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  1. - Top - End - #151
    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: An opinion you´re probably all alone with?

    Quote Originally Posted by InvisibleBison View Post
    I see no reason not to include fast travel and quest markers as an option. Sure, there are plenty of people who don't like them, but they can just not use them. If you take them out of the game, though, the game is made worse for the people who do want to use them.
    Well they'd still be in the game, but they'd correspond to actual in-character actions or acquisitions rather than just being automatic from game start. That'd make them nice early-game goals to acquire those things and to upgrade or augment them as the game goes on. Like getting Mark/Recall/Almsivi Intervention/Propylon indices/etc in Morrowind. Or like getting the airship in a Final Fantasy game.
    Last edited by NichG; 2022-09-26 at 05:02 PM.

  2. - Top - End - #152
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    Quote Originally Posted by veti View Post
    Heck, by mid-game (about level 12) in Morrowind I can reliably kill at least two ogrims with a single mana point.
    Assuming you mean magicka point, I am confused about how this is possible, given that Ogrim have at least 170 hp and spell cost doesn't decrease with better attributes or skill. Did you mean spell, or bar?

    As for fatigue, in Daggerfall it only regenerated while resting. Personally, I think that such a system would make sense if it were tied to other survival elements like food and water, with a rework of weight, encumbrance, and maybe spoiled food mechanics.
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  3. - Top - End - #153
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vinyadan View Post
    Assuming you mean magicka point, I am confused about how this is possible, given that Ogrim have at least 170 hp and spell cost doesn't decrease with better attributes or skill. Did you mean spell, or bar?.
    Bound Bow, 15 seconds duration. Costs 1 magicka, and with the ridiculous damage output of that weapon, most mid-level enemies are one-hit killed.
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  4. - Top - End - #154
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vinyadan View Post
    Assuming you mean magicka point, I am confused about how this is possible, given that Ogrim have at least 170 hp and spell cost doesn't decrease with better attributes or skill. Did you mean spell, or bar?
    The spell that veti is using to kill Ogrims for 1 point of magicka is Bound [Weapon] on Self for t<20 seconds. Personally, I would call this much more of a demonstration of the power of a martial character with a good weapon and the skill to use it than a demonstration of the power of magic in Morrowind, but veti and I have disagreed over this before.

    Having said that, I'm inclined to agree with veti that magicka regeneration is unnecessary and would probably be bad for Morrowind. Magic's reasonably powerful and very flexible in Morrowind; if it's also effectively free then it would very likely devalue other options quite a bit. There's really not that much room between "I have functionally-infinite mana" and "I may as well not have mana regeneration," especially outside of combat and all the more so if you're concerned about the known tendency for people to choose to do something that's 'optimal' over something that they actually find enjoyable (you can't have "slow" magicka regeneration if you're concerned that people will spend 30 seconds staring at a wall waiting for enough magicka to cast Hearth Heal instead of drinking a potion or cast Open 100 pts on Touch instead of using a lockpick, engage in ever-more-protracted bouts of kiting while tossing fireballs at enemies, or whatever other plausible scenario you care to think up), and unlike with enchanted items there's no built-in trade-off of having to carry around a bunch of junk in order to have access to the spells you might want to cast.

    The big issue that Morrowind has insofar as magicka usage goes is that Restore Magicka potions are fairly difficult to come by at low levels - sure, there's a couple freely available to members in each of the Mages' Guild halls, but those don't go very far if you're throwing around a lot of big spells, most potion vendors either don't carry or don't restock Restore Magicka potions (and even if they do have them, they're relatively expensive single-use consumables), and it can be difficult to obtain the ingredients to make Restore Magicka potions at low level, particularly if you're not engaging in money-making exploits - daedra hearts, frost salts, and void salts are expensive when obtained from vendors and difficult to acquire otherwise before the levels where daedra are common spawns in many parts of the game-world.
    Last edited by Aeson; 2022-09-26 at 06:46 PM.

