Bloat sucks

Are people who just buy games without playing them counted in completion statistics?

 

we have a lot of 5e crpg incoming they should all be bloat free games in particular the one with the focus on low levels.

 

We buy them (on sale for the price of a pizza), play them for a little while, then get back to that playthrough we had going on the game we knew we liked. When we're done with that sometimes we come back to the new game, but often not.

 

When your game has Steam achievements for main quest completion you can easily filter them out.

Let's say 80% of players got the achievement for finishing the prologue. That means 20% of owners didn't even start playing, so you can discount those 20% from the statistic.

Then you just look at the achievement completion of all the subsequent main quests until you reach the FINISHED GAME!! one.

 

One problem is that when there is no numbers bloat, then LITTLE details can make a HUGE difference. If all swords make 2d damage and then you find a 4d sword, that's double the damage. Do you understand how to handle such differences? Do you understand who in your party is supposed to carry the 4d sword? Do you understand that if that party member goes down, you are as good as dead?

Or are you one of those who start the fight by sending Amiri forward with a 2-hander? Maybe you aren't, but there is plenty of those, let me tell you.

Numbers bloat tends to equalize a lot of mistakes that players make at chargen too.

In other news, I am totally unconvinced that smarter enemy AI would be welcome by most Codexers.

 

Interdasting. It looks like it might a real problem in a DPS-centric game.
But I do wonder, is there any "Feature" that makes a game DPS-centric?
Ah yes, bloat.

Not only does it not equalize (apart from maybe a "grind more" manner) character differences, it adds large power disparity for even small advancement differences. Of course that in turn can be fixed by level scaling. Now if only we knew how to fix level scaling... this way of fixing problems by piling more problems on top of them looks very promising!

It takes intelligence to notice intelligence. Most Codexers wouldn't notice.

No, that's linear in completely different context and meaning.

Linear, exponential and so on refers to how fast something grows. Bloat refers to how much.

While exponential growth pretty much guarantees bloat, linear by no means rules it out.

Roleplaying emphasis seems like it could be a good thing in a roleplaying game.

 

In theory this argument is correct but it's used by a lot of retards in games where it doesn't fit to justify dumbing down. Case in point people who say KM has stat bloat because it requires min maxing on it's highest difficulty, dude just drop the difficulty and fuck off.

 

Diablo - armor class above 100 is considered good
Diablo 2 - armor class above 1000 is considered good
Diablo 3 - stats are measured in the millions

 

Hmmm... no?
I cannot comment further, because I have no idea how you reached this conclusion.

The point is that if you get +20 damage equipment for EACH your characters, this lessens the efficiency disparities that the characters had at chargen. It is bloat, but it also lessens chargen mistakes. This should be obvious.

I think that you have something in mind that I don't, and we are having trouble communicating.

 

Nobody is talking about dumbing down. Stat bloat does not equal complexity of system. You can turn down the bloat, make encounters harder by other means, like changing which enemies you fight, adding certain feats or spells, more complicated encounters with more spellcasters. The issue with bloat is that in a way it is quite a poor way of doing difficulty. For example P:KM, as you say, Unfair makes the first chapter quite tedious, because the player do not have many ways to combat enemies so they are at mercy of the dices. It exacerbates a classical issue of D&D systems where from level 1-3 there isn't much to do but hope for good RNG for the most part, even if you min-max. Then the issues is inverted, because at mid-game, specially if you min-max, then fights become too easy, and the only reason there was any difficulty was that you couldn't just reach the enemies on the "stats race". Lowering the difficulty doesn't help much, as then you will hit this point faster.

Even Pink Eye and Desiderius I think can attest to this. I think to remember, but correct me if I'm wrong, that the way Desiderius recommended to play the game was to start at Challenging, once that becomes too easy change to Hard, and finally once again to Unfair towards the end. And if you read Pink Eye's guide to Unfair for example, you see that many of the early fights are more about doing the best you can and praying for good rolls. Even I have found myself losing interest midway because of this, or having a hard time restarting just because anything under Unfair felt too easy, but Unfair was just tedious. I heard, for example, that in the alpha of Wrath of the Righteous there seems to be better designed encounters and more "intelligent" casters, so I think Owlcat themselves may be aware that the stat bloat had this issues.

