Please make easy combat patch !!!

[cyberdalekyeti]

Can you please listen to Lori & Corey and make a easy combat patch ? I am playing a pure fighter and i just completely suck at this combat system even with the skill all the way down and using copilot.

John

[Red CyricZ]

I respectfully disagree with the above poster's statement.

[arganite]

Mash the 7 and 9 key on your numpad. That usually works for me

[Goilveig]

Go to Uhura and really train. Don't just try to spam attacks (though you should practice them).

One fun exercise I do sometimes (which also builds skills) is get a few stam pills and try to run your stamina completely out without letting Uhura touch you. Dodge, block, or parry every attack she does; don't swing at all. Get used to defense. Then add some offense into the mix and try to win for real, but still be ready to defend on a moment's notice. The instant I see her block my attack, I'm already moving my fingers to intercept her counterattack.

And of course, build stats. 200 HP and 200 stam gives you a lot more margin for error.

The only real combat-related change I'd love to see would be options when you challenge Uhura to choose her fighting style (basically, variant AIs). Like have the option to make her a more aggressive fighter (even on max difficulty, she's still primarily defensive).

And on that note, you really need to learn your opponent. For example, Uhura's a pretty defensive fighter, but a brigand is a strongly offensive one, he's gonna push the attack all the time, so you need to defend and create an opening to attack.

[Erpy]

Just to test things out, I started a new fighter (no importing) and didn't raise any of his skills. (i.e: threw away my 50 bonus points at the start) I set the difficulty slider all the way down, I set the co-pilot all the way on defense, set the defense slider all the way to dodge and set the dodge slider all the way to misc. (these settings serve you well on easy difficulty) I then went into the desert and fought a brigand and later that night two jackalmen. I did not touch any of the defensive buttons, I only used my swing and stab key. I didn't hammer the attack keys, I simply pushed one, silently counted to 3 in my mind and pushed another one. In the meantime, the co-pilot would evade most attacks automatically. On easy brigands don't toss daggers and jackalmen stay away from the tag-team approach. I won both fights without any fear of dying. Try it. You can beat the lower enemies without too much trouble even with a bare starting fighter. For the tougher ones, you'll HAVE to work on your stats.

But please do give it another try using the advice I gave here.

[nightlite]

The best thing to do is just buy stamina pills and train a lot of times at Uhura's, your character quickly "evolves" into combat preparedness levels.

I don't think many people will turn difficulty down though as it's degrading and also worrisome (don't know if you'll be denied anything good in the game because of it although I don't think you are in this one.) But at normal settings it still fine once you train, being untrained is just what the Cole's didn't see yet, is what makes it too hard.

[adeyke]

The difficulty slider just makes things more/less difficult. You aren't penalized for a lower difficulty or rewarded for a higher one.

[Erpy]

Also keep in mind that even though the slider slides smoothly, there are only three difficulty levels. So moving the slider down a few pixels won't help.

[random]

So why is there smooth slider ? I wanna sharp slider

[Daniel06]

Seriously mate, just keep praticing. By the time I completed the game the first time, I was taking down Ghouls and Terrorsaurus's without really even getting hurt (I could do 3-4 without needing to rest and take a healing pill). That character was a thief!!!! Just make sure u practice every day, atleast once in the desert and once with Uhura.

[phathom]

The fighting is easy imo. Once you get used to it, it's super fun.

[malekdarshin]

As everyone has said practice with Uhura. I'd keep it up until weapon use is about 150. At that point you can do a three hit combo that allows you to be VERY aggressive. Swing, stab, swing. The last hit always knocks down the enemy. Buying the new sword from the weapon shop would help, too.

I also had my ass handed to be several times before I trained up a little. If nothing else fight until you need to run, then heal up and head back in. ESC runs from battle.

[Goilveig]

Seriously mate, just keep praticing. By the time I completed the game the first time, I was taking down Ghouls and Terrorsaurus's without really even getting hurt (I could do 3-4 without needing to rest and take a healing pill). That character was a thief!!!! Just make sure u practice every day, atleast once in the desert and once with Uhura.

