Messages

76

Suggestions / Re: Lack of Directions

« on: June 10, 2015, 05:55:29 pm »

Actually no if you really think about it. indeed maps are likely to become obsulete with cave ins and new passages becoming open, but think about it for a second. Mapping is dangerous and that makes maps rare and expensive. It's a job that would pay very well for people who want to scavenge or find out about other ways to get around underrail without using the conventional paths. It also means that if you have an older map that shows some place that is now inaccessible you might want to find a way to get to it as what is on the other side might be worth the trouble.

That alone is reason enough to map underrail but as far as your character goes, why would he not map the places he goes through if nothing else for the reason not to get lost?

77

Suggestions / Re: Lack of Directions

« on: June 10, 2015, 10:13:40 am »

Well if they alude to it then it does seems clear enough.

I do believe having a map would be nice, if nothing else to be able to fully map out the underrail and see if you missed any area but that aside it seems the directions at least in that specific case are good enough.

78

Suggestions / Re: Lack of Directions

« on: June 10, 2015, 08:37:03 am »

By the sounds of it you need TNT charges to blow up a cave wall. That is quite a lot of guess work that you actually have to blow open a passage to get ther. Being a quest you'd expect it to at least say, you'll have to blow open a passage otherwise it seems normal to assume that the way you are supposed to go is clear.

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Bugs / Re: Bilocation, and the impossibility to learn it under certain circumstances.

« on: June 02, 2015, 03:21:06 pm »

Actually you don't need to side with black eels to get bilocation. Just do the bilocation quest for them and that's that. Granted if you don't do that from the start the story is different, Maybe Styg could make Silas not part of the gang and his quest always available.

80

Suggestions / Re: Carry weight & inventory management

« on: May 23, 2015, 10:09:37 pm »

I disagree. Underrail has nothing of a roguelike, for example, the very stample of roguelikes are permadeath. There are other things too like procedural level generation, and while RNG exists and can screw you, RNG pertains drops or possible enemy conbinations you might find. When it comes to combat roguelikes are made of certainties. You know exactly what damage your weapon cause, there is no variable in damage rolls, at best there are hit rolls.

Now there do is at least a roguelike that uses money and a barter system now that I think about it and of course it has a limit amount of inventory space. it's called dungeons of dreadmore which I'm sure you all know it. So what happens in DD when you hit inventory limits? There is to ways to deal with it. The later expansions introduced a sort of home portal which is a place you can go from anywhere and you just drop items on the ground and use that as storage so you can sell everything. Nothing is left behind. Before that existed it was just extra work, you drped things by the stairs and kept moving the whole stuff even if it took 10 trips. Eventually you'd find a store and sell all. Just busy work when an infinite inventory would have beneficted the game much more... Sword of the stars: the pit had a limiting factor on that which was food but there was no money or traders so it worked well.

Now if there was a roguelike that had selling and money but money had ultimately no use, then money was not money, it was points and I wouldn't care as I don't play score attack games.

Now the current problem is not that traders buy too much, is that traders don't buy everything and that they pay too much for what they buy. The previous system was better where they paid less, you needed to repair items more often to get their money worth but it already paid too much much, at least later down the line anyway.

Idealisticly, the traders buys all and you have no carry limits. If you follow only the main quest you'll end up deprived of money, it shouldn't be impossible to beat the game but definitly make it hard. If you do some sidequests, let's say about half of them (assimung that a third can't be completed because you don't have the skills and you are always limited in which skillset you can have) then you'll get just about enough money to get everything you need, from ammo to equipment. If you doo all sidequest possible or half but explore then you'll have some extra money to throw around however you like. This is a very good system. it takes care of the money problem. There is no immersion break in having to stop midquest to go dump/sell stuff and there is no chore in even trying to sell the items.

Even from a realistic point of view (and again, realism takes a backstep to balance) you are a living in a world where you live off what you can scavenge. There are no worthless items, everything is worth money and money is a very precious commodity, especially now that the world has gone to hell. It makes sense that you'd carry everything and sell everything even if it took you time. You certainly wouldn't leave loot behind for someone else to get the money instead of you.

