Critique of Eschalon - Learning Cliffs, and real strategy

[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.

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.

Exactly! That's a very good image

[Wraith_Magus]

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.

This is honestly bewildering.

Yes, I'm certainly prone to sometimes making a run-on sentence, especially since I tend to shift my thoughts mid-sentence, and don't exactly have an editor.

However, there was nothing in what I said that was an insult.

I am trying to ask you to think about your game in another way, to move past simple preconceived notions, and instead, people want to shove me into some preconceived notions so that they don't have to actually consider what I'm saying.

You can say, "The only reason he's here talking about flaws in the game (that even other members of this community have called flaws) is because he hates the community," as an excuse for refusing to listen. However, it doesn't exactly make much sense, nor does it actually help the game or community to do so.

(And as a total aside, professionals are people who are paid for what they do...)

The reason I pointed that section out was because I was showing that you and the other players in this thread were in disagreement.

That's not an insult, and that's not invalidating what other people have done or enjoyed.

You said that you were opposed to the sort of game where level 1 characters could defeat level 30 characters, and so I pointed out that the game we had now was actually a game where not only was it possible for characters to defeat enemies far in excess of their own level, but that they listed it as one of the better things about the game that they were able to do so.

That is absolutely not an insult on anyone's play style, and I honestly can't understand why people seem to keep finding these insults in what I say.

For that matter, when I talked about how this game was or was not hard and fun or not fun for its strategic gameplay, which was the first type of gameplay that the game advertises itself on, and it was met with a response that people didn't want the game to involve that much more strategy, and that they found the game fun for reasons besides strategy.

I never said that liking the game for those things was wrong, I simply used that as proof that strategic challenge was not what people were finding fun in this game.

The argument I am making is that you have been throwing out this concept of a "hard game" or a "strategic challenge" as the primary reason people play the game, but when I try to test and probe that idea, everyone reverts to entirely different things they like about the game.

The argument I am making is that trying to think of just making some minor mechanical changes to make the game "more hard" or "less hard" aren't going to actually make the game any more fun for most people because being hard isn't what they're playing for.

If the players aren't looking for a challenge in the game, then it means that the sort of changes that should be made to the game are entirely different from the changes that should be made if they are; Again, that's the difference between the sort of X-Com style of game where you are facing constant tough decisions and a level 1 monster can kill a level 30 player, and one where it's all about character stats. That's why I ask what sort of game it is you really want, and that is not an insult to ask.

[Wraith_Magus]

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.

The problem is you're completely overlooking that the term you are arguing against was objectively defined, and can actually be measured.

The term is objectively defined - any skill point system with no growth in costs (and skills in Eschalon always have 1 skill point cost), and with a flat or increasing value to the points spent (which Eschalon's skills have). Eschalon objectively, measurably, meets that definition.

What I am using is an objectively defined term - just like how the automobile industry may define a "Light Truck" as being any truck with a payload of less than 4,000 lbs, then you can objectively measure whether it fits that definition. Maybe you want to say that "light" is a word that always means something is an opinion, but people can use that term in an objective fashion.

The point of that term of "enforced min/maxing" is that it denotes a game that has mechanics that are set up in such a way that actively encourages min/maxing behavior in players. Yes, certainly, you don't have to, but the point of the term is to denote when the conditions arise that give min/maxing players more powerful character than they otherwise would have.

That has absolutely nothing to do with whether this game is a good game or a bad game - I even asked repeatedly whether the system of min/maxing was on purpose, and BW said it, in fact, was.

The reason I am talking about enforced min/maxing is because I am comparing this game's current skill buy system to alternative systems that do not so heavily reward min/maxing. Games with skills that cost more skill points the more you have already invested into those skills are games that do not mechanically reinforce the min/maxing, and encourage players to play more jack-of-all-trade games.

The point I am making has nothing to do with whether people are wrong for playing the game the way they do, but with how the mechanics of the game push players to act. The current mechanics push players towards min/maxing, and that is why I am asking whether that's what people really want or not.

