Character development and tactical decisions

[Introdeker]

In this post I’ll argue that allowing the player to decide the development of his characters stats and tactical moves is actually useless. I go through some lengths to ground my arguments in two popular games, which those unfamiliar with these games might want to skip. I tried to keep it brief so some weak points appeared in the Disclaimer and Summary, but I’ll be happy to reinforce if thought necessary.

Disclaimer

By character development I mean the choice of stats, skills, traits, etc, and not the setting of psychological factors and backgrounds (which are woefully underdeveloped in video games anyway – and for good reasons). I understand some people can’t keep the two aspects separate, for instance choosing not to use a hammer even when it’d be the most effective because it’s a barbaric weapon beneath their noble status. But if this is not represented in the game by having characters with the nobility trait actually unable to wield hammers (just like clerics have always been forbidden to use slashing weapons) then can only explain that character’s behavior by thinking of him as an eccentric, perhaps a neurotic causing himself unnecessary disadvantages in his chosen profession. Most people who go about the world risking their lives for whatever reason would do well to always use the most effective and least dangerous option made available to them. With that I brush aside the self imposed role-playing house rules; I only want to analyze the rules of the game as the developers made them.

So, what’s the point of having character development in a game?

At first I was struck by the arguments of mondblut and others like him that the point of an rpg is what I call long term strategy (c development) and short term tactical choices. But the more I thought about games I had actually played the least convincing this became. In most games which really give you options of development you have a scenario in which half the skills are completely useless, and of the remaining some are only useful in a few contexts while others are so much better than everything else they usually feel exploitive. I’ll briefly analyze as examples Fallout and Might & Magic VI.

Fallout

In Fallout you only have two character types which can be played throughout the game: the warrior and the diplomat. Everything else (i.e. the gambler, the doctor, the hunter, the stealthy thief, etc) will either prove to be essentially poorer versions of those two types or will only use their skills on one or two quests, if they refuse to use skills from the essential types. Instead it’s better to think of the perks and skills which would be primary to these alternative types as secondary skills which the warrior or the diplomat can acquire. What I’m calling diplomat might perhaps be better described as pacifist, and this character will only really need to increase his intelligence and charisma (pretend it’s not bugged) for his stats, focusing on the Speech skill as his bread earner. He’ll talk everyone into doing what he wants and recruit many allies for the few people which can’t be reasoned with – but that’s it! The character doesn’t NEED anything else, all the other skills, traits and perks are completely optional, you might miss on a quest or two for not meeting a specific criterion but you’ll finish the game just fine. For pacifists the Speech skills and the Intelligence stat are completely overpowered, you’d do very poorly if you didn’t want to fight and prioritized something else. The Warrior type is a little more complex since you can choose from three basic skills and these open a lot more combo possibilities for you trait and perk picks (for the sake of simplicity I’ll ignore melee combat). But here too we stumble upon difficulties, for these three basic skills are very uneven in effectiveness. Small guns is much better in the beginning of the game but starts to become progressively worse as you start to actually find laser and plasma weapons. These are undoubtedly the better ranged weapons in the game, much better than the “big guns”, which also have strength requirements, further drawing your resources in a direction which effectively don’t help a gunslinger. So an Energy Weapons specialist which had a brief experience with Small Guns will have a very easy time through the game, especially if combined with traits and perks which improve your critical hits. Compared with such a character a muscular big gun wielder which fires more often in burst mode and does extra damage per bullet pales – there’s just no real comparison here. The game is very easy and you can finish it either way, or using far less effective builds, but that’s not the point. Which is: why do they give us so many options in building our Warrior if some of these options are so much better than the others? And the Warrior, as we’ve seen, is only one of the possible build choices you could have in the game – one of the two useful ones and in reality less useful than the diplomat who will see more of the world and have an easier time in his travels. (Just to make it perfectly clear: I know in f1 you don’t have to stick to a character type. My warrior will have first aid, speech and science, perhaps also outdoorsman. His only required skill however is a ranged weapon specialty = this would be sorely missed in a warrior, the others wouldn’t.)

