7 ms·

I clocked more than my fair share of hours rerolling stats on Baldur's Gate. But in retrospect, it seems like outrageously shoddy game design. "We're going to h

by dri_ft 9y ago

I clocked more than my fair share of hours rerolling stats on Baldur's Gate. But in retrospect, it seems like outrageously shoddy game design. "We're going to have a permanent set of stats that determine how powerful your character is for the whole game, and how good those stats are is going to depend mostly on how much time you spend clicking 'reroll' and a little bit on luck. And we're going to make you do this all in one go, right at the start of the game, before you even get to have any fun."

dozzie 9y ago
Note that it's not because the game was designed this way, but because the Dungeons and Dragons system was designed this way. It's not optimized for first-time and impatient computer players, but for roleplayers.
- rodgerd 9y ago
  It's not really inherint to role players. Plenty of popular RPGs had radically different (and often non-chance based) character generation systems, ranging from the sublime (doling out combinations from a pool and trading strengths and weaknesses, like GURPS and Shadowrun) to the ridiculous (Traveller, where your character can die before the start of the game).
  - Semaphor 9y ago
    To be fair, in some games, Hackmaster for example, your character dying during char creation can give benefits to your next character. But then that game also had you roll a D10,000 for critical hits ;)
- ggggtez 9y ago
  It's not really a fair defence, because D&D also had rules for point buy (limited points to add to stats). They just choose not to use it. Planescape, from the same era, used point buy instead of random rolls. (Which fixes the pointless rerolling until you get stats you want, but not the part about making important decisions before the game starts)
  - dri_ft 9y ago
    Yeah, Planescape pretty much got it right, as far as I'm concerned.
    - jrs95 9y ago
      Planescape effectively changed the impact of all of those stats on the game as well though. Personally I preferred Baldurs Gate.
- SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
  D&D didn't allow rerolls except for the "no stat above 13" and "total modifiers 0 or less" situations. If you complained to the DM (and/or bribed him) you might get another chance, but no one would sit there and wait for you to roll more than 2-3 times.
- e12e 9y ago
  The difference is that it can be fun to role-play a weak warrior, a stupid mage or a clumsy thief - or disagreeable bard. No computer game come close to that kind of storytelling / social / intelligent interaction though. The second best thing is stuff like Moria/Angband where each stat has a clear use and game effect - and of course in such games some form of re-roll/prioritization makes a lot of sense (the automagic re-roll based on min-stats targets (I need at least 17 dexterity) introduced in some version of Angband is probably the best if you want player-visible stats).
chokma 9y ago
In Angband (ascii rogue-like), there was an auto-roller to solve this problem. So char generation was also a bit of "what are my chances to get a reasonable character with two or three really good attributes in the time I am willing to wait?"
- dri_ft 9y ago
  That sorta makes sense--it's kind of the logical conclusion of the situation in the Bioware games--But I also feel like it exposes how bad an idea the whole thing is.
ggggtez 9y ago
I don't think there's any argument it's bad game design. It's inherited from D&Ds history as evolving from the war game genre.
sgtnasty 9y ago
I think they were trying to replicate the tabletop experience. Now imaging replicating the classic Traveller RPG, where you had a decent chance of your character dying during generation. I think that any computer RPG with D&D like stats needs to have point buy by default and only use a random generation as an option for tabletop like simulation.
- dri_ft 9y ago
  Yeah, I think it's inappropriate/thoughtless use of an idiom that might have made sense in tabletop games but doesn't really make much sense on a PC.
  - mathgeek 9y ago
    Agreed. One factor to remember though is that any deviation by DnD-based CRPG's from the original ruleset risked getting dinged in reviews for being "not enough like the original that we know and love... true DnD players should look elsewhere for their fix."
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- BEEdwards 9y ago
  Back when video games where interesting and tried new things, they did in fact make a mega traveller game, it may nerf character death during creation a little, but you can still come out with unusable ones. http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/search?q=MegaTraveller http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/search?q=MegaTraveller
moron4hire 9y ago
I'm trying to remember off the top of my head how Skyrim did it. During the character creation, I don't remember doing a class assignment, certainly not explicitly like Morrowind or Oblivion. I think everyone just started at the same base character level, and your "class" fell out of your behavior over the course of the game. Do more destruction magic, earn more magic power. Regardless, if it wasn't Skyrim, that seems like a better system all around. Leave the character a blank slate, start every stat at 0, and the character has to be molded through the course of the game.
- bbctol 9y ago
  Yeah, Skyrim was a major break from the earlier Elder Scrolls games by abandoning pre-made classes. It's probably a good idea in many ways, but you run into a similar problem if you want to level up in skills that aren't actually that much fun (which is basically anything except fighting.) If you want to be a master blacksmith, instead of spending time re-reolling, you spend it... crafting hundreds of iron daggers.
  - talmand 9y ago
    And you bankrupt every smith in the game because you flooded the market with hundreds of iron daggers.
  - antisthenes 9y ago
    Umm, what? Neither Morrowind nor Oblivion had pre-made classes. You technically had the option of picking "mage", but that distinction was utterly pointless beyond the first few levels. You weren't limited in leveling up primarily skills opposite of your "class".
    - bbctol 9y ago
      IIRC Oblivion had you choose a class, but then you still leveled up skills by using them (it definitely had pre-made classes, though.) I never actually played Morrowind, though.
- talmand 9y ago
dkersten 9y ago
"...and before you know what stats are important for what, or even what play style you may enjoy most." I always found it a bit strange that many games frontload you with decisions (what class? what stats? etc) before you even know anything about the game, what is effective or what you might enjoy.
jghn 9y ago
This reminded me of how I spent multiple nights re-rolling my party on my Mac port for Wizardry I. I eventually hit a point total that allowed me to start one character as a ninja, which apparently must have been a bug because that was supposed to be impossible. My cheesiness knew no bounds however. At some point I acquired a shuriken, which would increase your total HP by 1 every time you equipped it. I did the righteous thing and spent a few more nights unequipping and equipping it, which left me with some outrageously high HP. Feeling that even this munchkin level insanity wasn't enough I fiddled around with the save game and figured out how to clone my character. Finally my party had a front line of 3 ninjas with unassailably high HP totals. Finally, Werdna was mine.
- beobab 9y ago
  And you got an enormous amount of enjoyment from it, which is what a game is for. :) I remember doing a similar thing with save files and the old Ragnarok game.
  - seanp2k2 9y ago
    Same but with stuff like Diablo 2 and D2Edit / Jamella. Gameshark Pro was also fun stuff. It's honestly sad that you can't gameshark modern consoles since it was so much fun to mod games in ridiculous ways. Mod support for PC games is what keeps me buying PC games. Edit: excited for the potential mod support for FFXV on PC.
    - swozey 9y ago
      I no longer have time to dedicate to games like I did as a kid so cheats are a huge deal to me (single player only). They don't "ruin" the game for me at all. I only play games a few times a month but my steam library contains hundreds. So on that one random Saturday I've got the free time to dedicate to 5+ hours to gaming I want to get as far as possible in a couple of games. I've been playing the Witcher 3 seemingly forever. I have a Ps4 and a few big games for it, Yakuza, etc and I've played them all once or twice because of the time investment required to get through the story. I WANT to enjoy the story. It's really unfortunate. I'd love to speed up my progress, instead I'm forced to watch Lets Plays of those games.

