Book II design question

[Mongolian]

Let me explain the fundemental flaw to being able to reload/resave at every single move of the game:

It takes the fun out of playing.

Why? Cause I no longer have to fear any single situation I enter in this including monsters and traps.

Solution to Autosave problem:
- The game can and should auto-save every 5 or 10 minutes. And/Or Autosave happens when you enter a new screen.
- Every 100 moves, the game will allow a character to save. at any point.
- Last but not least, upon re-entering the game, no treasure chests can be opened until X amount of minutes. This is the least important, but I think it gets the job done.

And as for whomever said that 'you are just making it more annoying for players that want to restart for loot', the point of changing the format is to discourage the urge to want to resave. Anyone who is willing to re-roll every treasure chest every 1-5 minutes deserves to keep restarting.

[realmzmaster]

Let me explain the fundemental flaw to being able to reload/resave at every single move of the game:

It takes the fun out of playing.

Once again this is your opinion. First, many people do not consider it a flaw. For some of us it is a neccessity. Second this is a game there is nothing to fear. So my character gets blown up or dies where is the fear? Start over with a new character. Anyone who has played rogue likes knows Perma death. We also learn how to back up our saves. So we just swap in our backup save file and continued. The only fear is that you lose time. If the save file is in a separate folder (which is the way most CRPG and Action CRPG are designed) you simply back it up. Even if it not most gamers can find the save file, especially if you have been playing CRPGs for a while. That is a choice.

Any person who will reroll to get what they want is not going to be deterred by starting again.
Saving every hundred steps is just an annoyance that does detract from the enjoyment (my opinion). All I have to do is walk back and forth in the same place until the number of steps is reached and save. All it does is lengthen the time of the game. Any one willing to reroll and reload already has patience in spades. For the rest of us it becomes an annoyance. You need to use the computer dear, You have to wait I have another 75 moves before I can save. Not going to work for me!

Understand many of us (25%) who play this game are over forty. 8% (I included) are fifty or more. Some of us suffer from arthritis and repetitive stress syndrome. You may not think that extra 100 or more steps matters, but let me tell you that it does. Once you start getting tingling in your hands and muscles start to contract you have to stop.

I was drawn to this game because it gives me the ability to save at anytime. Your suggestions would distract from my enjoyment. I want to be able to save and pick up the game later when my hands are up to it. I respond to posts when my hands allow. People in my position have good days and bad days and very bad days. Try going for a hour or more unable to move your hand and fingers from one position. It is like that when your muscles involuntarily contract. Only time, massage and sometimes medication help. Today is a good day, hence my long response.

No opening chests for X minutes. Once again people will just wait. The only action that occurs is making the game longer. People who constantly reroll and reload do not care. They are already taking far more time with the game than many of us.

Autosave every 5 or 10 minutes? I assume autosave will be disabled during combat and will not interrupt conversations I am having with the NPCs. The autosave will work quitely in the background. I will still be able to save in a separate slot. Or will only autosaving be allowed?

If it is only autosave then count me out? I want to be able to explore different branches. For example in Book 1 I have the option of killing Lilith or not. I want to save at this point so I can explore both paths. If there is only autosaving I will not be able to explore both paths unless I replay the whole game to take the other branch.

The designer has to consider his audience. Since BW is making and has made retro style CRPGs it appeals to the people who grew up with that style or like playing that particular style. I know very few designers who would ignore 25% of their audience.

Which is why BW is making certain rules optional. You can play with them or without them. This option is fair all around. You play with the options you want and I play with the ones I want. Since it is a single player CRPG how I play does no affect on how you play. Use the optional rules or do not use them.

[Mongolian]

It is good to hear your perspective realmzmaster and yes there are clear different perspectives here.

Since it is a single player CRPG how I play does no affect on how you play. Use the optional rules or do not use them.

Actually, no matter what form a game is in, some people will always try to make it a competition. Despite being a 1 player game, I want to try to make my character the best he/she can be and I'm sure others try so too. But the problem is, 1/2 through the game, I realised I know can replay/restart every move, it just almost made my brain explode, now giving me the choice to cheat basically with saving every move, play moderatly, or try not to save it all. It was, yes, my option, but like in life, too many options can be a bad thing. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 155238.htm

I was drawn to this game because it gives me the ability to save at anytime. Your suggestions would distract from my enjoyment. I want to be able to save and pick up the game later when my hands are up to it.

