>>3656751
I agree, partially - player should not be rewarded for retarded decisions or running purposely handicapped builds - these should not be impossible on purpose, but it should not be in game dev's interest to make low-INT mages and low-STR Barbarians not tedious and viable.
But ideally game devs should also strive away from making "trap builds" on purpose. And by trap build I mean clearly intended build that ends being weak and nonviable without any reward, even if that reward is just satisfaction of beating the game as a fisherman.

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>>3656762
I agree. I think every PROPERLY built class should beat the game.

The problem is with games like Pillars of Eternity which are so fucking safe, so foolproof that you can literally make low strength fighters, low int wizards and such... And beat the game on the HIGHEST difficulty. (It was a struggle, but I did that in the first POE)

I like the direction Pathfinder took BUT, it doesn't explain mechanics very well and in that game there are truly some trap classes that are outright garbage. Still, I think their build philosophy is a step in the right direction, unpolished as it is.

Knights of the Chalice 2 is something I am playing trough right now and it seems genious so far.

>>3656751
I just disagree with the soft Lock part, for It also demands that the game be perfectly linear. If you are "softlocked", just grind, just roam the world, search for side Dungeons, try to rebuild your characters etc. I like the way wizardry-likes do It.

>>3656751
I beat Elden Ring, no summons, no cheese, full STR, and took out Malenia on my third try. The game still was "eh", and Malenia still sucked.

People don't hate her for being difficult, they hate her for doing the "hard to beat superduper swordmaster boss" in a retarded fuckhead way. They are right. She's not a good boss, she's not an intensive skill check, she's a knowledge check.

It's not people feeling entitled to beat to beat a boss a priori that makes them salty - notice how the same people just skip a ton of optional bosses and don't cry about that. People feel entitled when they put in skill, thought and effort, and they are perfectly justified to feel like that. And some encounters in ER do shit on all of that for no reason other than FS fucking up. Malenia is hyped up and presented as a something that pushes you at least somewhat hard on your build optimization, gear, reaction time and movement ability. In reality she just makes you eat shit regardless of how good all of that is if you don't know how to trivialize her from external sources of information, and if you do know she's fucking trivial. Hay and anticlimactic either way.

Your game is a flawed 7/10 deal with it.

>>3656751
>are stupid enough to sell/drop qeust items.
Lots of rpgs have quest items look like regular loot, making it easy to soft lock yourself because you dropped an iron sword without realising it's necessary to beat the game or access content, there's zero reason to make that easy other than feeling smug when other people do it.
>Figuring out what works is part of the fun. (Unless you are the type who plays RPGs for gay sex and compensation for the lack of social life)
You just touched on the fact that different people find different things fun. I personally like working out builds, but not everyone does. And those people are as entitled to want games to cater to their favourite parts as we are for ours. It also assumes game dev competence. Feels like every time I start an RPG I have to look up which skills or classes are dog shit and/or bugged and/or do not function as described because there's almost always at least one.
>today are literally targeting the most drooling of retards who don't even play RPGs without guides
Right, but such a difficulty increase does nothing but encourage and reward guide following behaviour. If a retard only uses guides, they will do the exact same thing if the game is explicitly meant to be harder, and they're encouraged to do that thing when they read things like "It's easy to softlock your playthrough".

I don't know, maybe I'm just tired of artificial difficulty, it often feels like a chance for devs and players to fellate themselves. I come from a /tg/ background where ivory tower design was and still is used to explicitly give some people an excuse to pat themselves on the back for not being new to the game. I played Lunacid recently, fun dungeon crawler but stopped playing because it both doesn't want to map itself but also wants to be labyrinthine, which makes returning after a break unbelievably tedious. And its idea of being hardcore includes "You can't even pause this [single player] game!!!!".

>>3656751
Roguelikes are like this in general. Some of them are actually developed to not be beatable, like IVAN. I also think Infra Arcana but not sure on that

>>3656786
>a chance for devs and players to fellate themselves
Anon that is a valid and vital part of appeal for many games. Autofellatio enthusiasts like OP are entitled to want games to cater to their favorite pastimes.

