is there a difference between rpg and fps anymore?

[alanschu]

Wow... talk about taking things too seriously...

 

Says the guy that, at one point, tried to sidestep the issue I presented to you in the death penalty thread by calling me a hypocrite, and thinking I actually wanted you dead.

 

When did this go from "Internet Forum discussion" to "OMG you disagree so you must hate me!"

 

I don't know. I didn't know it was like that. I'm not the one that started posting snide post script remarks at the end of a post when someone disagreed with me. If you look back through this thread, when I've disagreed with you, I've posted how I disagreed with you.

 

Take a break from the computer for a bit man, go for a walk or something. When you cool down everything will still be here waiting for you.

 

Nothing in this or any other thread is worth getting offended about, especially when its just strangers spouting opinions.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Most people on this forum have seen me get pissed off and snap, and this isn't it. And I certainly am not offended. You, after all, where the one that felt it was prudent to add in a post script to your message taking the shot at me. When I try addressing points that you make, and you ignore them, then later add a snide post script in your message talking about how I just say "irrelevant" when I'm wrong and can't discuss what you said (ironically in a post where I did discuss what you said), in addition to previous examples of your posting history, forgive me if I'm not all friendly with you. And much like the death penalty thread, when people started countering the points you made in your discussion, you either found some obscure point and took it out of context, and tried to drag attention away from the discussion. First it was when you started calling me a hypocrite and alleging that I actually wanted you dead, when I presented a situation that I had hoped you could use to present some form of perspective on the issue. You attacked me, instead of discussing the issue. When I called you on it, you disappeared (and later said you enjoyed the discussion we were having, when there wasn't any discussion between you and me because you weren't saying anything). Then there's your bizarre interpretation of Hell Kitty's player skills. And now, you're going on about how this became "OMG you disagree with me then you must hate me" comments. You continue to write words, without saying much. I have not done any actions that could be labelled as "OMG you disagree with me then you must hate me" type actions. I disagreed with you, stated where the disagreement was, and you responded with a snide remark about how I had nothing to say about what you posted, when in fact I actually did. I suppose my previous post about you being daft was rather hostile, but when you've made it a trend of obfuscating the issue, misinterpreting posts, and following it up with strawman arguments, it gets hard to take what you say seriously.

 

 

 

 

You still haven't explained why you can tolerate the OoC solving of puzzles but cannot tolerate the fact that you can metagame aiming (and you must be metagaming, because other people don't seem to be able to duplicate your amazing feats).

 

I think for one reason it's tolerable, because it's something that really cannot be removed from the equation meta. It's possible to remove direct player input for combat, but we can't just shut down our brains.

Edited December 29, 2006 by alanschu

[alanschu]

Actually I like how some of the puzzles in NWN2 worked.  For example in the library.  You need a good in character skills to solve the puzzles, and not player skills, and if the NPCs have good enough skills for the require skill they can interject and solve the puzzle to for the PC.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. I know if you had high Lore you could answer things straight up, but otherwise I remember having to read a book, and get the details from the book, so that I could answer the question posed by the tome.

[Sand]

I never actually had to read a book. I used Grobnar and Fox's Cunning to boost my Lore to solve those the NPCs didn't. I guess that is sort of cheating.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Better than the odds of a lowly trained character whose aiming is controlled by a player with slow reflexes and overall poor marksmanship

 

Precisely

 

Conceptually, it almost seems like you'd be happy with a game where many of the decisions are made for you, based on the attributes of your character.  The only real influence you may have is how you talk to a character, of which the dialogue options would only be appropriate for the attributes of the character of course.  I'm pretty sure that this isn't necessarily what you want (essentially have an AI traverse through the game for you dependent on your attributes), but it's just sort of the impression that I'm getting.

