Take that food for example ...
Since Larian implemented it many people around here are complaining that it actualy isnt any limitation ... even you mentioned that ...
I wonder, did anyone in Larian ever mentioned that this feature should somehow limit Long Rests? O_o
For those interested in this (side-)question and who don't want to find and listen to the relevant segment found by RagnarokCzD :
[...] We have started differentiating short rest from long rest more than they were expected [*] .
So here you see on our screen that we are actually using camp supplies before we have to go sleep. [...] If you eat sufficiently at camp, then you're going to have the benefits of a full rest. However if you don't have enough food with you, you will still be able to rest but you will get what we call a shallow rest or a partial rest. And that essentially means that you're not going to get all of your spells slots and not all of your HP restored when you go to sleep.
So managing your supplies is going to become important. That long rest has become more of a strategic, critical resource for you to manage.
The guys that have, let's say boni [*], when they do short rest, they're obviously going to get the benefits from that.
Experimental feature ! Putting in Early Access to see if you like it —yes or no ?
Certainly it has made finding food much more important in the game. And it actually, it works, I mean I know my opinion, it works pretty well.
* : transcribed as well as I could. Also, the emphasis is mine.
So, did Larian mention that food should somehow limit Long Rest ? Not in these exact words, but yes. If Long Rest becomes a critical resource for us to manage, we should no longer be able to spam Long Rest willy-nilly.
Maybe limiting long rests isn’t Larian’s primary goal, but I’d be surprised to hear they believe their stated goals are met. And regardless of designer intent, the perceived intent of adding a cost to an ability is to limit its use.
Fully agreed with second sentence. As for Larian's goal, as I said just above, I think this was clearly a stated goal (if they had unstated and more important goals, nobody knows, so I won't discuss the "primacy" aspect). It sounds as if Swen was pretty confident it would work.
My feeling is that the overall answer from the players is "no, it doesn't". (Maybe a new topic for a poll ?)
I can't criticise too much the fact of experimenting. That's usually a good method for gaining knowledge. But I can't help stressing that one can also derive knowledge from doing some analysis sometimes. Or, at least, form very good bets as to what the result of an experiment will be.
What does analysing the situation tell us ?
- 1. The camp supplies system necessarily adds some (tedious) UI manipulations to Long Rest. We now really should pick up the food we find (previously, we could ignore it if we didn't want to food as health potions). We tend to send it to camp to avoid being encumbered (thus going through the very subpar inventory UI). We then need to retrieve it once at camp. That's more clicks than before for a Long Rest.
- 2. Food is so abundant that I have not heard many people finding themselves in a tough spot because of excessive Long Rests.
- 3. The camp cutscenes system still encourages us to Long Rest frequently if we want to experience the story content.
- 4. The absence of any time-sensitive event means there is still never any consequence/impact of resting on the story, so why not regain our resources whenever we want ?
How could this limit Long Rest ? I can see two ways in which it could.
- Tediousness effect. Players limit their Long Rest because they are put off by the tediousness of it. That's hostile design. I personally don't think it's good design. At all.
- Psychological effect. Players limit their Long Rest because they realise that food, and thus Long Rest, is a potentially-limited resource, and they fear they might run short at some point.
This only works for so long. A couple of hours in, players realise that they are sitting on mountains of food. Unlike gold, which we will almost inevitably end up impossibly-rich with because I don't think I've seen a video game where the "gold curve" remains credible past the early game, and which we will surely hoard because that's what gold is for, I guess, and, who knows, maybe in this game the best gear will be bought instead of looted, so ... unlike gold, food can't be used for purchasing anything else than Long Rests. That means that once we've figured out how frequently we long rest and how abundant food is, there is no more reason to save food just-in-case. We can spend it fairly carelessly.
In short, one way is bad, one way is likely to fail.
Meanwhile, because of the camp cutscenes and the absence of time, we are still encouraged to Long Rest at will.
I don't think it would have taken a crystal ball to see that the current system would probably not work pretty well at limiting Long Rest (or making food much more important in the game).
Anyway.
Coming back to the poll, I answered 4. Although I probably could have answered 5 just as well. I would like to play in a way that makes camping less blatantly immersion-breaking, and perhaps also has some strategic considerations attached to it. Among other things. I would also like a game that makes me think about how to fight the enemies, not how to fight the UI.
