Yes, yes, whoever doesn't like AoD is because it's so hardcore and they can't get the genius writing of VD.
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
Incidentally, the Great Green Devil from the Tomb of Horrors is now a Codex avatar (already in use by at least one Codexer)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!"
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!"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.
"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..
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!"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.
"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.
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!".
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.
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.
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.
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.AoD recieves undue praise and favouritism from the Codex
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.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.
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.Making progress depends on character skills, not player skills.
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 very much 'on rails' but there are different rails to choose from, leading to different options and outcomes.
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.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.
Can't believe this piece of garbage is Codex's 11th highest rated game.
It unironically is.You're right. PoE is a million times better
A smooth-talker, for example, cannot do the heavy combat scenarios. Nor vice versa.
Mass Effect 3 and Oblivion are even better still.You're right. PoE is a million times betterCan't believe this piece of garbage is Codex's 11th highest rated game.
It unironically is.You're right. PoE is a million times better
It unironically is.You're right. PoE is a million times better