J.E. Sawyer
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Posts posted by J.E. Sawyer
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I still think you could split the bestiary-xp-difference even further for a compromise between 'genocide' and simply unlocking a creature = xp.
Sorry if I wasn't clear, but bestiary entries are unlocked piecemeal over time, so you would be gaining progressive XP up to the point where you learn everything about that critter type.
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Yeah, we're talking about various other forms of XP including exploration, trap, and lock XP. We've also discussed XP connected to unlocking elements in the bestiary, which is sort of a limited-pool form of combat XP that eventually gets exhausted and doesn't require you to commit genocide to reach it. Also, kith (humanoid people) are not (and would not be) in the bestiary, and those are the characters most often associated with quests.
The main motivation for our quest-only XP system came from observing how many people, both regular gamers and QA testers, completed certain types of quests in the games we've made. Those who completed a quest via stealth or conversations often backtracked to kill the people or critters they had just "spared" because the game's basic mechanics systemically rewarded that behavior. You can set a bunch of flags for each quest and try to side-step around these cases but it's a huge amount of work for something that can be solved in a more straightforward manner by awarding XP for objectives and quests instead of individual creatures killed.
Since creatures (i.e., not humans/elves/dwarves/etc.) are directly involved in quests as non-hostiles with much less frequency, I think having XP awarded based on bestiary unlocks could work well. If we set those unlock thresholds much lower than the total number of critters in the game, players will hopefully learn that they don't need to exterminate everyone/thing they come across and they will eventually exhaust the available XP for that type of creature. E.g. Korgrak is an ogre, but he's by no means the only ogre, so if you don't kill him, you should still be able to completely unlock the entire ogre bestiary entry (and get all XP from it).
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The devs may totally love something but if no one wants it or will use it there isn't much sense in keeping it around which is where some of these discussions go and then more often there is a sort of compromise.
I'm pretty easy-going about mechanics in the things that I play and it's not uncommon for me to implement mechanics I personally do not like if I feel they will improve the game overall. Most of the design choices I make focus on trying to produce a great experience for the audience, varied as they often are. In the process of working on RPGs over the past 15 years, I've observed a lot of things that create roadblocks in our games for subsets of people or structural flaws that make it difficult for people to really make a wide variety of viable characters. If I can fix those elements while still retaining the spirit of the genre, I feel that it is my responsibility to try. Those attempts don't always work out. In those cases, we either have to take a different approach or fall back on traditional conventions.
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No idea what they thought they'd accomplish with Stash. Just give characters very limited amount of quick slots (6 is probably too much, make it 2-3) and huge inventory or big inventories for everyone + stash. Make inventory locked during combat. That's it.
We were trying to balance what I saw as competing desires among backers for per-character inventories, reduced hassle in picking up items over the long haul, and some nod toward realism/strategic decision making in personal carrying capacity. The last element has always seemed like the least important to me, but that is what the Stash restrictions were meant to accomplish.
If the overwhelming vibe from people is that they don't like the Stash access restrictions, I am a-ok with removing them entirely. E: Except for in combat, of course.
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Bonus spells! I didn't even know that I missed them until just now.
There are class-specific items that grant bonus spells and Talents that grant bonus spells. There are also class-specific items that grant bonus uses of class abilities for non-casters.
Also consider that the majority of non-caster classes in most editions of A/D&D don't receive bonus ability uses for high stats (e.g. more Rage for barbarians, more Smites for paladins). In most cases, the stat in question is also one that's already key to the power of the class. More Smites for high Charisma when high Charisma already adds bonus to attack, more Rage for high Constitution when Constitution affects the duration of Rage, but you still get more spells for high Int or Wis when high Int and Wis already affect the DCs for those spells (in 3.X, anyway).
The most difficult classes to arrange stats for in core 3.x are often monks and paladins, specifically because more than half of the six are important to them. These classes aren't fundamentally more powerful, but their powers/functionality are dependent on more stats. Monks benefit heavily from Str, Dex, Con, and Wis (and somewhat from Int). Paladins benefit heavily from Str, Dex (sometimes), Con, Wis, and Cha. You can get away with being an idiot paladin in 3.x, but you kind of need to spread the points around the other four or five or the character is going to be worse off at something they do regularly to semi-regularly. This isn't really the case with A/D&D wizards at all. When there's no logical reason to do anything but put your highest score in the same stat for any character of that class, there's really not much of a choice there.
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Is the hard limit of eight total adventurers per game a true limit on the number created, or can one somehow delete previously created adventurers in that game after they have died in order to hire more? I am guessing the former from the phrasing, but would appreciate clarification nonetheless.
The limit is on eight active adventurers in a game.
