Combat - Immersion v. Simplicty II

[Shevek]

Like my previous thread, here a few more unbiased polls on a few topics related to gameplay in Project Eternity. My goal is to take the opinion out of how questions are asked to produce more actionable data.

 

Here is a link to my previous thread as well (Combat - Immersion v. Simplicity I).

[nikolokolus]

Arrows and bolts should be finite for sure, special materials add a nice touch and some complexity to combat, and I don't mind archers in close range as long as there is some perk/skill/proficiency/feat justification for it.

[Veca]

In regards to the arrows/bolts having finite amounts.

 

True it is more realistic to have a finite amount of projectiles.

But on the other hand, in for an example the IE games, you never were in danger of running out of arrows, all you had to do was stock up on a bunch of them before going adventuring, and on your adventures, plenty of adversaries had bolts and arrows their corpses freely passed on to you.

So the factor of always having projectiles for your ranged classes ended up beeing, "did you remember to stock up, spending 2 min clicking between select arrow, buy, then back to select arrow". Which in my opinion was more of a hassle than immersion. Therefor I voted, infinite of nonmagical arrow, but finite amounts of magical arrows.

[Shevek]

In regards to the arrows/bolts having finite amounts.

 

True it is more realistic to have a finite amount of projectiles.

But on the other hand, in for an example the IE games, you never were in danger of running out of arrows, all you had to do was stock up on a bunch of them before going adventuring, and on your adventures, plenty of adversaries had bolts and arrows their corpses freely passed on to you.

So the factor of always having projectiles for your ranged classes ended up beeing, "did you remember to stock up, spending 2 min clicking between select arrow, buy, then back to select arrow". Which in my opinion was more of a hassle than immersion. Therefor I voted, infinite of nonmagical arrow, but finite amounts of magical arrows.

 

Ya, all design decisions, I think, should be made from the standpoint of "is this tedium or is it challenging?" I can see how buying crazy stacks of nonmagical arrows can be seen as tedious by some.

[PsychoBlonde]

How is it "unbiased" to declare that a simple game is necessarily contra-immersion?

 

Some of my all-time favorite games (Prince of Persia) were incredibly simple. No inventory. No leveling up. Yet they had incredibly deep immersion. Or some of the older FPS shooters, where I'd find myself physically ducking to avoid attacks. Talk about immersion.

 

A game doesn't have to be fiddly and complex to be deep and engaging. Likewise, a fiddly, complex game isn't always engaging. Gothic had a spectacularly bad interface where you'd have to hold one key and press another in order to attack, and you had to let go of the held key to move while moving the mouse and pressing a bunch of other keys. You also had to TIME hitting the attack button or you wouldn't swing properly. It was AWFUL, the most fiddly, over-complicated combat I've run across before or since. Was it deep or engaging? No. Frankly I'm amazed I played it as long as I did, but the rest of the game was pretty cool and made up for it.

 

And why does the ammo thing have to be either/or? What about having ability specs where you can create ammo? Or specific weapons that create their own ammo? Or returning weapons? Now you've got both options depending on how people want to play.

 

Or, instead of having bows be useable or unuseable in melee--how about giving you a huge penalty to your defense against melee attacks when you're using a ranged weapon? Or even to your overall defense? If you want to get slightly more complex, you could have this diminish or even go away when you're moving instead of firing.

 

Should there be tradeoffs? Yes. But the nature of those tradeoffs doesn't have to be this two-dimensional.

[Shevek]

Can you please troll another post?

[Thraxen]

I like the idea of weapon material affecting certain enemies more, but if there's a system where you can use a weapon that you start the game with up until the end, via some specific weapon proficiency that improves your abilities with a particular weapon as you use it, it'd seem a bit unfair to people who'd want to try and RP in such a way. However, if there was some kind of system in which you could enhance a current weapon with another material, inlaying it or merging them somehow, that would make it a lot more feasible for enemies to have higher resistances.

[Shaewaros]

I will be really disappointed if ranged weapons have infinite ammunition. That would completely ruin the game for me.

[Shevek]

I screwed up when I made this poll, lol. I clicked on "multiple choice" not knowing that meant select more than one. *facepalm*

[Tale]

I screwed up when I made this poll, lol. I clicked on "multiple choice" not knowing that meant select more than one. *facepalm*

It did seem strange.