Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[FeelTheRads]

Also this:
Here's how cooldowns work in RPGs: spam, wait, spam, wait, spam, wait.

You can easily fix it. Fixing the Vancian system (to work well in CRPGs) is a lot harder.

Yes, "fix" it by making the wait longer. Awesome stuff, instead of going back to town you're gonna run around in circles until you get your spells back. I'm sure it's much easier to do, though, which is what the players should really care about. Wouldn't want those poor developers to actually bother.

 

[Dexter]

Eh, the problem with 'trash fights' is there's usually infinite resting which can undermine their entire point (slowly wear down the player).
Only allowing resting once per 'floor' of a dungeon/area would fix half the complaints I see about the Vancian system.

Backtracking to town is an admission of defeat. I seriously doubt anyone does that as their main strategy for fights.
Does changing an entire system around this option really make any sense?

If I remember right Dungeons & Dragons Online had an interesting system with campsites/rest places inside dungeons. There was no HP or spell regen before you hit those places, and you had to get through quite a lot before you got to one (or they were placed right before/behind a boss encounter). I think you could only use each of them once so there was a certain tactic involved in when you wanted to rest up. If you dropped too low in HP and couldn't get through to the next resting spot, you pretty much wiped and had to try again. I dunno how this might work in a non-MMO/SRPG with saving system, it was kinda similar to the Bonfires in Dark Souls, except you could only use each of them once and the enemies didn't respawn.

 

[Vault Dweller]

VD advocating waiting for cooldowns as being a better mechanic than searching for safe places to rest because you don't have to walk around...

Under the circumstances, yes. In the IE games you either slept were you could or went back to the previous area. It was probably the worst design I've ever seen (basically, you can cast as many spells as you like as often as you like; only the last battle in IWD2 was truly challenging and required some spell management). So, considering that Obsidian isn't planning to go old-school here and make rest anything more than "click a button and 3 seconds later you're healthy and ready to cast spells again", the cooldowns can improve on the IE games' design. It's not an ideal solution, but it's a solution that can work and work well.

 

[Captain Shrek]

What are you some kinda entitled gamer or something Dexter??!

 

[Jaesun]

Well you wan whine and complain or fight the good fight with your voice.

Answers Sawers question on the forum.

Dude. He has been working on developing game for how many years now?

Sawyer does listen to well good constructive feedback. He's been the same way even in the old BIS forums.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Then I better hope he does now.

 

[Dexter]

What are you some kinda entitled gamer or something Dexter??!

Wat? xD Can you elaborate?

 

[Infinitron]

I'm loving this thread. All the edgy posters frothing at the mouth as their role model, Vince D. Fucking Weller, reveals himself as a KOOL-Downist.

 

[evdk]

His hatred of walking is well documented.

 

[Captain Shrek]

What are you some kinda entitled gamer or something Dexter??!

Wat? xD Can you elaborate?

/sarcasm

 

[Vault Dweller]

Also this:
Here's how cooldowns work in RPGs: spam, wait, spam, wait, spam, wait.

You can easily fix it. Fixing the Vancian system (to work well in CRPGs) is a lot harder.

Yes, "fix" it by making the wait longer. Awesome stuff, instead of going back to town you're gonna run around in circles until you get your spells back.

Not necessarily. Much like in DnD where there are prized high level spells that you can cast once or twice per rest and there are cheaper spells you can cast a lot more often, a system with cooldowns should give you fast spells, slow spells, and everything in between. Slower spells are what you want to manage carefully, while the fast spells would ensure that you have something to cast. Sure, people can abuse it and wait for 5-20 min, but it's their choice to be retarded, whereas in the IE games abusing the rest system was part of the design.

 

[Shadenuat]

My guess in PE we'll get an option of setting up camp ourselves, but not just pressing the button for three-seconds cartoon with sun going up and down, but a real small location, or something alike.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I'm loving this thread. All the edgy posters frothing at the mouth as their role model, Vince D. Fucking Weller, reveals himself as a KOOL-Downist.

