"Backwards-compatible" Vitality

[seebs]

D&D was that way from the time it launched in the early 1970s ..till they got past revision 3 in the 1990s.

This statement cannot be evaluated meaningfully because "that way" could refer to any of several different ways D&D worked. And indeed, several different ways it worked even back in the 70s and 80s. (I have pretty much all the books published before 3rd edition, and most of 3rd, 3.5, and 4, on shelves here. Yes, that includes the little OD&D stapled books.)

Furthermore, so what? D&D was a pretty spectacularly buggy game full of design decisions that were seriously problematic for actual gameplay, and often overridden by nearly all DMs.

[dbgager]

All I can say..is I could not care less about your opinion. If that is the only debate you have to offer who does that make the fool...genius. You added absolutely zero to the conversation.

Oh I did try to reason with you, boy I did. Yet, it seems impossible to make you undestand even the mere topic of what is being debated here.

To recapitulate for others, we got 2 separate issues that I'm sure the devs would appreciate some more feedback on.

The first one, in the OP post, mentions that health gains aren't retrospectively recalculated, making early vitality the best choice and late vitality the worst choice.

The second issue, brought up later in the thread, is the random +d3 health roll per level, which doesn't seem to be the best choice for a game that has a save/load feature and in regard to how it's other skills work.

We could use some more opinions for both in here really, so let's continue that route.

Feedback..lol..All I have heard is the words "flawed".."bad game design"..""shit". This is an old school game ..using an old school system. I am sure the developers are smart enough not to modernize it. The old school charm is why the game is great. Especially since you guys seem to think you know more than they do.

[dbgager]

D&D was that way from the time it launched in the early 1970s ..till they got past revision 3 in the 1990s.

This statement cannot be evaluated meaningfully because "that way" could refer to any of several different ways D&D worked. And indeed, several different ways it worked even back in the 70s and 80s. (I have pretty much all the books published before 3rd edition, and most of 3rd, 3.5, and 4, on shelves here. Yes, that includes the little OD&D stapled books.)

Furthermore, so what? D&D was a pretty spectacularly buggy game full of design decisions that were seriously problematic for actual gameplay, and often overridden by nearly all DMs.

Then read them since you seems to be insuinuating that D&D did not work exactly as I state for a very long time.

Wasn't problematic for me..I was in many D&D groups..We just had a good time. Maybe you don't understand thats the point of playing these games.

You realize there was a revision 1 and a revision 2, and then of course 3 ,..
3.5 was released in 2003. People played the game for about 30 years before changes you are reffering to where made.

[affa]

Needing improvement is your opinion. Others do not share that opinion. Therefore whether it needs those improvements is also your opinion.

I find it ridiculous that people are actually insulting the game and calling it bad game design, because they can not have high HPs, and also develop other skills at the same time. Thats why its called a choice. There is no optimum path.So play the game and don't worry about it. You will make it to the end level regardless.

By the way the minute..you start using words like "bad game design"..the developer is going to tune you out.

I wish I could tune out your posts in this thread. It's quite clear you're incapable of having an adult discussion about game design.

The OP, and many others, are quite correct that random rolling at level up is bad design, and that there are many reasons (listed several times throughout this thread) we've seen this mechanic go away over the past decades.

Is it game breaking? No. Absolutely not. But if you don't make Vit scale retroactively, it means Vit is all important at the beginning of the game, and useless to improve later in the game compared to other stats.

If you want an easy analogy to explain why so many of us think this is a broken mechanic: imagine if the amount of weight you could carry was based on a similar broken mechanic. If you got a random amount added to your carrying capacity based on your current strength at level up, you could have one strength 22 minotaur being able to carry, say 200 pounds, and another strength 22 minotaur that could only carry 100 pounds... based on a combination of randomness and when they got their points added. It's odd. It's counter-intuitive. And it usually only ever breaks vitality, which is why game design long moved away from this mechanic.

[ItsRay]

To speak out of everyone's Heart in this Thread :

dbgager please shut the fuck up and fuck the shit off you incompetent piece of dirt.

No problem folks.

[Smaug]

No..THats exactly how I will reply..because that is how the game works.Like I said already its called a CHOICE. Also its a freaking game..genius. YOu think you get some kind of award for developing a character with a lot of HP. You are trying to develop in a way to be able to survive. YOu can not have both max HPS or max attack. You pick between the 2 of them. BAd game design...lol. You stat freaks , have played to much WOW, you don't know a thing about old school.

HPs are not even that important. unless you have totally no keyboard skills, and can only stand toe to toe with an enemy, with zero movement. Develop some actual game skills, and stop trying to make the game compensate for your lack of skill.

I am enjoying the game, and developing my characters to survive in the dungeon. I will finish the game with no problem. I will enjoy every minute of it. And if you can do that , the GAME is a success. People like you have forgotten that fun is why we play games. Bad game design..what an idiot.

I would hope the developers are smart enough to not turn this into another iteration of modern gaming. The fact that they went old school is why this game is so popular. I am confident that they will totally ignore the stat geeks.

The stuff you say is just random bullshit about enjoying the game. Enjoy the game... go on. No one tells you not to enjoy it.
What this has to do with the problem at hand I dont know. The way you experience fun has nothing to do with the way other people experience fun. And believing that your way of having fun equals the way other people have fun is just totally naive.


