Alesch

[Alesch]

Honestly, I find flat stat increases in weapon tiers to be very dull. I think the game is at its best when upgrading to the next tier of weapon is not just a financial decision, but a tactical one as well. Take the Warbrand/Greatsword for example. The Greatsword deals a lot more damage than the Warbrand, but it isn’t better in every way, in all circumstances, because the Warbrand’s Slash ability takes fewer AP than the Greatsword’s Diagonal Strike (I think that’s what the skills are called). The two weapons have very similar utility, but I personally find that the Warbrand’s ability to attack twice makes it more useful than the Greatsword against low-to-mid-tier enemies.

I’d also like to mention the decision between arming a Brother with a Greatsword vs a Greataxe. They aren’t different weapon-tiers of course, but they serve a similar function. Stat-wise they’re fairly similar, but their abilities are different, and so that is what you end up having to consider when deciding between the two. The Greataxe has a greater total damage potential, for example, because it has an ability that lets it attack up to six different targets at once! That ability, however, is really only useful when the Brother is not standing next to any of his allies. This means that in order to use the Greataxe to full effect you need to either have a loose formation, or the Greataxe-wielding Brother must be outside of your formation. The Greatsword, on the other hand, can mesh very easily into a shield-wall. Its abilities don’t have quite the AoE potential of the Greataxe, but they are easier to use without endangering your Battle Brothers. The abilities of these two weapons completely change their role in the game.

I think it’s important to consider the abilities of a weapon, and how they might be different from what’s already in the game. Adding a weapon that fills the exact same role as a weapon that’s already in the game adds less to the game than adding a weapon that fills a different, even if only slightly, role. Having said all that: here are my thoughts on some of the weapons that have been suggested in this thread, and some suggestions of my own.

I like the idea of a Pole-Hammer that can destroy armour from behind the shield-wall. I think a range 2 spearwall ability might be a bit too much though. The two range 2 weapons in the game now (ignoring the Pitchfork, which is Baby’s First Polearm) have weapon abilities that are centered around positioning enemies, and in that regard they compliment one another. Pike Pushes, Bill Pulls. The Pole-Hammer could itself pair up with a Pole-Axe, where one can Destroy Armour, while the other can Sunder Shields.

I’m not entirely sure that I see the point of a “Bastard Sword”. Do you intend to use the Quick Hands ability to take your shield off before you attack, and then put it back on? The way I see it the weapon would have no real in-game purpose of its own outside of some very gamey exploits. Also, and I may be wrong, I imagine it might be a bit more work programming wise than most of the other suggestions, with rather little to show for it. If the idea is that it is a Warbrand that can be wielded with a shield then that’s pretty much already possible to do. Get Quick Hands and Bags and Belts on a Brother and Presto! You have, functionally, your Bastard Sword.

I actually like the idea of “Claws” quite a bit. I think something like a Cestus might be more appropriate though, and I don’t imagine them being something you’d buy in a shop. I think they would make very interesting weapons for an Orc Berserker though. Especially if you took some inspiration from some of the ones used by roman gladiators… those things were wicked.

I could honestly take or leave guns. I think people have a good point with Battle Brothers not really taking place in a time period where they would be common, although I’m no stickler for sticking to history in fiction, but hand cannons existed in China in the 11th century, so it isn’t totally out of place (in a cosmological sense :P). Personally, I wouldn’t mind a bit seeing a hugely expensive hand cannon appear in a port city every once in awhile. The description of the harbour building does describe it as dealing with “foreign merchants” after all. A hand cannon could be made sufficiently distinct from a crossbow to be interesting. Make it less accurate and take a full 9 AP to load, but deal greater damage and force a morale check on a hit. Boom!

More interesting than the addition of a hand canon, however, and I’d hope less distressing to historical purists, would be some manner of hand grenade. The Byzantines knew how to stick naptha in a pot and throw it, after all. I’d imagine they’d be built similarly to the nets: one use only. I’d imagine they’d only be available from a city with some manner of alchemist (so a new building type) or, and this I think could be clever, from goblins. Goblins with firebombs would be terrifying, but being able to loot those firebombs yourself if you could kill the gobbos before they could throw them would be a very nice reward. As for what they would do, well the game does currently lack any kind of ranged AoE.

