Critical hits against the player

[dagorkan]

I'm more partial to broken limbs, internal damage and lasting dysfunction than to high, immediate drops in HP. These are unbalanced by abstract. The "problem" with this approach is that it implies organismic tracking, a mediate relevance of combat in pacing, a reflection in interactive acuity and a way around the save/load paradigm.

 

[Cthulhugoat]

How about a hit that knocks the PC down and/or makes him lose grip of his weapon?

Plenty of those in Jagged Alliance 2.

 

[Gambler]

I'm generealy for a more deadly combat, where winning and loosing are decided not by hitpoints, but by timing and tactics. So one-shot kills are fine by me, but they shouldn't be purely a matter of luck.

 

[claudius the god]

It's a sad day indeed when one finds oneself in agreement with the Volourn.

Shit happens, it's as easy as that. It's silly to only give the PC the ability to insta-kill. Sure it's frustrating and it makes you punch your keyboard sometimes, but hey, that's just life. Get over it and stop yammering.

As moronic as he can be, plenty of people here easily outstrip him in their moronaeity.

 

[Globbi]

Criticals the lead to one shot kills are better than not dying at all. In Fallouts it was ok, I never died too much unless I tried beating something I shouldn't. Still at the end of the game fighting was still fun and at least a bit challenging.
In ADOM it is ok since death there is the end but when there is a possibility of reloading your death may be interesting to watch fro time to time.

If a game is a serious RPG danger of dying should be real so criticals should be there.

 

[OSK]

Roguelikes can get away one-hit kills since it's more of a final score, point-driven, arcade game than a story-driven RPG.

 

[crufty]

the roguelike Ivan has a decent take on limb damage.

I think that critical hits work best in parties (might magic, bards tale, goldbox etc), where the sudden loss of a single character does not end the game. In fact, saving and reloading was a bigger pia because it probably meant you had to refight the entire sequence all over. Far better to take the loss of magic user and fighter, and high tail it to the nearest temple.

 

[Section8]

Shit happens, it's as easy as that. It's silly to only give the PC the ability to insta-kill. Sure it's frustrating and it makes you punch your keyboard sometimes, but hey, that's just life. Get over it and stop yammering.

Criticals the lead to one shot kills are better than not dying at all. In Fallouts it was ok, I never died too much unless I tried beating something I shouldn't. Still at the end of the game fighting was still fun and at least a bit challenging.

I can't agree with these sentiments. I don't see how massive critical damage constitutes a challenge. The player has no control over the action itself, and there's no real mitigating tactics that are worth pursuing in a game where short term failure simply results in a quickload.

 

[Ladonna]

As long as you take away this kind of death for enemies and NPC's, fair enough. If not it screws the game too far in favour of the player. As Dark Underlord said, its a slippery slope to Biowareland.

I still think the emphasis on the Wasteland system is the best way to cover things. It also gives a damn good reason for taking a medic skill instead of it usually being a useless point waster. You don't die straight away, but things keep getting worse until you actually do something about it.

 

[Jim Kata]

Shit happens, it's as easy as that. It's silly to only give the PC the ability to insta-kill. Sure it's frustrating and it makes you punch your keyboard sometimes, but hey, that's just life. Get over it and stop yammering.

Criticals the lead to one shot kills are better than not dying at all. In Fallouts it was ok, I never died too much unless I tried beating something I shouldn't. Still at the end of the game fighting was still fun and at least a bit challenging.

I can't agree with these sentiments. I don't see how massive critical damage constitutes a challenge. The player has no control over the action itself, and there's no real mitigating tactics that are worth pursuing in a game where short term failure simply results in a quickload.

Since youa re not infantily stupid like kingcomrade I will endeavor to explain my earlier sentiment.

First, as someone pointed out range plays a great factor.

Fuck, I hate kingcomrade's stupidness. I was just remembering his fallout build nonsense and just how fucking stupid he is.

