A discussion of gameplay and narrative

[quote=Searz][quote=lifebaka] [quote=Searz] Chance is a poisonous game mechanic that needs to be killed off. For the exact same reason that cutscenes and handholding are bad: [b]It takes away control from the player[/b].[/quote] I don't agree. Yes the chance-based elements you've listed are bad, and yes that's a problem. However, not [i]all[/i] chance-based elements are [i]inherently[/i] bad. For example, in the pay-for version of The Stanley Parable that just came out (and which I very much recommend), there are several versions of the starting corridor and associated narration before the first (official) "choice". Which one you get on any given run through is determined randomly, so it's a chance-based game element. Now, because you are going to move through this starting corridor a dozen or so times as you try to find all the various endings of the game, none of which are longer than some twenty minutes of gameplay, having multiple versions of the opening prevents it from becoming really boring. Yes, the player doesn't have control over which version of the opening he is going to see this time, but that 1) doesn't actually matter and 2) keeps the opening fresh and interesting when it would otherwise become a horrible drag. So this is a chance-based mechanic that actually [i]improves[/i] the game that it's in, and a single counterexample is all I really need to disprove your statement.[/quote] Yeah, I can be a bit more binary than I should sometimes. Great example with The Stanley Parable. Those are exactly the kinds of scenarios where it's perfectly fine to use chance. That's just one example though, compared to the 9 bad examples I brought up. I think that goes to show how often the element of chance is misused. [quote]More generally, I'm not convinced that taking control away from the player is inherently bad, either. Take Bioshock, for example. The whole "a man chooses, a slave obeys" speech wouldn't mean the same thing if the game didn't deliver it in a cutscene, where the player is unable to act. Yes, cutscenes are frequently over done and quick-time events are used to showcase characters doing cool things instead of just letting players do their own cool things. But this doesn't mean that cutscenes are inherently bad, just that games aren't using them well. And it doesn't mean that quick-time events are inherently bad, either; some games use them to great effect, especially games that aren't terrible interested in developing deep mechanics in the first place (Telltale games, David Cage games, etc.).[/quote] That holds true in games where the narrative takes the top priority and gameplay is shaped to fit around the narrative. It does not however necessarily hold true in games like Bioshock. This was made especially apparent in Bioshock Infinite, where there were several instances where I was annoyed out of my mind that I couldn't do shit about what was happening in the cutscenes. Anybody remember the famous "Press E to stop, smash his head in and drown him"? But yeah, I agree with you for the most part. There are just an overabundance of cutscenes in general, and loads of them are poorly done. In general though I very much prefer my games to leave me in control all the time. [quote]No more traditional randomized-deck card games, sure. Building a stacked-deck card game could be interesting, actually... Anyway, a lot of current successful card games actually include basically no random elements anyway.[/quote] Stacked-deck means what exactly? [quote]Drop/loot mechanics in MMOs are basically designed to keep players playing. It's a really thinly veiled Skinner-box mechanic. I wouldn't be sad to see stuff like this go in favor of more predictable systems. Refresh my memory on this one, but doesn't Final Fantasy include pretty minimal chance-based mechanics? I don't remember that accuracy is all that relevant in a lot of those games, and the randomization on damage isn't actually relevant in most circumstances. I actually can't remember much really random from FF13, back when I played it, other than perhaps enemy behavior and enemy encounters (maybe? I haven't played that game in a while). For other RPGs, I wouldn't be sad to see random encounters go away. They make the game hard to balance, because spending more time in an area automatically means more EXP and money, which can break things. Dragon Age: Origins did well on that front (although it had some other issues), and there are plenty of other games that do less-random enemy encounters in interesting ways (I'm thinking games like Shin Megami Tensei IV and the Tales series, for example, although both those games are grind-able). And a lot of classic western RPGs are based on D&D, which has some pretty crazy scaling chance-based mechanics. [i]Especially[/i] if you include optional rules like fumble or crit tables. I really, really wouldn't be sad to see that sort of thing change. In one of the D20 editions of Star Wars, for example, any given crit has a good chance to result in an automatic kill. And since the player characters tend to get attacked a lot in a D20-based game, it's statistically impossible for any level 1 character to live to see level 10.