individual that I am directly targeting with this comment.

Not once in this thread have I called the series "bad". I am simply pointing out in what is my opinion a negative trend that is beginning to be revealed in the final fantasy series. Look no further than my comment about FFVIII being a good game to prove that this topic is not meant to bash a particular game or ther series at all. I am simply criticizing one aspect of the game that I really hope is fixed quite soon!

I just wanted to point out that it is extremely easy too lvl. up in FFX because you know how when you lvl. up the amount of experience needed for the next lvl. up goes up, well it stops at 20,000 and in Omega Ruins......easy


anyway i just wanted to point that out

also yeah there does need to be more world maps, hopefully in FFXIII they make a HUGE one since it has the PS3's hardware.
csimonma

If you read my topic, I am stating that fact, although I pretty much summed up the point in the game that you are talking about as "inside sin far". My biggest concern with FFX and the sphere grid is pretty much the leveling that takes place before hand. I know that near the end, mass leveling is easy in the omega ruins and inside sin, but it better have damn well been trying to beat the battle arena monsters and the dark aeons!

ok first of all, i dont understand at all how heroes 5 does what you are hoping for unless you are talking about the single player non-story missions.  I know the story missions are very linear and have very strict rules on what you can do and scripted enemies.  The single player campaigns may have a few little things to find but i dont see how that rewards you as the little artifacts that are hidden around are just randomly generated anyway when you start the level, at least usually. 
VGMusicFreak

A couple of things to do? Um, try mission 4: The trap and see just how many things you can do! There are more battles, more items, more artifacts and more ground to cover by exploring the part of the map that has nothing to do with the actual missions themselves than the parts that do have to do with the missions! Seriously, I spent a lot of time on that mission and it sure in heck wasn't completing my goals or anything. Actually, now that I read this reply of yours, I doubt that you've even played the game competely. Some missions are strict yes, but for the most part, the missions are pretty open and the maps take a long time to fully explore. Not too mention that if you actually explore the maps, you get a lot of extra resource gathering installations and if anything, those just reward you with the ability to create a godly army to own all!

In conclusion: Square has allowed the idea of rewarding mass leveling and exploration suffer in the face of experimentation and better cinematic presentation. There just seems to be a little heart missing in Square's FFs lately, and the reason I am presenting here is, in my opinion, probably the biggest reason why. It kind of takes away from the whole concept of an RPG experience, don't you think?

SkyCastleDan

To fully understand why these changes accure you have to know who is making the games. FFVI, FFVII, and FFIX allowed you to greatly explore the map because Sakaguchi (FF creator) was overlooking the project. For FFVIII, Kitase was overlooking much of the production. Kitase is a great developer, but FFVIII was rushed thus the reason the game was not balanced well. FFX was directed by three people. One was in charge of the battle system. One was in charge of the maps. And the third one (the most important one) was in charge of the directing the story events. These three are new directors to the series thus the reason FFX took a linear approach. FFXII is being developed by Matsuno so expect something along the lines of FFTactics, Vagrant Story, and a little mix of FFXI. Now if you liked the exploration in FFVII and FFIX, then I would strongly recommend you keep an eye out for Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. Both are developed Hironobu Sakaguchi (FF creator).

yes you are right, i have not played the game completely.  I quit at around the second or third demon mission because it was way too F'n hard.   VGMusicFreak

Haha, yeah, its freaking hard. But very, very fun IMO

I've noticed that every time I play a FF game I'm never scared of fighting even though I can kick their A$$ with my cool new sword. BUT when I play KH2 on expert mode argh I hate getting hit thats the only thing I get scared of because well some of the bosses are a pain at times

Remember in the first couple of Final Fantasies how you would get really close to getting to a boss and you would get that exited, nervous, intense feeling?  I don't really get that anymore with Final Fantasy. Do You?

What are you talking about? no exited, nervous, intense feeling of getting to a boss? I sure do. I remember the first time i was going to fight Seymour the second time in ffx. When he turned into that monster i said "no way! i have to fight him? COOL!!!" and then i had to run to him and it took like ten minutes because of all the soldiers appearing. For me i was exited, nervous and had an intense feeling. So i think the bosses still make us feel that way.

What I wish happened is when you reach the highest level attainable, there would be a boss battle that would be obscenely difficult and would reward you with a really rare and cool item.  Or, maybe some armor or something that was a privelidged item for getting as strong as possible.  I'd like for there to be something that makes you feel that you accomplished something.

To me, if you spend hours and hours levelling up, getting stats maxed, exploring, etc. you should get at least SOMETHING for all your hard work other than beating the final boss rather easily.

Too long have I played RPG's that offer NO incentives!  I long to play an RPG that makes you feel like you actually did something and made a difference.

Cheers!

Jessica

I happen to agree with Auronotf concerning FFVIII.  I enjoyed the fact that the enemies were never overly powerful or terribly weak so that you could not abuse the system (though you could make Squall a weakling while everyone else was a juggernaut, but what fun is that?) 

In FFX, try getting all of the special items necessary for the Ultimate Weapons without cheating.  Yeah, some are a cakewalk, but the whole quest takes some time.  I love the monster capture sidequest as well.  I'm  nowhere near being done with that.  Being able to mine rare items from a monster the old guy created is fun and useful in a pinch. Especially when you don't want to traverse an entire dungeon (cough:: Omega Ruins ::cough) to fight one enemy.

I've run into this one a time or two.  You play an RPG until the disc is damn near melted just to achieve every possible secret and then once you do you sorta feel unfulfilled.  What's even worse is that mass leveling can make bosses in Square RPGs seem too easy (well two exceptions, FFVII and FFIX where screwing around could get you killed quickly).  Item collection is nice but there just needs to be something more!  A very few games off the top of my head actually substantially reward you for mass leveling (basically by taking the frustration out of the games), which are:

-Parasite Eve (the EX game is actually beatable at very high levels)

-Star Ocean

-Xenogears

-both Musashi titles (they technically have levels)

-Front Mission 3

-Vagrant story

-Kingdom Hearts 1/2

Not too many FF titles substantially reward unless you consider rewards to be item collecting which virtually all FF titles are known for.  Maybe FF12 or 13 will prove different.

I agree completely with skycastledan, I really have missed the world maps.  Why are the newer Final Fantasy games without it?  Every Final Fantasy before X had it and every game was successful.  This topic has been on my mind since I beat Final Fantasy X a few years ago.

Right now I'm hoping for a Final Fantasy VII remake.