 

It's not that far from what I would conceptually want from a game that presents a notion of a character role. I don't want automation, but I see little use in having the game require my direct input when it shows me a character spreadsheet detailing how well the PC succeeds in this or that skill. Of course, crafting a personality is achieved in multiple ways and some times my input is all but required (particularly in the examples you gave such as choosing dialogue lines, or making combat decisions), but most of the time numbers just get in the way of reflexes; there are probably better ways of handling this, and that's why I supported Deus Ex's take on movement exclusively depending on the player's direct input rather than an abstracted notion of Dexterity that would get in the way of my reflexes, or vice versa. Same applies to your previous example of Morrowind which I alluded to.

 

I guess it's just that I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing.  With poor skill, the player must try to counter the recoil of the gun, which will (even if you are really good) affect where JC is actually pointing the gun).  As the skill improves, the player no longer needs to compensate for such things, and accuracy greatly improves, both in the intrinsic crosshairs, as well as the removal of the wobble.

 

I don't have much against the game's skill system. The issue of Rifles was a loose example of how sometimes numbers and reflexes just don't work that well together that some saw fit to blow out of proportion. The same happens in Bloodlines and I've criticized it as well since both systems are similar (amusingly enough, I'm not the only one to mention the clunkiness inherent in combining both twitch and stat-based gameplay), but I've never criticized it when it works. The high level skills generally work best because there is a much better flow of combat and players with slower reflexes gain some help in the form of character expertise. I merely brought up the system because I find the differences at lower levels are greater and more damaging to the gameplay, as well as the notion of a division between character and player.

 

But otherwise there's not much else to it I would complain about the system (asides Hacking, which I think would benefit from randomly generating usernames and passwords for non-critical computer systems to avoid metagaming in the form of replaying with foreknowledge of the data fields, but that's got nothing to do with player reflexes or character skill).

[metadigital]

I was going to leave this, as it seems that I am having less than a little success in addressing the inconsistency in your grievance.

You still haven't explained why you can tolerate the OoC solving of puzzles

Once.

Twice.

Doesn't get any shorter or clearer than that.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You haven't actually addressed the issue, simply explaining over and over again that you don't like using player skills w.r.t. combat but don't mind so much using your own mind to determine strategic and tactical advantages in the combat (as an aside, does this mean you eschew strategic guides, too? Because they seem to be fairly popular).

 

But anyway, I was just curious as to why you found it so distracting in combat and not so much elsewhere.

You still haven't explained why you can tolerate the OoC solving of puzzles but cannot tolerate the fact that you can metagame aiming (and you must be metagaming, because other people don't seem to be able to duplicate your amazing feats).

I think for one reason it's tolerable, because it's something that really cannot be removed from the equation meta. It's possible to remove direct player input for combat, but we can't just shut down our brains.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, I don't think that's a defensible position, actually.

I don't have much against the game's skill system. The issue of Rifles was a loose example of how sometimes numbers and reflexes just don't work that well together that some saw fit to blow out of proportion. The same happens in Bloodlines and I've criticized it as well since both systems are similar (amusingly enough, I'm not the only one to mention the clunkiness inherent in combining both twitch and stat-based gameplay), but I've never criticized it when it works.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, that's the first time I've got that from your writing here.

The high level skills generally work best because there is a much better flow of combat and players with slower reflexes gain some help in the form of character expertise. I merely brought up the system because I find the differences at lower levels are greater and more damaging to the gameplay, as well as the notion of a division between character and player.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Really? So you think that the game is unbalanced at lower levels? Or do you think that it's easy to circumvent the skill system? Now I'm really confused ...

[Diogo Ribeiro]

I was going to leave this, as it seems that I am having less than a little success in addressing the inconsistency in your grievance.

 

There's no distress in my posts. I gave my opinion, and someone saw fit to keep going at it despite me having said "to each his own". I didn't press anyone for an answer until I was pressed for one.

 

You haven't actually addressed the issue, simply explaining over and over again that you don't like using player skills w.r.t. combat but don't mind so much using your own mind to determine strategic and tactical advantages in the combat

 

I also explained why:

 

The player's direct control over a character during combat only poses a problem when a system allows direct player control to override any skill or ability that defines said character. As alanschu pointed out, Morrowind stands as a point of contradiction between these two elements, as a player could use his reflexes to shoot back at someone with a bow but some character statistic determined that there was no hit despite the player having fired at point blank. Hence why I've stated my preference over a system that manages to include both elements but does not shortchange neither the player nor undermines the notion of a character.

