87 réponses à ce sujet

[Cyonan]

I don’t think that's even a problem necessarily.

The original Dungeon Siege (which was called an ARPG) threw progressively harder monsters at you, and was entirely linear, but it was still possible to find yourself over-leveled or under-leveled depending how you built your party.

Dungeon Siege used a learn-by-doing system, and was entirely combat-based, so you gained strength by successfully attacking things. But you were in control of the size of the party (and the number of combatants in it). If you filled it with 8 combatants, the game would grow harder as you went, as the characters didn't gain enough strength individually to keep up with the game. You'd also have subpar equipment, since you couldn't carry enough loot.

But, if you used a full party of two combatants, a non-combatant healer, and 5 pack mules, you'd walk over the second half of the game.

 

I don't personally see an issue with allowing a player to over/under level content in a RPG, or with having certain setups which are easier than others. I was mostly talking about character builds that make combat faceroll easy being a balance issue rather than a reality of stat based combat systems. That and the idea that just because it is a stat based system does not automatically mean you can overpower the enemy with superior stats.

 

Which I'm not really a fan of builds that break combat that badly, even in single-player games. I know I don't have to build my character that way, but sometimes it's unavoidable if I want a certain playstyle and my general rule when it comes to difficulty in video games is that I should never have to intentionally gimp my character setup to get a proper challenge.

 

Skyrim had this issue where stealth was broken. There's usually at least one thing in a Bethesda game that's broken in terms of balance.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Skyrim had this issue where stealth was broken. There's usually at least one thing in a Bethesda game that's broken in terms of balance.

Whereas, I loved how stealth worked in Skyrim.

In combination with Archery and Conjuration, a stealthy character was unbeatable.

But then, I hate action combat, so that this combination of skills basically let me avoid melee (especially since I usually had 3 followers at a time) was brilliant.

[RoboticWater]

I don't personally see an issue with allowing a player to over/under level content in a RPG, or with having certain setups which are easier than others. I was mostly talking about character builds that make combat faceroll easy being a balance issue rather than a reality of stat based combat systems. That and the idea that just because it is a stat based system does not automatically mean you can overpower the enemy with superior stats.

 

Which I'm not really a fan of builds that break combat that badly, even in single-player games. I know I don't have to build my character that way, but sometimes it's unavoidable if I want a certain playstyle and my general rule when it comes to difficulty in video games is that I should never have to intentionally gimp my character setup to get a proper challenge.

 

Skyrim had this issue where stealth was broken. There's usually at least one thing in a Bethesda game that's broken in terms of balance.

I'm really glad this video came out recently (I recommend anyone watch the whole thing, but 4:15 to the end should illustrate my point).

 

The Witcher 3's economy is far too forgiving to those who horde and sell off their piles of loot. The game is clearly trying to put the player in the shoes of a monster slayer, but holes in the economy don't easily facilitate that. By allowing the players an avenue of easy cash, the developers are eliminating an interesting challenge for the player and removing one of the central roleplaying pillars of the game. Without a cash problem, it's impossible for the player to feel the same emotions that a mercenary monster hunter would feel. They would feel no need to haggle or be greedy with their purchases and charity, and there would be no monetary pressure to offer their services in side quests.

 

The same problem has existed in RPGs for decades especially when it comes to XP gained from side quests. So often are games balanced to the lowest common denominator and have their side quests quickly outlevel players. Not only do those players loose incentive to play potentially fun side content, but any content they level out of (main or otherwise) likely becomes less interesting. Without any challenge from moment to moment or encounter to encounter, the game can quickly become stale. That's why people hate the late game of so many good RPGs.  

 

I'll always advocate for a difficulty slider to make the overall experience easier, because some games can just be too hard to complete otherwise; however, exploits extreme or moderate can make any game loose their spark. If developers want to make their players feel anything, then they need to keep the pressure on.

