Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Development => Design => Topic started by: luctius on February 24, 2015, 04:20:16 PM
-
Hey there.
I'm making a roguelike based on the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay systems, a gritty , low-magic setting.
When researching about the identification sub-game, and a lot of people don't really like it or think it is often badly implemented.
Now, one of the things in WFRP2 was that certain potions could have side effects or wouldn't work at all. What if instead of having
to identify potions, the game would assign a random side effect to the potion. This could be a good effect, a bad effect or no effect
at all, maybe even depending on the quality of the potion. In addition, a potion would provide a couple of sips instead of just one.
Thus the first draught of healing would have no additional effect, while the second would drain your stats for a while, while a
potion of poison would have a minor curing effect as side-effect.
Finally, you could have a skill as Apothecary for example which would have a chance of identifying the side-effect of the potion before use.
Do you guys like this idea, and what would some caveats be, and are there examples of rogue-likes where something like this has already been done?
-
I like it.
What if done like this:
Clear Potion of Healing: No side effects.
Muddy Potion of Healing: Chance for a side effect.
-
I was thinking of having different quality of items. This is easy for weapons and armour, the basic +1 etc.
But for potions this could be the difference. Higher quality items have a smaller chance of side effects.
Off-course, the normal way of stacking items (a simple counter) wouldn't work any more because each
potion is different. Not something the player should notice however.
-
I do not like that idea.
There's been a trend against identification subgames in various of the larger projects, notably angband and dcss, and the reductions have resulted in cleaner, better games. The lesson is this: Identification subgames are lame and should be avoided in new games. It's not that you should try to replace it with something else.
-
The lesson is that crawl and angband had bad ID systems and didn't know how to make them work
-
Hey there.
I'm making a roguelike based on the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay systems, a gritty , low-magic setting.
When researching about the identification sub-game, and a lot of people don't really like it or think it is often badly implemented.
Now, one of the things in WFRP2 was that certain potions could have side effects or wouldn't work at all. What if instead of having
to identify potions, the game would assign a random side effect to the potion. This could be a good effect, a bad effect or no effect
at all, maybe even depending on the quality of the potion. In addition, a potion would provide a couple of sips instead of just one.
Thus the first draught of healing would have no additional effect, while the second would drain your stats for a while, while a
potion of poison would have a minor curing effect as side-effect.
Finally, you could have a skill as Apothecary for example which would have a chance of identifying the side-effect of the potion before use.
Do you guys like this idea, and what would some caveats be, and are there examples of rogue-likes where something like this has already been done?
Deciding not to do it based off various opinions (especially ones from people who try to portray their preference as the only proven workable solution without much substantiation) here may be a big mistake, or it may not. You won't know until you try it.
-
I would like to point out your idea is less about IDing and more about introducing risk/reward. Kind of reminds of decks from DCSS, but the positive effect is a little more straightforward. Unknown risk, known reward? So I kind of like it.
Instead of "I'm in a bad situation, let me chug this on the off chance it helps me somehow" the thought process is more like "I'm low on health. I really need a health potion, but if I use the low quality one I could get get a bad status.... or I could use my high quality health potion but I only have 1 swig of that, maybe I should save it."
[edit: Actually, this is more similar to decks than I thought. You can use scroll of identify to see the next effect. I wouldn't know, since I never really use them.]
-
I do not like that idea.
There's been a trend against identification subgames in various of the larger projects, notably angband and dcss, and the reductions have resulted in cleaner, better games. The lesson is this: Identification subgames are lame and should be avoided in new games. It's not that you should try to replace it with something else.
The lesson is that crawl and angband had bad ID systems and didn't know how to make them work
I think this sums up the general feeling of the identification subgame quite well :).
Personally I like it, but I think it is a shame that it only matter for the first part of many games. After that you can have a good deduction of what unidentified stuff is and if it is worth using it.
That and I think is will be easier to implement ;).
Vanguard, could you explain to me why those games had a bad implementation?
Deciding not to do it based off various opinions (especially ones from people who try to portray their preference as the only proven workable solution without much substantiation) here may be a big mistake, or it may not. You won't know until you try it.
Oh, for sure.
But there is also a good chance that somebody would come up with a reason why my idea is very bad and I should not even bother, or maybe tweak it so it becomes better. But you are correct that if there is no implementation quite like it we won't know. That and the game itself probably influences a lot of how the subgame works.
I would like to point out your idea is less about IDing and more about introducing risk/reward. Kind of reminds of decks from DCSS, but the positive effect is a little more straightforward. Unknown risk, known reward? So I kind of like it.
Instead of "I'm in a bad situation, let me chug this on the off chance it helps me somehow" the thought process is more like "I'm low on health. I really need a health potion, but if I use the low quality one I could get get a bad status.... or I could use my high quality health potion but I only have 1 swig of that, maybe I should save it."
[edit: Actually, this is more similar to decks than I thought. You can use scroll of identify to see the next effect. I wouldn't know, since I never really use them.]