I like the idea of having a Pavise, or a roman-style tower shield in the game, but I don’t think their stats should be quite as high as what people have suggested. Honestly, I think that a roman shield would have stats comparable to the current kite shield, but have an improved version of the Shield-Wall ability. I think the best (or at least most interesting) way to implement a Pavise wouldn’t be as a shield, but rather as a deployable item like the wardog. That would let your crossbowmen (who were great fans of the pavise shields) carry them around and then plop them down as cover. A pavise could basically function as an immobile unit with a high resistance to ranged attacks, but that gets swatted aside easily in melee. It would provide the user with as much cover as hiding behind a Brother, without forcing a Brother to soak arrows for your crossbowman.

The idea of a longbow is neat, but it really shouldn’t be any better against armour than any other bow. The armour-piercing was the work of the arrowheads the English used, not the bows. What was special about the longbow was its range! I think that, if implemented, a longbow would be best represented by increasing the range of the current hunting bow, while keeping the same (or similar) decrease in accuracy over range. The kind of engagements we play in Battle Brothers aren’t really all that suited for the kind of tactics that longbowmen used. Still, I think that having a bow that had a greater range would be interesting, particularly when compared with crossbows that add more power at a reduced range.

Slings are a very cool suggestion too, and I think that the greatest strength of a sling would let it remain useful throughout the game: you can find ammunition for a sling anywhere. Sure, you could get specific ammunition for your sling. Heavy lead bullets were much better than a stone off the ground, but the stone would still work. Damage adjustments and all that aside, I think the best way to differentiate a sling from a bow mechanically would be to have the sling be able to fire (with a penalty to range and damage perhaps) even without ammunition. Slings would be aces against the Undead.

More than anything else, I would like to see more weapons in the hands of other factions. I really like the feeling you get when you loot a goblin overseers crossbow. The ancient looking weapons that the skeletons in some of the mock ups (rather than in the game) look super cool. One of those skeletons looks like its brandishing a falx! Mechanically that would probably just be a bastardization between the Warbrand and the Cleaver, but still! Two handed cleaver would be awesome.

TL;DR: Weapons’ abilities are far more interesting than their stats, and suggestions should consider that. I want to loot cool stuff from enemies far more than I want to buy stuff from shops.

[Alesch]

I actually liked that I couldn’t tell the orc sides apart. I kind of figured it was some kind of fantastic (as in fantasy, not wonderful) racism. “All them orcs look the same to me!”

I’ve also had a couple cool events occur with some caravan escort missions.

[Alesch]

While I don’t think the player would benefit from having an in-battle presence (just think of how hard it is to keep your original three companions alive and multiply that by a game-over screen), I think that you could get something out of the idea. Basically, the player avatar could have a leveling screen of their own, allowing an experienced company to get some bonuses independent of the mercenaries themselves.

Perhaps you could have skills that make you better at negotiating contract prices, or that make it harder for employers to learn about your double-dealings. Maybe a charismatic captain can attract skilled mercenaries to the company for less gold, or decrease the chance that a mercenary will desert when times get tough.

I’m sure there are other things that the captain could do without being visible, and vulnerable, on the battlefield.

[Alesch]

I always thought that german and russian sounding angry to english speakers had less to do with the actual sounds in the languages and more to do with the fact that germans and russians have been portrayed as villains in Hollywood for… almost as long as there’s been a film industry. World War 2 and the Cold War. Thinking about it now though, and I think GOD might be right (I feel dirty saying that).

After all, german is a guttural language compared to english, at least from my (limited) experience with it. Russian… might be? I don’t really know. What I do know is that a great many of english’s most impactful curse words also carry very guttural vowel sounds. I’m not sure what the board’s stance on cursing is, so I won’t put up a list. Suffice to say that many are four letter words with a U in the middle.

Then again, it might be the Hollywood thing.