Might & Magic VI

But couldn’t these be the faults of Fallout alone, a game whose focus is not on the traditional mondblutian values but on allowing the player to interfere deeply in the world and “plot”, even granting multiple endings? To avoid that objection we must look in what was perhaps the most popular game in a series which is the staple of traditional rpgs: MMVI. Here there’s no plot, no character interaction and the only non-combat related choice you make, your alignment, turns out to be the most important choice for you tanks in human form, limiting their choices for their ultimate abilities. But here we already have problems from the get-go, for only two (wizard and cleric) of the six classes have access to these ultimate abilities; while the others have no real compensation for this loss. It gets worse: the knight has no mp so can’t cast any spell at all while even the normal magic schools, accessible to the other five classes, are usually much more effective than melee attacks. But it’s even worse: the dagger, which everyone (including the all powerful mages) but the clerics can wield actually does more damage than any other melee weapon! And what do the poor knights get in return, but heavy armor and more hit points? These might have been fine if only you were allowed to place the knight in the front so he could tank all the damage, but as it is if your extra ac and hp ever make themselves noted you’ll have three dead characters and one knight with ¾ of his hp which can’t kill anything. Rigged from the very beginning, your choices in the game become whether you want to work double time for the same end or build a party with only mages and clerics. Which brings us to another point: of the four schools of magic of each type, one is definitely useless (earth and mind). The other three tend to settle in a primary (fire and body if I’m not mistaken) and secondary scheme. And even within these useful schools some spells are so much better than the others! So even in the game which gives you hundreds of level-ups and whose very core is character development something seems seem to be amiss. (I know you can have indirect interference with the plot and the world in mmvi, by not completing certain quests for instance; but essentially the world is a huge a dungeon with trainers and guild hall. MMVII is virtually the same game with some of the same problems though slightly – only slightly - better balanced. While World of Xeen has no character development as I defined it.)

Summarizing

In real games, thanks to their complete lack of balance, allowing choices in your character development could only be justified by one argument, that of surprise. Everything may be terribly unbalanced but when you start playing you won’t know it. In fact if you avoid reading guides and only play the game once you won’t ever find that out. So you may increase your Science rating to 200% thinking all the while you may be getting useful dialogue choices and hacking into computers you otherwise wouldn’t have been able thanks to that, while in truth you only got to hack two extra non-essential systems towards the end of the game, and only needed about 100% Science for these. Or you may have thought your super mini-gun in point blank range spelled the second coming. You made your choice and the only way you’ll find out how good it was is either through replaying or reading guides. If you’re not bothered with that, if the choice is irrelevant for you, then there’s yet only one other reason why you might want character development in your games – see my action figure argument below. For those who like me want to think that rpgs involve thinking and planning (character development as long-term strategy) choosing the best option is the only point of having a choice. But, and this is the key to the whole post, if there’s always one best choice and you don’t even get to find out which it was for 20 play hours or more, what’s the point of the whole thing? Why allow me to choose between hammer and sword if the sword is always better? Any professional warrior would already know that, and always use a sword – in fact, war hammers wouldn’t be an option for professionals, they wouldn’t even think about it. Thus I fail to see what’s the point in making a choice which, if the game mechanics are hidden (as usual), is done blindly or if not has always one best answer that once discovered (through simple calculation) has but to be followed.

We could conceive of an ideal game in which every skill has its use and none is better than the others. So the fire mage will have an easy time in the Icy Mountains and suffer terribly to get through the Volcano, while the ice mage faces the opposite situation. Yet this is even more pointless – the choice makes no difference, either way you’ll have to go through one difficult and one easy area, or only go through the easy one.

So the only last argument I can think in favor of character development = and it’s unfortunate because it limits the appeal of this aspect of rpgs to children alone – is what I have called the action figure argument. Some children like the big muscular green figure; others prefer the ninja, while others yet will choose the sword wielding tiger-man. I don’t know what they find so fun about that, but they do have their personal preferences and might not want to take part in the exact same playing session if forced to forfeit such preference. So in the end character development would be just another cosmetic feature allowing for different tastes, very much like the 3d models (and there were 2d options for oldies as well) we get to pick in the beginning.

P.S. I may yet follow up on the briefer part about the uselessness of tactical decisions during battles, but the reasoning is the same. You get to choose but your choice is either irrelevant (if all are the same in end) or a stupid waste of time (it it’s all about finding which is the right choice by playing the game a lot and perhaps even taking notes from your results). If the game mechanics are FULLY documented (never heard of such a thing) then it’s even sillier, coming down to simple arithmetic. I have hunch that what’s fun about video games as whole is the middle options (hidden rules forcing the player to figure them out) in which they’re doubly confirmed as absolute wastes of time.

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

Playing the game is also useless because you will win in the end. What's your point?

