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All games encourage people to min-max like crazy, so balance becomes ridiculously important. As a major example, early EQ had a *huuuuuge* balance problem in that clerics were the only decent healers at higher levels that didn't get addressed for years. Even then, little things like supposedly minor racial spells can become huge issues, like the racial problem with casters I mentioned earlier, can basically punish people for seemingly innocuous choices. Nobody wants to play a class for tens or hundreds of hours and then find out that they are a second-class citizen because they went elf and not dwarf.
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Mar 6, 2020 01:44
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JustJeff88 posted:All games encourage people to min-max like crazy, so balance becomes ridiculously important. As a major example, early EQ had a *huuuuuge* balance problem in that clerics were the only decent healers at higher levels that didn't get addressed for years. Even then, little things like supposedly minor racial spells can become huge issues, like the racial problem with casters I mentioned earlier, can basically punish people for seemingly innocuous choices. Nobody wants to play a class for tens or hundreds of hours and then find out that they are a second-class citizen because they went elf and not dwarf. The issue that often comes up is if the game is easy enough to allow for a wide variety of builds to be viable, min-maxing can end up trivializing the whole thing. Which can be fine for a narrative driven game, but for an online RPG that needs replay value to sustain itself, it would get boring too quickly. So they need content that's scaled to still be challenging for the strongest characters players can build, but then this has the opposite problem where you now have to min-max because you simply won't be viable in that content if you don't. The other option is just restricting the number of options players have with their build to make it easier to balance, but then this takes away the fun of coming up with a build in the first place.
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Mar 6, 2020 06:46
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It's more a problem for MMOs than for other kinds of games because multiplayer brings out a degree of competitiveness that you just don't see in singleplayer RPGs. You could probably minmax Nethack as insanely as people minmax Everquest or World of Warcraft, but nobody would, because doing whatever crazy poo poo comes to mind at your own pace is what a game like that is all about. It does make it difficult to balance MMOs, though, yeah. Even tiny things can have a huge impact - although not necessarily in an absolute sense. It's difficult to mess up badly enough to make one class effectively invincible. What isn't difficult is to mess up badly enough that there is a loud and obnoxious outcry because a class now has a 5.7% higher chance of winning their PVP matches when compared to the average. As they say, if you make your system idiot proof, people will just invent better idiots.
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Mar 6, 2020 09:30
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Both Cheshire and Vorax raise good points, but I don't think that they realise how lopsided this problem ways and how long it lasted. That said, I am aware that nobody wants to hear me bang on about this so I'll drop it. I will say that EQ had very little PvP scene and was entirely cooperative, so the admittedly incessant whining about PvP balance didn't come into it. I do agree that the constant nattering about PvP balance in WoW was bloody tiresome.
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Mar 7, 2020 00:57
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Hey - quick one about camera controls. We're busy on that now. Are there any camera controls, shortcuts or options you feel are missing from some of your old favourites, from a QoL perspective? Panning at edge of screen, right click/centre click and hold to pan, WASD to move camera, spacebar (or whatever) to quick jump back to character, and so on?
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Mar 17, 2020 06:01
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Does your game have a minimap? Can you direct people to places on the minimap?
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Mar 17, 2020 07:32
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My big things are wasd to move it around and something like spacebar to center like you already mentioned. I also really like the option to have the camera follow the party automatically out of combat to make exploration easier but I think I already saw that feature in the trailer. A minimap or map screen you can just click on to view there and/or have your characters autopath there is very nice for backtracking, bonus points if party members keep getting stuck on corners when you do it.
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Mar 17, 2020 18:30
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Thanks a lot guys - where we're at now: - Minimap out of scope for now. I'd like it, but let's see what we can do. - Can easily direct people in the actual town map screen though. - WASD to move camera - Space bar (bindable to other keys) to centre on player - Camera to follow party as an option (can turn on/off) - Map screen will have locations you can fast travel to in friendly locations. So no need to run across the entire map if you're passing through an explored town. Sitting and watching people run through big maps is boring. - Fog of war permanently removed once you explore through it.
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Mar 18, 2020 02:00
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First-time play through of BG:EE: do I max my health rolls or not?
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Mar 21, 2020 02:00
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I'm newer to isometric RPGs, and have got D:OS2 and Planescape Torment for my quarantine fun times. Should I prioritize Planescape so I won't be as frustrated with it later, or play D:OS2 so I'm more accustomed to the genre?
