SPECIAL sucks, Roguey vs aleph on Arcanum, etc

[laclongquan]

Let's make thing clear: fallout SPECIAL system is not bad. You generally dont have much way to exploit the bugs in the system (which is different from the bugs in the game engine).

If you need some bad system I invite you to look at Baldur's Gate.

Cost-free magical system where you have infinite magic just by sleeping to regain lost spells. WTF? Fallout you at least need bullets to shoot at people. The abundance of bullets is a matter of game engine, fiddling it a bit and you can reduce/increase that resource but no matter what you need some resource to fight. BG's one sleep and the most powerful combatant can keep fighting inexpensively.

 

[Delterius]

The abundance of sleeping areas is a matter of game engine. Fiddle with it a bit and you can reduce/increase that resource, but no matter what you need some resource to fight.

 

[laclongquan]

Repeat what I say doesnt mean you can cover for the bug in the system. One sleep, which generally cost little and no modder ever has the gut to make it cost more, and a magician can regain her arsenal of spells which can be very considerable AND free. We are not even talking about the cheap as dirt arrows which goes against the fact that bullets always cost in Fallout.

Do you ever see much mod with expensive sleep? Name it?

 

[Roguey]

So Sawyer is the messiah again? I think I'm not up-to-date on Roguey lore.

He's RPG Moses.

Hard games are bad.

Depends on why it's hard. A large part of Wasteland 2's "difficulty" for scrubs is that character creation is a difficulty slider.

 

[Delterius]

Depends on why it's hard. A large part of Wasteland 2's "difficulty" for scrubs is that character creation is a difficulty slider.

Unlike most good games, where character creation is choose your own flavour, as long as its vanilla.

 

[Average Manatee]

Beauty sucks in Arcanum, but having one stat be a dump stat is hardly enough to consider a whole system bad. Classes in PoE still have dump stats, PoE is bad for other reasons.

Arcanum, super model background. You're bad at fighting, bad at talking, but hey your beauty's sky high. Guess what, beauty's a dump stat. Choosing this background makes the game harder for no real benefit.

Chris Avellone's let's play. Guy puts all his points into talking, then keeps picking fights.

One should not take Avellone's LP as an example. He's a writer who has heard all about how Arcanum was such a good RPG and had to play it on camera. It's easy to believe he assumed that people wouldn't want to see an int 4 str 20 orc who just hits everything like its Diablo, and that he assumed the game would be like PS:T or something*. Real players, even dumb ones, are almost never going to put 100% of their points into diplomacy, at most they'll make a generalist for which a good portion of their points are wasted. Furthermore people not playing on camera are capable of restarting the game if something looks bad in the first 10 mins of a build, or of savescumming to try out new things like running past enemies to get to a town and see if you can recruit more party members.

It's also hard to say that the Arcanum system was bad because it's impossible to delineate the line between what is the Arcanum system and what is the Arcanum balance/world/NPCs/etc. I'd definitely say that Beauty could have been folded in to Charisma, and probably another stat combination should have happened (dex + per maybe), but beyond that I like the highly non-linear character advancement system. Ideally I'd say Arcanum's system would be best suited for a much more highly open world game, with more specialized/hard countery enemies/situations/abilities such that your character build would determine what order you would be able to complete areas.

As for SPECIAL in FO1/2, it has a very clearly Bad™ decision in the form of how critical hits work (also with how Armor was so OP such that critical hits were the only option). Skills were also kind of fucked up (going up to 300 but only gun skills above around 100 mattered, and 100 was easy to reach for most of the main skills and the magazine boosters easily covered the rest). FNV fixed all of this pretty well, if a new Fallout TB iso game was made I'd want to to draw more from FNV than FO1/2

*PS:T btw is amazing because most people on their first time though spend many/most of their points in the "dump" stats of STR/DEX/CON, then on a replay gain so much value out of INT/WIS/CHA.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Depends on why it's hard. A large part of Wasteland 2's "difficulty" for scrubs is that character creation is a difficulty slider.

Best way to put it.

 

[Delterius]

Repeat what I say doesnt mean you can cover for the bug in the system. One sleep, which generally cost little and no modder ever has the gut to make it cost more, and a magician can regain her arsenal of spells which can be very considerable AND free. We are not even talking about the cheap as dirt arrows which goes against the fact that bullets always cost in Fallout.

Do you ever see much mod with expensive sleep? Name it?

Its easier to just not rest than to mod-in no rest zones, or gold cost for resting. Point was that both games have a problem with their content.

