is making encounters difficult to the point where the player cannot beat them without using items a good countermeasure for the consumable hoarding issue? pic unrelated.
>>3626727>consumable hoarding issuethis isn't an issue
>>3626727Hoarding is a luxury, and RPG babies have been coddled by "just grind/minmax/exploit/read a guide" design
>>3626727it's the only countermeasure. what's the alternative?
>>3626727>take damage>quickload and try again so I don't have to consume a potion
>>3626730crafting or consumables that regenerate
>>3626731>drink a potion>beat encounter you reload 5 times>finish game 10 hours before you>play another game
>>3626736you didn't beat the game.
>>3626734that's true but that only works for a very specific format namely the checkpoint-to-checkpoint rush games like dark souls.
>>3626737i beat you.>>3626738no.
>>3626727Not a problem in kiseki
>>3626740Kiseki isn't challenging at all
>>3626727Items are part of your capabilities just as much as skills and spells are. Now, if these items are limited that's when things start to become a problem.
>>3626745a problem for who?
>>3626728This./thread.
>>3626728it is. it says so right there, hoarding ISSUE.
>>3626727The countermeasure for hoarding is to give player limited bag space or let them only hold up to 3 HP potions at a time, and to have a regular influx of new items, forcing the player to expend what it is in their inventory or let stuff go to waste.
>>3626743Post your SC nightmare clear
>>3626854>forcing the player to expend what it is in their inventory or let stuff go to waste.This might have negative consequences
>>3626727And how are you gonna do that? An autistic enough player is gonna beat it anyway consumables or not, so you're tweaking the difficulty around a mediocre one who was gonna get filtered anyway.
>>3626866the average player would have to face an ultimatum of spending multiple hours on a difficult fight in order to get good enough to beat it without consumables vs just chugging a few potions, beating it, and moving on. what's the contention here?
>>3626853a player's individual choice isn't an issue. you don't have to, and can't, "fix" players. if you do? bad design.
>>3626886What games do you know that make you spend hours learning a fight? How are you gonna stop players from overspending resources and not having the option by the next fight? If you don't, why wouldn't they learn the fight anyway?The player is either based enough that they don't need consumables to beat a fight, or they aren't, and they're going to waste them and have to get good anyway. The middle point you're asking for doesn't last.
>>3626901>What games do you know that make you spend hours learning a fight?without potions? any souls game ever made.
>>3626727Words cannot express how much I hate elder slop faggots. So sick of seeing these threads in the catalog every single day.
>>3626903Fuck off, don't pretend these are hard games. You can shit all over them with minimal grasp of the mechanics, consumables don't even matter because each game has a way toa. trivialise the fightb. bring enough estus that it doesn't matterIf there's no way to starve yourself of resources, it doesn't matter. If there is, then you're gonna have to learn how to do without and then resources don't matter anymore. It doesn't make you "spend multiple hours," it makes you get a bigger healthbar and more damage.
>>3626727kek saved
>>3626907jarpig go away
>>3626727>making encounters difficult to the point where the player cannot beat them without using itemsThey might just think "i need to grind" instead. Or "i need to look up a guide for minmaxing exploits"Then they make a thread attacking the game and to cope with their poor skills/thinking/attitude
here's a radical idea: make consumables actually FUN to use, really incorporate them into the game. give them effects beyond percentage buffs or weak version of a spell or HP up.
>>3626864It worked well in paper mario and pokemon
>>3626907this thread has nothing to do with elder scrolls you illiterate faggot. at least read the OP before sperging out next time.
>>3626908>bring enough estuswhat exactly do you think we're talking about here?
>>3626896>balance issues don't existJust say you're retarded next time to save me the trouble.
>>3626928>i want players not to have too many consumables>so we'll make encounters hard enough that they have to use them>like in the game that gives you infinitely replenishing healing you can stack mile high???
>>3626930this isn't a balance issue, retard, it's a "people aren't doing what I want" issue.
>>3627003No actually it's a you being a gravel-chewing retard issue.
>>3627069god damn you're boring.
>>3626727No, that leads to players hating your game>Make consumables better than any non consumable option>Make ALL consumables purchadable or relatively easy to craft in bulk>Make the problems solved by consumables actually worth solvingI won't use a poison heal item if poison is tickle damage, I won't use a unique mass-revive item before the final bonus boss, but I will spam potions if they heal more than any of my healing spells, have no mana cost, and are inexpensive to replenish
>>3627087i accept your concession
>>3626727Consumable hoarding is the sympyom of two separate issues.>restocking consumables is hard/impossible/slow/a pain in the ass>consumables are mostly too weak to be worth usingAll it takes is one of the two to cause hoarding, many games have both, and simply pumping up the difficulty helps with neither.If you really want consumables to be used you make them strong, limited in carry capacity, and fairly easy to restock.
