190 réponses à ce sujet

[Battlebloodmage]

They should make it so that strategy is the key. Your character can die in just 1-2 hits from the enemies. Magic should be limited and refills everytime you get to a base. Your character is always bloody and skinny and need to perform a ritual to regain their skin. If you don't perform the ritual, your companions won't fight alongside you. Healing ability should be separate from magic, so they should be 2 separate stats like faith and intelligence. Many enemies should have OHKO, and the chests should sometimes contain traps and eat you if you're not careful. 

[metatheurgist]

Yes you are bound by your character's physical limitations such as strength, endurance ect however the thought processes are yours to supply, it is why I don't believe the stat that governs casting ability should be called "intelligence" as the character's intelligence should more be a reflection of the player's intelligence.

It's not Intelligence in DA either, it's Cunning. Like I said there's a tradition of having puzzles for the player to solve in RPGs and I'm not really against it. But even in DA you're still affected by your mental stats, you need Cunning to be an effective backstabber, you need Willpower to have Mana.

In D&D it is Intelligence and it's meant to be played as such, and can be lots of fun. If you're dumb enough, you can get away with "Hulk Smash!" as a character. It's a bit harder with someone who's only slightly slow but it's still fun coming up with stupid plans and pretending not to notice the obvious. It's really hard to play a genius, when you're not one (but here's where a CPRG has an advantage as it can point things out to a smart character). It's roleplaying, try it.

[CybAnt1]

and the chests should sometimes contain traps and eat you if you're not careful. 

 

Well, D & D did have the mimic monster, which could take the shape of a chest.

 

Personally, I always liked trapped chests in many CRPGs. It would mean two reasons to bring a rogue, not just to unlock a locked chest, but to check the chest for traps and disarm it if they're present. Added a little bit to the risk of just running around opening chests. 

 

One of my wish lists for DA, besides the return of protag trap-making, is more interesting environmental traps. Every trap in the game is a red flat rectangle (if detected) that usually triggers something else. Where are the pit traps? Or, the favorite of any Indiana Jones fan, the rolling boulder traps ... 

[Sidney]

Let me ask a question, are you playing a role as a different character or playing yourself as the character? If you are role playing a character who has low intelligence then that character should fail at solving the puzzle unless it is extremely simple.
 
If you are role playing yourself as the character then you as the character should have a shot at solving the puzzle. It is like having a character who has no archery skill hit a bulleye's eye from 400 feet away. The character has a slim to none chance with slim walking out the door.
 
The point for some players is do I become protagonist or do I role play myself as the protagonist.

No, you do not role play yourself as the protagonist. You, the player, have no bearing on many or most of the elements of the game. You makes decisions about where to walk, which monster to hit but beyond that everything is about the character in the game. His skill defines if you hit a monster, not yours. His persauasion skill determines if he sweet talks a noble, not yours. His skill at picking locks opens a chest, not yours. When it comes to puzzles they do not work in RPGs because they remain a function of the player and not the character. There is no way to make me fail at the towers of Hanoi if I know how to solve it as it stands.

You want puzzles go play Myst which is about you solving puzzles. Stop trying to add even more things into an RPG that put a further barrier between me and my character.

[Maiden Crowe]

No, you do not role play yourself as the protagonist. You, the player, have no bearing on many or most of the elements of the game. You makes decisions about where to walk, which monster to hit but beyond that everything is about the character in the game. His skill defines if you hit a monster, not yours. His persauasion skill determines if he sweet talks a noble, not yours. His skill at picking locks opens a chest, not yours. When it comes to puzzles they do not work in RPGs because they remain a function of the player and not the character. There is no way to make me fail at the towers of Hanoi if I know how to solve it as it stands.

You want puzzles go play Myst which is about you solving puzzles. Stop trying to add even more things into an RPG that put a further barrier between me and my character.

 

You know what else is a function of the player rather than the character? Making decisions, are you saying we should remove that as well?

