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Video Games General

Discussion in 'General' started by Smuthunter, Mar 25, 2017.

  1. Smuthunter

    Smuthunter Begone Thot!

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    For conversations relating to video games that don't belong in the Rants thread.

    Like this one!

    But the people in the system are the ones who control the system. Ryan's banning of contact with the outside world is directly responsible for the state Rapture is in, because without that rule Frank Fontaine wouldn't have been able to build a power base around the black market and the civil war would never have gotten off the ground.

    You could say that that means Ryan is at fault for the collapse of his own city rather than his objectivist ideals and you'd be right. The criticism of Objectivism and of Atlas Shrugged in particular is that Ryan is supposed to be what John Galt would look like if John Galt were a real person instead of a political strawman / mary sue with no human flaws. The greatest difference between them is that Ryan and the other inhabitants of Rapture all have human failings, and because of those failings Rapture/Galt's Gulch comes apart at the seams.
     
    Valette-Serafina likes this.
  2. vyor

    vyor Oh that's cute

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    The issue with deconstructing Atlas Shrugged is that it's a parody. It in and of itself is a deconstruction.
     
  3. Smuthunter

    Smuthunter Begone Thot!

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    [Citation Needed]
     
  4. Marthis

    Marthis Oh how wonderful!

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    Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead are the most famous examples of Objectivist thought put down on paper. This is because Ayn Rand founded Objectivism.
    Claiming the mother of Objectivism was making a parody of her own philosophy seems more than a little dubious.
     
  5. Aodh

    Aodh Why are you even angry about being immortal?

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    Atlas Shrugged is one of the seminal pieces of objectivist literature. It was written by the founder of the philosophy it would supposedly be parodying and serves as the basis for much of objectivism.
     
  6. vyor

    vyor Oh that's cute

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    *facepalms*
    Gonna be honest, I had forgotten about that. In my defence it was around 4 in the morning when I wrote that.

    The damn thing might as well be a parody though, it's so absurd that if you gave it to someone who didn't know who Ayn Rand is they'd think the whole thing a joke.
     
  7. Tavarokk

    Tavarokk Pursuer of perversion

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    On an unrelated note, care to toss some RPG recs that involve top notch mage gameplay? I found myself craving some this week, but my options so far are Baldur's Gate that encourages you to conserve the good stuff whenever possible (not enough glorious spell slinging) and Skyrim that involves mindnumbingly spamming infinite fireballs while strafing around (not glorious enough spell slinging).
     
    Pef likes this.
  8. vyor

    vyor Oh that's cute

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    I'm curious if anyone can find this as well.
     
    AkumaOuja likes this.
  9. Dakkaface

    Dakkaface Magical Defender of Justice

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    Have you tried Pillars of Eternity? It's a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. The playstyle and interface are going to feel incredibly familiar, but it takes more cues from D&D 4e than 2e, so your spell slingers always have a few abilities on tap that are per-encounter rather than per-rest. Even if you completely tap yourself out, you'll still be contributory, and that's on top of the fact that wands & scepters are now infinite fountains of weak magic bolts.

    I'm currently playing through it now having picked it up on sale a month or so back. I definitely enjoy it a lot, and the tweaked stat system they use solves a lot of the issues with SAD, MAD, and overvalued stats. My druid hardly casts any spells, but that's because she's a melee blender that murderfaces at least 5 times as hard as the other five members of her party.
     
    visus likes this.
  10. Tavarokk

    Tavarokk Pursuer of perversion

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    I have PoE myself, but I've been repeatedly dropping it shortly after trying to start, because the new system they've cooked up for it pisses me off tremendously. For all that it has plenty of great ideas and features, there's equal amount of those that feel glaringly artificial, unwieldy, imbalanced or nonsensical. Even just sort of porting 3.5 like NWN did would've been a massive improvement.
     
    vyor likes this.
  11. Dakkaface

    Dakkaface Magical Defender of Justice

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    What exactly are your issues with it?I largely found the game incredibly easy to grasp, even if I had some hard fights (and I'm a scrub - I'm playing on Normal)

    I can see plenty of silly nonsensical things - being able to pause mid-castle raid and take 8 hours to camp in a store room is a bit immersion breaking. But the overall game feels much more balanced than any previous game that attempted to clone D&D gameplay. I'm curious as to what you find unbalanced, because Neverwinter Nights ported 3.5 - and 3e/3.5e is arguably the worst balanced D&D edition.
     
