Zwiebelchen

That's because people who watch LPs don't watch for the game, but for entertainment. It's a general misconception that Let's Plays or Twitch channels are about the games. That's also why the popular Twitch/LPers use different styles of casting. Some are more serious, bringing in philosophy and discussions about politics and recent events, some are making fun of the games they play (and mostly play trash games like Goat simulator) or just constantly do bad puns. Then there's also those that just like to show off their cleavage. And then there's PewDiePie. This one is an exception. I don't know why anyone would watch PewDiePie except for masochistic tendencies. This guy is just outright annoying and absolutely not funny.

And that's why I sympathize with him. Everyone who watches Yahtzee knows the meta behind his reviews: If he talks story and gameplay longer than 30% of the video, it's a good game.

Btw, what share does Obsidian get for the boxed copy? I plan to buy boxed because I'm a box collector, but if steam or GoG yield significant more returns for them, I might just go with a download and save the time driving into the city.

Wow, no need to get personal... I'm just giving examples of how games that are widely considered as RPGs wouldn't even match your definition of RPG. If you don't regard these games as RPGs, then fine, but I just fail to see how you would be disappointed about ME not being an RPG if you wouldn't even consider those other games RPGs. I think you get my point. Did you really expect ME:3 to be more RPG than, let's say, Planescape? In BG1 and BG2, choices were mostly minor and didn't have any real impact on the game other than perma-deaths and a reputation score. And even in BG2 you can't have a say in anything relating to the game's critical path. You can not convince Yoshimo to not betray you. You can not refuse to help Suldanessalar even though Irenicus has a damn good point. You can not really team up with Bodhi other them temporarily. You can not decide to not care about Imoen. Heck, you can't even be properly evil, even if the game has a reputation score suggesting it. The only chapter that is not linear is chapter 2/3 (which is essentially the same chapter). But I regard this chapter more as a bunch of completely story-unrelated sidequests. And it is. You can, in fact, not care about Imoen. You can't not go to Spellhold, but you don't have to go there for Imoen. You can tell everybody and their grandma that all you care about is getting Irenicus. You can not care two bits about Imoen, never let her back into your party, tell her these facts, even let her get killed. That's a thing. As I said, the game is semi-linear; I never claimed it's a sandbox. The crit path happens in order, but how you go about it is entirely up to you. ME2 was on rails; the side missions are *literally* a path from the beginning to the end with a couple turns but no deviations and then back to the ship. The original ME that wasn't so; in ME2 it's a direct result of EA limiting the game design from the beginning for console purposes. I never said I don't regard the games you listed as RPG's. In fact, I've said quite the opposite. Planescape: Torment can be argued to some extent, as it is in many ways a visual novel (800,000 lines of text!) but is also simultaneously truly a ROLE playing game, in that you take on a role and play that role, to such an extent that the combat in PT almost feels tacked on. So, to sum it up, your comment about "miss only one of those elements and it's not an RPG anymore" is only valid for games you like it to be valid for? Talk about double-standards. Either way, it doesn't really matter. I'd say 80% of players bought ME:2 and ME:3 for the story and decisions, not the RPG elements. Yes, they were advertised as RPGs, but that was mostly due to Bioware having a "reputation" at that time. In other words, it was a marketing trick. Nobody really considered ME:1 (and thus also ME:2 and ME:3) a "traditional" RPG. It has been and always was a shooter with RPG elements and an interactive (well-written) space-opera. Even though I consider myself a CRPG fan, I was mostly annoyed by the RPG elements of Mass Effect 1. I wanted to explore the story and characters, not mess around endlessly with the sidequests to raise my character level. I was absolutely pleased to hear that the tedious grinding was gone in ME2. It was just a distraction from the game's main selling point.

Wow, no need to get personal... I'm just giving examples of how games that are widely considered as RPGs wouldn't even match your definition of RPG. If you don't regard these games as RPGs, then fine, but I just fail to see how you would be disappointed about ME not being an RPG if you wouldn't even consider those other games RPGs. I think you get my point. Did you really expect ME:3 to be more RPG than, let's say, Planescape? In BG1 and BG2, choices were mostly minor and didn't have any real impact on the game other than perma-deaths and a reputation score. And even in BG2 you can't have a say in anything relating to the game's critical path. You can not convince Yoshimo to not betray you. You can not refuse to help Suldanessalar even though Irenicus has a damn good point. You can not really team up with Bodhi other them temporarily. You can not decide to not care about Imoen. Heck, you can't even be properly evil, even if the game has a reputation score suggesting it. The only chapter that is not linear is chapter 2/3 (which is essentially the same chapter). But I regard this chapter more as a bunch of completely story-unrelated sidequests. And it is.

