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paradoxGentleman posted:Oh, so by "ability scores" you mean stuff like D&D stats? Strenght, Dexterity and whatnot? Yep. In older editions sometimes depending on the whims of the GM and how he interpreted the rules, you might do an ability check by rolling under the ability score. As soon as you used anything resembling non-weapon proficiencies, this was immediately dumb. Then in 3.x "ability check" became just a skill check without a skill bonus, taking your ability bonus versus a regular DC. Which, as far as slimming down the mechanics and making the math easier, was a good idea, but they kept those superfluous scores because, uh, it's D&D. And then there're all the inconsistencies that arise from writers remembering or not remembering, or caring or not caring, so sometimes when you're weakened by something it reduces your ability score (which was often translated directly into a set penalty, making it even dumber), and sometimes it just gives you a penalty to ability rolls. And they added ability score increases as you level, but they were piddly poo poo boosts, so you could raise the roof over getting an odd score that does nothing while on the side of the system that matters you picked up ice storm or wish or some poo poo.
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Aug 22, 2015 16:18
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Potsticker posted:Mass Effect 2's story and plot progression was so bad that I never played 3.  Dunno what to tell you. I liked all the Mass Effect games pretty well, never had any problems with the story or anything. I remember I walked a couple miles to get that game in college and we all pretty much loved it. Good memories.RE space racism in Mass Effect: yeah, totally. I mean the game does a good job of showing you that the Illusive Man and Cerberus are bad news, and Shepard works with them to fight the Collectors because what else is he gonna do? They're basically a myth, no one else wants to deal with them. I was uncomfortable with how in 2 the Renegade options make you a space racist, so I went Paragon for that game. Ideally both options would have you giving the Illusive Man a big ol' gently caress you. Finally getting to kick Cerberus' rear end in ME3 was awesome.
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Aug 22, 2015 16:19
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Ability scores can also be attached to character attributes that should be fully under the player's control. It's fine to say "we use this stat to say that this character is this strong", but once you apply that to intelligence you get situations where players work out a puzzle solution, but because they have INT as a dump stat they feel they can't suggest it to the group (not that anyone would know how to tell how much INT you need). Taken to extremes you get stuff like DSA's Courage score where you can literally fail a skill check because it turns out that thing you want your character to do, he's too cowardly to do it.
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Aug 22, 2015 17:07
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paradoxGentleman posted:Why do a lot of people in this forum hate ability scores? It's specific to D&D's implementation, or even post-3rd Edition's implementation, where A. it presents a false choice, B. it can make your character a lot more limited than they could be and C. the necessity of some ability scores over others differs between classes and can contribute to class imbalance. Say you're a Fighter. You need a high STR to hit often and hit hard and a high CON to have lots of HP. Depending on the edition (pre-3rd-Ed), you might also want high DEX for the extra AC or a bare minimum of INT/WIS to let you qualify for certain critical feats (3rd Ed). A. It's a false choice because if you're using a standard array or a point-buy system, there's often going to be very little variation from one Fighter to another, because you're really only ever going to assign your stats one way. Maybe you might be a DEX Fighter, but besides that needing the STR/CON/DEX and a bit of INT is going to pigeonhole your stat allocation because it plays such a big factor into how well you can fight. If you're using rolled stats, then the freedom to have a high CHA score mostly rests on how many 18s you can randomly stumble upon and consequently how dicked over everyone else in the table is when you have 18 STR 18 CON 17 DEX or something and can still afford to put a 15 into CHA. B. If the "Investigation" skill is linked to INT, or the "Intimidation" skill is linked to CHA, and you cannot ever have high CHA because of problem A, then you can never have a gumshoe Fighter or an intimidating Fighter. Or if you could, it'd mean gimping your combat stats, and good luck enjoying a game as combat-heavy as D&D when you're behind on combat stats. Granted, ability scores are only half of the problem - the skill system itself is also a contributor. C. The Wizard needs INT to learn spells, and to have extra spell slots, and to bump up the saving throw difficulty of their spells, and to make their spells hit harder. Meanwhile a Paladin needs STR/CON just as much as a Fighter does, but they also need CHA to power their spells. And in some editions, they need CHA and WIS. If you have one class that only needs one high stat, versus a class that needs multiple high stats, then the former class has an advantage because problem B does not hit them as hard.
