Bloat sucks

[JarlFrank]

I'd pay good money for an Aftermath! game:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath!

It's got extremely complex rules and would be perfect for a CRPG. In pen and paper, it's pretty tedious to play since you have to do a lot of dice rolling, record keeping, calculating etc. If all that is done by a computer, however, the tedium would be gone but the deep tactical fun remains.

Just look at that number of hit locations:

 

[Desiderius]

I'd pay good money for an Aftermath! game:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath!

It's got extremely complex rules and would be perfect for a CRPG. In pen and paper, it's pretty tedious to play since you have to do a lot of dice rolling, record keeping, calculating etc. If all that is done by a computer, however, the tedium would be gone but the deep tactical fun remains.

Just look at that number of hit locations:

Location 12

 

[Trashos]

Aftermath's description sounded great, until I reached the Learn-by-Use bit. I will wait to see if Colony Ship improves my opinion on that, because right now...

 

[the mole]

The King is back

 

[Arbiter]

The King is back

Hacked the Codex to restore your account?

 

[the mole]

yes, I'm the supervillian

as much as you hate me you need me

like the batman needed the joker

 

[EldarEldrad]

Not the Joker, more like the Jester

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

 

[Falksi]

Bloat is the biggest killer of modern games. Take the best bits from Kingdoms of Amalur, Witcher 3, Skyrim, etc. and trim them down to a 30-40 hour experience, and you'd have some good games worth playing.

As they are they're a real slog which have to be played manipulatively to get anything really enjoyable from.

 

[Funposter]

remember when dark souls solved bloat and the only thing devs learned from it was that the player should be able to roll?

 

[Citizen]

yeah bros, sitting home most of the day and eating junk food, I"M FUCKING BLOATED AND IT SUCKS

 

[Atlantico]

- Assassin's Creed Odyssey. HP gets bloaty at higher levels, and the combat is much more tedious than it was in the purely action-based non-RPG predecessors.

It's merely that you don't know how to build a character in the game and/or think you should be able to solo an enemy 5 levels above you. Or something, because I have no problems wiping out enemies at higher levels. At the highest levels its stupidly easy, in fact.

But the bottom line is that you don't know how to make a character build in AC Odyssey, but don't realize that you don't know. Dunning-Kruger effect in action.

 

[JarlFrank]

Odyssey is known to be a grindy game though, where you have to do a lot of sidequests to catch up with bloaty enemies. Requirement of grind is also bloat in a way.

 

[Atlantico]

Odyssey is known to be a grindy game though, where you have to do a lot of sidequests to catch up with bloaty enemies. Requirement of grind is also bloat in a way.

I'm not saying you have to like the game, clearly you don't. But its bloatiness has more to do with whether you like the game or not. Fallout 4 is a much better example, with zounds of elite boss enemies with bajillion hit points. It's commonplace there. That's bloated.

But Odyssey is actually more like classic RPGs than people would like to admit.

For example, playing through Ultima V is grindy and bloated if you don't like it, even though there are just 9 character levels. You have to grind a stupid amount of Gazers, Mimics, Ettins, Orcs, Skeletons, Gremlins and Sharks, just to be able to go into a dungeon, which leads to a stupid amount of grind to reach the Underworld, which leads to so much grind the grind before seems trivial by comparison. Just to catch up with those bloaty Shadowlords. Still I thought it was a lot of fun and the game world rewarded all that grinding and exploration. Same with Odyssey.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Odyssey is a much more classic RPG than people would like to admit, probably because it has that stupid name "Assassin's Creed".

Odyssey has a really big world open world and there are 99 character levels. But outside some very optional quests, there are no "elite bosses" with bajillion hit points. If you are level 20 and fighting someone who is level 20, you will have a good chance - even if your build sucks. You'll one-shot enemies if your build is optimized, otherwise you'll fight for a few seconds and then win.

If your build is really good and you are good at the game mechanics, fighting someone 5-10 levels above you is absolutely possible.

As it should be, in D&D if you are fighting someone 5-10 levels above you, it is very hard to win. Even fighting NPCs 2-3 levels above you is challenging in D&D.

 

[Dramart]

Imagine the enemies in Dragon Age 2 with less HP. The game will last only fifteen hours.

 

[the mole]

Not the Joker, more like the Jester

I prefer forum bard

 

[Ninjerk]

Imagine the enemies in Dragon Age 2 with less HP. The game will last only fifteen hours.

Imagine playing good RPGs.

 

[JarlFrank]

Imagine the enemies in Dragon Age 2 with less HP. The game will last only fifteen hours.

Proof that bloat sucks.

