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AoD recieves undue praise and favouritism from the Codex

hivemind

Cipher
Patron
Pretty Princess
Joined
Feb 6, 2019
Messages
2,386
its so fucking sad how someone as incredibly retarded as me still manages to be one of the smartest people on this inbred hellpit of a forum
 

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
Patron
Joined
Oct 3, 2015
Messages
11,756
But Gygax loved to design dungeons which required heavy experimentation and application of character skills by the player. The Tomb of Horrors is a great example. A lot of players would just use their character skills, then do stupid things and get themselves killed because they purely trusted in their character skills and didn't apply their player skills. The big stone face with the annihilating sphere in its mouth is a great example. Thieves use their detect traps skill, clerics use their detect traps spell. Nobody detects a trap. Players put a hand in the mouth, the sphere of annihilation destroys their hand, now they're one-handed. "But how can it be?!" asks the angry player. "My character didn't find a trap!"

"It's not a fucking trap you dingus," says the DM. "Traps are things that are hidden and activated by accident. A trapped door, a trapped chest, a hidden floor plate that makes the ceiling fall on your head when you step on it. This is an open hole with a sphere of annihilation in it. There is no trap. If you put your hand in it you're a retard and brought your misfortune upon yourself. It's your own fucking fault. Think more about what you're doing next time instead of blindly trusting what the skill checks tell you!"
Incidentally, the Great Green Devil from the Tomb of Horrors is now a Codex avatar (already in use by at least one Codexer)
DD%20S1%20Great%20Green%20Devil.png
.

Detect evil and detect magic spells do work here to save the players from foolishness. :M Assuming they don't have cannon fodder hirelings with them.
 

cruelio

Savant
Joined
Nov 9, 2014
Messages
369
Putting points in something lets me pass relevant checks, while not putting enough points means not passing

"Reward" or "punish"? DISCUSS!

neither, it's just a chore.

I don't want to do too much injustice to AoD as its flaws turned me off before I could see all there is to see, but this was exactly the impression I got. "Put points into X to proceed along the pre-ordained path, sorry sucker, not enough points there lul". No thought or creativity required - or rewarded - on the player's side.

The one thing that demanded thought and analysis was, ironically, the combat system, not anything else. Which is fine and dandy if you're playing a freeform tactics game, not an RPG.

Ultimately it seems AoD fell prey to a lack of clear vision. The old RPG disease.
But Gygax loved to design dungeons which required heavy experimentation and application of character skills by the player. The Tomb of Horrors is a great example. A lot of players would just use their character skills, then do stupid things and get themselves killed because they purely trusted in their character skills and didn't apply their player skills. The big stone face with the annihilating sphere in its mouth is a great example. Thieves use their detect traps skill, clerics use their detect traps spell. Nobody detects a trap. Players put a hand in the mouth, the sphere of annihilation destroys their hand, now they're one-handed. "But how can it be?!" asks the angry player. "My character didn't find a trap!"

"It's not a fucking trap you dingus," says the DM. "Traps are things that are hidden and activated by accident. A trapped door, a trapped chest, a hidden floor plate that makes the ceiling fall on your head when you step on it. This is an open hole with a sphere of annihilation in it. There is no trap. If you put your hand in it you're a retard and brought your misfortune upon yourself. It's your own fucking fault. Think more about what you're doing next time instead of blindly trusting what the skill checks tell you!"

In the classic Gygaxian style of game design, players are confronted with a situation, and it's up to them to come up with a solution on their own. Often, Gygax would design things specifically so generic skill checks didn't work, demanding from players to think outside the box, and not merely trust into the skills and spells of their character, leaving all the thinking aside in favor of just saying "yeah my cleric has a detect traps spell and he's a level 20 cleric so of course he always detects traps if there are any, no thoughts required on my part because my character solves it on his own". Gygax specifically designed his harder moduels to counter this kind of gameplay approach because he found it boring..

Your own example doesn't make sense. The sphere of annihilation was hidden and was activated by accident. There's no point having a rules-based rollplaying system with skills and spells if one side, gm or players, is going to ignore them when convenient and go "lol it's your fault for being stoopid." Especially since in the example the players weren't stupid and were trying to use their skills and spells to interact with the world. Sounds like you're retarded and so is old dead dipshit Gary Gygax.
 

