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Why allow resting in dungeons at all?


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... After 15 hours playing this game my only real gripe is that Obsidian's solutions to these age-old cRPG problems seem to be over-engineered and arguably ineffective.

 

I agree, particularly regarding the rest mechanic being ineffective -- unless their design goal was to increase tedium.

 

 

I'll go into detail:

 

You're limited to X number of camps before you have to replenish your camping supplies.  There's no penalty for doing so except for player (IRL) time (the time it takes to leave the dungeon, buy supplies, and return to the same place in the dungeon) and a little bit of coin (75gp, which is negligible).

 

You're not sealed into the dungeon (cave-ins, magical barriers, whatever).

Monsters don't re-spawn.

Monster difficulty within the dungeon doesn't increase.

New traps aren't set for you.

Costs of camping supplies don't increase over time.

No chance of ambushes during/after camp.

 

There's nothing to prevent you from camping whenever and wherever you want. Essentially, there's really no limit to the number of camps you can do in any dungeon provided you're willing to deal with the tedium.  Furthermore, the classes with on-rest abilities are potentially more tedious to play.  And so, the game is either going to be too easy or too hard, depending on the amount of tedium you (the player, not your character) can endure.

 

So, there it is.  Fixable?  Sure. Will it be fixed?  No.

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Brimsurfer, on 31 Mar 2015 - 10:19 PM, said:

 

Rapscallion, on 31 Mar 2015 - 9:36 PM, said:

I fear that some people misinterpreted my original post.

 

This is not a complaint about realism, or even so much about RPing or the gameplay mechanics.

 

PoE was designed from the ground up using knowledge acquired from years of game-making to solve many of the little issues that are typical of cRPGs. You've only got to look at the primary attributes to see this.

 

My concern is that the rest system is still highly problematic, and seems to be the primary cause of many of the other iffy gameplay mechanics in this game. I wonder why the game could not be built upon a different system - i.e. rebalanced such that there was no resting while 'on mission'.

 

......i guess you are a new generation player who is just simply not use to it.

 

 

 

 

Please don't do that. I'm 30 years old and I've played many different cRPGs and PnP RPGs, including all the IE games.

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Because you also can do it in normal D&D?

 

I never encountered it but there should be a chance of getting attacked while resting and the longer you are in these dungeons the more should it occur in my opinion.  Worst thing for me is that you can go in and out a dungeon, travel to the city, get more camping supplies and then go straight in without repopulating the area.  

 

Rather strange that no one mentioned the ancient Ultima 5. In that game you could rest anywhere but player also has an option to post a guard for "night time" so all characters get waken up when party get attacked.

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Because then Mages would be really useless for one...I like that it limits resting, I would like it to limit also the ammount of "Grappling hooks", "pry bars" and stuff you encounter in dungeons though, it makes "being prepared" to dungeon crawling more important, but so far the system is OK as it is.

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Because you also can do it in normal D&D?

 

I never encountered it but there should be a chance of getting attacked while resting and the longer you are in these dungeons the more should it occur in my opinion.  Worst thing for me is that you can go in and out a dungeon, travel to the city, get more camping supplies and then go straight in without repopulating the area.  

 

Rather strange that no one mentioned the ancient Ultima 5. In that game you could rest anywhere but player also has an option to post a guard for "night time" so all characters get waken up when party get attacked.

 

Same deal in Realms of Arkania when you rest on the road. You can post up to 3 people to take shifts and some stats affect whether you get jumped.

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The thing with resting in dangerous places is... a random chance roll to see if you get attacked by a group of enemies (especially infinite, respawning groups of enemies that don't actually occupy space in a dungeon/area normally) is WAY too swingy of a mechanic to use to abstractly simulate the dangers/limitations of resting like that.

 

I'd much rather just always be able to successfully rest, but not for 8 hours. I mean, why would you:

 

A) set up a WHOLE campsite in the middle of a dungeon, in the midst of creatures with predatory senses of smell and such that have lived in this area for a while now?

B) not simply wake everyone else up quietly, as a scout, and have the option to get the hell out of there before something's actually attacking you?

 

The threat of being attacked wouldn't force you to sleep until you were attacked. It simply prevents you from continuing to sleep. You can either wake up and fight the stuff, or wake up and get the hell out of there. I don't need the game to have enemies that respawn independently of game world time/occurrences to materialize out of the ether and force me into combat just to limit my resting.

 

There are things for which to use dice rolls, and things not to.

