Why do camp sites disappear?

[Slimjimjohnson]

I always hated how you could do unlimited resting in other games. It made wizards too powerful and every battle was just an alpha strike away with your strongest spells until the next rest.

[SuperNose]

This being the first CRPG game I've ever taken a serious attempt at, I'm going to say I disagree with being able to camp at will. Being new to this sort of RPG(not RPGs in general, mind you), I'm finding that even on Easy I have to rest every couple fights. I haven't gotten this engagement system down yet, and my tank isn't exactly an amazing tank yet. But for me even being able to rest every fight would take the fun of learning and the challenge out of the game.

 

That being said, I'm having a ton of fun with this game so far!

[TheUsernamelessOne]

I always hated how you could do unlimited resting in other games. It made wizards too powerful and every battle was just an alpha strike away with your strongest spells until the next rest.

 

What are you talking about? Alpha striking every encounter with all your encounter powers is the only reasonable strategy in this game, and all the best abilities are replenished between encounters, not by resting.

[Mansen]

Unlimited camping supplies = 0 challenge mode.

 

No thanks. Play easy if you are really struggling to handle 2 camping supplies. I bet 98% of you guys aren't using consumables either.

 

"I didn't bother to read the thread"

 

You already have unlimited rests because of the Inns, Strongholds and a ton of other places where people will let you rest for free. Hell even Chateau de local Lord offers free resting - One of the arguably hardest challenges in the early game.

[aiqidar]

Warning: Long Post Coming Up

 

I think the best way to explain my thoughts on the resting issue would be to compare it to another one of my all-time favourite games (and one that I'm replaying again on the side, probably for the tenth time or so): Jagged Alliance 2. Now, in that game you actually had to do what a lot of people are suggesting here. You'd enter a combat zone with whatever limited supplies you had, and it was up to you to decide how much risk you wanted to expose your squad to, what was the most efficient way to use the two grenades you brought along, how best to use the one guy in your squad who actually has a sniper rife etc.

 

The result was that in order to play authentically (without save scumming etc.) you had to put a lot of thought into what to do. It wouldn't be uncommon to spend 45 minutes to an hour on a single encounter zone, especially if it was something like the military base in Alma where you first had to secure an entry point and then go room-to-room clearing enemies. There also wasn't any "resting" like there is here, and that makes perfect sense. If you set up a campsite in the middle of an active combat zone, the only result will be you getting murdered in your sleep by the remaining enemies you haven't killed yet. The only recovery you got between firefights was basic stamina regeneration, and having a medic treat your wounds for blood loss.

 

This all added to the difficulty obviously, but it didn't make the game frustrating. On the contrary, it was one of the best things about the game. That was because it had a sophisticated combat system that you could really immerse yourself in. There was a proper stealth system. There was proper use of cover and concealement, and light and darkness. The enemy AI was also better - if you shot at a guy and weren't able to kill him instantly, or if you used a very loud weapon, the other enemies would actually get alerted, rather than waiting in pre-set areas for you to "aggro" them. When engaging enemies, you (or they) could be standing, crouched or prone. You (or they) could shoot from the ground, or from rooftops. You could shoot at the enemy's head or legs, or you could just aim for center mass. Two headshots from a good rifle (and often, just one headshot from a sniper rifle) will just straight up kill an enemy dead, no matter how badass a soldier they were. And if they somehow did survive, they'd be pretty much useless for the remainder of the fight, taking severe penalties to combat statistics (as opposed to a "debuff" that goes away after six seconds).

 

The reason I mention all this stuff is: Pillars of Eternity has none of this. Sure, there's a nominal amount of "how do I position my guys" or "what items should I use", but compared to games with a properly dedicated tactical combat system, you're pretty much going through the same repetitive motions. Mind you, I'm not saying that this makes the combat system bad - I'm just saying that it would be closer to Diablo than Jagged Alliance. And a Diablo-esque system should be situated in a Diablo-esque framework, with quick and complete recovery between encounters enabling you to keep things moving at a decent pace. The combat is never going to be as immersive or fulfilling as something like Jagged Alliance 2, so there's no reason to artificially make it more burdensome. The entire concept of "resting" itself - whether it's at a campsite or you leaving the dungeon to go to an inn - is a complete absurdity, but it's one we live with because it makes games like these bearable.