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Mar 21, 2020 02:17
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I'm newer to isometric RPGs, and have got D:OS2 and Planescape Torment for my quarantine fun times. Should I prioritize Planescape so I won't be as frustrated with it later, or play D:OS2 so I'm more accustomed to the genre? I'd recommend either Baldur's Gate 1 or Fallout 1 but I don't know how palatable they'd be to someone who's brand new.
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Mar 21, 2020 02:29
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Fallom posted:First-time play through of BG:EE: do I max my health rolls or not?
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Mar 23, 2020 12:23
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Naar posted:Going to say yes, random health per level just leads to my broke brain save/loading to be perfectly optimal. I agreee. Max health is something that is permanent and affects a character in a very profound way, so having it be non-random is something that 4e really did well and should be standard, in my opinion. Also, I prefer to play the IE games without resting every eight steps, so you can see why I would be an advocate.
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Mar 23, 2020 13:46
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Fallom posted:First-time play through of BG:EE: do I max my health rolls or not?
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Mar 23, 2020 13:50
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Bard's Tale IV is included in this month's Humble Monthly so you all get to experience what I've been going through... ...which is sheer bliss!! For real though I actually think it's pretty good other than exploring the boring/giant main city (street level) for items and whatnot. I assume it opens up quite a bit judging by the world map. It reminds me of a combination between Arx Fatalis exploration with Betrayal At Krondor combat (except the field is limited by 50% and blobber-based).
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Apr 4, 2020 08:49
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The Joe Man posted:Bard's Tale IV is included in this month's Humble Monthly so you all get to experience what I've been going through... You're a bad man.
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Apr 4, 2020 09:31
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I think he is a Joe Man.
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Apr 4, 2020 11:55
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The Joe Man posted:Bard's Tale IV is included in this month's Humble Monthly so you all get to experience what I've been going through... Yeah it's underrated. I thought the combat was a real interesting take on CRPG combat and the action economy and it nailed the exploration pretty well. Plus there's a real big BT1 callback if you grew up on it like I did.
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Apr 4, 2020 12:35
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Sorry if this has been asked and answered and I missed it, this thread is massive and wonderful. I'm trying to get into Darklands but what really keeps making me bounce off isn't the gameplay or anything like that - I love it all. What's killing me is the font. I can't stand it. It's an eyesore. Is there any way to fiddle with the files and poo poo and change the font it uses? Or somewhere in the settings?
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Apr 8, 2020 15:02
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:Sorry if this has been asked and answered and I missed it, this thread is massive and wonderful. I have the same problem only it's the "SSI Goldbox games embedded font looking terrible zoomed up on modern displays" in my case. Only fix that worked for me is messing around with display resolution size to find something workable.
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Apr 8, 2020 15:14
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:Sorry if this has been asked and answered and I missed it, this thread is massive and wonderful. https://www.gog.com/forum/darklands/graphic_mode_setup_program_problem
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Apr 8, 2020 15:25
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Cardiovorax posted:Sorry, from what I know, the most that you can do about this is to mess with your scaling engine in DosBox. Hm, thanks, I'll see what I can do. I'm playing it from the Steam version of the game, but I imagine that link will still work. Thanks.
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Apr 9, 2020 09:24
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Hi guys. This thread over here sent me into a time warp about playing Baldur's Gate 2 multiplayer. Long story short: back in the day a friend and me got around the broken TCP/IP by making a VPN and then using IPX over it. Anyway, inquiring minds would like to know: did the enhanced edition redo the networking? Or is my weird old hack still the best way?
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Apr 12, 2020 01:21
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You might have better luck in this thread. Actually I'm not sure why that thread isn't in the Retro games folder.
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Apr 12, 2020 20:07
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From what I've been able to find on the Steam forums, it's very much hit or miss and often very unstable. I think you might actually have a better shot getting it to run by using Hamachi to build a pretend LAN.
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Apr 12, 2020 20:33
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J.E Sawyer's been quarantine-streaming a bunch of old school RPG -related stuff, he talked about RPG reputation systems a week back and has recently been playing Darklands which has been cool to watch even as someone who never got into it.
