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

Do you think it's bad design to allow players to create failed builds?

  • Yes

    Votes: 54 23.0%
  • No

    Votes: 181 77.0%

  • Total voters
    235
  • Poll closed .

mondblut

Arcane
Joined
Aug 10, 2005
Messages
22,205
Location
Ingrija
To be fair, if you're a newbie who doesn't know Fallout's systems yet, you might think that outdoorsman, barter and stealth are useful skills to have in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Real RPGs are for monocled genre-savvy scholars who know in advance how the game mechanics work, because they have played the same games that the developers did play for inspiration. And that's a good thing.

Newfags should humbly listen and learn from their betters.
 

hivemind

Cipher
Patron
Pretty Princess
Joined
Feb 6, 2019
Messages
2,386
Real RPGs are for monocled genre-savvy scholars who know in advance how the game mechanics work, because they have played the same games that the developers did play for inspiration. And that's a good thing.

Newfags should humbly listen and learn from their betters.
have sex the poster
 

frajaq

Erudite
Joined
Oct 5, 2017
Messages
2,380
Location
Brazil
I mean if one would know that he would play a post-apocalyptic wasteland game it would make sense to at least pick one weapon skill to defend himself

I think first time I played Fallout 1 (blind) I went with Small Guns, Science and Lockpicking, not super-optimized but went decent enough?
 

Darth Canoli

Arcane
Joined
Jun 8, 2018
Messages
5,687
Location
Perched on a tree
I blame Fallout for the utter degeneration of non-combat gameplay. It's easy to mock bethesda or bioware for their dialogue wheel retardation but the seeds were sown much earlier.

I blame the devs, that's what happens when monkeys try to build a house of cards, Fallout did it right but it requires talent and skills even to copy their formula.
 

Mustawd

Guest
Real RPGs are for monocled genre-savvy scholars who know in advance how the game mechanics work, because they have played the same games that the developers did play for inspiration. And that's a good thing.

Newfags should humbly listen and learn from their betters.
have sex the poster

Stfu you fat retard. Or I’ll gently place a bullet inside your skull that will lead to your death decades from now.
 

Mastermind

Cognito Elite Material
Patron
Bethestard
Joined
Apr 15, 2010
Messages
21,144
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I blame Fallout for the utter degeneration of non-combat gameplay. It's easy to mock bethesda or bioware for their dialogue wheel retardation but the seeds were sown much earlier.

I blame the devs, that's what happens when monkeys try to build a house of cards, Fallout did it right but it requires talent and skills even to copy their formula.

Fallout didn't "do it right". If anything AoD did it better. The formula itself is shit.
 

DalekFlay

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 5, 2010
Messages
14,118
Location
New Vegas
I'll disagree with the majority and say yes, but I mean seriously NONVIABLE. I don't think it's bad at all to let the player create a character who will have a much harder time, or a character who will be limited in how much of the game they can finish. I'd also say if you're a total retard and create a character that makes zero sense then that's on you, so I don't mean that. But if we're talking "I created a diplomat in a game that lets you be a diplomat and now I can't beat the game" then I think that's poor development.
 

Grampy_Bone

Arcane
Joined
Jan 25, 2016
Messages
3,640
Location
Wandering the world randomly in search of maps
I agree, but--

1. Obvious builds shouldn't be traps. Don't make a stealth tree if stealth isn't viable for much/most of the game. This really just comes down to balance.

2. The player should be able to fix their mistakes. If my build sucks, the punishment should be to go back and grind more, not to restart.
 

Silentstorm

Learned
Joined
Apr 29, 2019
Messages
885
I think the problem is time, when i was younger, i had a lot more free time and wouldn't mind just restarting after screwing everything up, but nowadays?

Nowadays i just can't see myself accepting replaying a game entirely after making a bad build, particularly if the game is made in such a way it's hard to realize you screwed up until you are several hours in.

Then again, it's hard to make such a terrible build in most games even without looking at guides, you sorta know what to expect most of the time and for those hard games you already know about their reputation when you hear about them and you end up preparing yourself, and unless a game is seriously unbalanced, you should make a decent build unless you're playing something like your first RPG, want to make the game harder for yourself or you really want to roleplay as someone who isn't that strong.
 

Sentinel

Arcane
Joined
Nov 18, 2015
Messages
6,633
Location
Ommadawn
Depends on the definition of a "bad-character".
Bad in that they can miss some content but can still complete the game and have some sub quests still tailored to them? Not really bad design.
Bad in that they can miss some content and the main quest suddenly turns into a linear hallway where there is only one option that you didn't spec into? Yes, it's terrible.
 
Last edited:

Open Path

Learned
Joined
Jun 25, 2017
Messages
67
Location
Hesperides
No. Suboptimal builds are interesting, not simply as difficulty challenge but as stimulus to solve situations in imaginative ways with the provided tools, that usually developers dind't even imagined.

Of course this is not an option in games as AoD. With the skill check galore, nu-exploration and limited solutions design, the game is mostly a rail roaded experience with some different pre-fixed forks and not space for improvisation, creativity, the joy of discovery or freedom.
 

Drowed

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2011
Messages
1,676
Location
Core City
I don't think that letting players create bad characters ("failed builds") is an example of bad design per se, I think the reason that leads characters to fail is what might be.

A game is often nothing more than a big puzzle. You, as a player, have the role of finding the ideal solution based on the pieces you have at hand. In some cases, there is a single combination of pieces that allows you to complete the challenge. In others, there are several possible combinations and discovering these combinations is part of the fun of the game. But whatever the case, it is undoubtedly the designer's responsibility to make clear what each piece represents.

