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Post by Kilarin on Aug 8, 2005 18:11:05 GMT -5
Sorry, didn't mean to sound like I was bragging. The reason I started this thread was to show that LOH is NOT too hard to play. It's hard, especially at the begining. VERY hard in places, but that's what makes it FUN. But it's not TOO hard anywhere. With some time, effort, and a lot of strategy, you can make it through.
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Post by NARAYAN on Aug 8, 2005 21:16:14 GMT -5
There is no need to sorry at all as you havn't any mistake.Low value of hardness is a problem.When I started playing no one stands in LOH and this is one of reasons I stopped playing this.I want it hard really hard as much as it appears to be impossible but we both knows that this is not.This may be hard for new players but it is very easy for us even in hard mode and no way to increase its hardness.
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Post by taltamir on Jun 26, 2006 19:03:08 GMT -5
(in regards to the original post about people complaining that the bears and wolves in the starting area are too hard to kill) what I find funny is that people have come to expect a "farmboy" to go out and kill BEARS and WOLVES by himself! Trying to kill a bear is a risky deal with a double barrel slug shotgun. There is a good chance that it will survive long enough to maul you. Bears are fast, strong, big, high on constitution and deadly.
If anything the game is too easy. As you have a small chance of surviving a bear's maul (where it should instantly kill you in real life, even in heavy armor)
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Post by NARAYAN on Jun 26, 2006 21:41:27 GMT -5
What people are expecting that they will come in game and eat chocolate and icecreams.
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Post by Kilarin on Jun 26, 2006 22:49:19 GMT -5
taltamir: Excellent point. NARAYAN Ha! But it does seem to be a large crowd. It seems that a signifigant percentage of the gaming crowd, instead of getting a sense of accomplishment from completeing tasks that are actually difficult, get thier ego boosts from destroying BIG things easily. If you want to appeal to those guys, just create a game with REALLY big nasty looking monsters with thousands of hit points, BUT, make it virtually impossible for them to damage the hero and give the hero a big axe that will kill the monster in two blows. Tada! They will be thrilled.
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Post by Xaa on Jun 26, 2006 23:40:36 GMT -5
If anything the game is too easy. As you have a small chance of surviving a bear's maul (where it should instantly kill you in real life, even in heavy armor) Well, if you define "heavy armor" as "17th Century Maximillian Plate", no, there's not a big chance of a bear being able to kill you unless it bites you in the head and penetrates your brain or other vital area. A bear CAN bite hard enough to puncture a 20-guage steel helmet, though it would take some doing for it to get a decent enough grip with it's teeth on a typical Maximillian helmet to actually penetrate deep enough to inflict a mortal wound. Otherwise, it can mess you up pretty bad bashing you around beneath that armor, quite possibly break bones, but it would have a hard time actually killing you. Now, if you define "heavy armor" as "11th century chainmail" or "modern PASGT", oh, most definitely, a bear can kill you with ease. A typical bear can weigh around 450 pounds, with larger species (like ursus arctos) reaching as much as 1300 pounds. On the smaller end of the scale, you're dealing with an animal that can deliver blows with forelimbs that weigh as much as your leg, and are clawed. Now, a bear's claws aren't terribly sharp (they dig too much with them for them to really get sharp), but they're incredibly strong and they don't break easily. Bears aren't like cats, they don't really rely much on their claws. Instead they rely more upon the strength of the blows they can deliver with their paws, and on the incredible power of their bite. A grizzly bear can deliver swats with it's forelimbs as fast as human punches, is bigger than a draft horse and stronger than an ox, and is delivering around four to seven thousand joules of energy with each swat - that's the kind of energy delivered by rifle rounds. If it rakes you with it's claws, it's going to rip right through chainmail. Though the claws won't penetrate PASGT, the force of the blows and the hooking of the claws will literally rip the armor off your body, the velcro closures ripping open, and the impact force is easily enough to break bones beneath your armor. But, boxing or clawing like a cat just isn't how bears really fight. When a bear decides to kill you (whether because it's annoyed or because it's hungry), the first thing it tries to do is knock you on your ass. Usually they charge and tackle, trying to swat you to knock you down. Once you're down, they grab on with their limbs (literally a bear-hug) and bite repeatedly until you stop moving, breferrably biting the head and neck. The kind of force they can generate at the tip of their canines is usually measured in tons, so they pierce pretty much any modern or historical armor with their teeth - and your skull, beneath. Bears are ambush hunters and opportunistic hunters, however, not stalkers (like felines) or group chase-hunters (like wolves). As a