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Review RPG Codex Review: Darth Roxor on Disappointment, thy name is Pillars of Eternity

Sensuki

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Codex 2014 Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
Hopefully there will be a new one soon...

Popcorn ready for when Angthoron destroys the claims that the writing is good

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Reloading is the developer's way of saying that you are totally awesome and can have a 100% perfect playthrough if you so desire, and don't worry about ever making a mistake because you never have to with this mechanic in place.

I like reload. I like getting better at games, so if I don't think I performed adequately I reload. In the Banner Saga I tried to do as many fights as possible without losing a single character, took a bit to figure out some of the ones after the first one but it was fun. Eventually you always start losing one guy though.
 
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roshan

Arcane
Joined
Apr 7, 2004
Messages
2,426
I like reload. I like getting better at games, so if I don't think I performed adequately I reload. In the Banner Saga I tried to do as many fights as possible without losing a single character, took a bit to figure out some of the ones after the first one but it was fun. Eventually you always start losing one guy though.

I like reload too. Reloaded everytime I lost a character in the IE games. Combat is just too easy and boring if you let people get killed and then just cast resurrect afterwards. Was just pointing out that in older games, lots of mechanics relied on exercising self restraint, whether it was reloading or resting, or not breaking sequence in such a way that everything else was trivialized. It seems to me that it was simply assumed that players were capable of managing their own fun, whether they wanted to ironman, limit rests, or whatever else they found interesting.

I watched a video of someone else playing LOX on YouTube. It was insane how differently this person handled everything. I used the traditional lockpick skills to open chests. This guy just had a shitload of food, and would use the break lock option all the time, everytime, even though it takes time and therefore consumes food. He always used the minigame to disarm traps, and rest spammed very liberally. And then used crystals to backtrack to town and buy more food. It was a really interesting way of playing because it was very gamey, totally in contrast to how I played. But he had his fun and I had mine. And kudos to the developers for building the game in such a way that different playstyles were supported. However, people were complaining on the LOX thread here about the lockpick minigame, totally ignoring the fact that not only did the game cost resources (lockpicks), but that there were also two other completely supported methods to handle the situation, breaking (which costs time and food), and the lockpick skill (which costs skill points). Codexers had a buffet of systems to choose from, and they were bitching simply about having options available.

I'm not sure how this expectation came up, but now it seems that players are so pathetic and weak willed that they want designers to tell them when to eat and when to shit, there's this expectation that designers must essentially control every aspect of the game experience, rather than building open ended mechanics and systems. And players are so stupid that they don't have the basic common sense to find their own enjoyment in a game, rather they want to be forcefed a specific designer's vision of so-called "fun". I think that's retarded, fuck games like POE with their forced mechanics, I want to enjoy and play on my own terms. If others want JE Sawyer to pilot them with his cock in their ass, then they are welcome to enjoy that travesty of a game.
 

Sensuki

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Codex 2014 Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
The best gameplay is always emergent, stuff that players do that the developers didn't intend/think of.

I'll bet that the modders who first made Counter Strike didn't expect people to run with their knives, but people do and it creates an interesting trade off between movement speed and having your most powerful weapon ready or not. This was also adopted in Call of Duty 1 & 2 (running with pistol instead of main gun) but removed in CoD4 because realism, and guess what? Gameplay is worse because of it.

Quake 3 has a bug in the code that causes players to jump higher and further depending on their frame rate, a divisor of 1000 (1000,500,333,250,125) give the best results. The devs didn't fix the bug (found by a player) because it created awesome smooth gameplay that players enjoyed. I believe in comps, players are required to limit their FPS to 125 so there's no inequality. This bug allows people to do crazy strafe jumping and stuff like that. There are also other unintended things like jumping up stairs making you move faster and "wall-riding" where if you hold down the left or right movement key when you're next to a wall on that side you get a movement speed boost of like 25% or something. This also adds to the gameplay rather than takes it away.

If you removed those three things. Quake 3 wouldn't be nearly as fun to play, or as competitive. The retards at Something Awful call this "sperging".

Nothing wrong with reloading. That's part of the fun, if you lose - reload and get better. Games these days try and make it so that you don't have to reload and thus everything is easy/banal/boring.
 

SniperHF

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2014
Messages
1,110
If you're coasting by with Arcane Assaults and Interdictions in every fight, you're not getting the game's true experience.

Maybe not, but isn't that the games fault and not the players? On hard you certainly don't need to chuck per-rest spells out there every, or even most fights.

