Johannes said:
DraQ said:
If something happens in game that would kill a person IRL, chances are it will kill a character in game. If something in game would cripple a person IRL, chances are it will cripple a character in game.
But just how reliable are those chances?
I have always figured typical RPG players to be more intelligent bunch than your typical FPS fans, and FPS fans are usually smart enough to figure out stuff without exact mechanics being handed to them on a silver platter.
Guess I was wrong.
Lord Rocket said:
Yeah that's pretty much what I asked you not to do. In game locations etc. aren't really system elements.
OK, here's a situation for you: the player makes a mistake, they've been ambushed. Which system (we'll assume there's only two extremes available here: everyone has 10000000 ablative HPs and ultra realistic almost anything can fuck you up) allows you to fight your way out of that shit without unacceptable losses and probably invoking the F9 key*?
If you're so bent on giving player a margin of error at all cost, why not just give player a perma-godmode? Some margin of error is necessary, but too big margin of error destroys the incentive to care and pay attention.
Fundamentally the problem with a realistic system is that the margin of error is much lower and as such there's actually less room for variety in fights. Since everything is so lethal you'll need to use the optimum tactics for an encounter pretty much straight away, or reload and try again.
This can be counteracted by minimizing filler combat, having non-lethal combat play greater role, good encounter design, and, amusingly more complex mechanics, that while not of much help in itself, can allow for greater player control - persistent die->reload cycles that don't want to go away are indicative of games with little control, that basically turn into a game of chance.
DamnedRegistrations said:
Starting combat and losing the game before you do anythnig because the enemy rolled a 20 is stupid. Being shot in the brain without fighting back doesn't constitute combat, it's assassination.
Maybe you should think about it before starting combat?
There are many situations when you can see the combat coming, in those you cannot, you can still identify things like probable ambush spots.
I do agree that the game shouldn't rape you with no warning (though a subtle, easy to overlook warning you have to specifically look for is perfectly sufficient) but you're overblowing the problem.
In Wizardries there is shitload of things that can autokill or even auto-TPK. Yet the games are perfectly playable and good, with many codexers playing them - even in ironman mode.
Similarly, in other genres there are things that will kill you in one hit, with little warning and no possibility to dodge. Even discounting ultra-realistic military-sims, take something like STALKER - an unlucky headshot will off you rather reliably and you don't get to dodge the bullets.
tl;dr
Quit. Fucking. Whining.
I was referring to instant kills ignoring remaining health entirely actually.
In a system I described instakills can happen regardless of health and weapon. Health and weapon only affect how likely they are to happen.
Why not? While a small dagger might be able to kill me, one stab is never going to finish off a whale.
Hence the "effective" part. Dagger is not an effective anti-whale weapon under normal circumstances. You're not going to kill a whale with your first stab, but also not with your thousandth one, although it may die later of infection, blood loss or some other aftereffect of your long stabbing session.
This kind of system falls apart when considering ineffective weapons, but it's as good as a HP-system can get, and gives acceptable results when considering only effective weapons and not to different combatants (roughly human sized organic beings with things like centralized nervous system and such).
Likewise a dart shouldn't be capable of killing some massive barbarian.
Because unpoisoned darts, shuriken and such weren't generally designed as effective weapons. Their main purpose was always to hurt and distract allowing user to crit the target dead using another weapon.
Everything aside from that is a matter of odds, but mapping out a possible instant kill for anything with less than 5% chance to kill you seems silly.
Which is probably why there are weapons in Wizardry with no more than 1% chance of instakill.
And depending on mechanics, you might not even need to explicitly define chance of instakill. It should be a function of what weapon can reach and how badly can it fuck it up.
Might as well add death by lightning storm while travelling.
Which, amusingly enough, has been actually implemented.
In fucking BG, of all games.
There's no reason Hp and detailed wounds should be exclusive.
There is - a detailed wound system will make HPs redundant. Some vestiges - like blood points - may linger, but they will likely have to get split into separate scales reflecting different things, like blood loss or exhaustion, that can kill you while acting on your whole organism.
Nobody needs to know when their warrior breaks a nail.
But if he gets his testicle mashed into a pulp, it will certainly put him out of commission.
How special that enemy is depends on the game. How many weak points do the undead have? Especially incorporeal undead. Demons? Do trolls give a fuck if they're stabbed in the heart? Werewolves? Plant monsters? Elementals?
Humans, humanoids animals, etc.?
And what if the PC doesn't know the enemy has a weakness? Critting a golem and destroying the magical talisman that animates it shouldn't be possible if the PC has no idea such a thing exists.
Even by accident? If the talisman is hit and breaks, does it matter if the attacker knew of it? Character knowledge should affect ability to actually aim for such points, not to hit them.
50 enemies one after another amounts to the same thing as 50 at once if the player can't heal in between fights.
...
I would really like to explain, but I'm not in the mood since I nearly broke my fucking nose by facepalming so hard.
Maybe someone else will be more forthcoming and actually attempt to explain why getting gangbanged by 50 enemies is infinitely worse than fighting them all in sequence, which is the kind of thing even the most impaired of retards should at least grasp instinctively. Maybe.
Right now - sorry, but you're a moron.
torpid said:
Giving gold to restore missing limbs through direct divine intervention strikes me as far more harmful to suspension of disbelief than healing spells or potions.
I see you share my dislike for direct divine intervention and divine magic somewhat distinct from arcane one. Good.
So let me rephrase it:
What if mages capable of performing this kind of healing, of inducing and guiding regeneration of an eye or a limb, while maintaining concentration for days in deep trance, using rare, otherworldly ingredients are fucking rare and, understanadably, few can afford their services?
Better - what if you can have a character that will achieve this kind of mastery if they neglect pretty much everything else, but study of restorative magic?
In any case, the difference is between regrowing limbs being costly, difficult and time consuming process and regrowing limbs taking seconds and being available in idiot-friendly, bottled form that works even while you keep swinging with your right hand while you regrow the left one. Because having some limbs to regrow is what tends to happen when someone axes you multiple times and into near death.
Also, in your realistic system with realistic crippling, any significant wound would probably lead to a reload, if it doesn't kill you outright. Wound penalties, added to the already increased lethality, would quickly make a fight unwinnable. As Lord Rocket said, the player's character/party would be heavily straitjacketed in the way it fights, and even a small mistake in a minor encounter would lead to a reload.
Not necessarily, fantasy worlds can have sufficiently advanced magic to make them softer, SF worlds - sufficiently advanced technology.
The problem is not that games don't cripple PCs 4life so that we could laugh at puny raging gaymers.
The problem is that some kinds of things are just logical and that games don't provide long term consequences that would inconvenience players for long enough period for them to try to avoid them next time.
I wouldn't be very happy if game informed me that I contracted a disease few saves ago, and that this disease is incurable and I will die.
I was, however, delighted (well, after the fact), when Daggerfall informed me that I contracted a lethal disease few saves ago, and that this disease will kill me in about a week, so I had to drop my current quest, travel to the nearest temple in great haste, discover that I don't have enough money, travel to the nearest city and sell my newly acquired cuirass of distilled awesome so that I could afford not dying horribly.
Makes shit more real, and more involving, you know.
THIS.
Also, one more thing - making healing more of a hassle is not just something that would inconvenience the player. What about harrassing much stronger enemy group for days without engaging in actual battles, till they run out of healing supplies and their arcane healers get saturated, and the troops start to die?