Become as gods

That's not really gaming the game though, that's just being a spectator, basically.

It's fun when games hard at first but then you learn and conquer it and became immortal.
If you're god from get go like in asscreed or cod then yeah, it's worth nothing.

if the game lets you become invincible, the game is too easy
they can increase the difficulty by "balancing" the single-player game

of course, the way that JRPGs typically do it by letting you reach level 99 when the endgame calls for level 70 or 40 or so isn't nearly as bad, because you gotta put a whole lot of work into reaching level 99 if you wanna actually do that, but the game design would be better if you were actually intended by be level 99 by the final boss without grinding, but then in that case they could implement a difficulty setting

but if something as simple as a character build makes you invincible or something, then thats something else

Personally I'm not a fan of the RPG elements in of Automata, Transformers Devastation as well. I just don't think they are a good fit for an action game, Your either too weak or too powerful it's too easy to miss the sweet spot you should be in. it's hard to be encouraged to get skilled at playing because you can't tell if the boss is hard because it's a hard boss or if it's because your under leveled, and if your over leveled the game is just a joke.

I vastly perfer how Devil May Cry handles things. It's balanced for any skill level of player you just need to pick the right difficulty setting, you can only start to brake the games balance when you've mastered all of it's mechanics and understand how they all can be intertwined and manipulated, and being able to break the game is your reward for mastering it, and even if you were someone who just looked up cheese strats to beat harder modes, You not going to be getting any S ranks without actually understanding the game.

You can kill Berial in 10 seconds on DMD with Vergil, but you won't get an S rank on that level without actually knowing how to play.

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This.
And it is overwhelmingly prevalent in western companies. They jst want to hide the fact that the game is shit and badly programmed.

The equipment system in T:D exists only to pad out the fact that the game is like 3 hours long.

FF8 and Morrowind, basically. Also the Disgaea series lets you get silly powerful. Other than that, games that allow you to become OP are pretty rare.

What I'd like to see more of, tbh, is the exact opposite in games. Games where you're so completely outclassed by even the most basic enemy that you have to exploit every aspect of the game just to stand a chance. The meme is that Dark Souls does this, but not really, you can beat any game in the series with just the junky starter gear if you wanted.

this
you can become pretty much invincible

Creating imbalance and making it fun requires intelligence and imagination. Which most western devs are lacking. Especially once you get onto big budget games. Its easy and simple as fuck to make something imbalanced. Make a fighter and give one character 10x the health bar. But to make if fun you need to actually work on design and implementation of the game systems. Most modern games are copy paste shit with a new gimmick. Third person shooter with… erm… Time mechanics? First person shooter but.. umm… basebuilding? Modern games are built on an elevator pitch design philosophy. For much the same reason as movies are I imagine: Suits are too stupid and ignorant of the medium to understand anything beyond "like X but with Y"
Also, big budget games are terrified of taking any risks. Balance is safe. Imbalance is risky. Will the player like the imbalance? Will they feel too weak or too powerful? What if they're too stupid to see how to work the system? Better make it bland and boring just to be safe.

Nigger, please. Shit's rampant everywhere, the nips just have fan service as a value add.

Because, despite them being single player, devs see the games as community experiences. They nerf exploits like that, because, otherwise, it's "cheating" to easily attain the same achievements, unlocks, and general goals that other plays are trying to legitimately get.

Because becoming strong is not in their ideals.

Let me list a bunch of games that did this shit and pissed me off.

Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen.

In the original Dragon's Dogma, there were "God builds" that made you unstoppable with extreme risk. The most famous one was the Nightstalker Build, ie, no pawns, travel at night only, stay in critical health the entire time, cast buff magic and you could deal Millions of damage in a single hit but run the chance of dying in a single hit. Other issues? This build required severe minmaxing, meaning you were not doing this by accident nor were you doing it on your first ,second or third run of the game. It was truly rewarding to be completely destroy things that could still destroy you if you made a single mistake.
tl;dr up to 50x more damage in exchange for dying in one hit and there were still enemies completely immune to physical damage so you really had to be a dodging master and good with throwing items to even stand a chance.

In Dark Arisen, they changed the items of this build to be additive rather than multiplicative, which in turn rendered a whole bunch of buffs absolutely worthless. Like how the fuck is +2 damage equal to x2 damage - - but the requirements for the build were the same. You still died in one hit but now your damage output was so pitifully low you could run anything else. Essentially punishing anyone who was dedicated enough to do this.

Another example.

