[Merged] Cooldowns 2.0

[Grimlorn]

Just wanted to answer these questions but thread was locked before I could.

Here is something I would like to hear opinions on. Take the following circumstance, which is not uncommon in the IE games and would be somewhat similar to the KotC "campsite" system in circumstances were you are not locked off from backtracking to a campsite.

 

* You are in a location where resting is either prohibited or extraordinarily likely to result in an encounter. You do not know the location of the next campsite/safe resting area.

* You have cast many of your spells and the ones that remain are not entirely appropriate for the encounters you are now facing.

* Because you came from an area where you could rest and are not locked in the location, you have a cleared (by you) path back to the area where you can safely rest.

* It will take you three minutes of real time to walk back to the camp, maybe thirty seconds to reconfigure spells, five seconds to rest, and another three minutes of real time to walk back to where you had left off.

* Because you killed everything between you and the campsite, there are no threats between you and the campsite.

 

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

 

Nothing is good about having to walk back and forth, but there is nothing wrong with it. It's ok to punish the player if they make bad choices in combat and spend their spells too much. Choices and consequences. A lot of players and I think even developers think that breaking up the flow of combat is bad through walking to heal or resting is bad but it isn't. You can't be afraid to punish players for making bad choices. It's what makes those old games memorable. Encounters being varied and challenging and adapting and overcoming them. It gives the player a sense of accomplishment. You don't have to ego stroke the player by making it so they can just spam a couple of attacks every battle to win like you see in games like Dragon Age 2.

 

I'm playing through IWD right now and I love the combat. Sure I could abuse the system by quicksaving after each battle and reloading until I rest uninterrupted but I don't play it that way. I fight each battle until I run out of healing spells and the health on all my characters are low. I make it through probably 3-4 fights average but that's also not a bad thing. It makes it seem like my party isn't all powerful and rofl stomps everything it comes up against. They can fight for about 6-8 hours in game time and rest for 16 hours usually after that to recover. This adds depth to the game because my party isn't superhuman and also makes the enemies I'm fighting challenging too.

If I run out of arrows or bullets I have to walk back to town and purchase them. Yeah it sucks,, but it's my fault for not stocking up enough for the dungeon.

 

One of the things KotC did was put campfires down you could rest at. It was perfectly reasonable to make it to a campfire before needing to rest, but if you didn't because you didn't spend your spells wisely or took too much damage from not fighting smart, you'd have to walk back to town or the last campfire and rest there. Yeah that sucks for the player but tough. They failed. There are plenty of ideas out there for this rest mechanic. Like resting only once a dungeon floor at a certain place. If you don't want them to have to walk too much, there are always exit/town portal spells/scrolls. I'm not great with brainstorming ideas for how to fix this. It depends on what specifics of the combat system you develop and the challenge of the encounters, but I don't think a cooldown system even if you can only cast spells once an encounter is ideal. It just makes magic trivial and you'll just be using the same spells each fight.

 

Also, a lot of people don't think combat is important in RPGs and just gets in the way of story. And I hate how they use PST as an example because its combat was weak/bad. Combat is an important part of RPGs and has always been there. Please make a game with not only a strong story, quests, and characters but also with a strong combat system so you can prove those people wrong.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

 

Also, a lot of people don't think combat is important in RPGs and just gets in the way of story. And I hate how they use PST as an example because its combat was weak/bad. Combat is an important part of RPGs and has always been there. Please make a game with not only a strong story, quests, and characters but also with a strong combat system so you can prove those people wrong.

 

I always thought that combat was the best part of the story. Then again I don't really like that whole gameplay/story segregation thing.

 

I hope PE uses vancian casting. After DA2(I was ok with DAO, since cooldowns for the more powerful abilities were a bit longer and global) I really don't want to play another cRPG with a cooldown system.

[nikolokolus]

Oh god, not again ...

