The loss of Vancian casting?!

[Infinitron]

Here's a scheme that I think could produce interesting results.

 

 

Protip: Any solution that comes down to "Let's turn this Infinity Engine RPG into a survival-oriented roguelike" is not going to happen

Edited February 21, 2017 by Infinitron

[Ninjamestari]

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. No one is trying to turn PoE into a survival-oriented roguelike, the purpose of this thought process is to explore the implications of certain design choices and the uncompromising division between a game that does have meaningful resource management and a game that does not, and why a game that belongs to one of those categories shouldn't aspire to lean more towards the other.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

tedium is necessary to create meaningful resource management

 

[citation needed]

[Ninjamestari]

It was me who said that, you can cite that all you like.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

It was me who said that, you can cite that all you like.

 

It's still a ****ing idiotic statement.

 

Meaningful tradeoffs are necessary to create meaningful resource management. "Player patience" is certainly a resource you could tap into and use as the basic currency for your meaningful tradeoffs, but that solution is suboptimal because it's fundamentally a meta-currency, disconnected from the closed internal economy of your resource management system.

Edited February 21, 2017 by aluminiumtrioxid

[Ninjamestari]

 

It was me who said that, you can cite that all you like.

 

It's still a ****ing idiotic statement.

 

Meaningful tradeoffs are necessary to create meaningful resource management. "Player patience" is certainly a resource you could tap into and use as the basic currency for your meaningful tradeoffs, but that solution is suboptimal because it's fundamentally a meta-currency, disconnected from the closed internal economy of your resource management system.

 

 

First of all, I don't really appreciate being called an idiot, and I REALLY don't appreciate you mocking an idea without even putting in the effort to read and understand it first.

 

Second, player patience isn't a currency here, although you being poor on that regard certainly would explain your strong reaction. You can't work around that system with patience, you have to successfully manage your resources through multiple encounters, although you still require patience. Meaningful game-play ALWAYS requires patience from the gamer. If you want a game that doesn't stress your patience, then you're after mindless entertainment and not after a meaningful experience.

[MaxQuest]

P.S.: Sleeping in a dungeon is cheating, and if I was your DM none of the sleeping beauties would wake up from their magical dreams. Going back to an inn for sleep while exploring a cave would result in that cave being evacuated by the time you come back.

What if... there would be?

- regular rest (when you restore all of your per-rest abilities)

- night-watch rest (when everyone restores 3/4 of their per-rest abilities), but are more or less prepared against ambushes.

 

I am looking forward to Josh's and Obsidian's revamp and elimination of Vancian casters. The empowerment resource sounds interesting but we will have to see how it all plays out.

Same here.

Although with the information we currently have at our disposal, I am a bit skeptical about empower "adding 3 power-levels to the next spell-cast". Because if spells scale with power_level (from 0 to 10); and empower is adding a flat +3; we can already see that empower will provide a very high relative gain in early game, and a meh gain in late game.

 

The new resource classes such as Cipher, Monk and Chanter were great. They were fresh and fun and could be easily tuned to allow for challenge throughout the game. Vancian casters, on the other hand, brought with them the same issues of resting abuse and 'god mode Gandolph'.

Couldn't agree more.

With 90+% of fights being trash encounters, it often felt like vancian casters were under-performing because if you rest once per 8-12 fights, you had to save/conserve their spells. Yet, during boss fights, ability to unload all their powerful arsenal from straight-go, indeed felt a little godly.

Edited February 21, 2017 by MaxQuest

[Ninjamestari]

It's difference in kind. Wizards pay for that ability to unload godly magic by being very limited in the less challenging encounters. I don't see why that is *necessarily* a bad thing, although with the way too easy resting in PoE it certainly was.

[Fenixp]

Meaningful game-play ALWAYS requires patience from the gamer. If you want a game that doesn't stress your patience, then you're after mindless entertainment and not after a meaningful experience.

Do you realize that your solution can still be for the most part bypassed by returning to an inn? Looking at a loading screen does test player's patience and is most certainly not meaningful. It's just tedious. And no, testing patience does not in any way, shape or form make for meaningful gameplay.

 

Looking at your screen and thinking about solution of a puzzle, correct party composition or the next step you wish to make in combat while not actually doing anything - that's not testing patience, that's mentally challenging player. That's not boring, that's usually creative and fun.