 

That's what I'd go with, off the top of my head; just limited resting capabilities in dungeons/dangerous areas. Maybe you can fully set up camp on the world map (or in an area that's basically been cleared -- the game could basically just reduce the "danger level" based on how many enemies are left in the map area), and rest for as long as you like (or as long as the danger level would allow). And there, the amount of healing you're able to achieve in your rest depends on the Survival skill, etc. OR, you can go back to town, always, and rest for free (takes longer to actually fully heal), or for not-free (you rest more quickly because you're not sleeping in the stables for free).

 

So, basically, you can ALWAYS heal a bit, if you want to throughout dungeons, but it's not going to be up to full unless you do really well in battles and come out of them with less missing HP than you're gaining in your limited rests.

 

If you're just going to have a system in which you always get to heal back to full in between every battle, there's no point in even having long-term health. Might as well just use the "infinite mana, everyone can constantly heal" system, where-in the only way to fail and die is for the enemies' damage input to your party outweighs your party's healing output. Which, to be honest, I've grown quite tired of. It's a perfectly valid way to do things, but hasn't it been done enough now? And isn't it more fun to actually not-get-dead in fights, than to simply keep undoing damage?

 

At some point, you've got to have a limitation, or you've just got to have absolutely no incentive to worry about how you're doing as you move through an area. "Who cares if we all got down to 1 HP every fight! 8D!"

 

At one extreme is "there's just no healing of any kind in a dungeon, and you have to make it all the way to the next checkpoint where you can heal." And on the other extreme is "you basically always just heal up after a fight, so you never ever have any kind of long-term conservation thoughts of any kind." I think somewhere in the middle makes for the most interesting gameplay, however you do it.

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Should we not start with some Ipelagos, or at least some Greater Ipelagos, before tackling a named Arch Ipelago? 6_u

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Would players object if a brand new RPG system was created using a checkpoint system instead of manual saves and resting? Like many shooter games (and Mass Effect) you'd take a party with a finite amount of resources into a mission, and then it's up to you to make those resources (including health and spells) count without resting.

 

There could be scattered opportunities to regain some spell uses and resources can be looted while on-mission. If a player messes up then they can reload from a previous checkpoint. If the player REALLY messed it up then they are given the opportunity to reload from the start of the 'mission'.

 

While exploring the wild then all resources can be regained by camping at certain sites or resting in an inn.

 

If anyone has played Persona 4, that's the kind of system I think would work really well.

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The original design was to allow you to only rest in certain locations on the map. This feature was replaced with camping supplies during development.

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"Wizards do not need to be The Dudes Who Can AoE Nuke You and Gish and Take as Many Hits as a Fighter and Make all Skills Irrelevant Because Magic."

-Josh Sawyer

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illathid, on 01 Apr 2015 - 2:51 PM, said:

The original design was to allow you to only rest in certain locations on the map. This feature was replaced with camping supplies during development.

 

This was my expectation. I did try to follow the developer commentary as much as possible, but I think I missed the part where they overturned this decision. I can't help but feel that it would have been better with the original design. Perhaps they were worried about slaughtering too many sacred cows?

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illathid, on 01 Apr 2015 - 2:51 PM, said:

The original design was to allow you to only rest in certain locations on the map. This feature was replaced with camping supplies during development.

 

This was my expectation. I did try to follow the developer commentary as much as possible, but I think I missed the part where they overturned this decision. I can't help but feel that it would have been better with the original design. Perhaps they were worried about slaughtering too many sacred cows?

 

 

I would suspect it was about compromise and balance - personally I think the current system is fine

Nomadic Wayfarer of the Obsidian Order


 

Not all those that wander are lost...

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Why not? It's not like anyone is holding a blunderbuss to your head to make you do so -

 

I have never understood why people complain about being able to do something in a game when all you have to do is NOT do it if that's how you wish to play

Well maybe I can sort of help you understand lol

 

Some of us are programed to take advantage of everything possible, so if we can rest limitlessly we will do so simply because its advantageous to do so. At least that is how my brain is wired so to speak.

 

so even if I would prefer it if you could not rest in dangerous places, I will rest if allowed to because I cant bring myself to purposely hamstring myself

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wanderon, on 01 Apr 2015 - 3:01 PM, said:

 

Rapscallion, on 01 Apr 2015 - 2:55 PM, said:

 

illathid, on 01 Apr 2015 - 2:51 PM, said:illathid, on 01 Apr 2015 - 2:51 PM, said:

The original design was to allow you to only rest in certain locations on the map. This feature was replaced with camping supplies during development.

