Jagged Alliance The RPG genre is weak. Very weak. Probably the weakest traditional genre in gaming

[The_Mask]

Okay, what I am understanding so far from this is:

1. luj, Corvinus and Jason Liang are 3 edgy idiots.
2. all combatfags must die
3. JA is an RPG, but it also isn't, maybe because of its files. or not.
4. mondblut finally made sense to me. I may be transforming into a boomer

and, most importantly

5. Lilura has small tits and is very upset she's single, so she makes shitty threads on the Codex, because she's bored and we're all taking the bait.

 

[Ol' Willy]

A proper strategy is a symmetrical zero-sum game where the rivals play by the same rules and compete for resources they both require.

Early Command & Conquer games have bastardly cheating AI which was receiving resources regardless of it's performance. You can destroy its harvesters for hours, no effect whatsoever. And C&C is one of the most iconic RTS like ever.

 

[luj1]

so she makes shitty threads on the Codex

I don't usually reply to Dark Age-worshipping peasants, but let me say there aren't many insightful threads on the genre on the Codex. This is one of them. You're free to go back to reading such gems of wisdom as "Is homosexuality disgusting" or "Does the Earth revolve around the Sun" though.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Though this 2da definition of RPG is slick, elegant and hard to counter, I would like to go back to my definition of a RPG and put it to the test with the JA2 and similar games like Fallout Tactics or Silent Storm series.

1) Player character as indirect medium between the player and gameworld.

Here the main difference between classical and tactical RPGs lies. Classical RPGs revolve around single player character: that is, you can have a party or allies, but the "main unit" of the game, the main protagonist is the player character. Tactical RPGs have squad as the "main unit" with each member being more or less equally important, soloing notwithstanding.

2) Outcome depends more on character skills and less on player' skill. Player chooses, character does.

Absolutely true. Player makes decisions, characters make them happen. Skills are indispensable as ever.

3) There should be a lot of such interactions, obviously.

Once again, absolutely true. Aside of combat, it's lockpicking, traps, barter, exploration and similar interactions.

4) And choice, after all. Otherwise, it would be "Predetermined character playing game".

You can create your character or you can compose your squad to your liking; considering that the "main unit" of such games is squad you can see squad being a sum of its parts, analogous to a single character. Squad of three machinegunners, two grenadiers and sniper in Silent Storm is analogues to a pure combat single character in classic RPG; add medic and engineer and you get more hybrid squad - akin to leveling up medical and engineering skill for a single character. All of this effectively affects your gameplay.

A question arises: where is the difference between tactical squad-based RPGs and RTS, brother? RTS games do not have any "main unit" at all: all the units that you build/hire are just tools to achieve your goal. Player has little control over the given units: no choice of skills, stats, equipment; power progression of the game is pronounced not in the skills/equipment but in unit themselves. There no need to build an army of Trikes when you can build a horde of Devastators in Dune 2, zerg rushes notwithstanding. Usually it's several types of predefined and absolutely similar units, replaced and copied without a thought from the player. RTT games come closer to a RPG: you can control equipment, there is a skill progression and each unit has more personality and unique qualities. Take Ultimate General Civil War as a good example of such game.

There is a clearly defined border between genres (being a metalhead I know a lot about genre-faggotry, kek):

CRPG (Fallout, Arcanum, Age of Decadence) - Tactical RPG (JA2, Silent Storm) ---- the border lies here ---- RTT (UGCW, Men of War) - RTS (C&C, Warcraft, Dune)

 

[Jason Liang]

You're just shifting the goal post.

Are Dragonfall, Pool of Radiance, ToEE and Darkest Dungeon also Tactical RPGs?

 

[mondblut]

Classical RPGs revolve around single player character: that is, you can have a party or allies, but the "main unit" of the game, the main protagonist is the player character.

The fuck are you talking about?

Your heard it here first, gents: Wizardry, Might & Magic, Bard's Tale, the Goldbox series, Realms of Arkania, Dark Sun, Eye of the Beholder and every other game from before 1996 that wasn't called "Ultima" are not "classical RPGs", they are "tactical"

 

[mondblut]

A proper strategy is a symmetrical zero-sum game where the rivals play by the same rules and compete for resources they both require.

