Preview RPG Codex Preview: Blackguards 2

[Grunker]

The attention they got from those three sites (two of which are rather obscure and have a limited audience) is insignificant compared to that factor.

The attention, sure, but actual purchases? I reiterate that I base this idea on my discussion with Logic Artists. Neither of us know the numbers, so it's pointless to act like we do.

You are all so focused on Steam having a huge audience. True. But trying to get noticed on Steam is like standing in a sea of shit and trying to draw attention to your smelly farts. On those three sites, your product can take front and center to people who actually care.

It's a pretty well-respected marketing fact that wide commercials are much less effective that ones targeted at people who are actually interested in your product. It's one of the reasons Google was so succesful.

 

[Shannow]

Will it sell better than BG1? Perhaps even double? (VD switches between double and 10x but we'll be fair and go with double )

Depends on the game. Some TB indie rpgs sold 2-3 times more, some 5-10 times more. Not saying it's because they are dumbed down, but being more accessible, welcoming, and easier does help. These numbers define the customer base an indie developer can count on (and these are the numbers that I know of, i.e. it's likely that this market is much bigger since most developers don't discuss their sales publicly).

So these totally different games sold better, you don't say it's because of dumbing down and you don't actually have numbers.
This conflicts with

...
From simply BG1+ I'd have expected some 30-60% sales increase. You keep your previous player-base and get some who were simply put off by obnoxious UI and stuff.
...

how exactly?

The simplest proof is the fact that BG2 was streamlined. Why? If Daedalic wasn't under the impression that they left a LOT of money on the table (as in disproportionally more than they took) due to difficulty and complexity, they wouldn't have made any changes to the established formula. Simple as that.

Proof of what? That Daedalic share your opinion? Was that contested?
What is contested is that this move will truly pay off. That will be decided empirically. All other aspects of BG2 are close enough to BG1 to make them halfway comparable.
(Though we'll probably never get to see the actual sales data . But perhaps there'll be enough information to base an opinion on.)

 

[Infinitron]

No sales data, but we can see how long it holds up in the Steam Top Sellers chart. It helps that it's being released in the same time of year as the first game was, which takes seasonal fluctuations out of the equation.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I was just about to buy the original game on the gog sale to help fund them for this but I rather see them die a Quick death for dumbing down a pretty promising series

such reactionary

 

[Emily]

I really liked the way that spells worked in the first one. So that your mage had to specialize in a way with his basic attributes if he wanted to cast certain spells. Now it seems you can just do whatever and be fine, pick any spell at whim.

 

[roshan]

Randomness is something that happens on top of that, and at extreme levels, is actually antithetical to both "player skill" AND "character skill".

This is Sawyerfag logic. There is no such thing as player skill without randomness (I'm talking about intelligence here, not reflexes). Randomness is a simulation of risk in RPGs. Without risk, there is no such thing as taking calculated risks, making meaningful choices or contingency planning. Without randomness, there is only predictable outcomes to obvious choices, no skill.

I'm really looking forward to tackling Serpent in the Staglands as Whalenought seems to realize that without a nice degree of randomness, combat is simply non-threatening.

And in an action-RPG, it's not very fun when you play skillfully but lose anyway because you keep getting bad rolls.

This is why popamoles (twitch gamers with low intelligence) always complain about RNG. It often voids what they are good at, while giving them something that they are not mentally capable of working around.

 

[shadow9d9]

Randomness is something that happens on top of that, and at extreme levels, is actually antithetical to both "player skill" AND "character skill".

This is Sawyerfag logic. There is no such thing as player skill without randomness (I'm talking about intelligence here, not reflexes). Randomness is a simulation of risk in RPGs. Without risk, there is no such thing as taking calculated risks, making meaningful choices or contingency planning. Without randomness, there is only predictable outcomes to obvious choices, no skill.

I'm really looking forward to tackling Serpent in the Staglands as Whalenought seems to realize that without a nice degree of randomness, combat is simply non-threatening.

And in an action-RPG, it's not very fun when you play skillfully but lose anyway because you keep getting bad rolls.

This is why popamoles (twitch gamers with low intelligence) always complain about RNG. It often voids what they are good at, while giving them something that they are not mentally capable of working around.

