the issue with status skills in JRPGs

[fishboneKiller]

alright folks, ive got a bone to pick with jrpg developers, and it all hinges on one thing: status skills. you know, moves your party members can learn to inflict annoying statuses on foes. seems pretty handy, right?

well, in most rpgs, i never find myself using them. if its a normal enemy, i wont feel inclined to use it on them since the battle will be over before the status serves a purpose. so you'd think the ideal use would be on longer fights like bosses, but that's the issue: most times, bosses are immune to your status moves! Pokemon and the Mother games are some of the only examples of this not being the case, since everything can be affected with statuses in Pokemon (unless its ability gives it an immunity) and most bosses in the Mother games have a weakness to a specific status.

does anyone share this sentiment with me? and if so, do you know of any games that get it right? this is easily my biggest issue with most traditional RPGs, and it bugs me to no end.

 

[dropsmegamega]

Yeah, I usually just ignore these skills in JRPGs, unless its a skill that does damage + has % chance of inflicting a status effects its just not worth imo. Maybe the exception would be something like slow/slowga in FF. In CRPGs these skills are more useful overall, stuff like mass charm or hold monster could easily change the tide of battles in D&D inspired games.

 

[Sir Auriel of Lionel]

I've always found green magic useless in Final Fantasy titles. Only used it on party never the enemy unless they were hit on effects on the weapon which was always a nice surprise.

 

[fake-kun]

Yeah, it's a common problem across games in the genre. The reason, I think, is that devs know that most of JRPG's fanbase doesn't care about gameplay and thus don't bother.

I heard SMT games avoid this issue, though.

 

[Gregory Crey]

alright folks, ive got a bone to pick with jrpg developers, and it all hinges on one thing: status skills. you know, moves your party members can learn to inflict annoying statuses on foes. seems pretty handy, right?

well, in most rpgs, i never find myself using them. if its a normal enemy, i wont feel inclined to use it on them since the battle will be over before the status serves a purpose. so you'd think the ideal use would be on longer fights like bosses, but that's the issue: most times, bosses are immune to your status moves! Pokemon and the Mother games are some of the only examples of this not being the case, since everything can be affected with statuses in Pokemon (unless its ability gives it an immunity) and most bosses in the Mother games have a weakness to a specific status.

does anyone share this sentiment with me? and if so, do you know of any games that get it right? this is easily my biggest issue with most traditional RPGs, and it bugs me to no end.

In most JRPGs, it's like this, yes. That said, I have found that in Shin Megami Tenshi and Persona games that this is (usually) not the case and that inflicting status effects is often the key to victory. I would say it is more important there than it is in Pokémon.

At least for the mainline games from the PS2 era onward. Some of the spinoffs may be another matter. I hear the SMT MMO made some unideal decisions with resistances, but I haven't played it and a number of others.

Edit: Ninja'd

 

[dropsmegamega]

In most JRPGs, it's like this, yes. That said, I have found that in Shin Megami Tenshi and Persona games that this is (usually) not the case and that inflicting status effects is often the key to victory. I would say it is more important there than it is in Pokémon.

At least for the mainline games from the PS2 era onward. Some of the spinoffs may be another matter. I hear the SMT MMO made some unideal decisions with resistances, but I haven't played it and a number of others.

Edit: Ninja'd

Never used status effects on SMT. Unless you mean debuffs like -kaja skills. Or the broken shock skills or gun shells in SMT 1. But most bosses are immune to stuff like charm or stun, although there are some specific iconic exceptions.

 

[LiberoVulpes]

SMT is about buff and debuff juggling, not status effects.

 

[Gregory Crey]

Never used status effects on SMT. Unless you mean debuffs like -kaja skills. Or the broken shock skills or gun shells in SMT 1. But most bosses are immune to stuff like charm or stun, although there are some specific iconic exceptions.

Bosses can be immune to some, yeah, but in Nocturne and Persona 3 and 4 I still find status effects useful in normal fights. Like, in normal battles, the instant death spells are usually useful, the buffs and debuffs tend to usually land and usually show dramatic difference in a fight.

SMT is about buff and debuff juggling, not status effects.

I count buffs and debuffs as statuses.

 

[Megazao]

For me it seems like devs don't know how/want to balance these effects most of the time. It's hard (and rare) enough to see them giving attention to buffs/debuffs, so to factor in these status too would make it easy for players to exploit them - which I think is the main mistake. Having a battle system be exploitable isn't necessarily making the gane too easy, since it requires thinking and an understanding of the gameplay systems, so maybe they could solve this problem by just worrying less about maybe the player getting op for a couple fights.