[Hypevosa]

As I said in the other cooldown thread, why punish players, who are ALREADY bad enough they need to run away to rest? They are bad, and they will perform badly regardless of if they need to waste 6 minutes recharging stuff or not.

 

Give those who don't rest as often rewards for doing well, people will then have reasons to play better, but don't punish those already having a hard time.

[Jasede]

Demon's Souls does something like this. If you fail to beat a stage without dying your health bar is cut in half. Really makes you learn how to play well.

 

Why'd you want to get better if you aren't punished for being bad?

 

I do like the idea of giving rewards to people who don't rest as a compromise instead, though.

Edited October 3, 2012 by Jasede

[Tale]

Why'd you want to get better if you aren't punished for being bad?

Having trouble beating encounters, using excess limited party resources like potions, and losing harder encounters is being "punished."

 

You don't need to inflate it.

 

 

[Grimlorn]

As I said in the other cooldown thread, why punish players, who are ALREADY bad enough they need to run away to rest? They are bad, and they will perform badly regardless of if they need to waste 6 minutes recharging stuff or not.

 

Give those who don't rest as often rewards for doing well, people will then have reasons to play better, but don't punish those already having a hard time.

Those players can select the easy difficulty. There is no reason to make the game boring for people with average or above average IQs so someone with an IQ of 80 can beat a game and feel good about himself. That's what the easy difficulties are for. People not good at these types of games.

[Hypevosa]

As I said in the other cooldown thread, why punish players, who are ALREADY bad enough they need to run away to rest? They are bad, and they will perform badly regardless of if they need to waste 6 minutes recharging stuff or not.

 

Give those who don't rest as often rewards for doing well, people will then have reasons to play better, but don't punish those already having a hard time.

Those players can select the easy difficulty. There is no reason to make the game boring for people with average or above average IQs so someone with an IQ of 80 can beat a game and feel good about himself. That's what the easy difficulties are for. People not good at these types of games.

 

Your statement makes 0 sense. Where the freakin heck did I say I wanted the game to be EASIER? If you're going to sit there and tell me that running 3 minutes to a save area and running 3 minutes back makes a game HARD, I'll point you to runescape where you grind iron ore for 1857 hours to get 99 mining, like any monkey, small child, or simple automated program can do.

 

All forcing walking back and forth does is add tedium. It's a thing that wastes time that takes little to no skill to accomplish at all. Played force unleased and force unleashed 2? The final fight with vader in force unleashed was HARD, it was challenging... In the second game they gave him an insanely long health bar and it was just plain boring because the fight took 2 hours with almost no skill involved at all.

 

You want to make bad players do better? Give them an incentive to get better where resting less = rewards. Not resting more= punishment.

[Jasede]

Bleh, we're just retreading old ground. Let's wait until some more details are announced; I think we all sort of gave a good glimpse in what certain factions want/expect, keeping in mind that the people on the forums are a minority compared to all the backers.

[rjshae]

One thing I would like to see is that the situation changes whenever the party retreats to a campsite. Enemies should become aware of the threat and react accordingly. Reinforcements should arrive, traps should be deployed, and ambushes sprung. The enemy may even trail the party back to camp and perform a counterattack when everybody is asleep.

 

Walking back to the campsite is okay early in the game, but at higher levels it would be nice to have the resources needed to rest in place. I mean, why can't we have the equivalent of rope trick, Leomund's secure shelter, Daern's instant fortress, or Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion?

[Silver6986]

Also, a lot of people don't think combat is important in RPGs and just gets in the way of story. And I hate how they use PST as an example because its combat was weak/bad. Combat is an important part of RPGs and has always been there. Please make a game with not only a strong story, quests, and characters but also with a strong combat system so you can prove those people wrong.

 

I always thought that combat was the best part of the story. Then again I don't really like that whole gameplay/story segregation thing.

 

I hope PE uses vancian casting. After DA2(I was ok with DAO, since cooldowns for the more powerful abilities were a bit longer and global) I really don't want to play another cRPG with a cooldown system.