Most of the time the choice to use per-rest spell from the two companions you mentioned is an exercise in murdering the enemy faster rather than being the difference between winning and losing the fight. Often it's not even the difference of maintaining Health vs having to rest sooner though that is at least a little more common.
 
Joined
May 16, 2015
Messages
17
I like reload. I like getting better at games, so if I don't think I performed adequately I reload.

Insults people for rest-scumming, but apparently is a huge save-scummer. It's funny the mental gymnastics people use to feel superior.

I like reload too. Reloaded everytime I lost a character in the IE games. Combat is just too easy and boring if you let people get killed and then just cast resurrect afterwards.

Yeah, combat always gets easy and boring for me in the IE games when one of my party members gets chunked and I have to go without or replace them with a sub-par character. Look, you people keep on save-scumming if you want and saying it's not a game mechanic but reloading after every sub-optimal decision is way more broken than rest-scumming and takes away all meaningful consequences for character choices.
 

Sensuki

Arcane
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Codex 2014 Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
Insults people for rest-scumming, but apparently is a huge save-scummer. It's funny the mental gymnastics people use to feel superior.

Nah, I'm just good at games. Every now and again when I play an Infinity Engine game, one of my characters will die. Quite a bit less than most people, I'm sure. When that happens I reload and re-do the fight.

I have a LP of IWD1 on youtube.

Or, you could just be a triggered faggot and make false accusations, whatever floats your boat.

reloading after every sub-optimal decision is way more broken than rest-scumming and takes away all meaningful consequences for character choices.

Do you dress up in fantasy armor when you play your games?

Reloading and doing something right leads to improving at the game and learning from your mistakes if you have such mental capacity (it's surprising how many don't). Accepting failure states does not, or at least, it's much slower.

In games like say, Super Mario - how many times do you think you 'lost' the game before you beat it? Probably quite a lot, but each time you went back and tried again, you got better.
 
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Delterius

Arcane
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Dec 12, 2012
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Entre a serra e o mar.
Personally I feel that house rules are the best.

I myself have a set of decorative sun-reflecting chimes just above my computer. Every time wind blows through the window it also causes the chimes to move slightly and disperse sunlight differently. It is time to reload every time a ray of sunlight hits the Sleep key on my keyboard.

Can you think of Your Own kind of scenario for reloading? Share it below.
 

Drowed

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2011
Messages
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Location
Core City
Loading a game won't restore your health, spells, and abilities. Resting does. Resting is an actual in-game mechanic -

Sorry to break it to you but in many cases when you reload, you can regain access to your health, spells, abilities, closed gameplay options and even dead characters. It's like rest on steroids. Both features can be used and exploited in practically the same way. The only difference is the "feelz" and the positioning of the button.

And the fact that you *lose* all the progress you just made if you reload? Lol?

EDIT:

To make it even clearer:
  • I'm in point "A". I battle some guys, now I'm in point "B", but without spells. I rest. Now I have my spells back.
  • I'm in point "A". I battle some guys, now I'm in point "B", but without spells. I reload. Now I have my spells back, but I'm in point "A" again.

Rest is a game mechanic because you keep playing the game, your progress continues exactly the same, everything you did is still done. Reload is a mechanic in the same way that restarting the game is: nothing prevents you from doing this, but you nullifies all progress made.
 
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Ulrox

Arbiter
Joined
Jul 18, 2014
Messages
363
The best gameplay is always emergent, stuff that players do that the developers didn't intend/think of.

Dude, Sensuki - Do us all a favor and apply for a job as QA tester at Obsidian - then when you've gotten higher in rank to become a game designer, design the ultimate infinity engine game together with Tim Cain and bring about absolute incline.

That crazy passion you have for these kinds of games is admirable - wish I had the same flame.
 
Weasel
Joined
Dec 14, 2012
Messages
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Rest is a game mechanic because you keep playing the game, your progress continues exactly the same, everything you did is still done. Reload is a mechanic in the same way that restarting the game is: nothing prevents you from doing this, but you nullifies all progress made.

What about other sorts of "progress' though, like checking out a dialogue option, gaining meta knowledge or trying your luck with RNG? I'm certainly not advocating save-scumming, just as I don't advocate rest-spamming, but when I see how some people play AoD (for example), abusing the reload function to get optimal dialogue results or distribute skill points perfectly to pass checks, it seems that save-scumming is part of their gameplay style just as rest spamming is how many people play IE games.
 