 

[Darklink]

Pokemon is hilariously one of the few JRPG series I've played where status attacks are actually decent. Mainly because every Pokemon you face basically has to play by the exact same rules that you use.

You almost never actually have to worry about a status effect working or not. Obviously there's the odd immunities, but they usually make sense, like Fire types not being able to be burned, or Ice types not being able to be frozen. And while some do have passive abilities that prevent certain kinds of status, it's not common enough of a pushback to have the player see them as 100% useless.

It also helps that buffs/debuffs are pretty significant. A single stage buff being 1.5x higher, and a single stage debuff being 0.67x. Much better than a lot of games' +/- 20%, with the addition that very few enemies are immune to it.

Of course, this is also Pokemon, easy as hell, and you can generally get through every game with just the Starter using a STAB move the entire time lol.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

Its fine balance between these abilities being useless and overpowered. I find that every game that makes these abilities usable, they are the very powerful. Like SMT games, you are always using kaja abilities in boss fights and such.

 

[CG4R12I4N]

Why wouldn't you count buffs and debuffs as status effects when they also literally affect your status? Smh.

Anyway, it's only more of an issue when the JRPGs are relatively overall easy difficulty like FF series and such, because allowing your chars to do the same as your enemies basically breaks the entire game difficulty altogether.
In more tactical/dungeon crawler JRPGs like Tactics Ogre and such, status effects are way more important because oftentimes in these kind of games you're overwhelmed by numbers and they're often either the key to victory or achieving side/hidden objectives.

 

[dropsmegamega]

Why wouldn't you count buffs and debuffs as status effects when they also literally affect your status? Smh.

Anyway, it's only more of an issue when the JRPGs are relatively overall easy difficulty like FF series and such, because allowing your chars to do the same as your enemies basically breaks the entire game difficulty altogether.
In more tactical/dungeon crawler JRPGs like Tactics Ogre and such, status effects are way more important because oftentimes in this games you're overwhelmed by numbers and they're often either the key to victory or achieving side/hidden objectives.

At least in SMT series, status effects/ailments and buff/debuffs are completely separate categories.

 

[UnDubious]

They're often useful in Dragon Quest. Not just buffs and debuffs (debuffs usually work on bosses in DQ), but there's even situations where you're facing an overwhelming number of foes and casting Sleep will work on most of them, or Paralyze will come in handy (or whatever they're called in the modern localizations), or Mute will save you a lot of damage from spell users. It's ironic because everybody else copied off DQ but most of them lost a lot along the way.

 

[Prism_Red]

Status effect is extremely useful in Final Fantasy Tactics, Trails series too, it's even a viable end game builds.

 

[Vir_Tual_Player]

alright folks, ive got a bone to pick with jrpg developers, and it all hinges on one thing: status skills. you know, moves your party members can learn to inflict annoying statuses on foes. seems pretty handy, right?

well, in most rpgs, i never find myself using them. if its a normal enemy, i wont feel inclined to use it on them since the battle will be over before the status serves a purpose. so you'd think the ideal use would be on longer fights like bosses, but that's the issue: most times, bosses are immune to your status moves! Pokemon and the Mother games are some of the only examples of this not being the case, since everything can be affected with statuses in Pokemon (unless its ability gives it an immunity) and most bosses in the Mother games have a weakness to a specific status.

does anyone share this sentiment with me? and if so, do you know of any games that get it right? this is easily my biggest issue with most traditional RPGs, and it bugs me to no end.

Yeah no, 100%. I love JRPGs, I've played a ton of them and I've almost never felt like status skills were usefull in any capacity. I think the only time it would be usefull would either be against bosses that aren't imune to them (so basically, only early game bosses) or enemies that are slightly overleveled, which whom you can't rely on just basic attacks. But even with that, I feel like I'm stretching things to give those skills a purpose.

