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Lohi

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  1. Lohi
    There's the middle earth solution, where magic is very rare and player characters don't get to use it... Not sure how well that would go over )
  2. Lohi
    These were the things I disliked the most in IE games. I like the games themselves, but I did not like the D&D game system or it's magic rules. These were things I tolerated.
  3. Lohi
    I agree. But so many players here are so rabidly opposed to this it seems. I don't understand it really, maybe D&D is a religion and we're not allowed to dislike it? Many players seem to think that magic users are supposed to be special, held in reserve, using that one awesome spell at just the right time to save the day. That seems boring. Let the mage do something useful in all the fights I say, if they're restricted then all classes should have restrictions, if they have advantages then all classes should have advantages. This is not some corrupting influence from MMOs, this is just common sense of having the classes be roughly equal. D&D was an early primitive form of RPG, the "role playing" part was really really new and it was just an extension of wargaming with miniatures. There was no attempt to balance classes. You were supposed to create a party of unbalanced characters that worked together. The working together part is great, however the unbalanced part is not. Fighter is always useful, mage however starts out as useless and over time becomes somewhat useful, and eventually extremely overpowered. Since then we have come up with point based systems. You have a fixed set of points and design a character around that. If the game system developers did it right they have roughly equivalent usefulness (in a pen-and-paper way at least, maybe not equivalent in combat in a computer game). Maybe they're not all perfect either but they point the way towards balancing off different types of characters all of which are roughly equal in usefulness. Therefore, if a mage has to rest after using a certain number of actions, then it is only fair that a fighter do this also. If a ranger can shoot 20 arrows in a row, then it is only fair that a mage be able to shoot the equivalent amount of damage. Here's my main problem with games like BG1/BG2/etc. If you are in a simple fight the mage does nothing. Because it's a waste to use your limited number of spells on kobolds. Just send in the fighters. So I just leave the mages standing there twiddling their thumbs until there's a tough fight. This is boring! And it's completely unfair that some classes get to have fun because they have no restriction on the number of actions that they can do during the day. I think the GURPS system uses fatigue for spells. It seems pretty reasonable. You use too many and you're drained. Melee attacks use up fatigue too, it's equivalent that way. But you can rest up and be ok, and you can rest up in much less than 8 hours. Mages in GURPS aren't narcoleptics. Yes this is true. I notice in BG1 that before I added the convenience mod to let me stack arrows that I was trying to conserve them and use melee more... However I have had a melee character break swords in BG1 as well. I am confused why some people will criticize this problem for ranged and melee attacks as being too inconvenient, and yet also defend even harsher limitations on magic use.
  4. Lohi
    With Witcher I could go from battle to battle to battle without sleeping overnight and without chugging potions. I also didn't have to strategically choose spells in advance. That's because he was a fighter. Any system in place should allow the party to from battle to battle to battle without doing too much resting, unless they were seriously hurt in a battle. You can't do that with a single mage character without regeneration of abilities, be it regen or cooldowns or whatever. I've noticed some things in some games. Fighter is always the best option if you're solo, or fighter+something. That's because the fighter always has something useful to do. A primary healing class is useful when healing but not too useful if you don't need healing. A mage is useful when you need a spell and you haven't run out, but is useless after that. With limited number of spells or power/mana you will carefully ration mage/healer abilities, but you never need to ration a fighter's sword swings.
  5. Lohi
    And that was broken, in my opinion. Even if you dump mages you need healing.
  6. Lohi
    Well with a system with regen or cooldowns you would also need to have spells that work well with that. Do not just take D&D and add cooldowns or it will be massively broken. Ie, no fireballs! Or if you do have fireballs then you need drawbacks for using it; everything turns to target the mage (ala MMOs), all the loot is burned to a crisp, high chance of other party members taking massive spash damage, etc. The idea I like better is a slow power regen. You can use a lot of power for a large fireball, but then you must wait a long time for the power to regen before you can do that again. Or you use smaller fireballs (ie, magic missile) and use them more often. Player decides on how much to charge up the magic effect. Using the small spells should be not much different from using a weapon. (it would make sense, similar to Elder Scrolls, to have similar stamina systems for melee/ranged attacks too) Even better, dont just have these massive nuking attacks but use more tactical magic instead. Traps, slows, miss-chances, confusion, etc. If it's a party game then let the party work together, instead of the mage or figther single-shotting an enemy they work together by the mage removing defenses before the fighter swings the sword.
