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RPGs with robust resource management

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Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
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Guys, I'm not really into self-imposed restrictions. If you need to "not grind", "not rest-spam" etc. to make the RPG seem like it has robust resource management, then it doesn't qualify.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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I hope you don't feel offended Lilura, but I've never considered resource management to be that much of an issue to warrant thinking about. As the guy at the start of the thread stated, I'm a hoarder and like to keep consumables for when they're needed, which, because I'm now training myself to get by without consumables, means I'll never use them anyway. You could say games that encourage hoarders are the ultimate resource managers, because us hoarders don't use any consumables... ever. Hence we never think about whether a game overloads us with consumables, 1 or 100 is the exact same shit, it's just a number in our rucksack that'll get considered while fighting what we believe is the final end-boss.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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Sure, but if you're playing a game where consumables are required to progress then they're not consumables any more, they're quest items, you're just allowing someone to consume them before their supposed to, which is obnoxious rather monocled.
 
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Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
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If you itemize consumables, you may as well make them useful. Enforced consumable use adds strategy in that you have to think how your use of them will affect you, overall. It also means you can add more dangerous foes to an encounter, with crippling abilities like lvldrain, paralyzation, and insta-death. This is better than just handing out items with blanket perma-immunities, that cause the player to become OP.
 

Deleted Member 16721

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Elminage Gothic starts with somewhat challenging resource management. The map system, for example, is a limited use resource. You can and should carry stacks of them to start, but you still have to end up carefully using them as they can go fast. Same for potions.

I like the idea of limited inventory in games like this. Also, Elminage Gothic combines armor and weapon equipment with how much you can carry. In other words, if you have 9 total slots to carry something per character, their weapons and armor take up slots in the total 9 slots as well.

Gothic 1 and start with good resource management, but by mid-game to the end you are carrying an entire world's worth of items in your infinite pack. But I do like how Gothic starts out with nothing and you have to scavenge, money is initially hard to come by, etc. I like that approach.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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If you itemize consumables, you may as well make them useful. Enforced consumable use adds strategy in that you have to think how your use of them will affect you, overall. It also means you can add more dangerous foes to an encounter, with crippling abilities like lvldrain, paralyzation, and insta-death. This is better than just handing out items with blanket perma-immunities, that cause the player to become OP.

Indeed. But, as I said, I'm a hoarder. I won't use an item until I absolutely have to. So this instance where I can't progress because I'm level-drained or whatever and need to have saved that one crucial anti-level drain potion in order to progress, wont feel any more monocled an experience for me because it wont matter whether I have 1 or 100 potions of anti-level drain, the instance where I can't progress without using one will be the moment that I use one, regardless of how many I have.

You could argue that potions of haste are best kept to a minimum, and I would agree, except that the mage can cast it whenever he likes, so I never use the potions anyway.

In order to make resource management in any way effective and enjoyable you have to ensure that there's no way for any character to have a permanent use of anything, but still providing them enough equipment/skills to be useful and relevant in every possible encounter, while providing encounters that are designed to drain all your resources.

Which is a huge amount of development time, balancing and QA which is more suited to the survivalist genre than the RPG genre, no?
 
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Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
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My preference is that you shouldn't be able to hoard because you are consistently offered just enough rope to hang yourself. If you don't use the limited consumables you are gonna be in for a slow and painful death. That's how it should be. Rest restrictions also stop Vancian builds from being OP (your haste spam example).

Lets take a lil' look at Hordes of the Underdark, f.e.

In the first dungeon of Undermountain you find items granting perma-haste, immunity to knockdown, mind-affecting (including fear), lvl drain, immobilization, insta-death, disease and poison.

That means the only negative status effect you have watch out for in the campaign is petrification.

On top of that, there are no rest restrictions, the on-rest ambushes are trivial, and you have a teleporting ability that whisks you away to vendors and healers, whenever you need it.

A solid example of a campaign with non-existent resource management, right thar.

