Rolling attributes

[Marceror]

I would love an option to roll attributes at chargen. I very much enjoyed rolling until my eyes bled in the BG series and ToEE. It would be marvy if this was possible in PoE.

 

 

EDIT - I decided to add a poll to this. To clarify, the poll is just meant to gauge opinions of the community. It is not intended to necessarily imply any action is required on the part of Obsidian Entertainment, should the poll skew in a particular direction.

Edited September 13, 2014 by Marceror

[Marceror]

Sort of like this:

[Starwars]

I don't enjoy it much personally but I certainly wouldn't be opposed to it as an option. Might even use it on replays.

[Sensuki]

C Priority feature.

 

KotC rolling system was nice but I think the core point buy needs to be perfected.

[Marceror]

Not something I would likely use all the time either, but damn, the nostalgia. And every once and a while, the joy of a totally OP MC.

[Monte Carlo]

I have only decided to reinforce changes that have the potential for success, and ignore that those which invite failure.

 

Sorry, Marc, but this feature is in the latter category. I've changed my mind, too. Once I was a roller for the sake of it but now I've accepted people will just spend hours clicking. Once I've finished the game a couple of times I'll simply use a game editor to make the characters I want.

[Marceror]

C Priority feature.

 

KotC rolling system was nice but I think the core point buy needs to be perfected.

According to Josh he doesn't have any C priority features. I see it as some potential low hanging fruit that will appeal to many of the BG fans. Of course, totally optional. And would suggest not the default option that the game installs with.

[Marceror]

I have only decided to reinforce changes that have the potential for success, and ignore that those which invite failure.

 

Sorry, Marc, but this feature is in the latter category. I've changed my mind, too. Once I was a roller for the sake of it but now I've accepted people will just spend hours clicking. Once I've finished the game a couple of times I'll simply use a game editor to make the characters I want.

Call me a grognard, but I actually enjoy having rolled those stats a lot more than having used an editor to simply set them.

 

I can't really explain objectively why this is the case. I do think it's firmly rooted in nostalgia from the days when I didn't know about such editors. And in terms of ToEE, I never bothered to learn how to use an editor in that game, so any above average characters had to be rolled the old fashioned way.

[Sensuki]

According to Josh he doesn't have any C priority features.

That was my interview that you read that in. You get what I mean though

[wanderon]

No thanks - even as an option it's not like someone can wave a wand and have it appear - resources would have to be used to put it in place that I would just as soon have working on something more important to me - if I want BG nostalgia I can always fire up BGEE...

[redneckdevil]

Nah i have no opionion on the matter. At the moment i can do point buy and if i wanted to which i have, bring out my dice and roll for my stats that way.

[Night Stalker]

I much prefer point-buy systems to roll systems, so no thank you.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

Actually, based upon the current state of the game, I'd prefer to pick my background before I picked my stats. Once I level up the first time, then I'd rather pick which stats I can influence. I think these types of games are silly when you start out you just happen to be as smart as you'll ever be, or as strong as you'll ever be in the beginning before you even play the game. I'd rather end the game with having the highest "roll" stat's available to me based upon my choices or playstyle as I progress. Possibly more like some games do like the ES, the more you do something the better you get at it. Although, I think I may have read that our stats will be out of 100. In that case, I'm ok choosing a starting base with a rolling feature just to get started.

 

Now I want to express I'm only talking about this as it's first game. If I was playing POE 2 or something like that, then I would rather choose my starting stats, because by that point the story or character should already have a history and playstyle established. It also depends on the scope of the game. If in game terms the story takes all of 2 days or a week to finish the plot I'm ok with preset stats, but if the adventure is going to take me months to complete in game, no way do I want preset skills for the whole game. Even though you find a +1 this or that, that's not the same.

[thelee]

One of the best parts of IWD2 was not having to sit there for 30 minutes just to get a good character set up.

 

Not having to roll absolutely forces you to decide on what's important and get done pretty quickly.

[Marceror]

/Marceror wakes up from a rather short night's sleep

 

"Hmm, let's check forums.obsidian.net to see of OE has assigned a programmer (or two) to banging out the attribute rolling option" (which I auspiciously expect will happen, even though I made claims to the contrary)

 

/views poll results

 

....

 

/rubs eyes and looks at them a second time, this time in disbelief

 

/gives eyes a few more seconds, because they clearly aren't working yet

 

....

 

"Holy hell! .... Really?"

 

To self: "It appears that I am one out of touch old codger. They don't even seem to appreciate the meme...?"

