RPGs that are unanimously praised by people of refined taste that you never could finish.

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Fallout 1/2 are good because they have amazing gameplay to go with the aesthetics/writing. Quest design and character creation are so wildly flexible the titles have incredible replayability -- which is why they're still being played. I also think the games capture the post-apocalyptic concept fairly well. It's not all grim-dark shit. You get the weird and the eccentric, too, something the Bethesda games kinda skipped on. I don't mean to be bombastic, but... really, the Fallout games are quintessential RPGs in my opinion. They just hit all the right spots.

Well obviously you cannot read then. You wrote 'THIS' in reply to a post that said Fallout 2 is for people that prefer GAMEPLAY over coherent story etc. Not my fault that you flunked basic reading and comprehension in school.

So when will people realize that all the "flaws" of F2 are present in F1 as well? Yes, F1 is a quite small game so there's not as much silly shit, but proportionally a significant amount of silly shit is there. That's, like totally, one of the distinguishable features of these games :rocketscientist:

lol post-apocalyptic emo vampires lol anti-communist giant robots who throw nukes like footballs lol robots who think they're founding fathers of the united states lol costumed superheros and supervillains battling it out lol

It isn't so much that F1 is flawless, but it's flaws are outweighed by the parts that are good. If you were to put combat above all else, I can understand why you'd rate F1 low, just as if you put amount of stuff you can do above all else, you might rate F2 highly. But the proportion of stupid things in F2 is much, much higher than if F1. Places like San Francisco or that small town where you get married are basically just there for "teh lulz". There's no comparable places in F1. Then you have places like the first two towns that are just about devoid of anything and feel tacked on. A couple of decent locations

The other thing is that F2 doesn't fix F1's flaws, it accentuates them. Combat is more numerous and longer in F2, so a mediocre system that felt OK in F1 really drags on you by the end of the game (I quit just before the end because I'd reached my fill). Item progression is screwed up more. In F1 you barely get anytime using combat armor, in F2 you barely get any time using combat armor or power armor. Stat progression is screwed up (finding out that maxing your stats is a waste in the game). They made small arms more viable and maybe made a couple of other skills better?

Fallout 2 is Fallout with worse gameplay, a worse world, worse story, and filled with "lulz" and sex jokes. If you're starved for more Fallout or really like being able to do random things in a game, I can see why you might like it, but that doesn't make it a good game.

there were very few places in F2 where combat dragged ass, the only place that i can remember clearly was in the sierra bunker if you alerted all the robots at once. the oil rig was like that sometimes but most of the guards were pretty tough with power armour and gauss guns so it wasnt as easy as smacking around the robots in the bunker

the story did seem a bit lame, i wonder what tim cain and co had in mind exactly when they wrote most of the main plot and how much different it is to the real story. whats wrong with the humour though? i can understand people getting a bit upset because it wasnt as serious as the first game, but i really enjoyed all the jokes and funnies in F2

as for the locations, i liked chinatown/hubs just as much as, say, junktown. the two raider locations in F2 were much better than the khans in F1. i guess it comes down to fallout 1 having less stuff but being more concise in quality whereas 2 had more stuff and some of it rubbed people the wrong way

If you avoid the sunk cost fallacy and simply stop playing the game when it stops being more fun than other activities you could be doing, then you will not finish very many games. Especially not many RPGs.

While RPG elements make games more compelling, they also have a significant potential to gradually destroy the gameplay of the genres that they're attached to, due to the focus on numbers going up.

For example, if you take a tactical turn based game and everybody has relatively even stats, then the focus will be on careful positioning and planning. But if you add a layer of RPG elements, there is the potential that the game gradually could become unbalanced and trivialized because the player's character grows to become more powerful than the developers planned. At this point, the core tactical gameplay would be weakened or destroyed, as the player can win through attrition without the need for careful maneuvering.

If an RPG looks interesting on the surface, but major flaws emerge part way through the game, nothing obligates you to keep playing.

Well RPG's are all about numbers going up so I don't understand what you are trying to say. If you don't like this mechanic, a mechanic inherent in the RPG in one way or another, then why are you playing RPG's in the first place?

Well I wouldn't call that weird or eccentric. Crap maybe.

I don't care about numbers going up but I do prefer to play characters who represent specific individuals (instead of generic units like "terran space marine") and who are defined by statistical parameters. So yes, I like RPG elements in my games (at least in theory).

