Stitch on 19/4/2012 at 14:38
It's a bit more difficult to enforce in an open-ended game like Skyrim or Morrowind, but I do think that having a finite amount of advancement realistically possible could discourage "masters of all" in a truly classless game. Level up a plethora of skills via use, fine, but don't expect to achieve great heights in anything unless you focus a bit.
Kind of like life.
But not at all like Grimrock, a game in which such a system would have actually worked incredibly well. I fall increasingly in love with Grimrock with each deeper level of dungeon, but I do think that the game's strictly class-based leveling system isn't one of its strengths.
Koki on 19/4/2012 at 14:52
Quote Posted by DDL
I personally still think SOME class restriction is good, just because it adds variety to a system that is otherwise likely to produce a lot of homegeneity: so something like, say...guild wars, where every skill was availble to every class, so you
could be a warrior with straight necro skills if you wanted, but a necro would always be
better at utilising those skills.
So you could still have your barbarian mages, but they'd be outmatched by actual dedicated mages in anything not involving muscle.
Or maybe that's how DM works? I never played it when I was younger.
You can play it now.
I think the Chaos Strikes Back changes it for some skills in that they only work if you actually do damage with them. I remember you could stand in an empty room swinging a sword and gain Fighter levels in vanilla DM, something that doesn't seem to work anymore in CSB. Throwing a scroll at a closed door 9000 times still works though, as does casting spells that don't do damage(like light, or create stamina potion for some extra throwing).
But even in the original DM the limit you're talking about was implemented simply by the XP tables*. The XP required to get a new level doubles every time, so it quickly reaches really really high values. If you're playing with a four-person party and don't grind you can consider it a success if you reach a Master level in Fighter/Ninja/Mage/Priest on any char, and there are six different levels of "Master" with Archmaster ON TOP OF THAT AND it doesn't stop there because (*) the game doesn't use a table but just a simple "double" alghoritm to calculate the XP requirements. Theoretically it would go on forever.
Bottom line is, it's easy to be a mediocre or even devent at everything, but to be a real Master/Archmaster would take idiotic amounts of time or some sort of cheating/exploit. So a fighter/mage who played same amount of time as a pure fighter or a pure mage would be worse than both at the respective roles.
Jason Moyer on 23/4/2012 at 01:20
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
I'm sure someone's tried it, but has anyone made a character with the name of the guy who solo'd the dungeon before your party got there? You find his notes scattered around, and there's a reference to him watermarked on the graph paper that came with the manual. It seems like there should be some sort of significance to that guy, and using that name to play solo would be what I would have done as the devteam.
So yeah, apparently ^^^^^ but it only works after you receive a particular achievement.
(http://www.gamebanshee.com/legendofgrimrock/walkthrough/toorummode.php) http://www.gamebanshee.com/legendofgrimrock/walkthrough/toorummode.phpStitch on 23/4/2012 at 19:23
And so after a good sixteen hours of in-game dungeon navigation (and 24 or so according to Steam--apparently I'm one reload-happy sonofabitch) I have managed to plumb the lowest depths of Grimrock, and then climb back up a couple of levels, and then head back down again before heading back up and then down. Anyway, bottom line: I've bested (huge spoiler) the giant mechanical cube of evil.
More about that spoiler: yes, that's right: a game with thirteen levels of dinosaurs and ogres and squid-faced monks has an end boss that is a giant mechanical cube of evil. Complete with gears. That you have to remove in order to beat him.
You remove gears from a mechanical cube.
Anyway, wtflol end boss aside--and even that sorta kinda makes sideways sense in a way--Grimrock easily lived up to my heightened expectations. It satisfies that ol' Dungeon Master craving while still forging its own unique identity, and it provided (mild spoiler) thirteen excellent level of solid dungeoneering.
Yes, the magic system is kind of shitty, and yes, the game lacks compelling upper level character development, and yes, the end boss is a giant mechanical cube of evil, but Grimrock is still an incredibly fun entry in a long-dormant genre, and it easily ranks up there among its better peers.
It has also apparently been an overwhelming financial success, which is both well-earned and something of a guarantee that Almost Human will be following up Grimrock with more. But where can they go from here?
Most successful sequels, I think, tend to expand upon the strengths of the predecessor and generally take things to a new level while staying true to the franchise. Some growth is generally desired, or else a sequel can be little more than more of the same. But how feasible is growth in a franchise that hinges on its defining characteristic of purposeful primitivism?
242 on 23/4/2012 at 23:55
It somehow reminded me of Arx Fatalis, especially inventory ;)
Excellent game, I'm actually surprised it's that enjoyable, really hard to put it down once you start to play it. It's long, its levels are large, but strangely it doesn't bore even though the environment looks the same, probably because it's really challenging (on hard it's really REALLY challenging), combat is fun, and it has lots of varied puzzles, secrets, and stuff.
Quote:
I find managing food to be a much bigger pain in the ass than the torches, which I have a massive stockpile of.
Same here. I've just started the 5th level and I see that my initially large stock dwindles fast, I guess I'll end up with mo foodby the time I'll start 7th or 8th level, maybe even sooner. As for the second problem - torches (which also eventually started to dwindle), luckily I've just found a solution: [SPOILER]I found a scroll with Magic Light spell. [/SPOILER]
Stitch on 24/4/2012 at 16:19
On food:
I played the game reasonably conservatively when it came to food consumption--I saved before major puzzles and would reload if figuring them out took too long (like, say fifteen minutes or more), and I would sometimes use the crystals for replenishing health and energy in lieu of just sleeping, but food never really became an issue (to the point that at the end I had quite the pantry overflow).
Minor spoiler that doesn't really spoil much but will address some food concerns, too: level six contains a respawing snail room that can be farmed for an endless supply of food, and a common food-dropping endgame monster starts appearing on level nine.
Seriously, those spoilers almost aren't even spoilers.
Renzatic on 25/4/2012 at 02:11
And yet more on the subject of food:
I HAVE ACQUIRED THE BLUEBERRY PIE!
Koki on 25/4/2012 at 16:44
This is me playing Grimrock:
1. Turn on the game
2. Custom party
3. No Priest class
4. Uninstall
Renzatic on 25/4/2012 at 17:05
This is me playing Grimrock:
1. Work myself into a mindset to hate the game.
2. Bitch about it on an internet forum.
3. Buy it and/or pirate it, so you can say you "gave it a chance" on said internet forum
4. Find arbitrary reason to hate the game.
5. Uninstall
Seriously, this game sucks. I absolutely loathe any class based RPG, especially when it doesn't even have the class I want to play as.
Koki on 25/4/2012 at 17:40
Copy Dungeon Master - that's all they had to do. It isn't hard. And they fucking failed at it. Not only they introduced classes, they couldn't even make FOUR in a game which FORCES you to play with FOUR party members based on a game with FOUR classes in it.
But hey, who cares right? This is an indie developer and they made an oldschool type game so they couldn't possibly get it wrong. After all, small devs are all cool and great just like all big devs are all evil and bad.
