Update #66: Double Whammy

[nikolokolus]

Any implementation of cooking food during rest? Taking the approach from Dragon's Crown, cooking and allocating food to the respective party members would give them temporary bonus depending on the type of food given. Some party members may prefer one kind of food over the other.

 

In what way is this even remotely "fun?" 

[Bli1942]

hoping for the big big update, but i really don't think it'll happen....

 

I think they are releasing it closer to end of November at Thanksgiving at least that's what the last update made it sound like

 

Bit harsh on the guy suggesting cooking, sounds fun to me lol

[Tamerlane]

Actual cooking suggestion: flat-out steal the cooking competition minigame from Suikoden 2.

 

Including the part where one of the potential judges was literally a wolf.

[Zoma]

 

Any implementation of cooking food during rest? Taking the approach from Dragon's Crown, cooking and allocating food to the respective party members would give them temporary bonus depending on the type of food given. Some party members may prefer one kind of food over the other.

 

In what way is this even remotely "fun?" 

 

Its not the exact cooking mini-game as Dragon's Crown. Minus all the button smashing. Just an optional food allocation system that could grant bonus.

 

Its more of the concept of food distribution during rest at camp similar to Expeditions: Conquistador, or eating food in Fallout New Vegas, which you receive temporary bonus (Or penalties) for a duration of time in the game depending on what kind of food was allocated to the party member.

 

I'm not referring to cooking mama style.

[Lephys]

I would love some kind of interval-based food system, as opposed to the "there's a bunch of food, but it's all really just an alternative to buffs/healing items." Maybe different stuff gives different passive, duration-based bonuses, and it's just a simple matter of slotting foodstuffs into some ration slots (kind of like ammo slots in the IE games), then clicking an "eat" button. Or, better yet, the party just eats when you rest. No "go into each person's inventory and use the item you want to eat, exactly when you want to eat it, every time, every 15 minutes." Simplified.

 

Obviously people eat, and maybe what you eat mildly affects you in various ways. Especially in a fantasy world, in which you can come up with all kinds of fruits and plants with edible properties. There's no need to represent the act of eating, itself, but that doesn't mean that any representation of eating has to be tedious or lame.

[rjshae]

I'm okay with the mundane details like food being abstracted in a system like this, along with minor repairs, finding water, making camp, and so forth. Such matters are better for use with a single-player game.

[Lephys]

Well, finding water, and making camp... you either do these things, or you don't. Without some extra system (like storms, or camp-discovery survival or something), there's no difference in the way in which you make camp. If you don't find water, you die of thirst. So, yeah, gain, without survival mechanics (which would be a bit out-of-place in this game), there's no point in representing the finding of water. It would be a waste of gameplay and coding.

 

But food... like I said, even if it's assumed you don't starve to death, different foods can have different effects. ESPECIALLY when you're not restricted to the realm of reality. I mean, they already have different effects in reality (hence rigorous diets for Olympic athletes, and specific ration packs for soldiers and such.) Anywho, it wouldn't be much different than choosing what kinds of things to say in dialogue (even though it's assumed your character can speak, you choose what they say), or choosing what weapon to use (you're going to fight, but you choose HOW you fight).

 

Or, better yet, ammo. You're going to stock arrows, but you can usually use various different ones. Will you use poison arrows, or will you use frost arrows? Etc. Same thing. It's not complicated to stock your quivers with ammo, but you still get to pick which kind.

[kspn]

Well, finding water, and making camp... you either do these things, or you don't. Without some extra system (like storms, or camp-discovery survival or something), there's no difference in the way in which you make camp. If you don't find water, you die of thirst. So, yeah, gain, without survival mechanics (which would be a bit out-of-place in this game), there's no point in representing the finding of water. It would be a waste of gameplay and coding.

 

But food... like I said, even if it's assumed you don't starve to death, different foods can have different effects. ESPECIALLY when you're not restricted to the realm of reality. I mean, they already have different effects in reality (hence rigorous diets for Olympic athletes, and specific ration packs for soldiers and such.) Anywho, it wouldn't be much different than choosing what kinds of things to say in dialogue (even though it's assumed your character can speak, you choose what they say), or choosing what weapon to use (you're going to fight, but you choose HOW you fight).

 

Or, better yet, ammo. You're going to stock arrows, but you can usually use various different ones. Will you use poison arrows, or will you use frost arrows? Etc. Same thing. It's not complicated to stock your quivers with ammo, but you still get to pick which kind.