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Aug 22, 2015 18:20
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It's also the fact that, in a lot of games now, you have an Ability Score that gives you an Ability Modifier, but then you never use the original Score anywhere. But you still have the 3-18 stats because D&D, that's why.
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Aug 22, 2015 18:33
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Evil Mastermind posted:It's also the fact that, in a lot of games now, you have an Ability Score that gives you an Ability Modifier, but then you never use the original Score anywhere. But you still have the 3-18 stats because D&D, that's why. Dungeon World is the #1 offender in this regard, but it's a common problem in every D&D derivative game. A big part of this forums' backlash against ability scores is how much more elegant they are in *World games in general than they have ever been in the past. You'll have between 4 and 6 stats, and the stats are always genre-appropriate names that fit the mood of the setting, and the numbers attached to the stats are directly tied to the moves you use to do things in the game. You know exactly what you're getting with each stat and exactly what you can do with it and it's all very clear. There's nothing like a better way to do a thing to make people dislike the old way of doing a thing. Not to mention all sorts of other clever alternatives, like Danger Patrol's dice-assigned stats, or Last Stand's attributes-as-hit-points, or a variety of games getting rid of them altogether, like Golden Sky Stories and Nobilis and Law's Out.
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Aug 22, 2015 18:40
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Serf posted:
This goes back to all those good American RPGs I was posting, which even though there may have seemed to be some odd or wacky choices I was completely unironic about if you couldn't tell by me defending the "generic human" role you play in games like Riven or Zork: Grand Inquisitor. But the point is that if you were in college and enjoyed it, that's fine. Everyone has different experiences. Personally my experience with Mass Effect 2 is I had just come off playing Alpha Protocol and comparatively the conversation system in ME2 sucked. I also ran into little nitpicks that annoyed me like running out Jacob's dialogue (whom I had chosen for Shepherd to get romantic on) super early and then after each mission I would return to chat with him and there was just the same response every time. It really exposed the limitations of the system in how it was designed. There's also the fact that the Elder Scrolls/Fallout/Mass Effect trio is all very well known and fairly recent games and to me shows a lack of actual insight into what games and RPGs in particular have been made in the forty-five-odd years that video games have existed. Arcanum and the three Ultima games were even on the edge of not even being mentioned because those are still fairly well known and often brought up when "good CRPGs" are brought up, but the point is there's a lot of good stuff out there and amazing experiences that can be had outside the very top of the surface of what's current and mainstream. Legend of Grimrock II probably should've made the cut too, now that I'm thinking about it. You know, some of those games aren't super easy to get into. But who knows, maybe someone will google Treasure of Tarmin and be amazed at what type of gameplay was possible on the Intellivision, or decide to check out if 2400 AD was actually a video game and not just made up and see what the Origin crew came up with between Ultimas IV and V. Sadly the old feature phone iD RPG games are not really available for play anymore, but Orcs & Elves I + II came out for the Nintendo DS and that can be played on a 3DS if a person has one of those available. It's a lovely name for a game, but the games themselves are really well put together. Sadly I cannot recommend one over the other since II fixes some of the problems I had, but introduces new problems of its own.
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Aug 22, 2015 19:05
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People who hate on Mass Effect 2's storylines are dumb and deserve the idiocy that is every other Bioware storyline, because ME2's plotlines were just uniformly cheesy 80's action movies. Mass Effect 1 was just a recycle of every other Bioware game and Mass Effect 3 wouldn't shut the gently caress up about how my badass protagonist apparently can't stop weeping over one dumb kid who got himself killed, whereas Mass Effect 2 gave me a goddamn Contra boss at the end and was 100% better for it. It's maybe the only Bioware game that isn't entirely shoved up it's own rear end. It's a dumb fun cheesy action game in space. Also the entire ending part of splitting the team up and choosing where people go and utilizing the party you've recruited - which leads to immediate input on how the party members trust you and feedback on if you completed their extra questlines - was well done.
