Critique of Eschalon - Learning Cliffs, and real strategy

[SpottedShroom]

I agree with just about everything Wrath_Magus says in his first post. I feel like it's similar to many of the things I hope to see in Book III, but better thought out and more eloquently put. I've focused mainly on balancing the character build system so that there are more builds that are interesting and playable without having to resort to "run away, camp forever, rinse, repeat" tactics that aren't fun. I'd compare this to D&D 3.x/Pathfinder, where there are almost infinitely many "good" builds, but you do have to think things through to come up with one.

Some of the other things you'd like to see - emergent behavior, complex enemy AI, etc. - are things I very much appreciate in a game, but I don't really expect to see in Eschalon. It's just not that kind of game. It's not super deep, but it's not shallow either. It doesn't offer a ton of variation, but enough to keep me interested. It's fun to figure out the tricks of the engine, and the graphics, sound, and plot are good enough to add another layer. It makes me nostalgic for early-mid 90s RPGs, even if it doesn't compare favorably with the best of them (Ultima 5-7, Gold Box). Oh, and it's a turn-based RPG that runs on Linux. I will buy pretty much any game that fits that description, because it's a market I want to support.

I think perhaps the suggestion you've made with the best benefit to difficulty ratio is better exposing the formulas in the engine. I'd love to see a brief description in the tooltip text for each ability and skill, or at least tables published in the manual. For the record, I initially created the Eschalon wikia site to scratch this itch, though most of its content is from discussions on this forum.

[bearro]

@Wraith_Magus

For somebody who claims to like challenge you seem to be bent on depriving yourself of one. I play Eschalon for many reason, and challenge is one of them. So I do not min-max. My last character uses swords and axes and both kinds of magic. So there are 4 skills I consider primary for him. Plus others I invest in. Is this the most effective build? No. But it's fun to play and quite challenging.

Plus you like terminology and have forgotten what is an RPG. Stop playing the mechanics and try to roleplay, it's fun! Maybe your character for religious reasons will not use any metal items? Maybe each cast of a spell uses a reagent? You can employ many challenging systems, not only the ones that the game forces on you.

That said you are totally right about hiding information from the player, it's a bad choice, especially since it makes playing a mage more attractive as spell casters get more info than fighters (e.g. how can a new player now about feats?)

[Lord_P]

This is devolving into a forum battle.

I have had similar discoveries that made the game fun for me. My favorite was when I was on my way to Bordertown and I ran into a bunch of bandits that were kicking my butt. So I decided to make a run for the town, hoping to duck inside a building for cover and buy some healing potions. When I got to the town, the bow trainer and blacksmith ran to meet me and helped fight off the bandits!

I know, that's so funny!

[munster]

Wraith Magus, I'm not trying to say you're wrong because I do think we may be arguing about two different aspects.

You appear to like an objective measure of what makes a good game, and I don't disagree that there are elements by which that can be measured. What I am getting at is that what, for you, makes something a good game or what, for you, is a vital metric may be completely unimportant for another person.

I'm afraid I will have to say that it's only your opinion that such-and-such is an absolute determinant for all games of this type that make it a good game. You do make a good argument about how game mechanics can, do and should work - but that's a case of preaching to the choir.

The likes of me, who don't particularly appreciate the hard work that goes into figuring out those things, don't care if a game ticks all those boxes. We care if it's fun.

It's a bit like buying a car or a computer. Yes, the specs are very important. However, someone may choose to buy a car because it's red and they like red cars. Or a new PC because it's named after a fruit and fruit is yummy

Now, those may be stupid reasons for making a choice of one car or PC over another, and if you say "But you need to know the engine capacity or the processor speed", you are absolutely correct. However, the level of detail you are going into is on the petrolhead level, where ordinary joes don't really care about how much torque the six-cylinder compression generates. Most people are more concerned about "Will it get me from A to B without costing a fortune in petrol or breaking down more than is acceptable?"

That's the part I'm arguing - the generally ignorant person in the street's view who mainly wants to know "Is this fun?"

(And I'm a she, not a he, but this is the interwebs and nobody knows for sure who or what anyone is - I could be, for all you know, a talking carrot from Alpha Centauri)

[munster]

Okay, one last digression and then I'll shut up, I promise

If I have to restart the whole game and restart counting the rock worms from scratch, it's something so dispiriting that I probably will just pick up the next game in my pile and abandon the old game forever.

But see, that's what you don't have to do in Eschalon - in Book II, for example, you can tell fairly quickly if your build is working or not. If you're cracking chests and locked doors like Jimmy Valentine or disposing of slimes and rats like the hammer of Thor, excellent! Or if you're not, then back to the drawing board and start again without having gone too far down the path of the storyline.

