How RPG fans ruined RPGs: Telengard on the Fiery BioWhore and the True Nature of the Awesome Button

[Space Insect]

I think you're spot on there, and this is probably why they're limiting companion armour as well, so that everybody and everything conforms to a filmic archetype. If I were speculating i'd say they're trying to do what good advertisers do and make that iconic outline or silhouette, you can see Indiana Jones or Batman just from the outline, instantly recognisable. Films invading and poisoning games once again?

One of the high ups got design ambitions and wanted to stamp movie ideas on games, not caring for the downsides of trying this on an interactive medium?

But where is the line we draw between choice and no choice? I don't want all my rpgs to be like Skyrim and Fallout 3 where you can master everything and effectively dual wield magic and weapons without an actual class.

 

[Neanderthal]

Should be in middle shouldn't it? You're either master of a few skills and ignorant of everything else, or a jack of all trades and master of none. Thought Arcanum got that balance about spot on, Fallout were a bit too giving.

 

[Space Insect]

Should be in middle shouldn't it? You're either master of a few skills and ignorant of everything else, or a jack of all trades and master of none. Thought Arcanum got that balance about spot on, Fallout were a bit too giving.

But when you have fewer options how are you supposed to only be a master of a few skills? would you only level up like 3 times for the entire game?

 

[NotAGolfer]

Exactly. This is the true nature of the Awesome Button. Placing player choice and empowerment above all.

The Awesome Button is the inevitable result of people wanting to make their choices whatever they want and have those choices be visibly validated by the game. More choice, more empowerment, and do keep it coming even if the underlying gameplay has no ability to adapt to your decisions.

Why Morrowind sucks in a nutshell.

 

[a Goat]

it the Commutard Sawyarean claim that people are idiots who don't really understand what they want

Including you.

What you seem to not understand that the things you're talking about are all combat related.

The non-combat interactions became less important and "awesome" than they were before. Puzzles hardly ever block you from getting any actual content(it's usually instant prize), exploration is killed by quest compasses etc.

I think I can see your reasoning but you're missing your own point. Basically some games seem like you can mow through them with normal/auto attacks and only with them, the skills are here only to kill the tedium and make you deal with enemies faster so you don't waste 100 hours on slop that should end after 30. Like they were balancing the game around "the player doesn't pick ANY SKILLS WE'VE MADE AT ALL(let alone applying tactic or whatever), but has to win the game".

As a result, the the skills you can pick are simply OP, because autoattacks are balanced way of fighting by definition of their balancing paradigms.

The Biowhore pimps aren't the terrible guys who wanted fighters not to be banalshitboring, but retarded people who listened to it on the one side and to the manager telling them to reach the wider audience on the other side.

This is also how the super-mega-spartan-marine was created.

Doomguy or BJ?

 

[DeepOcean]

TL;DR: Bioware want to appeal too MMO people that just want to look cool without effort. Why is this a new thread?

 

[Telengard]

Including you.

What you seem to not understand that the things you're talking about are all combat related.

The non-combat interactions became less important and "awesome" than they were before. Puzzles hardly ever block you from getting any actual content(it's usually instant prize), exploration is killed by quest compasses etc.

I think I can see your reasoning but you're missing your own point. Basically some games seem like you can mow through them with normal/auto attacks and only with them, the skills are here only to kill the tedium and make you deal with enemies faster so you don't waste 100 hours on slop that should end after 30. Like they were balancing the game around "the player doesn't pick ANY SKILLS WE'VE MADE AT ALL(let alone applying tactic or whatever), but has to win the game".

As a result, the the skills you can pick are simply OP, because autoattacks are balanced way of fighting by definition of their balancing paradigms.

The Biowhore pimps aren't the terrible guys who wanted fighters not to be banalshitboring, but retarded people who listened to it on the one side and to the manager telling them to reach the wider audience on the other side.

