https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkG3eo9ODPQ First livestreamed video episode of our actual-play podcast that I'm a player in (previously in audio form only on Soundcloud/iTunes/Google Play) is on YouTube now. It's mostly a story recap of everything that happened in the story up to this point, and some setup for the next arc. Come check us out!
Also on Soundcloud here, if you prefer audio-only:
I bought a snes mini when they came out (and I was lucky to even get one!) But I was devastated to find out that it didn't have chrono trigger on there. so I had to mod the console to allow for rom ports
I've just got such a long list of games, and I have less free time for JRPGs than I used to, even classics I hear are great from practically everyone who ever talks about them
I get interrupted at pretty random times and not being able to either immediately save or quickly make back major progress is pretty good reason for me to put certain games at the bottom of the list
But maybe next time I'm specifically looking for something like that Chrono trigger will be it
If I gotta walk away from the computer right now it doesn't help even if I know there is a save point two minutes away
And I mean, it's really not apocalyptic or anything, I just get annoyed when circumstances cause me to leave a game open when I'm not actually on the computer
It's not like I'm swearing off games that don't let you save all progress at any time but it's a consideration whenever I pick which game I'm getting next
Though I do question why there are still any games out there with a save feature that doesn't work at all times
Then there's games like Mass Effect Andromeda, where they built a save function that can work at any time, but disabled it at certain times because they were determined to make a terrible game.
@Miniman as for newer games, if it's difficult ok, but sometimes I feel like it's specifically because they are going for an old school feel when that's actually a detriment
It's especially ironic when most of their terrible design decisions stemmed from a desire to "be open world", but saving anywhere is the norm in open world games.
I'm not entirely sure where the line Is drawn, but for every game where they had to build the save system so you could only save in some places, there must be another one that you could have just opened a menu screen and saved if they decided to let you
But maybe that's just me
Anyway I don't wanna blow it out of proportion, it's just the main concern I have for picking up the game like right now
I fully expect to get it at some point and have a blast with it
I've heard almost exclusively good things about it
Doom is an interesting early-ish example of free saving anywhere, in that it also has a rather punishing death condition that only exists as something like a challenge mode (you lose all your guns and ammo save for the pistol you started with)
I think the general harshness of Doom maps as the game progressed reflects the assumption that the player is loaded with good gear, which suggests that the choice of saving system influenced their map design
In theory, save state systems are implemented in a way that contributes to the desired gameplay experience
e.g. If you want your game to feel punishing by making the player redo areas when they fail, then you design a save state system that (mostly) doesn't let the player save and reload
In practice, games are designed and released on such a tight schedule, with such profit-maximizing priorities, that ground-level states like save mechanics tend to be copy-pasted from previous properties in favor of flashy effects that will look good in the marketing material.
But yeah, games that allow for rapid-fire quickloading can generally get away with rather punishing challenges because the player can quickly abandon bad attempts and get straight back to action
Yeah, it started with talking about how save-game features influence which games we play based on how our real-life circumstances make them easier or harder.
Yeah, and it's a bigger problem than it might seem like at first
On the surface, it's just "you might have to play longer than you wanted so you don't lose progress"
But another effect is "you never know how long you need to play to not lose progress" which can be really frustrating and make one averse to playing when they're not very sure they have enough time.
I think a smoother gameplay where after clearly making a mistake you can still go on and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and it's still fun to start over if you fail in the end (like an Assault mission in Unreal Tournament!) is better than a gameplay which is so unforgiving that it requires saving and loading within a given section.
My personal favorite scheme is fair challenge with permadeath, when it fits the game well. I requires rather particular style of gameplay to work well though.
I think permadeath works in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, for instance. One feels at risk for death but the game doesn't take forever to get back to speed if you die.
In Angband, it's worse because the game is intensely grindy so you wind up investing lots of time in your character
Hitman series is unusual: you can save any time during a mission, but only a limited number of times depending on your difficulty settings. That actually works reasonably well given the nature of the levels
Quite often a mission in the Hitman games I've played are 95% observation of the surroundings for openings, and 5% of actual action. So you can complete most questions fairly quickly if you apply stuff you learned on the previous attempts.
Blood Money was quite excellent, although I concede those save slots were largely important because it wasn't always obvious what would cause the guards to go full aggro.
@trogdor I think the main series is something like six games
47 is Silent as a sin, if he's too large to fit into a secret opening he contracts, and if his other muscles fail him, he comes up with an ab solution.
@trogdor Haha, I honestly don't know because I haven't really even looked into the newer ones... the basic idea is that you just need to kill a target and leave alive, although Blood Money gives you a varying paycheck for upgrades between levels. More money for cleaner hits :)
Blood Money greatly expanded the possibility to kill people in unorthodox ways though. You can make deaths seem like accidents, eg. pushing someone down a staircase or rigging their barbecue to explode.
And there's no real bonus in using them, apart from the fact that collateral damage is not penalized if it's from an "accident"
My pet peeve in earlier Hitman games: a common obstacle in the game is guards that frisk 47 for guns. Until Blood Money, they actually attacked 47 straight away if they found anything. And there's no way to know for sure which guards are going to frisk you. And they also attack you if you decline frisking by turning away.
the newer games show an icon on items that are illegal when you look at them, and frisking is only necessary if you actually walk into the place the guards are,... guarding
and also if you have a briefcase you could just throw it over a wall with all your items and get them back anyway
as long as no one sees it, or if you get it back really fast even if someone does
it seems like 80% of the frisking areas are kinda useless if you know you can do that
anyway, I like stealth action games so it seemed like it would be right up my alley, but I don't really want to play the older games
so maybe at some indeterminate point in the future I will have a better computer for playing high performance games like that
@trogdor The remote detonated... the weirdness is, if a NPC sees one in 47's hand, they panic instantly. Despite it looking like a gray smoke detector :P
@trogdor If you like stealth games, I think Blood Money is passable once you get a hang of it but I have one really big recommendation: Invisible Inc. It's from Klei (the authors of Don't Starve)
When I was in my early teens I liked this game series called Commandos where you command a group of WWII Allied commandos against the Nazi Reich. It's a stealth action game, but from a RTS-like perspective. Your guys have different specializations and you'd usually need them all to beat the missions.
