Impossible odds

[Nonek]

How about an option to run away from some encounters, obviously we are going to sometimes run into superior odds, at these points can we have the option to leg it. Now this might not seem like such an interesting or heroic option, but what if we have various points along our escape route that allow us to perform delaying tactics?

 

For instance:

1. The mage binds a door with spells of warding and strength, similar to Gandalfs struggle to bind the gates against the orcs in Moria.

2. The technologist or rogue jams locks, plants traps or explosives.

3. The fighter smashes through obstacles, lifts heavy portcullis' or even takes a stand against the pursuers.

4. Small and quick dirty melee's that need to be over swiftly.

5. Bringing down the roof on the enemies heads, through various means.

6. Jumping in a river to hide your scent, and then tramping upstream or down to lose your pursuers.

7. Luring pursuers into a terrible beasts lair.

 

These are just off the top of my head obviously, but apart from Dead Money, I don't think i've ever played an rpg where I can opt to run from superior odds.

[Nakia]

I would like to see things like the above too. The more different ways you can do something the more interesting the game in my opinion.

[nikolokolus]

Impossible odds are good. However, I imagine there will be a few people who will just assume they are meant to fight anything that comes their way and if they aren't meant to beat an encounter will probably wait for the scripted cutscene to whisk them away from mortal danger ... I wonder how many times they will die, reload and repeat before they get the hint to flee?

[Nonek]

Ensure some funny let's plays with plenty of vented spleen.

[Huli22]

After playing Dark souls... I think that something like Impossible Odds does not exist!

[curryinahurry]

Wow, pushed back to page three by all the LGBT threads! This is a great idea, and I hope the Obsidian people consider a situation in the game that requires out of the box thinking. That said, if you were to create an impossible odds scenario, there would either have to be plenty of pre-warning or a quest specific NPC companion as a guide that basically tells you, in no uncertain terms, that a frontal assault will only end in defeat. Even with such contrivances, you would have people missing the point and raging about it on the forums.

 

Still, it would be great to try to do something along the lines you describe.

[C2B]

Pure survival is one of the things I'd like to see more in games. It should be possible to still successfully *run away* but it may end up in the scenarios you described.

 

And not just as part of a game's *cutscene*, but naturally in gameplay. In the case of a companion death this could lead to particular player emotions towards one specific normal enemy in the game.

[Nonek]

Wounded and hence slower moving characters might factor into a planned escape as well, or those burdened down with the loot. Though a cutscene might be a good way to start such a scene (a thousand undead turning their unliving eyes upon you as you stumble upon their lair,) I agree that the actual act of escaping should be left as gameplay, because gameplay trumps all.

 

If you've been smart and scouted ahead with your rogue, you should have the ability to be either forewarned or find away around the danger as well. But with the threat of it still lingering as you press on.

[GhostofAnakin]

I think this could be a good addition to the game, particularly so if there is no level scaling, and thus some encounters could be against enemies that are well above the player's current level.

[Kilroy_Was_Here]

How about a system like NWN where the mob's name is color coded based on your relative levels?

 

You learned pretty quick it was time to leave when AWESOME MCAWESOMESAUCE hit the scene...

 

edit: Had an additional thought. What if whether you knew what 'color' someone was depended on your skills or if you had heard of them before. Sort of like a DnD knowledge roll. That could make for hilarity if you thought something was really scary when it wasn't... (or vice versa)

Edited September 20, 2012 by Kilroy_Was_Here

[Naril]

impossible odds and multiple varied solutions add so much to a game if done properly. they are great features.

[Nonek]

Personally i'd prefer that the art told us whether they were dangerous or not, if you see a massive Ogre ripping a knight in half, with the corpses of a dozen others around him then you don't really need any indicator of his threat level. However traits that let you gauge the danger of a monster, that sounds eminently workable, especially if you gain them through experience or a background perk.

[KenThomas]

Impossible odds are good. However, I imagine there will be a few people who will just assume they are meant to fight anything that comes their way and if they aren't meant to beat an encounter will probably wait for the scripted cutscene to whisk them away from mortal danger ... I wonder how many times they will die, reload and repeat before they get the hint to flee?