[Wraith_Magus]

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.

Actually, no, the people who made Baldur's Gate knew what they were doing, and weren't just acting randomly.

They understood what it was they wanted to put into the game, and what would make it fun, and people have analyzed what made the game fun, and you can bet the likes of BioWare, Black Isle's successor, spent tremendous amounts of time and effort understanding what made their previous games successful, and what made them not work as well as they should.

Baldur's Gate had an obvious hit with a then fairly novel mechanic of having the "canned chatter" pop up, which broke up the tension of the fights with comedic banter, which added much-needed variety to the tension curve. It also added to both the Narrative and the Fantasy elements of the game's aesthetics, since it endeared the player to both the humorous characters and the

The problem with the Baldur's Gate method was that the chatter was tied to a timer, alone. This meant that people might have multiple chatters in a single trip to the shopping district or have that same conversation while cleaning the beholder guts off their boots in an ancient tomb.

To preserve a better tension curve, Dragon Age, for example, had invisible tripwires that triggered those chatters at designated points along a given dungeon - usually near the entrances or in the middle of a town, where the tension would already be low, anyway. You didn't get jokes thrown about just before the "climax" of a dungeon at the boss fight, since that would somewhat spoil the tension that was supposed to be building up as you approached the final confrontation of that segment of the game.

And you can't pretend that the same formula of characters hasn't been used again and again with Black Isle/BioWare - they pretty quickly found out that their "comedic psychopath" characters were by far their most popular, and kept bringing out HK-47s and Black Whirlwinds and Wrexs and such with every new game they made.

[Wraith_Magus]

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!

You seem to be viewing my analysis of the mechanics of this game as somehow a condemnation of how you, as a player, reacted to the mechanics.

What I am talking about is that mechanics in a game have specific effects that change how the player perceives and reacts to the game.

You see, mechanics either enforce or punish specific behaviors.

If you want to be a mage, the game enforces the behavior of putting tons of points into perception to get all the MP you can get, since it's so limited. If MP weren't nearly so scarce, then the game wouldn't be enforcing that type of behavior. Not focusing on having enough Wisdom to cast your cleric spells is punished by not letting you cast those spells, or by not letting you learn all the spells you might want to learn.

That is to say, this is a discussion purely about what the mechanics push players to do or not do.

In fact, your character actually helps prove my point:
Your general-magic casting character follows basically a similar model as my own general-magic casting character, which follows the same pattern as basically everyone else's characters who try to cast from both spell schools.

Everyone's magic users look basically the same because the game rules heavily reward putting all your attribute points into getting more MP, and spending just enough points on Intelligence and/or Wisdom to get the spells you really need.

Sure, you made choices without pursuing a "perfect build" by spending points on skills or attributes that didn't give you absolutely the best bang for your skill points, but that doesn't disprove that the game heavily rewards players for putting vast amounts of points into Perception if they want to be casters, the way you obviously just did. It simply means that the game has a margin for error for someone who doesn't min/max their character ruthlessly and relentlessly.

But just because you can survive without min/maxing doesn't mean the game doesn't make a min/maxed character significantly more powerful, or that it doesn't encourage or enforce such characters - even with what you had, you still massively pumped up the Perception points as well as Int and Wis to a lesser degree, just like every min/maxer does.

Besides that, what I'm saying is not that there's no reason to put a skill point into skullduggery, but that if you can get that skill point for free from a trainer, rather than having to spend one of the few level up skill points you have on it, don't you ultimately just wind up with more skill points to spend if you wait until after you get a trainer to put those skullduggery points in? Weren't you ever stopped before you put points into a skill to think that maybe you could just wait until after you found a trainer for that skill before you spread your points out to it? In fact, how many of those skills do you have only because you found a trainer for it?

