walking speed outside of combat

[Lephys]

 

That would depend a lot on how large the maps are going to be. In the original Baldur's Gate the maps were bloody huge (for its time anyway), and the movement speed was, well, let's say inadequate. So too slow movement speed is bad, I agree. However, I think it was fine in BG2 considering its average area size, given the availability of Haste, Boots of Speed, potions and other movement speed boosting items.

 

Addendum: if there were to be no movement speed boosting skills or items, then it might become an issue. AFAIK, we don't have the definitive answer to this question yet.

 

Even if you had boots of speed, everyone would need it, or at least your slowest party member, because as it currently stands, non-combat movement is locked to slowest party member.

 

This. Basically, if there will be boots of speed (or any such item), they will only affect the wearer's speed in combat. Which is significant: Your Fighter reaching melee engagement range on that enemy caster in 2 seconds instead of 5 matters. Your Fighter covering ground faster than your Druid when just walking around outside of any threatening situation is just unnecessary manual formation management. Thus, the "everyone move at the same pace" default setting.

 

According to Josh, these items (and other modifiers?) can lead to people moving pretty friggin' fast, which is great in a tactical situation, but a little silly when you're just trying to move around in a forest like a normal person, and not trying to urgently charge an archer or caster while every second counts.

 

Another thing I just thought of: Honestly, you could have the out-of-combat speed be actually pretty speedy, then actually have a character's in-combat speed be slower than that, as combat is really the only time that the relative differences in speed matter.

 

In other words, if you wanted to have a character who moved quite slowly, instead of just matching everyone's speed to that person's snail pace outside of combat, you could just take the average of the party or something (it'd be super easy, because it's all numerically represented). Then, when the combat state is entered, the slow characters can go a bit slower, and the fast characters can go a bit faster.

Edited April 11, 2014 by Lephys

[Archmage Silver]

Yeah, I never really agreed to the rule of making movement speed match the slowest member in the party. If the old codger can't run, buy him a horse. Should have made mounts a stretch goal.

 

I think teknoman2 is going in the right direction with his suggestion though, it would simplify the out-of-combat experience a lot.

Edited April 12, 2014 by Archmage Silver

[rjshae]

My biggest concern is that it'll be too slow. Especially with the bigger local maps, I don't want to spend a good deal of time just walking here and there for one-off chores.

 

The speed will probably be limited by what looks realistic for the animation. But I don't know why they couldn't have a speedy travel mode: move the view to where you want to go, click the location button, and, if there are no enemies nearby or along the path, the party instantly enters the side of the view (with the entry point determined by a path-finding algorithm).

[Hormalakh]

Missing the exploration aspect goes against the design goals. Having fast travel as described above is both expensive and goes against the exploration feel.

 

Really, just giving players the opportunity to change game speed would make this just so much easier without all these extra mechanics

[teknoman2]

Missing the exploration aspect goes against the design goals. Having fast travel as described above is both expensive and goes against the exploration feel.

 

Really, just giving players the opportunity to change game speed would make this just so much easier without all these extra mechanics

the areas will be BG2 style. you have to explore each on foot, however to go to another area, why have to walk all the way to the edge of the current area, and not just press M and choose a travel destination? you may also be able to use the map to set a destination within your current area, but in that case the characters will walk there normally

in BG2 you did not explore the road between De Arnise  hold and Trademeet. you just clicked on Trademeet and traveled there. all i suggest is simply removing the tedious "walk to the edge of the De Arnise hold map before you can travel"

Edited April 13, 2014 by teknoman2

[sesobebo]

Even if you had boots of speed, everyone would need it, or at least your slowest party member, because as it currently stands, non-combat movement is locked to slowest party member.

[matching speed to slowest] is the default. BTW it only matches speed for clicks made out of the combat state. If you initiate any movement while the combat state is active, everyone moves at full individual speed.

it's default, which means it can be toggled on/off. nothing's locked.

[Lephys]

Really, just giving players the opportunity to change game speed would make this just so much easier without all these extra mechanics

Fair enough. I just don't really agree on how much easier it's making anything, I suppose. It just feels like deciding that fast-forwarding is warranted, the "how much?" question obviously comes into play, which is then answered by "obviously stop at a reasonable limit," but then... that's what the initial design was doing. You can ALWAYS make your way through an area more slowly, even if everything around you isn't slow. And, in combat, for example, you can pause it to "slow down" the overall pace of the action (I guess you could pause outside of combat, technically? Maybe to look over terrain without having patrols move around and stuff while you're there? *shrug*). So, the only thing being provided is "make things go faster."

