Tuco Benedicto
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Everything posted by Tuco Benedicto
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Says who? You? Go and re-read my post. I stated that the novelty was that they are applying the system to the mage (and every other class of casters, clerics included, in fact). They are ditching the memorization system entirely, and I'm all for that. Are you actually trying to imply that I didn't know about sorcerers? I played Baldur's Gate 2 form start to finish seven time, and two of these playthrough were with a Sorcerer and with a Bard. What would you like to hear to be convinced? That sorcerers are based on Charisma instead of INT? That they don't need to memorize spells but they can't learn form scrolls and that at parity of level they have more level limitations on the spells they can use compared to the mages? I played pretty much any relevant RPG available on PC today since the late '80s, starting from Ultima IV. I don't need you to teach me how games work. In fact, I can probably teach something to you. No, what's clear here is just that you are jumping to conclusions and making wrong statements. Factually wrong, I mean. Not just different opinions. EDIT: but the most interesting thing, thinking about it, is that even if you were right (and you aren't) that's irrelevant anyway. Even if someone was unaware of exceptions like sorcerers, doesn't matter. People have any right to talk about the system they prefer, even if they can't exactly name it in a proper manner.
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Well, but there aren't just spells. There are also abilities for non magic classes. I'm all against too many abilities that can be spammed too often, for reasons I already explained... But that doesn't rule out cooldowns entirely. That rules out just a specific possible use of cooldown-based abilities.
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i don't want to support this game based on nostalgia, I want to support it because I expect it to be good. Because the games they are taking as inspiration were good. Hell, they still are good today, in fact.
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It's hilarious how people love to blame publishers for depriving developers of their creative freedom... and then as soon as they are throwing 50 bucks on the pile, they are already dictating terms in an even more strict way. Let's clear this up, guys: you are giving Obsidian money to give them the resources and freedom to do what they want. Your money aren't buying you any right to dictate the design. If you want wave your pledge as a ransom, as a way to blackmail them into following your directives... Well, it's your money, feel free to do it. But it's borderline pathetic.
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Uhm? I'm totally fine with this. Asynchronous combat pacing is exactly what I'm advocating for. If anything, you should point it to Gfted1. EDIT: Damn, I just noticed he was commenting my post. I missed that.
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yeah, I'm not following you at all, here. First, this isn't supposed to be a D&D game, just a game that aims to a similar gameplay. Second, how is the number of available spells strictly tied to a defined number of different classes of casters? There isn't any correlation, you could have twice the spells divided between half the classes. Third, we already know that this game is going to have 8-9 classes at most, so let's drop pointless concerns about over-populating the game with too many different casters.
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Are you kidding me? You specifically said that it becomes even more an issue when the caster is your main character. Which is what I'm confuting here.
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I know it's the single biggest difference *now*. What I'm arguing for is: get rid of the memorization mechanic, build all magic classes to work as sorcerers, build the difference between magic classes in some other different way, like giving them different spells or special abilities.
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Mikayel, what you are arguing about is balance, not mechanics. No one doubt a mage can be as useful or even more powerful compared to a sorcerer of the same level. The point is that the memorization mechanic is simply annoying.
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Of course they do. That doesn't mean that the main character lives in a vacuum. You manage the main character with the rest of the party, not as a single entity. What you are saying is essentially: "if my charater is a warrior and I hire a mage and a ranger, it's fine; if my character is a Mage, and I hire a warrior and a ranger, then it's boring because the mage it's me". I'm sorry, but... How does it make any sense? i have honestly no idea about how this is supposed to be related to this thread.
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Yeah, but on the other hand that's exactly the problem, in some sense: the fact that you need a specific class (sorcerer) to apply a maechanic that should be the basic one for every single caster. You read me so far arguing (mostly) for the D&D approach, but you know what i don't like about memorization? The fact that some very interesting but bery specific and situational spells are most likely never going to be picked and memorized unless the player is already aware of what he will cross forward. Even worse is how in that single, unique, specific circumstance where that quirk, weird spell could be useful, the player at first react like "Yeah, I know exactly how to deal with this" and one minute later he finds himself "Hell, no, it's not memorized", which can be highly annoying. Anyway, generally speaking: yes, bards and sorcerers are just fine as concept.
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let me spare you the effort. I described the system here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60372-vancian-magic-system/page__st__280#entry1217563 ...and mentioned it again at least two times now. About the second part of your post... What Infinitron said.
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No, I didn't. What I decided, on the other hand, is that IF the caster has a spell that can "level mountains" it's a very fair game for him being *very* limited about how often he can use it. ...Which is exactly the same system I was advocating for, so far, when I mentioned Chaos Chronicles in three different circumstances. Are you even reading my posts at all? Because I'm definitely reading yours before answering to them.
