Damage sponges. : V

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 9:34 am

Damage sponges, is it good design for a number based RPG to have enemies that reach abnormal amounts of health in order to be dangerous or is it awful design to have to whack at an enemy a dozen times before it stays down?

When I play an RPG, any RPG, then I want the game to be challenging but at the same time functional.
I want to be able to kill enemies in a couple of hits if I have a Daedric weapon but I want the same thing to apply to me.
No not realistic damage, [censored] that, I just mean that top level enemies on Master difficulty get really annoying to kill if I don't Smith the sword up to Legendary and get +40% damage enchants.

So what is a better design to use?

Damage sponges?
Unrealistic but coherent damage?
We get monster health but enemies get crap health?
We get monster damage but they get crap damage?
We get mediocre or little health while they get tons?
We gets mediocre or little damage but they get a lot?

But more importantly: Are you satisfied with how the difficulty system, the health system, the damage system in terms of smithing and enchanting and the level scaling system was designed for Skyrim?

Me`?
I hated it.

Spoiler

I don't mind number based systems at all, but at a certain point they become dreadful when they're unbalanced.
For example, if I play normally, and I don't try to become a demi-god, then after a while enemies will, well, stop being dangerous.
Their damage simply isn't that good and I can survive just about everything.
So I raise the difficulty, and now they hit me real good! But now I have to whack at them twice as much to die.
"Then keep it at the previous difficulty setting and remove or degrade your armor?"
That's the thing, I don't think that "It's too easy, then nerf yourself" is a valid solution.
I shouldn't have to toss away the great stuff I've collected just cause the enemies aren't an danger to me no more.
And I shouldn't have to get up Smithing or Enchanting to full with perks so that my damage can counter their new health pools.
Now if there was NPC's in the game that could enchant or smith my gear for a price then I wouldn't mind it as much becuase then it'd be about money, by using Enchanting myself I can get better effects with way less cost, but with an NPC I can still get that edge I need for the higher difficulties to counter the enemies' health.
So the difference between the current system and this is that right now, if I don't use Enchanting or Smithing then my damage falls behind while theirs get better.
But if there were NPC's that could upgrade my gear for a fee then I'd feel better about it, cause then I at least have the option to upgrade my gear without feeling forced to level up skills that don't suit my character. (And self-upgraded gear would always be better than NPC upgraded gear of course, but NPC upgraded gear would still bring your gear up to par with enemies')
When something is optional to use, like a game feature, say.... Wood cutting, then I don't mind the idea of "Don't like it, don't use it."
But when it comes to game balance and I have to forcefully [censored] my character up just cause the game can't toss a balanced challenge on me then I don't think it applies.
For Skyrim, I dunno which of my two characters it were, but with one of them I tried "not" to use Smithing or enchanting, and at some point, despite having fully perked out and 100 in said combat skill, it still took forever to kill the enemies, and if I lowered the difficulty then I couldn't get killed.
"But why would you want to get killed?"
Caaaaauuuse I like being faced with a challenge maybe? I like the idea of defeat if I fail?

Point is, I didn't like Skyrim's design, I never think that damage sponges should be used in a real-time FPP/3rdPP game.

» Sun Jun 10, 2012 8:45 pm

oh HI dan its been awhile since FNV.
anywho I do not mind sponges in this game as much as FNV because this game is kind enough to give me alot of weaker enemies to kill then fight their leader. To me that makes alot of sense instead of having a horde of sponges

» Sun Jun 10, 2012 8:23 pm

oh HI dan its been awhile since FNV.
anywho I do not mind sponges in this game as much as FNV because this game is kind enough to give me alot of weaker enemies to kill then fight their leader. To me that makes alot of sense instead of having a horde of sponges

That's the thing, at higher levels then at high level dungeons there seems to only be leaders around.
I remember the last dungeon I went into, it was draughr dungeon, and guess what it had and exclusively only had? Draughr Death Lords.
Every single enemy in that dungeon was the top-elite type of that enemy.

And after fighting 3 of them I just used the "kill" command on them. Not because it was challenging, but because it was boring to whack at 'em forever.
I stopped playing after that dungeon. Gonna wait for a combat overhaul mod before I even touch Skyrim again.

