Yeah warlocks were pretty damn awesome in NWN2. ending up with 2 in the party was even better

2 being you and Jerro? or is there another warlock somewhere out there??

Yeah me and him, I like the idea of simultaneously blasting an enemy with fire and acid. By the time the enemy managed to get close to my melee fighters, they were virtually dead
Hmm, you can do up to 4 player coop can't you? Maybe 5 warlocks?

Oh god that would be so overpowered :D
Say, what did you think of the Dwarf Monk? Or did you choose for him to get all monky??I don't remember the Dwarf's name at this time...

As an IGN employee (ForumPlanet administrator), I represent the company when I say "The SS Free is better.".

Oh Jesus he is everywhere!!!

You mean a stupid empty forum with just two people on it? Yeah, that's just grand.

I really have to ask...why did you change from the Jack Nicolsan look alike to the Slipknot Mask look alike?

You betcha! "King of shadows? What King of shadows?"
Khelgar? Eh he was okay I guess, never been a fan of monks in general (aside from Monkey but he was a special case because he rode a cloud, had a quarterstaff in his ear and hung out with a group so weird that the transvestite was the normal one). The thing that annoyed me was the presto changeo 'suddenly I'm a level 20 monk instead of a level 20 fighter' and there was no period of training or anything. Game wise I can see why they did it but frankly I'd have been happier losing him for a few quests while he studied or something

You tell your character(s) what to do, yes, and I imagine the game would be boring if not. But the actions they can perform, and how well, depends on their skill level, not yours. It's a matter of the game system acknowledging the fact that a character can be lacking in intelligence and reflecting this in the options it gives you. That's how a RPG works: it restricts and opens up options according to your character state, but it's up to you to make the choice, whether you have a stupid character do a smart move or an intelligent one act dumb.
What exactly are you trying to say? Is it still in relation to stuff like the Oblivion lockpicking minigame where you have to cripple yourself just to conform to what your character is supposed to be or is it something else? If it is that, then my answer is that the game should acknowledge the way your character is and have you fail or succeed in consequence, because if you have to voluntarily fail you are just playing make believe.
Not what I said. I'm just saying that the content should have some meaning and importance if it is present. And if it is redundant as you said, why have it in the first place?
Beside it is quite different from giving the player a choice between several paths and only one can be seen during the course of the game. Here it is about the use of a skill that consists of a minigame that basically make said skill useless, because it is possible to succeed even with an abysmal character skill. Why have the skill in the first place if anyone can succeed? To make it easier for the player to pretend that he plays some kind of rogue? This is even compounded by the fact that you can find an item that just lets you ignore the minigame entirely, so why have it?
System Shock 2, not even a full-fledged CRPG, got that kind of skill minigame right with the hacking skill, where a higher skill level removes protected nodes on the board and gives a bigger chance that a node will be successfully converted. It requires a bit of player skill and decision to chose which nodes to pick — including risking a protected one — but whether a node is successfully converted or not depends on the character. There are also items that allow the player to succeed automatically but these are an extremely rare comodity and can't be reproduced, instinctively giving the player the urge to keep those for a very difficult lock and/or when it needs to be hacked fast.
You mentioned Gothic without a number, so I assumed it was the first.
It attempts to simulate reality, it doesn't try to be real. Reality is boring, that's why we play games to escape it for while, though some of them are becoming quite mundane.
All working within the conventions of the game, so they may be believable in that context but clash with reality. I'd also say that I am mostly discussing CRPG, not P&P, which are two different animals, but so be it.
That's not mere semantics, it is an important distinction between what we accept within a group of conventions and what we accept in reality. I don't consider magic to be realistic but I consider it believable in a fantasy setting.
"Immersion" is mostly a buzzword that means a lot of things and none at the same time. If we want to discuss it, we'd have to define it and see how it works. It can even work in very opposite ways, because you can see games where little feedback is given be described as immersive but also games where a lot of math formulaes explaining the mechanics are thrown in your way, sometimes even by the same people.