 

It feels a little like skipping the game. Even if the hard-coded movement speed for your party was stupidly slow, I wouldn't say it warrants some kind of option. I'd just say it was bad design, and it should've been a reasonably faster speed.

 

As for the mechanics I've described, they're not meant to solve any problem in an easier fashion. They're simply meant to actually provide a purpose for things like movement speed options. There are plenty of games in which you get a run/walk toggle that affects absolutely nothing except whether or not your character moves faster or slower. It'd be nice if that actually mattered, if it's going to exist. And, honestly, I'd much rather have the option to run in lieu of the option to double the game speed. I'd just set everyone to Stealth mode and increase the game speed to make up for lost movement speed, then "run" around whilst still detecting traps and secret doors in a fraction of the time it would normally have taken. Thus, nothing in the game would actually require "care" on my part, since I could just bypass it with time control.

 

Trying to sneak past those patrolling guards? Who needs to wait for their patrol to pass by again when you can just fast forward until they do! 8D.

 

Got a sequence-based puzzle you didn't pay attention to the lore enough to know how to solve? Just max out time speed and "run" around trying all the sequences in one-tenth the time! 8D

 

Just... if it's such an obviously problem-free, nothing-but-good feature, why doesn't every game ever made have a game speed setting?

[Mor]

 

[matching speed to slowest] is the default. BTW it only matches speed for clicks made out of the combat state. If you initiate any movement while the combat state is active, everyone moves at full individual speed.

it's default, which means it can be toggled on/off. nothing's locked.

 

Slowest? I think that everyone but monks has the same speed, with scouting Mode being the only thing that effect it outside of combat(that and encumbrance unless it was changed, but that effected all party members until the items were sorted out). Edited April 14, 2014 by Mor

[sesobebo]

re-post from another thread:

