Frustrated by the game design

[Ensign]

And I never played the original, I only came in after the reboot. After the auction house was gone the game was rebalanced and became a lot of fun to play in my opinion. Only with the endless pursuit of higher greater rift levels did the game become boring for me. 

 

It has incredible gameplay for the genre.  Really top notch, fluid, fun to play.

 

Those games live and die on reward loops and economy though.  It *needed* an auction house to be the 1000+ hour, huge active player base game they wanted it to be, but their reward loops simply did not do enough to support that.  Without the auction house they were able to re-balance around a less integrated economy, which made for a better core game experience but that loses engagement faster.  They had no hope of that long term value prop that Path makes so much money off of.

 

I know Blizzard had economists looking at their economy model because on a high level it was a good design (for the time, flaws are obvious in retrospect), but they didn't have any game design / balancers who know a damn thing about the game economy because it didn't reflect their model at all.

 

...but I digress into my own real world rabbit holes and get far off topic.

 

 

I love that there are party roles in the first place, something AD&D and Pathfinder spectacularly fail at delivering since they weren't designed with clear party roles in mind. I especially love that almost nothing in Pillars is a complete waste of your experience points since even a subjective trap choice has niche uses, unlike a lot of the bloated systems in 3.5 and Pathfinder.

 

...ok I can't help but nerd on it a bit.

 

You also have to keep in mind that D&D and its descendants are a ~40 year old product from an era without a lot of competition.  It was a revolutionary product!  It was also really poorly optimized and a lot of the rules were bad and it didn't matter because it was the only thing of its kind, and it got enough right that radical departures didn't really stack up.

 

It has been 40 years, however, and we know a ridiculous amount more about game system design than we did then.  At the same time D&D and its lineage has a ton of design debt, locked in because they want to create new versions for players that are locked in from a combination of nostalgia and familiarity.  If you want to make a game for those players they *can't* shake things up radically.

 

Everything on that system is the modern equivalent of put putting around in your Model T because it was great god dammit, why would you ever change anything?  It works well enough for tabletop gaming because the market for radical system design there is so limited, it's all about the modules and fitting them in seamlessly.  On the flip side video games have at a minimum 8 figure and frequently 9 figure development budgets, with a need to hit sales that justify that, and a crappy nostalgia system isn't going to get it done there when we know how to build race cars now.

 

I totally get why BG and friends grabbed the D&D system along with the IP to tap into that tabletop market - wise at the time - but doing that today is just a bad decision, betting big to try and squeeze small returns.  Expectations are too high, you need to do better.

Edited January 7, 2019 by Ensign

[protopersona]

It has been 40 years, however, and we know a ridiculous amount more about game system design than we did then. At the same time D&D and its lineage has a ton of design debt, locked in because they want to create new versions for players that are locked in from a combination of nostalgia and familiarity. If you want to make a game for those players they *can't* shake things up radically.

 

This is a behavior in people I just don't understand, and it crops up in everything. "Keep things new and interesting, but don't change anything." It's like no one even sees the inherent paradox.

 

I get the sentiment behind it, they want to feel like they did the first time the experienced something. Except you can't get that feeling back. Chasing the dragon of nostalgia never works.

[Triple - A Foxy Lad]

ye, u can never go back.

 

and sometimes, it makes little difference how static or flowing the world may be. sometimes, the reason a person cant feel something again is bcs *theyve* changed.

 

then it becomes matter of urgency to examine everything other than themselves.

 

oh well, humans gonna human, i guess.

[Bleak]

 

Well if ud took ur own advice, ud have learnt that wizards in poe are considered a benchmark class by most of the playerbase. Yet u insist on their weakness. Why would u expect everyone else to perform a task which is apparenty beyond urself?

 

 

Why dont we all just play fortnite and be done with it then.

 

Mate, all thats going on here is that u have an agenda that rule of cool should take priority over fine tuning and damn the consquences - bcs the playerbase can impose their own balance thru selective application of a games systems.

