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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Pet peeve; games forcing you to specialize through poverty

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Player2 on 05 March 2015
Mummelmann said:
Mr Khan said:
It depends on how it works. pokoko makes a good point that if its implemented poorly, ability to max everything out could make you overpowered.

The way Monster Hunter does it, you can specialize in *everything*, but it would take an insane amount of work, and you can only have one set of armor and weapons active at a time. If you had to "switch" between active skill trees, and could only do so outside battle, it's less OP than just becoming a functional god.


Final Fantasy X and XII had systems where you could max out and become super powerful but it took 150-200 hours or more to achieve and even then you could get your ass kicked (Dark Aeons and cusom monsters in FFX were deadly even near max level), I feel worse about games that make you OP already near the midpoint and with nothing but the basic gear and encounters along the story and a few side missions (Elder Scrolls games have a tendency towards this).

I wouldn't call having worse stats than the Dark Aeons become super powerful (unless you mean max Luck and HP as well, but then you need way more than 200 hours), specially when the best you can do on offense barring limit breaks is pretty much basic attack 1.1.

Specialization doesn't prevent overpoweredness. My brother beated Omega Red in X-Men Legends 2 in less than five hits with Sunfire while he was invincible.

Personally as long as I can reset the skill tree to try the other skills and then choose my build I have no problem with it.



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FunFan on 05 March 2015

And that's why I dislike vanilla XII less than IZJS. It seems that IZJS class system creates variety, but in truth It takes away options while keeping the same grind-forcing balance and the same "ailment" abusing bosses. IZJS pretty much nerfs the player without fixing the enemies cheap-ass tactics. It's a good New Game+ for those that have played the original to death, but less experienced players and first timers have too many chances to cripple their team.



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Aeolus451 on 05 March 2015
Mummelmann said:
Aeolus451 said:


Elder Scrolls III Morrowind. You could be the most overpowered I have ever seen in a game and it's still challenging for the most part or wouldn't get boring after maxing out everything. it was really difficult to do that. I wouldn't do every OP thing that i could though. I really wish games would let a character become really OP if they were clever or creative but make bosses or certain enemies just as OP. Her hands were pretty feisty. There was this cave, full of bandits that had paralyzing weapons. 


I've finished Morrowind about 5-6 times and after the first couple of times I had to set ground rules to avoid getting overpowered. No stealing glass and other expensive stuff, no Boots of Blinding Speed and Savior's Hide and no enchanting weapons with all damage bonuses. You could practically one-shot every monster besides the final boss with a good katana with all elemental damage. The STR enchantment was also overpowered and I usually had 300-400 STR, this paired with the 300 SP due to the boots and other ehancements and a killer weapon made the game a cakewalk regardless of the choices you made. I don't know how you can see Morrowind as challenging on its own but there are mods that help a great deal.

Oblivion was even worse; my first proper playthrough with the expansion saw me end the game with a character that had 105% damage reflection and 80% magic resist and/or absorb; he was literally immortal and didn't even need a weapon.

Skyrim has super-overpowered archery and stealth mechanics and the perk system is grossly overpowered as well. Bethesda just don't seem to know how to make a truly challenging RPG (yes, I have played Fallout 3 as well and Daggerfall was even less balanced than the later additions to TES series).

The Baldur's Gate games, Icewind Dale, even Neverwinter Nights I and II; now there are some RPG's that offer a proper challenge.


I set my own personal rules like you but I was more restrictive with the echantments that i would use on my gear. No damage immunity and i would cap my str at a certain point. i wouldn't enchant weapons with elemental damage. What I mean is that the game gave you the freedom to be as op or as weak as you wanted. There were plenty of difficult parts in the game but if you were leveled up, geared with enchantments and had end game weapons, the content would be easy. There's plenty of parts in that game where you could die fairly easily.  Oblivion and skyrim were both just really easy and had way too much hand holding. With some changes, the new game in that series could let you be just as op as morrowind but still be as challenging as a souls game. 



Mummelmann on 05 March 2015
Aeolus451 said:
Mummelmann said:


I've finished Morrowind about 5-6 times and after the first couple of times I had to set ground rules to avoid getting overpowered. No stealing glass and other expensive stuff, no Boots of Blinding Speed and Savior's Hide and no enchanting weapons with all damage bonuses. You could practically one-shot every monster besides the final boss with a good katana with all elemental damage. The STR enchantment was also overpowered and I usually had 300-400 STR, this paired with the 300 SP due to the boots and other ehancements and a killer weapon made the game a cakewalk regardless of the choices you made. I don't know how you can see Morrowind as challenging on its own but there are mods that help a great deal.

Oblivion was even worse; my first proper playthrough with the expansion saw me end the game with a character that had 105% damage reflection and 80% magic resist and/or absorb; he was literally immortal and didn't even need a weapon.

Skyrim has super-overpowered archery and stealth mechanics and the perk system is grossly overpowered as well. Bethesda just don't seem to know how to make a truly challenging RPG (yes, I have played Fallout 3 as well and Daggerfall was even less balanced than the later additions to TES series).

The Baldur's Gate games, Icewind Dale, even Neverwinter Nights I and II; now there are some RPG's that offer a proper challenge.


I set my own personal rules like you but I was more restrictive with the echantments that i would use on my gear. No damage immunity and i would cap my str at a certain point. i wouldn't enchant weapons with elemental damage. What I mean is that the game gave you the freedom to be as op or as weak as you wanted. There were plenty of difficult parts in the game but if you were leveled up, geared with enchantments and had end game weapons, the content would be easy. There's plenty of parts in that game where you could die fairly easily.  Oblivion and skyrim were both just really easy and had way too much hand holding. With some changes, the new game in that series could let you be just as op as morrowind but still be as challenging as a souls game. 