 

(Guess if I ever feel the need, I can always bust out a few D6 and roll the old fashioned way, then input with an editor -- maybe that's for the best)

 

/feels so alone

 

[thelee]

/Marceror wakes up from a rather short night's sleep

 

"Hmm, let's check forums.obsidian.net to see of OE has assigned a programmer (or two) to banging out the attribute rolling option" (which I auspiciously expect will happen, even though I made claims to the contrary)

 

/views poll results

 

....

 

/rubs eyes and looks at them a second time, this time in disbelief

 

/gives eyes a few more seconds, because they clearly aren't working yet

 

....

 

"Holy hell! .... Really?"

 

To self: "It appears that I am one out of touch old codger. They don't even seem to appreciate the meme...?"

 

(Guess if I ever feel the need, I can always bust out a few D6 and roll the old fashioned way, then input with an editor -- maybe that's for the best)

 

/feels so alone

 

 

The problem with stat rolling is that it rewards being tedious in the worst possible way. People who want to just play will get punished because they'll have a stat total of say ~70 to distribute amongst their scores. Then there are people who will sit there for hours just to get a high total (85+) before playing. This is like the reverse of how it should work - more casual players should not find themselves immediately handicapped before playing the game for such an incredibly tedious reason.

 

It's also more interesting if players are forced to make trade-offs. A game system that says "hey, you can have it all... so long as you are willing to sit here for 30+ minutes clicking 'roll' over and over again" is broken, IMO.

 

Of course, the impact of stat rolling will be a bit more muted in PoE because PoE doesn't have insanely stupid stat thresholds like AD&D does (e.g. an 18/xx strength was worlds better than 17 strength, and a 14 constitution was useless but a 15 constitution was highly meaningful).

 

It *would* be interesting however, if there was like a Pen-and-Paper-style stat rolling; kind of like the iron mode (one death = kaput), you get only one set of dice rolls to determine your stats, and you're stuck with it. This would ideally work best if you set your stats before you set your class so you could try to adapt to it if, say, you got terrible intelligence and your aoe-based character was no summarily handicapped.

 

On a lighter note, while rolling a wizard in BG2EE, I ended up with the most stupidly awesome natural roll I've ever gotten in my life: 15/18/16/18/17/12 (yes, the 18s naturally landed on Dex and Int for my wizard and a perfect 16 for con, which would've been super great in a setting where I would not be allowed to arbitrarily move points around). I sat there dumbfounded for a while before shouting "BUT NO ONE WILL BELIEVE ME."

[redneckdevil]

I wouldnt be against rolled stats IF u were assigned the one roll and couldnt reroll.

[Marceror]

You people must hate dice!

[Matt516]

 

/Marceror wakes up from a rather short night's sleep

 

"Hmm, let's check forums.obsidian.net to see of OE has assigned a programmer (or two) to banging out the attribute rolling option" (which I auspiciously expect will happen, even though I made claims to the contrary)

 

/views poll results

 

....

 

/rubs eyes and looks at them a second time, this time in disbelief

 

/gives eyes a few more seconds, because they clearly aren't working yet

 

....

 

"Holy hell! .... Really?"

 

To self: "It appears that I am one out of touch old codger. They don't even seem to appreciate the meme...?"

 

(Guess if I ever feel the need, I can always bust out a few D6 and roll the old fashioned way, then input with an editor -- maybe that's for the best)

 

/feels so alone

 

 

The problem with stat rolling is that it rewards being tedious in the worst possible way. People who want to just play will get punished because they'll have a stat total of say ~70 to distribute amongst their scores. Then there are people who will sit there for hours just to get a high total (85+) before playing. This is like the reverse of how it should work - more casual players should not find themselves immediately handicapped before playing the game for such an incredibly tedious reason.

 

It's also more interesting if players are forced to make trade-offs. A game system that says "hey, you can have it all... so long as you are willing to sit here for 30+ minutes clicking 'roll' over and over again" is broken, IMO.

 

Of course, the impact of stat rolling will be a bit more muted in PoE because PoE doesn't have insanely stupid stat thresholds like AD&D does (e.g. an 18/xx strength was worlds better than 17 strength, and a 14 constitution was useless but a 15 constitution was highly meaningful).

 

It *would* be interesting however, if there was like a Pen-and-Paper-style stat rolling; kind of like the iron mode (one death = kaput), you get only one set of dice rolls to determine your stats, and you're stuck with it. This would ideally work best if you set your stats before you set your class so you could try to adapt to it if, say, you got terrible intelligence and your aoe-based character was no summarily handicapped.

 

On a lighter note, while rolling a wizard in BG2EE, I ended up with the most stupidly awesome natural roll I've ever gotten in my life: 15/18/16/18/17/12 (yes, the 18s naturally landed on Dex and Int for my wizard and a perfect 16 for con, which would've been super great in a setting where I would not be allowed to arbitrarily move points around). I sat there dumbfounded for a while before shouting "BUT NO ONE WILL BELIEVE ME."

