Do you believe in the concept of "system bloat" in RPGs?

[luj1]

It's bloat depending on how it was implemented. If it detracts from the core gameplay then yes. If it's a side dish then no.

This goes hand in hand with how well-developed a system is. I don't think you can have two well-developed, deep systems in a game that don't have great synergy together, ie don't detract from one another. In GTA you have shooting and driving, but both work well together, and combined make up the core gameplay loop.

Yes, that is true

 

[luj1]

Absolutely seething over the fact that strongholds are a core part of RPGs and always have been.

Where are you getting this from? You keep repeating that, but I see no proof.

Like Zed said and I suspected, strongholds were very basic in both OD&D and AD&D. They were first fleshed out in 1984 so you can't say "they always were a core part".

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Absolutely seething over the fact that strongholds are a core part of RPGs and always have been.

Where are you getting this from? You keep repeating that, but I see no proof.

Like Zed said and I suspected, strongholds were very basic in both OD&D and AD&D. They were first fleshed out in 1984 so you can't say "they always were a core part".

Everything in OD&D was "very basic", why do you think the partial rewrite was termed "Basic Set"?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

"it was just a minor part of the rules which is why it even details how much you had to pay your steward!!!!" — things RPG haters actually believe

 

[Vic]

sounds like bloat

 

[rusty_shackleford]

sounds like bloat

Again, I'm glad you guys weren't around to tell Gygax this at the time.
Enjoy your simpler & simpler games that are full of non-bloated perfect systems. Eventually the games will just roll credits when you press 'new game', the greatest game ever with entirely non-bloated systems!

 

[Alex]

Not necessarily. The ship campaign might turn to naval combat instead (with the different characters affecting actions according to their abilities).

...and eventually ships collide and boarding action begins. Bring in medium scale tactical combat.

Fixed.

The game focusing around a keep might turn to large scale tactics instead.

...and then enemies send a small group to infiltrate instead of bringing an army with catapults. Bring in skill tests with appropriate modifiers from the precautions the players took to see if they ever get anywhere near inside.

Fixed.

The investigation game might, depending on the situation, just end because there is no point trying to fight the kind of entities you are trying to stop.

Entities yes, their minions, not quite. (...)

Which is why I pointed out that it depends on the situation.

But the association is accidental rather than inherent.

No.

Historical reason is a prime example of what "accidental" means. A quality historically associated with a thing may either be accidental or not, but if historicity is the only argument that can be made, then the association is accidental. Furthermore, you could use that to argue that dungeon delving or trap detection to be as inherent as small scale tactical combat to the genre.

You can take the exact same combat rules of an RPG but make a board game without RPG elements out of it instead.

Why invent the wheel when a board game without RPG elements and with the exact same combat rules is what spawned RPGs to begin with?

That is an argument for the gameplay in question not being inherent of RPGs, not an invitation. It is just a mental exercise that tries to prove a point.

And you can make an RPG where small scale combat is not resolved by tactical gameplay (for instance, you might just make a compared skill roll, for a game where single combat is not supposed to matter much).

You can make any kind of game that has next to nothing in common with RPGs and call it an RPG. Question is, how many people will you make to agree with you.

No, the question is what is an RPG. Or to move away from linguistic issues, what is the point of playing an RPG and the different forms it can be achieved. Since I've gone into this in other threads, I don't think I need to do so again.

My point then is that there is not some gameplay aspect that is essential to RPGs

If it plays like D&D, it's an RPG. If it doesn't, chances are, it's probably not.

This argument is actually poor for saying that small scale tactics is essential to RPGs. The original D&D had a rather simple and quick combat system that is ultimately not much fun if taken only by itself. It is when you consider various different actions the PCs could do, for which the DM had to account by himself, that the game actually becomes interesting and shines. But that is not even the same gameplay you have on CRPGs, which can't account for stuff like that.

 

[The_Mask]

The idea of D&D characters eventually owning and developing their own stronghold was so fucking cool, that it was underlined in a Dexter's Lab episode. Initially Dexter's being DM, and he's being a dick. Then Dee-Dee takes over (by popular demand) and by the end of the "quest" in the dungeon-forest, she gives Dexter's friends 3 cool strongholds.

Dexter gets a shitty ring. Probably a reference to the Ring of Power, but... you know... shitty, because unlike a certain hobbit, he succumbed to power real fast.

Here's some pics to jog your memory.

Sadly, I can't find any pics with them in their strongholds, and I don't wanna pay Google to own the episodes and get the shots, but I'm sure your memory should work now.

 

[luj1]

Again, I'm glad you guys weren't around to tell Gygax this at the time.
Enjoy your simpler & simpler games that are full of non-bloated perfect systems.

You shut your whore mouth

Gygax would spit you in the face, Todd Howard worshipping tranny

Also dont complain about games dumbing down since you were filtered by Underrail hard

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Again, I'm glad you guys weren't around to tell Gygax this at the time.
Enjoy your simpler & simpler games that are full of non-bloated perfect systems.

You shut your whore mouth

Gygax would spit you in the face, Todd Howard worshipping tranny

Also dont talk about complexity since you were filtered by Underrail hard

und*rrail is an example of simplicity masquerading as complexity

 

[luj1]

You are an example of consoletard masquerading as RPG fan

 

[The_Mask]

If you're going for ad-hominems, you know you lost.

 

[luj1]

Yeah.

I'm not a winner like you, Mask. Winners like you who are following me around because you are attracted to me in weird ways. Winners like you who got burnt once, and can't stop thinking about me. I also know you deleted replies to me before, hastily. Because it's what winners do. Enjoy winning, scared beta orbiter cuck.