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Thanks for responding! Good to know I can potentially get this style of play on-line quickly! Couple other questions - Comments if you have time.
1 - As someone else asked...can you stockpile created companions in your stronghold? If yes, can you use them to solve quests etc that were meant for "while you are away" quests at the stronghold.
2 - If yes to answer 1...can you keep all created companions + the written companions at the stronghold or is there a limit? If there's a limit, can it be expanded to fit everyone or is it a hard limit?
3 - I get the idea that you could use them as "fodder"/perhaps certain parts of the game would be easier if you could jump up to a party of 6...but is that really a problem? I guess in a RPG/single player game...I don't see the purpose of limiting something like this based upon a few players that would "abuse" such a system.
4 - This is a little more off topic...is XP gained a flat amount to each character or is it split amongst the group? XP seems like it's going to be an interesting "resource" in this game, especially with being able to "buy" a character at -1 level to your current.
For purposes of clarity, when I use the term "companion", I mean the OEI-written characters. When I use the term "adventurer", I mean the player-made characters.
1. You can stockpile companions and adventurers at your stronghold, but you can only have eight active (i.e., in existence) adventurers at any given time.
2. All companions and all adventurers can be at the stronghold at the same time. Their limits are independent of each otther.
3. Because none of the early game content is designed for six characters. You would roll over things extremely easily. We restrict it for the same reason we restrict the amount of money you have access to, the amount of XP you gain, the amount of points you can spend on attributes, etc. It's still our responsibility to design a game that has some aspects of challenge to it.
4. The more characters you have in your party, the less XP you gain, but it's a marginal difference (5% per character).
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I understand the desire, as I once played a pirate from the Nelanther Isles with Thug, Blooded, Improved Initiative, Quick Draw, Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Pistol, and four pistols at the ready. However, it is tricky to implement without adding new stand-alone weapons (i.e., two matching weapons as a combined single item). For murderous multishots, the blunderbuss is pretty good even if it isn't as cool-looking.
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I think the only real reason for the resistance (assuming this would be balanced properly) is the RP perspective. I'm personally more of a mechanics focused person myself, so I can look past it - but many people won't like a system like this unless there's some plausible game-world explanation for it.
I do and don't understand that perspective. I understand wanting a justification, but it's always seemed fitting to me. Many AoE spells/effects originate at a point and spread outward. Fireball is probably the most obvious example, but I tend to think of most effects that way. You're a super smarty, so as you extend the AoE outward, you are able to selectively shape it at the margins, where it terminates. You can't do it on the interior because that's the origin of the effect, where it's emanating from. That's always been my view of it, anyway.
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Is there some technical issue that makes changing radii difficult? Because you're going for some weird way around the issue instead the most obvious one.
Seeing AoE affect characters is great (in ToEE creature circles changed color and glowed for that), but what if player is a big fan of "fair4all" friendly fire and expects it affect everyone from high difficulty he have chosen for his playthrough?
We have a bunch of people saying "yeah, AoE increase doesn't really seem that valuable", mostly because the marginal increase can be a liability. Allowing you to scale it down solves the liability problem, but also means that in those circumstances, you get literally no benefit from it at all. I still really don't get why this is such a spot of resistance when making the margins safe doesn't remove friendly fire, it makes INT valuable all the time instead of sometimes being a liability, and it doesn't require adding a UI layer on top of the system just to regulate AoE sizes.
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We'll look into that. We did already (today) shift the log over to use the primary color for characters in the log, which really helps locate different characters in it.
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I disagree. I don't think it's unintuitive at all. We currently have (for next BB update) highlighting for whom will be affected by an AoE and we will eventually have both the core AoE and marginal AoE increase displayed. This should make it very clear.
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Deflection on Int makes slightly more sense than on Res, but it still doesn't make a lot of sense.
Intelligence would become the attribute for all front-line warriors and meh on casters.
If you believe that deflection can't be put on an attribute that makes RP sense, stick to your vision.
Bigger AoEs seems pretty good for casters, IMO.
Ultimately my vision is that PoE is a "gamist" game so I err on the side of solutions that produce what I see as better gameplay even if they don't fit perfectly from a simulationist perspective.
Mechanics:
Of the two statistics currently tied to Intellect, Duration is obviously far superior. The AoE bonus is not very valuable at the moment due to the "my AoE is too big and I can't make it smaller" problem - not sure if that's planned to be customizable pre-cast with the mouse wheel or something. That said, even if that is fixed, AoE will still be much less powerful than Duration IMO. In light of that fact, combining AoE with Deflection doesn't seem like it would end up with an overpowered attribute, but I'm not entirely sure it wouldn't be underpowered either. Doesn't immediately strike me as a good or bad idea though - worth a try. Duration is very very powerful, so tying Concentration to it doesn't seem like a bad idea either since Concentration is kind of "meh" in my opinion. If it did turn out to be overpowered, the Concentration or Duration bonus could just be decreased to balance it.
