Neverwhere
Novice
I have been wondering whether this forum really needs any of my nit-picking, when everything I want to say has already been expressed by others who are far better at this sort of thing than I ever hope to be.
I guess my conclusion was no, but since it won’t matter, here I go anyway:
This is about what has been referred to as the “dumbing down” of combat. I will not contest the fact that combat has been getting easier and easier ever since I started playing CRPGs in the 80s. The reasons are blatantly obvious: games such as the gold box series were designed for nerds such as myself, who would go on to brag in school after beating Tyranthraxus the other day. In return, I would get acknowledging nods from the other nerds, who had spent their whole day trying to get their hands on that necklace of missiles in Valjevo Castle’s Temple of Bane – in vain. Nowadays, on the other hand, games are designed for… well, for people who spend equally much time in front of their computers (perhaps even more), but who simply do not care for something as old-fashioned as a good “challenge”. Games are designed for those with a short attention span – instant gratification guaranteed.
But has combat really been “dumbed down”? In the old days, did battles present you with a myriad of options, allowing you to twiddle and twitch the odds in your favour? Let’s have a look at what probably was the prime of 80s tactical combat:
Truth is, options in the gold box games were few. Your fighter could attack, or move and attack, or guard; your mage and priests could throw spells; and your thief was useless (as is usual in any D&D-based game). The difficulty of combat had little to do with tactical micro-management of combat options. The real problem was of a strategic nature: the gold box games threw monsters at you in unbelievable numbers, and the difficulty level of your average random encounter could well approach that of a boss fight (something that, apparently, even codexers considered annoying when it was repeated much later on in Arcanum). Combined with strict limitations on resting, the scarcity of healing potions, and the fact that - to my knowledge - pre-NWN D&D games did not feature “healing kits”, resource (in particular, spell) management became the key to success.
Another difficulty stemmed more from the limitations of the system than the intention of the designers. With enemies abundant, area effect spells were a neat trick to get out of trouble. But they also were tricky – since the game didn’t show you the threat area of the spell you wanted to cast, your battles often took a turn for the worse after your mage had grilled your front-line fighters. Fortunately, it didn’t take much trial error to find out that you only needed two spells to complete the gold box games: fireball and delayed blast fireball (which was implemented as a beefed-up standard fireball that exploded without there being any delay whatsoever). This solved the problem of trial and error, but again didn’t exactly contribute to an overload of combat options available to your party.
Now, the gold box series aside, I do not think any other games of the time actually offered a combat system which would in any way compare to the complexity of modern CRPGs.
I was never much of an Ultima buff, but given that their game design put less of an emphasis on the hack’n’slash aspects, I doubt that they even came close to the gold box games in terms of combat complexity. Also, none of the Bard’s Tale, Might & Magic or Wizardry games offered much in terms of tactical depth – they didn’t even have combat screen where you could position your party! What they did have, though, were endless waves of enemies…
Nowadays, even a game like Oblivion, with its botched combat system, gives you a couple of power attacks that you can use to knock down or disarm your enemies. This pales, of course, before WoW, which allows you to chose from a pretty impressive array of combat skills which even seem to make a difference (as some monsters have meaningful resistances to, say, physical damage, while others shrug off your arcane attacks). And I deliberately leave out tactics-heavy games like ToEE, because quite frankly I can’t remember anything except that it was pretty darn complex.
So where do modern games get it wrong? I think the main problem is, quite simply, that combat is way too easy. Even if you crank difficulty levels up to the highest setting, it will hardly take you more than two or three reloads to finish the “epic boss battle” and complete the game. Against this backdrop, all the options included in modern game designs create some sort of faux-complexity, while what they really do is simply provide the kids with another 20 different ways of “killin for lewt”. But for someone who loves a challenge, what’s the point in choosing between NWN2’s zillions of feats if my party can carve its way through the enemy hordes with hardly an intervention on my part? Why should I bother to spend points on any of the fighting styles in Jade Empire when there’s really no need to do so? It’s all choice without consequence, except for the flashy effects showing on your screen.
Another factor is that it is way too easy to recover from climatic battles. Back in the old days, you beat the bad boss, all fine and hooray, but you couldn’t rest until you had made it out of the dungeon. Since your spells were depleted at that point and as you had used your two remaining healing potions to get your fighters out of the battle alive, a random encounter of otherwise moderate difficulty could be quite a challenge. Today, on the other hand, games either feature regeneration rates that are downright silly, or allow you to set up camp in the middle of the boss’ lair with no adverse consequence. And that’s all good, since you don’t want to miss out on any one of the fourty-plus options you have to smite your weakish enemies in the next encounter.
