Not neuroses
Sep. 23rd, 2011 03:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidnThe new Windows 7 effect of windows fading out and falling slightly away from you puts a whole new spin on sending emails from Outlook. Now, when you hit the Send button, you get a direct visual representation of the message tumbling out of your grasp and through the unknown ether, knowing that you're powerless to get it back if you've accidentally sent everyone a personal note or copy and pasted in an observation that your client wears silly shoes.
But that's not what I wanted to talk about - though this might be more a question for the people who read this on LJ rather than anywhere else. I just remembered that in the PS Final Fantasy games (which were, of course, the first encounter with the series that I had), where your movement on the playfield was periodically interrupted by random battles with completely invisible enemies, I subconsciously developed a habit to try to avoid them. Instead of just running to where I was aiming for, I would always run a short distance for about a second, then let go of the direction to pause for a tiny amount of time, then start again, inserting little pauses between bursts of movement. I remember I read a speed FAQ for FF9 (where you got a special award for completing the game in under twelve hours) that recommended this out of nowhere, which makes me think that I wasn't alone - is this a habit that other people also got into?
I'm not sure whether it actually had any effect on the game, or whether it was an illusion born from taking slightly more time to move anywhere, therefore making the gaps between the battles seem longer. I know that as soon as I took advantage of snapshot saves in FF6 and found that the time to the next battle was a predetermined number of steps from the last one, I stopped bothering with it for that game immediately.
But that's not what I wanted to talk about - though this might be more a question for the people who read this on LJ rather than anywhere else. I just remembered that in the PS Final Fantasy games (which were, of course, the first encounter with the series that I had), where your movement on the playfield was periodically interrupted by random battles with completely invisible enemies, I subconsciously developed a habit to try to avoid them. Instead of just running to where I was aiming for, I would always run a short distance for about a second, then let go of the direction to pause for a tiny amount of time, then start again, inserting little pauses between bursts of movement. I remember I read a speed FAQ for FF9 (where you got a special award for completing the game in under twelve hours) that recommended this out of nowhere, which makes me think that I wasn't alone - is this a habit that other people also got into?
I'm not sure whether it actually had any effect on the game, or whether it was an illusion born from taking slightly more time to move anywhere, therefore making the gaps between the battles seem longer. I know that as soon as I took advantage of snapshot saves in FF6 and found that the time to the next battle was a predetermined number of steps from the last one, I stopped bothering with it for that game immediately.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-24 01:09 pm (UTC)And doesn't it also just about require manipulating your Playstation to skip the FMV sequences? Rather than just, I don't know, provide an in-game skip function... or better yet, only count your time spent actually playing rather than viewing story events.
Besides, the idea of not being able to go back, from that point, to do all the things you missed makes the completionist in me very unhappy. I understand and even appreciate when games employ a choice system whereby you can't do everything and have to make tough decision, but it seems that the primary point of getting that sword is for the sake of completion.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-24 10:19 pm (UTC)The pointlessness of getting an ultimate weapon at the very end of a rushed game in which you're underpowered and can't even go back to use it is not lost on me, but I was interested that it was even there, as a special challenge - playing an extremely long game as fast as possible, all the way through, within what seems like an impossible limit.