AoD recieves undue praise and favouritism from the Codex

[Deleted Member 22431]

I don't mind larp-centreic RPGs either, the thing is to set your horizon of expectations right. Decades of playing games should have developed that ability to appreciate whether the developer achieved what he was going for, and not look for things that he never meant to pursue.

But there are different schools of larping.

The adult larping school will want a hostile game world that treats you like a dog (ee.g., PtD, Gothic, RoA, AoD). This also creates immersion and butthurt.

The man-child larping school will pander to your childish fantasies in the most shameless manner. This includes 90% of cRPGs.

You also need to factor decline into this equation. Older games like KotDP would do the same things AoD is doing right now and players would consider this normal. Now, a player can't fail a skill check without the whole design approach being called into question. It is as simple as that. cRPGs became too easy and players can't handle any small amount of frustration. They talk about linearity, lack of exploration and make all kinds of excuses, but this justification is a smokescreen for the truth: they want to feel in charge because they were corrupted by cRPGs poorly designed.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

The point I was chasing was that many times AoD's criticisms are countered with "it is technically possible, here is the proof" rather than trying to actually take the time to understand why it feels that way to the player.

Oh, I understand them perfectly. If by "technically possible" you mean actual counterexamples that show that they are not making sense, you are right.

But a part of this pain is self-caused.

This was self-caused by the players themselves, who only play indulgent cRPGs and think that every developer needs to copy everything from other cRPGs because they are too lazy to understand different things.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

The feelz are important, even in hardcore games. That's what draws the line in between some sadistic early 90's French cuntgame and a timeless classic that you want to pick up again decade after decade.

What if the feelz is against the setting that treats you like a dog? Or the harsh skill checks, that punish you for lacking skills? The feelz that they are feeling underpowered has a place here too? Because that is completely subjective. If we want to follow this feelz thing to its common denominator and we will end up with things like Skyrim.

 

[JarlFrank]

It's funny how you always cherrypick bits and pieces of criticism so you can fall back to "you just don't like the gameworld being harsh on you lol" while avoiding to address posts like Drowed's where he explains that Fallout with AoD's skillcheck difficulty would still be a different game due to the different way you interact with it, or my post where I ask you to elaborate why more free-form and systemic interaction should lead to degenerate level and quest design.

Whenever people have legit criticisms (and funnily enough, people who openly admit to enjoying AoD despite having some issues with its structure) you deflect them and interpret their words as "you just hate it because you hate the world treating you harshly" which is a claim that has nothing to do with anything the poster actually said.

You're the Sigmund Freud of AoD, except that you reduce everything down to not being hardcore enough while Freud reduced everything down to penises.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

The thing is, most RPGs are built with very large margins in multiple levels - to accommodate different playstyles as well as player failure / bad decisions. You get no time limits so you can grind or get lost or go back and forth. You get to retry skill checks. You get so much money you can always reverse bad decisions about spending. You get enough XP and skill points that you can win challenges without really understanding what's going on.

Hyperbolic example: some dude plays Arcanum and likes getting to Tarant and getting 18 balanced swords before doing anything else, and ends the game at level 80. Dude then turns to AOD/DR and is like what the fuck is this, I'm playing some emasculated charaacter who can't do most of the shit I want to do and I feel like some existential pauper.

Read "Those games are too indulgent and don't take character building seriously. The player is showered with SPs and can do fuck all in character building and still succeed. Now every other cRPG should be just as indulgent and treat character building as a lesser thing because of these games".

AOD does have real flaws, and these are often the game's limitations in how well it communicates & delivers those thin margins of consequence. For example, AOD is just as uninformative as other RPGs about what each skill really means in-game, how much of what skill is 'good' for what stage of the game, and what skills tend to be used in tandem. In most RPGs with wide margins, it's fine - you figure it out along the way, you waste some points, you respec. In AOD, your dude sucks ass.

This applies to every single cRPG out there. Is the player supposed to know in advance witch skill is more useful than others? How about playing the fucking thing to decide upon the issue? Ever heard of this concept? I think this is what the player is supposed to do in combat gameplay, but somehow he is supposed to be omniscient when civic skills are concerned.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

You're the Sigmund Freud of AoD.

