Savescumming, respeccing, and cheating in RPGs

[Nooneatall]

Significant traps that create play hardship, cursed items, diseases, etc.. which were more common in early games of Wizardry, Might and Magic, etc... are no longer common in many modern games because developers realized people would simply "reload" if they ran into anything that was lasting.

I mean, lets be honest here... how many people do you think are going to continue playing if for instance a trap has some disease, curse, etc... which creates hardship for the character until they find some way to deal with it? Most will simply reload and avoid it rather than carry that consequence later into the game looking for a resolution.

May be because having trap that give you a curse that damages you every 5 seconds and give you –3 to all your stats until you visit priest in nearest settlement and nothing more is not actually fun or entertaining?

Welcome to game play. Risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc... "fun" is a useless word, subjective and a pointless balancing goal.

Games are about challenge, dealing with good and bad decisions, and unknown circumstances that create obstacles. Those things affect how you build a party or character, what equipment you bring, how you approach fights, etc...

Everyone these days just builds for DPS, fast fights, being the first to the finish line and see this as a viable approach to play, but this isn't a strategy, rather a result of poor development that does not implement proper risk vs reward, choice and consequence.

Maybe having a skill, character, etc... who specializes in traps was more important than that focus on all DPS? Maybe having a utility class who could cure a disease, remove a curse, etc... was a good choice rather than a full party of berserkers?

People don't game these days, they want to be entertained and this has turned games into boring repetitious no thought key spamming design.

That is perfect for me some days. Some days I'm so stressed out from wearing my adult diapers, eating pizza rolls, and watching reruns of Gun Smoke that I don't want to be challenged i just want to turn off my brain, turn on a podcast, and grind away at something. If there is a challenge I want it to be minimal.
Maybe we can't call that a game anymore, but what do you call it?
I would agree that the "movie games" that come out also barely qualify as games as well as light novels.
There's also simulators which aren't really games, like those grocery store simulation games.
Does animal crossing get to qualify as a game? It doesn't even have a fail condition and it's not challenging at all.

[rusty_shackleford]

May be because having trap that give you a curse that damages you every 5 seconds and give you –3 to all your stats until you visit priest in nearest settlement and nothing more is not actually fun or entertaining?

Welcome to game play. Risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc... "fun" is a useless word, subjective and a pointless balancing goal.

Games are about challenge, dealing with good and bad decisions, and unknown circumstances that create obstacles. Those things affect how you build a party or character, what equipment you bring, how you approach fights, etc...

Everyone these days just builds for DPS, fast fights, being the first to the finish line and see this as a viable approach to play, but this isn't a strategy, rather a result of poor development that does not implement proper risk vs reward, choice and consequence.

Maybe having a skill, character, etc... who specializes in traps was more important than that focus on all DPS? Maybe having a utility class who could cure a disease, remove a curse, etc... was a good choice rather than a full party of berserkers?

People don't game these days, they want to be entertained and this has turned games into boring repetitious no thought key spamming design.

If "risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc." mean stupid debuf that do nothing more than makes you backtrack, your understanding of "risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc." quite primitive.
Good job ignoring this argument:

No, make it interesting, like this: https://divinity.fandom.com/wiki/Tyrant's_Helm

The game flat out tells you the item is cursed because people would just quickload if they found out it was cursed after putting it on.

videoframe_322572.png.webp

[NotAI]

btw who wrote the dagerfall user's guide? Is it known? Lefay?

[Faceless_Sentinel]

Welcome to game play. Risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc... "fun" is a useless word, subjective and a pointless balancing goal.

Games are about challenge, dealing with good and bad decisions, and unknown circumstances that create obstacles. Those things affect how you build a party or character, what equipment you bring, how you approach fights, etc...

Everyone these days just builds for DPS, fast fights, being the first to the finish line and see this as a viable approach to play, but this isn't a strategy, rather a result of poor development that does not implement proper risk vs reward, choice and consequence.

Maybe having a skill, character, etc... who specializes in traps was more important than that focus on all DPS? Maybe having a utility class who could cure a disease, remove a curse, etc... was a good choice rather than a full party of berserkers?

People don't game these days, they want to be entertained and this has turned games into boring repetitious no thought key spamming design.