[/quote] Agreed. And I think he's referring to earlier games. I haven't played too many FF games myself, but I've played a little of the FF3 remake on my tablet and it has a lot of chance. Damage can vary greatly (15-35 for example). There is dodge, there is randomness to the order of attacks and there's randomness to several status effects and then there's the random encounters of course. I think the game would be a lot better without it. [quote]Dear Esther isn't really a visual novel. TB's right when he describes as something more like a virtual exhibit. I don't know if there's a name for the type of game Dear Esther is.[/quote] I think virtual exhibit fits perfectly. Why not use use that then? And possibly abbreviate it to VE?[/quote]

[quote=Searz][quote=YayaFTW] I'd say it needs to be toned down. Removing the chance mechanism completely will be a disaster.[/quote] The great majority of elements and mechanics based on chance are there to the detriment of the experience. Clever(read: GOOD) game design can completely replace almost anything governed by chance with better systems. [quote]No chance mechanism will mean no more card games.[/quote] False. There are card games without such elements. I know Yukimaru introduced me to one a while back. I wasn't particularly impressed with it though as it was very.. low budget. I'd love to see a game with Hearthstone's budget that tries to do away with the element of chance, or at least keep it to a bare minimum. (i.e: no chance-based elements outside of which cards you draw) [quote]No chance mechanism will mean no more drop/loot mechanism. (It'll be like guaranteed rewards at the end of a boss room, which is boring and not as thrilling as when you get a super rare item than others can't get because it has a .01% chance of dropping)[/quote] I can only see this as a good thing because it does away with grinding and could instead increase the difficulty level to compensate for the guaranteed items, or just implement another system entirely. The benefits of that feeling of exclusivity are EASILY outweighed by the removal of the feeling of getting cheated or bored trying to get said item. Bottom line: [b]chance is not required[/b]. [quote]No chance mechanism will mean no more quality RPGs. (Final Fantasy, one of the greatest games in history, would be ruined)[/quote] First off, blatantly false statement. Secondly 'greatest games in history' is clearly a highly subjective statement. [quote=caucheka] and all of those examples are extreme cases.[/quote] So what? That doesn't detract from my point in any way, shape or form. [quote]if you don't like a little chance thats fine, but to say that chance is on the same level as cutscenes and handholding is ridiculous.[/quote] Which is a very subjective thing in the end, so your statement holds little weight outside of your own preferences.[/quote]

[quote=DillButt64]i personally enjoy cutscenes, it feels weird to me when someone is talking to you about something really important and youre walking and jumping in a corner without actually looking at them or paying attention to them or looting some random container while the person is talking to you, i feel like cutscenes add to the story, regarding games like dear whatever and beyond two souls that are primarily cutscene games are kinda...boring to me, i still want gameplay in my games and i dont really like quicktime events and regarding chance mechanics in games, im ok with them in RPGs, the game would be extremely boring if everything hit 100% of the time and everyone would only use the strongest moves, in games like pokemon most of the strongest moves either have things that need to be met or low chances to hit, now if they had 100% hit rate because chance is no longer a thing everyone would only use fireblast and thunder and blizzard every single game not only that but there would be either a 0% or 100% of status inflicting moves which is also pretty toxic, another example for pokemon is ice beam, that move has a %chance to freeze when it hits, now if it still kept that it would be a 100% chance to freeze every time it hit or it would never have a chance to hit making it another damaging move which would get overshadowed by the stronger attacks that will no longer miss because the random chance element is gone crit chance is also something that isnt bad, its the main thing that makes certain DPS roles in RPGs stay a DPS role, like Assassins that have crits as a part of their burst, which to me is better than having constantly high numbers all of the time RPG games -need- a chance mechanic of some degree or they would be extremely boring games with certain spells/weapons being at the top because they have the highest damage and can never miss, and spells/skills that have a 100% chance to inflict a status effect that can also deal damage is a toxic mechanic in my eyes basically everything having a 0% or 100% chance of everything would make games boring and more toxic than they already are but i agree that there are some things that shouldnt be RNG, like GP ult[/quote]

