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Rivmusique

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They seem similar.

Sawyer school of design: cRPGs need to be "balanced"; every build deserves a chance; every roleplaying preference should be supported by the character system; every skill should be useful; every player should feel rewarded.

Vault Dweller school of design: cRPGs need to be balanced; poor builds have no chance; only sensible roleplaying preferences should be supported; skills should be useful when this is supported by the setting and common sense; only alpha players that master the system should feel rewarded.

Both use the word "balance", but they represent extreme opposite doctrines. The first one is designed for causals who can't get into cRPGs, while the second one is designed for grognards.

They both seem to be a similar place regarding trap choices in character creation/progression at least, which was the topic I was referring to. I don't think attempts to minimize them in both of their games was a bad thing, unlike some were saying back there.
 

Mozg

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AoD (and DR) has horrible trap choices in character creation and development.

Like: Even division of skillpoints rather than focusing. Going 50/50 between a ranged skill and a melee skill is a pretty intuitively sane decision (versatility!) but is actually a mistake due to the game's mechanics.
 
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vivec

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AoD (and DR) has horrible trap choices in character creation and development.

Like: Even division of skillpoints rather than focusing. Going 50/50 between a ranged skill and a melee skill is a pretty intuitively sane decision (versatility!) but is actually a mistake due to the game's mechanics.
Even PE has it. Try playing paladin all maxed out on ranged weapons and not defense stats.
 

agris

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+3 and 15% are not the same.

I agree, aesthetically and because percentile increases depend on the damage you deal, the decision to go with percentages was lame as fuck
Seriously, this is part of the charm of the older AD&D 1st/2nd ed systems. +1 damage isn't + 5% (lolz d20!). It's anywhere from +25% - 100% (+40% avg) for a 1d4 weapon, to +10% - 100% (+18% avg) for a 1d10 weapon. AC+1 (bonus, not malus) is not 5% less chance of being hit, it's a function of a given enemy's THAC0.

The completely linear percentage-based scaling of attributes in PoE is banal, IMO. I actually liked the weird tiering of bonus in the the old AD&D system, wherein a large range of values give no bonuses, with only exceptional values providing a benefit, and sometimes non-linearly. Guess that makes me a grognard.
 

Grunker

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+3 and 15% are not the same.

I agree, aesthetically and because percentile increases depend on the damage you deal, the decision to go with percentages was lame as fuck
Seriously, this is part of the charm of the older AD&D 1st/2nd ed systems.

Sorry, no. That's like saying the charm is that they're written on paper. Static boni isn't some unique thing about that shitty-ass, broken down, fucked system. There are next to no saving graces about AD&D except maybe the spells, the rest is complete horseshit. Every other D&D edition including earlier ones have merits, but AD&D is a turd.

AD&D has a to hit system that is identical to a progressive boni system, but uses a penalty-based recessive system instead in the form of THAC0. It's not that it's complicated, it's just that it's complexity for no gain whatsoever. And it's how the whole system is designed. A stat system where single stat gets an arbitrary percentile subsystem because why the fuck not. Arbitrary ass-pull systems and numbers that are the way they are because whoever designed it felt like that's the way it should be that day.
 
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agris

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Sorry, no. That's like saying the charm is that they're written on paper. Static boni isn't some unique thing about that shitty-ass, broken down, fucked system. There are next to no saving graces about AD&D except maybe the spells, the rest is complete horseshit. Every other D&D edition including earlier ones have merits, but AD&D is a turd.

Why the harsh words? If you've debated this somewhere else, just point me towards it.
 

Grunker

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Posted early by mistake - added another line.

Why the harsh words?

I've said many times that through my 20 year P&P career I don't think I've played more than 3 or 4 systems that are worse than AD&D. The IE games are brilliant in spite of it - because they rightly focus on the only salvagable thing, the spell system - not because of it.
 

agris

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I don't get it either, but I learned Grunker hates the AD&D 1st ed attribute system.

STR having 18/XX percentiles is kinda weird though. And the spell system is the best part.

