Less complex combat in RPGs is allegedly superior according to random retards

[Sykar]

Fallout 1/2 Combat is crap because you cant control your party members in combat.

It's bad because it's shallow as fuck with no tactical depth whatsoever, even without companions, they are just the tip of the iceberg. The only reason people do not complain too much about the combat is because the death scenes are morbidly satisfying.

Because in Fallout 1/2 you are the chosen one, super hero of epic proportions that saves the world and everyone. You can do it single handledly that's why you don't need to control your party members.

That's not really true. In Fallout 1 you are the poor shmuck who gets sent out to save your little Vault. At most you saved the immediate region, certainly not the world.
FO 2 you are the chosen one only for your tribe, the rest of the world doesn't give a fuck about you and will even ridicule you if you run around and proclaim yourself to be "Chosen One".
Again you at best save part of the west coast, you are not saving the entire world. Heck we do not even know how the world looks like outside the tiny spec of the US in which all FO games take place.

 

[laclongquan]

I thought it's a thread about combat design, but it's just another bash on DnD.

Shit, bashing on DnD combat is like two point shooting~

 

[Makabb]

Again you at best save part of the west coast, you are not saving the entire world.

Usa is teh whole world in Fallout, other continents were nuked into sinking beneath the oceans.
Fallout is also a power fantasy like many other games (baldur's gate where you play the child of bhaal, where in effect you become the next god)

Shit, bashing on DnD combat is like two point shooting~

In order for a combat system to work, the user has to be able to figure out the results of his actions. To find out the chance of hitting a target in DnD you need to know the targets armor class, know the attackers thaco subtract the AC from thaco then multiply it by 5.

That's a elegant and clean combat system ?

 

[Sykar]

Again you at best save part of the west coast, you are not saving the entire world.

Usa is teh whole world in Fallout, other continents were nuked into sinking beneath the oceans.
Fallout is also a power fantasy like many other games (baldur's gate where you play the child of bhaal, where in effect you become the next god)

Shit, bashing on DnD combat is like two point shooting~

In order for a combat system to work, the user has to be able to figure out the results of his actions. To find out the chance of hitting a target in DnD you need to know the targets armor class, know the attackers thaco subtract the AC from thaco then multiply it by 5.

That's a elegant and clean combat system ?

Almost all games are about power fantasies. Show me proof that the rest of the world is nuked beneath the oceans in Fallout, I certainly could not find any information about it. That's basically impossible even with a million nukes.

 

[Makabb]

. That's basically impossible even with a million nukes.

Do you know it's a video game? with monsters that do not exist in the real world ? with ideas that would not be possible in the real world ?

 

[Telengard]

Just so we're on the same page, JA2's base formula is: (Current Range x 3 - Gun's Maximum Range) / 1.7

Then you take that base range and add in a multitude of spot modifiers, like +10% per aim point, minus sight penalty, minus breath penalty, minus wound penalty, minus burst penalty, plus weapon mod, minus target's stance, plus your stance, and more. But first, before you shoot, roll for weapon jam.

Put it all into a formula and try it in pnp, and you'll quickly start missing the "simplicity" of thac0.

JA2 formulas work well in game, but they are neither simple nor elegant. To get them to function outside of the computer game, you have to got real old school and plot out a bunch of tables, and have players look up a bunch of values on different tables for each shot they take.

 

[Sykar]

. That's basically impossible even with a million nukes.

Do you know it's a video game? with monsters that do not exist in the real world ? with ideas that would not be possible in the real world ?

So why do we have silly stuff like gravity? Or even people?

 

[mondblut]

Just so we're on the same page, JA2's base formula is: (Current Range x 3 - Gun's Maximum Range) / 1.7

Then you take that base range and add in a multitude of spot modifiers, like +10% per aim point, minus sight penalty, minus breath penalty, minus wound penalty, minus burst penalty, plus weapon mod, minus target's stance, plus your stance, and more. But first, before you shoot, roll for weapon jam.

