Tanukitsune

Quitter's Club: Don't be ashamed to quit the game.

Recommended Posts

At exactly 200 hours and after a string of runs that failed on the third form of the final boss, I think I may have given up on my goal to unlock every ship in FTL. I love you, darling, and therefore must let you go.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I have every ship unlocked in FTL, which one was giving you trouble? (Mostly out of curiosity, i've been away from the game for long enough that i'm not sure i can offer any advice.)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I just need Slug C, which only requires you to get to Sector 8 with Slug B, but that ship is fucking garbage. Then I need the two Crystal Cruisers, which either require a blessing from the random number god or completing the game with every other A & B ship, except the Lanius. The only A & B ships I haven't won with are both Slug Cruisers and Mantis A.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I need the two Crystal Cruisers, which either require a blessing from the random number god or completing the game with every other A & B ship

 

The savescum god will work too. I played a bunch, and as soon as I got the stasis pod in an early sector I saved (as in, bypassed the permadeath by backing up my save file). Then when I hit a Zoltan sector, I used savescumming to fully explore the sector so that I could find the research outpost to open the pod, and so on for the final step.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That still involves a ton of save scumming, since the right sectors might not even appear. I think it's easier for me at this point to just finish with those three ships, but I probably won't.

 

I don't think any game I love as much as FTL is so deeply flawed.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't think any game I love as much as FTL is so deeply flawed.

 

Really? What's flawed about it? The stealth B is an evil trap designed by sadists, but other than that I can't think of much wrong with the game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I got into some FTL mods a while back after the Advanced Edition came out.  There were two in particular I liked.  One added a bunch of new weapon and drone types.  The other added an endless mode which let you explore at your own pace but each sector had a boss fight at the end.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Really? What's flawed about it? The stealth B is an evil trap designed by sadists, but other than that I can't think of much wrong with the game.

 

Mainly the whole final sector, which breaks all the rules of the game. Also, I wish the randomness of the stores was softened. And the stupid Crystal Cruiser questline.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Mainly the whole final sector, which breaks all the rules of the game. Also, I wish the randomness of the stores was softened. And the stupid Crystal Cruiser questline.

 

What rules does it break? Sure it switches the pursuing fleet for a ship traveling towards the base, but it's not like it's unclear what's happening or what you have to do. I feel like the randomness of the stores could be better, but I wouldn't call it broken. I've never gotten screwed by stores, but I have to go pretty much as far as you can to get maximum store selection (maximum exploration, visit every store, keep a full wallet in case you find a store). As for the Crystal Cruiser, sure it takes either unreasonable luck or unreasonable savescumming to get it, but why is it flawed to have a rare thing that not everyone gets? It's not like you need to get it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The ending encounter seemed to break with the rest of the game because it's no longer about holding your ship together over random encounters scraping together what equipment you can. Instead you're brought up against a tough wall of an enemy that seemed like it particularly favoured certain strategies, and could even be impossible if you have unsuitable weapons to attack them with.

When I reached the boss for the first time it took some wind out of my sails because my ship was totally unable to damage it with my limited firepower. Then when I eventually beat the first form I just gave up the game, seeing there was was a whole 'nother one I'd have to beat.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Off the top of my head, rules that the final battle breaks - I'll ignore the sector itself, because I agree that while it is a problem, it's not the biggest one.

 

Rule #1: Everything a ship does is attached to a system. This is true for every battle but the final one, which has its power surge attacks that cannot be prevented by destroying a system.

 

Rule #2: Killing a ship's crew ends the fight. The Flagship's AI will take over and start automatically repairing systems if you kill all the crew.

 

Rule #3: When you destroy a ship, it's destroyed. Obviously, the Flagship comes back twice.

 

Rule #4: A Zoltan shield disappears once it's destroyed. The Flagship's Zoltan shield reappears halfway through its third form. The Flagship's Zoltan shield is also twice as strong as any other.

 

Rule #5: Every ship except the Flagship has all its weapons concentrated in one room. The Flagship has four separate weapons rooms.

