Maybe you should google how to think for yourself, mother fucker
*I’m not talking about MMOs by the way, y’all don’t wanna see my fully unhinged, 
- tier rant about that fundamentally misguided genre of WoW-clones
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I’m going through a terrible time and am feeling compelled to share my aggressive thoughts 
Meta-gaming is a fucking blight, death to America
Listen, I try to play any crpg and they have a billion options with no way to tell what’s good or not and I get choice paralysis. Just give me a fucking build already
30 skills but you have no idea which ones will actually be checked.
this was fine when i was 12 and was going to re-play the game five times but that’s not how life is anymore.
my first 6 hours of any crpg consist of me making a character that seems cool, playing for an hour, then saying “ooohhhh, but what if I…” and starting over to make a new character.
it turns into 12 hours if I make a character I really like, then I meet a companion and they’re cooler than me + the class I made. I remade my first character in BG3 this way, because I was a cool dragonborn barbarian, then I met Karlach and went “well, I’ll never be as cool as her. main menu…”
I do things for fun
For example, Pathfinder just came out with rules for playing as a Minotaur, which naturally run as Large (basically taking up twice the space as a Medium character), but using the mythology behind the Minotaur, also gave them feats that allow them to talk with cattle and oxen and also be very stealthy
So in my newest game, I made a Minotaur investigator who is incredibly good at sneaking around and solving mysteries on farms
Their name is Barnabas Surehoof to the party, but on the sheet it’s Cow-lumbo
“Oh, and just one more thing!”
There are several Investigator feats that are named after stuff from famous detectives and that is one of them!
Also, I did cut a crooked landlord in half because he is also very competent with axes
You tried to use Cowlumbo as the ig name and got jossed by the DM didn’t you
Nope, I’m going to wait how long it takes him to realize the pun
I think if he doesn’t get it by the 3rd game I’ll just start doing an impression
here are my aggressive video game thoughts:
let people have fun instead of turning entertainment into some kind of protestant self-flagellation session. you aren’t building character by playing elden ring no matter how good you are or how much you fail and try again. its ok to have a power fantasy sometimes. i hate this 4 chan attitude that you have to suffer to play video games, like games are some kind of divine test of character and willpower and value as a human. i will always play easy mode, i will never play ironman permadeath modes no matter how many streamers scream about it into a camera, dark souls should have an easy mode, sekiro should have an auto-parry, elden ring should have objective markers instead of relying on meat gates killing you until you find where to go next (i have never found the maiden i gave up after getting killed by that horse knight guy on the way to the tree right after that first camp every fucking time, fuck elden ring), FPS games should have auto-aim since twiddling a stick is nothing like aiming a gun, titanfall should have had more smart pistols. being good at video games will never translate to another skill in my entire life unless i play an FPV drone sim. if i wanted to spend my time on something that would improve myself it would not be fucking video games. don’t even get me started on multiplayer FPS games, i swear they are a psy-op to make men more toxic. competitive sports were invented by bronze age slavers to trick their peasants into training for war.
The video game Stormworks translated (over time and a community college course) into a job. Video games should not feel like jobs (MMO developers will not see the light of heaven).
That said, if you come at a co-operative tabletop RPG where everyone else is playing roleplay characters that are not min-maxed and you come with a net build that uses rules from a splat book from 1990 (I assume this thread is about RPGs generally and not cRPGs)
One of the best things about most modern TTRPGs is that even the most broken meta build is just barely better than a total noob picking abilities at random, and what really makes players effective are their choices in game. D&D5/PF2 are the peak of that type of RPG/grid-based miniatures combat game, which is why the upcoming D&D6 just pokes at the edges and fixes a few annoying things rather than trying to be something totally new.
Yeah, trap builds as a game design “thing” basically shouldn’t exist.
That said, I do have a soft spot for GURPS and Hero System et al. as well as tacticool games (and war games, which I prefer writing), but it’s clear what you’re getting into going in (if you give players the opportunity to build a bad army, how much are you going to stop them if those are the decisions you’re supposed to be making)
Well GM engagement is supposed to be a big part of GURPS/HERO chargen, to make sure that nonfunctional or inappropriate characters dont happen unless part of the campaign tone is supposed to be having fun with that.
