Trigger the codex with a statement.

[Lemming42]

Morrowind was truly unforgiveable because of the way increasing attributes worked on level up. The thing where your advancement in each attribute is determined by skill use was fucking abominable, especially since you continue to level up without getting additional bonuses if you don't go to sleep. Duck-walking in someone's bedroom for two hours to reach 100 Sneak was dumb enough (especially in MW where plenty of NPCs can't even move to detect you), but the even worse part is that it propels you to like level 20 if you tagged Sneak as a major skill and your grand reward is a one-time dose of +5 to agility on your next level up, and the other 90+ levels of Sneak you gained are ignored for bonus purposes, because the bonus was only factored in for the next level up.

So you have to arbitrarily stop what you're doing and go sleep as soon as the level up message shows up, lest you end up with a level-up backlog that causes you to be spammed with unwanted, bonus-less level ups the next nineteen times you try to sleep, which offer you precisely jack shit beyond a crap +1 investment in any attribute, but also make the game slightly harder because of level scaling. Literally punishing the player for efficient and speedy skill training. Unbelievable. So you're encouraged to do really specific skill training to get the full +5 bonuses on level up, which means doing tons of inane gamey shit like spamming 1 mana custom spells for magic skills and auto-walking in water for Athletics. The Arena/Daggerfall way where you get a random number from 1 - 6 to spend on attributes was also completely terrible but somehow less offensive than whatever the hell they were playing at there.

I forget if it was the same in Oblivion, probably was, but regardless it's the worst thing ever devised.

 

[ds]

Bunnyhop around the place like a retard to get Athletics up.

you also had to do some weird shit to level up in that game too. Like, [...] jump everywhere.

Wait, you don't do that anyways? Bunnyhopping is mandatory in first person games!

Still not as bad as Oblivion though, because the level scaling wasn't stupid so you don't get murdered by sudden level 30 goblin because you did squats to get nice thighs leveled up athletics by accident.

Git gud. Being able to fuck yourself over is the only good thing about Oblivion's leveling system. Of course the level scaling is still retarded.

your advancement in each attribute is determined by skill use

Only if you are poor.

 

[Lord of Riva]

Morrowind was truly unforgiveable because of the way increasing attributes worked on level up. The thing where your advancement in each attribute is determined by skill use was fucking abominable, especially since you continue to level up without getting additional bonuses if you don't go to sleep. Duck-walking in someone's bedroom for two hours to reach 100 Sneak was dumb enough (especially in MW where plenty of NPCs can't even move to detect you), but the even worse part is that it propels you to like level 20 if you tagged Sneak as a major skill and your grand reward is a one-time dose of +5 to agility on your next level up, and the other 90+ levels of Sneak you gained are ignored for bonus purposes, because the bonus was only factored in for the next level up.

So you have to arbitrarily stop what you're doing and go sleep as soon as the level up message shows up, lest you end up with a level-up backlog that causes you to be spammed with unwanted, bonus-less level ups the next nineteen times you try to sleep, which offer you precisely jack shit beyond a crap +1 investment in any attribute, but also make the game slightly harder because of level scaling. Literally punishing the player for efficient and speedy skill training. Unbelievable. So you're encouraged to do really specific skill training to get the full +5 bonuses on level up, which means doing tons of inane gamey shit like spamming 1 mana custom spells for magic skills and auto-walking in water for Athletics. The Arena/Daggerfall way where you get a random number from 1 - 6 to spend on attributes was also completely terrible but somehow less offensive than whatever the hell they were playing at there.

I forget if it was the same in Oblivion, probably was, but regardless it's the worst thing ever devised.

Even if there wasn't much to like about it, I liked the levelling system in Tyranny.

 

[Butter]

Morrowind was truly unforgiveable because of the way increasing attributes worked on level up. The thing where your advancement in each attribute is determined by skill use was fucking abominable, especially since you continue to level up without getting additional bonuses if you don't go to sleep. Duck-walking in someone's bedroom for two hours to reach 100 Sneak was dumb enough (especially in MW where plenty of NPCs can't even move to detect you), but the even worse part is that it propels you to like level 20 if you tagged Sneak as a major skill and your grand reward is a one-time dose of +5 to agility on your next level up, and the other 90+ levels of Sneak you gained are ignored for bonus purposes, because the bonus was only factored in for the next level up.

