Expiring Potions (to discourage excessive resting and potion hoarding)

[moridin84]

 

To you.

For me it adds immersion. Games have you do far more tedious and stupd s*** (like mindless grinding) for worse reasons.

Well. Agree to disagree I guess. 

 

So if you were going on a field trip in a dangerous area, you'd insist that no one in your team knows first aid, becuae oyu dont' liek peopel who know first aid?

 

Frankly I'd say you were being stupid. I hardly consider it "forcing" to punish a player for obvious stupidity.

Would you complain that FPS's game force you to carry ammo with you?

But I don't like guns, I want ot paly with my fists! I don't want to be gimped compared to other players because of that!

 

To want to replace an entire class/function with a EQUALLY EFFECTIVE potion.....Sorry, but to me that just sounds...redicolous.

 

I guess you could go with a "no healer party", but a party like that would need regeneration potions, it would have to be far more carefull in combat and would probably have to return to town more often..but still doable. Harder, but hardly unexpected.

 

I don't want to replace a healer with a potion. I would like to be able to take an extra damage dealer instead of a healer. And in most games I could. And in this game I probably could too. The problem is that I don't have a good way of healing up my character out of combat.

 

Well anyway, it would be nice. Probably off-topic here though. 

 

 

 

Whoa whoa whoa... the explanation I gave was absurd, but "Most RPGs have healers, and there's a obviously a good reason for it, otherwise, you know, why?" is a perfectly logical, well-reasoned explanation?

 

Enlighten me, please? Could I trouble you for some details, there?

I didn't say your explanation was absurd. It's your opinion that is absurd. 

 

You are probably going to be offended by this but... if you cannot see why people would consider your opinion (this particular one I mean) to be absurd then I don't think anyone could explain it to you. 

Edited September 21, 2013 by moridin84

[TrashMan]

 

it sounds like you have never played JA2 at all, they had dungeons of a sort, and you could clear them out without returning to town, in fact there was less downtime than in BG in a dungeon with all of the resting you had to do.  the secret is that the whole dungeon was balanced against the whole health bars of the team, not so much balancing a fight against the health bars, and the number of fights on the number of healing spells you should have.  you could even finish a fight with no damage done against equal level opponents, as positioning, timing, and use of resources was more important than most rpgs.  you could spray the enemy with lead to boost the chances of a hit, which decreases their chances of hitting you, but spending that much ammo means that later in the game, or maybe even in the dungeon you will have less resources and have a harder time, while you could go the marksmanship route and be efficient with your ammo, but as that means lower dps you need to worry more about defense and sticking to cover, you could also try the whole sneaking thing and get close enough for some stealth kills so as to focus on a few at a time, the thing is you had loads of tactical options so you could adapt as the situation demands if something does go quite right early on in the dungeon, in most rpgs you have to return to town and memorize different spells.

 

in JA2 you could decide not to have any healing at all, and meet with the same success as BG when not having any healer classes.  now if you gave some rudimentary first aid to someone and lacked a dedicated healer, you could do better than in BG with one of the lesser healers.  now if you went with a dedicated healer in both then you'd have roughly the same success in both.  the reason for this greater amount of options is the increased importance of stabilization and basic first aid, without removing the value of dedicated healers, thus it allows more options for your party.

 

as for just ripping JA2 healing out of JA2 and throwing it into BG, or ripping PoE healing potions out and putting it into BG, it does seem off, but on the other hand i think both are better potion wise than the current BG potion system, though i am not sure which would be better in BG.  in either case though learning from them and making a new system would be preferable.

 

 

Ahh...yes. Positioning mattered since many maps were very open. Use of cover, flanking, diversions. Things like smoke grenades...mines...blowing up walls - all of those changed tactics greatly.

 

It's strange when you think about it - the game WAS difficult. Difficult because your mercs were very fragile. A single sniper headshot or close range burts from a assault rifle could kill , even with good armor.

Your MERCS weren't tanks with tons of HP that could just soak up damage. It was so refreshing.

[jamoecw]

 

 

So if you were going on a field trip in a dangerous area, you'd insist that no one in your team knows first aid, becuae oyu dont' liek peopel who know first aid?

 

Frankly I'd say you were being stupid. I hardly consider it "forcing" to punish a player for obvious stupidity.

Would you complain that FPS's game force you to carry ammo with you?

But I don't like guns, I want ot paly with my fists! I don't want to be gimped compared to other players because of that!

 

To want to replace an entire class/function with a EQUALLY EFFECTIVE potion.....Sorry, but to me that just sounds...redicolous.

 

I guess you could go with a "no healer party", but a party like that would need regeneration potions, it would have to be far more carefull in combat and would probably have to return to town more often..but still doable. Harder, but hardly unexpected.