 

To be clear, I love FTL. It's one of my favourite games ever. I don't hate the Flagship or the randomness as much as many others, but I do think that there are serious problems with how the game works and the Flagship is the most important one. It works so differently from the rest of the game that there are strategies you can build for every other sector that will just leave you fucked for the Flagship.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The AI thing is pretty cheaty, and it's gross that it makes the optimal play to kill all but one enemy then destroy the ship. I suppose given that they wanted the crew to carry over between fights, it was necessary because otherwise decrewing the ship in fight 1 would automatically win fights 2 and 3. That bothered me, but the rest of it doesn't really feel like rule-breaking (I suppose the superweapon not having a system is totally breaking a rule, but I never found myself wishing I could target the super instead of standard weapon system, so it's breaking a rule in a way that doesn't matter).

 

The criticism that the flagship invalidates some builds is one I've heard a lot, and it never occurred to me as a problem. I always thought of FTL as a game where your goal was to build a ship that could beat the final boss, so I never had the problem of cruising through sector 7 only to realize my sweet ship was totally not set up to fight the boss.

 

Most games with bossfights have bosses that don't play by the same ruleset as standard enemies, and there's lots of games with heavy customization (mostly RPGs) where you can build a character that's great at killing normal enemies and lousy against bosses, but I rarely see people complain about that, so why does FTL in particular get flak for it?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well in FTL if you lose then your entire run is over. I played for maybe ten hours and only reached the final boss a few times(I might suck but it's still a lot of play time relative to boss encounters). That doesn't offer a lot of time to figure out how to beat it, and it's pretty hollow to just find out strategies online.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The criticism that the flagship invalidates some builds is one I've heard a lot, and it never occurred to me as a problem. I always thought of FTL as a game where your goal was to build a ship that could beat the final boss, so I never had the problem of cruising through sector 7 only to realize my sweet ship was totally not set up to fight the boss.

 

Most games with bossfights have bosses that don't play by the same ruleset as standard enemies, and there's lots of games with heavy customization (mostly RPGs) where you can build a character that's great at killing normal enemies and lousy against bosses, but I rarely see people complain about that, so why does FTL in particular get flak for it?

 

The invalidation of builds is a problem for three reasons. First, as SuperBiasedMan said, the permadeath makes it difficult to know what the boss is going to look like ahead of time, meaning you have no idea whether or not your build is going to be successful or not the first few times you make it to the Flagship and no recourse once you realize you're fucked. If the game wants to be about beating the final boss, it should tell you much, much earlier that your build is not going to work.

 

Second, because of the high degree of randomness in the game (which I generally like), there's a good chance that you'll never come across the tools you need to beat the boss. Maybe the best weapon loadout you could must relies on a Hermes missile - well, that Defense drone is going to screw you over. Maybe it relies on boarding - good luck with the Zoltan shield, good luck with the AI. You encounter those problems in regular battles, but you can always run from those. Of course, you should try to get a more varied toolset, but the game often won't allow you to.

 

Third, a lot of the strategies that don't work against the Flagship are hella fun for the rest of the game. Suffocation and arson strategies are really entertaining and totally viable for certain ships, but they don't work against the Flagship and that's annoying. Of course, you can just ignore that and have fun all through Sector 7, but if enjoying a playstyle (one that is encouraged through the abundance of certain weapons, drones and augmentations) requires ignoring a large aspect of the game, that seems like a design flaw.

 

As for bosses in other games, I think people do complain about them a lot. Deus Ex: Human Revolution got tons of flack for having bosses that were a huge pain to get through using builds that were otherwise perfectly viable through the rest of the game. A good boss fight (and I would extend this to final levels in general) should be the culmination of all the skills you've learned up until that point, not a trick telling you to get it right next time.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

