The False Dichotomy Between Artistic Freedom and Work For Hire

Let's talk about butts. Hold on! Don't run away yet! I promise there's a link here!

Yes, butts. Recently, there was yet another internet kerfuffle over Blizzard removing a pose for Tracer in Overwatch, one which was the stereotypical comic book "peeking over the shoulder to show off her butt" poses. Someone complained, Blizzard removed it with barely any explanation, Internet exploded, then Jeff Kaplan posted a more complete explanation:

While I stand by my previous comment, I realize I should have been more clear. As the game director, I have final creative say over what does or does not go into the game. With this particular decision, it was an easy one to make—not just for me, but for the art team as well. We actually already have an alternate pose that we love and we feel speaks more to the character of Tracer. We weren’t entirely happy with the original pose, it was always one that we wrestled with creatively. That the pose had been called into question from an appropriateness standpoint by players in our community did help influence our decision—getting that kind of feedback is part of the reason we’re holding a closed beta test—but it wasn’t the only factor. We made the decision to go with a different pose in part because we shared some of the same concerns, but also because we wanted to create something better.

We wouldn’t do anything to sacrifice our creative vision for Overwatch, and we’re not going to remove something solely because someone may take issue with it. Our goal isn’t to water down or homogenize the world, or the diverse cast of heroes we’ve built within it. We have poured so much of our heart and souls into this game that it would be a travesty for us to do so.

We understand that not everyone will agree with our decision, and that’s okay. That’s what these kinds of public tests are for. This wasn’t pandering or caving, though. This was the right call from our perspective, and we think the game will be just as fun the next time you play it. ( http://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20743015583?page=11#post-210 )

tl;dr: The art team were already working on alternate poses, and input from the community just reinforced their original issues.


Artistic Freedom in Making Games

I'm a game developer working on an indie game where artistic freedom to create the game we envision is incredibly important to us. So important that we've insisted on maintaining near complete creative control in any negotiations we've been in so far. It wouldn't be Eon Altar if certain aspects of the gameplay were changed by some external party who doesn't share our vision.

But at the same time, the game we're creating is still for others to play. That's why we do things like have play tests, focus groups, and early access: to get feedback. Find out what resonates with players, and what turns them off the game.

Not all feedback is equal, mind. Sometimes we'll look at a piece of feedback and conclude, "not our target audience." That's okay. Not everyone has to love our game. Other times we'll look at a piece of feedback and say, "hey, they're on to something here, it really is not fun in this section." Then we'll take that feedback, discuss and dissect it within our team, and decide whether we want or can take action.

When someone says "artistic freedom" I immediately get the picture of an artist in front of a canvas, painting whatever the heck they want, in whatever style they want. And if you can afford to do that, fantastic! But there's a lot more than one person's artistic freedom involved in making something as large as a video game.


Design By Committee

If and when you get hired into a company to help create something--be it a video game, video streaming software, a movie, whatever--you're part of a larger group of artists or developers working towards the exact same goal: making a compelling product people can enjoy, and therefore want to purchase. Building something of this scale is nigh impossible for one person, and therefore is generally left to a larger organization like a company.

Often times, there's a single person--like in the case of Blizzard's Overwatch, the game director--who is the be-all end-all of the vision. But the entire game might not be their vision. They're the tie-breaker when difficult creative decisions come up, or sometimes when things go off the rails and something just isn't working within the framework of the game/world/product and they need to intervene. The work itself is (usually) a product of many people coming together to build something cool.

Even for Eon Altar, we have our Creative Director, but he leaves a lot of decision-making to the rest of us. It helps that we have a small team and we're all generally on the same page when it comes to the ultimate vision of the game--we still have clashes on occasion though. But if we can't set aside our differences--maybe because we have equally logical reasons for our own ideas--then having someone who's the tie-breaker helps us move forward. Sometimes that tie-breaking is also fueled by customer feedback.

The concept of "artistic freedom" as the Internet likes to envision it where you have someone dictating how all aspects of the product should be and their vision is sacrosanct is almost entirely absent from most creative productions in real life. Heck, even novels have editors and beta readers who provide feedback to novelists, despite the actual writing of the novel usually being driven by a single person.

