264 réponses à ce sujet

[Cyonan]

That's your choice.

It can be played either way, so neither one is the objectively right answer.

 

Game design in general has no objectively right answer, so criticisms about games are virtually always subjective by nature.

 

Just as you like certain things I've criticized, I'll like certain things about games that you criticize. I mean, I think that removing stat based accuracy in Mass Effect was one of the best things they did in ME2 because that's a terrible mechanic for a shooter to use.

 

My perception here might be shaded by my wizard-heavy parties. 4 mages with no spells, a thief who has run out of arrows, and a low HP Cleric don't handle surprises well.

 

Maybe, but my Paladin and Fighter with most of their health bar didn't care much about even half a dozen surprises in a row.

 

If you can bypass a limitation that easily, then it's not much of a limitation in the first place.

 

It probably didn't. But in implementing an existing ruleset, I'm not going to blame them for not making up new features.

I'm still annoyed they got Command wrong (it's supposed to be no-save).

 

A game must always stand on its own merits, so I will always judge it on its own merits as a game.

 

I'll not excuse things I see as poor design simply because it was in the original ruleset. The AD&D2 rules were designed for pen and paper and Baldur's Gate is a video game. When switching over to another medium, you have to make changes to accommodate that switch.

 

But not every aspect of every game.

 

This is an aspect that decides if you can continue to play your character or not so yes, it needs to have an element of skill in my mind.

 

Skill affects the odds. It's like playing Craps. It's still a game of chance, but if you're making sucker bets that's your own fault.

 

Skill does not affect natural 20s, which is what I have been talking about specifically because skill does not affect them and a single one can result in the death of a level 1 D&D character.

 

You keep going on about how dice introduce randomness or how skill affects the odds like those are supposed to be actual counter-arguments to me point, but they completely miss the point.

 

I do think symmetrical mechanics are really important, so if at level 1 you can OHK a level 1 bandit, then a level 1 bandit should be able to OHK you.

Also, since it's a party-based game, losing one character doesn't matter so much. I also think BioWare's modern games should allow death from gameplay.

 

I'm not keen on symmetrical mechanics 100% of the time but in this case this is where I prefer what the Shadowrun Returns games have done. Characters can still go down easy if you're not careful about it, but nobody is being killed in 1 hit. You wont OHK enemies at level 1 either.

 

Baldur's Gate also forces an instant game over if your main character ever dies, barring any bugs that can happen.

 

Baldur's Gate did totally invent the getting chunked at -10 HP. That isn't anywhere in the tabletop rules. I can see why they did it (it allowed them to implement the limitations of the Raise Dead spell from the rules), but I'm not a fan.

 

This isn't the same thing, though. They really should have simply used the "Not dead until -10 HP", or whatever the negative HP limit was for AD&D2.

[Cyonan]

Count me in the "they probably don't care" camp. Genres are great as a very basic quick guide to what you might enjoy - but that's about it. 

 

I've never known a developer to care a great deal about genre when making a game.

 

The closest thing I've seen is Blizzard insisting that Heroes of the Storm was a "Team Brawler" and not a MOBA. Probably because they wanted to separate themselves from the label, but it didn't really work with the playerbase anyway and they finally accepted that it's a MOBA.

 

As you note they're basically just useful as a quick reference to what style of game it is for both gamers talking to each other and developers telling gamers about the game they're making(but after they list the genre, they give us the details which is what we really wanted to know). Most gamers accept and understand that genres aren't even well defined terms.

 

Not even ones we treat with a literal description like First Person Shooter. Both Call of Duty and Duke Nukem 3D are FPS games, but they are vastly different styles of game. All it really means is "You're in first person shooting stuff".

 

It's pretty stupid to limit yourself to a very strict definition of a genre anyway.

[Mikael_Sebastia]

Even in D&D with the vancian spell system, casters are still pretty broken. You can get quite a few spell slots even by around level 4-6, so unless you're running through a large dungeon or the GM is making you do half a dozen fights in a day it's still a workable strategy. The biggest blocker to it is probably that you'd ****** off the other players who aren't immune to the CC you're spamming everywhere, but that's a non issue in BG when I'm playing single-player.

