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Pretty much. First person tile-based dungeon exploration with turnbased combat describes most entries you'll see on handheld systems.
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Aug 23, 2017 06:47
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The main problem I have with things inspired by wizardry and other old crpgs is that they tend to clutch onto D20 and THAC0 like sacred cows when they're loving insufferable to deal with
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Aug 23, 2017 06:57
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Hivac posted:The main problem I have with things inspired by wizardry and other old crpgs is that they tend to clutch onto D20 and THAC0 like sacred cows when they're loving insufferable to deal with If D20 means what I think it means, I probably understand that. But what the heck is THAC0?
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Aug 23, 2017 07:03
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Dr. Fetus posted:If D20 means what I think it means, I probably understand that. But what the heck is THAC0? To-hit AC 0, basically your accuracy stat. In D&D 2e, low AC was good and went negative easily. You hit if your roll on a d20 was equal to your THAC0 minus the enemy's AC or higher...or something like that. I don't really know much about D&D before 3.5
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Aug 23, 2017 07:05
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Dr. Fetus posted:If D20 means what I think it means, I probably understand that. But what the heck is THAC0? to hit armor class 0 idk what it means in reference to dungeon crawlers unless there are a bunch of games out there where the lower the armor number is, the better
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Aug 23, 2017 07:05
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MotU posted:to hit armor class 0 Daggerfall at least uses THAC0 and low AC good. I'm not a connoisseur of old-rear end PC RPGs but I'm sure others do too.
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Aug 23, 2017 07:06
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Elminage Gothic still has THAC0.
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Aug 23, 2017 07:06
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oh whoops didn't notice he said old ones my bad thac0 owns tho basically I assume the complaint is that, lets say youre starting a new game. chances are your lvl 1-3 fighter has about a 19 THAC0, which means to hit an enemy with an Armor Class of 0 he needs to roll a 19 or better on a d20. Most starting standard enemies, like goblins and orcs and poo poo probably have an AC of 6 or 7 (leather or studded leather armor equivalent: armored but not very). Now your Fighter type dude needs to roll a 12-13 naturally to hit the fodder enemies, maybe he has a +2 strength bonus so he still needs a 10-11 to hit even the easiest enemies, which is gonna tend towards a less than 50% chance to hit. Non-fighter classes have a worse THAC0 curve so like until your party is lvl 7-9 or so you're gonna be whiffing a ton and relying on magic for (limited) guaranteed damage. it makes starting real slow and kinda a slog until youre in a comfortable area MotU fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Aug 23, 2017 |
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Aug 23, 2017 07:07
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Dr. Fetus posted:If D20 means what I think it means, I probably understand that. But what the heck is THAC0? It means "To Hit Armour Class 0". In Advanced Dungeons and Dragons second edition that was your to hit roll. It worked like this. You'd have 16 THAC0 let us say. And the enemy would have an armour class between -10 and +10. If they had an armour class of +10 (which was very bad, no armour peasant style) then you'd need to roll 6 or more on a D20 to hit. If they had an armour class of -10 then you'd need to roll a 26 or more on a D20 to hit. Most things would have armour of say 5-7 in the early game. Wolves and things like that. So your THAC0 of 16 against an enemy with AC of 5 would mean 11+ hits. I never found it particularly confusing but it's just sort of stupid beyond anything else. Why work backwards? Other than D&D and games based on D&D I haven't seen another system like that though. gently caress knows the formula Wizardry uses to calculate to hit though. I gave up on it and uninstalled. The copies of Might and Magic I have are on Disk and I don't have a disk drive any longer so I might end up just buying them and playing them over for the tenth time. I feel like I've heard so much bad press about MM6-8 and that's why they went back turn based for X, that people love Wizardry the most. It seems a shame because like ChrisBTY said nobody seems to bother making games like Might and Magic.
