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Simple game improvement (idea 2)
MithrilCoat
#1 Posted : Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:56:07 AM
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My second idea is also designed to increase "playability"

Reduce Tedium


Tedium is probably the single largest problem I see with this game. It all goes back to why a player is playing any game in the first place. They want to have fun, escape boredom, and/or divert themselves from the monotony of daily life. So why do I want to play a game that creates "work" for me and ultimately leads me to doing repetitive boring tasks? Most people are willing to put in some work (even in a game) if it achieves a tangible reward -- however, in too many cases in Oubliette, it appears to be boring tasks that do little to improve the game experience.

1) Rolling Characters. As an old time Oubliette player I certainly understand the work/benefit ratio of spending some time in the character generator. While the roller is very tedious, I think it is a valuable part of the game. Where my issue lies is with what happens next. EXG: A newish player just spent 45 minutes rolling up halflings. His target was to roll a samurai, but he was careful and watched out for any other useful char the roller happened to give him. After 45 minutes he still hadn't achieved a Samurai (not a shocker!) however he happened across a beautiful Paladin with a 21 con. SWEET! He makes his selection, chooses to enter the Knights of the Cross guild, and then bam! DEAD. Not surprisingly, he feels cheated. In this example, I ask what benefit to the game playing experience is having so many chars die immediately after they are rolled? It isn't a skill issue. Not something the player did wrong, it is just another random stroke of fate to be delivered after 45 minutes (or more!) of rolling characters. I suggest you make a modification to allow all characters fresh out of the roller to live. They can still fail in their training and be forced to enter the Peasant's guild ... but nobody dies at level 1. Save that for the level 13 Peasant trying to enter the Sages guild. Additionally, reduce the aging associated with freshly rolled characters. There were several instances where I spent significant time rolling characters, only to have them exit their training as vegetables because they were already more than 1/2 way dead. Same logic applies -- what is fun about this? As it stands now I face the triple threat of having my character live, pass, and not age out. Seems pretty silly to me.

2) Loot. WHOAH! The object of the game is to acquire loot, and I am calling it out as tedious? WTF?
At the risk of sounding insane, as it is currently implemented, Loot is counter productive to fun. There are currently 3 sets of curing items (for example) commonly available in boxes. Potions, gems, and staves. While I understand the differences between gems and potions, I find it odd that I have to put so much effort into storing and using them. I mean I only have so much room for items I am carrying, and when it is time to clean out the pack, I am going thru these items 1 at a time. Since both the gem and the potion are single use items, wouldn't it be less tedious to only have one of them? Gems are devilishly boring to use in combat (you have to equip them one at a time) and so a player is left with the choice of monotony (storage and selling) or leaving them in the box (which strikes me, at least, as being the main reason I am playing the game -- picking up items.) Or trying to remember to re-equip his gem of "xxx" after every single use. Wouldn't it be easier/simpler to just do away with potions and replace them with gems? Or perhaps vice versa? Couldn't Gems of "xxx" (substitute a combat spell of your choice) be better replaced with a scroll of 'xxx" that you find much less often, but doesn't burn after every single use? After playing for awhile and gaining some insight, I am much more selective about what I pick up now, but really the important issue is why does the game's items function in such a "non fun" way?

3) After reaching dungeon level 6 or so, the boredom of walking up and down begins its slow steady grind, wearing away on "fun." It seems I spend about 1/3 of my time walking up and down. I know there are staves of traveling, but so far I have only found 2 staff/level 5 (one burned on its 1st use, and the other on the 2nd.) I don't mind putting in some work (walking up and down) to have fun (running my target level) but I feel that in this version, it is slanted too heavily towards the work end. I suggest you put a Teleporter fairly near the 7 to 5 stairs (on level 5) that will take you to level 4 in a convenient location to access the stairs to level 3. This would have the effect of greatly reducing the tedium of walking across levels 5 and 4. Another alternate idea would be to create a staff of level 3. I could use it to blast off of 8-9, and get home a lot sooner. Regardless of which scenario you favor, I feel you either need to increase the rate at which travelling items are found or decrease the rate at which they burn.
--If you chose to make it easier to walk down instead of up, (or perhaps both?) you could drop a set of stairs on level 3 that would take you to level 5. I find walking across level 4 to be the most tedious.