 

If you're making a video game based on those rules, you really need to address those issues. I'm not going to make excuses for a game doing something I thought was poor design.

 

I agree wholeheartedly on everything you say about Baldur's Gate, but extending that criticism to the pen&paper game(s) is a bit unfair on those grounds.  D&D's vancian spell system is quite interpretation heavy, and has a lot of freeform in expense of clearly defined gameplay mechanics*.  As an example Web spamming you mention wouldn't be that viable strategy as it is in BG, because it has a major drawback which is almost totally absent in BG.  Those strands of a web are highly flammable (actual quote from first edition rulebook I am holding says "Any fire - torch, flaming oil, flaming sword, etc. - will set them alight and burn them away in a single round". I am pretty sure this was the same in the second edition as well, but I don't have the book with me atm).  

 

Ofc, that is just one spell, but magic-users and magic in general had a lot of disadvantages similar to that example which couldn't be faithfully modeled in a videogame (like Haste ages you one year every time you use it. Or you have to lug a spellbook around, which can be damaged just easily as a regular book). Also some restrictions were simply left out like spell ingredients or the draconian spell learning system.

 

The rule-set is one of the worst choices for a videogame medium, even if the fantasy genre D&D created is still iconic and translates pretty well other environments including videogames. It's a huge topic, but I feel that calling the classic D&D pen&paers "broken" does them a great disservice, despite their many unbalances and overall quirkiness.  

 

*This extends to the general rules as well, along with incoherence and needless complexity along with an anal precision to certain details.  Plus with couple simply bad mechanics like the whole THACO-system.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Game design in general has no objectively right answer, so criticisms about games are virtually always subjective by nature.

Just as you like certain things I've criticized, I'll like certain things about games that you criticize. I mean, I think that removing stat based accuracy in Mass Effect was one of the best things they did in ME2 because that's a terrible mechanic for a shooter to use.

For playing in real time, it probably is. But when aiming while paused, it was a terrific way to turn aiming into a character skill.

Perhaps the stat-driven aiming should return, but only while paused (of course, then we'd need to be able to give fire orders while paused, so it would basically be VATS).

My point here is that different mechanics look very different based on how one plays the game. I would like the game to accommodate a wider range of playstyles.

Maybe, but my Paladin and Fighter with most of their health bar didn't care much about even half a dozen surprises in a row.

If you can bypass a limitation that easily, then it's not much of a limitation in the first place.

I'll concede that. But that just brings me back around to my GM point.

A game must always stand on its own merits, so I will always judge it on its own merits as a game.

I'll not excuse things I see as poor design simply because it was in the original ruleset. The AD&D2 rules were designed for pen and paper and Baldur's Gate is a video game. When switching over to another medium, you have to make changes to accommodate that switch.

I think the goal of all CRPGs should be to reproduce tabletop RPG gameplay (but without the need for other players).

If the medium matters, that difference is what needs to be removed. The gameplay shouldn't change.

This is an aspect that decides if you can continue to play your character or not so yes, it needs to have an element of skill in my mind.

Skill does not affect natural 20s, which is what I have been talking about specifically because skill does not affect them and a single one can result in the death of a level 1 D&D character.

You keep going on about how dice introduce randomness or how skill affects the odds like those are supposed to be actual counter-arguments to me point, but they completely miss the point.

You're looking at it too narrowly. Yes, once the to hit roll is being made, there's no skill involved (except perhaps to determine whether the character dies - the System Shock roll, which BG didn't include, is relevant here).

But there's a lot that can go one before that To Hit roll is made. If you never let the wolf get close to you, the roll never gets made. If you always scout ahead rather than marching on blindly, you won't stumble into ambushes.

I'm not keen on symmetrical mechanics 100% of the time but in this case this is where I prefer what the Shadowrun Returns games have done. Characters can still go down easy if you're not careful about it, but nobody is being killed in 1 hit. You wont OHK enemies at level 1 either.

Asymmetrical mechanics damage the coherence of the setting. If two relevantly similar characters follow different mechanical rules, there needs to be an in-game explanation for that.

