The RPG that pissed you off the most

[Robotigan]

What makes a game "skillful" and "good" in the eyes of a hardcore gamer has nothing to do with good game design, and is entirely about how obtuse the game is to learn and play. Then when people struggle initially to overcome that hurdle, they can then smugly post "get good" or "play for another 1000 hours to master some skill" as if it justifies their shitty game design decisions.

Aye, hardcore players think that anything they developed the muscle memory for should be rewarded no matter how arbitrary. Kind of reminds me how fighting games have dozens of long button sequences to memorize (because they were on 6-button arcades), but Melee has more positioning dynamics going on and manages to make every move two buttons at most. Yet the fighting community won't let go of their sequences.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

Aye, hardcore players think that anything they developed the muscle memory for should be rewarded no matter how arbitrary. Kind of reminds me how fighting games have dozens of long button sequences to memorize (because they were on 6-button arcades), but Melee has more positioning dynamics going on and manages to make every move two buttons at most. Yet the fighting community won't let go of their sequences.

The professional fighting game community is one of the most degenerate, brainless communities that exists within gaming.

 

[anvi]

I'd like to rage about DOTA2 even though it's not much of an RPG. If it was 100% shit then I would ignore it but there are parts that are amazing. When you get a big battle between 5 people vs the 5 enemy people, and everyone is good and contributing, then it can be amazing. And it's always different because of the many different interactions between the many characters. But everything else about the game is completely retarded. You depend so much on the rest of your team and usually they are fucking morons. In games like NOX you had all the same cool gameplay but it was deathmatch so you could just enjoy it, you only had to rely on yourself. Teamplay could be great but mobas allow shit people to ruin everything for everyone. You also can't leave the game when if someone on your team is deliberately trying to ruin the game, if you leave the game punishes you. So you are held hostage for an hour by these stupid fucks. Also kill stealing is like the stupidest mechanic that goes completely against everything else in the game. It ruins everything, it makes the players play like useless bastards and rewards them for it. It punishes people who play well. Also having to 'farm the lane' for 30 minutes at the start of every game is boring and stupid. Basically everything about these games is really annoying shit and stupid, except a few awesome bits of gameplay. I can't believe someone hasn't taken the few good bits and made a new game out of it, but this retarded games business instead just copy pastes the same DOTAs with the same shit problems. Same thing happened with MMOs, all these promising genres die out because they all copied 1 game instead of trying a few things.

I happen to like the farming economy side of it (since it's the only thing I'm remotely good at), but fully agreed that the lack of any surrender option is so damn tedious. And the way the player base celebrates it absolutely reeks of insecurity. Of course I understand maximum tryhard, play until the ancient falls will net marginally more wins; and I don't give a shit. If you wanna do that, get a 5-stack that feels the same way. The rest of us don't want to waste half-an-hour tilting in a game we're 99% sure to lose especially in unranked. Dota sold its soul to the hardcore audience and as a result is utterly devoid of new/casual players to bolster the lower ranks leaving everyone else is on the mmr treadmill.

The absolute worst thing you can do as a game designer is cater to the hardcore audience. Hardcore gamers are some of the most retarded people on the planet, usually pointing to some individual mechanic as "skill" while ignoring or not understanding the core design principles that make games fun and interesting.

At least actual casual players will play something for a while, get bored, and move on without yelling endlessly into the void about how "the game is catered to people who arent me so its bad". I know plenty of casuals who know what makes a game fun other than "OH it needs to have super skillful headshot" or "oh everything needs to be a skillshot". Hardcore gamers are likely to call needing to eat and drink in a survival game "hardcore" despite most of these systems adding nothing to a particular game other than busywork.

The worst example of this is probably Rainbow Six Siege. The game is horrendously designed - sight lines are massive so you can instantly die from anywhere (including spawn) which encourages rushing to various "magic kill spots" on each map, characters are unbalanced, it's difficult to read opponents - there are a lot of issues. But because the game has a low time to kill, it's obviously good in the eyes of hardcore gamers, and criticising it makes me a "noskill noob" who just needs to play more (or something).

What makes a game "skillful" and "good" in the eyes of a hardcore gamer has nothing to do with good game design, and is entirely about how obtuse the game is to learn and play. Then when people struggle initially to overcome that hurdle, they can then smugly post "get good" or "play for another 1000 hours to master some skill" as if it justifies their shitty game design decisions.