There are exceptions. Barone's Stardew Valley is one recent one. He is the only person actively working on the game, but even then he still takes into account customer feedback. Adding more post-marriage content is one that he decided was worthwhile feedback to implement, for example, which alters his game and his vision. And he still rejects other suggestions as well. His work is malleable, on purpose. Yet no one is decrying his artistic vision being impugned by others.


Work For Hire

There is a tension between being able to create whatever you like, and having to create something somebody else wants. Unless you're working entirely by yourself in a vacuum, your own artistic vision will be altered, nudged, changed, and influenced by others: your team, your customers, and the culture around you. Sometimes it will change during the creative process itself!

With customer input comes difficult decisions, though. You want to make a fun game, you have an idea of what would make it cool/great, but then you get feedback from many customers who hate it. See: nixing flight in World of Warcraft. Some folks saw the return of flight as Blizzard caving to people who wanted to dictate how the game was made. Some folks hailed it as "listening to their customers". Sounds similar to the consumer narratives around Tracer's butt pose in Overwatch to me. Personally I saw it as the game designers taking the feedback, and returning with a clever system that let them deliver their vision and give customers what they wanted. Win-win in my mind there.

At the end of the day, you're still creating a product to sell. If you don't want to sell it, by all means, do whatever you like, but chances are you're not part of a large team creating it if that's the case. But even if you're creating to sell, it doesn't mean you can't create something awesome (e.g.: Mona Lisa, Sistine Chapel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the original Transformers movie, all works created as work for hire).

Artistic freedom and work for hire aren't always at odds with each other, and even then, one could argue pure absolute "artistic freedom" doesn't exist outside of a vacuum anyhow, or at least total monetary freedom. It sounds like I'm contradicting myself, but I'm not. They're potentially correlated to each other, but there's not necessarily causation.


Game Devs Do What Game Devs Do

Game devs can still create whatever product they like, generally. Hatred as a game exists, it sold copies. GTA does extremely well despite critics of its hookers and violence. The Dead or Alive series has tits and asses as far as the eye can see.

In Blizzard's case, they're targeting a broad audience, which means creating many characters that fit many different archetypes. I mean, they're already shipping Widowmaker, who's fits the comic book-esque woman to a T, so it's not like they're removing everything "sexy" from the game. They've decided that's just not Tracer's style. And that's okay; it's ultimately their decision--a decision potentially of consensus internally, or top-down from the game director. But it's still their vision, their game, and their target customers are part of that vision.

#IndieDev, #Overwatch, #GameDevelopment

[Stardew Valley] A Charming, Slightly Flawed Masterclone

The game on everyone's Steam account these days is the same one I've been playing: Stardew Valley. A one-man developer job over the course of four years, it is an extremely impressive undertaking. Even more impressive that he managed to ship something, anything, let alone ship a complete and enjoyable game.

Many folks liken it to Harvest Moon with combat and many of the irks removed, but many seem unaware of Harvest Moon's cousin series, Rune Factory, which is also described as thus. In fact, I'd liken Stardew Valley as a Rune Factory with more charm but shallower combat rather than a Harvest Moon clone. But I guess people don't call Diablo-Clones "Torchlight but with <blah>", so expecting folks to be familiar with every offshoot of a given genre is probably unreasonable.

But there's been no visible game like it in the PC gaming space, and Barone knew there was a huge hole to be filled. Stardew Valley is to Farmville like Puzzle Quest is to Bejeweled. At a 40,000 foot view, they might be described as similar games, but they diverge extremely quickly. And given the popularity of Stardew, we've seen just how big that hole really was.

CAULIFLOWER DAY! I made like 77k off all that cauliflower.

Indie Development

Four years is an immensely long time. When I first heard of that timeline, I looked at what Stardew delivered and scoffed. I could probably program 80% of it in 8 - 10 months. But here's the thing, Barone didn't just program it: he designed it; he composed it; he wrote it; he drew it; he debugged it; he iterated it; he marketed it; he patched it. The game evolved significantly over that 4 years. Programming is just the tip of the iceberg. I certainly couldn't do all of that, let alone in 8 - 10 months.