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Aug 23, 2017 07:12
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Wizardry might not use true THAC0 but it still operates on dice rolls and AC and ends up being the same in practice as THAC0, which is swinging and missing 95% of the time, maybe doing 1 damage when the stars align, and then an enemy rolls high and oneshots you just before your wizard ignores all of that garbage and spews dozens of damage at every single target
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Aug 23, 2017 07:18
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Hivac posted:Wizardry might not use true THAC0 but it still operates on dice rolls and AC and ends up being the same in practice as THAC0, which is swinging and missing 95% of the time, maybe doing 1 damage when the stars align, and then an enemy rolls high and oneshots you just before your wizard ignores all of that garbage and spews dozens of damage at every single target That's a problem with number balance, not an inherent problem with D&D-style systems. Of course, every D&D except 4e sucks rear end at number balance so they were just copying that aspect too
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Aug 23, 2017 07:20
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cheetah7071 posted:That's a problem with number balance, not an inherent problem with D&D-style systems. Of course, every D&D except 4e sucks rear end at number balance so they were just copying that aspect too That's pretty much what I'm getting at, people hold onto it in spite of the systems being very poorly implemented because it's good because they played it 3 decades ago or something
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Aug 23, 2017 07:23
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A lot of dungeon crawler enthusiasts hang onto the past with tight fists. It's why Etrian Odyssey has manual cartography (well that and it was a chance to implement touch-screen technology in an RPG). It's also probably why developers are more intent to build a better Wizardry 1 (the archetypal dungeon crawler) than a better Might and Magic VIII. We're talking about a legacy that evolved from Wizardry IV. If you don't know what I'm talking about, there is an LP of it on the archives. Check it out to truly know how much a game can hate its players. (That's not even true. Wizardry IV DOESN'T hate its players. The players WANTED it. They DEMANDED that mess).
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Aug 23, 2017 07:30
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We cannot escape the ghost of Trebor past Also I would be a dungeon crawler enthusiast but the genre is riddled with mediocre games to games with wasted potential
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Aug 23, 2017 07:45
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Hivac posted:Wizardry might not use true THAC0 but it still operates on dice rolls and AC and ends up being the same in practice as THAC0, which is swinging and missing 95% of the time, maybe doing 1 damage when the stars align, and then an enemy rolls high and oneshots you just before your wizard ignores all of that garbage and spews dozens of damage at every single target Oh yea. I put it onto "Novice" just because I was tired of all the misses I got. Especially since I was building my characters to a guide, I can't fathom what it'd be like if I was just doing what I thought was best. While MM8 wasn't as good as the other two in my mind - it was exceptionally insanely easy, up to the point that I'd finished everything in around 15 hours and returned it to the shop - it still managed to be interesting. You get to see and do so many crazy things. I guess Divinity and Baldurs Gate 2 both sort of pick that end of it up but I'd really like a 1st person game to do it too. Until now I'd never seen anyone speak positively about MM6 - 8 though, it was always all about Wizardry and how everything needs to be turn based again. I loved the two factions of MM7. The promotion quests that could turn your Sorcerer into a Lich, visiting a city of Angels or killing tonnes of Behemoths and resurrecting them to fight each other. And then shooting some devils with lasers! It doesn't feel like things are quite as random as that now. Taear fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Aug 23, 2017 |
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Aug 23, 2017 08:33
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ChrisBTY posted:Might and Magic's entire history can be summed up as 'Wizardry, but far less obtuse.' Yeah, I have M&M 10 and I like it, but man was it weird seeing the series taking this huge step back to 100% turn-based. It's kind of odd how the devs of that game felt only nostalgic for the older games, and completely ignored M&M 6-9. Wizardry 8 is a lot like Might and Magic 9: Odd and with flaws, but still fun if you learn to live with them. (Also I think my new version on Steam has an option to make monsters go faster, which wasn't there in the original. Or at least I don't remember it from playing it back then. Would have been nice to have, at one point I got assaulted by 20+ slow-moving plants and getting them all was a hellish experience I don't really want to replicate in the world of today.)
