- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Controversial gaming opinion: video games are good.
What are controversial gaming opinions you have?
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
You can also buy yourself replacement goldfish, I suppose, but that only works when you're small and don't notice they switched classes and their abilities are different and possibly even can't be duplicated depend on your game options.
And you aren't consciously aware of doing it. One can become surprisingly attached to things far less unique.
Jace911
Spider-Dork
- Location
- The Gold-Bricking State
comparing them to goldfish is not helping your argument as much as you think
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sure, and I can get attached to a character in Dwarf Fortress but I'm not sure that really makes it a character driven game or an RPG.
Having little simulated arcs (seeing their squad die and their personalities changing, etc) is a nice step towards making that, but it's still not on the level of like Garrus or other RPG companions.
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
If Kaiden and Jacob get to be called RPG companions, then the revolutionary teacher with a vengeance motivation against the greys counts too! ò_ó
Saying that the arc has to be good is not really a great stance to take. I mean Final fantasy started with such enthralling characters as white mage, black mage, thief, and warrior. I can have an entire party of player made characters in dungeon crawl games or Wasteland and never have any character arc at all.
Also I'm not sure how Dwarf Fortress is anything but character driven. I mean the biggest cause of 'fun' is depression or rage spiraling out of control because someones spouse/child/cat died and they make someone else unhappy and it all snowballs from there. The world isn't nice but the biggest danger of the world is what strange quirks the other people around you have. I mean it is the Sims but with more 'fun' and the Sims is character driven as all hell and back.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Well, it's unpopular with me, so there.
Players want agency. The problem with fighters being a PC class is that fighters basically have none. They are entirely at the mercy of the dice for attack rolls, and have no innate ability to change their context. It's like playing an old JRPG, where you just keep hitting "fight" and maybe potion on occasion.
This is shit design even if you think that everything should be balanced for tier 5.
Contrast POW/Martial Adepts, which at least get to have options and feel like they have control over the fight. That's more like playing a more modern RPG where you have techniques that do interesting things and allow you to have options to finesse foes.
3.5 already showed that fighters were shit design, and the fact that PF kept them because they love legacy code is one of the biggest places the PF designers had their heads up their assess. Ditto goes for Barbarians and Monks.
What.
I am perfectly fine with the "generic Ubisoft sandbox" type gameplay people complain about. Yes playing them one after the other would get repetitive fast, but you don't need to take that long of a break before you can start refreshed. I can't tell you how many times I've reset the outposts on Far Cry 3 because unfortunately my PC can't do Far Cry 4 or Primal, but I've still had a lot of fun. They have a formula, and it works. I now understand why people keep buying the Call of Duty games one after another.
I think it's a joke about the amount of porn of 2B floating around the internet.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
2B's ass and the desire to be destroyed by it is the only thing anyone on the internet ever wants to talk about regarding Automata forever.
Vindictus
XENO
- Location
- Texas
I mean, I haven't played it, but you're making it sound like Ass: The Movie: The Game
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
2B's ass was the majority of the marketing.
"You're thinking about ****ing 2B aren't you?"
As a slight change of topic I thought I'd share something a couple of friends and I were discussing the other day. Specifically that having too many classes in an MMO is a detriment and not a benefit to the players.
Why do I say that? Because the developers have to keep those classes balanced with one another. Based on everything I have seen and read, keeping classes balanced is a huge undertaking. The developers have to ensure that no one class is the "definitively best" class because all the players would flock to it. They also have to ensure that no class is the "definitively worst" class because very few players would actually play it. Neither scenario is good for the community.
Oh, and they also have to make sure that the classes are fun to play.
Raise your mouse if you have ever lamented the lack of insert-role-here in an MMO. That's an example of times when a role or class was either just not fun to play or there was a "better" class or role to play that was more fun.
