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Game News Lords of Xulima II Development Update: More Casual Or More Hardcore?

Infinitron

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Tags: Lords of Xulima II; Numantian Games

In response to some sort of controversy on the game's Steam forum, the developers of the upcoming Lords of Xulima II felt compelled to write a development update detailing their approach to game difficulty and customizability. In short, they fall firmly on the oldschool side of the debate.

Recently, there have been some hot discussions in the forum about if the sequel of Lords of Xulima would be more casual to attract more potential buyers or more hardcore to please the old-school fans. So we would like to talk about this topic and clarify this aspect before the rivers of blood flood the forum.

First, don’t confuse Accessible with Casual

A game can be more casual or more hardcore independently of their accessibility level. Lords of Xulima is big, challenging and deep, with lots of mechanisms and possibilities but, it is very accessible. It is very easy and simple to play (move the avatar, talk with NPCs, disarm traps, level up, combat…). We dedicated a lot of work to achieve that level of simplicity of playing. On contrast, old-school games seemed much more hardcore than they actually were because of their obscure and awkward interfaces.

We will always try to make the games as accessible as possible so any player can play it, but with the same level of challenge and depth as they were originally designed.

Was Lords of Xulima casual or hardcore?

Of course, we would never say it is a casual game but it was also not designed as a hardcore one. We wanted to align it to the feel of the old-school games like Wizardy 7, Might and Magic, Ultima… Were those hardcore games? We wouldn’t say that. They were challenging. There was no hand holding, no tutorial, not linear, and they were complex and deep, but they were not hardcore at all. For us, a hardcore game is one that is mainly designed to challenge the player and always try to make him fail so only players with a lot of experience and a lot of understanding of the game mechanics can advance and overcome those challenges. That is what happens in most roguelikes or others like Dark Souls.

Lords of Xulima was designed and balanced to make the best experience possible for the Old-School difficulty mode. Then, we created two more modes as variations of the main mode:

Normal: It represent a much lower challenge. It is perfect for people that prefer a much straightforward adventure and enjoys the game without needing to worry too much about game mechanisms.

Hardcore: Just the opposite. The game parameters are modified to be much more difficult. Players should have a stronger understanding of the game, optimizing their party and way of playing to advance in the game. This is especially true if they active the Ironman Mode where they cannot save outside the towns.

We think it worked very well for most players. And for those that choose the hardest settings, the game rewards them with a better score (and also achievements and leaderboard position) that is impossible to achieve in lower difficulty modes.

So how will the sequel be?

Let’s just say that in Numantian Games, we will always focus on creating deep and challenging games. It is our seal and always will be. So, of course, it won’t be a casual game and it won’t have casual options to disable mechanisms of the game. We will use the same method for casual players: a low difficulty mode, but they will have to play the same game with the same mechanisms (food, traps, encounters…) as any other player.

Indeed, the game will be even more challenging, more open, with more depth, more options to evolve the party, and many more secrets. There will be a special ending that will be a truly hardcore experience and more special rewards for the higher difficulties.

Also, we are thinking of making the Ironman mode setting as mandatory or at least implement new features to prevent save-scumming as much as possible. But don’t worry!, it will always be implemented in a fair way.
Now you might be wondering just what this "rivers of blood" controversy was. It turns out to be a massive flamewar involving notorious Darkest Dungeon modder Celerity and fluent from RPGWatch (lol). Sometimes drama reveals itself in the most unexpected of places.
 

Grauken

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New difficulty modes:

Babby
Casual
Still Casual
Hardcore
Hardcorest
Celerity and Fluent make out


Everyone is happy
 

Celerity

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First off, that should say "notorious Lords of Xulima modder Celerity". My relation with Derpest Dungeon is making Darkest Dungeon, aka the real game. And that's still less noteworthy than what I've done with legitimate developers and games so it's less worthy of mention.

As for the "drama", it was pretty meh. Just some hyper casuals being retards and wanting everything optional because they can't handle it and struggle with games that should be in auto win mode a while back. Meanwhile, I'm my usual elitist self and preserving what real games still exist. I eventually just quit posting because it was 5 pages of retardation, so did everyone else.

I'm surprised by the delayed reaction, instead of fluent getting BTFO when it was still happening.