Exactly.
Instead of the sense of wonder rogue was trying to implement, it is indeed an risk - reward system. One that I hope will
stay relevant until the endgame.
I did not know about those decks, I will look them up. Thanks!
I was first thinking of not having healing items, only providing healing at set points, to invoke the gritty feeling of the setting. But with this I think that providing some healing will still preserve that feel due to the risk of taking them.
-
The lesson is that crawl and angband had bad ID systems and didn't know how to make them work
Their ID systems were more or less identical to those in other games.
Generally speaking, when something does not seem to work well in various different permutations and all examples of moves away from it seem to be improvements, the answer is not to find still new permutations. The answer is to abandon the idea entirely.
-
re: The DCSS decks comparison, this is on point. If you have any experience with dcss, you probably know that decks are somewhat marginal items and the ones it's generally agreed are worth carrying around are the legendary ones, unless you worship Nemelex. This is because the inconsistency of decks require that the player reliably get a powerful effect on use and the lesser decks don't measure up well without a major skill investment and/or god powers and/or ID scrolls.
You will see a similar situation with variable quality, random effect potions (assuming you can find players for such a game). Lower quality items will be largely ignored because consumables need to have reliable, powerful effects to be worthwhile. Players will wonder why they're in the game at all, outside of being an obnoxious aspect of a resource starved early game.
I don't see that anyone here has offered an alternative perspective that would justify placing a roadblock between picking up an item, of a type you may already have identified before, and using it. The lived experience of recent roguelike development strongly suggests that roadblock does little more than add tedium. Notions like this one have come up before in this forum and were given a similar response, namely that the gee-whiz alternative to a tedious but traditional aspect of the genre is an even more tedious version of it where instead of ID'ing a class of items once and for all, each item has a unique, randomized side effect requiring even more identification.
DCSS at least has a well-thought out idea here. The interaction of decks and identification has a built-in rationale: each deck has a top card and you can only draw from the top (ordinarily). You can identify only the top card (ordinarily). Great. This guy is proposing having a bunch of potions of the same base type all of which have potentially different side effects and each of which you can use at any time. So what I'm hearing here is that it's a great idea to have an inventory full of 10 different kinds of heal potions and speed potions and whatever else. We really can't know how this works until we've seen it implemented!
I can see an idea like this working as a drawback of an alchemy system where you produce batches of defective potions that are at least all the same. I cannot see this working in a setting where you have independently generated items with different random effects of the same base type.
-
Their ID systems were more or less identical to those in other games.
Angband's system is ridiculously pointless. You have unlimited time and an unlimited potential ID scrolls. You can't compare something like that to games like Brogue where you need to squeeze every last ounce of utility from your limited supplies.
Crawl's system is mostly pointless too. Remove curse and identify scrolls are plentiful so most of the time you're just doing busywork with no real consequence. It isn't a complete waste like Angband, though. Sometimes cool things happen. Like if you wield-ID a weapon and it turns out to be distortion, that's going to have an effect on your playthrough. If you wanna switch you have to consider the risk of lethal damage or going to the abyss. Maybe you'll live with it until you can survive the worst it can do, or maybe you'll take a risk to get rid of it right away. Either way it's a real problem and the way you choose to deal with it has meaningful consequences.
Brogue is a nice counterexample to Angband and Crawl's systems. In Brogue if you desperately need a specific effect from a potion or scroll, you can probably find it by burning through all of your items, but that will potentially involve a lot of waste. Or maybe you'll get lucky. If you wait until you find a detect magic potion, you can make much more informed decisions. The detect magic effect creates a lot of situations where you can try for a chance at an immediate benefit or hold off until later to get better odds.
Use-IDing scrolls might cost you a scroll of enchantment when you don't have anything good to enchant, and that will weaken your character for the rest of the playthrough, but the longer you go without testing scrolls the longer you'll have to survive without their advantages.
If you take an unknown item from a treasure room and it turns out to be bad, you have to weigh the hunger cost of swapping for a different item. If you had used an ID scroll or a detect magic potion you might not have had that problem.
Brogue also keeps track of which items you've IDed and tells you how common each item type is, so even when you're using unidentified items you can make educated decisions. If you already know all of the important positive potions you can feel free to throw your unknown ones at enemies.
There are a lot of cool things that can come from roguelike ID systems. Don't judge all roguelikes based on Angband, it's a terrible game with almost no redeeming traits.
-
Crawl's system is mostly pointless too. Remove curse and identify scrolls are plentiful so most of the time you're just doing busywork with no real consequence. It isn't a complete waste like Angband, though. Sometimes cool things happen. Like if you wield-ID a weapon and it turns out to be distortion, that's going to have an effect on your playthrough. If you wanna switch you have to consider the risk of lethal damage or going to the abyss. Maybe you'll live with it until you can survive the worst it can do, or maybe you'll take a risk to get rid of it right away. Either way it's a real problem and the way you choose to deal with it has meaningful consequences.
