A Dangerous Concept to Explore/Use

[V-Man339]

I don't recommend using this in a mission unless you are either sadistic or incredibly good at balancing patrol patterns.

 

Simply put, playing Far Cry 2 and seeing Pathologic's mindset I realized there was a concept for a mission the player could have forced on them to enforce a time limit.

Medicine puts off an inevitable death that will only be truly removed when one finds the cure objective.

 

This will force the player to sneak more aggressively than they're used to, and is a concept worth exploring, not to mention plays very well into the difficulty modes.

 

 

I cannot emphasize enough that if you intend to use this you need to be more forgiving than otherwise with patrol patterns, or you'll end up making people like me livid.

 

 

Needless to say I think the moral grey in this concept is also something that will really excite the narrative-bent of us in the community, since it is a literal survival and economic scarcity bent angle pushed to the logical extreme.

This is the survival mindset of a thief taken to the logical conclusion.

 

It would also play well enough into the world, as I've seen plenty of notices of plagues and the like.

Edited July 6, 2017 by V-Man339

[esme]

I'm sure there's a mission that starts like that, you've been given a poison & you have to get into the ladies bedchamber to steal something for a guard & his girlfriend before he'll give you the antidote, and you have periodic coughing fits as your health fails which if the guards hear they'll kill you

 

Once you're cured there's a large mission outside

 

Can't remember what it's called now though

[Obsttorte]

A "soft" time limit would also be an option. For quiet a while now I am thinking about the idea of an fm in which during the gametime passes "the sun slowly rises" (in simple words, it gets brighter). Due to the increasing brightness and probably an increasing number of ai (people awake and start doing their everyday business) things would get more and more challenging. This would encourage the player to hurry, but wouldn't punish him with a game over just because he or she took too long.

 

I remember when playing Far Cry 2 back in the day, that I hadn't payed much attention to the malaria pills, and when I was near the doctor I died a few metres away from his house. I had to reload an older savegame, which was very old as I mainly used quicksave, to make it to the doctor in time. I considered this pretty annoying and unneccessary.

 

So using a "hard" punishment (hard in terms of ending the mission upon failure) should only be used if it is somehow beneficial either for gameplay or storytelling. Otherwise I wouldn't use it.

 

For example the limited KO-objective in the third T2 mission (also reutilized by some fms) is a good way of doing it. Having to consider which ai you knockout and which not, thinking about whether it is really required to knock it out or whether there may be an other way, makes up for a very good gameplay, and having the ai level constantly high throughout the mission adds alot to the tension of said mission (one of my favorites).

[peter_spy]

There was a T2 mission quite recently, with coughing and fadeouts until you've found the cure. It was super annoying. (Wasn't it a part of Godbreaker campaign?)

[Sotha]

Yep, time limits are dangerous, and I agree with Obst that instead of instant game over a slap on the wrists is better.

 

Some other ways of adding a time limit: an assassin AI is slowly moving through the map towards the victim the player must save. If the player takes too long, the AI reaches his target. The victims dearh does not necessarily mean instant game over. Let the death cause a lockdown, and extra guards, which the player can still bypass to complete the mission. But it should be hard: equipment use mandatory.

 

Or just write the story so that the victims' death is sad for the player (their friend, wife, mother,

is killed). There are no formal effects of failure, just the sadness that their life was in the player's hands and the player failed, and the evildoers won. All the player can now do is to escape with their own life.

[Destined]

The first idea that came to my mind regarding something like that would be poisoning the player, resulting in a constant health loss. Maybe some kind of "minor antidote" could pause the poison effect and any helath potions placed along the way would increase the time available. With this setup, there would be enough points to adjust the difficulty (rate of health loss, number of potions/antidotes, amount of time that the poison is paused). Thus, the player would have the constant pressure of hurrying without immediately killing him, if potions are placed in generously short intervals. Also, health potions could be rewarded for searching around, so the player still has the time to look around, which would encourage (or at least not discourage) searching for hidden places. Fights, on the other hand, would be strongly discouraged as they not only cost time but possibly health, which in turn reduces the overall time available.

[Anderson]

Yes, Pathologic relies on this plague, infection and antidote thing.

The catch is that in Pathologic, once sick, it's pretty much only by the endgame the player gets a panacea, but in between there's basically only pills, fruits, to keep his immunity system higher and to prevent health from agressively going down. It's a sort of a micromanagement/strategical thing there coupled with survival. Anything like that in TDM would need additional assets and scripts to permanently have a health penalty over a set period of time. I. e. Health can be recovered by your potion/pill but that still means health will go down gradually. Keeps up a certain tension I guess and forces more planning for the player. Perhaps it can even be conceived in a larger mission where he won't physically manage to do all objectives in time, which will force him to choose which ones to accomplish and in what order. This may potentially be a thing for more endings.

Edited July 6, 2017 by Anderson

[Destined]

Hm, this would couple well with my idea: Instead of a "minor antidote" you could simply eat fruits and vegetables to pause the health draining. I actually think, the script would not be too complicated (but I have been wrong in this regard more than once ): Something like while on "damage health; wait x seconds". For eating fruits it is a "turn off other script, wait x seconds, turn on other script". This way you would not need new assets, only a (possibly) simple script.

I think the "you cannot do everything at once" will bother a couple of perfectionists, but it increases replayability, so this idea would also be not too bad.

[esme]

There was a T2 mission quite recently, with coughing and fadeouts until you've found the cure. It was super annoying. (Wasn't it a part of Godbreaker campaign?)

That was it, mission 3 I think

 

Super annoying is putting it politely, but it was only a small section & once you got past it it was an excellent mission

[wesp5]

I haven't played this T2 mission, but I remember FarCry 2 and I can only agree with all others here that don't really like the idea. Especially in slow games like TDM it's part of the fun for me to plan ahead and explore the beautiful maps and a time limit usually screws with both of these aspects...