[Alesch]

Jago wrote:

Sometimes I wonder if English-speaking people like to use German words in RPGs because it sounds exotic. The same way companies in Germany adopt English terms and slogans for their products, because it sounds fancy and modern.

Exoticism is a major reason that english speakers use foreign words, yes. No on in their right mind would pay 10$ for grilled flat bread with melted cheese inside, but if you call it a quesadilla (I cannot spell the word) and suddenly it’s a “cultural experience”. That said, sometimes it really is a matter of the english language not having a similar word, but in this case we usually just steal it wholesale and make it an english word. English is a bastard language, after all.

Revenant, for instance, is just the french verb for returning. It’s been an english word for ages now, but it was certainly stolen (adopted would probably be a better word, given how heavily french influenced english) initially. I find the history of english words to be very interesting, honestly.

The difference between “ask”, and “demand” for instance, comes from the relationship between the Saxons and their Norman rulers. “Demand” is (with some spelling differences, perhaps?) the french word for request. Both “ask” and “demand” essentially mean the same thing, with the difference between them being mostly in the insinuated relationship between the requester and the requestee. A Saxon would “ask” another Saxon for something, while a Norman would “demand” it. Saying no to the Norman wasn’t really an option, even if he was being very polite. :P

[Alesch]

Orcish Wieder… Fleshy Undead (German is a hard language to spell!) seems like it must ultimately be a necessity. It was written elsewhere that the various factions all fight each other, meaning that at some point a Necromancer might square off with an Orc Warlord. Since the player could potentially get involved in these fights (I never have, but it seems like it should be possible), then presumably in very rare instances the Necromancer might raise an orc corpse within sight of the player.

Of course, that would probably be really, really rare. So I doubt it would be that high on the priority list.

As for whether or not there should be orcish revenants amongst the regular undead spawns… I have no idea. I’d honestly prefer there not to be, as the two factions are currently very distinct to fight against. Where fighting the undead is mostly a matter of endurance and attrition, fighting Orcs is about being able to deal with their raw offensive power. Having a unit that hybridizes the two would pull the rug out from under both I think, unless it was only found in very rare circumstances.

[Alesch]

I had not noticed that. That will help, thanks.

[Alesch]

Anonymous wrote:

To be fair, I defy you to find a game that lets you save mid combat. I really cannot think of many (some, but certainly not many).

…I get the whole wasting my time argument… but hey, welcome to the world of gaming!?!?! F*** I don’t even wish to dwell upon the amount of minutes, hours, days and years I’ve wasted playing video games. But do I care? NO!

From personal experience you can either have a life, or play video games, theres not much room for both

Jokes aside, I wouldn’t have a problem with saving during battles; so long as Ironman mode saved after each and every combat turn.

In the TBS genre? It depends largely on how the battle systems work, but of the games that I know of and have separate battle/campaign portions the way Battle Brothers has I can think of a few. I may be wrong about a few, as some of these games I haven’t played in some time, so feel free to call me out on any that I mistakenly put up.

Jagged Alliance I believe had in battle saves, but I don’t recall for certain.
X-Com Had in battle saves, but not in battle loading.
X-Com: Terror from the Deep In battle saves, no in battle loading.
X-Com: Apocalypse I’m pretty sure had the same sort of set up as its precursors, but I am admittedly less certain.
Jagged Alliance 2 This one I might be wrong about actually, but I’m sure that someone can correct me about it.
Silent Storm
XCOM: Enemy Unknown Although people around here seem to dislike it for some reason.

You’re right in that the list isn’t large, but it is hardly unprecedented. It’s also a pretty short list of games that spend a substantial amount of time in both a battle map and a world map though, so it’s a short list all around. I don’t think that “Other games don’t allow saving mid battle” is the strongest argument to be made against it though :P.

[Alesch]

Aaand since I can’t find the edit button, if there is one, I am double-posting. I feel so dirty.