... then again, everyone knew that before buying the game. If you don't like cinematics, just stay away from such games. Tbh, I don't understand all the hate here for modern triple-A standards. The cinematics of ME3 were awesome and the choices presented in those were equally awesome aswell (if we exclude the terrible ending). In fact, at several points of the game, I was like "whoa... I just can't decide on that now." and shut the game down to get time to think it through. I never had that feeling in any CRPG I remember yet. Even the glorified Fallout 1 and 2 or Planescape: Torment didn't have such a moment for me. And if you really feel that an RPG game is all about mechanics and not writing, story or decisionmaking, then I have nothing to say to you. No, an RPG is about choice, interactivity, consequences, writing, story, characters, non-linear gameplay, and a set of mechanics. All of these things are necessary to make an RPG; miss out on one of them and you end up with a game that has RPG attributes. ME3 is a little more of an RPG than, say, Bioshock--but not by a whole lot. It is significantly less of an RPG than System Shock or System Shock 2, to provide other examples. What ME2 really is is a third-person shooter with significant RPG elements. By that definition: - Baldurs Gate (no consequences, no choices) - Baldurs Gate 2 (linear gameplay, no real choices) - Icewind Dale (no memorable characters, linear gameplay) - Icewind Dale 2 (see above) - Planescape Torment (semi-linear, game mechanics are not on par with other IE-games) wouldn't have qualified as RPGs either. And yet you are here, waiting to play a game that was made with exactly those games in mind. The definition of "RPG" is almost as widespread as the definition of "FPS" or "Action Adventure" nowadays. Technically, Minecraft is "FPS"...

... then again, everyone knew that before buying the game. If you don't like cinematics, just stay away from such games. Tbh, I don't understand all the hate here for modern triple-A standards. The cinematics of ME3 were awesome and the choices presented in those were equally awesome aswell (if we exclude the terrible ending). In fact, at several points of the game, I was like "whoa... I just can't decide on that now." and shut the game down to get time to think it through. I never had that feeling in any CRPG I remember yet. Even the glorified Fallout 1 and 2 or Planescape: Torment didn't have such a moment for me. And if you really feel that an RPG game is all about mechanics and not writing, story or decisionmaking, then I have nothing to say to you.

In regards to "post EA bioware releases": Dragon Age: Inquisition is not a bad game. It's just casual and too short. Mass Effect 3 wasn't a bad game either. In fact, ME3 was a masterpiece if we ignore the ending. And come on, judging a game only for it's ending is just ... wrong. And we know that. People didn't rate Breaking Bad as a masterpiece just because it didn't have the disappointing series finale we almost expect nowadays.

A simple solution is to make AI go after softer targets first, so that they will take down your wizard firs, and deal with plated tank last unless absolutely forced to by positioning. I agree that this is needed, definitely, but if we look at the above chart again, we will notice that it doesn't fix the armor scaling problem. The core issue is that the defensive stats grow in importance exponentially, not linear. So even with the AI going after the softer characters first there's still literally no benefit in wearing armor as a DPSer. Because it doesn't matter if an enemy two-hit kills your character or two-point-one-hit kills your character. What we need is a system that works logarithmic, not exponential: If an enemy deals 100 damage and you absorb 50, one additional point of absorbtion increases your effective life by 2%. However, if an enemy deals the same 100 damage and you absorb 98, one additional point of absorbtion doubles your life. This is an inherent flaw in the system that needs to be accounted for if we want to keep the system as-is. A simple way to fix this would be to "invert" the effectiveness curve and grant the defensive stats based on the difference, to achieve a linear or at least pseudo-linear scale: Cloth, Leather and Mail receive an increase in defensive scores; the lower tiers stronger than the higher tiers. Plate armor should only be slightly better than Chain mail, simply because that "slightly better" has a huge impact due to how the mitigation mechanics work.