When you start off in Eastwillow, your one big quest is crazy Julian the apostate (hmm - was that an intentional reference, BW?) and when you encounter him you should know if your character is working out. If it's not, then re-roll and re-start - and you're not stuck with doing everything the same (for instance, if the first time you tried diplomacy for getting Keebo's payment for the sword, this time you can try blackmail or good old-fashioned mayhem killing everyone in sight).

Anyway, I hope you stick around and contribute more to the discussion, Wraith Magus. Just because I don't place the same importance on certain elements as you do does not mean I don't find what you have to say interesting

[munster]

Okay, I lied. Truly final comment on this, because I don't want to pile on Wraith Magus.

If, for example, we all (or a majority of us) agree that in "Vixens of Valour IX: Moon of the Blood Carrot" the combat system sucked, we could fruitfully discuss why it sucked, how it could be improved, and what makes a good versus what makes a bad use of the mechanics of the gameplay.

But what we seem to be discussing here regarding Eschalon is coming down to personal opinion; one person thinks that magic spells (say) should not be classed in those divisions where another person thinks it's fine as it is, or one person thinks that there's no point investing in physical skills where you can use magic later on versus another person thinking it's no harm to have a couple of mundane skills while your character is still low-level.

I think that's where our major disagreement lies. Now, you're getting into discussing how the food and drink limitation applies, and that may be a better debate. Personally, I like that we have the choice whether or not to apply this limitation - sometimes I want the immersive experience where my sandals wear out and I have to fill my waterskin and I need to oil my sword or it'll rust, and sometimes I don't. I wouldn't like (I'd probably still play, but I appreciate having the choice) a game where I was forced to watch my food and drink bars or else (in the middle of everything else) just when I was one swing of a sword away from destroying the Ultimate Blob of Acid Ooze, I keeled over from inanition.

But for those who want to play with that option turned on, then working out the best way to make it work is certainly a fruitful debate. What is notfruitful, however, is saying that it must be included or else it is objectively not a good game.

[munster]

I did not know I could do that! Now I want to replay it again and try that!

Oh, do try it! I feel terrible for saying this, but it's true - it's fun!

You just have to be careful that your spell is strong enough that you don't sink to a fiery, molten doom

[Wraith_Magus]

Right, well, I was going to start on ways to better serve Exploration and Challenge, but I think what's discussed at the end of BW's last post deserves more immediate attention, because it's a bit of a game-changer.

there is no such thing as over-analysis, there is only insufficient data to reach a fully supported conclusion.

Over-analysis is quite real. It is clear that you have reach this point, and I will show you:

The entire point of the exercise is not to have JUST personal feelings about things, but to strip away what are just emotional biases in gaming to understand how to rationally and objectively to build a better game.

The key point of this whole exercise is understanding WHY someone enjoys something they enjoy, and WHY they don't like the parts they don't like so that the information gained can actually be turned into the knowledge that lets a better game be built.

Are you a Vulcan? Human preferences isn't about "stripping away emotion" to rationally look at something in order to understand why you like it. It's okay to like something "just because". Why do I like Coke over Pepsi? Why do you prefer red over blue? Why do you like Centipede over Space Invaders? Sometimes, it really is just a personal preference that doesn't require technical or psychological analysis.

Except it's not.

You may not know why you prefer Coke or Pepsi or why New Coke failed, but I can assure you, COCA COLA KNOWS.

Food scientists (yes, that's a real thing) have been mapping the brain to know the exact reactions of the brain to sugar or salt or fat, and search not just for things that hit the "bliss point" - a perfect balance of calories and sodium to make people crave - but also for the tricks that make the brain think it is constantly starving, and therefore constantly needs more and more.

(Incidentally, New Coke was launched after the "Pepsi Challenge" and declining Coke sales scared Coca Cola into believing that its classic formula was going out of style, and so they reacted by giving more of the difference between Coke and Pepsi - which was mostly in Pepsi's sweetness. In taste tests, the ultra-sweet formula that would be New Coke performed spectacularly (just like Pepsi outperformed Coke in sip-tests of the Pepsi Challenge)... but those tests were flawed because the tests were conducted with tiny sips of drinks, not a whole can. When you're only taking a tiny sip, sweetness is never overwhelming, but if you're downing a whole can, it can choke out most other flavors. People drinking a larger amount will prefer the more mellow Coke Classic.)

(And that's just the flavor - that's not even starting on the branding, and how that works on subconscious associations. Coke, like most industry leaders, wraps itself in classic Americana for the purpose of making itself seem like some trusted older relative, while Pepsi - and Dr Pepper - always portrays itself as the icon of the rebellion against tradition to heighten the distinction. Santa Claus, in fact, wears a red and white coat specifically because Coke branded him that way - before the 1950's, Santa wore green and brown. Coke rebranded a holiday to be its own billboard, with Santa an infamous Coke-drinker.)

