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

[DraQ]

Your "respawn the whole dungeon on rest" idea is very well thought and all Infinitron, but i'm afraid your great mind is a little late this time: most game already implement it under the name "Load game".

Joined:
Mar 24, 2013

 

[Jestai]

All right, I take it back, a rest mechanism which has exactly the same outcome as a reload is very good, thank you Codex for "the wheel 2.0".

 

[Infinitron]

All right, I take it back, a rest mechanism which has exactly the same outcome as a reload is very good, thank you Codex for "the wheel 2.0".

I know that in some Infinity Engine games monsters would respawn when you reloaded but that doesn't mean it'll work the same way in PE, and it was a crap mechanic besides.

So I have no idea what the fuck you're trying to say.

 

[tuluse]

All right, I take it back, a rest mechanism which has exactly the same outcome as a reload is very good, thank you Codex for "the wheel 2.0".

You don't get back consumables. You don't lose experience. You don't lose any gear you've found. You undo any world state changes you made.

Other than that, sure it's exactly the same.

 

[Jestai]

I checked your post again, secretly hoping I had missed something, but nope, it was still the same stupid as fuck idea.

You don't get back consumables => niche
You don't lose experience => no XP for killing monsters in PE. Also, grinding sucks and this is like the worst grinding idea ever (unlimited spawns).
You don't lose any gear you found => see below, but niche too. Or do you want to have every dungeon with a big gamechanger sword halfway through?
You undo any world state changes you made => I guess you wanted to say the opposite, I don't really see what you mean by that. Finishing quests? Opening a shortcut? Cool, I won't have to do the puzzle again, just the 200 free goblins.

Maybe "exactly" was a bit too much, but the differences are really small. Do you really think that's a good design? And by the way, resting is no fucking help if you're this close to the same state you were before leaving the rest area. By making the dungeon progressively easier rest after rest and shortcut after shortcut? Wow, this game looks nice, I really want to play it.


Do you want to respawn everyone or just trashmobs? Either way, it's stupid.
Everyone: "Haha, now that I have the wand I looted form your corpse, Named Wizard, this encounter is going to be way easier! How the fuck did you came back to life by the way?" Also, quest continuity hell. Also, do you really want to do encounters over and over again until you win? Wait, no, you're winning everytime, you're just not efficient enough to be able to beat Name Overlord who's on the opposite side of the castle without resting. Looks like fun.
Only trashmobs: "Ok, we finished this room and I think I saw someone with a name. He's probably quest tied and he won't respawn. Let's go back to the rest point, kill the filler mobs again and proceed to the next interesting encounter". Basically, you're punishing the player by making him lose time with mindless and pointless encounters. This is a stupid.

Anyway, it doesn't make any sense (I laughed at the "ghost coming back to life makes sense", have fun with your ghost centered RPG). Don't even try.

This is an RPG, not a roguelike, Dark Souls or a fucking MMORPG and you're not here to grind or to do the same fights over and over again because you wanted to rest (AKA SOMETHING SUPPOSED TO HELP YOU). You killed these guys, they're gone. Unlike in Dark Souls, combat can become tedious really fast in IE games.


You're taking the problem from the wrong side anyway. A good design isn't about directely punishing the bad players, it's about rewarding the good players even though sometimes, the result is the same (a shortfall is a disadvantage). Please, get this into your mind before proposing another dumbfuckery like this one. Don't listen to the people thinking it's a good idea. They haven't thought about it. It's stupid.
But in Dark Souls, the bad player gets punished and..." => the whole game is about punishment, frustration and being more efficient. Also, action game. Here, we're talking about the rest mechanism of a RPG.

Random ideas:

Hardmode or whatever it's called = more things if you finish the dungeon in a timely fashion. More Lore, Achievement (kidding), Gold, Items, Stats Improvement, Companions related stuff, learning that the pirate is in fact trying to swindle you or whatever passes as a reward in this game and whatever makes sense. Inform the player beforehand and don't forget to give him a little nod if he does good. You can modulate it however you want to make it as hardcore as you want. You slept 10 times ? Well, all the gold and items got relocated, buckle up for the rest of your adventure, you'll need it. You get the idea.

Normal mode = unlimited rest and best outcomes because why not. You can get little cherries on top, but it's not to be emphasized. Just a little "fast job bro, here are these extra +1 arrows" or little extra bits of info. People shouldn't be punished and suffer through rooms of trashmobs because some grognards full of metagame think it's abusive. People shouldn't be prevented to enjoy their experience however they want it. If they suck, well, they're gonna abuse rest. Who the fuck cares. Maybe make it a little bit more restrictive than in BG2 but it's not really important. The main idea is to give small rewards to fast players without directly making slower players know they're missing out on something. Everyone's happy. Once again, NORMAL MODE.