by dri_ft 9y ago

dozzie 9y ago

Note that it's not because the game was designed this way, but because the Dungeons and Dragons system was designed this way. It's not optimized for first-time and impatient computer players, but for roleplayers.

rodgerd 9y ago
It's not really inherint to role players. Plenty of popular RPGs had radically different (and often non-chance based) character generation systems, ranging from the sublime (doling out combinations from a pool and trading strengths and weaknesses, like GURPS and Shadowrun) to the ridiculous (Traveller, where your character can die before the start of the game).
- Semaphor 9y ago
  To be fair, in some games, Hackmaster for example, your character dying during char creation can give benefits to your next character. But then that game also had you roll a D10,000 for critical hits ;)
ggggtez 9y ago
It's not really a fair defence, because D&D also had rules for point buy (limited points to add to stats). They just choose not to use it. Planescape, from the same era, used point buy instead of random rolls. (Which fixes the pointless rerolling until you get stats you want, but not the part about making important decisions before the game starts)
- dri_ft 9y ago
  Yeah, Planescape pretty much got it right, as far as I'm concerned.
  - jrs95 9y ago
    Planescape effectively changed the impact of all of those stats on the game as well though. Personally I preferred Baldurs Gate.
SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
D&D didn't allow rerolls except for the "no stat above 13" and "total modifiers 0 or less" situations. If you complained to the DM (and/or bribed him) you might get another chance, but no one would sit there and wait for you to roll more than 2-3 times.
e12e 9y ago
The difference is that it can be fun to role-play a weak warrior, a stupid mage or a clumsy thief - or disagreeable bard. No computer game come close to that kind of storytelling / social / intelligent interaction though. The second best thing is stuff like Moria/Angband where each stat has a clear use and game effect - and of course in such games some form of re-roll/prioritization makes a lot of sense (the automagic re-roll based on min-stats targets (I need at least 17 dexterity) introduced in some version of Angband is probably the best if you want player-visible stats).

chokma 9y ago

In Angband (ascii rogue-like), there was an auto-roller to solve this problem. So char generation was also a bit of "what are my chances to get a reasonable character with two or three really good attributes in the time I am willing to wait?"

