MReed

Save time and be disappointed now! In the context of the dev quote from earlier, there is zero difference between "multi-player" and "Co-Op". The both involve designing & testing a set of modules that exchange data over a network connection, dealing with re-synchronization efforts between servers, providing a UI to establish / break / maintain a connection, and dealing with wide range of other issues (for example, if A leaves the map while B is in a dialog, what happens? No matter what you choose, you have to test to verify it works as expected -- you don't have to worry about testing this scenario is you only support single player). So... Yeah, this thread really is irrelevant, I'm afraid. On the plus side, creating your own party is in as a stretch goal (see "Adventurer's Guild"), but that's about the most you can hope for.

In any case, I think it would be interesting (in fitting in with the lore of the game, what little we know of it), to have non-wizards / non-clerics use the same system. Instead of what we think of as "Spells", they would have abilities similar to feats in D&D 3E (for example, "All-Around-Attack"). Rather than buying these feats at level up, they would gain access to them automatically and could control the # of uses "per day" by putting them into slots. Lots of advantages to this route: * You can try different techniques without re-specing your entire character. * You can chose just a few abilities (that you can use frequently) or lots of abilities (that you can only use rarely), as you see fit, instead of being locked into a "one size fits all" approach. * Many abilities, as they are implemented in CRPGs, are really supernatural / magical in nature -- "Sneak" is the biggest one. Once you have successfully started sneaking, you can walk right in front of an opponent without being detected, and nobody is that good at sneaking. By making "Sneak" an ability that consumes a slot, though, this makes alot more sense.

A proposal of a method to both have long (non-combat) cooldowns on spells but still avoid tedium: Spellcasters have slots (divided into levels, received as part of level advancement & class selection) and can put spells into these slots. When a slot is used to cast a spell, that slot is no longer available (and therefore the spell that resides in that slot is also unavailable). Slots have cooldown timers that only advance outside of combat of, say, "level"*10 minutes. "Rest", or at least rest that resets cooldowns, is highly restricted (generally not available in the field). Nothing really new yet. Spellcasters have an option (set when putting spells into slots, most likely) to divert some portion of XP received into replenishing slots instead. I'm envisioning a slider that runs from 0% to (say) 20%. If the spellcaster choses to do this, then each time he/she receives XPs all of his/her cooldowns advance based on the amount of XP diverted to this purpose. Note that the XP is divided equally between available slots, without regard to whether a particular slot is in cooldown or not, or what level it is. For example, if you have 30 slots, have 20% of XP received diverted to reducing cooldowns, and earn 300 XP, then 2 XP are assigned to each slot. If you only have 1 slot, though, then 60 XP is assigned to that slot. Therefore, as you advance in level (and gain more slots) you'll naturally need more XP to get the same "bang for your buck" (which you will get if you fight level appropriate encounters). This, it seems to me, would solve the problem -- if you are in a situation where you can't advance due to all of your spells being on cooldown, you have several choices: 1) Set the slider up high, find an extra (not to easy but not too hard) combat, and tada: Your cooldowns are reset (both because of the time you spent finding the combat, and the XP converted into cooldown counters at the same time). 2) You can retreat until you can rest, then increase the slider so that you'll get your spells back quicker in future combats. Problem solved, I think: Poor players are "punished" for being poor by receiving less XP for their spellcasters, so they have an incentive to improve (which some people seem to think is critical), without introducing tedium. Thoughts?

I don't necessarily oppose punishing the player twice (or more) for sucking in combat -- what I oppose is punishing the player with tedium for failing twice in combat. The ultimate expression of tedium is the "twiddle your thumbs for N hours while cooldown timers expire", but trekking back through empty areas to heal and then returning is in the same bucket. Games should never deliberately inflict tedium on the player. Sometimes tedium is unavoidable for various reasons (realism, technical limitations, and so forth), and that's OK, but it shouldn't be a deliberate design feature. Games are supposed to be fun, not work, after all.

Yes, but we don't know what mechanical effect it has. It is possible (perhaps even likely) that "resting" has nothing to do with spellcasting at all, but is the primary way to heal. Nor is has there been any statement about when resting is possible. I'll admit that something that advances the game clock would likely reset cooldowns as well, but there hasn't been a DEV post directly on topic.

Generally speaking, people who hate cooldowns fall into two camps (as I've observed): 1) A large number of people object to cooldowns because they suck as implemented in other games (especially MMORPGs and DA:O / DA:2). Of course, these are all cooldowns that reset during combat, and that's explicitly not what the devs are talking about, but... 2) Most of the rest object to the idea of "8 Real-Time hours must pass before spells are restored, and nothing the player can do will speed this process (no "rest", for example)". This doesn't seem to be what the developers are going for, but it hasn't been explicitly disclaimed by them, and it is arguable that this is what they are doing. The object here is that this "punishes" the player for poor play via creating tedium -- and this is a bad thing. I fall into the #2 camp, myself.