 

On the other hand, the player's control during non-combat situations only poses a problem when a system allows a character's role to remain neutered by allowing all hardships to be solved by the player when the character has the means to do so himself. I already gave examples on a previous post, so I won't go into it again. As I said I don't enjoy these situations but can live with them - not because of preference or bias or somesuch - but because the character is not in the same risk. Its integrity as a character is still there.

 

Another example:

 

Because quite simply one doesn't compromise the other. If the player or the character take the back seat temporarily then they have no chance of providing mixed results that will either cancel or screw each other. No big mistery or contradiction there. Having a game tell me that it will be based on two different methods of input (character statistics and layer reflexes) to determine how an obstacle is handled is going to bring more issues than temporarily placing the player or the PC in the background. In fact, if you can imagine how this would work if we were talking about the character's intelligence and the player's intelligence being used simultaneously instead, it's not much of a stretch to figure out why this is preferable.

 

And I explained this, in other words, several times (that which you dismissed as repetition in the links I provided, for instance). Now, if you would like to tell me I poorly explained the issue then do so, and I'll try to be clearer. But don't bother telling me I haven't explained my point of view because it's simply not true.

 

(as an aside, does this mean you eschew strategic guides, too? Because they seem to be fairly popular).

 

Irrelevant since a strategy guide remains outside the context of a game and is metagaming. That's not what I do at all when playing Deus Ex.

 

Well, that's the first time I've got that from your writing here.

 

Really? So, when I stated that "While we would probably disagree on just how much player skills are required in order to infuse personality in a CRPG character, I'm simply pointing out that there are issues when both things are allowed to clash together and that they usually tend to bring down the importance of a character's role.", how much does that stray from the notion that twitch and statistic based gameplay can be awkward?

 

Really? So you think that the game is unbalanced at lower levels? Or do you think that it's easy to circumvent the skill system? Now I'm really confused ...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Reading is the new cool.

[alanschu]

It's not that far from what I would conceptually want from a game that presents a notion of a character role. I don't want automation, but I see little use in having the game require my direct input when it shows me a character spreadsheet detailing how well the PC succeeds in this or that skill. Of course, crafting a personality is achieved in multiple ways and some times my input is all but required (particularly in the examples you gave such as choosing dialogue lines, or making combat decisions), but most of the time numbers just get in the way of reflexes; there are probably better ways of handling this, and that's why I supported Deus Ex's take on movement exclusively depending on the player's direct input rather than an abstracted notion of Dexterity that would get in the way of my reflexes, or vice versa. Same applies to your previous example of Morrowind which I alluded to.

 

There are ways that a dexterity rating can make an impact too of course. YOu can loose more arrows, have those arrows fire more accurately, and can aim faster when you have the bow drawn (maybe more a strength thing). Does an abstracted notion of dexterity necessarily have to get in the way of your reflexes?

 

 

 

I don't have much against the game's skill system. The issue of Rifles was a loose example of how sometimes numbers and reflexes just don't work that well together that some saw fit to blow out of proportion. The same happens in Bloodlines and I've criticized it as well since both systems are similar (amusingly enough, I'm not the only one to mention the clunkiness inherent in combining both twitch and stat-based gameplay), but I've never criticized it when it works. The high level skills generally work best because there is a much better flow of combat and players with slower reflexes gain some help in the form of character expertise. I merely brought up the system because I find the differences at lower levels are greater and more damaging to the gameplay, as well as the notion of a division between character and player.

 

While similar, for some reason I prefer the Deus Ex gameplay experience significantly more than the Bloodlines implementation. Maybe it's just because it was first, or I am biased because I like other aspects of Deus Ex quite a bit more than Bloodlines (not that I don't like Bloodlines. Very fun game).