Interview Actually, Some Developers Should Read Their Forums

[ALT914]

First, I don't recall Gothic being ever praised for its character system or dialogues. In fact, I'm pretty sure that everyone agrees that they are the weakest aspect of the games.

So what is it praised for, exactly? And more to point if it has very weak game system and very weak dialog what kind of RPG is it anyway?

You're not making a great case for codex intelligence with comments like this. Gothic is about as dumbed down as a game can get.

Second, praising a game doesn't mean praising every feature it has. I don't recall seeing any claims that well liked games like Fallout, Arcanum, Planescape, Bloodlines, Daggerfall, Wizardry, etc were perfect in every way. Quite the opposite is true, actually.

Third, the issue here isn't the number of skills, but the continuous dumbing down. From 36 skills and advantages/disadvantages in DF to 27 in MW to 21 in Oblivion to 18 in Skyrim. I don't think anyone would have complained if there were reasons to believe that Bethesda will do more with less, but it's clearly not the case. Whether or not other games had more or less skills is absolutely irrelevant.

So he is wrong about dumbing down because gothic isn't a dumbed down game due to lack of skills but due to some magic qualities only you can define. Even though every skill in the game already does have some use, so removing skills implies simplifying game, which of course means dumbing down.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

Only if you pick the "always use the best attack" option.

Or by pressing a WSAD key and the attack button, a feat that requires two working fingers.

Is this going to be blunt weapons 2011 edition?

 

[ALT914]

And to topic at hand, I have come to hate Jeff Vogel with the force of a thousand supernovae. There's a big difference between feedback and ideas. If you can't come up with ideas maybe you should get a new business, but no one can operate without feedback in an effective manner. But then what do you expect from a guy who repackages the same game over and over and dumbs down at every opportunity to screw over the same couple of brainwashed fans to give him money just one more time in the illogical hope he will make something better next time instead of worse.

 

[Davaris]

"Yet you are a member of the Codex, that claims to know what they are talking about."

I'm also a member of other forums. Your point?

Just pointing out the logic.

 

[Coyote]

So what is it praised for, exactly? And more to point if it has very weak game system and very weak dialog what kind of RPG is it anyway?

You're not making a great case for codex intelligence with comments like this. Gothic is about as dumbed down as a game can get.

Assuming that you're referring to Gothic 2, to which Mastermind originally referred to and which is generally liked around here, and not the less-popular Gothic 3 (which was stripped of many of the strengths of the previous games without adding much in the bargain), it's praised for several reasons:

* It has decent-to-good combat. This is pretty rare in action RPGs, a genre where combat is still generally as simple as clicking until everything is dead (although these days you sometimes have to take aim first).

* It's actually challenging until you reach a pretty high level. Most recent games follow the philosophy of making it hard for players to lose because they might be discouraged or not feel special and powerful, whereas Gothic throws the player into a harsh world where he will most likely die several times before getting the hang of it and most NPCs are much tougher than him for a good portion of the game.

* The exploration is better than most ARPGs; the world is open with few restrictions on where you can go, items and monsters are hand-placed, and the game rewards you for finding out-of-the-way places and making your way through tough areas early in the game.

* It has about a Deus Ex-level of choices and consequences: most of the effects of your choices are largely cosmetic, affecting how people react to you and such, but as far as cosmetic consequences go, they're well-realized. It has fewer choices than Deus Ex, boiling mainly down to the faction you choose, but more non-cosmetic consequences such as limiting your access to certain quests and the most powerful weapons, armor, and magic, making them about even in my book. (I should note that in making this statement, I'm considering choices that you make within the gameworld - such as who to kill or ally with - as separate from metagame choices that affect how you play the game - such as the PC's class or skills - and only referring to the former. In some cases these are inextricably linked, of course, but Deus Ex isn't one of them.)

* Speaking of armor and weapons, they make a huge difference in how effective the player is in combat, which many find preferable to other games' systems in which armor, especially, usually makes a pretty minor difference.

* Another purely cosmetic but nice touch is that NPCs actually have lives and will spend their days doing things like sawing wood, hammering at anvils, etc. instead of standing around waiting for the PC to show up so they can dispense quests. No (A)RPG since Ultima 7 had made more than a half-hearted attempt at this when the Gothics first came out, and no (A)RPG since the Gothics has done it better.

Also, the first Gothic also had a far more original setting than most RPGs, despite relying heavily on typical fantasy tropes.

While I wouldn't call them great RPGs, Gothic 1 and 2 are still some of the better action RPGs around. And if you think that they're about as dumbed down as a game can get, you obviously haven't played many other ARPGs. Dumbing down doesn't just pertain to lowering the number of skills and options in a game or simplifying stories and interactions with other characters; it also includes things like making games easier so that they will be accessible to more people, telling players where to go next and what points of interest are nearby with mechanics like the quest compass, letting players excel at everything instead of requiring them to specialize in a few areas or be a jack of all trades, master of none, and so on.

Anyway, this is all beside the point. Mastermind brought up liking Gothic 2 as an example of hypocrisy because it has less skills than other games that are popular on the Codex:

Only on the codex do you see retardedness like praising gothic 2 which has about 10 skills and complaining that Skyrim has "only" 18 even though 18 is about as many as the holy trinity's Fallout 1 had. It's pure unadulterated .

The point is that the reasons the Gothics are liked - whether or not you actually agree with them - have nothing to do with the way skills factor into gameplay. It's like saying that it's hypocritical how some Codexers like adventure games while complaining that Skyrim has only 18 skills because adventure games have no skills at all.

Where is the "much needed variation"?