What it doesn't say though is that if casuals and hardcores have the same mechanics, yes the game isn't being dumbed down for casuals but it's also not being made more serious for hardcores. Take every elemental attack except the earliest ones for example. A casual won't understand resists, a hardcore will. If enemies on both cast the same spells, non physical attacks by enemies quickly become irrelevant again.
 

Deleted Member 16721

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Flamewar between Celerity and I? No. That is not what happened. I don't have online wars with people, and I am not the one who got embroiled in the conversation to begin with. It was some other user.
 

Deleted Member 16721

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And really, that little scuffle there between Celerity and someone else was hardly a river of blood. More like a very weak stream of ketchup, or something. :)
 

Celerity

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I just wanna state for the record that even the developers are not hardcore enough for Deepest Dark.

So here's a non trolling difficulty list:

Hipster.
Casual.
Normal.
Real.
Hardcore.
Deepest Dark.
 

Deleted Member 16721

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:roll:

"We are not dumbing down, we are streamlining, that's, like, totally different thing, very respectable."

But what if dumbing down or smarting up were options in the same RPG that the user could choose? RPGCEPTION. :grpg:
 

l3loodAngel

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First, don’t confuse Accessible with Casual

A game can be more casual or more hardcore independently of their accessibility level. Lords of Xulima is big, challenging and deep, with lots of mechanisms and possibilities but, it is very accessible. It is very easy and simple to play (move the avatar, talk with NPCs, disarm traps, level up, combat…). We dedicated a lot of work to achieve that level of simplicity of playing. On contrast, old-school games seemed much more hardcore than they actually were because of their obscure and awkward interfaces.

We will always try to make the games as accessible as possible so any player can play it, but with the same level of challenge and depth as they were originally designed.​
Oh, please. You may try to fool your audience, but don't try to fool yourselves. Advanced mechanics are rarely both understood and enjoyed in games by casuals. In the current day and age accessibility is a code word for removal of advanced features/mechanics.
:roll:

"We are not dumbing down, we are streamlining, that's, like, totally different thing, very respectable."

But what if dumbing down or smarting up were options in the same RPG that the user could choose? RPGCEPTION.
Like making 2,3 or more games in one? Do you think it's financially feasible?
 
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mondblut

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But what if dumbing down or smarting up were options in the same RPG that the user could choose? RPGCEPTION. :grpg:

Adding up options is the opposite of streamlining. You'll only end up with retards fiddling with settings for half an hour, then ragequitting because they failed to find the "win game" button :obviously:
 

Deleted Member 16721

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Like making 2,3 or more games in one? Do you think it's financially feasible?

I've explained before (maybe on another forum, don't remember) how I think this could be feasible. First of all, the game would have to be developed and balanced for the hardcore options, i.e. the game is built to assume the player would play on the highest difficulty with all options enabled. This mode would be something like Hardcore Ironman from Xulima, or even Deepest Dark (Celerity's punishing mod). From there you can scale back features and options to build the less challenging modes. So you're really just building one game and then giving the option to scale back various options, or in turn, giving the user the ability to play on Normal or Easy (which would have various bonuses/penalties to the ruleset), yet still enable other a la carte options per their gaming style and preferences. And if sliders are implemented as the sports franchises have done, then the community can also edit those, create and share sets for various game modes that they have created themselves and so on. Just like the NBA 2K community does.

There are many mechanics options that can be easily implemented. I've given the example of quest markers in the past, but also limited saving modes (Ironman in Xulima, Mania Mode in some Wizardry games, etc.), or Story Mode, etc., wouldn't be too hard to implement. Also, options such as the map showing you your exact location at all times could be turned on and off, and even go as far as to make the map Gothic-style (buy pieces of it, no marker to show you where you are) to just Map Always Active where someone wouldn't need to mess with that. Since the map would already be in the game to begin with (the core design again would assume people would be finding pieces of the map or buying them from an NPC), then it really wouldn't take much effort to toggle that option for those who can't be bothered with it. Little things like this can add up and make an RPG more modular and customizable, which I think is the future of gaming anyway. We've seen mods take off in a huge way so this is sort of a natural extension of that that the developers themselves can help introduce.
 

l3loodAngel

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Like making 2,3 or more games in one? Do you think it's financially feasible?

