Mass Effect 2 was a masterpiece, but it only worked as well as it did because the missions were so character driven. I'm not sure most games either could, or should be that way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rodin
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Mass Effect 2 was a masterpiece, but it only worked as well as it did because the missions were so character driven. I'm not sure most games either could, or should be that way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rodin
your the one bringing definitions and semantics into this, I have no problem with what I said, semantics and definition bull is just that: bull to distract from the issue being discussed. I'm not falling for that trick again.Quote:
Originally Posted by deuterio12
finally someone who agrees with me on optimization. I would not deny pokemon breeding for others purposes though.
and they do. that success is "what I want to do in the game."
"left open the possibility" is a generous term for "its our policy that all pokemon games from now on will be this and we have no plans to put them back in." and then the translator not translating it correctly so it comes out as if they were talking about only one game. that is hardly leaving them open, it means they they aren't think about it, which might as well be a no. and I disagree, all the things you just said in the paragraph are negative, not positive.
Rogue tax, blargh. It feels so stupid to add something like that to the game. At least in WoW, THEORETICALLY you could actually create things in tradeskills to blow open locked chests and such. Seaforium charges. In practice I think it was generally considered very much not worth it. At least the chests tended to have something to roll on in them. It was pretty much never a game changing item but often it was something worth selling so it was no huge deal if you didnt have one other than scratching that itch "WHATS IN THE BOOOOOOX?!?!?!" Though speaking as someone who played a rogue, pickpocketing and lock picking was annoying more than anything. Oooh yay, I get to steal a few silver more off of humanoid mobs or random trash items taking up bag space, again, for a few silver each. Or lockboxes that I have to lockpick to get my skill up... for more silver or possibly a HEALING potion! Wow!Quote:
Originally Posted by GloatingSwine
I didn't include pickpocketing because, frankly, never* in history has anyone in a CRPG had anything worth pickpocketing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Traab
* Okay except Octopath Traveler where all the best weapons can be pinched off of NPCs if you don't want to buy them.
Well, for enemies, you could just kill them for it... (unless the game, for whatever reason, goes "oh, this is only available if you PICKPOCKET them. You can't get it off their corpse...")Quote:
Originally Posted by GloatingSwine
And for friendly NPCs, you get the Guards of Doom if you get caught trying to steal. That being said, I seem to recall a few games where you could steal a unique key off a NPC that allows access to a private room with a normally unbreakable / unpickable lock. Said room rewards you with ... sweetrolls? And some silverware.
Nevermind.
About the only real fun I've had with pickpocketing is REVERSE pickpocketing, like popping a live grenade in someone's trousers.
On the contrary, I find that most cRPGs have amazing pickpocket targets, particularly named NPCs (including a gamebreaker Algernon's Cloak from Baldur's Gate 1 and a really useful Ring of Regeneration in Baldur's Gate 2), but I've managed to poach high-level spell scrolls off of Amnish guards in BG2 too. Fallout 2, for instance, lets you steal one of the best Big Guns in the game from a merchant guard, although Fallout's broken skill system has the fact that you can become an expert fairly quickly in anything, regardless of build while there simply aren't that many useful skills to invest into, so the "thief package" (Lockpick and optionally Steal) isn't a hard detour. FF5 had a lot of gear only a Thief could get (Genji Armor), and you could also pickpocket monsters for Elixirs if you felt the need to stock up. It's true, though, that if you want to check the pockets of everyone in the world, it might feel redundant after a while, but I generally find it satisfying to have a pickpocket character in most RPGs, if only because I'm curious.Quote:
Originally Posted by GloatingSwine
I also don't really see that much of an issue with the Rogue Tax because games wherein the Rogue is a complete deadweight also do not make it a point that you need them to do anything (probably by some accident rather than actual developer insight none of the BG2 Thieves that stick around with you are "full" Thieves because no one ever needs them; Hexxat has some superpowers but still is rather below par because a single-class Thief is a single-class Thief), whereas in more modern games where there's an actual point to having a rogue (and you can't just bash locks open and traps aren't easily subvertable with summon spells or just a high HP / saving throw total) the rogue usually follows the MMO model of being a quick, high DPS assailant with the rest of their kit being a nice bonus. Either way, you usually don't need one.
Also in WoW I have it on good account that there's good money to be made from opening other people's boxes. :smalltongue:
Ah yes, the ol' Shady Sands Shuffle. Good times.Quote:
Originally Posted by sihnfahl
I will say the only two times pickpocketing has been worth it for me were in Windwaker, for farming trinkets, and Skyrim, for general shenaniganry.
Reminds me of Dragon Age with its four levels of lockpicking skills you needed to open locks. Bleh. :smallsigh:Quote:
Originally Posted by Traab
Pickpocketing is a bad mechanic not because it's not worth it, but because it encourages endless save-scumming. Since if it fails, people will generally attack you.