Why do I want 15 hours of playtime to be stretched into 40 with something that is fundamentally un-fun?

 

[Dramart]

Imagine the enemies in Dragon Age 2 with less HP. The game will last only fifteen hours.

Proof that bloat sucks.

Why do I want 15 hours of playtime to be stretched into 40 with something that is fundamentally un-fun?

And that is on normal difficulty, on hard and nightmare it takes more time. I think is not a bad thing if bosses have it, but with normal enemies is annoying. A game that does this well is Diablo II, normal enemies die fast and bosses have much more HP.

Over half the forum probably 90 percent basically want more bloat and min maxing

What's wrong with min-maxing?

 

[Alrik]

There's plenty of pen and paper systems that would be perfect for a computer game adaptation, but which haven't been turned into a CRPG yet.

Several complex systems from the 80s come to my mind, using a hex grid with positioning (bonus for flanking, attacking from behind, etc), locational damage, wounds instead of HP, etc etc. Those require a lot of recordkeeping in pen and paper and make combat a drawn out affair (which is why they tend to be less popular than D&D) but since a CRPG has the computer take care of all the calculations and recordkeeping, these systems are perfect for adaptation.

Yet the systems that tend to be adapted are usually relatively simple in their rules. Not even GURPS has been turned into a CRPG yet, and that's on the less complex end of the more involved systems.

This is something that has bothered me since I started to play TTRPGs in my teens. I understand why DnD has such simple combat rules, but when cRPGs eliminate the tedium that was the innate restriction the weapon/armor dynameics cease to make any sense. Most of the weapon variety is, aside from a few relatively unimpactful instances, just flavor and serves no meaningful purpose - it's mostly a guessing game on your first playthrough which weapon category will be most powerfully itemized in the game and then when you know what to expect you choose the same weapon every time. E.g. you would probably pick Bastard Swords in BG2 (to dual weild with Belm) to go Foebane +3 -> Jhor the Bleeder -> Foebane +5 (Jhor and Foebane +5 are stupidly overpowered) or Flails to use FoA (+3 -> +5) throughout the game. Or maybe you think some specific weapon is cool, so you use that one and it's not necessarily much worse than the alternative and it works just about as well in every single encounter no matter the opponent - so the distinction is ultimately meaningless. Weapons don't have strengths and weaknesses, they are just better/worse across the board and maybe some cool ability that usually doesn't make much sense to begin with.

The weapons are based on IRL counterparts which were developed for very specific circumstances, but these dynamics are not reflected in the game at all. Full plate mail would make you virtually invulnerable to any one-handed cutting weapon and thrusting weapons require the equivalent of a critical hit to do anything at all, but a halberd (always insanely underpowered in every DnD edition) would be a serious threat. At least in 2E there were some type-sprecific modifiers (though full plate was still not nearly good enough), but in 3E some dumbfuck with two Kukris can bring down a knight with ease. When these dynamics don't exist, why do things like halberds exist at all? If we compare halberds to greatswords; they have the same proficiency requirement, the same crit threat (halberds are 20/x3, while GS are 19-20/x2), greatswords have significantly better base damage 2d6 vs 1d10 and the only outright benefit of halberds is that they can deal piercing damage which AFAIK NEVER comes into play in NWN since armors don't have specific AC modifiers and IIRC there are no enemies that are vulnerable to piercing but resistant to slashing. There is NO mechanical reason to use a halberd over a greatsword. Compare to IRL where a skilled warrior had to be a master of many weapons since each one had significant drawbacks in many situations.

I've been toying around with an idea of creating an NWN module with totally revamped combat mechanics along these lines:

• Slashing damage would be by far the most powerful, but most armors would offer significant resistances (both in terms of AC and outright damage reduction). For example: a full plate mail would be impervious to slashing damage, have exceedingly high AC against piercing (but no damage reduction) while having low AC against force damage, but with some damage reduction. This also requires that full plate mail is exceedingly expensive and needs to be tailor made for a person - making it rare and undroppable among NPCs and an endgame item for the PC.
• Every weapon would deal some amount of "blunt" damage (force damage). Blunt weapons deal purely force damage, halberds and axes deal more than swords etc.
• Straight swords would akin to halberds be able to deal piercing damage as well as slashing (reflecting the differences between curved and straight swords and why the two types exist to begin with).
• Conversely, curved swords would deal more slashing damage and be more powerful against unarmored or lightly armored opponents (which is why they were much more popular in regions where heavy armor was rare, like the Orient and East Asia).
• HP only minimally increases throughout the game, everyone is 1HD (levels are abolished for a pure use-based system) only boosting your constitution can increase it. This ensures that the low-early midlevel danger is ever present through the game and maintains some realism.

