Captain Shrek
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Posts posted by Captain Shrek
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Back to castle ravenloft endless paths.
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Casual\Dumbed Down and it's a gameplay mechanic from a game of the 90 that is clearly hardcore oldschool?
In answer to the guy who quoted me: you assume that kiting will be viable, yet they declared that opportunity attacks are in, I'm not sure you'll be allowed to do it.
EDIT: Is it so hard to imagine stamina as a limited damage reduction based off your beefiness?
1) Not all things in Old games were good. i can name quite a few TERRIBLE old games. Superman 64 just for starters. Don't mention them just for kool points. You are not impressing anyone.
2) Are you talking about Darklands? It had no REGEN FOR STAMINA. This is more like Skyrim or DA2.
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Guys, what are you talking about?
Save-spamming? Save-or-die spells are bad?
Try newest version of XCOM and you will feel 'random death' and 'inability to save spam'. And it doesn't have any kind of save-or-die spells!
Don't like saves? Use Ironman mode.
I like save-reload.
The problem with DnD is that in computer games, the mage characters can get amazingly high DC that is basically insurmountable and sometimes requires ridiculous saves (or none if the PC is the mage). That can be good on occasions too. It becomes trouble when you have more than one such spell or have (god forbid) a spell like ability (with the enemies) who can spam it because they can use it 5 times a day.
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I agree that encounter design is a valid method for solving this problem, but encounters do not exist in a vacuum. That's all I'm saying. Avoiding all encounters with save/die spells/abilities in D&D games is a solution, but because the game has such an abundance of these spells/abilities, it's very hard to do. You have to basically remove a huge chunk of the game's monsters, spells, and abilities to make it happen. In that case, it's no longer a 'faithful' D&D game, which leads to a different set of complaints.
PE has the benefit of not being a D&D game, so it has the flexibility to design its own mechanics. This already solves a lot of the problems, provided the devs understand that it was D&D's magic design that caused a lot of the reloading and rest spamming that happened in the Infinity Engine games.
If one thinks about it, DnD works perfectly fine in PnP because of the DM oversight. He can create situations where such encounters are resolvable without too much luck.
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(unnecessarily long quests like in NWN2, GATHER YOUR PARTY, trash mobs of skeletons, zombies and shadows etc).
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As opposed to that NWN2 had surreptitiously large number of dungeons full of unnecessary enemies just so to find that you had to endure another dungeon to complete the main objective (Old own well anyone?).
Out of curiosity, have you played Dragon Age: Origins? I have a hard time believing any player familiar with DA would choose NWN2 as the worst example for over-padded death march quest chains.
Since we are on Obsidian forums, relevant and explemplary demonstrations are for their games (here or before the flood).
If wanted to just talk about trash mobs there are worse examples than DA:O.
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Rest spamming and save scumming were both heavily exploited in IE games because of the way magic worked in D&D. Higher level combat was so dependent on making certain spells work / not work that you had to resort to these exploits in order to overcome encounters.
I am not a fan of how MAGES and certain spells work in DnD. Save or Die spells in my opinion are terrible. But I disagree with other things you say. I will give you reasons. See if you think they are considerable.
I remember doing rest spamming a lot not because I ran out of spells / resources / health, but because I ran out of certain spells / abilities that were critical in the encounters I was facing. For example, greater restoration and mind protection spells vs. illithids whose intelligence draining hits and pisonic blasts were instant death when you didn't have those spells. It wasn't a case of just having to 'suck it up' and fight better / absorb the losses because the encounters were so punishing without these abilities that you were forced to use them.
That is the problem of save or die spells. The way that magic works in DnD is deeply flawed. Mages become exponentially powerful as the level progresses with a lot of spells that do not offer any solutions to face than lucky rolls or fortuitous availability of counterspells. This is essentially due to HIGH magic setting which makes Melee irrelevant at higher levels. I would welcome a LOW MAGIC setting, although PE is already confirmed to be High magic with magical monks that will beat monsters to death with bare hands.
BUT.