So you have to arbitrarily stop what you're doing and go sleep as soon as the level up message shows up, lest you end up with a level-up backlog that causes you to be spammed with unwanted, bonus-less level ups the next nineteen times you try to sleep, which offer you precisely jack shit beyond a crap +1 investment in any attribute, but also make the game slightly harder because of level scaling. Literally punishing the player for efficient and speedy skill training. Unbelievable. So you're encouraged to do really specific skill training to get the full +5 bonuses on level up, which means doing tons of inane gamey shit like spamming 1 mana custom spells for magic skills and auto-walking in water for Athletics. The Arena/Daggerfall way where you get a random number from 1 - 6 to spend on attributes was also completely terrible but somehow less offensive than whatever the hell they were playing at there.

I forget if it was the same in Oblivion, probably was, but regardless it's the worst thing ever devised.

Oblivion pleb detected. In Morrowind if you want to raise a skill fast you use training. Anyway, it's based that the game punishes you for this degenerate behavior.

 

[Lemming42]

Training is a dumb as hell and badly implemented system to start with (especially in a game where money is not a concern after the first hour) but even then it's only worth it for non-magic combat skills. With shit like Speechcraft or any magic skill, spamming the same action for like a minute reigns supreme.

 

[IDtenT]

That's why you should never choose skills you can't control the use of *cough*Athletics*cough* as a major skill. It fucks up the min-max of leveling.

 

[Tweed]

Only skills and attributes should increase, and of course only by using them, not by the equally lazy "XP" mechanic.

Right. Swinging at the enemy and seeing skill numbers go up. Sneaking around town like a paedo to get Sneak up to useful levels. Bunnyhop around the place like a retard to get Athletics up. Stand in the corner and cast spells over and over to get the corresponding skill up.

Riveting gameplay. If you're an Oblivion-era Bethestard.

Ultima 8 did it first.

 

[UndeadHalfOrc]

I love a good debate about level ups vs skill improvements by use.

I have played a few of those , but what the "skill improvements by use" have failed to properly implement, IMHO,
is max health(hit points).

In Betrayal at Krondor, your HP and stamina improve by game time (every few weeks). So you can get tougher by simpling buying tons of food and spending time sleeping.

In the original Final Fantasy II (and the Playstation 1 remake, dubbed "Final Fantasy Origins"), you gain HP by ending the battle with significantly less HP than what you started with. This comes with many problems: it's either too easy to abuse (by beating up your own characters) or too hard (if you play organically, your high evasion or back row characters never get hit, so rarely improve)

There's also the problem of Clerics/healing. The better you play, the less you need your healing spells, the less opportunity for your cleric to grow as a result. Sure , there are buffing spells, and turn undead spells, but that doesn't compare to an offensive mage who racks up kill after kill, allowing his skills to grow at exactly the same pace as your fighters. In the FF2 game mentioned above, the Esuna spell is impossible to level up unless you grind it.

Speaking of spells, I hate having to get skills for each spell. I much prefer having them divided up by schools, that way you're not forced to use weak spells over and over.

I think Might and Magic 6&7's system is a good compromise. You gain EXP, train to gain a level up, gain skills points on level ups, spend them as you wish.... but you have to FIND and pay a trainer to get to the next "mastery" level (basic,expert, master, grand master)
So it feels like you really invested some effort in raising your "water magic" skill to mastery even if you mage hardly ever cast any spells from that school until then. This is kinda similar to how Ultima Underworld II did it (except in the latter, it's in the presence of the trainer that you "spend" your skill points)

 

[laclongquan]

Only skills and attributes should increase, and of course only by using them, not by the equally lazy "XP" mechanic.

Right. Swinging at the enemy and seeing skill numbers go up. Sneaking around town like a paedo to get Sneak up to useful levels. Bunnyhop around the place like a retard to get Athletics up. Stand in the corner and cast spells over and over to get the corresponding skill up.

Riveting gameplay. If you're an Oblivion-era Bethestard.

Ultima 8 did it first.

Jagged Alliance 2. The rate is slow but you can do some trick to watch it fly high fast (in real time term).
Loaded down your merc like 400%. In the map command them to run to another cell but not let time past. cancel and having them move to another cell in opposite direction. This would make them run again. cancel and repeat the procedure. Use canteen once their stamina gone down.

 

[Max Damage]

Morrowind/Oblivion tying attribute progression to awkward skill level up/3 point buy from said skills led to weird cases where you'd power level Endurance via training Spears and Medium/Heavy Armor in towns, even if you never planned to use any spears or medium/heavy armor afterwards. Manually leveling up magic also took forever and was repetitive as shit.

