Kreador Freeaxe wrote:Shadowdragon8685,
For some reason you sound like you're set to "I hate everything." For a perspective, you sound like you're saying that Eschalon Book I is impossible without cheats for any but the hardest of hardcore gamers. I'm a long way from hardcore. This is only the second CRPG I've played in a decade. My first time through, I knew nothing of cheats or any of that, and I managed two of the three possible endings anyway. I found all the side-quest objects. And I enjoyed the game so much that I have played it over and over (sometimes with re-roll cheating just to see what I can get, sometimes straight).
If you see value in something, you should be as critical of it as possible. I expect nothing less from the guys who read my writings, and I will give nothing less to the developers of games I see potential in. I wouldn't waste my breath talking about a non-Half-Life shooter.
As for "impossible", by definition it's not. If absolutely nessessary, you can save/load every round until every hit you make is critical, and you've acomplished the statistically impossible simply by employing enough metaphorical typing monkies.
The point is, for the casual gamer, will they have
fun? That's what a game is, ultimately, about, and is a point that is all-too-often missed by the hardcore gamer who
does have fun by having his ass handed to him; will someone have
fun the whole game, or not?
I, for one, was
not having fun when I had twinked my character - cheated, in fact - my character for Thief-style theft, and found myself out of lockpicks on the
very first lock I encountered. You wouldn't think it was very much fun if you were playing a swordsman, had pushed every stat and skill available to you as regards swordsmen to the max, and found you had less than a one out of three chance to hit the very first Fanged Salamander you came across, would you?
I'm not going to get into a pissing contest with you. You have your opinion, and it's valid for you. I just disagree. I think Thomas and his crew did a great job balancing a game for the casual gamer, and I'm looking forward to a lot more fun with Book II.
I think you'll find it's less about whether my opinion is valid for you, than that it is or is not valid for the vast majority of potentially-paying customers.
Also, as an aside about your "cheat" about stealing a shopkeeper's stuff and selling it back to him, I don't think that would be a cheat. It's the point of being a good thief. It would be interesting if there were a chance the shopkeeper recognized that you were selling him his own inventory, though.
Personally, I'd think he'd be more upset by the fact that I'm entering his
bedroom using
a key of which he knows there is only one in the whole wide world.
But my point about that was, whether a cheat or not, it's exploitive of game mechanics and breaking of immersion (no D&D shopkeep would let you remotely get away with it unless the DM was lampooning CRPG mechanics), and gamebreaking in that the player will have literally unlimited gold, given unlimited patience.
If a game is balenced against the expectation that the player will never want for gold because of nefarious cheating like this, and by extension, the implicit assumption that the player will be able to buy the very best from any shop, ever, then those who do not play like that - whether out of a (misguided, since it's accepted for and balanced against) desire for 'game purity', or simply due to not thinking of it, will get royally shafted.
Jedi_Learner wrote:ShadowDragon8685 wrote:And honestly, I don't see you getting a very Good overall score. Eschalon is very, very hard...
ShadowDragon8685 wrote:...now that the game's on Steam, you may find it's a double-edged sword: a lot more people will have played it, and will say "That game kicked my ass, it's not very fun."
And this, ladies and gentlemen is the reason mainstream games are getting easier, simpler and dumber. Thank you
ShadowDragon8685 for contributing.
Wow.
So you think that game developers should make games hard and needlessly complicated, thus greatly reducing the fun inherant in playing them for the vast majority of players and producing a clunky, frustrating pile of goo...
Simply to avoid accusations of "easy, simpler and dumber"?
Wow, thank
you for contributing something utterly unhelpful and in fact, anathema to the goal of making games which you hope to sell to
make money.
Let's put it here straight-up.
The goal of playing any game is to have fun. If we can agree with that, then we have a starting point.
Now, the first few hours of playing any game are
crucial to that. If these hours are poisoned for the player, they will always remember them, even if later on, they're whirling through enemies like a Jedi Master through battle droids, opening every door and lock without trying, and generally getting on with things as though they're the hero they're supposed to be.
If a player finds that they can fail
utterly spectacularly at the very first example they come across of the
sort of thing they built their character specifically to be good at - to wit, my Thief getting stonewalled by the very first lock I attempted to pick - then chances are, they're not going to have a lot of fun.
If they find themselves constantly beleagered by being unable to do the sort of thing they hoped to do - sneak around and assassinate creatures - by a combination of being unable to hide unless it's pitch black, and being unable to see a monster to kill it when it is pitchblack - then they won't be having a lot of fun.
And if they're not having fun, what was the point of the excercize? They've given money to someone -
money they cannot get back - in exchange for something which is frustrating them and making them feel
bad, which is the
opposite of feeling good - the purpose of buying a game and hoping to have fun playing it.
So, frankly, they feel robbed - in good faith, they've given money way, implicitly trusting that in exchange for their money, they will recieve a game that will be fun to play with, and make them feel happier and more contented than having the twenty in their bank account would have. And in return, what they have is something that makes them frustrated and angry, discontent and upset -
and they're out the twenty, which in hindsight, they could have spent on something more satisfying, like a trip to the movies, something from the chinese restaraunt down the street, or a handie on the corner.