[quote=lifebaka][quote=Searz] That holds true in games where the narrative takes the top priority and gameplay is shaped to fit around the narrative. It does not however necessarily hold true in games like Bioshock. This was made especially apparent in Bioshock Infinite, where there were several instances where I was annoyed out of my mind that I couldn't do shit about what was happening in the cutscenes. Anybody remember the famous "Press E to stop, smash his head in and drown him"? But yeah, I agree with you for the most part. There are just an overabundance of cutscenes in general, and loads of them are poorly done. In general though I very much prefer my games to leave me in control all the time. [/quote] My point with Bioshock, really, was that not giving control to the player is sometimes necessary to get the game's point across. And that's okay, because there really are some things that can't be done unless the player doesn't get any say in what's happening. I think that the over-use of cutscenes, as an industry trend, is actually because cutscenes were used really well in several titles, and those titles sold really well. And the video game industry, in the US and perhaps also worldwide, like basically every other entertainment industry, is controlled largely by marketing-type people who look at sales figures and use those sales figures to try to make games that have "what the players want" in them. So we've gotten a lot of games with cutscenes, because they seem to be selling. And all shooters have multiplayer (often tacked on and not actually good), because that's "what players want". Et cetera. Basically the same trend can be seen in the US movie industry, in the huge number of big-budget action films, sequels, and comic-book adaptions that have been coming out in recent years; television's been rife with this kind of attempted cash-grab for at least a decade, and I'm not familiar enough with other industries to really speak about them. What's really telling, of course, is that a lot of these games/movies/et cetera actually do make a lot of money. So it's really hard to argue against the marketers; they're not actually wrong. We're just not getting games/movies/et cetera that are really [i]good[/i]. [quote=Searz] Stacked-deck means what exactly? [/quote] "Stacking the deck" (or "deck stacking" or similar phrases) is the act of putting a deck of cards in a specific order. Generally, since most card games are based on shuffling the deck and not knowing what you're going to draw next, it's a form of cheating. What I mean by a "stacked-deck card game" would be one where when you, the player, build your deck, you also decide the exact order you draw the cards in. And then, when you play, you always actually draw the cards in that order (unless you or another player does something to change that). There's potential to design games that work like that, although the specifics would probably be a lot more complicated. [quote=Searz] False. There are card games without such elements. I know Yukimaru introduced me to one a while back. I wasn't particularly impressed with it though as it was very.. low budget. I'd love to see a game with Hearthstone's budget that tries to do away with the element of chance, or at least keep it to a bare minimum. (i.e: no chance-based elements outside of which cards you draw) [/quote] For a higher-budget (and also really good) example of a low-chance-mechanics card game, see Magic: The Gathering. MT:G also has a lot of interesting ideas about how to design cards of differing power levels, utility, and complexity; rare cards are almost always more powerful and complex than commons, but not always [i]better[/i]. You can even build very competitive decks using basically nothing but commons and uncommons (and cheap rares; there used to be a column called "Building on a Budget" on mtg.com that did exactly this, but I don't know if it's still around). [quote=DillButt64] i personally enjoy cutscenes, it feels weird to me when someone is talking to you about something really important and youre walking and jumping in a corner without actually looking at them or paying attention to them or looting some random container while the person is talking to you [/quote] Fallout games and other games with dialogue-choice systems seem to handle this just fine. When someone talks to you, the dialogue system takes over and prevents you from just ignoring what they're saying. The dialogue isn't actually a cutscene, really, so there is a middle ground that more games could make use of, if they wanted to. [quote=DillButt64] and regarding chance mechanics in games, im ok with them in RPGs, the game would be extremely boring if everything hit 100% of the time and everyone would only use the strongest moves [/quote] Doesn't hold for