 

As to stats v. skill systems, I think Dark Souls is the hallmark of consistent challenge with a purely stat-based leveling system. Every battle, large or small, is life threatening, but entirely doable with the right amount of either skill or time investment. Personally, I prefer to gain new abilities every time I level up (much like how Mass Effect already does it), but stats gain you access to different kinds of weapons, which totally change the way you play. The game does a good job ushering you through the world and keeping you on the easiest path, but skilled players can go out of their way to find challenging side bosses and short cuts. As long as ME:A forces me to evolve my tactics provides a consistent challenge, I can't see why either stat or skill systems couldn't work. 

[Cyonan]

Whereas, I loved how stealth worked in Skyrim.

In combination with Archery and Conjuration, a stealthy character was unbeatable.

But then, I hate action combat, so that this combination of skills basically let me avoid melee (especially since I usually had 3 followers at a time) was brilliant.

 

The actual non combat stealth was okay. It's no Thief, but it gets the job done.

 

The part I had an issue with was the "a stealthy character was unbeatable". I like being the stealthy type but I also like challenge. The two don't mix in Skyrim without mods, and no argument can convince me that allowing an entire combat style to trivialize the highest difficulty like that is a good thing. Especially considering Skyrim doesn't actually have a great deal of variety in combat styles.

 

If you want to let people skip the action combat in your game, that should be done through a "story mode" thing like Mass Effect 3 had that massively nerfs all enemies.

 

 

I'm really glad this video came out recently (I recommend anyone watch the whole thing, but 4:15 to the end should illustrate my point).

 

The Witcher 3's economy is far too forgiving to those who horde and sell off their piles of loot. The game is clearly trying to put the player in the shoes of a monster slayer, but holes in the economy don't easily facilitate that. By allowing the players an avenue of easy cash, the developers are eliminating an interesting challenge for the player and removing one of the central roleplaying pillars of the game. Without a cash problem, it's impossible for the player to feel the same emotions that a mercenary monster hunter would feel. They would feel no need to haggle or be greedy with their purchases and charity, and there would be no monetary pressure to offer their services in side quests.

 

The same problem has existed in RPGs for decades especially when it comes to XP gained from side quests. So often are games balanced to the lowest common denominator and have their side quests quickly outlevel players. Not only do those players loose incentive to play potentially fun side content, but any content they level out of (main or otherwise) likely becomes less interesting. Without any challenge from moment to moment or encounter to encounter, the game can quickly become stale. That's why people hate the late game of so many good RPGs.  

 

I'll always advocate for a difficulty slider to make the overall experience easier, because some games can just be too hard to complete otherwise; however, exploits extreme or moderate can make any game loose their spark. If developers want to make their players feel anything, then they need to keep the pressure on.

 

I remember hearing people talk about how being good all of the time in TW3 would leave you without much money because you wouldn't be making as much off being an actual witcher, but then a lot of the times I find games tend to not do that sort of thing very well unless the entire focus of the game is about resource management.

 

As you mentioned it's usually designed around the lowest common denominator, so when I go around and loot absolutely everything in sight I'm ahead of where they designed for. I think when it comes to XP and side quests I still don't see a problem inherent in letting the player over-level content but you do still need to balance it out well, especially when I decide to go back to the main quest. I think this is one case where minor level scaling of enemies can help.

 

Difficulty sliders/levels are always a good idea in single-player games that feature a lot of combat(so most single-player games).

[SpaceLobster]

If they do it like ME2 (and, thus ME3) or ME1 it will be just fine for me, if they do it any other way, it will probably be fine as well. As long as they don't throw the hardest boss (I expect to see more bosses than in ME3) it's probably fine.

[Sylvius the Mad]

The actual non combat stealth was okay. It's no Thief, but it gets the job done.

Thief was excellent, but too actiony for a roleplaying mechanic. What I like about Skyrim's stealth system is how rules-based it is. There's no onus on the player to be good at doing it.

If you want to let people skip the action combat in your game, that should be done through a "story mode" thing like Mass Effect 3 had that massively nerfs all enemies.

No, that just makes the combat tedious. What they should do is offer a narrative equivalent of ME3's action mode, where the combat is played for you.

[Cyonan]

Thief was excellent, but too actiony for a roleplaying mechanic. What I like about Skyrim's stealth system is how rules-based it is. There's no onus on the player to be good at doing it.