 

Looking at your screen and waiting until the game does something you can't influence while you think about how fun would it be to actually play the bloody game - that's what 'testing patience' is called and is neither fun nor enriching in anyway, unless you want to pull some sort of "Inner peace" bollocks.

 

Anyway, your implementation would be interesting for a game that's not Pillars of Eternity, or any sort of classical RPG successor for that matter. The use of random chance of rests prompting reloads and impromptu 'solution' to this problem by restricting them just serves as a proof of that.

Edited February 21, 2017 by Fenixp

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

First of all, I don't really appreciate being called an idiot, and I REALLY don't appreciate you mocking an idea without even putting in the effort to read and understand it first.

 

 

Luckily I did neither of those things.

 

(A lesser man would undoubtedly add something about not appreciating poorly-thought-out accusations based on nothing but the reader's inability to distinguish between calling a statement idiotic and calling the person who made that statement an idiot, but I'm going to resist that temptation here.)

 

 

player patience isn't a currency here

 

 

tedium is necessary to create meaningful resource management

 

 

 

Pick one. "Tedium is necessary" and "player patience isn't a currency" are mutually incompatible statements.

[Ninjamestari]

 

Pick one. "Tedium is necessary" and "player patience isn't a currency" are mutually incompatible statements.

 

 

[citation needed]

[Doppelschwert]

Not so. First, tedium is necessary to create meaningful resource management, which was the original goal. Second, resting at an inn isn't free, and traveling back from the inn to wherever you're adventuring causes fatigue, which lowers your stats to make sure that if you take this approach, there is a price to pay for it.

 

The whole point I'm trying to illustrate is that you either go with a proper hardcore punishing system, or you forget about the whole thing and make a system that doesn't revolve around resting. Compromises between the two don't really produce desirable results.

 

First, I disagree that tedium is necessary for meaningful resource management. There just needs to be more meaningful opportunities to spend resources than what you have available at any given point in time. Tedium is certainly one way to limit the available resources, but so is cutting off any way to replenish them during a fixed amount of time, like during the missions in shadowrun.

Second, I don't see how the fatigue induced by traveling is a real price. Assuming that the fatigue only depends on the travel distance, I would always end up with the same fatigue at the beginning of a dungeon. So either I have to immediately rest at any new area, or it is not a real price to backtrack, since I'm just as good as I was the first time I entered.

The only way I could see this as a penalty was when resting at any new area was mandatory due to fatigue and traveling through the map induced more fatigue than fighting the enemies on the way, which both seems very illogical and / or gamey.

 

I agree on your assertion that you either make resting hardcore or mostly irrelevant. But thats exactly whats happening now:

The role of resting is reduced in favor of encounter based abilities.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

 

Pick one. "Tedium is necessary" and "player patience isn't a currency" are mutually incompatible statements.

 

 

[citation needed]

 

 

Surely the connection between rest-gating via tedium and the player's ability to tolerate tedium (ie. patience) isn't so obscure as to require extensive proof?

[Ninjamestari]

 

Not so. First, tedium is necessary to create meaningful resource management, which was the original goal. Second, resting at an inn isn't free, and traveling back from the inn to wherever you're adventuring causes fatigue, which lowers your stats to make sure that if you take this approach, there is a price to pay for it.

 

The whole point I'm trying to illustrate is that you either go with a proper hardcore punishing system, or you forget about the whole thing and make a system that doesn't revolve around resting. Compromises between the two don't really produce desirable results.

 

First, I disagree that tedium is necessary for meaningful resource management. There just needs to be more meaningful opportunities to spend resources than what you have available at any given point in time. Tedium is certainly one way to limit the available resources, but so is cutting off any way to replenish them during a fixed amount of time, like during the missions in shadowrun.

Second, I don't see how the fatigue induced by traveling is a real price. Assuming that the fatigue only depends on the travel distance, I would always end up with the same fatigue at the beginning of a dungeon. So either I have to immediately rest at any new area, or it is not a real price to backtrack, since I'm just as good as I was the first time I entered.

The only way I could see this as a penalty was when resting at any new area was mandatory due to fatigue and traveling through the map induced more fatigue than fighting the enemies on the way, which both seems very illogical and / or gamey.

