Do people want this game to be as "Hardcore" as 90's RPGs?

[KennethTopp]

I am not against, perma death it could tell some great stories I'd reckon with the companions you have and even better if your companions react to it in game, but if your main character dies in an encounter what then?

[Nonek]

Yes.

[Waywocket]

he one thing I'd like to avoid of the old IE games is the ridiculous randomness of life and death in early levels like in BG 1 were your low level character could often die through no fault of your own just because some bandit archer got a critical hit or through failing a single saving throw. While even great warriors dying to bad luck is realistic, I don't think it makes for a great game. When I fail I want it to be because I could have played better (but without cheesing), not because someone happened to roll a 1 or a 20.

Very much this.

 

I have literally never completed the prologue to IWD without at least a dozen reloads - if a single goblin or orc rolls higher than maybe 13 then that will one shot a wizard or thief, or a cleric if the enemy gets a good damage roll. A single critical hit will one-shot any level one character. There's nothing you can do tactically to prevent that, short of composing your party entirely of fighters and having each one run away after the first time they get hit (and hope you don't get critted). Baldur's Gate is about the same, except you don't get such large groups of enemies from the beginning so you only need to get lucky on a few rolls.

 

This is not fun. Actually, I don't really like any mechanics where the difficulty is all luck-based.

 

By the time you get to about level 3 then the difficulty level is about right - you need to use tactics in fights, but you're not dependent upon outrageous runs of good luck.

 

In general, I think games should start out easier so you at least have a chance to learn the mechanics before you've died repeatedly, but then gradually get harder as they progress - in both the BG and IWD series the games got progressively easier as you progressed, which isn't ideal, though it does lead to the feeling of becoming more and more epic as you get through the game.

 

(Torment was actually pretty much ideal, because if you played your cards right you could get a long way without any forced fights; getting out of the mortuary relied more on cunning than on being able to get good dice rolls. Alternatively you could always start a scrap if you really wanted to.)

[Infinitron]

he one thing I'd like to avoid of the old IE games is the ridiculous randomness of life and death in early levels like in BG 1 were your low level character could often die through no fault of your own just because some bandit archer got a critical hit or through failing a single saving throw. While even great warriors dying to bad luck is realistic, I don't think it makes for a great game. When I fail I want it to be because I could have played better (but without cheesing), not because someone happened to roll a 1 or a 20.

Very much this.

 

I have literally never completed the prologue to IWD without at least a dozen reloads - if a single goblin or orc rolls higher than maybe 13 then that will one shot a wizard or thief, or a cleric if the enemy gets a good damage roll. A single critical hit will one-shot any level one character. There's nothing you can do tactically to prevent that, short of composing your party entirely of fighters and having each one run away after the first time they get hit (and hope you don't get critted). Baldur's Gate is about the same, except you don't get such large groups of enemies from the beginning so you only need to get lucky on a few rolls.

 

This is not fun. Actually, I don't really like any mechanics where the difficulty is all luck-based.

 

By the time you get to about level 3 then the difficulty level is about right - you need to use tactics in fights, but you're not dependent upon outrageous runs of good luck.

 

In general, I think games should start out easier so you at least have a chance to learn the mechanics before you've died repeatedly, but then gradually get harder as they progress - in both the BG and IWD series the games got progressively easier as you progressed, which isn't ideal, though it does lead to the feeling of becoming more and more epic as you get through the game.

 

(Torment was actually pretty much ideal, because if you played your cards right you could get a long way without any forced fights; getting out of the mortuary relied more on cunning than on being able to get good dice rolls. Alternatively you could always start a scrap if you really wanted to.)

 

The solution is to make it easier to defend your weaker characters with stronger ones, I think. I like the concept of extremely weak supporting characters - it's part of the D&D tradition.

 

Maybe the game can give you a high-level buddy to escort you during the first few hours.

Edited September 18, 2012 by Infinitron

[Piccolo]

What I want is an RPG that treats you like an intelligent adult, that isn't afraid to frustrate you, and doesn't hold your hand in any way. I want an RPG that's aimed specifically at fans of RPGs and isn't dumbed down or simplified in any way just so people who are unfamiliar with RPGs find it more accessible and don't experience a steep learning curve.

 

I also want a complex character development system with lots of stats and none of the streamlining found in most modern aRPGs.

