Resting doesn't work, ditch it

[Frenetic Pony]

Resting just doesn't work, and you keep going further and further down the rabbit hole trying to "solve" it and it just keeps getting more complex without ever resolving anything.

 

I'll give an example: Respawning enemies, well then what's the point of resting to begin with? Congratulations, all your victories now count for nothing, and the world has gone back in time to the point where you've never conquered anything.

 

Randomly spawned attacks: Annoying at most, and you can just rest again and again until you're full healed, which means it just takes longer to achieve the same outcome.

 

Resource based resting: Lore problems galore! Last I looked I didn't need almost any "resources" to fall asleep, you can sleep on a rock. Nor do sleeping bags or tents or whatever wear out after use. And if you're talking about rations, then you're not actually "resting" now are you?

 

Area based resting: Did I mention people can generally "rest" anywhere? Unless you're in the middle of a volcano it doesn't make any sense lore wise. And for gameplay, now you have to place "rest" areas by hand everywhere and test them for balance everywhere, or force players to just backtrack the entire way out of a dungeon each and every time they want to heal. It doesn't prevent "abuse" of resting, it just makes it more annoying without giving any alternative to it that would be better.

 

Resting altogether: "You slept for eight hours in the middle of a dungeon while in mortal danger, yay!" Or backtracked, or etc. See the problem? Resting is a silly notion altogether carried over from how D&D is played around a table, not based on video games whatsoever. Video games are different, and need something different to work. Why not have... bandages and healing? There we are, a practical resource you can use up, is valuable, doesn't have any lore consequences, and just works better.

 

Or something else for that matter? Anything else. There's been pages and pages spend discussin how to restrict "resting" already. A thing that was never intended for how video games work to begin with; a relic from pen and paper D&D being carried over despite so much of the rest of pen and paper D&D being ditched already for systems designed around how video games and computers work. It would be best, it seems to me, to ditch this last notion as well, and bring in something that actually works better altogether for how Infinity Engine like RPGs are designed.

[Morgulon the Wise]

I think it is a "relic" from the real world. And if a good nap or a plaster can let you get rid of your wounds I'd gladly take the nap. Just waiting for a moment until all my spells and health have refilled won't do it for me.

So let us revolve in our trial of "solving". We at least have (mostly) the aim to be constructive.

 

It would be best, it seems to me, to ditch this last notion as well, and bring in something that actually works better altogether for how Infinity Engine like RPGs are designed.

 

It seems that you can analyze and summarize the problems we had so far (thats good) but please give us some approach for solving that "something" you want to bring in.

[Nonek]

In general i'm against features being jettisoned for the simple sake of streamlining and ease of use, it certainly hasn't produced better games over the past few years, so i'd have to disagree Pony.

 

I think resting could be a brilliant mechanic if it's rationed and balanced, say by the amount of water, firewood or vittles you are carrying. Even in the most crowded of dungeons one can imagine that there are entire abandoned wings that the party can barricade, defend and use for recuperation. Dungeons after all do not have to be linear corridors, with combat placed every few feet, personally i'm hoping for big sprawling maps where one can easily get lost in the darkness and interesting little features abound around every other corner.

 

I'll agree that they haven't worked in the Infinity engine games, but in my own opinion that's because not enough time and detail was spent implementing them, and wringing every last bit of potential out of them. And there is a massive amount of potential there, so many ideas and great roleplaying features, as we've shown in many other threads.

[Sensuki]

Resting doesn't work because we have totally played the game.

 

If I was gonna create a thread like this I'd at least wait until I'd seen the Rezzed Gameplay footage or played the beta

[Lephys]

The problem with resting is its typical jammed-into-the-game implementation, as it is an abstraction of SO many things at once.

 

I don't think any lore is actually suggesting that you're quite literally just sleeping off sword wounds and poison and infection. Added to the problem is the separation of "resting" and "healing." If you use a bandage/poultice on someone, what that literally does is stop their wound/injury from getting worse, and bolster their ability to passively heal it over time. It does not inject them with hitpoints, or close up their wound.