Actually, after thinking about it, I support the idea to have CON reduce the recovery penalty on armors (not the recovery time in general). It's a simple idea that fixes two useless things at the same time: medium armors and the constitution stat. Plus it even makes a lot of sense, from a logical point of view. There would basicly still be only two choices then: you go for the best armor that doesn't give you a penalty or go for the strongest armor. However, as not all characters will run the same CON stat, at least it varies from character to character. Also it will actually allow for battle-mage tank hybrids.

PoE will definitely sell better than those, considering BG 1 EE and BG 2 EE were mostly bought by those who didn't have the game already. Most of the patches done by the EE overhauls were already part of free fanmods. I bought them both, but not because of the additional content or patches (the extra content was not that good imho), but in order to support beamdog. Also, the game has gotten pretty good media coverage so far. The previews were very optimistic and the showcase reports of exhibitions were mostly positive aswell. If that tone continues, we will definitely see a decent success of the game. EDIT: ... damn, I think I should definitely finish by BG 2 EE playthrough while waiting for PoE. I dropped it halfway through TOB (The Neera quest was ridicolously hard). I want to know the epilogues of the new characters, even though I didn't like them that much.

Then we have the same problem that Archeage (a korean MMO) suffers from: Everyone wears leather. The reason for that is, that defense bonuses usually not scale linear, but logarithmic with a diminishing effect the more you stack. Leather with has balanced magic and physical defense offers the highest "bang for your buck" in standard situations. So, again, we would have a clear "optimum" choice which we are trying to avoid. But yeah, it would at least be an upgrade from the status quo. Again, I want to highlight the importance of incomparables in balancing. After all, this is the reason we got an unusual attribute selection in the first place ("might" instead of "strength", boosting magical and physical damage instead of just physical). And while the attribute system is still somewhat flawed, I feel it's at least going into the right direction. We can't say that for armor choices. As long as armor choices are only balanced on defense vs. offense we have no real fundamental choices. Because decisions between defense and offense can clearly be made on the purpose of your character in the holy trinity ruleset. Damage? Full offense. Tanking? Full Defense. Everything else is just gimping your character. The decision for armor types should be based on a different choice that can not clearly be made by just your role alone. Attributes on armor only distort our decisionmaking process by giving us incentives based on what the developers would recommend for your character. It's actually reducing the opportunity of choice, not increasing it. A different take on this could give incomporable bonuses and maluses based on the different types of armors. Maybe something like this: Light armor: immunity against certain status effects like stuns or knock downs Medium armor: disables disengagement attacks towards this character Heavy armor: you can not be interrupted via normal means This is obviously just an example. It would at least offer benefits in armor choices aside from the simple defense vs. offense choice.

Holy ****, I never knew that. :> Glory times when Bioware still cared for the community...

All that'd do really, would be to re-create class restrictions on armour, albeit "soft" restrictions. If we want to "fix" the armour system, I think we need to incentivize (sp?) the use of the various armours, rather than to restrict their use. First, I'd like to see the various effects of armours "upped", so that there'd be meaningful and clear differentiation between them, instead of just No/Robe/Light/Medium/Heavy armour (as it is now, despite the obvious attempt to get away from it). This could be done by drastically upping the effects of the armours vs. different weapons. As an interesting side-effect, this would also mean that there'd be a meaningful differentiation between the various weapons used against humanoid opponents. Second, I'd like to see Talents to support the use of various armours, with interesting effects, to discourage the constant swapping of armours between encounters and promote specialization on a per-character basis. This would mean that it wouldn't be a bust to use Medium Armours, if, for example, Medium Armours filled that niche that was good against crushing weapons, and had a talent that made you move faster, Plate Mail would be good against Slashing, with a Talent that turns (%) incoming Hits into Grazes. Something along those lines. The added perk is that the game is already structured somewhat like this, it just needs to be upped to 11 to make it matter. The problem would then be that basicly all armors would be the same and there is no more calculation that can be done via the player. Given no meta-game knowledge, a player can never estimate what types of damage he will encounter. If we apply incomparables instead of numbers (which, again, I think is definitely the way to go), those incomparables must have a clear meaning and predictability to the player. You won't know what damage types will matter later in the game, but you will definitely know what taking a stun over a fireball spell means. Again: the core problem is a number-based approach. You will always find an optimum for a problem in maths. What we need are incomparables. Something that isn't bound to stats or numbers. Hence my proposal to remove the recovery penalty and instead limit spell choices. Because damage vs mitigation can be directly compared, while mitigation vs flexibility can't.

