scrotiemcb

Totally off-topic: My experience IRL has been a switch of the two. A youthful period of blissful, lighthearted debauchery, then a monogamous relationship which got dark fast and stayed they way until it was over. Talk of lust and you're speaking my language; talk of love and I'm running for my life.

I would do Temple first.

Just an idea... What if Accuracy was exclusively used versus Deflection, and there was a separate character trait which worked like Accuracy against Fortitude, Reflex and Will? I can't think of a good name for this hypothetical Accuracy-esque trait, so I'm going to call it Accuracy 2: The Wrath of Khan. Or Khan for short. Probably a horrible name if you actually speak it, will get confused with Constitution. Maybe should have gone with Wok. But that's a cooking implement. Khan it is. So a wizard might have 20 Accuracy, 35 Khan - pretty good with them spells. But a Rogue might have 30 Accuracy and 25 Khan - not as good with the spells. This would make the Wizards better with the scrolls if they decide to use them. But really, I wouldn't want to nerf Rogue scroll use that much. Fighters, Barbarians, maybe. But Use Magic Device homages are awesome. Or maybe Use Magic Device didn't make much sense as a Rogue exclusive in d&d, and using Lore makes more sense. Or maybe not that either because I really, really hate the skill system. The whole thing. I'd like to see it removed from the game. In which case... Khan! In conclusion, I don't know.

They should have done it already, but better late than never. A Kickstarter for modding tools would probably be popular enough to raise requisite funds.

to use stretch goal money to develop strongholds instead of things we'd actually care about?

Comparing ANY story-driven RPG to Planescape Torment would be unfair, in my opinion. Doesn't matter whether it's new or old, it's not about the technical stuff anyway. The technology may have improved, but the right team, the motivation, the talented people. In some cases it's a combination which might not happen again. It's like comparing dubstep to Schopenhauer's music is unfair... for the Schopenhauer, because he lived a long time ago and the sound recording and whatever technologies are much more advanced now. You have apparently confused the concept of fairness with the concept of not being utterly and viciously torn a new one. Just because something isn't good doesn't mean it gets some kind of free pass against things which are.

Comparing a new game to a very old one might be unfair for the old one. I cannot fathom how it could be unfair for the new one.

If you have your own very personal set of house rules, fine. Deal with it. For most conventional modes of gameplay, there is a very good reason why some abilities should be per rest and not per encounter. It provides variety. If it makes you uneasy, then just rest before as many encounters as you can. Simple.

A lot of that can be fixed with signposting. For example, there is someone right outside Caed Nua who mentions that it's scary in there. Maybe add a little piece of dialogue which triggers based off party Health, advising maybe they should rest up first. Now if players just skip all dialogue, I feel they deserve what they get.

I think respawning enemies should be used very infrequently, if ever. However, scripted events which only occur if you attempt to retreat would be nice. Oh, and on your first visit to Caed Nua... One thing though: this shouldn't apply at all to casual exploration. If there isn't a quest (or at least a task) associated with it, you should feel free to rest-spam all you want. That said, some of the optional wilderness encounters should be brutal.

This is the third thread I've said this in. Oh well. Limiting camping supplies isn't enough to actually stop players from resting whenever they want. The game needs to limit camping supplies AND prevent players from leaving areas until quests/tasks are complete. Some examples from act 1 This would work best with optional quests, giving your party a chance to fail them if they retreat. However, that's fine; properly limiting camping for the main storyline isn't vital, so long as the system has a place to shine.

I think something closer to the current system is better. Limiting camping supplies isn't enough to actually stop players from resting whenever they want. The game needs to limit camping supplies AND prevent players from leaving areas until quests/tasks are complete. Some examples from act 1 This would work best with optional quests, giving your party a chance to fail them if they retreat. However, that's fine; properly limiting camping for the main storyline isn't vital, so long as the system has a place to shine.

Limiting camping supplies isn't enough to actually stop players from resting whenever they want. The game needs to limit camping supplies AND prevent players from leaving areas until quests/tasks are complete. Some examples from act 1 This would work best with optional quests, giving your party a chance to fail them if they retreat. However, that's fine; properly limiting camping for the main storyline isn't vital, so long as the system has a place to shine.

Why? It's not like those games are models of balanced attribute design either.

How enchanting should have been: - "Slaying" should be enchant-only, but only effect Accuracy. This allows you to customize a weapon against specific encounters. - "Lash" should be enchant-only, but instead of adding damage allow a possible alternative (ex: sword goes from Piercing/Slashing to Piercing/Slashing/Burn, whichever does most). This should allow you to customize a weapon against specific damage reductions. - "Proofed" should be enchant-only, allowing customization against specfic incoming damage. Everything else - everything - should be find-only.

