Your Attention Level During Online Games?

[Blue]

It's not just that the turns are long. It's that when it's my action, I don't feel like it has a meaningful impact. We shave away at monster HP. I absorb some damage from my allies. But the fights don't really matter because they're so numerous and the stakes aren't personal. It feels like we're just going through Fight 27 in Adventure Path 4, you know? Just a checklist of encounters that don't matter.
Like, in the last combat we had, we were trying to save an NPC. We had never met her before. It wasn't anyone we could name, that we'd had interactions with, that had any connection to the previous 2 years of the campaign. And this isn't an outlier. Just nothing feels like it matters.

It feels like that particular game has a host of problems, and this is definitely one of them.

A very good DM who I've been playing with for years was running PF2r, a new system to us, with a rather intrigue-heavy plotline. He was also swamped with work (he's his own boss). At the end of each session he's ask us about what we as players (not characters) were looking for from the next session, and combat would often come up. So we kept on getting these combat-heavy side quests that were just "in our way", not really related to our characters or the over-plot. And though he ran them well, they felt like filler instead of meaningful. We're going to win, we're going to use some resources, and it'll let us advance. Can we abstract that in some way so we don't spend session time on it? There was also plentiful of plot-meaningful combat, and same DM, same system, that felt a lot more fulfilling when we achieved out objectives (which also weren't always "they'll attack you until you kill them all".)

 

[Thomas Shey]

If looking through a random rulebook is rude, I've been that way for a long time and it not likely to change. I won't claim to find parts of the game interesting that I don't.

 

[aramis erak]

It's one guy who will start a 5 minute conversation to get a +1 bonus that he doesn't usually need. It's the other player who corrects the GM and forces us to backtrack. It's the necessity to look up feats to allow us to move an extra 5 feet if we get a critical on an Athletics check to swim.
The game is drowning in minutiae. It's worse in Pathfinder 2 than when we take occasional breaks to play one shots in other systems. But it's almost always there.
And in my limited time on earth, I don't think I can do it anymore.

If you're not having fun, tell them. And walk away. But tell them why.

 

[Koloth]

It feels like that particular game has a host of problems, and this is definitely one of them.

A very good DM who I've been playing with for years was running PF2r, a new system to us, with a rather intrigue-heavy plotline. He was also swamped with work (he's his own boss). At the end of each session he's ask us about what we as players (not characters) were looking for from the next session, and combat would often come up. So we kept on getting these combat-heavy side quests that were just "in our way", not really related to our characters or the over-plot. And though he ran them well, they felt like filler instead of meaningful. We're going to win, we're going to use some resources, and it'll let us advance. Can we abstract that in some way so we don't spend session time on it? There was also plentiful of plot-meaningful combat, and same DM, same system, that felt a lot more fulfilling when we achieved out objectives (which also weren't always "they'll attack you until you kill them all".)

Recently brought this point up in a PF2 game I am playing in. Frequent combats, few of which fell threatening to the PC's lives. Yet take up much of a session for little plot progress or loot gain. Suggested a single die roll for resolution. One player just about freaked. "But its Combat. You can't just resolve with one roll!....." But same player is perfectly happy with one roll for an entire day of bargain hunting or rumor chasing. Even though the bargain hunting, rumor chasing or performing are doing more to advance the plot then yet another boring arena match.

I get that the modern design concept is to prevent PC death during combats, but the end result is combat has become a boring time sink. Result is while PCs live longer and we feel it is worth spending time on back story and character development, the games are often not very entertaining because of the time wasted on mostly useless combats.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's just a fundamental problem with what different people find interesting, though. I mean, it really doesn't have that much to do with how load-bearing a scene is for a lot of people. Some people find combat scenes uninteresting, especially if they seem to drag on a lot (though I'm still a little boggled about low-threat combat scenes taking long in PF2e, but I accept this may be an artifact of not having people who take forever in those cases); some people find investigative scenes mostly uninteresting (me, or even worse, puzzle-solving); some people find primarily social scenes uninteresting.

There's very few of those you couldn't resolve with a single roll or something analogous to skill challenges. But if you do that with every type of scene someone finds boring, you have almost no game there.

 

[Reynard]

Recently brought this point up in a PF2 game I am playing in. Frequent combats, few of which fell threatening to the PC's lives. Yet take up much of a session for little plot progress or loot gain. Suggested a single die roll for resolution. One player just about freaked. "But its Combat. You can't just resolve with one roll!....." But same player is perfectly happy with one roll for an entire day of bargain hunting or rumor chasing. Even though the bargain hunting, rumor chasing or performing are doing more to advance the plot then yet another boring arena match.