 

Now I do acknowledge the existence of the "this is too easy" crowd. They like the fact that they can clear out an entire dungeon level without camping, and for whatever reason, they would be personally wounded by the mere existence of an unlimted rest option. I thik a good compromise for people like this would be to have achievements for clearing out entire dungeons while only resting a certain number of times. That way they have an incentive to keep optimizing their builds and micromanaging combat (and indeed would even get recognition for their exploits), while the rest of us can just get on with things.

Edited March 29, 2015 by aiqidar

[Andrew_C]

Anyone care to explain why camping supplies don't fit in the portable hole we are carrying around?

[averagedog]

Please increase the price of the common room at the black hound in to 12 copper. I realize that the quest reward essentially give syou a free place to rest, but in the early game I was obsessively going there after every battle because I had no incentive to use camping supplies since they were actually limited and technically cost 75 cp a pop...

[darqleo]

If you are constantly needing to rest, maybe rather than complain about not being able to infinitely rest or having to run back to town every two seconds, you should change your gaming strategy. I found myself getting into situations where I was getting my a$$ handed to me and had to rethink what I was doing, try a different tactic. For instance, I was getting nowhere fighting one of those bandits who kidnapped the dwarf cook with a sword, and when switching to a mace, it was a much easier battle. I checked out some of the map areas "too early" and find myself getting killed pretty quickly, so  I would come back when I had more experience, better equipment, more companions, etc. Not trying to tell anyone how to play the game, but I know it's easy to get into a stubborn "grind grind grind" mentality and try to plow through something without playing it out smarter. Sometimes something silly like a fruit and/or vegetable buff item turned the tide in a battle for me. 

[aiqidar]

If you are constantly needing to rest, maybe rather than complain about not being able to infinitely rest or having to run back to town every two seconds, you should change your gaming strategy. I found myself getting into situations where I was getting my a$$ handed to me and had to rethink what I was doing, try a different tactic. For instance, I was getting nowhere fighting one of those bandits who kidnapped the dwarf cook with a sword, and when switching to a mace, it was a much easier battle. I checked out some of the map areas "too early" and find myself getting killed pretty quickly, so  I would come back when I had more experience, better equipment, more companions, etc. Not trying to tell anyone how to play the game, but I know it's easy to get into a stubborn "grind grind grind" mentality and try to plow through something without playing it out smarter. Sometimes something silly like a fruit and/or vegetable buff item turned the tide in a battle for me. 

 

The problem isn't so much that these combats can't be done without resting, it's that for many people, the combat system just isn't immersive enough to justify that level of deep thought and micromanagement while still keeping the game fun (as I tried to explain perhaps a bit too laboriously in my previous post).

 

It actually hasn't been that difficult for me to clear areas even without resting - my main reason for doing so was paranoia, thinking that if I spend 3 months clearing out a single dungeon I might run out the clock on some invisible timer and fail some quest that I haven't gotten yet. But I didn't actually get any satisfaction from doing so, because like you said, you've got to do some pretty silly immersion-breaking things to make that a possibility, and that's on top of what was already a fairly silly and unrealistic system. 

[Lephys]

I do agree that it probably would've been more prudent to simply limit where you can rest, and/or even adjust the amount to which resting heals you (maybe Survival could augment it? And/or foods you have prepared, in place of camping. The thing is, that's how it WAS designed originally, and enough people moaned about that that they changed it to "camp anywhere, but only so many times". There were basically checkpoints at which you could rest. Which is no different from any other game in existence. In Mario, you don't restart after every single spike pit you jump over. In Call of Duty, you don't kill 2 out of 40 enemies, and start over with only 38 enemies. You have some section of the game (no matter the specifics of the gameplay) that you've got to make it through with limited resources. That's basically an inherent part of games.

 

If we're going to go with "you should always be full health after every single combat encounter," then why stop at that? Why not just make every single encounter involve a single creature, so that you never have to take on differing numbers of enemies without being fully rested and healed? And no, that isn't a silly question, because, in PoE, some encounters are one creature (like a forest troll I just fought recently), and some are like 17 foes. Some are relatively tougher fights, and others are easier, etc. So why allow such variance if you're not going to allow any variance in the resources at your disposal at the start of any given fight?

