Food and Puzzles don't mix

[Dr.Disaster]

Fun to read the excuses you say to yourself to help lessen how much you cry before going to sleep at night. Love it, I'm adding that to my sig later. haha

"Beware! The wrath of Azel is upon us!"

[Dr.Disaster]

I would just hope that they still designed and balanced the game around the system, since it's part of the core experience they are trying to provide.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Care to explain that a bit more in detail?

Food usage is about 4000 steps from fully fed to starving which takes about 22-23 minutes of nonstop walking.
Food is used to keep health and energy regeneration running and weapon damage at full.
Starving characters do not regen health or energy and deal only halved damage with weapons.

[Rithrin]

I would just hope that they still designed and balanced the game around the system, since it's part of the core experience they are trying to provide.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Care to explain that a bit more in detail?

Food usage is about 4000 steps from fully fed to starving which takes about 22-23 minutes of nonstop walking.
Food is used to keep health and energy regeneration running and weapon damage at full.
Starving characters do not regen health or energy and deal only halved damage with weapons.

That's part of what I'm talking about, sure, but that's just the consequences of running out of food.

Having food and hunger makes the player take many things into consideration when planning his adventuring day. Food both takes up space and has weight. Obviously, if you want to have a party operating at its full potential, you must have enough food to at least keep their hunger bars out of the red zone.

As en example, you grab a crate and load up on food. Uh oh, none of your characters can carry the crate without being encumbered. Being encumbered will hamper your party by making it harder to avoid attacks, causing you to expend your potion reserves, and possibly making it impossible to complete certain timed puzzles or doors. Alright, so I've been carrying around these Frost Bombs in case I get surrounded somehow, but if I leave them in the Hub then I can carry that crate of food. Problem solved. But, an hour later into a dungeon, I've been teleported into an ambush with three snakes and 2 medusae around me. My food crate remains mostly full - it seems I overestimated how much I needed - and offer no help against this ambush. Too bad I dropped the bombs to make room for the food. Game over. Poof, I'm back at the last crystal I touched.

Some people may run full Minotaur parties and have no problem with weight management, but I spent a large portion of my game simply trying to allow all my characters to hold what they needed without becoming encumbered. At one point, my Knight (even with the armor weight reduction!) could only hold his armor, shield, weapon, and small bag with some potions. If he picked anything up in a dungeon, he became encumbered. Even with 20+ Strength, I had to get him 3 levels in Athletics to hold swap items.

Another example, you are exploring a dungeon and have discovered that your party members are all in the yellow hunger zone and only have 4 food items remaining. You consider that you should return to the Hub to restock. However, you also realize that it will take probably a good 15 minutes to get back to the hub, will have consumed the 4 pieces of food you have remaining, will likely have to eat more food for the return journey, and might even then be low on the reserve food you keep in the Hub which would prompt another prolonged foraging expedition. Instead, despite the dangers of exploring without food, you decide to continue onward. You've been down here for days, after all, how much more could there be? Your party chomps down the last 4 sausages you brought and heads down the staircase. After some time, it's dark and you step on a pressure plate which closes the door behind you. You can reopen it with a key, but must defeat a powerful creature. He's tough, you have to retreat mid fight, and have found a ladder to climb or a secret room to hide in. Just need to wait for the Mage's Energy to regenerate. Wait a minute, he's not regenerating. Yep, the last bits of food you ate a while ago wore off already, and he's starving. Maybe that's why the boss was so hard to defeat, everyone was doing half damage. You chug your last Energy potion and step out to face the boss. Say hello to the loading screen and the last crystal.

When I speak of "balancing" the game for food usage, this is what I speak of. For instance, you'll notice that non-renewable food sources have the best satiation per unit of weight ratio. The renewable ones, like the Silver Roaches which respawn in the secret sewer room, have approximately 0.3 Satiation (of the whole hunger bar) and weigh 1.0 kg. Compare that to bread, which has a fixed supply in the entire game, and has 0.5 Satiation / 1.0 kg - almost twice as efficient! Warg meat, another "renewable" (though a bit dangerous to hunt) food has the same satiation value as bread, but weighs 50% more! The developers obviously did not want players to completely run out of food in the game, seeing as some food respawns with specific triggers, but they also wanted to incentivize intelligent rationing of food. If you are wasteful with your food use, or rely too heavily on the renewable food, you either have to sacrifice other useful items to make room for them or sacrifice your time by making arduous and time consuming trips back and forth to the sewers or Hamlet.

This is aspect of the game is what prompted me to, out of necessity, create a system where I held a lightweight bag full of enough lightweight and highly efficient food (Smoked Salmon, those little mushroom Caps, other things that I've forgotten the name of now...) which I only intended to use in an emergency, and then also had a crate full of exactly how much heavy, inefficient, renewable food I thought I would need for my next journey. If I was somehow unavoidably delayed and forced to use all of my renewable food, I could fall back and eat the lightweight, efficient food. Then in the hub, I just had crates filled with all the food I could scrounge up in the my journeys without weighing me down during my adventures. It worked, but it required planning and some accurate forecasting.