result, virtually all bear attacks boil down to the bear following it's instincts - knock you down, pin you, then bite you until you die. Note, however, that you don't "instantly die" from a bear swatting you. A single swat from a bear, no matter what it's size, is usually survivable, just like a single blow from a baseball bat is usually survivable. Sure, you may have broken bones, but one hit usually isn't going to kill (unless the bear rips your throat out withit's claws, or crushes your skull, etc). The problem is that bears don't just stand back like a cat and swat at you with their claws. Swatting is what they do to knock you on your ass so they can tackle you, get you in a good grip, then bite you to death. Of course, that just can't be done in a computer game. Having characters wrestle around verges on the impossible, no matter what system you're using, simply because of the difficulty of animating grappled maneuvers between two fighters - you have to animate two characters so that they work together as a team to produce an animation that looks right. So, wolves and bears and tigers and other predators you find in videogames don't tackle you and bite you like they do in real life. Instead, they stand in front of you and lunge & bite, or swat at you with their paws. Not realistic, unfortunately, but that's the limitations of the medium. Of course, realism isn't necessarily a good idea, when it comes to similating some things. Realistic is "hey, this is a grizzly bear, he weighs six times as much as your hero, runs about half again as fast as you so you can't get away. He hits you once, knocks you on your ass, jumps on you, bites through your helmet and kills you dead." That's realism, baby. It's also no fun at all. So, in LoH, bears are tough when you first run across them. But, after you get some experience, they're nothing. In Mageworld, bears are HIDEOUSLY tough for a beginning Black character, and are easily capable of downing your character in a single swat. After awhile, though, you can beat them up without getting hurt. With a large enough bow, you can take them down with just a few arrow hits. It's one of the places I had to compromise between fun and realism, in both LoH and Mageworld. In real life, bears are astonishingly tough and amazingly dangerous. And in any game, any carnivorous animal that can easily outrun you and easily kill you is just no fun. "Look! A bear! AAAAH! *CRUNCH!* <Press Escape for Options>" Speaking of bows and bears, I knew a guy who hunted black bears with a compound bow. Crazy bastard, he really was, but that was his thing. His basic technique was to sneak up on the bear, getting to a specific distance, then stand straight and tall to the bear spots him. The bear sees this as a potential challenge, and rises straight and tall to see if you'll back down (by dropping to all fours and waddling off like a bear) or simply turn and run (like a game animal - you'd be surprised how many predators are triggered to chase by seeing something run away). Bears, like a lot of animals, avoid fighting by exchanging tough looks. Well, while the bear is standing, he then shoots his first arrow. The bear is usually badly startled by that, and he can sometimes get a second arrow in while it's dropping to the ground. Then, he gets a third arrow in while it's charging. Then it drops, and he walks around to the side and puts a fourth arrow into it's heart to finish it. No, really! The key is that modern broadheads are wide, razor sharp, and designed to cause massive internal bleeding. By placing the arrows in the right spot (heart, aorta, etc), the bear is very quickly bleeding into it's lung cavity, and very shortly, it's down for the count. If he can hit in the heart (which he usually can), the bear doesn't even make it half the initial distance trying to charge him - it collapses in four to six seconds from interrupted circulation to the brain. Of course, he's the first to acknowledge that one day, he's gonna shoot badly - or maybe just screw up trying to sneak up on a bear, and end up having the bear sneak up on him When that day comes, he'll end up one of those tragic hunting statistics you read about. "Risks of the game," says he. "You're a crazy bastard," says I, and he just laughed. Lost touch with him over the years, dunno if he still bear-hunts with a bow. Likely he does, many people do. People get used to ordinary games, where bears and wolves are piddly little monsters. In reality, they're deadly - and, in both LoH and Mageworld, they're a LOT more dangerous than they are in basic DS. In the end, however, they are still beatable. They have to be, otherwise the game isn't a lot of fun.
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Post by Kilarin on Jun 27, 2006 0:03:55 GMT -5
Xaa: Indeed. Have you read "Man Eaters of Tsavo" or seen the movie "Ghost in the Darkness"? Back in 1898 two lions started killing and eating the people working on the Uganda Railway in Tsavo. The book written by the man who finally killed those two lions MAY contain exagerations, its hard to tell this far removed from the facts, But wherever his facts can be checked, they check out. And its a fact that the lions killed about 140 people before they were finally stopped. We often forget it in modern times, but there were good reasons our ancestors were afraid of the woods and the dark. Wild animals are DANGEROUS. Thank you Xaa for brining some of that feeling into LOH.
