Tale

Only if the goal is to end up there. If the goal is for PC, then compromising and considering things other than the PC takes away from that effort.

I'm heavily inclined to get it. But I'm not sure about the wait for BG2 EE. I much prefer Baldur's Gate 2 and don't want to wait too long to be able to slip from 1 to 2.

Closing this thread out of redundancy with the other thread on the subject of XP gain. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61543-are-you-for-or-against-gaining-experience-points-only-for-completing-objectives/page__st__340

That made me miss working in a game studio quite a bit.

Personal remarks are unnecessary, people.

I'm going to draw two games from recent memory, Skyrim and Dragon Age 2. They will give me four examples that contrast good handling of the situation and bad handling. And they're recent enough that I can be intimately familiar with why. In Skyrim you get a quest. Not to spoil the quest, but it eventually leads to you being imprisoned in a mine for a crime you probably didn't commit. You eventually break out and, if in the course of breaking out, you can kill a particular guy. Afterwards, a different guy, the one who framed you and sent you into that hole shows up to thank you. You can kill this guy. You probably should. If he lives to see the next morning, I would view you as less of a person/Khajit/Lizard/wahtever. This was great. Then there's the Thieves Guild in Skyrim. Eventually the main quest will introduce you to them. Even if not, I don't think that would be really better. The first thing they have you do is frame someone. No real understanding as to why. If you do go and join them, you find out there's no real redeeming character to the group. They rough up shopkeepers, put out contracts with the dark brotherhood, they're thugs for the most part. So say you get offended at the thought of them asking you to frame a possibly innocent shopkeeper. Or you get offended at the idea of harassing and threatening other shopkeepers. Maybe you just hate the crime in general and want to protect everyone from it with the sort of stabby voodoo that you do so well. Too bad. Every last member of the Thieve's guild, or at least the ones in the tavern area who have names, are unkillable. Crime goes unpunished because of designer fiat. And it made me sad. Okay, so say that you're in Skyrim still. Maybe you're doing Dark Brotherhood quests. Perhaps you take on a persona of a cold blooded killer with honor and dignity. You get sent on a quest. The person wants you to kill an ex-boyfriend that embarrassed her in front of her friends. He made her friends think she was a terrible person. Also, she'd like you to kill her friend for daring to think she was a terrible person. Wait, what? This is some serious nonsense here. I think the lady's friend might have a point. And for even daring suggest such a ridiculous idea, the quest giver should be killed outright. She's not really a threat to anyone. She's a barmaid that's as dumb as a sack of doorknobs. But her mere existence offended me at this point. Therefore, she died. Yay. Now for the worst of the worst. Dragon Age 2. The game is completely filled with offensive individuals who wrong you or others that then nonchalantly strut off in a cutscene while you're impotent of the ability to charge them down and use their insides as floor paint. But none struck me as worse than Meredith. You hear pretty much the entire game about how terrible her and her Templars are. How they oppress mages, how she's not strictly mentally sound. You may even be a mage yourself and sympathetic to her opposition. Well, at one point in the game, you get invited to meet her. You go to her office, where she is alone, and this scenario for some reason does not turn into a cagematch to the death. And it annoyed me to utterly no end. Can't attack her, can't kill her. No annoying cutscene protection that can be loosely justified as the PC being dumbstruck by the sheer bloody gall of this individual to continue breathing. Just two people who hate each others guts standing around and not following the natural course of events because it would be too far off script. The two examples that did let me kill the person in need of some vigorously applied violence made me enjoy the game more. They let me feel that I owned my character and that I could make a positive impact on the game world. The two examples that did not made me annoyed at how the writer thought their script was more important than choices and PC characterization. And that's almost enough to make me want to quit those games.

Send dlux a PM or post in the Obsidian Order thread. It doesn't really need its own thread.

Agreed. If someone wants to stop backing, that's no cause to be insulting.

I don't think they intend to have NPCs be essential. While it sounds like a challenge for development, they've done it before in previous games. I should be able to kill anyone who I have a reason to kill. If they send me on a stupid quest, I should get to kill them. If I think they're a terrible person and the setting would be better off without them, I should get to kill them. Regardless of any other status they may hold.

