mikeprichard wrote: ↑Fri Aug 02, 2019 4:27 am
I think Allofich's current system as recently tweaked/fixed by Interkarma is very simple and logical (even though it took me about a hundred posts to finally figure it out...). It's really up to classic players to get used to not abusing the most obvious exploit (though of course, there remain quite a few others). If we eventually get a proper DFU wiki working, the info can also be posted there.
Again, it seems like a simple enough thing to get them used to it by telling them 'This exploit does not work as it did in classic'. Really what you seem to be saying is these people should learn the hard way ("like I did") by taking the time to build a character and starting to play and then figuring out that DFU does not work the way classic does. Most people don't RTFM. They've played Daggerfall and expect DFU to perform in a similar fashion. I'm all for this exploit being taken out. However, the exploit IS a large part of how classic Daggerfall is played. Virtually everyone who has seriously played Daggerfall knows about this exploit. IMHO if you are going to make a fundamental change to character creation then let the player know; this exploit does not work anymore.
However, that being said, if a person DID use this exploit in a classic game that character is no longer the same in DFU. So an option (off by default) to allow the classic exploit seems like a reasonable notion for those importing classic games.
I'm not so sure you can strictly call it a bug so much as an unintended consequence of Daggerfall's game mechanics. The "fix" for this is to change the game mechanics. It seems like Julian basically applied the easiest solution possible which was to add immunity which just turned off paralysis for elves. What Julian clearly did not do was turn off immunity if you selected critical weakness.
If we are going to speak of a charted course, one goal is to create a fully compatible modern version. This is the only "Bug" that I can think of that has a significant (positive) impact on player experience. If it is decided that this mechanic should not be allowed in the game, and I am not necessarily arguing strongly against that, you should tell people when they try to do it. Bear in mind the very nature of the way character creation works makes this look like an exploit and a legitimate one. I for one was not one of those people who used this exploit when I originally played Daggerfall
Last edited by jayhova on Sun Aug 04, 2019 11:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
Documenting differences from classic is certainly one of the big goals with the wiki.
I think a sensible middle ground could be one catch-all warning when starting character creation. “Warning: bugs and exploits from classic have been patched. For further info,
please consult the DFU forums/wiki.” Obviously this wiki needs to be up and running for that to happen.
It is really clear in the DFU mission statement that many things will be fixed but as you said, people don’t bother to RTFM. If people with knowledge of classic don’t check the documentation after a warning like that, it’ would be on them.
Azteca wrote: ↑Sat Aug 03, 2019 1:31 am
Documenting differences from classic is certainly one of the big goals with the wiki.
I think a sensible middle ground could be one catch-all warning when starting character creation. “Warning: bugs and exploits from classic have been patched. For further info,
please consult the DFU forums/wiki.” Obviously this wiki needs to be up and running for that to happen.
It is really clear in the DFU mission statement that many things will be fixed but as you said, people don’t bother to RTFM. If people with knowledge of classic don’t check the documentation after a warning like that, it’ would be on them.
I think this is a great idea. It's clearly a major area of confusion with the classic players as seen in many videos already, and that one-time warning would flag the issue, leaving further research to the player if desired. As you say, after that, if they don't RTFM, it's on them.
It seems that it was almost certain that the original developers knew about this particular exploit and just left it in without trying to fix it. While something like casting a spell and then cancelling it but still getting a skill increase was likely overlooked. It also seems clear that immunity itself was conceived as an effect in the chain. The very first item in that chain is 'is the target immune?'. e.g. I attack an imp with an iron weapon, [check] is the imp immune? [result:TRUE] weapon does no damage. There is no percentage immunity. The imp is just immune. This is the the simplest way to do immunity and likely how the immunity in the original code worked. This way of doing this would produce exactly the effect we see in the original game.
Now, it's certainly legitimate to take the position that this particular mechanic gives the player an unfair advantage in character creation. However, if you look at character creation as a set of rules, the rules state you can take critical weakness as a disadvantage and get back points for that and as an elf you get immunity for free.
In this particular circumstance DFU changes the rule to close this loophole. I don't disagree with the decision to do that. However, if you are going to present DFU as a faithful re-implementation of the original game, and I think you need to explicitly tell the players that you have changed this particular rule to disallow this exploit. I would say a "bug" is a software problem that produces results that are inconsistent with the rules the game-world has set forth. This on the other hand is more like a legal loophole in the rules that players have been taking advantage of. In a perfect world I would say that DFU should allow this rule to stand as an option.
I think it's important to say that my view point come from a guy that plays a significant number of pen a paper RPGs. This sort of rule exploit exists there. Sometimes these rules are appended to close the loophole. In this case Bethesda never did that in the patches that followed Daggerfall.
The devs of DFU are, by default, the DMs of this flavor of TES Daggerfall. As The DMs they have the right to change the rules they see as unfair. That being the case, part of the DMs job is to tell the players that you are disallowing a particular rule in the original published version of the game because it gave the player an unfair advantage in character creation.
