79 réponses à ce sujet

[PsychoBlonde]

 

You go to the effort of acquiring it so you can meet the challenges ahead. That's the entire point of progression in an RPG. You meet the progression of challenges with your character's increasing strength.

 

A lot of that comes from the decision to use non-upgradeable unique items. There are many advantages of having an upgrade-heavy equipment progression system. The developer is not stuck holding on to all the fun stuff until the end of the game, since early unique drops don't have to be irrelevant at the end. You also don't have to leave game-breaking drops where the player might fall on them and completely trivialize a good chunk of the game (though it's better to be overpowered early than overpowered late). The player also doesn't have to give up the equipment they like for the sake of efficiency (e.g. Ancient Elven Armor).

 

Also, re: demolishing everything in your path, turn down the difficulty setting. If you don't care about gameplay or challenge, the game will let you plow through just fine if you turn the difficulty to zero -- no need to ruin the game for everybody else.

 

 

Your notions of game design are extremely limited, nor does it "ruin" the game for "everybody else".  Everyone I've ever met who complains about wanting a "challenge" in a game refuses to actually do what is necessary to create challenge for themselves.  EVERYONE, without exception.  They insist on playing the most overpowered easy-button build in the game using every piece of best-in-slot gear and then whine that the game is "too easy".  If you want a "challenge", you're completely free to throw items out instead of using them.  Asking the game to *impose* this situation on you is silly.

I want *significant* gear.  I want single gear items that you will do an entire character build just to use, not boring "oh it has 1% more crit chance than the dagger I already have, yawn".  That's not *significant*.  Significant items are like finding the *one weapon* in the game that has a 36% chance to stun on hit or the *one staff* that does multiple types of damage.  It has nothing to do with whether the item is "upgradeable" because the bonuses it has are *unique*.  If you don't it so the difference between low-level and high-level stuff is a matter of 1 to 1000 versus 1-3, you don't have to worry about "upgrading" because the unique bonus will maintain its viability and you don't care about the tiny bit of raw damage difference.

Party games are great for this because you can hand out significant items one at a time (usually after doing something cool like defeating a high-level unscaled monster) and while it's really cool it doesn't have that much overall effect because it only helps out one party member.  Baldur's Gate did this and it was a lot of fun--nor did getting the best items in the game make the more challenging fights substantially easier.  It just made the trash fights--which were already a joke--go by a little faster.

[Auztin]

It's completely valid yet insulting when saying "Don't like=Don't use".I beat DA2 with staff of parthalan.I beat DA:O with massive armor & grey iron family sword.I used bad weapons statistically but it was awesome.I don't use the best if anything all I care about is sticking to my story in the game.So get over the OP stuff.Did you OP complaints ruin games as well?

[In Exile]

Your notions of game design are extremely limited, nor does it "ruin" the game for "everybody else".  Everyone I've ever met who complains about wanting a "challenge" in a game refuses to actually do what is necessary to create challenge for themselves.  EVERYONE, without exception.  They insist on playing the most overpowered easy-button build in the game using every piece of best-in-slot gear and then whine that the game is "too easy".  If you want a "challenge", you're completely free to throw items out instead of using them.  Asking the game to *impose* this situation on you is silly.

I want *significant* gear.  I want single gear items that you will do an entire character build just to use, not boring "oh it has 1% more crit chance than the dagger I already have, yawn".  That's not *significant*.  Significant items are like finding the *one weapon* in the game that has a 36% chance to stun on hit or the *one staff* that does multiple types of damage.  It has nothing to do with whether the item is "upgradeable" because the bonuses it has are *unique*.  If you don't it so the difference between low-level and high-level stuff is a matter of 1 to 1000 versus 1-3, you don't have to worry about "upgrading" because the unique bonus will maintain its viability and you don't care about the tiny bit of raw damage difference.

Party games are great for this because you can hand out significant items one at a time (usually after doing something cool like defeating a high-level unscaled monster) and while it's really cool it doesn't have that much overall effect because it only helps out one party member.  Baldur's Gate did this and it was a lot of fun--nor did getting the best items in the game make the more challenging fights substantially easier.  It just made the trash fights--which were already a joke--go by a little faster.

 

While I generally agree with the tenor of what you say, I do think there's something to be said for difficulty that pushes you to think creatively. The problem with gimping oneself is that basically you have to involve yourself in the difficulty, and sometimes what's fun is not seeing it coming and having to react. 