As an example of something that makes my head spin I'll refer to the current state of WoW. To keep the example small I'm only going to look at the classes which can fill the "tank" role. There are "tank" versions of Death Knights, Demon Hunters, Druids, Monks, Paladins, and Warriors. That's six classes which the developers have to keep reasonably close to one another in terms of durability (don't get killed), value to a group of players (how easy / beneficial they are to work with), and how much fun each one is to play.
Now there is no good way to "fix" that problem in WoW. If the developers start taking away things there are going to be extremely angry players. And, quite frankly, if the players are happy with the state of WoW there's no real reason to "fix" it .. but that doesn't mean that the developers aren't going to be facing headaches in the future. They're going to be spending a lot of employee-hours keeping things balanced. That means fewer employee-hours to work on new content and, if one class gets "fixed" in a negative way they risk having players decide to just stop playing.
Why do I say that? Because the developers have to keep those classes balanced with one another. Based on everything I have seen and read, keeping classes balanced is a huge undertaking. The developers have to ensure that no one class is the "definitively best" class because all the players would flock to it. They also have to ensure that no class is the "definitively worst" class because very few players would actually play it. Neither scenario is good for the community.
Oh, and they also have to make sure that the classes are fun to play.
Raise your mouse if you have ever lamented the lack of insert-role-here in an MMO. That's an example of times when a role or class was either just not fun to play or there was a "better" class or role to play that was more fun.
As an example of something that makes my head spin I'll refer to the current state of WoW. To keep the example small I'm only going to look at the classes which can fill the "tank" role. There are "tank" versions of Death Knights, Demon Hunters, Druids, Monks, Paladins, and Warriors. That's six classes which the developers have to keep reasonably close to one another in terms of durability (don't get killed), value to a group of players (how easy / beneficial they are to work with), and how much fun each one is to play.
Now there is no good way to "fix" that problem in WoW. If the developers start taking away things there are going to be extremely angry players. And, quite frankly, if the players are happy with the state of WoW there's no real reason to "fix" it .. but that doesn't mean that the developers aren't going to be facing headaches in the future. They're going to be spending a lot of employee-hours keeping things balanced. That means fewer employee-hours to work on new content and, if one class gets "fixed" in a negative way they risk having players decide to just stop playing.
- Location
- Drachyench on Discord
IMO, Warhammer Online (as it was intended) got around the class balance issues (vaguely) by intending there to be ~24 classes… but only four classes per race. Meaning that of the 24 classes, about half would basically be different flavors / "paths" on overarching roles while the other half were their own unique thing that mostly had to work around not being broken and being viable within that race and / or faction's list of options.
Now, in practice the released game had far less than 24 and there were some obvious imbalances even then, but the basic principle seems quite sound IMO (if more practical for RP- or Lore-centric games as opposed to competitive / mechanically-centric ones). You still have to look into balance and the like, arguably even on more scales, but at the same time you can have a little more wriggle-room in some regards since your primary competition is not the other 23-ish classes in the game but either the other three of your player race or the other eleven of your player faction. Add in that, again, it'd be for a game more RP- / Lore-centric (if PvP / RvR was a flaunted goal), and you could have even more freedom to get a little loose in 1:1 balance ratios (especially if some things are intended to be Rock-Paper-Scissors, for example [not accurate of actual gameplay power tiers, but…] Blackguard beats Greatsword beats Choppa beats Phoenix Guard beats Blackguard).
The main issue with such a system would, most probably, be the one that plagued WAR in the end: That such a system relies on a relatively even distribution of all classes and races and factions, but if one side outnumbers the other or people thematically don't like (and thus avoid) certain classes / races then the intended balancing forces break down (to return to my prior example: Let's say that nobody liked playing Orcs. No Choppa = No hard counter to Phoenix Guard. No hard counter to Phoenix Guard = Blackguard are disproportionately getting ganked meaning Greatswords are experiencing less pressure meaning…).
Gud(™)Caster" argument that brought this on in the first place.
