[Arcanum] Beef with Arcanum

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Gonzo13

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Beef with Arcanum

So overall I like the game.....
I love the plot....
The setting is interesting....
The overall concept is wonderfuly original....

However...

The game is incredibly missbalanced in my opinion.
I do not have the time or the patience to play the game seven times before I can even hit and complete all the quests.
I fifnd that at the beginning it only makes sense to pump up your character phisicaly otherwise you get slaughtered way too many times. It is biased towards characters with brawn. Sure I know that there are alternate ways of completing every quest but they are genraly difficult to pull off and therefore frustrating. Your persuasion needs to be high to be able to complete many of the quests but if your character is weak because that is where you spent all your points then you may get killed just the same.

As you proceed through the game you encounter enemies very early on that are way too powerful to beat even when you have a large party. I can't tell you how many times I had to reload just to beat that pathetic gang at the bridge. That is because I tried to diversify my character in different abilities and I just got shit on for it. Getting maximum fifty five points through out the whole game is just frustrating and in my opinion does not add realism to the game. I do not want to play some common shmoe. I want to be able to make my character better than the most elite in the world, able to snipe a fly off your head at fifty yards without mussing your hair, diffuse a bomb, blow up a builting, cortirise a wound, and cure the plague all at once. I do not want to be handed those abilities but I want to be able to attain them all with the same charcter.

The reason I liked fallout is because it allowed me almost limitless expansion of my character. Even in the first one where there was a level cap I never felt like I was being stifled. I felt painfully restrained in Arcanum from the very getgo.

In Fallout there were many different ways to complete quests and get favorable results. You could also manipulate to a degree, based on your knowledge and skills, the outcome to benefit the people you wanted. In Arcanum there is an outcome of a quest theat is most benficial to everybody but most of the time you have to be profficient in a particular skill to acheive that result. Sure you can complete the quests in different ways but generaly those other ways will never be able to acheive the best results. In Fallout there were a great many side quests that were available to everyone with a little skill and imagination, and there were a few that required specializations in certain areas. In Arcanum the great majority of quests require specialization and most of the time brawn will acheive the best results the easiest way.

Instead of enticing me to try other types of characters in new games as fallout did, this game mostly frustrates me.

I finally used a chear that allowed me to get an extra hundred character points to use and that only allowed me to unlock fully three tech disciplines and increase my stats to where my character wasn't a total waste of space.

I NEVER cheat at games. NEVER!!!!!!!!!
I HATE cheating!!!!
I will exploit certain loopholes in the rules, push restrictions to their limit, but I NEVER cheat!!!
I REPAEAT..... I NEVER CHEAT!!!!!
I am very upset that I finally felt like I had to cheat to make the game fun for me.
For me it is all about developing my character and I just seemed to me like my character was not developing hardly at all.
I wanted to make a techie character that did not rely on his brawn hardly at all, but on his wits, and speed with a gun. I could neither develop my firearms skill to any effect, not my wits, nor my technical abilities. I just sucked in fights, got myself killed repeatedly, got shafted on getting equipment an money to any reasonable effect, and could not covince anybody to do anything.
One point per level!!!!!!!!!! What the hell is that!!! It certainly is not character developement. If it took me that long in the real world to educate myself, work out to any effect, and ackquire new skills I would shoot myself. I am just a regular guy, my character is supposed to be a heroe of epic proportions. I do not want to be playing some half wit store clerk with grandeoise notions. I want to be playing somebody with uncommon potential that will rise to any chalenge. I am surprised my character can rise out of bed, not to mention defeat an awsome evil.

Anyways....
Like I said I do like the game in the end and I will play it again probably and even try not to cheat(which will require me to put points in combat skills initialy). However I just wish that the second one will have a little more thought placed into character development. Right now it is way too focused on combat skills and expensive equipment.

>>It is berry skarry faiting tha snake.
 