Barone redid the project numerous times over his 4 year stint, saying when he had "first started [he] had no pretty much no experience." And of course, that last marathon to the finish to getting the game out in a complete form is no quick and easy march. On Eon Altar we've learned what I like to call the 20/80 rule: the last 20% will take 80% of your time. We've had most of Eon's core systems programmed relatively early in the product cycle, what's eaten our time has been iteration and polish. I imagine Barone's experience is likely similar.

He also likely struggled significantly over his time period due to industry inexperience as in the Kotaku interview, he mentioned,

"I know that any patch I release or anything, if it causes problems for people, there’s thousands of people that are going to be experiencing these problems. I have to just make very sure that everything I do is precise. Which is kind of something I’m new to. My whole development process I’ll admit was pretty sloppy. I’m not that professional. It’s like it is true indie game development, not super streamlined and polished. I’m getting used to it, and I’m starting to learn how to do this in a good way, but it’s pretty stressful."

For Eon Altar, we have the benefit of professional experience: nearly every employee has worked in AAA gaming or a big name software company previously. We've shipped products before, and thus we can bring that experience to the table at Flying Helmet Games. Disciplined practices around risk assessment, reduction, and management; estimates and timelines; what to cut, what to ship. Oh, we make plenty of mistakes, but they're usually mistakes of judgement, not necessarily obfuscated and compounded by a lack of process and experience.

That said, while Barone might have made that 4 year stint way harder on himself than he really needed to due to reinventing the wheel as far as development processes go, he's still done something many indie devs have not: shipped. And to be honest, I think he kicked ass. Pretty sure 60 hours of Stardew Valley so far can attest to how much I enjoy the game!

My farm is pretty organized, I guess.

Charms

The core loop of the game--the day/night cycle--is a satisfying just-one-more-day mechanic that rewards making plans. Tomorrow your tomatoes will be done and you'll make a few thousand gold; Thursday is the festival and you have the perfect crops to show off; Friday you want to check the wandering vendor for miscellaneous goods, and then hit the mines for more iron so you can spend Wednesday's gold on upgrading your pick-axe. The list goes on.

Now, this core loop is lifted directly from Harvest Moon--Barone has no bones about it, and that's all right: don't mess with what works.

What makes it more engaging to me than Rune Factory--the closest comparison to Stardew Valley--is how I interact with the townspeople, and concrete goals.

Rune Factory is a JRPG at heart, and thus often falls victim to anime conventions as far as personalities are concerned. That's not to say Stardew doesn't have its own stereotypes, but as someone who lives in North America, I fully admit I find the North American stereotypes more relatable--which really should show folks the importance of localization. But no localization required for me, as it's been developed in North America. Makes me wonder how European or Japanese folks would interpret the cast were it to be translated to those locales.

Also, I fully appreciate being able to romance characters of my gender. Getting the football--er, sorry, gridball jock out from the clutches of the vapid cheerleader was definitely an enjoyable experience once I got past his assholish exterior. Actually, most of the characters have really interesting back stories once you get past their mopey, day-to-day doldrums.

Farm wedding in my farm hat. Also, too bad, Halley. That boy is mine!

The other aspect that I really appreciated was the Community Center. It only took me about a year to get everything done for it, but having concrete goals to complete to guide my farm's initial growth was very helpful. The Rune Factory series has quests, but most of them focus on the combat aspect, and less on the farming aspect. Ideally I'd like something that has some sort of combination of the two, but I definitely enjoy how the Community Center was set up: here's a bunch of goals, you know them all in advance, have at 'em!


Flaws

Of course, no game is perfect, and while I love Stardew Valley to bits, there's one aspect that made me nearly quit in sheer frustration multiple times: the controls.

I use the gamepad controls, but there are some things that pretty much necessitate me switching to mouse/keyboard: buying stacks of items requires a shift-click; placing wallpaper in my house requires my mouse to target the wall; placing trellis-based crops like beans is pretty close to impossible without the mouse; placing anything like paths or sometimes even just talking to NPCs basically starts wonking out unpredictably.

A lot of these control issues boil down to the fact that gamepad support was tacked on after the fact. Most of the UI is mouse-based. In fact, the right stick controls the mouse cursor on screen, and you pretty well have to manually shove it in a corner to get the gamepad controls to act in a consistent manner, or your targeting tries to follow where the mouse cursor is on the screen. This is somewhat ameliorated by the "show target" setting, but it's still extremely messy and unpredictable. Menus are inconsistently controllable via the controller: most times them involve manually pressing an arrow on the screen with the mouse cursor rather than a simple button to scroll.

