Is it bad design to allow a player to create a nonviable character? (Age of Decadence)

[Goral]

"I failed because the game lied to me and there is no content for my character, the game presented a flexibility it doesn't have."

Now that is a valid complaint. This is specially bad when it is on the main critical path, Avellone social lady character being murdered by wolves over and over again on Arcanum's start is a great example of that.

How is Avellone's retarded gameplay a great example of false flexibility? If you're roleplaying a silver-tongued lady (or a lady with extreme charm thanks to her beauty) it shouldn't be surprising that when crashed in wilderness she would have problems to get by because her skill set wouldn't fit the situation she ended up with. But Arcanum offered you plenty of choices to overcome it anyway with the most obvious one being avoiding dangerous creatures and going to the nearest settlement ASAP. Although if you wanted and you weren't a total retard like Avellone (who was doing the same thing again and again expecting different results) you could have even defeated the wolves to get a significant XP boost at the very start.

You also need to take into account the fact that some builds might be easier to play at first but harder later and vice versa. And this is how it should be. The fact is Arcanum might be the most flexible game I know which you can learn as soon as you exit the crash site and get to Shrouded Hills. Just because the very first 5 minutes might be a bit harder for some builds doesn't make it a great example of dead end builds, WTF?


I mean seriously, how in the world can you take this guy's playthrough as great example?

 

[RK47]

You should just torrent the game and pay for it only when you find it fun.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

I think that making different builds and whatnot is part of the fun of playing an RPG. Though on this note, I don't think that min-maxing should be required, but that it should be permitted within the rules of the game. Let those that want to do that, do that, and let the other people still have fun too.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Depends. If you make obviously dumb choices like putting all your points into Charisma and then take only combat related abilities then sure, the player might be punished for not putting even a small ounce of thought into the logic of his character build. But in the case of AoD where it's just guessing what kind of build the developer intended the player to have then yes, that is poor design.

 

[thesheeep]

You should just torrent the game and pay for it only when you find it fun.

By now I find that when I just look at some gameplay and maybe read a few posts about it, I can tell in 95% of cases if I'll like the game or not.
I really stopped sailing the seven seas, but only extremely rarely do I make a purchase that I regret.

 

[hpstg]

Every alternative that people are proposing is a downgrade of the game's quality. Forcing people to restart if their build sucks is harsh, but is preferable when the alternative is to make the game so easy that it's either completely unrewarding or not worth replaying. If a game is easy then there better be something else compelling about it (e.g., KotOR 2 and Bloodlines) otherwise it brings absolutely nothing to the table.

Nobody says that restarting shouldn't happen. The whole question is how good is the game at hinting that you are fucking up.

If you take the "Post Nuclear" premise of Fallout seriously, and know nothing about the game itself, then the silly Doctor/Outdoorsman/Barter build, actually sounds ok.

At least Vampire had the combat and non combat skills split, so you could tell that there were two major categories of skills you should pay attention to. If you chose not to, then you were simply stupid.

That was not the case of Fallout, where everything was laid in a way that implied total freedom.

Strict build requirements to enjoy an RPG, are unfathomably stupid. Why not play a strategy or action game at that point, where the build is already refined, instead of trying out to figure out like an idiot what the game designers had or hadn't in mind when they were making the game.

Most of the time even that (the whole design of a game), is incoherent, on top of the rest of the issues.

 

[thesheeep]

Every alternative that people are proposing is a downgrade of the game's quality. Forcing people to restart if their build sucks is harsh, but is preferable when the alternative is to make the game so easy that it's either completely unrewarding or not worth replaying. If a game is easy then there better be something else compelling about it (e.g., KotOR 2 and Bloodlines) otherwise it brings absolutely nothing to the table.

Nobody says that restarting shouldn't happen. The whole question is how good is the game at hinting that you are fucking up.

If you take the "Post Nuclear" premise of Fallout seriously, and know nothing about the game itself, then the silly Doctor/Outdoorsman/Barter build, actually sounds ok.

