Insane Difficulty: Garbage Self-Referential, Immature, Inconsistent writing. - Insane Difficulty

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Localization is localization. That's not needing contact with the original team. Woosley for instance definitely localized FF6 but wasn't in contact with the original team always. In the case of BNW, the localization would be ... the target audience of modders. The type of people that are likely to play this game are a different type of person. You're not going to see your average gamer pick up a mod like this. Thus, the references and alterations are kept in tact with the target audience: other modders and the devs themselves.

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Which straight up would matter if the NPCs were all doing this. But it's an occasional remark every so often around the game. The thing is, the devs may have altered dialogue, but there's nothing wrong with that. They made BNW become its own thing at that point. It's no longer just the standard Final Fantasy 6. It's Brave New World. I see nothing wrong with that. The fact that you'd say that lends more credence to the crazy and wacky dialogue at that point: it gives BNW a separate identity from standard fare FFVI. So basically the fact of the matter is that it's an altered game, and you don't like all of the changes. And that's fine. But there's no reason to make it out that these changes are inherently bad because of it. Example: NT has a change at the final dungeon that's super jarring if you've played the original and ruins the intensity of the trek to the final boss. But you know what? Instead it gives me a ton of gameplay additions that add several hours of challenge and fun. In the end, I'm willing to let that slide because overall I feel that the missteps are not severe enough to matter.

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It's better than games like Tales of Destiny PSX having an actual advertisement for Tekken 3 within their own game on a billboard, the original Paper Mario making a reference to Fire Emblem within their own game, or Super Paper Mario making references to people that argue pointlessly on the Internet. The dialogue just establishes that the devs of the game were having fun, and wanted to have a zany world full of zany things. I really don't see how a person could literally have something like this affect them so much. Especially when the lore of Final Fantasy 6 is already a random mish-mash of things. I get where you're trying to go with this, but I'm honestly having a difficult time when the game has things like Edgar jumping off the side of a castle onto a giant yellow bird and then two seconds later swooning over a girl for casting magic while being bludgeoned by a giant mech-- of which was able to defeat an entire army of people and force its way into a town with just three people... And yet, our heroes beat it because...? Magic. That you might not even use. Making the whole ordeal completely ridiculous. No change to dialogue there either. So I have to say that people that are being this way are honestly being really uptight about the whole thing.

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They are when the official creators say "it's with a K" and the people STILL insist that they are wrong. It'd be like if I created a character named "Shin" and you insisted his name was "Shen" despite the fact that I said his name was "Shin." You'd have to be crazy to literally deny reality so vehemently, or at the least fanatical.

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Which can be construed as an actual negative. However, it does beg the question of why you'd play a mod of a game if you expected it to be exactly the same as the original? "Mod" is short for "modification," so it's kinda weird to go in expecting an altered game to be exactly like the original.

Ex-modder, on 12 March 2017 - 06:05 PM, said:

Something that you may understand as a modder is that when you spend long enough under the hood of something, you start to really hate whoever's mess it is that you're cleaning up. My resentment towards Squaresoft comes from five years of working on their game.

Your tastes are skewed. Good luck finding another well-rounded FF6 mod, the only other I can suggest is T Edition but it's japanese and you'd probably bitch because they add in scenes/dialogue also.

If you seriously play mods for dialogue, then I suggest reading a book instead of playing a video game. This mod adds so much to the game that if MC Hammer and british accents triggered you THAT badly, then maybe the internet isn't for your little bubble world. You are not the target audience. Glad you're wasting your time.

BTB, on 12 March 2017 - 07:30 PM, said:

Absolutely not. And I also spent half a decade on my project and did a lot of bug fixing, refactoring and iteration. But I have seen other people complain in a similar manner so you're not alone.
Plus my code probably is hardly any better on a technical level that the devs themselves anyway

Kain_Stryder, on 12 March 2017 - 07:41 PM, said:

Your interpretation of my tastes are skewed. I'm here for the full package/overarching experience, which should be expected of any user, and in terms of individual elements gameplay is always my prime concern.
But, part of the package I happened to find grating, so I will look elsewhere and find another hack that (hopefully) has good gameplay AND a non-grating script (so something that simply leaves the script alone will probably do).

