Biotards: what's with this potion cooldown shit?

[Mastermind]

Show/Hide :: Click here to show/hide the hidden post made by Mastermind.

Still can't hear you.

And yet you knew I was replying to you. Admit it, you use that + button religiously whenever my name comes up.

 

[Jools]

Cooldown in a single-player game is shite.

Drinking your body weight in potions is shite regardless of whether it's a single-player game or not.

Exactly. If you think spamming potions is cool, go try to drink a gallon of milk in five minutes and let me know how that goes.

Ehm, people, it's ok to agree with potions CD or not, but bringing real life, physical reasons into the argument doesn't really cut it, when we're talking about a game that shits on realism and coherence from an extreme altitude.

I disagree, I'd like it if RPGs (as a whole) were more realistic. I'm fine with fantastical aspects like magic and dragons and all that, as long as it makes sense in the game world. But a nice dose of realism, where it should be applied, is a good thing.

I must have expressed myself horribly. I don't question the need for realism in RPGs, I was just questioning calling in "realism" in a discussion about DA2, since:

1.DA2 is not an RPG;
2.even if turn 3 blind eyes and we consider DA2 an RPG, realism is not included in the equation. Just look at the size of the 2h swords, or even the 1h for that matter, and all the lightning-fast moves, health regeneration, etc etc. (mind you, I am not criticizing these choices, I'm just saying that DA2 is not a realism-oriented game).

I hope that clarified a bit.

 

[Zyrxil]

What is this, the one year anniversary of the Insta-heal potions thread? Just make all potions regenerate instead of insta-heal. In fact, make it a backloaded effect, so the more hurt you are, the slower the regeneration is. Quaff another potion? Refresh the regeneration duration.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

^Nice idea, but I can totally see a "you get stronger as your health goes lower" feature to counteract the difficulty that would arise from that change.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

so the more hurt you are, the slower the regeneration is.

My god. Use the potion early in combat to get the best potential healing mileage and risk wasting it or save it when you really need it and have shitty mileage but no risk of wastage?

Add not being able to reload in combat and it might...it's...it's...h....iiihhnhnnnnngggghhh

Where's the game that has done this? If you say the words console exclusive I will be very upset indeed.

you get stronger as your health goes lower

No. Bad. There'll be silly stuff like builds that take advantage of this to one shot everything. No free passes. NO GETTING STRONGER AS YOU ARE DYING. TAKE IT LIKE A BRO.

 

[Jasede]

Fuck videogames T_T

 

[DraQ]

The realism argument is retarded. How about I replace all the potions with magic coins charged with healing spells that do the same thing? Would that really improve the 'immersiveness' of the experience?

No:

Now, I think the first problem is filler combat served in improbable amounts, the second is BSB combat mechanics relying on whittling down abstract HPs, rather than trying to penetrate armour, tire or throw the enemy off balance and inflict actual structural damage.

(...)

No amount of potions should keep you from experiencing severe loss of body parts after some muscular fuck starts hacking you with an axe.

This applies regardless of whatever means of healing you replace "potions" with.

But, if it takes ten pots to defeat a boss with good tactics, and twenty when going full retard, then you can just recalibrate the encounter to require no pots when doing it right, ten pots when doing it wrong and not provide any - problem?

The problem with this, is that it makes those fights incredibly monotonous and boring.

Unlike tapping a potion hotkey once in a while in between clickety-clicks in order to out-HP them.

It means you play defensively, waiting to attack only in safe openings. And if the boss isn't a total pushover, those will be rare. So the fight consists of you running around evading attacks for 50 minutes and attacking for 5.

Again, if the alternative is watching who can bash whose head in faster, it is fucking riot and distilled awesome, unless you're the kind person that will keep drooling on the keyboard and mashing Teh Buttan (TM) as long as something awesome keeps happening.

I prefer my combat to be of a more cereberal nature.

Besides, avoiding getting hurt doesn't need to be trivial it may involve a lot of player input, mechanically complex actions or tactics.

It's far more interesting to provide potions, so that players can attack in risky situations, and try to minimize that risk, and determine how much risk they should accept based on their abilities and resources.

Armour, dodging and ability to continue fighting if not critically wounded provide decent margin of error.

Playing megaman or monster hunter or devil may cry or halo

Consolefag detected, care-meter draining.

Killing the butcher in Diablo by kiting him or locking him on the other side of some bars isn't interesting.

