Injury System is way too brutal

[Aramintai]

 

 

I don't feel it's too steep, only that it requires the player to be more careful and save more often. 

 

Priests or any other class should not feel like a no brainer choice, especially when the party is now limited to five members. 

I don't think save scumming, as well as rest scumming is a good game design choice. Sure, rest scumming can be alleviated by making food scarce, but then people will just save scum alot. I think this problem may be solved by properly balancing the game, because right now in the beta even relaxed difficulty felt like potd at times (personal opinion). If the game is properly balanced then getting an injury shouldn't be too common unless a player makes some big honest mistakes.

[Gairnulf]

 

I don't feel it's too steep, only that it requires the player to be more careful and save more often. Priests or any other class should not feel like a no brainer choice, especially when the party is now limited to five members.

I don't think save scumming, as well as rest scumming is a good game design choice. Sure, rest scumming can be alleviated by making food scarce, but then people will just save scum alot. I think this problem may be solved by properly balancing the game, because right now in the beta even relaxed difficulty felt like potd at times (personal opinion). If the game is properly balanced then getting an injury shouldn't be too common unless a player makes some big honest mistakes.

The player ultimately can choose how he plays. If I get annoyed by having to save-scum, I'll drop the game for a while, or consider the dungeon is too difficult for me right now and move to something else.

 

Having your health regenerate for free, or allowing you to easily reset your party to an unspoiled state as if nothing happened to you during that combat which you barely survived, involves no choice on the player's part, it is forced on the player. Loading the game is at least an option, which happens if the player decides to do it.

 

You are right about the player's ability to configure the difficulty, and for the developer's ability to do the same on his end. So there is yet another solution - if you are getting too many injuries and are running out of resting supplies, and don't want to load a savegame - drop the difficulty.

Edited November 19, 2017 by Gairnulf

[Christliar]

There is no way to prevent save scumming unless we go into weird territory of checkpoints and the game deleting your save file when you load a saved game. If someone wants that Path of Iron is where it's at, that's what it's for. You can exploit it as well, though, but that's on your head, why play Path of Iron/Iron Man if you are going to duplicate save files or alt + F4 when things go awry?

[Gairnulf]

I also wanted to add something, since save scumming was mentioned in relation to my suggesting that the player saves more often to avoid injuries.

 

It is strange that we should automatically assume that we have failed if one of our characters has been injured. Getting injured is by no means such an issue that it should require a game load.

 

Take example from this guy, who did the first twitch stream of the Beta. Look at 6:46 (hrs:mins) in the stream. He is playing very inefficiently, probably more inefficiently than most people reading this thread. And he is playing on Normal. Notice how he is able to make it through the fight on the second attempt, even though most of his characters have two injuries already, and one has even three:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/201324163

 

So my point is, don't take getting an injury too hard.

[Aramintai]

Sounds like you guys all here play only on potd and see it as a default difficulty or something. The majority of players will want to play on normal, but that normal has to be fair and balanced not the unbalanced beta mess you seem to be defending right now. 

 

Personally, I think this "everything is per encounter" system, while promising, still needs some work. Per rest system, when it comes to restoring health was better, imho. My favourite per rest system is when there are no stupid injuries, health doesn't regenerate after fight and healing spells are finite until rest - that way you can keep on going without rest spamming until you're out of healing spells and/or low on health. But I guess devs will have to think of something else with this new system.

[Aramintai]

So my point is, don't take getting an injury too hard.

How can you not, when you have less than 100 points of health, for example, and each injury takes a quarter of those? Each injury raises your chances of getting one shotted and more injured exponentially. Make every character beefed up on constitution? Then how about builds diversity? I still think that it would be better if not all injuries lowered health, only attributes.

[Christliar]

He literally posted a video where a not-very-good guy beat the adra dimension fight with all his party members having injuries up the butt, so I think it's fair to say that normal is alright for players who want to play on normal.

[Hariwulf]

I would resolve this by sorting the gravity of the injuries according the number of wounds already obtained. Another way could be to determine gravity of wounds according negative health value upon receiving a killing blow (overkill mechanic).

 

An example:

 

1st Injury-  Minor wound     (low debilitation, can heal in time)

2nd Injury- Medium wound  (medium debilitation, 50% chance to self heal in time OR heals in long time)

3rd Injury-  Mortal wound    (high debilitation, won't heal unless treated)

4th Injury-  Death               (definitive debilitation, won't heal unless reloading a prior save)

 

OR:

 

Calculate "overkill value" (the damage below 0 health points) and set gravity on injury received accordingly.