Until you actually play the game for about two to three hours, after which any mentally active person will notice "Oh, hey, this game seems to be way more combat and dialogue focused". And restart.
Continuing to play at this point with such a build is just silly.
The game itself is good at hinting what will or won't be required. There is no such thing as an RPG that entirely changes its nature in relation to build requirements toward the end of the game.

At least Vampire had the combat and non combat skills split, so you could tell that there were two major categories of skills you should pay attention to. If you chose not to, then you were simply stupid.

That was not the case of Fallout, where everything was laid in a way that implied total freedom.

All skills were listed in the same list, yes. But weapons were clearly on top. Obviously not the best designed character creator, but the fact that there were so many combat-related skills (and perks!), but just one Doctor, one trade, one science, etc. skill is a very, VERY strong hint.

Strict build requirements to enjoy an RPG, are unfathomably stupid. Why not play a strategy or action game at that point, where the build is already refined, instead of trying out to figure out like an idiot what the game designers had or hadn't in mind when they were making the game.

Which RPG is even that strict?
Not even AoD is, and that is without a doubt one of the most strictly gated RPGs I know. If you just make a coherent build, you'll be fine - min-maxing and strong meta-knowledge is only required to beat the hardest, optional stuff.

 

[cosmicray]

Thinking back, all the gaming experiences that I enjoyed (at leat those related to RPGs) were in games that required me to think about builds and allowed me to screw them up.
One of the reasons I remember my times with BG, Arcanum & Fallout fairly well, but frankly I remember very little about Pillars of Eternity is that in PoE no matter where you put your points, every build just works (sure, some are more optimal than others, but there's simply no real failure here). Of course that doesn't lead to anything memorable.
Not once when playing something like Arcanum did I think "What a bad game for allowing me to make a bad choice", instead I thought "I learned something. Next time I'll do better".

By the way. Starting reading these forums I was surprised about something. Do people frequently play the same game as different characters/builds? If so, do they finish the game(and most RPGs are long) over and over? I keep reading about "trying other build" or "rerolling", but I'm not sure how that works. Especially when first act/intro is almost always not that interesting, that even playing "a bit" with new character won't be that fun.

 

[orcinator]

Of course it is, a game shouldn't just expect you to know all about it's mechanics when all you've done so far is press "new game" and "just do the first two hours all over again lol" is a shit excuse.
This gets even worse when a lot of these games frontload all the challenge to character creation and the first few encounters and become braindead easy once you get far enough into it.

 

[thesheeep]

Thinking back, all the gaming experiences that I enjoyed (at leat those related to RPGs) were in games that required me to think about builds and allowed me to screw them up.
One of the reasons I remember my times with BG, Arcanum & Fallout fairly well, but frankly I remember very little about Pillars of Eternity is that in PoE no matter where you put your points, every build just works (sure, some are more optimal than others, but there's simply no real failure here). Of course that doesn't lead to anything memorable.
Not once when playing something like Arcanum did I think "What a bad game for allowing me to make a bad choice", instead I thought "I learned something. Next time I'll do better".

By the way. Starting reading these forums I was surprised about something. Do people frequently play the same game as different characters/builds? If so, do they finish the game(and most RPGs are long) over and over? I keep reading about "trying other build" or "rerolling", but I'm not sure how that works. Especially when first act/intro is almost always not that interesting, that even playing "a bit" with new character won't be that fun.

Depends on the build, of course.
If it sucks and/or isn't fun, you restart, that's obviously an unfinished playthrough, then.
But even if you finished with a build, no reason not to play it again with another one, after all, that's one of the purposes of a good character build system - increase replayability.

You are right about the start of the game, though. Thankfully, some games allow you to skip the intro or there are mods for it.
Other games, mostly of the procedural nature, don't have the "I know every pixel in this" problem to begin with.

When I finish a longer game, I never replay it right away, though. The memory's just too fresh and most things would be "too known" to me. Usually, I come back after some months. If the game was good enough.

Of course it is, a game shouldn't just expect you to know all about it's mechanics when all you've done so far is press "new game" and "just do the first two hours all over again lol" is a shit excuse.

