Azarkon
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Posts posted by Azarkon
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<Warning PS:T spoiler>
Personally, I think PS:T feature 2 of the best written "villain" in cRPG - Ravel Puzzlewell and the Practical Incarnation.
Ravel was wicked, obsessive, misunderstood, cunning, tragic and completely and madly in love with the PC. The potential romantic interest in the form of Fall from Grace and Annah has a bottom line in their attraction to the PC. You can do crappy stuff to drive them away. Not Ravel, her love/obsession is absolute and have no bottom line. Because of her nature, her expression of love almost invariably lead only to tragedy. And upon her passing, even the infinite multiverse feel a lot smaller.
Practical Incarnation from PS:T was ruthless, manipulative, selfish to the extreme and mades for a good "villain" even when he is technically "dead" when the game begins. The crappy mess that he leave across the planes for the PC are not just physically threatening but also make the PC(player) angry, sad and have to confront himself with some soul searching questions.
Referring to these two Titans of "villainy", I think it would serve future cRPG better to just forget about using a moral compass of good, evil and gritty grey which plague so many games and movie now. Just write characters with deep conviction, intense emotion and multifacet personality whose agenda happened to conflict the PC.
Neither of those characters were villains in PST.
Ravel was your 'wise old mentor' trope, subverted in that she was mad, amoral, and loved TNO in a twisted, grey hag way - the only way she knew. She helps TNO, rather than hampers him.
Practical Incarnation was a shadowy 'boogeyman' who had lost all agency by the time you came to be. His ruthlessness was a lesson to TNO, but he never acted against you except at the very end, when he tried to steal your body. In this, he was a foil, rather than a villain. Same with Paranoid Incarnation.
The villain of PST was, of course, TTO. He followed the standard trope of a villain in a heroic journey, slaughtering your 'wise old mentor' figure, hampering you every step of the way with his shadows and targeted assassinations, and eventually killing all your friends and cornering you in his lair.
Was TTO a decent villain? Yeah, but he didn't exactly carry the game - it wasn't the villains that made PST great. In this, I think a lesson is also learned about whether a game needs a great villain to be effective.
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I like the idea that good is something that will cost you something. It won't really just be a no-brainer choice. I'd like to see choices where you really have to think "Is the cost really worth doing the right thing?" without the cost being so high that no one will ever take the nice option, nor so low that its negligible.
Playing good and playing bad are usually uninteresting in RPGs as they're usually just about picking a line of actions, then sticking to them, without the game changing much. I want to see situations where there is content you will not see unless you make a certain decision in a certain way.
I don't particularly agree with this line of thinking. Making evil or good be innately more/less profitable just makes the whole thing a puerile "come to the dark side, we have cookies" thing.
I would rather that both sides of an option lead to different resolutions and rewards, and that no penalizing or rewarding the player for choosing one path over the other come into play.
BioShock was pretty decent at making the choice interesting, because you had no idea what the costs for either choice were. You simply had to guess, and when it became apparent what the cost was, it was too late to re-load and pick the other choice.
You were killing little girls. I'm pretty sure that was a conscious design choice to make you think twice about it.
Bioshock is a great example of the OP's issue, however. The choice of virtue / vice in that game was effectively just a choice of endings. It did not serve to advance the thematic principles of the game. A virtuous PC ended up 'living a long life and dying in the arms of loved ones.' An evil PC 'unleashed hell on the world.' There is no subtlety involved; the paths were just caricatures.
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Ah Princess Maker...good ol' Princess Maker
It's only Princess Maker if you get to marry your kid at the end.
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as to the embedded video, we went through 90+ pages o' a really bad comic 'cause we didn't want to dismiss berserk w/o reading. is no way in hell we is gonna get snookered a second and/or third time.
In defense of the story I would have recommended avoiding the Manga entirely actually. What takes like 250-300 pages of pretty par stuff in the Manga is cut down to 1 25 minute episode in the anime then it just cuts straight to where the story actually starts getting good.
I will admit straight out that if I had seen the manga first and started at the beginning I likely would have dropped it.
As for the guy being human... uh no not really. He was a child mercenary from like 5-6 years old and has in fact been "cursed" by the "gods" and has a bevy of other things going on. So yeah you are right, there is nothing "normal human" about him, christ sake he has a cannon on his arm. There is a part of the story where he is just a really really skilled normal human fighter but that doesn't start until like volume 3 and ends around volume 12. Even though it is the best arc of the story it is actually a small part of it.
Either way I understand why you would come away not liking it from volume 1, to each their own.