I agree that this the main case where identification is a real issue in crawl outside of the roadblock between picking things up and using them the identification game sticks you with at the beginning, which is the most dangerous part of the game. If you're early enough in the game where there's a resource issue here, you always have the option of unwielding and converting to Lugonu in the abyss if it comes to that after you've stomped enough orcs with your distortion weapon to survive a hundred turns there. Since artifacts don't seem to spawn with distortion, this becomes a non-issue past the mid-game where any non-artifact that would be a potential upgrade is going to be quite rare and recognizable by type.
Brogue is a nice counterexample to Angband and Crawl's systems. In Brogue if you desperately need a specific effect from a potion or scroll, you can probably find it by burning through all of your items, but that will potentially involve a lot of waste. Or maybe you'll get lucky. If you wait until you find a detect magic potion, you can make much more informed decisions. The detect magic effect creates a lot of situations where you can try for a chance at an immediate benefit or hold off until later to get better odds.
This gets to the nub of it. Apparently many people in the roguelike world think it's good when a tactical situation with game determining implications ("desperately need") is decided by pure chance. I can't begrudge you your fun trying to puzzle out what you've picked up in brogue, but this is nethackery and frankly not as popular/interesting as you think.
If you take an unknown item from a treasure room and it turns out to be bad, you have to weigh the hunger cost of swapping for a different item. If you had used an ID scroll or a detect magic potion you might not have had that problem.
Ah yes, consider the hunger cost.
[...] There are a lot of cool things that can come from roguelike ID systems. [...]
Sounds like a poor man's sudoku puzzle. I'm sorry, I'm going to need to hear a more convincing argument than this before I believe that being able to pick shit up off the floor and use it is bad and I should have to wait and figure out what it is first.
-
One man`s tedium can be another`s tension. Whenever I play a RL without IDing I fell that a large chunk of gameplay - and fun - is missing.
Like Vanguard says above, when implemented properly these systems are a good thing. Angband`s IDing seems indeed pointless (but is it the same across all the forks?) I disagree about Crawl though. I can`t speak for DCSS but in Linley`s original the amount of identity/remove scrolls is not "plentiful" but random - in some games you get lots in some you don`t (and even if you do there`s lots of things to ID), mostly it just works about right - keeping you on the edge, ponder these risk/reward choices and also providing touch of realness and "atmosphere" - yeah, these things that the gamists out there really hate ;) While part of what I love about RLs is that dungeons (from good games) are entities that don`t comply to some human wishes for "clean" games or some scholary proper implementation of game theory. When balanced correctly this can produce scintillating results.
As for abandoning a key element from a game that has been played and enjoyed by many for over a decade, well...I cannot help but think that maybe it`s also a variation of "feature creep" - or corruption, more like - that happens to projects that has been worked on for a very long time. After most of the bugs are squashed and heaps of simpler things like classes/items/monsters have been added, what is there to do but start tinkering with key systems, and maybe deciding that they`re actually rubbish?
-
This gets to the nub of it. Apparently many people in the roguelike world think it's good when a tactical situation with game determining implications ("desperately need") is decided by pure chance. I can't begrudge you your fun trying to puzzle out what you've picked up in brogue, but this is nethackery and frankly not as popular/interesting as you think.
If you need a certain effect, and you're in the mid game or later, odds are you already have the item you need. If you've been experimenting with your items properly, you can minimize the cost. More importantly, if you find yourself in that kind of situation, it's probably because you've already made some bad decisions. Like all roguelikes, Brogue is about acting under imperfect information and having a backup plan for when the RNG turns against you. It isn't pure chance.
You comment about the hunger clock suggests you haven't played Brogue. Its time limit is strict and a constant factor in any player's decisions. Most of the time you can't afford to backtrack three floors to switch your +1 ring for something better. Again, just because the hunger clocks in Angband and DCSS are badly made doesn't mean that's the case for all roguelikes.
-
Angband`s IDing seems indeed pointless (but is it the same across all the forks?)
Sil's ID system is somewhat interesting. There aren't many ID items and you're expected to do some experimentation. You get a good amount of experience for IDing items too, so even if you don't plan to use something, it's worthwhile to learn what it is. There's an ability you can learn that lets you fully ID any item on sight, and the ability to immediately understand and use anything you find gives the late game a different character from the early game.
-
The answer is to abandon the idea entirely. <...> I'm going to need to hear a more convincing argument than this before I believe that being able to pick shit up off the floor and use it is bad and I should have to wait and figure out what it is first.
Aren't being able to instantly read full info of any item without some in-game justification seems somewhat shallow? Like the game doesn't bother to keep the semblance of realism.
-
Aren't being able to instantly read full info of any item without some in-game justification seems somewhat shallow? Like the game doesn't bother to keep the semblance of realism.
That kind of thing is always easy to explain away. It's not a worthwhile complaint.
