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Something that sometimes depresses me about CRPGs

gurugeorge

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 3, 2019
Messages
7,437
Location
London, UK
Strap Yourselves In
So there I was, merrily building a party in Deadfire, just going by a casual look at the descriptions of things and the numbers, and then I take a gander at Nerd Commando's build guides, and I discover that as per fucking usual with CRPGs, when a proper nerd takes a closer look at the numbers, optimum builds are Frankenstein's monsters that bear no relationship whatsoever to any sort of RP rationale.

(e.g. some obscure Paladin/Cheesemonger hybrid turns out to be a better archer than any Ranger could ever be, that type of thing)

Why, God? Why? Why can't life just be simple? Why can't developers make it so that if you just follow your intuitions in relation to what's described, you end up with decent builds that do what they say on the tin? Is it that difficult? Apparently it is ...
 

Egosphere

Arcane
Joined
Jan 25, 2018
Messages
1,909
Location
Hibernia
If the difficulty of the game is such that it requires meta-knowledge of perks, items etc. to avoid your character struggling, it can be annoying.
 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
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Joined
Mar 22, 2013
Messages
12,787
So there I was, merrily building a party in Deadfire, just going by a casual look at the descriptions of things and the numbers, and then I take a gander at Nerd Commando's build guides, and I discover that as per fucking usual with CRPGs, when a proper nerd takes a closer look at the numbers, optimum builds are Frankenstein's monsters that bear no relationship whatsoever to any sort of RP rationale.

(e.g. some obscure Paladin/Cheesemonger hybrid turns out to be a better archer than any Ranger could ever be, that type of thing)

Why, God? Why? Why can't life just be simple? Why can't developers make it so that if you just follow your intuitions in relation to what's described, you end up with decent builds that do what they say on the tin? Is it that difficult? Apparently it is ...

Stop larping, embrace your inner munchkin
 

Sabotin

Scholar
Joined
Jun 16, 2016
Messages
189
Ignoring balancing issues, it's the nature of optimization itself that does this. It's either about trying to squeeze out the most out of a certain abilities/combos or crazily specialize a role, but premade classes are almost never as focused as they can be.

Also keep in mind how you want to play, optimal doesn't always mean fun, since it often requires rigid playstyles or setups. Also when the game gets too easy and you bump the difficulty you often box yourself in with what you can do. Most games seem to have difficulty options as an afterthought as well.
 

Citizen

Guest
(e.g. some obscure Paladin/Cheesemonger hybrid turns out to be a better archer than any Ranger could ever be, that type of thing)

But figuring this shit out is the best stuff in cRPGs!?

I just wish games offered more ways to make interesting multiclasses, but in most cases multiclasses are pretty stupid and don't offer anything new gameplay-wise, just another "dip X levels in monk to get +AC, dip Y levels in paladin to get +saves" or PK's "dip any class 1 lvl in vivisectionist to win the game", some COOL synergies are pretty rare
 

Barbalos

Savant
Joined
Jun 14, 2018
Messages
200
Just play Skyrim. Even if you attempt to gimp yourself or LARP into a useless build, just keep playing and eventually you will be a master at everything in the world.

:despair:
 

Grotesque

±¼ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Vatnik
Joined
Apr 16, 2012
Messages
8,987
Divinity: Original Sin Divinity: Original Sin 2
living your life in constant stress and disappointment that autist with much more time on their hands do things bigger & better is a sure way of missing it.
 

mindfields

Learned
Joined
May 26, 2017
Messages
156
Classless > class systems. Always.
The problem with PoE2 isn't that it's class-based, it's that the developers obviously didn't want to make a class-based RPG but were forced by Kickstarter promises to do so, so instead we got this abomination multi-classing system.
 

Citizen

Guest
living your life in constant stress and disappointment that autist with much more time on their hands do things bigger & better is a sure way of missing it.

The autism and free time part is bullshit made up by casual gamers who can't into videogames. It's not like you have to complete game 1337 times to read the class descriptions and skim through skill trees to come up with a decent build. And since the most crpgs today feature respec, you can just roll with something interesting and later respec into something more optimised when you get hold of the system
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Would have preferred subclasses with more depth(instead of typically only being a minor tweak to the class) over multiclassing.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2019
Messages
1,307
So there I was, merrily building a party in Deadfire, just going by a casual look at the descriptions of things and the numbers, and then I take a gander at Nerd Commando's build guides, and I discover that as per fucking usual with CRPGs, when a proper nerd takes a closer look at the numbers, optimum builds are Frankenstein's monsters that bear no relationship whatsoever to any sort of RP rationale.