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i just think that, like for pretty much anything, there's some virtuous middle way that can be reached. In a system similar to D&D NO, casters shouldn't be able to cast at every turn, exactly like a cleric shouldn't be able to waste his healing spell too frequently (this also prevents to design encounters around the "tank & spank" principle). I'm not sure why you are trying to imply that what applies for a class should be true for every other one. That's not the case, and that's why party based games are awesome: they can offer interesting subdivision of roles. Clearly a warrior "cleave" doesn't need to be set on a cooldown as high as a mage fireball, capable by itself to clean a battlefield.And clearly the guy that can clean the battlefiled in a very specific, unique circumstance doesn't need to be as active and as powerful as the other members of the party at any other moment. Anyway, I essentially already described my ideal situation on a RTwP game when I pointed how BG2 is better than DAO: everyone in your party should essentially rely on standard autoattack (plus eventual use of passive traits if they fit), with the player deciding who's targeting who and moving where... And *then* on top of this very basic layer you should have a fair amount of very situational abilities for each character. The ability to interrupt a cast, to deal a big burst of damage on a cooldown, to use a daily ability and to cast very decisive spells from a limited, precious pool of resources.
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Your reading skill may be failing you, because I never said that a game should punish a player for the sake of it, I argued about more punishing ways to deal with those who try to *exploit* a system, which is very different. EDIT: Also, friendly fire was NOT introduced by Dragon Age, neither it was its distinctive trait. if anything was heavily gimped in that game, compared to the IE ones. In fact, in DA2 was even confined just to the highest difficulty setting. And the game's ruleset was garbage, anyway. So i wouldn't really take it as model.
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No, it's not, i said it myself and never argued otherwise. You could easily pile up a cooldown system on top of a Vancian one(or variations, like the already mentioned Chaos Chronicles). Still, I strongly disagree with the idea that every character should have something special to do every single round, for the reasons I already pointed. It made Dragon Age painful to play without AI assist. Beside, I'm not sure why playing a specific class as main character should be that relevant, in a game where you manage a whole party in any case. Yeah, yeah, i know, they said that they plan to make the solo way viable, but that could mean a lot, not necessarily that a solo player can beat any fight. And let's face it: only sociopaths or people who's going for the fifth playthrough will go for solo in a game like this.
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I think he simply means the he doesn't want any random value. So just spells with a fixed amount of damage, no resist/miss/parry on chance, and so on. That, or he simply doesn't understand what "dice rolls" stand for in a game like this.
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Well, good riddance.
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i don't think they ruled "dice rolling" (which is a fancy way to name random variables) out of the game at any point, honestly.
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And that's exactly the point of this kind of system, in fact.
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Well, that was the fun part for me. When I tried to restrain myself as much as possible but at some point I was like "Damn, now I *really* need to use the big cannons".
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How does making decisions without proper information handed by the game equals playing poorly and/or expoliting the system? "Making a decision without proper information" is exactly the big flaw in the memorization system that I mentioned and addressed in my first reply in this thread. It prevent's flexibility and creativity with the "weirdest" and most "situational" spells. That said, I still find the idea of running back and forth to recharge your spell arsenal a cheap way to exploit the system. In all these IE games I always forced myself to enter an area and not rest until I was done with it. Even on the biggest dungeons I never rested more than once for every floor.
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I can't say I agree at all. That's exactly what makes Dragon Age so painful to manage with the AI completely off compared to Baldur's gate 2. In Dragon Age you are constantly cycling through characters that have very short cooldowns, while in Baldur's Gate you usually set a generic target for each of your men and *then* when it's actually useful to do so, you pick some special ability/spell/item to use.
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Purpose for mana points and cooldowns are same Barely, and in very different ways, especially where mana regen is involved. Cooldowns aren't strictly about limiting resources, but limiting the overuse of power moves/abilities in a short spawn of time. Memorization is all about limiting your resources for a fairly large amount of time (i.e. "I'm entering this dungeon now and I know that if I don't want to make a boring travel back to town I'll need to use these resources carefully"). Mana is a limited resource in the sense that gives you a limit of spells you can use in a row, but doesn't prevent you to use, for instance, the same useful but inexpensive spell very often as far as mana is available. So, if what you are trying to say is that every mechanic can find its place in a game, then I agree with you; if you are saying that they are essentially the same thing, then you are wrong. That's just you playing poorly and/or exploiting the system. If anything the problem with IE games was that they didn't punished/discouraged that kind of behavior hardly enough. Resting in the middle of a dungeon should be far more dangerous and going back to town to rest should be far more problematic (i.e. you end wasting way too much time to end a timed quest or like in Dark Souls when you rest all minor enemies respawn with you). Of course, developers usually don't like these punishing mechanics, despise how they make things much more interesting, because there are many people, even on this forum, that don't like to play to master the mechanics but "just for the story",
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Basically yes. In vancian system you have to rest in tavern or other place where this is allowed to recharge your spells, while in usual cooldown system you'll have to wait certain time OR rest to recharge. Cooldown time usually depends on power of the spell. Only real difference is that in Vancian you have limited amount of spells to use before you rest again so prepare to run like crazy between tavern and dungeon. Same thing when you notice you forgot to memorize some spell you needed ----> Back to tavern. I honestly don't know why anyone prefers pure Vancian system in CRPGs. While the vancian system has its own flaws (and I even pointed one of them in my previous post) you are trivializing this way too much. Ideally the system is NOT about running back and forth from tavern to dungeon, it's about managing a limited resource.
