Review RPG Codex Review: Darth Roxor on Disappointment, thy name is Pillars of Eternity

[Ulrox]

You mean I can't rest in the IE games almost anywhere? Because if I can, my point stands and it's Jasede who is full of shit and sweet childhood memories. Nice of you to whiteknight though.

To be nitpicky, there are some places where resting 8 out of 10 times spawn enemies on you. And some area's in throne of bhaal where it is almost 100% that enemies spawn, although by then you'll have the pocket plane so you can just teleport back and rest, but otherwise yes you are able to rest in many places without having too high of a chance of spawning enemies.

 

[Average Manatee]

Unrestricted resting is an admission by the developer that it's basically impossible to make rules for resting that are fair, satisfies all circumstances, and don't require reading 10 pages of rule lawyering beforehand. Yes D&D is supposed to have limited resting, and by extension a game based on D&D should have limited resting, but it's left to the player whether they want to be a casual rest spammer, play in a D&D manner, or add other rules to offset rest-spam (e.g. 1 character parties).

Ration-limited resting works best in games with constant random encounters throughout dungeons rather than preset battles, and long, semi-linear gameplay. This is so that you have to complete dungeons in one "go" or return for more rations and go through the whole thing again. IE games don't have that, it's pretty much all preset battles that you can leave at any time. Because of this ration-based resting limitations are just 100% busywork running back and forth. What's the difference between resting immediately or running back to the inn to rest or market to buy more rations? Either way you don't lose progress, the latter is just wasted time. So this common mechanic simply doesn't work well for IE-like games.

PoE went for a hybrid approach which somehow managed to fuck both up. Limited resting based on rations yet 90% of your powers are restored after every battle anyway, so you can't challenge yourself by not resting either.

 

[Infinitron]

Limited resting based on rations yet 90% of your powers are restored after every battle anyway

Uh. I don't know what game you're playing, but the per-encounter abilities of primarily per-rest spellcaster classes are weaksauce and will not win you tough battles in PotD. When you're out of per-rests, it's time to rest.

And if you're talking about using non-per-rest/spellcaster classes, well, duh? You can do that in the IE games too, you know. BG1 is perfectly finishable with a party of fighters and thieves.

As for resting in general, it seems people either get it or they don't. I said what had to be said about it here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ty-release-thread.98003/page-143#post-3855471

 

[roshan]

Reloading is about trying to something again after you failed miserably.

After you fail miserably? Sounds like..... A self-imposed restriction, also known as LARPing, as has been claimed by several in this thread.

It's not and never was a game mechanic.

How is it not a game mechanic when it fundamentally alters every aspect of how the game is played?

Resting IS a game mechanic, designed to help you recover health and spells. It has some restrictions like no resting on the streets or no resting next to a group of monsters but they are easy to bypass (go to an inn or move away from the monsters).

Yes, and save/reload is a game mechanic, designed to help you redo portions of the game you are not satisfied with your results, or when you have reached a fail state. It has some restrictions, such as not being able to save while in combat mode, but they are fairly minor ones.

You've heard it here first, folks. Reloading is a game mechanic!

You mean I can't rest in the IE games almost anywhere? Because if I can, my point stands and it's Jasede who is full of shit and sweet childhood memories. Nice of you to whiteknight though.

To argue that certain features are mechanics and others are not purely on the basis of where the button is positioned in the interface is absolutely ridiculous.

 

[Darth Roxor]

this thread is still going on?

damn, you men are bored

 

[roshan]

Trash encounters are to use up your spells. Then once they're used up, hit rest to get them all back.

It's weird that you are quoting my post when I have never made the "draining resources" argument in favor of trash mobs.

 

[Ulrox]

this thread is still going on?

damn, you men are bored

No, its just on watch, and I respond - could unwatch it but it's atleast somewhat interesting.

 

[Infinitron]

this thread is still going on?

damn, you men are bored

No, its just on watch, and I respond - could unwatch it but it's atleast somewhat interesting.

Hopefully there will be a new one soon...

 

[DeepOcean]

I remember that some time when everyone was still talking about Oblivion there was some guy who argued that the game does not provide any challenge because it's the player's fault and if he wants challenge then he should play the game as he would "adventure in real life" - throw away his weapon when running away from enemies (to run faster, geddit?), only sleep in inns at nights and other stupid shit. Adding self-imposed restrictions to limit resting sounds just as stupid to me as Oblivion adventurer guy's advice (even though when playing IE games I did try to limit resting simply because resting in some dungeons carried the risk of having enemies ambush you)

You want to limit resting? Then add food costs, time limits on quests, spawn enemies on your ass if you rest or make a simple text pop-up saying "You can hear enemies patrolling this hall, it would be unwise to rest here now" and only allow resting on dungeon floors once you've cleared them out and make exiting dungeons to rest outside difficult as well. PoE wanted to do limited resting but failed because at any time you can safely fuck off from a dungeon, go to the nearest town and restock your campfires. Lords of Xulima had a nice food system where every step you took used food and resting used a lot of food and the cost of food was astronomical compared to your riches at lower levels (it kind stopped being an issue by midgame, though).