If "risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc." mean stupid debuf that do nothing more than makes you backtrack, your understanding of "risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc." quite primitive.
Good job ignoring this argument:

No, make it interesting, like this: https://divinity.fandom.com/wiki/Tyrant's_Helm

The game flat out tells you the item is cursed because people would just quickload if they found out it was cursed after putting it on.

If "risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc." mean stupid debuf that do nothing more than makes you backtrack, your understanding of "risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc." quite primitive.

[rusty_shackleford]

If "risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc." mean stupid debuf that do nothing more than makes you backtrack, your understanding of "risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc." quite primitive.
Good job ignoring this argument:

The game flat out tells you the item is cursed because people would just quickload if they found out it was cursed after putting it on.

If "risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc." mean stupid debuf that do nothing more than makes you backtrack, your understanding of "risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc." quite primitive.

Attrition itself used to be a core mechanic of RPGs that has been removed to appease the babies.
Again, why have enemies do damage if you can just backtrack to an inn to rest?

[rusty_shackleford]

btw who wrote the dagerfall user's guide? Is it known? Lefay?

You could probably send an email to Lefay to ask, I'd assume

[Faceless_Sentinel]

The game flat out tells you the item is cursed because people would just quickload if they found out it was cursed after putting it on.

If "risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc." mean stupid debuf that do nothing more than makes you backtrack, your understanding of "risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc." quite primitive.

Attrition itself used to be a core mechanic of RPGs that has been removed to appease the babies.
Again, why have enemies do damage if you can just backtrack to an inn to rest?

Why do you even play modern rpgs if they are so bad? Since 1980—2000 there was so much good RPGs, why are you do not play them?

[rusty_shackleford]

Attrition itself used to be a core mechanic of RPGs that has been removed to appease the babies.
Again, why have enemies do damage if you can just backtrack to an inn to rest?

Why do you even play modern rpgs if they are so bad? Since 1980—2000 there was so much good RPGs, why are you do not play them?

I don't play that many modern RPGs.

[Rand]

I don't know why most of the game devs don't just implement anti-savescumming functions in their products. Jagged Alliance 2 does save rng seeds which disallows players to just reload and re-roll the dice, and that was like 25 years ago. This should've become a standard instead of what we have now.

I use the mod that stops that fascist ********.

[Xenich]

May be because having trap that give you a curse that damages you every 5 seconds and give you –3 to all your stats until you visit priest in nearest settlement and nothing more is not actually fun or entertaining?

Welcome to game play. Risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc... "fun" is a useless word, subjective and a pointless balancing goal.

Games are about challenge, dealing with good and bad decisions, and unknown circumstances that create obstacles. Those things affect how you build a party or character, what equipment you bring, how you approach fights, etc...

Everyone these days just builds for DPS, fast fights, being the first to the finish line and see this as a viable approach to play, but this isn't a strategy, rather a result of poor development that does not implement proper risk vs reward, choice and consequence.

Maybe having a skill, character, etc... who specializes in traps was more important than that focus on all DPS? Maybe having a utility class who could cure a disease, remove a curse, etc... was a good choice rather than a full party of berserkers?

People don't game these days, they want to be entertained and this has turned games into boring repetitious no thought key spamming design.

If "risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc." mean stupid debuf that do nothing more than makes you backtrack, your understanding of "risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc." quite primitive.
Good job ignoring this argument:

No, make it interesting, like this: https://divinity.fandom.com/wiki/Tyrant's_Helm

well, if you decide to build a party without the proper tools and are forced to backtrack because of it, who is the stupid one?

It seems your argument is that having to balance decisions is bad design. Sounds about as ******** as claiming turn based games are outdated mechanics.

[Xenich]

I think the point at least that I have been trying to make is...

Design the game with all the difficulties and mechanics of play that @rusty_shackleford is getting at, but... allow the player to either through a starting game setting (locks it to your choice for the rest of the game), or via a console switch command adjust the game (which most developer tools allow, but has to be activated with a exe switch). This way, the default game is designed as intended, but the "cheaters" can tune or adjust as they see fit.