Ultimately, FF6's story and writing was a good/fun thing, and I would still like that thing available to find in the experience without being grating.
And really, playing a FF game purely for the gameplay would also be questionable. The gameplay is serviceable, but it's the sum of all parts that makes these games good. Usually it's the art and music that are the truly fantastic near-flawless elements. The gameplay and story on the other hand are both typically rather flawed, but serviceable.

If gameplay is your key goal, stop bitching, play the game and enjoy it and stop crying over the script. Otherwise, take off and find that golden mod you desire.

Kain_Stryder, on 12 March 2017 - 08:39 PM, said:

the overarching, cumulative experience is what is most important; All elements combined and working in tandem.
THEN it's gameplay, which can salvage a game that doesn't deliver in other areas (but FF6 did deliver to an acceptable standard, that's the problem).
Then story/art/music/everything else, which I probably value equally on an individual basis.

Anyway, yes, no point hanging around on a board dedicated to something that I found too aggravating to appreciate.

Have "maximum enjoy"!

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BNW does this exceptionally well. Just because you don't think so, doesn't change this.

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Bye.

Okay. I don’t post often because I don’t have much to contribute, but here’s a topic I can get into.

Kain_Stryder, on 12 March 2017 - 07:41 PM, said:

You’ve thrown this sort of sentiment at me before. People play games for different reasons, and no reason is more valid than another. There isn’t anything wrong with wishing to play a mod for its dialogue, or (on another note) seeking to enhance a story rather than downplay it. Of course this doesn’t mean that enforcing one’s views on another or approaching the subject so angrily is appropriate, but your flavor of dismissal doesn’t help anything.

Miacis, on 12 March 2017 - 09:20 AM, said:

I agree with everything you’ve said thus far, and you’ve stated it all in a more moderate and eloquent way than I’d be able to manage. Thanks! :>

thzfunnymzn, on 12 March 2017 - 04:56 PM, said:

I’m hoping to make one someday, although nothing that’s managed will satisfy everyone. It’s a fairly complicated affair given that recent or future gameplay boons probably use potential script space, and the script changes are sometimes integrated into gameplay, too. I definitely wouldn’t ask for modder assistance on a facet they don’t really care about, and the “amateur, unpopular fork of a vibrant, updating product” life is a hard one...so the only things I had done prior to my interests cycling were enemy, item and spell-related text, none of which is as relevant as that meaty script.

Ex-modder, on 12 March 2017 - 03:06 PM, said:

that's not a fact, that's an opinion

And that's kinda the core issue, here, which is why I singled it out. I'm largely of the same mind as Miacis - for instance, I think Cyan's characterization was meaningfully damaged by BNW's decision to treat him like a walking joke. But I'm also aware that it's a concept that only makes sense because I want Cyan to be characterized as something else. Unfortunately, I'm incapable of making an argument that will convince BTB and/or Synchisi that what I want is what he should want, so it's not going to get fixed unless I develop the balls to fix it myself.

Remember, you're not the boss here. If you want somebody to do something for you, you have to make that person want to. Unless you have something valuable that you can withhold, nobody cares if you're angry. Nobody cares if you're disgusted. Nobody cares about your opinion, except possibly to tell you you're wrong about it. I'm not just talking about ID - I'm talking about all manner of Serious Business throughout life, in this paragraph. If you want to get results*, bitching about your objections, no matter how eloquently, will not be sufficient. You need to present an alternative vision, one attractive enough to get the people who do have the power to get shit done on board. Otherwise, shut the fuck up and learn to like what you're given. You'll never have anything else.

*If you want something else, like sympathy, that's what friends and family are for. And there are all sorts of tones this conversation could have had besides Serious Business, but that's where you seemed to want to take this one. A less adversarial tone, as has been suggested, wouldn't have triggered this response from me.

