What are you playing right now

[Fenixp]

I actually hate leveling by doing stuff and I prefer XP, because most of the time the skill based leveling is broken. Hitting **** 1000 times to get enough skillpoints to level up is boring

You mean playing a game is boring? It's no different from games with XP mechanics really - you want to increase a skill, you grind. You want more XP, you grind. A well designed game won't ever require you to grind, regardless of skill mechanics used.

 

lot of games don't give you enough options to levelup all of the implemented skills.

Which is the first massive advantage of "learn by doing" systems, incidentally. When you learn skills by using them and you can't level a skill up, it probably means the skill is useless and should be ignored. It has this mechanical courtesy of telling you "Oh yes, the skill is there, but we didn't have enough time to polish it up, just ignore it." Those are the same kinds of skills you invest in XP-based games and the find out they're utterly useless and you have lost a bunch of skill points needlessly.

 

If you go in middle of the save the day quest for a week of training, the game should reflect that, and give you hard time with the quest...

How exactly is that different from running away in the middle of a quest to grind up XP? In fact I'd say learn by doing systems have massive advantage here since you quite simply won't get inexplicably better at swinging your sword by finishing a bunch of fetch quests.

 

Witcher 3: Blood & Wine: Hearts of Stone was a whole lot of fun but I've heard that I shouldn't expect the same level of writing in Blood & Wine from some folks at teh interwebz. Doesn't matter though, because a.the writing will be awesome nevertheless b.I am REALLY excited to explore the new setting. Looks very vivid and colorful!

The writing is less consistent since the expansion is more open and ... well, longer, but the writing is brilliant nonetheless.

[Keyrock]

Combat was only one of many factors that made me eventually hate Pillars, though it was the biggest one. I made several key mistakes when playing Pillars: 1) I played it at launch 2) I tried to do a completionist run 3) I played it on Hard difficulty (because I always played IE games on Hardcore D&D). All 3 mistakes contributed to making the game overwhelmingly tedious for me. The higher difficulty setting combined with no companion AI made every combat encounter a slog that took 5X as long as it needed to. The game, even when going through a minimum playthrough already has waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much pointless filler combat, trying to be completionist only made this much worse. Finally, the main story was just plain boring. The writing style was generally quite good as were the flavor and lore bits, but the main story arc completely failed to sink its hooks into me. By the time the initial nostalgia/new IE style game hype wore off and I sobered up to the grim realization that I would never grow to care about the main story, I was extremely worn out by the, quite frankly, sadistic amount of filler battles. The only reason I finished the game is that I was running a LP of it and was deep enough in the game that I felt obligated to finish it (abandoning the completionist route in the process).

 

Speaking of archaic anachronism that need to go, filler battles. That garbage needs to die in a fire.

[sorophx]

unless combat is actually fun in which case you welcome every battle. RTWP combat can never be fun, though.

[Fenixp]

unless combat is actually fun in which case you welcome every battle. RTWP combat can never be fun, though.

You can have the most entertaining combat in the universe, but the moment you meet more or less the same enemy composition in the same environment and under the same conditions for the 10th time in a row, it'll invariably become tedious. I don't think we need to get rid of filler encounters entirely as they do serve their purpose, but Pillars has like 3 times of them then what would be necessary.

 

RTWP combat is the only system that's actually fun, though.

Edited November 2, 2016 by Fenixp

[sorophx]

you're right about having to go through similar combat encounter becoming tedious. I expected people to mod that kind of stuff out of PoE by now, to be honest

 

RTWP combat is the only system that's actually fun, though.

I can't agree I know at least two games that have better combat than any RTWP game ever: Jagged Alliance 2 and Frozen Synapse 

[Keyrock]

I tend to favor turn-based, though I can enjoy RTwP under the right conditions. I think RTwP is fine for single character RPGs. For party-based RPGs I generally only tolerate RTwP so long as the party size is no higher than 3, unless the companion AI is really really really good (which it virtually never is). In any party-based game I'll always prefer TB, especially a large party, as I find the organized structure of TB much less tiring than the chaos of RTwP when having to constantly micromanage a group of characters.

