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Comments
When dealing with that situation, players tend to use improvised metrics. For instance, it becomes less a case of "I have 69 health and they deal 17 damage a hit", exactly as you say, but it's replaced by "I can take about five hits before I go down". Both are quantified systems and equally useful, of course, but the point is that without a readily observable metric, players will create their own metrics. So the system is still understood by numbers -- just simpler ones.
Like I said, I think the best way to do this is to remove or reduce speed penalties while acting, adding in dodges and relegating damage to stamina damage while blocking. Which are all pretty simple changes that don't fundamentally alter the system. It also means players get a couple of options -- do they trust themselves to measure distance and avoid damage for no penalty whatsoever, or do they take the penalty to their stamina? It's not complex and it fits right in with the existing system.
The same goes for all games, though. Players in Dark Souls do precisely the same thing. "I can take four hits from a skeleton before going down" or "Hollows take two hits to go down".
I'm going to go right back to the first post I made on this topic.
Well, that's the kind of thing I primarily meant when I was talking about borrowing execution of mechanics from Dark Souls.
O <-- full circle doh
I disagree about dodging, mostly because dodging outside of running around doesn't really exist and I was talking about ways to make the encounters more fun outside of adding entirely new mechanics.
Anyway! So. My new file.
My new file on Skyrim is a bit of an experiment. It was to see if making yourself underpowered would make the game more challenging. And- surprise- it actually did!
Essentially, what I'm doing is spreading my perks around twelve skills; the five Magic skills (Alteration, Illusion, Destruction, Restoration, and Conjuration), Enchanting, Alchemy, Smithing, One-Handed, Archery, Light Armour, and Stealth.
This actually makes the game extremely challenging. Light Armour is hard to level in general; normally, one would either get better armour (ha, that involves leveling Smithing, which is damned hard to do without access to Dwarven Armour Smithing) or like, invest a whole bunch of perks in it. But I can't do that, so I've had to settle with using armour I've found in dungeons (Elven Helmet and Boots, Scaled Gauntlets, Gilded Elven Armour) and enchanted it (with +magicka regen and +Restoration), leaving me with an armour rating of a little over 100 and 150 Health at Level 30.
To compare, at this level, enemies are wielding Ebony weapons. Any given high-level enemy can wipe off a good 1/3rd to 1/2 of my health in one go, and I've had a Draugr Deathlord oneshot me without a power attack at full health.
The good news is: The game's actually fun! Dragon fights are challenging and involve some level of strategy (lolol Skyrim dragonfights involving strategy- it's true!), boss fights become quite interesting as I have to figure out how to avoid their attacks while killing them, and it can take upwards of forty hits to kill particularly tough enemies, leaving me to try and figure out how to deal with them. (The answer is to snipe them. With fireballs.)
So yeah. If anyone's looking to play Skyrim, consider doing a challenge something like I'm doing. You'd be surprised how fun it is.
I thought Dragon's Dogma was gonna be like Skyrim before I watched more on, but now that I'm playing, I think I like it more. Bare bones story though.
Started Guild Wars 2. This game kicks all the ass.
>talk to random NPC with no indication that he's important
>starts fully voiced quest chain/area event, which several people help with
Glenn:
That sort of thing has actually been implemented a few times. The problem is that magical healing, if available, always always supplants it in any noticeable scale. In combat, it doesn't happen nearly quickly enough to do any good. Out of combat, your magic typically regenerates faster and generates orders of magnitude more healing in the long term. The only thing it winds up being useful for is a minor convenience when you go through a series of minor, trivial skirmishes that scratch you a bit -- and even then, you'd be fine healing magically anyway. The purpose of food in games like that basically just comes down to picking up a buff from special food and/or keeping you from getting massive penalties or dying to complete starvation.
Guild Wars 2 is a great game...
I should go play more of that.
Mount & Blade has a good healing system.
Which is pretty much this: no healing in combat. It's good because HP values are super squishy in relation to damage values, but armour does a lot to help that out. So choosing good armour is pretty important rather than just of being a throwaway decision.
Man, I think I'd be more forgiving of SMT: Strange Journey if it weren't for that fucking first person interface.
I get that it's supposed to be atmosphere building, like you're in the suit yourself, but it doesn't work because the tiny screen keeps that from happening like it could in games like Metroid Prime. Devil Survivor had a more clever gimmick with the characters using items that looked like DS which was a nice little bit that gave an association of power.
I thought it was pretty clever when in Overclocked, they redesigned it so that it was distinctly a 3DS.
Anyway, Guild Wars 2...basically fixes almost every problem I have with MMOs. Especially with regard to combat.
Blech. I should play GW2.
y u no make public trial anet
There's an honest to god chance that both System Shock games will see an official release on GOG/Steam.
for a game so critically acclaimed, it's pretty difficult to run properly, so this will do us well.
Oh, awesome. That's one of those games I would totally play if, you know, it were possible to get it.
We should play GW2 together sometime CU.
The way the game works makes it so that we would be able to play together at absolutely anytime regardless of our levels.
