The Final Fantasy Legend Monsters: Not Fun?

I've done a little bit of playing recently and have maxxed out one of my 4 monsters at tier 13. There are tier 14 monsters but the only way to get to them is to eat the meat from some of the final bosses so for all intents and purposes that character is done getting better. He can still eat meat and if he transforms he's guaranteed to stay at tier 13 so he can't really get worse, either. Presumably the abilities at tier 13 are different and powerful so figuring out which tier 13 monsters to use will be a thing but by and large that character is simply done getting better. I found some non-random encounters (talk to a guard and get an instant fight) which spawn monsters frequently used to get to tier 13 so the remaining 3 characters will likely get maxxed out in an hour or two whenever I get around to putting that time in.

And then? There will be no possible way to get better. It will be a matter of muddling my way through the 'plot' until I either beat the game or reach a point where I need to find the right mix of top tier monsters to beat a hard fight. Money has practically no use to me either (I can pay to stay at an inn but since I can just eat practically any meat for full health and abilities I'm not sure that's going to matter) so there's really going to be no reason at all to fight. Running from fights can fail so I guess just holding down the attack button might well be faster in the long run. At this point I'm either going to win, or not, and there's not a lot I can do about it. (And since other people have won with 4 monsters I have to believe I'll be able to do it, too.)

Working out how the mechanic worked was interesting and fun. Writing the Java program was fun. Even wandering around and figuring out the path to tier 13 was fun. But I'm really dreading actually playing the game now. Part of the reason RPGs are so compelling to me is the ability to make numbers get bigger. Another is the story/cutscenes. A third is to get challenged. I'm pretty much done the first part and really don't have high hopes for story or cutscenes. Since there's no way to really get better challenge is pretty much out the window too at this point. I win or I don't. I'm going to plow my way through this, honest, but I don't know that I'm going to enjoy it much...

Is the problem with monsters themselves, or with a party of all monsters, or just with the way I've approached it? Maybe a party with a single monster could be interesting since you could still level up the other characters in more standard ways and just feed the monster when it made sense to do so. But then it feels like either you make a plan for the monster and probably make him awesome compared to your party for most of the game or you don't make a plan and he constantly languishes at low tier since there are way more transitions backwards down the chain than there are ones forward.


It's a little like the Dynasty Hockey Facebook game. It was fun while doing random matches was actually progressing my team, but I reached the point where I had to do a bunch of trivial matches for basically no reward except paying the upkeep on my buffs. Grinding out stuff when I can make progress is fun. Grinding out stuff for no reason is just tedious. I stopped playing that game as a result and have pretty much lost interesting in playing The Final Fantasy Legend in the same way. But maybe the plot will get better after I rebuild the statue...

Dynasty Hockey Leagues

I have now played my way through a full league in the Facebook game Dynasty Hockey. They managed to stick to their guns as far as having any given match only impact one person's stats which is a little unfortunate, but they also made it so cherry-picking weak matches isn't really feasible which is nice.

Basically how it works is there are two phases to a league. The first phase lasts 3 days and you can play 60 games total. There are 32 teams in the league and you can play each other team at most 3 times. So each team has 93 possible games of which they should play 60. Cherry-picking the weaker targets still exists here since the top 12 teams should all end up playing the same 60 games. But now it isn't good enough to merely be able to beat 10% of teams since if you're not in the top 12 of your league you'll actually have a harder schedule. (You can't play against yourself but everyone else can!) So there's real incentive to be good instead of just good enough. Also, other than advancing to the play-offs there is no reward for winning. Every game you play is worth 5 RP (game currency) regardless on if you win or lose, so even the bad teams are encouraged to play their 60 games and maybe get lucky.

The teams are split into 8 divisions of 4 and after the 3 days are up the top 2 in each division advance to the 'play-offs' while the bottom 2 get to play in a consolation play-off. This means that while 16 teams advance it isn't guaranteed to be the best 16 teams. A weaker team can get lucky with division placement and be able to squeak into the play-offs. The 3rd best team could even fail to qualify!

The play-offs are a 1 day event where you get to play 15 games and can play each team at most once. Since there are only 15 opponents you 'have' to play everyone once. Again, playing a game is worth 5 RP regardless on win or lose. Finishing with a better record gets you more cash and a better draft pick for a new player. (I ended up with the 4th pick in my draft and was able to snag the favourite player from my youth: Sergei Fedorov!) I ended up only playing 14 games in my play-off due to the way tiebreakers worked. (I was pretty much guaranteed to lose and the first tiebreaker is goal differential. I figured it was worth not earning the 5 RP to make an extra $2M bucks.

Everyone who makes the play-offs gets promoted to the next tier of league. The top 2 players in the consolation bracket also get the promotion so even if you were in a brutal division you can keep advancing. (You just earn less money and a worse draft pick.)

I wish there was a way to actually impact your opponent's record other than by making your team be hard to beat, but given that restriction this system actually seems pretty good. The final stage where you simply can't be the best without beating the best is nice. Multiple people could end up undefeated at 15-0 which is a little weird, but then the goal differential comes in and over 15 games it seems pretty likely that the 'better' 15-0 team will have the higher goal differential. And if they don't? Well, they only lose $2M and a slot in the draft.

One thing that does disappoint me is I'm unable to put together the Russian Five line. Not because the players don't exist in the game (they all do) but because the game has slotted all of Fedorov, Larionov, and Kozlov as centers. The glut at center for the Red Wings is really sad for me since I can only have 3 centers on my team. Clearly two have to be Fedorov and Yzerman but who gets to be the third? I currently have Datsyuk and Delvecchio and will need to toss one of them aside should I get a chance to draft Stevie Y.

Dynasty Hockey

I've recently started playing a new Facebook game, Dynasty Hockey. It's a typical Facebook game in the sense that you have a recharging set of actions you're allowed to take, you get bonuses if your friends play, and you can spend real money to just be better. The reason this game is interesting is you're building a hockey team out of current and historic hockey players.

The gameplay itself is a little on the weak side. Your recharging action is to play a game against another team, but the game is completely simulated. Your team faces their team, some goals are scored, and somebody wins. If you win you get a big bonus (two types of in game currency and the ability to buy a new player for your team), if you lose you get a consolation prize (20% of the in game currency you would have won, no new players). The person you play against has no change in their stats at all. It's as if you didn't do anything to them at all, win or lose, so other players are more like random NPCs than they are actual pvp opponents.

In and of itself that might not be so bad, but the problem is you get a list of 20 potential opponents and their approximate stats. Since there's no benefit to choosing the difficult game, a huge difference in the reward if you win, and a limited number of games you can play it should be pretty obvious that you want to cherry-pick the weak games and avoid playing anyone who might beat you. And since the game doesn't track how often you get challenged there's no punishment for being a bad team. As long as you can beat the truly terrible teams you're doing ok.

I just finished off the leveling aspect of the game and have moved into a league which provides a drastically smaller pool of opponents. Presumably we're going to play down to the end so if I want to win the league I'll need to be the best team of the 32 who signed up as opposed to just being good enough to beat the bottom 5-10% of players at any given level. (My record was 672-30 when I hit max level and if I was to start over I bet I could get there in more like 670-0. Most of my losses were in exhibition games that didn't use my game action number up and I now know how to properly spend the in game currencies.)

I want to see how this league thing plays out but mostly I'm just sticking around in the hopes of getting a chance to sign Gordie Howe. I already have Vladimir Konstantinov and Alex Delvecchio from Red Wings teams of the past!