 

I don't want to replace a healer with a potion. I would like to be able to take an extra damage dealer instead of a healer. And in most games I could. And in this game I probably could too. The problem is that I don't have a good way of healing up my character out of combat.

 

Well anyway, it would be nice. Probably off-topic here though. 

that was what was nice about JA2, giving someone some rudimentary skills could suffice for the mid combat healing and let him focus on doing damage.  a dedicated healer was better for out of combat healing, but it wasn't needed to the same degree as in BG.  PoE's potions work in this regard as well, as the damage they deal ends up healing them, when they want it (unlike vampirism), and slower than you took damage so as to prevent the potion spam.

 

existing BG style potion/healer system has a dedicated healer easily outpacing the benefits of potions (due to rarity and cost, both gold and time usage) both in battle and outside of combat.  while at the same time the potions are superior in battle to the bastard healing classes, yet inferior out of battle (due to rarity and gold cost).  given that extra damage dealers kill the enemies faster, you take less damage in battle, and thus should need less healing in battle, but as you said you still need out of combat healing, the BG system is backwards to both JA2 and PoE.

[TrashMan]

Thinking back it astounds me how easily killed your Mercs were, yet how you could go on and clear an entire town without resting if you played good.

 

I guess the whole point was that is was based on damage avoidance and actual sane tactics (attack at night, diversion, drawing out enemies, quitely taking them out) and alerting the whole sector could be damn deadly because EVERYONE on the map would be alarted (but..if you sneaked around and placed some traps/mines and remote detonated explosives in strategic places..setting off the alarms could be very fun..nothing like mining the doors of enemy barracks.)

 

I long wanted a fantasy RPG taht can capture some of that experience.

[Lephys]

In the party-based system, things are different because that extra health needs a destination, and getting it wrong matters. Even if we discount status bonuses and non-healing healer powers, you still have to choose whether to heal the fighter at half health or the archer at quarter health. It's a tactical choice.

I actually already agreed with that exact situation. The ability to restore a burst of health is quite the tactical ability. In the grand scheme of things, it's very much like a time-altering block ("Ha-HAH! That crossbow bolt's effects on this person suddenly NEVER HAPPENED!").

 

However, that in absolutely no way changes the fact that an entire role dedicated to constantly granting people bursts of undamage is not necessary, except as a balance to the design of the expectation for characters to NEED more health than they actually possess.

 

No one's against the sheer ability to heal. It's the role which is a bit unnecessary. As "It's fun and tactically different to be able to heal" is already covered by the sheer ability, without "this is what you do all the time, and what your class progression is completely centered around" being thrown into the mix.

 

There is no fundamental difference between the relationship of potions to the character in the single-player Diablo-esque scenario and the relationship between the healer ROLE and the other characters in the healer-class RPG scenario.

 

Either the desire to be a health battery demands inadequate health pools, or inadequate health pools demand a health battery. If you remove either one, the other becomes blatantly arbitrary and imbalancing.

 

Also, I'd just like to emphasize that I'm simply making a point here. Nothing more. There are games without dedicated healers, and all's well, so obviously they aren't needed. That isn't to say I'm just trying to make a big deal out of this, and I don't play games with dedicated healers. All that aside, they're either necessary, or they aren't. And they aren't. Not without being arbitrarily MADE to be necessary.

 

Honestly, I just wish that, at the very least, they were given a better offensive capability-to-healing ratio. The problem you run into is either:

 

A) They're a weak, obvious target, so the enemies focus fire them and take them out, leaving the rest of your party screwed because the game's design made sure it fabricated a need for a dedicated healer (all because you lost a single party member), OR

 

B) The enemies simply focus fire the people your healer is trying to keep not-dead, basically burst-killing them, leaving your weak, lack-of-offensive-capability healer to pointlessly toss pebbles at the enemy.

 

Obviously those things could happen to varying degrees, but I had to use slight extremes for the factors at play to actually be evident.

[jamoecw]

 

In the party-based system, things are different because that extra health needs a destination, and getting it wrong matters. Even if we discount status bonuses and non-healing healer powers, you still have to choose whether to heal the fighter at half health or the archer at quarter health. It's a tactical choice.

I actually already agreed with that exact situation. The ability to restore a burst of health is quite the tactical ability. In the grand scheme of things, it's very much like a time-altering block ("Ha-HAH! That crossbow bolt's effects on this person suddenly NEVER HAPPENED!").

 

However, that in absolutely no way changes the fact that an entire role dedicated to constantly granting people bursts of undamage is not necessary, except as a balance to the design of the expectation for characters to NEED more health than they actually possess.