What makes someone low intelligence for wanting skill to win in a game? "Twitch" is skill in addition to intelligence. You have to outsmart your enemies in addition to being coordinated. That is how it works.

I play boardgames. There are tons of euros with little to no luck. There are tons of games with luck. Are you trying to say that people with low intelligence would be winning the games that require only skill(euros) while they would lose the luck based ones because they can't outsmart luck?

You can attempt to mitigate some luck, but in the end, if the luck is bad enough, all plans are wasted. There are people out there that only want skill based games. I find that the people that support your point of view are the same people that would never win a skill only based game and need luck to occasionally win.

 

[Whisper]

I do hope they make good game.

Though lacking random is bad thing, but maybe more players will check this title.

 

[Bibbimbop]

And in an action-RPG, it's not very fun when you play skillfully but lose anyway because you keep getting bad rolls.

This is why popamoles (twitch gamers with low intelligence) always complain about RNG. It often voids what they are good at, while giving them something that they are not mentally capable of working around.

I hear you. bro. Those low intelligence gamers really hate random risk. For example, that moron Garry Kasparov.

Smart people naturally prefer games that involve dice. Why cant idiots understand this simple fact? If you see a group of people shooting craps in an alley, and people playing chess in the park across the street, it's doesn't take a Sherlock or an Einstein or a state lottery winner to realize that the chess players are just drooling popamole nitwits playing a boring deterministic grind, and the crap-shooters are world-renown physicists stimulating their brain cells during their lunch break so that they can face the rest of the work day with renewed mental vigor. Obviously.

 

[roshan]

Randomness is something that happens on top of that, and at extreme levels, is actually antithetical to both "player skill" AND "character skill".

This is Sawyerfag logic. There is no such thing as player skill without randomness (I'm talking about intelligence here, not reflexes). Randomness is a simulation of risk in RPGs. Without risk, there is no such thing as taking calculated risks, making meaningful choices or contingency planning. Without randomness, there is only predictable outcomes to obvious choices, no skill.

I'm really looking forward to tackling Serpent in the Staglands as Whalenought seems to realize that without a nice degree of randomness, combat is simply non-threatening.

And in an action-RPG, it's not very fun when you play skillfully but lose anyway because you keep getting bad rolls.

This is why popamoles (twitch gamers with low intelligence) always complain about RNG. It often voids what they are good at, while giving them something that they are not mentally capable of working around.

What makes someone low intelligence for wanting skill to win in a game? "Twitch" is skill in addition to intelligence. You have to outsmart your enemies in addition to being coordinated. That is how it works.

I play boardgames. There are tons of euros with little to no luck. There are tons of games with luck. Are you trying to say that people with low intelligence would be winning the games that require only skill(euros) while they would lose the luck based ones because they can't outsmart luck?

You can attempt to mitigate some luck, but in the end, if the luck is bad enough, all plans are wasted. There are people out there that only want skill based games. I find that the people that support your point of view are the same people that would never win a skill only based game and need luck to occasionally win.

I don't think it's fair or accurate to compare boardgames with computer RPG's because boardgames (like for example chess) are not usually based on numbers, have simple rules and pit you against an actual human opponent. RPG's are on the other hand meant to simulate combat between individuals. And combat is all about risk. Choosing between combat options in a good RPG system is deciding which risk you can afford to take.

For example, in a game, your character is near death. He theoretically could either heal or attack. If the enemy has 20 hp left, and your character does a fixed damage of 25, and attacks are guaranteed to hit, the only obvious choice is to attack and kill the opponent. If the enemy has 20 hp left, and your character does a fixed damage of 10 on the other hand, and attacks are guaranteed to hit, the only obvious choice is to heal, as you have no chance of killing the enemy before it kills you.

Now on the other hand if your character does 15-25 damage, can miss or critical, and the opponent can miss or critical as well - now you actually have to figure out what is the best option. You could heal, but your hp gain would also be variable, and the enemy might still kill you with a critical hit. You could attack, but the results depend on your chance to hit, critical chance, damage range, all of which you have to factor in. This is the "thinking power" that popamoles and Sawyerfags alike both lack.

