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

[tuluse]

DraQ, I believe we're thinking of how resting and respawing works in Dark Souls. Resting can't be interrupted, but when you rest, every single enemy is respawned.

 

[Grunker]

I don't think respawning is that bad if you know in advance that you're triggering it by resting. It becomes a tradeoff that you need to decide whether you want to make.

Inb4 multiple resting constantly until you get the resulting spawn fights just right so you can proceed with a free rest.

 

[tuluse]

You can make it completely deterministic, again like Dark Souls.

 

[Dorateen]

And given that P:E will make use of Rest areas, and its inspired by one game I haven't yet played (KotC), I have a question: are 'rest areas' (in KotC) something that you see with certain regularity like in Dark Souls?

KotC had campfires that needed to be found as rest locations. Much like the SSI Dark Sun games. Not so much an "area", but a spot on the map that had to be discovered. I suppose the basic concept is the same. Enemies respawned upon using a campfire.

Some were not easy to find, I remember missing the room that contained one in a certain hostile environment, with no backtracking, and made for a very challenging experience. But other than that, I would say the campfires were placed judiciously.

Anyway, worked for me in KotC and Dark Sun, but I do not get the sense P:E would be using interactive objects to facilitate the resting mechanic.

 

[hiver]

https://torment.uservoice.com/forums/197950-game-ideas/suggestions/3765012-disable-sleep-spamming

Disable sleep spamming

Sleeping consecutively many times should not be possible. Sleeping for days even less.
Sleep spamming is evil. Pure evil.
And its even worse when it serves as healing.
Whats the point of anything, all those healing potions, secret medical knowledge, value of doctors... when you can just set the timer to three days and spam, spam, spam it all away?
It ruins any pretense that healing or medicine are supposedly rare or valuable.
So, just allow 8 hours of sleep a day. Once in 24 hours.
(however long that lasts in the game)
With only exceptions given if its a scripted event, if you ended up in a hospital where some serious patching needs to be done.
(and it would be great if after such recuperation's my physical skills would be somewhat wobbly and weak for a few days)

Very much connected to this post: https://torment.uservoice.com/forums/197950-game-ideas/suggestions/3758441-medicine

I don't think respawning is that bad if you know in advance that you're triggering it by resting. It becomes a tradeoff that you need to decide whether you want to make.

It's random/spontaneous respawning like in the IE games that can be a pain in the ass.

It is not a tradeoff. Nothing bad is happening to you. You just get more combat. And we play those games for combat. (mostly since combat is most of gameplay anyway)
You end up rewarding the player.

It becomes a huge incentive - you sleep and heal and get your spells back - and n top of that you get to do more combat, with possibility of getting more XP and or more loot.

 

[Rake]

https://torment.uservoice.com/forums/197950-game-ideas/suggestions/3765012-disable-sleep-spamming

Whats the point of anything, all those healing potions, secret medical knowledge, value of doctors... when you can just set the timer to three days and spam, spam, spam it all away?
It ruins any pretense that healing or medicine are supposedly rare or valuable.

But P:E wont have any healing, or medicine. Rest will be the only way for health restoration.

 

[hiver]

What?

WHAAAAAAAT?

 

[DraQ]

What?

WHAAAAAAAT?

 

[Mrowak]

Let's face it - sleep spam is going to be a generic solution to resource deprivation problem in all RPGs unless you build them entirely around reactivity to depletion of said resources in space and in time.

When the game presents the player with a challenge, the challenge must shape accordingly to player's actions. For example, instead of slaughtering the entire orcish stronghold one room at a time, the game features enemies reacting to a full scale invasion accordingly, by e.g. relocating foes between the rooms in reaction to the noise and commotion, organising separate units into logical military force capable of resisting the players, moving important prisoners to a more remote location, Big Evil Overlord (TM) taking direct control over his minions and launching tactical counterattacks, all of this possibly resulting in a massively inflated difficulty spikes is the player fucks up and a premature showdown with the boss or even complete failure (yeah, I totally feel like having a nap. It's not like that bigass evil dragon won't wait for us forever).