I will never accept gameplay/lore segregation.

Baldur's Gate also forces an instant game over if your main character ever dies, barring any bugs that can happen.

That's just poor design. It tells us nothing about the general style of game.

This isn't the same thing, though. They really should have simply used the "Not dead until -10 HP", or whatever the negative HP limit was for AD&D2.

It's an example of BioWare deviating from the AD&D rules and making the game worse.

[Cyonan]

I think the goal of all CRPGs should be to reproduce tabletop RPG gameplay (but without the need for other players).

If the medium matters, that difference is what needs to be removed. The gameplay shouldn't change.

 

The difference is impossible to remove due to technological limitations.

 

Thus, the mechanics need to adapt to fit the medium.

 

You're looking at it too narrowly. Yes, once the to hit roll is being made, there's no skill involved (except perhaps to determine whether the character dies - the System Shock roll, which BG didn't include, is relevant here).

But there's a lot that can go one before that To Hit roll is made. If you never let the wolf get close to you, the roll never gets made. If you always scout ahead rather than marching on blindly, you won't stumble into ambushes.

 

Anybody who has played tabletop a decent amount should know how ridiculous of an argument you're making right now. It's simply not realistic to say "don't let the enemy roll To Hit against you", especially since we're talking about level 1 characters.

 

All it really takes is a single bandit with a bow to negate the whole "never let them get close" thing.

 

Asymmetrical mechanics damage the coherence of the setting. If two relevantly similar characters follow different mechanical rules, there needs to be an in-game explanation for that.

I will never accept gameplay/lore segregation.

 

There's typically plenty of that lovely ambiguity you love so much for you to exploit to figure why it might be that way in lore =P

 

Maybe that mage has some super rare spell component that's required, or they did some ritual that you don't know, or whatever else.

 

That's just poor design. It tells us nothing about the general style of game.

 

My entire thing in this discussion has always been criticisms about Baldur's Gate(and a little bit D&D in general) which has nothing to do about style of the game.

 

All I'm doing is talking about things which I thought was poor design in the game.

 

That's the whole point of my posts. There is no other purpose for me other than pointing out things I thought Baldur's Gate did not do well, even "for its time".

[Il Divo]

Asymmetrical mechanics damage the coherence of the setting. If two relevantly similar characters follow different mechanical rules, there needs to be an in-game explanation for that.

 

 

This is where I end up being confused. Given the level of effort you're willing to put forth to misinterpret what an on screen character is saying, I don't see why asymmetrical game mechanics should be a problem, in any capacity. 

[In Exile]

This is where I end up being confused. Given the level of effort you're willing to put forth to misinterpret what an on screen character is saying, I don't see why asymmetrical game mechanics should be a problem, in any capacity. 

 

I don't see why we assume gameplay mechanics are the natural laws of the setting. This isn't order of the stick - the Warden isn't going around complaining about her HP bar being low or that the tooltips on abilities are garbage. 

[KaiserShep]

I don't see why we assume gameplay mechanics are the natural laws of the setting. This isn't order of the stick - the Warden isn't going around complaining about her HP bar being low or that the tooltips on abilities are garbage. 

 

 

My Warden is constantly annoyed at having to open all those chests. 

[Il Divo]

I don't see why we assume gameplay mechanics are the natural laws of the setting. This isn't order of the stick - the Warden isn't going around complaining about her HP bar being low or that the tooltips on abilities are garbage. 

 

I could be reading him wrong, but I think what Sylvius is saying is that he considers that a form of metagaming. 

 

My issue is that his other arguments seem to be at odds with this approach. If we can somehow convince ourselves that Bioware lets us role-play a coward just by using a silent protagonist, I can't see why asymmetrical mechanics should pose a problem from a role-playing stand-point. We could just say that we don't know the natural laws of the setting and continue from there. 

[Draining Dragon]

My Warden is constantly annoyed at having to open all those chests.

Can I get you a ladder, so you can get off my back?