all RPGs. At all. Dark Souls, for example, has absolutely no hit-chance elements. Things hit, or they don't, based entirely on player input. And not everyone just uses "the strongest moves", either; although certain weapons and attacks are better than others, there's a whole freakin' lot that's pretty viable. There are RPGs that are just fundamentally different from Pokemon, and your arguments for chance mechanics really fall apart when you try to apply them to those games. Even in the context of Pokemon, and similar systems, usage requirements (such as secondary costs or situational requirements) serve as other potential balancing factors for powerful moves. I, for instance, always avoided moves like Fireblast, because no matter how much damage it does, it's not worth spending a move slot on an attack with 5 PP that isn't going to result in 5 guaranteed kills. I'll take Flamethrower (or whatever other decently powerful move), thank you very much, which is gonna' be worth [i]more[/i] than 5 kills in pretty much every situation.[/quote]

[quote=DillButt64]i thought i put in that my post was more about turn-based rpgs but i guess i left it out cuz someone was talking to me while i was typing that, im aware in things like dark souls and skyrim are real time RPGs so they can have DoT and on-hit things without %chance (even though there are a few weapons with %chance on hits in skyrim if i remember correctly but they took out a lot of the random things from morrowind like missing) but i still feel like taking out all chance from turn-based RPGs will leave many moves/spells/skills left out being replaced with other much stronger moves, also in pokemon you can use PP UP to make fire blast have 8 PP, but youll still be using flamethrower over other moves because it will have a 100% chance to hit (and if there is 0% or 100% itll either burn or not burn) making moves like flame wheel, or any less damaging move? since flamethrower will satisfy any needs you need with a fire type move than also burns? why would you ever use the move will-o-wisp if you can damage someone and burn them at the same time? and if the strongest fire type moves cant burn then they only thing separating them from other moves is the type of move they are rather than a special effect they would have i feel like in turn-based RPGs there needs to be some kind of chance so that things are different and dont get stale[/quote]

[quote=Searz][quote=DillButt64] i personally enjoy cutscenes, it feels weird to me when someone is talking to you about something really important and youre walking and jumping in a corner without actually looking at them or paying attention to them or looting some random container while the person is talking to you, i feel like cutscenes add to the story[/quote] I'm pretty sure this is a problem on your part... If you're constantly walking and jumping around, not paying any attention to somebody talking to you then you might have some issues with your attention span. Bottom line is: the game should draw you in by being interesting, so that you WANT to look at/listen to that thing, not by forcing you to listen/watch.. And I find it funny that you think these cutscenes add to the story. Most games that do overuse them have TERRIBLE stories. So even if they do add to the stories, are you sure it's a good thing? [quote=lifebaka] What I mean by a "stacked-deck card game" would be one where when you, the player, build your deck, you also decide the exact order you draw the cards in. And then, when you play, you always actually draw the cards in that order (unless you or another player does something to change that). There's potential to design games that work like that, although the specifics would probably be a lot more complicated.[/quote] AH, I see. That would be awesome. Why are not more card games using that model? O.o The only other model I've seen is one where there is no draw at all and you have your entire deck available to you. [quote]For a higher-budget (and also really good) example of a low-chance-mechanics card game, see Magic: The Gathering. MT:G also has a lot of interesting ideas about how to design cards of differing power levels, utility, and complexity; rare cards are almost always more powerful and complex than commons, but not always [i]better[/i]. You can even build very competitive decks using basically nothing but commons and uncommons (and cheap rares; there used to be a column called "Building on a Budget" on mtg.com that did exactly this, but I don't know if it's still around).[/quote] I'm not even remotely interested in playing with real cards, so are the digital versions of the MTG games good enough to waste time on? I've heard they have some pretty glaring issues.[/quote]