Does PnP AD&D 1st/2nd ed use building points and have the major/minor quirks/flaws system?
 

Prime Junta

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Also these CRAZY builds are possible because the developers accounted for them, it's certainly not YOU who came up with them and therefore the whole building process is reduced to figuring out what the developers thought, rather than through actual playing which is what I mean when I say you should work for it rather than have it handed to you.

No, that would be BG2 with its canned classes and kits again.

In Pillars, I'm pretty sure the devs didn't think of, say, a barbarian focusing on attack speed, AoE, and Interrupt, dual-wielding Spelltongues, and thereby keeping her Savage Defiance up ungodly long. Yet it works, and works well. (Want more offbeat examples? I've got lots.)
 

Grunker

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I don't see how thaco is so bad, it's the to hit system backwards, whoopdee fuck.

It's illustrative of the whole system: do bullshit with no point. The system is the textbook definition of arbitrary: "based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system." Why does class X get a saving throw bump against Dragon Breath at level X? Because wooptidoodeelidooo.

I don't get it either, but I learned Grunker hates the AD&D 1st ed attribute system.

No, I hate the entire system, except for the spells. Literally everything else is terrible.

I could live with everything being so bad if there was any kind of customization. But no. It's just "pick a class, click level up whenever you hear a sound."
 
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Lurker King

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They seem similar.

Sawyer school of design: cRPGs need to be "balanced"; every build deserves a chance; every roleplaying preference should be supported by the character system; every skill should be useful; every player should feel rewarded.

Vault Dweller school of design: cRPGs need to be balanced; poor builds have no chance; only sensible roleplaying preferences should be supported; skills should be useful when this is supported by the setting and common sense; only alpha players that master the system should feel rewarded.

Both use the word "balance", but they represent extreme opposite doctrines. The first one is designed for causals who can't get into cRPGs, while the second one is designed for grognards.

They both seem to be a similar place regarding trap choices in character creation/progression at least, which was the topic I was referring to. I don't think attempts to minimize them in both of their games was a bad thing, unlike some were saying back there.

600px-Khshotty.jpg


Let's discuss design! It's design discussion time! Design discussion time for Rivmusique!

The problem is that by “trap choices” you can mean different things: (1) bad builds; (2) failed attempts to impose yourself on the setting with your roleplaying preferences; (3) crappy items; (4) items that are crappy relatively to other items; (5) crappy skills; (6) complicated mechanics that induce you to make bad builds, etc.

You would think no one in its right mind would present (1) and (6) as actual problems, but I remember clear Sawyer saying in an interview that was too easy to make a bad build in D&D – see also Mozg’s comment above. For me, these are only trap choices for popamole players. (2) also seems the typical childish thing that only a Bethesda fan would require. It reminds of a causal complaining that AoD sucks because he couldn’t role-play as a two swordsman with a silver tongue. Maybe he was happy to role-play as a muscle wizard in PoE? I don’t know.

Therefore, only (3) and (5) are worthy of consideration, but even then this raises more questions than it seems. Consider (3). In the interview I quoted earlier, Sawyer complaints about how players are forced in some cRPGs to wear padded armor at the game's opening, saying that they are mechanically awful and they'll gladly ditch it as soon as anything else becomes available. Now, you can interpret this in two ways: (a) players should start the game with good things; (b) we should have good items of each type and padded armors shouldn’t be excluded. Now, (a) doesn’t make any sense because it’s an example of (4). You start the game with a shitty padded armor because you are a newbie that will get better items as the game progress. Padded armors in this case are awful just in comparison to better items that you will earn later. Saying that every item should be good it is utterly meaningless in this context, because we only have good items in comparison to bad ones. If every item is good, no item is good.

How about (b)? If indeed is the case that some types of items are always bad (and for me it’s not clear that this is the case, see BG2 for instance), then this is just a matter of personal preference. Far from being a proof of what cRPGs has being doing wrong, it is just a personal preference. Sawyer likes padded armors and is upset because he thinks they usually receive a shitty treatment.

