I agree so camping will be a major part in Tactica: Maiden of Faith so I hope you'll like that. IMHO that's much better than running back to town or super fast health generation + your team can do skills like reparing, forging, looking for ingredients, mixing potions, and so on while camping.
That sounds really good! I like games with foraging, potion-mixing, repairing, etc. Looking forward to playing Tactica when you got it finished. Godspeed!
Why? I'm finishing up Avernum 6 at the moment and there are some isolated areas that require reasonably lengthy stretches away from town. That either means you simply take a million potions and quaff them every few minutes or you trek back and forth to recover. Neither of these is actually more interesting than getting on with experiencing more content.
Not having played Avernum 6, I can't directly comment that, but I'll comment the game design aspect of "requiring lengthy stretches away from town, millions of potions and trekking back and forth to recover". If a game designer makes those lengthy stretches and does not allow you to rest and recover in the wilderness, then I'd say he/she intended you to juggle "a million potions" (making it part of the game's challenge) and at times slog back to town. In other words, the designer considered those activities an integral part of his/her game. Either that or he/she made a serious design error. I'm not accusing Jeff of an error, but I'm questioning designing a game where you cannot rest anywhere else but in towns AND then requiring long stretches in the wilderness WITH frequent combat. That design inherently forces you to make the long trek back to town eventually or, as luck would have it, even frequently. That is, unless you enable camping.
Note that I don't consider supply runs to towns that much of a bore, as long as they are not required frequently and/or made especially cumbersome (like very long distances between towns and constantly respawning mosnters in the way). Same goes for "potion juggling" - as long as it doesn't go overboard, requiring you to lug gallons of potions with you, I'm OK with it. I quess it's Old School, but I consider (some) potion juggling to be a part of fantasy cRPGs.
Anyways, now that Jeff is moving away from resting in towns and from wounds (HP loss) being meaningful after the battle, I think he's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's simplifying the system to the extreme and taking gameplay elements I liked away and replacing them with streamlined and very "MMO-like" elements. And to do that to make us "have more fun" is a lopsided comment leaving those of us who liked the Older School approach more in the cold.
But it's Jeff's game not mine, so he's entitled to do with as he pleases. It just doesn't seem to be a game after my tastes anymore. Different strokes for different folks and all that.
About "experiencing more content". I don't think that this revisioning of the game system is required for that, when either designing the content differently (e.g. shortening the lengthy stretches away from town) or allowing camping could have done it as well, IMO.
Why is it inherently worse to focus on each battle as an individual tactical event rather than one long stretch of attrition. Why is camping inherently better gameplay than simply not needing to? Note that fatigue builds up, so unlike Dragon Age, there's a consequence for losing battles.
But is this focussing more on the individual tactical event in a meaningful way? Surely, in games with attrition (as you call it), you need to focus on each individual battle too. You cannot just fight "the big picture", you need to focus on individual battles or lose the battle (thus losing the game). But in addition to this, you need to keep in mind the life after the battle and not just ignore that aspect completly. It creates continuity to the game, as you cannot just rampage around and take damage, fling spells and deplete your mana, etc. like there's no tomorrow, because you have to live with the aftermath of the individual battles. IMO, the focus on individual battles without any (or nearly any) long-term effects is very, eh, gamey. Yes, I know it is very common these days, especially in FPS games (e.g. no HPs or health-meter, just a temporarily "wounded state" which is cured by taking cover and not taking additional damage for a few seconds), but does it have to be? Is it inherently better gameplay, or to use the feared F-word, more fun, to streamline everything to the point of over-simplicity and drop anything that requires you to pay attention and perhaps think ahead a bit. I'm exaggerating here, I know, I'm just struggling to get my point across, because English isn't my first language, and so resort to over-emphasis as I lack the verbal finesse of a more subtle apporach. Hope you understood what I meant.
Yup. Just my two cents.