AoD recieves undue praise and favouritism from the Codex

[Azarkon]

The game pits you in several situations where if you have not specced a minimum of points in "XY" skill you're dead, and have to start over, and does this for purely the sake "being hardcore". ... You're not playing the way you want to in this game; you are playing the way you must do to succeed. That is, you're not role-playing your character, rather you're manipulating your character's stats once you've found out through trial and error what stats your character needs to have to progress.

This is the only legitimate complaint and it's a weakness of hard gated design - ie "you need 18 skill in lock picks and anything less is a fail" instead of "the higher your lock pick skill is, the less resources you need to succeed."

Or the problem in "you need the lockpick skill in order to succeed because it's the only way forward".

Hard gating isn't the issue if there are multiple ways to bypass an obstacle. Maybe the door can be bashed open with a high strength, but it makes noise, attracting the guards. Maybe you can find a hidden secret door as an alternate entry but only with high perception. Maybe you can use a gunpowder bomb to blow open the door but it makes even more noise than smashing and bombs are expensive. Maybe a high acrobatics skill allows you to bypass the door entirely and climb up through a window. Or maybe the quest isn't mandatory for finishing the game and you can skip getting through that door entirely - but you will leave an important item behind that will close off one way to win the game, or make the final fight much harder.

Just give different possible solutions to the player, so every type of character can progress, with some options being better than the others (lockpicking or finding the secret door are better than bashing or bombing the door) - or make the quest not mandatory for victory.

The problem I was alluding to is a bit more specific than that. It's not so much that you need a particular skill to solve a quest a certain way - that's sensible - but that you need a particular skill value. Thus, it isn't enough to have "lock picking," you need "lock picking > 7." Why 7? How was the player supposed to know that it requires 7? How can you plan ahead, reasonably, without meta-gaming? It's great to have multiple solutions for quests, but a giant waste of opportunity when the player is 1 or 2 points off the required skill value, and end up having to go with the lowest common denominator solution because of hard gated skill checks. Imagine building your character up to a lock picking skill of 6 and thinking "that's enough for now," not realizing that you needed 1 more for the big middle game fork that decides your character's route for the next 10 hours, and having the game tell you "well, you don't have enough lock picking skills for me to offer you the thief route, so congratulations on taking the random nobody route." This is the weakness of hard gated design.

Are there ways around it? Sure. You can save all your skill points as indicated above and do save scumming. Or you can go read a guide. Both are instances of meta-gaming, however, so we're back to square one: how do you design skill checks in such a way that they don't require meta-gaming from the player in order to sensibly accomplish character building goals? The obvious answer is "soft" skill checks, but it's far from easy due to the issues I brought up in the last post.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Imagine building your character up to a lock picking skill of 6 and thinking "that's enough for now," not realizing that you needed 1 more for the big middle game fork that decides your character's route for the next 10 hours. This is the weakness of this particular design.

Are there ways around it? Sure. You can save all your skill points as indicated above and do save scumming. Or you can go read a guide. Both are instances of meta-gaming, however, so we're back to square one: how do you design skill checks in such a way that they don't require meta-gaming from the player in order to sensibly accomplish character building goals? The obvious answer is "soft" skill checks, but it's far from easy due to the issues I brought up in the last post.

PnP games have already solved this problem with difficulty levels. They can even be deterministic.

Age of Decadence's skill reward system works perfectly for this. Only have 6 skill points? That's okay, you can still complete the action but you will get less skill points as a result.

 

[Azarkon]

Treating four different degrees of success as four different outcomes just results in twice as much work in reaction to the same old skill check. Designers would like to avoid this very much, and the solution is indeed less rewards or in other words, more resources spent based on the degree of success. The trick is in balancing the resources properly. Ultimately, you want players to feel the impact of their builds, to reward or punish them according to how well their characters "fit" the tasks they're trying to do. But at the same time, you don't want to encourage meta-gaming. That's the difficult act.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Frankly though, the biggest issue with AoD isn't hard skill checks. It's that you're punished for not min/maxing as one of three archetypes (pure fighter, pure talker, pure thief) on your first playthrough.

There's nothing wrong with specialized builds, but when the entire game is designed around three builds it feels shallow. Do what Fallout does, and reward players for specialization instead of punishing them.

 

[Syme]

Treating four different degrees of success as four different outcomes just results in twice as much work in reaction to the same old skill check.

