r/Games • u/AutoModerator • Sep 20 '24

Discussion Daily /r/Games Discussion - Free Talk Friday - September 20, 2024

It's F-F-Friday, the best day of the week where you can finally get home and play video games all weekend and also, talk about anything not-games in this thread.

Just keep our rules in mind, especially Rule 2. This post is set to sort comments by 'new' on default.

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Scheduled Discussion Posts

WEEKLY: What Have You Been Playing?

MONDAY: Thematic Monday

WEDNESDAY: Suggest Me A Game

FRIDAY: Free Talk Friday

22 Upvotes

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5

u/KawaiiSocks Sep 20 '24

For some reason every single great cRPG developer has a very weird quirk that involves doing more work, while simultaneously making the game ever so slightly worse, at least in my opinion.

For OwlCat it is encounters. Both Pathfinders and to a lesser extent Rogue Trader are great games, but they really suffer from having so many trashy and uninspired encounters. I just fought a bunch of goblins, can I not do it for another five times in the next half-hour, please? Take a look at Larian and how they approach their fights, with almost every single one being unique and memorable.

Certainly don't take a look into how freaking obsessed Larian is with CONTAINERS. I mean, what's up with that? I can semi-get it in DOS games, where there is a Lucky Find skill and it can give you some resources. But it gets tiring so fast, but as a completionist min-maxer I just can't stop myself from clicking every single one of them. I do wish they just made them movable objects that you can throw, climb on, instead of CONTAINERS, because this Jamrock Shuffle just isn't it. At least their dialogue is concise, to the point and fun.

Unlike long-winded monologues of Pillars of Eternity series. Brilliant game, best cRPG gameplay system, good encounter and CONTAINER design, but holy shit does it get verbose, and not in a good Disco Elysium-way. It comes off unnatural and takes a while to get used to all the names of the gods, and then in game two they just introduce a whole new culture that has different names for all the gods you've just spent 100+ hours learning and memorizing in game one; and also went ahead and made sure that every god has multiple aspects with different names.

-1

u/abbzug Sep 20 '24

Why not just lower the difficulty and cruise through the encounters? Improbable as it may seem some people play cRPGs because they like the gameplay of cRPGs.

3

u/KawaiiSocks Sep 20 '24

Oh, I do absolutely love the gameplay of cRPGs, have 3+ playthroughs in most offerings in the last several years, including more obscure titles like ATOM, Solasta and Encased. The problem still stands: most PF encounters are designed around solutions rather than stat-checks and it is a better approach for encounters in general to keep it fresh, in my opinion.

In Kingmaker/WotR, though, once you find a solution it is a lesson in repetition, rather than creativity a lot of the time, which I find jarring. It feels like a resource tax at best, and padding, grinding at its worst.

In the absence of mechanical skill check (aiming, reaction etc.), knowledge and tactics checks should be the go-to checks in good cRPGs, but that's just my opinion