If you actually think I will engage in internet discussions with butthurt players and take everything they said at face value given the abundance of counterexamples to said claims you are delusional.

 

[JarlFrank]

Then why are you only addressing the bitchings of butthurt players while ignoring the well-argued points of people who enjoyed the game but still have legit criticisms about it?

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Then why are you only addressing the bitchings of butthurt players while ignoring the well-argued points of people who enjoyed the game but still have legit criticisms about it?

Well-argued points? Like saying that traditional dialogue screens provide no choices, that AoD didn't do anything right or that you don't have anything to interact with the whole game? These points?

 

[JarlFrank]

Then why are you only addressing the bitchings of butthurt players while ignoring the well-argued points of people who enjoyed the game but still have legit criticisms about it?

Well-argued points? Like saying that traditional dialogue screens provide no choices, that AoD didn't do anything right or that you don't have anything to interact with the whole game? These points?

The point that AoD didn't do anything right was one of those butthurt detractor points, not one of the well-argued ones.

Nobody made the point that dialogue screens don't provide choices, but the point that they're more akin to CYOA than classic CRPG gameplay (which comes down as a matter of taste, so if people dislike that they dislike that; it has nothing to do with disliking a game treating you harshly).

And while AoD does have several areas where you can explore and interact freely, the majority of the main questlines consists of CYOA sequences. It's about 80% dialogue screens vs 20% free exploration and interaction (the various ancient ruins, mostly).

Again, neither me nor Drowed said AoD is a bad game. But we both explained why some people dislike it based on structure (and for me, it's not the ideal structure either, but I enjoy the game and appreciate its experiments with structure).
Some people don't like Gothic because they don't like 3D action RPGs. Does that mean they hate the game because it's hard and punishing? No, it means they don't like it because they don't like 3D action RPGs.
Some people don't like AoD because of its focus on CYOA style dialog screen sequences. It has nothing to do with not liking hard skill checks or consequences for failure.

There are also people who don't like King of Dragon Pass. They usually don't post in KoDP threads because they take one look at the screenshots, see what kind of game it is, and decide it's not for them. Meanwhile AoD looks like a Fallout/Arcanum style game at first glance (and those games were major inspirations of AoD, so yeah) and people go into it with certain expectations. Then they realize it's a different game from what they expected, and if they don't like that style of game they're obviously gonna hate it.

 

[Drowed]

The funny thing is, I don't even think AOD is that hard. I mean, back in 2015 I finished the game for the first time without any big problems. (At least as far as I can remember, although I've died a few times in certain fights.) And I just realized, I never even died in the first fight of the game, so I never got the specific achievement from that! Maybe I should install the game again just for it. There's actually a lot in the game that I haven't been able to explore, but for the time being I don't feel like going back to do that right now. Maybe someday.

When I played it, I always ended up going for more combat-focused characters precisely because I thought it was the most interesting (and interactive) part of the game. It didn't make much sense to invest in other skills if I couldn't "use" them whenever I wanted, right? But it certainly brought me satisfaction to stab some motherfuckers. And since all NPCs are assholes, in the end, it was something that was very satisfying to do.

 

[Saduj]

You have no idea what you are talking about. Hoarding skill points are only necessary if you want specific achievements and secret locations that are side quests. The main quests are easy. Thieve's Guild questline is the most open and accommodating of the factions. The questline in Teron is the freshest without a doubt.

We've all played the game. Many people have said the same thing. Do you think they are making it up? I know from first hand experience that you can be investing in the right skills but in the wrong combination and fail quests as in you're out of the guild. Has nothing to do with secret super special content and I don't know why you'd bother trying insert your narrative over what people are telling you about their experience with the game.

It's just my words against yours, but I literally did this and didn't reload much. The only time I reload during my virgin thief guild run is when I died in combat, or when attempting to do shit my thief can't do (very few instance if you know where to look based on what your thief specialize in), or when my curiosity gets the better of me and prompted me to reload to see what does the other options do instead of the one I chose (obviously not the fault of the system but mine). And like Politician said, it's because Thief's Guild questline is one of the most open out there in the game.
And as another note, I NEVER hoard SPs in any RPGs. Including AoD, of course.

