Wizardry Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord remake by Digital Eclipse - now available on Early Access - coming May 23rd

[Covenant]

It's just part of the challenge of the game.
It's like doing combat manually instead of using quick combat, or finding your way to a quest object armed only with directions instead of a magical quest compass.
And in combat heavy games, like the Bard's Tale games, it makes for more varied gameplay.

Tedium is never "part of the challenge". It just forces you to stop for a few seconds after taking each step. And if automaps make spinner and teleport traps moot, good riddance! (and it is easily fixed anyway, see Demise)

its fun, and i get a cool piece of paper to look back at. pure satisfaction.
if you dont like it, then you dont like it--- not bad design.

'It's fun' is a fair answer - as you say, it's not my cup of tea, but if some people enjoy it, great. I still don't think it justifies railing against games that do include an automap, but having the option to turn it off so you can map by hand is perfectly reasonable.

Can you make an actual argument though?

I don't know how to explain video games to brown people. Why aren't items sold automatically to vendors and the best items automatically equipped? Why do players need to walk to vendors in RPGs in the first place, why aren't items converted to currency directly if they aren't better than what the party is wearing? Why aren't all video games barely interactive movies and idle games?

Wizardry is a game designed with mapping out the dungeon by hand in mind, there are gameplay elements that directly tie into this. It's fun, it makes you interact with the gameworld differently than if it was handed to you on a plate and provides you with more unknowns to discover.

This is just retarded on so many levels, though. Managing your inventory and your loadout should be interesting tactical decisions (they aren't always, but that's another issue). You can go for something that has higher damage but lowers your defenses, and have that screw you over. You can gamble on a ???? being worth ditching some armour you were going to sell, and have it massively pay off. With mapping, excepting spinners/teleporters as I already said (and again, most games either don't include these or use them in such a basic manner that they're pointless - e.g. a spinner when there's a compass built into the damn UI), you're basically doing a connect-the-dots puzzle. If you're challenged by that, you're probably equally challenged by tying your shoes.

 

[mondblut]

I still don't think it justifies railing against games that do include an automap, but having the option to turn it off so you can map by hand is perfectly reasonable.

These kind of people are afraid that their exciting graph paper-scrawling hobby would suddenly feel less thrilling the moment they are offered a choice to have a computer do it for them.

Kinda like the folks who demand to ban quicksave and quickload because they just can't stop having F9 go brrrrr on their own volition.

 

[octavius]

I know I would never have finished Bard's Tale 2 is the mapping challenge didn't keep me interested in the game.
Of course, if there's little to no challenge involved you may as well use an auto-map. But there is a certain satisfaction involved in seeing the finished map of a level full of spinners, traps, darkness zones and anti-magic squares.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I still don't think it justifies railing against games that do include an automap, but having the option to turn it off so you can map by hand is perfectly reasonable.

These kind of people are afraid that their exciting graph paper-scrawling hobby would suddenly feel less thrilling the moment they are offered a choice to have a computer do it for them.

Kinda like the folks who demand to ban quicksave and quickload because they just can't stop having F9 go brrrrr on their own volition.

The problem isn't my temptation to take the easy path. The problem is that the game will be designed around that easy path. Morrowind had NPCs give you useful directions to find your way to quest objectives. Even in later Bethesda games (and similar ones) where the compass is 'optional' you don't get directions like that any more, because the assumption is that the player will just use the magic quest radar. Even if you turn off the quest compass, the game still feels artificial because someone just told you to go to Jobobner's house as if that's even remotely fucking helpful at all.

Same thing applies to quicksaves. Suddenly the devs feel totally justified in making the game an RNG shitfest where there's no point in playing well, it's faster to just reroll the dice.

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

These kind of people are afraid that their exciting graph paper-scrawling hobby would suddenly feel less thrilling the moment they are offered a choice to have a computer do it for them.

Kinda like the folks who demand to ban quicksave and quickload because they just can't stop having F9 go brrrrr on their own volition.

I'm disappointed in you, you always had the reputation for being a combatfag but it turns out you're a casual after all. You're not only incapable of exploring and mapping out a dungeon like a White man would but you're also afraid of games that up the stakes by limiting your saves and you need to be able to save before every corner of the dungeon to feel safe because you lack the gumption to take on even the smallest challenge? Where is the excitement in a game that plays itself and is designed around a baby's crib instead of a challenge? You deserved Ultima 7 and its descendants.