 

That's ludicrous. Someone up there scoffed at "limitation" being part of design. Limitation is what makes a game a game: You have limited health, limited damage capability, limited party size, limited move speed, limited action speed, limited stat points, limited skill points, limited equipment access... I could go on.

 

And regarding the sheer ability to travel back to town and rest for free... what, are you supposed to just be screwed and have to start a new game when you're too low on Health to continue, but out of camping supplies? You can save anywhere, then reload until you get better rolls and stuff. Should we remove traps and ambushes from the game because "you can always just reload and know what's coming"?

[aiqidar]

If we're going to go with "you should always be full health after every single combat encounter," then why stop at that? Why not just make every single encounter involve a single creature, so that you never have to take on differing numbers of enemies without being fully rested and healed? And no, that isn't a silly question, because, in PoE, some encounters are one creature (like a forest troll I just fought recently), and some are like 17 foes. Some are relatively tougher fights, and others are easier, etc. So why allow such variance if you're not going to allow any variance in the resources at your disposal at the start of any given fight?

 

The answer to "Why not just make every single encounter involve a single creature" is a pretty obvious one. The creatures are part of the setting, and so if you found only one creature in an area where there clearly should be more, that would be pretty strange and disorienting.

 

As to your question about making resource limitations matter, I would happily endorse that if PoE had a system where that felt rewarding in a meaningful sense, the way it does in Jagged Alliance. Or like it did, to some extent, in Fallout and Fallout 2. As it stands though, making me agonize over "resources" just accentuates the fact that the combat here basically functions like it would in a mediocre ARPG.

 

That in and of itsef isn't really a complaint - the combat in Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate was mindless fun, filler between the parts of the game that actually mattered, but it didn't stop them from being two of the greatest games ever made. Now I get that the PoE crew wanted to make combat a "thing" rather than just filler, but the way to do that would have been to completely overhaul the combat mechanics and make it a true tactical combat system. Rather than just keeping the old (and fundamentally very silly) system and making it more time-consuming.

 

Now, I get that some people actually enjoy this combat system. I can't figure out how or why, but more power to them if it adds to their enjoyment of the game. Me though, I play the game for a completely different reason, and the combat here feels much the same as it did in Torment - it's the stuff that's there between the parts of the game that actually matter to me.

[Geekoid]

Until you are casting fireball spells and fighting skeletons n real life, stop making a 'realistic' comparison. It's ridiculous. I've taken 10 preteens into the woods for a week, we weren't fighting creatures, but we were constantly moving, climbing and prepping camp. that three meals a day, and gear.

 

And in the real world if you are in combat, then after the first combat you leave and go to then hospital, or die in the woods. So let's stop about realism, shall we?

Now onward.

 

The camping aspect is just tedious. Not the concept, but the implementation.

 

I'm on level seven of a dungeon. So I get into a few fights, then rest. Then run out of camping gear. Then I need to go back  up through 2 empty levels, then go to side stairs. Then go to the surface, then go to an Inn, then the inn has.. 1 camping supply. So Now I have to go to a different zone to get more. Basically running around for a supply, and since all my health is red, I can't do anything else.

 

The is a very tedious process that seems to be put in place with the sole purpose of making the game longer.

The should be an option, like the expert option but no camping supplies. It would basically be there for the people who clearly enjoy that aspect.

 

Or change it to what the original poster thought. Set up a camping area on a level.

Or at the very least, let me get to the supplies I need easily. Right now, it's just tedious, and that has nothing to do with easy or hard, just tedium.

 

 

What seems to be missing from some peoples thoughts is that you can want easier camping, and not camp after every fight.

 

Let the players enjoy it how they want. I think most of the people here can't take constructive criticism of a great game.

 

Why does it bother you if people have an option you wont use?

 

Finally, if you are in fights and not taking long term injury? then you are the one playing in easy mode.

 

 

[AnarchyJesus]

Unlimited camping supplies = 0 challenge mode.

 

No thanks. Play easy if you are really struggling to handle 2 camping supplies. I bet 98% of you guys aren't using consumables either.

lol "No thanks"? guess what? no one asked you to use it. so stop crying about other people who do want to use it. not everyone play game the same way. i play solo on hard, running back town then run back every 2-4 fight is boring.

Edited April 2, 2015 by AnarchyJesus