If there was no food, I wouldn't have had this interesting experience. And, if the developers hadn't put so much thought into the renewable vs non-renewable food system, this experience wouldn't have been as fun. So, if they decide to give an option of enabling/disabling food, I would hope that they base the creation of their game off considerations of the above examples rather than creating a run of the mill RPG, then allowing a "food mode" to be slapped on without the proper considerations and balance.

[Anurias]

So what does a master puzzle solver like yourself use to beat Grimrock 2? In terms of the character class selection, what was your final build? I stuck to my Walking Dead Party (Mino Barb, Mino Alchemist, Lizard Alchemist, Rat Farmer).

I ended up playing through 3 times to get all the achievements since my first play through was on normal so I couldn't get the hard mode achievement on that run and I had no desire to do insane ironman on my first run and no desire to do it on hard mode, so getting that one needed a 3rd run on easy. But, my first party was a Minotaur Knight, a lizard rogue, an insect battle mage, and a ratling alchemist. I know that for really maximizing things a party like 4 alchemists would be ideal since they'd be swimming in stat potions and whatnot, but that seemed less fun than playing with actual classes.

When I did my hard mode run I swapped the rogue out for a farmer because I needed to level one to 10 for the achievement, and when I did the insane ironman run on easy I took a minotaur barbarian, insect battle mage, ratling alchemist, and lizard alchemist just to mess around. My ideal party so far is still the set up I had for my first run, I just enjoy the composition.

[Azel]

I think adding the option to disable food could be a decent solution. It's admittedly too easy to think of something as "either this or that", but situations that allow for player options are generally best. If anyone has played the latest addition to the Thief series of games, you'll remember that they had a very customizable difficulty setting screen, allowing you to set option rules for yourself like "Game over if ever spotted", "Game over if lethal force is used", etc. Not all of them make for the most enjoyable playthroughs, as the game was still designed for a certain combination of settings, but allowed people who preferred different experiences to at least try them out.

So if the developers want to add a food check box, I'm all for it. I would just hope that they still designed and balanced the game around the system, since it's part of the core experience they are trying to provide.

Badass analogy dude. I still own the original Thief games in their original packaging (you might hear me say that from time to time because I tend to collect original game releases for what I consider to be classics and legends).

I absolutely love the original Thief series - but I hate when it went to console and ruined the franchise with cheese factors, like auto-respawning guards with overly repetitive AI patterns. It's because of the original Thief games that I became obsessed with PC graphic cards (I needed to see the full animation from effects like Flame Arrow). But I digress.

Maybe if in Grimrock eating Food somehow added a boost to the game instead of penalizing via starvation there would be a reasonable compromise. Die hard dungeon crawl fans can keep food handy to give them a ++ bonus to attack and health, while RPG/Adventure fans like myself can abandon food at times in order to focus on puzzles and riddles. Then the game Option would be to make food "necessary" where a party member can actually die if you go too long without feeding them while under the Starvation status. Thus, in "normal" mode food gives temporary attribute bonuses, and in "hard mode" ... you eat to live.

Just a thought

[Azel]

So what does a master puzzle solver like yourself use to beat Grimrock 2? In terms of the character class selection, what was your final build? I stuck to my Walking Dead Party (Mino Barb, Mino Alchemist, Lizard Alchemist, Rat Farmer).

I ended up playing through 3 times to get all the achievements since my first play through was on normal so I couldn't get the hard mode achievement on that run and I had no desire to do insane ironman on my first run and no desire to do it on hard mode, so getting that one needed a 3rd run on easy. But, my first party was a Minotaur Knight, a lizard rogue, an insect battle mage, and a ratling alchemist. I know that for really maximizing things a party like 4 alchemists would be ideal since they'd be swimming in stat potions and whatnot, but that seemed less fun than playing with actual classes.

When I did my hard mode run I swapped the rogue out for a farmer because I needed to level one to 10 for the achievement, and when I did the insane ironman run on easy I took a minotaur barbarian, insect battle mage, ratling alchemist, and lizard alchemist just to mess around. My ideal party so far is still the set up I had for my first run, I just enjoy the composition.

