Hassat Hunter

The biggest risk in that is making probability ranges too small, or not at all. There's a reason D&D uses a d20, imagine how fun it would be without the dice roll. People wouldn't still be playing it. Imagine if swords always hit, to prevent "to hit" rolls missing. So damage and HP is adjusted accordingly. Then again, your sword ALWAYS does x damage. Nothing more, nothing less. Crits are gone too, too much random. Everything's all fixed. Wouldn't it be the most boring RPG in existance? Yes, yes it would.

Ah, so that was correct. Was doubting and decided to simply go with the 10% each time approach. Of course it matters if it was one casting or multiple... If you're going to face one 10% and die, that's bad luck. If you face 10, and then die, you were just being stupid. In this case the spell wasn't even an insta-killer like Disintegrate, but a regular spell that just caused so much damage the PC died. So we could even add "more constitution" to the solution. So many options to survive... and still it's called 'luck' and 'the game has no strategy'? Still, the point stands, if the poster had the time to kill a dozen enemies before going for the mage, and then died, going for the mage faster would mean he would have survived. 100% guaranteed even. How's that not strategy?

I've recently played X-com... there always was a chance my guy, against all odds, totally got murdered. Is that bad gamedesign? If so, modern game devs got it right, with their fainting PC's, super-low difficulties and lack of challenge. Though it would be odd that some old-school RPG got 4 million despite that the formula has been so well optimised, who would ever want to go back? EDIT: Also above counter list doesn't even include silence... another way to shut mages up. Or petrify them, stun them. Actually it's all about boosting your party, nothing even offensive against other mages. So there are 8 ways already, and many more can be tought up. Is that "can't prevent completely from being cast"?

Let's use math here. A mage has a few kill spells, you got 10% chance to instantly die. Yes, follow me? Okay, you get hit by one, 10% chance to die, right? The second? 10% chance to die. Total; 20%. Third, add another 10%. By now your deathchance over those casts is 30%. Your odds definitely are getting against you. The chance for you to survive all that is significantly smaller if you get just one of those 1d10 rolls, rather than 3 of them, or more. Even if the mage only has ONE spell like that, killing him before it's cast... well, you no longer have to worry about it, do you? A one-shot can't kill if it's never fired. Does that make sense? In both examples the mages got killed way after the melee enemies. Which makes it pretty clear they could easily have killed the mage before instead, but decided not to do so. And then died. Is it really the games fault, a bad roll? Or just bad... STRATEGY? No, it's not, see above. That chance to fail is adding up over time your chances to die.Also, think like a mage. You have 8 allies, versus 6 enemies. What would be the best power to start with? Speed... or disintegrate? Now all your allies died, would you still use your buff magic? No, of course not, you would try to survive or kill enemies, speed would be useless. Just because the mage wasn't damaging you casting haste, or protection from normal weapons or whatnot buffs, would he still do that without people to buff? So you have to check for yourself, go after the mage, or is it too risky against the benefits... you know it, STRATEGY. So based on this assumption, I let the mage live and go after the others. That's a STRATEGY. Oh noes, the mage killed me. Reality: Your STRATEGY wasn't quite good. You died. Maybe adapt it? People theorising here: Okay, so cause I chose to let the mage left, and he killed me, there's no strategy in the game, only luck. I had no other choice! (and there's the error right there, you do, you just chose not to. And it did you in.) Or... you kill it first. Then you don't even have to *care* what the hell he got, he's gone and dead. If you're really REALLY worried, you let a rogue backstab him and the battle starts with him or her dead to begin with. Look at all those STRATEGIES.Also, I bet the original poster of this 'issue' wouldn't complain if he got a critical or insta-kill from his crew based on luck.

Or worse, added at the start 'cause "DLC"

Then, as stated before, ahum KILL THE MAGE FIRST As for how mages with one-shot spells overloaded can work, look at Kangaxx. Could you not circumvent the one-shotting? Yes, you could... even there.

So in order to add strategy we need to remove "bad luck"? No more rolls? No more variable damage? No more dealing with defense and attack rolls (you might miss, bad luck!) Strategy would be everything fully static? Well, screw strategy then... I don't want my game to be *that* boring...

Mark of the Ninja I got from the Steam thread here. And... it's surprisingly good. Who would have tought I would actually like a game about stealth *this* much? I wouldn't...

That... would be pretty awesome. As for Batman installation errors, I remember when I got Arkham City and tried installing it by clicking Asylums map, then manually changing Asylum to City. Any other installers that would be fine, but for this one... it somehow still wanted to be in Arkham Asylums map, and the overwriting of data ruined both games and I had to reinstall both. Sad times.