Jaesun, I think you need to quantify what you mean by "per encounter" vs. "per day" -- specifically, what does this mean in terms of real-time, which is what matters to the player. If "Per Day" <= 10 RT minutes or so, then I'm probably good with all three options. If "Per Day" > 10 RT minutes, then I think this is a bad idea (unless a "rest" mechanic is included, possibly limited, that instantly resets the counter) If "Per Day" = 8 RT hours, then this is completely absurd. Another interesting solution is to make it "Per N encounters" -- so, for example, "Per day" might be "5 encounters", for example. You'd still need to include a rest mechanic (that forcibly resets the counter), but it offers additional balance options. In particular, "N" could be low for low levels (where mages tend to exhaust their spells quickly) and much higher at high levels (to encourage usage of a wide variety of spells).

Wrong again (and I'm honestly not trying to ruin your day). Time doesn't pass in Eschalon, when you just stand and do nothing, and NPCs don't move. That's why I never used the ESC pause menu. I didn't need to. Oh, and hitting the pause button on your keyboard will actually make a turn pass. Btw. I'm not saying this as an argument in this discussion. I'm not a participant of it. I'm just reading and I noticed you mixed up some facts a bit. Conceded -- I was think of Spiderweb Software games. I've never played Eschalon (I've looked at it a few times, but I strongly prefer party based games). Does Eschalon have a "Wait until time X" button, though?

Your joking, I assume, because even the mostly strictly based turn-based game in the world doesn't use turn-based mechanics outside of combat. Wrong. For example, most early 90s FPP dungeon crawler RPGs used turn-based mechanics all the time. As for isometric games: both Eschalon games did that too. All right, I admit that I forgot about those games (e.g. gold box D&D games, Bard's Tale, Wizardry, and the like). My bad. All of these games have two common features, though -- they treat the party as a many-headed hydra outside of combat (and sometimes in combat), and they all included a (penalty free) "Wait" command. The "Wait" presence of the wait command completely undermines the point being made... Eschalon games do not use turnbased mechanics outside of combat, based on my experience, though. If you just stand in one spot (no movement) then time does pass (e.g. NPCs move around), and the post that I was responding to said that this shouldn't happen.

Commonly wear heavy armor?? Commonly?? Are you saying that my magic barrier can't block bullets? Yeap -- it was confirmed in a dev post about "How do guns work in Project Eternity". I'll see if I can dig up the post / thread later, though (it isn't in the dev post thread).

Your joking, I assume, because even the mostly strictly based turn-based game in the world doesn't use turn-based mechanics outside of combat. I can see it now: DM: "Ok, you are currently in your rooms at the inn -- everyone roll for initiative" Fighter: "I win, I'll move towards the church" DM: "You are now 60 feet closer to the church -- next" Cleric: "I'm going to the church as well" .... You do understand that the only cooldown timer under consideration here are out of combat cooldown timers, not the standard in-combat timers, right?

Keep in mind, folks, that mages in P:E are already known to be much more combat effective characters than in D&D -- we've been specifically told that mages commonly wear heavy armor (full plate level) due to guns making their previous arcane defenses inadequate. I'd judge it likely that the "Gandalf" version of mages (can cast spells and fight more conventionally) is far closer to the developers vision than the standard D&D "hide in the corner when you run out of spells" version.

Yeap, understood. I don't support putting rest that is used to reset "N a day" spells / abilities to a real-time based cooldown system. Note, however, that while Josh has stated that resting is in the game, he has not stated what mechanical benefits resting provides to the player. It is entirely possible that his vision for resting has nothing at all to do with spellcasting or healing. Thus, the caveat in my previous post.