But, like I said, range is a factor. Strategy is a factor, as well.

If you just stay in place and trade punches like a dumb mug or rush in like an dumbshit then YES it's just a matter of luck, but why would anyone with half a brain work like that?

For all the minigun wielders all you have to do is engage from far away and get tem to waste their massive ammo load of two shots, for example.

And also make sure not to engage more enemies at once than you need to. Jesus Christ, it's nearly impossible to lose a fight in fallout one. If you have a semi rational build and half a brain you can win the whole game and beat any fight with a 6-7 level character.

When you are a complete dipshit like kc then you whine and cry that just because you stand there and let the enemy shoot you without say ducking around corners and blowing them away as they come around the corner, that the game is unreasonable.

 

[Elwro]

Roguelikes can get away one-hit kills since it's more of a final score, point-driven, arcade game than a story-driven RPG.

I disagree. Good roguelikes demand careful attention and a lot of thinking. It's stupid when you invest many hours of your time only to be killed because a monster rolled 66, and not 65 on his damage roll.
In roguelikes, the player should almost always feel "it's my fault, I did this and this wrong" after dying. Of course, chance has to play a big role, but not in the particular case of critical hits on the player. The 1 HP method is very good, I think. A crit is a warning, requiring specific counteractions which may take one of a multitude of shapes, and should not be a way of reaching another "lol u die" screen.

 

[Section8]

As long as you take away this kind of death for enemies and NPC's, fair enough. If not it screws the game too far in favour of the player. As Dark Underlord said, its a slippery slope to Biowareland.

What's wrong with screwing the game in favour of the player? It seems to me that the traditional RPG gameworld that allows a single character to slaughter anywhere between dozens and thousands of other gameworld inhabitants is already skewed. Assuming an encounter of appropriate difficulty, combat in an RPG shouldn't exist to kill the player. That's not to say the player shouldn't feel threatened by death, but it should be about the challenge to the player.

If the player fucks up, by all means, they deserve to die. A small probability of sudden death is the sort of frustration that should be eliminated, and is all too often generalised into the idiot philosophy of "failure is frustrating, so let's eliminate the chance of failure" instead of "let's eliminate randomly determined game-ending failure."

I still think the emphasis on the Wasteland system is the best way to cover things. It also gives a damn good reason for taking a medic skill instead of it usually being a useless point waster. You don't die straight away, but things keep getting worse until you actually do something about it.

Exactly, this is the sort of thing I'm all for. Rather than the non-choice of "reload or not play", why not leverage critical success and failure into creating new gameplay possibilities and challenges? I know I've gotten much more enjoyment out of improvising in a vain effort to halt the progress of a fatal wound/poison in Roguelikes than I have from sudden, unavoidable death.

 

[elander_]

As long as the player has an opportunity to know how to avoid this there's no reason not to have it. This is mostly a problem from games that don't do exploration well or very linear games. In a decent rpg if you are certain you can go into a fight with someone there's a ton of world you can alternatively explore first and get to know your choices better before taking higher risks.

 

[Ladonna]

Exactly, this is the sort of thing I'm all for. Rather than the non-choice of "reload or not play", why not leverage critical success and failure into creating new gameplay possibilities and challenges? I know I've gotten much more enjoyment out of improvising in a vain effort to halt the progress of a fatal wound/poison in Roguelikes than I have from sudden, unavoidable death.

Ok, I get you now. I was a little leery of this discussion as it started to sound a bit like how things have gone in the 'Mainstream' RPG's of today, where the player cannot die period.

The Wasteland system has been hammered by many people before, though I have never understood why. This is the perfect way to make a Medic type character useful (Cleric as well) instead of making healing into the non issue it is becoming. I still remember several races to the doctor in Wasteland where I only just arrived in time to prevent the death of a character when my medic skill was still too low.