My point is that RPG elements are not an unmixed blessing. If you're making a First Person Shooter with no character progression, then it's relatively easy to balance your game. You only have to take into account what guns the player might have when you are playtesting your game. Otherwise, everybody will have the same basic character.

But if you're making a First Person shooter with strong RPG elements, it becomes very difficult to balance your game. Instead of playtesting for one basic character, you now need to test the game and balance it for the entire range of possible character builds that the player might have. It's virtually impossible to achieve perfect balance for every possible character build.

This potential problem applies to all games with RPG elements and it has become a much bigger problem now that players are no longer allowed to fail. The developer will balance the game to let the weaker builds succeed. That means the stronger builds will often find the game becoming too easy.

This problem has significant potential to get worse as you move farther and farther through a RPG. The range of potential builds generally continues to expand as more customization options are opened up and fewer and fewer of these builds will have been playtested. So the longer you play, the less likely it is that the game will retain proper balance.

If you quit games when they stop being fun, as I do, then you'll probably end up quitting a lot of RPGs mid way through.

On topic example: Some of my favorite console RPGs are Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics, but I still quit playing each of them about 75% of the way through when I acquired certain characters who trivialized the game.

Lots of good points here and I have to agree with them (although usually I still keep playing an RPG long enough to complete it if I find the story and characters interesting).

An similar problem can arise in RPGs when the core mechanics of a game are also too shallow to sustain the length of the experience. I have tried and failed to replay The Witcher 2 to experience the new Enhanced Edition content, the different story arcs etc. but because character development and progression are so boring and have relatively little influence on actual gameplay, I get bored quickly even if I am currently enjoying the story.

This extends to RPG elements in other games as well, because my expectations for growth and development over the course of the game are raised. However, usually the RPG elements don't pay off and as a result the let-down that I'm playing "just" a shooter etc. is often enough to turn me off of playing, since once I realise the RPG elements are at best useless or at worst a poorly-veiled Skinner box, I also realise I've probably mastered the game mechanics as well and thus no part of the game will ever challenge or engage me outside of the narrative (which is usually fun at most once). This happened with Borderlands and RAGE for me. Both had potential but the RPG side was so woefully handled that the end result was a lot of decent-to-crap action without any interesting hooks.

I don't really equate this with simple ease - it's a problem with the systems design, not just a balance issue. Often it comes from a cultivation of aesthetic choice without the true gameplay rules to back it up. For instance, on the surface some RPGs have promising-looking mechanics, with tons of stats, skills and so on to use. These make a great first impression and get my mind going about how I'm going to build my character or party... however, after a few hours it becomes clear that many of the differences are at best aesthetic.

For example, the difference between Skyrim's axes and swords of various types are almost negligible save for damage and attack speed, which means that once you've done any sort of melee combat, you've already done it all. Magic is basically the same - the spells follow almost exactly the same model throughout, with only very minor aesthetic differences (blue = ice, red = fire, purple = shock, turn off the graphics and sound effects and you'd never know which is which). This is also a huge problem for Diablo III vs. Diablo II, as the singular "DPS" stat renders all weapon variety useless.

Dragon Age's RPG mechanics, meanwhile, sound good on paper because the system distills a lot of the petty distinctions between D&D-style classes that only really matter in a tabletop realm down to the basic archetypes, with the only limit being skill point availability - and is theoretically more flexible as a result (I like the D&D rules but personally I don't think they fit the CRPG realm at all). In practice however, the actual distinctions are extremely boring - and many of the skills that had so much potential to make combat fun and exciting are often mechanically identical (most of the warrior skills are just stun/knockdown + damage). Once you reach a certain point in either of these games, the systems stop being engaging because of the lack of complexity and growth over the course of the experience.

Older RPGs also fall victim to this of course, but I find that they tend to have more mechanical complexity as time goes on, or at least other considerations to take into account, that make up for the problems "in the moment." When you design a game's mechanics entirely around the relative short-term thrill of combat, but the system that those short-term elements are tied into isn't compelling in its own right and doesn't provide any interesting goals, obstacles and so on, it doesn't matter how huge your game world is or how fun combat is - the experience is still going to start dragging very quickly.

That's why Skyrim, despite having more enjoyable and exciting moment-to-moment gameplay than, say, Arcanum (especially in combat), gets old after 20 hours while Arcanum, with its interesting long-term goals, growth of skill set and active abilities, growing number of companions, etc. can keep you going even though it's by all accounts horrendously balanced, sloppy and incoherent.

Well i don't think you can actually manage to design great encounters for world that use firearms,if you don't use trenchs,crouching mechanics and give player more tactical options you will have it even harder.
Fallout 2 only has bigger world and better items but it felt like diablo 2,it had lost its spirit but had more content.

