Suggestion: Reduce healing effects on 'Frail' characters

Game Talk The Drawing Board
21

[quote=“KA101, post:20, topic:3922”]Oppose. “I find omniscience in games makes them far too easy.” means you don’t hit V, or you mod the cost into your own fork. Not that you take it away from everyone.

I find being able to look around the room and see what’s on the shelves, counter, etc makes perfect sense.[/quote]

I was going to say something snarky about subjective arguments but instead I’ll just say that objectively, “gaining instantaneous full knowledge of a store’s inventory from a glance through the window while being chased by a hoard of zombies who all stop and wait for you to say time in” does not make sense. It’s just consistent with video game behavior.

Secondly, I get the strong impression you feel your idea of what makes sense is more correct than his idea of what makes sense; Telling him to go make his own branch instead of making a suggestion that might harm your status quo is rude and sounds entitled. You go make your own branch, if his idea is adopted.

For the record, I’m in support of as many actions as possible being actually anchored in time and space and subject to its consequences.

Here’s my subjective opinion;
Roguelikes are the last place in gaming you’ll find an attitude that the game doesn’t need to be balanced around holding people’s hands and preventing the player from being able to make mistakes or bad choices. Stop and take an extremely detailed inventory of every object in your present environment, or run from zombies? That should be a choice, not an interface abstraction.

22

The only status quo is the one in the game as it stands right now. It’s not wrong to say any single suggestion, whether it ‘makes sense’ or not, deviates from the status quo and might be better off for a branch.

23

If everybody was really expected to go create their own branch of the game for every idea they had, I don’t think Suggestions would be included in the title of this subforum. ;3

24

Yes, but it’s not wrong to suggest that any single idea might be better suited for a branch if it deviates too far from the source. That’s also a subjective opinion. Anyway, I feel like pressing v to take stock always ended up being more or less a quick glance, which is why it doesn’t take into account things in cupboards or lockers unless you stand next to them. Making pressing ‘v’ take up action points is about on par with making opening and closing the inventory take up time, a level of tedium way too involved to be fun.

25

I thought it didn’t take into account things inside cupboards and lockers because they’re closed and it would be impossible to see.

Besides, any tedium added would only be experienced by your character, who’s fortunately incapable of boredom. It wouldn’t take any extra time at all for the player, or be any more involved than pressing ‘v’ already is. It’d just be a minute later or so in-game except when it asks you if you’re sure because there’s a zombie two tiles behind you, and then I guess you’d have to press ‘y’ or ‘n’.

If this happens too much in peaceful situations I think it’s more to do with the game considering every creature that isn’t 100% passive as a life threatening danger. Including for instance, weasels.

26

I’ve always thought pressing ‘v’ was more of an abstraction for the player, in the first place. The character in-game has taken this in at a single glance and mentally processes it during his move to the next square, and pressing ‘v’ just tells the player what the character sees, and where. I think if you really wanted to implement the actual act of turning around and taking stock of things, the better system would be Unreal World’s limited field of vision, where the character can only see what’s in front of him, and turning in another direction to look actually takes time. Although personally I don’t think that system would work for Cataclysm, it’d be a better way to implement it.

27

I recall Kevin considering the UW-style view direction, but ultimately decided to stick with the viewport shifting style right now. I haven’t played UW yet (though it’s been sitting here extracted in a folder for months) but I recall hearing a lot of people saying it was clunky.

I just think that were ‘v’ named “Thoroughly Examine Area” and took 20 movement points from the outset, nobody would think it were out of place. It seems like a lot of the dislike of the idea more or less boils down to “I like it better this way” rather than “I can think of reasons why it’s an objectively bad idea.”

28

Well, as you stated in your first post, your reasoning also boils down to your own subjective idea on roguelikes. Anyway, I see no reason why the character wouldn’t be able to tell common items at a glance, even on the move. Ultimately we seem to have different ideas on what the item listing actually is.

29

One reason why charging time to see the character’s inventory and look around is a bad idea: it links player and character memory.

Major problem is that roguelikes aren’t realtime. It’s entirely possible that I might check my inventory in-game and then leave it entirely (whether save & quit or leave-running) to do something else: say, dinner. Maybe rebalancing a cabinet, petting a cat, or otherwise focusing elsewhere. When I return, possibly days later…I’ve forgotten what I was carrying, despite the fact that zero time elapsed in-game. Under the proposed change, I’d be dinged time every time I loaded the game. TVTrope: Now Where Was I Going Again?

[hr]
More generally, I generally know what I’m carrying on my person. I put it there, can feel it in my pockets, stick a hand in for a quick check, etc.

The player doesn’t have that extra sensory input: only what the game tells you. So certain stuff that normally could be accomplished trivially (look in a shop window, pat your pockets, think “is that my pliers I’ve got there?”, and so on) needs a full inventory-screen or area-inv check.