Even in such scenario, IWDs for example were excellently designed so that you could always save from a reload when dies rolled too bad against you; I actually mentioned that in the post you are quoting. Also, IWDs were LOW level DnD for most part where the party did not become OP and always plan according to what they were facing; which is exactly what tactics is; planning to adapt to conflict. Encounter design was so that only logical enemies were so powerful to resist and you were given a choice to rest before facing them, something that is not contradictory to what I said in the post; the post is about good encounter design where you SHOULD be given a choice to rest before tough encounters.
Save scumming was used because of the randomness programmed into D&D spells. I used it because there were times when an enemy mage would insta kill my party with a well rolled Circle of Death / Weird and I didn't want to cast life protection on every one of my party members because - dum dum dum - I wanted to avoid rest spamming. It was also the case that certain encounters were only beatable at certain levels when you roll well. The sheer randomness of the D&D magic system is what made save scumming very useful.
Again an issue of encounter design. Remember that you are playing in a scaffold. The programmer has to learn to anticipate the problems the player will face playing the game. Broken encounter design will FORCE you play unnecessarily unbalanced scenarios. Good design won't. As to random encounters; there are NO random encounters per se. There is always a system by which such encounters are generated. That system can be balanced so that it makes sense from the scenario perspective (previous encounters; available resources; resting places etc).
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This is an excellent analysis.
I would add some points:
Irrespective of a game type, it is important that the game be balanced for all the play-styles the game allows and for those players that the game is targeting. It makes no sense to make game with (arbitrarily) hard combat for casual players (e.g. players of Farmville). Also, the game should not contain any elements that ANNOY the player, ruining his enjoyment (unnecessarily long quests like in NWN2, GATHER YOUR PARTY, trash mobs of skeletons, zombies and shadows etc).
One of the real tasks of the game designer I believe (since I am NOT a developer) would be balancing the challenge and the annoyance. It is is easy to confuse the two if one is not very bright. For example IWD2 was MEANT to be a hack and slash game with challenging combat. I had tough enemies and required smart planning of tactics before engaging in fighting or being punished for mistakes. This made playing the game satisfying.
As opposed to that NWN2 had surreptitiously large number of dungeons full of unnecessary enemies just so to find that you had to endure another dungeon to complete the main objective (Old own well anyone?).
This separation is necessary to make the game interesting. Please understand that there IS NO RESTRICTION ON THE IDEA that a hack and slash game have NO real story. In fact a well designed hack and slash game with good story is the most desirable kind of game from a general perspective. I am sure that nobody would have complained that a great game like Escape from tournament planet would only be benefited by great combat.
With this thing in mind we can discuss the system of stamina and health.
The question is, who is being addressed by this game?
Obsidian has announced that they want the IE game audience.
IE games were characteristic by good combat and great story. I am not talking about a particular mechanics like RtwP but rather the general feel of challenge provided by games like BGs and IWDs all the while experiencing great story of PST.
There is no doubt in my mind (neither should there be in yours) that these games were NOT PARAGONS OF GAMING. Yeah. Sacrilege. Bring on the stones and the sticks.
These games did suffer from numerous faults and ridding them would only improve them. "Where is the problem with such as assertion?", you ask. The problem, in my view lies in understanding that the broken mechanics (part of it) of these games was easily repairable and had no need to be replaced or removed.
A frequently cited problem of IE games is rest-spamming.
It is quite easy to realize that such problem can be quite decently solved by simply managing the combat encounters more intelligently than whining about how that is detrimental to the game. If the game is designed in a way so that the player party has to move from encounter to encounter (until you reach a safe spot) without an opportunity to rest in between, there would be no rest-spamming. Some might feel that this is too tough. Not so. It is simply made challenging by adding enough resources after every encounter that are just necessary to win the next encounter but still keeping it challenging. IWDs did this quite well. This would allow challenge (NOT frustration or annoyance) to be experienced only enhancing the game.