ShadowSpectre

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 11, 2017
Messages
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Location
Limbo
AoD's praise is well-deserved. Players seem to take issue with it because most RPGs let you essentially be the very powerful chosen one and more often than not with an almost equally talented party at your disposal. With AoD it's just you, this average person in a world that is not kind or forgiving (like real life more often than not). You can build your character the first time around and get through to the end, you just won't necessarily get to do that the way you wanted (like real life!) I imagine this part is the most frustrating with the people who don't like the game. You don't get what you want, but you will get somewhere. Once you've played it, you can build your character in such a way that you are far more successful in getting the outcome desired or going about it the way that satisfies you.

It's just a different style of game that is far more unforgiving than people have been used to. I bet the other frustration is that reloading often doesn't solve what you want to do and in that sense it is like real life again. You can't go and grind for more XP to solve your problems through leveling or similar. A person doesn't always get another opportunity or chance in life and sometimes it's just best to make due with what you got. I would say the devs were successful in their vision and execution.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Putting points in something lets me pass relevant checks, while not putting enough points means not passing

"Reward" or "punish"? DISCUSS!

neither, it's just a chore.

I don't want to do too much injustice to AoD as its flaws turned me off before I could see all there is to see, but this was exactly the impression I got. "Put points into X to proceed along the pre-ordained path, sorry sucker, not enough points there lul". No thought or creativity required - or rewarded - on the player's side.

The one thing that demanded thought and analysis was, ironically, the combat system, not anything else. Which is fine and dandy if you're playing a freeform tactics game, not an RPG.

Ultimately it seems AoD fell prey to a lack of clear vision. The old RPG disease.
But Gygax loved to design dungeons which required heavy experimentation and application of character skills by the player. The Tomb of Horrors is a great example. A lot of players would just use their character skills, then do stupid things and get themselves killed because they purely trusted in their character skills and didn't apply their player skills. The big stone face with the annihilating sphere in its mouth is a great example. Thieves use their detect traps skill, clerics use their detect traps spell. Nobody detects a trap. Players put a hand in the mouth, the sphere of annihilation destroys their hand, now they're one-handed. "But how can it be?!" asks the angry player. "My character didn't find a trap!"

"It's not a fucking trap you dingus," says the DM. "Traps are things that are hidden and activated by accident. A trapped door, a trapped chest, a hidden floor plate that makes the ceiling fall on your head when you step on it. This is an open hole with a sphere of annihilation in it. There is no trap. If you put your hand in it you're a retard and brought your misfortune upon yourself. It's your own fucking fault. Think more about what you're doing next time instead of blindly trusting what the skill checks tell you!"

In the classic Gygaxian style of game design, players are confronted with a situation, and it's up to them to come up with a solution on their own. Often, Gygax would design things specifically so generic skill checks didn't work, demanding from players to think outside the box, and not merely trust into the skills and spells of their character, leaving all the thinking aside in favor of just saying "yeah my cleric has a detect traps spell and he's a level 20 cleric so of course he always detects traps if there are any, no thoughts required on my part because my character solves it on his own". Gygax specifically designed his harder moduels to counter this kind of gameplay approach because he found it boring..

Your own example doesn't make sense. The sphere of annihilation was hidden and was activated by accident. There's no point having a rules-based rollplaying system with skills and spells if one side, gm or players, is going to ignore them when convenient and go "lol it's your fault for being stoopid." Especially since in the example the players weren't stupid and were trying to use their skills and spells to interact with the world. Sounds like you're retarded and so is old dead dipshit Gary Gygax.

Yes, it's hidden and activated by accident which is why it doesn't qualify as a trap, therefore detect trap doesn't do anything since it's not a trap.

Logical, ain't it?

EDIT:
The point here is that it's up to the player to determine whether a detect traps or a detect magic spell is the correct approach. Not just to roll a die and the character automatically knows what's up.
 
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Alpharius

Scholar
Joined
Mar 1, 2018
Messages
585
Oh i get it guys. You like it when you're talking to an important npc and there are dialogue checks like [persuation], [charisma], [intimidation], [perception], [resolve], [completed a side quest], [have positive reputation with faction], [have a party member x], [have background y], which all lead to the same outcome. And the you're like "Oh my god, its so awesome, he gave me 10 more gold! Its only because of my unique build that i'm such a winner! God bless you Josh!".

Edit: oh shi, haven't noticed this thread was dead.
 
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ShadowSpectre

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 11, 2017
Messages
333
Location
Limbo
Oh i get it guys. You like it when you're talking to an important npc and there are dialogue checks like [persuation], [charisma], [intimidation], [perception], [resolve], [completed a side quest], [have positive reputation with faction], [have a party member x], [have background y], which all lead to the same outcome. And the you're like "Oh my god, its so awesome, he gave me 10 more gold! Its only because of my unique build that i'm such a winner! God bless you Josh!".