(e.g. some obscure Paladin/Cheesemonger hybrid turns out to be a better archer than any Ranger could ever be, that type of thing)

Why, God? Why? Why can't life just be simple? Why can't developers make it so that if you just follow your intuitions in relation to what's described, you end up with decent builds that do what they say on the tin? Is it that difficult? Apparently it is ...
If the RPG is done right, going by your intuition usually ends with you getting a pretty decent powerful build regardless. In my recent deadfire playthrough i built a rogue without paying much attention to min/maxing and i ended up being really powerful in the end. Don't stress too much OP. It's a real killer.
 

biggestboss

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 16, 2017
Messages
528
The autism and free time part is bullshit made up by casual gamers who can't into videogames. It's not like you have to complete game 1337 times to read the class descriptions and skim through skill trees to come up with a decent build. And since the most crpgs today feature respec, you can just roll with something interesting and later respec into something more optimised when you get hold of the system
For me personally, the issue isn't in being able to optimize through min-maxing in itself, but I often find that min-maxing means you have to spend the entire game as a butt ugly Deadfire alien that's a Fighter/Monk/Cleric that also dabbled in playing instruments at some point.
 

Gregz

Arcane
Joined
Jul 31, 2011
Messages
8,511
Location
The Desert Wasteland
So there I was, merrily building a party in Deadfire, just going by a casual look at the descriptions of things and the numbers, and then I take a gander at Nerd Commando's build guides, and I discover that as per fucking usual with CRPGs, when a proper nerd takes a closer look at the numbers, optimum builds are Frankenstein's monsters that bear no relationship whatsoever to any sort of RP rationale.

(e.g. some obscure Paladin/Cheesemonger hybrid turns out to be a better archer than any Ranger could ever be, that type of thing)

Why, God? Why? Why can't life just be simple? Why can't developers make it so that if you just follow your intuitions in relation to what's described, you end up with decent builds that do what they say on the tin? Is it that difficult? Apparently it is ...

If you didn't read that guide you could have finished the game with your LARP intact, imagining that you had the best builds without knowing any better, and you would have had a lot more fun.
 

Citizen

Guest
If you didn't read that guide you could have finished the game with your LARP intact, imagining that you had the best builds without knowing any better, and you would have had a lot more fun.

Yeah, reading guides and clues is the easiest way to kill the fun
 

Daemongar

Arcane
Joined
Nov 21, 2010
Messages
4,706
Location
Wisconsin
Codex Year of the Donut
What do you enjoy most about the game?

If you enjoy...
Creating your party don't look at guides.
Having the best possible party with maximum damage output and are willing to read guides to have that party, I don't get why discovering imbalance would bother you. If you weren't seeking out an edge, you wouldn't be there.
Playing the game, just play the damn game.

If you are worried not having the best build will prevent you from finishing a modern RPG, I got news for you buddy...
 

Incendax

Augur
Joined
Jul 4, 2010
Messages
892
The funny thing is that Nerd Commander makes fairly average builds. Certainly better than a complete casual, but nowhere close to the amount of optimization a hardcore min/maxer could do. His focus is more about getting videos out quickly.
 
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ScrotumBroth

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 13, 2018
Messages
1,288
Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In
The autism and free time part is bullshit made up by casual gamers who can't into videogames. It's not like you have to complete game 1337 times to read the class descriptions and skim through skill trees to come up with a decent build. And since the most crpgs today feature respec, you can just roll with something interesting and later respec into something more optimised when you get hold of the system
I agree, but perhaps OP is not an old fart with experience of previous metas.

I mean, he's struggling with Deadfire, game I couldn't be bothered taking seriously and reading a single thing in character menu, and still managed to 'crack' it on experience alone.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
"if you just follow your intuitions in relation to what's described, you end up with decent builds that do what they say on the tin?"

You say that's what you want, but then you get envious of hyperoptimised theorycrafted munchkin builds doing it better? What?

A dude picking a ranger larping a ranger will get a decent ranger being a ranger in Deadfire, BG2, many other RPGs.

Sounds like you're just getting FOMO from some other dude's video game character.
 

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