Rune Factory provides controls to crab-walk for easier crop watering/planting/hoeing, and that sort of control is sorely missing here. The number of times I've accidentally watered the middle of my crops rather than from the edge because my target jumped a square as I lined myself up is innumerable.

Controls for me are the biggest bugbear. By hour 10 I was ready to give up until I realized that the controller couldn't be used standalone, and I was stuck with some sort of chimaera control scheme. Once I figured it out, it was easy to eventually compartmentalize certain tasks to mouse vs. controller, but this is extremely frustrating.

The other issue for me is combat. Combat is extremely simplistic. There's no depth, aside from the literal depth of the given mine you're in. It's an okay diversion from farming, but I'd like to see more here. Rune Factory provides this in spades: special attacks, spells, severe weapon differentiation, boss fights. Stardew doesn't really press my button as far as combat goes. It's a serviceable system, but I bet Barone can do so much more with the tools he's put together for this stuff. I'd say he's at that last 20% place as far as combat is concerned. It could use more iteration in my personal opinion.

Taking a leek.

The Future

Stardew Valley has sold by the bucketload. Over half a million copies. That's nearly unfathomable to me to be honest. And frankly, he absolutely deserves the success. Despite my issues above, Stardew is an impressive and fun game without taking into account it was a solo job.

Given his inexperience, I'm a little concerned about how he's going to bring multiplayer about. Honestly, that's going to be a many-month job unto itself, with many frustrating bugs and desyncs. Trust me when I say multiplayer networking is a very difficult task. But it'll be a fantastic learning experience at the same time.

I'm happy he released the solo game though, before sitting down to do multiplayer. It shines brightly without it, and I'm absolutely enjoying my time on my farm with my husband.

Smoochin'

#IndieDev, #StardewValley, #FirstImpression

[IndieDev] Back From Casual Connect Europe: Awesome Indie Games

So I'm back from Amsterdam and our trip to Casual Connect Europe 2016! I have to say that Amsterdam is a magnificent city, Europe is very different from North America, and Casual Connect had some freakin' awesome games.

Amsterdam has canals! And very narrow streets.

Cutting to the chase, sadly, Eon Altar did not win any Indie Prize awards, but to be honest our game felt a little out of place at the event. As per the name of the event, "Casual", we were probably not really the target indie audience. The grand majority of games there were the very definition of "casual", being mobile, or quick sessions, or simple mechanics, which Eon Altar is not really any of those three. But man, many of these other indie games were amazingly executed. Really cool concepts, gorgeous artwork, and so on. I'll expand on some of the coolest games I saw below.

I got to talk with representatives of all sorts, as well. My first real industry networking event that I actively participated in. Got to talk shop with one of the Unity engineers (probably my personal highlight, being a software engineer myself primarily); mingled with a bunch of folks running ad and analytic platforms; some publishers; translators; testing companies; others selling art, cloud, or programming services. Complete networking overload.

Indie Prize Participants

Many folks thought Eon Altar was super different and really interesting. Our control scheme was pretty universally hailed as innovative, and many commented on how smooth it felt, which for me felt really good. But at the same time, the same problem we have today with communicating Eon Altar via Steam cropped up at the event. How do we evoke the experience we're creating in our communications?

Many don't quite get Eon Altar when you describe it, because there's nothing quite like it on the market. But when they get their hands on it, everything clicks. So we still have to solve the issue of how to communicate what our game is and the experience without having to actively demonstrate said experience. We were originally mislabeled as a "mobile" game at the event because of this issue, and even advertisers and publishers approached us like we're a traditional mobile game because we use the phrase "mobile-enhanced". But we're very much a PC (and want to be a console) game, just with mobile elements.

Our Director with our "booth" just after we set up early. We had to squish in a little once other booths started arriving.

But that issue aside, it was a really interesting experience, and I met so many cool people. Awesome devs, neat games, fantastic city.


Some Cool Indie Games To Look Out For

Leon!

