Grimrock

Ok, so I found out about this game a day or two ago and pre-ordered the thing today, so I haven't been in the loop long enough to have found an answer to this question even if it's been addressed already, but...

One of the things that I liked so much about the old DnD based games -- EoB, et. al., but also other games based on those rules -- was the consistency and progression of the leveling. Abilities/spells that might be beyond the level cap (hard or soft) might still see use in the game, either as single use scrolls or merely by virtue of a boss-type creature using those abilities on you. This kind of consistency, lacking for the most part in modern games (partly, I feel, due to the sheer complexity of them), really gave my low level n00b characters something to work toward, as well as lent the setting a sense of credibility.

I'm hoping that 1) LoG does well enough to warrant a sequel, and 2) that if a sequel is planned, it will pick up where LoG leaves off -- perhaps even with the same group of characters so that we can take them even further -- and offer something of that sorely-missed sense of a setting that's not confined to the whim of the game in which it appears and that will be retconned at the drop of a hat.

that's my hope for LoG, but... has there been any thought given to this issue at all? Will LoG have a character progression system that doesn't drive players from noob-farmer to godling by the end credits, and thus gives 1) more powerful enemies room to exist consistently withing the rules of the setting, and 2) the player room to grow their characters beyond the scope of what just one game allows?

Either way, congrats on the game. Am definitely looking forward to playing it.

Hello Magnum Opus, glad you like the game.

That was indeed vague... but it was well written, so +1 for that. I will do my best to address your concerns.

Just so you know, there was another thread about sequels. Unfortunately nothing final was declared there. However, it would be nice to be able to import your old party to the next game in the series, kind of like in Mass Effect. It is known that there exists an entire world map dedicated to this game, but sources say that it was made purely for flavour. We can speculate whether or not this is true or false, as a sequel with a larger budget would surely encompass a larger game area than the first game.

Summary about the progression given by one of the developers:

juho wrote:First levels are pretty easy and the difficulty both in puzzles and monsters ramp up steadily.

The strength of your party is most likely proportional to the strength of your enemies, so therefore the game will have a steady learning curve. Not to forget the difficulty settings, which are easy, medium and hard, I believe. Medium is said to be close to what is called "hard" in most modern games. I predict that easy is a difficulty which does not require you to know how to build the ultimate party, while medium and hard are difficulties more aimed towards players who have previous experiences with dungeon crawler games. Even if the growth in strength is steady, it is uncertain when the breakpoint of godhood is reached, so to say.
"Growing beyond the scope of the game" would mean something like "breaking the game statistically", I take it? Like reaching a point where the game no longer proves to be challenging? It was said in another thread that there is a cap in skills, but not in levels. However, levels merit you nothing after maxing out all the skills, so it's rather controversial whether or not you can "grow beyond the scope" using this method.

I hope that answered your questions, but if not, just let me know and I will try again.

Thanks for the reply. And I'm sorry for the vagueness of the question . I'm referring to fairly nebulous design goals rather than anything specific, so it sort of has to be vague. Will try to provide a few examples for reference, though.

I suppose what it really boils down to is my view that Rules (ie. X skill points that can be allocated at level up, Y powers/spells that you have available to you as you gain XP in the game) are in themselves a form of storytelling... or at least, they can be a form of storytelling. They tell a story in the sense that they are what defines your character's personal growth in whatever ways they have of interacting with the world in which the game takes place. Level 0 in DnD is Joe Commoner, Dirt Farmer. Level 1 is Adventurer... someone with an already above-average level of combat skill (combat being the only real way of interacting with your environment in DnD computer games to date) Level 9 is an experienced veteran character, and level 20 denotes someone at the absolute apex of their craft (barring Epic Levels n' such.)

