![]() ![]() Its one of the biggest reasons I have no interest in Pathfinder:Kingmaker. It makes roleplaying easier if you don't have to worry about screwing yourself over becaue the concept you want to play simply doesn't work. It just more often than not, to me, has the chance of alienating a player when these options are supposed to do the opposite.Every build being viable is pretty ESSENTIAL for an RPG. ![]() What the options are originally set to is obviously going to be your "intended" experience for me. I'm not saying there shouldn't be an obvious default or presets, I'm saying you should just explain the options' purpose and what they change. Celeste's original language was a rare misstep for the people who put that game together and I really liked the change they made. This is actually the off the top of my head the example I was referring to. If you have a preset called "normal" (or more blatantly, in the example above, "intended difficulty") then I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that people understand that's the intended experience for able/skilled players. ![]() It has absolutely nothing to do with genuinely just finding it kinda pretentious to add and offer tons of accessibility or difficulty options and then actively discourage using them or create a scenario where the player is made to feel less rewarded for doing so. Oh, silly me, you're right, that's definitely what it is. Immersion and difficulty are loosely related and I don't think that they should be married. Limited saves and bullet sponge enemies do not add depth to a game. There's a way to implement these mechanics into games without making them feel like a chore and when they are implemented well it can add a ton of depth to the experience. I know that this probably isn't a big issue for most people but it has been on my mind a lot over the years. Would people complain as much as they do about weapon durability in Breath of the Wild if your weapons lasted five times longer and you had the ability to repair them at a blacksmith? Would people despise eating and drinking in survival games if you only needed to do so every couple of hours rather than minutes? That's a whole other topic of discussion I suppose. I think a big stigma when it comes to these kind of mechanics stems from the way they have been implemented. And you know what? A better implementation could be found in Skyrim: Special Edition (although the "creation club" thing is a whole other can of worms). The same issue afflicted Fallout 4 as well. I just feel like the developers are locking a substantial amount of depth behind an unnecessary wall. I get that and that's why I think that making them optional is a good thing. I know that a lot of people find these mechanics to be annoying. Giving enemies extra health while also making them deal massive damage to me? That completely contradicts the idea of more immersion. ![]() Stripping away my ability to save the game whenever I want? That actually detracts from the experience. Taking care of your equipment becomes a necessity. Items that were relatively useless before now have added value. Finding food or beds in the open world becomes much more rewarding. I like these mechanics because they add depth to the game world. At the very least though, the approach that Obsidian took in New Vegas was a lot better. In a perfect world, the player could toggle each of these mechanics on or off individually. That doesn't mean that I want to limit my ability to save or that I want the enemies in the game to become bullet sponges. Inherently, these changes add a little bit of challenge to the experience. This is a major step backwards for players like me. Instead of allowing the player to toggle these "immersive" elements on regardless of the difficulty level, these mechanics were locked to the highest difficulty level. This approach was not perfect but it was definitely better than what we got in Obsidian's latest title, The Outer Worlds. When this mode was enabled players would need to eat, drink, and sleep in order to avoid penalties to their stats and abilities. In Fallout: New Vegas we had a "Hardcore Mode" available as a toggle that was completely separate from the difficulty level of the game. I'm going to use Obsidian Entertainment as an example since they have crafted both good and bad examples of "immersive" mechanics in their games. Developers seem to realize this as well, given how they are often implemented. You know that armor isn't going to repair itself, right? I know that these kind of mechanics are not universally desired by players though. Suffering stat penalties when I don't let my character rest for days on end? Yes please. Needing to eat and drink in order to keep my character alive? Sign me up. ![]()
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