 

It sounds like far too much reality is going into my fantasy!

[Lephys]

It sounds like far too much reality is going into my fantasy!

o_O...?

 

I don't follow. Different ammo types is too much reality?

[kspn]

 

It sounds like far too much reality is going into my fantasy!

o_O...?

 

I don't follow. Different ammo types is too much reality?

 

More the discussion on the camping mechanic, food, drink, cooking etc.

[Lephys]

Well, that block you quoted me on was mostly pointing out all the details of reality that we don't really need to see in an RPG, then the very easily-simplified ones that I think would work well. Hence the comparison of food selection to ammo selection. People hear "food" and "cooking" and shout "ultra-complextity!", but you say "hey, lots of different types of ammo!", and people just say "YAY! AWESOMENESS", rather than "Hmm... I think we should really just assume your people can acquire ammo. They're not going to go into battle without arrows. Let's just leave that out of the gameplay, shall we?"

 

Double-standards, if you ask me.

[kspn]

I agree, I do like multiple types of ammo but that is generaly because they can then do other interesting things, like a fire arrow shot from a Sonic Bow causing Arrow/Fire/Sonic damage (yes I did that in one game) but I personally find that many of the food mechanics are overworked and add a level of micromanagement that is a little too far.

 

I would say Normal ammo is 'unlimited' in that you can just have it, like being fed and watered, but Special arrows are a limited resource that you need to conserve and craft in your Stronghold.

 

What is the point of using an explosive arrow on a minion, you would just use a normal arrow, but for a horde of minions I can see you using all the explosive arrows that you have. Then it becomes a tactical choice of what you are going to be doing rather than a 'ooo I have flaming arrows'

 

Just my 0.02 worth

[Lephys]

I agree, I do like multiple types of ammo but that is generaly because they can then do other interesting things, like a fire arrow shot from a Sonic Bow causing Arrow/Fire/Sonic damage (yes I did that in one game) but I personally find that many of the food mechanics are overworked and add a level of micromanagement that is a little too far.

I agree, which is precisely why I'm advocating a specific approach to food, and not just the sheer inclusion of some unknown manner of food mechanic that could be just as overworked and micro-managey as in many other systems.

 

I would say Normal ammo is 'unlimited' in that you can just have it, like being fed and watered, but Special arrows are a limited resource that you need to conserve and craft in your Stronghold.

I was going to say that I'd rather have normal ammo still be limited, BUT... with the spells-per-day system (at least in P:E), your lowest-tier of spells is unlimited use. So, I could see basic ammo being abstractly unlimited in nature. However, when I say basic ammo, I mean basic. Like small rocks you find on the ground for a sling, as opposed to metal bullets of the appropriate weight/shape, etc. Very basic arrows, as opposed to nicely-crafted razor-sharp steel arrowhead arrows. Etc.

 

Basically, if it were going to be unlimited like that, I'd want the unlimited ammo to be to special ammo as the unlimited spells are to the non-unlimited spells. So, if that 3 fire damage spell, Scorch (made up just for example), is unlimited, but 8-10 damage Magic Missile is not, then I wouldn't expect an Archer's basic, unlimited arrows to do 10 damage. That sort of thing.

 

*shrug*... On that note, I'm also cool with your arrows being limited, but it being understood that you retrieve the majority of them after combat has ended. So that they're per-encounter replenished, also much like a category of spells/abilities in P:E.

 

Anywho, I'm vying for food (IF it's implemented) to work in a similar manner. You have unlimited "this prevents me from dying" food, as it's understood you gather berries or carry around a cracker... who knows. So only the food above-and-beyond basic stay-alive food would be managed, in exactly the same manner that you would have only the arrows that are above-and-beyond basic shoot-things-with-my-bow arrows would be managed.

 

So, with that in mind, specifically (and not just thinking of random other food systems that sucked in games), I invite your thoughts on this.

 

What is the point of using an explosive arrow on a minion, you would just use a normal arrow, but for a horde of minions I can see you using all the explosive arrows that you have. Then it becomes a tactical choice of what you are going to be doing rather than a 'ooo I have flaming arrows'

Exactly. The flaming arrow costs something and/or is limited in nature (if you found it and it "didn't cost anything," even though it technically cost the effort of finding it; killing something, opening a chest, traveling TO that thing you killed or that chest, etc.), therefore you have a choice as to whether or not you buy it, or obtain it, or sell it, or use one this fight, or 10 this fight, or save them for later, etc.