Don't get me wrong i loved fallout 2 but its more like a expansion pack for fallout 1,not a masterpiece that most people think.

It's always like that. I don't play rpg's for the combat, except if they are turnbased and by sirtech and are called jagged alliance. In fact, the first thing i try is a combat-less playthrough - at least that is a challenge to break the game that actually may make you think.

I don't know about "always" but at least in theory you can have an RPG with combat that stays entertaining and has enemies that are challenging to fight across the game. Introducing new damage types and resistances, new mechanics like damage-over-time attacks (for players and enemies), and making it integral to exploit them in order to win should be more than enough. Attributes can also be made important in a lot of ways, for example high dexterity causing a character to be hard to hit with slower weapons but easier to hit with faster ones, or low constitution making the target susceptible to elemental attacks.

All RPG combat really is is jugging ability management, using the appropriate ones at the appropriate times - this is more than enough to make for entertaining gameplay, it's just that usually RPGs are balanced so anyone can win without much challenge, so the nuance of the systems isn't given room to grow. My qualms have more to do with systems that don't have much inherent depth to them in the first place.

It's never anything interesting. Damage over time? If it's a party realtime you're actually playing a rts, if it's single player realtime it's boring potion chugging, if potions have cooldowns you're just timing, without actually having to time anything because of the perfect feedback of modern games

And how they disguise the same ability as 4 class 'variants' durrr.

Yawwnnnn even simplistic TB. God, i'm having flashbacks to avernum already.

Resistances -> simplistic memory game (if you lose, which you won't since you're a hp sponge), or simple name/species/feeback deduction - that's slightly better since at least it integrates a little with the world.

I much prefer breaking a game into pieces so i can avoid what they desperately pass as the main content.
It's more entertaining.

I'm also partial to other perversions like:
not leveling on a levelling game.
using stealth and running away where you are not meant to
using hth and stealth in gun games (JA2)
soloing
multiclassing
stealing loot by stealth (geneforge 5 was great for this).

I will grant you Arcanum's combat was crappy ... even the greatest lover of it will grant you that, lol. But seriously what was wrong with the interface?? You could personalize it in great detail to only need to use one-two clicks for most actions ... some of the games today have much shitier interface than that.

Arcanum's strength was mostly in atmosphere and side quests, the atmosphere was great and fresh compared to typical D&D bullshit and the side quests, holly hell, never seen a game so varied as it, geting into that gentlement club prostituting yourself as a female character is something I've never seen again in a CRPG, damn you could even prostitute yourself for 50 coin at the whorehouse in Tarant too, lol. Or start a war between the two great humans cities, or prety much anythign you wanted ... even a bioromance

Yeah bro, I think the problem was I used Drogs (?) mod that increased the playable screen size, and it made the UI a little wonky or sth. I'm kind of foggy about it.

I do want to try it again someday, even if it really is more like a cool adventure game (without decent combat) instead of a full-blooded RPG.

This thread has me thinking. What RPGs have I actually finished? Not fucking many. Whatever you name I've probably not cared enough about to finish.

It turns out I like actual roleplaying. Like PnP and MUDs. Hmmmmmm.

The problem of Fallout 2 is equipment progression. Especially armor.

The should be one or two suits of combat armours advanced in NCR as a reward or hard to get loot. There should be increased rate of encounters around the SF city (gangs, mutants) and Navarro (patrol), with the effect of making sure only parties with greatest equipments can fight through the quarantine. Since it's not, it's broken.

On another note, Fallout 2 world is much bigger than Fallout 1. You got a few towns in 1, barely memorable other than Mad-Max Junktown. Every town in Fallout 2 is distintive. Fallout 2 make more scenes of a huge Wasteland than Fallout 1. F1 feel barely a patch. A plain, several counties patch together.

i think killap's mod increases the enclave encounters near navarro. anyways, perhaps a mod that hides navarro until you get the quest from that village mystic guy or matt from the bos, kinda like how vault 13/sierra army depot etc are hidden

Yeah but then you'll have rage about 'linear crap', 'Bioturd design'.....

@_@ Fine. Be that way then.

Arcanum. It just got so boring after a certain point. Maybe cause the combat system is piss easy.

Don't really understand the "themepark" complaint. Omg, New Reno had mafiosi and Sanfran had kung fu, gimme nondescript towns with generic thugs anyday.

Anyway, since we are talking about Fallout...