Stanley Woo wrote...
"Streamlining" is just making RPGs less number-crunching and more jump-into-the-action. Look at complex RPG rule systems like Palladium, AD&D, Rolemaster, the HERO system, etc. Traditionally, CRPGs had similar complex systems because they were the digital version of sitting around with your buddies playing open-and-paper RPGs. And for a long time, RPGs were all about stats and numbers and rules. These days, with technology as advanced as it is, we can afford to put a lot of those rules in the background and let the player do what he wants to do most, which is dive right into the game and the setting and play. The modern gamer doesn't want to know what THAC0 is, couldn't care less whether Choking Cloud gives you a -2 or -3 to Acrobatics, and who chooses Fire Arrow over Fireball not because it does more damage, but because it looks friggin' BOSS when it explodes on the Mayonnaise Elemental's face! "Streamlining" does not mean accepting a lower quality standard, nor does it mean "dumbing down" a product.
And now I'm full-fledged in this...I've got a game company named Paizo and it's recent sales and awards reports
http://www.examiner....ales-and-ennies that would take serious contention with your statement that todays players don't care about stats, numbers, etc., and just want to get into quick play and combat.
The "streamlining" tactic for WotC seems to be failing pretty hard for them. It didn't grow their base by including more people, it alienated a significant enough portion of their base to, from sheer resentment, create a cottage game company building success solely on "I hate your streamlined 4E, WotC!"
To be upfront:
I do not like Pathfinder's game system too much, and the book is a beast of confusing unbalanced rules (remarkably more balanced and less confusing than 3.5 D&D was, sure, but that's like saying losing a hand is less traumatic than losing your whole arm.)
And I DO like the simplification that WotC did for 4E. A lot.
BUT....
numbers don't lie.
At least in the table-top world, there's a BIG backlash against (and here I open that can of worms again) "dumbing down" games.
If you think that it's an isolated incident, that the one market is not representative of the other (table top vs. computer rpg), well, we'll see if DA3 is made "more accessible" and how many people choose to access it as a result.
*shrug*
I could be wrong.
But I at least have some hard numbers (Paizo vs. WotC, DA:O vs. DA2) to back up where the sales go: stats over accessiblilty.
And streamlining, as in making it more accessible, as in letting more people play the game as it's easier to understand and pick-up-and-play, is lowering the bar to entry.
Lowering the bar is so it's easier for everyone to succeed.
Making things easier for everyone to succeed means it doesn't take as much effort.
Not as much effort means not as much challenge.
Not being challenged means not having to grow, change, adapt.
That, IMO, is why it's considered "dumbing down." When you lower the bar, you don't challenge people to grow. When you don't challenge them to grow, they don't grow.
In education this is lowering the difficulty of tests, so more kids get better grades, so more kids can get to college... and lowering the difficulty of college courses (even if it is, to use the "easy to get in, difficulty grows as you go further in" argument, it's just the general education courses) so more people can get college degrees.... ultimately dilutes the worth of those degrees.
Less challenge, less people have to rise above to meet the challenge.
Q.E.D.
Ce sujet est fermé
Retour en haut
attack score vs. defence score? With THAC0, you have a simple table where your attack roll (higher is better) is compared to your target's AC (lower is better). With the other, higher is always better regardless of whether you're talking attack or defence.
