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Wombat

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  1. Wombat
    Modal abilities are carried out but active ones are per encounter/rest and instantaneous or expires after a certain duration. If they are not marked as either (modal or active), I assume that means they are passive. However, of course, answers from the devs would be much desirable. Yeah, sounds like an assassin. However, while I see where you came from, I think the team are doing well in offering the players good IE game (tactical combat heaviness through distinctive units) feel while throwing some interesting screwballs here and there. So...I guess rogue is more or less "evasion" unit after all, except the saves are replaced by the standard attack resolution of PoE.
  2. Wombat
    Yeah, what I meant was mostly about presentation. It's more like, how would be reality for people in the world of PoE. The world map seems to be yet to be completed in PoE world and it might be interesting if maps are detailed near civilizations and the areas of interests for such civilizations while there may be even some blank places for dangerous/underpopulated areas. These depends on how much of the world has been explored and how much these civilization has developed surveying, though. If PoE world has the level of technology equivalent to our late Middle/early modern Ages, the most advanced civilizations should be able to make quite accurate maps (Additionally, they have animancy, technology alien to our world). However, IIRC, in PoE setting, although technology is there, sea is quite dangerous to travel due to dangerous sea creatures. As a side note for "reality", we don't know how long our concept of "reality" would last. Surely, we have some "knowledge" which can be laughed at by people of the future. Then again, as you pointed out, it's quite rational for Obsidian to build the basic setting based on our knowledge. Speaking of which, in fact, you seem to have struck probably one of the most common/practical usage of astronomical knowledge through our history. Maybe, it's something like lunar calendar in our world. Without any adaptation to solar calendar, it begins to become "inaccurate" or inappropriate to reflect the seasons. So, yes, if they use astronomy as a way to record time as we do, it would be quite vital for them to employ more accurate knowledge about astronomy.
  3. Wombat
    No matter how such settings will be depicted, personally, I'd like to see the approach of some olde RPG supplements, which provides only the interpretations of in-world people. The designers intentionally avoided careless usage of scientific interpretation of our modern view since they seem to have thought they better serve that way for both role-playing and immersion. If the theme were focused on scientific interests, imaging how things would be in different planetary systems could be interesting. However, in roleplaying game, where the focus of the interests is more on exploring humanity and their ideas in different cultural settings, I'd like to see how things would look through different perspectives. That said, somehow, the time of PoE which the protagonist was thrown in is similar to our time of the verge of modernization, where a certain cultures began to take more control on nature through systematic scientific knowledge (animancy in their world). So, we may see perspective similar to our modern view although I don't think Obsidian would overdo to shift the focus to quasi-Sci-Fi from plausible human ideas and activities based on them.
  4. Wombat
    There are poping up some posts which are built on imaginary arguments only in the posters' heads but if they jump at a tiny piece of the info, which the designers mentioned as WIP, there may be no wonder in such hasty actions... D&D systems are full of "really stupid and illogical things." If you don't think so, it's just because you are accustomed to them. Some systems are more "realistic" or simulationist but they are, typically, harder to be translated into CRPG format. That said, all RPG systems have more or less have some "stupid and illogical things" since they cannot be real world simulations, especially when they are put into formats which are easily calculated by average human beings. Also, I think balancing is important in a subtle way since it allows the players to enjoy various choices on the same table rather than giving a handful of actual choices. However, at the same time, I understand there are some factors which can break the suspension of disbelief for some people. In fact, I, myself, must have my own subjective permissible range on it although, I guess, its relatively tolerant to D&D-ish gamist systems.
  5. Wombat
    Yeah-after all, it all comes down to how the system actually plays out*...but I guess I had already mentioned this somewhere else. * And if the designers go for the flexible area/duration option, how it is going to be presented (the UI and ease-of-use) is added to the factor. I know it works on theory due to my PnP experiences but I wonder if it works fine under RT with pause/slow combat. No wonder Sawyer sounded cautious when he mentioned the possible options. In any case, it's still too early to criticize or praise, I think.
  6. Wombat
    @AndreaColombo A possible problem with that solution is that investing on INT sounds less attractive if I'm building a character as offensive AoE damage dealer, especially compared with Might. For support type characters or characters whose ability lists with enough number of FF-free abilities, the story may be different but is this ideal motivation for the players to choose among ability scores/classes/class abilities in the first place? If it were just for genuinely about balancing, I'd be inclined to take the solution of non-FF for the extended/bonus areas but... -Edit- I had overlooked at first, but the added control on duration accompanied with that on the areas can compensate it enough.