Generally, I find the traditional "thief skills" to be a waste of time more often than not. Traps and pickpocketing entirely so. Lock-picking has a place if it's one of the possible ways of getting somewhere, rather than something you do for loot.
I'm not sure if I agree with this because any cRPG "encourages" save-scumming if anecdotal evidence of players preferring to brute-force encounters counting on lucky crits in combat is any distinction. Many players prefer to just load a save-game instead of bothering to resurrect a companion because having to drag all of their loot around is a chore, too. And with pickpocketing, you can usually reach a cap wherein you can't fail it. If you have a system where you can quicksave everywhere, failure in any subject is cheap. Apparently enough so that you can write an editorial bragging about it being your preferred way to play.Quote:
Originally Posted by Morty
What's bad is when failed pickpocketing causes permanent hostility or otherwise screws you over for way too long; most of the time I see some mechanic that allows the player to be "forgiven" for their crime. Sometimes it's just a matter of skipping town for a little while.
I don't mind this as much either simply because, as mentioned above, Rogues in DA are much more effective than just being locksmiths, and avoiding an abstract percentile system (like in many RPGs) at least makes it so that you have a clear goal to strive towards with a certain skill; there's no vague notion of "is 75% enough to open this or should I wait until I'm at 90%?", especially with systems that allow you to spam the lockpicking action on an item until it finally goes through.Quote:
Originally Posted by PraetorDragoon
The usefulness of Pickpocketing depends rather highly on how much dedication to RPing the game has. I mean take Assassin's Creed 2 for example. No you can't get anything special for Pickpocketing, but if you find yourself just a few florins short, five minutes of picking pockets is enough to net several thousand. As for Rogue Tax proper, it feels annoying certainly, but if the game is party based, why would you not have a thief of some flavor?
Also a single classed thief in BG2 can be quite powerful when kitted properly. Trap laying plus Firetooth equals a kiter without par.
Technically speaking, you can open any lock in DA:O without any of the lockpicking skills as long as you have a Rogue with a high enough Cunning score. The problem, of course, was that you probably wouldn't have a Rogue with a high enough Cunning score early enough in the game to unlock everything without investing in the lockpicking skills.Quote:
Reminds me of Dragon Age with its four levels of lockpicking skills you needed to open locks. Bleh.
The bigger problem with DA:O's lockpicking skills, in my opinion, is that for some reason they compete with combat skills rather than out-of-combat skills.
The issue here is that while a Thief is an extremely self-reliant class with a potential remedy to any problem, especially at high levels in BG2, but the problem is that pretty much anything else does the job easier. Rogues will not outdamage a Fighter and their utility is still somewhat more limited than a Mage. If we want to talk about a character specifically optimized for kiting, I'd still put multiple characters above it; literally any arcanist has an easier time refreshing crowd control or haste (hence why Jan, Imoen and Nalia will be better than Yoshimo or Hexxat at the job) and a CHARNAME can be an Archer (which is one of the only ways to make ranged damage stay on par with melee weaponry later on in the game) or some other power combo. Thieves are locked at a single attack per round and don't advance too far in THAC0. Sure, they can be effective, but I wouldn't say they do anything without par. HLA traps are a different story, but by the time they come online you're also liable to use other overpowered HLAs, and they still require a minimal amount of setup to be effective, being hard to utilize in combat, too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Triaxx
The real "Rogue Tax" is IMHO in that using Rogues in games tends to require a lot of micromanagement to maximize their effect, and even then, it's hard to not notice that your Rogue is still overshadowed in kill count or contribution by the guy with a more brute force approach available to them. As a result, I find that Thieves are most fun to play when you're solo.
For a more casual player who doesn't want to babysit his characters, Thieves will feel like gimped fighters with limited weaponry, an elaborate way to do burst damage that doesn't work against everything and might simply fail on the spot (with backstabs), and so they are just that guy who is only plinking away on autopilot, only ever selected to find traps and open locks. The same players often don't realize they really don't need that Thief for just these two jobs, but keeping a guy around for just this mundane job can be annoying.
I would describe that mostly as 'rogue fomo', because in practice there's almost never a game designer which puts anything meaningful or powerful or important in those locked containers. I remember having a discussion related to this when people would extol the virtues of the lockpicking and hacking perks in Fallout 4. Everyone would universally agree that the contents you could access using these talents were marginally useful at best, yet many, many people would continue to rate these as 'high value talents'.Quote:
Originally Posted by GloatingSwine
I think World of Warcraft had the best implementation of lockpicking in a game. Locked doors offered shortcuts in dungeon content which could be very useful, and lock boxes gave rogues an opportunity to help teammates and friends, as well as enrich themselves. Yet none of these features were powerful enough to make Rogues "mandatory".
