392 Discussion

[Karkarov]

Lol? No. In Icewind Dale 2 you can lose because of saves or whatever but in the 2E games, this doesn't happen.

 

Most of the time in BG1 or BG2, you die because you failed to do something (such as counterspell), not because of RNG.

 

> inb4 qq about wizard battles

*insert qq about wizard battles*

 

I think Junta is right here.  Eternity the RNG can make a fight very very very easy.... but I have never seen the RNG make a fight I "should" win into a fight I lost.

[Sensuki]

That's only because there's no Save or Die effects. As I previously stated a few days ago. That's the only difference here.

 

The actual resolutions of attacks have more states in this game, the to hit "die roll" is 100 not 20 and the damage ranges can be pretty wild as well. This creates a system where you can score 1 damage or 40 damage on the same attack. That IS more random and more swingy than the Infinity Engine games, and it's just downright awful.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Sensuki

[dr membrano]

I'm a bit late to the beta crowd but I have played 392 a couple times through now. My first impression is that there is a massive amount of potential for this game to be really good but only if some of these fundamentals are fixed properly. 

 

For one, it happened to me 3 times that looting was obstructed because of a corpse. Luckily each of these times nothing of any value was lost or missed as I loaded up the game and checked it out. However, in previous crpg's I've been burned by having to choose either to load the game to a much earlier save or go without major loot, or more crucially a quest item. 

 

This may be a personal problem but I had a hard time getting a comfortable combination of auto-pause settings. I like the idea of choosing which to you is a good time to pause but ultimately there was idle-item by a few in my party. An option here to pause after "one turn" or once each party member has attacked at least once would be good. I was either stopping and starting constantly which is the draw-back of entirely turn based play or one of my party was getting targeted while others were standing around which is the draw-back of real-time play.

 

I like the writing in the game, I thought it was very well done and I definitely noticed how my stats and different characters changed the content of the text. I'm looking forward to testing out a few more builds with entirely different stats to push it a little further. 

 

At the end of the Lle A Rhemen dungeon, in the room with the animal boss guy, there are about 8 spiders that were completely unaggro, I couldn't attack them and they didn't notice me. In regards to that boss, I was rather surprised that I was able to simply talk him out of a fight, especially because it only took me actually saying one thing. I hate to say, it was disappointing unless there's a continuation of that storyline later on in the game.

 

The way food and potions take effect needs work. I understand not wanting to make it so that you can bring tons of food into a dungeon and be a cat with 9 lives, but at the same time, potions are magical and if they exist at all they should have surprising effects. I was shocked that it was decided that food, healing potions and spells made the big dungeons too easy to get through and made things easier but you can "camp" in the bottom of a dungeon. In those other rpgs I would definitely take these camping supplies over a lot of the potions and spells I used. 

 

--------------------------

 

I was pleasantly surprised by the usefulness of the Priest class. It's not as much fun to have as your personal character but, IMO, the spells they have are even better than the wizard's spells. 

 

The monk as well was really cool and definitely refreshing difference from other rpgs.

 

The wizard was kind of difficult to use because of low defense and friendly fire. Whenever I had him in the back of the formation for protection purposes I found I was needing to bring him and and leave him alone on the flanks so as to use stronger spells effectively. After getting the IV level spells the wizard became more useful but was still in a supporting role, similar to the priest, sitting in the back and using very selective spells at certain points in the fight. The bounding and concussive missiles were the two better spells and the fire wall has a lot of potential for using in the right formation. I used it very effectively in the narrow dungeons as well.

 

I wasn't a fan of the rogue, the talents were nearly useless and the traps were just ineffective for use in a dungeon setting. 

 

I've had a chance to read through all the topics in the beta section with some context regarding peoples' suggestions and I got to say that I don't know what a lot of people are complaining about. While there are a lot of bugs, that's the point of a beta test. Most of the "problems" I ran into are things that could definitely be smoothed out as characters develop as the game goes on. There are still a lot of weapons and spells that haven't been introduced and to think that because the wizard at level 8 or whatever isn't very useful or powerful doesn't mean they don't become crucial later on. Considering how long it took to get through the "first area" in relation to the size of the map, it looks like there's a whole lot of gameplay. 

