Actually, forbidding swaps makes sense. If an armor set is particularly good at resisting some things, but has drawbacks like less physical protection, it’s only an interesting tradeoff if you can’t switch it willy-nilly. You have to decide up-front which set of advantages you want. If you can change them easily on the fly, you’ll just swap to whatever is strongest for each turn.
This is very true. What I said about tradeoffs only makes sense if you have some way of gathering information before combat. In most games, the way you gather information is to die and reload.
If you want to keep the “hard decision” of having to stick to a particular set of equipment, it’s better to give the player some way of doing a recon of the threat ahead without dying. RPGs really need more information spells.
Zylon
4262
They’re thinking that it’s utterly absurd for your character to be changing suits of armor while someone is hacking at him with a sword?
But yes, when RPGs throw armor suits at me with big lists of piddly bonuses, I generally ignore them. I’ve just been playing through Fallout 3, and no, I do not change hats before talking to traders, etc. Ugh.
That’s one area where New Vegas is more interesting. There are a ton of skill checks in the dialog, and 90% of the time you can say “bye, I’ll talk to you again after I’ve put on my robe and wizard hat.” For example, the check might be “Barter 35,” and that +5 Barter on your Trader’s Hat might be what you need to get by it. In fact, you end up planning around it, shaving skill points here and there because you know you can make it up with temporary bonuses.
Whether it “makes sense” or not, forbidding armor swaps in combat is a perfectly fine design decision. However, unless you’re furiously signaling what upcoming battles will consist of in advance, or relying on shithead save/load mechanics, what on earth is the point of combining that with selective resist armor? Are designers actively trying to reward OCD, tedious, unfun game mechanic manipulation?
What RPGs are you talking about, something from the 80s? I can’t remember playing anything that relied on retries to load up optimal equipment.
Roguelikes definitely make you do this until you learn the systems or spoil yourself. At that point you can go a long way by planning ahead and using all your options.
If you play Baldur’s Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal without minmaxing your class designs or doing selective equipment planning from reloads you’ll get completely butchered.
The bosses in Shin Megami Tensei games are all about screwing you over on your first attempt.
Well duh! I recently played ToB with a kensai/mage. I started it when the original game came out so I didn’t know it was one of the most powerful class combinations. I’m sure I didn’t come close to breaking the game with all the spells. Still, it didn’t take any armor swapping.
If there’s other examples I’m curious. I might have one of them in my backlog.
If you, like Yahtzee, can’t select weapons in Two Worlds II it works like this:
You have 3 entire sets of equipment, which you can switch between with a keypress. Sets include your weapon, shield, quiver, armour, amulet, rings, magic staff etc etc. Don’t try and attach individual weapons to the quick bar. It doesn’t work all that well.
They know their audience.
wumpus
4271
This was the first Yahtzee review that I didn’t even finish because the game, and the review itself, were both incredibly boring.
Hmm.
That’s why it’s so satisfying when you can beat them the first time. When that does happen.
Yahtzee reviews realism–and some shooter or other.
Great review, makes me wanna reload Painkiller.
He calls it out in the credits, but it’s not like the Doom marine was anything different from the Gears/Bulletstorm guys visually, he just didn’t say anything and you didn’t seem him much outside of the game’s box cover. Marcus Fenix is just the Doom guy with modern graphics technology applied.
WarrenM
4276
“I don’t remember asking for this”. Well, maybe not you personally, but millions of other gamers did, so … take it up with them. :)
Zylon
4277
The Doom guy would never wear that fruity headwrap.
Not one of his funniest reviews, but I agree with everything he said.
WarrenM
4279
You didn’t like Bulletstorm, Ben? :)
