No Defense scores or Skill check targets in Expert Mode please

[ShadowTiger]

Knowing the AC you are trying to hit is exciting in P&P because it makes you feel invested in your die roll. Instead of going cmon, gimme a 20, you are saying cmon, I just need a 14 or higher!

 

In the end though, knowing the AC of the target has little impact on what your actions are, except perhaps whether you use called shots or power attack. It may effect which enemies you focus fire, choosing the lowest AC ones for your weapon users and having your magic users focus on the one with highest AC. However, usually it is really easy to know which enemy has the lowest or highest AC just by looking at them.

 

In all my time playing BG, IWD and NWN I have never used AC or DC numbers to change my decisions. Mostly because positioning, AOE spell placement, kiting, focus fire, and rotating wounded soldiers out are much more important tactically than which enemies you target. Generally you worry about enemy DPS the most, trying to take out the bandit archers or the mage who can cast powerful spells. Usually these enemies are glass cannons with the lowest AC, as noted by cloth/leather armor. 

I guess the biggest problem area would be that if you know the skill check value, and you fail by a small margin, you can use potions or spells to boost yourself and get success. Not knowing those numbers (assuming you haven't memorized them) would cause you to waste potions / spells trying stuff you have no chance of succeeding on. That doesn't sound like a better game experience to me, but if thats something you want then I guess expert mode should have it. 

The fact is, most people who fail a skill check will just ignore it and move on, never thinking to come back after they level up and try again. I am one of the few people who would go back if I thought it was important... so it wouldn't really matter either way. That is... assuming you can backtrack at all. For one-shot skill checks, like avoiding traps... I have no idea why knowing the target number would make any difference. 

Edited November 9, 2013 by ShadowTiger

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Togglable is best. I do think there is a distinct possibility I will want to see rolls, as the rules won't be familiar to me. Also, since it is known that different armors will have different absorption qualities, it might not always be easy to distinguish the exact quality of an enemy's armor given the graphical style of P:E.

[Sensuki]

Knowing the AC you are trying to hit is exciting in P&P because it makes you feel invested in your die roll. Instead of going cmon, gimme a 20, you are saying cmon, I just need a 14 or higher!

 

......

 

This about expert mode only. You get popups that show values by default.

 

You will be able to see attack rolls, and the mechanics behind the rolls will be broken down (ie. bonuses to accuracy from gear + conditional values)

[Graham]

I voted for

 

"Yes - I think I should be able to choose"

 

However, I think, this option should be available in any mode, not only expert mode. I mean, if it is implemented, there is no reason for not giving the players this freedom regardless of the mode they play.

[JFSOCC]

That would be a pretty cool game mode, actually. The player's knowledge would be much closer to the characters' knowledge. Come upon some bandits, with certain equipment, etc. and it's going to be a bit of guesswork.

this is where telegraphing and monster identification come in.

 

"Oh, this is a Modular Slime This is the second time I've come across it, so I know what to expect"

 

You don't have to know the exact data, as long as you learn that certain enemies apply certain skills and tactics.

Every time except the first time when you come across a Blubberman you'll know (provided you're skilled enough to pay attention) to keep these bastards out of melee range, and especially away from your fighters.

 

Your skill and strategy would improve as encounters will continue to get more combinations of AI behaviours for you to deal with.

 

No number has ever got to be shown, and you would still have the information you need to tactically assess the situation and beat the encounter.

Edited November 10, 2013 by JFSOCC

[neo6874]

So pretty much, you want "Expert" mode to essentially be the (IIRC) "D&D Hardcore Mode" that other titles have used (I think this was NWN).

 

I could get behind this ... but only if there were the other ways around "needing to make 100 bad rolls to get that stupid lock open" -- such as "locked chest -> thief rolls 16 + modifiers -> fail ... hmm ... how about I just take 20? ... you open the chest".  Keeps gameplay going, but still lets you "easily" open things that you absolutely need a 20 on.

 

Alternatively, take 20 fails -> potion of [whatever] that improves "lockpicking" and take 20 again, and hooray you got it open!

Edited November 11, 2013 by neo6874

[Sensuki]

So pretty much, you want "Expert" mode to essentially be the (IIRC) "D&D Hardcore Mode" that other titles have used (I think this was NWN).

 

I could get behind this ... but only if there were the other ways around "needing to make 100 bad rolls to get that stupid lock open" -- such as "locked chest -> thief rolls 16 + modifiers -> fail ... hmm ... how about I just take 20? ... you open the chest".  Keeps gameplay going, but still lets you "easily" open things that you absolutely need a 20 on.

 

Alternatively, take 20 fails -> potion of [whatever] that improves "lockpicking" and take 20 again, and hooray you got it open!

