tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post3337868668045633552..comments2024-03-28T10:19:08.172-04:00Comments on The CRPG Addict: Wizardry VI: Temple of DoomCRPG Addicthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-19699498975480945322023-11-10T08:49:18.512-05:002023-11-10T08:49:18.512-05:00I also like to play without needing to ressurect. ...I also like to play without needing to ressurect. I don't know, it feels bad and I know some fights get harder this way. The one and only I accepted a character death was the final battle with the Baldur's Gate 2 mod Ascension, with Jan Jansen dying, but it was so hard that I guessed I could not get a better outcome.<br /><br />I also like to save when I want to because a) I don't want to play parts of the game over and over again, b) I don't need the tension, I am playing for fun and relaxation, not the opposite and c) although after many RPGs I am not the best player, I guess, but I think I have kind of a right to get on in the game, too.<br />The pros are free to limit themselves, as Chet does by e.g. only saving at the start of an area.<br /><br />Britannia47Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-66871884515059378142015-12-24T15:48:10.055-05:002015-12-24T15:48:10.055-05:00Yes, I agree. A game that allows limited saving ne...Yes, I agree. A game that allows limited saving needs to be fair in between those points. I'd still rather have limited saves and a moderately-difficult game than save anywhere and an extraordinarily difficult game. I think there needs to be more consequence to death than simply hitting reload.CRPG Addicthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-47985212772033190002015-12-22T21:17:37.550-05:002015-12-22T21:17:37.550-05:00I think an important consideration is how the make...I think an important consideration is how the makers of the game balanced the game with respect to the intended save system. The easier it is to save the harder it should be to survive everything, and vice versa, but you can't assume the creators built it that way. If you take game in which you can save anywhere, anytime and consequently the designers put in lots of arbitrary deaths then greatly limiting your saves wouldnt make the game better, just more time-consuming and more a pain in the ass.<br /><br />For example, I'm very slowly playing through BG1 for the first time and there are many level appropriate fights that I don't win until the 5th, 10th, 20th attempt due to die rolls. I don't see the game being more fun if I save at the start of a dungeon instead of right before the penultimate battle, just more tedious.<br /><br />Therefore I think a good game is one that balances its difficulty with the ability to save and that artificially restricting your ability to save on your own would only improve a game if they messed up the balance and you knew better how to fix it. Just blindly making it harder to save in every game won't necessarily make it better.<br /><br />Did that make sense?Jonesyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10646365932452250447noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-237597286964232992013-12-05T23:26:03.809-05:002013-12-05T23:26:03.809-05:00Yes, it's beautiful... like a naked dryad.Yes, it's beautiful... like a naked dryad.Kenny McCormickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01553499727945099493noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-66645221828165740322013-12-05T13:46:47.072-05:002013-12-05T13:46:47.072-05:00Indeed, modern games have become so complex it wou...Indeed, modern games have become so complex it would be very cruel not to allow liberal saving. NPC followers get lost, you are stuck in a place surrounded by steep mountains, for whatever reason your character falls through the ground into a nether dimension... a tile-based turn-based rpg with iconic perspective didn't even create these problems.Alexander Sebastian Schulzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15135338616598357444noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-16905312262479451222013-12-05T13:40:58.750-05:002013-12-05T13:40:58.750-05:00I didn't like that, in Torment, death was inco...I didn't like that, in Torment, death was inconsequential. Previous incarnations lost their memory, and since memory in this game is symbolized by XP you should have lost XP with each death. That's the mechanism World of Warcraft uses (or used?). But it only matters during the leveling process. And well, you can always grind your XP back. But I think a significant XP penalty is the way to go today.Alexander Sebastian Schulzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15135338616598357444noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-39070898702158294992013-12-05T13:31:01.684-05:002013-12-05T13:31:01.684-05:00Heart of China? Is that a reference to an obscure ...Heart of China? Is that a reference to an obscure adventure game? I never got far in there, but it looked beautiful.Alexander Sebastian Schulzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15135338616598357444noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-85491245046031817692013-11-04T14:16:11.143-05:002013-11-04T14:16:11.143-05:00Don't know if this has been mentioned already ...Don't know if this has been mentioned already or if it is obvious, but Queequeg is the native guy from Moby Dick!gboukenshahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12106689617071459570noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-33848334570447723332013-10-27T00:42:32.240-04:002013-10-27T00:42:32.240-04:00So