The more I read your posts, the more I guess you just cant stand having someone oppose your opinion, cause all you say is blabla and nonsense that is not related to the problem. All you can say is "what an idiot"... what an accomplishment...

I pointed out why its not about stats, but about consistency, easy grasp of rulesets and player expectation due to observation.

Just get your neurosis under control, and respect the opinion of other people, especially when it is well reasoned.
You are entitled to your "rules are irrelevant and I just click something to enjoy the game" opinion as much as others are entitled to say the system is punishing and disinformative, promoting unvoluntarily chosen disadvantage due to lack of knowlegde and lack of consistency.

[Spathi]

I have not read the thread much, but there is nothing wrong with Vitality. If changes such as the OP proposed were pumped into the game u just have yet another console game by the end.

1. get it early get the bonus
2. old school fighting fantasy had the same feel... who never rerolled once in a while in the books if you played them? Put your hand up, lol.
it was insignificant in this game anyway, if I happened to reload for whatever reason before I skilled up, I only had half an eye on health.. if it went up more or less the second time, I did not care at all.

I chose all skills based on Vitality for Minotaur, the fighter was not as effected so I started gunning Vitality a few levels later. It forces you to play in character is all.


That said another solution which would keep flavor in the game might be to let people pick from a set of meaningful skill lines per skill at the start (while assigning the first level up) rather than just one skill line.

This way you could preference strength or dexterity etc for sword play, range weapons or whatever, as well as putting Vitality onto your chosen skill tree (assuming it still made sense) at the expense of something you wanted later in another skill line you want to use later (assuming it still made sense in that as well). I would not put dexterity heavily in maces for instance... it would still have to make sense and have a balance.

Actually I really like their system, it forces you not to max out one stat then another.. which usually happens in the console games. At the same time it does preference pushing your barbarian style fighter towards Vitality and the knight style fighter to heavy armor.

[Ethos]

Vitality and Willpower as implemented in LoG is flawed. Instead of being a level-up modifier(+(VIT/2 -10) * 1HP on level up) Vitality should give a health bonus based on a level multiplier((VIT/2-10) *LEVEL)+((VIT-10) *2.5)) rounded down.

As it is now you can give items with bonuses to vitality and willpower to characters that are about to level up so they gain additional health and energy permanently even after you remove these items. This seems more cheesy/unintended to me than if they had been backwards compatible. Instead of allowing individual characters to gain health and energy retroactively from vitality and willpower respectively we currently can give bonus health and energy to ALL of our characters on EACH level up because of the one-time calculations upon level up.

Vitality and Willpower both should be changed to use character level as a multiplier and not themselves as a modifier on level ups. Not only would this make later statistical skill bonuses much more useful and valued it would prevent the abuse of item tossing to gain permanent health and energy bonuses. Even one of the first armor items your characters come across gives -1 willpower that can permanently reduce your character's energy. It just doesn't make sense game wise or logic wise that using an item temporarily can permanently gimp you.

The calculation used now also limits custom made content of spells, potions, and items that modify the Vitality and Willpower values. Any items, potions, or spells that gives bonuses or reductions to these two statistics will all be able to be abused on level-ups. Please consider changing the way that these values are calculated.

[amnnor]

Given the following situation:

The player is near the end of the game, around dungeon level 10+. He is about to level up for the last one or two times. Player's thought: I am going to face the endboss soon, and my tank is dying too quickly. I will raise VIT.

Player's expectation: This will have an impact on the survival of his tank.

Player's assumption: The game will not offer me a totally worthless character development option.

Player's actual experience: Character will not take much more of a beating than before.


Problems:
-No clear communication about this mechanic to the player (except for a tooltip) and no guidance by the game to raise player awareness about making a very bad choice (Usability / Accessibilty Issue = Bad
gamedesign).

-VIT is incosistent with other skills. Expectation are created by observing the other skills and applying that logic to VIT. A consistent system would raise attack value and damage value per level up, dependend on DEX respectively STR. (Incosistencies need to be explicitely pointed out = Bad gamedesign).

-In the lategame the player could maneuver himself into a frustrating game experience (loosing, facing a very harsh difficulty) not by having made bad choices, but by lack of knowledge and confusing incosistencies (Bad gamedesign).

-

I don't agree that the player would expect a major increase in HP by changing an attribute at the end of a game. Why would they be expecting a 100 pt (for example) HP increase versus what they had been getting 8-10 say on previous level ups.

The player assumption you give, I would say is invalid due to context. Near the end of the game one should not expect a decision on attribute placement to have a larger effect then all they're previous choices combined.

There maybe poor communication in game on the effects, but that is likely due to expectations of the player.

I would say this mechanic does not make vitality less consistent than strength or dexterity. A change in the later only gives a small increase in attack power, to hit, and evasion. This is the same benefit vitality gives at level up.

[Halk]

Without a retrospective increase in hps a late game increase in vitality would do virtually nothing. With a retrospective increase it would have a minor effect. Stats like str or dex which would affect chance to hit or damage would have the same effect as a retrospective vitality increase.