Early Command & Conquer games have bastardly cheating AI which was receiving resources regardless of it's performance. You can destroy its harvesters for hours, no effect whatsoever. And C&C is one of the most iconic RTS like ever.

Cheating AIs is nothing new, after all, players always complain about the snowballing effect that is a natural outcome when any gains made by you make you ever stronger and your opponent ever weaker. But at least these games go a long way pretending that they play fair and need to compete against you at level terms, like two soccer teams.

JA2, OTOH, is a typical quest that takes player on adventure from the Village of Godforsakia to the Dark Citadel of Evil Lord with zero strategy elements beyond the basic matching of running expenses to income. Remove the mines, and players probably won't even notice it, especially if they play with "enemies drop everything" enabled and swim in money anyway.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

I don't get why some people keep making the JA is rpg argument when no one makes that argument for X-Com or HoMM.

When I think about it, each HoMM scenario is a mini-RPG adventure. You get your hero, then you gather your party, then you're off to clear some monsters and explore the world, there are some sidequests along the way you can ignore (witches hut and hunt for the holy grail). At the end you defeat the badguy and complete the quest.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Your heard it here first, gents: Wizardry, Might & Magic, Bard's Tale, the Goldbox series, Realms of Arkania, Dark Sun, Eye of the Beholder and every other game from before 1996 that wasn't called "Ultima" are not "classical RPGs", they are "tactical"

This is just the transition from tabletop. Tabletop RPGs are usually played by the group of people, and for every player the most important character is his own. Aforementioned games just took such group and transferred the entire control of the party to the player. Imagine a co-op Dark Sun for 4 people, where each player controls only his character for the entirety of campaign. This is what I'm talking about.

Tactical RPGs, though, usually allow for quick changes to the team. Imagine a tabletop session when you send the guy home and call another guy with his own character because he fits the current game better.

 

[ItsChon]

Not only do we have people calling DE an rpg

Fuck you nigga, it is an RPG.

 

[mondblut]

Your heard it here first, gents: Wizardry, Might & Magic, Bard's Tale, the Goldbox series, Realms of Arkania, Dark Sun, Eye of the Beholder and every other game from before 1996 that wasn't called "Ultima" are not "classical RPGs", they are "tactical"

This is just the transition from tabletop. Tabletop RPGs are usually played by the group of people, and for every player the most important character is his own. Aforementioned games just took such group and transferred the entire control of the party to the player. Imagine a co-op Dark Sun for 4 people, where each player controls only his character for the entirety of campaign. This is what I'm talking about.

Tactical RPGs, though, usually allow for quick changes to the team. Imagine a tabletop session when you send the guy home and call another guy with his own character because he fits the current game better.

I see. You did rather poor job at communicating your message, but I am getting it.

It could be interesting to compare how many JA2 players constantly rotate their crew vs how many never dismiss anybody (the ice cream truck guy doesn't count) and bring the same core team from Omerta all the way to Deidranna's bedroom. I suspect that would corellate very strongly with those who treat JA2 as another squad tactics vs those who perceive it as an RPG, respectively.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The real RPG genre was born after 2010. Ultima, Wizardry, Pool of Radiance, etc. are objectively not RPGs. We consider them RPGs because we retrospectively project onto them our modern preconcepts.

Edit: ops, I missed an erlier post. Someone already said that.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Not only do we have people calling DE an rpg

Fuck you nigga, it is an RPG.

Based son of Koba.

 

[jackofshadows]

You gather a party of characters (any kind of combination of created characters and hired pregenerated characters) who have a number of attributes, skills and traits, as well as individual inventories containing all kinds of weapons, armor and utility items, and go adventuring across a vast open-ended world, where you fight turn-based battles against enemies, explore and loot places for items and money, converse to NPCs and do quests, in any order you wish, all depending on your characters' stats.

That's not entirely correct. For higher difficulties at least. You have to take order into account or you'll simply lose the game and that's what distinguish experience from usual "go adventuring around" breeze.