4) Lastly -- Oubliette forces me to be a "record keeper." I have found that I need to keep careful notes on my characters. I find running deeper in the dungeon, that I can't always tell when I have been drained. I have to write it all down to keep track of it. The game may tell me that "xxx" lost a level, but it tends to get pushed off the bottom of the notification area, and with so many things happening so quickly, it is easy to miss. When I am poisoned, I get a sticky notification on my characters guild icon, but when I am drained -- I do not. I know this is another coding issue, so maybe in some future version you could include a red border or some other notification that sticks around when draining occurs. Further more, why not include in the HoH an option to restore lost levels. This would be very expensive -- but it would give me something to do with all the cash I am holding anyhow.
John Gaby
#2 Posted : Sunday, March 31, 2013 9:02:29 AM
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MithrilCoat wrote:
1) Rolling Characters...


I actually tend to agree with this point. The original PLATO game did not do this. Jim added this feature to the DOS version of the game (upon which this game is based) and I kept it. If I were to create a new multiplayer version of Oubliette, I would probably remove this feature. To be honest, I always use portal gems to get around this feature.

MithrilCoat wrote:
2) Loot. WHOAH!...


The treasure system could certainly be improved. I actually find equipping potions to be pretty useless as well. The only characters that need them during a battle are your fighters and it is pretty much a pain in the ass to have to cancel the auto-fight in order to use a potion. The do have some use in non-combat situations to conserve the heal spells of the priests.

MithrilCoat wrote:
3) After reaching dungeon level 6 or so, the boredom of walking up and down begins its slow steady grind, wearing away on "fun."


You have a point, but I have played the game through from the beginning several times, and I don't believe that it is as bad as you are making out. Most levels have stairs that allow you to skip a level (e.g. stairs from level 1 o level 3). Also, mages have teleport spells which can take the whole party up or down. Part of the reason for making you walk, is to wear the party down a bit before you reach the level you want.

MithrilCoat wrote:
4) Lastly -- Oubliette forces me to be a "record keeper."


Honestly, if you are actually losing levels, you are doing something wrong. I simply cannot remember the last time I lost a level. When you meet up with monsters that can drain, you should be cranking the speed down to a minimum and using your mages and priests to take them out before they can even get a swing. NEVER go toe to toe with a drainer!
MithrilCoat
#3 Posted : Monday, April 1, 2013 3:40:08 PM
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Quote:
Honestly, if you are actually losing levels, you are doing something wrong. I simply cannot remember the last time I lost a level. When you meet up with monsters that can drain, you should be cranking the speed down to a minimum and using your mages and priests to take them out before they can even get a swing. NEVER go toe to toe with a drainer!


You know, last week I turned up the game speed to max, because I was bored. That is about the same time I started having problems with drainers. I guess I just didn't put the two of them together because that was about the time I started running a lower level. I feel a bit shamefaced about not seeing it, but thanks for pointing it out.
Snafaru
#4 Posted : Monday, April 1, 2013 6:52:18 PM
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1) Rolling characters... I always use portal gems before joining a guild, and if I roll something great but short by 1 or 2 points on a specific stat then I create a peasant, level him up and get what I want/need using the portal gems trick again.

2) Loot vs. Potions I always have at least 2 healer types in my party so the use of potions becomes a second thought really quick, although I pop one up from time to time but rarely, not sure how to improve things here, maybe potions that you can take more than 1 sip out of, i.-e. that don't have a 100% setting on Chance of Destruction?

3) Walking. I have a preferred path written down and with the Narvaybona spell (party invisible) I go down fairly quickly, but it does get indeed a bit tedious until you get the teleport spell, then again this game is a dungeon crawler type of game so it is what it is.

4) Drain. I slow down the game on the levels that I know have lots of drainers and try to avoid those levels. Having said that, this is my major peeve about this game which is that when a character gets drained it is often for a lot of hit points and stats that you never regain even after the next few level-ups thus ruining the character. My only solution is to use more portal gems that I normally would in order to not lose too much game time due to a drain... I don't like this, what a waste of portal gems.
John Gaby
#5 Posted : Monday, April 1, 2013 9:02:36 PM
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Snafaru wrote:
4) Drain. I slow down the game on the levels that I know have lots of drainers and try to avoid those levels. Having said that, this is my major peeve about this game which is that when a character gets drained it is often for a lot of hit points and stats that you never regain even after the next few level-ups thus ruining the character. My only solution is to use more portal gems that I normally would in order to not lose too much game time due to a drain... I don't like this, what a waste of portal gems.


