Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-1915529-20140702204420/@comment-3547390-20140916020531

Heh, I thought he was referring to me. Raadec didn't mention your age in that list, making it sound like I was the stupid kid. Like I said, his words just make him the stupid fool though.

Yeah, I don't catch on to RPGs easily. I kinda catch on, then hate them, then like them, then realize how stupid I was for liking it and swearing never to touch it again. I then reinstall it the next week and repeat the cycle. As you can see, this is why I barely level or do anything in an RPG.

I just... I don't know. I like the storytelling, the involvement with NPCs, and such. I just hate combat being fully based on numbers. Why is it that every game I start out absolutely terrible? When replaying an RPG, I would have to sit through this point of being terrible to get to the point where I can actually do something.

There is no skill curve beyond where you put stats. If you like numbers it is fun, but I would rather play a game then live in menus. The strategy isn't to learn the enemies attacks and adapt, it is to manage numbers by either learning what the dump stat is or min-maxing.

Please, explain the pause feature of Baldur's Gate. I apparently can't get through the game without it, yet I don't understand how it helps. I just send everyone into combat anyway and the one area I would manage (inventory) causes the game to unpause. The only reason I can see is to manage spells, but casters can only do 2-3 spells a day which makes that rather pointless. As far as I see, the "strategy" is to send everyone into combat and hope nobody dies. Of course Montaron is terrible for some reason even though everything should be better than Xzar, which means he dies almost within two seconds of fighting. So I have adjusted my strategy to sending just my main character around the map and using my other characters to hold items/steal stuff.

I don't really see the replay value either. You start out terrible each time, build your characters up, and end up great (well, if you manage yourself right, if you don't you end up in a situation where it is impossible to win). This is probably why RPGs rely on multiple storylines and other such tactics, which are nice, but probably needed to have any sort of re-playability (see Thief, a great game with one storyline that has a ridiculous amount of replay value).

SPOILER ALERTS for System Shock 2: You said you have played System Shock 2, right? Well, refer to the fight against SHODAN for reasons why I am upset by that game. To kill SHODAN, you use those panels on the sides on the arena and keep hacking them. If you fail to hack them, you get electrified, while if you succeed you injure her. Your ability to hack is defined by attributes that you upgraded earlier, hopefully you spent enough modules on hacking to get to the point where you can survive the boss fight. Combine that with the electrical floor nearly killing you for every mistake and suddenly you realize it is a dice roll. Based on the outcome of a dice roll, you either will injure the boss or take damage. That is the concept of every RPG.

I'm sorry, I don't want the final boss fight to be based on a dice roll. I would like some challenge, some difficulty. I don't want to keep reloading until I get it right, then continue until death. Where's the fun in that? What is the point? To see how far your powers have come? I didn't feel successful beating SHODAN in the slightest, I actually felt better after successfully destroying all the Rumblers and Mind Flayers in the previous level with a Wrench on Impossible difficulty. That took skill, it had upgrades that improved my abilities but it was eventually up to user input to do it well (meaning a player with really good skill could do it with no upgrades, similar to Unreal with Dispersion Pistol powerups). I wanted to conserve ammo for what I thought would be an epic battle (and what I found to be a rip-off), so I spent the length of the hardest level on the hardest difficulty basically attacking enemies with the weakest melee weapon. It took a lot of moving, it was extremely difficult, but I managed to do it and felt proud of myself for succeeding. SHODAN? Press a few buttons, hope for good results, move on. It was all based on random factors that felt out of my control, I couldn't use skill and had to rely on number crunching.

END OF SPOILER...

Most RPGs make it so I can't even evade attacks. Running away while the enemy swings at you? They will still hit you regardless! Your only hope is to have a high enough dexterity to evade such attacks.

September 19 is good for me. I don't have much to do that day, meaning I could be totally exhausted and still not worry about being able to stay awake later. Something tells me this is going to be fruitless, but I hope to get somewhere this time. Dominus, I want to try something. We will try to go on chat that day (there is a button for it in between recent activity and photos near the top of this page). I have tried doing it with Raadec, but it was rather unstable and didn't work well. Maybe, just maybe, it had something to do with him (or perhaps the length of distance). In either case, I would like to try it with another person before dismissing it entirely. Plus, if it works, it could serve to make the whole process a lot smoother.

Wait... what? You don't permanently die in Diablo 2? Ugh, I hate respawning. It is one other reason I hated System Shock, it felt like there was no point when I could respawn over and over with no problem. Then again, I usually just abuse the saving system of any game. I reload if I die. I reload if a party member dies.

Baldur's Gate is interesting as more enemies spawn when you reload, meaning it becomes harder to survive. However, when you solo and kill everything in one hit (thank you 18/95 strength and 18 dexterity) it suddenly becomes more rewarding to save spam. Why kill one Ogre Berserker when I can kill two, two Ogrillions, a mob of Gibberlings, and a couple Hobgoblins with poison arrows. If I sent in my party, instant death for Montaron, Xzar, Edmund, Jahiera, and Khalid. If I go in alone, nobody dies and we all get a good amount of XP and loot. So, the lesson is to save-spam and solo play. Plus, healing items sell for a lot of gold (oh, yeah, Montaron and them die before I could ever heal them, meaning it would only be useful for my character that can last on 1 hp and take down mobs of respawning gnolls in the gnoll stronghold). As to why I get to 1 HP in the first place, Carrion Crawler (one thing useful for parties, as they become useful human meat shields).