It isn't, but it's still dozens of times more interesting than just standing there, swinging and trying to out-potion him.

Killing the Butcher conventional, fighter way is in no way involving, you just try to click him to death before you run out of potions. Simple script could do it. It's unmemorable and involves no player skill. Now, when I once tried to kill him cheesy way with my rogue, I messed up and things suddenly got interesting:

I obtained two scrolls of firewall and figured they should suffice to kill the lardass in easy, cheesy, low-risk manner, by opening the door, barring the doorway with first firewall and roasting the butcher with the second one while closing the door just in case. The plan worked perfectly and sounds of Butcher getting roasted alive filled the air. Then the fire burned out, but Butcher was still alive, severely pissed and just behind the door, far too close for me to be able to put enough space between him and me and lock him behind the bars in order to safely pincushion him to death. Fuck.
Then I had a bright idea - for the last remanants of my measly funds I purchased one more scroll of firewall. With Butcher right on the other side of the door and just a single scroll I couldn't roast him and the firewall wouldn't hold him long enough for me to shoot him dead, but my plan was different. I found a nice set of bars+door, put the scroll on my belt, opened the Butcher's cell and ran. Just before I reached my selected spot I cast the firewall in front of myself, ran through the flames and shut the door.

Now, my screw-up essentially pitted me against relentless freakishly strong enemy I could not have defeated in conventional manner and had to get creative.

Was it more interesting and memorable than out-potioning Butcher? Yes. Did it require more skill and therefore was more of an achievement than clicking him to death? Yes.

cRPGs are still games of skill. You can best certain obstacles using specific build, you can surmount others using smart tactics (the loosest possible definition, including hiring another band of adventures to off the foozle), if the game allows it you can out-twitch it, all of these are feats of skill. Outpotioning the foozle is not.

A decent test of whether combat is interesting and somehow "proper" is, IMNSHO, trying to imagine a write-up of a combat scenario:

If it contains bits like "... fierce blow failed to penetrate hero's mail, but sickening crack of snapping bones could be heard and he dropped to the ground like a piece of rag clutching his side with remaining healthy hand. The battle would be over but the man, barely conscious from the pain, reached for a healing potion..." or, heavens forbid, "-Ha! You're beaten! Finally! - exclaimed enemy, but then the hero took out his twelfth healing potion and for the first time saw fear in his enemy's eyes..." then there is something terribly wrong with it.

Neither is popping out of cover to fire one arrow every 3 seconds because it's perfectly safe and enemies never regenerate.

What if enemies try to rush you, flank you lob explosive or gas potion behind your cover or airburst a fireball right above your head? Indeed, retarded AI can cause some very exploitable situations and should generally be avoided, but we are not talking about AI here, m'kay?

Moreover, enemies should be able to dish out unavoidable damage, because it puts a clock on the fight so you can't do lame ass boring shit like what I just mentioned.

Herp derp durr hurr.

There is very simple way to put a clock on the fight that doesn't involve unavoidable damage and that has real life analogue. It works very well when implemented right.
DamnedRegistrations - meet Fatigue,
Fatigue - meet DamnedRegistrations.

I remember many fight in Wizardry 8 (yes, I know, it has healing potions and spells), where shit started to get really scary not because I was running out of health or healing, but because party was running out of fatigue and I had no means of replenishing it at this stage or with this build.

Putting a clock on combat doesn't require having inevitable wounds and chugging gallons of coloured liquids that instantly restore missing limbs and mend pierced kidneys.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Your examples are retarded. First of all, if you sit there clickity clicking potions in PSO, you'll run out of potions before you've done more than 10% damage to the boss and die horribly. So you can't actually do that in any game except Diablo 1. (Thanks manashield + Town portal!) And your example of an interesting butcher fight was retarded. He's too slow to hit you unless you're a fucking moron, so you could kite him around the whole level for 50 years shooting him in the face once every circuit of the whole floor. The fact that you larped that you had to run through a firewall and lock the door behind you doesn't change that.

Any boss fight that can be best accomplished by an exact loop, even a complicated loop, is already shit. That's exactly what the butcher is like. The only difference for melee is that the loop involves healing potions instead of running in a big circle or cheesing the AI once before commencing a game of darts against a toothless enemy. Boss fights should involve multiple phases, multiple targets on the enemy to focus, minions, traps and changing positive and negative status effects. PSO does all those things and the fights are fucking awesome. Diablo does pretty much none of them and the only reason people remember the butcher fight is because of his shitty cheesable AI and the atmosphere.

