Saving and reloading

[teknoman2]

 

That is not the way the IE games worked. There were many variables: poisons, getting mazed, confused, spell protections, stealth failing, etc If you get a series of bad rolls or the enemy gets a series of especially good rolls or both, combat could go either way irrespective of your skill.

well if you get 10 straight rolls of 1 and the enemy gets 10 straight rolls of 20 its obvious you cant win, but for the rest of the things you say there are counters and tactics. luck may play a big part in all of it, but that's different from saying "yeah he is the boss so your dispel wont work on his defence unless you lose 5 times".

the mechanics of the game state that even if he is god himself, if you have the means to disable his defence and land hits, you kill him. if you have the means and use them you can win on the first try, if you have bad luck and cant land a hit is something entirely independend of the battle design

[metiman]

Firkraag undefeated? wat.

 

several breach/pierce magic spells + attack damage is usually how I beat him

 

most casters (and dragons) chain stoneskin / weapon & spell immunity spells, so you just have to keep removing their iterations as fast as possible you can actually do damage.

 

There's always the finger of death attempt too hahah

 

never cast mordenkainen's sword in bg2 myself.

 

I realize that it is unusual. I'm not claiming he was objectively the most difficult opponent in BG2 or ToB. Just that I have never beaten him and I've tried lots of times over the years, albeit usually with a level 10-13 party. And I've already read every strategy guide or forum post on the topic that I could find. I have beat him using cheese or exploits just for the hell of it, but never in a fair fight. Seems to just be my own personal quirk. For me he seems to be the most difficult opponent in all of BG2 SoA, including Watchers Keep. I don't think it would be fair for me to compare him against ToB foes because I've never tried going after Firkraag after the underdark or after the underdark + watchers keep. By the time I'm ready to switch over to ToB I probably could beat him. But by that time I'm too excited by ToB and usually can't be bothered. On my next playthrough I'm going to make it a point to see if I can defeat Firkraag at any point before the end of SoA. Although that will be with SCSII, highest hitpoints, and with Smart Dragons enabled. Many of my previous attempts were even without SCSII installed. I'm probably not a particularly good player, but I'm almost glad because that keeps it challenging.

[ogrezilla]

good rule of thumb in my opinion for good and bad difficulty

 

Can you explain how you won as something your characters figured out how to do? Or was it something that the player had to learn? If I die 5 times against the same boss and reload, my characters wouldn't have learned anything when I reload. I'm honestly not the biggest roleplayer when it comes to that stuff, but I think good fight design tends to go hand in hand with being able to describe a fight as something the characters were able to learn in game. Obviously the player will learn and that will influence the fights. But if afterwords you have to describe it as the characters getting lucky or some divine intervention telling them what to do it was probably the game employing cheap tricks without giving you a chance to learn from them any way other than being killed by them.

Edited October 7, 2012 by ogrezilla

[ogrezilla]

You people need to read the actual question and answer before responding in this thread. The question was regarding things that Avellone loved and hated in RPGs that form the basis of PE. His answer is not about fights, its about making decisions less about "winning' and "losing" and more about the exploration process. This thread is pointless in reference to the actual interview. If the OP wants to ask this question in general and have a discussion about it, fine; just don't paint it like Avellone is trying to get rid of difficulty in encounters.

I'm answering the poll question. I agree, the quote from Avellone does not fit the poll question.

Edited October 7, 2012 by ogrezilla

[Ieo]

good rule of thumb in my opinion for good and bad difficulty

 

Can you explain how you won as something your characters figured out how to do? Or was it something that the player had to learn? If I die 5 times against the same boss and reload, my characters wouldn't have learned anything when I reload. I'm honestly not the biggest roleplayer when it comes to that stuff, but I think good fight design tends to go hand in hand with being able to describe a fight as something the characters were able to learn in game. Obviously the player will learn and that will influence the fights. But if afterwords you have to describe it as the characters getting lucky or some divine intervention telling them what to do it was probably the game employing cheap tricks without giving you a chance to learn from them any way other than being killed by them.