I must have really missed my mark with the pizza analogy. I meant to say that the amount of money that a customer pays for Battle Brothers (around 22$ Canadian, I’m not sure about elsewhere) is roughly enough to buy a large pizza. I’ve certainly paid that much for pizza before, at least. I wasn’t trying to compare the game itself to pizza, but rather use pizza to illustrate (roughly, as Valve takes its mysterious Valve Percentage) the value of a sale to the dev team.

If we assume that one sale of Battle Brothers gives the devs one large pizza, and that one large pizza can feed the three gentlemen for one meal (I am not the slimmest man, perhaps our intrepid developers can subsist on less), then three copies of Battle Brothers can feed the devs for a day. More copies sold, means more days eating pizza (which is delicious, and thus desirable to eat). It’s… admittedly a clumsy analogy.

I’m sorry for confusing everyone with it.

[Alesch]

Sky wrote:

Main argument was that it would interfere with game design, the expendables type mercenary group with the small roguelike element of losing men. Making players who abuse the save miss out on the core concept of the low fantasy dark and bloody world of medieval harsh reality and such. It sure is a considerable part of the game and things will be build upon it later on. The recruits must flow.

While it is true, the opportunity to save and not lose progress is valid aswell. For many and me the current autosave is enought, for others not. Again, everyone choses for themselves. The final word is after Overhype.

Well, the word that I would take issue with there is “abuse”. Having the feature does not force anyone to make use of it; not putting it in at all because some players might somehow “misuse” it, and in so doing appreciate the game less somehow, seems like a very strange decision to make. I made the point my initial post that Player B (the fellow who doesn’t save) has no reasonable reason to be in any way annoyed by Player A (who does save), as the two will never interact. Most people here seem to agree that having some manner of “Save and Exit” option in battle is, at best, ideal, or, at worst, something to be indifferent about. I am personally in favor of having a “Save and Exit” option, and I don’t want people to think that I’m arguing against it in favor of saving all the time, or what have you.

What I’m taking issue with is the reasons that people are putting forward for thinking that “Save and Exit” should be the only acceptable form of in-battle saving. The common argument (yours included) seems to be to maintain some strange sense of “purity”, and that baffles me. The ability to save does not inherently rob the game of any “grittiness” or even necessarily difficulty. I thought I explained in my initial post how many games get around the issue entirely by having a set RNG seed, which prevents a game from recalculating a result if the game is loaded later. A miss, for instance, would always be a miss given the same seed. I don’t know how Battle Brothers does its calculations, and implementing a similar system might be a significant workload, but without knowing that saving a seed (and I really wish I knew the accepted Computer Science term for what I’m trying to describe) within the save file would be unfeasible, I don’t think it’s fair to say that save-scumming is an issue at all.

I really don’t think that the theme of the game is as threatened by an in-battle save as people seem to be worried it might be.

Jago wrote:

Oh well. To be honest I didn’t quiet read everything. It’s a wall of ranting and your comparisons with pizza and games I’ve frankly never heard about (and I probably wouldn’t care about) is tiresome.

Giving the player the option to reload and redo every little action would give people the wrong impression of what this game actually tries to achieve: being a medieval XCOM.
People should not believe that save-scumming is encouraged, nor a normal part of the game.

I wouldn’t consider a thousand words to be all that long, and I did try to avoid ranting. The games that I mentioned are the basis for the word “save scumming”, and I did not compare the game to pizza, but rather used pizza to illustrate income. Think of it as an impromptu lesson in basic economics, as written for kindergartners.

To summarize my point, as it relates to what you wrote in your post, no player, playing a single player game, has any reasonable right to declare the way that another player might play as being invalid, immoral, or even lesser in any way. The notion that save-scumming is somehow immoral or wrong is strange. It’s a reaction that players have to design decisions that they disagree with. It may be a subversion of the designer’s vision, but art is found in those who interact with it more than those who create it, just ask poor Ray Bradbury. Without getting to heavily into any kind of philosophical discussion, when people talk about the thematic ways that the game is threatened by the introduction of saving in-battle, I can only take that to mean in terms of “artistic purity”. That confuses me a bit, because art does not necessarily work that way. This, for instance, is one argument against that notion.