But, in order for the storytelling aspect of those rules to work as such, they need to be consistent. An enemy human fighter should follow the same rules that my party-NPC human fighter does (ie. no "special powers" that only that enemy has -- and there's a bit I could write about that in itself, but will mercifully spare you the agony). A level 6 mage that squares off against a level 12 mage should be at a distinct disadvantage, to the point where defeat is almost inevitable given the specifics of the DnD rules.

So, when I refer to "growing beyond the scope of the game", all I'm really referring to is the scenario where you've got a DnD-like set of rules, encompassing everything from Utter N00b to Demigod-In-Waiting on the power continuum of the setting in question (what's more powerful than a god?), BUT where only a portion of those rules are actually available to players in the game (the first game in a series). Instead of ramping up a N00b to godling in that first game, cap them at a middling level of competency. Then, when the sequel arrives, keep them going for another chunk of the rules system, incorporating what was already there and expanding upon it, instead of starting over from scratch with a new character (or a rebuilt character, in the case of the Mass Effect series).

From my perspective, there are a couple benefits to doing something like this.

1) Consistency. The world-building aspect of the RPG is preserved across the board when you DON'T have characters popping up that don't fit any mold. The storytelling aspect of rules, in other words. There's more to the world than JUST what we're able to achieve personally in the game.... as there always is in any world... but what's out there is still part of that world, too. But its also about carrying the past forward to make the present seem more "real". At the end of EoB3, my party still had the same +5 longsword they found in the Underdark levels of EoB1. I look at that sword and I think: "we've had some good times, haven't we?" It's a tangible reminder of previous adventures, of a history that was actually experienced, instead of merely read in a book. Similarly, my characters have literally been My Characters longer, if I've used them in more than one game. We've come a long way, baby...

2) The problem of coming up with challenging enemies for the player to fight when the player is already a god and can stomp on angels and demons alike. Look at your player's level, and then choose an enemy type from a section of the rules that the player can't quite achieve. In Gold Box terms, that would be the Golden Warrior in Secret of the Silver Blades. Still a legitimate character according to the DnD rules, but as a fighter he was of a level higher than anything we as player characters could achieve in that game. As a result... challenge.

3) Marketing. By showing me that a level 12 mage can cast a Death spell in the game, and by capping my mage at level 7, and then turning around and telling me that the next game in the series will let me get up to level 14... hell, it's a case of Showing Is Better Than Telling. If I want to get that Death Spell, see what it can really do (against the enemy, instead of just against my group of low level adventurers), I'll be looking forward to the next game in the series. This can apply with spells, or with items, or with enemies... Just as a few rumours dropped from a wandering NPC can foreshadow the things to come in the next game in a series, so too can little glimpses of items or skills or monsters provide the same sense of foreshadowing.,,, but only if the rules remain consistent. And that can be a fairly interesting and subtle incentive for the next game in the series, I find.

Am just wondering whether LoG has looked at this sort of thing, or (if not) whether it might still be able to look at it, regarding any sequel. About the only way it absolutely WOULDN'T work is if Grimrock itself ends with our heroes becoming gods themselves and/or otherwise retiring.

Ultimately (despite the length of my rambling on the subject) it's not a huge consideration for a dungeon crawler like LoG. It's just something I'm curious about.

Magnum Opus wrote:At the end of EoB3, my party still had the same +5 longsword they found in the Underdark levels of EoB1. I look at that sword and I think: "we've had some good times, haven't we?"

Isn't that the perfect example of where the game capped out at "godhood", giving you better equipment then you'd find right until the end of EOB3 halfway through the first game? That sword and the halberd could even be thought of as game-breakingly good in the 2nd and 3rd installment - they completely failed to balance equipment across the three games.

Those musings kinda remind me of this 'episodic' rpg concept I've been thinking of for couple decades.. Basically you have to expect that players hit the level cap on every episode - if not, just increase the level at the start of each episode (as time is expected to have passed between episodes anyway)...

