:mellow:





.....oooookay, so how do you propose we simulate that in a computer? You don't think (pseudo-)random number generators are required to simulate the random outcome of you trying to do something? Yes, the chance of you hitting the target is determined by the chance of you doing so (oh the wonderful world of circular redundancy), but how do you propose a program should simulate you hitting or not hitting without using a (pseudo-)random number generator?

You're making the mistake most commonly made by every person in every discussion; confusing fact with opinion. While YOU prefer that type of game, that doesn't mean those who don't are wrong and just need to be convinced with a good enough argument. One key difference between systems like turn-based and randomization and reflex/aim based is strategy. In an active combat situation, you have very little time to think about what you can do and how to do it. Your options on what you can do are often limited, since there's little point in having 100 different abilities and 1 second to figure out which to use. If you're dealing with a party, this increases. Player-skill-based combat doesn't work in a strategy/war game, for example. You can't individually, personally control 200 different units. They're different types of games, which demand different things of the player, and reward different types of satisfaction/entertainment with success.

Many people associate RPG's with a more strategic experience, and numbers vs numbers. This is not an "inferior" type of gameplay, any more than puzzle games are inferior to action games. Character-based skill allows one to play as a master swordsman if they lack dexterity themselves (and that's another thing by itself, not everyone has good reflexes or enjoys having them tested, there's no reason those people should be denied the genre), and to "build" a character as they wish, instead of being confined to their own identical capabilities every time they play. There are pros and cons to each form. You can prefer one over there other, but that doesn't make it an "evolution" or objective improvement.

How do FPS games know when the target got shot or not? (Gun is shot -> (Did it hit? (No -> Nothing Happens) (Yes -> (Did it hit a vital spot? (Yes -> Target dies) (No -> Target is wounded)))

Just translate that into sword/bow fighting. Oblivion didn't you a dice roll system.. and it worked.. the main problem was it didn't care where the hit was and it could take a huge amount of hits to kill something making many times something enjoyable into something more like.. "oh no.. not another Huge Health Bar enemy"

Don't take me wrong :pinch: , I certainly agree with you that many people enjoy to play the game in a different perspective that mine while others will agree with me. It really comes down to taste. For me its a superior type because for me its more fitting for a game like Skyrim to not use a Dice Roll system. While for someone else the Dice Roll system is much better. Thats why i love the Fallout system which gives you the option of using your Iron Sight or to use the Vats system .

The difference being that FPS games require aiming the gun so the required randomness is provided by the user input. If the same principle was used in simulating a sword-fight that would make the game pretty easy because positioning your mouse and clicking a button to make the character swing the sword is not nearly as difficult as actually holding a shield in one hand and sword in the other and swinging the sword at the right angle at the right time, whereas positioning your mouse correctly and clicking a button to make the character shoot a gun to hit a moving target in the right spot is a fairly good approximation of the level of difficulty of actually aiming a gun.

Well.. that would be debatable since it would come down to how good the AI is at defending itself.. while in a fps you have the task to aim and shot.. in a sword fight alot more factors come into play.. How big is your target? How fast is he? How fast am i? How hard is his skin? Are his weak points very easy to explore?
Even some FPS games already have more that just simply aiming and shotting... I recently played a bit of Crysis 2, while its not really a game i enjoyed.. i admired some stuff like for example when fighting does heavily armored aliens you could empty a entire clip on their armor and it still wouldn't take them down but a carefully placed shot on their exposed areas would easily take them down.

That's called "aiming".

Forgive my obvious lack of computer-oriented knowledge, but I wasn't aware computers could even roll dice. :huh:

That's just RP jargon. It means "generating one or more uniformly-distributed random numbers".

So, people are upset because computers, which are inherently different objects from boards, pens, papers, and dice, have games which utilize different types of character skill (take Oblivion's increase of damage with increase of skill approach instead of Morrowind's increased percentage to hit with increased skill approach) instead of utilizing a computer-based system which is supposedly meant to mimic a dice-based system that is meant to mimic stat progression and character skill which is, in turn, meant to mimic real-life people and their own progression... even though neither computer-based systems really do what the original RPGs people are referencing do, in the first place, and the dice-rolling system was just one way of trying to simulate character skill even though other, equally valid ways exist, and must exist, in order for computers to even have RPG-style games on them?

That sentence was too long for me to keep it all in my head at once while I read it, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say "yes".

I made a little drawing (hope its understandable) :tongue:

These are some examples, sometimes a image can help describe better

[img]http://img3.imageshack.us/f/explainingw.jpg/[/img]


(note: I can't seem to make the images show up on the thread )

But in DA2 you can't "miss" anymore. you either land a good blow and do your listed damage, or get a critical. when you roll a "miss" you simple do less damage. So a miss isn't a miss anymore in DA2.

The big problem with morrowind wasn't that you could miss, it was that they didn't adequately show what was happening. If they simply added in a animation of the enemy dodging or blocking your attack to show that you missed it would have been taken much better by the unwashed hordes.

You can't miss in melee, but ranged attacks (bows, crossbows) still can miss in the proper sense of the word, unless I am mistaken.

Even if that's not the case, I don't see that as something bad. When you "miss" the damage you do is so low anyway that it's pretty much the same thing. Ripping on DA2 and saying it's a lesser RPG because you can't properly miss is pretty pathetic.

Depends how effective the enemy is. If you can kill any enemy by "missing" often enough that the damage adds up to killing them it becomes pretty ridiculous.

Of course common sense would suggest that any enemy you keep missing that often would kill you long before you did enough damage through misses, but you never can tell with some games.

I never said it would make it a lesser RPG, what works for Dragon Age 2 doesn't necessarily work for Elder Scroll Games. What I've also been trying to say is that these kind of game mechanics have nothing to do with the fact that the game is a RPG or not.

I'll throw my tuppence worth in here. My OPINION is that die rolling yourself in a pen and paper rpg is perfectly acceptable, you roll, sometimes you fail, that is fine by me, but I personally feel cheated by a computer rolling dice for me, then telling me I have failed
( it's that travel agent in Little Britain " computer says no. " )

Morrowind had die rolls for just about everything, you 'rolled' to hit, and the damage was a fixed range, you hit based on character skill, Oblivion let you hit always, the damage was based on character skill and strength, I don't see how either system is less rpg-like. Your overall effectiveness in combat was decided by player stats, one way or the other.

My personal preference is the always hit system and here's why : when I was a kid, I was constantly subjected to fights with my brother. He was a better fighter than me, both in skill, he was out getting into trouble while I stayed at home reading and practicing music, and strength and toughness, I used to have really bad asthma, but I never missed him with a punch. The simple fact was we would always hit each other, but his punches hurt me more than mine hurt him.