RPG Mechanics Made Pointless By Game Features

[mondblut]

Short-range weapons for squishy classes in blobbers. Like anybody would ever put the naked 3hp mage in front of the party for the sake of using wizard's ritual dagger +1. If a non-fighter weapon is not a medium range polearm, it could just as well not exist.

Expensive and costly save or die spells that never truly work on high value targets which are the sole targets that justify their memorization slots/mana cost.

 

[Rat King]

Short-range weapons for squishy classes in blobbers. Like anybody would ever put the naked 3hp mage in front of the party for the sake of using wizard's ritual dagger +1. If a non-fighter weapon is not a medium range polearm, it could just as well not exist.

Expensive and costly save or die spells that never truly work on high value targets which are the sole targets that justify their memorization slots/mana cost.

Yeah fuck Baldur's Gate for giving us a badass flaming sword dagger thing that is only allowed to be used by a bloody 7 CON mage.

 

[DraQ]

Short-range weapons for squishy classes in blobbers. Like anybody would ever put the naked 3hp mage in front of the party for the sake of using wizard's ritual dagger +1. If a non-fighter weapon is not a medium range polearm, it could just as well not exist.

That's what staves (and slingshots/any other ranged weapons wizards can use - I really think light crossbow makes sense as backup for a caster) are for.
Daggers should be only be used as PDW by squishies (if they suddenly get flanked or attacked from the rear, they might be able to poke back), and the best ones for this purpose should maximize their usefulness in just those circumstances (or be useful for other things, like rituals).

Expensive and costly save or die spells that never truly work on high value targets which are the sole targets that justify their memorization slots/mana cost.

That's why multi-turn casting times should be a thing.

Yeah fuck Baldur's Gate for giving us a badass flaming sword dagger thing that is only allowed to be used by a bloody 7 CON mage.

Flaming sword for a flaming faggot*.

*

Elf.

 

[DalekFlay]

Traps is useless, you can't disarm traps but there are some traps like the spider pits in level 7.

Aren't traps usually useless because other rogue skills do just as much (or more) damage without the tricky setup and placement? Only game I remember finding traps useful was Dragon Age's paralysis glyphs and whatnot, and I'm not even sure those are "traps."

 

[jackofshadows]

It fits the theme of this thread (somewhat), so I mentioned it. That's all. It's not that big of a deal ultimately.

I see. To play or rather to enjoy PoE with iron man on one have to belong to a very specific minority (where some of them I suspect are just achievement-wankers) but still these players are exists so I wouldn't say it's completely pointless feature. Not to mention it gives different experience from the game like it suppose to. I'm not sure that adding some special retreat mechanic like in D:OS would be necessary though. Heal up and walk away is a possible option most of the times, besides, playing on IM involves taking at least some risks.

 

[mondblut]

Daggers should be only be used as PDW by squishies (if they suddenly get flanked or attacked from the rear, they might be able to poke back)

You don't get flanked in blobbers. Well, in turn-based (i.e. non-retarded) ones. A dagger is something you literally cannot use unless you are put in the front row.

Expensive and costly save or die spells that never truly work on high value targets which are the sole targets that justify their memorization slots/mana cost.

That's why multi-turn casting times should be a thing.

To make opportunity cost of already expensive spells that never work when you need them even higher? Ingenious

 

[JarlFrank]

Expensive and costly save or die spells that never truly work on high value targets which are the sole targets that justify their memorization slots/mana cost.

That's why multi-turn casting times should be a thing.

To make opportunity cost of already expensive spells that never work when you need them even higher? Ingenious

I guess the idea is giving them multi-turn cast time that is interruptible, but make them work more reliably than just giving boss enemies a blanket immunity on all spells of that type.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Save or die spells work best as silver bullets for particular types of enemies. I've seen them implemented well in a few games, like Labyrinth of Touhou. So you still can't just petrify every boss you encounter, but maybe it'll work on one of them and it's good for certain dangerous/taxing enemies. The problem is they tend to show up in games where everything except bosses die to a normal fire spell anyways. They only make sense when normal enemies are a threat too.