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Aug 22, 2015 22:25
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So unrelated to the current conversation. A friend of mine found a company whose slogan is "purity through innovation" which got us talking about a company run by Space Marines. And now all I can picture is The Office 40k with a space marine in full power armor wearing a tie sitting at a desk and trying to sell paper For the Emperor. Only it would have 40k logic. So the printer goes out and the techmarines don't just replace the toner. They have to go on some elaborate ritual involving praising the Emperor, killing a heretic, and replacing the toner.
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Aug 22, 2015 23:32
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Evil Mastermind posted:It's also the fact that, in a lot of games now, you have an Ability Score that gives you an Ability Modifier, but then you never use the original Score anywhere. But you still have the 3-18 stats because D&D, that's why. Yeah. I mean, it'd make sense in games like GURPS where it's "roll under stat" but I have no idea why games like 13th Age use 3-18 other than to give that D&D feels. Generally, though, I think most modern games only need to take one measure of PC competence anyway, whether it's skills or attributes or approaches. I'm not sure most games really benefit from combining two numbers, particularly if those combinations aren't variable. It makes some sense to at least give some unpredictability to make players roll Charisma + Lore at some point, but if you're always rolling Lore with Intelligence, what's the point?
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Aug 22, 2015 23:45
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah. I mean, it'd make sense in games like GURPS where it's "roll under stat" but I have no idea why games like 13th Age use 3-18 other than to give that D&D feels.
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Aug 22, 2015 23:57
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ProfessorCirno posted:People who hate on Mass Effect 2's storylines are dumb and deserve the idiocy that is every other Bioware storyline, because ME2's plotlines were just uniformly cheesy 80's action movies. Mass Effect 1 was just a recycle of every other Bioware game and Mass Effect 3 wouldn't shut the gently caress up about how my badass protagonist apparently can't stop weeping over one dumb kid who got himself killed, whereas Mass Effect 2 gave me a goddamn Contra boss at the end and was 100% better for it. It's maybe the only Bioware game that isn't entirely shoved up it's own rear end. It's a dumb fun cheesy action game in space. I agree with this for the most part, except that I think I must've blocked out the weepy Shepard part of ME3. Also Bioware games generally have enjoyable stories to go with the gameplay. One day we'll get Jade Empire 2. One day...
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Aug 23, 2015 00:00
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Serf posted:Also Bioware games generally have enjoyable stories to go with the gameplay. 
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Aug 23, 2015 00:04
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Evil Mastermind posted:Sadly, there's a lot of people out there who won't give a new game a shot unless it has the D&D feels. I've seen people ask stuff like "how do I make <game> more like D&D?" and part of me dies. I get what you're saying on one hand, but, on another, people like what they like and there isn't one way to play. While a poo poo game is a poo poo game and I'm not excusing bad game design, if people like D&D and want to mod their games to be more like it and they have more fun as a result, it works for them like story and indie games work for us.
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Aug 23, 2015 00:44
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Serf posted:Also Bioware games generally have enjoyable stories to go with the gameplay. Which-- ones? Wait, I take that back. I don't care which ones you enjoyed. Sorry.
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Aug 23, 2015 01:02
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ProfessorCirno posted:People who hate on Mass Effect 2's storylines are dumb and deserve the idiocy that is every other Bioware storyline, because ME2's plotlines were just uniformly cheesy 80's action movies.
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Aug 23, 2015 01:18
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I am also cool because I hate things other people like.
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Aug 23, 2015 02:34
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dwarf74 posted:I am also cool because I hate things other people like. Edgy
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Aug 23, 2015 02:36
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If a big group of people like something, it means it's not lovely and beyond reproach!
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Aug 23, 2015 02:37
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dwarf74 posted:I am also cool because I hate things other people like. Ah, a storygamer. Potsticker posted:If a big group of people like something, it means it's not lovely and beyond reproach! Ah, another storygamer.
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Aug 23, 2015 02:38
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I forget, is storygamer cool or an insult on SA? I'm not down with the lingo around here.
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Aug 23, 2015 02:40
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Potsticker posted:I forget, is storygamer cool or an insult on SA? I'm not down with the lingo around here. It depends. How ironically do you use the term 'Swine'?
