Lords of Reload

[Stuntpickle]

What a pile of problems!

First, I'm an old-school gamer, so when reading these criticisms, you can't simply pretend they're excuses made by someone reared on dumbed-down console games. My favorite RPGs are from the Might and Magic series.

As it now stands, the game is a bit of a mess, in my opinion. Considering you're slated for a launch this month, I fear this is going to be close to the gold version. Please consider the following list of problems that have, for this gamer, become an impediment to having fun.

1. Absurd difficulty. I have been playing on the difficulty level recommended for "old-school veterans," and I must confess to never having had to reload M&M or Ultima so many times just to get past an average fight.

In fact, reloading seems to be a primary mechanism for advancement by design. At nearly every stage of the game so far, my party, and every single conceivable party, is vastly outmatched by the level-appropriate content. From the first-cave death knight, which no beginner party without 4 blessings and a trunk of scrolls can kill, to the vomitting mushrooms that will alternately sleep, dot, nuke the entire party for damage of about half of what a back row-dwelling mage might have in life, to the Ogre that kills an entire rank of characters in 2 hits and which takes miniscule amounts of damage himself, the game begins to seem like one played primarily through the options menu.

Following one of numerous deaths, the player stares at this menu and tries to decide whether to reload his last save, exit to the main menu and reroll a new party or quit altogether. I fear that having to make that decision repeatedly will ultimately lead to a lot of people choosing to quit.

2. Gaulen sucks. Forget for a moment the implausibility of a major deity from a narrow pantheon leaving the planet's salvation to a botanist. Instead consider that one of the major draws of this sort of game is the customization of characters. Depriving people of that deprives them of some measure of fun. When you consider that the content requires someone to pick locks and someone to heal, it seems the game requires fairly rigid party structure, or else, a completely useless Gaulen inhabiting a back corner of the battlefield.

3. Reliance on tedious minutia. From hauling food through the dungeon to picking the ubiquitous mushrooms from the forest floor, the game relies on mechanisms that aren't particularly fun, challenging or deep.

I don't have any problem (yet) keeping food stocked. It's just this superfluous mechanic tacked on, masqueriading as a challenge.

Perhaps, for the expansion, you can remove the minimap and provide, instead, virtual graph paper or, better yet, a defecation system.

4. Divine summoner remains fairly useless. I know, I know each herald has his own personality and chooses his targets accordingly. It would, however, help to know which personality one has. For instance, Nepherion is of the "imbecile" personality type and will upon arrival cast divine shield on the least likely target over and over, generally himself. Nemona, on the other hand belongs to the "obssessive-compulsive" subset, as she will not heal anyone until every last smidgen of blood has been cleaned up--forget that your mage merely pricked his finger and your barbarian is eating at an arrow and axe buffet, the mage's finger must be tended to (we can't have him dripping on the carpet, you know.)

The "personality" line seems a bit like a euphimism for "we can't program a decent targeting logic and flatly refuse to let players control the summons based on our a priori assumption of absurd difficulty."

[asdf2100asd]

1.) The game is absurdly hard yes. But you maybe just aren't as good at the game as you think. I have the same opinion as you here but I play on hardcore, which is much much more difficult than old school veteran. Try that and then complain lol. Also some of your statements are inaccurate. If you clear things in proper order you don't need any blessings at all on old school veteran, except maybe if you come up against 2 hounds.

2.) I agree he sucks. Lots of people have complained about this. He does, however, have unique skills that can make your party way better. With some investment I think the herb skill is probably extremely powerful, and i think he gets an offensive skill that is much better late in the game. But yeah I still agree.. he should be a little better or something.

3.) You are looking at this the wrong way. If you are playing on one of the harder settings, then what you are referring to is resource management, which is a facet of strategy.

4.) Divine summoner is the most efficient caster in the game imo. And hardcore is all about efficiency.

[DiceWrangler]

re: 1

Are you inspecting the difficulty of each potential combat before initiating it? I do not know what level your party was but I suspect that you were *far* too low level to defeat the ogre or the *large* mushrooms in the forest; the smaller ones should be manageable. What level was your party when you fought the (skeleton) boss in the rat cave? Level 1 or 2? I recommend advancing to 2nd level before attacking it. This is an old school RPG where you are not expected to defeat every monster you encounter at the time you *first* encounter it. The adventure path is somewhat linear so search for alternative path until you encounter challenges that you can defeat.

Also, just because a character "dies" in combat does not mean they are actually dead. They are just removed from combat and suffer a "fatal" wound that is (not really fatal and) curable by taking a long rest. You do not have to win every fight with no casualties to be successful.

[Kaiser Fuente Pants]

In the beginning the game is technically non-linear but you have to figure out which areas to clear in a pretty specific order to make it easy on yourself. So it's really linear just not set out in a line, until you clear the 1st temple then probably the ogre and the game opens up a lot. You can't just engage any monster you see and win.