In order to make resource management in any way effective and enjoyable you have to ensure that there's no way for any character to have a permanent use of anything, but still providing them enough equipment/skills to be useful and relevant in every possible encounter, while providing encounters that are designed to drain all your resources.

Which is a huge amount of development time, balancing and QA which is more suited to the survivalist genre than the RPG genre, no?

Swordflight does this, and is balanced and reactive for the array of D&D builds. It was made by one person.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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Do you base all of your observations of the RPG genre off of your NWN experiences?

As for rest restrictions, how is that any different to check-points in console crap?

You can solve rest-spam simply by making each encounter worthy off all your skills. You can avoid consumable spam by removing all consumables. You can manipulate the RPG genre in any way you choose. Making an issue out of resource management is pretty weird because nearly all RPGs have some form of resource management, all of which is designed to be approached in a completely different way.

Take the ultimate consumable spam game, Diablo. In this game you are encouraged to own 100s of HP flasks and to literally 'pump' them during combat. However, the game will provide enemies that will drain your HP faster than you can consume it, even by hammering the HP potion button till you bleed, simply because you do not have enough total HP.

This game doesn't have a 'problem' of too many consumables, it just has a different way of making its consumables part of the difficulty curve.

When you ask for a game which has good resource management you're not asking a very specific question. If you ask for games which have resource management like Swordflight utilises its resource management then that's more specific. So perhaps you should have asked the latter question instead of trying to pretend that your own version/imagination of resource management is somehow the golden objective of resource management wrapped-up in a "suggest me games" facade...
 
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Lilura

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I gave non-Aurora examples that don't have robust resource management in my OP.

The devil is in the details. If you're not gonna talk specifics, you are worthless to me. Because my request was that ppl hit me with RPGs that feature robust resource management. Maybe go to a hoarder thread, and be smug there about how hardcore you are for facerolling your cakewalk RPGs?
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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I gave non-Aurora examples that don't have robust resource management in my OP.

Exactly my point.

The devil is in the details. If you're not gonna talk specifics, you are worthless to me.

Exactly my point.

Because my request was that ppl hit me with RPGs that feature robust resource management.

Which could mean anything without specifics.

Maybe go to a hoarder thread, and be smug there about how hardcore you are for facerolling your cakewalk RPGs?

And there was me thinking you were trying to be smug about how hardcore you are for wanting a game where resources are somehow the most important part of the gameplay... which just happens to be an example from, oh, there's a surprise, a NWN mod.

Also, I've not mentioned anything about facerolling or cakewalking, you still haven't explained to me how owning either 1 or 100 of a specific potion to cure level -drain makes any difference to my ability to defeat one monster that delivers level-drain - whether you have 1 or 100 potions you defeat the monster the exact same way don't you...?
 
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Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
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Gothic 1 and start with good resource management, but by mid-game to the end you are carrying an entire world's worth of items in your infinite pack. But I do like how Gothic starts out with nothing and you have to scavenge, money is initially hard to come by, etc. I like that approach.

Deus Ex is another popamole that does ok in resource management, at least early on.

Challenge in most other RPGs I've played is ruined by non-existent rest restrictions, over-itemization, dungeons having EZ escapes, etc.
 
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I have a different view of challenge in RPGs. Don't get me wrong, I like having to use certain types of resources in RPGs, like for example food on some level, maybe warm clothes in a cold environment, rope and hooks to scale walls or balconies, medicinal equipment, and so on. But it's not so much for challenge as for depth to gameplay and for rewarding logical, common sense thinking on the part of the player, and for richer ways of interacting with the game-world. I don't, however, like the idea of game challenge coming from stockpiling, rationing or deciding when to use what. I've played some games that did a good job of this, so I am not saying it can't work, but overall, I just think there are much better ways of handling challenge.

In my ideal RPG, the challenge would come from mastering complex systems for things like combat, stealth, or diplomacy. The game would let you craft the kind of character you want, with the appropriate skills, but then it would be up to you to make those skills work against the AI. So maybe you would craft a swordmaster type character, with 10 different attacks and 10 different defenses, but then you as the player would have to use them correctly, with proper timing to overcome in-game foes. Or you would craft a master thief, with stealth skills similar to the games Thief 1/2, and then you'd still have all the challenge of those games, to make your thief work.

