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Mods and Game Difficulty

Good issue.
Actually I think you guys´ discussions is valuable modding work - if nobody stops once in a while to think it all over, there is no constraint in the game for the player to enjoy and its all just a big chaos. I follow your discussions, they are great <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

Would it be possible for me to name some issues for you guys to discuss as well?
I am thinking of Pieters replacement officer system, with 8 officers each carrying out their own unique new functions. I liked it, although we concluded it was impossible to carry out because of the hardcoded stuff in the engine (as far as I remember). But hey, it might be possible some day..Also, I like the idea of attaching a sort of quest or destiny to every avatar, the player might choose in the start menu, because I think it would add to the length of gameplay for the average player of this Build.
 
That was not exactly my idea; my idea was to have all officers contribute their skills to the sailing of the ship, but only those that are relevant to their job. That would give each officer type a specialty of their own and if you have a carpenter with 10 sailing skill, he won't actually contribute that unless you make him a navigator, in which case he will no longer contribute his repair skill. Also saves you the trouble of switching your officers all the time; now you'd want to have three tough officers accompanying you ashore and on boardings, but you'd want officers with good gunnery and sailing skills in a ship-to-ship battle. I do think my idea is possible; I just don't know how.

As for a different quest for each of the choosable main character profiles at the beginning of the game: That should be quite possible. The only problem with that is that somebody needs to actually make the relevant quests. But it can easily be done. If somebody'd be willing and capable of doing it. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/yes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":yes" border="0" alt="yes.gif" />
 
<!--quoteo(post=233771:date=Jan 12 2008, 02:04 PM:name=Pieter Boelen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pieter Boelen @ Jan 12 2008, 02:04 PM) [snapback]233771[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->That was not exactly my idea; my idea was to have all officers contribute their skills to the sailing of the ship, but only those that are relevant to their job. That would give each officer type a specialty of their own and if you have a carpenter with 10 sailing skill, he won't actually contribute that unless you make him a navigator, in which case he will no longer contribute his repair skill. Also saves you the trouble of switching your officers all the time; now you'd want to have three tough officers accompanying you ashore and on boardings, but you'd want officers with good gunnery and sailing skills in a ship-to-ship battle. I do think my idea is possible; I just don't know how.

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I noticed AOP does that.
But even with super mod, a really poor game IMHO.
 
Apparently you tried AoP more thoroughly than I did. But the little testing I did do didn't impress me one bit either. I did notice some cool features that I would've liked in PotC though: Ability to talk to captains of friendly ships, lights on ships at night, memory for the worldmap, etc.
 
I'm still looking at it ... don't know why <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/dunno.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shrug" border="0" alt="dunno.gif" />

Ship skins stink and the towns don't look so great either.
Character models are not as good as POTC.

Sea encounters during a battle plop you in right next to enemies even if you entered from map on the other side with allays. Our mod kicks but in this category.

The one thing I like is the slower skill progression and the use of officers.

Other than that, it's so boring, nothing to do, even with the supermod.
The Jungle encounters don't work. No one you encounter can find dialogs.
The rapers don't even show up.

The dialog files they added point to the wrong place.
I changed that and then found that the character models in LandEnc_init.c were POTC and not AOP.
I changed that and found that the Jungles show as "Sea" on the upper right of screen, so that means they won't show up anyway.

Several hours later, I ask myself, why am I punishing myself <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/mybad.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":facepalm" border="0" alt="mybad.gif" />
 
What I don't like about the AoP towns is that they look really generic. You could swap them around and nobody would notice. In PotC if a town is English/French/Spanish/Dutch, you can actually see it and you wouldn't mistake a Spanish town for an English one. Also the character models aren't great either; they look <i>waaay</i> too cartoonish in a Japanese sort of way. Not to mention that I think that some of the characters walking around are, I think, supposed to be soldiers, but they really don't look like they're wearing actual uniforms. PotC is again better here: soldiers DO look like soldiers. AoP has more polygons, but it seems in PotC they did much better with the less polygons they used. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/piratesing.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shock" border="0" alt="piratesing.gif" />

AoP does have some cool features, but on the whole it just doesn't seem very great. Perhaps with a lot of work similar to what has been done on PotC, it could become great. But that's not going to happen; not with the release of City of Abandoned Ships just a few months away.