The last part about character stats is also ambiguous because you can focus on strategic game's element at expense of that very "stats" aspect, i.e. simply replace your characters and not say in BG1-2 fashion but take a better ones instead if you have enough resources! I wonder, how many players actually do that though. I guess, for a RPG-enthusiast it might be much more satisfying way to play as to recruit some worthless shmucks at the start and lead them to the very end, making a hell of a squad in the process. To me - nah. Once I realized that top-mercs are having very little room for improvement I focused on strategic aspect and getting a better gear (maybe I will make "RPGish" run some day).

In other words, order of adventuring dictated by strategic aspect (you better secure profitable locations first and some other important places and cannot wonder around for too long) and it's possible to ditch character's starting stats and their progression all together (doesn't sound like an RPG to me at all).

 

[Grauken]

Those are game parameters. That's not the point of 2da files.

I know the files layout of JA2 that it doesn't have or use world rule system information.

Okay, I'll play along. What kind of "world rule systems" do your precious 2da files carry that JA2 configuration tables don't?

https://nwn.fandom.com/wiki/Category:2da

For example:
https://nwn.fandom.com/wiki/Domains.2da governs which cleric domains are in the world and which domain spells clerics receive at each spell level.

There's no reason this information couldn't be stored in a ini file. I couldn't imagine why you'd think the data storage format would decide whether something is an RPG or not.

Are you even a programmer. A .ini file is a list, not a table. That's the whole point of the 2da structure - it's a TWO DIMENSIONAL ARRAY, i.e. a TABLE. Like the tables in the Player's Handbook. Jagged Alliance doesn't have tables because it doesn't use that information because it's not a role playing game. It's the difference between telling a ghost story and playing a pnp rpg.

Are you ok buddy? You seem to have gone down a road that leads to insanity. All codexers post retarded and stupid stuff sometimes, you don't even have to admit it (probably good never to admit you were wrong ever) just quietly back out and let this one die down

 

[Eisen]

Not only do we have people calling DE an rpg

Fuck you nigga, it is an RPG.

You're right

 

[mondblut]

The last part about character stats is also ambiguous because you can focus on strategic game's element at expense of that very "stats" aspect, i.e. simply replace your characters and not say in BG1-2 fashion but take a better ones instead if you have enough resources! I wonder, how many players actually do that though. I guess, for a RPG-enthusiast it might be much more satisfying way to play as to recruit some worthless shmucks at the start and lead them to the very end, making a hell of a squad in the process. To me - nah. Once I realized that top-mercs are having very little room for improvement I focused on strategic aspect and getting a better gear (maybe I will make "RPGish" run some day).

I already noted in the last post on the matter that the game might appear to emphasize different things depending on whether you roll with a stable party or treat mercs as disposable and replaceable assets. I always played JA2 with 6 IMPs as the primary core of the team, so the claims that it is not an RPG sound mindblowing to me. I suppose someone who used to ditch the entire crew after each major battle could be similarly puzzled by the claims that it is.

Still, while I struggle to recall any other RPG that has an option to replace your struggling party with endgame-tier NPCs who've got nowhere to develop further, I have a nagging feeling that JA2 is not the only one.

 

[Eisen]

Okay, what I am understanding so far from this is:
Lilura has small tits.

How do you know this? btw, i need pics

 

[Sykar]

For science?

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

The last part about character stats is also ambiguous because you can focus on strategic game's element at expense of that very "stats" aspect, i.e. simply replace your characters and not say in BG1-2 fashion but take a better ones instead if you have enough resources! I wonder, how many players actually do that though. I guess, for a RPG-enthusiast it might be much more satisfying way to play as to recruit some worthless shmucks at the start and lead them to the very end, making a hell of a squad in the process. To me - nah. Once I realized that top-mercs are having very little room for improvement I focused on strategic aspect and getting a better gear (maybe I will make "RPGish" run some day).

I already noted in the last post on the matter that the game might appear to emphasize different things depending on whether you roll with a stable party or treat mercs as disposable and replaceable assets. I always played JA2 with 6 IMPs as the primary core of the team, so the claims that it is not an RPG sound mindblowing to me. I suppose someone who used to ditch the entire crew after each major battle could be similarly puzzled by the claims that it is.

Still, while I struggle to recall any other RPG that has an option to replace your struggling party with endgame-tier NPCs who've got nowhere to develop further, I have a nagging feeling that JA2 is not the only one.