 

Glad I pre-ordered. 

[PrimeJunta]

That's only because there's no Save or Die effects. As I previously stated a few days ago. That's the only difference here.

 

The actual resolutions of attacks have more states in this game, the to hit "die roll" is 100 not 20 and the damage ranges can be pretty wild as well. This creates a system where you can score 1 damage or 40 damage on the same attack. That IS more random and more swingy than the Infinity Engine games, and it's just downright awful.

 

In BG I usually insta-lost a fight involving magic if I failed to stop Confusion, Horror, or some other long-duration party debuff that effectively left all or most of the party not responding to commands. The insta-kill effects were more of a BG2 thing and not much of a problem once the counters were available and you knew what they were.

 

What I like about P:E's "swingy" magic is that it calls for synergies in a way IE magic never did. Sure, your fireball is likely to be pretty ineffective against a group with high Reflex. But hey, you have buffs which pump Accuracy, and debuffs which debuff Reflex. Drop an Entangle on the group first, and your fireball will bite. I find that much more interesting and, yes, tactical.

[Sensuki]

That's more a strategical depth, than a tactical depth IMO. Most of the same depth existed in 3E D&D (and thus Icewind Dale 2) and it existed in the IE games too if you cast spells such as Greater Malison and stuff that reduced the saving throws of enemies. The difference with the 2E games is that there were spells that reduced all saving throws, or spells that reduced armor class. 

 

Tactical depth is in the moment decision making / the way that you responding to immediate problems. There's not much of that in Pillars of Eternity, it's usually a series of non-choices, and pretty much all of the movement based tactics that existed in the Infinity Engine games is removed by the Engagement system and replaced with binary choices - initial positioning plus a do I / do I not disengage question, which most of the time is, no.

 

A lot of the ability based tactical decision making that the IE games has been deliberately removed or made redundant as a side effect of design decisions. In the IE games you were required to pay attention to what spells enemies were casting and react to them, either by trying to protect your party members from the spell they were casting, trying to interrupt the spell, or making sure the appropriate party member (usually Priest, Mage or sometimes Paladin) were tactically positioned away from the party so that they were not caught by the enemy spell, and could dispell it. 

 

You don't really need to deliberately position casters away from the party in Pillars of Eternity because the AoE size of spells is small, and when an enemy targets an AoE spell, usually the AoE is only big enough to get the party member they are targeting and one other party member (usually the melee party members). You can't remove debuffs or status effects, you can only suspend them, and at the moment there is only one spell worth casting to remove status effects and that is the Paladin's one which suspends for 15 seconds. It's good but it costs an advancement point. The Priest one is only 6 seconds, and usually not worth it because casting a heal is 99% of the time the better choice (for the purposes of the spell slot, and the action itself). The monk one is a self-cast, and it also costs an advancement point, and as I've never seen it as a good choice among the other options available for Monks - particularly when weighed against disable abilities.

 

Interrupts are now random+weapon based, and ranged weapons have standard-low interrupt, so trying to interrupt an enemy caster with a ranged weapon is folly. So far enemy Wizards don't seem to be a huge threat in PE, they're easy to beat because they don't protect themselves against anything, (except maybe cast Arcane Veil) and they go down very quickly. Enemy Priests are annoying, but they don't seem to deal much damage, so they're usually my last priority as their buffs/debuffs are useless with no allies to take advantage of them.

 

Beyond the opening set of actions and movements in PE combat, there's not much tactical depth. You're required to react to initial movements, targeting, positioning and your ability choice (which there is more of, due to the class design), but after that it simply boils down to who you target and what abilities you use. A lot of that is rote because for many classes you just spam your per encounters, if you picked them. I have not faced a single encounter where something an enemy did after the opening required responding to other having to heal damage dealt with the Priest. I have lost encounters (well, I tend to reload if a party member falls unconscious) because I made a mistake in my opening positioning/ability choice, but that's about it.