League of Legends is the quintessential example. Everything is done in the name of "more skills" from Dota - more targeted abilities, more skillshots, more complex heroes, more complicated matchups etc. It should be a far deeper and more interesting game than Dota. And yet every other area of the game has basically regressed since their original Dota inspiration because the hardcore idiots that made it have no idea how a game works or how core mechanics function to create problem solving, tension and interactivity. Even something as simple as a town portal scroll - something that could require interesting resource costs, tradeoffs, and depth, is now just a magic teleport button. It didn't exactly require a lot of skill in Dota, but they could have moved forward, not regressed backwards. But because it wasn't a "skillshot", it's obviously not REAL skill so it was jetissoned.

This is why Counter-Strike has been in a broken state for over 20 years. It's also why it's completely devoid of fun. The game is broken on purpose. That's the way the community likes it. Certain guns aren't "overwpoered and broken", just "the community meta" (which is forever unchanging). 4 AKs and an AWP on every team forever, unless it's a save round. That's how CS "works" and if you suggest maybe some of the other guns (like the short range weapons aka shotguns) be made viable? "LOL you just want to use a high spread shotgun, just get good and learn how to use rifles", so the game is forever an unbalanced mess, because headshots are all that matter and all that counts as skill. The game is so stale and so barely functional to the point where the META is entirely broken, every game plays the same, and there's no strategy or nuance. Just shooty kill kill.

Don't even get me started on hardcore fighting game players. They think a game sucks if it doesn't require as much button mashing and "caters to casuls" as a result. Just ignore the character interactions, how each fighter can work, how balanced special abilities are. It's all about "those difficult to master combo moves". Divekick has more depth than a lot of professional fighting games and it was made as a joke parody of fighting games.

I have basically given up on multiplayer games at this point. All the interesting game design is happening in single player games. Multiplayer games are mostly just iterations on the same formula to cater to the same "high skill" hardcore audience of screeching autists, and I usually don't find them compelling or interesting enough to actually invest the time into to bother getting good, because all the higher leagues offer is the same game but usually with less content (since everyone sticks to the meta weapons and classes, rather than using everyting).

Certain types of skill are basically considered invalid because pro's have a very concise list of what count's as "skill". Overwatch is a good example of this. Take Torbion for example. The skill in playing Torb relies mostly on carefully placing a turret in a clever area to cover your team or surprise enemies. He's a very positional character. He is also underdeveloped and not complicated enough, so he caps off quickly and is not competitively viable, which I see as a game design issue. Because he doesn't rely on traditional aim or dodging skills, it's considered totally acceptable that he's not competitively viable because "only noobs play that class". It's a self fulfilling cycle where unbalanced game design is justified because a handful of pros have largely dictated what is the "correct" set of skills to be "pro" at videogames. Because his skill relies more on positioning and situational awareness, and not on aim, it's totally okay for the game to be unbalanced and him to not be viable because the pros said so. As a result, positional gameplay will not be developed, he will not be made more interesting, and will never be competitively viable. The design is stuck and will never go further. Personally I blame this phenomena on Quake, which is basically where these autistic pros came from.

Meanwhile single player game developers are free to explore every avenue.

I agree with some of what you said but I think you got some of it backwards. DOTA is more hardcore than League. League dumbs things down and makes it more casual. Removing the Town Portal and making it a teleport button instead, is making it more casual, dumbing down, simplifying, the dreaded "streamlining". All these things are the opposite of hardcore. A hardcore player would want the Town Portal to have a cost to buy it, require mana to use, have a significant cast time, and let the player be stunned and interrupted while casting it too. That's what hardcores would want, and they got exactly that with Heroes of Newerth. But that game died because being hardcore can limit the audience if they don't do a good job of easing people into it. (Which they did a terrible job of doing.)

But the fans loved it more than all the others because of these hardcore things. Same with a lot of games, the hardcore parts are what make it good. Take the hardcore out of say Dark Souls and you'd ruin it. But you can take the hardcore out of some games and they become more popular. That's why Skyrim is barely even an RPG anymore, compared to Morrowind that was full of stats and factions and RPG stuff. The best game I ever played was full of insanely hardcore things. Some of them were essential, some were stupid and never should be there. But there are similar games that tried removing all those things and making them casual instead and it turns out that it just made it worse. Some of them were big improvements, but mostly it ruined the experience. Great games often seem to need a mixture of hardcore and casual stuff. It's all about how well that gets blended together by the devs. Like a master chef, they can make something very spicy, or very bland, or anything in between. It can be nice either way, it just has to be done well.