 

No one's against the sheer ability to heal. It's the role which is a bit unnecessary. As "It's fun and tactically different to be able to heal" is already covered by the sheer ability, without "this is what you do all the time, and what your class progression is completely centered around" being thrown into the mix.

 

There is no fundamental difference between the relationship of potions to the character in the single-player Diablo-esque scenario and the relationship between the healer ROLE and the other characters in the healer-class RPG scenario.

 

Either the desire to be a health battery demands inadequate health pools, or inadequate health pools demand a health battery. If you remove either one, the other becomes blatantly arbitrary and imbalancing.

 

Also, I'd just like to emphasize that I'm simply making a point here. Nothing more. There are games without dedicated healers, and all's well, so obviously they aren't needed. That isn't to say I'm just trying to make a big deal out of this, and I don't play games with dedicated healers. All that aside, they're either necessary, or they aren't. And they aren't. Not without being arbitrarily MADE to be necessary.

 

Honestly, I just wish that, at the very least, they were given a better offensive capability-to-healing ratio. The problem you run into is either:

 

A) They're a weak, obvious target, so the enemies focus fire them and take them out, leaving the rest of your party screwed because the game's design made sure it fabricated a need for a dedicated healer (all because you lost a single party member), OR

 

B) The enemies simply focus fire the people your healer is trying to keep not-dead, basically burst-killing them, leaving your weak, lack-of-offensive-capability healer to pointlessly toss pebbles at the enemy.

 

Obviously those things could happen to varying degrees, but I had to use slight extremes for the factors at play to actually be evident.

 

PoE was single player, and the role of a healer is to prevent losing, not to win, thus someone who can't lose without someone to bring about a win is pointless.  in JA2 they did have dedicated healers (some mercs were no good at anything but healing), thus dedicated healing classes are entirely possible with the JA2 method, the difference is the trade off in tactical power vs. strategic power.

 

in JA2 they made it possible to do what you needed to do without a healer, but a bastard healer could suffice to boost tactical capability by giving a boost of health in combat to someone who needed it.  yet during rest a dedicated healer could get a party on its feet faster, and mitigate long term debuffs (that third class you were looking for is the debuffer, also known and the anti healer since it helps cause damage without doing damage).  so a dedicated healer in BG could be used to boost a health bar of a teammate, and could be used to fix a few debuffs, after battle they boosted health recovery rate.  bastard healers couldn't perform in battle as well as a healer, even if your entire team was a bastard healer rotating so that you were only down 1 man while healing (like having a dedicated healer), and ensuring some one was always casting (to counter the less number of spells they had), and they would be performing fairly close to full fighters when fighting, so no loss there, they wouldn't be healing at the same rate as the dedicated healer.  they should have enough spells to counter any debuffs, and overall their health point regen increase for the party while resting would be similar.  so overall the tactical advantage went to the dedicated healer in the BG style method vs. the bastard healers, while they had the same strategic level ability, overall you were weaker in combat with bastard healers than with a dedicated healer.

 

in JA2 a party full of bastard healers would have better response time and thus reduce the health loss during a fight, which is an opposite net effect from BG style bastard healers, while a dedicated healer is better for resting than the bastard healers, while in BG they are the same.  so in BG there is no give and take when picking between bastard healers instead of a dedicated healer, instead it is always inferior, thus the choice is more binary in BG (healing in party = at least one dedicated healer).

 

diablo 2 had a healer class, but that class was outshone by health pots, which was what combat was balanced around, so the healing aspect of that class became worthless.

 

healing classes that sacrifice in order to heal, but fails to match the existing cost benefit worth of the balanced method of healing is too weak to be worth anything, while being too strong will make the other classes worthless as well.  ultimately sitting back and undoing damage shouldn't be the issue, as it is a play style that some find fun.

[Dawn Quixotic]

 

I find carry weight restriction the best and only thing that can prevent hoarding.  For PE, the notion that only a portion of your inventory will be accessible during combat is a way to allow for this, while also letting us indulge in our "pick up all the things" RPG habbits.

 

A lot will depend on what the math on the stash overload penalties end up being, but I applaud the notion that we don't have to fully give up our packrat tendencies to enjoy the tactical depth that combat consumable scarcity provides.

 

 

My solution to inventory space in BG2 was to sell all the non-healing potions. >.<

 

 

 

I think the original post's idea is problematic because it gives players something to worry about. Hoarders are already worried about "using something they need later". Hoarding isn't to be "discouraged" , using is to be "encouraged".

You need to put an element in the game to let those players know that, "hey, it's okay to use this".

I don't think it would need to be complex mechanics or anything. Maybe even something like a screen-loading eyecatcher type tip.

 

 

[TrashMan]

I kinda don't think that "don't hoard your potions" message will have any effect.

 

Conditioning is hard to break.