 

Sawyer's post seems cogent here, though this question wasn't about save/reload specifically:

Melnorme

I suspect that PE will end up NOT using the Vancian magic system. But I do feel that the role of the spellbook as a custom-made "toolkit" that needs to be prepared ahead of time is integral to the IE spirit. Can this be achieved in a non-Vancian system?

smile

 

JESawyer

I think it can, but I also think we need to be cognizant that advance preparation does not always equal strategic gameplay. If the player is making choices "blind" (for lack of a better term) and those choices have a huge effect on efficacy, that's not really a strategic blunder as much as a bad guess. I think some of the spell prep requirements in BG2 fell into that category, where the player's only approach was to enter combat, see how he or she failed, and reload the game with a different set of spells memorized.

 

In difficult battles, reloading is not uncommon, but I think it usually feels better when the player's error is a tactical one rather than a "strategic" one -- strategic being in quotes because there's no way for the player to know what's coming outside of metagaming.

 

I tend to view reloading, especially excessively, as shifting gameplay from the role-play aspect into true metagaming, so I'm in agreement with Josh's assessment that tactical error in the heat of battle is better than reload-knowledge. Rather than using save/reload as a measure of difficulty, imminent death with the possibility of escape seems to be a better option--for example, if you're just completely unprepared or half your party is down, I'd rather the survivors to be able to flee and regroup without doing a reload. If this means someone is left behind, that may make it more interesting too.

[ogrezilla]

Like I said, I'm not even a huge huge roleplayer. I don't get mad about my immersion being broken. But that sounds awesome even from a gameplay perspective.

[Gfted1]

Im probably the exception to the rule but I like being able to save and reload at will. See, I prefer to have every party member survive every fight so everyone stays on roughly the same level. You dont earn experience face down on the dungeon floor. For example, my first run through BG2 I was able to drop Firkraag on the 3rd try but a few party members died. So it took me maybe 8-10 more tries before everyone lived. Similar situaltion on Demogorgon, etc... Just a personal preference I know.

 

Id like to know whats to be lost allowing players to do that? I see a lot of you say things like; "resting/saving between battles breaks the developers intended difficulty". Really? Do you think the developer has taken into account every possible party config and character build and have somehow scaled, for example, the fifth encouter into the dungeon to know that you have blown amount of spells/abilities and therefore these kobalds are only at half power? From my experience every mob has their full repertoire available to them, not some scaled to equal what you may or may not have used at this point abilities.

[ogrezilla]

Im probably the exception to the rule but I like being able to save and reload at will. See, I prefer to have every party member survive every fight so everyone stays on roughly the same level. You dont earn experience face down on the dungeon floor. For example, my first run through BG2 I was able to drop Firkraag on the 3rd try but a few party members died. So it took me maybe 8-10 more tries before everyone lived. Similar situaltion on Demogorgon, etc... Just a personal preference I know.

 

Id like to know whats to be lost allowing players to do that? I see a lot of you say things like; "resting/saving between battles breaks the developers intended difficulty". Really? Do you think the developer has taken into account every possible party config and character build and have somehow scaled, for example, the fifth encouter into the dungeon to know that you have blown <x> amount of spells/abilities and therefore these kobalds are only at half power? From my experience every mob has their full repertoire available to them, not some scaled to equal what you may or may not have used at this point abilities.

I have no problem with that.

[Adauli]

I prefer to Save and reload any time I want to and one reason why I hate many older JRPGs is because of theyr savepoints and that I'm not able to save when I want to.

[metiman]

good rule of thumb in my opinion for good and bad difficulty

 

Can you explain how you won as something your characters figured out how to do? Or was it something that the player had to learn? If I die 5 times against the same boss and reload, my characters wouldn't have learned anything when I reload. I'm honestly not the biggest roleplayer when it comes to that stuff, but I think good fight design tends to go hand in hand with being able to describe a fight as something the characters were able to learn in game. Obviously the player will learn and that will influence the fights. But if afterwords you have to describe it as the characters getting lucky or some divine intervention telling them what to do it was probably the game employing cheap tricks without giving you a chance to learn from them any way other than being killed by them.