RE: Beef with Arcanum

I know what you mean about the balance issues. In order to be a decent gunfighter, you'll need Intelligence as well as Perception in order to build worthwhile guns which are better than what you can purchase in the shops. That, combined with the points you need to invest in gunsmithy doctorate and the practical preresiquite of high agility leads you bankrupt in stat points. And then, you find yourself only using only one gun (the Fine Revolver at start and then the elepant rifle) for the most part because all the other guns are too complex to make and are weak anyway. I find that I only build the other guns because the parts are ridiculously easy to find and because I can sell them away for a pretty profit. Another gripe about the weapon building is that some weapons are built up in stages (you find a thinga-magoo plus a wathcamacallit and combine it together and then you combine THAT with another doowhicky) and the end results turn out be weaker than the original. And finally, the insane magic resistance of some creatures. Scenario: my gun-toting gunslinger, who is a purist and only carries with him his revolver, healing salves, and loads the rest of him down with ammo is traveling through a haunted graveyard. The beginning is a blur, all he has to do is mow down a few sewer rats with the insanely fast rate of fire of his revolver. But then, all of a sudden, some ghouls pop out of their disturbed graves and rushes him! They are extremely magickal inclined and not only is my gunslinger's accuracy decreased but it is like he is firing through a brick wall. Seeing the folley of his gun, he drops it and haves at the ghouls with his gauntlets only to realize that Magnus has built them as machined gauntlets. The ghouls promptly dismember my party.

End of gripe.

"Credo Ut Intelligam"- I believe so that I may understand.
 
RE: Beef with Arcanum

I am glad that someone agrees.....

I tried to make a purist gunslinger out of my character. My favorite weapon is the hand cannon, it has good balance between speed and power and does not eat up ammunition, I do not like two handed weapons as much even though they do so much damage because they are slow. My favorite two handed gun is the tesla gun. That is because I can take out golems and seething masses with two shots a piece. Try it. It is awsome to see those things literaly blown into pieces before they can move. No better way to fight them than the tesla gun, annoying buggers never get a chance to damage your equipment.
Anyways... off on a tangent....

I found that I had to invest some points into melee even though I was hoping to just use guns. The early guns were not cutting it and I was getting slaughtered. And as a gun slinger, having to invest those massive ammounts of points you mentioned before, you still need to have a high charisma and beauty and inteligence to be able to interact with the world to a full extent.

Anyways as I have said before..... it is a great concept but the character building and the balancing are infuriating.
The easiest combination by far seems to be a plain fighter. Upping melee is relatively cheap compared to getting decent at magic or tech. You still find good equipment without having to make it, and you are free to spend points on you persuasion and charisma and beauty which you need if you have any desire to unlock and complete most of the quests. The characters you encounter will make many of the tech items you may want. The way it is set up now just encourages the player to be a single character type rather than to try many different combinations. Any other combination is frustrating to develop, and if the character you are trying to make is tech inclined then he/she will probably end up with redundant abilities when taking followers into consideration. And then there is the matter of strength because unless you want to go through the game with the crapiest armor you need to invest in it to be able to move in plate mail, or machined plate mail.


>>It is berry skarry faiting tha snake.
 
RE: Beef with Arcanum

One of the primary reasons for this imbalance is the realtime combat system in which opponents charge and enter melee in one turn.
 
RE: Beef with Arcanum

i guess you're all kinda right.

arcanum is a great game, but the development of your main character is indeed extremely disappointing. i started the game several times with many different characters (a human thief, an elven magician, a technically inclined gun-toting dwarf, you name it, i tried it), but most of the time i just got killed in shrouded hills by those three bastards guarding the bridge. i was never able to pass them without decent dodge and melee skills, unless i wanted to become an evil character right away and blow up the bridge equipment. so the first time i actually finished the game, i did it with a typical half-ogre melee-fighter. this way, however, the game tends to become way too easy and, quite frankly, boring as hell. if you clear all of the sewers in tarant, for instance, you'll level up so quickly that by midgame one blow of your sword or axe usually means 30 to 40 hp's damage for the unfortunate freak that is standing in front of you. most of the time virgil and magnus never even got a chance to wield their weapons. no fun.

when you get to know the game a little better though, it is quite possible to finish it with a totally different character, but you should always remember to specialize. if you want to become a wizard, you should restrict yourself to 2 or 3 colleges and you should put all your other skillpoints into you willpower and endurance and such. the same goes for other types of character like thieves and technicians.

one thing that really got me pissed were the armors. you see, the magic robes in the game are quite disappointing and a good set of armor easily weighs 1000 pounds, so if you want some decent protection and don't like being encumbered, you have to put lotsa skillpoints into strength. when you want to become a magician, though, you can't really spare these skillpoints since you need them to boost your willpower and such. the same goes for a technician (how else can you learn to make all that nice stuff?). in other words: perfect imbalance.

but, still: it's a great game, isn't it?
 