 

[anvi]

I'd like to rage about DOTA2 even though it's not much of an RPG. If it was 100% shit then I would ignore it but there are parts that are amazing. When you get a big battle between 5 people vs the 5 enemy people, and everyone is good and contributing, then it can be amazing. And it's always different because of the many different interactions between the many characters. But everything else about the game is completely retarded. You depend so much on the rest of your team and usually they are fucking morons. In games like NOX you had all the same cool gameplay but it was deathmatch so you could just enjoy it, you only had to rely on yourself. Teamplay could be great but mobas allow shit people to ruin everything for everyone. You also can't leave the game when if someone on your team is deliberately trying to ruin the game, if you leave the game punishes you. So you are held hostage for an hour by these stupid fucks. Also kill stealing is like the stupidest mechanic that goes completely against everything else in the game. It ruins everything, it makes the players play like useless bastards and rewards them for it. It punishes people who play well. Also having to 'farm the lane' for 30 minutes at the start of every game is boring and stupid. Basically everything about these games is really annoying shit and stupid, except a few awesome bits of gameplay. I can't believe someone hasn't taken the few good bits and made a new game out of it, but this retarded games business instead just copy pastes the same DOTAs with the same shit problems. Same thing happened with MMOs, all these promising genres die out because they all copied 1 game instead of trying a few things.

I happen to like the farming economy side of it (since it's the only thing I'm remotely good at), but fully agreed that the lack of any surrender option is so damn tedious. And the way the player base celebrates it absolutely reeks of insecurity. Of course I understand maximum tryhard, play until the ancient falls will net marginally more wins; and I don't give a shit. If you wanna do that, get a 5-stack that feels the same way. The rest of us don't want to waste half-an-hour tilting in a game we're 99% sure to lose especially in unranked. Dota sold its soul to the hardcore audience and as a result is utterly devoid of new/casual players to bolster the lower ranks leaving everyone else is on the mmr treadmill.

I don't mind the farming but it's very simple and to expect the exact same thing every game, is gonna be a no from me. Hour long games in the exact same map, that all start the exact same way, so weak!

I always wanted to see MOBAs grow into bigger games. I think they are worth growing, and it would suit them much better. There could be a town where people hang around together and chat, look at items, maybe try items out on target dummies in the town. That would take care of all the people who can barely play and just want to be with people in an online game (a huge problem imo). Then outside the town I'd have various jungles full of mobs for people to hunt. They could hunt them solo or with other players. That would act like a tutorial for people to learn the game, and practice their attacks and ways to escape. Then beyond the jungles I'd have areas where players fight. Sometimes 1v1 or 5v5, some free for all deathmatch areas, etc. I'd also redo the ranking system to be based on character flags / achievements instead. Players would have to beat various challenges to progress, so it would keep newbies together, better players would get sent to areas with other better players, etc.

 

[Forseti]

Aye, hardcore players think that anything they developed the muscle memory for should be rewarded no matter how arbitrary. Kind of reminds me how fighting games have dozens of long button sequences to memorize (because they were on 6-button arcades), but Melee has more positioning dynamics going on and manages to make every move two buttons at most. Yet the fighting community won't let go of their sequences.

The professional fighting game community is one of the most degenerate, brainless communities that exists within gaming.

At least some of them have their heads on straight. Prediction, reaction: this is the essence of skill in action games.

To the topic, I get pissed at RPGs that adapt D&D combat mechanics (eg. Vancian magic) when it doesn't suit the flow of the game. Eg. The party is fighting their way through the Big Bad's palace to force a final confrontation... but the wizard needs more fireballs so they stop to camp... in the Big Bad's palace.. for an entire day.. twice!! Then they approach the Big Bad and trade le epic dialogues and initiate the climactic fight. But actually they spend two minutes buffing up while the Big Bad waits patiently.

This is the kind of absurdity you get when you insist on religiously translating tabletop mechanics. It's dumb. If the wizard is supposed to have fireballs per-encounter, just give them the damn fireballs back automatically. If they're supposed to conserve, then don't let them rest in the middle of high tension scenes like storming the boss' base. If you expect the player to always be pre-buffed, just make those buffs passive. If not, then make them do it in the middle of combat so there's a cost.