If your puzzle can be assembled in several different ways, but in all of them you always need 3 specific pieces, these 3 pieces have a completely different weight from the others. So, these pieces would obviously need some kind of highlight: the player needs to be able to realize (without needing to be psychic or restart the game several times) which are "the rules of the game". That in the case here, would be "assemble the puzzle using these 3 pieces as a base". This applies, for example, to skills in an RPG. If your game has 16 skills but some of them (or a specific combination of them) are fundamental for you to finish the game, then it's your role, as a designer, to make that clear. If in your design you imagined 3 primary ways to advance in the game (say for example, combat, stealth and diplomacy), the player should be able to realize this clearly and quickly by the design of your game.

Several games offer skills related to persuasion. But in the overwhelming majority of them, this is a completely secondary skill. Why would it be different in your game? If this is a skill that has great weight in its design, it certainly needs to be highlighted somehow. Not to prevent the player from making "stupid" decisions, but because the player first needs to be informed enough to be able to realize that the decision can be stupid. Think of an RST game. You have several types of units and different constructions. When you start the game, you notice that there are air units, and that not all troops have long-range attacks. You, as a player, can make the foolish decision not to create any units capable of dealing with air units and be annihilated, and that's on you. What cannot happen is playing for 20 hours and suddenly, air units appear in the game out of nowhere and you're wiped out.

Good design, among other things, requires two concepts: consistency and telegraph.

Consistency is a little obvious and self-evident. The rules of the game need to be consistent overall. Not to the point where you become a slave to your own design, but to the point where the player can trust that the game will follow certain principles so that they can create a successful strategy that doesn't depend on trial and error (at least, not often). Interesting and clever games are those in which you manage to put together a strategy previously to deal with what the game will throw at you. So that when you fail, you can recognize that the failure was in your strategy and not in the design of the game that put you in an unpredictable situation.

And here comes the concept of telegraphing. This idea is very present in fighting games - most character attacks have certain frames (key frames) that show which action will be performed by the character. The more powerful the attack, usually more evident (and time-consuming) is this animation, so that it can be identified by the opponent. In other words, the game tells the player what is coming, so that the player can prepare to deal with it. Obviously the player can make wrong decisions that put him in a situation where even if he is able to realize what will happen, he can't do anything about it (like for example if he is in the middle of a jump and realizes that a powerful anti-air attack is coming), but this is just part of what makes the game be interesting.

A good game, with a good design, is the one that always informs the player about the options and the tools he has at his disposal, so that he can make a conscious and informed decision. If certain skills are more important than others, this needs to be clear. If it is impossible to win the game without a combat skill, it needs to be clear. If the design of the game's quests follows a specific theme, this needs to be clear. You should not prevent the player from making mistakes and dumb decisions, but you need to give all the information to your player so that he, even without knowing anything about the game before that moment, has the potential to win any challenge that appears on the primary path of the game.

It's okay to have extra challenges or alternative ways to complete certain quests or missions that could only be discovered by someone who has finished the game before (or someone who was very lucky), as long as this is not present in the "core" of the game. If upon arriving at a challenge the player was unable to continue playing because he wasn't able to guess a specific and arbitrary decision of the game's creator, then there was a design flaw here. If the player needs some knowledge that only the game creator (or someone who has already played the game) has when arriving at a certain challenge, the game has failed. It is a line that often seems blurred, but if you confront it with practical examples it usually becomes obvious.
 
Joined
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1,875,968
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Glass Fields, Ruins of Old Iran
Yes, gotchas are stupid. Haha I let u make a noodle armed nerd but u have to duel a dragon with ur bare hands near the end anyway lmao. Exceptions being

a) player makes insane choices (get into a situation where you can't talk your way out, sell all your weapons except your rusty dagger and save)

b) the character is viable, but good endings might be out of reach and you'll have to follow the consolation prize route

c) you can turn back and get stronger somehow in order to procceed
 

majorsoccer

Prospernaut
Shitposter
Joined
Mar 10, 2019
Messages
175
Pillars of Eternity is one of the best RPGs because of this ! POE is so easy that i can make a rogue with 9 in all attributes and still able to solo a Dragon.

PIllars of Eternity is a masterpiece of game design
 

Machocruz

Arcane
Joined
Jul 7, 2011
Messages
4,315
Location
Hyperborea
RPGs aren't meant to be run with just one character, but video game derpvelopers persist in not understanding the foundational works of the genre and keep making these kind of games. That they keep having to dumb down of course because if you blow your only character's build, you're done.
 

Butter

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
7,523
In VTM Bloodlines, if you only focus on social skills and don't put any points into combat or stealth, you could render the game nearly non-completable because combat is mandatory in many parts of the game.

AoD is much more brutal, and it practically forces you to start savescumming early on. You could render the game ENTIRELY non-completable if you refuse to revert to an earlier save to remedy your mistakes.

Do you think it's bad design to allow players to create failed builds?
What if, instead of being a completely non-combat build, you invest your XP equally across all skills, so that you never have more than 3 points into any skill or attribute? That might be non-viable. Should the game allow you to do it anyway?
 

Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,623
In VTM Bloodlines, if you only focus on social skills and don't put any points into combat or stealth, you could render the game nearly non-completable because combat is mandatory in many parts of the game.

AoD is much more brutal, and it practically forces you to start savescumming early on. You could render the game ENTIRELY non-completable if you refuse to revert to an earlier save to remedy your mistakes.

Do you think it's bad design to allow players to create failed builds?

How can you read your own post and think it is NOT bad game design? That said, it all depends on what "non-completable" means. This is a major issue in cRPGs where there is not much in the way of tactics, whereas the opposite is true for action RPGs like Dark Souls, where you always have time to get better at the game.
 

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