GDB thread about half-giants

When it comes to how half-giants are roleplayed, it's really hard to tell if this is a case of half-giant players sucking at roleplaying half-giants, or Armageddon players sucking at roleplaying in general. So many players play the same character over and over, and then they're faced with the idea of playing a big dumb giant and have no idea how they should do it. So instead of doing Lennie from Of Mice and Men, they do Tarzan but with more punching animals to death.

This lack of any sort of understanding of nuance leads the average half-giant PC to be comic relief, if they even bother to RP with others at all.

Just looking at the mechanics, the ideal time to cut half-giants out of the game would have been at the game's inception. Having had a look over a certain text file full of shitty spaghetti code, those who designed the game heavily favored strength, most likely because they were teenage boys who looked up to the weightlifters at school. As you said, strength, as an attribute, does way more heavy lifting (no pun intended) than all of the other attributes in a variety of combat and non-combat situations.

If the staff had any desire at all to design a quality game (spoiler alert: they don't) they would have focused more and focused earlier on mechanical balance and made a strong race, a fast race, an enduring race, and a smart race - with humans in the balance. Instead, their official stance was to take pride in the idea of the game being unbalanced. The main difference between muls, dwarves, and half-giants is how much of a strength bonus each of them get. Then they started to half-assedly introduce balance to the game and things now look more lopsided than ever. You have half-mages who can barely do shit and people in-game think they are a minor nuisance. Players aren't afraid of anything anymore, and it shows in their roleplay. The game has become about who has the most strength; combat is all about who can do the most damage in the least number of hits.

The reason I approve of removing half-giants from Arm is precisely the same as the reason I think people should be able to seek euthanasia for terminal illnesses if they so choose. Because Armageddon is dying, and removing more content would hasten its slow and undignified death.

I really don't mind the half-giant as a concept, but I feel there needs to be a higher standard applied to applications.

It's been a long-running problem that half-giants are given a much quicker nod of approval than other special applications because they can never amass any tangible power. No matter how code powerful you are, you're never going to matter in a game ruled by politics... or at least, that was the working theory. I think we all know that coded power weighs in a lot more heavily now that political power has been so completely neutered as far as player characters are concerned.

The last half-giant I ran across in the game was a while ago, and the one before that even longer still, so I wouldn't think half-giants are so popular that they're ruining the 'standard' of play. With that said, the last one I spotted was 'the tall black half-giant' and it screamed low effort. There needs to be a higher standard applied to half-giant applications, which would solve a lot of the concerns people have with them.

There's a severe consequence to removing them from the game and that is that the game has been designed with half-giants being a factor. You can't reliably run a lot of big ticket RPTs without them and there is a lot of places you can't even consider going without a couple of them in tow. Even with them, the risks are so high that very few if anyone has even made a serious effort to go see what's going on down there.

The staff have to set some standards to what enters the game and hold everyone to it, up to and including themselves and their favorites. A lot of problems with the games reputation for mediocre RP could be solved by upping their standards and sticking to it. Getting rid of half-giants won't solve anything, just make the sandbox that much smaller for everyone.

If brawn won every fight George Foremnan would have beaten Ali. HGs are way too strong codedly that's always been a huge problem, none of this is new. Strength is Arms code works very..well badly for lack of a better word. Anything with a high strength score gets a big bonus to combat which is kind of well a bad idea since it's been proven hundreds of times that strength is one of the least considerable traits in an actual fight or even a battle with Arm-esque weaponry. Speed/reaction-time and the capability to endure (ie: constitution) to me should give you far more of an advantage in combat than strength. Of course this all goes back to Arms 4-stat system which is pretty ridiculous as well.

Of course, the very fact that this thread exists on the sHaDoWbOaRd means that staff will never actually consider this idea for fear of being seen as taking advice from us.

that might be true if this board had originated the idea

I've felt this way for a long time, and it really bothers me that they refuse to even acknowledge it. Almost every player here seems to feel the same way, too, which is pretty vindicating.

Just something as simple as making wisdom boost scan for easier catching of sneaks at high ends, or making piercing weapons based on agility instead of strength. Another idea: Make dwarves the HGs of end, and confer (more) magic resistance to endurance so that dwarves are great mage killers. You can even bring back the Scorpions and actual Mages, and appoint the Scorpions as Allanak's mage-busters. Almost anything would be better than the current modus operandi of str > all in all situations (excluding broken archery).

Honestly, the GDB has the same tainting effect on ideas for the game. Every idea thread becomes a shitshow and staff are probably less inclined to pay attention to ideas when the people who vomited them out onto the forum are taking a whiny tone or are getting shit mixed up. They are now whining about negativity and the purpose of player complaints. Like the average GDBer has the attention span of a goldfish. It's embarrassing.