 

My hope if this as well, give me the vancian casting system over cooldowns any day!! DAO was a let down in so many ways for me

 

Mind you it was damn sure better then DA2!

[Grimlorn]

As I said in the other cooldown thread, why punish players, who are ALREADY bad enough they need to run away to rest? They are bad, and they will perform badly regardless of if they need to waste 6 minutes recharging stuff or not.

 

Give those who don't rest as often rewards for doing well, people will then have reasons to play better, but don't punish those already having a hard time.

Those players can select the easy difficulty. There is no reason to make the game boring for people with average or above average IQs so someone with an IQ of 80 can beat a game and feel good about himself. That's what the easy difficulties are for. People not good at these types of games.

 

Your statement makes 0 sense. Where the freakin heck did I say I wanted the game to be EASIER? If you're going to sit there and tell me that running 3 minutes to a save area and running 3 minutes back makes a game HARD, I'll point you to runescape where you grind iron ore for 1857 hours to get 99 mining, like any monkey, small child, or simple automated program can do.

 

All forcing walking back and forth does is add tedium. It's a thing that wastes time that takes little to no skill to accomplish at all. Played force unleased and force unleashed 2? The final fight with vader in force unleashed was HARD, it was challenging... In the second game they gave him an insanely long health bar and it was just plain boring because the fight took 2 hours with almost no skill involved at all.

 

You want to make bad players do better? Give them an incentive to get better where resting less = rewards. Not resting more= punishment.

If you think walking is just tedious and it's unrealistic to walk back to town to recuperate than I don't know what to tell you. Try the AoD demo. They just teleport you from one location to another as you quest. You can also fast travel inside the city so there is little to no walking. But a lot of people complained about being teleported during quests when they played it because it took the freedom away from the player to control his character. You also were occasionally teleported to a place you've never been before and had no idea where you were.

 

The player who does well is rewarded with less walking. If you just reward the player for less resting, it will create this affect where someone who rests too much will be underpowered compared to someone who rests little and gets rewarded/stronger for it. The person who rests less will either start running through the game easily or to make it challenging for them, you'd have to make it too challenging for the player resting too much. Unless these rewards are just cosmetic and therefore meaningless.

 

Which is why I recommended the easy difficulty for people who continue to fail and need to head back to town all the time.

[Grimlorn]

I was thinking of the suite system Sawyer was talking about. It sounded like there might be some form of memorization with it.

 

I was thinking it sounded like it could be similar to the Sorcerer DnD system only you'd have suites instead of levels. But you could set a certain order to the spells which would affect their charges. Like a lvl 5 or 6 Cleric might have his lvl 1 suite spells, and cure light wounds would be his first spell of choice and that would get 5 charges, meanwhile his second choice might have 3 spell charges and that could be Bless, followed by Cure Poison at 2-3 charges, and then maybe a few spells or the rest at 1 charge each or something.

 

This would give you a set number of charges for spells you use often, but would also give you a spell point in spells you'd rarely use or possibly need rarely. You can also change up the order to suit your needs or style. I don't know I'm just brainstorming here.

Edited October 3, 2012 by Grimlorn

[Hypevosa]

Unrealistic? No, but unneeded tedium that adds absolutely nothing to the player experience? Yep. Wailing on darth vader for 2 hours did not make my battle with him more enjoyable or memorable in a positive way. Constantly retreading ground that offers no new experience is in that same boat - it's just, plain, unnecessary. It's not really enough punishment to make anyone who needs to do it learn to do otherwise, as the behavior is still entirely accepted. They just cash in 6 minutes - after all, they are playing a videogame and can waste as much time as they want. If you want players to get better, you give them a real, tangible reason to do so.

[Kopi]

A simple cooldown system might make sense with the souls concept, but it's rather unimaginative. I hope they figure out something new, maybe a combination of the two, or even a third ingredient.

