Sawyerism Distilled - an interview with Josh Sawyer at Iron Tower Studio

[Karkarov]

^ This. with one correction.Stamina is not shield. You take damage in both stamina and health simultaneously

It is a comparison as a means of explaining the concept through a situation that is similar to the game which the person reading may have actually experienced first hand. Not an actual blow by blow of how mechanics will work in the game. I pretty sure everyone got it.

 

It doesn't matter if it's called shields, stamina, or whatever; it's the same thing as regenerating health.

No it isn't. Losing all your stamina in P:E means you got knocked out and have to take a nap until combat is over. Losing all your "Health" in P:E means I hope you didn't like that party member very much, and or, a game over screen. Because in P:E death is death, you don't get rezzed, if a character dies they are gone.

 

Also in your insulting bad comparisons you are comparing it to games where all you have to do is hide behind cover for 5 seconds and you are all good. In P:E you don't regen stamina during combat aside from specific skills (which may have highly limited uses), and you don't regen HP period aside from resting. As Malekith pointed out you can still take HP damage without having to lose all your stamina and that damage can not be regenerated "over time", and not at all in actual combat. That is kind of the exact opposite of "don't get hit for 5 seconds".

Edited December 12, 2012 by Karkarov

[Lephys]

@Dream, regarding health management, I think I'll let you do all the talking:

 

Adding another resource to this system for the sole purpose of having to manage it is the definition of adding complexity for no reason.

 

I'm just the messenger... u_u

[Odglok]

Losing all your stamina in P:E means you got knocked out and have to take a nap until combat is over. Losing all your "Health" in P:E means I hope you didn't like that party member very much, and or, a game over screen. Because in P:E death is death, you don't get rezzed, if a character dies they are gone.

 

Well, just for clarification, Sawyer said that after a character loses all their health, they enter a critically injured state or the player can "optionally" choose to be killed (except in Hardcore mode, of course). Since he didn't explain what exactly happens after a character is critically wounded, we can only speculate, but it wold apparently include... not dying. My guess is that they have to be carried back to a town or appropriate place to be revived (likely at a significant cost) and there may be high level spells that can do the same. Probably some permanent penalties for being resuscitated.

 

Anyway, I haven't read all of this thread, but to comment on the debate about whether healers should even be a role in this kind of game, I basically agree with Lephys. I don't think it should necessarily be impossible to regenerate stamina in combat through abilities, but I don't think it should be one class's defining role. Personally, I'd like to see it possible for one or more classes to transfer stamina to allies, rather than generate it via spell with no other costs. That way, healing (stamina generation) would be more an act sacrifice than an act of magic. And the one doing the healing can't just stand around and cast healing spells all battle or he'll quickly deplete his/her own stamina and pass out. I would consider that design to be more tactical in nature than the old D&D cleric/druid healing arrangement.

Edited December 12, 2012 by Odglok

[Lephys]

^ I like your transfer idea. Which made me think of another possibility; What if you could spend mana to restore stamina (or give a short-term burst to the regeneration rate) like normal, but after any heal like that you suffered stamina fatigue?

 

i.e. You hit your warrior with a "heal," and for the next 8 seconds his stamina regen goes from 2/sec to 10/sec. But, after that, he doesn't regen any Stamina for... I dunno, 10 seconds (arbitrary example number).

 

I think the Barbarian description so far talks about how they have to manage their level of aggression so as not to suffer a form of fatigue. Similar idea as a cost to stamina heals. *shrug*

[Dream]

No it isn't. Losing all your stamina in P:E means you got knocked out and have to take a nap until combat is over. Losing all your "Health" in P:E means I hope you didn't like that party member very much, and or, a game over screen. Because in P:E death is death, you don't get rezzed, if a character dies they are gone.

 

Well I guess in Borderlands your "actual" health bar is the second wind timer, right? Also I suppose Dragon Age had no health whatsoever since you could never truly die. Stamina in P:E and health in BG serve the same purpose: they're bars that go down when you take damage.

 

Also in your insulting bad comparisons you are comparing it to games where all you have to do is hide behind cover for 5 seconds and you are all good. In P:E you don't regen stamina during combat aside from specific skills (which may have highly limited uses), and you don't regen HP period aside from resting. As Malekith pointed out you can still take HP damage without having to lose all your stamina and that damage can not be regenerated "over time", and not at all in actual combat. That is kind of the exact opposite of "don't get hit for 5 seconds".

