RPGs that make you crave for resources

[MrMarbles]

Don't mean to hijack your thread grimwulf, but after looking around and not finding anything I have a question for the codex hivemind:

Are there any RPGs out there that cannot be completed?

As in, the goal is not to win but to survive for as long as possible, and you WILL get wiped out at some point. Most survival games I've checked out are more like sims with few RPG elements. I gues ToME could be an option, but it looks like it can be completed.

 

[Grimwulf]

Don't mean to hijack your thread grimwulf, but after looking around and not finding anything I have a question for the codex hivemind:

Are there any RPGs out there that cannot be completed?

As in, the goal is not to win but to survive for as long as possible, and you WILL get wiped out at some point. Most survival games I've checked out are more like sims with few RPG elements. I gues ToME could be an option, but it looks like it can be completed.

A lot of them, actually. First that come to mind:
- Elona (weeaboo roguelike, probably the only one);
- Project Zomboid (survival roguelike, still very raw);
- Captive (although, I would never rememered it if Unkillable Cat didn't mention it the other day);
- The Guild 2 (rpg/life-sim; new patches STILL coming, the last one was released a week ago. I find this absolutely hilarious);
- A freakin' SHITTON of RPGs that let you continiue the game after completing main quest. Like TES games, Fallouts, Fable, and whatnot;
- Unreal World (may appear as survival, but in fact a life-sim/rpg, with Dat Soul in it)

Anyway, I'm too sclerotic to answer this. Maybe later, when I give it a thought.

 

[Emily]

Don't mean to hijack your thread grimwulf, but after looking around and not finding anything I have a question for the codex hivemind:

Are there any RPGs out there that cannot be completed?

As in, the goal is not to win but to survive for as long as possible, and you WILL get wiped out at some point. Most survival games I've checked out are more like sims with few RPG elements. I gues ToME could be an option, but it looks like it can be completed.

A lot of them, actually. First that come to mind:
- Elona (weeaboo roguelike, probably the only one);


Anyway, I'm too sclerotic to answer this. Maybe later, when I give it a thought.

That looks great! Never heard of that game before.
What about guild 2 patch did you play it? Is it better?

Unreal World is a good game but you need to make challenge yourself such as
>play as hermit, no trading with other people, can kill others
>play without any fishing nets or crafting bowls (i heard they fixed these tho)
>survive by just hunting
>start at winter
etc

 

[Grimwulf]

What about guild 2 patch did you play it? Is it better?

Changelog looks yummi. At least I won't have to run that stupid Legacy mod just to fix some major bugs, at the cost of frustrating new "features".

But nah, I've got myself burnt from my last Guild 2 experience. Need some time. Besides, gotta finish Dominions 4 session first.

Unreal World is a good game but you need to make challenge yourself such as
>play as hermit, no trading with other people, can kill others
>play without any fishing nets or crafting bowls (i heard they fixed these tho)
>survive by just hunting
>start at winter
etc

Yeah, you kinda need a bunch of home rules, if you want to make it a survival experience. My favorite is:
- Start in Winter
- Choose "hurt, helpless and afraid" starting scenario
- Discard all items on first turn, including the knife
- Don't zoom out to global map until you bump into first settlement

These are the basics.

 

[Emily]

how can you survive without a knife? no way to butcher animals without it.... And eating berries starves you in newer versions

 

[Grimwulf]

how can you survive without a knife? no way to butcher animals without it.... And eating berries starves you in newer versions

Cloudberries do not. The trick is to find rapids river asap (unfrozen). Then you can kill fish with a stone. You only have a month before cloudberries dissapear tho.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Not an rpg per se (though arguably unrealworld isn't either) but Factorio could certainly leave you short of resources if you set the scarcity and/or enemies high enough or play with mods that require vast quantities of stuff.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Wanted to bring up JA2 again. I know it has been brought up already and I think the OP already knows it well. I can't ever remember playing it on any difficulty other than hard, but I might have. Anyway, I've never finished the game. The way I played the past few times was I would quit if my main character died and would not load a savegame unless it was just to continue the game. So if I lost a team member (no matter how important) or anything other than my main, I'd just go with it. I'm not sure if it was playing this way that made me scavenge for every item and moneymaking opportunity, but it probably encouraged me to do that. I always felt like I needed more money.

