[Merged] Cooldown Thread

[Gfted1]

Granted, its been years since Ive played the BG series but I cannot recall ever walking 3 miutes real time to find a place to camp. Usually just walking around the corner will suffice. But if we must use that example then yes, walking three minutes real time or standing in the corner for three minutes while waiting for stuff to come off cooldown is the same.

 

I like to "top off" between battles, not everyone does. How about this concept, if you dont want to top off between battles, you dont push the little camp icon. Mind = blown right? Why do I have to be forced to park my group in a corner and go make a sammich while I wait for my abilities to come off cooldown? I also like to save before big battles because I like every party member to survive every fight and I will reload if one dies. Guess that needs to be stopped too because it doesnt fit the artistic vision? I dont need a game system to save me from myself.

[Hypevosa]

What is good, is that I learned I did not prepare as well as I should have, and must take the deterrent of walking back and now will try again. This time with alternate tactics/spells.

except this time its easier because part of the cave is already cleared. its not really a punishment. its just a waste of time.

Learning experiences (what Jaesun is specifically describing) are never a waste of time.

the walk back to town has nothing to do with the learning experience though.

Sure it does. The learning is in the action -> consequence. Used up your arsenal too fast? Then you're going to have to take some time and walk back to camp. What is learned: Be more economical with your arsenal next time, or else you'll need to walk back...again.

 

Or you learn that's acceptable behavior and just keep doing it since it's easy. The problem is there is no challenge here, so anyone can do it, it's JUST a waste of time.

 

reward players for being good, they will strive to be better to get those rewards. "Punishing" bad players with tedium will just waste their time, they'll still be bad players.

[Jaesun]

What is good, is that I learned I did not prepare as well as I should have, and must take the deterrent of walking back and now will try again. This time with alternate tactics/spells.

If they can be faced with a deterrent and a need to change tactics without the need to walk back, would that be somehow worse?

 

I agree with what you're saying about them needing to adjust tactics and needing a reason to see they need to adjust tactics. But, and maybe I was just making an assumption here, I was under the impression that would be happening anyway. The player would be having a hard time. They should be seeing that it's a hard time given how they're using so many abilities. They may even be about to hit a wall where they can no longer progress if they don't change their tactics.

 

If I was using THAT many resources quickly, the very first thing I would have noticed was I probably am in an area I really should not be. An/Or not using effective tactics. I would then head back to camp and re-asses on if I should continue, or decide to explore elsewhere.

[ogrezilla]

its not a real punishment though. You are not in any way disadvantaged. You just waste a few minutes of your time.

 

I don't know about you but I would definitely see it as punishment enough to make me reserve my spells better the next time.

In that case, I'd much rather they fully punish me and just make me try again against the full cave. That would make me do a better job next time. Like, actually make me or I'd never get through.

[aVENGER]

But it doesn't have a bigger punishment. It's a circumstance that arises all the time in IE games.

 

For what it's worth, I thought you handled this issue pretty well in Icewind Dale. Take Dragon's Eye, a huge multi-level dungeon which could not be cleared out completely in a single run, even if you managed your spells perfectly. Resting was dangerous as the player would often get ambushed by powerful creatures which could be fatal for an exhausted party.

 

However, the player was not forced to backtrack excessively thanks to clever design. Every couple of levels inside the dungeon, the party would rescue a friendly NPC whom they could subsequently ask to watch over them as they slept. In essence, the party created "safe zones" as they made progress through the dungeon. In my view, that's a much better solution than waiting on some cooldown to count down to zero.

[GordonHalfman]

The player doesn't have to walk back to the campsite. He can choose to struggle on and try to win with limited resources, or reload and try the dungeon again from the start. Reloading is after all was is supposed to happen when you screw up and end up in a bad situation. (Unless we just want to make the whole game a walk-over, in name of eliminating tedium.)

 

It's true that both the resting and reloading systems in D&D games introduce a "user adjustable challenge" element, but it's hard to worry about that too much, in principle it's true of any game that allows for save scumming. In any case Josh should clarify what his proposed solution to this "problem" is. I can think of only a few:

 

1. As in Demon Souls/Dark Souls, saving only allowed at certain points. All non-boss monsters re-spawn when resting. Works brilliantly if the underlying game-play is good enough, difficult to give an in game explanation for unless the world logic supports it.

 

2. Eliminate trash mobs altogether, resource management would not be an issue since there would only be a small number of tailored boss encounters, which the player can be fully stocked for. (I suspect this would have some pacing problems in practice, particularly for large dungeons that PE is meant to feature.)

