Why are PC RPGs so easy?

[David Xachaturian]

What do you mean, easy? Easy to roleplay in a CRPG? You wish.

 

[Relayer71]

The KOTOR games would have been SOOOOO much better if combat was drastically increased. Those games were cakewalks. Too bad because KOTOR2 was actually a great game (notwithstanding the bugs, botched ending and aforementioned combat difficulty).

Just like NWN 2 could have been a good game if the amount of battle encounters were reduced by 60% and difficulty of remaing battles increased by 500%. Instead it was a chore to play through.

This is the reason I have lost my enthusiasm for RPGs over the years. The last game I played in which I had a fun, challenging time with combat was probably Wizardry 8.

And maybe Divine Divinity - but that was more due to the overwhelming amount of enemies you sometimes faced (and that game could have also done with less combat).

Actually, Temple Of Elemental Evil had the best combat engine and was pretty difficult - but that game was all about combat with not much story and terrible writing.

In that sense, Icewind Dale doesn't get the respect it deserves. It had good writing, a decent story, good combat (not super difficult but not a cakewalk), great music and art design, had a perfect length. The only thing it lacked was actual C & C but everything else made up for it and is probably one of the best dungeon hack & slash games made.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Uh yeah, for the third fucking time, I didn't say it was easy. I said it didn't require grinding. Which it doesn't, unless you're imposing some stupid ironman rules on yourself, which would be just as arbitrary as a low level run. If you'd actually read my post you'd have noticed me gushing about how deep the combat is and how it allows for difficulty by giving the player meaningful strategies to mitigate that difficulty.

Difficulty you can bypass with player intelligence is the missing factor in most recent games.

Probably because it is assumed the players will have no intelligence and therefore the game should be made easy to begin with. Old games erred in the other direction- difficulty you could only bypass by investing massive amounts of time. That hasn't been the norm for well over a decade however.

 

[Lightknight]

In that sense, Icewind Dale doesn't get the respect it deserves. It had good writing, a decent story, good combat

I thought so before, however...
After i played ToEE i cant look at Icewind Dale with the same eyes. Its combat should be called "retarded crowd simulator". I see a dozen of units and can hardly see who is who and who is doing what, just a huge bunch of creatures mingling together.

You have all these heroes, with feats and equipment and spells and ability scores and skills and unique biographies...and then you just draw a frame around them and send them into fights like they are some cloned unnamed soldiers from C&C. Real smart design there.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I see a dozen of units and can hardly see who is who and who is doing what, just a huge bunch of creatures mingling together.
You have all these heroes, with feats and equipment and spells and ability scores and skills and unique biographies...

We must have played some very different Icewind Dales then.

 

[AlanC9]

Actually, Temple Of Elemental Evil had the best combat engine and was pretty difficult - but that game was all about combat with not much story and terrible writing.

What was difficult about ToEE? Surely not the endless Temple bugbears. (Devs, next time you make random encounters, don't put healing potions on them; the point of an RE is to drain party resources, not recharge them.)

There were one or two challenging fights (like the salamanders if you weren't prepared for getting fireballed). But most of the combat was easy. Which is OK if you just want to get a feeling of being a D&D master, I guess.

 

[Lightknight]

We must have played some very different Icewind Dales then.

I'm just guessing here, but might that be because your version of Icewind Dale exists only in your imagination ?

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

"Why are PC RPGs so easy?"

Because most of them are cheap ports from console Akshun-RPGs.

 

[bgillisp]

My answer? Because console RPG's cheat. Most PC RPG's keep the bosses within the same set of rules the player has to use (D and D for instance), including HP and MP. Bosses can run out of spells in most D and D games. However, console games don't feel that their bosses have to follow the same rules as the players, and will 'cheat' the system the player is on.

Example: I remember getting to the soceress Adel fight in FF8 for the first time. She spammed Ultima and Meteor the entire fight...which lasted 45 minutes to an hour (I kid you not!). At about 70 MP a pop, that was about...70 * 90 = 6300 MP (assuming 2 casts a minute, 45 minutes). So she was outside the same mecanics the player was (players MP limit was 999), didn't have to use anything to recharge MP or anything (which the player would have to at least stop and use an elixer to restore MP, losing one turn. Instead, she didn't ever have to break her rotation). Nope, instead she was given unlimited MP, so she could spam her attacks without end.

Old D and D games managed to be hard without going outside the D and D rules. I see none of that in console games.

And, as has been mentioned before, some of the console game difficulty lies in having to have a walkthrough to learn a good way to beat some battles...or even how to win the game. Ever try to get the good ending to FFX-2 without a walkthrough? Who would have known to push x 4x in that scene without one?

At least that is my $.02...

 

[Volourn]

"PC RPGs made before 2004 were harder. This is a fact"

No.