  7. Wombat
    I'd say it sounds like a game designer trying to appeal to filthy casuals by making the game a cake-walk. IF that is the case, it should be an option for the super easy settings and not forced on everyone. Actually, you don't need a genius to figure out that the most probable motivation is the balance issue. Also, here and here are recent quotes about FF by Sawyer. Personally, I wouldn't regard D&D or PoE as realism simulators but, if there are enough people find it causes the suspension of disbelief, then, the designers will come up with a better solution. If I'm sure a certain piece of info would upset some backers/potential players, I'd keep it secret. Basically, I think DMs/GMs should follow the rule-sets but, at times, I feel some things would work better if the players are not informed. For example, in New Vegas, Obsidian cranked up the HPs of the companion NPCs but how many of us complained of it? However, the story would have been different if the info had been revealed somehow before the release of the game. This reminds me of DM/GM screens although Sawyer seems to be a kind of open dice guy.
  8. Wombat
    While I agree with that the game should make the players think time to time rather than letting them rely on a single tactics in any situation, that mage class-heavy buff/debuff rote of BGII may not be an ideal solution, either, which is, of course, just my opinion. One of the probable reasons why PoE appears to get rid of critical-heavy gameplay is, I think, giving the players time to optimize their tactics if their party members begin to fight less efficiently. In this case, rather than giving the players all-or-nothing means to solve situations, letting them notice that they are giving less damage while getting more damage is more desirable and think how they could turn around the table. For AoE, at the moment, PoE seems to be letting the players to choose among FF AoE/FF-free and weaker AoE/Target-specific abilities when they find their party members are mixed with the enemies and I'm wondering how party composition/equipment play-out in this kind of choices. Although PoE may generally shift its focus from preparation to real-time adjustment to some extent, I beleive party composition and characterization of each class would influence the latter. As for positioning, beside the Fighers' ability of nailing a certain number of enemies, I wonder how the party chemistry play out in relation to AoE. IIRC, Sawyer called Druid as a crowd-control king. He/she may be able to prepare desirable settings for AoE casters. Agreed here. As for the side-note, I picked it up from the official wiki but, basically, if we are sure that we are talking of the same thing, there shouldn't be any problem since the game itself is WIP.
  9. Wombat
    Yeah, that could be a valid tactics when low PSY enemies begin to surround magic users of your party (Although I don't know how something like fear works in PoE-Does it even scare off your party members?). I see, micro-management in party member positioning, then. So far, a known ability which does "excuse me but could you step back a bit?" is that Grimoire Slam. More or less related, I think one of the devs wrote he was having fun in experimenting the formation. Like you said, what I was imaging here was more like old IE games but allows more flexible party/char-build by not too much focusing on Ref-targeted AoE spells/abilities. However, compared with Fighter, Rogue is not so good at crowd-control, which kept the old system more balanced (If Fighter can bear AoE, the players don't need to let Rogue sneak near to the enemies and pull him/her back before he/she is screwed up by genuine physical attacks and/or mental magic). So, maybe, just some spells/abilities which mitigate* the damages for various builds rather than totally replacing the old evasion builds could be a sensible compromise. * Despite of some other posters, IMO, in IE games, it was too easy to wipe off the negative effects of AoE only if the players know proper spells. For PoE, personally, I'd like to have a system which has both pros and cons even if know it well.
  10. Wombat
    Yeah, this is the reason why asked the question "how would the proportion among targeted defenses (FOR/REF/PSY) of AoE spells/abilities be?" earlier in this thread. In IE games, I could make evasion-build chars to let them avoid the damages inflicted by many of AoE spells. If there is a tactical element which allows the players to choose what types of AoE spells/abilities on a certain characters rather than just these evasion-builds, it can put another layer to the tactical and strategical choices. For example, while throwing REF-targeted AoE spells/abilities to an ally fighter might be risky but he/she may be rather O.K. with FOR-targeted AoE spells/abilities being thrown at him/her. Likewise, are there ways to make friendly fire less harmful to party members? I thought this kind of elements can be bit complicated for players who haven't playerd IE games but, somehow, it didn't come to me that simply making damages more forgiving in easier modes would be enough.
  11. Wombat
    As for quest XP, related to the topic of how to reward the players, there is a SAF post by Sawyer. Players will play the way that they enjoy playing. If we judge that stealth is more interesting than combat or combat is more interesting than conversation and decide to alter the rewards players receive for engaging in that gameplay, we're putting two desires into conflict: 1) the desire to complete quests using the gameplay they enjoy and 2) the desire to achieve a maximally beneficial reward. I don't think that's a good conflict for us to set up because it often, demonstrably, results in players grinding through activities in ways they don't want to because the game incentivizes them to do so. In-world reactions are something we will always emphasize because those reactions are purely for role-playing purposes. Sometimes the reactions are positive, sometimes they are negative, but they are intended to typically (though not always) align with the role the player sets out to play among the world's characters. If you're playing Alpha Protocol and Mike just starts blasting marines at the Embassy, I doubt players are negatively surprised by the reaction they get from other characters for it. You start blasting marines because of the reactions you're going to get! Most people who are accustomed to some PnP RPGs are, I think, already familiar with the quest XP, though.
