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Kilgamayan
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Kilgamayan »

Well, this is an entry into the Battle Network series, which is pretty story-heavy, being an RPG and all (even if that story is frequently pretty ridiculous). Frankly, it would be weirder if this game had the setup and pacing of an actual Classic series entry.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by xnamkcor »

Leet wrote: 5 years ago I don't think it's text, I think it's pacing and structure. Think of it this way, Mega Man games generally follow the structure of "intro stage, a series of stages you get to pick the order of, then a series of linear stages leading up to the end."

Network Transmission loosely follows this for a good portion of the game. It's two intro stages, and then you get your choice of four, and then another choice of two - somewhat weirdly staggered, but still a normal number of stages for the main chunk of the game. Then you go to a line of teleporters that have to be cleared in order, leading up to the confrontation with Zero of all people, the originator of the virus that is the game's main conflict. When we were going through the hallway that had those four stages, I thought for sure, "this is this game's way of doing the Wily Fortress".

And we beat Zero, and we stopped the virus! Since Zero isn't a villain, it would make sense to have another stage where we fight the true culprit or something, but instead... we get two more choices of robot masters around town! It would have made more sense to have these stages in the batches from before the fake climax, but nope, instead, there's suddenly a totally different plot and the game just... keeps... going.

I also find it really weird that after Zero was saved he just... presumably is just living a day-to-day life when he's not being summoned. I suppose it's better than the trend of "kill off the newly introduced characters every time", but it's Zero, he seems too important to just be relegated to "just a normal guy now".
Those two ones after Zero don't happen if

Zero dies

. So, putting them before Zero kinda negates the bonus of getting to play them if you go through the effort to get the ZeroData.

Also, I think Zero only appears in this game in EXE. So he's probably unimportant in the end because he may have never existed. Or if he did exist in the Anime, his role was already predetermined in that medium.

PS: Please rate my Chip Folder. Spoilers for chips and characters, obviously.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Paragraph »

Zero.exe only is a character/boss in Network Transmission, yes. In Battle Network 4, you can get the Z Saber chip featuring him in the artwork by linking with a Zero 3 cartridge, and that chip is also in BN4.5 (battle chip challenge) and BN5. Dunno about 4.5, it's just a postgame reward in BN5, nothing special to it.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Leet »

Kilgamayan wrote: 5 years ago Well, this is an entry into the Battle Network series, which is pretty story-heavy, being an RPG and all (even if that story is frequently pretty ridiculous). Frankly, it would be weirder if this game had the setup and pacing of an actual Classic series entry.
Then maybe they shouldn't have made it so much like one until the end...? They're mimicking the pattern themselves, except with an extra third of the game tacked on. If they wanted to make it like BN, then each navi would have a little mini-arc with its own story (that goes beyond a 'they did something to the place i'm at' e-mail). Also, despite being a battle network game there really isn't much story in this, most of the dialogue is just excuses to go to a stage. The setup really isn't that different from Classic or X at all. "There's a problem that's making robots go maverick, now go and beat them up." Except, again, with an extra third after you do that. Though maybe that in itself could be compared to the "second fortresses" back in the nes games.

As for the branching plotline, it probably shouldn't be there in the first place.
Well it is a decent hack but sometime its just too repetitif there no level that actually pop in your face and your like oh yeah that level they all ressemble themselves and just monster along the way.
Blood Ghoul wrote:Sometimes it seems my blood spurts out in gobs, as if it were a fountain's pulsing sobs. I clearly hear it mutter as it goes yet cannot find the wound from which it flows. Before I met you, baby, I didn't know what I was missing.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Bean »

There's a reason why I went with the title I did. It doesn't always know if it wants to be a platformer or an RPG at times, and it's really rough in the early going when you have barely any health and enemies can take you down in no time at all. As it moves on, it's basically trying to remind you of the NES Mega Man games in layout with some parts that do things differently. The music also reflects this at times.

It's got some good things going for it, but it also doesn't explain the things it really needs to well either! I'm not too big on this game, but raocow's been doing a pretty good job taking care of it so far for the most part. Tanking certain parts does work as long as those chips hit.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Paragraph »

I really like how everyone who engaged with this game on its own terms on their own time (including me) was like "to succeed, you need to farm some chips and go back to get all those powerups and buy shit from NumberMan and activate PAs and use all of those dumb systems because eventually the game expects you to!!!" and raocow proves that you CAN do that and get clever with elemental weaknesses and chips with specific throwing arcs and tactical folder building...

...or you just shove ten HiCannons in everyone's face.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Kilgamayan »

I'm genuinely don't understand what is bad about most of the things that have been described as negatives about this game. Like, it seems like people wanted this to be either a full-blown Classic-style game set in the BN timeline, or a full-blown BN game, and that trying to make a hybrid is objectively bad? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what is being presented.