You aren't wrong, but what does that have to do with not allowing the player to create a bad character, which is what this thread is about?
Just because a player knows (or would be able to know) the mechanics, doesn't mean they can't still mess up their build.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

If the build is completely unviable and the player absolutely cannot make any progress, yes. There should always be a chance of succeeding through player skill, no matter how slim it is.

One of the core principles of old-school RPG design is that player skill comes before character skill. Builds and items are there to give players superior/inferior tools, but the player's own ingenuity is the ultimate factor. This is lost on munchkins, however. They believe skill resides in system mastery, because that's how they can tell themselves that they deserve the extreme power they've acquired through min/maxing, metagaming, savescumming, etc. Munchkins are also a majority around here, hence the poll's result and all the talk about games like P:K supposedly being 'incline'.

This is one area where what works in p&p doesn't necessarily translate to the computer. A party wipe is a big fucking deal in p&p, it's an inconvenience in a CRPG. The experience of going somewhere dangerous, getting killed immediately and deciding to come back later is integral to playing a CRPG, but only an idiot would do that in a real RPG (unless the mechanics make it easy to resurrect like Paranoia).

With p&p you’re painting with a virtually infinite canvas and can outsmart your DM, with a CRPG your ingenuity is limited to what the programmers thought to include. Gotta believe that calls for different design principles.

However, the skills in Fallout are at first a little like a promise. Not a promise that you can finish the game with them alone (otherwise you wouldn't have 3 tags), but the promise that there will be interesting role-playing opportunities for those skills. They are an interface for you, as the player, to interact with the world. So, having skills that are just dead ends that lead almost nowhere is just bad design. It is not creating an interesting challenge for the player to come up with ways to use them so as to make an effective character.

Every alternative that people are proposing is a downgrade of the game's quality. Forcing people to restart if their build sucks is harsh, but is preferable when the alternative is to make the game so easy that it's either completely unrewarding or not worth replaying. If a game is easy then there better be something else compelling about it (e.g., KotOR 2 and Bloodlines) otherwise it brings absolutely nothing to the table.

Nobody says that restarting shouldn't happen. The whole question is how good is the game at hinting that you are fucking up.

If you take the "Post Nuclear" premise of Fallout seriously, and know nothing about the game itself, then the silly Doctor/Outdoorsman/Barter build, actually sounds ok.

At least Vampire had the combat and non combat skills split, so you could tell that there were two major categories of skills you should pay attention to. If you chose not to, then you were simply stupid.

That was not the case of Fallout, where everything was laid in a way that implied total freedom.

Strict build requirements to enjoy an RPG, are unfathomably stupid. Why not play a strategy or action game at that point, where the build is already refined, instead of trying out to figure out like an idiot what the game designers had or hadn't in mind when they were making the game.

Most of the time even that (the whole design of a game), is incoherent, on top of the rest of the issues.

Fallout came with a great manual that spelled out all of the skills in detail. It asterisks speech and barter as skills that will benefit a diplomatic character, it brackets off stealth, stealing and lockpick into their own separate section (not recommended by Vault-Tec because they’re illegal). Should you tag a weapon skill? The manual tells you that combat is inevitable: “at some point in your adventure, diplomacy or stealth will fail.” They also include the three pre-set builds if you want a sense of what the developers consider viable.

It’s just not true that the game gave you no detail or no context. If you were playing a CRPG in 1997, you were expected to read the manual. Tim, Leonard and Jason even ensured that it looked cool and made sense as something you might find inside the vault (incidentally, it’s possible that Fallout is merely a simulation played inside the Vault). You also got a notebook for writing down relevant information you come across in your travels.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

play the game for about two to three hours, after which any mentally active person will notice "Oh, hey, this game seems to be way more combat and dialogue focused". And restart.

OH THE HORROR, OOH THE HUMANITY!