 

This was my expectation. I did try to follow the developer commentary as much as possible, but I think I missed the part where they overturned this decision. I can't help but feel that it would have been better with the original design. Perhaps they were worried about slaughtering too many sacred cows?

 

 

I would suspect it was about compromise and balance - personally I think the current system is fine

 

 

The current system is fine, for sure, but we're talking about a company that promised they were going to produce a new robust RPG system that aspires to fix the problems that plague the genre (D&D being the most prominent). Really, I feel like the only major difference between PoE and D&D is the way primary attributes work.

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Stop wanting realistic gameplay dudes.

 

I can't belive it, you fight against dragons, undead, wizards, you can heal your wounds by resting, you can read souls and all : but you find illogical to rest in a dungeon.

 

 

You know there's a way to play like you want, it's called roleplay. You don't wanna rest cuz you find it not RP ? So don't. I can't see your point.

 

Agreed. I like the mechanic overall vs other attempts. Couple recent games have added that limited rest dimension, it is there to make you conserve and strategize. Not that I'm against a cooldown system, but with it being per rest, this isn't all bad.

 

And about realism... your player starts out "Did anyone see that?", "Did anyone hear that?" the visions. As if the player is dumfounded. But said player in this case spews magic from their finger tips, kills ghosts and shadows, but then is totally amazed they see dead people. That doesn't add up all that much either. Relax, enjoy.

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Everyone is (or has been) an armchair RPG Game Designer (myself included).

 

I like being able to rest when things go bad, assuming I can get out of a situation, w/o going all the way back to Town (or another safe place -- or worse, re-load).  I also really like seeing how far I can go without having to rest as well.

 

In a real tabletop RPG, the DM would let the party rest when the overall game session's pacing required it, but would also "roll up" some wandering monsters if he felt like the players were taking advantage.

 

In a single-player CRPG, I have to take some responsibility for my own game experience.  I rest when I can't be arsed to do something more realistic, otherwise I do not.  I like it that way.

 

I also know that some people really, really hate limiting themselves at all.  The camping supplies mechanics seems like a decent compromise so far.

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Horrorscope, on 01 Apr 2015 - 3:43 PM, said:

 

ProjectBG2Respawn, on 31 Mar 2015 - 5:44 PM, said:

Stop wanting realistic gameplay dudes.

 

I can't belive it, you fight against dragons, undead, wizards, you can heal your wounds by resting, you can read souls and all : but you find illogical to rest in a dungeon.

 

 

You know there's a way to play like you want, it's called roleplay. You don't wanna rest cuz you find it not RP ? So don't. I can't see your point.

 

Agreed. I like the mechanic overall vs other attempts. Couple recent games have added that limited rest dimension, it is there to make you conserve and strategize. Not that I'm against a cooldown system, but with it being per rest, this isn't all bad.

 

And about realism... your player starts out "Did anyone see that?", "Did anyone hear that?" the visions. As if the player is dumfounded. But said player in this case spews magic from their finger tips, kills ghosts and shadows, but then is totally amazed they see dead people. That doesn't add up all that much either. Relax, enjoy.

 

 

This thread is not a discussion on realism. It's a discussion on the mechanics of the resting system being the way they are, despite the developer goals of completely redesigning common cRPG systems for the modern age.

 

Also, your character lives in a world where magic is a known (even common?) force, and there are many monsters including undead in the wilds just metres from the road. These things are common in the lore. Being a Watcher is very uncommon and in the lore so your character has every right to react this way, especially because it's completely new to them.

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Horrorscope, on 01 Apr 2015 - 3:43 PM, said:

 

ProjectBG2Respawn, on 31 Mar 2015 - 5:44 PM, said:

Stop wanting realistic gameplay dudes.

 

I can't belive it, you fight against dragons, undead, wizards, you can heal your wounds by resting, you can read souls and all : but you find illogical to rest in a dungeon.

 

 

You know there's a way to play like you want, it's called roleplay. You don't wanna rest cuz you find it not RP ? So don't. I can't see your point.

 

Agreed. I like the mechanic overall vs other attempts. Couple recent games have added that limited rest dimension, it is there to make you conserve and strategize. Not that I'm against a cooldown system, but with it being per rest, this isn't all bad.

 

And about realism... your player starts out "Did anyone see that?", "Did anyone hear that?" the visions. As if the player is dumfounded. But said player in this case spews magic from their finger tips, kills ghosts and shadows, but then is totally amazed they see dead people. That doesn't add up all that much either. Relax, enjoy.