[qstoffe]

I think combat resources can be looked at in two ways:

• Were you focus on "just" making it through each isolated combat. Spend as much resources as you want. Even let your party members die if it makes the combat easier. You know they will be replenished/reset/revived and all is "forgiven" to the next combat.
  
• Were you focus on getting through every fight as "flawlessly" as you can by spending as little resources as possible. You know that having spent little on this fight will improve your chance of doing well in the fights to come. Having party members die might make you wanting to reload even if you get through the fight since it's so costly to revive.
  

Games that use cooldown mechanics tends to heavliy favor the first alternative. Personally I'm in strong favor of the second alternative since the first makes me a lot less engaged about doing well in combat.

[metiman]

If the only problem with BG2 combat was resting too often, then why not just only allow resting every 16 hours and make sure that the compelling story has time limits? Make sure that the world actualy changes with time and that time is another resource that needs to be managed (by not wasting it). If people are trying to make fights easier by returning to camp every time their mage runs out of spells then let there be a narrative penalty for that.

 

Why fix a system that is not otherwise broken? In the forum polls BG2 consistently gets the highest marks for its combat (well except maybe compared to turn based ToeEE) and even overall gameplay. PS:T does nearly as well, but I'd venture a guess that it isn't due to the combat system.

 

I'm trying to imagine showing up at a Dragon Age Reborn kickstarter and voting for it as my favorite cRPG of all time and then saying that I hated pretty much everything about the combat and could I please have Arx Fatalis or ToEE style combat instead. If you didn't like BG2 or IWD or IWD2 or PS:T combat then what are you doing here? Not saying you don't have a right to be here. I just don't understand why you are interested in a kickstarter that wants to create a BG2/IWD/PS:T hybrid if you disliked the combat in every single one of those games and strongly prefer some more modern system. Now maybe some of you just despised the magic system in those games and liked the standard RTwP melee combat. Or maybe some of you are consistent in hating the combat in all of those games and PnP DnD in general and are only here because you are hoping for a PS:T or MotB level story. Nevertheless it all seems a bit cheeky to me. But it seems clear that Obsidian seems intent on at least trying to accomodate you. Somehow I don't think the equivalent would happen if Codexians were to show up at a Bioware or Bethesda kickstarter suggesting ToEE combat mechanics. In fact we'd probably just have our IP address insta-banned and be shouted down as a troll by all the fanboys almost immediately.

 

 

Obsidian Entertainment and our legendary game designers Chris Avellone, Tim Cain, and Josh Sawyer are excited to bring you a new role-playing game for the PC. Project Eternity (working title) pays homage to the great Infinity Engine games of years past: Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment.

Project Eternity aims to recapture the magic, imagination, depth, and nostalgia of classic RPG's that we enjoyed making - and playing. At Obsidian, we have the people responsible for many of those classic games and we want to bring those games back… and that’s why we’re here - we need your help to make it a reality!

 

Project Eternity will take the central hero, memorable companions and the epic exploration of Baldur’s Gate, add in the fun, intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, and tie it all together with the emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of Planescape: Torment.

 

I'm wondering which part of that wasn't clear. Admittedly IWD combat was used as a more specfic example and not BG2, but both systems would be equally vulnerable to these criticisms over rest spamming and the unrealism of spell memorization and all the rest. The various views can be divided into two factions. One likes the old combat systems and would kill for a BG3 or a IWD3 or a PS:T-2 that is identical in every way except for the story being a sequel, but may or may not be thinking (as I am) don't try to fix what isn't broken and first do no harm. The other faction may have utterly hated those combat and magic systems and strongly prefers a newer, esoteric, or some completely novel combat mechanic.