[ReadingRambo220]

In Planescape, Arcanum, and Fallout (apology to ones i forgot) attributes seem to mean something rather than a collection of stats. Whether sleeping with the crime boss's daughter in New Reno or using the wisdom gained from countless lives to pacify the transcendent one, the stats had a meaningful effect on the gameworld and are interesting. Characters can be built to have maximum luck to unlock special encounters, or to ace the Vault City citizen test. All of that increases replay ability and the stats feel connected to the world.


Compare to DA 2, where towards the end of the game assigning attribute points is almost tedious. Each level you slightly increase attack and damage... Woohoo... Same thing with talents.

There is no incentive at all for building a character other than maximizing combat potential. And that's a damn shame. Instead of designing interesting specialized character builds to experience different options in the story, they apply a coat of math stats and call it a rpg system.

Bioware has always lauded choice in their games, but "increase crit by 1 percent" or "increase damage by 1 percent" is not an interesting choice whatsoever.

Having said that, I still love the games, stories and characters they make. But to make a true masterpiece they could really overhaul their game mechanics to give it more flavor.

[CybAnt1]

Yep, Cunning was just about the only attribute with usefulness outside of combat. And even then, only for one class, rogues. 

 

Willpower basically determines your mana/stamina pool. Great. But it could have been used in so many other ways. Like something trying to possess you or control you, and you get a Willpower resistance check. But no. 

 

Strength could affect whether you can bash down doors and gates (hello, Cassandra?) but it wasn't used that way. 

 

Constitution could affect your resistance to poisons or diseases - but wasn't used that way. 

 

Dexterity could (and should) affect your ability to evade traps. 

 

Your Magic score might influence your ability to understand magic runes or detect magical effects. But didn't. 

 

Etc. I do agree, I prefer RPGs (C and otherwise) where the attributes affect things other than just direct combat bonuses. 

[Hiemoth]

In Planescape, Arcanum, and Fallout (apology to ones i forgot) attributes seem to mean something rather than a collection of stats. Whether sleeping with the crime boss's daughter in New Reno or using the wisdom gained from countless lives to pacify the transcendent one, the stats had a meaningful effect on the gameworld and are interesting. Characters can be built to have maximum luck to unlock special encounters, or to ace the Vault City citizen test. All of that increases replay ability and the stats feel connected to the world.


Compare to DA 2, where towards the end of the game assigning attribute points is almost tedious. Each level you slightly increase attack and damage... Woohoo... Same thing with talents.

There is no incentive at all for building a character other than maximizing combat potential. And that's a damn shame. Instead of designing interesting specialized character builds to experience different options in the story, they apply a coat of math stats and call it a rpg system.

Bioware has always lauded choice in their games, but "increase crit by 1 percent" or "increase damage by 1 percent" is not an interesting choice whatsoever.

Having said that, I still love the games, stories and characters they make. But to make a true masterpiece they could really overhaul their game mechanics to give it more flavor.

 

For the DA2 jab, how exactly was this aspect different in DAO? As for the stat mechanic, they actually do allow you to built very different characters and approaches to combat situations, although I do see where your argument is coming for and I can in a way see the appeal for it.

 

The problem, though, I have with your argument is actually somewhat summed up by your examples. I utterly love Planescape: Torment, but the rule system in it heavily favoured certain types of characters and if you did not play a character with maxed up mental stats, you lost a lot of content. Note, you did not get different content, but options were removed from you. The only alternative way to get new dialogue was to play the really dumb character. Thus, if you were playing a fighter or a thief, you either created a truly sub-optimal build for those characters or lost a lot of dialogue. Again, I loved Ps:T, but it wasn't a really well-balanced game in that sense.

 

Arcanum, oh Arcanum, is also a really bad example. Most of the social skills were utterly useless and the combat skills didn't really attribute to anything, with stats having a minimal effect on dialogue. Things got even worse with the horrendeus system they implemented in the game, with most experience in combat coming from attacks and strikes instead of the actual kill. Thus if you attempted to play non-combat oriented character who relied on henchmen doing the combat, you were severely handicapped with a very slow level development. I'm kind of shocked they used the same system in Lionheart considering how utterly unbalanced it was for different character builds.

 

Now Fallout games were of course a lot better in this sense, but even there they have moved to having the primary social situations affected by a couple of skills, with majority of the skills affecting only a few situations. Also, it is important to realize that they not only operated on a very different approach to stats and skills, and ultimately it was also a game that became very difficult if points were not allocated to those combat skills.