I don't think developers should waste time trying to prevent cheaters with stupid anti-mechanics (in the end, cheat engine always wins), but I also don't think the game should allow or design around those cheats in the games basic tenants of design. To ask they design around that is.. well... mainstream "modern audience" ********.

[Xenich]

May be because having trap that give you a curse that damages you every 5 seconds and give you –3 to all your stats until you visit priest in nearest settlement and nothing more is not actually fun or entertaining?

Welcome to game play. Risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc... "fun" is a useless word, subjective and a pointless balancing goal.

Games are about challenge, dealing with good and bad decisions, and unknown circumstances that create obstacles. Those things affect how you build a party or character, what equipment you bring, how you approach fights, etc...

Everyone these days just builds for DPS, fast fights, being the first to the finish line and see this as a viable approach to play, but this isn't a strategy, rather a result of poor development that does not implement proper risk vs reward, choice and consequence.

Maybe having a skill, character, etc... who specializes in traps was more important than that focus on all DPS? Maybe having a utility class who could cure a disease, remove a curse, etc... was a good choice rather than a full party of berserkers?

People don't game these days, they want to be entertained and this has turned games into boring repetitious no thought key spamming design.

That is perfect for me some days. Some days I'm so stressed out from wearing my adult diapers, eating pizza rolls, and watching reruns of Gun Smoke that I don't want to be challenged i just want to turn off my brain, turn on a podcast, and grind away at something. If there is a challenge I want it to be minimal.
Maybe we can't call that a game anymore, but what do you call it?
I would agree that the "movie games" that come out also barely qualify as games as well as light novels.
There's also simulators which aren't really games, like those grocery store simulation games.
Does animal crossing get to qualify as a game? It doesn't even have a fail condition and it's not challenging at all.

I understand, which is why I said don't develop in excessive means to combat people from seeking outside remedy (I view an exe switch that toggles a developer function as outside remedy). That used to be a fairly common way to deal with these things, though as I said... with modern design, a simple tailoring of a first game start settings would be fine as well. The former would better suit the "I feel like cheating today" you describe and due to its nature, is really a hidden function that most wouldn't even know about (ie talking about ******** mainstream players). Those who do, would be purposefully cheating the game and the actions and results are obvious, so people can't *****.

[Stack of Turtles]

"Developers should design the game experience they intend people to have and not worry about the way most people will want to play it!"
A million Veilguards later: "noooooo not like that!"

[Red7]

Dislike the fact in Dragon age Veilguard you change your physical appearance, gender, race etc anytime in the game with no ingame explanation or story consequences. It’s completely immersion breaking and even worse that other RPG studios have been doing the same thing as well.

Hard disagree. Any game with a customizable appearance eventually adds the ability to change it and for a good reason - it's a fluff that does not affect gameplay in any way but allows for correcting mistakes during initial customization. Lighting on the character-generating screen is never the same as in the game.

Same with respect. If there are builds in game, there should be the ability to change it. Most RPGs have it from the start, others fixed with mods.

Race or class can be fixed if they play a role in the story (like for Hawk in DA2) but the look and the build absolutely should be possible to change mid-game.

**** another vagina i havent harrased yet. why nobody informed me rreeeeeeeeee

[Red7]

In this thread I've learned that pretty much everything is cheating and I'm proud to say I'm a cheater.

"it aint cheating if u dont get cought"

old jew and vagina proverb

[Xenich]

"Developers should design the game experience they intend people to have and not worry about the way most people will want to play it!"
A million Veilguards later: "noooooo not like that!"

As long as the bulk of your player base thinks Game = Entertainment, and "Fun" is a viable development objective, all you will continue to get is garbage.

It is the same idea as trying to explain to someone that hard work to a goal is actually the joy of the eventual win.

[Stack of Turtles]

"Developers should design the game experience they intend people to have and not worry about the way most people will want to play it!"
A million Veilguards later: "noooooo not like that!"

As long as the bulk of your player base thinks Game = Entertainment, and "Fun" is a viable development objective, all you will continue to get is garbage.

It is the same idea as trying to explain to someone that hard work to a goal is actually the joy of the eventual win.

Video games are a commercial enterprise dedicated to turning a profit.
The bulk of the player base will always think that and developers will always oblige them for money. I'm good with that.

