#for the most part the regions are pretty samey for amount of characters who are playable in the game

[lollitree]

I did the maths on how many characters and unique alts there are in pokemas and there's DEFINITELY a Unova bias there for alts sdkfjhs

[canageek]

I've been thinking about why I stopped playing 4th edition, as I was quite a fan when it first came out. And I remembered because they completely screwed up the RPGA Living Forgotten Realms.

I was a big living greyhawk player, and I'm the first to admit the module quality was completely scattershot along any possible axis of quality you care to name, from story, to encounter balance, to treasure distribution, to plot consistency. This was because the adventures were written locally for each geographic region and approved for the most part by the local administrators (the triad) who were always short on people to write the adventures. They were written by volunteers, and as such apparently there were some legal issues with copyrights not necessarily being assigned to Wizards of the coast or the RPGA.

With 4th edition and the start of the Living Forgotten Realms this process was much more heavily centralized, with all authors being paid. However the structure of the adventures was much more tightly controlled which as I understand it meant you had to have a certain number of combats of a certain amount of challenge.

Now I've heard that 4th edition had much faster high-level combats then third edition, however the starting minimum length for a combat was much longer at low levels, even a second or third level character had a whole array of powers they can use. This means that first off there's no character like a fighter where you can basically just check out and keep swinging your sword every round. Secondly it means that every character has the potential to be the unprepared wizard where you're not ready on your turn and have to take a minute to figure out what ability you're going to use. So while every time you gain a level comments don't get much longer unlike in third edition, your base combat time was significantly higher.

And with the new stricter module writing guidelines you went from one short and one long combat as standard (an "obligatory thug fight" at the start of the module to get everyone warmed up and familiar with what each other's characters could do, then a big boss fight a few hours later at the end) to three combats each of which would take 0.75-1h, in a 4-Hour adventure. This led to a lot of DM railroading, a lot of summarizing and very little investigation or role-playing as they're just wasn't time outside of combat.

So the problem was last with the system itself, and more with the culture surrounding the main organized playgroup I played with. And it wasn't just me, under Living Greyhawk Southern Ontario had a thriving convention scene, for a long time there was a bi-weekly open game running at the University of Guelph that would usually run 2 to 4 tables, the daggerthorne consortium bran like five game days a year in Toronto, usually with about three tables running three adventures, and they're usually be a small number of larger conventions throughout the year such as Gryphcon, we're living greyhawk would be a very large percentage of the games being run. All that pretty much vanished the second living Forgotten Realms took over, as the player base just did not migrate. I remember my dad and I went to two or three events and just gave up because the adventures were so samey as it was so hard to fit anything original into the structure.

A few years later paizo started up the Pathfinder society, and my dad started playing regularly and he said it was much more like the old living greyhawk. I only went to a couple of events, as I was heading off to grad school around that time and was not particularly impressed with the quality of the local dming at the events I did go to, but that may have just been me getting unlucky, it's not like there weren't plenty of terrible DMs in the living greyhawk days and probably any other era of convention role-playing you can name.

Anyway I just thought that was an amusing microcosm of the problems with 4th edition, they managed to fix all the problems people were having with the previous structure but what they replaced it with did not do what people wanted for entirely new reasons.

People rallied against 4e for being well designed? I always heard it was because it was too much like WoW.

D&D 4e being too much like WoW is one of those things that's true in places (it actually had design informed by WoW among other things but a lot of said design was actually remodeled to actually work in the context of tabletop game instead of trying to lazily transplant mechanics from a video game directly into a tabletop game), but ultimately is just a lazy shorthand for "it's like bideo gane therefore bad." On a deeper level D&D 4e wasn't rejected "just" because it was too much like videos game but because its designers actually took a look at all the things taken as default in D&D and actually considered how conducive they were to the experience people were seemingly looking for from D&D (D&D 4e being built to be a fun skirmish game didn't come out of nowhere: it was a response to people basically playing D&D 3e like that and finding the game too unbalanced to serve that experience).

Funnily enough, in being willing to reconsider what people actually wanted out of D&D, 4e is actually the edition of Hasbro D&D most aligned with what people seem to actually want out of D&D these days. A lot of the common design issues people bring up with 5e are issues that D&D 4e already rectified once and 5e actually walked back on because they wanted to get back the purists who had rejected 4e for not being D&D-shaped enough.