dri_ft 9y ago
That sorta makes sense--it's kind of the logical conclusion of the situation in the Bioware games--But I also feel like it exposes how bad an idea the whole thing is.

ggggtez 9y ago

I don't think there's any argument it's bad game design. It's inherited from D&Ds history as evolving from the war game genre.

sgtnasty 9y ago

I think they were trying to replicate the tabletop experience. Now imaging replicating the classic Traveller RPG, where you had a decent chance of your character dying during generation. I think that any computer RPG with D&D like stats needs to have point buy by default and only use a random generation as an option for tabletop like simulation.

dri_ft 9y ago
Yeah, I think it's inappropriate/thoughtless use of an idiom that might have made sense in tabletop games but doesn't really make much sense on a PC.
- mathgeek 9y ago
  Agreed. One factor to remember though is that any deviation by DnD-based CRPG's from the original ruleset risked getting dinged in reviews for being "not enough like the original that we know and love... true DnD players should look elsewhere for their fix."
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
BEEdwards 9y ago
Back when video games where interesting and tried new things, they did in fact make a mega traveller game, it may nerf character death during creation a little, but you can still come out with unusable ones. http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/search?q=MegaTraveller http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/search?q=MegaTraveller

moron4hire 9y ago

I'm trying to remember off the top of my head how Skyrim did it. During the character creation, I don't remember doing a class assignment, certainly not explicitly like Morrowind or Oblivion. I think everyone just started at the same base character level, and your "class" fell out of your behavior over the course of the game. Do more destruction magic, earn more magic power. Regardless, if it wasn't Skyrim, that seems like a better system all around. Leave the character a blank slate, start every stat at 0, and the character has to be molded through the course of the game.

bbctol 9y ago
Yeah, Skyrim was a major break from the earlier Elder Scrolls games by abandoning pre-made classes. It's probably a good idea in many ways, but you run into a similar problem if you want to level up in skills that aren't actually that much fun (which is basically anything except fighting.) If you want to be a master blacksmith, instead of spending time re-reolling, you spend it... crafting hundreds of iron daggers.
- talmand 9y ago
  And you bankrupt every smith in the game because you flooded the market with hundreds of iron daggers.
- antisthenes 9y ago
  Umm, what? Neither Morrowind nor Oblivion had pre-made classes. You technically had the option of picking "mage", but that distinction was utterly pointless beyond the first few levels. You weren't limited in leveling up primarily skills opposite of your "class".
  - bbctol 9y ago
    IIRC Oblivion had you choose a class, but then you still leveled up skills by using them (it definitely had pre-made classes, though.) I never actually played Morrowind, though.
talmand 9y ago

dkersten 9y ago

"...and before you know what stats are important for what, or even what play style you may enjoy most." I always found it a bit strange that many games frontload you with decisions (what class? what stats? etc) before you even know anything about the game, what is effective or what you might enjoy.

jghn 9y ago

This reminded me of how I spent multiple nights re-rolling my party on my Mac port for Wizardry I. I eventually hit a point total that allowed me to start one character as a ninja, which apparently must have been a bug because that was supposed to be impossible. My cheesiness knew no bounds however. At some point I acquired a shuriken, which would increase your total HP by 1 every time you equipped it. I did the righteous thing and spent a few more nights unequipping and equipping it, which left me with some outrageously high HP. Feeling that even this munchkin level insanity wasn't enough I fiddled around with the save game and figured out how to clone my character. Finally my party had a front line of 3 ninjas with unassailably high HP totals. Finally, Werdna was mine.

beobab 9y ago
And you got an enormous amount of enjoyment from it, which is what a game is for. :) I remember doing a similar thing with save files and the old Ragnarok game.
- seanp2k2 9y ago
  Same but with stuff like Diablo 2 and D2Edit / Jamella. Gameshark Pro was also fun stuff. It's honestly sad that you can't gameshark modern consoles since it was so much fun to mod games in ridiculous ways. Mod support for PC games is what keeps me buying PC games. Edit: excited for the potential mod support for FFXV on PC.
  - swozey 9y ago
    I no longer have time to dedicate to games like I did as a kid so cheats are a huge deal to me (single player only). They don't "ruin" the game for me at all. I only play games a few times a month but my steam library contains hundreds. So on that one random Saturday I've got the free time to dedicate to 5+ hours to gaming I want to get as far as possible in a couple of games. I've been playing the Witcher 3 seemingly forever. I have a Ps4 and a few big games for it, Yakuza, etc and I've played them all once or twice because of the time investment required to get through the story. I WANT to enjoy the story. It's really unfortunate. I'd love to speed up my progress, instead I'm forced to watch Lets Plays of those games.