  12. vyor

    vyor Oh that's cute

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    NwN did it well, PoE's system is clunky as hell.
     
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  13. Tavarokk

    Tavarokk Pursuer of perversion

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    In no particular order, the fact that stronger classes such as Cipher could outperform weaker classes such as Monk by several times in every way that matters, be that damage, survivability or utility (might depend on game version), Might being shared stat for fighters and casters (incredibly SoD-breaking), Monk's resource being 'wounds' along with the whole masochism fluff, chanters and chanter fluff, forced rigid class roles in many situations (good luck making aggressive paladin or allowing your warrior to make cleaving attacks, etc), limited spell selections... was more, but damn if I remember at this point.

    As said above, PoE system felt incredibly clunky. Instead of as faithful a representation of the real workings of the setting that would allow a player to accurately describe and quantify they character it felt as a glaringly artificial mess that dictated what a player is allowed to be IC for the sake of forcing balance and 'interesting' gameplay, at which it didn't really succeed anyway.
     
    vyor likes this.
  14. Dakkaface

    Dakkaface Magical Defender of Justice

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    [​IMG]
    I never really thought NwN was an elegant system, nor do I think PoE is especially clunky. Specifics would help if you're interested in elaborating on it.

    Stats are for the most part abstractions. I like PoE's stat system - sure it it isn't a instant map to D&D's stats, but it gets rid of single-stat builds, as all classes want most stats, though obviously to different degrees. Dex no longer governs AC, To-hit and Reflex. To-Hit goes to Perception, which also splits the generation of Reflex. Dex gets action speed. Int and Wis are no longer the single caster god-stats that govern bonus spells, to-hit/saving throws, spell damage, etc. I like that every defense but Deflection keys off of two stats. Might now governing ALL damage boosts as well as no longer governing melee to-hit. The system is set up such that nothing is a dump stat. The closest thing to a dump-stat is Int, and only if you have no AoE or duration abilities whatsoever.

    Some of the stuff you're describing sounds like it'd be fixed with the multi-class system that PoE2 is implementing - instead of using the weak 'multiclass feat' style that's cribbed from 4e, you can actually multiclass in PoE2, though they're only planning to let you have a maximum of two classes. If you want cleaving attacks with a Fighter you'll be able to go Fighter/Barbarian for Carnage and the Barb's cleave talent.

    If there's mechanics you dislike, that's fine. Some people have a favorite type of class and if the mechanics aren't to their taste, then it's not gonna work out. But if the mere fact that a statistic called 'Might' governs both physical and magical power kills your SoD, you might have calcified views on how casters should function. I mean, the goal with PoE was for Obsidian to make their own D&D-like world, not to do a direct copy of D&D. So the fact that some things got little twists like Monks being powered by penitent pain seems silly to object to.
     
    aquinas likes this.
  15. Vashon

    Vashon Earnest Voice Gone for Good

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    No, sorry, the criticism doesn't work, yes he fucked up but...

    But he did so by explicitly violating the very principles he set forth. Like a retard. He wasnt an objectivist or any of that shit. In fact, his economic policies had more in common with Venezuela.

    The criticism, in fact, fails, for that very reason. Ryan went Galt, yes he fucked off to his own corner of the world, but he was nothing more than a tinpot dictator. He never followed those ideals in the first place.

    Andrew Ryan isnt even a strawman of Randian Ideals, because he exercises none in the first place. There isnt "But humans have flaws" or "Mary Sue" issue here. Things didnt go to shit because of another Gilded Age and subsequent revolt, or any of the actual, or theorized, consequences of Objectivist Hyper Capitalism. And so it fails in actually criticizing it or "proving" it couldnt work. And thats the problem right there. We know that rampant and pure laisezz fairre capitalism can function and keep on chugging for quite some time. Certainly on a longer streak than any professed Socialist/Communist nation has, as of yet, achieved. Its brutal and its terrible and has generally awful consequences that nudge the rich and powerful to temper themselves as they see writing on the wall. Which sets the path for Crony Capitalism but different thread.