In Morrowind, in case you've forgotten, you could perform Chopping, Slashing, and Thrusting attacks, which actually worked better for certain weapons (axes are good for chopping and slashing, spears (you remember spears, don't you?) for thrusting, long blades for slashing and chopping, etc.

Automatically using the highest damage attack type isn't variation.

Only if you pick the "always use the best attack" option.

Technically true, as you would only automatically use the highest damage attack if you chose to do so in the options menu. But the problem is that Morrowind gave you no reason to do anything but use the best attack all the time, whether you selected that option or not. If some armors had been stronger against certain types of attacks and weaker against others, if some attacks were more likely to miss as in Daggerfall, if some attacks were weaker but fast enough that they could make up for the difference against lightly armored opponents or enemies good at dodging, or if any other similar mechanic were in play, that would have been one thing. The player would then have to assess the situation and decide what type of attack to use. But as it was, Morrowind might as well have left out the non-optimal attacks altogether. If a game gives you several choices but one is clearly the best from all possible angles (including roleplaying your character), it might as well not have given you a choice.

Edit: I suppose there is one reason you might use the weaker attacks: to level up your weapon skill faster. But that seems a little too metagame-y and unrealistic (why would you get better at using a weapon by repeatedly using it poorly rather than you would by using it less, but in the way it is meant to be used? Why would your character use suboptimal attacks like stabbing with a mace in a life-or-death situation?). It's rather like the idea of using weak spells over and over to level up the associated skill quicker. That's one of the nicer improvements I've heard about for Skyrim; supposedly, casting more powerful spells will be required to level up your skill past a certain point.

 

[Volourn]

"Also, the first Gothic also had a far more original setting than most RPGs, despite relying heavily on typical fantasy tropes."

I detect dope smoker.

Whetehr you like the Gothics or not, how the fuck is its world in any way 'original'? It's as generic fantasy as you can get.

 

[Coyote]

I'll admit that "far more original" was an overstatement, but I otherwise stand by what I wrote. You'll notice that I said "setting" and not "world", as you used. The world itself was pretty damn generic, especially when it got - and I use the words loosely - fleshed out in Gothic 2 and 3. But unlike other fantasy games, most of which have worlds just as generic (more detailed != less generic, by the way), Gothic put a new spin on the old formula. You're thrown into a penal colony where the first thing that happens is a local asshole drops by and pounds on you to make sure you know who's boss. The colony is run by the prisoners themselves, who took advantage of a poorly thought-out experiment with a magical barrier to take over but then splintered into factions: one in which a select few took over as the new guards and ran business as usual while blackmailing the kingdom for luxury goods and two others seeking to escape through separate means while maintaining self-sufficiency through cash or food crops and hunters, lacking direct access to the goods from outside the barrier. Gothic's setting is more original than most fantasy games' simply by virtue of utilizing the generic world in a less generic fashion.

G2, in turn, had a horribly generic setting because it failed to do so.

For an example of the reverse, the setting of Oblivion is as generic as they get (in large part because they ignored the lore in favor of a more familiar setting), but the world is pretty interesting. In Oblivion it only comes out in the in-game books, but you could see a lot more of it in Morrowind. Likewise, NWN2's setting is pretty generic, but MotB takes place in the same world and has a far more interesting setting. (It always struck me as odd that out of all the areas in the Forgotten Realms, developers like to make games in the most generic one, the Sword Coast, but I guess familiarity sells.)

 

[Mastermind]

First, I don't recall Gothic being ever praised for its character system or dialogues. In fact, I'm pretty sure that everyone agrees that they are the weakest aspect of the games.

That's not really the issue. I've never seen it savaged for its far, far shittier skill system like I've seen it done to Oblivion (and oblivion has a very solid skill system as far as the average cRPG goes).

Second, praising a game doesn't mean praising every feature it has. I don't recall seeing any claims that well liked games like Fallout, Arcanum, Planescape, Bloodlines, Daggerfall, Wizardry, etc were perfect in every way. Quite the opposite is true, actually.

This is completely irrelevant. I've never asked anyone to praise every feature they have. I requested consistency. If incessant mocking of Oblivion's skill system is to persist, then Fallout should receive even more mocking for having an even shittier and smaller set of skills. The lack of consistency leads me to believe that codexers don't care about rational arguments or deductions, they just care about raging. And that being the case, claiming to be above a consoletard or the average PC player is completely undeserved. The codex is essentially a gathering of PC exclusive consoletards. I just answered a moron on the beth forums who opposed introducing perks because "they break his immersion". This level of stupidity is the same thing I run to on the codex, only it's about a different set of issues (like C&C)

Third, the issue here isn't the number of skills, but the continuous dumbing down. From 36 skills and advantages/disadvantages in DF to 27 in MW to 21 in Oblivion to 18 in Skyrim. I don't think anyone would have complained if there were reasons to believe that Bethesda will do more with less, but it's clearly not the case.

Yes it is. And in fact Morrowind's skills were so shallow that the handful of shitty perks oblivion gives you when hitting breakpoints is still more complex than Morrowind's. A good argument can be made that they could've done much better, but in a straight up comparison Oblivion's skills themselves are well above Morrowind's.

Whether or not other games had more or less skills is absolutely irrelevant.

Not at all, for the reason I already outlined in earlier posts.

 

[Mastermind]

The point is that the reasons the Gothics are liked - whether or not you actually agree with them - have nothing to do with the way skills factor into gameplay.

That would be fine and well if the skill system was ignored in TES like it's ignored in Gothic. But it's not. Hence double standard. Hence lack of thought. I don't give a fuck if the codex likes the gothics. But if one is going to like Gothic, he should shut the fuck up about the lack of skill variation in other RPGs.