Herbs are interesting in that you can have them now or wait and have two or 6 later, if you level Gaulen's herbs ability, so choose when you need power

Agree that food in general is a tedious mechanic and the trap minigame like yay a reaction time test!

[Eraija]

1) Easy mode is kinda too easy Old school is to hard this is mainly to do with the food. The food mechanic and all things it affects utterly ruins this game.

2) Give gaulen a Bow and he become a mediocre Dps

3) Food's unwavering reach destorys all sembalance of fun.

4) Im pretty sure that given time, food would be the cause of this as well.

[Lord Azlan]

Don't want to give up on this game but the difficulty levels are messed up.

Gave up on easy as it was too easy. Now on medium difficulty my party members are about level 5 and are supposed to beat an Ogre with 450 health - I tried and its impossible. The other options are to take out a group of 4 mushrooms that are Very Difficult - it's also impossible.

The design choice to limit XP is sort of retarded - there should be some way of gaining additional XP just in case the player needs to do that, for example if they can't find the optimum path. I am using the default party by the way.

Any tips on how to progress on medium diffulty past the Ogre or these mushrooms would be most welcome. I tried the blessing with resistence and my party gets wiped out in two rounds. Might try initiative next though - any tips?

Otherwise as the OP says its SAVE, SAVE and SAVE

Not too worried about resources or food at the moment

Thanks

[asdf2100asd]

Lord Azian, don't try the ogre until much much later in the game. How I compete the start of the game goes --clear the random goblin guys, clear rat cave, clear beach, clear parts of sporia i can do, clear the way to the first statue, destroy it, kill the guards at each gate of town, kill the guards to nabrot, make the hounds spawn and kill them, and then go to nabrot forest.

[Kaiser Fuente Pants]

Yeap go east, kill the soldiers to unlock that whole part and clear everything there except the huge soldier groups which will be impossible, just avoid them. Kill the lord of the nabros castle, get the key, unlock the temple up noth in Velegarn, and then you can kill the ogre most likely

Also the default party is pretty trashy, I'd use at least 2 mages
Current setup in HC is
gaulen/paladin/barbarian
mage/divine summoner/mage

[Lord Azlan]

Cool - respect and thanks to the posters above. I was hoping my only bad choice so far was to go with the default party. I had just gone through the SE tower into the new area came across that guy and the new moster types. Avoiding the patrolling soldiers as you suggest. So it seems I am on the right track - if you can't complete an area come back later right?

Neat - hopefully the game designers are smarter than I - I was hoping it wasn't a dead end and it wasn't.

[asdf2100asd]

Yeah if you can't complete an area come back later. Make sure that you fully complete areas, including the random encounters, for the experience bonuses.

Most people swear by mages but I don't think it's the only way to play. My party is gaulen(mostly a meatshield with out of combat functionality), 2 soldiers, and a barbarian in front. I put my tankiest soldier and my barbarian in the middle. Then in back I have my paladin to where he will most effectively buff. My paladin is caster with some use in polearms. Finally I have divine summoner spec'd to use 2 backline casters. The divine summoner is extremely good.

[Elizabello]

So ok, i finished all content on HC, got up to tanaxas on arena. My party is Gaulen(swords, bleeds, poison, great dps), Barbarian(Axe, wounds. deals awesome dmg especially later on when he starts to crit A LOT, Thief(crossbow, deals pretty decent dps+wounds), Bard(crossbow, sleeps mobs, buffs, debuffs+wounds very nice), Mage(everyone knows they are very strong), cleric(healer, removes poison, bleed, wounds, buffs with resistances, can deal a lot of dmg to undead). Only had a problem at start of game with hounds. So what am i doing wrong that i had a blast in all my playthroughs and barely encountered any difficulty? I do agree that there is a lot of save/load. But i didnt have that much of load tbh.

[Sentinel 08295]

Originally posted by Stuntpickle:

What a pile of problems!

First, I'm an old-school gamer, so when reading these criticisms, you can't simply pretend they're excuses made by someone reared on dumbed-down console games. My favorite RPGs are from the Might and Magic series.

As it now stands, the game is a bit of a mess, in my opinion. Considering you're slated for a launch this month, I fear this is going to be close to the gold version. Please consider the following list of problems that have, for this gamer, become an impediment to having fun.

1. Absurd difficulty. I have been playing on the difficulty level recommended for "old-school veterans," and I must confess to never having had to reload M&M or Ultima so many times just to get past an average fight.

In fact, reloading seems to be a primary mechanism for advancement by design. At nearly every stage of the game so far, my party, and every single conceivable party, is vastly outmatched by the level-appropriate content. From the first-cave death knight, which no beginner party without 4 blessings and a trunk of scrolls can kill, to the vomitting mushrooms that will alternately sleep, dot, nuke the entire party for damage of about half of what a back row-dwelling mage might have in life, to the Ogre that kills an entire rank of characters in 2 hits and which takes miniscule amounts of damage himself, the game begins to seem like one played primarily through the options menu.

