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J.E. Sawyer

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Everything posted by J.E. Sawyer

  1. J.E. Sawyer
    Except that's not what I'm proposing at all. Additionally, your AD&D powerful warriors typically became more powerful because they did more damage per attack and had more attacks per round. Low-level AD&D consisted of whiffing once per round. By mid-to-high levels, front line characters are hitting almost constantly, for huge amounts of damage, and many times per round. I.e. the "missing" mechanic is most pronounced at low levels, when people generally hate the feeling of combat. In the most-liked level ranges of AD&D, missing is typically the exception, not the rule -- and it stays that way for a long time.
  2. J.E. Sawyer
    +3 is ostensibly a +15% chance of success all other things being equal. However, often all other things are not equal. Class skills tend to also align with the most common primary stats for the classes taking them. It's true that a high-Dex fighter can be quite viable in 3E and Pathfinder, but they aren't as common as high-Dex rogues. Even an additional +2 means that the gap is 25% -- not enough to make most checks impossible for the non-specialist, but significantly more difficult.
  3. J.E. Sawyer
    This is correct. While I think puzzles have their place and can be very enjoyable, the designers of the Ice Palace and Fell Wood were both less than satisfied with how they had to implement their ideas. On paper, their ideas were pretty good, IMO. I don't think I'm misrepresenting them to say that they would have preferred to change their fundamental area designs if they could go back in time (via the bottom level of Dragon's Eye). We have been bitten by the Pit Viper of Sketchy Puzzle Implementations one too many times, so the puzzles in PE will be put under heavy scrutiny for viability and *~ actual fun ~* when they are being designed and implemented.
  4. J.E. Sawyer
    Yes, you will be able to choose what set of assets you want to use and what resolution.
  5. J.E. Sawyer
    Building on this, there's also a significant difference between how cross-class skills work in 3E/3.5 and how they work in Pathfinder. In 3E/3.5, CC skills cost twice as many points to advance (essentially -- you buy half-ranks) and your max is well below what it is for characters that have that skill as a class skill. At low levels, the CC skills are simply lower than class skills, but by a relatively small margin. At high levels, the CC skills are so far below class skills that it's often impossible for a CC skill to make a check that is targeted at a character of your level. E.g. a rogue may have +30 in Open Lock while a determined, lock-lovin' fighter has +15. A 40 DC lock is not extraordinarily difficult for the rogue to pick, but it is literally impossible for the fighter to pick. The end result is that at higher levels, cross class skills become virtually worthless because the system consistently punishes you for not mix-maxing to a class' strengths. In Pathfinder, class skills receive an immediate and permanent +3 bonus the first time you put a rank in one. Cross class skills don't have half-ranks, but they also don't get a bonus. In addition to being simpler overall, the system accomplishes a few things: 1) it keeps CC skills at a more-or-less fixed point distance (3) from class skills, all other things being equal 2) it encourages players to spread their skill points out among class skills, since they get more bonuses the more skills they put ranks in 3) ultimately, it reinforces the idea that classes will generally tend to be better at class skills without crushing characters playing "against type". The reason I'm comparing these two things is to show that on the design side, we have many different ways we can allow you to be "sub-optimal". Both 3E and Pathfinder allow you to buy cross class skills, but in the former it's a more-or-less dead end. In the long run, they're mostly wasted points. In Pathfinder, you're usually at a disadvantage compared to someone focusing on a class skill, but it's a fixed distance disadvantage, meaning that sub-optimal actually means "sub-optimal" -- not "terrible".
  6. J.E. Sawyer
    We are. Wizards will have among the most and fighters among the fewest, not because they "should", but because that's how we're choosing to design them. Among fighter abilities, many are modal, like 3E/3.5 Power Attack, so their strong tendency will be toward lower maintenance overall, but there will still be a range. Similarly, while wizards can select Talents that are more on the passive side, all of their spells are active abilities. You effectively can't play a fully passive wizard, only various flavors of active.