 

No I'm pretty sure that's what it is already. If you go right back to the Kickstarter video Josh explains what he envisioned Expert Mode as and related it to Hardcore mode in Fallout: New Vegas and talks about turning 'help' off.

 

Expert mode will enable the punishing gameplay elements (such as Permanent Death) so you have to pay more attention and turn all the help details off.

 

I relate this to Baldur's Gate 1 because BG1 didn't give you much feedback about anything.

 

Quests did not have quest names, they were simply quest entries in the Journal

There was no feedback as to the remaining hit points of enemies

Ability score checks in the dialogue were not highlighted

"Influence" Modifiers with companions were never shown

You have absolutely no idea about the offensive or defensive capabilities of enemies other than "Oh jeez, that guy just hit me on a roll of 4".

 

So far all of these things are disabled in Expert Mode in Project Eternity - no quest names, no hit point feedback, ability score checks in dialogue are invisible, influence modifiers with companions are never shown and Accuracy/Defense tooltips on enemies are disabled.

Edited November 11, 2013 by Sensuki

[neo6874]

sweet!  although I thought perma-death was the "Ironman" mode?

 

Not that I'm ever gonna play it ... I have a hard enough time on "normal" or "hard" (or whichever is right below "D&D Hardcore") ... I guess I'm just that bad

[SunBroSolaire]

sweet!  although I thought perma-death was the "Ironman" mode?

 

Not that I'm ever gonna play it ... I have a hard enough time on "normal" or "hard" (or whichever is right below "D&D Hardcore") ... I guess I'm just that bad

 

Iron Man means you only have one save that gets deleted when your party wipes out. Expert mode will have permanent death, but afaik, no restrictions on reloading a previous save.

[neo6874]

OK I guess I'm just not making the connection then... 

 

"Expert" = "Permanent Death" = no resurrect?

"Ironman" = That, plus "one save, don't mess it up"?

 

I guess I started with the "wrong" games then -- as "permanent death" in NWN was (as I recall it) "you just aren't waking up after you get KO'd ... so have some rez spells with you" (although, if the PC ever got KO'd it was "Game Over" anyway)

[TrashMan]

I honestly prefer for a game to give you a general indication of some things the PC shouldn't have accurate knowledge off

 

 

Like enemy health.

The "Near Deth", "Heavily Injured", "Injured", "Barely Wounded" etc do a far better job of portaying combat than "12/40"

[neo6874]

Definitely like the "progression" of injury like you pointed out.  Also liked (with NWN, I think I'm just bad at the Icewind Dale* controls to figure it out) where you could check the "properties" of a creature, and get some info... 

 

e.g. 
"Orc - Challenging"

"flavor text about orcs"

 

 

 

*GOG is an evil site... have spent more money on the classics in the last year that I've spent on "new titles"

[Sensuki]

I honestly prefer for a game to give you a general indication of some things the PC shouldn't have accurate knowledge off

 

 

Like enemy health.

The "Near Deth", "Heavily Injured", "Injured", "Barely Wounded" etc do a far better job of portaying combat than "12/40"

 

The game will give you that feedback on default. Expert mode will turn this stuff off, which is something I think a lot of the 'yes' voters fail to understand. Expert mode turns ALL help off (and locks it).

[Lephys]

I honestly prefer for a game to give you a general indication of some things the PC shouldn't have accurate knowledge off

 

 

Like enemy health.

The "Near Deth", "Heavily Injured", "Injured", "Barely Wounded" etc do a far better job of portaying combat than "12/40"

 

 

Honestly, I wouldn't mind the game telling you, after your character has knowledge of such things, that your standard sword attack will deal "high" damage against some kobold (for example). In the same way that striking the kobold, then observing the fact that he is clearly "near death" provides the same information. If you do that against one kobold, then run into another seconds later, you shouldn't just have absolutely no clue as to how effective your sword and strength and skill should be in a slash against that kobold, as you now comprehend the relative level of resiliency of a kobold (empirically, from observing the effects of your own attack.) Granted, it could be a significantly different/larger kobold, or a kobold wearing different armor, etc.

 

Anywho, the point is, I'm cool with the game providing you with information so you don't have to just remember "Hmm... about how well did my sword work against that kobold I fought an hour ago? 'Cause there's another kobold here now," but it still doesn't have to tell you anything you don't already know, and it certainly doesn't need to tell you exact numbers. If there was any factor in place that you were uncertain of, the info would either be absent ("damage: ???") or would be marked as your character's best guess.

Edited November 13, 2013 by Lephys

[neo6874]

... or would be marked as your character's best guess.

 

 

I'm always gonna be getting '42' then  

[TrashMan]

 

I honestly prefer for a game to give you a general indication of some things the PC shouldn't have accurate knowledge off

 

 

Like enemy health.