 

There is an argument for this, but it comes with at least three issues that u havent acknowledged. 1. Selective application is limited in a video game as u have no DM. 2. U freeze out a certain percentage of players who are detered from playing game how they wish (eg. I wanted to play a rounded party in dos2, and the game told me to **** off.) 3. As viable choices in game are limited, it throttles replayability.

 

Ur also glossing over fact that the success of the ad&d games didnt happen in a void. The games were partly successful bcs they piggybacked off an experience people already had positive feelings about.

 

How well the games stood on their own was less important than how well they made certain connections in folks brains. Part of the reason BG1 was a blinding success was bcs it was a big ol dose of nostalgia that invited players to immerse themselves in memories of campaigns past. For newcomers, it was an introduction to an established arcane world full of nooks and crannies - both in its lore and its system. It had the thrill of exploration.

 

New games and new systems cant rely on that context. Part of the reason i half-bounced off dos is bcs its imperfections have no history to flatter them. People have heartwarming stories about looking up THAC0 tables with friends and taking drizzt seriously as a kid. Divinitys systems and lore dont have that advantage.

 

 

I never claimed that many or even most people don't consider wizards a "benchmark class". I just find that they feel much worse to play than in pretty much all other crpgs I've experienced. And from what I am seeing the main argument when it comes to caster usefulness is them being debuff bots (or magic weapon damage dealers). Personally, that is just not to my liking.

 

I don't think you are being fair to all these DnD crpgs since BG saying that most of their successes piggybacked on PnP but there's not point in arguing about that without hard evidence about this or the contrary. As you said though, DOS didn't have that advantage nor did it adhere to that, imo misguided, philosophy you are referring to, yet it was really successful.

 

And to the rest: You can invoke "nostalgia" all you like but there is no weaker or more vague argument than that in a forum discussion, aimed at dismissing something with an arbitrary assumption - not to attack someone else, but mainly to blame something and satisfy the lack of better answers in your own mind. Also a very human thing to do. Is nostalgia the culprit for me finding (like I said before) DOS' magic enjoyable too? Perhaps, who knows. But, as I said before, I can't, nor want to change your mind. I can only give feedback about my gameplay experience ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited January 8, 2019 by Bleak

[daven]

This seems to be going nowhere. Just an argument of 'I don't like it', 'Well I do, so you're wrong'.

[xzar_monty]

 

It has been 40 years, however, and we know a ridiculous amount more about game system design than we did then. At the same time D&D and its lineage has a ton of design debt, locked in because they want to create new versions for players that are locked in from a combination of nostalgia and familiarity. If you want to make a game for those players they *can't* shake things up radically.

This is a behavior in people I just don't understand, and it crops up in everything. "Keep things new and interesting, but don't change anything." It's like no one even sees the inherent paradox.

 

I get the sentiment behind it, they want to feel like they did the first time the experienced something. Except you can't get that feeling back. Chasing the dragon of nostalgia never works.

 

 

This is the "experienced virgin" problem, which in literary and drama circles is often expressed thus: "Knowing everything that I know about it now, how I wish I could see Hamlet for the first time."

 

It is not at all uncommon for people to be unaware of the paradoxes in their thinking. We humans are extraordinarily good at cognitive dissonance. It is only other people's paradoxes that we're generally able to see without difficulty.

[protopersona]

I never claimed that many or even most people don't consider wizards a "benchmark class". I just find that they feel much worse to play than in pretty much all other crpgs I've experienced. And from what I am seeing the main argument when it comes to caster usefulness is them being debuff bots (or magic weapon damage dealers). Personally, that is just not to my liking.

 

I don't think you are being fair to all these DnD crpgs since BG saying that most of their successes piggybacked on PnP but there's not point in arguing about that without hard evidence about this or the contrary. As you said though, DOS didn't have that advantage nor did it adhere to that, imo misguided, philosophy you are referring to, yet it was really successful.