You're an experienced adventurer who has already learned about all the magic items you can expect to find in your previous adventures. You're a graduate from a prestigious guild and your education included hands on training with all known magic items and all available knowledge on the world's lost artifacts. Your god wants to see you succeed, and grants you knowledge of magic items as you find them. You've been spying on the enemy for some time prior to the beginning of the game, and you've learned what weapons and magic items they use, and how they function.
See? It's so trivial to come up with explanations that it isn't worth worrying about.
-
Aren't being able to instantly read full info of any item without some in-game justification seems somewhat shallow? Like the game doesn't bother to keep the semblance of realism.
That kind of thing is always easy to explain away. It's not a worthwhile complaint.
You're an experienced adventurer who has already learned about all the magic items .... .... .... you've learned what weapons and magic items they use, and how they function.
See? It's so trivial to come up with explanations that it isn't worth worrying about.
Sure if magic in your game is 'assembly line magic' that follows scientific method... which... sigh... Magic != science, or at least shouldn't be, or doesn't need to be. One view of magic is that it does not follow cause and effect and it is not subject to repeatable experiments (aka scientific method). Each person, each phase of the moon, each subtly different impure ingredient in both alchemy and magic leads to a different embodiment or effect of the magic. Or at least, it can. In a magical magic or alchemy system (rather than pseudo science), identification becomes necessary, since every potion, every item, every spell, is unique.
Of course, coming up with a game implementation which makes that clear to the player and makes it interesting both strategically and tactically, well, that's a bit harder :) Step outside the box.
-
Sure if magic in your game is 'assembly line magic' that follows scientific method... which... sigh... Magic != science, or at least shouldn't be, or doesn't need to be. One view of magic is that it does not follow cause and effect and it is not subject to repeatable experiments (aka scientific method). Each person, each phase of the moon, each subtly different impure ingredient in both alchemy and magic leads to a different embodiment or effect of the magic. Or at least, it can. In a magical magic or alchemy system (rather than pseudo science), identification becomes necessary, since every potion, every item, every spell, is unique.
Of course, coming up with a game implementation which makes that clear to the player and makes it interesting both strategically and tactically, well, that's a bit harder :) Step outside the box.
Ok but something about your character is extremely appealing to the omnipresent and invisible spirits which give all things their form and function, and through their blessing your character finds themselves intuitively understanding all magic they encounter.
Long-term exposure to sorcery has twisted your mind and now even the most subtle of magics is completely transparent to you, at the cost of your sanity.
You're actually the descendent of some supernatural being and you perceive the supernatural world as clearly as others perceive the natural world.
The dungeon was once the home of a legendary wizard, and his enchantments of knowledge and understanding still stand strong to this day. All who enter gain an inexplicable ability to know the unknowable.
There's a team of ace magical researchers supporting your mission. They're maintaining a telepathic connection with you, and at any time can call you on the codec to explain whatever you encounter.
It doesn't matter what the setting or situation is. It can always be explained away.
-
It doesn't matter what the setting or situation is. It can always be explained away.
It's like any random reasoning will do. I will have to disagree.
Character ususally starts being fairly weak and have to steadily improve to fully unlock various aspects. He is weak in combat, useless in magic, can't tell right from left in the dungeon, prone to traps and hexes. If that is not the case, then why does he have such trouble over measly early foes? Yet at the same time he is fully aware of huge amount of information. What it is, how it is named and used, how deep it cuts, how much HP it restores, was it cursed, etc. And this is just does not add up.
In the deep and complex game on DCSS level it breaks the suspension of disbelief. The character is completely imbalanced, but this does not have any significant impact on the otherwise consistent game. What such extraordinary character does so out of his comfort zone? He know literally everything about the item, is it the same with monsters? The way to kill them most quickly, current HP and MP, thoughts (just to plan a few turns ahead, nothing serious)? What about the level structure? Traps around? He perceive the supernatural but the walls are more supernatural than that? He knows everything about the magic book and super hard spells in it, surely he will not have trouble reading that? Then what that supporting team of ace mages is for then? With no offense meant, all those 'explanations' you provided are half-assed. They have tremendous implications none of which will be addressed in the game.
I think the problem is that you intend to give player access to inconsistent information. There will have to be a lot of things PC does not know about or have access to. And now without ID there will also be a lot of things PC does know about. With no clear line between these two it will not be trivial to justify.
-
This gets to the nub of it. Apparently many people in the roguelike world think it's good when a tactical situation with game determining implications ("desperately need") is decided by pure chance. I can't begrudge you your fun trying to puzzle out what you've picked up in brogue, but this is nethackery and frankly not as popular/interesting as you think.
If you need a certain effect, and you're in the mid game or later, odds are you already have the item you need. If you've been experimenting with your items properly, you can minimize the cost. More importantly, if you find yourself in that kind of situation, it's probably because you've already made some bad decisions. Like all roguelikes, Brogue is about acting under imperfect information and having a backup plan for when the RNG turns against you. It isn't pure chance.
Or you've gotten lazy. This happens to a certain extent in DCSS as well. There's a certain amount of sentiment against it.