I'm not arguing that twitch gaming doesn't also involve a sort of mental processing. Just that this is not the sort of mental processing a good RPG combat system is based on. That being said I think skilled twitch gamers command significantly more respect than RPG players who like dumbed down RTWP and TB systems who have neither the reflexes for twitch gaming nor the intellectual power to cope with RNG.

 

[Infinitron]

without randomness

at extreme levels

 

[roshan]

And in an action-RPG, it's not very fun when you play skillfully but lose anyway because you keep getting bad rolls.

This is why popamoles (twitch gamers with low intelligence) always complain about RNG. It often voids what they are good at, while giving them something that they are not mentally capable of working around.

I hear you. bro. Those low intelligence gamers really hate random risk. For example, that moron Garry Kasparov.

Smart people naturally prefer games that involve dice. Why cant idiots understand this simple fact? If you see a group of people shooting craps in an alley, and people playing chess in the park across the street, it's doesn't take a Sherlock or an Einstein or a state lottery winner to realize that the chess players are just drooling popamole nitwits playing a boring deterministic grind, and the crap-shooters are world-renown phy stimulating their brain cells during their lunch break so that they can face the rest of the work day with renewed mental vigor. Obviously.

I'm sorry but comparing lousy CRPG's like Pillars of Shitternity or Blackguards 2 to chess is simply retarded. You might as well compare them to basketball or cricket.

 

[Bibbimbop]

I'm sorry but comparing lousy CRPG's like Pillars of Shitternity or Blackguards 2 to chess is simply retarded. You might as well compare them to basketball or cricket.

That assertion is flippant and absurd. It's basically a flat-out dodge to avoid debating your opinions. Chess is a simple turn-based game which has been computerized at various times to the enjoyment of many and the embarassment of Garry Kasparov himself. There is no reason not to apply insights from deterministic chess rules to other games. If you think CRPGs must be lousier than chess, then you are already fixed in your opinion that the dice-based traditions of RPGs are bad, but you are emotionally fond of that status quo.

Now on the other hand if your character does 15-25 damage, can miss or critical, and the opponent can miss or critical as well - now you actually have to figure out what is the best option. You could heal, but your hp gain would also be variable, and the enemy might still kill you with a critical hit. You could attack, but the results depend on your chance to hit, critical chance, damage range, all of which you have to factor in. This is the "thinking power" that popamoles and Sawyerfags alike both lack..

You're romanticizing what actually happens, probably because you get adrenaline surges from gambling. Gambling is not thought. Yes, you enjoy it. Yes it feels better emotionally to those people who are inclined to gamble. But it is still just noise around a statistical average result. It is all the joys of the deterministic system that you scorn, with the extra added pleasure of constant reloading even when you are playing the optimal odds. You need a sense for the sweet spot of average results merely in order to minimize the reloading. There's not as much thinking as you'd like to believe. What you feel is mainly emotion and adrenaline.

Risk without complex underlying systems to understand--that is, deterministic and deep systems--simply becomes a crap-shoot grind of finding the averaged sweet spot that iwould be analogous to the straight-forward determinstic calculation in a non-random system that you panned. This is not the "thinking power" but rather it is the "reload-until-the-numbers-you-don't-control-eventually-go-your-way power" that is perversion of using dice in a setting for which they were never meant. Dice belong in social settings where other players can insist on enforcing a bad roll. In single-player games, dice and random risk are just a save-reload time-sink.

 

[roshan]

I'm sorry but comparing lousy CRPG's like Pillars of Shitternity or Blackguards 2 to chess is simply retarded. You might as well compare them to basketball or cricket.

That assertion is flippant and absurd. It's basically a flat-out dodge to avoid debating your opinions. Chess is a simple turn-based game which has been computerized at various times to the enjoyment of many and the embarassment of Garry Kasparov himself. There is no reason not to apply insights from deterministic chess rules to other games.

Chess may be turn based but so is tic tac toe and arguably so is cricket. I don't see how that makes chess the model for CRPG's to emulate or even a remotely valid point of comparison for CRPG's. CRPG's are numbers based and we are discussing here whether these numbers should be static values or ranges, and here you are drawing comparison to an entirely different beast that does not involve numbers at all. Unless your argument is that CRPG's should not involve numbers at all then you really have no point.

If you think CRPGs must be lousier than chess, then you are already fixed in your opinion that the dice-based traditions of RPGs are bad, but you are emotionally fond of that status quo.