<!--quoteo(post=233838:date=Jan 12 2008, 09:59 PM:name=Petros)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Petros @ Jan 12 2008, 09:59 PM) [snapback]233838[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Several hours later, I ask myself, why am I punishing myself <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/mybad.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":facepalm" border="0" alt="mybad.gif" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Good question. I haven't played AoP since the first freeze upon boarding. Of course I <i>have</i> been rather too busy to play AoP anyway, even if I wouldn't have had a freeze last time. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/whistling.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":wp" border="0" alt="whistling.gif" />
 
<!--quoteo(post=233871:date=Jan 12 2008, 04:30 PM:name=Pieter Boelen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pieter Boelen @ Jan 12 2008, 04:30 PM) [snapback]233871[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->... But that's not going to happen; not with the release of City of Abandoned Ships just a few months away.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

I can't help but wonder if it will just be another disappointment, like POTC was at first, and like AOP is now.

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->...Good question. I haven't played AoP since the first freeze upon boarding. Of course I <i>have</i> been rather too busy to play AoP anyway, even if I wouldn't have had a freeze last time. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/whistling.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":wp" border="0" alt="whistling.gif" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

I missed the freeze, so I was able to get into it a little.
I wanted to see what all the Buzz was about a year ago.
 
<!--quoteo(post=233877:date=Jan 12 2008, 10:38 PM:name=Petros)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Petros @ Jan 12 2008, 10:38 PM) [snapback]233877[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I can't help but wonder if it will just be another disappointment, like POTC was at first, and like AOP is now.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Don't we all wonder that? That recent interiew sounded really good, but in an interview, everything sounds good. Of course seaward.ru did, as far as I know, a good job on their SLiB mod for PotC, so if they manage to get the same level of quality in CoAS so that we can actually play their work in English, that'd be really good. But Akella did, from what I've heard, a really good job on Sea Dogs as well and never were able to improve on that either. I just don't understand why newer games tend to be less good than the older ones. Don't you keep the same gameplay, improve it and improve the graphics? Apparently not, otherwise AoP would've been better. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/modding.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":modding" border="0" alt="modding.gif" />

<!--quoteo(post=233877:date=Jan 12 2008, 10:38 PM:name=Petros)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Petros @ Jan 12 2008, 10:38 PM) [snapback]233877[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I missed the freeze, so I was able to get into it a little.
I wanted to see what all the Buzz was about a year ago.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I still want to see that. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="icon_wink.gif" />
 
The classic problem of game design. You start with something simple, workable, and reasonably balanced. (i.e. the original "Sea Dogs") The biggest complaint is the "simple" part - a lot of things are over-simplified and so unreasonable. (Inability to get a variety of officers, for example.)

The next level is to add a bunch of features. These features add complexity, but in doing so, remove some of the simple, workable, and balanced. If the features are not worked through carefully, they become painfully unbalancing. Rather than removing them, since there is now an investment in them, the general policy is to cover the bugs with bells and whistles and hope nobody notices. POTC was a perfect example of this ... in adding RPG-type perks, they unbalanced a lot of the game play ... so rather than re-balancing it, they just covered it in improved graphics or inane work-arounds (level requirements for certain items, scaled enemy difficulty) that replaced the missing difficulty but gave the game the depth of immersion of a mud puddle.

AoP just went one step further ... more bells and whistles, more cheap work-arounds to cover the lack of an actual game.

The build mod, up to this point, has been mostly adding features. Generally, these were done with little or no plan, and so suffer from the same problem as the original. Now, I'm all for adding features, and I'm all for experimenting with stuff just to see if it's possible ... but we need focus.

This rework on the blades and hit-points is a good example. It actually returns some degree of balance to the game, and not just by adding difficulty or complexity to the player, but by actually balancing something. Beyond that, new features (new weapon models, whatever) can be added, as long as they fit in the framework of the new reset balance.