Also trash mobs are trash in both Baldur's Gate games and PoE, don't pretend otherwise. The only difference is that in Baldur's Gate 2 there is a much larger variety of them, so it's slightly less trash but still trash nonetheless.

I think Oblivion LARPING is it's own level of retardation. When someone says "adventure in real life" for a game that doesn't support that by mechanics, the guy is just crazy, he is inventing mechanics that don't exist. There is a big difference of a Bethesdard playing like a retard to supposedly make a shitty popamole game better and people avoid abusing certain mechanics you know were there to make the life of impatient/inexperienced RPG players life easier.

The vancian spell system only makes sense with hard resting restrictions, like Jasede said with his GM fucking the players that tried that and as you said, placing time limits on quests would be great but let's not fool ourselves, BG 1 and 2 didn't have hard resting limits for the same reason on Thief you can blackjack all the guards on a mission. The developers wanted their games to sell more than 10000 copies. So, not using the blackjack on Thief, doing a no powers run on Dishonored (the developers even added ways for you to navigate the map without powers as they knew many players would prefer that way.) or not abusing resting on IE games makes total sense as you are avoiding popamole features that are there to help new players. The new players win because they can abuse the options they have and the more experienced players win because they can play the game on an interesting way, maybe the new players like the game and decide to not be so cheesy on the next playthrough.

You aren't creating mechanics on your head (that is LARPING), you are avoiding exploiting broken shit that is there to make the life of new players easier or as an oversight of the developer (you can break Fallout 1 economy by gambling for example, you can break Fallout 2 difficulty balance by going to Navarro first, you can break Morrowind by abusing alchemy and not doing that is far from LARPING.)

About trash mobs on Baldur's Gate games, if someone said to me "DeepOcean, there is this RPG game that has no trash mobs anywhere, all fights are unique and challenging." I would say, this is the best combat focus RPG game ever if you say to me "DeepOcean, there are alot of trash mobs but there are enough real fights to keep you awake." what is the case of the second half of BG 1 and the whole BG2, I would be annoyed by the trash mobs but he real fights would be enough to pump the adrenaline up but someone said to me "DeepOcean, 99,9% of the fights are trash mobs and the only fights that aren't, they are behind generic go kill contracts or is a dragon on the end of a 15 levels trash mob dungeon." I would think this game is crap.

I hate trash mobs with a passion and they are just filler when a developer wants to make a game bigger for the sake of it being bigger, they were awful on BG 1, thank God less annoying on BG 2 and absolutely ridiculous on 2d NWN 2PoE.

 

[Ulrox]

"DeepOcean, 99,9% of the fights are trash mobs and the only fights that aren't, they are behind generic go kill contracts or is a dragon on the end of a 15 levels trash mob dungeon." I would think this game is crap.

Wasnt icewind dale 2 also 99% trash mobs? and also directed by sawyer?

 

[Vault Dweller]

Reloading is about trying to something again after you failed miserably.

After you fail miserably? Sounds like..... A self-imposed restriction, also known as LARPing, as has been claimed by several in this thread.

I meant after you die, which isn't a self-imposed restriction but 'game over'.

It's not and never was a game mechanic.

How is it not a game mechanic when it fundamentally alters every aspect of how the game is played?

It doesn't alter anything. You die and either restart or reload if you want to keep playing. It's like saying that dropping quarters in the old arcade machines was a game mechanic that altered the way we played them.

To argue that certain features are mechanics and others are not purely on the basis of where the button is positioned in the interface is absolutely ridiculous.

It's not about where the buttons are. It's what they do. Things that affect gameplay WHILE YOU'RE PLAYING a game are game mechanics. Anything that affect your game when you aren't playing it (like loading a save or restarting or buying a DLC that would add AWSUM weapons) aren't game mechanics.

 

[Shadenuat]

It would be easier to make a game that requires resting after every encounter (which for IE games often was true because many encounters were just pretty deadly) than a game where you'd fix rest-scum issue somehow that wouldn't require you to.
That or destroy the problem at it's core like Dark Souls did with fully respawning mobs/true ironman game/game where time&supplies are a live-or-die resource (Faster Than Light).
Half-assed design tricks like in PoE that mostly just rely on gamer's psychology are, in their essence, fake.

