Solutions to the Degenerate Rest

[PsychoBlonde]

I like having a resting mechanic in the game, both to advance time and as a way to recharge your party, basically. However, I didn't really like how degenerate the resting system in BG was, where you could (mostly) rest anywhere at any time, and the primary benefit was that you could change out your spells or refresh the used spells. You also recovered a TINY bit of health. I also didn't like resting in the Neverwinter Nights games (the "take a knee" thing) because it was REALLY degenerate, you could do it every other minute if you wanted to.

 

So, let's look at similar mechanics from a few different games:

 

The oldest example I'm familiar with was in the old Gold Box D&D games. It was similar to Baldur's Gate in that you could rest pretty much anywhere (although some areas were limited), but in hostile areas you had a greater or lesser chance of being interrupted by wandering monsters. So, if you rested after a tough fight when you were low on resources, there was a chance you'd get a fight too tough for you to handle as a result. You *could* hoof it back to town, but there was also a significant risk of wandering monsters doing that, depending on the area you were in, of course. Occasionally, you'd have areas where you just couldn't rest for some reason. Unfortunately, if this was a large area, it could render your casters very quickly worthless in combat.

 

The Eye of the Beholder series was very similar to that system. So was Baldur's Gate. Neverwinter Nights lacked the random wandering monster component.

 

Next we have the Dark Sun games, where you rested at little "fire circles" salted here and there across the map. I don't believe there were any limitations on how often you could rest at the circle, but there were random encounters and you couldn't rest when enemies were nearby. Much like the above system, if you went too long without being able to rest, your casters could become basically worthless in combat. There was also a chance of random encounters if you decided to hoof it back to a circle in a "safe" location.

 

In Dungeons and Dragons Online, you can only rest at certain locations, marked by "rest shrines" (usually with a resurrection shrine for reviving dead party members). It can be a little amusing because the game alternatively treats these rest shrines as if they were simple markers for "safe rooms" and as if they were physical in-game objects. There are also limitations on how many times you can use a rest shrine, and on whether you can use it a second time at all. (These are based on your game difficulty selection, which you select at the start of the quest.) Again, the primary purpose is to regain spell points, but you also regain item charges and limited-use abilities. You also heal a very small (and, past level 4 or so, insignificant) amount. It's not degenerate--you can't rest every fight even if you want to--but it can have severe limitations for new characters with limited access to potions, scrolls, wands, clickies, and maxed-out gear, causing party wipes which make you have to start the quest over from the beginning. Not fun.

 

The Dragon Age games, of course, have no resting mechanic at all--and no attrition, either, you just regain everything at the end of combat, except for some utterly insignificant "Injuries" you acquire if someone gets dropped. This is, in my mind, also a degenerate system.

 

So, with that history done, here's my suggestion for a potential non-degenerate resting system. Is this the only option? No. Is this the BEST option? Probably not. It's the one I came up with.

 

1. Get rid of spells-per-day or a spell point pool, and have spells/special abilities simply have a longer or shorter casting time and a longer or shorter cooldown. (Also, it should be possible to interrupt abilities during the casting time.) This way, ability and spell-focused characters will never become useless in combat. In addition, resting recovers 100% of your "hit points" or whatever they decide to call it. You may also switch out which abilities you have active from your known list or which spells you have active from your known list.

2. When abilities/spells are used, and at end-of-combat, your characters pick up an increasing "fatigue" stack, which increases cooldowns, casting times, and decreases attack speed. Fatigue can be reduced by eating food (available at inns/taverns/shops) or by resting, or, possibly, by using certain (likely rare) items/consumables.

3. When a character eats a critical hit, they get a number of "wound" stacks, which decrease to-hit and damage on all attacks and abilities. (They could also have special rare injuries that have other detrimental effects.) Wounds can be reduced by Healers and Doctors or (very rare) items, or eliminated by resting a certain amount of time.