For example:

PC at 50 HP, receives 50 damage, gain Minor wound

PC at 50 HP, receives 100 damage, gain Medium wound

PC at 50 HP, receives 150 damage, gain Mortal wound

Edited November 19, 2017 by Hariwulf

[demeisen]

 

 

That's in a sense how Stalwart Village worked at the start of WM1.  You were thrust into a combat situation, quickly discovered you couldn't rest, and would need to defeat multiple groups with what you brought with you.  That also IMO made it one of the most fun combat situations in the entire game, especially if you got there at an early level.  There was an initial sense of panic: "ruh roh...", and then planning out how best to scramble to survive.  I remember finishing several characters barely alive, and finding creative uses for lesser known spells I typically never thought about.  It was brilliant game design.

 

Of course it's one of the best combat encounters in the whole game, the combat system finally makes sense then. That's the whole point of limited resources and that's what I'm talking about. People like Katarack will always bitch about any kind of challenge and try to demagogue their way out of it with empty and manipulative phrases like "it doesn't give meaningful choice!" ... instead of rising up to conquer said challenge,

 

Admittedly I haven't read every single post, so might be missing some subtleties, but... I sort of feel like I agree with both you and Katarack21, at once.  I didn't interpret Katarack21's main complaint as being about the absolute difficulty, but more about the granularity of the injury system.  (Apologies if not the case - there's a lot of posters, and I might have things mixed up).  I agree with what I think he's arguing: I'm not a fan of it either, in present form.  On the other hand, I also agree with you that RPGs are more fun if you have to contend with limited resources, no auto-regen, and meaningful challenge, and we have the difficulty slider for a reason.  Those concepts don't seem mutually exclusive to me.

 

:shrug: Maybe I missed something 

Edited November 20, 2017 by demeisen

[Katarack21]

 

 

 

That's in a sense how Stalwart Village worked at the start of WM1.  You were thrust into a combat situation, quickly discovered you couldn't rest, and would need to defeat multiple groups with what you brought with you.  That also IMO made it one of the most fun combat situations in the entire game, especially if you got there at an early level.  There was an initial sense of panic: "ruh roh...", and then planning out how best to scramble to survive.  I remember finishing several characters barely alive, and finding creative uses for lesser known spells I typically never thought about.  It was brilliant game design.

 

Of course it's one of the best combat encounters in the whole game, the combat system finally makes sense then. That's the whole point of limited resources and that's what I'm talking about. People like Katarack will always bitch about any kind of challenge and try to demagogue their way out of it with empty and manipulative phrases like "it doesn't give meaningful choice!" ... instead of rising up to conquer said challenge,

 

Admittedly I haven't read every single post, so might be missing some subtleties, but... I sort of feel like I agree with both you and Katarack21, at once.  I didn't interpret Katarack21's main complaint as being about the absolute difficulty, but more about the granularity of the injury system. 

 

That is *literally* what I'm talking about. That is *exactly* what I'm talking about. That is *specifically* what I'm talking about. I have no idea where Christliar is getting this crap from, and I have in fact blocked him rather than deal with his repeated insults and accusations. I'm talking about the granluarity of the injury system, not about the games difficulty, and I don't have time to deal with being insulted and accused over a beta.

Edited November 20, 2017 by Katarack21

[KingDiamond]

You should die when you reach 0 HP.  That way instead of backtracking to get more camping supply people will backtrack to get a new companion.

 

More seriously with an injury system people will just rest spam anyway.  At this point they should just remove the resting mechanic.

[Answermancer]

I think one of the best points made in this thread (that made me think, at least) was that resting as it exists now only serves one purpose:

To get rid of wounds.

 

When that is the case, I don't think there's any way to make the choice to push on despite wounds interesting or meaningful. Some granularity could help a little maybe, but ultimately there's no interesting decision in not resting, so you may as well do it.

 

By not resting, you're not going to have more interesting encounters due to depleted resources. You will still have all your abilities as per-encounter, so what is interesting about refusing to rest and pushing on? I think that aspect is gone, and either they'll add more per-rest resources to bring it back or we should resign ourselves that resting is a purely wound-clearing action, and use it when we feel that... it's time to clear wounds, nothing else.