No, I am saying that CRPGs that attempt to eliminate RNG are usually pretty shitty and making comparisons to chess to justify these crappy games is pointless.

Now on the other hand if your character does 15-25 damage, can miss or critical, and the opponent can miss or critical as well - now you actually have to figure out what is the best option. You could heal, but your hp gain would also be variable, and the enemy might still kill you with a critical hit. You could attack, but the results depend on your chance to hit, critical chance, damage range, all of which you have to factor in. This is the "thinking power" that popamoles and Sawyerfags alike both lack..

You're romanticizing what actually happens, probably because you get adrenaline surges from gambling. Gambling is not thought. Yes, you enjoy it. Yes it feels better emotionally to those people who are inclined to gamble. But it is still just noise around a statistical average result. It is all the joys of the deterministic system that you scorn, with the extra added pleasure of constant reloading even when you are playing the optimal odds.

This is where contingency planning comes into play. If there is always a 100% deterministic optimal choice then you have absolutely no need for contingency planning. When things do not always go your way due to sheer random luck or a slew of variables not under your control (often the case in real life) then you need a contingency plan.

You need a sense for the sweet spot of average results merely in order to minimize the reloading. There's not as much thinking as you'd like to believe. What you feel is mainly emotion and adrenaline.

You are being self contradictory here. On one hand you are claiming it is "emotion and adrenaline" produced by gambling, and on the other hand you are claiming it is a cold game of statistics. But both claims are essentially absurd. Neither is RPG combat pulse pounding nor is it about intense number crunching. It's about constantly making decisions, weighing the alternatives, taking calculated risks, and continuously planning and figuring out what you will do next both if things go your way and if they don't.

Risk without complex underlying systems to understand--that is, deterministic and deep systems--simply becomes a crap-shoot grind of finding the averaged sweet spot that iwould be analogous to the straight-forward determinstic calculation in a non-random system that you panned.

In a CRPG randomness amplifies the depth of systems. As I have indicated in the example in my previous post, without randomness there is always an "optimal choice" and therefore really no choice at all. If you have no choices there is no depth. If things always go your way, basically if a decision always produces the same result, the second layer of thinking, the "what will I do next if this doesn't work?" is absent, hence CRPG's which reduce or eliminate randomness are usually both shallow and hollow experiences.

This is not the "thinking power" but rather it is the "reload-until-the-numbers-you-don't-control-eventually-go-your-way power" that is perversion of using dice in a setting for which they were never meant. Dice belong in social settings where other players can insist on enforcing a bad roll. In single-player games, dice and random risk are just a save-reload time-sink.

We are not talking about PNP here but CRPGs, so here we go again with pointless comparisons. PNP games don't have reloads but neither do they have game over screens. A game over screen and the reload that happens afterwards is the way a CRPG results in loss. A game in which you do not need to reload is a game you cannot lose and a game in which you cannot lose is a game with no challenge. Of course no one plays games simply to lose so the objective is to not reload. There are those that man up and play hard, trying different but sound tactics and making intelligent decisions so that they can enjoy a satisfying victory. And there are those who go on forums and bitch about random number generation. If you don't want to lose at CRPGs you should be playing adventure games.

 

[Bibbimbop]

This is where contingency planning comes into play. If there is always a 100% deterministic optimal choice then you have absolutely no need for contingency planning. When things do not always go your way due to sheer random luck or a slew of variables not under your control (often the case in real life) then you need a contingency plan.

English is a rich and varied language with many synonyms. Today, I learnt that "contigency plan" and "reload" are the same. I would always reload in the first Blackguards, if a few important spells failed in the first round. It saved me time, and I got nearly to the end of the game.

Also, you like to frame the issue improperly. You wish to present randomness as anything that isn't known and optimal. A deterministic game still should have many suboptimal choices that aren't immediately obvious.

• It can still have "a slew of variables" that change and interact according to a complex determined system.
• There doesn't need to be full knowledge of enemy stats and abilities in a deterministic game.
• There can be bad choices that aren't obvious until they're tried.
• You should be able to lose a deterministic game.

Acknowledging these things will cut out quite a bit of the filler in these posts. You should also acknowledge that RPGs are derived from paper rulesets for table-top wargames, through the legacy of AD&D and other roleplay systems intended for groups.