But it still doesn't solve the problem. It still makes it worse - everyone will wear clothing only not to lose spells (especially damage spells) which are the very basis of the class. Especially considering buff/support spells are reacitonary thing. Already in PoE if someone is hitting your spellcaster you are doing it wrong. Viability of "combat" mages in plate is already in question. With that suggestion - it won;t make much sense. As for other classes - there will be no reason not to wear plate. Unless abilities also get limited by armor. Which would mean congratulations! You've managed to create D&D armor limitations, even if it is a soft cap (you can use any armor, but it will gimp you so much nobody will do it). BTW - Currently the armor penalty can be counteracted with dexterity. I think you have a very traditional look on spellcasters then (glass cannons with pure DPS). Which is fine, but it's not like others have no different oppinions on that. What if I want to build my spellcaster around buffing and utility and not raw DPS? Currently, this will just mean that I suck either way. I can't compensate for my dropped offensive potential as I'm still stuck with the recovery time penalty. The system as I proposed offers me to build a character with more survivability at the cost of flexibility. The lack of good non-reactionary buff spells is not really a system flaw, just a flaw in spell design (which can be easily fixed with new spells). But yes, this idea only works with better AI; because why would I limit my spell choices if my spellcasters won't get attacked anyway? Disagree with you here, D&D made you wear the amor that suited your dex bonus. But the main point is, heavy armors need some other penalty that makes sense within the system (banning spells would be terrible I agree), like a deflection penalty. Plate : -8 def Mail : -6 def leather : -4 def etc. Or maybe a percentage based penalty for your deflection bonuses total, rather than flat values, since -8 is too much on lvl 1, but too little on lvl 10... I like this second idea better, it's consistent with the game world too. I was also thinking of adding an accuracy penalty, but the moment you reduce dps output, armors are a no-go for most non tanks. While "dodge tanks" aren't preferred by healers in MMO's (spike damage kills healing efficiency heh), it could be an intresting mechanic here. The problem with a number-based solution is, again, that players would go for extremes only: either take no penalty or get max benefits at maximum penalty. Number-based solutions will never encourage hybrids because specialized builds are always superior to jack-of-all-trades builds in RPGs. If you can do the maths, you will always find an optimum somewhere.

Because under your system if a player wants to play a certain way they have to wear a certain armor. And as other people have said your system just makes it more likely for a caster to wear no armor instead of having to deal with a bunch of restrictions. And why exactly is being bound to a certain type of armor for a certain playstyle a problem? After all, your tank will suck without plate, no matter what. I see nobody complaining about that? Having to deal with some restrictions is a non-issue if your numbers aren't affected by your choice through proper balancing: So what if I can't use 3 fireballs when I can use 3 stuns instead? What this does is shifting the choice between survivability and DPS - which basicly are two sides of the same coin (If you can kill your enemy faster than he can kill you, you win) towards a choice between survivability <---> flexibility. Which are incomparables by default, making it a way tougher choice, as you can not fix the problem via numbercrunching anymore. Wait, then you understood the idea wrong: the idea is to get rid of the recovery time penalty and instead apply limited spell choices.

Then again, the system they designed doesn't work. Nobody uses light or medium armors. In fact, nobody ever uses anything but cloth except for the main tank. And the best point of this proposal: it wouldn't even change the status quo for min/maxers: you can still cast everything with no penalty on cloth. As you guys already said: wearing plate on a wizard is terrible. Removing the penalty and limiting spell choices will not make it more terrible. Instead, it allows for new opportunities like a "tank wizard", as it allows for new spells that weren't possible in the current system.

To be honest; I don't see how it would go "against the general design principles of this game". Higher defensive potential must come at a loss in offensive potential. However, if that cost is raw effectivity through numbers, you choice becomes a no-brainer. The idea proposed supports the idea of incomparables in balancing. You just can't say that a druid or wizard that doesn't have access to his potent offensive spells is "worse" if he can use a powerful stun or defensive spell instead. It would definitely make wearing light or medium armor more attractive for spellcasters without gimping your character. Because you don't have any penalties other than your spell choices themselves. It's basicly how Sorcerers and Mages and spell schools were in the IE games: You could have full spell potential or you could limit yourself and get a benefit elsewhere. I don't see how this goes against any design principle of this game.

