Why are RPG gamers more tolerant with bullshit mechanics?

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

How many modern games allow vampires to be exposed to sun like Elder Scroll Online and nobody cares?

Unfortunately that's one of those exceptions they had to make or else the idea of vampirism would be almost useless since ESO does not have a traditional real/server time day and night cycle. I think it circulates like... three or four hours of daylight then two hours or so of night. If they did give it a proper real time equivalent it would've been much better and more fun than incorporating the vampiric stages they currently do. At day you take increased damage/more vulnerable and many of your vampiric gifts are suppressed but at night you're at full power and notably harder to kill as an off the cuff example.

 

[Cryomancer]

Unfortunately that's one of those exceptions they had to make or else the idea of vampirism would be almost useless since ESO does not have a traditional real/server time day and night cycle. I think it circulates like... three or four hours of daylight then two hours or so of night. If they did give it a proper real time equivalent it would've been much better and more fun than incorporating the vampiric stages they currently do. At day you take increased damage/more vulnerable and many of your vampiric gifts are suppressed but at night you're at full power and notably harder to kill as an off the cuff example.

You are right. As for skyrim vampirism, at least vampires are weaker in the sunlight AND you could argue that Skyrim sunlight is far weaker than Morrowind sunlight just like IRL equator sunlight is far stronger than PAtagonia sunlight or Canadian sunlight, so vampires in Skyrim are weaker while exposed to sun but not actually damaged...

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

we are tempered by the codex. we can whitstand almost anything.

 

[Gregz]

Nobody accepts (the) things present in most modern RPG's in other game genres and other entertainment medias.

Why Owlcat's Kingmaker Sucks, in Plain Language

 

[karoliner]

High percentage of virgins.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Horseshit. This forum cries about everything. I'd rather negotiate contracts with the US government than deal with you faggots as my customers.

 

[Cryomancer]

Why Owlcat's Kingmaker Sucks, in Plain Language

A game who allows me to do that can't suck

High percentage of virgins.

Prostitution is legal in my country, so very few people are virgins here...

Horseshit. This forum cries about everything. I'd rather negotiate contracts with the US government than deal with you faggots as my customers.

Wrong. Most people here love old RPG's exactly because they don't have this BS mechanics

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[JarlFrank]

Are not the same thing. Spell per day makes sense. As limited battery ammo. CDs doesn't... And please. Read the second paragraph. I an not talking only about CD's in this thread. I an talking about resistances/immunities, everything scaling with weapon, ludonarrative dissonance, etc

I'm using a specific example to try and make you see that limitations to overcome or counteract are at the heart of game design, and RPG design especially, for a reason. Resistances? How about FPS enemies with armor you have to use a particular ammo type for? Enemies that are easier to kill with a shotgun versus a scope? I could go on and on... the point is, limitation makes the player adapt and overcome, which is the essence of gameplay. RPGs might have more of this than other genres because the whole point is to make your character stronger, but all games have this fundamental design idea.

Did you even read the OP?

OP specifically complains about silly RPG conventions like longswords being able to damage even a knight in plate armor because players would be butthurt if they required specific armor piercing weapons for that. OMG I went with bows instead of crossbows and now I can barely hurt a knight because his armor has too high pierce resistance for my bow??? Laaaaaaaame!!!

Meanwhile strategy games like Men of War have tanks being literally invincible against small arms, you need AT guns or AT grenades to damage them. They even have different ammo for tanks and AT guns: HE shells and AP shells, and most tanks can easily shrug off HE shells.

Due to convention and a too high degree of abstraction, armor and to-hit chance and damage are merely numbers disassociated from the things they're supposed to represent. The difference between leather armor, chainmail and plate armor is that you need progressively higher rolls to land a successful hit. Usually, the kind of weapon you use doesn't matter whatsoever. Sword? Axe? Warhammer? They all work the same lol, only the damage value is different. If we're lucky, certain enemy types like skeletons take less damage from slicing and piercing weapons and more damage from crushing weapons. Why not apply the same principle to armor worn by the player and by humanoid enemies to give it at least some semblance to how the real thing works? Few RPGs do this because convention says a high STR character with a longsword should be able to deliver damage to everything, even if it's a fucking stone golem (which should do more damage to your fucking sword than you're doing to it if you're dumb enough to use a sword against it).

