RPGWatch Side Quest: The Great Debate

All I can say is you must not be a good chess player.

Your ad hominem on my skill as a chess player has no bearing on how the actual strategy of the game goes, and it certainly won't make your rather vague assumption of either case come true.

Strategy in chess revolves around the evaluation of piece position and value, the groups of squares, movement and the importance of the King - all of which are crucial in determing long-term goals under which to achieve victory. By means of comparison Fallout, even as basic as it is, does the very same. The position of characters and their strategic significance is in place - each individual will have their own unique strengths and weaknesses. The importance of hexes is paramount to determining personal and enemy weapon range and movement tied to Action Point use. The importance of maintaining the PC safe, much like a King in chess, is also at stake. And all of these need to be considered and studied to implement goals under which victory becomes a possibility.

In games like X-Com, there are several other factors added to the mix such as different positions under which to make attacks, , interrupts, line of sight - which chess simply does not use. Fallout allows players to target enemy body parts for several uses: hitting the legs lessens their movement, hitting the arms will reduce or cripple attack ratings, hitting the eyes will blind an enemy or cause a critical to instantly kill them. Not to mention other games with different attack methods - single, burst or targetted shots, or area of effect attacks. In contrast, yes, the absence of such varied and rich variables in chess definitely make it more static, simplistic and braindead, if only relatively since it has its own brand of strategy and tactics which role-playing or strategy games do not possess.

Your latter comment of how chess is apparently deeper because one "can spend a whole life playing and studying it and finding ways to improve and challenge oneself" isn't inherent to chess or exclusively tied to it. The very same commitment can be made by a gamer for just about any game, role-playing games - and their combat - included, regardless of rule complexity.
 
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Your ad hominem on my skill as a chess player has no bearing on how the actual strategy of the game goes, and it certainly won't make your rather vague assumption of either case come true.
You may be a wonderful player who has spent hundreds of hours studying chess. You may have blown hundreds of dollars on a chess library. You may compete regularly in clubs and tournaments. You may have pushed your mind and will to the limit to crack the mysteries of Caissa countless times. It is possible that after all that effort you feel that Fallout is as challenging as the chess program installed on your harddrive... but it is a million times more likely that you just haven't played chess hard enough to see the depth to it.
Strategy in chess revolves around the evaluation of piece position and value, the groups of squares, movement and the importance of the King - all of which are crucial in determing long-term goals under which to achieve victory.
Don't forget tactics. You can't accomplish long-term goals without using and calculating the decoys, deflections, interference, pins, forks, skewers, x-rays, zwischenzugs, discovered and double attacks in the position.
By means of comparison Fallout, even as basic as it is, does the very same.
Basic is the key word when making this comparison. Ruben Fine did a classic treastise on the endgame called Basic Chess Endings. It is 600 pages of analysis.

The position of characters and their strategic significance is in place - each individual will have their own unique strengths and weaknesses. The importance of hexes is paramount to determining personal and enemy weapon range and movement tied to Action Point use. The importance of maintaining the PC safe, much like a King in chess, is also at stake. And all of these need to be considered and studied to implement goals under which victory becomes a possibility.
There is strategy to Fallout but when was the last time you spent half an hour or more planning a turn? You are also playing a set system and not a dynamic and intelligent opponent. Hell your own allies were a hazard to you in the original Fallout.
In contrast, yes, the absence of such varied and rich variables in chess definitely make it more static, simplistic and braindead, if only relatively since it has its own brand of strategy and tactics which role-playing or strategy games do not possess.
I won't argue with you. Pick up the game of chess sometime more seriously and you will find it far more intellectually gratifying than called shots on bad AI.

Your latter comment of how chess is apparently deeper because one "can spend a whole life playing and studying it and finding ways to improve and challenge oneself" isn't inherent to chess or exclusively tied to it. The very same commitment can be made by a gamer for just about any game, role-playing games - and their combat - included, regardless of rule complexity.
Your argument is inane. If it takes you a lifetime to master the challenges Fallout presents you then would never rise above patzer in a lifetime of chess.
 
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but it is a million times more likely that you just haven't played chess hard enough to see the depth to it.