 

I think once someone eventually gets the idea that's what they're supposed to do, they'll be more apt to consider that as an option in future encounters and games. Also, people can look things up online nowadays, they'd eventually find out. If they went on a huge ragey rant about it they'd probably just make themselves look dumb.

 

I'd also be in favor of attrition tactics getting brought into a game like this. It'd be good if the first encounter of this kind was accompanied by some sort of dialogue prompt such as an NPC saying "there's a lot of noise coming from that room ahead, we should scout it before going in" and then having a way to peek inside before opening the door. That'd give you the chance to setup some traps and plan out your strategy.

 

edit: sorry the above was already suggested by curryinahurry and in a way by Nonek. Consider me to be uhh.. thirding the notion. It's not that I don't read threads, I just find I give better posts if I give my thoughts on something first and then read and respond directly after that. Otherwise I totally get involved in "groupthink" where the possibilities I consider get restricted to the path others are already considering, and then I'm not adding anything useful to the discussion.

 

I think if you want players to have to be more "tactical" you'd also want to prevent players from doing what I think is the typical tactic in this kind of game. Whenever I encountered a room packed with enemies, I'd simply have my fighter stand in the doorway using his most defensive damage reducing talents while he's getting slammed with heals. Meanwhile I'd have my mage(s) casting AOE spells of doom through the door to the other side. The end result is a ton of XP for essentially no work or danger.

 

Ways to avoid this that I've thought of:

 

-Spell warding; certain areas spells are not able to be cast in without preforming a long spellcast to break the ward. The extra time involved would likely end up meaning that the fighter would take too much damage before enemies started dying (likely due to knockdowns when surrounded) and the standard tactic would not work, forcing creative thought into other tactics.

 

-Counteracting spells; if for instance your mage casts firestorm, an opposing mage could cast blizzard in the area. Anyone who's in the spots where they overlap is protected from damage by them cancelling each other out, forcing the player to move the enemies to a different area in order to damage them.

 

-Wizard battles; if a mage is using a long cast time, if an opposing mage has line of sight on him he should be able to respond to a counterspell type of prompt that would then put the opposing mage's spell on cooldown as though it had been cast but without the spell actually going off.

 

-Smart AI; they don't run stupidly into the firestorm but wait at the periphery until it expires before charging. Meanwhile they're firing bow attacks at the warrior standing in the door. This would force the player to draw enemies into something like a hallway and then having features in the game that allowed the control of space. Either traps that brought down rubble from walls and forced time being taken to clear it before anyone could go that way, or a spell that allowed a door to be shut from range, or some kind of forcefield spell that made an area impassable for some length of time, or a player triggerable trap that could be activated from range or with something like a bowshot (ie grease fire in braveheart). The general idea is the AI is smart enough to avoid stuff that will kill them, but that will necessitate the player having the opportunity to control space in some way with traps or spells or preferably both.

Edited September 20, 2012 by KenThomas

[aluminiumtrioxid]

Very cool ideas, I like them.

[KenThomas]

Personally i'd prefer that the art told us whether they were dangerous or not, if you see a massive Ogre ripping a knight in half, with the corpses of a dozen others around him then you don't really need any indicator of his threat level. However traits that let you gauge the danger of a monster, that sounds eminently workable, especially if you gain them through experience or a background perk.

 

Yeah I'm also not a fan of the colored names thing. Nor am I a fan of artificial difficulty levels like in NWN and WoW. Those games made it so that enemies with red or orange names didn't just have the advantage of higher hp and damage output, they also had these silly hit/miss mechanics where your characters couldn't hit them or do much of anything to them. It always felt a contrived cheap system to force players to fear and respect enemies that they wanted to be "tough". It was especially evident in WoW's pvp system, where someone who was say, level 70 could take on probably about 200 level 30's and have it be a fair fight. That kind of mechanic is absurd. It reminds me of Neo vs the legions of Agent Smith.

Edited September 20, 2012 by KenThomas