[gregzillagt]

Gregzilla’s Thoughts on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Breath of the Wild is a very good game.  Very good.  Great, even.  If you’re a Zelda fan or a fan of open world adventure games then I absolutely recommend it.

I just wanted to make that very clear so I don’t get ravaged for having plenty of negative things to say about it.

(I’ll keep this free of major spoilers, but I think this game is more enjoyable the more blind you go in, so if you want absolutely nothing spoiled then maybe play it before you read this.  If that’s all good, then read on.)

(Reviewing the Nintendo Switch version)

-I am not a fan of open world games, but it’s one of the best open worlds I’ve experienced.  Most open world games nowadays bore the shit out of me, as they’re usually just tons of space without much meaningful content.  Lots of repetition, lots of samey quests, and a severe lack of discovering anything truly special.  BotW doesn’t avoid this entirely, but the beautiful environments, likable and active NPCs, fun abilities, and varied terrain go a long way to making it more fun to explore than its contemporaries.

-Gorgeous visuals, a strong contender for best art style in the series.  When the sun shines on the grassy fields, it creates a beautiful lushness the likes of which I haven’t seen in a game before.  Characters are also much more expressive than Twilight Princess or Skyward Sword, capturing a bit of that Wind Waker charm that I’ve really missed.

-Combat has some great new additions, especially the new Flurry Rush, which rewards you for performing a dodge at the very last second.  It gave me a Platinum games vibe and I hope stuff like this carries over to future games.

-One of the hardest Nintendo games in recent memory, and a complete reversal from the hand-holding of Skyward Sword, which is incredibly refreshing.

-The puzzles in the shrines and dungeons utilize Link’s abilities and the player’s spacial awareness very well to create some fun problem solving situations.  Another breath of fresh air after the dull, tedious challenges of the previous two 3D Zelda games.

-The Master Sword actually feels like a very special goal to work towards, something many of the recent Zelda games really lacked.

-Many of the side quests are fairly engaging.  I particularly enjoyed the quest requiring you to find locations based on pictures (outside of one or two that were overly vague).  In general there were several quests that I felt the need to go out of my way to do, which I can’t say about many side quests in games.

-Voice acting is not particularly good.  Outside of a few good performances, most of the voiced characters sound forced an awkward, like a mediocre anime dub.  Zelda herself, while not a bad actor, has a very unfitting voice - she’s supposed to be around 17 but ends up sounding 30.  I’m glad they tried it once, but unless the quality is upped considerably then I think I’d prefer they stick to text and grunts, or maybe Hylian.

-I was not a huge fan of the main story.  Most of the big events revolve around characters from Link’s past who you don’t really interact with as a player, while there are four perfectly good characters you DO actually go on quests with and are active in your adventure that would have been more satisfying to see stick around in the story.  Additionally, Link is often recognized and hailed as the legendary hero, which is a story element I don’t really enjoy.  Wind Waker Link is really the only one I enjoy as a character, because he (and the player) actually has to prove himself due to his complete lack of legendary status.  BotW brings everything back to “Link is destined to beat the bad thing,” which is pretty tired at this point.  Zelda’s character development via flashbacks was one of the better aspects, as they gave her more conflict and personality than most Zelda incarnations.

-This is probably one of the most boring incarnations of Ganon to date, having basically zero impact on the gameplay experience until you actually go to face him.  Outside of summoning enemies into the world now and again, the world seems to be doing pretty alright even as the demonic pig cloud is hanging around the castle.  The primary motivation is to save Zelda, as well as PREVENT the world from getting its shit rocked, which isn’t a terrible motivation, but certainly pales in comparison to Ocarina of Time, in which you actually get to see the direct results of Ganon’s takeover.  For the most part it’s very easy to forget Ganon’s even there, which doesn’t make him a particularly strong villain.

-The shrines, while having very good puzzle design, feel completely detached from the world.  I’m glad the puzzles themselves are improved, but at times it feels less like I’m playing a Zelda game with better puzzles, and more like I’m playing a Zelda game that temporarily turns into Portal whenever I enter a shrine.  The big open world and the enclosed shrines feel totally separate, and I would have liked to see more of these kinds of puzzles utilized in the actual overworld.  It feels incredibly artificial, and at first it’s not an issue, but as the game went on I found myself getting very bored at the concept of the shrines, as it turned the whole experience into a formula.

