Why I haven't bought Eschalon
Posted: July 5th, 2011, 6:20 pm
Hi,
Just a consumer posting my thoughts on the product in hopes that some of my ideas may stick and be incorporated in future games from the company.
First, let me say that I have demod both EB1 and EB2 and was generally happy with the overall style of the game. Focus on story and game mechanics and graphics are secondary. I like this and I think 90% of the cost of most games these days is due to eye candy which is NOT what makes a good game (dragon age 2 is a perfect example). That being said, the game has, from what I can tell, a few major failures in terms of game mechanics that are the reason I still have not purchased the game despite it only being about 4 dollars on steam.
The first is the skill system. I know others have pointed this out, but it encourages players to not spend their points until they find the trainer and suddenly become godlike in that area. This is kind of silly if you ask me. Others have gone into much more detail on why this is a bad mechanic and I just add my voice to the chorus. I would also like to point out that it is silly to have bludgeons and swords be completely different skills if those skills are the only ones that control melee combat. A swordsman does not forget everything he learned about melee combat just because he has a club in his hand instead of his trusty sword. In addition to "specializations" in certain weapon classes, there need to be broader skills that represent your character's general ability to fight regardless of the particular weapon in his hands.
The second is the lack of clarity regarding how various attributes and skills improve your character. The formulas for these things (which can be found in the forums if you hunt a little) should be IN the game. This is especially necessary since the system is unique. If the character building system was standard d20, one wouldn't need such tips necessarily, but the fact that perception, rather than intellect is the major attribute for your mana pool is not clear at all from the in game tooltips (just one example). Additionally, it seems that points in magic, elemental are useless after you have the level 5 version of all your spells available. This is fairly minor, but if a skill is useless after a certain point, the game needs to inform me of this in some way. Given the finality of skill selection, it seems that it would be prudent to give players as much information as possible before they make these decisions and also make some effort to ensure that all of the skills are somewhat useful. It does not seem that this has been done very well.
Additionally, there appears to be a bug in movement. If I move one square at a time, the lizard chasing me keeps up with me staying exactly the same distance away. However, if I make several moves in rapid succession, the lizard does not seem to keep up. I am totally ok with having mobs of different speeds. I would in fact love a mechanic where a "zerg" type creature might get 1.25 actions per action that I take (he has a 25% chance of getting two actions each time I take an action). However, this mechanic should be independent of how fast I elect to take my actions.
Finally, the AI is exceptionally weak even for such a low budget game. I have not seen any mob that does anything other than charge at me and attack. If you manage to ditch them using the movement bug above or leaving the area, they just wait for you exactly where they last were. They don't go back to their allies. They don't heal. They just sit there waiting for you to get around to killing them. I know *I* can write better AI than that given enough time, and I am sure you guys can too, but someone needs to put some time into it. Additionally, all enemies seem to hate me but don't mind each other very much. Lizards and goblins all want to kill me even though the goblin standing right next to the lizard seems a lot easier to catch. A mob does not alert other nearby mobs to your presence once he detects you. This makes it trivially easy to "pull" individual mobs from a group and whittle them down. It seems like only the most basic effort was put into the AI wheras a small time investment here could produce a functional AI that improves both the challenge of the game and immersion.
The above are kind of deal breakers for me...especially the silly skill system and the AI.
I would also just like to say that I think this game is an ideal playground for trying a "use to improve" skill system where skills are increased by doing the associated action. Hit monsters with a sword and your sword skill and melee combat skills go up. Get hit by monsters and your defensive skills go up. In this way players would inevitably build a character that suited their play style. But that is just a wish list.
Anyway, good luck with your games and I hope that you found some of my comments helpful. I really hope that I can bring myself to buy future products from you guys because I am a huge old-school rpg fan who cares not a wit about graphics, and I have a lot of trouble finding solid RPGs for mac....Two Worlds 2 was just sad...
Just a consumer posting my thoughts on the product in hopes that some of my ideas may stick and be incorporated in future games from the company.
First, let me say that I have demod both EB1 and EB2 and was generally happy with the overall style of the game. Focus on story and game mechanics and graphics are secondary. I like this and I think 90% of the cost of most games these days is due to eye candy which is NOT what makes a good game (dragon age 2 is a perfect example). That being said, the game has, from what I can tell, a few major failures in terms of game mechanics that are the reason I still have not purchased the game despite it only being about 4 dollars on steam.
The first is the skill system. I know others have pointed this out, but it encourages players to not spend their points until they find the trainer and suddenly become godlike in that area. This is kind of silly if you ask me. Others have gone into much more detail on why this is a bad mechanic and I just add my voice to the chorus. I would also like to point out that it is silly to have bludgeons and swords be completely different skills if those skills are the only ones that control melee combat. A swordsman does not forget everything he learned about melee combat just because he has a club in his hand instead of his trusty sword. In addition to "specializations" in certain weapon classes, there need to be broader skills that represent your character's general ability to fight regardless of the particular weapon in his hands.
The second is the lack of clarity regarding how various attributes and skills improve your character. The formulas for these things (which can be found in the forums if you hunt a little) should be IN the game. This is especially necessary since the system is unique. If the character building system was standard d20, one wouldn't need such tips necessarily, but the fact that perception, rather than intellect is the major attribute for your mana pool is not clear at all from the in game tooltips (just one example). Additionally, it seems that points in magic, elemental are useless after you have the level 5 version of all your spells available. This is fairly minor, but if a skill is useless after a certain point, the game needs to inform me of this in some way. Given the finality of skill selection, it seems that it would be prudent to give players as much information as possible before they make these decisions and also make some effort to ensure that all of the skills are somewhat useful. It does not seem that this has been done very well.
Additionally, there appears to be a bug in movement. If I move one square at a time, the lizard chasing me keeps up with me staying exactly the same distance away. However, if I make several moves in rapid succession, the lizard does not seem to keep up. I am totally ok with having mobs of different speeds. I would in fact love a mechanic where a "zerg" type creature might get 1.25 actions per action that I take (he has a 25% chance of getting two actions each time I take an action). However, this mechanic should be independent of how fast I elect to take my actions.
Finally, the AI is exceptionally weak even for such a low budget game. I have not seen any mob that does anything other than charge at me and attack. If you manage to ditch them using the movement bug above or leaving the area, they just wait for you exactly where they last were. They don't go back to their allies. They don't heal. They just sit there waiting for you to get around to killing them. I know *I* can write better AI than that given enough time, and I am sure you guys can too, but someone needs to put some time into it. Additionally, all enemies seem to hate me but don't mind each other very much. Lizards and goblins all want to kill me even though the goblin standing right next to the lizard seems a lot easier to catch. A mob does not alert other nearby mobs to your presence once he detects you. This makes it trivially easy to "pull" individual mobs from a group and whittle them down. It seems like only the most basic effort was put into the AI wheras a small time investment here could produce a functional AI that improves both the challenge of the game and immersion.
The above are kind of deal breakers for me...especially the silly skill system and the AI.
I would also just like to say that I think this game is an ideal playground for trying a "use to improve" skill system where skills are increased by doing the associated action. Hit monsters with a sword and your sword skill and melee combat skills go up. Get hit by monsters and your defensive skills go up. In this way players would inevitably build a character that suited their play style. But that is just a wish list.
Anyway, good luck with your games and I hope that you found some of my comments helpful. I really hope that I can bring myself to buy future products from you guys because I am a huge old-school rpg fan who cares not a wit about graphics, and I have a lot of trouble finding solid RPGs for mac....Two Worlds 2 was just sad...
