Are cRPGs, as a genre, currently based around single turn encounters from a design/difficulty perspective?

[Rubaboo]

Hey All,

I recently picked back up the cRPG genre after loving Divinity 2 and deciding to give Rogue Trader a shot because I’m a fan of 40k. I was thinking it would be a really immersive dive into the 40k world and give some great tense turn based tactical gameplay like in the X-COM 40k mod I played and loved.

After playing Rogue Trader through act 1 and feeling like I wanted to respec my characters and up the difficulty I ended up getting a bit stuck after I had spent a while theory crafting builds and none working very well or how I thought they would. I looked up some guides on max difficulty builds because they usually go into pretty big detail on the overall game design and mechanics.

The guides I saw basically said that Rogue Trader was about stacking bonus turns/buffs to kill the entire opposing team before they could take any actions. Tanking was not viable, and debuffing seemed irrelevant. As well as stuns and other CC not working on harder enemies and thus not being viable.

Divinity 2 had the same mechanical loop. So it got me wondering if a single or half turn based damage meta was the design principle for cRPGs in general as a genre or if it was just a common feature for both of these games?

I played some Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 with friends many years ago. One friend was super into Neverwinter Nights 2. So I gave that game a shot. Never finished it but I don’t remember it being designed with the same ‘single turn damage loop’ as Divinity 2 or Rogue Trader. The impression I got from Neverwinter Nights 2 was that it was just a single player DnD campaign but on the computer. And the combats played out more requiring the player to CC, use consumables, counter CC, buff, heal as opposed to Divinity 2 or Rogue Trader’s system of damage from what I remember. So I was a bit confused whether the cRPG genre had changed since Neverwinter Nights 2 or if Neverwinter Nights 2 was the same mechanically and I just didn’t know about it.

I got confused even further when I read that there is a Rogue Trader tabletop RPG game and that’s what this game is based off of to some degree. I don’t remember DnD 3.5 being based around single turn damage loops mechanically in the books. Nor have I ever heard of a tabletop game being based off of that kind of system. I have heard of very lethal tabletop games where needing to make another character once or twice in a campaign was common place though. In DnD, losing a few players and needing to stabilize them during a boss fight was pretty common and the sign of a well-balanced fight in my campaigns. It came down to the wire oftentimes and your team would just barely manage to scrape by. Which was part of the fun for our group and I kinda remember Neverwinter Nights 2 being the same.

Was hoping there might be some folks who are a bit more well versed in the cRPG genre as a whole and could give a more big picture perspective on it.

Thanks!

[mk11]

No.

It doesn't seem to be the way Jagged Alliance 3, Dark Envoy, Wasteland 3, Colony Ship, Solasta, or Cyber Knights are designed (you may not consider all of them CRPG). It also isn't needed in Rogue Trader or Pathfinder games unless you play at very high difficulties.

Both Pathfinder and Rogue Trader have complex choices in character abilities and party composition. The consequence of this is that optimal builds become much stronger than average builds.

To compensate for this, Owlcat's hardest standard difficulties, increase the resistance to CC, the damage done, and the chance of enemies hitting you which make many strategies that leave enemies alive non viable. Instead, you can not increase damage done, only marginally increase characteristics, not play with the dodge settings and increase the enemies wounds a lot. That way it will be harder to kill all in one turn but tanking and CC will still have its place.

Having said that, all the games do put a premium on eliminating (or nullifying) high risk enemies fast.

[いか]

In the grimdark universe of the 41st millennium there is only unending war..

In Rogue Trader the pnp game you stack buffs. You spend most of your turns just building stacks of buffs.

So in Rogue trader. You enter combat, you get fate rolls, these are going to be the encounters "do overs" or sometimes they add buffs. Just know all rogue traders are seen by fate and thus they are unusual compared to the average person.

You then roll initiative.
Same as dnd in that regard.

In combat you have half and full actions, reactions, move/charge...It's very much like this game.

Free actions are just that free.

Then some characters have specials that can add half actions, extra free etc.