"Most PC RPG's keep the bosses within the same set of rules the player has to use (D and D for instance)"

What a bullshittastic lie.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

If you go "Fuck. Random encounter killed me before i could act because i have low luck. Reload. Fuck. Random encounter killed me before i could act because i have no resistance to curses. Reload. Fuck. Boss LOLed because i only brought melee demons and he reflects all melee attacks. Reload. Woohoo! I won! This game is so fucking easy! No challenge!" is a little bit ridiculous. Are you careful about what demons you have? No, because if you find a immune boss or enemy you just reload a bring diferent ones. Are you careful about Inheritance & Fusion as to have a varied set of skills in your "main" group? Nah, because if i need a certain skill i reload and get my a demon with that one.

It's not ridiculous because I don't have to write a savescumming utility or anything like that to do that reloading. It's built into the game so it's part of the game's overall challenge level.

Now, a game that allows saving and loading can still be difficult. It can delete saves that you reload (most roguelikes). It can restrict the number of times you can save (A few roguelikes, Dragon quarter). It can space its savepoints out really widely, meaning if you want to/have to reload, you have to sacrifice a considerable amount of progress. (Older JRPGs) It can just make the enemies really mean and really varied, meaning that you're able to save and reload frequently, but also have to because you're constantly getting your shit stomped out. (Baldur's Gate series)

Nocturne does none of these things.

In nocturne, every boss except for I think Red Rider has a savepoint right before him. You get killed and reload, you start right next to him. You lose no progress barring the time you need to spend to re-adjust your party. Not all RPGs, japanese or western, have save placements that are this forgiving. Nocturne does, and is made easier for it.

Enemies in nocturne can have some nasty, surprising abilities, but in any given dungeon they don't tend to change much. You get in a fight that kills you or makes you sweat, you go back to a cathedral and equip magatama/fuse demons that can counter them. Matador's multitarget force spell getting you down? Make a demon that nulls or absorbs it. Debilitate making your life hard? Get a demon with dekunda AND KEEP THE ABILITY IN YOUR PARTY FOR FUCKS SAKE, YOU'LL PROBABLY STILL NEED IT LATER. Plus, the general idea that "status immunities are good, status weaknesses are bad, better have demons that have the former and not the latter" is an idea that's drilled into your head early, and one that's not hard to follow.

As for abilities like bright might, well, you see it at first, you understand "you know, this could be useful for any boss." So you use the fusion system to make sure some demons have it, then if you recognize that a boss fight is coming up, wait for full kagutsuchi.

Nocturne has some brutal enemies, but it also gives you some very powerful, obvious tools to deal with them, including a relatively forgiving save/load system. You can't just ignore those tools if you know they are there and say "this game's fuckin hard, if you play it without grinding you're screwed." Calling a game hard because you missed said tools? That's more reasonable. Well hidden goodies are part of a game's challenge. But getting fiends in your party is the only thing like that I can think of which Nocturne has.

 

[desocupado]

The Rambling Sage wrote:
Emotional Vampire wrote:
Having complex mechanics is one thing, not telling the player about any of them is another.


Who said the game does not?


Poster before me.

I played this game, and other than a vague reference of what might happen if you fuse during the full moon, the game tells you shit about it's mechanics.

Also, everybody is talking about how nocturne gives you the tools, and how great the game mechanics are. They are not. I played the game, enjoyed it, finished it. But if you want to kill all the secret bosses, and get to the secret levels, you need grinding.

Of course having the right abilities is essential, but to get those you have to grind, and also, some of those aren't available to all party members. It's nice one of your demons did not took the damage of that attack, shame that all other 3 died from it.

And then somebody says "lolzor, get all demons of the type that survived, lolzors".

It's not so simple, you have to grind to get demons to certain levels to fuse right, and you have the issue of ability inheritance (you might fuse and get the demon without the ability you wanted). To equip some magatamas you have to have a certain level, if I'm not mistaken.

Bottom line is, you want to fuse some demons and finish the game. You can do it with more or less the same grinding you would have to do in another (atlus) jRPG. Special endings and secret bosses, that's another story.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Well no shit, the difficult parts are there for people who don't mind the grinding. Thats why they're optional genius.

BG is so hard! I can't kill Drizzt without grinding to max level then trapping him on the other side of a lake and shooting him 1000 times!

 

[elenai]

Well no shit, the difficult parts are there for people who don't mind the grinding. Thats why they're optional genius.

BG is so hard! I can't kill Drizzt without grinding to max level then trapping him on the other side of a lake and shooting him 1000 times!

Its quite easy. Just buy to everybody arrows of explosion

 

[Kraszu]

Not a great example you get to max lvl in BG even when you did not grind. I summoned plenty of weak monsters and they hold him long enough for long range weapons to kill him. You could have many of those spells to reinforce. I had used normal arrows.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Summoned plenty of weak monsters? With what? The 30 scrolls you grinded for? Or did you coincidently stumble across a ring of wizardry?

