WRPG builds

[Ando85]

I find whenever I start a WRPG that requires stat allocation, ability selections, and stuff like that I have to do some heavy research before I start. If I am going to potentially spend dozens of hours on a character I don't want to find out later on I made bad decisions and no way to rectify them.

Do you research and follow builds or handle all that yourself?

 

[Crises^]

Yes every time, I do this in mmorpgs as well.
I sometimes even change my character if I find its not what I thought it would be.

 

[linwolf]

No, I choose points and skills based on what fits the character I am trying to create and a bit after what seem cool or funny. No need for max efficiency since I already feel most RPGs are too easy.

 

[Bostur]

I never research. I base builds partly on what I think looks cool, and partly what I think makes sense from a min/max powergaming perspective. In an old game I powergame more, in new games I sometimes try to make my builds as ridiculous as possible since they are too easy anyway. And sometimes I go by what inspiration the game gives me in its backstory or character creator.
If the game describes the stats during the character creation process I do read those descriptions, I suppose that counts as a kind of research.

Sometimes I research later if I get the feeling my party/build just doesn't work.

And this makes me wonder, why do people think they need to research? Did you try just putting points into whatever stats and skills you feel like?

 

[Cranky]

Nah, unless it's for some super crazy Insanity run like in ME1, otherwise I just do whatever my fancy.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

I buy the strategy guide.

I'm pretty paranoid about messing up WRPGs, there are just so many things a player can miss. My first run through of Dragon Age: Origins, I ended up killing the first party member cause I wanted to explore before recruiting him.

The strategy guide tells me all the pitfalls, including where to put my stat points at the beginning, so the only thing I have to worry about is my character's good looks. Which I have reset a few games trying to achieve.

 

[Treeinthewoods]

The first time through I just do whatever I feel like, second time I pick stuff that's the opposite of my first. After that I do my own calcukations and start working on a "perfect" build. After a few more times through I will look online to see how my "perfect" build compares.

I'm a little OCD.

 

[KingHodor]

I buy the strategy guide.

I'm pretty paranoid about messing up WRPGs, there are just so many things a player can miss. My first run through of Dragon Age: Origins, I ended up killing the first party member cause I wanted to explore before recruiting him.

The strategy guide tells me all the pitfalls, including where to put my stat points at the beginning, so the only thing I have to worry about is my character's good looks. Which I have reset a few games trying to achieve.

Same here.

Well, I don't buy a strategy guide, I usually wait until ~2 months after release, after version 1.02 is out and there's a decent wiki listing all the missables and (remaining) gamebreaker bugs. It's like by now I've developed gaming OCD.

I wish I could return to the days of gaming naiveté I had when I first played Fallout 1, where I had a tremendous amount of fun despite eventually having to restart the game during my trip to the Glow (partially because of my lack of agility, partially because I had saved after foolhardily agreeing to a chess match with a supercomputer in the most heavily irradiated site in the wasteland without packing enough anti-radiation drugs)

 

[Swyftstar]

Nah, I just play. I figure out as I go along what stats are important and what are garbage and pick traits to go with the playstyle I want to achieve and a few just for the fun of having them. If I realize later that I messed up a little, I usually chalk it up to my belief that no game is gonna be perfect so I keep going if I'm still having fun. If I mess up royally I just start over. I usually end up with a handful of different characters with different builds so redoing one is never an issue for me.

 

[Kahunaburger]

I generally try to learn what the various stats and abilities do first, then design my own builds based on that.

 

[Terminal Blue]

For some games I've enjoyed (Torchlight, Dragon Age: Origins) I do look up other people's builds for inspiration. But in generally it's something I genuinely hate about WRPGs, and one of the reasons I'll happily defend the RPG credibility of "dumbed down" games like Dragon Age 2, Skyrim and the Mass Effect series.

I don't mind having to look the odd thing up to try and clarify an ambiguous tooltip or to work out whether something I want to choose will work as I intend, but if your game has become so complicated that a first time player cannot judge for themselves what is an effective choice for their character build, I think you're doing something wrong.

There's choice, and then there's maths. Meaningful choice comes from a game incorporating a range of different playstyles, putting in a range of choices which intuitively benefit each of those playstyles, and making just enough of those choices useful that a player will have to choose what elements can sacrificed in order to refine a character who plays how they want.

Giving a choice between 7 different types of vague mechanical advantage which might ultimately lead to dealing slightly more damage is just setting a maths exercise.

This isn't about difficulty or dumbing down either. You can reward clever tactics or thinking about character design without making it overly complex. Heck, I'm a sucker for replaying RPGs and working up the difficulty levels, I just don't think it should be so complicated that you can't already be thinking about that stuff on your first play-through.