Put it all into a formula and try it in pnp, and you'll quickly start missing the "simplicity" of thac0.

JA2 formulas work well in game, but they are neither simple nor elegant. To get them to function outside of the computer game, you have to got real old school and plot out a bunch of tables, and have players look up a bunch of values on different tables for each shot they take.

Finally, a post that makes sense.

Retards who can't calculate THAC0 should get the fuck out of the kitchen and go play a role in Pacman.

 

[Melan]

In order for a combat system to work, the user has to be able to figure out the results of his actions. To find out the chance of hitting a target in DnD you need to know the targets armor class, know the attackers thaco subtract the AC from thaco then multiply it by 5.

That's a elegant and clean combat system ?

That's not how Thac0 works.
1) Take your Thac0
2) Subtract 1d20
3) The result is the AC you hit.

Spoiler

Examples: Dorf has a Thac0 of 17. He rolls 12, hitting an AC of 5 or lower. Orc has a Thac0 of 20. He rolls 7, a clear miss since the worst AC is 10. Killfuck Soulshitter has a Thac0 of 7. He rolls a 10, hitting an AC of -3 or lower.

That's not even the high end of elementary school math. But Thac0 has not even been an official rule for 15 years, succeeded by a system where you have a hit bonus, add a d20, and hit an AC rating that goes up from 10.

 

[naossano]

I believe the mistake is to consider that one formula should be applied to every other games, no matter if it is simple or complex.
Clone games is a factor of decline, no matter the quality of the clones.

 

[Old Hans]

I bet these arguments cropped up all the time in d&d groups back in the 70's, which led to all those early off-shoot house rulebooks filled with 10 pages of critical hit charts and detailed rules on how to prepare your camp.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

That's not really true. In Fallout 1 you are the poor shmuck who gets sent out to save your little Vault. At most you saved the immediate region, certainly not the world.
FO 2 you are the chosen one only for your tribe, the rest of the world doesn't give a fuck about you and will even ridicule you if you run around and proclaim yourself to be "Chosen One".
Again you at best save part of the west coast, you are not saving the entire world. Heck we do not even know how the world looks like outside the tiny spec of the US in which all FO games take place.

The Master's army and the Enclave are genocidal maniacs with the firepower to back it up, I can't see them as a local threat. The PCs were just lucky to fight them before they became unstoppable.

I think it's safe to say the world powers were destroyed. The USA was the strongest one and it was bombed back to the wild west age. Rural shitholes are probably doing fine.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Complexity is bad. What is good is having interesting decisions to make. Complexity is just the cost to having those interesting decisions. So people confuse complexity with the interesting decisions themselves. But complexity isn't the interesting decisions; complexity is bad. Complexity requires more time and effort to implement, iterate, and tweak on the part of the developers. If there are two systems that offer the same richness of interesting decisions, the simpler one is the better designed one. When designing something a designer should always strive to find ways to make it simpler without reducing the quality and quantity of interesting decisions. This is what elegance is. It is easy to add increasingly complex mechanics to try and abstract something or provide choices. It doesn't take a skilled designer to do that and it will usually decrease the quality of the decisions available because it will be easier to break and the developers will have less time and resources to implement, polish, and iterate each component of the system. The KISS principle doesn't magically stop applying when designing video games.

All of you people who think complexity itself is good, which apparently includes a butthurt mod who changed the title of this thread(very professional BTW), are wrong and have a poor understanding of game design. When you are designing a system you are constantly trying to find the best balance for the system between providing a richness of interesting decisions and complexity. Trying to maximize the richness of your interesting decisions and minimize your complexity. People who understand what they are doing when designing systems anyway. I suppose there are people who confuse having a more complex system for having a better one with more interesting decisions. They always reveal themselves when this topic comes up.