Same applies to most others, Falmer? Yeah I don't know the rank but nearing the end of that last character only the highest rank came after me with the occasional low level one thrown into the mix.

» Sun Jun 10, 2012 11:25 pm

That's the thing, at higher levels then at high level dungeons there seems to only be leaders around.
I remember the last dungeon I went into, it was draughr dungeon, and guess what it had and exclusively only had? Draughr Death Lords.
Every single enemy in that dungeon was the top-elite type of that enemy.

And after fighting 3 of them I just used the "kill" command on them. Not because it was challenging, but because it was boring to whack at 'em forever.
I stopped playing after that dungeon. Gonna wait for a combat overhaul mod before I even touch Skyrim again.

Same applies to most others, Falmer? Yeah I don't know the rank but nearing the end of that last character only the highest rank came after me with the occasional low level one thrown into the mix.

still not as bad as FNV at least they try to give you challenging enemies were as in FNV they hid them in the back ends of the map and you have to go looking for them. I do agree that sponges are irritating and I would like to see a mix of hard hitting enemies with low health and sponges so hopefully they will put that idea into dlc.
Off topic which side do you go with?

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 2:14 am

Sponges are lazy design.

I'd rather equal health and damage for high level enemy's vs high level PC.

» Sun Jun 10, 2012 9:01 pm

still not as bad as FNV at least they try to give you challenging enemies were as in FNV they hid them in the back ends of the map and you have to go looking for them. I do agree that sponges are irritating and I would like to see a mix of hard hitting enemies with low health and sponges so hopefully they will put that idea into dlc.
Off topic which side do you go with?

I dunno, FNV felt good for me, I never used Medium or Heavy armor cause I didn't like the speed drawback so enemies always hurt me lots.
Ghouls, radscorpions, gecko's, cazador's, deathclaws, super mutants, assassins, rangers, all of them posed a challenge to me even after I got great stuff.
The problem with New Vegas wasn't the actual enemies or their stats, it was more that the wasteland was so fixed with it's enemy spawns.
So when I knew that golden gecko's were at the entrance of Vault 34 then I knew that I should be more catious.

Though then Obsidian pulled that ass card too with Old World Blues and Lonesome Road and had bullet sponges everywhere, which I was not pleased with. :stare:

Still, New Vegas prior to that was fine IMO, the balance was better in terms of numbers.
The problem was that it became uneventful, that nothing was dynamic, that once you learn that X is at Z then you know what to expect and can easily counter X's combat tactics.

[edit]

Soop, I dunno if that was ever possible for Skyrim though. I mean, what if the player used Daedric weapons? What if the player uses Dwarven? What if their gear is upgraded to Fine? What if Legendary? What if Epic? What if the player has X or Y or Z enchantments? What perks do the player have? How much health did the player focus on? It's hard to calculate precise balance with numbers if too many factors are thrown into the mix.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 11:26 am

Hehe, I'm using a flawless long bow with iron arrows on master and I still think the game is too easy. When fighting bosses with lots of health I use lingering damage health poisons to help out, and I'm glad that I have to do that instead of mindlessly two-shotting a 'tough' boss. Unlike FO3 where you had bullet-sponge ghouls and hillbillies, which made little sense because they have no armor, in skyrim the sponges are either bandit leaders in plate armor, or draugr or dragon priests who are undead so the survivability rules don't apply to them, or large monsters or beasts that can take a lot of hits (trolls, dragons, etc.).

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 11:53 am

Hehe, I'm using a flawless long bow with iron arrows on master and I still think the game is too easy.

O_o

How the...
I used a Daedric Bow with fully perked out skill and +damage enchants and Legendary Status and only then did enemies on Master go down in 1 to 3 shots. :confused:

Anything below that and I had to shoot enemies a dozen times at minimum.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 1:36 am

Gab - Then the play gets an advantage. Simple. Either that or make it so that if the player isn't using enhanced weaponry the enemy's are that much harder.

I think the game should encourage players to maximise, rather then punish them as it currently does. The more effort you put into your character the harder the encounters become. Wut?

As for the whole "I play on master with a sharp stick and naughty words and the earth trembles before me" spiel, who are you kidding?