 

 

Pretty much my opinion. Rolling for attributes (or rolling for anything, really) only makes sense if it's enforced, if the player can't simply reroll until they get the result they want. That's why I like combat systems based on rolling, but not character creation based on rolling. The fact that you can just keep rolling (or even in Iron Man mode, keep starting over since its the beginning of the game) until you get a high value basically punishes those who aren't willing to sit there rolling for 30 minutes and make the game too easy for those who do. Rolling for stats is great in PnP. Not in cRPG.

[Marceror]

 

Pretty much my opinion. Rolling for attributes (or rolling for anything, really) only makes sense if it's enforced, if the player can't simply reroll until they get the result they want. That's why I like combat systems based on rolling, but not character creation based on rolling. The fact that you can just keep rolling (or even in Iron Man mode, keep starting over since its the beginning of the game) until you get a high value basically punishes those who aren't willing to sit there rolling for 30 minutes and make the game too easy for those who do. Rolling for stats is great in PnP. Not in cRPG.

 

I can appreciate your perspective, but don't really see how someone rolling for 30 minutes "punishes" someone who uses the fixed point distribution. Maybe if this were a multiplayer game I could see that.

 

But what happens in my game on my PC in my house shouldn't punish, reward, or otherwise affect what happens in your game on your PC in your home. And to that point, there will be people who decide to give all their characters an 18 in all attributes, thousands of health/endurance, etc, etc. I'm not "punished" if I choose to play the game with the balance that the developers intended. If anything, the cheater is punished because they have spoiled their game experience, arguably.

[Matt516]

 

 

Pretty much my opinion. Rolling for attributes (or rolling for anything, really) only makes sense if it's enforced, if the player can't simply reroll until they get the result they want. That's why I like combat systems based on rolling, but not character creation based on rolling. The fact that you can just keep rolling (or even in Iron Man mode, keep starting over since its the beginning of the game) until you get a high value basically punishes those who aren't willing to sit there rolling for 30 minutes and make the game too easy for those who do. Rolling for stats is great in PnP. Not in cRPG.

 

I can appreciate your perspective, but don't really see how someone rolling for 30 minutes "punishes" someone who uses the fixed point distribution. Maybe if this were a multiplayer game I could see that.

 

But what happens in my game on my PC in my house shouldn't punish, reward, or otherwise affect what happens in your game on your PC in your home. And to that point, there will be people who decide to give all their characters an 18 in all attributes, thousands of health/endurance, etc, etc. I'm not "punished" if I choose to play the game with the balance that the developers intended. If anything, the cheater is punished because they have spoiled their game experience, arguably.

 

 

Well yes, but how do the developers determine what to balance for? The easiest way would be to take the statistically most likely roll (i.e. in the middle of the distribution since it should be symmetrical) and balance for that many attributes - but c'mon. Even "casuals" (I mean no disrespect) will reroll a few times. It's just not fitting for a computer game IMO. I would be in favor of a "cheat code" that allows setting your own stats - but I think such an ability shouldn't be included in the "core" game mechanics, simply because of the balance issues.

[Marceror]

I get your point. And I'll be perfectly happy if the option isn't added to the game (and frankly, if there was a chance before, I'm sure this poll has utterly destroyed that -- nice going Marceror )

 

That said, where I come from we have a saying, "if it were good 'nuff for Baldur's Gate, it sure hell good 'nuff for me!" Usually this statement is followed by spitting into a small cup for emphasis, and we nearly always get a bull's-eye because we all rolled long enough to get an 18 in Dex.

[Lychnidos]

I have no problem with an option to randomly assign the points you are allocated on character creation, in addition to assigning them manually. 

[Fiebras]

I began playing Baldur´s Gate Enhanced Edition last night.

As nice it is to roll a 96 overall score the frustration of skiping over a 90 roll because youre clicking so fast due to sheer tedium of rolling for a long time is cringy to say the least. And thats every new character.

 

Yeah, its not a feature Im gonna miss anytime soon.

Edited September 13, 2014 by Fiebras

[thelee]

I began playing Baldur´s Gate Enhanced Edition last night.

As nice it is to roll a 96 overall score the frustration of skiping over a 90 roll because youre clicking so fast due to sheer tedium of rolling for a long time is cringy to say the least. And thats every new character.

 

Yeah, its not a feature Im gonna miss anytime soon.

 

Worst was the original Icewind Dale (IWD2 didn't have this problem because it had a pseudo-point buy). Imagine doing that dice roll dance *six* times before you could start playing the game. Literally most of the time I ever feel like playing IWD again, I give up after trying to roll the 3rd or 4th character. IWD would've had a lot more replayability if I were just given a flat, say, 85 points to distribute.