I've played through nocturne on the normal difficulty and gotten the hardest ending. I didn't go out of my way to grind at any point. I beat the end boss by abusing the hell out of buffs and debuffs do deal him critical non elemental hits that were completely insane, and had created a fiend that could limitless heal my party long beforehand. I think by that point I had 2 or 3 more that could do it too.

That said, just finding your way through that fucking labyrinth will produce a lot of grinding, especially if you're trying to grab all the items from the rare chests at the right times like I did. But at no point did I stop and think 'Shit. I need to go and gain 3 levels to unlock X spell!'. Thats just the crutch for people who don't want to employ any sort of plan.

 

[Radisshu]

I found the secret insta-win secret of BG:

Fireball arrows.

 

[desocupado]

I've played through nocturne on the normal difficulty and gotten the hardest ending. I didn't go out of my way to grind at any point. I beat the end boss by abusing the hell out of buffs and debuffs do deal him critical non elemental hits that were completely insane, and had created a fiend that could limitless heal my party long beforehand. I think by that point I had 2 or 3 more that could do it too.

Was that your first play? If it was, did you do it without an walkthrough? I kinda doubt it. In the first play, you're still figuring out what the fuck a kaja spell does to plan much ahead.

You talk like the game is all plan, and that if you are super smart or something you can beat the game with the right strategy at very low levels. Including the optional grinding parts which you didn't say, but made it sound like that.

And I call that bullshit, assuming it's ones first run, how do you plan all that without knowing what a kaja spell does? Not to mention that all the goodies are only attainable at later levels. Even if it's not your first run, all this "planning" is impossible, unless you look at a walkthrough to figure out how to get all these monsters. Or you plan on saying you discovered how to make all fusions, and what monsters have what skills all by yourself? To me, this would sound more like a case of "in the internet, everybody is a genius with two girlfriends and a 15 inch dick" than reality, since the game tells you fuck about it's mechanics.

I liked the game, it allowed some planning, and it was challenging, but what I see here is that you also liked the game very much, and now sees more strengths than the game really have.

 

[Thor Kaufman]

Just get the Cloak of Algernon and charm any monster that stands in your way.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

I like how Monkeyfinger is shitting himself giving examples how Nocturne is not hard and no one probably has any idea what the names he throws about mean.

 

[Kraszu]

Summoned plenty of weak monsters? With what? The 30 scrolls you grinded for? Or did you coincidently stumble across a ring of wizardry?

I had only used memorized spells no scrolls. I did memorize as much of them as I could for cleric and mage.

 

[Damned Registrations]

And I call that bullshit, assuming it's ones first run, how do you plan all that without knowing what a kaja spell does? Not to mention that all the goodies are only attainable at later levels. Even if it's not your first run, all this "planning" is impossible, unless you look at a walkthrough to figure out how to get all these monsters. Or you plan on saying you discovered how to make all fusions, and what monsters have what skills all by yourself? To me, this would sound more like a case of "in the internet, everybody is a genius with two girlfriends and a 15 inch dick" than reality, since the game tells you fuck about it's mechanics.

I liked the game, it allowed some planning, and it was challenging, but what I see here is that you also liked the game very much, and now sees more strengths than the game really have.

God, you remind me of all the idiots I find on Warcraft and Starcraft that need to ask for help in custom maps because they can't read a fucking tooltip or unit name.

The game comes with a fucking manual. Aside from that, the very first boss is weak against the only fucking attack spell a character that is FORCED into your party has. If you need to see something as simple as a critical hit giving you an extra turn happen more than twice to figure it out, go play some pong or something. There are only 3 types or stats you can buff and debuff, and they follow a very simple naming machanism. Raku > Defense, Taru > Attack, Suku > Agility; Kunda > Debuff, Kaja > Buff, De > Cancel. Maybe if they cast the spell and then they glowed purple and grew an extra penis you'd have a point, but theres a fucking message saying exactly what happened when those spells are cast. About the only thing I missed until halfway through the game was the fact that you could tell exactly when a new ability was available on a parasite by how it glowed and twitched- and they even explain THAT in the manual. Hell, they list a status effect only one boss in the entire game can induce.

The fucking fusion system was very simple. Theres a grid of monster types, and, with a very few rare exceptions, type A + type B always = type C of the next rank higher than their average level. Since this would usually mean it was higher level than you could actually produce at the time, this meant you could only see it's stats (Including it's level, starting abilities, and the first ability it will learn and what level it will learn it at, elemental affinites, and stats.) So yeah, I didn't need a fucking walkthrough to know I should try and make the cool monster with the unfamiliar adjective infront of it's version of the healing spell instead of the gimpy one with lame abilities I've already seen epically fail when used against me. I managed to figure out that since Dia and Media were both healing spells, Diarahan probably was too, ALL BY MYSELF. GENIUS POWER! The only things that were really a mystery were the fiends, since that involves some dicking around with the phases, but they fucking tell you every time you go there that the sun's phase is fucking important and screws with fusions, negotiation, and pretty much everything in the game.

It's because of retards like you that games like Oblivion get made.