 

And to the rest: You can invoke "nostalgia" all you like but there is no weaker or more vague argument than that in a forum discussion, aimed at dismissing something with an arbitrary assumption - not to attack someone else, but mainly to blame something and satisfy the lack of better answers in your own mind. Also a very human thing to do. Is nostalgia the culprit for me finding (like I said before) DOS' magic enjoyable too? Perhaps, who knows. But, as I said before, I can't, nor want to change your mind. I can only give feedback about my gameplay experience ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Can you really blame us? The main thrust of your argument boils down to "yes wizards are powerful, but they aren't guaranteed to take off large chunks of enemy health bars with every cast of a damage spell."

 

This game is built around needing to buff and debuff on the hardest difficulty, especially your accuracy. That doesn't mean your wizard has to be the one doing the buffs\debuffs. NPCs can do that job too.

 

If you don't feel like that's the way things should work you're barking up the wrong tree here. Your desires would drastically change how the game plays, and I don't think cool explosions are worth that.

Edited January 8, 2019 by protopersona

[Bleak]

 

I never claimed that many or even most people don't consider wizards a "benchmark class". I just find that they feel much worse to play than in pretty much all other crpgs I've experienced. And from what I am seeing the main argument when it comes to caster usefulness is them being debuff bots (or magic weapon damage dealers). Personally, that is just not to my liking.

 

I don't think you are being fair to all these DnD crpgs since BG saying that most of their successes piggybacked on PnP but there's not point in arguing about that without hard evidence about this or the contrary. As you said though, DOS didn't have that advantage nor did it adhere to that, imo misguided, philosophy you are referring to, yet it was really successful.

 

And to the rest: You can invoke "nostalgia" all you like but there is no weaker or more vague argument than that in a forum discussion, aimed at dismissing something with an arbitrary assumption - not to attack someone else, but mainly to blame something and satisfy the lack of better answers in your own mind. Also a very human thing to do. Is nostalgia the culprit for me finding (like I said before) DOS' magic enjoyable too? Perhaps, who knows. But, as I said before, I can't, nor want to change your mind. I can only give feedback about my gameplay experience ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Can you really blame us? The main thrust of your argument boils down to "yes wizards are powerful, but they aren't guaranteed to take off large chunks of enemy health bars with every cast of a damage spell."

 

This game is built around needing to buff and debuff on the hardest difficulty, especially your accuracy. That doesn't mean your wizard has to be the one doing the buffs\debuffs. NPCs can do that job too.

 

If you don't feel like that's the way things should work you're barking up the wrong tree here. Your desires would drastically change how the game plays, and I don't think cool explosions are worth that.

 

 

I didn't say wizards are powerful in general though. To summarise, yes they are effective for their debuffs and they are powerful only with their latest spell levels and mostly because of their magic weapons in any long fight. I just don't enjoy playing them as debuff bots for the vast majority of the game (that need buffs themselves in order for the debuff to hit) and perhaps melee/crossbow dps with their summoned weapons near the end-game.  In the traditional sense, of any game ever, you can't call that a wizard imo, you can call it a hexer perhaps. The weird thing is that they do have many pure damage spells (which I regret taking at every playthrough). I vastly prefer the DnD/DOS casters, since you can do so many more things with them. I don't know if they overshadow other classes in these systems, but personally, I found that every class was worth playing there. 

 

Anyway, tastes will be tastes. 

[knownastherat]

This seems to be going nowhere. Just an argument of 'I don't like it', 'Well I do, so you're wrong'.

 

Well, since there is no truth to be found, it could not go anywhere else. There is no such a thing as "good" design and "bad" design. There is only design some people like while others don't. 

Edited January 10, 2019 by knownastherat

[Cartoons Plural]

 

This seems to be going nowhere. Just an argument of 'I don't like it', 'Well I do, so you're wrong'.

 

Well, since there is no truth to be found, it could not go anywhere else. There is no such a thing as "good" design and "bad" design. There is only design some people like while others don't. 

 

 

nah man there's badly made games for sure, cynical, buggy, time wasting, counter intuitive, self indulgent

Edited January 11, 2019 by Cartoons Plural

[Verde]

Play Superman 64 and tell me that's not a terribly designed game.