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RPGs with back pressure

oldmanpaco

Master of Siestas
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Nov 8, 2008
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Winter
If you don't get a Black Egg onto the Crystal Planet in nine months the starport gets pretty lonely.
 

luj1

You're all shills
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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.

Because in Fallout the effective time limit is a non-issue, you still have time to do fuck all. There is a huge difference between that and Kingmaker with its bugged time attacks and travelling back and forth between two map points like a fucking moron.
 

Modron

Arcane
Joined
May 5, 2012
Messages
9,939
Surprised no one mentioned Exile/Avernum 3, if you take your time monsters attack cities, destroying walls, killing npcs, even quest related ones and shopkeepers which, if I recall correctly, can lead to a fail state if you really lollygag.
 

Nutmeg

Arcane
Vatnik Wumao
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Mahou Kingdom
mostly because I love exploration and time limits are counterproductive to that
I would argue you can't have meaningful exploration without a time limit because it just makes it a time sink. Like your success is guaranteed, it is just a matter of going through the motions. Compare to something like HoMM3 where exploring can be rewarding (wow that tome of earth is defended by just a throng of skeletons) and risky (ah fuck my hero can't make it back to town in time to defend)
 

Doktor Best

Arcane
Joined
Feb 2, 2015
Messages
2,849
Currently playing Kingdom Come Deliverance and some quests appear to have time limits. I found Reeky too late for example and he was already cut up and in his dying breath when i found him. Several other mentions in quest dialogue that i should move my ass pronto or else bad things will happen.

I dont know if there is an universal time pressure in the main quest though.
 

Smerlus

Educated
Joined
Mar 29, 2020
Messages
133
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.

Harassment is still pressure by definition. It doesn't result in a game over but I know every time I try to level up, I dont enjoy getting interrupted and poked with sharp objects.

I dont recall infinite souls in Mask of the Betrayer. It has been a while so I could be wrong. By the end I remember having to sacrifice XP to stave off the hunger because I was playing the game at my own pace.
 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
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mostly because I love exploration and time limits are counterproductive to that
I would argue you can't have meaningful exploration without a time limit because it just makes it a time sink. Like your success is guaranteed, it is just a matter of going through the motions.

you really don't seem to get exploration
 

Carrion

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Lost in Necropolis
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
I'd say that in Fallout it actually wasn't, because the time limit encouraged you to be more thorough with each location before moving on. It was travelling that really cost you, so you had to plan your trips carefully (that is, until you knew how plentiful the time limit actually was).

When used effectively, time limits can add a great deal to a game in the form of another resource to manage, as well as discourage the usual degenerate behaviour like rest spam or repeated trips to traders in order to sell every piece of junk you found in a dungeon. They can also destroy a game if handled badly, like being too pressing and taking the fun out of spontaneous exploration and downtime.
 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
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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
I'd say that in Fallout it actually wasn't, because the time limit encouraged you to be more thorough with each location before moving on. It was travelling that really cost you, so you had to plan your trips carefully (that is, until you knew how plentiful the time limit actually was).

When used effectively, time limits can add a great deal to a game in the form of another resource to manage, as well as discourage the usual degenerate behaviour like rest spam or repeated trips to traders in order to sell every piece of junk you found in a dungeon.

I'll never understand the mindset of people preoccupied with how other people play their games.
 

Nutmeg

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I'll never understand the mindset of people preoccupied with how other people play their games.
Games themselves are preoccupied about how their players play them.

Might as well fault a game for not giving you infinite HP or whatever. "How dare the game say this Goblin killed me!"
 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
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I'll never understand the mindset of people preoccupied with how other people play their games.
Games themselves are preoccupied about how their players play them.

Might as well fault a game for not giving you infinite HP or whatever. "How dare the game say this Goblin killed me!"

If a game is well designed, it doesn't matter, if it's not I cheat, easy peasy
 

Fowyr

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Mar 29, 2009
Messages
7,671
Wizardry 4 - do nothing, get a visit from a Trebor's Ghost.
Bloodnet - do nothing, become hungry, bite a random person, lose humanity - game over.
 

vonAchdorf

Arcane
Joined
Sep 20, 2014
Messages
13,465
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.

