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How RPG fans ruined RPGs: Telengard on the Fiery BioWhore and the True Nature of the Awesome Button

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
DU is talking about player validation. In his view, a game is unbalanced when there are "useless" skills which you should never pick. It can have different difficulty curves based on what you pick but there should be moments where what you choose is validated in some way, otherwise why is it there? (This is more about classless systems than those with classes)

A good example is Deus Ex where you can finish the game by only pumping Poison Resistance and Swimming...it will be very hard, but you get the point.

According to DU in 2006, there are limits to "very hard", though: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...-single-player-crpgs.13876/page-3#post-251024

There are limits. That's the balancing part. Running with your example, if a Doctor has an easier time through the game than a Gambler, that doesn't mean the game is necessarily unbalanced. The crucial issue is that it's not phenomenally hard or phenomenally easy but it's possible never-the-less within what one would be expect to be reasonable limits.
 
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Ludo Lense

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DU is talking about player validation. In his view, a game is unbalanced when there are "useless" skills which you should never pick. It can have different difficulty curves based on what you pick but there should be moments where what you choose is validated in some way, otherwise why is it there? (This is more about classless systems than those with classes)

A good example is Deus Ex where you can finish the game by only pumping Poison Resistance and Swimming...it will be very hard, but you get the point.

According to DU in 2006, there are limits to "very hard", though: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...-single-player-crpgs.13876/page-3#post-251024

There are limits. That's the balancing part. Running with your example, if a Doctor has an easier time through the game than a Gambler, that doesn't mean the game is necessarily unbalanced. The crucial issue is that it's not phenomenally hard or phenomenally easy but it's possible never-the-less within what one would be expect to be reasonable limits.

This is a case by case situation. Plus a lot of people interpret "phenomenally hard" in different ways. Deus Ex with swimming and poison is still doable, you are gonna save scum a bit but you still get progress little by little. Finishing Dark Souls just by being lvl 1 is what I consider phenomenally hard.
 

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I would say re: Deus Ex that there's a reason the game gives new characters Trained in Pistols by default.

Anyway, in the context of this thread's original topic, I think it's interesting how the neo-grognards, the ones who believe in all the oldschool principles but hate trash combat and seem to find combat as a whole to be a vaguely distasteful activity, ended up undermining the position of the oldschool grognards like Telengard.

See, in the really old RPGs, you could build a bad character, but with the gauntlets of trash mobs that those games threw at you right from the beginning, you'd discover that the character was bad very, very quickly. It's the nu-RPGs, the ones that present you with lots of dialogue, story, choices and a world that seems to be bigger than just a combat crawl, that trick you into thinking any character can be viable. Is it any surprise then that most of them have been moving in that direction?
 
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adrix89

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Builds are anathema to characters which means they are anathema to role play.

The problem lies in that PnP RPG had GM as a balancing factors to make the characters viable and cRPGs don't.

The marriage between builds and characters is a very precarious one. If you are going to focus on builds why have stats at all? You aren't roleplaying, you aren't defining your character, you are just mini-maxing what is the best based on what you know of the system. It might be interesting to you but it fails in its reason of existence. This is why jRPGs nuked the whole concept, you have classes and you have levels.

It is absolutely important for your choices in building your character to be viable, that is the only way to have a slimmer of characterization. Maybe not all choices should be equal, maybe they should collapse into a few playstyles but it has to be viable. Otherwise why not jRPGs?
 
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Lurker King

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I don’t understand why you guys keep talking about DU arguments, when he is just repeating Sawyer arguments. The idea that shouldn’t be "useless" skills transforms the game world and the setting in a circus, in which every choice of skill must be rewarded. Take W2, for instance. The wasteland is filled with toasters, mines, locks, alarms, etc., because those skills were properly balanced. Of course, that doesn’t make any sense. From the fact that one rich individual would lock his strongbox with alarms and bombs, doesn’t follow that every single strongbox, or chest would be locked, with alarms or bombs. So this brilliant design approach implies that a wasteland should be literally filled with high security chests, even if this doesn’t make any sense. The consequence of this approach is that making a believable world is not what the developer should aim for, instead the aim is to reward player’s investment in skills, pander to his ego.