Not sure what you mean by "attempting to do shit your thief couldn't do". Also, I don't know how someone would know that a particular quest line is the "most open out there in the game" if they just happened to luck into the a build that passed all the required checks for every quest. The only two ways to really know that is to either save and reload with skills points in the bag multiple times so you can try different combinations or doing the same thing but taking way more time to do it by starting over multiple times and trying different combinations. And if you did spend so much time trying out different skill distributions, you'd have to had seen many failures and would know exactly what I'm talking about.

Edit: I suppose you could also know how flexible the quests are if you had a list of all the checks but even then the point stands that if you had that in front of you, you'd be able to see how easy it is to paint oneself into a corner with a character that had succeeded through multiple quests prior.

Not saying you're lying about getting through the first time without hoarding skill points but I know for a fact that you can very easily have the right character concept and put points into the right skills but not in the right combination and if you don't have skill points saved or know where you can pick up some skill points, you're screwed. And I know this because after getting stuck and having to start over well into the questline, I did experiment with the checks.

ee the post above Saudj? The criticism is not "I don't like this feature or this thing pissed me of". It is "these developers are imbeciles and they don't know their job". This coming from a player who enjoys all kinds of shitty games. It is pure butthurt and egotistical drivel.

That there are people who make nonsensical criticisms of the game doesn't mean that every criticism is nonsensical.

 

[FeelTheRads]

The funny thing is, I don't even think AOD is that hard.

It's not. However, VD managed to market it as some ultra-hardcore experience and the fanboys fell for it. Hearing AoD fanboys talk about how amazingly hardcore it is, it's like hearing the Dark Souls fanboys screeching that it's the most difficult game ever.

"I guessed the correct options on which to click in a dialogue" is not difficulty. Putting all points into a few skills and then clicking on the dialogue options that look like they use those skills isn't difficult either.

 

[Saduj]

Putting all points into a few skills and then clicking on the dialogue options that look like they use those skills isn't difficult either.

You can reduce any game to "moving an input device around and clicking on buttons" to make it sound super simple and boring.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

We've all played the game. Many people have said the same thing.

Many people played FO3. Most people think it is an improvement over FO and FO2. Does it mean that it is right because many people said this? No, it doesn't make any difference. The only thing that matters is the quality of the argument.

Do you think they are making it up?

I think it is a mix of exaggerated criticisms motivated by butthurt, expectations based on other games and different preferences. I'm fine with people disliking the game. What pisses me off is the caricatures and unfair criticisms motivated by butthurt and expectations.

I know from first-hand experience that you can be investing in the right skills but in the wrong combination and fail quests as in you're out of the guild.

I know from first-hand experience that is the most accomodating faction and provides plenty of freedom. If you failed that bad, you probably did something wrong with your build. And yes, players can make bad choices and not everything is the developers' fault. The developer doesn't have the obligation to telepathically communicate to you in advance which build is viable or not. if you think like that is because you are spoiled. Trying a different build is supposed to be part of the experience, in combat and outside of it.

 

[Black Angel]

Not sure what you mean by "attempting to do shit your thief couldn't do".

Basically, there's generally 3 types of thieves: sneaky types, silver-tongued types, and musclehead thug types. A sneaky types would definitely NOT attempt things like talking it out with people or brute-force their way in, etc etc.

Also, I don't know how someone would know that a particular quest line is the "most open out there in the game" if they just happened to luck into the a build that passed all the required checks for every quest.

I didn't say that in argument of a virgin playthrough. Only that because I've experience most of paths there are in the Thief questline I can say it. It's something to consider when you say how people reloaded a lot during their virgin thief playthrough because there are many possible paths. However, instead of taking the most obvious path according to their invested stats and skill points I'd say people tried to pursue a path THEY *want*. Which, may or may not results in total or partial failure, which may or may not results in them reloading.

The only two ways to really know that is to either save and reload with skills points in the bag multiple times so you can try different combinations or doing the same thing but taking way more time to do it by starting over multiple times and trying different combinations. And if you did spend so much time trying out different skill distributions, you'd have to had seen many failures and would know exactly what I'm talking about.