[Fenixp]

RTWP for single characters? What's even the point then? Anyway, I love RTWP systems because they feel a lot more organic - they tend to reward careful planning in equal measure as they reward improvisation. They're a lot less predictable and require quite a bit more reactivity out of their players. I really dig that.

 

In comparison, turn-based systems tend to be entirely predictable and veer much more into the planning territory, which to me feels a lot less natural in a combat scenario, but turn-based systems kinda have to work that way by definition. Actually, yeah, simultaneous turn-based systems can have the best of both worlds, but I still like RTWP a fair bit more.
 

Jagged Alliance 2 and Frozen Synapse

Didn't like Frozen Synapse all that much so YMMV I suppose and Jagged Allienace 2 is also a proof of inferiority of turn-based systems as there's no other which lived up to it since :-P

 

Personally I really enjoyed RTWP combat mechanics in UFO: Aftershock - there was still a decent amount of polish needed to bring it to the JA2 level of polish sadly, but it was a really sound system, revolving around positioning, elevation, weapon choices and timing. The timing aspect was especially cool, when queuing orders, the game told you how long will it take for which character to execute which order and at what time will they get to order XYZ, so you could synchronize your squads very nicely when you grew accustomed to the system.

 

In fact I think timing mechanics should be a lot more prevalent in RTWP system as simultaneous execution is the biggest advantage those systems have, it should be reinforced by the interface, not obscured.

Edited November 2, 2016 by Fenixp

[Keyrock]

I don't think we need to get rid of filler encounters entirely as they do serve their purpose

Please elaborate as I disagree and fail to see a purpose for filler battles beyond padding game length (not a worthy purpose IMHO)

[Blarghagh]

Yeah, done with WoW. My daily world quest reward was trash, my weekly Mythic reward chest was trash, the weekly World Boss gave me 20 gold and for my bonus loot roll coin that cost 1000 gold, it gave me another 20 gold. Then I did a Mythic dungeon and got two pieces of loot that were trash that I couldn't even trade away to any of my group mates because it was trash for them too. The reward to disappointment ratio this expansion is way off. I basically outgeared the baseline content I usually enjoy with randomly upgraded world quest gear in the first month and now I only have hardcore content left to do. It's a bit unfortunate that the world quest system that was supposed to make sure this expansion wouldn't be Raid or Die ended up trivialising everything except the super hardcore content that I have no interest in.

[Fenixp]

Please elaborate as I disagree and fail to see a purpose for filler battles beyond padding game length (not a worthy purpose IMHO)

Well I suppose it depends on what your definition of a filler encounter would be, for me I'd be something along the lines of "Encounters that neither push the story forward in any way nor challenge the player". And their purpose is... Basically, if all you did was present player with a long string of challenging encounters, player would grow tired of your game relatively quickly. That's why most games don't have linear difficulty curve, what you want to achieve is basically this:

 

 

You want to have challenging peaks to test player's skills and then less difficult encounters to give player a feeling of empowerment, which feel especially important in RPG with character power progression. And while I suppose it would be possible, it's rather difficult to make these downs meaningful in a readily apparent sense. Thus, trash encounters, those enemies you mop the floor with when you master a new mechanic/your characters get new gear or level up, become rather important. Still, you can't keep the difficulty down for too long, otherwise the game'll become boring.

 

Incidentally, this is another thing Pillars of Eternity does incorrectly: Not only is there far too many of these "downs", the way combat is structured essentially means that the moment you let your guard down and make a couple of mistakes, you can get a party-wipe. Which is stupid, because instead of being relaxing power romp, trash encounters just continue to tire player out as opposed to help him relax.