In fact, even if you assume that realism must be ignored for the sake of gameplay, you will face another problem. You are ruining the playthrough of players that didn’t want to invest in those particular skills that are all now required to use all over the place. Don’t want to invest in demolition in W2? Tough luck, because the game is proper balanced, is filled with them. Please notice that providing palliative solutions like using grenades doesn’t help, because if I don’t want to use the demolition skills all the time, I also don’t want to think about grenades all the time. In fact, I want to throw the grenades over my enemies. What is worse is that if those alternative solutions are easily available, they make any investment in demolition worthless, because now I can just throw grenades and save my skill points for another thing. Which makes the skill uselles, contradicting the assumption of balance that lead us to this in the first place.

Thus, in conclusion: (1) this design approach is motivated by the popamole unjustified assumption that the player should not be able to make poor choices, (2) but paradoxically end up forcing every player to make poor choices, because if all choice is relevant, you are screwed all the time, (3) provide some alternatives to avoid the player to get screwed by balance, but these alternatives don’t make the playthrough any more enjoyable for players who don’t want to use that skills, and make the skills worthless, which ruins balance, (4) throw realism under the bus, one more time. Which makes the genre always captive of the “teenager fiction” syndrome.

What we need is the opposite design approach: (1) make the player suffer if he made a poor choice of skills, (2) make the utility of skills determined by the reality of the game world and the setting, not the other way around, (3) tell the players to fuck off with their egotistical assumptions created by the poor standards of the industry and (4) never abandon realism.
 
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Poor choices and choices that make it so that you can't finish the game aren't the same thing. Nice strawman.

The argument is that the game's encounters should accommodate the various skills that the designers themselves put inside the game.

Sawyer just wants every type of fighters possible to be more or less equal and you "roleplay" the rest of the character.

What we need is the opposite design approach: (1) make the player suffer if he made a poor choice of skills, (2) make the utility of skills determined by the reality of the game world and the setting, not the other way around, (3) tell the players to fuck off with their egotistical assumptions created by the poor standards of the industry and (4) never abandon realism.

Gr8 b8 m8 I r8 8/8.

Seriously this sounds amazing on paper but its made for people looking for second jobs.

In a perfect world, every path you take should have upsides and downsides. But then people who restart like 4 times before they even finish the game once find the inevitable mistakes and then whine the game is "soo easy" and "unbalanced".

Moreso this isn't skill. Its knowledge. Theoretically you make your choices at the start or during the game and you trust the designers that they will form an appropriate experience. The first time when you boot up Arcanum there is no way of knowing that playing a gunslinger tech guy is absolute trash while being a harm spamming mage makes you ignore the insanely tedious combat.
 

adrix89

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What we need is the opposite design approach: (1) make the player suffer if he made a poor choice of skills, (2) make the utility of skills determined by the reality of the game world and the setting, not the other way around, (3) tell the players to fuck off with their egotistical assumptions created by the poor standards of the industry and (4) never abandon realism.
You are literally asking to put skills that are just traps. Take some time and think. What THE FUCK this is supposed to accomplish? Punish the noobs for not divining the mind of the insane developer wanted you to build? Laught tyrannically when players can't finish the last part of the game because they screwed their build?

WELL GREAT FUCKING JOB! Now everybody on the internet is going to spread the special snowflake builds you need to win just like it happened in PS:T. Now everybody is a little bit more married with their fucking wikis, just like they do with their Dota,MMORPGs or Diablo builds.
Meaningful choices? Whatever the fucking wiki says!
 

TigerKnee

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This is making me think of theoretical gag "RPG" with 50 stats and skills, and the joke is that only two skills is ever checked throughout the entire game - let's say "Polearms" and "Toaster Repair" - if you don't have both at certain thresholds at certain points, you lose the game.
 
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That's a fault of our binary system of ideas, if something is not balanced into meaningless choices at all, it should automatically turn half of anything into uterly shit.
 