[Big Bad]

From a publishing perspective, totally. Bethesda (and Zenimax) aren't ingenious patrons that fund cool IP and create consistently iconic universes. I'll give them Dishonored and Wolfenstien (even though that was an existing IP), but they're no Devolver Digital.

 

As for the games, I've said something like this before: taken separately, nearly every element in a Bethesda game sucks: the combat's weak, the AI's dumb, the enemies aren't varied, the leveling's not very deep, etc., but Bethesda games don't work because they're individual elements work. Simply fighting a bear in Skyrim is a languid affair: you chip away at the thing's excessive health bar with repetitive clicking motions while maybe occasionally throwing a spell or two and avoiding its attacks with a few back steps. The fun comes from accidentally stumbling into that bear after running away from an OP Stormcloak patrol and subsequently hiding in a cave that turns out to hold a ancient relic. Bethesda games work because all these lame elements smash together to form these fun experiences. Of course, when all that smashing isn't happening, you still have a 3D sandbox to futz around in.

 

My main problem with Bethesda games is that they're practically a de facto monopoly. We suffer through Bethesda's terrible engine, lackluster design, and horrible narratives because no one else does what they do. Apparently no one wants (or can) to compete in that market. Sure, we have devs copying open world elements left and right and trying to "add their own spin," (losing parts of themselves in the process) but no one does the "3D do whatever you want" style RPG that Bethesda does.

 

Imagine a big publisher scraping together a bunch of talent to create a "Bethesda killer" RPG set in a unique setting (like steampunk or sci-fi) with a slightly smaller scope, tighter mechanics, and an engine that isn't made of elmer's glue and wet noodles. Hell, I'd buy the game if it was a just Skyrim clone not set in a generic fantasy setting. Incidentally though, the Bethesda RPG is precisely the kind of game that requires a developer funded by a big publisher. You don't get Morrowind, Skyrim, or Fallout without big piles of cash.

You have just perfectly described what I love (and don't quite love) about Bethesda games.  Well done.

[Sylvius the Mad]

The difference is impossible to remove due to technological limitations.

Technology improves. The differences get smaller.

Changing other things risks exactly what has happened to the genre, where people think about it in terms of video game features rather than RPG features.

Anybody who has played tabletop a decent amount should know how ridiculous of an argument you're making right now. It's simply not realistic to say "don't let the enemy roll To Hit against you", especially since we're talking about level 1 characters.

And sometimes you'll die.

But you can reduce the risk of that. You can't eliminate it, but you can reduce it.

There's typically plenty of that lovely ambiguity you love so much for you to exploit to figure why it might be that way in lore =P

Maybe that mage has some super rare spell component that's required, or they did some ritual that you don't know, or whatever else.

Such things should be documented in the rules.

We should get a complete set of rules to read, just like with a tabletop game. We don't have to read them to play, but they're available. If there's some possibility of a rare component or new rituals, they should be in the rules.

My entire thing in this discussion has always been criticisms about Baldur's Gate(and a little bit D&D in general) which has nothing to do about style of the game.

Right, and what you said there was true of Baldur's Gate, but not D&D in general, so I drew that distinction.

[Sylvius the Mad]

This is where I end up being confused. Given the level of effort you're willing to put forth to misinterpret what an on screen character is saying, I don't see why asymmetrical game mechanics should be a problem, in any capacity.

I'm not misinterpreting. I'm interpreting. There's no way to tell whether I'm doing it right, so I can simply declare that I am without fear of contradiction.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I don't see why we assume gameplay mechanics are the natural laws of the setting. This isn't order of the stick - the Warden isn't going around complaining about her HP bar being low or that the tooltips on abilities are garbage.

Of course they are. That's what the rules always are. They either accurately describe the setting, or they're an abstraction of the setting. But they need to be an accurate abstraction. The consequences of the abstraction needs to be identical to the consequences of the natural laws.

Injury and death in the setting work exactly the way HP say they do. Why would we ever think otherwise? What evidence do we have for that not being the case?