 

Encounters in all the IE games (except maybe Baldur's Gate 1) often went for a lot longer duration than Pillars of Eternity due to the to hit system, lower per-hit damage across the board and the required responding to enemy actions, particularly casters. Combat could end catastrophically quick if you didn't prepare properly against a "save or die effect", or you cheesed the crap out of the game with broken combos, but the standard play against Pillars of Eternity standard play is a lot different, has much better pace, is more tactical and more fun. PE has a bit more strategy involved, and more emphasis on the opening set of actions, other than that I find it pretty banal - it's trying to be tactical, but failing at it.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Sensuki

[PrimeJunta]

Thank you for the in-depth explanation. Very interesting. I think we play these games rather differently, and expect different things from them.

 

The counter-based gameplay in DnD never really appealed to me. It was all about knowing which status effect is connected to which action, how to counter or dispel that particular status effect, and how to make sure you had the right counters/dispels available. I found the system complicated rather than complex or deep.

 

My experience of combat in IE games is pretty much as you describe P:E -- "You're required to react to initial movements, targeting, positioning and your ability choice [...], but after that it simply boils down to who you target and what abilities you use." Add to that, preparing for the insta-lose effects the foes you're going to face will have, with or without meta-knowledge.

 

As to responding to something they did, it's all scripted: I don't so much respond as die, reload, prepare the right counter, and know what to do. It's extremely rare that I can recover from a mistake and turn around an encounter that's going badly. In P:E, however, this happens quite frequently: having the monk kick away a beetle that's burrowed behind your lines, a caster drop a short-duration or even single-target disabling spell to break engagement or stop threatening enemies in their tracks, and so on. 

 

I find P:E combat much more dynamic, fluid, and engaging. I barely ever save-and-reload (which is something I strongly dislike), but there's plenty of quick adjustments to changing circumstances. Usually the worst that's happened after a fight gone wrong is that I've had to camp earlier than I had planned. None of the IE games had this, let alone the NWN's and their rather horrid mushy combat.

[Sensuki]

will reply properly after my dota 2 game

[Luridis]

Something I don't understand... 1-40 damage as Sensuki said. Why not have a weapon that does 40(max) and D10 or D20 the last 50-60% of the damage. I see PrimeJunta's point about applying debuffs before magic. But, 1-40 on a weapon is a pretty wild damage range. I can see how that would lead to a pretty RNG dependent encounter.

 

I mean, lets assume you save before battle and some warrior gets 5 consecutive hits at the start of the battle both times.

 

2, 3, 2, 10, 7 = 24 damage over 5 hits

 

20, 5, 2, 26, 38 = 91 damage over 5 hits

 

That's a pretty wild variance for the same number of hits. Look at the same with 40% min-max percentage rolls. (16 + Round(1d60 as %)) (same rolls)

 

16 + 0, 16 + 1, 16 + 0, 16 + 2, 16 + 1 = 67

 

16 + 3, 16 + 1, 16 + 0, 16 + 4, 16 + 6 = 78

 

Now, granted the original rolls were not 1-60 like would be actually used for the second set. But the damage isn't looking so wild. They could even go down to 25% + 1d75 as % if the variance is too little. That would at least prevent the weapons from being so lucky or unlucky depending on how things are playing out.

 

I know they could use the D20 way of handling minimums... 3d6 + 8, etc. But that's going to look strange on weapon descriptions and less clear.

 

Doing it the percentage way, weapons could have a description that reads:

 

Damage Type

Damage Amount

Damage Variance

 

i.e.

