Vapourware Ironmode games

[MerchantKing]

Designing a game around Iron man mode and to only be played with the Iron mode seems natural for a crpg. It's good for role playing since you can't save scum.

 

[Cryomancer]

I agree with you, save scumming is a problem, if you can phantasmal killer and reload till the foe dies, you remove the main reason behind RNG in the game. Talking about it, DDO will start a new hardcore league day 6, you could try make a gnome illusionist and see how far you can go.

 

[std::namespace]

Designing a game around Iron man mode and to only be played with the Iron mode seems natural for a crpg. It's good for role playing since you can't save scum.

wrong!
rpgs are played by hoarding xp points and then applying them in quests, save/reload to see the other routes if any, so that you need only 1 playtrhough to see alll the garbage
efficient

 

[Butter]

Have you heard of roguelikes?

 

[Kruyurk]

Designing a game around Iron man mode and to only be played with the Iron mode seems natural for a crpg. It's good for role playing since you can't save scum.

I agree, but to make it work the difference between success and failure needs to be gradual, not a binary thing, and failure needs to be fun.

A good example is Kenshi: losing a fight does not mean that a party member will die most times. It creates an interesting situation where you have to patch up your wounded characters, have them being carried to safety, maybe change your plans if you wanted to go on exploring since recovery takes a while and leaves you vulnerable, etc. Losing fights still improves your characters, because taking damage improves resistance, and because experience from combat is gained by hitting the enemy, not obtained once the enemy is defeated.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Designing a game around Iron man mode and to only be played with the Iron mode seems natural for a crpg. It's good for role playing since you can't save scum.

Rusty's alt identified:

 

[Gahbreeil]

Wasn't Tyranny the first RPG with an Ironman option?

 

[Butter]

Wasn't Tyranny the first RPG with an Ironman option?

Yeah that's correct.

 

[Gahbreeil]

It's a Paradox Interactive Grand Strategy Game innovation. Whether it belongs in RPGs... Well, I don't really know.

One can argue that it allows for triple replayability values yet, hey, if someone won't then someone won't.

 

[Pocgels]

Yeah but restarting a 30 hour rpg because of a misclick sucks

 

[JarlFrank]

Forced ironman does not belong in anything other than strategy games.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Wasn't Tyranny the first RPG with an Ironman option?

Yeah that's correct.

Not true. I believe it was Diablo 2 with Hardcore mode. Temple of Elemental Evil was first for proper party-based CRPGs.

 

[Gahbreeil]

I apologise, my memory failed me, you can give me the old rate.

 

[Butter]

Wasn't Tyranny the first RPG with an Ironman option?

Yeah that's correct.

Not true. I believe it was Diablo 2 with Hardcore mode. Temple of Elemental Evil was first for proper party-based CRPGs.

Wizardry 8 had it before ToEE, and the original Wizardry was effectively Iron Man before it was called as such.

 

[MerchantKing]

Designing a game around Iron man mode and to only be played with the Iron mode seems natural for a crpg. It's good for role playing since you can't save scum.

Rusty's alt identified:

I'm glad I'm not Rusty. I would've killed myself a long time ago if I that was so. Of course, if I were born as any goy I would've killed myself then too.

Yeah but restarting a 30 hour rpg because of a misclick sucks

Maybe slow down when clicking. It's not necessary fun to lose a character in an RPG because you got unlucky with a dice roll or the DM got lucky, but making a new character to replace him is part of playing rpgs. The only real problem is losing continuity in crpgs.

 

[MerchantKing]

It's a Paradox Interactive Grand Strategy Game innovation. Whether it belongs in RPGs... Well, I don't really know.

One can argue that it allows for triple replayability values yet, hey, if someone won't then someone won't.

It is in rpgs. Whenever you are playing an rpg in tabletop, you're playing iron mode. Hence it does belong in crpgs.

Designing a game around Iron man mode and to only be played with the Iron mode seems natural for a crpg. It's good for role playing since you can't save scum.

I agree, but to make it work the difference between success and failure needs to be gradual, not a binary thing, and failure needs to be fun.

A good example is Kenshi: losing a fight does not mean that a party member will die most times. It creates an interesting situation where you have to patch up your wounded characters, have them being carried to safety, maybe change your plans if you wanted to go on exploring since recovery takes a while and leaves you vulnerable, etc. Losing fights still improves your characters, because taking damage improves resistance, and because experience from combat is gained by hitting the enemy, not obtained once the enemy is defeated.

I agree. I think you should have a variety of mechanical options that let you play on much like you would while playing pen&paper with either different characters or provide more mechanical ways to get out of a bad situation if possible. Unfortunately, there are few games that do that. With all the budget of AAA games, if they decided to do things like that instead of jamming a bunch of nonsense, cutscenes, bloating the game size with the graphics (even though I can barely tell any difference between 2k and 4k), and trying to emulate Marvel movies, we might have good crpgs.

 

[Glop_dweller]

Legend of Grimrock 2 Ironman + single use crystals for the entire session —was the most intense dungeon crawler I have ever played [...and completed].

*That said... those modes are optional, and I chose them both for my very first play-through of the game. The problem with forced save restriction, and especially perma-death is the case of power-outage, game instability, and/or file corruption. If after playing for nearly an hour or more without saving, and then suddenly having a brown-out, black-out, software crash, or a corrupted overwrite of your single-save Ironman game (ruining it)... it's likely that most would rage quit, and not return to it anytime soon—if at all. In today's society (sadly) it might likely result in a refunded game.