>>3627119Then why the hell even have healing spells
>>3627165to deal extra damage to the undead.
>>3627189So for some reason potions don't also work on the undead and there's no plain holy magic
>>3627197how are you gonna get a skeleton to drink a potion dude?
>>3627208put it in their milk
>>3627211Wow he's literally me
>>3627211i do the same thing except instead of milk i use bourbon
>>3626727Play Etrian Odyssey.
>>3627165To spend MP instead of money
>>3627369and then spend money on recovering mp?
>>3627395No, grind to the point where character has enough MP to sustain heals
>>3627395In most games MP recovers by itself, and in most of those where it doesn't a rest is either free or far cheaper than a dozen potions
>>3626727There should be an option that makes it that way, sure. The problem with most RPGs is that they assume the player is a dumb normie who beelines through the main quest and can't build an effective character, so if you aren't one of those the game becomes increasingly easy as it goes on.>>3626728It kind of is, why even have consumables if they're just going to be clutter?
>>3627636>why even have consumables if they're just going to be clutter?why are people hoarding them if they are clutter?
>>3626727go the witcher road and make consumables easy to acquire and limit number of them that can be used per encounterbtw I'd like some crpgs to throw away the "operational layer"(managing resources between battles) and instead make hard encounters so I can go all out every time
>>3627651sounds like an arcadish game, with "levels" and loadouts that reset, not an rpg.
>>3627656how does having a "full rest" between encounters make a game "not an rpg"?
It is, however you end up with another problem if you fuck up the desing.That is, shit becomes either to hard or impossible to beat eventually if power scaling rises to much to the point item collecting cannot keep up, or it forced characters to look around for "safe" methods of item farming.This can be pretty much one issue with Fallout 4 on survival, where in order to get plenty of trash, food and water you are most likely going to start to set a route to pretty much tax the population out of their reserves of food and water.If you do not handle shit properly, you will be misersble, since almost every random encounter usually has one or several legendary enemies that needs a proper build and items to beat.For example, taking down a random mirelurk queen you might need either high explosives (which weight a lot, and since this is a random encounter and you are looking for trash, you most likely don't have one), so instead you use psychojet (shit that allows you to slow time and increase damage) together with that one melee weapon with a chance to cripple limbs. If you do things properly, that shit instead of mauling you 5 seconds in can now be killed like if it was Morrowind.But now you practically have a dependency on getting psychojet.Which means you need the shit (literally Brahmin shit) to craft it, as well as everything else.So now in order to sustain yourself, instead of item hoarding, you now have to delve in item manufacturation and economics.The last one can be fun, but for nonautistic people, they would rather just hoard shit the find around, which is Fallout 4 vanila difficult issue.We replace one issue with another one more complex in hopes its more fun at the risk it becomes a boring grind on the hopes for item economical stability.
>>3627651I've seen a few games like that, but they're mostly roguelites.
>>3626727You mean you haven't outgrown your hoarding mentality yet OP?Use items nigga, the devs literally put them in the game for you to use them.Items are replaceable, my time isn't.It's not like real life where scarcity is a real concern, you'll notice that most RPGs literally shower you with items for killing enemies and completing quests so you can be fairly sure that your used items will get replaced as you play the game.It's also far more in line with actual roleplaying than trudging back to an inn every time you're running low on HP/MP, real adventurers in a fantasy world wouldn't do that shit
>>3627744look at what you just posted, your time is not only replaceable it's disposable.
>>3627744>more in line with actual roleplaying than trudging back to an inn every time you're running lowRPGs really need to start forcing players into roleplaying by putting restrictions into shit like this.
Sorry I will always barely use 1% of my consumables and instead decorate my player home with the potions and gems I find
>>3627003Balance doesn't exist outside of pvp
>>3628414yes it does. if you make one class flagrantly better than the others then that will obviously disincentivize players from playing other classes unless they want a challenge. if your response is that this is a design choice and not a balance issue then you have to concede that balance doesn't exist in pvp either.
>>3627649because the game doesn't make players feel like they need to spend them.
>>3626886Most RPGs are not action games you can git gud at to no-hit a boss fight. How well your party does largely depends on dice rolls. Spending hours on a challenging fight does not feel good if it comes down to git gud rolls.Consumables are a way to smooth out the random nature of dice rolls and to help the player to keep going without quick loading when he encounters something new and unexpected.Because spending hours on a fight to best it usually involves learning attack patterns and not improving ones reflexes or strategic thinking.
>>3628445>unless they want a challengeI would argue that this exception already requires game design to have unequal play options. You would never in a million years think that a game design is good when it actively prevents players from finding challenge within the game.The difference between pvp and single-player challenge seeking is that for pvp the players can always seek better players to play against. For single-player games this is categorically not an option, so the game design has to employ other means. The idea that different players' outcome in games should be maximally skill-driven is totally moot when there is only one player.
