This is something I found interesting about the types of games that I really enjoy and if I'm honest the games that I find myself keep coming back to are those games that are easy to learn and hard to master. Or if they do have complexity it's more to do with story choices and interesting level design etc. than whatever stats you pick for your character at the beginning.
Particularly with RPGs, A great example of this comparison would be Fable 1 and Diablo 2. There are enough options in the game to keep you occupied gameplay wise and find a style you like. However it's not so overwhelming and pants on head retarded that you could be an autist and end up making an excel spreadsheet comparing all the miniscule amounts of stats to find out which is the 'best' class or stats setup.
I'm also thinking about this in terms of appearance customisation and all that nonsense. I wonder if the RPG development cycle overall for an indie dev especially wouldn't end up benefiting by deliberately restricting the options you're going to have so that you can focus more on the depth of the classes you have and the gameplay. As opposed to having 30+ different builds with nothing to show for it which is what most modern RPGs are now.
As an example instead of the usual 'le modern RPG' setup where you've inevitably got 30+ options in the character selection I'd potentially just have Warrior/Thief/Mage/Cleric. Something I really appreciated for example even though BG2 has quite a few class options is stuff like class oriented storylines and quests.
The problem with modern RPGs is not complexity but verbosity. SO MUCH DIALOGUE. Just shit the fuck up already and let me play the god damn game.
Modern RPGs are horribly overwritten. There’s no sense of pace, no respect for the reader’s time. It’s just endless flowery language, unnecessary paragraphs, and adverbs as far as the eye can see, all made ten times worse if it happens to be voice-acted. I can’t believe people sit through that shit.
Wasteland 3 was good in that regard. Just enough punchy dialogue to move the story forward and back to blowing stuff up with rocket launchers.
I think if that's true, it's part of why games like Nethack and Dungeon Crawl are so popular, no need for massive amounts of dialogue, just dungeoneering straight to the point.
There's only 1 series I don't just X through dialog and that's Souls games. Well acted, short, to the point, impactful.
You could easily remove two thirds of the story text from modern crpgs.
"There's something evil coming through the teleporters!" and "The princess is in another castle!" is all the premise I need to enjoy a game.
Yeah that's probably why I've gone off them. ( I am playing Starfield at the moment though)
I hate these books they've got too many words in them! /s :P
Now I get to mock people over their choice of games lol.
Books =/= Games
You are a masterclass in self-owning, storyfag.
Bethesda have been dumbing down their RPG's for ages. I actually prefer more stats and levelling options. But I think the two games to get the balance right are Dungeon Master and Wizardry 8. Oblivion was the last Bethesda to have the balance right - Skyrim dumbed it down a lot as did Fallout 76.
Honestly the old ES leveling system in Morrowind and Oblivion was too convoluted for no real benefit. It encouraged you to play in counter-intuitive ways, like putting your most desired skills into the non-leveling categories to prevent leveling. I wasn't sad to see that go.
In Skyrim, you just play the game how you want and your character naturally evolves along those lines, then you "solidify" those choices with perks. Much better than picking everything permanently at character creation and being stuck with that choice forever. I think it works pretty well. People complain that it technically allows you to get every skill to max, but A. all the previous games had the same problem, and B. you'd have to play for an overly long amount of time for that, so whatever. Some people also really want a 100 hour game to punish you with a full restart if you don't like your weapon pick you made five minutes in. I consider that bad design. I do miss the custom spell options though.
The problem with Skyrim is the dumb writing, bad quests, effortless dragons, and overall half-baked plot ideas (like the civil war that's resolved with one dialogue in a conference room).
Skyrim had terrible game balance. Magic scaling was atrocious. Also, level scaling is a trash mechanic for shit devs who are too lazy to properly balance their games.
Level scaling takes the fun out of litteraly every aspect of a light RPG like Skyrim
It makes every reward pointless and dull, and gives you no real sense of progression.
You're too kind. Original ES leveling was beyond stupid. "I ran too much and that made everyone but me really strong." The fuck?