it seems I save a lot more then the rest of you...So it seems I save a lot more then the rest of you, but enforce a lot stricter in game rules. For example; no one in my party dies if there is a non-trivial consequence to it. So in Baldur's Gate, if one person in the party dies, I reload the combat right then and start over. The challenge should be in the fight, the interesting tactical choices. Not in if I get bored before walking the 30 minutes between the fight and the edge of the area. <br /><br />Also all this talk of limited saving assumes a perfect game with no bugs and a computer that never crashes. Half the reason I saved in Baldur's gate so much is that the unpatched version would crash randomly; turning weather effects off helped this a lot, but it would still often crash when changing areas, if I looked at it funny, or so on. This isn't to mention Skyrim, Oblivion and Fallout 3: You jumped wrong, and are now stuck on some geometry. You don't have a recent save? SUCKS TO BE YOU. Not to mention FO3's habit of corrupting save files means I never use the same one twice, just make more and more of them. Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-41669253594772671252013-10-26T22:46:53.247-04:002013-10-26T22:46:53.247-04:00I can see why RLs use permadeath, and while I love...I can see why RLs use permadeath, and while I love Nethack it is about the only game I like that feature in. <br /><br />I also don't like gamest that make dying too inconsequential (Halo 3) because I can just charge in and keep fighting, wearing the enemies down with death after death; and don't think I didn't notice you secretly refilling my health meter when I died, Space Marine. <br /><br />The one I like is the chance to do a fight over, with no consequences. If I die an have to walk hours back to that spot I usually put the game down and go do something else; half the time I won't pick it back up, as playing the same boring section over again, is well, boring. There are *so* many games on my shelf I haven't played that I will just go play one of them. <br /><br />The right choice for a game, in my opinion, is let you do the fight as many times as you want, but you have to start over each time; You still have the full tactical experience of the fight, which is the interesting and fun part. There are fights I had to do a dozen times in Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale until I got the exact right strategy. That isn't EASY, it just means I don't have to spend an hour walking across an empty landscape being bored before getting back into the action (However, loading those games off CD often FELT like an hour on my old PIII 500 MHz)Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-50531485911791703162013-10-26T19:23:20.194-04:002013-10-26T19:23:20.194-04:00Good comments in this thread. "Racist" d...Good comments in this thread. "Racist" doesn't have to mean blatantly offensive or deliberately designed to be hateful. An artist creating a game, book, television show, or film needs to ask himself whether he's creating realistic characters or simply perpetuating stereotypes--and if the latter, if there's an artistic reason for it.CRPG Addicthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-73294452849559029712013-10-26T19:19:07.863-04:002013-10-26T19:19:07.863-04:00Good to have you with us. Try a gimlet next time.Good to have you with us. Try a gimlet next time.CRPG Addicthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-40368593460785550482013-10-26T19:18:17.280-04:002013-10-26T19:18:17.280-04:00Yes, I fully agree. I said something like this in ...Yes, I fully agree. I said something like this in an earlier posting. I'd appreciate the option to set save regularity when starting a game. I've literally never seen that as an option.CRPG Addicthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-57964141156342263902013-10-26T05:08:50.308-04:002013-10-26T05:08:50.308-04:00More games need to have difficulty toggles that af...More games need to have difficulty toggles that affect how often you can save. Some people want to blow through a game using nothing but the power of the mystical quicksave button, sure, but it is *really* easy to add in a toggle for "only save in towns" or "only save once per X minutes of gameplay" or whatever.<br /><br />Although that wouldn't work for games that are built around players saving between every encounter. With ubiquitous saving, developers have a nasty habit of building in more irritating gotcha deaths, so much so that a good measure of a modern game's quality is whether or not someone who'd never played that particular game before could beat it without dying once on their first playthrough. Not if it's very likely, mind you, just if it's a thing that could plausibly happen. Like, they're great at this type of game, and the enemies are all beatable the first time if you're good enough as opposed to requiring you to know what they're going to do before they do it, and there's no insta-gib dialogue options or invisible deathtraps or other things where the only possible way to avoid death is to already know exactly how the level is set up.Maldeushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00281269631242362618noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-19455151134237780522013-10-26T03:14:04.219-04:002013-10-26T03:14:04.219-04:00True rogue-likes are, like true Scotsmen, in the e...True rogue-likes are, like true Scotsmen, in the eye of the beholder.