The "Near Deth", "Heavily Injured", "Injured", "Barely Wounded" etc do a far better job of portaying combat than "12/40"

 

The game will give you that feedback on default. Expert mode will turn this stuff off, which is something I think a lot of the 'yes' voters fail to understand. Expert mode turns ALL help off (and locks it).

 

 

I don't see why.

There is a difference bitween "too much feedback" or "too detailed feedback" and "no feedback".

 

The player should have access to knowledge the PC should have. And hte PC should be able to roughly gauge the shape the enemy is in.

 

Some king of "expert" mode that purposfully handicaps you beyond reason for challange is silly IMHO.

 

[agris]

I fully support this idea Sensuki, and despite the vocal (minority) in this thread, do think it adds a less tangible element of difficulty and suspension of disbelief. The original Fallout 1/2 did this in a manner, with 'invisible' skill checks during dialogue and obfuscated skill checks (mostly lockpick). It was a good system though, if your lockpicks broke or your jammed the lock, your skill was too low. Much preferable to the systems of FO3 and FNV when it lists the required skills for performing a dialogue option. I know you're talking combat challenges, but I think the idea could be extended to _any_ 'skill target' (for lack of a better term).

 

One of the best flavor mods for FNV removed the skill target text from dialogue...

 

The counter argument for this up-front presentation of skill-dependent dialogue choices is that the player misses content if the dialogue option (and the skill check) aren't shown. This issue is resolved in a much more organic way though, by making the dialogue choice still an option but with the appropriate NPC response indicating a failed skill check. It is the NPC's response that indicates to the player their skill (which should be obvious based on the content of the dialogue and game mechanics) wasn't high enough to pull off the line.

 

Sorry I've derailed this a bit, but I think this issue goes hand-in-hand with your combat one.

Edited November 13, 2013 by agris

[Lephys]

Going with what Trashman is saying, and throwing in the lockpicking example Agris just brought up:

 

Would you play a game in which nothing even told you the results of your lockpicking attempt? You don't even know how many lockpicks you have in your inventory, or whether or not you unlocked the door, or a lockpick broke...? You just play, and everything is obfuscated, MUAHAHAH!

 

Wouldn't that be a bit overboard?

 

So, I mean... there's definitely a "not enough information" point somewhere on the scale. I mean, what good is tactical combat if your decision is between attacking Creature A with God-only-knows how many HP left (is it 10, or 1000?), or attacking Creature B with God-only-knows how many HP left? Doesn't matter if you use numbers or not. But, why should your character be incapable of detecting slumping/slowing/extreme bloodflow out of a wound/etc. in the enemy you're slicing up? Or, if you're fighting a human, how do you not know that putting that sword all the way through his shoulder and out his back damaged him quite a bit? You yourself being human... could you not at the very least imagine the effects of the same thing happening to you, and estimate from there?

[Sensuki]

 

I don't see why.

There is a difference bitween "too much feedback" or "too detailed feedback" and "no feedback".

 

The player should have access to knowledge the PC should have. And hte PC should be able to roughly gauge the shape the enemy is in.

 

Some king of "expert" mode that purposfully handicaps you beyond reason for challange is silly IMHO.

I don't know what games you have been playing, but Baldur's Gate showed no health status of enemies and plenty of other RPGs before it also did not.

 

Josh Sawyer would agree with you that feedback is good because it allows people that do not already have an in depth knowledge of the system to engage with it.

 

Expert mode is a collection of settings that are forced to provide a more hardcore experience.

 

If you don't like that you can:

 

A) Do not tick expert mode

B) Do not tick expert mode, and then go into the options settings and enable the hardcore features you want and leave the ones you don't want out.

 

No Health feedback is already in for Expert mode whether you like it or not. What I am wondering is whether Defenses will be obfuscated from the combat log, because if this feature doesn't make it into expert mode then it most likely won't make it into the game.

 

It would be fair to assume that if stat popups are disabled on enemies then their values *should* be hidden by the game (perhaps not the bestiary) but I'm not 100% sure.

 

"The player should know these things" is not an invalid argument and that's why the default mode has exactly that. Your preference is actually the default setting. Why would you want to infect the hardcore setting with non-hardcore elements ?

[JFSOCC]

"The player should know these things" is not an invalid argument and that's why the default mode has exactly that. Your preference is actually the default setting. Why would you want to infect the hardcore setting with non-hardcore elements ?

Either way I hope there's a toggle in the difficulty settings, because I haven't decided yet if I want to play expert mode, but I do want hidden skill checks for my game.

[Hassat Hunter]

*GOG is an evil site... have spent more money on the classics in the last year that I've spent on "new titles"

It's more an indication that modern games are not nearly as good or grasping than old games than anything else.