The logical conclusion to this is probably "Sawyer was right", even if PoE made other mistakes

 

[Yosharian]

More like Pierre was right. His approach to balancing spells in KOTC2 is quite elegant and effective IMO

Sawyer's approach is ass by comparison

 

[Pink Eye]

His approach to balancing spells in KOTC2 is quite elegant and effective IMO

I like that there's a script in game to automatically prebuff spells. I also like how some buffs can last until the end of combat or until next rest. Pierre understood that spending 10 mins to prebuff only for it to expire in minutes isn't fun.

 

[anvi]

Aye, hardcore players think that anything they developed the muscle memory for should be rewarded no matter how arbitrary. Kind of reminds me how fighting games have dozens of long button sequences to memorize (because they were on 6-button arcades), but Melee has more positioning dynamics going on and manages to make every move two buttons at most. Yet the fighting community won't let go of their sequences.

The professional fighting game community is one of the most degenerate, brainless communities that exists within gaming.

At least some of them have their heads on straight. Prediction, reaction: this is the essence of skill in action games.

To the topic, I get pissed at RPGs that adapt D&D combat mechanics (eg. Vancian magic) when it doesn't suit the flow of the game. Eg. The party is fighting their way through the Big Bad's palace to force a final confrontation... but the wizard needs more fireballs so they stop to camp... in the Big Bad's palace.. for an entire day.. twice!! Then they approach the Big Bad and trade le epic dialogues and initiate the climactic fight. But actually they spend two minutes buffing up while the Big Bad waits patiently.

This is the kind of absurdity you get when you insist on religiously translating tabletop mechanics. It's dumb. If the wizard is supposed to have fireballs per-encounter, just give them the damn fireballs back automatically. If they're supposed to conserve, then don't let them rest in the middle of high tension scenes like storming the boss' base. If you expect the player to always be pre-buffed, just make those buffs passive. If not, then make them do it in the middle of combat so there's a cost.

The logical conclusion to this is probably "Sawyer was right", even if PoE made other mistakes

EverQuest did a great job of some of that. Making the whole pnp D&D thing work in real time was a great achievement. Like an action game, all realtime, but with all that depth of D&D and like a pnp game. Resting was one of the things they did best, and buffing. They replaced the party setting up camp and sleeping for 24 hours with just sitting down and meditating and resting for a few minutes. But it was so amazing in the context of the game. Because it forced careful resource management, and preparation. You had to sit and rest or you would run out of mana and die which was v bad. Every second you sat felt scary because there are enemies roaming around, and enemies respawn too. So if you are not strong enough or efficient enough with your spells, then you end up resting too much and get respawns on top of you. You can't make progress unless you are good enough to clear ahead and then just rest for a moment, and then keep moving.

It's still a bit gamey, you still sit outside his room for 5 minutes casting noisy buffs after slaughtering the whole place, while the boss sits in his room waiting for you. But in terms of translating it into a game I think EQ did a lot of stuff better than anything else.

 

[logrus]

Drakensang The Dark Eye. Level of cringe in dialogs, awful, unimaginative, childish writing and something only someone from Germany can consider "humor". Plus the artstyle somehow even worse than in Oblivion with five tons of bloom filter. Character system was fun though.
Fallout 4. I could maybe stomach one settlement, but the way it's implemented with whole network to manage combined with dustman simulator and dumbest dialog system ever created? No, nope, nein.
Might and Magic VI. Mindless fantasy mass murder simulator. don't get me wrong, world is fun to explore but constant fights with 30 sprite mobs that you just pew-pew? Not to mention some dungeon with 500 undead fight. And you guys say "modern cRPGs have shitty combat and encounter desgin", well living up to "classics" I guess.

 

[anvi]

Drakensang The Dark Eye. Level of cringe in dialogs, awful, unimaginative, childish writing and something only someone from Germany can consider "humor". Plus the artstyle somehow even worse than in Oblivion with five tons of bloom filter. Character system was fun though.
Fallout 4. I could maybe stomach one settlement, but the way it's implemented with whole network to manage combined with dustman simulator and dumbest dialog system ever created? No, nope, nein.
Might and Magic VI. Mindless fantasy mass murder simulator. don't get me wrong, world is fun to explore but constant fights with 30 sprite mobs that you just pew-pew? Not to mention some dungeon with 500 undead fight. And you guys say "modern cRPGs have shitty combat and encounter desgin", well living up to "classics" I guess.

