Editorial Charles Miles on Wizardry 8 Difficulty

[Jason]

Tags: SirTech; Wizardry 8

<b><a href="http://www.wizardry8.com/wizardry8/index2.html">Wizardry 8</a></b> designer Charles Miles stopped by <a href="http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/2008/08/guest-post-wizardry-8-designer-explains.html">Tales of the Rampant Coyote</a> to explain his intent behind the infamous Arnika Road and Wizardry 8's difficulty in general.
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<blockquote>Last but far from least, Wizardry 8 was one of the last North American RPGs to be unapologetically hard--we wanted surviving each level to feel like an achievement. In fact one of our concerns about Wizardry 8 was that it might be too *easy, *as crazy as that sounds today. We made Wiz 8 much easier than any of the earlier installments in the series (if you don't believe me then try, say, Wizardry 4) and we were worried the long-time fans might object.
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Anyway, I've always regretted that people had so much trouble with the Arnika road. If I were doing it today I'd do things differently--I might make it a bit easier and I would definitely put in a tutorial system that gave you guidance on how to survive.</blockquote>
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If you haven't already, make sure you check out Jay Barnson's Wiz8 playthrough <a href="http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/2008/08/wizardry-8-old-school-goes-old-school.html">articles</a> to get your nostalgia buds tingling.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.rpgwatch.com/">RPGWatch</A>

 

[thesheeep]

Yeah, tutorials would have made that game a lot more accessible without giving away its challenge.

Then again, that was not some very common design philosphy back then. At least not in those games

 

[Relien]

If memory serves me well, I'd say the difficulty of the Arnika Road is somewhat overrated. I remember I had to run from those crabs when I first exited the monastery, but that was because they're Horrible Creatures (R) and I wasn't really prepared for them at that time. The rest of that area was pretty much ok.

I guess I had more problems with the bands of Juggernauts on the way to Trynton (especially when soloing), or when I encountered the naked flying spell-casting hard-to-hit bitches for the first time.

 

[someone else]

The difficulty of Arnika Road comes from the low skills of the party, which increases with use. It gets easier when your skill matches your character level after using your skills for a while.

In other words, the monsters may match your party level but your skills do not.

 

[sportforredneck]

I still would prefer lack of tutorials. There's a reason that there is a book that comes with games, though that doesn't seem to be how it is anymore.

 

[Heirophant]

I've always thought of the Arnika Road as something of a tutorial in it's own right. Chances are that the first time you travel it, you'll run across at least one mob that could wax your party pretty handily. Because of this, it serves to teach newer players the fastest way to identify threats, and how to use terrain to avoid battles, or at least mitigate your opponents offense. While I'm certainly not the longest-term Wizardry fan, I thought that W8 was the most genuinely fun out of the entire series- making it hands-down my favorite RPG.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Wizardry 8 was absolutely amazing. It's one of the few games that I got in college and still play now, some years later. I remember not knowing a damn thing about the game or it's system in the least and just jumping right into the action. I loved the environment and the interaction with the characters, which remains some of the richest still today in my opinion.

 

[FrancoTAU]

Arnika road was hard because of a combo of your skills still sucking and the shitty equipment. Once you get to Arnika your equipment is pretty decent. After that, I wish they had a difficulty setting like they did in 7. The game is hard in a fun way the first 2/3rds of the way. After that, a 6 person party will start destroying any enemies.

 

[Skald]

Near the end of the game it has gotten so easy that I stopped playing.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

I haven't found time to get back to it after leaving the monastery, but that particular dungeon was fairly easy.
Then I got outside and a group of far-away tentacle monsters raped my Valkyrie.

I'll pick it up again soon.

 

[thesheeep]

I still would prefer lack of tutorials. There's a reason that there is a book that comes with games, though that doesn't seem to be how it is anymore.

If a game requires you to read a manual to grasp it, the game sucks. I hate reading books...

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Could you play Civilization without ever reading the manual?

 

[thesheeep]

When playing Civ4, I didn't have the impression that a manual was needed, as everything was either self-explanatory or explained somewhere in the game.
DOn't know about the earlier ones, though. And I don't intend to play them, as I didn't like Civ4. Too boring.

 

[Hory]

Could you play Civilization without ever reading the manual?