 

I'll concede that this is an interesting point. The problem is in the real world it really isn't those characters making the decisions and that fiction does break down at some point. Reloads are an example of that. By that logic there should be no save/load system at all. Not even checkpoint saves. None of that makes any sense from either a role play or a narrative perspective. Unfortunately without a save/load system many players would not be able to play the game at all. It's just a practical issue. You could think of it as a necessary evil, but I've never heard of a way around it. Unlike the characters, you (presumably) have a life outside the game.

[ogrezilla]

good rule of thumb in my opinion for good and bad difficulty

 

Can you explain how you won as something your characters figured out how to do? Or was it something that the player had to learn? If I die 5 times against the same boss and reload, my characters wouldn't have learned anything when I reload. I'm honestly not the biggest roleplayer when it comes to that stuff, but I think good fight design tends to go hand in hand with being able to describe a fight as something the characters were able to learn in game. Obviously the player will learn and that will influence the fights. But if afterwords you have to describe it as the characters getting lucky or some divine intervention telling them what to do it was probably the game employing cheap tricks without giving you a chance to learn from them any way other than being killed by them.

 

I'll concede that this is an interesting point. The problem is in the real world it really isn't those characters making the decisions and that fiction does break down at some point. Reloads are an example of that. By that logic there should be no save/load system at all. Not even checkpoint saves. None of that makes any sense from either a role play or a narrative perspective. Unfortunately without a save/load system many players would not be able to play the game at all. It's just a practical issue. You could think of it as a necessary evil, but I've never heard of a way around it. Unlike the characters, you (presumably) have a life outside the game.

Like I said, I don't actually care all that much about the roleplaying part of that. Just in general, I think if you can do that it means the game gave you a fair chance to learn and win the fight. If you can't, you probably just had to learn how to win by memorizing the fight. I just don't think binary memorization mechanics are actually difficult. If you have to reload because the fight is legitimately hard, I'm cool with that. I like good difficulty, not cheap difficulty. I'm not really arguing against any particularly games either. I just don't think the poll question is a good one because I think number of reloads is a terrible way to measure difficulty.

Edited October 7, 2012 by ogrezilla

[Ieo]

Im probably the exception to the rule but I like being able to save and reload at will. See, I prefer to have every party member survive every fight so everyone stays on roughly the same level. You dont earn experience face down on the dungeon floor. For example, my first run through BG2 I was able to drop Firkraag on the 3rd try but a few party members died. So it took me maybe 8-10 more tries before everyone lived. Similar situaltion on Demogorgon, etc... Just a personal preference I know.

 

Id like to know whats to be lost allowing players to do that? I see a lot of you say things like; "resting/saving between battles breaks the developers intended difficulty". Really? Do you think the developer has taken into account every possible party config and character build and have somehow scaled, for example, the fifth encouter into the dungeon to know that you have blown <x> amount of spells/abilities and therefore these kobalds are only at half power? From my experience every mob has their full repertoire available to them, not some scaled to equal what you may or may not have used at this point abilities.

 

I am definitely not against at-will save/reload at all--I'm a habitual quick-saver myself. It's the reload that actually gives me pause. As strange as it might sound, I treat the two separately first and then as a whole: My at-will save is only insurance, and I like insurance. But I do not want to nor like to invoke my insurance, because something Not Good happened. As a whole, my preference for difficulty is--I have to pull out all the stops and maybe one or two party members die (I totally get the reload-until-no-on-dies bit too), assuming I can get them back somehow, but I squeak by without the reload insurance.

 

"Difficulty" in general is a very hard thing to measure and balance; I imagine, in fact, that figuring out "normal" is going to be the hardest part for Obsidian. We already know there will be at least 5 difficulty modes with hopefully cherry-pick capability, though, so really I'm not all that worried that players will be able to play to their preferred fun difficulty.