I know some people have objected to it, but I still think that if the marginal increased area for AoEs were made foe-only for friend-or-foe spells (e.g. a Fireball that, in the expanded margin, only affects hostiles), it would immediately become much more valuable.
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Deflection makes more sense on PER or DEX. Does being smarter really help you with deflecting blows? I guess, but not really.
I don't disagree, but if DEX affects Action Speed and PER affects Accuracy, putting Deflection on either would make them must-haves (IMO) and doesn't help out RES at all.
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Regarding not putting Deflection on a stat:
For one, there is already one "purely defensive" stat - Constitution. Additionally, stating that purely defensive stats don't "feel" great seems like a bit of a subjective thing. It might not feel great for you and for a majority of the playtesting team (which is where I assume you're drawing that info from), but you really need a larger sample size as this is basically a matter of personal preference. For me (and many others), having the ability to choose a purely defensive stat to augment a character concept "feels" fantastic! Also, Concentration is not a defensive stat, at least not from a mechanical standpoint. It does absolutely nothing to improve survivability - it prevents you from having your own attacks interrupted. At best, this is a hybrid (utility) stat, though I'd honestly even call it slightly offensive. Even if Deflection was added to Resolve, Constitution would still be more of a "purely defensive" stat.
Regarding taking healing from Might or splitting up Health/Stamina:
This is a bad idea, in my opinion. The current problems with the attribute system stem from Resolve and Perception. Those are the broken stats. Might and Constitution are just fine how they are. Removing healing from Might or removing health from Constitution would make them weaker, requiring other balance changes to compensate, and in general causing your team to spend much more time than necessary iterating through attribute design systems. From both an RP and a mechanical perspective, you've already gotten Might and Constitution right - they are attributes with very clear benefits that "feel" really good to put points into. Nerfing either one of them would be a mistake, and would cause a balancing chain reaction that would potentially eat up development time that could be better used for other things. Why waste time trying to find a good attribute system that requires major changes to the one already in place when you could have a good attribute system while making only minor changes?
I think we're getting close on this, but here's a small modification: instead of INT being +5 AoE Size/Duration per point and RES being +3 Concentration/+? Deflection per point, for general *~ feels ~* and broader applicability, set INT to +5 AoE Size/+? Deflection per point, and RES to +3 Concentration, +5% Duration per point.
Concentration and longer durations seem to feel appropriate on RES. If you're a character who is not always in the line of fire, you're probably creating more status effects and could use longer durations. If you're a caster character, AoE size is great even if you're not always in the line of fire (Deflection-wise). Any front-line character would benefit from increased Deflection even if they weren't creating effects with AoEs. And Deflection on INT seems slightly more fitting than Deflection on RES.
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I also agree with some of the others that this may require a rebalance of the Cipher class at least with regards to speed. As they get Focus from attacks attacking faster increases the rate of focus gain while the increased action speed also increases the number of abilities they can cast in a set time period. Thus your boosting both the rate of acquisition of abilities along with the rate of use of abilities.
I don't think ciphers are well-balanced right now, anyway, so I'm not personally worried about that.
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Hey, guys. First of all, thank you for putting this together. It's great work. Your research is (obviously) extremely in-depth and well thought-out. This will sound like BS, but just before lunch, I wrote this chart on my board:
And while waiting for my food, started reading your paper. I think we've reached largely similar conclusions, though honestly mine were based more on *~ gut feelin's ~* and less on deep statistics.
The main conclusions we reached internally were:
1) Interrupt chance should be primarily attack/weapon-based with Accuracy (or rather, attack resolution) being the modifying factor. This doesn't entirely align with your conclusions, but it essentially decouples Interrupt from an Attribute independent of what's affecting Accuracy.
2) Accuracy makes as much, if not more, sense on Perception as it would on Dexterity.
3) Dexterity should modify Action Speed by 2% per point.
4) We should establish 10 as the baseline for any stat, with values below inflicting penalties. It feels more traditional and it's extremely easy to make the math work either way (i.e., nothing "bad" really happens because of it, gameplay-wise).
With Resolve, we were still torn on a few issues. We also considered putting Deflection onto one of the stats, but having a stat be purely defensive didn't feel great. Keeping Concentration on Resolve seems good/solid/sensible. We had discussed what I believe was an idea originally from the forums, which was having Might not affect healing output, but having Resolve affect healing received. I think that could work well, as could simply making Endurance (FAK Stamina) be Resolve-based, with Health being Constitution-based.
