ogrezilla

save points are only a good mechanic when the content you have to repeat is enjoyable to repeat. In an action game, the whole point is the combat so its typically fine. But in a tactical game like this, its typically not that fun to repeat yourself. I get the point you are making. I've thought about it before too. But I think save scumming the lesser evil compared to the alternative of having to repeat content you've already completed.

Like I said, I'm not even a huge huge roleplayer. I don't get mad about my immersion being broken. But that sounds awesome even from a gameplay perspective.

psh go play with your doll simulator bioware boy. i hope everyone is a stick figure, no reason to waste time with what my characters look like.</sarcasm>

exactly. I've said it a few times. I want this game to feel like a classic, but I don't want it to feel old.

my guess is there is some of both of those things happening. It is still very very early in the design process.

I'm answering the poll question. I agree, the quote from Avellone does not fit the poll question.

good rule of thumb in my opinion for good and bad difficulty Can you explain how you won as something your characters figured out how to do? Or was it something that the player had to learn? If I die 5 times against the same boss and reload, my characters wouldn't have learned anything when I reload. I'm honestly not the biggest roleplayer when it comes to that stuff, but I think good fight design tends to go hand in hand with being able to describe a fight as something the characters were able to learn in game. Obviously the player will learn and that will influence the fights. But if afterwords you have to describe it as the characters getting lucky or some divine intervention telling them what to do it was probably the game employing cheap tricks without giving you a chance to learn from them any way other than being killed by them.

ok I just woke up and this all became a bit of a ramble. the short version is I don't like binary fights where you either know what to do or you die and the only way to learn what to do is to have already died. either make cheap tricks that you can recover from if you avoid them the rest of the fight, or give information beforehand so you can avoid instantly losing. read on if you want it is completely possible for a fight that you can win the first try to be more difficult than a fight where you die 10 times before winning. If a fight includes binary abilities where you will lose if you don't know what to do or go unharmed if you do know what to do and the only way to learn is to go through the fight and memorize what is going to happen, that isn't difficult. That's memorization. That sort of fight is frustrating, but its not difficult. You should have the ability to recover within the fight. Unless the game has given you clues as to what you should expect, you should never lose outright without having a chance to recover. If you get hit by the same avoidable skills several times, then ya that's your fault and you deserve to lose. Petrify one party member without warning; that's fine. You can recover from that. And I'm not saying any fight where you have to reload is poorly designed. I like difficult. But real difficult, not cheap tricks that you simply couldn't have known to avoid. I'm not saying you are advocating cheap tricks either. But using number of reloads as a measure of difficulty does include cheap tricks. scenario: note I am in no way a game designer so this is probably terrible You are exploring a cave occupied by cultists. You find a group of five adventurers turned to stone in the cave. You read their journal and learn that there was actually a 6th member of their group, but he had been complaining of a voice attempting to give him commands. He then left one night having stolen the groups gold and gems, down to the sapphires that lined the writers frost enchanted broadsword. Upon further exploration, you find a burned. There are three sapphires lying next to him. You reach the boss who immediately attempts to turn the party to stone. Terrible design without clues leading up to the fight, but since you knew about the petrified party, you were prepared. He appears to be encased in a shield of fire. He attempts to charm your rogue and then begins hurling fireballs at everything that moves. Occasionally he will attempt to petrify someone so you need to keep your protection up or keep up with removing petrification. This makes it difficult to keep fire protection and charm protection up, so you are forced to prioritize. Either you will be fighting shorthanded, you will have a member of your team fighting against you, or you will simply be getting burned if you aren't careful to avoid the fireballs. His shield badly burns anyone that stands near him. Using frost attacks seems to temporarily disable the shield. Still a difficult fight, but you have a chance to win it from the start because you had some idea of what to expect.

that's why i really like the idea of it chilling at your house.

What the gosh darn heck ( keeping within forum rules here) would close-ups and zooming hurt? Or a rotating camera? Would that destroy the tactical combat? If so, please explain. nothing at all. the rotating likely won't work with the 2d prerendered backgrounds, but there is nothing wrong with rotating cameras in general. Yes it is. To this day I can't touch NWN2 because of camera controls from hell. So no thanks. that's a problem with a bad rotating camera.

so is heavy rain Heavy Rain doesn't pretend to be a genre it's not fair enough. Cinematic style is good for telling a story about preexisting characters; not so good for letting you roleplay your own character.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I expect special abilities for each class that make the specialty classes significantly different than the base classes. I think Paladins could be every bit as unique as a Barbarian or whatever other classes they include. Not that I'm really fighting for them to be in.

I missed that part about mid-level spells. not sure how I feel about that part. I guess it depends on the spells

What the gosh darn heck ( keeping within forum rules here) would close-ups and zooming hurt? Or a rotating camera? Would that destroy the tactical combat? If so, please explain. nothing at all. the rotating likely won't work with the 2d prerendered backgrounds, but there is nothing wrong with rotating cameras in general.

I think he is trying to ask how hard you want the game to be by using the number of reloads as a metric for difficulty. Oh really? That's not a very good metric to use. indeed

so is heavy rain

the only difference cooldowns will ever have on an individual fight is potentially allowing you to cast extra low level spells in a long fight. Its not like you will be constantly juggling cooldowns like an MMO or diablo 3. That meditate idea seems fine if it just stops you from waiting for the cooldown for 30 seconds I guess but having it instead of the cooldown would just cause extra down time.

did they say there are no casting times? I don't see why casting times and cooldowns would have to be mutually exclusive considering the cooldowns aren't even attached to individual spells.

I think he is trying to ask how hard you want the game to be by using the number of reloads as a metric for difficulty.

the partly 2d backdrops will almost certainly mean no rotating the camera. Zoom I think they said was possible.

Id be happy to have it autosave fairly often. Even after every fight. Because that's pretty much what I do anyway. Maybe keep 3 to 5 saved and overwrite the 1st after you finish the 6th fight so that you can go back more than 1 fight if you want to. Obviously allowing full saves whenever you want to that wouldn't get overwritten without you doing it yourself. Even automatically keep a "last rest" save too

that early in development part is key. This game literally didn't exist three weeks ago.

I agree with the checkpoint saves spoiling the challenge---I much prefer just a general autosave whenever entering an area, which could be large like a world map region or really any new area. I think DA:O had the much more obvious checkpoint saves. See, at the same time forcing you to fight those easily dispatched groups of kobolds again is also just an annoyance when the player now knows they can just save and reload right before the big fight. Why make them die first so they just know to save and reload later if you can have a system that just saves them the menu jaunt instead? most games have quick save and quick load buttons to avoid the menu jaunt at least. Auto saving after each fight with a button to load that would work, but it seems very unnecessary

Yeah but wouldn't you say current games are more "forgiving" than the old ones? Like how many players make it through BG2 the first time without reloading vs i.e. Dragon Age? Are you saying BG2 was unfair to the player that way? I'm not really talking about any games specifically. I agree that a lot of newer games are too easy. I'm just disagreeing with the notion that number of reloads is a good indicator of difficulty.

random is better the more combat oriented the game is. And honestly, its usually best when killing "trash" mobs is fun. For a tactical game I would rather the encounters be carefully designed.