Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis Requiring fights to the death: cool, or lazy?

The only way I can see to prevent this being an issue is to make it clear up front (or at least, intuitive) what the difference is, and then balance the payoffs. People would do the first couple of fights and reload to see the difference. Heck, maybe they'd even read the rulebook that explained it. And then they'd get on with the game once they understood how combat worked.

It's easier in a system like Oblivion's, where you exercise specific skills, rather than just earning generic "XP". Then you can have a system like:

Each character has a store of XP: you can't earn more XP off him than his store.
If you convince a foe not to begin combat, you exercise your speechcraft or animal-handling or whatever.
If you enter a fight, you exercise your combat abilities.
If you kill someone, your weapon abilities get exercised more, and your number of kills increments.
I think perhaps a death should give a certain amount of combat experience, even if you have used up their XP store through other actions.
If you spare them, surrender, flee, or talk them round, you only exercise your weapon skills proportional to the damage you did before you stopped.
Fleeing exercises athletics skills.
Talking them round exercises speechcraft/animal-handling, but less than if you avoided the combat entirely.
Surrendering/sparing exercises no skills and gives no bonus: the only payoff is, someone's not dead.
If anyone saw a deed, or the NPC survived the battle, the deed's considered "reported".
For reported deeds, apply the NPC's defined values for that deed to your reputation network, scaled by the XP you earned from the deed.

Looks complex, but should be fairly intuitive. Easier to understand in play, than it is to explain in speech, hopefully.



Yup <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Just ordered Planescape:Torment, though it looks like I'll be ordering DD after that - I'm really liking what I hear <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

First of all, I didn't say that saving shouldn't be allowed. I said that players should change their way of playing in order to allow better games with more immersion that today. Of course you can get rid of the saving - that wouldn't change much because then people wouldn't play the game because they actually want to play a game in which they can save when they want. So, that wouldn't help at all.

And secondly, quite honestly, in computer gaming, I don't really care what other people like or not... I don't want to sound too selfish or something but I have even difficulties to sort out what I like, so that I can't be bothered by what other players like. At least not when I am just a customer and state my personal opinion. It's the job of the developers to take that into consideration in the way they want. If I were the game designer, it would be totally different of course... but thank God I am not developing a game yet. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

On the subject of what makes an RPG into an RPG: I feel that there are two main things that, if one or the other is there (preferably both) the game can be considered an RPG. These things would be customizing and developing a character's power/skills in a way other than gear, and developing a personality for your character.

Diablo and Diablo 2 do have non-item power growths, and though admittedly it was probably under 1% of the population who actually tried to develop a personality for their character and stuck with it, you very well COULD do so with the way you chat with friends and random other people you played with online.

Developing a personality for your character seems to be the prevailing definition for 'RPG' in this thread, and I agree that a game that allows for personality development truly deserves the title of RPG. The problem is that common usage and the English language being what they are, RPG has also come to mean any game where the character grows in power.

On the subject of realistic item drops: One ActionRPG (like Diablo, as opposed to TrueRPGs) that I sometimes play called Titan Quest actually has a somewhat realistic loot system. Pretty much anything can be in a chest, but you're not getting (for example) any sort of Bow to drop from something obviously using a Sword no matter how high level or powerful the monster is. Also, if the monster is the Minotaur Lord at the bottom of the Minoan Labyrinth, you can't expect it to have any caster robes on it. (though it quite possibly would have some in its associated treasure chests)

On the subject of having non-lethal conflict resolutions: I agree that avoiding fights should not always make the game harder, and can prove to add more points of interest to the same amount of conflicts. The biggest problem with conflicts being resolved by anything other than killing the critter or disabling it in a scripted manner mandated as the ONLY possible method is that no game-designer can ever think of every possible way a player would want to solve it.

Take the ever-popular 'Cult of evil wizards want to summon a demon, and will neither take nor accept quarter from what they see as a lesser being'. Standard course of most 'RPGs' would be to slaughter them all.

• What if you're an evil character who WANTS the world to suffer, can you not prove your loyalty to the destruction of the world?
  What if you believe there is good in even the most evil-hearted, can you not subdue them, somehow restrict their magics (in Dungeons and Dragons, for example, you'd just need to tie them up, take away their spell components, and gag them properly) and attempt to convince them of the errors of their ways?
  If you do decide to just slaughter them all, if their friends and enthusiasts ever find out one would think you'd be likely to have hordes of madmen and madwomen attempting to avenge their brethren.

Most RPGs just leave it at 'You kill the evil wizards, collect your reward from whatever leader is left, and go on about your life.' Even some ones where being of an evil alignment is actually supposed to be an option, like Neverwinter Nights 1 or Knights of the Old Republic 2. Sure, in either of those you can slaughter the innocent within limits, but you're still limited to either defeating a great evil or abandoning the game before the end.

What I'd love to see is the ability to enter any action you wanted to, and have the game respond accordingly, but I understand that that is only possible in simple games like the various text-based Zork games where most of the responses to 'I want to do X' are 'I do not know how to do X' and the rest are highly scripted. The best we can hope for is a sort of open beta stage where all sorts of players can come in and lend ideas for new options they'd like to see.

Oh, and I can highly recommend both Planescape: Torment and Divine Divinity. Their graphics are poor by today's standards, but if gameplay is what you want, go for it. Both are quite advanced for the times they were released, and contain far more 'Roleplay' and 'Moral Choices' than most everything else released later. (especially PS:T) A note is that PS:T is party-based even though the Nameless One is the only one you control the speech of directly. (other party members' non-combat actions can be influenced with diplomatic tactics) <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> is entirely a one-PC adventure.

Hmmm... it'd be great to be able to persuade an "enemy" to let you go, or through multiple visits, to be even able to turn him to your side(if you can provide safe harbour from his master) or with suitable skill levels, pry some info from his mouth.

Anyways, fleeing from a battle could have either positive or negative results. For example: in a series I'd played a long time ago, you were allowed to flee from a battle but the monsters could catch up to you or other monsters could be attracted to the current mob and run after you.

This meant that you needed to save often or face death 'cos especially at night, there were fewer but more dangerous monsters. And considering that some of these monsters had highly lethal attacks, even if you won the battle, you could still die from the after-effects. That's 'cos some of these effects could only be got rid of by sleeping or gulping potions(which could be limited).