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Aug 23, 2017 08:49
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Libluini posted:Yeah, I have M&M 10 and I like it, but man was it weird seeing the series taking this huge step back to 100% turn-based. It's kind of odd how the devs of that game felt only nostalgic for the older games, and completely ignored M&M 6-9. Like I said outside of here right now all I've seen is negative stuff about the later MM games. That's part of why MM9 was poo poo - they were responding to the way people saw the newer might and magics, trying to modernise it and make it 3D. People unhappy that you just saw a picture that you clicked on in houses or that you could fly and all sorts of other stuff. Maybe also reacting to how easy MM8 was? And places like RPG Codex that only like an RPG if it requires you to smash your head into a wall a thousand times before it works. In my head the switch back to turn based is because people are nostalgic for the combat rather than the content, if that makes sense. While I hated the combat in the old games because I'm impatient and want to see what's next instead of spending 15 minutes per encounter. I didn't see a way to increase the speed in my Steam wizardry 8. In fact all the options the game had (graphics changes and etc) refused to work, I had to do it by changing an ini file. Taear fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Aug 23, 2017 |
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Aug 23, 2017 09:20
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Taear posted:I didn't see a way to increase the speed in my Steam wizardry 8. In fact all the options the game had (graphics changes and etc) refused to work, I had to do it by changing an ini file.  Two out of three general options deal with combat speed: The very first option is combat speed (always set to max by me) and the third option deals with monster speeds (also maxed out by me, makes the monsters run 3x times faster than normal.)It's literally the first thing you see when you click on options! About the graphics options I can't say anything, since I never changed them. Either because I had no idea what stuff like "Mip Mapping" is and was too scared, or because taking shadows away from monsters seems silly on a modern computer.
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Aug 23, 2017 09:56
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Libluini posted:
The graphics thing was more about making it fit the screen because it was tiny and squashed! Ah I assumed you meant beyond those. Even with those on max it's still painfully slow to me. Like ones outside of the game. My idea would be that I don't even see the enemies moving, honestly!
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Aug 23, 2017 10:07
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There's a speedhack for wiz8
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Aug 23, 2017 13:05
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Motto posted:Pretty much. First person tile-based dungeon exploration with turnbased combat describes most entries you'll see on handheld systems. Hey, on that note, what are some really good ones? I know some of the classics...Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore, Might and Magic...are there any that might have slipped by, did something unique in some way? I'm currently playing Etrian Odyssey. It is what it is...it's hardly anything I would consider noteworthy, but it's a pretty solid execution of the formula. I am enjoying it -- like ten years after I bought it. I'm playing it on my original first-run Nintendo DS.
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Aug 23, 2017 13:44
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If you can stand crazy amounts of creepy fan service then Dungeon Travelers 2 is very solid. The classes are nice original takes on classic Wizardry clone stuff, the game sets up nice feedback loops to keep progressing and grinding enemies from feeling like a grind, and if you can get past how all the enemies are either under-dressed girls or fruit the art is actually pretty good. Just don't, you know, play it in public. Alternatively if you can read Japanese try Lost Heroes which is a first person dungeon crawler where you play as a group made of Gundams, Kamen Riders and Ultramans (Ultramen?) It's good.
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Aug 23, 2017 14:13
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Taear posted:Ah I assumed you meant beyond those. Even with those on max it's still painfully slow to me. Like ones outside of the game. My idea would be that I don't even see the enemies moving, honestly! Let's just say I played Wiz8 the first time with those two set to normal and it was the greatest error of my life. Normal-speed and below must have been intended as options for an alien race of hyperintelligent sloths, but since their ships haven't arrived on Earth yet, those speeds make no sense to us normal humans. Also, if you play Wiz8 on slow I suggest having a suicide hotline on speed dial, because holy loving poo poo But yeah, if it's still to slow for you with both options set to max, that Speed Hack mentioned above may be a solution. No idea how that interacts with the Steam-version, though.
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Aug 23, 2017 15:10
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Since we're on the topic of these kinds of games, Demon Gaze 2 just got announced for the US so I'm wondering if it's time for me to play the first one. I think people complained that the first one didn't wrap up the whole story so maybe now that both will be available it'll be a better experience? Aside from that all I know is that it's supposed to be 'baby's first dungeon crawler' level easy.
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Aug 23, 2017 15:20
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corn in the bible posted:There's a speedhack for wiz8 Yep, and there's actually a better one out now apparently that doesn't have the old movement bugs. It just cuts the animation time for stuff in half so combat moves along way faster. https://www.gog.com/forum/wizardry_series/wizadry_8_speed_mod Use that one instead of the old 'speedhack' now which was buggy.