You can say that the current system tries to work like a roguelike where it forces the player to leave items behind, however it doesn't. the player always has a choice whether or not to take it, it will just take more time and break immersion. Selling items follows on the same page. You cannot stop a player from selling everything, you'll merely make the plyer waste several hours to be able to do so.

The leason taken from this is. A few people will like it. Some people will dislike it but still suffer the system to play however these people are probably going to finish the game once more likely just follow the storyline since they don't need to do more and then they'll never play it again. And some people will just be so frustated with the chores and disrespect of their time that they will give up on the game and consider it a waste of their money... Let's consider the previously implemented system where no one had complaints about it. Everyone liked it how it was, even if a few people like it better now, everyone liked the old system! The only problem was too much money floating around and that was very easy to remedy.

81

Suggestions / Re: Carry weight & inventory management

« on: May 23, 2015, 07:48:07 pm »

Now inventory management is a part of most RPGs too. It tends to be the one of the worst parts of it, but it's there. That is why good RPGs give you an ignorable inventory management.

Wait, what? You assume inventory management is always going to be shit in RPGs? And thus a system so meaningless that it can be literally ignored is a good thing? And when one game breaks the status quo of bad design, you outright refuse to play it? Goddamnit Elhazzared, I will never understand you

You would probably like Dungeon Siege. You can transmute items to money in it. Torchlight too, you get a pet that sells your junk loot at town automatically. Generally speaking, ARPGs that streamline the whole itemization/looting aspect might be your thing - the polar opposite of what Underrail does.

Because that's not actually a hassle, that is part of combat. Running out of ammo can kill you so you have to plan acordingly. it's not so much a case of whether or not it is like that in the real world but actually something that is part of the actual combat dificulty.

Don't try to use ridiculous examples on me. You do know that realism in a game is always secondary to balance.

You mean *exactly* just like carry weight is part of combat? Getting crippled and encumbered can kill you so you have to plan accordingly. The only difference is that you WILL get crippled and it WILL have a major impact on combat. Running out of ammo WON'T happen unless you are very, very careless.

I shouldn't need to point this out, but it's not any more ridiculous than your viewpoint.

Inventory management makes sense in a rogue like. Let's take sword of the stars: the pit as an example. There are no shops or ways to buy and sell items. In this case, chosing what you keep and what you throw away is a good mechanic since there will never be money involved. So you have to decide, do I keep this extra weapon when I already have one of teh same? Just in case it breaks? Do I keep this component to try and build something with it later or do i throw it away rather than throw food away or some other component?

In an RPG where money takes place and there are vendors you do not need an inventory management system. All it does is breaking game immersion. It makes people stop doing their quest to go and dump stuff or sell stuff to then go back to do the mission. This does not beneficts the game in any way possible. I don't have a problem with things being done different, I have a problem with thing being done worse. When I first played this game and saw there was no limit to what I could carry I thought. Well this is different but Styg gets it right. There shouldn't be a need for a player to stop what he's doing just to go and dump/sell stuff, it is counter producive. Of course, the game was just far too early in development and only proved to have a much worse system instead.

I think I played one of the dungeon siege games, not much but can't remember much about it anyway. Torchlight was meh, all abillities were pretty meh, got bored very quickly. Sacred 2 had a huge inventory space and you could sell directly from the inventory at a minimal loss which was fine to sell the cheap items. Still, ARPGs are not the same so I won't be drawing comparisons to underrail.

Getting crippled already has it's penalties which need having nothing to do with getting encumbered. You only get encumbered if you want, just go back and dump items before that happens. There is no comparison at all. When i say run out of ammo, I don't mean, really having no more bullets, i mean running out of bullets in the chamber. If you need to shot but have to reload that round it can get you killed. Planning ahead as to when you'll have your reloads is part of the strategy and part of the difficulty. Yes, getting crippled is part of the difficulty too, but that has nothing to do with carry weights, getting crippled already has penalties of it's own and if for some reason getting crippled ties in with losing max carry weight so as to supposedly get you encumbered and get you further penalties, then all you have to do is increase the penalties for getting crippled and get rid of the weight system all the same.