 

[Mastermind]

I recall an old drama on the Interplay forums. Someone bought was Fallout, got all excited about exploring the post-apocalyptic world and made a character specializing in outdoorsmanship, barter, and stealth. Naturally, he didn't enjoy the experience. Was it the developers' fault for not ensuring that any randomly-picked skills would allow him to beat the game?

An option to poison the master would have covered just about every possible angle. Would be less retarded than talking the guy into killing himself too.

 

[V_K]

At least Vampire had the combat and non combat skills split, so you could tell that there were two major categories of skills you should pay attention to. If you chose not to, then you were simply stupid.

And so did AoD, yet going for a hybrid build is the opposite of what you should do.

 

[DraQ]

Non-viable builds or vastly suboptimal (in terms of gameplay/content mileage, not power) ones are a proof of inexcusably shit design.

First, player's total failure should always be due to player's error given available information. Available information during chargen is limited to what is in the manual and/or tooltips. Not being a psychic is not player's error.

Second, non-viable builds illustrate poor use of available build space and low amount of RPGness per buck. If you put, say, outdoorsman into your game as a choice for the player, you make on obligation of it being about as good a choice as any of the alternatives. If you can't fulfill that obligation then don't put this choice in your game just like you didn't allow characters to specialize in fucking ikebana. You will have avoided concentrating development effort on something that's not worth it and wasting player's time on something not worth it. You can also do consolidation/splitting of skills until they are relatively even match in terms of gameplay payoff, split skills into tiers and making investment into shit-tier flavour skills separate from primary ones or whatever. It is your system, you have authorial control over it (or what fraction of licensed system you use), there are no excuses.

Third, preemptive:
Game's challenge shouldn't lie in grinding nor in googling the build to faceroll everything. It should lie in adopting your playstyle to effectively randomized (in a system with more or less equally attractive choices and no prior knowledge) toolbox you are stuck with since chargen. Character building should be about implementing the concept of a character you want to play, chalenge about having this concept persevere and thrive given circumstances, possibly changing to an extent allowed by mechanics.
By extension, both dump-stats and power inflation are hallmarks of shittily designed system (yes, everything is shit).

 

[Sigourn]

A character system that makes every build viable is entirely worthless.

If you do not need to think about your build, then there is no challenge in creating a build. No challenge = bad design.

Your argument only makes sense for min-maxers or people who metagame. For people who want to play a roleplaying game where you can be whoever you want*, your argument is moot. "Metagaming" should never be a thing in roleplaying games, aside from those who want to beat the game and beat it hard.

This is what I mean by "freedom of choice is not freedom if you have to specialize in certain skills". Yo've said it yourself: creating a build needs to be challenging, i.e. "you need to pick the good skills from the bad". Which begs the question: why even add gimmicky skills? "Outdoorsman" may as well have been a Perk. In a game like Fallout, this should be a no brainer: the very specific skills should be Perks, bonuses.

*this shouldn't even need to be clarified, but this is the Codex so here it goes: "whoever you want" means "play whichever build you want and be able to succeed". Being able to succeed doesn't mean "make the game a cakewalk", however. It means being ABLE to succeed, as opposed to be put into a position you can't progress through the game anymore.

In that example, the player was simply a fool for going in blindly, expecting a game that is about combat & dialogue to be solveable via stealth, trade and wilderness skills.
The need to think about metagame (what used to be RTFM, if you ask me) at least somewhat is essential for any real RPG enthusiast and essential for the experience - if you do not want that, read a book, watch a movie or play a walking simulator, but stop demaning (c)RPGs to feature braindead character building.

If you need to RTFM to understand that the choices presented to you are either great, good, or shit, then I'm sorry, but that doesn't excuse bad design. It's even worse: "the game design is awful but if we warn the player in the manual it's all good".

 

[DeepOcean]

With freedom of choice (i.e. a skill-based system that doesn't hold your hand the way class-based systems do) comes the freedom to make mistakes.