Honestly, Octopath Traveler handles Rogue Tax the best. Most things that NPCs have can either be stolen via Therion or taken via Tressa, and there's some exclusive items to those two characters (some can be stolen but can't be bought, and vice versa). There's very little that you're missing out even without them in your party, because it's extremely easy to swap characters.Quote:
Originally Posted by GloatingSwine
Star Ocean 2 had a fun pickpocketing benefit. First off, it wasnt something you could just automatically do. It was a secret skill you could unlock if your character had the right intrinsic skills at the start of the game (assigned randomly I believe) or earned through various skills plus a super expensive item you had to buy early on. However, once you did get that, you could get some crazy stuff. You got the standard handful of cash, junk items, etc. But there was also super secret powerful armor you could somehow pickpocket during the game if you knew when and where to do it.
Stealing was kind of neat in FFT, once you put in the time to make it good. Due to the wonky way scaling worked (random encounters scaled with the party, most story ones did not), you could often get some really nice gear ahead of time by stealing it from random enemies, and it was the only way to obtain some items. The downside, of course, was that enemy Thieves had it as well, and having somebody walk up and yoink the rare armor you spent a ton of time getting right off your back was unpleasant.
Well, Fallout gives good experience for picking chests so ultimately the skill ends up paying for itself.Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Jackal
I guess, but I'm of the opinion that like all Bethsoft RPGs, you're better off focusing exclusively on combat abilities, because level doesn't really do you much good, alone. What matters is fast-tracking the perks that make you effective in a fight.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anteros
Outside of pushing a single gun skill up first, I never found combat to be difficult enough to bother investing so heavily in combat skills. You lock yourself out of way too much other content by doing that, and the combat isn't hard anyway. Fallout in particular features companions that can basically solo every combat encounter for you.Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Jackal
Well, until they float away or get stuck. DAMMIT VALENTINE.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anteros
In Fallout 3 you don't lock yourself out of anything.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anteros
It is quite possible to get all the skills to max by level 20 starting the game with an Intelligence of 2*.
In Fallout 4 stealth cheeses everything, to the point that with shadowed armour and finding a few of the stealth magazines as long as you are crouching in the shadow of a tree, even if it's in completely open ground, enemies can't find you unless they actually trip over you.
* With Broken Steel you'd actually start with 3 though so you can hold off collecting the Int bobblehead until 30 when you take Almost Perfect.
(In New Vegas it's difficult but possible to get all skills to 100 and you need quite a lot more int to do it, at least 7 I think.)
I meant locking yourself out of things in the sense that so much random content in that game requires skill checks for non combat skills. If you're focusing on just combat skills you'll lock yourself out of that stuff forever because you won't have the skills for the checks.Quote:
Originally Posted by GloatingSwine
Granted, none of that is necessary to complete the game.
In New Vegas, yeah. New Vegas uses skills all over the place.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anteros
In Bethesda ones not so much, the only out of combat skills that really gate anything are Lockpick/Science.
(My favourite version of adventure skills like this is Pillars 2 though, where any time all your characters are together all their skill levels contribute to the task when they're reasonably able to co-operate on it.)
I like this, because I hate having to give my 'main' character certain skills when the story treats them as some sort of insanely skilled warrior. Uh...Why can't I just have the bard do this? Why do I even HAVE a bard if I can't make them talk for me?Quote:
Originally Posted by GloatingSwine
This got really silly in Divinity:OS 2. Even though you have your 4-man adventuring party, only the person currently speaking would get the speech checks. This means that you can have a character who is silver-tongued enough to talk a guy out of his pants...who never gets to talk to a random encounter because they're a squishy wizard at the back of your party and the NPC grabs your dumb-as-a-rock warrior for the conversation since he's in the lead. All 4 characters can trade inventory freely on the main map to the point of silliness, like having a character teleport halfway up a mountain using a magic item then hand said item to the next party member at the bottom of the mountain so they can follow. Once in conversation where the entire party is stood next to the merchant? Not only do the other party members not get the Barter bonus, only the person who initiated the conversation can sell items from their own inventory.Quote:
Originally Posted by Honest Tiefling
There's nothing more annoying than reloading walking into an area multiple times just because you want the character with relevant skills to speak up. And separated inventories for individual characters is just a mechanic that needs to die.
Agreed here. I used a mod that just shared things like diplomacy and barter throughout the party so you'd always use the highest score. It made things much less tedious.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rodin
You could switch characters selling items, I did figure that out. But you only get the barter bonus of who initiated the conversation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rodin
Other than that, yeah, those other things really bothered me.
With the exception of certain origin-specific quests and encounters, dialogue will use the skills of whoever initiated it. Most of the time, you can in fact have the silver-tongued minstrel do the talking, and for when it initiates a conversation on its own, the game expects you to reload and try again if you don't like the outcome.Quote:
Originally Posted by tonberrian
Even more fun if you need to spend skill points on persuasion skills instead of combat skills.Quote:
Originally Posted by Honest Tiefling