 

 

This thread is not a discussion on realism. It's a discussion on the mechanics of the resting system being the way they are, despite the developer goals of completely redesigning common cRPG systems for the modern age.

 

Also, your character lives in a world where magic is a known (even common?) force, and there are many monsters including undead in the wilds just metres from the road. These things are common in the lore. Being a Watcher is very uncommon and in the lore so your character has every right to react this way, especially because it's completely new to them.

 

 

I am ok with the mechanics of resting and get it.

 

I'm also part of th equation of believing the story and the situation, I find it a bit goofy. Sorry.

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wanderon, on 01 Apr 2015 - 3:01 PM, said:

 

Rapscallion, on 01 Apr 2015 - 2:55 PM, said:

 

illathid, on 01 Apr 2015 - 2:51 PM, said:illathid, on 01 Apr 2015 - 2:51 PM, said:

The original design was to allow you to only rest in certain locations on the map. This feature was replaced with camping supplies during development.

 

This was my expectation. I did try to follow the developer commentary as much as possible, but I think I missed the part where they overturned this decision. I can't help but feel that it would have been better with the original design. Perhaps they were worried about slaughtering too many sacred cows?

 

 

I would suspect it was about compromise and balance - personally I think the current system is fine

 

 

The current system is fine, for sure, but we're talking about a company that promised they were going to produce a new robust RPG system that aspires to fix the problems that plague the genre (D&D being the most prominent). Really, I feel like the only major difference between PoE and D&D is the way primary attributes work.

 

 

I think you are a bit confused about promises - what was promised was not the bright new day of RPGs totally reworked from games gone by it was to create a spiritual successor to some of the most popular RPGs of the past - the IE games - 

Nomadic Wayfarer of the Obsidian Order


 

Not all those that wander are lost...

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Would players object if a brand new RPG system was created using a checkpoint system instead of manual saves and resting? Like many shooter games (and Mass Effect) you'd take a party with a finite amount of resources into a mission, and then it's up to you to make those resources (including health and spells) count without resting.

 

There could be scattered opportunities to regain some spell uses and resources can be looted while on-mission. If a player messes up then they can reload from a previous checkpoint. If the player REALLY messed it up then they are given the opportunity to reload from the start of the 'mission'.

 

While exploring the wild then all resources can be regained by camping at certain sites or resting in an inn.

 

If anyone has played Persona 4, that's the kind of system I think would work really well.

I absolutely despise checkpoint-based saving systems; people do not always have the time to play to the next checkpoint, and games shouldn't be enforcing that you have to spend x amount of time playing before you're allowed to quit without losing your progress.

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Here's a story about my Stronghold Dungeon trip around 9 hours in the game, Spoilers for the first 5 levels of the dungeon:

 

I went down the pit from the first floor straight to the fifth floor. I had no camping supplies left

I encountered the drake with my level 4 party, and got my ass kicked many times before clearing the encounter. After that I figured I was going the wrong way (I wanted to get back up, I had not saved before going into the pit) so I had to go the other way.

I had to go through 2 Xaurip Encounters on my underleveled, poorly built party without any resting supplies. Luckily after the first encounter I found one pack of camping supplies and I got out alive.

 

 

I will probably remember this situation for the rest of the playthrough. I spent ~1.5 hours trying to come up with proper tactics to stay alive, and once I finally got out it felt extremely rewarding. Without camping supply limit I would've never ran out of rests and the situation wouldn't have happened. With limited resting the situation would've been more frustrating and a lot harder.

 

This far I've had no problems with the rest mechanics. If you happen to find the mechanics pointless, it might be because you just are not used to it. I think It's a great way to add more planning to the combat. I'd like to hear one argument against the resting mechanics (specifically in dungeons) that is not purely based on personal opinion.

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DocDoomII, on 01 Apr 2015 - 4:43 PM, said:

Checkpoint based games are kinda crappy for RPGs. They feel super cheap and arcade-y.

 

I should clarify. When I say checkpoints, in this instance I mean set locations/times where the party may rest within the dungeon. You'd still be able to save anywhere but you'd need to progress to a certain point to allow your party to rest.

 

Some examples:

 

If you're invading Readric's Hold by force then resting is completely disabled until you rout the guards. This can be done by eliminating (kill, bribe, persuade) one or more captains or by killing a certain number of mooks. Rest is then enabled.

 

If you're infiltrating Readric's Hold then resting is disabled until you convince an NPC to help you. You're then able to rest in their quarters.