With my thief I could take unlimited amounts of ghouls and terrorsaurs, as the only SP used was sneaking

I love one-shotting ghouls, and two-shotting terrorsaurs.

[Crowley9]

One thing I would like is to have the window of opportunity for blocking extended by another fraction of a second. Press parry the instant you see the enemy prepare for an attack, it is too soon.

[Kael]

I love this remake and it's made me start going through the whole series again. I beat QFG1 as a thief the other day, and did a lot of stuff in Shapeir with that character, but after running into a wall with the combat, and not being able to defeat anything -- and this is where I think I might be experiencing a bug or something because it's not because I'm not blocking/dodging enough, or that it's too difficult to do so necessarily, it's because the enemies have a zillion hitpoints; my successful attacks do tiny slivers of damage... my health and stamina just eventually cave in to the enemy attacks before they can be brought to even half health -- I spent a couple of hours last night and made a new character in QFG1 VGA, a fighter, and trained to 100 in all combat-related attributes. I then finished the game and took that guy out to the Shapeirian desert and finally managed to best a brigand, but just barely, with my stamina totally drained and health at critical. I didn't think until then that maybe the remake is unique in that it jacked up enemy hitpoints over the original, so I tested it out by loading the same character into the EGA version of the game, set out into the desert, and, as I expected, mopped the floor with a brigand as easily as I felt my buff character should be able to.

So I came here to figure out if it was intentional for all the enemies to have a ridiculous number of hitpoints, or if it was some sort of error that may be fixed. If the enemies are going to be this hardy, I'm considering just playing the original instead, which I don't want to do because I really like the remake in every other way, I think it's fantastic.

[Brainiac]

Remember you're a Thief. Try being dishonorable in your attacks.

[AtypicalChuck]

While the fighting in the game is challenging I don't think that patching it to make it easier/simpler is a practical option. It's a major element of the game and it rewards people who build up their skills. It is also a hundred times better than the fighting engines in any other QFG game.

May as well just remove action style fighting from the game period.

So why is there smooth slider ? I wanna sharp slider

This is the most awesome thing I ever read

[Erpy]

Well, it's not exactly the number of hitpoints. Here's the comparison for a thief with every stat at 100:

Original:
Brigand hitpoints: 66
Attack damage brigand: between 10 and 20 per attack with leather armor
Attack damage hero: between 13 and 23 per attack with a dagger
Chance of brigand hitting hero: 87,5% if he's standing still and 47,5% if he's dodging.

Remake:
Brigand hitpoints: 60 on easy, 75 on normal and 90 on hard
Attack damage brigand on hero with leather armor: 6 for a swing, 5 for a slash and 7 for a dagger toss.
Attack damage hero: between 1 and 2 for a stab, between 1 and 4 for a swing, between 3 and 14 for a lunge. If a critical hit occurs, it's between 1 and 5 for a stab, between 1 and 9 for a swing and between 9 and 32 for a lunge. (the last one is rather unlikely)
Chance of brigand hitting hero: 100% if he's standing still, 40% if he's dodging (that is, the dodge has 40% of failing), 0% if the hero ducks a swing or jumps back from a melee attack and if he's hit while doing a failed sidestep, he'll take 70% of the normal damage.

So what does the comparison say? The original is pretty much a quickdraw...if the enemy gets a few licks in, you die. If you get a couple of licks in first, the enemy dies. Since the enemy usually pulls off an attack every two seconds or so if not hit by your attack (which has between 40% and 70% of hitting with 100 in everything) while the player can get in 2 attacks or so a second, the quickdraw usually ends in favor of the player. In the remake, both you and the opponent do less damage and the player has the option of using a 100% effective dodging technique. Attack rate is more closely matched this time. It takes you and the opponent a lot longer to kill each other. I do feel that if the hero were to do a lot more damage, it'd upset the balance of things...a balance that's dependant on a crazy amount of factors.

Yeah, at the start your attacks suck and basic attacks' strength goes up pretty slowly. On the other hand, if your basic attack was any higher, you'd probably be totally slaughtering everything within half a day of training.