Your continued assumptions about my skill are still irrelevant to the discussion.

Don't forget tactics. You can't accomplish long-term goals without using and calculating the decoys, deflections, interference, pins, forks, skewers, x-rays, zwischenzugs, discovered and double attacks in the position.

It seems you didn't quote all of wikipedia. Let me add it also has sacrifices, underminings and overloadings. Anything else I should quote there?

Basic is the key word when making this comparison. Ruben Fine did a classic treastise on the endgame called Basic Chess Endings. It is 600 pages of analysis.

Reuben Fine's book is a 600 page collection of analysis that is composed of images of the board itself, and detailed listings of piece movements. Admirable, but the same amount of work could very well go into Fallout, listing many possible hex moves and various actions for an incredibly large number of opponents - and variables! - on a battlefield. Fine's work was excellent but taken on its own it tells us nothing about the base complexities of the game, it's just a treatise on how many probabilities are involved and how to best take advantage of them. The only difference between Fine's book and say, Per's walkthrough is that Fine sets up several variables himself then tells players how to go for them.

There is strategy to Fallout but when was the last time you spent half an hour or more planning a turn? You are also playing a set system and not a dynamic and intelligent opponent. Hell your own allies were a hazard to you in the original Fallout.

This argument is specious. The effectiveness of a turn is not related to the time spent planning it, but by how each probability is analyzed. A well thought out move may be a bad one even if planned for half an hour or more if it failed to account for all possibilities. Technically yes, it takes a good deal of time to create a solid counter that carries strong chances of succeeding but poor planning is a likelihood even in the most contemplative and patient of players. Kasparov himself lost several games to Deep Blue and X3D Fritz, and he criticized himself for doing so with the latter.

I won't argue with you. Pick up the game of chess sometime more seriously and you will find it far more intellectually gratifying than called shots on bad AI.

Pick up the game of Fallout sometime more seriously and you will find it far more intellectually gratifying than performing a Lasker-Bauer maneuver on a poor chess player.

Your argument is inane. If it takes you a lifetime to master the challenges Fallout presents you then would never rise above patzer in a lifetime of chess.

I didn't advocate that it could take me a lifetime to master the challenges Fallout presents. I made a point that spending a whole life playing, studying it and finding ways to improve and challenge oneself is not something that only chess, as a game, can entice people to do.
 
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Let's rein in the disdain, folks. Debating the depth of chess, and anyone's skill at it, is only tangentially relevant to the topic and probably misplaced on a cRPG forum.

Back to topic, I still fail to see why cRPGers would favor a system that values and requires the same skills as a platform jumper. Whether it's intellect or laziness or simply personal preference, I don't play cRPGs to exercise my mad mousing skilz. In fact, the CRPGs in my hall of fame barely use the mouse at all.
 
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Since we've turned this into a chess pis... um .. debate, I had a thought while reading the last few posts:
- Chess = pure turn based.
- And we know about 'speed chess', which is simply fast turn-based.
But imagine:
- Phased-Chess - you have to make your move within 5 seconds or your opponent can go again, and you can only take one turn every 5 seconds.
- Real-time Chess - stop to analyze a move and lose 6 pieces.

:D
 
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I was talking of course about text-based MMORPGs which are far older than graphical MMORPGs. A few examples include DragonRealms, Medievia, Materia Magica, the Gemstone series etc. Most of them should be still active. The genre is far from dead and there are several titles currently in development. There are also quite a few examples of graphical turn-based MMORPGs and turn-based strategy browser games.

Oh... ummm... OK. Well, you said "recently" in your original post but -hey- there are scientists who will call the extinction of the dinosaurs a relatively "recent" event as well in the grand scheme of cosmic things :) .

Also being less sarcastic/ using better language when posting would only help in improving your public image.

[BritneySpearsMode]Oops, I did it again...[/BritneySpearsMode] :biggrin: :biggrin: :biggrin:
 
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I think a distinction needs to made between tactical turn based games and turn based games where you simply select from a list of possible actions i.e. Wizardry/Bards Tale. In the tactical variation the "turn" serves to give the player time to ponder various possibilities, whereas in games like "Might and Magic" all you are doing is deciding what each character in your party is going to do: fight/defend/run away - although there is a small degree of tactics involved in this (should I heal this turn or next turn?).

