Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Jedi Master Radek]

"We need durability mechanic, because we need a money sink" is such a non reflective take. If money sink is not fun to sink money in, then it should not be included. Durability mechanic usually is a busywork the game punishes the player for forgetting to do. If there is are no good alternative money sinks in the game, then the number of monetary rewards the game throws at the player should be reduced.

 

[Jacov]

I for one enjoy durability mechanics in RPGs. They enhance the resource management part of the game which is important to RPG experience IMO.
Durability is not a cure for shitty economy, obviously, but it still can be a good balancing tool if done right.

I remember item durability in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. mods (such as Anomaly). That shit is on another level. Every armor and weapon has durability for individual parts, each requires a different set of tools to repair/maintain. Some can't be repaired if dropped below certain percent, and it adds more stress to an already stressful life in the Zone. If you found some cool piece of gear and want to repair it, you have to actively explore the game world in search for parts. The whole system is autistic, but I think it's a good example of a durability mechanic that is not just about numbers — it forces player to engage with the world and other systems.

 

[Harthwain]

"We need durability mechanic, because we need a money sink" is such a non reflective take. If money sink is not fun to sink money in, then it should not be included. Durability mechanic usually is a busywork the game punishes the player for forgetting to do. If there is are no good alternative money sinks in the game, then the number of monetary rewards the game throws at the player should be reduced.

I am against durability, but weapon maintenance could work. For example, your weapon has a random chance to jam if not kept in proper order. You could buy maintenance kits to simulate keeping your weapon clean to reduce that chance to as low as possible. Other consumables can also work as money sinks (food, bandages, pills to clean water sources, etc.).

 

[0sacred]

Tim likes durability because it makes people swap weapons frequently, even though that is something that leads to bloated inventories and fucked up carrying capacity and players carrying a whole arsenal of weapons. It needs to die in a fire IMO. How many weapons did Aragorn use? Exactly.

Tim even thinks it's a great money sink Because paying to have my sword repaired after killing 20 bandits is fun?

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Properly employed, logistics enhance exploration, whether via encumbrance and its effects, inventory limitations in terms of weight/volume/spaces, food/hunger, water/thirst, sleep/fatigue/stamina, equipment deterioration & repair, a day/night cycle, or lighting and the impact of darkness. Not every CRPG needs every one of these, but these mechanics are generally easier to emulate in the medium of a computer, relative to pen-and-paper RPGs where they quickly become computationally ponderous.

 

[Wesp5]

In my experience logistics are often used to make short games feel longer. This goes from inventory tetris to breaking weapons, you spend more time with this than actually playing the game!

 

[ds]

Properly employed, logistics enhance exploration, whether via encumbrance and its effects, inventory limitations in terms of weight/volume/spaces, food/hunger, water/thirst, sleep/fatigue/stamina, equipment deterioration & repair

"Properly employed" is doing quite a bit of heavy lifting here. If its just mindless busywork and you are always have enough resources to maintain your gear then it doesn't really add anything. I think most games fall into that. It's also annoying if items no longer stack once slightly damaged/used, making your inventory into a disorderly mess. Forcing the player to switch weapons by constantly breaking them form even the slightest use also is somewhat of an admission that you can't your weapons interesting enough - better to give the player a reason to switch by choice due to weapons actually being different and useful in different situations.

a day/night cycle, or lighting and the impact of darkness.

These are not like the others, the only common thing is that its a repeating cycle. Sure, if implemented badly and you can just chuck a potion each dawn/dusk to negate the effects then it's boring. But unlike damaged weapons or hunger, day/night cycles have much more potential to affect *how* you play rather than just forcing to waste time on repetitive "minigames".

In my experience logistics are often used to make short games feel longer. This goes from inventory tetris to breaking weapons, you spend more time with this than actually playing the game!