The thing is, you are powerless in that conversation because you aren't armed with the language to understand how the game is being played, and you don't even recognize that such things are even knowable in the first place to even start questioning.

When I took my course on the History of Philosophy, one of the things they talked about was how the very first scientists of Greek tradition were the people who looked up at the coming rain storms and just watched how they formed. The other people thought them crazy, and that the clouds were formed by the gods, and were therefore unknowable, but these earliest scientists still just wanted to see and understand how they worked, because they disagreed - they believed there were things in the universe that were knowable.

What I am concerned with is why I feel what I feel. If I am bored because it seems like I'm constantly doing the same thing, how do I know how to express that, or remedy that? If you assume that nothing is ever knowable, that it's all just subjective opinions, and one man's coming rain storm will be another man's sunny day, then you can't even begin to understand the world, much less seek to exert any influence upon it.

The people who deny their emotions - who pretend to be vulcans - are the people who are most ruled by their emotions, and in fact, the reason that they ever even try to deny their emotions in the first place often has to do with their fear of facing them.

The first step to control is acknowledging that, yes, your emotions are understandable and predictable, and therefore, controllable.

You talk about wanting to create a system where you aren't constrained by class, but your mechanics actually are built around concepts like a "cleric spell list" that makes no sense for someone trying to accomplish that goal. ... Why do you use a D&D-style spell list for the magic skills, when those were spell lists built to give class-restrained characters greater flexibility with their spells than a strict class straight-jacket would allow?

Wrong. Class doesn't determine your spells, only your Skills do. Your class in simply a moniker to model your character after. Be a Rogue, but spend some skill points on learning Divination magic. Nothing wrong with that.

Except that's not true, whether you want to admit it or not.

Again, you have enforced min-maxing, (and say that it's entirely purposeful, at that,) and that undermines any attempt to claim that you aren't trying to force players into classes.

While, hypothetically, yes, you could punch all your points into Speed as a stat and "Divination" (you know that doesn't mean the same thing as "Divine" magic, right?) magic, the game strictly punishes any such strategy.

Instead, you made attributes align themselves with certain skills, while at the same time made certain skills possess so much power that they could be used to overcome all the obstacles in the game.

If you want to be a cleric, you need Perception maxed out fast, and you need very high Wisdom to get spells.

In fact, you exacerbated this need to min/max by making it so that it was impossible to cast any magic at all without putting points into attributes above their "natural" range, and even worse, forcing players to put in nearly 50 points to their Intelligence or Wisdom for all the spells, while encouraging them to go for massive quantities of Perception for the MP regen.

Meanwhile, Dexterity is for the archers, the different melee weapons have different stats, but generally Strength is a good place to go for it.

If you don't believe that the skill people chose to focus upon IS their class, just look at your own forums, and people will say, "I'm playing a cleric" or "I'm playing a ranger". Whatever your weapon skill or primary magic skill (read: the primary way you solve the primary threat in this game, the enemies,) is your class. If you put points into Weapons:Blades, and take up a sword, you're now a fighter. Your system has made skill and class synonymous.

When I play in that oh-so-hated Skyrim, I'm a stealth-bow-conjurer-alterer-alchemist-except-on-tuesdays-when-I-chug-a-Destruction-potion-and-throw-empowered-lightning-bolts... there's no name for that. I can't put that into a single "class name" besides maybe to say I'm a sneaky mage, but that doesn't start to describe how I'm a specific mage.

Again, I have to ask, if you didn't want everyone just calling themselves a "wizard" all the time, why did you make it so that they could clear the game pumping all their skill points into just one "wizard class-skill" with mechanics that reinforce that Intelligence and Perception are the "wizard class stats", and encourage, both in the game's mechanics, and in your own statements in this thread, that they do so?

You built a class system, you just don't really realize it.

If you really want to have a more free-form and classless system, you can do so, but it requires breaking apart those skills that are classes-to-themselves. If you had that skill for spells that only let you do sneaky things like unlock doors and turn invisible, and then set it side-by-side as an Intelligence-and-Perception heavy character's alternative to doing the same thing that a Dexterity-heavy character's non-magical stealth and lock-picking skills do, while still making it separate from a "spells that deal damage" magic skill that is the Intelligence-heavy alternative to the Dexterity-heavy bow skills, then you start setting up a series of real alternatives where players might still be defined by the skills they pick and attributes they have, but it isn't so straight-jacketed into all "wizards" having the exact same spell list.

Because right now, there's no reason for anyone putting any heavy investment into "elemental" not to pick the same spells as everyone else, being the same "wizard" as everyone else. If you separate it out into either being a fire-elemental or wind-elemental elementalist, or the sneaky spells wizard, or the conjurer wizard, or the emomancer from Dungeons of Dreadmore, you start to create chances for characters with the same attributes to actually have different skills, and start creating a much larger number of iterations of real "classes" for this game.