 

[Castanova]

If you obsessively read every single existing FAQ and min-mix your planned party for 10 days before even popping in the disc then, yes, there is no "point" to player choice in character development. However, very few people play RPGs like that and the ones that do derive satisfaction from ripping through the game with ease (seeing their planning pay off). So, basically, your arguments are nothing more than existential malaise.

 

[mondblut]

Playing the game is also useless because you will win in the end.

Damn, beat me to that.

Well, you might also uninstall. The Pacifist way

 

[Introdeker]

Playing the game is also useless because you will win in the end. What's your point?

My point is that since character development is only good for kids there must be something else driving adults to play rpgs. Since I'm an adult interested in rpg designing I want to find out what that is, and I fear that the other party, the larpers (as opposed to the mondblutians which I said had impressed me at first) may be right.

your arguments are nothing more than existential malaise.

I'd prefer if you told me if and why are you interested in character development as I defined it. My arguments are all technical with real life examples and covering a wide range of contexts, including people who never think about their builds.

 

[Castanova]

Ugh, I'll take the bait.

My point is that since character development is only good for kids there must be something else driving adults to play rpgs.

It's within your argument that only kids enjoy it. You most certainly didn't prove it. Therefore your argument that there MUST be "something else" driving adults to play RPGs is invalid.

I'd prefer if you told me if and why are you interested in character development as I defined it. My arguments are all technical with real life examples and covering a wide range of contexts, including people who never think about their builds.

People who never think about their builds would never think about the rationale you went through here. They would simply be disappointed in certain skills and pleasantly surprised with others. They may have an easy time through the game or a difficult time.

I'm interested in character development because it's fun to think about the different options and how they might interact with one another. It's fun to start out with weak skills and progress to better ones. Just because some skills are better than others doesn't make this exercise pointless by any means. It's called "playing a game."

 

[Introdeker]

Think of the following tactical situation in Jagged Alliance 2: You’ve just arrived in a sector. You’re faced with three options.

a) Have your characters literally charge in.
b) Do a leapfrog clearing of the terrain, moving slowly and taking cover at every step.
c) Camp the corner in a favorable position.

As a child I might have chosen a), reasoning that brave mercenaries need not fear third world half-starved cannon fodder. But when I played the game in my mid teens the question in my mind was how I could get through the sector suffering as little damage as possible and preferably saving ammo. The best answer is c), but I’d soon add “and not get bored to death”. So I’d choose b) as a compromise between effectiveness and time spent getting it. Are you telling me that if you played the game today you could choose a), for the coolness factor? Of course the example is simplistic and doesn’t take in the tactical nuance of JA2.

Or again, aren’t you annoyed that in Fallout you can create any character you want but all but 6 skills and about 6 accompanying perks have any game usage? You will have spent hours (I did anyway) creating something that’s perfectly useless because there’s only one right choice. Nowadays I couldn’t level up without thinking whether what I was doing would get used or not. And not to mention, this seems to me like extremely sloppy design.

 

[zenbitz]

So, you are really not complaining about character design, but about the fact that two games are poorly balanced?

 

[Hory]

Introdeker, the absolute tactical value of a choice is largely irrelevant, because the player doesn't know it. What is relevant is that the player has choices that represent his desired ways of acting, with consequences distinct enough so that the player sees that the choices are valuable. Reading guides before a game is ridiculous, pretty much like reading the script of a movie before seeing it. They are simply spoilers - they take away from you the pleasure of discovering new things.

Fallout's combat choices might be imbalanced, but as long as the choices' values aren't 100% obvious, this is not something to stop me from enjoyig it. I enjoy the combat even now, when I know it's imbalanced. I don't think that it should necessarily be balanced. Is every action in reality equally viable? What gives me satisfaction is that there is a multitude of ways in which I can approach the combat, even if in the bottom line they don't have equal values.

If they had equal values, you say they'd be meaningless, but you know why that is? Because combat is not a particularly meaningful thing - which is why I usually criticise it. It usually has only two outcomes - you die or the enemy dies. It's a paradox that something so interactive has so few distinct consequences. Or perhaps it shouldn't be called highly interactive at all. Aren't you ultimately just working with higher or lower values of the same elements - damage, accuracy, speed and a few others?

Compare it to a meaningful interaction like social ones between humans. A single action can have a myriad of short and long-term consequences, affecting various emotions, moods, beliefs, attitudes, future plans, and so on - which are too complex to even properly quantify (unlike in combat, in which each choice is perfectly quantifiable).