I'm editing this to make clear that I don't think you have nothing valuable to offer the mod's development. It's not supposed to be an insider's club of sycophants, and people have often improved the mod by making criticisms of it. The key element that helps get the community to treat you with respect, and gets the mod to be more like what you want it to be, is to have more than your opinion backing you up, and that's all you have. When people offer good criticism or make a good argument against the status quo, they do it by showing how the status quo is bad for what people want the mod or the community to be. They tap into what people already want, or they show them why what they think they want isn't all that desirable, and they do those things with reasoning, evidence, and tact. I'm trying to offer you valuable advice, but I admit that I'm being an asshole about it because you've established that as the mode of conversation you seem to prefer.

OP has some very valid points and it's disappointing to see him attacked for simply making a pretty obvious criticism of Brave New World.

I feel like people sugarcoat the script issue simply because they enjoy the rest of the romhack. I was forced into a rather similar situation of having to stomach the dialogue changes because I enjoyed the mechanical improvements that were made to the game. And some of the excuses that people make are just plain inaccurate, such as Brave New World's translation being more faithful to the original Japanese script (really?).

I know it can be hard to hear that other people don't like something that you've created. The dev(s) did a great job with the balancing and combat mechanics. But if a mechanic fixes your car and also gives you a terrible paint job, the paint job is going to tarnish the quality of the mechanical work that was done.

The characters and story of FFVI are pretty celebrated. There's a lot of comments here dismissing the original work and translation as "trash" and I don't understand how the same people could be interested in this romhack in the first place.

In summation, the script changes are just overall lower quality than the original Woolsey translation. Instead of feeling like you're playing through a souped up and more modern version of FFVI, you instead feel like you're stuck in a bad junior high fanfic.

I didn't like the GBA translation either. That "Weapons of Magitek Destruction" line is a good example of what not to do in a re-translation effort.

So, I hope the devs don't take this the wrong way or think that I'm attacking them or anything. Most of the components of the romhack are excellent and executed professionally. The script isn't one of those things, and I think the original poster received a bit of an unfair reception for his opinion.

You apparently didn't read much of the thread or how Ex-modder came across. You can have complaints about something and give opinions; that's fine. However, when you flat insult and tell someone their work is shit and to "learn their limits", and haven't even played the mod probably beyond an hour, come off all holier-than-thou and just all-around jackass, then your opinion means shit and you have no business being here.

For all the things people love to bash about in this mod, the language and such, I really wonder how any of them can play an M-rated game these days like GTA or Fallout. Pretty fragile bubbles some live in.

I'm not saying the script is god-like and should be defended, but if the creators wanted to do what they did, then ok, fine. It's a mod, enjoy the changes. Nothing is stopping anyone from modding BNW themselves and changing the script and throwing a release out. That's the great thing about modding. It offers more than the script. And yes, there are things in here from the japanese script, I can attest to that. Again, the japanese script is at times cringey and I'm more than fine with Woolsey's translation because he did great for what he had made available to him. Google the interview with him sometime, it's interesting.

As Nowea said earlier, people's immersion is ruined from Rocky Horror lines, yet an Octopus. In an Opera House. That moments prior was trying to Wil-E-Coyote Celes. Is more than fine.

You say this:

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When in actuality nothing the OP said was any worse than something like this:

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Which is just a total strawman argument since no one is claiming to be offended by the swearing in the first place.

The OP could have worded things a bit more nicely, but the backlash towards him has been 10x worse. Just how I see things as an outsider.

Augestein, on 12 March 2017 - 07:14 PM, said:

You are wrong.
The very process of localizing games in the industry is a constant back and forth between the localization team and whatever the creative division has for representatives. Worst case scenario, that representative is the editor, but there's always someone double-checking and vetoing the localizer's decisions. If there's no contact it's a fan/unaffiliated translation.

Augestein, on 12 March 2017 - 07:14 PM, said:

Too many, too heavy-handed, too inappropriate. There are many reasons I already elaborated on.

Augestein, on 12 March 2017 - 07:14 PM, said:

Okay... I'm sorry to be blunt and not elaborate more on specific points but you've been doing damage control this entire time and it's getting in the way of conversation. I get it you truly believe "It's not that bad", "There's not that many", "It's just a mod, etc." I'm saying it is that bad, that it's still too many, and I have gone into a lot of detail about it. And I'm visibly not the only one bothered by it.
So let's agree to disagree on whether the poor jokes are hurting this game and leave it at that, okay?