The goal is to wipe the board of the encounter as soon as possible. You are basically role playing being a force of nature. If you make it to reaction steps your team probably didn't use their whole turn potential or the GM has scaled it so you can't. Combat in the pnp is sort of an after thought to the game. It plays like warhammer 40k does. But smaller and with fewer action pools. You don't want to get hit by enemies in Rogue Trader, A Bolter will zero you no matter what.

I am so glad I got to nerd out on Rogue Trader here. It's my main pnp game. (only because I can use my 40k figures for this game too)


As player of the actual game, this game feels Rogue Trader. I cannot stress that enough. They did it right here. Every battle is just a puzzle to solve with numbers. Those numbers are death to heretic, the mutant and the xenos.

We shall not be remembered.


Wait I forgot to mention extended actions I have 5 more pages to type now.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by いか:

In Rogue Trader the pnp game you stack buffs. You spend most of your turns just building stacks of buffs.

.......


The goal is to wipe the board of the encounter as soon as possible. You are basically role playing being a force of nature.

That's very interesting. I have asked about the pnp version of RT before here but nobody seemed to have played it, or much of it anyways. What you say does mean Owlcat have stayed pretty faithful to the pnp game I would think?

Originally posted by Rubaboo:

After playing Rogue Trader through act 1 and feeling like I wanted to respec my characters and up the difficulty I ended up getting a bit stuck after I had spent a while theory crafting builds and none working very well or how I thought they would. I looked up some guides on max difficulty builds because they usually go into pretty big detail on the overall game design and mechanics.

The guides I saw basically said that Rogue Trader was about stacking bonus turns/buffs to kill the entire opposing team before they could take any actions. Tanking was not viable, and debuffing seemed irrelevant. As well as stuns and other CC not working on harder enemies and thus not being viable.

Yes, this is exactly my experience. I played the Alpha and the Beta blind on Normal. I struggled, just playing like I normally approach cRPGs. Then I looked up the stuff you refer to here for my current first full playthrough, playing on Hard. It's like a differnt game.

My view is that playing blind trying to work it out yourself on Normal is far harder than playing full power characters and tactics on Hard, probably even Unfair too.

I could say that the rule set and mechics of this game are both it's greatest stregth and it's greatest weakness, and maybe that's true, but as @いか says, it looks like the implementation is faithful to the mechanics and the vibe of the original pnp game material.

What I can say is yes, most battles are over turn 1. A few last half way into turn 2 and a very few longer than that simply because the enemies happen to be stretched out around a large map hiding in cover etc.

However I can also say that playing these uber-builds is an absolute blast. It's really good fun even if it's often pretty easy. I'd say it's a lot more fun than struggling on Normal trying to unravel this insanely complex rule set on your own.

But is it good design? Err, meh. There are no other cRPGs I can think of that work like this. And I honestly don't think there are that many folks who have the time, let alone the inclination, to work out how these uber-builds work and even those that do would probably consider life too short to do so in this case.

[Rubaboo]

Originally posted by mk11:

It doesn't seem to be the way Jagged Alliance 3, Dark Envoy, Wasteland 3, Colony Ship, Solasta, or Cyber Knights are designed (you may not consider all of them CRPG). It also isn't needed in Rogue Trader or Pathfinder games unless you play at very high difficulties.

Ok, thanks for the answer. Do you know of any cRPGs that allow for building a team based around debuffing, CC, tank / healer or hybrid melee tank / dps? I have always really loved the idea of making a team that was able to debuff the opponents so much they ceased to be able to damage my team as their counter system for opponents but haven't ever played a game that allowed that. The ones I have played always had a maximum amount I could debuff and minimum damage enemies would deal to the player.

Originally posted by mk11:

Having said that, all the games do put a premium on eliminating (or nullifying) high risk enemies fast.

I was using Cinder in Act 2 as a test bed for builds I would come up with to see how well I was grasping the mechanics and how accurately I was picturing the mechanics interacting with each other. Cinder is completely immune to stuns and immobilizing on both normal difficulty and unfair difficulty. I didn't test knockdowns. After realizing that, I looked up whether that was a general thing in Rogue Trader and found a reddit post talking about how Owlcat had patched that out of their Pathfinder games and how most enemies that weren't trash enemies are immune to stuns, etc in Rogue Trader.

