If there is to be a performance hit on injured players, you need to handle the death aspect with care... Killing a player because they weren''t able to run away fast enough is not a reasonable excuse...

Just as in all the others - death is only a last resort for really stupid players. It should be almost impossible to die.

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - The future of RPGs
Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche

Heres an annoying trait i''ve noticed in a few games...

My body has the perfect alarm clock.

Regardless of what time of day it is or how tired I am my character will always rest for exactly seven hours and is quite willing to go to sleep at 3pm and get up at 10pm later that day. I''m sure it''s not too much to ask to allow PC''s to rest for a specified length of time, or if they go to sleep some time in the late evening to have them wake up the next day rather than exactly 7 hours later (which is invariably between 4 and 5am).

Also, if I have a party of characters, why do they all have to rest at the same time?


-Forxl

About the resting, most people only need to take a 15 to 20 minute nap midday to feel refreshed. To tie this in with the $5 a pop for all healing mentioned earlier, maybe the time could be adjusted depending on what condition your character(s) is/are in. Obviously when they''re down to 1HP they would realistically need more rest. so:

15-20 minutes for Minor healing (1%-15%)
6-9 hours for Moderate healing (20%-60%)
24-30 hours for Serious healing (65%-80%)
5-8 days for Coming back from near death (85%-99%)
Special items/tasks/places for Raising the dead (%100)

I left gaps in for fidgeting. Perhaps not taking the next level leaves you with the difference in healing still needed (i.e. your samaged 17%, but only rest 20 minutes. Your character will still have 2% damage to heal.) Either that or the rest time could be scaled between divisions (such as 3 hours for that 17% damage.) This is where being able to heal characters seperately would be useful. Let''s say your Paladin takes one for them team, but the evil you''re persuing is getting away. You can take the Paladin to the local temple to heal for a week of game time while you catch up with the bady guy. Later (s)he can catch up with you since you left him instructions with the clerics.

I cant beleive you guys missed this one out....

All Goblins are evil and must be killed on sight!!

"Cast Fireball, heal magic, repeat until desred effect is achieved..."

I tire quickly of this. Most enemies in cRPG''s require simple repetetive strategies, if any to vanquish. Having to rotate between attacks is about as much variation as I can remember being applied to this formula, but then the same problem arises. I would love for more improvisation and thought to be invested into combat systems.

"These ''inns'' of which you speak seem to have almost unlimited powers."

Inns are by far the most powerful places in all of cRPG land. You can save your game, completely replenish your health, and spend several nights there without time progressing in the outside world. Not to mention that in most towns you get all this and more for the low, low price of only 10 gold pieces!

"You don''t think that prophecy could be talking about me , could it??"

For the last time, yes. Why must every prophecy in the game world ever, that anyone bothers to tell you about, somehow pertains to you? Some of the prophecies really suck too. "To unlock the Door of Secrets, legend says you must use the Key of Knowledge." Gee, you don''t think that could be this "Got the mysterious Key of Knowledge" thing, do you?

"This may sound strange, but do you believe in destiny?"

How could we not? Seems like no matter what we do, no matter who we screwed over, no matter what we did or didn''t do, no matter how many goblin villiages we decimated, no matter whether or not we tried to switch over to the dark side, we save the world. I think it should be a little more challenging than that. Saving the world is hard, damn hard, and games should treat it that way. What I would give for a little free will.

"I''m sorry, you can''t fit another feather in your inventory, but look, there''s room for 2 or 3 suits of armor in there!"

Crappy inventory system. Enough said.

"But with all the mazes, switches and pits, how does the Prince of Darkness get around in his castle?"

I have trouble with all the tricks and crap you have to go through to get to the guy you''re looking for. Do we honestly believe that anyone would organize a dungeon in such a manner. Of course with all these bloody heroes running around you can''t be too careful. But even then, why must they leave the instructions to the puzzle right in the room? I''d much rather fight in a dungeon and have the little puzzles somewhere else.

"Who the hell are you, and would you like to buy a sword?"

What the hell? All you have to do is show up in a town and people will send you anything you want, including deadly weapons. Now there''s a policy that''s sure to pay off.