 

I agree on your assertion that you either make resting hardcore or mostly irrelevant. But thats exactly whats happening now:

The role of resting is reduced in favor of encounter based abilities.

 

 

You do realize that cutting off ways to replenish resources in some peoples minds would equate to Tedium? This is why I used it as a very broad umbrella term. There will always be consequences, and there will always be someone who finds those consequences tedious, no matter what way you choose to handle them.

 

I'm glad you agree on the main point, and you're right that this is exactly what is happening now. I never said it shouldn't happen, because PoE was this weird middle-ground compromise that really implemented the problems of both worlds, and that it is necessary to move to one direction or another. The point was to illustrate the problems of vancian magic in a crpg environment, and that in order to have a meaningful resting mechanic, you really need to go all in with that, and half-measures will only cause more trouble than they're worth.

Edited February 21, 2017 by Ninjamestari

[Aotrs Commander]

Here's a scheme that I think could produce interesting results.

 

Resting and Fatigue

 - Resting should be tied to fatigue levels, which will accumulate to characters through time and through exerting activities, such as combat, traveling, climbing, spell-casting etc.

 - These fatigue levels will add cumulative penalties to your stats.

 - Resting allows you to recover from fatigue

 - NO FREE RESTING ANYWHERE

 - Resting in a wilderness area has negative side effects, such as catching colds, not being able to rest properly, requiring camping supplies AND sleeping bags to be carried along.

 - Survival skill will allow you to better recover from fatigue while resting in a wilderness. A character without survival skill won't be as well rested after a night in the wilds.

 - Re-introduce carrying limitations by strength and containers you're carrying with you to make the ability to sleep in wilderness areas have a real opportunity cost.

 

Spell-casting

 - Spell-casting is best done with a mana-system. The mana doesn't regenerate on its own and it doesn't automatically replenish during resting.

 - To replenish mana, one has to drink up mana potions, or consume special mana-recharging products prior to resting.

 

Wounds and lost hitpoints

 - Wounds that are not treated properly with proper herbs or other medicines do not heal during resting.

 - Wounds reduce the fatigue recovery gained from resting

 - Untreated wounds may fester while resting

 - Magical healing is available, but costs mana.

 - NO HEALING DURING COMBAT, this whole concept is fairly ridiculous to me.

 

And then for the last ingredient that is necessary to make this whole thing work: NO FREE SAVING. Saving the game should be restricted either to resting, or to resting at a safe location. So no reloading over and over and over again to avoid negative effects that require treatment, forcing you to plan ahead.

 

It looks like we're looking at quite a hardcore system here, but any compromise would make the whole system meaningless. That final bit is the most important one not to compromise, along with the no free resting part, the others can be worked around with less severe consequences.

 

If, on the table-top, my DM suggested this as a way he was going to run his games, I would walk out the door so fast I would have left before he started speaking.

 

(And I say that as quarter-century long-running DM who considers his micro-management (like making the PCs pay for their food expenses) as it is only tolerated by his players as foilable.)

 

I'm not sure what my players would do if I suggested that to them - actually, y'know what, I'mma ask them. I'll get back to you if they don't lynch me.

 

Ye gods, it would make Rolemaster played to the hilt look benign by comparison.

 

All of that applied would be a unilaterally terrible idea. It would make the game unfun, tedious and - especially with the inability to save - arbitarily inconvenient, Save points are a legacy of primitive computer technology and they have no place in a modern RPG - nor even in one twenty years ago. And there is nothing worse than having to do the same thing over and over because you keep dying at some late point; especially if you are going to be actively punished for going away, elimianting the chance of coming back with a different approach. (It was to the detriment of JPGs that they still (at least in the PS2 era ones i last played) did that.)

 

Let alone that it absolutely forces players to play one, very specific way - your way - when giving the players the option to set their own difficulty is becoming more common.

 

If such as system was implemented, I can very much imagine it would lead to far more people ragequitting (and then that's lost revenue for Obs when they say "never buying a game from them again, that was [inesrt expletive here]" becaue angry people do that) or just using a walkthrough from the start.

 

But I'd take even Dragon Quest 8's terrible "you can only ever rest and save in inns" over that - though only barely, since it was so crap a system I never made it past the first boss.