[match speed to slowest]'s already in and helps a lot with exploration.
~~~
It is the default. BTW it only matches speed for clicks made out of the combat state. If you initiate any movement while the combat state is active, everyone moves at full individual speed.
~~~
The fastest characters characters are extremely fast and you'd eventually be zipping around the maps in no time. I think it negatively impacts exploration when the pace gets accelerated.
~~~
Barbarians get Wild Sprint, wizards can cast Fleet Feet, and there are other goodies that increase movement speed.

Increased movement speed only applies while running, and the scouting mode (used for sneaking and searching) is at walking speed.

source

[constantine]

Oh c'mon people .. walking speed adjustment ?? seriously ?! You are gonna play a RPG, at least try to act like it on a base level.

 

 

Even if your protagonist wants to be Forest Gump your team-mates ain't gonna follow you around.

[Gnostic]

 

Really, just giving players the opportunity to change game speed would make this just so much easier without all these extra mechanics

Fair enough. I just don't really agree on how much easier it's making anything, I suppose. It just feels like deciding that fast-forwarding is warranted, the "how much?" question obviously comes into play, which is then answered by "obviously stop at a reasonable limit," but then... that's what the initial design was doing. You can ALWAYS make your way through an area more slowly, even if everything around you isn't slow. And, in combat, for example, you can pause it to "slow down" the overall pace of the action (I guess you could pause outside of combat, technically? Maybe to look over terrain without having patrols move around and stuff while you're there? *shrug*). So, the only thing being provided is "make things go faster."

 

It feels a little like skipping the game. Even if the hard-coded movement speed for your party was stupidly slow, I wouldn't say it warrants some kind of option. I'd just say it was bad design, and it should've been a reasonably faster speed.

 

As for the mechanics I've described, they're not meant to solve any problem in an easier fashion. They're simply meant to actually provide a purpose for things like movement speed options. There are plenty of games in which you get a run/walk toggle that affects absolutely nothing except whether or not your character moves faster or slower. It'd be nice if that actually mattered, if it's going to exist. And, honestly, I'd much rather have the option to run in lieu of the option to double the game speed. I'd just set everyone to Stealth mode and increase the game speed to make up for lost movement speed, then "run" around whilst still detecting traps and secret doors in a fraction of the time it would normally have taken. Thus, nothing in the game would actually require "care" on my part, since I could just bypass it with time control.

 

Trying to sneak past those patrolling guards? Who needs to wait for their patrol to pass by again when you can just fast forward until they do! 8D.

 

Got a sequence-based puzzle you didn't pay attention to the lore enough to know how to solve? Just max out time speed and "run" around trying all the sequences in one-tenth the time! 8D

 

Just... if it's such an obviously problem-free, nothing-but-good feature, why doesn't every game ever made have a game speed setting?

 

 

If walking faster is going to break game, how about town portals?

 

Or you can click anywhere you already explored on the map and be instantly trans-located there?

 

As for your example of allowing speeding the game up when in stealth mode to make a pseudo run, how is that a disadvantage? It is an advantage as I will be forwarding the less interesting parts of the game. The enemy is also faster so there will be no breaking of balance.

 

And the other example of speeding up while waiting for patrol guards, seriously you think this is an disadvantage? Is waiting for patrol guards to make a mistake fun? It will be more fun to speed it up and get to the fun part. You will not be missing out the test to your intelligence as you still have to analyze the behavior of the guards to exploit their loophole.

 

For speeding up to get random tries at the puzzle without reading the lore, is that a problem with a badly design puzzle rather than the speed option? People can do random tries too with slower speed.

 

Actually your post make me look at speeding up option more favorably as I not only get to fast forward the useless traveling time, I also get to fast forward the boring parts of the game.

 

This is why player customization is generally good as they can choose to enjoy what part of the game and skip the un-enjoyable parts for them which may be enjoyable for others. One shoe size fit all approach make it only enjoyable to a narrower range of people

Edited May 21, 2014 by Gnostic

[Lephys]

I don't know how else to put this, Gnostic:

 

You don't read a book, but tear 100 pages out of the middle of it just because you wanted it to be shorter, and still go around telling everyone you love that book. No, you love parts of that book.

 

It's great when a game gives you options for your experience of the game, but it is not obligated to make sure that the actual contents of the game are tailored specifically to you.

 

If you think sneaking is boring, the game already has a way for you to "skip" that. It's called combat. And actually, instead of skipping it, you get to skip the sneaking part without actually skipping content.

 

You can already skip oodles of stuff: Dialogue, sneaking, optional combat, the stronghold management, etc. The game has 0 need to allow you to simply speed up the whole game just to skip things. At best, it's a completely arbitrary middleman. As others already pointed out, if you think it takes too long to run to the edge of the map to use fast traveling (to different map locations), then you shouldn't be advocating a game speed dial. You should be advocating the ability to fast travel from wherever you're standing, instead of having to move to the edge of the map. Faster game speed lets you spend less time running to the edge of the map. A "leave area" option allows you to spend NO time doing so. Boom.

 

I'm not arguing anything is a disadvantage (you might mean something specifically different by your use of that word than I'm thinking, and if so, I apologize). I'm simply pointing out how unnecessary it is.

 

If "this is too slow" or "I don't feel like doing this" is all it takes to warrant a feature like a game speed adjuster, then what wouldn't be warranted? That's what I want to know. According to your line of reasoning, we should have a "no enemies!" toggle, for people who hate enemies. Or maybe a "no story!" option, for people who hate stories. A "text-based" option for people who hate graphics! 8D

[Gnostic]

I don't know how else to put this, Gnostic:

 

You don't read a book, but tear 100 pages out of the middle of it just because you wanted it to be shorter, and still go around telling everyone you love that book. No, you love parts of that book.

 

It's great when a game gives you options for your experience of the game, but it is not obligated to make sure that the actual contents of the game are tailored specifically to you.

 

If you think sneaking is boring, the game already has a way for you to "skip" that. It's called combat. And actually, instead of skipping it, you get to skip the sneaking part without actually skipping content.

 