FWIW the story has actually been one long connected thing if one has been paying attention (admittedly difficult if the only exposure one has to the story is watching someone else speed through a lot of the dialogue boxes while MST3King the whole thing). For better or worse, the LifeVirus restoration project has been the end goal of the Professor the entire time. This project needed financing, so he whipped out StarMan.EXE and the remains of the WWW's Zero Project, and used Zero.EXE to spread the Zero Virus so StarMan.EXE can sell a fake vaccine. It wasn't the perfect plan by any stretch, but vaccine sales got him plenty of money, and the resulting chaos from the Zero Virus's effects as well as the Navi hacking program in the fake vaccine bought him enough time to complete LifeVirus production. Zero was never an end, he was just a means to an end disguised as a different end in order to mislead the player characters (as well as the player). That honestly seems like some fairly basic writing trope stuff to me. I feel like taking issue that Zero isn't the final boss of MMNT is like taking issue with Chrono Trigger that the game didn't end after the Magus fight.
Paragraph wrote: 5 years ago I really like how everyone who engaged with this game on its own terms on their own time (including me) was like "to succeed, you need to farm some chips and go back to get all those powerups and buy shit from NumberMan and activate PAs and use all of those dumb systems because eventually the game expects you to!!!" and raocow proves that you CAN do that and get clever with elemental weaknesses and chips with specific throwing arcs and tactical folder building...

...or you just shove ten HiCannons in everyone's face.
I think this is a problem purely because of the constraints of the AtMM project. CapCom designed the game to be played by oneself on one's own time, with the player taking whatever time they need to explore and get better/more powerful at their own pace. 95% of the exploration and the power improvement gets flushed down the toilet when the player (a) reasonably has only X number of minutes to play the game each day, and (b) must create a gameplay video that is entertaining to the viewers and ends after a boss fight. I mean, sure, one can get through the game by spamming direct attacks and energy tanks, but that's a lot less fun than buffing MegaMan directly while also having more chip folder customization available from all your exploring.

All of this is not to praise this game as perfect, because it sure as hell has obvious gameplay-based faults, but a lot of the good and fun about this game is lost when plucking it out of the context of when and why it was made and shoving it into the middle of a queue of largely unrelated games for someone pumping gameplay videos out literally every day for the enjoyment of others.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by xnamkcor »

Try to remember that this game was developed by Arika. A company known for such great games as: Dr. Luigi, Street Fighter EX, and Endless Ocean.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Paragraph »

My biggest lol at the HiCannon murderplan is that it actually works, and quite well at that. You'd assume the game would at some point force you to engage with its numerous systems, but naw, using the most basic-ass chip you can get waaaay into the endgame is the most efficient tactic from a reliability, cost (MP) and accessibility point of view. It honestly shows how little time they spent finetuning and balancing things.

For example, Sword vs. Cannon in the big RPGs is a very simple question: Sword does double the damage of a Cannon, so you lose range but gain killing power. Eventually you find better Cannons, but then you also find better Swords, and Network Transmission kinda fails to deliver on that second part, so now you have no meaningful choice anymore, the HiCannon is always better. Also, because it's a platformer and not a 6x3 grid, range matters far more, and the Swords are also more expensive to use and can be animation-canceled by the enemy hitting you out of it.

Also, while having the HiCannon always available is obviously working super well for raocow, if he had farmed up DoubleJumps and put that as a regular chip, you could just skip entire platforming challenges with little penalty (MP and future uses of the jump), so you can trivialize both the combat as well as the platforming part in ways that weren't possible at all in the RPGs for so little effort. It's just not thought through well at all.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Stink Terios »

xnamkcor wrote: 5 years ago Try to remember that this game was developed by Arika. A company known for such great games as: Dr. Luigi, Street Fighter EX, and Endless Ocean.
No mention of TETRIS: THE GRANDMASTER 3: TERROR INSTINCT? smh
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Bean »

Kilgamayan wrote: 5 years ago I'm genuinely don't understand what is bad about most of the things that have been described as negatives about this game. Like, it seems like people wanted this to be either a full-blown Classic-style game set in the BN timeline, or a full-blown BN game, and that trying to make a hybrid is objectively bad? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what is being presented.
It's that the two styles of platforming and MMBN gameplay don't always mesh well together while the difficulty curve is all over the place. Again, I think it's got some good things going for it, but it reminds me of another game that didn't handle that mix well in Super Paper Mario. It felt like a lesser version of multiple games I'd rather be playing instead.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Arctangent »

Paragraph wrote: 5 years ago HiCannon
I wonder how much of this is because of the removal of the cannons' significant wind-up time. Thing about this game is that you can just press the chip button and instantly blast something with a hitscan as soon as you can trace a line to their hitbox. In the RPGs, though, Mega Man actually has to stand around for a bit while waiting for the cannon to form around his buster, meaning you can't use it to instantly interrupt Navi attacks or score counter hits.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Ashan »

Paragraph wrote: 5 years agothat chip is also in BN4.5 (battle chip challenge)
4.5 and Battle Chip Challenge are 2 separate games. 4.5 never got a release outside Japan while BCC did.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

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fillerman.exe
Why don't you eat me?