I've explained before (maybe on another forum, don't remember) how I think this could be feasible. First of all, the game would have to be developed and balanced for the hardcore options, i.e. the game is built to assume the player would play on the highest difficulty with all options enabled. This mode would be something like Hardcore Ironman from Xulima, or even Deepest Dark (Celerity's punishing mod). From there you can scale back features and options to build the less challenging modes. So you're really just building one game and then giving the option to scale back various options, or in turn, giving the user the ability to play on Normal or Easy (which would have various bonuses/penalties to the ruleset), yet still enable other a la carte options per their gaming style and preferences. And if sliders are implemented as the sports franchises have done, then the community can also edit those, create and share sets for various game modes that they have created themselves and so on. Just like the NBA 2K community does.

There are many mechanics options that can be easily implemented. I've given the example of quest markers in the past, but also limited saving modes (Ironman in Xulima, Mania Mode in some Wizardry games, etc.), or Story Mode, etc., wouldn't be too hard to implement. Also, options such as the map showing you your exact location at all times could be turned on and off, and even go as far as to make the map Gothic-style (buy pieces of it, no marker to show you where you are) to just Map Always Active where someone wouldn't need to mess with that. Since the map would already be in the game to begin with (the core design again would assume people would be finding pieces of the map or buying them from an NPC), then it really wouldn't take much effort to toggle that option for those who can't be bothered with it. Little things like this can add up and make an RPG more modular and customizable, which I think is the future of gaming anyway. We've seen mods take off in a huge way so this is sort of a natural extension of that that the developers themselves can help introduce.
But how many casuals will like the feature and how much dollars will this bring? Casuals prefer no frills gameplay. Meaning you sit down and play. Choosing features carefully and doing research is for hard core audience. Besides casuals love participation awards if the game will tell them about the features they are missing and that they are casuals they will become offended.

And you assume that easy and other modes should not be balanced?
 

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But how many casuals will like the feature and how much dollars will this bring? Casuals prefer no frills gameplay. Meaning you sit down and play. Choosing features carefully and doing research is for hard core audience. Besides casuals love participation awards if the game will tell them about the features they are missing and that they are casuals they will become offended.

And you assume that easy and other modes should not be balanced?

They will naturally be balanced according to the skill level of the player. The Insane mode would be way too hard, and the more you scale back the naturally easier it gets. Casual players are also not concerned with things like heavy resource management, so the Food mechanic in Xulima for example is completely lost on them. So instead of scrapping it in the game design, which actually would hurt the game for hardcore gamers like us, might as well just let them turn it off. No harm no foul. And you could also add good descriptions in-game to explain the philosophy behind certain mechanics, a glossary and even other incentives to get them to try the different features. Maybe casual players who end up liking the game would get curious about the more advanced features and end up trying them.

The same argument about casual players not wanting to mess with options was pretty much used against sliders in the NBA 2K community, but it turned out to be a non-issue. While it's true that many casual gamers indeed won't endlessly tweak options, you can 100% guarantee that many of the hardcore fans will. Some will even spend more time than the developers have on the sliders sets and game mode options. And then they share them with everyone and even casuals can easily download slider sets and try them. So that's not really an issue, IMHO, especially if it is easy to download the slider sets as the 2K series has made it, and more community features are added.

Also, as a player gets more comfortable with a game and becomes a bigger fan of it, even a casual gamer is likely to start looking at the advanced options, sliders, etc.. This is usually the path to mutantism and it happens a whole lot in games that have sliders. :)
 

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Balanced by what? A magical finger!?
Casuals are no frills people, extensive tutorials with feature explanations and in-game descriptions are lost on them. I am not sure what those NBA sliders do, but I can tell you that changes in features requires different balancing approaches in RPGs, which are costly. The costs will be born by developers, for some nebulous objective of educating mainstream players? It's better to build a casual game.
 

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I already explained it. I think you're just trolling me at this point but if I must respond:

Casuals are no-frills, but many casual players of the 2K series download slider sets all the time. In-game tutorials, a glossary and the suggestions I gave are not something crazy that casuals wouldn't entertain. Xulima already has these features. I just think they should develop them more. There is about one or two small paragraphs in a menu in-game that talk about how to explore the world in the game. It doesn't give nearly enough information. That much is clear as I've seen posts on the Steam forum as well as the developers themselves talking about how people don't understand the game at all. For example, some people tried to fight the Ogre near Velegarn even though it is marked Impossible and then they don't understand where to go next. Another reason why things like quest markers should be an option. And maybe a Neon Flashing Lights option that makes the Ogre blink bright red with a huge WARNING sign above his head. I'm only half-joking there. :)

What do you think will happen if most of the customers can't get past the Ogre or figure out what to do? Things like that will be removed from the next game. That then could make the game more casual for EVERYBODY, not just the casual gamers who want it. That's why having options to help negate the frustration and challenge for those who want it should be there. It actually helps the hardcore modes and options survive in the long run.

