Preview Frayed Knights preview

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: Frayed Knights

Frayed Knights (Rampant Coyote's game thing) has been previewed. Find <a href="http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/2009/02/frayed-knights-critique-part-iv.html">links to all four articles of the preview here</a>:
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<blockquote>Moving on, there’s one thing that I’ve been actively avoiding until now, and that is the Stars/”Drama points” system. For those that don’t know, this system is visualized as those three stars sitting at the top of the screen. Every time something dramatic happens the player gets a corresponding amount of drama points as a reward. Then, when the player has collected enough points he can spend them on something useful, such as reviving a party member or casting some special spells among other things. Sounds like a good idea, but there’s a catch: Your drama points are never saved. If you quit the game, they are erased.
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Why the catch? Well, Jay implemented it this way to punish those gamers that don’t tolerate failure. Something bad happens? Load a previous save. Some players act this way because games like Fallout 2 and Eschalon: Book 1 actively encourage this conduct. With or without “Drama points”, if you offer random rewards and punishments then you are automatically encouraging constant quicksaving and loading.
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You can’t simply apply a patch over this issue either and pretend to be done with it. The problem can’t be solved by punishing certain players and rewarding others. I know I’ve already said this but it bears to be repeated: The root of the problem lays squarely on the shoulders of the mechanics with random outcomes.
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What’s more, I don’t like the drama points system because it affects everybody, not just the quickloader-happy population. It’s a system that rewards gamers for playing for extended periods of time. For people like me it’s a plus, but there are some other gamers out there that don’t have as much spare time as I do. Those people are never going to see the best rewards offered by the drama point’s system, all because some other people can’t tolerate failure. Just fantastic.</blockquote>
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I think drama points sound pretty cool actually.
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Spotted @ <a href="http://www.rpgwatch.com">Yup</a>
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[Gragt]

The way it sounds, it's not required to complete the game, just a reward for those who play extended periods of time without loading. It can even be seen as countering the risks you'll encounter playing "semi-iron man" like this: someone dies but you can revive him as a reward for not loading earlier when you got a small problem. Those who prefer to quickload will likely have the benefits of their system and those who do not have much time won't simply take advantage of drama points.

It sounds like a nice system, I like it.

 

[Ogg]

What’s more, I don’t like the drama points system because it affects everybody, not just the quickloader-happy population. It’s a system that rewards gamers for playing for extended periods of time. For people like me it’s a plus, but there are some other gamers out there that don’t have as much spare time as I do.

RPG are not for casual gamers.

 

[racofer]

Toddler begs to differ.

 

[Tigranes]

The guy went overboard, Gragt is surely correct. It's a partial deterrent to reflex-quickload, and otherwise is similar to Arcanum's Fate Points (or whatever they were called).

I've yet to really be interested because the hook is that it's a funny/parody RPG, but from what little of the dialogue I've seen it's just not very funny. Very Disney stuff. Could be very wrong though, need to have a better look when it comes out.

 

[Walkin' Dude]

I think it sounds like an interesting approach for dealing with the save/reload problem. We will just have to wait and see how it works in practice.

 

[obediah]

So if the purpose is to punish save/reload people, why not go the extra inch and add a special save slot that is deleted when loaded from so you don't hit all the people with limited gaming windows as well. Every handheld game and rougelike over the past 20+ years has managed it.

 

[Walkin' Dude]

Because there is a difference between wiping out your progress when something bad happens and providing an incentive to keep going despite setbacks.

 

[obediah]

Because there is a difference between wiping out your progress when something bad happens and providing an incentive to keep going despite setbacks.

Jesus Fucking Christ! Do I have to spell it out with Crayons?

Hi! I am Obediah. I'm playing Frayed Knights. I feel like saving my game. Oh look! There are two options!

1) Save Game - This will save my progress, but not my drama points. I can keep playing, and load it as many times as I want.

2) Suspend Game - This will save my progress and my drama points. However the game will exit, and when I load from this file it will be deleted. Because Rampant Coyote are nice guys, this will also create a save game just in case something goes wrong in the restore process.

Got it now? I can increase font size and add colors if necessary.

 

[Andhaira]

This game sounds sweet. And the drama points do sound cool as long as they don't go oveboard with it.

Anyone know anything else about the game? (plz ddon't point me to another website ok) For instance:

-Real time or turnbased? Or RTwp?
-Party based or single pc?
-Classes or skills?
-Special abilities?
-Time period/story? I hope its not the same old orcs and elves. I don't mind gritty fantasy though.
-Magic system?
-System requirements?

 

[Jason]

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=24015

 

[Andhaira]

Hey there baby arm. Hows that ice cream truck coming along?

 

[DarkUnderlord]

2) Suspend Game - This will save my progress and my drama points. However the game will exit, and when I load from this file it will be deleted.

That's like how Need For Speed: High Stakes would save your progress but over-write it whenever you lost a race / lost money making you do it again. I very quickly worked out that a Ctrl-Alt-Del before I'd crossed the finish line of a race I lost avoided writing the save file and meant I could get back in and try again without losing cash and having to go back through fifteen bloody races all over again. I then learnt that alt-tab, find save game directory, copy, paste also allowed me to get around the auto-save nonsense.

I also did the same thing in EV Nova. Copy my saved game every once in a while so I could go back to it if I stuffed something up.

I think the "not saving drama points" system works better because it encourages you to actually use those points. Unlike Arcanum where all I did was save up Fate points for that one special time I needed them and then never bothered to actually use them, so ended up using them just because I had maxed them out.

 

[Andhaira]

Fate Points were a freaking joke in arcanum, unless you played a hghly charismatic character with a high beauty. Then you needed to spend FP's to get rid of scars.

 

[obediah]

I think the "not saving drama points" system works better because it encourages you to actually use those points. Unlike Arcanum where all I did was save up Fate points for that one special time I needed them and then never bothered to actually use them, so ended up using them just because I had maxed them out.

That's a good point. My grenade/potion hoarding ass could use such encouragement.