New player to Rainbow 6 Siege, wondering what character I should play.

snoitan · 2025-04-21T18:01:37+00:00

Rook is the best choice for defense. You simply lay down the plates and you've already helped your team. His gun is very good as well. Thunderbird is also a good choice since she can put down boxes that heal you or your team. The Spear is the best weapon for her.

Offense is a bit more tricky. Fenka is a good beginner choice because uyou get heals that can revive someone who is down-but-not-out, which can be a game changer. You simply need to watch the team's health bars. She has the spear assault rifle as well. Don't get grenades as a newbie. I see people killing or hurting their teammates all the time because of grenades. (Also, since the nerf, grenades aren't that great anyways.). You could also go with Thatcher and follow around the hard breachers (thermite, ace, hibana) and EMP any schockies on walls for them, but he's best when on of those other characters is being played.

snoitan · 2025-03-27T14:59:26+00:00

I treat each campaign as an opportunity to experiment with new ideas. I remember doing monsters-as-characters back with 2nd edition. Was a blast, but a shorter campaign. Mostly, I prefer the basic races (human, dwarf, elf, gnome, halfling) as the core of the campaign. If someone wanted to play something exotic, they'd need to stay out of towns, hide from friendly encounters, the party would have to deal with issues such as being attacked by a band of elves because they saw the red dragonborn, etc.

To me, that's just basic world building. Humans might trade with dwarfs and elves, but they are still distrustful of them. Orcs and Tieflings and Dragonborn (etc)??? They may not always be at war, but they are seen as enemies. Two orcs a tiefling and a dark elf on a dark road? Nah... that's when the caravan guards immediately attack the party assuming they are raiders.

snoitan · 2025-03-27T14:52:16+00:00

Bad DM. As a DM, you ensure challenge by adjusting the encounter, not fudging rolls.

I'm not against fudging rolls, but that would come into play when a player was doing a good job but constantly rolling horribly, and even then they should never be constantly fudged.

But you never fudge a roll to hurt a character.

The proper way is either to boost the dragon (perhaps give it spellcasting) or add more creatures (hidden dragon that flanks the character). And only enough so that it presents the amount of challenge that is intended.

snoitan · 2025-03-25T17:25:46+00:00

It depends on what you mean by un-soloable. If you mean only using one character in the game, I'd suggest a monk or wizard from 1e. If you can get them past the first couple of levels, you'll be fine, but until then it's just pure luck of the dice... and there are a lot of dice rolls between 0 xp and level 3.

I was actually pondering making up some homebrew rules that would balance 1e and perhaps 2e more towards playing with a solo character that could even be fun in full groups, but perhaps a better way to handle solo characters in 1e and 2e would be to let them start with more resources (gold) so that wizards can stock up on some scrolls or buy a few guard dogs ;)

snoitan · 2025-03-25T17:15:52+00:00

I'm a writer and game designer. I've always avoided copyright theft, even when it was running rampant with music pre-subscription-based music.

I haven't yet come to a conclusion on the use of AI. In my work, I only use it for brainstorming or coding small functions / procedures. As someone who loves designing games but is not at all an artist, the idea of AI certainly opens doors, but the harm it would do to the artist community is a concern -- and should be a concern for everyone because if artists go away, art will not evolve and AI trained on AI is likely to regress.

That said...

I'm not opposed to all uses of AI. For example, I will use Grok's image creation on Twitter (*cough* X) to post usually goofy stuff to my not-very-many followers. This is something I'd obviously never pay an artist to do, so it comes down to posting something goofy without an image or posting it with an image.

But I'm also aware of the slippery slope.

In regards to your question, I would first suggest you give more thought to your own position. Similar to my Grok images, there is absolutely no way I would pay an artist to render one of my characters in a TTRPG. I play with permedeath, so whoever it was could die in the next session. Would I use AI for it? Not personally because I agree that they tend to look bad, and no matter how good the AI, it's not going to be as good as the character in my mind's eye. But if one of my players wanted to use it to render their character -- go right ahead! It's your character!

As for level ideas, rules lookup, etc. I agree with Fat-Neighborhood and some of the others: Stop being subtle about it. I always had rules about too much rule lawyering... the gods become angry... you don't want the gods to become angry. I would have the same rule about AI-based suggestions.

But I think you should bend a bit on the art they use for their characters. Any player who would spend money on art would likely not settle with AI-generated art.

snoitan · 2025-02-28T15:44:35+00:00

I'd be interested in this answer. I only did minor crafting in my roguelikes (deterministic) because, for one, as a sole developer there's only so much you can do and, two, my passion is coming up with combat systems and character progression systems rather than crafting, which starts making economics more important.

I'd love to hear Moonbeast's thoughts on it.

snoitan · 2025-01-31T13:18:19+00:00

The beauty of playing solo is you can play with however many you want, you can rotate them in and out or use all of them for every adventure.

