You need more than 99 frogs to make Frog Drop the most powerful, since it’s 99 x Level, so even at level 99 (way too high) Frog Drop will do 9801 damage. At a more moderate game finishing level (like 50-55) it’ll only do around 5000 with 99 frogs.
Hey, can’t you kill that boss in Cosmo Canyon in FFVII using a phoenix down or a full potion? That’s cheap, it MUST have been an unintentional glitch.
I’m with Hades on this one. The spells work in FFVI just as they’re supposed to. So what if they didn’t consider all the situations in which they’d be used.
Does that work against the boss before that? Or the one after? Or the one after that? Anyone else? The answer is no. My case is about the virtual omnipotence of Vanish+Doom and related tricks, added to the absolute ease in which they are acquired and how early they are available, unlike everything else mentioned in this thread.
On GameFAQs, there always FAQs about how you can get the Lionheart early in the game by card modding, or automatic AP/EXP maxing, or the debug room, or All Lucky 7s. Granted, the term “exploit” is subjective as some of these involve a great deal of busywork, but the fact is that you can do something you’re not supposed to be able to do until a certain point of the game, manipulating the game mechanics. It’s not always lazy programmers, this can happen in any game that hasn’t been thoroughly tested, like tabletop RPG’s. The difference is, they can come out with a new version. In video games, it is pretty static once it is released. That’s why there are release dates (read: deadlines), every game has bugs and excess material, and especially in RPGs where it is so hard to test everything. If they could refactor the code to make it flawless, they’d never get released. But these exploits are part of what gives the game lasting power.
Rubs forehead
Okay, let’s see if I can make a point here: All my responses are aimed at Hades saying that it’s not certain that this was unintended. I’m not saying they are negative, I’m not saying they don’t exist in any other games, I’m just saying that it’s not something the programmers were expecting you to use when balancing difficulty.
An just in the remote case someone doesn’t read the first three times I said this: Aside from effectiveness, consider the effort/outcome balance when bringing up exploits. Comparing KotR, Lionheart and the like with Vanish+Doom is ridiculous.
Obviously, Lionheart and KotR aren’t early moves.
Being able to use limits like degenerator every single turn with no cost even against normal enemies is a tactic available before the end of disc one in FFVIII. It’s a 100% accuracy instant death attack that works against some bosses and all monsters, including the ones that shame FFVI’s bosses like Ruby Dragons, Malboros, Elvorets, Sea Lions, T-Rexaurs etc.
In FFVII, you can have Finishing Blow and Meteorain before leaving Midgar, and Cosmo Memory before hitting Rocket Town. I was killing Green Dragons in the Nibel Mountains in one hit at low levels. It was ridiculous. I killed Lost Number in two moves. I killed Demon Gate and Jenova-Life in mere seconds without losing a single HP.
Vanish-doom isn’t available as early as you’re making it out be, either. You don’t even get the espers until late in the magitek facility, and that’s more than half way through the game. It’s not nearly as broken as you’re trying to argue it is.
Provided you spend time killing enemies considerably beyond what you normally would, which really falls under the category of overleveling. But forget about that now and read the following very carefully:
Now let me get this clear because I don’t think we are on the same page here: These are obviously mistakes. No one intentionally creates a way to screw over all their own balancing work, you said it yourself that it’s not how you would make a game and there’s no reason to believe developers would think otherwise. It’s nearly impossible to test everything in every case due to deadlines, like Wallflower mentioned, but common sense dictates that this is not something that was intentionally placed for you to use.
Call it exploit, glitch, bug, trick, anything, the point stands: If it allows such near-omnipotence at such little cost, the chances of being there intentionally are null. Saying that these aren’t mistakes simply because they are present in a passably similar fashion in FFVII and FFVIII would only be valid if you believe those two games to have been perfectly an thoroughly revised so that no such accidental exploits could possibly exist, which as it has been mentioned, just doesn’t happen because it’s not a priority for the developers.
As for FFIX and FFX, you were obviously generalizing. There is no such thing in FFIX unless you count the whole item-swapping Reflect Ring trick that allows you to barely kill Grand Dragons after Burmecia, something that takes at the very least an hour and a half to pull off completely given the item price, the skill’s learning price, the leveling time etc.
I haven’t played FFX enough to test anything, but the case of Magus Sisters is the same as KotR and Lionheart, so unless there’s something else you haven’t mentioned, that’s discarded too.
And we go back to the point I’ve repeated since the beginning and what I really want you to reply to: Do you truly believe developers include these things intentionally? And try to give me something else than “it happened on other games so it must [be on purpose” because I already spoke about that in this post.
But forget about that now and read the following very carefully:
Oh, a self flatterer. A person who thinks that if I don’t agree with him I must not have been reading his comments very carefully thus far. Surprise, surprise. I have, they’re just not very persuassive.