They call it Might & Magic and then you run around pew pewing everything with 4 bows, using neither might nor magic. I like some other parts of that series though.

 

[Sarathiour]

I agree with some of what you said but I think you got some of it backwards. DOTA is more hardcore than League. League dumbs things down and makes it more casual. Removing the Town Portal and making it a teleport button instead, is making it more casual, dumbing down, simplifying, the dreaded "streamlining".

We're getting sidetricked, but the thing is over the year LoL did his best to streamline the game, by having 5 locked roll in the team, nerfing any strat diverging from the meta and letting all of their other game mode dying a painful death.

 

[Faarbaute]

What makes a game "skillful" and "good" in the eyes of a hardcore gamer has nothing to do with good game design, and is entirely about how obtuse the game is to learn and play. Then when people struggle initially to overcome that hurdle, they can then smugly post "get good" or "play for another 1000 hours to master some skill" as if it justifies their shitty game design decisions.

I'm not gonna shill for bad game design but, mastering complex, abstract or obtuse game design is its own reward in this case. It's literally the thing people derive satisfaction from. Whether it's about rote memorization, muscle memory, strategy or tactics.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

dork souls is just rote memorization and the peak of degenerate gameplay design yet lots of people love it

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Each of these six TSR editions of D&D is better than any version of "D&D" post-TSR.

That was interesting, but you didn't exactly explain the main differences between editions or how they differ to current DND.

What is it about TSR DND that makes it so good in comparison to WOTC DND?

Dungeons & Dragons is the original RPG and was brilliant in general at creating a combination of exploration, combat, and character-related elements that propelled gameplay. Rules for the six versions published by TSR can variously be criticized for being messy, inconsistent, incomplete or conversely overlong, and contradictory, but the fundamentals are sound.

The three versions of "D&D" published after TSR's demise each dramatically altered the fundamentals of the game, though in different ways each time. There are Codexers better versed in "Nu-D&D", who could explain in detail the changes made, but briefly put they all not only altered the balance of components but severely damaged them in their attempts to imitate other types of games (e.g. MMORPGs for "4th edition D&D").

 

[Fedora Master]

dork souls is just rote memorization and the peak of degenerate gameplay design yet lots of people love it

Someone got filtered.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Plus the artstyle somehow even worse than in Oblivion with five tons of bloom filter.

The bloom is crap but the characters were actually pretty nice. Hottest chicks in Western gaming for sure.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

I agree with some of what you said but I think you got some of it backwards. DOTA is more hardcore than League. League dumbs things down and makes it more casual. Removing the Town Portal and making it a teleport button instead, is making it more casual, dumbing down, simplifying, the dreaded "streamlining". All these things are the opposite of hardcore. A hardcore player would want the Town Portal to have a cost to buy it, require mana to use, have a significant cast time, and let the player be stunned and interrupted while casting it too. That's what hardcores would want, and they got exactly that with Heroes of Newerth. But that game died because being hardcore can limit the audience if they don't do a good job of easing people into it. (Which they did a terrible job of doing.)

But the fans loved it more than all the others because of these hardcore things. Same with a lot of games, the hardcore parts are what make it good. Take the hardcore out of say Dark Souls and you'd ruin it. But you can take the hardcore out of some games and they become more popular. That's why Skyrim is barely even an RPG anymore, compared to Morrowind that was full of stats and factions and RPG stuff. The best game I ever played was full of insanely hardcore things. Some of them were essential, some were stupid and never should be there. But there are similar games that tried removing all those things and making them casual instead and it turns out that it just made it worse. Some of them were big improvements, but mostly it ruined the experience. Great games often seem to need a mixture of hardcore and casual stuff. It's all about how well that gets blended together by the devs. Like a master chef, they can make something very spicy, or very bland, or anything in between. It can be nice either way, it just has to be done well.

Talk to any League player, and they will tell you the game is high skill, and then list off a bunch of champions who have skillshot moves or other "high skill" attacks. They will then compare them to some of the more boring or straightforward Dota heroes (heroes like Skeleton King) and claim that League is a much higher skill game because of these "more interactive" skills and skillshot moves.