You can already skip oodles of stuff: Dialogue, sneaking, optional combat, the stronghold management, etc. The game has 0 need to allow you to simply speed up the whole game just to skip things. At best, it's a completely arbitrary middleman. As others already pointed out, if you think it takes too long to run to the edge of the map to use fast traveling (to different map locations), then you shouldn't be advocating a game speed dial. You should be advocating the ability to fast travel from wherever you're standing, instead of having to move to the edge of the map. Faster game speed lets you spend less time running to the edge of the map. A "leave area" option allows you to spend NO time doing so. Boom.

 

I'm not arguing anything is a disadvantage (you might mean something specifically different by your use of that word than I'm thinking, and if so, I apologize). I'm simply pointing out how unnecessary it is.

 

If "this is too slow" or "I don't feel like doing this" is all it takes to warrant a feature like a game speed adjuster, then what wouldn't be warranted? That's what I want to know. According to your line of reasoning, we should have a "no enemies!" toggle, for people who hate enemies. Or maybe a "no story!" option, for people who hate stories. A "text-based" option for people who hate graphics! 8D

Dear Lephys

 

The Crux of my reasoning is that players should be able to customize the game as they like best, not shoehorn to a specific model that only a certain player enjoy best. That way ALL players get to enjoy what they like best.

 

If I and a number of people love reading a book by tearing 100 pages from it, then me and like minded people enjoy the reading so such book and will be very happy. Other people who enjoy reading a book without tearing 100 pages from it can choose NOT TO DO SO and get the full enjoyment. The end result, both group of people will be very happy.

 

Yes the game is not obligated to design these feature that I or a certain group of people want, that's why we are discussing it here. The game is already all set to implement a slow down option, how difficult it is to implement a speed up option?

 

I don't think sneaking is boring, it is just a response to your previous post that stated people can cheat the system by speeding up while sneaking. Sorry if I get your meaning wrong. Regarding to cheating the system, what is wrong if you can have fun cheating the system? After all a game sole purpose is to make it FUN to the players. As long as cheating such system does not break the game that make it not fun, why it is not allow?

 

Yes there are other means to make traveling time less boring, it is specifically your previous post that make me think speeding up may be fun in other ways.

 

As for the "no enemies!" toggle, for people who hate enemies. You find a auto-resolve option in games HoMM, Age of Wonder, Galactic Civilization and such. Players have the freedom do that so both group of players that like enemies and hate enemies are happy.

 

A "no story!" option, for people who hate stories. You realize most of the game give you the option to skip the text and get to the next text or be done with it and jump back to the game. Players that like the lore can continue reading and all players are happy. In fact I am sure that Eternity will have the option to fast forward / skip the text.

 

A "text-based" option for people who hate graphics! I have yet to come over people like only text instead of graphic, but I know there are people who do not like lengthy / repetitive animation. You can skip the cut scene! Seen that attack animation for the 100th time? Want to skip it and know the results? There are many a game that let you do that. Turn Base game especially favor that function.

 

Hey, are you a secret advocator of of player customization?   you seems to bring up reason why player customization should be supported

Edited May 22, 2014 by Gnostic

[Lephys]

Dear Lephys

 

The Crux of my reasoning is that players should be able to customize the game as they like best, not shoehorn to a specific model that only a certain player enjoy best. That way ALL players get to enjoy what they like best.

I'm not arguing against player customization, in general. I'm simply observing that there's got to be more consideration put into what to make customizable than "would someone possibly maybe want to skip this and/or do this differently?"

 

If I and a number of people love reading a book by tearing 100 pages from it, then me and like minded people enjoy the reading so such book and will be very happy. Other people who enjoy reading a book without tearing 100 pages from it can choose NOT TO DO SO and get the full enjoyment. The end result, both group of people will be very happy.

The difference between you and me is that you expect the book producers to design the book so that those 100 pages are intentionally removable, so that you don't have to tear them out. I have no problem with you tearing them out. If you don't actually like the whole book, then don't read the whole book. IT's not the book's obligation to make sure it's inherently accommodating to your completely random subjective human desires.

[Gnostic]

If I and a number of people love reading a book by tearing 100 pages from it, then me and like minded people enjoy the reading so such book and will be very happy. Other people who enjoy reading a book without tearing 100 pages from it can choose NOT TO DO SO and get the full enjoyment. The end result, both group of people will be very happy.

The difference between you and me is that you expect the book producers to design the book so that those 100 pages are intentionally removable, so that you don't have to tear them out. I have no problem with you tearing them out. If you don't actually like the whole book, then don't read the whole book. IT's not the book's obligation to make sure it's inherently accommodating to your completely random subjective human desires.

 

 

Is there anything wrong with that? I thought the purpose of this forum is to bring to the attention of the developers what is the player preference and what may be good for the game. Whether the developers choose to implement that is up to them.

 

That said, how hard it is to implement a speed up function? If I choose to mod this into existent, will it be enough to reduce the frame rate and "turn" time? Or I just need to mod the internal timer of the game that it thinks one second is actually two?

[JFSOCC]

 

Dear Lephys

 

The Crux of my reasoning is that players should be able to customize the game as they like best, not shoehorn to a specific model that only a certain player enjoy best. That way ALL players get to enjoy what they like best.

I'm not arguing against player customization, in general. I'm simply observing that there's got to be more consideration put into what to make customizable than "would someone possibly maybe want to skip this and/or do this differently?"

I believe it was said that PoE weas going to have a tremendous amount of toggles for various difficulty affecting gameplay options. It's not that much of a stretch to think we'll find even an option/toggle for what is discussed here.

[Lephys]

It's going to have a lot of toggles. But they were placed there for a reason. They didn't just go "COULD this technically be a toggle? Yes? Okay. IT'S IN!"

 

Also, I don't think "what if someone just doesn't like this inherent part of our game at all? I guess they should be allowed to skip it" is a valid basis they used for any of their toggles.

 

You're pointing out how you feel about this, Gnostic, and I'm simply doing the same.