 

The rule base is fine, although it is silly that once you hit 100 in stealth you become virtually invisible to the point where you can sneak attack somebody and have an arrow sticking out of their skull and their friend 10 feet away goes "huh... must have been my imagination".

 

Even by RPG standards that's ridiculous. They really need to improve their AI.

 

No, that just makes the combat tedious. What they should do is offer a narrative equivalent of ME3's action mode, where the combat is played for you.

 

That's kind of what I was going for.

 

In either case, it should be a game mode option and not a character build that's doing it.

[Sylvius the Mad]

The rule base is fine, although it is silly that once you hit 100 in stealth you become virtually invisible to the point where you can sneak attack somebody and have an arrow sticking out of their skull and their friend 10 feet away goes "huh... must have been my imagination".

Even by RPG standards that's ridiculous. They really need to improve their AI.


That's kind of what I was going for.

In either case, it should be a game mode option and not a character build that's doing it.

I'd like both options.

What I would like to see in Skyrim is enemies that use stealth. That would even things up.

Incidentally, the only ability I ever got to 100 in Skyrim was archery (because there's a follower who will train you, so you can just take the money back and buy again and again with the same gold).

[Inprea]

I tend to favor stat based systems myself. I'm a fan of leveling grinding as I get a thrill out of seeing my character progress and grow more powerful which I expect to be reflected in game play. It's what kept me playing through Final Fantasy Lighting Returns, as the story sure couldn't do it, I just enjoyed having Lightning be able to rip enemies apart more and more easily. Mass Effect 3 actually has a little of this with the upgrades to weapons and mods. Sure I beat the game with weapons and mods that were less than level five but I wanted to do it again with more powerful weapons and modifications. It's a shame you couldn't improve you armor as well.

 

Thinking about it I'd love it if the next Mass Effect had a level cap that you could turn off or on. Perhaps with the level cap turned off you could eventually gain every ability and advantage there is but you couldn't gain achievements any longer.

[Chealec]

Much as it's getting tired - here comes The Witcher comparison again...

 

Yes it's based on stats - as you level up you can beat up bigger monsters; some stuff will OHK you if you're too low a level and the enemy names are colour coded depending on how hard they are relative to your current level (red means you're likely to die, grey is about equal footing and so on)...

 

... however, you can learn the attack patterns of enemies and, as long as the level difference isn't too great you can defeat red-flagged enemies - it just takes longer as your attack strength is lower than it would be at a higher level (where they'd merely be grey-flagged). I was killing Earth Elementals that were 10+ levels higher than me because their attack patterns are obvious and quite slow.

 

I thought that was quite a good mix of stat and skill based combat for an RPG though it did mean, oddly, that quite often groups of grey-flagged enemies were sometimes actually harder to deal with than single red-flagged enemies. Skill will only take you so far when you're being ganked.

[Sidney]

The rule base is fine, although it is silly that once you hit 100 in stealth you become virtually invisible to the point where you can sneak attack somebody and have an arrow sticking out of their skull and their friend 10 feet away goes "huh... must have been my imagination".
 
Even by RPG standards that's ridiculous. They really need to improve their AI.
 

 
That's kind of what I was going for.
 
In either case, it should be a game mode option and not a character build that's doing it.

Stealth is almost always bad because it is never really implemented as hide in shadows and creep through the dark (BG tried but as you got better that need to be slow and in the shadows waned) as opposed to flat invisibility.

[Sidney]

I never like stat building. The idea that character X is now 5x stronger than character Y makes no sense and there isn't really a fake way of thinking about that to rationalize it.

As much as I hate leveling up as a mechanism in general - seriously in the time frames of these games you are not going to get 2x or more better at anything especially since you aren't an amateur to begin with and why killing an Orc makes you better at potions or casting spells makes zero sense - skill progression is the better way to go. Fallout still has the best system (and yes I know it has some minor stat improvement) to me in CRPGs.

[Cyonan]

I'd like both options.

What I would like to see in Skyrim is enemies that use stealth. That would even things up.

Incidentally, the only ability I ever got to 100 in Skyrim was archery (because there's a follower who will train you, so you can just take the money back and buy again and again with the same gold).

