Grim Misadventure #46: We Need Food

Grim Dawn Development Updates
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Yeah, I’ll be waiting until I get to try the mechanics myself to form my full opinion. Based solely off what I read about it and my experience with other games that used things like this… I don’t like the idea. I’m not against trying it. Just not keen on the concept. I see more “evil” than “good” having only a text version of the concepts to go off of.

Overall though I just can’t see the food mechanics as really addressing the abuse issues. If I can still just run circles around my enemies and heal back up… then its still able to be abused. It just adds extra tedium in finding the food to allow the abuse.

Another concern I just had though… how will this work in multiplayer?

If anyone here grew up playing co-op side scrolling games like “Streets of Rage, Double Dragon, P.O.W., etc…” they likely also recall how enraging it was to be one punch away from dying with only a single continue left… while player two, at max health, has been grabbing every turkey dinner that you kicked out of a trashcan.

In response to Azorai and anyone else who was saying that a regen mechanic based on distance would simply mean that you’d have to run further away from the creature to re-heal…

That is a valid concern. My approach to this would be much like powbam said about it.

Give the creature a greater “agro” range so that they could keep you targeted for a longer distance. This way you’d have to run a good bit further to get the rapid regen. In close quarters like inside buildings and caves it might not even be possible to get far enough away from a creature. If you have to run further away it becomes more inconvenient to abuse the mechanic.

Also I’d support the idea of giving creatures an OOC HR of their own. If I get far enough away from a baddie for my rapid HR to kick in… then let them start to regenerate health as well. This would make it a bit less appealing to try to abuse the mechanic since running away could essentially start the fight over again completely. In theory this would encourage people to simple do short tactical retreats for a “second wind” without running away so far that their rapid regen would start to work.

Since I brought up multiplayer issues as an argument against the food mechanics its only right that I also address multiplayer in my idea.

The way I feel a distance mechanic should work in multiplayer would be as follows. So long as any other player is fighting a creature that you previously attacked… you are considered “engaging in combat” and thus can’t have the rapid OOC HR kick in.

So in the event that me and a friend are playing together and encounter a tough opponent it would work like this. My friend attacks the creatures and is now considered to be fighting it. So long as I don’t attack that creature I can still have rapid regeneration kick in. If I start attacking the creature and then my friend decides to fall back and heal back up a bit… he won’t be able to have rapid regeneration occur because he had previously attacked the creature and now I’m fighting it… which causes him to continue to be considered to be in combat.

42

I believe in multiplayer if one player were to get a constitution item it would effect those nearby as well. Much like D3 globes - though with constitution it is a reserve of health regeneration rather then simply healing you to full health like D3 globes.

The key difference between Constitution and the old B17 OoC healing (B18 is lessened) is that you can’t abuse the system for very long. If you really need to backtrack to find some piece of food then that is a negative thing for you - not a positive.

But like I said - once everyone gets access to B19 everyone will have a better feel for the system and there will be more feedback on it.

Your “aggro” range idea would be terrible in quite a few situations where you cannot run away. Darious’ fight, Warden fight, and several other places where you cannot run away far enough from the enemy - then you would need to resort to using a riftgate to escape which is both tedious and also won’t work in the later Steps of Torment levels.

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To be fair you can’t escape aggro with the Warden regardless so it wouldn’t really matter.

Sent from my SCH-R950 using Tapatalk

44

That would solve the problem of other players nabbing it all.

Although it now makes me wonder what prevents me from having a player in my group be a gopher and just run to grab some food to revitalize all of us to allow further HR abuse in a tough fight.

True, backtracking for a piece of food to allow continued abuse of the OOC HR mechanics would be a negative for those trying to do so. But, if its still able to be done then the abuse issue hasn’t really been solved. Making abusing the mechanic take longer doesn’t really prevent the abuse from occurring.

Limiting its available duration with food and constitution would be a great way to handle it if the abuse was occurring regularly over a playing session, but in my experience this is rarely the case.

More often than not I’m plowing through groups of chumps that put up no real challenge. The only time I find it necessary to play ring around the baddie and use the OOC HR mechanic in a way it isn’t intended is when I’m up against a single tough enemy or boss.

If food is available commonly enough and constitution is high enough to allow the mechanics to work as intended by allowing you a quick health recharge between combat encounters on a regular basis… then it seems like it would be more than enough to allow abuse through the rare one off fights.

A valid point.

However, the cases you’re stating all seem to be fairly specific in the location that you fight the target. Darius and the Warden to my knowledge always occur in the same location without any randomization. So all that would need to be done would be to give these particular opponents a lower agro range than the others. This way it would be appropriate to where the encounter takes place.

Although I actually don’t think it would be necessary to make exceptions at all for these kinds of things. My reason is… if you need to abuse a game mechanic to survive those encounters… then shouldn’t the reason for needing to abuse it be the real issue that needs to be addressed?

Instead of making it so that tough fights like the Warden and Darius require players to abuse the OOC HR mechanics by using them IN a battle… why not balance out those encounters a bit more so that the abuse itself isn’t necessary?