You haven't read them, have you? In these there are pretty clear distinctions between users who actually give reasons, pro's and con's, discuss, try to give counters to your arguments... (the reasonable), some who simply are 'I prefer it this way', which is totally fine, and nothing bad can be said about that (again, reasonable), and... the brick wall who insults others, ignore their posts, ignore their points being repeatedly adressed in the 'see, no one has replied back yet how this is a bad example (yes, yes, we have)'... the people in question. Not quite sure why you're on the defensive, since as far as I can tell, you're not seen as one of those. But they exist, and I gave you a pretty good thread to see that for yourself to read. It's not about which side one is on, it's how the discussion goes. There's a difference between discussion and completely ignoring everything everyone else says and then insult them. I think you know that too, right? Sadly, it's one of those things were telling doesn't do much good, one has to experience the horrible thruth for him- or herself. I personally wouldn't object to discussion about speculation. That's a good thing, a healthy thing for a forum for a game not yet published. But of course a line can be reached if someone just goes all out hating on the developers, saying stuff like "J.E. Sawyer ruins all games. He's the destroyer of fun, I want him to die" cause of ONE thing in PE... you don't agree that's kinda overstepping the line? I do... I really, really, do. As for the gold nuggest section, I agree. But the nugget might be burried deep if a thread goes haywire and post and post of crap gets posted. No developer is going to waste their time reading all of that, and thus, the value gets dimished or lost. I really don't know how (even if) OE scoures these boards, and if they actually take suggestions from it, or from posts go around asking themselves questions or change things. We all don't know. But I can bet we all know no dev will read every post in a 50-page thread. Especially if filled with hate and flame. I sure hope too developers can distinguish good ideas from bad. Sometimes things sound good on paper, but can get bad in execution (or vice-versa) and gamers usually don't understand that and may get hateful. And of course the danger lurks too from misinterpretating data, the fun thing that got us Dragon Age 2. Cause a statistic saying X doesn't give a reason, and pasting one to it, especially a wrong one, can be very risky. PE's development is actually opener than most. Boon of Kickstarter, with the journals and J.E. Sawyer and Adam Brennecke posting her often too. But yes, much will be hold back of course, since stuff always gets cut in game development, and how often have you not had that a preview of a game told stuff that never made the final version and was just 'damn, I was looking forward to that'. Better not give false promises, especially since it's made for a select niche market of hardcore fans, and you kinda want to keep them to you. TL;DR variation; Discussion is fine. Brickwalling and doomsaying however, doesn't help anyone. Nor does blind faith that Obsidian will do perfect.

Well, the biggest problem I see with right-mouse dragging is that the right mouse button could be used (IMO) much more efficiently than merely for the camera. For quick access to spells or feats for example instead of dragging to the bottom of the screen. For various move-commands other than simple go there. So many things to think of right mouse could make easier without sacrificing it to camera-control. Would still leave WASD wide open.

Well, it was released when most already got full 69 or 72. And any remaining 72 got easy to get with them being elite now. So it has more to do with 'when released' than intended. Since the drops you get when doing the story first time definitely make it seem out you aren't supposed to be full 69 there yet. My 72/part 78 breezes through it, even the Heroic by himself. It's not exactly made for that gear (well, besides the HM Ops).

Oh, look, a thread I wisely ignored, till now. I assume the above posters haven't actually read the objective XP vs. kill XP threads? Do so. I so tried my best in them to be reasonable... but to some, it seemed like talking to a brick wall. Seriously, read the threads. But don't come complaining to me afterwards if you; 1) Lost hope in humanity 2) Are seriously mind****ed 3) Your PC catched fire from the flamewars bursting out 4) Somehow inherit the brick-wall thinking of some users, the one Lephys means with 'they' 5) Forever fear the word 'they'

Then we're talking about a different level of masking effects. Also, actually showing enemy effects would be an easy way for developers and modmakers to check wheter or not something is amiss. Though I suppose you could see that as debugging information that shouldn't be in the game (though definitely available for modmakers). Anyway, not really warm or cold on masking enemy DC and AC... you should be able to figure it out for yourself rather easily with your own statistics. I'm just more worried about people wanting to mask how stuff actually works for them, so have the magic missile say "damage: low" rather than "damage: 1d4 + 1"

I don't know... KOTOR2's system of... "here's a new teammate, spend time to manually level up 15x" isn't exactly... great. Though of course I don't think PE even *has* 15 levels (does it? I'm not sure), the point still stands. And if you really don't like the default characters layout there's always the Champion's Hall to manually craft a new character.

