Unclever title wrote:Yes. Extensively. Probably the best example for the training players in a non-stressful environment before compelling them to accomplish the same task under pressure would be Portal. All the test chambers where the danger is increased incrementally after the very easy ones in the beginning until the finale. A very enjoyable game yes, extremely even. And a very clever story, but also very easy in my opinion. I was eventually beating the game in under two hours while initially I think it took me about 5 1/2 but I wasn't really counting then. The beauty of that though is after the initial game then one could download user made content for the added challenge.
Another good example would be the gravity gun, a quick explanation in HL2 and then you get sent off into Ravenholm to start cutting zombies in half with projectile sawblades.
And HL2 and and it's episodes certainly did have challenging portions to them, such as wave battles in Nova Prospekt, the Fighting Zombie hoards in almost complete darkness waiting for the slowest dang elevator in the world.
But I don't think these situations with the gravity and portal guns really compare to Eschalon. The closest thing I can think of for Eschalon is having an NPC say "Careful when looting corpses, they've been known to carry diseases." Obviously there's probably a better way to implement that, but... I don't know it seems a little... too Final Fantasy-ish.
I can think of a good way to train someone to do that. A couple, in fact; it's simple.
1) Start with a healer (who approaches you and forces the player into conversation) who warns the player about entering a house; have the healer explain that the house has been stricken with plauge, which the player might contract if he handles the bodies. Have him also explain to the player that the house needs to be purged (in fire!), but he's afraid to go in; he has a potion to grant temporary immunity to disease, but he's afraid to use it on himself because he has a weak constitution. He'll pay the player a sum of gold to do it for him, and let the player go into the house. (Of course, while inside, the player can take the opportunity to loot the bodies, and it will prominantly display that he is [IMMUNE] to disease thanks to the potion.)
2) Have the player find a sick house with a healer in it, who explains that, while he's doing everything he can to tend to his patient's ailments, he'd appreciate it if someone would go in and spend some time talking to them. At the guy who got diseased by looting a corpse, the guy explains what he was doing and how it got him - and tells the player that if he takes the proper precautions, he might get the stuff that the bedridden man missed.
Obviously, you want to make these into questlets that give a reward of at least some XP, since the player character is presumably learning about their world, at the same time the player is learning about playing the game. They also lead into further quests by giving the player a hint about places they can pick up more loot, which is a sure-fire way to lure players into experiancing it in a situation set up to teach the new players about game mechanics that may not be obvious (in this case, 'looting long-dead corpses risks diseases') under circumstances as controlled as they can be, before they wind up diseased in a dungeon with no way to cure it and no way to get back to town before they die.
Really, this kind of thing would help a
lot. A big damn lot.
It's a great series and all, but I don't think the style matches properly to Eschalon's for that. Perhaps a more elegant method is similar to how it was done in Deus Ex where during the training mode a friendly Doctor man reminds you that you need to put on a hazmat suit in order for it to work and makes a joke about "you'd be surprised how many people just jump in holding it" but that's more or less because of a quirk in the interface that if you don't know about you can easily make that mistake. But really it's not THAT much more elegant.
I jumped into the pool holding the suit in my hands anyway, even
after hearing that... <_> OTOH, since the pool isn't large enough to actually kill J.C. if he hauls ass to the other side, and there's health pickups right there, that's a
great way to learn. If the player figures out how to use his hazmat suit before jumping in, gravy. If he doesn't, he gets an object lesson in what he did wrong, in an envrionment that won't punish him with a gameover for doing so.
Now the message "Careful when looting corpses, they've been known to carry diseases." would be great for the hints thing. I have no idea if it's actually there or not.
Hints thing? Another feature the game doesn't teach you about... I found it by accident - just after I'd incinerated Gramuk with the Incinerator Fuel.
You do have a point about the portcullis trap, I thought that was pretty cheap too. But then again it's reasonable for it to be there. It's a pretty good trap to have in a citadel! I think something that would be a good compromise in this kind of situation is to have multiple setups of these kinds of portcullis traps, but the first one you come across is tripped by a forgetful enemy.
