[Merged] Cooldown Thread

[Infinitron]

Making design decisions according to the lowest common denominator strikes me as a bit short sighted.

 

Welcome to computer gaming in the 21st century.

[Umberlin]

We like that you want to tell us about the general ideas, I'm curious if someone couldn't compile everything you'd said into a more cohesive whole. It'd be nice to see what you have so far as completely as possible, maybe it would change some minds, or get better feedback, since people would see the 'what we have so far' more completely than the bits and pieces we have, where a commentor can easily miss one, or several, or all, of the bits or pieces.

 

With the obvious, 'Not just a work in progress, but a work that's barely even begun" addendum.

Edited October 3, 2012 by Umberlin

[Cyn!c]

This is not always the kind of area population that the BG/IWD games had.

 

Is it not acceptable when camping in a clearing of a forest/cave/dungeon filled with <insert monster type here> that some of them may regroup?

 

It respawns creatures after rest, not on your way back to the campfire.

 

Again this is a red herring. Why do you focus on the return journey being slightly tedious? It doesn't matter as long as the player can potentially get something enriching out of that return journey. Consider the following scenario

• Party finds a campsite just outside the entrance to a dark cave
  
• Party camps and decides to explore the cave
  
• They get a ways through but run out of spells, while also thinking that maybe they could use some different spells to what they have currently. So they make the decision to go back to the campsite, rest and memorize new spells
  
• On the return journey back to the point in the cave they encounter a rare monster because it's now night time and when they entered the cave previously, it was day. It drops a rare piece of loot.
  
• The player now feels thankful that they went back and rested, not only did they get new spells but they got a shiny treasure too.
  

How in the world would that experience not be fun?

and then I spend the rest of the game checking every corner of every dungeon at different times of day because I'm a crazy person haha

 

Yes if you want to do that, then of course. It's fun to have stuff like this in games that are rare and random.

[Hypevosa]

Well not directly but they are at least as bad if not worse like some of the save or die and if you survive then worse; get nerfed variety. But we are diverting. The point is that the wizard can then no longer have any spell which will be meta-effect like hold since that will always mean instawin with spam since you would have many such spells (unless the decision is to cut spell variety so that player can't use them). To avoid that and introduce some challenge I can see that you will have to force nerfed damage spells. Which are fine in my book as long as the combat is balanced, right?

 

EDIT: And I must bid good night! Thanks for your time. I hope it was well spent.

Why would you be able to instawin by spamming? A theoretical 12th level wizard in PE will probably have about the same number of 5th level spell slots as an equivalent wizard in D&D. Let's say that's 2 or 3. In IWD, you could cast Hold Monster your two or three times in a row and then you'd be done casting 5th level spells for the fight. It would work the same way in PE. The main mechanical difference that I'm considering is when/how you regain your 5th level spells following the fight.

 

I'd say that your ability to regain spells should depend on not just if you cast the spell, but how many other spells you've cast as well. I think it would be ideal to have a situation where the caster has to weigh the value of using 5 lower level spells vs 1 higher level spell. If all spells recharged given time, but you had to recharge all your lower level spells first, this would allow mages to regain their fallback spells like magic missile before fights sooner, but if they could effectively use fireball instead of 4 magic missiles to the same effect, they could save those lower level spells and just work on getting the higher level spell back.

[Delterius]

The problem with cooldowns post-battle, though, is that it's just like unlimited rest-anywhere, except (1) takes longer, as you have to wait, and (2) is staggered across abilities, which makes it slightly better.

 

Yes, cooldowns are best as a in-battle mechanic in Action games such as MMOs. If people assumed that rest spamming was part of the game's design (and not a issue that wasn't fixed), they will also assume that waiting for their cooldowns to end between every battle is needed.

[evdk]

Making design decisions according to the lowest common denominator strikes me as a bit short sighted.

 

Welcome to computer gaming in the 21st century.

Call me naive, but I expect the Kickstarter projects to be somewhat different.

[andreisiadi]

Second - the question :

 

Seeing how this whole cooldown thing has garnered such a strong reaction on all sides, does that mean you guys will have a brainstorming meeting or something to take every angle into consideration ?

We do not have a spellcasting system designed. This is not something we have to "change" because the majority of what we have developed for things as complex as the spellcasting system are ideas. It's three weeks into a fundraising campaign to make this project. I cannot tell you what final form the spellcasting system will take, what elements it absolutely will or won't have. All I can tell you is the sort of goals we have and general ideas of things I'd like to see and avoid.