 

I am sympathetic with some of these new (to me) systems like fatigue and the only system I really have a major problem with is cooldowns (of any sort), but I don't consider the old systems broken in any way. Not even slightly. I only left the dungeon to rest when my characters were on the edge of death and likely bleeding out. It was a kind of retreat. To me "rest spamming" wasn't any sort of problem I needed to solve. To me there was no conceptual problem with a once per day spell memorization system. I liked the fact that mages were limited in the number of spells they cast per day and that eventually they would be reduced to slings or crossbow bolts. I liked the fact that you weren't omniscient enough to predict what spells you always needed and that that sometimes resulted in a less than ideal battle strategy or even a party death and subsequent reload. I liked the fact that one price of exploring with a mage, of all that power, was that you might use up more game time than you might otherwise have with a melee only party. I was always disappointed when there was no real meaning to the passage of time that penalized you for this, but that wasn't such a big deal either. I think a main story that takes into account the passage of time would be nice and would help balance out the power of spell casters vs melee characters to an extent, but it isn't a deal breaker for me if that isn't in.

 

Of course, I don't think forcing all classes to rest every 16 hours or suffer a gradual decline in abilities is at all unreasonable or undesirable. Perhaps some races could get by with less sleep, but certainly humans should require at least 6 hours of sleep per night to even have the slightest chance of fighting with their maximum ability. And enforcing a 16 hour waking time between sleep would seem to solve this whole non-problem all by itself. Obviously sleeping 8 hours ever hour is not particularly logical or realistic, and I never played that way in the first place. The only justification for it might be soloing as a mage, in which case it might be nice to turn off that requirement or allow some kind of soporific drug/herb to allow you to sleep so much. If not being able to memorize 100 complex spells at short notice is unrealistic then what about continuing to walk around with heavy packs and fight multiple life threatening battles that wound much of the party and then just continue on forever without sleep?

 

I just don't get all this fuss over walking to a safe place to rest? Is it really that tedious to do? So tedious that it is worth risking the fun of a hugely enjoyable and proven combat system? To me the risk is not worth the possible reward, if any.

 

Why not respect the proven systems of the past and try to add options for players who didn't like them instead of simply removing the old system and possiblly destroying the entire experience for the players who loved BG2/IWD/PS:T combat just as it was? How?

 

1. (easy) Introduce an insta-camping function/button/option that has some canned animation of leaving a dungeon and making camp and then returning, possibly with various sub-settings like the option to start you back at the beginning of the level or the beginning of the entire dungeon or which makes you wait for some set amount of time as well. After all, this is Josh's argument in favor of cooldowns. Just automate the process and be done with it. Is this the equivalent of a resting cooldown? Yeah, but it's optional. I don't think a lot of us who loved the old combat mechanics have a huge amount of difficulty restraining ourselves from engaging in game mechanics that we don't like. Just because a resting bypass button or checkbox exists does not mean we have to use it.

 

2. (more involved) Automatically (or manually) record a sort of macro of movement events between the last place of rest or last viable place of rest (presumably outside of the dungeon if you are in one). Then just play it back in reverse, rest, and play it forward again. This mostly just elminates the canned nature of the animation in solution (1) while still mitigating a lot of the tedium complaints about resting, especially if there is the option to speed things forward by 10x or 100x or whatever.

 

3. (considerably more involved but with additional benefits including greater replay value) Take a page from BG2's book and implement more than one sort of arcane caster class in the game. You could have a Vancian mage, a BG2 style sorcerer, a fatigue based caster, a mana+reagent based caster, a ritual+reagent based caster, a prayer based caster, and even a cooldown based caster / magic spammer or any subset of these that includes the old style mechanic as well. Each casting class could be more or less balanced with each other through playtesting. It is a lot more work admittedly, but it would also allow for a great deal of replay value playing all these different sorts of casters. It would also allow the sort of innovation that Josh seems to be interested in. You won't risk ruining an entire game just by having a single class that many people dislike. If you don't like a class you don't have to play it. One disadvantage may be fitting it all in with the game narrative/setting.