Should tactics be part of a pure-cRPG? While tactical combat can add some enjoyment to the game, I think it adds the problem that it can cause battles to become of drawn out and even in some cases the "tactics" required to win combat involve doing the same thing over and over again (hardly what I call tactics). I must admit that in Fallout by the time I was on fight #243 I was pretty much just doing endless shots at the closest persons eyes, is that even different to it's predecessor Wasteland?

Personally, I could easily imagine a turn based Gothic or a real time fallout, and I could probably even imagine them being good games if they were done right, if the rest of the game is good and the combat system doesn't detract from the overall game I think the combat system real-time vs turn based isn't that important to me.

I did love how you could just hold down one or two keys and fights would be finished in a couple of seconds in the old wizardry and bards tale games though.....
 
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That was way off-topic. I salute you and your Fallout dedication Role-player.
 
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I think Bridge rivals chess, and while chess fanatics will disagree with me, I think Bridge is more complex if played at a high level.
Yes and no. ;)
Please note that I´m a reasonably good chess player but only a lousy bridge player.
Bridge has 13 cards and a random element which results in hellovalot of starting positions. It´s hard to say if it´s really more complex though because every card can only be played once. A bridge game has 13 full moves, a chess game ~40 full moves on average. Certainly bridge is more complex at the beginning, but the game gets simpler with every move and the player´s influence on the situation isn´t that big compared to chess. If your side gets crap cards you´re fucked against equal opposition.
Chess has only 6 different pieces, but more strategic and tactical options because the unit values have been perfectly balanced over the last few thousand years, resulting in lots of hidden possibilities to trade advantage A for disadvantage B if you think that´s good for you. A random element is missing (exception Fischer-Random chess), but chess has two more dimensions which are either missing or are not that significant in bridge: time and psychology. (Lack of) Time pressure influences decisions to the good or bad. Psychological strength can win games even against objectively stronger opponents if you find weak spots to play mind games. (example: force a solid positional player to play a risky attack. Then the probability for mistakes will increase drastically.)
Both games have a lot in common. I might be wrong due to my limited experience with bridge, but I think it´s the more "objective" game because usually you´re playing the cards, not the opponent.



They both leave computer games for dead!!
Sure, because they are perfectly polished and include communication with other people who love your hobby. You can add dozens of board and card games to the list.
 
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Your continued assumptions about my skill are still irrelevant to the discussion.

That is true. It just boggles my mind at the possibility that someone who had spent the time and effort necessary to become a good chess player would equate his accomplishments to becoming good at an RPG.

It seems you didn't quote all of wikipedia. Let me add it also has sacrifices, underminings and overloadings. Anything else I should quote there?
If you wanted to be complete obstruction would round out the basic tactics where ever you get it from.
Reuben Fine's book is a 600 page collection of analysis that is composed of images of the board itself, and detailed listings of piece movements. Admirable, but the same amount of work could very well go into Fallout, listing many possible hex moves and various actions for an incredibly large number of opponents - and variables! - on a battlefield. Fine's work was excellent but taken on its own it tells us nothing about the base complexities of the game, it's just a treatise on how many probabilities are involved and how to best take advantage of them. The only difference between Fine's book and say, Per's walkthrough is that Fine sets up several variables himself then tells players how to go for them.
The big difference I see is that Per's walkthrough is sufficient for someone who has never played Fallout before to beat every challenge the game has to offer. Nobody can provide such a walkthrough for chess and the best methods of learning involve looking at typical and archetypal positions that embody an idea. That is because the rich ideas we touched on in our tactics listing can combine in countless ways with every new game. Unless you are talking about random encounters the problems will always be the same every new Fallout game you play.