I am perfectly tasty...

AND I'LL STEAL YOUR SOUL! :twisted:

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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Kilgamayan »

The Z-Cannon PA actually does make you invincible and give you infinite super-powerful cannons for a limited amount of time in the original games (except for BN1, where it's a single 200-damage shot IIRC). It's tremendously useful in this game since you're able to whack off over half of just about any boss's HP before the invincibility runs out.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Ashan »

Okay let's just get this out of the way, even Capcom made that mistake at one point:
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And that's just the start of how the terminology of this game was completely set up to sound inappropriate
Exhibit A:
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Exhibit B:
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Exhibit E:
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by AlchemistHohenheim »

So I think the deal with VarSword in the RPGs was that it had different effects if you put in fighting game inputs when you used it.

I don't remember exactly what all those effects were, though.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by xnamkcor »

I wouldn't be surprised if there were a Japanese urban legend about going backwards in a turnstile.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Chirei »

AlchemistHohenheim wrote: 5 years ago So I think the deal with VarSword in the RPGs was that it had different effects if you put in fighting game inputs when you used it.

I don't remember exactly what all those effects were, though.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Leet »

Kilgamayan wrote: 5 years ago I'm genuinely don't understand what is bad about most of the things that have been described as negatives about this game. Like, it seems like people wanted this to be either a full-blown Classic-style game set in the BN timeline, or a full-blown BN game, and that trying to make a hybrid is objectively bad? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what is being presented.
Okay, first of all, the megaman pattern I'm talking about isn't the "Classic pattern", X, Zero and ZX use the same pattern. I never said anything about mm classic games, but Network Transmission itself certainly has by putting in a lot of enemies and music from them for some reason, which is fair enough because why not. But I'm talking about the mega man pattern that classic itself is just one permutation of.
FWIW the story has actually been one long connected thing if one has been paying attention (admittedly difficult if the only exposure one has to the story is watching someone else speed through a lot of the dialogue boxes while MST3King the whole thing). For better or worse, the LifeVirus restoration project has been the end goal of the Professor the entire time. This project needed financing, so he whipped out StarMan.EXE and the remains of the WWW's Zero Project, and used Zero.EXE to spread the Zero Virus so StarMan.EXE can sell a fake vaccine. It wasn't the perfect plan by any stretch, but vaccine sales got him plenty of money, and the resulting chaos from the Zero Virus's effects as well as the Navi hacking program in the fake vaccine bought him enough time to complete LifeVirus production.
To the point here: this is still an excuse plot. Yes, the game provides an explanation as to why Professor is here, but does that actually matter or affect anything other than "there are more levels to go to"? Either way the Professor is causing destruction because shonen villain, whether it's with Virus A or Virus B. More importantly, that is not "one long connected thing", that is one connection. The bulk of the game is just going to places and fighting maverick navis. A navi is being maverick in [x place] by doing [x thing], and then you fight it. Or "a navi is guarding a key you need". Repeating myself here, but that's exactly the same as any Classic or X game. In fact, X4-6 actually gives you much more story information on the mavericks and their stages than this game does.
Zero was never an end, he was just a means to an end disguised as a different end in order to mislead the player characters (as well as the player). That honestly seems like some fairly basic writing trope stuff to me. I feel like taking issue that Zero isn't the final boss of MMNT is like taking issue with Chrono Trigger that the game didn't end after the Magus fight.
But the player isn't mislead in any way. "There was another villain behind them the whole time!" is not a meaningful twist on its own if there's no context to make that interesting. In Chrono Trigger, the scope of the game is much bigger than you thought, and you're only halfway through the game. In Network Transmission, the scope of the game is the same and there's just like one more chapter of the game left. The true villain is someone you've never heard of before, so his reveal is pointless, and the game never actually suggests that Zero is evil in the first place. Hell, Professor is pretty much just Wily anyway, even in-universe he's explicitly carrying out Wily's plans. It's suggested for the entire game that WWW is back, and then at the end, it turns out that it's WWW the whole time, doing the exact same thing as in the previous game? "Mislead the player", yeah, no.

Going back to the idea of length and scope, this is more comparable to Chrono Cross' successive climaxes, except I like Chrono Cross because its story is pretty weird so there's more to it than "there is another bad guy". And Professor sure as hell isn't a Lavos. Actually, with how much more interesting Zero is, it's more like if Lavos was the fake final boss in Chrono Trigger and Magus was the real one, but without the narrative thematically accounting for that at all.