Some people might have a different level of engagement. I accept that. However, given recent trends in RPG design, I don't think they're as common as they like to think.

 

[Kahunaburger]

I don't mind having to look the odd thing up to try and clarify an ambiguous tooltip or to work out whether something I want to choose will work as I intend, but if your game has become so complicated that a first time player cannot judge for themselves what is an effective choice for their character build, I think you're doing something wrong.

I definitely agree that RPGs should give first-time players the tools to tell what a good build would be. I tend to think of this as less a complexity issue (unless we're talking something like Incursion) and more of a transparency issue.

Like in Grimrock, DEX is basically useless for archers - arrows hit whatever they make contact with, and STR determines arrow damage. This actually makes sense in an IRL context (draw strength = penetration power) but there's not really anything in the game itself that tells you "hey, strength determines ranged weapon damage." A lot of "simplified" RPGs/ARPGs have this problem as well - Mass Effect 2, for instance, tells you nothing about what your guns and half of your powers actually do. See also: 90% of shooters that feature in-game weapon "stats." There were a significant number of Modern Warfare 2 players who had convinced themselves that the Intervention was the most accurate gun in the game because it's completely arbitrary "accuracy" bar was longer than the other guns' completely arbitrary "accuracy" bar.

So long story short: I think the biggest problem with games with stats in general is that they very rarely tell you what the actual stats are or what they do.

 

[ohnoitsabear]

In newer games, no. Newer games are usually forgiving enough and well-balanced enough that any mistakes in character building early on are either fixable, or don't matter all that much.

Now, in older games, almost always. A lot of those games you can be completely fucked if you don't do certian things with building your character, and it's always nice to know about these things beforehand.

 

[newdarkcloud]

As a rule, I go through my first playthrough blind. If I intuit a better way to play, then I might start over, but I don't research until after the game is beaten by me once.

On a second playthrough, I'll focus on optimization and finding the best build for me.

 

[Kahunaburger]

In newer games, no. Newer games are usually forgiving enough and well-balanced enough that any mistakes in character building early on are either fixable, or don't matter all that much.

I think that, oddly enough, the forgivingness of newer games generally reflects poorly on game balance. An effectively built character in a balanced RPG in which build is designed to matter would be theoretically better than an ineffectively built character. If not, it indicates that build isn't playing as large of a role in the game as intended. One thing that new games do that I think A) makes the game much more forgiving and B) is compatible with a balanced game is a re-spec option.

 

[DoPo]

I definitely have a look before I start playing. I want to avoid trap options. And they would have been way too common in RPGs, if there weren't some that are completely useless, say, putting points into cooking and that never even coming up until three quarters in the game or something. If I see that I can actually judge for myself what to pick, I'll do that, otherwise I'll dig deeper into optimisating my character.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

I always wing it first, and see how far I can get on what I picked at the time... if it eventually corners me and renders me useless then I will restart!

I will research, however, for older RPG's like the original Fallout etc, where a bad build SERIOUSLY messes up your game and makes the difficulty TOO hard!

 

[shrekfan246]

For some games I've enjoyed (Torchlight, Dragon Age: Origins) I do look up other people's builds for inspiration. But in generally it's something I genuinely hate about WRPGs, and one of the reasons I'll happily defend the RPG credibility of "dumbed down" games like Dragon Age 2, Skyrim and the Mass Effect series.

I don't mind having to look the odd thing up to try and clarify an ambiguous tooltip or to work out whether something I want to choose will work as I intend, but if your game has become so complicated that a first time player cannot judge for themselves what is an effective choice for their character build, I think you're doing something wrong.

There's choice, and then there's maths. Meaningful choice comes from a game incorporating a range of different playstyles, putting in a range of choices which intuitively benefit each of those playstyles, and making just enough of those choices useful that a player will have to choose what elements can sacrificed in order to refine a character who plays how they want.

Giving a choice between 7 different types of vague mechanical advantage which might ultimately lead to dealing slightly more damage is just setting a maths exercise.

This isn't about difficulty or dumbing down either. You can reward clever tactics or thinking about character design without making it overly complex. Heck, I'm a sucker for replaying RPGs and working up the difficulty levels, I just don't think it should be so complicated that you can't already be thinking about that stuff on your first play-through.

Some people might have a different level of engagement. I accept that. However, given recent trends in RPG design, I don't think they're as common as they like to think.

I agree with this completely.

I absolutely despise all of the old WRPGs that gave you the illusion of picking how you leveled your character, but realistically did everything except telling you specifically what you needed to choose to actually get further into the game and calling you stupid for picking something else. Being unable to proceed because you chose the "wrong" skills or didn't level up "charming wit" enough is bad game design.