 

[Roguey]

Beauty sucks in Arcanum, but having one stat be a dump stat is hardly enough to consider a whole system bad. Classes in PoE still have dump stats, PoE is bad for other reasons.

That's one of many problems Arcanum has, e.g. its xp per hit system, dexterity being the end-all be-all, stealth going from practically useless to practically-invisible and its terrible way of presenting feedback, guns and technology in general being so much effort for so little reward compared to magic.

Real players, even dumb ones, are almost never going to put 100% of their points into diplomacy, at most they'll make a generalist for which a good portion of their points are wasted.

The complaints I've seen from people who go full diplomat for Bloodlines, then hit a brickwall in the end game tell me otherwise.

The mistakes he makes can't all be excused by his recording. He didn't try to understand the UI at all and just clicks everywhere, he missed the part where he was supposed to go the map screen and travel to the town from there, he equipped his good armor on a shopkeeper (twice I think), and he kept dying to those bridge bandits until he finally won rather than explore the dialogue tree options to pass by them (partially because lying goes against his character concept and he refuses to budge from it).

 

[Average Manatee]

That's one of many problems Arcanum has, e.g. its xp per hit system, dexterity being the end-all be-all, stealth going from practically useless to practically-invisible and its terrible way of presenting feedback, guns and technology in general being so much effort for so little reward compared to magic.

Most of those are balance issues, not systematic issues.

The complaints I've seen from people who go full diplomat for Bloodlines, then hit a brickwall in the end game tell me otherwise.

That's totally different since Bloodlines both specifically provides for a full diplomat build for the first half of the game and doesn't allow other party members to make up for deficiencies.

The mistakes he makes can't all be excused by his recording. He didn't try to understand the UI at all and just clicks everywhere, he missed the part where he was supposed to go the map screen and travel to the town from there, he equipped his good armor on a shopkeeper (twice I think), and he kept dying to those bridge bandits until he finally won rather than explore the dialogue tree options to pass by them (partially because lying goes against his character concept and he refuses to budge from it).

These are just issues of rushing because you don't want to sit around on camera looking dumb while you think about things. Like 90% of video LPs have this problem, which is why they are bad.

 

[coldcrow]

I am not one of those, but I heard that some people like the challnge of gimping their game. But gimping is only fun if you get something out of it, e.g. low int retard talk, +100 reaction in cities, blabla. If everything is balanced it becomes much more difficult to play an interesting low power build, since there are fewer dump characteristics.

 

[Dzupakazul]

Most of those are balance issues, not systematic issues.

Actually, I'd like to (humbly) inquire: how do we make the distinction?
Anyone who has played Fallout knows that Charisma is utterly useless and makes up maybe 4-5 stat checks that you'll be very hard-pressed to find or notice. Is it a systematic or a balance issue?
It seems like the only game that has managed to make Charisma solid is, ironically, Fallout: Tactics, and that's for a rather arbitrary reason in that it gives you better crewmembers earlier; every other Fallout game, arguably, doesn't give Charisma any real edge, and too often it can be rendered utterly irrelevant despite ideas like Nerve, companion limit, etc. It always seemed to me that there was a design pitfall with the SPECIAL system, because of good dialogue options being entirely reliant on the Intelligence stat. The cookie-cutter, holy tag-trifecta of Weapon/Lockpick/Speech is almost always associated with the hideous, shy geek (ergo, I 7-10 C 2) who retains a silver tongue in spite of being repulsive. I can imagine this working with stuff like deducing and explaining Louie Salvatore's motive in poisoning Richard Wright, but Charisma should definitely mean a lot more when you're making up bullshit like the whole Chosen Onealitis thing you scare the Vault City slavedriver with.

And how does it compare to the issue with the Strength stat, which isn't relevant enough even for melee characters and putting actual points into it is rendered completely moot with the existence of (A)PA? That sounds more like a balance issue, on the other hand. But, I admittedly do not have a great grasp on this.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Most of those are balance issues, not systematic issues.



That's totally different since Bloodlines both specifically provides for a full diplomat build for the first half of the game and doesn't allow other party members to make up for deficiencies.



These are just issues of rushing because you don't want to sit around on camera looking dumb while you think about things. Like 90% of video LPs have this problem, which is why they are bad.

Re Bloodlines: that's mostly just a matter of the game taking a sharp turn at the sewers. Full diplomacy is extremely effective early, and when the model of 'urban dialogue/questing with the occasional short dungeon crawl' continues through downtown, it's natural to think that it will continue for the whole game.