 

[Average Manatee]

Limited resting based on rations yet 90% of your powers are restored after every battle anyway

Uh. I don't know what game you're playing, but the per-encounter abilities of primarily per-rest spellcaster classes are weaksauce and will not win you tough battles in PotD. When you're out of per-rests, it's time to rest.

And if you're talking about using non-per-rest/spellcaster classes, well, duh? You can do that in the IE games too, you know. BG1 is perfectly finishable with a party of fighters and thieves.

As for resting in general, it seems people either get it or they don't. I said what had to be said about it here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ty-release-thread.98003/page-143#post-3855471

Not talking about PotD (because playing PoE once is masochistic enough), and I'm not talking about "tough battles", because of course people are going to rest before boss monsters. The point is that there's no real attrition from the trash mobs, where there was certainly attrition in IE games if you didn't rest. And a large number of the battles qualify as trash mobs.

As to your linked post: Adding a time sink to an exploit doesn't make it not an exploit and taking away a time sink from something that isn't an exploit doesn't make it an exploit. Both are equally bad systems if we're looking for some kind of hardcore game with maximum difficulty and a focus on tactical battles, but one is worse for adding a time sink.

 

[DeepOcean]

"DeepOcean, 99,9% of the fights are trash mobs and the only fights that aren't, they are behind generic go kill contracts or is a dragon on the end of a 15 levels trash mob dungeon." I would think this game is crap.

Wasnt icewind dale 2 also 99% trash mobs? and also directed by sawyer?

Yep, that is why it was the worst IE game and the only one I gave up half way. Look, there are things that the IE games did well but the trash mobs weren't one of them, on some, like BG 2, it wasn't that terrible, there were plenty of tough fights to compensate, while others like BG 1 wilderness areas and Icewind Dale 2 it was mind melting awful. When Sawyer said he was going to improve the IE games I tought he would fix that shit that was really broken, and REALLY needed a fix but he had this very peculiar vision of what needed to be "fixed" an just kept the trash mob army, worse, he gone back from BG 2 and made it worse than Icewind Dale 2 because even that crap still had its moments.

 

[Infinitron]

Not talking about PotD (because playing PoE once is masochistic enough), and I'm not talking about "tough battles", because of course people are going to rest before boss monsters. The point is that there's no real attrition from the trash mobs, where there was certainly attrition in IE games if you didn't rest. And a large number of the battles qualify as trash mobs.

Sorry, but that experience of the game just doesn't match with mine at all. Aloth and Durance's spells are a commonly used resource, and not just in "boss fights". If you're coasting by with Arcane Assaults and Interdictions in every fight, you're not getting the game's true experience.

And anyway, attrition isn't just spells, it's also health.

 

[t]

It's not about where the buttons are. It's what they do. Things that affect gameplay WHILE YOU'RE PLAYING a game are game mechanics. Anything that affect your game when you aren't playing it (like loading a save or restarting or buying a DLC that would add AWSUM weapons) aren't game mechanics.

I have to say, that I play differently when I ironman, so in a sense not being able to reload changes the way I play, while I do so.

Still, it's p. funny that some people get very defensive about their own larping (rest limitation). Ironman is also a larp of sorts, embrace it.

 

[Alex]

As I see it, self-imposed restrictions on gameplay are always worse than having the game impose real restrictions. But they can be worse in different degrees. roshan mentioned playing Fallout 2 in ironman mode as an example. The main issue of doing that is that Fallout 2 isn't really designed with ironman in mind, and repeating the beginning of the game several times can be really annoying. Rogue-likes, on the other hand, don't suffer from this problem because they are built around this kind of gameplay, usually having several random elements that assure the game won't become repetitive while the player is still learning the ropes.

However, ironmanning is one of the best self-restrictions one can use in these games, because it is pretty clear when you would be breaking it (whenever you reload to a point before something happened, possibly with the exception of bugs). The rest thing is not so clear, however. Of course, if you are resting between every two fights, you are doing it wrong (though those early levels can be a bit problematic). But without the game enforcing any kind of real restriction, it doesn't feel much fun, because you don't have any kind of standard to meet but your own. Maybe you can make your own rules, such "at least three fights before a rest", though these feel arbitrary. You can try to beat your own best (in game) time, but you will only have a measuring standard when you finish the game. You can refuse to rest in dangerous areas, though this can make some parts a bit annoying.

In the end, though, the game would have been better (in my opinion, at least) if there were more consequences for resting in wrong places. Such as having things happen depending on how long you are taking. The random encounter we have can be a good consequence as well if you are playing ironman, or if you only allow saving after a successful rest. But after a certain level, I get the impression they hardly ever matter.