  12. Wombat
    @Adhin Yeah, the least surprising but most likely way would keep things as they were (if not broken...) while making it disabled in easy mode. In that case, as you said, the designers would just assign spells/abilities to area effect/single target with equal proportion. At least, letting characters can dodge any type of AoE with Ref first doesn't sound right in terms of balancing. Probably, I read too much into just a small piece of info. That said, of course, quite many things talked here are more or less conjunctures. As for the "bonus" area, for the time being, I'd leave the decision to the designers since they are the only people who directly know how things actually work. Also, I'm inclined to think basic frameworks are better to be thought out from the top-down perspective rather than a democratic/grassroot-ish way. Once the designers are confident in them, I'd like them to ask public opinions to avoid hard-landing. I don't know about other people but, at the current stage, I feel like blind-folded.
  13. Wombat
    Yeah, that's what I meant in my previous post but the designers seem to be yet to decide. I was reading the related part of the official wiki Among three defenses, only Ref had the explicit comment about AoE, which made me wonder. Unfortunately, I have difficulty in finding the original post by Sawyer, though.
  14. Wombat
    Considering the fact that Sawyer has been cautious to rote rituals such as buffing, I have no idea on how he would answer the question. In IE games, AoE management definitely required preparations ranging from party composition to spell/equipment choices (Oh beloved ring of free movement). Also, how would the porpotion among targetted defences (FOR/REF/PSY) of AoE spells/abilities be? So definitely gonna have friendly fire, maybe there will be a toggle, and there maybe some double-radius thing with FF and non-FF areas depending on base vs bonus size. I kinda like the idea. Yeah, investing on INT might make otherwise useful spells/abilities less useful or even almost useless if the areas get large enough to cover too many party members...
  15. Wombat
    Yeah, while it could be ineteresting to have independent zones for vision, sound, scent and magic (soul power like in the case of Skuldr), I guess it would be overkill for the scope of the game...
  16. Wombat
    ? Actually, there is no wonder since I checked out both the wiki and the original source to be sure before writing my previous comment (I quoted the latter simply because I could make use of the function of the boards). For relying exclusively on my memory is not a good idea.
  17. Wombat
    As for possible scaling, considering various things, I personally think reasonable level-scaling is for plot-required areas make sense (especially in a system, where the strengths of characters are roughly majored by levels). However, the topic is rather touchy and the word "level-scaling" could give a wrong impression, ending up with inefficient inter-desinger-backer communication. Also, I think detailed balance-out task should come after, at least, basic features are on the table. So, I guess Sawyer is not prepared to talk about it yet both socially and technically. At least, considering the info revealed so far, I think Sawyer deserves some trust, along with his past records, in terms of his history of both released games and communication with his players. I wonder if there is a differenciation among creatures which are perticulary sensitive to specific information such as sound, vision and ordor. There is already a creature, which is probably almost impossible to avoid by stealth skill, though. I thnik scouting/occational looting is good enough for all the maps but, depending on the area designs, there can be a chance of subotarging (disabling alarms and/or other defense systems, oppening doors for other party members, maybe setting traps or make use of existing ones/environments, and talking to possible friendly NPCs bypathing guards).
  18. Wombat
    Agreed but, in other words, Sawyer's explanation makes more sense when they are not visible... Also, now I wonder how other skills will be implemented. Indeed, somehow it's todays' standard for some games to offer both stealth and assault gameplays. However, I wonder if they can offer juicy gameplay for other skills even compared with the additional layer of gameplay given by the stealth mechanic. Admittedly, this is quite a luxury already, though.
  19. Wombat
    How much of info about PoE did you actually read? If things are not changed after the old update above, enemies are scaled based on the difficulty level, not character level as in Bethesda games. So, even at easier difficulty levels, if a low-level party wander too far, they will eventually come across what they cannot deal with, which is, however, by design or due to the scope of the game. [Edit] BTW, I couldn't find where it was mentioned but, IIRC, encounters tied to the plot seems to be scaled to some extent. Oh and np Indira
  20. Wombat
    That would be rather costly tactics for Expert mode, where 0 health means death, but, if you just crank up the difficulty level, even in Path of the Damned, it would be a valid enough tactics. As I wrote, nobody would stop you from doing so. There are already such tools which adapt the gameplay to the preference of the players. Even Sawyer admitted Fighter is easier class for the players to choose attritute scores compared with Monk/Paladin. Fighter seems not to be a resource-consumptive class and more modal than some other classes with flashy soul abililies but, still, I think they can be more varied compared with the equivalant class in IE games. And, personally, I wonder if I'd like all the six party members to require micromanagement (even with the newly added "slow" funciton), which is rather based on my preference, though. In any case, If you like more resouce-heavy classes, you are free to ignore Fighter.