    Its like BioShock Infinite. Whats the criticism, muh racism? No, sorry, but you done fucked up. The actual conclusion to draw from that? Dont let "those people" in in the first damned place, and just hire "your own kind". BioShock Infinite is not an argument against racism or racialism. Its an argument for it. It completely fucked up any central point regarding racism. Its also a shitty game for other reasons but thats beside the point.


    All of the BioShock games would have been improved, had they actually addressed the issues they claimed to.
     
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  16. Tavarokk

    Tavarokk Pursuer of perversion

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    Missing the point entirely. You're discussing mechanical merits of the system, but those by themselves have zero value for me when it comes to RPGs. A system is supposed to be a model of the real in-game world, as accurate, intuitive and flexible as possible. It doesn't matter how clever dumping all damage into a single stat may seem, the point is that it's not how it works IC and that it often forces a player to make their character a physical powerhouse stats-wise when they are nothing of the sort IC. Thus, the system is inaccurate and inflexible, meaning that it limits and grates on the player when it should help and provide a framework to express what they want to get in an organic manner. The issue with monks is the same - the problem isn't that I dislike their wounds-based variant - to each their own - the problem is that they're forcing it down my throat if I want to play any kind of martial artist or brawler at all.
     
    vyor likes this.
  17. Dakkaface

    Dakkaface Magical Defender of Justice

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    It's a different game system, boss. I laid out the mechanical differences with the stats, but the fact remains it's a different system. The stats function differently. Might means you can accomplish stuff with physical or magical power. That's regardless of it being IC or meta. You can still be a scrawny wizard with massive mojo - if a dialogue option says you pick a guy up by the neck, or intimidate him with your might, then you're clearly Force Choking him or causing your eyes to glow, or flaring your aura or something similar.

    What your complaints seem to amount to are 'I don't have the breadth of options of D&D' and 'It's not D&D.' The system isn't inaccurate, it's just not D&D, despite drawing heavily from it. Perhaps too strongly - I had some similar issues with Pathfinder at first blush because it was so damn similar to 3.5 that I was positive I knew what I was doing, but kept finding things that worked slightly differently or didn't work quite like I expected. It's not that the system is bad, it's that you're trying to do things the way you would in the system that it's based on and getting frustrated that it doesn't work like you expect it to. Rather than try to be a character from the game Pillars of Eternity, set in Eora, you're complaining that PoE is crap at being D&D without granting that it's a different (if similar) game.

    As for options - yeah. They're limited. It's the first game, and in the base game you don't even have multiclass as a talent, since that was added in with The White March. You pick a class and while there are a few different builds you can do within that class, there's not a huge amount of variety. But this is the same thing of expectations from a previous system vs. what is presented to you in this game's system. I mean, you want to be some kind of magic fist man that punches out dragons? It so happens that there are magic fist men in Eora - but unlike D&D worlds, they are not wuxia monks, but pain-powered monks. You don't like that, which is fine. There's 10 other classes you could play as, but rather than try a different class - you insist that you should get a greater breadth of options, to be another kind of fist man just as capable of punching out dragons. Feels a bit entitled to me.

    Thus far nothing I'm seeing is real deep criticism of the game or it's systems - just that it doesn't meet your expectations of 'being D&D.'
     
    Last edited: Mar 31, 2017
  18. Tavarokk

    Tavarokk Pursuer of perversion

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    Why do you keep bringing up D&D? And claiming that I want PoE to work like D&D even - at no point have I stated anything of the sort. This whole 'this system is not like another system, so it's bad' line of thought is something you came up with entirely on your own and are now arguing with yourself, apparently?

    My problem with PoE system is not that it's worse than some other one in itself, it's that it's bad at describing PoE world. Yes, adapted D&D would've worked better, but adapted Storytelling or Numenera or what have you would've been fine as well. Latching on the system-to-system comparison once again completely misses the point that before anything else any RPG system is supposed to describe a realistic world (and not define it). At the beginning there's a broad concept 'my character is such ad such' that is completely disconnected from any kind of mechanics and relies solely on setting and campaign fluff, and the more adjustments the player is forced to inflict on the concept for no other reason but to fit it into the system limitations, the worse said system is.

