nomask7
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2008
- Messages
- 7,620
Boss fights in GF5 are precisely where you have to actually spend some time thinking about your tactics, and very possibly reload as a result of failed tactics. Concerning RPGs and randomness and tactics in general, I don't necessarily disagree with you much, but I also can't escape the feeling that 50% of the time I didn't reload in those games because there was something wrong with my tactics, but because the fight just happened to go badly and I was hoping for better luck "this time", which I often got. The other 50% were because I hadn't prepared properly, not really because I had used bad tactics per se (rather, bad strategy, if you will). Maybe 0.1% of the time it was bad tactics on my part. I've also never really been a fan of poker, whereas in chess there is no randomness or room for randomness. Of course, the lure of poker is money, or rather, "maybe winning lots of money", and game sharks have evolved to be very good at suspending that "maybe". The need for randomness in games that involve no money prizes comes when the tactics as such are too simple to hold the player's interest. So you need some additional spice, which randomness provides.PorkaMorka said:Why do you think you don't have to think about your moves in Vogel's games? Play GF5 on hard, and it's pretty obvious moves matter once you can make a couple of creations (that is, pretty much right from the beginning).
You do, of course have to think about it a little. But his games have been very poor in terms of tactical combat from what little I've played and his quote illustrates for me that this is partially due to a lack of effort/desire to make the combat tactical or interesting.
However, as with other RPGs, the combat ain't chess. You don't, as a rule, have to think about your moves more than a second or a fraction of a second. That's true of every RPG I've played. There simply isn't much to think about in battles where you can control only a few different characters, each of which has a specific, simple function (healer, fireball guy, archer, here's-Johnny). RPGs aren't tactical games, period.
You've been playing rather bad RPGs if you never got wiped out by a boss and had to reload, stop and think about a tactic to beat him. RPGs would really be an awful genre of games if they were as you make them out to be, games where you purely win or lose based on luck.
BG2? Sure, unless you've played AD&D before, in which case your brain is constantly on autopilot in the combat encounters. The excitement of a challenging battle is always fake in BG2, because the excitement really comes from the randomness. How can you even use tactics, when anything can happen? It doesn't matter how carefully you think about your moves: one unlikely miss and a challenging fight becomes impossible. The game doesn't really have challenging fights: if the battle is balanced, ie, if your opponent is about as powerful as you are, you either win or lose based on nothing except random chance.
While I'm no fan of excessive randomness, you're wrong if you think that tactics do not play a role in games where there is a random element in the success or failure of character attacks and actions.
Most "tactical" games have a random element, such as a percent chance to hit with your sniper rifle, and you have to factor that into your decisions on how you use your troops. BG2 is no different, although it's overall not particularly deep in terms of tactics, you do need to use some.
While you can lasso and click for most of the trash fights (not necessarily a bad thing) you have to think (a little) and form basic plans for many of the boss or "big" fights. A plan that takes into account that spells can fail as can attacks, and factors in that randomness, similar to how in say Combat Mission, you have to take into account the fact that all your panzers might miss.
Unless you really overpowered your characters, you most likely had to think up some tactics to beat Saverok at the end of BG1, not just lasso and click.
Tactics, being simply the direction and maneuver of military units, is almost an essential element of party based RPGs. Really, the only time I've seen a party based, non real time game entirely do away with tactics, is KOTOR2, where you could simply autoattack/AI fight your way through the game (at least for the first several levels, after which I stopped).
Another point: how much of a meaningful tactics game can a game really be, when you can always, in the case of a difficult encounter, leave and come back more powerful than before? There would have to be some in-game costs or changes of game world for such activity, and for too much tarrying in general. Of course, from what I've heard, Wizardry 8 (or rather, I suppose, some earlier Wizardry) solved that by using a very good system of level-scaling and related mechanics. That was to be expected and very much hoped for, since it's basically a combat tactics game like ToEE. Apart from Wizardry and 7th Saga, has any apparent RPG ever done anything successful to solve the dilemma which often appears in the form of a short dialog:
"I will come back when I can beat you, just wait here, OK?"
"OK."
I think the answer is basically no, there aren't many other such RPGs, and no such real RPGs whatsoever. The reason for that, I think, is that in actual role playing games, the focus isn't on combat, and one of the popular core conventions of the genre is that you are able to return to beat up the baddy or his minions once you've gotten powerful enough to do so.
EDIT: BG2 isn't even poker. The truth is, you can't factor in a chance of 50%. You always know if there is a truly balanced fight that you're going to win or lose and that the chances for either outcome are pretty much even. You just can't tell how badly you're going to lose—or win, which is what makes it interesting, for a while.