 

I wasn't actually comparing the games themselves, but the arguments made about said games. People said regenerating health would make shooters more tactical but the reality was quite the opposite; same thing here. Is it possible that Obsidian comes up with some revolutionary combat system revolving around this two bar crap? Yea, sure, but I'm not holding my breath over that possibility. Story wise Obsidian's a great studio, but combat wise? Not so much. Look at the combat systems they've developed so far:

 

DS3: A crappy Diablo clone where they somehow managed to **** up the controls so bad that it was impossible to play without a gamepad (not to mention completely butchering the feel of the original games).

AP: An okay third person shooter... if it was released half a decade ago. Even compared to ME2 it was lackluster combat wise (not to mention actual TPS games like Gears, Uncharted, Army of Two, Max Payne, etc.).

NV: Straight port of FO3's combat (obviously).

KotoR2: Basically KotoR but slightly improved.

NWN2: Probably their best combat system so far since it was essentially a 3D Baldur's Gate.

 

So basically we have a port, an update, a revamp (from 2d to 3d), and 2 crappy/mediocre originals, but maybe 6th time's a charm for them.

Edited December 12, 2012 by Dream

[Dream]

@Dream, regarding health management, I think I'll let you do all the talking:

Adding another resource to this system for the sole purpose of having to manage it is the definition of adding complexity for no reason.

I'm just the messenger... u_u

 

Except the purpose of health management is to add depth to the combat. What's the purpose of a firewood restriction on resting? To add depth to inventory management?

 

^ I like your transfer idea. Which made me think of another possibility; What if you could spend mana to restore stamina (or give a short-term burst to the regeneration rate) like normal, but after any heal like that you suffered stamina fatigue?

 

i.e. You hit your warrior with a "heal," and for the next 8 seconds his stamina regen goes from 2/sec to 10/sec. But, after that, he doesn't regen any Stamina for... I dunno, 10 seconds (arbitrary example number).

 

How is that mathematically different from putting a DoT on the enemy that after 10 seconds proceeds to undo part of the damage (unless the opponent is dead). Just saying.

[Blackstream]

I think early firearms are interesting and I've enjoyed reading about their use in late Medieval and early modern Europe. From a gameplay perspective, they pack more of a punch than bows and crossbows, but they have worse accuracy and take much longer to reload. They're also particularly good at penetrating wizards' arcane veils, which are commonly used for defense.

This means that firearms after a few more advances in technology will eventually become the dominate way to do battle just like in real life, since they'll lose the only restrictions currently afflicting them. Unless of course similar advances in magic happen (maybe the only reason magic shields don't work against bullets is because guns are so new, no one has researched that area of magic). Or people start integrating magic with technology (although magic guns seem like the obvious result of that).

 

Currently it's at 1:4 Health:Stamina. When you run out of Stamina, your character gets knocked out, just like hitting 0 hit points in most editions of A/D&D. You're effectively out of the fight and you're not going to get back up without outside assistance.

I don't like this very much. Personally I think health/stamina damage should be a property of attacks and spells. As in, some should do more damage to one, and some should do more damage to the other. It allows you to do things like make a boss that does ridiculous one shot level damage without autokilling your team. It allows you to make cool buffs that manipulate the incoming stamina/health damage. It allows you to make attacks that don't do very much stamina damage, but do much more dangerous health damage, making enemies that are very scary for any prolonged engagements. All sorts of things. I think a ratio is good as a baseline for how abilities, weapons, normal attacks, etc work, but from there they should diverge.

 

I don't think it's correct to say that I want dialogue choices to be flavor only. I want the player's choices from node to node to actually be more mechanically significant that they have been in most RPGs. That consists of two parts: the immediate reaction within the conversation and the long-term effects of how that choice feeds into your reputation. Sometimes the short-term effects are minor, but the reputation system won't "forget" what you've done.