The idea behind this is that your raw spell power and number of spell uses is completely unaffected by your choice of armor. So, given proper balancing of abilities (in a way that spell choices are basicly incomparables that are not clearly superior to other choices), a wizard would never be "worse" just because he wears plate armor. He would just play differently, with a smaller set of abilities at his disposal (he can still cast the same amount of spells, just has less options). It also fixes a major balancing flaw in that developers can not add super-powerful defensive spells, as it might cause cookie-cutter builds optimized to use that particular spell to steamroll everything. With a system like that, you could create such spells, but make them only available for cloth wearers, effectively balancing out any kind of "OP potential". I was one of those guys that made heavy use of the spell in Baldurs Gate 2 that turned your mage into a warrior of equal level, disabling all spells. Combined with buffs and utility spells like stone skin and magic armor, you could build an interesting battlemage hybrid in the IE games. Stuff like this is just not possible (or simply not viable) in the current implementation of armor penalty. Which is a shame, as the general idea behind armors not being class-locked was exactly that: encouraging unique hybrid-playstyles.

Armor penalties. The current concept has been proven not to work as intended: people min-max either to plate or cloth; there isn't any middle-ground. You equip your tank with plate, everything else wears cloth. So, what could be possible solutions to this problem? Obviously, we don't want DnD 2nd edition chance to spell failure, because do-or-die dice rolls suck. DnD 3rd edition max dex modifiers didn't work well either, with leather armors getting the same armor scores as plate if you accumulated enough +dex and no incentive to go lighter when you haven't reach max dex yet. And we definitely don't want to limit armor choices based on class choices alone, as that's incredibly boring and basicly defeats the idea of hybrid builds or battle mages. I think a good approach should not affect DPS or speed at all, but instead limit the flexibility of the class. So, my idea would be to limit spellcasters in their spell choices depending on the type of armor. Spells are divided into "difficulty"-tiers. This is not to be confused with the spell levels. Each spell gets a certain difficulty tier applied to them: 1) can be cast with all types of armor 2) can be cast with chainmail and below 3) can be cast with leather and below 4) can be cast with light armor and below 5) can only be cast in cloth armor If you wear plate as a wizard, you can only cast a selection of defensive or utility spells; if you wear leather, you unlock a selection of offensive spells of difficulty level 3 aswell. If you wear cloth, you get full access to all spells (difficulty level 5). The beauty about this approach is that it balances the armor choices and the spell repertoire in the same process and allows for a powerful tool for the developers to fine-tune the power of spellcaster hybrids. You can play your wizard or druid as a glass cannon with the full spell potential or you could play them more as battle mages, using weapons as DPS and otherwise are limited to enhancing spells and some CC. This way, you can basicly select your armor choice based on the spells you want to use for your playstyle. Or you can select your spell choices based on the armor choice. So your favorite spells are all available on leather armor? Great! But damn, you definitely want that powerful highlevel-CC that only gets unlocked when using light armor..., so yeah, downgrade to light armor then. But wait, maybe I can make up for the lack of CC with that defensive spell on the same level that can be used with leather? The beauty about this idea is, that it even brings a logical explanation as to why you can or can't cast that particular spell: as you are encumbered, you simply can not perform the moves that are required to shape the magic into the right form. It also allows for new cool spells that play with this mechanic: for example, a once-per-day spell that unlocks the next difficulty-tier of spells for a limited duration. Again, this is not to be confused with the spell levels themselves. There should be spells on every level that can be cast on plate difficulty, so that when you reach a new spell level, you definitely have *something* to use. You just don't have the full repertoire at your disposal. This system can also easily be applied to all non-magic classes aswell: certain moves and abilities are just impossible to do in plate armor.

Thanks for the additional intel. Combined with the knowledge from the other thread about maps, I think I can now replicate all the maps with a satisfactory result. Now the remaining problem is porting them into a game-readable file...

Btw, have there been any details on the model format of the armors and weapons yet? I suppose they were made via Maya aswell?

Hilarious mistake! Then again, you don't see the start or end of the river in the ingame world-map. It could come from a mountain, go northwards until it hits the other river or flow into an underground cavern.

Impractical oversexed armor flames inc.

I see... so no plugin for Maya directly? In that case, I'll go ahead and download a students license of Maya to check out if I can create those render passes. At least that's a first step into creating maps for PoE. Converting them into unity-readable files would be the second.