-The dungeons are a similar issue.  While they have some of the best puzzle design of any dungeons in the series, they all look basically the same and don’t have much personality.  No dungeon really feels special or standout from the others, they’re all a pretty samey aesthetic.

-The bosses have the same issue as well.  The main bosses of the game all look almost identical and don’t really feel that different, which is one of the biggest disappointments for me.  I also found them incredibly frustrating, doing unreasonable amounts of damage and often attacking erratically, which could often feel like too much to handle considering switching between weapons and shields can be a bit more awkward this time around.

-The final boss is the exception, it feels much more polished and up to the series’ standards, though it was a bit strange how easy it was compared to the dungeon bosses.  I died many, many times on all the other bosses, but I played through the final boss twice and didn’t die once.  Regardless it’s a satisfying finale, probably one of the better ones in the series.

-The scenes BEFORE the dungeons, involving some of the more memorable characters, are very exciting and fun, probably some of the most engaging moments in the game.

-Enemy outposts are fun to take on at first, but it didn’t take long for me to just start ignoring them.  I didn’t find much desire to experiment on ways to take them on when it was usually just a better idea to pick my strongest weapon and wail away, or use bombs and arrows to set them ablaze.  

-This is more of a personal opinion, but I just am not a fan of the emphasis on equipment and picking up tons of items survival game style.  I really just don’t dig when games stuff your inventory full of tons of shit to keep track of.  I much prefer Zelda to leave the RPG elements on the lighter side, and stick to just a few weapons and permanent arsenal upgrades, as I feel that creates a stronger sense of progression and makes every item feel special.  I can see why Nintendo tried the survival game angle, and it certainly has its charm, but I hope they don’t try it again.  I know Zelda is often referred to as an action RPG, but I never wanted the RPG side of that to be that prominent.

-There’s some very fun and likable NPC characters, made even better by having schedules and not just standing around waiting for Link to show up.  Highlights include the painter Pikango, the Sheikah tech lab scientists, and of course Sidon, the internet’s new favorite fish boy crush.

-Optional minibosses in the overworld are a very fun addition, though there’s several of each type, which makes them feel less special.  

-The music is surprisingly sparse for a Zelda game.  Considering the vast open world I can see why they would try this, as the mellow piano tunes certainly compliment the calm atmosphere.  I do wish there were a few more memorable tunes though, because when I think Zelda, I think truly masterful soundtracks.  The Hyrule Castle theme is by far one of my favorite tracks in the series, however.

-Shield surfing is the best.

-Pretty much every NPC species is something we’ve seen before.  Rito, Gorons, Zora, and even Koroks are back.  There’s plenty of likable characters in the bunch, but it would have been nice to visit a region with a whole new species instead of just reusing old ones.

-Finally, while exploring the world is absolutely enthralling for a good while, I unfortunately began to feel my typical huge open world boredom as the hours racked up.  Over time the rewards for exploring began to feel less exciting and more formulaic, which sadly just seems inevitable whenever I play a gigantic game like this.  I just prefer the smaller, tighter, more intimate worlds like Majora’s Mask and A Link Between Worlds, or other games like (shocker) Dark Souls and Bloodborne.  This is more of a personal opinion, again, but I really do gravitate towards games with a more hand-crafted and dense feel, where every single inch has something new and interesting.  BotW certainly comes closer to capturing that feeling than most giant open world games, but in the end when a game is this gigantic, it’s bound to bore me sooner or later.

So there ya have it.  I know this sounded very negative, but just know that I really did have a good time with Breath of the Wild, and I think it represents a very good change of pace in Nintendo’s game design.  The fact that they were so willing to totally rebuild the Zelda experience from the ground up leaves me very hopeful for them to be more adventurous like this in future games as well.  There were plenty of moments I truly enjoyed myself, and it really is a beautiful world to explore.  But for me, I just don’t think bigger is always better.  It’s very much worth playing, and I’m glad Nintendo gave it a go, but it’s not personally my ideal Zelda experience.