 

 First, tedium is necessary to create meaningful resource management,

 

It really, really, REALLY isn't. If at any point, one of the design ideas of a game designer (i.e. "game: a thing that is supposed to be fun") is "create tedium" they need to give up their day job and take up a career in buracracy or something.

Edited February 21, 2017 by Aotrs Commander

[Leeuwenhart]

It will be like Harry Potter...

 

6 years for a spell to kill somebody XD

[Ninjamestari]

 

Meaningful game-play ALWAYS requires patience from the gamer. If you want a game that doesn't stress your patience, then you're after mindless entertainment and not after a meaningful experience.

Do you realize that your solution can still be for the most part bypassed by returning to an inn? Looking at a loading screen does test player's patience and is most certainly not meaningful. It's just tedious. And no, testing patience does not in any way, shape or form make for meaningful gameplay.

 

 

What exactly would that accomplish, if resting only recovers your character from fatigue, it doesn't replenish hitpoints or spells. If untreated wounds fester, then should the inn be far away, that trip is actually harmful to the party rather than beneficial.

 

All in all, the point never was to implement this system in PoE, i made it merely to illustrate the point of what kind of a system would need to be in place if resting was to be meaningful in the first place. I'm glad that even if the point was lost on so many (not all), I at least managed to spark some thought, so the post wasn't a complete failure.

Edited February 21, 2017 by Ninjamestari

[demeisen]

​​​​

 

Am I the only one who enjoys killing trash mobs if the gameplay mechanics are designed in a fun way? The way most posters and Obsidian devs talk about trash mobs, you'd think the best option would be to just remove them altogether because of how "unfun" they apparently are to most people.

 

​You're not the only one, no.  I enjoy most of the fights, but I want to feel like they matter in some way.  I'm not overly attached to Vancian as such, so I won't argue strongly for it, but I am attached to some form of longer term resource management that is significant.  It gives value to the trash fights, because each one costs me in some way, and is a part of wearing my party down as they journey through an area.  The point isn't to survive the trash encounter - I know damned well I'm going to win - the point is to survive the whole dungeon full of trash encounters... plus the non-trash ones.  The trash encounters are much less fun if they have no risk or cost of any sort.

​

​Some old CRPGs circa 1980's were tuned such that there was no regen of any sort outside a few safe places to sleep.  That provided a palpable sense of being on a journey.  At the end of a long trip into a dungeon, those weak little creatures you could normally beat without thinking twice were legitimately dangerous to your ground-down battle-weary, exhausted party.   You didn't meet every encounter fresh as a daisy, and it meant you needed to actually think about how to best handle the easy fights, because each and every one was part of that grinding-down process.  It was about having a journey, not having a bunch of mostly-disconnected little encounters.

​

​PoE1 was tuned to be very easy outside of boss fights, which means you could beat any encounter with nothing more than per-encounter resources - at least after the early game.  One saving grace was the split health/stamina system, which was a good idea.  Still, I'd really like to see PoE2 go further in the direction of longer term resource management, whatever the mechanism behind it.  I feel the lack of it really cheapens games, and that cheapening has become almost inescapable in modern games where everybody wants their hands held.  You never have to think much beyond the single fight you're currently in, which you will always meet at or near full strength.  You never have to worry about being backed into a corner, because everything you had in the last fight will be there in the next one too.  A whole dimension of gameplay gets eviscerated.  Now, that dimension can and often is done poorly, but I feel the right answer is to improve it, not to eliminate it.

​

[MaxQuest]

Am I the only one who enjoys killing trash mobs if the gameplay mechanics are designed in a fun way? The way most posters and Obsidian devs talk about trash mobs, you'd think the best option would be to just remove them altogether because of how "unfun" they apparently are to most people. Yet this seems like a bandaid fix to the true, more glaring issue, "Is combat itself even fun?". Personally, I don't find throwing in one unkillable super-tank into the fray who hits like a kitten while I cast mostly the same spells and use the same tactics over and over for each encounter incredibly fun.

Nope. You are not the only one. With a proper party composition it wasn't tedious. And with DAO style party AI tactics we will be able to blaze them.