[quote=DillButt64][quote=Searz] I'm pretty sure this is a problem on your part... If you're constantly walking and jumping around, not paying any attention to somebody talking to you then you might have some issues with your attention span. Bottom line is: the game should draw you in by being interesting, so that you WANT to look at/listen to that thing, not by forcing you to listen/watch.. And I find it funny that you think these cutscenes add to the story. Most games that do overuse them have TERRIBLE stories. So even if they do add to the stories, are you sure it's a good thing? [/quote] my part? no i like looking at the people when theyre talking it adds to it like you said, however when i watch let's plays of some games and someone is talking to them but there is say a barrel or a chest next to the person to loot they go to loot that instead since they have free control, why waste time listening when you can get more items? cutscenes always felt like a "reward" to me, after you beat an extremely hard boss would you rather it just end and have you walk around and talk to people or do you want a cutscene to stop and take a rest after said boss? i would rather have a cutscene than a complete stop in the flow of the game, like in Bioshock Infinite there was a part where you were on the rails falling through the sky away from the bird, directly after that you were placed on a beach unable to use your weapons until you got to a certain point and that felt boring to me after such a fast paced spot in the game, im sure if they made the beach scene into a cutscene it would be slow paced but playing through it seemed very slow but Searz if you find it funny that cutscenes add to the story can you maybe give examples of other ways to add to the story or present a story?[/quote]

[quote=Searz][quote=DillButt64] and regarding chance mechanics in games, im ok with them in RPGs, the game would be extremely boring if everything hit 100% of the time and everyone would only use the strongest moves, in games like pokemon most of the strongest moves either have things that need to be met or low chances to hit, now if they had 100% hit rate because chance is no longer a thing everyone would only use fireblast and thunder and blizzard every single game RPG games -need- a chance mechanic of some degree or they would be extremely boring games with certain spells/weapons being at the top because they have the highest damage and can never miss, and spells/skills that have a 100% chance to inflict a status effect that can also deal damage is a toxic mechanic in my eyes basically everything having a 0% or 100% chance of everything would make games boring and more toxic than they already are but i agree that there are some things that shouldnt be RNG, like GP ult[/quote] Not to be rude or anything, but seriously? Did you think your comments through at all? Your entire comment is a misguided mess. Pokemon is [b]designed around[/b] chance. You will have to make drastic changes to Pokemon for it to work without chance. Which of course is very possible and will likely make it a better game in the end. [quote]crit chance is also something that isnt bad, its the main thing that makes certain DPS roles in RPGs stay a DPS role, like Assassins that have crits as a part of their burst, which to me is better than having constantly high numbers all of the time[/quote] Uhuh, and what does crits do? That's right, they increase damage. Why not just increase damage under specific conditions instead? I mean is there any reason to make the extra damage rely on chance rather than relying on player skill? Because of variety? Nope, that can be done without chance. [quote=DillButt64] i feel like in turn-based RPGs there needs to be some kind of chance so that things are different and dont get stale[/quote] That is simply not the case. Your ramblings really don't help your point. As I've said previously: clever(read: GOOD) game design can completely replace almost anything governed by chance with better systems. [spoiler=Here are a few ideas of things I'd like to see in Pokemon:]PP is an incredibly outdated system and it needs to be streamlined into something more reasonable. My first idea would be a stamina system. Attacks require stamina to use. Different attacks use different amounts of stamina. Stamina recharges slowly automatically each turn, but can be charged back to full if you use the (new) Rest/Catch your breath/whatever option in battle, effectively losing a turn, but regaining all your stamina. If stamina runs out you get a penalty to your defense for the next enemy turn. Something like Hyper Beam for example could take a shit-ton of stamina to use, leaving your defenses low the next turn as a trade off for the high power it possesses. The amount of stamina is governed by a combination of Speed and Strength(see below). A redesign of attributes(stats). I'd introduce something like Speed, Strength, Intelligence, Durability and Resistance. Strength adds damage to physical attacks and also adds more stamina, Intelligence adds more damage to spells and I would like it to have some more effect too, like increasing duration, but duration increase would be hard to balance. Durability would be resistance to physical attacks and increases in HP or there would need to be shield mechanics