I was using this as an example of how the game actually enforces players to fall into specific "classes", where most people have fairly similar builds because the game rewards those builds far more heavily than anything else, and using that as a counterpoint to the claim that this game should have a "classless system".

My point is that the mechanics of this game, as it stands, do not achieve the stated goals set out for this game.

That is, we're supposed to have a game where everyone's character is totally a unique, special snowflake, but the mechanics of the game push all our characters into the same four or so types of characters over and over again.

I am not saying this is the player's fault for behaving the way that the mechanics rewarded them, I'm saying it's the mechanics' fault for rewarding only a small few specific behaviors.

I'm saying that if you want to have a game where people genuinely can have vastly different character types from one another, you need to start by setting up mechanics that allow such characters to thrive.

[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.

The problem is you're completely overlooking that the term you are arguing against was objectively defined, and can actually be measured.

The term is objectively defined - any skill point system with no growth in costs (and skills in Eschalon always have 1 skill point cost), and with a flat or increasing value to the points spent (which Eschalon's skills have). Eschalon objectively, measurably, meets that definition.

What I am using is an objectively defined term - just like how the automobile industry may define a "Light Truck" as being any truck with a payload of less than 4,000 lbs, then you can objectively measure whether it fits that definition. Maybe you want to say that "light" is a word that always means something is an opinion, but people can use that term in an objective fashion.

The point of that term of "enforced min/maxing" is that it denotes a game that has mechanics that are set up in such a way that actively encourages min/maxing behavior in players. Yes, certainly, you don't have to, but the point of the term is to denote when the conditions arise that give min/maxing players more powerful character than they otherwise would have.

That has absolutely nothing to do with whether this game is a good game or a bad game - I even asked repeatedly whether the system of min/maxing was on purpose, and BW said it, in fact, was.

The reason I am talking about enforced min/maxing is because I am comparing this game's current skill buy system to alternative systems that do not so heavily reward min/maxing. Games with skills that cost more skill points the more you have already invested into those skills are games that do not mechanically reinforce the min/maxing, and encourage players to play more jack-of-all-trade games.

The point I am making has nothing to do with whether people are wrong for playing the game the way they do, but with how the mechanics of the game push players to act. The current mechanics push players towards min/maxing, and that is why I am asking whether that's what people really want or not.

I'm sorry for coping your way of discussion (and yes I know you're not doing it consciously), though not the number of words:

I understand your point. But your point is absolutely moot. As I and other players pointed out it is possible to play without min-maxing. "Enforcing min-maxing" was a problem in Diablo 2 and many a patch did fight with it. Not because it is devil's spawn but because it broke balance between players. Eschalon does not have multiplayer. If you think min-maxing has a bad effect on the gameplay PLEASE DON'T DO IT. The fact that it is encouraged or as you claim "enforced" (which is still a silly term) doesn't matter one bit. It would matter if it were not possible to finish or enjoy the game without it and then your argument would be substantial, but as it is it does not matter.

[bearro]

Besides that, what I'm saying is not that there's no reason to put a skill point into skullduggery, but that if you can get that skill point for free from a trainer, rather than having to spend one of the few level up skill points you have on it, don't you ultimately just wind up with more skill points to spend if you wait until after you get a trainer to put those skullduggery points in? Weren't you ever stopped before you put points into a skill to think that maybe you could just wait until after you found a trainer for that skill before you spread your points out to it? In fact, how many of those skills do you have only because you found a trainer for it?

Are we playing a game or creating a build? If you're just creating a build then yes, you're right. I start my characters with cartography. Let's say I could get from a trainer after e.g. 5 hours of gameplay (this figure is purely theoretical). What I lose going the trainer route is 5 hours of my time without the minimap, and I personally hate playing like that. I don't give a damn what it does to my character build, it hurts my gameplay. So it is worth to take cartography when building a character. Let's stop thinking of playing games as mathematics. It's fun.