However, if you want to truly go into the realm of making a system that is fully classless, (which I think you actually have some animus against, considering the way you react to Skyrim,) then you have to start working at a much deeper level upon the mechanics, and start using the likes of either a training-through-use system, or heavily recalibrate your skill-buying methods to include sub-geometric cost growth on skills. (That is, if skill level 2 costs 5 points, skill level 3 costs 6, skill level 4 costs 7, etc.)

Wouldn't it make more sense, if your goal was to create a sense that the characters you created were not defined by "classes" to instead have a far greater set of magic-related skills where you specifically invested skill points into "buffs", or "direct damage spells", or even "fire spells" versus "ice spells", along with a "this is a trap-busting spell" skill?

Yeah, this is pretty much what Eschalon is all about. This is my first clue that you don't really know as much about the game as you appear to. You can be anything you want in Eschalon- dabble in Divination and Elemental Magicks, try out some Alchemy, and dedicate as much or as little to it as you want. Is there a lock in your way? Bash the chest open. Pick the lock. Find the key. Melt the lock. That is 4 possible ways to open nearly any locked chest in the game. How many other RPGs allow this level of freedom? We made the game SPECIFICALLY this way so that any kind of character build could discover a way to play the game to the best of their ability.

You seem a little eager to want to prove me wrong somehow. Good. If you want to prove me wrong, you have to critically analyze what I say, and what I am trying to do is bring critical analysis to how this game is viewed.

The thing is, though, that may be what you wanted the game to be, but it failed to deliver upon that goal for the very problems I keep trying to highlight.

Again, this is the problem that Enforced Min-Maxing creates, and which you, yourself, already declared you were trying to encourage. This is, again, a point of schizophrenic game design - you want to say that any kind of class can succeed, but then at the same time say that how you build your character, and min-maxing them to be as specialized as possible is the way you're supposed to win.

Sure, I dabble in all sorts of skills - the mechanics of the game made it so that there's absolutely no reason not to do so, because trainers are free in the only resource that matters. However, I'm not spending my actual resources on anything but maximizing my one actually important class-skill to its limit before maybe spreading other points around, because doing anything else is punished by the game's mechanics.

If you wanted people to actually spread points around to dabble in skills of their choice, you shouldn't have built the trainers the way you built them, and you shouldn't have set up your skill point costs to specifically punish players for trying to add on more skills with triple costs for the first point, and you should have punished excessive min-maxing by making the skills more expensive the more points you put into them.

But you didn't, because you wanted people to min-max, as you, yourself, said in this thread and elsewhere, but now that I'm saying that there's no reason to do anything but min-max, you claim that it's not actually what you wanted.

This is, again, schizophrenic game design brought about, most likely, by a lack of critical analysis of what it was you were actually trying to accomplish. You have to realize those two goals are in direct conflict with one another, and the game suffers for it.



On the other note, I can't really take You see, the reason why I dismiss those "choices" for how to deal with a door is that they really don't add anything to the game as it stands.

I mean, yes, I've played several games that let you do exactly the same thing, even Oblivion was like that with mods to allow bashing, and Arcanum is probably best remembered for it, but that's beside the point.

If I'm a wizard that isn't going to want to invest the points to learn lock picking with actual lock picks, I could, hypothetically, choose between using lock melt or fire bolt to "bash" a door down, but... is that really an exciting choice?

I mean, do you really, honestly, tingle with excitement every time you come across a locked door?

There's a reason most RPGs nowadays involve minigames for their lock picking sessions - if all you do is click on the door, see you failed, click again, see you failed, click again, success, then it's not exactly engaging the player any.

Again, part of what you have to ask is, "Am I doing this for extrinsic enjoyment, or intrinsic enjoyment?" Do you actually enjoy the mechanic of opening a chest for its own sake, or just so you can get to what's inside it? (Again, this is like asking if someone is killing orcs in an RPG because they love the combat system, and play it for that act of combat, itself, or are they doing it because they just are trying to level-grind to get to something else? If you're playing a game that focuses heavily upon drip-fed rewards and huge grind sessions, like WoW, then you're talking about extrinsic rewards and often boring combat.) If all the chest serves as is a toll-booth that interrupts the player on the path to getting to what they actually want, then, well, that's not a terrible thing in a game, but it's not something that you can hold up and say, "SEE! We have a mechanic where you have to hit an inanimate door repeatedly until it breaks! Our game is much better for having that there just for its own sake!" Clicking on a door in some way repeatedly until the numbers say the door gives up - whether it is by axe-bashing, fire-bolting, lock-melting-spell, or lock pick, it doesn't matter, they are all engaging the player in the same way, they just require one or more clicks - doesn't actually deliver on any aesthetic, any form of enjoyment for the player on its own terms. (That isn't to say that you couldn't somehow incorporate it into something enjoyable, like needing to get through a door quickly in a tense moment, so that the actual time spent might matter, but it's still just clicking, in general.)