4. There are two types of rests, depending on whether you try to rest in the open or in a special "safe" location marked by a shrine or campfire circle or a dancing gnome I don't care pick something. If you rest in the open, you do a "long" rest, which consumes 8 hours, has a chance for random encounter spawns, and, depending on the location, spawns extra monsters in the area. Interrupted rests increase fatigue stacks instead of decreasing them. If you rest at the shrine/circle/gnome/whatever, it takes 1 hour, has no chance for random encounter spawns, and does not increase spawns in the area. However, you can only do this once for every X number of hours of game time passed, probably 24. Or it could be different for each shrine/circle/gnome.

5. If you consider it a problem that people might go to an area, rest a bunch, then fight the resulting tons of monster spawns to level up (I don't, I think people ought to be able to level up however suits them, if grinding mob spawns is what they wanna do, let em), you can make it so that repeat kills on the same type of monster yield less xp.

 

That's my idea for non-degenerate resting. Ideally, you'd want to rest as infrequently as possible (only when fatigue and injuries were really slowing you down), and at "safe" locations--unless you're grinding monster spawns for XP, which I personally have no problem with. I'm sure there are lots of other options.

[Rostere]

I thought Arcanum had a very good solution to this problem.

[PsychoBlonde]

I thought Arcanum had a very good solution to this problem.

 

In Arcanum you had to sleep in a bed, right? So it's basically the same as the "you must rest at the campfire" one.

[eimatshya]

OP's approach to resting reminds me a bit of the system in pre NGE Star Wars Galaxies where you would accumulate wounds and combat fatigue over time as you fought. Getting incapacitated or dying caused you to accumulate these even faster. Eventually your combat ability would be reduced so much that you'd have to go back to civilization to rest and recuperate. I always liked this system.

 

Anyway, OP's suggestion seems viable to me, and preferable to the resting system in most D&D type CRPGs. Being able to rest less builds a kind of tension that you don't get when you are always entering combat in top shape. One thing I really liked about Mask of the Betrayer was that I became increasingly terrified of resting as the game went on because the less time passed, the less my hunger would build. As such, by the end of the game, I hadn't slept in like three days and my spell casters were completely out of spells and basically just served as spectators. For all my character knew, all the epic stuff that happened at the end of the game could have all been a hallucination brought on by the lack of sleep. Anyway, the limited resting gave the game a great intensity and feeling of desperation that did a wonderful job of capturing the essence of the situation.

[Zed]

I think Sawyer might address this in the update tomorrow. They've been talking about how they weren't fully pleased with the rest mechanics in IE games.

[Umberlin]

Try out the quest for glory series, they'd actually prevent you from resting, not just in certain situations, but if your character really just didn't feel tired (they had a pool of stamina) or if they'd rested recently. While it didn't use the systems like, say, DnD Spell Books and such, it did prevent you from just going on forever and never having to worry about your resources. Then, of course, some places/situations you outright could not rest no matter what.

 

-

 

Actually I want to talk about NWN, because, I believe, it was either Darkness Over Daggerford (my absolute favorite addition to NWN) or HotU (possibly both, since it's been awhile) that would in fact spawn enemies on you when you tried to rest at times. I bring this up because the above mentioned Quest for Glory series did have that in addition to rest limitations, in that resting in the wild could result in a monster or bandit coming across you.

[eimatshya]

I thought Arcanum had a very good solution to this problem.

 

In Arcanum you had to sleep in a bed, right? So it's basically the same as the "you must rest at the campfire" one.

 

I don't think you needed to rest in Arcanum, did you? It's been a while, but I just remember that they had a wait for x number of hours mechanic like in Fallout. I used this a lot rather than wait for ten minutes of real time while my my stamina slowly recovered.