 

I think if the "git gud" crowd had focused more on making that point without throwing out ad-hominems and assuming that everyone just wants the game to be easier, then more people would agree with them that the system is probably okay as is. That's the argument that made me swing in that direction, after initially thinking the system was indeed too punishing because of lack of granularity and the other stuff that Katarack mentioned.

[Katarack21]

I think one of the best points made in this thread (that made me think, at least) was that resting as it exists now only serves one purpose:

To get rid of wounds.

 

When that is the case, I don't think there's any way to make the choice to push on despite wounds interesting or meaningful. Some granularity could help a little maybe, but ultimately there's no interesting decision in not resting, so you may as well do it.

 

By not resting, you're not going to have more interesting encounters due to depleted resources. You will still have all your abilities as per-encounter, so what is interesting about refusing to rest and pushing on? I think that aspect is gone, and either they'll add more per-rest resources to bring it back or we should resign ourselves that resting is a purely wound-clearing action, and use it when we feel that... it's time to clear wounds, nothing else.

 

I think if the "git gud" crowd had focused more on making that point without throwing out ad-hominems and assuming that everyone just wants the game to be easier, then more people would agree with them that the system is probably okay as is. That's the argument that made me swing in that direction, after initially thinking the system was indeed too punishing because of lack of granularity and the other stuff that Katarack mentioned.

That's to some extent an artifact of the beta. Good inn rest bonuses, high-quality food bonuses, high-quality shrine bonuses, they simply aren't implemented to any great extent--only two inn rests bonuses, one shrine bonus, and a bunch of low-level foods. The impetus to *not* rest can come from trying to save and conserve those bonuses. The impetus *to* rest can come both from wound clearing, from Empower being out, and from items that have per-rest abilities (like the Bounding Boots).

 

The problem right now is that there is a *very* clear point where you should rest (whenever you get two wounds), that condition comes up with some degree of regularity and no granularity of any sort, and there is *no* impetus to not rest. So you get rest spam.

[KDubya]

If you want true granularity and have every point of damage taken actually mean something then you need to go back to the PoE system of health and endurance. In that system just squeaking by an encounter still resulted in loss of health which eventually would force you to rest. Getting knocked out gave you wounds which were extra punishment for getting knocked out. 

 

Why they changed it i don't know. It seemed pretty straight forward and was unique. If younger gamers are incapable of grasping the concept of health and endurance I weep for the future

 

The old system worked perfectly with high constitution monks who had regen; your health was like a battery that you drew on fueling your attacks. Now with only health it makes far more sense to make Shattered Pillar Monks who get stronger by doing damage rather than taking damage.

[Rooksx]

You misunderstood me, I wasn't talking about not auto-regenerating health, but about the debuffs at certain health levels during combat. Auto-regen is there so you don't have to bring a healing class along for the ride and spend minutes after every fight healing up, at least that's the justification, I was never in favor of it. Since crafting materials are abundant then maybe it prevents the need to bring a healing class and you can rely on healing potions or bandages.

 

The respawning enemies can work if they only respawn if you backtrack, so sure, whether it slams the door behind you or this it's functionally the same thing.

Auto-regen does not eliminate the need for a healing class. You still need one to heal during combat. 

[Christliar]

 

 

Admittedly I haven't read every single post, so might be missing some subtleties, but... I sort of feel like I agree with both you and Katarack21, at once.  I didn't interpret Katarack21's main complaint as being about the absolute difficulty, but more about the granularity of the injury system.  (Apologies if not the case - there's a lot of posters, and I might have things mixed up).  I agree with what I think he's arguing: I'm not a fan of it either, in present form.  On the other hand, I also agree with you that RPGs are more fun if you have to contend with limited resources, no auto-regen, and meaningful challenge, and we have the difficulty slider for a reason.  Those concepts don't seem mutually exclusive to me.

