strong character development (which in my view 2e AD&D did NOT have, especially for melee characters)
Please, elucidate.
Didn't you just mock and dismiss me in your last post here? Not convinced you sincerely have an interest in anything I may post.
Were you referring to the actual tabletop gaming rules, CRPGs based on the AD&D 2e rules or both?
Okay I'll bite.
I am referring to both. I played a lot of TT D&D with 2e rules (it's where I started with D&D), and really disliked that for melee classes especially you didn't have much to add to your character during level-up. And once you got above level 10 you gained virtually nothing meaningful at all from level to level. This then also meant that in combat all had available to do was to just keep repeating to your DM: I take yet another swing at the target. But even playing other types of classes I always felt very strongly that 2e rules did not provide meaningful character development options, and leveling up was mostly rather boring.
But at least in TT play, if you have a good DM, your DM can find ways to make things interesting for you. In a video game, like all the IE games, you don't have that, and you are stuck with boring character development. The whole point of leveling up in an RPG is to feel that everything your character did since the last level up was meaningful in concrete ways. So when you get to that next leveling up point, and your character does not change/advance in any meaningful way (in 2e you had many levels at which hardly anything changed in your character), it takes away a lot from the game. That's why for me 3.5e of D&D remains the best. Where others consider it too complex, or even bloated, I consider that "bloat" to be exactly what is awesome about that edition. I love it!! I love having a million options and all the different ways in which you can advance and develop your character. And that's a huge part of why I love the Pathfinder games. I could easily, and happily, spend dozens of hours just on character development, not just at the beginning of the game but at every level-up.
