#its to find some other third and random way to deal with ur enemy than just fighting one on one

[heartcircus]

not to be a super complainer mid-liveblogging but i feel like having a faction draft is just such a bad idea. a lot of people are Very concrete in their ideals and each faction has their own agenda so i can't imagine it playing out well in the long run. not to mention that it'd create a lot of conflicting and confusing lore. i mean, green and yellow almost immediately chose to oppose one another (honestly mainly because of bad and foolish but i digress), it wouldn't make sense "in-lore" to have them all suddenly be jumbled up in patchwork factions?

if balancing is the issue then why not disband the factions and move on to the next thing. the primary excuse for "balancing" them that i could understand would be the fact that yellow has the strongest and most grind-y members so Physical conflicts would seem like an uphill battle to other teams. but then again, red and green have been successfully killing Yellow Faction Members every week and more ? there's other ways of dealing with problems than just hand-to-hand combat? quests are scaled per team and boss fights are supposedly scaled per-player so there's not really an issue there? i just don't really see the point in a draft lmao

[acradaunt]

Saw one of those ask things around for Etrian Odyssey, and I felt like doing it, so. I think someone's supposed to ask you particular numbers first. That's dumb. I'm just gonna answer those that interest me. Which is pretty much all of them.

1. What is your Guild Name? -It's never been the same. Usually it's a compound word and/or related to the game's region. Skyquake was EOII, Riptide for the watery EOIII, Zephyr for the airship-oriented EOIV. It's Starlight in EOV, which was a really fitting coincidence.

2. Favorite class? -Chasers/Linkers/Chainers. Which, at the end of the day, are all the same thing. They're all sorts of nifty, but I think I like them the most when subpar attackers get a little something extra out of it, like a Medic with a Polar Rod or a Botanist with a Bow. The downside is you really gotta build around them, but I kinda like doing that, personally. Weirdly, I never liked Buccaneers. I also really like Runemasters. The Runes putting two contrasting functions into a single spell is an amazing idea. It saves so many Skill Points and makes them really versatile. Them also 'fixing' magic to not be painfully straightforward is worth big points, too. Shamans having 'take less damage from Fire/Ice/Volt, but also do Fire/Ice/Volt damage' was a huge black mark against them, and ultimately why I stuck with a Poison Botanist. Contrasting is cool, contradictory is not. Apart from the 10F boss, I can't think of an instance where that wouldn't be actively detrimental to you. No, I'm actually not sure if that Fire/Ice/Volt is bonus damage on top of normal damage or an affinity change. That would change everything, but I never assed myself to find out. I may be petty.

3. Favorite NPC? -Jenetta. Full stop. No contest. I guess Edie would be a diiiistant second place.

4. Favorite monster? -At this moment, gotta give it to the Sword Saurians (shame they weren't an actual race). I'm a huuuuge sucker for any enemy that makes you go 'hey, that's exactly one of our moves'. Them being an enemy chaser, well, it was pretty obvious I'd like 'em. Most commonly, this concept has shown up throughout the series on turtle/coral/crab monsters being wannabe Protectors / Hoplites / Fortresses.

5. Favorite FOE? -This probably needs more thought than I'm going to give it, but fresh off of EOV's caves, any of those three get points for puzzle design. The sound thing is a big step up from EOIV's moths only moving when there's combat. Once Atlus figured out what to do with them, the Pumpkin trio became great too. They were practically a third superboss in EOIV if you didn't handle them properly.

6. Favorite Boss? -EOV has had exceptionally good bosses so far, so this answer could certainly change, but I still gotta give it up to the Warped Saviour from EOIV. Unlike every other boss or FOE, which is one big, nasty healthbar, it changes between forms that favour multi-target attacks and single attacks. It's a fight that keeps you on your toes and adapting, but pretty much every class can find a way to contribute. Unlike almost every other superboss. Ur-Child at least gets props for one-shotting himself on Painless Counters, though. That's just hilarious.

7. Favorite Stratum? -Aethsetically, EOII's Auburn Thicket, hands down. Literally just autumn isn't much of anything, but I'm apparently a colossal sucker for that. It then probably loses all those points by being the biggest difficulty spike in the series. EOIII's Undersea Grotto and EOV's Jagged Reach get big points too. None of them have too much in the way of puzzles, though. They're also all second stratums. Weird. Hall of Darkness's final floor also deserves a huge shout-out for really seeing EOIV take the gloves off. That's probably the most synergy you'll ever see a collective group of monsters have. Having a mini-section for nearly every previous gimmick in the game is worth points, too.