The fact that your bad decisions can be amplified or forgiven completely according to the luck of the draw may be "fun," but it's also haphazard design. In the case of identification subgames, the instance of trusting to the heart of the scrolls tends not to repeat itself within a game, so you don't even have the usual defense of tactical randomness that risks repeated over the course of a game inevitably add up to death.
You comment about the hunger clock suggests you haven't played Brogue. Its time limit is strict and a constant factor in any player's decisions. Most of the time you can't afford to backtrack three floors to switch your +1 ring for something better. Again, just because the hunger clocks in Angband and DCSS are badly made doesn't mean that's the case for all roguelikes.
It's true. I guess I'd be willing to play it if it has public servers available.
Regarding the so-called "hunger clock," this is another piece of vestigial cruft that would be best abandoned. The cliche itself suggests the problem: If you want a time limit, you should just set a time limit, not make the player dick around stuffing his character's face every so often and picking up cherries everywhere. There are plenty of better options for limiting backtracking and scumming than literally finding and eating food.
re: other comments about how nethack is the best thing ever and realism of roguelikes, no true ID system whatever: Realism is a terrible guide to designing games. Why don't you have to drink in roguelikes? Doesn't that seem kind of shallow? Like a whole chunk of gameplay (and fun!) is missing??
If indeed brogue's ID system rises to the level of a middling game of sudoku as claimed in this thread, that does not suggest to me that such systems are a crucial part of any dungeon crawling game. On the contrary, the fact that a typical ID system sucks suggests to me that it's not a good idea to try them at all. Moreover, if the argument is that ID systems offer a source of danger the magnitude of which can be reduced with conservative play (oh boy!) or blind luck it would seem to me the energy involved in designing and balancing that system (and making sure it doesn't suck) would be better devoted to some other more calibrated source of danger.
-
People tend to forget that these roguelike things are games and are not intended as imaginary (and possibly quite short) life simulators, where any game action should be explained realistically.
Designers can find plenty of excuses for the existence (or not) of mechanics using lore, so it's pointless to try and argue that ID is necessary or not because "here's some lore wherein ID'ing or not makes sense".
Point is, is it fun? Before you say the ID process is repetitive/tedious, consider the following: ID is like a wrapped gift. You know you got something, you're excited at the prospect that it might be good, but it might also be crap. Gifts are universally considered fun (for kids at least, body or mind). Now if you can make the "unwrapping" process not hated/super boring, then I believe the revelation is worth it. Add to that the possibility of the gift can blow up in your face and there you have the extra fun tension.
I agree though that making the ID process fun is difficult. But what's wrong with making ID'ing automatic/easy for lower-level items and make it difficult for high-level stuff? The ID'ing process would be infrequent, and therefore could be more involved and meaningful.
-
But what's wrong with making ID'ing automatic/easy for lower-level items and make it difficult for high-level stuff? The ID'ing process would be infrequent, and therefore could be more involved and meaningful.
That is actually a very good idea. I was planning to ID artefacts anyway, but yes, I could use something like that.
-
People tend to forget that these roguelike things are games and are not intended as imaginary (and possibly quite short) life simulators, where any game action should be explained realistically.
Designers can find plenty of excuses for the existence (or not) of mechanics using lore, so it's pointless to try and argue that ID is necessary or not because "here's some lore wherein ID'ing or not makes sense".
Point is, is it fun? Before you say the ID process is repetitive/tedious, consider the following: ID is like a wrapped gift. You know you got something, you're excited at the prospect that it might be good, but it might also be crap. Gifts are universally considered fun (for kids at least, body or mind). Now if you can make the "unwrapping" process not hated/super boring, then I believe the revelation is worth it. Add to that the possibility of the gift can blow up in your face and there you have the extra fun tension.
Yeah, but if I were a kid and I got a gift that stuck to my hand or poisoned me, I wouldn't like gifts anymore. Similarly if everything I encountered in life were gift wrapped, I'd quickly tire of unwrapping gifts. This is exactly how roguelike identification subgames work, though.
Add to this the fact that it's already a good time if you find an outstanding piece of randomly generated loot lying on the ground -- indeed, it's a better time and a more strategic time, because you know exactly how much you want/need it and what lengths you'll go to to nab it if there's something guarding it or whatever. The analogous situation in games with strong ID systems is almost universally one of "well, it's probably junk anyway and you should never risk much for random junk on the ground."
As to what's wrong with making low level stuff easy to ID and high level stuff not: The bad part of that is that high level stuff is not easy to ID. The unknowability of loot in ID heavy games inevitably results in ambivalence toward the unID'd item. Yes, you need to get it if you can, but the expectation value of its utility is generally small and therefore not worth a real risk. If you can rarely say that an item is worth taking a risk, this is bad. Every time a game hides the fact that there's a great item you could get if you took a big risk, something valuable is lost.
-
Aren't being able to instantly read full info of any item without some in-game justification seems somewhat shallow? Like the game doesn't bother to keep the semblance of realism.
That kind of thing is always easy to explain away. It's not a worthwhile complaint.