DeN DarK

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In fact, even if you assume that realism must be ignored for the sake of gameplay, you will face another problem. You are ruining the playthrough of players that didn’t want to invest in those particular skills that are all now required to use all over the place. Don’t want to invest in demolition in W2? Tough luck, because the game is proper balanced, is filled with them. Please notice that providing palliative solutions like using grenades doesn’t help, because if I don’t want to use the demolition skills all the time, I also don’t want to think about grenades all the time. In fact, I want to throw the grenades over my enemies. What is worse is that if those alternative solutions are easily available, they make any investment in demolition worthless, because now I can just throw grenades and save my skill points for another thing. Which makes the skill uselles, contradicting the assumption of balance that lead us to this in the first place.

If we speak about W2 - we must not forget: W2 is not Fallout 2. It is PARTY game. More of that - your party is custom-made by you. And if you have any experience with RPGs you will be making balanced party with wide skill range.
Lets take AoD in that regard. Some social skills are just useless compared to others. And it is bad thing.

I think balance means that all in-game skills are useful but your char cannot have all useful skills and must choose. Lets again take AoD - You can't be 10 in all useful soc skills and 10 in combat skills. And you will fail some checks => some quest will be very different for different builds.

What we need is the opposite design approach: (1) make the player suffer if he made a poor choice of skills, (2) make the utility of skills determined by the reality of the game world and the setting, not the other way around, (3) tell the players to fuck off with their egotistical assumptions created by the poor standards of the industry and (4) never abandon realism.

1. I think game must have SOME (wide) range of acceptance. Lets take AoD again - very different builds can finish game. Not all builds are combat-oriented - and can kill final boss (it was so some time ago at least).
2. True. But this means that devs must first make the world and the game, and then make char system. Pretty complicated thing it seems.
3. Tell the players to fuck off is not very good way to advertasing games and become financially successful. Much easier tell players to fuck off and don't make any games.
4. Realism is very hard to understand in fantasy setting. How much realism in KOTOR1-2, BG2, Arcanum?

You are literally asking to put skills that are just traps. Take some time and think. What THE FUCK this is supposed to accomplish? Punish the noobs for not divining the mind of the insane developer wanted you to build? Laught tyrannically when players can't finish the last part of the game because they screwed their build?

WELL GREAT FUCKING JOB! Now everybody on the internet is going to spread the special snowflake builds you need to win just like it happened in PS:T. Now everybody is a little bit more married with their fucking wikis, just like they do with their Dota,MMORPGs or Diablo builds.
Meaningful choices? Whatever the fucking wiki says!

I think he means by "(2) make the utility of skills determined by the reality of the game world and the setting, not the other way around," that devs must first make draft of the game and only after that they must make char sheet with only useful skills. Because if it is like you said - it will be too strange.
 

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About balance question:

Not all builds MUST be pure win by default. Some builds may be very hard for player. And it is ok if some (especially min/maxed) builds are make game too easy.
Still if for finishing game you need to have some special build and only it - it is bad job, cause player cannot know it. Another thing if somewhere in first half of game player will have tip like "Big Bad Boss can be defeated only with ranged weapons cause he can flyl and immune to any magic - without bow you will be dead meat". But even in that case - still it is very restricting from roleplay reasons - not all people really want to be archers especially if it is forced on them in the middle of the game.
In the end it is very easy decision - all "normal" builds must have decent chances for finishing game and for stupid builds it must be very hard or impossiable. Lets say in D&D game mage with huge Str and low Int - it is bad idea. On char creation screen new player must be informed about it. If he still chooses to make such build - it is his fault not devs. And it is punishing enough. If you make mage and in the end all monsters and boss are immune to magic damage and you have no means to change it - it is fault of devs not player. And it isn't very important if such situation is explained very good by plot and by world "realism" - player class isn't balanced properly by devs and cannot be used for this game. It is trap. Therefore - if only few classes can success - game is broken.
When we speak about party games of course we must speak about party balance - not class balance. In BG (as example) you can use any build for main char and still win the game with help of companions.

So, it seems all game classes must be on same level and differ only in regard of gameplay or roleplay. Warrior kill with the sword, mage with fireball but both are strong and have they use in party. It seems thats why we don't have classes like peasant, village idiot and bureaucrat in D&D.

Another reason why all classes must be viable will be for sales reason. Half of the RPG players want to be mages or warriors. How they will react if in the end if warriors sucks and mages rule? Especially if it will be revealed only in the end of the game, after 40+ hours of play? Shitstorm will be huge and reviews will be bad => sales drop. For indie or medius-sized dev it will be end of line.
 
