Question to game mechanics and more

[AnjyBelle]

Starting with that rifle-girl, I'm meanwhile in the eastern woods with Anjali. As it seems, DS III has nothing at all in common with the predecessors DS I and DS II. But that's not necessarily bad.

 

Some questions, though:

 

Increasing skills and stats

 

In the former DS-games any character became better in a specific skill, when he used it again and again. E.g. fighting with sword raised close combat and (among others) strength, using nature magic (nm) raised nm-skill and (among others) intelligence. Of course I see, that the characters are somewhat bound to their classes and are not able to use the stuff of their companions, wherefore a "multiclassed" character cannot exist and thus, it would make limited sense to increase their original skills with every use. Nevertheless, using rifles COULD raise agility or using magic COULD raise will.

Am I correct, when I say that there is nothing like this happening in DS III?

 

 

Primarily attributes

 

Am I correct, when I see

 

a) Agility and attack for the rifle-girl

b) Attack and will for Anjali

c) Attack for the fighter

d) Will for the old mage

 

as main attributes?

 

 

For the following questions I ask humbly, not to see it as "flame" or "whine". I'm really interested to know about possible advantages, which I failed to see during the last 21 years of gaming.

 

1) WASD

 

A desktop-PC has arrow keys and a num-pad. Why are devs STILL clinging to this odd WASD-thing?

 

2) Save-points

 

In 1997 I started Final Fantasy VII, knowing, that it was a console-port. So I was not surprised by the strange way I had to map my keys (note: Key mapping WAS possible!). I thought, for consoles it might be impossible to let the player save at any time. So much more I was surprised, when I left the first town and travelled through open land: I could save whenever and wherever, except during a fight. This way I learnt, that save points - respectively the denial of arbitrary saves - are deliberate measures of the devs to make a game "more challenging".

 

Question for the more adult PC-gamers: Is it really "more challenging" or is it rather a way to make game-time artificially longer?

Question for people knowing about coding and programming: Is it really so much more work to implement a "normal" save-feature into a console-port?

 

 

Thanks in advance for your replies

[brandysnap]

most action rpgs have this form of saving. if it isnt a checkpoint its getting dumped back to the nearest town when you save/quit.

 

torchlight is an exception but there are few others that save your exact spot in the game world when you quit. nothing to do with consoles at all, diablo 2 wasnt a console game but that kicks you back to town when you save forcing you to run all the way back to where you were.

there are also lots of rpgs on consoles that allow you to save anywhere.

this leads to the conclusion that its a design decision rather than some spiteful console port decision.

[metamag]

No, Lucas benefits greatly from Willpower and Agility more than any other character, Attack is the least relevant for him.

 

Willpower being the most important for Lucas:

-blade dash/wind shear for crowds, heroic charge-->auto-crit for single enemies

-agility is not as important because both(blade dash and heroic charge) abilities you can spec to have criticals

 

Read the abilities/talents descriptions again, he even converts willpower to attack as passive.

[AnjyBelle]

this leads to the conclusion that its a design decision rather than some spiteful console port decision.

 

 

When I played Diablo II and later DS I and II I noticed that, of course. The "save points" in Diablo and the DS-games would be the teleporters, which spare the player to walk all the way back.

 

My question remains: What is the idea of a dev to make stuff like this? Just because of the fact, that Diablo had this "throwing back to town"-system, does not mean, that ist is good. IMO it makes these games just repetitive and "adds" to game-time in a negative way. Who did ever consider these "save-points" as "fun" or "challenge"?

 

 

@ Metamag

Interesting. I don't have Lucas yet, so I couldn't know. Thanks for the advice!

[Tigranes]

I don't think there are 'main attributes' set in stone for each character. The huge changes in bonuses you get through items mean you could easily force 'unnatural' build types to pretty good efficiency, e.g. a blocker Katarina.