If JRPGs count, most Atelier games have some kind of time limit.

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.

Arkania 1 - Sword of Destiny also has a (generous) time limit.
 

Reinhardt

Arcane
Joined
Sep 4, 2015
Messages
29,247
Trillion: God of Destruction. You train your waifu and send her to chip some hp from boss destroying your world and to to buy some more time to train next waifu. He literally have trillion hp.
 

ntonystinson

Scholar
Joined
Nov 11, 2016
Messages
181
Elona is supposed to have like a late world event which you're supposed to prepare for. It's been a while though so I'm not too clear on the details
 

Arulan

Cipher
Joined
Feb 13, 2014
Messages
313
Currently playing Kingdom Come Deliverance and some quests appear to have time limits. I found Reeky too late for example and he was already cut up and in his dying breath when i found him. Several other mentions in quest dialogue that i should move my ass pronto or else bad things will happen.

I dont know if there is an universal time pressure in the main quest though.
I thought they executed this really well. There are several quests that imply urgency. Failing to act in a timely manner results in events continuing without you, and in most cases with negative consequences. I don't believe there is a global timer of any kind, but this attention to detail is a lot of what makes Kingdom Come: Deliverance such an immersive game. From your very first quest, the game is already training you to take it at face value, and behave appropriately. That pitcher of ale for Father needs to be brought to him cool, not whenever you damn well please. When someone tells you to meet them this evening, they don't mean you can go play in the woods for 40 hours, and then come back to this quest when you feel like it. They mean this evening. These all serve to reinforce your belief in the world to the point where you're starting to play as if it were real. You come to expect logical outcomes from actions. And in a lot of cases in Kingdom Come: Deliverance, you're rewarded for it.
 

Bruma Hobo

Lurker
Joined
Dec 29, 2011
Messages
2,409
All quests in Daggerfall have time limits, most of them generous enough, but they become a fun challenge if you accept several of them at the same time (and there's an incentive to do so, your reputation worldwide drops a point every in-game month, so you don't want to spend too much time traveling).

And if you like Ultima style food requirements limiting exploration, try Expeditions: Conquistador.
 

Citizen

Guest
MoTB has spirit meter instead of a timer
Legend of Eisenwald has back pressure in form of unit upkeep
 

samuraigaiden

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2018
Messages
1,954
Location
Harare
RPG Wokedex
Has anyone mentioned the Soldak games yet?

In Depths of Peril you are one among a given numbers of competing heroes. If don’t complete a quest, someone else will.

In Dins Curse the entire village can be murdered by monsters if you don’t take action. It’s a shame these games are Diablo clones, because everything else about them is awesome.
 

Serious_Business

Best Poster on the Codex
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Messages
3,909
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Frown Town
Overall rpgs seem to be hostile to this concept (need a better word than "backpressure"), as they are meant to be experiences for tired, feeble old men. More seriously, they are meant to be "adventures", which allow you to "play at your own pace", which is really a way to mean : you're going to win whatever you do. In effect the real pressure rpgs can do is to make character building a strategic component to its dynamics - requiring the player to "build" their character properly, or not being able to pass certain tests or challenges ; and so there is the threat of having the restart or rebuild your character (threat which is supposed to be "unfun" by the most potato-loving guys out there). This pressure is removed more often than not through character respecialisation (Divinity 2's mirror was terrible regarding this : I would argue it was the worst thing about the game, far beyond the armor system). Either way rpg players want to "feel like the master of their own house" ; they want to be in control all the time, as I put it somewhere else.
 

ntonystinson

Scholar
Joined
Nov 11, 2016
Messages
181
Has anyone mentioned the Soldak games yet?

In Depths of Peril you are one among a given numbers of competing heroes. If don’t complete a quest, someone else will.