  5. - Top - End - #155
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    Quote Originally Posted by InvisibleBison View Post
    I see no reason not to include fast travel and quest markers as an option. Sure, there are plenty of people who don't like them, but they can just not use them. If you take them out of the game, though, the game is made worse for the people who do want to use them.
    The main problem comes when you design your game in such a way that quest markers and the like are actually necessary. Morrowind's quest journal would often include directions to reach where you needed to go, because that was necessary with no quest markers and added some nice flavour to proceedings. (Would have been better if the journal wasn't such an awful piece of crap to use, of course, but that's more a UI thing than a quest marker issue). Whereas the likes of Skyrim doesn't bother with that noise, because why should it when you can just be led by the nose to your next destination? So in that case you have the opposite issue--you *have* to use the quest markers whether you want to or not!

    I think the Witcher 3 actually had a nice compromise here--many quests would lead you to the general area you needed to be in via quest marker, but then you'd have to search within a small area for the actual important bit.

  6. - Top - End - #156
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    My personal preference vis-a-vis quest markers would be to have markers for anywhere I have already been but to have directions to new things. So I can have a dot on the map lead me to sakron, teacher of storms [i]after [\i] I have found his hut in the middle of gassy swamp, but I need to actually search the swamp the first time to find it.
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    Rockphed said it well.
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  7. - Top - End - #157
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    Unpopular opinion:
    Competitive Pokemon (and competitive Smash) are both antithetical to what makes these games fun in the first place, (i.e. trying out many different things)
    I wish Nintendo would just stop considering "competitiveness" in their game design at all, or just make a different game that's only competitive and nothing else.

    -----

    As for Bethesda RPGs, what can I say....
    Bethesda designed them. It's what you sign up for and it's exactly what you get.
    Their design philosophy reminds me of Dominic Deegan, in the sense that it seems to be a "cargo cult" way of design.
    Magic is cool? We have magic. No, we didn't think about how it meshes with other types of combat.
    Open worlds are cool? We have open worlds. No, we didn't actually consider if our quest system makes the world feel alive or not.
    Choices in character creation are cool? We have have that too! No, role play will not be affected beyond 1 or 2 occasional dialogues with racism that have no consequences whatsoever.
    rinse and repeat for all other design choices...

  8. - Top - End - #158
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    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    The main problem comes when you design your game in such a way that quest markers and the like are actually necessary. Morrowind's quest journal would often include directions to reach where you needed to go, because that was necessary with no quest markers and added some nice flavour to proceedings. (Would have been better if the journal wasn't such an awful piece of crap to use, of course, but that's more a UI thing than a quest marker issue). Whereas the likes of Skyrim doesn't bother with that noise, because why should it when you can just be led by the nose to your next destination? So in that case you have the opposite issue--you *have* to use the quest markers whether you want to or not!

    I think the Witcher 3 actually had a nice compromise here--many quests would lead you to the general area you needed to be in via quest marker, but then you'd have to search within a small area for the actual important bit.
    Yes, I understand why games that require the use of quest markers are frustrating for people who don't like using quest markers. What I don't understand is why said people would advocate for a game that doesn't allow for the use of quest markers. It seems to me like that would simply change who is being frustrated by the game, while it would be just as easy to make quest markers optional and prevent anyone from being frustrated.
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  9. - Top - End - #159
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    Quote Originally Posted by MetroAlien View Post
    Unpopular opinion:
    Competitive Pokemon (and competitive Smash) are both antithetical to what makes these games fun in the first place, (i.e. trying out many different things)
    I wish Nintendo would just stop considering "competitiveness" in their game design at all, or just make a different game that's only competitive and nothing else.
    Frankly, I don't think they do. Certainly people have frequently been baffled by decisions they make with Smash Brothers in balance patches and the like, and they've never displayed more than a passing willingness to even acknowledge the competitive scenes of Smash games - getting them to even allow the games to be played at big tournaments like Evo has been a challenge at times.