Anyway, those are my quick thoughts, but again I want to let you know that I appreciate all of the effort you put into researching these problems.
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And I somehow thought that he was an illustrator (I mean, a good one) while, reading what he wrote tells me he is not just that. Thanks for the heads-up, Sawyer, anyway.
Kaz has done most of our UI art and he grew up on the IE games, so he (and many other people on the team, honestly) has a lot of feedback for UI and general gameplay issues. Obsidian encourages everyone on the team to give feedback. Designers still give the majority of feedback but we get it from everyone.
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Only tangentially related, but we've already made changes to the Stamina (soon to be Endurance) and Health system that should a) make front-line characters (like fighters) more survivable in the long-term and b) make the system clearer overall.
The previous system kept Stamina and Health values pretty much equal. Behind the scenes, as you took damage, a fraction of what went to Stamina would go to Health. That fraction was smaller for barbarians with Thick-Skinned, but otherwise it was the same for all classes.
We now simply apply damage 1:1 to Stamina (Endurance) and Health, but Health is determined differently for different classes (but always through a multiplier). Front-line characters are expected to take a lot of abuse and get combat-healed more often, so they have a superior ratio of Endurance to Health. This will (well, actually it already does in our initial playtests) help prevent front-liners from forcing the party to rest after two fights even when the rest of the group has a lot of per rest abilities and Health left. The ratios are very easy to tune, but most importantly, it is much, much clearer how everything works.
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The detection circles are programmer art, though tonight Kaz came up with a great idea how to better represent stealth/detection that a) doesn't involve visible circles at all b) is still fully deterministic c) can scale infinitely with character level d) brings back some ambiguity and "play" to the system. I still need to talk with Tim and BMac about it, but I think it will work much better than what's in the game currently.
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There will probably be more updates in the official announcements, but at a much slower rate.
BTW I talked to Tim et al. about invisibility as a state and selective scouting. Invisibility as a state is much easier to do and both Tim and Dave will likely work on it in the near future. Selective scouting has many more potential issues, so it's less likely to happen in short order.
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Well, if we can ask questions in this thread, can you give a sketch on how the beta is supposed to be updated?
I guess you'll first continue on stability issues and stuff, but can you give a rough scheme on when, for example, additional talents could be in a patch?
Also, is it still up to debate whether non-magic classes will be able to select their class feats from a pool instead of having a linear progression?
I feel this would go a long way to make them feel more costumizable, as the magic classes already feel quite costumizable just because you can select the spells they learn after your personal priorities (at least except for the classes that have immidiate access to all spells of a given level). This would also remove some pressure on the general talents at every third level of being the only way to customizing after the attributes are set, without you needing to implement enough talents to be able to choose one every second level.
Also, thanks for your work and taking time to explain your point of view.
I can't give you a timeline on when more Talents we be implemented or when they will be rolled out to backers, but we are discussing them now.
When it comes to Abilities and Talents and whether or not some Abilites could be selected vs. linearly progressed, I think that will ultimately depend on what that final pool of Abilities and Talents looks like. I'm pretty sure our data structure allows us to do it from a technical perspective, but it will likely come down to the total amount of available content for those classes.
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Yeah, okay, but this is a pretty basic thing. It's how the IE games worked. In most cases where the behavior of Pillars is divergent from the Infinity Engine games, you've explained what, how and why well in advance.
But this whole stealth-on-the-whole-party thing has kind of gone under the radar, so I'm asking.
Asking is fine, and if you want you can start off a question by asking us to confirm/deny that we're incompetent dummies, but I don't think it's helpful.
We implemented stealth as party-based because it seemed most likely that if the player had one character in scouting mode, there was little to no downside to having all characters in scouting mode. In my experience, if one member of the party, or in more complex circumstances, one AI enemy, is invisible and others are not, it can cause some measure of feedback confusion. The worst situations are when one or more characters are selectively invisible to one or more characters. E.g. two guys have seen the party's rogue, but other enemies have not, or three party members have seen through the wizard's invisibility, but the other three have not.
I didn't say that we couldn't make stealth/scouting selective for characters or that we couldn't make individual party members invisible in combat, but there are often bugs that arise from it. I've already talked to Steve about it and will talk to Tim about it right after post this.
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As a general rule, I think it would be more productive if people did not leap to conclusions about why an aspect of the game is or isn't a certain way. If you want to ask, just ask.
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Discussion: the PoE beta xp system
in Backer Beta Discussion
Posted
I think there's a significant difference between being required to kill 100% of all ogres to get all XP from ogre killing and being required to kill 50% of all ogres. You can skip individual ogres, groups of ogres, named ogres on quests, and still gain all of the XP.