And this is why we should support Project Eternity. It has already given us hours of quality entertainment and we haven't even seen a single screenshot. I can only imagine how awesome the post-release 200-page discussion is going to be.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60875-merged-cooldown-thread/page__st__420#entry1220358

No. The punishment is that they do poorly in combat. Assuming they survive the combat and have learned that they used poor tactics (or strategy), why does the player need to be punished again? This is pretty much the sequence of how this goes down from a player's perspective:

* Player selects a number of spells for any number of reasons, thoughtful or thoughtless.
* Player enters combat with enemies that are poorly matched to his or her spells.
* The player realizes that a different group of spells would be better for these monsters.
* The fight is rough, but the player survives.
* The player decides to switch his or her spells to something more appropriate.

If the fight is hard, they already suffered for the choices they made. When the fight is over and the player has made a decision to switch spells, why should he or she be punished again?

 

[Jaesun]

Sawyer is asking some good questions in that thread.

 

[Captain Shrek]

This is stupid. Let's have even less tedium by DA style auto-regenerate. I mean why even wait with your thumbs in your butt just for spells to recover; just do regen!

 

[Jasede]

Sawyer is asking some good questions in that thread.

Yeah, he is. Someone smarter will have to answer them, or concede. Because right now I got nothing.

 

[Kz3r0]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60875-merged-cooldown-thread/page__st__420#entry1220358

No. The punishment is that they do poorly in combat. Assuming they survive the combat and have learned that they used poor tactics (or strategy), why does the player need to be punished again? This is pretty much the sequence of how this goes down from a player's perspective:

* Player selects a number of spells for any number of reasons, thoughtful or thoughtless.
* Player enters combat with enemies that are poorly matched to his or her spells.
* The player realizes that a different group of spells would be better for these monsters.
* The fight is rough, but the player survives.
* The player decides to switch his or her spells to something more appropriate.

If the fight is hard, they already suffered for the choices they made. When the fight is over and the player has made a decision to switch spells, why should he or she be punished again?

So, what's the point of changing tactic then?

 

[Infinitron]

Sawyer is asking some good questions in that thread.

And I'm answering some good answers: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60875-merged-cooldown-thread/page__st__440#entry1220370

 

[Jaesun]

Sawyer is asking some good questions in that thread.

Yeah, he is. Someone smarter will have to answer them, or concede. Because right now I got nothing.

Yeah. I know what he is doing.

I just can't....... word what I want to say correctly.

 

[Jasede]

It's not that I agree with him but his phrasing is very persuasive. But I like games that force me to manage resources - like a limited amount of spells per day, a limited mana pool, limited health potions that can't be bought en masse, all those sorts of things. I don't want every encounter to start fresh, with all spells available- I want to be made to use them wisely over a period of time.

How embarrassing, here we have the chance to argue our side and we can't think of the right words.

 

[Infinitron]

Josh's reply http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60875-merged-cooldown-thread/page__st__440#entry1220381

That is likely more common, but isn't being "wasteful" something that's only appreciated in retrospect? I.e. conservation strategy is only strategic if you have some sort of understanding of what you're going up against. In most cases, you don't know how many enemies you're going to fight, how deep the dungeon is, or what spells any given caster has at his or her disposal. Is it "wasteful" to cast fireball on 6 lizard men? Is it wasteful to cast it on 4 lizard men? What if one of them is a caster and he's casting hold person? What if there are only 30 lizard men on the level?

I answered that too.

 

[Captain Shrek]

It's not that I agree with him but his phrasing is very persuasive.

Joined 2005.

 

[Lord Andre]

Captain Shrek couldn't stand it anymore and joined the fight. I have to agree this Obsidian thing might be worth it just for the lols.

Oh, and Sawyer isn't asking any good questions, he is just strawmanning to push his cooldowns idea. I am happy to say not everyone is falling for it.