Community The Age of Incline: RPG Codex's 2012-2016 GOTY Results

[Latelistener]

Can we go back to discussing Twitcher and how those pesky poles hijacked our poll?

 

[Zero Credibility]

There's nothing wrong with content gating per se, but it can be of two kinds: hard gating - when you're locked out of content because of choices made at character creation; or soft gating - when you're locked out of certain content because your skills are too low, but can return and access it later when you're more powerful. AoD strives for a middle ground, but ends up with the worst parts of both approaches. It's just very, very annoying to come at a skill check that you can't pass because two minutes ago you've put your SP into a different skill (without any way of telling which one you'd need next), and not be able to return later when you have the needed skill. All it does is incentivises save-scumming.

Is this is why the next game will have skill grow with use? No choice in how to spend skill points -> no hording skill points for when you find a skill check you wish to pass by savescumming -> no savescumming. I guess. Somehow the solution strikes me as far, far worse than the problem here.

 

[Jasede]

Here's a shower thought: if in AoD you have to pick skills that complement your class or else you will have very few options, and if you do, usually 1 option (which you will then use because it is playing your role) - why even have skills? Just pick a class at the start and have a mostly linear experience. I haven't played the game but it sounds like it mostly is this already, judging from the last four, five pages of this thread.

 

[Irenaeus]

I'm sure there's plenty of people who just stop posting controversial things because their fee-fees get hurt. Peer pressure works. This is also why Reddit is so bad. At least here negative ratings don't hide your posts from everyone.

Imagine being this gay.

 

[makiavelli747]

Is this is why the next game will have skill grow with use? No choice in how to spend skill points -> no hording skill points for when you find a skill check you wish to pass by savescumming -> no savescumming. I guess. Somehow the solution strikes me as far, far worse than the problem here.

I was thinking about this back in my childhood... How to solve hording skill points/savescumming? The only way is to make quests timebased, when you can't do some else to gain enough points for other quest.
But then you are forced to raise only those skills you picked in the beginning. So it is the same as if you were able to spread skill points only at the start of the game and then playing whole game without any exp gain.
Thus skills and lvl progression only serves meta-gaming purpose...

 

[makiavelli747]

Here's a shower thought: if in AoD you have to pick skills that complement your class or else you will have very few options, and if you do, usually 1 option (which you will then use because it is playing your role) - why even have skills?

usually no matter what your build is you always have 2 or more options in AoD.
In 1st AG quest you can betray your guild to work for Gaelius. In 2nd you can choose to shoot Dias, etc...

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Is this is why the next game will have skill grow with use? No choice in how to spend skill points -> no hording skill points for when you find a skill check you wish to pass by savescumming -> no savescumming. I guess. Somehow the solution strikes me as far, far worse than the problem here.

I was thinking about this back in my childhood... How to solve hording skill points/savescumming? The only way is to make quests timebased, when you can't do some else to gain enough points for other quest.
But then you are forced to raise only those skills you picked in the beginning. So it is the same as if you were able to spread skill points only at the start of the game and then playing whole game without any exp gain.
Thus skills and lvl progression only serves meta-gaming purpose...

Are we talking about AoD or normal games as well? Because in normal games it's easily solved by making skills useful outside of designated skill-checks.

 

[makiavelli747]

Because in normal games it's easily solved by making skills useful outside of designated skill-checks

and how is that?

 

[Tito Anic]

Can we go back to discussing Twitcher and how those pesky poles hijacked our poll? I was way more fun.

Or better how "Age of Teleportation" fanbois downvoted Underrail and upvoted Witcher. Pathetic

 

[Lurker King]

It's pure guesswork. You have no way of knowing, or even anticipating, which skill levels you will need at which points. And if your character concept is something Vince didn't bother to think of, you're fucked even if your build makes perfect sense to you.

Case in point: my first character was a loremaster. I started out with points in lore (naturally) and traps (for ruin exploration). But then the first part of loremaster playthrough turned out to be purely about social checks - which I didn't bother to invest in because why would a bookworm have high persuasion? And when I finally got to the ruins, it turned out all my lore levels were mostly useless without crafting - which I also didn't bother to invest in because why would a non-combat character do that (and I hate crafting in games anyway)? So a perfectly logical build got fucked up because I prioritzed skills in a different order than the one Vince had in mind.

Now you have some good criticism but it doesn’t represent what you think it is. You have eight backgrounds to choose: Assassin, Thief, Praetor, Loremaster, Grifter, Drifter, Mercenary, Merchant. But only six backgrounds are genuine or full-fledged. “Loremaster” and “Drifter” are not really backgrounds. They provide you with some different perspective of events and some hilarious LOL content at the beginning, but after that you have to choose the path of other background. That’s misleading, I agree.