 

I'm trying to create the feeling of strategic spell selection and tactical spell use in D&D while avoiding the constant rest spamming that was so prevalent in the games I made. There are probably a number of ways to solve this problem. I have some ideas on this, but we haven't settled on them. I want to tell people about general ideas and opinions I have, but I don't think spending a day trying to design the system in the forum is going to produce good results.

 

Got it. Thanks. In this case I'll be eagerly awaiting your future updates. You have to understand Josh, for the last couple of years we've been buried in console-ports RPGs. We've gotten a little twitchy that's all.

[_dagger_]

Josh, I think that the more common case isn't the player doing poorly in combat due to a bad selection of spells, but rather running out of spells, period.

 

You might play wastefully and run out of spells even if you chose them wisely and kicked ass at combat while you still had them.

That is likely more common, but isn't being "wasteful" something that's only appreciated in retrospect? I.e. conservation strategy is only strategic if you have some sort of understanding of what you're going up against. In most cases, you don't know how many enemies you're going to fight, how deep the dungeon is, or what spells any given caster has at his or her disposal. Is it "wasteful" to cast fireball on 6 lizard men? Is it wasteful to cast it on 4 lizard men? What if one of them is a caster and he's casting hold person? What if there are only 30 lizard men on the level?

 

Obviously, conservation strategy is playing as economically as you can all the time.

For me, that was one of the fun challenges in BG.

[Captain Shrek]

Second - the question :

 

Seeing how this whole cooldown thing has garnered such a strong reaction on all sides, does that mean you guys will have a brainstorming meeting or something to take every angle into consideration ?

We do not have a spellcasting system designed. This is not something we have to "change" because the majority of what we have developed for things as complex as the spellcasting system are ideas. It's three weeks into a fundraising campaign to make this project. I cannot tell you what final form the spellcasting system will take, what elements it absolutely will or won't have. All I can tell you is the sort of goals we have and general ideas of things I'd like to see and avoid.

 

I'm trying to create the feeling of strategic spell selection and tactical spell use in D&D while avoiding the constant rest spamming that was so prevalent in the games I made. There are probably a number of ways to solve this problem. I have some ideas on this, but we haven't settled on them. I want to tell people about general ideas and opinions I have, but I don't think spending a day trying to design the system in the forum is going to produce good results.

 

Sorry Josh to bother you again. But I had some wall of text that might add a little value to this entire discussion we had. I hope you will be able to find some time to go through it.

[anek]

It also has the effect that no fight is trivial. Every spell cast is important. It requires the player to consider whether the fighters can deal with the current weak threat to conserve spells or if having your party at full health is more important.

 

Exactly.

 

You might not know what in particular lies ahead, but you can make a decision based on the fight currently at hand - do I need to cast these high-level spells right now in order to not wear out my fighters, or can I handle it without those spells and save them for later?

Over time, as you get a "feeling" for the game and the range of difficulty of the encounters you face, this does become a strategic consideration. E.g. if you are at the very beginning of a dungeon, your fighters are all healthy, healing potions are in ample supply, and the current encounter is only of medium difficulty, you know you should not use those high-level spells just yet even if it would be tempting.

 

This is what I fear might be lost if the Vancian system is replaced with an after-battle cooldown.

 

But maybe Obsidian will figure out other ways to provide that incentive for conservation and strategic application of spell usage, even without the Vancian system?

I guess I'll just have to trust them...

[Captain Shrek]

Hi.

 

 

In my mind there are two important parts associated with implementing a system of magic in (video) games.

 

1) Mechanics based balance

2) Narrative / Lore considerations

 

Since we are playing a game, there is no doubt that the former always trumps the latter; that is to say that you have to balance the system before you can invent a cool lore.

 

This made clear, we can now proceed onto some intelligent discourse.

 

The first question is what to call magic:

 

I would claim that magic is something that is not a physical skill i.e. it is not a mental skill (Diplomacy, alchemy) or a strength or (solely) agility based skill (like weapon handling or thievery). Magic means evoking something un-natural by definition. Please, I am talking about the magic as the staple of fantasy setting. There are other views of what magic is; I am not concerning myself with them. Thus magic is doing what no normal person can do with normal means. There are again two facets of this "magic":

 

1) Magical items

2) Magical skills

 

By magical items I indicate objects that grant (negative/positive) bonuses on usage or consumption. This may or may not intersect with Alchemy which is a mental skill. These items will impart traits to the user that will (or should) alter their skills one way or another (drastically) beyond their capacity without any obvious ability to do so.

