Off topic: How are games failing you?

[Tifone]

@ Agema - Tnx, I heard some time ago about Wizardry 8 being good but I forgot about it. I'll give a look around for it

[Aezeal]

Jim: sounds like you just needed to take up a weapon and some BASIC potions and then use your good skills (the potions) to increase the weak skills.. cus alchemy certainly could balance out a below average combat skill.

at the same time do some combat magic, throw fires when they are at a distace and fight up close buffed with potions.. your comabt magic and sword skill should rise

llama: I think most systems can be abused but really I'd not count it against the game. It's SP so it's not like we will be bothered by others leveling like that. and we (by the gods I hope you are with me on this at least) wouldn't play that way because it makes really no sense at all and wouldn't increase the fun we'd have. I couldn't care less. I do want a new RPG though.

[Aezeal]

PS the witcher is a nice game too. not so much for the choices you have (it's rather limited really) but the world is nice and the combat system decent and the story is good.. well addictive at least.. and you are just a very very very kewl guy. Almost like RP myself.

[llamabeast]

Aezeal: yeah, you're kind of right about the fact that the system being abusable doesn't matter too much in SP. However, although I'm hardly a min-maxer I do like to think about what decisions would be best for my character, and it bothers me that the best decisions are very different to what would be reasonable decisions "in real life".

[capnq]

Originally Posted by rdonj

Strategy games: [...] I also don't like having to manage resources, production, and combat all at the same time. I can't watch everything at once, and I like to watch the combats and try to organize them. But if you stop paying attention to one thing in favor of another, you're going to suffer for it. You'll run out of resources, or your opponent will pull some trick against your army, or you'll stop producing units... and you can't watch everything all the time. It's just frustrating.

IMO, "Real-Time Strategy" is an oxymoron. I've tried a couple of "pausable" RTS titles (Star Wars Rebellion, Europa Universalis II), and still found that there was just too much to keep track of. AI opponents aren't handicapped by the need to physically manipulate the interface the way a human player has to, either.

[Aezeal]

Llama, getting a melee weapon skill, magic damage and healing spells is a pretty decent decision for any adventurer and it's also one of the better options in Oblivion

Rdonj, try the warhammer 40K dawn of war games.. much less focus on base builing (the upcoming part 2 even less I hear) and more on units and taking territory. Also a very nice setting, some rpg feel (for RTS with leveling troops and commanders etc). From the same makers there is that WW II game which is very good too.. taking points on the map for unit caps etc is a good idea and used much more these days.

[llamabeast]

Yeah Aezeal, but I don't like the fact that I'm better off avoiding levelling up, and that I shouldn't choose as Major Skills the things that I want to be best at. It's not good that I have to be careful not to get too good at a particular thing, e.g. levelling lots due to alchemy when I haven't got that good at fighting yet.

It's still a great game in many ways, but the levelling design is startlingly bad to my mind.

[Trumanator]

@ capnq- Yeah, give Company of Heroes a shot, or the DoW games. Compared to the likes of starcraft there is a lot less micro, and it is all focused on action rather than resource gathering or base building.

[Aezeal]

leveling 1-2 skills doesn't matter THAT much llama and your not better of doing that trick you said CUZ IT'S LAME and will certainly not make the game more enjoyable
Even with a lil catching up to do you can still clear some ruins and then you will be fine .

Well not going to continue this further though since I doubt you'll start oblivion again and I know I'm not (played the game, did most dungeons, nearly all quests and the DLC packs, not the real add ons but I can't be bothered by it. once I know the story it's not as fun anymore.. can't play games much more than once really if they are about the story (and most RPG's for me are about the story )

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by capnq

IMO, "Real-Time Strategy" is an oxymoron. I've tried a couple of "pausable" RTS titles (Star Wars Rebellion, Europa Universalis II), and still found that there was just too much to keep track of. AI opponents aren't handicapped by the need to physically manipulate the interface the way a human player has to, either.

Originally Posted by Aezeal

Rdonj, try the warhammer 40K dawn of war games.. much less focus on base builing (the upcoming part 2 even less I hear) and more on units and taking territory. Also a very nice setting, some rpg feel (for RTS with leveling troops and commanders etc). From the same makers there is that WW II game which is very good too.. taking points on the map for unit caps etc is a good idea and used much more these days.

I find it somewhat interesting to see those one after the other . I've got WH 40k, and the soulstorm expansion (never played multiplayer so winter assault wasn't a big deal for me), and I agree, the way they handle resources is a nice break from games like starcraft or age of empires which you can have to micromanage to ridiculous levels. Yet while it is focused a lot on action I found myself pausing frequently to speed myself up. The big thing in that game is upgrades. You have to capture nodes, build on them, later upgrade those buildings. Then there's research later, another upgrade, and then more research. And that's just the upgrades on one of your buildings, most others also have upgrades you have to deal with as well, and may be timing-critical to your strategy.

Then all of your units have upgrades as well, and in the middle of combat it can be hard to be sure which units are reinforcing at the time and which have finished reinforcing and are now dropping again. Then you have all sorts of different commander and unit abilities you have to keep track of. I enjoy the game, but that's a lot of things to watch. So I frequently end up pausing to give myself some time to breathe.


I've been thinking about it a bit, and I've come to the conclusion that basically, one of the biggest problems RTS games have is that the basic AI for units is terrible. In starcraft you had to either babysit your units to make sure they didn't run off and get killed by someone kiting them into ambushes. Or set them to hold position and watch them just stand there and slowly die. In some games (AoE or dawn of war for example) they'll give you a "defensive stance" option, where the units will chase attackers for a while and then return to something like their original positions. This is a step in the right direction, but it's still abusable. And what do you do when you have to run off and deal with some problem with your base, or set workers to a new resource? Well, when you have a large amount of units you'll eventually end up with a large percentage who will just stand there, watching your enemies kill their comrades in arms because they're too far away for the defensive stance's aggression trigger to be reached. And if you set them on attack, well, then they'll just go and do some of those foolish things that you get in starcraft chasing things through enemy bases and getting themselves shot up.

Why is there no way of setting units to stay as a cohesive group and fight as a whole? It would also be great if we could do something like temporarily give control to the AI and say, give it an area we authorize it to operate in if we have to go and deal with some crisis somewhere else.

Edit: I've not played relic's WW2 game though (or at least I assume it's relic's).