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Post by Xaa on Jun 27, 2006 0:28:43 GMT -5
Man Eaters of Tsavo... The book written by the man who finally killed those two lions MAY contain exagerations... Not really, it's happened before, and many times since. For example, back in the 1950's a lone male lion had a damaged foot and couldn't hunt normal game anymore, so he started hunting people living in small villages in Uganda. A British hunter spent months tracking the animal down. It had a very recognizable trail, due to one leg being screwed up, likely by the kick of a zebra. Regardless, it ate nearly a hundred people before it was finally shot and killed. And it's not like these villagers doused themselves in steak sauce and just walked back and forth with "EAT ME" signs around their necks, either. During the day, they carried what weapons they had - spears, some guns - and they stayed indoors at night. Didn't help, the huts just made it easier for the lion to find it's dinner. It would just barge in while people were sleeping, ripping and tearing, then drag whoever didn't get away off into the bush for a quick meal. Lions hunt at night, and we don't see worth a crap compared to a lion at night. Unfortunately, lions and tigers eating people is something that happens on a fairly regular basis, as is them being hunted down and shot by big-game hunters. It's just a part of life for many people in Africa and India. It's true. I can't tell you how many 19th century and earlier accounts I have read of bears and wolves killing people - many. There were still lions in europe during the time of the Romans, and though the europeans hunted them out by the dawn of the middle ages, they were still remembered in heraldry and legend. Today, the environmentalists and animal rights groups want you to believe that wolves and bears are all friendly and happy creatures that never attack man. Well, it's just not true, as a few unfortunate hikers and campers learn the hard way every single year. Our ancestors had damn good reason to be afraid of the dark.
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Post by taltamir on Jul 2, 2006 6:59:09 GMT -5
Ineed those are ferocious animals.
As for the "one swipe you are dead" thing. Well it wouldn't kill you like you said, but what I meant is that it will leave you with severe internal bleeding with ruptured organs and broken bones... you are gonna die in a few hours from that single swipe even if the bear leaves. And if it doesn't it just means you wouldn't be able to thrust around when it finishes you off with its bite. And there is a good chance that your neck will snap whenever you hit the tree/ground/whatever after the bear hits you (thats alot of ineria). But yes, instant death is extremely hard to achive. Even shooting someone in the heart doesn't instantly kill them (still takes a few seconds for them to pass out from lack of blood to the brain, and longer for the actual cells to die). The thing is that "clinically dead" is an outdated term refering to someone who is not breathing or having a heartbeat. But those conditions can be remedied as long as the cells are still alive and relatively intact; on the other hand certain injuries are certain death over the course of a few minutes or even hours. So when I said dead I mean done for, not instantly die from the hit EVERY time (although it can still happen).
Speaking of armor. Heavy medieval armor like plate is extremely resilient to slicing (such as swords) but very volnerable to blunt force impact which go right through it. Thats what the flail was invented for, to injure people in armor when a sword wouldn't do. Chain mail or padded leather armor would actually provide better protection against a bear maul then a plate. There are however modern impact armors that can survive a bear mauling. I actually saw a show where they designed an impact suit (looked like a space suit, only bigger and thicker and clumsier) and went out bear baiting. The guy walked out unharmed from a few good swipes from the bear. But the suit was so cumbersome he couldn't actually walk in it by himself, he had to be towed by his buddies using a mini crane.
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Post by Xaa on Jul 2, 2006 7:12:12 GMT -5
Ineed those are ferocious animals. As for the "one swipe you are dead" thing. Well it wouldn't kill you like you said, but what I meant is that it will leave you with severe internal bleeding with ruptured organs and broken bones... you are gonna die in a few hours from that single swipe even if the bear leaves. In nearly every bear attack I've read about, that's very true. Even a backhanded slap from a bear leaves massive bruising. The suit I've seen is one that was developed to work with lions and tigers. What it's usually made of is a thick layer of foam padding covered by kevlar. But, similar to the one you saw, you can barely move in it. It's just to allow someone to distract a violent caged animal while he's being tranq-darted, prodded into a holding cage, or whatever. You definitely could not fight in that thing, it's tough enough just to waddle around, and almost impossible to get back up if you trip. The show I saw was back in the 80's. A tiger was in one of those larger "open" areas that they were starting to use back then in zoos, and it was hiding because it had broken a tooth and felt like shiznit. They needed to get the tiger out of it's little hidey-hole so they could tranq it and give it dental work, but no way to do it without someone getting dead. The tiger would NOT come out and eat drugged meat, it wouldn't eat anything, it wouldn't drink, they had to do something or it was going to die. Well, enter one brave guy in a really funky space-suit thingie. That tiger was all over him like white on rice. Slammed him around like a rag doll, it was NOT funny. But, he came out of it unharmed - they tranqued the tiger, fixed up it's tooth, and it was an eight hundred pound pussycat again after.