Another problem with (3) is that it ignores that items are not just gamey stuff to kill things. They attempt to emulate the setting in some way. If you are a poor apprentice, you are expected to start with a staff with a cloak, if you are a shitty warrior, you get a padded armor, etc. These common places are not arbitrary; they are there for a reason. Thus, Sawyer didn’t present a compelling case in favor of (3).

Now, consider (5). Despite first appearances, this is a very trick subject. First, we need to consider just as items, skills are also tied to the setting. They help to engage the player to the game world. That it is why skills such as hardass, demolition or lockpick in W2, because these are the types of abilities we would expect from rangers living on the wasteland.

Second, since skills are tied to the setting, you can’t expect to make every skill equally useful without making the game world unbelievable and gamey. That it’s what happened with W2. You have a bunch of mines in the middle of nowhere and a bunch of safes and boxes filled with nothing locked. There is nothing that screams more “This is just loot stuff to players!!!” and ruin the enjoyment than this. This fact alone prevents every skill from being equally useful.

Third, people like Sawyer talks about the importance of useful skills almost as if each skill was a different kind of plate that should be equally tasty, but that it is not how these things works in most games. Let’s consider “traps” in FO, for instance. Some players complained that traps wasn’t that useful. The solution now is to spread traps everywhere. That is great, now that skill is useful. Well, actually that is not great because this will ruin the game for everyone who doesn’t want traps, because there are traps everywhere and they have to deal with it. Thus, the idea that every skill should be equally useful turns into a nightmare in practice.

I think that the lesson that we can draw from this discussion is that the only way to ensure that every skill is equally useful without making an unbelievable game world and without ruining players that don’t want to invest in a particular skill is by providing different and mutually exclusive paths that are gated behind different skills. Trying to make all skills useful in games with open worlds, like W2 or FO, hurts players preferences. I also think that certain skills, like traps and demolitions, shouldn’t be implemented because they can only be pervasive by ruining other players’ preferences. The game that came close to achieve this was Age of Decadence, but even this game failed with two skills (etiquette and traps) and thank god that trap was useless.
 
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Rivmusique

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They seem similar.

Sawyer school of design: cRPGs need to be "balanced"; every build deserves a chance; every roleplaying preference should be supported by the character system; every skill should be useful; every player should feel rewarded.

Vault Dweller school of design: cRPGs need to be balanced; poor builds have no chance; only sensible roleplaying preferences should be supported; skills should be useful when this is supported by the setting and common sense; only alpha players that master the system should feel rewarded.

Both use the word "balance", but they represent extreme opposite doctrines. The first one is designed for causals who can't get into cRPGs, while the second one is designed for grognards.

They both seem to be a similar place regarding trap choices in character creation/progression at least, which was the topic I was referring to. I don't think attempts to minimize them in both of their games was a bad thing, unlike some were saying back there.

<compelling stuff>

If AoD had trap choices like what Sawyer was talking about it would have had "Shovel" and "Pickaxe" as combat skills right alongside the others. A Sawyer led classless game wouldn't be so different, probably just a fair bit easier.

Neither Traps nor Etiquette were useless in AoD.
 
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Lurker King

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Neither Traps nor Etiquette were useless in AoD.

Ok, but the investment doesn't feel rewarding enough because you don't use them so much, specially traps. Etiquette is more usefull at Teron and Maadoran.
 
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+3 and 15% are not the same.

I agree, aesthetically and because percentile increases depend on the damage you deal, the decision to go with percentages was lame as fuck
Seriously, this is part of the charm of the older AD&D 1st/2nd ed systems.

Sorry, no. That's like saying the charm is that they're written on paper. Static boni isn't some unique thing about that shitty-ass, broken down, fucked system. There are next to no saving graces about AD&D except maybe the spells, the rest is complete horseshit. Every other D&D edition including earlier ones have merits, but AD&D is a turd.