If you would research systems design, systems psychology would arise as one of the subdisciplines. I cannot possibly imagine a serious argument that psychology should be abandoned in a system for a GAME, in favor of raw math. Players are not (usually) robots. This argument is a lot like saying an object is nothing more than protons, neutrons and electons. I'd consider it a false statement, not because I deny these three things to be the essential building blocks of matter, but because the arrangement of those blocks is key to the identity of a thing. A paperweight on a desk isn't *just* particles, but particles arranged in a particular manner. In the same way, saying everything is DPS or survivability is a gross oversimplification. By this view, an AoE with a duration which debuffs accuracy of anyone in it is just survivability. This isn't wholly untrue. I'll admit, I got a little overzealous in my previous post. Throwing out Sesuki's work was going a bit too far. I was just trying to be dramatic. However, this is the important distinction: those charts were player activities, not (primarily) designer activities. They are still relevant to the designer, because those charts express a player psychology. But the core goal is to bring balance to attributes so none is a dump stat. The core of doing this will always be what you call the "character building perspective," because you need to get into the minds of gamers approaching the attribute system from various INFORMED angles and successfully encouraging them not to dump certain attributes. What I interesting here is how you easily identify psychological profiles early in this quote, but do not seem to identify "min-maxer" as a psychological profile itself. Emphasis mine. Here's an example of that idea taken to its ultimate extreme: Might: +3% damage Con: +3% damage Dex: +3% damage Per: +3% damage Int: +3% damage Res: +3% damage Is this "perfectly balanced?" I would argue it has zero balance, because it isn't balancing anything, really; it is just xeroxing. Copypasta isn't balance. And no attribute should copypasta anything another attribute does. Fortitude shouldn't be on both Might and Con. Reflex shouldn't be on both Ref and Per. Will shouldn't be on both Int and Res. Deflection shouldn't be on both Per and Res. There should be only one. Among the not-copypasta stuff, players will *try* to go all Grand Unification Theory on a game, making charts and such. As a designer, the objective is to prevent such theories from being true. If someone is trying to reduce a combination of attributes to just DPS and survivability, you must stop them with situational superiority/inferiority scenarios. I do not mean balance is just a matter of the designers ignoring things. That's silly. I mean they should make things appear a near tie, with pros and cons for each, but with an unknowable victor. It's anything but easy. I'll try to reply to others later

I think you just wrote my one-sentence review of PoE.

Okay, so let's imagine I'm a developer and I've thought of a mechanic which seems to be a "maybe" in terms of whether it's worthy of adding to the game. Should I1. develop a mockup of the mechanic and put it through testing, always reserving the right to pull it if it doesn't fit, at any time up to the game's release, or 2. instead of making a decision myself, leave it to a swarm of overenthused laymen using a paid version of StrawPoll? Putting non-essential mechanics on sale as Kickstarter stretch goals is completely unethical. Now if you want to offer stuff like upgrading voice acting by hiring well-known professionals (who cost more) or improve music by hiring a well-known composer (again, costs more), or a writer, or even something like the expected length of the game in hours (with an "at least" qualifier), those all seem fair game to me. Heck, if a developer can't afford to add a mechanic they KNOW would make the game better, that's fair game too. But if a developer can imagine their game without crafting in it, it almost certainly shouldn't have crafting in it. I mean, I personally don't know if I agree with OP's list or not, but Kickstarter is a poor justification.

You may find it here (not sure which one is the latest and greatest.)Thanks. Interestingly, my reaction to the paper ties in to Luckman's post... And I continue to disagree. Accuracy is valuable, and I'd like to see some graphs on exactly how much Accuracy is worth in relation to, for example, Might. Is +1 Accuracy worth more or less than +3% to Dmg and Healing? How is it quantifiable compared to +AoE% (which I want on Resolve) and +Duration% (which I want to keep on Intellect)? And is the difference enough to matter in a meaningful way?I'm still not convinced. Emphasis mine. This line of thinking, which was so prevalent in the Sesuki/Matt paper that it spawned massive charts, is unfortunately completely wrong. By which I mean it is a bad question. Consider the context of allocating attributes at character creation. 60 points to spread around, if you include race, culture, and reduce everything to 3 first. So under that context, asking "which of these two attributes is best for this single task?" is an utterly worthless question. If that task is the only thing which you care about, you are maxing both. Because you only need about 33 points to do that, and you have 60. Let's imagine, however, that you only had 17 points to allocate towards your single goal. How would you decide to allocate them? The answer is you'd either do a calculation, like Sesuki's fancy charts, or you'd be doing it wrong. Either you'd find some equilibrium point, or if not you'd max one attribute and put the rest in the other. But a calculation isn't a meaningful choice, it's just a math test. The only meaningful choice is what came before: what tasks do you want your character to excel at? Weapon DPS? Tanking (and if so, tanking what?). Healing other party members? Applying debuffs? The thing to understand here is that these different tasks are INCOMPARABLES. You can't put DPS and healing on the same line chart. When players decide how many points to allocate to an attribute, they are doing one of two things: a calculation, or a choice between incomparables. Only the latter represents meaningful choice! So let's go back to Accuracy and Might. Accuracy doesn't change speeds, so at their core both attributes modify the same subcontinent of DPS, damage per action. They're the same thing! So there is no meaningful choice added, just a calculation. Worse, the same thing is true regarding debuffs. Both Intelligence and Accuracy determine the length of the debuff, so once again, two attributes doing the same thing. Except the Accuracy attribute is doing two things. So it probably gets its rate turned down such that, if the two tasks you want to do are damage and debuffs, you can take the Accuracy attribute for a discount because it acts as a kind of hybrid Might/Intelligence. Except you can already go hybrid Might/Intelligence, by putting points in each. Why the discount? Why allow these attributes to feel "overcapped?" Now I feel I should mention the current Dexterity here. Yes, it acts as a second Might for weapon DPS. But it is not "more damage per Rest" for spells or "more damage per Encounter" for per-Encounter abilities (unless encounter length is universally short). Dexterity gives better Interrupts per second, which Might doesn't. Most important, Dexterity has an impact on kiting which no other attribute has, as well as a unique defense against enemy Interrupts. It does have a fair bit of sameness to it - otherwise I wouldn't have brought it up - but (barely) maintains enough differences to make it feel truly different. What we need here are true differences in kind, not differences in scale. We need to put an absolute end to identical traits being on multiple stats, such as Fortitude, Reflex, Will, and most importantly Deflection. (Probably should add Interrupt to that list; if you want to Interrupt more, get gear with bonuses or pump Dexterity!) We need to throw out the charts, because they mean nothing. We need to stop with players comparing apples to apples, and have them compare apples to oranges. And, of course, we should never have an Accuracy- increasing attribute. One to increase damage and one to increase duration. This splits accuracy into two halves which follow the differences-in-kind principle.