On top of that, another kind of challenge comes from having intelligent gameplay, such as eliminating quest compasses and over-detailed quest journals, and making the player be an active investigator, and figure things out themselves. So if you combine those two types of challenges together, I think that would be more than enough, and you wouldn't need it to come from overly intensive resource management.
 

Deleted Member 16721

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Challenge in most other RPGs I've played is ruined by non-existent rest restrictions, over-itemization, dungeons having EZ escapes, etc.

Interesting you mention this as I was talking about Elminage Gothic. Elminage Gothic does a great thing in the world of resource management (at least, in early game before you can teleport around).

That is, many dungeons are several long, sprawling, maze-like levels deep. Not only do you have to manage resources such as maps, potions and even spells (it uses the early D&D style of spell-casting where you get severals casts per level of spell), but you have to manage them both in your DESCENT into the dungeon, as well as your ASCENT back out.

This creates some emergent management gameplay when you then factor in that dungeon floors re-spawn upon entering them. Thus, the same floors you had to manage resources down into the dungeon, well, going back up you better make sure you still have some of those resources left if you want to get out alive.

I thought that was absolutely awesome and I loved it. It was a big reason why I was hooked on that game.

Unfortunately, the game gets much, much easier when you have the later Mage spell, Diomente (teleport). All you have to do is make sure to keep 2 casts of that spell available - one to go back into a dungeon where you have been, one to safely get out.

Also, I wish the game had a "hardcore" mode that limited saves in some way. Perhaps allowing you to save, say, twice per dungeon floor, or something. That would have been a nice addition. As it stands you can save whenever, and it encourages you to pretty much save after every battle, since the combat is often quite rough and deadly.

Just some thoughts. Ciao! :)
 

Hupu

Literate
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Jun 8, 2016
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I hope you don't feel offended Lilura, but I've never considered resource management to be that much of an issue to warrant thinking about.
Yet it's the point of this thread to find games in which you do have to think about the issue and how to achieve that.

Sure, but if you're playing a game where consumables are required to progress then they're not consumables any more, they're quest items, you're just allowing someone to consume them before their supposed to, which is obnoxious rather monocled.
You had to go to an extreme to make your point, that's not a sound argument. You're arguing something without changing your definition, where consumable = abundant and unimportant, quest item = singular, to be used in one situation only to progress. If the thread was "games with challenging fights against goblins", would you waddle in and say "well fuck how are goblins challenging, they're trash mobs!"?
It's not about requiring a specific single item to progress but make it possible to destroy it beforehand, it's about games in which that cure poison flask is actually valuable to the player, because you can't just kill the enemy quickly and rest the ailment away.

No need to handwave Diablo away, though. It'd be interesting to see a game in which chugging down gallons of potions was an element of the gameplay. Maybe the character's stomach volume could be taken into account?:D EYE: Divine Cybermancy comes to mind where each use of your medkit has a growing chance of instakilling you.

Also, I've not mentioned anything about facerolling or cakewalking, you still haven't explained to me how owning either 1 or 100 of a specific potion to cure level -drain makes any difference to my ability to defeat one monster that delivers level-drain - whether you have 1 or 100 potions you defeat the monster the exact same way don't you...
The game should be structured in such a way that the player has to think whether to use that potion of cure level drain, or maybe use a scroll of blind instead, because there might be an enemy inflicting lvl drain but immune to blindness at the end of this dungeon. It'd do that by keeping the items scarce: have a finite stock in shops, severely limit drops etc. It's not really hoarding if you have x potions of cure lvl drain, but x+5 monsters who will inflict it.

The point is, it's hard to find a game that doesn't shower you with ways to render its selection of challenges insignificant. Why have a selection of: blind, confuse, paralyze, petrify, sleep, freeze, poison, curse, etc - when you always have dozens of "remove all conditions" potions on hand?