  7. J.E. Sawyer
    Implements and Blasts are not particularly powerful per-shot. They have two advantages: range and area of effect. If you want to hit a single character hard without casting a limited-resource spell, don't use an implement. Put a sword, spear, or mace in your hand, march up to the front line, and start melee-ing. Some wizard spells are short range and very powerful, but that puts in you in close contact with enemies. Players who want to focus on this type of spellcasting may want to use a good melee weapon instead of falling back with implements/Blasts.
  8. J.E. Sawyer
    Capital-A Abilities are always class-specific. Talents are a mix of class-specific and class-neutral abilities. Some Talents will be open to anyone but unlock earlier for characters of certain classes, races, or cultures. Outside of class restrictions, it will be rare for Talents to have strict prerequisites that do not eventually open up to all characters of a certain level. E.g. Alteration School Specialization will never open for non-wizards because it specifically augments wizard spells. Weapon Specialization will likely be available to Fighters at low levels with certain specializations opening early to characters of any class who are elves, Aedyrans, etc. Then at a higher level, Weapon Specialization will be available to characters of any class as long as they meet the level requirement.
  9. J.E. Sawyer
    I'm still thinking about the best way to handle weapons that traditionally have mixed roles in combat (e.g. polearms, military/war hammers).
  10. J.E. Sawyer
    We intend to have Talents that allow you do that, if you choose. Some players may want to specialize in specific types of spells or make their general spellcasting abilities better, but other players can effectively upgrade their wizards' base implement and Blast capabilities. E: To be clear, players who want to use their Talents to specialize in unorthodox things (e.g. a wizard who jabs people with a pike all day long) are free to do so as well.
  11. J.E. Sawyer
    It depends on how much damage you can do with a single strike. "Heavily armored" is not a type, but an amount of DT relative to the damage you do. Rogues' Sneak Attack damage will likely be added to their total prior to calculating reduction from DT, which would allow them to lean more heavily on slashing and piercing weapons. Also, the amount of DT that piercing weapons negate increases proportionally with other damage bonuses. As a result, as the DT range of enemies gets higher and higher, the "band" of applicability for each weapon type gets wider. But yes, if you are facing an opponent in a stand-up fight and it has incredibly high DT, your best hope is to equip mauls, war hammers, and maces and wear them down over time. At a higher level, when your characters' bonuses and gear are upgraded, you may find that an opponent that previously suggested crushing weapons is now most vulnerable to your piercing or even slashing weapons.
  12. J.E. Sawyer
    To clarify, here is a picture: The inset map is half the resolution of the larger map (though I cropped some edges to avoid some overlap). The inset map = "low"-res environments. The bigger map = original (2560x1440 = one screen) environments. If you use the low-res environments and UI, any resolution above the base (1280x720) will reveal more of the environment. If you use the high-res environment, you will never be "zoomed in" more than what you would normally see at the base resolution of 1280x720, but you have 4x as many pixels. Please look at the 1280x720 and 2560x1440 sections on each map. They are the same location, exactly. Resolutions below 2560x1440 (to 1920x1080) will use the same backgrounds, downsampled, with a UI that is built to start at 1920x1080. Why all of the special attention to 1920x1080? Because a huge number of people run at it. If you use the high-res environments and run above 2560x1440, you will start to see more of the environment. In both cases, you can run (theoretically) any aspect ratio as long as the resolution is above the base: 1280x720 for low-res assets and 1920x1080 for high-res assets.
  13. J.E. Sawyer
    I don't think we're making a mistake because there is no practical way for us to render and hand-edit maps with a target per-screen size of 5120x2880. Yes, the big manufacturers are moving forward with 4K displays. It will be many years before people hurl their current displays in the trash to buy replacement 4K displays.