Is the nullifying of special / leader enemies like Cinder in Rogue Trader solely through damage or soft CCs like reducing hit chance so they can't get past parry and dodge checks?

Originally posted by mk11:

Both Pathfinder and Rogue Trader have complex choices in character abilities and party composition. The consequence of this is that optimal builds become much stronger than average builds.

I had planned to play Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous and Kingmaker after finishing Rogue Trader. How hard are these games? Do they require you to look up builds or have a good knowledge of the Pathfinder setting/ruleset?

I'm completely new to Pathfinder and I was worried that I would get stuck at some point and need to restart because I didn't know how to build my character optimally and wouldn't be offered the chance to respec or change difficulty to compensate when needed.

[Rubaboo]

Originally posted by いか:

In the grimdark universe of the 41st millennium there is only unending war..

In Rogue Trader the pnp game you stack buffs. You spend most of your turns just building stacks of buffs.

So in Rogue trader. You enter combat, you get fate rolls, these are going to be the encounters "do overs" or sometimes they add buffs. Just know all rogue traders are seen by fate and thus they are unusual compared to the average person.

You then roll initiative.
Same as dnd in that regard.

In combat you have half and full actions, reactions, move/charge...It's very much like this game.

Free actions are just that free.

Then some characters have specials that can add half actions, extra free etc.

The goal is to wipe the board of the encounter as soon as possible. You are basically role playing being a force of nature. If you make it to reaction steps your team probably didn't use their whole turn potential or the GM has scaled it so you can't. Combat in the pnp is sort of an after thought to the game. It plays like warhammer 40k does. But smaller and with fewer action pools. You don't want to get hit by enemies in Rogue Trader, A Bolter will zero you no matter what.

I am so glad I got to nerd out on Rogue Trader here. It's my main pnp game. (only because I can use my 40k figures for this game too)


As player of the actual game, this game feels Rogue Trader. I cannot stress that enough. They did it right here. Every battle is just a puzzle to solve with numbers. Those numbers are death to heretic, the mutant and the xenos.

We shall not be remembered.


Wait I forgot to mention extended actions I have 5 more pages to type now.

Very insightful answer, thank you!

It sounds like viewing the difficulties in Rogue Trader as a ruleset selector as opposed to difficulties is more accurate from what you, Gregorovitch and mk11 have said. Which really helps me understand the games context a lot better.

I still wish Owlcat had an option in the difficulty settings to be able to toggle how respeccing works and turning on or off the trauma / injury system for that bit of extra customization.

[Rubaboo]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

Yes, this is exactly my experience. I played the Alpha and the Beta blind on Normal. I struggled, just playing like I normally approach cRPGs. Then I looked up the stuff you refer to here for my current first full playthrough, playing on Hard. It's like a differnt game.

My view is that playing blind trying to work it out yourself on Normal is far harder than playing full power characters and tactics on Hard, probably even Unfair too.

I could say that the rule set and mechics of this game are both it's greatest stregth and it's greatest weakness, and maybe that's true, but as @いか says, it looks like the implementation is faithful to the mechanics and the vibe of the original pnp game material.

What I can say is yes, most battles are over turn 1. A few last half way into turn 2 and a very few longer than that simply because the enemies happen to be stretched out around a large map hiding in cover etc.

However I can also say that playing these uber-builds is an absolute blast. It's really good fun even if it's often pretty easy. I'd say it's a lot more fun than struggling on Normal trying to unravel this insanely complex rule set on your own.

But is it good design? Err, meh. There are no other cRPGs I can think of that work like this. And I honestly don't think there are that many folks who have the time, let alone the inclination, to work out how these uber-builds work and even those that do would probably consider life too short to do so in this case.

Yeah that was what made me want to turn up the difficulty after act 1.

My second playthrough of Divinity 2 was a lot more optimized and by the end of the game I only required 1 out of 4 party members to act in order to kill the entire enemy group by the end of the game. It was very cathartic to win by such a margin after suffering through my first playthrough but it felt more like I was hitting a skip button on every combat as opposed to engaging with them.

