entertainer
Arbiter
yo niggas you need a little respect for the man who wants to bring THE RPG to yo mammas
Emotional Vampire said:Kaanyrvhok said:I dont understand the double standard between RPGs and other genres. The 2D Ninja Gaidens were near impossible but the last two weren't that tough. There was one boss in the first one that required close to 10 mulligans but I have seen worse. If you compare the mainstream multi platform RPGs do other genres the RPGs are much easier. They are easier than platformers, shooters, whatever sports too. Who doesnt expect to die a bunch of times playing a Mario game? I dont know how you could possibly think that we have anything close to too many deaths in RPGs.
It comes from the fact that RPGs are half skill and half pure fucking luck you slack-jawed junkslut.
When you get killed in Ninja Gaiden, or Mario, or Modern Warfare 3 you get killed because you suck. You either press the wrong buttons, or you press them at the wrong times. You would live if you blocked, used weaker but faster attack, jumped, saw the mushroom, shoot the guy with the RPG first, or hide your stupid ass and not try to be a cool guy. Either way, the fault is 100% on your side.
When you get killed in an RPG, it's not. If you have 50% chance to hit a monster, you have a 50% chance to hit a monster. You might hit him ten times in a row, or you could critical fucking miss and impale yourself on your own dick. So with your 50% hit chance, monster's 25% hit chance, your damage being 1-4 and monster's damage being 2-19 you get a shitload of possible outcomes ranging from flawless victory to death in first turn, all of them completely unrelated to how good of a player you are.
Being "good" in an RPG is just using as many mechanic elements to your advantage as you can: blessing yourself, using a ranged weapon, taking high ground which adds +6 to your dex, grinding till you outlevel enemies 2:1, whatever. But no matter what you do, all you're doing is simply altering a virtual die roll. You're merely decreasing your chance of failure. When it comes to results, everything still depends on a script generating pseudo-random numbers.
That's why I always laugh at people praising "hard" RPGs like Wizardry(A ninja did a sneak attack crit and killed my healer instantly! And half of my group was already poisoned so I got wiped out! AWESOME!) or SMT(I had to try this boss fight seventeen times, but finally, after completely remaking my party setup and grinding for few hours for some elemental equips and potions, I did it with only the main hero left standing with 17HP! AWESOME!). Essentially, these "Hard" games are no different from level-scalling bullshit, these are also designed to "keep you on your toes, always"... hm, did I discover another Codex hypocrisy?
Raghar said:Story is important in RPG, either implicit or as a strong narrative. A RPG without story, or/and consistent game world, would be much more closer a hack and slash game, than a properly done interactive art.
Castanova said:You cannot remove stats from an RPG but you can very easily remove story. I understand you and EV feel the need to denigrate hack and slash RPGs for whatever reason but claiming they're not RPGs at all is the wrong way to go about it.
Vault Dweller said:http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/11/make-your-game-easy-then-make-it-easier.html
This does not bode well.My worst instinct has to do with game difficulty. I'm a hardcore nerd of the old school, and I'm not truly satisfied unless a game is really difficult. Other people, also known as "regular humans," do not, in fact, want this.
I used to succinctly describe my views about game difficulty thus:
People will forgive a game for being too hard. They will never forgive it for being too easy.
No. This is, in fact, completely, 100% opposite from the truth. A better summary of reality would be:
People will happily forgive a game for being too easy, because it makes them feel badass. If a game is too hard, they will get angry, ragequit, hold a grudge, and never buy your games again.
Video games are leisure time expressions of adolescent power fantasies. They should only be hard if players specifically request that they be hard.
After long reflection, here is my new rule for RPGs I write:
When a player is on the default difficult level, has built his or her characters poorly, and is playing straight through the main storyline with mediocre tactics, that player should almost never be killed.
I can almost hear the heads of hardcore gamers imploding with impotent nerdrage. But seriously. If you have a problem with this, I think you're getting a lot of your fun from making other people have less fun.
Of course, a game should have harder difficulty levels. And, if a player chooses to opt-in on higher difficulty, they should be seriously nasty. But, when played on the default difficulty, the game should be accessible to your mom or average eight-year old.
I'm about to release my next game, Avernum 6. And it doesn't live up to what I have learned. In fact, in parts, it gets downright tricky. But then I'm going to write an all-new game series, and I promise that it will be pretty easy on Normal difficulty.
And if you turn the difficulty up to Torment, well, I'll be gunning for you.
Oh, and one parting thought.
If your game is actually fun, killing the player won't make it more fun. But nothing sucks all of the fun out of a good game faster than repeated failure.
Blackadder said:BG example: "Beholder/Basalisk turns you to stone/disintegrates you!"
Trash said:So he basically promises to make normal easier and hard harder? Then why not just include an easy setting and be done with it?
What else does it do?DreadMessiah said:Then go play halowars. It does that already
The problem with it is that the player now sees that the computer is blatantly cheating. As in, there's a slight difference between: you sly motherlover, how did you just do that, and: yeah yeah, so your basic unit is now 2x strong than it used to?Again, no one's saying bad AI is a good plan. But all other things equal, not changing the AI at all, giving German divisions twice as much staying power or killing power certainly would provide a greater challenge, wouldn't it? What's wrong with that, if people are clamouring a game's too easy?
Black Cat said:That thingie with, like, doing. The rank thingie and stuffy stuff. Your playthrough stops, like, being important.
And then people stops, like, instead of, like, overcoming and stuff, and stuff.
And then is the oposite, like, thingie. But you, like, keep practicing and stuff and thingies, nya.
So, like, and stuff. That one challenge thingie, and stuff.