 

Now it might be argued that the encounter system as a whole cannot be balanced properly for at least the first two options. That if the encounters are mainly designed for the players who play the old way that things will be too easy for the player who can insta-regain all of their spells at will like BG2 Wish spell cheese or one of the "infinite spells" exploits. I would argue that the difficulty system can mitigate this imbalance. Different players prefer different level of combat difficulty in any case. Having choices to increase or decrease encounter difficulty is an important game mechanic and one of the few that can be very much improved compared to the old IE games with their "every enemy does 50% more damage" crudeness. Actually having this option could in itself be considered part of the difficulty system. Although I do believe in combat fairness and that if you can insta-regain all of your spells enemy mages should be able to do the same. So it could just result in casters killing off non-casters very quickly without otherwise altering the game difficulty significantly.

[cealicu_ca]

just a thought.

 

why not make spells and abilities work this way:

 

the more you cast them the more proficient you get at using that spell/ability, but the drawback is that each spell/ability has an efficiency meter or something, that replenishes slowly. each time you use that ability/cast that spell the efficiency goes down a bit.

 

this way you'll encourage people to use a multitude of spells and abilities (because their most favorite is not going to be that efficient if abused) and no longer need the cooldowns. think of this efficiency meter as getting bored or whatever.

 

on the other hand it's pretty much logical that the more you use an ability, the more you cast a spell you "train" yourself. so instead of learning a new spell you only get the basic spells and by using them you advance to the next tier (or even lets you do combos that will add some "experience" points to each of the constituents).

 

example 1:

 

ability: Bash (damage 10-20)

spell: Plague (damage 5-25)

 

For each use (within 5 minutes) the efficiency goes down by 10%, so after the first use you get Bash (damage 9-18) and Plague (5-23) (rounded up).

Also, with each use you advance a bit towards the next tier (Improved Bash and Mortal Plague).

 

Example 2:

 

For a combo ability (Swipe + Bash) you get fatigue for both abilities (both lose efficiency) and the "experience" towards each tier of the base components (both Swipe and Bash) is divided between the two. This way you let people make combos, and even if they are overpowered they must use them carefully because not only they will get fatigued when using the combo, they will also get fatigued in their base abilities/spells (for this example Bash AND Swipe). Also, using combos means that actually you will advance more slowly in each of the base ability/spell but you will advance at the same time with more than one. So you have advantages AND disadvantages.

 

Hmm, the more i read this the better it gets :D. I would actually like to see such an implementation.

 

Oh, that would mean that there is no need for neither cooldown nor rest.

 

P.S. some more refinement. the experience gained takes into consideration the difference in level between the attacker and the target. If the target is well below the attacker, you get no experience, only fatigue (so if you use overpowered spells on low level targets you don't get any bonus - forcing you to rather use more basic or normal attacks). On the other hand if you chose to do it you might get caught with your pants down (low efficiency for your best combo or base ability/spell) when facing a tough opponent.

 

Also, casting basic spells or using basic abilities does not count towards the efficiency of the combo (so you can use your low level attacks on low level targets and still keep your best for when it matters).

Edited October 3, 2012 by cealicu_ca

[MReed]

Just to summarize the comments in the previous thread (http://forums.obsidi...ooldown-thread/):

 

A number of dev posts were combined into the OP (mostly from Josh), indicating that:

 

1) Vancian spellcasting was out (more or less)

2) Some sort of cooldown system was in (but explicitly not the standard in-combat cooldown timers)

 

A significant number of people jumped to the assumption that #2 meant "Resting is out, cooldowns will be ~8 in game hours (~1-2 RT hours) and there will to no provision speed up the passage of time in the game" with a goal of preventing the "problem" of rest-spamming (resting after every encounter). A number of other people responded strongly (including myself) that this was a downright terrible idea (& that the resting "problem" wasn't a problem in the first place)

 

Eventually Josh got involved directly in the thread (the OP was reposting comments from elsewhere) and made quite a few very carefully worded to be non-definitive postings that implied the "1+ RT hours must pass (no acceleration option) before you get spells back" did not accurately reflect his point of view / goal when he talked of cooldowns.