 

That being said, there are OODLES of factors that would prevent a group from making the decision to rest under certain circumstances. It's not that you literally can't fall asleep (again, sleep isn't the issue when it comes to anything other than, possibly, replenishing your spells -- mental prepwork and mental fatigue elimination, basically...). It's that you don't have the means of properly treating a given wound, injury, or condition. Which means that that particular wound/injury/condition is only going to worsen with the passage of time. You're not going to say "Hey, Steve's leg is cut completely open, and infected! 8D! We've stopped the bleeding, but in 12 hours, it's pretty much going to need amputation. LET'S SLEEP FOR 8 HOURS! 8D!"

 

All THAT being said, we don't really need to play Medieval Fantasy Hospital Sim 2013 every time someone gets a cut or a scratch. Which is why all of that is abstracted into "resting." When you "rest," you literally stop your forward progress, and focus on recouperation and taking care of your party's well-being in a variety of ways. I mean, you also make a fire, surely, and eat food, and probably go poop somewhere, and I'm sure people keep watch (I doubt everyone just passes out without a care in the world, in the middle of a wild-animal-ridden forest... that would be a pretty terrible decision). But, again, you don't really NEED to specifically deal with each of those individual things every single time. Especially with how common the need to rest is in such games, due to other abstractions, etc.

 

And, even with just mental fatigue and such, and re-memorizing/preparing spells, that's all an abstraction of how much your mind can handle in a given span of time. And you can't just be awake for 30 minutes, then sleep for 8 hours. Then wake up again for 30 minutes, then sleep for 8 hours. At some point, you are literally going to be unable to fall asleep, and you're definitely going to start suffering from too much sleep (yes, that's actually bad for you... all things in moderation, ).

 

So, again, in the interest of lets-not-deal-with-7,000-individual-factors-every-5-seconds, the abstraction is a literal temporal sleep limitation.

 

So, no, I really don't see a problem with resting, itself, as it represents perfectly legitimate things that, if unrepresented, detract from the game's depth and vibrance. The problem is HOW it represents them. And the other problem, honestly, is people's tendency to frown at limitations for seemingly no reason. "This limitation seems to be poorly implemented, so OBVIOUSLY WE SHOULD JUST NOT LIMIT ANYTHING!" No. That's a terrible conclusion.

 

Resting can be balanced and implemented just as well as ANY other limitation-management system. If you feel it hasn't yet been implemented well at all, then why not join in on the effort to make it better? It's not as if game developers have already attempted every possible implementation of resting there is. Not to mention that how well a given implementation works depends heavily upon the specifics of oodles of other factors that are all different in each separate game's design.

[Micamo]

In general i'm against features being jettisoned for the simple sake of streamlining and ease of use, it certainly hasn't produced better games over the past few years, so i'd have to disagree Pony.

 

I think resting could be a brilliant mechanic if it's rationed and balanced, say by the amount of water, firewood or vittles you are carrying. Even in the most crowded of dungeons one can imagine that there are entire abandoned wings that the party can barricade, defend and use for recuperation. Dungeons after all do not have to be linear corridors, with combat placed every few feet, personally i'm hoping for big sprawling maps where one can easily get lost in the darkness and interesting little features abound around every other corner.

And features added for the sake of features hasn't been working out either. There's brilliance in simplicity: If you have to keep adding more and more layers of simulation to make a mechanic work, then maybe you're better off just dumping that mechanic.

[Gumbercules]

Maybe it could be done away with and replaced with a different mechanic, but I kind of like the combination of limited rest areas + limited uses of resting (either only 1 rest per given time period or 1 rest per rest area within a certain amount of time). It's fairly simple, prevents rest abuse, allows the devs to balance each dungeon with a certain amount of rests assumed, and can be explained away fairly easily in the lore. Watch:

 

• The party wants to pick the most secluded and defensible area within a dungeon to rest in without attracting the attention of enemies
• However, even such a place will eventually be discovered by enemies if you stay there for too long or keep going back to it
• Furthermore, after a certain point more sleep + bandages just isn't going to help any further
• Therefore, you can only rest a limited amount (1?) of times in a limited amount (1?) of places per dungeon.

