Fun Stuff > CLIKC

Preventing the Metagame

<< < (2/8) > >>

StaedlerMars:
(Dungeon Master was a great game. I miss it dearly)

But yeah, I've always thought stats were a bit ... off. Role playing, I figured, was about playing a role. And that shouldn't mean having to play a role to death by having to level and get better stats, just so that you could be the character that you had in mind from the outset.

Chesire Cat:
I refer to this as power gaming, the notion that knowledge of what the best items are and how to get them to me undermine the suspense of disbelief which is the core of 'fun' in vid games.  Though I will admit in MMOs esp, power gaming is built into its core, as well as arena style multiplayer games like halo in which battles are one by increments and specific knowledge.  But for the vast majority of single player games I have to consciously avoid hints/tips or guides and cheats etc to get the most out of the game.

As we speak Im playing Ragnarok online in which its virtually mandatory to have a database on in one window and maybe a character creator in another, and I get off on hair brained outside the box schemes to be the best at whatever niche best suits what I like, as opposed to what is strictly the best.  That being said, I want to create the absolute best niche character that there can be, which does involve planning and forethought.

Boro_Bandito:
man I rock at Halo and never look at no damn numbers.

actreal:

--- Quote from: Boro_Bandito on 28 Oct 2008, 13:54 ---This is why I like something like White Wolf's storytelling system in the case of pen and paper games. The game isn't about stats, or at least isn't if the storyteller is any good. You try and actually role-play rather than maximizing your character. Of course, in that case it always depends on the player/storyteller relationship.

--- End quote ---

As you sort of conclude, the relative levels of roleplaying or powergaming in any pen and paper game has a lot more to do with the GM and the players than the game engine. If you all want to powergame, you can go right ahead - even in White Wolf games. If you want to roleplay, you an do that, even in D&D.

If you want a gaming engine that really encourages roleplaying over roll-playing, try a diceless system.

est:

--- Quote from: snalin on 28 Oct 2008, 14:01 ---If you want an MMO where grinding for equipment doesn't matter, wait of Darkfall

--- End quote ---

Man, I read all the things about it and got kind of excited.  Then I looked at the screenshot gallery they have on their site and realised that I couldn't play the game because the art direction and rendering tech on it is fucking pitiful and reminds me of EQ2.  How the hell can the developers think that plastic skin, shiny, plastic armour, hard lighting and hard, jagged shadows is acceptable?  It's like, ok I understand you've spent a lot of time on the textures because the textures actually look quite good.  Could you not have spent a little bit more time on the quality of the models and licensed a decent fucking engine for the game?  Or if you are using a decent engine then what the fuck are you doing?  Why does it look shit?  Why is the bloom lighting only working on some models and not others, making the whole scene look like a conglomerate of objects photoshopped together badly.  I wish I could work as quality control for some of these fucking games so I could yell at them and ask what the fuck they think they are doing.

So anyway, meta-gaming.  The way I see it is this.  If you were an adventurer/warrior/wizard/whatever in these game settings you would be able to gauge an item's quality by looking at it and testing it and feeling it and suchlike.  We can't, because we are not there and don't have the relevant skills/knowledge to know how to check the item's quality, so we get stats to tell us what's up.  You think that a ye olde adventurer wouldn't care about the quality of the gear that was meant to keep them from dying?  Bullshit, they'd try to get the best their money could buy them, and if they heard tell in the taverns of some legendary armour they could get by killing a den of ogres over the hill they'd be devising ways of doing so or at least tricking them out of it somehow.  For adventurers gear would be like gadgets.  Some people would be content with what stops them from getting killed, but others would only be happy one-upping their adventurer buddies so they had something to show off/brag about.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page