<br /><br />I find perma-death just as lazy a design decision as inconsequential death (in a CRPG). I prefer a middle ground, where death has significant adverse consequences but is not game-ending.bansheehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16438986830273754976noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-89194063601903347942013-10-25T21:15:58.614-04:002013-10-25T21:15:58.614-04:00Permanent death might be a little extreme, but I w...Permanent death might be a little extreme, but I wish it had found some way to limit saving. I could do that myself, of course, but sometimes it's easy to succumb to temptation.CRPG Addicthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-36384117734834836642013-10-25T20:07:26.520-04:002013-10-25T20:07:26.520-04:00For me having a save to fall back on is nice. I d...For me having a save to fall back on is nice. I don't get enough time to keep starting over if I get killed. Besides, just because the option is there, doesn't mean you have to use it, right?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-53327928758311671452013-10-25T15:32:04.139-04:002013-10-25T15:32:04.139-04:00Yes, by all means, let's put our fingers in ou...Yes, by all means, let's put our fingers in our ears, shout LA LA LA, and refuse to even <i>consider</i> any of these issues. Dammit, we don't WANT to think critically or have our preconceptions challenged or ever learn anything ever!GeoX, one of the GeoX boys.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14658452994152399308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-33895945586318093742013-10-25T15:21:42.168-04:002013-10-25T15:21:42.168-04:00I propose we replace all character designs with na...I propose we replace all character designs with nameless faceless non-gender specific mutes rendered in #808080 grey on a #808080 grey background, refered to only as 'the pc' or 'npc number x'.Vicnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-32102968837508959122013-10-25T14:05:01.863-04:002013-10-25T14:05:01.863-04:00Everything is racist these days.
As a Norwegian I...Everything is racist these days. <br />As a Norwegian I'm especially offended by vikings constantly being portrayed with horned helmets.<br />PetrusOctavianusnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-91906449761659422312013-10-25T13:31:12.930-04:002013-10-25T13:31:12.930-04:00The stereotypes you present are certainly all raci...The stereotypes you present are certainly all racist. Helmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00584102280299430293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-65856874103375227522013-10-25T10:26:55.211-04:002013-10-25T10:26:55.211-04:00All the awful, frustrating, game killing elements ...All the awful, frustrating, game killing elements (snipers, land mines, insta-kill traps, roll X not to die events) are born out of the desire to challenge players who can reload at will. - Apparently the 'challenge' is a combination of patience and save discipline. It's like comparing IWDs encounters to BG2s.<br /><br />Where you can save, and how what you can do directly afterwards has a huge effect on how the game plays. Saving only in safe locations only really works IF you can't gamble, steal, or otherwise abuse the RNG.<br /><br />Slightly more on topic: I do like the Sirtech solution of fixing loot rolls in advance. By increasing the delay between the action and the payoff they discouraged savescumming to an extent.Vicnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-48664440572812783352013-10-25T09:18:30.489-04:002013-10-25T09:18:30.489-04:00Dear Crpg addict,
For me, the save scumming is th...Dear Crpg addict,<br /><br />For me, the save scumming is the band of Bane. I wish Bradley had keep the permanent death of the earlier series. I suppose there was a market reason for changing this to something more user friendly. JJnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-11834439048685988932013-10-25T08:06:43.864-04:002013-10-25T08:06:43.864-04:00Yeah, not racism per se, but pigeonholing. It gets...Yeah, not racism per se, but pigeonholing. It gets a bit tiring when every Native American is a mystic, every Italian America a mafioso, every old Asian man either a Confucius or Fu Manchu clone.<br /><br />In a fantasy world, there's every opportunity to challenge such crap.Tristan Gallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16769219573533545742noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-75514383198768272292013-10-25T02:39:37.570-04:002013-10-25T02:39:37.570-04:00This is slightly offtopic, but I wanted to add my ...This is slightly offtopic, but I wanted to add my voice to your chorus - love the blog. Stumbled upon it two months ago, read it all and check in daily in the hope of another update. Commenting as anonymous since there seems no site-specific registration. <br /><br />Anyway, I follow you religiously and enjoy seeing you work through many a game I never finished. It's like youtoube LPs/playthroughs, but with text! Personally I have become hung up on the "current" nethack version, and play morrowind, MMVI and freecol on the side. Recent retro-games I played will fall outside of the RPG category, so let me finish this inspired rambling with complementing you on your work once more. Keep it up.<br /><br />An inebriated and enchanted followerAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com