 

You could have food produce choice-worthy bonuses, as well. Make it relatively rare (to find good enough foodstuffs that it actually provides a significant enough bonus to represent with mechanics), and now you've got a significant choice. Between what to eat when, and when to rest, etc. It would be a minor thing, but it could easily provide some benefit and layering to the system without causing a bunch of trouble.

 

It also gives various skills and such an additional purpose. High survival skill or Knowledge: Flora? Your character can locate beneficial berries and/or other plants to directly eat and/or cook with, so the next time you camp, you can cook a meal of +5% stamina regen as opposed to just a regular meal that keeps you alive. Or maybe another foodstuff grants +1 to initiative rolls until you rest again. Etc. Do you want the initiative bonus, or the stamina regen bonus? You can't have both. Alas, choice. And yet, if you DON'T have a +1 to initiative rolls for the next span between rest points, the world doesn't end. And thus, if you don't have a character with ultra high Survival skill to find those berries, you're still fine.

 

As I said, minor stuff. I'm not talking food that has the same impact as which weapon you have, or what abilities/spells you use or something.

[Monte Carlo]

Cooking = The Sims.

[Silent Winter]

I'm not in favour of micro-managing the food supply, but if it's mostly abstracted and you can choose "forage for better food" from your 'survival' skills, which then adds a rest-bonus, I think it'd work ok.

[jethro]

Let us remember that buffing as a game mechanic isn't all that desireable. In small doses and as a limited option to use before fights you anticipate as difficult it is okay. But in many RPGs it either became a ritual before every fight or was ignored completely because it was so repetitious.

 

Granted there are ways to make the concept slightly interesting by providing buffs that help only against specific enemies and you have to think ahead what monster is likely around the corner. But for example a stamina-buff is never specific and just a bad method to keep the player occupied without giving him something fun to do. In general it is hard to make buffing fun. Do we agree on this?

 

Now we are talking about ideas to make food interesting by (amongst other things) giving us small buffs. In other words, bending a basically uninteresting daily task into something interesting by adding buffs which are tending to make a game less fun on average. That is not the right direction in my opinion.

 

Other tangents to make cooking interesting may be ingredients-gathering or finding/creating recipes. If you are getting a deja-vu, you are right. We usually already have potion-making/herbalism and crafting in games to fill these niches aka to employ these mechanisms. So cooking would be somewhat redundant and only interesting if potion-making or crafting were very limited or had somehow fundamentally different mechanisms.

 

If you see some other way to make cooking interesting, fine. But the buff-road is the road to hell paved with good intentions. (Did that sound dramatic enough? Good ;-)

Edited November 7, 2013 by jethro

[JFSOCC]

I agree, buffs made combat entirely unfun for me in DnD. I get that they were part of the game, but you basically HAD to buff, you HAD to have a counter to buffs, or you HAD to wait out enemy buffs. Mostly it was because the buffs made some characters untouchable. I'd rather buffs give benefits which are helpful but don't shield characters from normal, UN-augmented combat.

Buffs that don't provide direct armour or health or saving throws boost, but rather things which decrease ability cooldowns, increase attack speed, speed, increase status effect duration on enemies or decrease it (not cancel it) on allies.

 

What I'm saying is you can fix buffing without removing it.

[IndiraLightfoot]

+1 It's one of the things that got out of hand in D&D, and in CRPG-versions of it, this reached an absurd extent as you levelled certain characters. May I add that the characters looked like lit up Christmas trees? It took quite some time if you had a party of casters and you wanted to buff before a big encounter. I'm praying that Josh & Co has solved this issue.

[Prometheus]

Granted there are ways to make the concept slightly interesting by providing buffs that help only against specific enemies and you have to think ahead what monster is likely around the corner. But for example a stamina-buff is never specific and just a bad method to keep the player occupied without giving him something fun to do. In general it is hard to make buffing fun. Do we agree on this?

I disagree. I find buffing as much fun as attacking an enemy. I don't see any differences between clicking a button to attack someone or clicking a button to buff. I like to play support characters/have them in the group. That's why I like the concepts for chanters and paladins. Having a short duration stamina buff is in my opinion a good idea, if you use the spell you can't use a different spell/ this spell later so it's tactical decision. The same decision you would make if you use an attack spell.

 

Josh Sawyer also mentioned that a lot of buffs you can only cast during combat (so no pre buffing for this abillities). source

A lot of the longer-duration buffs can only be cast in combat, so pre-buffing isn't an option for those abilities.