    As for your Might argument, now consider the implications of any spellcaster PC being able to do anything of the sort at will, and why such skills are only available during special interactions and not, say, in combat. The ways physical and magical might are used are different, and the ways different classes use magical might are also different. Conflating all of that into a single stat makes it too clunky and vague at describing what and how a given character can do and spawns inconsistencies.
     
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  19. Dakkaface

    Dakkaface Magical Defender of Justice

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    You brought up a bunch of stuff that D&D can do. Then said. PoE can't do this, so it sucks. It was a pretty natural conclusion to draw.

    Except, that other than not aping D&D's breadth of options or specific mechanics, I'm not seeing the complete disconnect between mechanics and character that you are.

    They are available in combat. They're called your spells, and even if you run out of spells, Might affects Rod and Scepter magic bolt damage. Or possible that having greater physical might makes you better at channeling magic in this universe. Dunno. Lemme actually go back and look at the stat description for Might. "A character's physical and spiritual strength, brute force as well as their ability to channel powerful magic" Sounds like physical and magical strength are linked in this world. Wizards are not automatically scrawny, and if you're a scrawny wizard, your magic will be weaker. Muscle Wizards are canon for Eora, apparently.

    No, I don't think that it's the best system - it's trying very hard to fix D&D's broken stat system without changing it overmuch. But it certainly looks to me like you're trying way to hard to try and make the system fit what you expect it to do rather than use the system as it was designed. You're hitting nails with a wrench and complaining that it's a shitty hammer.
     
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  20. vyor

    vyor Oh that's cute

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    No, it was just "PoE constrains players and keeps them from doing X, Y, Z, so I don't like it"

    He never said anything about DnD
     
  21. Dakkaface

    Dakkaface Magical Defender of Justice

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    Actually he did.

    3.5 is the D&D edition NwN ported.
     
  22. vyor

    vyor Oh that's cute

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    He said it would be improvement, nothing else.
     
  23. Dakkaface

    Dakkaface Magical Defender of Justice

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    Still mentioned, plus we're talking about a Baldur's Gate spiritual successor and comparisons are being drawn to another D&D based game - the subject is implicit, even if not explicitly mentioned.

    At any rate, Tavarokk if PoE isn't to your taste... Magika? It's fun and full of caster shenanigans, but I'm not sure if it's too spammy for you.
     
  24. Evillevi

    Evillevi Shadow Pika!

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    Seconding this rec. Magicka is fantastic.

    Also Tavarokk have you tried Caves of Qud. It doesn't have magic but it feels great for a rouge-like game since a lot of it's mechanics so far can interact with one another (with some imagination applied). And while it is in Early Access, it has a lot of interconnected system and is updated weekly for the last few months.

    Also there's something to be said about beating a dungeon by casting flame spells until the entire thing spontaneously explodes
     
  25. Tavarokk

    Tavarokk Pursuer of perversion

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    I wouldn't call Magicka spammy at all, it very much rewards being clever about your spellcasting. I've played through the main campaign a while ago, but iirc there have been a bunch of DLCs, so I might unearth it to swing that QRESSS sword once again.
    No, not quite what I'm after at this time.
     
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  26. Wootius

    Wootius I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    If you like classic JRPG, Final fantasy dimensions is pretty much FFV 2.0. Humorous cast, abuse the job system, fight overpowered bosses.

    The option to switch between 16bit-ish and instrumental sound is pretty awesome.
     
  27. Smuthunter

    Smuthunter Begone Thot!

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    Do we have a QQ server for Conan Exiles? And, if not, do enough of us play it to justify making one?
     
  28. Snake/Eater

    Snake/Eater Myth Maker of the North

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    I heard from someone that the Unreal 4 Engine is free to download, is this true?

    What would you do?

    What could I do?;)
     
  29. Evillevi

    Evillevi Shadow Pika!

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    IIRC UE4 is free to use in any capacity except commercial business. So as long as you're not making a profit, UE4 doesn't take a cut. And it's standard cut is a percentage of your profits.
     
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  30. Snake/Eater

    Snake/Eater Myth Maker of the North

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    well this a bit disappointing to know, at best i could learn how to use the program by making a animated webshow with it or i practice with it and save up make a game with it someday.