It's reasonable to
be there, not to be a "instakill with no save and no warning." I had a truely broken Spot Hidden check, and it didn't warn me.
However... I am kind of fond of the tremendously unfair trap particularly when it's rare to unique. Mainly because it's something to talk about with the game. *Also it's justification for those times in the past where I could just swear that a game was cheating me.
I am not. Once isn't a total deal-breaker, but it
really torqued me off that it happened.
EDIT: I should mention though that I had been anticipating portal's release for a very long time and had already seen many videos so I did already have a pretty good sense of using momentum to my advantage which might explain why I found it a bit too easy.
Yeah, I figured that out long before GLAdOS took the time to explain it to me.
CrazyBernie wrote:
Not according to you:
I'll preface this by saying that I came into this game with no intention of playing 'fair'. I do this with pretty much every non-multiplayer RPG (or indeed, any game) I play.
And as I am wont to say, when you tell me I'm wrong, then I say it is you who are wrong.
Which honestly, in the end proves neither to be correct. That being said, I don't believe I've outright called you wrong (unless you consider disagreeing as such), but feel free to point out where I have and I shall rephrase it.
1: Just because I intend to do it as a given doesn't mean I relish it. I intend to pay my auto insurance, but that doesn't mean I particularly relish that, either.
Diablo doesn't 'reward' you for completing a harder difficulty, it just runs you through the same stuff over again with proportionally better gear. What you're proposing is not the same.
It's a little more involved than that.
1. Players will level up faster than the previous difficulty.
2. Players will have a better chance of getting magic enhanced items. Monsters will also have a slim chance (5% in Nightmare, 10% in Hell) to drop an Exceptional Piece of Armor or Weapon with an increased chance for special Monsters (10% in Nightmare, 20% in Hell).
This falls into the same vein as checking off some boxes to increase difficulty and get 10% more score and 5% increased loot table quality, a la Book II
No, it really does not. For one thing, Diablo II's Nightmare and Hell difficulties are more like New Game+. In this, it's up-front, "Play on Hard to get good shit," it's not "Wanna go through again with bigger, better, badder everything?"
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my explanation. Assuming we're only talking about US gamers, 76 Million US gamers who play PC games (as of 2006... most recent I could find). Let's say 10% of those play CRPG's (I'm assuming thats far lower than reality). That gives us 7.6 Million theroetical RPGers. Let's say 10% of those consider themselves "hardcore." That's 760,000 hardcore RPGers very likely to buy "hardcore" Rpgs. Now, assume only 10% of them found and bought Eschalon: Book I. So 76,000 gamers bought E:B1 over the past two years. The game was released @ $28 originally. Let's say 50% of those gamers who bought the game paid the initial price in that first year. That's $1,064,000 in gross sales. Then the remaining 50% pay only $20, that's $760,000 in gross sales in the second year. Those numbers would look abysmal for a big time game shop, but for a one man army with a couple of employees, that's just dandy. So as long as BW doesn't incur huge expenses and those hardcore gamers spend their money on his products, he can continue the cycle indefinitely. So minority doesn't necessarily mean squat.
Those percentages sound really high.
Really damn high, even before the fact that you're forgetting a lot, such as the fact that BW isn't just appealing to those who want a hardcore, rape-your-anus challenge, but also those who want an isometric sprite-based old-school game.
Don't fault the game for Steam's failure to include the manual. It's available here in the forums as well.
Actually, I will, since BW had control of that, and should have included the manual and done up the proper tags for rightclick-linking to the manual from the Steam games list, like, oooh, every other Steam game.
Also, the very first thing I do when I get a game is to find it's forums, read all the spoilers and such and look for the manual...[/sarcasm]
I prefer my challenges in-game, which is why in all eventuality you probably win this contest of circles we're currently engaged in.
It is inevitable. I have forseen it.
In which case you're lying to make up for the slip, or you've proved my point in your self-confidence of assuming my indignation. To which I could easily follow up on:
Thanks for the personal dig. I appreciate that - really, I do.