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Aug 23, 2017 15:28
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Getsuya posted:Since we're on the topic of these kinds of games, Demon Gaze 2 just got announced for the US so I'm wondering if it's time for me to play the first one. I think people complained that the first one didn't wrap up the whole story so maybe now that both will be available it'll be a better experience? Demon Gaze 1 has four difficulty settings that you can switch between whenever you're back at base, and if you set it to the highest option it's not too easy, although it's still pretty tractable for a dungeon crawler. The difficulty feels a bit swingy: sometimes your attacks just keep missing or your characters get one-shotted by crits, and other times your demon decides to bust out a super attack and take off like a third of a boss's HP in one turn. I'm not sure why people would complain about the story feeling incomplete. There really wasn't that much story to wrap up in the first place, and the game gives a pretty solid resolution to what there is of it, although there's some backstory that could be expanded upon. I guess the postgame ends on what could be a sequel hook if you squint? Aside from that, it's a pretty fun game: there's a good amount of variation and versatility in party builds, way more so than in Operation Abyss by the same devs, and all the classes have something going for them. Also most of the bosses and quite a few of the normal enemies are titty ladies but it's a Vita dungeon crawler so what do you expect Thuryl fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Aug 23, 2017 |
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Aug 23, 2017 17:17
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Cool. It's only $20 so I'll probably pick it up after I finish Cold Steel.
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Aug 23, 2017 17:28
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The things that I loved about Might and Magic 6-8 is that they weren't 'dungeon crawlers'. Dungeon crawlers are cramped, claustrophobic and isolated. They stick you in a tiny box and expect you to fight your way out. Maybe if they're modern enough they'll move you through different boxes to create a sense of progression. Might and Magic, even starting with #2 on, were early experiments in open world RPGs with first-person dungeon crawler mechanics. People seem to worship IV-V but those still feel rather primitive to me. Once free move happened, it was a revelation. You could run past poo poo, you could run through poo poo without fussing with the combat menu. You could fly and drop meteor swarms on unsuspecting swarths of groundbound trolls. You could stealth through a cave filled with behemoths to get to Nighton and get Grandmaster Air magic at like level 12, then loot endgame gear from a castle filled with Titans. It was freedom to break the game over your knee. It was glorious and I had always hoped that those games would have to the opportunity to evolve further...and then they didn't. And now they just want to stick you back in the drat box.
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Aug 23, 2017 21:50
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Am I alone in really, really enjoying Might and Magic X?
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Aug 24, 2017 04:23
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ChrisBTY posted:And now they just want to stick you back in the drat box. This is something I've spent too much time thinking about and prototyping and we've had some interesting discussions in the classic CRPG thread about it. There are lots of ways player expectations and game abstractions can really clash and MM6-8/Wiz 8 came out at a weird time when they were trying to sort through what was essential to the genre and what was an old school limitation that could be abandoned. First person party worked well in old games when everything was pretty abstracted. You can imagine your party crouched behind the camera as they shuffle through a dungeon in a group when the play is kept in that kind of space. When I had people playing a dungeon crawler prototype set in a pseudo realistically rendered hotel (it was a horror dungeon crawler in an infinite hotel) play testers thought most of what made it a 'dungeon crawler' felt odd. The hotel was pretty spare done basically in the same style as dungeon crawlers so it was mostly walls, doors, light sconces, some beds, some cabinets and such with loot. A common complaint was for more details as the pseudo realism created expectations of it being closer to a real hotel. The difference between scattering some objects in a grided space and having to hand set dress an environment is a mountain of work though. Like MM and Wiz 8 I had non-modal combat and I think that is an important part of the freedom those games have. Unfortunately that does make the dev quite a bit more complicated and also can affect those player expectations. Having combat share the exploration space only deepens the sense of 'realism' which fucks with trying to abstract out expensive problems. I can see why indie/Japanese RPGs go for modal. Initially I had grid movement but that caused some complaints so I also added non grid movement but that really changes level design. When you know the player is centered on a tile you know where their attention is but now players have to comb through the environment more freely and that lack of graphical clutter feels even worse. Off the grid makes the party feel weird as players are definitely in a more 'real' play space. So I have this group of people not marching in formation down a hall but taking tiny steps and swiveling their heads together? MM6-8 suffered from sometimes your party feeling more like elaborate guns you switched between and not people which the fast gameplay exacerbated. Of course you can jettison the party like most free roaming RPGs of the classic era (TES, UW) but there's something to be said for that party dynamic. I had an idea to kinda do both by taking some SMT and do a single player character with summonable demons but never got around to implementing it entirely before I abandoned the project. Here's the funny thing: put it in a dungeon, toss out all that hotel crap, replace with some fantasy poo poo, and I get no complaints. People just grok 'dungeons' and engage with them differently (and expect rpg crap with fantasy). I think that play space expectation you can also see in Daggerfall to Morrowind. Players complained of 'missing' on hits in MW as the game felt more real and was released in a different era while the game-y rpg bits felt right at home in DF in its era. If a game goes for a big world like MM6 now they are going to have to bring a lot more graphical details than those games skated by with. So I understand why devs are hiding in dungeons but I'd like to see it change sometime too. The new Bard's Tale is trying some new things and if it does well maybe it'll inspire more and we'll get a first person rpg renaissance like the isometric one. I'd love to see explorable worlds but I'll take at least some gameplay innovation.