The second problem cited often is save-scumming:
In my view this is the strangest complaint playing a computer game. In a PnP game (to which a lot of people draw unfair comparison to cRPGs) the DM provides a flexible scaffold to play within the game, so that player misfortune (through bad die rolls) is mitigated unless he is playing terribly. A computer game is also a scaffold but a rigid one. That means good tactics but bad luck may result in losing huge lot of effort. This is solved by saving the game. If the encounters are designed as described above, there would BE NO WAY TO EXPLOIT SAVE-RELAOD system. This is a an easier and an elegent solution compared to a complete overhaul which could result in broken mechanics like so many non IE cRPG classics.
I believe that the system proposed here for stamina and health is a result of these considerations gone off track (trying to avoid rest-spamming or save-scumming). There is NO reason to get rid of a non-broken system in IE games which is simply a victim of poor design of encounters.
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Obsidian now has the chance to deconstruct the tropes and conventions of CRPGs and do something new which is rooted into the traditional rpgs (IE in this case). I would applaud the goal oriented XP and it would actually make all the possible ways to solve quests and goals equal instead of "I'm gonna just kill 'em all because I get the most exp out of that".
Obsidian Entertainment and our legendary game designers Chris Avellone, Tim Cain, and Josh Sawyer are excited to bring you a new role-playing game for the PC. Project Eternity (working title) pays homage to the great Infinity Engine games of years past: Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment.
Project Eternity aims to recapture the magic, imagination, depth, and nostalgia of classic RPG's that we enjoyed making - and playing. At Obsidian, we have the people responsible for many of those classic games and we want to bring those games back… and that’s why we’re here - we need your help to make it a reality!
Project Eternity will take the central hero, memorable companions and the epic exploration of Baldur’s Gate, add in the fun, intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, and tie it all together with the emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of Planescape: Torment.
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This is getting sad. Stamina regenerates after combat while you are looting bodies. Did you get that from a wiki or something? Now I'm starting to think you've never played Darklands and you're just trolling.
Oh and btw, constant regen is meaningless without knowing the rate.
It only recovers when you are not involved in any special activity and takes 1 hr of game time.
You probably still do not understand: Darklands stamina DOES NOT recover during combat. PE does. Skyrim does. DA2 does. SKyrim, DA2 use stamina for special attacks; so does PE.
Your entire invocation of Darklands is confusing. Why do you keep thinking that this game has any similarity to PE compared to COD or Skyrim or DA2?
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Because this thread isn't about whether or not Project Eternity will be a hack and slash game or about health regen or anything else. It's a poll about the experience mechanic.
Which should be dependent on whether the game is hack and slash or not.
What would be the point of creating a hack & slash game where the primary resolution for quests isn't combat? In other words, why would you have an experience system generated on quests so that players are rewarded however they play but make the game only resolvable through combat? Or am I missing something?
That is a good question to ask the devs.
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Why don't you rather address my questions?
Because this thread isn't about whether or not Project Eternity will be a hack and slash game or about health regen or anything else. It's a poll about the experience mechanic.
Which should be dependent on whether the game is hack and slash or not.
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Because you don't know if it is hack and slash or not.
Especially with regenerating spammable (low level?) spells and regenerating stamina and no rest - "spamming" to boot, it has all the features of a hack and slash like DA2.
Jesus Christ Shrek, give your crusade a rest for a day, you are becoming worse then VotS, because in his case I am at least reasonably sure that he is trolling.
You are deluded. I have no crusade only very valid points. Appealing to emotions or trying to humiliate others indirectly by such stupid accusations is riddiculous internet tactics. Stop being immature.
Actually your points are far from valid. They are based on assumptions and jumping to the worst possible conclusions (too your mind). I can't speak to spells because I have no ideas how the system will actually work, but I can say that the stamina/health system Josh Sawyer mentioned can be absolutely brutal if they follow fairly closely to how Darklands did it. Tougher by far than any of the IE games, and only Shattered Lands was as tough among the SSI games in my opinion.
You have never played Darklands. Darklands does not allow auto-regenration.
After combat in Darklands, stamina regenerates, health on the other hand only regenerates with rest. Or are you thinking of a different game?
Yes. I am indeed. Games like Skyrim, Dragon age and co. where Spells have cool downs, stamina regens. The onyl difference here is that stamina is ALSO health analogue. Which means, dropping all the pretense that stamina is just Health +, health also regens. That game was COD.