AD&D has a to hit system that is identical to a progressive boni system, but uses a penalty-based recessive system instead in the form of THAC0. It's not that it's complicated, it's just that it's complexity for no gain whatsoever. And it's how the whole system is designed. A stat system where single stat gets an arbitrary percentile subsystem because why the fuck not. Arbitrary ass-pull systems and numbers that are the way they are because whoever designed it felt like that's the way it should be that day.

IE games also convert a weakness of the AD&D system (the multi-classing and dual-classing rules) into a strength. In the IE context, where you've got a full party to plan, there's a fun risk/reward system to the combination of multi-class, single-class and dual-class characters. I.e. Single class will shine early, and then overtake multiclass for the early-mid levels, multiclass will shine in the late-early and the late-mid levels, and dual-classing involves the party taking a negative hit for quite some time in order to have an overpowered member later on. In a crpg environment, you can factor that into your build in order to have a powerful late-game party, sustained by 1-2 characters built for early-game power. But in P&P it's just stupid and arbitrary.
 

JustMyOnion

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I think a Fallout MMO would do well. Yes, RPG Codex, light your torches, I'll send you a map to my house.
Of course it would do well. A pile of shit in a box that has "Fallout" written on it would do well. I don't get what the torches are for, it's common knowledge that Bethesda can sell literally anything to idiots.
 

DraQ

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The problem is that by “trap choices” you can mean different things: (1) bad builds; (2) failed attempts to impose yourself on the setting with your roleplaying preferences; (3) crappy items; (4) items that are crappy relatively to other items; (5) crappy skills; (6) complicated mechanics that induce you to make bad builds, etc.

You would think no one in its right mind would present (1) and (6) as actual problems, but I remember clear Sawyer saying in an interview that was too easy to make a bad build in D&D – see also Mozg’s comment above. For me, these are only trap choices for popamole players.
Bad builds are definitely a problem.

First, building doesn't really test any skill - at least one build, the most important one, is generally done without any clue, unless you happen to already know the system and at least general tone from somewhere else or unless the choices to make are trivial.
There is no point allowing failing builds and there is no point bogging the player down with trivial choices - for example stat allocation only makes sense if there are reasons to allocate stats in many different ways that aren't, for example, summed up by the class; likewise letting player neglect particular stat only makes sense if their class or skillset isn't dependent on it - muscle wizard might make sense but a dumb* one simply doesn't and isn't meaningful in most cases (WTF is a dumb wizard?).

Second, bad builds only serve to reduce the actual depth offered by the system compared to the depth it might theoretically offer.
They are combinatorially wasteful - for example if a system offers a way to express some inherently contradictory or sucky build (like dumb wizard), it's one less useful, sensible and potentially interesting build it could have described instead of a nonsense one.

A good system should strive to only express builds that make sense in its context, fully exploiting its potential depth and only facing players with problems - and only nontrivial ones - when they can actually hope to figure them out based on available information. For example beating all sorts of problems with their build.

*)
Of course, intelligence as an attribute is problematic enough to warrant it's complete removal. Most importantly, it's not really enforceable in general case - you can stop weak character from performing any feats of strength, but you can't force dumb character to behave in a stupid manner, in fact if the difficulty is right player will have to make their character behave intelligently to survive - even a "dumb" one. Moreso, stupid protagonists make for shit heroic stories - a hero that somehow outsmarts overwhelming opposition or uses his cunning to surmount obstacles is more interesting than one that simply facerolled opponents because of stats.
Meanwhile the removal of intelligence as attribute would rid us of the most glaringly broken nonsensical trap build - the dumb wizard - and move dumb firmly into (2) as far as build choices are concerned, by making "dumb" not part of any build, remove the need for out of character behaviour and making dumb protagonists synonymous with dead ones, and dumb characters with dumb players.
:obviously:

(2) also seems the typical childish thing that only a Bethesda fan would require. It reminds of a causal complaining that AoD sucks because he couldn’t role-play as a two swordsman with a silver tongue. Maybe he was happy to role-play as a muscle wizard in PoE? I don’t know.
(2) is dumb if it means, for example "WAAH! I wanted to charge massed archers with my bare chested barbarian, but I die when I try" (this applies to both mechanics and story elements), but mechanics that forces heavily focused builds is similarly wasteful and actually does perpetuate (2).