When I started to feel like the same thing was happening in Rogue Trader, I wanted to up the difficulty so it felt like I was a bit more involved during combat.

But as @いか said, that isn't Rogue Trader haha. I wonder now if Larion was inspired by pen and paper games like Rogue Trader for Divinity 2 now.

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

But is it good design? Err, meh. There are no other cRPGs I can think of that work like this. And I honestly don't think there are that many folks who have the time, let alone the inclination, to work out how these uber-builds work and even those that do would probably consider life too short to do so in this case.

I think the perspective that makes me the most excited as a player, in terms of whether it's good design or not. Is to have a difficulty system like what is already present that allows the player to customize the experience so much that the player can essentially play through Rogue Trader but using more of a Dungeons and Dragons or Pulp Call of Cthulu ruleset. Or any other ruleset.

That level of customization is awesome in my mind as it allows everyone to play the game however they'd like or play it completely differently a few different times.

There is a addon for World of Warcraft classic that uses AI to voice all the quests. It's pretty rough at times and really good at times in terms of quality but the idea of allowing the player to customize their experience by giving them the option to have well acted and voiced text throughout the game. If, that's something that helps bring the game world alive for the player; without it needing to be a central selling point of the game because of the cost of including all of that voice work is absolutely AWESOME! And something I hope we can see in more games, so that people who love the reading side and people who love the aural side are both able to be immersed in the same game world without a significant loss in quality to either side is really exciting.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Rubaboo:

That level of customization is awesome in my mind as it allows everyone to play the game however they'd like or play it completely differently a few different times.

The argument against that is there are only a few folks that have the time and/or the patience to work out how to do that with a rule set as complex and a set of options as large as RT. Most people don't.

The issue is that in this game whilst it is possible to make gloriously OP characters, it's also absolutely possible to make not just sub-optimal but totally non-viable characters leading at best to a miserable struggle and at worst a brick wall.

There are both upsides and downsides to it. I'm kinda torn on the question. My main view is that Owlcat struggle to come up with a UI design and metaphors that can support this level of complexity. This may be because there are no other cRPGs with this level of complexity therefore there are no standard well understood UI design principles and metaphors to copy from. A game like this needs something new, UI innovation.

They've already changed the level up screens several times (which have improved it, no doubt) but this suggests that they created the game and rule set first and then thought about how to present it in the UI afterwards. I'd say it should be done the other way round. The rule set should be designed in conjunction with the UI so as to ensure the UI can actually support it in terms of reasonable player accessibility to the guts of the game. During the design process either the rule set can be simplified or the UI can be beefed up/innovated but one of those has to happen IMO.

As an example there are about 50 level ups and at least half of them involve two talent/ability selections. Many of these selections present over 60 individual options each. In the UI these are presented as a simple list. OK, the lists are broken down into sub-lists, but sub-lists of .... what exactly? What's good for my character and what's not? A playground for an experienced theorycrafter, no question, but for a new player who doesn't know what all these options are and what they do it's completely overwhelming.

[✧Starshadow Melody✧]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

They've already changed the level up screens several times (which have improved it, no doubt) but this suggests that they created the game and rule set first and then thought about how to present it in the UI afterwards. I'd say it should be done the other way round. The rule set should be designed in conjunction with the UI so as to ensure the UI can actually support it in terms of reasonable player accessibility to the guts of the game. During the design process either the rule set can be simplified or the UI can be beefed up/innovated but one of those has to happen IMO.

How the ♥♥♥♥ do you expect to design the UI before you even know what you're trying to show!?

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by ✧Starshadow Melody✧:

How the ♥♥♥♥ do you expect to design the UI before you even know what you're trying to show!?

Why do you ask that?

I suggested the UI should be storyboarded in parallel with rule set design. That way if the emerging rule set starts to get too complex for the initial UI concepts you can stop and consider what to do about it (either reduce rule set complexity or come up with a new UI concept).