[Gargantuan]

Those are good, well thought out ideas, I agree with them. I wonder if the system allows the fatigue or stamina levels be alleviated or increased by stimulants you can concoct or buy from merchants. Buying a roll of beddings or even some sort of tent to pitch for rest could increase the effectiveness of sleep or provide the increased rate of convalescence at less amount of time spent. And sleeping during the day as opposed to night (in regards to monsters who may be nocturnal, dirunal) might present some interesting way of planning.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

1. Get rid of spells-per-day or a spell point pool, and have spells/special abilities simply have a longer or shorter casting time and a longer or shorter cooldown. (Also, it should be possible to interrupt abilities during the casting time.) This way, ability and spell-focused characters will never become useless in combat. In addition, resting recovers 100% of your "hit points" or whatever they decide to call it. You may also switch out which abilities you have active from your known list or which spells you have active from your known list.

 

3. When a character eats a critical hit, they get a number of "wound" stacks, which decrease to-hit and damage on all attacks and abilities. (They could also have special rare injuries that have other detrimental effects.) Wounds can be reduced by Healers and Doctors or (very rare) items, or eliminated by resting a certain amount of time.

 

 

Generally cool ideas. As for 1, I like the "automatically regenerating mana pool for simple spells/cantrips + memorization for the powerful stuff" idea someone suggested in another topic. But your solution is also good.

 

And as for 3, I'd prefer wounds to have a greater effect on the gameplay: they should be specific to the type of the injury and hit location, be accumulated when the character falls below 0 HP (with increased damage comes more serious injury - like in WFRP, if you fall below 0 HP, you can still fight, but every hit you take causes a critical effect: broken knee, concussion, etc.). But I think healing magic should be able to - at least temporarily - alleviate such effects. Fully healing such wounds should, however, take time (days, at least), in which time you can not use the injured companion.

It's good because it encourages the player to experiment with different playstyles, different companions (while leaving open the possibility of simply waiting until the injured companion is healed). Since no companion is essential, it gives a consequence to having a character KO-d, but this consequence isn't necessarily a punishment.

[Monte Carlo]

Put it on a difficulty slider, like almost everything else.

 

Wandering Monsters on Rest? Low probability / Medium probability / High probability

 

Or tie it to easy / medium / hardcore settings.

 

Seriously, you can't please everybody, especially folks who can write 5000 words on the subject! But you can please most people.

[metiman]

This game isn't going to have any cooldowns. It's not going to be WoW or Dragon Age. Can you modify your ideas to work without cooldowns?

[Yst]

I'm among those who will argue the one thing we should take away from D&D 4E is the At-Will/Encounter/Daily power distinction. It ensures that a character doesn't become effectively impotent once they've exhausted their abilities (they still have their At-Wills). At the same time, it ensures that some powers have to be used with care, given the rarity of their available use (rather than simply spammed as rapidly as possible during every encounter). Finally, it ensures that a new fight means new exceptional abilities (encounters), without the need for the bizarre fits of narcolepsy which the 2E system enforces.

 

This doesn't need to be copied wholesale. But this type of semi-Vancian approach captures, for me, the best of both worlds.

[Giantevilhead]

There should be a feature that lets you choose characters to stand watch during rest. You can either pick one character to stand watch the entire time or you can switch characters every hour. The characters who stand watch are less rested.

 

The character standing watch will also influence the chances of a random encounter and whether or not you are surprised by the random encounter. If the character standing watch has good perception or survival skills, they may be able to scare away a wandering monster or wake the party up before they are attacked. If the character has poor perception/survival skills or if you don't pick someone to stand watch, the wandering monster could get in several free attacks before your party wakes up.

 

There would also be spells and special items that can do the job of a watchman.

[teknoman2]

i agree with an overall fatique that drops as you go around doing things, lke the FNV hardcore sleep meter. after a time you lose a few stats, after more time you lose lots of stats and in the end you colapse due to exaustion.

as for spellcasting, its more probable that they will have a mana system since magic is tied to souls, but im against mana regeneration and mana potions. i may say ok to a very slow regeneration as long as it isnt allowing mages to spam their spells.

if i use the dnd system to explain it, i'd say that each level of magic will drain mana equal to its number for any spell of that level you cast... so if you get 14 mana and can cast spells up to lv5, you will be able to cast 2 lv5 and 2 lv2 spells, or 14 lv1 spells or 7 lv2 or 4 lv3 and 2 lv1 and so on. and the mana will regenerate (if at all) at a rate of 1 per 1 in game hour unless you rest or are in a location filled with spiritual energy where the regeneration rate increases

[Wombat]

I think there must be a certain kind of resource management game-play which makes threat area adventure interesting, too.