[Wraith_Magus]

Besides that, what I'm saying is not that there's no reason to put a skill point into skullduggery, but that if you can get that skill point for free from a trainer, rather than having to spend one of the few level up skill points you have on it, don't you ultimately just wind up with more skill points to spend if you wait until after you get a trainer to put those skullduggery points in? Weren't you ever stopped before you put points into a skill to think that maybe you could just wait until after you found a trainer for that skill before you spread your points out to it? In fact, how many of those skills do you have only because you found a trainer for it?

Are we playing a game or creating a build? If you're just creating a build then yes, you're right. I start my characters with cartography. Let's say I could get from a trainer after e.g. 5 hours of gameplay (this figure is purely theoretical). What I lose going the trainer route is 5 hours of my time without the minimap, and I personally hate playing like that. I don't give a damn what it does to my character build, it hurts my gameplay. So it is worth to take cartography when building a character. Let's stop thinking of playing games as mathematics. It's fun.

But choices like that are exactly part of my point.

That is exactly what a choice between incomparables is like: you're not choosing based upon what gives you strictly mathematically provable benefits in the long run of the game, you're putting how powerful your character might be in a fight in the long term on a scale against whether it's inconvenient for you, as a player, to play without a minimap, and choosing the out-of-game convenience over the in-game power.

The problem I'm highlighting with this min/maxing-encouraging system is that most of the problems are just math. When you just roll dice based upon what your armor rating is all the time, that's nothing but a math problem, and that is a math problem you solve once, and isn't any fun from then on out.

When you're choosing between things that aren't just math, then the choices become much more engaging/fun.

I'm not saying the problem is that not enough people are just sitting down and doing math problems, I'm saying the problem is that too much of the game can be boiled down to nothing but a math problem, and should be turned into something that isn't a math problem.

Again, I'm not trying to judge any person as a player, here, I'm trying to judge the mechanics, and what those mechanics do to the players.

This is all a question of "What did you want to do in this game?" and then "What did the mechanics of the game make you do, instead?"

[munster]

The problem is you're completely overlooking that the term you are arguing against was objectively defined, and can actually be measured.

I am beginning to get the feeling that the only way we're ever going to solve this impasse involves electrodes, EEG machines, and lots of operant reinforcement measurement

As long as there's chocolate at the end, I'll run through the mazes for you, Wraith Magus

[Wraith_Magus]

Fine then, let me try arguing this on more common terms, and actually go into just plain judging the game as a whole, then...

This game advertises itself on being a game that is fun for being tile-based, turn-based, and strategically difficult.

That means that the game has to involve complex decisions, because games that are turn-based cannot be based upon player finesse or skill for its challenge, and the point of the game is to be hard.

A game that is real-time can be challenging while being very simple because it's all about your capacity to handle what is thrown at you in real-time. Touhou can be hard while involving nothing but dodging bullets because they focus on freak-tons of bullets.

A game that's turn-based and tile-based, meanwhile, is a game that has to be more like Chess or Sid Meyer's Civilization, and involve a lot of different choices that are not simply, easily measured to be engaging.

If a turn-based game is too simple, you wind up with Tic-Tac-Toe, a game that is so simple that even if you don't sit there and analyze it too thoroughly, you wind up finding out that all the games you play wind up coming out the same.

The thing about Eschalon is that basically everything important in the game comes down to a few simple math problems that are easy to solve, even if you're not particularly trying to solve them. Almost all the real challenge in the game comes from killing monsters trying to kill you, and you kill all those monsters the same way - putting all your points into the same few skills that are the obvious choices for getting better at killing monsters.



On a very basic level, one of the crippling problems in this game is that all the enemies are, fundamentally, the same monster over and over again. Like with how many other RPGs just "palette swap" the same monster, and make a slime into a red slime that just has more hit points, in Eschalon nearly all the monsters act like the same monster.

Fanged Salamanders/Catacomb Rats have few HP, and attack by just moving towards the player, then punching at them until either they or the player dies. Thugs have somewhat more HP, and attack by just moving towards the player, then punching at them until either they or the player dies. Tauraxes have more HP, and attack by just moving towards the player, then punching at them until either they die or the player dies.

