Comments on: The 18-Hour Bossfight

By: CoggsD

CoggsD — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:58:56 +0000

This is the exact reason I love FF1 with its beautiful 8 bits of impressive graphics and georgeous streaming colors. Play few hours to beat start to end and feel just as accomplished

8 BIT RULES!!!!!!
And I hate to say this but I own a PS3 and decent PC and still would rather pop in a 8 bit cart in the NES and play it and have just as much fun if not more.

By: Werrick

Werrick — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:28:48 +0000

This is one of the half-dozen or so reasons why I hate the FF series…

By: luckystriker

luckystriker — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:46:07 +0000

I’m fine with it as long as no one dies. I played WoW for 3 years and although i’ve never spent 18 hours killing 1 boss, I’ve spent many 18 hours days doing something equally pointless (or rewarding, depending on your outlook). Also for the purely selfish reason that gaming already has a bad enough image in the mainstream press without some 14 yr old kid keeling over trying to kill a spawn of satan.

By: Mr. President

Mr. President — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:20:43 +0000

Now I personally wouldn’t touch any MMO with a ten-foot pole, but I can see how this could be cool if you are into this kind of thing.
MMORPG People are known to spend multiple hours on ALL sorts of dumb things. At least in this case you have something to show for your poopsocking. Fighting an epic battle, with a unique monster.. I can respect that.

By: BonSequitur

BonSequitur — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:15:44 +0000

How did anyone ever think that’s good game design?

How did anyone ever think Final Fantasy was good game design?

By: Skalpadda

Skalpadda — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:40:30 +0000

Their method of handling bosses is fairly solid, after a few failures you can generally figure out what you have to do. So one fight shouldn’t take you 5+ hrs unless you’re with a ton of idiots.

Unless you’re counting some of the end bosses where even the top guilds would take about a week of constant tries to get a working strategy. I don’t see a problem with that though, in this case it’s the insanity of an actual 18 hour session that’s a bit horrifying. I’d get bored with any fight that could stretch over half an hour when I played WoW.

By: GeorgeR

GeorgeR — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:02:38 +0000

@Eric, yeah, that or the mobs that dropped good gear that only spawned once every few days, and in FFXI “good gear” meant it would essentially make you + a level or 5. And since a lot of things were built around you being X level with X gear you had to wait and get lucky.

I loved the art design in that game, but god, it was so awful, there needed to be SOMETHING you could do solo because man, if you didn’t havea good linkshell partying sucked.

Also, WoW did the outdoor encounters with giant raid bosses, along with crazy invasions. Their method of handling bosses is fairly solid, after a few failures you can generally figure out what you have to do. So one fight shouldn’t take you 5+ hrs unless you’re with a ton of idiots.

Eh. To each their own I guess.

By: Tony

Tony — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:14:54 +0000

Remember: You can piss when you’re down. And there was a lot of being down, judging by XP loss.

But anyway, this was a pop in a normal zone. You could have nine alliances on each mob that spawns, but judging by the clusterfuck of Astral Flow that wiped everyone (summoner’s two hour ability – avatars do their classic attacks from other FF games and… basically kill everything. If it’s not player-summoned, anyway…) I gather that there isn’t anyone foolish enough to clean up afterwards. Or, to be fair, enough suicidal linkshells that wouldn’t bicker about who gets the drops.

Man, I sound like a dork.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:50:13 +0000

Oh man… I used to play FFXI. I ended up sitting at the computer for more than 24 hours just waiting for a monster to spawn so that I could get an item for a quest. It only dropped one and there were about 20 other people to fight with for it.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:26:02 +0000

Any old Everquest players around? If I remember right (never did this myself), there were some bosses that took obscene amounts of time to down there as well.

The one I’m thinking of wasn’t even orignally intended to be taken out by players. Of course, people being people, a group eventually took it down.

By: Acosta

Acosta — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:13:31 +0000

The thing is, knowing a bit of FFXI and its design evolution, this was probably not designed to create 20 hours fights, there must be certain patterns that make the fight “easier” but they will probably be extremely obscure and hard to put together.

The story of the end gaming bosses in FFXI is just insane, I really think is one of the few game that prides himself of having really “hardcore” content. And they are optional, outside of the storyline content that is the main line of progress for players. I guess it works in a similar way of other FFs, with a main story arc and some optional, secret and very hard bosses spread at the world.

By: Vollgassen

Vollgassen — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:11:28 +0000

That’d be funny. It’d be like MMORPGs replacing Kool-Aid for mass cultist suicide.