Rogue-like Doom

[--Pete]

Hi,

Be careful with this line of thought. I think it may be leading down the road we've traversed already, except in calculations instead of graphics.

This is always possible and the designers of the game need to keep it in mind. As long as the designers focus on the game first and what technologies to implement second all should be well. But you have a valid point as the history of games over the last decade or so clearly demonstrates.

Not to mention if you introduce more realistic features, you have...problems. With the example given, what happens, say, in PvP with two Warriors who have minor healing abilities. They are backed by support characters who die for whatever reason, and are left alone, unable to kill each other in any reasonable amount of time because they are too tired. Do they go take a nap for fifteen minutes?

Again, this is a design and balance issue. The examples I gave were brief and simplistic. In a complex implementation, using both fixed factors and random factors (some days you just have more zip than others) the two might start out equal, but one would probably dominate in a while. In addition to fatigue, other factors could dominate. For each character, the effects of fatigue could be spread over strength, agility, coordination, reflexes, etc. And that spread could be somewhat (randomly) different for the same character in different fights. Putting on the player the needed to analyze the immediate situation and react accordingly instead of the 'this is a barlog, so I shoot him twice, cut him three times and finish him off with lightning' game play that is the norm. One of the reasons that PvP is so popular is that PvE is only a challenge the first time or two that a situation is encountered. After that, the brain is taken out of the loop and the discovered and digested solution is applied. Good enough for Tetris, maybe, but hardly what a gamer wants from a RPG.

Even against the environment, this is a potential issue, unless you impose this strictly as a limitation for players and not ALL entities, which I would be amenable to, but would be a large turn-off to a majority of players out there.

The rate at which fatigue is accumulated could (and should) be very much a function of the creature type. A magical creature might not fatigue at all. A bear would fatigue much more slowly than would a rat, and a character might fall in between. So, part of an anti-rat strategy might be to wear him down, but you want a quick kill versus a bear. And so on.

At least they would tell you it was, and perhaps convince themselves as well. I likes me a challenge, but if people on the Innernet are to be believed (HAH!), then they want games as easy as possible, with everything handed to them on a silver platter. Diablo II and its bot infestation has actually shown that some of them are not just kidding themselves. They will literally leave the bots on for days to find gear, which they will equip onto their bots. It's disgusting. There is no game-play for these guys. I don't know why they still have their CDs.

To each his own. Like you, I play games mostly for the challenge, and if the designer doesn't give it to me, I can often figure out how to add it (I still occasionally try Immortal Heroes in D1 and I've yet to three dot one). So, when I'm talking about what I would like to see in a game, I'm not talking about the games for the masses. I doubt that anybody would try making commercial games along the lines that I would prefer, they would be too frustrating for the common gamer and there just aren't enough of the hard core gamers out there to pay for the development. But I do miss the days of real game difficulty levels, where starting a new game on 'Impossible' often meant just that;)

--Pete