Dev Log #27: Version 0.1.10.0 released

[Elhazzared]

Don't worry, I also like to argue.

Crafting traps has no flaw, other than traps not being worth it. A proper grenade or caltrops well thrown are much more effective than a single bear trap or a mine. Not only are they more effective, they also don't have a hard setup requirement which needs you to have and incredibly high stealth value to be able to be next to enemies and lay down traps without them seeying you... Granted i'll grant you a point that the problem lays on the traps and not the crafting system itself, the crating system is flawed when it comes to weapons/armor mostly for reasons I explained before.

I also enjoy going everywhere, exploring everything, but if I am not rewarded for doing that then why am I bothering myself to do so? Why should I go explore that cave that has nothing of interest?... This in fact goes back to one of my original complaints about the GMS burrower hive. It was the hardest content possible (at least till the previous patch, I dunno if something more difficult appeared) and yet what was the reward for going there? Absolutly nothing, maybe a few part and a dead body at the end with nothing of value... Really? That encourages reward? Where is the factor of risk reward too? I did it once in my playthroughs... Never again did I bother to do it. Pretty simple, it was a waste of time that place... Exploring another cave or facillity just for the fun of exploring. Quite frankly, it's more scenary like I've seen previously and more enemies the like I've killed many times before, if I'm doing it, something must provide the fun for me to do it. That is get better stuff or at least get worse stuff that I'll be able to sell in order to buy better stuff... Also don't throw the word power gamer like if it was a bad thing. Some people like to play just to suffer through a game, heck you've got people who play those platformers that are so insanely hard they are only meant to drive you crazy. Similarly there are people who like to play games in a way that they get much more powerful and are able to do more. That is called character developement and it's very important in the enjoyment of the game.

And while you can say that this makes the game better I'm sure that if you were to ask to most people who liked old school RPGs they wouldn't like this. We are but a minory here in the foruns. A game doesn't has to be fun for everyone, but it shouldn't include mechanics that the majority doesn't likes. If you ask all RPGers if they like mechanics that will waste their time, what do you think the answer is?.. Yes sure you can say that you don't need the loot or whatever but that detracts from the experience since it removes the reward for doing something and as such makes not want to waste the time... Still it is quite possible to just make it so that you adjust whether or not you want these system by a simple checkbox in the start game asking whether or not you want weight limits or merchants. In fact it would be an educative experience if this had a way to just send back information of how did players chose to make their playthrough. It would then be similarly fun to see a detailed statistics of whether there was more plays with those mechanics or without as well as how many new games and in which system  each player played.

I didn't say crafting was useless, I said mostly useless. There are exceptions though they are so very few. Grenades are the true exception to the rule... There was a minimal exception before that was. You can make more money out of crafting cause you can use the components to just make stuff that you won't need and sell... point that is now moot. Thus I say, crafting is now even more useless... also I'm not going to talk about shadowrun, I haven't played but the only 2 problems I've heard about the game is that it's linear rather than open world as it should have been as well as your class and race matering not, all that matters is picking guns as the main combat skill cause it is completly overpowered when compared to everything else... Again I'm in no position to judge as I don't own the game.

In the real world you deal with supply and demand, but why would that need to sweep into a game? Why would a game have you bother to deal with it if that serves no practical purpose other than A) lose money for no good reason. B) lose so much time that completly kills the want to play the game in order to sell items?

Then you go on exagerating. Obviously I'm not a weapon smuggler though I agree my life would probably be a lot more fun and I'd probably have much more money too... But if I want to bother with such things as what people buy and sell, the fluctuations of market in supply and demand quite frankly the real world has a lot of that on many types of buisness (many of them legal too)... the point is that the game is not a live sim, it can perfectly deal without mechanics that will just make the game worse.

And no, I don't assume you rush through the game, that was merely a statement to drive the point across. You can be just running around, looking at everything and getting nothing in return. It's your time after all. There was all those guys mining that curiosity cube for god knows how long. It wasn't anything more than an absolute waste of time but hey, it was their time, if that keeps them entertained.

[LazyMonk]

Don't worry, I also like to argue.

Phew, i am glad you do.

About the trap vs grenades. For me the biggest advantage is that traps are much more stealth friendly, and you can also use them with grenades. After playing the game for a while the enemy pathfinding becomes a little more predictable so i have a easy time placing them. Its also very common to see mine blasts hitting more than one enemy. Even better traps explosions can trip other traps for more fun.

I also enjoy going everywhere, exploring everything, but if I am not rewarded for doing that then why am I bothering myself to do so? Why should I go explore that cave that has nothing of interest?...

Exploration should indeed be rewarded either with information or with nice loot. I know you don't like it but the oddity system rewards exploration. Now the problem with the lack of reward isn't tied down to the economy restrictions, but the lack of exotic items.

And while you can say that this makes the game better I'm sure that if you were to ask to most people who liked old school RPGs they wouldn't like this. We are but a minory here in the foruns. A game doesn't has to be fun for everyone, but it shouldn't include mechanics that the majority doesn't likes. If you ask all RPGers if they like mechanics that will waste their time, what do you think the answer is?..

Most people i know like this sort of stuff. This game isn't being crafted to please the majority, if it was we would have a RTwP combat and romanceable NPCs. I am supposing that this is what the majority wants. And this mechanics are not designed to waste peoples time. Some people chose to waste their own time without any need to.
Much more annoying to me is a broken economy, and i don't know who else feels this way. I really don't know how many people like this or that, but i do know what i do like. I have seen games designed for the masses for years and i hated them. I am very happy that now with the indie movement i am being showered by games with exactly everything i like.
Sorry i don't mean that power gamer is a bad thing, i just think that a game should not be designed around a power gamer.
Picking just the most profitable solution is not what i find fun about RPGs. But that's me.