I get that the modern design concept is to prevent PC death during combats, but the end result is combat has become a boring time sink. Result is while PCs live longer and we feel it is worth spending time on back story and character development, the games are often not very entertaining because of the time wasted on mostly useless combats.

Some people just don't find "plot" particularly compelling in TTRPGs. They are there for the fights.

 

[Retreater]

That's just a fundamental problem with what different people find interesting, though. I mean, it really doesn't have that much to do with how load-bearing a scene is for a lot of people. Some people find combat scenes uninteresting, especially if they seem to drag on a lot (though I'm still a little boggled about low-threat combat scenes taking long in PF2e, but I accept this may be an artifact of not having people who take forever in those cases); some people find investigative scenes mostly uninteresting (me, or even worse, puzzle-solving); some people find primarily social scenes uninteresting.

There's very few of those you couldn't resolve with a single roll or something analogous to skill challenges. But if you do that with every type of scene someone finds boring, you have almost no game there.

For me, it's a juice vs. squeeze situation.
There's a good number of "rider conditions" that go along with attacks in PF2. That slows down the game, when you have to roll saves, trigger additional actions, impart conditions that have to be taken into account and saved against in future rounds, tracking ongoing damage, auras, etc.
In a pure, whiteboard experiment, I'd run sample encounters in Foundry. I would ignore most feats, conditions, etc. The combats were faster but ultimately unchanged.
Those "extra 2 hp of bleed damage" don't really matter. In most cases that extra +1 to hit doesn't matter. An extra 5 ft of movement is usually not important to the outcome.
I enjoy progress, epic heroics, atmosphere, exploration - not "pixel b*tching" about miserly +1's for 3 hours.

 

[Blue]

Recently brought this point up in a PF2 game I am playing in. Frequent combats, few of which fell threatening to the PC's lives. Yet take up much of a session for little plot progress or loot gain. Suggested a single die roll for resolution. One player just about freaked. "But its Combat. You can't just resolve with one roll!....." But same player is perfectly happy with one roll for an entire day of bargain hunting or rumor chasing. Even though the bargain hunting, rumor chasing or performing are doing more to advance the plot then yet another boring arena match.

I get that the modern design concept is to prevent PC death during combats, but the end result is combat has become a boring time sink. Result is while PCs live longer and we feel it is worth spending time on back story and character development, the games are often not very entertaining because of the time wasted on mostly useless combats.

Agree with what you say. And because of it I'm playing less games in genres where combat is a common way to overcome a challenge. No, that's not quite right, where combat-to-the-death is common stakes would be a better descriptor. Because I'll play or run superhero games, but (a) there's very little random, meaningless combat, and (b) the stakes and win conditions vary a lot, like protecting innocents, not letting the baddies get something, etc.

The "but it's combat" brings me back to one of the concepts I wish they had kept in 5e from 4e, with a mechanical update: skill challenges. So many gamers first experience was some flavor of D&D, and combat is the only all-hands-on-deck, many rolls mechanical type of scene. So that's incorporated into what they expect from RPGs. Having other types of scenes that also are group effort with many rolls helps remove that from a unique, sacred cow status, and at that point it can become like other scenes where the mechanical effort more depends on how important it is.

I've plenty of times just let the players go around the table in a montage describing one cool thing they've done when the battle would be a curbstomp in the players favor, disengaging it from mechanics completely. (I'm a GM who will have things significantly more and less powerful than the party, and it's up to the players to decide if combat is how they want to try to overcome that challenge.)

Some RPGs, like many PbtA games, use the same (or mostly the same) mechanics for combat as for other challenges. For example in Masks: A New Generation which is about teen superteams and all the coming of age and drama that comes with them, it's the same set of Moves for defending a mother with stroller from a thrown car as it is to defend your bestie from being trash-talked by the prom queen. Different types of scenes end up a little more egalitarian in the amount of mechanics invoked instead of combat zoom-in just running away with it and taking up a large chunk of real time.

 

[zerofor]

1. This is why I don't play rules-heavy systems anymore.
2. This is also why I don't play TTRPGs online either.

 

[LordEntrails]

Apparently there's a lot of rules debate and nit-picking going on, stopping to measure distances, tracing out area effects, etc.

IMO, that's just poor GMing driven by a player and GM approach I don't enjoy.

The table needs to have some OOC discussion. Do folks want the game to progress at a quicker pace, or do they want to make sure every rule is accounted for and option considered?

I learned long ago, at a real table or virtual one, that I much prefer a quicker pace. Do I care if I forget some opportunity attack or a modifier is off by 2? No, not really, not if my character is doing things and I'm engaged. Fiddly bits are not important to my fun.