Just to summarize the comments in the previous thread (http://forums.obsidi...ooldown-thread/): A number of dev posts were combined into the OP (mostly from Josh), indicating that: 1) Vancian spellcasting was out (more or less) 2) Some sort of cooldown system was in (but explicitly not the standard in-combat cooldown timers) A significant number of people jumped to the assumption that #2 meant "Resting is out, cooldowns will be ~8 in game hours (~1-2 RT hours) and there will to no provision speed up the passage of time in the game" with a goal of preventing the "problem" of rest-spamming (resting after every encounter). A number of other people responded strongly (including myself) that this was a downright terrible idea (& that the resting "problem" wasn't a problem in the first place) Eventually Josh got involved directly in the thread (the OP was reposting comments from elsewhere) and made quite a few very carefully worded to be non-definitive postings that implied the "1+ RT hours must pass (no acceleration option) before you get spells back" did not accurately reflect his point of view / goal when he talked of cooldowns. It is my belief, based on the various posts made by Josh in the previous thread, that Josh is proposing something along the following lines: 1) Spellcasters have level based slots which must be pre-populated with spells out of combat. Furthermore, it looks like he envisions several "sets" of spells (say, "General adventuring", "Anti-mage", and "Anti-Boss") that can be changed in-combat with some yet-to-be defined penalty. Just to be clear, this doesn't mean that all known spells are available to you all the time -- it just means that you can flip your spell loadout from "General Adventuring" to "Anti-mage" when you run across a heavily protected mage if you wish. 2) In combat, when a spell slot is expended, it is unavailable for the remainder of combat -- no in combat cooldowns at all (at least for spells)! While not stated, it seems likely to me that the slot is what is expended -- if you flip to an alternate spell loadout, then whatever spell ends up in the previously expended slot isn't available. 3) Out of combat is where the cooldowns come into play -- an expended slot will be automatically restored after some amount of non-combat time. The vast bulk of the conversation has been about #3, in particularly how long the cooldown timer should be. 1) There is a sizable number of people who believe that this timeout should be very high (> 30 minutes RT) and there shouldn't be any method of resetting the timer except the passage of time (e.g. "no rest"). These people also tend to believe that it is reasonable / desirable for the game to punish the player (with tedium) for poor play. 2) There is another sizable group of people that feel the timer should be fairly short (~5 minutes at most) and "rest" should reset the cooldown immediately and, generally speaking, be available to use). These people also tend to believe that it is terrible idea to punish a player that already sucks at the game further, and especially not with tedium. 3) Everyone seems to agree that very short cooldown timers (< 1 minute -- think the "Dragon Age" system) are a bad idea -- the concept of needing to conserve spells across encounters is something that everyone agrees is important. General consensus of the previous thread participants Josh appears to be supporting the #2 position, but... He has not explicitly endorsed any of the three positions. He has stated that: 1) Cooldowns are "in", as described above (cooldowns that only run outside of combat). 2) Some sort of "spell preparation" system is in, for at least some spellcasting classes. 3) "Rest" is in, although the mechanical benefits of doing so are unclear at this point. 4) He isn't going to design an entire spellcasting system from scratch via a series of posts on a forum, and he doesn't have a completed spellcasting system to post about yet. He has implied pretty strongly that he is not in favor of punishing the player with tedium for poor performance. My position? I feel that a cooldown system (as described) is acceptable, as long as rest is generally available and the cooldown timers are both fairly short (no more than 5-10 minutes) and can be reset via a "rest" button (which, mind you, might not involve actual resting -- it could be just a "wait" button, or it might be using a common consumable item). I strongly oppose any system that punishes the player with tedium for poor performance, though.

I don't mind the "autoretreat to last safe spot, rest, and return" feature, although I don't feel it is worth the likely cost to implement as written in the OP (unless the game is designed to ensure that something will happen when you retreat, the odds of something happening are close to nil). I don't, however, support the "Can only rest every 8 game hours", unless the only gameplay effect of resting is that you must do it every 8 hours to avoid "fatigue" (that is only caused by not resting every 8 hours). No objection to including the "rest only every 8 hours" as a part of the part of the "Please hurt me lots" game mode that has been promised in the recent stretch goal, but all of the "normal" difficulty modes should allow sleep / rest / waiting at the player's discretion.

Ah, I see -- so the tedium of walking back the camp isn't sufficient punishment for bad players -- instead, we need to heap additional punishments on top of them. Well, I suppose that's one strategy you could follow...

Ummmm... You do realize that: 1) This theoritical player paid money for this game -- he isn't getting paid to play the game and, 2) This player's game play style doesn't (or shouldn't) impact your own enjoyment of the game in the slightest Right? I mean, I'm not arguing that the game should be made easier so that this bad player never runs into trouble. Nor am arguing that lack of skill shouldn't have consequences (walking back and forth to the camp is, in fact, much less fun than killing monsters). But, hey, if the player wants to do that, then I say "Go for it". My concern (still not 100% addressed) is that the developers don't agree with this sentiment -- in particular, my concern is that the reason that developers are introducing long cooldown times is, in fact, to prevent rest-spamming. Cooldown timers that are reset on rest don't have any impact at all on rest-spamming, after all. If this is untrue, then I'd really like to see a dev post stating that this is not the goal of the cooldown timers.

