Review Vampire: The Masquerade retrospective article at Hardcore Gaming 101

[Chaotic_Heretic]

I would rather have easy fast shitty real time combat than slow shitty real time combat.

 

[Excidium]

what

 

[Excidium]

Probably in a PnP session, but this is a video game adaptation. If betraying the setting makes the game better, then I say go for it. What counts is the end result.

It doesn't really make the game better, it's just forcing a different type of setting through the same old CRPG approach.

I don't know what CRPG devs have against personal, low-key storylines. Sure, marketing demands and all that, but it can't all be blamed on publishers, just look at kickstarter games.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I would rather have easy fast shitty real time combat than slow shitty real time combat.

How about neither? I'd also like my dog turds steaming hot instead of dry and chewy, but unless I'm really desperate I'll just have real food instead.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Clockwork Knight
most of my favourite rpgs have dog turd combat. Arcanum being the most appropriate example. In such a case rather than having to slog through battles trying to be tacticool and taking a few minutes of my time, I would rather just cheese through with stun+backstab+time ap spells.

In other words,

If I have to traverse through dog turd (shitty combat) to get some real food (solid non combat gameplay like world building for example), I would rather run through it quickly in seconds rather than swim and wallow in it for hours.

Although I wouldn't say no to something like Dark Souls. More cources of real food to enjoy.

 

[crawlkill]

I started playing Bloodlines recently, but the end of the first chapter really turned me off: being unavoidably captured, then rescued at the last moment by the DM Storyteller's Favorite NPC Who Is More Awesome Than You. It's like they read all the advice on how to be a good DM/GM/Storyteller/whatever, then laughed and decided to deliberately do the opposite.

it's a pretty weak beat, yeah. and an unskippable cutscene! I tend to get up to take a piss when I hit that point. Nines in general is irritating, and he tends to be involved in the most "what the fuck I would not have done X why didn't I just say Y" railroady moments. but the game as a whole, if you can put up with the turrible combat and the ever-weaker level design, is worth seeing through.

 

[SCO]

Bloodlines XP with its skill book system and free upgrades can be gamed to a ridiculous amount even more with the 'university' which caramilla edition adds (exchanges money for skills, which makes money not fucking useless).
So not getting enough combat skills for the sewers is dumb. You can be a god with almost all filled stuff and a full discipline or two.
The disadvantage is actually not investing until you get to the limit of the free upgrade threshold or get the opportunity for the upgrade, which is painful during early game and is degenerate metagame gameplay.

I love degeneracy

 

[crawlkill]

Bloodlines XP with its skill book system and free upgrades can be gamed to a ridiculous amount even more with the 'university' which caramilla edition adds (exchanges money for skills, which makes money not fucking useless).
So not getting enough combat skills for the sewers is dumb. You can be a god with almost all filled stuff and a full discipline or two.
The disadvantage is actually not investing until you get to the limit of the free upgrade threshold or get the opportunity for the upgrade, which is painful during early game and is degenerate metagame gameplay.

I love degeneracy

that's the way I play, but only because the game's become ritual to me. in a sensible world a book or quest skill boost reward you've already bought the skill for would just give you the xp that that skill would've cost you. obliterates metagaming and makes books and the already-appealing academics skill more attractive in one swoop.