With Skyrim I felt like I was playing an Action Adventure like Heroes of Might & Magic. So when I finished it (much quicker than Oblivion) it had no replay value. I don't endorse Morrowind, btw.
You see if the trade off for me is I get well written stories and level design I don't care if I only get three class options. When it comes to Owlcat Games especially you realise how meaningless overall the character creator is because at the end of the day the overall story in RPGs is about dialogue options and the combat aspect is pretty detached.
Hi let me introduce you to the 9+ different religions in the game, what? Story? Oh no they barely effect your dialogue options and you only get one or two lore specific responses from NPCs on that choice anyway. I also think that the devs who make such complex stats probably have no idea what they're doing with them anymore than the players do except perhaps the really autistic ones.
Owlcat games are bloated nightmares. I don’t think I could even be friends with someone who enjoys them.
I don't play for the stories, I skip most dialogue and rarely read the lore. Sounds like you would prefer the Fable series? Did you ever play text adventures?
LOL that explains it, I played Fable to death, didn't really play text adventures but experimented a bit with MUDs out of curiosity. For me good story writing is what helps keep you immersed in a game with the atmosphere. Most suggestions I could get RPG wise I've already played or at least looked at.
See I didn't mind having a narrative oriented game when playing Infocom and Melbourne House Text Adventures - like reading a book, you create the images in your mind anyway. But for RPG's I prefer creating a character to free roam. I think the last RPG I played that I got into the narrative was Mass Effect.
I’ll look those up
As always, you are an agent of the decline.
Please tell me you've played more than a hundred games in your life.
Think about it. A hundred. Should seem like a small number, compared to probably over a million games out there. But, be honest. You haven't, have you?
Seriously. Lethn would probably prefer Guildwars 2 over Guildwars 1. He would probably prefers Borderlands 2 over Diablo 2. He would probably prefer Baulder's Gate over Planescape: Torment or Neverwinter Nights. He probably hates Factorio and Rimworld.
Lethn is the world's biggest Beamdog fanboy. The saddest day in his life was when they fired David Gayder.
He is the inevitable result of a failure to gatekeep.
Is he? I didn't know that Beamdog HAD fanboys? I say that as someone who briefly hung out on their forums when BG1EE was first released and owns most of the "EE" releases.
My impression was the general community feeling was thankfulness for Beamdog refreshing the engines, making them easier to run on modern PCs, tablets, etc. The most positive things I've ever heard said about their new content is that it wasn't bad and that most of it was optional.
Not Lethn, but that's an interesting question. How many games have I played?
And what does played mean? I might be tempted to break it out into categories so that "played" means one of:
That avoids playing some game for 5 minutes and it goes on the list.
For me it would be old DOS games, old Mac games, NES, SNES, (etc), PS2+ (etc), "modern" games, phone games, flash games, etc.
I would guess it would have to be 300+, but I have no idea. I could be way off.
My vidya time really tailed off in my 30s.
Edit: My Steam and Gog collections are ~150, but I have definitely not played them all! I might revise my guess to 400+.
I used to think the opposite, but now I agree. Generally speaking all having too many stats does is dilute the rest. Every stat, by nature, interacts with every other stat. This makes adding a stat an exponential increase in the complexity of the system. And this complexity has to be tested. And testers are humans with limited time. The more unnecessary shit you add, the less attention gets paid to the stuff that does matter.
Alternatively you have like 20 different stats but none of them actually matter. Final Fantasy games are a great example of this. Did you know that every character in FF7 has a unique set of starting stats and stat growth? Did you even know FF7 had stats beyond attack, defense, HP, and MP? You can get forgiven if not, because you don't have to pay any attention to them at all.
Exactly, I'm not much of an FF gamer so no I don't know about that, it's one of the reasons why I dislike JRPGs. Too much grinding and random encounters vomited all over the place and me endlessly having to trawl through a myriad of stats I can't hope to understand with one playthrough. This is coming from a programmer as well, so I'm not some normie whining about complexity, I just don't like it when it's obviously shoved in there for the sake of making it look like there's more content than there is.