Every single encounter is basically just trying to get one lone monster's attention from range, and killing them before they can actually get to melee range and punch me. Every single fight is the exact same thing, no matter what the actual monster is supposed to look like, just a straight, one-dimensional line of how many tiles it takes them to get to punch range, followed by punching time.

When I say these things, people come out and say that if I'm tired of every fight being the same, that I should do something different.

But here's the thing - sure, I could try juggling with one hand while clicking a monster to death, or I could play Bohemian Rhapsody up loud and play air guitar and have a blast while occasionally clicking at an enemy, and have fun doing things differently, but then, if all the work of entertaining myself while playing this game is on me, why am I playing this game? I might as well be, as someone so helpfully suggested earlier in the thread, just playing Skyrim instead, because that game actually manages to deliver entertainment values.

The problem is that every encounter in this game starts to quickly feel the same.

That isn't always the case, there are some bright spots - I rather liked the point where I was in whistling cave, and found an object stuck in the rocks that caused a bunch of bats to surround me. Being surrounded was new. For a quick moment, I felt I was experiencing something different.

This just doesn't happen nearly enough to stay entertaining.

Even in a game as basic as Dragon Quest, you can find enemies that are truly different from one another in some manner other than just having a different graphic.

When I play Elona, I am rushed, yes, by melee monsters, but also monsters like mine dogs that drop land mines while running away from my player. I fight liches that cast spells at me, then teleport if I get nearby. I fight sound dogs that breathe sound cones that inflict confusion. I fight mass monsters that split upon taking damage, and require I use spells that create walls to box them in so that they can't keep dividing because of a lack of room.

Monsters of other games have elemental affinities, status ailments that they either inflict or are vulnerable to, they have waves of little monsters, or single giant monsters, they spice things up with variety.

These things keep the game interesting because I'm not constantly faced with the same thing over and over.

Eschalon has, at best, just a few rare monsters with bows to present any variety at all, and those are nullified completely with a single spell.

In this game, all characters are the same character, because the game's mechanics enforce the same min/maxed "classes" of characters, and the game's enemies are all just the same monster with more hit points and slightly better numbers, while, in the core ways that monsters should be judged - how they force players to react - they are nearly all identical.

When I play a game like Dragon's Dogma, you know how their wolves act? They don't just come stringing out at you one at a time. They first howl for reinforcements, which brings all the wolves in range together, and they'll retreat until they can attack en masse. When they're ready to attack, one wolf will seemingly charge you, then stop while out of range, and dance away from you if you get close. That one's a distraction - there are more wolves circling around behind you, and they'll dash in from the flanks while you focus in on the first wolf, and pin and grapple you if you aren't watching. They like to drag one party member (usually ranged combatants like rangers or mages) off, and then let the other wolves rip them apart while the other wolves are still just distracting your party members.

The whole point is, they're not just stupidly charging you, they're actually using group tactics, and it makes the encounter as a whole much more engaging and fun to play.

If the red wolves in this game actually used a capacity to run in order to surround your character and then close in on them, the game would be far different and more entertaining a game than one where wolves just require grabbing a single wolf's attention, pulling them away from the others, and then firebolting them to death just like every other monster in the whole game.

So when I say that I can just make one character, focus on doing one thing, and do that one thing over and over and over again, it's not me trying to say you're stupid for doing anything else, I'm saying the game is not giving me any reason to do anything else, and that's a flaw in the game, not in other people who tried to do anything else.

This game is, fundamentally, a solved game.

It's Tic-Tac-Toe.

Too simple and boring to be fun.

I've found a single tactic the game can't defeat, and there's no reason to play any other way because the game doesn't have enough breadth in it to make me want to.