This is totally not my usual faire, but the idea behind this education game was so freaking cool I was enamoured with the game immediately. Leon! is a game where you're reading a story, but words of the story can be swapped around to change the story. As you change the story, the illustrations and sentences change as well. It's basically a reading/puzzle game, but it's a beautiful, really well thought out concept.

Chatting with the devs, they figured kids in the 6 - 7 age range would be the target (along with their parents), but honestly if your child's reading level is high enough I could easily see a 5 year old managing just fine. I could easily see my nephews playing this with their mom. Also, bonus, you could swap between English and French in the demo they brought seamlessly on any page, which was pretty awesome.


Ellipsis

Ellipsis is a physical puzzle/platformer game played on a touch device. It's similar to pacifist mode of Geometry Wars (and indeed, the neon geometric aesthetics of it definitely elicit Geometry Wars), where you drag your circle around dodging traps and enemies, collecting other spheres. Simple concept, fun gameplay. And good news, this one is actually available on app stores right now.

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ellipsis-touch.-explore.-survive./id1003716367?mt=8


Slashy Hero

A point and drag action RPG of sorts, you're trying to retrieve all of the Halloween candy that's been stolen by a great evil. Enemies and environments all feel suitably cartoony Halloween, and even your character can wear different costumes. It's a bit of a puzzle as you want to create good slashing paths to kill enemies before they kill you, and of course in true ARPG fashion there are secret rooms and hidden portals. This one is also out on app stores right now.

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/slashy-hero/id1023492278?mt=8
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kongregate.mobile.slashyhero.google&hl=en


Clapper

A patty cake rhythm game. It sounds goofy, but oh my god I loved playing this game so much. It's basically DDR, except you're playing patty cake. Of course with my love of rhythm games I absolutely killed it on the harder difficulty (syncopation has nothing on me!). The booth with this game was pretty much busy non-stop for the entire convention, but I was really impressed at the use of the iPad camera as part of the game itself. Really clever.


Herald

A point-and-click puzzle game, with a little bit of Choose Your Own Adventure to it in the dialogues. Absolutely gorgeous 2D artwork (their trailer really doesn't do it justice), and I liked how you got to shape the story a bit by making choices along the way. There's no wrong choices as far as I can tell, but you do get to shape the story as you go based on said choices, which was a neat mechanic


Conclusion

I may do a post later on the differences I noticed between Europe (or at least, the tiny slice I saw in Amsterdam) and North America, because there were a lot, but hopefully now that's all over I'll be back blogging a bit more regularly. February was a bit of a wash, apparently. But really, check out the games I mentioned above if any tickle your fancy, because you will not likely be disappointed; they're all excellent games. To be nominated beside them is pretty amazing. #IndieDev, #EonAltar

[IndieDev] Amsterdam Bound! Awards and Conventions

Flying Helmet Games, myself included, have been pretty head's down the past few weeks trying to finish up our big Combat Update for Eon Altar, which should be coming very Soon™. I've personally also been working on a feature that should help bring our game up to more modern standards for RPGs, but that won't be until the patch after next.

Testing & polish cont's apace for Eon Altar update. Huge overhaul on progression, powers + new features thx to all your feedback! #indiedev

— Flying Helmet Games (@FHG_Games) February 1, 2016

But in the meantime, a couple of us will be going to Casual Connect in Amsterdam for the Developer Showcase, where I'll get to man our booth along with our Creative Director. One of the benefits to being a tiny company. I've never been to Amsterdam, either, so I'm really excited to see it. Networking opportunities abound, as well, so I suppose I'll have to get over my social awkwardness for a week.

But on that note I'll be gone for nearly two weeks, so my blog updates are still going to be sporadic at best.


Awards and Nominations

Something To Behold - Most Unique Gameplay

The reason for going to Casual Connect Europe is that Eon Altar has been nominated for the Indie Prize, which judging by the other entries nominated is in fantastic company. I don't know if we'll win, given how many participants there are, but I think we have something unique to offer, and judging from other awards we've received so far, I'm not the only one to think so.