By the way, don't you forget that if in some place, the devs think "mm, they shouldn't be sleeping here, it makes the game more interesting", it's always possible to NOT MAKE IT POSSIBLE TO SLEEP HERE and to prevent people to come back to town or whatever. Problem solved.


"More trashmobs". This guy...

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Quite Tangential to Josh and PE, but related to the resting mechanics:

About the re-spawning thing. Many codexians are assuming, that since respawning/save/rest bonfire worked so well in Dark Souls (this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIx7Ot5Mq2Q sums up my opinion of The Dark Souls Experience™ with fancy vocabulary), doesn't mean it will work for an IE successor. Combat from IE games has a vast scope of improvement. Sadly this will be RTwP., but to play a cRPG written by MCA and George Ziets I would suffer through popamole migraine inducing combat like DA2 where literally u pop bags of piss and shit which swarm towards you in waves. The low tech and no magic medicine setting could turn out to be interesting... If rest mechanics are implemented appropriate to the gameplay/setting of PE. When I first heard about the bonfire mechanics in DS, I literally went , lol console shit respawnign enemies and no freedom to save. After i played it, I became a total fanboy. Who knows, PE could turn out to be a Gesamtkunstwerk. Don't get me wrong, PST was superb, but combat in PS:T always left me butthurt. Yes combat could be avoided, but LARPing as a musclehead fighter in one of the later experimental playthroughs was not as fun as it could have been.

EDIT: Trashmobs are a consequence of RTwP. If hand places encounters are designed ground up as TB like in D:OS ( larian), each encounter can be challenging, where again i hope the shelter at end of time doesn't become infinte rest lure like the IE games, at least not without some ingame penalty. Since it is sandbox designed, a timer with CnC (like the water chip part in fallout - generous limit unless doctor spam) culd be great.

 

[Sensuki]

I detect an attempt at being edgy two posts above this one.

 

[Mastermind]

EDIT: Trashmobs are a consequence of RTwP.

 

[Sensuki]

Like killing rats in Fallout right ? oh wait

 

[Mrowak]

Quite Tangential to Josh and PE, but related to the resting mechanics:

EDIT: Trashmobs are a consequence of RTwP. If hand places encounters are designed ground up as TB like in D:OS ( larian), each encounter can be challenging, where again i hope the shelter at end of time doesn't become infinte rest lure like the IE games, at least not without some ingame penalty. Since it is sandbox designed, a timer with CnC (like the water chip part in fallout - generous limit unless doctor spam) culd be great.

Wait, wait, wait, wait... How did you go from "Hand-placed encounters are awesome" to "Thrashmobs are a consequence of RTwP"? Last time I checked there was nothing precluding RTwP from having great, hand-placed combat encounters. In fact BG2 and ID games sport quite a lot of those. Conversely, TB didn't prevent rest-spam nor facilitate good encounters in, say, ToEE (especially towards the end of the game). In fact encounter design is my main concern with D:OS, because the combat situations showcased thus far were pretty lackluster. What gives?

 

[hiver]

I already gave you the best solution, you are all just spinning in circles. Jestai especially with his idiotic non solution of simply doing nothing of difference and making it even easier and even more rewarding for the player.
Thats because you are stuck in logic and limits of simple few features and cannot see outside them.

So you see that way or even easier way because - what the fuck.
- which is nonsensical. To put it mildly.

People shouldn't be prevented to enjoy their experience however they want it.

Yes they fucking should. In an RPG. This is not a fucking movie that you should be able to enjoy any way you want, dumbass.

Spoken like a true popamole newfag that really doesnt like to play these games - but likes to get the experience - any way he can, in every way he can - by removing any limits or conditions that have to be met, any obstacles that need to be surpassed and any mutually exclusive content - which is the core of a real RPG game.
A real biodrone, by the sound of it.



Resting should be removed and limited as i said and then the combat gameplay designed around that, from the ground up.
Instead of repeating the same mistake over and over. Or rather same set of mistakes that influenced and even created one another over period of time.
Vancian magic spells - limited to duration of a day - necessity of "actions" and epic moments for emotional engagement - increase in number of encounters - allowing sleeping to restore resources.
Same happened with HP points and healing.

Its a Gordian knot problem and you dont solve that by trying a different tack on untangling it. Or by adding more rope. You remove the problem all together.