Yeah, I think that’s generally the case (though not explicitly stated). Writing the basics of everyone’s characters should be a group effort, with some amount of buy-in from each player for each character. The idea of 4 completely independently written characters coming on the same adventure is… It feels archaic, like we’re all playing weekly D&D with completely different people and everyone has different amounts of XP etc.
I think there are limits, though. If you don’t want to interact with the mechanics of the game at all, maybe just watch a lets play?
let people have fun instead of turning entertainment into some kind of protestant self-flagellation session.
counterpoint: let games be difficult without whining about how they are not ‘accessible’. why should dark souls ‘have’ an easy mode? why should elden ring have objective markers? if you want to engage with the worldbuilding/actual non-gameplay parts of a Dark Souls or Elden Ring, watch a Let’s Play or read the wiki.
just don’t play the easy mode and you can still wank yourself off about ur l337 g4m3r skillz, and also neurodivergent people or just people with less time to dedicate to perfectly mastering the art of pressing the b/circle button to the exact timing of every bosses idiosyncratic attack sequences can enjoy the media in an interactive way unfiltered through obnoxious amateur youtuber meme narration. like in any other context yelling ‘well just go read a book then’ at someone asking about accessibility options in a piece of media would be considered blatantly ableist, idfk why its different for video games.
the problem with that is that dev time is limited and they’re not going to put resources into the highest or lowest difficulty being a well designed good time because gamedev is happening under capitalism. that’s how you get tedious damage sponges or a dexterity challenge so trivialized that the mechanical design is irrelevant.
hard on purpose games are serving a market segment and asking them to dilute the niche thing they’re trying to make to cater to players who have a thousand alternatives is really weird to me. there are wheelchair accessible nature trails and we probably need more of them but no advocate would suggest building those at the direct expense of hiking trails challenging and interesting to able-bodied people, so why are people like this about games?
obviously capitalism ruins everything and i don’t necessarily blame any individual developers for a systemic issue, but with a public funded ministry of arts there would be absolutely no excuse to not have a suite of accessibility options comparable to, for example, The Last of Us 2. imagine if someone invented a new all-terrain wheelchair (naughty dog’s above average accessibility options in this metaphor) and hiking and trail running enthusiasts (gamers) harassed and ridiculed and gatekept anyone from using it on a particular trail (soulslikes). that’s absolutely ableist and its ridiculous that i have to point this out on a leftist forum.
I don’t really know anyone who wants themselves off to being good at video games. I don’t think that’s what’s being said.
Sekiros gameplay is in large part about parrying, if you remove that you’re playing a different game altogether. Same goes for not having objective markers - I dont really see how that is a difficulty question tbh. It does make it harder to navigate, but its a choice that forces engagement with the world. Firewatch did the same and to great effect. Elden Ring could have markers without being fundamentally different, but firewatch couldn’t. It’d be like eliminating the economy from Victoria 3.
Sometimes it’s not possible, sometimes it is. I think Hades has a really good way of handling difficulty
counterpoint: let games be difficult without whining about how they are not ‘accessible’.
Example: Nobody will argue that Hades and Hades 2 are easy games. They have an easy mode.
I’ve never turned it on, because I play these games for the challenge of pushing my Heat/Fear as high as I can.
My partner has it turned on 100% of the time, because they play these games for the story. So to speak.
The game is better for it for both of us.
I support accessibility options so that disabled people can play difficult games, just make them options and have a clear default experience. Things like the skibidi fragment system from Shadow of the Erdtree and more obviously Sekiro’s Demon Bell and Kuro’s Charm or DS2’s Covenant of Champions all show that it’s no problem to implement a higher optional difficulty setting, so why not include a lower one as well?
FWIW I do also support accessibility options so that disabled gamers can enjoy games; Elden Ring definitely does lack in things like menu narration options & audio/visual cues, as I learnt from watching my dad play (he’d have to stand and walk close to the TV every time he leveled up and once completely missed the ‘NPC has invaded your world’ pop-up and walked right into them lol; although this is admittedly more of a ‘he mounts his TV way too high and sits way too far from it’ problem but still).