That being said, the idea that you can’t know in advance how things work of what is going to happen is part of every challenging game. That’s true even for Underrail, for instance, which some people praise for being able to make many different builds. You make some choices that will fuck you up later on, because you don’t know all the nuances of the system and how the game world was designed. That’s nothing wrong with it, because that’s the price you pay for having complex systems. If you are playing D&D and you go in a room full of beholders, and die, the DM didn’t nothing wrong. That’s the type of thing that is bound to happen when you are involved in dangerous adventures. Somehow, people forget these basic facts when they are playing cRPGs, and I think the developers are to blame. After decades of handholding, players developed an intolerance for frustration and try and error, and are easily offended just by failing in a simple skill check.

In the case of AoD, you also have concerns about realism, so it makes sense. Now, what is the alternative? Traditional games like Shadowrun. You can distribute all your skill points blindly because the game is so easy and so predictable. You just around killing things. That’s it. The supposed complexity involving drones and matrix are just shallow mini-games that you use before you start killing things again. In fact, you only kill things at the matrix. It’s all just for show, really.

Because you spent days and nights on AoD forums talking to other zealots and have learnt the game by heart by this point?

I don’t think things were that way for most players, to be honest. You get so frustrated by one failure that you lash it out on the game. In any case, when things didn’t go as planned, I just reloaded and tried again. What you fail to see is that some players have no problem at all with this concept in cRPGs. If that’s the price we have to pay for having better settings and more realism, so bet it. It’s a small price. Just exploring gamey settings to kill things and downgrading every non-combat aspect as fluffy is a pointless endeavor. Unless you have an amazing combat system, but well, we are talking about cRPGs so…

There's nothing wrong with content gating per se, but it can be of two kinds: hard gating - when you're locked out of content because of choices made at character creation; or soft gating - when you're locked out of certain content because your skills are too low, but can return and access it later when you're more powerful. AoD strives for a middle ground, but ends up with the worst parts of both approaches. It's just very, very annoying to come at a skill check that you can't pass because two minutes ago you've put your SP into a different skill (without any way of telling which one you'd need next), and not be able to return later when you have the needed skill. All it does is incentivises save-scumming.

What you are ignoring is that the game is designed around replayability, which diminishes considerably the save-scumming aspect. You act like being barred from a location because you a previous choice is an insult. That’s an incorrect way of seeing things. Consider the abyss. If you will fail with one build, let’s say, an assassin, you can come later in your mercenary playtrough to try to pass that part. Did you fail again because this time you didn’t have enough intelligence? No problem. Then your next build would have this feature. By the third time, you already developed a sense of wonder and respect for the site. It really looks like a mysterious place that most people can’t survive. By the time you finally achieve the center and solve the mystery, you are thrilled. Now compare this with exploration in most games. You take for granted the locations, which makes them just a gamey background to kill things. When you say “This forces me to reload; that I don’t like” you are ignoring all that. You are considering the negative aspects and ignoring the good stuff.

Now, consider FO2, which is considered a paradise of freedom here. When you talk with Merk, the crime boss at the saloon in NCR, you have some options. If you start by saying “You can ask around, I’m an awesome guy” you blew it the quest. From then one he will only reply, “Well, here you are just a nobody”, and that’s it. End of the line. Initially I got upset by this, but then it hit me that this was awesome because the NPC was acting like a real person.

You're twisting the facts here because these are choices that are 1) optional; 2) not tied to skillchecks.

I’m not. Let’s consider the first quest of the mercenary background. You start and you take a job of bodyguard. If you have enough perception, you noticed the thief trying to rob the chest. The assassin gets in. If you have enough persuasion or streetwise, you can convince him to avoid a fight – you earn skill points for avoiding the fight. Later on, you have to protect another person visiting the thieves’ guild. On your way back, he gets attacked by thieves. Again, you can fight or you can simply walk around and run. If you kill them, you can even visit the thieves’ guild again and start working for them. That’s a shitload of choices. On the worst scenario, you have one fight, which what would be expected of you because you are a mercenary. Now let’s consider what most players do because they are deformed by game prejudices. Attack the assassin. Die. Keep reloading until he beats the assassin with the same build on RNG because he is too lazy to make another one. Get in another mission without healing because he is click-happy. Try to kill the two thieves with a crappy build that is still wounded by the previous fight. Failed. Only this time the RNG won’t help him. Rage quit and go to the internets to complain about game design. Whose fault is that, the player or the developer?