 

[Mrowak]

Resting should be removed and limited as i said and then the combat gameplay designed around that, from the ground up.
Instead of repeating the same mistake over and over. Or rather same set of mistakes that influenced and even created one another over period of time.
Vancian magic spells - limited to duration of a day - necessity of "actions" and epic moments for emotional engagement - increase in number of encounters - allowing sleeping to restore resources.
Same happened with HP points and healing.

Its a Gordian knot problem and you dont solve that by trying a different tack on untangling it. Or by adding more rope. You remove the problem all together.

Or better - give the quest a sense of urgency and change its parametres in reaction to what you (do not) do, only then design the entire gameplay around that as advocated in my post a couple of pages ago. No need for any half-measures whatsoever.

 

[hiver]

I agree with your previous post. Such design would logically follow from measures i suggest.
Since trash mob design and sleep spamming is out of the picture ... it should be filled up with smarter, better design and what you suggested is of course part of that.

Better Ai, better reactivity to players actions, hand crafted encounters, immediate and delayed consequences. Inclusion of environment into gameplay and so on.

 

[Infinitron]

You're taking the problem from the wrong side anyway. A good design isn't about directely punishing the bad players, it's about rewarding the good players even though sometimes, the result is the same (a shortfall is a disadvantage). Please, get this into your mind before proposing another dumbfuckery like this one. Don't listen to the people thinking it's a good idea. They haven't thought about it. It's stupid.

In this post Jestai admits he's a bad player.

If you read my post on the Obsidian forums, you'd see that I prefer limiting rest by adding a limited "rest resource", with respawning being an alternative solution.

None of the solutions you proposed are systemic - they all require per-location scripting of special rewards for good players - which means they aren't good enough.

Also, why are you assuming dungeons are full of awful "trashmobs" that are a "punishment" to fight? Combat isn't a punishment. It's supposed to be fun and challenging.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/469557999036295539

Also, hiver, nobody on the Codex said the PE setting didn't have medicine. You didn't have to go bugging Josh about it.

 

[Jestai]

Oh sorry, I thought we were speaking about PE, not a RPG/pipedream fusion. Did you ever read anything written by Sawyer? He obviously wants to make everyone happy. That's a given. I was just looking for ideas GIVEN THE INFORMATION WE ALREADY HAVE. You know, normal mode, "hardcore mode", not a lot of time. Realistic things. It's not optimal, but that's what gonna happen. Not your dream RPG featuring your dream mechanisms, you delusional simpleton. If you read what I said, I'm thinking about a more diverse content for the hardcore experience, but still adaptable to a normal mode. What the fuck is your problem with people enjoying streamlined bullshit? Why do you care if hardcore is the base of the game and normal is like its retarded console port? "PEOPLE SHOULD ENJOY THIS GAME THE WAY I ENJOY IT => ELSE POPAMOLE". Couldn't give less of a fuck if Torment had an easy mode with 90% less text as long as the real game is complex enough for me.

The rest of your post is just a big strawman made up by your diseased mind. "He talked about casual morons enjoying the game => lol he's obviously one of them". Did you forget to take your pills tonight?

Funny thing is I agree with most of what you're putting forward, but I'm afraid you're in the wrong topic... Maybe people should cut the knot, but it's not gonna happen with PE. WAKE UP CALL HIVER.

 

[Infinitron]

What's your problem, dude? Did a trash mob kill your parents?

Did you ever read anything written by Sawyer? He obviously wants to make everyone happy.

Sawyer wants to remove loopholes and exploits that trivialize the game. The ability to rest without consequences is such a loophole. I'm trying to think of appropriate consequences.

Or at least I was thinking - I've pretty much moved on now, but you seem intent on keeping the discussion alive.

 

[Grunker]

Did you ever read anything written by Sawyer? He obviously wants to make everyone happy.

What in the fuck?

Sawyer is perhaps the most outspoken developer I've ever seen. I've never witnessed anyone else willing to piss on his audience to that degree if he disagrees with him. Just look at the butthurt displayed by me and others on some of his opinions that we find retarded and you'll know the truth of this

Sawyer as populist? Now I've heard it all.

Infinitron: M&M had food ages ago, as well as other games. Has Sawyer said why he doesn't like that system for rest? Because you can run out having to restart? Fuck the casuals, bro!

 

[Mangoose]

Ew, tactical precision in a RTWP. No thanks.

 

[Grunker]

Ew, tactical precision in a RTWP. No thanks.

They said from Day 1 they wanted to make positioning important and have AoOs and shit like that.