 

Quick list about possible "degenerations" (Off the top of my head)

 

Severe injuries/Disease/Acid/Poisons

Possible solutions: Medical treatment/healing magic/healing potions

Possibly related skills: Medical/Brewing potions

 

Fatigue penalty/sleep/hunger/thirst

Possible solutions: 6-8 hours resting/consuming food rations

Possibly related skills: Survival/(Maybe)Spot(to find a safer place)

 

Spell casting ability/Special ability

Possible presentaions: Rune Quest-like hybrid system of both spell point (mana) system and spell slot system, D&D 4E Action Point system, and Cool-down system with some abilities which require much longer recovery time (thus resting).

Possible solutions: Resting/Preparation ritual (ingridients)

Possibly related skills: Magic crafting skill (Some magic may require ingredients)/appropriate Ritual skills

 

Weapon/Armor efficiency

Possible solutions: -

Possibly related skills: Crafting skills which can be subcategorized as Armourer/Weapon Smith

[Baudolino05]

You don't need over-complicated or over-realistic solution to the rest problem. You just need a system that brings trade-off decisions and resource managment in to the game.

 

I quote myself from another topic:

 

1- In Ultima Underworld you had limited inventory room, no mana/healt regeneration and a (once) typical starvation system. To heal the Avatar you could use healing potions (extremely rare), different healing spells (mana consuming) or try to sleep.

The most convenient of the 3 opitions (sleeping) consumed only time, but any x hours the Avatar bacame hungry and due to the limited inventory he never had too much food.

2- In Frayed Knights, instead, your party members consume energy with almost any combat action, even with the simplest physical attack. You are allowed to sleep almost everywhere, and sleeping, of course, refills your energy pool, but still any x hours your TOTAL amount of energy decreases, and you can restore the pool to the original level only with a safe bed or a (relatively) rare potion.

 

In short: I don't care how realistic will be the healt/rest system in Project Eternity. I just want an interesting system like the two I mentioned above...

[generic.hybridity]

Some good ideas in this thread. I think that a system which encourages realistic resting without being tedious is necessary. How this can be achieved is up in the air. The MoTB system which was fairly tense worked in some sense but also felt like it could put you into an unwinnable position eventually and the problem is that classes which didn't rely on spell memorisation to work got an unfair advantage.

 

Certainly the system that Obsidian create will have to be fundamentally different to the norm in order to avoid these issues, i'm sure they'll be able to manage it.

[PsychoBlonde]

Try out the quest for glory series, they'd actually prevent you from resting, not just in certain situations, but if your character really just didn't feel tired (they had a pool of stamina) or if they'd rested recently. While it didn't use the systems like, say, DnD Spell Books and such, it did prevent you from just going on forever and never having to worry about your resources. Then, of course, some places/situations you outright could not rest no matter what.

 

I really enjoyed the Quest for Glory series (well, the first 4 anyway). I particularly liked the resting mechanics in part 3 where you had that HUGE African savannah map, and when you wanted to rest you'd build a campfire and snooze. The random encounters could be entertaining as well. In Game 4 wandering outside of town at night could be *extremely* dangerous if not outright deadly until you picked up some abilities to let you defend yourself.

 

Gothic had an interesting resting mechanic not in how it was executed--you had to sleep in a bed just like Arcanum--but in the fact that it was REALLY FREAKIN' DARK at night and due to the limitations on torches it was really easy to get lost and stumble into some horrible monster that would eat you in one gulp. Either that, or you would just run straight off a cliff. So for most of the game, when it started to get dark, you ran to town, hopped in bed, and rested until dawn. You didn't rest a whole lot while you were out and about exploring, though, you'd mostly eat food to recuperate when you got wounded or ran low on sp.

