[Poll] How do you play games w/ skill trees and non transparent mechanics ? Blind or spoiled?

[PorkaMorka]

Many RPGs have skill trees where the player cannot possibly max out all of the available skills. Many of these games do not offer the opportunity for a full respec or make it very expensive. The player has to live with the consequences of his build choice.

However, in these games, the mechanics are often lacking in transparency. This reaches an extreme in Japanese games with poorly translated skill descriptions, but even in games with detailed descriptions you're rarely presented with enough information to make an informed decision at level one about what skills will be relevant at level 100. There is a certain amount of guesswork involved in picking your build, unless you read spoilers. You also have to trust the developers to provide accurate skill descriptions and trust that they made the build you picked viable. But often they don't do either thing. So it's more like guesses and consequences than choices and consequences.

You could look up spoilers on mechanics, but it is often difficult to find information on mechanics that doesn't also delve into build choices. Since your choice of build tends to be a primary determinant of your success, looking up builds on the internet really removes a lot of gameplay.

So what do you do? It's quite a dilemma; without spoilers you're risking severe disappointment when you spend 40 hours building a character and he turns out to be ineffective due to information that you had no in game way of knowing. But with spoilers you're taking a genre with very little gameplay and stripping out even more of it; spending 40 hours copying some other dude's build is kind of sad and pathetic, when it's supposed to be the meat of the game.

I tend to enjoy these games at first, as long as I don't have to spend any points that can't be taken back. But then I have to assign points and I realize I have no way of making an informed decision. So I research the mechanics on the internet, read some build spoilers, realize that I'm not likely to make a better build and quit in disgust. It happened with the Etrian Odyssey games and it happened with Torchlight 2, among others.

I don't think I've ever enjoyed a game with skill trees actually, except ones where I was able to respec quite often. I do much better with other skill systems in RPGs.

I know this is neurotic behavior, but I'm wondering what you guys do.

 

[Wyrmlord]

If I make a mistake, so what?

It's just a videogame.

My character in one game I was playing turned out to be sub-optimal - it's really not the end of the world.

 

[Baron]

I use the force / what looks fun, (any skills described as Disease bombs, etc). I prefer to play like Crazy Harry.

I've heard that some people resort to spreadsheets prior to playing to design their characters. Deeply insecure...

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Mostly blind, but I'll do a quick check to see if there's something that should be avoided due to being banalshitboring or useless / overpowered. With newer games I may go in completely blind since they aren't as strict concerning shitty builds.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I play mostly blind. I might put out some feelers on the internet just about what the stats and skills do (generally speaking) if it's really not apparent but that almost never comes up. I avoid other people's builds and spoilers about how any skills and stats are used in the game until after I've completed it.

 

[Gregz]

Theorycrafting is half the fun man. I research the shit out of everything first, then work towards the uber-OP game-breaking design I have in mind. I did the same thing when I was 12 years old looking for exploits in the AD&D Player's Handbook; I'm always looking for the OP build.

If I want a challenge I'll play a PvP shooter/MMO or a classic arcade ROM that was made in the days when games were actually hard. If I want to crush my enemies and see them driven before me, I play an RPG.

Edit: And all you bitches are lying, you know you google your builds beforehand.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I really like theorycrafting but part of that is coming up with your own builds and figuring the game out. Usually if I'm doing that it's for a game that I actually like and want to spend more time screwing around with. Either way, I'm actually not much of a power gamer. I tend to get bored if I start steamrolling everything.

 

[SCO]

RPG's suck ass for difficulty anyway. That's what power word: Reload does

Ruin tension, if said tension is generated from the actual gameplay enders (one of the reasons Thief is so great, is that many of it's challenges cause tension from stealth, not death or 'difficult' combats and allow some elasticity before ending your game).
Aren't the best rpgs for tension those that put you in a situation where you can't turn back, can't save, can't rest and have limited supplies?
The build brokenness or weakness is far from what's most important for difficulty in a good rpg, because even if you're a 40ac behemoth, that doesn't help if what's actually killing you is a lack of food, or blankets, or sleep, or the death of a thousand knives from 40 sequential combats without healing, which is as it should be.

 

[Gregz]

I really like theorycrafting but part of that is coming up with your own builds and figuring the game out.

Yeah, but you can't do that without being able to respec, unless you want to play the same cinematic-emotional engagement-fetch questastic sequence of events 12 times in a row until you stumble upon your perfect build.

 

[Excommunicator]

Sometimes 1 sometimes 2. If the game isn't annoying me along the way then I'll just let it go and see what happens. If the game is constantly proving how badly made certain parts of it are, I'll just look it up to extract out what little enjoyment there is left and then discard it. If the game is especially bad I'll probably completely lose the interest to start the game up again after reading about it

 

[mediocrepoet]

I really like theorycrafting but part of that is coming up with your own builds and figuring the game out.

Yeah, but you can't do that without being able to respec, unless you want to play the same cinematic-emotional engagement-fetch questastic sequence of events 12 times in a row until you stumble upon your perfect build.