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Aug 24, 2017 04:45
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credburn posted:Am I alone in really, really enjoying Might and Magic X? I enjoyed it well enough to finish it, although it had serious performance issues on my computer (and on a lot of other people's, from what I've heard), which exacerbated the fact that the combat is kinda slow to begin with. Also, the setting is way less interesting than the freewheeling SF/fantasy mashup of previous games, not just because the sci-fi elements were cut out but because it takes itself a little too seriously in general. I also have a couple of issues with the gameplay, like the fact that you can't ever run away from combat: once an enemy sees you, you're locked into either fighting to the death or reloading your save. Other than that, though, it's a fun hybrid of M&M2-5's grid-based exploration and M&M6-8's skill system.
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Aug 24, 2017 05:26
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credburn posted:Am I alone in really, really enjoying Might and Magic X? I enjoyed X. It was a very good game. It just didn't scratch that itch. It felt like a linear game masquerading as a non-linear one.
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Aug 24, 2017 05:32
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ChrisBTY posted:I enjoyed X. It was a very good game. Yeah, I think part of that was the main story being a bigger part of the total game content than earlier games (and being a bit more structured than "collect X number of plot coupons scattered around the world to unlock the next story dungeon") and part of it was the difficulty curve. if you want to make a nonlinear game where characters level up, then you have to tune it to be pretty easy if the player tackles every area in increasing order of difficulty, so that it's still playable if they do things in a different order. M&MX is pretty unforgiving if you walk into an area you're underlevelled for.
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Aug 24, 2017 05:39
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Getsuya posted:Dungeon Travelers 2
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Aug 24, 2017 10:43
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all the enemies are either under-dressed girls or fruit
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Zereth posted:... Excuse me? And they drop fruit juice which you can drink for minor health regeneration which seems kind of messed up in a world where the fruit is sentient.
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Aug 24, 2017 11:35
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Getsuya posted:And they drop fruit juice which you can drink for minor health regeneration which seems kind of messed up in a world where the fruit is sentient. Months later, the farmers turned the pigs into sausages and fed them to the firefighters. The world is a messed up place already I guess.
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Aug 24, 2017 11:38
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ChrisBTY posted:The things that I loved about Might and Magic 6-8 is that they weren't 'dungeon crawlers'. Nothing was more freeing to me in a game than realising I can just run by the enemies. But MM7 - which I'm now replaying although on Windows 10 alt-tabbing breaks the game which sucks - I'd forgotten how long it takes until you can stand toe to toe with enemies in groups. It's all about running down corridors luring one or two to their deaths. Which still manages to be more fun than standing in a group of 15 crabs all taking their own turns.
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Aug 24, 2017 11:48
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Something I've been curious about. Considering all the cool/quirky stuff people have made using RPGMaker on PC, I'm wondering if there are hidden gems in the older versions of the series. Like, Japanese sites speak highly of 3 and 4 for the old Sony systems, including how there used to be a PS magazine that would come with discs containing indie RPGMaker 3 games. Is there a net community for old RPGmaker stuff? It'd be fun to find some diamonds in the rough made from the PS or SFC RPGmakers back in the day.
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Aug 24, 2017 13:51
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Panic! at Nabisco posted:RPG thread: my brain is broken and I can't get enough turn-based combat with twists that make you have to make interesting decisions. I've played every Zeboyd game even though they're all kinda not good. The best I've found have been, weirdly enough, RPG Maker games like Echoes of Aetheria. Any other recommendations in this vein? Sunken Spire, The Heart Pumps Clay, and Born Under The Rain.
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Aug 24, 2017 22:00
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Getsuya posted:And they drop fruit juice which you can drink for minor health regeneration which seems kind of messed up in a world where the fruit is sentient.
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Aug 25, 2017 03:35
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