That's how it is today, but it's now how it started. Nearly 15 years ago now, it began by listening to feedback and watching downloads for design ideas, shaping the game to your most requested options and the things you showed you wanted by download count. It was all the rage in dev circles back then. Sure, it was mostly dumb feedback, all about hair choices and power fantasies (mostly hair, actually). But they heard you. They heard your dumb requests that you wanted to be a dual-sword wielding mage or a sorcerer paladin (those being both from the link provided, but there's thousands more just like them from a decade's worth of forum posts). You told them that your favorite thing was to make yourself more powerful. And so, throughout the NWN2 clones, that is what the Biowhore did, but by bit, piece by piece. In their games, you were already a hero, not a bunch of common men gathering together to attempt a dangerous job for the sake of riches, but a lordly hero. And you told them you loved the power fantasy, loved it so much you wanted more of it. Lots and lots more. Options on top of options. Megadamage atop megadamage.

Back then, there were 2 million of you, most of you telling Bioware how you wanted to be dual-sword wielding mages, just like the guy in the linked thread. Years upon years of listening to people just like you demanding more power, more options, more hair styles. And Bioware listened and listened, and slowly whored itself out to your desires. But that's the thing with shaping your game to the current lowest common denominator, every time you do it, the bottom gets lower and lower. And eventually, you reach the mouth breathers.

You get there not by suddenly waking up one morning and deciding to cater to a new audience (unless it's EA directed), no, you get there by whoring yourself out to the masses, starting with the 2 million of you right at the beginning.

 

[Telengard]

TL;DR: Bioware want to appeal too MMO people that just want to look cool without effort. Why is this a new thread?

Actually, I blamed the power mongers of yesteryear and today for starting the trend toward power fantasy and wish fulfillment, and thus made a whole bunch of people mad.

 

[a Goat]

In their games, you were already a hero, not a bunch of common men gathering together to attempt a dangerous job for the sake of riches, but a lordly hero. And you told them you loved the power fantasy, loved it so much you wanted more of it. Lots and lots more.

Ah I see...

So what you're raving at is the fact that we don't have low key games released nowadays, did I get this?

 

[Night Goat]

For all those who don't understand anything about game development, or who are simply dumb, I will illustrate the Biowhorean journey. Let us begin with a picture of the destination. The Biowhorean game DA:O offers every class a long list of special abilities and powers that each class can then implement in combat, and many of those abilities can be chosen by anyone. Which is precisely what people demand, yeah even here on the Codex - whine whine "Fighters need more to do than just select attack!' whine whine. And that is exactly what the Biowhore gave them.

whine whine 'There needs to be lots of character interaction and writing!' And that is exactly what the Biowhore gave, filling out 8 book's worth of writing (which is above average, by the by, but not tops). whine whine 'When I make a choice on my character sheet, the choice needs to be visible on my character!' And that is exactly what Biowhore gave. No matter what choice of armor, hair, or special combat power, all of it shows up on the screen. whine whine 'And my character needs lots and lots of choices on his character sheet!' whine whine. And that is exactly what Biowhore gave, dumping in bunches of armors and hairs and powers, all of them visible in the game.

That is what the Biowhore did, that is all that it did - it gave people (even the people of the Codex) exactly what they demand.

Frankly, you're an idiot. All of those things you mentioned are good things, and none of them are reasons why DAO is bad. DAO is bad because the setting is banal, the plot is shit and the gameplay is boring. The problem isn't that the audience demanded too much, it's that they didn't demand enough.

 

[Space Insect]

T In their games, you were already a hero, not a bunch of common men gathering together to attempt a dangerous job for the sake of riches, but a lordly hero. And you told them you loved the power fantasy, loved it so much you wanted more of it. Lots and lots more. Options on top of options. Megadamage atop megadamage.

.

So what you really want is a medival peasant simulator? But seriously, Baldur's Gate started with the charname living with a bunch of monks. I can understand Baldur's Gate 2 as a countinuation though.

 

[Infinitron]

Seems to me that what Telengard is saying, or a major part of what he's saying, is basically "game AI really sucks, so you MUST impose harsh, clear-cut, binary limitations on character power in order to to create a truly challenging oldschool RPG, otherwise it can't and will never be able to cope except perhaps by boring means of 'HP bloat' and the like".

Perhaps game AI sucks because developers are intentionally making it bad to dumb things down, or maybe they're just incompetent, but that doesn't really matter, right?

However, one gets the impression that Telengard also has a purely aesthetic dislike for character empowerment regardless of difficulty.

 

[Telengard]

All true, what Infinitron said.