All this said, though, I still much prefer BG's reliance on longer term resources to PoE "per battle" thing. BG's system is broke, but it can be fixed by self restrictions in various ways. PoE on the other hand removes those longer term resources and no amount of self restriction can change it. Well, it could, actually, but they would resonate far worse than BG's...

 

[Kz3r0]

Why reinvent the wheel? .

 

[roshan]

I meant after you die, which isn't a self-imposed restriction but 'game over'.

Sorry to break it to you but that is still a self-imposed restriction. Hence according to your own criteria, you are LARPing.

It doesn't alter anything. You die and either restart or reload if you want to keep playing. It's like saying that dropping quarters in the old arcade machines was a game mechanic that altered the way we played them.

Sleeping is basically the same thing. If you play a battle in a sub optimal way, and end up with too few resources left to continue the game, you hit the button and gain them back. Both are essentially reset buttons of different types. It's up to you as a player to decide to what extent you want to take advantage of those buttons.

It's not about where the buttons are. It's what they do. Things that affect gameplay WHILE YOU'RE PLAYING a game are game mechanics. Anything that affect your game when you aren't playing it (like loading a save or restarting or buying a DLC that would add AWSUM weapons) aren't game mechanics.

They are game mechanics when they have an impact on gameplay. And save/load does have a profound impact on gameplay. Everything you do is different and "tainted" by the presence of that mechanic. You can pick silly dialogue options because you can reload afterwards, or use risky strategies in battles, again because you can simply reload.

 

[almondblight]

I actually don't think the rest system in the BG games is the main issue. Sure, it could be better (plenty of RPGs have better systems), but it's not like attrition works well in the game. The fights you usually hear people bring up as being particularly good/difficult - Kangxx, Firkraag, that group of demons in the house in the bridge district - are battles that people rest before. Nobody, no matter what their personal rest rules are, goes around saying "hey, one of the best fights in BG was generic group of orcs #15, because after the first 14 generic groups of orcs you're out of spells and almost dead."

Even if there was a good save system (Shadowrun, or KotC without backtracking), attrition would still be done better with 2 or 3 difficult handcrafted encounters than 15 copy and paste trash encounters. A poor save system shows how silly the defenses of trash encounters are, but even with a good save system trash encounters would still suck.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I meant after you die, which isn't a self-imposed restriction but 'game over'.

Sorry to break it to you but that is still a self-imposed restriction. Hence according to your own criteria, you are LARPing.

You play a game, die, you have 3 options: start a new game, load previous save, stop playing. Without imposing any self-restrictions, loading is the only logical option here, assuming you want to finish the game and aren't ready to rage-quit yet. It has as much to do with game mechanics as the act of installing the game and clicking on its icon.

Basically, dying ends your play session, loading a save starts another session.

Sleeping is basically the same thing. If you play a battle in a sub optimal way, and end up with too few resources left to continue the game, you hit the button and gain them back. Both are essentially reset buttons of different types. It's up to you as a player to decide to what extent you want to take advantage of those buttons.

Loading a game won't restore your health, spells, and abilities. Resting does. Resting is an actual in-game mechanic - developers' way of saying 'we don't really get DnD but we think that you should be able to rest whenever you feel like it because you're awesome'.

 

[roshan]

You play a game, die, you have 3 options: start a new game, load previous save, stop playing. Without imposing any self-restrictions, loading is the only logical option here, assuming you want to finish the game and aren't ready to rage-quit yet. It has as much to do with game mechanics as the act of installing the game and clicking on its icon.

Basically, dying ends your play session, loading a save starts another session.

Again, this relies on self restriction to only reload when you die. We're not talking exclusively about death here. In reality, you can save and reload the game whenever you want. You can reload after every roll that goes wrong. It's left entirely up to you to self restrict when you use the reload button.

Loading a game won't restore your health, spells, and abilities. Resting does. Resting is an actual in-game mechanic -

Sorry to break it to you but in many cases when you reload, you can regain access to your health, spells, abilities, closed gameplay options and even dead characters. It's like rest on steroids. Both features can be used and exploited in practically the same way. The only difference is the "feelz" and the positioning of the button.

developers' way of saying 'we don't really get DnD but we think that you should be able to rest whenever you feel like it because you're awesome'.

Reloading is the developer's way of saying that you are totally awesome and can have a 100% perfect playthrough if you so desire, and don't worry about ever making a mistake because you never have to with this mechanic in place.

 

[Lhynn]

I dislike reloading mechanics, but they are often the lesser of several evils, thats the entire reason for them existing.

 

[Dreaad]

This discussion is a mess.

 

[Ninjerk]

This discussion is a mess.

I love it. Lots of buttrekt