Incline The List of Incline (Now with a poll)

[FeelTheRads]

even if what they're doing is coddling bad players.

What are bad players?

 

[Infinitron]

It's clear that combat is the core gameplay and nearly everything else supplements that.

Combat is the "core gameplay" in essentially all CRPGs. They differ in how much prominence they give the non-combat elements DESPITE the dominance of the combat element.

Regardless, I disagree with your assessment of the skill list. It seems full of non-combaty goodness to me. And even if it wasn't, that still wouldn't be a good way to determine how much non-combat gameplay a game has. PS:T doesn't have any (non-Thief) skills at all.

 

[Roguey]

even if what they're doing is coddling bad players.

What are bad players?

People who are bad at playing games. Bioware's core audience from the looks of things.

Regardless, I disagree with your assessment of the skill list. It seems full of non-combaty goodness to me. And even if it wasn't, that still wouldn't be a good way to determine how much non-combat gameplay a game has. PS:T doesn't have any (non-Thief) skills at all.

Crafting and a whole of lot of "use skill x on object y" stuff. Torment had a lot walking around and talking to people (as did the Fallouts). PoE has two large cities where you'll likely be able to do that as well.

 

[tuluse]

Do you consider the core gameplay of Fallout to be combat?

 

[Infinitron]

Crafting and a whole of lot of "use skill x on object y" stuff.

And three dialogue skills. Four if you include Leadership. Five if you include Bartering. Six if you include the backer skill.

 

[FeelTheRads]

People who are bad at playing games. Bioware's core audience from the looks of things.

Ah, like Sawyer's target audience. Got it.

 

[Roguey]

Do you consider the core gameplay of Fallout to be combat?

Yes. So does Josh.

And three dialogue skills. Four if you include Leadership. Five if you include Bartering. Six if you include the backer skill.

Dialogue skills are trash, thus spoke Sawyerthustra.

Ah, like Sawyer's target audience. Got it.

Josh and Bioware handle bad players in very different ways.

 

[Infinitron]

Dialogue skills are trash, thus spoke Sawyerthustra.

Who cares? They're still non-combat skills that imply significant non-combat gameplay.

Also, if dialogue skills are out, "use skill x on object y" skills are out, crafting is out...what non-combat skills do you approve of, exactly?

 

[FeelTheRads]

Josh does so I do too because I can't think for myself.

Fixed.

Josh and Bioware handle bad players in very different ways.

Changing the subject, I see.

But no, they don't. They're both about making them accessible to everybody.

 

[Bitcher1]

Also, if dialogue skills are out, "use skill x on object y" skills are out, crafting is out...what non-combat skills do you approve of, exactly?

I'm guessing the ones which come with a minigame.
BTW: it sure is fun watching you two uber-stalkers bumping heads with each other.

 

[tuluse]

Sawyer said he doesn't like social skills, I don't think he made an argument that they were objectively bad.

 

[tuluse]

Do you consider the core gameplay of Fallout to be combat?

Yes. So does Josh.

Here's the problem. If you compared Fallout and a game like BG2, and you say their core gameplay is combat. BG2 blows away Fallout.

Yet Fallout still has something going for it, which can make a person like it more than BG2.

So just comparing core gameplay to core gameplay doesn't seem like a useful measure to me. Unless Fallout's core gameplay wasn't combat.

 

[Roguey]

Who cares? They're still non-combat skills that imply significant non-combat gameplay.

Temple of Elemental Evil also had dialogue skills.

Also, if dialogue skills are out, "use skill x on object y" skills are out, crafting is out...what non-combat skills do you approve of, exactly?

I do enjoy stealth, which Wasteland 2 has, but since it's a party-based game it's more of a combat stealth to get into a better situation than a "memorize patterns and sneak past these patrols" kind of stealth. Perhaps it has areas like that, but I doubt it.

They're both about making them accessible to everybody.

There are different ways of doing that.

Sawyer said he doesn't like social skills, I don't think he made an argument that they were objectively bad.

He says they're objectively bad. He wants to marginalize them into the dust bin.
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/62...wyer-at-iron-tower-studio/page-6#entry1288404

Speech as a skill is the thing that I think produces the most quasi-/metagaming. Attribute/ability score checks tend to not produce the same problem since you can often be more egalitarian about what attributes are checked and how often. With a Speech skill (or equivalent), its whole raison d'être is to gain advantage in conversation. That's not true even for stats like Charisma or Intelligence in D&D.