Drowed

Arcane
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What about other sorts of "progress' though, like checking out a dialogue option, gaining meta knowledge or trying your luck with RNG? I'm certainly not advocating save-scumming, just as I don't advocate rest-spamming, but when I see how some people play AoD (for example), abusing the reload function to get optimal dialogue results or distribute skill points perfectly to pass checks, it seems that save-scumming is part of their gameplay style just as rest spamming is how many people play IE games.

This is not "progress" within the game, that is progress in your knowledge of the game. They are different things.

Can I change the comparison changing the genre of the game also. Let's pick a platformer, Sonic 2. I can watch 20 videos of the game, showing step by step how to beat each stage in the most efficient and expeditious way possible. But until I, myself, put the cartridge into the console and press "START", I'm not playing. All my knowledge of the game can come from any source: a FAQ, a video, a conversation on a forum, whatever I want to use. But until I get to control the character, we don't speak of "progress" in the game.

By this principle, you can say that "walkthrough reading" is also a gameplay-style, because it obviously changes your results within the game. As well as "beer-drinking", which will also affect the results in the game. The question isn't whether your experience when playing will be different: thousands of things can infuence it and no one would call them "gameplay-style".

The question is how your progress happens *in* the game *while* you play.
 
Joined
May 16, 2015
Messages
17
Nah, I'm just good at games.

L0L
I believe you, calm down.

I have a LP of IWD1 on youtube.

I played the recorder in a school concert in Elementary School. So I guess we've both got cool stuff going on.

Or, you could just be a triggered faggot and make false accusations, whatever floats your boat.

:butthurt:

Do you dress up in fantasy armor when you play your games?

Nah, only when I'm banging ur mom :cool:

Seriously, though, I guess it's a crime to enjoy any roleplaying in fucking roleplaying games. You seem like a confused person to me.

Reloading and doing something right leads to improving at the game and learning from your mistakes if you have such mental capacity (it's surprising how many don't). Accepting failure states does not, or at least, it's much slower.

Sure, but telling people they suck because they rest scum (they do of course, I agree with that much) while defending save scumming is retarded. Like my friend who thinks he's hardcore and wants to play on the hardest difficulty he can to feel good about himself, and then he reloads as soon as he falls down that pit that drops you to level 5 of the endless paths in PoE. Not that getting out is hard, it's just hilarious how people convince themselves they're hardcore by not technically doing anything cheesy or cheating in their minds. Reload isn't a game mechanic after all, so he's still totally hardcore, right? Also, people absolutely play differently when they are limiting their saves (through an ironman mode or self-imposed rules) and have to actually use their heads to manage resources, etc.

In games like say, Super Mario - how many times do you think you 'lost' the game before you beat it? Probably quite a lot, but each time you went back and tried again, you got better.

Yeah, except I'm talking about reloading after sub-optimal decisions to make the game easier rather than reloading after a game over screen. There is a difference.
 

Sensuki

Arcane
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Codex 2014 Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
That's different from reloading a fight because you wanted to do it better.

Rest spamming takes away the resource management concern from all fights that you do it for. I reload after a Pyrrhic victory (or impending Pyrrhic victory) to perform better at the fight. A matter of pride (or in the case of learning the game - wanting to improve).
 
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Sensuki

Arcane
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Codex 2014 Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
There was some fight in Knights of the Chalice that I reloaded like 100 times to beat. It was my first time playing it and I didn't rest before I went into the Orc Fortress. I assumed I would be able to come back outside. However, the drawbridge closed and I was stuck inside and pretty hurt. I could have reloaded the game to back before the drawbridge went up but I thought fuck it, I got myself into this - let's see if I can do it. Managed to get through most fights using a few 1HP party members as first round bait so my main Knight could mop up but I got to a fight against Wizards that needed very specific circumstances for me to not lose a character permanently and that was, if they cast a Fireball it would not hit any of my 1HP characters, and a bunch of other conditions. I also needed my Fighter to win initiative and a specific Wizard of theirs to not be first.

It took a long time and a lot of reloads, but I got it. My Knight got initiative first, moved in the most optimal manner toward the Wizards, they did not target any of my other party members and he managed to get up in their grille and win.
 

FeelTheRads

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
13,716
Seriously, though, I guess it's a crime to enjoy any roleplaying in fucking roleplaying games. You seem like a confused person to me.

Yes, your brand of "roleplaying" is a crime and you are guilty for all the decline.
 

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