 

3. Eliminate resource conservation between fights but keep trash mobs. The dragon age solution. (It absolutely sucked.)

 

4. Impose time limits of some kind.

Edited October 2, 2012 by GordonHalfman

[metiman]

Is the better prepared adventurer supposed to somehow hold back and conserve their spells? What if the battle is difficult and they are required? Intentionally not using your spells except when absolutely necessary reeks of exactly the sort of intra-casting cooldowns that I loathe. Sort of like voluntary cooldowns. I want the mage to cast every round until he cannot or I would rather not bring a mage to the fight at all.

[andreisiadi]

you could rest in that dungeon after totally clearing a level.

[Monte Carlo]

A serious point: until you actually see the magic system and spells within it, how can you honestly pre-judge cool-downs?

 

I'd be crap at designing a decent spell system and mechanics, which is why I'm not a games developer. But I bet that some of the developers here are having night-time sweats thinking about getting this right.

 

So people need to chill.

[NoxNoctum]

Personally I think Obsidian should just come up with a clever way to fix resting abuse rather than going with cooldowns.

 

I am a newbie to the IE games, but what I like about the system is the tactical options it gives. Being able to spam 4 magic missiles in a row if I feel like it is nice, but it comes at the cost of not having something I might need for another encounter elsewhere. That's a fun strategic choice.

 

I get what Sawyer's saying though about the whole "reload" problem, but I think they can find a better solution to that. Take randomized enemies for instance. If you re-load, any enemy not yet "discovered" is slightly different in abilities etc. That avoids the cheese of just re-loading and setting up your party perfectly to handle the upcoming situation. Except for maybe the big bosses. Those should probably be set in stone. The roguelike genre is pretty good with this kind of thing.

Edited October 2, 2012 by NoxNoctum

[ogrezilla]

Is the better prepared adventurer supposed to somehow hold back and conserve their spells? What if the battle is difficult and they are required? Intentionally not using your spells except when absolutely necessary reeks of exactly the sort of intra-casting cooldowns that I loathe. Sort of like voluntary cooldowns. I want the mage to cast every round until he cannot or I would rather not bring a mage to the fight at all.

I don't think you'll be getting this. That does sound like dragon age type mages that are basically just archers but more colorful.

Edited October 2, 2012 by ogrezilla

[Lohi]

i.e rest spamming.

Yup that's the problem. Rest to get your spells back and ignore the fact that it takes you 5 days of real game time to clear out the small cave. How many players actually play hardcore enough so that the refuse to rest until it's night time, even if they use up all their spells an hour after waking up?

 

Power/mana regen is not just for MMOs, it's used in single player games a lot too, even many pen and paper systems. If you want your magic users to be as fun to play as your fighters then you need to give them more than a hanful of attacks every eight hours. The memorized spells may have been ok in an old pen and paper game where you fought very few enemies in an evening but it is clumsy in a computer game.

 

If the fighter does not have to rest between fights why should the magic user have to rest?

[Starwars]

JESawyer's post implies cooldowns will be on the order of 5 minutes long.

No it doesn't. Nothing about it implies that.

 

The obvious answer is nothing - but the question is loaded.

We are talking about the Infinity Engine games and the experience that they created. Do you believe my representation of how players actually played the game is inaccurate?

 

Am I wrong? Did people look at Dragon's Eye in IWD and guess, "You know, I bet there's... five levels to this place... lizard men with shamans, armored skeletons, blast skeletons, some cold wights, ghouls, a cleric of Talona, disguised yuani-ti casters, a mix of yuan-ti fighters and casters and... I've got a feeling there's a marilith at the bottom." and then do a point-to-point march through the dungeon, not only selecting, but conserving their spells perfectly so they never had to backtrack out?

 

I feel like I'm describing what is a very common circumstance in the Infinity Engine games. People pay attention, make educated guesses, but ultimately are unable to know the full extent of the challenges they are dealing with. The only way they would be able to do so is through extraordinary prescience.

 

This is something I completely agree with, and I think the reason why many people are responding the way they do is that they either don't remember, or choose to ignore, the first time they made it through some of these games and instead respond based on their experience *now*. It's easier to plan ahead when you either know, or have an idea, on what is coming ahead in a game. When you play a game, you have a very limited idea of that. And especially how long a dungeon/area will be, and how many encounters are in there.

