LogFAQs > #950444449

Zeus posted...

When picking weapons in a fantasy setting like that, I'd rather just go with a bow or magic and avoid all of that melee altogether

I went off archery in games waaaay early, because I loathe ammunition mechanics for bows. And because I've always sort of had this underlying feeling of "If I wanted to shoot things from a distance, I'd just go play an FPS". A lot of the things I take for granted when shooting an assault rifle or marksman rifle in an FPS bother me when bows are involved. Especially if the aiming mechanics are kind of shit.

When I'm playing fantasy I mostly just want to hit things (same reason why I rarely stealth, at least not very long after the initial attack). I like fantasy to be meaty, chunky, hack-and-slash. I want to melee my way into a pile of dudes and just cut them all down in a tornado of steel. And even in FPSes, I tend to prefer games that reward more aggressive, in-the-mix play (Halo, Doom) than I do ones where you're punished for being reckless and are more forced into more tactical play (like R6).

I think the first time I ever really played a serious archer build in anything was either Skyrim or Dragon Age: Origins, and even then it was more "Well, I've already done everything else" (for DA there was also the added RP of "The Dalish are like 90% archers/hunters, so obviously I'm an archer"). And while I didn't hate those runs, they didn't really make me fall in love with the style either (and in Skyrim it feels so cheap because Archery+Stealth basically means you'll never be hit again and you kill nearly everything with only a couple attacks). And I've played games with archery since and never felt overly inclined to lean into it.

I'm not adverse to magic, though it depends on the game and how it's handled. In Diablo 2 and 3 my main character picks were the Sorceress and Wizard and I was mostly a back-line ranged magic user (especially in groups with friends) - but I hated magic in Skyrim, and while I was willing to do magic runs (mainly when I was playing a character to complete the College quest line), it always felt like more of a burden than something I actually wanted to do.

I usually treat magic the same way I do Alchemy in Skyrim - which is as something I exploit for support purposes, but nothing that I focus on or build my style around. In Skyrim, I mostly just level magic via cheaty means (like casting Soul Trap on corpses or constantly using Transmutation) for quick perk points and occasionally use minor healing magic, but then never, ever using it in actual combat. If I'm making a magic character in a game like D&D I take a couple damage spells but them dump the rest of my spell choices into utility and non-combat options (Prestidigitation and Mending are basically my must-have starting cantrips for every character and every class ever).

I just finished replaying the KotOR games, and in those I played Sentinel for the balance of skills and physicality, and 99% of my combat was hitting things with lightsabers and ignoring the fact that I have Force powers.

This mentality goes way back for me as well - when I played Baldur's Gate 2 for the first time 20 years ago, my immediate instinct for first character was Swashbuckler, basically giving me the Rogue's skill bonuses (mostly for lockpicking) at the expense of the Rogue's sneak attack/stealth advantages I never used anyway in favor of something closer to a Fighter's physical attacks (plus dual-wielding!).
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