pippin
Guest
Yeah, you can play the games again and again and again and again... Fortunately those games often offer lots of replay value.
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Scorpia and Baldur's Gate, a discussion from 2006
- Thread starter Infinitron
- Start date
cherry blossom
Infinitron
Zed Duke of Banville
Siobhan
felipepepe
look, I'm the first one to admit to my own faults. I, for many reasons that include both personal and "professional" ones, am an obsessive person. I am not good at being objective however I do believe I am very good at plumbing the depths of whatever genre/subject I have become obsessed with and dissecting it completely to see what makes it tick; and I am also the type of person who wants to make others see the same depth I have discovered in said genre/subject.
when I was a child and teenager I only played JRPGs (i grew up with them) and I considered "western RPGs" to be non-RPGs. After all, they didn't feature "good stories". I was very fanatical about this.
during university and onwards, basically from 18-31, I discovered Fallout 1, table-top dungeons and dragons, and all of that good stuff; and guess what? they were a motherfucking revelation to me. Suddenly I discovered games that not only featured a "story" (my ability to discern good and bad narrative and writing had also obviously matured) but lo and behold, these games of the post-Fallout 1 "generation" also included deep system mechanics that (for the most part) served to create great gameplay, which is something sorely missing from almost all JRPGs.
I became extremely fanatical about the superiority of "western RPGs" and poo-poo'd all over JRPGs any chance I got. In fact, if you go back to my 2005-2007 posts, if you can sift through the gigantic amount of shit-posting I did, whenever I actually talked about RPGs it was to praise the superiority of choice and consequence: the RPG and to demerit any inherent value in JRPGs.
time passed, and I fell out of love with ALL RPGs. I feel like I have played everything there is to play and that the new RPGs coming out today, mostly the kickstarter ones, are banal-shit-boring games that while they may feature competent game-making (some of them) are definitely not anything to get excited about.
now I recently (six months or so) discovered the turn-based dungeon crawler via Wizardry and all of the years of being dissatisfied with the combat mechanics in RPGs and being dissatisfied with the control schemes have melted away because I finally realized that after all these years I am not looking for a good story or good NPCs in an RPG: i am looking primarily for exploration and for deep combat and deep party-building (with all of the facets that party-building entails such as class-systems and spell systems).
sometimes I forget that not every poster here has been playing every form of RPG for the better part of 30 years and has gone through every single phase and sub-genre in the realm of RPGs. I think the only sub-genre I have yet to go through is the pure war-gaming one as I am a very impatient person both in real life and in video games.
(yet another reason I love so much blobber-style turn-based combat; quick, deep, meaningful, both abstract and tactical at the same time; the perfect melding of unit management with ease-of-use compartmentalized into one single combat system/presentation).
I actually love a lot of non-turn based RPGs, and I consider Fallout: New Vegas for example to be one of my all-time favorite RPGs right up there now with Wizardry and Elminage and Fallout 1. Now here's me in a nutshell:
- I am all about the combat and the exploration. The combat has to be extreme, i.e. no middle-grounds. Either all action (F:NV), or all turn-based.
- RTwP, and the primitive (in my opinion) utilization of real time combat in a game like Eye of the Beholder or Legends of Grimrock , are middle-grounds that do not satisfy either my lust for pure action or for pure taking of turns.
- Another reason i am very dismissive of games like Dark Souls and its ilk, or a game like Daggerfall or Morrowind, (and yes I am fully aware that F:NV is the child of those games), is because I am a competitive person and competitive gamer.
- I play competitive billiards in real life and I play competitive Street Fighter / Fighting games when I'm not taking turns on an RPG. Something like Legends of Grimrock with its clickity-click combat and/or tango-of-death, or something like Dark Souls with its simplistic dodge-parry-interrupt gameplay simply doesn't do it for me because I am accustomed to fighting games where you have to make decisions based off less than 3 frames of anticipation.
- it is a lie that the human eye can process only 11 frames at a time; if you train yourself enough you can recognize Ryu's crouching medium punch coming out based off animation which takes 3 frames from startup, active frames to the vulnerable frames where the arm is coming back into his body.