>>3656788
I suck actual fucking balls at Infra Arcana, but it seems a far cry from unbeatable. It's also hard to compare genres I suppose, roguelikes necessitate and encourage experimentation by their nature, good or bad your builds will die and get reset. It's harder for an RPG to do that when you're locked into a build for a dozens of hours. Some of also encourage guide usage because it's masochism to play them blind, looking at Nethack, and ADOM to a much, much lesser degree.

>>3656793
>ADOM
>a much, much lesser degree
Not really. ADOM was very much designed with player cooperation on findings and strategies in mind. Omnipresent guides and wikis just weren't a thing back then, Biskup thought more of a players sharing by word of mouth in small communities kind of thing:
>- Yeah, so you actually can control teleportation if you eat a blink dog corpse.
>- But dog corpses give you sickness!
>- Not this one.
>- No way, I gotta try this out.

>pretending Malenia the literal fujoshi is well designed to own le casuals
She can be stunlocked indefinitely for the same reason she can sometimes insta-cancel stuns into attacks, Elden Ring is a broken shitfest at the most fundamental mechanical level.
Also it's the most casualized and guidefag-pandering game in the series: you can get to Fire Giant with zero skill and zero proper fights, you just need to look up the hyper-specific cheese strats.

>>3656799
I literally adress this. Did you read my post?
I said she should've been way harder, and uncheesable.

The only thing that sucks about Malenia is that you can cheese her and that she's optional.

>>3656803
>I said she should've been way harder, and uncheesable.
That would just make her autistic to deal with.

Nah, that turd needs to be redesigned from the ground up.

>>3656751
Its not about difficulty, its about poorly designed encounters and poorly designed mechanics.

Returnal is a well designed game with difficulty spikes
Elden Ring is a poorly designed game with difficulty spikes

>>3656799
>Also it's the most casualized and guidefag-pandering game in the series: you can get to Fire Giant with zero skill and zero proper fights
My defining Elden Ring moment was when being in very early game I discussed it with my retard shitfaggot friends who already completed it, and they spent hours arguing about which one of the numerous incoming boos fights I should actually look forward to as "the one that doesn't suck ass".

These cretins who shilled the game to me could not agree on which ONE encounter in the entire game was not complete shit. But they were in total harmonious agreement that nearly all of them are shit. They turned out to be right about that one for sure.

>>3656795
Corpse experimentation is actually the thing I was thinking of. If you actually experiment with what you eat you can immediately fuck a run, with no way of telling what the actual effect would be until it's too late.

>>3656803
No, faggot, you didn't.
You didn't even write a generic "should be uncheesable" in your gay OP, just a lot of tooting your own horn and asking for the fight to be harder.
And again, fixing the broken mechanics that enable the cheese would also reduce the difficulty you praise so much.

>>3656751
Great bait thread. You could've said all that shit in two sentences and I would've agreed, this is just gay.

>>3656877
Why do you take issues with longer threads? You don't like to read? I genuinely don't get it. Its a text based forum.

>>3656877
This board is already so full of below subhuman IQ posting, at least appreciate someone putting the bare minimum effort to express some kind of an oppinion with a degree of effort, instead of a smug anime girl and a sentence.

>>3656878
It's just bitching and hot air, it reads like a 15 year old who just beat his first "hard" game and wants everyone to know about it.
The point itself is good, games should not be design around whether the average player will get frustrated or stuck. It's a consequence of the market for games being bigger and broader, and it's for the worse.

>>3656768
Saying low INT wizards or low MIG fighters are bad is being very disingenuous or just ignorant and you haven't played the game.

The game was designed to allow smart barbarians or buff wizards to be good so players could make unique characters they couldn't in more restrictive RPGs like DND. Buff wizards with high MIG make great frontliners with summon weapons, defense buffs, debuffs centered around themselves etc. High INT barbs are good at mobbing because their passive aoe attacks and fear auras affect larger areas. High PER low DEX rogues can crit more often with less hits, High INT low MIG Paladins cast a larger aura and have longer buffs, but heal and hit for less.

Every attribute is useful to every class and allows for a very wide build variety in spite of it's lack of a multiclassing sytem. Looking at it and saying that it's safe instead of intuitive is a dogshit statement.