Nice. I really am hoping for an LoG 2 patch that helps "fix" the Fighter and Knight so that they are much more viable options than the Barb/Alchemist classes - who currently have a monopoly on the game. Wizards too, they should do something to give them a damage boost so that in the end-game magic is more effective and sought after. Doesn't seem right that my Farmer can cast electricity with as much damage as a pure Wizard

[Dr.Disaster]

This is aspect of the game is what prompted me to, out of necessity, create a system where I held a lightweight bag full of enough lightweight and highly efficient food (Smoked Salmon, those little mushroom Caps, other things that I've forgotten the name of now...) which I only intended to use in an emergency, and then also had a crate full of exactly how much heavy, inefficient, renewable food I thought I would need for my next journey. If I was somehow unavoidably delayed and forced to use all of my renewable food, I could fall back and eat the lightweight, efficient food. Then in the hub, I just had crates filled with all the food I could scrounge up in the my journeys without weighing me down during my adventures. It worked, but it required planning and some accurate forecasting.

Basically this is how a Pen'n'Paper RPG roleplaying session progresses: the dungeon master gives the players the situation/quest, the players gather gear and provisions according to their characters abilities, then the party travels. Along the way time passes, encounters are made, provision get used and so on. Of course this can be be done in very different stages of detail and depth.

By replacing the dungeon master as a person with the computer you get a real-time roleplaying game. Actions influence your world and this includes your need for food. Just walked and rested? Consumption is low. Worked out a lot i.e. by conquering an ork encampment you heard stories about? Comsumption is high. Matching the need for food with what you can carry along is just the next logical step; shall i pick this stack of fruit or that fresh-hunted warg carcass? Most likely you carry a mix with the heaviest food being consumed first.

If there was no food, I wouldn't have had this interesting experience. And, if the developers hadn't put so much thought into the renewable vs non-renewable food system, this experience wouldn't have been as fun. So, if they decide to give an option of enabling/disabling food, I would hope that they base the creation of their game off considerations of the above examples rather than creating a run of the mill RPG, then allowing a "food mode" to be slapped on without the proper considerations and balance.

In fact AH did improve the food system over what was in LoG1. Which influences food has stayed the same but now we have more variety, more regrowth and more informations: the nutrition value was not shown in LoG1; you had to go try'n'error.

SpoilerShow

We now even have hidden race specific treats which is just the kind of litte detail RPG players love to discover.

Looking at their work done and it's background it seems pretty unlikely AH would consider the food system to become optional.

[Thorham]

The game is fine the way it is. If the developers changed everything that people wanted changed, then it would become a different game.

I don't like that petrified characters don't gain experience. So what? I don't like that you can't cast potions into potion bottles like in Dungeon Master. So what? I don't like that you can't swim. So what? I don't like that you need special weapons to fight under water. So what?

There will always be things that people don't like, and the developers simply can't cater to everyone's wishes. Don't like something? So what? If it doesn't ruin the game for you, then who cares? If it does, then go play something else.

[Azel]

The game is fine the way it is. If the developers changed everything that people wanted changed, then it would become a different game.[

Grimrock 1 was also "fine the way it is" yet the developers made changes people wanted, such as more character classes, weapon and armor selections, more intriguing puzzles, and more intuitive monster AI. The developers also turned Grimrock 2 in to a different game by leaving the pure "dungeon" and taking players above ground in to an open world. There are complaints from die-hard dungeon crawl fans about the fact that LoG 2 has less of an epic dungeon feel and more of an open world experience; yet the change happened anyway.

If the developers took your advice - hell if anyone took your advice - then nothing would ever evolve. Remaining stagnant might work for you, but not for everyone else, including the developers. Besides, it's not an expectation that the developers change "everything" ... the idea is for developers to receive as much feedback as possible and decide amongst themselves what should be considered vs discarded. Whereas your suggestion eliminates that lovely process altogether. A bit absurd, but also unrealistic. The evolution of Grimrock 1 to Grimrock 2 is a fine example of how evolution can work - and it contradicts your silly attempt at promoting lack of growth.

I don't like that petrified characters don't gain experience. So what? I don't like that you can't cast potions into potion bottles like in Dungeon Master. So what? I don't like that you can't swim. So what? I don't like that you need special weapons to fight under water. So what?

Correct, who cares what Thorham thinks? Thorham doesn't like when people make suggestions about Grimrock, so what? Thorham thinks it's bad to complain on a forum, so what? Thorham wants someone to read his reply in this thread and take it seriously, so what?

There will always be things that people don't like, and the developers simply can't cater to everyone's wishes. Don't like something? So what? If it doesn't ruin the game for you, then who cares? If it does, then go play something else.

This thread is less about addressing something "people don't like" and more about addressing something "people like a lot." This thread is about promoting how strongly puzzle solving has evolved in Grimrock - you know, since the dev's evolved it in comparison to the last game. If you don't like what you're reading, then who cares? Go read something else. And if you don't like evolution, then you shouldn't have played Grimrock 2.

The only point I agree with you on is that no one should care what you think.

[Batty]

Is this thread an homage to 90's Internet?

Can someone make the experience complete and post a .jpeg that takes 3 minutes to load while I get my 56K modem out of the closet?