A sad development

 

Like enemy health.

The "Near Deth", "Heavily Injured", "Injured", "Barely Wounded" etc do a far better job of portaying combat than "12/40"

The game will give you that feedback on default. Expert mode will turn this stuff off, which is something I think a lot of the 'yes' voters fail to understand. Expert mode turns ALL help off (and locks it).

 

Ehm, unlike your posts try to make out, both BG's actually HAVE this once you use tab to hover over them. Where do you think ThrashMan got those terms from? BG!

 

I don't see why it should be turned off completely, expert or none. It's just the right balance of information for both modes, nothing needed to be tweaked about further :/

 

I agree about skill/stat checks in convo's, but I am not quite sure those even existed in the BG's. They did in the KOTOR games, and they were 'hidden' there, I think it's a much better sollution than the F:NV method.

[Lephys]

Yeah, I'm kinda just wondering at what point "expert mode" becomes basically the opposite of a cheat code. I mean, what about a mode in which your screen simply doesn't display anything at all (just a black/blank screen), to simulate your wearing a blindfold while playing, just to make it tougher?

 

I very much like the idea of a mode that obfuscates specific values and things, but I'm just not sure the idea is to prevent the player from knowing anything about what's going on. Again, there's only so much you can hide before the tactical significance of choices goes out the window. It's the difference between "I don't know anything yet" and "I just plain have no information, ever."

 

Imagine one of those sliding-tile puzzles (with the one tile missing, so as to provide a space into which to always be able to slide a single tile) if you flipped it over so you couldn't see the picture you were trying to assemble. At that point, it would be purely guesswork, with no amount of cleverness involved. It wouldn't even be a puzzle anymore. You wouldn't even know when you had completed the image.

[Sensuki]

Ehm, unlike your posts try to make out, both BG's actually HAVE this once you use tab to hover over them. Where do you think ThrashMan got those terms from? BG!

Baldur's Gate (1) does not. Took photo because cursor is not captured during Print Screen.

 

[Mor]

I fully support this idea Sensuki, and despite the vocal (minority) in this thread, do think it adds a less tangible element of difficulty and suspension of disbelief. The original Fallout 1/2 did this in a manner, with 'invisible' skill checks during dialogue and obfuscated skill checks (mostly lockpick). It was a good system though, if your lockpicks broke or your jammed the lock, your skill was too low. Much preferable to the systems of FO3 and FNV when it lists the required skills for performing a dialogue option. I know you're talking combat challenges, but I think the idea could be extended to _any_ 'skill target' (for lack of a better term).

 

One of the best flavor mods for FNV removed the skill target text from dialogue...

 

The counter argument for this up-front presentation of skill-dependent dialogue choices is that the player misses content if the dialogue option (and the skill check) aren't shown. This issue is resolved in a much more organic way though, by making the dialogue choice still an option but with the appropriate NPC response indicating a failed skill check. It is the NPC's response that indicates to the player their skill (which should be obvious based on the content of the dialogue and game mechanics) wasn't high enough to pull off the line.

 

Sorry I've derailed this a bit, but I think this issue goes hand-in-hand with your combat one.

 

You say that combat should be handled like in FO1/2 dialogue system. which is the opposite of how FO1/2 combat system was handled...  In FO1/2 you got information about the health status of every character, basically what anyone would be able to observe in that situation i.e. If the character is unhurt, wounded, or dying and with Awareness Perk you could even see the exact stats.

 

But we digress, Its not about how its being played in one game or another its about what this suggestion adds here. Expert mode is there to provide additional challenge. Going by Sensuki example, AC is the way you gauge your opponent, knowing if you are barely missing or completely outmatched allows you to adapt your tactic. While hiding that information as Sensuki suggest, makes the game less tactical and the same time adds nothing, other than maybe Sensuki playing memorization game with the manual.

Edited November 15, 2013 by Mor

[Sensuki]

No.

 

If I already know the DT, Vulnerabilities, Accuracy & Defenses of an enemy, then I can look at the stat popup and go oh okay - I see what I need to do here. That is exactly what I do not want. I want to figure it out for myself. That way if I am doing it wrong to begin with I can try different tactics and find something that works, and I find that more satisfying than being told all of that information up front. I already know the system design (the publicly known stuff) very well, probably better than most people here.

 

The system design is intuitive so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. I would rather come up with my own solutions to combat challenges without having knowledge of the enemy defenses/stats as I think it allows for more creativity, it is more immersive and it is more challenging and fun.

 

If something goes against the trends, such as a guy in light armor with a very high DT, I am not going to complain about that fact being obfuscated. I will accept it and deal with it. Like I did with the games of old.