Then only have an outcome for success and critical failure like in Wasteland 2

3 skill points - 0% chance of success
4 skill points - 25% chance of success, 25% chance of failure, 50% chance of critical failure
5 skill points - 50% chance of success, 25% chance of failure, 25% chance of critical failure
6 skill points - 75% chance of success, 15% chance of failure, 10% chance of critical failure
7 skill points - 100% chance of success

How I remember Wasteland 2:

3 skill points - shit, I shouldn't have wasted so many points elsewhere, I need them here
4 skill points - MANY MANY RELOADS. bind mouse2 "quickload"
5 skill points - never works the first time, ever
6 skill points - still fails half the time for some reason, fuck you game
7 skill points - shit, I shouldn't have wasted so many points in this skill, I need them elsewhere

 

[Safav Hamon]

Yeah the RNG felt rigged, but it's a great system otherwise.

It's dumb when your master safecracker fails to pick a basic lock, yet also boring when there's no risk/reward factor. Difficulty checks are the best of both worlds.

 

[Syme]

Nah I'm just kidding, I was fine with the RNG for the most part, though it does encourage some savescumming if you want to min/max. The biggest problem I had with Wasteland 2 skills was waiting for the fucking symbol to fill up with every attempt. I despise games that waste my time for no good reason.

 

[Tavernking]

Trust the codex to turn my shitpost into a legitimate thread

 

[Goral]

AoD has plenty of choices, yes, but they all lead you down relatively narrow paths - it's why people tend to call it a "CYOA RPG". You pick a choice, then you're railroaded down into the next choice, and so on.

Well technically paths are narrow but you have so many paths and crossroads that it doesn't matter. It's not a sandbox but at the same time if offers way more choices than any sandbox game I know.

if you joined them, you don't get the option to betray them and work for a different faction instead

lol
That's just a straight out lie. You have the option to betray your faction and work for another, whatever it is you're smoking I suggest you stop because you're getting holes in your brain.

People talking out of their ass now. Game constantly offers opportunities to switch sides and loyalties. Most of complaints here derrive from butthurt because game didn't scale to your level.

These opportunities are game-driven though, not player-driven.

You can't just decide spontaneously "You know what, I hate my current faction. I'll march over to their rivals and sell them out for a decent reward.", you can only decide such a thing when the current quest you're in offers you the opportunity.

Oh, so now you're changing your tune and saying that "you can betray your faction pretty often BUT it's not at times when you want it". Are you serious? Grow a pair and admit that you're talking out of your ass.

These opportunities are game-driven though, not player-driven.

You can't just decide spontaneously "You know what, I hate my current faction. I'll march over to their rivals and sell them out for a decent reward.", you can only decide such a thing when the current quest you're in offers you the opportunity.

Almost as if game waits for an opportunity for your character to be in a position of power / value to the opposing faction for them to consider you worthy of conspiring with. Crazy.

What ScrotumBroth said. Plus you can do it only when it's beneficial to you and you want to play as an opportunist, not being able to play as a retard or a crazy man is a quality not a flaw. Going against a faction on their territory or at a moment when you will be able to hugely profit from them (by being paid by them and getting more influence and power) would be just retarded. Same goes for going into the enemy territory undisturbed (usually they shoot first, ask questions later) and presenting them some interesting information. How do you imagine would they react to it if it came from an enemy? Firstly they would be sceptical, secondly, you wouldn't be able to leave until it was confirmed, thirdly, even if it had been confirmed why would anyone want to have a traitor among their ranks? It would be easier to kill you in case you would decide to switch sides again.

That's the thing with traitors, unless they have a damn good reason to betray instead of your spontaneous idea they become the lowest of the low. And these are problems only from the top of my head, in reality it's much more complicated and creating a storyline that would make sense in such case would require some amazing writing skills.

So the alternative where the game presents you that option in places where it makes sense and in moments when it makes sense is just the best thing we can get. That pragmatist and logical approach is what I love about AoD and is the exact opposite of retarded Bethesda games where you can belong to every faction because it's supposedly a sandbox game.

Or the problem in "you need the lockpick skill in order to succeed because it's the only way forward".

There wasn't one moment like this in the game, don't understand why you're lying like this JF.

 

[toro]

Fallout 1,2, PST etc all required players to learn meta, AoD is just more annoying than most. Toughen up son.

This is a straight lie. I hope you are proud of yourself.

