Vault Dweller: Before I begin, I'd like to say that this post ended up being a lot longer than I intended, but you asked, and I think you deserve an in-depth response. I'd also like to say that AoD's BETA left me hungry for more, but it also let me down hugely in that there's so much potential in some of the brilliant design decisions (such as the way weapons actively feel incredibly different from each other) that is squandered because of a few other, not so good decisions.
EDIT:
Johannes touches briefly on what I'm going to go into depth with, actually.
I'd say good but too close to meh in my opinion. I agree with most of everything good that's been said (likaq brings up a lot of the good points), except for the combat, which I think is a pretty big let down. There is simply too little player control... there are too few actual tactical choices to make in combat.
Just to be clear, is it criticism of all single-character systems in general or our system in particular? I thought that the post-combat demo consensus was that the combat system is fairly tactical. If you disagree, what's missing, in your opinion?
The combat IS fairly tactical compared to other RPGs (which I actually state in the post you responded too), it's just not nearly tactical enough for the kind of difficulty AND limited options you have. From the bottom, I'll make three points in relation to why I think your game does not have enough direct combat depth:
1) If an RPG is as incredibly difficult as yours, I need to have many options at my disposal in any encounter. Different ways to tackle shit with the skill-set that I have (provided, of course, that I invested in combat). I don't in AoD really. I have a short list of different ways to attack where, depending on my opponent, one of them will most often be clearly favoured. Unless I've invested in other weapon skills than my primary weapon one (i.e. put point into throwing or whatever) my options are limited to almost only that short list. Movement is almost non-existant unless you're built for it.
So, the first point is that your RPG is incredibly difficult but does not offer enough options for the player to try different things in different encounters (with the same character - a different approach requires a new character) to combat the difficulty. You can't, say, switch weapons (skill points are too sparse), you can't shift attack modes (one will often be best), you can't use utilities such as nets (most of these are bound to skills too) and you can't shift fighting styles (tied to skills, again). So the difficulty is often rooted in something being "wrong" with your build (woops - dodge wasn't as good as you thought for this quest line!) rather than you using your build wrongly in the gameplay. This ties in to something very important in difficult gaming -
you must feel, if you lose, that it was your own fault. I'll come back to this point.
2) You have us control a single character. This in itself is DEFINETELY not my favourite cup of tea, but it's not like I haven't enjoyed plenty other RPGs with such a system, so this is not a criticism of such a system in itself. Rather, IF you can only control one character, this character must as a minimum have a range of options and shit he can do so that you don't go through the same motions again and again and again. Plenty RPGs fail here, but this is no excuse for AoD. AoD also fails even more than some because movement during combat is so limited without something to make up for this lack of tactical depth.
In short, the second point is that when you give us control of fewer characters you must make that character have more to do.
3) The third point is associated with both of the above, and is, in essence, the root of the problem. I'm gonna make a statement here: Age of Decadence has HUGE tactical variety but VERY FEW tactical options when you are playing. Let me explain: All weapons in AoD function extremely differently, and trying different builds you can really feel changes in how you play and fight. However, actually playing the game with any of the available builds, you have a very, very limited set of options available to you. This is also why the response to your combat demo and the actual game were so different, IMO: in the demo, people toyed with different builds and used the tactical variety. In the game, people played a character with limited options. So all this tactical variety is wasted from a player perspective because in any given playthrough you're only using 1/100 number of options there are, and will never be given access to new shit to do. The only tactical variety that happens while you are playing is encounter-based; i.e.: you are now attacked by a spear-wielder, how do you use your build now? However, even here in most cases you try to force yourself into a position as quickly as possbile where you can do whatever one-trick pony-thing your build wants to do.
I am pondering writing an article about this (something along the lines of "why good RPGs allow you to actually do shit in combat"), becuase it's something I feel most RPGs squander. I'm behind the questions in the RPG Codex Interviews with Legends of Eisenwald and Dead State that sound something like "yo, what will we actually be doing in combat?", but AoD gave me the inspiration. In my eyes, you've created one of the deepest weapon systems, if not THE deepest, in any RPG ever, however short of the enemies you face, the player doesn't actually get to use that depth actively while playing. Instead of a set of options at the player's disposal, the player gets to choose one at character creation and use that the whole game. This isn't necessarily bad - in an easy game you wouldn't care, and in a party-based game different characters in the party would make up for each of the characters being one-trick ponies. A single-character RPG could make up for this by grouping weapons that feel differently together in the same skill, for instance (Small Weapons cover everything from a pistol to an uzi) or by giving non-skill related tactical options. However, in a difficult, single-character RPG, the lack of options becomes a glaring problem.
Now, back to my point about
losing being your own damned fault. I've played P&P for many, many years, and designed, gamemastered and played in a large number of excrutiangly difficult encounters. In the well-designed ones, losing is clearly your own fault. You didn't utilize the options at your disposal correctly, and thus, you lost. You did the wrong thing on your turn, you underestimated a given factors role in the fight, or whatever, and you got put down. In AoD, far too often when you lose you can't explain why - either you got fucked by the RNG, but far more you simply "gambled on the wrong horse" (i.e. made a bad choice in character creation). In my humble opinion, your laughing replies to the outcry about the difficulty when you released the BETA were arrogance that mistook what was people having a hard time identifying why they lost, or people losing to something that wasn't their fault, with rage against the very nature of difficulty. You concluded that people who loved Wizardry or decade old, impossible platformers weren't men enough to handle AoD's difficulty. As I've stated many times, there is good and bad difficulty.
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As for what you should have done instead, I've already given my opinion on this if you recall. You should have done either of these things (the two first would be ideal in my opinion):
a) Fleshed out the maneuvers like Power Attack or Fast Attack, and given more active choices in combat that were all valid. More maneuvers (unlocked at different levels of weapon skill, even), different ways to use each maneuver. I wouldn't mind if these things came at the exclusion of some weapons, since immediate tactical variety for me is more important than being able to replay with another type of character - especially when the game has so much replay value in other areas anyway. Not that you should include magic, but magic is a good example of what I mean; with spells a character always has different options for different situations.
b) Made the game party-based, so that we could use more of the options presented at the character-selection screen that we never get to see again while playing.
c) Made some alternative mechanic that could make up for the lack of variety inherent in the system. Utilities that everybody could use? Focus more on movement-mechanics? Anything, really, that added immediate tactical variety.
d) Made the game is easier (which I would actively oppose
).
I hope that, even if you disagree, you follow what my personal concerns are.
