I'm so annoyed with myself. I accidentally used rage of god in the nexus and got stockpile thomas mad at me and was forced kill him. So basically all the time I spent on NG leveling up my temple knight to lvl 70 just went to waste since I cant finish the game without the locker
Wow that sucks. And unfortunately since they locked the save game there is no easy way to backup/restore it.
I've accidentally attacked several NPCs, but they just complained about it. It never got to the point where they were fighting back. Probably I will just hit the reset switch on my machine to avoid the game saving that condition.
patsu said:
After reading your post, I'm curious about Monster Hunter now.
You should give MH3 a try (assuming you have a Wii) once it comes out in English. If you like DS you might like it. It shares similar ideas with regard to game design. It seems pretty clear to me that some of DS design was influenced by MH.
In both DS and MH your weapons/equip/stats do matter, but not nearly as much as player skill and game experience. A newbie player with great gear in the game is still going to get killed quickly by even low level stuff. It's not like a JRPG where the outcome really just comes down the stats math.
In DS you get ingredients from random drops to upgrade weapons/armor. In MH you get ingredients from random drops to upgrade weapons/armor and forge new ones.
In DS you have 1 life per level. If you die you have to start from the beginning of the level.
MH you have 3 lives, on the third death you have to restart the mission from the beginning.
This idea is really not seen in western games anymore, except maybe in some MMOs. Most devs these days really want to pamper their players with generous save points and regenerating life bars etc. They are so afraid of "pissing" of the gamer, or more importantly, the "game reviewer". I know many people will say they don't want to go through "punishment" during their leisure time. But I feel you lose something lot by removing any real form of punishment.
I think even a Diablo2 style level of punishment (corpse run if you die) is frowned on by most western devs these days. But it is nice to see DS get received so well by gamers and reviewers. It says to me that at least some people are saying going back to this style of game play is refreshing. And people are realizing how much more rewarding victory can be when you feel you really earned it.
Something MH has that DS doesn't is "Time" pressure. in MH each hunt is on a timer. The timer could be anywhere from 15-50mins generally. In most of the early to mid missions it is pretty rare to run out of time. But in later missions, if you turtle too much or use cowardly poke and run style tactics you have the real risk of running out of time and failing the mission. Sometimes you are having this really epic hour long fight and you know you only have a few more mins on the clock, you have to make a decision between continuing to play carefully, or using a more aggressive risky strategy that are will do more damage to the monster but potentially get yourself killed. And that can really add to the tension.
I think DS could have benefited from this idea, at least during the boss fights. Because as it is right now, it is too attractive to find a nice sniping spot where they can't reach you and just pick their life bars away with arrows or other ranged attacks. Another idea is maybe they should just reduce the number of arrows you can carry to like 50. That way you would be forced to engage the monster in real combat as designed one way or another.
Another idea in MH that I hope they borrow for the next DS game is that in MH monsters have no life bars. Instead of life bars there are visual indicators to show what state they are at. Like you will start to see wounds/gashes and torn/smashed/cracked body parts indicating you have done extensive damage to them at that body part. Also when they are close to death every monster goes in to an injured state where their animations change a little. Some of them visibly start to limp when they move around etc. Also there are things like rage mode where a monster will temporarily go in to this state where they are very angry at you. And you have to be extra careful around them when they are that way. Also this purely from visual indicators or from the monsters animations that you recognize this. It's not shown on the HUD or as a life bar etc. For me just seeing a life bar pop up kind of takes me out of the game a little.