[BroBear Berbil]

Yep, Cunning was just about the only attribute with usefulness outside of combat. And even then, only for one class, rogues. 

 

Willpower basically determines your mana/stamina pool. Great. But it could have been used in so many other ways. Like something trying to possess you or control you, and you get a Willpower resistance check. But no. 

 

Strength could affect whether you can bash down doors and gates (hello, Cassandra?) but it wasn't used that way. 

 

Constitution could affect your resistance to poisons or diseases - but wasn't used that way. 

 

Dexterity could (and should) affect your ability to evade traps. 

 

Your Magic score might influence your ability to understand magic runes or detect magical effects. But didn't. 

 

Etc. I do agree, I prefer RPGs (C and otherwise) where the attributes affect things other than just direct combat bonuses. 

 

Well, there's that one time in DA:O where your willpower can save you from the camp demon in the Brecillian forest. I'd like to see the stats used more outside of combat too.

 

As for the rules...I like DA's simplicity to be honest. Coming from an MMO background DA was easy to jump into and understand. I missed that golden age of CRPGs and when I've tried the older games (BG and NWN), I've absolutely hated their combat and stats. I hated KOTOR's combat too but I actually managed to complete those games and even play them more than once.

 

DA2 was more simplistic compared to even DA:O, but at least most things were working properly and were more transparent. I played Origins for years and didn't learn that there was a cap to elemental damage gear until recently.

[vania z]

Let me ask you this, are you making the decisions or is your character? Would you rather your character's make decisions for themselves without your input or would you rather be in control of their decision making process?

It is actually the character, who makes decisions. That's why one playthrough you can be a powerhungry mage and on the other peaceful noble. Because that is what your character is. Otherwise you play always the same character - yourself. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

But then the player could know which quests are sidequests, because they'd be the ones without workarounds.

If you documented the difference, yes.  Don't.

 

And that's a level of metagaming I'm not willing to support.  If people want to ruin their experience through metagaming, I'm inclined to let them.  But we also shouldn't force that level of metagaming on them by explicitly labelling the quests as main or side.

[Sylvius the Mad]

You know what else is a function of the player rather than the character? Making decisions, are you saying we should remove that as well?

That's not necessarily the case.  The player can make decision-making a character function.

 

I populate my character's mind during character creation (just as I choose his skills and physical abilities), but then the character makes the in-game decisions.  I am merely the mechanism by which those decisions are implemented - but the decision-making is not mine.

 

Solving puzzles can be an in-character event.  You, the player, can approach the problem as your character would, and then see what outcome that produces.

 

This is partly why I'd like to see quests have failure as a possible result.  If we're going to roleplay our way through quests, then sometimes our characters will make the wrong decision and fail.  That shouldn't require a reload; that should simply produce a different result.

[AlanC9]

If you documented the difference, yes.  Don't.

 

And that's a level of metagaming I'm not willing to support.  If people want to ruin their experience through metagaming, I'm inclined to let them.  But we also shouldn't force that level of metagaming on them by explicitly labelling the quests as main or side.

 

You'd only get through about half a playthrough before everyone figured it out anyway  -- less if they read this board --and in the second game designed this way everyone would be on to it from the start. I don't see how the way players learn which are sidequests and which aren't sidequests really matters.

[Sylvius the Mad]

You'd only get through about half a playthrough before everyone figured it out anyway  -- less if they read this board --and in the second game designed this way everyone would be on to it from the start. I don't see how the way players learn which are sidequests and which aren't sidequests really matters.

You'd only figure it out if you're playing a gamist approach and using your genre-savvy.  Not all players do.  Some of us don't want to know those things, so we don't look for patterns that might reveal them.  For example, I had no idea that BioWare's pre-wheel dialogue options had a predictable sort in them.

 

But wilfull ignorance is much harder when the game forcibly shows you the information.

 

I do not want to know which quests are which.  Not knowing this is one of the main reasons I like BG so much - all the quests were just quests.