 

[behold_a_man]

I forget if it was the same in Oblivion, probably was, but regardless it's the worst thing ever devised.

Worse than Detroit?

 

[Cancer]

D&D is still holding Western RPGs back. Games should explore new ideas and locations, not endlessly rehash what was a poorly conceived setting to begin with. The sooner we get rid of D&Ds limp class system and childish alignment system, the better.

"Leveling" is a lazy game mechanic that is primarily designed to trigger dopamine. Levels shouldn't exist. Only skills and attributes should increase, and of course only by using them, not by the equally lazy "XP" mechanic.

Yet we live in a world where D&D is probably one of the more sophisticated CRPG systems that you see still being made...

At least you know what you're gonna get with D&D and the various spinoffs.

It's funny, when people look back with rose tinted glasses at the golden era of RPGs and so many of them are D&D based (NWN, MOTB, IWD, BG, PS:T, ToEE).

On the other end of the spectrum, we have the diarrhea of modern MMORPGs, and shit like Larian Studios, Dragon Age, Skyrim, etc. My simple fear is that if you ripped the bandaid off on D&D, you'd get something that would be similar to modern button mash ARPGs in its place. At least with D&D, some studios and tabletop designers still have the annoyance of the wrong things that D&D does as the impetus to make minor improvements, or better yet, design their own systems.

Only skills and attributes should increase, and of course only by using them, not by the equally lazy "XP" mechanic.

Oh, yes, if only we had such a wonderful....

Oh yes, there are many good D&D games, but hasn't the system reached the limit of what can be done with it? You're not gonna get the vaunted incline with archaic stuff like "chaotic neutral" paladins and clerics. I'd rather see new worlds and gameplay visions than playing it safe with established tropes. Science fiction RPGs are greatly outpacing fantasy in this regard (it's perhaps in SF's nature), though I like fantasy more.

Oblivion yeah, but include Daggerfall and Morrowind as well if you're making that argument. Daggerfall was a great leap in innovation, regardless of how much Bethesda has regressed in the last 20 years. Elder Scrolls has the same worldbuilding problem as D&D, though - too many chefs, not one unifying and coherent vision. When there is more than one person writing, you always end up with fucking elves, orcs and dragons.

Unmodded Oblivion is pretty weak, but surely not because you level up your alchemy skill by, you know, doing alchemy? The problem with XP is that it's lazy. Get XP for killing stuff, and maybe "doing quests", and then level up random ass skills that may or may not had anything to do with getting that XP in the first place. Ridiculous. Why are we still doing 1970s stuff on computers? This is why I declare Holy War in the name of immersion faggotry call for innovation. Any skill that is warranted to be in the game is surely to be used, and if you don't use the skill enough to raise it by using it, it's not well conceived. There's not enough stuff to do with it, and it's perhaps only used for "skill checks" (in other words, much less frequently used than combat skills). And so the cycle of laziness continues.

 

[Cancer]

D&D is still holding Western RPGs back. Games should explore new ideas and locations, not endlessly rehash what was a poorly conceived setting to begin with. The sooner we get rid of D&Ds limp class system and childish alignment system, the better.

"Leveling" is a lazy game mechanic that is primarily designed to trigger dopamine. Levels shouldn't exist. Only skills and attributes should increase

Only skills and attributes should increase, and of course only by using them, not by the equally lazy "XP" mechanic.

Yeah, I should have made two posts. Half bag?

 

[Cancer]

The TES system still uses XP. Each skill tracks its own XP and then levels up when it crosses a threshold. The game just doesn't tell you how much XP you're earning whenever you perform an action (can you imagine how obnoxious that would be, especially for Athletics?).

True, but I was talking about the generic XP points that are shared across any and all skills.

 

[HappyDaddyWow!]

When people talk about leveling in Morrowind, they're forgetting that half the spells in the game completely break combat, and enchanted gear is common enough that even if you're playing a pure warrior or thief you'll eventually find some piece of gear with an op effect. I remember in my first playthrough when I was younger figuring out that there's technically no limit to how many creatures you can summon if you're using enchanted equipment, so I'd crap out like 8 different monsters in combat encounters and made the entire game trivial. The point I'm trying to make here is just that efficient leveling and min maxing is a total waste of time and not at all necessary.

Oblivion on the other hand probably has one of the most broken and poorly thought out leveling systems of any AAA RPG ever made and it totally ruins the game.