 

This is all correct, it’s just that once one figures out how stacking (i.e. Sacred, Luck, Insight, Competence, and Morale) and abilities scaling by level works (i.e. to discourage splashing), then the numbers look less bloaty. You check off each box in the former, usually via a reasonably long duration buff, and generally stick to one class for the latter and next thing you know you’ve got +30 without worrying about items at all, and the items themselves show up from artisans or during regular questing (non-random and/or via decent Perception).

Point being that once you hit that comfort level with the game it doesn’t feel like bloat at all, unlike games with bullet sponges, grinding, and vendor stalking. It’s just a poor example of what OP is talking about.

Now there are a couple mobs with relatively huge AC or AB/damage to get you out of a tank and spank rut, but that’s not bloat, it’s just to get you to use touch attacks and/or attack weak save.

 

Are there any systems where stats grow along a logarithm?

 

Possibly, but it'd be disingenuous to not acknowledge that the roots of this hobby call back to games that have nothing to do with "roleplaying" other than inspiration from the combat mechanics of TTRPGs and those games have their own merits. And, oddly, some of the more true examples of the CRPG genre involve no roleplaying whereas ones that involve too much start drifting towards other genres such as adventure games, visual novels, and dating sims.

 

While I am in agreement with much of this thread, I will temper some attitudes towards “lazy design”.

Developing a system which rationally and intuitively simulates the depth and breadth of character growth, while avoiding a litany of exceptions or reference tables, is extremely difficult. The only way I’ve been able to do it is by using LOTS of dice, which is very unwieldy outside of a digital format. Making items which are enjoyable and have incentive to be sought without breaking the game or invalidating an entire class is harder than you think. It’s a multi variable calculus where the sum of the parts must be constantly considered before all of those parts are even fully developed, or even imagined. Then, if you can even make it “work”, is it even fun? Does it have the unspeakable quality that is enjoyable? I have been working on a system for 7 years. Every time it’s almost perfect, there is a flaw which I just can’t look past. My last iteration made it over two years. The price of pursuing perfection.

 

4u

This is what seperates mediocre or alright RPGs from excellence. The difficulty of any good RPG should be determined on how well you optimize your build. The highest difficulty option of an RPG should be entirely balanced around minmaxing and optimization. Failure to do so leads to Bethesda and BioWare tier games where you can roll with whatever the fuck you want and still easily complete the game at the highest difficulty. THAT is not good design.
This is why Underrail and PF:KM are excellent, and Decline: Original Sin(ful Design) and Pillars of Shit are shit.

Underrail and PF:KM aren't well balanced, and that's part of the fun. Figuring out what works and doesn't, and then comparing between various builds. That's pure combatfaggotry, and I fucking love it.

 

The issue arises when it goes so far that build decides everything. Build your char right and you can one-shot everything, build her wrong and she'll be beaten to a pulp by everything she encounters.

It focuses the entire gameplay on the stat allocation and lessens the importance of actual combat tactics. In an action RPG, you won't have to be good at twitching anymore, just walk up to an enemy and click left mouse button to whack once, done. In an RPG with tactical combat, you won't have to use consumables, try to outflank the enemy, etc, you just walk up to the enemy and use your basic attack to whack once, done.

A well-designed RPG makes it so that good character builds get an edge, but if you want to win a fight you need to use your brain and make good use of the tools provided to you by the game. Like all those spells you get as a wizard or cleric in D&D, which especially in P&P can be used for out-of-the-box tactics. I've witnessed players using really creative tactics to defeat enemies above their league in pen and paper sessions, and that's what the genre is all about. The character building gives you the tools, but you have to use those tools effectively to prevail.

If all you have to do is optimize your build, gameplay is boring and combat encounters could just be replaced by a single dice roll that results in either "you win" or "you lose".

 

I mean I guess but I honestly don't think this applies to PF:KM. I've seen so many people complain about the Temple of the Elk bear fight when a simple grease spell solves the fucking thing. Later on in the game if you're build and stat allocation is bad you'll feel it, but this is true even for tabletop D&D. That's the way it's meant to be.

Yup. That's what PF:KM does. Good character planning is part of using your brain, if your build is bad I don't think good tactics should save you.

True, but considering vidya doesn't have an actual human DM present who can adapt to the situation, I don't think it's fair to expect the same out of vidya what you get out of p&p.

Which is what PF:KM does. If some people take the wrong tools or don't take the right ones that's not on the game. It's a learning process. Are we arguing that players should have the right tool for the job at all times without them knowing the game and/or mechanics? Cause that completely invalidates character building.