The entire point of healing potions is to artificially lower the player's health pool. If, over the course of the boss fight, you'll probably take around 900 damage in 30-90 hp chunks, which is going to be more interesting, having 1000 Hp or having 120 Hp and 10 100 Hp potions? Obviously the second, since you have to think about when to use the potions and balance rationing for the fight versus safety against being one shotted. Your retarded example assumes the player is just slowly losing hp at a constant unavoidable rate in every boss fight with potions in it. Games that aren't shit for combat don't do that. Practically no games at all do that ever. Your argument is a load of bullshit built up against a strawman.

How would your potionless butcher fight be better? The fighter has more hp so he just spam clicks attack and skips out the potion chugging, so now it sounds better when you larp about it? Because if you're going to change other shit about the fight, it'll make combat better with or without potions, and the potion combat is already better.

 

[DraQ]

Your examples are retarded. First of all, if you sit there clickity clicking potions in PSO

GTFO with your cryptic consoletard faggotry.

And your example of an interesting butcher fight was retarded. He's too slow to hit you unless you're a fucking moron, so you could kite him around the whole level for 50 years shooting him in the face once every circuit of the whole floor.

I have requested your dumbfuckening over that. Everyone who has ever played Diablo *KNOWS* that Butcher moves at the same rate as PC, barely ever hesitates and swings very hard and fast (he is also dumb as a brick but that isn't much of an advantage if you don't have any space between him and yourself).

The entire point of healing potions is to artificially lower the player's health pool. If, over the course of the boss fight, you'll probably take around 900 damage in 30-90 hp chunks, which is going to be more interesting, having 1000 Hp or having 120 Hp and 10 100 Hp potions?

Both are shit, even if the latter is slightly less shitty shit.

Other than that I don't argue with dumbfucks.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

 

[Damned Registrations]

Yes. Behold the awesome speed and tenacity of the butcher, against which players have no advantage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICvV83ZkD_E

However could anyone posssibly get any space between them and the butcher to just shoot him with arrows over and over.

Oh, and the best version of PSO was actually released exclusively for PC. Unlike Diablo. Derp.

 

[Xor]

I'm not going to respond to your overly long post, Draq, but instead pull a Volourn:

You're wrong and I don't feel like explaining why.

 

[DraQ]

Yes. Behold the awesome speed and tenacity of the butcher, against which players have no advantage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICvV83ZkD_E

Fucking classy. Offing Butcher with a semi-high level character, in modified game (dude in front of lair) while exploiting a bug.

I'm not going to respond to your overly long post, Draq, but instead pull a Volourn:

You're wrong and I don't feel like explaining why.

But taht's jsut beacuse youa redumb.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Yes. Clearly the butcher got caught there because the game was modded, and the fight would have been epically cool if it took 300 arrows from a level 1 character instead of 3.

He moves as fast as the player, attacks so slowly he'll fall about 1-2 seconds behind after he attacks, and his pathing is so bad he'll get stuck after the first door you run through and turn past. Go check the other dozen videos of people fighting him. They generally have to backtrack while luring him away so he'll keep following them. And there's grates all over the place, so the only difference the stairs make is that he doesn't wander back and forther along the bars dodging half the shots. It's not like you were going to run out of arrows anyways.

This is your ideal enemy that you use as an example of cool situations that arise without using potions. An enemy that doesn't fight back while you kill him.

 

[DraQ]

Yes. Clearly the butcher got caught there because the game was modded

No, he got caught there because the player exploited a bug in AI routines.

And if the game was modded there is sufficient reason to suspect anything that happens.

and the fight would have been epically cool if it took 300 arrows from a level 1 character instead of 3.

He moves as fast as the player, attacks so slowly he'll fall about 1-2 seconds behind after he attacks

The flaw in that plan is that he can hit a low level rogue fairly reliably (poor AC) stopping her in her tracks and kill her in 2-3 hits due to shitty HP.

and his pathing is so bad he'll get stuck after the first door you run through and turn past. Go check the other dozen videos of people fighting him. They generally have to backtrack while luring him away so he'll keep following them. And there's grates all over the place, so the only difference the stairs make is that he doesn't wander back and forther along the bars dodging half the shots.

His pathfinding was made poor on purpose since there are hordes of enemies later on that don't suffer from similar problems. He fills the role of a dumb, but powerful and relentless brute that can be easily outsmarted but not outran, staircase glitch is probably an unintended side effect of this simplification.