  21. Wombat
    Did I need to emphasize 'fixated' part? How about a 'puzzle' which requires your response time to time but your responses can be different depending on how your character and parties are built, what kind of abilities/equipment/members (some may have been maimed) remained in your options?
  22. Wombat
    I've gotten an impression that some people here forgot about the various game modes they are offering with more detailed options for single items. Nobody would stop you from choosing Expert, Path of the Damned and Trial of Iron game modes, besides the normal difficulty settings. Also, quite many of us are entitled to take part in beta testing if we wish to do so.* Furthermore, as I wrote before, you don't need to rest in every single rest place. So, I guess its too early to discuss things further especially when we are yet to put our hands on the current gameplay although the devs sound quite confident in how things turned out so far, to my ears. As a long term forum lurker, I may have been just accustomed to the way of Sawyer thinking but, some of us asked how things around difficulty were designed and Sawyer gave quite good answers in both general terms and more concrete details in this thread. * It would be time-saving for both designers and testers if they have a better system to balance things out, which is probably one of the reasons why they came up with the current system rather than the old RNS-heavy and fixated puzzle system. BTW, if you wonder what I mean by 'fixated puzzle', Sawyer once wrote something like: an ideal system would allow the players to solve a situation in various ways rather than forcing them to solve a puzzle which strictly demands a single answer and thus ends up requiring the players routine tasks. If you think this may decrease the difficulty, why not try higher difficulty settings and figure it by yourself once the game is available? Also, why not read his recent comments and ask why he designed the system in the way it is now to yourselves?
  23. Wombat
    Guess I overlooked the direct question from TRoar, somehow but I wonder Im sorry since he/she got a reply from Sawyer. Well, I meant backtracking part in my original post-since there is a scene where Pharod dropping it. I think you are just technically right as well as the z part. However, some people failed to hover their mouse pointers on a certain object to initiate the so-called dialogue. As for the other part, I don't think we disagree. So, lets save our time from nitpicking each other. Basically, my point was something in line of Nonek wrote-such things should stay out of main quests. Not all the players are kinds of players who enjoy exploration and thus, basically, the designers shouldnt put someting important in main story in the subcategory, which ends up with diminishing experience of other types of the players. That said, if players invest their time on a certain activities, they should be rewarded within the scope of the game. I know Im repeating myself here but Ive gotten an impression that I may not have been enough clear to some people. Any case, Sawyer put better words in his post which I refered in the beggining of this post.
  24. Wombat
    In fact, I tried to explain why parties end up with quite wealthy in so many CRPGs. Personally, I like some survival focused games and Darklands has interesting ways to invest, which enhances the immersion rather than distracting. So, I guess it comes down to the scope of the game. In PoE's case, the item degradation, which was given up, was going to be implemented as a money sink-probably in the line of thought similar to the Poorman's Mod (Personally, I haven't played it but, at least, judging from your explanation here). Even the stronghold seems to have been partly designed as a possible money-sink (This may sound odd but to dry up the player cash, I guess since, somehow, I don't think they were even implementing real estate economy mechanic...). So, while even the devs seem to have planned something like that, they gave up due to the community reaction. That said, I don't believe anybody has problem with you or other people making a mod like "Poor Man's Mod".
  25. Wombat
    This is another factor where the lack of game masters in CRPGs can screw things up. I agree that money scarcity can be good for immersion but, if it gets really difficult to build wealth, at the end of the game, tactical difficulty for the players who managed to build wealth and who failed to do so/or was not interested in doing so would be significally different, which can shift the focus of the game. So, unless there is a clever way to sovle this dilenma, I'd like PoE to be more traditional, means-at the early game, my party may struggle for decent equipments but, at the end of the game, I don't mind how wealthy it is since I'd like the game to be less about investment simulation game. I liked old Romance of the Three Kingdoms games, where you need to build both your countries and individual heroes, which suited the format, but, for PoE, I'd like the game to focus on tactical combat with relatively small scale resource management. Simply, they are different games. As for low magic setting, the lead desinger himself seems to like low magic setting as I do but, considering the item design pledgers, I think there will be a considerable number of magic items, some of which may not be available depending on how you play the game, though.
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