Frankly, you're an idiot. All of those things you mentioned are good things, and none of them are reasons why DAO is bad. DAO is bad because the setting is banal, the plot is shit and the gameplay is boring. The problem isn't that the audience demanded too much, it's that they didn't demand enough.

For those people who don't like challenge, it's a wonderful, Awesome time to be a gamer.

Ah I see...

So what you're raving at is the fact that we don't have low key games released nowadays, did I get this?

That's the general area, yes. This area actually arises from one of the key elements of basic design. When building - not the gameplay - but the elements that are going to produce the gameplay, you have to decide on a few key factors. And one of those is the shape of what the character can do. In a regular adventure of old, characters are normalish folk, they have weaknesses, and it is those weaknesses that define the challenges of the game. And you can choose those elements, or you can go with high fantasy heroes, who have - maybe - an Achilles Heel (like Kryptonite) and are otherwise superior to all other beings by a huge margin.

This difference expresses itself very clearly in games like Thief vs Thi4f. In Thief, your character can't easily do things, and that is what influences how you play the game. While in Thi4f, if you get caught sneaking, you just slaughter everyone. And if your health gets low while slaughtering, you just sneak away. Nothing ever stops you, because you are so much more empowered than those you are up against. you are a god among mortals. You may be facing more enemies in a given section of Thi4f than you were in Thief, which should make for a higher challenge, but that fact doesn't matter because you have been given so many options that the game cannot throw up anything to stop you.

And if this is the kind of game you want, fine. But don't come crying to me about games not being challenging anymore.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

RPG fans don't want choices, they want consequences.
Look at a game like Skyrim, it's character system is all about choice, there's no limits to what you can do or who you can be within it. RPG fans look down on that game for those same reasons(And many other reasons, but let's just look at the character systems for now). Those RPG fans that do play the game tend to play it heavily modded, if you look at how those people generally mod their games, you'll find that they've actually taken power and endless choice away, in favor of limits and consequence. You can no longer be a demigod, you are no longer a blank slate, and in many cases you aren't the all powerful dragonborn. The role you choose limits what you can do, and like any good RPG, you must now play the game with the pros and cons of the character created.

This kind of gameplay will never appeal to AAA game devs because it's time and effort for content that many players will never experience. You're right about the power fantasy and lack of boundaries being the bane of modern gaming, but dead wrong if you think RPG fans are the reason for it, or that the devs are somehow catering to them. The devs are just catering to the fact that most of their audience doesn't even complete their games, let alone care to be restricted by what they see as "arbitrary" limits. Basically, people who hate RPGs are the demographic that modern devs seem to be targeting.

 

[Night Goat]

For those people who don't like challenge, it's a wonderful, Awesome time to be a gamer.

None of those things you mention make a game less challenging. Please explain how character interaction and writing, visible armor, and lots of hair choices make a game easier. Unless one of the choices is adamantium body hair I'm not seeing it. You could say that having lots of abilities makes the game easier, but you'd still be wrong. The key is to make more challenging encounters so that players actually have to use those abilities.

 

[Infinitron]

But Telengard, now that we've established all that, the question that needs to be asked is "When did games stop becoming low key?"

I get the impression that you consider the hardcore IE/BG2 fans to be poseurs and pharisees. The kind of people who laud Baldur's Gate 2 for being more hardcore than Dragon Age, but will spend hours rolling for stats and poring over FAQs to create the ultimate multi-classed munchkin build. They don't truly reject character empowerment - they just like that it's not accessible to people who aren't as dedicated as them.

Or is that okay with you too, empowerment that's heavily obscured? If so, how obscured?

 

[Night Goat]

Look at a game like Skyrim, it's character system is all about choice, there's no limits to what you can do or who you can be within it. RPG fans look down on that game for those same reason(Any many other reasons, but let's just look at the character systems for now). Those RPG fans that do play the game tend to play it heavily modded,

So RPG fans are perverts. Tell us something we don't know

 

[KK1001]

The real problem is that player empowerment is pushed over interesting encounter design/world design/system design. Who the fuck cares if you have 50 ways to do a particular task if that task is unrewarding and how you do it has no dynamic consequences in the way the game responds to you?

