Mod insanity back into the game?

[SilkSk1]

So I played long enough to encounter the first monster in that area with all the cages. I had hoped that the removal of the insanity feature would not harm the experience too much but I was wrong. This game NEEDS the insanity mechanic to be scary. It enhances the experience and makes every monster encounter a terrifying trial. But all I had to do about the monster in this game was walk around it.

The problem with the sanity mechanic of the last game was that there were clear methods of measuring and managing it. "Putting a dipstick in your ear" as it were. But rather then simply improving upon the mechanic, Thechineseroom made a grave mistake and removed it altogether.

I do not want to continue playing this game until I know whether a mod may eventually come out that brings back that Amnesia experience. Hiding in the dark drains and looking at monsters drains sanity but staying in the light gets you murdered. Can it happen? Should it? Anyone else want it back too?

[Cuyir]

Do you really miss that useless meter?

It only filled up during scripted sequences, which made it useless.

Outside of those sequences, staring at the creatures for too long only caused you to get discovered, like in the Penumbra games which had no insanity meter.

So what's the point of the meter then? I spent 80 percent of A:TDD crouching and with the lantern off and all it did was cause visual effects and the crackling sounds. Nothing else. Useless mechanic when you realize that it has no penalty for filling it up (besides wobbly controls and distorted vision) and that it can only be filled up when the game is scripted to do so.

[Retomathic]

the only way a sanity meter can be useful if it were low monster appearances would come and vanish.
they were there in amnesia but weird enough they broke down doors and weren't sanity effects.

like whatever place you are, if your sanity is low things will happen. like eternal darkness, you saw things happen and after that everything was back to normal.

what if a door would open but later it's closed again because of your sanity

[SilkSk1]

Do you really miss that useless meter?

It only filled up during scripted sequences, which made it useless.

Outside of those sequences, staring at the creatures for too long only caused you to get discovered, like in the Penumbra games which had no insanity meter.

So what's the point of the meter then? I spent 80 percent of A:TDD crouching and with the lantern off and all it did was cause visual effects and the crackling sounds. Nothing else. Useless mechanic when you realize that it has no penalty for filling it up and that it can only be filled up when the game is scripted to do so.

You're complaining about what was wrong with that mechanic. I don't disagree with you. But it needed to be improved upon, not removed. No, I don't want a "meter" in the sense that I can just press tab and get a measure on my state of mind. What I DO want is for scary or sudden events to negatively impact your character like in the last game.

Also, that mechanic was more effective then you're giving it credit for. I did a lot of testing and this was what I found.

Hiding in the dark will not make you go completely nuts. It just effects your vision a little. But it DOES make you more vulnerable to sudden scary events or monsters. They have slightly more drastic effects that degrade your vision even more and in some cases make your character harder to control.

If you get too close to a monster or look at it too long, it really will make it difficult to play. Everything is blurry, you can barely move, you can only crawl slowly on the ground and have only a little control over where you can even look. At this point the monster will sense you and come over to grant you his mercy.

It had its problems, sure. But it was big mistake to remove it in this game. I want it back. Even if it works exactly the same as TDD, as long as there's no definite way to measure it, it will already be an improvement over the last game. And it will be an even greater improvement on this one.

[Cuyir]

I find the system useless because of how it was executed. If you're not going to make it better, why bring it back when you can have the same effects (distorted vision, character fainting, etc etc etc) without having the meter ingame?

It hasn't affected my game experience so far because, again, the moments where the protagonist begins losing it you get the effects and experience you'd expect, without a meter that was useless.

Again, if you stared at the creatures in Penumbra Philip suffered from a sort of breakdown too and gets spotted and killed. All without a meter.

Could a sanity system be awesome? Hell yes. Was it done well in A:TDD? No. Do I miss it in A:AMFP? No.

[SilkSk1]

I find the system useless because of how it was executed. If you're not going to make it better, why bring it back when you can have the same effects (distorted vision, character fainting, etc etc etc) without having the meter ingame?

It hasn't affected my game experience so far because, again, the moments where the protagonist begins losing it you get the effects and experience you'd expect, without a meter that was useless.

Listen, I don't want a "meter" in the sense that it is measurable. But I do want actions of the player (such as staring a monster in the face) to have an impact on the player. I'm not talking about scripted events at all.

Yes, there were scripted moments of blurry-ness in Amnesia but most of it wasn't. Looking at the monsters had a very distinct negative impact on your character, the same as getting hit would drain your health. It added a lot of tension to the encounters. Now in MFP we ONLY have scripted blurry-ness and it sucks.

[Cuyir]

The only times when I noticed an insanity system in TDD was when the scripted moments would happen. The rest of the times the effects were just visual. At least in Black Plague

Spoiler below!

Clarence plays around with your mind (which by coincidence goes on while Philip is getting worse and worse with the virus) and makes you see stuff that wasn't there and whatnot. But this was also scripted.

TDD had nothing like that. Just some superficial effects most of the times and the noteworthy insanity effects being scripted. What more do you want? They just removed the meter itself and the superficial elements (standing in the darkness and whatnot) of the system.

If TDD has used it well and TCR would have removed it then fine but TDD didn't use it well, so moot.

I don't understand this complaint.

[Potato]

I don't know if I want to see those 2D bug sprites again to be honest.

Though shit like the Alexander painting was fucked.

[Deep One]

I don't know if I want to see those 2D bug sprites again to be honest.

Though shit like the Alexander painting was fucked.

And the hanging bodies in Choir entrance.

[Cuyir]

But both of those were scripted, if I remember correctly.

Not events that occurred because of your insanity meter being filled, if i'm not mistaken.