To me, the boss in FTL felt like one it was a case of "this is a video game, therefore there needs to be a final boss".  I wouldn't mind that so much except it just doesn't feel as organic as the rest of the game.  When I randomly come across an enemy ship that happens to have a configuration that I'm weak against, I'll accept it because that's the luck of the draw.  The boss feels like lazy design in a way.  It takes every system in the game, turns them up to 11, then throws them all at you one after another.  I would have preferred that the boss also be randomized the same way enemies are.  Make it strong yes, but have different builds instead of all builds.  It's part of the reason the Endless Space mod was fun.  It takes what I think is the best part of the game, exploring the galaxy, and makes that the point.  But it also has a randomized, single stage boss at the end of each sector to keep things interesting.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I got to the point where I could fairly regularly make it to the boss, but only ever beat once. I decided the boss was not fun, and uninstalled the game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The invalidation of builds is a problem for three reasons. First, as SuperBiasedMan said, the permadeath makes it difficult to know what the boss is going to look like ahead of time, meaning you have no idea whether or not your build is going to be successful or not the first few times you make it to the Flagship and no recourse once you realize you're fucked. If the game wants to be about beating the final boss, it should tell you much, much earlier that your build is not going to work.

 

I agree that on the very first bossfight, you don't know what you're in for, and you can die because of that. I don't remember if I beat the boss on my first sighting, but I know I at least got to the second phase, and by that point I had seen everything I needed to know how to prepare. It's obvious that you need to put a lot of damage through their 4 shield/many engine configuration, teleporting in crew is strong against the weapons pods but good luck taking out the full crew (and the AI is a shitty surprise when you do manage it, but at least you only get surprised once), to survive the super mode you'll want cloaking, a ton of shields and engines, or just enough firepower to kill most of their guns by the time it comes online... it's not like you need to fight it five times to learn what to do.

 

I'm prepared to entertain the argument that getting screwed by a permadeath boss once (or twice, counting the AI thing) is too many times, but if that's an acceptable number of times, I reject the notion that FTL's boss requires more than that.

 

Second, because of the high degree of randomness in the game (which I generally like), there's a good chance that you'll never come across the tools you need to beat the boss. Maybe the best weapon loadout you could must relies on a Hermes missile - well, that Defense drone is going to screw you over. Maybe it relies on boarding - good luck with the Zoltan shield, good luck with the AI. You encounter those problems in regular battles, but you can always run from those. Of course, you should try to get a more varied toolset, but the game often won't allow you to.

 

Steam tells me I have over two hundred hours logged on FTL, victories with most ships and configurations, and I have never reached the final boss without enough weapons (and weapons are the only thing you need, I've powered through the fight without any specialized gear like cloaking or hacking). I hate to use "git good, scrub" as an argument, but with that many playthroughs, it's unlikely that I'm running on pure luck. I assert that with the right strategy, you can avoid ending up simply unable to kill the boss.

 

Third, a lot of the strategies that don't work against the Flagship are hella fun for the rest of the game. Suffocation and arson strategies are really entertaining and totally viable for certain ships, but they don't work against the Flagship and that's annoying. Of course, you can just ignore that and have fun all through Sector 7, but if enjoying a playstyle (one that is encouraged through the abundance of certain weapons, drones and augmentations) requires ignoring a large aspect of the game, that seems like a design flaw.

 

I don't know what to say to this, because I could never make suffocation work (you had to outclass them so badly to keep O2 down without just killing them entirely), and fire was a terrible version of damage beams where you didn't get the damage effect of partial shield or weapon disabling until the enemy's ship was thoroughly on fire. Do people really play arson builds? What do you do about drones, just run away from every one of them, and leave all that scrap unclaimed?

 

As for bosses in other games, I think people do complain about them a lot. Deus Ex: Human Revolution got tons of flack for having bosses that were a huge pain to get through using builds that were otherwise perfectly viable through the rest of the game. A good boss fight

 

That's just it though, the DE bosses were terrible. Not just as bosses of the stealth game Deus Ex, but as bosses in general. Even if you were playing the game as a pure FPS (and they were clearly built as pure FPS bosses), they were ultralethal bullet sponges who gave no indication of fight progress, had about two attack patterns each, fought in boring arenas and were trivially defeated with stupid boring tactics (mines, the wall-penetrating laser). To say that invalidating some builds is their problem, I think they'd have to be otherwise good bosses.

 

 

The boss feels like lazy design in a way.  It takes every system in the game, turns them up to 11, then throws them all at you one after another.