I agree with this in general, if a player wants to make a rogue type of character but he invested all his point on use magical item, that is his problem for being a tard, but I don't think designers should be too radical about this. On a freedom of choice system, offering templates so noobs have an idea of the skills they might need like on Fallout 1, segregated stat pools, skill point investment limit by level, don't adding skills that won't be used, there are a series of options for diminishing the possibility of noobs making trap builds. Basically, the game should at least warn the player somehow that he is making a trap non viable build, if the moron ignore the warnings, then he should be punished.

I don't mean, having a literal warning sign on the character creation (while some morons would actually benefit from this) but having subtle hints for the player. I don't think providing a big list of skills and let noobs choose at random without any context is a good idea. The experienced RPG player will just assume this is a combat RPG with very, very light social skills use like on 99% of the cRPGs and ignore the social skills completely as the safest path and the noob (having probably played tabletop rpgs before, only making this worse) will have all kinds of wrong expectations when he sees all those skill options.

Allow random choice could lead to alot of confusion specially if the game demands specialization (there is an argument here if the game isn't willing to balance well for Jack of all Trades, if it wouldn't be a better option a class based system offering standard kits for noobs.). I'm not talking of clueless morons making warrior characters with all points on charisma so their ultra niche character is viable, Im talking of players that placed some points of persuasion thinking that as important suddenly discovering they can't convince anyone and now they are shit at the combat, there is the issue of flexibility and the margin of error the designer is willing to provide.

If the designer is willing to allow for a wide margin of error, then the game becomes a cake walk for experienced players, if he is allowing a very tight margin of error, then the game becomes a guessing the designer mind game, flexibility and balancing that is a pain in the ass, that is why freedom of choice systems are harder to make than class based systems.

Sure, it is player's duty to understand the game he is playing but he can't do that if the designer doesn't provide something for him, some basic information about the game he will play, if the game doesn't provide any information what so ever to help making those choices, the designer is confusing not holding the players hands with treating them like Nostradamus.

 

[Zer0wing]

And so did AoD, yet going for a hybrid build is the opposite of what you should do.

ORLY? There's a fuckton of screenshots on the internet and several guides on steam about hybrid characters.

 

[thesheeep]

"Metagaming" should never be a thing in roleplaying games, aside from those who want to beat the game and beat it hard.

With sentences like that, you belong in kindergarden. Or Waldorf school.
I bet you're also one of those people who claim that developers who do not add an easy mode "disrespect" your time. Go play Pillars in story mode or something - not that story mode would even be needed in that game

This is what I mean by "freedom of choice is not freedom if you have to specialize in certain skills". Yo've said it yourself: creating a build needs to be challenging, i.e. "you need to pick the good skills from the bad". Which begs the question: why even add gimmicky skills? "Outdoorsman" may as well have been a Perk. In a game like Fallout, this should be a no brainer: the very specific skills should be Perks, bonuses.

That would be better design, sure, but that still doesn't make it bad design if a game allows you to fuck up your build.

It means being ABLE to succeed, as opposed to be put into a position you can't progress through the game anymore.

Success only has meaning if failure is also a possible outcome.
If every possible build can realistically succeed, this is no longer the case.

 

[Vault Dweller]

If the build is completely unviable and the player absolutely cannot make any progress, yes. There should always be a chance of succeeding through player skill, no matter how slim it is.

Then what role do the stats and skills serve if you can beat the game no matter what? Unlock extra bonuses and make your character even more awesome?

One of the core principles of old-school RPG design is that player skill comes before character skill. Builds and items are there to give players superior/inferior tools, but the player's own ingenuity is the ultimate factor.

Because the old school design was all about combat and combat gives the player a lot of flexibility. First, balance always favors the average player so an experienced player can do more with a lot less. Second, the AI was pretty basic which gave an extra advantage to the player. Not to mention savescumming in the middle of combat. You could easily beat Garl in Fallout (the guy you could fight to rescue Tandi and get that nice metal armor) without putting a single point into Unarmed but I suppose that's good design because "the player's own ingenuity is the ultimate factor", eh?

Anyway, stats and skills alone shouldn't guarantee you victory in combat so nobody's talking about removing the player's ingenuity from the equation but the ingenuity shouldn't make the character system optional either.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

No, allowing player to make unviable character is excellent design. In fact, it should be the only design allowed.