Edited November 2, 2016 by Fenixp

[Malcador]

Yeah, done with WoW. My daily world quest reward was trash, my weekly Mythic reward chest was trash, the weekly World Boss gave me 20 gold and for my bonus loot roll coin that cost 1000 gold, it gave me another 20 gold. Then I did a Mythic dungeon and got two pieces of loot that were trash that I couldn't even trade away to any of my group mates because it was trash for them too. The reward to disappointment ratio this expansion is way off. I basically outgeared the baseline content I usually enjoy with randomly upgraded world quest gear in the first month and now I only have hardcore content left to do. It's a bit unfortunate that the world quest system that was supposed to make sure this expansion wouldn't be Raid or Die ended up trivialising everything except the super hardcore content that I have no interest in.

They should have World quests all over the world for some variety. Actually...no. Forgot about pvp.

 

But am burned out a bit. Will give it a break before I charge again to get an alt to 110.

 

Still pushing on in ME. Rather short game if you don't bother with exploration. Exterminated Zhu's Hope, that was fun.

[Keyrock]

 

Please elaborate as I disagree and fail to see a purpose for filler battles beyond padding game length (not a worthy purpose IMHO)

Well I suppose it depends on what your definition of a filler encounter would be, for me I'd be something along the lines of "Encounters that neither push the story forward in any way nor challenge the player". And their purpose is... Basically, if all you did was present player with a long string of challenging encounters, player would grow tired of your game relatively quickly. That's why most games don't have linear difficulty curve, what you want to achieve is basically this:

 

 

You want to have challenging peaks to test player's skills and then less difficult encounters to give player a feeling of empowerment, which feel especially important in RPG with character power progression. And while I suppose it would be possible, it's rather difficult to make these downs meaningful in a readily apparent sense. Thus, trash encounters, those enemies you mop the floor with when you master a new mechanic/your characters get new gear or level up, become rather important. Still, you can't keep the difficulty down for too long, otherwise the game'll become boring.

 

Incidentally, this is another thing Pillars of Eternity does incorrectly: Not only is there far too many of these "downs", the way combat is structured essentially means that the moment you let your guard down and make a couple of mistakes, you can get a party-wipe. Which is stupid, because instead of being relaxing power romp, trash encounters just continue to tire player out as opposed to help him relax.

This brings up another issue I have with RPGs in video game form; I'm not a fan of how much combat dominates the focus of video game RPGs. I'm not sure how your PnP RPG sessions went, assuming you played PnP RPGs, but in my experiences, regardless of who was GM, combat was a fairly small part of the overall experience. If video games more closely mirrored PnP then it would be feasible to handcraft every combat encounter to be a unique experience, but since early on someone seemingly wrote a rule that states that video game RPGs must have at least 10X as much combat as PnP, that's just not feasible.

[Gfted1]

XP should be rewarded for every action; combat, quest, individual class abilities (such as trap disarm or lock pick), etc. The only thing that sucks more than not seeing incremental improvements is level scaling.

[Fenixp]

This brings up another issue I have with RPGs in video game form; I'm not a fan of how much combat dominates the focus of video game RPGs. I'm not sure how your PnP RPG sessions went, assuming you played PnP RPGs, but in my experiences, regardless of who was GM, combat was a fairly small part of the overall experience. If video games more closely mirrored PnP then it would be feasible to handcraft every combat encounter to be a unique experience, but since early on someone seemingly wrote a rule that states that video game RPGs must have at least 10X as much combat as PnP, that's just not feasible.

While this is true, it wouldn't really eliminate trash encounters anyway. Most players want to feel like their characters are progressing, and even if combat is rare, many will welcome a chance to try out their new gear on weaker monsters every now and again. That said, I'd kill for an RPG which will challenge the player by difficult dialogue, just for him to meet some traders later on that player will be able to sweet-talk into great prices using his silver tongue as the "low" of the difficulty curve. The important thing is that the easier bits need to be comparable to the more difficult bits. Sadly, out abstraction of dialogue has not managed to get that far. ... Well, mostly. I'd like to see more experimentation like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZkiQBiPCEI

 

 

XP should be rewarded for every action; combat, quest, individual class abilities (such as trap disarm or lock pick), etc. The only thing that sucks more than not seeing incremental improvements is level scaling.