That was quite the leap. No, I was thinking more about something like NWN2 which is based on an external rule set though it has its own quirks... where you can tool around with builds easily enough in various modules or with other players and test them out. You don't necessarily need to respec. Granted, most of my own theorycrafting is more on paper and talking with friends about something either from tabletop or when I used to play MMOs than anything.

I suppose if you're thinking about I don't know... timing out something to figure out some sort of dps calculation between +1 over here and over there, then maybe you do need respecing. I think that'd be boring as hell though. Why would I waste my time?

Like I say, I only really bother with it after I've beaten a game at least once anyway - if I'm still interested enough. If you haven't gotten some handle on the game mechanics by the time you've completed it once, well... good for you, I guess.

 

[Gregz]

stuff

Let me put it this way, when was the last time you solo'd a multiclass bard/thief/druid halfling in a DnD cRPG?

I'm not talking about the fairie-ninja solo challenge of Wizardry 8, I'm taking about doing something completely apeshit like above in a game like Baldur's Gate 2 or some such.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Personally? Never. My buddy is the one who likes to try more bizarre class combinations and try to go for high numbers whether AC or what have you. I used to just more be a sounding board for him and we'd discuss game mechanics.

I'm more like the boring person who will screw around looking to make effective/semi-effective builds based on RP concepts which are often fairly conventional. I suppose if by theorycrafting you mean putting together odd combinations of things to try and make something either gamebreaking or just unique, that's not really something that interests me much. I was more meaning say, tossing around builds and ideas for builds with an eye towards appreciating and understanding game mechanics generally rather than powergaming specifically.

 

[Gozma]

I mostly don't play them. I was never that into the stuff descended from M:tG like 3rd edition D&D and MMORPGs where everything got retarded with "build" centrism.

However if I were to do so and I couldn't do easy testing with save/reload or cheats I would go on the Codex and ask for a summary. Sort of like going on the Codex about a '90s game to see what skills don't do anything

 

[7hm]

Depends on the game. In something like the Etrian Odyssey series, or Wiz 8, where I'll likely have one complete playthrough at best (and several partials), I like to research the builds first.

In roguelikes I prefer to play mostly blind and look for new combinations. Replaying those isn't a slog through the same content.

 

[Gurkog]

My first time through a game I will play without spoilers. Then I may look online if the skills and shit are a broken pile of fuck ups.

Diablo 2 had one of the shittiest skill tier systems ever. Since usually only 1 skill in each tier was useful. Torchlight 2 is much more interesting in this respect because of the flexibility in builds.

 

[Mastermind]

Let me put it this way, when was the last time you solo'd a multiclass bard/thief/druid halfling in a DnD cRPG?

I'm not talking about the fairie-ninja solo challenge of Wizardry 8, I'm taking about doing something completely apeshit like above in a game like Baldur's Gate 2 or some such.

That combo is not valid in BG2 but I could make something similar work in NWN.

Bard song is effective on parties, and the druid can get a summon and the animal companion in addition to the henchman (2 of them in hotu). Slap stone skin/bark skin and other buffs on them. Then shift to an animal or elemental yourself or just rain call lightning/bombardment until everything turns to ash. you'd have to alternate between druid/bard to avoid the xp penalty but that's about all. The rogue is completely pointless but halflings have rogue as favored class so at least it doesn't impose multiclass xp penalties.

 

[waywardOne]

#2, because typically any "manual" or otherwise official reference material is misleading, such as making a certain skill path sound far more effective than it actually is, or neglecting to tell you that choosing a certain throwaway skill early on will block off an entire branch of skills later on. If that situation were rare, I'd be fine with guessing and figuring it out on my own.

 

[Carrion]

I just pick whatever sounds interesting and try to make it work. I usually do a bit of planning on what skills I'll pick later in the game, but if I find out that it's not going to work, I have no problem changing my plans on the fly. Playing a sub-optimal character is usually more fun anyway. I don't see the point in copying someone else's build because you might as well ask someone else to play the game for you.

 

[felipepepe]

I play blind, unless I'm aiming for a specific biuld/choices, then I may check on the internet if they are actualy doable.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

I play blind, even bad surprises are better than no surprises. Maxing the shit out of everything eventually comes with later replays, if ever.

 

[Hobo Elf]

There's no yes and no in this for me, really. It all depends on the game. If the game is so anal that it doesn't want me to try out the skills or at least see them first before fully committing to it then I probably will at least check out all the useless skills on the internet. I've been burned too many times by incompetent skill balance and design. Otherwise I don't mind sitting down and coming up with my own builds and ideas, as long as I can do it in-game instead of transfering data into an Excel spreadsheet and doing banal number crunching there.

 

[Commissar Draco]

A in first play trough as any spoiler diminish both the fun from exploration and satisfaction from achievement... besides in new games you got so much XP you can't seriusly gimp yourself even if you will take a few suboptimal choices.

 

[CrustyBot]

Generally speaking, blind. I sometimes do a little browsing to check out what certain skills and mechanics actually do from a practical standpoint. But using someone else's builds instead of trying to hone in on your own character concept, especially during your first playthrough, sounds incredibly counterproductive.

 

[Captain Shrek]

A good game prevents Frustration (contrast to challenge). Blind mechanics is good as long as it provides planning challenge instead of broken builds.