And the fact that enemies are so one-dimensional is just one of the problems that causes this - the skill system is basically geared to that same enforced min-maxing problem, which means that characters are general clone-stamps of one another, the fact that this game uses a system where every character moves at the same speed is another, the lack of any real capacity to role-play, the discouragement this game gives to exploration, so that going over the whole map is more chore than fun (in spite of this being what the developer of the game wanted to be the most fun part of the game...) there are a slew of problems, but every time I try to talk about what the game's mechanics are like, it keeps being twisted into somehow a discussion about who is playing the game, rather than how the game is made.

[Elveronion]

i've been around for a while and only post when I have something important to say. and this is one time...

This game is, fundamentally, a solved game.

It's Tic-Tac-Toe.

Too simple and boring to be fun.

well then why the fuck are you here? do you think you are going to convince any one of us "hey, yes this guy is right!! eschalon has sucked forever and we just never saw it!!". we like the game because we DO find it challenging. we DO find it enjoyable. i personally rate it in my top 5 rpgs of all time, so you want to tell my i am wrong for this??

this guy is a huge troll and I vote for a ban on him. 10 votes total and we can ban him right bw??? come on people, cast your vote!

[Firall]

First post. Huzzah. Anyhow, I'm going to answer the simpler question: What was fun about Eschalon to you(me)?

I enjoyed the "learning cliff". After several failed attempts at making a decent character I had a better understanding of the game, figuring those things out without using the forums or wiki was fun for me. I also take pleasure in games with "replay value". Replay value comes primarily from choices, which eschalon has a lot, even if they aren't optimal and/or achieve the same thing.

But here's the thing - sure, I could try juggling with one hand while clicking a monster to death, or I could play Bohemian Rhapsody up loud and play air guitar and have a blast while occasionally clicking at an enemy, and have fun doing things differently, but then, if all the work of entertaining myself while playing this game is on me, why am I playing this game? I might as well be, as someone so helpfully suggested earlier in the thread, just playing Skyrim instead, because that game actually manages to deliver entertainment values.

Self-created "challenges" are another form of replayability, just not one you particularly seem to like. For example: The player who finished the game at level 1. You might see it as just an exercise in tedium, but for some that IS enjoyable.

I did the same thing with Skyrim, before modding it to be mechanically harder. There's only so many times you can see and do the same quests though. (This is just for examples sake, Skyrim is a much larger world made by a much larger company, it's still easy, just more stuff to do. It's like comparing a standard orange to a mandarin, without being a food scientist.)

There are things that are "Broken" in Eschalon, and things that could be vastly improved apon, and you've touched on most of those things, but they didn't make the game boring for me.

[Lord_P]

Elveronion, while I agree that Wraith_Magus went a bit overboard with that sentence, you shouldn't say things like that. The swearing was also unnecessary.

That means that the game has to involve complex decisions, because games that are turn-based cannot be based upon player finesse or skill for its challenge, and the point of the game is to be hard.

So you say that all turn-based games have to be challenging? But do you mean: "should be in my opinion", or: "must be in my opinion"?

Also, you are judging the game because of it's mechanics. And then you call us stupid for liking the game because you feel that the mechanics aren't good. Have you thought that we like Eschalon not because of it's mechanics but because of it's feel?

P.S. Eschalon (at least Books I & II) was made by a single person (mostly). You can't expect extremely complicated coding to simulate realistic things like moisture or air pressure. Or group tactics. Or individual monster intelligence. Not everyone's PC (or Mac or Linux) would handle all that, and Eschalon is known for being playable on older machines.

Sorry for ranting but your posts have certainly irritated the community.

[bearro]

Elveronion, while I agree that Wraith_Magus went a bit overboard with that sentence, you shouldn't say things like that. The swearing was also unnecessary.

That means that the game has to involve complex decisions, because games that are turn-based cannot be based upon player finesse or skill for its challenge, and the point of the game is to be hard.

So you say that all turn-based games have to be challenging? But do you mean: "should be in my opinion", or: "must be in my opinion"?