It just enables designers to go "well, we could make this encounter interesting, but how about instead we give the player 10 different ways to kill these 3 rats? Yeah!" and feel like they're doing a good job.

It's the same sort of empty rhetoric that plagues open world game design. Who cares if our open world is lifeless and boring, it's open and you have FREEDUMZ~!

 

[Machocruz]

Role-playing (in video games) is now synonymous with unrestricted "choice" and "freedom." It's a gross interpretation of what we do in pen and paper games, interpreted by those that have never actually played pen and paper games. In all the PnP games I played, you are constantly reminded that limitations shape your character and their actions as much as allowances. The video game audience don't want to commit to this though. Their idea of role-playing is making whatever decisions seem most interesting at the time, not what the character would do given their attributes, skills, background, personality, etc. These people want to be able to play what I call Evil Paladin. The role of Paladin requires that you perform nobly, and I mean perform in the sense that the player, like an actor, portray the character according to who the character is, not the whims of the player. The Evil Paladin player acts in a wildly inconsistent manner, violating the nature of the character they are representing, or never establishing or acting according to a nature at all.

I almost have more respect for the LARPers who play according to self imposed rules that the game does not recognize. These people are detrimental to game design in their own ways, but at least they are trying to act in the spirit of the thing. The others, they don't want simulation beyond NPCs walking around and squirrels chasing each other. They want a game where every character they make can swim equally, read maps equally, traverse terrain equally, kill equally, survive in the wilderness equally, etc. They bring an arcade mindset to (what should be) a non-arcade genre.

I did request more options, but only to enhance the logic of the game world, the simulation. I wanted more skills to choose from but not more slots to stick skills in, because specialization and time-cost are factors in the real world and one's place in it. People like me were drowned out by those that wanted more skills AND more slots for them, to enhance their power fantasy and dominion over the game world. I wanted visit into another reality, they wanted to escape theirs.

 

[SCO]

Performing surgery on this thread was a good first step, but why didn't you follow through and place it in retardoland yet?

 

[Telengard]

None of those things you mention make a game less challenging. Please explain how character interaction and writing, visible armor, and lots of hair choices make a game easier. Unless one of the choices is adamantium body hair I'm not seeing it. You could say that having lots of abilities makes the game easier, but you'd still be wrong. The key is to make more challenging encounters so that players actually have to use those abilities.

Ah, picking out my asides as arguments. Brilliant.

A character that has no weaknesses is difficult to provide challenges for for two reasons. 1) If a character has no weaknesses, just what is going to stop them? What does stop a super-mega-spartan-marine? Bullets certainly don't. 2) If you're not going to gate the character into staying in an area, how do you insist that a character with no weaknesses fight the enemy in non-cheesy combat?

But this is actually even more fundamental than a straight weighted power relationship. If a character can do thirty different kinds of things, just what kind of awesomesause design is going to go into your encounter that would stop all thirty kinds of awesomeness? And are you going to make every single encounter in your game just as super cleverly awesome so they're all equally a challenge? Just how much cleverness are you willing to expend on each and every encounter in order to counter so much awesome?

But wait, you must do so while still allowing the player to feel his awesomeness. That's inescapable. Because the whole point of a power fantasy is to feel awesome. Superman doesn't feel like superman if he only ever fights mirror-superman. He's got to be able to feel super-awesome to be Superman, and to do that he's got to be super overpowered most of the time, 'cause otherwise he's just a guy in tights.

 

[Night Goat]

Where did I say a character shouldn't have weaknesses?

 

[Lilura]

Thank you so much for this hilarious topic, guys!

 

[Telengard]

But Telengard, now that we've established all that, the question that needs to be asked is "When did games stop becoming low key?"

I get the impression that you consider the hardcore IE/BG2 fans to be poseurs and pharisees. The kind of people who laud Baldur's Gate 2 for being more hardcore than Dragon Age, but will spend hours rolling for stats and poring over FAQs to create the ultimate multi-classed munchkin build. They don't truly reject character empowerment - they just like that it's not accessible to people who aren't as dedicated as them.

Or is that okay with you too, empowerment that's heavily obscured? If so, how obscured?