that relied on durability. Resistance would be resistance toward non-physical attacks and could also add more stamina or some other effect(unsure). Speed decides which pokemon attacks first and adds more stamina. The addition of stamina makes Speed much less of binary helpfulness. I mean, either you're first or you're not, it doesn't get much more binary than that, which is why speed in current games can be utterly terrible. And having Strength increase stamina while Intelligence doesn't will create a very interesting dynamic between physical attackers and non-physical attackers. I'd like money and items in general in the game to be much more streamlined. Maybe even to the point of removing the item system in battles entirely(i.e: have the Catch your breath option where you now have items), in favor of adding more depth to the combat in general. 'Cus items are pretty boring in general. Adding more move slots to Pokemon would probably be a good way of increasing the variation and depth of combat. 4 is a really small pool of moves, 6 would probably be a better number (8 could be too much). With a larger pool of moves there could also be more combo attacks and systems implemented, like a proper weather system that increases damage for some attacks based on humidity, wind and temperature. Because honestly, let's face it, the current weather system is kinda pathetic. Status effects would have to be reworked entirely, obviously. If something is to have a lasting effect it cannot have a heavy impact on each turn (like Paralysis and Confusion) or it would have to require more work to achieve. Things like ice attacks could rapidly decrease the temperature of targeted pokemon and if he gets too cold he freezes (weather system, SOU CLEVUR). That means that you'd have to combo several ice-based attacks together to freeze your enemy and rely on the fact that your enemy doesn't have any moves that can heat him up again. It would create a great dynamic and would make Ice a very unique element. Same thing with high temperatures and Burn ofc. (only that Burn will have a completely different effect from Freeze) Not relevant to chance, but I'd like it if they made it so that every move your pokemon learns is added to a pool of moves and never lost, but that you can, as usual, only bring 4 moves at a time with you into battle. Which would also solve all the problems with [b]fucking HMs[/b]. HMs in their current state suck so hard..[/spoiler] So yeah, there you have a few ideas. I spent less than an hour to come up with those. What do you think a team of 30 could do with hundreds of hours? Game design is fun :) I might even use ideas like these for future games I intend to make :3[/quote]

[quote=DillButt64]your changes youd like to see in pokemon completely change the whole entire battle system, the game would have to have its name changed so its not called pokemon because of how much youre changing the battle system, also your attributes you said are basically the same thing other than HP being a stat you moved to Durability/Defense and adding extra stats when you get more stats, which ive seen other games do well but it seems like a burden of knowledge with the varity pokemon has (whereas in other games that have that you have like 4-5 classes that only need a specific thing and pokemon has 600+ pokemon) and the stamina feature would now be instead of who gets more lucky its who has the most stamina so they dont have to rest before the other person crit has always been a system in games that also come with ways to make your damage higher under specific conditions, pokemon has the weather system (which i agree is a poor system but your proposed system is a huge burden of knowledge, having to take in account humidity, wind speed, temp., cloud coverage, what season it is, angle of the sun, every time you attack along with the other things is overbearing to people that arnt studying weather) and other games have buffs that last for X amount of turns/seconds, crit feels fine to me if its something you can build around (there are moves in pokemon with higher crit chance and items that give you a better crit ratio so yes you can sort of build around it) your status effect system is kinda...different? i dont want to say bad because it can work but in a game like pokemon you might as well just normalize the %chance of effects so that if a move has 30% chance of freeze and it doesnt freeze on the first turn the %chance raises to like 60% also im not going to read clever as good because you can be clever but also terrible at the same time, while your ideas are cleaver theyre also a massive burden of knowledge that over complicates things[/quote]