[Xenich]

"Developers should design the game experience they intend people to have and not worry about the way most people will want to play it!"
A million Veilguards later: "noooooo not like that!"

As long as the bulk of your player base thinks Game = Entertainment, and "Fun" is a viable development objective, all you will continue to get is garbage.

It is the same idea as trying to explain to someone that hard work to a goal is actually the joy of the eventual win.

Video games are a commercial enterprise dedicated to turning a profit.
The bulk of the player base will always think that and developers will always oblige them for money. I'm good with that.

I would argue that is what it became, not what it started out as.

[Stack of Turtles]

As long as the bulk of your player base thinks Game = Entertainment, and "Fun" is a viable development objective, all you will continue to get is garbage.

It is the same idea as trying to explain to someone that hard work to a goal is actually the joy of the eventual win.

Video games are a commercial enterprise dedicated to turning a profit.
The bulk of the player base will always think that and developers will always oblige them for money. I'm good with that.

I would argue that is what it became, not what it started out as.

It was always about making money, why do you think they sold them? Did you think arcade games came with a quarter slot as social satire and the lives system was totally unrelated?

[Xenich]

Video games are a commercial enterprise dedicated to turning a profit.
The bulk of the player base will always think that and developers will always oblige them for money. I'm good with that.

I would argue that is what it became, not what it started out as.

It was always about making money, why do you think they sold them? Did you think arcade games came with a quarter slot as social satire and the lives system was totally unrelated?

Business did not create idea, idea created a means to do business.

While there are exceptions, great ideas, works of passion, etc... do not stem from a balance sheet. It is the money makers who take the ideas and attempt to market them, hence the corruption of concepts over time that gimmick and manipulate markets to their own ends.

Nothing wrong with making a profit and any venture should consider this before it seeks the market, but it is obvious that games became about profit in how they are developed over that of the original concepts they were initially derived from.

This is evident by numerous works throughout history on how they became and eventually hit the market.

If you follow Gygax, his passion was the reason for creating the business and it drove his decisions. Those that scammed him out of the company were concerned about business, not games and used the creator to manipulate the markets for profits.

Without the passionate creators, the businessmen have nothing, produce nothing, create nothing. They can only manipulate off of the ideas of others.

[Red7]

I would argue that is what it became, not what it started out as.

It was always about making money, why do you think they sold them? Did you think arcade games came with a quarter slot as social satire and the lives system was totally unrelated?

Business did not create idea, idea created a means to do business.

While there are exceptions, great ideas, works of passion, etc... do not stem from a balance sheet. It is the money makers who take the ideas and attempt to market them, hence the corruption of concepts over time that gimmick and manipulate markets to their own ends.

Nothing wrong with making a profit and any venture should consider this before it seeks the market, but it is obvious that games became about profit in how they are developed over that of the original concepts they were initially derived from.

This is evident by numerous works throughout history on how they became and eventually hit the market.

If you follow Gygax, his passion was the reason for creating the business and it drove his decisions. Those that scammed him out of the company were concerned about business, not games and used the creator to manipulate the markets for profits.

Without the passionate creators, the businessmen have nothing, produce nothing, create nothing. They can only manipulate off of the ideas of others.

sounds like glorification of goy crying about being incapable of protecting his business to me

only true passion is power, rest are ******** goy delusions and jew fabricated distractions
ergo love is money
ero rape is love

mmm delicious

[Red7]

"Developers should design the game experience they intend people to have and not worry about the way most people will want to play it!"
A million Veilguards later: "noooooo not like that!"

As long as the bulk of your player base thinks Game = Entertainment, and "Fun" is a viable development objective, all you will continue to get is garbage.

It is the same idea as trying to explain to someone that hard work to a goal is actually the joy of the eventual win.

Video games are a commercial enterprise dedicated to turning a profit.
The bulk of the player base will always think that and developers will always oblige them for money. I'm good with that.

it would be if **** didnt had infinite money printer and used all media as propaganda tools first and money grab second
**** are too evil /and kuked/ to be truly greedy as they are bound to wishes of ultraterrestrial entity and orion group

[J1M]

Quickload is pretty awful gameplay.