He doesn't like it because it's too over the top. This is a feature of Japanese entertainment in general. They enjoy caricatures, and their artistic style revolves around creating and selling caricatures. Judging by what they put into their art and entertainment you'd think Japan is the land of larger than life life styles and colorful personalities. But it's actually the opposite - Japanese culture is as reserved as their artistic style is not.
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Nice article here:
http://www.wizards.c...4dreye/20120328
Article summary/precis:
"Armor should look appropriate to the culture, environment, materials available, and technology, first and foremost. If the armor doesn't pass that test, then it doesn't matter whether it is being worn by a man or a woman.
In other words, a male knight in full battle dress, wading through the desert sands, is just about as silly as a female fighter, in a chainmail bikini, forging through the frozen wastes of the Iceland Dale".
Edit: In the above "photo realism" example I would justify that character as a succubus in hell with supernatural strength intent on using any means to subdue/eviscerate a (hetro male or otherwise) character. Does that fit the context/intent/story of the character?. So would put forward the question of whether a succubus is the oversexualization of a female, or does she/it have a serious place in a fantasy game?.
The problem with that article is that the writer spend the entirety of it talking about what sort of armor is appropriate, stating that his stance is 'armor should look appropriate to the culture, environment, materials available, and technology, first and foremost.' Then at the end he gives 2 / 3 examples in entertainment that do not at all abide by this rule, and fails to say a single word about why.
What separates the manga, fantastic, and photorealistic examples in the portraits above isn't 'culture, environment, materials available, and technology,' but artistic style. Sure, we're able to conceive of a culture and environment in which female warriors go into battle with their shoulders, midriffs, and thighs exposed, but the result is utterly frivolous - a sort of building the world to match the style - and does not describe why those characters are drawn the way they are. No manga / comic book artist ever designed armor of that form thinking that there is a culture, environment, etc. in which it is appropriate. Rather, they designed it because that's the style of art they chose to go with. An example of 'female armor' from the most popular Japanese animations of recent times shows that the style has not slowed down whatsoever:
Artists do this not because they are sexist, but because it sells. It sells not because it is sexist, but because it satisfies a certain artistic sensibility - the one possessed by the target market / audience. Style does not evolve independently of the connoisseur. Rather, it is the product of repeated experimentation by artists to produce what their target audiences enjoy. Of course, not all audiences enjoy the same thing. That's why there are genres of style. 'Photorealistic' is a genre of style, which for certain works - ie historical works that try to be 'accurate' to the period - is a requirement. For works of fantasy, it is a choice, and the criteria for making that choice depends on the target audience.
Thus, what is appropriate armor design is not, first and foremost, a question of 'culture, environment, material, and technology.' By stating that it is, you have in fact already answered, a priori, the first and foremost question, which is the artistic style of the work. A 'photorealistic' style requires that the armor design matches the culture, environment, material, and technology. A 'fantastic' / 'rule of cool' style does not. The selection of artistic style has profound impact on the overall tone of the game and how players experience it. In Borderlands 2, for example, the cartoonish style of the game is instrumental to creating the game's Monty Python mix of extreme graphic violence and absurdist humor. At the same time, Call of Duty's 'photorealistic' style is necessary to the game's goal of emulating combat IRL.
Armor design is not a standalone question. First you have to decide the tone of the game. Then you have to decide an artistic style that furnishes said tone. The choice of armor design is straight forward after you've decided the first two criteria.
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The idea of player families offers excellent opportunities for future RPG design, but this sort of player family feature requires time lapses to be present in the game. It is thus available only to RPGs that do not take place within the span of a sequence of adventures, but over the course of a timeline / life time. Given that doing player family correctly requires a great deal of resources spent on family interactions, it's best left to games that have a thematic drive for such features and ought not to be just haphazardly inserted into a game.
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I have the niggling feeling that the soul concept in PE is a thematic expansion of the amnesiac / resurrection device Avellone used back in PST.
Chris Avellone: ... The whole premise of the lore and the magic system is that souls get inherited, and then when you pass away the souls wait for a time and then come back to another body. The question is how much of your own behavior is being governed by your own free will or the influence of the soul inside you and all of its history? I think that can raise some interesting questions for both the player character and the companions.There's that preoccupation with memory, past events, and the burden of reincarnation.
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Also, it is embarrassing to kill female enemies that are overly exposed (forsworn half naked bandits in skyrim for example).
Armor that makes the opponent too embarrassed to attack? Mission accomplished.
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It has already been explained that in a Flight or Fight situation the brain do not care about such things.
And anyway, if that would be real, a single naked woman could wipe out an entire army of straight men.
Please, use your brain before posting.
