"Philosophical" questions, What is a cheesy method? Bug or feature? Options

[Vuki]

I created this topic to discuss the "philosophical" aspect of the game. We can discuss here questions like:

- is a modification really needed or not?
- is something cheesy or cheeting or just a clever trick?
- game balance
- is an actual gap a bug or a feature?
- and so on ...

This topic will be maybe a bit too theoretical but I do not think it is a problem. We need such a place - as the discussions from the last 2-3 weeks prove it.

This post has been edited by Vuki: Aug 11 2008, 08:34 PM

[Kerkes]

Very nice topic! Bravo!

IMO =not the apsolute truth

casting spells from off-screen - pure cheese. I wrote a post some while ago about this and how you'd do if enemies did that to you. I still remember Firkraag from vanilla game falling to wand of cloudkill without ever bothering to see who is using it. You can't expect computer AI to have a sript as smart as a real human player, no matter how good AI is it will probably always be exploitable. as for drow ambush, the thing that you cannot pre-buff actually makes the battle much more interesting than the usual. Besides, they don't cast spells immedialtely, you just get dispelled off-screen. It is insanely hard, usually forces a numer of reloads but is well made. I think it will be nerfed in IA6.

abusing area - imagine this - 2 enemies (for example, take elemental golems) are standing on a narrow bridge. Behind them, thus out of your reach are 2 high level figh/mages beating the crap out of you. That wouldn't be fair. and that's how enemies usually fare when you do that.
But, I do believe that in IA final battle it is completely justified to abuse it. It is used in strategy games, but IA is more of a tactical thing. Defeating hard battles usually is much more dependant on what you do in a round and not if your enemies can reach you or not. besides, if they can't reach you, you can't reach them also. I remember a line from "call of duty 4" which says "tracers work both ways":) . for surprises, I think backstab is a very nice surprise and is as such covered in BG

stealing quest items - I too never use it, but it is probably a nice RPG aspect of the game

prebuffing - remember that mage Edwin sends you to kill? (Rayic I believe). In vanilla game you needed something like this (with no mages in party, just cleric) - remove fear because he casts symbol fear, free action for symbol stun(or PW, don't remember), death ward for FOD and disin, prot fire for sunfire. After ALL THAT he'd cast remove magic (finaly!) and then try to charm you and start castin mm like there's no tomorrow. He usually died after his pfmw expired if you don't bother switching to normal wpns. well, if you know in advance what tactiscs/spells enemy uses you can buff up perfectly, and yeah, I agree that's perhaps cheese. But since your fighters and clerics usually get dispelled asap perhaps it's less cheese in IA, and is a thing (amongst others) which makes mages so powerful compared to any other class in the game. But I find that much neccesary for most of the battles, thus reducing the number of reloads greatly as you get to know the game better. I don't believe any IA player ever managed to defeat, for example, Twisted rune battle without at least one reload, and even I know the battle pretty well, it still forces reloads. You just don't know what's coming. But I do think that it's impossible and would ruin the game if enemies chose tactics and spells at random, due to the fact that some spell combos just work very good and enemies already do use them. IMO, clerics do as much they can offensively in IA, ther's really no going beyond that (well, maybe energy blades). as for non-buffed enemies (dracolich), I agree, it would be nice. But not for all battles. Draco is alone, and you're probably playing with a 6 persons party... you can buff some your chars, kill his protections and attack him phisically all in one round, making it a walk-over..

Again, a very interesting topic! Hope to see more interesting posts here soon.

This post has been edited by Kerkes: Aug 12 2008, 08:53 AM

[Sikret]

casting spells from off-screen - pure cheese. I wrote a post some while ago about this and how you'd do if enemies did that to you.

Very true. This answer is valid for the case of abusing area structure as well. The general short answer to the question why doing these things is cheesy is simple (as others have mentioned as well): Don't use such methods against the enemy, because the enemy doesn't use them against you. Play fair.

if they can't reach you, you can't reach them also.

This part is not 100% accurate. As mentioned in the pdf file, there are cases in which the enemy has a large avatar/animation and can't follow you into a narrow passage; hence the cheesy player can hit-flee-heal-return-hit-flee continuously or just stand far and use ranged weapons. In such cases, abusing the area structure is a lot cheesier. But it's still cheesy even against enemies with small/normal avatar size.

[Vuki]

Very true. This answer is valid for the case of abusing area structure as well. The general short answer to the question why doing these things is cheesy is simple (as others have mentioned as well): Don't use such methods against the enemy, because the enemy doesn't use them against you. Play fair.

The only problem that enemies have powers and abilities that you can never archieved. It is of course not a problem but your advantage is that you can do tactics that they do not use. BTW, enemy spellcasters do not renew their buffs and therefore you should not do it because it is not fair. I do not think it is really valid argument.

This part is not 100% accurate. As mentioned in the pdf file, there are cases in which the enemy has a large avatar/animation and can't follow you into a narrow passage; hence the cheesy player can hit-flee-heal-return-hit-flee continuously or just stand far and use ranged weapons. In such cases, abusing the area structure is a lot cheesier. But it's still cheesy even against enemies with small/normal avatar size.

I do not remember too much cases like this. There is one well-known example in Nalia castle but I am pretty sure that it was the intention of the creators of the game to make this door so small. That is very clear I think. I do not use this trick in my IA game however. I cannot recall now any other cases but there could be more.