Now if we can do that with ship combat and economics in general, a bunch of this will start making sense.
 
Personnaly, I think the main problem with have with battles is that it's based on a level system. The higher your level, the higher are your oponents' level, the most expensive & inapropriate their weapons are, and the higher are their HP. That's the big difference with Seadogs, and that's one thing that really disappointed me with PotC. It'll be good being able to to switch to another system.
 
Her... As Ron Losey said, much simpler : you couldn't fight people in the street!
There were swordfights when boarding a ship or landing troops to attack a fort only. There it was a one-to-one fight with the Captain/Fort Commander : 4 keys to attack, attack key + shift = feint so 4 feint, 2 key to defend yourself (left and right). Your HP was the amont of crew you had. And there were fatigue as well. A lot to explain, I fear, I'll leave it here.
So in Seadogs, the only thing that counted were your 'battle' skill, the amont of crew, and your own dexterity. (Oh yes - and the dummy difficulty level thing that was added with the patch.)
So your character hadn't any 'health' characteristic, wasn't getting better swords or anything, and his rank had no direct influence on the battle itself.
Was working pretty well you see, but in PotC you have to draw your sword at any moment, fighting many ennemies ; this system cannot work here. (Eventhought during boarding your crewmates' and the ennemies' HP do depend on the amont of crew, I remember once all my crewmen died because of a food-disapearing bug and I was boarded by a Ship-of-the-Line... I was alone and all oponents had more then 3000 hp - wOops)

Of course Seadogs did worked on a experience-earning system. You had 12 rank, you're starting from 12 - then 11, etc. Each time you get a better rank you earn 3 free points you can add to your different skills (a lot of them, you started with 0 in all of them and you can increase them up to 9 - but in theory you could go up to 12 with the help of officers. Officers could increase or decrease those value : for exemple Julius Ironcast the blind cannoner, -1 gunlaying, +2 coordination, +3 reloading...) But still, even with low skills a lot was depending on how you played.


Now back to PotC. I'm afraid Ron Losey work is worthless if HP are so different and are based mostly on level. We should decide of a max HP value for all characters. HP shouldn't rise with your level. Your max HP could depend on a lot of parameters - like are you suffuring from bad diseases, haven't you eaten from three days, etc. And another thought. Currently, when the main character die, he wake up in a tavern - he wasn't killed but just seriously wounded. We have been talking about wounded crewmen at sea, couldn't we make the same thing at land for every character? A 'defeated' character wouldn't be necessary 'killed', he could be 'wounded', and have to be healed (if you manage to). Like in the Artois quest. Of course that's a lot of work.
 
You're late on the hit point thing ... that was a few pages back, limiting ALL characters to one additional hit point per level. That way, your guy might get a little tougher, but not enough to take more than one more additional hit.

But yeah, we will have to go to a wounded/killed system. That's the way most games of this type handle it. (Check out "Mount and Blade" if you haven't.) It's just going to require some programming skill to make it happen.
 
So Sea Dogs only ever had one-on-one fights? Ah; that indeed IS simpler. I wouldn't want to lose our current big boardings though; I think it's cool to have a lot of characters fighting. But indeed it's hard to balance that. Personally the most annoying thing with mass-fights that I have is that my own crewmembers keep obstructing my path to the enemy, so that my crewmembers get killed and I can't fight the enemy. AGH! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/modding.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":modding" border="0" alt="modding.gif" />
 
Yeah the "battleground" is always those narrow passages between the sides and the mast in the middle <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />
 
"Sea Dogs" fight screen was based on the old Microprose "Pirates" model, where a single swordfight is simulated, and each time you get hit, you loose some crewmen. (Of course, the graphics were updated from the old 320x200 stuff, but the mechanics were essentially the same.) Not even an attempt at realism or immersion, just an arcade sequence to determine the outcome of the fight.

The reality of having trouble getting your troops organized ... well, that's life.

But the current rework on the weapons and hit-points should balance things out a bit, as well as making you personally less energetic about charging in first. So I wouldn't worry too much about the inability to go first.

Rule one of a good boarding ... always let somebody else go first.
 
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