Unfortunately, many consumers are now far better game designers than those doing the role professionally. (There's a variety of reasons for this.) So the idea of the designer's decisions being the right design, especially when time constraints are factored in, is laughable.

Modding has long been an essential part of PC gaming, whether that was to fill a content void by editing maps, removing bloom by editing an .ini file, or making fixes.

[anonusername]

Dislike the fact in Dragon age Veilguard you change your physical appearance, gender, race etc anytime in the game with no ingame explanation or story consequences. It’s completely immersion breaking and even worse that other RPG studios have been doing the same thing as well.

Hard disagree. Any game with a customizable appearance eventually adds the ability to change it and for a good reason - it's a fluff that does not affect gameplay in any way but allows for correcting mistakes during initial customization. Lighting on the character-generating screen is never the same as in the game.

Same with respec. If there are builds in the game, there should be ability to change it. Most RPGs have it from the start, others fixed with mods.

Race or class can be fixed if they play a role in the story (like for Hawk in DA2) but the look and the build absolutely should be possible to change mid-game.

I have some sympathy for your position. I have played games with a large discrepancy between how a character looks in the creator versus how he looks in game, and I've also played games with ambiguous or outright broken character building options that made me wish for a respec.

Nevertheless, in principle, I think maintaining the integrity of the game world is paramount. Whatever appearance modification and respec options be available, they must be fully justified within the setting; options beyond that violate the simulation. Fortunately, appearance issues can usually be caught very early, so restarting to fix them isn't much of a hassle. Build issues are a thornier problem, and this is one of the reasons I tend to prefer JRPG-style systems that allow radically altering your build on the fly so long as they are an actual feature of the setting (ex: orbments in Trails in the Sky).

The answer is the classic "respec at the end of the tutorial". Also, you should not have massively overly complicated minmax buildfaggotry without respecs. In something like AD&D you picked a class and your build choices were things like "which spells do I learn this level" or "do I dual class at level 4 or level 6?". If you have 10 thousand "feats" and "skills" to mix and match then you end up with problems.

[anonusername]

The game flat out tells you the item is cursed because people would just quickload if they found out it was cursed after putting it on.

If "risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc." mean stupid debuf that do nothing more than makes you backtrack, your understanding of "risk vs reward, consequence of choice, etc." quite primitive.

Attrition itself used to be a core mechanic of RPGs that has been removed to appease the babies.
Again, why have enemies do damage if you can just backtrack to an inn to rest?

If you want to know how many people are capable of basic resource management, just look up the average credit card debt level in the US. Is it any wonder games don't expect players to be capable of the basic self control to now blow all their <mana, items, stamina, whatever> on the first encounter?

On a totally different topic, someone should make a gacha where you can purchase the whores on in-game credit, and if you cannot make the minimum payment the character is locked. Offer a small per-character microtransaction to skip the payment for a month without pausing the interest or paying down the principal. Don't allow upgrading anything until you've made the minimum payments for the month on each character. Offer a very expensive "micro" transaction to pay off a character entirely. Probably avoids gambling laws even in gay countries like Belgium, and credit cards are more lucrative than gambling anyway.

[Xenich]

Hard disagree. Any game with a customizable appearance eventually adds the ability to change it and for a good reason - it's a fluff that does not affect gameplay in any way but allows for correcting mistakes during initial customization. Lighting on the character-generating screen is never the same as in the game.

Same with respec. If there are builds in the game, there should be ability to change it. Most RPGs have it from the start, others fixed with mods.

Race or class can be fixed if they play a role in the story (like for Hawk in DA2) but the look and the build absolutely should be possible to change mid-game.

I have some sympathy for your position. I have played games with a large discrepancy between how a character looks in the creator versus how he looks in game, and I've also played games with ambiguous or outright broken character building options that made me wish for a respec.

Nevertheless, in principle, I think maintaining the integrity of the game world is paramount. Whatever appearance modification and respec options be available, they must be fully justified within the setting; options beyond that violate the simulation. Fortunately, appearance issues can usually be caught very early, so restarting to fix them isn't much of a hassle. Build issues are a thornier problem, and this is one of the reasons I tend to prefer JRPG-style systems that allow radically altering your build on the fly so long as they are an actual feature of the setting (ex: orbments in Trails in the Sky).