I guess my attitude is so piss-poor that my poorness is why I've had a pair of lesbians masturbating one another in the back seats of my truck every night for the last week while me and our other friend rocked to music in the front - or why we got invited into the fire hall to play pool and drink up their beer (which I did not partake of, as it happens) whilst loud music played from the on-demand video music channels on the large screen and surroundsound.
Note to self: See if we can play infra-red camera hide-and-seak sometime in the firehouse.
I was merely assuming you were waiting for someone to point this out so you could follow up with some reason for affirming your own self-importance
Actually, I wrote it to point out the arrogance in assuming that I never get out of my house. Also: No infra-red hide&seek tonight. Ahhh well.
Funnily enough, what you consider 'reward' may be what most people consider 'things preventing you from getting to the reward'.
The 'reward' I speak of is the reward of a job well done, which you've already expressed disinterest in many times. I shall attempt to refrain from mentioning it any further, since you have no desire to experience it in a video game setting.
Again: I almost never get any satisfaction from fighting a ridiculously lopsided battle and winning. More often it's frustration that builds and builds, and then it's over, and there's nothing but a bundle of nerves.
I don't happen to like 'streamlined' games, or 'dumbed down' games, I like games properly balanced so that a player will learn rapidly how to play, can progress rapidly with few or zero interruptions, and will smoothly complete what needs to be completed in order to see all (or most) of the stuff in the game, and finally, the game ending.
We can go round and round all day long, but what you keep asking for are games that are Easy. No challenge = Easy. Not Hard = Easy. No thinking = Easy. All you want is Easy Progression With a Story. Eschalon is not Easy. I suspect it never will be. So if you want to play Eschalon, you're going to have to cheat and be happy, cheat and be not happy, or don't play at all. Honestly, it makes me wonder why you even play video games. Books or Movies would better suit someone who's only interested in story. Or television I suppose, but I wouldn't recommend TV to anyone. All those channels and never anything to watch.
Watch The History Channel and BBC America.
As for 'easy', would you call HL2 'easy'? I almost never said "that was too easy, I wish I could try it again with
more Combines/zombies[/i] (though I have said "I wish I could try it again with more Combines
and zombies", because I love watching them fight each other), but I never wound up smashing my keyboard or beating up my table in frustration, either.
What I'm looking for is to
not get frustrated.
IJBall wrote:The Underground Repository holding cell is the one thing in all of Book I that really kind of torques me off! (Well, the other is not being able to mix my own Predator Sight potions, but that one's minor in comparison.)
Anyway, there being
no way out of the Repository holding cell strikes me as the one flaw in the whole game, because it's the one thing that
forces you to Reload (and under "Hard" Book II rules, you wouldn't even necessarily be able to do that, I think!).
Not having an in-game way out of that cell (OK, yes, you can use a Portal Spell, but I only ever did Portal Spells with my Mage - and they'd likely be no good to, say, a Fighter, anyway!), even a ridiculously hard one (e.g. having to kill
both Dimension Eyes), strikes me as pretty much the only unfair element in the whole game.
But that is one small, small blemish on an otherwise almost perfect game experience, IMHO.
That's a lot more than a 'small' blemish. Frankly, there's no reason I shouldn't have been able to smash the doors down with Compress Atmosphere, walk out, and shout "Hey motherfuckers! You think that was funny? Death walks in the night!"
And of course, recover
my damn gear! That was just freaking lame. But not NEARLY as lame as the scripted nonstandard game-over that happened if you talk to the goblins.
It's
never kosher to fuck the players by fiat. Any good DM learns this, usually by having the sharp end of the DMG beat into his skull if he does it to his tabletop gamers. If the NPCs are going to try to disable me, they need to roll, and I need to roll to not be disabled. And frankly, it's stupid, an ultra-elite warrior being ganked by four goblins he could
easily have taken on in melee - assuming they could even
see him.
That event gave me more torque than my truck.
)