The irony is that you complain about no thinking involved, but the game is designed in a way that every single one of your decisions requires thinking. Should you accept this mission? Should I turn back and run? Should I heal before venturing in another mission? Should I buy a better weapon? The problem is that the players don’t want to think, they want to click, because they are used to bad design that doesn’t require thinking. It’s the world upside down. You complain about the game for the lack of thinking involved when in fact you are complaining that the game let you make mistakes and you should watch out before clicking.

It's a case of hindsight being 20/20. Before you actually start the encounter, you have no way of knowing whether it's going to be unwinnable or a cakewalk. And please, don't give me that bullshit about muh grimdarks setting, because grimdark setting doesn't mean criminals can't be young wannabes who are way in over their heads.

That’s not the point. You have a bunch of interesting things going on. You fall in a trap, you can escape, even if you die, you can come back more prepared to murder his ass, you can succeed and open a chain reaction of events that will open more quests and end with him being an emperor, etc. When you say “Fuck that, I didn’t see that coming, is unfair!”, other players are saying “Whoa! That fucking dude was trying to con me, that’s awesome!” Do you see what I mean? This adds a lot of value, but the only thing that matters to you is that you should know in advance what kind of build you need, because you can't endure any form of failure.

No, it's not a challenge. It's a trial-and-error situation that can be won either through dumb luck or through equally dumb persistence.

Just like real life. The funny thing is that dying and reloading to beat an encounter is considering good gameplay, but dying and reloading to beat a skill check is save-scumming, dumb persistence, etc. What you really want is to make these skill checks go away so you can enjoy killing things without thinking.

your first few playthroughs are bound to end up in utter failure

Only that’s not true. You have two* kinds of playtroughs: with combat skills or social skills. If you opt for a combat path, the only thing you need is being good at combat. If opt for a social build, you just need to invest on persuasion and streetwise. I’m by no means an experienced player like other grognards here. My first playtrough was with an assassin. Once I understood the combat system, I finished all the quests. Immediately reloaded and tried a different another playtrough with an assassin to try different things. So the “Oh my god I have to reload curse” is far from true. Maybe you feel frustrated because you think you are entitled to access every location and beat every filler quest, but that is a game prejudice that was infused on you over the years.


Of course, a third hybrid way is still possible if you know the ins and outs of the game, but that is harder.

 

[Irenaeus]

I didnt keep playing because the story was largely uninteresting

As opposed to the amazingly interesting story of Age of Chinkaboo.

, the impressive array of choices before me was always reduced to 1 because of my build

Congratulations on making a shitty character.

Maybe if the game allowed you to roll your 18(00) 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 character that you usually play, you might have enjoyed it.

 

[Irenaeus]

Or better how "Age of Teleportation" fanbois downvoted Underrail

It's the other way around, this has been proved already, Titanic. Let that sink in.

 

[Latelistener]

Here's a shower thought: if in AoD you have to pick skills that complement your class or else you will have very few options, and if you do, usually 1 option (which you will then use because it is playing your role) - why even have skills? Just pick a class at the start and have a mostly linear experience. I haven't played the game but it sounds like it mostly is this already, judging from the last four, five pages of this thread.

Age of Decadence as a hardcore eroge with several characters / endings and optional combat sequences...

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Just like real life. The funny thing is that dying and reloading to beat an encounter is considering good gameplay, but dying and reloading to beat a skill check is save-scumming, dumb persistence, etc. What you really want is to make these skill checks go away so you can enjoy killing things without thinking.

This point can easily be explained. If you fail an encounter you need to do some thinking, readjust your strategy, change your equipment, try different thing etc. In case of AoD skill checks you just need to put one point into skill you failed and you are good to go. If AoD outright asked you to rise the skill the moment you fail it eg. "You've failed this persuasion check. Do you want to spend X points to raise your skill enough to pass it? Y/N?" the game wouldn't become more shallow. It would just remove some tedious reloading. Unlike combat encounters where there are multiple variables and letting players pass it would just dumb the game down into oblivion.

Or better how "Age of Teleportation" fanbois downvoted Underrail

It's the other way around, this has been proved already, Titanic. Let that sink in.

That's different from the last pool, where it was proven that UR fanboys were liked AoD more than AoD fanboys liked UR. Some sort of retaliation perhaps?