Yes sure you can say that you don't need the loot or whatever but that detracts from the experience since it removes the reward for doing something and as such makes not want to waste the time...

If i am at maximum capacity and i find a neat item that is a little heavy, i drop some stuff and take that one with me instead.

I didn't say crafting was useless, I said mostly useless.

Oh sorry really thought you did.
About Shadowrun, yes it has those flaws. I guess the whole point of the game was to be something like NWN. The OC would be just a demonstration and the power would be in the editor and fan made content, but so far it hasn't been great on that end.

In the real world you deal with supply and demand, but why would that need to sweep into a game? Why would a game have you bother to deal with it if that serves no practical purpose other than A) lose money for no good reason. B) lose so much time that completly kills the want to play the game in order to sell items?

But you have to understand why Styg added this. Its not to make underrail a simulation of real life tradings. Its just a game mechanic to avoid the economy breaking too soon, and becoming a meaningless aspect of the game. In my opinion, that's a very good reason.
The time you lose is due to your own decision. The game doesn't force you to do that, nor does it reward you. Yet you do. Let it go. Try it. Be free and let it go.

Then you go on exagerating. Obviously I'm not a weapon smuggler though I agree my life would probably be a lot more fun and I'd probably have much more money too...

And aren't you glad that i did? Also i am not sure that its obvious that you are not a gun smuggler.

[Elhazzared]

Yeah but I look at it from this angle. If I have say, a mk5 grenade, or maybe even an mk4. I throw it, everything in the blast radius dies. Why would it make sense to have to go to all the trouble of burrowing mines to set chains of explosions when there is little benefict to it and in some cases can be a major pain cause your stealth might just not be enough? Grenades and caltrops really solve issues as far as traps and explosives are concerned, they are of much more convinient and easier use... If anything caltrops has the problem oof maybe you needing to pass through the place where you threw them in but well, nothing is perfect and after combat a little bit of damage when there is no more enemies is hardly a problem.

I don't belive the oddity system rewards exploration and this is my reasoning... The GMS burrower hive is currently worth only a little bit of XP. Now if the classic system doing that is not worth just for the XP, why would it be in the oddity when at the end, you stand to gain the same? I do understand that using oddity that is the only way to gain XP but even then that isn't nearly enough to merit going in.

I do not say a game should be made according to what the vast majority thinks about everything, otherwise I'd agree this would end up as a pretty generic RPG. But even then there are certain aspects, especially when it comes to mechanics, that are incredibly important and that are popular simply because they are good and because they work well.
If you really think the economy was broken then I am sorry, but you should by your own words despise it now. The game economy is even more broken, before it was hard to have any money before a good deal into the junkyard. Now, you are leaving the first quest with a lot more money and cheaper stuff to buy, durabillities are higher and things degrade slightly slower... it is true I can't bring everything with me and sell everything, but even if I don't I still have it a lot easier. By all accounts the economy is a lot more broken than it used to be but you know what? The economy had only one problem before and that was that the beggining have way too expensive ammo... the reason why economy wasn't broken before in the first place was because it was just a simple matter of maintaining the balance that existed previously. You leave the SGS for the junkyard thinking. I have a lot of money. You get there and you see that no, you really don't have a lot of money, you won't even have enough to buy a new armor or a new gun. Now junkyard should set you to leave to a new area where the cost of the items on the new area will allow you to just buy one item despite it looking like it's a lot... it's only a log in the current area but not the next. Then the game should proceed like that, what seams like a lot is only a lot in your current area, when you leave it it's not really that much. Simple balance archieved in the economy without a need for gymmics like carry weights and merchant limits.

The time I would lose (I don't because I won't play only to lose my time, that would make me hate the game and never touch it again) may be of my own decision, but it comes from the only way i'll derive fun from the game. If I can't do it that way, if I have to leave stuff behind then I won't derive fun from the game, just as wasting days selling stuff. As I belive we can all agree that the reason to play a game is to have fun, I'd just not have a reason to play a game if I played it the way you are sugesting me to.

[Elhazzared]

It is possible that the traps may have been made a lot better. I know Styg planned to make the required mats for them lower cause it had no sense they were double the amoung of the stardard grenade version so at least that I expected but unless some changes were made to the works of traps I still don't find them very reliable. The ones that are really required for enemies to step on them like bear traps will be a pain. This is my previous experience so by all means it could have changed but 4 out of 5 times they would go around the trap on the ground as if they could see it, even when I had tested their pathing and knew exactly which squares they'd move through.

As for whether or not grenades are OP... I don't think so. I think they are just about right to allow you to survive the majority of the fights. I am absolutly sure that if I didn't had mk5 or at very least mk4 in the junkyard to deal with the dogs and mutants on my non psi character. My chances would have been nil... I am not so sure the changes to the grenade crafting skill requirements were a good thing... Maybe they needed to be upped a little, but I'm fairly confident that at very least mk4 is needed for depot A... And that is not enough to deal with the mutants but if at least it kills the dogs (which mk4 are not guaranteed too... Then maybe it's good enough.

Now theoricly, a trapper could be a good build, I say theoricly because I haven't had a decent trapper experience so far and I think that to do a propper trapper I'll need a very high stealth value and a high intelligence value so I'm not so sure I'm willing to make a character that rellies purelly on spending a lot of time setting up each and every fight... takes a bit too much time. Still I can see how it could be good, but I still consider grenades and caltrops to be a much superior alternative.

[Fenix]

There was a lot said about Psi, that was a nonsence of such kind, that first I want to use word "bulshit" instead.
I'll post about my experience in Suggestion.