And it's again mostly a question of conventions and believability: having your sword go through an enemy without inflicting damage looks definitely silly, because we expect it to cause damage. Yet many other things should scream that you are playing a game — which isn't that surprising considering that you are actually playing a game: use of a HUD or other menus, ability to recover from mortal wounds by eating a bandage, presence of magic, fantastic races and beasts, NPC not acknowledging your actions, NPC repeating the same stuff over and over or finding normal that a stranger meddles in his personal affairs and asks if he can help, etc. Yet we usualy accept that stuff because it's part of a convention in a certain context. One could even say that the more realistic a game is, the easiest we will find the flaws in it because we are used to how reality sounds, looks and behaves like, and the more abstract you go, the easiest it will be to accept it. That's exactly why in the context of a theatre play, you can show a fake tree made out of paper, pretend it is a tree and have people accept it as one, while in a movie you won't be able to pretend that this obviously fake tree is real because we are used to a more realistic appearance in that context.
It works like that for a good part of the game, but yeah, it changes for the last part. But you still got time to see that change coming, with the game gradually throwing you into more and more situations where combat is the only issue, though stealth remains somewhat effective except in the event of a boss fight. A shame but at least the first 3/4 is very good and nothing else really compares to it.
You are right when you say the skills influence what actions you can take, but a class can put the emphasis on a certain group of skills and abilities as well as unlocking unique content. They give the opportunity to use archetypes but can also offer variations, like how a fighter could be a dumb brawler or a cunning tactician. Else class-less systems, where one can pick which skill he will focus on, are of course a good thing because they offer a lot of flexibility, but are often hard to balance properly and then usualy end up in a situation where a character will manage to master almost every skill. That or they just aren't very important to begin with. Both systems are viable but classes can offer an immediate mean to identify the type of character you are dealing with, and give better ways to control what options will be available or not.
Why is it bad to make a choice that will define how the game will play right at the start? It doesn't mean that all options are closed, just that some will be restricted and others will be opened up, and you will still need to chose from there. After that if you really want to take some specific path, maybe you should have taken another class or accept that no, your character won't be able to do it even if he tries to specialise in a certain skill. Beside that a fighter may not have to always fight his way through, he could try to intimidate people into leaving the battle, or if he decides to fight he might use his expertise to get into a much better position that another character would have missed; and we could go farther and imagine a situation where a fighter could forge an item that he needs while other characters will have to fight someone to get another version of it, or steal, etc. Picking a class shouldn't set you on the same unique path by default.
I am also not found of item restriction by class, though I find the system of proficiencies in D&D 3.5 to be ok: you can use items you are not proficient with but they will incur a penalty to some of your abilities, and different classes start with different sets of proficiencies.
Then we can remove the story element. I assumed you found that part important because you cited games like Oblivion or Mass Effect. Yet it still remains that the more you move the skill from the character to the player, the closer you get to an action game, if only because a skilled player might succeed in situations where a lowly skilled character will not.
Not necessarily, as I am sure you and everyone else reading this thread know people who just do not learn from their experiences. I am not interested in knowing what an experienced man believe but rather why he believes it.
I did address it: you can control randomness by improving your character skill; the two are tied and if you improve the skill, it will give him more chances to succeed. I wouldn't call the random element uninteresting as it makes the game far more tactical, forcing you to plan ahead on what to do if you fail your skill check. I'm playing Knights of the Chalice these days, and I really don't see how you could keep the game interesting by removing the dice roll and instead replace it with player skill.
And we still get to the same problem: you can artificially boost your character simply by being more skilled than he is supposed to be. To effectively mix both character and player skill, the game has to really cripple you at low skill levels, like in Gothic or Deus Ex, and these aren't really full fledged CRPG's. If it goes the Oblivion or Fallout 3 route, the skills have very little impact and characters with different focus on skills are basically equal to each other. To be fair, Fallout 3 has more unique uses of skills in dialogs but these are very simplistic compared to what has been done before.
My bad, I wasn't exactly sure by then of what you meant by randomness being an empty, uninteresting and unsatisfying gameplay device.