Congratulations, you have disarmed 100 traps! You can now use two-handed swords and knock-down your opponents in combat! I feel like XP-based systems only ever work when XP is awarded for reaching milestones, not for doing stuff. Because the moment XP is awarded both for combat and stealth, I suddenly have an urge to sneak through an area and then turn around and kill everything in it. Why? To improve persuasion, of course.

 

When XP is only rewarded at certain points of the game however, regardless of how you reached that point, distributing skill points can be easily explained away by just about -anything- you were doing on the way there.

[SadExchange]

I wanted to throw some thoughts down as I've put in about 13 hours into Skyrim SE now.  I will say, having not played the original game for quite a long time, I forgot how much I enjoyed the exploration in this game.  Instead of the Civ games being just 1 more turn, this game for me is just see what's over the horizon or in that tower, but then that tower turns into an underground den of evil I feel the need to clean out and then end up turning off the game an hour later.

 

I will say the idea of the caves being linear and always having a quick shortcut back can be weird to think about, but some of these caves can get quite extensive and I know I wouldn't really enjoy my time sprinting all the way back through an empty cave after spending 15-20 minutes getting to the end.  I know it may seem weird for a shortcut, but I'm kind of glad it's there.

 

For me, I always compare it to the Witcher 3, due to size and scope and I love the W3, but I will say that while the W3 beats Skyrim on quite a few components, I actually enjoy the exploration in Skyrim much more.  I think Bethesda's exploration/mapping/compass at the top is kind of nice.  In W3, I always was just checking my map for the next checkmark, but with Skyrim, I can freely explore and see what might be coming.  I realize that's my opinion, but in an open world, with the amount of time I have to game, I'd rather spend more time running around than checking my map.  

 

I will say the combat feels cluncky as it did and I enjoy W3's "actiony" combat much more, but then again, Skyrim was released 5 years ago and while I don't see their combat changing unless they change their engine, we'll see.  I will say though that I enjoy the Elder Scrolls worlds by Bethesda much more than their Fallout worlds, but I side more towards Fantasy than apoc/end of world scenarios.

 

Skyrim looks decent enough with the upgrades in the SE and I'm enjoying some mods, but honestly, so far, just having a good time so far and can see myself rummaging through dungeons and skooma dens for quite a while longer in the near future.

 

Side note disclosure.  I did not beat Skyrim back in the day, however spent around 40 hours with a character exploring on a vanilla game without mods.

Edited November 2, 2016 by SadExchange

[Fenixp]

I will say the idea of the caves being linear and always having a quick shortcut back can be weird to think about, but some of these caves can get quite extensive and I know I wouldn't really enjoy my time sprinting all the way back through an empty cave after spending 15-20 minutes getting to the end.  I know it may seem weird for a shortcut, but I'm kind of glad it's there.

It comes hand in hand with the complaint that they're linear - hell, the original Doom had this figured out, if you want to get rid of excessive backtracking, make levels branch out. That way, player will only ever have to backtrack a bit. So instead of being a long, linear corridor, if tombs were more branched out, you could, say, have a puzzle in the first room that you enter, but you'd have to go down that corridor over there to find first half of the puzzle, the second corridor over there to figure out second half and then open the door leading to treasure, which would contain the last path. Incidentally, most fortresses in Skyrim do actually follow a similar model.

 

I think Bethesda's exploration/mapping/compass at the top is kind of nice.  In W3, I always was just checking my map for the next checkmark, but with Skyrim, I can freely explore and see what might be coming.  I realize that's my opinion, but in an open world, with the amount of time I have to game, I'd rather spend more time running around than checking my map.

May I ask you to try and do something? Try heading to Documents/My Games/Skyrim/, find the SkyrimPrefs.ini file and set the "bShowCompass" value from "1" to "0". This will hide the compass altogether. Asking to do that might feel weird right after you have praised the compass, but I actually have a fairly good reason for it - you can re-enable it at any point without consequence (I'm still not sure why this isn't a bloody option in main menu) and I found that I appreciated Skyrim's world design a lot more without it.