Then it's fortunate that we are not in a Flight or Fight situation in video games.
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Looking through all this discussion, one thing I've wondered about is the demographics of those who are hardcore fans of romance in games. I know that Bioware started off making romances primarily for 'straight male gamers' under the logic that those are their main market. That's why, for example, Baldur's Gate II featured three romance options for 'straight male gamers' and only one for 'straight female gamers.' However, from that time on Bioware has swung completely in the opposite direction. In DA 2, they ended up with four bisxeual romances, and an extra one for 'straight female gamers.'
Is this reflective of the market for romances in CRPGs?
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Also, it is embarrassing to kill female enemies that are overly exposed (forsworn half naked bandits in skyrim for example).
Armor that makes the opponent too embarrassed to attack? Mission accomplished.
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On the subject of romances as a specific sort of relationship in CRPGs, a couple of observations about ways to use it -
Romance as Plot: in a lot of the older CRPGs and JRPGs with predefined characters, romance in the game is a plot feature. Background romance between NPCs, and between the PC and NPC, generates the game's motivations and carries the plot. This form of romance does not generally involve the player's decisions, even when the player is party to it - rather, the player is simply told that a romance exists between his / her character and a NPC; whether he / she accepts it is irrelevant. This does not limit the player's ability to enjoy the romance as an observer, the same way one enjoys a romance in a movie. In certain cases, the player is able to decide what one character says to his / her romantic partner, which adds a personal dimension to the relationship, but still keeps it 'at a safe distance.'
Romance as Character Content: when the player does carry on a romance of his / her choice with a NPC, in a lot of the cases it is simply a device for additional character content. The basic principle behind such a design is that a player romances a character not because he / she is personally / physically attracted to said character, but because they want to know the character's back story / how a deeper relationship with said character plays out. In game rewards are also an option. Curiosity - and the desire for whatever in game rewards are available - is therefore the primary drive for this sort of romance, and the outcome is a better understanding of the character, the satisfaction of having 'overcome' certain issues the character had in the same way one solves a quest chain, and in game material rewards. Physical attraction between player and NPC is not necessary, as the experience is cerebral / theme / goal driven.
Romance as Romance: a final design for romance in games is to treat romance as romance - that is to say, a relationship grounded in physical and personal attraction. This is the bread and butter of date sims and, to an extent, Bioware games. To accomplish this feat, you first have to find a receptive audience, as not everyone is comfortable with being physically and personally attracted to characters in a game. It is safe to say, however, that this audience exists. For example: http://simpleek.word...game-character/ Having found an audience, you then have to design a character that is physically and personally appealing to the demographic - a problem of art design, voice acting, and background story writing. There are various archetypes people have developed for this. As an example, Bioware falls back on an 'aggressive femme fatale' type and an 'innocent maiden' type for male gamers. The better games, however, employ unique artistic touches necessary for today's jaded gamers. Presentation is very important for this type of romance, because you want the player to be physically attracted - ergo, the NPC has to be physically attractive.
When thinking about what structure the romance ought to have, it is important to first determine which type of romance it is. The first type is conducive to a 'classic romantic' story, full of pathos and dramatic moments, because the designer is in full control of the involved parties and does not have to explain, to the player, why the PC acts in the way that he / she does. Freed from the constraints of having to give the player options / choices, the designer is then allowed to do whatever makes the story richer.
The second type ought to be used sparingly. Requiring the player to romance characters in order to appreciate / understand said characters is gimmicky. There are plenty of relationships players are able to have with a character and it is unnecessary that every 'deep' relationship has to involve a romantic bond. When it is used, the second type benefits from having a thematic purpose - ie is the relationship played for laughs? Is it designed to convey a theme? Is it an in-depth study of the affected character? The player is looking for a novel experience in these sorts of romances, and it is up to the developer to create one.
The third type is, in a lot of ways, the hardest to handle. When the player's personal emotions are involved, however superficially, poor judgment on how the relationship unfolds is a sure way to ruin the player's enjoyment of the game. But this does not = the romance always has to end 'happily ever after' and be warm and fuzzy. Tragic / unfulfilled romances are at their best when the player is personally affected by them, because it is during those moments that the in game experience is able to 'break out' to become a tangible, memorable experience. It is important, in a 'romance as romance' scenario, that the character never lapses into 'obvious algorithm' mode, which instantly breaks the immersion and the personal connection players feel. In CRPGs, this requires interactions to be carefully handled and preferably NPC driven, so that the player doesn't get the opportunity to 'unravel the algorithm.' I've seen this done well only a few times, but when it is done well, you're able to actually get the player to carry feelings for a character for weeks after the game ends, and to be a fanboy / fangirl of said game for life.