I just don’t think difficulty in terms of gameplay is an accessibility thing. Like, the OP I was replying to said:
elden ring should have objective markers instead of relying on meat gates killing you until you find where to go next (i have never found the maiden i gave up after getting killed by that horse knight guy on the way to the tree right after that first camp every fucking time, fuck elden ring),
Is this an accessibility issue? The average player is not expected to beat the Tree Sentinel or even throw themselves at it continually upon walking out of the Stranded Graveyard on their first playthrough of the game. The game specifically points you towards the Church of Elleh beyond them (the very first NPC you encounter right outside the Stranded Graveyard explains how sites of grace work & point the way) and uses the sentinel to tell you it isn’t impossible to go around or go elsewhere before coming back to a difficult boss/enemy. The site of grace right there points directly towards the church. You’ve already been taught in the tutorial about sneaking past enemies. You can literally go out of your way to avoid the Tree Sentinel and encounter no other enemies (except maybe one bat, from what I recall) by going west and approaching the church from the side/behind.
Oh I agree, I kind of have to assume that they were being hyperbolic as a bit. You can definitely make it to the church without aggroing anyone, you don’t even need to sneak, just don’t run right at him. That said, I did almost give up on Dark Souls 1 when I was told I could go up or down, didn’t see the way up to Undead Burg, and went into the Catacombs so I do have some sympathy lol.
Yeah the objective markers is weird to me. Imagine if Firewatch had objective markers
This is a pretty bad take and I hope you reevaluate your position on people “whining” about their inability to enjoy some games because developers don’t consider them at all. I’m so sorry you have you hear people complain about their disabilities and how it makes it hard for them to enjoy some video games. Really tho, this is fucked and I hope you think about it.
i have never found the maiden i gave up after getting killed by that horse knight guy on the way to the tree right after that first camp every fucking time, fuck elden ring)
The point of the Tree Sentinel is to set the tone of the game. In most RPGs the world is built for you and more or less caters to your success. The tree sentinel is there to tell you that the lands between are not like that and losing vigilance for a few seconds will kill you.
Also I recommend crouching and hooking as far around it as possible. If you are running past the tree sentinel or trying to fight it, you’ve already died.
you aren’t building character by playing elden ring no matter how good you are or how much you fail and try again.
A certain type of person needs to keep perpetuating this myth because video games are the only things they spend their time on and they need to convince themselves that they aren’t just wasting that time.
In terms of exploration, combat, and character variety, Elden Ring may be the best to ever do it. It’s an incredibly fun and engaging game once you learn how it treats fights as a dance and not a DPS exchange. And of course I use all the tools it offers because I’m not a masochist and have a day job.
It is also crippled by asinine quest design, with invisible gates that trip permanent changes that may make quests impossible to complete. It’s frustrating because some quests will put markers on your map, and others will be like “Ah, I’m looking for Glup Shitto, keep an eye out for me” and you see them again 20 hours later and they give you a reward for a quest you didn’t realize you’d done.
The story is also pretty mid, and it’s hard to even understand what the story is sometimes. Who are these people I’m fighting? Why are they fighting me? What the fuck is an Elden Lord anyways? Why do I want to be one? It’s a world of rich lore snippets that, if you’re lucky, sometimes piece together if you bother to read item descriptions and have the right items.
I’d you’re on steam I recommend using shift-tab to keep a journal of quests and people
I like difficult games not because I want to improve myself, but because I find joy in experiencing myself learning a system, getting better at it and overcoming obstacles. I think that’s fun. Finally beating a boss after a ton of tries is fun for me. Working out how to do these things is fun.