Here's the problem. If you compared Fallout and a game like BG2, and you say their core gameplay is combat. BG2 blows away Fallout.

Yet Fallout still has something going for it, which can make a person like it more than BG2.

So just comparing core gameplay to core gameplay doesn't seem like a useful measure to me. Unless Fallout's core gameplay wasn't combat.

Fallout is mediocre combat with great death animations/descriptions (all BG2 has is chunking), bad stealth, "use x on y" stuff, and a whole lot of exploring, looting/buying/selling, and talking which I don't consider gameplay because there's no test in it. It's interacting with an environment. It's more fun to interact with Fallout's environment than it is with BG2's but that's not gameplay.

 

[tuluse]

Fallout is mediocre combat with great death animations/descriptions (all BG2 has is chunking), bad stealth, "use x on y" stuff, and a whole lot of exploring, looting/buying/selling, and talking which I don't consider gameplay because there's no test in it. It's interacting with an environment. It's more fun to interact with Fallout's environment than it is with BG2's but that's not gameplay.

Then what is it? Does this mean adventure games don't have gameplay?

Edit: I've been drawn into an argument I didn't mean to have.

My point was this: Fallout has things about it that make it a more enjoyable experience than BG2, in my opinion. Yet it has worse core gameplay, as you define it. So this tells me core gameplay is not the end-all be-all of gaming.

 

[set]

The 'game' of Fallout lies in getting the water chip before the timer runs out. This is why to me, New Vegas was less of a game. Sure, it had better gunplay than FO3 and it was a little less clunky than killing rats in FO1, but there was never any urgency. There was some tension in the very very beginning if you had hardcore mode on, because you had to get your rations in order, but by the second major settlement you're swimming in bobby pins, cram, and nuka cola.

I'm not sure if there will be any external pressures in Wasteland 2, but they've already talked about certain timers existing for saving towns or visiting places. Will PE have time-sensitive content? Will you feel an urgency or tension while dungeon crawling? That's what I liked about FO1, was the sense of survival, even if it was lacking in that game as well.

I spent more time in New Vegas looting bodies than I was... well, I mean, in New Vegas, there's almost no actual player authorship. Yes, you can side with X, Y, and Z, and there are some neat little details here and there- but none of the quests or actions you make impact anything. At least in FO1, telling somebody you were from a vault and you were looking for a waterchip would lower the amount of time you had left to find one.

 

[Infinitron]

Temple of Elemental Evil also had dialogue skills.

You're going in circles, hon. First you said you can tell Wasteland 2 won't have significant non-combat gameplay according to its skill list, now you're saying can't tell what sort of gameplay a game will have according to its skill list, using TTOEE as an example.

I guess you're out of useful things to say, so we're probably done here.

 

[Roguey]

Then what is it? Does this mean adventure games don't have gameplay?

The gameplay in adventure games is solving puzzles.

You're going in circles, hon. First you said you can tell Wasteland 2 won't have significant non-combat gameplay according to its skill list, now you're saying can't tell what sort of gameplay a game will have according to its skill list, using TTOEE as an example.

I guess you're out of useful things to say, so we're probably done here.

I don't consider talking to people gameplay regardless of whether there's a skill attached to it or not.

I'm sure there will be plenty of people to talk to, but they didn't seem all that interesting in the two videos released.

 

[Lady_Error]

Is this turning into a new Roguey trolling PE discussion megathread?

 

[Grunker]

even if what they're doing is coddling bad players.

What are bad players?

People who suck at video games?

 

[SwiftCrack]

Poor Lords of Bulimia.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

This thread got lulz quick. Back on topic...

Should Paper Sorcerer been added to this list? It seems to have dropped under most of our radars from its Kickstarter to release, but the consensus seems to be that it is a pretty solid old school CRPG:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/paper-sorcerer-released.87539/

http://www.ultrarunaway.com/

This would give 2013 at least a little more incline to talk about.

Cleve's superdemo is also turning heads, and though it isn't the full game, it seems to provide 30-40 hours of play on its own, which easily beats out most fully released CRPGs of today.

 

[Roguey]

Hours of gameplay is a meaningless metric.

 

[Lady_Error]

Hours of gameplay is a meaningless metric.

When I hear the word "meaningless", something else comes to mind.

Of course, it is supposed to mean hours of fun gameplay. Shadowrun had fun gameplay, but it turned out too short.

 

[Roguey]

I've never played a RPG with dozens of hours of consistently fun gameplay.

 

[Lady_Error]

In before: "fun is a meaningless metric"