Some RPGs break those conventions stemming from D&D (which make sense in a tabletop game where you don't want to spend 30 minutes on a single combat round and check 50 different tables to determine what effect your particular action has), but a lot of games stick to them and go even further in the abstractions, which creates a weird gameworld that wants to feel real through detailed worldbuilding and all that, but is systemically so abstract that the illusion breaks if you spend 5 seconds thinking about it.

 

[JarlFrank]

Unfortunately that's one of those exceptions they had to make or else the idea of vampirism would be almost useless since ESO does not have a traditional real/server time day and night cycle. I think it circulates like... three or four hours of daylight then two hours or so of night. If they did give it a proper real time equivalent it would've been much better and more fun than incorporating the vampiric stages they currently do. At day you take increased damage/more vulnerable and many of your vampiric gifts are suppressed but at night you're at full power and notably harder to kill as an off the cuff example.

You are right. As for skyrim vampirism, at least vampires are weaker in the sunlight AND you could argue that Skyrim sunlight is far weaker than Morrowind sunlight just like IRL equator sunlight is far stronger than PAtagonia sunlight or Canadian sunlight, so vampires in Skyrim are weaker while exposed to sun but not actually damaged...

The island of Vvardenfell and Skyrim are on the same geographical latitude, therefore should have similar stregth of sunlight:

 

[Lilura]

So the OP loves to obsess over stupid shit.

Yes, OP is a twit.

 

[Cryomancer]

Why not apply the same principle to armor worn by the player and by humanoid enemies to give it at least some semblance to how the real thing works? Few RPGs do this because convention says a high STR character with a longsword should be able to deliver damage to everything, even if it's a fucking stone golem (which should do more damage to your fucking sword than you're doing to it if you're dumb enough to use a sword against it).

Well said. Also, look to Arcanum. People complain about Ore Golems... The gargoyle on the theater of VTMB also is near invincible vs non blunt weapons.

As for D&D, D&D 2e had different armor values from slashing and blunt. But the difference is too small IMO... Full plate armor AC = 1 (-3 vs. slashing, -2 vs. piercing and missile) https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Full_Plate_Armor

Meaning that using a sword instead of a mace only means -40% chance to hit when it should mean -90%...

 

[JarlFrank]

Meaning that using a sword instead of a mace only means -40% chance to hit when it should mean -90%...

Ideally, a combat system would use different calculations for to hit and for armor penetration. Preferably with locational damage so differently armored body parts have different protection values.

 

[DalekFlay]

Did you even read the OP?

His English is pretty rough, so maybe I'm misreading his intent. Sure reads like he's complaining about things like skeletons being resistant to blades, rather than the opposite. If you're right though then hey whatevs... my reply then would be that it's about balance. Gameplay is more important than anal realism, so resistances and limits should be focused on the gameplay service they provide by overcoming them. Arcanum golems being resistant to blades is cool, but do that 1,000 times throughout the game and it's just tedious.

 

[DraQ]

Unfortunately that's one of those exceptions they had to make or else the idea of vampirism would be almost useless since ESO does not have a traditional real/server time day and night cycle. I think it circulates like... three or four hours of daylight then two hours or so of night. If they did give it a proper real time equivalent it would've been much better and more fun than incorporating the vampiric stages they currently do. At day you take increased damage/more vulnerable and many of your vampiric gifts are suppressed but at night you're at full power and notably harder to kill as an off the cuff example.

You are right. As for skyrim vampirism, at least vampires are weaker in the sunlight AND you could argue that Skyrim sunlight is far weaker than Morrowind sunlight just like IRL equator sunlight is far stronger than PAtagonia sunlight or Canadian sunlight, so vampires in Skyrim are weaker while exposed to sun but not actually damaged...

The island of Vvardenfell and Skyrim are on the same geographical latitude, therefore should have similar stregth of sunlight:

Vvardenfell should get less because of ash storms.

Anyway, there are differences between vampire clans.

 

[Cryomancer]

Sure reads like he's complaining about things like skeletons being resistant to blades, rather than the opposite. If you're right though then hey whatevs... my reply then would be that it's about balance. Gameplay is more important than anal realism, so resistances and limits should be focused on the gameplay service they provide by overcoming them. Arcanum golems being resistant to blades is cool, but do that 1,000 times throughout the game and it's just tedious.