 

If there's one thing that excites me, is that Josh's view of how dialogue and world interactivity should work, is something I've always wanted. I think one of the reason games feel hollow to me is that designers focus too much on the short term immediate reaction part, and not nearly enough, or sometimes not at all on the long-term effects of what you're actually saying or doing. This leads to things like playing through the game multiple times and realizing that no matter what you say or do, all characters will regard you the exact same and the same things will happen. It's even worse if they work off of a global reputation system, because that leads to things like you saving a shopkeepers business and his daughter, but oh look, you punched a drunk in the face outside the bar, so the shopkeep grabs a sword to try and slice you up since you are now a criminal (I'm looking at you Skyrim).

[Lephys]

Except the purpose of health management is to add depth to the combat. What's the purpose of a firewood restriction on resting? To add depth to inventory management?

 

So, what you meant was, "Adding another resource to this system for the sole purpose of having to manage it is the definition of adding complexity for no reason... Unless it's healing. If it's healing, it adds depth, for a very good reason. But if it's anything else, it only adds complexity instead of depth, and for absolutely no reason, because I said so."

 

So far, you haven't pointed out any difference other than the fact that you believe the added complexity of healing also adds depth.

 

And what is depth? Well...

 

 

That's your problem; complexity is not the same thing as depth. It's easy to make a game as complex and convoluted as possible, but it's hard to make it deep. A game that's deep looks simple to begin with, but as the player plays more he discovers more as well. The depth comes from basic features opening up and expanding (first a player finds out he can cast spells, then he learns there are spells that do things other than straight damage, then he learns certain spells work better against certain enemies, then he learns certain spells work well together, etc.). A complex game simply overloads the player with numbers and features and then calls it a day. One is fun and the other isn't.

 

Oh, so added complexity doesn't automatically equal more depth? But wait, I'm confused...

 

So you admit that adding different archetypes adds depth? Good.

 

How then, exactly, would adding a healer on top of that subtract from the depth of play, or are 9 different damage dealers more complex than 9 different damage dealers and 1 healer.

 

I see... so the complexity added by the healer is automatically depth.

 

Do you see why your arguments seem to float upon the raft of Opinion? I'm failing to see consistency here.

 

How is that mathematically different from putting a DoT on the enemy that after 10 seconds proceeds to undo part of the damage (unless the opponent is dead). Just saying.

 

It isn't mathematically any different, but how you arrive at the mathematical result and what you get to do along the way is different.That's literally what I said about dedicated healing versus the Sawyer-system several posts up. In multiple paragraphs of extremely detailed explanation. No matter how it's done, so long as your health (or stamina, in this case) is finite and can be lost and gained in some established fashion, you are required to manage your health. As long as you are actively controlling your party, and your actions affect the amount of damage they take and the rate at which they take it, you've got "active health management."

 

You brought up the regenerating health in shooters, supposedly just to point out the flaws of regenerating health, but then, when it was pointed out that the specifics of shooter gameplay weren't relevant to stamina regen in P:E -- an RPG and not a shooter -- you said:

 

 

I wasn't actually comparing the games themselves, but the arguments made about said games.

 

Once again, convenient that something can be applicable when you want it to be, but then it magically isn't when you decide you don't want it to be. I don't understand why you can't simply explain to people, using their own examples and context, the flaws in what they've said.

Edited December 12, 2012 by Lephys

[Dream]

So, what you meant was, "Adding another resource to this system for the sole purpose of having to manage it is the definition of adding complexity for no reason... Unless it's healing. If it's healing, it adds depth, for a very good reason. But if it's anything else, it only adds complexity instead of depth, and for absolutely no reason, because I said so."

 

Hey man, if you can tell me how adding the need to occupy a bunch of inventory slots with firewood adds depth to a game then I will gladly say I was wrong. As for healing, yea, pretty much every RPG I've played that had a deep combat system had healing in it.

 

Look, if Obsidian proves me wrong then I will be overjoyed, but what I'm hearing is just not inspiring a lot of confidence in me.

 

As for the rest of what you said I honestly don't even know where to begin. You're either a politician or just finished up rhetoric 101 because that is some impressively convoluted spin. Clearly this is super important to you bro so I'm just gonna give it to you, congrats.

[Lephys]

^The fact that you didn't even address your own paradox is what saddens me the most. You're more comfortable pretending that bit you just quoted me on merely says "... I like firewood... *picks nose*..."

 

Clearly this is super important to you bro so I'm just gonna give it to you, congrats.

 

Yeah. Actual discussion on a discussion forum IS pretty important to me. Obviously we don't share that. I don't know what you're giving me and anyone else in this (and other) discussion(s) other than a complete lack of respect and an absolute disregard for reason or consistency, but... thanks? o_O

 

This means that firearms after a few more advances in technology will eventually become the dominate way to do battle just like in real life, since they'll lose the only restrictions currently afflicting them. Unless of course similar advances in magic happen (maybe the only reason magic shields don't work against bullets is because guns are so new, no one has researched that area of magic). Or people start integrating magic with technology (although magic guns seem like the obvious result of that).

 

Yeah. I guess it's sort of assumed that, even though the shield/barrier is magically generated, it's still affecting the laws of physics, and its source can only be SO strong (or the Mage's power levels would be over 9,000, and the world would explode when they sneezed), so the extremely concentrated force of a gunshot at close range can pierce them (as even a ridiculously buff Barbarian cannot generate such force with a weapon swing). And magi-tech would be an interesting development in the lore.

 

name='Blackstream']I don't like this very much. Personally I think health/stamina damage should be a property of attacks and spells. As in, some should do more damage to one, and some should do more damage to the other. It allows you to do things like make a boss that does ridiculous one shot level damage without autokilling your team. It allows you to make cool buffs that manipulate the incoming stamina/health damage. It allows you to make attacks that don't do very much stamina damage, but do much more dangerous health damage, making enemies that are very scary for any prolonged engagements. All sorts of things. I think a ratio is good as a baseline for how abilities, weapons, normal attacks, etc work, but from there they should diverge.

 

I agree that they'll probably need to play around with your suggestions (some of them have come up already in some fashion) a bit and find the right balance, but the system itself has plenty of merit. I think combat will definitely feel more... tactile?

 

If there's one thing that excites me, is that Josh's view of how dialogue and world interactivity should work, is something I've always wanted. I think one of the reason games feel hollow to me is that designers focus too much on the short term immediate reaction part, and not nearly enough, or sometimes not at all on the long-term effects of what you're actually saying or doing. This leads to things like playing through the game multiple times and realizing that no matter what you say or do, all characters will regard you the exact same and the same things will happen. It's even worse if they work off of a global reputation system, because that leads to things like you saving a shopkeepers business and his daughter, but oh look, you punched a drunk in the face outside the bar, so the shopkeep grabs a sword to try and slice you up since you are now a criminal (I'm looking at you Skyrim).

 

YES! The possibilities are awesome, aren't they? 8D. None of that "You fidgeted behind my counter a few millimeters... THE WORLD IS NOW YOUR ARCHNEMESIS!" Haha. You definitely see a lot more short-term effects (Yay! You resolved this conflict in a different manner) that don't have much bearing on the rest of the game than you do long-term effects in a lot of other games. I'm confident the dialogue will be handled in quite a more interesting fashion with P:E.

Edited December 12, 2012 by Lephys

[Michael_Galt]

 

snip

 

I don't think it would be a very exciting tale if someone kept healing every single cut that another character took.

 

"He fought valiantly against the evil lord Melavath, who kept wounding him and wounding him. But, lo, the healer Azreiar did keep undoing that which the evil lord had done, immediately after each blow had been dealt. But would her mana pool last longer than the dark lord's health pool? The tension was menacingly thick!"

 

The only tactical consideration that provides is "Take out the healer first!" for the attackers, and "protect the healer or we're all dead!" for the defenders. That's really about as silly as "Keep the Warrior healed, or we'll lose our damage dealer!"

 

So, "Have our knight run over there to shield block that axe blow" or "Have our healer undo the hit point loss from that axe blow regardless of how we worry about dealing with it!"... which is a more tactical decision, I ask.

 

Yes, I like this. It actually explains one of the things I didn't like about the IE games, when I really think of it. I hated having to attempt to heal someone in the middle of combat. It just seems so contrived- like swalling 4 healing potions in rapid succession in the middle of a fight. I don't know if I like Josh's thoughts on the speech stuff (since I like speech skills), but I like their decision to redo this dynamic. Seems like it would make combat more exciting, and it even "makes sense". I mean, mostly, it does come down to endurance. A guy gets hit enough with blunt objects, he gases. He gets cut, he tires from blood loss (provided we aren't talking amputations). This system doesn't remove the possibility of critical strikes- if a blow completely exhausts endurance and is powerful enough, it could hypothetically wipe someone's health out as well. I like it.

[Lephys]

^ Yeah, I mean, healing isn't just plain bad. But, when it factors too heavily into combat (i.e. you're dependant upon at least one dedicated healer just to match up properly against the game's hostiles), it becomes a bit moot compared to a system that uses it more strategically. There are more interesting ways to manage health (or, in this case, stamina) than to basically deal negative damage in the middle of combat. It's sort of like saying "Each party member has 100 hit points, but you're going to need to convert THIS person's mana into negative damage constantly throughout the fight so that they can last through the 500 damage they'll take because we've balanced the game for healing, or you lose." It's more of a speed bump to the flow of combat.

 

If you just take a game that's already built around that mechanic and simply remove the dedicated healing, then yes, the game loses a bit of depth. BUT, if you replace the system all together, you gain the time no longer spent reversing damage AND the tactical variance that comes from combat built around a different, less attrition-based health management system.

 

And I understand the concerns about his comments about the speech skills, but I think they're misunderstood to a degree. It might not seem to make much sense without a lot of details, but I think he wants dialogue choices and effects to be more varied and meaningful than with many traditional implementations of a single Speech skill, in which your Speech skill simply accomplishes things for you. It's almost like a Jedi mind trick.

 

"You do not want to fight us anymore."

"... Man, let's get out of here. I've spent my whole life as a Bandit, but this guy makes a good point about Banditry being bad."

 

So, to add variety and depth to that system, it makes more sense to split the skill check into its various affecting factors (such as attributes, and the effects of various choices in a reputation system, etc.) rather than to simply keep the single Speech skill and have it provide 7 different dialogue options when it's at 70 instead of 2.

 

Really, how you say something is only a small part of how you affect people. So, there may even be a Speech skill, still, in P:E, or maybe a few skills that make it up. They just won't be deciding all the outcomes of dialogue by themselves if they are in the game.

Edited December 12, 2012 by Lephys

[Michael_Galt]

Yeah, we'll see how that goes. I don't want it to be an insta-win, but I do like having my eloquent/passionate/compelling speaker characters. I mean, I played 2 different types during F:NV. One was just really smart, so his dialogue was intelligent, probing, and discerning, whereas my charismatic speaker was more emotive and just passionate. As I understand it, there will be combat skills and non-combat, which will be split and each get points. If that is the case, there should certainly be speech skills. I mean, if you can choose to put skills in gambling, lock-picking, "lore", whatever, you should be able to do the same with different speech skills, since you are accepting corresponding "weaknesses" by not getting other skills which might be more concretely useful.

[Lephys]

Well, at the very least, if there are absolutely no speech skills, I don't think the point is to remove the dialogue options that those gave you from the game. Sawyer's goal seems only to be to allow you to have more than a single range (eloquent-to-uneloquent) characters, and to have the dialogue restrictions be more than just locked treasure chests.

 

In other words, if they scrap the speech skills all together, then it'll only be because they decided that some other system made more sense to support their added dialogue depth. Worst-case scenario (as far as your worries are concerned), you still get access to your eloquent/passionate/compelling options but the character build is simply different to get to them (instead of "Oh, I just need to make sure I put enough points into Speech.)

 

We'll obviously know more once we're provided with more details, but I whole-heartedly believe that the lack of details is causing the goal of the design to be very easily misunderstood.

[Helm]

This dual-bar health system is an extremely weird concept (at least on paper)...

 

I like the fact that you cannot rest everywhere in order to prevent sleep spamming. But it does seem rather strange to me to reduce the health system to being practically only a tactical mechanic and in turn almost completely removing all of the strategic elements of the health system used in the IE-Games and other RPGs.

 

I guess this system could work, but the stamina health bar should not regenerate in order to not make health potions and a healer (strategic elements) almost completely redundant.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Helm

[Ieo]

This dual-bar health system is an extremely weird concept (at least on paper)...

 

I like the fact that you cannot rest everywhere in order to prevent sleep spamming. But it does seem rather strange to me to reduce the health system to being practically only a tactical mechanic and in turn almost completely removing all of the strategic elements of the health system used in the IE-Games and other RPGs.

 

I guess this system could work, but the stamina health bar should not regenerate in order to not make health potions and a healer (strategic elements) almost completely redundant.

 

There will not be actual "healing" available outside of resting. The stamina bar will regenerate.

 

I suggest you read the entire official Update #24 thread (including Josh's comments, that is) along with his points in this thread.

[Helm]

 

There will not be actual "healing" available outside of resting. The stamina bar will regenerate.

 

I suggest you read the entire official Update #24 thread (including Josh's comments, that is) along with his points in this thread.

I know there will be no healing of the health bar (health bar 1) outside of resting. The stamina bar (health bar 2) in this game is actually nothing other than a regenerating health bar. These mechanics will make healers and healing potions redundant. And that is my argument.

 

btw, I have read the entire thread and the updates. ^^

[Sacred_Path]

I know there will be no healing of the health bar (health bar 1) outside of resting. The stamina bar (health bar 2) in this game is actually nothing other than a regenerating health bar. These mechanics will make healers and healing potions redundant. And that is my argument.

 

btw, I have read the entire thread and the updates. ^^

 

Are you lamenting the fact that there will be two health bars, or the fact that there will be no healers (there won't, priests are relegated to the role of paladin) ?

 

How exactly is healing redundant when you will lose health along with stamina, health can only be recouped by resting, and resting is limited?

[Helm]

Are you lamenting the fact that there will be two health bars, or the fact that there will be no healers (there won't, priests are relegated to the role of paladin) ?

 

How exactly is healing redundant when you will lose health along with stamina, health can only be recouped by resting, and resting is limited?

I said: These mechanics will make healers and healing potions almost completely redundant as strategical elements. In other words, you probably wont even need a healer (a priest, whatever) or healing potions because the health system will be almost completely and solely tactical based with a self-regenerating health (stamina) bar.

 

Understand now?

[Sacred_Path]

Are you lamenting the fact that there will be two health bars, or the fact that there will be no healers (there won't, priests are relegated to the role of paladin) ?

 

How exactly is healing redundant when you will lose health along with stamina, health can only be recouped by resting, and resting is limited?

I said: These mechanics will make healers and healing potions almost completely redundant as strategical elements. In other words, you probably wont even need a healer (a priest, whatever) or healing potions because the health system will be almost completely and solely tactical based with a self-regenerating health (stamina) bar.

 

Understand now?

 

IOW: you will lose health, and that health can't be regained by resting at will and it doesn't regenerate. That means you'll wish for healers, rather than them being redundant. Items/ spells that could refresh health will be rare and valuable, adding possibly more strategic choices in how you will outfit/ make up your party.

[Helm]

Are you lamenting the fact that there will be two health bars, or the fact that there will be no healers (there won't, priests are relegated to the role of paladin) ?

 

How exactly is healing redundant when you will lose health along with stamina, health can only be recouped by resting, and resting is limited?

I said: These mechanics will make healers and healing potions almost completely redundant as strategical elements. In other words, you probably wont even need a healer (a priest, whatever) or healing potions because the health system will be almost completely and solely tactical based with a self-regenerating health (stamina) bar.

 

Understand now?

 

IOW: you will lose health, and that health can't be regained by resting at will and it doesn't regenerate. That means you'll wish for healers, rather than them being redundant. Items/ spells that could refresh health will be rare and valuable, adding possibly more strategic choices in how you will outfit/ make up your party.

Which means that the only strategic element of the health system will be the fact that you want to take as little damage as possible. This is is the same for every game, you always try to avoid taking damage as much as possible.

 

By removing healers and healing potions you are removing two strategic elements and in turn are simplifying the game strategically and tactically. That certainly is a huge problem if you ask me.

Edited January 4, 2013 by Helm

[PrimeJunta]

We can't really know that yet, can we? It all depends on how frequently spaced the rest areas are relative to the combat areas. If there are relatively few rest areas, you will have to be very careful about managing your health; if they are relatively frequent, you won't, and if some areas have more or less than others, they'll offer different types of challenges.

 

FWIW, I kinda like this system precisely because it offers the possibility of varying the challenges in this way. With the standard system of hp + plentiful healing magic/potions etc., there's really not much to health management -- just stock up on enough make-well kits and you're golden. The workarounds to that aren't unproblematic either; if you make healing magic/potions rare, they'll easily get into "too awesome to use" territory and push you into save-scumming for optimal battle results every time, for example.

 

Whether P:E will actually end up like this we don't know, of course. I for one am optimistic, though.

[Sacred_Path]

Which means that the only strategic element of the health system will be the fact that you want to take as little damage as possible. This is is the same for every game, you always try to avoid taking damage as much as possible.

 

By removing healers and healing potions you are removing two strategic elements and in turn are simplifying the game strategically and tactically. That certainly is a huge problem if you ask me.

 

The first clear statement I read said that healing magic will be rare. Then someone said there would be none at all. Current stance seems to be that it's rare. So I'm building on that when I'm saying that you'll want to be very careful with your health potions and possible rare spells.

 

How is that system inferior to IE style DnD games? Where you could tag "cast healing spells on rest" and then just spam that rest button, considering that even a lvl 1 cleric or druid could cast healing spells? The only thing it accomplished was forcing you to include at least one of either class in your party (= no brainer).

[redneckdevil]

Good reading, I like what im seeing.

Im a bit worried as well about the health but I dont know if anyone pointed out that he said health wouldnt be regenerated by magic, but didnt say anything about potions and such. Have we heard anything if theres gonna be health potions or not for health along with stamina?

 

Also im digging his idea for just scraping speech skills. I would much rather have varied options to reply to something and get different even small outcomes and even the idea that past speeches will influence future....ow man that is roleplaying greatness right there if they can pull it off.

Someone whos a jackass throughout the entire game comes across a scenario that moves his or her heart and speaks truthfully and sincerity only to have the person hes trying to comfort get mad because they think hes being snide again...that would be awesome.

Edited January 4, 2013 by redneckdevil

[Lephys]

Which means that the only strategic element of the health system will be the fact that you want to take as little damage as possible. This is is the same for every game, you always try to avoid taking damage as much as possible.

 

By removing healers and healing potions you are removing two strategic elements and in turn are simplifying the game strategically and tactically. That certainly is a huge problem if you ask me.

 

Except that, in other games, you're 100% expected to HAVE to use healing to complete a battle. It wasn't really a big deal that you made absolutely sure you took as little damage as possible through strategic decision-making as it was that you avoided taking too much damage in too little a time. All the damage and HP numbers were designed with healing in mind, or the dedicated healing classes and overly abundant healing potions would be useless.

 

So, really, without those things being an integral, abundant factor in combat, you've got to deal more with your current health (in this case, stamina) values and your ability to take down foes more efficiently. Doesn't necessarily mean every rat you encounter is going to annihilate you just because you can't heal. The only difference is, the more you **** around with easy foes, the more likely you are to have a tougher time with all other foes between your current location and the next rest point.

 

Obviously, this is going to scale with the difficulty, so, if you're playing on Easy, you aren't going to need to be a strategic genius to get from one rest point to the next. Whereas, if you're playing on Hard, you might need to be.

 

Hitpoints, though, are no different from any other limited resource. The easier you make it to replenish them, the less you HAVE to care about conserving them. And conserving hitpoints is a part of combat strategy (within an RPG combat system). Strategy, itself, is the effort to use resources efficiently in combat, as opposed to inefficiently. Not that healing can't be part of strategy, but people keep implying that removing that does nothing but take 20% of the strategy out of combat or something. It removes something, and adds something in its absence.

 

Their decision was based mainly on one question, I think: Is it more enjoyable and less convoluted to manage your preservation of hitpoints AND your active replenishment of them, or to simply preserve them while focusing your efforts on actively dispatching your foes efficiently? Fighting opponents, even without any healing system, already involves hitpoint management. So, while different and sometimes nice, is the reversal of damage done to you really any more strategic than a system that focuses on giving you interesting ways of preventing/avoiding that damage in the first place, within the offenses and defenses you're using no matter what?

Edited January 4, 2013 by Lephys