Good post, michael.
Almost all of my forum fishing has been to generate a good basis for things to avoid taking advantage of. I was under the impression that this game was a BEAUTY, and it is! But any gamer knows there is going to be at least one method of cheese to cheat any system with. I remember my first go around with Ogre Battle 64 when I had only one overpowered unit that I used to clear all enemies with. Then I remember the gratification of using my entire army (more units, all weaker = more strategy required = more failed attempts = more learning = more gratification)
Tiny amounts of self-regulation can really increase gratification and re-playability. Any system can(and will)be cheated, even RL finance and court systems are duped regularly.
I ended up rolling a 3-man party and gave myself some rules, some arguable but I new & am trying to go overboard in the spirit of keeping my gratification meter high and my combat frustrating, but still possible. The comments I have read about the backwards scaling of difficulty are a big turn-off to me, even though the story is super amazing. It is the difference between 100 hours played for the story, and 600 hours played for 'the game.'
-Hardmode
-No Reloads for loot containers, smells like cheese
-No Stealth. Enemy AI issues, personal preference.
-No Glass Cannon, OP?
-No Leech, OP?
-No Weather the Storm, OP?
-No Comeback Kid, OP?
-No Henchman Crafting Bot, smells like cheese
-No Cain, OP?
-Restrict Teleport and other select spells to one char only. I want strategic wildcards, not spam.
I would much rather be forced to re-roll 30 hours in because my party can't handle it - rather than lose interest in the game due to a lack of combat gratification.
It was the same thing for Skyrim. Wonderful game. Great story. But it began to get boring despite it's gifts due to the combat. I played maybe 50 hours of vanilla Skyrim, plus another 300 that would have never have happened without mods or self-regulations. There was a point when my only viable build was a paladin build due to the ridiculous difficulty I had modded into the game - but holy crap was it fun. If I didn't have my shield raised against a 2h enemy I was one-shot. Unless stoneskin, then I was two-shot but could try to kite and spam dual-wield heal to regen health and stam as I was being chased by Death. LOVED IT.
