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Roguey vs the Grognards Thread

TheGreatOne

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Yahtzee "king of PC gamers and the Roger Ebert of gaming" Croshaw still considers it to be nothing but an above average size DLC for Fallout 3. Though that guy is fucking retarded, but escapist&SJW crowd takes his word as law.
 

Volrath

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Yahtzee "king of PC gamers and the Roger Ebert of gaming" Croshaw still considers it to be nothing but an above average size DLC for Fallout 3. Though that guy is fucking retarded, but escapist&SJW crowd takes his word as law.
So?
 

TheGreatOne

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Some people still think that it's an expansion pack, even PC gamers with "refined taste"
 

Volrath

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There are many things to describe Yahtzee and his retarded followers, refined isn't one of them.
 

Roguey

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Yahtzee's made it no secret that he can't get into RPGs at all. Couldn't stand Planescape Torment or either Witcher.

Role played a gay man and completed Dragon Age II though.
 

Rake

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Yahtzee's made it no secret that he can't get into RPGs at all. Couldn't stand Planescape Torment or either Witcher.

Role played a gay man and completed Dragon Age II though.
Source? His Torment and Witchers videos i mean. I'm curious about what he said.
 

Roguey

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Source? His Torment and Witchers videos i mean. I'm curious about what he said.
You can look up the ZP Twitcher reviews yourself.

His thoughts on Torment were on his blog.
http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/archive/20070814-1220.htm
This week: Mass Effect. In summary: too much text.

I did my usual cursory glance over notable forum threads to get my feedback and it seems some people on one forum that shall remain nameless have been calling me a hypocrite for apparently liking Planescape Torment despite it, too, being a monstrously wordy game. My response: where the hell did you get the impression that I liked Planescape Torment? That, too, I found boring and couldn't get further than the first world. I'm not angry, I'm just confused as to how you made this leap of logic. Admittedly I did show the box art for, like, one second to illustrate a point but I don't remember drawing a big sign over it saying THIS GAME IS AWESOME MMM I WANT IT TO SPUNK IN MY FACE
 

TheGreatOne

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There are many things to describe Yahtzee and his retarded followers, refined isn't one of them.
Many clueless people still think he's the most :obviously: internet reviewer ever because he hates everything and claims to like old PC games :lol: And yet designers like JES don't get it that catering to people like Yahtzee is useless since they don't like RPGs core design anyway, just the exploration/story/graphics part if a good (=overhyped) game comes along
 

HiddenX

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Divinity: Original Sin Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Seems Desslock is one of us Grognards, too:

Tweets (23. August 2014) in response to Josh E. Sawyers article on balancing RPGs and after playing the beta of PoE.

If balance an overriding goal, specialization and diversity usually pared back or abilities conflated/mirrored sacrificing uniqueness.

[Balance] ]Not needed in single player game - I want misfits and juggernauts - they make roleplaying richer. Balance challenges to ensure all can overcome

Players should feel the "sting of character weakness and satisfaction of character strengths over the course of" an RPG - -perfect.

Too many developers seem afraid to deliver any "sting",even though it's crucial to make choices consequential.Choices should be tough

That doesn't mean creating frustrating roadblocks,but roleplaying requires differentiation between characters to ensure a personalized story

Fallout is such an interesting RPG to discuss in terms of balance. It has trash skill options,it has unspoken "easy mode"development options

But it has so many viable options for roleplaying truly different, personalized characters that it's a superlative RPG. And imbalanced.

Some of that imbalance is bad(trash options-science skill),but there are no dead ends & most punitive choices self-evident (non-violence)

Fallout's great strength is you can play non-speaking brutes or non-violent diplomat-much harder characters to play than typical gunslinger

Which cycles back to tweets earlier in week-balance challenges so all characters are viable and rewarding. Misfits & juggernauts can enhance

I agree 100%.
 

Roguey

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Pillars of Eternity isn't Fallout. A character bad at combat ends up being a bad character.

Additionally, non-violent characters in Fallout aren't difficult to play at all as long as you don't try to engage in combat.

Skyrim journal update: That talking dog quest was an excellent troll. The only way it could be more trollish is if you had been forced to follow that damn dog all the way to the second cave like you were with the first. Felt like I was playing Divinity 2 again.

I'm now the owner of a house by a lake. Time to adopt that orphan from the city and go full-Sims.
 

Sceptic

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Divinity: Original Sin
Fallout's great strength is you can play non-speaking brutes or non-violent diplomat-much harder characters to play than typical gunslinger.
I don't agree with this one. The beauty of Fallout is that a Brave Diplomat ™ can be easier in certain situations. I'm pretty sure the stealth/bluff option in Cathedral is a lot easier than slaughtering everything that moves, and it's certainly a LOT faster, even with Fallout's relatively quick combat. Fallout's great strength isn't that the brute and diplomat options exist - it's that they can deal with some situations better than a typical combat/gunslinger build. It's why playing the game as a mix of gunslinger and diplomat works better than either pure route. And that in itself is a sign of balance - this is the kind of balance I'm more interested in, one in which multiple playstyles are all viable, and one in which mix-and-match is the most optimal depending on the situation (as it should be, if you think about).