First, if you have, say, ten skills or stats and need to focus on one to be successful, you effectively have ten different builds. OTOH if you have same ten stats but have to choose five you're good at, you have over 14k builds - and that's without even considering things like different levels of proficiency.

Second, if your character is good at one thing, you make your way through the game doing this one thing repeatedly until successful - which is very much imposing your vision on the world (or until you discover that it's one of the trap builds and you need to restart, which sucks for a different set of reasons - see (1)).

Of course, to really make best of such multitude of builds you'll need at least some compound solutions where multiple abilities need to be used together for effect, but on the flipside it also allows for much more robust and more interesting single skill ones, because you no longer need to ensure that every challenge on a critical path needs to be somehow beatable using, say, knitting skill (because player is guaranteed to have a number of tools at their disposal instead of just a hammer) - as long as you can think of any 6 approaches using different skill each, you're guaranteed to not trap the player; and because instead of mindlessly applying his hammer over and over to every problem he faces, player actually needs to stop and think which approaches may work that he is also capable of (and that's before involving any other mechanics) - "hmm... intimidate the king? Nope. Attack the king? Nah. What else can I do to have my way?".

Consider (3). In the interview I quoted earlier, Sawyer complaints about how players are forced in some cRPGs to wear padded armor at the game's opening, saying that they are mechanically awful and they'll gladly ditch it as soon as anything else becomes available. Now, you can interpret this in two ways: (a) players should start the game with good things; (b) we should have good items of each type and padded armors shouldn’t be excluded. Now, (a) doesn’t make any sense because it’s an example of (4). You start the game with a shitty padded armor because you are a newbie that will get better items as the game progress. Padded armors in this case are awful just in comparison to better items that you will earn later. Saying that every item should be good it is utterly meaningless in this context, because we only have good items in comparison to bad ones. If every item is good, no item is good.

How about (b)? If indeed is the case that some types of items are always bad (and for me it’s not clear that this is the case, see BG2 for instance), then this is just a matter of personal preference. Far from being a proof of what cRPGs has being doing wrong, it is just a personal preference. Sawyer likes padded armors and is upset because he thinks they usually receive a shitty treatment.

Another problem with (3) is that it ignores that items are not just gamey stuff to kill things. They attempt to emulate the setting in some way. If you are a poor apprentice, you are expected to start with a staff with a cloak, if you are a shitty warrior, you get a padded armor, etc. These common places are not arbitrary; they are there for a reason. Thus, Sawyer didn’t present a compelling case in favor of (3).
If you have problems with some items being unconditionally superior/inferior, then you're either not describing them with enough variables or are doing a complete botch job using those variables in actual gameplay.

Shit-tier items automatically have following important advantages:
  • They are easily obtained.
  • They are easily replaced (see above).
  • They are easily maintained (repaired if possible, see above otherwise).
Items don't only exist for the player to swing at the enemy (or to protect the player from being swung at) - you might just as well use player's items against the player by effectively taking them hostage - which makes their value and rarity as big drawbacks as you want, turning them into resource sinks - which is a compelling reason to have a durability mechanics as long as you can ensure it consumes resources that are in some way proportional to the value of maintained items, or using them against the player in some other way (for example brandishing a legendary artifact makes you instantly identifiable - which can be problematic not only if you are doing something nefarious, but if you have any sort of antagonistic forces at work you can't just bash over the head).