Stingy resource handling has also a great impact on how significant trash mob encounters are, if there's encounters that are not much of a tactical challenge by mid- and late-game, they are made relevant if they're still a drain on the player's resources. Otherwise they're just time filler, not much more than cookie clicker with pause.
 

Lhynn

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So yes, neoscavenger puts all your silly shitty games resource management to shame. The first lighter you find, those feels...
 

Lonely Vazdru

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you still haven't explained to me how owning either 1 or 100 of a specific potion to cure level -drain makes any difference to my ability to defeat one monster that delivers level-drain - whether you have 1 or 100 potions you defeat the monster the exact same way don't you...?
As a compulsive hoarder myself, I'll say that if I have only one potion I'll probably die/reload a hundred times trying to defeat the monster WITHOUT using my precious potion ('cause hey, you never know) while if I have 100, I might consider popping one before that.

Hoarding... hoarding never changes.
 
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Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
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So yes, neoscavenger puts all your silly shitty games resource management to shame. The first lighter you find, those feels...

It's always cute when you try to be hardcore, Mr. BG2. :P
 

Karellen

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Jan 3, 2012
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Guys, I'm not really into self-imposed restrictions. If you need to "not grind", "not rest-spam" etc. to make the RPG seem like it has robust resource management, then it doesn't qualify.

I'm a bit puzzled by the implications of that position, since there wouldn't really be a lot of RPGs that would be impossible to trivialise through grinding. Ultimately, you can out-level the content in RPG in which there is a non-finite amount of encounters from which you can get experience and loot; the question is whether you're actually encouraged to do so or not. Of course, you could either put a time limit into the game or just limit the amount of encounters, but neither of those options is very popular, since unless the encounters are entirely trivial to begin with, there's a very serious risk of suboptimal decisions leading into a death spiral. At best that turns the game into a puzzle game, but more typically you end up with a lot of save-scumming and metagaming instead of what I would consider strategic gameplay. Just about the only games that I actually like in which all resources are scarce, finite and inevitably need to be used are the early Resident Evil games, which, of course, are not RPGs, although a case could be made that they are dungeon crawlers. They're very short (albeit good) games, though, which is part of what makes it work, whereas in a longer game - which most RPGs are - that sort of thing would probably be just tedious.

Having said that, the way things work in a lot of old JRPGs (and some more recent oldschool throwbacks like Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light) is that resources are theoretically infinite and grinding (especially for gold) is possible and even mandatory, but also slow and inefficient. You could get through the game just by grinding, but it'd be very tedious, so the implicit goal in these games is to make progress while grinding as little as possible, which translates to a lot of risk-reward calculation and interesting decisions about which items and equipment to buy, use and keep around (hoarding is discouraged and even impossible, since inventory space is frequently very limited). But none of that is any different from what you'd see in a typical blobber, of which early JRPGs are essentially an offshoot anyway, so that's not strictly "outside blobbers". Then again, I imagine that people who are into resource management just play blobbers anyway, so other RPGs tend not to emphasise it much since it would be difficult to top blobbers in that department.
 
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Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
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Feb 13, 2013
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Lords of Xulima

That looks to be my cup of tea, if its resource management is indeed enforced (it might be breakable/have holes in it, like are being poked into recommendations in this thread).

Anyway, I would like to see resource management valued by combatfags, just as reactivity is for the lowly storyfags. Considering the number of ppl on the Codex that like good combat, there doesn't seem to be much discussion on the subject (I found two threads on the Codex, and one is very old).
 

Lhynn

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So yes, neoscavenger puts all your silly shitty games resource management to shame. The first lighter you find, those feels...

It's always cute when you try to be hardcore, Mr. BG2. :P
Never implied BG2 was hardcore. Its just that you keep saying its an easy game, and its only an easy game when you have meta knowledge, and every rpg is like that when you do.
 

Ziem

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None

If you want real resource management, play roguelikes instead
 

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