The Big Indie Pitch Trophy

Recently we showed at Montreal's Big Indie Pitch, and came in 3rd place for it. Curse Gaming gave us an award (with a physical trophy!) after PAX Prime 2015 for, "Something to Behold--Most Unique Gameplay." We're one of Pixelkin's Editor Picks for PAX Prime 2015 as well. Holy Grail From Hell put us on their "PCs Finest Games of 2015" list under the Unfinished/Early Access category. Ookpixels thought our story was interesting enough to write a massive article on the origins of Flying Helmet Games.

Pixelkin Editor's Pick Logo we have on our Steam page

Here's hoping the Indie Prize judges also think we have something awesome to offer, but either way it's a fantastic honour and opportunity to go to Amsterdam to participate in the event. We're starting to make (good) waves and I can only hope to continue doing so until our release and beyond.

Onwards and upwards!
#IndieDev, #EonAltar

[IndieDev] I'd Love To Support Your Platform, But I Can't (Yet)

One of the most frustrating things about being a game developer for me, so far, is people unable to play your game. Maybe they don't have good enough specs on their computer, maybe their networking setup doesn't work, or maybe they just don't have devices on the platforms you support.

Eon Altar has a bit of a double whammy on the platform part, because we're limited for both the main game, as well as the controller applications. Right now we're Windows or bust via Steam for the main game (though we're working on OSX when we have spare moments), and for the controller apps, we're on iOS 8.1+ or Android 4.1+ on 512MB+ devices.


Platforms and Market Share

We expected some folks to ask for their platforms, but I'm a tad surprised as to what seems to be the most popular requests. For OSX we had a large number of users at PAX ask us about it--I personally fielded about 5 - 10 OSX requests a day--and I think we've had maybe 3 people total ask about Linux (which given Steam's statistics show a 1% user base for Linux users, not really surprising).

Steam Hardware Survey, January 2016

But on the mobile device side, we're had a surprising number of users asking for Windows Phone (or to a lesser extent, Windows Tablets). More users asking than OSX and Linux combined easily. Given Windows Phone only has a 1.7% market share vs. iOS at 13.1% and Android at 84.7%, I'm shocked by how many people outside of Microsoft's bubble owns these devices. Although if you look at country-specific data, you can see Windows Phone market share is largely driven by a few European countries, where Windows Phone share actually rivals or even beats out iOS in some cases.


Zug Zug

However, market share is a bit of a moot point for us on the controller app side. We're a Unity 4.x shop, and Unity 4.x doesn't support networking on Windows Store apps. While Unity 5.x's networking stack does support Windows Store apps, converting Eon Altar to use the new networking stack is non-trivial work, which is programmer speak for it will take a really long time. Probably on the order of weeks, if not months, to get correct, let alone all the other things that will break when we upconvert the project.

As the only programmer on the job currently, that would mean cutting features, like checkpoint saves. If I had to choose between checkpoint saves and another platform--oh wait, I do have to choose, that's my job!--I'd pick checkpoint saves, as that affects all of our current and future users in a supremely positive, non-trivial way. Also, we've had more requests for checkpoint saves than for Windows Phone.

There's also a question of, well, couldn't you just port the controller app to a ye olde Win32 (or OSX, or Linux) application? Push a button and go? The short answer is no, not really. The longer answer is it still involves work to ensure that resolutions work out, how do we ship the controller, is hardware support there, how does it play with a mouse instead of a touchscreen if the device has no touch screen--as well as a lot more testing. Which still means cutting features to get out the door.


Never Say Never

That's not to say we'll never support these other platforms. There are clear paths to doing so in all cases, it's just a matter of time is money, both of which are in extremely finite supply currently. Supporting more platforms so more people can play our game is definitely on my wish list, but right now we need to focus on getting the game out on the platforms we currently support, and if the game takes off sufficiently, we can revisit the platform discussion.
#IndieDev, #EonAltar, #Programming

[FFRK] Ultimate Rubicante: A Puzzle Cloaked in Fire

I'm still playing FFRK, and it's been a lot of fun, despite some of the wonky balance issues that pretty much necessitate the use of S/L tricks to reset the fight. As the game moves forward, you have power creep as you are wont to have in a mobile game, but the developers have started putting in extremely difficult fights that are FFRK at its best: a puzzle game with an execution phase.

There have been 3 of these "Ultimate" fights so far: Exdeath (FFV), Yunalesca (FFX), and Rubicante (FFIV).

