Slowtrain

But is putting your blade skill in a minor slot and using it exclusively "breaking" the game? I'm playing completely within the system if I do that, given the rules that have been set forth. By the same token, someone who puts blade as a major but only uses it when they need to, is also operating within the rules. But you end up with 2 vastly different results: a character who has a 100 blade skill at level 2 or 3 and a character who has a 50 skill at level 11. Don't you think that is a bit of an issue? Same thing with the dice rolls in BG. Rolling a thousand times and ending up with a Paladin of 18/00 12 18 18 15 18 or roll twice and end up with a Paladin of 17 8 12 14 8 10, either way its legit, but those characters aren't in anyway comparable.

No, no. I would not assume that. Twas not my point. My guess is that computer game developers are pretty much like any other skilled job force: some work really hard and are really good at what they do; some don't work hard but are still good enough to get by; some work really hard but still aren't very good; some don't work hard and aren't very good but they are the son of the CEO. My point was that developers do not always make games that work. For whatever reason. SO to trust that they will always know and do the right or best or even a workable thing is a crapshoot. Nothing more than that.

Oblivion is so weirdly designed its hard to know what to make of it. One the one hand, the game has the level scaling system which basically matches the entire gameworld, monsters, loot, rewards, everything, to the player character's level. Its the ultimate in total control of the gameworld for the developer. One the other hand its totally possible to have a level 1 character with a 100 combat skill. With mutiple 100 skills in fact. WHich to me is the ultimate in broken as far as game systems go. Strange game.

That's probably pretty true, but eh we probably all fail that test at various points. I know I do. lol.

A game developer has to take that into account when balacning a game. How should a game like Oblivion be balanced? SHould the devs assume that everyone will use a rusty dagger on mudcrabs and raise their blade skill to 100 without even reaching level 2 and so make combat really hard? Or should they assume that everyone will play it straight and use their most powerful weapons and only fight when they need to so the should make combat easier? Or should they assume that half will do it and half won't? Being able to increase your skills at will, and even worse, increase them without any corrsponding leveling, makes a game difficult to balance. Its the same thing with the unlimited dice rolls in BG1 and BG2. DO the developers assume that everyone wil roll for hours until they have uber characters? Or do they assume that people will roll once or twice?

Is this possible in a crpg though? Well, I mean I'm sure its possible but it would require a lots of checks and balances to avoid exploitation and having all characters end up the same. An XP system is not "realistic" of course, but it is a workable abstraction that is concrete enough to build a game around. Unless there is some huge advantage to a learn-by-doing system that I am not aware of, it seems an unneccesarily clumsy way to do the same thing that can be done much more easily in an XP-based system.

Its also powered by people who care enough about things to post. I've got no problem with people posting when they've got problems with the way a game is being developed or handled or when a favorite franchise looks like its getting flushed down the toilet. If that is their belief, they should by all means post such if they feel so inclined.

I hear you. Arcanum is one of those games that I really understand all the bad things people say about it (additionally it was insanely buggy despite being "finished" 3 months or so prior to release and the tech vs melee weapon balance was way off as well) but for me the world was so robust and interesting that it made up for all the bad stuff. The combat especially was hideous, but it didn't matter; I spent hundreds of hours on that game.

A game that kinda made me sad was Freelancer. I remember when Chris Roberts was in all the gamign mags in the late 90s talking up how awesome Freelancer was going to be, how to was going to combine single player and multiplayer with all these awesome features that sounded totally awesome. The Freelancer that was eventually released fell so short of what Roberts had wanted that it was really sad and disappointing.

That's simply not true. A BAD classless system in a poorly designed game will definitely tend to that (Hello Oblivion!), but a well done classless system will force you to make choices as you create and build your character that preclude you from being able to be awesome at everything. Additionally, a jack-of-all-trades may actually have some strengths and be an effective build, but as a trade off such a build will not allow a character to achieve the levels of expertise that a highly specialized build would.

Maybe the devs know better; maybe they don't. I don't think its a foregone conclusion either way. I'm played enough bad games to know that a lot of times developers don't seem to have any clue what they are doing. But regardless, I thought the point of this thread was to state a preference and discuss why you liked it and what other systems there are. Simply stating that the devs must know best doesn't add much. I recognize this sounds harsh tonewise but I'm not meaning to be. I'm just saying what I think as directly as possible. Please don't take any offense.

I'm in the "let the devs do what they do because they are going to do it anyway but don't pay much attention to their promises or give them any money until you can how it all turned out" camp, but I still have a preference for a classless system anyway.

