11 réponses à ce sujet

[mickey111]

It's early and we've no specific gameplay info so I'll have to be vague... how many peopl here know what "phase based" combat is? It's where you'd encounter some enemies, you would start the battle out by telling your poeople what to do and then start the battle and they'd do things that best fit your established guidelines. Each phased based game can vary quite a lot in just how vague or how specific you can be when telling people to do ****, but one thing most have in common is that you can just say "nah, **** it" to the people you're ordering about by selecting the autoresolve option. Autoresolve is an absolutee godsend in games which are full of trash encounters. A trash encounter is the kind of combat which you could easily beat with your eyes closed, one hand tied behind your back without breaking a sweat. Both Dragon Age games have had hundreds of instances of trash encounters. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just take the easy way out?


 the ''autoresolve'' acts as an ignore button for **** you don't want to waste time on, the rest of the details can range from fairly minor to quite signifigant. In theory using autoresolve is usually less effective than if you did it yourself. You might get less experience points for victory, your team might use more health potions and magic potions than neccessary, but if it makes the combat less of a chore and more fun then auto resolve is something I'd probably use as often as I can. Now, I don't really care much at all for phase based combat myself, but I
think that this one autoresolve idea could appeal greatly to some of us
in a Bioware game and it'd be nice to borrow that one thing from the
phase based system.

Modifié par mickey111, 19 mars 2013 - 12:09 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Developers aren't tying consequences to combat anymore and its making games weaker for it.

You say "anymore." Has that really happened much in the past?

I could maybe see something like Fallout (especially the first, before the timer gets patched out) in that getting heavily wounded means having to rest to recuperate. How common was consequences in combat that wasn't "kill everyone or die yourself?"

[Allan Schumacher]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

In Fallout and Arcanum, you can wage war with every town, killing everyone there. This can make doing some things in game quite difficult.

But barring instances of mass genocide, in the first Quest for Glory, you wander into a cave and encounter a feral bear. If you engage it in combat, you kill it... and then it turns into the human form of the Baron's son, who you were sent to save. Whoops. Maybe combat wasn't the best outcome there.

True.  But Quest for Glory is as much "Sierra Adventure Game" as it is an RPG.  After you do that, the game pops up saying "Maybe you shouldn't have done that" and suggests reloading the game.  At least it doesn't go "Space Quest" on us and let us know hours later we mucked up.

In Final Fantasy 3 (US), during one of the opening sequences, you can lose a fight that will not result in a game over, but will siginificantly delay you obtaining two characters, Mog and Umaro. In addition, you will lose the chance to unlock a certain type of move for Mog (the River Dance) at all in the game.

Interesting example.

[Allan Schumacher]

So it may seem like I'm throwing them under the bus.

I didn't get this impression. I was more asking for clarification because going through my rolodex of history, the occurrence of "combat with consequences besides kill or be killed" wasn't coming up too often. In other words, I was curious how influenced it was by a nostalgic reference to "the good old days."

The exact Space Quest dilema you outlined happened to me in one of my QFG playthroughs doing exactly this. I accidentally dumped out the potion and hit Quick Save and then, in frustration, quit for the day. I loaded it back up completing forgetting I had made this bone head mistake and got to the end of the game and had zero recourse. I had to start all the way over (because I am not one of those smart people who kept multiple saves).

I have mixed feelings about stuff like this. I know some use an example like this and go "see, the game didn't hold your hand back then." But at the same time, outright sabotaging one's game experience (especially through an accident) isn't necessarily a pleasant thing. Although the Sierra games were often reasonably fair for this sort of thing (it'd be clearly a stupid thing to do. Ooops you just dumped the potion, that was probably dumb of you), it wasn't always (what do you mean I needed to pick up that coin on the spaceship at the start of the game to ensure I wouldn't be blocked several hours later in the game!). Though Space Quest kind of takes some level of pride in killing the gamer haha.

Ideally, the game would probably allow you to create another potion (in some way, at some cost). Alternatively, suboptimal conclusions can still happen (rather than game over), but then things can get pretty divergent.