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Romance is only one of a set of 'deep relationships' between players and NPCs. It is an important one, to be sure, but there are equally - and at times tighter - bonds. For example, the relationship between a parent and a child. The relationship between siblings. The relationship between a priest and his god. The relationship between an avenger and his target. The relationship between a knight and the one he / she is oathbound to serve. The relationship between an artist and his object of inspiration. The relationship of these relationships to each other, to get a bit meta.
Personally, what I want to see are explorations of these other sorts of relationships, rather than romance per se.
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Take, for example, Dragon Age Origin's Deep Roads segment. That slug fest of an area is barely tolerable with exp gain, because you are at the minimum progressing your characters for each darkspawn you kill. Without exp gain, it is unbearable, because it becomes just a tedious chore that you have to do to get to the next objective of the game, which is several hours off.
In addition to what has already been said about no one suggesting to remove rewards for combat oriented tasks in general (where does this idea even come from?), I find it funny how you talk about not wanting to discuss degenerate cases and then go on and suggest a degenerate case of your own: hours long grindfest that adds nothing to the game. How is "something is good because it makes ****ty parts of the game marginally less ****ty" a good argument?
Fine, then a better example is wilderness exploration in Baldur's Gate - no objectives involved but your own curiosity and desire for adventure, with exp and loot from slain monsters / cleared dungeons being the only rewards for doing so. How do you script combat objectives into exploration without making it feel artificial and rail roaded?
Well, if you get experience for exploring or finding Interesting Locations, then there you go. Or there's a bounty on gnome-ears. Or there are people you meet in the wilderness that supply quests, items, interesting interaction, etc. Maybe there are trails you find that people with Survivalist skills can track and find dens of bandits.
There's many, many ways to make wilderness exploration interesting and useful as a game mechanic. The fact that you can't come up with them doesn't mean they don't exist.
I know they exist, because I'v played a variety of quest driven MMOs and the game mechanic for doing what you said is a specific concept there - quest hubs.
I don't, however, find quest hubs a solid game mechanic. They are:
Not intuitive: why is it that I'm only able to get a chunk of experience from doing what NPCs tell me to do? Why is fighting a dragon not experience granting in and of itself?
Intrusive: why are there camps of quest givers conveniently located next to every wilderness area and outside of every dungeon? What, they think an adventurer is just going to walk by and offer his / her help? Oh wait-
Constrictive: quest driven games rail road the player into having specific objectives that the game tells them they have, and fails to support objectives that the player himself / herself has. For example, one strategy for beating a game is to 'go off into the wilderness, kill lots of monsters for experience and loot, and then come out, a veteran of countless battles, to stop the villain.' In a quest driven game, this isn't allowed. Instead, the player is forced to do the NPCs' bidding to get better. Whether he cares about those quests is irrelevant. He HAS to do them to level up.
The last of these cases is quite degenerate in a roleplaying game. In a logical setting, a lot of the side quests a game has are of no personal concern to the player. What does my dwarvish fighter care about a couple of elves being robbed, for example? What does my drow mage care about what happens to human towns? Yet, because quests are the mechanism by which the game provides exp, I am forced to do them just to advance my character. This leads to the same sort of 'degenerate' meta-gaming that happens when players slaughter townsfolk for exp - ie doing quests to maximize exp gain instead of roleplaying a certain character.
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I don't know about you, but when I hear the word quest, I think of things that go into your journal. Exploring a dungeon does not require having a quest in that dungeon, and having to assign a hackneyed 'explore the dungeon' quest to a player each time he enters a dungeon is just another form of gameplay degeneracy.
I recall Sawyer talking about objectives and sub-objectives, including a specfic example of a "kill that monster in the wild".
This is what he said, and what I'm going off of -
Tim and I would rather not give XP for general killin' because it leads to a lot of weird/degenerate scenarios, but I have no problem with having quests oriented specifically around killing and receiving XP for achieving sub-objectives/the main goal.Gameplay degeneration occurs when a player engages in gameplay not because they enjoy that gameplay but because the game's mechanics put the player at a disadvantage for not taking advantage of it. Rest spamming is one example. Wholesale slaughter/genocide is another. Quests that involve a peaceful option to resolve that get turned around after completion when the player murders the saved parties is a familiar expression of this sort of degeneration. If XP is linked to quests and objectives within quests, the player has much more freedom to resolve those quests in whatever way he or she wants, whether that means talking through it, fighting, sneaking around, or using some mixture of skills/scripted environment objects to reach the goal.I don't see a mention of objectives outside of quests here.