Right, this post took far too long to write, and I can't continue like this. So after this post, I'll bow out of the debate. I think I've said most of what I wanted to, anyway.
Exactly. Through my tactical skills I can get a team of idiots to behave as if they were trained by the SAS. So even in the purest RPG imaginable, my skills as a player are still more important than the skills of my characters, and I can make them behave in a way that is contrary to their personality and skills. Which is in principle the same as giving a character with poor combat skills the boost of being controlled by a player with good combat skills. THe "physical" vs. "mental"-thing is largely an artificial divide.
Which is pretty much what RPGs are about, in the first place. But no, I'm not talking about voluntarily failing, I'm talking about not exploiting weaknesses that lead to my enjoyment being reduced. I did not have a problem with the lockpicking in Oblivion, no matter how hard that is to believe.
Why not?
I don't see why it is bad to give players access to skills and items which basically act as shortcuts, so that players can concentrate more on other parts of the game as it moves on. It is not as if this magic lockpick was free, it's a reward - and a good one. Not everyone will get this lockpick, in fact most probably won't.
The idea that if you have content in the game, the player should have to experience it, is very anti-RPG in the first place. Having content that can be skipped if desired is part of the very essence of the genre.
I agree this is a superior implementation.
Reality is boring? Really now?
You know, at one point we had dinosaurs as big as houses, flying insects with a wingspan of almost 80 cm, we had neanderthal men (& a bunch of other weirdos) and giant woolly mammoths. And today we have everything from electric eels to bats that navigate using sonar. And this is just on our world. Who knows what else is out there, on worlds where the conditions are different or where evolution took different turns.
Realistic does not mean mundane. It doesn't mean that things are supposed to be exactly like in your daily life. A dinosaur in a game isn't neccessarily unrealistic, and considering some of the things that have walked this earth, neither are most most monsters you'll find in typical fantasy RPGs. So the realistic = boring-generalization is just blatantly wrong.
But that's besides the point. The point is that I want the game world to behave in a realistic way, according to believable rules. I don't want RPGs to feel artificial, which is precisely what they do if I can't be sure my sword hit the enemy even if I saw it do so with my own eyes, for instance.
I agree. I want my RPGs to have fantastical elements in them. But I want them to behave in a realistic manner. I don't mind monsters, magic and the undead. But in an ideal RPG, I'd like monsters to be hostile to each other, I'd like them to be far fewer (and instead harder to kill), and I'd like them to not stand around outside the city gates waiting for me, because that's not what real monsters* do.
(* tigers, lions, bears, these things are real and they most definitely are monsters in the RPG sense)
Immersive, to me, basically means that I get sucked into the world. I don't "believe it's real" or think I'm the guy on the screen, but still I do get to partly identify not only with my character but with others as well. That happens in many good games, regardless of genre. I don't feel it's a buzzword, it's very appropriate and it's commonly used to describe other experiences as well (books, movies, et.c.).
Some of the things you mention here, especially regarding the NPCs, are pet peeves of mine, and as you say they do help making the world feel less believable and less immersive. There are loads of other examples of common flaws in RPGs that do the same. But some are more serious than others. Having the graphics show something that isn't "real" is definitely one of the more serious ones (as well as a cardinal sin, game design-wise - sending signals to the player that are plain wrong is not a good idea).
This is a good point. Another example would be having a giant D charge you in Oblivion; it wouldn't work. In Nethack, though, it does.
But most modern RPGs feature a presentation that is realistic enough to make it harder to accept things that don't make sense. That's the trouble with today's videogames - "doing it right" demands so much more, and when they "do it wrong", the effects are so much more noticeable.
Of course, you could just stick to the Geneforges, Eschatons and whatever but that's not interesting for everyone.
Agreed.
If classes are used simply as a foundation - i.e. let you develop him or her as you wish as the game goes on, instead of being forced into certain paths due to class selection, then class-based systems are fairly tolerable.
Because at the start, you don't know how those choices will influence the game. You have no experience with the game, how its systems work in practice, what skills are actually useful and what skills to avoid (and which are just plain broken, if you're playing a Troika-game), and thus it is the worst possible time to make what in many of these games is the most important choice you will ever make.
(it's kind of like giving you the chance to adjust graphics settings before, but not after, you've seen how a game runs on your computer)
In party-based games, it's especially bad. Making the wrong choices in the start can seriously screw up your entire game, and it's not neccessarily evident that you've done so before you've played for hours. Quite a few older RPGs are guilty of this.
Obviously not; that is a game that is as old-skool as it can possibly get, right down to the crappy fonts used. The RPG-genre is hugely varied, and I appreciate that not all games try to do the same things (or try to interest *me*). Utilizing player skills works best for games where you have direct control over your character.
Take Avencast, for example. On the surface it looks like a standard Diablo-like clickfest. But delve deeper, and you find it has a very interesting combat system that mixes player skills and character skills in a surprising and satisfying manner, and as a result what looks frankly a little boring on the surface becomes much more involving and exciting than most games of its kind.
Or take Mount & Blade. It uses a wonderful combat system that is entirely depending on player skills. But at the same time, it is an RPG, and as you level up you notice that your character's skills matter a lot as well. Mount & Blade isn't perfect, clearly, but I think it has found a way to marry player skills and character skills that I would love to see more of, in future Gothics, Risens, Elder Scrolls, et.c.
I think I've been through this already. Artificially boosting your characters through your own skills isn't uncommon for RPGs, even the purest ones. It's when these skills are physical rather than mental that certain groups of RPG-players begin to go nuts over it. I feel the difference between the two (physical vs. mental) is largely a constructed one (created by people with an agenda to keep the genre "pure", according to their own tastes).
Also, I don't agree with you in terms of how much impact the character skills has on the gameplay in Oblivion and Fallout 3. What you're saying just doesn't match the reality of these games, in my experience.

Personally, I think Oblivion, FO3, and Mass Effect are great RPG's.
Also, there are PLENTY of games that are genre-bending -- and I think we'll see even more games doing this in the future, as well.
We could go and make a case for PST and BG series basically being strategy-RPG games, for example...
I don't care what anyone says -- but NO game should be THAT bug-ridden upon release. That's solely on the fault of the dev's for not finishing the game in the amount of time correctly that they agreed w/ the publisher AND for the publisher for releasing a game in such a sad state. Really, though -- PB should've not had such a ridiculously huge scope for that game.
Community Patches, as great as they are and can be -- especially for Gothic 3, Arcanum, and Vampire: Bloodlines -- don't really count, since it wasn't the developer's and publisher's agreed-upon final version.
Though, those 3 games do deserve some awards for having some of the "Best Unofficial Patching Communities." :)
I would agree that those two you listed are great.

Especially Bloodlines, with the amount they've put out, they could probably have made a sequel by now