This argument is specious. The effectiveness of a turn is not related to the time spent planning it, but by how each probability is analyzed. A well thought out move may be a bad one even if planned for half an hour or more if it failed to account for all possibilities. Technically yes, it takes a good deal of time to create a solid counter that carries strong chances of succeeding but poor planning is a likelihood even in the most contemplative and patient of players. Kasparov himself lost several games to Deep Blue and X3D Fritz, and he criticized himself for doing so with the latter.
Your argument is irrelevant. There are no such situations that require a half-hour or more to plan a turn in Fallout because the strategies are obvious to people who have played it often or read Per's walkthrough. There weren't meant to be such situations either because there are plenty of ways to accomplish almost every task.
Pick up the game of Fallout sometime more seriously and you will find it far more intellectually gratifying than performing a Lasker-Bauer maneuver on a poor chess player.
You can always play better chess players but you can never play an intelligent opponent in Fallout.

I didn't advocate that it could take me a lifetime to master the challenges Fallout presents. I made a point that spending a whole life playing, studying it and finding ways to improve and challenge oneself is not something that only chess, as a game, can entice people to do.
I never claimed chess was the only game. You might think beating Fallout is a similar accomplishment to becoming a titled player in chess, I was just amazed a proclaimed chess enthusiast had this viewpoint.
 
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So it's suddenly on-topic again?

That is true. It just boggles my mind at the possibility that someone who had spent the time and effort necessary to become a good chess player would equate his accomplishments to becoming good at an RPG.

Apples and oranges. Each game has its own scale of complexity. Chess has a wide variety of tactics that can be employed while others it simply can't. I've well gone over a handful of select examples from various games that have excellent tactical opportunities that chess can't ever hope to implement into its own rules and which are more palatable and richer from a gameplay perspective than some of the things chess proposes to offer.

The big difference I see is that Per's walkthrough is sufficient for someone who has never played Fallout before to beat every challenge the game has to offer. Nobody can provide such a walkthrough for chess and the best methods of learning involve looking at typical and archetypal positions that embody an idea. That is because the rich ideas we touched on in our tactics listing can combine in countless ways with every new game. Unless you are talking about random encounters the problems will always be the same every new Fallout game you play.

And aren't Reuben's analysis based upon random game sets or multiple ways of handling one single set? Many of those often feel like a walkthrough where he presents a situation then the exact steps to solve it! Once again, I could only dream of one day being able to employ all those tactics in a chess game and am certainly not badmouthing his work but what he is doing could be analoguous to picking on one single combat situation in Fallout and describing all possible methods - or the best ones - for victory step by step. Then going over another situation and once again describing the best ones, and so on.

Your argument is irrelevant. There are no such situations that require a half-hour or more to plan a turn in Fallout because the strategies are obvious to people who have played it often or read Per's walkthrough.

Does Fallout require half an hour of planning? Possibly not. But the same argument can be made of people who play chess often and have read Reuben's book or any other such established works in that field. The more one plays a game the more accostumed to rules and mechanics one gets.

There weren't meant to be such situations either because there are plenty of ways to accomplish almost every task.

It goes both ways.

You can always play better chess players but you can never play an intelligent opponent in Fallout.

There's no intelectual gratification or stimulation by winning over weak opponents, human or artifical. Does chess provide more of a challenge in this regard? Very much yes, but that wasn't - or didn't came across as being - your point. Then again there are bound to be cases where AI will be quite challenging. Kasparov should say so.

I never claimed chess was the only game. You might think beating Fallout is a similar accomplishment to becoming a titled player in chess, I was just amazed a proclaimed chess enthusiast had this viewpoint.

My viewpoint is that any game may warrant studying it and finding ways to improve and challenge oneself while playing it - some more than others of course. Chess has its own depth, RPGs have their own depth, strategy games their own depth and so on. The amount of strategy and tactics each of these games has may not be comparable, but they each have something to offer that by comparison chess has not. I enjoy chess but also enjoy some of these game mechanics a lot more, and they certainly offer challenges chess cannot. Sometimes, even more complex ones. The ability for units to hide from sight in X-Com gives it such an unpredictable element that chess, by virtue of exposing all of the units to both players, can't hope to have. Fallout's ability to target specific body parts adds an element of risk that chess also doesn't have. And so on.
 
