Azarkon
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2005
- Messages
- 2,989
I don't get what you're trying to argue, I agree with you completely. My point was precise, about permanent inherit immunity to lower weapon enchantment levels - that's not rock paper scissors, it's binary pass or fail, and that I can understand why Obsidian decided against it. They went for weapon type immunites, but didn't insist upon them like BG2's golems, so they feel irrelevant.
Weapon type immunities are soft counters - since you can still use a weapon you're not proficient in - and punish specialization. Enchantment level immunities are hard counters, and punish lack of resources. We were talking about the relative satisfaction of treasure hunting, and finding an enchanted weapon in Dungeons and Dragons is supposed to feel rewarding, and it does, because +1 is significant. Finding a +5 accuracy weapon in Pillars of Eternity is not nearly as rewarding, because +5 accuracy is much less significant. So in this respect we're not talking about the same issue, since weapon type immunities can never be a proper substitute for enchantment level immunities.
The Starcraft comparison isn't very good though, because it predominantly hinges on soft counters that vary dramatically with the player skill involved, ie. vulture kiting micro vs zealots, dragoon/zealot demining, splitting air units vs irradiate, cloning BC Yamato vs Carriers, etc. You as a player have much more agency, because you can scout and even the success of early cheeses hinges upon minor execution from both sides
The example you mentioned, having no anti-air vs e.g. zerg muta switch, is almost impossible.
You could have a few dragoons or proton cannons or turrets up, but you'd lose instantly to a mutalisk switch that you did not scout. Even in the event that you are, in fact, a much better player, you still have to respond to the hard counter through building the proper answer. You can't just ignore it. The fact that the "safe" strategies developed in Starcraft ended up working in all sorts of preemptive protection mechanisms against hard counters is a consequence of their threat level, not the other way around. Your standard build timings, scout timings, etc. are motivated by a long list of possible counter strategies, and it took many years of professional gaming & analysis to figure out, down to the second, what you had to do to be safe. So yes, Starcraft eventually became a competition over mechanical skill, but this fact ignores just how long it took to get there, which is a function of the game's depth. Had it been possible to meet every challenge in Starcraft with just mechanical skill alone, the game would've been strategically stagnant much sooner.
To bring this back to CRPGs: in a game in which any character build and any party composition can meet any challenge in the game, there would be no need for thought or strategy in that area. You'd just pick whatever you want and it'd all work. Such a game has lower strategic depth. It has more strategic versatility, but this versatility is superficial - when all choices lead to the same result, no choice matters. I don't think Sawyer quite appreciated this aspect of game design as much as he should have, when he first came up with his philosophy. Yes, you want to give players choices. But those choices have to matter and not just in the sense of fluff. It's also not bad design for there to be better choices and worse choices, as long as it takes time & effort to figure all that out. After all, games are supposed to be a problem solving activity, so why is it so wrong for there to be better and worse answers?
Last edited: