Beast of Winter Interview(s?) with BAdler

[AndreaColombo]

It’s hard to design a rest system that encourages proper resting schedules without resorting to making the rest mechanic inconvenient for players IRL.

Edited July 25, 2018 by AndreaColombo

[daven]

Dark souls does a rest mechanic the best. However it's a completely different type of game.

 

I was thinking something like... you can only rest 1 time per day, or every 18 hours or something.

[Verde]

There should be a penalty if you rest too much.

[Takkik]

It’s hard to design a rest system that encourages proper resting schedules without resorting to making the rest mechanic inconvenient for players IRL.

It's just impossible to design a rest system that don't constrain the player. The point of a resting system is to add some limitation/challenge. You need to build your game around or it's just pointless, that why I would prefer they completly drop the rest mechanic.

 

In real life you just can't rest multiple time 8h in a day (outside be ill/injuried, and even when you're ill you can be bored to stay in bed). You have concept of short rest (1h) that feel more realistic and allow you to regain your breath after some difficult situations.

 

You should not be able to rest in dungeons or even city streets, only in Inn/ship, and on world map with a risk of random encounter. That would give more weight to injuries & empower points or any curse/afflictions that you can only remove by resting.

When time pass, enemies should respawn (random or not) in dangerous places. You only gain limited xp from fight so should not be a problem and that would prevent rest spamming.

 

It's something old school JRPG do better than baldur's gate & co. Random encounter + rest only in Inn force you to be more cautious when exploring and be ready/able to finish a dungeon up to the boss in one go. They manage better resting (SP) and consummable managing (at least early on).

 

But if they don't want to put more interesting weight in the rest system, they're just better to remove it and design encounters as self contained challenge (attrition become trivia). The only attrition/limit you have are consumables forcing you to return to city to restock.

[JerekKruger]

... that why I would prefer they completly drop the rest mechanic.

Given the state of resting in Deadfire I'd completely agree, and I say this as someone who likes resting systems. It's basically just busy work at this point.

[Guest]

 

... that why I would prefer they completly drop the rest mechanic.

Given the state of resting in Deadfire I'd completely agree, and I say this as someone who likes resting systems. It's basically just busy work at this point.

They’d have to ditch food too, otherwise power gamers would go back to eating the 15 meals before every encounter (which was game-breaking at all)

[JerekKruger]

They’d have to ditch food too, otherwise power gamers would go back to eating the 15 meals before every encounter (which was game-breaking at all)

That'd be fine by me

 

That said, you could keep it in and simply have new food buffs overwrite existing ones, so only one can be active at any time.

[Boeroer]

Banning food from the quick item slots and moving it to camping was a good decision. It's just too easy to camp. You can camp everywhere (besides towns). Maybe only allowing to camp in certain "save" spots would be a solution. I mean I also don't throw my tent just besides the way and go to sleep. I search for a nice location without bumpy rocks and puddles and mudholes and so on. Imagine you would haveto camp in the Old City... no much of a rest, right?  

Edited July 25, 2018 by Boeroer

[Takkik]

 

They’d have to ditch food too, otherwise power gamers would go back to eating the 15 meals before every encounter (which was game-breaking at all)

That'd be fine by me

 

That said, you could keep it in and simply have new food buffs overwrite existing ones, so only one can be active at any time.

 

 

Only one food bonus at same time & out of combat consummable. That'll work excatly the same but without the need of resting.

[grasida]

The issue with something like bonfires or save points is that without respawning enemies or random encounters to enforce attrition, they’ll just be seen as similar to the current system, but with a backtracking tax added. Functionally they’re not all that much different from poe 1’s resting supplies.

 

Fights in dark souls are typically over fast and are designed assuming you’ll get killed by them many times. Old-school JRPG random encounters are considered pretty abhorrent nowadays. I think the only way such a system would work in a game like pillars would be with major sacrifices to the feeling of simulation. Perhaps if you could only use a rest point once per dungeon and everything in the dungeon (including the camp site) respawned if you left it would enforce attrition. But that wouldn’t help Deadfire much, in which there are few dungeons and a lot of the combat takes place on boats or single encounter screens.

[Guest]

Who knew that resting was such a hot topic? I’m 20 hours into this playthrough and I think I’ve rested twice.

[dunehunter]

Maybe split rest into short rest and long rest.

1. You are allowed to do short rest as many times as possible, every short rest last one hour and u can eat food, but it won't replenish your per rest charges or heal injury.
2. You are allowed to do long rest once per day when you out of town, last 8 hours, every long rest will allow u to heal injury, eat food and replenish per rest items.
3. When u are in safe area, let's say in town or on your own ship, you can do whatever long or short rest you want.

Anyone's up to this solution?

Edited July 25, 2018 by dunehunter

[Dorftek]

Or, everytime you rest you loose 2k experience and eventually lvl backwards! Fixes resting AND the inflation of exp :D

 

I'm a genius!!

 

Gonna leave this forum section now quickly and go back to the character build and strat section cuz I've seen this guy Jerekkruger checking me out quite passionately and I know he hangs around here!

 

*vanishes with shadowing beyond*

Edited July 25, 2018 by Dorftek

[Takkik]

you should be able to rest at will in your ship. It's like your base.

 

That don't fix all problems. Without enemies respawn/random encounter, that just make it more annoying to rest without drawback. When in a city or around, it's just like before unlimited resting. Overall it's pretty similar to the 2 supply limit of poe1.

 

The game wasn't built around resting so it's asking lot more changes to make it interesting. But overall the biggest issue is per rest abilities & injuries. Unlimited resting make traps annoying but not deadly. Per rest abilities are just annoying too, they promoted a per encounter system, but you still have to rest after every fight just to get back all your activations. Every resting limitation you'll add will just return to poe1 situation without more interesting change under the hood.