So I guess the point to this rant, if there is any, is that designers should throw more enemies at us again, or at least make it more difficult to recover from fights. This, much rather than including more and more fighting styles or yet another useless spell, will serve to make combat a much more involving affair than it is now. A couple of less dated games, in particular the Icewind Dales, did a pretty good job at that, even though resting was far too easy. ToEE also featured a couple of battles where your party could get properly roughed up. But how likely is it that designers will risk alienating the masses, just because old farts like me like to reload their saved games a couple of times more? The market for that sort of fetishism seems to be quite limited these days. Well, maybe I’ll just use my imagination to make games more difficult – it’s all about role-playing anyway…
P.S.: While the “spirit eater” concept in MoTB sure approaches White Wolf-levels of gayness, I’m actually looking forward to that game – if resting really has some gameplay implications, the choices you make in developing your character might just be so much more meaningful…
I guess my conclusion was no, but since it won’t matter, here I go anyway:
This is about what has been referred to as the “dumbing down” of combat. I will not contest the fact that combat has been getting easier and easier ever since I started playing CRPGs in the 80s. The reasons are blatantly obvious: games such as the gold box series were designed for nerds such as myself, who would go on to brag in school after beating Tyranthraxus the other day. In return, I would get acknowledging nods from the other nerds, who had spent their whole day trying to get their hands on that necklace of missiles in Valjevo Castle’s Temple of Bane – in vain. Nowadays, on the other hand, games are designed for… well, for people who spend equally much time in front of their computers (perhaps even more), but who simply do not care for something as old-fashioned as a good “challenge”. Games are designed for those with a short attention span – instant gratification guaranteed.
But has combat really been “dumbed down”? In the old days, did battles present you with a myriad of options, allowing you to twiddle and twitch the odds in your favour? Let’s have a look at what probably was the prime of 80s tactical combat:
Truth is, options in the gold box games were few. Your fighter could attack, or move and attack, or guard; your mage and priests could throw spells; and your thief was useless (as is usual in any D&D-based game). The difficulty of combat had little to do with tactical micro-management of combat options. The real problem was of a strategic nature: the gold box games threw monsters at you in unbelievable numbers, and the difficulty level of your average random encounter could well approach that of a boss fight (something that, apparently, even codexers considered annoying when it was repeated much later on in Arcanum). Combined with strict limitations on resting, the scarcity of healing potions, and the fact that - to my knowledge - pre-NWN D&D games did not feature “healing kits”, resource (in particular, spell) management became the key to success.
Another difficulty stemmed more from the limitations of the system than the intention of the designers. With enemies abundant, area effect spells were a neat trick to get out of trouble. But they also were tricky – since the game didn’t show you the threat area of the spell you wanted to cast, your battles often took a turn for the worse after your mage had grilled your front-line fighters. Fortunately, it didn’t take much trial error to find out that you only needed two spells to complete the gold box games: fireball and delayed blast fireball (which was implemented as a beefed-up standard fireball that exploded without there being any delay whatsoever). This solved the problem of trial and error, but again didn’t exactly contribute to an overload of combat options available to your party.
Now, the gold box series aside, I do not think any other games of the time actually offered a combat system which would in any way compare to the complexity of modern CRPGs.
I was never much of an Ultima buff, but given that their game design put less of an emphasis on the hack’n’slash aspects, I doubt that they even came close to the gold box games in terms of combat complexity. Also, none of the Bard’s Tale, Might & Magic or Wizardry games offered much in terms of tactical depth – they didn’t even have combat screen where you could position your party! What they did have, though, were endless waves of enemies…
Nowadays, even a game like Oblivion, with its botched combat system, gives you a couple of power attacks that you can use to knock down or disarm your enemies. This pales, of course, before WoW, which allows you to chose from a pretty impressive array of combat skills which even seem to make a difference (as some monsters have meaningful resistances to, say, physical damage, while others shrug off your arcane attacks). And I deliberately leave out tactics-heavy games like ToEE, because quite frankly I can’t remember anything except that it was pretty darn complex.
So where do modern games get it wrong? I think the main problem is, quite simply, that combat is way too easy. Even if you crank difficulty levels up to the highest setting, it will hardly take you more than two or three reloads to finish the “epic boss battle” and complete the game. Against this backdrop, all the options included in modern game designs create some sort of faux-complexity, while what they really do is simply provide the kids with another 20 different ways of “killin for lewt”. But for someone who loves a challenge, what’s the point in choosing between NWN2’s zillions of feats if my party can carve its way through the enemy hordes with hardly an intervention on my part? Why should I bother to spend points on any of the fighting styles in Jade Empire when there’s really no need to do so? It’s all choice without consequence, except for the flashy effects showing on your screen.
Another factor is that it is way too easy to recover from climatic battles. Back in the old days, you beat the bad boss, all fine and hooray, but you couldn’t rest until you had made it out of the dungeon. Since your spells were depleted at that point and as you had used your two remaining healing potions to get your fighters out of the battle alive, a random encounter of otherwise moderate difficulty could be quite a challenge. Today, on the other hand, games either feature regeneration rates that are downright silly, or allow you to set up camp in the middle of the boss’ lair with no adverse consequence. And that’s all good, since you don’t want to miss out on any one of the fourty-plus options you have to smite your weakish enemies in the next encounter.
So I guess the point to this rant, if there is any, is that designers should throw more enemies at us again, or at least make it more difficult to recover from fights. This, much rather than including more and more fighting styles or yet another useless spell, will serve to make combat a much more involving affair than it is now. A couple of less dated games, in particular the Icewind Dales, did a pretty good job at that, even though resting was far too easy. ToEE also featured a couple of battles where your party could get properly roughed up. But how likely is it that designers will risk alienating the masses, just because old farts like me like to reload their saved games a couple of times more? The market for that sort of fetishism seems to be quite limited these days. Well, maybe I’ll just use my imagination to make games more difficult – it’s all about role-playing anyway…
P.S.: While the “spirit eater” concept in MoTB sure approaches White Wolf-levels of gayness, I’m actually looking forward to that game – if resting really has some gameplay implications, the choices you make in developing your character might just be so much more meaningful…