 

My understanding was, that with the nerf to per-encounter usage of low-lvl spells for vancian casters past lvl 9; devs decided to also reduce the number of trash fights, to somewhat keep the balance in perceived usefulness between them and other classes.

[Pel]

I think it's important to understand that different people want different things from their gaming experiences (and even those things can suddenly change at a mood's whim or over a longer period of time - and naturally many people's desires and "fun needs" are at odds which each other, meaning that they don't even really know what they want). So to say one system is "idiotic" or "tedious" in a situation where all of these feelings are incredibly subjective/relative and while leaving out the possible pros of a nuanced system while only addressing the cons is intellectually dishonest and will run our conversation in endless circles.

[Pel]

 

Here's a scheme that I think could produce interesting results.

 

Resting and Fatigue

 - Resting should be tied to fatigue levels, which will accumulate to characters through time and through exerting activities, such as combat, traveling, climbing, spell-casting etc.

 - These fatigue levels will add cumulative penalties to your stats.

 - Resting allows you to recover from fatigue

 - NO FREE RESTING ANYWHERE

 - Resting in a wilderness area has negative side effects, such as catching colds, not being able to rest properly, requiring camping supplies AND sleeping bags to be carried along.

 - Survival skill will allow you to better recover from fatigue while resting in a wilderness. A character without survival skill won't be as well rested after a night in the wilds.

 - Re-introduce carrying limitations by strength and containers you're carrying with you to make the ability to sleep in wilderness areas have a real opportunity cost.

 

Spell-casting

 - Spell-casting is best done with a mana-system. The mana doesn't regenerate on its own and it doesn't automatically replenish during resting.

 - To replenish mana, one has to drink up mana potions, or consume special mana-recharging products prior to resting.

 

Wounds and lost hitpoints

 - Wounds that are not treated properly with proper herbs or other medicines do not heal during resting.

 - Wounds reduce the fatigue recovery gained from resting

 - Untreated wounds may fester while resting

 - Magical healing is available, but costs mana.

 - NO HEALING DURING COMBAT, this whole concept is fairly ridiculous to me.

 

And then for the last ingredient that is necessary to make this whole thing work: NO FREE SAVING. Saving the game should be restricted either to resting, or to resting at a safe location. So no reloading over and over and over again to avoid negative effects that require treatment, forcing you to plan ahead.

 

It looks like we're looking at quite a hardcore system here, but any compromise would make the whole system meaningless. That final bit is the most important one not to compromise, along with the no free resting part, the others can be worked around with less severe consequences.

 

If, on the table-top, my DM suggested this as a way he was going to run his games, I would walk out the door so fast I would have left before he started speaking.

 

(And I say that as quarter-century long-running DM who considers his micro-management (like making the PCs pay for their food expenses) as it is only tolerated by his players as foilable.)

 

I'm not sure what my players would do if I suggested that to them - actually, y'know what, I'mma ask them. I'll get back to you if they don't lynch me.

 

Ye gods, it would make Rolemaster played to the hilt look benign by comparison.

 

All of that applied would be a unilaterally terrible idea. It would make the game unfun, tedious and - especially with the inability to save - arbitarily inconvenient, Save points are a legacy of primitive computer technology and they have no place in a modern RPG - nor even in one twenty years ago. And there is nothing worse than having to do the same thing over and over because you keep dying at some late point; especially if you are going to be actively punished for going away, elimianting the chance of coming back with a different approach. (It was to the detriment of JPGs that they still (at least in the PS2 era ones i last played) did that.)

 

Let alone that it absolutely forces players to play one, very specific way - your way - when giving the players the option to set their own difficulty is becoming more common.

 

If such as system was implemented, I can very much imagine it would lead to far more people ragequitting (and then that's lost revenue for Obs when they say "never buying a game from them again, that was [inesrt expletive here]" becaue angry people do that) or just using a walkthrough from the start.

 

But I'd take even Dragon Quest 8's terrible "you can only ever rest and save in inns" over that - though only barely, since it was so crap a system I never made it past the first boss.

 

 First, tedium is necessary to create meaningful resource management,

 

It really, really, REALLY isn't. If at any point, one of the design ideas of a game designer (i.e. "game: a thing that is supposed to be fun") is "create tedium" they need to give up their day job and take up a career in buracracy or something.