Now, regarding your JA2 example, this just seems like bad design (even tho JA2 is one of the most tactical games). Ideally, there should be no "safe and boring" choice. It's a game, it should be fun. The AI should pose a challenge in any situation. The AI should outsmart a static plan such as "camping the corner". Spam it with grenades, surround the position, and so on. But it's hard to do, even if designers have the best intentions. That's why I propose that multiplayer is, in theory and at least for now, the best form of gaming. That's why I don't play action and strategy games singleplayer anymore. If something of JA2 quality would be released, I would play it, but ultimately, defeating a computer seems like a waste of time. Dungeon crawler fans, I'm looking at you.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

You made your choice and the only way you’ll find out how good it was is either through replaying or reading guides. If you’re not bothered with that, if the choice is irrelevant for you, then there’s yet only one other reason why you might want character development in your games – see my action figure argument below. For those who like me want to think that rpgs involve thinking and planning (character development as long-term strategy) choosing the best option is the only point of having a choice.

If the best choice is the only real option, my first question is: What is the best choice? Opinions on that will largly differ. It's not irrational if you want your dwarven fighter to wield a dwarven waraxe, despite there being better weapons. A lot of people love their Thieves, Paladins, *insert inferior sample class here* and just don't want to play a Sorcerer or Cleric/Favored Soul - does that make all the less powerful classes obsolete? I think not. It's role-playing games after all.

But, and this is the key to the whole post, if there’s always one best choice and you don’t even get to find out which it was for 20 play hours or more, what’s the point of the whole thing?

To build an arbitrary character, however suboptimal he is, with all the disadvantages, crappy feats and useless skills that stroke your fancy. Exactly how you imagined him to be.

Why allow me to choose between hammer and sword if the sword is always better? Any professional warrior would already know that, and always use a sword – in fact, war hammers wouldn’t be an option for professionals, they wouldn’t even think about it.

Normaly different weapons have advantages as well as disadvantages. Is there really always a best weapon? And even if that's the case, some folks choose their weapon according to what they think looks most badass. So?

Thus I fail to see what’s the point in making a choice which, if the game mechanics are hidden (as usual), is done blindly or if not has always one best answer that once discovered (through simple calculation) has but to be followed.

First i doubt that there's always one best answer, second i insist on my right to choose what i want, even if it's not optimal.

We could conceive of an ideal game in which every skill has its use and none is better than the others.

Pretty much nonsense, have fun making pickpocketing and treat injuries exactly equal, so that none is better than the other.

So the fire mage will have an easy time in the Icy Mountains and suffer terribly to get through the Volcano, while the ice mage faces the opposite situation. Yet this is even more pointless – the choice makes no difference, either way you’ll have to go through one difficult and one easy area, or only go through the easy one.

And your point is? Characters must not have disadvantages?

So the only last argument I can think in favor of character development = and it’s unfortunate because it limits the appeal of this aspect of rpgs to children alone – is what I have called the action figure argument. Some children like the big muscular green figure; others prefer the ninja, while others yet will choose the sword wielding tiger-man. I don’t know what they find so fun about that, but they do have their personal preferences and might not want to take part in the exact same playing session if forced to forfeit such preference. So in the end character development would be just another cosmetic feature allowing for different tastes, very much like the 3d models (and there were 2d options for oldies as well) we get to pick in the beginning.

So having different tastes and preferences that differ from what you perceive as optimal is childish. I'm glad that I apparently have been able to preserve my childish attitude through all the 33 years of my life.

 

[Zomg]

First, I completely disown what most people are talking about. A well designed game should absolutely survive min-maxing.

Properly balanced parameters aren't different ways of doing the same thing. Particularly, they should have serious differences in context, Rock-Scissors-Paper effects and investment levels. All you can ask is that options should be interesting (in a single player context, you're balancing for interest, not on eventuating the win condition - it doesn't matter if my "thief" character has to painstakingly sneak through a level the warrior could blitz through, as long as both methods are worth playing). If you can't create those conditions, don't implement the parameter. If there's no marked difference between a Ranseur and a Spetum, don't put both on the weapon table.

Now, what's the point, anyway? It's that the point of an RPG is to articulate a character. It's not possible to articulate an arbitrary character, so you're assembling one from a discrete number of gameworld-relevant and supported parameters and, eventually, styles and choices. The function of having played through a game of Fallout with a given character and having made certain choices in lieu of others was to generate a particular version of the Fallout guy, existing in the context of his concomitant game history.