>>3656880
>The point itself is good
For OP's point, absolutely not: in the age of omnipresent wikis, guides, and walkthroughs, OP suggests to fight casualization with... more knowledge checks.
For your point, just don't set the whole indistinct mass of "gamers" as your target audience, and then you won't have to worry about how moviegames enjoyers might get stuck on your basic controls tutorial: on the other hand, if the average PLAYER is getting frustrated or stuck after picking your game out of the 100 others that released in the same week, perhaps you should stick to troll levels in Mario Maker.

>>3656920
>if the average PLAYER is getting frustrated or stuck after picking your game out of the 100 others that released in the same week,
And there's the problem. Older games didn't think about or care about this sort of thing, if you couldn't beat Wizardry that was entirely on you. There shouldn't be any concern with "picking your game out of 100 other releases" or "getting your money's worth," there's the game and either you like it or you don't. Accessibility is a meme, unless you're sticking colourblind mode in there.

>>3656920
I never suggested that

>>3656751
>casual subhumans
thinking people who are bad at games are subhuman is subhuman behavior, like you must be incredibly insecure about other aspects of yourself to lean in so heavily to games. small penis? awful personality?

>>3656941
>implying Wizardry "let's ship unfinished to avoid having to optimize" 1 was a good game
>being this much of an ivory tower nigger
Since the implication bounced off your thick ape-like skull: the average PLAYER of your game is the most favourable audience you'll get outside of zero-commitment circlejerks a la reddit/discord, BECAUSE he picked your game over 100s of others to spend his limited free time on.
If your average player can't stand your game, you're either a misunderstood genius too avant-garde for your times or you fucked up, you already know which one is more likely.

>>3657039
>If your average player can't stand your game, you're either a misunderstood genius too avant-garde for your times or you fucked up, you already know which one is more likely.
If you even think about making a difficult game, odds are your average player is a little bitch. Go look at the reviews for Underrail on Steam, notice how many of them get filtered. The only way to have the average player measure up to a game that doesn't give a shit about helping them is already being in a niche genre and wearing your design philosophy on your sleeve, like Age of Decadence does.
Everyone else can eat shit if they don't like it. Good games don't negotiate with the player, it's take it or leave it.

>>3657050
The worst are not even casuals, but scrubs. People who put hundreds of hours into games but can't be bothered to learn them or get good at them. Especially bad with RPGs, which don't even require skill, just knowledge.

>>3656795
There is no way to prevent sickness in ADoM? Gay.

RPGs are perhaps the easiest genre of game, so it is hilarious to see tryhard nerds jerking themselves off about “hard” RPGs.

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>>3656751
>RPGs should allow you to get soft locked if you make shitty builds
That's the fault of the devs. Knowing what's good or not (including in terms of balance), how to build a completely new game's character(s), what enemies you'll face and what their skills/stats are, etc. are not things known to the player initially.

It's a good thing inhumane retards like you don't design and balance games.

>>3657147
>It's a good thing inhumane retards like you don't design and balance games.
It’s funny because you can plainly see that his egotism comes from a place of insecurity yet projects this onto everyone else.

>>3657147
I don't really disagree with you or the other guy, but you have to account for genre mastery as well, some kinds of games are fine to be aimed at people who can intuit what is good and what isn't due to previous experiences in other games. Like, knowing that knowing what makes a robust party or that quicker actions and regeneration or almost universally good things comes from experience. It's good to have different types of games.

>>3656751
In theory you're right, true quality can only be forged by disregarding the audience and pursuing pure vision.
But on practical terms very few devs/studios do that anymore, most will eagerly compromise the quality to appeal to wider audience.

>>3656751
If you can't beat an RPG by reading what a skill/feat/ability does and you have average motoric skills, then your game is designed wrong or just for autists and should be left in obscurity for tryhards. I know for sure that Souls-likes are not for me for I have no patience to learn when I should roll to avoid damage, but I'm okay with it, despite loving the atmosphere of Dark Souls when I tried it, I'd rather play CRPG where reading and comprehending is the more important skill. Being an adult is realizing that you have nothing to prove to anyone and just do your thing to be happy (trannies will never be, lol).

>>3657150
You're literally suggesting restarting or getting soft locked when the devs poorly communicated, designed and/or balanced their game is "good design". Because you think trial and error after +20 hours forcing a game reset is "good design" and you think that makes you hardcore. When it's the opposite.