And this isn't the fault of the system. But I'm also not faulting people who wants to see and try different combinations. I'm also 'guilty' of this myself, as I admitted before how I also reload when curiosity gets the better of me. So why is it a 'problem' for an AoD's virgin Thief Guild questline, again?

Edit: I suppose you could also know how flexible the quests are if you had a list of all the checks but even then the point stands that if you had that in front of you, you'd be able to see how easy it is to paint oneself into a corner with a character that had succeeded through multiple quests prior.

Wouldn't you say this is a matter of not paying attention to the options you're choosing? Of course, there's also a possibility where you're just so hellbent on doing the 'right thing' instead of going with 'what's done is done'.
And I'm serious about this: more often that not it's because players keep demanding for the narrative to go the way THEY *want* it, instead of relying on their stats and skills investment to execute it. There's probably a scenario or two out there where even though you've tried your best with your choice in chardev, the narrative just won't count for it. I doubt there's many of such scenario, though. I remembered even VD and co pointing out how it's actually players expecting things the way they want it to go instead of properly invest in the right stats and skills.

Not saying you're lying about getting through the first time without hoarding skill points but I know for a fact that you can very easily have the right character concept and put points into the right skills but not in the right combination and if you don't have skill points saved or know where you can pick up some skill points, you're screwed. And I know this because after getting stuck and having to start over well into the questline, I did experiment with the checks.

But is that really the fault of the system? Wouldn't it be right for you to, instead of keep banging your head against that wall which happened to be there, go back and do stuff somewhere else? I'll admit it can come of as kind of tricky when it comes to this game's noncombat gameplay elements, but from what I remembered there are a lot of opportunities to increase your civic skills other than quest-related stuff, like a merchant's goods or a sleeping people to steal from or a chest to detect, disarm traps and lockpick, or trainers which can raise your skills or give free SPs. And if the problem lies in which numbers you got to have the skills in a given city, isn't that rather simple? 3-4, 5 for high difficulty content in Teron, 5-7 in Maadoran, 8-10 in Ganezzar or beyond? And if we go by this logic, then why do we insists on hoarding SPs up until we encounter a skill check? And then you might ask, what skills? Well, what kind of character you want to play as? There's a matter of 'useless' skill, like Etiquette, but this ain't the problem with the system and more with the problem of content design, like how in Fallout 1&2 First Aid and Doctor were largely useless to tag at chargen.

 

[Darth Canoli]

You're the Sigmund Freud of AoD, except that you reduce everything down to not being hardcore enough while Freud reduced everything down to penises.

But penises are EVERYTHING!

And they are everywhere ...

Spoiler

 

[Butter]

The truth is there are many failed and forgotten crpgs from the mid to late 90's. AoD is no better than any of those and suffers from many of the same playability issues. I have a problem with the shills who rate it in the top 20 rpgs of all time and pushed it into the top 20 of the codex rpg poll.

If you think AoD is a top 10, top 20 rpg of all time, please tell why. What does AoD do that is actually great? What does AoD do that is actually fun?

AoD deserves a place near the top for its combat alone. There isn't a single trash fight, it supports a diversity of builds, it manages to be challenging without feeling unfair, and it's rewarding when you fuck people up.

 

[Jason Liang]

AoD combat is dumb

It's the great Codex myth that AoD combat is good.

The enemy AI is dumb and your enemies are gimps.

If you think AoD combat is good then you don't have a clue how the combat actually works.

 

[Butter]

AoD combat is dumb

Good point. You know what? You're dumb.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Good point. You know what? You're dumb.

Not only this but he's a gimp too.

 

[Jason Liang]

AoD combat is dumb

Good point. You know what? You're dumb.

Go read my posts on AoD combat and you'll see why it's a joke. I just checked, all the images are still up.

 

[JarlFrank]

Your critical strike rating is Heil Hitler? What's that supposed to prove?

 

[Shadenuat]

posting in the AoD has not enough systemic content thread because it is not obvious to everyone and we must talk about it even though their new game now has stealth.

 

[Saduj]

I think it is a mix of exaggerated criticisms motivated by butthurt, expectations based on other games and different preferences. I'm fine with people disliking the game. What pisses me off is the caricatures and unfair criticisms motivated by butthurt and expectations.

OK but people who like the game say the same thing so this theory is demonstrably false.

