Cheating is endemic in rpgs. Being forced not to reload puts you on disadvantage

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Sigourn]

Oh, Baldur's Gate.

Yeah, I savescummed the shit out of Baldur's Gate when it came to companions dying. Reviving them was expensive as fuck. The devs had no clue of what balance was when you consider that resting at an inn multiple times was far, far more beneficial than simply asking for healing at a temple.

 

[aweigh]

Wait, you're saying all games have an built-in function that raises some %'s and lowers other %'s when you reload?

 

[Tigranes]

He's saying, if you shoot some fucker at 50%, and you roll with it ironman, it's 50%.

But if you sit down to play, shoot, and then reload every time you miss, it's effectvely a 100% THC because that evening, you as a player simply aren't going to ever roll with a miss.

This kind of thinking is a valid way to criticise an extreme save-scummer, but for people who only reload minimally, it doesn't work because when I get party-wiped and reload, I'm just experiencing a different instance of the play.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

lukaszek
If deterministic > rng

Why the fuck are your most played games recently so rng based?

Among them star trader frointers is HEAVILY RNG based.

 

[Roqua]

what is this thread even about ? save-scumming?

it is what you make it to be.

It was supposed to point out that even if you reload only on death in battle, it rises your effective hit chance while lowers enemy hit and crit.
Granted I might have not made it clear nor im good at making polls. Looking at results it appears that codexers are playing mainly ironman which is laughable(and doesnt match other threads about ironman).
Lets look at following example: you build a high initiative, evasive glass cannon. Enemies got mere 10% chance to hit you and they need to hit twice.
Your strategy is clear: you expect to start battle first and put down few enemies before they can act. Lets say you play alone against 6 enemies. Since after your action 4 enemies are still standing and they attack once each, chance of you losing is 1%. Quite laughable.
Thing is you are expected to die once in 100 such rounds. Obviously game will throw more at you. What you will do is reload. It can also be more extreme, like having bad initiative roll and enemies starting first or boss critting which will force you to reload too.
You went through the game with only single reload on highest diff. Your build must be awesome.
Except its not how it works. You have rigged game in your favor.

And if you think that this example was too extreme, judging by replies high initiative glass cannon was chosen best build in DOS1, here on codex.

But whats the answer? Obviously no one wants saving/reloading allowed in combat - not without a seed value like nuXCom has (it has seed value, right?). People freaked out and had huge hissy fits when Shadowrun Returns didn't allow saving during missions. People freak out and have hissy fits when AoD built in people having to replay battles and try new strategies. People freak out about games that have actual chardev that requires thought, and not some super-safe system were everything you pick is awesome to protect the dummies from themselves.

When mmorpgs started they had pretty steep death penalties - people didn't like it so they made death relatively pain free. I could go on with the examples, but outside of a handful of hipster success games, people don't want the game to allow them to fail.

Unless you are trying to promote some sort of nonrandom system where the end result is the same (people reloading when they aren't successful), I can only assume you a promoting an ironman-lite type system where people have to live with their mistakes? Where they get "knocked-out" instead of being killed with a game over screen? But that also leads to the same result - people doing the battle over until they are successful. The same argument can be made for games with an actual ironman mode. Just apply your logic from a single battle onto the game. If I play the game 20 times on ironman what are my chances of failing? Or 100 times restarting the game (instead of reloading to restart a battle)?

 

[Roqua]

lukaszek
If deterministic > rng

Why the fuck are your most played games recently so rng based?

Among them star trader frointers is HEAVILY RNG based.

Because they are way better and more fun?

 

[aweigh]

roqua accidentally talking about Wizardry's implementation of iron-man.

 

[Roqua]

roqua accidentally talking about Wizardry's implementation of iron-man.

I like hub based save systems too. I think the new Bard's Tale 1 update was a much lesser game for having a "save anywhere" system.

 

[aweigh]

Don't forget about corpse retrieval as well, and Wiz's save system saves with every step you take, not when you return to the city.

 

[Roqua]

Don't forget about corpse retrieval as well, and Wiz's save system saves with every step you take, not when you return to the city.

What do you think is better and/or higher risk? Hub based saving or autosaving? I haven't played Wizardry 1 in probably 10 years but couldn't you just x out the application during combat gone wrong to load right before it? In a hub based game that isn't an option. I'm not sure if I'm right about Wizardry 1 specifically, as my memory obviously isn't the best.

