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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2749 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 4, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Perhaps I just viscerally dislike gamey mechanics that have become RPG tropes, like leveled lists, health inflation as a difficulty mechanic etc. Or when bullets barely do damage against enemies without visible body armor, because reasons.

Health inflation particularly pisses me off, because nobody likes it and it's just so lazy. At least mix up the attacks or something! A lot of those mechanics were adopted from jrpgs, and I have to assume it's laziness motivating the devs, because there's no way they don't know the difference between Japanese and Western rpgs as genres - in a jrpg you navigate menus and mash A to get to the next story beat, so spongy enemies kind of fit (although it is still lazy on anything more powerful than a nes) but when you are actually physically moving the character everywhere and dictating the flow of their attacks it's just stupid.

But how do we get devs to cut it out? I understand increasing strategy is difficult for anyone not strategically minded, but surely there is a middle ground between teaching developers to wargame and adding a zero to the end of enemy health or dumbing down end game bosses so you can onebro them with ease. I guess all we can do is make sure we give our support to the devs who do it right. But are there any triple a or even double a devs who consistently do so? All I can think of is From Software.

Beats me! Given that I'm not a fan of the gameplay in Dark Souls, my go to strategy is to simply mod more conventional RPGs to my preferences.

For example, I absolutely despised the leveling in The Witcher 3, when a random townguard could take half an hour to kill, and installed a mod called The Witcher 3 Enhanced Edition, which makes gameplay and combat significantly more immersive and skill based, after which I had a great time and could actually appreciate the story.

For Fallout 4, I use mods that rebalance bullet damage, which largely helps with not making things bullet spongy.

But a single dev that consistently avoids those bad tropes? I can't name one either haha

I know I'm being an annoying from software fan here, but forget the souls games, you really should give elden ring a decent chance. elden ring gives you both the defensive gameplay style of the souls games, the offensive gameplay style of bloodborne plus ranged and magic combat options (plus a hundred different options for outs if you aren't in the mood for a challenge at the time.) I wouldn't bring it up except you are modding decent combat into games, and tw3ee in particular - which I'm pretty sure (based on interviews I can't find sorry) drew inspiration from from software.

I don't know what you like about the Witcher 3, but elden ring scratched so many of the same itches for me. It does lack meaningful arguments, which is admittedly a big minus, but your choices do have major impacts on the world, there are mysteries all over the place for you to solve (and if you can refrain from using the internet they usually require actual thought and investigation), and you are constantly forced to decide between marveling at the beauty or being stopped short by the horror of something new you have discovered.

And yeah, with all the items and spells and ashes you get, you aren't just beating your head against a wall until the loop clicks for you, which is what gave me the most pause before I became a from fan. Instead you can just focus on seeing new and gorgeous nightmares, like a dragon so big it exceeds the bounds of your draw distance, or a giant flaming eye in the sky that drives you mad if you are in its line of sight, or a land being consumed by a cancerous blight that traps everything it touches in a parody of life and death. And from what I've seen playing the game with my friends (most of whom also refused to play a from software game prior to elden ring) eventually the loop does click, and then you go and play bloodborne and we have a proper circlejerk.

What was I talking about? Oh right, my point is it seems a bit crazy to me that you are modding decently built combat against non damage sink enemies into games and not playing a game with it already built in - plus one of the most breathtaking and original fantasy worlds I've ever seen and a strong focus on player agency and diegetic delivery and discovery.

If you change your mind though and have a ps5, hmu in pms and I will be happy to help you get started - I remember how daunting the first hour was and how skeptical I was that I wasn't going to be dying a thousand times on every enemy.

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