Exdeath was a bit of a wake-up call for a lot of players. The ability to spam AoE magics, AoE physical attacks, and Dispel the entire party as a counter attack meant that while the standard Retaliate/Reflect strats were pretty well required, you also really needed a lot of mitigation. Stacking Shellga, Full Break, and Magic Breakdown reduced damage to tolerable levels (though it still required a lot of AoE healing). The fun part was that while he got twice the actions per round once he hit 50% health, because most of them turned into single-target mega-spells, suddenly you could just Carbuncle to reflect-all. The latter half of the fight was easier than the beginning of the fight.

Yunalesca was crazy easy, especially compared to her FFX counterpart which was probably one of the harder fights in the game. Retaliate was the name of the game here, and you'd pretty well rip through her in no time. Because of her Stage 3 Osmose spam pretty well reducing you to no ability uses left, Retaliate allowed your party to dish out impressive damage still.

Rubicante Ultimate, though, oh man, this required some impressive thinking to try and fight the mitigation required onto your team, deal with his gimmick, and still dish out enough damage to win, but quickly enough to keep taken damage low and kill him before your mitigation ran out. This fight really stressed having access to specific abilities that could only come from pulling certain gear.

The FFRK community on Reddit has determined there are 3 types of Soul Breaks (SBs)--super special attacks characters can learn from equipping gear, and can only be cast when your soul break bar has enough energy gained from taking damage/using actions--that are pretty much essential. Named the Holy Trinity of SBs, they are Wall, Medica, and Hastega (or Boostega).


The FFRK Holy Trinity

Wall is only on two characters currently: Tyro, and Y'shtola. And both of them require a very specific relic to learn said wall. But the effect is to raise the Defense and Resistance of all allies by 200% (!!!) for 25 seconds. This stacks on top of Shell/Protect, which both raise Resistance and Defense by 100%, so combined you're looking at a damage reduction of nearly 88% (since they stack multiplicatively), which makes this incredibly powerful.

Medica is basically any AoE heal (as they are only available via Soul Break). There are currently 19 Medicas in the game, of varying effectiveness. I have Y'shtola's and Vanille's, which are two of the most powerful ones available. On top of that, many Medicas have secondary effects. Vanille's also casts Protect as well as healing. Y'shtola's has an Esuna effect, both quite useful. I also have a "Shared" Soul Break from the armor "Mystery Veil" that cannot be learned, but a character can access while they have the item equipped, which has helped in a pinch as well.

Hastega/Boostega is generally a two-buff AoE Soul Break, generally one of which is Haste. You cannot get AoE Haste outside of these Soul Breaks, which is why it's so powerful. Currently there are only 3 Hastega Soul Breaks: one for Red XIII (Lunatic High, Protect/Haste); one for Sazh (Boon, Shell/Haste); and Eiko (Emerald Light, Medica/Haste). All three are incredibly useful, especially when you need to bring both Shellga and Protectga to a fight, saving you an ability slot.


Mitigation While Missing The Trinity

I'm a Day 1 player of FFRK, which means I have an impressive amount of gear and abilities. A really impressive amount. Yeah, I've spent probably about $100 on the game, but I've also played for 9 months, which works out to less than what I'm paying for WoW, so I'm okay with this. But even still, I'm missing Wall and Hastega from the Trinity. As mentioned, I have three Medicas (Y'shtola, Vanille, Mystery Veil), though only two of them are really fantastic.

Unmitigated on a character with ~250 Resistance, Rubicante dishes out ~5400 damage single target to a character. Most of my characters have 4000 health of so. Rubicante resists Breaks, so Magic Breakdown will "only" reduce that by about 41%, bringing each shot down to ~3,175 damage.

Shellga increases Resistance by 100%, so stacking those two brings him down to ~1,774 damage a shot, which is still not enough. He'd roast me well before I could heal my party. Even with two Medicas that heal the entire party for ~1,800, I can't spam them every round, so we need to reduce damage further.

So either I had to find a way to fit Full Break on my team, or I suck it up and use my "Wandering Record Warrior", AKA friend power, for 2 uses of Wall. This would mean that with Shellga, Wall, and Magic Breakdown, said attack would only do ~991 damage, well within healable range.