 

[Cancer]

Only skills and attributes should increase, and of course only by using them, not by the equally lazy "XP" mechanic.

Right. Swinging at the enemy and seeing skill numbers go up. Sneaking around town like a paedo to get Sneak up to useful levels. Bunnyhop around the place like a retard to get Athletics up. Stand in the corner and cast spells over and over to get the corresponding skill up.

Riveting gameplay. If you're an Oblivion-era Bethestard.

I'm surprised you ever made it out of the Daggerfall starting dungeon. Should've taken the ebony dagger.

Anyway, this is low-level thinking dominated by our old stagnant friend D&D. Of course the Oblivion system is hopeless. A huge problem is how skills and attributes are connected. Specifically, the attribute modifiers, which favour inorganic gameplay where you level up everything but your major skills. Another problem is that there is no urgency, no time constraints, anywhere in the game, so you are even more encouraged to do nonsense stuff that has nothing to do with your character. I don't see how XP grinding random encounters is any more fun, or relates to "playing a role".

But these are problems to be solved, and the correct solution is to make the core systems better by trial and error (even better, by trial and success). The solution is not to revert back to dice and squared paper as soon as someone makes a mess like Oblivion. Do you want to play the same elf yahtzee games over and over till the end of time?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

So..... ya'll weren't entertained at all playing any of these games and tortured yourselves experiencing them. LOL. Ok.

 

[grimer]

games without skills should not be considered rpgs

 

[raeven]

Outer worlds was a fucking great game

 

[Quillon]

Outer worlds was a fucking great game

 

[Cancer]

D&D is still holding Western RPGs back. Games should explore new ideas and locations, not endlessly rehash what was a poorly conceived setting to begin with. The sooner we get rid of D&Ds limp class system and childish alignment system, the better.

"Leveling" is a lazy game mechanic that is primarily designed to trigger dopamine. Levels shouldn't exist. Only skills and attributes should increase, and of course only by using them, not by the equally lazy "XP" mechanic.

D&D is still holding Western RPGs back. Games should explore new ideas and locations, not endlessly rehash what was a poorly conceived setting to begin with. The sooner we get rid of D&Ds limp class system and childish alignment system, the better.

"Leveling" is a lazy game mechanic that is primarily designed to trigger dopamine. Levels shouldn't exist. Only skills and attributes should increase, and of course only by using them, not by the equally lazy "XP" mechanic.

Happy that new blood keeps carrying the torch

Ban all newfags.
And before you start, I'm well aware. I'm perfectly happy to burn so long as they burn alongside me.

Enchanté.

Immersion > Dice

*drops mic*

 

[Chippy]

The Steller Blade model should have used a British woman or one recommended by Sweet Baby Inc. I mean just look at these buxom, voluptuous, and totally unrealistically curvy body proportions on this RL woman:



Giving hetro men of the world the impression that there are beautiful women out there.

 

[samuraigaiden]

I'm developing a hentai zombie looter shooter RPG. It's going to be called Zombie Tits.

 

[Spukrian]

An computer roleplaying cRPG game is a game in which the player is

FTFY

 

[Axioms]

D&D is still holding Western RPGs back. Games should explore new ideas and locations, not endlessly rehash what was a poorly conceived setting to begin with. The sooner we get rid of D&Ds limp class system and childish alignment system, the better.

"Leveling" is a lazy game mechanic that is primarily designed to trigger dopamine. Levels shouldn't exist. Only skills and attributes should increase, and of course only by using them, not by the equally lazy "XP" mechanic.

D&D is still holding Western RPGs back. Games should explore new ideas and locations, not endlessly rehash what was a poorly conceived setting to begin with. The sooner we get rid of D&Ds limp class system and childish alignment system, the better.

"Leveling" is a lazy game mechanic that is primarily designed to trigger dopamine. Levels shouldn't exist. Only skills and attributes should increase, and of course only by using them, not by the equally lazy "XP" mechanic.

Happy that new blood keeps carrying the torch

Ban all newfags.
And before you start, I'm well aware. I'm perfectly happy to burn so long as they burn alongside me.

Enchanté.

Immersion > Dice

*drops mic*

I've been a long time DnD hater. Let DnD stay on the tabletop where it belongs. Why should PC RPGs be held back by the limitations of dummies larping with their loser friends? Thank god for ARPGs at least. Baldur's Gate 3 and the series in general are a sin and a stain and a strangulating influence on PC RPGs.