aliens

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Pyronymer

Pages: [1]
1
XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99I1 - 26 Dec - Spirit of Christmas
« on: February 19, 2018, 12:21:51 pm »
I made some simple statements about a fairly clear possible improvement to the game.

The response is... I'm going to have to say, not just abusive but to me suggests Dioxene is... kinda nuts.

I'm not going to respond to flailing abuse with grateful praise and monetary donations. That's not what normal people do, nor is it what normal people should do.

I would not even make this post and point that out, because at this point it's clear that might needlessly trigger a fragile individual.

But seeing the last two responses... one of the reasons I'm not going to respond with money and praise is that at this point I genuinely fear that would be enabling behavior and just maybe other people shouldn't be responding to wild eyed abuse with praise either.

People shouldn't be encouraged to act like that. Its not good for him either.

2
XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99I1 - 26 Dec - Spirit of Christmas
« on: February 19, 2018, 10:57:19 am »
Are you seriously freaking out this much, threatening to abandon your clearly apparent passion project of years, and ranting about everything wrong with society the gaming industry... because people, and only a some of them at that... would like to see actual useful damage feedback.

Of all the things to freak out this much about, and of all the things to loudly declare are the thing that is wrong with the admittedly deeply flawed gaming industry... accurate damage result feedback?

That?

Really?

Like this?

Look I'm not here to crap on your parade, but... that's kinda the point, because you are acting like I'm actually physically crapping on your parade. It's just mentioning sensible feedback responses. I can't even make you do it, I'm not even putting serious effort into trying to make you do it, I'm just pointing out the obvious on a relevant public forum, it's not the end of the world, I hold no power over you.

And when did I declare myself an authority?

3
XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99I1 - 26 Dec - Spirit of Christmas
« on: February 19, 2018, 07:28:14 am »
Basic idea is fighting smarter not harder, and an ideal warrior is one with a heck of alot of agility to dodge hits (with high initiative to deliver them first).
This is the sort of glaring issue I was talking about. It is smarter not harder to build characters all of the same archetype all benefiting from the same mechanical exploit of "well then we will just kill them first and try never to be hit" typical of, I'm sorry, but not really "medium" fatality systems. But is it remotely healthy for generating interesting diverse games?

If the "right" way to play a TTRPG is "everyone is a speedster, everyone always shoots Greedo first, anything else is failure death and 'comedy' games" you have a major underlying design issue. There should be functional competitive player character builds that dump agility and do... something else just as good just the same way these "heck of alot of agility" builds are dumping... something if not everything else.

I'm thinking this is wandering off topic though...

Er.... ...I used to take 1 or so Assault Grenade Launcher girls as soon as I could to any mission without a roof. Then I stopped because they just couldn't compete with the gun+sword standards, don't know exactly when or why that happened, but it just became pretty much just another weapon thrown in the rather large pile of "Does this thing even do anything? I can barely tell".

Hell. I used to use bows. Back when they were viable.

4
XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99I1 - 26 Dec - Spirit of Christmas
« on: February 19, 2018, 02:07:20 am »
unless someone is an autist with a computer in their head and prefers calculating tables instead of actually playing the game.
As a player the actual autistic route is to demand that there be as little automation as possible in the game so that decisions require a great deal of really autistic calculations in your head. I don't want to sit down and do relatively complex autistic math calculations for the rather complex armour/bonus damage/etc... I would need to use to make what should be relatively simple and quick decisions about which character should use which weapons on which targets.

If you want to say "screw that I'm doing it my way, even if its crazy, even if people will keep noticing and WTFing about it forever" thats fine. But... don't call the people who want to do less of the complex math themselves autistic, it's really the other way around.

Quote
It's like a hate for games in general, trying to push the attitude that they have nothing to do with the real world and cannot ever simulate anything and should be as gamey as possible. And I love games so I find this disgusting.
I've always been very much of the opposite attitude. You aren't simulating reality. You are making a game. It should be fun, every aspect should facilitate fun. You can "simulate" to some extent, because sometimes that is fun, but when it conflicts with the primary goal of making a game, the simulation goal loses or the game gets worse. I also find that people who disagree with this say oddly inconsistent things like... well complaining that critics hate games, then complaining about how you hate things being too gamey, then switching around yet again and declaring how much you love games.

That sort of multiple contradiction in a few short words... look I'm just suggesting a small quality of life improvement which I think honestly you know is a better solution and you are over compensating a bit and maybe going a touch off the rails in the process of being a bit too defensive. I haven't attacked your entire design philosophy, I haven't attacked your entire work, I've just suggested that games giving clear feedback on the results of your actions is a good thing and more of it would be nice.

...
Generally speaking every +8 damage is x2 Firepower or takedown capability, which is what I meant by logarithmic.
I don't want to go into too much detail, I'd need a thread to go into everything wrong with the excessive details of what you described. So I'll keep it short.