 

I strongly disagree. I'm a proponent of the "final exam" school of boss design where the boss tests you on all the game's systems, and what you're describing is exactly that. Sure you could run away from any one fight, but if you ran away often, you were doing it wrong. I didn't take the unmanned drones as a sign for my boarding ship to run away, I took them as a sign to not rely purely on boarding. This is a roguelike-like with a clock, you need all the XP you can get for the final level.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

But the problem is that the Flagship is a final exam with trick questions.

 

EDIT: To address one of your other points, the Lanius B and Rock B are built for suffocation and fire-bombing, respectively. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think you're viewing this wrong, you're viewing it as someone 200 hours deep into the game rather than from the view of someone who thought <10 hours was enough and dropped out then. I don't want a final exam, I just want a fun game and it felt overly disruptive to me to change how the game worked for that ending so I bounced off the game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's just it though, the DE bosses were terrible. Not just as bosses of the stealth game Deus Ex, but as bosses in general. Even if you were playing the game as a pure FPS (and they were clearly built as pure FPS bosses), they were ultralethal bullet sponges who gave no indication of fight progress, had about two attack patterns each, fought in boring arenas and were trivially defeated with stupid boring tactics (mines, the wall-penetrating laser). To say that invalidating some builds is their problem, I think they'd have to be otherwise good bosses.

 

Apart from the thing about fight progress, that pretty much describes the FTL boss to me.

 

 

I strongly disagree. I'm a proponent of the "final exam" school of boss design where the boss tests you on all the game's systems, and what you're describing is exactly that. Sure you could run away from any one fight, but if you ran away often, you were doing it wrong. I didn't take the unmanned drones as a sign for my boarding ship to run away, I took them as a sign to not rely purely on boarding. This is a roguelike-like with a clock, you need all the XP you can get for the final level.

 

I don't mean running away from every fight, I mean encountering a ship configuration that you can't overcome and running away, which is a totally valid strategy and completely fitting with the setting of the game.  I'm not opposed to the "final exam" boss in theory, I just felt like this wasn't a good execution of it.  It's not testing me on the game's systems when there are boss only systems.

 

 

Also, I want to state for the record that I do like the game a lot.  I just had a lot more fun when I didn't have to deal with the boss.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

But the problem is that the Flagship is a final exam with trick questions.

 

EDIT: To address one of your other points, the Lanius B and Rock B are built for suffocation and fire-bombing, respectively. 

 

What are the tricks? I admit that the AI pilot is a dirty rotten trick, but it can only get you once. The only other way the ship "gets you" is by just being hard: having a ton of shelds/engine, and a ton of firepower, which is hardly a trick. Sure it has a Zoltan shield, but shoot that down. Sure it has the AI pilot, but boarding and killing 90% of the crew is still sweet. Sure it has a defense drone, but it's not like you didn't know those existed, overwhelm it.

 

As for the ships, I always sell off the firebomb and turn the Rock B into a battleship, built upon that sweet Heavy Pierce laser, and the Lanius B's anti-oxygen boarding crew is just as good at boarding the flagship as anything else.

 

 

I think you're viewing this wrong, you're viewing it as someone 200 hours deep into the game rather than from the view of someone who thought <10 hours was enough and dropped out then. I don't want a final exam, I just want a fun game and it felt overly disruptive to me to change how the game worked for that ending so I bounced off the game.

 

I don't know what to tell you because I also liked the boss when I was ten hours in, and I wasn't having a huge problem killing it. I didn't drop out where you are now because I was doing better than you are now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

im all for hard boss fights that require multiple passes to figure out.  But I am on SAM and SBM's side here, playing the whole way up to the end on your first handful of games feels like you are barely making it along, doing cool missions or getting burned for bad decisions.  Maybe you've made it with almost no weapons or missiles and mostly avoided conflict (which makes for a cool experience and narrative of your run) - then last level flagship and you're fun run is toast in a few seconds.