There is already a thread for discussing the health mechanic. Please move that discussion over there. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61264-automatic-regeneration-of-hit-points-during-combat/

I'm against tacking on multiplayer and I'm also against tacked on minigames. This idea seems to hit both squarely. Maybe a sequel could have a more comprehensive co-op multiplayer, but I don't see it making this game.

Stick to the subject, guys. Not each other.

I think my planning stage is coming along on my writing. I've got a core 4 character cast. 3-4 secondary characters. And 8 or 9 major "events." I just need to figure out if I need to trim that down or add more to it. This is much better than my first major attempt at writing. I had 20 or so narrative events. Only 2 core characters, and they were part of the B plot.

Yes. I say this because, in my experience, stories that try to be too long end up being unsatisfactory. They end up losing track of their own themes, they have massive amounts of filler, or they have some other miscellaneous problem. Is it possible to do it without problems? Theoretically, I mean that I have no mathematical proof or scientific law saying it is impossible. But in my experience, I've always enjoyed stories with a tighter focus on a few core themes and the development of a core cast. Something you have to pace out pretty well and have coherent milestones, beginnings, and endings. You can only progress towards a goal then push it back so many times before it starts to seem pointless. And you can't keep changing the goal either without the same repercussion.

"Most damage taken in combat would Endurance*, which is relatively easy to restore (through abilities and magic) and regenerates rapidly on its own, both in and out of combat." *now stamina http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer I mean, if rapidly isn't at least 5% per second then I think he's heavily misusing the word. That's a mighty big assumption. The worst assumption is that rapid means 3/5th the DPS of an Ogre.

Did you just make that up? Has Sawyer said anything about Stamina regenerating quickly or anywhere near those numbers comparable to damage? Where it would take an Ogre 5 hits with a successful hit every round to down a fighter?

I don't think Avellone wrote Safiya. It wasn't tragedy either way. Unless it was and she got eaten by One of Many. The ending I got a couple of days ago had the PC and Safiya get happily married. It was pretty lame, but there it was. Doesn't hold a candle to my god devourer playthrough.

I don't think Avellone wrote Safiya. It wasn't tragedy either way.

I would have been behind you if you hadn't said that. I can't think of a single book I've seen or movie I've read that had a tasteful sex scene. Scratch that. Spy thriller movies. Those aren't bad. They're not memorable either, except Xenia Onatopp.

It's objective based, not quest based. But maybe that's beside the point. Why do you think they'll never be able to be overpowered? It's not. But I might as well ask you how stealth and charm getting XP hurt other people's games. Because that's a large part of what the system does, it allows for alternate playstyles to reach the same end. I'm not worried about how you play. The problem is it needs to reward the people who don't kill.

Yes, what difference does it make? Why do you assume that's impossible? The objective system allows for more options than just killing to reach that goal.

What restriction? You said earlier that you want to take your group into a dungeon to get XP and loot. That still happens. The only change is when the XP is parcelled out. At milestones instead of every time a kobold hits the floor. You've also gained more options in that you can reach those milestones in different ways.

It's not that complicated. The extra complication is for a reason, though. It's been used in PnP games for who knows how long at this point for exactly the same reasons. You'll still get your XP and loot for dungeon delving, I don't see what the issue is.

What I'm interpreting. Restoring stamina is available from abilities, magic, abilities, perhaps potions as well. Restoring health requires rest. Like setting up camp. I would be surprised if he's referring to something other than this. I've played a few games where they reward you with XP for completing a quest using skill checks. Like you talk an enemy out of a fight. But then they also reward you for killing your way through. So the ideal solution became talking them down, then stabbing them in the back. Basically, situations where the ideal solution to any scenario was to game the system for as many quest solution paths as possible because they were all separately counted.

Why wouldn't "interesting foes not necessarily tied to a quest" be an objective on their own? Is there some assumption that quest givers define objectives? Dungeons can grant XP based on progress through dungeons. Quests on quest completion. Dragons on slaying the dragon or stealing their hoarde or whatever. Random encounters on surviving the encounter, whether you run, talk, or fight. etc. etc. And the dungeon concept isn't limited to literal dungeons. Find gnolls on a mountain side? It could be just as easily tied to progress up the mountain.