[Sylvius the Mad]

My issue is that his other arguments seem to be at odds with this approach. If we can somehow convince ourselves that Bioware lets us role-play a coward just by using a silent protagonist, I can't see why asymmetrical mechanics should pose a problem from a role-playing stand-point. We could just say that we don't know the natural laws of the setting and continue from there.

How can the character not be aware of the natural laws that govern his setting?

[Il Divo]

How can the character not be aware of the natural laws that govern his setting?

 

Why not? Approach it from the perspective of a scientist - we have a set of assumptions about what the natural laws of our universe are - until they're disproven, at which point we reform our beliefs about what those natural laws actually are. The first time we're exposed to something that violates our theories, we're not immediately gifted with an understanding of what caused the violation or how to fix it. 

 

Similarly, your character could have a set of beliefs about the natural laws of the setting. When something breaks those laws, your character will observe it, even if he can't explain why, in that context. 

 

I guess this just strikes me as a natural consequence of your positions regarding the silent protagonist - it's acceptable/encouraged to fill in the game's gaps with your own narrative (Ex: role-playing a coward)- so there's no reason for us to believe that we have to know all the laws of the setting or that those laws even need to be consistent - maybe the character  inhabits an inconsistent universe. Much like how you don't require the game to tell you that you can role-play a coward, it isn't necessary for the game to document an inconsistent universe for that to be the setting of the game. 

[Iakus]

How can the character not be aware of the natural laws that govern his setting?

Well, Planescape: Torment and the Nameless One was pretty much all about that...

[Il Divo]

^Didn't they call Sigil "City of Doors" or something similar? Basic idea was that we never knew what the hell was going to happen - until it did. Physics were always subject to change. 

[Iakus]

^Didn't they call Sigil "City of Doors" or something similar? Basic idea was that we never knew what the hell was going to happen - until it did. Physics were always subject to change. 

And the protagonist had no memories to start with anyways...

[Cyonan]

Technology improves. The differences get smaller.

Changing other things risks exactly what has happened to the genre, where people think about it in terms of video game features rather than RPG features.

 

The differences are impossible to remove entirely without a massive breakthrough in technology. This is not simply my opinion, it's objective fact. A computer can't 100% replace the other Humans in a pen and paper game, nor can it get "close enough that it makes no difference". This is due to the fact that a computer can only ever follow instructions, but can't think for itself. It means a computer is technically 100% predictable. Yes, even RNG isn't truly random.

 

Until that's dealt with, the mechanics need to change to fit the medium.

 

What happened to the genre is not a bad thing, nor am I inclined to care about your little crusade over the definition of the term RPG that I never agreed with in the first place.

 

I'm never not going to look at gameplay mechanics when judging a video game, especially in the areas of combat if the game expects me to be doing it half the time.

 

And sometimes you'll die.

But you can reduce the risk of that. You can't eliminate it, but you can reduce it.

 

and I'm saying I don't like that it can happen through no fault of the player/character.

 

I don't get what's so hard to understand about that, or why you started going on about things like dice introducing randomness which isn't an actual argument against that.

 

Such things should be documented in the rules.

We should get a complete set of rules to read, just like with a tabletop game. We don't have to read them to play, but they're available. If there's some possibility of a rare component or new rituals, they should be in the rules.

 

But it's left ambiguous which means you're free to interpret it how you want.

 

That it's not documented is a documentation issue, not a lore/gameplay one. You're the one choosing for it to be a lore/gameplay problem.

 

Right, and what you said there was true of Baldur's Gate, but not D&D in general, so I drew that distinction.

 

The only criticisms I've leveled at D&D are A. Magic is too overpowered with too little drawbacks and B. I don't like that level 1 characters can die without skill factoring into it. I've also noted that the magic thing isn't as bad in stock D&D and that Baldur's Gate really amplifies the issue. I doesn't bother me so much to the point that I would avoid playing a D&D/Pathfinder campaign just because of it.

 

It was noted that web spam only works in BG for specific reasons but overall I maintain that both of those are the case, and that I don't like either of those being the case.

 

Everything else has been Baldur's Gate specific.

 

How can the character not be aware of the natural laws that govern his setting?

 

A character would be aware of them as a concept, but not in detail.

