Vaarna_Aarne
Notorious Internet Vandal
The only answer is to make going to the toilet less realistic:
I think it only worked in EQ because you could avoid dying if you wanted to, you just had to take it easy and plan ahead. If you want to try something different and challenging, you can maybe make it pay off, but you might just die a bunch of times and lose everything you earned in the past weekSingle player games can do the same thing, they just don't do it yet. Some of the survival games I've played had no savegame. It saves your progress when you log out, but there is no way to load a save, so if you die in the game there is no reloading. Sadly the only game I saw which did this had an extremely minor penalty for dying, or none at all. But in an RPG it would be perfect.
Some single player games do. The space trading game Oolite, for example, which I am currently trying, only lets you save at bases. That is, at the start and at the end of a trip. In RPGs, I am not so keen on the idea. Good RPGs are about letting you try different approaches, and a lack of saving ability wouldn't work with them, I think. It could be tried of course, I just wouldn't want to see all of them move in this direction. Your idea sounds better (to me) for quick mission-based games.
The time limits are ok I think. I am not that far into the game but the few time limited events I've had so far are all like 90 weeks or something. It means you can do a bunch of side quests and things first and then go and sell, and then get around to it when you are ready. The game is a bit shit at explaining itself though, so for example you get a message that there are some trolls causing trouble in your region and you are like ok whatever, and carry on doing your thing. And the next thing you hear the trolls killed lots of people and captured town and are marching on your capitol with an army. It still gives you time to go and fight back, but a lot of people lost the game because they didn't figure it out soon enough. But I think it is all easy enough to make sure you succeed. Game is really great. I am curious how it will turn out later because I am still semi early.Pathfinder is maybe a good recent example of this.
I haven't played Kingmaker yet, unfortunately. I am considering trying it, but the fact that it is full of time-limited quests (as I have been told) stops me. I hate time limits in RPGs, even though they are realistic.
The best combat RPG I have played recently is Underrail, and it didn't need any such tricks to make combat awesome. They just worked on their systems and encounters a lot, to make them challenging and feel good. I think that RTwP games are kind of stuck in not working on anything seriously, and then using dirty tricks to try to make it interesting. But as I mentioned, I haven't tried Kingmaker.
Obviously when a game allows person who was pierced by a sword through to be healed naturally next day, and it's not a troll, or someone with regeneration, it feels weird.
How would you actually do combat with two handed swords where people are not getting massive wounds? Two bladed swords are hard to use to not cut the wielder, much less to avoid murdering opponent instead of defeating him...
All cRPGs are shit? No. All good cRPGs are just AVERAGE.
on that last sentence I'd argue you're confusing average with mediocre. The word average has been much maligned over the years & associated with all kinds of negative phrases as a result of wordsmiths being taught not to repeat words when writing essays etc.
Average difficulty used to mean average, for example, but instead nowadays it often means slightly easier than average, and that's the issue you're referring to with regard to modern interpretations of average.
if your using a two handed sword, you're probably not thinking "I hope I don't hurt this guy too bad"How would you actually do combat with two handed swords where people are not getting massive wounds? Two bladed swords are hard to use to not cut the wielder, much less to avoid murdering opponent instead of defeating him...
But, incendiary device said HP is decreased accompanied with cherries and pink unicorns. The redeness of HP bar is just accidental relation to blood and other stuff flying to 3 meter distance.if your using a two handed sword, you're probably not thinking "I hope I don't hurt this guy too bad"How would you actually do combat with two handed swords where people are not getting massive wounds? Two bladed swords are hard to use to not cut the wielder, much less to avoid murdering opponent instead of defeating him...
Threads like this are great for exposing the more irrational nature of people.
And you can carry this theme across any aspect of a good cRPG. Take Neanderthal , for example. Ever since 1992 or whenever it was he played Ultima 7 he's been banging on about cRPGs not following the simulationist angle and providing more 'realism'. In 1992 or whenever he got personally really excited that the game let him bake bread, that the game had NPCs with schedules who moved around, that it had day and night cycles and etc. What he doesn't care about is that the game had shit combat. Utterly retarded combat. So it was a game which magnified one aspect of cRPGs while minimising another. A good cRPG should have some flavour to it, some fun things you can do that are abstract from the grand routine of questing and looting, but that's all it ever should be, flavour. Neanderthal has really taken to one specific aspect of the game and, like anvi, demanded that that one aspect should be heavily enhanced in exception to everything else. A good cRPG should not only appeal to simulationists.
Can you see where this is going yet?
Yep I've always ignored the Black Gates combat, never criticised it and I'd certainly never want a (perish the thought) game that had a well simulated world and TOEE or Severance combat. I don't expect a quarter century old games best features to be matched or exceeded by now, nor for it to be added to other better systems.
When have I ever complained about difficulty other than that one game?(hi anvi) who is a regular rager that combat isn't 'hard' enough.
In this very thread you're complaining that save scumming makes things pointless in cRPGs, with particular reference to combat. This implies that dying means that combat was difficult enough for you to actually die in the first place. The reason cRPGs have a save anywhere system is precisely because combat is not supposed to be the sole focus, it's just another puzzle to overcome that happens to be one of the genre's main gameplay elements. You say you think cRPGs should have a means to make death feel more impactful, but why do you ask for this when death isn't supposed to be hugely impactful in cRPGs, it is supposed to mean simply "oopsy, try again".