 

Type: Slashing

Damage: 40

Variance: +/- 24 (60%)

 

Weapons of higher quality could then be, not necessarily TONs more damage, but have less variance.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Luridis

[Karkarov]

Just be aware Lurdis that while what Sensuki says is true it isn't that simple.  It relies immeasurably on whether you grazed or crit and the enemies DR versus your damage type.  In general while the RNG gods can make some fights really hard or insanely easy in Eternity most of the time it is actually somewhere in the middle.  Also it rides a ton on your weapon choice.... cause you aren't doing 40 damage to a stone beetle with a generic sword unless you also have a ton of other special abilities, passives, modals, etc running and score a lucky crit.  Even then it is highly unlikely due to the beetles high DR versus slashing.

 

Here is the real difference between Eternity and Infinity Engine games.

 

Eternity is 70% pre fight planning and proper deployment, maybe 30% in fight adjustments and changes.

 

Infinity Engine games are 70% in fight countering and adjustments and 30% prebuffing.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Karkarov

[Luckmann]

[...]

 

Infinity Engine games are 70% in fight countering and adjustments and 30% prebuffing.

30% prebuffing? That's not nearly enough, if you're doing proper buffing in the IE games, you will steamroll everything, and pre-buffing could easily take longer than most actual fights.

[Sensuki]

That's just a made up stat, but in general it's true. Eternity is more about strategic planning and less about per-encounter tactics. I don't like that. I do like the fact that planning and strategy are required, I don't like the fact that the actual gameplay in the encounter isn't very fun, or very tactical.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Sensuki

[PrimeJunta]

Hu? I'd say the exact opposite again. DnD based games are won or lost in chargen; what you actually do in encounters is almost entirely determined by those choices. P:E has way more tactical flexibility in encounters. Also at least I find it way more fun.

 

Edit: let me take that "won or lost in chargen" back, partly. It's overstating the case. It's true for DnD3, much less true for AD&D where character advancement is entirely on-rails. With AD&D it's all about memorizing the right spells and having the right gear, or, at lower levels, shooting arrows at everything. 

Edited January 2, 2015 by PrimeJunta

[PrimeJunta]

Re the swingingess, also note that most P:E grazes -- those 1's Sensuki is talking about -- would have been outright misses or saves in IE games. I.e., zeroes. I.e. what he's saying is true, but then by the same criterion the damage range for anything in IE games is zero to whatever.

[Karkarov]

30% prebuffing? That's not nearly enough, if you're doing proper buffing in the IE games, you will steamroll everything, and pre-buffing could easily take longer than most actual fights.

Well I wanted to keep consistent numbers in both examples

 

Junta you could make that same argument in Eternity though.  I can't cast fireball if I didn't bring a wizard and give him a grimoire that has it, etc etc.

[Sensuki]

Hu? I'd say the exact opposite again. DnD based games are won or lost in chargen; what you actually do in encounters is almost entirely determined by those choices. P:E has way more tactical flexibility in encounters. Also at least I find it way more fun.

 

Edit: let me take that back, partly. It's overstating the case. It's true for DnD3, much less true for AD&D where character advancement is entirely on-rails. With AD&D it's all about memorizing the right spells and having the right gear, or, at lower levels, shooting arrows at everything.

Come on man. Not everyone is terrible at building characters. PE's character system is a bit more forgiving and is designed more for role players than power gamers, but it's just ludicrous if you think that makes gameplay in the Infinity Engine games not matter.

 

Thank you for the in-depth explanation. Very interesting. I think we play these games rather differently, and expect different things from them.

 

The counter-based gameplay in DnD never really appealed to me. It was all about knowing which status effect is connected to which action, how to counter or dispel that particular status effect, and how to make sure you had the right counters/dispels available. I found the system complicated rather than complex or deep.

I don't really have a massive affinity for the actual system itself, but I do enjoy the gameplay it produced in the Infinity Engine games, it required reaction/multiple reactions from the player. Combined with other gameplay elements there were often multiple ways of dealing with a combat problem. A simple example is an enemy that casts Horror. You can cast Resist Fear on the party before the encounter, you can sit the Priest back and cast Remove Fear on the party after it has taken effect, you can interrupt the enemy caster with an archer, or a magic missile.

