I never said "greatness". No one said "greatness". The only "greatness" here is that of the strawman. Mechanically Arcanum combat is very poorly done and since items are mostly used in combat they are often poorly done as well. Balance-wise Arcanum is an unfunny joke. From gameplay standpoint Arcanum itemization is lackluster - as are combat mechanics or character development (creation is nice though). HOWEVER items in Arcanum are often very well done thematically. Mostly the technological ones, including the blueprints. They are part of why the techno-magic setting (sort of) works. My favorite from that perspective is the Chapeau of Magnetic Inversion. They have great names, the art fits the theme well, you need to make some of them yourself which also add to the theme. They are good mostly because of fluff. You my say that fluff matters little compared to mechanics or balance or simple usefulness and you'd be correct - i'm the first one to agree that mechanics should go before everything else. Still, some of Arcanum strongest points are the setting and the atmosphere. Its items greatly help in that.Ah, yes, the great itemization of arcanum, a game where most items seem to have lolrandom stats, magic items consistently outperform tech and upgrading weapons as a tech guy oftentimes makes it strictly worse instead of better. Amazing example.But Arcanum comes the closest for someone to make that comment.
You can set scripts exactly for that. I never used it, but I will have to try it sometime and go through the game mostly that way (aside from casting target spells manually, of course).RTwP is best when you can program party AI and let it play itself in real time (in other words, when you bypass the pause part).
EE Story mode most likely.Are you babies playing the game on core difficutly or something?
So let me get it straight. You've said that arcanum has shit combat but itemisation is great. What you've actually meant by this is that the itemisation is terrible but the lore behind it is good.I never said "greatness". No one said "greatness". The only "greatness" here is that of the strawman. Mechanically Arcanum combat is very poorly done and since items are mostly used in combat they are often poorly done as well. Balance-wise Arcanum is an unfunny joke. From gameplay standpoint Arcanum itemization is lackluster - as are combat mechanics or character development (creation is nice though). HOWEVER items in Arcanum are often very well done thematically. Mostly the technological ones, including the blueprints. They are part of why the techno-magic setting (sort of) works. My favorite from that perspective is the Chapeau of Magnetic Inversion. They have great names, the art fits the theme well, you need to make some of them yourself which also add to the theme. They are good mostly because of fluff. You my say that fluff matters little compared to mechanics or balance or simple usefulness and you'd be correct - i'm the first one to agree that mechanics should go before everything else. Still, some of Arcanum strongest points are the setting and the atmosphere. Its items greatly help in that.Ah, yes, the great itemization of arcanum, a game where most items seem to have lolrandom stats, magic items consistently outperform tech and upgrading weapons as a tech guy oftentimes makes it strictly worse instead of better. Amazing example.But Arcanum comes the closest for someone to make that comment.
THAC0 was the biggest pleb and retard (tautology) filter ever made, kinda sad they removed it.More Larian cultists after the launch of BG3 :
Not true. Even a kid could grasp that better armours have lower value by comparing something as simple as chain mail and leather armor (with the idea being that heavier armours obviously offer a great deal more protection). Then there are ordinary weapons and magical weapons, the latter having higher plus sign clearly indicating the better ones (and XdX was simple enough to understand by comparing single-handed and two-handed weapons). So you could not fully understand the rules governing that, but in practical sense it was easy enough to follow.THAC0 was the biggest pleb and retard (tautology) filter ever made, kinda sad they removed it.
And yet you can see a great many retards complaining that they were filtered by it in the Steam reviews.Not true. Even a kid could grasp that better armours have lower value by comparing something as simple as chain mail and leather armor (with the idea being that heavier armours obviously offer a great deal more protection). Then there are ordinary weapons and magical weapons, the latter having higher plus sign clearly indicating the better ones (and XdX was simple enough to understand by comparing single-handed and two-handed weapons). So you could not fully understand the rules governing that, but in practical sense it was easy enough to follow.THAC0 was the biggest pleb and retard (tautology) filter ever made, kinda sad they removed it.
"A great many"? 91% out of 8 360 reviews are positive and not all of them mention THAC0. Hell, you could argue that a lot of these negative reviews are about Beamdog's changes to the original game, not about the original game itself or its system.And yet you can see a great many retards complaining that they were filtered by it in the Steam reviews.
This is the dumbest take in the history of dumb takes. You should feel ashamed for having posted it.there's nothing wrong with thac0, it's just a math thingy you do when you perform attacks. it really doesn't matter if it "makes sense" when the game is entirely based on abstractions.
(x)-(-y) is primary school mathematicsThis is the dumbest take in the history of dumb takes. You should feel ashamed for having posted it.there's nothing wrong with thac0, it's just a math thingy you do when you perform attacks. it really doesn't matter if it "makes sense" when the game is entirely based on abstractions.
A strength of game design is being able to keep mechanics understandable and simple, but with a large amount of depth. THAC0 goes in the opposite direction, being inherently complicated to understand, and offering little depth.
Literally all it's doing is decreasing your chance to hit. Which plenty of other systems (including 5E) do in much the same way, without the extra pointless abstraction.
(x)-(-y) is primary school mathematics
(x)-(-y) is primary school mathematics
"Oh no, the lower number is actually BETTER
The game is largely automated on the account of being in real-time and the game doing all the calculations for you, so it's easy to play it even if THAC0 is needlessly complicated. At worst you may play somewhat suboptimally. Playing it at the table would be an entirely different matter, because someone has to actually do the calculations for everybody, which is more complex than having an automated system, even when everyone understands the rules.This is the dumbest take in the history of dumb takes. You should feel ashamed for having posted it.there's nothing wrong with thac0, it's just a math thingy you do when you perform attacks. it really doesn't matter if it "makes sense" when the game is entirely based on abstractions.
A strength of game design is being able to keep mechanics understandable and simple, but with a large amount of depth. THAC0 goes in the opposite direction, being inherently complicated to understand, and offering little depth.
Literally all it's doing is decreasing your chance to hit. Which plenty of other systems (including 5E) do in much the same way, without the extra pointless abstraction.
THAC0 (To-Hit Armor Class 0) was merely a simplification of the existing tables in D&D and AD&D, which laboriously displayed the minimum d20 roll needed to hit an enemy based on character class and level range (in rows or columns) and the enemy's armor class (in columns or rows). Gary Gygax had already hit upon the THAC0 concept in a series of tables appearing in Appendix E in the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide in 1979, though the exact acronym THAC0 wasn't used until 1985's 'Black Box' Master Set for Mentzer BECMI D&D, and it didn't become standard until AD&D 2nd edition in 1989, which finally enabled the same information to be delivered far more concisely.(x)-(-y) is primary school mathematics
And that addresses my point how exactly?
Explain to me how "Oh no, the lower number is actually BETTER, you need to subtract the armour numbers in relation to THAC0 rather than simply lowering the to hit value" actually adds anything of any tangible value to the game.
If all you have is "LOL but math is simple reeeeeee everyone is dumb but me" then maybe you should spend less time on forums and more time killing yourself.