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Ok, so let’s get our assumptions straight first. Are we talking only about skills or are we also talking stats? If you include stats in this discussion, then players can’t be punished for making idiotic builds – see PoE. That is popamole inclusive design for the plebes. So let’s put this bullshit to rest and consider the alternatives.

If you are talking only about skills, you need to be clearer about what type of skills you have in mind. Do you have in mind weapon skills, or civil skills, like lockpick? It seems trivial that every weapon skill should be useful for a game that revolves mainly around combat. However, that doesn’t mean that they should be all equally useful, because the difference in utility is based on the weapons specificities, and the only way to make them all equally important is to make the specificities meaningless. We don’t want that weapon skills end up being bland just because some developers think that players deserve equal rights in weapon skills. Let’s put this shit to rest too.

Now, we have the civil skills. Unless the success of your main quest revolves around your particular choice of civil skills, them there is no danger of making the game unplayable due to some poor choice of skills. In the worst scenario, you will make the player feel frustrated with his choice of skills, but nothing that is particular game breaking. That still sucks, but we have to consider what is the best way to fix this.

My point is that W2 design is not the answer because it end up imposing the relevance of every skill in every player even if they don’t care about that particular skill, and the way to guarantee that the game will be playable for players that don’t have that skill make them pointless. Moreover, it turns the setting in an idiotic circus for five years old. The only way to solve this problem is to implement civil skills whose utility wouldn’t affect the plausibility of the setting, or the gameplay of players with difference preferences. For instance, no skills of the nature of demolitions or alarms. That I can live with it.
 

DeN DarK

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Wtf is this? Baby's first forum? Telengard is a grognard. If that doesn't explain his point of view then I can't help you DeN DarK or The Nameless Pun

Is this your first forum? Who cares who is Telengard? We all here for disagreement with each other and subsequent shitstorm.
Find yourself damsel in distress and stop helping people who didn't ask for help. :salute:
 

DeN DarK

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If you are talking only about skills, you need to be clearer about what type of skills you have in mind. Do you have in mind weapon skills, or civil skills, like lockpick? It seems trivial that every weapon skill should be useful for a game that revolves mainly around combat. However, that doesn’t mean that they should be all equally useful, because the difference in utility is based on the weapons specificities, and the only way to make them all equally important is to make the specificities meaningless. We don’t want that weapon skills end up being bland just because some developers think that players deserve equal rights in weapon skills. Let’s put this shit to rest too.

Agreed. All weapons must have theirs uses. In some situations bows will be superior to axes and e.t.c. Still if we have 10 encounters where axes will be very usefull and only 1 encounter where bow is useful - bow is badly implemented in game. Weapons must not be equal but they all must be equally useful.

Now, we have the civil skills. Unless the success of your main quest revolves around your particular choice of civil skills, them there is no danger of making the game unplayable due to some poor choice of skills. In the worst scenario, you will make the player feel frustrated with his choice of skills, but nothing that is particular game breaking. That still sucks, but we have to consider what is the best way to fix this.

Yes, of course we speak about main quest here. If some side quest is not accessiable for char - it is even good. More replayability )

My point is that W2 design is not the answer because it end up imposing the relevance of every skill in every player even if they don’t care about that particular skill, and the way to guarantee that the game will be playable for players that don’t have that skill make them pointless. Moreover, it turns the setting in an idiotic circus for five years old. The only way to solve this problem is to implement civil skills whose utility wouldn’t affect the plausibility of the setting, or the gameplay of players with difference preferences. For instance, no skills of the nature of demolitions or alarms. That I can live with it.

If we speal about W2 - I totally agree - they made strange decisions.
 
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If we speak about W2 - we must not forget: W2 is not Fallout 2. It is PARTY game. More of that - your party is custom-made by you. And if you have any experience with RPGs you will be making balanced party with wide skill range.

So I have to use all the skills in order to play the game? What happens if I don’t want to invest in demolition skills in any of my zombie custom made characters? I will be punished? Don’t you think that using every zombie member of my team as a specialist I’m not cheating the game? How can I fail if I can have every skill?