>>3626727The best games are beatable without consumables, but hard enough that you feel the need to use them. They should also not be easy to collect a lot of them. I'm not trying to say Dark Souls is perfect, but think about how different Dark Souls would be if you could collect flasks so you had like 99 of them to drink. It would change the game a lot.
>>3626727Need a imageboard with this css
>>3626727Make autosave on quit a feature and pair it with a "lose consumables on death" policy
>>3626727that fucking pic LMAO
>>3628472>how different Dark Souls wouldThat, and if it had manual saves.
>>3628518Finally some good fucking ideas>>3627165Spells can be cast on any unit.Potions can only be consumed by the unit that spends its turn/time on it. Unless you have item thrower ability, but even then only allies can be targeted.Something like that.
>>3628525>Potions can only be consumed by the unit that spends its turn/time on it. Unless you have item thrower abilityFFT has entered the chat
>>3627208>how are you gonna get a skeleton to drink a potion dude?Oil applied to the bones.
>>3628556This kills the skeleton
>>3626727>player cannot beat them without using itemsMaybe that would be a sign of the game lacking in character abilities.Healing isn't interesting, but mitigating is.
Here's some questions for your idea for you to ruminate on.When a player fails an encounter what happens to the items they've "hoarded" or came prepared with up until now? If you fail an encounter and reload just before the moment then all this does is support trial and error gameplay for some. This is pussification of video games, game over screens can only come from random encounters, otherwise some resource must be spent after a failed encounter.Where do players get their items? From a shop? Drops? Crafting? Where is the shop in relation to the combat? What's the gameplay balance and how is the in game economy?What are the item limits like? How are your encounters planned? Are they random at all, can you repeat encounters? Is the game you're programming a linear puzzle box with almost no variety other than critical hits?Many things to consider in this "consumable hoarding" "issue" for sure.Ruminate, digest and present your excrement.
>>3626727you will never be a game designer. you will never make a game. stop acting like these questions have any bearing on your life and play your slop in silence like a good little consumer.
>>3626727>hoarding issueThat's a mental disorder
>>3626727This question is way too vague. There are games where you can avoid all damage with skill, there are games where you can avoid some damage with skill, there are games where you just have to take the hits because its turnbased or something. There are games that have counter measures against hording like inventory limits or difficulty of acquiring items, there are games that have none, there are games where you must use items to succeed (diablo and its potions spam) there are games where you don't need to. There are games like resident evil where you technically dont need to use consumable items but you need speed-runner skill to get away with it (in resident evil you never heal except by using items).Questions need context. Go look at any of reddit's game discussion boards and they will type out sentences upon sentences of context and detail for even the dumbest question. Chan is supposed to be better than reddit right? Than don't be worse than about basic language skills. Like there is a reason in school they make you write multiple sentences and paragraphs for your essay and not just ask you to do one sentence like OP.
>>3632740>There are games where you can avoid all damage with skill, there are games where you can avoid some damage with skill, there are games where you just have to take the hits because its turnbased or somethingI watched a review of NWN, and the reviewer resorted to exploiting pathfinding issues and leaving midfight to rest.Just made me realize that the player needs to be fucking nailed down so all that character skill-based bullshit can play out. Otherwise they figure out some shenanigans.It sucks because it limits game design. A lot of work to prevent cheesing.
>>3632744Abusing rest is an issue in Western style RPGs. Basically you either need to lean into allowing the player to be able to heal to full after every encounter and they are all designed to be able deadly to a fully rested party or you need to have some limit on how much they can rest either by requiring a limited resource, making it so the random encounters from resting make it a gamble, or just plain saying you cannot rest in certain locations.I think the correct way to think about is to first decide what item/recovery options the player will have and than make the challenge appropriate for what they have. If you decide to give me infinite potions encounters better be designed around me chugging it. If you decide to give me hardly any recovery items encounters are designed around never using them and you the recovery items are precocious and rare easy-mode-buttons.
>>3632740>Than don't be worse than about basic language skillsCan't tell if ironic or not
>>3632780Yeah you can try to balance it, but given control, some players will find a way to cheese it, which my main point was about. Some designs work great for the average player, but for cheesers, tryhards and grinders they are "broken" in some way.I'm thinking players need less control in RPGs, because if given the choice, some players ruin them.
>>3633332You're about 2 insights away from reinventing "cinematic" AAAA games (interactive movies)
>>3632744>see experienced player doing cool tricks to show off>WTF THIS IS WHY PLAYERS NEED TO BE LOCKED DOWNEnjoy AAA development, lole.
>>3633478>reinventing "cinematic" AAAA games (interactive movies)Going backwards from ARPGs to old turn-based RPGs, actually.
>>3632744>exploiting pathfinding issuesThis is perfectly kosher in most cases. Always has been.>leaving midfight to restBut THAT'S some bullshit.
