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Kalia
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
Posts: 30
Location: Arizona |
| Gothic III Impressions @ Evil Avatar |
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Evil Avatar has finally posted its E3 editorial impression of Gothic III. <blockquote><em>The issue of balance comes up: Gothic games are notorious for a difficult early game and a pushover end game - as with all freeform RPGs. Oblivion's solution to this problem has been controversial, and regretably, Gothic 3 plans to adopt similar method of balance. The placement of the creatures are static, but their attributes scale to your individual character slates. As for the all-important "how" or how they plan to scale to the player character remains to be seen.
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<br>Gothic has a reputation as games for hardcore roleplaying fans. The choices are prone to unknown consequences, they're final, and elicit visible reactions from the gameworld minutes or hours down the line. NPCs are not keen on easily forgiving player transgressions - they remember forever! Also, quest givers are powerful, but still very much flesh and blood; killing one would result in being hunted down or shunned by other NPCs, but the dead stays dead.</em></blockquote>Read it and comment <a href="http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13031" target="_blank">here</a>. |
Mon May 22, 2006 5:30 am |
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I think they should do it by creature like for example wolves would be leveled for levels 1 through 10 and orcs would be leveled from level 15 through 25 or something like that which would keep realism and make the game balanced. |
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Mon May 22, 2006 5:33 am |
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Danicek
The Old One
Joined: 15 Dec 2001
Posts: 5922
Location: Czech Republic |
I don't think some type of story-like driven player based mechanism that would replace one sort of creatures with similar but higher level (lets say orc warrior with orc chieftian - slightly differently dressed for example) would be so impossibly difficult to develop. And it would really much much better than any type of autoscaling. |
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Mon May 22, 2006 6:47 am |
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Acleacius
King of the Realms
Joined: 24 Dec 2002
Posts: 453
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What Oblvion did was the worst possible choice, as far as I am conserned, by using autoscaling there was no sence of accoplishment or challenge.
I personally would like to see them all scaled even the wolves, thou not autoscaled as Danicek mentioned.
I believe Gothic 2 had a good system for monsters and were just forced to throw Dragon Island together when they proabaly intended it to be much more difficult and possibly larger but ran out of development time. |
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Mon May 22, 2006 7:56 am |
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ikbenrichard
Village Dweller
Joined: 04 May 2006
Posts: 7
Location: netherlands |
i sincerly hope they do not make the same mistake as Oblivion !.
i like the the old system of "almost" static enemies alot more.
_________________
listen to both sides before you make your conclusion. |
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Mon May 22, 2006 8:49 am |
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| The fun about being powerfull! |
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Sure I like a challenge, but I also like to advance to a point where my character is uber and can kick rats to the moon if he'd like to.
The point is, If your character level is 40 and you encounter a rat with the same level and characteristics beefed it just doesn't make sense. I mean, it's not like you are going the encounter the God of rats in every single rat you find...
I would rather have each creature placed in a area to be of a certain level range, lets say rats would have range 1-3, goblins 2-6 , orcs 4-12 etc. Some of these creatures could be swapped (like in an encounter table) with some stronger version of the same : Rat king , Goblin Elder , Orc Chieftain etc. |
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Mon May 22, 2006 9:56 am |
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I don't mind being pretty powerful in the end of the game... I mean if I'm supposed to be the chosen of Innos, then I damn well better be able to kick some orc ass in the end of the game! The only thing I don't want is for the bosses and in particular the end-boss to be push-overs. The end-boss in Gothic 2 was for instance way too easy... I want a worthy challenge to finish the game off with. |
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Mon May 22, 2006 10:23 am |
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Mr Wonderstuff
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 09 Jan 2002
Posts: 30
Location: London |
I love the autoscaling in Oblivion. I find the fact that after the main quest the game is still a challenge a reason why I still play. Would be a waste of money if I became uber at the end of the main quest then walked through all the other quests (or vice versa) knowing I could wiipe them all out without breaking a sweat.
Without this scaling you would need far more dungeons to house your level ranges (or split the existing dungeons up into level groups). Imagine you have you 1-15 level dungeons....would you bother with it, knowing the loot was crap or the challenge non-existent as you were level 50?
I think this hero thing is fine...to a point. However, its a sad reflection of our real lives that becoming the greatest warrior which walked the earth is our reason d'etre. It's not vitally important to me that I become this hero, just that I made a difference and enjoyed the game. |
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Mon May 22, 2006 10:35 am |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
There's an enormous difference between using scaling like a sledgehammer as Oblivion does and using some targetted scaling, which many RPGs use.
Do you honestly enjoy knowing that at any given moment, every dungeon in the gameworld is exactly the same? That there is no risk, reward or sense of the unknown because every dungeon is carefully homogenised? That you can win the arena or close demonic gates at a low level, then promptly get your ass handed to you by wildlife?