 

They know that a sword hurts when it hits them. They don't know it did 6 points of damage to their health pool of 12 HP.

 

They wouldn't know that a nat 20 is a critical success while a nat 1 is a critical failure, only that around 5% of the time they do something they either succeed or fail spectacularly.

[Xen]

Considering that of the 5 Biower games I've played, the relationship between their age and how fun they are is inversely proportional, I'd say no, Biower does not need to "go back" to anything. 

Now, they could afford to make their writing (in all aspects, characters, lore, narrative etc) less mind numbingly stupid, lazy and nonsensical than ME3's was, but tbh it's not like ME1 or 2 was ever Dostoyevsky in the first place, so I don't think it'd be all that difficult to get back to that level.

[Revan Reborn]

BioWare can't go back. They were an Indie studio with a small team and tiny budget at a time when it was much easier to make quality video games (not to mention much simpler games). Now, making AAA video games costs tens of millions of dollars (if not close to $100 million), and every game after Mass Effect 1 (last game before EA) would not have been possible without the funding, resources, and staff EA provided.

 

BioWare barely had the resources and money to make Mass Effect, and they had to merge with Pandemic Studios just to actually finish the game. Ironically, it's because of EA that BioWare has been able to do so much since the first Mass Effect. The notion that EA ruined BioWare is also nonsense, as EA gave BioWare full discretion and even put BioWare in charge of EA's entire RPG department.

 

What led to BioWare's downfall is it tried to do too much. BioWare developed ME3 and DAII on 18 month development cycles. BioWare also was developing SWTOR in full production since 2008, thus creating a huge studio with an astronomical budget of allegedly $150 million (still the biggest budget MMO to date). SWTOR also had an incredibly short development cycle releasing only three years later (that's insane for a AAA MMO). To the credit of BioWare, SWTOR still has the fastest selling MMO launch to date.

 

It's no surprise that DAII and ME3 were both heavily criticized, largely because they were rushed. The same issue applies to SWTOR, which clearly was not finished as the endgame content wasn't even fully implemented at the release of the game. BioWare tried to do far too much with not enough time and they cracked under the pressure. With the disappointing performance of DAII, the controversial ending of ME3, and the impending catastrophe that was SWTOR after losing 700,000 subscribers three months, the doctors decided to retire.

 

There is only one thing BioWare needs to do. TAKE ITS TIME. Thankfully, BioWare has done that and so far it has paid off. DAI was delayed another year to add in playable races other than humans and other features and because of the delay DAI went on to become the 2014 Game of the Year. MEA has had a much longer development cycle than typical of BioWare games and was delayed another six months because BioWare realizes taking its time will pay off in the end.

 

Studios like Rockstar, Irrational Games, Naughty Dog, CD Projekt Red, Blizzard, Bungie, and Bethesda Game Studios are all examples of the best in the industry who take their time and get results. Longer dev cycles are what these games need and hopefully BioWare will continue to encourage quality and time over quantity and frequency.

[In Exile]

BioWare can't go back. They were an Indie studio with a small team and tiny budget at a time when it was much easier to make quality video games (not to mention much simpler games). Now, making AAA video games costs tens of millions of dollars (if not close to $100 million), and every game after Mass Effect 1 (last game before EA) would not have been possible without the funding, resources, and staff EA provided.

 

BioWare barely had the resources and money to make Mass Effect, and they had to merge with Pandemic Studios just to actually finish the game. Ironically, it's because of EA that BioWare has been able to do so much since the first Mass Effect. The notion that EA ruined BioWare is also nonsense, as EA gave BioWare full discretion and even put BioWare in charge of EA's entire RPG department.

 

What led to BioWare's downfall is it tried to do too much. BioWare developed ME3 and DAII on 18 month development cycles. BioWare also was developing SWTOR in full production since 2008, thus creating a huge studio with an astronomical budget of allegedly $150 million (still the biggest budget MMO to date). SWTOR also had an incredibly short development cycle releasing only three years later (that's insane for a AAA MMO). To the credit of BioWare, SWTOR still has the fastest selling MMO launch to date.