8. Favorite game? -EOIII probably did the most to solidify the series, and EOIV is easily the one I'd recommend to new players, and I'm still going through EOV, but I think it's the winner here. Normally, I'm not one to go 'yay difficulty', but EOV really did nail the difficulty just right.

9. Favorite song? -EOIII's Porcelain Forest, without a doubt. EOIII's volcano deserves mention too, especially since nobody else seems to like it. I'll admit it sounds very Streets of Rage-y next to everything else.

10. Least favorite class? -The easy answer would be the classes that fundamentally don't work, like Beast and Yggdroid. But that's too easy. Probably Troubadour. They do one or two buffs, then are completely useless for the rest of a fight. At least later buff-boys like Sovereign and Dancer do it right.

12. Least favorite monster? -Any answer that isn't a Petaloid is wrong. Muskoids primarily, though. Party-wide petrification is borderline cheating. Yes, they need to be hit first for the range-increase, but make it an ambush and throw in a Hollow Magus, and, well, you can be wiped before having a single action. Stun Eryngii doing loads of damage on death is also really annoying. I'm sure EOV's final stratum will have new horrors to add to the list. ...After writing 13, I changed my answer. EOV's 1st floor doggos and EOIII's Great Lynxes being able to instantly kill anybody, even if they're blocking, have probably done plenty to turn people away from the series. They're stupidly unfair at that point, and why I'd sooner recommend EOIV over the others to a new player. At least with Baboons, it's at least sort of your fault for not being attentive enough.

13. Least favorite FOE? -Not a fan of a petrification goats, especially since you need to kill loads of them for Formaldehyde. On further thought, my answer's gotta be the Baboons from the very start of EOIV. I know more than one person who got to mining, got ambushed by not noticing that FOEs move when you mine, wiping, then promptly throwing their 3DS off a building.

14. Least favorite Boss? -In contrast to Warped Saviour, shitlord dragon is a bunch of crap. Lots of classes are nigh useless against him, and it's very much one of those 'know exactly how he works or you're screwed' fights. Weirdly, he's like a carbon-copy clone of the last sea boss from EOIII, and that wasn't half as annoying, despite having to put up with idiot NPC AIs for it.

15. Least favorite Stratum? -EOII's fifth stratum is an eyesore, even if the music's pretty good. Not a fan of the enemies, either.

16. Least favorite game? -The most honest answer would be EO2. Looking back, it's a really poorly balanced game. Like, REALLY poorly. I'm super-biased against the Untold series, because I don't feel it needs to exist, and Story mode feels six kinds of wrong for this series. Especially because I loathe every party choice in EO2U (well, Sovereign is okay, but otherwise). Ohwait, forgot EMD exists. Let's go with that.

17. Least favorite song? -Any of the more ambient ones, like the caves in EOIV and EOV, or the second stratum in EOIV. ...EOIV had really weak dungeon themes all around, thinking back. EOIII's second battle theme is pitiful compared its glorious first battle theme.

18. What is your favorite floor mechanic? (ie: warping, dead zones, etc.) -Looking back, these really didn't go anywhere until EOIV. EOIII had the gates in the shrine and EOII had sliding ice puzzles and damage tiles. Whoo. Then IV had things like FOEs breaking walls, being literal walls, changing the fire cave to an ice cave, and more. EOV's just taking things a step further, with knocking pillars down, day/night FINALLY meaning something, and an actually good teleporting puzzle. A couple rooms (especially 3F's redux) where I had to sit down and actually think. Only one puzzle in EOIII made me stop and think (the NW tentacle on B25F). I mean, there's a puzzle in EOV where you've got to use a falling pillar as a (painful) speed boost. That's freaking awesome. Exploring in and of itself is a lot more fun in EOIV and especially EOV than it was in earlier titles. I imagine EOU and EO2U did things to un-borify some stratums. Again, wouldn't know.

19. What floor mechanic annoys you the most? -Warping suuuucked in EO2. 29F, at least. Especially, especially, especially since you had no adequate way to mark them all. Not even by using random icons. You'd need duplicate icons well before you finished marking all those infernal teleporters. The 'invisible' areas in EOIII's last two stratums feels like a missed opportunity to me. I feel like those areas should be semi-randomly generated, rather than just 'oh, I can't see my little dot on the map'. No, they're not super-closely related, but it brings that to my mind.