It''s amazing how many of these you can think of.

I played a goblin in an RPG once and I got attacked as soon as I entered a town despite my cires for mercy.

I think good guy goblins are a great idea - if only just to see adventurers charge at a goblin horde and hack them up before they realise they had a white flag and were trying to give them some vital information.

You can include friendly goblins but how do you stop players from killing them anyway?

-Forxl

The reverse of Sandmans convention :

I''m a level 2 goblin with no armor, a dagger, and 5 golds, and I''m comming for your life, foolish level 40 human !!! DIE !!!

Damn you Diodor, I read that post while drinking a glass of orange juice and I now have juice coming out of my nose.

"Look, I can cast fireball, lightning bolt, ice storm, meteor storm etc etc... "

What is the point of 50 different spells which, are essentially the same thing but doing different amounts of damage? (and having different pretty special effects)
I want to see some useful spells as well as purely offensive ones. Baldurs Gate tried to do this, but a lot of the 'useful'
spells proved to be a complete waste of time (any one bother with the 'know alignment' spell? Nah, didnt think so.)


"Hey, I'm rich, I know this because I have 689364 gold coins in my pocket"

How on earth can someone carry this amount of gold in their pocket? Even if gold coins were extremely light, and weighed only 0.1 gram, that is still nearly 70 kilos of metal they are lugging around. And that is in addition to the 9 suits of full plate armour, 6 two handed swords, 8 magical bows etc etc...
I wont even mention the fact that most characters in a fantasy setting probably couldn't count that high.... (Ok so maybe I will mention it ) And few people these days would bother counting out that much cash if they had to do it by hand.

"I am a 40th level paladin, an example of purity and light... please hold on a sec while I loot this goblin I just brutally murdered (for no reason at all)"

This is kind of related to lots of things - the "gold = dead monster poo" syndrome, and the "I am a priest of healing and mercy, but the only way I get to the next level is to murder 300 goblins" issue.


Edited by - Sandman on April 23, 2001 7:27:25 PM

I''m sorry. Despite the fact that you have 69''999 pieces of gold, I won''t give you this weapon worth 70''000 gold. And, oh, by the way, someone else will probably buy it by the time you find that last piece of gold.
I don''t know how many times in Diablo II this has happened to me. I''m short by a little bit, have to go kill something to get enough money (and I''m not sure why that works), but doing so changes what items are available. Pretty dumb that the game has a "Gamble" option for buying unknown items, but no "haggle." At least it Might and Magic you could have a character learn "Merchant" skills to reduce price, but it was always an urealistic exact percentage. Plus, the longer an item goes without selling, the lower its price whould be.

Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good night. Good morning...
Sometimes I wonder if the NPCs in town aren''t actually intelligent zombies. These guys just never seem to sleep.

"Quick! Go there to stop the bad guys!" "But where is that?" "Quick! Go there..."
Why is it no matter how many times you talk to certain characters, they won''t actually tell you where something is?

Well, we''re sorry, but we''re not going to let you climb up on a three foot high wall.
This has plagued nearly every genre I know. The only games that I''ve seen let you climb anything physically possible to are Price of Persia and Tomb Raider. Wow, wrong genre. The worst part is that the same characters can jump 20 feet straight up on to a roof in the pre-enacted scenes. Consistency, people!

quote: Original post by Diodor

The reverse of Sandmans convention :

I''m a level 2 goblin with no armor, a dagger, and 5 golds, and I''m comming for your life, foolish level 40 human !!! DIE !!!

LOL!!! Man, that is *so* true!!!

Picture this: You are an NPC. Armed with a combat knife and dressed in leather armor, you''re waylaying travelers out in the wasteland.

In strides a 7 foot tall suit of air conditioned battle armor. The wearer slings a plasma rifle and a rocket launcher. Your mates make a move, but their bullets do NO DAMAGE. The suit, in turn, fires a turbo plasma rifle and bisects them AT THE WAIST with 1(!) shot!!!!

What the heck would YOU do?!?!

Well, if you''re a Fallout 2 NPC, heck, you attack anyway!!!

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Just waiting for the mothership...