Tell the players to fuck off is not very good way to advertising games and become financially successful. Much easier tell players to fuck off and don't make any games.

Hardcore games can be advertised as hardcore.

Another reason why all classes must be viable will be for sales reason. Half of the RPG players want to be mages or warriors. How they will react if in the end if warriors sucks and mages rule? Especially if it will be revealed only in the end of the game, after 40+ hours of play? Shitstorm will be huge and reviews will be bad => sales drop. For indie or medius-sized dev it will be end of line.

The problem with this coward approach is that you lose sight of the profit you can obtain with trying new things. You assume that you must make a game for a specific target audience. Of course, if you are trying to make the same type of game for the same type of player, when everyone else is doing the same type of thing your chances of success are decreasing, instead of increasing. Moreover, you assume that cRPG players never get tired of the same thing, which doesn’t make any sense. Where you see risk, I see opportunity to try something different and make a profit. The target audience is always created by the authors. The difference is that most developers are too lazy or afraid to innovate, and keep insisting on the same target audience, over and over.
 

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So I have to use all the skills in order to play the game? What happens if I don’t want to use demolition skills in any of my zombie custom made characters? I will be punished? Don’t you think that using every zombie member of my team as a specialist I’m not cheating the game? How can I fail if I can have every skill?
Actually it is classic approach. Take D&D balanced party. Thief+ Mage+Warriors+Cleric. Can you play without clerics with full thieves party - you can but it will be hard.
Can you play with not optimized party in W2? Yes you can but it will be harder. Less optimized party => more problems. If I remember correctly you can finish W2 without some skills or even most skills. Am I wrong?

Hardcore games can be advertised as hardcore.
Hardcore isn't mean that players like if devs tell them to fuck off. They like when they heard by devs more than popamole crowd actually. Hardcore crowd just said different things than popamole crowd )

The problem with this coward approach is that you lose sight of the profit you can obtain with trying new things. You assume that you must make a game for a specific target audience. Of course, if you are trying to make the same type of game for the same type of player, when everyone else is doing the same type of thing your chances of success are decreasing, instead of increasing. Moreover, you assume that cRPG players never get tired of the same thing, which doesn’t make any sense. Where you see risk, I see opportunity to try something different and make a profit. The target audience is always created by the authors. The difference is that most developers are too lazy or afraid to innovate, and keep insisting on the same target audience, over and over.

You will be afraid too if it is your job and money on the line. Imagine yourself in place of devs. Escpecially if you work in medium-sized company.
And "new" things are very hard to define. Is approach taken by praised here AoD and Underrail is "new"? How "new" was BG? Arcanum and PS:T have huge number of "new" elements - but still same mages, warriors, dialogues, combat. Of course just copy of classic can be only mediocre. Still it is better than total failure. Of course some riskes must be taken - thats why Arcanum and PS:T are so praised.
About target audience created by authors? Thats why all games in cRPG advertise as successor in the spirit of the old-classics like Fallout and e.t.c.? Audience is already exists and made by other authors in last 10-20 years and audience already have expectations. Yes you can try and make some very different approach to the jenre - but it is risky and some people will be angry anyway. If you sure it is win - why not try it. But how you can be sure about some new thing? I cannot blame devs for cowardice.
 
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4. Realism is very hard to understand in fantasy setting. How much realism in KOTOR1-2, BG2, Arcanum?

Massive amounts: There are humans in KotOR, a religion were all vaguely familiar with, guns, melee weapons, physics work in basically the same manner, there are spaceships such as we have launched but more advanced, there are robots which have been around for quite some time on earth, planets, suns, asteroids, water, food, alcohol.
BG2 is even more familiar, most o stuff from above works but its set in a faux renaissance/late medieval period, there are pubs, nobles, knights, thieves, battles, castles, forests, almost everything is realistic.
Arcanum, same really, you've got trains, zeppelins, planes, different races o humanity, cities, culture clashes, a vaguely victorian setting, early guns, bows, dungeons, mountains, mines, islands.