Kalanar wrote:

I would turn the argument back towards you, I haven’t heard a good argument that supports a battle save. The argument for it seems utterly alien to me. The “freedom of choice” argument I believe is valid, but not strong enough to influence a design decision in my opinion. It adds so little that it isn’t worth the trade off, which would be a reduction in the danger element that pairs nicely with the dark themes of the game. Having said – Would it ruin the game for me if a battle save was included? No.

I thought I made some decent points beyond simply freedom of choice. I would argue that the implementation of an in-battle save would increase the game’s broader market appeal, but I couched it in an analogy that wasn’t worded as clearly as it should have been I suppose. Increased potential revenue should theoretically be attractive for any company, I should think. It wouldn’t even necessarily compromise the game’s appeal to “hardcore gamers”, since the implementation of an Iron Man mode (which seems pretty universally desired) would keep everyone happy with a single save, in battle or otherwise. Allowing people to save outside of battle can really only make the game accessible to more people, and thus provide Overhype with more potential customers (or pizza, in my analogy). I also seem to have, not a different opinion on whether or not games are art, but a different opinion about the nature of art from the majority of the forums (and to be fair, possibly from the majority of people in general).

I’d also like to restate that I am, personally, in favor of a “Save on Exit” solution. I just don’t think that the arguments leveled against saving whenever you want are being made for the right reasons. I still can’t say that I am convinced, but I will admit that your opinion is valid. I think we are mostly disagreeing about the impact that in-battle saving will have on the strength of the game’s theme, or at least on the value of the feature when compared to the thematic reinforcement that’s lost.

GOD wrote:

t’s the idea of maintaining the weight of actions by removing the ability to undo them, in a game where consequences are a major source of tension and enjoyment for the player. Many things you can say about saving at will, you can say about being able to redo perks, or re-rolling levels, or undoing character death. It’s a single-player game, so who cares? The point is that once you start undermining these kind of fundamental design elements the player eventually stops caring about the game and stops having fun. It’s like how I can win any chess game by just smacking his king off the board, but that wouldn’t be according to the arbitrary rules we set and therefore be pretty boring. Another example is how in this game hitting in combat is satisfying because you can miss, it wouldn’t be exciting if you always hit.

I think you’re missing the point about the single-player nature of the game, or at least the comparison with chess isn’t quite right. Chess, after all, requires two players. Player A knocking over Player B’s king and declaring him or herself the winner would certainly impact Player B’s enjoyment of the game there. I think I understand what you’re trying to get across though, but I would still disagree. While many of the arguments for saving whenever you want (which, again, isn’t necessarily the argument that I am making) can be made for “redoing perks, re-rolling levels, or undoing character death”, not all of them can. While missteps in those areas can be detrimental to a player, none of them punish a player for needing to set the game aside at any given moment. Stating that a player will eventually stop caring about the game because of any specific design choice is a bit presumptuous. I could, after all, say with equal validity that a player might, as a result of being unable to save their game, be forced to lose progress and as a result of that lose interest in the game and stop having fun.

The discussion is not about redoing perks, re-rolling levels, undoing character deaths, or anything else that would strip the RNG of any authority, or the player of accountability. The argument, at least the one that I’m trying to make, is about the value of being able to save the game in battle. Saving the game at the beginning of each turn, and loading whenever things don’t go your way is not my intention, but at the same time I would say that a player who finds enjoyment in doing so should not be barred from doing so simply because you disagree with how the game should be enjoyed.

I’d also have to wonder exactly how “fundamental” any of these decisions are. As best as I can tell, the only truly fundamental aspects of Battle Brothers, right now, are that Medieval Fantasy Men fight Other Medieval Fantasy Men and Monsters. Fundamental, after all, means something that “forms a base or necessary core”, and I’m not sure that the description applies to the inability to save in battle.

If the weight of consequences is of such central and inalienable importance to the game as a whole, then I think the solution lies less with how and when you can save, but rather how and when you can load. While it might upset some people, loading from the main menu is enough of a delay to be inconvenient (and so slightly discourage repeat and rapid reloading) without entirely barring the possibility of resuming a game from mid battle.