Clearly you haven't played AoD if you expect that "[have party member x]" has some sort of validity. You must be thinking of a different game.
 

barghwata

Savant
Joined
Sep 13, 2019
Messages
504
AoD's praise is well-deserved. Players seem to take issue with it because most RPGs let you essentially be the very powerful chosen one and more often than not with an almost equally talented party at your disposal.

People for some reason got the idea that AoD is hardcore but you see, this is where you're wrong, whereas in better rpgs you generally have to use your own creativity, logical reasoning and mastery of the game mechanics in order to figure out how to solve a problem or finish a quest in AoD you basically just start a dialog or something, see what choices you have and click on the one that is suitable to your character build and POOF!!........ all your problems go away with one magical skill check. It's diffcult to feel any pride for anything you do in AoD except for winning in combat because aside from that it's not really you who achieved anything, your character's stats effectivley did it for you.
Once you learn how to specialise your character's stats correctly the game essentialy plays itself for you, except if your playing as a combatant in which case you have to win the fights yourself. And also i have to add, i am not saying i am against skill checks in general, those can be done correctly for example like how in fallout you can't really see which dialog options appeared because of what skill so you still have to choose the option that seems the most rational by yourself, unlike in AoD where you just press a success button and move on, this type of design is just insulting to be honest.
 
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ShadowSpectre

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 11, 2017
Messages
333
Location
Limbo
AoD's praise is well-deserved. Players seem to take issue with it because most RPGs let you essentially be the very powerful chosen one and more often than not with an almost equally talented party at your disposal.

People for some reason got the idea that AoD is hardcore but you see, this is where you're wrong, whereas in better rpgs you generally have to use your own creativity, logical reasoning and mastery of the game mechanics in order to figure out how to solve a problem or finish a quest in AoD you basically just start a dialog or something, see what choices you have and click on the one that is suitable to your character build and POOF!!........ all your problems go away with one magical skill check. It's diffcult to feel any pride for anything you do in AoD except for winning in combat because aside from that it's not really you who achieved anything, your character's stats effectivley did it for you.
Once you learn how to specialise your character's stats correctly the game essentialy plays itself for you, except if your playing as a combatant in which case you have to win the fights yourself. And also i have to add, i am not saying i am against skill checks in general, those can be done correctly for example like how in fallout you can't really see which dialog options appeared because of what skill so you still have to choose the option that seems the most rational by yourself, unlike in AoD where you just press a success button and move on, this type of design is just insulting to be honest.

I am under the impression from what you've said, that you didn't play the original Fallout games. Then again, you didn't specify which Fallout game(s) you were referring to. I guess that also validates that you see no distinction between them --which is highly suspect. Also from what you've said, I doubt you've actually played AoD for any length of time or most other RPG-styled games that are widely praised from the golden era for that matter.
 

barghwata

Savant
Joined
Sep 13, 2019
Messages
504
AoD's praise is well-deserved. Players seem to take issue with it because most RPGs let you essentially be the very powerful chosen one and more often than not with an almost equally talented party at your disposal.

People for some reason got the idea that AoD is hardcore but you see, this is where you're wrong, whereas in better rpgs you generally have to use your own creativity, logical reasoning and mastery of the game mechanics in order to figure out how to solve a problem or finish a quest in AoD you basically just start a dialog or something, see what choices you have and click on the one that is suitable to your character build and POOF!!........ all your problems go away with one magical skill check. It's diffcult to feel any pride for anything you do in AoD except for winning in combat because aside from that it's not really you who achieved anything, your character's stats effectivley did it for you.
Once you learn how to specialise your character's stats correctly the game essentialy plays itself for you, except if your playing as a combatant in which case you have to win the fights yourself. And also i have to add, i am not saying i am against skill checks in general, those can be done correctly for example like how in fallout you can't really see which dialog options appeared because of what skill so you still have to choose the option that seems the most rational by yourself, unlike in AoD where you just press a success button and move on, this type of design is just insulting to be honest.

I am under the impression from what you've said, that you didn't play the original Fallout games. Then again, you didn't specify which Fallout game(s) you were referring to. I guess that also validates that you see no distinction between them --which is highly suspect. Also from what you've said, I doubt you've actually played AoD for any length of time or most other RPG-styled games that are widely praised from the golden era for that matter.

