Why would you ever have a fear of combat just because you run out of healing things? In a JRP with random encounters this was somewhat dangerous because you could always be attacked, but that goes back to my point about attrition. The danger is there because you don't automatically make an area safe just by walking through it and clearing it out once, which is precisely what happens in RPGs.
This was something that the Gold Box games, as well as current RPGs, don't do well. Roaming enemies. Random encounters. Respawns that are realistic. It is as you say - in Baldur's Gate, I can clear a path through a dungeon, turn right back around if I get in trouble and "Gather My Party Before Venturing Forth" and sleep, then walk right back to my starting spot.
I fully endorse a way to prevent clearing a safe way out via a path of corpses. I don't particularly like the old JRPG method of "take 10 steps, screen goes squiggly, combat screen loads" method of this, but it did have merit in this context. With fast travel, going to an inn is a bit silly, since once you make it out of the dungeon, you are just a few clicks away from instant healing, so being able to make camp once outside the dungeon gives the same net experience, minus the inconvenience. And, without respawns of some sort, walking out the dungeon would just require walking backwards through the areas you have cleared, so you might as well be able to rest anywhere in a dungeon, too. And, if you can rest after every battle and there is no time counter to penalize you for doing so, then why not do auto-regenerate?
The problem isn't limited to the auto-regenerate alone. It is part of, what I view as, a larger problem. But if you add attrition and don't stop the auto-regenerate, you've simply added more mook fights without any real risk. So they would have to both go together.
Now the problem comes from the option to engage in countless mook fights, which means grinding is introduced. Which can be a problem with gating content versus having the level scaling.
However, I don't think just throwing up our hands and saying "okay, fine... you automatically are fully healed and have full mana" is a good idea. Because it diminishes the risk. Not to mention puts everything on a cooldown timer, instead of the more conventional mana pool or even (children, cover your ears) Vancian casting. A cooldown basically means your character is using their nuke spells, every fight, without fail. Yes, friendly fire makes using this a little trickier... but that simply incentivizes getting nuke spells that don't have AoE or which ignore friendly fire. It doesn't solve the underlying issue that every character is now using their most powerful skills over and over and over again. Which not only stretches the bounds of gameplay/story segregation, but also results in boring "kite while I wait for cooldowns" type combat.
Ultimately, there needs to be a better solution.
I can't relate to that, because I've always found exploration unbelievably boring. While I agree with you that tension is a good thing, I see the kind of feature you're asking for as about making combat tense, not walking around tense.
I would say walking around is tense if combat is tense... simply because the possibility of walking right into a combat situation is ever-present. With that threat, exploration becomes exciting... not just, again, a To Do list.
I take your point that there is much more tension when there's actual attrition going on in a dungeon. I just don't see how removing regeneration - by itself - changes anything. And even if it's included, you can easily be an a sitution of attrition if you have, for example, a 'fatigue' mechanic that just gives you a % decrease to stats based on the # of encounters (or equivalent).
And I'd say that is a real problem.
The entire premise of an RPG, mechanics-wise, is to provide simulation. You have the chance to miss when you attack, you have certain skills (reflected numerically) which you excel at and others which you fail, you can upgrade to better equipment which enhance your abilities... these are all numerical representations of real concepts.
To remove the element of fear from combat removes the entire point of combat. That is, you are struggling for your life. When you make combat closer to the spectrum of "unfailable," then that struggle is removed. Which then, by comparison, creates MAMMOTH gameplay/story segregation.
Why can't my Hawke just stroll up to the Templars and slay every last one to free his sister? It is what you wind up doing anyway, so it is hardly an unrealistic suggestion. If I am playing an overly aggressive, pro-Mage Hawke who has already killed Templars and who has seen what a terror Meredith has become, why not just go on a rampage? "Because though must." Having Hawke be able to kill everyone without batting an eye is silly, but the game totally justifies this silliness by Hawke being able to shrug off demons, blood mages, Darkspawn and dragons. The same applies to the Warden - if the Darkspawn Horde really had an actual Horde (say, 10,000 Darkspawn), there would be nothing to prevent the Warden to killing every single last one of them if there was time to regenerate full health and mana between each fight.Yet we all acknowledge that would have been a stupid way for the game to play out.
Yet a game that has no regenerating health/mana and that has a limited amount of spell points for healing suddenly is realistic. The PC wouldn't be able to fight more than 10 or 20 enemies without starting to look at their stats with worried eyes. 40 or 50 and they would be fighting for their life, with companions dropping like flies. 100 would be outright near impossible. That's the way it should be.
Baldur's Gate 2, even playing as a demi-god, you could not oppose the Cowled Wizards and cast magic unfettered until late game (and many times not even then) without a license. In the Underdark, you could not easily take arms against the entire city of Drow and win. Yet a PC with auto-regenerating health/mana would have as little problem with the first round of an entire city as they would with the last. That defies any sort of logic.
To keep the tension of fighting and to keep the logic of the entire game world on the tracks, damage and mana usage cannot be abstracted to simple regeneration. Yes, rest functions can be abused, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to mitigate that. And using a walkthrough will always make a game easier - using that as a justification against a feature is a little arbitrary.
Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 19 mai 2013 - 02:13 .
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