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Aug 23, 2015 02:42
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Arcanum was made by the same people who did Vampire: Bloodlines, which is probably the only decent World of Darkness property. I rank it up there with Alpha Protocol. And if I recall correctly, after Troika shut down an awful lot of that crew went on to join Obsidian.
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Aug 23, 2015 02:45
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Error 404 posted:It depends. How ironically do you use the term 'Swine'? Unironically? But like I prefer to refer to them as pigs. Or piggies if they're small and cute.
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Aug 23, 2015 02:45
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paradoxGentleman posted:Why do a lot of people in this forum hate ability scores? This could be worth putting up with if ability scores in D&D actually brought anything to the table, but all they really do is shuffle some of your numbers around, meaning they add very little in exchange for actively getting in the way of the other character creation tools. Taking them out would allow for a much wider range of viable characters without removing any actual functionality, and if further number shuffling customisation is desirable there are other methods that would work better with the rest of the system. Again, this is D&D (and some similar games) specific. Ability scores work fine in some other games (variable success based systems, systems like OD&D where they're basically just your skill list), but since 3.x they've just been getting in the way of the rest of the game. Splicer fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Aug 23, 2015 |
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Aug 23, 2015 02:46
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Potsticker posted:Unironically? But like I prefer to refer to them as pigs. Or piggies if they're small and cute. I meant when you refer to people playing elfgames.
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Aug 23, 2015 02:47
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Gravy Train Robber posted:Arcanum was made by the same people who did Vampire: Bloodlines, which is probably the only decent World of Darkness property. I rank it up there with Alpha Protocol. And if I recall correctly, after Troika shut down an awful lot of that crew went on to join Obsidian. http://debofnight.andcuriouser.com
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Aug 23, 2015 02:48
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Error 404 posted:I meant when you refer to people playing elfgames. Those are nerds.
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Aug 23, 2015 02:48
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dwarf74 posted:I am also cool because I hate things other people like. 
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Aug 23, 2015 02:55
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dwarf74 posted:I am also cool because I hate things other people like.
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Aug 23, 2015 03:01
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Splicer posted:That explains why no-one got cool by hating your posting
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Aug 23, 2015 03:06
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Ew. I feel dirty.
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Aug 23, 2015 03:11
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You've just made my day so much better. I want to go back to the world of 2004
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Aug 23, 2015 03:17
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dwarf74 posted:I am also cool because I hate things other people like. Accurate.
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Aug 23, 2015 04:34
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Gravy Train Robber posted:You've just made my day so much better. I want to go back to the world of 2004 Glad to help!
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Aug 23, 2015 04:50
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I have no idea why games like 13th Age use 3-18 other than to give that D&D feels. 13th Age has that because of Jonathan Tweet. But it's OK because it means I can actually get players. It's loving dumb, but most fantasy RPG gamers won't touch a system unless they initially mistake it for a Pathfinder supplement.
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Aug 23, 2015 05:15
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moths posted:...most fantasy RPG gamers won't touch a system unless they initially mistake it for a Pathfinder supplement. Where did you even find the market research documents for D&D Next?
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Aug 23, 2015 05:57
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People apparently took guns to a Pokemon tournament. https://www.facebook.com/BostonPoliceDepartment?fref=nf
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Aug 24, 2015 02:43
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So for my homebrewed "5e Retroclone" known as "The Next Project" I decided to do a 2nd slate of classes After discussing ideas pertaining to classes, abilities and fluff with the people following the thread, a semi-finalized class list was created, and I've posted the 1st drafts for two of them. A link to the "SRD" is in the OP of the same thread, and any discussion posts can go there, too (or in my PMs.) 
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Aug 24, 2015 06:33
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There's nothing wrong with ability scores, even with having them alongside class, level, and skills. A bigger issue is that they're often implemented terribly and counterintuitively when that's the case, such as in D&D past 2e. But it's not exactly hard to see a game where you have two silos, one with class and level as the key elements and another with ability scores and skills as the key element. Ability scores also allow you to, if they're well-designed, sum up a character with a glance (D&D doesn't do this very well at all) even if they're cosmetic, which helps with roleplaying somewhat. You could also use them as the centerpiece of a damage system.
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Aug 24, 2015 12:07
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