[quote=lifebaka][quote=DillButt64] i feel like in turn-based RPGs there needs to be some kind of chance so that things are different and dont get stale [/quote] Again, even in the context of [i]just Pokemon[/i], you could design it without the random hit chance or stun/burn/whatever chances and still have a functional game. Also, the PP-Up isn't a real argument; you can use it on other moves, too, and receive the same percentage benefit. Turn-based RPGs get stale when the player doesn't get new toys to play with or isn't forced to use their old toys in new ways. It actually has little to do with whether or not there's a random element. The real reason a lot of those games end up feeling kind of stale after a while is because there's a straight linear progression from lower-tier moves/attacks/spells to higher-tier moves/attacks/spells, so once you get to the highest tier there's no more progression. Usually the game ends pretty soon after that, though, so you don't have as much time to notice unless you grind and do optional stuff a lot. I can't honestly think of a turn-based RPG with absolutely zero random or chance-based elements, but a lot of games get fairly close by allowing the systems to go all the way too 100% and 0% chances. Fire Emblem games, for instance, end up with a lot of 100% hit chances, especially on lower difficulties. The Etrian Odyssey series (which is great, by the way) also does a pretty god job of allowing hit chances and the like to get really consistent when you're an appropriate level to be in an area, unless the enemies are supposed to be really hard to hit or something. Etrian Odyssey also does a good job of making random enemy encounters more predictable, via a part of the dungeon HUD that gradually turns from blue and green to red as the next encounter approaches. [quote=Searz] Bottom line is: the game should draw you in by being interesting, so that you WANT to look at/listen to that thing, not by forcing you to listen/watch. [/quote] Dunno'. There are ways to use cutscenes that are just fine without either them or the game strictly being interesting (which is, IMO, a different problm). The little vignettes when you first enter an area in Kingdom Hearts, for instance, are a great way to use short cutscenes to show off an area, and they'd work (i.e. serve their purpose) just fine even in a terrible game. I think the big problem with cutscenes is that the games that use them really well tend to be very narrative-driven; JRPGs, for instance. And a lot of games are trying to use them in the same way, which is the problem. In a game that's driven by its narrative, showing things happening that the player doesn't have much (or any) input on is fine; that's what you're there for. But it's not okay in other games. If I'm playing a game to shoot people in the head, I don't want to watch videos of other people shooting people in the head. I want to be shooting people in the head. [quote=Searz] I'm not even remotely interested in playing with real cards, so are the digital versions of the MTG games good enough to waste time on? I've heard they have some pretty glaring issues. [/quote] I hear the Duels of the Planeswalkers series is good, and a friend of mine found a lot of the puzzles in the 2013 version a lot of fun; it's probably your best bet, overall. MTG Online's interface is terrible, and it's really too expensive to get into. You could also go for Apprentice, which is a free unofficial version, but it doesn't actually have support for the rules, so you can't really play using Apprentice unless you already know how to play. [quote=Searz] Uhuh, and what does crits do? That's right, they increase damage. Why not just increase damage under specific conditions instead? I mean is there any reason to make the extra damage rely on chance rather than relying on player skill? Because of variety? Nope, that can be done without chance. [/quote] Eh, I don't think crits are that big a deal, overall. Random elements like crit don't have as much of as the length of combat goes up, so designers just have to make sure that these sorts of random elements are placed in such a way that they actually tend towards the average results. MMO boss fights, for example, are long enough that the crit does actually act like a straight up damage multiplier over all. I agree that a more skill-based system would be nice, but I'm not sure that having a lower-skill option, like crit, in as well, as long as the higher-skill option is mutually exclusive and also a bit better, is really a problem. It'd allow inferior players to still feel powerful (which is seriously important), but still give better players a real edge. (In PvE content, at least. PvP balance would still be hell.) I don't have much to say about your suggested Pokemon changes, unfortunately. It's been ages since I played a Pokemon game. Dill's right when he says that those changes would make it not a Pokemon game, at least; it'd certainly be something different. I get the feeling that you'd like a game with longer battles overall, rather than each attack doing a considerable amount of damage, if not outright killing the enemy. I do hope so, at least, since I'd probably really like something like that. Also, Dill, your idea of a weather system isn't at all what Searz suggested. He suggested something kinda' simple, not something that complex.[/quote]