Personally, even playing a purely defensive character with crazy high armor and resistances… I still found that I needed to abuse OOC HR in the Warden and Darius fights to have a good chance at winning.

45

Still wouldn’t work.

The Darius and Warden fight (among others) have small rooms in which the door locks behind you as you enter them.

Lowering aggro range for them makes no sense and doing so would only bring up the other exploit in running away from them and finding that one point where they will leave you alone and then exploiting that by aggroing them in and out of that area.

Yes you can abuse the OoC healing mechanic - though less with Constitution, and you can do the exact same thing with healing potions. Simply run away from enemies and use a potion and you’re good.

46

The backtracking is not severe, between two riftgates you are more than likely to find another ration before you backtrack to one you left previously. But, for example, at the Village rift, I often keep in memory where the rations have fallen around the Village on my cleaning of the outer rim before I activate the rift so that during that fight, I can run back and grab one if needed.

This is a dangerous mechanic for Crate to inject into the game after people are used to playing without it. It will generate a negative response from some people. It is a good thing the game is not “released” yet. Therefore, technically, they can still do whatever they want.

Anyway, as with all threads, discuss away…but until you have it and have played with it for a significant amount of time, feedback is kinda pointless.

47

About exploiting. You can exploit every healing mechanic in every game as long as you disengage. You can lure enemies one by one if you wish with a ranged weapon. But then the game becomes slow by player choice. If sleep/rest is available, you can sleep after each encounter at the cost of faster progress with the game. We will find a way to play the game “our way”, and if profit is to be gained by playing “our way” it feels even better!

Constitution/rations will have to be experienced in-game to give actual feedback. I really want oocr to work as it is a nice idea, having to go back to mindless potion spamming would suck.

I guess I can wait a few days; everything should become clear then.:slight_smile:

48

What about an icon that is active when you are out of combat and is grayed when you are in one? Once you are out of combat you will heal almost instantaneously with a cooldown (60 secs).

49

In my opinion, the longish potion cool down plus slow regeneration worked fine. The previous fast regeneration was degenerate and too easy to abuse (rendering potions useless), but the current one seems to be working as intended. I don’t see why additional layer of busywork needs to be added to the mix here??

And this does not prevent you from running away from combat to heal at all. It just makes the wait to get back to combat longer by; a) you die while running away and have to portal/teleport back, b) you run until the mobs stop chasing you and wait for the long potion cooling time to heal back to full.

The above is especially true if rations prove to be rare.

Are we going back to Titan Quest format where half of your inventory space was devoted to potions and the only time you had to go back to town was to buy more god damn potions? :confused:

50

That’s good news because it is actually intended to make ooc regen more effective during combat again but just not unlimited as it was before.

We slowed ooc regen in B18 because our only recourse to it being perceived as over-powered was to reduce it’s effectiveness. In my opinion, this just slowed everything down. If you retreat from combat to regen, it takes a lot longer, so that slows battles down a lot or encourages more frequent potion use. After combat, sometimes it was too slow to fully regenerate you before you reached the next group of enemies, so you either had to waste time waiting or go in with partial health, which meant you’d have to use even more potions.

In B17, where you had infinite fast ooc regen, I think this also slowed combat down for some people who relied on it too heavily. Since it was free and unlimited, I think people felt compelled to use it instead of “wasting” expensive health potions. So there was an excessive amount of leaving combat and running around to heal.

Constitution has allowed us to increase regeneration rate again without having it feel overpowered or “cheap” because it isn’t infinite. If you rely on it excessive, you will run out, so now there is some incentive to use it sparingly and not use it freely as a sole means of healing.

Used in a more moderated manner, it will allow you to retreat and quickly regen at times when potions and healing skills are cooling down or you just want to conserve them. It will also rapidly refill you between encounters so that you’re not having to wait.

It just makes the wait to get back to combat longer

So really, this is the opposite of what the system does.

It may take a little time to acclimate, as it did for people in closed testing but, once they’d played with it for a while, everyone found it to work without complaint or even add a new enjoyable element to the game.

Once you get used to it, I think people will find that they don’t often run out of constitution and when they do, it isn’t for very long. It does create episodes of “feast and famine” though that, imo, create a fun little dynamic of desperation, followed by satisfaction as you get low and then replenish yourself.

It may also take a little more balancing to get the drop rates tuned right for everyone.

If time proves that this system is a detraction to most people, we can easily remove it. I don’t think that will be the case though.

51

The purpose of Out of Combat Healing is to quickly replenish life in between each fight. This is meant to keep the flow of combat going while not resorting to health potion spamming.

The issue though is that this system was easily abused since you could easily jump in and out of a fight to regain life. With constitution you can still do this but only for so long in which case after losing all constitution you will need to rely on other means of healing.

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This new mechanic will slow the game right down for me, i usually find that already on a level 32 char that i am still running away from mass squads of enemys only to run into the fray again and again to reduce the numbers.