 

[Irenaeus]

Here is how the quest works. You start the game at the inn, the innkeeper tells you to go guard one of the guests, you can say sure or you can say I need to buy some weapons first. Then you go back, tell the innkeeper you're ready and go upstairs. After the guest is killed (that's one outcome you can't change but that's the intro basically), the innkeeper offers you to an optional quest. At this point you aren't offered another option to go and buy weapons because now it's the middle of the night and because you (the player) just did 5 min ago and nothing has changed.

I think the main problem with AoD, and this example is rather telling, is that you approach these things from narrative realism perspective rather than from gameplay perspective

What is telling is that you lack a functioning brain.

 

[Irenaeus]

Or better how "Age of Teleportation" fanbois downvoted Underrail

It's the other way around, this has been proved already, Titanic. Let that sink in.

That's different from the last pool, where it was proven that UR fanboys were liked AoD more than AoD fanboys liked UR. Some sort of retaliation perhaps?

This will happen forever until the end of times. Underrail fanboys don't have tags, but are eternally obsessive and secretively vindictive.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Or better how "Age of Teleportation" fanbois downvoted Underrail

It's the other way around, this has been proved already, Titanic. Let that sink in.

That's different from the last pool, where it was proven that UR fanboys were liked AoD more than AoD fanboys liked UR. Some sort of retaliation perhaps?

This will happen forever until the end of times. Underrail fanboys don't have tags, but are eternally obsessive and secretively vindictive.

At least they shitpost a lot less. And If you try to argue that AoD fans don't shitpost that much, please re-read your last 3 posts.

 

[makiavelli747]

This point can easily be explained. If you fail an encounter you need to do some thinking, readjust your strategy, change your equipment, try different thing etc.

you playing it like it is some fucking combat strategy game
but if you don't know how to manage character sheet/your skill points(how to use your char strentghs and weaknesses) and predict skill checks, then that means you can't into real RPGs

 

[Irenaeus]

Not surprised the Witcher 3 won.

It touched the Codex in places where the Codex has not been touched ... in a long time.

Since I never played it, and probably never will (not much of a fan of action cRPG and the setting/art direction looks boooring), I'm curious on how the Codex longed to be touched by an action cRPG? Please explain.

 

[Irenaeus]

Or better how "Age of Teleportation" fanbois downvoted Underrail

It's the other way around, this has been proved already, Titanic. Let that sink in.

That's different from the last pool, where it was proven that UR fanboys were liked AoD more than AoD fanboys liked UR. Some sort of retaliation perhaps?

This will happen forever until the end of times. Underrail fanboys don't have tags, but are eternally obsessive and secretively vindictive.

At least they shitpost a lot less.

No, they don't.

 

[Rivmusique]

Here's a shower thought: if in AoD you have to pick skills that complement your class or else you will have very few options, and if you do, usually 1 option (which you will then use because it is playing your role) - why even have skills? Just pick a class at the start and have a mostly linear experience. I haven't played the game but it sounds like it mostly is this already, judging from the last four, five pages of this thread.

It isn't like that.

 

[vdweller]

I am very disappoint that DOOM was not in the list. DOOM was the best game of 2016 and this is based on FACTS!

 

[Jazz_]

Here's a shower thought: if in AoD you have to pick skills that complement your class or else you will have very few options, and if you do, usually 1 option (which you will then use because it is playing your role) - why even have skills? Just pick a class at the start and have a mostly linear experience. I haven't played the game but it sounds like it mostly is this already, judging from the last four, five pages of this thread.

Because you wouldn't have all that intricate branching VD spent years to develop, AoD is sort of like that movie ''Sliding Doors'', a ''many worlds interpretation'' simulator, the problem is that the branching is predicated on the passive act of increasing or decreasing skill points, not on gameplay and active choices. The player doesn't know what kind of destiny is forging for himself by raising a skill or another.

 

[gaussgunner]

600 hours (25 fucking days) in AoD is literal insanity, what the fuck do you even do?

i started from 2013, plus i liked combat system and tried a lot of builds
and yes, AoD has a lot of stuff to see...

Did VD put something in his game that triggers restricted, repetitive behaviors in autistic people? that's the only explanation I can find.

lol, its Codex you fucking moron

So you're an *autistic* Malkavian

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

This point can easily be explained. If you fail an encounter you need to do some thinking, readjust your strategy, change your equipment, try different thing etc.

you playing it like it is some fucking combat strategy game
but if you don't know how to manage character sheet/your skill points(how to use your char strentghs and weaknesses) and predict skill checks, then that means you can't into real RPGs

Real RPGs were never about predicting skill checks. I fail to remember even one quality RPG other than AoD where "predicting skill checks" was a must, or even very useuful.