Dark Souls , 1.03
Crystal Ring Butterfly Shield / Pyromancy / Magic / etc.
Before they fucked up the game in favor of PVP, very few items could get you through NG+7.
Then they decided to re balance everything for PVP, not taking any fucking consideration for people who only played in PvE.

And then the faggots behind Darkest Dungeon.

Oh and then Metal Gear Online.

One more game. GTA Online, at Launch in 2013
But there was no economy in the game. You couldn't buy or sell anything to other players, so what economy was having a lot of easily accessible money ruining?
2 years later PC launch.

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The stories of constant rebalancing keep me from even touching this game, despite pirating it on vita. I want a finished product, not something that will shift rules every few days.

I cant wait for red dead redemption 2

All I want is more western games. I already know they're going to ruin it.

They would make the Jester a class that can do absolutely nothing if they could get away with it, the fuckers.

Modern games trigger something in me. Not depression, just a severe lack of fucks. It's like the developers know enough people will mindlessly scream " YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUY IT" while filling in their credit card numbers. If I had a time machine and I told my younger self what gaming would become in 30 years, I'd laugh in my own face.

And that's why I tell people to either pirate Darkest Dungeon or buy the GOG version, simply because you can control which version of the game you're playing, unlike Steam. I could rant all fucking day at all the bullshit they pulled with Crimson Court. That alone should have completely killed off the fanbase of the game. Imagine if EA did some shit like this.

HANK! Don't say crumbbumb in front of company.

Since you brought up Nier Automata - the problem there isn't that you can become an immortal and unstoppable killing machine, it's that you do that without any effort just by playing normally.

Edmund McMillen lacks both the intelligence and work ethic to make a balanced game as well as anticipate what the meta strategy of his own game would be

Because with unclear developer intentions you end up with people having wildly fluctuating experiences from one another and players not realizing they're breaking the game or using what amounts to a cheat code to begin with.

You might think "who gives a shit, you fucking autist?", but consider this. OP kindly mentioned Nier Automata, which is a prime example of what I'm about to say. You can find tons of health potions throughout the game, and you can buy like 99 of them for cheap. At any point in the game you can pause the game and just refill your health to max without any penalty, effectively eliminating any challenge from the game. What's the point in any of the combat if you can instantly heal at any point?

And so people almost reflexively respond: "then just don't use the potions". But here's the thing, if the challenge of the game is completely up to the player, where is the line? Where is the line between however the developer intended for you to play the game and the player breaking the game? There's nothing in Nier Automata which gives you a reason NOT to use healing items. Games like Bayonetta would give you a score penalty at the end of each stage if you used items. You could use them, but it's made incredibly obvious that you're not really intended to use them. Especially in discussions you'll encounter a lot of people who use every given advantage to them to their fullest, be it creditfeeding, cheesing strats, or spamming healing items.

A game's difficulty shouldn't be a matter of self-restriction, I shouldn't have to hold back just because the game will practically break if I do, that should be only possible if I know the game inside out. I should be able to use the full extent of the toolset I'm given and have a good time, that's why balance is necessary to make everything useful in at least some situation, and to encourage the player learning the game.

What's to prevent me from playing through Symphony of the Night while insta-killing everything with the Shield Rod? Absolutely nothing. What's to prevent me from playing through Dishonored while using all my given powers? A bad ending only, but not a real incentive when the required playstyle for the good ending is boring as sin. What's to prevent me from S-Ranking every mission in Metal Gear Rising with the Fox Blade. Absolutely nothing, the ranking doesn't even account for the Fox Blade.

This happens because a lot of developers are not clear enough in making it obvious what constitutes as a God Mode cheat, what constitutes as being a total shitter at the game, and what constitutes at being good at a game (not really applicable to sandboxes).

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i bought it when it was at its meme zenith on here and regret every cent of it. it was fun for about a week, then the devs nerfed the only strategy i had found to actually survive and had buffed the enemies, and added weird new rules to combat like having to hack your way through enemy corpses to get to their back row - taking up time and giving the enemy more turns to fuck you up. i've never seen a team that dedicated to stamping out fun in my life and i'm never, ever going to pay for anything they make again

Yeah, I get that it's cool to be an edgy contrarian and whatnot, but it's actually a good game.

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I don't disagree with you on any point, I just want to say this:
It's Platinum. The only truly difficult game they've ever made was Bayonetta. I know I'll catch flack for this but fuck it. Metal Gear Rising and 101 were shitshows, fun shitshows but mechanically they was a step backwards from Bayonetta. It's like they were one hit wonders.

