Fun episode.
On negative status effects, I feel FFXI handles these phenomenally well and has a large assortment of them. The game is a somewhat menu-driven real-time game. Spells, equipment, additional effects of weapons and abilities can all inflict negative status effects on an entity. Many of these effects can stack, but sometimes they do not if they have a similar effect or overwrite the prior effect.
I wouldn’t even know where to start in an introduction to how they all work together. All of them have elemental alignments and you can buff against them to help increase the chance of resistance or debuff an opponent that to increase the chance of them landing. Paralyze can cause spell, ability, item use, and attack round interruptions. Enfeebling magic skill, MND, and magic accuracy buffs can influence chance of successfully landing it without a resist; which could resist in the target evading it or it having a shorter duration. The more MND you have vs your target can influence how often it procs. It’s aligned with Ice, which means Ice resistance debuffs from BRD or NIN can influence the resistance check. The white magic spells Barblizzara and Barparalyzra, the BRD song Ice Carol, and other abilities & spells can affect the target’s ability to evade it… and so on. It’s a pretty intricate system.
Healing magic and items can be used to cure most of these effects, with the magic of another person not necessarily being affected by the paralyze chance in the example above if they weren’t inflicted.
I haven’t played a ton of MMOs (maybe 5-10 of them overall?), but I’d imagine some others might have such elaborate systems beyond “yo, just land the DoTs.” I would hope so at least?
I love hearing Yakuza V mentioned in the wild. I think it gets overlooked so much and it’s the one I personally enjoyed the most from 0-5 and the Kiyamis (haven’t played the others yet). There’s a large part of the game that doesn’t necessarily center around violence. Racing, hunting, the idol stuff, etc. On top of the typical silly sidequests the series is known for, I feel like it has a huge amount of variety. I think you were reaching for Saejima’s name when discussing it.
There’s a ton of games without violence centered around real world professions, especially with the explosion of casual business simulations in the last decade or so. I think a strong game can be centered around a singular act of violence as the impetus for the plot as well - say a murder mystery.
EDIT: @ whatever Tim’s nick is if he’s on here: Nothing beats a classic double-edged safety razor for sustainable and reliable shave for me. If the beard trimmer work, fantastic. None of the ones I’ve had over the years has ever given me a close enough cut.