Why not? I did and I must have been around 10 years old at the time. It did have some in-game help tho, from what I can remember. Being able to quickly find out more about a feature in-game is OK, as long as the large bulk of the game can be intuitively understood.

 

[Wyrmlord]

I still would prefer lack of tutorials. There's a reason that there is a book that comes with games, though that doesn't seem to be how it is anymore.

If a game requires you to read a manual to grasp it, the game sucks. I hate reading books...

Eh?

A manual is only making things easy for you by explaining everything. Why is it supposed to be an inconvenience?

 

[abstract]

I still would prefer lack of tutorials. There's a reason that there is a book that comes with games, though that doesn't seem to be how it is anymore.

If a game requires you to read a manual to grasp it, the game sucks. I hate reading books...

4/10, try harder

 

[sportforredneck]

Could you play Civilization without ever reading the manual?

Actually I've never played a Civilization game with reading the manual...though I'm not exactly the best player at them. I still enjoy them though. Although I have only played 3 and 4, but mostly 3.

I still would prefer lack of tutorials. There's a reason that there is a book that comes with games, though that doesn't seem to be how it is anymore.

If a game requires you to read a manual to grasp it, the game sucks. I hate reading books...

1/10, don't bother

fixed

 

[thesheeep]

Guys, I didn't even try to be ironic, so don't rate me for that.
I seriously hate reading books. That is not a joke. They bore me.
Books with some kind of fictional story, that is, not educational books, etc.

A manual is only making things easy for you by explaining everything. Why is it supposed to be an inconvenience?

It is an inconvenience if you must read it to be able to play the game.
It is inconvenient when some information that might be crucial for playing are simply not explained in the game itself.
It is an unnecessary waste of the player's time to force him to either look something very important up in a manual or to find it out by testing it himself for a long time, when it can also be shown or explained in much better ways ( starting tutorial, installation-slides, videos, in-game wiki,... endless possibilities).
The manual should be there for people who like to have a manual in their hands for whatever reason, not for being the key to playing a game.

That said, I don't know too many games where I had to read a manual in order to know what I have to do...

 

[Serious_Business]

babababababa those germans always speaking barbaric language, hmm, what did he say again

 

[thesheeep]

Don't close your eyes to the truth!

 

[elander_]

The Fallout manual is very well written in a fictional way and very fun to read. Diablo is another example of a great manual. The thing is a game manual has to be well written and entertaining otherwise an in-game tutorial is probably better for those retards with a very low attention span.

 

[JarlFrank]

Guys, I didn't even try to be ironic, so don't rate me for that.
I seriously hate reading books. That is not a joke. They bore me.
Books with some kind of fictional story, that is, not educational books, etc.

Dude, we were supposed to be the country of poets and thinkers. Nobody can call himself German without having read Faust and enjoyed it.

 

[thesheeep]

Dude, we were supposed to be the country of poets and thinkers. Nobody can call himself German without having read Faust and enjoyed it.

Read it I have, but....

Wait a moment, I thought we were supposed to bash the Poles, wear helmets with pikes and make good cars.

 

[Xi]

When I was young I read manuals more, in-between classes and at lunch that kind of thing, but as I grow older I generally use them as a reference for when I get stuck or feel like I'm misunderstanding how a game element works.(Although I like to quickly flip through them to see if any information catches my eye, at first.) So I usually jump right in and play the game until I need more information. This is when the manual comes in handy for me.

Wizardy 8's challenge is what makes it fun. Fun, in terms of competitiveness that video games seem to be all about, are directly a factor of their difficulty. If they aren't challenging enough then they will cease to be fun very quickly. Kind of a tug of war between the ideas where without one the other cannot exist. Kind of like how cheating quickly becomes a stale experience and you put the game down much, much sooner than you would have.

 

[dagorkan]

Read a manual for Civ? Are you kidding??

I can probably count on one hand the number of game manuals I've comprehensively read (TOAWIII is one that comes to mind)... excepting flavor stuff Flight Sims tables which I would study all the stats of all the different aircraft in depth, there's never been a need to. Never read any Civ game manual, or Sim City, I've never read X-Com's manual or Fallout's or Arcanum's or any RPGs.

You pick it up as you go along.