There all firmly rooted in reality, however they also have fantastic elements which stand out from that reality, and also make that reality stand up on its own, the two define and enhance each other. Just because there are fantastic elements doesn't mean internal consistency and some sense of reality should not be accounted for, but that you should know when to stretch or break it, and gi good reasons for that. In Lord o Rings folk got tired, thirsted, hungered, were injured, were afraid and realistically human, dint demean fantastic elements in any way, made em pop more cos they stood out from usual.
 
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Actually it is classic approach. Take D&D balanced party. Thief+ Mage+Warriors+Cleric. Can you play without clerics with full thieves party - you can but it will be hard.

That is not the same thing at all. There is a difference between one player controlling a full party and a team of players each one using his character. The first breaks the immersion because you can’t role-play five people at once. You can argue that many cRPGs do this, but they are just idiotic. Many “classic” common places in the genre are stupid.

Hardcore isn't mean that players like if devs tell them to fuck off. They like when they heard by devs more than popamole crowd actually. Hardcore crowd just said different things than popamole crowd.

What I mean by telling the players to fuck off is that the developers should not accepting idiotic demands that ruin the setting for the sake of gameplay. By the way, where do you get this romantic idea that developers take any critical feedback seriously? 99% of the time they will just implement whatever is they decided to do. They may implement some minor modifications to please the crowd, but deep changes? They almost never do that.

And "new" things are very hard to define. Is approach taken by praised here AoD and Underrail is "new"? How "new" was BG? Arcanum and PS:T have huge number of "new" elements - but still same mages, warriors, dialogues, combat. Of course, just copy of classic can be only mediocre. Still it is better than total failure. Of course some risks must be taken - that’s why Arcanum and PS:T are so praised.

Seriously? Can’t you tell the difference between a game that is innovative and another dungeon crawler? You can have new approaches to settings, narratives, combat systems, leveling systems, etc. There is nothing mysterious about implementing new ideas in the genre. Sure, you can’t make everything new, but there is a big difference between an refreshing cRPG and another cRPG filled with trash mobs.

You will be afraid too if it is your job and money on the line. Imagine yourself in place of devs. Especially if you work in medium-sized company.

But I do this in my personal life, because I’m more afraid of doing mediocre meaningless shit than satisfying other people expectations. The conventional wisdom in these cases is the mediocrity speaking. Can't you see? Every time someone try some new, someone like you will come and say these things about survival and playing safe, and most of the time they will listen to this advice, and do a bunch of shit in order to survive. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you believe that you must do shit to survive, you will always do shit to survive, and you will not be able to do anything that is worthy, because you are too afraid and more worried about survival. On the other hand, if you are invested in making some contribution that will last, you will work ten times harder to leave your mark. I mean, this is not even a choice. There is no point in doing something just to survive. You have to achieve excellence. If your conditions doesn’t allow to do, you have to improve them to achieve excellence. That is what matters. If you have to put yourself under extreme pressure because you’re going against the norm, so be it. If a medium-sized company didn’t allow me to do what is necessary to make great cRPGs, I would leave it and make a smaller company. There is no excuse.

About target audience created by authors? Thats why all games in cRPG advertise as successor in the spirit of the old-classics like Fallout and e.t.c.? Audience is already exists and made by other authors in last 10-20 years and audience already have expectations. Yes you can try and make some very different approach to the jenre - but it is risky and some people will be angry anyway. If you sure it is win - why not try it. But how you can be sure about some new thing? I cannot blame devs for cowardice.

If there is a target audience associated with Fallout now is because developers like Tin Cain created that audience in the first place. I bet that he decided to move on when everybody was using arguments like yours “Don’t take risks”. “It’s better a mediocre product than a total failure”. Repeating that most developers are mediocre and too dumb to make their own audience only shows that they are mediocre authors that contribute to the low standards in the industry, nothing more.
 
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RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In
New Vegas probably had the best approach to making sure that every skill is useful because they all were useful because of game systems and not some skill checks thrown here and there. For example science saved my butt many times not because the authors thrown in some forced science checks, but because recycling batteries was super-useful in some parts of the game.

