RPGs with back pressure

Most of my favorite games have some kind of back pressure.

By back pressure I mean if the player elects to do nothing for some amount of (game) time, they enter a failure state (game over).

For example, auto-scrolling shooters have back pressure (eventually something shoots you or you run into something), as do strategy and tactics games both turn based and real time (sit on your hands too long and the enemy will overwhelm you).

However, it's not very common in RPGs.

There's the water chip quest in Fallout 1, and food in various rogue-likes and early Ultimas. But that's all the examples I can think of in Western RPGs.

Can you guys think of any?

Do you like back pressure as a game mechanic?

 

In Pathfinder Kingmaker, your kingdom is quickly destroyed if you keep exploring or faffing about. There are deadlines to meet, invasions to repel -- the sort of things that don't wait on adventurers. On the other hand, there's plenty of downtime between major threats if you play your cards right, so you should have time to backtrack, as well as to improve the realm. Frankly, I think the time limits add a sense of urgency that enhances my experience with PFK, although I still haven't finished it. It's a damnably long game.

 

Jagged Alliance 2.

 

If timed quests, like the water chip in Fallout 1 are fitting, then:

1. Expeditions: Viking - you have a year before "judgement day", so you have to prepare your expedition before spring.
2. Tyranny - you're given 1 week to sort out the rebels before a massive spell, called edict, will slay everyone in the area.

 

Realms of Arkania has a lot of resource management/survival elements - resting to heal is extremely slow, healing potions are extremely rare and expensive, your character may get diseases that get worse with time if not treated, inventory is limited by both weight and size.
Wizardry 7 has competing NPC parties that will take mcguffins from their respective dungeons if you're too slow. It's not a failure state per se though, you'll just have to find those parties and negotiate or kill them to get the mcguffins for yourself.

 

that one was interesting. Everyone knew about and felt pressured too, also making you sort of untouchable at the beginning before you played your hand

 

It's interesting that the timers in Fallout and Tyranny are extremely generous, but they still do the job of making you haul ass your first time through. On a second playthrough you'd already know what to do, so even a restrictive timer wouldn't really matter. It means the devs get their desired urgency without much risk of frustrating the bad players.

 

Seems pretty rare in Western RPGs.

A nice compromise I think was Majora's Mask. There time flows, but you are given tools to reverse it. It's still kind of a failure state if you don't accomplish your goals in time and you have to rewind.

 

... by bugs and unfinished card games

 

>actually playing these kind of games on release rather than waiting a year or two until goyim find and fix all the bugs
what a dumbass lmao

and there is a reason why
normalfaggots hate this, they simply want to run around in a sandbox with an "rpg" label, the moment you include serious gameplay related consequences for actions (actions such as spending time on random bullshit rather than the Supposedly Very Important Task), they endlessly bitch about it
note : serious and gameplay related - shit like "different line of text in a dialogue because you did xyz, woohoo, muh reactivity" does not qualify

 

Star Control 2 and Quest for Glory 2 are some older examples of these.

 

space rangers

 

Time limits are shit

 

It's not very common in RPGs because it's a shit thing to have in an RPG. Your galaxy brain should have figured out why almost no RPGs have it.

 

So, others mentioned Space Rangers 2 and Jagged Alliance 2, if you consider those RPGs. I think it works well there. You don't?

 

Good games, but I don't consider them RPGs, neither is Star Control 2, and the time limits were controversial enough in Fallout, and are intolerable for Kingmaker

 

Just play any game to this to apply the pressure......

 

Tribunal expansion to Morrowind would pester you with assassins randomly while you rested.

The spirit meter in MotB put a little rush to things but not terribly bad.

Pathfinder would also remove party members/advisors which could prompt you to hurry up and do those quests to get them back if you want them back in your party ot don't want your kingdom to fall to shit because an important member is gone.

 

Welcome, newbro.

 

All great of examples of why this sort of stuff sucks 99% of the time.

 

Wtf bro I can't even

 

reading comprehension not one of your strengths?

 

That wasn't pressure in the sense that something would happen, that was just persistent harassment. The level of harassment would never become unbearable nor would any failure state occur if you just maintained the status quo.

That wasn't pressure either, that was just a form of hunger, and it was possible to basically just farm the relevant level and maintain status quo indefinitely.

 

Actually yes. I've failed to pass [Reading Comprehension] checks multiple times in the Codex, so

 

Hmm

I hate time limits, I didn't have a problem with them in Fallout, but many others did, the kingdom management/time limit in Kingmaker is what stops me from playing it. Not sure I can be more clear

If people like time limits, more power to them, but I avoid all RPGs that have them, mostly because I love exploration and time limits are counterproductive to that