It is also worth noting that interesting decisions aren't the only factor one is considering when determining the entertainment value of a game. There are many other things to consider including what kind of experience it provides. That is also an important factor the systems designed for the game should support and reinforce that experience.

You're absolutely right it's about interesting decisions. I am completely with you on that. Yet this is tricky. You say it's not tricky, but I think it's. The fact it's tricky is why so many games have small audiences.

1. Complexity gets confused with depth.

Complexity is different from depth in that it "pulls you out of the game." It causes you to stop using your intuition/experience and causes you to read manuals or descriptions or pour over technical details. It's a far less natural thing to do and this is why it pulls you out of the game and will make it less accessible.

JA2, for example, is a game some people hate and some people love. It's a good one for me to pull out because it's so blurry. Is it complex or deep? It's easy to spin it one way or the other, depending on the person.

One of the things which may have been too complex were how you had to press keys to highlight the line-of-sight. This gave you three color codes for tiles: barely visible, moderate visible, fully visible. Using this information, you could judge how clean the shot is for your characters and your enemies. It was pivotal information and you HAVE to use it on higher difficulty. One deficiency was you couldn't judge what the line-of-sight was at a position not occupied by one of your party members, yet it's probable the enemies can. And I think this line-of-sight "feature" did pull you out of the game and that's not usually a good thing.

2. It's too hard or just not fun! It's too inaccessible!

I love racing games. Those're usually very intuitive. At no point do you need to read a description or read a manual or otherwise be "pulled out of it." However, sometimes they have power-sliding. Power-sliding, traditionally, has been a simulation-esque feature. Many gamers perceive it as inaccessible. It used to be a common sight, until it became an option and then was totally absent in some. I tend to prefer power-sliding. I don't think power sliding is about depth or complexity, but it's a very tight and uncompromising feature which some, paradoxically, enjoy.

Or what about a game which is primarily action-oriented having too many puzzles? Players who're accustomed to action will not want the puzzles. For them, the puzzles will make the game incaccessible. So they'll have to be removed.

Note that these things aren't strictly complex or deep. They're just unwanted or unnecessary, given the audience. Placed in the wrong game they can be interpreted as bad. You don't put power-sliding, for example, in a racing game which is focused on arcade gameplay. You AT LEAST make it an option.
___________

I think game makers will continue to confuse depth and complexity, even if it's avoidable. I also think some games will necessarily be harder to play for some or just not fun for them, but this doesn't mean they're too complex or bad games.

 

[madrigal]

In order for a combat system to work, the user has to be able to figure out the results of his actions. To find out the chance of hitting a target in DnD you need to know the targets armor class, know the attackers thaco subtract the AC from thaco then multiply it by 5.

That's a elegant and clean combat system ?

So if I have a thac0 of 20 and am fighting enemy with AC of 10, my chance to hit is 5(20-10) = 50 % chance. Awesome so I have a 50% chance to roll a 10 or higher on a 20 sided die. That is some magic die. Are you missing some fingers or toes, because most people can count to at least 20?

 

[Declinator]

Complexity is different from depth in that it "pulls you out of the game." It causes you to stop using your intuition/experience and causes you to read manuals or descriptions or pour over technical details. It's a far less natural thing to do and this is why it pulls you out of the game and will make it less accessible.

JA2, for example, is a game some people hate and some people love. It's a good one for me to pull out because it's so blurry. Is it complex or deep? It's easy to spin it one way or the other, depending on the person.

One of the things which may have been too complex were how you had to press keys to highlight the line-of-sight. This gave you three color codes for tiles: barely visible, moderate visible, fully visible. Using this information, you could judge how clean the shot is for your characters and your enemies. It was pivotal information and you HAVE to use it on higher difficulty. One deficiency was you couldn't judge what the line-of-sight was at a position not occupied by one of your party members, yet it's probable the enemies can. And I think this line-of-sight "feature" did pull you out of the game and that's not usually a good thing.