It can backfire on RPG's though. Case in point... Dragon Age: Origins. Magic had such helpful information as "high damage, avarage damage" etc, and while that was shown for various types of spells, they differed from each other by a lot. And in a RPG there isn't a lot of fun in leveling and then just having to blind pick your skills, abilities, spells, generally being permanently stuck to them or having to pay a hefty fee to re-do.

As usual, games on sale; http://www.gog.com/promo/activision_weekend_promo_081113?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=game_subject&utm_campaign=activision_weekend_promo_081113 Including Vampire Redemption (not to be confused with Bloodlines) and Arcanum. Also many Sierra titles. And this very awesome charity promo; http://www.gog.com/news/charity_promo_pick_3_games_donate_5_or_more_100_goes_to_charity I picked WWF (of course), gave some money, got a few nice games... it's all good. Definitely people check it out and help! Even got a few titles I never heard about, but looked interesting enough, and for this price, *and it helps charity*, how could I say no?

Support actually helped me today. Yes, I am shocked too. Had an issue with upgrading my PvP implant (did I mention that here?). Only got it cause the regular comms implants suck. And from what I could see I could only upgrade my good MK-2 for the crappy MK-1 counterpart that sucked beyond all comprehension. Which triggered my bugreport, since the "has old MK-1" was green, and MK-2 red. But support notified me that if I unequiped it, I could exchange it. And indeed, equipped, only MK-1 exchange available. Unequipped, I could trade MK-2 for MK-2. I'm not even going to TRY understand why the heck it's that way, but I got my implant. Should suit me till I get a Dread Forged alternative in... well, probably never. Always win crap in random rolls, but bet if I really want it (still got crappy 66 saber, roll for 72) and there are only 2 people going for it... I still lose. Anyway, sharing a story that either support got better than it used to be... or they got so annoyed by me that they decide to actually answer in a hope to shut up all my mails about bugs and stuff XD

But you would think a developer would set skills and what-not based on what people probably would pick. Apparently though, many would disagree with the BioWare developer who leveled those characters. If we would know their reasons, and the gamers who disagree, that would be an interesting thing to look at. But I don't think we have, or can anymore. It's also rather funny with the "handcrafting is perfect!" going on in the other thread about random items, and then seeing just how many errors still remain in Baldur's Gate II. I have faith in PE, but with the scope of this project, I would expect many such similar errors or different viewpoints between devs and gamers. But it seems also pretty much a given, looking back at previous BioWare and Obsidian (IE) RPG's, we as community can always do something about it. Hope of course it wont be necessary, but well, prepared to do my duty .

(This is all based on reading the unofficial Baldur's Gate patchlogs for both games) Actually, the AI didn't level them, BioWare had different character files for various levels for each and every character. So it wasn't he case of "(s)he gets leveled up to you, auto-spend" but rather "PC is level 2, NPC is level 2 file. PC is level 5, NPC level 5 file." So any and all bad spending can be accounted to whichever BioWare developer set up those sheets. And poorly too, according to the unofficial patch, removing points giving too many, or adding points added to few in quite a few of those NPC files.

I've got both Batman's, but on Disk (so windows live ). I wouldn't mind having them for that. Unless of course someone wants them and he or she hasn't played those games at all, which would mean they HAVE to do so, and I wouldn't want to be in that way of them finding out they (especially Asylum) are great fun...

While that sounds good on paper, in a party-based game, that may be hard to implement. As I assume most checks aren't specific for class, but rather skills or feats. Potentially you could then grant the bonus XP to the character succeeding the skill-check, but what if you have 2 or 3 who can? Always the highest skilled one? Then XP will get unbalanced again. Random? Sounds good on paper, but I see difficulties translating it into a game-format like PE.

Of course, WASD and mouse-scrolling. Just wondering why some people think it's 'old' or outdated or something? I definitely prefer mouse scrolling (or clicking on the map) in IE games, never even bothered with WASD. @ curryinahurry; The screenshot was a small portion in a bigger map. Scrolling would still be necessary, maps are bigger than a single frame.

I don't know... making stuff 'inconvenient' for the sake of it, or hiding data (like DA:O did) hardly seems like a good idea for Regular or Expert mode.

Different engine, sure... but they're trying to replicate IE as best as possible.Why is this a crappy solution in 2014? Because all other games in 2014 have fixed cameras on their PC and thus scrolling is made extra difficult, since usually the camera is locked on them? If so, that's not a very good reason IMO. While dragging with the mouse seems reasonable (and I assume will be in) I have no reason not to believe simple mouse scrolling like in the BG's would feel absolutely fine in PE, rather than in other modern game with their PC-locked cameras.