Bayonetta was their best hit hands down, nothing they've released since has compared to it.
Nier 2, Wonderful 101 , Madworld and Anarchy Reigns were alright, could have been far better. Especially Anarchy Reigns, dead on arrival.
Bayonetta 2, Metal Gear Rising and Transformers were iffy as hell if you compared them to Bayonetta.
Vanquish was meh. Some people swear by it, but people who played it before the PC release hype team arrived will warn you to never play it simply because of how buggy and mindlessly repetitive the game is.
Korra and Ninja Turtles were absolute shit to the point where you shouldn't even pirate them.

Darkest was the ultimate result of the "IT'S FUN BECAUSE IT'S HARD" meme that people perpetuate. Personally, it has a new challenger with Labotomy Corp.

Game was too popular, now is in it's refractory period when people don't want to talk about it. By this time next year people will be back to "it was above average mechanically and had good music/aesthetics."

It just isn't fair. I bought the game like 2 months after it released, managed to find one full game because the stars aligned, and holy shit it was a fucking blast. Played like 3 or 4 rounds before people had to leave, but the game deserved better than what it got.

Your talk of items reminded me the first time I played FFTA. I went through like 75% of the main game without using items because I thought they were 100% illegal thanks to the tutorial battle. I was pretty retarded at the time. I didn't understand how to learn abilities either. I switched equipment and characters ended up with new skills but I never made the connection. Didn't class change until after Famfrit.
sage for blogspot

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That kinda sucks but hell, it was a pretty great game. Not 10/10 by any stretch and had its flaws. Not to mention, it's not like many good games even come out nowadays.

I remember back when OOT had a sudden popularity spike on Holla Forums, mainly theories about the temples and shit like that and it was honestly one of the best threads I've ever lurked in. Shitposting was kept to a minimum at first and what was being said was interesting to anyone that cared.

I did love the N:A threads when they first came after the game released. The good ones anyway.

Patching games frequently has become common place and in order to sell DLC the devs push out patches whilst they're at it.
Part of the patches is balancing the game. Sometimes things are just plain broken and make the game trivial. This is especially important if the game is multiplayer and the majority of the population is using the exact same customization and strategies. Anything that flatout breaks the game in a player versus player setup should be fixed.

That said, games these days are often overbalancing things. And I hate it too.
For customization to have any meaning, some setups need to be flatout better at some things than other setups, but modern balancing insists on making everything good at everything, or something exclusively good at one thing. As a result, any time spent customizing equipment is time that feels completely wasted.
It's even worse with games like Diablo/PathOfExile/Torchlight; items don't have any significant meaning in those games, they're just stats that the treadmill feeds you that you require to do anything at all.

I think most of this is better attributed to developers that have absolutely no idea what the fuck they're doing though. Time and time again I see games get balanced in ways that make absolutely no sense and just suck all the fun out of it. And I don't mean the "devs nerfed thing that was good", I mean "dev changed mechanic X completely breaking the innate rock-paper-scissors balance that made the game actually function".

You're*

You can REALLY, REALLY break FFTA. Blue Mage + Ninja, Assassin + Concentrate, Gunner + Ultima Charge, it doesn't end.

FF Tactics A2 is even worse, you have shit like Double Sword + Devout's Magic Frenzy + Blue Mage's Night = Attacking every enemy twice and sleeping anyone you missed somehow.

Then there's Blood Magic + Double Cast + Summon. instant summons, you can literally heal back the hp with Phoenix or Unicorn as long as you use it last, and you get out a powerful area attack. And you can do this every fucking turn.

then there's the Seeq race's Reverse Item + Healing Item, or Reverse Item + Remedy, which can inflict 400/999 damage and inflict every status effect in the game.

If you pair the summoner with a Parivir (samurai) and have him use his skill that sacrifices himself but fully heals everyone, you can use this skill every fucking time and revive him fully with Phoenix to use it again, and due to how revival works in the second game you can use this to relocate him elsewhere as well, and Parivirs have their own set of game breaking shit that bust through elemental defences, make people even more weak to elemental attacks and so on, which they specialize in.

Bangaas got fucking broke since one of their classes is called Trickster, specializes in inflicting status effects, but they also have a low damage weapon called a Card that they can fling ridiculous distances and nothing can get in the way of them, so paired with Ultima Charge, which has range equal to your weapon, and they can decide who dies every two or so turns, which they get loads of due to high speed.

the only ones that get the shit end of the stick are the Gria, who still get flying status and can traverse any terrain.