So naturally, they're going to advise anyone they hear musing about buying this game - the thing they paid money for and which only made them feel worse than when they started, not better - about their experiences playing that game, which is that it will make you feel
bad and not good, and will be like giving someone your money and having him punch you in the junk in return.
Word of mouth can make or break a product. No amount of fancy glitz advertising - which BasiliskWrangler certainly doesn't have the money for - can make a bad game sell well. And to be frank, VALVe hardly even
bothers to advertise their releases even on their own site, since they have such a massive power of recognition and trust that they know that people will throw their money at them no matter what. They just have to keep making the next one good, so that people will buy the one after that.
Whereas, despite all the huge advertising glitz that surrounded it, all three Halos combined barely begin to match the exposure of Half-Life 2 and it's Episodes, to say nothing of the Source engine family (Half-Life 2, Ep1&2, Portal, Counter-Strike Source,) which blows Halo out of the water.
And hell, they even went to the trouble of building a live-action "museum" set and having old men walk through, pretending to get teared up about war memories that never happened and showing off fictional weapons.
As for me... Eh, I'm kind of divided. I
would advise my friends to buy Eschalon: Book I (and Book II), but only if they're comfortable with cheating their asses off via memory editor or whatever means they see fit.
Zeno wrote:Jedi_Learner wrote:ShadowDragon8685 wrote:And honestly, I don't see you getting a very Good overall score. Eschalon is very, very hard...
ShadowDragon8685 wrote:...now that the game's on Steam, you may find it's a double-edged sword: a lot more people will have played it, and will say "That game kicked my ass, it's not very fun."
And this, ladies and gentlemen is the reason mainstream games are getting easier, simpler and dumber. Thank you
ShadowDragon8685 for contributing.
If I see one more FPS game that gives the player regenerative health and practically holds your hand (coughcallofdutycough) I will punch the nearest person in the face. I understand that some people aren't "hardcore" gamers, but it annoys me to no end that being made by a popular developer now means a game must be able to be beaten by a
5-year-old.
I really hope that person is me, so I can have you locked up for assault.
The point of a game is to have fun. Regenerative health is a fun mechanic, and frankly it beats the tar out of "magical band-aids, canteens and food scattered all over everywhere." Regenerative health means that, no matter what, if the player can make it through
one challenge, you can expect them to meet the next one head-on, at full health, as they will have had the time to regenerate.
And, you know, last I heard, Call of Duty had difficulty settings to cater to you. So take your sanctimoniousness and
cram it. Game developers keep catering to you at the expense of those of us who would like to
enjoy a game, and they quickly go out of business - for good reason. Catering to the niche hardcore gamer crowd is economic suicide.
On topic, I admit that I've used save-reload a few times, mostly to avoid looting a diseased corpse. (How was I supposed to know that there's actually a reason not to loot everything in the game!) However, I think I still could've done fine. In my personal opinion, this game is balanced near-perfectly. I never feel as though I've been sent to an unavoidable death; poor choices (i.e. wandering into groups of bandits) have killed me on more than one occasion, but I then learn to avoid that place. I'm hoping that Book II doesn't ramp up the difficulty insanely, but I know I'll buy it regardless. You just need to learn the ins-and-outs of the game.
So, you admit that the only way to learn how to play is by trial and error?
That is a
very poor way to teach the player how to play the game. If there's no obvious way to know "this place is too hard and will kill me by sneezing at me", and I blunder in, I'm going to be angry. I'm going to be
very angry if this means I lose a large portion of play, or worse, if it means that save slot is fucked because I saved whilst in over my head.
ShadowDragon8685 wrote:Which frankly, means that if I buy Eschalon Book II (Still working out whether I want more or not), what I'm going to do is check off "food and water", "equipment deteriorates", "no save/load", and "random functions".
Then I'm just going to use ArtMoney SE to ensure I never lack for food or water to survive, always have enough gold to repair (or the repair skill* myself), never need to save or reload because my character is essentially invunerable to damage short of being caught in a portcullis, and will never actually face the results of failure at lockpicking, or trap disarming.
That's the stupidest thing I've heard in a long while. If you're just going to cheat out of those requirements, TURN THEM OFF. Or, even better, DON'T PLAY THE GAME. No one is forcing you to. Unless you find
cheating to be more fun than playing the game, find a different game.
This one may not be for you.
I explained why. I'm going to cheat out of those requirements
so I can get the loot table boost.
Never offer a player an 'easy' option that then goes on to screw them. Never offer a
salient, game-altering reward for playing 'harder', because that really means "cheating the ones who don't like playing it hard".
Oh, and ProTip? Don't yell at people because they play different than you. I've cheated my arse off at
every CRPG I've ever played that I had the ability to cheat at. KotOR and KotOR2, you bet. Final Fantasy Tactics? Absolutely. I have nothing but contempt for a game where cheating is unnessessarily difficult or impossible. Frankly, I'd rather see the endgame stuff and kick ass like a hero, than spend my time scumming about the dirt like every other Chosen One who frankly isn't very special at all, given that every random mook is better equipped and stronger than he is.