Now, in practice the released game had far less than 24 and there were some obvious imbalances even then, but the basic principle seems quite sound IMO (if more practical for RP- or Lore-centric games as opposed to competitive / mechanically-centric ones). You still have to look into balance and the like, arguably even on more scales, but at the same time you can have a little more wriggle-room in some regards since your primary competition is not the other 23-ish classes in the game but either the other three of your player race or the other eleven of your player faction. Add in that, again, it'd be for a game more RP- / Lore-centric (if PvP / RvR was a flaunted goal), and you could have even more freedom to get a little loose in 1:1 balance ratios (especially if some things are intended to be Rock-Paper-Scissors, for example [not accurate of actual gameplay power tiers, but…] Blackguard beats Greatsword beats Choppa beats Phoenix Guard beats Blackguard).
The main issue with such a system would, most probably, be the one that plagued WAR in the end: That such a system relies on a relatively even distribution of all classes and races and factions, but if one side outnumbers the other or people thematically don't like (and thus avoid) certain classes / races then the intended balancing forces break down (to return to my prior example: Let's say that nobody liked playing Orcs. No Choppa = No hard counter to Phoenix Guard. No hard counter to Phoenix Guard = Blackguard are disproportionately getting ganked meaning Greatswords are experiencing less pressure meaning…).
I'm going to hope you mean this in regards to solely 3.5 / PF and not D&D as a whole (I'd disagree even then, but I could see the argument for the former). Otherwise, well, to use your own words:
Fighters were - and are - quite viable in AD&D 2E (even at higher levels, albeit at that point you need to keep track of even more material than Wizards as you maintain sheets for your various henchmen and hirelings and whatnot), 4E has most of the classes fairly well balanced, and in 5E Fighters are quite competitive with Wizards and Clerics and such even going solely Fighter levels 1 through 20. Admittedly there's people who think this to be bad due to the absence of 3.PF's (EDIT: Community) fetish for caster tiers shitting on non-caster tiers, but see the whole prior "Git
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This is just the symptom. Every new class released can tank because Blizzard can't seem to make tanking appealing to the wider base.
Thus they need to make sure tank players can always offspec tank to fill the queues.
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- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Controversial MMO opinion: The Holy Trinity is a flawed gameplay idea, and in practice always leads to balance issues and players not filling the roles in the right ratios.
Guild Wars 2 had it's own balance issues but I liked that they didn't have dedicated healing and tank classes (until Druid was added as a spec, but the point stands.) Everyone had some way to heal themselves and the rest of tanking was mostly dodging constantly, and there were a handful of scattered group healing skills throughout most of the classes if you really needed it.
There's still group compositions, but it's more about synergies between specific class builds and not just slotting in any given Tank.
(Alternatively, the job system in FF14 also seems like it would help, because at least you can quickly switch armor to be a tank or a healer if you need to fill without swapping characters.)
Guild Wars 2 had it's own balance issues but I liked that they didn't have dedicated healing and tank classes (until Druid was added as a spec, but the point stands.) Everyone had some way to heal themselves and the rest of tanking was mostly dodging constantly, and there were a handful of scattered group healing skills throughout most of the classes if you really needed it.
There's still group compositions, but it's more about synergies between specific class builds and not just slotting in any given Tank.
(Alternatively, the job system in FF14 also seems like it would help, because at least you can quickly switch armor to be a tank or a healer if you need to fill without swapping characters.)
Population of people that can tank isn't the problem. ~55% of players play something that can tank and role changing is painless in WoW.
On the subject of MMO tanks and D&D fighters, here's one I'm not sure is controversial or not, but probably somehow is:
Tanking is an obsolete mechanic (to make weak classes stronger?). Active Defender mechanics like D&D 4's make anything that uses traditional MMO tanking an embarrassment. They are more engaging, create more interesting decisions, and produce more intuitive results.
The concept of aggro and passively tanking by drawing enemies to attack you should have been relegated to deliberate retro homages, the way we don't see much in the way of pre-Super Mario Bros single-screen platforming today.
Tanking is an obsolete mechanic (to make weak classes stronger?). Active Defender mechanics like D&D 4's make anything that uses traditional MMO tanking an embarrassment. They are more engaging, create more interesting decisions, and produce more intuitive results.