You can make 6 IMPs? I remember playing it and website is not accessible after you make one. Otherwise I'd run with Lynx and 5 IMPs for half of the game.
Regarding the NPCs. In Final Fantasy Tactics (tactical RPG) you start with a squad of your main dude, and a bunch of generics. During your journey you recruit powerful NPCs to your party, but if you know what you were doing by the point you get to them only 1 or 2 are worth adding.

 

[mondblut]

You can make 6 IMPs? I remember playing it and website is not accessible after you make one. Otherwise I'd run with Lynx and 5 IMPs for half of the game.

In vanilla, you had to use the secret code "90210". In 1.13, it is always accessible (and they enabled 4th male character more recently too, so 7 in total).

Regarding the NPCs. In Final Fantasy Tactics (tactical RPG) you start with a squad of your main dude, and a bunch of generics. During your journey you recruit powerful NPCs to your party, but if you know what you were doing by the point you get to them only 1 or 2 are worth adding.

Some partially fitting examples:

Celtic Tales (might qualify as "tactical RPG" too due to combat) - there is a couple of max level characters you may eventually recruit, but it's a long way and you can max out lower-level characters with somewhat better stats in the meanwhile. The best character in the game starts at level 1, though.

Ishar 1 - haven't played it till the end, but I've heard there are some high-level NPCs you must recruit in place of your party members (an ongoing problem running through the entire series) near the end to finish the game.

Fate: Gates of Dawn - same, I think? Anyway, early in the game there is a very powerful unique NPC to recruit who is way more powerful than your usual recruits.

Grimoire - early on the NPCs are ridiculously OP next to properly generated characters.

Any other additions of "why the hell did I bother levelling my characters when these dudes were there all along?" are welcome in the thread.

 

[Grauken]

You can make 6 IMPs? I remember playing it and website is not accessible after you make one. Otherwise I'd run with Lynx and 5 IMPs for half of the game.

In vanilla, you had to use the secret code "90210". In 1.13, it is always accessible (and they enabled 4th male character more recently too, so 7 in total).

 

[NJClaw]

Are you even a programmer. A .ini file is a list, not a table. That's the whole point of the 2da structure - it's a TWO DIMENSIONAL ARRAY, i.e. a TABLE. Like the tables in the Player's Handbook. Jagged Alliance doesn't have tables because it doesn't use that information because it's not a role playing game. It's the difference between telling a ghost story and playing a pnp rpg.

What the fuck am I reading? What is this post? Is this forum even real? Is this the actual internet or am I in a coma?

What is going on, guys? Please, stop it. This is too much.

 

[Thac0]

On the whole JA2 thing with the comparison to Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem:

Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem (and der Langrisser and Tactics Ogre and so on and so on) are not actually JRPGs. They are adjacent to JRPGs, but the genre has its own name in SRPG. That stands for Strategy RPG in the west and for simulation rpg in the east. They are however generally free to discuss in any JRPG forum, since they are "part of the family" and do not have a big enough fanbase to make their own forums.

For me the situation is exactly the same with JA, its not a classical CRPG following either the Wizardry adventure party formula continued by goldbox and IE, nor is it an ultima descendant game with a lone hero gathering a troupe of allies like Fallout, Arcanum etc. JA is a T(actical)RPG,a nichegenre in a nichegenre. And as such they should be treated like "part of the family" aswell.

Now why do the weebs never argue wether SRPGs are JRPGs and just accept that ambigious state? Because they are not retarded.

 

[mondblut]

For me the situation is exactly the same with JA, its not a classical CRPG following either the Wizardry adventure party formula continued by goldbox and IE, nor is it an ultima descendant game with a lone hero gathering a troupe of allies like Fallout, Arcanum etc. JA is a T(actical)RPG,a nichegenre in a nichegenre.

We already call RPGs like Goldbox series, Dark Sun, Nahlakh and the likes "tactical". But I am fine with accepting JA2 as a same kind of game as these

(besides, that would tempt some to dump the entirety of squad tactics genre in there, and I want no mission-based garbage in muh RPGs)

Now why do the weebs never argue wether SRPGs are JRPGs and just accept that ambigious state?

Because they are too busy fapping to 8 years old lolis.