 

[denizsi]

As long as the player has an opportunity to know how to avoid this there's no reason not to have it. This is mostly a problem from games that don't do exploration well or very linear games. In a decent rpg if you are certain you can go into a fight with someone there's a ton of world you can alternatively explore first and get to know your choices better before taking higher risks.

 

[Surgey]

Instant and unavoidable random death is bad. Critical hits are non always instant, unavoidable random death.

From miniguns, they were. Rather damaging criticals for a weapon that does piece of shit damage against anything more than leather armor.

 

[Section8]

From miniguns, they were. Rather damaging criticals for a weapon that does piece of shit damage against anything more than leather armor.

Fallout's miniguns are horribly broken because they don't work with the damage threshold (DT) of armour. If you have a weapon that throws out 20 shots, that each can only do a maximum of 11 damage, and you have armour with a damage threshold of 11 or higher, then you can only do damage on a critical that bypasses armour.

Seems pretty sillly to me, and biases the system in favour of single shot, high damage weapons.

 

[denizsi]

The discussion beside, are you (anyone complaining about critical deaths in Fallout) telling me that you didn't get a kick out of being critically killed to -200 range in Fallout every now and then? I sure did.

 

[hoochimama]

The discussion beside, are you (anyone complaining about critical deaths in Fallout) telling me that you didn't get a kick out of being critically killed to -200 range in Fallout every now and then? I sure did.

When playing alone: no.

Knowing that I died by a lot instead of a little made no difference, just a question of reload&retrying.

When playing with friends : sometimes yes.

We'd laugh when we thought we were on the brink of crushing the enemy and they suddenly pulled a monster crit that produced a gory death animation and we couldn't even get to the game over screen until the game stopped counting the amount of damage suffered.

 

[rei1974]

Yes well... even reloading and retrying lot of times isn't fun. But if you get killed with 1 shot because your stats, or your armor isn't high enough, and you can upgrade those somehow, before encountering the tough guys, I think is fine.
The player just need to know that it's going to happen. In Fallout, the first time I saw it, I laughed for hours :D

 

[Surgey]

From miniguns, they were. Rather damaging criticals for a weapon that does piece of shit damage against anything more than leather armor.

Fallout's miniguns are horribly broken because they don't work with the damage threshold (DT) of armour. If you have a weapon that throws out 20 shots, that each can only do a maximum of 11 damage, and you have armour with a damage threshold of 11 or higher, then you can only do damage on a critical that bypasses armour.

Seems pretty sillly to me, and biases the system in favour of single shot, high damage weapons.

Yeah, that's why it was retarded. But if the guy got a crit that bypassed the armor, suddenly it does hundreds of damage. Totally random deaths. The miniguns should've been able to pierce armor better, really.

 

[flabbyjack]

Why crit hits against the player? Sometimes it's fun to have your head explode. Just try it! ^^ Look at avatar of the guy above me ^^

 

[Atrokkus]

I LOVED critical hits in Fallout.
That's one of the elements of the realistic firefight concept in RPGs (or tactics games), because it makes the player feel more "live" and mortal, which, of course, complements the challenge rating of the game (very important) and overall realism (not very important but still nice to have, for some reason).

Try playing the game in "hardcore" (ironman?) mode (without saving, except for between sessions), and you'll see how CAREFUl you're going to be, always thinking twice before engagin in a random encounter. Very fun.

However, since Fallout doesn't have much of a tactics component, it all boils down to luck most of the time. And yet, all three of my "ironman" walkthrus were damn fun -- so why care about the inferior tactics element if it's still fun?

 

[nikpalj]

Non lethal crits are a great way to spice things up not just in rpg's! As I'm a star trek nut I enjoy playing (heavily modded) starfleet command 3 starship combat game.

When the tactical officer on your (or any other, for that matter) ship has high enough "Find Weakness" skill you start dealing crits every once in a while... and let me tell you, this ability adds a whole new level of immersion and realism to the game - without it the game would be much less fun to play...