That's why I hate imbeciles like you, Goral and Lurker King (whatever his last avatar his) - you think that lying in favor of AoD it's somewhat ok. It's not.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Well i started AoD trying to be a shooter/talker/crafter. one of the earlier bandit encounters simply buttfucked me over.

Que a few restarts later I am a pure dodge/sledgehammer/murderhobo build. I got gud. really satisfying.

but that is the only playthrough I finished though. Didn't bother with other playthrus in the future.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Fallout 1,2, PST etc all required players to learn meta, AoD is just more annoying than most. Toughen up son.

I'm calling bullshit. Fallout always gave the player multiple ways to achieve any quest outcome (usually at least one without any skill requirements), and because of its open world nature you could return to a quest at any time.

Age of Decadence gives you one or two ways to achieve a specific outcome, and if you don't meet the proper skill requirements at the time you're shit out of luck.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Age of Decadence isn't 1/10th the RPG that Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout: New Vegas are

 

[AbounI]

Age of Decadence isn't 1/10th the RPG that Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout: New Vegas are

So now, beause of this statement, it's a shiity game? You can't be serious, right ? As if you can compare a limited ressources 4 person team's production with a bigger studio full of ressources and already experienced in game development?

 

[Strange Fellow]

Underrail is much better though

 

[Safav Hamon]

So now, beause of this statement, it's a shiity game? You can't be serious, right ? As if you can compare a limited ressources 4 person team's production with a bigger studio full of ressources and already experienced in game development?

It's not shit, but it's appropriately priced at $15.

Underrail is much better though

Atom RPG as well, and most likely Encased when that releases.

 

[ScrotumBroth]

I'm calling bullshit. Fallout always gave the player multiple ways to achieve any quest outcome (usually at least one without any skill requirements), and because of its open world nature you could return to a quest at any time.

Age of Decadence gives you one or two ways to achieve a specific outcome, and if you don't meet the proper skill requirements at the time you're shit out of luck.

Well, in a way, AoD offers more, because you have a world that is moving and changing as important, big events unfold. FO1 only has a water chip timer and FO2 illusion of timer with dream sequences. You only get too see the change in end slides. AoD gives you early, mid and end slides, with opportunity to play in changed world states.

AoD is not a static world where everything waits on and caters to the player. The fact that is causing butt hurt on Codex is embarrassing.

And you're factually incorrect, it's more like 3-4-5 ways of doing things, you just can't play being great at everything, nor have all paths available depending on the character created.

The arguments against AoD presented in this thread are weak and I can see the some people whinging about FO1/2 if they were released today instead of existing as cult classics. Revealing.

But it's also partly because some people lean towards rage quitting instead of figuring it out, it would seem.

VD's dev style is clearly not to everyone's taste, but a ton of respect for not catering to masses and doing his own thing.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

So the alternative where the game presents you that option in places where it makes sense and in moments when it makes sense is just the best thing we can get. That pragmatist and logical approach is what I love about AoD and is the exact opposite of retarded Bethesda games where you can belong to every faction because it's supposedly a sandbox game.

Looks like JL is talking about being allowed to pick a bad moment to betray your faction (which is a valid point, even if you'd just get fucked over), not that you should be able to do it anytime and succeed just as if you'd picked a good time.

 

[Strange Fellow]

It's simply dull to run up against "you must be THIS tall to ride" signs at every turn. No RPG has managed to create genuine difficulty in non-combat gameplay (with the exception of puzzles, which VD abhors), and AoD doesn't either, it just fakes it by being exorbitantly unforgiving with skill checks. It's not difficulty when the player can't use his or her own skills to surmount obstacles.

 

[Elephantman]

It's simply dull to run up against "you must be THIS tall to ride" signs at every turn.

For a manlet. I dont see them at all.

Whats the best build to play and why is it assassin? Discucks!

 

[Elephantman]

Though, I double dare anyone to find a single dude who predicted being teleported to Maadoran after the mine talks.

 

[Data4]

Trust the codex to turn my shitpost into a legitimate thread

Be proud. It's damned near become sentient.

 

[Safav Hamon]

There is good non-combat difficulty, which is encouraging creative solutions to quests like in Fallout.

AoD doesn't have any freedom of experimentation. You're told exactly where to go and what your options are. There's no sense of accomplishment when you do something cool because you were railroaded into it.

 

[Elephantman]

 

[Safav Hamon]

I also have this tag, so I know a thing or two about fanboys. This game has plenty of them.