Worse still, and I will cover this more in depth in the Exploration post I want to make later, there's no particular reason for me to even want to get into most chests in particular, anyway, and I can always just leave a chest there for later, when I'll actually possibly get rubber-banded higher-level loot from opening them later, anyway. Since nearly every chest is randomly filled with loot, and I basically only sell 99% of what I get, anyway, and there are other ways to get money, there's no particular incentive for me to care about getting into a chest, and that ultimately winds up damping the joy I can get out of Exploration, as well.

Do you want a game where stats are God, and everything is determined by character build?

I favor this.

or...Do you want a game where tactics are everything, and a level 30 character can be beaten by a level 1 monster if mishandled badly enough?

I feel like this is the type of game you want. Strategy is everything. So, if we apply this to real life we could say: if you are a fully outfitted and trained Marine (level 30) and you faced a giant sewer rat (level 1), but you "mishandled" the encounter, the rat is going to kill you. Yes, perhaps if you laid on the ground and did nothing while the rodent chewed on you for two days, you might die. Eschalon works the same way: take your level 30 character, strip off his armor, and stand in front of a rat. Now press the space bar over and over until your horrible tactics kill your character. Being able to mismanage and kill your experienced character is not a mark of a good game, only that you suck as a gamer.

So, what I have to ask is do you consider the way that the game turned out, where people are coming up with ways to evade enemy encounters and defeat more powerful enemies through tricks a mistake you regret? Was it an unfortunate accident that people found out ways to make these "Challenge Playthroughs" work that you want to reformulate the game so that they can no longer accomplish them?

Because what we do have in this game is a level 1 character beating a level 30 enemy, so it shouldn't be all that much

In fact, I'd point to your own fans, here in this thread, and how they are, in protest to how I say the game offers such limited strategy, trying to offer up all the unpredicted, emergent gameplay behaviors they found - are you genuinely calling all those just mistakes on your part, that you wished weren't actually in the game, and that the players had to accomplish everything through just what they put into character skills alone, with no chance for player skill to matter?

Because yes, I do prefer a focus more upon making each battle involve more tactical choices - my problem with those emergent solutions that players found wasn't that they were somehow inadequate, or that I'm trying to find one perfect solution to every problem, but rather that the situational solutions were far too rare in a game that could deliver far more of them, and that there was such an obvious perfect solution to every problem, when the game could be built so that there wasn't one.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure you really fully get what I was asking you about, or if you wanted to put the answer you gave so forcefully against tactical choice, and have the nagging doubt that this might be another case of something you are of a conflicted mind over, but for the case of this post, I'll take this statement at its face value, and carry it to its conclusions.

If what you really want is a game where stats are everything, and there aren't player tricks and strategies that let you shortcut challenges, then the best way to do that would be to take a page from games like Etrian Odyssey, the old Bard's Tale games, Wizardry, most of the Final Fantasys, and Dragon Quest, and include separate combat screens that focus purely upon just using "attack" and "magic" commands once per turn and focus purely upon stats.

In fact, I'd genuinely encourage you to look at the Etrian Odyssey series and it's skill system since Etrian Odyssey 3 onward, especially, since they, while they used a class system, used a very non-standard one that shuffled up the typical way classes and skills are distributed. (Rather than having just one healer class, they have "Prince(ss)" and "Monk" classes, where Princes/Princesses don't heal directly, but can cast buff spells with a passive skill that lets them heal allies when they buff them, and also heal the whole party passively if they are at full health at the end of a turn, as well as every step out of combat. Their heals are passive and free and constant, but lack the ability to immediately heal an ally who's badly hurt but by items. Meanwhile, monks have traditional healing spells and barefisted melee attack skills, but have to pay their MP (which basically only recovers with item use or leaving the whole dungeon to go to town,) to actually do the healing. They also have a half-dozen different variants on fighter-type characters, focusing on different aspects of either being tanks, fast fighters, powerful fighters, support skill fighters, or debilitation fighters, with some hybrids between them. They way they set up their skills, and then encourage players to just build their characters around using one skill and making it excessively powerful, are worth at least analyzing for ideas when you set about on thinking about how to make your next game.)

Focusing combat down into just hitting the "attack" or "magic" command without having movement may be limiting in terms of what game strategies you can employ (although if that's what you want, then that's fine,) but it also makes combat go faster and smoother, which allows a greater degree of time to be spent on other things in the game, such as Exploration. The Etrian Odyssey series, in fact, makes Exploration its cornerstone by actually using the DS stylus to make you draw your own map as you go, and sprinkling in tons of hidden passageways and the like to find. The movement system in combat essentially just creates the sort of tactical combat solutions that let people avoid having to use their skills by simply walking around the problems or using tricks to circumvent threats.