The answer is the classic "respec at the end of the tutorial". Also, you should not have massively overly complicated minmax buildfaggotry without respecs. In something like AD&D you picked a class and your build choices were things like "which spells do I learn this level" or "do I dual class at level 4 or level 6?". If you have 10 thousand "feats" and "skills" to mix and match then you end up with problems.

I would rather see respecing built into game play more than some cheap "poof! you are now this".

I am not sure the best approach to this, but I did like how AD&D treated human dual classing at least in terms of the negatives concerning moving to a new class. This created a means for a player to switch, but was a reasonable limitation that made sense and was centered around game play. It was proper choice/consequence in play.

Capture.PNG

[Xenich]

Attrition itself used to be a core mechanic of RPGs that has been removed to appease the babies.
Again, why have enemies do damage if you can just backtrack to an inn to rest?

If you want to know how many people are capable of basic resource management, just look up the average credit card debt level in the US. Is it any wonder games don't expect players to be capable of the basic self control to now blow all their <mana, items, stamina, whatever> on the first encounter?

On a totally different topic, someone should make a gacha where you can purchase the whores on in-game credit, and if you cannot make the minimum payment the character is locked. Offer a small per-character microtransaction to skip the payment for a month without pausing the interest or paying down the principal. Don't allow upgrading anything until you've made the minimum payments for the month on each character. Offer a very expensive "micro" transaction to pay off a character entirely. Probably avoids gambling laws even in gay countries like Belgium, and credit cards are more lucrative than gambling anyway.

Many of these types of games weren't designed for the average ****** though. Games were actually made for and by intelligent people wishing to challenge themselves through various means, not a process of attending to the dull brained need for mundane repetition.

Heck, even arcade games were a process of recognizing patterns and applying hand/eye coordination to execute solutions to solve them.

Games are not entertainment, they are tests/challenges/competitions that certain people find entertaining.

[anonusername]

Attrition itself used to be a core mechanic of RPGs that has been removed to appease the babies.
Again, why have enemies do damage if you can just backtrack to an inn to rest?

If you want to know how many people are capable of basic resource management, just look up the average credit card debt level in the US. Is it any wonder games don't expect players to be capable of the basic self control to now blow all their <mana, items, stamina, whatever> on the first encounter?

On a totally different topic, someone should make a gacha where you can purchase the whores on in-game credit, and if you cannot make the minimum payment the character is locked. Offer a small per-character microtransaction to skip the payment for a month without pausing the interest or paying down the principal. Don't allow upgrading anything until you've made the minimum payments for the month on each character. Offer a very expensive "micro" transaction to pay off a character entirely. Probably avoids gambling laws even in gay countries like Belgium, and credit cards are more lucrative than gambling anyway.

Many of these types of games weren't designed for the average ****** though. Games were actually made for and by intelligent people wishing to challenge themselves through various means, not a process of attending to the dull brained need for mundane repetition.

Heck, even arcade games were a process of recognizing patterns and applying hand/eye coordination to execute solutions to solve them.

Games are not entertainment, they are tests/challenges/competitions that certain people find entertaining.

Yes, which is why these old games were designed differently than modern ones. Modern games are primarily entertainment outsides of niches.

[TKVNC]

The only reason Respeccing should be allowed is because of ridiculous design "choices" such as allocating worthless stats to players (Int of Fighters, for example), and forcing people to pick Skills/Abilities at the start that they will never use.

That doesn't necessarily apply to Racials; but they should never directly affect your Stats - they should be more creative - the problem is most developers can't think of a good way to do this, so different stats is a way to add simple window-dressing.

[J1M]

The only reason Respeccing should be allowed is because of ridiculous design "choices" such as allocating worthless stats to players (Int of Fighters, for example), and forcing people to pick Skills/Abilities at the start that they will never use.

That doesn't necessarily apply to Racials; but they should never directly affect your Stats - they should be more creative - the problem is most developers can't think of a good way to do this, so different stats is a way to add simple window-dressing.

The part of BG3 I enjoyed the most was the respec feature. I disagree that its only value is as a stopgap for bad/badly communicated design. I would like to see a game where character building was the primary gameplay. (RPG autobattler?)