As a result:

1) There is actual C&C to *gameplay* decisions of the player (as opposed to arbitrary stats and other "fake" C&C).
2) The possibility of exploiting resource recovery through sleep and other means is close to 0.
3) The gameplay becomes varied and less predictable increasing its playability.

Sadly, until we learn to implement emergent gameplay in RPGs this kind of approach will be pain in the arse to take.

 

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

So... where is this week's update?

 

[Infinitron]

So... where is this week's update?

They're busy at E3, no update.

 

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

Thanks.

 

[Mrowak]

DraQ, I believe we're thinking of how resting and respawing works in Dark Souls. Resting can't be interrupted, but when you rest, every single enemy is respawned.

Conworld destructive shit reeking of lazy design. I know it kinda sorta works in DS, but only because it reinforces the theme of solitude, mystique and being faced against depressingly impossible odds. In any other RPG this is rubbish I'd rather not see mindlessly copy-pasted.

 

[Roguey]

Respawning encounters would fix everything

Yeah, they would help. I've actually asked Josh about that, let's see if he responds.

Respawns were one of the first fan suggestions he shot down back in October.

 

[Carrion]

Resting as a free healing mechanic should die anyway. If you get stabbed or shot in the guts, sleeping won't heal you, it'll kill you unless you get proper treatment. You could rather just remove heal-by-resting entirely and use consumables instead, although that wouldn't fix the possible problems with stuff like spell memorization.

Personally I'd just like to see more games going the JA2 route: add some upkeep costs and make healing a time-consuming process which requires a character with the appropriate skill and some use of limited medical resources. Or you could just keep all the existing mechanics but add a fairly generous FO-style time limit to prevent the most ridiculous abuse of the system.

 

[AN4RCHID]

Respawning encounters would fix everything

Yeah, they would help. I've actually asked Josh about that, let's see if he responds.

Respawns were one of the first fan suggestions he shot down back in October.

You mean those tards asking for elaborate reinforcement scripting? I don't remember him addressing simple respawns.

 

[Roguey]

You mean those tards asking for elaborate reinforcement scripting? I don't remember him addressing simple respawns.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60875-merged-cooldown-thread/page-30

Dark Souls is an excellent game, but it also solves the problem in the opposite direction. It respawns creatures after rest, not on your way back to the campfire. This is also acceptable within the fiction of Dark Souls because it is quite close to being a world full of monsters and undead. This is not always the kind of area population that the BG/IWD games had.

 

[AN4RCHID]

You mean those tards asking for elaborate reinforcement scripting? I don't remember him addressing simple respawns.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60875-merged-cooldown-thread/page-30

Dark Souls is an excellent game, but it also solves the problem in the opposite direction. It respawns creatures after rest, not on your way back to the campfire. This is also acceptable within the fiction of Dark Souls because it is quite close to being a world full of monsters and undead. This is not always the kind of area population that the BG/IWD games had.

Not really shooting it down there.

 

[Grunker]

Roguey, just out of curiosity, could you give me an example of something where you disagree with Josh?

 

[Delterius]

Roguey, just out of curiosity, could you give me an example of something where you disagree with Josh?

 

[felipepepe]

When Josh humbly doesn't consider himself the best designer ever? Oh wait, he does...

 

[Roguey]

Roguey, just out of curiosity, could you give me an example of something where you disagree with Josh?

He's way too lenient about third edition in this interview http://www.ign.com/articles/2002/03/15/icewind-dale-2-trailer-and-interview

 

[Grunker]

Figures that the only time you disagree with him is when he isn't being SAWYER ENOUGH

 

[Sensuki]

That doesn't even really count, because it would have been bad PR to diss the gaming system upon which you have a license for making the game.

 

[Blaine]

It was also over a decade ago when 3E was quite new and we didn't have eleven years of perspective to draw on. I hadn't even realized what a shitty system the entire D&D line was by 2002.