In Dins Curse the entire village can be murdered by monsters if you don’t take action. It’s a shame these games are Diablo clones, because everything else about them is awesome.
Just checked the steam page out, seems like a game that would do well on Android/ios
 

DalekFlay

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 5, 2010
Messages
14,118
Location
New Vegas
I like it when one part of the game has timers that make you feel some pressure. Fallout and Tyranny are good examples, as is chapter one of Pathfinder. When the whole game works on this structure though, like the rest of Pathfinder, I think it's more annoying than fun. A big part of why people love RPGs is the freedom they usually offer, and constant timers or developer enforced priorities are the opposite of that.
 

Silly Germans

Guest
Baldurs Gate 2 also uses time limits multiple times, although mostly in side/companion/stronghold quests.
One can turn the Drow city against you but most others have little to no consequences except failing the
quest and thus getting no reward.
Baldurs Gate 1 also had at least the one poison quest that could kill you if you were to slow to get the antidote.

They work well as small mix-up but it becomes annoying when one timer simply gets replaced/followed by
the next timer. Its niece to feel the release of the tension upon finishing something within a limit but it
shouldn't be overdone.
 

:Flash:

Arcane
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
6,454
I have to quote myself again on Arcatera, because even though it's a terrible game, it does have the most elaborate and interesting approach to time limits:
In most games, you can ask the same question and/or choose the same response over and over again. This is stupid. Now, there are probably many examples in which a particular dialogue option limits further options to a degree because of NPC reaction, but I'd like to see a lot more of this AND i'd like to know if there are any RPGs (or non-RPGS even) that have implemented a very strict limit on the ability to repeat dialogue lines?
Arcatera: The Dark Brotherhood has a very elaborate System for this. Dialogue is influenced by three attributes: alignment, irritation and patience. alignment and influences whether the person will talk to you at all, and how much patience points you have. Additionally, it influences what the person answers to a specific question. Irritation is influenced by specific dialogue options (and can in turn influence alignment, e.g. if you insult someone, or make the NPC attack you or call the guards). Patience runs down with every question you ask, and once it has run out, the NPC will stop talking to you. So if you have less patience points than dialogue options, you cannot even ask all questions.
Additionally, once everything the NPC could possibly say regarding a specific question, that dialogue options is removed. That must not necessarily be after the first time you selected it, because it is possible that he might answer something different if you manage to influence his alignment. Of course, you might run out of patience trying to do that.
That actually sounds like a badass system, was the game any good ?
Unfortunately, no. This game is so chock full of good ideas and innovations it should have been great, unfortunately, it is quite bad. To quote myself:
This is perhaps one of the most innovative games that nobody has played, because, ultimately, it's not very good. But it's full of good ideas.
It's an RPG/Adventure Hybrid, with day/night cycles and NPC schedules. That alone is pretty unique already.
Then it has a split party mechanic, which actually makes sense. You can assign tasks to the "inactive" party, which are then performed automatically, while you can do stuff that needs your attention. E.g. you can search a location in order to find things (searching a location can take several hours), or observe a location in order to intercept an NPC that tries to evade you. Or sleep, as Arcatera has requirement for sleeping, eating and drinking, all managed manually. Of course, depending on location you can get robbed or attacked during sleep.
Then it has a crime system that has the guards punish you depending on how many offences you have committed already, including increasing gold fees and banishment from the city.

The World of Arcatera has a nice backstory as well, it is based on the PNP game the developers had worked on since their youth.
Man this game should have been great. If only the execution hadn't been so shoddy.
The game has a fixed time limit and things happen whether you are there or not. Depending on what you achieved during that time, the game has ten different endings. That makes the time-consuming mechanics (NPCs shutting you down and refusing to speak to you again for a certain time, searching stuff taking time, etc) even more interesting in theory, but again, the game is shoddily executed, broken in parts and just plain not fun. :(
 

octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,185
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Bjørgvin
What's the opposite of back pressure?
In Doomdark's Revenge (not a CRPG, but still) you could win by entering a tunnel and then hit end turn repeatedly until your arch enemy had been killed.
 

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