Speak for yourself. More crunch is more better. That means if I take the time to learn the systems I'm rewarded with smoother gameplay. I say this as someone who doesn't nearly have as much time and energy to expend on games as I did previously.
TIL I'm an autist.
Why would you do that when there's probably a dozen guides on the internet with that information?
There weren't in many cases, at least originally (e.g., Vanilla WoW). I also didn't always trust guides or simulations as complete or correct.
He likes doing the maths.
LOL with the habits I exhibit on a daily basis If I was diagnosed with autism I wouldn't even be surprised so I don't really see the need to get it done officially. I mean I dream in code and go into programming trances on a daily basis so it tells me all I need to know about myself. It's one of those things where you end up with quirks in how your brain works and I don't think it's that big of a deal if you're reasonably well adjusted to society for the most part and it doesn't interfere with daily life.
Well there is such a thing as scope creep and bloat that commonly affects indie development that would be beneficial to cut down upon, that's one of the most common things that leads to vaporware.
I think you grossly underestimate Diablo 2, and also what it inspired.
Nothing wrong with your approach, but people have their own tastes. A lot of people like to autistically customize. A lot of others prefer the game to handle that kind of thing and let them focus on whatever else the game offers.
Diablo 2 is a great example of a game that satisfies both groups. If you want to bang it out in casual mode, you can do that - it’s almost impossible to soft lock your progress in normal D2. But if you want to tackle the hardest difficulty, then you’ll have to delve further into mechanics, builds, and itemization. That’s the scaling complexity that games should aspire to.
The funny thing about complexity for the sake of complexity is once you breakdown the "complexity", it's actually really simple and doesn't add anything.
Diablo 4's paragon system is a fine example of this. They tried to make it "complex" but in the end it turned out to be a simple system that added absolutely nothing to the game.
Rogue Trader kind of annoyed me for this reason and I've noticed it's happened with others as well. The level system is very unnecessary and you've got hundreds of these abilities and then all they do is add 0.01% to a certain stat or change a stat. At least in previous Owl Cat games they offered autocomplete for levelling but they don't in Rogue Trader and that's annoying so it means you have to click through all that crap just to level up your party. I would much rather have an automatic level system that was way simpler than the customisation vomit we constantly see in RPGs now.
The leveling only looks complicated because you aren't using the filter buttons. I also made that mistake until I just recently found them.
I was thinking about this but I'm going to refuse to release any tutorial for my games just to spite people for that. That's annoying, why didn't they have that enabled by default? Lol.
The filters aren't on by default because the "fail" state (not noticing the tabs) is the game is playable but you have to scroll a bunch when you level up. If they were on by default the "fail" state would be that the player doesn't have access most of the talents.
I agree they aren't the most obvious but at the same time filter tabs are something that be expected of the kind of player who would pick up an involved game like this.
You are right though that the leveling UI is pretty crap and needs to be its own full-screen overlay.
I have more of an issue with length. While I do like my open world survival exploration games in occasion I don't want a single player game to do it and pad the game to 50 hours. I'd rather play a 10h game that is a great experience than 50h slog.
By the way this is why I consider RPGs that base their stats off tabletop roleplaying is a mistake quite often. The reason being is because they're just copy-pasting stats from tabletop even though you could potentially create an infinitely superior and easier to understand system if you wrote it from the ground up with digital in mind.
If you really wanted to tabletop it out you could just have an RNG computer or piece of software on a phone that does the calculations based on what's happening on the board.
I think complexity is cool if it’s done well regardless. Early wow raids are a good example of this. Like as a tank a lot of the movements are weirdly unintuitive in terms of feeling like “combat” but at the end of the attempt it still felt like a grueling fight against a crazed elemental or whatever.
Agreed. There are memes about games like Path of Exile that you need a PhD or an hour long guide to make a viable character. Even Diablo 4 with all its faults is superior to me because I can create a character I feel like playing and not be useless halfway through.
On reason I like Path of Exile is that it offers something to both players who like to be methodical theorycrafters, and to players like me who just want to hit the ground hacking-and-slashing using one of their build guides.