[Lephys]

And features added for the sake of features hasn't been working out either. There's brilliance in simplicity: If you have to keep adding more and more layers of simulation to make a mechanic work, then maybe you're better off just dumping that mechanic.

The solution is simple, then: Add features for the sake of quality and depth, rather than for the sheer sake of adding features (which is pretty much just "for no reason at all."). So, add features for an actual reason. Or, to put it with the title of this topic: "Resting isn't working; ditch the flaws with it."

 

I mean, if you're suggesting that nothing can actually be problematic because of a lack of something, and that the necessity to add to a system's complexity to make it work better is always a purely negative indicator, then we should just get rid of anything that doesn't work like we want it to.

 

"Remember that one dialogue with that guy, and it seemed like you should've been able to at least produce 2 different outcomes, if not more, but the game prevented your character from even being able to ATTEMPT to change the outcome? Yeah, I think that could've been better, so we should probably DITCH DIALOGUE!". Silly, no? Here's another one... "Man, I keep finding all these different weapons, but it turns out they all actually just do the same thing. But I don't know that until after checking each and every new one I find that seems different. We could actually implement functional differences/effectiveness factors for different weapon types, or we could GIVE UP ON THE WEAPON SYSTEM AND JUST HAVE A SINGLE WEAPON CALLED 'SWORD' IN THE ENTIRE GAME!"

 

Yeah, that doesn't work too well. I'm thinking there's a different variable that actually makes something unnecessarily complex, beyond "well, we're having to add layers to this to make it work."

 

 

Also, regarding actually trying to fix the resting implementation, I genuinely believe that simply making resting less effective in certain areas and more effective in others would work well, in some form or fashion.

 

Look at the Fellowship's trek through the Mines of Moria in the Lord of the Rings. You wouldn't willingly decide to have everyone sleep for a normal sleep cycle in a place like that. You might say "Okay, this doesn't look like an extremely stupid spot to maybe take an hour for a breather and bandage a few people up a bit, maybe get some water, rest our muscles." Then you'd be on your way to get the hell out of there. Whereas, somewhere out in the open wilderness, you might actually be able to stop for the night and perform more lengthy wound-dressings and mix up (and scout for and find) herbs and such.

 

All of that can be abstracted, though. But it makes perfect sense. I don't get why the topic of limited resting keeps sparking "I don't understand what would possibly keep your entire party from collapsing in a heap, right where you stand, in the dungeon of your enemy's castle. Why would where you are matter?" comments, and "why couldn't you just sleep for 97 hours in a row if you wanted to?" comments.

 

I dunno, what's preventing you from making your characters dive into pits of lava, or apply bandages to themselves when they have no wounds? There's no railing on a lava pit, and there's no force stopping bandages from being applied to wound-less skin.

Edited June 17, 2013 by Lephys

[Micamo]

Not what I was talking about at all. Game mechanics are tools. When designing a game the proper way, you start with an experience you want the player to have, then you use art, music, dialogue, and mechanics to find some way to evoke that experience. Do you want to make a game scary? Then you use mechanics that evoke horror the same way you use cramped environments, spooky sounds, and blood-splattered textures. Per-rest mechanics worked in Dark Souls because they were the solution to a complex set of ludic and thematic problems with the game's predecessor, Demon's Souls.

 

The problem with rest mechanics in P:E is that they aren't being included as the solution to a design problem, they're being included for the sole reason that it's what the IE games (and by extension D&D) did. It's literally backwards game design, trying to suit the task to fit the tool rather than the tool to fit the task. To use an analogy, trying to make rest mechanics work in P:E is like trying to build a house using Chewing Gum, Battery Acid, and Sawdust. You can come up with whatever crazy ideas you like, but it's never going to be as good as something made with the proper tools.