I really hope not, because that would be truly silly. Right? But some players will not or can not (due to player inability, poorly equipped characters, laziness, whatever) be able to complete the expected number of encounters that the cooldowns are "tuned" for. If those players can rest (or wait, or whatever) then they can continue playing and enjoy the game. This even applies if it is as inconvenient as spending 10 minutes navigating through safe maps to get back to the camp site -- at least they are doing something with the game, even if it isn't very fun. However, if the only alternative for these players is to twiddle their thumbs (for 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 8 hours, whatever) until the game says "OK, you've convinced me that you really want your cooldowns reset -- you can resume playing the game now..." Well, I think that's an even worse gameplay experience than tracking back to the camp, don't you?

Bingo. Unless the game has enemies that will patrol and suddenly block the path to your camp, or will be there in the morning when you head back so you aren't getting back to that spot un-harassed, then forcing people to waste time walking back and forth is unnecessary. 100% agreed -- it is a total waste of time to make the player walk back to the camp. Thus, the reason that most games either include a resting mechanic that can be used almost anywhere that resets spells / abilities at minimal or no cost or simply assumes that the player will rest after every encounter and resets all spells / abilities automatically. I'm convinced, where do I sign up?

Yeap, that's my concern. There hasn't been a developer post stating that "A mechanic will be available that immediately resets all the cooldowns" (whether that is "wait()" or "rest()" or something altogether different). Until I see such a post, I think it is far more likely that the intent of this feature is exactly what it seems like: to prevent players from rest spamming. The best way to do this is to make cooldown timers that only respond to the passage of real-time. This is 100% reliable at solving the "problem", after all. Of course, this leads to a much more serious problem, of people leaving the game running overnight (or during dinner, or while they are at work) to reset cooldowns, but hey -- surely the developers aren't that silly, are they?

He said rest is still included. I'm guessing it will be more limited than it used to be, but this is where that would be useful. Then how does this system address the "problem" of rest-spamming? by limiting either how often or where you can rest. The advantage is that your mage can still get some lower level and lower cooldown spells back in the meantime. Then I'm cool with that, although I'd argue that such a system is a more accurately described as a "variant of Vancian system" than a "cooldown system". The only benefit I can see to such a system is to increase the power of players that refuse (for RP reasons, or whatever) to rest-spam to be closer to the power of parties that do rest-spam. I guess that makes it a bit easier to balance the game... Note: No system of restricting rest will be even slightly effective against a dedicated rest spammer. You can always retreat all the way to the last inn, if no other options are available, after all.

He said rest is still included. I'm guessing it will be more limited than it used to be, but this is where that would be useful. Then how does this system address the "problem" of rest-spamming?

If this is correct, then I'm a happy camper -- however, I don't think this is the case. Rather, I expect that resting (whatever other mechanical purposes it may serve) won't reset cooldowns, which are only reset via the passage of real time. Why do I think this? Because if resting resets the cooldowns, then the game system is functionally equivalent to a Vancian system. We've already been told that cooldowns aren't going to clear / reset during combat, so short cooldowns are out, and we've been told that some sort of spell preparation system is in (but likely not bound to resting), and we know that Vancian style magic is out, so... What other possible role could cooldowns serve?

I would like that kind of setup. But I have a feeling you'd have people complaining about those changes as well. Particularly "save points" Not me... I'm not 100% behind limited save points, but if you can save the game and resume (alal "Ironman mode" -- the save is deleted on load) anywhere then I'm OK with this concept. Heck, I wouldn't even oppose a "You can only rest in Inns" type mechanic.

All I'm looking for is a dev post on what we are missing with the following scenarios (assuming that spell slots exists and can be filled via some non-cooldown related mechanic): 1) If cooldowns reset at the end of combat (or reset very quickly at the end of combat -- see most [all?] single player RPGs with cooldowns), then cooldowns need to be short (so that they come into play within an encounter) or are largely / completely irrelevant. Honestly, I'm not 100% opposed to short cooldowns of this sort -- from a gameplay standpoint, having mages ping away with slings in 99.9 % of the time but absolutely dominate combat the other 0.1% of the time isn't all that desirable. A system with some low level / common abilities on a short cooldown (with the "big guns" only available rarely) would address this problem -- but, as far as I can tell, this isn't what the developers are talking about... 2) If long cooldowns aren't reset at the end of combat, and there isn't "rest" mechanic to reset them faster, then there will be occasions where players will wait for cooldowns to regenerate (whether that's desired behavior or not, it will inevitably happen), which isn't fun. 3) If long cooldowns aren't reset at the end of combat, and there is a "rest" mechanic to reset them, then how is this different from the rest-spam that cooldown proponents are arguing is the primary reason why Vancian casting is undesirable. FYI: "rest" is in quotation mark because it might not involve actually resting -- for example, there might be a (moderately common) consumable item that, when used, immediately resets cooldowns.