  14. J.E. Sawyer
    If you're playing on a smaller screen and/or at low-res, you will likely use the downsampled resolution (one screen = 1280x720) environments and GUI. If you're playing on a larger screen and/or at higher resolution, you will probably want to use the original resolution environments and GUI elements, the former of which are @2560x1440 for one 16:9 screen (downsampled to run as low as 1920x1080) with GUI elements designed for 1920x1080 as a starting res. If you click on the colored rectangle image in the OP, you can see the various resolutions in "real" size, with the ghosted full-size environment and downsampled (half size) resolutions.
  15. J.E. Sawyer
    People with laptops, who make up a non-trivial number of gamers. Why are you saying this? We're rendering out to 1280x720 and 2560x1440, with the horizontal pixel count being the important part. On a 13" MacBook Pro with Retina, you'll see an additional 160 vertical pixels of the environment. On a 15" MacBook Pro with Retina, you'll see an additional 320 horizontal and 360 vertical pixels of the world. On a 27" Thunderbolt display, you will see it at the target resolution exactly.
  16. J.E. Sawyer
    The number of players who would benefit from a standard screen size of 5120x2880 (which, again, is more than double that of the highest res 27" Thunderbolt display currently available) is very small, especially considering the enormous amount of time and effort that goes into rendering out and touching up each screen. Take the Eternity screenshot we showed during the KS campaign. That's at 2560x1440. We will be rendering out many "6x6" areas (a common exterior area size in BG and IWD). That's a 15360x8640 image. We have to open that in Photoshop and adjust the brightness/contrast/color levels and surface details across the whole environment. Imagine doing that with a 30720x17280 image. It's a huge amount of work, and I really do not think many players would benefit from it. Steam's last resolution survey put 1920x1080 at 29% (the highest) of all participants. People running above 1920x1200 make up only a small percentage of participants. The next biggest chunk comes at 1366x768 (18.69%), which is a really common laptop resolution. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
  17. J.E. Sawyer
    Piercing is best when the target's armor is good but not great, i.e. when the DT bypass of the piercing weapon is negating more of the armor than the equivalent slashing can power through. Slashing weapons, especially the single-handed slashing weapons, start getting inefficient very quickly when armor piles on. The piercing weapons continue doing all of their damage up until the point where the DT exceeds the bypass. When the DT is so high that it is effectively negating all of the piercing weapons' bypass AND damage, that's when crushing weapons emerge as the best choice. All that said, more protective armor always protects you against more damage, regardless of what the source of the damage is. So at the high end when guys are pounding away with mauls, war hammers, and maces, they're doing proportionally much more damage than slashing or piercing weapons, but they're doing much less damage overall than weapons of any damage type when the target has no DT.
  18. J.E. Sawyer
    Pixel doubling would only be required if displays moved outside of the realm of the sane, e.g. running at double current Retina display levels with current monitor/display sizes. A 27" Thunderbolt doesn't even run at the highest current Retina res; it runs at our high-res target, 2560x1440, and that's on a 27" monitor. Those displays are remarkably clear and smooth. If, for some wacky reason, we continue to inflate resolutions while keeping monitor sizes the same, I do not believe the player would benefit much from rendering out 4x as many pixels as our high-res target. Just to keep this in perspective, the original games were 640x480. We're at a 16:9 aspect ratio, but 1280x720 is roughly double the size as a base resolution. 2560x1440 is four times as many pixels for the same scene and would be sixteen times as many pixels for a 640x360 scene. An environment rendered out at 5120x2880 would be sixty four times as many pixels as a 640x360 scene. That seems like overkill on displays that will likely range between 11" and 30".
  19. J.E. Sawyer
    It really shouldn't be necessary to generate a third set of intermediary assets. Planescape: Torment, IWD, and BG were designed to run at 640x480 and people played those comfortably at 1024x768. Doubling those sizes takes us to 1280x960 and 2048x1536. Going from 1280x720 to 1920x1080 is a proportionally smaller jump.