20. Do you like the Grimoire system? If not what would you change? -I conceptually like what it stands for. Get a couple random skills from other classes. But that was the thing. It was either too random or too complex, if not both. It felt atrocious from EOU's demo alone. I can't imagine dealing with that all game. I don't like the idea of you getting monster skills. At all. Apparently, EO2U fixed some things. Wouldn't know.

25. Do you defeat any FOEs when you’re a higher level than them, the same level or a lower level? -My plan for FOEs is pretty much always ignore them until you've seen the stratum's boss. Or maybe just forever in EOII, where FOEs didn't give you anything of value, ever. Starting with EOII really discouraged me from fighting them, so that's probably influenced me.

26. Do you like the cooking mechanics in EOU2? EO4? EO5? -Short answer is no. Just looking at the food buffs made them seem pretty underwhelming, and finding/using the rare stuff was a pain, because Wiglaf and Kirjonen were constantly asking for them. In EO5, I just never seem to need food. A Botanist provides enough healing on her own, and when I pull out, it's more because I don't want to lose 40 minutes of mapping or save after a rough FOE fight than because I'm direly low on TP. Also, I never seem to have the ingredients to make anything, anyway. Maybe it's because nobody knows fishing, and all the good dishes require fish? Ramus hasn't shown me a dish since the start of the third stratum, so maybe he doesn't blab about them if you don't have the ingredients on hand. Memory is hazy, but I think EO2U's way of doing cooking was okay. You'd permanently have one food effect active until you ate something else, right? It doesn't make sense that that's what food would do, but from a mechanical standpoint, it's a neat extra modifier to play with.

30. What is one thing you wish Etrian Odyssey could improve on? -I certainly like the direction the series went. It could've been stuck in a mire of 'let's emulate early-early-ass dungeon crawlers' forever, and never really moved forward. But uuuuh, single thing I'd like to see the most? Gimme a reason to use multiple parties. It's a great problem to have, but seeing all these cool classes, yet never really having a chance to use them or good opportunities to swap guys around kinda hurts. EOIII and EOV's Learning/Memory Conch and EOIV's jump to lvl-25/35/45 books do help, but the former doesn't really keep them competitive and EOIV's are limited to two uses. And even that, that's more talking about individual characters. Yeah, I used EOIV's books to swap a second Fortress out for a Nightseeker and then again for an Imperial, but I wanna see a reason to use completely different parties. Simultaneous dungeon-exploring or characters being unavailable for multiple days after being bodied, whatever. I wanna reason to have 15+ characters viable and in play.

31. Do you think about Etrian Odyssey with other crossovers? (ie: Collab events) If so, what collab event would you like to see? -Screw mere collabs, I can seriously see a lot of potential for a Monster Hunter X Etrian Odyssey game. Basically, it'd be an EO game with some design changes, wearing a MH skin. Weapons would be instead of classes (Lance = Protector, Switch Axe = Imperial, Hunting Horn = Troubadour, etc.), and instead of beating up semi-generic squirrels and durians and doggos, it'd be iconic Monster Hunter monsters. And it'd be more like 'all FOEs, all the time'. Both series kinda sorta have this thing on 'get better drops by killing it in a certain way' that started this thought process. Rather than exploring through stratums, you'd have a dozen or so mid-sized maps, each with their own gimmicks and FOEs. Your goal, as always, is to killdoze one particular monster. It'd be a task of picking when and where to fight, as other FOEs would be eager to step and make things miserable for everyone. Running and re-initiating fights would be a thing, and monsters would maintain their health. Putting traps and using the field against the FOE would be a big thing. Things like Narmer (and every 1st stratum boss, really; why are the first guys always the most interesting?) the Boiling Lizard, and Primordiphant certainly influenced this thought.

32. Sea exploration or Sky exploration? -At the end of the day, Sky exploration is kinda... empty. It looks cool, and mini-dungeons isn't a bad idea, but it's more window-dressing than a real system. Sea exploration has a billion things wrong with it; it's too demanding that all your moves are perfect, putting a money cost on it is stupid, and so on and so forth. I don't like the Untold subseries, but I'd really like to see EO3U do it right. Some of those places are just begging for EO4 style mini-dungeons, like the Lighthouse, the Golem's Ruins, or the Pirate Island. Honestly, if they just straight-up transplant a couple stratums out of Yggdrasil and onto the other islands, that'd be cool with me. Reaching Deep City so early made it feel... not so very deep, really.