I think the dynamics of such a system could be interesting. Groups would be much more powerful unless someone has heavy armor (like IRL), shields would be an absolute necessity unless you have heavy armor. Two handed weapons (or blunt + shield if you don't have the armor to back up a two hander) are a must against heavy armor whereas cutting weapons are just as dangerous against a lesser armored opponent (if not more since they are, or rather should be, faster). Since one good hit is a death sentence, initiative is much more important. It's no longer a DPS race, but a race to get the killshot.

I'm programming a combat simulator to see how the system would play out and how to balance it before I dive into implementation, so hopefully it's not just ideas that seem to make sense in my head (and not just an RNG-based orgy of savescumming). I've been wanting to play an RPG system with low HP dynamics since I was 14 and me and my older brother made an attempt at a homebrew that was rejected by the rest of our D&D* group.

*Drakar och Demoner, Swedish TTRPG that at least had separate HP pools and the way we played leveling was extremely slow, don't think anyone in our group ever went above level 3.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

yeah bros, sitting home most of the day and eating junk food, I"M FUCKING BLOATED AND IT SUCKS

Yeah it sucks when you weight 452,902 kilograms and burgers have over million calories each just because it's the endgame.

 

[thesecret1]

For me, the sign of good, tight progression instead of bloat is that even low level enemies can pose a danger. See some low level schmucks and decide to just charge in instead of using any tactics whatsoever? You ought to die or at least get heavily injured. Sure, player might be able to get more HP as he progresses, but it should never become overwhelming – there's plenty of other stuff to gain from a level up than just a larger HP pool, so why not focus on that instead of making the character tankier? It makes the game more immersive too, at least to me. If some villager comes running to me crying about terrible goblins, it's a lot better if I actually perceive them as a legit threat rather than thinking "the village guard is level 15, just ask him to kill them all, they literally cannot harm him, are you stupid?" This tends to become an even larger issue as the bloat progresses - the game mechanics become completely dissociated from the setting. Neverwinter Nights can serve as an example: at start of the game, the city is plagued by several calamities and cannot help but rely on random adventurers to save it. Okay, cool. But by game's end, war starts, and you see Neverwinter troops fighting Luskan and see how tough everyone is... so why, instead of relying on random murderhobos, didn't they simply ask a single damn soldier from their army to save the city? He wouldn't even break a sweat given his stats! Or another extreme where everyone in a city is some level 0 commoner – how can anyone even survive in such a world when a generic random encounter you meet outside the city gates ought to be powerful enough to wipe the whole city out? The game world starts losing its logic due to the massive dissonance between what the player sees and is told, and what he actually experiences with the mechanics. With a proper, bloat-less system, none of this is ever an issue because the danger posed by the enemies lore-wise matches the danger they pose mechanically. I liked this in Gothics quite a lot – yeah, sure, a guard in heavy armor can take out the wolves no problem. But such a guard is not here. And you, as a player, have experienced just how incredibly deadly a pack of wolves can be to you, so it makes sense why a hunter would ask your help with them. Or Orcs – dangerous, not unbeatable, but would cause casualties even to a group of paladins, so the siege situation makes perfect sense. Another matter I liked was that one of the biggest gaps in power wasn't getting a particular level, but getting a new cool armor – that was very realistic and made perfect sense. Of course animals can't do shit to me when I'm in heavy plate, but I can still easily understand why someone without such protection would be afraid of them.

 

[Ninjerk]

Use paragraphs, you mongoloid

 

[Johannes]

I agree that bloat as described in the initial post is bad but it is not as clear cut as it sounds.
Large numbers aren't the problem itself but rather the lack of different options to tackle them
and how you implement them in such a way that it doesn't harm the atmosphere of the game.

Even Gothic works with number bloat under the hood. The "bloat" is somewhat hidden but
it is still part of the game. Your progress is pretty much tied to your weapon damage and the
resistances of your armor. But in the end you can convert the resistances into effective health,
which means that an armor simply grants you a huge bonus to hitpoints, i.e. bloat.
But Gothic manages to "hide" that well enough so it doesn't feel like a "bloaty" game.

Another problem is a continuous rise in numbers. That simply doesn't evoke any feeling of
improvement. Having fewer but larger, more noticeable "jumps" in power simply feels better in my opinion.

It's pretty obvious that most of combat relies on whether your weapon damage is enough to do more than 1 dmg to an enemy, nothing hidden about this shit

 

[DraQ]

But Odyssey is actually more like classic RPGs than people would like to admit.

No one gives a flying fuck about those.