 

I would certainly want some form of punishment of burning through powerful spells quickly. But having that punishment simply be a time-sink and wasting my real life time doing nothing interesting in order to go back and find a rest spot is... idiotic game design to be frank. It is just a waste of time. I *know* that I need to prepare for difficult fights. But playing a game for the first time, there is absolutely no guarantee on what fights are difficult, for how long a dungeon will go on etc. Having my time wasted (again, it really is a time-waste because there is nothing in-game that serves as punishment, it is simply taxing the player) as "punishment" is not going to make me a better player in any way whatsoever.

Edited October 2, 2012 by Starwars

[andreisiadi]

If the fighter does not have to rest between fights why should the magic user have to rest?

 

Because he is warping the very fabric of time and space with each spell. That's why.

[metiman]

Is the better prepared adventurer supposed to somehow hold back and conserve their spells? What if the battle is difficult and they are required? Intentionally not using your spells except when absolutely necessary reeks of exactly the sort of intra-casting cooldowns that I loathe. Sort of like voluntary cooldowns. I want the mage to cast every round until he cannot or I would rather not bring a mage to the fight at all.

I don't think you'll be getting this. That does sound like dragon age type mages that are basically just archers but more colorful.

 

No because in any lengthy battle the mages spellbook would quickly run out. In most mana based systems it's usually only a matter of a few rounds and then that's it. I've found most difficult battles are decided in the first 5 rounds. After that the mage can go take a nap for all I care. If you don't like the rest mechanism in BG2 for instance you don't bring any mages along with you.

[Stun]

Sure it does. The learning is in the action -> consequence. Used up your arsenal too fast? Then you're going to have to take some time and walk back to camp. What is learned: Be more economical with your arsenal next time, or else you'll need to walk back...again.

 

Or you learn that's acceptable behavior and just keep doing it since it's easy. The problem is there is no challenge here, so anyone can do it, it's JUST a waste of time.

 

reward players for being good, they will strive to be better to get those rewards. "Punishing" bad players with tedium will just waste their time, they'll still be bad players.

Ok, lets pause for a moment to make a couple of things clear. First, A consequence does not have to be "hard" to successfully deter the player and make him re-think his strategies. It mearly has to be unpleasant enough to make the player not wish to do it anymore. (which is what back tracking in a dungeon does. I hated, absolutely HATED having to walk back to the surface for any reason, when I was in level 2 or 3 in Dragon's eye in IWD. Therefore, I learned, real quick, to do whatever it takes to not have to)

 

Second, what is with you guys and your erroneous belief that Old-school = Challenging? The IE games weren't "hard". They were easy. But what made them so great was that they still maintained their tactical depth and rules-system complexity, despite being easy.

Edited October 2, 2012 by Stun

[Osvir]

But I disagree with the existence of the walk, and think that it can be improved upon. I do like and enjoy the idea of something happening as well, during the time you walk back and forth. A lot of interesting things I'm sure.

 

Ah, I see -- so the tedium of walking back the camp isn't sufficient punishment for bad players -- instead, we need to heap additional punishments on top of them. Well, I suppose that's one strategy you could follow...

 

I don't understand your point. In my opinion, I don't feel that this walk is necessary as I could simply device my strategy on the fly instead of walking back and rest up and all that, all that macro managing.

 

However! I am not ruling out the walk because I can see lots of potential in it, that could be improved upon. Sure, most of the times it would be a pointless back and forth walk, but in some cases in some dungeons there could actually be an effect of it. Druids who think you are ruining the Mother Tree by slaying beasts in a Sunken Forgotten Cave. The Royal Guard intercepts you telling you that you are not allowed back into the Dungeon, because it is property of the King and his mad scientists are conducting experiments on the creatures living in this Dungeon.

 

The Bandit Keep could turn into high alert because you left, or perhaps they all escaped because you took out a considerable amount of a large force, so they pretty much fled.

 

I can think of many more scenario's of how it could be expanded.

[Shadenuat]

People pay attention, make educated guesses, but ultimately are unable to know the full extent of the challenges they are dealing with. The only way they would be able to do so is through..

0.02$: ...skills like Tracking, Monster Lore and Dungeoneering.

[ogrezilla]

Sure it does. The learning is in the action -> consequence. Used up your arsenal too fast? Then you're going to have to take some time and walk back to camp. What is learned: Be more economical with your arsenal next time, or else you'll need to walk back...again.

 

Or you learn that's acceptable behavior and just keep doing it since it's easy. The problem is there is no challenge here, so anyone can do it, it's JUST a waste of time.

 

reward players for being good, they will strive to be better to get those rewards. "Punishing" bad players with tedium will just waste their time, they'll still be bad players.