I can't find this paper (the link yields a dropbox error 404, resource not found). Anyone know where I could find it? Mathematically proven is a bold statement.

Two thoughts on Rangers... 1. The Skill system sucks. I'd rather have Fatigue tied to percentage of Health remaining, so that as your tank slowly gets more and more worn away, the effects of their wounds start to become more and more apparent. (Perhaps all characters would have more Health under such a system.) I feel Stealth and Mechanics could be handled by attributes just fine, and I can't see why consumables aren't handled by Intelligence and Might under the current system. I'd much prefer if we got an occasional Attribute boost from levels instead of dealing with skills at all. This would, incidentally, rub out the entire "companion athletics" problem. 2. Some people feel we have too much animal companion with the ranger. I feel we don't have enough. Being two characters instead of one character is a really cool class gimmick, but as implemented it feels totally lame. What I'd like to see is a Ranger which flat-out outDPSes a Rogue so long as both Ranger and companion are attacking the same target. Almost all of the Ranger's abilities would be about an increasingly powerful bond between man and animal, and increasingly powerful teamwork. Save the "pure archer" abilities for other classes to make room for abilities which focus on coordinated attacks. Note that, under such a system, Bonded Grief wouldn't (or at least shouldn't) exist. A Ranger would already lose all kinds of goodies if their companion fell, so mucking the Ranger while they're down would be pointless.

On number of stats: as I've said before, the purpose of balance is not to promote sameness, but to promote variety by presenting prayers with a series of separate viable options. Generally speaking, if the choice is between 4 attributes, 6 attributes, or 8 attributes, the most balanced option will probably be a tie between 6 and 8. It would be a tie because it's very unlikely a 7th or 8th attribute around add viable choices for the player, but instead the illusion of choice... but this doesn't make it less variety than 6 choices, merely less elegant. (Elegance is still a great thing in game design, but conceptually separate.) Meanwhile, a 5th attribute is quite likely to give meaningful choice to a player, so 6 is more balanced than 4. People need to stop looking at balance in terms of monotony or simplicity. Balance shouldn't be about either of those things. It is about validating player choice in a sea of differences.

Generally speaking, I don't offer constructive criticism in earnest until I'm pretty convinced things are pretty broken. The gameplay of PoE is pretty darn broken. Therefore, you can find me in other threads offering suggestions to unbreak it.

OP logic... 1. Roxor said something was wrong with PoE. 2. However, that same wrongness was also present in BG. 3. Therefore, Roxor wants PoE to be just another BG clone. I like what you did with point #3. Most people would have concluded the post opposite.

Easier question first: while Health represents how much damage your body can take before it dies, Endurance represents how much pain your mind can take before you lose consciousness. As such, it makes more sense thematically to tie it to a mental attribute than the current situation. Regarding interrupt, it all ties into what I said earlier about the melee engagement system. I believe interrupt should be one of two possible specifications for disengagement attacks (the other being straight-up damage). I view Concentration primarily as a way for characters who want to disengage to worry less about being interrupted. So while I'm not necessarily against more ways to boost Interrupt for players who want to invest in it, I want it to be a tank thing, not a squishy thing. Much like Sawyer I wouldn't want to see ranged builds kiting with interrupt stun, but I feel the best way to avoid that is to grant Interrupt bonuses to melee weapons and disengagement attack Talents, not to water down Interrupt by having to balance it for ranged. So I don't feel Interrupt would be a good fit at all as a benefit for squishies in the Perception slot.