 

The problem with JRPG random encounter is it they were too much (for today taste). But the games got a more interesting economy/challenge. Fallout & Baldur's gate have random encounters on world map and it was nice (not always combat). In 'dungeons', you could have random encounter at specific zones, like a respawn (but not always the samething). Overall less random encounter than in a old school JRPG, and since you see enemies in game you can always stealth, use another passage etc... You don't have the annoying random encounter that pop from nowhere.

[Purudaya]

 

Per rest = per encounter now

Indeed. Say what you will about Camping Supplies, but they did impose a(n admittedly small) restriction on rest spamming. No such restriction exists in Deadfire, so per rest is meaningless.

I would be surprised (and disappointed) if one of the new challenge modes didn't add a some kind of rest restriction. Just restricting rest to inns, ships, and cleared map levels would do a lot for the game.

Edited July 25, 2018 by Purudaya

[AndreaColombo]

The problem with solutions that make resting inconvenient just because it's tedious for the player to do (as was the case with camping supplies in the first game) is that they encourage cheating more than resource management. If I know I can do it within the game rules, but it's time-consuming and/or tedious, I'll just cheat to remove the inconvenience—also because I value my free time too much to waste it going through areas and loading screens just to achieve the same result cheats get me in 5 seconds.

[Takkik]

Resting never worked properly in baldur's gate like rpg (as far I remember)., but I find that Obsidian made the same mistake than in Dragon age: origins. With automatic restauration of resources, you can just spam all your best abilities (even without counting per rest ones). In DAO, you enter a room full of NPC, you could just cast all your AOE abilities (even if on paper they got malus when combined) and watch every one die. Mana is restaured and you could proceed to next room.

 

Discarding resting, one thing that could work it's not restauring resources (& per encounter & per rest & emporer pt) or Life when the battle end, forcing you to use consumables. Food restaure some resources (+ giving bonus), medkit you can use out of combat and some special potions/food/alchool that restaure resources when out of combat. That give player some money sink & resource management.

Hardcore mode : You have to repair your equipment, injuries only heal over time, encouraging you to change your party roster (like in a xcom game) etc...

 

Another option : build all classes around resource building like chanter, cipher & monk. You can't use your best abilities right from the start and have to gather resources to use them, or just rely on low cost abilities spamming.

 

Right now I find the game is stuck between 2 system and is too afraid to fully switch to a per encounter system.

[AndreaColombo]

In DAO, you enter a room full of NPC, you could just cast all your AOE abilities (even if on paper they got malus when combined) and watch every one die. Mana is restaured and you could proceed to next room.

 

In a way, this is easier to balance (not saying DA:O was balanced, which I can't because I haven't played it; also not saying Deadfire should employ the same system. I'm speaking in general.) Developers know you will always face enemies at your apex, so all encounters can be balanced expecting it.

 

In a game that has per-rest abilities, fights need to be challenging for people at their full power while still being generally feasiblefory those who aren't (in the sense they stand at least a chance to win if they play their cards right.) It becomes a very delicate balancing act where different players' skills are no longer the only variable; you also need to account for what resources they may or may not have by the time they get to each encounter.

 

In an open-world game you also can't tell which pieces of equipment the party will or will not have.

 

Hard to make it all work.

Edited July 25, 2018 by AndreaColombo

[juanval]

I play usually on hard difficulty and I found interesting battles at the beginning of campaign but too easy at medium-high levels (now I'm at 13).

 

I stop playing, and I'll resume my campaign once the 3 DLC are released.

 

PLEASE devs, improve balance of combats.

Edited July 25, 2018 by juanval

[JerekKruger]

The problem with solutions that make resting inconvenient just because it's tedious for the player to do (as was the case with camping supplies in the first game) is that they encourage cheating more than resource management.

I've no doubt that was true of some people, but it wasn't for me. For reference I rest spammed all the way through the BG series, but the introduction of camping supplies in PoE did make me change the way I played, and I found I enjoyed it more as a result.

 

I guess I wish there was a way for me to cheat in Deadfire to make the game play like I prefer (with per rest) in the same way you could cheat in PoE.

[Big-Ben]

 

The problem with solutions that make resting inconvenient just because it's tedious for the player to do (as was the case with camping supplies in the first game) is that they encourage cheating more than resource management.

I've no doubt that was true of some people, but it wasn't for me. For reference I rest spammed all the way through the BG series, but the introduction of camping supplies in PoE did make me change the way I played, and I found I enjoyed it more as a result.

 

I guess I wish there was a way for me to cheat in Deadfire to make the game play like I prefer (with per rest) in the same way you could cheat in PoE.

 

 

I guess this is one of those things were setting standards for yourself might set in. Like no resting in certain areas or only after a certain period of time had passed. It's always nicer to have these features in the game but alas.

[JerekKruger]

I guess this is one of those things were setting standards for yourself might set in. Like no resting in certain areas or only after a certain period of time had passed. It's always nicer to have these features in the game but alas.

Doesn't really work sadly: I can't mimic non-regenerating health or limited spells per rest.

[AndreaColombo]

You can make a mod that turns spells into a per-test resource, though. Going by memory, that’s the example BMac used in his modding guide

[JerekKruger]

You can make a mod that turns spells into a per-test resource, though. Going by memory, that’s the example BMac used in his modding guide

Really? Okay that's interesting. I'll have to take a look.

[Vaneglorious]

I'll admit I'm a little disappointed at the DLC's being aimed at characters "only" 14th-15th level, as I was hoping for more level 19-20 content. Hopefully it'll stay challenging with level scaling.

 

Level scaling will solve that probably.

 

@OP

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