[Allan Schumacher]

metatheurgist wrote...

It's been a long time but didn't companions in BG die permanently as a result of combat? 'course you could say that with save games you can erase that consequence just by reloading.

In my experience this was the most common thing that would happen (it's what my friends and I did)

[Allan Schumacher]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

metatheurgist wrote...

It's been a long time but didn't companions in BG die permanently as a result of combat? 'course you could say that with save games you can erase that consequence just by reloading.

In my experience this was the most common thing that would happen (it's what my friends and I did)

That doesn't diminish the value of the feature, though.  An option not taken has value simply in having been an option.

Agreed.

[Allan Schumacher]

The tricky part of your example is that it took two games to conclude that.

I agree that game difficulty should scale better than just upping numbers. On some level doing what you and Jimmy describe can be straight forward, but on other levels it's less easy.

For example: The difference between using standard attacks and special skills is a lot easier to set up than determining how to use cross-class combos in an intelligent and reactive way. If you make the AI too prescriptive in applying those cross-class combos, it becomes easy to game the system (and it can just be difficult to properly have it set up).

I don't actually know the costs, though, so I am speculating somewhat. I'll ask Mike about it when he gets back from PAX East and pass along your posts.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 22 mars 2013 - 07:48 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Also, speaking of the Megaman issue, this could be something that lends itself better to episodic content? Using not only player choice for shaping the story, but also combat tendencies and oft-used player strategies, adjusting enemies' tactics accordingly?

Episodic content does indeed allow improved iteration based on consumer feedback (since it actually exists.... haha)

It is difficult, I wouldn't dream of saying otherwise. It basically requires the combat team to be as good as the most veteran player will be after a few months of playing the game before the combat system is even fully operationalized (or require going "back to the drawing board" a number of times after a combat system has been finished). With a game like Monopoly, it is easy (relatively) to devise an AI that plays smart. After all, Monopoly has been out for nearly 100 years. You all will have to devise a system that requires experienced players to think on the fly, while not completely scaring and penalizng novice players who just want to be able to one-hit everything to more on through the story.

There's an aspect of simply knowing the rules, but there's a bit more to it than that. With monopoly, only one player moves at a time. That makes a gigantic difference (I actually worked on the ORTS Research Project at my university one summer and this was cemented home. I assisted with improving 2D pathfinding algorithms as well as combat mechanics for target prioritization between opposing squads).

So a good player can determine a particular sequence against a particular enemies, but the biggest thing is that the player is adaptable. If you know Storm of the Century is amazing, and while you're setting it up you realize the AI is threatening you in some other way, you can abort and shift to a different strategy. However, depending on the circumstances, you may NOT change your strategy.

The adaptability due to real time changes in the environment is a large part of what makes it so difficult. Which is why a difficulty level that is basically "use abilities" or "don't use abilities" is much easier to do as it's binary.

[Allan Schumacher]

Quest for Glory I was not.

In any case, I find semantics arguments about what is or is not an RPG doesn't really go anywhere, and ask that it be toned down.

[Allan Schumacher]

You've said this in so many threads now. Has Mike ever looked annoyed when you dump yet another bunch of posts on his lap? =) I am imagining responses like this,

This is why I typically email him!

[Allan Schumacher]

Sopa de Gato wrote...

Does anyone else find it funny that people take a "We want a skip combat" option seriously, but if you suggested a "skip story" option would draw a million replies about "dumbing down", " they're catering to the CoD crowd" and the like?

I think there's a greater chance of "dumbing down" allegations if we added skip combat.

[Allan Schumacher]

Nightdragon8 wrote...

didn't this pretty much happen in DA2?? I mean you could lose your sibbling in the deeproads if you don't take anders. In fact my first game was like this. (well you lose your sibbling to templars or the circle anyway but still get them back later)

and in fact I debated on wither or not I should reload... and ended up NOT reloading. (still need to do a playthough where Carver goes into the GW tho maybe Ill do that next) 

I think it's different.  When a player is lost in combat, the assumption is typically "they died in a way that isn't related to any sort of plot mechanic"