RPG Combat...uh...huh?

[RGE]

People who want to test their abilities could always stick with inferior weapons and armours. Go Mad Max on them - take them out while wearing a leather jacket and wielding a mostly unloaded sawed off shotgun.

Personally I like the necessary fights to be easy, the optional fights to be of medium difficulty and the really unnecessary fights to be hard. Kind of how Fallout 2 stuck the tougher random encounters in caves that could be left alone.

 

[Anonymous]

That kind of thinking is one reason why Morrowind sucks ass (the use inferior items thing).

 

[RGE]

I thought Morrowind sucked ass because of the boring NPCs, the random quests and the apparent lack of story. If the game is mostly filled with fighting and dungeoncrawling I suppose you could instead claim that it's boring because the fighting is boring, but I don't feel that difficult fights are a necessary part of RPGs. If the game is reasonably non-linear it shouldn't be impossible to find difficult fights if you really want some.

 

[Anonymous]

I said it was one reason why, that you had to constantly force yourself to key down on things to make the game any sort of a challenge.

 

[RGE]

Ah yes, I missed that "one". Or perhaps when I saw the "one" alone, it became the only one. Sorry about that.

 

[Claw]

EDIT: On second thought, perhaps having a full blown tactical TB system would be bad, since it might require people to enjoy both tactical combat and many roleplaying elements. People who only want one of the two might be annoyed at having the game filled with too much dead weight. But then again, if the game allows people to avoid combat, then it shouldn't matter as much.

True, choosing your own path is an important feature after all.
If a player wanted a greater challenge, he could actively seek out combat where other players would avoid it, fight more dangerous enemies which would require more tactical skills.
I wouldn't expect every single random combat to be a great challenge, but it would actually be more interesting if there were more dangerous enemies. I like watching my char blow away some random baddies, but a greater challenge would be nice occasionally.
One problem with Fallout random encounters was how you were thrown into the thick of the battle. Surrounded by enemies, sometimes Super Mutants with miniguns there wasn't really much you could do tactically but blow them away quickly.
The random encounters ought to offer more alternatives, and I think they should as a rule start with a larger distance between both parties, giving the player the chance to asess the situation and prepare.

Ah, looks like I forgot to read the whole thread.

I suppose you could instead claim that it's boring because the fighting is boring, but I don't feel that difficult fights are a necessary part of RPGs.

There is a difference between easy and boring though. Fights in Morrowind were less easy than they were boring. In fact, for my mage the constant ambushes by demon hounds or whatever these things were were incredibly irritating especially because they drained my life and mana. They weren't easy as such, but aggravating and I was bored of it.

 

[RGE]

Not sure if your comment about not reading the whole thread was in regard to the context of boring and easy/difficult, but the quote below is what I was responding to, so in the context difficult = not boring. By exchanging both words for their opposites I assumed that in this case easy = boring.

But make a really hard difficulty, for when I get bored and want a test of my abilities.

And from the very words you quoted, "but I don't feel that difficult fights are a necessary part of RPGs", you could have deduced that I agree with you that just because it's easy doesn't mean that it's boring. Ok, so it's not a 100% certain chain of deduction, since I might think that it's ok to have only easy and boring fights in RPGs. But assuming that I like RPGs (I'm here posting about them), and assuming that I like my games to provide me with fun and excitement (who doesn't?), if I don't think that difficult fights are necessary (which I wrote), then apparently I'm not all that bored by easy fights (neglecting to account for medium difficulty here).

And I believe you when you say that difficult can be boring. I remember fighting random encounter aliens, centaurs and floaters in Fallout 2, and that was boring because it was so difficult that I had to use such boring tactics to benefit from battling those encounters.

 

[Claw]

Hmm, you are right.

Actually, my comment on not reading the whole thread was in regard to the fact that a second page existed, and you had basically already said everything I said about finding difficult fights if you want to, but not having to fight them.

Meh, in the end I just made a redundant post because I hadn't read the whole thread.