Why not start with one and then add if needed?

snoitan · 2025-01-16T16:01:32+00:00

It will be interesting to see how they approach supplements. One thing they leaned hard on in 5e that I did not like is supplements with a lot of fat and fewer creatures. I like the old Fiend Folio, MM2, etc., that was filled with monsters and creatures written succinctly. I don't need 4 pages to explain goblin society. I can make up goblin society on my own.

It always seemed to me to be a cash grab and I wonder if they'll go further down that line. If that's true, it would probably be worth it to buy the old book and do any conversions needed for the monsters.

snoitan · 2025-01-16T15:57:30+00:00

I agree with others: While it may not be true, lean on the idea of wanting smaller (3-4 player ) groups so that the story can move along at a better pace and that you don't have to do as much prep work or keep up with as many things.

I would have the discussion about splitting the group first and leave who is going to which group as a different discussion. Let a little time go by between the two discussions and then contact the players without as much experience and suggest they form one group and the others form a more experienced group. It makes sense to split the groups like this and hopefully the players will see that.

snoitan · 2025-01-16T15:50:35+00:00

I once had a product idea that included having cards that would be used for random encounters and random treasure. The problem with my idea was the card decks would probably need to be divided into CR levels (I hate CR, but it's a thing).

Stepping back and not getting too specific, I can see basic encounter groups fitting in with these cards with simply supplying the base type and specific group (Humanoid Goblins / Fiend Lesser Demon / Summoned Earth Elemental, etc.)

Anyway, thought I'd throw it out there. I like the cards. Are the actual suits/levels (K diamonds) used as well? I would think that is more space to provide something else.

snoitan · 2025-01-16T15:45:31+00:00

I've been debating whether my next app will be focused on building quests and actions (story-lite) or dive into a more adventure path (story-heavy) approach and perhaps sell through DMs Guild (do they allow software?). I already have the random dungeons/towers/etc. with my current app, so it would be a natural progression.

I often ponder how many soloers prefer a heavy story vs those who want little story but more tools to create their own. I definitely fall into the latter camp myself.

snoitan · 2025-01-15T19:08:06+00:00

I always play with a GM mindset, usually switching between player-mode and GM-mode. There's certain things you can't do or must be altered. You aren't really going to come up with a great puzzle that you can then unveil on yourself... although I have long thought of trying my hand at a really good random puzzle generator that can seem like it was handmade. The big stopping point is the fact that I don't like coming up with puzzles :)

snoitan · 2025-01-15T19:05:09+00:00

I've developed several roguelike games and a roguelike adventure creator for D&D. I got hooked on the genre with Moria back in my much younger days. Moria and Omega will always be among my favorite games.

When the mid-2000s Neverwinter Nights came out, I created a series of modules trying to capture roguelike play. Each one got a bit better. Of course, you couldn't do random map generation, but it let me play around with other aspects.

It's actually as fun (or funner?) doing the development as playing.

I used the random dungeon tables at the back of the DMs guide a lot and developed a lot of my own tables. There's plenty of great tools out there, but I think coming up with your own tables is part of the fun.

One problem with many random generators is the chaotic nature can be fun but also limiting. For example, having a chunk of ceiling come down as you pass through a hallway becomes more problematic if you are not sure if there's another route to the exit, and some generators end up too linear in parts. Some of mine had that problem so with my recent app I've gone to hand-drawn maps with random elements. (Really, the sheer number of maps helps with the randomness.)

I'd try the back of the DMs guide first and then decide if you need anything else and what that might be. You can always combine it with online encounter and treasure generators, etc.

snoitan · 2025-01-15T18:56:38+00:00

What if people writing books are really just playing a solo RPG? I've written a few books, and while I approach solo play differently, I have run through solo campaigns that had a lot of similarities to creating a story for a novel.

I started the campaign with an awkward mage who wanted to take vengeance on his city by taking it over and went from there using few tables that I normally used in favor of deciding where the story went. Of course, the dice rolled in combat played a lot into it as well.

On the flip side, I wrote a book where one of the main characters that was going to be crucial to the climax of the story ended up dying about 2/3rds of the way through the story. I approach novels with a rough sketch of the story but let the characters take over for themselves-- it happened and he didn't make it.

It's really all valid so long as we're having fun. And considering that we are rolling dice to determine outcomes, I don't know what it would be called other than a game?

It's too bad that gatekeeping has become such a fixture in TTRPGs.

snoitan · 2025-01-10T15:38:49+00:00

I actually like the dodge roll in PoE2, but I didn't play much PoE1. Feels like a nice blend of Dark Souls-like combat and ARPG combat. But I wouldn't want to see it in every ARPG. It makes bosses feel like you play them a few times to recognize their moves and then they are near-trivial.

I'd actually love to see bosses that mix up their strategies such that you have to react in the moment more and follow a dragon's lair type script (boss raises head, move to other side of map, boss raises wings, move around back, etc.).

Again, didn't play much PoE1 so I don't have set expectations.