Ok, lets pause for a moment to make a couple of things clear. First, A consequence does not have to be "hard" to successfully deter the player and make him re-think his strategies. It mearly has to be unpleasant enough to make the player not wish to do it anymore. (which is what back tracking in a dungeon does. I hated, absolutely HATED having to walk back to the surface for any reason, when I was in level 2 or 3 in Dragon's eye in IWD. Therefore, I learned, real qucik, to do whatever it takes so I wouldn't have to trek back)

 

Second, what is with you guys and your erroneous belief that Old-school = Hard? The IE games weren't hard. They were easy. But what made them so great was that they still maintained their complexity, despite being easy.

who is saying old school = hard? I think some of us are saying the opposite if anything. One of my biggest gripes with them is that most challenges could be overcome by dealing with tedium instead of by getting better at the game.

Edited October 2, 2012 by ogrezilla

[metiman]

Sure it does. The learning is in the action -> consequence. Used up your arsenal too fast? Then you're going to have to take some time and walk back to camp. What is learned: Be more economical with your arsenal next time, or else you'll need to walk back...again.

 

Or you learn that's acceptable behavior and just keep doing it since it's easy. The problem is there is no challenge here, so anyone can do it, it's JUST a waste of time.

 

reward players for being good, they will strive to be better to get those rewards. "Punishing" bad players with tedium will just waste their time, they'll still be bad players.

Ok, lets pause for a moment to make a couple of things clear. First, A consequence does not have to be "hard" to successfully deter the player and make him re-think his strategies. It mearly has to be unpleasant enough to make the player not wish to do it anymore. (which is what back tracking in a dungeon does. I hated, absolutely HATED having to walk back to the surface for any reason, when I was in level 2 or 3 in Dragon's eye in IWD. Therefore, I learned, real qucik, to do whatever it takes so I wouldn't have to trek back)

 

Second, what is with you guys and your erroneous belief that Old-school = Hard? The IE games weren't hard. They were easy. But what made them so great was that they still maintained their complexity, despite being easy.

 

Are not hard compared to what? Firkraag isn't hard? Even with SCS or improved anvil installed? Kangaxx isn't hard?

[grotbag]

 

The obvious answer is nothing - but the question is loaded. This experience can be minimised by game design as well as player strategy. The real question is, is this occasional inconvenience worth the sacrifice of a Vancian system? I don't believe so.

 

 

I think this is right. It's problematic being asked to give an unequivocal answer to a question that I'm not sure completely represents the issue.

 

But to at least attempt it; backtracking across a level over the course of 3 minutes to get back to camp is probably not fun. For anyone. Once your party's safely back in camp, and you're taking a moment to get all of them togged up, healing them back to full health, assigning them the right spells for the job now that you have a better idea of what you're facing, then rubbing your hands together and saying, 'Right; I'm prepared now. Let's have another go at that lich' - that is fun, self-evidently. Call a 'we need guns; lots of guns' experience, if you like. It's exhilarating in its anticipation of a more successful, more informed expedition back down into that dungeon, it engages the player, and it's rewarding. It doesn't necessarily justify the 3-minute slog, but I'm not sure it could exist if the resting area wasn't distanced, however symbolically or in the shortest of ways, from the dungeon itself.

[Althernai]

We are talking about the Infinity Engine games and the experience that they created. Do you believe my representation of how players actually played the game is inaccurate?

 

Am I wrong?

No, you are not wrong. Backtracking when necessary is how I played the first time through (except in Throne of Bhaal which had the rather handy Wish spell option). In subsequent playthroughs, the player is naturally prescient by virtue of memory.

[norolim]

Here is something I would like to hear opinions on. Take the following circumstance, which is not uncommon in the IE games

[...]

In this circumstance, what is good about the experience of walking back to the campsite?

 

Choice.

 

The player has to decide whether he/she will waste some time and go back to a resting place or risk venturing forth with what spells you have. This, however, makes sense only if the resting system is something more, than just a screen fadeout, as TrashMan described towards the end of his post

 

Mind you, I'm not advocating a resting based spell memorising system. I'm just answering the question.

Edited October 2, 2012 by norolim

[metiman]

It's important to remember that those trips are one of the biggest drawbacks to having a spell caster in the party. By removing it you do kind of make the class more powerful.

[J.E. Sawyer]

0.02$: ...skills like Tracking, Monster Lore and Dungeoneering.

Do you think you should be able to get the full spread on not only the occupants of Dragon's Eye on each level but also their tactics and spell selection prior to entry?

 

Even in tabletop games where my characters were loaded to the gills with divination magic I couldn't get that much detail. I.e. actual in-game metagaming could not fully prepare us for encounters.