The problem with Wasteland 2 skill system wasn't that they forced players to use some skills, but because they took a system that works best with single-player games and used it in multi-player system. It's good that DeN DarK mentioned DnD because DnD actually does it well. In Wasteland party you need to have a bunch of specific skills to succeed and the game gives you more than enough points to get them all, so there is little thinking involved. You never benefit from having more than one character with these skills. No reason to have 2 toaster repairmen, 2 lockpickers, 2 hackers etc. Because of that there is little thinking involved in deciding which skills to invest into. In DnD you require a thief, a wizard and a cleric. Since your usual DnD party consists of 4-6 characters and because you can dual and multiclass and because you benefit from having more than one character from certain class (besides thieves I think) creating an optimal party might be challenge.
 

Telengard

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In the posts above, one can already see the Tyranny of Choice being to arise, and how it affects the dev. Character sheet choice naturally leads to statistical variance in the effective power level of the character at any point in the game. Everyone in the game might be level 10 at a certain point, but due to the respective choices of different Players, their effective character level based on their character's power might be anywhere between 5 and 15. The results of that variance will fall on a bell curve, and the dev can target a narrow window on that curve to set the game's challenge at. The more choice, the more scrunched down and wide is the bell, while the dev's window of opportunity gets no larger. (If you think all that sounds familiar, it's because it's basic Game Theory.) And so, to ensure the largest audience share, the dev will pitch the difficulty just below the center line on the bell. Meaning the game is already weaksauce. And that's before you mix in a story-based game and the power fantasy, which together will bake the result into something with a guaranteed win and enemies that can't even fight you. It's the nature of the beast.

But really, the choice we're talking about here is all the wrong kind of choice anyways. If you're looking for story-based choices, you shouldn't be looking for d&d-style games anyway. Look at the system closely, and not its modules; d&d was built around emergent gameplay. Everything about the older versions are directed to that purpose. Those who attempted to change the game into story-based high fantasy were unwise during their conversion, and they did not strip the game down to its core and rebuild it with story in mind. And doing that much is necessary when you're changing the intent of a game.

Much hash has been made on this site about the Storyteller system (Vampire) being great for storytelling, and how the skills and such are so suited. That's wrong. The skills are just as sucky for storytelling purposes as any other game. The thing that could make the Storyteller system great for storytelling is the Nature/Demeanor duality. A clever designer could do a lot with that. It's not too many combinations to effectively realize in a game, and it's not a simple binary system that speaks to nothing (like Star Wars good/evil, or even d&d's alignment). Rather, it speaks directly to character, and in a natural way. Combine that with a choiced morality system, such as Pendragon's, and you would then have a solid story-based set of choices for a character that would have meaning within the story. Your character stats would interact directly and meaningfully with the narrative. And with meaning, there would be the opportunity to tell a quality story, a story with intent and purpose, instead of being limited to basic schlock. Of course, such a system would naturally have sucky combat, since the combat therein would all be in service to the story - any combat would be expounding upon character and theme, and wouldn't at all be about the physical challenge. And that would be right, in a story-based game.
 
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Lurker King

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a bunch of stuff

The only problem with your post is the suggestion that a combat system that would be in service to the story would suck. One thing has nothing to do with each other, because a tight combat system is compatible with any story.
 
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Lurker King

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I think that we can identify the following types of cRPG players:

(1) Players that only care about the variety of skills and emergent gameplay, but gives challenge the finger.

(2) Players that only care about combos and the variety of choices in the combat system, but gives challenge the finger.

(3) Players that only care about properly balanced and challenging combat system, but gives the abundance of choices and player experimentation the finger.

This means that groups (1)-(2) are actually covert popamoles that can pretend to be something else because they know more than a causal about the combination of stats and skills, but only the group (3) is genuinely interested in stats, skills and challenge.

Good, I will revive to rethink my priorities as a cRPG player.
 

DeN DarK

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Massive amounts: There are humans in KotOR, a religion were all vaguely familiar with, guns, melee weapons, physics work in basically the same manner, there are spaceships such as we have launched but more advanced, there are robots which have been around for quite some time on earth, planets, suns, asteroids, water, food, alcohol.
BG2 is even more familiar, most o stuff from above works but its set in a faux renaissance/late medieval period, there are pubs, nobles, knights, thieves, battles, castles, forests, almost everything is realistic.
Arcanum, same really, you've got trains, zeppelins, planes, different races o humanity, cities, culture clashes, a vaguely victorian setting, early guns, bows, dungeons, mountains, mines, islands.