Blue magic still can't be beat, since you can combine it with Seer though.

but holy SHIT the game is broke

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once the PC port hit the game became really hard to talk about.

I never experimented much with tricksters or seeq. I tried doing every possible sidequest before advancing the plot and that kind of ruined my recruiting. I didn't understand why I had no grias or seeq in the team until much later in the game where I didn't want to go through the trouble of raising another unit. That and the game gives you so many OCs you HAVE to deploy on every story mission you get basically no free slots. Magic Frenzy was the shit and the game let you know that very early with the 5 colors clan's Blue Mage fight.

It's fun when you can play a game in many different ways.
If a certain class or build overshadows the others too much, not only it's not fun to just choose the "easy mode class" to plow trough the game but it's unfair to the people that prefer or just chose to play the other ones.
Even singleplayer games have meta, specially when players can freely build their stats. When a certain build or strategy is objectively better than all other options, the other ones are discarded when playing the game seriously and it defeats the purpose of gicing you that customization in the first place.

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FF5. Blue mages can kill pretty much every boss in a single hit.

Happens with all any game that gets too much buzz/shilling.

That's the thing. Games shouldn't be made with autistic speedrunners and pro MLG gaymers in mind, they should be made so that your regular non-braindead person who plays the game has fun in his first playthrough, ideally even for more playthroughs after the first.

I didn't mean playing seriously as speedrunning or anything similar, just that those alternative builds wouldn't matter unless making a joke or "for fun" playtrough, either fully realising you're crippling yourself and doing it for laughs or extra challenge or being retarded and not realising it's an unviable build compared to the other ones on your first playtrough or simply unlucky for choosing the bad build/class on your first playtrough.
By playing seriously, I meant trying to clear the game and using all your tools at your disposal, that's what most people should do when first playing the game.
Then there's a balance between what classe's and build's fun and efficiency. You'll try to play with the one you find more fun, but if it's not objectively as useful as others then you may have to drop it to play as other ones, unless you want to cripple yourself.
I've played too many games where melee classes were just much worse than any sort of ranged classes for the simple fact that they deal about the same if not less damage, tank just a bit more, yet need to be at point blank at all times to be as effective as the other ones. It's not fun to play those in these games.

Been looking for games like this. Risk of Rain is pretty great for having a bum phase in the beginning and you being a god in late game.

Just get so much barbed wire the visual effect break into a white translucent square over the screen. Always a blast to hear things popping off screen.

In tactics games where things try to be balanced, you have a balance of Damage/Range/Durability/Utility

Classes will generally be built like this
+Damage ++Range -Durability –Utility = Archer
+Damage +Range –Durability ++Utility = Mage
++Damage –Range +Durability -Utility = Warrior

So when you get down to it, the balance is pretty shallow unless you decide to go nuts. FF Tactics Advance 2 went fucking nuts, made classes based off of concepts, tested them and then locked them off based on usefulness so you couldn't steamroll the early game.

When you're designing, it's all about making cool shit, then testing to see how well it works and nerfing it if it breaks the game too much or locking it off first behind requirements, if you're going by constrained design you'll suffer for it.

A good example of constrained design that DOES work is Tactics Ogre PSP, each class has a useful role that needs others to cover for them, and so on.

In Tactics ogre, you have four unit types and classes that fit two types at once while having their own gimmicks, and Monster classes which act as certain roles, usually tanks.

You have Warrior, Berserker, Lizardman's Juggernaut and such, which act as tank classes and have little utility, but have passive abilities that stop units from passing their territory without stopping in front of them. this necessitates Archers, which do little but snipe mages and other archers from long distances, but generally struggle against Tank types and Monsters, so your Tanks will mostly be contending with other Tanks.

Then you have Mages, and while they do have magic bolts and such, will hardly do much damage unless they cast the absolute highest level of attack spell, so they're relegated to support and disturbance, being able to accurately and to a terrifying extent completely shut down any type of unit and open them up to a mauling, which is why they're usually targeted first, since they can do this to Dragons, an effective tank unit.

Then you have Clerics, who heal. This is more game changing then you think, since they can give a tank or mage a speed buff to take more turns or just give them more survivability.

And that's not even getting into the Mage Knight classes, who generally do less damage all around, but have unique abilities or affinities that make them exceedingly useful. A Terror Knight can Frighten enemies for example and effectively ruin any defence a Tank type has, or put enemies to sleep or stone like a Mage can, while still having a decent amount of attack, and can also wield Crossbows, which are less effective then bows but can still attack at range, a character like that has no strength, but cannot be blindsided by any type of unit is still useful as hell, especially in a tactics game that is heavily restricted in the amount of damage you can do.