 

[Alrik]

Save or die spells work best as silver bullets for particular types of enemies. I've seen them implemented well in a few games, like Labyrinth of Touhou. So you still can't just petrify every boss you encounter, but maybe it'll work on one of them and it's good for certain dangerous/taxing enemies. The problem is they tend to show up in games where everything except bosses die to a normal fire spell anyways. They only make sense when normal enemies are a threat too.

BGII was comparatively decent in this regard IIRC, I distinctly remember disintegrating Spellhold Irenicus in my first playthrough. It just ended the encounter normally with me getting XP for the kill (which you don't get if you whittle down his health).

 

[DraQ]

Expensive and costly save or die spells that never truly work on high value targets which are the sole targets that justify their memorization slots/mana cost.

That's why multi-turn casting times should be a thing.

To make opportunity cost of already expensive spells that never work when you need them even higher? Ingenious

I guess the idea is giving them multi-turn cast time that is interruptible, but make them work more reliably than just giving boss enemies a blanket immunity on all spells of that type.

And not give them reload-until-successful saves.

 

[Carrion]

With save-or-die spells your game should ideally also have a decent selection of protection spells, something that you need to deal with before you go for the kill. Powerful spells have to feel powerful but not become automatic win buttons. I like facing squishy mages who simply happen to be untouchable at the start of a fight because they're using mirror images, protections from specific schools of magic, immunities to certain elements, buffs that improve saving throws, and so on.

 

[laclongquan]

OP being a damn weasel. I suspect he intentionally changed the "PnP RPG mechanics" into the actual "RPG mechanics" .

Unique items being less powerful than random or crafted ones.
Or the opposite: crafting useless because better items can easily be found or purchased.

On this note: Path of Exile's (and plenty of similar games I'm sure) crafting AND equipment drops are utterly ruined by it's online economy. The exact same materials are used for crafting whether you're level 5 or level 95. However, the ratio of crafting materials to under level unique items changes completely as you gain levels. So crafting anything is a retarded waste of materials for 99.9% of the player base, they should just trade their materials to some piss-bottling uber farmer for all the garbage (read:anything less than perfect rolls on the best items in the game) items he doesn't need any more. And you shouldn't even bother picking up any of the uniques you find -let alone rares or magic or normals- someone else already found hundreds of them so they're worth nothing.

Nothing new since the days of Morrowind. Where crafting just drive the game to chaos.

You let an aspect of game fall under gamers' control and they ruin the careful balanced state of economy.

Set a "bind on creator" and it would be controlled somewhat. People can only make what they use, not making others profit from their creation.

 

[DraQ]

You don't get flanked in blobbers. Well, in turn-based (i.e. non-retarded) ones. A dagger is something you literally cannot use unless you are put in the front row.

To make opportunity cost of already expensive spells that never work when you need them even higher? Ingenious

Casting time instead of unreliable & crapshot (because of saving throws and selective boss immunity bullshit) spells.

 

[gurugeorge]

So what we're saying is that most CRPGs are shit

 

[mondblut]

So what we're saying is that most CRPGs are shit

Most of everything is shit, and CRPGs are no exception.

 

[mondblut]

Nothing new since the days of Morrowind. Where crafting just drive the game to chaos.

You let an aspect of game fall under gamers' control and they ruin the careful balanced state of economy.

Ruining the careful balanced states is the whole point of gaming

Set a "bind on creator" and it would be controlled somewhat. People can only make what they use, not making others profit from their creation.

Commie scum.

 

[JarlFrank]

Balance ruins fun.

 

[laclongquan]

Nothing new since the days of Morrowind. Where crafting just drive the game to chaos.

You let an aspect of game fall under gamers' control and they ruin the careful balanced state of economy.