Edited October 7, 2012 by Ieo

[Hypevosa]

Well here's a proposal - assuming you can revive party members, and since souls are so important, what if a downed member still gained experience since their soul has observed the battle or perhaps inhabited (not possessed) one of the other party members as a means of still experiencing the fight?

 

Not feeling the urge to reload after someone dies because otherwise they'll be back so much exp they'll just get owned faster in later fights would be cool, and we can somewhat justify it in this setting if souls can also experience things without being in their own body.

[metiman]

good rule of thumb in my opinion for good and bad difficulty

 

Can you explain how you won as something your characters figured out how to do? Or was it something that the player had to learn? If I die 5 times against the same boss and reload, my characters wouldn't have learned anything when I reload. I'm honestly not the biggest roleplayer when it comes to that stuff, but I think good fight design tends to go hand in hand with being able to describe a fight as something the characters were able to learn in game. Obviously the player will learn and that will influence the fights. But if afterwords you have to describe it as the characters getting lucky or some divine intervention telling them what to do it was probably the game employing cheap tricks without giving you a chance to learn from them any way other than being killed by them.

 

I'll concede that this is an interesting point. The problem is in the real world it really isn't those characters making the decisions and that fiction does break down at some point. Reloads are an example of that. By that logic there should be no save/load system at all. Not even checkpoint saves. None of that makes any sense from either a role play or a narrative perspective. Unfortunately without a save/load system many players would not be able to play the game at all. It's just a practical issue. You could think of it as a necessary evil, but I've never heard of a way around it. Unlike the characters, you (presumably) have a life outside the game.

Like I said, I don't actually care all that much about the roleplaying part of that. Just in general, I think if you can do that it means the game gave you a fair chance to learn and win the fight. If you can't, you probably just had to learn how to win by memorizing the fight. I just don't think binary memorization mechanics are actually difficult. If you have to reload because the fight is legitimately hard, I'm cool with that. I like good difficulty, not cheap difficulty. I'm not really arguing against any particularly games either. I just don't think the poll question is a good one because I think number of reloads is a terrible way to measure difficulty.

 

This sounds like another role play argument. You are arguing that you, the player, end up with more information after a failed encounter than the characters themselves. Fair enough. Since you, the player, cannot make yourself forget what you learned about the encounter any time you replay that fight, even during a new playthrough, it screws up that role playing aspect. Well this is certainly true, but what is the solution?

 

1. You could make every encounter so easy that it is unlikely you will die and then you could never replay the game again.

2. You could make the characters immortal / unkillable and then never replay the game again.

 

Neither solution sounds very attractive to me.

 

You are also arguing that there are two kinds of encounter difficulties:

1. An encounter about which you have no prior knowledge. This will only ever occur the first time you play the game and if the encounter is too difficult for you that first time you will never have another chance to play it at this "ideal" difficulty level. After that the fight will always be too easy.

2. An encoutner about which you do have prior knowledge. This is a far more typical situation. And is presumably always too easy. Or is only difficult in some way that doesn't count.

 

So you are arguing that only the first sort of encounter is difficult? That under no circumstances can the second type be difficult? Not even against an army of ancient dragons and 60th level demi-liches?

[Jarmo]

The same as tabletop. No reloading.

 

I want a bit of a challenge occasionally, but the game should be perfectly passable without knowledge of things to come,

on first playthrough, without a single reload.

[ogrezilla]

I am saying there is a difference between real difficulty and the illusion of difficulty in the form of cheap tricks. Its not difficult to die a few times until you memorize the encounter. It's frustrating, but not difficult. So using deaths and reloads as a metric of difficulty doesn't work. It is entirely possible for a fight where I win the first try to be more difficult than a fight where I reload 10 times.

Edited October 7, 2012 by ogrezilla

[metiman]

Well here's a proposal - assuming you can revive party members, and since souls are so important, what if a downed member still gained experience since their soul has observed the battle or perhaps inhabited (not possessed) one of the other party members as a means of still experiencing the fight?