The concept of aggro and passively tanking by drawing enemies to attack you should have been relegated to deliberate retro homages, the way we don't see much in the way of pre-Super Mario Bros single-screen platforming today.
WanderingEye
smol skeleton
Background and Psych Profile does matter actually (scroll down), a Renegade playthrough Samara (Can't find the footage of the second game but this is the conversation in the third game) has some minor differences in which she swore to kill you if she's forced to do anything that violates her code.
It's minor things but I appreciate it nonetheless.
I kinda agree with you though about the Class, BioWare only implements Engineer interrupt in the DLC of the third game and even then it's only fo Engineer.
I think you missed the point. The same trend holds true for healers and DPS. I'd argue that it is even more of a problem for DPS since each class has at least one DPS specialization. Most of them have two or more. That means the developers have to keep two specs for Druids, three specs for Hunters, three specs for Mages, one spec for Paladins, one spec for Priests, three specs for Rogues, two specs for Shaman, three specs for Warlocks, two specs for Warriors, two specs for Death Knights, one spec for Monks, and one spec for Demon Hunters balanced so that no one specialization / class combo is definitively the best class in the game.
That's 24 different DPS specializations they have to balance. For reference that's three times more class/specialization combos to balance for just one role in WoW than all of SWTOR (8 class/specialization combos), half again as much balancing as there is in EverQuest (16 classes), and a third more balancing than all of the classes in FFXIV (18 classes).
Again, just to be clear, I'm not saying that having a relatively huge class list like EverQuest or FFXIV is a good thing. I'm just pointing out that having to spend time making sure the players' options are actually options instead of mandatory "play X or forever be second best at your role!" is a time sink developers don't have to dive into.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
4e and 5e fighters have agency, because they get abilities that meaningfully shift the context instead of just "more plusses" like PF's idiocy. WoTC is not generally staffed by idiots. PF on the other hand, hired SKR. I mean, PF had some good devs too, but SKR probably cancelled out at least three of them on his lonesome.
For exactly the same reason, i'm going to say that viable or not, 2e fighters were also shit design. More plusses do not make up for lack of actual class features. But hey, that was back when RPGs were still young so I can cut them some slack. Unlike PF who really have no excuse for how much their design on their core classes suck ass (their latter archetypes and partial casters are often decent though... notably after SKR left)
Aww, i was thinking that she got all the waif-fu sit-on-face or strangle with thighs moves like in DOA, Soul Cal and that awful girl ninja game i don't remember the name of.
There's only 13 in FFXIV right now, 15 once the upcoming expansion hits actually. 3 tanks, 3 healers, 7 dps (9 in a month). Even with a fairly low amount of jobs there's still some small balancing issues for the game, Warriors and Scholars are practically considered mandatory for raid content for example as they make things much easier, that I'm wondering how other mmos manage to keep all their shit straight.. if they even can.
Tanks: Warrior, Paladin, Dark Knight
Healers: White Mage, Scholar, Astrologian
DPS: Dragoon, Monk, Ninja, Summoner, Black Mage, Machinist, Bard
Expac DPS: Samurai, Red Mage
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Apparently my Google-fu for research failed me. Thanks for the correction!
Claudette Savagely
Ball of flies
- Location
- (and made of) Parts Unknown
Six shooter rapid fire round GO:
- Warhammer 40k is mechanically terrible as of 7th edition and I don't expect 8th to solve enough of the game's big problems to matter.
- The Soulsborne series style of storytelling is basically catnip for apopheniacs and not much more.
- E-sports aren't particularly interesting to watch, and most online competitive gaming is a haven for the socially deformed and the needlessly aggressive. At this point it's a net negative on the hobby.
- Alignment systems of any stripe in RPGs are invariably hot garbage.
- Good matchmaking in online multiplayer games is incredibly rare, if not actually non-existant.
- Western giant robot games are generally bad.
- There need to be more big budget Tribes games.