Ruining the careful balanced states is the whole point of gaming

I agree. Hard to find a game where we powergamer cant break it.

Set a "bind on creator" and it would be controlled somewhat. People can only make what they use, not making others profit from their creation.

Commie scum.

There you have it~ That commie policy would drive so many capitalism's young stars in game to drink. TO DRINK~

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Any RPG with turn-based combat and a multi-character party but that only gives the player control over a single character. AI is always frustrating in comparison with the player's own choices, and this reduces the complexity of what might otherwise be good combat systems.

Similarly, any RPG with turn-based combat and a single player-character (rather than a full party) would be better served by having multiple PCs, except in the rare instances where the combat systems are actually designed for just one character.

Counterpoint:
Unless the game has very good AI/high difficulty, full party control typically makes the combat trivial.

Then again, if it had good AI they'd perform better anyways. Maybe it's not the lack of FPC that people hate, but the shitty AI in general.

 

[NJClaw]

Traps that damage you outside of combat when you have ways to infinitely replenish your health without spending resources. What's the point? This gets even worse when your health/shield replenishes automatically.

 

[Tacgnol]

Food/hunger requirements with a very low level/low cost create food spell.

 

[NJClaw]

If player opens a chest and only at that moment contents are determined using RNG, then of course player will keep reloading until something cool falls out of it.
If a result of a skill usage or stat check is non-deterministic and readily apparent, then of course player will keep reloading (doubly so if it's something like pickpocket check and the entire town goes nuclear on the PC/party on failure - I'm looking at you, Wizardry 8).

I played Pathfinder Kingmaker recently and in the end-game it has a ton of pretty high level skill checks in dialog that are RNG based, so even with great scores you fail half the time. I don't like being a save-scummer so I resisted the tempation to reload them all, but you easily could. You could also save before trying to open any locked chest (I got screwed out of finishing a quest for a unicorn horn by not being able to open the two chests in the game that had one). At least in these cases though the player can choose to be a prestigious man of honor and not reload if he cares about it, while in Outer Worlds you can't stop yourself from getting 300 lockpicks.

I know this is not the point of this thread, but you can obtain an horn during a random encounter with unicorns while traveling the world map (actually, that's the way you are supposed to get it, since that encounter triggers only after getting the quest from the artisan).

 

[agentorange]

Nah, people are addicted to their F5/F9.

The worst thing is how most games are just designed around it. I often forget to quicksave if I'm invested enough into the game, so playing stuff where you can just randomly die in absolutely any moment (STALKER: SOC, I'm looking at you) can be frustrating

Unmodded SOC is pretty easy even on master. About the only time it gets instadeathy is if you're fighting enemies with high end AP ammo whilst lightly armoured, and those really only appear around end game.

Shadow of Chernobyl is far harder than CS or especially CoP due to the damage system. In SoC enemies can tank many shots to their chest, even occasionally shrugging off headshots. They changed it in CS and CoP to where headshot insta-kill and enemies can take very few hits to chest as well.

Also the worse AI in SoC makes the game harder as you end up with situations like enemies stuck behind a door that will blast your head off immediately on entering a room. Granted you can be hyper vigilant and try to cautiously sneak everywhere while covering every angle, but SoC also has by far the most indoor locations which is far harder to deal with than outdoor areas where you can drop enemies from afar (which again is a reason CoP is easy, since its mostly outdoor areas).

And yeah the already mentioned NPP section where you are quick saving after every kill. Or even areas leading up to it like sections of Pripyat city or Dark Forest/Brain Scorcher building where lots of enemies have rockets or snipers. CS was also a quick save/reload spam-fest as soon as you entered Limansk, especially on release when enemies could snipe you with grenades from across the map.

 

[CryptRat]

Maybe it's not the lack of FPC that people hate

It is, a party of 6 where you control only 1 is basically automatic combat which sucks regardless of the AI's ability.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG