An idea regarding resting/stamina/health

[Hormalakh]

So by now most people have read the interview with Mr. Sawyer and I've seen a bit of people griping about how the health/stamina system would be worked and why we're being forced to not rest and other things Josh Sawyer didn't actually come out and say.

 

Anyway, it got me to thinking about the topic(s) and I had two ideas I wanted to share with the developers. I'd also be interested in hearing others' opinions on the ideas.

 

Rest:

I would like the resting mechanic to be fairly punishing since Josh is trying to dissuade from degenerate gaming (resting everywhere)... that is to say that you are allowed to rest wherever you wish, but it's a heavily-risky thing to do. You could try to rest in a dungeon, but the chances are very high (90%) that you will be ambushed/attacked while resting. So, this allows for that 10% chance (if you really need to risk it) to rest, but perhaps it allows you to also regain a little bit of health so that when you are ambushed, you can fight back. It's sort of a decision you'd have to make in each scenario. You'd look at the setting (dungeon-type) and the enemies you're likely to see (dragon dungeon would have lots of dragons, for example) and the health that you have and you make an executive decision to either risk the rest or actually hike it back to town. There is no actual "game mechanic" that says you can't rest here. It would just either be suicide or an actual player decision.

 

Now, this whole thing can be made even more complicated if the devs wish (add an outdoorsman/quiet resting skill to reduce ambushes and random encounters, etc) but I've stuck with the main concept for now.

 

Health/stamina:

Many people are complaining that the whole health/stamina doesn't work when your health is at extermely low numbers because at that point, you're automatically health-limited by what you can and can't do. Now, I would say that the point is to play well enough to only lose minimal health, but that's another point... Perhaps there could be certain skills/abilities which allow stamina/health ratio losses to change during battle so as to, once again, make this a more deliberate decision. For example, if your wizard casts "magic armor" on you, that will change your health:stamina loss from 2:8 to 1:16. Therefore, while maximizing stamina loss, it limits your losses on health. (Imagine a big giant magic shield that covers you, but everytime you get hit, it knocks you around (and you can have your breath knocked out of you - kind of like how kevlar protects from a bullet, but that doesn't mean you won't get thrown back). Once again the point is to make players who have low health think about risking that next battle or resting (which is also risky) or hiking back to town. It becomes more of a tactical and strategic decision.

 

If you know the next battle will be the last one before you're home free, perhaps your bloodied party would be willing to risk higher stamina loses (and the chance to knock everyone unconscious) instead of resting there (which would just increase the number of battles) or hiking back (which would just take up time).

 

What do you guys think?

Edited December 6, 2012 by Hormalakh

[Jasede]

Now, I would say that the point is to play well enough to only lose minimal health, but that's another point...

 

I think the thread should end right at that line and hopefully people realize video games are just that, games, and you don't always win when you play a game - else it wouldn't be fun.

[Hormalakh]

Good luck with that (convincing people games should be tough and sometimes frustrating by design). In any case, the ideas I brought forth do increase tactical decision making when it comes to combat, I believe and still adds to the flavor of the combat within the game. Wouldn't you agree?

[Jasede]

It's a reasonable proposal but I'm not sure if it really gains us much.

What I'm trying to say is that the existence of stamina/hp ratio spells wouldn't change my outcome of the decision "press on" vs "turn back" because if my HP were low I'd realize running out of stamina would be lethal, so increasing the stamina drain would perhaps not be the best decision though it would depend on the encounter in question.

 

I just don't see why they'd bother adding such considerations just to silence a few complaints. There's already an easy mode which is extremely likely to be easy enough that the problem stated will never be an issue.

[Rasputin]

I think this is an issue that rears its head because of tabletop gaming vs. crpgs trying to be like them yet designers not wanting people to be able to rest everywhere because it is unrealistic and or too easy. in PnP you had a chance of random encounter when you rested, Im fine with having a chance (even in a city - thieves, brigands, ladies of the night, etc.) of a random encounter.

 

I guess the other question is: Will it add to gameplay and realism or immersion? Will the design implimented for restign add to the tactical decision making for the game? If so, then its probably worth adding. Also, anything to stay away from a constant grind/kill fest that we see so commonly in modern games. Lets be realistic, even heroes need to lick their wounds. Also, knowing your hero is mortal etc. adds to your accomplishments when you do succeed imho.

[Hormalakh]

it would depend on the encounter in question.

 

And thus it makes it your decision - and I would think most people would like that. It's a fuzzy scenario and it allows for actual decision making. It allows players more flexibility for those who wish it, and also doesn't lock certain mechanics (resting anywhere) for unknown reasons. As for quieting the masses, I never really care much for that anyway. Different people are different. You can't please everyone. However, it does make any certain action more deliberate and thus more fun, in my opinion.

[Hormalakh]

I think this is an issue that rears its head because of tabletop gaming vs. crpgs trying to be like them yet designers not wanting people to be able to rest everywhere because it is unrealistic and or too easy. in PnP you had a chance of random encounter when you rested, Im fine with having a chance (even in a city - thieves, brigands, ladies of the night, etc.) of a random encounter.

 

Good point, perhaps you can still be random encountered in a city, but the chances are lower (perhaps 20-30%). There are usually city guards protecting the streets afterall.

 

I guess my point is that I don't want "railroading" type mechanics in this sort of game. You should be allowed to do whatever you wish. If you want to rest anywhere, then you can. But there are risks to this and it becomes a legitimate reason why you shouldn't rest. Not just "don't do it because I said so." This should be true with most things in the game. You should be able to do many things, the question is whether the risks are worth the rewards of doing any certain act.

Edited December 6, 2012 by Hormalakh

[Ieo]

I think this is an issue that rears its head because of tabletop gaming vs. crpgs trying to be like them yet designers not wanting people to be able to rest everywhere because it is unrealistic and or too easy. in PnP you had a chance of random encounter when you rested, Im fine with having a chance (even in a city - thieves, brigands, ladies of the night, etc.) of a random encounter.

 

Good point, perhaps you can still be random encountered in a city, but the chances are lower (perhaps 20-30%). There are usually city guards protecting the streets afterall.

 

I guess my point is that I don't want "railroading" type mechanics in this sort of game. You should be allowed to do whatever you wish. If you want to rest anywhere, then you can. But there are risks to this and it becomes a legitimate reason why you shouldn't rest. Not just "don't do it because I said so." This should be true with most things in the game. You should be able to do many things, the question is whether the risks are worth the rewards of doing any certain act.

 

You might think it's "railroading" because as concepts are proposed, players typically take them and sprint down the path of railroady "omg this is gonna break the whole game/my playstyle!" assumptions without context to other possibilities.

 

I'd suggest that players basically take a step back and remember that Obsidian in several places have said that player choice is paramount to the game experience, even if mechanics are crafted to nudge in certain directions, rather than hardlining. This is a Kickstarter! Just read the dev forum posts, and you'll see that player flexibility is foremost on their minds, because game industry devs with years of business experience are very aware that there are different ideas of "fun." Everything is WIP. Holistic game mechanics are like spiderwebs--you can't just pull out a thread for study without taking into consideration so many counterbalancing things. Including player behavior.

 

Players do not have the capability to see the high-level top-down view of development (and while I really appreciate that Obsidian is sharing so much with us, part of me thinks it's actually dangerous for Obsidian to do so when the initial reactions almost always magnify things out of context, even if said context hasn't been fleshed out yet; case in point, cooldowns).

 

Anyway. In BG (both), I think it was essentially impossible to rest in cities because the guards would interrupt you for vagrancy. (Maybe this didn't apply to Athkatla slums district, but I don't remember now.) So I can see forced policed in cities within socially acceptable limits, and then free resting with variable risk (maybe tied to modes) between wilderness and dungeon areas. Among other things.

[Hormalakh]

You might think it's "railroading" because as concepts are proposed, players typically take them and sprint down the path of railroady "omg this is gonna break the whole game/my playstyle!" assumptions without context to other possibilities.

 

I'd suggest that players basically take a step back and remember that Obsidian in several places have said that player choice is paramount to the game experience, even if mechanics are crafted to nudge in certain directions, rather than hardlining. This is a Kickstarter! Just read the dev forum posts, and you'll see that player flexibility is foremost on their minds, because game industry devs with years of business experience are very aware that there are different ideas of "fun." Everything is WIP. Holistic game mechanics are like spiderwebs--you can't just pull out a thread for study without taking into consideration so many counterbalancing things. Including player behavior.

 

Players do not have the capability to see the high-level top-down view of development (and while I really appreciate that Obsidian is sharing so much with us, part of me thinks it's actually dangerous for Obsidian to do so when the initial reactions almost always magnify things out of context, even if said context hasn't been fleshed out yet; case in point, cooldowns).

 

Anyway. In BG (both), I think it was essentially impossible to rest in cities because the guards would interrupt you for vagrancy. (Maybe this didn't apply to Athkatla slums district, but I don't remember now.) So I can see forced policed in cities within socially acceptable limits, and then free resting with variable risk (maybe tied to modes) between wilderness and dungeon areas. Among other things.

 

You're saying....you're saying I'm not a developer of games?!?! How DARE YOU SIR.

 

I don't think it's railroading, but eh... I thought this might be an interesting idea. I also never understood what the point of taverns were in BG2. I could rest anywhere I liked and never really saw much point in paying for a tavern. It seemed like it was broken somehow. The not being able to rest anywhere in the city, and it being a little more dangerous to rest outside of the city, makes an inn a prime spot for resting and paying to rest there. Otherwise, just don't implement inns. Nobody will use them.

 

I just think that some of these things were broken in BG2 and could be tweaked. I actually liked that BG1 had lots of random encounters ifyou rest outside.

Edited December 6, 2012 by Hormalakh

[Lord of Lost Socks]

So to fix rest abusing, you solve it by forcing the rest abusers to save before resting and reloading if ambushed over and over again. Not exactly a solution.

[Hormalakh]

So to fix rest abusing, you solve it by forcing the rest abusers to save before resting and reloading if ambushed over and over again. Not exactly a solution.

 

Interesting...obviously didn't think about it this way. Forced random encounters for all! You get a random encounter! You get a random encounter! YOU get a random encounter! Everyone gets a random encounter! YAY.

 

Seriously, though, good point.

[Lord of Lost Socks]

I know the mentality, because I used to have it. Nowadays, I do try and avoid rest abusing. But those who do it, will just save and reload until the desired outcome with all percentage based events.

[Hormalakh]

Yeah I used to play the games -that allowed me to do so- that way too. A lot of my ideas come down to me thinking "what would I have liked to be an option to stop me from playing degeneratively in the first place?" Obviously, everyone has different ways to gaming the system

[Dream]

Now, I would say that the point is to play well enough to only lose minimal health, but that's another point...

 

How is that different than any other game ever though?

 

My issue with the answer he gave was when he said they did this to avoid "healing battery" characters. Out of all the complaints I've read on this forum since it opened (and there have certainly been a lot); I don't really remember anyone complaining about being forced to have a healer in their group and wanted instead to have 6 DPS characters (granted I didn't read every thread, so my bad if someone did bring it up). If anything this lowers the strategic decision making that goes into the game since before you had to have a balanced party, but now you can just throw any 6 characters together and they'll do fine since everyone regenerates their own stamina.

 

This kind of mentality made sense in GW2 where they wanted to avoid forcing people to play the healer, but in a single player game with multiple characters? I don't really see the issue there.

[Inertia]

I think the stamina regeneration mech is mainly for when you're out of combat so you can move on faster instead of waiting on cds/resting where as in the old ie games you'd sit there for a couple mins casting 10x cure minor wounds to get yourself to full health assuming you didn't just rest after every fight. i think healing within the fight will still be viable.

[Sacred_Path]

I'd like a system that resembles a good DM - and that comes down to saying, "you can't rest at this time".

It doesn't matter where you are, you just aren't tired enough again to sink into that magical fix-me-up sleep. I'm not sure about the specifics, such as game time or real time determining when you can rest and when not, but restricting resting in certain areas probably won't be enough. That would only encourage/ enfore backtracking.

 

And this is slightly off topic, but if resting really is about the only way we have to get back health, make it sensible. Such as having medical skills that are applied when you're resting. Otherwise it's just really really cheesy (no, even a high level mage can't heal you, but simply snoring for 30 hours will invigorate you).

[Hormalakh]

I think the stamina regeneration mech is mainly for when you're out of combat so you can move on faster instead of waiting on cds/resting where as in the old ie games you'd sit there for a couple mins casting 10x cure minor wounds to get yourself to full health assuming you didn't just rest after every fight. i think healing within the fight will still be viable.

No. It seems from what Josh is saying and, obviously this can all change, (see my signature) but the goal is to have renewable stamina during fights, but your health stays fairly static (except for when you get hit). Stamina would be "healable" from other party members (e.g. paladin yelling "Suck it up and deal with it!") and from your own character (barbarian's rage increases stamina for example). But getting hit takes away both stamina and health.

 

I actually really like this new game mechanic because it's so much more dynamic and tactically deep. There is much more you have control over and the decisions to be made are at least one level deeper than with a single "health bar." In terms of it being fair and balanced, that can be tweaked with player input (see my signature...).

[Gumbercules]

To prevent save-scumming rest ambushes, could they maybe make it so that the game saves the outcome of the die roll and applies it to all future reloads if you rest in that area unless you either:

 

1) Get wiped out fighting off the ambush

 

or

 

2) Defeat the attackers.

 

At that point you are free to reload that particular save and get a new die roll, at which point the process repeats itself.

[Hormalakh]

^ Yeah someone talked about that in another thread - basing the idea off XCOM's saved random number. It's one way to do it... Although, at this point after reading what Sawyer's said about High-level design, I don't think that either of these ideas can be said to be good to go or not. These are more low-level detail-oriented adjustments and will probably come in much later (during beta testing perhaps...)

[Dream]

To prevent save-scumming rest ambushes, could they maybe make it so that the game saves the outcome of the die roll and applies it to all future reloads if you rest in that area unless you either:

 

1) Get wiped out fighting off the ambush

 

or

 

2) Defeat the attackers.

 

At that point you are free to reload that particular save and get a new die roll, at which point the process repeats itself.

 

People save scum for a reason. If you don't want players to do it then design a system that doesn't require it. If you simply make it impossible without changing the underlying mechanics then you just end up pissing off your players.

[Lephys]

People save scum for a reason. If you don't want players to do it then design a system that doesn't require it. If you simply make it impossible without changing the underlying mechanics then you just end up pissing off your players.

 

A system that doesn't require it? What system requires it?

[Dream]

People save scum for a reason. If you don't want players to do it then design a system that doesn't require it. If you simply make it impossible without changing the underlying mechanics then you just end up pissing off your players.

 

A system that doesn't require it? What system requires it?

 

Any system that relies on RNG. You can say it doesn't require it, but the fact that so many people play that way is evidence to the contrary. Rolling the dice and crossing your fingers is just not fun for a large percentage of people.

[Lephys]

Any system that relies on RNG. You can say it doesn't require it, but the fact that so many people play that way is evidence to the contrary. Rolling the dice and crossing your fingers is just not fun for a large percentage of people.

 

I was only asking. And, while I will admit that the misuse of RNG systems can require it, the sheer existence of a chance roll doesn't require it. That would be saying that a tavern game of dice REQUIRES you to save-scum. Which is absurd, of course, because the game is quite literally a game of chance.

[Dream]

Any system that relies on RNG. You can say it doesn't require it, but the fact that so many people play that way is evidence to the contrary. Rolling the dice and crossing your fingers is just not fun for a large percentage of people.

 

I was only asking. And, while I will admit that the misuse of RNG systems can require it, the sheer existence of a chance roll doesn't require it. That would be saying that a tavern game of dice REQUIRES you to save-scum. Which is absurd, of course, because the game is quite literally a game of chance.

 

Optional minigames are one thing (although even then pretty much everyone I know, including me, save scummed rather hard on the Witcher dice game), but RNG within a base game mechanic? Yea, people are going to save scum and simply preventing them from doing it is not a solution.

Edited December 8, 2012 by Dream

[Gumbercules]

Yea, people are going to save scum and simply preventing them from doing it is not a solution.

 

Good point. So is the answer then to minimize randomness and risk, or to just ignore people who save scum and let them play a single player game however they want?

 

What about keeping the idea I proposed on the previous page, but making it an option that you check or uncheck the same as any other optional setting? There's a difference between saying, "Ok, I'm not going to abuse saves. I'll take whatever the game throws at me instead of reloading," and then letting the game enforce that automatically versus having to do it yourself and being faced with temptation every time.