Edited September 18, 2012 by Piccolo

[daz23]

Why not. I'm supporting them for bringing back that old feeling from the Golden age of pc gaming late 90's early 2k. Once the Xbox came along PC gaming started going downhill.

[Skie Nightfall]

 

Enough said.

[overlordrauz]

Nah. I don't want:

 

- impossibly hard boss fights that'd crush your soul even after you'd find everything else a walk in the park.

- to remember or write down instructions, I want the important bits automatically in my journal (or whatever)

- no team members dying (that just meant a reload, even back then)

- some stupid baldurs gate/nwn2 inventory system with 100 slots of 5x5 pixel images you can't even see

- to spend 30 minutes after a fight applying ointments and minor cure spells to get the party back to speed

 

...or any of the other old crap, I just what the good stuff.

 

But as far as difficulty goes, please include a "crazy masochist exteme hardcore ironman" setting where you'll only have 1 hitpoint,

will die of a whisper and your computer will reformat if you do. Because even then someone will complain it's too crazy easy.

 

I agree on some points you have but the whole no team member dieing crap needs to stop. Having them able to be killed is the best way to deal with things in this game like how in baldurs gate 2 if you put the game to dnd rules your characters will die if a well placed crit hit them. Adds a huge roleplay and game feel to it. You may have reloaded your game when it happened but others did not since it made the game feel like they were what they are ment to be. Which they are mortals and nothing more. It really pisses me off in games that are ment to have a story with real feeling characters and they can't die.

Edited September 18, 2012 by overlordrauz

[Freddo]

Nah. I don't want:

 

- impossibly hard boss fights that'd crush your soul even after you'd find everything else a walk in the park.

- to remember or write down instructions, I want the important bits automatically in my journal (or whatever)

- no team members dying (that just meant a reload, even back then)

- some stupid baldurs gate/nwn2 inventory system with 100 slots of 5x5 pixel images you can't even see

- to spend 30 minutes after a fight applying ointments and minor cure spells to get the party back to speed

 

...or any of the other old crap, I just what the good stuff.

 

But as far as difficulty goes, please include a "crazy masochist exteme hardcore ironman" setting where you'll only have 1 hitpoint,

will die of a whisper and your computer will reformat if you do. Because even then someone will complain it's too crazy easy.

I very much agree with this

[Crosmando]

D&D level 1 has always been miss-miss-miss-miss-hit-die though, in PST TNO is useless at the start of the game and the best bet is just to use Morte

[ET3D]

I want the depth of story that Torment had. I don't want extreme difficulty and micro-management. I want most of my choices for skills etc. to result in a non-crippled character, and I'd love it if there was an auto-save before a battle so if I lose I can replay it or avoid it. Purely optional of course, so hardcores won't complain too much. I don't mind hoarding healing potions or having to manage my battles, and I certainly don't want mobs to scale with my level. Realtime battles with pause sound okay to me, I'd hate it if they were click fests, but might like them better as turn based.

 

Still, I don't want extreme difficulty. I want a challenge that a casual but smart player can overcome.

[Crosmando]

[Tauron]

RPGs have been watered down to appeal to broader audience and different platforms. I think majority got excited whn they sid they are gong back to roots. Reasoning in this project should be what people loved about those and can with todays tech be built on it. Evrything yo wanted to see in old titles but could not becouse of tech limitations.

[Gurkog]

The Infinity Engine games are not hardcore, in my opinion. I found them to be so incredibly popular because of their compromise of hardcore pen-and-paper micromanagement and the ability of computers to do all of the calculations in real time without the hassles that would slow a player down (worrying about fatigue, nutrition, weather, sickness, etc...). They made RPGs accessable to people who want to just jump into an adventure and be swept away while offering some depth to those who want a more traditional experience.

 

EDIT: The old games had difficulty options... so I do not see why challenge would be a factor in how hardcore the RPG is. Eternity is almost guaranteed to have difficulty adjustment options as well.

Edited September 18, 2012 by Gurkog

[Wombat]

The one thing I'd like to avoid of the old IE games is the ridiculous randomness of life and death in early levels like in BG 1 were your low level character could often die through no fault of your own just because some bandit archer got a critical hit or through failing a single saving throw. While even great warriors dying to bad luck is realistic, I don't think it makes for a great game. When I fail I want it to be because I could have played better (but without cheesing), not because someone happened to roll a 1 or a 20.

Unlikely to happen - Sawyer has written a lot about how not to make his game "reload to win."