- so right off the bat, as a gamer, I am inherently uninterested in middle-ground actions like Dark Souls because their combat systems are, in my view, a poor man's fighting games. And I feel this comparison is valid because I have seen plenty of Dark Souls gamers talk about frames and the active and vulnerable portions of animations when talking DS games and all I can think is: goddamn if only these poor fools would play a fighting game they would understand that what they enjoy about DS can be experienced in a much purer way in other games!
- lastly, a lot of my anger towards non-turn based RPGs and RTwP and flat-out real-time RPGs comes from a decade of being lied to by the industry and by my peers. For the better part of a decade I was told repeatedly that the "best RPGs" were games like Fallout, Baldur's Gate, primitive middle-ground experiences like Underworld or Dungeon Master; so I have a lot of pent-up anger that comes out whenever I see people dismissing turn-based RPGs and instead praising RPGs for things that are unrelated to the combat.
- Combat, or as Planescape: Torment demonstrates whatever is analogous to conflict resolution in the game, is the primary way of interaction in an RPG and while that point is definitely arguable it is undeniably a realistic point to make or to "believe". I spent too many years playing RPGs with sub-par combat, i.e. sub-par gameplay, (Baldur's Gate, etc), and now that I have played RPGs that put the emphasis on the gameplay (combat/exploration/character-development) i sometimes lose the ability to engage in a rational discussion with a fellow poster who is still going through his or her "story/NPCs/quests" phase and who believe or find that the combat system and the exploration are ancillary facets to what makes an RPG an RPG.
- (for real lastly now) yes, I am fully aware of war-gaming and yes, a lot of people tell me herp derp if combat is all you care about go play PANZER GENERALS or something like that; and I have answered that before many times with the answer that when I say "combat" I mean the entire confluence of building a party, managing RESOURCES such as deep, complex spell systems, comprehensive itemization that usually hinges on a properly limited inventory and most importantly of all: war-games do not feature the type of "exploration" that I enjoy along with my combat.
- There are some games that transcend like planescape: torment and Bloodlines for a very simple reason:
1) they placed the entire focus of the game's conflict resolution mechanics into their dialog and their exploration, and therefore I find them enjoyable even though they are not turn-based. I get the same thrill from the Ravel dialog tree and all of its choices, or when you lose an Eye during a conversation, as I do after a thrilling battle->looting->dungeon escape in Wizardry.
2) unlike other games which are also not turn-based, such as EotB or DM, or Underworld; both PS:T and Bloodlines do not rely on design elements culled from the Adventure Game genre in the form of clickity-click pixel-hunt puzzles which are always obtuse and always serve only to "gate-keep" the player from proper exploration.
- as for a game like Deus Ex: sure, if I was a teenager and just discovered it I would think it was a really cool game because of its story and atmosphere and its gameplay. however I am not a teenager and I have played almost every FPS you can think of up until the year 2004 (my last enjoyable FPS was Quake 4 back in, i think, 2003 or 2004); so to me a game like Deus Ex is simply a middle-ground FPS that does not satisfy neither the RPG itch nor the pure action itch
- Finally I have posited before that I find branching content or mutually exclusive content to be wholly unnecessary to a video game experience as they do not truly create legitimate emergent situations or create legitimate replay value. Legitimate replay value comes in the form of rock-solid system design (obviously with that catch-all terminology I include combat and exploration), as a video game player should re-play a video game because they ENJOY THE ACTUAL ACT OF PLAYING THROUGH THE GAME, AND *NOT* BECAUSE THEY WANT MERELY TO SEE STORY STATE A/B/C.
tl;dr: i am fully aware I need to dial it down a gram otherwise people will dismiss what I have to say, exactly like what happened to Scorpia.
