Too easy to become godlike?

[Darklord]

i don't know if anyone else thinks this is a problem, but it bugged my quite a bit that it is too easy to become invincible in this game. if you go for enchantment value in your equipment rather than protection, it's very possible to get 100 sanctuary and 100 spell absorbtion if you chose the atronach as your sign (who needs to regenerate magicka anyway when you have lots of exquisite rings and the likes to enchant... more powerful than regular spellcasting anyway).
potions are just as abusable (fortify intelligence potions, drink 10 of them, make new ones until your intelligence is in the 1000s, then make whatever you wish... a restore health potion will make you unkillable for minutes)

of course, you could just say "don't abuse the system!", but honestly... almost anything you can do that is more complex than "chuck fireball" or "whack them!" is good enough to be abuse.

constant effect levitate - hurl spells at them in almsot complete safety
absorb health spells - goes past most defense and is way to efficient
hide behind an obstacle - enemy spellcasters will waste all their mana blasting a rock
damage strength spells: permanent paralyse, just poke them to death with a spear
high area low duration paralyse, cast on strike - your opponents wont fight back

sure it's fun to gradually become more powerful, but if you can vivec within 10 seconds and he can't even hurt you... what else is there?

[Yorick]

That's the beauty of the game. ROLEPLAY. It's about self limitation, not trying to become an ubercharacter within the system. It's an important lesson. If it's all about the stats, you'r just manipulating 0 and 1s. If it's roleplay it's about imagination. Roleplay requires self limitations to work. "No... that's out of character" etc.

But the beautiful open ended nature of the game means you can do that or not. In most games people find hacks and cheats that do exactly as you say, so why not build it into the game itself as Morrowind has done?

Hands down Morrowind is the best game I've ever played.

[Yorick]

That's the beauty of the game. ROLEPLAY. It's about self limitation, not trying to become an ubercharacter within the system. It's an important lesson. If it's all about the stats, you'r just manipulating 0 and 1s. If it's roleplay it's about imagination. Roleplay requires self limitations to work. "No... that's out of character" etc.

But the beautiful open ended nature of the game means you can do that or not. In most games people find hacks and cheats that do exactly as you say, so why not build it into the game itself as Morrowind has done?

Hands down Morrowind is the best game I've ever played.

[johnny]

And of course there's always the settings.... did you know you can turn it up so the game becomes harder ?

[Darklord]

i enjoy the depth and open-endedness of morrowwind... but imo that is no reason to accept a sub-standard gameplay. it's a gripe i have with most roleplaying games - either they are hack&slash fests with decent gameplay but without an immersive storyline, or it's a damn good yarn (i was actually shivering when i first met dagoth gareth) where the combat aspects are merely an annoyance.

self-limitation can extend the lifespan of a game (i completed baldurs gate with a solo wizard never casting a single spell, as a tribute to rincewind from discworld).

i realise power isn't everything (i've been playing pen&paper rpgs since i was 13), but i long for a rpg that will draw me in while at the same time giving me a challenge despite my best efforts. say, baldurs gate 2 with gameplay aspects of commandos... or morrowind with actual fencing and a smart enemy ai. there are excellent games which combine rpg elements with the best of other genres (deus ex comes to mind), but in those rpg elements are just the icing on the cake. could it not work the other way round as well?
i'm not dissing morrowind as a whole, i enjoy the game a lot. but despite this, i can't help thinking "it could have been so much more..."

in most rpgs, your opponents don't employ all their resources but rely on raw power. when a major battle is challenging because bandits attack you from multiple directions, thieves sneak up on you and bodyguards prevent you from getting close to the spellcasters... i will get that precious "you are there" feeling in combat as well. if it's a series of granted wins until you face a lvl 2 zillion opponent with out of this world statistics you dispatch with your godlike power and/or serious weaknesses of the game engine, i quickly lose interest in combat.

regardless of my level, anything trying to kill me should be dangerous; by all means reduce the number of hostile encounters if you don't want a hack&slash fest, but make the ones that do take place matter. some rpgs have combat mods that go a long way towards that, but game companies rarely incorporate this. i just don't want to bored while fighting for my life!

[Yorick]

It's called "The lowest common denominator".
A little bit of everything. Most computer gamers don't want to have a degree in brain surgury to get past a single combat scenario.

If you are talking realism, what's realistic about Morrowind at all? It's fantasy. A real battle could take all day. Do you have 12 hours to spend on one battle? Most professionals who work and play an rpg for an hour each night certainly don't.

Then you'd need months to heal. None of this heal-in-five-minutes crap. What is that?

It's a computer game, and a damn good one that offers choices in levels of immersion and difficulty to it's players.

It's easy to say "it could have been more" but talk is cheap. Could it? How much more computer power would this realism and advanced AI you are extolling need? How many more gamers would have been disenfranchised? When it came out you needed a pretty top-of-the-line machine.

It's far and away the banchmark game yet - according to most - and yet you are wanting more? Invent the technology then.

I mean it could have been 3-dimensional instead of lousy 2-d! I wanted to smell the sea! Why don't the blows actually hurt me? I should feel hungry when my character does!

Where do you draw the line? It's a game. I repeat. Many games have cheats and hacks which become standard that lift experience caps, remove attribute caps, increase speeds etc. In Morrowind it's built in the game. No hacks needed. You can even design your own world.

Beautiful.

Originally posted by Yorick: You can even design your own world.

I think ultimately, the construction kit is the clincher.
It’s the equivalent of putting your money where your mouth is by the Development team.
They're saying: "you don't like it? Then make it better for yourself"
and lo!

People have, I myself made a plugin to rebalance certain things for my own personal enjoyment, and to me, that was what makes the game so special, Dwarves on the shoulders of giants and all that.

[Oruboris]

Personally, I feel that Darklord's original point is valid.

As with Wiz8, the early going can be tough and challenging, but the quality of your encounters doesn't really keep pace with the advancement of the characters, so long as you are even half competent at character developement-- and thats WITHOUT using any 'built in cheats' like staying 'corpsified' till your strength is at 300, or the various tricks like using 'soulbind' to make an attribute boosting skill permanent.

MIND YOU, I DO ENJOY THE GAME AND APPRECIATE THE EFFORT THAT WENT INTO IT. But the one little thing the developers could have tweaked more efficiently would have been to create more satisfying end and mid game encounters, IMO...

Oru

It is too easy to become a god but at your own perogative. YOU have the choice. If you can't control yourself, then maybe you can try some other RPGs that won't let you even if you wanted to. [img]smile.gif[/img] I love this game for the amount of control I have. No other game I can think of allows me this much control and creativity. The toolset rules. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Gabrielles blades]

you dont even need tactics to become god like in power.
Just making a spell on an amulet with lower resistance 90% or so and 100 dmg touch spell - reason is so powerful is cuz spells on items are instant recast, so an amulet like this along with an amulet of pure damage can drop an enemies resistance to almost nothing, and then kill him in a matter of seconds with the 2nd amulet.
the only issue i have with this is where the enemy has a spell of reflect on him (then you need to cast an amulet of 100% resist to whatever you are casting with the dmg amulets)

Course, theres also always melee godlike ness...make a bunch of equipment with things like restore health constant, so you end up with super troll like regeneration that almost nothing can kill you.
Weapons with cast on strike 40+ dmg make short work of things as well.
can also make instant recast 100 restore health/fatigue amulets...so even if they do make it past your high regeneration and armor you can get back to full in seconds.