 

:shrug: Maybe I missed something 

 

He's missing the point of the injury system entirely, it's not about granularity, choice or difficulty as you can rest whenever, it's about telling you when you suck and that you have to improve. There's also a video where a guy with many more injuries than Katarack claims to be impossible to continue defeated the adra dimension fight, so he's demonstrably wrong even by his own standards. You can also see that he eschews any kind of confrontation by blocking me instead of arguing my points, so I don't think he's the person to go to about challenge advice ;p

Edited November 20, 2017 by Christliar

[Katarack21]

 

 

 

Admittedly I haven't read every single post, so might be missing some subtleties, but... I sort of feel like I agree with both you and Katarack21, at once.  I didn't interpret Katarack21's main complaint as being about the absolute difficulty, but more about the granularity of the injury system.  (Apologies if not the case - there's a lot of posters, and I might have things mixed up).  I agree with what I think he's arguing: I'm not a fan of it either, in present form.  On the other hand, I also agree with you that RPGs are more fun if you have to contend with limited resources, no auto-regen, and meaningful challenge, and we have the difficulty slider for a reason.  Those concepts don't seem mutually exclusive to me.

 

:shrug: Maybe I missed something 

 

He's missing the point of the injury system entirely, it's not about granularity, choice or difficulty as you can rest whenever, it's about telling you when you suck and that you have to improve. There's also a video where a guy with many more injuries than Katarack claims to be impossible to continue defeated the adra dimension fight, so he's demonstrably wrong even by his own standards. You can also see that he eschews any kind of confrontation by blocking me instead of arguing my points, so I don't think he's the person to go to about challenge advice ;p

 

Crikey, man, I'm not ignoring you to avoid debate--I'm engaging in debate with plenty of people, including those who disagree with me. I'm ignoring you because all you're doing is insulting me and saying "get good", you're not actually debating. You only want to defend your "If it was up to me, you'd just die" mentality and mock everybody who disagrees with you as inferior players. I don't have time for that crap.

 

I never said it was "impossible" to continue with -50% health, I just said it's an *incredibly* strong push to rest because you *really* should. Most people will heal however healing is done if their main character, main tank, or significant portion of the party is at -50% health or less. It's just sound strategy. You don't have to, and certainly you can go forward with that going, but it's a *very significant push towards resting*.

 

I doubt *very* much if the development team is designing much gameplay design resources around showing the player when they suck. I think they're probably just designing encounters of logical progressive difficulty and engaging design and trusting failure itself to show you when you suck, rather than designing whole mechanics around that core concept. That really seems to just be you.

 

For what it's worth, this is what Josh says about injuries and the food-to-remove-injuries mechanic:

 

"When characters receive injuries or run low on/out of Empowers, they can be replenished by consuming food while resting.  Food is no longer consumed directly from the inventory or quick item slots in Deadfire.  When the party rests, there is a resting interface where the player can specify which food items they want each character to consume (it remembers the last choice).  Food items always grant bonuses, but common/cheap food grants modest bonuses.  The party is not restricted in how much food they can carry, but if they rest frequently, they’ll be operating on those “lesser” bonuses or burning through their really good food/better bonuses."

 

It seems the intent of injuries and eating food to heal those injuries is more complicated than "this is when you suck".

[Boeroer]

You can also see that he eschews any kind of confrontation by blocking me instead of arguing my points, so I don't think he's the person to go to about challenge advice ;p

Maybe it would help if you weren't discussing with that disdainful attitude and bringing forth that "git gud" nonsense every now and then.

[Answermancer]

 You can also see that he eschews any kind of confrontation by blocking me instead of arguing my points

 

No, what I can see is that you're a bully who doesn't know how to communicate without denigrating people.

 

This makes people not listen to you or understand your points. I certainly didn't until someone else in the thread phrased them in a way that wasn't surrounded by accusations of demagoguery and other ad-hominem nonsense.

[Christliar]

It doesn't matter what the intention of the system was/is, in practice it's about showing you when you suck. When they make it so you can't rest whenever then we can talk about that specific intention. There is no diplomatic way to say that you are just bad at the game or that you use manipulative demagoguery to try to twist facts. You repeatedly mentioned how you have to rest after 2 injuries and the game doesn't give you meaningful choice whether to continue or not. There's a video posted showing that you are demonstrably wrong, a player who has no idea of this 'debate' and is playing the beta for the first time, so now you are moving the goalposts.

[Answermancer]

It doesn't matter what the intention of the system was/is, in practice it's about showing you when you suck. When they make it so you can't rest whenever then we can talk about that specific intention. There is no diplomatic way to say that you are just bad at the game or that you use manipulative demagoguery to try to twist facts. You repeatedly mentioned how you have to rest after 2 injuries and the game doesn't give you meaningful choice whether to continue or not. There's a video posted showing that you are demonstrably wrong, a player who has no idea of this 'debate' and is playing the beta for the first time, so now you are moving the goalposts.