 

Josh Sawyer and others here don't like Hard counters. Okay, fair enough. I'm not saying that absolutes is the best way to go (nor am I saying it's a bad way to go) but removing them has removed these reactionary elements from the gameplay. There's a few reasons for this. The first is that you can't flat out remove effects, you can only suspend them, and the number of ways you can do that is very limited and some of the spells themselves aren't very good. Then there's the fact that in PE, if your party members are Frightened, or Sickened, or Blinded or something - so what? It's very difficult to even notice the effect of a spell compared to the Infinity Engine games. When I am blinded by a Mist Mephit in BG2 at the start of the game, geez I notice the difference, it becomes really difficult to hit anything. If you're blinded in PE, you don't even really notice it. Status effects are also cheap to come by, and you're usually affected by more than one of them in combat. Figuring out the exact efficacy of something in this game is very difficult, and requires external mathematical equations, like the stuff Matt516 does. There are some "Protection from" type spells, but they only give a meagre increase against afflictions. Most afflictions don't cause damage or last for very long either, so using one of those to get like 3 seconds less of an affliction over a heal or a debuff is just a waste of a spell slot on a Priest IMO.

 

There's no reason such reactionary gameplay couldn't exist in this game without having the hard counters, but I believe it was deliberately excluded from the design, and there are ramifications for doing that.

 

My experience of combat in IE games is pretty much as you describe P:E -- "You're required to react to initial movements, targeting, positioning and your ability choice [...], but after that it simply boils down to who you target and what abilities you use." Add to that, preparing for the insta-lose effects the foes you're going to face will have, with or without meta-knowledge.

I don't believe that is true. I think you may be overlooking some of the things you did without thinking in the IE games. It does depend a bit on which game you're talking about. There wasn't too much to the combat in Baldur's Gate 1, but the other games required more reactionary elements from the player. In my Let's Play (modded) Icewind Dale, I did a tonne of reactionary movement in encounters, switching of aggro, micromanaging wounded characters to the backline, moving melee units around mid combat. Tactical repositioning to take advantage of terrain. Swapping items between characters mid combat. Swapping between melee and ranged on some characters. I think a lot of people do this stuff almost subconsciously in the IE games.

 

The Melee Engagement system alone removes or actively discourages most of the movement-based tactics that you could apply in the Infinity Engine games. If your character is engaged, it's almost always a very bad idea to disengage and risk the disengagement attack, particularly on characters with low Deflection. You can build a character that is hard to hit with disengagement attacks at the cost of character advancement points and ability use that could otherwise be used on something useful like actually making the character better at doing damage, and instead just standing still and doing damage. Even with investing in making a character better at disengaging, you're still going to lose Health because of it and make your adventuring day shorter. The Monk ability that you love so much was not available in any of the previous builds, it is new to this build. It is a good ability and it's likely the only one worth actually using because it knocks targets away AND inflicts the prone status, which is a really good disable. Regardless, 99% of the time it's always better to stay engaged and just stand still and deal damage, which is boring gameplay.

 

As to responding to something they did, it's all scripted: I don't so much respond as die, reload, prepare the right counter, and know what to do. It's extremely rare that I can recover from a mistake and turn around an encounter that's going badly. In P:E, however, this happens quite frequently: having the monk kick away a beetle that's burrowed behind your lines, a caster drop a short-duration or even single-target disabling spell to break engagement or stop threatening enemies in their tracks, and so on.

For me it's the opposite. Combat in Pillars of Eternity is usually decided based on the combat opening and initial movements. In this particular build combat goes for a bit longer against creatures because character weapons and class abilities have been nerfed, but creatures have not, so they take longer to take down. If you make a positional error at the start of combat and one of your squishies is engaged by multiple melee units (which is more an issue on Hard due to the increased number of enemies in encounters that your front line cannot deal with - due to the engagement limits) and your opening set of abilities wasn't particularly effective, that's probably going to end up in some KOs. For me that's a reload.