[Gamemako]

Your notions of game design are extremely limited, nor does it "ruin" the game for "everybody else".  Everyone I've ever met who complains about wanting a "challenge" in a game refuses to actually do what is necessary to create challenge for themselves.  EVERYONE, without exception. They insist on playing the most overpowered easy-button build in the game using every piece of best-in-slot gear and then whine that the game is "too easy". If you want a "challenge", you're completely free to throw items out instead of using them. Asking the game to *impose* this situation on you is silly.

Oh, how delightful. The post starts with the ad hominem, followed by more ad hominem peppered with a little guilt by association. After that, we get a restatement of the premise, then a false dichotomy (combined with what seems to be a naturalistic fallacy, given the asterisks around impose). Now, let's stop for a moment to marvel at the utter absurdity of the accusation leveled: players only want balance because of some great character flaw. This is important because of the premise of the discussion: that a player should be effectively locked out of content because it's overpowered. Thus, in order to justify your own selfish demands, you go out of your way to denigrate them. There is no substance or logic here; you're just saying "well, those people are rubbish anyway, so **** what they want!"
 

I want *significant* gear.  I want single gear items that you will do an entire character build just to use, not boring "oh it has 1% more crit chance than the dagger I already have, yawn".  That's not *significant*.  Significant items are like finding the *one weapon* in the game that has a 36% chance to stun on hit or the *one staff* that does multiple types of damage.  It has nothing to do with whether the item is "upgradeable" because the bonuses it has are *unique*.  If you don't it so the difference between low-level and high-level stuff is a matter of 1 to 1000 versus 1-3, you don't have to worry about "upgrading" because the unique bonus will maintain its viability and you don't care about the tiny bit of raw damage difference.

What you're talking about as significant are not necessarily overpowered. Gear that requires a specialized build necessarily comes with large drawbacks (and typically requires heavy investment as well). To pull from another genre, that would be like saying the ADC -- attack damage carry, character built purely for damage output at the end of the match -- is overpowered in a MOBA. That player also is terribly easy to kill and largely ineffective on its own, which is why it has to be carried until the end of the match, and it is still vulnerable then without due care. If an entire team tried to roll ADC, they would be summarily obliterated. Strong, specialized, and not overpowered. Much more likely to be overpowered are things which do not require a specialized build, like an Arcane Warrior.

Additionally, unique factors do not necessarily make a weapon overpowered, nor are unique factors unscalable. Taking the stun weapon example, you can scale that factor through the game as well as across difficulties. Many early mooks may be vulnerable to hefty stun abuse, but those opponents become increasingly scarce as the game goes on, modulating difficulty. With upgrades, you can add to stun duration or resistance penetration, making your stun stick retain its usefulness in every situation at the cost of upgrade resources, or you can leave it as a niche tool for certain opponents. You can also have casual difficulty get 2x stun duration and Nightmare get 1/2 stun duration and 50% stun resistance -- this is actually somewhat necessary to maintain balance with other tools in the first place, because stun is less valuable when you kill in 1-2 hits on Casual and overpowered when fighting a war of attrition on Nightmare. Again, you still need that one staff and you need to upgrade it with that one unique resource you found, but it doesn't break the game.

Though, the entire point of giving you mooks to kill late game is to give a cue for how much more powerful you've gotten. They're meant to be slaughtered by whatever you have, not any specific tool. Otherwise, opponents have to either be a drain on your resources or a challenge to complete outright. If you're mid-game and the game is giving you opponents which are just lambs for the slaughter, then your encounter needs to be made more challenging. Encounters should either challenge the player or communicate something (typically fulfilling the power fantasy). If they fail on both accounts, they're just annoying and should be removed or re-tuned. DA2 whiffed spectacularly on a lot of things, and that is one of the biggest parts it screwed up. It felt like progression went backwards as you were forced into random drop items due to poor scaling, and the DLCs fiddled a lot with encounter design.
 

Party games are great for this because you can hand out significant items one at a time (usually after doing something cool like defeating a high-level unscaled monster) and while it's really cool it doesn't have that much overall effect because it only helps out one party member.  Baldur's Gate did this and it was a lot of fun--nor did getting the best items in the game make the more challenging fights substantially easier.