[✧Starshadow Melody✧]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

Originally posted by ✧Starshadow Melody✧:

How the ♥♥♥♥ do you expect to design the UI before you even know what you're trying to show!?

Why do you ask that?

I suggested the UI should be storyboarded in parallel with rule set design. That way if the emerging rule set starts to get too complex for the initial UI concepts you can stop and consider what to do about it (either reduce rule set complexity or come up with a new UI concept).

Ah, I must have misread.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by ✧Starshadow Melody✧:

Ah, I must have misread.

Not really, I also said:

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

I'd say it should be done the other way round.

So it's easy to see why you thought that now I look at it again. My bad, I didn't mean UI first, I just meant not UI last.

[spammdc]

IMHO,
1) DOS2, combat is very arcadey in nature and is not like WH40K:RT or any of the Pathfinder games (to date).
To be very honest, I am not a big fan of DOS2, I did enjoy parts of the game but felt the game system itself was lacking.
2) PF:WoTR is a very much superior game to PF:Kingmaker as the devs did a much better job on balancing things. But both use the Pathfinder 1 rule set and it can be complex in nature but there are lots of build guides out there. In PF:WotR various people have also not liked the mass combat system and I recommend people to chose the Story Mode option for that feature.
IMHO PF:WotR has a very in depth story (base game as I felt some of the later DLC was not as well done more Arcade Like in nature) that I found appealing.

But in general if you love DOS2 for its Arcade style then any of the PF or W40K games you mentioned above are not a great fit. Again IMHO.

[Rubaboo]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

The argument against that is there are only a few folks that have the time and/or the patience to work out how to do that with a rule set as complex and a set of options as large as RT. Most people don't.

I would say they already have a difficulty system that allows the player to mostly adjust the game to fit, in a broad sense, whichever ruleset they like. I think the proponent issue with it is actually how it is described to the player. I don't think that the word "Difficulty" is accurate nor succinct in what it actually means gameplay wise.

If the "Difficulty" was renamed and split into "Combat Style" and "Roleplaying Style" it would clarify what they mean. Likewise, if the replacement for the currently named difficulties (story, normal, daring, hard, unfair) were instead renamed to things like "Brawler" "Tank n Spank" "Rogue Trader Pen n Paper" with a written description clearly describing how a combat would play out and what was expected mathematically on that difficulty setting it would I think hugely clarify what kind of an experience the player was in for.

Example for "Rogue Trader Pen n Paper": This is a faithful recreation of the pen and paper roleplaying game. It requires the player to understand the pen and paper RPG mechanics and be able to build their party around killing all enemies in a combat scenario before they can act. On fights where the player is unable to kill enemies before they can act, the player is required to use healing items as every hit will cause damage and only a few hits can be sustained before a party member is knocked out.

I made a DnD esque difficulty setting by simply removing the +20% minimum player damage and keeping almost every other unfair statistic settings as mk11 suggested.

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

The issue is that in this game whilst it is possible to make gloriously OP characters, it's also absolutely possible to make not just sub-optimal but totally non-viable characters leading at best to a miserable struggle and at worst a brick wall.

I think the issue here is the emotional experience of needing to lower a difficulty. It feels like 'I, as a player have failed and am lesser.'. Which I think is disingenuous because it is really more of a playstyle not a difficulty the player is actually selecting.

The player can lower the enemy statistics and skill checks by 80-90% at any time. Impossible to get stuck in that regard and I love that Owlcat did that.

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

My main view is that Owlcat struggle to come up with a UI design and metaphors that can support this level of complexity.

I would say 'yes', with the caveot of 'It could take the emphasis away from the story and put it on the mechanics.' 40k: Rogue Trader is a world to get lost in and I feel like that is 'the' emphasis of the game.

Personally, I would love to see a build manager, maker and tracker added. Make it so players can turn on build tracking and it would show everything for all party members at the beginning of every combat then the exact action sequence for that combat. Would be an awesome feature for people who wanted to do speedruns / challenge runs / theory crafting. However, I think that caveot still applies and could take away from the current emphasis of the game.