 

I'm not a fan of all these "speaking for other people" blanket statements regarding people being extremely upset and ragequitting from having to replay the same areas after dying, etc. We only have to look at the success of the Dark Souls series and other very challenging games to see that there are many different types of gamers, some of whom absolutely love a great challenge, as it tests and improves their reaction times, memories (pattern recognition), willpowers, work ethics, and/or mental acuities, etc, depending on the game.

 

Edit: So what I'm saying is that sure, these hardcore mechanics may make some people dislike the game more, but you can't deny that it will make other, different types of people like the game more, and just because you side more with the "dislike the game more" crowd in this instance or that technically it will decrease profits by a minute amount, doesn't mean the decision is objectively bad if it fits within the developer's vision of making a great game. And it's important to note that most great games usually aren't at odds with themselves. For example, you can't really want your players to be happily engrossed in a dangerous fantasy world which was supposed to be at least as immersive as the Infinity Engine games, and then have a ton of hand-holdy, unpunishing mechanics that allow said players to soundly rest in the WILDerness or not have to deal with resource management - you can't have your cake and eat it too.

 

And one final retort to the "game: a thing that is supposed to be fun" claim. Games don't have to be fun to be popular, engaging, and more. They just have to give something worthwhile to the player: give some amount of emotion (sadness (story-driven games about death/cancer/etc), fear (horror games), thrill (first person theme park games), etc), learning experience, benefit, or if you are a masochist, make the player suffer as a sort of life lesson, etc. But yes, fun games are awesome.

Edited February 21, 2017 by Pel

[Gromnir]

 

Is Gromnir the resident troll? Seems a bit annoying for him to roleplay while endeavoring to soundly debate people lol...

 

Edit: I'm all for fun and games btw, but there's a time and place for everything and it seems a bit selfish to get his in this convo derailing way. It's important to keep in mind that someone "roleplaying" as a bully is still being a bully, just as someone roleplaying a fallacy-spouting curmudgeon is still being a fallacy-spouting curmudgeon in a place where fans of Obsidian are genuinely (to varyingly, obviously subjective degrees) trying to make the game they like/love the best it can be via discussion.

 

Gromnir isn't a troll, he's a half-orc. Also, it's bad form to post multiple times in the same thread without intervening posts.

 

 

quick clarification:

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66081-united-states-claims-at-being-a-democracy-seriously-threatened/?p=1441976

 

as an aside, folks does realize how repetitive this thread has become, yes? 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[ManifestedISO]

To this day the only half-orc to earn an MFA from Berkeley, if I remember, which now admits only six humans per year to that program, from 200 applicants. Orc and half-orc admission data is strangely difficult to research. 

[ocelotter]

Perhaps allowing players to "fail" dungeons would creating an interesting dynamic within the constraints of the current resting system? Let me explain.

 

Suppose entry into some (all?) dungeons was gated with a scripted interaction, warning of the dangers inside (come prepared!). Once inside, the dungeon would behave as a gauntlet: do the best you can with the limited resources available to you, e.g. camping supplies. If your party is unable to continue, there's always the load feature if you would like to try again. Alternatively, you can admit defeat and leave the dungeon, but in that case the scripted interaction would warn you that doing so will provoke a fail scenario. \

 

tFor example, perhaps in the Drowned Barrows Dungeon featured on Fulvano's Voyage, the fighting in the depths has caused instability in the structure, and leaving would flood the dungeon and render further progress impossible. Or maybe upon your attempted return, the inhabitants sealed the entrance shut behind you. Or maybe they left once they found dozens of their comrades slaughtered on the dungeon floor (in PoE1, would Raedric really not notice what was going on while you returned to the Gilded Vale to rest and gather supplies?). Or maybe previously banished spirits were reanimated upon reentry, cursed to remain until the dungeon finale takes place (full dungeon respawn).

 

This is certainly not a new concept, but I feel like it provides certain gameplay and immersion advantages. Dedicated players can partake in strategic resource management scenarios that many enjoy. Others can reload and come back later when they are stronger, or simply reduce the difficulty for these sections of the game. Perhaps in critical path dungeons, a failure such as the example above could still allow progress, e.g. an important quest item floats out of the flooded dungeon to allow the protagonist's quest to continue.