Lately the way I play games is I allow myself to load savegames if my main character dies, but I don't load a savegame just to avoid losing a more negative outcome. I also record everything as I experience it, like all my deaths and all of my thoughts about hte game.

Just buy insurance for your mercs, then you'll have no need to reaload at all. If your main dies, make a new one - that's perfectly allowed. At least in 1.13 mod. Vanilla is too easy coz of predictable AI.

I did research 1.13 somewhat. I stay away from 1.13 because I don't see any reason to use it yet until I can master vanilla. There're some things I like about it I guess, but there're also just too many changes for me to trust it. It doesn't give off the same vibe as vanilla. I mean, I don't mean any offense to those who like 1.13. Maybe someday I'll give it a run.

I haven't used insurance ever. On my next playthrough I may try to look into that. Although I rarely lose mercs. I usually lose when I start running out of mining resources and so I have to take one of the tougher sectors or explore around them. The body bags start piling up. That's when insurance would be handy. And note running out of resources is why I commented at all. The way I play JA2 starves me for resources, so it semed appropriate to comment about it.

 

[Norfleet]

I can't say I find that losing mercs is a frequent occurrence, either. Either you win handily, or your position is overrun and you're TPKed and the game ends. Only time you're likely to lose men is at the beginning, when you don't have any men to lose...so you get TPK'ed and the game ends.

 

[Grimwulf]

Not an rpg per se (though arguably unrealworld isn't either) but Factorio could certainly leave you short of resources if you set the scarcity and/or enemies high enough or play with mods that require vast quantities of stuff.

Never heard of it. Looks like economic sim or tycoon of sorts.

I play on Vanilla. You must be smarter than me because I haven't really figured out he AI. I stay away from 1.13 because I don't see any reason to use it. I haven't used insurance ever. On my next playthrough I may try to look into that. Although I rarely lose mercs. I usually lose when I start running out of mining resources and so I have to take one of the tougher sectors. That's when insurance would be handy.

You've gotta try harder to git gud. Insurance is cheap as fucks, and besides you can't "run out" of mining resources. You must speak of some other Jagged Alliance 2, because in vanilla there was only a random event (depletion of random mine), that may or may not happen once during playthrough. Mines give you endless cash. Even if they didn't, Tony has respawning 15k. Hire yerself a looter squad of cheap-ass MERC douchebags and let them drag the loot to Tony (although, they could use someone with "scout" perk to aviod encounters). That is, if you experience financial difficulties. Which isn't an issue at all in JA2.

1.13 has all the real challenge.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

I think you could also cross an option that prevent you from saving during fight in Ja2, but i am not sure...

Ya I don't save during fights, so it wouldn't mater anyway. But I do check that.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

I play on Vanilla. You must be smarter than me because I haven't really figured out he AI. I stay away from 1.13 because I don't see any reason to use it. I haven't used insurance ever. On my next playthrough I may try to look into that. Although I rarely lose mercs. I usually lose when I start running out of mining resources and so I have to take one of the tougher sectors. That's when insurance would be handy.

You've gotta try harder to git gud. Insurance is cheap as fucks, and besides you can't "run out" of mining resources. You must speak of some other Jagged Alliance 2, because in vanilla there was only a random event (depletion of random mine), that may or may not happen once during playthrough. Mines give you endless cash. Even if they didn't, Tony has respawning 15k. Hire yerself a looter squad of cheap-ass MERC douchebags and let them drag the loot to Tony (although, they could use someone with "scout" perk to aviod encounters). That is, if you experience financial difficulties. Which isn't an issue at all in JA2.

1.13 has all the real challenge.