Augestein, on 12 March 2017 - 07:14 PM, said:

If you're talking about the sudden unveiling of sidequests right before the final boss, I'm pretty sure it's being moved to before the crater for v 1.5. Because you know, people who couldn't "let it slide" reported it, and Sega Chief answered to their feedback.
... For the record, nobody came in his thread to say it's not that bad and people are too uptight and he shouldn't change it because etc

Seriously, I don't understand why people here are so abrasive about this sort of criticism. BTB isn't doing it. Synchisi isn't doing it. Why are you doing it? (Yes, you! Aaron!)
Just ignore the childish insults and try to see the criticism lying under. Don't give me that "Well if you're so easily flustered by [strawman] and [other strawman], you should be playing the original game" crap. The reason we're not playing the original game is because we like things in here. And we like to see more good things in it. At least respect that.
The authors are more than qualified enough to filter suggestions they do not want in their mod. There's no "defending" against an "attack" here, sheesh.

Mishrak, on 12 March 2017 - 09:15 PM, said:

It kinda doesn't, though. Is what people are saying, like, right now.

Yeah, I don't think BNW does the overarching experience as well as it could. BTB's talked before about how (good) modders see the game that could have been and try to make it a reality. The problem is that OP doesn't do that - he's posting to vent, not to improve the game. The point of his posts isn't to make BNW a better mod by improving its script, it's to somehow recoup his two hours by spending additional time ranting about how unhappy he was with the experience. I'm not projecting, here, I'm summarizing his literal posts. The problem is, "I didn't like it" isn't valid criticism for artwork in general. It's a valid reason to go do other things instead, but it doesn't provide useful feedback unless the artist's goal is to appeal to as many people as possible. Miacis, you've generally provided criticism. Ex-modder has provided whining.

Yeah, I know there's a bit of a dogpile going on. That kind of sucks. Sorry to contribute, but this is something I kind of feel is getting overlooked.

Bauglir, on 13 March 2017 - 10:08 AM, said:

Bin the script, replace it with Woolsey's, mission accomplished in the best possible way. Should take little talent, just time.
Even the more subtle edits to the script didn't feel right. Syntactically and grammatically, they were. But it felt very contemporary and inconsistent with the writing that was not touched.

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It's true. I was mostly having a bitch and a bash, and blowing off steam. It's also fun seeing people rush to defend this script with x amount of excuses and strawmen. It doesn't make my criticism any less valid though, just harder to swallow or reason with without getting upset yourself, which is why it's not the best or most helpful approach to criticism.
And it is helpful, even if that wasn't my prime intention. Not as helpful as it could be, but you're all now seriously discussing it, and maybe something will be done about it. If not the developers, a fan that sees potential in BNW's gameplay with Woolsey's script.
I was rather surprised when I skimmed through the board and saw no other such thread dedicated to criticizing or trashing the script.

At the end of the day, though, some may like the ridiculous, inconsistent, juvenile writing, and if the developer were to stick to his guns I'd respect that on some level. However, try to make it clearer that the writing is extremely silly and only partially/barely at all faithful to vanilla in the readme, faqs etc.

Ex-modder, you are currently motivating your bad behavior by saying that something constructive came out of it. This is not the case. Something constructive came out of it because someone else with a similar view point, but with better presentation, came in to word his thoughts in a constructive way. Do not attribute what came after that to yourself. It just wasn't any of your doing, you just started a thread. You were only lucky someone took your topic and made it serious.

My interest in this thread is only the way the discussion is going, I don't care too much about the topic at hand.

Your attitude is being attacked, while Miacis criticism is met with a lot more respect, as it contains a whole lot more of it to begin with, hence the very different reception of both of your arguments.

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There are more threads, not many, but this is not the first time it has come up.