 

EDIT: Now that I think about it, Extra Credits recently did a video on similar problems in Bioshock Infinite.

Edited June 17, 2013 by Micamo

[Sensuki]

I literally can't believe some of the stuff I read on this forum. 

No resting in the game means that you have to have regenerating health and cooldowns. Those are _definitely_ not things I, or many of the other people who want an old school experience want to see in this game.

 

There shouldn't be too much of an issue with limited resting depending on how it is implemented. I guess you can't completely stop people wandering back to a rest site every time after a few fights, but who cares really.

 

I'd prefer to play the game or at least see it being played before I decide whether the rest system needs any changes.

[Frenetic Pony]

In general i'm against features being jettisoned for the simple sake of streamlining and ease of use, it certainly hasn't produced better games over the past few years, so i'd have to disagree Pony.

 

I think resting could be a brilliant mechanic if it's rationed and balanced, say by the amount of water, firewood or vittles you are carrying. Even in the most crowded of dungeons one can imagine that there are entire abandoned wings that the party can barricade, defend and use for recuperation. Dungeons after all do not have to be linear corridors, with combat placed every few feet, personally i'm hoping for big sprawling maps where one can easily get lost in the darkness and interesting little features abound around every other corner.

 

I'll agree that they haven't worked in the Infinity engine games, but in my own opinion that's because not enough time and detail was spent implementing them, and wringing every last bit of potential out of them. And there is a massive amount of potential there, so many ideas and great roleplaying features, as we've shown in many other threads.

 

I'm not really suggesting "streamlining" at all, but questioning how it actually impacts the game. If you just change "wood, water, whatever" to "bandages" in terms of words, it's the same exact thing in terms of actual game mechanics, but you don't have to pretend you've just slept for eight hours or are making camp inside the middle of a dungeon.

 

Again, are you going to ask people to get all this stuff in the middle of a dungeon? "A cheery campfire in the middle of the pits of hell!" Seems rather silly, or restriction on where you sleep? Again, that just makes people backtrack all the way to where they can rest, and then backtrack all the way back to where they were, for no real difference in the end except annoying people.

 

This, to me, seems to be an argument that leads down to what's already been discussed to death in several threads with no good solution ever coming of it. "Resting will work if we just think of something!" But it's been months and thread after thread, and no ones thought of something yet. I'm suggesting the opposite of going down that route, that maybe it's past time to give up the notion and think of something else.

Edited June 17, 2013 by Frenetic Pony

[Micamo]

I literally can't believe some of the stuff I read on this forum. 

 

No resting in the game means that you have to have regenerating health and cooldowns. Those are _definitely_ not things I, or many of the other people who want an old school experience want to see in this game.

That's like saying "No randomized loot drops means you have to have a real-money microtransaction store to buy weapon upgrades for your character."

[Gumbercules]

 

In general i'm against features being jettisoned for the simple sake of streamlining and ease of use, it certainly hasn't produced better games over the past few years, so i'd have to disagree Pony.

 

I think resting could be a brilliant mechanic if it's rationed and balanced, say by the amount of water, firewood or vittles you are carrying. Even in the most crowded of dungeons one can imagine that there are entire abandoned wings that the party can barricade, defend and use for recuperation. Dungeons after all do not have to be linear corridors, with combat placed every few feet, personally i'm hoping for big sprawling maps where one can easily get lost in the darkness and interesting little features abound around every other corner.

 

I'll agree that they haven't worked in the Infinity engine games, but in my own opinion that's because not enough time and detail was spent implementing them, and wringing every last bit of potential out of them. And there is a massive amount of potential there, so many ideas and great roleplaying features, as we've shown in many other threads.

 

I'm not really suggesting "streamlining" at all, but questioning how it actually impacts the game. If you just change "wood, water, whatever" to "bandages" in terms of words, it's the same exact thing in terms of actual game mechanics, but you don't have to pretend you've just slept for eight hours or are making camp inside the middle of a dungeon.