But it had problems... the missions were usually VERY tailored to exactly fit the resources at hand. Not enough room for creativity.
And it required lots of mouse acrobatics, doing actions quick
Invisible Inc feels a bit like taking what I loved from Commandos and turning that into a roguelike-ish turn-based game
@Piomicron If you mean Ars Magica, you're welcome to ask that as a mainsite question. Best to show your work and show where you're stuck figuring it out.
Note we have ars-magica, ars-magica-4, and ars-magica-5, and if you're playing with 4th or 5th edition you'll want to tag the main tag plus the edition tag.
(which is different to how we handle D&D question tagging, but that handling is specific to D&D)
I'm still confused by the tagging rules. E.g. some games forcibly synonymise to the short form, others enforce the long form, and that doesn't seem to line up to the game's official name (e.g. GURPS is not spelled out in formal naming, but many short-tag games are).
However brevity is another thing we try to achieve. Spelling out Gurps would be incredibly long and nobody is going to be confused about what GURPS refers to assuming they know the system.
We also pick what people would be looking for. Nobody types "generic universal roleplaying system" into google or search, they type GURPS, so we use GURPS.
Same is why we use [dnd-#e] even though we could fit the spelled-out name.
Warhammer Fantasy could also refer to a number of games. WHFB is usually used to refer to the tabletop wargame with minis, but Warhammer Fantasy is the TTRPG.
@vicky_molokh Heh, this is something I've never thought about but yeah, kinda funny! I guess the people who set the precedent have the most weight here...
@Rubiksmoose Asking about opinions: "Do you think we should pass a law that forbids eating pancakes with a shovel?" Asking about facts: "Is banning eating of pancakes with a shovel a common enough sentiment that a politician could win an election by promising it, and what goals do those pro-ban people pursue with such a law?"
I'm afraid that if I condense the two sections of the fact-example in the chat, I'll need to provide more goals in the example, making it harder to parse as an example.
@vicky_molokh This question rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/140494/…, doesn't seem to fit the stack very well. It's "let's discuss why players are pro-chance of death in games"
Opinion question: "Why do you think we should ban shovelling pancakes?" Facts questions: "I've seen these arguments for banning pancake-shovelling, but they seem like just a front for some other, less obvious arguments. What are the deeper arguments for banning pancake-shovelling that are quite common in the relevant population?"
A (more) factual question would be "what proportion of players think like option 2". You are asking "What reasons do players who like option 2, like option 2?"
'I like WoD' is an opinion. 'People tend to like WoD for its X, Y and Z, while its U, V and W tend to have little effect on its likeability, and its M, N and O tend to result in people disliking it' is a description of facts, even if in low precision.
@vicky_molokh In following with your previous example, "What are the three most common reasons for pro-death-risk players to insist that there must be a real chance of character death in the rpgs they play?"
@vicky_molokh You're going to need to have some citations to back something like that up in an answer.... and if you're asking about prevalence of opinions about rpgs, the polling data is scarce.
@vicky_molokh Asking for the most common would make it technically answerable, but unlikely to have a verifiable answer. So yes, better question, but also unlikely to be answered or answerable.
I'm more bothered bu the comment that' up on the post. My comments were deleted, and I feel like one of them contributed to the potential thought process but whatever they were deleted. But the comment calls me out as "trying to get someone to change an answer" and I certainly wasn't doing that, and I don't wnat a comment out there accusing me of that
@G.Moylan Generally the important thing to know about conversations here is that there are all public (besides a system that the mods can use for special cases)
Feel free to bring issues (no matter how small) to meta and they should get addressed.
I'm not familiar enough with comment patterns to really know, so if I somehow imitated that that's my bad. I thought my comment about harvesting poisons was still relevant though but if we're not discussing then ok
@G.Moylan I mean, petty or not, meta is the tool we have to resolve issues. And, I imagine that it is probably one of the only ways that mods receive feedback on their actions (which I imagine is helpful for them to hear at least )
@Carcer In that case, short appointment seems good? Here's your prescription. Have a nice evening or tea or whatever it is the archaic English speakers do these days.
it's a followup appointment for previous surgery, to which the conclusion was "yes you'll need a bit more surgery there, we'll be in touch to schedule that"
The wording of the spell matters
If the characters are aware that there might be an impostor and they word the spell carefully, then the spell will fail. For example "Show me Sir Galahad the Great, rightful King of Brittax, Friend of Elves." The polymorphed minion is not this specific person a...
Of course the Locatocracy is open to corruption since only the mage knows what the spell is really saying. I assume they use several mages and have to be unanimous.
@MarkWells To be fair, the American government does not require an illiterate child to make decisions, it simply has an illiterate child making decisions. ;)
The more interesting way to rig that election would be to find Mystara or whoever is in charge of magic and convince them that you're the rightful King.
Find a monomolecular sword, an impossibly sharp archeotech weapon... and decide to add more molecules to it, thereby making it stabbier. That's not how it w— okay no apparently that is exactly how it works because you and all the other Orks believe that is how it should work
The wording of the spell matters
If the characters are aware that there might be an impostor and they word the spell carefully, then the spell will fail. For example "Show me Sir Galahad the Great, rightful King of Brittax, Friend of Elves." The polymorphed minion is not this specific person a...