I still don't think it justifies railing against games that do include an automap, but having the option to turn it off so you can map by hand is perfectly reasonable.

This has been the argument for every single area of decline within the RPG genre since time immemorial. Just casualize one part of the genre until people forget why they were even parts of games in the first place and they are removed.

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

And if automaps make spinner and teleport traps moot, good riddance!

Woodhead has claimed another scalp, another failed adventurer shaking and crying stumbling out of the dungeon of the mad overlord, resigned to only go on safe Disney rides and eat pre-chewed baby food in the future. Now here he is decades later outside of the dungeon on his mobility scooter, picketing the shovelware studio creating a remake to include an automap to get his revenge, and he demands that all games in the future must include guard rails and be accessible for disabled people. Somewhere out there Woodhead laughs tauntingly.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I don’t mind auto-map or lack of it. Most auto maps are rather barren of information though. Whether I print the map or draw my own is another consideration. Not ALL auto maps are flawlessly accurate and rarely they can be utterly fucked up if the programmer screwed up. Some auto maps are so fucking hard to read or ugly as sin that the paper&pencil option trumps it. And for some reason, committing the extra time to hand notes and drawing the map is quite relaxing and entertaining for some. Different folks different strokes.

If I can turn off auto mapping, that’s a plus. Ever play a game where you ONLY look at the auto map and not the rest of the screen? Yeesh! That’s a MINUS! I’m split on it but NO AUTOMAP doesn’t break the game gif me. If you never mapped by hand, then give it a try.

Thing is, I drew maps just for fun after that. Before that, I used to draw maps of even video games like Donkey Kong, pac-man, etc. Profile maps were fun for a while even if they turned kind of messed up hybrid when inventing them.

 

[JarlFrank]

I recently (in the last 5 years) replayed stuff like W6, W7, Lands of Lore, Betrayal at Krondor, Ishar, Ravenloft, Albion, Battle Isle 2. Shit from the early 1990s in short. And had an absolute blast. Maybe because that's the shit I grew up with as a wee lad.

But no, I can't into wireframes with text. I'm autistic but not that much.

Lands of Lore still looks better than a lot of the shit put out nowadays, not sure why it was included in that list.

And W7. And Ishar. And...

Even most indie blobbers look better than this.
Even early 3D blobbers look better than this.

Wizardry 8 and Wizards & Warriors look better than this.
Grimoire looks better than this.
Demon Lord Reincarnation, Aeon of Sands, The Quest, Frayed Knights, StarCrawlers, Might & Magic X.

Pretty much every first person dungeon crawler has a better arstyle than whatever the fuck this is.

 

[mondblut]

Morrowind had NPCs give you useful directions to find your way to quest objectives. Even in later Bethesda games (and similar ones) where the compass is 'optional' you don't get directions like that any more, because the assumption is that the player will just use the magic quest radar. Even if you turn off the quest compass, the game still feels artificial because someone just told you to go to Jobobner's house as if that's even remotely fucking helpful at all.

What does it have to do with the computer helpfully drawing the walls around your current tile on its own instead of forcing you to drag the cursor up and down yourself? Why don't we stop with computer-assisted attack rolls and have the players roll their own dice and input the values into the program while we're there?

Same thing applies to quicksaves. Suddenly the devs feel totally justified in making the game an RNG shitfest where there's no point in playing well, it's faster to just reroll the dice.

In theory, your point has merit. In practice, some of the worst RNG shitfests I remember were the games where you had to backtrack back to the exit in order to save. Case in point...

 

[Gaznak]

Just saw it on GOG now. Looks absolutely disgusting and trash-cheap. Even stupid Japanese Wizardry-clones look (and play) better. Agree with "another Beamdog" opinions.

 

[Catacombs]

Personally I draw the line with ASCII graphics.

ASCII can have a lot of charm

Cogmind is a work of art.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Personally I draw the line with ASCII graphics.

ASCII can have a lot of charm

Cogmind is a work of art.

Brogue does an excellent job too. But yeah, Cogmind is in it's own tier, and the tier below it is empty.

 

[treborSux]

Yawn

 

[treborSux]

I'm already sort of against the concept of "modernizing" old games, but even accepting the idea, this is about the worst to choose. The game is essentially a minimalist haunted house. It's definitively an old school experience. By adding modern graphics, music etc., it's like you're trying to hide the spartan quality and empty space of a game from 1980. It's like playing Pong with modern graphics. "Polishing a turd" feels appropriate, though I use the term affectionately because this game of course always will have a special place in my heart.