• Dice are historically a social activity.
• No one shoots craps without a group. It's boring randomness.
• Old wargames were social activities meant for groups, and dice were used.
• The first paper RPGs were based on these wargames
• The paper RPGs have always incorporated dice as a tradition back to their roots.

• Computer RPGs are generally not a social activity.
• Yet most CRPGs come, directly or indirectly, from paper RPGs.
• The vast body of existing CRPGs are using rulesets not expressly intended for single-play
• This is, in fact, worthy of comparison.

As I have indicated in the example in my previous post, without randomness there is always an "optimal choice" and therefore really no choice at all. If you have no choices there is no depth. If things always always go your way, basically if a decision always produces the same result, the second layer of thinking, the "what will I do next if this doesn't work?" is absent, hence CRPG's which reduce or eliminate randomness are usually both shallow and hollow experiences.

You are aware that, even with randomness, there remains an "optimal choice" based upon expectation values, right? If you are reasonably savvy, it isn't hard to get a belly feel for the optimal choice in a random system, and thus be returned back to your dilemma of having no choice at all. And random games don't necessarily have more options. You can easily make a game that just rolls dice ad nauseam. There's a lot of clever "framing the issue" that is going on here.

We are not talking about PNP here but CRPGs, so here we go again with pointless comparisons.

No, the comparisons remain apt. Often CRPG rulesets do literally get copied straight from the dead tree medium, like Dark Eye and Blackguards. It's absurd to forbid comparisons.

When you're complaining that a CRPG deviates from the strict dice-centric gameplay meant for group social settings in the PNP source from which it is derived, then you really don't have the luxury of telling me that PNP games can't be compared to CRPGs. You want the CRPG to have the same system as the PNP without acknowledging that dice are fundamentally a group social activity. Then you claim that they can't be compared. You are engaging in an interesting amount of intellectual jujitsu here, pronouncing judgement upon what can and can't be compared, but I largely reject all of that.

The reason you point to shitty games as determinstic is simply because there are so few that have matured yet. Wait for Telepath Tactics. The vast legacy of CRPGs from Akalabeth till now is a huge corpus of dice-centric games inspired by PNP rules for social settings. But dice are not well-suited to a single-player experience. Often they simply inspire grinding for the best rolls. I say this as someone who ground out a 93 point total in Baldur's Gate for six hours.

 

[shadow9d9]

Randomness is something that happens on top of that, and at extreme levels, is actually antithetical to both "player skill" AND "character skill".

This is Sawyerfag logic. There is no such thing as player skill without randomness (I'm talking about intelligence here, not reflexes). Randomness is a simulation of risk in RPGs. Without risk, there is no such thing as taking calculated risks, making meaningful choices or contingency planning. Without randomness, there is only predictable outcomes to obvious choices, no skill.

I'm really looking forward to tackling Serpent in the Staglands as Whalenought seems to realize that without a nice degree of randomness, combat is simply non-threatening.

And in an action-RPG, it's not very fun when you play skillfully but lose anyway because you keep getting bad rolls.

This is why popamoles (twitch gamers with low intelligence) always complain about RNG. It often voids what they are good at, while giving them something that they are not mentally capable of working around.

What makes someone low intelligence for wanting skill to win in a game? "Twitch" is skill in addition to intelligence. You have to outsmart your enemies in addition to being coordinated. That is how it works.

I play boardgames. There are tons of euros with little to no luck. There are tons of games with luck. Are you trying to say that people with low intelligence would be winning the games that require only skill(euros) while they would lose the luck based ones because they can't outsmart luck?

You can attempt to mitigate some luck, but in the end, if the luck is bad enough, all plans are wasted. There are people out there that only want skill based games. I find that the people that support your point of view are the same people that would never win a skill only based game and need luck to occasionally win.

I don't think it's fair or accurate to compare boardgames with computer RPG's because boardgames (like for example chess) are not usually based on numbers, have simple rules and pit you against an actual human opponent. RPG's are on the other hand meant to simulate combat between individuals. And combat is all about risk. Choosing between combat options in a good RPG system is deciding which risk you can afford to take.