The reason why this shift from a Roguelike-style "exploration and combat in the same interface" type of interface to a Wizardry-style of combat interrupting exploration and movement would be a good idea for focusing on the character's stats is that, as I was saying earlier, I can play an Abnegation-focused grindy game, but the problem with Eschalon is that its combat is too simple for me to enjoy as a strategic challenge, but not so simple that it, like those Etrian Odyssey/Wizardry styles of games, I can ram through the combat with minimal brainpower and just do it while listening to the news or an audio book so I don't feel like I'm just sitting there doing nothing. Going for either extreme is fine, but sitting in a nebulous middle dissatisfies both reasons to want to play such a game.

If what you really want to do is pull the focus away from having to make difficult strategic choices in combat, (and putting all those choices back into the Character Creation screen,) then, while, yes, it's not exactly my first preference of game, although I've certainly played a ton of games with similar systems, and you can certainly build up an audience by trying to focus more upon your "Core Competencies" of exploration, and leave the tactical combat behind.

[Wraith_Magus]

(And I'm a she, not a he, but this is the interwebs and nobody knows for sure who or what anyone is - I could be, for all you know, a talking carrot from Alpha Centauri)

My mistake, and my apologies. I try not to throw in pronouns until after I've confirmed someone's gender, but I obviously slipped up.

Wraith Magus, I'm not trying to say you're wrong because I do think we may be arguing about two different aspects.

You appear to like an objective measure of what makes a good game, and I don't disagree that there are elements by which that can be measured. What I am getting at is that what, for you, makes something a good game or what, for you, is a vital metric may be completely unimportant for another person.

No, I am fully aware of that - I'm not much of a FPS fan, but obviously there are people who do enjoy the genre, and they do have their reasons.

The thing is, however, that even if I don't share that enjoyment, I can understand what it is they enjoy in a game, and find the words it takes to express what it is they are looking for in a game.

I'm afraid I will have to say that it's only your opinion that such-and-such is an absolute determinant for all games of this type that make it a good game. You do make a good argument about how game mechanics can, do and should work - but that's a case of preaching to the choir.

But that's not the case of the point where I was trying to make a distinction, here.

I said that the game had a specific type of skill point system which I objectively defined, and you responded that it was my opinion, because you didn't choose to see it the way I did.

You might certainly have a different opinion of how the skill system should be used, but that the skill point system is based upon having three skill points per level, and one point per skill level, regardless of what the current skill level is, would be an objective description of the system, and is not subject to opinion.

The likes of me, who don't particularly appreciate the hard work that goes into figuring out those things, don't care if a game ticks all those boxes. We care if it's fun.

And I'm not saying that's wrong - in fact, I agree with you when you say that we're probably looking for different things in a game.

The thing I'm trying to do here, however, is ask what do you find fun?

Even if it's difficult to know exactly what drives someone to like a shooter game or a strategy game in general, if you will say that what you really like is the colorful graphics or music in one game, I bet I can find a game that has similar aesthetics, and predict that you might like that game, as well. I might even make the suggestion that the game expand on the variety of music it has, and after seeing what tracks you particularly favored, try to see if more tracks that explored that kind of tone or mood more deeply would be the sort of thing you appreciate more.

The problem I have is with a declaration that, basically, everything about a game is just opinion, and that, therefore, we can't really ever understand anything about what it is we like, or how we could try to find something we like better than what we have now, because that's not true.

However, the level of detail you are going into is on the petrolhead level, where ordinary joes don't really care about how much torque the six-cylinder compression generates. Most people are more concerned about "Will it get me from A to B without costing a fortune in petrol or breaking down more than is acceptable?"

That's the part I'm arguing - the generally ignorant person in the street's view who mainly wants to know "Is this fun?"

This is where I get back to the idea, though, of how you have the likes of food scientists who can tell you exactly what your favorite level of sodium in a chip is.

In fact, those same people hire taste-testers who have specifically trained taste senses that go beyond the normal human range - a jar of mayonnaise will be graded in 38 different criteria on just its level of eggs alone, along with its color in a vocabulary that a normal person just doesn't have, because their jobs require the ability to convey an extremely precise description of just how yellowy or how creamy or how egg-flavored a mayo is that ordinary people just don't have a vocabulary to describe.

Just because you don't understand what a petrolhead is talking about doesn't mean that what they are talking about isn't real. It's just something you don't particularly care about or bother to understand. Not bothering to understand how a car works is perfectly fine - I sure don't - but you DO hope that the people who make your car will understand it.

What I am trying to do is break down why I like or dislike what I play in that same way.