BOOM SHAKALAKA MOTHERFUCKERS SEE HOW I MADE MY LONG ASS POST LOOP BACK TO ON-TOPIC :D
Infinitron
Zed Duke of Banville
Siobhan
felipepepe
look, I'm the first one to admit to my own faults. I, for many reasons that include both personal and "professional" ones, am an obsessive person. I am not good at being objective however I do believe I am very good at plumbing the depths of whatever genre/subject I have become obsessed with and dissecting it completely to see what makes it tick; and I am also the type of person who wants to make others see the same depth I have discovered in said genre/subject.
when I was a child and teenager I only played JRPGs (i grew up with them) and I considered "western RPGs" to be non-RPGs. After all, they didn't feature "good stories". I was very fanatical about this.
during university and onwards, basically from 18-31, I discovered Fallout 1, table-top dungeons and dragons, and all of that good stuff; and guess what? they were a motherfucking revelation to me. Suddenly I discovered games that not only featured a "story" (my ability to discern good and bad narrative and writing had also obviously matured) but lo and behold, these games of the post-Fallout 1 "generation" also included deep system mechanics that (for the most part) served to create great gameplay, which is something sorely missing from almost all JRPGs.
I became extremely fanatical about the superiority of "western RPGs" and poo-poo'd all over JRPGs any chance I got. In fact, if you go back to my 2005-2007 posts, if you can sift through the gigantic amount of shit-posting I did, whenever I actually talked about RPGs it was to praise the superiority of choice and consequence: the RPG and to demerit any inherent value in JRPGs.
time passed, and I fell out of love with ALL RPGs. I feel like I have played everything there is to play and that the new RPGs coming out today, mostly the kickstarter ones, are banal-shit-boring games that while they may feature competent game-making (some of them) are definitely not anything to get excited about.
now I recently (six months or so) discovered the turn-based dungeon crawler via Wizardry and all of the years of being dissatisfied with the combat mechanics in RPGs and being dissatisfied with the control schemes have melted away because I finally realized that after all these years I am not looking for a good story or good NPCs in an RPG: i am looking primarily for exploration and for deep combat and deep party-building (with all of the facets that party-building entails such as class-systems and spell systems).
sometimes I forget that not every poster here has been playing every form of RPG for the better part of 30 years and has gone through every single phase and sub-genre in the realm of RPGs. I think the only sub-genre I have yet to go through is the pure war-gaming one as I am a very impatient person both in real life and in video games.
(yet another reason I love so much blobber-style turn-based combat; quick, deep, meaningful, both abstract and tactical at the same time; the perfect melding of unit management with ease-of-use compartmentalized into one single combat system/presentation).
I actually love a lot of non-turn based RPGs, and I consider Fallout: New Vegas for example to be one of my all-time favorite RPGs right up there now with Wizardry and Elminage and Fallout 1. Now here's me in a nutshell:
- I am all about the combat and the exploration. The combat has to be extreme, i.e. no middle-grounds. Either all action (F:NV), or all turn-based.
- RTwP, and the primitive (in my opinion) utilization of real time combat in a game like Eye of the Beholder or Legends of Grimrock , are middle-grounds that do not satisfy either my lust for pure action or for pure taking of turns.
- Another reason i am very dismissive of games like Dark Souls and its ilk, or a game like Daggerfall or Morrowind, (and yes I am fully aware that F:NV is the child of those games), is because I am a competitive person and competitive gamer.
- I play competitive billiards in real life and I play competitive Street Fighter / Fighting games when I'm not taking turns on an RPG. Something like Legends of Grimrock with its clickity-click combat and/or tango-of-death, or something like Dark Souls with its simplistic dodge-parry-interrupt gameplay simply doesn't do it for me because I am accustomed to fighting games where you have to make decisions based off less than 3 frames of anticipation.
- it is a lie that the human eye can process only 11 frames at a time; if you train yourself enough you can recognize Ryu's crouching medium punch coming out based off animation which takes 3 frames from startup, active frames to the vulnerable frames where the arm is coming back into his body.