In the thread about character customization I suggested tying Steam achievements to an Iron Man mode. Whether or not that happens, I do think that an Iron Man mode might be the best chance to make the greatest number of people happy with Battle Brothers.

[Alesch]

GOD wrote:

If saving in combat is implemented they could make it save on exit, with an autosave before the fight. That way you don’t have the constant reloading problem and people can still take a break from playing without having to restart the battle.

GOD wrote:

you don’t have the constant reloading problem

GOD wrote:

constant reloading problem

GOD wrote:

reloading problem

GOD wrote:

problem

Who exactly is this a problem for? That is ridiculous. It’s absurd. Battle Brothers is a single player game, and as far as I can tell there are no plans to change that at all. Player A’s playthrough has no bearing whatsoever on Player B’s. So even if Player A prefers to reload his game after making a mistake, while Player B does not, there is still no reason for Player B to find Player A’s practice objectionable. The two will never meet. Their games will never interact. The players themselves will likely never interact. What possible business does Player B have in this case to so much as comment on Player A’s decision to save?

Is Player B offended by the fact that Player A is not “as skilled a player”? Again, their games never interact, nor do the players. That argument is ludicrous. If Player B’s concern is that the addition of a saving feature might somehow undercut his own play style, then it’s still baffling as to how that might be. Will the ability to save tempt Player B into setting aside his moral superiority by reloading after an in-game misstep? I am personally confused as to why that would be a problem at all, but even if it were then it would seem to me that the fault would lie in Player B him or herself, rather than with the game for offering the function.

Forgive me if I’m setting up a straw man here, but that honestly seems to be the main argument against implementing a save feature, and it’s nonsense.

Malthus wrote:

If there is a save mechanic inside of combat it will end like every not-ironman xcom game. It ends in uncounted reloads until every strike you do hits and your guys don´t get hurt. This is neither intended nor should it ever be possible in my opinion.
Though the save on exit seems like a very good idea and would deal with the no-time-issue.

First of all, I can personally attest to having never spammed the reload feature in a game of XCOM until “every strike do hits and [my] guys don’t get hurt”. I wasn’t even aware that this was possible in XCOM. It doesn’t need to be. Lots of games spawn a randomization seed at the beginning of each game that determines the outcome of actions, and a good many games save this seed as part of the save file. This means that save/load spamming would accomplish very little, because the outcome of an attack, let’s say, is predetermined. The only possible influence is that it might allow you to move a character to a different position to strike, or to know in advance that a strike will fail and so take a different action instead. Again though, it seems to me that the fault here (if indeed there is a fault at all, and no one has put forth any convincing arguments that there is) must lie with the player, and not with the software.

Again, my apologies if this isn’t what you meant to say, but it seems to be your argument. If it is, then it makes little sense, and I must disagree.

Personally, the idea of being able to save in battle seems like an obvious feature, and the OP had some legitimate reasons for it. Sometimes, things happen, and you need to step away from a game. Always, losing progress in a game is frustrating. Therefore, a feature that can accommodate the former while reducing the later seems like an obvious thing to have. Arguments about it compromising some perceived Ironman difficulty seem strange, as Ironman difficulty settings are generally set to be special challenges, rather than the norm in gaming. The arguments about save scumming so far have missed the point I’d say. Games like Nethack, ADOM, Angband, and what have you, where the term “save scum” originate from (I believe it began with NetHack, but I could be wrong) might have come up with a derogatory term for the practice, but what they were really experiencing were players subverting a feature (or making up for a lack of features perhaps) in order to better enjoy the game.

A major difference between, say, NetHack, and Battle Brothers is that Battle Brothers is a paid product. NetHack is free. They can take users, or leave them. If people want to undo game-ending mishaps by reloading a save game in NetHack, and it runs counter to the game’s design, then by all means call them names for it. If a player doesn’t enjoy NetHack, and tells their friends that the game is rubbish as a result, then the good folks making NetHack lose nothing. If the same happens to Battle Brothers, then our friends at Overhype Studios might potentially sell less games. Sure, bending over backwards to sell as many copies as possible might leave a bad taste in some peoples’ mouths, but Battle Brothers costs about as much as a mid-range pizza. Is denying people the ability to save in battle and maintaining the… I don’t know, the “purity of hardcore gaming” perhaps? Is that worth even a single pizza? No, no it is not. Pizza is delicious.