By removing obstacles you will, at a certain point, kind of also eliminate the game itself. Sekiro gets an autoparry, and then later an auto-strike. If you jump off a platform you get teleported to the one you were aiming for. If you get discovered while sneaking, the spotter dies. I’m not saying you’re arguing for this, but I am trying to illustrate how “make things easier” can be difficult in game design.I would even argue that Elden Ring already possesses an “easy mode”, it’s just not a literal stat increase to you and a stat decrease to all enemies. Spirit Ashes and multiplayer co-op are optional features to make the game easier, and you can also add status effects to your build without much effort which are pretty busted in Elden Ring at least. In previous games, access to these statuses were considerably more limited; now, you can make over half the weapons in the game into artery-eviscerating WMDs.
I have personally mellowed out on the whole “Souls games SHOULD be really hard!” thing because I’ve listened to the critique of others on it and I think they’re correct. The bizarre crusade against video game journalists that gamers do really gets on my nerve. Some of those journalists are right - some games should be more accessible. But Elden Ring… literally is more accessible than its predecessors? If you want it to be, it can be the easiest game that Miyazaki has made. The open world means that you can much more easily get good weaponry if you explore rather than fight bosses immediately, you can find spots to overlevel (cough Greyoll cough), the crafting system means you can apply statuses to enemies and buffs to yourself, etc. You can’t even be invaded online anymore unless you summon somebody, and even then, if you immediately start the boss then the invader is forced out of the world.
Compare this to Dark Souls 1, where you’d get oneshotted by Dark Bead users every 30 minutes if you played online, and if you decided to head down to the Catacombs first and found your way to the Tomb of the Giants at level 20, you were just fucked because you couldn’t warp until halfway through the game.
I wouldn’t regard myself as Elden Ring Fan #1. I do have a list of problems with the game, and that list was added to with the DLC; I think I was in the minority that found the DLC to be kinda disappointing if anything. But I do think that From Software is genuinely iterating towards better games over time, including in accessibility.
I agree but I also think accessibility is a weird discussion. To follow the book analogy that has been used in this thread: Rewriting books so they use shorter words and less flowery language would make them more accessible to a broader audience, but they would also lose something integral. I think it’s the same with games. Yeah super meat boy could just have a mode where you don’t die, but that’s not the story/art/whatever. Macbeth could be less weirdly written, but that’s part of it. Disco Elysium could just have an “auto win roll” button, but it doesn’t for a reason.
I don’t think games should be hard, but I also think that’s not the entirety of the argument, and it saddens me to see people reduce it to that (not saying you’re doing that, I feel like we agree).
And games like Elden Ring and dark Souls strike me as weird, because they have summons and so much more that’s meant to make the game “easier”
Players looking up guides is what turns games into Protestantism. You’re taking a creative medium and churning it into mechanical drudgery.
Some games are made by protestants though and they’re full of mechanical drudgery
I don’t stsrt by googling the best build. I start by googling the plot so it doesn’t distract from min-maxing while I play
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Do not enjoy games the way you like. REPEAT, YOU ARE ENJOYING YOUR GAME WRONG
They’re not enjoying the game, they’re placing themselves within a meaningless skinnerbox of interactivity.
I assume this is satire? You could describe all gameplay that way
I would say ‘unproductive skinner box’ rather than ‘meaningless skinner box’. But that’s most hobbies.
I start off by googling “booba mods” and seeing how realistic the smut is
I don’t really care about the best class or build, but with my current levels of free time, I at least want to avoid wasting time sinking effort and time I don’t have into a non-viable character, or even a suboptimal one that just makes the game way harder. If I get 20-30 hours into a game and find out that the character/build that most appealed to me is either super hard to play through the game, or basically requires a huge time commitment to get to the point where it suddenly gets good, I’d probably just drop it.
I’m pretty sure I’ve trapped myself at the end of a couple of games where my build just doesn’t get past a particular point (but was fun up to this point). I had a save that was just before the last fight of Divinity: Original Sin. I think Deus Ex: Human Revolution had this annoying this where the entire game was about stealth and hacking and stuff and then the boss fights were based on combat abilities only because the boss fights were outsourced and the outsourcing company apparently didn’t realise people wouldn’t spec full combat classes.
etc.
Yep it was Deus Ex HR, but in fairness to the devs they did eventually patch in stealth and hacking options for the bosses.