I suspect your instinct is an artifact of typical RPG designs where the real task given to the player is "Find All The Content", not "Be Interested".

 

[Introdeker]

Scrolling down from the Dave Arneson interview on Gamasutra I found this: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22456. Those who are interested in this thread might want to read it.

 

[Paperclip]

My point is that since character development is only good for kids there must be something else driving adults to play rpgs. Since I'm an adult interested in rpg designing I want to find out what that is, and I fear that the other party, the larpers (as opposed to the mondblutians which I said had impressed me at first) may be right.

The "larpers" are right regarding the approach to "single player RPGs", that is the most important thing is the experience - so the purpose to build games with many choice and consequences or alternatives is to provide rich and engaging gaming experience. The "mondblutians" and your view is exactly what MMORPGs are about.

BTW "cosmetic feature", like you said in your analogy, taken literally is essential to MMORPGs, one of fastest selling items in F2P (mmos with cash shops/item malls) are accessories/clothing/dyes/etc - that is appearance enhancing items. I know cuz I played mmos and I too love those items

Scrolling down from the Dave Arneson interview on Gamasutra I found this: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i ... tory=22456. Those who are interested in this thread might want to read it.

I think the problem of "choices becoming problems" can seldom exist for players who role-play in their single player RPGs. Players have to role-play hard though in RPGs with bad design or limited choices. This is from players' perspective.

 

[felicity]

In an ideal game, a properly built character will make up for her weight in any area. One skill maybe better than another in a given situation, but you can usually pick a combination of skills which allow the character to circumvant the problems. SKill choices have the same consequence only if you use the skill right. Bad tactical choices lead to bad ends is the most basic criteria that distinguish remotely playable games from Bad-esda games. It's not necessary to "play-a-lot" in order to use proper tactics when you can analyse and experiment. I think creativity and efforts in thinking/planning are the most important factors in character building. Some experiences are needed to get yourself familiar with the basic gameplay, but by no mean it's necessary to have mutliple playthrough in your sleeves.

If the game mechanics are FULLY documented (never heard of such a thing) then it’s even sillier, coming down to simple arithmetic.

Check out Incursion, the manual is pretty detailed. If you want a mainstream example try NWN, while the game manual is uttershit(well in number-crunching standard), the in-game tooltips are detailed enough for building sensically. Arithmetic alone is not sufficient, no idea where you come up with that.

 

[bhlaab]

You're using the fact that Fallout didn't do it perfectly to throw out the whole system. If they had been more thorough and made every quest solvable with stealth/science/medical path and balanced things a little better you wouldn't have any reason to complain.

 

[Kavax]

You could get through the two first Fallout games using only stealth skills pretty well. It wasn't as well done as the diplomatic path, but I personally found it better than pure combat. You can farm experience by stealing stuff, and quite a few side-quests can be solved by stealing the item you need or sneaking past enemies.

 

[keithburgun]

You speak about plain and simple "imbalance", and you speak of it as if it were intentionally created. Imbalance naturally happens when designing a video game. They stay imbalanced, until you balance them. These games were not sufficiently balance-patched, before or after release, so that they'd be balanced. Changing some numbers and functionalities around would eventually lead to balance - perhaps not perfect balance, but a very acceptable small amount of imbalance. I think probably no game has ever been 100% perfectly balanced.

 

[Yeesh]

You're using the fact that Fallout didn't do it perfectly to throw out the whole system. If they had been more thorough and made every quest solvable with stealth/science/medical path and balanced things a little better you wouldn't have any reason to complain.

Something like this.

There's a pretty interesting topic here, but the original post presents it poorly. Fallout and M&M6 aren't well-balanced, and therefor no game can be? That's not going to convince anyone.

However, there is a real, unnoticed tension in some of the strongly held beliefs around here, and how they relate to difficulty.

1. People who laud difficulty but somehow disparage min/maxing. This is a head-scratcher to me; if a (non-action) game is difficult only if you willfully neglect to make your character(s) as powerful as possible, then is it actually difficult? Or are you just investing difficulty in an otherwise milder game? What is playing smart in a hard game, other than giving your character(s) every possible advantage because they need it? Just about any game is tough if you play the gimpiest combos.