 

It is my belief, based on the various posts made by Josh in the previous thread, that Josh is proposing something along the following lines:

 

1) Spellcasters have level based slots which must be pre-populated with spells out of combat. Furthermore, it looks like he envisions several "sets" of spells (say, "General adventuring", "Anti-mage", and "Anti-Boss") that can be changed in-combat with some yet-to-be defined penalty. Just to be clear, this doesn't mean that all known spells are available to you all the time -- it just means that you can flip your spell loadout from "General Adventuring" to "Anti-mage" when you run across a heavily protected mage if you wish.

2) In combat, when a spell slot is expended, it is unavailable for the remainder of combat -- no in combat cooldowns at all (at least for spells)! While not stated, it seems likely to me that the slot is what is expended -- if you flip to an alternate spell loadout, then whatever spell ends up in the previously expended slot isn't available.

3) Out of combat is where the cooldowns come into play -- an expended slot will be automatically restored after some amount of non-combat time.

 

The vast bulk of the conversation has been about #3, in particularly how long the cooldown timer should be.

 

1) There is a sizable number of people who believe that this timeout should be very high (> 30 minutes RT) and there shouldn't be any method of resetting the timer except the passage of time (e.g. "no rest"). These people also tend to believe that it is reasonable / desirable for the game to punish the player (with tedium) for poor play.

2) There is another sizable group of people that feel the timer should be fairly short (~5 minutes at most) and "rest" should reset the cooldown immediately and, generally speaking, be available to use). These people also tend to believe that it is terrible idea to punish a player that already sucks at the game further, and especially not with tedium.

3) Everyone seems to agree that very short cooldown timers (< 1 minute -- think the "Dragon Age" system) are a bad idea -- the concept of needing to conserve spells across encounters is something that everyone agrees is important.

 

General consensus of the previous thread participants Josh appears to be supporting the #2 position, but... He has not explicitly endorsed any of the three positions. He has stated that:

 

1) Cooldowns are "in", as described above (cooldowns that only run outside of combat).

2) Some sort of "spell preparation" system is in, for at least some spellcasting classes.

3) "Rest" is in, although the mechanical benefits of doing so are unclear at this point.

4) He isn't going to design an entire spellcasting system from scratch via a series of posts on a forum, and he doesn't have a completed spellcasting system to post about yet.

 

He has implied pretty strongly that he is not in favor of punishing the player with tedium for poor performance.

 

My position? I feel that a cooldown system (as described) is acceptable, as long as rest is generally available and the cooldown timers are both fairly short (no more than 5-10 minutes) and can be reset via a "rest" button (which, mind you, might not involve actual resting -- it could be just a "wait" button, or it might be using a common consumable item). I strongly oppose any system that punishes the player with tedium for poor performance, though.

Edited October 3, 2012 by MReed

[Osvir]

Turn-Based world would solve so much, with a turn-based cooldown.

 

If you aren't playing the game, time won't pass~ basically.

 

EDIT: I want to add something in to MReed's summarization as well.

 

4) He isn't going to design an entire spellcasting system from scratch via a series of posts on a forum, and he doesn't have a completed spellcasting system to post about yet. 3 weeks has passed.

Edited October 3, 2012 by Osvir

[MReed]

Turn-Based world would solve so much, with a turn-based cooldown.

 

If you aren't playing the game, time won't pass~ basically.

 

Your joking, I assume, because even the mostly strictly based turn-based game in the world doesn't use turn-based mechanics outside of combat. I can see it now:

 

DM: "Ok, you are currently in your rooms at the inn -- everyone roll for initiative"

Fighter: "I win, I'll move towards the church"

DM: "You are now 60 feet closer to the church -- next"

Cleric: "I'm going to the church as well"

....

 

You do understand that the only cooldown timer under consideration here are out of combat cooldown timers, not the standard in-combat timers, right?

[Semper]

One thing I would like to see is that the situation changes whenever the party retreats to a campsite. Enemies should become aware of the threat and react accordingly. Reinforcements should arrive, traps should be deployed, and ambushes sprung.