I agree, it's fun that you can save at any point, but I also think that you are also being too extreme here. #1, this is a turn-base game, not something real-time, so you can take as long or as slow as you want to play out each move. The ability to not save during combat, is not something that extreme. Also, that is why Auto-save (which saves in slot 1 always), will save for you before a battle, in case you forgot to save as like other scenarios that auto-save. (Yes, you get other save slots).

Aside of not being able to save in battle, I just don't like the ability for people to reopen a treasure chest till they get the perfect thing they want. For people that don't use this option-resave, you probablly are already enjoying what pick-ups you get. For those that are constant-resavers, as I for one was doing this at one point, I basically could buy anything I wanted. Not to mention all the needed +++ gear, I felt it took away from my fun when picking up things if I can get whatever I want. I believe humans want challenges. If there was no struggle involved, women/men would be less attractive. Again, I would just like to revise my above statements into 2 simple modest changes:

1) Can't save during fighting (assuming the same type & amount in book 1)
2) Treasure chests will automically specify the treasure going to be found inside the treasure. This will be the same random generator used once the particular map is loaded up. (Yes, still loop holes, but a much more modest change).

[Kreador Freeaxe]

So I'm assuming, Mongolian, that you'll be turning on the optional save limitations in Book II when you play.

Just don't turn them on for me, because I don't want them.

Fair?

[realmzmaster]

Actually, no matter what form a game is in, some people will always try to make it a competition. Despite being a 1 player game, I want to try to make my character the best he/she can be and I'm sure others try so too.

Who are you competeing against in a single player CRPG? Certainly it is not me! So what if someone wants to post their uber character build on the forum. Most of us here do not care! We want to enjoy the game! That is why most of us bought it. If you want competition go play World of Warcraft or Everquest. You can join a clan and compete against other clans. Book I and Book II are single player CRPGs and if you read on the forum most of use are not trying to compete against each other. We help each other.

What we do here is ask each other what great stuff did you find that I did not or what weapon do you think is better. We give tips or questions are ask about is my build a good one. There is very little or no competition. We help each other, discuss the game and give BW suggestions on what we think would make the next game better. Not much competition. We may do polls to see how much gold someone had at the end of the game, but there is no prize, no bragging rights. Even the Destroyer title was stumbled upon by accident. A little bonus in the game for people who actually killed all the guards. Did everyone jump up and brag about being a destroyer? No, we actually gave out tips on how everyone else could try to achieve it. There is no hall of fame, no rating system. If there is a rating system in Book II everyone will be trying to better their own scores not looking to beat someone else. I am not competing against anyone here. I am trying to enjoy the game.

[Mongolian]

Actually, I'm not competing with anyone anyhow. Nor, could I give a rats ass what uber stats anyone has. I just don't enjoy the current resave feature cause I'm evil and I use it. It's like a little devil over my shoulder going *please please* resave resave. Sorry if all my previous posts come off so negative, not the intent.

PS, to those being so wonderfuly nice to me on this thread, my goals are to help perfect the game and have a nice dialogue in the meantime.

[Hurleye]

Hi BW,

I liked the ability to save and reload at anytime in Book 1, so my vote would be to make the one minute rule an option

[RezoApio]

Somewhat late in the discussion but here is my opinion.

I do use some reload when I think the game cheats me of my probabilities (like you have 90% of picklock and I break my 3 picklock on it and the next city is very far away (missing quick location here ?) or the chest contains nothing after killing some warlords....

My first opinion is to let it has it is because the game designer is not here to enforce things that people can enforce themselves. We are not competing each other (at least I am not) so what is the use of having the best character when you enjoy playing the full game with yours. And as fairness is not the same for everybody, why not allow for reloading, X thinks killing a taurax lord should be rewarded with a shiny sword why not allow him ?
And sometimes it is very boring to get 5 magical axes when you are only using swords so reloading can alos be a fairness enhancer ....

If we want the game to design something along that line, I would say the best solution would be to limit the randomness of chest within smaller ranges that would be computed based on factor (should I say reality factors ?) like preference and intelligence of the monsters, (fools's gold can easily mislead low level IQ monsters), you may want to find cure poison potion in goblin chest using noximander as guards etc etc. with maybe letting extremely low chance to have extra good or extra bad loot.

My 0.02€

[Cyan]

Just to add my two cents, I consider myself an "honest" kind of gamer. What I mean by that is, I never use cheat codes, never look at a walkthrough until I finish the game the first time through, etc. In the case of Eschalon: B1, I was never tempted to save the game and reload just because I got a raw deal for stuff out of a chest/shelf/barrel/whatever. I rather like my game to be a challenge.