But what we seem to be discussing here regarding Eschalon is coming down to personal opinion; one person thinks that magic spells (say) should not be classed in those divisions where another person thinks it's fine as it is, or one person thinks that there's no point investing in physical skills where you can use magic later on versus another person thinking it's no harm to have a couple of mundane skills while your character is still low-level.

But that's looking at the discussion a little too broadly.

You see, what I'm interested in is why someone likes a magic system one way, and a different person likes it another.

Sometimes, there is a disagreement because there is a difference in goals - one person wants a more complex game, and another person wants a simpler game. Because their goals are different, they're unlikely to ever actually arrive at an agreement on how the game should be, since they basically want to play different games. If both people want the same thing, however, and just disagree on how to achieve that goal, however, it's ultimately just a matter of people disagreeing over what would be the most effective way to accomplish the same goal.

This is why I'm focused on asking what it is people actually want out of a game.

And, more importantly, I'm focused on asking if the things they say they want are the things they actually want - because when I read the description of the game in its own advertisement, the game proclaims itself as being completely about strategic choice. But when I probe about ways that this game lacks in strategic choice, and if people really want that much of it, the answer back is a somewhat frustrated answer that I want too much strategy.

That tells me the answer was actually, "No, they didn't really want strategy after all."

And that, in turn, goes back to the focus I have in being able to get people to have the terms they need to describe what it is they are really looking for in a game, and what it is that's actually fun for them.

Because if what they really want is to just explore a great big, open world with few limitations on where they can go, and enjoy the act of searching every last nook and cranny, and they're just throwing in a lot of the combat simply because "well, no, I don't think fights are fun, but... y'know, that's just sorta what you put into RPGs... why change it?" then it's probably worth asking if maybe they wouldn't rather try putting in something else to break up the traveling segments with some tension?

-----

And I'll ask you, as I asked the others:

What is it you like most about this game?
What is the most fun experience you ever had in this game?

For that matter, what are some of your (other) favorite games, and why are they fun to you? Can you see a similar thread between those favorite games (including, possibly, Eschalon)?

[BasiliskWrangler]

This is my last response to this thread; again, I will try to read it all in my spare time, but I simply can't respond to every comment or suggestion you are proposing, Wraith_Magus.

My first suggestion is to stop doing this:

In fact, I'd point to your own fans, here in this thread, and how they are, in protest to how I say the game offers such limited strategy, trying to offer up all the unpredicted, emergent gameplay behaviors they found - are you genuinely calling all those just mistakes on your part, that you wished weren't actually in the game, and that the players had to accomplish everything through just what they put into character skills alone, with no chance for player skill to matter?

This is a thinly veiled insult wrapped in a run-on sentence that is barely legible. Stop this. If you want more constructive feedback, you need to learn the etiquette and skill of concise posts. Trim down the fat, get to the point, and stop suggesting that people are wrong for simply liking something. This is the kind of paragraph that will lose you audience members, and why people are starting to view you as nothing more than a professional troll.

Now, if you're looking for a debate, you'll get none from me. I don't have the time, though maybe someone else here will entertain you with one. My suggestion to you is this: if you have real ideas on how we could improve Book III, please compose a concise email and send it to me. It doesn't need to be a 10,000 word dissertation on game theory and the mechanics of strategy- just tell me how you think we could improve the game and we'll see what we can do.

[bearro]

Again, you have enforced min-maxing,

Except he's not

Like I said before I'm playing the game without min-maxing. Nothing is forcing me to. Quite the contrary, I feel the game forces me not to min-max as it because too easy if you do.

Plus, let's not turn it into trolling, whether you like it or not not everything can be measured in a objective way. You can't prove why one film is "better" than the other. And games are art. You can have opinions, but they aren't facts.

[munster]

In fact, you exacerbated this need to min/max by making it so that it was impossible to cast any magic at all without putting points into attributes above their "natural" range, and even worse, forcing players to put in nearly 50 points to their Intelligence or Wisdom for all the spells, while encouraging them to go for massive quantities of Perception for the MP regen.

Wraith Magus (and the rest of you), meet my guy who I managed to successfully play through to the end of Book II, Trez (Level 19 Male Virtuous Magic User). Hi, Trez! Stats for this character:

Strength 18, Dexterity 21, Endurance 21, Speed 21, Constitution 22
Intellect 27, Wisdom 27, Perception 51

Yes, I pumped up Perception for the MP regen, but you may note I am not up into the high 40s or at 50 for either Intellect or Wisdom, and I have access to a nice selection of spells and can cast them at a strong enough force to do what I want (shield me from missiles and zap the baddies out of their socks, mainly).