 

Skryim enemies using stealth would require improvements to the AI, since most players aren't dumb enough to not see a stealthed person walking around in the middle of the lighted areas.

 

Still, it would be nice to see as opposed to having only two types of AI that they have right now of "Melee, run at player and swing wildly" or "ranged, run away while shooting magic/bow".

 

Stealth is almost always bad because it is never really implemented as hide in shadows and creep through the dark (BG tried but as you got better that need to be slow and in the shadows waned) as opposed to flat invisibility.

 

It's even funnier in Oblivion once you get 100% chameleon and you literally cannot be spotted by enemies no matter how badly you fail at stealth or even if you actually aren't in stealth mode.

 

At least I'll always have Thief 2.

[The Night Haunter]

I never like stat building. The idea that character X is now 5x stronger than character Y makes no sense and there isn't really a fake way of thinking about that to rationalize it.

As much as I hate leveling up as a mechanism in general - seriously in the time frames of these games you are not going to get 2x or more better at anything especially since you aren't an amateur to begin with and why killing an Orc makes you better at potions or casting spells makes zero sense - skill progression is the better way to go. Fallout still has the best system (and yes I know it has some minor stat improvement) to me in CRPGs.

Of course there is. The Character's skill improves. Why does he have more health? Because he's taken hits, been in combats, and now he knows more effectively how to manage enemy hits. At level 1 maybe he just takes an axe to the shoulder, so it takes out 30% of HP pool, at level 10 he has learned that turning away and using his armguard will make him take less damage, so that attack only takes 10% of his HP pool. Since no video game designer is going to put a herculean effort into combat animations to display all the varying levels of combat skill, this is represented by a larger health pool.

Same reasoning can go for why that character does more damage, he learns how to apply his strength in combat more effectively, making his blows hit harder and where they'll count more.

 

The time frame of DAI seemed to me to be on the order of a year, and a year of constant combat and battling the toughest enemies the character's've ever faced will give them marked improvements in combat skill.

 

As for magic, obviously practice makes perfect, they get better at using the spells they know and thus gain access to new spells to start learning, which get better over time, leading to more new spells....

 

 

 

It really isn't that hard of a system to come up with, the only reason to say it is impossible is because you dislike it and you think your opinion is more important than everyone (anyone) else's and you want to try and say they are wrong for liking this system.

 

Personally I hope MEA goes further down the RPG/Stats route than ME3. ME2 was the low point of the ME series, after ME1 had a great Stat system, ME3 brought it back up by reintroducing weapon mods and branching skill trees, and hopefully MEA will go even further, with hopefully customizable armor (a feature lacking since ME1), even more modable weapons, and more diverse skill sets.

[Sidney]

Yeah HP aren't stats like strength and agility. We've all developed the dodging the blow logic even if the animations never support that which is a whole other annoyance.

The raw strength or agility still doesn't work. Learned to focus it? That is a skill not amping up the raw underlying ability. There is an argument that technique matters, take golf, but that is the difference between a raw amateur and a professional. Gaining upper body strength and flexibility will help your golf game but that is going from a feeble weakling to a health individual. In no scenario are you a completely untrained rube like that in games. There isn't much longer a drive you can get once you reach a certain level. Plenty of amateurs can drive as far as a lot of pros. The gain isn't in raw abilities but in skills - short game, rough bunkers and so forth. Soldiers who fight aren't stronger or more agile. They might be calmer under fire, better marksmen, better at using cover. Skills not abilities. You explanation, which is about as clever a defense of this mechanism I have seen BTW kudos seriously not snark here, still doesn't convince me.

Even at that the gains are grossly distorted. A year in combat might make you better. It won't make you the orders of magnitude better than you start with. The difference between a level 10 character and a level 1 is a gulf that makes the gap between a SEAL and a beat cop look narrow -- as in the beat cop could kill a SEAL (as plenty of them have been killed by "lesser" foes) but a level 1 character simply can't kill your level 10 short of cosmically improbable die rolls.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Skryim enemies using stealth would require improvements to the AI, since most players aren't dumb enough to not see a stealthed person walking around in the middle of the lighted areas.