 

There could still be plenty of content that does not behave in the gauntlet fashion. But I think part of the problem with the PoE1 system is in the absence of forced strategic resource management; any individual encounters that do not challenge the party to its utmost feel lackluster. So maybe non-dungeon content could focus on interesting individual encounters, while dungeon content could focus on extended adventuring situations that require resource management due to the risk of failure.

 

I personally feel a sense of failure already if I do not complete a dungeon without having to return to town for more supplies. Why not consider enforcing it in some areas of the game, sort of like Spellhold in BG2? This would give trash encounters meaning in some contexts, without forcing them on players who do not enjoy the resource management aspect of CRPGs. Furthermore, if many of the dungeons are gauntlets, players would come to anticipate these situations, and not feel antagonized when they come to realize that retreat is no longer an optimal decision.

 

Thoughts?

[Aotrs Commander]

I'm not a fan of all these "speaking for other people" blanket statements regarding people being extremely upset and ragequitting from having to replay the same areas after dying, etc. We only have to look at the success of the Dark Souls series and other very challenging games to see that there are many different types of gamers, some of whom absolutely love a great challenge, as it tests and improves their reaction times, memories (pattern recognition), willpowers, work ethics, and/or mental acuities, etc, depending on the game.

 

Edit: So what I'm saying is that sure, these hardcore mechanics may make some people dislike the game more, but you can't deny that it will make other, different types of people like the game more, and just because you side more with the "dislike the game more" crowd in this instance or that technically it will decrease profits by a minute amount, doesn't mean the decision is objectively bad if it fits within the developer's vision of making a great game. And it's important to note that most great games usually aren't at odds with themselves. For example, you can't really want your players to be happily engrossed in a dangerous fantasy world which was supposed to be at least as immersive as the Infinity Engine games, and then have a ton of hand-holdy, unpunishing mechanics that allow said players to soundly rest in the WILDerness or not have to deal with resource management - you can't have your cake and eat it too.

 

And yet PS:T, BG, BG2, IWD, IWD2, PoE and Tyranny did that just absolute fine (and I'm going to deliberately exclude NWN and NWN2 from that list, let alone DA:O, KotR 1/2 and ME trilogy-apart-from-the-last-fifteen-minutes-of-3, which didn't even have any "rest"-like abilities) and collectively, all of the above are the most immersive games I've played (well maybe not NWN 1 so much). PS:T, in fact, is still, in my opinion, the best RPG of all time (and among the top three best games period of all time, alongside TIE Fighter and Dungeon Keeper 1) and in that game in was actually required some effort to actually DIE.

 

If I wanted to play Dark Souls (or equivilent), I would play Dark Souls (or equivilent). I emphatically do not want to play Dark Souls (or equivilent). PoE was the first game of its type - my favourite sort of game - in literal decades and it was exactly the game I wanted. So I am afraid I am going to have to politely draw my line in the sand here and say: no, no, I do not want PoE to be made into a different sort of Dark Souls. That genera is still getting plenty of (popular) support, so I don't feel that by saying so I am denying people the chance to have the sort of game they want made by anyone - which is what the shift of the last few years was doing to me; until Obsidian came to the rescue with Pillars of Eternity. I'd like to keep at least one or two companies* making games for MY type of gamer, thank you.

 

(*And it is pretty much literally two at the moment,  Obsidian and Paradox Development, plus some potentials kickstarted (but for those, the proof will be in the pudding as always.))

 

And one final retort to the "game: a thing that is supposed to be fun" claim. Games don't have to be fun to be popular, engaging, and more. They just have to give something worthwhile to the player: give some amount of emotion (sadness (story-driven games about death/cancer/etc), fear (horror games), thrill (first person theme park games), etc), learning experience, benefit, or if you are a masochist, make the player suffer as a sort of life lesson, etc. But yes, fun games are awesome.

 

None of that is "tedium," which was the gist of the point I was making with that comment. (I would aso question why, given subjective nature, it is not "fun" to be subjected if one is so inclined, to any of your aforementioned criterion. Perhaps "entertaining" would have been a better fit, I will grant you, but my point was "tedium" is not any of that.)

Edited February 22, 2017 by Aotrs Commander