82

Suggestions / Re: Carry weight & inventory management

« on: May 23, 2015, 01:42:13 pm »

Because that's not actually a hassle, that is part of combat. Running out of ammo can kill you so you have to plan acordingly. it's not so much a case of whether or not it is like that in the real world but actually something that is part of the actual combat dificulty.

Don't try to use ridiculous examples on me. You do know that realism in a game is always secondary to balance.

83

Suggestions / Re: Carry weight & inventory management

« on: May 22, 2015, 11:58:43 pm »

No, loot is not a big thing in an RPG just by virtue of it being an RPG.
There were RPGs where that was the case, but the opposite is also true.
By the same token, I could say that Inventory management is a staple of RPGs, and in addition to limited weight there should also be limited slots.
Loot is a staple of ARPGs.

About the only decent RPG I've played without a great loot system was probably shadowrun returns (also dragonfall, got it today cause 70% off seems about right in my books). Other than that I have yet to see a good RPG that doesn't has a big emphasys on loot. Fallout series, Arcanum: of steamworks and magika obscura, Pillars of eternity, Divinity original sin, wastelands 2. That's what i can remember at the moment. After reset also looks good but I can't atest to that yet. All of these games have an emphasis on loot.

More to the point, any game which is supposed to have exploration and is expected to have a good loot system. People will not explore if there is no incentive. Even if you do it once for the heck of it, people will not do it every single time when there is no point to it. Same could be said about sidequests.

Now inventory management is a part of most RPGs too. It tends to be the one of the worst parts of it, but it's there. That is why good RPGs give you an ignorable inventory management. That is. You have limits, but with companions acting as pack mules you never leave anything behind.

Sorbitol - Thanks anyway, I knew that was going to be a lot harder, it's nothing as simple as change character sheet carry weight value to infinite after all. It's making the trader accept all items in unlimited quantities so I imagine it would require quite a bit more messing with the games files to get it working, but I really appreciate you taking the time of your day to see if you could help me out there, especially since it's still early access and each patch that is rolled could at any point render all your work useless... Well until you tweek it again anyway.

84

Suggestions / Re: Carry weight & inventory management

« on: May 22, 2015, 07:08:01 pm »

You are talking about real world sense which does not applies to a game. You can simply think that all merchants have a deal between themselves that anything they get they trae between themselves at shop value. Thus you sell a gun to an electronics guy and later on he'll go to the gunstore and see if anyone sold electronics there for him to trade at fair prices. The merchants end up winning like this and it removes the chore of running around.

As for your diablo reference. If this was a diablo game I wouldn't mind leaving loot behind if it was worthless anyway. This isn't an ARPG however and there lies the problem. Getting all items and selling all items in the same trader does not makes it diablo, however as with any turn based RPG, loot is one of the big things of the game, if you are going to make it pointless to chase loot then you are throwing away one of the strong mechanics and many people are bound to dislike it.

85

Suggestions / Re: Carry weight & inventory management

« on: May 21, 2015, 06:11:12 pm »

Well, so what options could we have?
Let's gather a few that would work well together.

• Reduce sell value of all items slightly, so players can't get rich that quickly. +A bit more for any of the below.
• Allow traders to buy a secondary set of items at a fraction of their worth, f.Ex. Lucas could buy additional weapons at 10% their sell value, increased by mercantile.
• Some traders should buy either scraps or rep. kits in larger quantities.
• Increase the amount of money traders have over the course of the game. That's saying, mostly by player level and story progress.
• Slightly stratify weight, f.Ex. Metal plates could be 20%-25% lighter. ?
• Buff the Packrat feat to 75, at least. Alternatively, keep it at 50, but make it reduce the debuff from encumbrance.
• Make items disappear after a while. What you pick up should be a choice unless you spec for everything, but it isn't if you can just come back and get the rest.

I still don't a problem (with the exception of Fenix point), but I wouldn't die if some of those were, in some way or another, implemented.

Edit: And there comes Sorbitol and fixes nearly all of Elhazzareds Problems. Or at least one of them.

Reduce items value, yes, probably not just slightly, there is way too much money floating around.

Allow traders to buy everything. They are traders, it doesn't matters what they specialise in, they are buying cheap from you and will be able to sell at a higher price to someone else (as far as background work goes anyway).

