Life Point system

[Jabber]

Hello! I'm liking this game so far, but I must say that the life point system seems pretty bad. Not because it's too challenging or that I feel death shouldn't be punishable, but simply because it's so very unfun.

If you happen to get a few unlucky deaths early on in the game, but manage to progress further, you can suddenly be one party member down after finishing a dungeon / particularly hard encounter... and that's it. By then your chances of ever progressing your storyline or taking on more dungeons are basically over, since the content is naturally balanced around a full party.

I'm going to make an analogy to Dungeons and Dragons, since I've been playing that and other tabletop RPGs for a long time: If a player character were to die in such a campaign while the rest of the party remains alive, you would always be have a choice of either trying to bring them back to life through either questing, getting them back to town for resurrection (at a price) or later on simply by the players themselves being powerful enough to do so (again, at a cost). Or even have the player reroll a new character (sometimes with worse gear and lower level, to make death carry a penalty):

It seems like a flawed design that your run may not be over since you still have your other two characters, but in reality, it's just a matter of time since they can't progress and will eventually either die, or just keep running around in circles trying to keep up with the scourges and increasing chaos.

It's entirely possible I'm missing something, but this kind of "soft-wipe" just feels like an anti-climatic, un-fun way to end your grand quest.

[Minato-sama]

I very much agree with this. This is especially true in multiplayer. I feel bad for anyone that I play with who dies since they basically get stuck sitting there watching us play in the hopes we can manage to accrue more lives.

[Cap'n Darwin]

I think you have two easy choices. One, quickly find a life and revive the down character or two, start a new game and find ways not to lose a guy or build up lives.

The nature of a rouge-like game is always going to push this choice. If you can easily revive or not die then the base design of the game collapses.

It's hard as a gamer to live with a squad wipe and restart and a co-op effort just amplifies the angst.

[Minato-sama]

Originally posted by Cap'n Darwin:

I think you have two easy choices. One, quickly find a life and revive the down character or two, start a new game and find ways not to lose a guy or build up lives.

The nature of a rouge-like game is always going to push this choice. If you can easily revive or not die then the base design of the game collapses.

It's hard as a gamer to live with a squad wipe and restart and a co-op effort just amplifies the angst.

I agree with you that the difficulty would suffer if revival was simple; however, the issue is that permanently losing a single character is as good as wiping and leaves the players to continue trudging through a hopeless situation for no reason.

Before lives dying used to simply add more chaos. Why not a merger of the systems where you have the choice of taking a chaos to revive a player if lives have been all used up? This would prevent players from becoming spectators as well as at least give the team some form of hope to continue the run while still severely punishing the team for extra deaths outside their number of lives?

[Jabber]

Cap'n Darwin: One of the problems is that the game doesn't provide any "quick" way to get a life point back. And the ones it does have usually require a full party, meaning having one down and being out of life is a game over, but might take you another 10 turns or have you do encounters you're just going to lose to.

Honestly, I'd rather the game just ended if you ran out of Life Pool, like Renowned Explorer's Resolve mechanic: Whenever a character is downed, you lose one Resolve. Lose all resolve, and it's game over. Something along those lines would suit this game a lot better, in my opinion.

[Cap'n Darwin]

Ending on a single character death with no extra lives may be a good option for co-op games to prevent the one player sits idle problem, but I still want the option in single player to find a life. I just had this scenario in my open adventure game.

[Feaelin Moilar]

I really like the idea of bringing a new character at the lowest level if the party has run out of life. You can continue playing but it retains that element of risk.

[Lapis Lupa]

While I don't want to make any assumptions here, I think you should also review the decisions of you and your fellow mates that led to the soft-wipe. Sometimes, it's what the dice says and it's beyond your control. But more often than not, it's a series of poor decisions/greedy plays that contribute to it.

Examples include trying to max the value of sanctums (deciding to go into an encounter first because you still have half health), Funneling equipment onto one character, not valuing immunity items (especially if you know what you are facing ahead of time) or not putting focus onto a unit that can completely gimp you (My herbalist once had 4 curses put onto him in a single fight)

In my example of funneling equipment onto a character (or everybody looks after themselves first), one thing we did was put almost all our money onto a character (usually, the one with party heal or someone with high movement who can sneak from encounters) and give him the final say on what to buy. Yes, the next tier sword would be amazing, but is it worth spending 200gold to give him an extra 6 attack while our hunter has armor one tier below the rest and getting beat up as a result of it?

Yes, what you described is frustrating and anti-climatic when it happens. But more often than not, there is a lesson or two you can learn from it

[Jabber]

Originally posted by Insanemiko:

While I don't want to make any assumptions here, I think you should also review the decisions of you and your fellow mates that led to the soft-wipe. Sometimes, it's what the dice says and it's beyond your control. But more often than not, it's a series of poor decisions/greedy plays that contribute to it.