I've never played a better crpg system than SPECIAL. Whether it was luck or good design, it is a stunningly simple system that has huge amounts of depth and creates hugely different characters. I played Fallout so many times simply because I kept coming up with new character to builds to send off into the wasteland and they all played out differently. Credit should also go to the gameworld that allows different characters to play out differently. Classless skill-based xp systems are the best way to go in crpgs in my opinion. D&D in all its flavors and mutations is functional in crpgs but I've never really liked it.

Dungeon Lords was the last game I will ever purchase without doing a least a small amount of research before I buy. I'm still embarrased that I gave them my money. In the end a huge amount of patching made it sorta playable, but uh, I ask myself why....

What did you think Bethesda did well in Oblivion? What did you find to be the game's strengths? This is not a trolling comment. I really am interested.

Can you give an example from a game? The distinctions you are making here are not clear to me. No, I mean choices made to affect the world, as opposed to choices to affect the character internally (taking a perk). I'm not clear on your point. In a stat based game, the build of your character defines the charatcer internally but it also defines the character externally as well. His interactions with the gameworld flow from within. DX didn't allow many decisions, but the ones allowed were fairly important. Killing Agent Navarre to save Lebedev? Protecting Paul Denton or beating it? Killing Gunther outright or trying to reason with him? Merging with Helios or killing Bob Page? Those actually affected the plot. And the game also had other, more "flavor", choices such as shutting down Lucius DeBeer. Sure, the game wasn't great as far as character development goes - it wasn't even a proper RPG and was not open-ended by any means. But choices were significant and did have an impact, and they did allow for glimpses of the personality of JC through the player's choices. Well, we're going a little OT here, but why not! I loved Deus Ex. Great game. But it is filled with fradulent player choice: choices that appear to be sigficant but are in fact not significant at all. 2 of the ones you brought up are great examples: Saving Paul's life, despite appearing monumentally sigficant at the time, changes nothing in the remaining game, except you get a few lines of dialogue with him in Hong Kong. Sure, you can get a warm and fuzzy glow inside from saving him, but a well-designd game should make something that sigficant actually mean something to the gameworld. Saving Lebedev from Anna on the plane is even worse. Not only does it have 0 gameplay signifcance other than a few lines of dialogue, but the next time you see Manderley you are told Lebeded was tracked down and killed anyway, offscreen where you could do nothing about it. That's an example of game design that offers you something that appears to be a sigificant choice then spits it back in your face 10 minutes later by telling you it didn't matter anyway, because we killed him without you. Again, I am not putting down Deus Ex. I probably played it more times than anyone else on this planet. But it doesn't really do very well as anything except a problem solving action game.

But there doesn't appear to be nearly so wide a selection of games for pc anymore. And most pc games are on the XBOX anyway.

I did. I recall not being too impressed with it, but I am not sure why. I love the SH series, but it's probably more due to my love of horror in general. I play them for the story and characters and locations, and always felt the gameplay alone was never enough to carry the game. Well if I were to get an XBOX I would defintely try SH5, even if the trailer wasn't so impressive. I generally enjoy horror and scary type stuff, although not too scary or I start to cry. But regardless I'm tired of going into best buy and seeing a entire pc game section that consists of 1 shelf with about 7 games compared to a console game section that stretches from one end of the store to another and has little signs so you don't get lost. Even if 90% of the games are crap, with that many to choose from some are bound to be enjoyable. Plus you can rent them to try them out.

Well, I don't have specific titles really. I mean I know there are a few I would like to try on their native platform such as Resident Evil vs as a crappy pc port with buggered controls 2 years after tha fact. But since I don't have a console, I don't really go looking at console titles. I would probably have to research a bit as to what is available for which platform, but my tendency would be to go for an Xbox rather than a PS3. I'm not really interested in a Wii, I am pretty sure.