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Apr 13, 2020 08:03
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Kanfy posted:J.E Sawyer's been quarantine-streaming a bunch of old school RPG -related stuff, he talked about RPG reputation systems a week back and has recently been playing Darklands which has been cool to watch even as someone who never got into it. Very cool. Thanks for that! 
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Apr 13, 2020 11:21
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I ended up reading Josh's interview with Arnold Hendrick that's on RPG Codex, which mentions a lot of the main missions and quests in Darklands came from Sandy Petersen. I've been watching a lot of Civvie11's Pro Doom videos, and thought, "that can't be the same Sandy Petersen who made half the levels of Doom 1 and 2, can it?" Turns out it is.
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Apr 13, 2020 22:45
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Wait, the author of the Call of Cthulu ttrpg worked on Doom?! That's wild.
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Apr 13, 2020 22:54
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Glimpse posted:Wait, the author of the Call of Cthulu ttrpg worked on Doom?! That's wild. He also was largely responsible for Quake, although the connection there is a bit more obvious given Quake's much more Lovecraftian theme.
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Apr 13, 2020 22:56
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Glimpse posted:Wait, the author of the Call of Cthulu ttrpg worked on Doom?! That's wild. Yep, and Jennell Jacquays (an influential early D&D designer) worked on Quake 2. Before there were dedicated game design schools for video games, RPGs were kind of the best place to go for level design and so on. There's a lot of crossover, even these days. Warren Spector got his start in tabletop RPG design, too.
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Apr 13, 2020 22:57
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Hell if you read the original Doom Bible (barely any of which made it into the final product) you can see how the original design was actually much more of an RPG than what it ended up being. A lot of id software were actually big D&D nerds, they just happened to keep making simple action games because the technology was so new that it was just easier to do something basic and hopefully finish the game before Carmack wrote another brand new engine that everyone was going to have to learn how to use again.
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Apr 13, 2020 23:00
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The Cheshire Cat posted:Hell if you read the original Doom Bible (barely any of which made it into the final product) you can see how the original design was actually much more of an RPG than what it ended up being. A lot of id software were actually big D&D nerds, they just happened to keep making simple action games because the technology was so new that it was just easier to do something basic and hopefully finish the game before Carmack wrote another brand new engine that everyone was going to have to learn how to use again. Quake was originally supposed to be an RPG starring Quake, one of their RPG characters.
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Apr 13, 2020 23:14
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About a decade ago I started a Call of Cthulhu campaign where all my friends played themselves, and the overarching plot involved tabletop game designers working to bring their creations to real life. I say this because in the process of figuring out who designed what and what else they did, I came to the conclusion Sandy Petersen has to be one of the most noteworthy people in gaming whose name rarely comes up. He was involved in the creation of more amazing influential games of both tabletop and video variety than makes any sense. Seriously; DOOM, Civilization, Age of Empires, Call of Cthulhu, Sid Meier's Pirates!, and that is not even all... What a jerk
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Apr 14, 2020 01:57
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Doom actually uses RNG for calculating damage when you shoot an enemy. There's a bit more RPG baked into that game than people realize.
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Apr 14, 2020 17:12
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They came up with a whole elaborate lore and backstory for Doom then decided it was dumb and scrapped it all, which frankly is a lesson that their modern counterparts should have learned
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Apr 14, 2020 18:44
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:They came up with a whole elaborate lore and backstory for Doom then decided it was dumb and scrapped it all, which frankly is a lesson that their modern counterparts should have learned I have seen this opinion thrown about a lot and it's stupid and I wish people would stop saying it.
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Apr 14, 2020 19:25
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Glagha posted:I have seen this opinion thrown about a lot and it's stupid and I wish people would stop saying it.
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Apr 14, 2020 21:18
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Honestly, I paid absolutely zero attention to the plot of Doom 2016. "There are demons, go kill the demons" was more than enough plot to carry Doom 1 and 2, I'm not really asking for or terribly interested in any more than that. If those games need anything, it's less plot, not better plot.
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Apr 14, 2020 21:22
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I tried the newest Doom recently and I did not like it. Firstly, it was phenomenally hard in my experience, and secondly the focus on melee range and minimal ammo was not fun. To each their own and all that, but the fact that this thing is getting such good player feedback (I put zero stock in "professional reviewers") is baffling to me.
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Apr 14, 2020 21:40
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