Otherwise Desslock does make some pretty good points, especially with respect to the "sting".
 

Johannes

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Fallout New Vegas sold more copies than any individual new Bioware game.
It could've been designed by Cleve and it would've sold just as much. JES's influence on the game had 0 impact on its sales, it sold well because it's a sequel to one of the most popular games of the last console generation.
Are you serious? If it'd been designed by Cleve it would've been a smash hit with ten times the sales and metacritic scores. Always bet on the neanderthal.
 
Self-Ejected

Ulminati

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There's a lot of other better examples where sequels sell more.
Go on then. Keep in mind they have to be slam dunks to genres that are as comparably complex as RPGs.

The annual EA sports series (FIFA, Madden, NFL, Tiger Woods etc) all sell equally well or better than their predecessors, despite mosly being updating of names and slightly higher resulations on the face textures.


Red Alert, despite introducing no new mechanics, using the same engine sold buckets and is widely recognized as being way better than its predecessor.

We all know you're going to make up some bullshit argument - probably that you don't think they're complex enough - to disregard any information that clashes with your preconceptions. That's par for the course when taking roguey bait.
 

St. Toxic

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I don't agree with this one. The beauty of Fallout is that a Brave Diplomat ™ can be easier in certain situations. I'm pretty sure the stealth/bluff option in Cathedral is a lot easier than slaughtering everything that moves, and it's certainly a LOT faster, even with Fallout's relatively quick combat. Fallout's great strength isn't that the brute and diplomat options exist - it's that they can deal with some situations better than a typical combat/gunslinger build. It's why playing the game as a mix of gunslinger and diplomat works better than either pure route. And that in itself is a sign of balance - this is the kind of balance I'm more interested in, one in which multiple playstyles are all viable, and one in which mix-and-match is the most optimal depending on the situation (as it should be, if you think about).

I would have to agree to some extent, but it does come off as you trying to say two mutually exclusive things simultaneously. Which of the two statements is actually true: that going for the extreme gunz only/ diplo only options is "easier", or that a mix of both works better than either extreme? The question is basically rhetorical.

A mix of both makes you master of none, right, meaning that you get access to more game content overall with a mix-n-match character build, more varied and personally rewarding resolutions to problems, all the while you do end up facing challenges not really meant for your character's particular skill level in a number of different fields and so by the grace of failure state end up being forced to look for alternative solutions which do work for your build. Meanwhile, extremely combat-centric or diplomacy-centric builds breeze through some parts of the game and are faced with dilemmas in others, sometimes "moral" and sometimes practical ones, like being forced to completely eliminate a map because diplomacy won't work for your combat build or having to settle for truce where an ass kicking would have been more appropriate and profitable, but on the up-swing you do get access to exclusively higher tier content.

That is not to say Fallout is a balanced game as we currently understand the term, where every build holds an equally viable solution to a problem, and Fallout did have the scenic-route option where one could forgo character skills entirely to solve segments of the main storyline in more of an adventure-game spirit. But I sure as hell thought it was way more fun, and couldn't care less if my characters ended up sucking or becoming overpowered.

There's a different kind of balance at play here, one arguably more realistic, in showing that both extreme specialization and too broad a distribution creates characters that are unsuitable outside of their proper element. Perhaps this is why so many people see the story-telling element as the defining aspect of RPG's, without necessarily realizing how interwoven story is with both gameplay mechanics and the preconceptions a player has about what constitutes a logical chain of events. Basically, I don't think it's possible for every written event to support multiple skill-based solutions while at the same time coming across as coherent and realistic from a story-telling perspective, which then presupposes unique and detailed content to be added in separately with a particular skillset in mind, naturally trying to avoid any potential conflicts with the initial narrative. Taking on a task like this while at the same time trying to provide meaningful choices in character creation which are supposed to represent the full range of relevant abilities one would normally expect from any individual thriving/surviving in a particular scenario is a gigantic undertaking, which is why it has to be done with some consideration to minimize bloat, but let's not forget that it's also the first step to creating a game-world where multiple narrative potentials would make sense to a player even outside of a reactive environment and cannot be fashioned on the basis of pure practicality.

There are undoubtedly ways of making even minor "support" skills in Fallout play a central role in the main storyline, but not without adding a ton more content to support it, perhaps not even without multiple equally viable end-goals to pursue. This isn't always economically viable or even desirable from a story and gameplay perspective, as games which are too open ended leave the player to pursue goals which aren't even remotely attainable without even the slightest indication by the content or game mechanics that this is the case. Far better to simply release a second module, a sequel, this time using the second rate abilities as the primary driving force in favor of previously overrepresented abilities, driving the point that it's not a question of chargen but context in terms of gameworld events and narrative that's key in creating a "balanced" gameplay experience.
 