Following one of numerous deaths, the player stares at this menu and tries to decide whether to reload his last save, exit to the main menu and reroll a new party or quit altogether. I fear that having to make that decision repeatedly will ultimately lead to a lot of people choosing to quit.

2. Gaulen sucks. Forget for a moment the implausibility of a major deity from a narrow pantheon leaving the planet's salvation to a botanist. Instead consider that one of the major draws of this sort of game is the customization of characters. Depriving people of that deprives them of some measure of fun. When you consider that the content requires someone to pick locks and someone to heal, it seems the game requires fairly rigid party structure, or else, a completely useless Gaulen inhabiting a back corner of the battlefield.

3. Reliance on tedious minutia. From hauling food through the dungeon to picking the ubiquitous mushrooms from the forest floor, the game relies on mechanisms that aren't particularly fun, challenging or deep.

I don't have any problem (yet) keeping food stocked. It's just this superfluous mechanic tacked on, masqueriading as a challenge.

Perhaps, for the expansion, you can remove the minimap and provide, instead, virtual graph paper or, better yet, a defecation system.

4. Divine summoner remains fairly useless. I know, I know each herald has his own personality and chooses his targets accordingly. It would, however, help to know which personality one has. For instance, Nepherion is of the "imbecile" personality type and will upon arrival cast divine shield on the least likely target over and over, generally himself. Nemona, on the other hand belongs to the "obssessive-compulsive" subset, as she will not heal anyone until every last smidgen of blood has been cleaned up--forget that your mage merely pricked his finger and your barbarian is eating at an arrow and axe buffet, the mage's finger must be tended to (we can't have him dripping on the carpet, you know.)

The "personality" line seems a bit like a euphimism for "we can't program a decent targeting logic and flatly refuse to let players control the summons based on our a priori assumption of absurd difficulty."

Sir, you are the Lord of TLDR. No one is forcing you to reload. It's also none of your business how others choose to play their game.

[Sentinel 08295]

Originally posted by Lord Azlan:

Don't want to give up on this game but the difficulty levels are messed up.

Gave up on easy as it was too easy. Now on medium difficulty my party members are about level 5 and are supposed to beat an Ogre with 450 health - I tried and its impossible. The other options are to take out a group of 4 mushrooms that are Very Difficult - it's also impossible.

The design choice to limit XP is sort of retarded - there should be some way of gaining additional XP just in case the player needs to do that, for example if they can't find the optimum path. I am using the default party by the way.

Any tips on how to progress on medium diffulty past the Ogre or these mushrooms would be most welcome. I tried the blessing with resistence and my party gets wiped out in two rounds. Might try initiative next though - any tips?

Otherwise as the OP says its SAVE, SAVE and SAVE

Not too worried about resources or food at the moment

Thanks

I blew through the shrooms around level 10 or so. There's plenty of opportunity for XP. You can even take the single point in the learning skill for the 5% XP buff.

[Lord Azlan]

My mistake - years of playing through these consolisaton of PC games have made me forget how it used to be. Needless to say I have done a bit more exploring and gained some levels - come across a dinosaur, some statues and even some thieves that whacked me a few times and then ran away with some of my herbs!

I am finding Bards next to useless - anyone have any clue whether they get any better? At the moment it;s almost like I am playing the game on medium difficulty with a party of five.

Might start a new game over the weekend with two mages!

Thanks for the feedback guys - appreciated

[Anubis]

Some will be happy to know that the Divine Summoner Herald AI has been improved :) H. of Nalaet should be healing low HP party members as intended, while H. of Alnaet should now prioritize casting protection spells on party members who are more likely to take the brunt of the damage. Please continue to leave feedback about any Herald which might seem under-tuned!

Other than that, we are glad to be making progress 'piercing' into the mainstream crowd. If we can all spend as much energy spreading the word about Lords of Xulima as we spend writing eloquently about the game's design direction, a quality post-launch Gold Edition and sequel are as good as funded :D

[fredingue]

I must agree that my first contact with the game at launch was allmost the same and i had many common thoughts with the OP.
At a time, i had finished all "doable fights" and was short on food and money.
I saw some patches coming, so i left the game for a while.

I thinkt that this kind of game may need either to read a lot of infos about each class and skills prior to start a game, or to start a first game, learn the game making some msitakes, then restart a "real game this time".

I must admit i had started the game like "let's party and crush those mobs", but, as myself being also a veteran of the psychic wars and of various M&M style games, i tried to build a "suitable party whatever".

I may wait for some more balancing and news to restart, because i fon't feel like starting over and doing the same things (even a different way with different guys) at the moment.

In fact, i used to play this kind of games to destress and relax...this one is far more demanding and needs some vitamins and iron-pumping before playing.