- so right off the bat, as a gamer, I am inherently uninterested in middle-ground actions like Dark Souls because their combat systems are, in my view, a poor man's fighting games. And I feel this comparison is valid because I have seen plenty of Dark Souls gamers talk about frames and the active and vulnerable portions of animations when talking DS games and all I can think is: goddamn if only these poor fools would play a fighting game they would understand that what they enjoy about DS can be experienced in a much purer way in other games!
- lastly, a lot of my anger towards non-turn based RPGs and RTwP and flat-out real-time RPGs comes from a decade of being lied to by the industry and by my peers. For the better part of a decade I was told repeatedly that the "best RPGs" were games like Fallout, Baldur's Gate, primitive middle-ground experiences like Underworld or Dungeon Master; so I have a lot of pent-up anger that comes out whenever I see people dismissing turn-based RPGs and instead praising RPGs for things that are unrelated to the combat.
- Combat, or as Planescape: Torment demonstrates whatever is analogous to conflict resolution in the game, is the primary way of interaction in an RPG and while that point is definitely arguable it is undeniably a realistic point to make or to "believe". I spent too many years playing RPGs with sub-par combat, i.e. sub-par gameplay, (Baldur's Gate, etc), and now that I have played RPGs that put the emphasis on the gameplay (combat/exploration/character-development) i sometimes lose the ability to engage in a rational discussion with a fellow poster who is still going through his or her "story/NPCs/quests" phase and who believe or find that the combat system and the exploration are ancillary facets to what makes an RPG an RPG.
- (for real lastly now) yes, I am fully aware of war-gaming and yes, a lot of people tell me herp derp if combat is all you care about go play PANZER GENERALS or something like that; and I have answered that before many times with the answer that when I say "combat" I mean the entire confluence of building a party, managing RESOURCES such as deep, complex spell systems, comprehensive itemization that usually hinges on a properly limited inventory and most importantly of all: war-games do not feature the type of "exploration" that I enjoy along with my combat.
- There are some games that transcend like planescape: torment and Bloodlines for a very simple reason:
1) they placed the entire focus of the game's conflict resolution mechanics into their dialog and their exploration, and therefore I find them enjoyable even though they are not turn-based. I get the same thrill from the Ravel dialog tree and all of its choices, or when you lose an Eye during a conversation, as I do after a thrilling battle->looting->dungeon escape in Wizardry.
2) unlike other games which are also not turn-based, such as EotB or DM, or Underworld; both PS:T and Bloodlines do not rely on design elements culled from the Adventure Game genre in the form of clickity-click pixel-hunt puzzles which are always obtuse and always serve only to "gate-keep" the player from proper exploration.
- as for a game like Deus Ex: sure, if I was a teenager and just discovered it I would think it was a really cool game because of its story and atmosphere and its gameplay. however I am not a teenager and I have played almost every FPS you can think of up until the year 2004 (my last enjoyable FPS was Quake 4 back in, i think, 2003 or 2004); so to me a game like Deus Ex is simply a middle-ground FPS that does not satisfy neither the RPG itch nor the pure action itch
- Finally I have posited before that I find branching content or mutually exclusive content to be wholly unnecessary to a video game experience as they do not truly create legitimate emergent situations or create legitimate replay value. Legitimate replay value comes in the form of rock-solid system design (obviously with that catch-all terminology I include combat and exploration), as a video game player should re-play a video game because they ENJOY THE ACTUAL ACT OF PLAYING THROUGH THE GAME, AND *NOT* BECAUSE THEY WANT MERELY TO SEE STORY STATE A/B/C.
tl;dr: i am fully aware I need to dial it down a gram otherwise people will dismiss what I have to say, exactly like what happened to Scorpia.
BOOM SHAKALAKA MOTHERFUCKERS SEE HOW I MADE MY LONG ASS POST LOOP BACK TO ON-TOPIC :D
Last edited:
I disagree.
DS had no fog of war and no grid to help with the turn based combat. And it was quite unbalanced. Very easy for most of the game; so much that you (or I at least) didn't bother to learn all the spells properly, and then the final battle is brutal.
Also, on a world so hot and dry, where body water is your life, so to speak, water as a resources plays no role, so the setting was partly wasted.