When I’m in the IRL local milsurp, I can look around and tell: winter coats, army pants, cash register, T-shirts, pocket knives, leather vests, coveralls, army jackets, sheriff shirts, straw hats, boots, shoe covers, web belts, backpacks, chest rigs, drop pouches, utility vests, wool berets, trucker caps, sunglasses, bandanas, fur hats, maybe the canteens…you get the idea.

Might not be able to tell if the stuff (fits). But I can get a surprisingly good idea what stuff’s around. So, IME, the V function isn’t unrealistic.

30

Hrm.

Well, yes, the character could in an instant look at any one place in a room to see what’s there, it would take some time to look at every surface within view distance. It just starts to make weird scenarios where someone fleeing at full speed from zombies can, whilst running past a window, instantly know the location of every item on all surfaces inside the building where as in reality (Which I assume we’re trying to emulate with the changes here) you might be able to go “oh hey some counters with stuff on them, better scope that out in more detail after I lose the zombies.”

To make this work, though, the x examine option would probably have to not tell you anything about a tile until you press another key to reveal that tile’s info for like, 1 movement point. Without that you could just gain all the same information in the same amount of game turns as the current ‘V’ but without any of the convenience, and the point of course isn’t just to add arbitrary hindrances. It’s mostly just to standardize your character being able to do x amount of stuff in y amount of time. If things like non-instant first aid are on the table, why not a rather powerful tool like V?

On the plus side, using x-examine would probably tell you about everything on that tile at least, instead of “a whole darn mess of items.”

It is a little weird that the “look at one specific spot” option tells you less than the “look at the entire world in view” button. Subjectively I suppose. :stuck_out_tongue:

Is the overhaul worth the difference in 20 movement points every once in a while? Well, even I’m not convinced, but I do think it would be more ideal if I could snap my fingers and make it happen.

31

I think while physical actions like bandages might reasonably take time, inventory and item management in general is an abstraction, and that includes the ‘v’ function. The post above yours probably words it better than I could have.

32

From the player’s perspective, you still have infinite time to consider your next move, your character can just no longer pay attention to every single thing that’s happening simultaneously, you’d have to manage your time.
From a gameplay/interface perspective a two-part system would probably work best, wherein hitting v would load up a list of all the things you’ve already seen (which wouldn’t have a cost), and hitting it twice, or hitting another key would cause you to actually look around.

My opinion comes from my personal experience, wherein I do not have a photographic memory of every item I see while in the midst of running around while swinging weapons and firing guns. I think needing to spend a brief moment to actually assess things would be realistic, the actual ‘look around’ key works fine for instant recognition, and it doesn’t make you able to tell what every single item in a gigantic pile of stuff is at a single glance (Just tells you the item on top).

It costs 100 movement points to take a single step, costing 10-20 points to pay close attention to the piles of stuff lying around just doesn’t sound like an unreasonably big game changer to me, and I’d like to have the option.
This kind of feature always tends to remind me of Bethesda’s RPGs, where you can eat a 20 course meal, read an entire library, and drink an entire distillery’s worth of alcohol all simultaneously in between sword swings.

Keeping in mind the focus on gameplay over realism, it’s still the case that in real life looking takes time, thinking takes time, reading a map takes time, etc. I can understand why people don’t want to have these things take time but without the option it makes time not much of a factor except how fast you can move and attack, I think the change would be nice even if it’s simply a minor cost to how many times you check your map or look around for loot, or shift your clothing around, or all those things that would be utterly ridiculous to see somebody do in the middle of a crowbar fight with a horde of zombies in a movie.

33

Exactly what I was protesting about in the first place. Why can’t the person already have considered the items around him while in the process of moving, especially given the game’s relatively sketchy version of ‘in combat’? At this point, it’s basically trying to map the character’s thoughts to real-time, and I think that’s a level too far. It seems like a better way to manage the actual complaint would be to limit your field of vision to the actual threat you’re facing, if the argument is that you shouldn’t be able to do anything except focus on your enemy. Not that I’d support that idea either, just that that seems more focused on answering the actual question.

34

I thought I had provided a pretty good example of a situation where that would be weird with my post on the previous page.

At this point, it's basically trying to map the character's thoughts to real-time, and I think that's a level too far. It seems like a better way to manage the actual complaint would be to limit your field of vision to the actual threat you're facing, if the argument is that you shouldn't be able to do anything except focus on your enemy. Not that I'd support that idea either, just that that seems more focused on answering the actual question.

But that doesn’t manage the actual compliant at all because you can still gain instantaneous knowledge of the entire inventory of a store because you ran past a window. with a zombie horde one swing away from your brain meats.

Why is it a level too far? The game already limits how far your character can see. When you’re blinded, or boomered, the player’s view is limited, not abstracted out because it’s too deep. This isn’t mapping the character’s thoughts, it’s imposing limits upon their vision. Only instead of distance, it’s the rate that visual information can be taken in.