Skills I picked up, to at least Level 1:
Cartography, Medicine, Meditation, Mercantile, Hide in Shadows, Skullduggery, Spot Hidden, Unarmed Combat, Bludgeoning Weapons, Cleaving Weapons, Thrown Weapons, Swords, Pick Locks, Move Silently, Repair, Alchemy, Divine Magic, Elemental Magic, Light Armour, Heavy Armour, Shields

Is this the absolutely best build of a magic-user character? No. Did I put the most points into the least qualities? No. Did I pick up a few skills that, in hindsight, I could have left alone and better used those points? Yes, but on the other hand - that Thrown Weapons skill comes in handy when chucking rocks at rats (and there were some sweet weapons like the throwing stars I just could not resist when I saw them and I wanted to use them), or when I was bashing open barrels starting out, those Bludgeoning Weapons and Unarmed Combat skills saved me from bloodying my knuckles or breaking my hand bones.

Could someone who better understands and has more experience with game mechanics build the perfect spell-slinger using the same points but pumping them into a few, carefully chosen areas? Sure they could!

But the point is - I had fun with this character, I got to the end, I was able to manage the quests, and I didn't have to and was certainly not forced down the route of shoving all my points into Intellect and Wisdom as you maintain I would have to be. I juggled a few skills here and there, consciously choosing them rather than relying on (say) getting a ring or a hat for Mercantile (I didn't want the hassle of constantly swapping between the combat gear, spell-casting gear and then mercantile/foraging/whatever gear when I had selected the optimum outfits). I had a specific outfit for combat (the armour, weapons, rings and amulets giving boosts for that) and one for magic-using (hats, rings, amulet) and depending on the circumstances, I switched between them by toggling.

Was Trez a "pure" sample of his class? No, but (for my notion of the story, anyway), he was a bit of a mongrel since he doesn't know who or what he was before and he is going on instinct and preference ('hey, this feels good, I should use this!' or 'ooh, pretty shiny!') when choosing weapons and skills. So he picks up skills along the way, either from books or trainers, finds cool loot and then either sells it off or decides to keep it, and by encounters with monsters and bandits, finds out the hard way whether he is better suited to be a fighter or a magic-user.

And I can't wait for Book III to do it all over again!

[munster]

Okay, I think I understand where a lot of the conflict is coming from. You are approaching the game from the view of a critique of the design (as your example, the precise description of the shade of yellow of the egg yolks for the mayonnaise manufacturer) and we are responding to you from the view point of the playing experience (the shopper who picks up a jar of Hellmann's rather than Crosse and Blackwell's because the colour looks richer).

We're in the position of telling you "But we like the taste!" while you seem to be saying (I'm not saying you are saying this, I'm saying this is what it sounds like - and that sentence is convoluted enough to make the pixies cry) that "Well, you shouldn't, because our panel of trained expert testers specially chosen for their refined palates marked this much lower on our patented scientific tastebud test!"

It is important for someone working in the print industry or manufacturing the flags to specify that the shade of blue in the Scottish saltire is Pantone Shade 300, but for the rest of us, it suffices to say "It's dark blue". You're asking us to quote you the exact reference number when we're happy enough to say "Dark blue works here but light blue wouldn't fit".

[bearro]

It is important for someone working in the print industry or manufacturing the flags to specify that the shade of blue in the Scottish saltire is Pantone Shade 300, but for the rest of us, it suffices to say "It's dark blue". You're asking us to quote you the exact reference number when we're happy enough to say "Dark blue works here but light blue wouldn't fit".

I have to disagree. I don't think game development is an industry. There is no formulae for a perfect game, no list of elements to choose, for me at least, games are art, their value is more than the sum of the elements. I'm not saying the mechanics aren't important, I'm saying the creator should not be obsessed with them. For example - Baldur's Gate - the mechanics, especially when it comes to combat are far from balanced and still the game can be replayed hundreds of times. And we played it even when it had more bugs than a prison mattress. Why? Because it had something that cannnot be analysed and more over it shouldn't be.

[Kreador Freeaxe]

It is important for someone working in the print industry or manufacturing the flags to specify that the shade of blue in the Scottish saltire is Pantone Shade 300, but for the rest of us, it suffices to say "It's dark blue". You're asking us to quote you the exact reference number when we're happy enough to say "Dark blue works here but light blue wouldn't fit".

I have to disagree. I don't think game development is an industry. There is no formulae for a perfect game, no list of elements to choose, for me at least, games are art, their value is more than the sum of the elements. I'm not saying the mechanics aren't important, I'm saying the creator should not be obsessed with them. For example - Baldur's Gate - the mechanics, especially when it comes to combat are far from balanced and still the game can be replayed hundreds of times. And we played it even when it had more bugs than a prison mattress. Why? Because it had something that cannnot be analysed and more over it shouldn't be.

I'm suddenly flashing on the first day of class with Robin Williams teaching in "Dead Poets Society." Where he has the student start reading the introduction to the poetry text book, and midway through he tells him to rip it out and throw it away.