2. But more to the point here, there's a real tension between meaningful choice and decent difficulty. Game balance is hard, and the more different paths you allow a player to take, the less likely it is that you're going to be able to make each path similarly challenging. And so you can be stuck with a spectrum from Punishing or Impossible unless you play THIS way, to Challenging as long as you refrain from making it Easy for yourself by playing the powerful class.

Of course balance isn't impossible, but the equation gets to much more complicated the more options you give the player. I think there's a real failure to notice that difficulty and choice are natural enemies.

 

[Joe Krow]

A. No one would choose a trait knowing that it was inferior (except perhaps a larper). What you seem to be arguing for is that an absolute balance in the utility of stats should not only exist but be forced on the player (having a "balancing" element never explored by the player would throw off that perfect symmetry you seem to be shooting for).

B. Would you apply the same need for foresight and symmetry to dialogue options? I think they would fare even worse then the combat systems. A better question would have been "is strategic character development possible in dialogue driven rpgs?" Unless you can foresee not only the situations you'll face but the outcome of your choices, I would say it's not.

 

[TNO]

The OP, if anything, gives fallout too much credit. You don't need to choose between warrior and diplomat. You can do both. Tag speech and small guns (+ lockpick for the loot) and you get more than enough skill points to talk or fight well enough to beat the game on hardest difficulty. Provided you abuse INT and gifted, you also have enough skill points to buy energy weapons up to a high enough level to replace the sniper rifle with the turbo plas for the end game. Other skills you rightly point out have either secondary usefulness, or are just useless. Besides, several of them you can get up to the right level with books.

Lots of games have similar imbalances: guns>swords in DX and VmtB, and most fantasy RPGs have magic users wtfpwning fighters after mid level. I don't think this matters, providing it is still fun to play these 'gimped' characters, and the game doesn't screw you over. Besides, also LARPing - when I play fallout, my characters tend not to tag small guns and be bookish scientists, not because thats the most effective build, but because that seems cooler for what a sheltered vault would send out into the nasty wasteland.

When it is a problem is if your character becomes useless. If all the high level fights boil down to magic spamming or close combat, then your PC being a figher or a ranged combatant sucks. Likewise, picking a stealth and diplomacy VtmB character gets screwed in the endgame. I don't mind some character builds being gimped or ineffective - some skills are clearly secondary and shouldn't be a character focus, and it adds verisilmitude that a cloistered academic type would find it hard to survive in a post-apoc wasteland, however, when this comes out of the blue, it's cheating.

 

[GarfunkeL]

the traditional mondblutian values

is my new favourite catchphrase.

Anyway, turtle formation in JA2 work only:

1) during night and then you must kill them as soon as they appear, or
2) if you sit in a corner

Number two is obvious exploitation of game-mechanics and arguing that the game isn't balanced because exploiting is possible is retarded.

To the original argument - not everything has to be 100% balanced as long as different character builds are viable.

 

[spectre]

Balancing is overrated, methinks, unless we're talking multiplayer.
A better kind of balancing is when each choice gives you interesting stuff to do (i.e. content).

Balancing belongs more to strategy games (when when you find your golden surefire strategy, it's kinda over). Combat oriented rpgs suffer from this, but more traditional ones are actually played for content, not balancing.

 

[mondblut]

A better kind of balancing is when each choice gives you interesting stuff to do (i.e. content).

No.

What's with this new trend of jerking off at "replayability" and looking down on an intent to see everything within a single playthrough? Your shitty game is not good enough to invest additional 80 hours in just to see half an hour of missed content (yes, Dragon Age, I am speaking to YOU).

 

[spectre]

No.

How about yes?

What's with this new trend of jerking off at "replayability" and looking down on an intent to see everything within a single playthrough?

The rage over teh noo shit. It's over nine thousand.

Also, what the fuck are you on about? It's pretty normal to play stuff like Fallout and Arcanum more than once, just to try different shit, cause the game kinda encourages it with different builds and all that. Same with stuff such as Wizardry, Might and Magic.
I dare you to find me more than one person that got through both Fallouts, with no missed content. On their first or second go and without walkthroughs.

Of course, going over an 80 hour game just to get the one lesbian alien buttsecks cutscene you missed is fucking moronic (and a reason why jewtube was invented), what I am talking about is playing the game a second time with a different build that is meaningful (gives different content), not: I am a wizard, I fwackoom stuff withmy trusty fireball, then I am a fighter, I hack shit with my trusty sword, I am a rogue, I stab shit from the shadows with my trusty dagger.