Do You Have Any Unpopular Gaming Opinions?

[marlowe221]

In games like Wizardy IV, your party can (and probably will) be randomly destroyed during a random encounter, and, in all honesty, there really isn't anything you can do about it. (Whether your party is destroyed is dictated almost entirely by "rolls" over which you have no control.) If this happened during a platformer or fighting game - e.g., platforms appeared and disappeared randomly, your opponent's strength fluctuated randomly, etc. - we would probably consider the game to be completely broken.

We probably would - but then again, those are not genres of games whose primary mechanics ARE dice rolls. After all, half the game of an RPG is building your character/party such that the rolls are as much in your favor as you can make them.

[Ack]

Ah, see, that kind of procedural generation has recently started appearing in FPS like Tower of Guns and Ziggurat. You may start up the game and find yourself facing an enemy for which you are entirely unprepared in a room that is an absolute nightmare to maneuver in. You die, and the game resets entirely unless you managed to fulfill some kind of requirement to unlock some item or weapon or something.

And then you come back for more.

[Erik_Twice]

My point is/was that a thread where people are encouraged to express their "unpopular opinion" will inevitably become susceptible to the worst elements of hipster posturing, backlash to hipster posturing, backlash to the use of the words hipster or posturing or backlash, etc. Thus the "circle jerk" and/or "trollng" nature of the thread I spoke out about years ago. A post like this from someone like me is also par for the course, of course. Boring thread is boring.

You mean, filling with "hipster posturing" and "backlash to hipster posturing" like you are doing right now?

Seriously, we have had some really nice discussions here. Really, really great ones, actually. And hey, I resent all this "trolling", "circle jerk" accussations because I'm one of the most active posters in the thread and they apply as much to me as they do to anyone else.

In fact, to me one of the great things about this thread is that it has been devoid of insincere accussations or backlash.

[Gunstar Green]

In games like Wizardy IV, your party can (and probably will) be randomly destroyed during a random encounter, and, in all honesty, there really isn't anything you can do about it. (Whether your party is destroyed is dictated almost entirely by "rolls" over which you have no control.) If this happened during a platformer or fighting game - e.g., platforms appeared and disappeared randomly, your opponent's strength fluctuated randomly, etc. - we would probably consider the game to be completely broken.

We probably would - but then again, those are not genres of games whose primary mechanics ARE dice rolls. After all, half the game of an RPG is building your character/party such that the rolls are as much in your favor as you can make them.

I think that's a major part of it, yes. Dice rolls remove quite a bit of player agency. In an action game you generally want to depend more on your skill than statistics.

But then again maybe I'm wrong. I only recently started poking at the Borderlands games and that seems to have a lot of dice roll dependence.

[BoneSnapDeez]

In The 7th Saga you can get boned during your first enemy encounter.

[Sarge]

So, this probably counts as unpopular, but generally, when I see the words "procedurally generated", I run for the hills. Same deal with "tower defense".

[Erik_Twice]

I'm not sure if Wizardry IV is a great example. It's probably the hardest RPG ever made and it's not designed to be attemped by anyone who wasn't already an expert. It also seems you are talking about the Samurais, but keep in mind they cannot kill Werdna as long as he's defended by monsters.

I think a better example would be Persona 3. In that game, if your main character dies, you lose and there are lots of enemies that may cast an instakill spell on a random member of the party, which is dumb

[BoneSnapDeez]

I like some tower defense. Rampart is awesome, for instance.

[Sarge]

I like some tower defense. Rampart is awesome, for instance.

Actually, I agree with that. Rampart is cool stuff. I feel that's a little different from the modern variants, which are basically reverse RTS.

[Gunstar Green]

So, this probably counts as unpopular, but generally, when I see the words "procedurally generated", I run for the hills.

It depends on what else I know about the game and how much of it is being left of to the whims of randomness. It's nothing new, it's been part of gaming since gaming has been a thing. It's just suddenly become a buzzword for indie titles without much else going for them, especially ones that want to make their lack of level design look like a positive.

There's only a few instances where I see it as an actual selling point, such as No Man's Sky where it's the entire point of the game. Whether or not it will make for an interesting game we'll have to wait and see.