If by "RPG-styled games that are widely praised from the golden era" you mean ...... fallout 1, 2 , arcanum, planescape torment, VMTB, BG2; aside from baldur's gate i played them all as for how long i've played AoD well i've finished the game twice.
Instead of snidely making assumptions about what games i did and did not play and for how long i played them; mabye you should try responding to my criticisms with actual, i dont know.......... argumentation and maybe even......... convince me of your point of view.
 

jac8awol

Arbiter
Joined
Feb 2, 2018
Messages
408
You pick a role for your character. You explore an interesting, complex and cohesive world, gaining experience in the process to make your character better at the role you chose. This in turn enables you to explore more of the world. Making progress depends on character skills, not player skills. It's very much 'on rails' but there are different rails to choose from, leading to different options and outcomes.

The game doesn't play itself for you, but it is character driven. It's more about passive enjoyment, like watching a movie, reading a book, than active 'look what I'm doing' first person walking simulator. Does this make it less of an RPG or inferior? No.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2019
Messages
1,307
AoD recieves undue praise and favouritism from the Codex
100% agree. This is glorified CYOA VN with shitty TB combat. It's barely an RPG since you have very little in creating your role. It's story is also just mediocre and all its "political intrigue" is incredibly childish if you spend a minute thinking about it all. AoD has its fanboys who (let's be real) are mostly fawning over the Argentinian developers rather than the game itself. An American "male" reads Argentinian and immediately assumes the position to receive the thick shaft. I said this before, Codex should either ban everything American, or else vet them extensively to make sure the undesirable elements can't get inside. Then we can have relative peace shitting on games rather than on each other. :evilcodex:
 

barghwata

Savant
Joined
Sep 13, 2019
Messages
504
You pick a role for your character. You explore an interesting, complex and cohesive world, gaining experience in the process to make your character better at the role you chose. This in turn enables you to explore more of the world.
Which is one of the things that really bothered with the game, i would love to explore more of the world since it seems really interesting but i can't because it's so artificially made, there are very few characters to speak to outside of the main quest or anything to explore in the cities and locations you go through, the world feels very empty and the developpers clearly constructed the absolute bare minimum environnement needed to tell the main story.

Making progress depends on character skills, not player skills.
you can have both, i mean look at the combat in AoD for example, it's tactical turn based combat and clearly requires skill, preperation and careful planning in order to win, however it's also based on stats, being skilled in the combat is definitley very important in order to win but if you don't have the necessary stats to back it up you'll most likely die, this way you keep the roleplaying aspect of it but also keep the player engaged and feeling that their own skills are needed at the same time, unfortunatley AoD only does this in combat, almost every other aspect of the game is done through skill checks and pressing buttons whether that be stealth, disguise, persuation etc.... it's just sad.

It's very much 'on rails' but there are different rails to choose from, leading to different options and outcomes.
It's not as much as choosing as it is just trying to find the rail that was specificaly designed by the developer for your character build, the other rails will most likely lead you to instant death.

It's more about passive enjoyment, like watching a movie, reading a book, than active 'look what I'm doing' first person walking simulator. Does this make it less of an RPG or inferior? No.
I absolutly agree, if AoD's story and characters are what you enjoy in the game then who am i to tell you not to enjoy them, and it's true that the game is very well written, but when you say does this make it less of an RPG ..... well i think so yes, you said it yourself, it's like a reading a book, but that's not what roleplaying is about, in fact it's the opposite since roleplaying means you activley playing the role of the character rather then just passivley following a character's footsteps, in AoD it feels like that because you're forced by the game to follow the exact path crafted to your character build by the developper. Now does this make it a bad game, NO it doesn't and it's certainly none of my buisness telling people what to enjoy and what not to enjoy but i don't think it works very well as an RPG is all i'm saying.

Also glad to see someone actually arguing points rather then just being hateful and butthurt, the codex certainly needs more of that.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
AoD is good at what it takes from you, not what it gives. After its idea that if you're just a merchant running boy then in any combat even with allies only thing you better do is hide behind a rock and pray, I can't take games where you pass persuasion checks and if you fail kill everyone anyway seriously.
 

ZagorTeNej

Arcane
Joined
Dec 10, 2012
Messages
1,980
A smooth-talker, for example, cannot do the heavy combat scenarios. Nor vice versa.

If a smooth talker could do heavy combat scenarios then what's the point of a warrior build/skills in the game? And vice versa.

Not taking into account the hybrid characters which are certainly possibly once you get familiar with the game's systems.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2019
Messages
1,307
Here's a list of AoD apologists who should be purged from Codex:
Tacgnol
Kyl von Kull
pizza_microwave
oscar
sorinmask

I will keep updating this list in my little black book. When the time is right, the CGB will pay your a visit.
 

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