 

By magical skill I mean the capacity to invoke effects that are paranormal through incantations or sigils or glyphs or similarly esoteric products (ingredients). It is obvious to me and so should it be to you, that only magic that can change things significantly in the game world would be respected. For example a spell to shave belly hair is neat but has no consequence on gaming experience. Same holds true for magical items as well. Ring of back itching +3 is not a very useful item unless for the sake of hilarity.

 

Good.

 

Magic need NOT be visually spectacular always. It can have visually unappealing results. That is okay as long as the above condition of usefulness is satisfied.

 

Secondly, magic needs to be at least as powerful as Physical skills in the game IF the game allows a pure "magical" path. This is a balance issue.

 

Finally, magic must be at least capped to some level without allowing a play to win spell. The same holds for Melee/ranged/rogue skills as well. Again a balance issue.

 

As long as these three points are satisfied, a good storyteller can now design lore to surround and "explain" magic.

 

Here is where the real discussion starts:

 

Let me tell you what I think about magic.

 

To me, magic is essentially something that is overpowered by definition. It has to be so, because otherwise it would lose its awe-inspiring nature. This does not imply by necessity that magic be rare. But it OUGHT TO BE RARE, because without its exquisite scarcity it would stop being interesting. This is a narrative point of view which allows the story to become seamless. If magic is both powerful and common, e.g. existence of teleport and resurrect spells or even something as simple as fireball spell being 'easy' once per day cast, I for one, would be hard pressed to find a meaningful story that I can relate to.

 

But that seems a bit contradictory to the earlier necessary claim that magic should be balanced wrt Physical skills. Because balance would require magic to be cast at least once in a while. To resolve this dilemma, there has to be a system in place which will stop you from becoming super-powerful during a game and at the same time give you options that are not easily exhausted just because magic is rare.

 

There is another problem associated with the issue that deals with whether the game is single player single character game or a party based game. I am certain that the former forces you to choose a system of magic that is based on ideas like regenerating mana or easily acquired ingredients (time (vancian) or spell components). I will not consider these games because they do not confirm to my view of magic. This is a relative choice and I welcome you to have your own views regarding them.

 

 

Now there have been quite a few implementations of magical systems for party based games. I will not bore you with recounting them. Rather I will give you my version of an ideal system:

 

In order to have a balanced yet rare magical system , I propose that the caster lose something with every cast. Not a (at least quick) regenerating thing, mind you, so that the game can be turned into a waiting game. But something that will be difficult to acquire. I am not going to support stamina or mana as a resource since if one has somewhat powerful spells that heal and another spell that hurt, then it would become a rinse and repeat game of cast 1 and cast 2. Instead this resource that one loses should be rare reflecting the difficulty to cast spells. To counterbalance the rarity, increase the number of options (spells) that each require different resource (or more practically a mix and match) thus always giving the player a tactical choice. This way the player can always either act as a nuker or a buff-caster.

 

There is no doubt in my mind that the above system only works well for party based games where the Spell caster can choose a role according to his options while being flexible about the role itself. He can effortlessly switch from one role to another as a particular ingredient becomes available and thus be crucial to conflicts in the game, never feeling useless and never making the magic system feel over the top.

Edited October 3, 2012 by Captain Shrek

[J.E. Sawyer]

I am interested in hearing where you will go with this. My question would be, what is the design goal? What purpose will small encounters to have as opposed to large encounters? In other words, will you be looking to factor in "attrition" into encounter design or not? Will you want players to be fully loaded for lage encounters or not? Etc etc

I think attrition can be valuable for pacing, but I think it's more interesting to think about party attrition rather than the attrition of a single character's class-based resources.

[Umberlin]

Making design decisions according to the lowest common denominator strikes me as a bit short sighted.

 

Welcome to computer gaming in the 21st century.

Call me naive, but I expect the Kickstarter projects to be somewhat different.

 

I think what's important is that we're talking about these things at all. Sure the discussion can get heated, and some people feel strongly, but that's to be expected from people enthusiastic about their hobby.

[Infinitron]

I am interested in hearing where you will go with this. My question would be, what is the design goal? What purpose will small encounters to have as opposed to large encounters? In other words, will you be looking to factor in "attrition" into encounter design or not? Will you want players to be fully loaded for lage encounters or not? Etc etc

I think attrition can be valuable for pacing, but I think it's more interesting to think about party attrition rather than the attrition of a single character's class-based resources.