For sure, this game definitely uses some standard RPG structure tropes, but that's literally all the game has. There's no actual content to go into that structure; "generic evil plan 1 was actually just a front for generic evil plan 2" changes no stakes, and there's nothing interesting about it. If this game really was "a game with Battle Network storytelling and platforming gameplay", that would be enjoyable, but in many cases, it fails at that.
I think this is a problem purely because of the constraints of the AtMM project. CapCom designed the game to be played by oneself on one's own time, with the player taking whatever time they need to explore and get better/more powerful at their own pace.
This is true. One element of RPGs, gameplay downtime where you build up yourself, is still very possible in this game but doesn't come across in this playthrough. However, I still think that that element could be improved by adding more optional areas, or making the whole world connected instead of most levels being disconnected, to encourage exploring the world as a whole. Or, hell, just be able to control Lan like in a normal BN game, and switch to platforming when you jack-in.
Well it is a decent hack but sometime its just too repetitif there no level that actually pop in your face and your like oh yeah that level they all ressemble themselves and just monster along the way.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Leet »

Wow I wrote a lot of words about that
Well it is a decent hack but sometime its just too repetitif there no level that actually pop in your face and your like oh yeah that level they all ressemble themselves and just monster along the way.
Blood Ghoul wrote:Sometimes it seems my blood spurts out in gobs, as if it were a fountain's pulsing sobs. I clearly hear it mutter as it goes yet cannot find the wound from which it flows. Before I met you, baby, I didn't know what I was missing.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Blue »

Leet wrote: 5 years ago Actually, with how much more interesting Zero is, it's more like if Lavos was the fake final boss in Chrono Trigger and Magus was the real one, but without the narrative thematically accounting for that at all.
This is a really good way to put it. I don't have any sort of actual investment in the game whatsover, but swapping out Zero, who's a real and persistent threat since the very start of the game for a guy who's just sort of there and has had no screentime was stupid enough to irk me. If Zero had escaped or mutated into the life virus and the Professor guy was just completely written out of the plot, I wouldn't have a problem with it. The guy that is causing problems by changing the status quo (antagonist) continues to do that but in a different form, and what you thought was the ending was the halfway point. That's fine. That's completely narratively acceptable.

What it feels like they were trying to do was something like SoTN's second castle and bad end, but got the narrative aspects of that totally backwards. In SoTN, there's plot threads left dangling and no answers to questions that have been bugging the player from the start, IE why did Richter turn evil, why is Dracula's castle back, etc. You don't get those questions answered so when you get to the bad end it doesn't feel like a real ending. It feels incomplete at best and hollow and pointless at worst.

This game did the exact opposite of that. Either defeating or saving Zero after he reveals he was created by the WWW completely ties up every plot thread. That's it. Case shut. All plot elements have been resolved, all mysteries answered, it would have been satisfying to end the story there. The virus that has been causing problems the whole game is now a physical thing for you to attack, so you can do that and save the world.

But they didn't end the story there! They awkwardly ham-fisted in a new antagonist and opened up a bunch of plot threads with no foreshadowing or reason to expect them to exist. The story doesn't benefit from it. It's like making a completely generic but solid enough SMW level where you get the goalpost and the victory jingle starts playing, and then the victory jingle stops and you have to do one more platforming segment.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by xnamkcor »

Do we have to resolve all plotlines in a story? I took English 9 about three times and I don't recall leaving things unresolved was ever that much of an issue.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Dragon Fogel »

It's certainly not necessary to resolve everything, but a lack of resolution to the main plot is generally unsatisfying and shouldn't be done unless you have a really good reason for it, and also have some very good writing to back up that decision.

However, failure to resolve threads isn't what this game is being criticized for. It's being criticized for basically taking the threads to their conclusion and then just slapping another largely unrelated thing on top of that to extend the game.

The real reason for the extension is probably "so you have something to use Zero's chips on", honestly.
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Re: Mega Man Network Transmission - A Classic Case of Identity Crisis

Post by Leet »

xnamkcor wrote: 5 years ago Do we have to resolve all plotlines in a story? I took English 9 about three times and I don't recall leaving things unresolved was ever that much of an issue.
Of course not, but if a story just ends without doing something, there's no point to ending it. Wrapping up the plot is just the most common way of doing that. But at the same time, you can still have a wrapped up plot that is also pointless.
Well it is a decent hack but sometime its just too repetitif there no level that actually pop in your face and your like oh yeah that level they all ressemble themselves and just monster along the way.
Blood Ghoul wrote:Sometimes it seems my blood spurts out in gobs, as if it were a fountain's pulsing sobs. I clearly hear it mutter as it goes yet cannot find the wound from which it flows. Before I met you, baby, I didn't know what I was missing.
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