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Post by taltamir on Jul 2, 2006 7:17:55 GMT -5
yes, thats what they did with the bear. those type of "armors" are definatly NOT usable in any type of fighting situation... With fantasy games you tend to chulk up the success of fighting those creatures to magic... but now that I think about it, you can outrun most animals (bears, wolfes, etc) despite the fact they are so much faster then humans in real life. oh well, it still has to be fun What you could do for early fights though is just fight other humans... or maybe cute little gnomes
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Post by Xaa on Jul 2, 2006 7:30:44 GMT -5
yes, thats what they did with the bear. those type of "armors" are definatly NOT usable in any type of fighting situation... Absolutely. I wish I could find a link to that "High Threat" suit that was developed in the 80's, though - it was made for counter-terrorism work, the idea was you could armor up a squad of guys in it and they could charge into a building, taking hits from AK-47's all the way, and not get dead. Amazing stuff - it looked like a spacesuit, too. It's not used today - one hand grenade, RPG or even a home-made explosive and the wearer is downed by the overpressure of the blast, dying or dead. And as we've discovered over the last few years, the bad guys like bombs and RPG's a lot more than they like AK's. True. Most of that is for game playability, however. If you can't run away, then that means every fight is do or die - either you win or you're dead. The original Dungeon Siege was heavily slanted towards the player being able to win it in a few hours - not only could you outrun every mob in the game, but until you get to the first dungeon, there isn't really anything you encounter thad even has a chance of killing you. Yah. Games like EQ and it's imitators use things like giant rats. That always amazed me. Here's a rat the size of a german shepherd - literally at least a good eighty pounds of pissed off rodent with incisors at least a good four inches long. And I'm killing it with my fists? Not very damn likely.
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Post by Kilarin on Jul 2, 2006 9:09:09 GMT -5
On the topic of wild animals vs. humans: Cougars/Mountain Lions/Panthers are MUCH smaller than bears and lions. An entirely different class. And people HAVE managed to fight them and win. I was trying to find a story I read in readers digest years ago about a guy who stopped an attacking cougar by shoving his fist down it's throat, and I came upon this page: cougarinfo.org/It lists some amazing battles. People lost a lot, but they DID win occasionally. in 1916 an 11 year old girl managed to beat off a 2 year old cougar with cataracts. Gerald Walters (this is they guy whos story I was looking for) shoved his fist down the throat of a cougar and kept it from killing him long enough to let one of his friends kill the beast with an axe. cougarinfo.org/attacks.htmLarrane Leach pulled a young cougar off her kids by the scruff of the neck, then held it by it's paws at arms length until her dog could chase it off. Steven Arroyo chased off a mountain lion with a good rock between the eyes. Jessica Vanney fought off a cougar with a hunting knife www.cougarinfo.org/attacks2.htmElliot Cole used a bag, his fists, and bicycle to stop a cougar from killing Jon Nostdal. David Parker took out a cougar with a pocket knife! cougarinfo.com/attacks3.htmAnd lots more. Fascinating stories.
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Post by Xaa on Jul 2, 2006 9:17:17 GMT -5
On the topic of wild animals vs. humans: Cougars/Mountain Lions/Panthers are MUCH smaller than bears and lions. An entirely different class. And people HAVE managed to fight them and win. Yep. It's rare, but it happens. The stories from the 19th century are similar - most involve mountain men who got jumped by cougars. I was reading a book that had several of those stories in them from the 19th century as part of a history class in high school. One of the students pointed out there were no stories of these mountain men getting killed by cougars. And I was thinking "Well, duh. If they die, how do they tell the story? Not like anyone was going to find the body, they were alone out there." So, yes, all the stories were brave and thrilling and talked about killing mountain lions with a knife or club or what-have-you. But, naturally, none of the stories ended "then, after the mountain lion killed me, I walked two hundred miles to the nearest bit of civilization to tell the story." Despite that the dead still vote quite a bit out here in the west, they remain quite taciturn otherwise.
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Post by taltamir on Jul 5, 2006 5:17:07 GMT -5
On the other hand, there ARE alot of missing person cases Also note that the vast majority of those aren't "and then he killed the lion with his poket knife" but "and then the lion saw he put too much of a fight and LEFT never to be seen again/to be found in good health by trackers later on" And those were usually attacks by younglings and cougars, not attacks by full grown lions (so apperantly surviving that is somewhat harder...). For you its a fight to the death, for the lion its a mean thats not worth risking a sprain/light injury over as it will hamper its ability to hunt in the future.
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