Better [IMO] to incentivize playing the Ironman mode (with achievements, possibly with extra content, and mechanics) than to force it upon players who are just learning the game—that way you might get some players who bothered to learn the game well enough to appreciate an Ironman mode.

 

[octavius]

Did the original X-Com have Ironman mode, or is that just an OpenXcom thing?

 

[Vic]

arcades had 1CC runs where you tried to beat the game with only one credit

 

[HeatEXTEND]

arcades had 1CC runs where you tried to beat the game with only one credit

Self enforced, doesn't count.

 

[CryptRat]

Forced ironman makes resource management as a all better as well as plenty of other things related or not such as identification checks, trap detection and hidden door detection, chests exploding at your face or people getting pissed off when you critically failed an haggling check. The problem is that replaying 5 hours of content several times is not really fun leaving alone that various identification checks are basically made pointless. Also I don't like to replace dead characters that much, and I want the death of a character to matter enough that I might have to reload (it should be worse than him getting only unconscious) but I don't want a party swipe to actually matter that much (I don't want to restart from the beginning of the game each time). Which means all I'm left with when talking about RPGs with permadeath I want to play is single character games with some randomness.

On one hand that is exactly what traditional roguelikes are, so I understand why they are and should be this way and I like traditional roguelikes especially when they feature item identification, traps and plenty of other rolling to check things, spending your time on computing odds and thinking of benefits/risks of trying to pass checks and everything which make the best use of permadeath. Case in point Caverns of Xaskazien II is my favourite roguelike while it features by far not the best combat part.

However on another hand I prefer handcrafted party-based games, and they don't work with forced ironman mode for my taste so overall I'd rather play games with a save system (which does not have to be save everywhere, it can be a bit limited too).

 

[Iucounu]

Designing a game around Iron man mode and to only be played with the Iron mode seems natural for a crpg. It's good for role playing since you can't save scum.

What's wrong with save scumming, if the player likes it? And if the player doesn't like it, the developer is to blame for forcing the player to save scum.

If a developer wants to prevent players to circumvent RNG outcomes, the solution is to run the RNG long before the player notices the outcome, instead of the same moment. Perhaps each lootbox and NPC stat could be generated when the game begins, instead of the moment the player interacts with them?

wrong!
rpgs are played by hoarding xp points and then applying them in quests, save/reload to see the other routes if any, so that you need only 1 playtrhough to see alll the garbage
efficient

True. In shorter games I can live with C&C, and replay the whole game to try out other paths, but if a game is very long that's not an option. Imagine replaying the entire Mass Effect trilogy just to get a different cutscene in the third part, not worth it.

 

[octavius]

Bard's Tale 1 and 2 did it right, with saving only in the Adventurers Guild, and with no real permadeath/Game Over, since you could always roll new characters in the Adventurers Guild who could either carry on or resurrect the old ones. Same for early Wizardries, except you actually had to bring the corpses back.

 

[Ash]

Designing a game around Iron man mode and to only be played with the Iron mode seems natural for a crpg. It's good for role playing since you can't save scum.

wrong!
rpgs are played by hoarding xp points and then applying them in quests, save/reload to see the other routes if any, so that you need only 1 playtrhough to see alll the garbage
efficient

If you weren't playing low quality, shitty RPGs, this mentality wouldn't apply.

Zero save restrictions whatsoever is pure retardation in almost any context. Only casuals and those that think they're not casual, but in reality are, oppose save restrictions. Gameplay is WAY more with intelligent restrictions in effect. Goddamn it's fun as fuck. XCOM2 ironman is a fine modern example, peak turn-based tactics.

I do hate when devs throw ironman in genres it doesn't make sense and where restricted saving in specific locations instead would be far more appropriate. Like Deus Ex Mankind Divided added an ironman, which is utterly retarded. Especially when it could just be autosaves-only mode and to much better result. It's a game where jumping physics programming/collision inconsistencies can result in your instant death easily, and other bullshit of that nature. XCOM 2 on the other hand, your entire squad can be wiped out in battle and you can still continue and have a shot at winning. there is still room for error or other potential issues. Ironman actually makes sense there.

What's wrong with save scumming

Like 50 different things. But I am done with essays for the day.

 

[MerchantKing]

Designing a game around Iron man mode and to only be played with the Iron mode seems natural for a crpg. It's good for role playing since you can't save scum.

What's wrong with save scumming, if the player likes it? And if the player doesn't like it, the developer is to blame for forcing the player to save scum.

We are talking about computer roleplaying games.

If a developer wants to prevent players to circumvent RNG outcomes, the solution is to run the RNG long before the player notices the outcome, instead of the same moment. Perhaps each lootbox and NPC stat could be generated when the game begins, instead of the moment the player interacts with them?

There are some games that actually generate seeds in place of RNG for some things. For example, Battle Brothers determines the rolls for each character's level up the moment they're generated for recruitment.

wrong!
rpgs are played by hoarding xp points and then applying them in quests, save/reload to see the other routes if any, so that you need only 1 playtrhough to see alll the garbage
efficient

True. In shorter games I can live with C&C, and replay the whole game to try out other paths, but if a game is very long that's not an option. Imagine replaying the entire Mass Effect trilogy just to get a different cutscene in the third part, not worth it.

Imagine playing the Ass Effect trilogy. It's not worth it.