  7. Lohi
    I disagree. This may be the intent in some games. However there is no universal dictionary that defines a mage this way! And since this isn't a D&D game there's no reason to assumed D&D's definition. Even in D&D that's not at all true. At lower levels the mage is a dead weight. Fighters do more damage, soak up more damage, and carry more loot than the mage will. Level 1, one spell. Level 2, two spells. Turn on AI in Baldur's Gate and all the spells are used up in the first fight against xvarts. Even clerics at least can be useful when their spells are used up. D&D magic users don't get really tide turning until higher levels, and that's the only reason people put up with it. If the mage is too powerful this way then lower the power, simple. There is no rule that mages must be massive nukers. The D&D system in my view is absolutely not perfectly functioning, it's an extremely flawed system. The D&D mechanics are irrepairable, and I don't think anyone would ever use it in a computer game if it were not for the marketing bonus that comes from being an Official D&D game. Why is it only the mage must use their spells judiciously, and why is that necessary in the first place? Everyone else can swing their sword as much as they want all day long but the mage has decide when it's alright to use one out of the 5 spells per day? Yes, the older IE games were fun. But they were fun despite the game system they were built on top of. Replicate what was good in those games but leave the broken D&D ideas behind. Memorized spells are a bad design decision.
  8. Lohi
    Yup that's the problem. Rest to get your spells back and ignore the fact that it takes you 5 days of real game time to clear out the small cave. How many players actually play hardcore enough so that the refuse to rest until it's night time, even if they use up all their spells an hour after waking up? Power/mana regen is not just for MMOs, it's used in single player games a lot too, even many pen and paper systems. If you want your magic users to be as fun to play as your fighters then you need to give them more than a hanful of attacks every eight hours. The memorized spells may have been ok in an old pen and paper game where you fought very few enemies in an evening but it is clumsy in a computer game. If the fighter does not have to rest between fights why should the magic user have to rest?
  9. Lohi
    If it was real life it would be legendary I suppose. But it would make a lousy story. Most GMs wouldn't let you have an item like that when you first rolled up your character. I would even suggest that an any decent story where you found a legendary item in granddad's attic that you would be unable to use it anyway and would get a quest to uncover its secrets.
  10. Lohi
    I never understood achievements when I first saw them. They had no game-importance, it just seemed like a way to show off to your friends which is kind of sad. However occasionally some seem interesting in a way to get you to try stuff. Ie, an explorer achievement to try and find difficult to reach areas, or a way to gain some in-game reputation. Maybe it's a check list of really difficult to do things, or a list of "have you tried this" items, or maybe extra challenges. Examples: in Thief some players have a self imposed "ghost" style where they must make sure to never be seen, or a style where they're not allowed to purchase any extra items, or that they must find every last coin of treasure; those could all be achievements. Let's say it was Baldur's Gate, and achievement could be to acquire all three pantaloons ).
  11. Lohi
    Replaying Baldur's Gate now, and I must say, D&D magic system is just plain awful! Seriously, you start with ONE spell. You cast it and you're useless until you sleep again. This was maybe fine when you were in a pen paper game and never got more than a couple fights in an evening, but in a computer game it's awful. Now you're level 3, and woopdydoo, you hav 3 or 4 spells (depending on house rules, magic items, etc). Yes, I know magic users seem to get overpowered at high level, but the balance is just wrong. All classes in a game (any that have classes) should be fun at every single level, players should never have to struggle with beginning of a game with the hope that it gets better later. What I'd like is "Other" here. Not really a mana pool (the concept is just too stereotypical I think). Have a power/energy/fatigue pool. You can blow it all in a big inefficient burst of magic, or have a lot of smaller attacks. If you run low it will regenerate over the course of the fight as well, it's just there to slow you down and from being overpowered. No need to rest overnight, or an hour, or even 10 minutes. Absolutely you should be recharged by the time you get to the next fight. Of course if it's been a long day or you're badly hurt then it regenerates much slower. That is a magic user should play somewhat similar to a melee or ranged fighter. If a level 1 fighter can shoot 20 arrows one after the other limited only by agility and stamina, then a level 1 magic user should be able to do the equivalent and be limited by power or stamina. And when characters of any class run out of stamina they're not useless they just need to slow down the attacks and catch a breath (no potions unless you're in a hurry). I'd like to see fewer "spells" (or really just magical effects as opposed to cooking recipes), and they vary when being cast from low power to high power, or change effect to be single target or multiple target, a one shot or a continuous effect, etc. Don't burden the player with an overload of information about magic, some game manuals have 3/4s or more devoted just to spells. Keep it simpler and accessible. Arcane and divine should be the same thing. If you are going to split into two then why not split into 3 or 4 or 20? Never understood that binary divide, too much like medievalism, exoteric vs esoteric, too much like D&D.