I recommend trying Skyrim and Oblivion with mods to make them harder. Have you played the Gothic series? Gothic 3 had a nice and somewhat fair difficulty curve and was properly balanced after a couple of patches. And it was still challenging no matter what gear and level one attained! Diablo II is also very well balanced, especially after patch 1.10.



Aeolus451 on 05 March 2015
Mummelmann said:
Aeolus451 said:


I set my own personal rules like you but I was more restrictive with the echantments that i would use on my gear. No damage immunity and i would cap my str at a certain point. i wouldn't enchant weapons with elemental damage. What I mean is that the game gave you the freedom to be as op or as weak as you wanted. There were plenty of difficult parts in the game but if you were leveled up, geared with enchantments and had end game weapons, the content would be easy. There's plenty of parts in that game where you could die fairly easily.  Oblivion and skyrim were both just really easy and had way too much hand holding. With some changes, the new game in that series could let you be just as op as morrowind but still be as challenging as a souls game. 


I recommend trying Skyrim and Oblivion with mods to make them harder. Have you played the Gothic series? Gothic 3 had a nice and somewhat fair difficulty curve and was properly balanced after a couple of patches. And it was still challenging no matter what gear and level one attained! Diablo II is also very well balanced, especially after patch 1.10.


I haven't tried the gothic series. I assume it's PC only? ugh. This is one of those times where i wish I had a gaming pc. I would probably play skyrim/oblivion/morrowind just for the mods. haha. 



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Insidb on 05 March 2015

I've finished Morrowind about 5-6 times and after the first couple of times I had to set ground rules to avoid getting overpowered. No stealing glass and other expensive stuff, no Boots of Blinding Speed and Savior's Hide and no enchanting weapons with all damage bonuses. You could practically one-shot every monster besides the final boss with a good katana with all elemental damage. The STR enchantment was also overpowered and I usually had 300-400 STR, this paired with the 300 SP due to the boots and other ehancements and a killer weapon made the game a cakewalk regardless of the choices you made. I don't know how you can see Morrowind as challenging on its own but there are mods that help a great deal.

Oblivion was even worse; my first proper playthrough with the expansion saw me end the game with a character that had 105% damage reflection and 80% magic resist and/or absorb; he was literally immortal and didn't even need a weapon.

Skyrim has super-overpowered archery and stealth mechanics and the perk system is grossly overpowered as well. Bethesda just don't seem to know how to make a truly challenging RPG (yes, I have played Fallout 3 as well and Daggerfall was even less balanced than the later additions to TES series).

The Baldur's Gate games, Icewind Dale, even Neverwinter Nights I and II; now there are some RPG's that offer a proper challenge.

Destiny goes another route by allowing you to max out the skill trees and switch on the fly, but they normalize damage reduction. Sometimes, it's annoying that I can't curb stomp every enemy, but that would elminate any challenge. Far Cry 3 was a cakewalk once I got the AMR and could multikill with body shots beyond any enemy's range. It still was a whole lot of fun, though lol.



SanAndreasX on 05 March 2015

When games don't make your character specialize, what's the point of having skill trees? The point is that you cannot have it all and weren't meant to.



MARCUSDJACKSON on 05 March 2015

Perfect title, and you're right. This is done to force a second play through.



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kupomogli on 06 March 2015
curl-6 said:

I freaking hate how so many games now will give you, say, three skill trees, but only enough money to max out one of them, or 20 weapons but enough money to buy 12.

It's billed as allowing options and different styles of play, but what it's really doing is taking away options. What if I want to be strong, stealthy, and fast? What if I want to be versatile, and switch up my playstyle on the fly, instead of being locked into playing the whole game sneakily cos the game doesn't give me enough cash to max out everything?

Give me enough money to buy/upgrade everything by the end of my playthrough, please.

I prefer both styles, but I prefer limiting the characters and not allowing the player to have e very single ability at their fingertips makes for a more enjoyable experiences.  Even on games like FFTactics and Wild ARMs XF where your character can gain access to every skill in the game, you still only have access to a limited skillset because you have your classes that can use skills, and then you can customize the class with a few skills here and there from other classes

Games like Infamous 2 that split good and evil powers gives the game a lot of replay value where the different skill sets are fairly unique between the two.  Or games like WRPGs such as Diablo 2, Sacred 2, etc, where you put points in specific skills and stats to create a unique build from other players who choose the same class.  Payday 2 allows you uto pick and choose from any of the four class trees so you can have skills from each one, but your points are limited so you might only be able to master one while have some decent low level skills from the others, or maybe try to get some of the best mid level skills for each one and not master any of them if you want to be a great enforcer character.



dharh on 06 March 2015
curl-6 said:

I freaking hate how so many games now will give you, say, three skill trees, but only enough money to max out one of them, or 20 weapons but enough money to buy 12.

It's billed as allowing options and different styles of play, but what it's really doing is taking away options. What if I want to be strong, stealthy, and fast? What if I want to be versatile, and switch up my playstyle on the fly, instead of being locked into playing the whole game sneakily cos the game doesn't give me enough cash to max out everything?

Give me enough money to buy/upgrade everything by the end of my playthrough, please.


This has been going on since like forever. It's just leaking out to other games that are not traditionally role play. Back in the day they just _gave_ you the skills they wanted to give you and you didn't even have a choice in the order you got them. 1st world gaming problems.



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