ogrezilla

If folks are pulling two mobs and resting, perhaps the problem lies not in the ability to rest but a more basic imbalance in the game? Poor companion AI? Certain classes lacking sufficient power or longevity (either at certain levels or throughout the game)? And yuck to solutions that require a trip back to town every time the group needs rest. people resting every two encounters doesn't mean they needed to; just that they can.

so it should be my job to figure out how the designers intend for the game to be played?

What would that even mean? You're talking about having an entirely different magic system? I don't think it would have been anywhere near as good if it had used a mana-based system, which was the only other system in common use at the time. It simply means that Baldur's Gate would have been different game without the Rest mechanic, and from reading your post we agree/are on the same level. Fair enough. I'm not sure where you can get from there though - I guess you're just trying to point out that the system used by a game has a large bearing on the enjoyability, even if the plot, characters, etc are the same. To be honest I don't really get why there's so much discussion about preventing rest. I mean, what's the goal? Just to make the game harder? I don't see how it would do that, but I do see how it could do the opposite. Let's look at Baldur's Gate: at some point you've fought through as much as you can take, you have no spells left, and your party has 15 HP between them. At this point basically your only option is to find somewhere safe to rest, and do so. What does it matter if you've been awake for 8 hours to get to that point, or 48? If you can't rest for another 8 hours, pretty much your only option is to leave the game running for an hour of real time while you do something else. It's not like you can just say 'I'll be hardcore and fight on anyway' - you'd die the moment any enemy lands a blow. If instead you use something other than a rest mechanic to throttle the rate at which people cast spells, what does that actually gain? In all the games I've ever played that's led to less downtime required, not more. So, serious question: why are we talking about this? What do we want to get out of it? I don't really understand this discussion but I might have a better idea if those were spelled out to me. I think its a question of balancing the difficulty. Do they design the encounters assuming you are resting between every fight or do they design encounters assuming you only rest occasionally?

or just walk back to town and get more arrows. I personally don't do it, but it's up to each player to do as he/she likes. so do they balance encounters for people who do or don't keep themselves fully supplied? They should balnace encounters for people who can use tactics. If your ranger runs out of arrows, I bet there's something you can he can do. I've played lots of games where I run out of arrows, but I don't exit the dungeon each and every time to buy new ones. I ALWAYS keep a melee weapon in reserve for my archer, just in case. He'll probably not be very useful for some time, but can still help out in battle. you didn't answer my question. Should the game be balanced around my party always being fully prepared or should it be balanced around someone who allows their party to go into fights in sub-optimal conditions. If the game mechanics don't discourage me from always being fully prepared, I would say that's what the game is designed for and thus how it should be balanced. You have the option of adding extra challenge, but the people who use the mechanics how they are designed should be the ones who are seeing the challenge as it was designed. Otherwise, its bad game design. I would personally prefer the game to be designed for what you are describing. But assuming the player will add his or her own limitations to get the intended results is bad design. That's pretty much the definition. If your design doesn't give the intended results, something is wrong with the design. edit: this has strayed off topic. I want arrows to either be limited for real (I can't go get more at any moment so it actually adds strategy or challenge to the game) or just unlimited. The walk back to town to get more is boring tedium that adds nothing to the game.

If only there were more to being a fighter than swinging a sword. I hope there is.

By paying attention in-game? If it starts feeling too easy, sleep less frequently and close to melee sooner. Or change the difficulty level. That just reeks of bad game design to me if I have to install my own limitations just to play the game as the designer intended. I would be perfectly happy if different difficulties limited these things differently. Not bad game design. Just common sense. You never really know how easy or difficult something will be for you until you try it. First time through you make your best guess at difficulty level and adjust what you can on the fly if it proves too hard or too easy. Depending on class/group make-up difficulty can also vary in the course of the game. You either change what you can or don't. I'm not a game designer. I expect the people who are game designers to implement the game mechanics so that they naturally encourage me to play the game as it is intended to be played. If I figure out the perfect class combinations then ya, that's on my for making it too easy. But if there is literally a button that lets me fully heal and replenish my spells, the natural response is to use that button every time I need healed and my spells need replenished. Why would they give me such a button if that wasn't their intent?

or just walk back to town and get more arrows. I personally don't do it, but it's up to each player to do as he/she likes. so do they balance encounters for people who do or don't keep themselves fully supplied?

or just walk back to town and get more arrows.

Traps, stab a guy in the leg to slow him down. Maybe trips even. Not so much hard CC like a mage will have. But things to slow them down.

But that's why I said the different difficulties have more limits on them, and would say as much when you go to select that difficulty. So you'd know going in (once you select which level of difficulty you want to play) what kind of "forced limits" there are on you. For example, the topic of "abusing rest". On hard difficulty, it would say at the start up that there are limits to resting, gold counts toward your inventory weight limit, you have a limited number of saves per game, etc. Whereas the easy setting would have no such limits for those items. So you'd have a general idea what each game difficulty will impose on you, and you select your difficulty to fit whatever play style you want. we aren't answering the same question then. We absolutely agree. I think you are saying the game design should enforce the limitations to different degrees to match different intentions. That's perfect. I'm talking about a situation where the game mechanics never match the intended design. In the old IE games, it seems clear that resource management and particularly spell management were meant to be important. The games were designed with careful spell use in mind. But it wasn't enforced. To play the game as the developers intended, you had to put your own limitations in place no matter what difficulty setting you were on.