 

Again, are you going to ask people to get all this stuff in the middle of a dungeon? "A cheery campfire in the middle of the pits of hell!" Seems rather silly, or restriction on where you sleep? Again, that just makes people backtrack all the way to where they can rest, and then backtrack all the way back to where they were, for no real difference in the end except annoying people.

 

This, to me, seems to be an argument that leads down to what's already been discussed to death in several threads with no good solution ever coming of it. "Resting will work if we just think of something!" But it's been months and thread after thread, and no ones thought of something yet. I'm suggesting the opposite of going down that route, that maybe it's past time to give up the notion and think of something else.

 

 

I don't think you did a very good job of refuting his post, or mine for that matter. We've both provided solutions that have lore justifications and eliminate problems like excessive backtracking, so unless you can do a better job of picking apart our solutions I consider the problem solved.

 

There doesn't need to be a cheery campfire, there merely needs to be a comparatively safe spot. Even Sam and Frodo were able to find shelter in the middle of Mordor, so that's really all that's required as far as mood and scenery goes. You could be restricted to only using the safe spot once, after which point your party begins to make noise about moving on before you get discovered. That way forward momentum is preserved and backtracking is eliminated.

[curryinahurry]

Just to be clear; from my understanding, there will be 3 different types of resting in P:E (potentially).  There will be recuperative resting in Cities & Towns, & Camping; both of which will hopefully be modeled in the Darklands style; or some variant.  There may also be resting in dungeons.  The nature and purpose is yet to be determined.  I'm not necessarily for the latter, and if it is in the game, I would prefer it only be available under semi-logical conditions; after you've completely cleared a level or, as Nonek mentioned, if there are abandoned areas of dungeons, etc.

Edited June 17, 2013 by curryinahurry

[Sensuki]

 

I literally can't believe some of the stuff I read on this forum. 

 

No resting in the game means that you have to have regenerating health and cooldowns. Those are _definitely_ not things I, or many of the other people who want an old school experience want to see in this game.

That's like saying "No randomized loot drops means you have to have a real-money microtransaction store to buy weapon upgrades for your character."

 

 

Actually no it isn't because that doesn't make any sense.

 

If there is no rest then how do you regain abilities? Cooldowns.

 

There are multiple ways to regenerate health though: health pots, healing spells, NPCs healing you etc etc

 

But still these things are ARPG stuff, not Project Eternity stuff.

Edited June 17, 2013 by Sensuki

[Sedrefilos]

I said it before; I don't like resting at all 'cause, wherever it's been used, nothing good came out of it. Only frustration. The best mechanic, imo, was in DA:O; survive the encounter or game over. If one falls and rises after the encounter is over, they get injuries that they must treat or injuries stack up and give big penalties. Fast, strategic, meaningfull, well executed.

 

On the other hand, since the devs said they're going for rest mechnics (and I don't believe they're going to change their minds now), I'd like to see their new idea of doing it. After all, this health/stamina system might work better with resting.

Edited June 17, 2013 by Sedrefilos

[TrashMan]

Look at it from a realism point of view - you can't sleep on a whim. And the human body also REQUIRED 8 hours of sleep.

People that sleep less suffer from related problems even if they don't appear to at first.

 

So I'd make a difference between REST and SLEEP.

Rest is a short stop. Battles - especially in mele and with armor - and exhausting. Taking 15-30 minutes to rest a bit, mend wounds and clean equipment is something you should be able to do after every battle ...ideally. But just a short rest doesn't do much for you. It might stop the bleeding, but it won't heal it. It will help you recover some of hte stamina, but you will still have to sleep later.

 

Sleeping is something you should be only able to do once a day. It actually restores some HP and sleepign is something done in a camp or inn. You get far better care for your wounds, you eat and you rest.

 

Making a difference between the two might be prudent.