It would work in caves maybe, if only to make scouting ahead less useful.

My typical playstyle was to sneak ahead and snipe with a bow. Low rank enemies took only a single shot, so I mostly didn't know what the AI did (and with higher rank enemies I'd just retreat and let my followers and summons deal with it after that first shot.

[RoboticWater]

Skryim enemies using stealth would require improvements to the AI, since most players aren't dumb enough to not see a stealthed person walking around in the middle of the lighted areas.

 

Still, it would be nice to see as opposed to having only two types of AI that they have right now of "Melee, run at player and swing wildly" or "ranged, run away while shooting magic/bow".

Good stealth is a product of good level design. Without well designed nooks and alleyways for enemies to scurry in and out of, stealth just doesn't work. Most games try to circumvent this by giving stealth enemies invisibility or insane agility, emulating the obfuscation given by physical cover, but that's only a patch for the underlying problem.

 

Even the player stealth in Skyrim is pretty lame: sneak up, get a crit, slink off, and repeat. What makes it worse is that the stat system essentially gets rid of the gameplay loop entirely. By the middle of the game you don't have to even slink off to find cover because you're just invisible. The stat system is a self defeating mechanic, making the game less dynamic and less fun as it progresses.

 

Compare that with a proper stealth game like Dishonored and we can see how a game can expertly handle a stealth character. Stealth enemies are placed in hidden corners waiting to spring a trap, and even normal enemies can have the element of surprise.Not many abilities make the player generally more sneaky (the ones that do arrive late game); rather, they give the player more opportunities. The player gets better by becoming more versatile not more "stealthy," and levels get harder and more open ended to accommodate that.

 

Understandably, open world doesn't lend itself to good level design, so no Bethesda game is likely to have Dishonored's level of stealth gameplay.

 

Stealth shouldn't be about surprise criticals and simply lurking in the shadows. It's about being crafty and thinking tactically; using innate abilities to traverse levels and outsmart enemies.

 

 

Even at that the gains are grossly distorted. A year in combat might make you better. It won't make you the orders of magnitude better than you start with. The difference between a level 10 character and a level 1 is a gulf that makes the gap between a SEAL and a beat cop look narrow -- as in the beat cop could kill a SEAL (as plenty of them have been killed by "lesser" foes) but a level 1 character simply can't kill your level 10 short of cosmically improbable die rolls.

Exactly. Steel is steel and bullets are bullets. If I can hit someone with them, something should happen.

 

As I said before, Dark Souls handles this very well, allowing players to get very granular with their skills while also requiring their attention in every battle. No one's invincible, even the most absurd boss and the most over-leveled player.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Understandably, open world doesn't lend itself to good level design...

We must disagree on what constitutes good lwvel design, because I thinj the exact opposite is true.

Only an open world truly allows good level design, because it needs to accomodate the player approaching from any direction under any circumstances.

Linear games tend to have very contrived levels.

[Farangbaa]

Stat based - More tactical skill is required. You need to be smart about where you move your characters and when they use their abilities.
"skill" based - Faster paced and twitch aiming is required.

*cough*

Stat based just means that after 1.5 runs of the game I'll end up making every character almost identically the same because I've figured out the mechanics of the game, certain builds are clearly better, if not, optimal and I hate wasting time... even, or rather, particularily when playing a game.

Like PoE. This is just from the top of my head:

Tank:
max might, 8 con, spread the rest for optimal saves OR, put everything in deflection.
Everything else:
max might, 4 con, max dex, 9 per, max int, 9 res. (you could argue for 3 con, but meh)

And then that's how you play the game.



Though I realize this is min/maxer problem. I am a min/maxer, and this is why I dislike stat based games.

(that and the almost universal fact that the beginning of the game is watching your character try to kill the air around them, hitting everything but their enemies)

[RoboticWater]

We must disagree on what constitutes good lwvel design, because I thinj the exact opposite is true.

Only an open world truly allows good level design, because it needs to accomodate the player approaching from any direction under any circumstances.

Linear games tend to have very contrived levels.

I'm not saying open world level design is inherently bad, but that it doesn't make it easy for developers to design intentionally.