[Schrijvertje]

Rakeesh just thought me some new moves after training with Uhura. I'm curious to see how long I can survive in the desert with them (have only defeated a couple of Jackalmen up till now). The uneventful days I'm spending entirely training - which is kinda sad because I'd like to go looking for the easter eggs as well but I fear I just won't be good enough at combat for the future storyline battles if I don't take advantage of every opportunity to raise my stats.

[Rip Steakjaw]

I gotta say this kind of mentality among adventure gamers just kills me. I see it all the time. This is a big reason why adventure games haven't evolved at all. I mean, some modern game by the Adventure Company is going to play exactly the same as some old sierra game, they haven't changed at all. Meanwhile a genre like the FPS genre, that's based around pointing and shooting, you can't get much simpler than that. But you can hardly say Portal or something plays exactly like Doom. Yet in adventure games, where you can theoretically do a whole lot more with the genre I would think, they haven't changed at all.

I read a preview for a new adventure game coming up, about Mata Hari or something, the point is they talked about features like there being large crowds of people on screen and having to avoid pursuers and whatnot. I thought that was kind of sad that these "features" were new and exciting here in the year 2008. The worst part though was the guy writing the preview, he pointed out these features and was all like, "Uh, these sound kind of actiony, we'll have to see how they turn out." That's the problem right there. I remember reading a review of Curse of Monkey Island once and they guy said it was good, even with the action sequences. Action sequences in Curse of Monkey Island? You're kidding me, watching a dvd or cooking popcorn requires more effort than the "action sequences" in that game, and if I remember right you can bypass them completely anyway!

Anyway point is if you don't like the fighting in Quest for Glory, what I'd do is, I wouldn't play as a fighter. They got two whole other classes there. And if you're real adamant about it you can make it easier on yourself in the options. No need to have it dumbed down for the rest of us.

Also I wasn't meaning to take a swing at AGD or anything, they're remaking old games and Al Emmo was obviously an attempt to make a new classic sierra game like it was from 92 or whatnot, not a "modern" game. It killed me when it came out and people complained about the graphics. Like lifeless looking 3d rendered backgrounds that serve no purpose in being 3d in the first place would have been any better.

[DrJones]

While I'm enjoying immensely so far the combat on this game, I think it should be friendlier. I suggest the following tweaks that shouldn't take too much work to implement. Implementing one might remove the need of others:

1. The co-pilot should be active by default.
Reasoning: Some people (the kind that don't usually check the options) don't know that there's a co-pilot in the first place. Going from your own ability to co-pilot feels bad, while turning off co-pilot to play solo makes you feel like a real hero. I would show a message about turning off co-pilot once you feel confident about your skills, on Uhura's training. I don't know if the Shapier guard warns you about going to the desert without training first, but that would also be good.

2. Slighty reduce the health of monsters.
Reasoning: I find the combat is a bit lenghty, a 5-10% health reduction of monsters solves that and also makes it a bit easier.

3. Make health of monsters a function of your kills.
Reasoning: This takes more work, but if monsters become tougher as the game advances, you can make the start of the game easier while avoiding the problem of remaking Rambo instead of Quest for Glory 2.

4. Slighty reduce combat speed.
Reasoning: Some people just have worse reaction times than others. Autoadjusting combat speed seems like a lot of work, allowing the user to adjust it himself via changing the game speed slider is an option, but abusable. If the combat speed is fixed, you can make it a bit slower easily, though.

Note that many problems related with the combat are due to it taking a while to get used to the new system, and that I'm just offering ideas of ways in which the combat system could be improved, if there were a need to do so.

[christl13999]

I like these ideas.
I was very fast without money when I tried to play in normal. Because you can train with Uhura, but you cannot beat a single monster without good stats, so you don't get any more money.

I play now a thief, Turned on copilot on defensive and the skill level to easy and still the combat is challenging.
My Stats are now mostly at 150. I have the feeling that in most games this would be the normal setting.
After some monsters I still have to take some pill, but at least I kill them and get some reward.