Complexity in game is very relative, I like Path of Exile for instance and I disliked Diablo 3. In part this was do to how simple Diablo 3 is and how fun it was in POE to do builds.
What other games do you think are complex? I remember finding some of my favorite games a bit complex at first and then they were just normal. Total War: Warhammer, Divinity Original Sin and POE.
Is a car engine complex? At first it seems so but after a while it is very basic and you feel accomplish for now having the knowledge.
In the end it is about having some difficulty to overcome. For what ever reason difficulty in itself seems to make people enjoy games, complexity is just one way to achieve that.
Simplifying a game mechanics for the sake of story is how we got to the movie game meta we have today. I hate it.
However you also have a good point, make a game to difficult and to many will just not give it a shot. There is also the time people are willing to put in to a game, I have a job and a family, I don't have the time to start a game over and over again until I get that perfect build I wanted - I do miss those days but it is what it is.
The question should be where to draw the line, what is the balance? Should games be targeted to the most basic player? Someone with very low attention spam that just wants a quick dopamine hit? For profit alone it makes sense to do that. People here may not like it but the time where games were made by and for nerds is over, gaming is now mainstream and there is no going back.
It's always a massive balancing act, it does depend on my mood what game I choose. Sometimes I like complexity but even when I'm in the mood I can find it way too overwhelming and annoying to deal with if there are just options vomited in my face constantly. There's also sometimes no way for you to skip it even if you find the game fairly enjoyable. You're expected to trawl through through the options you're given or gtfo.
The post below I pointed to BG2 as an example of a game that's complex and it's one of my favourite RPG. However it is a pain in the arse to get through the myriad of options thanks to it's D&D ruleset. As an example of what I think is done right Fallout New Vegas handles the skills and levelling up well but I think part of that is the way it presents the options you pick to you. There's not as much hidden rules going on in the background compared to BG2 as well.
To be honest, BG2 and NWN2 had great balance. BG2 however becomes way to easy after the first run.
Did you play DOS2? I found that one to be overwhelming first time and I ended up restarting it a few times and then it was kind of simplistic.
Funny you call DOS2 overwhelming, yeah I played that game to death, for me that was the exact sort of balance I look for in an RPG. It was it's own whole system for PC so it didn't have a ton of tabletop nonsense maths shoved into it for the sake of making it more like tabletop. Combat was very straightforward.
Having so many things to put points in was the part that was overwhelming and I wanted to have the best build :) Combat was turned based and I like that but I also like the pseudo turn based from BG1 and 2.
By the way a great example of complexity for the sake of complexity is something that aggravates me about one of my favourite RPGs Baldur's Gate 2. This goes back to my rant about games adapting tabletop RPG rulesets.
I've enjoyed the spellcasting aspect of BG2 it does a really good job of making you feel like a powerful wizard or priest at the later levels. At the same time the amount of extremely specific resistances and abilities enemies have drive me up the wall so I have a very love/hate relationship with this game.
You guys will know what I'm chatting about who play RPGs a lot, level drain is a great example because it's such bullshit. Sometimes the difficulty of classic games isn't down to anything like clever level design. A lot of it is because you have to specifically look up some bullshit cheap effect a monster has inflicted on you in order to counter it properly then you realise because it's not exactly great game design the only way to win is to cheese your way through it regardless.
Warning autistic rant
Firkraag is a great example of this, I decided to look up some kind of proper way to beat him as I was chilling with a classic gaming session. As expected, it was pants on head retarded and you had to do all kinds of specific things to get the bastard. Then somebody mentioned because of how easy it is sometimes to screw with the NPC code you can spam cast a cloud kill wand and get him that way. I do that and he goes down within five seconds. Worse fight ever over and done with and you get an amazing +5 two handed sword for your trouble.
With the vampires where you have to make sure your priest characters have the correct negative plane protection spells to prevent it from happening in the first place. Oh and in typical bullshit classic gaming difficulty they made that specific spell not AOE so you can't buff your whole party with it because the devs are arseholes unless there's an AOE version I'm not aware of which is possible.