Again, those are assumptions and I gave you a factual situation, that is the inspiration for at least the stamina portion of PE, that accomplishes the task elegantly. We have no idea of the rate of regeneration just like we don't know how quickly or in what quantity low level spells will regenerate or how this will actually effect encounters. The has yet to be designed. I'm going to leave it that; any more and we'll just be talking in circles.
cheers
>I gave you factual info
No you did not. Darklands DOES NOT REGEN STAMINA OUTSIDE COMBAT. This requires 1 hour rest. Your constant source of misinformation indicates that you haven't played it. Also, there seems to be some confusion in your mind. It has been clearly declared that:
1) There will be CONSTANT REGEN on stamina
2) There will be very easy ways to increase it if it is lost.
Probably should check your facts before arguing.
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Because you don't know if it is hack and slash or not.
Especially with regenerating spammable (low level?) spells and regenerating stamina and no rest - "spamming" to boot, it has all the features of a hack and slash like DA2.
Jesus Christ Shrek, give your crusade a rest for a day, you are becoming worse then VotS, because in his case I am at least reasonably sure that he is trolling.
You are deluded. I have no crusade only very valid points. Appealing to emotions or trying to humiliate others indirectly by such stupid accusations is riddiculous internet tactics. Stop being immature.
Actually your points are far from valid. They are based on assumptions and jumping to the worst possible conclusions (too your mind). I can't speak to spells because I have no ideas how the system will actually work, but I can say that the stamina/health system Josh Sawyer mentioned can be absolutely brutal if they follow fairly closely to how Darklands did it. Tougher by far than any of the IE games, and only Shattered Lands was as tough among the SSI games in my opinion.
You have never played Darklands. Darklands does not allow auto-regenration.
After combat in Darklands, stamina regenerates, health on the other hand only regenerates with rest. Or are you thinking of a different game?
Yes. I am indeed. Games like Skyrim, Dragon age and co. where Spells have cool downs, stamina regens. The onyl difference here is that stamina is ALSO health analogue. Which means, dropping all the pretense that stamina is just Health +, health also regens. That game was COD.
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Because you don't know if it is hack and slash or not.
Especially with regenerating spammable (low level?) spells and regenerating stamina and no rest - "spamming" to boot, it has all the features of a hack and slash like DA2.
Jesus Christ Shrek, give your crusade a rest for a day, you are becoming worse then VotS, because in his case I am at least reasonably sure that he is trolling.
You are deluded. I have no crusade only very valid points. Appealing to emotions or trying to humiliate others indirectly by such stupid accusations is riddiculous internet tactics. Stop being immature.
Actually your points are far from valid. They are based on assumptions and jumping to the worst possible conclusions (too your mind). I can't speak to spells because I have no ideas how the system will actually work, but I can say that the stamina/health system Josh Sawyer mentioned can be absolutely brutal if they follow fairly closely to how Darklands did it. Tougher by far than any of the IE games, and only Shattered Lands was as tough among the SSI games in my opinion.
You have never played Darklands. Darklands does not allow auto-regenration.
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Because you don't know if it is hack and slash or not.
Especially with regenerating spammable (low level?) spells and regenerating stamina and no rest - "spamming" to boot, it has all the features of a hack and slash like DA2.
Jesus Christ Shrek, give your crusade a rest for a day, you are becoming worse then VotS, because in his case I am at least reasonably sure that he is trolling.
You are deluded. I have no crusade only very valid points. Appealing to emotions or trying to humiliate others indirectly by such stupid accusations is riddiculous internet tactics. Stop being immature.
While your constant demands that everyone who argues with you should read all your various posts on this topic and treating every one of your claim as inrefutable objective truth LS style is mature. OK, why not.
Dude you are really deluded. Do you even realize which board you are on?
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Add options in a gameplay menu (accept saves in combat [Y/N])
is automatically optimum. But honestly it is impossible to implement all that in such a short time. Requires quite a few design tweaks.
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Because you don't know if it is hack and slash or not.
Especially with regenerating spammable (low level?) spells and regenerating stamina and no rest - "spamming" to boot, it has all the features of a hack and slash like DA2.
