Moving on, there’s one thing that I’ve been actively avoiding until now, and that is the Stars/”Drama points” system. For those that don’t know, this system is visualized as those three stars sitting at the top of the screen. Every time something dramatic happens the player gets a corresponding amount of drama points as a reward. Then, when the player has collected enough points he can spend them on something useful, such as reviving a party member or casting some special spells among other things. Sounds like a good idea, but there’s a catch: Your drama points are never saved. If you quit the game, they are erased.

Why the catch? Well, Jay implemented it this way to punish those gamers that don’t tolerate failure. Something bad happens? Load a previous save. Some players act this way because games like Fallout 2 and Eschalon: Book 1 actively encourage this conduct. With or without “Drama points”, if you offer random rewards and punishments then you are automatically encouraging constant quicksaving and loading.

You can’t simply apply a patch over this issue either and pretend to be done with it. The problem can’t be solved by punishing certain players and rewarding others. I know I’ve already said this but it bears to be repeated: The root of the problem lays squarely on the shoulders of the mechanics with random outcomes.

What’s more, I don’t like the drama points system because it affects everybody, not just the quickloader-happy population. It’s a system that rewards gamers for playing for extended periods of time. For people like me it’s a plus, but there are some other gamers out there that don’t have as much spare time as I do. Those people are never going to see the best rewards offered by the drama point’s system, all because some other people can’t tolerate failure. Just fantastic.​