 

Theoretically, you're right: open world is the best case scenario for stealth games, but only if the developers have enough time to develop functional environments ans open world engines capable of rendering them accurately.

 

Compare Dishonored's final fortress level to one of Skyrim's castles. Both are well fortified and guarded, but Dishonored's castle is much more fun to break into because it's a very deliberately designed arena. Around every corner there's a new opportunity and a new risk and always a new way to combine your abilities with the environment. Skyrim is designed for everyone, so the levels are mostly static. Were Skyrim's AI not gimped beyond belief, sneaking into anywhere would be impossible because the neither the level design nor the gameplay gives the player enough tactical finesse. The AI needs to disengage the player after 30 seconds and stop 10 feet away from every logical hiding spot because otherwise stealth players would have no where to go. Unfortunately this means that there's no grand escapes and tense near-misses either because the AI's too stupid to generate high risk. 

 

And ultimately, it's all the same in Skyrim. Another similar environment with similar AI who all run similar AI routines. Dishonored only gets bigger as it goes, intentionally dolling out new baddies and different mechanics as the game progresses. It's a cycle of comfort and pressure that keeps the player thinking and constantly engaged.

 

Linear games generally have better level design because the developers have time to put real effort into all every aspect of them: visually and mechanically. They have the time to add all manner of hidden grates, alternate alleyways, and interesting traps because they're not stuck trying to fill in absurdly high square footage.

 

I prefer the term crafted to contrived. The levels may be created artificially, but they are made with the player's enjoyment in mind. Whether it be a bombastic train ride or a thrilling arena, linearity exists to put the player in the most fun position as quick as possible. It may hamper completely emergent behavior, but it doesn't stifle it entirely. Done well, linearity exists only to suggest fun gameplay opportunities and urge players to expand on abilities they wouldn't have thought of using at all.

[Tantum Dic Verbo]

Even at that the gains are grossly distorted. A year in combat might make you better. It won't make you the orders of magnitude better than you start with. The difference between a level 10 character and a level 1 is a gulf that makes the gap between a SEAL and a beat cop look narrow -- as in the beat cop could kill a SEAL (as plenty of them have been killed by "lesser" foes) but a level 1 character simply can't kill your level 10 short of cosmically improbable die rolls.

That depends on what your ruleset is designed to do. I used to design (tabletop) rules to simulate how things work in the real world. Eventually, I started designing to simulate how stories are told. Security guards rarely hit James Bond, and if they do, it's a grazing wound. It's not realistic, but neither are the movies we wanted our games to resemble.

We found that we could narrate a pretty good modern action story that way. It didn't look much like reality, but it looked quite a bit like hokey movies.

[Cyonan]

*cough*

Stat based just means that after 1.5 runs of the game I'll end up making every character almost identically the same because I've figured out the mechanics of the game, certain builds are clearly better, if not, optimal and I hate wasting time... even, or rather, particularily when playing a game.

Like PoE. This is just from the top of my head:

Tank:
max might, 8 con, spread the rest for optimal saves OR, put everything in deflection.
Everything else:
max might, 4 con, max dex, 9 per, max int, 9 res. (you could argue for 3 con, but meh)

And then that's how you play the game.



Though I realize this is min/maxer problem. I am a min/maxer, and this is why I dislike stat based games.

(that and the almost universal fact that the beginning of the game is watching your character try to kill the air around them, hitting everything but their enemies)

 

I didn't say anything about variable character builds. There usually will be an optimal setup in any game, either by certain stat point allocations or using certain guns in a FPS. The M4A1 was by far the most popular CT weapon in Counter-Strike for years for a very good reason, after all.

 

If that tank build trivializes combat in PoE to the point where you don't need any tactical skill on the higher difficulties then that's a balance issue with PoE, not a problem of the stat based nature of the system. As I mentioned before XCOM and Fire Emblem are both examples of games which feature stat based combat that you can't just faceroll the higher difficulty levels by adopting a single setup.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I'm not saying open world level design is inherently bad, but that it doesn't make it easy for developers to design intentionally.