Scarps and repair kits already included above.

Not simply increase, just make them have unlimited amounts of money (this would likely require a much welcome change where money no longer is an item but rather have it on a separate box with total value and also allow for physicly enter the exact quantity of money you want to put).

No weight at all would be the better option, but if you really want to give players pointless chores like in all other games where immersion is broken to go sell stuff mid mission or just dump the inventory somewhere, then at least make all items much lighter, especially the ones which are way heavier than they should be for a game.

Nothing to say about packrat really, in my opinion it shouldn't even be needed but meh.

Make items disapear after a while... Yes, so long as they are not inside a container that is also not a garbage bin.

Sorbitol, I may give that a go once i am less busy, carry weight is one of my major problem with the game though the merchants are definitly the worse. Do you think you can also find a way to disable the buy limits and the type limitations of the merchants? If you could it would be great. definitly would fix the game for me and make me enjoy it once again.

86

Suggestions / Re: Carry weight & inventory management

« on: May 21, 2015, 08:05:41 am »

Let's count how many problems there is with that.

You'll make a lot more repair kits than you can use or sell.

You'll have to waste points in crafting.

You'll lose more money since it's more lucrative to sell the items outright in most cases.

87

Suggestions / Re: Carry weight & inventory management

« on: May 20, 2015, 07:20:40 pm »

True, but the problem is that early on you really need to pick other perks that actually help with combat. packrat would be useful but would similarly be a dumping perk, one you get when you don't have anything better, much like medic (or whatever it's called the one to always let use bandages), it's good but really there are a lot of priorities before that.

The biggest problem with the carry weight is actually the inbalance in the weights of items an abillity to carry. Even on a strenght 10 character it feels like you can carry nearly nothing. You do first mission, get the loot and look at the carry weight and think, oh pretty good, I can actually carry some stuff. Then you do the SGS which isn't that big a place and you can't even loot it all because metal armor and sledgehammer (just 2 examples, there is more) weight a ton. Sure it makes sense from a realistic point of view. But from a gammy point of view it just makes you feel like you can carry nothing even on max starting strenght.

88

Suggestions / Re: Carry weight & inventory management

« on: May 20, 2015, 04:26:29 pm »

Exploring gives the possibillity, albeit unlikely to find something better. Which can probably be negated very easily by going to a shop until late game where shops hit the limit of quallity stuff they give you and you can only get better if you either find it or craft it... Not that you'll need it I'm sure. So exploring is still pointless.

Unlimited. You want realism, while I've explained that realism takes a backstep when balance is concerned, let me give you just a little bit of realism. Why would the character go out of his way to get in harms way just to scavenge or do a side mission when he is already so rich he could buy half of the entire underrail? Much before this point is reached the chracter would think. I have a lot of money, i can just retire anywhere, not have to risk my life anymore and enjoy all the luxuries that the world, such as it is, has to offer. That is what would be realistic and yet it's not really how it goes is it?

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General / Re: Why you did this location?

« on: May 20, 2015, 04:21:08 pm »

I'd be fine with that really. If it's clear you can't destroy it you are not going to waste your time doing it and it also will feel much better. You know what you are up to something that you can only destroy with a similar kind of firepower which you obviously don't... or by doing some quest.

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Suggestions / Re: Carry weight & inventory management

« on: May 20, 2015, 09:07:46 am »

Yes but then what is the point of exploring? Why would I explore if there is no loot to be gained? I mean sure the loot is there but I cannot carry it all and een what I can carry I can't sell. On the same note, what is the point of doing side missions? Even the main quest alone is going to give me more than I can carry and more than I can sell amount what I can carry and that alone is more money than I will probably need anyway.

Selling loot is not really a chore, what tends to make it a chore is the limited amount of items you can carry breaking your immersion by making you stop what you are doing and going to sell, if instead you had a limitless carry capacity you cold finish the mission, sell the junk, keep what you want and move on to more exploring and side quests.

The problem isn't limited to the carry system and merchants limits but the economy as a whole. The previous system had economy problems already where everyone agreed there was too much money and now the problem is even worse. More to the point with this carry and selling system there is actually no way to fix the economy of the game.