incl. the staff
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I know. Yeah Yokai Relm with Companion is my new amarita farming method. Those witch guys that play the Enka and summon revenants are bastards. I really really need to complete the spider castle so I can unlock the teahouse. Thereās my update
I think I can finish this in a couple more sittings. Got to the last map area (I think) right before Automata came out. Then P5.
Overabundant loot and the convoluted stats having far more width than depth, keep this game held no higher than a 7.5-8 for me.
Those ninja levels though!
anyone help me roll through the lastā¦ half of the game thatās too manly for me?
I am horrible at committing to anything like this immediately, but I will think of you and say YO when I pick it back up. 
youād be a prince.
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do you actually filter your experiences through this metric
Relatively, probably a lot. My enjoyment doesnāt parallel my uh, quick critical score?
The frequency of drops, how many stats there are to manage. Given how fast combat and exploration go otherwise, compared to your average game in the genre they get in the way a lot more often than they should. Really its the constant gear variations and kinda bs differences or items. Sure maybe moreso for the compulsive player but who playing Nioh isnāt gonna want to get that shit 90% of the time?
For all the strong points in Nioh, its hard to separate from its predecessors (or biggest inspiration) and not think of what could have made it even better.
thereās no reason to care about 99% of the microstats / the loot is color coded and easy to ignore regardless (I encourage it actually!!!) / there are mass loot culling options at the shrine / most loot is only worth it for the amrita / who cares / why does the game need to be ābetterā in any way besides what serves what the game uniquely is rather than the influences it ultimately isnāt / pls ban metacritic from your brain
like I mightāve been inclined slightly toward this early into the beta maybe but I pretty strongly disagree with this by now
My friend keeps struggling at the boss Nue, complaining about his gear or levels being too low (they arenāt). But learning to maneuver and strike more patiently, takes up less time towards beating it than grinding plus 30+ more deaths. So in a huge way I agree with how easy it can be to ignore that stuff and just play more efficiently. Streamline.
But I canāt agree that something designed to be so present in the game is fine, being this constant yet ānegligibleā. A further rewarding system, worth time put into it, would be better more ideal. I feel it when I play, not just talking about it.
Itās a gorgeous, fun game in many ways, held as derivative or not. My point about score was not to be hard stuck on a number, just saying I can imagine what would make it excellent (to me and maybe some others).
I found it more useful to grind the items for item disassembly so you can buff out a weapon you like longer, to use it for another level or two.
It is frustrating to have systems you need to actively ignore to enjoy the game or else you fall into a vortex of tedious min/maxing, but this happens so often in the best games (zodiac in Final Fantasy Tactics, elemental resistances/imlunities in SMT, the slash/blunt/pierce/fire/etc defense ratings in Dark Souls, status spells, etc) I donāt really care anymore and this barely affects my enjoyment of the game.
In Nioh I just pick every piece of equipment I find but never check it immediately even if itās purple. Every hour or so, I open the menu and equip whichever armor has the best defense/weight/fashion/unlimited jitsu ratio then sell everything else. It goes well.
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The large amount of systems actually felt like it was actively discouraging me from min/maxing. I did pretty well ignoring 900 mechanic on my playthrough at least. Unlike Souls, it actually feels pretty nice that thereās a constant crescendo of more powerful equipment because it at least lets me experiment around with different weapon types without being at a disadvantage (besides not having moves unlocked but Iām bad and I donāt use 90% of them anyway).
Like I donāt know if itās better (or if comparing it qualitatively even matters) than Souls, but itās a different flavor I definitely appreciated. In the end, having 99999 stats and numbers made things feel more open-ended rather than an extra source of anxiety.
This is kind of where I was going to go with this; you donāt āhave toā ignore anything to enjoy anything. The reason this works and isnāt really a problem is exactly what anothersphere implied: a wide range of solutions and approaches are available based on your commitment level, interest, playstyle. Itās like turning items on or off in smash: your preference is facilitated without being forced upon you.
I canāt think of many loot games that donāt make you feel actively punished for abstaining from aggressively obsessive play but still reward you for bothering. This is one of them, though.
Resenting that mechanics exist that donāt personally apply to you in a game this fundamentally loose seems to me like vestigial frustration with worse games than this one is. I mean, donāt get me wrong, I think Bloodborneās streamlining was very well intentioned and executed, but that doesnāt mean its design philosophy is universally applicable.
also like
fft is great for a million reasons but one of them is how profoundly you can break it if youāre so inclined, how much the game doesnāt mind that you can do this, and how much youād never even know it if you just played through āā""ācausallyā""""
I used to be pretty big on austerity in design until I realized that almost all of my favorite games are good because the players made them good in spite of the developersā best efforts to put their boring intentions on the page. when they recognize this and attempt mechanical apathy as an appeasement it works out just as well
3 Likes
I think the Nioh item drops definitely detract from the experience. Theyāre built mimicking (poorly) systems designed to hijack expectation/reward cycles in the brain, so every time they pop they either create a) a loot expectation and desire to see if the lottery has paid off, or b) a forceful indifference, gained by purposely rejecting the psychological hooks the loot system is inserting. That has an emotional cost and makes it draining to keep ignoring things that might make the game easier. Meanwhile the game is putting up a stiff challenge and demanding the player take every advantage to succeed.
All loot systems walk a line between giving players too much and forcing them to filter out trash reducing the meaning of the gear, and giving too little and either forcing every drop to be a major buff, removing player choice in setting up their characterās bonuses. Iām pretty sure Nioh ended up ridiculously deep into āgobs of lootā because they were so feedback-driven and havenāt course-corrected after the last swing (seriously, they could reduce the loot drop amount by 70% and, while not fundamentally fixing the system, patching it significantly).
Whatās an ideal loot system?
- Each drop is a meaningful reward
- Each drop offers interesting choices
- Players have a range of mechanical and aesthetic choices (without getting punished for it)
- Players can opt-in to the complexity
I didnāt really need to find more validation of how broken I am but that sounds like Destiny and I want to play it more now
heh
Destiny once youāre into max level is certainly odd because 99% of all drops are trash. Nioh at low to mid level (I havenāt gotten farther) promises that something in here will be good,
Iām going to think about this for a while because it feels like a difference in kind (I think Destiny has a much healthier loot cycle) but it is certainly swamped in trash. I donāt want to say itās just an efficient UI because I think itās deeper than that.
It may be that thereās a limit to the āinterestingā perks drop rate; Destiny keeps its weapon perks within a very narrow band outside of exotics, so thereās very little cognitive load when evaluating trash drops, while Nier has interesting-but-useless properties on everything, making a kaleidoscope of hard-to-parse trash.
Unfortunately, I believe strongly in interesting-and-hard-to-compare properties; the trick is making them feel meaningful without swamping the game.
That sounds more like The Division than Destiny. The amount of potential stat boosts on a piece of gear was so high that it became practically impossible to min/max for any particular build, and you really didnāt have much of a reason to build for anything else than the 3-4 critical rate boosting perks anyway.