However, because of this, it suffers from very long fights, and it still makes you grind for some godawful reason, both easily fixable in a new game by changing how it's weird class levels work into character levels, or having some sort of catch up mechanic for new classes.

It's not hard to design a tactics game, it's literally all about balance.

What is the point of playing a game that becomes too easy?

No it isn't
How could it possibly be?

If anything it's unfair to the people that pick the overpowered method by accident and play a sleepwalking simulator instead of a fun video game without even realising it.

If you're obsessed with everyone having an identical experience then don't have character progression
If you have character progression then make it interesting
If it's interesting then there will be wildly differing levels of power

It's just bad design

It's not about having an identical experience, but having each class or build excel in some or other areas in a balanced way.
Every build, unless retarded shit like full int full melee warriors, should be able to pull their own weight equally despite having their advantages and advantages.
No fun trying to make a berserker build with top damage if you know you could just go for a standard mage build and do much more damage without all the drawbacks.

Are you actually a faggot?

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I stopped playing a while ago, what happened with crimson court ?

They nerfed the entire base game basicly cause shit that wasn't viable became actually useful for once in the DLC AFAIK.
Are you not playing DD with sex mods for luls.?

I haven't touched it for a year now, how much lewd are we talking about ?

Get the fuck out.

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What game is this? Looks cool af

Death Stranding

I think this is a big part of it. Patching games is so easy now since everything is connected to the internet, and devs can communicate with players super easy. Plus with how hard multiplayer is pushed even in mainly single player games, the devs have greater incentive to nerf anything someone bitches about to keep people playing.

This is why I wish they'd hurry up with that PS3 emulator. I've got disc versions of some of the hottest PS3 games that PC-Only faggots missed out on and I'm ready to rip them and upload them so they can experience some real quality.

Can you imagine?
Holla Forums game weekend.

What i hate the most about balance in nu-multiplayer is how instead of fixing actually game-breaking shit, it only feels like every character is mown down to please kids who just want to win with luck.
In modern FPS or MMOs, with each update every character and weapon just feels less special and the gameplay is minimized to 'click anything with no strategy until you win', all because of a few buttdestroyed babies whining about something being too OP instead of learning how to counter it.
In nicher games like RTS, anyone who bitches about something in the game being 'thwooo OHHPEEEE :s' after losing to it, gets told to git gud and to learn how to counter it, and no one gives a shit unless it's an actual ez master-of-all-trades or something that's just cancerous.

That's pretty much any singleplayer game since live systems died, yeah. Just rush screaming at the enemy with no tactics, and if it doesn't work, just reload until it does.

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The players demand it now. They will leave bad reviews and shit on your game if it isn't balanced. Players don't complain about a balanced game. Well, they do, but developers cannot read between the lines. When a game is balanced, people will often complain about it being boring.

Punishment isn't fun, but the fear of punishment creates tension, which improves immersion. Save scumming and games that allow respawning at no cost will fail to create that feeling.

I always thought it was funny how you basically become nigh-killable when you reach 20 Luck in the Exile games. Like 99% of the time an enemy inflicts a blow that would kill you, your character instead "lucks out" and survives. Costs a ton of skill points that could be spent increasing more important stats, so it's not necessarily as broken as it seems.

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Your Symphony of the Night example doesn't work too well because the game is a piss easy pile of garbage no matter how many restrictions you impose. I know, I've beaten the game armorless with fists.

Terraria is quite an impressive challenge on Expert mode with a Hardcore character. I still haven't managed to figure out how to consistently survive Mothron during eclipses.

Yeah, there's a Youtube channel that's supposed to be about analysing successful game design concepts, then there's a video on it that's literally just Firaxis admitting that this is how they make their games.

Because for people who aren't impotent autists with god fantasies, standard vidya is, at its core, about puzzle solving, overcoming challenge to progress. For these non-autistics, facerolling everything becomes trite and boring very fast, and having random progression avenues turn into godmode and ruining the sense of challenge will spoil their vidya experience.

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I don't get this bizarre meme especially because it was mostly perpetuated by normalfags who suddenly became hardcore vidya gaym nerds after playing babby's 1st complex titles like the Souls entries. The e-peen stroking by obnoxious YouTubers didn't help. It's one thing to enjoy a game that is hard and yet is also fun once you get used to the mechanics, while it's an entirely different thing to say games like Souls are fun because they are hard, when they're not even that hard in the first place.

I bet you kids didn't even iddqd

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