No, i an complaining that people plays RPG's expecting to solve everything with a fast swinging blade. From a swarm to a stone golem. And saying that FPS gamers doesn't expect that a 9mm SMG will be amazing as a anti tank weapon, counter sniper weapon and to deal with heavily armored humans.

And balance is useless. What is the most balanced D&D edition? 4e. And 4e is exactly the WORST in every aspect. There are no way to make the nosferatu clan in VtMB has his curse correctly implemented in the game in a balanced way. Nosferatu are the hardest clan to play and i love it. How can you make the deformity curse balanced in a highly social game?

PS : I know that my English is bad(i an trying to improve) but one thing that i never understood is that people who has English as a first language tends to complain more about my English than the Polish/German/Italian/Japanese/etc here....

 

[Serus]

Did you even read the OP?

His English is pretty rough, so maybe I'm misreading his intent. Sure reads like he's complaining about things like skeletons being resistant to blades, rather than the opposite. If you're right though then hey whatevs... my reply then would be that it's about balance. Gameplay is more important than anal realism, so resistances and limits should be focused on the gameplay service they provide by overcoming them. Arcanum golems being resistant to blades is cool, but do that 1,000 times throughout the game and it's just tedious.

The OP is perfectly understandable, make some effort.

The point made by Jarl was that it is tedious in a pnp but in a computer game all the calculations are made in the background. What's so tedious about people in heavy armour and a few special magical enemies being really hard to hit by certain weapon? You just make an argumentum ad absurdum by bringing the 1000 times thing. In case of armour you can even substitute penetration with high skill and precision targeting of vulnerable spots.
Such crpgs are not made not because of servicing gameplay but because of other reasons - influence of pnp mostly (where it IS tedious), accessibility for mass market, perhaps some other. And in the end we (or at least I) don't want for every CRPG be like that. Some however should be made with mechanics that make some real life sense. More than the near-zero amount of today.
I absolutely have no problem with abstraction in D&D based games for example, but not all have to be D&D-like in this regard.

Edit: A good crpg that has the penetration of weapons vs heavy armour is Darklands. Long swords (and other low penetration/light weapons) have hard time penetrating good quality heavy armour. You need a more penetrating weapon (or one with exceptional quality against a poor quality plate). And I can say that the game has some serious problems but tediousness of this weapon vs armour system is certainly not one of them. In fact that's one of the strong points.

 

[DalekFlay]

No, i an complaining that people plays RPG's expecting to solve everything with a fast swinging blade.

Okay, sorry I misunderstood you. I seriously thought you were arguing against things like resistances and limited "ammo," which are what makes you change up your tactics. I agree making players adapt and overcome is important, rather than just hacking and slashing all the time. That was my argument from the get-go.

PS : I know that my English is bad(i an trying to improve) but one thing that i never understood is that people who has English as a first language tends to complain more about my English than the Polish/German/Italian/Japanese/etc here....

I wasn't mocking you, just saying it's probably why I misunderstood. It's not surprising native speakers can have a rougher time, since we're not used to interpreting broken phrases and whatnot like a second language person would be. It's all good though man.

 

[S.torch]

Due to convention and a too high degree of abstraction, armor and to-hit chance and damage are merely numbers disassociated from the things they're supposed to represent. The difference between leather armor, chainmail and plate armor is that you need progressively higher rolls to land a successful hit. Usually, the kind of weapon you use doesn't matter whatsoever.

You're picking up things that have nothing to do with each other. OP was complaining about bad practice. An abstraction isn't malpractice, neither is a simulation. It's two different ways of making a game that are valid.

 

[Machocruz]

So it's as I suspected. The people who say "rpg games" are non-native English speakers. But still, please stop.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Ranarama]

we see people complaining because a sword can't solve every problem in the world. From a insect swarm

For fuck's sake. The reason people hate the insect swarm is because you don't even need the fucking sword in that case.

Any idiot should be able to slap 5% of a swarms HP with their hands.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Ontopoly]

we see people complaining because a sword can't solve every problem in the world. From a insect swarm

For fuck's sake. The reason people hate the insect swarm is because you don't even need the fucking sword in that case.

Any idiot should be able to slap 5% of a swarms HP with their hands.

depends on size of your hands

And the size of the swarm.