PS:T and others have handled that by bombarding the player with messages during char-gen and load-screens saying explicitly that there is no way to avoid substantial combat, and all player builds need a strong combat element. Ironically, that was unnecessary for PS:T, because by the time you're without a party, you're utterly godlike.

 

[Average Manatee]

Actually, I'd like to (humbly) inquire: how do we make the distinction?

Like I said, there's not a clear line, but I'd argue that most of Arcanum's issues fall on the other side. Fallout basically requires source code access to modify the crit system and then a complete overhaul of all weapons/armor to work well. Arcanum's issues of Harm being OP, early guns being UP, etc, are all specific issues rather than an overall overriding issue. Arcanum generally had a good system but with rough edges and didn't have good encounter design to let it be utilized.

Anyone who has played Fallout knows that Charisma is utterly useless and makes up maybe 4-5 stat checks that you'll be very hard-pressed to find or notice. Is it a systematic or a balance issue?
It seems like the only game that has managed to make Charisma solid is, ironically, Fallout: Tactics, and that's for a rather arbitrary reason in that it gives you better crewmembers earlier; every other Fallout game, arguably, doesn't give Charisma any real edge, and too often it can be rendered utterly irrelevant despite ideas like Nerve, companion limit, etc. It always seemed to me that there was a design pitfall with the SPECIAL system, because of good dialogue options being entirely reliant on the Intelligence stat. The cookie-cutter, holy tag-trifecta of Weapon/Lockpick/Speech is almost always associated with the hideous, shy geek (ergo, I 7-10 C 2) who retains a silver tongue in spite of being repulsive. I can imagine this working with stuff like deducing and explaining Louie Salvatore's motive in poisoning Richard Wright, but Charisma should definitely mean a lot more when you're making up bullshit like the whole Chosen Onealitis thing you scare the Vault City slavedriver with.

Speech + Charisma both being designed as the "diplomacy" stats has the same pitfall that Beauty/Charisma has in Arcanum, that its entirely up to your writers/designers/scripters/etc to use them correctly and invariably one is going to be used 90% of the time while the other lies worthless. It's hard to say that one should be removed but it's easy to see that its very, very hard to make work.

That said Charisma for a higher party limit worked well in Fallout 2. It's just the party members kind of sucked, dealing little damage since they weren't critting the eyes and often shooting you more often than not. But that's their fault, not Charisma's.

And how does it compare to the issue with the Strength stat, which isn't relevant enough even for melee characters and putting actual points into it is rendered completely moot with the existence of (A)PA? That sounds more like a balance issue, on the other hand. But, I admittedly do not have a great grasp on this.

Again, this is why the crit/armor/damage system/HP bloat is a systematic problem and half the balance problems in the game revolve around it. +5 damage from 10 STR is useless when non-crits deal 0 damage and crits instantly kill 20% of the time (end game enemies often taking way more than 5 melee crits to kill otherwise). Fix the initial problem so that aimed punches to the eyes aren't the only possible strategy to kill things and suddenly +5 damage isn't too bad when you are making 5 normal attacks a turn.

That said there's no reason Power Armor doesn't take you above 10 STR.

 

[laclongquan]

I like Charisma.

Several of Fallout 2 run is CHA runs.
My main character is Fallout Tactics is a Cha8 one.

Never thought CHA is a dump stat, or unneccessary, or weak. If you dont know how to play a CHA it just mean you are clueless on that type of character.

Before you "muh combat" I will remind you that a major use of CHA is to get companions so they fight for you.

 

[Shadenuat]

One should not take Avellone's LP as an example.

One should exactly do that. Guy makes a diplomatic character with high Beauty and Cha and picks fights, yet, with the use of companions (one of which can only be picked with character with high CHA), magical equipment and gadgets like grenades, he still goes past Shrouded Hills, even if he savescummed like shit.
This is the same as someone playing Fallout 2 as little girl with 2 points in all stats or a character who kills everyone up to Enclave troopers by throwing rocks and flashlights in their eyes.

 

[Dzupakazul]

Before you "muh combat" I will remind you that a major use of CHA is to get companions so they fight for you.

Taking Mentats twice gives you a bonus companion. If Charisma is uneven, wear shades while doing so and get another one. Get a charisma chip otherwise as well. Get Magnetic Personality if you really, really want more companions (level 6 perks aren't that great, and if you're serious about companion usage, it's at least worth considering even over great stuff like Bonus Move). There aren't that many companions, not many of them are very battle-efficient, and if you're playing (semi-)ironman style, you are likely to cycle through them throughout the gameplay, as they die easily. For efficiency, you can still play an "ugly" character (my current protagonist in a FO2 run has a Charisma of 4 for flavor reasons; I don't like being a full-on min-maxer, and she plays without Gifted, too) and be virtually exempt from cons of such a playstyle.