You're an experienced adventurer who has already learned about all the magic items .... .... .... you've learned what weapons and magic items they use, and how they function.
See? It's so trivial to come up with explanations that it isn't worth worrying about.
Sure if magic in your game is 'assembly line magic' that follows scientific method... which... sigh... Magic != science, or at least shouldn't be, or doesn't need to be.
And yet, once you've quaffed a single "red potion", you know that all of them are "healing potions".
Much more important, I think, is that an ID subgame works well with the rest of the game, in terms of gameplay. In some games, it makes sense to omit it altogether, in other games it can be done well – I guess – but much more depending on mechanics than setting. As Vanguard demonstrated, you can always find some justification for a certain mechanic, and in the end, a game can't encompass "everything". Why isn't there a mechanic for sleeping, when there is one for eating? That is a stupid question, but I'm sure a game with a dedicated sleeping mechanic might have dreams (or something) just as interesting as corpse-eating in your traditional nethack-like.
As always,
Minotauros
-
People tend to forget that these roguelike things are games and are not intended as imaginary (and possibly quite short) life simulators, where any game action should be explained realistically.
Well, I suppose that roguelike authors` intentions do vary, which (thankfully) leads to variety of released material - some like UnrealWorld or CDDA are indeed very close to simulations and yet dare to call themselves roguelikes and are very good games too.
Way I see it, some players perceive RLs in a more abstract, "gamey" way and don`t care much for explanations or atmosphere, while others do, to some extent at least. For me personally gameplay always comes first but I still like a bit of roleplay & realism remaining too - but I do enjoy RLs from both ends of the spectrum, depending on mood.
There`s no reason why gameplay & realism can`t coexist and they indeed do in lots of RLs to great effect. Also no reason for the opponents of this style to always jump on and pounce whenever this word is uttered - we really don`t mean that a "realistic" game has to include blood pressure levels and "out of toilet paper" subgame.
IDing & hunger clocks are example of systems that can be both fun, realistic and very much part of the "game" itself. And I suppose these have been around not because they`re part of tradition or that players were just stumbling in the dark for so many years but because more often than not they do happen to work rather well.
And so I`d rather see efforts concentrated on improving existing systems like combat or AI in RLs than dismantling working ones. Although, there is one old trope that drives me mad - the run-around-the-column to recover health - both unrealistic and unfun, and it`d be great to see that addressed somehow.
-
And yet, once you've quaffed a single "red potion", you know that all of them are "healing potions".
That describes assembly line magic in a nutshell.
What if healing consumables come in multiple forms? Salves, poultices, and yes potions for example. What if 'positive divine' magic is associated with the color red - but in *any* combination with other colors? The color might be just a hint, not a guarantee. If, in your game, magic and magic consumables aren't as common as dirt, there is no reason the ID 'subgame' can't be made a major, interesting, part of the game.
In the end, are you writing a chess game? A new take on pacman? Or perhaps a different take on the portrayal of a fantasy world in an immersive computer role playing game that concentrates on guts rather than eye-candy?
Yes explanations for lack of realism can be taken to as ridiculous extremes as realism can, hell explain away the entire game, start game, display "You won!" or "You lost!" and exit.
-
In the case of identification subgames, the instance of trusting to the heart of the scrolls tends not to repeat itself within a game, so you don't even have the usual defense of tactical randomness that risks repeated over the course of a game inevitably add up to death.
But it's literally the same thing! If you make bad decisions with your inventory you either weaken your character's long term viability or else put them at immediate risk of death, just exactly the same as if you make bad decisions in combat.
You really need to play an actual good roguelike if you think hunger clocks are vestigial. ID systems are generally a good feature, but hunger clocks are fundamental. Most roguelikes are not functional without a time limit, and every single roguelike that doesn't have a meaningful time limit would be massively improved if it did. A hunger clock changes a roguelike from a series of unrelated challenges to a single holistic adventure where every event exists in the context of what happened before. It adds another layer to every decision you make over the course of the game.
It doesn't have to be food-based, anything will do as long as it makes time a valuable resource. Sil has Morgoth's power drawing you to his throne room, Infra Arcana has your character gradually go insane over time, and both of them work just as well as a traditional hunger system.
-
This potion idea is great and I think some comments reveal that people are just jealous they didn't come up with this idea themselves.
-
In the case of identification subgames, the instance of trusting to the heart of the scrolls tends not to repeat itself within a game, so you don't even have the usual defense of tactical randomness that risks repeated over the course of a game inevitably add up to death.
But it's literally the same thing! If you make bad decisions with your inventory you either weaken your character's long term viability or else put them at immediate risk of death, just exactly the same as if you make bad decisions in combat.
No it isn't. Decisions involving your inventory are paperwork. Tactical decisions are not.