 

[luj1]

And this is how you trigger insecure internet warriors.

 

[The_Mask]

Yeah.

I'm not a winner like you, Mask. Winners like you who are following me around because you are attracted to me in weird ways. Winners like you who got burnt once, and can't stop thinking about me. Don't forget I caught you deleting replies to me before, quickly after posting them. Because it's what winners do. Enjoy winning, scared beta orbiter cuck.

RPGs are too complicated for you, bud.

If they have more than "spear hits skull of goblin", you can't handle it. Might I recommend something easier? Solitaire, perhaps?

 

[luj1]

RPGs are too complicated for you, bud.

Yeah. That's why Dark Souls, your well known favorite, is the apex of gaming. A literal console port created for playing with a joypad.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The reason he hates any of the intricate parts of RPGs is because he's an NPC, he can only do things that other people tell him to do.

 

[c u in da ballpit ashren]

Rimworld recently with the DLCs has this problem. If you're extremely acoustic, this isn't an issue, but it's implied that if you enjoy the DLCs you're more likely to be someone who already plays and understands the core gameplay loop. On the other hand if you're a new players, you start the game and there's all this wall of text piledrived by random icons for religions, narratives, memes, various cultural ideological talk that changes as much to the game as it adds, that you'll be there reading and customizing your ideology longer than necessary before the game can actually start and you see it in practice. It also adds so much more micromanaging because now instead of somebody being pissed because they ate without a table, they can be starving, completely fine, but what sets them off the edge is the fact that you cut down too many trees recently. There's so much to process even for an experienced player.

Yet it's interesting because Rimworld is to Dwarf Fortress, what vanilla Rimworld is, to it's own DLCs. It's a lot less systems to manage than DF, systems like wind speed or how many hairs are on a Dwarf's balls at any time, that I found that I didn't need to have fun, after all. The only thing DF has over Rimworld is z-levels.

 

[Faarbaute]

rusty_shackleford Would you grant that there could conceivably be something like system bloat, or at the very least something interpreted as system bloat by the player, if base building and other systems featured in pnp weren't up for debate?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

rusty_shackleford Would you grant that there could conceivably be something like system bloat, or at the very least something interpreted as system bloat by the player, if base building and other systems featured in pnp weren't up for debate?

Only good or bad systems.

 

[The_Mask]

Dark Souls isn't an RPG, though. I mean... you can totally ignore gear, and just dodge everything the game throws at you. The atmosphere is pretty much all the same, so it's obviously shit. You can't kill *all* the characters in the game, wtf. And it's literally 2 stories that you can track through the game, where's the C&C?

Actually, scratch that... Dark Souls barely qualifies as a videogame. It's more like DDR. They should really put Dark Souls in arcades: make sure kids use their calories. Fucking Miyazaki is a hack!

Yeah. That's why Dark Souls, your well known favorite, is the apex of gaming. A literal console port.

Don't play Dark Souls, luj1. For you, I'd recommend something like Barbie's Dreamhouse Party. *That* game has gameplay up your alley. You even manage a stronghold!

 

[luj1]

rusty_shackleford Would you grant that there could conceivably be something like system bloat, or at the very least something interpreted as system bloat by the player, if base building and other systems featured in pnp weren't up for debate?

Only good or bad systems.

bad systems that clutter gameplay = bloat

 

[jungl]

System bloat does suck ass if it adds nothing fun to the experience. I'm trying to wrap up my wrath of the righteous playthrough after growlanser 6 but its simply a inferior RTwP game.

The worst thing about the game is casting buff after buff on your dudes. The buffs in pathfinder all have different names but ultimately they mean more attack or more defense on your dudes. Growlanser does it better because there only a handful of buffs you can cast attack, defense, resist, haste and their associated power levels that determine how long they last. Its also more tactical sometimes to cast them in fight because the they are on limited timers compared to pathfinder buffs. The funny thing is growlanser 6 enemy AI and party AI options you can use are more smart then wraths so you are prebuffing to fight these trash fights that are worse then a ps2 game from decades ago.

 

[Darkozric]

Retardation bloat

 

[Serus]

Mate, you like Fallout 76 and Todd Howard. This is widely known on this forum. You are literally a consoletard trying to lecture others about RPGs.

You have no counter-argument for the fact based assertion that you only pick and choose what part of RPGs you like then accuse the rest of being 'bloat' despite it being there before you were even a twinkle in your father's eye.

You are the decline, you are the popamoler.

Damn, I actually have to go with Rusty on that. I also think there is nothing inherently non-(c)rpgish in stronghold mechanics. They are just uninteresting mechanic in practice of most crpgs that include them.

Nothing non-crpgish per se in strategy mechanics for that matter. The problem is, in my opinion, not systemic but in practical implementation. Simply put, it is very hard to make it so that elements of one system are well integrated in the other one and whole remains a coherent whole AND and the same time both are interesting and deep enough.
In practice i suggest that most crpg developers should NOT try it - they have enough trouble to make a good basic, focused crpgs. But can it be done in theory and can in it improve a crpg if done well? Sure it can.

The Pathfinder Kingmaker didn't fail because it implemented a "kingdom management". It failed because that part wasn't well integrated into core crpg gameplay nor was it very interesting on its own.


Luj1 - you seem to have have a tendency to dislike multi-genre or multi-system, games. See the Sid Meier's games discussions. Which is ok as a preference. Forcing it as some kind of a rule - is not.