    The problem someone with your opinion has is the simple fact that any game with multiplayer that isn't strictly co-op will, by nature, be competitive. The only way it won't attract players who enjoy that competition is if the game is bad and such players simply don't want to play it.
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  10. - Top - End - #160
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    Frankly, I don't think they do. Certainly people have frequently been baffled by decisions they make with Smash Brothers in balance patches and the like, and they've never displayed more than a passing willingness to even acknowledge the competitive scenes of Smash games - getting them to even allow the games to be played at big tournaments like Evo has been a challenge at times.
    Indeed. Nintendo is one of the most casual-focused companies there is. they hate the idea of nuzlockes, they design pokemon to be easy intentionally, and Smash Bros is meant to be a party game. competitive stuff for all this isn't really their focus or concern.

    its just that they get so many people, they can't stop people from playing however they want, and eventually people are going to go for world records and competition and whatnot because they find it fun. it is simply in humanity's nature to experiment as well as to compare and to compete simply because they want to compete.

    the whole IV/EV thing? not supposed to be optimized. they're supposed to give your pokemon personality and unique strengths and weaknesses. but when you put numbers and effectiveness impacts on that kind of thing, you inevitably just get people optimizing it to get the best they can.
    Last edited by Lord Raziere; 2022-09-26 at 11:07 PM.
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  11. - Top - End - #161
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    Quote Originally Posted by InvisibleBison View Post
    I see no reason not to include fast travel and quest markers as an option. Sure, there are plenty of people who don't like them, but they can just not use them. If you take them out of the game, though, the game is made worse for the people who do want to use them.
    That is a somewhat faulty take on it. Automatic Fast Travel being available and quest markers existing heavily influence how quests are designed.

    Consider Oblivion's questlines that make you hop all over the map in the span of three or four quests, much less the entire quest chain - you can easily go from Leyawinn to Cheydinhal, from there to Chorrol, and from there to Leyawinn, and then to Anvil again - to resolve maybe three quests. With no native travel option that isn't "walk there" or "fast travel, we've even unlocked all the towns by default for you". If you deign to not resort to that, you're in for a trek across most of Cyrodiil - three times in a row. And this is a mild example, there are questlines which expect you to visit Leyawinn (at the southernmost end of the map) five times and come back to northern cities every time in-between.

    Consider Morrowind's quest chains, which are noticeably more logical in how far they send you, and the travel system pretty much ensures that most places aren't far from "legal" fast travel between towns. When you're being sent far into the wilderness, it's the sign that it will probably get tough.

    Same with quest text and markers. While Oblivion is partially playable without quest markers (not always, though), Skyrim is simply not. There is not enough quest text to even remotely understand where the quest giver wants you to go without a marker.
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  12. - Top - End - #162
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    The only way it won't attract players who enjoy that competition is if the game is bad and such players simply don't want to play it.
    hm...
    you're certainly making a lot of sense!
    Two player games are by default a competition.

    What bugs me about Pokemon/Smash in particular, is that the games market themselves as having many pokemon (characters/maps/items, etc...) but the entire point of "competitive" play is to reduce the number of options as much as possible.
    It's literally the exact opposite of what the game was designed for.Like, just play TFT (or Street Fighter) at that point??

    Eating soup with a fork also goes against the intended design. It may be a quirky novelty, but I won't admire somebody dying on that hill.

  13. - Top - End - #163
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    Quote Originally Posted by MetroAlien View Post
    but the entire point of "competitive" play is to reduce the number of options as much as possible.
    I'm...not sure where you get this idea?

    The point of competitive play is to compete.

    You're gonna have to expand on this because as written it makes no sense to me at all.

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    Quote Originally Posted by MetroAlien View Post
    What bugs me about Pokemon/Smash in particular, is that the games market themselves as having many pokemon (characters/maps/items, etc...) but the entire point of "competitive" play is to reduce the number of options as much as possible.
    It's literally the exact opposite of what the game was designed for.Like, just play TFT (or Street Fighter) at that point??
    Someone else should speak to Pokémon, since I've long since stopped playing that and did very little multiplayer even back when I did play it, but you're simply wrong about Smash Brothers. The reason that competitive play in Smash uses only certain elements of the game is in order to make the competition as fair as possible - to remove random elements that can make it no longer a competition of skill between two players, but significantly impacted by mere luck, or elements that can create unpleasant gameplay in a competitive environment*. And the series has always supported that, by allowing items to be toggled on or off, or allowing you to pick which stages you want, even in Smash Ultimate allowing you to turn off stage hazards separately from simply selecting stages that don't have hazards. So to claim it goes against the game's design is just silly. The games are absolutely designed to support that kind of play, and have been since the very beginning.