Theoretically, you're right: open world is the best case scenario for stealth games, but only if the developers have enough time to develop functional environments ans open world engines capable of rendering them accurately.

Compare Dishonored's final fortress level to one of Skyrim's castles. Both are well fortified and guarded, but Dishonored's castle is much more fun to break into because it's a very deliberately designed arena. Around every corner there's a new opportunity and a new risk and always a new way to combine your abilities with the environment. Skyrim is designed for everyone, so the levels are mostly static. Were Skyrim's AI not gimped beyond belief, sneaking into anywhere would be impossible because the neither the level design nor the gameplay gives the player enough tactical finesse. The AI needs to disengage the player after 30 seconds and stop 10 feet away from every logical hiding spot because otherwise stealth players would have no where to go. Unfortunately this means that there's no grand escapes and tense near-misses either because the AI's too stupid to generate high risk.

And ultimately, it's all the same in Skyrim. Another similar environment with similar AI who all run similar AI routines. Dishonored only gets bigger as it goes, intentionally dolling out new baddies and different mechanics as the game progresses. It's a cycle of comfort and pressure that keeps the player thinking and constantly engaged.

Linear games generally have better level design because the developers have time to put real effort into all every aspect of them: visually and mechanically. They have the time to add all manner of hidden grates, alternate alleyways, and interesting traps because they're not stuck trying to fill in absurdly high square footage.

I prefer the term crafted to contrived. The levels may be created artificially, but they are made with the player's enjoyment in mind. Whether it be a bombastic train ride or a thrilling arena, linearity exists to put the player in the most fun position as quick as possible. It may hamper completely emergent behavior, but it doesn't stifle it entirely. Done well, linearity exists only to suggest fun gameplay opportunities and urge players to expand on abilities they wouldn't have thought of using at all.

My concern here is that the linear design allows the developer not only to intend a specific solution, but to force that solution.

And that's not fun. I don't want to be told, even implicitly, how to advance through the level. In fact, when I am, I almost always try to disobey.

Linear design may not stifle emergent behaviour by necessity, but I find it makes it too easy for developers not to allow it.

Emergent behaviour is what I want all of my behaviour to be. I don't advance through a Skyrim fort facing enemies at all. I usually find an unassailable position on some nearby mountains and snipe at the enemies until they're all dead, and then I go collect the loot. Linear design would almost never allow that.

Developers are seemingly never trying to leave opportunities for the players to subvert their design, but that's generally what I like doing, so I favour design principles within which developers have trouble closing all those loopholes.

[Farangbaa]

If that tank build trivializes combat in PoE to the point where you don't need any tactical skill on the higher difficulties then that's a balance issue with PoE, not a problem of the stat based nature of the system. As I mentioned before XCOM and Fire Emblem are both examples of games which feature stat based combat that you can't just faceroll the higher difficulty levels by adopting a single setup.

It doesn't trivialize it. If you used that build without knowledge of the mechanics you'd lose every battle but because you know the mechanics you can abuse such risky builds, maximize damage and steamroll over everything. Thisd is much less an issue if you can not use the game's mechanics against itself. This, in my opinion, is most prevalent in stat based games.

(and the more of these types of games I play, the more I understand why the Asian games use randomness so much. It adds suspense, some anxiety)

Though PoE's AI IS shaky, I'll give you that.

[Cyonan]

It doesn't trivialize it. If you used that build without knowledge of the mechanics you'd lose every battle but because you know the mechanics you can abuse such risky builds, maximize damage and steamroll over everything. Thisd is much less an issue if you can not use the game's mechanics against itself. This, in my opinion, is most prevalent in stat based games.

Though PoE's AI IS shaky, I'll give you that.

 

I'd consider mechanics mastery to be part of the skill of playing the game, though =P

 

You can also abuse things like right hand advantage in the action based combat of Mass Effect 3 to get away with what would otherwise be pretty risky moves.

 

Or when I play CS:GO and need to know when to use walking vs crouching to maintain accuracy while firing, how to effectively peek around corners to minimize risk of being shot, etc.

 

Knowledge of the mechanics is just as necessary as actual aiming reflexes in a lot of well designed action based games.