Damn I should try to finish that game then, I had the same experience and got stuck maybe 2/3 of the way through the game, and haven’t played it since. That was 9 years ago. Really enjoyed what I did play of it too
Disclaimer: I haven’t played it since the update so I can’t vouch for the quality of the update. Might want to do some research first.
googles the best way to respond to this
To be fair most games don’t make failure fun. In a real life TTRPG, a character with low skills in everything is probably more fun than some god character with perfect 20s. It makes for interesting stories. But video games have a hard time replicating that, I guess
There are very few games where you can go wild with your skill points and still make it through the game in an interesting way. Disco Elysium is a good one. There is no good build and min/maxing is detrimental since your inner voices will start feeding you misinformation at higher levels.
I really like Dark Souls 2 as well. Equip two shields, power stance with daggers, use a whip, anything’s viable if you want it to be.
Also I tend to use lightning stuff in Kor! I really like how all the element type things are good, but lightning is just so cool. I hope you feel better soon goadstool :(
In a real life TTRPG, a character with low skills in everything is probably more fun than some god character with perfect 20s. It makes for interesting stories.
Ah, another good opportunity to shill Thirsty Sword Lesbians because it allows you to advance the story by failure and because failing checks is actually a way to gain XP. Also, all characters are thirsty sword lesbians.
In Forbidden Lands, you gain the special resource for doing extra cool stuff and casting spells by failing rolls. Characters are not necessarily thirsty sword lesbians though.
In a real life TTRPG, a character with low skills in everything is probably more fun than some god character with perfect 20s.
Depends on the game. Playing something where a giant portion of game time is taken up by combat (D&D, Pathfinder, Lancer) and being obviously and noticeably worse than every other player just feels bad.
Yeah and it also comes down to your DM and how much of a combat focus they have. Back when I was a GM for shadowrun my players were encouraged to meticulously plan every combat encounter, sometimes so well they didn’t have to fight at all. That’s always fun.
For sure, I’m running a cyberpunk game right now where they’ve cleared most missions without getting caught, and every time they’ve gotten into a firefight has been a disaster ending with someone on death’s door. If anything, the combat-oriented solo (who got killed by a lucky headshot) feels underpowered in that game.
I would always push my players to stake out a place before they would infiltrate it in Shadowrun. Hey, maybe they would luck out and find a rotation schedule for the guards?
I think its partly the mismatch, having one person in the party being a power gamer and everyone else kinda waffling about is also bad. If everyone is kinda bad and wonky in a combat heavy game, that can also be fun
Imo one person having a better character is less of a problem, provided they’re not too overpowered. If they’re really good at their niche, that’s not a problem, it’s only when they start making other PCs feel obsolete that I’ve run into issues. I could see everyone being bad being fun but only as a gimmick and not for a lasting campaign (eg Paranoia). D&D combat, though, is already a slog and missing every attack is just going to slow it down and make it even more boring.
When I say bad I mean like… Not top tier super spec meta build that certain power gamers will complain at you about if you don’t build that way
Oh lol that’s not bad to me, that’s just a normal player. I was thinking something like a D&D character that rolled 3d6 down the line for attributes and got nothing above a 10.
I may have overstated a tad, but yeah, normal characters.
In Shadowrun I played with some people who were very build focused (and also their characters had more xp than mine). My character had a party pistol, which was a revolver where each chamber had a different novelty bullet (none of the popular ones). You could choose which round, everyone had a lot of fun even the players who suggested I only use APFSDS and HE rounds. But then when I played shadowrun with other people, my character seemed very focused and power gamey compared to my friends, even though she had a broad range of skills and abilities that were ok in most situations but nowhere near top tier.
idk, context and stuff. Is roleplaying dialectics?
Base (the rules) reinforces and shapes Superstructure (the players) which in turn reinforces and shapes the Base (houserules)
I hate the meta, but my favorites just mysteriously happen to be meta
I like to do the opposite in fighting games, making sure to try and make an underused fighter shine. Also, take care and get well!