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Take, for example, Dragon Age Origin's Deep Roads segment. That slug fest of an area is barely tolerable with exp gain, because you are at the minimum progressing your characters for each darkspawn you kill. Without exp gain, it is unbearable, because it becomes just a tedious chore that you have to do to get to the next objective of the game, which is several hours off.
In addition to what has already been said about no one suggesting to remove rewards for combat oriented tasks in general (where does this idea even come from?), I find it funny how you talk about not wanting to discuss degenerate cases and then go on and suggest a degenerate case of your own: hours long grindfest that adds nothing to the game. How is "something is good because it makes ****ty parts of the game marginally less ****ty" a good argument?
Fine, then a better example is wilderness exploration in Baldur's Gate - no objectives involved but your own curiosity and desire for adventure, with exp and loot from slain monsters / cleared dungeons being the only rewards for doing so. How do you script combat objectives into exploration without making it feel artificial and rail roaded?
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TLDR: when there is no perceptible reward, humans have very little tolerance for repetition. Combat in RPGs is inevitably repetitive by virtue of the fact that RPG designers do not have the luxury to spend the bulk of their time designing innovative encounters. This goes extra for Obsidian, who have said that their development specialty is elsewhere. In that case, having exp gain for monster killing is a tried-and-tested, cheap, and effective way to improve player satisfaction. I know Sawyer and Cain feel that, theoretically speaking, exp gain for objectives is a better design principle because it makes it easier to avoid degenerate scenarios and to implement options. But what they are missing, in my opinion, is that the argument against exp gain for objectives is not just 'nostalgia' for classic RPGs - ala Feargus. The argument is vastly better than that, provided they are designing a game in which tactical combat is going to play a primary role.
First, let me say this is the exact reason i never finished the dwarf roads- my characters were already level 25+ at the time, and "exp" was of no importantce whatsoever, and the whole thing was boring as hell.
Now, then, here is the thing: You are continuing to ignore that a long-ass dungeon will be cut in many different parts, each giving exp. There won't ever be a "two hours of fighting without reward" because a°) the simple fact that the devs want objective-exp means they don't want such scenarios of long ass boring fights, and b°) you will get your exp.
What you won't get is the exp for each different 'kills', but XP when, for example you have "taken care of the monster blocking the passage" or "taken care of the demon wanting your soul", and so on. You will still get that exp, man.
Provided that's how it works, sure. But in practice, setting such nuanced and detailed objectives requires carefully scripting the entire game. That brings with it its own set of issues, the greatest of which is that there is a lot less room for 'free form' gameplay. Sure, at a certain level it all becomes the same thing - after all, exp gain for monster killing is equivalent to making every monster a mini objective. But the principle behind how you set the level at which the objectives exist is what's at stake here. The way Sawyer was talking, one gets the idea that he wanted to control the way players played the game and only reward them when they are doing a quest.
I don't know about you, but when I hear the word quest, I think of things that go into your journal. Exploring a dungeon does not require having a quest in that dungeon, and having to assign a hackneyed 'explore the dungeon' quest to a player each time he enters a dungeon is just another form of gameplay degeneracy.
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Why should we be policing how Player's play the game? What right does anyone have to declare that "You're doing it wrong and we're going to stop you!"? How does it affect anyone but that Player if he/she decides to go and do that?
I'm not particularly invested in the debate at all since I don't mind either per kill or objective based, or a mix of both, but I really don't see how this particular objection works.
Nothing inherent to objective based rewards stops you playing any way you want- there's nothing specific to it which says that you cannot receive a quest reward then go back and kill everyone involved, should you want to. You just wouldn't be habitually rewarded for that approach. That is not restricting how you play nor penalising for playing a certain way, it's just making sure you do something because you like it or want to rather than because you feel compelled to in order to maximise benefits/xp.
While at the same time removing this 'habitual reward' from everywhere else, thereby weakening the tactical combat side of the game.
We are going in circles because the advocates of objective only exp gain are dead set on talking about the 'degenerate' cases while the opposition is worried primarily about the overall gameplay. I am not concerned about the 'degenerate' cases because I find them trivial. Provided the game is balanced for parties that did not go back and kill every quest giver / townsfolk they met in their travels, it is not an issue for me because it's not how I play RPGs. Those who feel compelled to squeeze every little drop of exp and loot from the NPCs in the game, roleplaying be damned - I say go ahead, it's your game. I have friends whose idea of having fun in RPGs is to screw with the NPC AI to create retarded situations that they then laugh their heads off about. Devs are not going to stop people from playing the game the way they want to, nor do they have a great argument for why they need to.