You really need to play an actual good roguelike if you think hunger clocks are vestigial. ID systems are generally a good feature, but hunger clocks are fundamental. Most roguelikes are not functional without a time limit, and every single roguelike that doesn't have a meaningful time limit would be massively improved if it did. A hunger clock changes a roguelike from a series of unrelated challenges to a single holistic adventure where every event exists in the context of what happened before. It adds another layer to every decision you make over the course of the game.
Given that we've already established a distinction between "hunger" and "time," I'm not sure I see the content of this paragraph. As far as time limits, as long as the game keeps a careful turn count, there is always the possibility of speed running to impose time limitations.
Incidentally, I agree that angband is fairly weak as a game unless you speedrun it and even then it's lacking compared to many other games. Crawl has its issues too, but the significance of food/time is definitely not among them. If you think crawl sucks and that's a key part of your argument (as it seems to be), I don't see much room for progress here.
It doesn't have to be food-based, anything will do as long as it makes time a valuable resource. Sil has Morgoth's power drawing you to his throne room, Infra Arcana has your character gradually go insane over time, and both of them work just as well as a traditional hunger system.
Indeed, but they're better in that the player isn't responsible for dicking around with items to keep himself alive.
The problem with your thinking is that you want to have a single tier of winning with a high bar set from the beginning. There's a lot of wisdom in the crawl and angband approaches of allowing the player a lot of freedom, particularly in the crawl setting where there's choice about endgame content and different tiers of victory. As a speedrunner, I agree that time is important and speed and the tension it creates improves games, but making the player pick up pellets then eat them when he gets hungry is little more than an interface screw and cuts against the speed part of the formula.
-
Inventory decisions are only busywork when they're obvious or don't have meaningful consequences. Trivial, obvious combat is busywork too.
Crawl's hunger clock isn't 100% pointless like Angband's is, but it's still pretty minor. You can and should rest to 100% health in between most fights and there's no real cost to backtracking through the entire dungeon. Crawl's hunger clock does not force you to think about how you will solve the next fight as you engage in the current one. It keeps you moving and it doesn't let you grind indefinitely, which are both good things but other games have better hunger clocks that do much more than that.
I'm 100% in favor of multiple "levels" of victory, but hunger clocks are so important and so beneficial that they should be a big factor in even the easiest version of any roguelike.
-
Inventory decisions are only busywork when they're obvious or don't have meaningful consequences. Trivial, obvious combat is busywork too.
Sure, but the way ID works for scrolls in crawl, it is busywork. It has meaningful consequences if you forget to do it, in the way that failing to fill out a TPS report does, but there's essentially an algorithm for ID'ing your scrolls with minimal waste on average and whether you get screwed doing it is a matter of luck and not that important usually. Brogue does not sound wildly different from the scrolls perspective. You have some idea of how many of various things you're expected to have and you base your use-ID decisions on that. Whatever.
Crawl's hunger clock isn't 100% pointless like Angband's is, but it's still pretty minor. You can and should rest to 100% health in between most fights and there's no real cost to backtracking through the entire dungeon. Crawl's hunger clock does not force you to think about how you will solve the next fight as you engage in the current one. It keeps you moving and it doesn't let you grind indefinitely, which are both good things but other games have better hunger clocks that do much more than that.
Yes, if you even slightly know what you're doing, hunger is not a real issue in Crawl. Time and resting is an issue if you speed run though, and since online competitive play is a thing in crawl and crawl has a sensible scoring algorithm that takes speed into account, this has a nontrivial impact.
I'm 100% in favor of multiple "levels" of victory, but hunger clocks are so important and so beneficial that they should be a big factor in even the easiest version of any roguelike.
Well, I think we can agree on the "clocks" part at least.
re: trivial, obvious combat is busywork too: That's an interesting point, but I don't know of a good proposal for addressing it, other than autofight (which is a decent solution, imo). If you have a system in which monsters generate independent of the player's actions and the player increases in power consistently thoughout the game, it seems to me that there's no way to avoid trivial combat without also making combat a pain in the ass -- e.g. by overly complicated tactics.
One way to go that springs to mind in light of the discussion here is that monsters spawns can be tied to the game clock. This is what happens in crawl in a limited way, but it could be applied much more aggressively.
-
re: trivial, obvious combat is busywork too: That's an interesting point, but I don't know of a good proposal for addressing it, other than autofight (which is a decent solution, imo). If you have a system in which monsters generate independent of the player's actions and the player increases in power consistently thoughout the game, it seems to me that there's no way to avoid trivial combat without also making combat a pain in the ass -- e.g. by overly complicated tactics.
One way to go that springs to mind in light of the discussion here is that monsters spawns can be tied to the game clock. This is what happens in crawl in a limited way, but it could be applied much more aggressively.
there are already roguelikes that solve this problem.
shiren the wanderer and brogue have proper hunger clocks that keep the health regen/hunger ratio low enough that small amounts of damage in separate fights can add up to a serious problem. the end result is that you take nearly every fight seriously. also in both of those games your enemies' power grows faster than yours does, so combat becomes more costly over time. shiren's case is particularly interesting, because the high danger presented by most enemies and the game's rapid experience growth mean that weak enemies can be an opportunity and a blessing.
in sil you can easily die if you get surrounded, even if the enemies are beneath your level, and the AI is good enough that outmaneuvering them is nontrivial. on the other hand, nearly any encounter can be survived if you play it well and you didn't make any serious character building mistakes
-
I'm aware of the situation in sil -- I don't know to what extent this resolves the issue. The other examples are the same issues you run into if you speedrun, which is fine as far as it goes.