How do you take an item hostage? Simple. Put player in an environment or against enemies that are actively harmful to given types of items - for example some metal-dissolving goop or rust monsters and such. Want to see your legendary suit of plate armour that was originally worn by the Emperor Idontgiveafuckabout during the battle of Whatever turn into a rusty puddle? No? Pack something you won't cry after. Put player against some hazard or potential solution to an obstacle that requires parting with some equipment - want to swim through the moat or scale that wall or avoid the guards? Take off that pretty shiny plate please. Want audience with local lord? No weapons allowed. Want to carry all that pretty loot out? While already loaded with all this gear? Pffft. :hahano:

Of course this kind of approach needs a few things to work:
  • You need to be able to take player's unattended stuff - the lord might not be entirely noble (if you excuse the pun), but might be a connoisseur of ancient artifcats of power, prestige, historical significance and, above all else, eye-pleasing shininess, such artifacts left unattended somewhere in the bushes will probably also find a lucky finder. You probably shouldn't be a complete asshole and don't remove irreplaceable items from the world completely if you can help it (read - item has not turned into a rusty puddle), but if they resurface don't make it an obvious "reclaim your stolen gear" quest - let the player work to find them, without any sort of guarantee regarding where and when they might turn up. Randomize as much as possible. Be mildly sadistic, just not a total ass.
  • Player needs inventory limitations, and severe ones too. You can't meaningfully expect player to drop their gear if they can just hammerspace it for latter use.
  • Player needs some place to store their stuff safely. Otherwise you simply won't get them to part with cool gear because they will either be using or losing it, and they will know.
  • Damned Registrations must stay the fuck out of this thread or else he might launch into an inane and delirious rant about how abstract mechanics with no connection to how things would actually work in your world is almost invariably the best choice and realism always makes for bad gameplay.
    :nofunallowed:

Now, consider (5). Despite first appearances, this is a very trick subject. First, we need to consider just as items, skills are also tied to the setting. They help to engage the player to the game world. That it is why skills such as hardass, demolition or lockpick in W2, because these are the types of abilities we would expect from rangers living on the wasteland.
(5) is a subset of (1), thankfully easily remediated. It shouldn't be too hard to merge weak, thematically related skills or split strong ones until relatively balanced utility is achieved. It also helps to avoid making your skills one trick ponies.
Avoiding allowing ultra-focused builds also helps make situational skills useful and worthwhile.
 
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Lurker King

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Bad builds are definitely a problem.

First, building doesn't really test any skill - at least one build, the most important one, is generally done without any clue, unless you happen to already know the system and at least general tone from somewhere else or unless the choices to make are trivial.

You did not think this through, did you? The whole skill test in any RPG or cRPGs lies in understanding how to make effective builds, understanding the mechanics, creating interesting combos, managing resources, etc. Ignoring this amounts to ignore the first thing about cRPGs. There is a reason for that. Stats and skill are abstract representations that set the boundaries and possibilities of role-playing. THe first image that comes to mind when I talk about this is Sawyer saying in an interview that the belief that skills are important to role-play are a myth. For me, the only myth is that Sawyer is anything but a clueless individual.

There is no point allowing failing builds.

You could just as well have said that there is no point in allowing players to take damage or die. cRPGs are games. Games are attempts to surpass challenges. cRPGs are games that provide challenges by allowing players to role-play by means of stats and skills. Not allowing players to make bad builds in a cRPGs is like not allowing players to deal a bad hand in poker or making a bad move in chess. It goes against those very rules of the game and the challenging experience that they should provide in the first place.

letting player neglect particular stat only makes sense if their class or skillset isn't dependent on it - muscle wizard might make sense but a dumb* one simply doesn't and isn't meaningful in most cases (WTF is a dumb wizard?).

Letting players neglect particular stats makes perfect sense because it is a responsibility of the player, not of the developer, to master the system in order to role-play. At most, developers can provide small tips in character creation about the role of each stat for each weapon or class. Anything more than this is excessive handholding for players who don’t enjoy cRPGs and should be better playing Super Mario.

Second, bad builds only serve to reduce the actual depth offered by the system compared to the depth it might theoretically offer. They are combinatorially wasteful - for example if a system offers a way to express some inherently contradictory or sucky build (like dumb wizard), it's one less useful, sensible and potentially interesting build it could have described instead of a nonsense one.

Without bad builds you don’t have good builds, because bad builds are only bad in comparison to the good ones. Without bad choices and mistakes you don’t have the possibility of learning how to make right choices. Without less useful choices you don’t have more useful choices. And so forth. The only thing you manage by removing all the bad choices is providing a bland experience of a system that you don’t need to understand in order to beat challenges that are inexistent.