[PsychoBlonde]

Some good ideas in this thread. I think that a system which encourages realistic resting without being tedious is necessary. How this can be achieved is up in the air. The MoTB system which was fairly tense worked in some sense but also felt like it could put you into an unwinnable position eventually and the problem is that classes which didn't rely on spell memorisation to work got an unfair advantage.

 

Yes. I played through on a monk and I remembered the hunger mechanic as being wholly superfluous--I never managed even to get into the yellow, and I never consumed souls.

[PsychoBlonde]

I thought Arcanum had a very good solution to this problem.

 

In Arcanum you had to sleep in a bed, right? So it's basically the same as the "you must rest at the campfire" one.

 

I don't think you needed to rest in Arcanum, did you? It's been a while, but I just remember that they had a wait for x number of hours mechanic like in Fallout. I used this a lot rather than wait for ten minutes of real time while my my stamina slowly recovered.

 

You could also sleep in a bed for a given amount of time and recover all your hp and sp points--but it had to be an "available" bed, like one you rented in an inn.

[Nonek]

Few more possibilities discussed earlier:

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60111-rest-injuries-and-recuperation/?do=findComment&comment=1188190

[BasaltineBadger]

Just make it like they did it in KoTC. There is a number of campfires through the area and you can rest by them once. Just make them reset when player leaves the location.

[PsychoBlonde]

Those are good, well thought out ideas, I agree with them. I wonder if the system allows the fatigue or stamina levels be alleviated or increased by stimulants you can concoct or buy from merchants. Buying a roll of beddings or even some sort of tent to pitch for rest could increase the effectiveness of sleep or provide the increased rate of convalescence at less amount of time spent. And sleeping during the day as opposed to night (in regards to monsters who may be nocturnal, dirunal) might present some interesting way of planning.

 

Interesting ideas there, and I just outlined the basics of my idea, there's plenty of room for modifications like stimulation items (which would reduce fatigue temporarily but increase it when the timer ran out) and having "better resting" eq/sites. All of this would add some interesting depth without being terribly fiddly or over-complicated.

 

Put it on a difficulty slider, like almost everything else.

 

Wandering Monsters on Rest? Low probability / Medium probability / High probability

 

Or tie it to easy / medium / hardcore settings.

 

Seriously, you can't please everybody, especially folks who can write 5000 words on the subject! But you can please most people.

 

I'm not trying to please anyone, I'm just pointing out that a.) resting in the BG games, and most other games with a rest mechanic is degenerate (which the devs have also mentioned) and b.) here's a single suggestion on how you could, hypothetically, solve this problem. There are probably a great many solutions to make the resting mechanic a vital and important part of the game without people simply resting after every single encounter or, alternatively, dumping the classes that need to rest (casters, predominately) and just going on and on and on and on until their characters really ought to have collapsed.

 

This game isn't going to have any cooldowns. It's not going to be WoW or Dragon Age. Can you modify your ideas to work without cooldowns?

 

How do you know this? I personally have not seen anything where the devs have said "no cooldowns", and cooldowns are and can be a great mechanic for realtime play (or realtime + pause) because they put a limitation on how frequently you can use an ability without also limiting the number of times overall that you can use the same ability. You could probably accomplish the same goal with longer and shorter casting times, because if it takes you 20 seconds to get a spell off and it can be interrupted at any point, you're likely only going to be using it as your initial combat-starter--too hard to get it off when the fight's fully engaged.

 

As I said, this is by no means the *only* way or even the *best* way to solve the degenerate resting problem. It's a group of suggestions that form a fairly functional system without being so outside-the-box that new players will be baffled by it. If people want to come up with other alternative systems, I'd love to see them.

Edited September 21, 2012 by PsychoBlonde