Also, you have apparently missed the part where I clearly said how he ended up about 1.5 tile away rather than several tiles away from my character which makes normally trivial act of trapping him behind the bars virtually impossible.

in any case potion-less method was much more involved and interesting than the one involving health replenishment. Potions or inflated HP are only there to artificially prolong combat and their effects don't make sense in the context of the gameworld.

It's not like you were going to run out of arrows anyways.

Bows have rather limited durability, I've always figured that it was meant to crudely represent ammo, which is supported by Blitzen and it's fireball shooting counterpart from Hellfire that both have infinite durability.

This is your ideal enemy that you use as an example of cool situations that arise without using potions. An enemy that doesn't fight back while you kill him.

No, this is how I respond to you bringing up the Butcher cheese. And my response is that no matter how cheesy this cheese is it's still much more interesting than clicking him to death while stuffing your face so full of healing pots that your face looks like giant raspberry.

My reason for bringing up Diablo is that it's retardedly simple game with little room for tactics and it's nearly synonymous with pot spam. Guess what, despite its limitations and simplicity it still gets infinitely more interesting if you try to avoid having to heal.

Bonus retard points for bringing up " Morrowindesque 99 stacks" as an example of a problem, while the inventory system used in game is based on weight and weight alone, with stacks being merely a method of displaying the contents of one's inventory in a relatively uncluttered manner.


Multiplying potion weights in Morrowind by 10 or 20 would greatly curtail the retardation, although it would leave the core problem untouched.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Well, as long as we've established that you think shooting an enemy trapped where he can't fight back is infinitely more interesting than fighting him while drinking potions, I don't think there's anything more to say.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Guys guys

D1 combat sucks no matter what you do and we're all fellow rpg fans, so lets stop fighting

 

[Rogue]

Well if I was allowed to overhaul potions I'd remove the cooldown entirely. That, and make the potions 10 times more expensive. And also I'd make it so that in no case you could make money by spamming and selling potions (that was popular in DA1 IIRC).

 

[Esquilax]

Guys guys

D1 combat sucks no matter what you do and we're all fellow rpg fans, so lets stop fighting

BROS NEED TO UNITE

 

[Xor]

When I finish the game I'm working on* I'll give the player 100 times more health than I was going to and remove healing items in a special build for Draq. Since that's the way he prefers it.

*Supervillain RPG that TBH I probably won't finish

 

[DraQ]

When I finish the game I'm working on* I'll give the player 100 times more health than I was going to and remove healing items in a special build for Draq. Since that's the way he prefers it.

Xor cannot into proper discussion.
Or even decent strawmen.

 

[torpid]

Well, as long as we've established that you think shooting an enemy trapped where he can't fight back is infinitely more interesting than fighting him while drinking potions, I don't think there's anything more to say.

Don't you get it? You need to LARP to make it meaningful. Health potions interfere with the player's ability to LARP.

 

[Xor]

When I finish the game I'm working on* I'll give the player 100 times more health than I was going to and remove healing items in a special build for Draq. Since that's the way he prefers it.

Xor cannot into proper discussion.
Or even decent strawmen.

Really, I don't think I could convince you I'm right here, you aren't going to convince me, and I don't find this discussion interesting enough to type up several paragraphs on this subject. In the end I think this just comes down to a taste issue. You're free to disagree with that, of course.

Also I shouldn't check the codex before passing out on friday night. I don't even remember making that post.

 

[DraQ]

When I finish the game I'm working on* I'll give the player 100 times more health than I was going to and remove healing items in a special build for Draq. Since that's the way he prefers it.

Xor cannot into proper discussion.
Or even decent strawmen.

Really, I don't think I could convince you I'm right here, you aren't going to convince me, and I don't find this discussion interesting enough to type up several paragraphs on this subject. In the end I think this just comes down to a taste issue. You're free to disagree with that, of course.

Then at least check *why* are healing pots so derp.

Also I shouldn't check the codex before passing out on friday night. I don't even remember making that post.

That's what you get for overdosing potions.

 

[Mastermind]

Healing potions are not derp in and of themselves. Shitty implementation is. Then again, you can have shitty broken implementation of just about anything, including magic, melee, archery, etc. Ideally potions should provide marginal benefits in combat to the average character with characters specializing in them getting most of the benefits. I think M&M7 did it pretty well (minus the tediousness of actually producing them).