Are we talking about the same game? JA2 vanilla is brutal in my experience. You may be right about one mine exhausting itself. I don't think my games ever lasted long enough for me to know that only one fails. And I do use Tony to sell things. I think hehas a cap though. There's also a guy that buys animals parts. I mostly don't know which perks the mercs have. I know Haywire has psycho.

Wabt to say the way I die in JA2 can be sometimes "random". Like when my squad was butchered by a whole lineage of tigers - no way to win that one. Because my main died, I quit that game. Lot of old games play that way. But I think most of hte time in JA2 I feel lke I have a chance ot win, I just don't. Yet those moments where I CANNOT win are very hard to get over.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Don't mean to hijack your thread grimwulf, but after looking around and not finding anything I have a question for the codex hivemind:

Are there any RPGs out there that cannot be completed?

As in, the goal is not to win but to survive for as long as possible, and you WILL get wiped out at some point. Most survival games I've checked out are more like sims with few RPG elements. I gues ToME could be an option, but it looks like it can be completed.

A lot of them, actually. First that come to mind:
- Elona (weeaboo roguelike, probably the only one);
- Project Zomboid (survival roguelike, still very raw);
- Captive (although, I would never rememered it if Unkillable Cat didn't mention it the other day);
- The Guild 2 (rpg/life-sim; new patches STILL coming, the last one was released a week ago. I find this absolutely hilarious);
- A freakin' SHITTON of RPGs that let you continiue the game after completing main quest. Like TES games, Fallouts, Fable, and whatnot;
- Unreal World (may appear as survival, but in fact a life-sim/rpg, with Dat Soul in it)

Anyway, I'm too sclerotic to answer this. Maybe later, when I give it a thought.

Grimrulf you should reread this part of his post:

As in, the goal is not to win but to survive for as long as possible, and you WILL get wiped out at some point.

I don't think he meant a random death or just dying because you were AFK. I think he meant the game ramps up in difficulty until you CANNOT survive. Like being a lvl 1 against a lvl 90. I brought this up in my post earlier about X2: The Threat (shown below).

I want to add I used to play X2: The Threat. At some point, the game got boring because there were no threats. I was in the process of trying to make a MOD to address that. There were other mods, but I didn't feel like hunting them down. I wanted to make it so the enemy would attack with more and more power, so eventually you'd lose. Someone else made a mod similar to that, but it didn't do the things I wanted. I never actually made the mod, but it makes me wonder: How does a game keep itself interesting and challenging indefinitely, without development resources? A game it seems can only go so far without someone developing it. Challenge isn't just adjusting some numbers, it's new content and new kinds of challenges too.

I'm fairly sure Morrowind (and later TES games?) always keep the levle of creatures around you roughly equal to your own. This way, no matter how high your level, the difficulty is close to the same. Still, this is not the same as ramping up the dificulty as your levels go up, so that at some point you cannot even play.

 

[Grimwulf]

Don't mean to hijack your thread grimwulf, but after looking around and not finding anything I have a question for the codex hivemind:

Are there any RPGs out there that cannot be completed?

As in, the goal is not to win but to survive for as long as possible, and you WILL get wiped out at some point. Most survival games I've checked out are more like sims with few RPG elements. I gues ToME could be an option, but it looks like it can be completed.

A lot of them, actually. First that come to mind:
- Elona (weeaboo roguelike, probably the only one);
- Project Zomboid (survival roguelike, still very raw);
- Captive (although, I would never rememered it if Unkillable Cat didn't mention it the other day);
- The Guild 2 (rpg/life-sim; new patches STILL coming, the last one was released a week ago. I find this absolutely hilarious);
- A freakin' SHITTON of RPGs that let you continiue the game after completing main quest. Like TES games, Fallouts, Fable, and whatnot;
- Unreal World (may appear as survival, but in fact a life-sim/rpg, with Dat Soul in it)

Anyway, I'm too sclerotic to answer this. Maybe later, when I give it a thought.