 

You're a modder yourself so don't you think that scripting every area that way would be too much to do, especially considering the tight development schedule? You've to test, balance and probably bugfix all the possible encounters. This kind of reactive environment is only for a small amount of special areas, but could never replace or overhaul a core mechanic like resting.

Edited October 3, 2012 by Semper

[DCParry]

If the only problem with BG2 combat was resting too often, then why not just only allow resting every 16 hours and make sure that the compelling story has time limits? Make sure that the world actualy changes with time and that time is another resource that needs to be managed (by not wasting it). If people are trying to make fights easier by returning to camp every time their mage runs out of spells then let there be a narrative penalty for that.

 

Why fix a system that is not otherwise broken? In the forum polls BG2 consistently gets the highest marks for its combat (well except maybe compared to turn based ToeEE) and even overall gameplay. PS:T does nearly as well, but I'd venture a guess that it isn't due to the combat system.

 

I'm trying to imagine showing up at a Dragon Age Reborn kickstarter and voting for it as my favorite cRPG of all time and then saying that I hated pretty much everything about the combat and could I please have Arx Fatalis or ToEE style combat instead. If you didn't like BG2 or IWD or IWD2 or PS:T combat then what are you doing here? Not saying you don't have a right to be here. I just don't understand why you are interested in a kickstarter that wants to create a BG2/IWD/PS:T hybrid if you disliked the combat in every single one of those games and strongly prefer some more modern system. Now maybe some of you just despised the magic system in those games and liked the standard RTwP melee combat. Or maybe some of you are consistent in hating the combat in all of those games and PnP DnD in general and are only here because you are hoping for a PS:T or MotB level story. Nevertheless it all seems a bit cheeky to me. But it seems clear that Obsidian seems intent on at least trying to accomodate you. Somehow I don't think the equivalent would happen if Codexians were to show up at a Bioware or Bethesda kickstarter suggesting ToEE combat mechanics. In fact we'd probably just have our IP address insta-banned and be shouted down as a troll by all the fanboys almost immediately.

 

 

 

See, here is where the problem. I am here not because I want a remake of those particular games. I do not want the same thing. Those games are great, they are fun, and they have their own charm. This project is supposed to be inspired by the experience. The problem is people have different ideas about what that "experience". For me, mechanics and spread-sheets are the least part of cRPGs. I understand their importance, I like discussing them, but I find the near cultish obsession with things like spell memorization and anti-cool down rants fairly strange. I want a new game that captures the environment and feeling of those classic games, not a tribute a spell casting system that has always been a problematic port to computer.

Edited October 3, 2012 by DCParry

[norolim]

Turn-Based world would solve so much, with a turn-based cooldown.

Your joking, I assume, because even the mostly strictly based turn-based game in the world doesn't use turn-based mechanics outside of combat.

Wrong. For example, most early 90s FPP dungeon crawler RPGs used turn-based mechanics all the time. As for isometric games: both Eschalon games did that too.

Edited October 3, 2012 by norolim

[MReed]

Turn-Based world would solve so much, with a turn-based cooldown.

Your joking, I assume, because even the mostly strictly based turn-based game in the world doesn't use turn-based mechanics outside of combat.

Wrong. For example, most early 90s FPP dungeon crawler RPGs used turn-based mechanics all the time. As for isometric games: both Eschalon games did that too.

 

All right, I admit that I forgot about those games (e.g. gold box D&D games, Bard's Tale, Wizardry, and the like). My bad.

 

All of these games have two common features, though -- they treat the party as a many-headed hydra outside of combat (and sometimes in combat), and they all included a (penalty free) "Wait" command. The "Wait" presence of the wait command completely undermines the point being made...

 

Eschalon games do not use turnbased mechanics outside of combat, based on my experience, though. If you just stand in one spot (no movement) then time does pass (e.g. NPCs move around), and the post that I was responding to said that this shouldn't happen.