But when it comes to the overall game mechanic of exp gain for monster killing, that affects me - a lot - because I have always felt that this is a very important feature in classic RPGs, which keeps the games from becoming dull when faced with a long tract of combat, and which encourages the player to fully explore a wilderness / dungeon, effectively making the game longer than the set of objectives it contains. Take, for example, Dragon Age Origin's Deep Roads segment. That slug fest of an area is barely tolerable with exp gain, because you are at the minimum progressing your characters for each darkspawn you kill. Without exp gain, it is unbearable, because it becomes just a tedious chore that you have to do to get to the next objective of the game, which is several hours off.
To understand why that is, you have to understand human psychology - we are creatures who want to be rewarded for the activities that we engage in. At times, the novelty of the activity is reward enough. But the bulk of our lives are not spent in novel situations. The bulk of our lives are spent on repetition, which we are able to tolerate only because there are meta-activity rewards - ie money, career advancement, friendship, etc. This psychological phenomenon is why, genre wise, RPGs are able to get away with worse gameplay than action games - because while grinding random mobs in, say, World of Warcraft is in every way a dull and trivial task, the RPG design of the game keeps you grinding because it gives you the satisfaction of knowing that you are advancing your der Wille zur Macht, which is the driving force behind the fantasy of RPG progression.
Now, I'm not suggesting that Project Eternity is a monster grinder, but in a game where tactical combat is a primary mode of gameplay, it is vital to understand that 'exp gain for monster killing' is one of the things that makes RPG combat work. Games that do not feature this - which do not reward combat, such as VTMB - do not end up with psychologically rewarding combat systems. Playing through VTMB, this was obvious to me, and one of the biggest complaints about VTMB was the lengthy forced combat segments towards the end.
TLDR: when there is no perceptible reward, humans have very little tolerance for repetition. Combat in RPGs is inevitably repetitive by virtue of the fact that RPG designers do not have the luxury to spend the bulk of their time designing innovative encounters. This goes extra for Obsidian, who have said that their development specialty is elsewhere. In that case, having exp gain for monster killing is a tried-and-tested, cheap, and effective way to improve player satisfaction. I know Sawyer and Cain feel that, theoretically speaking, exp gain for objectives is a better design principle because it makes it easier to avoid degenerate scenarios and to implement options. But what they are missing, in my opinion, is that the argument against exp gain for objectives is not just 'nostalgia' for classic RPGs - ala Feargus. The argument is vastly better than that, provided they are designing a game in which tactical combat is going to play a primary role, and has to do with the very principles behind why and how RPG combat is psychologically satisfying.
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To sacrifice such an important feature of tactical combat in RPGs - exp gain via monster killing, you better have an excellent argument. Exp gain via monster killing is critical to a lot of people's enjoyment of a tactical combat system because it rewards them for every combat they win. Whether you think that's logical, it's the way human psychology works.
Hmm...
For that matter, just by engaging in it you are basically saying that you're a greater munchkin than you are a 'roleplayer' - in which case, isn't it just a case of not understanding who you are?Need to read carefully. In the latter quote, I'm talking about a very specific case of choosing exp gain over 'roleplaying' - slaughtering townsfolk after helping them to get what little exp / coin they have. In the former, I'm talking about the feature of exp gain via monster killing in its totality. Personally, I don't do the former. However, I do enjoy getting rewarded for monster kills and exploring the entirety of a dungeon / combat area rather than just those areas that have to do with my objective. When I put in the effort to kill a monster, I want that to count.
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That's terrible and arbitrary.
You suddenly become "enlightened" when you reach the last dungeon wall.. but before that - nada.
Go give your boss 50% of your work. See how "enlightened" you became doing just half.
Also, feel free to tell 'That's terrible and arbitrary. I should be rewarded doing not everything'...
@ Azarkon; Is providing alternate options also a wasted effort then? Why make a branching story like The Witcher II if only half the people experience it? Why create something and people are not only not rewarded, but may actually not see it in their game...
So yeah, point seems weak. The combat is there to provide a challenge. It's part of the game. How can one complain one is not "using" the game?
Alternate options are never a wasted effort because they increase the game's replayability and audience.
The correct balance of 'alternate options' is, however, up to discretion. With limited time and resources, not every option is going to be fleshed out. Tactical combat happens to be one of those options that is fleshed out in classic RPGs. It is a tried-and-tested design, and remains the option with the greatest amount of success.