  12. Lohi
    Well, there are the old style single player RPG quests that took weeks to finish, and modern MMO micro-managed quests. For the former you have things like "rescue Imoen", for the latter you have "take this cup of coffee across the street". The old style quests were very broad and leave it up to the player to figure out what to do, new style tend to be hand holding quests with rarely any thinking. Nothing tells you how to rescue Imoen, you have to figure that out yourself, earn some money, get a bit tougher, etc. In an MMO for instance you may discover that a certain enemy is the one you're looking for but if you kill it early you get no credit, instead you go see the quest giver who only then tells you "oh ya, now that we've figure out who it is, go kill him". Another good example of old style quest is Fallout, where you just have to find a water chip. Nobody tells you how to do this, you just figure it out and do it in any way you can. Similarly old style quests gave you freedom of how you solve them: fight, steal, bypass, get someone else to do it for you, etc. Side quests were really side quests, as in you could do them right away or just wait until you're in the appropriate area or when you stumble across the objective. You don't even need to turn in side quests, keep the persons magic cloak instead of turning it in for a reward. Very often in older games the player is left to make up their own objectives. That's what I want to see in quests again. Open ended, long term objectives, no hand holding, no being on rails, many possible solutions, make the player think if they want or brute force it if they want.
  13. Lohi
    But that's such a bad way of making easy mode. A lot of games do it but it feels like a hastily designed feature added at the last minute. Harder difficulties tend to about more than just that; adding more enemies, adding in stricter, rules, etc. Why shouldn't easier difficulties get the same effort from the developers? I liked the original System Shock method. You got 3 sliders for difficulty; combat, puzzles, and hacking. If you liked the combat you kept the difficulty at normal, if you hated doing all those wire connecting puzzles you turned that down, if you thought swimming in 3D hacking spaces was cool you could turn that up. In some ways the BG style of difficulties felt a bit wrong. "Strict D&D" rules I never liked and were too random; ie, hit points on level up, if you were unlucky then you had an extremely weak character, if you were lucky you got someone pretty tough (I knew a lot of tabletop versions that just gave the average hitpoint on level up, no dice rolls). So I always played on "normal". It felt hard enough in many fights on normal.
  14. Lohi
    Reload game to when I was at the store, buy a doggie treat, then go out to find the encounter again.
  15. Lohi
    You missed a poll option: zero UI at all. That is, no borders, no icons, nothing but the game screen. Things pop up only when you want them to after you press a key or move the mouse to the bottom, something like that.
  16. Lohi
    Not really sure what "finishing moves" are. Fallout didn't have these really, it had critical hits. A finishing move sounds like something from a kids console game, mortal combat, or a japanese rpg. To quote the movie, "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk". That is just kill the enemy and don't be flashy about it.
  17. Lohi
    This is necessary for the myth. Or "narrativium" as Terry Pratchett puts it. A legendary item is not legendary if you find it your grandfather's attic. A hero must do heroic acts. It doesn't necessarily have to have a high level guardian, but it does have to have a heroic challenge to obtain it, be that a fight, a journey, a quest, or a sacrifice.
  18. Lohi
    I hated Irenicus. Reallly he just didn't seem to work for me. Maybe his look was just all wrong (buff musclebound S&M guy). In a lot of other games the villain really is the side piece. I didn't care for the Master in Fallout much (again, David Warner, even though I like David Warner I don't really like his villains). But the Master was a side character only really showing up at the end. Fallout 3 though the president seems omnipresent, he's on one radio channel all the time, he's talked about on the other radio station a lot, his soldiers are out and about. The fact that he's a faceless voice behind the scenes I think worked well. Best villain of all I think was Shodan from System Shock. Always present on the loudspeakers, taunting you, commenting on your actions, setting traps, etc. Somewhat similar would be GladOS from Portal. The villain should not just be the boss of the bosses that you mostly only see at the start, at the end, and in cutscenes. Often most games do without a good villain and instead the enemy are the followers; the cult trying to resurrect the dead god, the supermutants terrorizing the wastelands, the obstacles in your way. You finish the game and you remember them but you forget who the villain was. (it's really sad, I check out the web for list of favorite RPG villains and I've never heard of most of them, almost all seem to be ridiculous Japanese/console RPG things)
  19. Lohi
    Of course, everyone knows that you find epic items by checking the walkthroughs online... Or if you replay the game they're in the same place; it'd be interesting if the items were not always found exactly the same way on replay, or that the item/location changes depending on some early actions or player background/skill/class.