All other stats work in such a way that drugs enhancing them will work to improve your prowess greatly (except EN), but they're still a temporary resource and have to be counted as such; two Mentats, however, give you a permanent benefit that you might only have to "refresh" sometimes if you leave companions in place. Since the "meta" way to play is to be high IN and either high PE (snipers, shooters, etc.) or not reliant whatsoever on PE, keeping the stat as a Better Criticals requirement (meleers, biggunners perhaps), you don't need Mentats for any other reason. Temporary EN only gives benefits for applying for perks, LK can't be raised other than a one-time occassion that (semi-)ironman players might not want to risk, so hard points invested there are very efficient and wanted on many builds, temporary IN won't help you get skillpoints or good conversation options without some heavy metagaming. As such, CH doesn't require investing hard points into it at all; 5 companions is a very suboptimal playstyle (lots of waiting for their turns, little control over their actions in vanilla) and you'll be hard-pressed to find 5 companions who will stay relevant all the way into the Enclave; the "golden number" necessary for an enjoyable playstyle that employs a reasonable (or even maximum) number of companions doesn't even have to exceed CH=5.

 

[Black]

What's the bottom line of this thread?

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

What's the bottom line of this thread?

The usual : "My dick is bigger than yours", with the occasional mention of a mythical balanced condom that would fit us both.

 

[laclongquan]

Oh joy~ Waste a perk to get companion, joy~ Finding high level drug at early stage, joy~ Idiot!

I am certain that you have fun with your aggressive fugly of a character but I have my standard. My diplomat will goes past all doors with the charisma of Don Juan and finish quest with flair. Any idiot fugly stand in my way will die in an explosion done by my protectors~

 

[Black]

Hey now, low CHA doesn't mean you're ugly!

 

[Lord Andre]

People who play RPGs with "character concepts" should be sterilised on general principle. It's a fucking game not a masturbation contest.

It's really simple, a game has rules together with victory conditions and lose conditions. You read the fucking rules and you play to the best of your ability within those rules to achieve the victory condition and avoid the lose condition. Maybe you find the game interesting, maybe not, that's subjective, but to complain that a game isn't holding your balls exactly how you like it while you tug furiously on your penis, that's just... I hate people. People are cretins.

And before any retard points out the Role Playing part in RPG, go fuck yourself! I don't care what the shit is called. The genre evolved from tabletop wargames, not Faggot's first LARPing SIM. The rules are there because it's a role playing GAME, not a role playing "I'm day dreaming about shit I made up in my head where I'm an awesome special snowflake that can do no wrong".

So, fuck character concepts, fuck viable builds, fuck balance, fuck Sawyer, fuck Roguey, fuck laclongquan (who is one of the oldest retards on the codex and since times immemorial everyone ignores his insipid attempts at discussion because he's so fucking boring in his mediocre ramblings), fuck Infinitron for shilling, fuck Obsidian, fuck Bethesda, fuck Bioware, fuck George Lucas, fuck yourself !

 

[laclongquan]

Sound like some skull desperately need some snuggle time with a harlot~

 

[Roguey]

Well, once D&D became more and more popular and you ran out of good storytellers for gamemasters, it devolved, in my mind, into the [talks with a lisp] "Well, I'm standing behind you and I've got a +3 sword, and I've got a slight advantage because my dexterity is a little higher", and they do complicated calculations, then once every five minutes, roll die, and say you win. Which I think it not roleplaying.

Role-playing isn’t about statistics or exploring randomly generated worlds of crate-filled buildings. It isn’t about random quests and combat encounters every sixteen steps. It isn’t even about +37 Swords of Instant Critical Hits that do Double Damage From Behind! Roleplaying is about giving players the freedom to act as they see fit, within the framework of a story we provide.

No need for a Sawyer quote since I'm sure I've posted it more than enough.

 

[Shadenuat]

Roleplaying is not this or that, it is a hobby of many games and systems, CRPGs just struggle to simulate the creativity of real people, so number crunching is a bigger part of them and it is 1's and 0's that simulate your options, but it may be as fun part as any other. Roleplaying without numbers it not a more "noble" roleplaying, while playing characters without numbers is not necessarily without challenge since you may need to make tough decisions in the story (for example, the difficulty in figuring out how not to end up dead in AoD is placed both on the player's choices and his ability to create viable builds).