To sacrifice such an important feature of tactical combat in RPGs - exp gain via monster killing, you better have an excellent argument. Exp gain via monster killing is critical to a lot of people's enjoyment of a tactical combat system because it rewards them for every combat they win. Whether you think that's logical, it's the way human psychology works.
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Rest spamming and save scumming were both heavily exploited in IE games because of the way magic worked in D&D. Higher level combat was so dependent on making certain spells work / not work that you had to resort to these exploits in order to overcome encounters.
I am not a fan of how MAGES and certain spells work in DnD. Save or Die spells in my opinion are terrible. But I disagree with other things you say. I will give you reasons. See if you think they are considerable.
I remember doing rest spamming a lot not because I ran out of spells / resources / health, but because I ran out of certain spells / abilities that were critical in the encounters I was facing. For example, greater restoration and mind protection spells vs. illithids whose intelligence draining hits and pisonic blasts were instant death when you didn't have those spells. It wasn't a case of just having to 'suck it up' and fight better / absorb the losses because the encounters were so punishing without these abilities that you were forced to use them.
That is the problem of save or die spells. The way that magic works in DnD is deeply flawed. Mages become exponentially powerful as the level progresses with a lot of spells that do not offer any solutions to face than lucky rolls or fortuitous availability of counterspells. This is essentially due to HIGH magic setting which makes Melee irrelevant at higher levels. I would welcome a LOW MAGIC setting, although PE is already confirmed to be High magic with magical monks that will beat monsters to death with bare hands.
BUT.
Even in such scenario, IWDs for example were excellently designed so that you could always save from a reload when dies rolled too bad against you; I actually mentioned that in the post you are quoting. Also, IWDs were LOW level DnD for most part where the party did not become OP and always plan according to what they were facing; which is exactly what tactics is; planning to adapt to conflict. Encounter design was so that only logical enemies were so powerful to resist and you were given a choice to rest before facing them, something that is not contradictory to what I said in the post; the post is about good encounter design where you SHOULD be given a choice to rest before tough encounters.
Save scumming was used because of the randomness programmed into D&D spells. I used it because there were times when an enemy mage would insta kill my party with a well rolled Circle of Death / Weird and I didn't want to cast life protection on every one of my party members because - dum dum dum - I wanted to avoid rest spamming. It was also the case that certain encounters were only beatable at certain levels when you roll well. The sheer randomness of the D&D magic system is what made save scumming very useful.
Again an issue of encounter design. Remember that you are playing in a scaffold. The programmer has to learn to anticipate the problems the player will face playing the game. Broken encounter design will FORCE you play unnecessarily unbalanced scenarios. Good design won't. As to random encounters; there are NO random encounters per se. There is always a system by which such encounters are generated. That system can be balanced so that it makes sense from the scenario perspective (previous encounters; available resources; resting places etc).
I agree that encounter design is a valid method for solving this problem, but encounters do not exist in a vacuum. That's all I'm saying. Avoiding all encounters with save/die spells/abilities in D&D games is a solution, but because the game has such an abundance of these spells/abilities, it's very hard to do. You have to basically remove a huge chunk of the game's monsters, spells, and abilities to make it happen. In that case, it's no longer a 'faithful' D&D game, which leads to a different set of complaints.
PE has the benefit of not being a D&D game, so it has the flexibility to design its own mechanics. This already solves a lot of the problems, provided the devs understand that it was D&D's magic design that caused a lot of the reloading and rest spamming that happened in the Infinity Engine games.
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Who says stealth is faster or safer?
Presumptions
That depends on the design of the stealth system, obviously, but every stealth system I've ever seen designed has been faster and shallower than an equivalently well designed combat system. Stealth systems that are 'difficult' also generally involve reload spamming because in stealth games, detection ~ failure, and I find that design principle distasteful. Engine wise, isometric games are worse vessels for stealth games because of the overhead tactical view. I'm not saying that OE is incapable of designing a better stealth system. But I don't have faith in them doing so, while I do have faith in them designing a decent combat system because all they need to do is take what existed in the Infinity Engine games and port them.
You are making the point for 'For' here- a lot of people won't do the stealth thing, and will just kill the enemies- and will get the exp regardless as they do the objective by killing the enemies.
Having the exp for "objective" just means that stealth is no nerfed, not that combat is nerfed. Most players are going to enjoy the combat, so they won't see a need to "rush" by reloading dozens of times and ending up taking more time.
I'm not against having additional options in a game, but it has to be understood that classic RPGs are, first and foremost, combat simulators. Their basic character, attribute, and gameplay design are all based on combat. This is the area in which the bulk of these games' designers and players spent their time, and which defined the normative experience of these games.