Optimization is far more than that. It's a combination of the right stat allocations, the right abilities, spells, item combinations, multiclassing or going pure, party composition, all of that is in and of itself fun for me. You get all of those right and you'll breeze through the game. You get them so-so, maybe you'll make it. You fuck up everything and you'll have a bad time.

There's RPGs that lean on the tactics side like Jagged Alliance, Battle Brothers and XCOM, then there's classic D&Ds like PF:KM that lean on char building.
D:OS is an example of an RPG that tries to do both, and feels mediocre in both aspects, but is a good middle ground... I guess.
Also I'm pretty sure I got the 'tism.

 

A computer game consisting of just a TTRPG combat port doesn't have any merits nowadays.

That might not be a popular opinion here, but TTRPG combat mechanics is built around its medium and its limitations and bottlenecks (humans looking up values, rolling dice and doing calculations). Just porting it doesn't account for strengths and pitfalls of the new medium, it would be like adapting a novel into a movie by just filming a guy reading the entirety of novel aloud for several hours.

The only reason we might ever consider using a TT or PnP system in a cRPG an incline (apart from quite a few people being obviously deluded, that is) are mindboggling levels of ineptitude at designing cRPG gameplay shown by the devs, and that's even those that are sometimes capable of brilliant innovations.

Sure, some concepts do carry through more or less verbatim (ironically those tend to be the first to be discarded when designing an in-house cRPG mechanics), but many just don't or do so very poorly.

 

PFKM has a lot of places where you need to use your brain regardless of build. Unsurprisingly, it is the same exact places that people around here complain about.

 

Weird statement to make, when done right, which also means it can be done wrong, these are the very best computer games.

Well turn-based combat with dicerolls is the best video games have to offer if you want strategic combat with high use on stats.


Therefore it's only natural that it's not easy to design a better system for tactical combat than those designed and refined by TableTop wargame autists. D20 systems or similar stuff are perfect for CRPG combat and using an existing system means there's ton of stuff that you don't need to balance yourself. Investing years into developping a very ambitious system which will likely be ultimately worse (and possible similar but worse) is not worth the invested time, adpating something which works may be a better use of your time.

Also character sheets are the best the medium has to offer when simulating "playing your own role" with different characters being unable to do some things, so just like PnP again. Thief and GTA are something else. You're always not that far from PnP mechanisms.

Devs making very PnP-ish games are aware it's not perfect for everything, typically D20 for opening a chest is perfect in rogue-likes but not as much with a save everywhere system and Dungeon Rats like KOTC2 (based on dev's talks) use deterministic checks oustide combat, if you want to retry to disarm a Wizardry chest you'll need to replay the fight ...

 

Yes, of course you don't throw out all the traditions refined over time by tens of PnP DMs, but by the same token man don't be a Luddite and pretend that there is nothing a real-life digital Difference Engine can uniquely bring to the table.

 

It really depends what you are trying to achieve. Do you want to place the game mechanics in the background and make it a black box which
the user doesn't need to understand, or do you want the player to understand the mechanics and interact with the system directly.
The second case requires a system that is simple enough to be understood quickly but it also has to have some complexity so it isn't boring.
I think table top D20 systems have been optimized for this, which is why they also work well as cRPG mechanics.
They are most likely not optimal if you want to place the mechanics in the background without the player doing calculations himself. In this
case it could be better to discard the D20 systems, allowing the use of more sophisticated implementations. The question is then how do you
interface the system with the player and how does such an interface achieve a better result than the direct way as implemented in table top
mechanics.
I think interfacing in a fun and meaningful way is where most games fail(ed). Table top adaptions still have their place unless someone shows
how this is done properly and achieves noticeable better results.

 

There's plenty of pen and paper systems that would be perfect for a computer game adaptation, but which haven't been turned into a CRPG yet.

Several complex systems from the 80s come to my mind, using a hex grid with positioning (bonus for flanking, attacking from behind, etc), locational damage, wounds instead of HP, etc etc. Those require a lot of recordkeeping in pen and paper and make combat a drawn out affair (which is why they tend to be less popular than D&D) but since a CRPG has the computer take care of all the calculations and recordkeeping, these systems are perfect for adaptation.

Yet the systems that tend to be adapted are usually relatively simple in their rules. Not even GURPS has been turned into a CRPG yet, and that's on the less complex end of the more involved systems.

 

I always wonder what could have been if Fallout had kept using GURPS.

The screenshots from the GURPS version looked interesting.