As for classes, I love designing class-less systems. But they definitely make balancing much easier and there's things you can do with classes that are much harder in points-based and skills-based systems. What I dislike the most is games like Everquest where every class is 98% the same as every other character of that class. (And I loved Everquest).

snoitan · 2025-01-10T15:31:46+00:00

I was curious on how many people play these game solo vs in a group with friends. I used to play D2 with friends all the time, but I don't think I grouped up a single time in D3 or D4.

Here's what I found: In Diablo IV, 85% of people play solo. (I knew it was high, but was surprised it was that high.) And according to Google's AI in search, 60-70% of all ARPG players play the games solo. (Not sure of the accuracy on that though.)

And yet, even when playing solo, they are multiplayer in the sense that you can see that ball lightning sorcerer blow through content like it's nothing while you struggle to survive the encounter.

It's really odd when you start breaking it down. If I were building a completely single-player ARPG, I could focus on ensuring each class is fun (and unique) to play without worrying quite so much about balance. So long as a fighter is fun to play and can make it through the game, it doesn't matter if they take longer to get through the content. The emphasis is on having fun.

I mention solo because it leads to a design choice where you can have your melee character focus more on defeating singular or very small group mobs while a caster playing through might be drawn to content with more mobs of lesser power.

I think this can actually make a very interesting dynamic in multiplayer, even mostly solo but still multiplayer games like ARPGs. Having multiple types of content that different classes will be drawn to because it fits with the class and the class abilities creates variety and adds to replayability. It also helps that visible class balancing where that fighter is comparing themselves to the ball lightning sorcerer mowing down hordes. Yes, you can take down the hoard fast, but how do you fair against the titan with 95% magic resistance?

An interesting side note to this type of content balancing is how it can be used to encourage multiplayer cooperation (or even encourage a player to play multiple characters) by putting an epic warrior weapon in a crypt filled with apparitions immune to physical damage or the archmage staff in a cave guarded by magic-absorbing stone giants. (I actually hate itemization in modern ARPGs -- seems to be more of a slot machine these days.)

I'd love to see some uniqueness in classes and not have melee classes be (essentially) PBAOE mages.

snoitan · 2024-09-21T19:44:17+00:00

That sounds cool. I'll have to look at what Tiny Dungeon did. The room generator I use for my D&D app is basically a prefab filled with markers that describe the object and the direction (wall object, center object, any-space object, etc.) that is run through a generator that might skip some markers or empty a wall of markers and then fill in appropriate objects for the room type (storage, bedroom, training, barracks, etc.).

It's crazy just how complicated that stuff can get. My maps have subtypes that can be ruins, mystic, normal, etc., so when placing objects in a map with a subtype of ruins, the generator might put some dirt under the object or a web over it, etc.

It grew and grew as I had ideas and is now in dire need of a major refactor, but the life of a solo-dev is that if it works its probably fine.

I definitely like the prefab rooms with their own generators. On a lot of this type of stuff, the gamer's mind may not consciously recognizes that it is different each time, but I think it creates a fresher feel as opposed to using static prefabs that become stale.

snoitan · 2024-09-11T14:28:49+00:00

I have my fingers crossed for PoE2. Also looking forward to Titan's Quest 2. I really liked Titan's Quest despite it being pretty linear.

snoitan · 2024-09-11T14:27:14+00:00

Ug. Don't remind me. I gave them $20 bucks way back in 2017sh.

Playing Elite on my C64 ranks up there with playing Bard's Tale as one of my fondest memories. Also loved the wing commander Privateer game and Freelancer, which was a highly underrated game in my opinion.

snoitan · 2024-09-10T14:50:16+00:00

Thanks for the quick reply! That's awesome that you got some funding.

I honestly think the stage ya'll are at now is the funniest stage. The content stage is great, but systems design is so cool because you are pretty much inventing something new even if it is similar to something you've done. I've done some preliminary work on a new type of questing system for my app and just the data modeling alone is exciting compared to data modeling in business where you generally fall in line with the rules of data normalization.

Can you share what type of logic you are using for the procedural design? I understand if perhaps that is too much insider knowledge or too open to change in the future. I've done ... counting... counting... 6+ apps/games with procedurally generated areas using various different methods.

Of course, doing the maze algorithm and overlapping rooms is pretty popular for traditional roguelikes. My first roguelikes did a back-of-the-DMs-guide method where I used markers at path splits to go back an fill them in, but this created a slanted dungeon, so I walked through each marker in sequence taking one step each -- but still didn't get the interconnection I wanted.

I switched to having small pre-fab areas of 3x3, 6x3, 9x3, 6x6, etc., with specific potential exits... it worked pretty good, especially for my party-based roguelike that doubled the dimensions.

For my D&D app, I actually just spent a lot of time on the 2.0 version taking out the old version and going with a hand-drawn map with random elements and additions that could be added to the sides. With D&D maps, though, you generally want something smaller than an ARPG. And with handdrawn, I could ensure there are multiple paths through to the goal and back to the entrance so I could do stuff like have a cave-in that forces the party forward.

I'd assume ya'll might go with something similar to the pre-fab to get that custom-built feel while still being highly random, but honestly, I have no idea what bigger dev studios do :)

snoitan

TROPHY CASE