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Your argument is irrelevant. There are no such situations that require a half-hour or more to plan a turn in Fallout because the strategies are obvious to people who have played it often or read Per's walkthrough. There weren't meant to be such situations either because there are plenty of ways to accomplish almost every task.

Your argument is irrelevant, because in your arrogance you decidedly lerave out the Newbies.

Newbies ARE ABLE to do a planning for half an hor, because they DO NOT know the game (or the walkthrough) !

But you won't admit that, because it doesn't fit into the line of your own arguments.


Besoides that, I do get bored by the private discussion between Burress and Role-Player now.

Please return to the topic !
 
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Gorath, while I could pick a few holes in several sections of your comparison of chess and Bridge, in one area you are completely wrong. Psychology is a MAJOR aspect of being a successful Bridge player. There are several books on this topic. Consider, there are 4 people at a Bridge table; your partner (whom you have to deal with in many ways :) ) and 2 opponents. There is psycholgy in both the bidding of the hand and in the play of the cards. Also, unlike chess, you need to remember every card played during the hand as you continually update and alter your plans as both a declarer or a defender. I would never belittle chess, I have too much respect for the game, even though I'm a poor player, but one hand of Bridge takes about 7 mins to play. I would play about 30 hands in an evening; each one very different. You might only play one or two games of chess in the same time period. Oh, good chess players usually make excellnt Bridge players!! :)
 
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Let's rein in the disdain, folks. Debating the depth of chess, and anyone's skill at it, is only tangentially relevant to the topic and probably misplaced on a cRPG forum.

Back to topic, I still fail to see why cRPGers would favor a system that values and requires the same skills as a platform jumper. Whether it's intellect or laziness or simply personal preference, I don't play cRPGs to exercise my mad mousing skilz. In fact, the CRPGs in my hall of fame barely use the mouse at all.

While some action RPG's and games like the TES series, are certainly more "twitchy" I have never experienced their combat as a challenge to my mouse skillz, as you put it. In that department they are usually several levels below what a good shooter or plattformer demand, i.e. the influence of the character attributes is still clearly prevalent. An exception maybe are clear crossover titles like Deus Ex. And that example may serve to answer your question: I like the way shooters play, but I usually get frustrated by their linearity and lack of interaction with the gameworld. When the complexity of intereaction, non-linearity and choice and consequence combine with an adrenaline packed shooter gameplay I am just as happy as when it combines with well-made tactical turn-based combat. Both styles appeal to me, just as I enjoy both chess and basketball.
 
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I like how wizardry 8 and temple of elemental evil did TBs. Obviously games like Deus EX and similar FPS woudln't work very well as turn base. Then you have 'inverted' games like total war series that are turn base until combat when they become real time :)

While I like both RTS and turn base - i prefer games which allow you to set the pace of the rts so it does not become a reflex fest (I think total war allows (though I don't remember for sure) but if not it was not overly fast - TA and supercomm also allow you to set the pace and many games (like TA) allow you to pause - issue commands and hten continue.
 
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I really don't care what kind of combat, as long as the combat is good. There is good RT-Combat (Daggerfall, WoW), good RTwP-Combat (Baldur's Gate 2) and good TB-Combat (ToEE) and bad Combat (Oblivion, Dungeon Siege, PoR2).

But I like to use different tactics and Angles, so I get a little bit more of party-based, turn-based or RTwP Fights... I could always replay BG 1 or BG 2 with different Mods, and never get tired on the combat, while the in Bloodlines or Wizardry 8 Combat was just tedious. It's a pity that we will probably never see any deep combat-simulations ever again... Dragon Age and Drakensang will only have Partys of four, most Games will only feature one Character (while Immersion is the offical Reason I guess the Gamers nowadays are simply over their heads with managing more than one Character^^) - we might still be able to use some tactics, i.e. different Spells or Moves like in WoW, but another Relict from the old days is lost :(
 
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Wow, I just wrote a reply to a thread that is several years old. :furious:

Why the heck was I even reading his?
Out of spite, I shall post my brilliant conclusion anyway:

Whatever you like. Different people like different styles. Everything else is BS.

Debate over.
 
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