I am not particularly sure the... system... you described does result in that "logarithmic" outcome, but if it did... it's kinda "logarithmic" but only really in a remotely practical way, maybe, if we had any idea of how actual damage progression in character advancement/enemy levels/equivalent works. But then again the primary issue there is the system you described is frankly way too complex for a base damage system for a TTRPG. There are other major tangential issues like built in no save instakills, what looks like LESS hp for PCs than NPCs, an over complex armour mechanic, an average dice value better than the actual average result on a dice and also better than the maximum armor reduction per dice (the .5 on its own barely makes the averaged dice better than a roll, the armor interaction almost DEFINITELY pushes the average dice to better than rolling). But really nothing gets past the obstacle of "it could take a good year or more of gaming time for most TTRPG players to actually begin to get a grasp on how damage actually works in the game they are trying to play".

I'm pointedly not saying that this mod is bad, I'm very happy with much of it and would just like to see it improve, I am pointedly saying that my personal judgement on the quality of the described TTRPG system is negative both over all and on nearly every described point.

It went like this:
My current it goes like this goes like this :
Sell all the muskets right away. They are less than useless. Hit things with sticks if you have to. Its wildly better.

Sabres+Sawn Offs

Tech Blades + Kustom Hand Cannons

Always Panzerfausts.

For rare and increasingly inferior two handed gun girls... Any mediocre two handed shot gun... Mammoth Shotgun/Heavy Slug Thrower...???(see below)

Maybe bring a mortar.

Always the Little Wooden Clubs of Better than other Stun Options. I think you need bigger sticks or electric sticks to stun things with sometimes but with the combined rarity of that and the lack of feedback... I'm pretty sure the opportunity cost of carrying something other than the tiny wooden club is a bad choice. And all forms of stun grenades my ass but maybe thats a hold over from experiences in prior patches... or minimal feedback.

There would be at least another tier of replacement for Tech Blades + Kustom Hand Cannons... There might even be SOME limited branching in roles, once upon a time it was ALMOST a good idea to bring a hover suit sniper once you got sniper options worth an ass. But for a while now the earlier game just goes so long I haven't seen those for a LONG time.


Also, just for tangential reference, I start a new game with each patch, looking at a lot of comments about what to use for certain missions on this thread... it seems pretty clear a lot of people have not been doing that when they respond to early game missions with the suggestion of bringing far later game levels of resources/techs. 

5
XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99I1 - 26 Dec - Spirit of Christmas
« on: February 18, 2018, 01:43:19 am »
It wasn't the same game and I sure as hell am not throwing away other conveniences and features from this game or anything else I interact with of any other sort just because "we didn't have it in the 90s".

The 90s not having something is a terrible excuse for not having it now.

The 90s didn't have this entire mod.

6
XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99I1 - 26 Dec - Spirit of Christmas
« on: February 18, 2018, 01:27:42 am »
You really want that much information just... handed to you? What the hell.
No I want the somewhat lesser information of actual damage dealt handed to me. That information would still require some number of attacks to determine if a weapon is on average a good choice against a target, having that information up front is possibly the poorer solution, but at least a solution better than "just use weapons hundreds of times to git a git gud feel for them for no reason".

Up front final calculation damage ranges mean you immediately know if the weapon is the right choice vs that target but not if you are actually progressing with defeating them and will not give you informed decision making on whether to invest TUs in a few more attacks or not.

Final actual damage dealt means you will still need to try out weapons a bit against different targets, and will let you make informed decisions about whether blowing your last TUs on one more attack is a rational choice or not.

Up front calculation of damage ranges that thanks to massive modifiers NOT included in them are completely unrepresentative of final damage ranges are completely useless and only serve to give misleading information encouraging you to make uninformed, incorrect and in a game like this one, game losing, decisions. That sort of information very much should NOT be available.

7
XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99I1 - 26 Dec - Spirit of Christmas
« on: February 18, 2018, 01:12:59 am »
hold ALT while targeting (shot will do between 0 and 98 damage) is enough information for me to crunch effectively.
If that number accounts for the plethora of weapon, user and target specific calculations the game uses and is final possible damage range I'm prepared to walk away and say "oops, yet another feature of the game nothing ever told me was there that changes everything", and then move on to asking how the hell I get than number with Melee attacks and why the hell what should clearly be the default option is hidden behind wearing my thumb down on the alt key constantly.

But if that number doesn't account for target armor and resistances, weapon modifiers that ignore or even increase target armor, elaborately calculated multiple attribute dependent bonus damage etc... then the number isn't good enough to really be anything other than a red herring that might even make the transparency situation worse.

Though... actually while (the full information version) of that helps a lot with correct weapon match ups... it still doesn't let you know if it is the right decision or not to keep fighting a specific target right now in combat, which actual damage results would tell you.

8
XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99I1 - 26 Dec - Spirit of Christmas
« on: February 18, 2018, 12:45:15 am »
If you do that 50 times, you will know.
And this seems to be the one thing hiding the information does.

Massively artificially bloat the number of times required to know a fundamental basic fact, each and every time with each and every target, with each and every weapon.