 

Excluding save or die effects, you can clutch yourself out of most situations in the Infinity Engine games. I've saved characters through tactical retreating, tactical blocking, swapping potions mid combat, casting clutch spells such as Invisibility, Free Action, shuffling items between inventories mid-combat so a character can use a Potion of Invisibility or Exilir of Health. Sometimes you can't do it - for instance if you're out of spells and your main Fighter gets charmed and kills your party or something silly like that.

 

but there's plenty of quick adjustments to changing circumstances. Usually the worst that's happened after a fight gone wrong is that I've had to camp earlier than I had planned. None of the IE games had this, let alone the NWN's and their rather horrid mushy combat.

Lies (or ignorance maybe).

 

Kinda sounds like you didn't like the combat in the Infinity Engine games that much. There seems to be a trend here. The people that didn't really like/didn't really care for the IE combat gameplay seem to enjoy Pillars of Eternity more. The people that played the IE games for the combat gameplay (myself, Stun, HP2, Malekith, Sif, Raszius etc) don't find it very fun.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Sensuki

[Sedrefilos]

I don't know exactly how combat is in PE (haven;t played but I've seen many videos), but in IE games, combat was relying heavily in trial and error. You don't know what is ahead of you, you enter a fight, you lose (or lose some vital character you cannot resurrect at the moment) because you don't know what you are facing, then reload, pre-buff, re-position and try again. It is OK if you enter a difficult situation and have to rethink your tactics, but when this happens every single time, is extremely annoying. I'm playing IWD EE right now and I have to do this in almost every situation (I haven't played the game since 2001). Also you don't know if the characters you've made are made good enough to be effective in what they're supposed to be. You may die by a shot from a goblin. Then you press "L" and redo. The other time I had 5 characters dealing with an army of goblins while my cleric was there exchanging swings with a goblin the whole time without one hitting the other even once!

 

IE games expect you to know in advance how D&D is played and that's the big problem. I had this problem back then and I have it even now. I played those games only once each because I don't replay rpgs. Back then it felt cool because "oh, I have to learn the rules" and "tactics and ****, if I play it this way I might get better results". It was something new to me after a 5 year break from computers and video games and I was adapted to it. Since then, 14 years have passed and things have changed a lot in video games. That combat gameplay, the IE combat gameplay, for me right now, now that I'm revisiting those games, is bad. Really really bad. And I like Pillars is trying to be different.

 

To be honest though, BG2 felt a bit better combatwise than IWD (I played it a bit last summer), maybe because you start at level 7 and you are stronger/have more abilities, but that didn't changed the way battles were played.

 

In conclusion, rules made for tabletop games and based on turn-based gameplay not always translate best in real time video games. In tabletop games you roll a die and you get the thrill just by that. In a video game you can't rely on that. You must change the rules. I haven't played the beta, but in theory I like its mechanics better than IE games. And, let me say this once more, comparison makes no sense and it's not constructive. We have a game with its rules, better try and contribute on those rather than making comparisons with other games and demand changes for Pillars to represent those games most.

[Shevek]

I hardly ever reacted in the middle of a fight in the IE games. I mostly steamrolled all encounters. Fights where I needed to do stuff other than auto were typically 90% prebuffing (dragons, etc), just memming breach/having anti imprison stuff up (liches), summons+haste or just saying screw it and dumping tons of aoe (stinking cloud x2, web x2, cloudkill, skull traps, etc) before the fight even properly starts. All of these are never ever done on the thick of it. The rare exception being needed to pop an antidote when poisoned or kiting some dude/popping pots while my archer murders it.

 

The IE games could be played successfully at all difficulties with ZERO tactical thought (just fight, die, reload and mem proper spells if you havent played the game before and do not have meta knowledge). Only difficulty mods that added in prebuffing enemies or enemies with cheezy abilities changed that somewhat. Unless you hamstring yourself by using a playstyle to artificially increase IE combat depth, then the unmodded IE games were fairly boring combat wise (this is doubly true at the early levels PoE takes place in).