I know from first-hand experience that is the most accomodating faction and provides plenty of freedom. If you failed that bad, you probably did something wrong with your build. And yes, players can make bad choices and not everything is the developers' fault. The developer doesn't have the obligation to telepathically communicate to you in advance which build is viable or not. if you think like that is because you are spoiled. Trying a different build is supposed to be part of the experience, in combat and outside of it.

Nobody said anything about telepathic communication. The point is, what you refer to as "doing something wrong" is the player having a viable build up to a certain point and just making the wrong investment at the wrong time and not being able to pass the next series of checks for the next mission. And that "wrong" investment isn't due to the player making some off the wall decision to take the character in a new direction. It is just not having one of the right combinations that were subjectively selected for the next mission.

I didn't say that in argument of a virgin playthrough. Only that because I've experience most of paths there are in the Thief questline I can say it. It's something to consider when you say how people reloaded a lot during their virgin thief playthrough because there are many possible paths. However, instead of taking the most obvious path according to their invested stats and skill points I'd say people tried to pursue a path THEY *want*. Which, may or may not results in total or partial failure, which may or may not results in them reloading.

My point is that there is no obvious path. Yes, you know what skills a thief should be invested in. And yes, you know what skills have come in useful during past missions. I'm not talking about players just deciding all the sudden that their thief is going to switch gears and handle the next mission by Bartering their way out of it or something like that. I'm talking about having points invested in the skills that have come in useful before and just not in the right combo for the next mission. I know for a fact that the developers reluctantly acknowledged the issue by changing some skill checks to a combination of two skills. That made it better, but it was still possible to logically invest skill points and paint oneself into a corner. People who don't like replaying hours of content that they just recently completed are going to get stuck once and then adjust by saving before any investment of skill points and rightfully so because it is very possible that reloading is in their future. This is a common adjustment that many players reported making.

But is that really the fault of the system? Wouldn't it be right for you to, instead of keep banging your head against that wall which happened to be there, go back and do stuff somewhere else? I'll admit it can come of as kind of tricky when it comes to this game's noncombat gameplay elements, but from what I remembered there are a lot of opportunities to increase your civic skills other than quest-related stuff, like a merchant's goods or a sleeping people to steal from or a chest to detect, disarm traps and lockpick, or trainers which can raise your skills or give free SPs. And if the problem lies in which numbers you got to have the skills in a given city, isn't that rather simple? 3-4, 5 for high difficulty content in Teron, 5-7 in Maadoran, 8-10 in Ganezzar or beyond? And if we go by this logic, then why do we insists on hoarding SPs up until we encounter a skill check? And then you might ask, what skills? Well, what kind of character you want to play as? There's a matter of 'useless' skill, like Etiquette, but this ain't the problem with the system and more with the problem of content design, like how in Fallout 1&2 First Aid and Doctor were largely useless to tag at chargen.

Yes, knowing where all the opportunities to pick up skill points is very useful in this game. There is really little difference between hoarding skill points or failing a faction quest, reloading and then going picking up a few SP you knew were out there but hand't bothered with yet. After you play your first couple of backgrounds you're going to know where the easy extra SPs are. I actually started with the easier backgrounds like Loremaster, Merchant and Mercenary so that by the time I got around to some of the harder ones, I knew where most of those opportunities were. As far as what you're talking about with skill point levels by city, that is oversimplifying. Because you're not going to have the same skill level in all your relevant skills at any point in the game. Once you get to Maadoran, raising one of the skills you've been investing in consistently requires a major investment of skill points. And if you make the wrong major investment of your skill points at the wrong time, it is easy to get stuck.

Anyway, I feel bad writing long critical posts because I really did like the game. I wasn't reloading on every skill check. But I always saved before making major investments because replaying hours of content that I just recently finished is something I didn't want to do. The "kill Gaelius" mission is the one where I remember getting stuck, having to start over and still having to do some trial and error during my next try in order to get through it. And it definitely involved putting points in at least one skill that I hadn't used previously as a thief and didn't use again.

 

[CappenVarra]

actually, it's more like: dissing AoD recieves undue praise and favouritism from the Codex

the game is quite alright if you're not min-maxing edgelord or imabetterrpgdesignerthanthou points