Also, you are judging the game because of it's mechanics. And then you call us stupid for liking the game because you feel that the mechanics aren't good. Have you thought that we like Eschalon not because of it's mechanics but because of it's feel?

P.S. Eschalon (at least Books I & II) was made by a single person (mostly). You can't expect extremely complicated coding to simulate realistic things like moisture or air pressure. Or group tactics. Or individual monster intelligence. Not everyone's PC (or Mac or Linux) would handle all that, and Eschalon is known for being playable on older machines.

Sorry for ranting but your posts have certainly irritated the community.

I think you underestimate BW. I'm sure there were limitations, but lack of group tactics was a concept not a necessity due to lack of resources. Look at spiderweb games (e.g. Avadon or Arvenum) also made by one person and have group tactics. Actually they are quite good in this respect, but I feel Eschalon has much better writing and that's the biggest reason to play it.

[munster]

Every single encounter is basically just trying to get one lone monster's attention from range, and killing them before they can actually get to melee range and punch me. Every single fight is the exact same thing, no matter what the actual monster is supposed to look like, just a straight, one-dimensional line of how many tiles it takes them to get to punch range, followed by punching time.

Okay, this is good. We're getting into substantive critiques of the gameplay that don't rely on evaluations of "simple maths problems" (believe me, with my mathematical ability, getting 2+2 = 4 is about as complicated a problem as I want to face in a game like this) but a concrete example of why you think a particular mechanic did not work to make the game as enjoyable to play as it could or should have done.

Stand back, everyone, because I am going to agree (qualified) with Wraith Magus on this point!

Yes, it's pretty much "encounter monster, bash or zap, rinse, repeat". And yes, a lot of the times, you have no other choice (yes, you can sneak around without fighting the monsters, but sometimes you need to kill them to get keys or the likes). And the one instance of this I regretted (okay, the two instances I regretted) were Sparrow at Broken Blade and the dwarves of Hammerlorne.

It's a nasty shock when Sparrow, a presumed ally, turns crazy and attacks you. You don't have a choice other than (a) kill her (b) run away (if you don't need the key she has). It would be great to be able to knock her unconscious but leave her alive, or cast a spell/use a charm potion to win her over to your side, or talk her out of being crazy brainwashed devotee of The One, or some other non-lethal method of achieving your aim. But you pretty much have to kill her in this encounter.

The second is the dwarves of Hammerlorne, who you kill for no better reason than that they're in your way. Yes, again, you can do the sneaking around them if you're very determined, but again, basically it's 'kill the lawn ornaments' even though they're not enemies or monsters or even crazy brainwashed devotees of The One. It would be great if, say, you could convince the Dwarf Lord that you really needed the Crux and it was a matter of saving the entire world. Or if you could get a dwarven ally within Hammerlorne. Or avoid having to murder the poor guys for no other reason than that you're breaking into their sacred ancestral halls to rob their most precious and venerated relic

All that being said, there are twists. The ghosts in the cemetery and necropolis, for instance; you find out (and it's a nasty surprise) that certain spells or weapons won't work on them, and if you don't have that particular spell which will work, too bad. Even worse, they can curse you - and unless you had the forethought to learn the spell to dispel curses, or brought the potions to do that with you, then you find yourself bleeding HP and scrabbling desperately back through the halls to the outside to teleport to the nearest city to find a cleric who can heal you. And if you built a character who doesn't get the benefit of healing from clerics, or if you did something to annoy that particular cleric so they attack you on sight, well - too bad for you!

So yes, it's a linear combat system. But BW is a small operation (not quite a one-man band) so frankly he doesn't have the time, range of support or money to develop the more sophisticated systems you would prefer. And this is supposed to be a game in the old style, where "encounter monster, bash or zap, rinse, repeat"! was the order of the day.

So valid point, good criticism, nice to see a suggestion about improvement that deals with a concrete example from within the gameplay, but countered with you can't expect too much from a smaller operation