The options don't need to be extensively balanced across the board because if someone is turning Food off, or playing on Story Mode, they don't care about a tight balance anyway. If there is an option to make Food 50% less restrictive (there is already something similar in Xulima), then naturally players will have more money to spend elsewhere. There are many different low-cost ways to make that work. Turning off Food makes items a certain percentage more expensive. Or turning of the Food option makes magical items and/or gold drop less frequently. Etc.. These aren't monumental undertakings, IMO. They would be paid back and then some as more casuals would be able to access the game and not run into the mushrooms at level 1, get wrekt and then quit the game in frustration. Not to mention the negative reviews then, the word of mouth (or lack thereof) and so on.

The game and other RPGs out now already have different difficulty levels. Pillars of Eternity has Path of the Damned and Story Mode, so they are ahead of the game. I also recall Pillars having many low-cost/low-resource options that change the game, like turning off or on the option to see all available dialogue skill checks, or being able to see the area-of-effect when casting a spell. Options like this can please everybody, because again, if they don't add those options what do you think will happen? The next game will have you see the area-of-effect at all times, most likely. So options are important for everybody, not just casual gamers.
 

l3loodAngel

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I already explained it. I think you're just trolling me at this point but if I must respond:

Casuals are no-frills, but many casual players of the 2K series download slider sets all the time. In-game tutorials, a glossary and the suggestions I gave are not something crazy that casuals wouldn't entertain. Xulima already has these features. I just think they should develop them more.

NBA is casual game. It's a huge difference between a hardcore audience. If Oblivion crowd can download sliders or Mods it doesn't mean that they will play FO 1 -2, Underail or AOD.

Casuals are capable of downloading stuff like mods. But there is no overlaping between games they play.

The options don't need to be extensively balanced across the board because if someone is turning Food off, or playing on Story Mode, they don't care about a tight balance anyway. If there is an option to make Food 50% less restrictive (there is already something similar in Xulima), then naturally players will have more money to spend elsewhere. There are many different low-cost ways to make that work. Turning off Food makes items a certain percentage more expensive. Or turning of the Food option makes magical items and/or gold drop less frequently. Etc.. These aren't monumental undertakings, IMO. They would be paid back and then some as more casuals would be able to access the game and not run into the mushrooms at level 1, get wrekt and then quit the game in frustration. Not to mention the negative reviews then, the word of mouth (or lack thereof) and so on.

So you mean it has to be balanced? Nothing is free especially balancing with different features. If you want to tell that it's free you're wasting everyone's time.

They wont access the game you are a fucking moron, because there is no overlaping between tastes/games. I won't play Oblivion and they won't play hardcore games. That boat has sailed after DAO and Oblivion were released.

They would be paid back and then some as more casuals would be able to access the game and not run into the mushrooms at level 1, get wrekt and then quit the game in frustration.
Dream on. And if they are playing maybe they already bought the game?
 
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Well played. lol. :D

For those who honestly think that, I beg to differ. The 2K series has more stats and complex calculations than 99% of RPGs, most likely. Those games are absurdly deep. :)
 

l3loodAngel

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Well played. lol. :D

For those who honestly think that, I beg to differ. The 2K series has more stats and complex calculations than 99% of RPGs, most likely. Those games are absurdly deep. :)
NBA as a genre (sports) is uber casual. So people will be drawn to it, unlike blobber RPGs, which is niche within a niche. I believe that you should finance this bulshit personnaly.
 

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The person who does finance it will make a killing. 2K already figured that out. Appeal to casuals yet keep the options to make the game as hardcore as one would like. Best of both worlds. :)
 

Celerity

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Do we need a fluent difficulty and should it be higher or lower than hipster?
 

Deleted Member 16721

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Wasn't the grind optional, though? You didn't have to clear every area for the XP bonus. I'm generally in favor of a lot of combat in a game like this as long as it makes you think about long-term and short-term resource management as well as character development. The game is combat-oriented to begin with so I didn't feel much of an unnecessary grind, just basic combat/gameplay-RPG stuff.
 

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