I largely agree that League is a far more dumbed down and simplified game, but it's still appealing to the hardcore audience. The difference is it's appealing to people who think targeted abilities are the only form of skill and that nothing else matters. The same way that Counter-Strike, despite being a very simple, shallow game mainly appeals to people who think headshots == skill and nothing else is important. That's exactly why everything outside of the gunplay in CS is so extremely undercooked.

There are a lot of hadcore games which are very barebones in terms of mechanics, and require very little skill in many areas. But they focus almost exclusively on one form of play above all else, and the community holds them up as beacons of skill, depth and difficulty as a result.

Dota is definitely a more complicated game to play that League. I also find it more interesting because it emphasizes different types of skills. You have your skillshot heroes like Queen of Pain, you have positioning and managment heroes like Meepo, you have button combo and mana management heroes like Invoker, aoe and positioning heroes like KotL, and full on supports like IO, plus a whole bunch of combination heroes like support and nuking, such as Silencer, Lion etc. I'm sure League has at least some of these too, but the emphasis definitely seems to be, at least from the marketing, on """high skill""" heroes where targeted abilities with very tight timings being the main selling point, and virtually every other type of skill is unimportant, and in many cases can be jettisoned. League is absolutely catering to the "hardcore" types of gamers I am talking about - the ones who like to argue about "high skill play" and "low skill play" by basically defining a whole bunch of different skills as invalid.

This is specifically why I mentioned Torbjorn in my original post. He is one of the best examples. As is the TF2 engineer for the same reason. Anyone who has played either of these classes offensively knows that there's a lot of skill that needs to be practiced to duke enemies, bait people into your sentry guns, create crossfires, and keep them protected so they don't die instantly. That skill is valid. However, because the Overwatch community collectively decided that "he's not an accuracy hero, therefore he's low skill by default", no work was ever done to make Torb competitively viable and increase his skill ceiling, so he never gets picked. They probably saw some of the really terrible sentry-camping engineers in a 2fort 24/7 server and decided the entire class (and any sort of gameplay like that at all) is inherently for "casuls".

It's exactly why hardcore multiplayer esports are so stale and boring. Only certain types of skill are permissable. In League, that's skillshots and targeted abilities. Luckily for Dota, it's gotten away with promoting a lot more styles of play, and I respect it for that. It's probably the most interesting multiplayer game I have played as a result. If it weren't for the fact that I can be locked in a game for 40 minutes with Russians who just want to throw and insult me, I would play it a lot more.

My 2 favourite heroes are IO and Wyvern, by the way. Both are pretty difficult, but only one of them (IO) gets shit on for being a "noob hero".

 

[Butter]

I don't know enough about League of Legend mechanics vis-a-vis Dota 2, but I can imagine skillshots make the game more accessible to casuals. To be clear, like putting the basketball in the hoop, the goal of a skillshot-oriented character is obvious, even if it it's not easy to execute. Someone who's unfamiliar with the game can tell when you're hitting Mirana's arrows consistently, but he might have no clue what it looks like to play Dark Seer effectively. The skill involved in that is more subtle, and that means there's a higher threshold of knowledge required just to spectate the game.

 

[Fedora Master]

ASSFAGGOTS are not role playing games.

Hope that clears things up.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

ASSFAGGOTS

Bless the guy who coined this term

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

The logical conclusion to this is probably "Sawyer was right", even if PoE made other mistakes

This is what I have been saying. PoE has some genuine good stuff in it and the developers at least tried to (and in some cases succeeded) improve the DND formula. The problems lie in other areas.

Everyone shit on me for basically being correct. That's RPGCodex, I guess.

 

[Fedora Master]

It's academic to differentiate between two bad implementations. PoE is regressive in entirely new ways as far as CRPGs go.

 

[eli]

any RPG that adopted its ruleset or envisioned itself entirely on tabletop and adds nothing/ inferior mechanics to replicate tabletop experience in a video game medium, if you want to experience tabletop just play it.
games focused more on tabletop recreate tabletop experiences with mechanics that are, on a conceptual level, not good for a computer game. why all of them are party-based? so you won't feel lonely?, why have romances? to cringly replicate your attempts to get a GF in an actual tabletop session?, why have companions?, to make you think you have friends?. all of these game designs (AND MUCH MORE) attempt to faithfully but fruitlessly make a good CRPG(C as as in a COMPUTER). and this goes for the "classics" and modern-day games. just have your RPG fit to an actual video game medium instead to create a game that brings nothing new with experimenting in a video game environment.