For example, in a game, your character is near death. He theoretically could either heal or attack. If the enemy has 20 hp left, and your character does a fixed damage of 25, and attacks are guaranteed to hit, the only obvious choice is to attack and kill the opponent. If the enemy has 20 hp left, and your character does a fixed damage of 10 on the other hand, and attacks are guaranteed to hit, the only obvious choice is to heal, as you have no chance of killing the enemy before it kills you.

Now on the other hand if your character does 15-25 damage, can miss or critical, and the opponent can miss or critical as well - now you actually have to figure out what is the best option. You could heal, but your hp gain would also be variable, and the enemy might still kill you with a critical hit. You could attack, but the results depend on your chance to hit, critical chance, damage range, all of which you have to factor in. This is the "thinking power" that popamoles and Sawyerfags alike both lack.

I'm not arguing that twitch gaming doesn't also involve a sort of mental processing. Just that this is not the sort of mental processing a good RPG combat system is based on. That being said I think skilled twitch gamers command significantly more respect than RPG players who like dumbed down RTWP and TB systems who have neither the reflexes for twitch gaming nor the intellectual power to cope with RNG.

Many board games are indeed based on numbers. Abstract games like chess do not. This comparison is difficult due to most peoples' unfamiliarity with euro boardgames. Many, many euros have fixed prices of conversions(give in x and get Y in return). It isn't each individual decision that matters as much as the order and overall outcome of all the decisions combined that makes the game into the game. You are right in that the human component aspect is missing in computer rpgs. Still, meaningful and complex decisions could be demanded even in the case of predetermined values.

I've always been sensitive to luck, from boardgames and beyond. You can often mitigate them to some degree, which is the skill you refer to. I appreciate that. That being said, I once lost 10 dice rolls in a row to someone in a 3 hour board game. No amount of mitigation existed in the game to counterbalance this. Yes, the odds of losing 10 dice rolls in a row is astronomical, but it is still possible.

I've always felt that random number generators in computer games, based on percentages(% to hit, such as when a game says there is a 99% chance to hit), are off. Should you expect a 99% accurate shot in Xcom to succeed? Not every time, but most of the time. If you miss this shot 3 times in a row, that is crap imo. Something is off. In RPGs, if something absolutely absurd happens, I have no qualms reloading. Sometimes games don't play fair with numbers. I don't think at that point that it becomes a skill or non skill based decision. At that point it just becomes ludicrous.

If mitigation were more prominent, then that is one thing. If you do everything perfectly and still receive absurd results, then it just isn't fun and is more of the game playing you than you playing the game.

"without randomness there is always an "optimal choice"" This is demonstrably not true. Being presented with multiple decisions to make, with changing goals does not make an optimal choice apparent. That is the key to a good game. You operate on assumptions here and ideals. I base my response off of owning over 250 boardgames and running a group for 5 years.

I also think that there is often a misconception that if everything was determinable that the game would not be dynamic and would be dry. Boardgamers are often of this misconception as well. However, my 250(90%) luckless/super luck board games show that you can make extremely dynamic and nail biting experiences with little to no luck. Most of this comes from the human opponents in board games. Why can't AI be created to produce the same effect? It is much easier to make a crappy RNG generator than good AI however...

As for twitch based gaming, my point is that you can have amazing skills in accuracy and response time, but what makes the top gamers into what they are is their situational awareness, their ability to read other humans, and their ability to outthink their opponents. Pure accuracy will only get them so far.

 

[twincast]

I believe you're referring to the New Features video series? That actually has me confused for another reason. While Mháire also likes simple dungeon crawlers and stats-light Numenera in particular, she doesn't strike me as someone who would support streamlining The Dark Eye that much. (I think even TDE5e goes just a little bit too far for her liking, but I ain't stalking her forum activities.) And to be frank, that reaction's written plainly on her face during her site's videos of the Gamescom presentation and their interview with some Daedalic guy right after. So why does she narrate their videos again? I guess she must've made friends at Daedalic over the last couple of years...

Ah, this German Blackguards 2 preview of theirs apparently covering pretty much the whole prologue (with several skips) reveals it; they wrote the manual and she the English translation this time, i.e. stuff that actually brings home money unlike the wee little guide vids.