 

That's because Skyrim is actually fairly ingenious in telling player where there are things to be found - like when you see a smoke coming from a mountain and come in to investigate, you'll find a cave. Or an old, overgrown passage leading somewhere. Or snowy path marked by stone hills. That kind of thing. It's incredibly varied and extremely immersive, much moreso than just following compass.

 

And as a bonus you'll start noticing a ton of tiny details you missed while following compass - the world has incredible amount of detail put into it that aren't even marked on the compass, like sacrificial sites, small caches with bandit's loot, shrines, stuff like that. I feel like the compass kinda drags one's attention from all of that detail so that you can find the next black spot you see on the compass.

[Mamoulian War]

 

I actually hate leveling by doing stuff and I prefer XP, because most of the time the skill based leveling is broken. Hitting **** 1000 times to get enough skillpoints to level up is boring

You mean playing a game is boring? It's no different from games with XP mechanics really - you want to increase a skill, you grind. You want more XP, you grind. A well designed game won't ever require you to grind, regardless of skill mechanics used.

lot of games don't give you enough options to levelup all of the implemented skills.

Which is the first massive advantage of "learn by doing" systems, incidentally. When you learn skills by using them and you can't level a skill up, it probably means the skill is useless and should be ignored. It has this mechanical courtesy of telling you "Oh yes, the skill is there, but we didn't have enough time to polish it up, just ignore it." Those are the same kinds of skills you invest in XP-based games and the find out they're utterly useless and you have lost a bunch of skill points needlessly.

If you go in middle of the save the day quest for a week of training, the game should reflect that, and give you hard time with the quest...

How exactly is that different from running away in the middle of a quest to grind up XP? In fact I'd say learn by doing systems have massive advantage here since you quite simply won't get inexplicably better at swinging your sword by finishing a bunch of fetch quests.

Witcher 3: Blood & Wine: Hearts of Stone was a whole lot of fun but I've heard that I shouldn't expect the same level of writing in Blood & Wine from some folks at teh interwebz. Doesn't matter though, because a.the writing will be awesome nevertheless b.I am REALLY excited to explore the new setting. Looks very vivid and colorful!

The writing is less consistent since the expansion is more open and ... well, longer, but the writing is brilliant nonetheless.

 

Well the reason why I do not like skill based stuff, is not because it sucks, but because the balance of the stuff and grinding tends to break the game much more than xp grind. The thing, which I love most is XP based adventures with tiered level caps. This allows very challenging encounters even in middle of the game. We are playing that way our Rise of the Runelords AP in PFRPG tabletop. And I love it.

[Labadal]

The reason I am excited for Tyranny isn't because of the combat or learn by doing or whatever. I want to see if they can deliver on their promise of choices and replay value.

[Mamoulian War]

AND EVUL!!!11ONE

[SadExchange]

 

I will say the idea of the caves being linear and always having a quick shortcut back can be weird to think about, but some of these caves can get quite extensive and I know I wouldn't really enjoy my time sprinting all the way back through an empty cave after spending 15-20 minutes getting to the end.  I know it may seem weird for a shortcut, but I'm kind of glad it's there.

It comes hand in hand with the complaint that they're linear - hell, the original Doom had this figured out, if you want to get rid of excessive backtracking, make levels branch out. That way, player will only ever have to backtrack a bit. So instead of being a long, linear corridor, if tombs were more branched out, you could, say, have a puzzle in the first room that you enter, but you'd have to go down that corridor over there to find first half of the puzzle, the second corridor over there to figure out second half and then open the door leading to treasure, which would contain the last path. Incidentally, most fortresses in Skyrim do actually follow a similar model.

 

I think Bethesda's exploration/mapping/compass at the top is kind of nice.  In W3, I always was just checking my map for the next checkmark, but with Skyrim, I can freely explore and see what might be coming.  I realize that's my opinion, but in an open world, with the amount of time I have to game, I'd rather spend more time running around than checking my map.

May I ask you to try and do something? Try heading to Documents/My Games/Skyrim/, find the SkyrimPrefs.ini file and set the "bShowCompass" value from "1" to "0". This will hide the compass altogether. Asking to do that might feel weird right after you have praised the compass, but I actually have a fairly good reason for it - you can re-enable it at any point without consequence (I'm still not sure why this isn't a bloody option in main menu) and I found that I appreciated Skyrim's world design a lot more without it.