 

[Sykar]

Oblivion.


Perfect example of Bethestardian fustercluck:

0:42 I was wondering what this meant and I went to remind myself who Salmo was. He's a baker in Skingrad. The wiki has this to say Salmo has two AI packages commanding him to take five loaves of bread to the Two Sisters Lodge at 10am and to the West Weald Inn at midday, but the packages never execute as he has no bread in his inventory and the packages are of "escort" type, meaning he doesn't actively seek any out. It's possible this bug was introduced to avoid another, more serious one: if bread is given to Salmo using the console or CS, he will walk to one of the inns as commanded, take a bite of bread, and the game will crash. That's such a deep level joke, god I love you Young Scrolls.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

I don't know enough about League of Legend mechanics vis-a-vis Dota 2, but I can imagine skillshots make the game more accessible to casuals. To be clear, like putting the basketball in the hoop, the goal of a skillshot-oriented character is obvious, even if it it's not easy to execute. Someone who's unfamiliar with the game can tell when you're hitting Mirana's arrows consistently, but he might have no clue what it looks like to play Dark Seer effectively. The skill involved in that is more subtle, and that means there's a higher threshold of knowledge required just to spectate the game.

I find most of the people who constantly talk about how "hardcore" they are and how "they only play hardcore games" and how "it took me a long time to LEARN headshots so it's high skill" are some of the most casual players ever. Dumbfucks who want to endlessly repeat the same action over and over again to claim some semblance of skill in repetitive motion because they are too stupid to read an opponent and react in a meaningful manner.

A lot of the games that appeal to these sorts of people - Counter-Strike, Valorant, Overwatch, Apex Legends, Starcraft, most Fighting games - have very little if any strategy or counterplay, and largely focus on mastering some sort of repetitive action. Most competitive FPS nowadays have such low TTK that counter play is largely impossible - once you get in a fight, you either win or lose, and accuracy plays a huge part in it. Yes, I am aware Starcraft is on the list, and that's probably the most contentious game on there. Unofortunately, the Starcraft pro scene is largely not related to strategy and is more about direct unit counters and fighting against the games limitations to manage your base. This is exactly why people argue that the unit selection limit in Starcraft is a positive and it's removal is one of the reasons Starcraft 2 sucks (which is literally insane reasoning if you actually think about it. The game being tangibly worse to play aparrently makes it better).

Oblivion.


Perfect example of Bethestardian fustercluck:

0:42 I was wondering what this meant and I went to remind myself who Salmo was. He's a baker in Skingrad. The wiki has this to say Salmo has two AI packages commanding him to take five loaves of bread to the Two Sisters Lodge at 10am and to the West Weald Inn at midday, but the packages never execute as he has no bread in his inventory and the packages are of "escort" type, meaning he doesn't actively seek any out. It's possible this bug was introduced to avoid another, more serious one: if bread is given to Salmo using the console or CS, he will walk to one of the inns as commanded, take a bite of bread, and the game will crash. That's such a deep level joke, god I love you Young Scrolls.

You can reliably crash Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and New Vegas by adding an item to the inventory of a deleted actor via a script.

There is no error checking or contingencies in place in the engine whatsoever. Which is genuis design when you consider that this is a game made by possibly hundreds of people, many who don't understand the nuances of the engine, who will be constantly editing and deleting things in the creation process. This is even more hilarious when you realise that the only thing keeping TES afloat is the modding scene, which will often be done by people with very little software experience who likely know even less about the engine than Bethesda. Absolute 1000 IQ level engine design.

People forget the time where Oblivion would literally corrupt your save after ~100 hours of play because it wasn't cleaning up used references, leading to an overflow. This was mainly noticeable after isntalling Shivering Isles (which would make it happen after more like 40 hours of play) because it was creating about 20 new references per second because of it's horrendously written scripts. Want to play an open world RPG for a long time? Tough luck, your game is fucked. Luckily they did patch this, but the fact it happened in the first place (and that NOBODY in the office played the game for 100 hours on a single play to experience the bug) speaks volumes.

A gamebreaking animation bug (that kicks in after about 250 hours) still exists to this day.

Bethesda are possibly the most incompetent company in gaming. The fact that it took fans until Fallout 76 to realise just how broken their game code is astounds me. I honestly don't know why so many people give them a free pass.

I didn't even mention that this still works