  20. J.E. Sawyer
    4:3, 16:10 and other aspect ratios will be supported and will not have "black bars". Our main challenge will be making sure the interface adjusts properly. When it comes to ultra-high resolutions, we will likely do the same "zoom out" of the environment up to a certain point and then pixel double the high-res backgrounds. When the pixel density is as high as it is on a laptop or desktop screen (that 2880x1800 display is for a 15" MacBook Pro), a pixel doubled image won't really have much of a loss of quality, IMO.
  21. J.E. Sawyer
    We're not attempting a mythical perfect balance. We're attempting to make all of your options potentially appealing both before you play and after you've done a playthrough. I'd say it's difficult to avoid a significant difference in the number of times any given option can be applied during a game, so a certain amount of "impact scaling" has to be considered. If there are 100 locks and only 10 ancient poems, designers should probably try to make the impact of those 10 ancient poems (readable only through the Read Ancient Poetry skill, naturally) proportionally larger. You can't really quantify that difference in any objective way, but I think you can account for it in your scenarios. That said, I do think there's probably a minimum density you want to hit, especially in any game where a lot of content is optional or can be played in any order. If you only have 5 Ancient Poetry checks in such a game, there's a really good chance a player could miss the majority of of them. You can also have options cost disproportionate amounts of points, as suggested in the OP. Personally, I am not in favor of this. I would rather have the design team discuss the implementation considerations of each skill, how dense the application of those skills should be, what the benefit/payoff for using the skill should be, and then build the content to support a more-or-less egalitarian application of those skills. This allows us to keep the "buy rate" of those player resources uniform. In the case of marginal skills like D&D's Use Rope, the evolution of the skill in 4E and Pathfinder was not to contrive applications of Use Rope, but to distribute the benefits of that skill into other skills and checks (which, in turn, made those skills marginally more useful).
  22. J.E. Sawyer
    They'll be turned off in Expert mode and if you select an option in other modes. Personally, I think it stinks to high heaven and obfuscates what's going on, but it's no skin off my nose.
  23. J.E. Sawyer
    It's actually already implemented and it works similarly to the classic MicroProse game Darklands. The major differences (IIRC) are that Darklands used armor to adjust the ratio of Endurance/Strength lost (i.e., heavier armor reduced the amount of Strength lost on a hit compared to Endurance) and that there were items to regain Strength, but they were rare/expensive.
  24. J.E. Sawyer
    Just a reminder: Icewind Dale II was the only Infinity Engine game to have a dialogue skill (three, in fact). BG, BG2, IWD, and PS:T and related expansions all used ability scores and other more-or-less fixed character attributes like class and race. IMO, if you're going to have stat-based unlocks, I'd rather do that type of unlocking because it's often easier/more sensible to spread the checks out more evenly.
  25. J.E. Sawyer
    Above a certain (fairly low) level, potions were not going to get your front-line characters back up to peak condition unless you were dumping gallons of potions down their throats. Whether it was due to loss of hit points or loss of per-rest/daily abilities, parties eventually had to rest in IE games. Pre-3E, clerics (or druids) had to devote a lot of their spell slots to healing. Some of those healing spells were used in combat, but often they were used between combat -- in essence trading the loss of one resource for another, but still accelerating the diminution of party resources. It also practically demanded the presence of a dedicated healer for extended exploration. In 3E, the system ameliorated the necessity of loading up on healing spells by allowing good (and some neutral) clerics to spontaneously convert prepared spells into cure wounds spells of similar level. 4E took this a step further and implemented healing surges, which gave ALL characters much greater flexibility in healing themselves between combats, but gave them limited ability to do so within combat -- unless assisted by another character (e.g. a cleric casting healing word as a minor action). A party without a healer has a certain disadvantage within combat, but is nowhere near as disadvantaged between combats (compared to 2nd Ed. or 3E/3.5). The Stamina/Health system is intended to accomplish a similar goal, but Health is still intended to be a resource that progressively dwindles down and encourages the player to rest. In PE, my belief is that this system will make that progression less chaotic and dependent on the presence of certain items/classes than it is in pre-4E D&D.
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