 

[Casual Hero]

I'm already sort of against the concept of "modernizing" old games, but even accepting the idea, this is about the worst to choose. The game is essentially a minimalist haunted house. It's definitively an old school experience. By adding modern graphics, music etc., it's like you're trying to hide the spartan quality and empty space of a game from 1980. It's like playing Pong with modern graphics. "Polishing a turd" feels appropriate, though I use the term affectionately because this game of course always will have a special place in my heart.

I simply can't agree with you, and I don't know if I have the ability or authority to begin to explain why.
While the ways that you interact with the game are very simple (equipping characters, navigating the dungeon, and combat), the game itself is beautifully designed. I wrote a little bit about design philosophies of Wizardry maps in the jRPG thread just now.

Adding new graphics and sound won't add anything to the core game, but the game isn't an empty experience to play through- like most people claim. There are a lot of good principles to be gained from it.

 

[treborSux]

There's nothing wrong with the original Apple II versions though.

Original Apple ][ version's got one huge design issue: Both you and enemies can use magic during surprise rounds. Not too big a deal for the first few floors (and can be quite good when the luck's on your side) can become a huge issue once you get to floor 8-9 and your entire party gets wiped out in the first round. Most ports fix this.

No way that shit was awesome. Putting in 100 hours to have your party wiped out by a surpise pack of Greater Demons is a feature

 

[Filthy Sauce]

Just a heat warning for laptop users such as myself- At this point in time, the game has no video options and runs at an uncapped FPS. The game engine fortunately does have both native vsync and frame limit support, but you got to enter the values in a config file.

 

[octavius]

No way that shit was awesome. Putting in 100 hours to have your party wiped out by a surpise pack of Greater Demons is a feature

It works in Bard's Tale, where your party members' corpses magically appear at the Adventurer Guild. In Wizardry it doesn't make much sense, unless meta gaming and cheating is an intended feature.

 

[Grauken]

No way that shit was awesome. Putting in 100 hours to have your party wiped out by a surpise pack of Greater Demons is a feature

It works in Bard's Tale, where your party members' corpses magically appear at the Adventurer Guild. In Wizardry it doesn't make much sense, unless meta gaming and cheating is an intended feature.

They expected players to have many characters at the guild with many parties, some just so that they could go out and get the corpses of slain parties. That's not how most people play the game these days, if it ever was, but that was the main idea then and TPKs were expected and intended

 

[octavius]

Well, they changed their intention with the later non-Apple versions.

 

[Grauken]

Well, they changed their intention with the later non-Apple versions.

Probably because they realized people weren't playing as they thought they should and adapted to that.

 

[mondblut]

Probably because they realized people weren't playing as they thought they should

They must have thought Wizardry will be the only RPG on the market forever, hah.

 

[koyota]

Most auto maps are rather barren of information though

About the worst possible way you can do this is what they did for the FF1 Remaster - a game much more the vein of early Ultima / Wiz than anything you call a JRPG today -

Make the map already filled in and show everything (Including which ways are dead-ends and which ways have treasures) with no option to turn it off or other mapping methods, in a dungeon crawler.

Amazingly in the target audience, no one seemed to care.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Already filled in? Jesus fucking Christ? Do they not care about that map completionist ocd feel we get from hitting every square or room (I suppose it doesn’t have to be EVERY SQUARE… grumble grumble).

Side notes: It seems that I am part of the discord for that wizardry blockchain game. I forgot to unsub there. Where is the game itself? Fuck if I know but Apple Store does NOT have it.
Probably good.

THE BAD!???
Well, type in wizardry into Apple Store and a fucking ton of knock off wizardry games pop up and I don’t mean Quest. I’ll try to link in the phone game thread. Most require purchase to remove ads.

 

[Damned Registrations]

No way that shit was awesome. Putting in 100 hours to have your party wiped out by a surpise pack of Greater Demons is a feature

It works in Bard's Tale, where your party members' corpses magically appear at the Adventurer Guild. In Wizardry it doesn't make much sense, unless meta gaming and cheating is an intended feature.

They expected players to have many characters at the guild with many parties, some just so that they could go out and get the corpses of slain parties. That's not how most people play the game these days, if it ever was, but that was the main idea then and TPKs were expected and intended

Is that actually a viable option at all compared to just reloading? It seems like you'd just endlessly be throwing parties into the meat grinder after a certain point, never being able to build up enough of the best equipment to make it to the end.