Sure, having to read manuals or go over tutorials etc. is not "natural" nor could it be called an organic way to learn the game. However, while it may not be natural it is also not automatically bad. The reaction to noticing that a feature seemingly needs to be taught via a tutorial or manual should not be "let's drop this feature" but instead "can we make this more intuitive". If the latter fails one should still not drop the feature but simply let it be what it is, i.e. somewhat complicated to learn.

For example if Rainbow Six had simply dropped the multi-team control via quick keys because it is a complex system to learn...well that lead to Rainbow Six: Vegas and we all know how that went. (Hint: it was a damn shame regardless of how much money it made.)

If the choice is between complexity and depth or accessibility and shallowness then the choice should be obvious.

Also, line-of-sight in JA2 is a good thing, shame on you.

You don't put power-sliding, for example, in a racing game which is focused on arcade gameplay. You AT LEAST make it an option.

Powersliding features heavily in a number of racing games of the arcade persuasion. NFS: Underground, for example, has that as what one might call its main feature.

In fact I'd say it would probably be difficult to find a modern arcade racer that does not have powersliding. (Mario Kart and other extremely arcade racers do not need to be mentioned.)

So if I have a thac0 of 20 and am fighting enemy with AC of 10, my chance to hit is 5(20-10) = 50 % chance. Awesome so I have a 50% chance to roll a 10 or higher on a 20 sided die. That is some magic die. Are you missing some fingers or toes, because most people can count to at least 20?

This is really the sort of stuff the game should do for you. Some people don't like explicitly seeing the chance-to-hit but I don't see any reason why not. Maybe it's too "gamey".

JA2 for example has no numerical chance-to-hit if I remember correctly but instead has that targeting circle that gets smaller the higher the chance and you basically just have to play the game enough for you to start figuring out how much the actual chance is. That part of the game is much better in Silent Storm what with the numerical chance-to-hit.

 

[Matalarata]

That's a elegant and clean combat system ?

That's an elegant and clean bag of steming horseshit! My compliments for showing your dumbfuckery, talking about something you don't actually understand/know!
Do you even know what thac0 means? Because, beside the wrong math in your post, that's not how it works. Player rolls dice, does in his head math that a second grader can do (I should know, I teach to 2nd grader...), then announces: I hit armor class "Ur mom"
GM declares if you hit or miss.

That's clean. Cleaner than 90% of pnp systems. Faster than 95% of pnp systems (especially if you are intelligent enough to roll damage AND to hit in one go, you can also color code dices if you need to roll more than one attack. Advanced pnp streamlining tactics...)

You can define thac0/BAB unrealistic, simplistic, archaic or hell even stupid or retarded for all I care. But probably you should first get some experience with pnp systems, you know to look less like a retard!

Also, depth is in the game world. And that's true for both pnp and vidja. I'd take a sub-par system and a good GM over the opposite any day. Depth of combat means nothing if there's no need to use it, and the means to use it come from encounter design, world interaction eccecc... That gives you options.
The opposite gives you ways to calculate if your bullets hit the groins, if your blade cuts a dick or if your character gets damage from wearing tight shoes. Interdasting!

 

[octavius]

I never played pen&paper RPGs before playing my first AD&D CRPG - Curse of the Azure Bonds -, and I had no problems understanding things like AC (already familiar from other games) or THAC0. It may not be the most elegant or intuitive system, but it certainly wasn't hard to understand.
I had more problems understanding why demi-humans were so useless...

 

[TigerKnee]

I had more problems understanding why demi-humans were so useless...

A mystery for the ages.

Unless we dig up Gygax's grave and cast Commune with Dead.

 

[Xathrodox86]

Fallout 1/2 Combat is crap because you cant control your party members in combat.

And thus F: Tactics had the best combat of all Fallouts.

 

[Catfish]

Fallout 1/2 Combat is crap because you cant control your party members in combat.