 

No doubt. So perhaps instead of worrying so much making life easier for a mage who runs out of spells, we should, perhaps, assume that fighters and rogues will usually be able to pick up the slack?

Edited October 3, 2012 by Infinitron

[Umberlin]

I am interested in hearing where you will go with this. My question would be, what is the design goal? What purpose will small encounters to have as opposed to large encounters? In other words, will you be looking to factor in "attrition" into encounter design or not? Will you want players to be fully loaded for lage encounters or not? Etc etc

I think attrition can be valuable for pacing, but I think it's more interesting to think about party attrition rather than the attrition of a single character's class-based resources.

 

Are you thinking of a group-wide resource, of sorts, like a 'morale' system for combat then, or do you just mean the group's statistical/resource/tactical potential/limitations as a whole?

Edited October 3, 2012 by Umberlin

[Cyn!c]

This is not always the kind of area population that the BG/IWD games had.

 

Is it not acceptable when camping in a clearing of a forest/cave/dungeon filled with <insert monster type here> that some of them may regroup?

 

It respawns creatures after rest, not on your way back to the campfire.

 

Again this is a red herring. Why do you focus on the return journey being slightly tedious? It doesn't matter as long as the player can potentially get something enriching out of that return journey. Consider the following scenario

• Party finds a campsite just outside the entrance to a dark cave
  
• Party camps and decides to explore the cave
  
• They get a ways through but run out of spells, while also thinking that maybe they could use some different spells to what they have currently. So they make the decision to go back to the campsite, rest and memorize new spells
  
• On the return journey back to the point in the cave they encounter a rare monster because it's now night time and when they entered the cave previously, it was day. It drops a rare piece of loot.
  
• The player now feels thankful that they went back and rested, not only did they get new spells but they got a shiny treasure too.
  

How in the world would that experience not be fun?

 

I like the idea in general, but there are ways in which that experience could be unfun. Someone is not very good or is having a bad day combat-wise and needs to rest 2 or 3 times, or risk just not making headway; then it doesn't help that he uses half the spells he just regained fighting that newly spawned monster.

 

 

The rare monsters would never be guaranteed. Most of the time it would just be a regular mob. Sometimes of course nothing would be there at all (monsters didn't regroup). You would of course, mix it up. You'd also be careful to try and conserve your spells to avoid going back again to the campsite. See, thought, conservation, tension. It just makes the game fun.

 

If someone is not very good then they should reduce the difficulty level, which of course would directly affect these kinds of mechanics.

[Hypevosa]

I am interested in hearing where you will go with this. My question would be, what is the design goal? What purpose will small encounters to have as opposed to large encounters? In other words, will you be looking to factor in "attrition" into encounter design or not? Will you want players to be fully loaded for lage encounters or not? Etc etc

I think attrition can be valuable for pacing, but I think it's more interesting to think about party attrition rather than the attrition of a single character's class-based resources.

 

No doubt. So perhaps instead of worrying so much about what a mage should do when he runs out of spells, we should, perhaps, assume that fighters and rogues will usually be able to pick up the slack?

 

Having mages be at least pseudo useful without spells would also be nice. Allowing them to have decent chance to hit at least, though not really any high damage potential would be good.

[Raapys]

I've never liked cooldown systems, or at least I've never enjoyed playing a spellcaster in a game with a cooldown system. If Obsidian somehow think they can do it better than all the other games that have tried cooldown systems, then go ahead I guess.

 

Personally I'm kinda at a loss though. The IE engine games didn't have particularly great combat, but if they did one thing right it was the spellcasting system. The spells and spell selection/variety/power was great( particularly in BG2), the spell battles were probably the best throughout the history of gaming, and spellcasters were without a doubt the most fun classes to play.

 

So why change the single-most successful thing the spiritual predecessors to this game had?

[Shadenuat]

I'm trying to create the feeling of strategic spell selection and tactical spell use in D&D while avoiding the constant rest spamming that was so prevalent in the games I made. There are probably a number of ways to solve this problem.

 

In my opinion Waterchip calendar and Spirit Eater Hunger both were good enough.

There is also that Wargame-design way where you have, say, 50 tanks, 1000 troopers, 10 artillery, and you have to solve whole game with them without any reinforcements.

Edited October 3, 2012 by Shadenuat

[ogrezilla]

I've never liked cooldown systems, or at least I've never enjoyed playing a spellcaster in a game with a cooldown system. If Obsidian somehow think they can do it better than all the other games that have tried cooldown systems, then go ahead I guess.