Last edited:

Grunker

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despite mosly being updating of names and slightly higher resulations on the face textures.

They don't sell well because of updated features, they sell well because sport game plays have plenty of money and want an updated database. Nothing more sucky than playing with last year's roster to a FIFA player.

(I don't agree with Roguey here though)
 
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Ulminati

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You wanted examples of slam-dunk sequels that sell more. I gave you examples of slam-dunk sequels that sell more.
 

Roguey

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While good to know, sports games don't exactly have to design dozens of hours of new content, and as you said yourself they pretty much just copy/paste the mechanics.
 
In My Safe Space
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I don't agree with this one. The beauty of Fallout is that a Brave Diplomat ™ can be easier in certain situations. I'm pretty sure the stealth/bluff option in Cathedral is a lot easier than slaughtering everything that moves, and it's certainly a LOT faster, even with Fallout's relatively quick combat. Fallout's great strength isn't that the brute and diplomat options exist - it's that they can deal with some situations better than a typical combat/gunslinger build. It's why playing the game as a mix of gunslinger and diplomat works better than either pure route. And that in itself is a sign of balance - this is the kind of balance I'm more interested in, one in which multiple playstyles are all viable, and one in which mix-and-match is the most optimal depending on the situation (as it should be, if you think about).

I would have to agree to some extent, but it does come off as you trying to say two mutually exclusive things simultaneously. Which of the two statements is actually true: that going for the extreme gunz only/ diplo only options is "easier", or that a mix of both works better than either extreme? The question is basically rhetorical.

A mix of both makes you master of none, right, meaning that you get access to more game content overall with a mix-n-match character build, more varied and personally rewarding resolutions to problems, all the while you do end up facing challenges not really meant for your character's particular skill level in a number of different fields and so by the grace of failure state end up being forced to look for alternative solutions which do work for your build. Meanwhile, extremely combat-centric or diplomacy-centric builds breeze through some parts of the game and are faced with dilemmas in others, sometimes "moral" and sometimes practical ones, like being forced to completely eliminate a map because diplomacy won't work for your combat build or having to settle for truce where an ass kicking would have been more appropriate and profitable, but on the up-swing you do get access to exclusively higher tier content.

That is not to say Fallout is a balanced game as we currently understand the term, where every build holds an equally viable solution to a problem, and Fallout did have the scenic-route option where one could forgo character skills entirely to solve segments of the main storyline in more of an adventure-game spirit. But I sure as hell thought it was way more fun, and couldn't care less if my characters ended up sucking or becoming overpowered.

There's a different kind of balance at play here, one arguably more realistic, in showing that both extreme specialization and too broad a distribution creates characters that are unsuitable outside of their proper element. Perhaps this is why so many people see the story-telling element as the defining aspect of RPG's, without necessarily realizing how interwoven story is with both gameplay mechanics and the preconceptions a player has about what constitutes a logical chain of events. Basically, I don't think it's possible for every written event to support multiple skill-based solutions while at the same time coming across as coherent and realistic from a story-telling perspective, which then presupposes unique and detailed content to be added in separately with a particular skillset in mind, naturally trying to avoid any potential conflicts with the initial narrative. Taking on a task like this while at the same time trying to provide meaningful choices in character creation which are supposed to represent the full range of relevant abilities one would normally expect from any individual thriving/surviving in a particular scenario is a gigantic undertaking, which is why it has to be done with some consideration to minimize bloat, but let's not forget that it's also the first step to creating a game-world where multiple narrative potentials would make sense to a player even outside of a reactive environment and cannot be fashioned on the basis of pure practicality.

There are undoubtedly ways of making even minor "support" skills in Fallout play a central role in the main storyline, but not without adding a ton more content to support it, perhaps not even without multiple equally viable end-goals to pursue. This isn't always economically viable or even desirable from a story and gameplay perspective, as games which are too open ended leave the player to pursue goals which aren't even remotely attainable without even the slightest indication by the content or game mechanics that this is the case. Far better to simply release a second module, a sequel, this time using the second rate abilities as the primary driving force in favor of previously overrepresented abilities, driving the point that it's not a question of chargen but context in terms of gameworld events and narrative that's key in creating a "balanced" gameplay experience.
Doesn't Fallout allow to develop a character that has both great diplomacy and combat skills?
 

St. Toxic

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Doesn't Fallout allow to develop a character that has both great diplomacy and combat skills?

To some extent, but hardly as par for the course, I don't think. Other than the fairly lengthy time-limit, there's little stopping you from amassing enough experience to basically out-lvl some of the quest related challenges, but if you're speccing into a bit of everything to get a well rounded build, as I assume we're talking about, it would take some time to get there.
 

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