Edit : Buffs and Debuffs to me are a separate thing, those do actually matter in lots a JRPGs and are quite usefull. My post only refered to skills inflicting status ailments

 

[kanesha]

It's the all or nothing apect that really makes them boring, they are either OP or useless. I think there are a lot better ways to achieve the same thing. Like I remember in Heroes 5 there is an initiative system - units with higher initiative get to go more often, and morale system - which if hight has a percentage chance to buff initiative and if low has a percentage chance to skip a turn, sounds super complicated I know, but this means that a strong morale debuff on a unit with low initiative can delay their turn so much and so often that it's esentially a stun, while even on a creature with high initiative it's not useless, it'll still make them go less often than they otherwise would, and the closest thing to immunity that maybe like 1 unit type had, is that their morale can't get lower than certain value so you can't skip their turns, but it's still not useless cause you can prevent initiative boosts that high morale would otherwise give them. It's sounds incoprehensible in words but when you play you just get a feel for it, that certain units ability can just disable certain other unit as long as they are affected, while not actually being black and white like a usual status effect.

 

[Dyne]

This is one thing I love about the Brave New World romhack of Final Fantasy VI.
Status skills are super useful and borderline mandatory sometimes. Really good implementation of status effects imo

 

[AncientBehemoth]

Well yeah, I find useless ailments skills mildly annoying. But my biggest gripe is accuracy, I HATE this stat, I HATE percentage hit.

 

[fishboneKiller]

im not talking about buffs and debuffs here, im specifically referring to status effects, since that's what has the problem im talking about. most rpgs let you use buffs and debuffs during boss battles, its specifically status effects that most bosses are immune to. that said, i think that buffs/debuffs are usually very usable in most rpgs theyre in, i dont take any issue with them

also, im happy to see people mentioned smt a few times here, but i have another issue with bosses in those games. they don't let you use stuff like analyze to see what they're weak to. again, i feel like that's the one time that you'd actually want to use something like analyze, but i guess it would be too easy if you could find it out just using a skill. also, on the topic of smt, i don't mind statuses being overpowered in those games. SMT is already so cutthroat as is, so i don't feel a tinge of remorse doing something like shocking Thor to death in SMT1. (seriously, that game kicked my ass the first time i played it, it was BRUTAL)

 

[GardeniaSky]

Final Fantasy XIII kind of made this better with the saboteur role. Especially in XIII-2, saboteur attacks did damage as well as building up statuses. I remember there being a boss you had to use specific statuses against.

I agree, though. I love playing classes that focus on debuffing/sabotaging enemies, but a lot of times stuff is immune or insanely resistant.

 

[KirboDeku]

Funnily enough, the original Shin Megami Tensei has the exact opposite problem. Almost all bosses are vulnerable to game-breaking status effects like freeze or shock that cause the boss to be immobilized for the entire turn. So if you have a mage whose speed is higher than the boss, then they can keep them in paralysis until you either beat them or you run out of MP (in the rare case of the latter, the boss is already so beaten up that it should be easy to finish them off).

 

[diapered]

Status effect is extremely useful in Final Fantasy Tactics, Trails series too, it's even a viable end game builds.

Useful in tactics? I never found oracles that good (low percentages for success, the zodiac alignment system makes this unreliable). The only negative status skills I ever found good are Mustadio's snipe and even that I never found that powerful (seal evil causing petrification is great on that one map when he is a guest, but I think that is about it). Also, why bother getting an oracle to work when it is more effective/easier to just focus on damage?

 

[CG4R12I4N]

Useful in tactics? I never found oracles that good (low percentages for success, the zodiac alignment system makes this unreliable). The only negative status skills I ever found good are Mustadio's snipe and even that I never found that powerful (seal evil causing petrification is great on that one map when he is a guest, but I think that is about it). Also, why bother getting an oracle to work when it is more effective/easier to just focus on damage?
View attachment 24504

Bro's never heard of Geomancy and Finishing Touch.

 

[MasterEn]

disgaea 6 is probably one of the few games where status ailments are actually useful, and i think this is the case for the other games in the series too. you can add them to weapons or armor, and depending on the level of the corresponding innocent [ex: lv62 alchemist has a 62% chance of inflecting poison with all attacks] the aliment can be inflected onto all enemies, including bosses and final boss too. they give the intentionally strong enemies a passive ability that weakens the power of the ailment, and only a handful get immunity, like instant kill block. but they still can be inflicted with it.
any other game, and it is very hit and miss. at the very least, they could make bosses susceptible to poison and stun but just make it a relatively low chance to hit.
but hey, it could be worse. my first ff game was ff4 for the psx. i was fully convinced for over a decade that protect and shell did not work, or had such low accuracy, that they never land. it was during my 4th or 5th playthrough of ffx when i saw those spells actually working like they were supposed to. until then, i never used any status buffs ever in any game.