    Basically, Smash Brothers is designed to be played however people would like to play it, with options aplenty. It's absolutely silly to claim there's any one true way to play it, or pooh-pooh other people playing it in a manner you wouldn't choose to play. Play it how you like, and let others do the same.

    Also, for the record, a fair amount of people who play Smash competitively do also play other fighting games competitively. For example, one of the best Smash Melee players in the world, who goes by the name Leffen, is also well-known these days as one of the best Guilty Gear Strive players in the world, and I just watched him place 4th in a big tournament for that game this past weekend.

    *Stages with walk-off edges, for example, where players could just sit by the edge of the stage, grab the opponent, and throw them off for a quick KO, repeatedly, turning the whole game into a brief flurry of near-instant-deaths. That would be the optimal way to play on those stages if your goal is to win, since it gets you kills the quickest, but nobody truly wants that kind of gameplay experience, so those stages aren't allowed in competitive play.
    Last edited by Zevox; 2022-09-26 at 11:57 PM. Reason: Correction: Smash 64 did allow turning items off, I'd just forgotten.
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  15. - Top - End - #165
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    I'm...not sure where you get this idea?

    The point of competitive play is to compete.

    You're gonna have to expand on this because as written it makes no sense to me at all.
    Given the games Metro is referring to, its probable he is referring to things like the smogon tiers of pokemon or the omega stages in smash.

    competitive anything likes to decrease the amount of random chance is involved in any competition to focus on skill over some random happenstance or some cheesy/cheap strategy that doesn't actually demonstrate skill.

    in pokemon this is the pokemon selection, as the top tier pokemon outdo lower tier pokemon at everything. so a certain tournament will only focus on a certain tier and disallow for anything else as allowing all pokemon will only make everyone there go for the strongest pokemon in existence. without it, the choices and matchup are more homogenous than if they limit the selection because otherwise its all the same pokemon.

    in smash, this making the sure the stage has zero hazards and no items. which is why things like battlefield and final destination were so popular before all the stages got omega versions, because those were the most neutral stages to fight on.

    I'm guessing Metro simply wants people to play casually without bothering with such limitations and accepting that whatever happens, happens.
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  16. - Top - End - #166
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    No competition on Earth just allows "whatever happens, happens". Because at that point they're not competitions, they're death matches. Imagine if boxers could legally rabbit punch, or hit below the belt. There'd be no healthy competition left.

    Hell, restrictions (perhaps paradoxically) usually INCREASE options. It's not like the competitive players choose which options or tactics are strongest. The game designers did that.

    If there is one option that is wildly better than another, it will become the only option. Thus, decreasing the number of options to one.

    And so, restrictions are made.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    You're gonna have to expand on this because as written it makes no sense to me at all.
    I think Zevox inadvertently described the exact thing I was trying to say...
    Competitive smash play separates itself from casual play by a long list of things that aren't allowed, i.e. reducing the options.

    I accept the reasons they listed, but none of it changes that the games in question are particularly ill-suited for it, by design.

    I'm not discouraging anyone from playing smash or pokemon competitively. I just can't take it seriously in the slightest.

  18. - Top - End - #168
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    Quote Originally Posted by MetroAlien View Post
    I accept the reasons they listed, but none of it changes that the games in question are particularly ill-suited for it, by design.
    In that you're simply wrong. Smash would be particularly ill-suited to it by design if it didn't allow you to disable random items, or didn't include any stages that promote fair competition and lack any elements that create bad play experiences when playing competitively. But it has those things, and always has. It's perfectly suited to that style of play, and by design includes it as an option. The existence of other options that aren't suited to that style of play doesn't change that.

    Quote Originally Posted by MetroAlien View Post
    I'm not discouraging anyone from playing smash or pokemon competitively. I just can't take it seriously in the slightest.
    You don't need to. But it would be nice if you could simply acknowledge that other people preferring to play that way is an equally valid choice on their part, whatever your own preferences might be.
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    You do realise you're making "stone soup" when you say "it's well suited, but you have to follow all these points: 1. 2. 3. 4. ...."

    I'm aware my take is unpopular, that's why I said it here.