Scaling is a useful tool - but it's also a freadful design choice to use on everything.
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Editor @ RPGDot |
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Mon May 22, 2006 10:45 am |
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Carpathic
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 12 Feb 2005
Posts: 31
Location: Kitchener, Ontario |
I have to agree with Dhruin on this one. Scaling has its uses, but only to a certain point.
Though I must admit, I like kicking a little rat-butt everyonce in a while just because I can. Kind of like wiping out entire villages with a big nasty spell, just because you can.
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The biggest rocks are but grains of sand to an ocean. |
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Mon May 22, 2006 11:02 am |
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reading this has got me really worried about this game. As far as I'm concerned Gothic 2 + NOTR was pretty much perfectly balanced and exactly the system that this sort of RPG should use. Why do they want to change something that worked so well and IMO is a gameplay trademark of the Gothic series and a huge amount of what made the first 2 so good? I don't want my hand held by autoscaling systems. |
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Mon May 22, 2006 11:30 am |
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txa1265
Magister of the Light
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 390
Location: Marlborough, MA USA |
Personally I still remember my second attempt at Gothic II - the first time I went in swinging and got killed repeatedly by stuff just going to see Lester, and gave up and put it away for a month or so.
But the second time I learned the controls early and worked my way through, and saw some Bloodflies just before I was about to head to the city gates. So I headed towards them, feeling pretty good about my skills. Killed them, killed some wolves, and then had an Orc come up and swat me like a fly!
Same with the 'Gold' edition - just leaving the city towards Akil's farm, found a small cave just up the hill - did I miss that all these times? No, it was new. Anyway, there was an Orc and a Wolf. I had beaten the other Orc so I felt safe ... only this was an Orc Warrior ... oh well, reload and rethink *that* strategy 
Limited level scaling is good, globally applied feels like nonsense to me.
Oh, the article ... yeah, it is good to see that the 'G2 controls' are there as an option. Who knows what will work best, but it looks like they are really making an effort to expand the player base with alienating the hardcore fans.
Mike
_________________
Dopelar effect (n.) The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
Check out my blog. |
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Mon May 22, 2006 11:54 am |
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quote:
Originally posted by Dhruin
Do you honestly enjoy knowing that at any given moment, every dungeon in the gameworld is exactly the same? That there is no risk, reward or sense of the unknown because every dungeon is carefully homogenised?
Yes, if you are interested in exploration, you are likely to be unhappy with the lack of variety, while Oblivion offered a lot of reasonable vast dungeons, they look more or less similar. Also, the species of the creatures are rather limited. However, this is just a matter of quality vs quantity of the graphics. I don’t think it is easy to keep that high level of graphics and the variety of the sceneries and animations at the same time.
In Oblivion, my game-play focus was in solving quests and, thanx to the level-scaling, I didn’t take too much time in finishing them. I found this nice especially when I didn’t find them so interesting.
About Gothic II, I agree with txa1265. I was just persistent enough to finish the game but I don't think the content worth the time I spent on re-loading. It definitely required my time but not my brains. Of course, I enjoyed trying out various things and seeing how they would turn out but I don't think even them worth the time I spent on the game.
This is just my hypothesis but it seems a part of hardcore fans became too addicted to old games which require re-loading constantly and cannot stand "easier" games. They may think the "overwhelming power" which they can get later in such games is worth sacrificing their time in their lives but I don't think the majority would think in that way. I don't know whether the designers are going to be successful but, for me, I think they are going to right direction. Unlike Oblivion, they are trying to make the interactions and consequences more interesting. If someone calls this dumbing-down, I'd ask him what is so intelligent about re-loading.
Of course, this is just a matter of taste. Personally, I liked the direction of Bioshock most in E3 and I like Irrational probably because they seem to be constantly thinking of how intelligent and interesting computer games can be. |
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Mon May 22, 2006 2:08 pm |
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txa1265
Magister of the Light
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 390
Location: Marlborough, MA USA |
quote:
Originally posted by Anonymous
About Gothic II, I agree with txa1265.
Apparently I messed up in my wording, because Gothic II is one of my all-time fave RPG's and getting smacked down like that was one of the reasons I loved it. When I'm level 1 I shouldn't be taking on Orcs, and when I'm level 40 a rat shouldn't be able to touch me.
Mike
_________________
Dopelar effect (n.) The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
Check out my blog. |
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Mon May 22, 2006 3:07 pm |
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Father Omally
Guest
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| Raise our voices of concern mightily before tis too late! |
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Let us pray.Let us protest ruthlessly that the miracle in the making in the waiting called Gothic III is not cursed with the autoscaling abomination of Oblivion. Proper scaling is a gift from the halls of paradise for all involved but if used in the slipshod dumped on lazy idiotic laughable manner the makers of Oblivion did it then Gothic III will surely fall before the spirits of unrewarding frustration. |
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Mon May 22, 2006 3:08 pm |
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