You don't have to slow the game down in general. You can always review the list of monsters you are facing before the battle starts and only slow it down if there is a drainer (or some other really nasty monster) in the group (remember too that drainers cannot harm you if they are not the first group of monsters you are facing). Once you have dispatched the nasties, you can speed the game back up. As I have said, I never get drained following this approach.
MithrilCoat
#6 Posted : Wednesday, April 3, 2013 10:09:37 AM
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Snafaru wrote:
4) Drain. I slow down the game on the levels that I know have lots of drainers and try to avoid those levels. Having said that, this is my major peeve about this game which is that when a character gets drained it is often for a lot of hit points and stats that you never regain even after the next few level-ups thus ruining the character....




Ya. That has always been the problem with drainers in oubliette. ITOG (in the original game) you would lose a full hit dice per level and usually at least 2 stats would fall, sometimes 3 or 4. Your character would regain those hits 2/lvl if near max hits, and usually get either 0 or 1 stat increase. When you played deep enough, there were lots of things that drained 3 lvls at a time. I still recall losing 11 levels on a trip to 10 on a lovely Hobbit Valkyrie. It took a lot of effort to recover from that disaster.

Course, making lvls back wasn't all that tough, and there were items to increase your stats and hits available semi-readily. There were, however, no temporal portals tho.!!! And there were also some rare moments when building chars, where you got drained a level or 2, lost almost no hits or stats, and then when you remade those levels, you hit pay dirt with big rolls and stats. Pretty rare, but it was nice to see that the gods of randomness would smile upon you once in a while.
John Gaby
#7 Posted : Wednesday, April 3, 2013 9:56:52 PM
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Yes, the original Oubliette could be pretty brutal sometimes and there was NO recourse from a failed raise. Dead was dead. Yet, for me at least, that was one of the attractions of the game. Most dungeon games today require only patience to play.
MithrilCoat
#8 Posted : Thursday, April 4, 2013 12:49:48 PM
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John Gaby wrote:
Yes, the original Oubliette could be pretty brutal sometimes and there was NO recourse from a failed raise. Dead was dead. Yet, for me at least, that was one of the attractions of the game. Most dungeon games today require only patience to play.



I couldn't agree more. ITOG, if you saw a char that was lvl 140 you could deduce two possible reasons.


1) The dude was a either faker who was powerbuilding
1 char trying to get guildmaster.

or

2) The dude was a player with a large number of runs on 10.


Since you almost always knew all the people who fit into category 2, it usually meant the guy was cat 1. Most of my chars never went past level 75 or so. I did have a Ranger that ended up at 93 before it permed, but that was exceptional for my style of play. I tended to use rejuvs and tomes to fix drain damage once I had regained the needed levels. For those that don't know, lvl 63 was the maximum lvl for skill/save increases. Most smart players ran their chars to lvl 66 before the ran them on lvl 10. (66 - one drain = 63 [still at max save]) One of the older guys I played with swore that level 69 was the minimum he would SR 10 with (giving him protection against two drains, prior to losing max save.) It would happen once in a while, and it was hair raising walking off 10 with a char down 3 levels from max save. Oh, and a rejuv would restore 5 hits permanently, tomes would give a stat increase... so if you remade your three levels, you would be down 15 or so hits and most likely 2 or 3 stats. Some people liked to keep leveling up until they recovered their stats, then use rejuvs to finish up the hits. Others just kept building until they were whole. The maximum level attainable was 255. The max level I ever saw was a Hobbit Courtesan at level 210 (who was definitely a Cat 2 player.)
hitfan
#9 Posted : Saturday, April 6, 2013 2:26:58 PM
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I think one way to improve the game would be for the game to play a small 'click' sound when you press one of the direction keys. Since tablets have a flat surface which doesn't give feedback when you press on it with your finger, I think an audio feedback would be nice.
John Gaby
#10 Posted : Sunday, April 7, 2013 10:03:34 AM
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hitfan wrote:
I think one way to improve the game would be for the game to play a small 'click' sound when you press one of the direction keys. Since tablets have a flat surface which doesn't give feedback when you press on it with your finger, I think an audio feedback would be nice.


We could probably do that, but how would that help? Are you having trouble determining if the table took your press or not?
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