 

[DefJam101]

Not that this isn't the strawman battle of the year but the entire point of having randomness in a single-player game is to add challenge in the absence of a DM. If you manually design every single bit of every single challenge your game will be complete shit unless it is extremely complex (read: hard to program and balance and populate with content). So, faced with a choice between programming highly advanced AI that can put up a fight in a highly complex system all without destroying the pacing or going with randomization, devs choose randomization.

If you reload every time your plan catastrophically fails in an RPG, I can understand why you would hate randomization.

Then again I'm totally fine playing a heavily randomized game even when it means I will sometimes fail through no fault of my own. The resulting challenge and excitement, to me, is worth the tradeoff. So, I might be a space alien.

 

[Grunker]

why do people still reply to roshan

 

[Achiman]

Currently playing BG1.
I just beat the crocodiles fight this morning where you have to stop them eating all the scooby snacks on the weighted pedestals, but if you run up to the pedestals they nom away at the chick you are trying to save. Really cool.
Also my character seems to be a piece of shit because I didn't know/still don't know enough about the game system when I stared playing. He's a two handed crushing weapons specialist but seems to be shithouse at everything lol. I'm fine with that though and I'm too far into the game to re-roll. The combat is just difficult enough imo to be rewarding and frustrating without seeming too unfair or random. You really HAVE to exploit the environment if there is a trap of some sort to win a lot of the maps.
Sad they are dumbing down the combat systems just as I'm starting to get the hang of it all.
Incidentally one of your NPCs is a drug addict who is a total liability for that fight and the next one (spoiler: don't do drugs kids). That is something I haven't seen in an RPG that I can remember.

 

[shadow9d9]

Not that this isn't the strawman battle of the year but the entire point of having randomness in a single-player game is to add challenge in the absence of a DM. If you manually design every single bit of every single challenge your game will be complete shit unless it is extremely complex (read: hard to program and balance and populate with content). So, faced with a choice between programming highly advanced AI that can put up a fight in a highly complex system all without destroying the pacing or going with randomization, devs choose randomization.

If you reload every time your plan catastrophically fails in an RPG, I can understand why you would hate randomization.

Then again I'm totally fine playing a heavily randomized game even when it means I will sometimes fail through no fault of my own. The resulting challenge and excitement, to me, is worth the tradeoff. So, I might be a space alien.

Not a strawman at all.

If you don't reload when your plan fails due to luck, I guess you just start the entire game over, right?

Something ceases to be "challenging" when it is preposterous and the "luck" gives you literally zero chance to win.

 

[DefJam101]

If you don't reload when your plan fails due to luck, I guess you just start the entire game over, right?

There's a reason I generally support checkpoint-based or "setback-based"* save/reload systems rather than player-controlled ones.

Something ceases to be "challenging" when it is preposterous and the "luck" gives you literally zero chance to win.

Since others have already said this stuff better than I can, I'll quote the Crawl manual's statement on balance:

The notions of balance, or being imbalanced, are extremely vague. Here is our definition: Crawl is designed to be a challenging game, and is also renowned for its randomness. However, this does not mean that wins are an arbitrary matter of luck: the skill of players will have the largest impact. So, yes, there may be situations where you are doomed - no action could have saved your life. But then, from the midgame on, most deaths are not of this type: By this stage, almost all casualties can be traced back to actual mistakes; if not tactical ones, then of a strategical type, like wrong skilling (too broad or too narrow), unwise use of resources (too conservative or too liberal), or wrong decisions about branch/god/gear.

The possibility of unavoidable deaths is a larger topic in computer games. Ideally, a game like this would be really challenging and have both random layout and random course of action, yet still be winnable with perfect play. This goal seems out of reach. Thus, computer games can be soft in the sense that optimal play ensures a win. Apart from puzzles, though, this means that the game is solved from the outset; this is where the lack of a human game-master is obvious. Alternatively, they can be hard in the sense that unavoidable deaths can occur. We feel that the latter choice provides much more fun in the long run.

Crawl is a roguelike, so its approach to randomization will of course differ from games in other genres, but this concept can be applied to basically any singleplayer game intended to pose a challenge for experienced players.

* I don't think there's a name for the sort of system found in, for example, the Souls games.

 

[Nihiliste]

Feels bad man. Another developer that needs to learn the age old lesson - if it's not broken, DON'T FUCK WITH IT.