    Also, I can't believe I made two different soup analogies

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ignimortis View Post
    That is a somewhat faulty take on it. Automatic Fast Travel being available and quest markers existing heavily influence how quests are designed.
    This is not a problem with fast travel and quest markers being in the game, this is a problem with the game designers assuming people are going to use them. If the developers don't make that assumption, there's no problem with including them as an option for people who want them.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aeson View Post
    The spell that veti is using to kill Ogrims for 1 point of magicka is Bound [Weapon] on Self for t<20 seconds. Personally, I would call this much more of a demonstration of the power of a martial character with a good weapon and the skill to use it than a demonstration of the power of magic in Morrowind, but veti and I have disagreed over this before.
    For me, it's a bad example because it's an outlier, and one so extreme that it doesn't matter whether you regen magicka or not: I don't think any other subset of spells come even close, not even summons. We're talking 170*2 damage / 1 magicka, with one of the easiest spells to cast. To make a comparison, a spell like firebite inflicts 15-30 dagame / 6 magicka, with touch range and the danger of failure and reflection. Bound spells are extremely effective, no doubt about it, but they are an exception (with the remarkable advantage of a good usability on the player's side). Compared to weapons, when used as a damage source, Morrowind magic is clunky, slow, faces a considerable number of resistances, and suffers from a mostly very small magicka pool*. It has its place early on though, as it helps you kill critters without swinging 1,000 times.

    *but maybe that's just why bound spells feel so powerful. In the end, they are just weapons you don't have to carry with you or repair. Once you have daedric weapons, there isn't much reason to use the bound ones, unless you are strapped for inventory room.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    Because it's stupid and tedious in a game with action combat. If I wanted random misses I'd play a turn based game. You cannot sit there an d tell me when I can clearly see the weapon hit the enemy that I missed. no, I didn't miss. the weapon turned intangible for a split second and slipped through the enemy.

    One of the most bafflingly stupid game design decisions ever made.
    It sounds like this not uncommon complaint has more to do with graphics than mechanics. You want to be assured that your sword swing mattered, but the nyx-hound only has, like, three animations. Since you didn't see it duck, you feel robbed. Morrowind, it seems, requires just a touch of theatre-of-the-mind.
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    Ima buck thread consensus here, and say I like compass arrows and quest markers and fast travel. As in I prefer when games have them (when they are big open world type affairs) to not.

    I like compass arrows and quest markers because I don't enjoy being lost, or listening to/reading long sets of directions. I remember real life navigation prior to GPS, when directions were things hastily scribbled on scrap paper and always failed to include some turn or weird bit of road or whatever. It sucked, I don't miss it at all, and I see no reason to go back to a virtual version of that.

    I like fast travel because I may, on any given game session, not want to spend a lot of my time marching from A to B and dealing with ransom encounters. I may in fact want to make progress on a quest because it's engaging and I want to see what happens next.

    Now I think they can be overdone. If the quest is look for clues, just give me the area and let me look. I don't want fast travel points everywhere, major regions/cities are fine. But I do want them.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Imbalance View Post
    It sounds like this not uncommon complaint has more to do with graphics than mechanics. You want to be assured that your sword swing mattered, but the nyx-hound only has, like, three animations. Since you didn't see it duck, you feel robbed. Morrowind, it seems, requires just a touch of theatre-of-the-mind.
    No.

    The game requires the player to perform an active interaction (line up the attack with the target). That is the test of whether the attack hits. If the player aims properly, they hit, if they fail to line up the attack correctly they miss.

    You only get one. Either the player's physical interaction with the game, or a random number generator. Not both for the same action.

  25. - Top - End - #175
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    BlackDragon

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    Quote Originally Posted by warty goblin View Post
    Now I think they can be overdone. If the quest is look for clues, just give me the area and let me look. I don't want fast travel points everywhere, major regions/cities are fine. But I do want them.
    Sounds almost like a combination of Morrowind's fast travel, which actually existed but was done via various in-game mechanics--e.g. spells that would teleport you to the nearest temple, the ability to teleport between mage guilds, Mark and Recall spells, silt striders, and if you were very advanced, propylon indexes--and the Witcher 3 giving you an area to search once you got close to your destination.

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    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    No.

    The game requires the player to perform an active interaction (line up the attack with the target). That is the test of whether the attack hits. If the player aims properly, they hit, if they fail to line up the attack correctly they miss.