I beg to differ. Careful preparation in FO2 yields pretty awesome results (pick the right gunsand drugs and custom combat orders and your guys work pretty much as a proper team). I had a playthrough several years ago with a diplomat char with topped charisma + the personality perk for the maximum of possible companions. The char had 2 base strength, so pretty much anything beyond a 9mm was out of the question. Yet, until the endgame, even through the toughest encounters, I barely needed to fire once.

 

[CyberWhale]

Fallout 1/2 Combat is crap because you cant control your party members in combat.

I beg to differ. Careful preparation in FO2 yields pretty awesome results (pick the right gunsand drugs and custom combat orders and your guys work pretty much as a proper team).

Sulik likes this!

At deep behind enemy lines.
feeling almost dead with Chosen one, John Cassidy and Vic The Trader.

 

[Catfish]

Fallout 1/2 Combat is crap because you cant control your party members in combat.

I beg to differ. Careful preparation in FO2 yields pretty awesome results (pick the right gunsand drugs and custom combat orders and your guys work pretty much as a proper team).

Sulik likes this!

At deep behind enemy lines.
feeling almost dead with Chosen one, John Cassidy and Vic The Trader.

Have you evar turned Sulik into a Jet an' Buffout junkie, fren? He like to breathe like a fish, but he fly like spaceman with da baddest spirits!

 

[Catfish]

Seriously though, Sulik on Buffout, Jet and Psycho with any one of the better meelee weapons is is op it is not even funny

Nah, it's fucking hilarious, especially if he is in mkii power armor

 

[Somberlain]

Fallout 1/2 Combat is crap because you cant control your party members in combat.

I beg to differ. Careful preparation in FO2 yields pretty awesome results (pick the right gunsand drugs and custom combat orders and your guys work pretty much as a proper team). I had a playthrough several years ago with a diplomat char with topped charisma + the personality perk for the maximum of possible companions. The char had 2 base strength, so pretty much anything beyond a 9mm was out of the question. Yet, until the endgame, even through the toughest encounters, I barely needed to fire once.

He wasn't talking about Fallout's combat being hard, what it obviously isn't, aside from the occasional deaths by critical hits. The point was that Fallout 1/2 combat is shit because it's boring, repetitive and shallow. Being able to manually control your party members would have made it at least somewhat more interesting, but it would still be boring "shoot stuff in the eyes point blank until it dies" shit.

 

[Catfish]

Fallout 1/2 Combat is crap because you cant control your party members in combat.

I beg to differ. Careful preparation in FO2 yields pretty awesome results (pick the right gunsand drugs and custom combat orders and your guys work pretty much as a proper team). I had a playthrough several years ago with a diplomat char with topped charisma + the personality perk for the maximum of possible companions. The char had 2 base strength, so pretty much anything beyond a 9mm was out of the question. Yet, until the endgame, even through the toughest encounters, I barely needed to fire once.

He wasn't talking about Fallout's combat being hard, what it obviously isn't, aside from the occasional deaths by critical hits. The point was that Fallout 1/2 combat is shit because it's boring, repetitive and shallow. Being able to manually control your party members would have made it at least somewhat more interesting, but it would still be boring "shoot stuff in the eyes point blank until it dies" shit.

You know, i actually have a pretty good FO-based test for "complex" combat in cRPGs (whenever the question arises). I produce a really dumb and strong char with no redeeming qualities and just bash the opposition. Whenever both the simple hulksmashing and datacrunching are satisfying, the combat generally turns out good on the rest of the spectrum. BG, FO, even the odd Planescape (thanks to DnD) turn out to be satisfactory that way.

I know FO combat is not hard by any stretch, but what i do know is that SPECIAL provides a really fun ride both in FO and pnp, and the "cannot control party members" is not entirely valid in this particular case. However, I also admit the game itself proves really shallow in terms of combat if you don't spend a lot of time getting familiar with it.

On a side note, pnp SPECIAL thread, anyone? I would love to dm it, if I had at least two-three willing heroes