 

It's no surprise that DAII and ME3 were both heavily criticized, largely because they were rushed. The same issue applies to SWTOR, which clearly was not finished as the endgame content wasn't even fully implemented at the release of the game. BioWare tried to do far too much with not enough time and they cracked under the pressure. With the disappointing performance of DAII, the controversial ending of ME3, and the impending catastrophe that was SWTOR after losing 700,000 subscribers three months, the doctors decided to retire.

 

There is only one thing BioWare needs to do. TAKE ITS TIME. Thankfully, BioWare has done that and so far it has paid off. DAI was delayed another year to add in playable races other than humans and other features and because of the delay DAI went on to become the 2014 Game of the Year. MEA has had a much longer development cycle than typical of BioWare games and was delayed another six months because BioWare realizes taking its time will pay off in the end.

 

Studios like Rockstar, Irrational Games, Naughty Dog, CD Projekt Red, Blizzard, Bungie, and Bethesda Game Studios are all examples of the best in the industry who take their time and get results. Longer dev cycles are what these games need and hopefully BioWare will continue to encourage quality and time over quantity and frequency.

 

Bioware was an AAA developer. BG was not some indie project  - any more than Fallout 1&2 were indie projects, or PS:T was an indie project. The gaming market was different back then in terms of what size a studio had to be to make an AAA game. 

 

Bioware didn't merge with Pandemic. They were owned by the same fund, but the acquisitions were separate. It was the fund that flipped Bioware to EA. The financial issues came earlier, from around the time of JE and the fact that they did take their time with DA:O, electing to make a game while not making any money. 

 

And I wouldn't cite Bestheda as a studio that releases quality. Just because their game is a massive seller doesn't mean it's a quality release, and this is a company that releases a broken game a mod kit and says "good luck". 

[Cyonan]

Studios like Rockstar, Irrational Games, Naughty Dog, CD Projekt Red, Blizzard, Bungie, and Bethesda Game Studios are all examples of the best in the industry who take their time and get results. Longer dev cycles are what these games need and hopefully BioWare will continue to encourage quality and time over quantity and frequency.

 

Bethesda regularly releases games that are buggy as hell and leaves it up to the community to fix.

 

Blizzard is rather hit or miss these days. Overwatch and Hearthstone are great but they also released Diablo 3, Warlords of Draenor, and Heroes of the Storm all in unfinished states. Warlords at this point has basically been abandoned while they work on the next expansion and has seen the single largest subscriber drop in the history of World of Warcraft by a very significant margin.

 

and Bungie released Destiny in the state it was.

[Mikael_Sebastia]

B. I don't like that level 1 characters can die without skill factoring into it. I've also noted that the magic thing isn't as bad in stock D&D and that Baldur's Gate really amplifies the issue. I doesn't bother me so much to the point that I would avoid playing a D&D/Pathfinder campaign just because of it.
 

 

I'd say this goes well beyond 1 level, and it's something that can and will happen all throughout a typical old school D&D campaign, if you play it by the book. Tons of monsters and traps have instant kill abilities vs one failed d20 save roll, also books give you very little means or resources to scale challenges to level of players (monsters don't have challenge ratings, most of encounter tables are universal, etc).

 

If you just don't prefer that, then there's not much to argue against, because I'd say that's hardwired to the spirit of classic D&D (look at the early modules, like Tomb of Horros or Temple of Elemental Evil). Personally I am only bothered by this, if a game doesn't complement or support these rules, and forces you a narrative unsuited for them. This is the case of Baldur's Gate. I love the series, but I'd never do a D&D campaign similar to Bhaalspawn saga.

 

Old school D&D rules don't do a typical game / movie / book plot, which centers around fixed protagonist well, because of these unfair and random deaths. In a good campaign dying isn't a game over but a setback, since usually you just do another character and story goes on. You "lose" only when you fail to do some campaign objective (like as an example, one campaign I played long time ago, players as a party failed to stop Elemental Prince of Ice, which resulted a new ice age for the realm. Tons of player characters died, retired or turned to NPCs before that final defeat happened after couple of irl years of playing).