Grimrulf you should reread this part of his post:

As in, the goal is not to win but to survive for as long as possible, and you WILL get wiped out at some point.

I don't think he meant a random death or just dying because you were AFK. I think he meant the game ramps up in difficulty until you're dead. I brought this up in my post earlier about X2: The Threat.

What's your point?

1. Death in Elona is permanent. It's a ROGUELIKE, for fucks sake. Of course you get urself wiped out. I loved playing as Pianist class, and my most frequent way of dying was "killed by bigass piano, that some crazy drunk mutha throwed in my face during random party".

Spoiler

Although, it had some kind of infinite-lifes mode, can't remember exactly

2. Death in PZ is unavoidable. It's a fucking ZOMBIE SURVIVAL. Even if you git gud tho, and live ur life in super-duper fortified fortress, save corrupts, game over. That what usually happend to me. But even the most fortified ones experience, well, PROBLEMS:

3. Captive is hard until you learn EVERYTHING about the game. That's gonna take you a while. And even then you're gonna make mistakes if not careful.
4. The Guild 2? If you survive 50 turns, I'm gonna applause you as loud as I can.

Spoiler

5. Freakin' shitton of endless rpgs? Well, there is a shitton of them. Some may never get easy. Brytenwalda mod for M&B never does.
6. Yes, URW isn't hard, so what? Random arrow in the eye or banal pack of wolves may kill you ANY FUCKING MOMENT, no matter how cool and skillful you are. It just doesn't happen very often.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Ok I get where you're coming from. I guess it depends how you read it. I read "wiped out" as meaning much more than a simple death. I read it as meaning impossible to play the game further.

Maybe I thought this way because I had just wrote that post and commented about X2: The Threat. If you not understand what I saying just imagine an arcade game where the enemies double in number infinitely and the player's tangible powers remain the same (skills don't increase, etc). Eventually all players WILL lose, although at differnt points.

 

[Grimwulf]

Most of the RPGs I've played Grim reach a plateau at the high levels. They just aren't dangerous anymore (if they ever were). Nothing much changes to challenge you. Ya, you might experience a random death, like a rare critical which kills you, but this isn't I think what he was referring to. In the case you suffer a random death, you can reload and you'll be ok again until you die again from something random. Thing is, the "difficulty" doesn't increase thereafter. You just experience random deaths from random mechanics into infinity. I think what he was more talking about what something which becomes impossible to play at some point. Reloading after a death isn't even an option.

http://impossiblegame.org/

 

[Emily]

"1. Death in Elona is permanent. It's a ROGUELIKE, for fucks sake. Of course you get urself wiped out. I loved playing as Pianist class, and my most frequent way of dying was "killed by bigass piano, that some crazy drunk mutha throwed in my face during random party"."

It is not permanent you just get some(lot of) penalties or am i somehow playing "easy mode" that i am not aware off

 

[Grimwulf]

"1. Death in Elona is permanent. It's a ROGUELIKE, for fucks sake. Of course you get urself wiped out. I loved playing as Pianist class, and my most frequent way of dying was "killed by bigass piano, that some crazy drunk mutha throwed in my face during random party"."

It is not permanent you just get some(lot of) penalties or am i somehow playing "easy mode" that i am not aware off

Ok, I'm not to sure, actually. I have dat sclerosis problem, which I try to cure with whiskey. No effect so far.

Edit: But I definetely started Elona from scratch every time I died. So either it was one of my crazy home rules, or you get to choose difficulty.

Edit 2: What the hell, let us summon Damned Registrations. He knows, 100%.

 

[koyota]

Necroing this thread instead of creating another one:

In the 7 years since this thread was made we have seen the rise of the survival genre.
Fallout 4 Survival Iron Man Mode with mods to gimp even more has taken up close to 100 hours of play-time by me (No idea what the main plot is about as it never seemed to be interesting or an RPG)

Any other suggestions for things that have come out in the past 7 years (Or this thread missed) with RPGS that have scare resources / Survival style RPGS that are good?