Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate III by Larian Studios - it's turn-based and isometric, folks

EDIT: Black, oldie but goldie.

 

The dispute is not RT vs TB, they are both valid. It's RTwP vs TB, which is bananas, there is no possible timeline in which RTwP is better or even viable.

 

The argument for TB is that it is cheap,easy to make and balance and generally more accessible(AKA dumbed down).

 

Anyone who thinks that RTwP diarrhea can be balanced even in principle is not right in the head.

RTwP is a sign of the times. People have such a short attention span that they can't think tactically anymore. Ergo, a tactical combat system must play itself super-fast like in an action movie.

There is no despise enough in the world for cRPG players who indulge in this mistake just out of respect for the BG series, which was already a dumb down and decline game.

 

Those are some fucking fighting words.
TDKS is loads of fun and Flames of Vengeance is all around great.

 

I wouldn't go that far.

 

RTwP is real time that sucks.

 

COMEDY GOLD!

 

They wrote two articles, one defending TB and the other one just being wrong.

 

Being journalists, probably they were both wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if the TB one started with "TB, which stands for Termite Balls [...]".

 

Ahhh that is my point lol,balance is the killer of fun. It is thing that lets old people and journos to finish the first level. If i see a fucking dragon,i want to be able to go and get my ass handled 100 times and kill the bastard on my 101 time! Stop boggling us down with your lack of skills mate.

 

I don't know how to react to this. It's blowing my mind. It's a combination of you being unaware of what balance is trying to achieve and what the argument against balance is. Balance is making sure the playable characters aren't overpowered compared to the NPCs. Which is what you are arguing for and the anti-balance people are arguing against.

What a time to be alive.

 

Considering lv cap = 10, you will not fight much dragons... And if you fight, will gonna be in a very gimmicky way...

HE is right; balance kills immersion, freedom, variety and fun.

Looks to VtMB. If the devs decided to nerf the nosferatu deformity curse to a minor penalty on seduction, the game would be extremely more balanced and far less interesting. Nosferatu will not feel like Nosferatu anymore. Same if they remove the clan. Balance and accessibility are the main reason to why we have the modern boring games.

 

Symmetrical balance kills variety, not balance. Balance has nothing to do with accessibility.

 

When people talk about balance what they mean can be either one of two things:

1. The noble attempt to ensure that combat and resource management will remain challenging throughout the whole game [grognard mentality];
2. The welfarist belief that no builds should be left behind because of players' whims and illiteracy [modern developer mentality, e.g., Sawyer].

Saying that we should abolish balance because of Sawyer is like saying that we should abolish freedom because of libertarians. You are reducing your own vocabulary and endorsing beliefs you never accepted because you are confused.

 

What ruins the immersion is allowing the player to do whatever he likes and act like a God. It makes the setting and the game world infantile and childish. What is worse, but not surprisingly, is that all this freedom is usually accompanied by terrible combat systems and a lack of challenge. What is fun for this breed of mongoloid irrationalist player is poison to me.

 

NAme one old school RPG where it happens. Just one. If the player can become god without great effort and a good reason and good challenges after if, like other gods not liking the new god, then the game fails as a story driven experience and as a game.

And RPG's aren't only about combat and challenge. See Planescape torment. Has a amazing story. Look to D&D 4e, the most balanced thing ever and most boring thing ever.;

 

Depends what you mean by oldschool. Would you say that Bloodlines is oldschool? I don't think it is. I know that the combat sucks and that you can breeze throughout the game with terrible builds because the character system is fluffy. People usually talk about the first FOs as if they were this massive open game where you can do whatever you like. This is irrationalist revisionism, of course. There is no such thing. There is plenty of gated content and soul-crushing mistakes.

 

What usually happens in RPGs to cause the power creep is the constant growth of the player's toolbox with more and more ludicrous powers because the designers run out of ideas. That's why I started advocating staggered spell circle acquisition in D&D. NPCs become more and more limited the more ridiculous spells and abilities we have, including in terms of AI. Numbers, like damage values and health pools, are easy to tweak, but actual effects are harder.

 

VtMB is more like a social game than a action challenging game.

That said, the problem on VtMB difficulty can be solved in a way that makes sense. Eg

• Give incendiary .410 judge revolvers to vampire hunters
• Make enemies use disciplines on you with far greater frequency
• Make you unable to carry an arsenal on your backpack, so you need to walk with a long weapon(shotgun/rifle) and 2 short weapons at max
• Make Bruno Giovanni use advanced necromancy disciplines
• Make money harder to obtain
• Make certain disciplines like Thaumaturgy requires that you talk with Maximillian Strauss and do quests for him, instead of just learning from the menu
• Gives Apex to some enemies
• Reduce the healing rate for aggravated damage even more
• Improve enemy AI

Any spell/weapon/feat/etc that a PC can take, a NPC can take.

 

That's called *gasp* balance. Sometimes it works by buffing enemies, but sometimes the culprits are the player abilities.

Not all of them at once and, like I said, sometimes the abilties themselves are a problem and need to go.

 

How does that work in 5e? With ToEE's max level of 10, 3.5, you could still fight a Balor. Or Iuz.

 

Well, at least it's an argument, if a specious one, which is an improvement over the usual inane ipse dixit.

Of course he chooses an example which leaves out:

(a) the most important* part of the turn

(b) the most salient difference between RTwP and TB

which is of course the Move.

* - it didn't hurt that Genghis had the gun while his adversaries did not, but so did the English and Genghis made more progress in a season than St. George's boys made in a century.

 

You don't fight Iuz. You try to survive for few rounds

Depends the way that you call """balance""" but uter removing nosferatu because "it is too hard" and removing thaumaturgy because "it is too good" or nerfing thaumaturgy would be silly. Would kill variety, immersion, fun and etc.