By paying attention in-game? If it starts feeling too easy, sleep less frequently and close to melee sooner. Or change the difficulty level. That just reeks of bad game design to me if I have to install my own limitations just to play the game as the designer intended. I would be perfectly happy if different difficulties limited these things differently.

Well, because I'd assume it would say which "limits" are present in the description of the difficulties when you first start up a game. So the player would know what kind of limits to expect if he chooses "hard" difficulty over "easy". Keep in mind, it's about allowing *all* people to have fun. Some folks simply don't want the game to be incredibly difficult. Some do. Should the former category then give up and not play the game because the developers catered to just the latter category? I get what you are saying. My problem is, when the mechanics don't actually enforce the intent of the game design, you don't actually know what difficulty you are choosing. If they call it normal difficulty, but that is based on an assumption that I will give myself my own limitations, then I end up playing what amounts to easy difficulty.

but the first time through the game, when you have no idea what to expect around the next corner how can you know if you want to limit yourself or not? I don't want to make the game too easy by resting too often and using arrows non stop. But if the game allows me to, I am going to assume the difficulty of the game is based on me doing those things. Simply put; how can players make an educated choice the first time through the game?

ya I think this needs to be more specific. I deleted my vote because I guess it depends. I want enemy AI to not suck.

I think we are picturing MMO style aggro mechanics. I want smart AI who can figure out who to attack. I don't want my fighter to keep enemies off my mage because of some threat level. He should have to get in the way or otherwise prevent the enemy from getting to the mage.

No. this is probably the most adamantly I've felt about any of these poll topics so far. Enemies shouldn't be stupid, but there should not be arbitrary threat levels added to my fighters to keep enemies from attacking anyone else.

I agree completely with this. Different players find different ways to play fun. If one player wants to save before every encounter, then re-load a game if he fails whatever he attempted, then he should be able to. Because for that player, the game loses its fun factor if he's not able to do that. The developer can limit these so-called "abuses" by implementing mechanics as described above, whereby the player will have to live with certain consequences if he decides to rest for 40 hours straight (village he was tasked to rescue is now burned to the ground, people dead). But the option to rest for 40 hours straight should still be there. But I don't think the developer should arbitrarily limit pretty much everything just to keep players from doing "cheap" things. that's fine. they should balance the game assuming people will do cheap things then. Let people who use their own limitations add extra difficulty since that's their intention anyway. Don't require us to limit ourselves just to get the desired level of challenge.

I really really really hope aggro is not a thing in this game. A distract/taunt that maybe lowers their chance to avoid an attack for a second might make sense as long as it can be saved with intellect or concentration or something pretty easily.

let firearms turn to clubs. I want to pistol whip an elf.

I like the idea of taunt/distract being more of a pre-combat skill to allow the rest of your party to get the jump on someone. At least more than I like in-fight taunting.

I like this thought a lot. EDIT: I want a game built in confidence and not insecurity, I do not want the developer's to be influenced in a way by the community so that they start to think: "We shouldn't do this because this is abuse-able" Whilst in fact whatever idea they got is a great idea. To draw a picture/parallel: Resting in Baldur's Gate is a great idea in itself, but it is -very easy- to abuse at the same time. Even on the hardest of difficulties. Without resting in the game it wouldn't have been the same game, instead it was released to have that feature. What if the developer's had gotten cold feet and removed the feature from the game? Would it have been the same experience? Would we even be talking about it today? I hope they don't remove the troublesome mechanics outright. I hope they fix them. If they just start taking things out because they might be abused the game could turn out very bland.

I like the basic idea that anyone will be more effective attacking from behind. Rogues should be better at getting behind enemies, but not stronger when they get there. I'd like mobility and utility to be their specialty in combat, not DPS. They should still do damage, but I don't want to see Fighters become pure tanks and Rogues become the DPS class ala most MMO's.

A game should restrict us from abusing it so that we can play the game as the designers intend. The reason this is important is for the difficulty of the game. Its especially important the first time through. If I don't know what to expect I am going to rest as often as the game allows me because I will assume the encounters are designed to match the game mechanics. Same thing with any resource management like potions, spells or ammunition. If the game allows me to easily replenish these resources, I will never go without them. I will never keep going in a dungeon after I run out of arrows if the game allows me to go back to town and get more anytime I want, because in that scenario it stands to reason the designers want me to always have arrows. The alternative is to assume poor game design. Now the next time through the game I might give myself limitations if I realize the first time through was too easy. Though with this game having difficulty levels, I will probably just go through the same way again on the hard mode. So I guess basically my point is this: the game mechanics need to match the intended balance of the game. If the game is designed around me being conservative with my supplies, don't let me get more supplies so easily. If the game is designed for me to only rest occasionally, don't let me rest whenever I want. Developers should not expect us to predict their intentions when their mechanics don't enforce them.

somewhere along the line I said my preferred solution would be to include stricter consequences so I'm with you. There are quite a few design choices that sort of let you know what the designers intentions are, but they don't seem to be enforced. Basically anything that can be solved simply by walking back to town.

if that is actually a possibility, great. But since it never has been I'll assume it still isn't. I know I could put these limitations on myself. But particularly on the first time through a game, I am not going to purposely make things harder when I don't know what I will be going up against. Good game design wouldn't require me to pretend there are consequences for half baked limitations. I'd be cool with a pack mule I guess.