If this mechanic remains then you will have to reduce the damage done by bosses so we can run away and tp back to home base just to re generate our health.

Btw i only use health in big ass battles, i dont find my self useing them in standered battle as i just run away and back again but i dont wish to have to deal with running and battling constantly just to make it thought the levels.

The game has a quality normality about it as it stands. If people want hard core mode then allow this to happen. But lets see how we think of this new system after it gets patched in.

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Anyone who criticizes this idea without having tested it is a Puka-Chay Puka-Chay. That’s Aztec for “lazy farmer”.

Jokes aside, I reckon - with medierra’s detailed response especially - that this sounds like an idea that will only benefit the game, and props to Crate for introducing it in a way that also makes sense (scavenging for rations). I can now say I’m looking forward to the release of B19 for more than just the savage two-handed weapons we’ll be seeing. :smiley:
Cheers for another fantastic update Zantai,
Younghappy :slight_smile:

54

Hm, this system sounds like an overcomplication of a mechanic that could be adjusted instead.

OOC regen could be fast, but take say 5 seconds to activate once you’re outside of combat (maybe just add a 20 second cooldown once you’re healed to 100% to prevent exploiting) instead of just wooshing up as soon as you leave combat…No need to input system_045 which will just make it more confusing. And i know many people are thinking “it’s not complicated, are you dumb?!” …but it just seems like “one more thing to watch” instead of watching the actual fighting. (And yes, i know it’s “outside of combat”…but if you’re low on constitution…it’ll make you double back to find more food you may have missed insted of pressing on due to being low on constitution…which seems like the opposite of it’s intent)

55

A longer aggro range also does not prevent abuse… As long as OOC is in, the best you probably can do is limit abuse by making abuse tedious, which this one does

You won’t stop all abuse anyway as long as you can portal away (and I am not implying this should be prevented…)

56

You just made it an inferior version of the health potion. In that case you might as well (preferably imo) remove it

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It sounds like, judging from the amount of complaints that a lot of people relied heavily on OOC abuse to clear the content? (OOC the clues in the name not RAAHTCBA regen ‘run away and heal then come back again’)

Slowed right down game play? Means have to copy&save files more to boast I’ve only died 2 times more like…

Do you seriously think crate would impede their game play? look at what they have already achieved. The complaints are rather untimely since its not avaliable for us to try yet…

58

Hehe. I comment in last Grim Misadventures how rogue-like dungeon Steps of Torment will not mean much since we can regenerate health and there are no limited resources to worry about and then this is implemented.
Coincidence? I don’t think so :wink:

Anyways, this is a great solution for that rogue-like dungeon, but I don’t see how is this a solution overall.
If the goal of out of combat regeneration was to speed up healing between combat, isn’t being out of it due to lack of food opposite to this goal?
Isn’t running out of the way to grab food in areas you already went through opposite to this goal?

Also boss fights in my experience were balanced around using this regeneration. Bosses do a lot of damage and I could usually only fight them for few seconds until I needed to run around and wait to heal. If I wait too long to do this I could die and if I stop running to do more damage while I am not fully healed I risk dying. But it is a choice and it does not take me out of the fight for too long. Now I guess I will be using potions to heal vs bosses and potions have a huge cooldown and make the boss fights both boring and more expensive (due to lots of potions that I will need).
Also the game will revert back to standard aRPG of drinking yourself silly. I really liked that GD tried something different.

My suggestion is to let us collect food but only let us have a limited max amount. This will allow us to not slow down but also not “abuse it” all the time. It will also let us still have fun boss fights.
EDIT: You could say that if Constitution lasts long enough it is same as having less Constitution but more rations in inventory but I (and I would guess most players) would like more control over when I want to fill my Constitution to the max.
In this case, it would be good if food didn’t heal Constitution to the max but to half or 1/4. It would give even more control to the player.

59

If this means the ooc regen goes back to the old values (when you have constitution) then I like it a lot. With the nerf in build 18 I had to start treating ooc regen as it did not exist or I would end up being bored waiting for the regen to work. It will be very interesting to see how this works out though. The game is still in alpha and everything can change if it turns out to be bad.

60

Ok, “I guess” cause that is all you and all the other naysayers without b19 are doing, guessing. Thanks for pointing that out. :smiley:

For the red, nope, Now you are using skills like PBurst and Blood or Dreeg, or pray for a raven heal or MWill to kick in, in addition to pots when they are not on cooldown to try to conserve constitution and get your health back so that if, right after a pot, with a skill on cooldown, and you get hit bad, you can run and ooc regen.

It just adds 1 more variable to the equation, but in such a way that they whole system is improved, more thought provoking and even challenging at times.

The playtesters went through this same phase after we got hit with the patch. I do not expect everyone to like it. I do expect most everyone to not like it at the beginning. But after a dozen hours with it, I expect that the number of positive comments will outweight the negatives. Might be a 55%/45% split, but I expect the majority of players that give it an actual chance, will find it extremely innovative and enjoyable.