So. Why 50 times? What's magic about that number? Even if you knew the actual damage dealt you won't know for sure if a weapon is a good choice after a single hit, it would take at least several, probably more like a half dozen.

What's wrong with that much more manageable number? With the sheer plethora of weapons in the game isn't a half dozen tries per weapon per target type a MORE than sufficient "git gud" threshold (as if "git gud" is ever even anything other than excuse for not having an argument for a poor mechanical choice).

I like choices. If I saw the damage on my latest weapon or against the latest target I could within a reasonable instead of fairly insane time frame make the simple choice of "well this weapon does fairly reliable damage vs this target, I just need to hit it some more" compared to "this weapon only rarely does meaningful damage to this target, this is a gamble, but one I MIGHT win" compared to "this weapon is totally ineffective vs this target". You have to do that fifty times or more before you are allowed to make that choice is not a reasonable demand even on the sheer grind scale of this game it is not a reasonable demand.

The current threshold for this information and that choice is unreasonable. It is more unreasonable because of the massive amount of weaponry and targets, it is more unreasonable again because of the constant changes to damage and resistance types from patch to patch. Which stun weapons are effective against what (or effective pretty much at all) this patch? Well I could know rapidly with some actual feedback, but since that sort of information changes every patch I now need to make how many attacks per weapon per target to RE"git gud" AGAIN?

And lets take a second and think what it motivates you to actually do. Because the threshold for determining the effectiveness of a weapon is so high, and because there are so many weapons it motivates you to simply ignore most of the weapons in the game. Do the stats on that weapon look like maybe they have ANY down side on paper? Well there is no way in hell you are taking it into the field and using it for hundreds of attacks just to see if it actually works well. Hell if you've found just one or two weapons which work well on most targets you are fighting right now? You have a massive game mechanical motivation to stick with nothing but them until you have absolutely obviously all round superior alternatives due to tech advancement, and then it will just be the next one or two effective weapons from that tech level ignoring the rest again.

There is enough inertia and motivation against actually enjoying the game's weapon variety as it is without hiding the direct information that could show you the differences between the weapons in actual application.

9
XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99I1 - 26 Dec - Spirit of Christmas
« on: February 17, 2018, 11:37:26 pm »
I've been reading this thread and playing this mod for I think a couple of years now but I've registered explicitly to say this.

Transparency in game events is a good thing. Hiding information from the player is a bad thing. This is a game and when it doesn't provide meaningful feedback we basically aren't playing it anymore it's just playing itself without interacting with the player. Knowing how much damage a hit deals is uniformly an improvement, if it were an option I would turn it on and never ever play with it off because playing with it off would be not just stupid but actually a flat out less rich and less tactical experience.

Not having that information means there is no observable difference between 3 hits that all do reasonable damage and take down a target and 2 hits that mostly deal nothing and a lucky critical/equivalent high damage roll that actually overwhelms armor etc... and takes the target out. That's a bad thing. We need to know that difference in order to make the right tactical choices, hell we even need to know that difference to even know that is even a tactically relevant possibility at all.

And precisely what benefit is hiding that information from players supposed to provide? "Well it stops/merely slows down players from being able to know if the weapons they are choosing to use are effective against the targets they choose to use them on!" er... whut? Because that's my guess here.

And since I'm registered and active now and this mind boggling semi relevant thing was also said (somehow in support of hiding damage results despite not apparently mentioning anything of the sort???)

(in a tabletop rpg system im making, one previous iteration of it didnt have hitpoints it just had health and if you had 100 you were just fine, damage was compared to a Toughness stat and thats what determined how much health you lost. At this point its just about the same but its been simplified to a wound track. Unlike whitewolf the number of wounds escalates based on damage, because the damage values themselves are supposed to be logarithmic)
1) So you didn't have hit points. You had... er... 100 points of health that were exactly the same thing. And now its a wound track. Which is also really just another name for basically hit points.
2) Unlike whitewolf? If the go to default comparison point from which your design either varies or not is white wolf based, well lets just say that in my experience that's a gigantic warning flag.
3) "the number of wounds escalates based on damage, because the damage values themselves are supposed to be logarithmic" for a start that just doesn't parse in the way I think you meant it to. I'm pretty sure you didn't mean you have more HP based on damage. But since that's all it actually says... logarithmic damage in what way, in reference to what, other than the wound track that apparently scales with it thus rendering it meaningless?

Damage tracking mechanics are vital fundamental mechanics in well... any games that use them. In TTRPGS especially it is important that they make sense and resolve quickly and efficiently (oh yeah, and completely transparently). If you are including some sort of logarithmic calculation in a game where everyone has to resolve everything and understand the implications of everything without the aid of the kind of automation a computer game can provide it had better have a really good reason for being there. And it absolutely had better not once all things are accounted for average out to a result that could be closely approximated with a system that doesn't use a logarithmic element. Which, considering past experiences with similar TTRPG designs, I'm prepared to bet it does.

Pages: [1]