Jesus Christ Shrek, give your crusade a rest for a day, you are becoming worse then VotS, because in his case I am at least reasonably sure that he is trolling.
You are deluded. I have no crusade only very valid points. Appealing to emotions or trying to humiliate others indirectly by such stupid accusations is riddiculous internet tactics. Stop being immature.
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Because you don't know if it is hack and slash or not.It depends on what kind of game you are playing. Most hack and slash games are directed towards.. guess what.. hack and slash.
Indeed, and PE is no hack and slash. So how am I completely wrong?
Especially with regenerating spammable (low level?) spells and regenerating stamina and no rest - "spamming" to boot, it has all the features of a hack and slash like DA2.
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I voted for. It'll give me more of a reason to explore the world better.
I agree bro, there's no better incentive to explore areas full of monsters that want to kill you than awarding no xp for killing them.
On the contrary, since monsters are monsters are monsters, what is your incentive to explore any particular area if you can get the same amount of XP from grinding monsters in an area you've already explored?
Objective-based XP incentivizes you to go to new places and do new things.
This is completely wrong.
It depends on what kind of game you are playing. Most hack and slash games are directed towards.. guess what.. hack and slash.
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XP when finishing objective like Bloodlines was PURE AWESOME. <3 And it is a far better cRPG mechanic.
What an intelligent comment! It is overflowing with the light of reason!
As to the argument:
An important issue is, should you be given points for completing objectives (goals) or successfully engaging in non-goal encounters along with completing objectives. I personally believe that the question is of game-design again. If the game focuses on Combat then the latter is the chief way of distributing the points. If the game has more encounter resolution elements than combat then probably it should depend on the BOTH but adjusted for the sake of balance.BUt to be honest, balancing everything is a hassle. Best to stick with what is not broken than invent retarded systems that have never been tested and appear weak right from the get go. This is not a point against innovation. But against being insensibly confident of your abilities to manage such things.
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Humans -> Elves -> Dwarves -> Orcs/Lizardmen.
You forgot "Orlans"
Could be then Gnomes.
Now we have the full DnD set.
And Godlike race
:pTieflings and Asimar.
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Humans -> Elves -> Dwarves -> Orcs/Lizardmen.
You forgot "Orlans"
Could be then Gnomes.
Now we have the full DnD set.
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Humans -> Elves -> Dwarves -> Orcs/Lizardmen.
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Since character creation is my (oddly) favorite part of any RPG, anything works.
There is nothing 'oddly' about it.
Character creation done well is an amazing minigame by itself as NWN2 has proved.
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Automatic regeneration of hit points during combat
in Pillars of Eternity: Stories (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted · Edited by Captain Shrek
Really?
First of all: Health is a mechanics that has existed since ages. You probably don't understand the term dumbed down ( makes sense
since you PROBABLY compared darklands to PE). It refers to reducing complexity of something. HP can't be dumbed down becuase it is one of the first.
Secondly, there is no DOUBT that it can be improved. However by putting a Health+ system like stamina as SEEMS to be indicated by PE expo, is hardly an improvement.
Let me describe to you in small words why Stamina in such a case is ALSO health (it can serve other purposes too) and dumbed down.
1) Your health does not deplete at the same rate when HIT as long as you have stamina = > Stamina acts as excess health.
2) Stamina regenerates RAPIDLY and there are spells to recover it which will PROBABLY be on cooldown (the last part is not certain; granted).
Combined this means that you have a de facto health shield (excess health; bonus hitpoints like condition) when you have stamina which is easiliy recoverable.
Also you fail at a basic level to understand why the stamina system exists,
The developers have pointed out multiple times that they do not want Rest "spamming" and save "scumming" (highly personal peferences as far as I understand and hardly meaningful it actually analysed). Stamina exists to counter the need to rest often.
Now it should be obvious that stamina WILL HAVE TO PREVENT health from being lost quickly or else it will defeat its own purpose for being introduced (rest "spamming").
Which means, YES stamina MUST function as health+ for some design goal to be satisfied.
Now that should be easier to comprehend I hope! Cheers~