Fair enough. To me, a characters skill's and stats define their personality. They have to, because obviously a bunch of pixels or polygons has no actual personality of their own. If my character is very strong and has a high unarmed combat skill, that defines part of his personality because his use of strength and punching is going to be a important aspect of how he deals with things. That same character may have a low personality or a low intelligence and these will also impact and define his personailty. These are very simple examples. But they show how my characters create themselves as distinct beings: I am not very strong and can't fight and would never resolve things with my fists. My character might though. His personaility, ideally, is going to lead him through the game, not my personaility. His personality being defined by his unique mix of skills and stats. I am not sure what you mean by the "choices made by the character externally"? Do you mean choices made by you, the player? Agreed. That's very true. Significant choices of some sort are an important aspect of any fun game. Be it crpg or not. I would also agree that a skill system alone is not enough to make a game a crpg. Well, Deus Ex wasn't really a crpg (My opinion! lol) It was an action game that gave you some choices as to how to solve things through the use of a skill set, a biomod set, and a gear set. Also, I like Deus Ex, but it lacked significant player choice really. Most of them were pretty superficial: Sandra runs away, smuggler lives or dies, nothing too earth shaking. Not much of the world changed its response to you based on your actions, iirc. Deus Ex was mostly a problem solving action game. I'm not putting it down in any way. I enjoyed it a lot.

I did. I recall not being too impressed with it, but I am not sure why. I was just going from your previous argument that your taste is gaming has never changed. You're hard to follow. Well it hasn't really. I mean I still love the same gamplay I've always loved, but I am more than willing to move to a new platform to find it, if that is what it takes. I mean I am not really finding it on the pc in any great quantity at the moment, so I might as well look elsewhere.

Maybe. Probably dead is the wrong word. Slumbering maybe. (you guys drive me crazy! lol) But the bottom line is by not having a console I feel I am missing out on games I might like; I feel my choices are a lot more limited than they need to be right now. I am not saying I am going to throw my pc out the window and only use a console; I am just saying I really can't abide with being a pc-only gamer anymore. WHich is just somewhat a new situation for me becuase for many many years it hasn't been a problem. I never used to feel I was "missing out" with only a pc. Now I do.

I'm attacking you? Because I'm disagreeing with you and considering the points you made? Wait, isn't that what a discussion is all about? To some degree, yes, but you're kinda just making things up by intepreting what I say to meet your own ends (min/maxing, fundamental connections). To me, in a discussion, if you want clarification on what somebody is thinking you do your best to ask for that clarification rather than simply make something up by loosely interpreting what they have said. The latter is more like a debating way of doing things vs a discussion way of doing things. I recognize that the second hand nature of posting on the internet makes asking for clarification a little more difficult then when you are talking in person, but still its helpful sometimes. And playing a character and having it interact with the gameworld is related to stat fiddling how? And how does that preclude player skill from being a factor, too? That's the connection I'm challenging.? Stat fiddling is your term; I've never used it. I'm not really sure what it means. I build my characters following the ruleset and then level them according. I don't fiddle around with stats or hack them or anything. I'm not sure if that is what you are referring to though. When I play a stat-based crpg, my hope is that the gameworld will reflect on the choices I have made for my character. My character should not be able to do everything in the gameworld, even though I THE PLAYA am capable of doing everything becasue I sit behind the keyboard in full control. My skill/knowledge should have as little impact on my characters ability to perform tasks and interact as possible. if my character has a weak backstabbing skill, they should fail at backstabbing most of the time, and sometimes they are just going to fail anyway because that's the way it is. In a stat-based game I don't find that problematic, because that is how they work. If I didn't like it, I wouldn't play it. Obviously there will never be a situation where my knowledge as a human can actually be reduced to 0 impact on the gameworld, but the closer it can get to that point, the better I like it. Also not all crpg worlds are equally well-reflective of your player's stats and skills. I'm not a huge fan of BG1 and BG2 as being awesome roleplaying experiences, although they are certainly OK in some ways. The really fun thing about a good stat based character is that it has a personaility that isn't me. In FPS games I find that the character that I am "roleplaying" really doesn't have any personality other than as some sort of weird cyber extension of my hands and eyes. WHich is always somewhat dull. To me. Personally. That's fine. Thank you.

I don't know really. If I could I would get both a PS3 and an Xbox, but that would seem unlikely....lol. Xbox seems to have more games that I like in general, but I think there are a few that won't be on it. Resident Evil and SIlent Hill are not on Xbox, correct?

You know, disinterest isn't indicative of quality. CrashGirl no likey doesn't equal junk, that's true. Junk was uneccessarily derogative on my part. It was just the demos and walkthroughs were so...I don't even have a word for it. ALl they showed were characters carrying weapons and fighting. And it all looked very much the same. Seriously. Like identical. Other than a few specific ares like the art of Prince of Persia. Sure you can. I change all time. A lot of my arguments with you over the years have changed my opnions about a lot of things. Or at least modified them. I just took what was on the list. I skipped 2 I think. I was expecting much more from the RE5 and Silent Hill trailers. I was very disappointed by those especially. I can only assume that they really do not represent the games very well.