No, that’s not what I said. I said “They’ve done it in every game after 6. It’s not how I’d make a game, but it’s how they did.” I have reason to believe they would, because they’ve done it and do it so often and so consistently.
Common sense dictates that you’re given a spell, vanish, that was intentionally placed for you to use, and another spell, doom, that was intentionally placed for you to use. In whichever way you choose. If some bright individual realizes that doom is an instant death attack, and that vanish raises magic accuracy to 100%, that’s not glitchy. That’s genius. It’s genius in the same way that junctioning 100 deaths to your status-attack is genius.
Call it exploit, glitch, bug, trick, anything, the point stands: If it allows such near-omnipotence at such little cost, the chances of being there intentionally are null.
This is where you are beyond the shadow of a doubt, absolutely 100% wrong. You keep going back to the conditions that would exist in an ideal gaming environment, where everything is perfectly balanced in an RPS way and no moves are slanted enough to give you an unfair advantage. Let’s stop talking about ideals, and start talking about what actually happens in games.
Do you truly believe developers include these things intentionally? And try to give me something else than “it happened on other games so it must [be on purpose” because I already spoke about that in this post.
You spoke about it and failed to defend yourself against it. At this point you’re restating the same arguments without making any vertical progress. You keep going back to the same question I’ve answered so many times before, in hopes that asking it in a different way will somehow change my answer, and I’ve been answering it in different ways to humor your pointless effort.
For the last time, yes, I do believe that these anonymous nameless “developers” you speak of would and do include completely slanted moves and tactics intentionally. I believe this because they’ve shown no aversion to it in the past, and I’ve given good examples of it.
Building on that, I do believe that vanish-doom is a legitimate strategy. You learn two spells through the system the game provides to you, and take advantage of the fact that they both work EXACTLY as they were intended to. There is nothing at all glitchy about that.
Also, consider the audience. The Final Fantasy series is supposed to be easy enough so that 12 year olds can complete it. It’s not Starcraft or Shinobi. It’s filled with fluffy animals, stereotypical monsters, and bloodless deaths. Don’t kid yourself into believing it was ever supposed to be balanced.
This isn’t really about “final fantasy 6” is it? It’s really about finding ways to call each other stupid.
Actually, this was because you said there were equally effortless early-available tricks in every game after FFVI even though the only one that truly fits the description is Degenerator (See posts 18 and 19). At that point, you had presented KotR, Lionheart and Magus Sisters as being in this category (Post 15). I’m simply trying to cover every aspect so that I don’t have to repeat myself (Posts 18 & 19 again). Sorry if it seemed like something else.
“Often so consistently”? That’s two out of 5 other numbered FFs, not enough to be considered often, and I still hold that even the tricks in FFVII require a small amount of effort on your part.
It could just as easily mean that they didn’t quite realize what the combination of those spells could result into. That someone didn’t pay enough attention to what extents Degenerator could be used. Your argument has as much solid proof as mine, except I have the common sense factor that says one doesn’t program balance and then undoes all his work.
As a detail: Junctioning 100 Deaths was balanced against. It doesn’t work against every single enemy and bosses. That was simply smart use of the Junctions, not nearly powerful enough to enter the field we’re discussing.
Yes I obviously do talk from the perspective of a completely balanced gaming environment. There’d be no point in doing it from any other stance, because then there’d be no point of reference from which to judge if a game is balanced or not. The perfect status obviously can’t be achieved, but you judge depending on how near that perfection it can get.
Get off the high horse and don’t patronize me. The only response you gave to that particular question was “They’ve done it in every game after 6. It’s not how I’d make a game, but it’s how they did.”, everything else was dedicated to analyzing which methods fell in this category and which are simply powergaming like KotR, so don’t pretend like you’ve been patiently trying to thoroughly and explain something for so long. I know from participating and watching your arguments how you subtly inflate things like that to appear important or denigrate the opponent, but that doesn’t mean I have to take it.
Ok, that’s the answer I was really hoping you’d give. If you truly believe that because they’ve done so in other games, then it’s back to the argument that I believe the other examples you gave do not qualify as equal cases.
If you believe they’d do it because they’d think it was a good idea… well, there’s really no way to be certain if that’s true or false. Who knows? Maybe they did think it was a good idea for some reason beyond my understanding.
By using that argument you’re invalidating yourself. If the target is truly people who would consider this game a reasonable challenge (Which I think we both a agree it isn’t, even using completely standard tactics), thus meaning that they wouldn’t be able to figure out simple basic methods for winning almost every time, what would be the point of including an exploit that required knowledge of how Vanish affects statistics?
According to who? You don’t know what square had in mind when they made the game.
And it comes full circle. I don’t really see the point of continuing after this. It boils down to the fact that you believe they would do this and I don’t.
It’s been entertaining, I missed having these pointless arguments with you. See ya.