Returners FFRPG

[Archmage Joda]

I tried searching the forum, and only found a small mention within another thread about cheap labor, so here I am to ask: What is your opinion of the returnergames FFRPG system. If the two posts I saw are any indication, it's another system thought to be of poor quality, but those posts omitted the most important detail: why, specifically, is it so?

[DragonChild]

The last time I looked at the system, it was god-awful horrible. It cared more about directly copying the video games then making a playable system. There were levels where your damage output would literally flat double, and it was different from every class. NPCs could not meaningfully interact.

Unless the system has hugely changed, and ALL the design guidelines, I imagine it is still godawful.

[Archmage Joda]

Out of curiosity, when did you look at the system last. If it was back in the days of their 2e FFRPG, then it is plainly obvious why that one is terrible, nobody denies that (that I've ever seen). I made the mistake of not specifying, but my question was more in regards to the current 3e of the system on their website: www.returnergames.com/ord

[TheFlatline]

Oh jesus I'm looking at it now and my head hurts. I know a lot of this math gets calculated between levels and out of combat, but I want to play a game, not run a spreadsheet.

Also, I counted like 20-30 jobs that you'd have to read through to learn their game mechanics. *That* makes my head hurt. I seriously doubt that all 30 of those jobs have been rigorously playtested either.

Also, the game talks about damage cap and exceeding 999 damage in an attack (ultima). That means that the game has monsters in it with 500,000 hit points and shit like that in it.

No thank you.

Then again I probably am not a good person to pitch a final fantasy game to. I find it to be the lowest form of "entertainment" that passes for an RPG imaginable (and even then I will argue passionately that JRPGs are in fact adventure games with unbelievable amounts of grind involved).

[Caedrus]

I tried searching the forum, and only found a small mention within another thread about cheap labor, so here I am to ask: What is your opinion of the returnergames FFRPG system. If the two posts I saw are any indication, it's another system thought to be of poor quality, but those posts omitted the most important detail: why, specifically, is it so?

I've actually played a session of Returners at the insistence of another, and yeah, it's pretty bad. It does indeed focus heavily on copying the games without making considerations for factors like "You know, the Final Fantasy battles were more tactically interesting when you controlled 3 or 4 people at the same time and battles lasted 30 seconds, when you control only 1 and wait 15 minutes between each time you hit the "attack" button it's a bit less entertaining."

[Archmage]

I skimmed several chapters of the latest ruleset, and there are a number of questionable design decisions, some way worse than others. From "quirky but harmless" to "WTF are you doing," I'd like to note:

1) Use of percentile dice for task resolution for no apparent reason--all the modifiers to task success are in 5% or 10% increments and nearly everything has a success threshold that is a multiple of 5 or 10%. The off percentages come up with skill use, but I'm seriously not sure why you would care that your chance to hit is 64% versus 65% or whatever.

2) You should not ever need a table in your rules that explains to people how to "compute common percentages without a calculator."

3) In fact, quit modifying things by percentages. Multiply stuff by whole numbers for the sake of everyone's convenience. I don't want to calculate what "+175% damage" is in the middle of a game, even if I'm perfectly capable of doing so.

The numbers are a bit big for no apparent reason other than the fact that that's the way Final Fantasy games are. I'm not in the mood to otherwise go through and make sure all their math works, but if you could round everything off to 5% values and make the game d20-esque, it might be playable albeit not especially interesting. Most of the class abilities and whatnot are essentially damage-dealing effects and battle abilities. Honestly, it's probably about as good as 4e in that respect, without the flexibility of multiclassing to create varied characters and with much wonkier math.

Oh, and the game seriously goes to level 99, though apparently does so without changing anything except making your numbers bigger--most of the abilities you get at level 99 are the same as the ones you get at level 1 in terms of plot power, they just do more damage to whatever you're attacking.

The fact that the game goes to level 99 at all--and that sometimes you go six or seven entire levels without gaining a new job-related special ability--is kind of mind-blowing to me. Clearly you're supposed to level up practically every encounter, maybe several times an encounter. Otherwise I can't really imagine ever getting your capstone abilities, some of which come online as late as level 64.