A good game, but not as good as the Gold Box or IE games.
pippin
Guest
Dark Sun has the added value of using the Dark Sun setting. Sadly sometimes we have to take what we get.
Serves them right. Traps are huge faggotry and a dirty exploitation of game's limitations. When you are railroaded into crossing a minefield, it makes all the sense in the world to charm some local wildlife into clearing the way for you, and if that gives a stroke to your DM, he had it coming.
animlboogy
Learned
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2015
- Messages
- 122
sfV is balls. I never imagined I would be one of those that always went: WHY IN MY DAY WE PLAYED REAL STREET FIGHTER, etc; but SF5 is an unbelievably step backwards in depth and complexity and sheer breadth of options from SF4 Ultra...
I'd just like to point out that that massive all of text/rant was twice the size of a review for the CRPG Book :3
Lonely Vazdru
Pimp my Title
I sincerely hate to rain on your parade, but as an older fuck on these boards, I must say that after so many "again" (number varies according to your love for each game) you really start to wonder if you'll make it. So if some actually good new stuff could pop out every once in a while, I'd be grateful.
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 97,507
So "middle-ground" experiences are bad except when they aren't, eh.
pippin
Guest
I get what you're saying, but I guess I'm a different kind of person. I'll always return to the same games I played endlessly no matter what, even if it's longer than any other game. It's the stuff you grew up with after all. A similar thing happens to me with music, I'd download everything but every 6 months I still end up deleting everything I downloaded and return to the records I own physically, because those aremore important to me.
"I know what I like and I like what I know".
pippin
Guest
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2015
- Messages
- 11,925
It seems you also have yet to experience an exploration-focused phase, where you'll learn to praise Dungeon Master and its derivatives, The Stygian Abyss and its derivatives, and Morrowind (but not Morrowind's derivatives except F:NV).
The pinnacle of RPG combat occurs in tactical turn-based games like Pool of Radiance, where positioning adds levels of complexity that are absent in the more simplistic blobber combat of Wizardry-derivatives. Perhaps one day you'll become patient enough to undergo a phase of devotion to true turn-based tactical combat, and then dump on Wizardry-derivatives for their simplistic middle-ground concessions.
That's my biggest complain about blobbers - often there's more RNG than tactics in who the enemies will attack, and the front row/back row formation ends up limiting your party composition choices.
cherry blossom
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2013
- Messages
- 1,258
Only a shit deals in absolutes.
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2013
- Messages
- 12,803
cherry blossom
The pinnacle of RPG combat occurs in tactical turn-based games like Pool of Radiance, where positioning adds levels of complexity that are absent in the more simplistic blobber combat of Wizardry-derivatives. Perhaps one day you'll become patient enough to undergo a phase of devotion to true turn-based tactical combat, and then dump on Wizardry-derivatives for their simplistic middle-ground concessions.
Is there a turn-based tactical RPG that also has different attack modes for the same weapon, it's one of the features I love from my recent playthrough of W6 (and currently W7) and I don't remember seeing this anywhere else
Jrpgfan
Erudite
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2016
- Messages
- 2,023
cherry blossom
The pinnacle of RPG combat occurs in tactical turn-based games like Pool of Radiance, where positioning adds levels of complexity that are absent in the more simplistic blobber combat of Wizardry-derivatives. Perhaps one day you'll become patient enough to undergo a phase of devotion to true turn-based tactical combat, and then dump on Wizardry-derivatives for their simplistic middle-ground concessions.
Is there a turn-based tactical RPG that also has different attack modes for the same weapon, it's one of the features I love from my recent playthrough of W6 (and currently W7) and I don't remember seeing this anywhere else
JA2, Silent Storm.
Natuk.
Fowyr
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2009
- Messages
- 7,671
Dragon Wars.
Wayward Son
Fails to keep valuable team members alive
I believe AoD does.
hoverdog
dog that is hovering, Wastelands Interactive
Fallouts, Jagged Alliance, even some weapons in Wasteland 2
V_K
Arcane
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