 

I think Obsidian guys, especially Sawyer is good enough to make the game hard for hardcore fans while keeping it reasonably bearable for possible new players with difficulty-related options, especially when they are building up from the rule sets. Cain and Sawyer seem to be already taking of Ironman mode, too.

 

That said, some nuisances around interfaces may be avoided for any type of the players. By nuisances, of course, I don't mean resource-management game-play. I have never been asked to choose hardcore mode in FONV in each start-over.

[Grimlorn]

Yes definitely hardcore.

[PsychoBlonde]

So my question is: Do you want a carbon copy the "hardcore" game mechanics of the 90's, or do you want the more complex elements mixed with some modern mechanics and gameplay elements?

 

If by "hardcore" do you mean party members getting zapped into nonexistence by single spells against which the only defense/fix is that one item you find in that one place that costs like 1/3 of your available early-game cash - - - oh, and you have areas where like the monsters spam this spell 30+ times before you can kill them?

 

NO.

 

Tough fights are fine. I'm even okay with various instant-kill mechanics. Entire areas full of mobs that do nothing but spam instant-death (or ridiculous levels of mass damage a la that guy at the end of Baldur's Gate with those fireball arrows) and the only way you can win is by putting a bow on every character and cheesing out the aggro mechanics? LET'S GIVE THAT A MISS.

[Morten]

I'd like the game to be reasonably playable with any race, class combos I choose so that I feel like a masochist for playing a gnome bard or something. Though at the same time I'd like the game to have major challenges perhaps through optional challenges, alternative story routes or just an insane difficulty level. Being able to replay the game again with your maxed out character against much harder enemies could create that challenge too.

 

Basically, easy for everyone with an optional challenge for the hardcore.

[Nakia]

If by hardcore you mean depth and complexity of story and characters, fights that vary in difficult and make you use strategy. Yes I want hardcore If anything I want more than the old games had. I want real choices, choices that make a difference. Actually Arcanum had but that wan't a 90s game. As for the boss fights those should be fair. The Boss should be hard to kill but you should be able to level up and so the fight should be more or less equal. The final battle should encourage you to explore and increase you skill levels, have excellent equipment. It shouldn't be easy but it shouldn't have to resort to cheese. Cheese is for mice and Sheogorath.

[Monte Carlo]

Getting key characters gibbed, then pressing on regardless after a really tough boss battle is, for me, the quintessence of hard-core, old-skool BG-style games.

 

I remember once losing Minsc, level 20+, in the Underdark on hardcore. I had to press on. It was tough, but I worked around it.

 

I think difficulty sliders will enable everybody to play various levels of difficulty to match their personal tastes. If people want a Content Tourism mode that's fine by me.

[Metabot]

Yes and more so.

[Metabot]

Yes and more so.

[andreisiadi]

I want to see videos on youtube where people are raging about dieing in the tutorial dungeon. Then I want a video of a guy solo-ing it on hard difficulty by using tactics with "Bad to the bone" playing in the backround.

 

So, no awesome button please, give me hardcore gameplay, good AI and good encounter design.

 

And if a companion who dropped below 0 HP gets up after battle I'll kill him myself.

[Wintersong]

Why should be the tutorial dungeon a nightmare in normal difficulties? What's this? Age of Decadence where you supposedly must have a Master Degree in Age of Decadence to beat the first combat?

 

I'm all in for good encounter design, good AI and such. But the tutorial area, specially in normal difficulty, cannot be a nightmare. That's why it's a freaking tutorial area.

[descalabro]

Concerning combat and scenario interaction, I think IWD 2 had the best mechanics for a pre-rendered isometric game: besides of an enormous amount of strategic possibilities in combat, you also had to face actual physical traps and puzzles which were fun to play and watch. Still, I think that for 2012+ standarts the designers should go way beyond that concerning the interaction our characters will have with the environment: I mean puzzles, traps, vehicles and enemies that can actually use the space (flying enemies!) and buildings around them to their advantage in combat (the very best example of this is the 2002 strategy game http://www.gamespot.com/robin-hood-the-legend-of-sherwood/. The amount of physical possibilities in this game is unbelievable considering it's isometric).

 

Concerning the mechanics of dialogue and character development I think something like PST is just right, except it lacked the option to somehow save and quit during a conversation because some dialogues lasted for more than 50 minutes.

 

As for rules in general, I don't mind them at all as long as they don't hinder the gameplay, and Black Isle games never had that problem.