-
Yeah but you shouldn't have to use self-imposed rules like speedrunning to make a game consistently interesting
-
These mechanics are obsolete, and we must move beyond them! Time and tide wait for no man!
Out with the old and in with the new!
For every step forward, there must also be a step backward. This isn't a simple, "Oh, now that I have this +3 shortsword, I can drop this +0 short sword!" change here. There's a reason vinyl is making a comeback: analog recording has certain capabilities that digital recording doesn't. The hunger clock works badly in Angband because it's just a hard limit on how long you can stay underground, which is already covered by torches and consumables.
Regarding OP, I like the idea. I'd need to try it to see how it would play out, but it really seems like a clever and interesting mechanic. Just make sure the low-quality potions are useful as something other than just vendor trash.
-
Some mechanics really are better than others, though, and sometimes people discover better solutions to existing design problems. This just isn't one of those times
-
This potion idea is great and I think some comments reveal that people are just jealous they didn't come up with this idea themselves.
Thanks :)
These mechanics are obsolete, and we must move beyond them! Time and tide wait for no man!
Out with the old and in with the new!
For every step forward, there must also be a step backward. This isn't a simple, "Oh, now that I have this +3 shortsword, I can drop this +0 short sword!" change here. There's a reason vinyl is making a comeback: analog recording has certain capabilities that digital recording doesn't. The hunger clock works badly in Angband because it's just a hard limit on how long you can stay underground, which is already covered by torches and consumables.
Regarding OP, I like the idea. I'd need to try it to see how it would play out, but it really seems like a clever and interesting mechanic. Just make sure the low-quality potions are useful as something other than just vendor trash.
True, all of these mechanics really depend on the whole ecosystem and it is in my opinion difficult to rate them on their own.
The idea I'm running with now is to make consumables quite valuable on their own right, but I'll have to see how that impacts the game.
<< I was about to say that I hope to have an alpha version available in a couple of months, but I know how it goes so I'll not say it ;). >>
Some mechanics really are better than others, though, and sometimes people discover better solutions to existing design problems. This just isn't one of those times
You have given well thought-out reasons why you like the current ID system (if well implemented). I haven't really gone into that discussion because I'm
slightly ambivalent about it. I guess my biggest problem with it is that, at-least with the implementations I've seen, the ID game is mostly a system for low to medium
level play and does not really affect the later game because you either have identified everything or there are few options left.
I might have missed it, but I don't think I've seen you argue specifically against my proposal but rather in favour of the ID system.
Could you tell me why this doesn't appeal to you?
-
I just came here for the ID/hunger talk.
I think your potion system is randomness for its own sake, rather than randomness directed towards a worthwhile purpose.
I think it will function much like existing ID systems, except the potentially interesting experimentation phase will be replaced with grinding up your apothecary skill so you don't YASD from a healing potion.
-
Yeah but you shouldn't have to use self-imposed rules like speedrunning to make a game consistently interesting
And yet so often you do. The fact is that games are generally designed to be played by more or less normal people who are terrible at things like games. Roguelikes are less like that, but I have to say, in retrospect, I'm shocked at how terrible I used to be at games like angband and moria (and to a lesser extent DCSS, which I'm still fairly terrible at). If making a game consistently interesting, by which I take it you mean challenging, to people who can already win it (without going for records, conducts, etc.) is the goal in, say, brogue, it's not hard to see how you get people like a certain former poster we both know who seemed to earnestly believe that no one can beat a typical roguelike without cheating.
-
I would like to point out that item ID systems are as important and central to traditional roguelikes as permadeath. Not making a value judgement about item ID systems, but if you're going for a traditional roguelike, it isn't one if it doesn't have an ID system and permadeath.
If item ID systems are removed, scrolls, potions, weapons, and armor with negative effects must be removed because they become pointless. Only positive scrolls, potions, etc. will remain in the game.
This cuts out at least 50% of scrolls and potions in most roguelikes.
-
If item ID systems are removed, scrolls, potions, weapons, and armor with negative effects must be removed because they become pointless. Only positive scrolls, potions, etc. will remain in the game.
Not true. You can have items that combine positive and negative effects. Even if you know these effects from the beginning, you still need a choice to be made, which is fun. What is more, in many games you can use some of 'negative' potions to your advance, for example by throwing them on enemies (or maybe by forcing an enemy to drink those potions -- interesting idea, by the way, or using them to build a trap, or leaving them on ground in a hope that a monster will pick it up and drink). Isn't it pure 'roguelikeness'? You usually don't experience such things in mainstream games.