Edited November 7, 2013 by Prometheus

[Lephys]

I'm not in favour of micro-managing the food supply, but if it's mostly abstracted and you can choose "forage for better food" from your 'survival' skills, which then adds a rest-bonus, I think it'd work ok.

I commend you, sir, for being constructively against the specifics of previous suggestions by actually contributing a "how COULD we make it better, though?" after voicing your dislike.

 

See how that works, people who just disagree? (really no one specifically here...)

 

Now we are talking about ideas to make food interesting by (amongst other things) giving us small buffs. In other words, bending a basically uninteresting daily task into something interesting by adding buffs which are tending to make a game less fun on average. That is not the right direction in my opinion.

You say buffs, I say factor modifiers. You could really look at any factor modifier as a buff. "Oh, hey, if you equip that sword against light armor instead of that mace, you get a damage buff. And if you equip that mace, you get an armor penetration buff! If you send your archer to high ground, he gets a range buff!"

 

Honestly, I blame the oversimplification of such things that has led to all the MMO terminology. . Not that "buff" was necessarily invented by MMOs (I'm not sure), but it's heavily used in that same library of terms. And those terms overly generalize entire aspects of design (such as factor modification) into a simple, bland thing, so that every time you think of something similar to a buff, you can't help but think about a spell you cast before every battle in a chore-like fashion to make sure you have all the best numbers under-the-hood for combat.

 

But, I DO agree in the same way JFSOCC did, and I agree with him. You're wrong that "buffs" are the wrong way to go, in that I don't think altering factors is inherently lame or bad. However, buffs as we know them are not always very splendid. Like JFSOCC, I think it would be best to fix the wonky design details rather than abandon an otherwise valuable facet of design.

[jethro]

 

Granted there are ways to make the concept slightly interesting by providing buffs that help only against specific enemies and you have to think ahead what monster is likely around the corner. But for example a stamina-buff is never specific and just a bad method to keep the player occupied without giving him something fun to do. In general it is hard to make buffing fun. Do we agree on this?

I disagree. I find buffing as much fun as attacking an enemy. I don't see any differences between clicking a button to attack someone or clicking a button to buff. I like to play support characters/have them in the group. That's why I like the concepts for chanters and paladins. Having a short duration stamina buff is in my opinion a good idea, if you use the spell you can't use a different spell/ this spell later so it's tactical decision. The same decision you would make if you use an attack spell.

 

Josh Sawyer also mentioned that a lot of buffs you can only cast during combat (so no pre buffing for this abillities)

 

We probably should have defined the term "buffing" before we started discussing about it. Especially I should have since I don't have much against spells/abilities that you can only use during combat. Especially if they are concentrated on specific (support) classes. If I find the support class too simple I can always switch to a different class.

 

No, I'm specifically talking about what Josh called pre-buffs. Because they don't take time off your fighting time, there is really no reason not to do them and so it always is done. I would name Stoneskin as an egregrious example. In NWN2 it was nearly mandatory to put Stoneskin on your clothies after every rest. And if you wanted to be thorough, a few long-duration buff spells as well.

 

Naturally if all combat-buffs are no-brainers it gets tedious again, but there are easy remedies: Combat buffs with short durations have to be used at the right moment. Combat buffs against specific attacks or spells/spell families help only if that attack or spell is likely to be used shortly.

 

So, can we agree that pre-buffs are bad? At least if their use has no disadvantage? Then obviously you would take them all the time. Making them a chore if you have to do something to get them and static noise in the background if you get them automatically.

 

Well, here are two ideas: By getting them automatically they at least don't seem like tedious chores. And if they have disadvantages (real ones, not whimpy INT-1 for the fighter) then their selection is tactical again.

 

Now, to get back to food, it should be evident that food has to be on the pre-buff side of buffs. Which makes it hard in my opinion to make it fun.

Edited November 8, 2013 by jethro

[Fridgemagnet]

 

Now, to get back to food, it should be evident that food has to be on the pre-buff side of buffs. Which makes it hard in my opinion to make it fun.

 

Although for some monsters, eating your party for lunch would be just wonderful

 

But seriously, I'm at least with you in that I don't think combat snacking should be implemented. 

Outside of combat, I'm really not sure what the best thing to do is. Maybe the occasional magic sandwich that is actually just a fancy potion (masquerading as food), but it still looks like long-duration buff territory.

 

Whether or not that is bad is not a discussion I want to get too involved in.