I don't want any of these mass market RPGs that hold my hand and protect me from my own mistakes. I want big dick RPGs that hold me down and fuck me in the ass raw until I pass out bleeding. True incline RPGs should be like huge orcs, showing their massive hairy dicks down my throat and just keep repeatedly cumming if I allocated even one skill point wrong.

That is the way of the monocle.

 

[Vault Dweller]

No, allowing player to make unviable character is excellent design. In fact, it should be the only design allowed.

I don't want any of these mass market RPGs that hold my hand and protect me from my own mistakes. I want big dick RPGs that hold me down and fuck me in the ass raw until I pass out bleeding. True incline RPG is should be like a huge orcs, showing their massive hairy dicks down my throat and just keep repeatedly cumming if I allocated even one point wrong.

That is the way of the monocle.

Let's say you have 3 ways through the game: combat, diplomacy, stealth. Each direction has a main (primary) skill or two and a couple of supportive (secondary) skills. For example, you can craft your own gear (crafting) or hack electronic systems to make sneaking easier or gain access to optional areas.

Problem #1: a player decides to go with the supportive skills only ignoring the primary skills. At first, he manages to fight a bit or sneak because the starting difficulty is low but in an hour or two he hits a dead end and quits in frustration.

Problem #2: a player spreads the points too thin covering all skills because deep down he always wanted to be a fighter/mage/thief and has has 500 hours in Skyrim to prove it. At first, he manages to fight or sneak because the starting difficulty is low but in an hour or two he hits a dead end and quits in frustration.

How should these problems be addressed?

PS. Bonus content:

Fallout 1 character build help

So I'm a fairly experienced player at FO3 and FO:NV (about a dozen run thoughs on each), but earlier this week I decided to to go ahead and buy the Fallout 1, 2 and tactics pack. So far I've only tried Fallout 1, but I can't seem to build a good character. Any tips?

 

[Incendax]

If I am a new player that has no idea some of my choices have almost no chance of beating the game, then that would be poor design unless there is some mechanic like Respec that allows me to correct my mistakes.

If I am an experienced player who knows what the choices mean, or the choices are very clearly explained, then the additional challenge is my own choice and that is great design.

So the problem lies in having no way to know you are fucking up, AND no way to fix it later.

 

[orcinator]

Fallout came with a great manual that spelled out all of the skills in detail. It asterisks speech and barter as skills that will benefit a diplomatic character, it brackets off stealth, stealing and lockpick into their own separate section (not recommended by Vault-Tec because they’re illegal). Should you tag a weapon skill? The manual tells you that combat is inevitable: “at some point in your adventure, diplomacy or stealth will fail.” They also include the three pre-set builds if you want a sense of what the developers consider viable.

It’s just not true that the game gave you no detail or no context. If you were playing a CRPG in 1997, you were expected to read the manual. Tim, Leonard and Jason even ensured that it looked cool and made sense as something you might find inside the vault (incidentally, it’s possible that Fallout is merely a simulation played inside the Vault). You also got a notebook for writing down relevant information you come across in your travels.

Reading it now, the advice is pretty terrible, all you get is the vague description of each stat and skill but you have no idea how useful they'll actually be. Those three sample characters are all bad and the only good advice I see is how you should pick a combat skill. Feels like that part of the manual was written by someone trying to write for the Fallout PnP book and not the video game. I guess there's only so much you can do when Fallout's mechanics are terrible, but that isn't a real excuse.

 

[FreeKaner]

Doing bad builds that cannot progress is okay. Having options in the game that are not actually options but rather are mistakes is not. In other words, choice is good but trap choices are not.

So, if a game for example gives you the illusion that you can do a stealth build but you cannot actually complete the game that way, it is bad. Making a character that is all over the place that is under the power level of what is required is okay.

Similarly, if a game has options to put skill points or abilities or whatever that you can take that are actually never useful, this is bad. If a game has options to put skill points or abilities but you waste them one way or another, that's okay.