>>3657154
No such thing as "genre mastery".
If you play a new RPG, with a new ruleset, with classes and balance unknown to you for that game, with no idea what kind of enemies you'll face, what enemy AI will be like, etc. and you get fucked for not knowing something that wasn't communicated to you, that is the exact opposite of skill, meaningful decisions, let alone interesting gameplay.
What can be great in one game or look good on paper does not mean it will be good in another game. Is it logical to assume shotguns would deal worse damage or be inferior to pistols? No, yet that can happen in games due to balancing and skill design.

Not only that, you have no idea the value, power or whatever of tons of things. If you pick "favored enemy: greenskins" because you see orcs on the poster and cover art, yet you only fight orcs a grand total of 2 times in a +50 hour long RPG, you got fucked because the game didn't support that choice well and you had no way of knowing it unless you looked up a guide beforehand or played through the game. That is not interesting or skillful, but just shit balanace and design.

Idiots think they're hot shit for going through the motions of trial and error, when literally any retard can learn and apply shit from it.

>>3656786
>quest items look like regular loot
Yeah I hate those situations where I feel like I have to hold on to stuff just in case. With inventory limits/cluttering

>>3657161
>You're literally suggesting
Go ahead and quote me where I said that. Pro tip: you can’t

>>3657171
So you didn't disagree with me and just wanted to shitpost then. Raising the quality of the board there, wouldn't surprise me if you also thought the board was shitty.

>>3657161
>No such thing as "genre mastery".
Not at all, there are plenty of commonalities across games because they are intrinsically tied into how math and time work. Even learning a new system itself is done quicker and quicker as you play more RPGs.
>Is it logical to assume shotguns would deal worse damage or be inferior to pistols
Yeah, if you have weapon specialization at all in your game, it's kinda shit. Don't do that.
>If you pick "favored enemy: greenskins"
Favored enemies are meant for thematic character concepts in tabletop, where the DM can adjust the campaign to the players. They shouldn't really be part of a video game.

>>3657176
>Favored enemies are meant for thematic character concepts in tabletop,
Not always. Some games make them an actual part of your power budget and gameplay. DnD 5e tried this and failed, so they had to replace it with an actually worthwhile feature. Off the top of my head, Monster of the Week has an entire class/playbook based around "You want revenge on all monsters, but really fuck this one specific type in particular".

>>3657185
I've always thought they were an incredibly stupid idea to begin with. Always just picked "humans" because those are the enemies with equipment.

>>3657192
I think it works better in video games, actually. In video games the devs are in complete control over what you fight, they can ensure that the enemy type options are at least somewhat close to each other in number or usefulness. In tabletop where 90% of campaigns are DM homebrew you either
>Force your DM to include your enemy where it wasn't previously just so your feature isn't useless
>Don't force your DM and have a feature that's useful very rarely, if at all
>Guess correctly and now have a very strong feature. This one is very easy to do when you're in premade modules and adventures
So yeah, I agree with you that it's really not a good idea beyond either being just flavour or a minor feature that you don't build around.

>>3657050
>Go look at the reviews for Underrail on Steam
Very Positive (87% of 5405)
Learn what "average" means.

>>3656751
I don't wholly disagree but at the same time if I find the game is busting my ass for stupid reasons I'm still not gonna have a terribly good time or enjoy it. It is possible to make games where losing is at least partly as fun as winning. I don't want a instant win button but I don't see the joy in throwing myself at a blender that can practically clip through my attacks and obliterate me in one second because my dodge role was 1 picosecond off.

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>>3656751
Well uh if I'm not entitled to beat the game then I guess that just means YOU are not entitled to my money. Sorry chump devs!

>>3657050
>muh Age Of Decadence
Look, OP, we get that you have an hard-on for knowledge checks, but AoD is a glorified visual novel with no challenges outside the routing and the (very much optional) combat.

>>3657050
Underrail is great example of game that would filter casual gamer, but it doesn't get negative reviews from casual gamres because average casual gamer won't even know it exists.