    You only get one. Either the player's physical interaction with the game, or a random number generator. Not both for the same action.
    But that's such a brain dead easy interaction that it's useless as a metric. It's like saying players should always hit in d&d if they manage to roll their dice. It's not a test of the player's skill so much as the base requirement for interacting with the game.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Anteros View Post
    But that's such a brain dead easy interaction that it's useless as a metric. It's like saying players should always hit in d&d if they manage to roll their dice. It's not a test of the player's skill so much as the base requirement for interacting with the game.
    That's why enemies do things like dodge and block and stagger the player, so it a challenge.

    Elder Scrolls games kinda fail at this it's true. That's more a function of Bethesda's awful xbox 360 era combat design and generally just not being good at this sort of thing than it is an indictment of action combat in RPGs in general though.
    Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
    When they shot him down on the highway,
    Down like a dog on the highway,
    And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.


    Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.

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    Quote Originally Posted by MetroAlien View Post
    You do realise you're making "stone soup" when you say "it's well suited, but you have to follow all these points: 1. 2. 3. 4. ...."

    I'm aware my take is unpopular, that's why I said it here.

    Also, I can't believe I made two different soup analogies
    It’s well-suited with options within the game itself.
    No, not every mode is good for high-level competitions. But you don’t have to mod the game to get to it.

    I don’t enjoy playing competitive games, outside casual settings, for a variety of reasons. But other people do. They have fun their way, I have fun my way, and it’s all good.
    I have a LOT of Homebrew!

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    Quote Originally Posted by Anteros View Post
    But that's such a brain dead easy interaction that it's useless as a metric. It's like saying players should always hit in d&d if they manage to roll their dice. It's not a test of the player's skill so much as the base requirement for interacting with the game.
    No, it isn't. Because the dice are a random number generator and the player knows that's what they're interacting with.

    Your perception of how difficult the interaction is is not relevant. The fact that the game requires it is, because it vastly increases the frustration when the player does their bit right and the game tells them "nah".

    There's a reason the "Accurate Attack" mod is on the first page of the all-time most popular mods on Nexus. It's not quite as popular as the titty mod, but it's close.

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    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    No.

    The game requires the player to perform an active interaction (line up the attack with the target). That is the test of whether the attack hits. If the player aims properly, they hit, if they fail to line up the attack correctly they miss.

    You only get one. Either the player's physical interaction with the game, or a random number generator. Not both for the same action.
    Well, that's palpably incorrect. You clearly get both for the same action.

    In Skyrim, it will often happen that an arrow fired dead on target will miss because the target moved unexpectedly. (I'm not talking about the infamous "ninja dodge" effect, but simply - movement, that turns out to be exceptionally well timed from the target's point of view.) It's particularly frustrating when the shot triggers a killcam, showing that even the game itself thought that was a perfect shot.

    And Skyrim has good enough graphics and animation that you can see what happens. What it doesn't have, however, is any attempt to simulate the sheer difficulty of aiming a shot on target. You focus your convenient crosshairs, hold the shot for as long as you want, then let fly.

    Shooting a bow is nothing like that, even making allowance for Skyrim's extremely elastic ideas of "simulation". There are no sights, to start with. Because you're exerting all the strength of your arms, it's hard to draw any kind of bead on your target - that's why archery needs practice, lots of it. And even for an expert, holding a bow fully drawn requires an immense amount of energy, and will quickly tire the archer. (It's not at all good for the bow, either.)

    And then there's wind, and precipitation, variability in the tension and balance of the weapon...

    I have no experience with swinging a sword in melee, but I imagine there are similar effects at play there.

    The act of aiming the weapon does no more than designate the target. Whether you actually hit it or not is a whole different question. There are games that try much harder to simulate the physical difficulties (Kingdom Come: Deliverance springs to mind), but the trouble with this approach is that player skill rapidly starts to upstage character skill. On the whole, I think a weighted die roll is a pretty good way to capture all of this stuff, which also accounts for why tabletop games have pretty much always worked this way.
    "None of us likes to be hated, none of us likes to be shunned. A natural result of these conditions is, that we consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound." - Mark Twain

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