  20. Lohi
    It would be nice if loot you find is not necessarily the best. Maybe the best stuff is only from crafting or from finding a crafter. I was never really fond of games where magic items are so common you can buy them at the market in every town. Potions should require alchemical ingredients, magic swords need a very rare item and someone to bind it with a ritual, etc. These can very easily be the basis of going off to quest to get the ingredients. A really skilled player could do this (say the wizard if he's got an advanced lab) or they would have to hire someone or get the work done as a reward. Consider the Ankheg armor in BG1. Kill the Anghegs, get the carapace, have the NPC make you a set of armor. Here's the other thing I would like: keep your armor and keep your weapons, just improve them over time maybe. (though I don't necessarily like gear dependent systems). Enchant your grandfather's sword, put protective runes on your shield, and so forth. Better than just selling your old stuff everytime you find something new.
  21. Lohi
    Your actions should have an effect. But they shouldn't be necessarily told about in newspapers or by minstrels. That would highlight big things but overlook smaller actions. In Fallout 3 it felt like the radio was basically being a big propaganda machine about you, but that was ok within the game concept of being a subversive underground radio trying to build up hope in the wasteland. Ie, in Lord of the Rings Online in one village the people are commenting about whether I'm trustworthy or not, and one child speaks up and says I found her lost toy and then the adults shush her. A small insignificant act but it gets acknowledged later. That's what I want in a single player game too. If I wipe out the bandits, the nearby town stores will start to get better equipment (but without that instantaneous world wide reputation gain), other bandit groups might start to show up, other towns want me to help them out too, etc. Towncriers might mention that the duke was rescued without saying that it was me, and the duke appears later in the game. So instead of having news about my actions being broadcast, what I see is that the world itself is changing based on what I do. Even some major game changers as well (such as the entire town vanishing if I decide to launch the nuke).
  22. Lohi
    I would like the narration with artwork, maybe a slideshow of artwork behind the narration. You can tell more story this way and it won't take up much space. The cutscenes tend to take up a significant amount of space and development time that could have been used for the game. Alternatively you could have a machanima style, creating the cut scene using the 3d engine itself and some simple scripting. Though with an overhead view style of game it might not be that effective.
  23. Lohi
    Multiclassing is a D&D concept, and this won't be a D&D game.
  24. Lohi
    I never liked the "roll a dice to see if you travel uneventfully or not". Though in some games you sort of need that to get some more money/bullets/arrows/XP. In BG1 you travel to your destination with game maps, in BG2 there's a lot of land you just bypass as not worth creating a map for, in Fallout you travel to destination with a dotted arrow until you get there or you have an encounter. Each style would want different sorts of rules. If you've got the BG1 style with the entire game world mapped out then random encounters don't make sense, though of course you might want respawning or NPCs that move around. For Fallout style you need to move around to discover stuff, and if you did not have random encounters then the player could just zig-zag around to discover everything with no danger. For BG2 it's in the middle, you don't need to discover new locations by exploring the interstitial areas, so random encounters can be added or removed without much effect.
  25. Lohi
    I'm trying to get BG1/2 regoing again. Couldn't get BG1tutu to work and the BG1 CDs were so difficult to read that I'm hesitant to spend another two hours getting it to reinstall. (easytutu requires ToSC which I don't have) Anyway was surprised by how small the visible screen was again in BG1. And in BG2 how hard it is to get used to the look, the characters in the first scene blend into the background. There's something to be said for slightly cartoonish characters that you can easily see, like Fallout 1&2. What I'd like in BG2 is to zoom in and out. Higher rez is nice but it just means that the details are harder to see. I also remember some of the stuff I really didn't like about the non-turn based combat. You lose so much control over all your party members, you pause the game but aren't sure if they have done their action yet or not, rely too much on the simplistic scripts, etc. Just takes getting used to again I guess.
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