For funsies, Celes' default Soul Break, Magic Shield also boosts the party's Resistance by 50%, and is stackable, bringing us to a total of ~705 damage with all my possible mitigation up for the largest single target attack he can bring to bear. His AoE attack would only hit the party for ~423 damage.

So we can survive, and I'm pretty much obligated to bring Celes, Y'shtola, and Vanille, and a Wall for a friend, leaving me with 2 other characters to bring, but no Hastega.


Dealing With Mechanics and Dishing Damage

The next step was to fit someone on my team who could use Thief 4 abilties. Rubicante is weak to ice/water damage, but every 3 turns he'll put up his cloak, which makes him absorb those elements instead, and counter pretty much everything. Basically, when he cloaks, you're going to get wrecked.

However, you can force him to remove the cloak early by "stealing" from him, similar to the mechanic in the original FFIV game. In this case, your options are Steal Defense or Steal Power. Steal Power is the only that ups your own damage, and given most of my attacks are going to be magic since Rubicante counters physical attacks often, Steal Defense makes not much sense.

So now my party was:
Celes (Magic Caster)
Vanille (Magic Caster/Healer/Buffer/Whatever)
Y'shtola (Healer)
Magic Caster
Thief

No Thief can use Full Break and Steal Power, so rather, I decided to use Spellblade for Watera Strike. That meant using Balthier, as he is the only current Thief 4 with Spellblade 3.

Which left us with a Magic Caster to bring. Since I had a fantastic weapon for Rydia, and she would get the Realm bonus, Rydia it was. For Celes I had a FFIV synergy 5* Ice Rod thanks to the earlier FFIV event loot that increased ice damage dealt, so she got all my ice spells, and Rydia got all my Water spells.

I still needed to fit Magic Breakdown, Shellga, a heal, and to deal with the fact I didn't have Hastega, I needed Haste. Y'shtola can use Magic Breakdown, so that meant Vanille was going to be my buffer with Shellga and Haste. I finally had a party:

You'll notice that pretty well every character is wearing a Mage robe of sorts, for Resistance. Most characters had 300 Resistance or more rather than the 250 I was using baseline for my calculations, which meant taking a further 39% less damage or so. Add to that Vanille and Y'shtola wearing Fire Resistance accessories, and my mitigation was through the roof.

You'll also notice that my two offensive casters weren't using Devotion or Impetuous Youth for their Record Materia. Those would reduce their Resistance, and frankly, survival was more important than DPS in this case, especially since I could capitalize on elemental weaknesses.


The Battle

Combat with Rubicante himself still required a few S/L's. Interestingly, his first attack is always Blaze, which does 25% of the party's HP in damage, unmitigatable. This allows you a round to set up defenses, and solves to an extent the problems I had with other fights being RNG heavy and taking a blast to the face off the bat.

However, timing issues and figuring when to use abilities are really what caused me to have to reload a few times. Who to Haste first, in what order for maximum survivability. The timing of Steal Power got me a few times, too. Rubicante is fast. Even with Haste, if I hadn't started an action by the time his second attack got off, I usually waited until I could Steal power for his third to uncloak him. Also, Water spells have a faster cast time for some reason than other spells, so that timing threw me a couple times too.

Sentinel's Grimoire, my Wall, I had to hold off from using for the first 25% of the battle or so. I couldn't kill him fast enough to keep the buff for the entire battle, and he does less damage in the first 50% of his health than he does in the last 50% (Triple Firaga can go sit on a tack, thank you).

But eventually:

Woohoo! Nailed him! It was a hard fight, and when you think mobile games you don't necessarily think of the strategy required to beat an enemy of this difficulty. These Ultimate fights are really where FFRK shines in my eyes: when both the meta setup and the actual fight execution itself are a puzzle.

Despite having to go through 262,029 health to kill him, I had just enough ability uses to make it through. I had just run out of Steal Power, I was down to 1 heal left, no Soul Break power left in the tank for my two Medica users, both casters had maybe 3 or 4 casts left, and Balthier has 1 use of Watera Strike remaining when Rubicante went down. Talk about balanced on a knife's edge!

All in all, I've really been enjoying these fights. Well done, DeNA!
#FFRK, #Theorycraft