A good system should strive to only express builds that make sense in its context, fully exploiting its potential depth and only facing players with problems - and only nontrivial ones - when they can actually hope to figure them out based on available information. For example beating all sorts of problems with their build.*)

You are confusing the roles of the developers with the roles of players. It is the players, not the system designed by developers, which should strive to make good builds. Learning how to make a good build is a not a trivial problem that should be ignored, it is one of the main elements that a good cRPG should attempt to provide. Any intelligent cRPG player will look forward to understand the complexities of the system, this is not a problem to him. It is only a problem to players that don’t like cRPGs.

Of course, intelligence as an attribute is problematic enough to warrant it's complete removal. Most importantly, it's not really enforceable in general case - you can stop weak character from performing any feats of strength, but you can't force dumb character to behave in a stupid manner, in fact if the difficulty is right player will have to make their character behave intelligently to survive - even a "dumb" one.

Of course you can! See how to roleplay a dumb character in Fallout 2. Besides, you are assuming a definition of intelligence that it is not uncontroversial. What is intelligence? Abstract reasoning? Capacity to master symbols? I know people with mental disabilities who can do what most regular people do, including driving, marrying, etc.

Moreso, stupid protagonists make for shit heroic stories - a hero that somehow outsmarts overwhelming opposition or uses his cunning to surmount obstacles is more interesting than one that simply facerolled opponents because of stats.

Well, that makes no sense. Most heroic stories involve dumb regular dudes against evil characters, who in general have more intelligence, are more sophisticated, etc. Dumb vs sophisticated, strength vs smarts, pure vs corrupt, good vs evil. 9 out of 10 narratives of acts of heroism demands more courage and strength than intelligence.

Meanwhile the removal of intelligence as attribute would rid us of the most glaringly broken nonsensical trap build - the dumb wizard - and move dumb firmly into (2) as far as build choices are concerned, by making "dumb" not part of any build, remove the need for out of character behaviour and making dumb protagonists synonymous with dead ones, and dumb characters with dumb players.

Instead of removing a fundamental stat, I think it would be better to remove the dumb player who can’t make a decent wizard. Without dumb players, you don’t have to worry about protagonists making dumb choices. It would be awesome.

but mechanics that forces heavily focused builds is similarly wasteful and actually does perpetuate (2).

But that is a remote possibility. What happens in most cases is that players that were spoiled by Bioware demand that real cRPGs should give them absolute power to realize their whims.

Second, if your character is good at one thing, you make your way through the game doing this one thing repeatedly until successful - which is very much imposing your vision on the world (or until you discover that it's one of the trap builds and you need to restart, which sucks for a different set of reasons - see (1)).

But every developer impose their visions of the world. It is foolish to think otherwise. The difference is that some developers provide less challenging games that are easier to finish, while others provide more challenges along the way. Players who strive under challenge will use the opportunity to restart as an incentive to get better and beat the game.

If you have problems with some items being unconditionally superior/inferior, then you're either not describing them with enough variables or are doing a complete botch job using those variables in actual gameplay.

Shit-tier items automatically have following important advantages:

They are easily obtained.

They are easily replaced (see above).

They are easily maintained (repaired if possible, see above otherwise).

Agreed and this shows how wrong Sawyer is.

(5) is a subset of (1), thankfully easily remediated. It shouldn't be too hard to merge weak, thematically related skills or split strong ones until relatively balanced utility is achieved. It also helps to avoid making your skills one trick ponies. Avoiding allowing ultra-focused builds also helps make situational skills useful and worthwhile.

No, they are two different topics. One thing is providing skills that can’t be used in most cases. Another one is to make bad builds because you don’t understand how the mechanics work, with good skills or not.
 
Last edited:

mondblut

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going miles about defending Bethesda and praising them and their games

One day, he might be in need of employment. :smug:

while only saying bad things about Fallout 2/New Vegas is just terrible.

...but obsidian is out of the question for him.
 

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