This fight was lost when most of you were still in diapers. It is an age-old argument between people who left d&d long before 3e was even a mote in anyone's eyes, when crpgs were still simple things that hadn't really found themselves yet, when you could still see the pixels. The last expression of this philosophical design is probably the Strategy RPG Jagged Alliance 2. As for the beginnings of the end, it's an old happening, ancient really. But most people trace it back to this (no emphasis from me):

OBSCURE DEATH...AND HOW TO LIVE WITH IT

Because DRAGONLANCE is a story, certain "name" heroes and villains are important. They should not die until the right point in the story (sometimes, they shouldn't die at all!). What happens when the wrong person gets killed?

That's where a special rule - the "obscure death" rule - comes into play. If a "name" character (any DRAGONLANCE PC or featured NPC) dies prematurely, that character meets an "obscure death" so that you can bring him or her back later.

What exactly is an "obscure death"? Obscure death is a favorite comic book convention...

I shall stop there.

This was the tipping point for most of the old crew, who left for greener pastures or who quit altogether. They wanted adventure stories, not storybook high fantasy tales. But that wasn't the real kicker for the particular aspect of design I have been discussing. The first visible mark of what was then called power creep was Unearthed Arcana (or the book based on the cartoon) having many of its parts incorporated into 2e.

As for the adventure-style line of thought? Outside of Roguelikes and the real early crpgs, their style of design has never been much explored in the world of crpgs. And as this thread helps illustrate, for good reason.

*

As for me personally, on the old gamer grid, I'm a tactician. But unlike most, I am okay with other types of design being in existence. But in this age-old fight, when I finally get to say I told you so, I actually want to be able to say it, instead of having everyone forget what they said all along. "It's okay if the game gets easier, as long as it's fun." Well, what did you think that was going to end up like?

 

[Beastro]

Exactly. This is the true nature of the Awesome Button. Placing player choice and empowerment above all.

The Awesome Button is the inevitable result of people wanting to make their choices whatever they want and have those choices be visibly validated by the game. More choice, more empowerment, and do keep it coming even if the underlying gameplay has no ability to adapt to your decisions.

Thus is Bioware. You created them in your image. "Player choice uber alles."

I'm personally sick of tabula rasa's in games.

I'd rather have a more tighter focused Geralt type character in more stories with a flesh out personality and background that has a lot of choice in molding the situations presented to him. Not that Geralt is ideal, you're still allowed to make wildly different world view choices with him that can often make him come off as schizophrenic as he tries to justify and moralize his actions.

Sacrificing for player choice just makes for bland characters because the choices that mold your character are so bland.

Wish for more games where, for example, Conan is the center and the choices he makes that effect the game can be different, but are consistent with Conan's internal logic and the character he has that we know so well, unlike "Mr. Neutrality" Geralt having the choice of factions to help and no one calling bullshit on a Witcher violating the very essence of his professional code.

If Conan helps faction A against faction B what in Conan would make him make that decision? If he does it with B against A, again, why would Conan do that? If he refuses to help them, or decides to act against both it would up to fleshing out why this personality acted in different ways, but ones that were from his point of view. Instead we get to help out faction A because you're a blank slate and you're RPing a villain so you help the stereotypical bad guys, or you're white as snow so you help the nice, underdog faction (while inconsistently robbing them blind).

I guess I could have said that choice means nothing without motivation, and without well defined characters the choices are shut because the motivations change on a whim and thus the character of your character does.

I think that's why certain elements of PoE are so frustrating. The intro FAQ to build character development was a nice, organic way or shaping your character with the presented options, but it's a let down because it's all window dressing and most isn't touched upon again. First playthrough I went with Stoic Elven Barbarian Aristocrat, pretty much the closest thing to a Conan figure you could be in PoE, and it changed nothing from my next playthough as a godlike fire slave because god-forbid choices should lock you into a certain play style instead of being always available.

Instead of always being open and broad, a game should start out that way as you're forming your character, but the more you form them, the more choices you make, the more locked into a path you should be that opens certain paths while denying others. There's real "multiple endings" there where a villain character would end their game in different circumstances than a goodie two shoes facing a different "end boss" I think that also shows how much of a curse voice acting is now that it's the norm, it's such a chain around story development when text allows so much more freedom to realistically accomplish what I just described without being hobbled by hiring and voicing all those potential dialogue lines, not that it would be an easy thing to do as text by itself.