Primary offender: Oblivion. But it really is widespread.
Let's say you coded in a new piece of armor in the game before it shipped. It's an Elven Wodrack, a gauntlet that grants 3 additional armor points higher than normal Elven Gauntlets. However, you fail to notice a bug in the code that causes the game to mostly recognize it as Elven Gauntlets, so the armor bonus is negated.
And then...
ABSOLUTELY NO ONE NOTICES EVER.
This is a criminal offense I see in so many RPGs and even beyond. Anytime you get a chance to upgrade your weapon, or swap out your armor for a better piece, the numbers have to stack endlessly before they're honestly noticable. Sure, a rogue wearing a studded leather armor is going to be less protected than a knight with full chainmail set plus two protection buffs and an enchantment that protects from physical damage. But that's a lot stacking up, and it's still not even an immediate difference. Worse, when you're dealing miserable damage to someone or taking quite a lot, there's no clear player connection that says "Oh, I must not have enough armor!" Heck, I might just think that bandit is using an incredibly strong rusty dagger.
Where I see this worst is in the elemental effects. In Oblivion, I would find these scrolls labelled "Increase resistance to fire damage 30% for 15 seconds". I honestly would like to know if anybody ever used these. It's incredibly situational as most cannot even recognize when an enemy's attacks are fire-based, and then the reward of using such a situational weapon is mostly negligible. Would you ever see a little red flash around an enemy and think "OH FUDGE-KNUCKERS! HE JUST TURNED ON +20% FIRE DAMAGE! RUN! RUN LIKE THE WIND!!"
I'd really like to see fewer upgrades, but make the ones that are there REALLY worth it, and VERY obvious. One RPG that I saw nail it well was Chrono Trigger. The game introduces magic and the elements relatively late, and the ensuing enemies just afterwards have absurdly high physical defense. The result? Magic attacks will utterly destroy them. Then, the famous Magus fight has the elements as its centerpiece. Magus shifts his elemental state often, letting you predict which element he'll use (so you can use armor that 90%, or even COMPLETELY, negates damage of that element). And, if you use the right element on him in a certain state, he'll take massiv-er...a lot of damage.
Even better is TF2. The Medic's medigun will slowly charge over time, letting you unleash a very brief, but very powerful, "ubercharge". This protects you from 50% of damage, and blocks the other 50%. YOUR ARE INVINCIBLE. His alternate charge, the Kritzkrieg, causes the charged ally to deal FOUR TIMES his original damage in each shot. That practically lets a Sniper run-and-gun with his SMG at the stopping power of a minigun.
A game that has less resounding, but definitely noticable success in the area is Mass Effect 2. It still falls prey to multiples of 10% for the weapon upgrades, but there are relatively few actual weapons of each category. The only reason you're given new ones are for massive changes in power level.
The ultimate failure here is that as Valve states in their commentaries, it's a good idea to make rewards infrequent, but massive. So in their games, rather than one health kit every 50 feet, you'd find a bunch of health kits and a pile of ammo every 500 feet. It's a much better emotional reward.
Your thoughts? Are there people who genuinely enjoy and see the benefit of a stack of beneficial armor, in which the numbers are only strong once they're added up? Or are you too questioning why you have a sword that deals 53 damage, and another sword that deals 57?
Let's say you coded in a new piece of armor in the game before it shipped. It's an Elven Wodrack, a gauntlet that grants 3 additional armor points higher than normal Elven Gauntlets. However, you fail to notice a bug in the code that causes the game to mostly recognize it as Elven Gauntlets, so the armor bonus is negated.
And then...
ABSOLUTELY NO ONE NOTICES EVER.
This is a criminal offense I see in so many RPGs and even beyond. Anytime you get a chance to upgrade your weapon, or swap out your armor for a better piece, the numbers have to stack endlessly before they're honestly noticable. Sure, a rogue wearing a studded leather armor is going to be less protected than a knight with full chainmail set plus two protection buffs and an enchantment that protects from physical damage. But that's a lot stacking up, and it's still not even an immediate difference. Worse, when you're dealing miserable damage to someone or taking quite a lot, there's no clear player connection that says "Oh, I must not have enough armor!" Heck, I might just think that bandit is using an incredibly strong rusty dagger.
Where I see this worst is in the elemental effects. In Oblivion, I would find these scrolls labelled "Increase resistance to fire damage 30% for 15 seconds". I honestly would like to know if anybody ever used these. It's incredibly situational as most cannot even recognize when an enemy's attacks are fire-based, and then the reward of using such a situational weapon is mostly negligible. Would you ever see a little red flash around an enemy and think "OH FUDGE-KNUCKERS! HE JUST TURNED ON +20% FIRE DAMAGE! RUN! RUN LIKE THE WIND!!"
I'd really like to see fewer upgrades, but make the ones that are there REALLY worth it, and VERY obvious. One RPG that I saw nail it well was Chrono Trigger. The game introduces magic and the elements relatively late, and the ensuing enemies just afterwards have absurdly high physical defense. The result? Magic attacks will utterly destroy them. Then, the famous Magus fight has the elements as its centerpiece. Magus shifts his elemental state often, letting you predict which element he'll use (so you can use armor that 90%, or even COMPLETELY, negates damage of that element). And, if you use the right element on him in a certain state, he'll take massiv-er...a lot of damage.
Even better is TF2. The Medic's medigun will slowly charge over time, letting you unleash a very brief, but very powerful, "ubercharge". This protects you from 50% of damage, and blocks the other 50%. YOUR ARE INVINCIBLE. His alternate charge, the Kritzkrieg, causes the charged ally to deal FOUR TIMES his original damage in each shot. That practically lets a Sniper run-and-gun with his SMG at the stopping power of a minigun.
A game that has less resounding, but definitely noticable success in the area is Mass Effect 2. It still falls prey to multiples of 10% for the weapon upgrades, but there are relatively few actual weapons of each category. The only reason you're given new ones are for massive changes in power level.
The ultimate failure here is that as Valve states in their commentaries, it's a good idea to make rewards infrequent, but massive. So in their games, rather than one health kit every 50 feet, you'd find a bunch of health kits and a pile of ammo every 500 feet. It's a much better emotional reward.
Your thoughts? Are there people who genuinely enjoy and see the benefit of a stack of beneficial armor, in which the numbers are only strong once they're added up? Or are you too questioning why you have a sword that deals 53 damage, and another sword that deals 57?