Fighting games are different, you can spend your whole life trying to unlock tech that you can just look up in 2 seconds, and when everyone you’re fighting has already done that research, it’s the only practical way to proceed. IMO just play the character you like and from there the fun is in unlocking their abilities. I’ve been playing SF6 as my first fighting game I’m taking “seriously” and it’s a lotta fun.
counterpoint: im an idiot and i dont wanna have to restart halfway into the story bc i made a doodoo character
Almost no games are designed such that you cannot beat them with practically any build, and even fewer are designed so that you cannot alter that build halfway through based on one’s own determinations of what isn’t working
Googling “worst class” and picking that to play.
aww yea it’s Truenamer time.
How dare you if I could pass a DC 32 check I’d unspeak you right now.
Also Truenamers aren’t the worst they are cool, they are really really cool
I love them in concept! But the execution is just awful. Why on Earth would the designers take something that works (saving throws versus a DC) and replace it with a skill check system that scales against target CR and gets worse as you level!?
True though there are weaker classes, both of 3.5’s Samurai come to mind.
I don’t disagree with you because you are wrong I disagree because it hurts because I like Truenamers so much they got a great concept and just overall cohesion that I enjoy like, ‘oh yeah speak this word to speed something up, speak it backwards to slow someone down’, what I’m saying that class has greatness its just yeah…
I guess the weaker classes would be stuff like NPC classes I don’t know if Truenamers could win again 3.5e CW Samurais to be honest depends on what level and equipment but it might actually be close depending on who wins initiative.
It was part of the series of prototypes for 4E. As they were near the end of the 3.5 run they started loosening up and experimenting, though of course someone (Mearls? I forget) got into power and scrapped the entire 4E project for their own pet idea.
You would love Old School Runescape and all the restrictions they put on themselves.
if you play an rpg and dont choose the proletariat because it is the best class you are a lib
My most frequent blunder in Victoria 3 is trying to rush the proles into power way too early instead of focusing on economic development and fostering the proper conditions for their rise.
a good revolutionary sets up their comrades for success rather than selfishly trying to force things themselves
Classic idealist getting their revolution crushed in the 1860s. We all have to go through it at least once .
Damn, now I feel bad for running Baldwin in Darkest Dungeon.
ehh, it depends on the game.
shit like Elden Ring where you get a bunch of free full respecs to do whatever the fuck you want with, hell yeah I’m gonna do whatever
Path of Exile where if you fuck up the placement of your 123 passive skill points you essentially have to either grind your tush off for 50+ hours or reroll and redo the same 20+ hour boring ass campaign again if you want to do anything meaningful post-campaign, I’m gonna look up a guide
if games respected my time more i’d do it less, but otherwise lol, lmao, even.
Path of Exile where if you fuck up the placement of your 123 passive skill points you essentially have to either grind your tush off for 50+ hours or reroll and redo the same 20+ hour boring ass campaign again if you want to do anything meaningful post-campaign, I’m gonna look up a guide
I have some amazing news:
Gold cost is pretty easy to afford because it scales based on your level, very cheap early on and more expensive as you reach endgame. If you make a mistake in your first 80 points from the campaign it shouldn’t take any grinding to reset most of the tree now.
(sidenote: it’s really funny how this PoE announcement has been so big that there’s like 10 people, myself included, on Hexbear endlessly evangelizing about it
)It seems like it’s almost the exact same system where by the time you hit maps and realize the build you made is absolutely fucking cooked, respeccing is still really expensive and grindy, maybe even more expensive depending on how late game gold scaling will work out vs orbs of regret?
I feel like the campaign is when you least need cheap respecs, since you can pretty decently run through it with almost anything
You can still use regrets, and assuming you didn’t spend all your gold on the league mechanic they already explained you get way more gold than you need to respec early on. It only gets expensive late game, 85+ if I had to guess.
Once you’ve played poe for a while, you can play without following a guide exactly. You can even make a build from scratch. My favorite thing about path of exile is that you can make a character so powerful that it feels like you break the game. During necropolis league, I reached over 4 billion dps as manaforged arrows hierophant.