Examples include trying to max the value of sanctums (deciding to go into an encounter first because you still have half health), Funneling equipment onto one character, not valuing immunity items (especially if you know what you are facing ahead of time) or not putting focus onto a unit that can completely gimp you (My herbalist once had 4 curses put onto him in a single fight)

In my example of funneling equipment onto a character (or everybody looks after themselves first), one thing we did was put almost all our money onto a character (usually, the one with party heal or someone with high movement who can sneak from encounters) and give him the final say on what to buy. Yes, the next tier sword would be amazing, but is it worth spending 200gold to give him an extra 6 attack while our hunter has armor one tier below the rest and getting beat up as a result of it?

Yes, what you described is frustrating and anti-climatic when it happens. But more often than not, there is a lesson or two you can learn from it

After level 2 everything you say is correct, pre-2 I still feel the game is high RNG. Sometimes the monster just go first and wreck you. But that's a balancing issue, and personally I have no problem with that, I love that the game is pushing you and offer challenges you might not be ready for.

So once again: It's not the fact that we wiped that's bothering me at all, I like that aspect of roguelikes. I've lost characters with 150+ hours playtime in Diablo Hardcore, for instance, didn't stop me from going back in.

it's the way the game just fizzles out, usually with no way to reverse it, that's my issues. I'd much rather die when i die, rather than play on gimped beyond redemption or, even worse, with a player in coop unable to interact with the game until some way to gain life is reached.

Like I mention in a comment above, a system like the Resolve system from Renovned Explores would work much better: If you have no resolve left and a character dies, your party's morale is broken and they cannot go on. It just feels more "satisfying" to die a clean death to me.

In short, I have no issue with getting a game over because of the Life Pool system. I just think it sucks to end a game on a soft wipe.

[Cap'n Darwin]

There are a couple of options here. The Devs could add a "Sudden Death" option to game play. If your party has no revives and someone dies, then the game is over. Another option would be adding a town option to revive a dead character for a large and ever increasing amount of gold. The dead character then revives at that town with minimal HPs and maybe the loss of gear based on the number of turns to revive. Even the gold revive could be an option. Allow players to tailor the game to a pain level they can deal with.

My 2 cents.

[spauldsa]

I think the current system is fine. Four acts, four revives (on easy). It's not like you can't do the math. Basically the strategic theme of this game is that if any bar (chaos, scourge or even revives) hits zero there is an excellent chance you are toast. There's always a steamroller or two around the corner, and if one catches your shoelace, well that sucks. Without the steamroller mechanic the game becomes Heroes of Might and Magic lite. That's why it has a rogue-like tag, a plus for some, certainly not all, and the telltale that you will be restarting often. The only time Dungeons and Dragons was rogue-like was when the DM didn't like you.

While I have no real problem with any of the proposed remedies for your issue, I suspect that they all fall into the Prolonging-the-Agony category.

btw a vision + portal scroll + golden root can sometimes pull your ass out of the fire in these situations by finding the nearest chaos device. Can be useful for a scourge problem too.

[F0l2saken]

I'm actually going to uninstall the game over this eventually. I play this with my wife, there's no way I'm going to make her sit through watching me play just so I can try to recover a life point in some poorly though out revive system. Traditional turn based RPG's have revive spells, ressurect spells, whatever, but there is no penalty for using it outside the cost of MP/Mana.

Great games can be ruined by poorly thought out additions, it happens all the time. For me, this ridiculously stupid life point system completely ruins the co-op multiplayer which is the only reason I purchased this game in the first place. Games are supposed to be fun, when they become boring chores and they already have a boring story, they get uninstalled.

It's extremely poorly thought out because there's no easy way to get a life point. Rather than forcing such a poorly thought out system on people, they should give you an option when starting a new game to use this system or use a traditional system.

Now we have to restart all over again, because we're not wasting our time trying to find a life point. I have a feeling this game is going to end up in the recycling bin very fast.

[Lemonhead]

Originally posted by spauldsa:

btw a vision + portal scroll + golden root can sometimes pull your ass out of the fire in these situations by finding the nearest chaos device. Can be useful for a scourge problem too.

How are Chaos Devices spawned anyways? Is there one hidden in every tileset, or are they just randomly created for you to stumble upon like random events?

I have a game with 0 revives left where I lost a character. Would be great to get some guidance on how to locate a Cult Device.

[Cap'n Darwin]

It's one device per biome.

[killk Brisetrogne]

I totally agree with Jabber I could finish the 3 quests then one character died after hard encounter. I can't revive him. My entire party is lvl 5 with good stuff. I feel bored to be stuck like this, it's like punishment : no fun. I'm about to quit the game cause i feel blased to do the same part of the game over and over