 

Not feeling the urge to reload after someone dies because otherwise they'll be back so much exp they'll just get owned faster in later fights would be cool, and we can somewhat justify it in this setting if souls can also experience things without being in their own body.

 

I don't really care about the experience sharing issue, but reviving dead party members without penalty strikes me as awful game design. Death should have a very real drawback. This is what I have always hated about "raise dead". It utterly trivializes death. You don't have to reload. You don't have to try the (presumably difficult) battle again. All you have to do is cast a quick spell and poof! the dead party member wakes up from their violence induced slumber. Ugh. To me this is the biggest weakness that D&D and fantasy RPGs in general have had. It's just silly. A major goal of the game is to avoid getting killed and yet there is no penalty for getting killed. At least remove like 1/3 of their experience points or something. Wasn't that a standard 2nd Edition D&D thing? To take off some number of XP per resurrection? Now that was a good idea. If you want to raise a party member you should only be able to do it so many times before you are left with a 1st level character who isn't particularly useful to your 16th level party anymore.

[ogrezilla]

just an example

 

a fight where the boss paralyzes everyone at the start of the fight vs a fight where the boss paralyzes one character at a time throughout the entire fight. The first is more likely to cause a reload but after one reload it will never be an issue again. The second is less likely to cause you to lose outright, but its more difficult because its not a binary all or nothing attack.

Edited October 7, 2012 by ogrezilla

[Hypevosa]

Well here's a proposal - assuming you can revive party members, and since souls are so important, what if a downed member still gained experience since their soul has observed the battle or perhaps inhabited (not possessed) one of the other party members as a means of still experiencing the fight?

 

Not feeling the urge to reload after someone dies because otherwise they'll be back so much exp they'll just get owned faster in later fights would be cool, and we can somewhat justify it in this setting if souls can also experience things without being in their own body.

 

I don't really care about the experience sharing issue, but reviving dead party members without penalty strikes me as awful game design. Death should have a very real drawback. This is what I have always hated about "raise dead". It utterly trivializes death. You don't have to reload. You don't have to try the (presumably difficult) battle again. All you have to do is cast a quick spell and poof! the dead party member wakes up from their violence induced slumber. Ugh. To me this is the biggest weakness that D&D and fantasy RPGs in general have had. It's just silly. A major goal of the game is to avoid getting killed and yet there is no penalty for getting killed. At least remove like 1/3 of their experience points or something. Wasn't that a standard 2nd Edition D&D thing? To take off some number of XP per resurrection? Now that was a good idea. If you want to raise a party member you should only be able to do it so many times before you are left with a 1st level character who isn't particularly useful to your 16th level party anymore.

 

Losing a party member is already a rather vicious cycle.

 

Party member dies --> Party damage output is decreased --> fights last longer----\/

|---> Party ability to divide damage is decreased ----> all party members on average take more damage ----> Party members are more likely to die (loop)

 

God forbid it was your cleric or whoever will help heal the party after fights. The cost of gold and time to anyone who loses a party member is already immense unless they have a rod of resurrection or some other means of immediately bringing that party member back - if they are going to play on anyways, I don't feel they should be penalized with the dead character also falling behind on exp.

 

D&D doesn't trivialize death unless you have a merciful DM. Technically speaking, any dead body only has 3 days until you can't bring the person back to life since their soul has moved on. If you all are in the middle of the wilderness and the nearest temple where someone would have the level to raise dead (not every town's priest should be able to do this) is a massive trek away, you've essentially lost that party member. In D&D you also have the dying party lose a whole level for dying unless your priest is epic enough to True resurrection instead of raise dead or resurrect on them, and that in itself is a major drawback to death.

 

Death has a chance to be reversible in D&D, it isn't a guaranteed thing unless your DM is being a flimsy noodle.

 

And to put that into better perspective, the cleric casting even just resurrection needs to have 10k in diamonds, true resurrection costs 25k in diamonds. Finding that many valuable diamonds, even if you're buying them? Doesn't just happen.