 

Avoiding this information in DA2 was basically impossible unless you never opened journal.  So that's what I did, and as such I missed out on a bunch of information the game was trying to give me (only some of which I wanted to avoid).

 

The player should be able to avoid metagame information.  Quest categories are metagame information.

[ReadingRambo220]

For the DA2 jab, how exactly was this aspect different in DAO? As for the stat mechanic, they actually do allow you to built very different characters and approaches to combat situations, although I do see where your argument is coming for and I can in a way see the appeal for it.

The problem, though, I have with your argument is actually somewhat summed up by your examples. I utterly love Planescape: Torment, but the rule system in it heavily favoured certain types of characters and if you did not play a character with maxed up mental stats, you lost a lot of content. Note, you did not get different content, but options were removed from you. The only alternative way to get new dialogue was to play the really dumb character. Thus, if you were playing a fighter or a thief, you either created a truly sub-optimal build for those characters or lost a lot of dialogue. Again, I loved Ps:T, but it wasn't a really well-balanced game in that sense.

Arcanum, oh Arcanum, is also a really bad example. Most of the social skills were utterly useless and the combat skills didn't really attribute to anything, with stats having a minimal effect on dialogue. Things got even worse with the horrendeus system they implemented in the game, with most experience in combat coming from attacks and strikes instead of the actual kill. Thus if you attempted to play non-combat oriented character who relied on henchmen doing the combat, you were severely handicapped with a very slow level development. I'm kind of shocked they used the same system in Lionheart considering how utterly unbalanced it was for different character builds.

Now Fallout games were of course a lot better in this sense, but even there they have moved to having the primary social situations affected by a couple of skills, with majority of the skills affecting only a few situations. Also, it is important to realize that they not only operated on a very different approach to stats and skills, and ultimately it was also a game that became very difficult if points were not allocated to those combat skills.

You are correct, perhaps it was a mistake bringing up PS:T and Arcanum. I didn't play Arcanum very heavily, and Planescape I haven't played in years. But I remember thinking how cool it was that wisdom was such an important and interesting stat in PST after being a dump stat in previous infinity engine games.

As for bringing up DA 2, I've been replaying it recently so it was fresh on my mind. You are correct, Origins is essentially the same, I could have brought up both.

[deuce985]

I think it would but I'm probably in the minority. From a design perspective, I don't think gamers like "complexity" as evidenced by the most popular games on the market. Arguably the most popular RPG is anything but complex in Skyrim. It seems appeal goes for more streamlined games that are easier to pick up and play. Probably why most modern RPGs feel less and less complex these days unless you play a niche one from Kickstarter projects.

 

I know several people who hate RPGs but loved Skyrim because it was so easy to understand/play. These people obviously do not like the RPG genre when they absolutely must manage everything or understand all these complex attribute/battle mechanics. Some people just do not like to micromanage their games and nor do they want to sit aroud learning a boss fight for an hour before they actually progress past it.

 

I do think publishers sell the core gamers short though in underestimating how much money they can make on them if a game is solely built to appeal to them as evidenced by the Demon's Souls/Dark Souls games. These games might not be the best examples because even a lot of core gamers probably feel they're too hardcore but it's an example that they're doing their third game and still going strong without any hint of it slowing down. If anybody has the quickest and highest attach rate, it's core gamers. I don't think that's something that can be debated. Going for appeal gives you potential at striking lightning in a bottle but they're far less likely to adopt early. I think ideally Bioware is trying to capture both audiences with DAI so they're trying something between. Or at least they hope so.

 

More specifically, I'm not even sure why I rambled about this. Kinda OT...sorry.

[CybAnt1]

I think ideally Bioware is trying to capture both audiences with DAI so they're trying something between. Or at least they hope so.

 

More specifically, I'm not even sure why I rambled about this. Kinda OT...sorry.

 

Not rambling: I happen to think you're right. The reason is, I've seen Mike Laidlaw and some others say so. 

 

I agree with the earlier video posted in this thread, and I'll repeat its point and mine. Nobody wants complexity for its own sake. Especially me.

 

What players seem to want is depth, and you want to find the right level of complexity to provide the kind of depth they want, without having the excessive complexity that will frustrate them and prevent them from getting to/seeing/using the depth. 