 

That's because Skyrim is actually fairly ingenious in telling player where there are things to be found - like when you see a smoke coming from a mountain and come in to investigate, you'll find a cave. Or an old, overgrown passage leading somewhere. Or snowy path marked by stone hills. That kind of thing. It's incredibly varied and extremely immersive, much moreso than just following compass.

 

And as a bonus you'll start noticing a ton of tiny details you missed while following compass - the world has incredible amount of detail put into it that aren't even marked on the compass, like sacrificial sites, small caches with bandit's loot, shrines, stuff like that. I feel like the compass kinda drags one's attention from all of that detail so that you can find the next black spot you see on the compass.

 

Sorry to quote a quote, but just wanted to say thanks for the idea, I am definitely going to do that.  Sounds like a lot of fun and looking forward to focusing on the details more.  I do enjoy the little stories that are told through the scenes they create.

[Keyrock]

Renown Explorers is pretty damn fun.  They really hit on something with the combat system and the mood balance system.  There is quite a bit of strategic depth to encounters in trying to manipulate the overall mood of the battle to gain advantages and make your better abilities more effective.

 

I wish we could have Alpha Protocol 2 so that Obsidian (or someone) would take that excellent dialogue system and expand on it, making it an even bigger and more meaningful part of the game.  It makes so much sense for an espionage RPG as charming, bluffing, intimidating and other forms of manipulating people mentally is such an integral part of playing a James Bond archetype.

Edited November 3, 2016 by Keyrock

[Tale]

A little more Corpse Party. There's this one part in chapter 2 with instant death stuff going on. Got kind of sick of all that.

 

And so I did more Shadows of the Empire. Looks like there's a bug in it, one person says it's due to running over 30 FPS, where you slip and slide when going downhill. This makes one level with lots of slopes and ledges ridiculous. So I'm not thrilled with that either. It's really killing my nostalgia.

[Gorth]

Another fun night in Swtor. Got started too late to finish the raid, but at got raptus downed in dread palace. Now I just need the dread council to cross dp off my hard mode to do list. The "boss" wants to do that tonight so we can move on to him dp friday (we were doing all those hm ops for my benefit as they are old easy stuff for the rest of the group, most of which spout revanchist, dragonslayer, gate crasher etc. titles). Yes, I really am the "junior" member, but guys are being great and helpful

[majestic]

So how did you like the operations? I found that while mechanics and leghth-wise they are behind other MMOs (especially WoW's) Bioware really managed to pull off some great looking settings, fun bosses and tight atmosphere - especially Terror from Beyond and Dread Palace. Same goes for some of the flashpoints.

[Gorth]

So how did you like the operations? I found that while mechanics and leghth-wise they are behind other MMOs (especially WoW's) Bioware really managed to pull off some great looking settings, fun bosses and tight atmosphere - especially Terror from Beyond and Dread Palace. Same goes for some of the flashpoints.

I've been doing the story mode operations for a long time now. At one point I was doing 2 or 3 a day which is why I eventually also got tired of that, just being too easy. It' sadly just now, 7 days before I was about to put game on the shelf for good (my sub was about to expire) that I found a group of people through one of those chance encounters, that was happy to take me in so speak, and show me the fun of HM Ops (I don't count EV and KP as hm challenges). But yes, been doing all the old ops from ev to tos in sm to the point of drifting off, my attention wandering, while doing M&B and Underlurker

 

Doing HM re-ignited my interest in them because of the added challenge of the mechanics that either never were or got nerfed in 4.0 from sm ops. TfB will always have a special place in my memory, being the first ops I did. SnV for the sheer fun (only Ravagers gets close to the that irreverent atmosphere of not intended to be taken quite too seriously story wise). DF and DP are fun in each their own way, but TfB and SnV probably does appeal more to me. Never really liked Revan as a character or the story, so that probably makes me very indifferent towards ToS.