While I do agree that GW2 fixes a lot of the problems MMO's face (a main one being the shitty grind) these days and moves away from 'like WOW, but...', for me it got stale after a while. Also I didn't really like the universe its set and didn't find myself engaging at all really. I felt that the dungeons were too spammy and relied a lot on chance as I couldn't figure out how the aggro works. I understand that it's supposed to be getting away from the standard three roles of classes (healer, tank and dps), but that system of classes and roles seems to work in other MMO's, so there isn't really a need to do away with it.
If any of you have ever played RIFT (my favourite MMO, WOW clone that it is) there is a fourth role available to be played called support. The support role is reserved for bards and shit like that and while not necessary for any 5-man dungeons, can be of great aid in dungeons and even more so for raiding.
However having said that the PVP in GW2 was amazing and if I was more of the PVP person I would have probably continued to play. No subscription fee is a godsend as well but that wasn't really new to GW2 and was kind of expected after the first one.
I can't really stand PVP in MMOs. It almost always winds up being "die instantly if you don't grind for weeks to get entry-level PVP gear" and/or "guess the class the developer had a hardon for".
Is it out of the ordinary for developers to protest their own company's backhanded decisions without being shuttered? Because that's what I fear will happen.
Man, I go on to Escapist to see Moviebob and Jim Sterling manages to have an episode based of the fallacy of arguing 'companies exist to make money'.
Finally got Fire Emblem Awakening. First of all, what tips to you have for a FE newbie like me? Second of all, why do the characters have no feet?
Your characters have no feet because they don't require them.
Anyway, Fire Emblem tips:
So basically, be conservative but not stingy, distribute XP evenly, and don't spam strong classes like there's no tomorrow.
It's not so much "distribute XP evenly" as "avoid giving it to your stronger starting characters at all if possible."
This isn't actually true in Awakening. Due to the presence of reclassing and unlimited skirmishes, it's often better to promote early to gain early access to powerful skills. Plus if you hit 20/20 you can use a Second Seal to reclass yourself as a level 1 version of that promoted class. Meaning you're free to level up as much as you want.
Also, PICK SPEED AS YOUR ASSET, NO MATTER WHAT YOUR CLASS. Speed is a God Stat in FE as it controls Double Attacking, which is imperative for killing enemies fast.
Also Also: If you have Pegasus Knights, promote them to Dark Flier and get Galeforce at lv.15 ASAP. It's the most powerful skill in the game and you can pass it to their children.
Also Also Also: Use Donnel, reclass him to a Mercenary. He's the Magikarp of this game. Meaning if slog through his first 10 levels, he WILL turn into a god unit.
Also Also Also Also: Just use this.
To clarify...
Typically, any class will cap at 20, but you can use an item to upgrade their class while they're anywhere from 10-20. Upgrading them gives a huge stat boost right away, then drops them to level 1 so they can get another 20 levels' worth of stats over the rest of the game.
The thing is, when you upgrade them early, you skip over all the stats you would have gotten up till level 20. The characters don't scale to their level -- they gain stats during the act of leveling up, and so the only thing that matters is how many times you level up.
Additionally, how much XP you get is based on the level discrepancy between you and your target, which penalizes you for killing weak enemies with a far stronger unit. An advanced class is effectively considered to be level 21-40, etc. -- so if you upgrade early you're also gaining XP in the advanced class at a snail's pace because you're fighting level 10-ish enemies using a level 21 unit (who has the stats of maybe a level 13). In the long run, this screws you because not only do you need that unit eating pretty much everything on the field to get any levels at all (thus depriving everyone else of any), but he'll personally have way less stats by the time he reaches enemies that are up to scratch than if he just took a reasonable share of them as a lower-class unit.
^Again this doesn't apply, except for the experience penalty but that's not hard to surmount, in Awakening.
I should point out that (whilst I'm not sure of its applicability to Awakening specifically) the characters with high stats to begin with are not always like this. The most notable examples I can think of being Oifey from FE4, Seth from FE8, and Titania from FE9. Although, from what I can tell from the internet, Frederick falls more under the "Oifey" Archetype than the "Jeigan" (what Alex is talking about) one.
So, do people actually like the whole getting experience per action based on level differences, etc. that seems to be so common in SRPGs? Because seriously I think it's the least enjoyable RPG mechanic I've ever experienced. Depending on the game, it might not matter too much (that is, if you're already expected to be grinding a lot anyway) but really the only thing that that mechanic seems to do is discourage doing anything actually sensible in a battle, instead having to make sure that every single thing you do is based around leveling your characters rather than actually playing the game.
Actually, now that I think of it, it's basically the same problem (albeit in a different way) as Oblivion's leveling system, where if you wanted to create an effective character you have to constantly micromanage your skill use to make sure you're always gaining exactly the right number of skills per level, etc. and so you can't just, like... go and kill monsters and expect to get stronger as you do so, like you can in any reasonable RPG.
Isn't the entire point of the mechanic to discourage grinding?
I mean, if they implement it in a game where grinding is legitimately necessary, then yeah, that's bullshit, but otherwise it's just a means of getting the player to move forward.