 

Some may find the PoE abilities banal, but I am doing much more during combat in PoE. The per encounter abilities promote constant skill use in the thick of combat and the quickly draining stamina/limited rest resources reward it.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Shevek

[Sensuki]

You've repeatedly stated that you regularly cheese encounters and rest spam in the IE games. Your position seems to be that because exploits exist in the IE games and you use them, Pillars of Eternity is automatically better.

 

Sedrifilos has stated that he only plays games once and doesn't like having to learn complex rules, which doesn't really have anything to do with the gameplay itself.

 

Two more examples of people who don't really like the combat gameplay in the Infinity Engine games that prefer Pillars of Eternity. No change to that trend here.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Sensuki

[Shevek]

The problem being that cheesy abilities are built into the fabric of the IE games. They are incredibly numerous. Its one thing to avoid using a single spell or overpowered ability but in the IE games you have to avoid tons of spells, abilities, items, etc. For combat in IE not to be cheezy, be mindful in how you use haste, web, stinking cloud, cloudkill, archers, spike traps, skull traps, spell sequencers, chromatic orbs, simalcrum, cheezy items, summons, etc etc...

[PrimeJunta]

"Lies?" Sensuki, I am disappoint. Usually discussions like this go sour fast once this kind of thing starts, so I'm bowing out of this one.

[Sensuki]

Most of those spells are per day. In BG1, BG2 and IWD2 in particular you don't have too many spell slots. You can only use them often if you rest spam.

[Shevek]

Two things:

1. I only used those for encounters I couldnt just steamroll.

2. Nothing stopped you from rest spamming or doing any of that cheese 90% of the time. Again, unless you are artificially limiting yourself, IE combat was fairly straight forward.

[Sensuki]

Because you rest-spammed and faced every encounter at 100% strength? Yeah I'll bet. The gameplay is actually fun if you don't do that and also accept strategical errors such as forgetting to buy arrows, haha. There appears to be lots of people who rest-spammed and didn't use potions ...

 

In a lot of places in the vanilla games you actually can't rest spam, but the Rest Anywhere mod exists (I use it too, but I mostly only rest when fatigue kicks in and mostly only backtrack when my inventory is full) so I suppose that's mostly where it comes from, otherwise there'd be lots of backtracking to inns.

 

A lot of the best fun I've had with the IE games is figuring out ways to beat encounters when you're not at full capacity. Out of spells, out of arrows, didn't bring the right scrolls or whatever, and see how many ways you can make something out of nothing.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Sensuki

[Sedrefilos]

That's the problem Sensuki. A game must be crystal clear of what you can and cannot do with its rules. IE had you guessing or in many times were unclear of what you were doing.

A game must give you all of it in its first playthrough. You have to experience the combat tactics and complexity the first time you play it, not after the 100th. You must know what you're doing by the first hour or so. Else the designers didn't do their job well.

 

Some people used to play D&D so IE rules were clear to them from the start. I (and most people) didn't. I adapted to it, liked some things about it, but even after a whole playthrough, some things were still unclear. Other games have complex rules too but you know what you're doing from the start. Challeges are fair and rules are gradually explained and introduced and have meaning after the first couple of hours or so. Maybe if I endure the frustration of IWD I might like it better after my characters have leveled up 5 or 6 levels. Maybe the next time I play it I know what builds are better. But that isn't good game design. Not ofr me at least.

 

And I din't say I don't play games in general more than once. I just don't play rpgs more than once because I tend to do the same descisions so they have no meaning to me. I do play strategies and action games more than once because there is no character development in there. Just gameplay and mechanics. So I do like complex mechanics. But complex well designed mechanics. And I don't rely on nostalgia only. I like evolution of gameplay. I don't see the IE as the best rtwp gameplay any more and I guess all designers saw that too that's why no other games made exactly as IE games. I don't believe they're the greedy moneymongers or the consolified heretics. They just wanted to evolve.

[Shevek]

Edit: Darn, spolier tags dont work on this forum

 

Also, Sensuki, its not suprising that if you challenge yourself, the IE games are challenging. That is true of almost any game.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Shevek