[TrashMan]

Not what I was talking about at all. Game mechanics are tools. When designing a game the proper way, you start with an experience you want the player to have, then you use art, music, dialogue, and mechanics to find some way to evoke that experience. Do you want to make a game scary? Then you use mechanics that evoke horror the same way you use cramped environments, spooky sounds, and blood-splattered textures. Per-rest mechanics worked in Dark Souls because they were the solution to a complex set of ludic and thematic problems with the game's predecessor, Demon's Souls.

 

The problem with rest mechanics in P:E is that they aren't being included as the solution to a design problem, they're being included for the sole reason that it's what the IE games (and by extension D&D) did. It's literally backwards game design, trying to suit the task to fit the tool rather than the tool to fit the task. To use an analogy, trying to make rest mechanics work in P:E is like trying to build a house using Chewing Gum, Battery Acid, and Sawdust. You can come up with whatever crazy ideas you like, but it's never going to be as good as something made with the proper tools.

 

EDIT: Now that I think about it, Extra Credits recently did a video on similar problems in Bioshock Infinite.

 

 

A lot of assumptions there.

 

yo uare assumign resting mechanic serves no real purpso and it's there as an afterthought.

You said it yoursef - you start with an experience. What if the DEV's WANT the experience of a true adventure - and that includes camps and carefull resource allocation?

 

Now you can say that having to find a safe spot or backtracking is just boring, but I can say the same for any mechanic I don't like, from any game on the planet.

[Micamo]

A lot of assumptions there.

 

yo uare assumign resting mechanic serves no real purpso and it's there as an afterthought.

You said it yoursef - you start with an experience. What if the DEV's WANT the experience of a true adventure - and that includes camps and carefull resource allocation?

 

Now you can say that having to find a safe spot or backtracking is just boring, but I can say the same for any mechanic I don't like, from any game on the planet.

You're absolutely right: We can't really determine which is which for sure without divining authorial intent. So either:

 

- They decided their design goals in advance and spent time playtesting various prototypes, coming to the conclusion that a rest mechanic (with modifications from the IE games) was the best solution.

 

- They defaulted to the rest mechanic (because that's what the IE games did) and never considered any potential alternatives.

 

I'm a cynic.

[Sensuki]

Here's your answer

 

 

 

I've talked with Tim about this for a while and here's the thing: camping out in the wilderness and setting watches and getting ambushed by jackasses has a great classic A/D&D feel to it, but it got pretty silly in games like IWD2. I'd like to build in reasonable mechanics that make you rest in the wilderness, but I don't want it to result in the sort of degenerate "rest after every fight" stuff we've faced in the past.

 

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3506352&userid=17931#post407551559

Edited June 17, 2013 by Sensuki

[Valci]

i'm sure this has been answered before but as i'm relatively new i'm gonna ask anyway... How is eliminating resting in any way realistic? After a certain amount of waking hours you literally NEED to sleep. Also... going long periods without rest leads to muscle fatigue, impaired judgement etc etc. which translates into the game into a limited amount of special attacks/spells a character can cast before exhausting his body/mind and needing to rest.

 

In regards to the connection between resting and healing yourself...if my recollection of BG is accurate i think the idea was that *healing spells were cast on rest*....meaning that your healers would auto-use the remaining healing spells on your NPC's so you didnt have to do it manually. The fewer unused healing spells you had the less your party healed on rest with minimal amounts of health gained if you had no healing spells left (which would be similar to what bandaging would accomplish). The idea was that the healing was still of a magical nature (even though you didnt have to manually do it) and not that sleep would miraculously heal your gaping wounds.

 

There is merit in the idea that resting should be restricted depending on the location (nr. of times or time spent resting - 8 hours in inn, 6 in wilderness, 3 in dungeon for example - etc) and that the health gained (strictly from resting) should also be proportional to the time spent resting and the conditions you would be resting in (warm blanket in inn as opposed to using a rock as a pillow for instance).... but to eliminate resting altogether is in no way realistic and imho the concept of resting should not be removed.