Tactical combat is the heart and soul of a classic RPG. All other options are side effects. Stealth, diplomacy, puzzle solving, etc. - these are secondary to the genre we're talking about. They are not there to replace combat. They are there to give options for people who simply are not able to stand RPG combat, which has to be a small segment of the player base because otherwise why are you building a combat simulator?
I'm open to other game genres, but when it comes to classic RPGs you are talking about a combat simulator, in which case the option is simple - is Project Eternity a classic RPG ala Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Wizardry, etc.?
Yes: then make tactical combat rewarding and the best of available options for going through the game.
No: then find a different mode of gameplay that is equally engaging and design your game around that.
There is no gain in trying to fit a circle to a square. There is no gain in designing a complex and detailed combat system and then not rewarding people for using it.
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Who says stealth is faster or safer?
Presumptions
That depends on the design of the stealth system, obviously, but every stealth system I've ever seen designed has been faster and shallower than an equivalently well designed combat system. Mechanics wise, stealth systems that are 'difficult' lead to a lot of reload spamming because in stealth games, detection ~ failure and there is little room for error, and I find that design principle distasteful. Engine wise, isometric games are worse vessels for stealth games because of the overhead tactical view. I'm not saying that OE is incapable of designing a better stealth system. But I don't have faith in them doing so, while I do have faith in them designing a decent combat system because all they need to do is take what existed in the Infinity Engine games and port them.
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Why does killing 100 kobolds in a dungeon, gaining 10XP per kobold make a great game, but getting through that dungeon whatever way give 1000XP make the combat useless and worthless and totally change the basis of the game. Anyone?
You spend thousands of hours designing a fun, interactive, and in-depth tactical combat system involving dozens of classes, hundreds of abilities, attribute interactions, perks, equipment & status effects, etc.
Your basic game design discourages the player from ever using them because it's faster / safer to get through the game without ever fighting.
...Fail?
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It is quite easy to realize that such problem can be quite decently solved by simply managing the combat encounters more intelligently than whining about how that is detrimental to the game. If the game is designed in a way so that the player party has to move from encounter to encounter (until you reach a safe spot) without an opportunity to rest in between, there would be no rest-spamming. Some might feel that this is too tough. Not so. It is simply made challenging by adding enough resources after every encounter that are just necessary to win the next encounter but still keeping it challenging. IWDs did this quite well. This would allow challenge (NOT frustration or annoyance) to be experienced only enhancing the game.
Rest spamming and save scumming were both heavily exploited in IE games because of the way magic worked in D&D. Higher level combat was so dependent on making certain spells work / not work that you had to resort to these exploits in order to overcome encounters.
I remember doing rest spamming a lot not because I ran out of spells / resources / health, but because I ran out of certain spells / abilities that were critical in the encounters I was facing. For example, greater restoration and mind protection spells vs. illithids whose intelligence draining hits and pisonic blasts were instant death when you didn't have those spells. It wasn't a case of just having to 'suck it up' and fight better / absorb the losses because the encounters were so punishing without these abilities that you were forced to use them.
Save scumming was used because of the randomness programmed into D&D spells. I used it because there were times when an enemy mage would insta kill my party with a well rolled Circle of Death / Weird and I didn't want to cast life protection on every one of my party members because - dum dum dum - I wanted to avoid rest spamming. It was also the case that certain encounters were only beatable at certain levels when you roll well. The sheer randomness of the D&D magic system is what made save scumming very useful.
Let's talk villainy
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted · Edited by Azarkon
All great stories have conflict, but a lot of Obsidian games do not employ the use of a villain-antagonist.
Take Mask of the Betrayer: who was the villain-antagonist? Akachi? Araman? Kelemvor? Myrkul?
In a way, it was all of them, and in a way, it was none of them. MOTB's story was driven by ideas. Physically, the PC was caught up in a sequence of unfortunate events that required him to undertake an adventure in order to survive, but symbolically he was fighting in a struggle between Man and God. The final battle was not against an villain-antagonist, per se, but against the very foundations of the world's spiritual system.
A lot of this thread has been devoted to the idea that a great villain drives stories. But the a priori principle behind a villain is villainy, which when placed at the center of a story, transforms it into a moral struggle. Not all stories are moral struggles. In stories where the primary struggle is not between virtue and vice, villains have no place, only antagonists, and at times those antagonists are not even characters, but ideas and structures.
Embodying a story's conflict through an antagonist is a clever and useful device, for it is easier to get players to care about a character than abstract concepts. Nonetheless, having an NPC antagonist just for the sake of having an NPC antagonist is not my idea of great design. Say no to hamfisted boss fights.