>>3657276
Not sure who mentioned aod but it wasn't me(OP) and I already said I don't like knowledge checks

>>3657147
>>3657150
No, you being a retard and not knowing how to make a build thats not complete and utter dog shit is not fault of the devs, I am not asking you to minmax on your first playtrough

Acquire reading comprehension, untermensch

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I (OP) will be abandoning the thread now. Feel free to argue amongst yourselves.

You people quite literally can't fucking read. 70% of you are arguing against things I NEVER SAID. There's no point in continuing the discourse

ACQUIRE READING COMPREHENSION you dumb fucking retarded subhumans, our society is the way it is because of people like you, although me complaining about that is practically yelling at clouds

>>3656751
You are playing a game. You aren't accomplishing anything just because you did it while standing in your head while deepthroating a cactus. No one gives a shit, you oxygen-waster.

>>3657304
OP BTFO

>>3657285
It literally is the dev's fault for failing to communicate what a worthwhile build is.

>>3656751
Had you considered learning some worthwile skill instead of deriving your self-worth from taking the entertainment you consume way too seriously? I don't know, woodworking, knitting, getting a job. You know, something that would make your dad stop regretting not buying the rubbers that time.

>>3657286
unfortunately ur thread concept was just retarded and you got btfo
i'd sympathize with you if you weren't just a petty and cruel nerd whose ego was tied up with playing hard vidya

>>3657284
>I already said I don't like knowledge checks
The entire opening post mostly asks for more knowledge checks, such as the request to remove any way to dodge Malenia's waterfoul dance except for the 3/4th circlestrafe exploit.

>>3657280
>Underrail is great example of game that would filter casual gamer, but it doesn't get negative reviews from casual gamres because average casual gamer won't even know it exists.
Underrail does nothing to filter casual gamer because the game explicitly tells the casual gamer that it is balanced around Normal difficulty, and an average gamer lacks the crippling autism that would force him to always play on DOMINATING against his will.

And Underrail on Normal difficulty is factually easier than Baldur's Gate 3 on Balanced.

>>3657286
>so BTFO you have to leave the thread
>announce your departure like an autist
Try departing from the board too.

>>3657323
Regardless of difficulty, Underrail would filter casuals by sheer tedium of its gameplay.

>>3657286
>our society is the way it is because
Lmao

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>>3656751
If I buy a game, I want to beat it. I love fromsoft games, they're the right difficulty. I have a family and a job. I don't have 30000 hours a week to devote to video games. Games SHOULD be for normies, you just want them to be absurdly difficult as a built in gate keep, so that you can prove to yourself that you didn't waste your finite existence getting good at pressing buttons. Go goon to Chinese cartoons and take a deep breath.

>>3656751
In the RPG Maker community, it's considered bad design to limit things like EXP. Whether the enemies are finite token encounters, or random encounters in un-revistitable locations.
You can't expect the players to have an oversight of the game and know that they're painting themselves into a corner by not leveling up while they have the chance. Because they have no perception that a chance is a chance. Unless you explicitly tell them "I'm an asshole game dev and what everyone to play one way, the same way, for One China."

>>3656751
The real problem isn't "what counts as a real win," it's that you're always going to restrict your design if you worry about accessibility to normies. It's why games trend towards slop, slop is what you get when everyone is incentivised to take the same decisions for their product that also happen to be the least interesting ones. If you have to worry about John Q. Public being able to beat the game, how many interesting things do you have to cut out to make that possible?

>>3656751
Are you sure this policy will make us make more money? Seems risky to me.

>>3656751
I agree.

>>3656751
>rpgs should be soft locked
Why?
Having plenty of fallbacks in the way of build reset items works out just fine

Videogames are not an achievement and if you think otherwise you need help.

this whole thread is gay

>>3656777
The dragonknight before Maleketh was probably the hardest for me. Then maybe the final boss mainly because that piece of shit reappears a map away and spams that bullshit attack that I can't seem to dodge. Had to just tank it and pray mimic fucked his shit up.

The dual gargoyles was rewarding, again the crucible knights gave me more trouble

>>3656751
You want roguelikes with permadeath.

>>3662436
Even with roguelikes it depends. Some of them like DCSS have mechanics so streamlined and visible that you can full well beat the game just by picking something simple and playing carefully, others like Nethack require you to be extremely autistic and be willing to play for a very long time just to figure out how it works without just printing out a spoiler sheet.