[Micamo]

i'm sure this has been answered before but as i'm relatively new i'm gonna ask anyway... How is eliminating resting in any way realistic? After a certain amount of waking hours you literally NEED to sleep. Also... going long periods without rest leads to muscle fatigue, impaired judgement etc etc. which translates into the game into a limited amount of special attacks/spells a character can cast before exhausting his body/mind and needing to rest.

 

...

 

There is merit in the idea that resting should be restricted depending on the location (nr. of times or time spent resting - 8 hours in inn, 6 in wilderness, 3 in dungeon for example - etc) and that the health gained (strictly from resting) should also be proportional to the time spent resting and the conditions you would be resting in (warm blanket in inn as opposed to using a rock as a pillow for instance).... but to eliminate resting altogether is in no way realistic and imho the concept of resting should not be removed.

It's not about simulating reality, it's about crafting an experience for the player. In Dark Souls (the only game I've ever played with a resting mechanic where I thought it actually worked) you get back your spellcasting and your estus flasks (used to regain health) at campfires. The game world is filled with a foreboding, lonely atmosphere where the fires are the only safe places, and the world is dying because the fires are going out. In this way Dark Souls uses its mechanics to create meaning: Without it the First Flame would be a pointless MacGuffin.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Most CRPGs nowadays don't have resting. Usually, recuperation and sleep have been replaced by cooldowns and medikits.

Coming from PnP D&D, it's no surprise I actually like resting in the form of precarious nappies in some unmapped wilderness.

Personally, I think sleep should be in, and that it should be linked to the memorization of spells or something similar. Also, we are talking hours here, in a way representing physical sleep. In PE, I'd imagine the dream part of sleeping is somehow weaved into the soul and into magical forces that are pivotal to the fantasy setting itself, so that means sleep is not only a good time for untimely encounters, but also for soul-searching and personal choices on behalf of your various characters. You know those wonderful drawings where we get to do a choice, almost FF-style in PE? Well, imagine those kinds of sepias popping up for certain characters while sleeping at irregular intervals!

 

I'd like to see sleep being confined to certain places - but still rather generously. Also, I have no problem with no-rest areas, as in NWN2, for instance.

And while my party sleeps I'd expect there be trouble at times, which very well may be deadly. think ToEE or even the good old SSR Dragonlance trilogy:

 

What I loved about the latter series was the danger of resting. My party may have slain a dragon or two, but we were barely standing and had no spells left. Then came the rest, which meant plenty of random encounters, that could be devastating for an already bushed gang. Even easier random encounters could turn into strategic challenges all of the sudden. I really hope Obsidian go all-in on the resting. It should be important, story-sprinkled and potentially dangerous and deadly. As for the annoyance bit, I understand there's a need for a balance to be struck. Each rest can't be pandemonium. However, each rest can't be kneeling every minute NWN2-style without consequences either.

Edited June 17, 2013 by IndiraLightfoot

[Valci]

 

It's not about simulating reality, it's about crafting an experience for the player. In Dark Souls (the only game I've ever played with a resting mechanic where I thought it actually worked) you get back your spellcasting and your estus flasks (used to regain health) at campfires. The game world is filled with a foreboding, lonely atmosphere where the fires are the only safe places, and the world is dying because the fires are going out. In this way Dark Souls uses its mechanics to create meaning: Without it the First Flame would be a pointless MacGuffin.

 

 

 

Imho simulating reality should be on the cards if the experience i get from the game is to be believable. For instance...in BG the fact that NPC's got fatigued when not resting for long periods for me added to the game experience and made it richer and more believable. I want to be able to immerse myself in the fantasy world and in order to do that there need to be at least a few mundane things that i need to do, in order to feel a part of a living, breathing world. Sleeping/resting is one of the easier to implement and it can double up as a crutch for mechanics.... whereas having you NPC's tell you they need to use the bathroom...not so much.

 

Needing "special places" to rest makes little to no sense for me.... i should be able to rest wherever... how much rest i get should depend on the conditions i sleep in like i said above but that's it.

[radioactivelullaby]

don't know if it has been mentioned already, but resting/sleeping could be be used as a tool for the story too, as they used it in baldur's gate.