 

If you're sneaking into Readric's Hold you're able to rest in remote locations (sewer/dungeon) so long as your party remains unseen.

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DocDoomII, on 01 Apr 2015 - 4:43 PM, said:

Checkpoint based games are kinda crappy for RPGs. They feel super cheap and arcade-y.

 

I should clarify. When I say checkpoints, in this instance I mean set locations/times where the party may rest within the dungeon. You'd still be able to save anywhere but you'd need to progress to a certain point to allow your party to rest.

 

Some examples:

 

If you're invading Readric's Hold by force then resting is completely disabled until you rout the guards. This can be done by eliminating (kill, bribe, persuade) one or more captains or by killing a certain number of mooks. Rest is then enabled.

 

If you're infiltrating Readric's Hold then resting is disabled until you convince an NPC to help you. You're then able to rest in their quarters.

 

If you're sneaking into Readric's Hold you're able to rest in remote locations (sewer/dungeon) so long as your party remains unseen.

 

 

Sounds like a great idea for a mod. Also, I know that in NWN you can't rest if there's an enemy within a certain distance, and that resting in the wild win BG/BG2 sometimes triggered a random attack/event. That might be easier to code, because resting when you can physically see the enemy through FoW but he can't see you is cheesy. 

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See, the whole "you can rest whenever, but you might get attacked by monsters, oh nooooo!" thing just rubs me the wrong way. The game's saying "by all means, rest. But also, I'm going to discourage you from resting."

 

I'd much rather have a more straight-forward limitation, than just two things clashing with each other. It's the same reason I hate "You can carry all this weight, but then you'll move like a snail" systems. Imagine if, in a PnP session, your DM actually just made you, the players, wait twice as long for everything to occur because one of your characters was encumbered.

 

I think there are intelligent/clever ways to limit things that make sense and aren't overly one-sided (pure limitation for limitation's sake, or limitation for simulation's sake).

 

Something akin to checkpoints would be best, I think, if you're going to limit resting in the first place. You can also use the relative-time-passage approach, and have each combat you get through equate to some certain amount of time (15 minutes, for example) in regard to "how long has it actually been, if this were a book recounting all our character's adventures, since we last rested?". Then, instead of "you make camp and sleep in the middle of this dungeon for 8 hours and you're all healed up), you could just allow for hour-long rests in dangerous places, etc. But, you could only rest like that every so often. Nothing crazy. Not "Oh, you hafta fight the next million enemies first." But, just not "you're always full-health, but you have to manually rest whenever you choose to actually achieve that, even though nothing's stopping you."

 

Another approach is to simply have your immediate health be your non-permanent wounds, and to allow for the occurrence of permanent wounds in combat, based on things you can actually affect (like how much damage you take at once, or what kind of attacks you're being hit with versus what kind of defense you have, etc.). Then, have wounds simply lower your maximum Health. You could even just have an understood "auto-rest" after each fight -- just "instead of immediately hauling butt down the corridor after that 15-minute battle, we actually bind wounds and such and catch our breath before moving on." So, your Health would always automatically recover by a certain percentage after each fight, but, again, based on your wounds you'd accrued, your maximum health at any given point could be lower than your base maximum. Then, you could have different ways of curing/treating certain wounds to make them heal faster, or have spells that remove wounds of certain kinds, etc.

 

Now it's a little more interesting, but it still basically just means that you can't run around all willy-nilly, taking JUST few enough hits for everyone to not-die, every single battle, as you make your way through an area. At the same time, you're never forced or encouraged to just fully retreat to a tavern just to heal up.

 

Then, of course, you've got time as a factor, etc. If resting of any sort takes time, and time-sensitive things are going on in the game world ("Look! The mad king's escaping with his daughter! We have to fight our way to him NOW!"), then there's an actual choice. Of course, again, a lot of those types of things are always "If you take 10 minutes, everything's fine. If you take 10 minutes and 1 second, OH NO EVERYONE'S DOOMED!". I understand that you can only code so many outcomes to a situation, because time and resource restraints, but... some kind of more gradual range of outcomes is preferrable. I mean, even 3 outcomes instead of just 2 is infinitely more appealing.

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Should we not start with some Ipelagos, or at least some Greater Ipelagos, before tackling a named Arch Ipelago? 6_u

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Well if you don't want to camp, then don't......

 

I don't see a problem there. Don't buy or pick up any camping supplies, you can just play the game without camping.................

 

Why do you want to force others to play the game your way? just don't don't camp yourself and you problem is solved.

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