So far, it's this decision above all others that I oppose in P:E. Micromanaging your team's position sounds incredibly boring. The IE-games worked well because beyond a few macro-decisions (keep vulnerable people in backlane) you were worrying about tactical combat decisions and not the micromanagement of party position when you played, for the most part.

 

[Grunker]

EDIT: Trashmobs are a consequence of RTwP.

I see someone has never played Wizardry. Or Might & Magic.

 

[Mangoose]

Ew, tactical precision in a RTWP. No thanks.

They said from Day 1 they wanted to make positioning important and have AoOs and shit like that.

So far, it's this decision above all others that I oppose in P:E. Micromanaging your team's position sounds incredibly boring. The IE-games worked well because beyond a few macro-decisions (keep vulnerable people in backlane) you were worrying about tactical combat decisions and not the micromanagement of party position when you played, for the most part.

Agreed 100%. The "Engagement" system is supposed to assist in this regard so we'll see how it is..

Edit: Just thought of something... Varying terrain types/tiles would be great. That would give you some macro-level positioning decisions to make.

 

[Grunker]

Ew, tactical precision in a RTWP. No thanks.

They said from Day 1 they wanted to make positioning important and have AoOs and shit like that.

So far, it's this decision above all others that I oppose in P:E. Micromanaging your team's position sounds incredibly boring. The IE-games worked well because beyond a few macro-decisions (keep vulnerable people in backlane) you were worrying about tactical combat decisions and not the micromanagement of party position when you played, for the most part.

Agreed 100%. The "Engagement" system is supposed to assist in this regard so we'll see how it is..

Well, as I said back when they suggested that system, it's certainly an improvement on NWN2's retarded whirlpool of AoOs, but it's still "pause"-"move"-"pause"-"grimoire slam"-"pause"-"move"-"pause"-"engage with warrior"-"pause"-"move".

RTwP should be focused on macro-level combat decisions like "which abilities do I use?" if you ask me.

But yeah, we'll see.

 

[Infinitron]

Ew, tactical precision in a RTWP. No thanks.

They said from Day 1 they wanted to make positioning important and have AoOs and shit like that.

So far, it's this decision above all others that I oppose in P:E. Micromanaging your team's position sounds incredibly boring. The IE-games worked well because beyond a few macro-decisions (keep vulnerable people in backlane) you were worrying about tactical combat decisions and not the micromanagement of party position when you played, for the most part.

The game definitely sounds like it will require more micromanagement than the IE games, but I'm hoping slow motion controls + relatively more predictable combat (no instadeath, narrower random number intervals, etc) will make it play out more like an RTS. There'll be more stuff to do, but you won't have to do it as quickly, so APMs will remain constant.

 

[Jestai]

You're taking the problem from the wrong side anyway. A good design isn't about directely punishing the bad players, it's about rewarding the good players even though sometimes, the result is the same (a shortfall is a disadvantage). Please, get this into your mind before proposing another dumbfuckery like this one. Don't listen to the people thinking it's a good idea. They haven't thought about it. It's stupid.

In this post Jestai admits he's a bad player.

If you read my post on the Obsidian forums, you'd see that I prefer limiting rest by adding a limited "rest resource", with respawning being an alternative solution.

None of the solutions you proposed are systemic - they all require per-location scripting of special rewards for good players - which means they aren't good enough.

Also, why are you assuming dungeons are full of awful "trashmobs" that are a "punishment" to fight? Combat isn't a punishment. It's supposed to be fun and challenging.

Nope, I'm a better player than you. I WIN.

Irenicus's Dungeon wants to speak to you. It's the closest thing we have of your idea: doing back to back dungeon runs. It's not a "bad dungeon", but we've been doing it so much that it's painful to just think about doing it one more time. It was fun and (a little bit) challenging the first time. Then it got tedious really, really fast.
I wouldn't do a very good dungeon 2 times in a row. Looks like fun to you? Killing the same enemies in the same place over and over again? Also, it still doesn't make sense: what about "special" encounters aka not duregar #25. Ennemies who are talking to you before the fight, who are dropping stuff or who are quest related. Do they talk to you again after they're raised from the dead? Do they drop stuff again? Looks like a very good solution that doesn't require scripting or extra thoughts indeed. Not a clusterfuck at all.

A challenge is something to overcome. Once you've solved the riddle, you don't really want to do it again (at least not right after), even to find a somewhat better solutions, especially if you have to go through to many easy as pie baby riddles to get there. And if you really want to do it again, hoping for a better outcome or something, you load your game like the savescumer you are, you don't use "Infinitron's useless res(e)t system (that doesn't make any sense by the way)".