 

[aweigh]

It saves during combat as well. It uses a global counter of sorts. Obviously you don't have an Exit Game option available during combat so if the power goes out I don't know what would happen, though it obviously wouldn't load you into the middle of combat...

...however it does save some information during combat because in the old DOS versions (or in any of its many ports and remakes), if you yank out the floppy/terminate right as the tombstones for your party screen appears it will have already saved your dead party and load you into the tavern with no one alive.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[ERYFKRAD]

People freaked out and had huge hissy fits when Shadowrun Returns didn't allow saving during missions.

I hope this is because of time management and not wanting to repeat stuff you already sat through, not because of the rng of that game.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Range and dices are great but in strategies and tactical games in RPGs you are supposed to solve certain amount of quests or worse still clean certain amount of maps or you fell below the curve of difficulty. Granted its usually not that extreme as in AoD when you needed every morsel of XP to just not fail next story quest and die horribly. Games are nowadays artificially stretched by shit put there to steal your time so I am not ashamed to say I cheat between the quests or fights. I am not student anymore so I don't have time to grind gold or collect 50 orc spears one by one to the town thanks to artificial weight limit so I just type tgm, collect all the loot and teleport back to town after completing quest/clearing dungeon. Not my fault that quest rewards are often 100 septims (the prize of two drinks and room in the inn) for destroying huge cave full of bandits, dragon cultists or Vampires.

 

[laclongquan]

Oh, Baldur's Gate.

Yeah, I savescummed the shit out of Baldur's Gate when it came to companions dying. Reviving them was expensive as fuck. The devs had no clue of what balance was when you consider that resting at an inn multiple times was far, far more beneficial than simply asking for healing at a temple.

Didnt the Friendly Arm Temple has the cheapest Raise Dead price out of all temple? And it's at the centre of the map.

Couple that with good to great reputation and you have quite a cheap service at your beck and call.

 

[FritzedProcess]

You mean FO1, right? Because if not...

Or did I just fail my sarcasm check?

There's a time limit in Fallout 2 (it's years rather than months... I believe my character was in his 30s when it ran out, so I had to drop whatever I was doing and rush the Enclave platform). So yes, your fellow villagers can die in captivity (of old age, I guess) and then it's game over.

 

[FeelTheRads]

No, what they die of is engine limitations. And the limit is 13 years.

You don't get any warning or anything, and you're not told why it ends. You just get a "The End" screen.

They probably assumed nobody sane would reach this limit.

 

[FritzedProcess]

No, what they die of is engine limitations. And the limit is 13 years.

You don't get any warning or anything, and you're not told why it ends. You just get a "The End" screen.

They probably assumed nobody sane would reach this limit.

When you are as much of a cheapskate as I am, you can reach it easily. To give you an idea, after acquiring the Power Armor Mk2 at Navarro, I killed the whole base for the XP and loot. Since I didn't want to spend a lot of stimpaks, what I did was use the elevator when I was too wounded, go down to the underground level where I had already killed everyone and sleep it off. The whole thing started (in-game) in mid-September and by the time I had managed to wipe the base clean, it was January already.

 

[Theldaran]

That seems just achievement autism.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Easy... Add tons of options

Cool story, bro.

Though I have a feeling that in this utopian universe where it's easy to add tons of options, deterministfags will cry because too many options results in brain-RNG. What if I don't think to use the correct option out of those many? Should I reload now because my brain failed the roll? Fuck this game.

 

[Roqua]

Easy answer: make mechanics deterministic.

This is the best way to make rpgs not rpgs. Rpgs are simulations. Nonrandom systems are not simulations. Is the way to fix baseball making every swing hit? Its a ridiculous idea. Yet a game just came out where every shot hits, which is even more ridiculous. The core of great rpg systems is giving the player the tools to manipulate the random system placed over the nonrandom system.

People saying fully nonrandom is the answer to rpg simulation systems are like people saying murder is the answer to reducing the amount of sick people.

 

[Grauken]

He's right, they're called emulations. Simulations would need to replicate the randomness of reality, emulations can just hack in the outward behavior at a macro-level and get away with being non-random

 

[Roqua]

Easy answer: make mechanics deterministic.

Nonrandom systems are not simulations.

Wut?

I don't understand the confusion. If you were making a baseball game simulation, would every pitch be hit?

Unless you don't understand nonrandom? Deterministic is the fancy word for nonrandom or systematic.

Edit - I typed this while Grauken posted his response.

 

[Zenith]

Is the way to fix baseball making every swing hit?

Should just resolve sports matches through a series of coin tosses, eh?