Descriptions definitely need improvement still. Descriptions are inconsistent, confusing and need to be redone. Duration / stacking needs to be added as fields like range. The talent list needs to be organized better, such as all talents that affect area attacks, burst attacks, etc. Abilites should clearly show a new talent would or wouldn't affect them. The thing that would immediately fix this is to allow the player to choose how respeccing works in the difficulty window. add 3 options like respec anytime outside of combat, an unlimited number of times at the voidship or only player defined number for free, like 3 as it is now. So that the player can just mess around with everything if they aren't understanding how things they choose are working.

I think the next stage would be making a build maker. A training area where the player can put a build together, test it on enemies and see how it plays in their team setup.

But adding more respeccing options I think is the feature that would take things to the next level for me.

If you do want an idea for helping with overwhelm with all the talents. I tend to go through and read them all once or twice. Starring ones that sound useful. Then I switch to starred list and look at how many talent spots I have open for an archetype and remove talents until I am at the allowed number.

[Drake]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

Originally posted by Rubaboo:

That level of customization is awesome in my mind as it allows everyone to play the game however they'd like or play it completely differently a few different times.

The argument against that is there are only a few folks that have the time and/or the patience to work out how to do that with a rule set as complex and a set of options as large as RT. Most people don't.

The issue is that in this game whilst it is possible to make gloriously OP characters, it's also absolutely possible to make not just sub-optimal but totally non-viable characters leading at best to a miserable struggle and at worst a brick wall.

There are both upsides and downsides to it. I'm kinda torn on the question. My main view is that Owlcat struggle to come up with a UI design and metaphors that can support this level of complexity. This may be because there are no other cRPGs with this level of complexity therefore there are no standard well understood UI design principles and metaphors to copy from. A game like this needs something new, UI innovation.

They've already changed the level up screens several times (which have improved it, no doubt) but this suggests that they created the game and rule set first and then thought about how to present it in the UI afterwards. I'd say it should be done the other way round. The rule set should be designed in conjunction with the UI so as to ensure the UI can actually support it in terms of reasonable player accessibility to the guts of the game. During the design process either the rule set can be simplified or the UI can be beefed up/innovated but one of those has to happen IMO.

As an example there are about 50 level ups and at least half of them involve two talent/ability selections. Many of these selections present over 60 individual options each. In the UI these are presented as a simple list. OK, the lists are broken down into sub-lists, but sub-lists of .... what exactly? What's good for my character and what's not? A playground for an experienced theorycrafter, no question, but for a new player who doesn't know what all these options are and what they do it's completely overwhelming.

The issue is that they homebrewed a lot from the PnP.

The warhammer 40K RPG system doesn't have levels. You gain XP and then you directly spend that XP on stats, skills or talent as you see fit.
The only requirement is that skills and talents have ranks and to unlock ranks you need to have previously spent a certain amount of XP before (so that you don't purchase OP talents too soon). Same with advanced careers, you need to unlock a certain rank in a career to get another one.
It's like that because FFG 40K games are mostly sandbox rpgs, you just do stuff and missions, you just go campaigns after campaigns and if you're lucky, you character doesn't die too soon (becasue rerolling is part of the game, it's a very lethal set of rules).

Changing that to 50 levels in a single epic campaign is a very difficult task.

as to the main topic.

I think trying to end the combat in a single turn is mostly player mentality more than game design.
People make guides online. The most popular guides are for the OP builds. Players then see these builds are popular so they play it and before you know it it's the main way to play that's the only thing you see online.

Personally i don't look at guides and always develop my own playstyle. As long as I win fights, I'm okay with it.

[Gorwe]

I would agree that, yes, cRPGs right now are quite reliant on the first two turns. Maybe it's not as visible in other cRPGs, but in Owlcat games? Yeah, it is super visible.

Old games weren't like that afaik. Solasta also isn't like that. And that's why I don't necessarily treat Owlcat RPGs as great RPGs. Optimization is necessary, ofc, but it isn't and shouldn't be all end all.

Ofc, the social media don't exactly help. Watching some schmuck play isn't terribly interesting. Watching someone break the game and speedrun it is a very potent clickbait. And that colors people's perception of games.