[Lephys]

I just still see that as a bit of a narrow-minded view of a bunch of stuff generalized into "pre-buffs." I mean, resting at the stronghold is going to "buff" you. But, it only does so after resting at the stronghold, and only according to what you've put your money into there. It's not a pre-buff, because you can't go rest at your stronghold before every single thing you do. You can do it whenever you get the chance to return to your stronghold, but then, you're going to be resting anyway (for the healths), so it's not as if it's just something to do to get a buff. It's getting an added bonus when you do rest, which you will have to. When you rest at the stronghold, that is.

 

Pre-buffing is so bad when it's completely managed by the player, 24/7. You never DON'T want to have that extra Stoneskin AC, or extra weapon damage or accuracy, etc., so you actively prep your party to its maximum every time you're going to go into battle, (if you can, and in a lot of other games, you can). But, if food is linked to your rest cycle, then you can't simply stop and eat a snack to get some bonuses. Therefore, again, it's a conditional bonus.

 

If darkness lowers stealth checks, then you could conceivably wait until darkness every single time you needed to perform some kind of stealthy task, and then consider the sheer condition of darkness to be providing a pre-buff. Would that mean that darkness affecting stealth is a horrible idea? I don't think so.

 

You could even have a timer on food usage (depending on how resting is handled -- if resting automatically passes 8 hours or something, then that would be moot, since food would be linked to resting, and resting would already progress time sufficiently). If you just rest for an hour or so, then you wouldn't actually get to eat food every single time you rested, so it would be an even more gradual bonus, but one repeatedly utilized throughout the game nonetheless. Got someone with excellent Survival skill? You have much greater chances of finding quite-beneficial plants/meats and such when you DO sit down to eat during a rest, so you get access to more different types of food bonuses when you do occasionally rest after a certain amount of time has passed since your last meal. Again, all abstracted away and handled automatically. The only thing you choose is what to eat (out of what's available -- also dependent upon choices) when your party is hungry and rests.

 

So, it would simply be another layer. And you could have some rather interesting effects of foods. Maybe one improves move speed slightly for the next few hours. Thus affecting the positioning aspect of combat. Maybe you know there are going to be speedy creatures in the region you're about to traipse through, so you eat that food. OR, maybe you go with some other bonus that you have, because why not? You're the one coming up with your strategy. Nothing says speed is the single best answer to faster enemies.

 

*shrug*. It's just an example. There are numerous, numerous ways of doing it. All of the above details can be tweaked and altered. It's not about the specific results, but the idea, and what kind of layer that COULD add to the system.

 

I don't know everything there is to know about everything else in the system, so I can't say "this would be the greatest addition to the game, ever, DEFINITELY!", but nor can I rightly say "this would definitely just be lame pre-buffs, and would make the game worse."

 

I'd much rather hear your breakdown of why my examples would be problematic in nature, and why you can't come up with any ways around that, than just how much pre-buffs in other games tend to be lame, and how that's one potentiality for some kind of rest-meal implementation in P:E.

[jethro]

I just still see that as a bit of a narrow-minded view of a bunch of stuff generalized into "pre-buffs." I mean, resting at the stronghold is going to "buff" you. But, it only does so after resting at the stronghold, and only according to what you've put your money into there. It's not a pre-buff, because you can't go rest at your stronghold before every single thing you do. You can do it whenever you get the chance to return to your stronghold, but then, you're going to be resting anyway (for the healths), so it's not as if it's just something to do to get a buff. It's getting an added bonus when you do rest, which you will have to. When you rest at the stronghold, that is.

The stronghold buff is definitely a pre-buff. It just isn't tedious usually because you don't have to do repetitious tasks to get it (as I said, this is one of the remedies, but it also makes the buff a bit superfluous). The only time you will ever have fun with this buff is when you proudly buy the facility in your stronghold to get it. After that it is just something you incidentally have if you recently visited the stronghold and it might make you hold off resting for one further fight because you want to still have the buff. The moment you actively go back to the stronghold only to have the buff for the next fight it becomes slightly tedious.

 

The only good reason for the stronghold buff is (besides the meta-reason of having something to throw money at and give the stronghold a justification to exist) that you might encounter a fight that is so hard that you need every last bit of help and decide to make a stopp-over at the stronghold to get the buff.

 

Sorry I'm so negative about this. I don't see a way around the problems and I think I showed why any conventional solution is bound to fail because of fundamental reasons. So in my opinion, if you want to bring food into the game, forget buffs, think about something completely different.

[Ywerion]

This is one fantastic update!