At the risk of repeating what most everyone else here has said, we have absolutely no problem with criticism of any kind. As most people here will tell you, I listen to every bit of feedback that I get. We may not always agree with it, but everything is considered and much of how Brave New World has changed was in direct response to feedback. Yes, most of it as of late has been regarding gameplay, but the first major set of changes that was made due to overwhelming feedback was to the script (which was initially much more vulgar than we'd realized).

It isn't just that Miacis presents his point in a polite fashion, it's that he presents a point in well thought-out manner. When I see posts like that, I see constructive feedback that I can potentially use to make Brave New World better. When I see posts like that which started out this topic, I see, "the dialogue is different and I hate it," which tells me that I'm dealing with somebody that is just not going to be happy with anything that isn't just like the original.

As I said before, I'd gladly support anyone who wanted to make a vanilla translation of Brave New World since there is a very vocal minority of players who have requested it, but understand that such a project would be far more work than simply importing the old script and calling it a day.

Reiker, on 13 March 2017 - 08:13 AM, said:

Far from it. In fact, I'm actually very pleased with the way the community as a whole has responded to this thread, particularly Miacis. I've often said that the community here is the best thing that has come out of making Brave New World and it's things like this that remind me why that statement still holds true.

Quite honestly, the title of this thread could be used to describe literally every post you've made, Ex- Modder. I'm not sure why you feel like it's okay to just roll in here with some air of superiority and take a crap all over a bunch of people you don't even know. It's one thing to dislike a script it's another to troll bait, insult/bash and otherwise be completely toxic every time you write something. It just isn't warranted at all.

It has been encouraging to see legitimate good conversation surface in the midst of this thread so kudos to you guys.

Mishrak, on 13 March 2017 - 01:03 PM, said:

Overreaction, much? Gotta love overly sensitive fanboys.

BTB, on 13 March 2017 - 12:20 PM, said:

Right. Keep on believing that's what this boils down to. If I weren't accepting of merely "different" I wouldn't have downloaded and withstood the hack for two hours to begin with.

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The writing is awful and deserving of an awful response. I was fully aware it'd upset some, hence my praising of the initial mature response of the community.

For the most part, aside from taking a well-deserved dump on the garbage writing I've been rather reasonable. People should stop making me out to be the Anti-Christ.

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No. I'm not. If it was 2017 when this came out? I would be. But FF6 came out in 94. The standards and paradigms utilized for localizations were radically different then. This was more than 20 years ago at this point. Woosley for instance? Pretty much did all of the translations himself with the only real check being Nintendo making sure things were properly censored like Celes' suicidal jump.It's why translations were so bad as a whole back in the day. In addition to text limitations there were a myriad of things going against them.

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Which if you were paying attention, you'd see that I actually agree with you within that post:


Which can be construed as an actual negative. However, it does beg the question of why you'd play a mod of a game if you expected it to be exactly the same as the original? "Mod" is short for "modification," so it's kinda weird to go in expecting an altered game to be exactly like the original.


The reason I'm so baffled by this, is because this is literally the first and only time I've ever seen someone actually complain about the "story" in a mod where it wasn't a mod that was a hack with a new story. Especially because I'm sure when the text was changed in BNW, it was probably done under the attempt to make it worth reading again because it's a gameplay mod. Or just because the modders decided to have a little fun with it. So I'm literally trying to understand how "silly dialogue" in a gameplay mod ruins the game honestly.

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It's also in a horrible spot. You have to trek down to the bottom to go to the top. So it sucks gameplay wise too. I'm glad it's changed because I reported it too.

And really, it's not abrasive to disagree with you. It really isn't. The same way you're allowed to criticize, people are allowed to disagree and criticize your qualms as well. People certainly did in my topic. That's just what happens when you discuss things. I'm not sure who Aaron is in this case, so I can't respond to that though.

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It's not a strawman though. Strawman is redirecting your argument. I've done no such thing. Telling you "if it makes you that angry, don't play." Is a logical conclusion to state. Of which I'm more so talking to Ex-Modder on that.

And I'm not defending an attack. I'm literally trying to figure out why goofy references in the text of a game would bother someone that much in a gameplay mod. You know... Outside of the descriptions being next to useless. Of which, I agree on that part. Remember?