 

The video's absolutely right. My additional observation is this is why some developers are shedding complexity, particularly within this genre, in order to lower "frustration-ness" and inaccessibility. Nothing wrong with that. My personal problem, (and I do not consider myself the least bit "hardcore" in the senses most people mean it, like I crave insane levels of tedium, nightmarish challenge, or calculus-level stat-crunching), is that this decision seems to also mean these games are ALSO losing depth. They haven't been finding the depth-complexity sweet spot, they've been erring too far on the side of simplicity as everybody seems to be trying to make the same kinds of action-RPGs in the name of "evolution" or "being different" or "bold" (when in fact, none of the three things are true.) 

 

Looks to me like Bioware are aiming for said spot in DAI, like I keep saying -- I hope they can find it. 

[OdanUrr]

What players seem to want is depth, and you want to find the right level of complexity to provide the kind of depth they want, without having the excessive complexity that will frustrate them and prevent them from getting to/seeing/using the depth. 

 

The video's absolutely right. My additional observation is this is why some developers are shedding complexity, particularly within this genre, in order to lower "frustration-ness" and inaccessibility. Nothing wrong with that. My personal problem, (and I do not consider myself the least bit "hardcore" in the senses most people mean it, like I crave insane levels of tedium, nightmarish challenge, or calculus-level stat-crunching), is that this decision seems to also mean these games are ALSO losing depth. They haven't been finding the depth-complexity sweet spot, they've been erring too far on the side of simplicity as everybody seems to be trying to make the same kinds of action-RPGs in the name of "evolution" or "being different" or "bold" (when in fact, none of the three things are true.) 

 

The problem perhaps stems from not knowing the difference between depth and complexity? Depth, according to the video, is the number of emergent experientially different possibilities. Complexity is "the data the players have to store, the rules they have to process and calculations they have to make to make a meaningful choice."

 

I came up with a silly example that can perhaps illustrate the point. Say you have a game where your main attack is a melee attack with a sword. You decide to add a bow to the player's arsenal. This decision contributes to the depth of the game because it allows the player to create more possibilities from his available weapons.

 

Imagine now that in order to fire that bow the player must somehow gauge the wind speed and direction since these will inevitably alter the trajectory of the arrow. This adds to the game's complexity because now the player must process more data in order to access the game's depth.

 

And, yes, Arrow is to blame for this example.

[Realmzmaster]

No, you do not role play yourself as the protagonist. You, the player, have no bearing on many or most of the elements of the game. You makes decisions about where to walk, which monster to hit but beyond that everything is about the character in the game. His skill defines if you hit a monster, not yours. His persauasion skill determines if he sweet talks a noble, not yours. His skill at picking locks opens a chest, not yours. When it comes to puzzles they do not work in RPGs because they remain a function of the player and not the character. There is no way to make me fail at the towers of Hanoi if I know how to solve it as it stands.

You want puzzles go play Myst which is about you solving puzzles. Stop trying to add even more things into an RPG that put a further barrier between me and my character.

 

Are you sure you are quoting the right person? I am the one who thinks that the character that has a low intelligence attribute should not be able to solve the puzzle! I simply stated that if a puzzle is present that on the main quest line there must be an alternative way of getting around the puzzle to avoid lack of progress and frustration..

[Realmzmaster]

I see no reason to require this.  As long as only side quests have necessary puzzle components, there's no need for non-puzzle solutions.

 

You don't want to force any player to have to solve a puzzle.  We can do that without eliminating all puzzle-centric quests.

 

This has nothing to do with whether we tell the player which quests are which.

 

The point is in DAO the puzzles were on the main quest line and therefore unavoidable. If there had been a secondary way around that quest it would not have cause as much player frustration.

 

The problem is that the player keeps working at the puzzle thinking it maybe on the main quest line. The player is unable to solve it. Gives up in frustration comes to the forum and bad months Bioware about it and proceeds to tell all of his/her friends about the frustration. Bioware gets bad word of mouth through no fault of its own.

By  hinting at the point it may be a side quest and the puzzle optional the player can then go on his/her way and experience the rest of the game. Thereby that player may have a more positive experience and recommend rather than condemn.