As to your question, what's more powerful than a god, the answer is pretty obvious: DM

Im ALL UP for party transfers between dlc/sequals like they did in Eye1 ... it gives so much replayability and motivation when replaying to get that perfect party out of Eye1 to go on to Eye2 to go on to Eye3 ... yes there were some item balancing issues especially with some items in Eye1 ... but that can be done better these days

Most of the item balancing stuff can be explained through the passage of time.

Our hero has rent to pay, and the evil forces have been dead for a while, so why not sell that mystic halberd of fiery paralysis +23 - it's not like it would come in handy in the new profession of waiting tables..

My use of the term "godhood" in these posts is twofold: it refers to a situation where BOTH 1) there's no challenge left to the game, and 2) there's literally no room for the character left to grow within the power structure of the setting as a whole.

While it's true that in EoB, +5 was the highest enchantment level a weapon could attain, it was not true the having a +5 longsword (or any other weapon, for that matter) in the game disrupted the balance of the gameplay to such a degree that I would categorize it as "broken". Still had to maneuver through the corridors, time my attacks, dodge incoming strikes, still had to watch out for a swarm of kenku blasting me with magic missiles, still had to watch out for Mind flayers, and Xorn, and golems... basically, you did a couple extra points of damage per swing. Nice to have, certainly, but not a game breaker... not from a game PLAY perspective.

You ARE right, though. Finding that sword that early in the series did break things from a game design perspective. Once you found that longsword, if the longsword was your favourite weapon, there was no reason to ever change it, and that made all other longswords redundant. I still liked finding other longswords, mind you, but that enjoyment stemmed from my PackRat tendencies more than any sort of utility factor.

'course, it's another quirk of mine that I'll forbear using the best equipment (statistically speaking) if I find another, less powerful piece of equipment that I "value" more. I went, for instance, to some length to transfer one "Longsword +2, Varscona" into BG2 from BG1, despite there being more powerful swords readily available in BG2. I did that because I valued the history of that sword -- the time I spent with it in BG1 -- more than I did the minimal bonuses the other +2 or even +3 swords in BG2 offered. I also liked its icon.

I guess it really depends on perspective, and on what you value most. If you're looking to maximize bonuses and power, then you're 100% right. If you place greater weight on other things, then maybe the game design wasn't quite so broken. I know that the +4 longsword "talon" in EoB2 was one that I used in EoB2 for a while DESPITE already having that +5, precisely because that sword's story (in EOB2) meant more to me than the prior game's nostalgia factor surrounding the +5. Building that sword in that game, blade, gem, and hilt... that was cool. HAD to use that sword for a while. How could I not? The game was still as challenging as before, but this new +4 sword had a neat new icon, it had a name attached to it (the "severious" tag got dropped from Eob1 to subsequent games, and it was just a "Longsword +5" (which is itself a minor matter of consistency.))... it was just a cool sword.


Damn, I really gotta trim these posts down...

Sol_HSA wrote: As to your question, what's more powerful than a god, the answer is pretty obvious: DM

GAH! fourth wall! Fourth wall!!

*head explodes*

Okay, I think I get it now... it's painfully obvious that you are an enthusiastic DnD player. Nothing wrong with that. Very nice. But LoG uses a ruleset designed purely for its own system. So I think there has to be a clear distinction. A line drawn on the floor. Importing your characters at max level with all their equipment from the previous game would break the balance.

Also, I agree that you should seriously consider trimming your posts. They are getting out of hand. If you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough. Everything in this world, at its core, is simple. It is up to you how complex you want to make them. Perhaps that is why your questions were so vague.

So you could just ask whether or not is it possible to import your party from the first game to the next. It would be nice, just without the levels and gear, but perhaps with some cosmetic items your characters picked from the dungeon to make them sort of authentic survivors.
Time is indeed a good explanation. The prisoners got out, presumably sold their equipment, or stored them in some old container, and returned to whatever they were doing before. And then the sequel was released. Call to arms, so to say. The group got together again, and defeated whatever evil rose upon the land.