 

Go look at raise dead, resurrection, and true resurrection for D&D and you'll see that bringing back the dead is not supposed to be as trivial as dragging them to the nearest excuse for a temple...

Edited October 7, 2012 by Hypevosa

[metiman]

Your vicious cycle is trivial. Someone died. They didn't just go to sleep. They are a corpse. And depending on how they were killed they might even be half eaten or in little pieces or burnt to a crisp. I'll concede the whole thing about undeath and...oh wait. After your party member has been raised they should become undead and never be the same again. And they should suffer a significant XP penalty. If you raise your party member on the battlefield, it should also bring to life the most powerful foe you were combating or perhaps all of the enemies up to the XP of the revived character. And maybe you should only be able to raise a party member and make them undead one time. Once they are undead that's it.

 

That sort of thing might be a sensible system. Although I still think it would be better simply not to have a raise dead mechanic in the game. If you don't want to reload then you should have to go and find some new adventurers to replace your fallen comrades. This discussion is leading me to the conclusion that having some kind of mechanism to hire an infinite number of 'red shirt' adventurers is a good system. And they shouldn't automagically be exactly the same level as your fallen party member either.

[Hypevosa]

I like how a potentially game ending cycle is "trivial". Unless everyone in your party has AC and HP like a warrior, or you have tons of potions and scrolls lying around for such rainy days, losing a single companion means tons of trouble.

 

How does anonymous redshirts add more to the game than keeping interesting companions around?

 

How does needing to have or find thousands of gold in diamonds trivialize death? Mind you, even raise dead costs 5000 in diamonds, burned as a spell component. The temple in D&D is not going to just throw 5000 in diamonds at you - they will enslave your party for multiple adventures if they do such a thing, or you will face the wrath of one of their deity's agents if you don't repay such mercy. Astral deva's are easily a party leveling force. Forcing the party to decide between stocking up on diamonds for such an emergency or buying better gear with the loot gotten from it sounds like a fine risk/reward mechanic to me.

[Elerond]

In D&D resurrection causes also permanent level drop or - 2 to CON, if charcters is on level 1. And of course it uses diamonds worth a total of at least 10,000 gp as material component. These features are usually left out from computer games where player can freely use save and load functions, because players usually load instead accepting such punishment.

[moridin84]

The same as tabletop. No reloading.

 

I want a bit of a challenge occasionally, but the game should be perfectly passable without knowledge of things to come,

on first playthrough, without a single reload.

How the hell are Obsidan supposed to calculate that though? Some people play better, some people play worse, some people play drunk.

[metiman]

The same as tabletop. No reloading.

 

I want a bit of a challenge occasionally, but the game should be perfectly passable without knowledge of things to come,

on first playthrough, without a single reload.

 

That's what ironman + easy difficulty setting is for. That's already in the game. Knock yourself out. I just don't want checkpoint saves enforced on everyone. I'll go into terrorist mode and start strapping explosives to my chest if that happens.

[Jarmo]

The same as tabletop. No reloading.

 

I want a bit of a challenge occasionally, but the game should be perfectly passable without knowledge of things to come,

on first playthrough, without a single reload.

How the hell are Obsidan supposed to calculate that though? Some people play better, some people play worse, some people play drunk.

 

By having plenty of difficulty options, easiest of which will let really, really bad gamers win the fights*. Allowing you to change the settings midway through the game and not making fights where you have to know beforehand something is going to happen, so the next time you try you'll be prepared. When I play drunk & tired and screw up, I'll reload. But I don't want to progress through trial and error and reloads all the way.

 

And allow saving at any time. If for no other reason, then because it's really annoying to lose two hours of gameplay because the game crashed.

 

*I know a few non-gamers who gave up on DA:O on easy, because they just couldn't win the tougher fights.

Now one can go all elitist basement nerd and say they should just get better, but I'm not about to tell people what they should enjoy.

Edited October 7, 2012 by Jarmo