There all firmly rooted in reality, however they also have fantastic elements which stand out from that reality, and also make that reality stand up on its own, the two define and enhance each other. Just because there are fantastic elements doesn't mean internal consistency and some sense of reality should not be accounted for, but that you should know when to stretch or break it, and gi good reasons for that. In Lord o Rings folk got tired, thirsted, hungered, were injured, were afraid and realistically human, dint demean fantastic elements in any way, made em pop more cos they stood out from usual.

My answer is - realism determined not by setting but by human interactions in game (PC with NPC and NPC with NPC). It is more about how people react, feel, think and e.t.c. Plus some inner problems in setting must be resolved or explained somehow. As example - flying robots in F4. They have AI in small robot in the world without color TV. Not very real for me. Not very important too. This game bad not because of that )

In the posts above, one can already see the Tyranny of Choice being to arise, and how it affects the dev. Character sheet choice naturally leads to statistical variance in the effective power level of the character at any point in the game. Everyone in the game might be level 10 at a certain point, but due to the respective choices of different Players, their effective character level based on their character's power might be anywhere between 5 and 15. The results of that variance will fall on a bell curve, and the dev can target a narrow window on that curve to set the game's challenge at. The more choice, the more scrunched down and wide is the bell, while the dev's window of opportunity gets no larger. (If you think all that sounds familiar, it's because it's basic Game Theory.) And so, to ensure the largest audience share, the dev will pitch the difficulty just below the center line on the bell. Meaning the game is already weaksauce. And that's before you mix in a story-based game and the power fantasy, which together will bake the result into something with a guaranteed win and enemies that can't even fight you. It's the nature of the beast.

Without choices in the game how they will be roleplay games? If you will have game with only one char class, with linear skill progression and nailed down challenges (from lvl1 to lvl10, without window of opportunity to win), without story branches - how it will be different from shooters? Only difference - it will be puzzle-solving game without reactivity and depth.

I think that we can identify the following types of cRPG players:
(1) Players that only care about the variety of skills and emergent gameplay, but gives challenge the finger.
(2) Players that only care about combos and the variety of choices in the combat system, but gives challenge the finger.
(3) Players that only care about properly balanced and challenging combat system, but gives the abundance of choices and player experimentation the finger.
This means that groups (1)-(2) are actually covert popamoles that can pretend to be something else because they know more than a causal about the combination of stats and skills, but only the group (3) is genuinely interested in stats, skills and challenge.
Good, I will revive to rethink my priorities as a cRPG player.

Actully it is very radical thinking. But it is Codex. Why not.
Still I think best way to make cRPG - use all 3 approaches + good story. You somehow omitted story from this all.
 
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Lurker King

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Actually, it is very radical thinking. But it is Codex. Why not.
Still I think best way to make cRPG - use all 3 approaches + good story. You somehow omitted story from this all

The problem with (1) and (2) is not just the variety of skills and combos in itself, but the way this variety of choices should be implemented to provide the type of experience these players want. They want abundance of skill points, low skill checks and many ways to interact with the environment. However, they don’t want content gated by harsh skill checks. Which means that the skill checks are just poor excuses to provide them with cool ways to do shit they want. They don’t want just combos and new abilities, they want overwhelming broken combos and super-destructive builds that deals absurd amount of damage and let them feel like gods of destruction. It is impossible to find a middle term between this mindset and a hardcore mindset, because their experience is entirely based on the possibility to break the combat system. You can provide more abilities and combos, but if the game is challenging, people will cry and moan about how stupid your game is, and how it should attempt to emulate the likes of D:OS and BG2. However, and this is the funny part, they will never admit that they want this because is easier. No, they will say that this is what the definition of a fun cRPG is.
 

adrix89

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The Strawman King.

People are much simple then that, they just want a fun game with a cool story and a sense of progression.
Saying that players do not like challenging combat is fucking absurd in the era of DOTA, Heartstone, LoL, PvP MMOs, Roguelikes.

Those players would wipe the fucking floor with you and your special snowflake RPG combat.
The AI has always been braindead in all RPGs and yet these players compete with real human intelligence.
 

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