How saving in battle is implemented matters very little to me. At will, on exit, after spinning three times widdershins, who cares. The idea that a basic feature might be left out entirely to satisfy a small group of players that seem to be worried that the game might be easier for it somehow, is madness. Mount and Blade has been brought up before, and sure, it didn’t allow players to save in battle, but a battle in Mount and Blade is generally much, much shorter than a battle in Battle Brothers is. The argument that “the tactical battles are the fun part, why would you want to save and deny yourself the fun part of the game” is as absurd as anything else. Ideally, the entirety of the game should be “the fun part”, and in practice players will enjoy different aspects of a game more or less than others. Telling someone what they should enjoy is certainly far more arrogant than believing that one’s time is worth respecting.

Why anyone would be against being able to save the game at any point seems utterly alien to me, but I’d certainly love to hear a good argument against it. So far, there doesn’t seem to be any arguments that don’t boil down to “but I am a hardcore gamer, and if you let me save whenever I want then I might not be hardcore anymore!” Seriously guys, what the heck? Please tell me that I’m misunderstanding your arguments, because that is a sad attitude to have.

[Alesch]

thenewromance wrote:

You do want to hear the story of Sigbold Dogpuncher, dontcha?

Now that the forum exists for it… tell us more about this “Dogpuncher”.

[Alesch]

Ladies and Gentlemen, I think I have a solution to this whole “Give me Character Customization/ Leave it for RNGesus to decide” thing. It isn’t an original solution, since I’m just going to point out how Paradox handled things in CK2 (and everyone and their dog loved CK2). Crusader Kings was mentioned earlier in the thread, sure, but no one mentioned that its Achievements were tied to its Ironman mode, which strictly forbade the Character Customizer, at least as I recall. I always thought that was an elegant solution to the conflict that seems to be going on in this thread.

As I see it, there are the people who want to have control over the story that their game tells, and the people who want to beat up RNGesus even if it means both of their hands are tied behind their backs. The later crowd, in my experience, has a lot more overlap with the achievement hunters of the world than the former does. Tying the achievements to playing without any character customization gives an incentive toward playing with whatever junk characters the RNG gives you, while players that want to use custom characters likely won’t care. Heck, if you really want to take a page out of Paradox’s book you could even toss out character customization as a 5$ DLC (queue an entire forum’s worth of outrage here).

As it is right now, I often find myself restarting a new game several times until I have a crew that I deem “playable”, and I doubt that I’m the only one who does this. That isn’t what a functioning system looks like, and if the main argument against incorporating some form of character customization is essentially “but that will make the game easier!” then I really think that locking the achievements away from people in playthroughs that use custom characters would nip that in the bud. After all, who cares if the game is easier for me, if it won’t mean that I can get the same “Congratulations on Winning the Game” picture more easily than the other guy.

Everyone wins. I get to play with characters that I want to play with. Achievement hunters aren’t having their achievements devalued by “easy-mode” players.

Seriously. Paradox already solved this. Do correct me though, if I am wrong.

[Alesch]

Spare wrote:

You put the link as the name and the name as the link :p
Here it is.

I… I don’t really know how to internet. :(

[Alesch]

I’m not sure if this is actually a bug or not, but if it isn’t then it isn’t really indicated in the perk. When you have the Quick Hands perk you are not able to change items unless you have at least four action points available. The AP isn’t used, as the perk claims, but it seems odd that I still need the AP free to swap items.

Of course, I’d understand if that was meant to be that way. I discovered the bug when I tried switching back to a sword and shield after biffing an Orc Warlord in the head with a Greataxe. So I suppose the perk is a bit wonky either way. Either it has restrictions that aren’t clear from the tooltip, or it effectively allows me to wield a two handed weapon with a shield.

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