 

Personally I'm kinda at a loss though. The IE engine games didn't have particularly great combat, but if they did one thing right it was the spellcasting system. The spells and spell selection/variety/power was great( particularly in BG2), the spell battles were probably the best throughout the history of gaming, and spellcasters were without a doubt the most fun classes to play.

 

So why change the single-most successful thing the spiritual predecessors to this game had?

I disagree with this post so hard it isn't even funny.

[Merin]

That automatically begs the question Josh, that does the party have a heal spell, no?

Not in the way you're thinking of it.

 

In either way, since he misused the phrase "begs the question"...

[NoxNoctum]

Do you just disagree with the whole concept of managing resources across fights then? I'm curious as to what your stance is on healing potions.

No. I haven't though a tremendous amount about healing points, but that brings up an interesting parallel resource management behavior in RPGs. I've seen (and talked to) innumerable gamers who say they end games with inventories full of consumables: potions, wands, scrolls, etc. The most commonly cited reason they give is that they don't know when is/isn't a good time to use them. Also, because they often have no idea when they might get more, they don't want to run out. It's sort of the inverse problem of rest spamming.

 

Permadeath solves that one quite elegantly . (people are quick to use potions)

Edited October 3, 2012 by NoxNoctum

[Lv99Wizard]

Second - the question :

 

Seeing how this whole cooldown thing has garnered such a strong reaction on all sides, does that mean you guys will have a brainstorming meeting or something to take every angle into consideration ?

We do not have a spellcasting system designed. This is not something we have to "change" because the majority of what we have developed for things as complex as the spellcasting system are ideas. It's three weeks into a fundraising campaign to make this project. I cannot tell you what final form the spellcasting system will take, what elements it absolutely will or won't have. All I can tell you is the sort of goals we have and general ideas of things I'd like to see and avoid.

 

I'm trying to create the feeling of strategic spell selection and tactical spell use in D&D while avoiding the constant rest spamming that was so prevalent in the games I made. There are probably a number of ways to solve this problem. I have some ideas on this, but we haven't settled on them. I want to tell people about general ideas and opinions I have, but I don't think spending a day trying to design the system in the forum is going to produce good results.

 

 

I'm still not sure that rest spamming is such a massive problem or that the (still ethereal) alternative concept is worth the potential sacrifices to depth and atmosphere.

 

We all really appreciate this project and this forum. We'd like to offer our perspectives of what made the original IE games so memorable. And we're also trying to give feedback to the question you posed about backtracking.

[Merin]

Masochists get their jollies?

 

Why play games if you just want visual novels?

 

Straw man.

[Wombat]

One thing I liked about the resting is that I could adjust the "difficulty" simply by deciding how often I rest. When I began to reload, I went back to the resting place. In this way, low level spells are quite important for me since they need to be carefully used when I run out - and I often ran out of big spells due to this play-style. I didn't touch difficulty slider since, for D&D system, this was the easiest way to adjust "difficulty."

 

The point is, at least for me, how to make it feel danger of adventuring wilderness and, in combat, how the system to let me choose important actions, hopefully at my pace of liking, rather than force me to spam/mash buttons. I, simply, would like to play the game at my own pace. If the designers can let me play in this way, I don't care what system they would choose but...hopefully, I'd like the designers make the system and the lore nicely hands in hands. I know this is luxury in CRPGs but, I'd like to see well crafted world and the system which "expresses" it properly.

 

We do not have a spellcasting system designed. This is not something we have to "change" because the majority of what we have developed for things as complex as the spellcasting system are ideas. It's three weeks into a fundraising campaign to make this project. I cannot tell you what final form the spellcasting system will take, what elements it absolutely will or won't have. All I can tell you is the sort of goals we have and general ideas of things I'd like to see and avoid.

 

I'm trying to create the feeling of strategic spell selection and tactical spell use in D&D while avoiding the constant rest spamming that was so prevalent in the games I made. There are probably a number of ways to solve this problem. I have some ideas on this, but we haven't settled on them. I want to tell people about general ideas and opinions I have, but I don't think spending a day trying to design the system in the forum is going to produce good results.

Yeah, that's my misunderstanding part. I did some guess works right but I was terribly wrong when I thought Obsidians were just teasing as a tactics of Kickstarter (Actually, you had talked of Kickstarter for months before revealing PE). Anyway, in that case, I'd like you designers to take your time. I cannot voice other people but I think yous are doing your best in offering info/thoughts.