RE: Beef with Arcanum

>arcanum is a great game, but the development of your main character is indeed extremely disappointing. i started the game several times with many different characters (a human thief, an elven magician, a technically inclined gun-toting dwarf, you name it, i tried it), but most of the time i just got killed in shrouded hills by those three bastards guarding the bridge. i was never able to pass them without decent dodge and melee skills,

It is pretty bad when people overlook the speech skills as a part of the game.
 
RE: Beef with Arcanum

>It is pretty bad when people overlook the speech skills as a part of the game.

Speech skills my ass! I played the game with a dumb half-ogre (intelligence 3, although I actually had to 'boost' that up to 4, because I couldn't get (m)any quests)and with a witty, irresistable human (you know, lotsa intelligence, lotsa charm, lotsa beauty, persuasion, an extra trait from the start of the game ...). Believe me: being witty in the world of Arcanum just sucks! The only real 'bonus' is that a witty character will be able to solve some quests without having to resort to violence. Duh! The downside of this, however, is that you can't waste many skillpoints on fighting skills, because you have to specialize in all those 'good natured' skills (and you HAVE to specialize in this game, believe me). So when you encounter seething masses and such, you'll have to rely on your npc's! Yes, you'll have to rely on Virgil, who is a complete egghead during the largest part of the game (he'll basically only heal you and have lotsa critical misses when you're a technically inclined character) and you have to rely on Magnus, who gets pissed off so easily, that he must be bugged or something and Raven (who's bugged too) and ...

But hey, what do I know, right?
So yeah: boost up those speech skills! That might just do the trick. (pf!)
 
RE: Beef with Arcanum

[updated:LAST EDITED ON Mar-11-03 AT 03:25AM (GMT)]I find between three ogres, Virgil, and a dwarf or two, I don't have to fight at all. Which leaves a lot of moneymaking opportunities, stat bonuses, etc. to be made through being very persuasive.
 
RE: Beef with Arcanum

Aw man, you're right. Really. No kidding. If you have lotsa luck with them bugs, you might just pull it off. It never worked for me anyway (and yes, I do play the patched version). One time I had to witness my own character getting slaughtered by three of my 'befriended' npc's because they had suddenly turned suspicious and hostile. Yeah, and I was only picking a lock in Stillwater at that time. Picking a lock! How evil is that? And yet, that stupid dwarf Magnus and that magick clown Dante both jumped me. (Forgot whom the third one was, however. It wasn't Raven, though. Maybe it was that ogre you meet in Shrouded Hills, what's his name?) And what was I to do, huh? I couldn't really defend myself because I was a charming thief character and I had put most of my skillpoints in pickpocket and lockpick. Persuade them to save my life while I was being blown to bits? Yeah, right. IMHO: not all characters can survive in the world of Arcanum and (again IMHO) that's due to lotsa annoying bugs and a disappointing character development (it's unbalanced, you get way too little skillpoints, most of the bonus traits simply suck,...).

The thing is: after playing the Fallout series a couple of times, the development of your main character in Arcanum just seems so limited. If you play a melee-fighter in Arcanum, you'll get like the easiest rpg ever, because you can fight lotsa things and you'll level up so quick you won't believe it. Other characters, though, will have to watch their back constantly (which, I admit, can be fun too, but I don't really enjoy saving and loading my game every three minutes or so). When you play a technician, you'll never be able to learn how to make all those nice thingies and when you play a magician you'll never master more than what? Three colleges? And because of them bugs, you even stand a change that you'll never be a master at dodge or melee and so on and so on... It's a tragedy, really.

But still: I like it, so get off my case :-)
 
RE: Beef with Arcanum

(snip first paragraph)

Uh...news flash. Those aren't bugs. That's people getting tired of evil actions and not wanting to associate with you anymore.

I'm sorry if it seems like a bug. Perhaps they should neuter down the game so you have direct control over your NPCs?
 
RE: Beef with Arcanum

The only diplomatic skill that's truly worth investing in is Persuasion. I think it was around the Expert level of that skill that the amount of NPC's you can carry is increased by two, making the maximum limit +7 with a 20 in Charisma.

Additionally, to solve the problem of the bridge and Lukan, Persuasion is what you need, not Speech. You can persuade Lukan that you're part of a thieves guild and that he's intruding on your territory. You can even make him pay YOU gold AND give the key. Pretty grand, don't you think?
 
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