[Hiemoth]

You are correct, perhaps it was a mistake bringing up PS:T and Arcanum. I didn't play Arcanum very heavily, and Planescape I haven't played in years. But I remember thinking how cool it was that wisdom was such an important and interesting stat in PST after being a dump stat in previous infinity engine games.

As for bringing up DA 2, I've been replaying it recently so it was fresh on my mind. You are correct, Origins is essentially the same, I could have brought up both.

 

As said, I am a huge fan of PS:T and am somewhat looking forward to Torment, so I understand bringing it up as an example. And not only did it give Wisdom a role in the game, but Charisma and Intelligence also affected things, which was a far cry from the base games. It was just that when I started thinking about it after reading your comment did I realize how unbalanced it was and how difficult it must be to truly incorporate such elements to games. I would also love stats be reflected better during cutscenes and dialogue, but I can also see how it is difficult to implement without making one stat the superstat.

 

And my apologies on my jab on DAO. I just really like DA2, and while I admit there is a lot of valid criticism towards it, I see so many criticisms for it doing things DAO also essentially did. Thus my reaction. Sorry about it again.

[metatheurgist]

The video's absolutely right. My additional observation is this is why some developers are shedding complexity, particularly within this genre, in order to lower "frustration-ness" and inaccessibility. Nothing wrong with that. My personal problem, (and I do not consider myself the least bit "hardcore" in the senses most people mean it, like I crave insane levels of tedium, nightmarish challenge, or calculus-level stat-crunching), is that this decision seems to also mean these games are ALSO losing depth. They haven't been finding the depth-complexity sweet spot, they've been erring too far on the side of simplicity as everybody seems to be trying to make the same kinds of action-RPGs in the name of "evolution" or "being different" or "bold" (when in fact, none of the three things are true.)

This is the problem with market economics. Everyone wants a shot at the largest market, so every game ends up playing the same. I have no problem with companies simplifying games and making money, but, when you simplify a game to the point where it's no longer an RPG, can you please stop calling it an RPG and just call it an action game?

[Realmzmaster]

This is the problem with market economics. Everyone wants a shot at the largest market, so every game ends up playing the same. I have no problem with companies simplifying games and making money, but, when you simplify a game to the point where it's no longer an RPG, can you please stop calling it an RPG and just call it an action game?

 

That will lead into the debate of what is an rpg. That is a very slippery slope and a very contested argument.

[CybAnt1]

Imagine now that in order to fire that bow the player must somehow gauge the wind speed and direction since these will inevitably alter the trajectory of the arrow. This adds to the game's complexity because now the player must process more data in order to access the game's depth.

 

And, yes, Arrow is to blame for this example.

 

MHO: that might be appropriate for an archery sim, where you the player are aiming at a target, and the game wants to as realistically simulate all factors that affect archery.

(P.S. if that's what Arrow is - don't know - then we're saying the same thing. I do know of the TV show which appears to be based on the DC Green Arrow character, who has no "superpowers" other than trick arrows ... his Marvel universe equivalent is the Avenger, Hawkeye) ... 

 

For a game in which firing a bow is just one of a lot of things going on in the game, especially 4 different things being done by 4 different party members all at once ... yeah, that's TMI for players to process. 

[OdanUrr]

MHO: that might be appropriate for an archery sim, where you the player are aiming at a target, and the game wants to as realistically simulate all factors that affect archery.

(P.S. if that's what Arrow is - don't know - then we're saying the same thing. I do know of the TV show which appears to be based on the DC Green Arrow character, who has no "superpowers" other than trick arrows ... his Marvel universe equivalent is the Avenger, Hawkeye) ... 

 

For a game in which firing a bow is just one of a lot of things going on in the game, especially 4 different things being done by 4 different party members all at once ... yeah, that's TMI for players to process. 

 

Indeed, context matters. If it is an archery sim, then yes, that would actually be part of the game's depth and not complexity. The same rings true for any simulator where you need to learn the rules of the simulation. However, in this example using the bow is not the game's primary objective but rather one of the many tools available.

 

Yes, I was referring to the TV series.