 

Yeah you're clearly one of these people that just assumes the worst of anyone who doesn't agree with them.

 

It couldn't just be that he's wrong, or that he hasn't thought something through about the system, or even that he has a strong personal preference that clouds his judgment. No, he must be a liar with malicious intent trying to mislead people.

 

Great way to get people to listen to your points.

[Katarack21]

I've been saying "pushes you much harder towards rest" since 6:20 AM on November 17th...since before you entered the conversation, dude. "Moving the goalposts" indeed.
 

[Christliar]

No, I never said he's a liar or a demagogue, I said he uses demagoguery, whether it's intentional or not. I don't care what he is as a person, I care that what he is saying is muddying the waters, using different concepts and ideas interchangeably, accusing the game of something the player is at fault for and other such things.
 

 

I've been saying "pushes you much harder towards rest" since 6:20 AM on November 17th...since before you entered the conversation, dude. "Moving the goalposts" indeed.
 

That is completely different than what I've been arguing and what you've been telling me. It's supposed to push you towards resting, whether you do rest or not is your decision. A decision that has already been proven to exist even for players playing for the first time. What's the point of this thread now, then?

Edited November 20, 2017 by Christliar

[Katarack21]

No, I never said he's a liar or a demagogue, I said he uses demagoguery, whether it's intentional or not. I don't care what he is as a person, I care that what he is saying is muddying the waters, using different concepts and ideas interchangeably, accusing the game of something the player is at fault for and other such things.

 

 

I've been saying "pushes you much harder towards rest" since 6:20 AM on November 17th...since before you entered the conversation, dude. "Moving the goalposts" indeed.

 

That is completely different than what I've been arguing and what you've been telling me. It's supposed to push you towards resting, whether you do rest or not is your decision. A decision that has already been proven to exist even for players playing for the first time. What's the point of this thread now, then?

No. It's literally what I've been saying *THIS WHOLE TIME*. I have been saying that it pushes you much to hard towards rest--that the push is so hard that it takes away a meaningful choice. Yes, you still have a choice--you still have a *choice* of continuing onwards with -75% health, no empowers, and with no bonuses. There's nothing stopping you--but the *entire point* of injuries causing health degeneration is for the injuries to push you towards resting, my argument has *always* been that the amount of pressure created by the -25% health loss per injury is *to much of a push*. My point, since the beginning, has been the greater granularity in the injury system--and thus *less pressure to rest per injury*--creates a better play system by providing the opportunity for more meaningful choice on when to rest, as opposed to  that -50% health at two injuries creating relatively *intense* pressure to rest.

 

That *all I've been saying*. I would *prefer* this be done by adding additional wounds created by different weapon types and amounts of overkill, with wounds varrying in amount of health removed. So you could have three or four injuries that don't equal up to 100%, but you could also have three injuries that do, depending on what type of injury and how you got it.

 

That way you would *sometimes* have that intense pressure to rest after a couple knockouts, but other times have to make choices about how likely it is you'll get another injury that might be bigger and how far you think you can go.

 

As Josh said above, the pressure to *not* rest comes from rare high-quality foods that provide big bonuses. He *didn't* say anything about inn bonuses and shrine bonuses, but I presume those will be there, too. Right now the beta only has low-level foods, so some of that is missing.

Edited November 20, 2017 by Katarack21

[Wormerine]

rest mechanic doesn’t feel all that good to me in this iteration. I do like individual changes (food used for camping, food replacing supplies, resting flexible but with diminishing returns, spells per encounter not encouraging not using them) but as the result resting mechanic (and therefore injury system) seems to be in the game only because is has been there before rather than fulfilling intergral part of the gameplay. In PoE1 rest would interact with many aspects of the gameplay - replenish health, refill spells, remove injuries, set right bonuses before tough fight. In PoE2 it’s just remove injuries and replenish “empower points” - which so far I am not using all that much - it might be me being new to the system, not fault of the system itself. Bonuses from resting seem nonspecific so far making them general choices (more healing for tank, more health for squishes etc.) rather than tailored for next encounters.

 

While I wasn’t a fan of how KOTOR didn’t punish getting knocked out in any way, PoE2 injury/resting system seems to be there only to punish getting knocked out. It’s not terrible but feels more artificial than before. I got annoyed with traps giving injuries but at the same time I do like that activating trap does something tangible now.