I'm interested are most people playing this beast on supereasy?
What are the combat settings of most people here?

[Goilveig]

I like these ideas.
I was very fast without money when I tried to play in normal. Because you can train with Uhura, but you cannot beat a single monster without good stats, so you don't get any more money.

I play now a thief, Turned on copilot on defensive and the skill level to easy and still the combat is challenging.
My Stats are now mostly at 150. I have the feeling that in most games this would be the normal setting.
After some monsters I still have to take some pill, but at least I kill them and get some reward.

I'm interested are most people playing this beast on supereasy?
What are the combat settings of most people here?

I played through on max difficulty, except I went to normal on a few crazy fights like Khaveen or his three guards, because they're just too good.

As a thief, if you sneak attack, on normal difficulty you can kill everything except a Terrorsaur in one hit without any chance to receive damage. Thieves aren't supposed to be masters of straight-up combat, that's the fighter. The thief sneaks around and throws things. Try doing that.

[Schrijvertje]

Finally won a ghoul fight! Those combo attacks really did the trick.

[Erpy]

Ghouls aren't really that nasty if you let them exhaust their mana pool first. The trick is to stay alive until they've weakened themselves.

1. The co-pilot should be active by default.
Reasoning: Some people (the kind that don't usually check the options) don't know that there's a co-pilot in the first place. Going from your own ability to co-pilot feels bad, while turning off co-pilot to play solo makes you feel like a real hero. I would show a message about turning off co-pilot once you feel confident about your skills, on Uhura's training. I don't know if the Shapier guard warns you about going to the desert without training first, but that would also be good.

The guard does warn you when you first head into the desert.

Also, if you set the difficulty to easy, the co-pilot is automatically enabled. Initially, easy setting was the default setting too, but it was changed because easy difficulty effectively strips monsters of all but their basic attacks and we were afraid some people would play through the game without ever getting to see 70% of the battle system's potential. This is a personal opinion, but I never feel bad about picking a lower difficulty level manually. Heck, a lot of games I played had insultings for the lowest difficulty levels like "I'm a crybaby" or "I think I left the stove on". The difficulty with enabling the co-pilot by default is that not everybody reads manuals anymore these days and we may have gotten posts telling us that the control scheme is messed up. ("WTF? I pushed the attack button and my hero dodged. Why is that?")

2. Slighty reduce the health of monsters.
Reasoning: I find the combat is a bit lenghty, a 5-10% health reduction of monsters solves that and also makes it a bit easier.

The difficulty with that is that the moment you gain double swings (or triple in case of the fighter), which effectively doubles your damage output, you'll mow through enemies in a heartbeat. That said, I'm contemplating adding a 50% single-hitpoint damage bonus to every attack after all other calculations are made, meaning you might end up needing just a few less swings to finish off an enemy.

3. Make health of monsters a function of your kills.
Reasoning: This takes more work, but if monsters become tougher as the game advances, you can make the start of the game easier while avoiding the problem of remaking Rambo instead of Quest for Glory 2.

I proposed enemies that kinda level with you near the beginning of development and fans were not too hot on that. It kinda eliminates a part of stat growth too.

4. Slighty reduce combat speed.
Reasoning: Some people just have worse reaction times than others. Autoadjusting combat speed seems like a lot of work, allowing the user to adjust it himself via changing the game speed slider is an option, but abusable. If the combat speed is fixed, you can make it a bit slower easily, though.

True, although a noticable difference in speed will make battles a lot lengthier too, plus use of the co-pilot can avoid up to 80% of damage already.

I acknowledge starting out can be a toughie and you made some well-thoughtout suggestions. I'm actually very relieved with the reactions on the new system so far, since I kinda expected 50% to like it and 50% to rip it apart. (adventure gamers can be a picky and hard-to-please audience and some jump ship on general principle when they hear "arcade") But lowering difficulty while maintaining challenge, and rewarding training and stat growth while keeping all the factors like different attacks in mind is a tough thing to do.