Admittedly it *is* mostly padding but I usually like inventory tetris more than spreadsheet inventories. It can be fun to organize your inventory so that you can actually find things later and differently sized and shaped items (even if the size is abstracted) do feel better than just a list of items. I guess it just depends on how it's implemented, how many items you are spammed with and personal preferences.

 

[Infinitron]

It might be possible to flesh out the concept of weapon durability to create viable alternative playstyles. Eg, in addition to the standard RPG playstyle of picking the best all-around weapon and keeping it in good shape, there could be a build that leans deliberately on weapon fungibility.

Or what if there was a limit on item durability, such that over time it would degrade beyond your ability to repair it? I can't recall it now, but I'm pretty sure I played a game where each time you repaired an item, its max durability dropped.

 

[Infinitron]

Anyway:

I answer a lot of questions in one video, including my most inspirational setting, company food catering, the difference between AA and AAA games, making better boss encounters, thoughts on save scumming, and thoughts on asset reuse.

 

[Butter]

Or what if there was a limit on item durability, such that over time it would degrade beyond your ability to repair it? I can't recall it now, but I'm pretty sure I played a game where each time you repaired an item, its max durability dropped.

Brigand: Oaxaca does this.

TLoZ: Majora's Mask has a sword upgrade called the Razor Sword. It deals extra damage, but after 100 uses it reverts to the ordinary Kokiri Sword. If you complete a quest chain, you can upgrade the Razor Sword to the Gilded Sword, which deals even more damage and will never lose its sharpness. This is a limited kind of weapon durability that I think people could generally get behind. Your weapon never falls apart or becomes useless, but it can lose a bonus if not maintained.

 

[Roguey]

"I'm completely unconcerned with save scumming" - Tim Cain

Sawyer seething.

 

[Wesp5]

Or what if there was a limit on item durability, such that over time it would degrade beyond your ability to repair it?

I think durability is kind of ridiculous. Most games play out over a few days, why should weapons like swords or firearms degrade enough in that time so they would break? A self-made wooden stick maybe, but a professional weapon, no!

 

[ds]

Or what if there was a limit on item durability, such that over time it would degrade beyond your ability to repair it? I can't recall it now, but I'm pretty sure I played a game where each time you repaired an item, its max durability dropped.

Brigand: Oaxaca does this.

Arx Fatalis does as well if your object knowledge skill below 100. The NPC smith also won't degrade the max durability.

Not an RPG, but Dying Light also restricts the number of times you can repair weapons. Doesn't really make it more interesting.

 

[Alienman]

Or what if there was a limit on item durability, such that over time it would degrade beyond your ability to repair it?

I think durability is kind of ridiculous. Most games play out over a few days, why should weapons like swords or firearms degrade enough in that time so they would break? A self-made wooden stick maybe, but a professional weapon, no!

Maybe not durability, as a percentage, but having a weapon shatter would be cool. I mean, think of the amount of fighting you do in every average RPG.

 

[Spukrian]

I can't recall it now, but I'm pretty sure I played a game where each time you repaired an item, its max durability dropped.

I remember that game, it's called Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

Or what if there was a limit on item durability, such that over time it would degrade beyond your ability to repair it? I can't recall it now, but I'm pretty sure I played a game where each time you repaired an item, its max durability dropped.

Dying Light.
Unrelated but I quite liked how KCD handled durability with it feeding into the Charisma stat where if you simultaneously had expensive gear and kept it well-maintained you could use it to pass speech checks as well as just having a ton of ambient dialogue reactivity where NPCs would treat you as nobility rather than a stinky peasant boy. Item maintenance was still a money sink but it felt rewarding rather than tedious.

 

[deuxhero]

The only good weapon durability systems are ones where it is completely unrelated to money sink. Stuff like Swordcraft Story trilogy, where it's a second HP bar that's either automatic or trivial to refill between battles, and Way of the Samurai 1-3, where it's a stress gauge that goes down automatically when not attacking/blocking and bad things only happen when it's full.