On the other hand, there was one chest (one of those big, yellow striped ones) that was behind a trapped door, surrounded by foot traps, and then trapped itself. I think by the time I got through all of those traps, I was so pissed off by the fact that I just got "Weapon Fragments" that I reloaded and went at it again. That's the only time I've done that, where I felt like I deserved a whole heck of a lot more for all of the effort of getting through the traps. (ps: You don't understand how long I hung onto weapon fragments thinking that they might come into play later on -- hah!)

But if you look at other classic games out there, especially my favourites: Might & Magic III and Ultima VI, they really don't have that kind of randomization of the treasure. So I'm pretty strongly in favour of setting the chest contents upon entering an area. It just takes that temptation away and makes the game more challenging.

Heck, why not make it an option? I mean, if I were presented with that option at character roll time (i.e. "chest contents set at opening time or room entry time"), and I knew it would make the game more challenging, I'd opt to have it generated at room-entry time.

The beautiful thing about Eschalon is just how dynamic it is. That's what makes it fun. You can't lose by adding even more ways to tweak the game to your particular tastes.

On the other hand, on the issue of saving, I turn back to Might & Magic III and Ultima VI for guidance. Those games let you save pretty much anywhere. I think Ultima VI may have had some restrictions, it's been a while since I've played (although Eschalon has put me in the mood to fire up DOSbox and play it again,) but it was always pretty liberal in allowing you to save.

I think one of the main issues, what made Eschalon a little too easy in the combat department, was that it was just far too easy to run away from enemies. Now I'm not sure if that's because I chose a rouge-ish character that had pretty high dexterity stats, but it just seemed too easy to walk into a battle, realize I was knee deep in it, and walk out. You could let the enemy follow you to the edge of an area, cross it, camp out on the other side, and then return to finish the job. As far as I'm concerned, whenever you get into a tangle with an enemy, it's do or die time. You either die and reload from where you saved before you engaged the enemy, or, you kill them all. Running away should be a very, very painful experience where the enemy gets all sorts of opportunities to hit you again and again. I remember Might & Magic III being a total bitch in this regard, but that's what made the game challenging

Anyway, I think I've rambled on long enough. Any way you cut it, Book I was awesome, and I'm really, really looking forward to Book II.

-RS.

[Mongolian]

Heck, why not make it an option?

Wow, that is an excellent game option. Would be killer to see done but highly unlikely. heh.

[devinv]

I'm OK with leaving things the way they are. I'm also OK with putting in the 1-minute rule. It wouldn't change things much for me. The only time I've re-rolled is when I got a great item and died afterwards, then went back and got a crappy item. I re-rolled maybe 5 times, until I got something in the same ballpark, so narrowing the possibilities of item value in a given chest would remove the temptation for me, and most people I believe.

Hey, the easiest way for us to do it is to not change a thing. I'm very happy with keeping the same system as in Book I and letting people "play how they want".

It just seems like a week doesn't go by that someone doesn't say they want chests pre-filled at game start, or a set random seed so things aren't really random, or limits put on saves. We are trying to gauge if these opinions are of the silent majority or just a loud minority.

[Evnissyen]

I've found myself constantly reloading... for every single barrel, chest and bag to make sure I got the best items. All accounted for, it really does take time away from the gameplay. Maybe it'd be best if barrels were all empty, dropped bags had their contents randomly determined upon the death of the enemy rather than the moment the bag is opened, and chest items were all predetermined (rather than just a few of them). I know #3 would require more programming, but it would improve the game, I think.

[Scryler]

I have no programing experience or even knowledge, but if it isn't too hard, maybe the loot, trap, pick randomness and results could be tied to an "easy," "normal," "difficult" or "insane" option chosen at the beginning of the game.

That way, it would be entirely the player's choice.

I do believe that the game is somewhat unbalanced. I'm with those who feel that the reward should reflect the difficulty.

[devinv]

different difficulty levels add to replay value, which is always nice. random, or pseudo-random rewards add to unpredictability which also adds to replay value and to game quality in general.

I have no programing experience or even knowledge, but if it isn't too hard, maybe the loot, trap, pick randomness and results could be tied to an "easy," "normal," "difficult" or "insane" option chosen at the beginning of the game.

That way, it would be entirely the player's choice.

I do believe that the game is somewhat unbalanced. I'm with those who feel that the reward should reflect the difficulty.

[Mongolian]

4 levels of difficulty sounds like a decent option. I still would prefer another solution (non-timer) but better then it is for sure.