 

Not to change to a rogue-like-lite-like comparison but Isaac is my jam for perma death - the first time i got to Mom i knew it was some sort of uber boss...i did some damage, got stomped on, hand out the side, crap - dead. But! she is totally killable on your first show up with a great run, or at least your second/third after you figure out her general movement patterns can survive with less optimal items.  The other bosses in the womb, cath, sheol, chest are all similar - probably going to lose to each respective boss on your first-ever sighting but can learn and make some adjustments.

 

Ive gotten to the FTL last boss a handful of times and get spanked every time.  I dont even know if i've learned anything except that i love the game until the boss.  This talk of multiple phases is news to me and even more aggravating knowing that if i ever cleared the first i'd be super jacked only to get crushed in the next.  If i make it there again i may just open all the doors as a martyr rebellion to such a difficulty spike

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Sure you could run away from any one fight, but if you ran away often, you were doing it wrong. I didn't take the unmanned drones as a sign for my boarding ship to run away, I took them as a sign to not rely purely on boarding. This is a roguelike-like with a clock, you need all the XP you can get for the final level.

 

I agree with your general point in that I liked FTL, including the final boss, but I somewhat sympathize with those who didn't like the final boss because the game does have this strong flavor of "do whatever you can (including running away) to survive" feel to it.  So to find out that there is this guaranteed final boss that your ship has to measure up to could be a let down because it isn't exactly 100% aligned with the survival flavor.  I personally think the mismatch in tone is very minor and agree with you that it works, but I can see why it would be a huge break for some.

 

So I imagine that those who don't like the final boss... if the flagship wasn't guaranteed end-game event but rather random encounter from sector 8+ (and sectors just go on forever perhaps?), they probably won't like that enemy still but might like the game a lot more, even if they always end up dying to the exact same encounter.

 

Granted this whole ordeal started cause tberton said FTL was deeply flawed, and I would definitely disagree with that.  But I can see how it felt misleading to others.

 

From the get go I viewed entirety of FTL's system as one where every event and decisions boil down to how well your ship can fight, so big tough boss in the end kinda made sense.  But I'm thinking SAM/SBM/undermind9/tberton probably enjoyed the game initially as a journey with combat attached instead.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Grrr... I probably won't finish Transistor. It was interesting and all, but then GOG released DarkSiders and I got into that one far more seriously. Then came Technobabylon... well, it's strange, but I have more than enough to play in 2015, it seems!

 

For a Steam/Origin/Uplay denier who is quite picky about games, that's quite a novelty.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I agree with your general point in that I liked FTL, including the final boss, but I somewhat sympathize with those who didn't like the final boss because the game does have this strong flavor of "do whatever you can (including running away) to survive" feel to it.  So to find out that there is this guaranteed final boss that your ship has to measure up to could be a let down because it isn't exactly 100% aligned with the survival flavor.  I personally think the mismatch in tone is very minor and agree with you that it works, but I can see why it would be a huge break for some.

 

So I imagine that those who don't like the final boss... if the flagship wasn't guaranteed end-game event but rather random encounter from sector 8+ (and sectors just go on forever perhaps?), they probably won't like that enemy still but might like the game a lot more, even if they always end up dying to the exact same encounter.

 

Granted this whole ordeal started cause tberton said FTL was deeply flawed, and I would definitely disagree with that.  But I can see how it felt misleading to others.

 

From the get go I viewed entirety of FTL's system as one where every event and decisions boil down to how well your ship can fight, so big tough boss in the end kinda made sense.  But I'm thinking SAM/SBM/undermind9/tberton probably enjoyed the game initially as a journey with combat attached instead.

 

The funny thing is, I think I did approach the game from your point of view more. FTL, for most of the time I've been obsessed with it (remember, this is a game I've put 200 hours into), has been about ship combat to me. But the more I've played, the more I've recognized that there's other stuff there that the Flagship runs counter to. For instance, there's a huge benefit to upgrading your Medbay, Oxygen, Doors, Piloting and Sensors for the normal game, because a lot of blue options for events require that. But upgrading those systems for the Flagship is much less useful, except to soak up damage.

 

The more I think about it though, the more I think the problems with the Flagship are intertwined with the rest of the game. Maybe I'll make a "how I would redesign FTL" post later.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now