It's even worse with guns. The only parts that fail with use on any decently made firearm are barrel (where only the rifling fails), bolt and springs. Due to the design nature and materials, there's no fixing these parts as a practical mater and they just need a replacement. Even then, unless the player is dumpping mags in full auto for the sake of it, the lifespan will far exceed the number of rounds the player will actually fire in an entire campaign.

edit: I can't even think of a single game where repairs are money sinks except those where "repair" is actually restoring charges to a magic item. Maybe New Vegas with ultra high end stuff you find damaged early (which is pretty much the stuff off the dead Brotherhood of Steel scouts), but even that is entirely avoidable. Even games with repair I can think of having far better non-repair money sinks, like Morrowind's training and enchanting (MW's many economy issues not withstanding).

edit: Fire Emblem's implementation is kinda a cash sink, but it's more of resources being finite. You always know exactly how many uses you have left, and in most cases repairing items is an artifact level effect that happens 3 or less times per playthrough and is only used to renew the most important ones, rather than a chore of constantly rushing back to repair shit.

 

[NwNgger]

If a good number of people say the UI sucks, then it sucks.

No..? A good number of simpeltons had a flawed opinion. You're just searching for confirmation bias. And besides that, none of us would be here if we cared about the mass audience opinion on RPGs. I'm sorry but if you can't figure out Arcanums UI then maybe you really do belong in the special camp.

I think with something like a UI, you have to go with public opinion, because usability by the end-user is what a UI is supposed to be all about. It's not a matter of taste like some other aspects of the game might be.

While I get where you're coming from, I have to disagree. The general public opinion might be that it is obtuse, but to me it would seem to be that it's people not familiar with RPGs who are complaining about it (in which case just about any "real" RPG will be a challenge for them UI wise). It is understandable that it'd be difficult for them, it makes sense, but they aren't the target audience. Bit of a hyperbolic statement but do airplane cockpits have shit UIs because the general public can't use them, or is it functional for those who it is intended for? Of course airplanes aren't necessarily commercial products but again commercial products are also allowed to be targeted toward specific audiences and don't have to try and have mass appeal. I mean that much should be obvious to Codexers at least.

I agree with what you're saying. Bare in mind the publications that said Arcanum's UI is clunky are the same publications that are racing to praise the Western Erotic Game known as Baldur's Gate 3.

Their opinions are not derived from any kind of critical thinking. They reviewed Arcanum badly because they didn't care to read the manual or engage with the game in any meaningful way. Whereas Baldur's Gate 3 was very popular with their disgusting kind so they praised it whilst still not engaging critically to find the flaws.

 

[Daedalos]

So what are the chances that Outer Worlds 2 actually turns out great this time around? Have they listening to feedback and criticism on the first game? And they have a much bigger budget now im assuming into the AAA territory.
Supposedly, he is still very much shadow game director and Leonard Boyarsky is the main game director.

I remember being quite disappointed with outer worlds giving the fact that two of the most well-renowned people were spear-heading it, perhaps it was scope, design or budget-retraints, who knows. Have Tim or Leonard ever commented on the criticism anywhere?

I REALLY want outer worlds 2 to be the REAL fallout + firefly or fallout in space game that they couldnt seemingly make with the first game for various reasons.

We all want the REAL New Vegas in space game.

PLEASE TIM, make it good.

 

[Roguey]

Supposedly, he is still very much shadow game director and Leonard Boyarsky is the main game director.

Boyarsky is the creative lead, but Brandon Adler is the director. I do not believe Cain is telling him what to do.

 

[Hobo Elf]

So what are the chances that Outer Worlds 2 actually turns out great this time around?

Zero.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about my ideas to translate the book Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny into a computer role playing game.

 

[0sacred]

is science fantasy a terrible genre or is Lord of Light especially silly?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Durability and other attrition features are pointless busywork unless if gameplay is purposefully built around it, survival genre style.

 

[normie]

LMAO

This is a public apology to Rebecca Heineman for the use of a deadname